that I have been improving the images which were raised by that picture, by reading the same representation in two of our greatest poets.  Look you, here are the passages in Milton and in Dryden.  All Milton’s thoughts are wonderfully just and natural, in this inimitable description which Adam makes of himself in the eighth book of “Paradise Lost.”  But there is none of them finer than that contained in the following lines, where he tells us his thoughts when he was falling asleep a little after his creation.

While thus I called, and strayed I know not whither, From whence I first drew air, and first beheld This happy light; when answer none returned, On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers, Pensive I sate me down, there gentle sleep First found me, and with soft oppression seized My drowned sense, untroubled, though I thought I then was passing to my former state, Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.[125]

But now I can’t forgive this odious thing, this Dryden, who, in his “State of Innocence,” has given my great-grand-mother Eve the same apprehension of annihilation, on a very different occasion, as Adam pronounces it of himself, when he was seized with a pleasing kind of stupor and deadness, Eve fancies herself falling away, and dissolving in the hurry of a rapture.  However, the verses are very good, and I don’t know but it may be natural what she says.  I’ll read them: 

When your kind eyes looked languishing on mine, And wreathing arms did soft embraces join, A doubtful trembling seized me first all o’er, Then wishes, and a warmth unknown before; What followed was all extasy and trance, Immortal pleasures round my swimming eyes did dance, And speechless joys, in whose sweet tumults tost, I thought my breath and my new being lost.[126]

She went on, and said a thousand good things at random, but so strangely mixed that you would be apt to say all her wit is mere good luck, and not the effect of reason and judgment.  When I made my escape hither I found a gentleman playing the critic on two other great poets, even Virgil and Homer.[127] He was observing, that Virgil is more judicious than the other in the epithets he gives his hero.  “Homer’s usual epithet,” said he, “is {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} [Podas ochus], or {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} [Podarches], and his indiscretion has been often rallied by the critics, for mentioning the nimbleness of foot in Achilles, though he describes him standing, sitting,