“from each tree
  The feathered kind press down to look on me;
  The beasts, with up-cast eyes, forsake their shade,
  And gaze, as if I were to be obeyed. 
  Sure, I am somewhat which they wish to be,
  And cannot,—­I myself am proud of me.”

Upon receiving Adam’s addresses, she expresses, rather unreasonably in the circumstances, some apprehensions of his infidelity; and, upon the whole, she is considerably too knowing for the primitive state.  The same may be said of Adam, whose knowledge in school divinity, and use of syllogistic argument, Dryden, though he found it in the original, was under no necessity to have retained.

The “State of Innocence,” as it could not be designed for the stage, seems to have been originally intended as a mere poetical prolusion; for Dryden, who was above affecting such a circumstance, tells us, that it was only made public, because, in consequence of several hundred copies, every one gathering new faults, having been dispersed without his knowledge, it became at length a libel on the author, who was forced to print a correct edition in his own defence.  As the incidents and language were ready composed by Milton, we are not surprised when informed, that the composition and revision were completed in a single month.  The critics having assailed the poem even before publication, the author has prefixed an “Essay upon Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence;” in which he treats chiefly of the use of metaphors, and of the legitimacy of machinery.

The Dedication of the “State of Innocence,” addressed to Mary of Este, Duchess of York, is a singular specimen of what has been since termed the celestial style of inscription.  It is a strain of flattery in the language of adoration; and the elated station of the princess is declared so suited to her excellence, that Providence has only done justice to its own works in placing the most perfect work of heaven where it may be admired by all beholders.  Even this flight is surpassed by the following:—­“Tis true, you are above all mortal wishes; no man desires impossibilities, because they are beyond the reach of nature.  To hope to be a god is folly exalted into madness; but, by the laws of our creation, we are obliged to adore him, and are permitted to love him too at human distance.  ’Tis the nature of perfection to be attractive; but the excellency of the object refines the nature of the love.  It strikes an impression of awful reverence; ’tis indeed that love which is more properly a zeal than passion.  ’Tis the rapture which anchorites find in prayer, when a beam of the divinity shines upon them; that which makes them despise all worldly objects; and yet ’tis all but contemplation.  They are seldom visited from above; but a single vision so transports them, that it makes up the happiness of their lives.  Mortality cannot bear it often:  it finds them in the eagerness and height of their devotion; they are speechless for the time that it continues, and prostrate and dead when it departs.”  Such eulogy was the taste of the days of Charles, when ladies were deified in dedications and painted as Venus or Diana upon canvas.  In our time, the elegance of the language would be scarcely held to counterbalance the absurdity of the compliments.