nd in the
wonderful close of _Paradise Lost_, where Adam and Eve are led down from
the garden by the archangel Michael, and are left standing in the vast
plain below:--

They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

Criticism might exhaust itself in the effort to do justice to the beauty
of this close. Of Adam and Eve it may be truly said that none of all
their doings in the garden became them like the leaving of it. Yet
Addison and Bentley, the ornaments of a polite and learned age, are at
one in their depreciation of the last two lines. Addison, after a formal
apology for "the smallest Alteration in this divine Work," boldly
recommends amputation; while Bentley, with the caution of a more
experienced surgeon, offers to crutch the lines on certain wooden
contrivances of his own. The three epithets, "wandering," "slow," and
"solitary," are all censured by him. Our first parents, he remarks, were
guided by Providence, and therefore needed not to wander; they were
reassured by Michael's predictions, and so might well display an engaging
briskness; while as for "their solitary way," they were no more solitary
than in Paradise, "there being no Body besides Them Two, both here and
there." He therefore suggests a distich more agreeable to the general
scheme:--

Then hand in hand with social steps their way
Through Eden took, with Heav'nly Comfort cheer'd

It is impossible to answer such criticism; the organs of human speech are
too frail. Let Bentley be left to contemplate with delight the hideous
gash that his chopper has inflicted on the Miltonic rhythm of the last
line. If Addison, for his part, had been less concerned with the opinions
of M. Bossu, and the enumeration of the books of the _AEneid_, he might
have found leisure to notice that the two later poems, _Paradise
Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_, are each brought to a close which
exactly resembles the close of _Paradise Lost_. After the splendours in
the last book of _Paradise Regained_--the fall of Satan, "smitten with
amazement," from the pinnacle of the Temple, the elabor