Kevrici val with servle punishment!
The Luse decree n which I now am fallen,
The 1s 2sing, is not yet so base
de ve 117 fcter service, ignoble,
Cmany, Szives Acres,

THE SUPET, Mi that indess worse than this,
TRAS DE Dw begeertely I served.

Ka. I zucie prase thy marriage-choices, son,
later coved them not; but thou didst plead
Jum mousa prompting bow thou mightst
Fai sine recasin ta tést our foes.
ISHED: ts I am sure, our foes
Fund 11 person therely to make thee

Cher score mi the ph; thou the sooner
Taraan junts, ir ver-potent charms,

Mit de siered as of sence

Cesta v dre; which to have kept TAX By ever: ; and thou bear'st Imre, the burden of that fault; her is to put and start paying, Tanism. A wire thing yet remains: 1- the Philistines a popular feast"

~ ZETI I Gama ; and proclaim YOR, Li sráce, and prises kud, Is the pad wine hach deliver'd

Sasa Nani mi bind into their hands, ància, vir sew st them many a slain.

Jess visa på raped with idols,
Seuraa ha bemed, and bad in scorn
3o 2 1 LACUS Cak teir wine;
Vht u het om r us by means of thee,
SINE & 3: sufers the the heaviest,

a xerad the mast vid shame that ever
CA LA NOLin der mi thy father's house.
* Fachen. Vår sowledge and confess,
as mever I dis peep, have brought
Daca and armeed is rises Ligh
sining the beschen mand; a. God have brought
Ostrian, Plaç17, mi sped the meaths

PA PAS JAT Fist of mégance and passionate self-reproach upon
Asus in a smetting vastly grand and noble in his

is gming suit yet se huse, JC-THYER.

47,0 mm & pupular feast, ke.

vees jf the Pilates gathered them together, for to offer

Yet ther you and to regione : for they said, Our god hath delivered This laciant the poet bas finely improved, and as reach of Susa into the mouth of his father,

Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
In feeble hearts, propense enough before
To waver, or fall off and join with idols;
Which is my chief affliction, shame and sorrow,
The anguish of my soul, that suffers not

Mine eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife
With me hath end; all the contest is now
"Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presumed,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,
His deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham.
Will not connive or linger, thus provoked;
But will arise, and his great name assert:
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him
Of all these boasted trophies won on me,

He, be sure,

455

460

465

470

And with confusion blank his worshippers ".

Man. With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words

I as a prophecy receive; for God,

Nothing more certain, will not long defer

To vindicate the glory of his name

Against all competition, nor will long
Endure it doubtful whether God be Lord,
Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be done?
Thou must not in the mean while here forgot,
Lie in this miserable loathsome plight,
Neglected. I already have made way

To some Philistian lords, with whom to treat
About thy ransom: well they may by this
Have satisfied their utmost of revenge

By pains and slaveries, worse than death, inflicted
On thee, who now no more canst do them harm.

Sam. Spare that proposal, father; spare the trouble

Of that solicitation; let me here,

As I deserve, pay on my punishment;

475

480

485

And expiate, if possible, my crime,
Shameful garrulity. To have reveal'd
Secrets of men, the secrets of a friend,

n Blank his worshippers.

That is, confound. So, in "Hamlet," a. iii. s. 2.

Each opposite that blanks the face of joy.

Milton often uses the adjective "blank" also in the sense of confounded.—TODD.

o And these words

I as a prophecy receive.

490

This method of one person's taking an omen from the words of another, was frequently practised among the ancients; and in these words the downfall of Dagon's worshippers is artfully presignified, as the death of Samson is in other places; but Manoah, as it was natural, accepts the good omen, without thinking of the evil that is to follow.-NEWTON.

reg the secrets of the gods was Tue. Dec. 16. Poete impendere apad

10 essen, de mentiam, et superbiloquentiam."

sane Mlsiner, and he the same reas, n. 4 Orestes," v. 8.

IN KORT" ATSes tanght, that the gods puZNOT NID IN WALL ID Ta on if the mysteries. Milton had here in his eye LIL. BE TO

T

TBOL ZANJE. Nerua fom the - Tusculan Questions” does not explain the JE'S A HOT TImei a: nether does the passage from Euripides without its where mared it is said that Tantalus was punished for revealing ¤ Suns a te pas. Br de cassical authority in Milton's mind I suppose to have ! PILTI CINSKT ascribes the punishment of Tantalus to his shameful viac a su i be a gravoos crime, De Art. Amandi,” ii. 601, &c.—

A these mais, Vind wie kamus but God hath set before us: "what" for "those The expressum is a little hard, but to this effect: Reject not these means of sursa, which, fie any thing one can tell, God may have set before us, or suggested to us,

All mortals I excell'd, and great in hopes,

With youthful courage, and magnanimous thoughts
Of birth from heaven foretold, and high exploits,
Full of divine instinct, after some proof

Of acts indeed heroic, far beyond

The sons of Anak, famous now and blazed;
Fearless of danger, like a petty god

I walk'd about admired of all, and dreaded
On hostile ground, none daring my affront;
Then swollen with pride, into the snare I fell
Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains,
Soften'd with pleasure and voluptuous life;
At length to lay my head and hallow'd pledge
Of all my strength in the lascivious lap
Of a deceitful concubine, who shore me,
Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece ;
Then turn'd me out ridiculous, despoil'd,
Shaven, and disarm'd among mine enemies.

Cho. Desire of wine, and all delicious drinks,
Which many a famous warriour overturns,
Thou couldst repress; nor did the dancing ruby,
Sparkling, out-pour'd, the flavour, or the smell,
Or taste that cheers the heart of gods and men ",
Allure thee from the cool crystalline stream".

Into the snare I fell

of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains.

525

530

535

540

545

See Fairfax's translation of Tasso, b. iv. 26, where Hedroart, sending Armida to seduce the Christian host, and, if possible, its leader, bids her

Frame snares of looks, trains of alluring speech.-DUNSTER.

At length to lay my head, &c.

Compare Spenser's "Faerie Queene," ii. vi. 14.

Thus when shee had his eyes and sences fed

With false delights, and fill'd with pleasures vayn,

Into a shady vale she soft him led,

And layd him downe upon a grassy playn:

She sett beside, laying his head disarm'd

In her loose lap.-TODD.

The dancing ruby, &c.

Dr. Newton and Mr. Thyer remark, that the poet probably alludes to Prov. xxiii. 31. "Look not upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright." Milton has also "rubied nectar,' "Par. Lost," b. v. 633. And dancing he has transferred hither from his "Comus," v. 673.

And first behold this cordial julep here,

That flames and dances in his crystal bounds.-TODD.

Or taste that cheers the heart of gods and men.

a god

Judges ix. 13, "Wine which cheereth God and man." Milton says 66 gods," which is a just paraphrase, meaning the hero gods of the heathen. Jotham is here speaking to an idolatrous city, that " ran a whoring after Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god; sprung from among men, as may be partly collected from his name, as well as from divers other circumstances of the story. Hesiod, in a similar expression, says that "the vengeance of the Fates pursued the crimes of gods and men," Theog. v. 220.-WARBURTON.

▾ Cool crystalline stream.

Borrowed by Mason, in his additions to Gray's fragment of an "Ode to Vicissitude."

Sam. Wherever fountain or fresh current f. w'i
Against the eastern ray". translucent, pare
With touch ethereal of Heaven's fiery rod,
I drank, from the clear miky juice allaying
Thirst, and refresh'd; nor envied them the grape,
Whose heads that turbulent liquor fills with fumes.

Cho. O, madness, to think use of strongest wines
And strongest drinks our chief support of health,
When God with these forbiiden made choice to rear
His mighty champion, strong above eompare,
Whose drink was only from the liquid brook.

Sam. But what avail'd this temperance, not complete
Against another object more enticing?

What boots it at one gate to make defence,
And at another to let in the foe,

Effeminately vanquisl.'d? by which means,

Now blind, dishearten'd, shamed, dishonour'd, queli'd,
To what can I be useful, wherein serve
My nation, and the work from Heaven imposed,
But to sit idle on the household hearth',
A burdenous drone; to visitants a gaze,
Or pitied object; these redundant locks,
Robustious to no purpose, clustering down,
Vain monument of strength; till length of years
And sedentary numbness craze my limbs a
To a contemptible old age obscure?

Here rather let me drudge and earn my bread;

* Wherever fountain or fresh current flow”d

Against the eastern ray, &c.

This circumstance was very probably suggested to our author by Tasso's poem Del Mondo creato," giorna iii. st. 8.-THYER.

Mr. Geddes, in his learned and entertaining " Essay on the Composition, &c. of Plato," considers these lines of Milton as possessing much of the same spirit, though applied to another thing, with a passage in the philosopher's "Io," p. 533, 534, tom. i. edit. Serian. where, speaking of the poets, he says, "As soon as they enter the winding mazes of harmony, they become lymphatic, and rove like the furious Bacchanals, who in their frenzy draw honey and milk out of the rivers. The poets tell us the same thing of themselves," &c. Essay, 1748, p. 184.-TODD.

With touch ethereal of Heaven's fiery rod.

This description of the first ray of light at the moment of sunrise, is eminently bold and beautiful. We might trace it to Euripides, "Suppl." 652, to which Dr. Hurd refers Milton's "long-level'd rule of streaming light," Comus, v. 340.-DUNSTER.

7 Whose drink, &c.

Samson was a Nazarite, Judges xiii. 7; therefore to drink no wine, nor shave his head. See Numb. vi. Amos ii. 12.-RICHARDSON.

But to sit idle on the household hearth, &c.

It is supposed, with probability enough, that Milton chose Samson for his subject, because he was a fellow-sufferer with him in the loss of his eyes: however, one may venture to say. that the similitude of their circumstances has enriched the poem with several very pathetic descriptions of the misery of blindness.-THYER.

a Craze my limbs.

He uses the word "craze" much in the same manner as in the "Par. Lost," b. xii. 210--NEWTON,