Smooth on the tongue difcours'd, pleafing to th' ear, And tuneable as fylvan pipe or fong; 480 What wonder then if I delight to hear Her dictates from thy mouth? most men admire Infpir'd; disdain not fuch accefs to me. To whom our Saviour with unalter'd brow. › Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope, I bid not or forbid; do as thou find'ft Permiffion from above; thou canst not more. 495 He publican principles at the Reftora- faying of Medea. Ov. Met. VII. He added not; and Satan bowing low His gray diffimulation, disappear'd Into thin air diffus'd: for now began Night with her fullen wings to double-shade foo The defert; fowls in their clay nefts were couch'd ; And now wild beafts came forth the woods to roam. 497.-and Satan bowing low His gray diffimulation,] An expreffion this, which your little word-catching critics will very probably cenfure, but readers of true tafte admire. It is a true in ftance of the feliciter audet. There is another of the fame kind in this book, where the poet fays, speaking of the angelic quire, ver. 170. -and in celeftial measures mov'd, Circling the throne and finging, while the hand Sung with the voice. Thyer. Et procul in tenuem ex oculis evanuit auram. 500. --to double-fhade The defert;] He has expreffed the fame thought elsewhere In double night of darkness, and And the reader will naturally ob- The end of the Firft Book. EAN while the new-baptiz'd, who yet re- At Jordan with the Baptift, and had seen 1. Mean while the new-baptiz'd &c.]The greatest and indeed jufteft objection to this poem is the narrowness of its plan, which being confin'd to that fingle fcene of our Saviour's life on earth, his temptation in the defert, has too much fameness in it, too much of the reafoning and too little of the defcriptive part, a defect most certainly in an epic poem, which ought to confift of a proper and happy mixture of the inftructive and the delightful. Milton was himself, no doubt, fenfible of this imperfection, and has therefore very judiciously contriv'd and in, troduc'd all the little digreffions that could with any fort of propriety connect with his fubject, in order to relieve and refresh the reader's attention, The following converfation betwixt Andrew and Simon upon the miffling our Saviour fo long, with the Virgin's re#estions on the fame occafion, and And the council of the Devils how beft to attack their enemy, are intances of this fort, and both very happily executed in their refpe&tive ways. The language of the former is not glaring and impaffion'd, but cool and unaffected, corresponding moft exactly to the humble pious character of the fpeakers. That of the latter is full of energy and majefty, and not a whit inferior to their moft fpirited speeches in the Paradife Loft. This may be given as one proof cut of many others, that, if the Paradife Regain'd is inferior, as indeed I think it must be allow'd to be, to the Paradife Loft, it cannot juflly be imputed, as fome would have it, to any decay of Milton's genius, but to his being cramp'd down by a more barren and contracted subject. Thyer. 4. Jefus Meffiab Son of God de clar'd,] This is a great mistake in the poet. All that the people E 2 could |