Despoil'd of innocence—or faith—of bliss!

For now, and since first break of dawn, the fiend,
Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come;
And on his quest, where likeliest he might find
The only two of mankind, but in them
The whole included race, his purpos'd prey.
In bower and field he sought where any tuft
Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay,
Their tendance, or plantation for delight :
By fountain, or by shady rivulet,

He sought them both, but wish'd his hap might find
Eve separate; he wish'd, but not with hope

Of what so seldom chanc'd; when to his wish—
Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,

Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance,1 where she stood,
Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
About her glow'd, oft stooping to support
Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay
Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold,
Hung drooping unsustain'd; them she upstays
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,3
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh!
Nearer he drew, and many a walk travers'd
Of stateliest covert,3 cedar, pine, or palm ;
Then voluble and bold; now hid, now seen
Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers
Imborder'd on each bank, the hand of Eve!*
Spot more delicious than those gardens feign'd,
440 Or of reviv'd Adonis,8 or renown'd

» 11. XV. 153 :

Αμφι δε μιν Θυσεν νέρος εστεφανωτο. - (Τ.

2 This thought and manner or speaking must hare pleased our author, as they are here a repetition of iv. 269.—(N.)

• The many pleasing images of nature which are intermixed in this part of the story with the several wiles which are put in practice by the tempter, and the gradual and regular progress to the catastrophe, are so very obvious, that it would be superfluous to point out their respective beauties.—{Ad.)

I. e. Set as a border. The hanks were bordered with the flowers. "The hand of Eve;" the handiwork of Eve, as we say of a picture that it is the hand of such or such a master; and thus Virgil, Æn. i. 455:—

"Artificumque manvs inter so operumque labores
Mlratur."—(N.)

As Milton is comparing this particular spot to the garden of Alcinous, he uses "imbordercd" as illustrating a word of similar meaning in Homer's charming description of that celebrated garden, Odyss. vii. 127:

Ενθα δε κοσμηται προσιαι παρα νειατον ορχου
Παντοίαι πεφύασιν, επηετανον γανόωσαι. - (Τ.)

5 The numerous disputes about this passage, and its defence, may be thus summon

Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son;

2

Or that, not mystic,' where the sapient king
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.
Much he the place admir'd, the person more.
As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight—
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy—each rural sight-each rural sound;
If chance, with nymph-like step, fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seem'd, for her now pleases more;
She most, and in her look sums all delight:
Such pleasure took the serpent to behold
This flow'ry plat—the sweet recess of Eve,
Thus early, thus alone. Her heavenly form
Angelic, but more soft and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action, overaw'd
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereav'd
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought;b
That space the evil one abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remain'd
Stupidly good; of enmity disarm'd—

466 Of guile of hate—of envy—of revenge!

3

up. Although the gardens of Adonis, xnce Advedos, may have been nothing else (as Dr. Bentley says) than portable earthern pots filled with lettuce or fennel, and used at the yearly festival of Adonis, because Venus once laid him on a lettuce bed; still the reason why these little gardens were carried about in honour of him was, that the Greeks had a tradition (as Pearce shows) that when alive, he bad a magnificent garden in which he delighted. Pliny mentions the gardens of Alcinous and Adonis together, as Milton does (b. xix. c. 4): "Antiquity has admired nothing more than the gardens of the Hesperides, and of kings Adonis and Alcinous." So that this was sufficient ground for the poet to refer to them. But he had high poetic authority as well. Marino, in his L'Adone (c. 6), Spenser in his Fairy Queen (III. 6), and Shakspcare (K. H. VI. act i. sc. 6), refer to them in terms of high encomium. Besides all this, Milton fortifies himself against all cavil by calling these gardens "feigned." The gardens of Alcinous, king of Phnacia (now Corfu), who entertained Ulysses, are celebrated in the Seventh Book of the Odyssey.

1 Or the gardens of Solomon, which were not imaginary but real, where he was wont to enjoy himself with his beautiful wife, daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. See the book of Canticles; and also the description of them in Cotovicus of Utrecht, in his Iti— nerarium Hierosolymatanum.—(N., T.)

* Grass just mowed, and spread for drying.—(K.)

* See Fairy Queen, II. vi. 24.—(TA.)

Compare this scene with that between the Saracen king Aladin, and the Italian virgin Sophronia, in the second canto of Tasso's Jerusalem, in which, however, the Engiishman far surpasses the Italian.—(Th.)

"Et noslro same doluiiti dolore." These repetitions are common in the best poets. —(N.)

500

But the hot hell that always in him burns,
Though in mid heaven,1 soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordain'd; then soon
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites :

66

"Thoughts, whither have ye led me! with what sweet
Compulsion thus transported, to forget

"What hither brought us! hate, not love; nor hope
"Of Paradise for hell—hope here to taste
"Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,
"Save what is in destroying: other joy.
"To me is lost. Then, let me not let pass
"Occasion which now smiles: behold alone
"The woman, opportune to all attempts!
"Her husband (for I view far round) not nigh,
"Whose higher intellectual more I shun,
"And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb
"Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould;
"Foe not informidable! exempt from wound,
"I not; so much hath hell debas'd, and pain
"Enfeebled me, to what I was in heaven.
"She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods!
"Not terrible, though terror be in love
"And beauty, not approach'd by stronger hate—
"Hate stronger under show of love well feign'd;
"The way which to her ruin now I tend."
So spake the enemy of mankind enclos'd
In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve
Address'd his way; not with indented 2 wave,
Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd

3

Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; "

1 /. «. Even were he in the midst of heaven; or it may refer to Job. ii. l: "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord : and Satan also came among them to present himself." So Satan speaks, Par. Reg. i. 366.—

-"nor from Ihe heaven of heavens

Hath be excluded my resort sometimes."—(N.)

* Notched, going in and out, like the teeth of a saw. So Shakspcare, As You Like It. act iv. so. 3:

"And with indented glides did slip away."—(N.)

As the dragon, or serpent, is described by Orpheus, de Lap. Arg. 44.—

rv«/j» Tw suxuz/

w; recvo igv pxxi , «ur« sir' Vt<,t A// ,-,
icetze <T «i ' Xho ehst ofitvov Tfi XOi.—(2'.) *

Hilton has not only imitated Ovid, Met. iii. 32, in this description, but has

With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape
And lovely never since of serpent-kind
Lovelier; not those that in Illyria chang'd
Hermione, and Cadmus; or the god
In Epidaurus; nor to which transform'd
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen;
He with Olympias; this with her who bore
Scipio, the height of Rome. With tract oblique

1

At first, as one who sought access, but fear'd

512 To interrupt, side-long he works his way.

ransacked all the good poets who ever made a remarkable description of a serpent.

"Carbuncle his eyes." So Shakspearc in Hamlet's speech to the players :-

"With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus

Old grandsire Priam seeks."—(Steevens*)

"Carbuncle." A jewel resembling in its colour a burning coal.

• Satan here is compared and preferred to the most memorable of those serpents into which persons were transformed. Cadmus, together with his wife Hermione, or Harmonia, leaving Thebes in Boeotia, which he had founded, and for divers misfortunes quilted, went to Illyria, and were there turned into serpents for having slain one sacred to Mars. (See Ov. Met. iv. 562, etc.) Esculapius, the god of physic, who was worshipped at Epidaurus, having been supplicated by a deputation from Rome to allay a pestilence raging there, was said to have gone to Home for the purpose in the form of a serpent. See Livy, b. xi.j Ov. Met. xv. Jupiter Ammon was said to have had intercourse in the form of a serpent with Olympias, and thus to have begotten Alexander the Great. In like manner Jupiter Capitolinus was said to have begotten Scipio Africanus, who raised his country to the highest pitch of glory.—(N.) The critics hove observed a difficulty in the construction of the word "changed" here. Pearce says it may be excused as a poetic liberty of expression, much the same as critics have observed in Ovid, Met. i.:—

"Fonnas ir.atas in nova corpora ;"

/. e. corpora mutala in novas formas. So Horace, ii. Sat. 8:—

-"aceto

Quod Hetbymnæam vilio mutaverat uvam;"

i. e. in quod vitio mutala est uva Methymnæa. Newton thinks the meaning is, that the serpents changed only the form of Cadmus and Hermione, for they still retained their sense and memory; just as £sculapius was still a god, though so disguised (Ovid states these facts, Met. iv. and xv.}, so was Satan Satan still. The alleged difficulty of the word "changed" will be removed, say Dunster and Todd, by placing a comma after it, and considering it as a neuter verb, in its usual signification of underwent a change or transformation. "The height of Rome," Pearce observes, is an expression of the same nature with Ovid's "Summa dueum Atrides." Amor. i. El. ix. 37. Agamemnon, the sum of chiefs. Todd quotes as parallel, "those the top of eloquence," far. Reg. iv. 353; and Shakspearc, Meas. for Meas. act ii. sc. 2 :

--"how should you be,

If he, which is the lop of judgment, should

But judge you as you are."

There is a passage in Lucian's Timon, when the flatterer calls him a wα Tuv AfrVxcuv which I think is most analogous.

As when a ship,1 by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth, or foreland, where the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sails;
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curl'd many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,
To lure her eye: she, busied, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as us'd
To such disport before her through the field
From ev'ry beast, more duteous at her call,
Than at Circean call the herd disguis'd.*
He, bolder now, uncall'd before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring: oft he bow'd
His turret crest, and sleek enamell'd neck,
Fawning; and lick'd the ground whereon she trod :
His gentle dumb expression turn'd at length
The eye of Eve, to mark his play: he, glad'
Of her attention gain'd,* with serpent-tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,

His fraudulent temptation thus began:

"Wonder not, sov'reign mistress (if perhaps

"Thou canst, who art sole wonder) much less arm 534 Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,

66

1 Todd quotes a beautiful passage from Apollonius Hhodius, in whose works Milton manifestly delighted, where the progress of the ship Argo is compared to the motion and workings of a serpent; (and Milton particularly mentions this ship, ii. 1017;) Argon It. 1541. Meen says the simile may be traced to Nicander, (Ther. 266,) where the oblique movements of a particular species of serpent are compared to those of a ship rolling from side to side, as sudden gusts impel it, and marking by its keel the sinuosity of its track. The passages are these :

Ως δε δράκων σκολιην ειλιγμενος ερχεται οιμον
Εντε μιν οξύτατον Θαλπει σελας ηελίοιο
Σπινθαρύγεσσι πυρος εναλίγκια μαιμωοντι
Λαμπεται, οφρα μυχόνδε δια ρωχμοιο δυηται·
Ως Αργω λίμνης στομα ναυπορον εξερέουσα,
Αμφέπολει δηναιον επι χρονον. - (Apol.)

Αυταρ ογε σκαιος μέσατῳ επαλινδεται ολκῳ
Οιμον οδοιπλανων σκολιήν τετρηχοτι νωτῷ,
Τραμπιος ολκαιης ακατω ισος, ήτε δι' αλμης
Πλευρον όλον βαπτούσα, κακοσταθέοντος κήτου,

Εις ανεμον βεβιηται αποκρουστος λιθος ουρῳ.-(Nicander.)

* Alluding to the men turned into beasts by the sorceress Circe, and fawning before her. Ov. Met. liT. 45:—

-"per qne ferarum

Agmen adulantum media procedlt ab aula."-(H.)

a All the commentators agree in extolling this description of the serpent, and the masterly adulation by which Eve is thrown off her guard; and the ability with which Milton removes the common objections to the Mosaic history of the temptation.

Millon, without giving his own opinion, states in general the disputed question whether the devil moved the serpent's tongue, and used that instrument to make the speech; or formed a voiee by impression of the sounding air distant from the serpent. —(H.)