ed, that Virgil's analogy was familiar and
simple, and that of Dryden was far-fetched, and startling by its
novelty. The majesty of Milton's verse is strangely degraded in the
following speeches, which precede the rising of Pandaemonium. Some of
the couplets are utterly flat and bald, and, in others, the balance of
point and antithesis is substituted for the simple sublimity of the
original:

_Moloch_. Changed as we are, we're yet from homage free;
We have, by hell, at least gained liberty:
That's worth our fall; thus low though we are driven.
Better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.

_Lucifer_. There spoke the better half of Lucifer!

_Asmoday_. 'Tis fit in frequent senate we confer,
And then determine how to steer our course;
To wage new war by fraud, or open force.
The doom's now past, submission were in vain.

_Mol_. And were it not, such baseness I disdain;
I would not stoop, to purchase all above,
And should contemn a power, whom prayer could move,
As one unworthy to have conquered me.

_Beelzebub_. Moloch, in that all are resolved, like thee
The means are unproposed; but 'tis not fit
Our dark divan in public view should sit;
Or what we plot against the Thunderer,
The ignoble crowd of vulgar devils hear.

_Lucif._ A golden palace let be raised on high;
To imitate? No, to outshine the sky!
All mines are ours, and gold above the rest:
Let this be done; and quick as 'twas exprest.

I fancy the reader is now nearly satisfied with Dryden's improvements on
Milton. Yet some of his alterations have such peculiar reference to the
taste and manners of his age, that I cannot avoid pointing them out. Eve
is somewhat of a coquette even in the state of innocence. She exclaims:

"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 t