THE ARGUMENT. THE Disciples of Jesus, uneasy at his long absence, reason amongst themselves concerning it. Mary also gives vent to her maternal anxiety: in the expression of which she recapitulates many circumstances respecting the birth and early life of her Son. Satan again meets his Infernal Council, reports the bad success of his first temptation of our blessed Lord, and calls upon them for counsel and assistance. Belial proposes one mode of tempting Jesus. Satan rebukes Belial for his dissoluteness, charging on him all the profligacy of that kind ascribed by the poets to the heathen gods, and rejects his proposal as in no respect likely to succeed. Satan then suggests other modes of temptation, particularly proposing to avail himself of the circumstance of our Lord's hungering; and, taking a band of chosen spirits with him, returns to resume his enterprise. Jesus hungers in the desert. Night comes on; the manner in which our Saviour passes the night is described. Morning advances. Satan again appears to Jesus, and, after expressing wonder that he should be so entirely neglected in the wilderness, where others had been miraculously fed, tempts him with a sumptuous banquet of the most luxurious kind. This he rejects, and the banquet vanishes. Satan, finding our Lord not to be assailed on the ground of appetite, tempts him again by offering him riches, as the means of acquiring power: this Jesus also rejects, producing many instances of great actions performed by persons under virtuous poverty, and specifying the danger of riches, and the cares and pains inseparable from power and greatness. Dunster. PARADISE REGAINED. BOOK II. MEAN while the new-baptiz'd, who yet remain'd 1. Mean while the new-baptiz'd, &c.] The greatest and indeed justest objection to this poem is the narrowness of its plan, which being confined to that single scene of our Saviour's life on earth, his temptation in the desert, has too much sameness in it, too much of the reasoning, and too little of the descriptive part, a defect most certainly in an epic poem, which ought to consist of a proper and happy mixture of the instructive and the delightful. Milton was himself, no doubt, sensible of this imperfection, and has therefore very judiciously contrived and introduced all the little digressions that could with any sort of propriéty connect with his subject, in order to relieve and refresh the reader's attention. The following conversation betwixt Andrew and Simon upon the missing our Saviour so long, 1 with the Virgin's reflections on the same occasion, and the council of the Devils how best to attack their enemy, are instances of this sort, and both very happily executed in their respective ways. The language of the former is not glaring and impassioned, but cool and unaffected, corresponding most exactly to the humble pious character of the speakers. That of the latter is full of energy and majesty, and not a whit inferior to their most spirited speeches in the Paradise Lost. This may be given as one proof out of many others, that, if the Paradise Regained is inferior, as indeed I think it must be allowed to be, to the Paradise Lost, it cannot justly be imputed, as some would have it, to any decay of Milton's genius, but to his being cramped down by a more barren and contracted subject. Thyer. 'Jesus Messiah Son of God declar'd, And on that high authority had believ'd, And with him talk'd, and with him lodg'd, I mean With others though in holy writ not nam❜d, 4. Jesus Messiah Son of God declar'd,] This is a great mistake in the poet. All that the people could collect from the declarations of John the Baptist and the voice from heaven was, that he was a great Prophet; and this was all they did in fact collect; they were uncertain whether he was their promised Messiah. Warburton. John the Baptist had however expressly called him the Lumb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, referring, probably, to Isaiah liii. 7. And, the day following, John's giving him the same title is the ground of An drew's conversion, who thereupon followed Jesus, and having passed some time with him, declared to his brother Simon, We have found the Messias. See John i. 19-42. on which chapter the particulars here related founded. 6. Dunster. -I mean Andrew and Simon.] are 5 10 15 find a like instance or two in Harrington's translation of the Orlando Furioso, cant. xxxi. st. 46. And calling still upon that noble name, That often had the Pagans overcome, (I mean Renaldo's house of Montalbane.) And again, st. 55. Further she did to Brandimart re- How she had seen the bridge the (I mean the cruel Pagan Rodomount.) 13. Sometimes they thought he might be only shown, Virg. Æn. vi. 870. Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata nec ultra Esse sinent. 14. as once Moses was in the mount, and missing long ;] Exod, xxxii. 1. And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, &c. This sounds very prosaic; but I Dunster. |