Chaucer and Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them.  But I found not there neither that for which I looked.”  This judgment Addison has proved to be erroneous, by quoting from Milton the most beautiful example of a turn of words which can be found in English poetry.[31] But Dryden, holding it for just, conceived, doubtless, that in his “State of Innocence” he might exert his skill successfully, by supplying the supposed deficiency, and for relieving those “flats of thought” which he complains of, where Milton, for a hundred lines together, runs on in a “track of scripture;” but which Dennis more justly ascribes to the humble nature of his subject in those passages.  The graces, also, which Dryden ventured to interweave with the lofty theme of Milton, were rather those of Ovid than of Virgil, rather turns of verbal expression than of thought.  Such is that conceit which met with censure at the time: 

  “Seraph and cherub, careless of their charge,
  And wanton, in full ease now live at large;
  Unguarded leave the passes of the sky,
  And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie.”

“I have heard,” said a petulant critic, “of anchovies dissolved in sauce; but never of an angel dissolved in hallelujahs.”  But this raillery Dryden rebuffs with a quotation from Virgil: 

  “Invadunt urbem, somno vinoque sepultam.”

It might have been replied, that Virgil’s analogy was familiar and simple, and that of Dryden was far-fetched, and startling by its novelty.  The majesty of Milton’s verse is strangely degraded in the following speeches, which precede the rising of Pandaemonium.  Some of the couplets are utterly flat and bald, and, in others, the balance of point and antithesis is substituted for the simple sublimity of the original: 

Moloch.  Changed as we are, we’re yet from homage free; We have, by hell, at least gained liberty:  That’s worth our fall; thus low though we are driven.  Better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.

  Lucifer.  There spoke the better half of Lucifer!

Asmoday.  ’Tis fit in frequent senate we confer, And then determine how to steer our course; To wage new war by fraud, or open force.  The doom’s now past, submission were in vain.

Mol.  And were it not, such baseness I disdain; I would not stoop, to purchase all above, And should contemn a power, whom prayer could move, As one unworthy to have conquered me.

Beelzebub.  Moloch, in that all are resolved, like thee The means are unproposed; but ’tis not fit Our dark divan in public view should sit; Or what we plot against the Thunderer, The ignoble crowd of vulgar devils hear.

Lucif. A golden palace let be raised on high; To imitate?  No, to outshine the sky!  All mines are ours, and gold above the rest:  Let this be done; and quick as ’twas exprest.

I fancy the reader is now nearly satisfied with Dryden’s improvements on Milton.  Yet some of his alterations have such peculiar reference to the taste and manners of his age, that I cannot avoid pointing them out.  Eve is somewhat of a coquette even in the state of innocence.  She exclaims: