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And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government
In their majestic unaffected style

Than all th' oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy', and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.

355

360

So spake the Son of God; but Satan now

365

Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent,
Thus to our Saviour with stern brow replied.
Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor ought
By me propos'd in life contemplative,
Or active, tended on by glory', or fame,

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,
And thither will return thee; yet remember

What I foretel thee, soon thou shalt have cause

375

To wish thou never hadst rejected thus
Nicely or cautiously my offer'd aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease

On David's throne, or throne of all the world,
Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,
When prophecies of thee are best fulfill'd.
Now contrary, if I read ought in heaven,
'Or heav'n write ought of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,

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,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric I discern not,

Nor when, eternal sure, as without end,

390

Without beginning; for no date prefix'd
Directs me in the starry rubric set.

power

So say'ing he took (for still he knew his
Not yet expir'd) and to the wilderness
Brought back the Son of God, and left him there,
Feigning to disappear. Darkness now rose,
As day-light sunk, and brought in low'ring night
Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light and absent day.

Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind
After his aery jaunt, though hurried sore,
Hungry and cold betook him to his rest,
Wherever, under some concourse of shades,

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

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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.

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--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-
serving Milton's own punctu-
ation, unless there be
very good
reason for departing from it, and
I understand the passage thus:
and either tropic now 'gan thunder,
it thundered from the north and
from the south, for this I con-
ceive to be Milton's meaning,

From many a horrid rift abortive pour'd

Fierce rain with lightning mix'd, water with fire
In ruin reconcil'd: nor slept the winds

though the expression is inaccu-
rate, the situation of our Saviour
and Satan being not within the
tropics: and both ends of heaven,
that is, and from or at both ends
of heaven, the preposition being
omitted, as is frequent in Milton,
and several instances were given
in the notes on the Paradise Lost.
See particularly Dr. Pearce's note
on i. 282. and from both ends of
heaven, the clouds &c. This storm
is described very much like one
in Tasso, which was raised in
the same manner by evil spirits.
See Canto vii. st. 114, 115.

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.

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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,
Πυρ και θάλασσα, και τα πιστ' εδειξαν

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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,

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