mpleated 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 t