I have avoided mentioning any particular Similitudes in my Remarks on this great Work, because I have given a general Account of them in my Paper on the first Book.  There is one, however, in this part of the Poem, which I shall here quote as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole Poem.  I mean that where the Serpent is describ as rolling forward in all his Pride, animated by the evil Spirit, and conducting Eve to her Destruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her to give her his Assistance.  These several Particulars are all of them wrought into the following Similitude.

 —­Hope elevates, and Joy
  Brightens his Crest; as when a wandering Fire,
  Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night
  Condenses, and the Cold invirons round,
  Kindled through Agitation to a Flame,
  (Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends)
  Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
  Misleads th’ amaz’d Night-wanderer from his Way
  To Bogs and Mires, and oft through Pond or Pool,
  There swallowed up and lost, from succour far.

That secret Intoxication of Pleasure, with all those transient flushings of Guilt and Joy, which the Poet represents in our first Parents upon their eating the forbidden Fruit, to [those [5]] flaggings of Spirits, damps of Sorrow, and mutual Accusations which succeed it, are conceiv’d with a wonderful Imagination, and described in very natural Sentiments.

When Dido in the fourth AEneid yielded to that fatal Temptation which ruined her, Virgil tells us the Earth trembled, the Heavens were filled with Flashes of Lightning, and the Nymphs howled upon the Mountain-Tops.  Milton, in the same poetical Spirit, has described all Nature as disturbed upon Eves eating the forbidden Fruit.

  So saying, her rash Hand in evil hour
  Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluckt, she eat: 
  Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her Seat
  Sighing, through all her Works gave signs of Woe
  That all was lost—­

Upon Adams falling into the same Guilt, the whole Creation appears a second time in Convulsions.

 —­He scrupled not to eat
  Against his better knowledge; not deceiv’s,
  But fondly overcome with female Charm. 
  Earth trembled from her Entrails, as again
  In Pangs, and Nature gave a second Groan,
  Sky lowred, and muttering Thunder, some sad Drops
  Wept at compleating of the mortal Sin—­

As all Nature suffer’d by the Guilt of our first Parents, these Symptoms of Trouble and Consternation are wonderfully imagined, not only as Prodigies, but as Marks of her Sympathizing in the Fall of Man.

Adams Converse with Eve, after having eaten the forbidden Fruit, is an exact Copy of that between Jupiter and Juno in the fourteenth Iliad.  Juno there approaches Jupiter with the Girdle which she had received from Venus; upon which he tells her, that she appeared more charming and desirable than she [6] done before, even when their Loves were at the highest.  The Poet afterwards describes them as reposing on a Summet of Mount Ida, which produced under them a Bed of Flowers, the Lotos, the Crocus, and the Hyacinth; and concludes his Description with their falling asleep.