These bounties from our Nourisher are given,
From whom all perfect good descends,
Milton, with great liberality to that sex against which he is accused of so much severity, obligingly permitted Eve to sit much longer after dinner, than most modern husbands would allow. She had attentively listened to all the historical and moral subjects so divinely discussed between the first Angel and the first Man; and perhaps there can scarcely be found a more beautiful trait of a delicately attentive wife, than she exhibits, by withdrawing at the exact point of propriety. She does not retire in consequence of any look or gesture, any broad sign of impatience, much less any command or intimation of her husband; but with the ever watchful eye of vigilant affection and deep humility:
When by his countenance he seem'd
Entering on thoughts abstruse,
instructed only by her own quick intuition of what was right and delicate, she withdrew. And here again how admirably does the poet sustain her intellectual dignity, softened by a most tender stroke of conjugal affection.
Yet went she not, as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her ear
Of what was high—such pleasure she reserved,
Adam relating, she sole auditress——
On perusing, however, the tête-à-tête which her absence occasioned, methinks I hear some sprightly lady, fresh from the Royal Institution, express her wonder why Eve should be banished by her husband from Raphael's fine lecture on astronomy which follows; was not she as capable as Adam of understanding all he said, of
Cycle and Epicycle, Orb on Orb?
If, however, the imaginary fair objector will take the trouble to read to the end of the eighth book of this immortal work, it will raise in her estimation both the poet and the heroine, when she contemplates the just propriety of her being absent before Adam enters on the account of the formation, beauty and attractions of his wife, and of his own love and admiration. She will further observe, in her progress through this divine poem, that the author is so far from making Eve a mere domestic drudge, an unpolished housewife, that he pays an invariable attention even to external elegance, in his whole delineation, ascribing grace to her steps and dignity to her gesture. He uniformly keeps up the same combination of intellectual worth and polished manners;
For softness she, and sweet attractive grace.
And her husband, so far from a churlish insensibility to her perfections, politely calls her