—­To Heavn their Prayers
  Flew up, nor miss’d the Way, by envious Winds
  Blown vagabond or frustrate:  in they passd
  Dimensionless through heavnly Doors, then clad
  With Incense, where the Golden Altar fumed,
  By their great Intercessor, came in sight
  Before the Father’s Throne—­

We have the same Thought expressed a second time in the Intercession of the Messiah, which is conceived in very Emphatick Sentiments and Expressions.

Among the Poetical Parts of Scripture, which Milton has so finely wrought into this Part of his Narration, I must not omit that wherein Ezekiel speaking of the Angels who appeared to him in a Vision, adds, that every one had four Faces, and that their whole Bodies, and their Backs, and their Hands, and their Wings, were full of Eyes round about.

 —­The Cohort bright
  Of watchful Cherubims, four Faces each
  Had like a double Janus, all their Shape
  Spangled with Eyes—­

The Assembling of all the Angels of Heaven to hear the solemn Decree passed upon Man, is represented in very lively Ideas.  The Almighty is here describd as remembring Mercy in the midst of Judgment, and commanding Michael to deliver his Message in the mildest Terms, lest the Spirit of Man, which was already broken with the Sense of his Guilt and Misery, should fail before him.

 —­Yet lest they faint
  At the sad Sentence rigorously urg’d,
  For I behold them softned, and with Tears
  Bewailing their Excess, all Terror hide,

The Conference of Adam and Eve is full of moving Sentiments.  Upon their going abroad after the melancholy Night which they had passed together, they discover the Lion and the Eagle pursuing each of them their Prey towards the Eastern Gates of Paradise.  There is a double Beauty in this Incident, not only as it presents great and just Omens, which are always agreeable in Poetry, but as it expresses that Enmity which was now produced in the Animal Creation.  The Poet to shew the like Changes in Nature, as well as to grace his Fable with a noble Prodigy, represents the Sun in an Eclipse.  This particular Incident has likewise a fine Effect upon the Imagination of the Reader, in regard to what follows; for at the same time that the Sun is under an Eclipse, a bright Cloud descends in the Western Quarter of the Heavens, filled with an Host of Angels, and more luminous than the Sun it self.  The whole Theatre of Nature is darkned, that this glorious Machine may appear in all its Lustre and Magnificence.

 —­Why in the East
  Darkness ere Days mid-course, and morning Light
  More orient in that Western Cloud that draws
  O’er the blue Firmament a radiant White,
  And slow descends, with something Heavnly fraught? 
    He err’d not, for by this the heavenly Bands
  Down from a Sky of Jasper lighted now
  In Paradise, and on a Hill made halt;
  A glorious Apparition—­