Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes At every sudden slighting quite abash'd". Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise; And now I know he hungers, where no food Is to be found, in the wide wilderness : The rest commit to me; I shall let pass No advantage, and his strength as oft assay. He ceased, and heard their grant in loud acclaim; For beauty stands In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive. 225 230 235 Among Milton's early Latin Elegies, we find one, the seventh, of the amatory kind : but when he published his Latin poems, eighteen years afterwards, he thought it necessary to add to it ten lines, apologising for the puerile weakness, or rather vacancy, of his mind, that could admit such an impression.-DUNSTER. b Cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy, This is a very beautiful and apposite allusion to the peacock; speaking of which bird, Pliny notices the circumstance of its spreading its tail under a sense of admiration:— "Gemmantes laudatus expandit colores, adverso maxime sole, quia sic fulgentius radiant." Nat. Hist. I. x. c. 20. Tasso compares Armida, in all the pride and vanity of her beauty and ornaments, to a peacock with its tail spread, c. xvi. st. 24. But Milton had here in his mind Ovid, "De Arte Am." i. 627. Laudatas ostentat avis Junonia pennas; Si tacitus spectes, illa recondit opes.-DUNSTER. c He ceased. Our Lord (ver. 110) is, in a brief but appropriate description, again presented to us in the wilderness. The poet, in the mean time, makes Satan return to his infernal council, to report the bad success of his first attempt, and to demand their counsel and assistance in an enterprise of so much difficulty. This he does in a brief and energetic speech. Hence arises a debate; or at least a proposition on the part of Belial, and a rejection of it by Satan, of which I cannot sufficiently express my admiration. The language of Belial is exquisitely descriptive of the power of beauty; without a single word introduced, or even a thought conveyed, that is unbecoming its place in this divine poem. Satan's reply is eminently fine: his imputing to Belial, as the most dissolute of the fallen angels, the amours attributed by the poets and mythologists to the heathen gods; while it is replete with classic beauty, furnishes an excellent moral to those extravagant fictions; and his description of the little effect which the most powerful enticements can produce on the resolute mind of the virtuous, while it is heightened with many beautiful turns of language, is, in its general tenor, of the most superior and dignified kind. Indeed, all this part of his speech (from ver. 191 to ver. 225) seems to breathe such a sincere and deep sense of the charms of real goodness, that we almost forget who is the speaker: at least, we readily subscribe to what he had said of himself in the first book: I have not lost To love, at least contemplate, and admire, Or virtuous. After such sentiments so expressed, it might have been thought difficult for the poet to return to his subject, by making the arch-fiend resume his attempts against the Divine Person, BB experial.y, contudering the time that must have necessary elapsed during Satan's convening and estatLLI THA S Milton comprises the printinal senin, f the poem in • smesine drs. This is the second day, in which as positive temptadin weins; for Staan hal y Jesus as was said, ver. 116 of this book Previous to the tempter's appearing at all, it is said, b. 1. 203. that var Fessed Lord ad passed full forty days in the w..d. mness. All that is bere meant that be was not hungry till the forty days were ended; and accordingly our Savi, ar himself presently says that, during the time, he human food Nor tasted, nor had appetite. As to the time necessary for convening the infernal enuncil, there is the space of twenty. four hours taken for the devil to go up to the region of mid air,” where his council was sitting, and where we are told he went with speed:" (ver. 117 of this book) and for him to debate the matter with his council and return with his chosen band of spirits: for it was the commencement of night when he left our Saviour at the end of the first book ; and it is now" the hour of night," (ver. 260) when he is returned. But it must also be considered that spiritual beings are not supposed to require, for their actions, the time necessary to human ones; otherwise we might proceed to calculate the time requisite for the descent of Michael, or Raphael, to Paradise, and criticise the Paradise Lost "accordingly. But Raphael, in the eighth book of that poem, says to Adam, inquiring concerning celestial motions ; The swiftness of those circles attribute, Speed almost spiritual: me thou think'st not slow, In Eden; distance inexpressible By numbers that have name. We are also expressly told by St. Luke, when the devil took our Lord up into a high mountain, that "he showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time," Luke iv. 5.-DUNSTER, Wandering this woody maze, and human food It was the hour of night, when thus the Son Of trees thick interwoven"; there he slept, Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet: Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought: Me hungering more to do my Father's will. 230 255 260 265 In allusion to our Saviour's words, John iv. 34:-" My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.". ."-NEWTON. But with reference also to, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness," Matt. v. 6.-DUNSTER. g Communed in silent walk, then laid him down. Agreeable to what we find in the Psalms, iv. 4:-"Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still."-NEWTON. As the kind hospitable woods provide.-Dunster. iHe by the brook of Cherith stood, &c. Alluding to the account of Elijah, 1 Kings xvii. 5, 6; and xix. 4. And Daniel's living upon pulse and water, rather than the portion of the king's meat and drink, is celebrated, Dan. i. So that as our dreams are often composed of the matter of our waking thoughts, our Saviour is with great propriety supposed to dream of sacred persons and subjects. Lucretius, iv. 960 : Et quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhæret, He saw the prophet also, how he fled The strength whereof sufficed him forty days: Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. k Thus wore out night; and now the herald lark To descry The morn's approach, and greet her with his song. This is a beautiful thought, which modern wit hath added to the stock of antiquity. We may see it rising, though out of a low hint of Theocritus, like the bird from his " thatch'd pallat," Idyll. x. 50. Chaucer leads the way to the English poets, in four of the finest lines in all his works, Knight's Tale," 1493: The merry lark, messengere of the day, In the same manner, Spenser, "Faery Queen," 1. xi. 51 :— When Una did her mark Climb to her charet all with flowers spread, From heaven high to chase the cheerless dark; With merry notes her loud salutes the mounting lark.-CALTON. Thus, in "Comus," the early hour of morning is marked by the lark's rousing from his thatch'd pallat, ver. 315; and the lark, high-towering and greeting the morn with her song, is thus beautifully described in P. Fletcher's "Purple Island," c. ix. st. 2 : The cheerful lark, mounting from early bed, See also Spenser's Astrophel, st. vi. :— As summers lark, that with her song doth greete k From his grassy couch. So in "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 600 :— For beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, 1 And found all was but a dream. "Paradise Lost," b. v. 92. But O! how glad I waked, To find this but a dream!-DUNSTER. If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or herd; This mode of repetition our poet is fond of, and has frequently used with singular effect. Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove ", High roof'd, and walks beneath, and alleys brown ", 290 See "Comus," v. 221, &c. Thus also, in "Paradise Lost," b. iv. 640, a delightful description of morning, evening, and night is beautifully recapitulated.-Dunster. n Only in a bottom saw a pleasant grove, &c. The tempter here is the magician of the Italian poets. This "pleasant grove is a magical creation in the desert, designed as a scene suited for the ensuing temptation of the banquet. Thus Tasso lays the scene of the sumptuous banquet, which Armida provides for her lovers, amidst High trees, sweet meadows, waters pure and good, FAIRFAX'S "Tasso," c. x. 63, 64. "" The whole of Milton's description here is very beautiful; and I rather wonder that the noble author of the "Anecdotes of Painting" did not subjoin it to his citations from the "Paradise Lost," in the "Observations on Modern Gardening." He there ascribes to our author the having foreseen, with the prophetic eye of taste," our modern style of gardening. It may however be questioned, whether his idea of a garden was much, if at all, elevated above that of his contemporaries. In the "Comus," speaking of the gardens of the Hesperides, he describes" cedarn alleys," and "crisped shades and bowers; and his "Penseroso," "retired leisure" is made to please itself in "trim gardens." Mr. Warton, in a note on the latter passage, observes that Milton had changed his ideas of a garden when he wrote his "Paradise Lost :" but the Paradise which he there describes is not a garden, either ancient or modern: it is in fact a country in its natural, unornamented state; only rendered beautiful, and (which is more essential to happiness in a hot climate) at all times perfectly habitable, from its abundance of pleasingly-disposed shade and water, and its consequent verdure and fertility. From all such poetical delineations, as from Nature herself, the landscape-gardener may certainly enrich his fancy and cultivate his taste. The poet in the mean time contributes to the perfection of art, not by laying down rules for it, but by his exquisite descriptions of the more beautiful scenes of nature, which it is the office of art to imitate and to represent. One merit of our modern art of laying out ground, independent of the beauty of its scenery, is its being peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of our climate. A modern English pleasure-ground would not be considered as a Paradise on the sultry plains of Assyria, if it could be formed or exist there: accordingly, another mode of gardening has always prevailed in hot countries, which, though it would be the height of absurdity to adopt in our own island, may be well defended in its proper place by the best of all pleas, necessity. The reader may see this question fully discussed with great taste and judgment, by my learned friend Dr. Falconer, in his “Historical View of the Taste for Gardening and laying out grounds among the Nations of Antiquity."-Dunster. • Determined there To rest at noon. The custom of retiring to the shade and reposing, in hot countries, during the extreme heat of the day, is frequently alluded to by Milton, in his " Paradise Lost." See b. iv. 627; b. v. 230 and 300; and b. ix. 401.-DUNSTER. P High roof'd, and walks beneath, and alleys brown. Such are also the arched over-shading groves of Spenser, with their walks, alleys, and arbours, "Faer. Q." i. i. 7. A shady grove not far away they spied, &c. See also"Faer. Qu." iv. x. 25. "High-roof'd" reminds us of some of Milton's descriptions in the "Paradise Lost," as in b. ix. 1037. A shady bank Thick overhead with verdant roof imbower'd. See also b. iv. 692. 772; b. v. 137. The deep shade produced by great masses of wood, |