vv. 40, 41; 67-109; 191-193; 219-226; 241-255; 268-276; 563-572;

590-598; 695-702; 760, 761; 1025-1060; 1418-1422; 1461-1471; 1687-1707.

These passages show that the allegorical significance of the 'Samson Agonistes' bears not only upon Milton's individual life and experiences, but also upon the backsliding of the English people, in their restoration of monarchy. The misgivings to which Milton gave expression in his 'Ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth, and the excellence thereof, compared with the inconveniences and dangers of readmitting kingship in this nation,' were realized in less than three months after its publication late in February or early in March, 1660. Charles II. entered London May 29, 1660. These misgivings are expressed, or, at least, implied, in the following passage of 'The ready and easy way.' The involved construction of the language in this pamphlet shows that it must have been very hastily dictated by the blind poet:

'After our liberty and religion thus prosperously fought for, gained, and many years possessed, except in those unhappy interruptions, which God hath removed; now that nothing remains, but in all reason the certain hopes of a speedy and immediate settlement for ever in a firm and free commonwealth, for this extolled and magnified nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed from heaven, to fall back, or rather to creep back so poorly, _as it seems the multitude would_, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship, to be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds, though done by some to covetous and ambitious ends, yet not therefore to be stained with their infamy, or they to asperse the integrity of others; and yet these now by revolting from the conscience of deeds well done, both in church and state, to throw away and forsake, or rather to betray, a just and noble cause for the mixture of bad men who have ill-managed and abused it (which had our fathers done heretofore, and on the same pretence deserted true religion, what had long ere this become of our gospel, and all protestant reformation so much intermixed with the avarice and ambition of some reformers?), and by thus relapsing, to verify all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think they wisely discerned and justly censured both us and all our actions as rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious; not only argues a strange, degenerate contagion suddenly spread among us, fitted and prepared for new slavery, but will render us a scorn and derision to all our neighbours.'

OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED TRAGEDY

Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions,—that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion; for so, in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, 1 Cor. xv. 33; and Paræus, commenting on the _Revelation_, divides the whole book, as a tragedy, into acts, distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honour Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Cæsar also had begun his _Ajax_, but, unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies (at least the best of them) that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a Father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which is entitled 'Christ Suffering.' This is mentioned to vindicate Tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons: which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defence or explanation, that which Martial calls an Epistle, in behalf of this tragedy, coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much beforehand may be _epistled_,—that Chorus is here introduced after the Greek manner, not ancient only, but modern, and still in use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore of this poem, with good reason, the Ancients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more authority and fame. The measure of verse used in the Chorus is of all sorts, called by the Greeks _monostrophic_, or rather _apolelymenon_, without regard had to strophe, antistrophe, or epode,—which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music, then used with the Chorus that sung; not essential to the poem, and therefore not material; or, being divided into stanzas or pauses, they may be called _allœostropha_. Division into act and scene, referring chiefly to the stage (to which this work never was intended), is here omitted.

It suffices if the whole drama be found not produced beyond the fifth act. Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot, whether intricate or explicit,—which is nothing indeed but such economy, or disposition of the fable, as may stand best with verisimilitude and decorum,—they only will best judge who are not unacquainted with Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequalled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavour to write Tragedy. The circumscription of time, wherein the whole drama begins and ends, is, according to ancient rule and best example, within the space of twenty-four hours.—_M._

THE ARGUMENT

_Samson, made captive, blind, and now in the prison at Gaza, there to labour as in a common workhouse, on a festival day, in the general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired, there to sit a while and bemoan his condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father, Manoa, who endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the hands of Samson—which yet more troubles him. Manoa then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistian lords for Samson's redemption: who, in the meanwhile, is visited by other persons, and, lastly, by a public officer to require his coming to the feast before the lords and people, to play or show his strength in their presence. He at first refuses, dismissing the public officer with absolute denial to come: at length, persuaded inwardly that this was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the second time with great threatenings to fetch him. The Chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoa returns full of joyful hope to procure ere long his son's deliverance; in the midst of which discourse an Ebrew comes in haste, confusedly at first, and afterwards more distinctly, relating the catastrophe—what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself; wherewith the Tragedy ends._

THE PERSONS

SAMSON. MANOA, the Father of Samson. DALILA, his wife. HARAPHA, of Gath. Public Officer. Messenger. Chorus of Danites.

The SCENE, before the Prison in Gaza.

SAMSON AGONISTES

_Samson._ A little onward lend thy guiding hand To these dark steps, a little further on; For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade. There I am wont to sit, when any chance Relieves me from my task of servile toil, 5 Daily in the common prison else enjoined me, Where I, a prisoner chained, scarce freely draw The air, imprisoned also, close and damp, Unwholesome draught. But here I feel amends— The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet, 10 With day-spring born; here leave me to respire. This day a solemn feast the people hold To Dagon, their sea-idol, and forbid Laborious works. Unwillingly this rest Their superstition yields me; hence with leave 15 Retiring from the popular noise, I seek This unfrequented place to find some ease— Ease to the body some, none to the mind From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm Of hornets armed, no sooner found alone 20 But rush upon me thronging, and present Times past, what once I was, and what am now. Oh, wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold Twice by an Angel, who at last, in sight Of both my parents, all in flames ascended 25 From off the altar where an offering burned, As in a fiery column charioting His godlike presence, and from some great act Or benefit revealed to Abraham's race? Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed 30 As of a person separate to God, Designed for great exploits, if I must die Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out, Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze, To grind in brazen fetters under task 35 With this heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength, Put to the labour of a beast, debased Lower than bond-slave! Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver! Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him 40 Eyeless, in Gaza, at the mill, with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke. Yet stay; let me not rashly call in doubt Divine prediction. What if all foretold Had been fulfilled but through mine own default? 45 Whom have I to complain of but myself, Who this high gift of strength committed to me, In what part lodged, how easily bereft me, Under the seal of silence could not keep, But weakly to a woman must reveal it, 50 O'ercome with importunity and tears? O impotence of mind, in body strong! But what is strength without a double share Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome, Proudly secure, yet liable to fall 55 By weakest subtleties; not made to rule, But to subserve where wisdom bears command. God, when he gave me strength, to show withal How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair. But peace! I must not quarrel with the will 60 Of highest dispensation, which herein Haply had ends above my reach to know. Suffices that to me strength is my bane, And proves the source of all my miseries— So many, and so huge, that each apart 65 Would ask a life to wail. But chief of all, O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies! Oh worse than chains, Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct, 70 And all her various objects of delight Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased. Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm, the vilest here excel me: They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed 75 To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own— Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. Oh dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 80 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! O first created beam, and thou great Word, 'Let there be light, and light was over all,' Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? 85 The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. Since light so necessary is to life, 90 And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul, She all in every part, why was the sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined, So obvious and so easy to be quenched, 95 And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, That she might look at will through every pore? Then had I not been thus exiled from light, As in the land of darkness, yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death, 100 And buried; but, oh yet more miserable! Myself, my sepulchre, a moving grave; Buried, yet not exempt, By privilege of death and burial, From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs; 105 But made hereby obnoxious more To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes. But who are these? for with joint pace I hear 110 The tread of many feet steering this way; Perhaps my enemies, who come to stare At my affliction, and perhaps to insult— Their daily practice to afflict me more.

_Chorus._ This, this is he; softly a while; 115 Let us not break in upon him. Oh change beyond report, thought, or belief! See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused, With languished head unpropt, As one past hope, abandoned, 120 And by himself given over, In slavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'er-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, 125 Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed, No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand; Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid; Ran on embattled armies clad in iron, And, weaponless himself, 130 Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass, Chalybean-tempered steel, and frock of mail Adamantean proof; But safest he who stood aloof, 135 When insupportably his foot advanced, In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools, Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Ascalonite Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turned Their plated backs under his heel, 140 Or grovelling soiled their crested helmets in the dust. Then with what trivial weapon came to hand, The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone, A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine, In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day. 145 Then by main force pulled up, and on his shoulders bore, The gates of Azza, post and massy bar, Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old, No journey of a sabbath-day, and loaded so; Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up Heaven. 150 Which shall I first bewail, Thy bondage or lost sight? Prison within prison Inseparably dark. Thou art become (Oh worst imprisonment!) 155 The dungeon of thyself; thy soul (Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain) Imprisoned now indeed, In real darkness of the body dwells, Shut up from outward light 160 To incorporate with gloomy night; For inward light, alas! Puts forth no visual beam. O mirror of our fickle state, Since man on earth unparalleled, 165 The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen. For him I reckon not in high estate 170 Whom long descent of birth Or the sphere of fortune raises; But thee, whose strength, while virtue was her mate, Might have subdued the earth, Universally crowned with highest praises. 175

_Samson._ I hear the sound of words; their sense the air Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.

_Chorus._ He speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless in might, The glory late of Israel, now the grief! We come, thy friends and neighbours not unknown, 180 From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful vale, To visit or bewail thee; or, if better, Counsel or consolation we may bring, Salve to thy sores; apt words have power to swage The tumours of a troubled mind, 185 And are as balm to festered wounds.

_Samson._ Your coming, friends, revives me; for I learn Now of my own experience, not by talk, How counterfeit a coin they are who 'friends' Bear in their superscription (of the most 190 I would be understood). In prosperous days They swarm, but in adverse withdraw their head, Not to be found, though sought. Ye see, O friends, How many evils have enclosed me round; Yet that which was the worst now least afflicts me, 195 Blindness; for had I sight, confused with shame, How could I once look up, or heave the head, Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked My vessel trusted to me from above, Gloriously rigged; and for a word, a tear, 200 Fool! have divulged the secret gift of God To a deceitful woman? tell me, friends, Am I not sung and proverbed for a fool In every street? do they not say, 'how well Are come upon him his deserts?' yet why? 205 Immeasurable strength they might behold In me, of wisdom nothing more than mean. This with the other should, at least, have paired; These two, proportioned ill, drove me transverse.

_Chorus._ Tax not divine disposal. Wisest men 210 Have erred, and by bad women been deceived; And shall again, pretend they ne'er so wise. Deject not, then, so overmuch thyself, Who hast of sorrow thy full load besides. Yet, truth to say, I oft have heard men wonder 215 Why thou shouldst wed Philistian women rather Than of thine own tribe fairer, or as fair, At least of thy own nation, and as noble.

_Samson._ The first I saw at Timna, and she pleased Me, not my parents, that I sought to wed 220 The daughter of an infidel. They knew not That what I motioned was of God; I knew From intimate impulse, and therefore urged The marriage on, that, by occasion hence, I might begin Israel's deliverance— 225 The work to which I was divinely called. She proving false, the next I took to wife (Oh that I never had! fond wish too late!) Was in the vale of Sorec, Dalila, That specious monster, my accomplished snare. 230 I thought it lawful from my former act, And the same end, still watching to oppress Israel's oppressors. Of what now I suffer She was not the prime cause, but I myself, Who, vanquished with a peal of words (oh weakness!) 235 Gave up my fort of silence to a woman.

_Chorus._ In seeking just occasion to provoke The Philistine, thy country's enemy, Thou never wast remiss, I bear thee witness: Yet Israel still serves with all his sons. 240

_Samson._ That fault I take not on me, but transfer On Israel's governors and heads of tribes, Who, seeing those great acts which God had done Singly by me against their conquerors, Acknowledged not, or not at all considered, 245 Deliverance offered. I, on the other side, Used no ambition to commend my deeds; The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer. But they persisted deaf, and would not seem To count them things worth notice, till at length 250 Their lords, the Philistines, with gathered powers, Entered Judea, seeking me, who then Safe to the rock of Etham was retired— Not flying, but forecasting in what place To set upon them, what advantaged best. 255 Meanwhile the men of Judah, to prevent The harass of their land, beset me round; I willingly on some conditions came Into their hands, and they as gladly yield me To the Uncircumcised a welcome prey, 260 Bound with two cords. But cords to me were threads Touched with the flame: on their whole host I flew Unarmed, and with a trivial weapon felled Their choicest youth; they only lived who fled. Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe, 265 They had by this possessed the towers of Gath, And lorded over them whom they now serve. But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, And by their vices brought to servitude, Than to love bondage more than liberty— 270 Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty— And to despise, or envy, or suspect, Whom God hath of his special favour raised As their deliverer? If he aught begin, How frequent to desert him, and at last 275 To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds!

_Chorus._ Thy words to my remembrance bring How Succoth and the fort of Penuel Their great deliverer contemned, The matchless Gideon, in pursuit 280 Of Madian, and her vanquished kings; And how ingrateful Ephraim Had dealt with Jephtha, who by argument, Not worse than by his shield and spear, Defended Israel from the Ammonite, 285 Had not his prowess quelled their pride In that sore battle when so many died Without reprieve, adjudged to death, For want of well pronouncing _Shibboleth_.

_Samson._ Of such examples add me to the roll. 290 Me easily indeed mine may neglect, But God's proposed deliverance not so.

_Chorus._ Just are the ways of God, And justifiable to men, Unless there be who think not God at all. 295 If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor but himself. Yet more there be who doubt his ways not just, 300 As to his own edicts found contradicting; Then give the reins to wandering thought, Regardless of his glory's diminution, Till, by their own perplexities involved, They ravel more, still less resolved, 305 But never find self-satisfying solution. As if they would confine the Interminable, And tie him to his own prescript, Who made our laws to bind us, not himself, And hath full right to exempt 310 Whomso it pleases him by choice From national obstriction, without taint Of sin, or legal debt; For with his own laws he can best dispense. He would not else, who never wanted means, 315 Nor in respect of the enemy just cause, To set his people free, Have prompted this heroic Nazarite, Against his vow of strictest purity, To seek in marriage that fallacious bride, 320 Unclean, unchaste. Down, Reason, then; at least, vain reasonings, down; Though Reason here aver That moral verdict quits her of unclean: Unchaste was subsequent, her stain not his. 325 But see! here comes thy reverend sire, With careful step, locks white as down, Old Manoa: advise Forthwith how thou ought'st to receive him.

_Samson._ Ay me! another inward grief, awaked 330 With mention of that name, renews the assault.

_Manoa._ Brethren and men of Dan (for such ye seem, Though in this uncouth place), if old respect, As I suppose, towards your once gloried friend, My son, now captive, hither hath informed 335 Your younger feet, while mine, cast back with age, Came lagging after, say if he be here.

_Chorus._ As signal now in low dejected state, As erst in highest, behold him where he lies.

_Manoa._ Oh miserable change! is this the man? 340 That invincible Samson, far renowned, The dread of Israel's foes, who with a strength Equivalent to Angels', walked their streets, None offering fight; who, single combatant, Duelled their armies ranked in proud array, 345 Himself an army, now unequal match To save himself against a coward armed At one spear's length. Oh ever-failing trust In mortal strength! and oh, what not in man Deceivable and vain? Nay, what thing good 350 Prayed for, but often proves our woe, our bane? I prayed for children, and thought barrenness In wedlock a reproach; I gained a son, And such a son as all men hailed me happy. Who would be now a father in my stead? 355 Oh, wherefore did God grant me my request, And as a blessing with such pomp adorned? Why are his gifts desirable, to tempt Our earnest prayers, then, given with solemn hand As graces, draw a scorpion's tail behind? 360 For this did the Angel twice descend? for this Ordained thy nurture holy, as of a plant Select and sacred? glorious for a while, The miracle of men; then in an hour Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, 365 Thy foes' derision, captive, poor and blind, Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves! Alas! methinks whom God hath chosen once To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err, He should not so o'erwhelm, and as a thrall 370 Subject him to so foul indignities, Be it but for honour's sake of former deeds.

_Samson._ Appoint not heavenly disposition, father. Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me But justly; I myself have brought them on; 375 Sole author I, sole cause. If aught seem vile, As vile hath been my folly, who have profaned The mystery of God, given me under pledge Of vow, and have betrayed it to a woman, A Canaanite, my faithless enemy. 380 This well I knew, nor was at all surprised, But warned by oft experience. Did not she Of Timna first betray me, and reveal The secret wrested from me in her highth Of nuptial love professed, carrying it straight 385 To them who had corrupted her, my spies And rivals? In this other was there found More faith, who, also in her prime of love, Spousal embraces, vitiated with gold, Though offered only, by the scent conceived 390 Her spurious first-born, Treason against me? Thrice she assayed, with flattering prayers and sighs And amorous reproaches, to win from me My capital secret, in what part my strength Lay stored, in what part summed, that she might know; 395 Thrice I deluded her, and turned to sport Her importunity, each time perceiving How openly and with what impudence She purposed to betray me, and (which was worse Than undissembled hate) with what contempt 400 She sought to make me traitor to myself. Yet, the fourth time, when, mustering all her wiles, With blandished parleys, feminine assaults, Tongue-batteries, she surceased not day nor night To storm me, over-watched, and wearied out, 405 At times when men seek most repose and rest, I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart, Who, with a grain of manhood well resolved, Might easily have shook off all her snares; But foul effeminacy held me yoked 410 Her bond-slave. Oh indignity, oh blot To honour and religion! servile mind Rewarded well with servile punishment! The base degree to which I now am fallen, These rags, this grinding, is not yet so base 415 As was my former servitude, ignoble, Unmanly, ignominious, infamous, True slavery; and that blindness worse than this, That saw not how degenerately I served.

_Manoa._ I cannot praise thy marriage-choices, son, 420 Rather approved them not; but thou didst plead Divine impulsion prompting how thou might'st Find some occasion to infest our foes. I state not that; this I am sure—our foes Found soon occasion thereby to make thee 425 Their captive, and their triumph; thou the sooner Temptation found'st, or over-potent charms, To violate the sacred trust of silence Deposited within thee—which to have kept Tacit, was in thy power; true; and thou bear'st 430 Enough, and more, the burden of that fault; Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying, That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains: This day the Philistines a popular feast Here celebrate in Gaza, and proclaim 435 Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud, To Dagon, as their god who hath delivered Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their hands, Them out of thine, who slew'st them many a slain. So Dagon shall be magnified, and God 440 Besides whom is no god, compared with idols, Disglorified, blasphemed, and had in scorn By the idolatrous rout amidst their wine; Which to have come to pass by means of thee, Samson, of all thy sufferings think the heaviest, 445 Of all reproach the most with shame that ever Could have befallen thee and thy father's house.

_Samson._ Father, I do acknowledge and confess That I this honour, I this pomp, have brought To Dagon, and advanced his praises high 450 Among the Heathen round; to God have brought Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt In feeble hearts, propense enough before 455 To waver, or fall off and join with idols; Which is my chief affliction, shame and sorrow, The anguish of my soul, that suffers not Mine eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest. This only hope relieves me, that the strife 460 With me hath end; all the contest is now 'Twixt God and Dagon. Dagon hath presumed, Me overthrown, to enter lists with God, His deity comparing and preferring Before the God of Abraham. He, be sure, 465 Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked, But will arise and his great name assert. Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him Of all these boasted trophies won on me, 470 And with confusion blank his worshippers.

_Manoa._ With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words I as a prophecy receive; for God (Nothing more certain) will not long defer To vindicate the glory of his name 475 Against all competition, nor will long Endure it doubtful whether God be Lord, Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be done? Thou must not in the mean while, here forgot, Lie in this miserable loathsome plight 480 Neglected. I already have made way To some Philistian lords, with whom to treat About thy ransom: well they may by this Have satisfied their utmost of revenge, By pains and slaveries, worse than death, inflicted 485 On thee, who now no more canst do them harm.

_Samson._ Spare that proposal, father; spare the trouble Of that solicitation. Let me here, As I deserve, pay on my punishment, And expiate, if possible, my crime, 490 Shameful garrulity. To have revealed Secrets of _men_, the secrets of a friend, How heinous had the fact been, how deserving Contempt and scorn of all—to be excluded All friendship, and avoided as a blab, 495 The mark of fool set on his front! But I _God's_ counsel have not kept, his holy secret Presumptuously have published, impiously, Weakly at least, and shamefully—a sin That Gentiles in their parables condemn 500 To their Abyss and horrid pains confined.

_Manoa._ Be penitent, and for thy fault contrite; But act not in thy own affliction, son. Repent the sin; but, if the punishment Thou canst avoid, self-preservation bids; 505 Or the execution leave to high disposal, And let another hand, not thine, exact Thy penal forfeit from thyself. Perhaps God will relent, and quit thee all his debt; Who ever more approves and more accepts 510 (Best pleased with humble and filial submission) Him who, imploring mercy, sues for life, Than who, self-rigorous, chooses death as due; Which argues over-just, and self-displeased For self-offence, more than for God offended. 515 Reject not, then, what offered means. Who knows But God hath set before us to return thee Home to thy country and his sacred house, Where thou mayst bring thy offerings, to avert His further ire, with prayers and vows renewed? 520

_Samson._ His pardon I implore; but as for life, To what end should I seek it? when in strength All mortals I excelled, and great in hopes, With youthful courage, and magnanimous thoughts Of birth from Heaven foretold and high exploits, 525 Full of divine instinct, after some proof Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed, Fearless of danger, like a petty god I walked about, admired of all, and dreaded 530 On hostile ground, none daring my affront— Then, swollen with pride, into the snare I fell Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life, At length to lay my head and hallowed pledge 535 Of all my strength in the lascivious lap Of a deceitful concubine, who shore me Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece, Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled, Shaven, and disarmed among mine enemies. 540

_Chorus._ Desire of wine and all delicious drinks, Which many a famous warrior overturns, Thou could'st repress; nor did the dancing ruby Sparkling, out-poured, the flavour, or the smell, Or taste that cheers the heart of gods and men, 545 Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream.

_Samson._ Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure With touch ethereal of Heaven's fiery rod, I drank, from the clear milky juice allaying 550 Thirst, and refreshed; nor envied them the grape Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes.

_Chorus._ Oh madness! to think use of strongest wines And strongest drinks our chief support of health, When God with these forbidden made choice to rear 555 His mighty champion, strong above compare, Whose drink was only from the liquid brook!

_Samson._ But what availed this temperance, not complete Against another object more enticing? What boots it at one gate to make defence, 560 And at another to let in the foe, Effeminately vanquished? by which means, Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonoured, quelled, To what can I be useful? wherein serve My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed? 565 But to sit idle on the household hearth, A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze, Or pitied object; these redundant locks, Robustious to no purpose, clustering down, Vain monument of strength; till length of years 570 And sedentary numbness craze my limbs To a contemptible old age obscure. Here rather let me drudge, and earn my bread, Till vermin, or the draff of servile food, Consume me, and oft-invocated death 575 Hasten the welcome end of all my pains.

_Manoa._ Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that gift Which was expressly given thee to annoy them? Better at home lie bed-rid, not only idle, Inglorious, unemployed, with age outworn. 580 But God, who caused a fountain at thy prayer From the dry ground to spring, thy thirst to allay After the brunt of battle, can as easy Cause light again within thy eyes to spring, Wherewith to serve him better than thou hast. 585 And I persuade me so. Why else this strength Miraculous yet remaining in those locks? His might continues in thee not for nought, Nor shall his wondrous gifts be frustrate thus.

_Samson._ All otherwise to me my thoughts portend— 590 That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, Nor the other light of life continue long, But yield to double darkness nigh at hand; So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat: Nature within me seems 595 In all her functions weary of herself; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

_Manoa._ Believe not these suggestions, which proceed From anguish of the mind, and humours black 600 That mingle with thy fancy. I, however, Must not omit a father's timely care To prosecute the means of thy deliverance By ransom or how else. Mean while be calm, And healing words from these thy friends admit. 605

_Samson._ Oh, that torment should not be confined To the body's wounds and sores, With maladies innumerable In heart, head, breast, and reins, But must secret passage find 610 To the inmost mind, There exercise all his fierce accidents, And on her purest spirits prey, As on entrails, joints, and limbs, With answerable pains, but more intense, 615 Though void of corporal sense! My griefs not only pain me As a lingering disease, But, finding no redress, ferment and rage; Nor less than wounds immedicable 620 Rankle, and fester, and gangrene, To black mortification. Thoughts, my tormentors, armed with deadly stings, Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts, Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise 625 Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb Or medicinal liquor can assuage, Nor breath of vernal air from snowy Alp. Sleep hath forsook and given me o'er To death's benumbing opium as my only cure; 630 Thence faintings, swoonings of despair, And sense of Heaven's desertion. I was his nursling once and choice delight, His, destined from the womb, Promised by heavenly message twice descending. 635 Under his special eye Abstemious I grew up and thrived amain; He led me on to mightiest deeds, Above the nerve of mortal arm, Against the Uncircumcised, our enemies: 640 But now hath cast me off as never known, And to those cruel enemies, Whom I by his appointment had provoked, Left me all helpless, with the irreparable loss Of sight, reserved alive to be repeated 645 The subject of their cruelty or scorn. Nor am I in the list of them that hope; Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless. This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard, No long petition, speedy death, 650 The close of all my miseries, and the balm.

_Chorus._ Many are the sayings of the wise, In ancient and in modern books enrolled, Extolling patience as the truest fortitude, And to the bearing well of all calamities, 655 All chances incident to man's frail life, Consolatories writ With studied argument, and much persuasion sought, Lenient of grief and anxious thought. But with the afflicted in his pangs their sound 660 Little prevails, or rather seems a tune Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint, Unless he feel within Some source of consolation from above, Secret refreshings that repair his strength 665 And fainting spirits uphold. God of our fathers! what is Man, That thou towards him with hand so various— Or might I say contrarious?— Temper'st thy providence through his short course: 670 Not evenly, as thou rul'st The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, Irrational and brute? Nor do I name of men the common rout, That, wand'ring loose about, 675 Grow up and perish, as the summer fly, Heads without name, no more rememberèd; But such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, 680 And people's safety, which in part they effect. Yet toward these thus dignified, thou oft, Amidst their highth of noon, Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard Of highest favours past 685 From thee on them, or them to thee of service. Nor only dost degrade them, or remit To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high— Unseemly falls in human eye, 690 Too grievous for the trespass or omission; Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword Of heathen and profane, their carcasses To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captived, Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, 695 And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude. If these they scape, perhaps in poverty With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down, Painful diseases and deformed, In crude old age; 700 Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering The punishment of dissolute days. In fine, Just or unjust alike seem miserable, For oft alike both come to evil end. So deal not with this once thy glorious champion, 705 The image of thy strength, and mighty minister. What do I beg? how hast thou dealt already! Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end. But who is this? what thing of sea or land? 710 —Female of sex it seems— That so bedecked, ornate, and gay, Comes this way sailing, Like a stately ship Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 715 Of Javan or Gadire, With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, Sails filled, and streamers waving, Courted by all the winds that hold them play, An amber scent of odorous perfume 720 Her harbinger, a damsel train behind; Some rich Philistian matron she may seem, And now, at nearer view, no other certain Than Dalila thy wife.

_Samson._ My wife? my traitress; let her not come near me. 725

_Chorus._ Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixed, About to have spoke; but now, with head declined, Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, Wetting the borders of her silken veil. 730 But now again she makes address to speak.

_Dalila._ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson, Which to have merited, without excuse, I cannot but acknowledge; yet if tears 735 May expiate (though the fact more evil drew In the perverse event than I foresaw), My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon No way assured. But conjugal affection, Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, 740 Hath led me on, desirous to behold Once more thy face, and know of thy estate, If aught in my ability may serve To lighten what thou sufferest, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power, 745 Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash but more unfortunate misdeed.

_Samson._ Out, out, hyæna! these are thy wonted arts, And arts of every woman false like thee— To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray; 750 Then, as repentant, to submit, beseech, And reconcilement move with feigned remorse, Confess, and promise wonders in her change— Not truly penitent, but chief to try Her husband, how far urged his patience bears, 755 His virtue or weakness which way to assail: Then, with more cautious and instructed skill, Again transgresses, and again submits; That wisest and best men, full oft beguiled, With goodness principled not to reject 760 The penitent, but ever to forgive, Are drawn to wear out miserable days, Entangled with a poisonous bosom-snake, If not by quick destruction soon cut off, As I by thee, to ages an example. 765

_Dalila._ Yet hear me, Samson; not that I endeavour To lessen or extenuate my offence, But that, on the other side, if it be weighed By itself, with aggravations not surcharged, Or else with just allowance counterpoised, 770 I may, if possible, thy pardon find The easier towards me, or thy hatred less. First granting, as I do, it was a weakness In me, but incident to all our sex, Curiosity, inquisitive, importune 775 Of secrets, then with like infirmity To publish them—both common female faults— Was it not weakness also to make known, For importunity, that is for nought, Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety? 780 To what I did thou showd'st me first the way. But I to enemies revealed, and should not; Nor should'st thou have trusted that to woman's frailty: Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel. Let weakness, then, with weakness come to parle, 785 So near related, or the same of kind; Thine forgive mine, that men may censure thine The gentler, if severely thou exact not More strength from me than in thyself was found. And what if love, which thou interpret'st hate, 790 The jealousy of love, powerful of sway In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee, Caused what I did? I saw thee mutable Of fancy, feared lest one day thou would'st leave me As her at Timna; sought by all means, therefore, 795 How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest: No better way I saw than by importuning To learn thy secrets, get into my power Thy key of strength and safety. Thou wilt say, 'Why, then, revealed?' I was assured by those 800 Who tempted me, that nothing was designed Against thee but safe custody and hold. That made for me; I knew that liberty Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises, While I at home sat full of cares and fears, 805 Wailing thy absence in my widowed bed; Here I should still enjoy thee, day and night, Mine and love's prisoner, not the Philistines', Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad, Fearless at home of partners in my love. 810 These reasons in love's law have passed for good, Though fond and reasonless to some perhaps; And love hath oft, well meaning, wrought much woe, Yet always pity or pardon hath obtained. Be not unlike all others, not austere 815 As thou art strong, inflexible as steel. If thou in strength all mortals dost exceed, In uncompassionate anger do not so.

_Samson._ How cunningly the sorceress displays Her own transgressions, to upbraid me mine! 820 That malice, not repentance, brought thee hither, By this appears. I gave, thou say'st, the example, I led the way; bitter reproach, but true; I to myself was false ere thou to me. Such pardon, therefore, as I give my folly, 825 Take to thy wicked deed; which when thou seest Impartial, self-severe, inexorable, Thou wilt renounce thy seeking, and much rather Confess it feigned. Weakness is thy excuse, And I believe it—weakness to resist 830 Philistian gold. If weakness may excuse, What murtherer, what traitor, parricide, Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it? All wickedness is weakness; that plea, therefore, With God or man will gain thee no remission. 835 But love constrained thee! call it furious rage To satisfy thy lust. Love seeks to have love; My love how could'st thou hope, who took'st the way To raise in me inexpiable hate, Knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed? 840 In vain thou striv'st to cover shame with shame, Or by evasions thy crime uncover'st more.

_Dalila._ Since thou determin'st weakness for no plea In man or woman, though to thy own condemning, Hear what assaults I had, what snares besides, 845 What sieges girt me round, ere I consented; Which might have awed the best-resolved of men, The constantest, to have yielded without blame. It was not gold, as to my charge thou lay'st, That wrought with me. Thou know'st the magistrates 850 And princes of my country came in person, Solicited, commanded, threatened, urged, Adjured by all the bonds of civil duty And of religion; pressed how just it was, How honourable, how glorious, to entrap 855 A common enemy, who had destroyed Such numbers of our nation: and the priest Was not behind, but ever at my ear, Preaching how meritorious with the gods It would be to ensnare an irreligious 860 Dishonourer of Dagon. What had I To oppose against such powerful arguments? Only my love of thee held long debate, And combated in silence all these reasons With hard contest. At length, that grounded maxim, 865 So rife and celebrated in the mouths Of wisest men, that to the public good Private respects must yield, with grave authority Took full possession of me, and prevailed; Virtue, as I thought, truth, duty, so enjoining. 870

_Samson._ I thought where all thy circling wiles would end— In feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy! But, had thy love, still odiously pretended, Been, as it ought, sincere, it would have taught thee Far other reasonings, brought forth other deeds. 875 I, before all the daughters of my tribe And of my nation, chose thee from among My enemies, loved thee, as too well thou knew'st, Too well; unbosomed all my secrets to thee, Not out of levity, but overpowered 880 By thy request, who could deny thee nothing; Yet now am judged an enemy. Why, then, Didst thou at first receive me for thy husband, Then, as since then, thy country's foe professed? Being once a wife, for me thou wast to leave 885 Parents and country; nor was I their subject, Nor under their protection, but my own; Thou mine, not theirs. If aught against my life Thy country sought of thee, it sought unjustly, Against the law of nature, law of nations; 890 No more thy country, but an impious crew Of men conspiring to uphold their state By worse than hostile deeds, violating the ends For which our country is a name so dear; Not therefore to be obeyed. But zeal moved thee; 895 To please thy gods thou didst it! gods unable To acquit themselves and prosecute their foes But by ungodly deeds, the contradiction Of their own deity, gods cannot be; Less therefore to be pleased, obeyed, or feared. 900 These false pretexts and varnished colours failing, Bare in thy guilt, how foul must thou appear!

_Dalila._ In argument with men a woman ever Goes by the worse, whatever be her cause.

_Samson._ For want of words, no doubt, or lack of breath! 905 Witness when I was worried with thy peals.

_Dalila._ I was a fool, too rash, and quite mistaken In what I thought would have succeeded best. Let me obtain forgiveness of thee, Samson; Afford me place to show what recompense 910 Towards thee I intend for what I have misdone, Misguided. Only what remains past cure Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist To afflict thyself in vain. Though sight be lost, Life yet hath many solaces, enjoyed 915 Where other senses want not their delights— At home, in leisure and domestic ease, Exempt from many a care and chance to which Eye-sight exposes, daily, men abroad. I to the lords will intercede, not doubting 920 Their favourable ear, that I may fetch thee From forth this loathsome prison-house, to abide With me, where my redoubled love and care, With nursing diligence, to me glad office, May ever tend about thee to old age, 925 With all things grateful cheered, and so supplied That what by me thou hast lost thou least shalt miss.

_Samson._ No, no; of my condition take no care; It fits not; thou and I long since are twain; Nor think me so unwary or accursed, 930 To bring my feet again into the snare Where once I have been caught. I know thy trains, Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils. Thy fair enchanted cup, and warbling charms, No more on me have power; their force is nulled; 935 So much of adder's wisdom I have learned, To fence my ear against thy sorceries. If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men Loved, honoured, feared me, thou alone could'st hate me, Thy husband, slight me, sell me, and forgo me, 940 How would'st thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceivable, in most things as a child Helpless, thence easily contemned and scorned, And last neglected! How would'st thou insult, When I must live uxorious to thy will 945 In perfect thraldom! how again betray me, Bearing my words and doings to the lords To gloss upon, and, censuring, frown or smile! This jail I count the house of liberty To thine, whose doors my feet shall never enter. 950

_Dalila._ Let me approach at least, and touch thy hand.

_Samson._ Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint. At distance I forgive thee; go with that; Bewail thy falsehood, and the pious works 955 It hath brought forth to make thee memorable Among illustrious women, faithful wives; Cherish thy hastened widowhood with the gold Of matrimonial treason: so farewell.

_Dalila._ I see thou art implacable, more deaf 960 To prayers than winds and seas; yet winds to seas Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore: Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages, Eternal tempest never to be calmed. Why do I humble thus myself, and, suing 965 For peace, reap nothing but repulse and hate? Bid go with evil omen, and the brand Of infamy upon my name denounced. To mix with thy concernments I desist Henceforth, nor too much disapprove my own. 970 Fame, if not double-faced, is double-mouthed, And with contráry blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight. My name, perhaps, among the Circumcised 975 In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes, To all posterity may stand defamed, With malediction mentioned, and the blot Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced. But in my country, where I most desire, 980 In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who, to save Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose 985 Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb With odours visited and annual flowers; Not less renowned than in mount Ephraim Jael, who, with inhospitable guile, Smote Sisera sleeping, through the temples nailed. 990 Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy The public marks of honour and reward Conferred upon me for the piety Which to my country I was judged to have shown. At this whoever envies or repines, 995 I leave him to his lot, and like my own.

_Chorus._ She's gone—a manifest serpent by her sting Discovered in the end, till now concealed.

_Samson._ So let her go. God sent her to debase me, And aggravate my folly, who committed 1000 To such a viper his most sacred trust Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.

_Chorus._ Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain Love once possessed, nor can be easily 1005 Repulsed, without much inward passion felt, And secret sting of amorous remorse.

_Samson._ Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end, Not wedlock-treachery endangering life.

_Chorus._ It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit, 1010 Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit, That woman's love can win or long inherit; But what it is, hard is to say, Harder to hit, Which way soever men refer it 1015 (Much like thy riddle, Samson), in one day Or seven, though one should musing sit. If any of these, or all, the Timnian bride Had not so soon preferred Thy paranymph, worthless to thee compared, 1020 Successor in thy bed, Nor both so loosely disallied Their nuptials, nor this last so treacherously Had shorn the fatal harvest of thy head. Is it for that such outward ornament 1025 Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant, Capacity not raised to apprehend Or value what is best In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong? 1030 Or was too much of self-love mixed, Of constancy no root infixed, That either they love nothing, or not long? Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best, Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, 1035 Soft, modest, meek, demure, Once joined, the contrary she proves—a thorn Intestine, far within defensive arms A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue Adverse and turbulent; or by her charms 1040 Draws him awry, enslaved With dotage, and his sense depraved To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends. What pilot so expert but needs must wreck, Embarked with such a steers-mate at the helm? 1045 Favoured of heaven who finds One virtuous, rarely found, That in domestic good combines! Happy that house! his way to peace is smooth: But virtue which breaks through all opposition, 1050 And all temptation can remove, Most shines and most is acceptable above. Therefore God's universal law Gave to the man despotic power Over his female in due awe, 1055 Nor from that right to part an hour, Smile she or lour: So shall he least confusion draw On his whole life, not swayed By female usurpation, nor dismayed. 1060 But had we best retire? I see a storm.

_Samson._ Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain.

_Chorus._ But this another kind of tempest brings.

_Samson._ Be less abstruse; my riddling days are past.

_Chorus._ Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear 1065 The bait of honied words; a rougher tongue Draws hitherward; I know him by his stride, The giant Harapha of Gath, his look Haughty, as is his pile high-built and proud. Comes he in peace? what wind hath blown him hither 1070 I less conjecture than when first I saw The sumptuous Dalila floating this way: His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.

_Samson._ Or peace or not, alike to me he comes.

_Chorus._ His fraught we soon shall know: he now arrives. 1075

_Harapha._ I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance, As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath; Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned As Og, or Anak, and the Emims old 1080 That Kiriathaim held. Thou know'st me now, If thou at all art known. Much I have heard Of thy prodigious might and feats performed, Incredible to me,—in this displeased, That I was never present on the place 1085 Of those encounters, where we might have tried Each other's force in camp or listed field; And now am come to see of whom such noise Hath walked about, and each limb to survey, If thy appearance answer loud report. 1090

_Samson._ The way to know were not to see, but taste.

_Harapha._ Dost thou already single me? I thought Gyves and the mill had tamed thee. Oh, that fortune Had brought me to the field, where thou art famed To have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw! 1095 I should have forced thee soon with other arms, Or left thy carcass where the ass lay thrown; So had the glory of prowess been recovered To Palestine, won by a Philistine From the unforeskinned race, of whom thou bear'st 1100 The highest name for valiant acts; that honour, Certain to have won by mortal duel from thee, I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.

_Samson._ Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st; thou seest it in thy hand. 1105

_Harapha._ To combat with a blind man I disdain, And thou hast need much washing to be touched.

_Samson._ Such usage as your honourable lords Afford me, assassinated and betrayed; Who durst not with their whole united powers 1110 In fight withstand me single and unarmed, Nor in the house with chamber-ambushes Close-banded durst attack me, no, not sleeping, Till they had hired a woman with their gold, Breaking her marriage-faith, to circumvent me. 1115 Therefore, without feigned shifts, let be assigned Some narrow place enclosed, where sight may give thee, Or rather flight, no great advantage on me; Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon, 1120 Vant-brace and greaves and gauntlet; add thy spear, A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded shield: I only with an oaken staff will meet thee, And raise such outcries on thy clattered iron, Which long shall not withhold me from thy head, 1125 That in a little time while breath remains thee, Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath, to boast Again in safety what thou would'st have done To Samson, but shalt never see Gath more.

_Harapha._ Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms, 1130 Which greatest heroes have in battle worn, Their ornament and safety, had not spells And black enchantments, some magician's art, Armed thee or charmed thee strong, which thou from Heaven Feign'dst at thy birth was given thee in thy hair, 1135 Where strength can least abide, though all thy hairs Were bristles ranged like those that ridge the back Of chafed wild boars or ruffled porcupines.

_Samson._ I know no spells, use no forbidden arts; My trust is in the Living God, who gave me, 1140 At my nativity, this strength, diffused No less through all my sinews, joints, and bones, Than thine, while I preserved these locks unshorn, The pledge of my unviolated vow. For proof hereof, if Dagon be thy god, 1145 Go to his temple, invocate his aid With solemnest devotion, spread before him How highly it concerns his glory now To frustrate and dissolve these magic spells, Which I to be the power of Israel's God 1150 Avow, and challenge Dagon to the test, Offering to combat thee, his champion bold, With the utmost of his godhead seconded: Then thou shalt see, or rather to thy sorrow Soon feel, whose God is strongest, thine or mine. 1155

_Harapha._ Presume not on thy God. Whate'er he be, Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off Quite from his people, and delivered up Into thy enemies' hand; permitted them To put out both thine eyes, and fettered send thee 1160 Into the common prison, there to grind Among the slaves and asses, thy comrades, As good for nothing else, no better service With those thy boisterous locks; no worthy match For valour to assail, nor by the sword 1165 Of noble warrior, so to stain his honour, But by the barber's razor best subdued.

_Samson._ All these indignities, for such they are From thine, these evils I deserve and more, Acknowledge them from God inflicted on me 1170 Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, Whose ear is ever open, and his eye Gracious to re-admit the suppliant; In confidence whereof I once again Defy thee to the trial of mortal fight, 1175 By combat to decide whose god is God, Thine, or whom I with Israel's sons adore.

_Harapha._ Fair honour that thou doest thy God, in trusting He will accept thee to defend his cause, A murtherer, a revolter, and a robber! 1180

_Samson._ Tongue-doughty giant, how dost thou prove me these?

_Harapha._ Is not thy nation subject to our lords? Their magistrates confessed it, when they took thee As a league-breaker, and delivered bound Into our hands: for hadst thou not committed 1185 Notorious murder on those thirty men At Ascalon, who never did thee harm, Then, like a robber, stripp'dst them of their robes? The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the league, Went up with armed powers thee only seeking, 1190 To others did no violence nor spoil.

_Samson._ Among the daughters of the Philistines I chose a wife, which argued me no foe, And in your city held my nuptial feast; But your ill-meaning politician lords, 1195 Under pretence of bridal friends and guests, Appointed to await me thirty spies, Who, threatening cruel death, constrained the bride To wring from me, and tell to them, my secret, That solved the riddle which I had proposed. 1200 When I perceived all set on enmity, As on my enemies, wherever chanced, I used hostility, and took their spoil, To pay my underminers in their coin. My nation was subjected to your lords! 1205 It was the force of conquest; force with force Is well ejected when the conquered can. But I, a private person, whom my country As a league-breaker gave up bound, presumed Single rebellion, and did hostile acts! 1210 I was no private, but a person raised, With strength sufficient, and command from Heaven, To free my country. If their servile minds Me, their deliverer sent, would not receive, But to their masters gave me up for nought, 1215 The unworthier they; whence to this day they serve. I was to do my part from Heaven assigned, And had performed it, if my known offence Had not disabled me, not all your force. These shifts refuted, answer thy appellant, 1220 Though by his blindness maimed for high attempts, Who now defies thee thrice to single fight, As a petty enterprise of small enforce.

_Harapha._ With thee, a man condemned, a slave enrolled, Due by the law to capital punishment? 1225 To fight with thee no man of arms will deign.

_Samson._ Cam'st thou for this, vain boaster, to survey me, To descant on my strength, and give thy verdict? Come nearer; part not hence so slight informed; But take good heed my hand survey not thee. 1230

_Harapha._ O Baal-zebub! can my ears unused Hear these dishonours, and not render death?

_Samson._ No man withholds thee; nothing from thy hand Fear I incurable; bring up thy van; My heels are fettered, but my fist is free. 1235

_Harapha._ This insolence other kind of answer fits.

_Samson._ Go, baffled coward, lest I run upon thee, Though in these chains, bulk without spirit vast, And with one buffet lay thy structure low, Or swing thee in the air, then dash thee down, 1240 To the hazard of thy brains and shattered sides.

_Harapha._ By Astaroth, ere long thou shalt lament These braveries in irons loaden on thee.

_Chorus._ His giantship is gone somewhat crest-fallen, Stalking with less unconscionable strides, 1245 And lower looks, but in a sultry chafe.

_Samson._ I dread him not, nor all his giant brood, Though fame divulge him father of five sons, All of gigantic size, Goliah chief.

_Chorus._ He will directly to the lords, I fear, 1250 And with malicious counsel stir them up Some way or other yet further to afflict thee.

_Samson._ He must allege some cause, and offered fight Will not dare mention, lest a question rise Whether he durst accept the offer or not; 1255 And that he durst not plain enough appeared. Much more affliction than already felt They cannot well impose, nor I sustain, If they intend advantage of my labours, The work of many hands, which earns my keeping, 1260 With no small profit daily to my owners. But come what will, my deadliest foe will prove My speediest friend, by death to rid me hence; The worst that he can give, to me the best. Yet so it may fall out, because their end 1265 Is hate, not help to me, it may with mine Draw their own ruin who attempt the deed.

_Chorus._ Oh how comely it is, and how reviving To the spirits of just men long oppressed, When God into the hands of their deliverer 1270 Puts invincible might, To quell the mighty of the earth, the oppressor, The brute and boisterous force of violent men, Hardy and industrious to support. Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue 1275 The righteous, and all such as honour truth! He all their ammunition And feats of war defeats, With plain heroic magnitude of mind And celestial vigour armed; 1280 Their armories and magazines contemns, Renders them useless, while With wingèd expedition Swift as the lightning glance he executes His errand on the wicked, who, surprised, 1285 Lose their defence, distracted and amazed. But patience is more oft the exercise Of saints, the trial of their fortitude, Making them each his own deliverer, And victor over all 1290 That tyranny or fortune can inflict. Either of these is in thy lot, Samson, with might endued Above the sons of men; but sight bereaved May chance to number thee with those 1295 Whom patience finally must crown. This Idol's day hath been to thee no day of rest, Labouring thy mind More than the working day thy hands. And yet perhaps more trouble is behind; 1300 For I descry this way Some other tending; in his hand A sceptre or quaint staff he bears, Comes on amain, speed in his look. By his habit I discern him now 1305 A public officer, and now at hand. His message will be short and voluble.

_Officer._ Ebrews, the prisoner Samson here I seek.

_Chorus._ His manacles remark him; there he sits.

_Officer._ Samson, to thee our lords thus bid me say: 1310 This day to Dagon is a solemn feast, With sacrifices, triumph, pomp, and games; Thy strength they know surpassing human rate, And now some public proof thereof require To honour this great feast, and great assembly. 1315 Rise, therefore, with all speed, and come along, Where I will see thee heartened and fresh clad, To appear as fits before the illustrious lords.

_Samson._ Thou know'st I am an Ebrew; therefore tell them Our Law forbids at their religious rites 1320 My presence; for that cause I cannot come.

_Officer._ This answer, be assured, will not content them.

_Samson._ Have they not sword-players, and every sort Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners, Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics, 1325 But they must pick me out, with shackles tired, And over-laboured at their public mill, To make them sport with blind activity? Do they not seek occasion of new quarrels, On my refusal, to distress me more, 1330 Or make a game of my calamities? Return the way thou cam'st; I will not come.

_Officer._ Regard thyself; this will offend them highly.

_Samson._ Myself? my conscience and internal peace. Can they think me so broken, so debased 1335 With corporal servitude, that my mind ever Will condescend to such absurd commands? Although their drudge, to be their fool or jester, And, in my midst of sorrow and heart-grief, To show them feats, and play before their god— 1340 The worst of all indignities, yet on me Joined with extreme contempt! I will not come.

_Officer._ My message was imposed on me with speed, Brooks no delay: is this thy resolution?

_Samson._ So take it with what speed thy message needs. 1345

_Officer._ I am sorry what this stoutness will produce.

_Samson._ Perhaps thou shalt have cause to sorrow indeed.

_Chorus._ Consider, Samson; matters now are strained Up to the highth, whether to hold or break. He's gone, and who knows how he may report 1350 Thy words by adding fuel to the flame? Expect another message more imperious, More lordly thundering than thou well wilt bear.

_Samson._ Shall I abuse this consecrated gift Of strength, again returning with my hair 1355 After my great transgression? so requite Favour renewed, and add a greater sin By prostituting holy things to idols, A Nazarite, in place abominable, Vaunting my strength in honour to their Dagon? 1360 Besides how vile, contemptible, ridiculous, What act more execrably unclean, profane?

_Chorus._ Yet with this strength thou serv'st the Philistines, Idolatrous, uncircumcised, unclean.

_Samson._ Not in their idol-worship, but by labour 1365 Honest and lawful to deserve my food Of those who have me in their civil power.

_Chorus._ Where the heart joins not, outward acts defile not.

_Samson._ Where outward force constrains, the sentence holds. But who constrains me to the temple of Dagon, 1370 Not dragging? the Philistian lords command: Commands are no constraints. If I obey them, I do it freely, venturing to displease God for the fear of man, and man prefer, Set God behind; which, in his jealousy, 1375 Shall never, unrepented, find forgiveness. Yet that he may dispense with me, or thee, Present in temples at idolatrous rites For some important cause, thou need'st not doubt.

_Chorus._ How thou wilt here come off surmounts my reach. 1380

_Samson._ Be of good courage; I begin to feel Some rousing motions in me, which dispose To something extraordinary my thoughts. I with this messenger will go along, Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour 1385 Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. If there be aught of presage in the mind, This day will be remarkable in my life By some great act, or of my days the last.

_Chorus._ In time thou hast resolved: the man returns. 1390

_Officer._ Samson, this second message from our lords To thee I am bid say: Art thou our slave, Our captive, at the public mill our drudge, And dar'st thou, at our sending and command, Dispute thy coming? Come without delay; 1395 Or we shall find such engines to assail And hamper thee, as thou shalt come of force, Though thou wert firmlier fastened than a rock.

_Samson._ I could be well content to try their art, Which to no few of them would prove pernicious; 1400 Yet, knowing their advantages too many, Because they shall not trail me through their streets Like a wild beast, I am content to go. —Masters' commands come with a power resistless To such as owe them absolute subjection; 1405 And for a life who will not change his purpose? So mutable are all the ways of men.— Yet this be sure, in nothing to comply Scandalous or forbidden in our Law.

_Officer._ I praise thy resolution. Doff these links: 1410 By this compliance thou wilt win the lords To favour, and perhaps to set thee free.

_Samson._ Brethren, farewell. Your company along I will not wish, lest it perhaps offend them To see me girt with friends; and how the sight 1415 Of me as of a common enemy, So dreaded once, may now exasperate them, I know not. Lords are lordliest in their wine; And the well-feasted priest then soonest fired With zeal, if aught religion seem concerned; 1420 No less the people, on their holy-days, Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable. Happen what may, of me expect to hear Nothing dishonourable, impure, unworthy Our God, our Law, my nation, or myself; 1425 The last of me or no I cannot warrant.

_Chorus._ Go, and the Holy One Of Israel be thy guide To what may serve his glory best, and spread his name Great among the Heathen round; 1430 Send thee the Angel of thy birth, to stand Fast by thy side, who from thy father's field Rode up in flames after his message told Of thy conception, and be now a shield Of fire; that Spirit, that first rushed on thee 1435 In the camp of Dan, Be efficacious in thee now at need! For never was from Heaven imparted Measure of strength so great to mortal seed, As in thy wondrous actions hath been seen. 1440 But wherefore comes old Manoa in such haste With youthful steps? much livelier than ere while He seems: supposing here to find his son, Or of him bringing to us some glad news?

_Manoa._ Peace with you, brethren! My inducement hither 1445 Was not at present here to find my son, By order of the lords new parted hence To come and play before them at their feast. I heard all as I came; the city rings, And numbers thither flock; I had no will, 1450 Lest I should see him forced to things unseemly. But that which moved my coming now, was chiefly To give ye part with me what hope I have With good success to work his liberty.

_Chorus._ That hope would much rejoice us to partake 1455 With thee. Say, reverend sire; we thirst to hear.

_Manoa._ I have attempted, one by one, the lords, Either at home, or through the high street passing, With supplication prone and father's tears, To accept of ransom for my son, their prisoner. 1460 Some much averse I found, and wondrous harsh, Contemptuous, proud, set on revenge and spite; That part most reverenced Dagon and his priests; Others more moderate seeming, but their aim Private reward, for which both God and State 1465 They easily would set to sale; a third More generous far and civil, who confessed They had enough revenged, having reduced Their foe to misery beneath their fears; The rest was magnanimity to remit, 1470 If some convenient ransom were proposed. What noise or shout was that? it tore the sky.

_Chorus._ Doubtless the people shouting to behold Their once great dread, captive and blind before them, Or at some proof of strength before them shown. 1475

_Manoa._ His ransom, if my whole inheritance May compass it, shall willingly be paid And numbered down. Much rather I shall choose To live the poorest in my tribe, than richest, And he in that calamitous prison left. 1480 No, I am fixed not to part hence without him. For his redemption all my patrimony, If need be, I am ready to forgo And quit. Not wanting him, I shall want nothing.

_Chorus._ Fathers are wont to lay up for their sons; 1485 Thou for thy son art bent to lay out all; Sons wont to nurse their parents in old age, Thou in old age car'st how to nurse thy son, Made older than thy age through eye-sight lost.

_Manoa._ It shall be my delight to tend his eyes, 1490 And view him sitting in the house, ennobled With all those high exploits by him achieved, And on his shoulders waving down those locks That of a nation armed the strength contained. And I persuade me, God had not permitted 1495 His strength again to grow up with his hair Garrisoned round about him like a camp Of faithful soldiery, were not his purpose To use him further yet in some great service— Not to sit idle with so great a gift 1500 Useless, and thence ridiculous, about him. And since his strength with eye-sight was not lost, God will restore him eye-sight to his strength.

_Chorus._ Thy hopes are not ill founded, nor seem vain, Of his delivery, and thy joy thereon 1505 Conceived, agreeable to a father's love, In both which we, as next, participate.

_Manoa._ I know your friendly minds and . . . oh, what noise! Mercy of Heaven! what hideous noise was that? Horribly loud, unlike the former shout. 1510

_Chorus._ Noise call you it, or universal groan, As if the whole inhabitation perished! Blood, death, and deathful deeds, are in that noise, Ruin, destruction at the utmost point.

_Manoa._ Of ruin indeed methought I heard the noise. 1515 Oh, it continues; they have slain my son!

_Chorus._ Thy son is rather slaying them; that outcry From slaughter of one foe could not ascend.

_Manoa._ Some dismal accident it needs must be. What shall we do—stay here or run and see? 1520

_Chorus._ Best keep together here, lest, running thither, We unawares run into danger's mouth. This evil on the Philistines is fallen; From whom could else a general cry be heard? The sufferers then will scarce molest us here; 1525 From other hands we need not much to fear. What if, his eye-sight (for to Israel's God Nothing is hard) by miracle restored, He now be dealing dole among his foes, And over heaps of slaughtered walk his way? 1530

_Manoa._ That were a joy presumptuous to be thought.

_Chorus._ Yet God hath wrought things as incredible For his people of old; what hinders now?

_Manoa._ He can, I know, but doubt to think he will; Yet hope would fain subscribe, and tempts belief. 1535 A little stay will bring some notice hither.

_Chorus._ Of good or bad so great, of bad the sooner; For evil news rides post, while good news baits. And to our wish I see one hither speeding— An Ebrew, as I guess, and of our tribe. 1540

_Messenger._ Oh, whither shall I run, or which way fly The sight of this so horrid spectacle, Which erst my eyes beheld, and yet behold? For dire imagination still pursues me. But providence or instinct of nature seems, 1545 Or reason, though disturbed, and scarce consulted, To have guided me aright, I know not how, To thee first, reverend Manoa, and to these My countrymen, whom here I knew remaining, As at some distance from the place of horror, 1550 So in the sad event too much concerned.

_Manoa._ The accident was loud, and here before thee With rueful cry; yet what it was we hear not. No preface needs, thou seest we long to know.

_Messenger._ It would burst forth; but I recover breath, 1555 And sense distract, to know well what I utter.

_Manoa._ Tell us the sum, the circumstance defer.

_Messenger._ Gaza yet stands, but all her sons are fallen, All in a moment overwhelmed and fallen.

_Manoa._ Sad! but thou know'st to Israelites not saddest 1560 The desolation of a hostile city.

_Messenger._ Feed on that first, there may in grief be surfeit.

_Manoa._ Relate by whom.

_Messenger._ By Samson.

_Manoa._ That still lessens The sorrow, and converts it nigh to joy.

_Messenger._ Ah! Manoa, I refrain too suddenly 1565 To utter what will come at last too soon, Lest evil tidings, with too rude irruption Hitting thy aged ear, should pierce too deep.

_Manoa._ Suspense in news is torture; speak them out.

_Messenger._ Take then the worst in brief: Samson is dead. 1570

_Manoa._ The worst indeed! oh, all my hope's defeated To free him hence! but Death who sets all free Hath paid his ransom now and full discharge. What windy joy this day had I conceived, Hopeful of his delivery, which now proves 1575 Abortive as the first-born bloom of spring Nipt with the lagging rear of winter's frost! Yet, ere I give the reins to grief, say first How died he; death to life is crown or shame. All by him fell, thou say'st; by whom fell he? 1580 What glorious hand gave Samson his death's wound?

_Messenger._ Unwounded of his enemies he fell.

_Manoa._ Wearied with slaughter, then, or how? explain.

_Messenger._ By his own hands.

_Manoa._ Self-violence? what cause Brought him so soon at variance with himself 1585 Among his foes?

_Messenger._ Inevitable cause— At once both to destroy and be destroyed. The edifice, where all were met to see him, Upon their heads and on his own he pulled.

_Manoa._ Oh, lastly over-strong against thyself! 1590 A dreadful way thou took'st to thy revenge. More than enough we know; but, while things yet Are in confusion, give us, if thou canst, Eye-witness of what first or last was done, Relation more particular and distinct. 1595

_Messenger._ Occasions drew me early to this city, And, as the gates I entered with sun-rise, The morning trumpets festival proclaimed Through each high street. Little I had dispatched, When all abroad was rumoured that this day 1600 Samson should be brought forth, to show the people Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games. I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded Not to be absent at that spectacle. The building was a spacious theatre, 1605 Half-round, on two main pillars vaulted high, With seats where all the lords, and each degree Of sort, might sit in order to behold; The other side was open, where the throng On banks and scaffolds under sky might stand; 1610 I among these aloof obscurely stood. The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer, and wine, When to their sports they turned. Immediately Was Samson as a public servant brought, 1615 In their state livery clad; before him pipes And timbrels; on each side went armèd guards, Both horse and foot; before him and behind Archers and slingers, cataphracts and spears. At sight of him the people with a shout 1620 Rifted the air, clamouring their god with praise, Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall. He, patient but undaunted where they led him, Came to the place; and what was set before him, Which without help of eye might be assayed, 1625 To heave, pull, draw, or break, he still performed All with incredible, stupendious force, None daring to appear antagonist. At length, for intermission sake, they led him Between the pillars; he his guide requested 1630 (For so from such as nearer stood we heard), As over-tired, to let him lean a while With both his arms on those two massy pillars, That to the archèd roof gave main support. He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson 1635 Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined, And eyes fast fixed, he stood, as one who prayed, Or some great matter in his mind revolved. At last, with head erect, thus cried aloud: 'Hitherto, Lords, what your commands imposed 1640 I have performed, as reason was, obeying, Not without wonder or delight beheld; Now of my own accord such other trial I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater, As with amaze shall strike all who behold.' 1645 This uttered, straining all his nerves, he bowed; As with the force of winds and waters pent When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars With horrible convulsion to and fro He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew 1650 The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder, Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests, Their choice nobility and flower, not only Of this, but each Philistian city round, 1655 Met from all parts to solemnize this feast. Samson, with these immixed, inevitably Pulled down the same destruction on himself; The vulgar only scaped, who stood without.

_Chorus._ Oh, dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious! 1660 Living or dying thou hast fulfilled The work for which thou wast foretold To Israel, and now liest victorious Among thy slain self-killed; Not willingly, but tangled in the fold 1665 Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more Than all thy life had slain before.

_Semichorus._ While their hearts were jocund and sublime, Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine, 1670 And fat regorged of bulls and goats, Chaunting their idol, and preferring Before our living Dread, who dwells In Silo, his bright sanctuary, Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent, 1675 Who hurt their minds, And urged them on with mad desire To call in haste for their destroyer. They, only set on sport and play, Unweetingly importuned 1680 Their own destruction to come speedy upon them. So fond are mortal men, Fallen into wrath divine, As their own ruin on themselves to invite, Insensate left, or to sense reprobate, 1685 And with blindness internal struck.

_Semichorus._ But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite, With inward eyes illuminated, His fiery virtue roused 1690 From under ashes into sudden flame, And as an evening dragon came, Assailant on the perchèd roosts And nests in order ranged Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle 1695 His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads. So Virtue, given for lost, Depressed and overthrown, as seemed, Like that self-begotten bird, In the Arabian woods embost, 1700 That no second knows nor third, And lay erewhile a holocaust, From out her ashy womb now teemed, Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most When most unactive deemed; 1705 And, though her body die, her fame survives, A secular bird, ages of lives.

_Manoa._ Come, come; no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished 1710 A life heroic, on his enemies Fully revenged; hath left them years of mourning, And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor Through all Philistian bounds; to Israel Honour hath left and freedom, let but them 1715 Find courage to lay hold on this occasion; To himself and father's house eternal fame; And, which is best and happiest yet, all this With God not parted from him, as was feared, But favouring and assisting to the end. 1720 Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble. Let us go find the body where it lies 1725 Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the stream With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, wash off The clotted gore. I, with what speed the while (Gaza is not in plight to say us nay), Will send for all my kindred, all my friends, 1730 To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend, With silent obsequy and funeral train, Home to his father's house. There will I build him A monument, and plant it round with shade Of laurel ever green, and branching palm, 1735 With all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled In copious legend, or sweet lyric song. Thither shall all the valiant youth resort, And from his memory inflame their breasts To matchless valour, and adventures high; 1740 The virgins also shall, on feastful days, Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice, From whence captivity and loss of eyes.

_Chorus._ All is best, though we oft doubt, 1745 What the unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft He seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, 1750 And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns, And all that band them to resist His uncontrollable intent. His servants He, with new acquist 1755 Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent.

NOTES

_A Defence of the People of England_

Page 2. _Salmasius_ (Claudius), Latinized name of Claude de Saumaise, b. 1588, d. 1653; regarded in his time, throughout Europe, as the paragon of scholarship; engaged, after the execution of Charles I., to defend the royal cause against the Commonwealth, which he endeavored to do in his _Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._, addressed to Charles II. In this work he defines a king ('if that,' says Milton, 'may be said to be defined which he makes infinite') 'to be a person in whom the supreme power of the kingdom resides, who is answerable to God alone, who may do whatsoever pleases him, who is bound by no law.'

P. 4, 5. _single person_: Milton himself, who replied to the _Eikon Basilike_, and refuted its 'maudlin sophistry' in his _Eikonoklastes_; _antagonist of mine_: Salmasius.

_The Second Defence of the People of England_

P. 7. _one eminent above the rest_: Salmasius.

P. 9, 10. _columns of Hercules_: the mountains on each side of the Straits of Gibraltar. It was fabled that they were formerly one mountain, which was rent asunder by Hercules. _Triptolemus_: the fabled inventor of the plough and the distributor of grain among men, under favor of Ceres.

P. 10. _the most noble queen of Sweden_: Christina, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus.

P. 12. _Monstrum horrendum_: a monster horrible, mis-shapen, huge, deprived of his eyesight; description of the Cyclops Polyphemus, whose one eye was put out by Ulysses.—_Virgil's Æneid_, iii. 658.

P. 14. _Tiresias_: the blind prophet of Thebes. _Apollonius Rhodius_: poet and rhetorician (B.C. 280-203), author of the _Argonautica_, a heroic poem on the Argonautic expedition to Colchis in quest of the golden fleece.

P. 14, 15. _Timoleon of Corinth_: Greek statesman and general, who expelled the tyrants from the Greek cities of Sicily, and restored the democratic form of government; died blind, 337 B.C. _Appius Claudius_: surnamed Cæcus from his blindness. Roman consul, 307 and 296; induced the senate, in his old age, to reject the terms of peace which Cineas had proposed on behalf of Pyrrhus. _Pyrrhus_: king of Epirus (B.C. 318-272), who waged war against the Romans. _Cæcilius Metellus_: Roman consul, B.C. 251, 249; pontifex maximus for twenty-two years from 243; lost his sight in 241 while rescuing the Palladium when the temple of Vesta was on fire. _Dandolo_ (_Enrico_): b. 1107(?); elected Doge in 1192; d. 1205. He was ninety-six years old when, though blind, he commanded the Venetians at the taking of Constantinople, June 17, 1203.

'Oh, for one hour of blind old Dandolo! The octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe.'

—_Byron's Childe Harold_, Canto iv. St. xii.

_Ziska_, or Zizka (John): military chief of the Hussites, b. 1360(?), d. 1424; his real name was Trocznow; he lost an eye in battle, and was thence called Ziska, _i.e._ one-eyed; lost his other eye from an arrow at the siege of Rubi, but his blindness did not prevent his continuing the war against ecclesiastical tyranny. _Jerome Zanchius_ (Girolamo Zanchi), Italian Protestant theologian, b. 1516, d. 1590; was canon regular of the Lateran when he became a Protestant; professor of theology and philosophy, University of Strasburg, 1553-1563; professor of theology, University of Heidelberg, 1568-1576.

P. 16. _Æsculapius_: the god of medicine. _Epidaurus_ (now Epidauro): chief seat of the worship of Æsculapius; _the son of Thetis_: Achilles, the hero of the Iliad. I have substituted the Earl of Derby's translation of the lines which follow from the Iliad, for that given by Robert Fellowes.

P. 18. _Prytaneum_: 'a public building in the towns of Greece, where the Prytanes (chief magistrates in the states) assembled and took their meals together, and where those who had deserved well of their country were maintained during life.'

P. 19, 20. _born in London_: 9th of December, 1608; _grammar-school_: St. Paul's, notable among the classical seminaries then in London. The head-master was a Mr. Alexander Gill, Sr., and the sub-master, or usher, Mr. Alexander Gill, Jr.; with the latter Milton afterward maintained an intimate friendship.

P. 20. _On my father's estate_: at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. _Henry Wotton_: at this time Provost of Eton. His letter to Milton is dated 13 April, 1638. In the concluding paragraph, Sir Henry writes: 'At Sienna I was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipioni, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times, . . . at my departure toward Rome (which had been the centre of his experience) I had won confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of mine own conscience. _Signor Arrigo mio_ (says he), _I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto_: that is, your thoughts close and your countenance loose, will go safely over the whole world. Of which Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary; and therefore, Sir, I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, God's dear love, remaining your friend as much at command as any of longer date.' Milton was certainly the last man in the world to make such a prudential, or rather crafty, maxim his rule of conduct, even in such a country as Italy then was. He has stated his own rule further on in this extract. _Thomas Scudamore_: miswritten for John (_Masson_).

P. 21. _Jacopo Gaddi_: a prominent and influential literary man of Florence, member of the Florentine Academy, author of poems, historical essays, etc., in Latin and in Italian. _Carlo Dati_: his full name was Carlo Ruberto Dati; only in his 19th year when Milton visited Florence; was afterwards one of the most distinguished of the Florentine men of letters and academicians; became strongly attached to Milton, and corresponded with him after his return to England; author of 'Vite de' Pittori Antichi' (Lives of the Ancient Painters) and numerous other works.

P. 21. _Frescobaldi_ (_Pietro_): a Florentine academician. _Coltellini_ (_Agostino_): a Florentine advocate; founder of an academy under the name of the Apatisti (the Indifferents). 'Such were the attractions of this academy, and so energetic was Coltellini in its behalf, that within ten or twenty years after its foundation it had a fame among the Italian academies equal, in some respects, to that of the first and oldest, and counted among its members not only all the eminent Florentines, but most of the distinguished _literati_ of Italy, besides cardinals, Italian princes and dukes, many foreign nobles and scholars, and at least one pope.'—_Masson._ _Bonmattei_, or _Buommattei_ (_Benedetto_): an eminent member of various Florentine and other academies; author of various works, among them a commentary on parts of Dante, and a standard treatise, _Della Lingua Toscana_; by profession a priest. _Chimentelli_ (_Valerio_): a priest; professor of Greek, and then of Eloquence and Politics, in Pisa; author of an archæological work, entitled _Marmor Pisanum_. _Francini_ (_Antonio_): Florentine academician and poet. _Lucas Holstenius_ (in the vernacular, Lukas Holste, or Holsten), secretary to Cardinal Barberini, and one of the librarians of the Vatican. _Manso_: author of a Life of Tasso, 1619. Milton, just before leaving Naples, addressed to him his Latin poem, _Mansus_.

P. 22. _so little reserve on matters of religion_: here it appears that he did not make Sir Henry Wotton's prudential maxim his rule of conduct.

P. 22, 23. _the slandering More_ (Lat. _Morus_), Alexander: a Reformed minister, then resident in Holland, and at one time a friend of Salmasius. He had formerly been Professor of Greek in the University of Geneva. The real author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was the Rev. Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the younger, made, 1660, a prebendary of Canterbury. More was, indeed, the publisher of the book, the corrector of the press, and author of the dedicatory preface in the printer's name, to Charles II. Milton fully believed when he wrote the Second Defence that More was the author of the _R. S. C._, having received convincing assurances that he was. _Diodati_ (Dr. Jean, or Giovanni), uncle of Milton's friend, Carolo Diodati. He made the Italian translation of the Scriptures, known as Diodati's Bible, published in 1607. _at the time when Charles_, etc.: Milton's return to England was not, as he himself (by a slip of memory, no doubt) states, 'at the time when Charles, having broken the peace with the Scots, was renewing the second of those wars named Episcopal,' but exactly a twelvemonth previous to that time, and about eight months before the meeting of the Short Parliament.—_Keightley._

P. 24. _two books to a friend_: 'Of Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it. 1641.' _two bishops_: Dr. Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Exeter, afterward Bishop of Norwich; and Dr. James Usher (1580-1656), Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland. _Concerning Prelatical Episcopacy_: the full title is, 'Of prelatical episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the apostolical times, by virtue of those testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late treatises; one whereof goes under the name of James, Archbishop of Armagh. 1641.' _Concerning the mode of ecclesiastical government_: 'The reason of church government urged against prelaty. 1641.'

P. 24. _Animadversions_: 'Animadversions upon the remonstrant's defence against Smectymnuus. 1641.'

P. 24. _Apology_: 'An apology for Smectymnuus.' 1642. The pamphlet by Smectymnuus was published with the following title, which is sufficiently descriptive of its character: 'An Answer to a Book entituled "An Humble Remonstrance" [by Bishop Hall], in which the originall of Liturgy [and] Episcopacy is discussed and quæres propounded concerning both, the parity of Bishops and Presbyters in Scripture demonstrated, the occasion of their unparity in Antiquity discovered, the disparity of the ancient and our modern Bishops manifested, the antiquity of Ruling Elders in the Church vindicated, the Prelaticall Church bounded: Written by Smectymnuus.' 1641. The pamphlet was the joint production of five Presbyterian clergymen, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow, but written for the most part by Thomas Young, Milton's former tutor. The name Smectymnuus was made up from the several authors' initials: S. M., E. C., T. Y., M. N., U. U. (for W.) S.

P. 24. _the domestic species_: the titles of the pamphlets on marriage and divorce are: 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' 1643, 1644; 'The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce,' 1644; 'Tetrachordon: expositions upon the four chief places in Scripture which treat of marriage, or nullities in marriage,' 1644; 'Colasterion: a reply to a nameless answer against the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' 1645.

P. 25. _Selden_ (_John_), 1584-1654, celebrated English lawyer, statesman, and political writer. His 'Table Talk' was long famous, 'being his sense of various matters of weight and high consequence, relating especially to religion and state.'

P. 25. _an inferior at home_: many passages in Milton's works, poetical and prose, indicate, on his part, an estimate of woman which may be attributed, in some measure, at least, to his unfortunate first marriage. His own opinions of what should be the relation of wife to husband he, no doubt, expressed in the following passages in the 'Paradise Lost,' Book iv. 635-638, x. 145-156, xi. 287-292, 629-636; and in the 'Samson Agonistes,' 1053-1060. But no one can read the several treatises on Divorce without being impressed with the loftiness of Milton's ideal of marriage, and his sense of the sacred duties appertaining thereto. The only true marriage with him was the union of _souls_, as well as of bodies, souls whom _God_ hath joined together (Matt. xix. 6, Mark x. 9), not the priest nor the magistrate.

P. 25. _the principles of education_: 'Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib.' 1644. Hartlib was nominally a merchant in London, a foreigner by birth, the son of a Polish merchant of German extraction, settled in Elbing, in Prussia, whose wife was the daughter of a wealthy English merchant of Dantzic. He was a reformer and philanthropist, and an advocate of the views of the educational reformer, Comenius.

P. 25. '_Areopagitica_: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, to the Parliament of England.' 1644.

P. 26. _what might lawfully be done against tyrants_: in his pamphlet entitled, 'The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it; and that they who of late so much blame deposing are the men that did it themselves. The author J. M. 1649,'

P. 27. _history of my country_: 'The History of Britain; that part especially now called England. From the first traditional beginning continued to the Norman Conquest.'

P. 27. _I had already finished four books_: _i.e._ in 1648; the work was not published till 1670. It contained the fine portrait of Milton, by William Faithorne, for which he sat in his 62d year.

P. 27. _A book . . . ascribed to the king_: ten days after the king's death, was published (9 Feb. 1649), 'Ἑἰκὼν Βασιλική: The True Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings.—_Rom._ viii. _More than conquerour_, &c.—_Bona agere et mala pati Regium est._—MDCXLVIII.' The book professed to be the king's own production, and Milton answered it as such, tho' it appears he had his suspicions as to its authorship. It was universally regarded, at the time, as the king's; but it was before long well known (though the controversy as to the authorship was long after kept up) to have been written by Dr. John Gauden, Rector of Bocking, and, after the Restoration, Bishop of Exeter, and, a short time before his death, Bishop of Worcester. Milton's reply, published 6th of Oct., 1649, is entitled 'ἙΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ in Answer To a Book Intitl'd ἘΙΚῺΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΙΚΉ, The Portrature of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings. The Author I. M.

Prov. xxviii. 15, 16, 17.

15. As a roaring Lyon, and a ranging Beare, so is a wicked Ruler over the poor people.

16. The Prince that wanteth understanding, is also a great oppressor; but he that hateth covetousnesse shall prolong his dayes.

17. A man that doth violence to the blood of any person, shall fly to the pit, let no man stay him.

Salust. Conjurat. Catilin.

Regium imperium, quod initio, conservandæ libertatis, atque augendæ reipub. causâ fuerat, in superbiam, dominationemque se convertit.

Regibus boni, quam mali, suspectiores sunt; semperque his aliena virtus formidolosa est.

Quidlibet impunè facere, hoc scilicet regium est.

Published by Authority.

London, Printed by Matthew Simmons, next dore to the gilded Lyon in Aldersgate street. 1649.'

P. 27. _Salmasius then appeared_: that is, with his _Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._

_To Charles Diodati_

P. 28. _Chester's Dee_: the old city of Chester is situated on the Dee (Lat. _Deva_).

P. 28. _Vergivian wave_ (Lat. _Vergivium salum_): the Irish Sea.

P. 28. _it is not my care to revisit the reedy Cam_, etc.: this was the period of his rustication from Christ's College, Cambridge, due, it seems, to some difficulty which Milton had with his tutor, Mr. Chappell.

P. 28. _the tearful exile in the Pontic territory_: Ovid, who was relegated (rather than exiled) to Tomi, a town on the Euxine.

P. 28. _Maro_: the Latin poet, Publius Virgilius Maro.

P. 29. _or the unhappy boy . . . or the fierce avenger_: as Masson suggests, the allusions here may be to Shakespeare's Romeo and the Ghost in _Hamlet_.

P. 29. _the house of Pelops_, etc.: subjects of the principal Greek tragedies.

P. 29. _the arms of living Pelops_: an allusion to the ivory shoulder of Pelops, by which, when he was restored to life after having been served up at a feast of the gods, given by his father Tantalus, the shoulder consumed by Ceres was replaced.

P. 30. _thy own flower_: the anemone into which Adonis was turned by Venus, after his dying of a wound received from a wild boar during the chase.

P. 30. _alternate measures_: the alternate hexameters and pentameters of the Elegy.

_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. III.)

P. 30. _Alexander Gill, Jr._: Gill was Milton's tutor in St. Paul's School, of which his father, Alexander Gill, was head-master. Milton was sent to this school in his twelfth year (1620), and remained there till his seventeenth year (1625). He was entered very soon after at Christ's College, Cambridge, beginning residence in the Easter term of 1625.

_To Thomas Young._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. IV.)

P. 31. _Thomas Young_: Young had been Milton's tutor before he entered St. Paul's School, and later; he was one of the authors of the Smectymnuan pamphlet; was appointed Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1644.

P. 31. _Stoa of the Iceni_ (Lat. _Stoam Icenorum_): a pun for Stowmarket in Suffolk, the Iceni having been the inhabitants of the parts of Roman Britain corresponding to Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, etc.—_Masson._ Their queen was Boadicea, who led their revolt against the Romans.

P. 31. _Zeno_: Greek philosopher (about 358-260 B.C.), father of the Stoic philosophy, so called from his teaching in the _Stoa Pœcile_, in Athens, in which were the frescoes of Polygnotus (about 480-430 B.C.).

P. 31. _Serranus_: an agnomen, or fourth name, given to L. Quinctius Cincinnatus; Roman consul 460 B.C.; in 458 called from the plough to the dictatorship, whence called by Florus, _Dictator ad aratro_; the agnomen is said to have been derived from _serere_, to sow; 'Quis te, magne Cato, tacitum, aut te, Cosse, relinquat? . . . vel te sulco, Serrane, serentem' (Who can leave thee unmentioned, great Cato, or thee, Cossus? . . . or thee, Serranus, sowing in the furrow).—_Æneid_, vi. 844.

P. 31. _Curius_: M'. Curius Dentatus, noted for his fortitude and frugality; consul B.C. 290; a second time 275, when he defeated Pyrrhus, king of Epirus; consul a third time, 274; afterward retired to his small farm, which he cultivated himself.

_To Charles Diodati, making a Stay in the Country_

P. 32. _Erato_: the muse of erotic poetry.

P. 32. _the fierce dog_: Cerberus.

P. 32. _the Samian master_: Pythagoras, who was a native of Samos.

P. 32. _Tiresias_: the Theban prophet, deprived of sight by Juno; Jupiter, in compensation, bestowed upon him the power of prophecy.

P. 32. _Theban Linus_: the singer and philosopher.

P. 32. _Calchas the exile_: a famous soothsayer, who accompanied the Greeks to Troy.

P. 32. _Orpheus_: the fabulous Thracian poet and musician.

P. 32. _Circe_: See Comus, 50-53.

P. 33. _the heavenly birth of the King of Peace_: his ode _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity_, composed on and just after Christmas, 1629.

_Ad Patrem_

P. 35. 1. _Pieria's_: used for Pierian, from Pierus, a mountain of Thessaly sacred to the muses.

P. 36. 18. _Clio_: the Muse of History, 'inasmuch,' says Masson, 'as what he is to say about his Father is strictly true.'

P. 36. 22. _Promethean fire_: the fire which Prometheus brought down from heaven.

P. 37. 44. _Ophiuchus_: _i.e._ a serpent holder (ὄφις + ἔχειν); a constellation in the northern hemisphere, the outline of which is imagined to be a man holding a serpent; called also Anguitenens and Serpentarius, which have the same meaning; Ophiuchus is the translator's word; the original is _sibila serpens_, the hissing serpent.

P. 37. 45. _Orion_: a constellation with sword, belt, and club; 'Orion arm'd.'—_P. L._, i. 305.

P. 37. 50. _Lyæus_: an epithet of Bacchus as the deliverer from care (Gk. λυαίος).

P. 37. 53. _proposed_: set forth.

P. 37. 55. _to imitation_: _i.e._ for imitation, to be imitated, _i.e._ the character of heroes and their deeds.

P. 38. 92. _Streams Aonian_: so called as if the resort of the muses.

P. 39. 120. _the boy_: Phaëthon.

P. 40. 141-148. _Ye too, . . . my voluntary numbers_: it does not seem to me improbable that these six lines [115-120 of the original] were added to the poem just before its publication in the volume of 1645. The phrase '_juvenilia carmina_' seems to refer to that volume as containing this piece among others. Anyhow, it was a beautiful ending and prophetic.—_Masson._

_An English Letter to a Friend_

P. 40. _English letter to a friend_: this letter of which there are two undated drafts in Milton's handwriting in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, must have been written in 1632 or 1633. In the second draft (which is given in the text), Milton is content, for the first few sentences, with simply correcting the language of the first; but in the remaining portion he throws the first draft all but entirely aside, and rewrites the same meaning more at large in a series of new sentences. Evidently he took pains with the letter.—_Masson._

P. 41. _tale of Latmus_: _i.e._ of Endymion's sleeping upon Mount Latmus, and of his being visited by Selene (the moon).

P. 42. 5. _Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth_: _i.e._ he appears younger than he really is. In his Second Defence, he says, 'though I am more than forty years old, there is scarcely any one to whom I do not appear ten years younger than I am.'

P. 42. 8. _timely-happy_: happy, or fortunate, in the matter of inward ripeness.

P. 42. 10. _it_: 'inward ripeness.'

P. 42. _it shall be still_: Milton very early regarded himself as dedicated to the performance of some great work for which he had to make adequate preparation, in the way of building himself up; _even_: equal, in proportion to, in conformity with.

P. 43. _Your true and unfeigned friend, etc._: see penultimate sentence of the passage given, p. 65, from 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.'

_To Alexander Gill, Jr._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. V.)

P. 43. _this ode_: Psalm cxiv.

_To Charles Diodati._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. VI.)

P. 44. _To Charles Diodati_: Milton's schoolfellow at St. Paul's, and his dearest friend; he died in August, 1638, while Milton was on his Continental tour; on his return he wrote the _In memoriam_ poem, _Epitaphium Damonis_.

_To Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. VIII.)

P. 46. _To Benedetto Bonmattei_: mentioned by Milton among his Florentine friends, in the autobiographical passage in the Second Defence; see note, p. 247.

_Mansus_

P. 47. _our native kings_: the ancient kings of Britain.

P. 47. _stirring wars even under the earth_: King Arthur, after his death, was supposed to be carried into the subterraneous land of Faerie, or of Spirits, where he still reigned as a king, and whence he was to return into Britain, to renew the Round Table, conquer all his old enemies, and reëstablish his throne. He was, therefore, _etiam movens bella sub terris_, still meditating wars under the earth. The impulse of his attachment to this subject was not entirely suppressed; it produced his History of Britain. By the expression _revocabo in carmina_, the poet means, that these ancient kings, which were once the themes of the British bards, should now again be celebrated in verse.—_Warton._ Warton renders _bella moventem_ [v. 81 of the Latin] _meditating wars_, but that is not the true sense; it is waging wars, and Arthur is represented as so employed in Fairy-land in the romances.—_Keightley._

P. 47. _Paphian myrtle_: the myrtle was sacred to Venus; Paphos was an ancient city of Cyprus, where was a temple of Venus.

_Areopagitica_

P. 48. _Galileo_: b. 1564, d. 1642; he was seventy-four years old when Milton visited him in 1638; whether he was actually imprisoned at the time is somewhat uncertain; he may have been, as Hales suggests, _in libera custodia_, _i.e._ 'only kept under a certain restraint, as that he should not move away from a specified neighborhood, or perhaps a special house.'

P. 48. _never be forgotten by any revolution of time_: _i.e._ as Hales explains, caused to be forgotten.

P. 48. _other parts_: _i.e._ of the world.

P. 48. _in time of parliament_: there was no parliament assembled from 1629 to 1640.

P. 48. _without envy_: without exciting any odium against me.—_Hales._

P. 48. _he whom an honest quæstorship_: Cicero, 75 B.C.

P. 48. _Verres_: pro-prætor in Sicily, 73-71 B.C. Cicero's Verrine orations were directed against his extortions and exactions.

_To Lucas Holstenius._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. IX.)

P. 49. _Lucas Holstenius_: see note, p. 21.

P. 49. _Alexander Cherubini_: Roman friend of Milton, 'known in his lifetime as a prodigy of erudition, though he died at the early age of twenty-eight.'

P. 49. _Virgil's 'penitus convalle virenti'_: Virgil's 'souls enclosed within a verdant valley, and about to go to the upper light.'

P. 49. _Cardinal Francesco Barberini_: b. 1597, d. 1679; librarian of the Vatican, and founder of the Barberini Library.

_Epitaphium Damonis_

P. 50. In the British legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth and others, the mythical Brutus, before arriving in Britain with his Trojans, marries Imogen, daughter of the Grecian king Pandrasus; Brennus and Belinus are two legendary British princes of a much later age, sons of King Dunwallo Molmutius; Arvirach or Arviragus, son of Cunobeline, or Cymbeline, belongs to the time of the Roman conquest of Britain; the "Armorican settlers" are the Britons who removed to the French coast of Armonica to avoid the invading Saxons; Uther Pendragon, Igraine, Gorlois, Merlin, and Arthur are familiar names of the Arthurian romances.—_Masson._

_Of Reformation in England_

P. 52. _their damned designs_: the restoration of Papacy and ecclesiastical despotism.

P. 53. _antichristian thraldom_: he would seem to allude to the invasions of England by the Romans, Saxons, Danes (twice), and Normans, and the War of the Roses, followed by the partial reformation under Henry VIII.—_Keightley._

P. 53. _Thule_: some undetermined island or other land, regarded as the northernmost part of the earth; called in Latin _Ultima Thule_; often used metaphorically for an extreme limit.

P. 53. _that horrible and damned blast_: Keightley understands this as referring to the Gunpowder plot.

P. 53. _that sad intelligencing tyrant_: Philip IV., King of Spain from 1621 to 1665.

P. 53. _mines of Ophir_: used in a general sense for gold mines.

P. 53. _his naval ruins_: an allusion to the destruction of the Spanish armada, in 1588, in the reign of his grandfather, Philip II.

P. 54. _in this land_: when Milton wrote this, he must still have been meditating a poem to be based on British history.

_Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence, etc._

P. 56. _and thou standing at the door_: see introductory remarks on Lycidas.

_The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_

P. 57. _Slothful, and ever to be set light by_: thou slothful one, and ever, etc.

P. 57. _infancy_: not speaking.

P. 58. _preventive_: going before, forecasting, anticipative.

P. 58. _equal_: impartial, equitable; Lat. _æqualis_.

P. 58. _the elegant and learned reader_: him only Milton addressed, not the common reader. He was no demagogue.

P. 58. _anything elaborately composed_: he had his meditated great work in mind.

P. 59. _another task_: poetical composition.

P. 59. _empyreal conceit_: lofty conceit of himself.

P. 59. _envy_: odium; Lat. _invidia_.

P. 60. _Ariosto_ (_Lodovico_): Italian poet; b. 1474, d. 1533; author of the _Orlando Furioso_.

P. 60. _Bembo_ (_Pietro_): b. 1470, d. 1547; secretary to Pope Leo X.; Cardinal, 1539; famous as a Latin scholar.

P. 60. _wits_: geniuses.

P. 61. _Tasso_ (_Torquato_): Italian poet; b. 1544, d. 1595; author of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_ (Jerusalem Delivered).

P. 61. _a prince of Italy_: Alfonso II., Duke of Ferrara?

P. 61. _Godfrey's expedition against the Infidels_: the subject of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the first crusade; b. about 1058, d. 1100.

P. 61. _Belisarius_: a celebrated general, in the reign of Justinian; b. about 505 A.D., d. 565.

P. 61. _Charlemagne_ (or Charles the Great): b. 742, d. 814; Emperor of the West and King of the Franks.

P. 61. _doctrinal and exemplary_: instructive and serving for example.

P. 61. _Origen_: Christian Father, of Alexandria (185-254).

P. 61. _Pareus_ (_David_): b. 1548, d. 1622; a Calvinist theologian, Professor of Theology, University of Heidelberg.

P. 62. _Pindarus_: Greek lyric poet, about 522-442 B.C.

P. 62. _Callimachus_: Greek poet and grammarian, about 310-235 B.C.

P. 62. _most an end_: 'almost uninterruptedly, almost always, mostly, for the most part.'—_Murray's New English Dictionary_, _s.v._ 'an end.' The phrase occurs again in Chap. III. Book II. of this same pamphlet: 'the patients, which most an end are brought into his [the civil magistrate's] hospital, are such as are far gone,' etc. Vol. II. p. 491, of the Bohn ed. of the P. W.

P. 63. _demean_: conduct; O. Fr. _demener_.

P. 63. _such (sports, etc.) as were authorized a while since_: _i.e._ in the Book of Sports. Proclamation allowing Sunday sports, issued by James I.

P. 63. _paneguries_: same as panegyrics.

P. 64. _Siren daughters_: the Muses, daughters of Memory or Mnemosyne.

P. 65. _gentle apprehension_: a refined faculty of conception or perception.

_Apology for Smectymnuus_

P. 66. _Solon_: Athenian statesman and lawgiver, about 638-558 B.C. 'According to Suidas it was a law of Solon that he who stood neuter in any public sedition, should be declared ἄτιμος, infamous.'

P. 66. _doubted_: hesitated; or, perhaps, in the sense of feared.

P. 66. _most nominated_: most frequently named, most prominent.

P. 66, 67. _my certain account_: the account which I shall certainly have to render.

P. 67. _tired out almost a whole youth_: see the extract given from 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.'

P. 67. _this modest confuter_: Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, afterward of Norwich; the reference is to his 'Modest Confutation' of Milton's 'Animadversions.'

P. 69. _Animadversions_: 'A. upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus.' 1641.

P. 69. _devised_: described, represented.

P. 70. _conversation_: in New Testament sense, mode or way of life, conduct, deportment (ἀναστροφή).

P. 70. _apology_: defence, vindication.

P. 71. _propense_: inclined, disposed.

P. 71. _that place_: the University.

P. 71. _to obtain with me_: prevail, succeed with me, to get the better of.

P. 71. _both she or her sister_: Cambridge or Oxford University; 'both' requires 'and'; 'or' requires 'either.'

P. 71. _that suburb sink_: the 'pretty garden-house in Aldersgate street,' as his nephew, Edward Phillips styles it, to which he removed from 'his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard,' in 1640, and where he was living when he wrote his 'Apology for Smectymnuus.'

P. 72. _I never greatly admired, so now much less_: in 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty' ('The Conclusion. The mischief that Prelaty does in the State'), Milton writes: 'The service of God, who is truth, her (Prelaty's) liturgy confesses to be perfect freedom; but her works and her opinions declare that the service of prelaty is perfect slavery, and by consequence perfect falsehood. Which makes me wonder much that many of the gentry, studious men as I hear, should engage themselves to write and speak publicly in her defence; but that I believe their honest and ingenuous natures coming to the universities to store themselves with good and solid learning, and there unfortunately fed with nothing else but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry, were sent home again with such a scholastic bur in their throats, as hath stopped and hindered all true and generous philosophy from entering, cracked their voices for ever with metaphysical gargarisms, and hath made them admire a sort of formal outside men prelatically addicted, whose unchastened and unwrought minds were never yet initiated or subdued under the true lore of religion or moral virtue, which two are the best and greatest points of learning; but either slightly trained up in a kind of hypocritical and hackney course of literature to get their living by, and dazzle the ignorant, or else fondly over-studied in useless controversies, except those which they use with all the specious and delusive subtlety they are able, to defend their prelatical Sparta.'

P. 72. _wisses_: knows.

P. 72. _the bird that first rouses_: the lark; see 'L'Allegro,' 41 _et seq._

P. 72. _old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt lotion_: the passage alluded to in the 'Animadversions,' is the following: 'We know where the shoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and oh what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased, to have the periwigs plucked off, that cover your baldness, your inside nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time, once every year, when their slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if the free-born people of England, with whom the voice of truth for these many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be obtained without the shallow surview, but _not shallow hand_ of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and strait-laced almost to a brokenwinded phthisic, if now, at a good time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and resurrection of the state, if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long-persecuted truth, could not be suffered to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of words, could not be excused after such an injurious strangle of silence, nor avoid the censure of libelling, it were hard, it were something pinching in a kingdom of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists, have thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust themselves under disguise into a popular throng, to stand the night long under eaves of houses, and low windows, that they might hear everywhere the utterances of private breasts, and amongst them find out the precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless pebbles of the shore; whereby they might be the abler to discover, and avoid, that deceitful and close-couched evil of flattery, that ever attends them, and misleads them, and might skilfully know how to apply the several redresses to each malady of state, without trusting the disloyal information of parasites and sycophants; whereas now this permission of free writing, were there no good else in it, yet at some time thus licensed, is such an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and tenderest particular truths, as makes not only the whole nation in many points the wiser, but also presents and carries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or restrained good among the commons, as that they shall not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller for eaves-dropping, not to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with these free-spoken and plain-hearted men, that are the eyes of their country, and the prospective glasses of their prince? But these are the nettlers, these are the blabbing books that tell, though not half your fellows' feats. You love toothless satires; let me inform you, a toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleekstone, and as bullish.'

P. 73. _antistrophon_: reasoning turned upon an opponent.

P. 73. _mime_: a kind of buffoon play, in which real persons and events were ridiculously mimicked and represented.

P. 73. _Mundus alter et idem_ (another world and the same): a satire by Bishop Hall.

P. 73. _Cephalus_: son of Mercury (Hermes), carried off by Aurora (Eos).

P. 73. _Hylas_: accompanied Hercules in the Argonautic expedition. His beauty excited the love of the Naiads, as he went to draw water from a fountain, on the coast of Mysia, and he was drawn by them into the water, and never again seen.

P. 73. _Viraginea_: the land of viragoes.

P. 73. _Aphrodisia_: the land of Aphrodite (Venus).

P. 73. _Desvergonia_: the land of shamelessness. Ital. _vergona_, shame, infamy.

P. 73. _hearsay_: the hearing of, knowing about.

P. 73. _tire_: head-dress.

P. 73. _those in next aptitude to divinity_: divinity students.

P. 73. _Trinculoes_: Trinculo is the name of a jester in Shakespeare's 'Tempest'; or, according to a note in Johnson's 'Life of Milton,' signed R., referred to by J. A. St. John, 'by the mention of this name he evidently refers to "Albemazor," acted at Cambridge in 1614.'

P. 73. _mademoiselles_: ladies' maids.

P. 73. _Atticism_: because he is here imitating a well-known passage in Demosthenes's speech against Æschines.—_Keightley._

P. 74. _for me_: so far as I'm concerned.

P. 74. ἀπειροκαλία: ignorance of the beautiful, want of taste or sensibility (Liddell and Scott).

P. 75. _elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce_: _i.e._ they are much read in the schools.

P. 75. _numerous_: in poetic numbers; 'in prose or numerous verse.'—_P. L._, v. 150.

P. 75. _For that_: because.

P. 75. _severe_: serious.

P. 76. _the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura_: Dante and Petrarch.

P. 76. _though not in the title-page_: an allusion to his opponent's 'A _Modest_ Confutation.'

P. 78. _Corinthian_: licentious, Corinth having been noted for its licentiousness.

P. 78. _the precepts of the Christian religion_: J. A. St. John quotes from Symmons's 'Life of Milton': 'It was at this early period of his life, as we may confidently conjecture, that he imbibed that spirit of devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: and we need not extend our search beyond the limits of his own house for the fountain from which the living influence was derived.'

P. 78. _had been_: _i.e._ might have been.

P. 79. _sleekstone_: a smoothing stone; a toothed sleekstone would fail of its purpose as much as a toothless satire.

P. 79. _this champion from behind the arras_: probably an allusion to Polonius, who, in the closet scene (A. III. S. iv.), conceals himself behind the arras to overhear the interview between Hamlet and his mother.

P. 80. _Socrates_: surnamed Scholasticus; a Greek ecclesiastical historian; b. about 379, d. after 440; author of a 'History of the Church from 306 to 439 A.D.'

P. 81. _St. Martin_: there are two saints of the name; which one is alluded to is uncertain, but probably Bishop of Tours, 4th century.

P. 81. _Gregory Nazianzen_: a Greek father, surnamed the Theologian; b. about 328, d. 389 A.D.

P. 81. _Murena_: Roman consul, 63 B.C.; charged with bribery by Servius Sulpicius; defended by Cicero, in his oration _Pro Murena_. In Cicero's answer to Sulpicius, 'three months,' as given by Milton, should be 'three days': 'itaque, si mihi, homini vehementer occupato, stomachum moveritis, _triduo_ me jurisconsultum esse profitebor.'

_To Carlo Dati._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. X.)

P. 83. _tomb of Damon_: _i.e._ of Carolo Diodati.

P. 83. _that poem_: 'Epitaphium Damonis.'

_On his Blindness_

P. 84. 1. _spent_: extinguished.

P. 84. 2. _Ere half my days_: _i.e._ are spent; Milton was about forty-four years old when his 'light' was fully 'spent.'

P. 85. 8. _fondly_: foolishly; _prevent_: to come before, anticipate, forestall.

P. 85. 12. _thousands_: _i.e._ of 'spiritual creatures.' See 'P. L.,' iv. 677.

P. 85. 14. _They also serve_: _i.e._ as Verity explains, those other angels too, who, etc.

_To Leonard Philaras._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XII.)

P. 85. _Angier_ (_René_): resident agent in Paris for the English Parliament.

_To Henry Oldenburg._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XIV.)

P. 87. _Henry Oldenburg_: b. at Bremen about 1615, d. 1677; sent in 1653 by the Council of Bremen as their agent to negotiate with Cromwell some arrangement by which the neutrality of Bremen should be respected in the naval war between England and Holland ('Dict. of National Biography'); became a member and secretary of the Royal Society of London, and was afterward elected a fellow of the Society; corresponded extensively with the philosopher, Benedict Spinosa; published the 'Transactions' of the Royal Society from 1664 to 1677.

P. 87. _'Cry' of that kind 'to Heaven'_: the reference is to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum, adversus Parricidas Anglicanos_ (The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides).

P. 87. _Morus_: Alexander More, whom Milton supposed to be the author of 'The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven.' See note, p. 248.

_To Leonard Philaras._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XV.)

P. 89. _Phineus_: see note on 'P. L.,' iii. 36, in this volume.

P. 89. _Salmydessus_: a town of Thrace, on the coast of the Black Sea.

P. 89. _Argonautica_: a heroic poem on the Argonautic expedition, by Apollonius Rhodius.

P. 89. κάρος δέ μιν ἀμφεκάλυψεν:

'A darkling maze now round about him drew, The earth from underneath seemed whirling fast, In languid trance he lay bereft of speech.'

_Prof. Charles E. Bennett's translation._

P. 90. _the Wise Man_: Ecclesiastes xi. 8.

P. 90. _Lynceus_: the keen-sighted Argonaut.

_To Cyriac Skinner_

P. 91. 1. _this three years' day_: this day three years ago. Milton became completely blind in 1652, so this sonnet must have been written in 1655. _though clear_: see passage from Second Defence, p. 13.

P. 91. 7. _bate_: from 'abate.'

P. 91. 8. _bear up and steer right onward_: the nautical sense of 'bear up,' _i.e._ to put the ship before the wind, is indicated by what follows.

P. 91. 10. _conscience_: consciousness.

P. 91. 12. _talks_: the Trin. Coll. MS. reading; the word 'rings' was substituted by Phillips in his printed copy of 1694; 'talks' does not sound so well, in the verse, but it is more modest.

P. 91. 13. _mask_: masquerade.

_On his deceased wife_

P. 91. 1. _my late espoused saint_: his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, whom he married November 12, 1656; she died in February, 1658.

P. 91. 2. _Alcestis_: brought back to life by Herakles (Hercules). _her glad husband_: Admetus, King of Pheræ in Thessaly. See Browning's 'Balaustion's Adventure, including a Transcript from [the Alkestis of] Euripides.'

P. 91. 5. _as whom_: as one whom.

P. 91. 6. _Purification_: Leviticus xii.

P. 91. 10. _her face was veiled_: Alcestis was still in his mind. In Browning's 'Balaustion's Adventure,' when Hercules returns with her:

'Under the great guard of one arm, there leant A _shrouded_ something, live and woman-like, Propped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion coat. . . . There is no telling how the hero twitched The veil off: and there stood, with such fixed eyes And such slow smile, Alkestis' silent self!'

_To Emeric Bigot._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XXI.)

P. 92. _Emeric Bigot_: a French scholar, native of Rouen; b. 1626, d. 1689.

P. 92. _King Telephus of the Mysians_: wounded by Achilles and by him healed with the rust of his spear; and in return Telephus directed the Greeks on their way to Troy.

_Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost_

P. 96. 2. _Or of the Eternal_: or may I, unblamed, express thee as the coeternal beam of the Eternal.

P. 96. 6. _increate_: qualifies 'bright effluence.'

P. 96. 7. _Or hearest thou rather_: or approvest thou rather the appellation of pure ethereal stream; 'hearest' is a classicism: 'Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis' (father of the morning, or if Janus thou hearest more willingly).—_Horace_, Sat. II., vi. 20, cited by Bentley.

P. 97. 13. _wing_: flight.

P. 97. 17. _With other notes_: Orpheus made a hymn to Night, which is still extant; he also wrote of the creation out of Chaos. See 'Apoll. Rhodius,' i. 493. Orpheus was inspired by his mother Calliope only, Milton by the _heavenly Muse_; therefore he boasts that he sung with _other notes_ than Orpheus, though the subjects were the same.—_Richardson._

P. 97. 21. _hard and rare_: evidently after Virgil's Æneid, vi. 126-129.

P. 97. 25. _a drop serene_: gutta serena, _i.e._ amaurosis.

P. 97. 26. _dim suffusion_: cataract.

P. 97. 34. _So_: appears to be used optatively, as Lat. _sic_, Greek ὡς, would that I were equalled with them in renown.

P. 97. 35. _Thamyris_: a Thracian bard, mentioned by Homer, Iliad, ii. 595:

'he, over-bold, Boasted himself preëminent in song, Ev'n though the daughters of Olympian Jove, The Muses, were his rivals: they in wrath, Him of his sight at once and power of song Amerced, and bade his hand forget the lyre.'

—_Earl of Derby's Translation_, 692-697.

P. 97. 35. _Mæonides_: a patronymic of Homer.

P. 97. 36. _Tiresias_: the famous blind soothsayer of Thebes, 'cui profundum cæcitas lumen dedit' (to whom his blindness gave deep sight), says Milton, in his _De Idea Platonica_, v. 25.

P. 97. 36. _Phineus_: a blind soothsayer, who, according to some authorities, was king of Salmydessus, in Thrace. By reason of his cruelty to his sons, who had been falsely accused, he was tormented by the Harpies, until delivered from them by the Argonauts, in return for prophetic information in regard to their voyage.

P. 97. 39. _darkling_: in the dark.

P. 97. 42. _Day_: note the emphasis imparted to this initial monosyllabic word, which receives the ictus and is followed by a pause; Milton felt that the loss of sight was fully compensated for by an inward celestial light.

P. 98. 1. _Urania_: the Heavenly Muse invoked in the opening of the poem.

P. 98. 4. _Pegaséan wing_: above the flight of 'the poet's winged steed' of classical mythology.

P. 98. 5. _the meaning, not the name_: Urania was the name of one of the Grecian Muses; he invokes not her, but what her name signifies, the Heavenly one. See vv. 38, 39.

P. 98. 8. _Before the hills appeared_: Prov. viii. 23-31.

P. 98. 10. _didst play_: the King James's version, Prov. viii. 30, reads, 'rejoicing always before him'; the Vulgate, '_ludens_ coram eo omni tempore.'

P. 98. 15. _thy tempering_: the empyreal air was tempered for, adapted to, his breathing, as a mortal, by the Heavenly Muse.

P. 98. 17. _this flying steed_: _i.e._ this higher poetic inspiration than that represented by the classical Pegasus; _unreined_: unbridled, _infrenis_.

P. 98. 18. _Bellerophon_: thrown from Pegasus when attempting to soar upon the winged horse to heaven.

P. 99. 19. _Aleian field_: in Asia Minor, where Bellerophon, after he was thrown from Pegasus, wandered and perished; πεδίον τὸ Ἀλήïον, Iliad, vi. 201, land of wandering (ἄλη).

P. 99. 20. _erroneous there to wander_: to wander without knowing whither; Lat. _erroneus_; _forlorn_: entirely lost; 'for' is intensive.

P. 99. 21. _Half yet remains unsung_: 'half of the episode, not of the whole work, . . . the episode has two principal parts, the war in heaven, and the new creation; the one was sung, but the other remained unsung, . . . _but narrower bound_, . . . this other half is not rapt so much into the invisible world as the former, it is confined in narrower compass, and bound within the visible sphere of day.'—_Newton._

_narrower_: more narrowly.

P. 99. 26. _on evil days though fallen_: a pathetic emotional repetition; note the artistic change in the order of the words. Macaulay justly characterizes the thirty years which succeeded the protectorate as 'the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. . . . Then came those days never to be recalled without a blush—the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival [Louis XIV.] that he might trample on his people, sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. . . . Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.'

P. 99. 33. _Bacchus and his revellers_: Charles II. and his Court, from whom Milton had reason to fear a similar fate to that of the Thracian bard, Orpheus, who was torn to pieces by the Bacchanalian women of Rhodope.

P. 99. 38. _so fail not thou_: _i.e._ to defend me as the Muse Calliope failed to defend her son, Orpheus.

P. 99. 1. _no more of talk_: _i.e._ as in the foregoing episode.

P. 99. 5. _venial_: allowable, fitting.

P. 100. 14-19. _the wrath of stern Achilles . . . Cytherea's son_: these are not the arguments (subjects) proper of the three epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid; as Newton pointed out, the poet mentions certain angers or enmities, the wrath of Achilles, the rage of Turnus, Neptune's and Juno's ire; 'the anger, etc. (v. 10) of Heaven which he is about to sing is an argument more heroic, not only than the anger of men, of Achilles and Turnus, but than that even of the gods, of Neptune and Juno;' _his foe_: Hector; _Turnus_: king of the Rutuli when Æneas arrived in Italy; _Lavinia_: daughter of King Latinus, betrothed to Turnus, but afterward given in marriage to Æneas; _the Greek_: Ulysses; _Cytherea's son_: Æneas; Cytherea, a surname of Venus, from the island Cythera, famous for her worship.

P. 100. 19. _Perplexed the Greek_: a respective construction, 'perplexed the Greek' looks back to 'Neptune's ire,' 'Cytherea's son,' to Juno's ire. Bentley's note is remarkable: '_Juno's that long perplexed the Greek_: when, contrary, the _Greek_ was her favourite all along.'

P. 100. 20. _answerable_: corresponding to the high argument.

P. 100. 21. _my celestial Patroness_: Urania, the Heavenly Muse.

P. 100. 23. _inspires_: Milton regarded himself as inspired by the Holy Spirit in the composition of 'Paradise Lost.'

P. 100. 25. _Since first this subject_: Milton, as has been seen, had meditated, as early as 1638, an epic poem to be based on legendary British history, with King Arthur for its hero, a subject which it appears he abandoned in the course of two or three years. While still undecided, he jotted down ninety-nine different subjects, sixty-one Scriptural, thirty-eight from British history. Among the former, 'Paradise Lost' appears first of all. These jottings occupy seven pages of the Cambridge MSS. It is evident that by 1640, Milton was quite decided as to the subject of 'Paradise Lost,' but not as to the form of his work. It was first as a tragedy that he conceived it, on the model of the Grecian drama with choruses. His nephew, Edward Phillips, informs us that several years before the poem was begun (about 1642, according to Aubrey), Satan's address to the sun (Book iv. 32-41) was shown him as designed for the beginning of the tragedy. The composition of the poem was begun, according to Phillips, about 1658, the poet being then fifty years of age. The student should read, in connection with this subject, the thirteenth chapter of Mark Pattison's 'Life of Milton.'

P. 100. 35. _Impresses_: 'devices or emblems used on shields or otherwise.' Keightley alludes to the enumeration of the devices of the nobles of England, in the tenth Canto of the 'Orlando Furioso.'

P. 100. 36. _bases_: 'the base was a skirt or kilt which hung down from the waist to the knees of the knight when on horseback.'

P. 100. 37. _marshalled feast_: 'from Minshew's "Guide into Tongues," it appears that the marshal placed the guests according to their rank, and saw that they were properly served; the sewer marched in before the meats and arranged them on the table, and was originally called _Asseour_ from the French _asseoir_, to set down, or place; and the _Seneshal_ was the household-steward.'—_Todd._

P. 100. 41. _Me . . . higher argument remains_: _i.e._ for me.

P. 101. 44. _an age too late_: Milton might well feel, in the reign of the 'merry monarch,' that he was treating his high argument in an age too late.

P. 101. 45, 46. _my intended wing depressed_: 'wing' is used, by metonymy, for 'flight.' Keightley incorrectly puts a comma after 'wing,' 'intended wing depressed' being a case of the placing of a noun between two epithets, usual with Milton, the epithet following the noun qualifying the noun as qualified by the preceding epithet. Rev. James Robert Boyd, in his edition of the 'P. L.,' explains 'intended,' 'stretched out'; but the word is undoubtedly used in its present sense of 'purposed.'

_Letter to Peter Heimbach._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XXXI.)

P. 102. _a country retreat_: 'a pretty box,' secured for him by his Quaker friend, Elwood, at Chalfont St. Giles; the house still exists, having undergone little or no change.

I hardly like to express in the text a fancy that has occurred to me in translating the letter and studying it in connection with Heimbach's, to wit, that Milton may not merely have been ironically rebuking Heimbach for his adulation and silly phraseology, but may also have been suspicious of the possibility of some trap laid for him politically. Certainly, if this letter of Milton's to a Councillor of the Elector of Brandenburg had been intercepted by the English government, it is so cleverly worded that nothing could have been made of it. But Heimbach may have been as honest as he looks. Even then, however, Milton, knowing little or nothing of Heimbach for the last nine years, had reason to be cautious.—_Masson._

_Passages in which Milton's Idea of True Liberty is Set Forth_

P. 104. _Deep versed in books_: Milton would, I conceive, have thus characterized his old antagonist, Salmasius.—_Dunster._

P. 104. _trifles for choice matters_: as choice matters.

P. 104. _worth a spunge_: deserving to be wiped out. So in his 'Areopagitica': 'sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together, dialogue-wise, in the piazza of one title-page, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge.'

P. 111. _Uzza_: see 2 Sam. vi. 3-8.

P. 112. _Whom do we count a good man_:

'Vir bonus est quis?— Qui consulta patrum, qui leges juraque servat; Quo multæ magnæque secantur judice lites; Quo res sponsore, et quo causæ teste tenentur. Sed videt hunc omnis domus et vicinia tota Introrsùs turpem, speciosum pelle decorâ.'

—_Epistolarum Liber_, i. 16, vv. 40-45, _Ad Quinctium_.

P. 118. _Crescentius Nomentanus_: Roman patrician, a native of Nomentum (now La Mentana), tenth century, was at the head of the Italian party against the Germans and the popes, with title of Consul; was besieged in the Castle St. Angelo, and finally capitulated on terms honorable to himself, but was basely put to death by Otho III., A.D. 998.

P. 118. _Nicholas Rentius_: Rienzi, or Rienzo (Niccolo Gabrini), or Cola di Rienzi, 'the last of the Roman Tribunes,' b. about 1313, d. 1354.

'Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, Redeemer of dark centuries of shame— The friend of Petrarch—hope of Italy— Rienzi! last of Romans! while the tree Of Freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, Even for thy tomb a garland let it be— The forum's champion, and the people's chief— Her new-born Numa thou—with reign, alas! too brief.'

—_Byron's Childe Harold_, Canto iv. St. cxiv.

P. 120. _the resentment of Achilles_: the subject of the Iliad.

P. 120. _the return of Ulysses_: the subject of the Odyssey.

P. 120. _the coming of Æneas into Italy_: the subject of the Æneid.

P. 121. _As when those hinds_: he compares the reception given it [the doctrine of his Divorce pamphlets] to the treatment of the goddess Latona and her newly born twins by the Lycian rustics. These twins afterward 'held the sun and moon in fee' (_i.e._ in full possession), for they were Apollo and Diana; and yet, when the goddess, carrying them in her arms, and fleeing from the wrath of Juno, stooped in her fatigue to drink of the water of a small lake, the rustics railed at her and puddled the lake with their hands and feet; for which, on the instant, at the goddess's prayer, they were turned into frogs, to live forever in the mud of their own making (Ovid, _Met._, vi. 335-381).—_Masson._ Wordsworth uses the phrase, 'in fee,' in the same way in the opening verse of his sonnet on the 'Extinction of the Venetian Republic': 'Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee.'

P. 121. _lapse_: fall.

P. 121. _twinned_: as a twin.

P. 121. _dividual_: separate.

P. 121. _undeservedly_: without right or merit; no thanks to them.

P. 121. _virtue, which is reason_: 'Virtus est recta ratio, et animi habitus, naturæ modo, rationi consentaneus.'—_Cicero._

P. 123. 424. _his son Herod_: king of Judea when Christ was born.

P. 123. 439. _Gideon, and Jephtha_; see _Judges_ vi.-viii. and xi., xii.; _the shepherd-lad_: David; see the _Books of Samuel_.

P. 123. 446. _Quintius_: Quintius Cincinnatus: _Fabricius_: the patriotic Roman who was proof against the bribes of Pyrrhus; _Curius_: _Curius Dentatus_: who would accept no public rewards; _Regulus_: after dissuading the Romans from making peace with the Carthaginians, returned to Carthage, knowing the consequences he would suffer.

_Comus_

P. 129. 4. _With Midas' ears_: _i.e._ with the ears of an ass; _committing_: bringing together, setting at variance (Lat. _committere_). Martial says, 'Cum Juvenale meo cur me committere tentas?' _i.e._ 'why try to match me with my Juvenal,' _i.e._ in a poetical contest with him.

P. 129. 5. _exempts_: separates, distinguishes; the compound subject 'worth and skill' is logically singular, and takes a singular verb.

P. 129. 11. _story_: 'the story of Ariadne, set by him to music,' as explained in a note in 'Choice Psalms,' 1648.

P. 129. 13. _Casella_: 'a Florentine musician and friend of Dante, who here ['Purgatorio,' ii. 91 _et seq._] speaks to him with so much tenderness and affection as to make us regret that nothing more is known of him.—_Longfellow's note._

_milder shades_: _i.e._ than those of the Inferno which Dante has just left.

3. _insphered_: in their several spheres.

7. _pestered_: here, as indicated by 'pinfold,' the word means 'clogged'; 'pester' is a shortened form of 'impester.' Fr. _empêtrer_ (OF. _empestrer_) 'signifies properly to hobble a horse while he feeds afield. Mid. Lat. _pastorium_, a clog for horses at pasture.'—_Brachet's Etymol. Dict. of the French Language_, _s.v._ _dépêtrer_.

10. _After this mortal change_: 'mortal' I understand to be used here as a noun, the subject of 'change,' a verb in the subjunctive; there is evidently an allusion to 1 Cor. xv. 52-54, in which occur the expressions, 'we shall be changed' and 'this mortal must put on immortality.'

16. _ambrosial weeds_: immortal or heavenly garments, _i.e._ garments worn by an immortal. Gk. Ἀμβρόσιος, lengthened form of ἄμβροτος, immortal. See v. 83.

20. _high and nether Jove_: by metonymy for the realms of Jove and Pluto.

23. _unadornèd_: _i.e._ but for 'the sea-girt isles.'

25. _several_: separate; _by course_: in due order.

29. _quarters_: not literally, but simply, divides, distributes.

30. _this tract that fronts the falling sun_: Wales.

31. _a noble Peer_: the Earl of Bridgewater, Lord President of Wales, before whom 'Comus' was presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634.

32. _tempered awe_: _i.e._ tempered with mercy; 'mercy seasons justice.'

34. _nursed in princely lore_: nurtured in high learning.

38. _horror_: ruggedness, shagginess. See v. 429. . . . 'densis hastilibus horrida myrtus.'—Virgil's _Æneid_, iii. 23. _brows_: overarching branches.

39. _forlorn and wandering_: entirely lost and, consequently, straying at random.

48. _After the Tuscan mariners transformed_: a Latinism; so, 'since created man.'—_P. L._, i. 573. The allusion is to the story of the Etruscan or Tyrrhenian pirates, who attempted to carry off Bacchus, sell him as a slave, and were by him changed into dolphins.—_Ovid_, _Met._, 660 _et seq._

49. _listed_: pleased.

50. _On . . . fell_: happened upon.

59. _of_: from, by reason of.

60. _Celtic and Iberian fields_: France and Spain.

61. _ominous_: portentous.

65. _orient_: bright. The word was used independently of the idea of 'eastern.' In the ode 'On the Nativity,' v. 231, the _setting_ sun 'pillows his chin upon an orient wave.' Fuller, in his 'Holy War,' Book ii. Chap. I., says of Godfrey of Bouillon, 'His soul was enriched with many virtues, but the most _orient_ of all was his humility, which took all men's affections without resistance.'

66. _the drouth of Phœbus_: the thirst caused by the sun's heat.

67. _fond_: foolish.

88. _nor of less faith_: _i.e._ than of musical power; 'faith' means the fidelity of his service.

90. _Likeliest_: the best suited for impersonation by the Attendant Spirit, by reason of his office of mountain watch over the flocks. He would therefore be supposed to be near at hand if aid were needed.

92. _viewless_: invisible.

93. _The star that bids the shepherd fold_: the evening star cannot be said to hold the top of heaven, _i.e._ be in the meridian; any star, the earliest to appear, must be meant.

101. _his chamber in the east_: an allusion to Psalm xix. 5.

110. _saws_: sayings, maxims; 'grave' is used contemptuously by Comus.

116. _to the moon in wavering morrice move_: the sounds and seas beneath the moon reflect dancing lights; 'morrice,' a rapid Moorish dance, once common in England.

129. _Cotytto_: the goddess of shameless and licentious orgies. Her priests were called _Baptæ_.

'involved in thickest gloom, Cotytto's priests her secret torch illume; And to such orgies give the lustful night, That e'en Cotytto sickens at the sight.'

—_Gifford's translation of Juvenal_, ii. 91, 92.

132. _spets_: spits.

135. _Hecate_: goddess of sorcery and magic and 'of all kinds of nocturnal ghastliness, such as spectral sights, the howlings of dogs, haunted spots, the graves of the murdered, witches at their incantations' (_Masson_). King Lear (I. i. 112) swears by 'the mysteries of Hecate and the night.'

139. _nice_: fastidious, over-scrupulous; used contemptuously by Comus.

141. _descry_: reveal.

144. _round_: a circular dance; in 'L'Allegro,' 34, we have 'the light fantastic toe.'

151. _trains_: enticements, allurements.

154. _spungy air_: which absorbs his 'dazzling spells.'

155. _blear_: dim, deceiving.

156. _false presentments_: representations which deceive the eye.

157. _quaint habits_: strange garments.

165. _virtue_: peculiar power. See v. 621; 'Il Pens.,' 113.

167. _country gear_: rural affairs.

168. _fairly_: softly.

175. _granges_: used in its original sense—barns. (Fr. _grange_.)

178. _swilled_: drunken.

180. _inform my unacquainted feet_: where else shall I learn my way than from these revellers.

203. _perfect_: perfectly distinct, sure, certain, unmistakable. There is a similar use of the word in Shakespeare: 'Thou art perfect, then, our ship hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?'—_Winter's Tale_, III. iii. 1; 'I am perfect that the Pannonians and Dalmatians for their liberties are now in arms.'—_Cymb._, III. i. 73; 'What hast thou done? I am perfect what' ('I know full well, I am fully aware.' _Schmidt_).—_Cymb._, IV. ii. 118.

204. _single darkness_: pure darkness, only that and nothing more.

210. _may startle well_: _i.e._ may well (or indeed) startle.

212. _strong-siding_: strongly supporting.

215. _Chastity_: significantly substituted for Charity, as the companion virtue of Faith and Hope, it being the _theme_, the central idea of the poem, to which an explicit expression is given in the Elder Brother's speech, vv. 418-475, and in the speech of the Lady to Comus, 780-799.

231. _airy shell_: the dome of the sky; 'cell' is in the margin of Milton's MS.

248. _his_: (old neuter genitive) its, referring to 'something.'

251. _fall_: cadence.

251, 252. _smoothing . . . till it smiled_: Dr. Symmons, in his 'Life of Milton,' remarks: 'Darkness may aptly be represented by the blackness of the raven; and the stillness of that darkness may be paralleled by an image borrowed from the object of another sense—by the softness of down; but it is surely a transgression which stands in need of pardon when, proceeding a step further and accumulating personifications, we invest this raven-down with life and make it smile.' The metaphorical use of 'smile' or 'laugh,' applied to inanimate things that are smooth, shining, glossy, bright in colour, and the like, is, perhaps, common in all literatures. The Latin 'rideo' and the Greek γελάω are frequently so used; _e.g._ 'florumque coloribus almus ridet ager' (and the bounteous field laughs with the colours of its flowers).—_Ovid_, _Met._, xv. 205; 'Domus ridet argento' (the house smiles with glittering silver).—_Horace_, _Odes_, IV. xi. 6; 'Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet' (that corner of the earth smiles for me above all others).—_Horace_, _Odes_, II. vi. 14.

262. _home-felt delight_: _i.e._ delight that keeps one at home with himself, does not carry him out of himself; in contrast with the singing of Circe and the Sirens three, which 'in sweet madness _robbed it_ (the sense) _of itself_.'

267. _unless the goddess_: _i.e._ unless (thou be) the goddess; 'dwell'st' should properly be 'dwells,' the antecedent of the relative 'that' being 'goddess,' third person, not 'thou' in the ellipsis.

273. _extreme shift_: last resort; Fr. _dernier ressort_.

279. _near ushering_: attending near at hand.

285. _forestalling night_: preventing, or hindering, night came before them; 'forestall' has here the present sense of 'prevent,' and 'prevent' its old, literal sense of come before.

287. _imports their loss_: does their loss signify other than your present need of them?

290. _Hebe_: the goddess of youth; cupbearer to the gods before Ganymedes.

293. _Swinked_: hard-worked. Spenser frequently uses the verb 'swink,' and several times in connection with 'sweat'; _severe_ toil is always implied in his use of the word: 'For which men swinck and sweat incessantly.'—_F. Q._, 2. 7, 8; 'And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat.'—2. 7, 36; 'For which he long in vaine did sweate and swinke,' 6. 4, 32; 'Of mortal men, that swincke and sweate for nought.'—_The Sheapherd's Calender_, _November_, 154; 'For they doo swinke and sweate to feed the other.'—_Mother Hubbard's Tale_, 163.

301. _plighted_: folded, involved.

313. _bosky bourn_: Masson explains 'shrubby boundary or watercourse.' Warton's explanation seems better supported by the context: 'A _bourn_ . . . properly signifies here, a winding, deep, and narrow valley, with a rivulet at the bottom. In the present instance, the declivities are interspersed with trees and bushes. This sort of valley Comus knew from _side to side_. He knew _both_ the _opposite sides_ or ridges, and had consequently traversed the intermediate space.'

315. _attendance_: attendants.

329. _square_: adapt.

332. _wont'st_: art accustomed; _benison_: blessing.

333. _stoop_: the same idea, or _impression_, rather, in regard to the moon, is expressed in 'Il Penseroso,' 72:

'And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.'

'And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars.'

—_Coleridge's Dejection: an Ode._

336. _influence_: (astrological) the effect _flowing in, or upon_, from the stars. See 'P. L.,' vii. 375, viii. 513, ix. 107, x. 662; 'L'Al.,' 122; 'Od. Nat.,' 71.

340. _rule_: long horizontal beam of light.

341. _Star of Arcady_: the constellation of the Greater Bear, by which, or by some star in which, the Greek mariner steered his course.

342. _Tyrian Cynosure_: the constellation of the Lesser Bear, or the pole star therein, by which the Phœnician (Tyrian) mariner steered.

344. _wattled cotes_: sheep-pens made of interwoven twigs.

349. _innumerous_: innumerable.

355. _leans_: subject 'she' implied in 'her,' above. See note on 'Samson Agonistes', 1671; some editors make 'head' the subject.

358. _heat_: lust.

359. _exquisite_: used literally: outsearching; 'consider not too curiously.'

366. _so to seek_: so wanting, so much at a loss.

367. _unprincipled_: ignorant of the elements, or first principles.

369. _noise_: not to be connected with 'single want of'; the meaning is, mere darkness and noise.

373. _would_: might wish.

375. _flat sea_: in 'Lycidas,' 98, 'level brine.'

376. _oft seeks to_: oft resorts to.

380. _all to-ruffled_: all ruffled up; the prefix 'to-' is an old intensive, with force of Ger. 'zer-'; generally imparts the idea of destruction: 'all to-brake,' broke all in pieces; 'all to-rent,' tore all in pieces.

382. _centre_: as in Shakespeare, centre of the earth.

386. _affects_: likes, entirely without any of its present meaning of making a show of.

390. _weeds_: garments.

391. _maple_: maple-wood.

393. _Hesperian tree_: the tree in the Hesperian gardens which bore golden apples and was guarded by the sleepless dragon Ladon, which was slain by Hercules.

395. _unenchanted_: not to be enchanted, or wrought upon by magical spells.

401. _wink on_: not take notice or advantage of.

402. _single_: solitary, alone.

404. _it recks me not_: I take no account of, care not for.

405. _events_: outcomes, consequences.

407. _unowned_: without a protector.

409. _without all doubt_: _i.e._ without any doubt; a Latinism.

413. _squint_: 'looking askance.' Spenser represents Suspect ('F. Q.,' 3. 12, 15) as

'ill favourèd, and grim, Under his eiebrowes looking still askaunce.'

419. _if_: even if Heaven _did_ give it.

423. _unharboured_: without harbor, or shelter.

424. _infámous_: of bad reputation.

430. _unblenched_: fearless, self-sustained.

432. _some say_: reminds, as has been often noted, of the passage in 'Hamlet': 'some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,' etc.—I. i. 158.

455. _lackey_: attend, or wait upon, as guardians.

474. _and linked itself_: and as if it were itself linked.

494. _artful_: artistic, skilful.

495. _huddling_: hurrying; Verity understands 'huddling' as the result of 'delayed.'

501. _next joy_: Thyrsis addresses the elder brother as his master's heir, and then the second brother as 'his next joy,' _i.e._ object of his joy.

503. _stealth_: the thing stolen.

509. _sadly_: seriously; _without blame_: _i.e._ on our part.

515, 516. _what the sage poets . . . storied_: made the theme of story:

Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs, and stories His victories, his triumphs, and his glories.

—_Shakespeare's V. and A._, 1013, 14.

520. _navel_: centre.

526. _murmurs_: muttered spells, or incantations.

529. _mintage_: coinage.

533. _monstrous rout_: rout of monsters; so, 'monstrous world,' world of monsters.—_Lycidas_, 158.

539. _unweeting_: not knowing.

540. _by then_: by the time that.

547. _meditate_: practice; see 'Lycidas,' 66.

548. _had_: subj., should have; _close_: _i.e._ of his 'rural minstrelsy.'

552. _unusual stop of sudden silence_: see 145.

553. _drowsy-flighted_: this is the reading of the Cambridge MS., which Masson adopts. Lawes's ed., 1637, and Milton's editions, 1645, 1673, read 'drowsy frighted.' Masson quite conclusively supports the reading of the MS., which he explains, 'always drowsily flying.' Keightley retains 'drowsy frighted,' but says in his note, 'we are strongly inclined to think it [the MS. reading] the right reading, and the present one a mistake of Lawes himself or his printer.'

558. _took_: rapt.

560. _still_: ever.

585. _period_: sentence.

586. _for me_: as for me.

603. _grisly_: horrible. 'So spake the grisly terror (Death).'—_P. L._, ii. 704.

604. _Acheron_: a river of the lower world; here used for the lower world itself.

607. _purchase_: acquisition; the word retains here much of its original meaning, _i.e._ what has been hunted down or stolen.

610. _yet_: notwithstanding; _emprise_: here, readiness for any dangerous undertaking.

619. _a certain shepherd-lad_: a supposed compliment to Milton's dearest friend, Charles Diodati.

620. _to see to_: to look upon.

621. _virtuous_: efficacious, potent.

627. _simples_: medicinal herbs.

634. _and like esteemed_: _i.e._ and (un)esteemed.

635. _clouted shoon_: patched shoes.

636. _Moly_: (Gk. μώλυ) a fabulous herb, 'that Hermes [Mercury] to wise Ulysses gave,' as a protection against the spells of Circe.—_Od._, x. 305. See Pope's note, in his translation, x. 361, Tennyson's 'Lotus Eaters,' 133.

638. _Hæmony_: supposed to be from Hæmonia, Thessaly, famous for its magic.

641. _Furies'_: used objectively.

642. _little reckoning made_: see 'Lycidas,' 116.

646. _lime-twigs_: used metaphorically.

662. _root-bound_: referring to her metamorphosis into a laurel tree (δάφνη).

673. _his_: old neuter genitive, its.

675. _Nepenthes_ (Gk. νηπενθὲς, sorrow-soothing): the drug (supposed to be opium) given by Polydamna to Helena, who put it into her husband Menelaus's wine.—_Od._, iv. 220 _et seq._ See note to Pope's translation, v. 302.

'Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore.'

—_Poe's Raven_, 83.

685. _unexempt condition_: condition to which all mortal frailty is subject, namely, refreshment after toil, ease after pain.

688. _that_: referring to 'you,' 682.

695. _oughly_: the spelling in Milton's editions; 'as Milton has the common spelling, _ugly_, in all other cases where he has used the word, he must have intended a different form here, perhaps to indicate a more guttural pronunciation.'—_Masson._

698. _visored_: masked; he appears as 'some harmless villager,' v. 166.

707. _budge_: austere, morose; _fur_: used metaphorically for order, sect, profession. Landor remarks that 'it is the first time Cynic or Stoic ever put on fur.' 'Budge' also means a kind of fur, but it certainly cannot have that meaning here; the context requires the other meaning.

708. _from the Cynic tub_: _i.e._ from the tub whence Diogenes, the Cynic, delivered them.

714. _curious_: careful, nice, delicate, fastidious.

719. _hutched_: hoarded, laid up, as in a hutch or chest.

724. _yet_: in addition; or, it may have the force of 'even.'

744. _it_: _i.e._ beauty.

750. _grain_: 'a term derived from the Latin _granum_, a seed or kernel, or grain in the sense of "grain of corn,"—which word _granum_ had come, in later Latin times, to be applied specifically to the _coccum_, a peculiar dye-stuff consisting of the dried, granular, or seed-like bodies of insects of the genus _Coccus_, collected in large quantities from trees in Spain and other Mediterranean countries. But that dye was distinctly red. Another name for it, and for the insect producing it, was _kermes_ . . . whence our "carmine" and "crimson." "Grain," therefore, meant a dye of such red as might be produced by the use of kermes or coccum.'—From Masson's note on 'Sky-tinctured grain,' 'P. L.,' v. 285, based on George P. Marsh's dissertation on the etymology of the word, in his 'Lectures on the English Language' (1st S., 4th Am. ed., 1861, pp. 65-75). Masson's note on 'cheeks of sorry grain' is '_i.e._ of poor colour,' as if 'grain' were used in the general sense of colour merely. It is better, I think, to understand 'grain' here in its special sense of red, but used by Comus ironically, as indicated by 'sorry.' Beautiful cheeks are presumed to have a delicate reddish hue; but where the features are homely and the complexion coarse, the cheeks may be said, ironically, to be of a sorry grain, _i.e._ not red at all.

759. _pranked_: set off, adorned, decked.

760. _bolt_: sift, refine; a metaphor from the process of separating flour from the bran. But the word may mean, as Dr. Newton explains, 'to shoot,' or, as Dr. Johnson explains, 'to blurt out, or throw out precipitantly.'

782. _sun-clad_: spiritually refulgent.

785. _the sublime notion_: see in extract from 'Apology for Smectymnuus,' in this volume.

788. _worthy_: deserving, in a bad sense.

790. _your dear wit_: the change from 'thy' to 'your' is not explainable here.

791. _her dazzling fence_: dear wit's and gay rhetoric's dazzling art of fencing. Todd quotes from Prose Works, 'Hired Masters of Tongue-fence': 'dear wit' and 'gay rhetoric,' not constituting a compound idea in Milton's mind, the relative 'that,' of which they are the antecedents, takes a singular verb, and the two nouns are represented by the singular personal pronoun 'her.' In the following passage from Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' B. II. C. ii. St. 31, two subjects take a singular verb, and are represented by a singular personal pronoun:

'But lovely concord, and most sacred peace, Doth nourish vertue, and fast friendship breeds; Weake she makes strong, and strong thing does increace.'

The italicized portion of the following passage from 'The Passions and Faculties of the Soul,' by Reynolds, C. xxxix, given in Trench's 'Select Glossary,' _s.v._ Wit, defines well 'dear wit': 'I take not _wit_ in that common acceptation, whereby men understand _some sudden flashes of conceit whether in style or conference, which, like rotten wood in the dark, have more shine than substance, whose use and ornament are, like themselves, swift and vanishing, at once both admired and forgotten_. But I understand a settled, constant and habitual sufficiency of the understanding, whereby it is enabled in any kind of learning, theory, or practice, both to sharpness in search, subtilty in expression, and despatch in execution.'

797. _brute_: senseless; _lend her nerves_: _i.e._ to this sacred vehemence.

800-806. spoken aside.

804. _speaks thunder_: threatens thunder and the chains of Erebus to some of the Titans who are disposed to be rebellious in their imprisonment in Tartarus. It seems to be meant that Erebus is a more painful region than that into which they were cast after their defeat by Jove (Zeus).

815. _snatched his wand_: see v. 653.

816. _without his rod reversed_: the process, as related in Ovid, 'Met.,' xiv. 299-305, by which the companions of Ulysses are, through his intervention, retransformed by Circe.

822. _Melibœus_: Spenser is probably referred to.

823. _soothest_: truest, most faithful.

826. _Sabrina_: the legend of Sabrina is told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his 'Latin History of the Britons'; by Drayton, in his 'Polyolbion,' 6th Song; by Warner, in his 'Albion's England'; by Spenser, in his 'Faerie Queene,' II. x. 14-19, and by Milton, in the first book of his 'History of Britain.'

835. _Nereus_: 'the good spirit of the Ægean Sea,' father of the nereids or sea-nymphs.

852. _old swain_: Melibœus.

867-889. _Listen, and appear to us_: _Oceanus_ was the most ancient sea-god, . . . _Neptune_, with his trident, was a later being. _Tethys_ was the wife of Oceanus, and mother of the river-gods. _Hoary Nereus_ is the 'aged Nereus' of line 835. The _Carpathian wizard_ is the subtle _Proteus_, ever shifting his shape: . . . _Triton_, son of Neptune and Aphrodite, . . . he was 'scaly,' because the lower part of him was fish. _Glaucus_ was a Bœotian fisherman who had been changed into a marine god: . . . was an oracle for sailors and fishermen. _Leucothea_ ('the white goddess') was originally Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, and had received her new name after she had drowned herself and been converted into a sea-deity. _Her son that rules the strands_ was Melicertes, drowned and deified with her, and thenceforward known as _Palæmon_, or _Portumnus_, the god of bays and harbours. _Thetis_, one of the daughters of Nereus, and therefore a sea-deity by birth, married Peleus, and was the mother of Achilles: . . . Of the _Sirens_, or singing sea-nymphs . . . _Parthenope_ and _Ligea_ were two. The 'dear tomb' of the first was at Naples . . . the 'golden comb' of the second is from stories of our own mermaids.—_Masson's note, condensed._

900. _gentle swain_: the attendant spirit is still in the person and habit of the shepherd Thyrsis.

913. _cure_: curative power.

919. _his_: old neuter genitive, its.

921. _to wait_: to attend in the bower (court) of Amphitrite (wife of Neptune).

922. _daughter of Locrine_: see vv. 827, 828. The order of the legendary 'line' is, Anchises, Æneas, Ascanius, Silvius, Brutus, Locrine.

924. _brimmed_: full to the brim or edge of the bank; _cf._ 'full-fed river.'—_Tennyson's Palace of Art._

929. _scorch_: optative subj.

934-937. The true construction of these lines is pointed out by Mr. Calton, quoted in Todd's _variorum_ ed.: 'May thy lofty head be _crowned round_ with many a tower and terrace, and here and there [may] thy banks [be crowned] upon with groves of myrrh and cinnamon.'

960. _duck or nod_: _i.e._ of the awkward country dancers.

964. _mincing Dryades_: daintily stepping wood-nymphs.

968. _goodly_: interesting and attractive in appearance.

972. _assays_: trials.

982. _Hesperus and his daughters three_: brother of Atlas, and father of the Hesperides.

1012. _But now, etc._: may be an independent or a subordinate sentence; if the latter, understand 'that' after 'now.' It is, perhaps, preferable to take it as an independent sentence.

1015. _bowed welkin_: arched sky; the idea is that the bend is the less noticeable at 'the green earth's end.'

1017. _corners_: horns.

1021. _higher than the sphery chime_: '_i.e._ to the Empyrean, beyond the spheres which give forth their music.'—_Keightley._

_Lycidas_

P. 167. _haud procul a littore Britannico_: 'the ship having struck on a rock not far from the British shore and been ruptured by the shock, he, while the other passengers were fruitlessly busy about their mortal lives, having fallen forward upon his knees, and breathing a life which was immortal, in the act of prayer going down with the vessel, rendered up his soul to God, August 10, 1637, aged 25.'—_Masson's translation._

1-5. _Yet once more_: these verses express the poet's sense of his unripeness for the exercise of the poetic gift. See his 'English Letter to a Friend,' p. 40; laurel, myrtle, and ivy are poetical emblems.

5. _before the mellowing year_: _i.e._ before the mellowing year or period of his own life; 'mellowing' is intransitive, growing or becoming mellow; 'year' is not a nominative, the subject of 'does' or 'shatters,' understood, as several editors make it, but is the object of the preposition 'before.'

6. _dear_: of intimate concernment; the word was formerly applied to what is precious, or painful, to the heart; it has here, of course, the latter application.

7. _Compels me to disturb your season due_: _i.e._ compels me to write a poem before I have attained to the requisite 'inward ripeness.' The compound subject, 'bitter constraint and sad occasion dear,' is logically singular, and takes a singular verb. The placing of a noun between two epithets is usual with Milton, especially when the epithet following the noun qualifies the noun as qualified by the preceding epithet; _e.g._ 'hazel copses green,' v. 42; 'flower-inwoven tresses torn.'—_Hymn on the Nativity_, 187; 'beckoning shadows dire.'—_Comus_, 207.

14. _melodious tear_: 'tear' is used, by metonymy, for an elegiac poem.

15. _sacred well_: the Pierian spring.

16. _the seat of Jove_: Mount Olympus.

17. _loudly_: _i.e._ as Hunter explains, in lamentation; or, perhaps, in praises.

18. _Hence with denial vain and coy excuse_: away with, etc., _i.e._ on _my_ part; _denial_: refusal; _coy_: shrinking, hesitating, reluctant, by reason of what is expressed in the opening verses.

19-22. _So may . . . sable shroud_: these verses are parenthetical, and v. 23 must be connected with v. 18, 'Hence with denial vain,' etc. I have followed Keightley's pointing; _gentle Muse_: high-born (nobly endowed) poet; _lucky words_: words that will favorably perpetuate my memory; _bid fair peace_: pray that fair peace be, etc.

23-36. _For we were nursed_: these verses express in pastoral language the devotion to their joint studies, early and late, of Milton and King, at Christ's College, Cambridge.

25. _ere the high lawns appeared_: _i.e._ before daybreak.

28. _What time the grey-fly_: _i.e._ the sultry noontide.

30. _Oft till the star . . . had sloped his westering wheel_: _i.e._ they continued their studies till after midnight, while in the meantime many of their fellow-students were giving themselves to music and dancing.

33. _Tempered_: attuned, modulated.

36. _old Damœtas_: 'may be,' says Masson, 'some fellow or tutor of Christ's College, if not Dr. Bainbrigge, the master.'

37. _Now thou art gone_: emotionally repeated; _heavy_: sad.

40. _With wild thyme . . . o'ergrown_: to be connected only with 'desert caves,' not 'woods.'

44. _to_: responsively to.

45. _canker_: cankerworm.

49. _Such_: used in its etymological sense, so-like; so-like killing is thy loss; _thy_: of thee; the personal pronoun here, used objectively, and not the possessive adjective pronoun.

52. _the steep_: some one of the Welsh mountains.

53. _lie_: lie buried.

54. _Mona_: the isle of Anglesey; Mona is represented by Tacitus as the chief seat of the Druids; _shaggy_: densely wooded; 'shaggy hill.'—_P. L._, iv. 224.

'They plucked the seated hills, with all their load, Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops Uplifting, bore them in their hands.'

—_P. L._, vi. 645.

'grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades.'—_Comus_, 429.

55. _Deva_: the river Dee; called a 'wizard stream' from its associations with Druidical divinations and traditions, or Milton, in his use of the epithet, may have had more particularly in his mind the belief in regard to the river as the boundary between England and Wales, that it was itself prophetic. Drayton, in his 'Polyolbion,' 10th Song, says of the Dee:

'A brook, that was supposed much business to have seen, Which had an ancient bound twixt Wales and England been, And noted was by both to be an ominous flood, That changing of his fords, the future ill, or good, Of either country told; of either's war, or peace, The sickness, or the health, the dearth, or the increase: And that of all the floods of Britain, he might boast His stream in former times to have been honoured most, When as at Chester once King Edgar held his court, To whom eight lesser kings with homage did resort: That mighty Mercian lord, him in his barge bestowed, And was by all those kings about the river rowed.'

Aubrey, in his 'Miscellanies,' 1696, Chap. XVII., says, as quoted by Todd, 'F. Q.,' IV. xi. 39, 'when any Christian is drowned in the river Dee, there will appear over the water, where the corpse is, a light, by which means they do find the body; and it is therefore called the holy Dee.'

58. _The Muse herself_: Calliope.

59. _enchanting_: refers to the power he exercised, with the lyre given him by Apollo, over wild beasts, trees, rocks, etc.

64-69. _Alas! what boots it_: in these verses Milton, with his high ideal of the function of poetry, laments its low state, and momentarily gives way to the thought that it would be better to conform to the prevailing flimsy taste than to 'strictly meditate the thankless Muse,' _i.e._ seriously devote one's self to song such as meets with no favor in these days. Amaryllis and Neæra are names of shepherdesses in Virgil's first and third Eclogues, and in other pastorals; 'meditate the thankless Muse' is after Virgil's 'Silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avenâ.'—_Ecl._, i. 2.

75. _Fury_: used in a general, and not in its special, mythological sense; the allusion is, of course, to Atropos, one of the Fates; called a blind fury by reason of the rashness with which she sometimes slits the thin-spun thread of life, as in the case of his friend King; 'slit' now always means to cut lengthwise; here, to cut across, sever.

76. _But not the praise_: 'slits' is understood, but it doesn't yoke well with 'praise'; the nearest substitute would be 'cuts off': but cuts not off the praise.

79. _Nor in_: _i.e._ nor (lies) in, not set off in; 'set off' refers, not to 'Fame,' but to 'glistering foil,' _i.e._ the bright outside exhibited to the world.

81. _by_: as Keightley explains, by means of, under the influence of; he quotes Habakkuk i. 13: 'Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil.'

85. _fountain Arethuse_: in the island Ortygia, near Syracuse; by metonymy for the 'Sicilian Muse' (v. 133), or the fountain-nymph, Arethusa, presiding over pastoral poetry, which originated in Sicily, and was consummated by Theocritus, a native of Syracuse. Virgil, in the opening of his fourth Eclogue, Pollio, invokes the Sicilian Muses (Sicelides Musæ, paullo majora canamus), and in his tenth Eclogue, Gallus, he invokes the fountain nymph, Arethusa, to aid him in his last pastoral song (Extremum hunc, Arethusa, mihi concede laborem); _and thou honoured flood, smooth-sliding Mincius_: Mantua, Virgil's birth town, or what he regarded as such (he was born in the neighboring village of Andes), is on an island in the river Mincius, a tributary of the Po; _honoured flood . . . crowned with vocal reeds_: _i.e._ by reason of its association with Virgil, and his fame as a pastoral poet. Lord Tennyson, in his ode 'To Virgil, written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of Virgil's death,' speaks of him as a pastoral poet, in the fourth and fifth stanzas:

'Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers; Chanter of the Pollio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless sea.'

88. _my oat proceeds_: the suspended pastoral strain is resumed.

89. _Herald of the Sea_: Triton, with 'wreathed horn.'

90. _in Neptune's plea_: Neptune's is an objective genitive: in defence, or exculpation of Neptune. This explanation of 'plea' is supported by its use in all other places in Milton's poetry:

'So spake the fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.'

—_P. L._, iv. 394.

'to make appear, With righteous plea, their utmost vigilance.'—_P. L._, x. 30.

'Yet of another plea bethought him soon.'—_P. R._, iii. 149.

'Weakness is thy excuse, . . . All wickedness is weakness; that plea therefore With God or man will gain thee no remission.'

—_S. A._, 834.

Keightley explains that Triton 'came, deputed by Neptune, to hold a judicial inquiry into the affair. We have the Pleas of the Crown and the Court of Common Pleas.'

96. _Hippotades_: a patronymic of Æolus, god of the winds.

98. _the level brine_: in v. 167, 'the watery floor.'

99. _Sleek Panope_: one of the sea-nymphs, daughter of Nereus; the name (in Gk. Πανόπη) seems to indicate that the nymph is a personification of a smooth sea ('level brine') which affords a _full view_ all around to the horizon. The voyager on such a sea is 'ringed with the azure world.' The epithet 'sleek' is in accord with the personification.

100-102. _It was that fatal_: these verses are not part of the answer which Hippotades brings; the poet speaks in his own person.

101. _Built in the eclipse_: eclipses were believed to shed malign influences (see 'P. L.,' i. 594-599); one of the ingredients of the witches' hell-broth, in 'Macbeth,' is 'slips of yew, slivered in the moon's eclipse'; _rigged with curses dark_: 'with,' of course, though this has been questioned, expresses accompaniment; to understand it as instrumental, makes a crazy hyperbole of the phrase.

102. _sacred head_: King was dedicated to the holy office of the ministry. He is made to represent, in the poem, a pure priesthood.

103-107. _Next Camus_: Dr. Masson's note, and the included quoted one, are the most acceptable of the numerous notes on this passage: 'Camus, the tutelary genius of the Cam, and of Cambridge University, appeared as one of the mourning figures; for had not King been one of the young hopes of the University? The garb given to Camus must doubtless be characteristic, and is perhaps most succinctly explained by a Latin note which appeared in a Greek translation of "Lycidas" by Mr. John Plumptre in 1797. "The mantle," said Mr. Plumptre in this note, "is as if made of the plant 'river-sponge,' which floats copiously in the Cam; the _bonnet_ of the river-sedge, distinguished by vague marks traced somehow over the middle of the leaves, and serrated at the edge of the leaves after the fashion of the ἀὶ, ἀὶ of the hyacinth." It is said that the flags of the Cam still exhibit, when dried, these dusky streaks in the middle, and apparent scrawlings on the edge; and Milton (in whose MS. "_scrawled o'er_" was first written for "_inwrought_") is supposed to have carried away from the "_arundifer Camus_" ('Eleg.,' i. 11) this exact recollection. He identifies the edge-markings with the ἀὶ, ἀὶ (Alas! Alas!) which the Greeks fancied they saw on the leaves of the hyacinth, commemorating the sad fate of the Spartan youth from whose blood that flower had sprung.'

107. _pledge_: child; Lat. _pignus amoris_.

109. _The Pilot_: St. Peter, whom, it must be understood, Milton presents as 'the type and head of _true_ episcopal power,' to which he was in no wise opposed. He wished the bishop to be a truly spiritual _overseer_, as the word signifies.

114. _Enow_: an archaic plural form of 'enough'; 'hellish foes enow.'—_P. L._, ii. 504; 'evils enow to darken all his goodness.'—_Antony and Cleopatra_, I. iv. 11.

117. _to scramble at the shearer's feast_: to scramble for and gobble up fat benefices.

118. _the worthy bidden guest_: one who has been truly called to serve the Church.

119. _Blind mouths_: 'mouths' is used, by synecdoche, for gluttons, as the five preceding verses show. Ruskin's explanation of the phrase, in his 'Sesame and Lilies,' is very ingenious, but it is not likely that Milton meant it to have such significance. 'Those two monosyllables,' he says, 'express the precisely accurate contraries of right character in the two great offices of the Church,—those of Bishop and Pastor. A Bishop means a person who sees. A Pastor means one who feeds. The most unbishoply character a man can have is, therefore, to be Blind. The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed,—to be a Mouth. Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind mouths."'

Milton makes here his first onset upon the ecclesiastical abuses of the time. He was destined to make, not long after, fiercer onsets in his polemic prose writings.

120. _the least_: connect with 'aught else' rather than 'belongs.'

122. _What recks it them_: what does it concern them; _They are sped_: they've been successful in obtaining rich livings.

123. _list_: please; in earlier English generally used impersonally with a dative; _when they list_: _i.e._ when it suits them, not otherwise. They don't act from any sense of duty.

123, 124. _their lean and flashy songs grate_: their wretched sermons are wretchedly delivered with the emphasis of insincerity. Masson explains 'scrannel,' 'screeching, ear-torturing.'

126. _wind and the rank mist they draw_: _i.e._ the mere wind of some sermons and the poisonous doctrines of others, which their flocks inhale and drink in, and then impart the resulting spiritual disease to others.

128, 129. _the grim wolf_: generally understood to mean the Church of Rome. Bishop Newton, who first understood the passage to have reference to Archbishop Laud's 'privily introducing popery' afterward gave the alternative explanation, 'besides what the popish priests privately pervert to their religion,' which Masson conclusively supports in his 'Life of Milton,' and adopts in his note on the passage in his edition of the 'Poetical Works'; the 'privy paw' doesn't suit Archbishop Laud, who did everything above-board.

130, 131. _But that two-handed engine_: see my explanation of these verses in the Introductory Remarks.

132. _Return, Alpheus_: he invokes the return of the pastoral Muse when the dread denouncing voice of St. Peter has ceased. Alpheus, the chief river of Peloponnesus, flowing through Arcadia and Elis. The river-god loved the nymph Arethusa, of Elis, whom, in her flight from him, Diana changed into a fountain which was directed by the goddess under the sea to the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse. The river followed under sea and united with the fountain. See note on v. 85.

136. _use_: frequent.

138. _whose_: refers to 'valleys'; _the swart star_: understood by editors to mean the dog-star Sirius. But it may mean, and I think it does, the day-star, the sun. See v. 168; 'diurnal star.'—_P. L._, x. 1069; _swart_: used causatively; _sparely looks_: _i.e._ by reason of the shades.

139. _quaint enamelled eyes_: flowers of curious structure and of variegated glossy colors (?); the words are more enjoyable than distinctly intelligible; in the 'P. L.,' ix. 529, it is said of the serpent:

'oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, fawning.'

Here 'enamelled' appears to mean variegated and glossy; so in Arcades:

'O'er the smooth enamelled green.'

141. _purple_: an imperative, to be construed with 'throw.'

142. _rathe_: early, soon; the old positive form of 'rather,' sooner. Tennyson uses the word in his 'In Memoriam,' c. ix. 2, 'The men of rathe and riper years'; and in 'Lancelot and Elaine,' 339, 'Till rathe she rose,' etc.; _that forsaken dies_: forsaken by the sun.

153. _with false surmise_: _i.e._ that we have the body of Lycidas with us.

158. _monstrous world_: the world of sea-monsters.

159. _moist_: tearful.

160. _the fable of Bellerus old_: _i.e._ the scene of the fable.

161-163. _Where the great Vision_: see Introductory Remarks.

164. _O ye dolphins_: an allusion to the story of Arion.

166. _your sorrow_: used objectively, he who is the object of your sorrow. 'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead.'—_Shelley's Adonais._

167. _watery floor_: what is called the level brine, v. 98; 'the shining levels of the lake.'—_Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur_, suggested, no doubt, by the classical _æquora_.

169-171. _repairs his drooping head_: Milton, in these lines, compares great things with small (_parvis componit magna_); if they are 'considered curiously,' the sun makes his toilet on rising from his ocean bed!

172. _sunk . . . mounted_: any one reading this verse for the first time would be likely to get the impression that these words are participles; this would not be the case if 'sunk' were 'sank,' originally the distinctive singular form of the preterite, 'sunk' being plural; AS. _sanc_, _suncon_.

173. _Him that walked the waves_: a beautiful designation of the Saviour, in accord with the occasion of the poem; and so St. Peter is designated as 'the Pilot of the Galilean Lake.'

174. _along_: beside.

176. _unexpressive_: inexpressible.

184. _thy large recompense_: 'thy' is the personal, not the possessive adjective pronoun, being used objectively,—the large recompense thou hast received, in which is included thy becoming the genius of the shore; good: kind, propitious; 'sent by some spirit to mortals good.'—_Il Pens._, 154.

185. _in that perilous flood_: 'in' is more poetic than 'on' or 'o'er' would be; 'that perilous flood' is spoken of as a domain in which is included the atmosphere with its winds and storms; so, to wander in the desert.

186. _uncouth_: used, it is most likely, in its original sense of 'unknown,' Milton so regarding himself, as a poet; there may be involved the idea (supported by the opening lines of the Elegy) of wanting in poetic skill and grace.

188. _tender stops_: poetic transference of epithet, 'tender' being logically applicable to the music; _various quills_: used, by metonymy, for the varied moods, strains, metres, and other features of the Elegy; _eager thought_: perhaps meant to signify as much as sharp grief; _Doric_: equivalent to pastoral, the great Greek bucolic poets having written in the Doric dialect.

190, 191. _had . . . was_: note the distinctive use of these auxiliaries, the former being used with a participle of a transitive verb, and the latter, with that of an intransitive; _all the hills_: _i.e._ their shadows.

192. _twitched_: Keightley explains, 'pulled, drew tightly about him on account of the chilliness of the evening.' Jerram explains, 'snatched up from where it lay beside him.'

_Samson Agonistes_

P. 187. _Aristotle_: Greek philosopher, B.C. 384-322; the reference is to 'The Poetics,' (Περὶ ποιητικῆς), the greater part of which is devoted to the theory of tragedy.

P. 187. _a verse of Euripides_: φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ' ὁμιλίαι κακαί, 'evil communications corrupt good manners'; found in the fragments of both Euripides and Menander.

P. 187. _Pareus_: David Pareus, a German Calvinist theologian and biblical commentator, 1548-1622.

P. 187. _Dionysius the elder_: known as 'the tyrant of Syracuse,' B.C. 431-367; repeatedly contended for the prize of tragedy at Athens.

P. 187. _Seneca_ (_Lucius Annæus_): Roman Stoic philosopher, B.C. 3?-65 A.D.

P. 187. _Gregory Nazianzen_: saint; a Greek father of the Church, Bishop of Constantinople, about 328-389.

P. 188. _Martial_: M. Valerius Martialis, Latin epigrammatic poet, 43-104 A.D. or later.

P. 188. _apolelymenon_: 'a Greek word, ἀπολελυμένον, "loosed from," _i.e._ from the fetters of strophe, antistrophe, or epode; monostrophic (μονόστροφος) meaning literally "single stanzaed," _i.e._ a strophe without answering antistrophe. So allœostrophic (ἀλλοιόστροφος) signifies stanzas of irregular strophes, strophes not consisting of alternate strophe and antistrophe.'—_John Churton Collins._

P. 188. _beyond the fifth act_: 'Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu Fabula.'—_Horace_, _Ars Poetica_, 189.

P. 191. _Agonistes_: one who contends as an athlete. 'The term is peculiarly appropriate to Samson, for he is the hero of the drama . . . and the catastrophe results from the exhibition of his strength in the public games of the Philistines.'—_J. Churton Collins._

2. _dark_: blind.

6. _else_: otherwhile, at other times.

9. _draught_: appositive to 'air.'

11. _day-spring_: the dawn.

12. With this line Samson's soliloquy begins, the attendant having withdrawn.

13. _Dagon_: god of the Philistines; represented in the 'Paradise Lost' (i. 462, 463) as a 'sea-monster, upward man, and downward fish.' See 1 Sam. v. 1-9.

16. _popular_: of the people.

19-21. Restless thoughts, that rush thronging upon me found alone.

24. _Twice by an Angel_: see Judges xiii.

27. _charioting_, etc.: withdrawing as in a chariot his godlike presence.

28. _and from_: and (as) from.

31. _separate_: separated, set apart: 'the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.'—Acts xiii. 2.

35. _under task_: under a prescribed task.

41. _Eyeless, in Gaza_, etc.: Thomas De Quincey, in his paper entitled 'Milton _vs._ Southey and Landor,' remarks: 'Mr. Landor makes one correction by a simple improvement in the punctuation, which has a very fine effect. . . . Samson says, . . .

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him _Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves_.

Thus it is usually printed, that is, without a comma in the latter line; but, says Landor, 'there ought to be commas after _eyeless_, after _Gaza_, after _mill_.' And why? because thus, 'the grief of Samson is aggravated at every member of the sentence.' He (like Milton) was 1, blind; 2, in a city of triumphant enemies; 3, working for daily bread; 4, herding with slaves—Samson literally, and Milton with those whom politically he regarded as such.'

45. _but through_: except for, had it not been for.

55. _Proudly secure_: 'secure' is subjective, free from care or fear; 'Security is mortals' chiefest enemy.'—_Macbeth_, III. v. 32.

56. _By weakest subtleties_: by those most weak but crafty creatures (women), who are not made to rule, but to serve as subordinates to the rule of wisdom, the prerogative of man. This was, unfortunately, too much Milton's own opinion of women.

58. _withal_: at the same time.

62. _above my reach_: above the reach of my capacity to know.

63. _Suffices_: it is sufficient (to know).

67. _O loss of sight_: Milton here speaks virtually _in propria persona_.

70. _Light the prime work of God._—Gen. i. 3; 'offspring of Heaven first born.'—_P. L._, iii. 1.

75, 76. _exposed to daily fraud_: Milton here, no doubt, drew from his own experiences as a father.

77. _still_: ever, always.

82. _all_: any; 'without all doubt.'—_Henry VIII._, IV. i. 113; without all remedy.'—_Macbeth_, III. ii. 11.

87. _silent_: invisible; the epithet which pertains to one sense, that of hearing, is transferred to another, that of sight. Lat. _luna silens_.

89. _Hid in her vacant interlunar cave_: the moon is poetically represented as hid in a cave, and giving no light (vacant), between her disappearance and return, in the sky.

91, 92. _if it be true that light is in the soul_: the soul proceeding from God, and partaking of the 'Bright effluence of bright essence increate.'—_P. L._, iii. 6.

93. _She_ (the soul) _all in every part_ (of the body).

95. _obvious_: literally, in the way of (Lat. _obvius_), and so, exposed; 'Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired.'—_P. L._, viii. 504.

106. _obnoxious_: subject, liable.

111. _steering_: directing their course; 'With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering.'—_Ode on Nativity_, 146.

118. _at random_: anyway or anyhow; _carelessly diffused_: passively stretched upon the ground, sprawling.

'His limbs did rest Diffused and motionless.'

—_Shelley's Alastor._

Spenser uses two phrases of similar import; '_Pour'd out in loosnesse_ on the grassy ground.'—_F. Q._, I. vii. 7; 'carelessly displaid.'—_F. Q._, II. v. 32. This use of 'diffused' is a Latinism.

'Publica me requies curarum somnus habebat, _Fusa_que erant toto languida membra toro.'

—_Ovid_, _Ex Ponto_, III. iii. 7, 8.

122. _weeds_: garments, clothes.

128. _Who tore the lion_: see Judges xiv. 5, 6.

132. _hammered cuirass_: the cuirass was originally of leather; here of metal, formed with the hammer.

133. _Chalybean-tempered steel_: having the temper of steel wrought by the Chalybes, an ancient Asiatic people dwelling south of the Black Sea, and famous as workers in iron; hence, Lat. _chalybs_, steel, Gr. [Greek: chalyps]. Dr. Masson accents 'Chalybean' on the third syllable; it seems rather to have the accent here on the second.

134. _Adamantean proof_: having the strength of adamant.

136. _insupportably_: irresistibly.

139. _his lion ramp_: his leap or spring as of a lion. In the description of the sixth day of the creation (_P. L._, vii. 463-466) it is said of the lion,

'now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane.'

144. _foreskins_: uncircumcised Philistines.

145. _Ramath-lechi_: see Judges xv. 17.

147. _Azza_: Gaza. See Judges xvi. 3. The form Azzah is used Deut. ii. 23.

148. _Hebron, seat of giants old_: for Hebron was the city of Arba, the father of Anak, and the seat of the Anakims.—Josh. xv. 13, 14. 'And the Anakims were giants, which come of the giants.'—Num. xiii. 33. _Newton._

149. _No journey of a sabbath-day_: Hebron was about thirty miles distant from Gaza; a sabbath-day's journey was but three-quarters of a mile.

150. _Like whom_: Atlas.

157. _complain_: directly transitive, in the sense of lament, bewail.

163. _visual beam_: ray of light, the condition of seeing.

'the air, No where so clear, sharpen'd his visual ray.'

—_P. L._, iii. 620.

'then [Michael] purged with euphrasy and rue The visual nerve, for he [Adam] had much to see.'

—_P. L._, xi. 415.

165. _Since man on earth_: a Latinism like _Post urbem conditam_, of frequent occurrence in Milton's poetry; 'Never since created man.—_P. L._, i. 573; 'After the Tuscan mariners transformed.'—_Comus_, 48.

169. _pitch_: usually pertains to height; here to depth.

172. _the sphere of fortune_: a constantly revolving globe.

173. _But thee_: construe with 'him,' third line above: 'For him I reckon not in high estate . . . But thee.'

181. _Eshtaol and Zora_: see Josh. xix. 41.

185. _tumours_: perturbations, agitations; so _tumor_ is used in Latin: 'Cum tumor animi resedisset;' 'Erat in tumore animus.'

190. _superscription_: a continuation of the metaphor in preceding line.

191-193. _In prosperous days they swarm_: perhaps from Milton's own experience after the Restoration.—_Masson._

207. _mean_: moderate, as compared with his physical strength.

208. _This_: _i.e._ wisdom.

209. _drove me transverse_: a continuation of the metaphor in 198-200. So in 'P. L.,' iii. 488:

'A violent cross wind from either coast Blows them transverse ten thousand leagues away Into the devious air.'

212. _pretend they ne'er so wise_: claim they to be never so wise; the idea of falseness is not in the word 'pretend' as in its present use.

219. _The first I saw at Timna_: Judges xiv.

221. _The daughter of an infidel_: Milton probably had his first wife, Mary Powell, in his mind, whose family was infidel to his own political creed.

222. _motioned_: proposed.

223. _intimate_: inward, inmost.

228. _fond_: foolish.

229. _vale of Sorec_: a valley (and stream) between Askelon and Gaza, not far from Zorah.—Judges xvi. 4.

230. _specious_: good appearing.

235, 236. _vanquished with a peal of words_: a metaphor drawn from the storming of a fortress. A similar metaphor is found in '1 Henry VI.,' III. iii. 79, 80:

'I am vanquished; these haughty words of hers Have battered me like roaring cannon-shot.'

237. _provoke_: to call forth, to challenge. Lat. _provocare_.

241. _That fault I take not on me_: 'with an occult reference, perhaps, to the conduct of those in power in England after Cromwell's death, when Milton still argued vehemently against the restoration of the Stuarts.'—_Masson._

247. _ambition_: used literally, going about in the service of some object, canvassing. Lat. _ambitio_.

248. _spoke loud_: proclaimed.

253. _Etham_: Judges xv. 8, 9.

257. _harass_: ravaging.

258. _on some conditions_: Judges xv. 11-13.

263. _a trivial weapon_: the jawbone of an ass. Judges xv. 15.

268-276. _But what more oft_: a plain reference to the state of England, and to Milton's own position there, after the Restoration.—_Masson._

271. _strenuous_: ardently maintained. Newton quotes a similar sentiment from the oration of Æmilius Lepidus, the consul, to the Roman people, against Sulla: 'Annuite legibus impositis; accipite otium cum servitio;'—but for myself—'potior visa est periculosa libertas quieto servitio.'

278. _How Succoth_: Judges viii. 4-9.

282. _how ingrateful Ephraim_: Judges xi. 15-27.

287-289. _sore battle_: the battle fought by Jephthah with Ephraim. Judges xii. 4-6.

291. _mine_: my people.

297, 298. _For of such doctrine_: 'Observe the peculiar effect of contempt given to the passage by the rapid rhythm and the sudden introduction of a rhyme in these two lines.'—_Masson._

305. _They ravel more, still less resolved_: they become more confused, and ever less disentangled.

327. _careful step_: 'careful' is used subjectively; a step indicating that Manoa was full of care, deeply concerned. Chaucer so uses 'dredeful':

'With dredeful foot thanne stalketh Palamoun.'

—_Knight's Tale_, 1479.

333. _uncouth_: literally, unknown; strange, with the idea of the disagreeable.

334. _gloried_: a participial form derived from the noun.

335. _informed_: directed.

343. _Angels'_: I have followed Keightley in making 'Angels' a genitive.

345. _Duelled_: it was an individual fight on the part of Samson.

354. _as_: that; this use of 'as' after 'so' and 'such' is not uncommon in Shakespeare and Bacon, and the later literature.

'I feel such sharp dissension in my breast, Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear, As I am sick with working of my thoughts.'

—_1 Henry VI._, V. v. 86.

364. _miracle_: wonder, admiration.

373. _Appoint_: 'Do not you arrange or direct the disposition of heavenly things.'—_Keightley._

383. _Of Timna_: Judges xiv.

394. _my capital secret_: a play on the word 'capital' is, no doubt, designed; chief secret and the secret of his strength depending upon his hair.

433. _That rigid score_: rigorous account or reckoning.

434. _This day_: Judges xvi. 23.

453. _idolists_: idolaters.

455. _propense_: disposed.

466. _provoked_: called forth, challenged.

499, 500. _a sin that Gentiles_: supposed to be an allusion to Tantalus, who divulged the secrets of the gods.

503. _but act not_: take not a part in thy own affliction; 'thy' is objective: in afflicting thyself.

505. _self-preservation bids_: _i.e._ that thou do so.

509. _his debt_: debt to him.

516. _what offered means_: those offered means which.

528. _blazed_: trumpeted abroad.

531. _affront_: a front to front encounter. The word occurs as a noun but once in Shakespeare:

'There was a fourth man in a silly habit, That gave the affront with them.'—_Cymb._, V. iii. 87.

_i.e._ faced or confronted the enemy (Rolfe).

533. _venereal trains_: snares of Venus, or love.

537. _me_: an ethical dative? or it may be the usual dative.

539. _Then turned me out ridiculous_: an object of ridicule, a laughing-stock.

549. _rod_: ray of light.

552. _turbulent_: used causatively.

563-572. _Now blind, disheartened_: almost literally autobiographic.

569. _robustious_: Masson explains 'full of force'; but 'vain monument of strength' in the following verse, does not seem to support this explanation.

581. _caused a fountain_: Judges xv. 18, 19.

590-598. _All otherwise_: this pathetic passage is quite literally autobiographic, if 'race of shame' be excepted; but even this might be understood, in Milton's case, to be used objectively.

599. _suggestions_: the word has a stronger meaning than at present: inward promptings.

'why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs Against the use of nature?'—_Macbeth_, I. iii. 34.

604. _how else_: elsewise, otherwise.

612. _all his_ (torment's) _fierce accidents_: all the fierce things which _fall to_, or happen to, body or mind.

613. _her_: the mind's.

615. _answerable_: corresponding.

624. _apprehensive_: taking hold of, mentally; having the power of conception or perception.

627. _medicinal_: accented on the penult.

628. _snowy Alp_: used generically for any snowy mountain.

633. _his_: Heaven's.

635. _message_: messenger, angel.

637. _amain_: vigorously.

643. _provoked_: called forth, challenged.

645. _to be repeated_: to be again and again made the subject of their cruelty or scorn.—_Masson._

650. _speedy death_: an appositive of 'prayer.'

658. _much persuasion_: to be construed with 'many are the sayings,' etc., and 'much persuasion (is) sought.'

662. _dissonant mood from_: mood dissonant from his complaint.

677. _Heads_: appositive to 'the common rout of men.'

683. _their highth of noon_: the meridian of their glory.

684. _Changest thy countenance_: a similar expression, but with a different meaning, to that in Job xiv. 20: 'Thou changest his (man's) countenance, and sendest him away.'

686. _or them to thee of service_: or of service (from) them to thee.

690. _Unseemly_: unbecoming in human eye; 'falls' is a noun in apposition to the preceding thought, 'thou throwest them lower than thou didst exalt them high.'

695-702. _Or to the unjust tribunals_: there has been an occult reference all through this chorus to the wreck of the Puritan cause by the Restoration; but in these lines the reference becomes distinct. Milton has the trials of Vane and the Regicides in his mind. He himself had been in danger of the law; and, though he had escaped, it was to a 'crude (premature) old age,' afflicted by painful diseases from which his temperate life might have been expected to exempt him.—_Masson._

699. _deformed_: attended with deformity.

700. _crude_: premature.

701. _disordinate_: inordinate, irregular; yet suffering without cause.

707. _What_: the word here, perhaps, means 'why.' The following question seems to support this.

715. _Tarsus_: _i.e._ Tarshish, which Milton avoided from his dislike to the sound _sh_. He seems to have agreed with those who thought that Tarshish was Tarsus in Cilicia, instead of Tartessus in Spain. In the Bible, 'ships of Tarshish' signify large sea-going vessels in general; _the iles_, etc.: _i.e._ the isles and coasts of Greece and Lesser Asia; _Javan_ (pr. _Yawan_) is Ἰάονες, Ἴωνες, the Ionians. As these were the best known of the Greeks in the south, their name was given to the whole people, just as the Greeks themselves called all the subjects of the king of Persia, Medes; _Gadire_: Γαδείρα, Gades, Cadiz.—_Keightley._

717. _bravery_: finery, ornament; _trim_: shipshape, in good order.

719. _hold them play_: keep them in play.

720. _An amber scent_: an ambergris scent.

731. _makes address_: prepares.

732 _et seq._ 'The student will notice how thoroughly Euripidean the whole of the following scene is, not merely in the fact that two of the _dramatis personæ_ are pitted dialectically against one another, but in the cast of the language and in the quality of the sentiment.'—_John Churton Collins._

748. _hyæna_: 'a creature somewhat like a wolf, and is said to imitate a human voice so artfully as to draw people to it, and then devour them.

"'Tis thus the false hyæna makes her moan, To draw the pitying traveller to her den; Your sex are so, such false dissemblers all."

—_Thomas Otway's Orphan_, A. ii.

Milton applies it to a woman, but Otway to the men.'—_Newton._

760, 761. _not to reject the penitent_: an obvious allusion to Milton's forgiveness of his first wife, after her two years' abandonment of him.

803. _That made for me_: helped my purpose (_i.e._ to keep you from leaving me as you did her at Timna).

842. _Or_: Keightley suspects that 'or' should be 'and' here, as 'or' does not connect well with what precedes.

868. _respects_: considerations; 'there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life.'—_Hamlet_, III. i. 68, 69.

906. _peals_: peals of words. See l. 235.

932, 933. _trains_, _gins_, _toils_: these words all express modes of entrapping any one or anything.

934. _thy fair enchanted cup_: an allusion to Circe and the Sirens.

948. _gloss_: comment, construe.

950. _To thine_: compared to thine.

988, 989. _in mount Ephraim Jael_: Judges iv. 5.

990. _Smote Sisera_: Judges v. 26.

1016. _thy riddle_: Judges xiv. 12-19; _in one day or seven_: connect with 'harder to hit.'

1018. _If any of these, or all_: if it be any or all of these qualities, virtue, wisdom, valor, etc., that can win or long inherit (possess) woman's love, the Timnian bride had not so soon preferred thy paranymph (bridesman). Judges xiv., xv.

1022. _Nor both_: nor both wives; _disallied_: severed.

1025. _for that_: because.

1025-1060. _Is it for that such outward ornament_: the ideas expressed in these verses, it must be admitted, were too much Milton's own, in regard to woman, as his Divorce pamphlets show.

1030. _affect_: like.

1037. _Once joined_: _i.e._ in marriage.

1038. _far within_: a thorn in the flesh, a cleaving mischief, deep beneath defensive armor; these may be an allusion to the poisoned shirt sent to Hercules by his wife Deianira.

1048. _combines_: _i.e._ with her husband.

1057. _lour_: frown, or look sullen.

1062. _contracted_: drawn together, gathered.

1068. _Harapha of Gath_: see under 1079.

1069. _pile_: the giant's body is spoken of as a pile, or large, proudly towering building.

1073. _habit_: dress.

1075. _His fraught_: the freight of commands or whatever else he is charged with. The word seems to be used contemptuously.

1076. _chance_: fate.

1079. _Men call me Harapha_: 'No such giant is mentioned by name in Scripture; but see 2 Sam. xxi. 16-22. The four Philistine giants mentioned there are said to be sons of a certain giant in Gath called "the giant"; and the Hebrew word for "the giant" there is Rapha or Harapha. Milton has appropriated the name to his fictitious giant, whom he makes out in the sequel (1248, 1249) to be the actual father of that brood of giants.'—_Masson._

1080. _Og, or Anak_: see Deut. iii. 11, ii. 10, and Gen. xiv. 5.

1081. _Thou know'st me now_: so in 'P. L.,' iv. 830:

'Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.'

1091. _taste_: to make trial of; Fr. _tâter_, OF. _taster_;

'he now began To taste the bow, the sharp shaft took, tugg'd hard,' etc.

—_Chapman's Homer's Od._, xxi. 211.

1092. _single me_: challenge me to single combat.—_Keightley._

1093. _Gyves_: handcuffs.

1105. _In thy hand_: in thy power.

1109. _assassinated_: cruelly abused or maltreated. The word is so used in Milton's 'Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' Book I. c. xii.

1113. _close-banded_: secretly leagued.—_Dr. Johnson._

1116. _without feigned shifts_: without any pretended considerations for my blindness.

1118. _Or rather flight_: a cutting phrase, implying that otherwise the giant may seek safety in flight, if they were not in 'some narrow place enclosed.'

1120, 1121. _brigandine_: coat of armor for the body; _habergeon_: armor for neck and shoulders; _Vant-brace_: (_avant bras_) armor for the arms; _greaves_: leg armor; _gauntlet_: (_gant_) glove of mail.

1122. _A weaver's beam_: 1 Sam. xvii. 5-7 was in Milton's mind in lines 1119-1122. 'And he [Goliath] had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; . . . And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam;' . . .

1132. _had not spells_: 'taken from the ritual of the combat in chivalry. When two champions entered the lists, each took an oath that he had no charm, herb, or any enchantment about him.'—_T. Warton._

1164. _boisterous_: strong, powerful?

1169. _thine_: thy people?

1181. _Tongue-doughty_: tongue-valiant.

1186. _thirty men_: Judges xiv. 19.

1195. _politician lords_: lords of your state.

1197. _spies_: Judges xiv. 10-18. 'Milton follows Jewish tradition in supposing the thirty bridal friends there mentioned to have been spies appointed by the Philistines.'—_Masson._

1202. _wherever chanced_: _i.e._ wherever by chance met with.

1219. _not all your force_: the ellipsis is, would have disabled me.

1220. _These shifts_: the charges made by Harapha of his being 'a murderer, a revolter, and a robber'; _appellant_: challenger.

1223. _enforce_: demand of strength.

1224. _With thee_: (fight) with thee?

1231. _Baal-zebub_: the god of Ekron. 2 Kings i. 16.

1238. _bulk without spirit vast_: vast bulk without spirit.

1242. _Astaroth_: the Phœnician goddess.

1243. _braveries_: bravadoes.

1266. _mine_: my end.

1274. _Hardy_: bold.

1292. _Either of these_: 'might' or 'patience.'

1309. _remark him_: plainly mark him.

1317. _heartened_: encouraged, emboldened.

1334. _Myself_: regard myself, do you say? No, my conscience and internal peace I regard. Keightley and Masson both place an (!) instead of an (?). But 'myself' requires to be uttered with an _inquiring_ surprise, and should be followed by an (?).

1346. _stoutness_: firm refusal.

1369. _the sentence holds_: the sentence, 'outward acts defile not,' holds good, where outward force constrains.

1375. _which_: represents what precedes, 'If I obey . . . set God behind.'

1377. _dispense with_: pardon. 'Milton here probably had in view the story of Naaman the Syrian, begging a _dispensation_ of this sort from Elisha, which he seemingly grants him.' See 2 Kings v. 18, 19.—_Thyer._

1397. _as_: used after 'such' to introduce a result, instead of 'that,' as in present English; not uncommon in Shakespeare, Bacon, and other writers of the time and later.

1399. _to try_: to test.

1408. _Yet this be sure_: looks back to 'I am content to go.'

1418-1422. _Lords are lordliest_: 'in this passage may be detected a reference to England in Milton's time.'—_Masson._

1435. _that Spirit that first rushed on thee_: 'a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid.'—_Judges_ xiv. 5, 6.

1450. _I had no will_: _i.e._ to go thither.

1455. _That hope_: to partake that hope with thee would much rejoice us.

1461-1471. _Some much averse I found_: the different shades of feeling among the men in power in England after the Restoration may be supposed to be glanced at in this passage: obstinate and revengeful Royalism, strongest among the High Church party; and so on.—_Masson._

1470. _The rest_: to remit the rest was magnanimity.

1471. _convenient_: fitting. Lat. _conveniens_, coming together.

1474. _Their once great dread_: former object of their great dread.

1512. _whole inhabitation_: all the inhabitants of the world, as is indicated by 'universal groan.'

1514. _ruin_: down crashing.

1529. _dole_: grief, sorrow; 'dealing dole' is not a case of the cognate accusative, as it is understood by some critics.

1538. _baits_: literally, stops for refreshment; in a general sense, tarries.

1551. _concerned in_: connected with.

1554. _needs_: is necessary.

1557. _tell us the sum_: the main fact, defer what accompanied it.

1581. _glorious_: used proleptically.

1594. _eye-witness_: ocular testimony.

1599. _high street_: main or principal street; so, highway, high seas.

1608. _sort_: rank.

1610. _banks_: benches.

1619. _cataphracts_: heavy-armed cavalry soldiers, whose horses as well as themselves were covered with a complete suit of mail armor. Gr. κατάφρακτος, covered; _spears_: spearmen.

1621. _rifted_: split.

1625. _assayed_: tried.

1626. _still_: ever.

1671. _And fat regorged_: Keightley explains, 'and the fat of bulls and goats was regorged by them who had eaten too much.' This, along with the preceding and the following verse, gives a Miltonic sublimity of the disgusting to the passage. But the prefix 're-' is, perhaps, simply intensive, and 'regorged' may mean gorged, or swallowed, voraciously. The construction is, 'And (while they, 'they' being implied in 'their,' above) fat regorged of bulls and goats, . . . Among them he (our living Dread) a spirit of phrenzy sent.'

1674. _Silo_: Shiloh. Joshua xviii. 1, Judges xxi. 19. 'He probably terms it _bright_, on account of the Shekinah which was supposed to rest on the ark.'—_Keightley._

1688. _and thought extinguished quite_: this phrase is understood by some as a nominative absolute (the Latin ablative absolute), thought having been quite extinguished; but 'thought' is rather a past participle referring to 'he': thought to be entirely extinguished.

1692. _as an evening dragon came_: 'he' (Samson) is the subject of 'came'; he came among the Philistines as an evening dragon comes on tame farmhouse fowl, but afterward bolted his cloudless thunder on their heads, as an eagle.

1699. _that self-begotten bird_: the phœnix.

1700. _embost_: enclosed in a wood.

1702. _erewhile_: for some time before; _holocaust_: a whole burnt offering.

1703. _teemed_: brought forth.

1704. _revives_: the subject is 'Virtue,' 1697.

1707. _A secular bird_: a bird living for generations. Lat. _sæcula_.

1713. _sons of Caphtor_: the Philistines, 'originally of the island Caphtor or Crete. A colony of them settled in Palestine and there went by the name of Philistim.'—_Meadowcourt, in Todd's Var. Ed. of Milton._

1733. _Home to his father's house_: see Judges xvi. 31.

1753. _band them_: unite themselves.

1755. _acquist_: acquisition.

Aims of Literary Study

BY

Professor HIRAM CORSON

_Cornell University_

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The Voice and Spiritual Education

BY

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_Cornell University_

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. Words with and without accents appear as in the original.

The following corrections have been made to the original text:

Page xxix: lessen the value of my panegyric[original has "pangeyric"] upon them

Page 136: ([parenthesis missing in original]For so I can distinguish by mine art)

Page 175: '[quotation mark missing in original]But not the praise,' Phœbus replied

Page 251: situated on the Dee (Lat. _Deva_[original has extraneous period]).

Page 255: specified neighborhood, or perhaps a special house.'[quotation mark missing in original]

Page 269: the mud of their own making (Ovid, _Met._, vi. 335-381).[original has extraneous quotation mark]

Page 273: ([quotation mark missing in original]'I know full well, I am fully aware.' _Schmidt_).

Page 274: 'And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat.'[quotation mark missing in original]—2. 7, 36