Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

But, he once past, soon after, when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain

Following his track,—such was the will of Heav'n,—
Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endur'd a bridge of wondrous length,
From hell continued, reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse.
With easy intercourse, pass to and fro

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
As from her outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less, and with less hostile din ;
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,'
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds

3

Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste resembling air

5

4

Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, (undetermin'd square or round,)
With opal towers and battlements adorn'd
Of living sapphire, once his native seat!
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

1055 Accurs'd, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

greater idea of it. Even "he," the most adventurous, sagacious, and powerful of the spirits, found it so.

i "Her," ». e. nature's works.

s See Seneca, Hercul. Fur. 668.—(T.) s

"Holds the port:" "occupat portum." (Hor.1

See Tasso, Ger. Liber, i. 14.—(T.)

A sort of pale bluish stone, reflecting every colour when turned to the light. 6" Pendent world," here, is not the earth, but the new creation, or heaven and earth, the whole orb of fixed stars, to which the earth is but a point in comparison. (See 1004.) Besides, Satan does not yet see this earth; see iii. 542, 722. "This pendent world," or the newly created universe, appeared, when seen afar off, not bigger than the smallest star, and even the smallest star near the moon, the superior light of which makes any star near appear small and indistinct—(JV., B.) 1 have not hesitated to expunge the comma after" magnitude," which all the editions retain, and by retaining which it would appear that "close" refers to the "world," whereas it refers to "the moon.'

"

BOOK III.

God, silting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand, foretels the success of Satan in perverting mankind, clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he Tell not of his own malice, as did satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father tor the manifestation of bis gracious purpose towards man: but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice: man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny, devoled to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains bis incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity: what persons and things fly up thither thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights first on mount Niphates.

Hail, holy Light! offspring of heaven first born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam

May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,

1 If Milton's majesty anywhere forsakes him, it is in those parts of his poem where the divine persons, especially the Almighty, are introduced as speakers. He dares not give his imagination full play, but confines himself with a kind of awe to such thoughts and expressions as are to be drawn from Scripture, and the works of the most orthodox divines. The beauties then of these speeches are not so proper to till the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as they are with devotion and religious fear- The beauty of the speeches in the third book consists in that shortness, force, and perspicuity of style in which the poet has couched the great mysteries nf Christianity, and the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man; the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free will, and grace; as also the great points of incarnation and redemption. These subjects being in themselves dry to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner in which he has treated them is very much to be admired; as is likewise the particular art which he has made use of in interspersing all those graces of poetry which the subject was capable of receiving.—{Ad.)

> Or may I without blame express thee, call thee the coeternal beam of the Eternal God? The ancients were very cautious and curious by what names they addressed their deities; and Milton, in imitation of them, questions whether he should address light as the first-born offspring of heaven, or as the coeternal beam of the Eternal Father, or as

Bright effluence of bright essence increate!1
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethwreal stream,'
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,—
Before the heavens thou wert; and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.8
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escap'd the Stygian pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight,
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,'
With other notes than to th' Orphean lyre,

I sung of Chaos, and eternal Night;

6

Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,

3i Though hard and rare.7 Thee I revisit safe,

a pure ethereal stream whose fountain no one knew. But as the second appellation seems to ascribe to light a proper eternity, or an eternity equal to that of God, he very justly doubts whether he may use that without blame.—"Since God is light." So 1 John i. 5: "God is light."--" And never but in unapproached light dwelt from eternity." So l Tim. vi. 16: "Who (God) alone hath immortality, dwelling in the light, which no man can approach, no man can see, or halh seen."—(N.)

1 Solomon says this of wisdom: Wisd. of Solom. vii. 25, 26.—(N.)

> This is a pure Lalinism—dost thou delight rather to be called, dost thou rather lika to hear the title of, "pure ethereal stream?" Audio in Latin, and x in Greek, sometimes mean, hear oneself called; hence to be named or called, though the party may not hear it. So bene audire, male audire, ev xxovciv, xxxus Xxcuslj, to be praised, to be

abused. So Hor. ii. Sat. vi.

"Hatutine paler, seu Jane libentiut audit."

Hilton so uses the word in his Arcopagitica.
So Fairy Queen, I. v. 23:—

"It old Aveugle's sons so evil hear."

s The world was only in a state of fluidity when the light was created. (See Gen. i. 2, 3.) "The void and formless infinite," i. e. boundless Chaos, destitute, not of matter, but of any formed being. This is, too, the meaning of the words, (Gen. i. 2.) "The earth was without form, and void." Fairy Queen, I. i. 39:

"The rising world of waters, wide and deep."—(N., P.)

Having escaped; classically used like elapiut.

"Utter darkness," TO OXOTOS EDTpoy, the outer darkness mentioned in Scriptuie— the darkness of hell. "Middle darkness," is the darkness of the middle gulf between hell and heaven.—(N.)

6 Orpheus made a hymn to Night, which is extant; he also wrote of the Creation out of Chaos. See Apollonius Rhodius, i. 493. Orpheus was inspired by his mother Calliope, the heathen muse only; Milton by the heavenly muse: therefore he boasts that he sung with other notes than Orpheus, though the subjects were the same. (Rich.)—"Orphean lyre" is a phrase taken from Apollon. Rhod. ii. 161:

Ορφείη φόρμιγγι συνοίμιον ύμνον αείδον.-(Wart.)

1 Though difficult and unusual the achievement: the words are classically used in the occasional sense of durum and rarum. Newton says this sentence is manifestly an allusion to Virg. Mu. vi. 128:—

"Sed rerocare gradum superasqne evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, tic labor est; pauci, quos æquus amavit
Jupiter, aut ardens erelit ad nthera virtus,

DIs genlll potaere."

And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes,

at roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a Drop-serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; * but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget'

[ocr errors]

Those other two equall'd with me in fate,

S3 So were t equall'd with them in renown,

> As being uncertain of the real cause of his blindness, he describes the two great causes according to what was then known, t. e. the gulla serena and cataract. See his own account or the malady in his letter to Phalaras in the notice of his Life. The gutla terena was thought to be a transparent watery humour distilling upon the optic nerve, making little change in the eye in appearance. A cataract was supposed to begin with luffiuion or dimness gradually thickening like a cloud over the sight.

1 Georg. ii. 475

---Dutccs ante omnia muss,

Qaarum sacra fero ingenli percussus amore."

> The brooks Kedron and Siloah flowed at the Toot or Mount Sion. He was, he says, (as will be seen by a reference to his "Life") always delighted with the study of the ancient poets, but bis chief delight was in the songs of the prophets on Sion, and in the Holy Scriptures; and in these he meditated day and night, notwithstanding his blindness.—(N., P.)

The same as and not forget: nor here is used for and not, in the sense that nee and ueque are sometimes used, i. e. for el non. Every classical scholar knows there are many instances where the conjunction disjunctive negative is to be resolved into its parts. 5 Though he mentions four, yet there are but two whom he particularly desires to resemble, both of whom he distinguishes with the epithet "blind," to make the likeness more striking.—Homer, sometimes called Mæonides, his favourite author; and Thamyris. Thamyris, now so little known, (his writings having been lost,) is mentioned by Homer, II. ii. 595; and Eustathius, the learned commentator of Homer, ranks him with Orpheus and Musæus, the most celebrated poets and musicians of antiquity. Plato mentions his hymns with honour in the beginning of his eighth book of Laws; and towards the conclusion of the last book of his Republic feigns, on the principles of transmigration, that the soul of Thamyris passed into a nightingale. He was a Thracian by birth, and invented the Doric mood or measure, according to Pliny, vii. 57. Plutarch, in his Treatise on Music, says, that he had the finest voice of any man of his lime, and that he wrote a poem of the war of the Titans with the gods: and from Suidas likewise we learn that he composed a poem on the generation of the world; which subjects being of near kin to Milton's, might occasion the mention of him in this place. It seems then, that having at lirsl only intended to mention these two, Milton, by the force of association of ideas, mentioned, currente calamo, Tiresias and Phineus; the first a Theban, (familiar to the readers of Lucian, and often mentioned in our extant classical authors,) the other a king of Arcadia; both famous blind prophets and poets of antiquity; for the word prophet, pops, sometimes comprehends both characters, as vales does in Latin.—(N.)

Some learned commentators would read "those other too," in order to get rid of the contradiction between the word two, and the enumeration of four. But Milton wrote "two;" and I think Newton's solution the most probable. Pearce, followed by some good modern critics, would transpose the words Tiresias and Phineus on account of the prosody, and read the line thus :---

"And Phineoi and Tlresiiu, prophets old."

This I think an improvement.

37

Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old;
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note.1 Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even, or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off! and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expung'd and ras'd,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out!'
So much the rather thou, celestial light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight.

Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyrean where he sits

t A beautiful and concise imitation of Virgil's simile of the nightingale, Georg. iy. 5ii; omitting the circumstance of the nightingale's lamentation for her ravished brood, as being uusuited to him:

See Odyss. xix. 518.

"Qualis populea morens Philomela sub umbra
Flet noctem, ramisque sedeus mlserabile carmen
Integrat, et moestis lale loca questlbus imptet."

2 Pearce, fancying an absurdity in the present reading, which is Millon's own, proposes to point the passage by a semicolon after the words "blank" and "rased," and read "alt nature's," for " of nature's," thus making these two lines ablatives absolute. Newton says some such emendation were to be wished, as "otherwise, it is not easy to say what the conjunction and copulates wisdom to." Thus Todd defends the text: "There is lillle difficulty in this passage if we consider wisdom as the genitive case; ' ot nature's works of wisdom.'" In my opinion the emendation of Pearce, however ingenious, is unnecessary; while Todd's defence of the text is absurd. As universal is here the inseparable adjunct of blank, and, as the words, "at one entrance quite shut out," serve to show that wisdom was not shut out at every entrance, but only partially, it would be a folly, and involve a contradiction of terms, to make wisdom the genitive of blank—it would make Milton say, a universal blank of partially excluded wisdom. The explanation of the text then, 1 think, is simply this—wisdom is the ablative case coupled by and with blank. The works of nature (he means external nature) were to him a universal blank by reason of his loss of the sense of sight, the only channel through which a knowledge of external objects could reach the mind; but not so wisdom, which was only shut out to him at one entrance, i.e. sensation, leaving the other great entrance, reflection (and these two, according to Locke, arc the great avenues or ideas to the mind, and the fountain of all our knowledge), still open. Thus, in place of the book of general knowledge open to him, he was presented with the book of nature's works totally shut up, and with the book of wisdom partially so. The construction therefore s—"presented with a universal blank of nature's works, and (with) wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

« PredošláPokračovať »