As through unquiet rest: he, on his side,
Leaning half-rais'd with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whisper'd thus: Awake
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,

Heav'n's last best gift, my ever new delight,
Awake.".

The general style, indeed, in which Ere is addressed by Adam, or described by the poet, is in the highest strain of compliment:

"When Adam thus to Eve. Fair consort, the hour

Of night approaches."

"To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorned.”
"To whom our general ancestor replied,

Daughter of God and Man, accomplish'd Eve.”

Eve is herself so well convinced that these epithets are her due that the idea follows her in her sleep, and she dreams of herself as the paragon of nature, the wonder of the universe:—

Close at mine ear, one call'd me forth to walk,

With gentle voice, I thought it thine; it said,

Why sleep'st thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
Tunes sweetest his love-labour'd song; now reigns
Full-orb'd the moon, and with more pleasing light
Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain
If none regard; Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire?

In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze."

This is the very topic, too, on which the Serpent afterwards enlarges with so much artful insinuation and fatal consequences of success. "So talked the spirited sly snake."-The conclusion of the foregoing scene, in which Eve relates her dream and Adam comforts her, is such an exquisite piece of description

that, though not to my immediate purpose, I cannot refrain from quoting it :

"So cheer'd he his fair spouse, and she was cheer'd;

But silently a gentle tear let fall

From either eye, and wip'd them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kiss'd, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that fear'd to have offended."

The formal eulogy on Eve which Adam addresses to the Angel, in giving an account of his own creation and hers, is full of elaborate grace :

"Under his forming hand a creature grew,

-so lovely fair

That what seem'd fair in all the world seem'd now
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her contain'd

And in her looks, which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before,

And into all things from her air inspir'd

The spirit of love and amorous delight."

That which distinguishes Milton from the other poets, who have pampered the eye and fed the imagination with exuberant descriptions of female beauty, is the moral severity with which he has tempered them. There is not a line in his works which tends to licentiousness, or the impression of which, if it has such a tendency, is not effectually checked by thought and sentiment. The following are two remarkable instances:

"In shadier bower

More secret and sequester'd, though but feign'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph,
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve deck'd first her nuptial bed,
And heavenly quires the hymenœan sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her in naked beauty more adorn'd,
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endow'd with all their gifts, and O too like!
In sad event, when to th' unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnar'd

Mankind by her fair looks, to be aveng'd

On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire."

The other is a passage of extreme beauty and pathos blended. It is the one in which the Angel is described as the guest of our first ancestors :—

"Meanwhile at table Eve

Minister'd naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquors crown'd: O innocence
Deserving Paradise! if ever, then,

Then had the sons of God excuse to have been
Enamour'd at that sight: but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injur'd lover's Hell."

The character which a living poet has given of Spenser would be much more true of Milton:-

"Yet not more sweet

Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High Priest of all the Muses' mysteries."

Spenser, on the contrary, is very apt to pry into mysteries which do not belong to the Muses. Milton's voluptuousness is not lasciviousness nor sensual. He describes beautiful objects for their own sakes. Spenser has an eye to the consequences, and steeps every thing in pleasure, often not of the purest kind. The want of passion has been brought as an objection against Milton, and his Adam and Eve have been considered as rather insipid personages, wrapped up in one another, and who excite but little sympathy in any one else. . I do not feel this objection myself: I am content to be spectator in such scenes, without any other excitement. In general the interest in Milton is essentially epic, and not dramatic; and the difference between the epic and the dramatic is this, that in the former the imagination produces the passion, and in the latter the passion produces the imagination. The interest of epic poetry arises from the contemplation of certain objects in themselves grand and beautiful; the interest of dramatic poetry from sympathy with the passions and pursuits of others; that is from the practical relations of certain persons to certain objects, as depending on accident or will.

The Pyramids of Egypt are epic objects: the imagination of them is necessarily attended with passion; but they have no dramatic interest; till circumstances connect them with some human catastrophe. Now a poem might be constructed almost entirely of such images, of the highest intellectual passion, with little dramatic interest; and it is in this way that Milton has in a great measure constructed his poem. That is not its fault, but its excellence. The fault is in those who have no idea but of one kind of interest. But this question would lead to a longer discussion than I have room for at present. I shall conclude these extracts from Milton with two passages, which have always appeared to me to be highly affecting, and to contain a fine discrimination of character:

"O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? Where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,

My early visitation and my last

At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from th' ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bow'r, by me adorn'd
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild? how shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits?"

This is the lamentation of Eve on being driven out of Paradise. Adam's reflections are in a different strain, and still finer. After expressing his submission to the will of his Maker, he says

"This most afflicts me, that departing hence
As from his face I shall be hid, depriv'd
His blessed countenance; here I could frequent
With worship place by place where he vouchsaf'd
Presence divine, and to my sons relate,

On this mount he appeared, under this tree
Stood visible, among these pines his voice

I heard, here with him at this fountain talk'd:
So many grateful altars I would rear

Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory

Or monument to ages, and thereon

Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flowers.
In vonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footstep trace?
For though I fled him angry, yet, recall'd
To life prolong'd and promis'd race, I now
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore."

III.

ON MR. WORDSWORTH'S POEM, 66 THE EXCURSION."

In power of intellect, in lofty conception, in the depth of feeling, at once simple and sublime, which pervades every part of it, and which gives to every object an almost preternatural and preterhuman interest, this work has seldom been surpassed. The poem of the Excursion resembles that part of the country in which the scene is laid. It has the same vastness and magnificence, with the same nakedness and confusion. It has the same overwhelming, oppressive power. It excites or recals the same sensations which those who have traversed that wonderful scenery must have felt. We are surrounded with the constant sense and superstitious awe of the collective power of matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which, from the beginning of time, the hand of man has made no impression. Here are no dotted lines, no hedge-row beauties, no box-tree borders, no gravel walks, no square mechanic inclosures; all is left loose and irregular in the rude chaos of aboriginal nature. The boundaries of hill and valley are the poet's only geography, where we wander with him incessantly over deep beds of moss and waving fern, amidst the troops of red-deer and wild animals. Such is the severe simplicity of Mr. Wordsworth's taste that I