eep in each other's
arms." But there is such an affinity between painting and poetry, 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