this character, developed by Milton out of the bare Scripture account, and reminding us, in some respects, of the Clytemnestra of Eschylus and Sophocles, of Nimue in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and of Vivien in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. The revelation of true and permanent traits of character, when freed from a passing impulse that has for a moment concealed them, is emphasized by the Chorus when they call Delilah a "manifest serpent," and is called by Aristotle the "Discovery (anagnorisis) in character." Had these traits been those commonly ascribed to many of her sex—to Samson's first wife-"she of Timna,"-for instance,they might have been lightly visited as weaknesses. But when to feminine curiosity and fickleness are added the darker stains of avarice, artful dissimulation, unrelenting perseverance in gaining an evil end, from which no sentiment of wifely love and duty could turn her, and which no feeling of shame or remorse could lead her to regret, Delilah's character acquires a hatefulness that seems to unsex her in our eyes.

Critics find an allusion in Samson's relation with Delilah, to Milton's relation with Mary Powell, his first wife. This is true, in so far as Mary Powell was a Royalist, who had no sympathy for her husband's ways of life and thought, and whose desertion of him had affected his temper and his opinion of woman's character, for the worse. But the latter part of this relation -his wife's penitence and their reconciliation-finds a parallel rather in the scene referred to in the Notes (11. 732-765) between Adam and Eve (P. L. x.). But even here the parallelism has been extended (perhaps, strained), so as to find in Samson's repulse of Delilah,

an expression of Milton's own first impulse of resentment towards Mary Powell.

MANOA. The mention of the burying place of Manoah in Judges, xvi. 31, does not necessarily imply that he died before Samson. There is no mention in Scripture or in Josephus of any attempt at ransoming Samson made by him, or of any trait of his character, except his devout nature, and his social rank as the "principal person of his country" (Whiston). Milton's Manoah is presented to us for the first time when, broken down with age and grief, he advances with feeble, lagging steps, towards the prison of Gaza. At the sight of his son's condition, he cannot refrain from upbraiding Providence that had turned its special blessing into a curse, and allowed Samson's former deeds of glory to pass unrewarded. The father's grief seems to restore the son to self-possession, when, with the solemn rebuke, "appoint not heavenly disposition, father," he takes all the blame upon himself. But this burst of grief over, we find Manoah exercising a father's prerogative of gentle reproof to the son for his past errors -his two Philistine marriages, and the disgrace upon his house, and dishonour upon the name of Israel's God that they had brought. Just as the Chorus had not ventured beyond sympathy, where the father proceeds to reproof, so where the Chorus had limited itself to counsel, the father has brought something more substantial for his son-namely, a project for ransoming him. But now the respective moods of mind of Samson and Manoah are entirely reversed. The former reaches the lowest depths of despair, while the latter's hopefulness is correspondingly exalted. In this frame of mind

*

he departs to negotiate with the Philistine lords. When he returns to announce the progress of his efforts, his hopes seem to rise still higher, and he draws a loving picture of his son, restored to his own house, tended by his own fatherly care, and-such is the logic of affection -restored to eyesight and the light of day, if God so wills it. Then comes the announcement of Samson's death to crush these hopes for ever; and as the artist is said to have painted Agamemnon's grief at the sacrifice of his daughter, by representing him with his face veiled, so has Milton depicted the grief of Manoah by silence. During the long description of the deathscene by the Messenger, and the lament of the Chorus, a silent struggle is evidently going on in the father's breast between grief and resignation, and when at length he speaks, his first words show on which side the victory has been: "no time for lamentation now, nor much more cause," for his son has died as he should have. Such is the character of Manoah: in the midst of a father's anguish for a son's miseries, not forgetting that son's transgressions; borne down by grief, yet capable of carrying on difficult negotiations with powerful enemies; resolved to succeed in them, though it cost him all his wealth; hopeful of success as long as his son was alive, and finding in his death both the atonement for his error, and the fulfilment of his divine mission; displaying a noble self-restraint over his own grief, and recalling the Chorus from indulgence in theirs; and while the latter seek, in the meditative bent of their minds, for peace and consolation, his active

*The painter was Timanthes, and the story is told in Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 36. 5.

and practical nature finds employment in attending to the last rites in honour of the dead, and planning a monument to his memory.

HARAPHA. As Samson represents might consecrated to the service of righteousness, so the character of Harapha supplies the foil of brute and boisterous force debased to the servitude of low passions. Boastful, for he proclaims his own descent from the giants of old; a coward, who declines Samson's repeated challenges; foul-mouthed, for he taunts Samson with his rags and misery, with being a murderer and a robber; blasphemous, when he declares Samson's strength to be due to magic and black enchantment, and his fall to the impotence of his God against the might of Dagon; full of malice, which he seeks to wreak on Samson; a vile informer, in order to gratify this malice:- such is Harapha.

and Allusions

of the Times.

The personage of Samson besides being a veiled pre- Political sentment of the tragedy of Milton's own life, also Significance allegorizes the ruin of the public cause to which that to the History life had been devoted. Samson represents Puritanism fallen and captive, as the Philistines stand for the Royalists triumphant at the restoration; Delilah is that Restoration which had sought in vain to allure and win over Milton; the festivities held by the lords of the Philistines in the temple of Dagon typify the godless and dissolute manners prevalent at the court of Charles II.; and lastly, the freedom which Manoah predicts for Israel (1. 1719), and which they compassed under the prophet Samuel at the battle of Mizpeh, finds a distant parallel in the Revolution by which Stuart tyranny and licence were swept away.

Place in
Literature.

Allusions to particular facts and events also occur. Besides those to the desecration of Cromwell's remains, the treatment of the bodies of the regicides, and the trial of Vane, already mentioned (p. ix), the following references have been traced :-to Cromwell as the deliverer of "the saints" from oppression (11. 1270 sq.); to the favourable attitude of men in power, like Monk, towards the Restoration, and to. Milton's single-handed efforts to oppose this event, and retrieve the Puritan cause (11. 241 sq.); to General Lambert's efforts against Monk's designs, the want of support that these efforts met with at the hands of Parliament (1659), and his imprisonment (1662), (11. 272 sq.); to the efforts made to secure Milton's safety at the Restoration by including his name in the Indemnity Bill of August, 1660, and to the varying degrees of favour with which these efforts were received by the different shades of political parties then in power (11. 1457 sq.); to the degraded tastes of the English court and of the English stage (11. 1323 sq.); and to the unbridled passions of the nobility and clergy, and of the common people (ll. 1418 sq.).

The story of Samson's life is told by Boccaccio in Latin in his Falls of Illustrious Men (De Casibus etc.), translated into English by Lydgate under the title of Tragedies, as tragic tales were then called. Chaucer, in his Monkes Tale, written on the model of the same work of Boccaccio, gives a "tragedy" of Samson. The story of Samson, like that of Hercules among the Greek tragedians, formed the subject of a tragi-comedy in Spanish literature, of which a translation into Italian appeared in 1620 (Riccoboni, in Hallam, Lit. of Eur., xxiii.). After Milton, we find Voltaire writing an opera