For that fair female Troop thou sawst, that seemed
  Of Goddesses, so Blithe, so Smooth, so Gay,
  Yet empty of all Good wherein consists
  Woman’s domestick Honour and chief Praise;
  Bred only and compleated to the taste
  Of lustful Appetence, to sing, to dance,
  To dress, and troule the Tongue, and roll the Eye: 
  To these that sober Race of Men, whose Lives
  Religious titled them the Sons of God,
  Shall yield up all their Virtue, all their Fame
  Ignobly, to the Trains and to the Smiles
  Of those fair Atheists—­

The next Vision is of a quite contrary Nature, and filled with the Horrors of War.  Adam at the Sight of it melts into Tears, and breaks out in that passionate Speech,

 —­O what are these! 
  Death’s Ministers, not Men, who thus deal Death
  Inhumanly to Men, and multiply
  Ten Thousandfold the Sin of him who slew
  His Brother:  for of whom such Massacre
  Make they but of their Brethren, Men of Men?

Milton, to keep up an agreeable Variety in his Visions, after having raised in the Mind of his Reader the several Ideas of Terror which are conformable to the Description of War, passes on to those softer Images of Triumphs and Festivals, in that Vision of Lewdness and Luxury which ushers in the Flood.

As it is visible that the Poet had his Eye upon Ovid’s Account of the universal Deluge, the Reader may observe with how much Judgment he has avoided every thing that is redundant or puerile in the Latin Poet.  We do not here see the Wolf swimming among the Sheep, nor any of those wanton Imaginations, which Seneca found fault with, [1] as unbecoming [the [2]] great Catastrophe of Nature.  If our Poet has imitated that Verse in which Ovid tells us that there was nothing but Sea, and that this Sea had no Shore to it, he has not set the Thought in such a Light as to incur the Censure which Criticks have passed upon it.  The latter part of that Verse in Ovid is idle and superfluous, but just and beautiful in Milton.

  ’Jamque mare et tellus nullum discrimen habebant,
  Nil nisi pontus erat, deerant quoque littora ponto.’

  (Ovid.)

  ’—­Sea cover’d Sea,
  Sea without Shore—­’

  (Milton.)

In Milton the former Part of the Description does not forestall the latter.  How much more great and solemn on this Occasion is that which follows in our English Poet,

 —­And in their Palaces
  Where Luxury late reign’d, Sea-Monsters whelp’d
  And stabled—­

than that in Ovid, where we are told that the Sea-Calfs lay in those Places where the Goats were used to browze?  The Reader may find several other parallel Passages in the Latin and English Description of the Deluge, wherein our Poet has visibly the Advantage.  The Skys being overcharged with Clouds, the descending of the Rains, the rising of the Seas, and the Appearance of the Rainbow, are such Descriptions as every one must take notice of.  The Circumstance relating to Paradise is so finely imagined, and suitable to the Opinions of many learned Authors, that I cannot forbear giving it a Place in this Paper.