And sweet reluctant amorous delay.’
Eve is not only represented as beautiful, but with conscious beauty. Shakspeare’s heroines are almost insensible of their charms, and wound without knowing it. They are not coquets. If the salvation of mankind had depended upon one of them, we don’t know—but the Devil might have been baulked. This is but a conjecture! Eve has a great idea of herself, and there is some difficulty in prevailing on her to quit her own image, the first time she discovers its reflection in the water. She gives the following account of herself to Adam:
‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awak’d, and found myself repos’d
Under a shade on flow’rs, much wond’ring where
And what I was, whence thither brought and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain, then stood unmov’d
Pure as the expanse of Heav’n; I thither went