that scenic deception must be rendered
ridiculous; and ought to be avoided, even in a drama intended for
perusal only, since they cannot be mentioned without exciting
ludicrous combinations.--Even in describing the primitive state of our
first parents, Dryden has displayed some of the false and corrupted
taste of the court of Charles. Eve does not consent to her union with
Adam without coquettish apprehensions of his infidelity, which
circumstances rendered rather improbable; and even in the state of
innocence, she avows the love of sway and of self, which, in a loose
age, is thought the principal attribute of her daughters. It may be
remembered that the Adam of Milton, when first experiencing the powers
of slumber, thought,

I then was passing to my former state
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.

The Eve of Dryden expresses the same apprehensions of annihilation
upon a very different occasion. These passages form a contrast highly
favourable to the simplicity and chastity of Milton's taste. The
school logic, employed by Adam and the angels in the first scene of
the fourth act, however misplaced, may be paralleled if not justified,
by similar instances in the "Paradise Lost."

On the other hand, the "State of Innocence" contains many passages of
varied and happy expression peculiar to our great poet; and the speech
of Lucfier in Paradise (Act third, scene first), approaches in
sublimity to his prototype in Milton, Indeed, altered as this poem was
from the original, in order to accommodate it to the taste of a
frivolous age, it still retained too much fancy to escape the raillery
of the men of wit and fashion, more disposed to "laugh at
extravagance, than to sympathise with feelings of grandeur." The
"Companion to the Theatre" mentions an objection started by the more
nice and delicate critics, against the anachronism and absurdity of
Lucifer conversing about the world, its form and vicissitudes, at a
time previous to its creation, or, at least, to the possibility of his
knowing any thing of it. But to this objection, which applies to the
"Paradise Lost" also, it is sufficient to reply, that the measure of
intelligence, competent to supernatural beings, being altogether
unknown to us, leaves the poet at liberty to accommodate its extent to
the purposes in which he employs them, without which poetic license,
it would be in vain to introduce them. Dryden, moved by this, and
similar objections, has prefixed to