Impart against his will if all be his?

Or is it envy, and can envy dwell

In heav'nly breasts? thefe, these and many more 730
Causes import your need of this fair fruit.
Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.

735

He ended, and his words replete with guile
Into her heart too eafy entrance won:
Fix'd on the fruit fhe gaz'd, which to behold
Might tempt alone, and in her ears the found
Yet rung of his perfuafive words, impregn'd
With reafon, to her feeming, and with truth;
Mean while the hour of noon drew on, and wak'd
An eager appetite, rais'd by the smell

So favory of that fruit, which with defire,
Inclinable now grown to touch or tafte,

Solicited her longing eye; yet first

Paufing a while, thus to herself fhe mus'd.

What can your knowledge hurt

them, or this tree Impart against their will, if all be theirs?

But Milton had faid God in ver. 692. and 700: and I think he ufes the fingular number in the very next preceding fentence, ver. 722.

who inclos'd.

740

Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, 745 Though kept from man, and worthy to be' admir'd, Whose tafte, too long forborn, at firft affay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught

The tongue not made for fpeech to speak thy praise :

Thy praise he alfo who forbids thy use,

Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree

750

Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids us then to tafte, but his forbidding Commends thee more, while it infers the good

By thee communicated, and our want:

For good unknown, fure is not had, or had

And

yet unknown, is as not had at all.

In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wife?

Such prohibitions bind not.

755

But if death

760 Bind

order to make the folly and impiety of Eve appear lefs extravagant and monstrous.

750. he alfo who forbids] As if it had not been God who had forbidden; but God was not now in all her thoughts. She afterwards profeffes herself ignorant of him, ver. 775.

777 Fair

Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom? In the day we eat
Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we fhall die.
How dies the Serpent? he hath eat’n and lives,

And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, 765
Irrational till then. For us alone

Was death invented? or to us deny'd

This intellectual food, for beafts reserv'd?

770

For beafts it seems: yet that one beast which firft
Hath tafted, envies not, but brings with joy
The good befall'n him, author unfufpect,
Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile.

What fear I then, rather what know to fear

Under this ignorance of good and evil,

Of God or death, of law or penalty?

775

Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,

Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,

780

Of virtue to make wife: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both body' and mind?
So faying, her rafh hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, fhe pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her feat
Sighing through all her works gave figns of woe,
That all was loft. Back to the thicket flunk
The guilty Serpent, and well might, for Eve 785
Intent now wholly on her taste, nought elfe
Regarded, fuch delight till then, as feem'd,
In fruit she never tafted, whether true
Or fancy'd fo, through expectation high

Of knowledge, nor was God-head from her thought.
Greedily the ingorg'd without reftraint,

And knew not eating death: Satiate at length,
And highten'd as with wine, jocond and boon,
Thus to herself she pleasingly began.

791

O fovran, virtuous, precious of all trees
In Paradife, of operation bleft

To fapience, hitherto obfcur'd, infam'd,
And thy fair fruit let hang, as to no end
Created; but henceforth my early care,

795

Not without fong, each morning, and due praise, 800 Shall tend thee, and the fertil burden ease

Of thy full branches offer'd free to all ;

In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know;
Though others envy what they cannot give;

ficiently compenfated by her outward charms, and were rather foftnings than blemishes in her character, we fee her now running into the greatest abfurdities, and indulging the wildeft imaginations. It has been remark'd that our poet in this work feems to court the favor of his female readers very much, yet I cannot help thinking, but that in this place he intended a fatirical as well as a moral hint to the ladies, in making one of Eve's first thoughts after her fatal lapfe to be, how to get the fuperio rity and maft'ry over her husband. There is however, I think, a defect in this fpeech of Eve's, that there is no notice taken of the Serpent in it. Our author very naturally reprefents her in the first tranfports of delight expreffing her gratitude to the fruit, which the fancied had wrought fuch a happy change in her, and next to

805 For