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Follow'd with benediction. Since to part,
Go heav'nly guest, ethereal messenger,
Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore.
Gentle to me and affable hath been

645

Thy condescension, and shall be' honour'd ever
With grateful memory: thou to mankind
Be good and friendly still, and oft return.
So parted they, the angel up to heaven
From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.

ness suitable to the father of mankind in his state of innocence. Addison.

645. Follow'd with benediction. Since to part,] Benedicere Domino, to bless God is a common phrase in religious offices. And so in a lower sense men may be said to bless angels; for benediction is (properly speaking) only giving them good words, or wishing them well. See Psal. cix. 17. In this sense therefore it is not improper to be used towards superiors. Since to part means, since we are to part. If the expression is abbreviated, so was the time of Raphael's stay with Adam. He was just upon the point of going, and therefore Adam might choose brevity of speech, that he might express all he had to say before the archangel withdrew himself. Pearce.

Benediction here is not blessing, as it is usually understood, but well speaking, thanks. So Milton has explained the word, Par. Reg. iii. 127.

650

Glory and benediction, that is thanks.
Richardson.

652. So parted they, the angel
up to heaven

From the thick shade, and Adam

to his bower.] It is very true, as Dr. Bentley says, that this conversation between Adam and the angel was held in the bower. For thither Adam had invited him. V. 367.

Vouchsafe with us-in yonder bower
To rest.

And the angel had accepted the invitation, ver. 375.

-lead on then where thy bower
O'ershades

-So to the sylvan lodge
They came.

But by bower in this place is meant his inmost bower, as it is called in iv. 738. his place of rest. There was a shady walk that led to Adam's bower. When the angel arose, ver. 644. Adam followed him into this shady walk: and it was from this thick shade that they parted, and the angel went up to heaven, and Adam to his bower.

PARADISE LOST.

BOOK IX.

THE ARGUMENT.

SATAN having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise, enters into the Serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve, loath to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength; Adam at last yields: the Serpent finds her alone; his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the Serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now; the Serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge forbidden the Serpent now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat; she pleased with the taste deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam or not, at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves through vehemence of love to perish with her: and extenuating the trespass eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.

PARADISE LOST.

BOOK IX.

No more of talk where God or angel guest With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd

1. No more of talk &c.] These prologues or prefaces of Milton to some of his books, speaking of his own person, lamenting his blindness, and preferring his subject to those of Homer and Virgil and the greatest poets before him, are condemned by some critics: and it must be allowed that we find no such digression in the Iliad or Æneid; it is a liberty that can be taken only by such a genius as Milton, and I question whether it would have succeeded in any hands but his. As Monsieur Voltaire says upon the occasion, I cannot but own that an author is generally guilty of an unpardonable selflove, when he lays aside his subject to descant upon his own person: but that human frailty is to be forgiven in Milton; nay I am pleased with it. He gratifies the curiosity he has raised in me about his person; when I admire the author, I desire to know something of the man; and he, whom all readers would be glad to know, is allowed to

ever is a very dangerous example for a genius of an inferior order, and is only to be justified by success. See Voltaire's Essay on epic poetry, p. 111. But as Mr. Thyer adds, however some critics and Monsieur Voltaire may condemn a poet's sometimes digressing from his subject to speak of himself, it is very certain that Milton was of a very different opinion long before he thought of writing this poem. For in his discourse of the Reason of Church-Government, &c. apologizing for saying so much of himself as he there does, he adds, "For al"though a poet, soaring in the "high region of his fancies, with "his garland and singing robes “about him, might, without apo

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To sit indulgent, and with him partake

Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam'd; I now must change
Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,

And disobedience: on the part of Heaven
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery

"be envy to me." Vol. i. p. 59. Edit. 1738.

1. where God or angel guest] A difficulty has been made here, where, as it seems to me, no difficulty is. The poet says, that he must now treat no more of familiar discourse with either God or angel. For Adam had held discourse with God, as we read in the preceding book, and the whole foregoing episode is a conversation with the angel, and as this takes up so large a part of the poem, this is particularly described and insisted upon here. The Lord God and the angel Michael both indeed afterwards discourse with Adam in the

following books, but those discourses are not familiar conversation as with a friend, they are of a different strain, the one coming to judge, and the other to expel him from Paradise.

5. ——I now must change Those notes to tragic;] As the author is now changing his subject, he professes likewise to change his style agreeably to it. The reader therefore must not expect such lofty images and

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descriptions, as before. What follows is more of the tragic strain than of the epic. Which may serve as an answer to those critics, who censure the latter books of the Paradise Lost as falling below the former.

11. That brought into this world a world of woe,] The pun or what shall I call it in this line may be avoided, as a great man observed to me, by distinguishing thus,

That brought into this world (a world of woe)

Sin and her shadow Death,

but I fancy the other will be
found more agreeable to Milton's
We have a
style and manner.
similar instance in xi. 627.

The world ere long a world of tears
must weep.

But in these instances Milton was corrupted by the bad taste of the times, and by reading the Italian poets, who abound with such verbal quaintnesses.

12.

and Misery Death's harbinger:] Dr. Bentley reads malady: because, as there is misery after

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