On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers
Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon,
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.
Dryden remarks that the elegance he speaks of is common in Italian sonnets, which are usually written on the turn of the first thought; and certainly this speech of Eve might be truly compared, in all but the metrical structure, to an interspersed sonnet. There is another elaborate piece of repetition at the close of the Tenth Book, where the humble prostration of Adam and Eve is described in exactly the form of speech used by Adam to propose it. But the repetition in this case is too exact to suit Dryden's meaning; by a close verbal coincidence the ritual of penitence is emphasised in detail, and the book brought to a restful pause. Scattered here and there throughout Milton's longer poems Dryden might, nevertheless, have found the thing he sought. One instance that he gives is taken from the fourth Georgic of Virgil, where Orpheus, leading Eurydice up from Hell, suddenly turns to look on her:--
Cum subita incautum dementia cepit amantem;
Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere Manes.
This turn--"deserving grace, if grace were known in Hell"--may easily be matched in Milton. In the Second Book of Paradise Lost is described how the damned
feel by turns the bitter change