Of fome rich burgher, whofe fubftantial doors, In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles: 190 195 Thereby regain'd, but fat devifing death To them who liv'd; nor on the virtue thought ftronger refemblance; and the hint Of 195. The middle tree and highest there that grew,] The tree of of this and the additional fimile of a thief feems to have been taken life alfo in the midst of the garden, from those words of our Saviour Gen. II. 9. In the midft is a Hein St. John's gospel, X. 1. He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up fome other way, the fame is a thief and a robber. 193. lewd hirelings] The word lewd was formerly underftood in a larger acceptation than it is at prefent, and fignified profane, impious, wicked, vicious, as "well as wanton: and in this larger fenfe it is employ'd by Milton in the other places where he uses it, as well as here; I. 490. brew phrafe, expreffing not only the local fituation of this inlivening tree, but denoting its excellency, as being the most confiderable, the talleft, goodlieft, and moft lovely tree in that beauteous garden planted by God himfelf: So Scotus, Duran, Valefius, &c. whom our poet follows, affirming it the higheft there that grew. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradife of God, Rev. II. 7. Hume. than whom a Spirit more lewd: thought of Satan's transformation 196. Sat like a cormorant ;] The and VI. 182. into a cormorant, and placing himfelf on the tree of life, feems raifed Yet lewdly dar'ft our miniftring upon that paffage in the Iliad, upbraid. where two deities are described, as perching Of that life-giving plant, but only us'd For profpect, what well us'd had been the pledge Any, but God alone, to value right The good before him, but perverts best things 201 Beneath him with new wonder now he views 205 To all delight of human fenfe expos'd In narrow room Nature's whole wealth, yea more, A Heav'n on Earth: for blissful Paradife perching on the top of an oak in the shape of vulturs. Addifon. The poet had compared Satan to a vultur before, III. 431. and here again he is well likend to a cormorant, which being a very voracious fea-fowl, is a proper emblem of this destroyer of mankind, 196. yet not true life &c.] The poet here moralizes, and reprehends Satan for making no better ufe of the tree of life. He fat upon it, but did not thereby regain true life to himself, but fat devifing death to others who were alive. Neither did he think at all on the virtues of the tree, but used it only for the convenience of profpect, when it might have been ufed fo as to have been a pledge of immortality. And fo he perverted the best of things to worst abufe, by fitting upon the tree of life devifing death, or to meanest Of afe, by ufing it only for profpect, when he might have applied it to nobler purposes. But what use then would our author have had Satan to have made of the tree of life? Would eating of it have alter'd his condition, or have render'd him more immortal than he was already? What other use then could he have made of it, unless he had taken occafion from thence to reflect duly on life and immortality, and thereby had put himfelf in a condition to regain true life and a happy immortality? If the poet had not fome fuch meaning as this, it is not easy to say what is the fenfe of the paffage. Mr. Thyer thinks that the well us'd in this paffage relates to our first parents, and not to Satan: but I conceive that well us'd and only us'd must both refer to the fame person; and what ill ufe did our first parents Cc 3 make Of God the garden was, by him in th'eaft make of the tree of life? They fays Chap. XXXVII. 12.) which Telaffar or Talatha was a province and a city of the children of Eden, placed by Ptolomy in Babylonia, upon the common ftream of Tigris and Euphrates. See Sir Haaé Newton's Chronol. p. 275. So that our author places Eden, agreeably to the accounts in Scripture, fomewhere in Mefopotamia. 215. His far more pleasant garden] In the defcription of Paradife, the poet has obferved Ariftotle's rule of lavishing all the ornaments of diction on the weak unactive parts of the fable, which are not fupported by the beauty of fentiments and characters. Accordingly the reader may obferve, that the expřeffions are more florid and elaborate in thefe defcriptions, than in most other parts of the poem. I muft farther add, that tho the drawings of gardens, rivers, rainbows, and the like dead pieces of nature, are justly cenfured in an And all amid them ftood the tree of life, 220 Our death the tree of knowledge grew faft by, heroic poem, when they run out into an unneceffary length; the defcription of Paradife would have been faulty, had not the poet been very particular in it, not only as it is the fcene of the principal action, but as it is requifite to give us an idea of that happinefs from which our first parents fell. The plan of it is wonderfully beautiful, and formed upon the fhort ketch which we have of it in holy Writ, Milton's exuberance of imagina tion has poured forth fuch a redundancy of ornaments on this feat of happiness and innocence, that it would be endless to point out each particular. I must not quit this head without further obferving, that there is scarce a fpeech of Adam and Eve in the whole poem, wherein the fentiments and allyfions are not taken from this their delightful habitation. The reader, during their whole courfe of action, always finds himself in the Upon walks of Paradise. In fhort, as the critics have remarked that in thofe poems, wherein fhepherds are actors, the thoughts ought always to take a tincture from the woods, fields, and rivers; fo we may obferve, that our first parents feldom lofe fight of their happy ftation in any thing they fpeak or do; and, if the reader will give me leave to use the expreffion, that their thoughts are always Paradi fiacal. Addifon. 223. Southward through Eden went a river large,] This is moft probably the river formed by the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, which flows fouthward, and muft needs be a river large by the joining of two fuch mighty rivers. Upon this river it is fuppofed by the beft commentators that the terreftrial Paradife was fituated. Milton calls this river Tigris in IX. 71. Upon the rapid current, which through veins Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, 233. And now divided into four main fireams,] This is grounded upon the words of Mofes, Gen. II. 10. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. Now the moft probable account that is given of these four rivers we conceive to be this. The river that water'd the garden of Eden was, as we think, the river fomed by the junction of Euphrates and Tigris; and this river was parted into four other main ftreams or rivers; two above the garden, namely Euphrates and Tigris before they are join'd, and two below the garden, namely Euphrates and Tigris after they are parted again; for Euphrates and Tigris they were still called by the Greeks and Romans, though in the time of Mofes they were named Pison and Gihon. Our 230 235 How poet expreffes it as if the river had been parted into four other rivers below the garden; but there is no being certain of thefe particulars, and Milton, fenfible of the great uncertainty of them, wifely avoids giving any farther defcription of the countries thro' which the rivers flow'd, and fays in the general that no account needs to be given of them here. 238. Rolling on orient pearl and Sands of gald,] Pactolus, Hermus, and other rivers are defcribed by the poets as having golden fands; but the defcription is made richer here, and the water rolls on the choiceft pearls as well as fands of gold. So in HII. 507. we have arient gems; fee the note there. We have likewife orient pearl in Shakefpear, Richard III. A&t IV. and in Beaumont and Fletcher, The faithful Shepherdefs, Act III. And in the |