More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth:
Those bloffoms alfo, and those dropping gums, 630
That lie beftrown unfightly and unsmooth,
Afk riddance, if we mean to tread with ease;
Mean while, as Nature wills, night bids us reft.

To whom thus Eve with perfect beauty' adorn'd. My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst Unargued I obey; fo God ordains;

God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise.
With thee converfing I forget all time;

All feafons and their change, all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rifing sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the fun,

635

640

When and fentiments fuitable to their It was now an eternal Spring, ver. condition and characters. The 268. and we shall read in X. 677. fpeech of Eve in particular is dref- of the changes made after the fall, fed up in fuch a foft and natural turn of the words, as cannot be fufficiently admired. Addifon.

640. All feafons and their change,] We should understand here the feafons of the day, and not of the year. So in VIII. 69. we read His feafons, hours, or days, or

months, or years:

and in IX. 200. he fays Adam and Eve partake the feafon prime for fweeteft fents, that is the morning.

to bring in change

Of seasons to each clime; elfe had Perpetual fmil'd on earth with verthe fpring

nant flowers.

And we may farther observe, that Eve in the following charming lines mentions morning, evening, night, the times of the day, and not the feafons of the year.

641. Sweet is the breath of morn, &c.] Mr. Dryden in his preface to

Juvenal

645

When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glift'ring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth
After foft show'rs; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then filent night
With this her folemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of Heav'n, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn, when the afcends 650
With charm of earliest birds; nor rifing fun

On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glift'ring with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor filent night
With this her folemn bird, nor walk by moon, 655
Or glittering star-light without thee is sweet.
But wherefore all night long shine these? for whom

This

verfes has fomething in it of a paftoral, yet it excels the ordinary kind, as much as the scene of it is above an ordinary field or meadow.

648. With this her folemn bird,] The nightingale, moft mufical, most melancholy, as he fays elsewhere. She is call'd the folemn nightingale, VII. 435.

660. Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve,] Mr. Pope in his excellent notes upon Homer, B. 1. ver. 97. obferves, that those appellations of praise and honor, with which the heroes in Homer

This glorious fight, when fleep hath shut all eyes?
To whom our general ancestor reply'd.
Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve, 660
These have their courfe to finish round the earth,
By morrow evening, and from land to land
In order, though to nations yet unborn,
Ministring light prepar'd, they set and rife;
Left total darkness should by night regain
Her old poffeffion, and extinguish life
In nature and all things, which these soft fires
Not only' inlighten, but with kindly heat
Of various influence foment and warm,
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down
Their ftellar virtue on all kinds that
On earth, made hereby apter to receive

fo frequently falute each other, were agreeable to the ftile of the ancient times, as appears from feveral of the like nature in Scripture. Milton has not been wanting to give his poem this caft of antiquity, throughout which our firft parents almost always accost each other with fome title, that expreffes a refpect to the dignity of human

nature.

661. These have their courfe] I have prefum'd to make a small alteration here in the text, and read Thefe, though in most other edi

grow

665

670

Perfection

Perfection from the fun's more potent ray.
These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, 674
Shine not in vain; nor think, though men were none,
That Heav'n would want fpectators, God want praise:
Millions of fpiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we fleep:
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold
Both day and night: how often from the steep 680
Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard

Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or refponfive each to others note,

Singing their great Creator? oft in bands

684

While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk With heav'nly touch of inftrumental founds

he had not a little affectation of fhowing his learning of all kinds, and makes Adam difcourfe here fomewhat like an adept in aftrology, which was too much the philofophy of his own times. What he fays afterwards of numberless fpiritual creatures walking the earth unfeen, and joining in praises to their great Creator, is of a nobler ftrain, more agreeable to reafon and revelation, as well as more pleafing to the imagination, and feems to be an imitation and improvement of old Hefiod's notion of good geniuses, the guardians

In

of mortal men, clothed with air, wand'ring every where through the earth. See Hefiod, I. 120-125.

682. Celestial voices to the mid

night air,] Singing to the midnight air. So in Virg. Ecl. I. 57.

canet frondator ad auras.

For as Dr. Pearce obferves there fhould be a comma after note, that the conftruction may be Singing their great Creator to the midnight air.

And this notion of their finging thus by night is agreeable to the account given by Lucretius, IV. 586. Quorum

In full harmonic number join'd, their fongs

699

Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven.
Thus talking hand in hand alone they pass'd
On to their blissful bow'r; it was a place
Chos'n by the fovran Planter, when he fram'd
All things to Man's delightful ufe; the roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either fidé
Acanthus, and each odorous bufhy shrub
Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses, and jeffamin

695

Rear'd high their florifh'd heads between, and