And lovers of their country, as may seem; Than all th' oratory of Greece and Rome. 355 360 So spake the Son of God; but Satan now 365 Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent, 370 354. Milton has statists for statesmen in his Areopagitica. Prose works, p. 424. ed. Amst. 1698. Dunster. 362. makes happy, and keeps so] Hor. Epist. i. vi. 2. -facere et servare beatum. Richardson. 362. Prov. xiv. 34. Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Dunster. 365. So spake the Son of God;] From the beginning of the third book to this place practical Christianity, personified as it were in the character of Jesus, is contrasted with the boasted pretensions of the heathen world, in its zenith of power, splendour, civilization, and knowledge; the several claims of which are fully stated, with much ornament of language, and poetic decoration. It is observed indeed by Mr. Hayley, that "as in the Paradise Lost the poet seems to emulate the sublimity of Moses and the Prophets, it appears to have been his wish in the Paradise Regained to copy the sweetness and simplicity of the Evangelists." Life of Milton, p. 125. And certainly the great object of this second poem seems to be the exemplification of true evangelical virtue, in the person and sentiments of our blessed Lord. Dunster. What dost thou in this world? the wilderness For thee is fittest place; I found thee there, What I foretel thee, soon thou shalt have cause 375 To wish thou never hadst rejected thus Which would have set thee in short time with ease On David's throne, or throne of all the world, In their conjunction met, give me to spell, 380. fulness of time,] Gal. iv. 4. When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son. 382. if I read ought in hea ven, &c.] A satire on Cardan, who with the boldness and impiety of an atheist and a madman, both of which he was, cast the nativity of Jesus Christ, and found by the great and illustrious concourse of stars at his birth, that he must needs have the fortune which befel him, and become the author of a religion, which should spread itself far and near for many ages. The great Milton, with a just indignation of this impiety, hath satirized it in a very beautiful manner, by putting these reveries into the mouth of the Devil: where it is to be observed, that the poet thought it not enough to discredit judicial astrology by making it patronised by the De 380 385 vil, without shewing at the same time the absurdity of it. He has therefore very judiciously made him blunder in the expression, of portending a kingdom which was without beginning. This destroys all he would insinuate. The poet's conduct is fine and ingenious. See Warburton's Shakespeare, vol. vi. Lear, act i. sc. 8. 382. The poet certainly never meant to make the Tempter a blunderer. The language is here intended to be highly sarcastic on the eternity of Christ's kingdom, which, the Tempter says, will have one of the properties of eternity, that of never beginning. This is that species of insulting wit which Mr. Thyer says, when he defends the introduction of it into the sixth book of Par. Lost, "is most peculiar to proud contemptuous spirits.". Dunster. Sorrows, and labours, opposition, hate Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries, Nor when, eternal sure, as without end, 390 Without beginning; for no date prefix'd power So say'ing he took (for still he knew his Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind 395 400 Whose branching arms thick intertwin'd might shield From dews and damps of night his shelter'd head, 406 But shelter'd slept in vain, for at his head The Tempter watch'd, and soon with ugly dreams 386. Sorrows, and labours, op- tortured, bound, at length, having suffered every species of barbarous treatment, he shall be crucified." Dunster. position, hate Attends thee, &c.] Compare the very remarkable description of the fate which Plato says it is easy to foresee will attend the Just Man. De / Repub. lib. ii. p. 361. ed. Serran. Ο δίκαιος ματιγωσεται, στρεβλώσεται, δεδησεται - τελευτων παντα κακα παθών ανασχινδιλευθησεται. "The Just Man shall be scourged, 399.-unsubstantial both,] His philosophy is here ill placed. It dashes out the image he had just been painting. Warburton. 408. -and soon with ugly dreams &c.] It is remarkable, that the poet made the Devil begin his temptation of Eve by Disturb'd his sleep; and either tropic now 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n, the clouds 410 It thundered from both tropics, that is, perhaps, from the right and from the left. The ancients had very different opinions concerning the right and the left side of the world. Plutarch says, that Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoras were of opinion, that the δε προς νότον, αριστερα. ld. de Isid. p. 363. If by either tropic be meant the right side and the left, by both ends of heaven may be understood, before and behind. I know it may be objected, that the tropics cannot be the one the right side, and the other the left, to those who are placed without the tropics: but I do not think that objection to be very material. I have another exposition to offer, which is thus: It thundered all along the heaven, from the north pole to the tropic of Cancer, from thence to the to the south pole. From pole to tropic of Capricorn, from thence pole. The ends of heaven are the poles. This is a poetical tempest, like that in Virgil, Æn. i. --and either tropic now 'Gan thunder; at both ends of heav'n the clouds &c. -and either tropic now 'Gan thunder, and both ends of heav'n the clouds &c. east is the right side, and the Mr. Meadowcourt points it thus; west the left; but that Empedocles held that the right side is towards the summer tropic, and the left towards the winter tropic. Πυθαγορας, Πλατων, Αριστοτέλης, δέξια του κοσμου τα ανατολικα μegn, að ŵv ʼn αgxians vos agστερα δε, τα δυτικα. Εμπεδοκλης δεξία μεν τα κατα τον θερινόν τροπικον. αριστερα δε τα κατα τον χειμερινον. De Placit. Philos. ii. 10. AYUTTIO οίονται τα μεν έωα, του κοσμου προσωπου είναι, τα દ προς βοῤῥαν, δεξια, τα But after all I am still for pre- From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd Fierce rain with lightning mix'd, water with fire though the expression is inaccu- 409. Most probably, as Mr. Dunster says, by either tropic Milton meant the north and south, and by both ends of heaven the east and west; 66 as his purpose is to describe a general storm coming from every point of the horizon at once." But I see no reason for supposing the preposition from or at omitted; the syntax is exact without it. E. style. Neither are such storms confined, as Mr. Thyer supposes, to tropical regions. I was a witness of one in the northern part of Germany, lat. 52. which was every thing the poet has here described: the wind was to the full as tremendous as the thunder and lightning, and, like them, seemed to come from every point of the heavens at once. Dunster. -water with fire 412. In ruin reconcil'd:] That is, joining together to do hurt. Warburton. This bold figure our poet has borrowed from Eschylus, where he is describing the storm, which scattered the Grecian fleet. Agamemnon. ver. 659. Ξυνώμοσαν γαρ, οντες έχθιστοι το πριν, Φθείροντε τον δύστηνον Αργείων στρατον. Thyer. Or perhaps it means only water and fire falling down both together, according to Milton's usage of the word ruin in Paradise Lost, i. 46. vi. 868. 413. -nor slept the winds Within their stony caves,] So Virgil describes the winds in the prisons of Æolus, Æn. i. 52. And Lucan, v. 608. -non imbribus atrum Eolii jacuisse Notum sub carcere saxi Crediderim. And Lucretius, lib. vi. Speluncasque velut saxis pendentibus structas Cernere, quas venti quem, tempestate coorta, |