The spirit of love and amorous delight.’
That which distinguishes Milton from the other poets, who have pampered the eye and fed the imagination with exuberant descriptions of female beauty, is the moral severity with which he has tempered them. There is not a line in his works which tends to licentiousness, or the impression of which, if it has such a tendency, is not effectually checked by thought and sentiment. The following are two remarkable instances:
——‘In shadier bower
More secret and sequester’d, though but feign’d,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph,
Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espoused Eve deck’d first her nuptial bed,
And heavenly quires the hymenœan sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire