650 655 While the Creator calling forth by name Solftitial le must likewise take notice of the With which his feeble Ateps he ommand which the Angels receiv'd, stayed ftill: o produce the several changes in For he was faint with cold, and lature, and fully the beauty of the weak with eld, creation. Accordingly they are re- That scarce his loosed limbs he able presented as infecting the itars and was to weld. Thyer. planets with malignant influences, The expression of decrepit winter weakning the light of the fun, bring- occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher. ing down the winter into the milder A Wife for a Month. AX IV. regions of nature, planting winds Decrepit winter hang upon my and Itorms in several quarters of the shoulders. sky, ftoring the clouds with thunder, 655. -- from the south to bring and in thort perverting the whole Solsitial summer's beat.] Have a frame of the universe to the condi- care (fays Dr. Bentley) of going tom tion of its criminal inhabitants. As far south to bring summer's beat, the this is a noble incident in the poem, regions near the southern pole being the following lines, in which we see as cold as thofe near the northern the Angels heaving up the earth, he therefore reads and placing it in a different polture from the torrid zone to the fun from what it had before Solstitial summer's heat. the fall of Man, is conceiv'd with But the word Solstitial seem fuffithat sublime imagination which was ciently to determin, from how far fo peculiar to this great author. south Milton meant that this sumSome say he bid his Angels turn mer's heat was brought, viz. so far afcanle &c. Addison. from the south as the fun is, when 655. Decrepit winter,] Alluding he is in the summer's folfice, or about perhaps to Spenser's description of 23 degrees and a half southward. winter under the figure of a decrepit Pearce. old man, Fairy Queen, B. 7. Cant. 7. The ancient poets represent the south St. 31. as the region of heat. Statius. TheIn his right hand a tipped faff he baid. I. 160. held, S 2 aut the sky, gitur austri. Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc moon 666 In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd Their influence malignant when to shower, Which aut Boreâ gelidas, madidive The Sov'reign of the Heav'ns has tepentes set on high Igne noti. The moon, to mark the changes of Lucan I. 54. very extravagantly, When southern blasts should cease. Nec polus aversi calidus qua ver Dryden. Jortin. 659. In fextile, square, and trin, 656. To the blanc moon &c.] Of and oppofit] If a planet, in the French blanc, white, as Virgil one part of the zodiac, be distant calls her candida luna, Æn. VII. 8. from another by a fixth part of and the Italian poets frequently bi- twelve, that is by two signs, their anca luna. And what is said here of aspect is called fextile ; if by a fourth, the moon, and of the stars, Which Square; by a third, trine; and if by of them rising with the sun, cr falling, one half, oppofit, whick laft is said jould prove tempestuous, was written to be of noxious eficacy, because the probably not without an eye to Vir- planets so opposed are thought to gil Georg. I. 335. Itrive, debilitate, and overcome one another; deemed of evil consequence Hoc metuens cæli menses et fidera serva, to those born under or subject to the influence of the distressed star. Hume. Frigida Saturni fese quo If an unnecessary oftentation of learnceptet, Quos ignis cæli Cyllenius erret in ing be, as Mr. Addison observes, one of our author's faults, it certainly orbes. Ipse pater ftatuit quid menstrua luna he not only introduces, but counte must be an aggravation of it, where moneret, Quo figno caderent auftri. nances such enthusiastic unphiloso phical notions as this jargon of the In fear of this observe the starry aftrologers is made up of Tbser. signs, 664. To the winds they set &c.] Where Satan houses, and where Thus the first editions, and I think Hermes joins, all others before Dr, Bentley's ap stella re peard: Which of them rising with the sun, or falling, prove tempestuous: To the winds they set From pear'd: and they give the true read the accusative case after it. As little ing, whereas he would read, reason has he to change dark in the To the winds they gave last verse into wide; for since he alTheir orders, when with blufter to lows that the aereal hall or sky is confound darken'd by the clouds that attend Sea, air, and fhore: To thunder and cause thurider, the sky may as when to roll well be said in poetry to be then dark, With terror through the wide aereal as darken'd. Pearce. hall. 668. Some say he bid his Angels &c.] Let us hear his reasons for altering It was eternal spring (IV. 268.): bethe text. The winds (says he) as fore the fall; and he is now accountdistinguish'd from one another, had ing for the change of seasons after their corners and quarters set before the fall, and mentions the two fathe fall: but this affertion is directly mous hypotheses. Some say it was contrary to what Milton tells us in occasion'd by altering the position ver. 69;, &c. He asks what is meant of the earth, by turning the poles by their corners, when with blufter of the earth above 20 degrees afide to confound? But the sentence is to from the sun's orb, be bid his Angels be thus fupply'd, set their corners, turn ascanse the poles of earth twice and taught them when with blufler ten degrees and more from the sun's &c: and the same ellipsis we have axle; and the poles of the earth are in ver. 660. Or if this should not about 23 degrees and a half distant be approv'd of, I had much rather from those of the ecliptic; they with read (as the Doctor proposes) set their labor push'd cblique the centric globe, corners, whence with bluffer to con- it was erect before, but is oblique found—the thunder whence to roll. It now; the obliquity of a sphere is the may be wonder'd at, how the Doctor proper astronomical term, when the came in the next verse to change the pole is raised any number of degrees thunder when to roll, into, To thunder, less than 90; the centric globe fix'd when to roll; since roll is plainly on its center and therefore moved an active verb here, and thunder is with labor and difficulty, or rather Centric S 3 From the sun's axle; they with labor puth'd 670 Equal tentric as being the center of the as deep as Capricorn, the tropic of world, according to the Ptolemaic Capricorn, which is the sun's farthelt system, which our author usually fol- progress southwards. This motion lows. Some say again this change of the sun in the ecliptic occafions was occasion d by altering the course the variety of seasons, else bad the of the sun, the fun was bid turn reins Spring perpetual smil'd on earth with from the equinoctial road in which vernant flowers, if the sun had conhe had moved before, like dijlant tinued to move in the equator. It is breadth in both hemispheres, to Tau- likewise Dr. Burnet's allertion, that rus with the seven Atlantic Sifters, the primitive earth enjoy'd a perthe constellation Taurus with the petual spring, and for the same reaseven stars in his neck, the Pleiades son of the sun's moving in the equadaughters of Atlas, and the Spartan tor. But though this notion of a tuins, the sign Gemini, Caftor and perpetual spring may be very pleasing Pollux, twin-brothers, and sons of in poetry, yet it is very false in phiI'yndarus king of Sparta, up to the losophy; and this position of the Tropic Crab, the tropic of Cancer, earth so far from being the best is the sun's farthest stage northwards ; one of the worst it could have, as bence down amain, Dr. Bentley reads Dr. Keill hath prov'd excellently as much, as much on one side of the well in the fourth chapter of his Exequator as the other, but if any al. amination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of icration were necessary it is easier the Earth. to read thence down again, by Leo 673. —to Taurus) Dr. Bentley ] and the Virgin, the sign Virgo, and reads through Taurus, through it tbc Scales, the constellation Libra, and Gemini, up to Cancer. And Mr. cEqual in days and nights, except to those 682 Beyond the polar circles ; to them day Had unbenighted Thone, while the low fun To recompense his distance, in their fight i Had rounded still th' horizon, and not known InMr. Pope approves this emendation, Thyestes and Atreus brethren hated and it seems probable, through Taurus each other outrageously; the first in and By Leo afterwards answering to spite lay with the wife of Atreus, each other. but he having gotten his brother's 686. - Eftotiland,] A great tract children in his power pretended a of land in the north of America, desire of reconciliation, and invited towards the Ar&ic Circle and Hud- him to a banquet. Thyestes, that fon's Bay; as Magellan is a country he might see his children, dissembling in south America, which together his augmented malice, came; the with its straits took their name of fealt being over, his brother let him Ferdinandus Magellanus a Portu- know he had been entertain’d with guese, who in the year 1520 first the flelh of his sons, and their blood discover'd them. Hume. mix'd with the wine, and show'd 687. --- At that tafted fruit him the sad proof of what he had Tbe fun, as from Thyeftean banquet told him, their heads and hands turn'd &c.] Dr. Bentley says which he had reserved for that purthat Thyéftean for Thyeftian is intole- pose. At this the sun is said to have rable: but I have shown that Milton turn'd away, as Milton here says he used Ægean for Ægéan, in my note did when the more dreadful banquet on I. 745. and so our poet in his was made on the fruit of the forSamson Agonifles, ver. 133. uses Cha- bidden tree. Richardson. by bean for Chalybean. "Infances of We may farther observe that it is such a poetical liberty may be found called the Thyestean banquet, though in the best ancient poets as well as made not by him, but only for him; in the modern ones. Pearce. and Euripides in like manner calls |