Circumstances that give an agreeable Surprize to the Reader, and are devised with great Art, to connect that Series of Adventures in which the Poet has engaged
this
Artificer of Fraud.
The Thought of
Satan's
Transformation into a Cormorant, and placing himself on the Tree of Life, seems raised upon that Passage in the
Iliad
, where two Deities are described, as perching on the Top of an Oak in the shape of Vulturs.