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 the stage,
seems to have been originally intended as a mere poetical prolusion; for
Dryden, who was above affecting such a circumstance, tells us, that it
was only made public, because, in consequence of several hundred copies,
every one gathering new faults, having been dispersed without his
knowledge, it became at length a libel on the author, who was forced to
print a correct edition in his own defence. As the incidents and
language were ready composed by Milton, we are not surprised when
informed, that the composition and revision were completed in a single
month.
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