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That death be not one stroke, as I suppos'd
Bereaving sense, but endless misery

From this day onward, which I feel begun
Both in me, and without me, and so last

To perpetuity; Aye me, that fear

Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution
On my defenceless head; both Death and I
Am found eternal, and incorporate both,
Nor I in my part single, in me all
Posterity stands curs'd: Fair patrimony
That I must leave ye, Sons; O were I able
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none !
So disinherited how would

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Aye, there's the rub, &c.

-that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head;] The thought is fine as it is natural.

The sinner may invent never so many arguments in favour of the annihilation and utter extinction of the soul; but after all his subterfuges and evasions, the fear of a future state and the dread of everlasting punishment will still pursue him he may put it off for a time, but it will return with dreadful revolution; and let him affect what serenity and gaiety he pleases, will notwithstanding in the midst of it all come thundering back on his defenceless head. -both Death and I Am found eternal,]

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you bless

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816. -and incorporate both,] Lodged both together in one mortal body, as St. Paul says, Rom. vii. 20. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Hume.

817. Nor I on my part single, in me all

Posterity stands curs'd:] And this curse was the patrimony which he was to leave his sons. The author had in view 2 Esdr. vii. 48. O thou Adam, what hast thou done? for though it was thou that sinned, thou art not fallen alone, but we all that come of thee.

Me now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind
For one man's fault thus guiltless be condemn'd,
If guiltless? But from me what can proceed,
But all corrupt, both mind and will deprav'd
Not to do only, but to will the same

With me? how can they then acquitted stand
In sight of God? Him after all disputes

Forc'd I absolve: all my evasions vain,

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And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still 830
But to my own conviction: first and last
On me, me only, as the source and spring
Of all corruption, all the blame lights due;

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So might the wrath. Fond wish! could'st thou support
That burden heavier than the earth to bear,
Than all the world much heavier, though divided
With that bad Woman? Thus what thou desir'st
And what thou fear'st, alike destroys all hope
Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable
Beyond all past example and futúre,

825. But all corrupt,] For, as Job says, xiv. 4. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?

834. So might the wrath.] So is used in the sense of wishing, as in iii. 34.

So were I equall'd with them in

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in the other: and that much is well thrown in, and raises the sense greatly; the burden is not only heavier than the earth to bear, it is heavier than all the world, nay, it is much heavier.

840. Beyond all past example and futúre,] As Adam is here speaking in great agonies of mind, he aggravates his own misery, 835. —heavier than the earth and concludes it to be greater

renown.

to bear, Than all the world much heavier,]

We quote this only that the reader may observe the beautiful turn of the words, heavier the first in one line and the last

and worse than that of the fallen angels or all future men, as having in himself alone the source of misery for all his posterity; whereas both angels and men had only their own to bear. Satan was only like him, as

To Satan only like both crime and doom.
O conscience, into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driv'n me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plung'd!

Thus Adam to himself lamented loud
Through the still night, not now, as ere Man fell
Wholesome and cool, and mild, but with black air
Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom,
Which to his evil conscience represented
All things with double terror: on the ground
Outstretch'd he lay, on the cold ground, and oft
Curs'd his creation, death as oft accus'd
Of tardy execution, since denounc'd

The day of his offence. Why comes not death,
Said he, with one thrice acceptable stroke
To end me? shall truth fail to keep her word,

being the ringleader, and this added very much to his remorse, as we read in i. 605. The accent upon the word future is indeed very uncommon, but it is the Latin accent, and there is a like instance in Fairfax's Tasso, cant. xvii. st. 88.

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Sat in their sad discourse, and va. rious plaint,

Thence gather'd his own doom; and the next morning, while the sun in Aries rose, ver. 329. he met Sin and Death in their way to earth; they discourse together, and it was after Sin and Death were arrived in Paradise,

But not by art or skill, of things that the Almighty made that

futúre

Can the plain troth revealed be and told.

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speech from ver. 616, to ver. 641. and after that the angels are ordered to make the changes in nature: so that this, we conceive, must be some other night than that immediately after the fall.

854. why comes not death,— But death comes not at call,] Sophocles Philoctetes, 793.

Ω θανατε, θανατε, πως αει καλυμενος
Ούτω κατ' ημας, ου δυνή μολείν ποτέ;

Justice divine not hasten to be just?

But death comes not at call, justice divine

Mends not her slowest pace for pray'rs or cries.

O woods, O fountains, hillocs, dales, and bowers, 860 With other echo late I taught your shades

song.

To answer, and resound far other
Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld,

859. her slowest pace] Pede
pœna claudo. Hor. Od. iii. ii. 32.
The most beautiful passages
commonly want the fewest
notes: and for the beauties of
this passage, we are sure, the
reader must not only perceive
them, but must really feel them,
if he has any feeling at all.
Nothing in all the ancient tra-
gedies is
more moving and
pathetic.

860. O woods, O fountains, hillocs, dales, and bowers, With other echo late I taught your shades To answer, and resound far other song.] Alluding to this part of Adam's morning hymn, v. 202.

Witness if I be silent, morn or even,

To hill, or valley, fountain or fresh

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had now gained the dominion over him. The following passage, wherein she is described as renewing her addresses to him, with the whole speech that follows it, have something in them exquisitely moving and pathetic:

He added not, and from her turn'd; but Eve &c.

Adam's reconcilement to her is worked up in the same spirit of tenderness. Eve afterwards proposes to her husband, in the blindness of her despair, that to prevent their guilt from descending upon posterity they should resolve to live childless; or if that could not be done, they should seek their own deaths by violent methods. As those sentiments naturally engage the reader to regard the mother of mankind with more than ordinary commiseration, they likewise contain a very fine moral. The resolution of dying to end our miseries, does not show such a degree of magnanimity as a resolution to bear them, and submit to the dispensations of Providence. Our author has therefore, with great delicacy, represented Eve as entertaining this thought, and Adam as disapproving it. Addison.

Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fierce passion she assay'd:
But her with stern regard he thus repell❜d.

Out of my sight, thou serpent; that name best
Befits thee with him leagu'd, thyself as false
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and colour serpentine may show
Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee
Henceforth; lest that too heav'nly form, pretended
To hellish falsehood, snare them. But for thee
I had persisted happy', had not thy pride
And wand'ring vanity, when least was safe,
Rejected my forewarning, and disdain'd
Not to be trusted, longing to be seen
Though by the Dev'il himself, him overweening
To over-reach, but with the serpent meeting
Fool'd and beguil'd, by him thou, I by thee,
To trust thee from my side, imagin'd wise,
Constant, mature, proof against all assaults,
And understood not all was but a show
Rather than solid virtue', all but a rib
Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears,

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Milton himself explains this phrase, p. 809. Tol. Edit. -but ecclesiastical is ever pretended to political. Thus Quintil. Pref. to 1. i. Vultum et tristitiam et dissentientem a cæteris habitum pessimis moribus prætendebant, speaking of the false philosophers. Richardson.

883. And understood not] The construction is, I was fooled and beguiled by thee, and understood not &c.

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