Footnotes: 
1.  The situation of Venice renders it impossible to bring horses into
   the town; accordingly, the Venetians are proverbially bad riders.

2.  The poet alludes to the king’s evil, and to the joint war of France
   and England against Holland.

3.  Allusions to Cato,—­who presented to the Roman Senate the rich figs
   of Africa, and reminded them it was but three days sail to the
   country which produced such excellent fruit,—­were fashionable
   during the Dutch war.  The Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury had set the
   example, by applying to Holland the favourite maxim of the Roman
   philosopher, Delenda est Carthago. When that versatile statesman
   afterwards fled to Holland, he petitioned to be created a burgess
   of Amsterdam, to ensure him against being delivered up to England. 
   The magistrates conferred on him the freedom desired, with the
   memorable words, “Ab nostra Carthagine nondum deleta, salutem
   accipe.”

* * * * *

THE

STATE OF INNOCENCE,

AND

FALL OF MAN.

AN

OPERA.

—­Utinam modo dicere possem
Carmina digna dea:  Certe est dea carmine digna.
OVID.  MET.

THE STATE OF INNOCENCE, &c.

The “Paradise Lost” of Milton is a work so extraordinary in conception and execution, that it required a lapse of many years to reconcile the herd of readers, and of critics, to what was almost too sublime for ordinary understandings.  The poets, in particular, seemed to have gazed on its excellencies, like the inferior animals on Dryden’s immortal Hind; and, incapable of fully estimating a merit, which, in some degree, they could not help feeling, many were their absurd experiments to lower it to the standard of their own comprehension.  One author, deeming the “Paradise Lost” deficient in harmony, was pleased painfully to turn it into rhyme; and more than one, conceiving the subject too serious to be treated in verse of any kind, employed their leisure in humbling it into prose.  The names of these well-judging and considerate persons are preserved by Mr Todd in his edition of Milton’s Poetical Works.

But we must not confound with these effusions of gratuitous folly an alteration, or imitation, planned and executed by John Dryden; although we may be at a loss to guess the motives by which he was guided in hazarding such an attempt.  His reverence for Milton and his high estimation of his poetry, had already called forth the well-known verses, in which he attributes to him the joint excellencies of the two most celebrated poets of antiquity; and if other proofs of his veneration were wanting, they may be found in the preface to this very production.  Had the subject been of a nature which admitted its being actually represented, we might conceive, that Dryden, who was under engagements