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The Dispute which follows between our two first Parents, is represented with great Art: It [proceeds [4]] from a Difference of Judgment, not of Passion, and is managed with Reason, not with Heat: It is such a Dispute as we may suppose might have happened in Paradise, had Man continued Happy and Innocent. There is a great Delicacy in the Moralities which are interspersed in Adams Discourse, and which the most ordinary Reader cannot but take notice of. That Force of Love which the Father of Mankind so finely describes in the eighth Book, and which is inserted in my last Saturdays Paper, shews it self here in many fine Instances: As in those fond Regards he cast towards Eve at her parting from him.

Her long with ardent Look his Eye pursued
Delighted, but desiring more her stay:
Oft he to her his Charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engaged
To be return’d by noon amid the Bower.

In his Impatience and Amusement during her Absence

–Adam the while,
Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest Flowers a Garland, to adorn
Her Tresses, and her rural Labours crown:
As Reapers oft are wont their Harvest Queen.
Great Joy he promised to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, so long delay’d.

But particularly in that passionate Speech, where seeing her irrecoverably lost, he resolves to perish with her rather than to live without her.

–Some cursed Fraud
Or Enemy hath beguil’d thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruin’d; for with thee
Certain my Resolution is to die!
How can I live without thee; how forego
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly join’d,
To live again in these wild Woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my Heart! no, no! I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, Bliss or Woe!

The Beginning of this Speech, and the Preparation to it, are animated with the same Spirit as the Conclusion, which I have here quoted.

The several Wiles which are put in practice by the Tempter, when he found Eve separated from her Husband, the many pleasing Images of Nature which are intermix’d in this part of the Story, with its gradual and regular Progress to the fatal Catastrophe, are so very remarkable that it would be superfluous to point out their respective Beauties.

I have avoided mentioning any particular Similitudes in my Remarks on this great Work, because I have given a general Account of them in my Paper on the first Book. There is one, however, in this part of the Poem, which I shall here quote as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole Poem. I mean that where the Serpent is describ as rolling forward in all his Pride, animated by the evil Spirit, and conducting Eve to her Destruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her to give her his Assistance. These several Particulars are all of them wrought into the following Similitude.

–Hope elevates, and Joy
Brightens his Crest; as when a wandering Fire,
Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night
Condenses, and the Cold invirons round,
Kindled through Agitation to a Flame,
(Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends)
Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
Misleads th’ amaz’d Night-wanderer from his Way
To Bogs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Pool,
There swallowed up and lost, from succour far.

That secret Intoxication of Pleasure, with all those transient flushings of Guilt and Joy, which the Poet represents in our first Parents upon their eating the forbidden Fruit, to [those [5]] flaggings of Spirits, damps of Sorrow, and mutual Accusations which succeed it, are conceiv’d with a wonderful Imagination, and described in very natural Sentiments.