Pensive I sat me down; there gentle sleep When suddenly stood at my head a dream, My fancy to believe I yet had being, 290 And liv'd: one came, methought, of shape divine, 295 First father, call'd by thee I come thy guide 289. —untroubled, though I I then was passing to my former state, &c.] It is surely remarkable that Adam is described as untroubled, though he thought he then was passing into dissolution. But perhaps Milton only intended to describe the soothing nature of sleep, which is pleasing notwithstanding its resemblance to death; according to the Epigram; Somne levis, quanquam certissima mortis imago, Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori; Alma quies optata veni-nam sic sine vitâ Vivere quam suave est, sic sine E. 292. stood at my head a dream,] Where busy fancy, in 300 are laid, has its seat and residence, according to Homer's philosophic observation, Iliad. ii. 16, 20. Βη δ' αρ' ονειρος, επει τον μύθον ακάσε, Στη δ' αρ' ὑπερ κεφαλής. Hume. 296. Thy mansion wants thee,] As in v. 365. Those happy places thou hast deign'd a while To want. Pearce. 300. So saying, by the hand he took me rais'd,] It is said, Gen. ii. 15. that the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Some commentators say, that man was not formed in Paradise, but was placed there after he was formed, to shew that he had no title to it by nature but by grace: and our And over fields and waters, as in air Smooth sliding without step, last led me up To pluck and eat; whereat I wak'd, and found he was carried thither sleeping, and was first made to see that happy place in vision. Our poet had perhaps in mind that passage of Virgil, where Venus lays young Ascanius asleep, and removes him from Carthage to the Idalian groves, Æn. i. 691. At Venus Ascanio placidam per membra quietem Irrigat, et fotum gremio dea tollit in altos Idaliæ lucos; ubi mollis amaracus illum 305 310 315 Then with a wreath of myrtle crowns his head, And softly lays him on a flow'ry bed. Dryden. Or if our poet had Scripture still in view, he had authority for such a removal of a person, Acts viii. 39. when the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, and he was found at Azotus. 314.-Rejoicing, but with awe,] There should most certainly be a comma after the word awe, although there be no printed Floribus, et dulci aspirans comple- authorities to justify it. It gives ctitur umbra. a greater strength to the sense, as it confines the awe to the rejoicing, and thereby expresses that mixture of joy and reverence, which the Scriptures so often recommend to us in our approaches to the divine Being. Thyer. Submiss he rear'd me', and whom thou sought'st I am, 316. -I am,] These words make very good sense here in the common acceptation of them: but by Milton's placing them in such an emphatical manner at the end of the verse, I am of opinion that he might possibly allude to the name, which God gave himself to Moses, when he appeared to him in the bush. Exod. iii. 14. God said unto Moses I am that I am; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you. John viii. 58. Before Abraham was, I am. Greenwood. 20. To till and keep,] Dr. Bentley says that Paradise was not to be tilled, but the common earth after the fall: he therefore says that Milton designed it to dress and keep, as in Gen. ii. 15. to dress it and to keep it. This looks like a just objection, and yet is not so in reality; for if he had consulted the original, he would have found that Adam was to till as well before as after the fall: while he continued in that garden, he was to till that; after his expulsion from thence he was to till the common earth. Our poet seems here to have approved of the opinion of Fagius, (a favourite annotator of his,) who, in his note on Gen. ii. 9. thinks that Adam was to have 320 if he had continued there: and Milton here follows Ainsworth's translation, which has in Gen. ii. 15. to till it and to keep it: and Ainsworth's translation is more exact than that of our common Bible; for not only the original word y here used is the very same with that used in chap. iii. 23. and which is there rendered to till: but the LXX likewise employ one and the same word εργαζεσθαι in both places, as the Vulgar Latin does operari: and the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin word alike signify to labour, cultivate, or till. In chap. iii. 23. our translators render it till, and they might as well have rendered it so chap. ii. 15. since that word in the common acceptation signifies no more than to cultivate; and therefore Ainsworth has till, and Le Clerc colere in both places. Our English translators chose to use dress here, as imagining it (I suppose) more applicable to a garden. But Dr. Bentley should have consulted the ancient versions and the original, and not have trusted to our English translation, especially before he found fault with an author who understood the original so well as Milton did. Pearce. Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth: Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set 323. But of the tree &c.] This being the great hinge on which the whole poem turns, Milton has marked it strongly. But of the tree-Remember what I warn thee-he dwell expatiates upon it from ver. 323 to 336, repeating, enforcing, fixing every word; it is all nerve and energy. Richardson. 330. inevitably thou shalt die,] In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die, as it is expressed Gen. ii. 17. that is, choice 325 330 335 340 from that day thou shalt become mortal, as our poet immediately afterwards explains it. 335. Yet dreadful in mine ear,] The impression, which the interdiction of the tree of life left in the mind of our first parent, is described with great strength and judgment; as the image of the several beasts and birds passing in review before him is very beautiful and lively. Addison. After their kinds; I bring them to receive Not hither summon'd, since they cannot change As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold 353. -with such knowledge -but in these 345 350 355 gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field: but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And from this short account our author has raised what a noble episode! and what a divine dialogue from the latter part only! 357. O by what name, &c.] Adam in the next place describes a conference which he held with his Maker upon the subject of solitude. The poet here represents the Supreme Being, as making an essay of his own work, and putting to the trial that reasoning faculty, with which he had indued his creature. Adam urges in this divine colloquy the impossibility of his being happy, though he was the inhabitant of Paradise, and lord of the whole creation, without |