"Know, that in the soul Are many lesser faculties that serve Reason as chief; among these Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful senses represent, She forms imaginations, aery shapes Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames All what we affirm or what deny, and call Our knowledge on opinion.... Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes, Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams; Ill matching words and deeds long past or late."[188] Here was something to send Eve off to sleep again. Her husband noting the effect, adds like an accredited casuist: "Yet be not sad: Evil into the mind of God or man May come and go, so unapproved; and leave No spot or blame behind."[189] We recognize the Protestant husband, his wife's confessor. Next day comes an angel on a visit. Adam tells Eve: "Go with speed, And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour Abundance, fit to honour and receive Our heavenly stranger."[190] She, like a good housewife, talks about the _menu_, and rather proud of her kitchen garden, says: "He Beholding shall confess, that here on earth God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven."[191] Mark this becoming zeal of a hospitable lady. She goes "with dispatchful looks, in haste": "What choice to choose for delicacy best; What order, so contrived as not to mix Tastes, not well join'd, inelegant; but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change."[192] She makes sweet wine, perry, creams; scatters flowers and leaves under the table. What an excellent housewife! What a great many votes she will gain among the country squires, when Adam stands for Parliament. Adam belongs to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan. He "walks forth; without more train Accompanied than with his own complete Perfections: in himself was all his state, More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits On princes, when their rich retinue long Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold, Dazzles the crowd."[193] The epic is changed into a political poem, and we have just heard an epigram against power. The preliminary ceremonies are somewhat long; fortunately, the dishes being uncooked, "no fear lest dinner cool." The angel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer: "Nor seemingly The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss Of theologians; but with keen dispatch Of real hunger, and concoctive heat To transubstantiate: what redounds, transpires Through spirits with ease."[194] At table. Eve listens to the angel's stories, then discreetly rises at dessert, when they are getting into politics. English ladies may learn by her example to perceive from their lord's faces when they are "entering on studious thoughts abstruse." The sex does not mount so high. A wise lady prefers her husband's talk to that of strangers. "Her husband the relater she prefered." Now Adam hears a little treatise on astronomy. He concludes, like a practical Englishman: