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650.gave them several charge] Under this head of celestial persons we must likewise take notice of the command which the Angels received to produce the several changes in nature, and sully the beauty of the creation. Accordingly they are represented as infecting the stars and planets with malignant influences, weakening the light of the sun, bringing down the winter into the milder regions of nature, planting winds and storms in several quarters of the sky, storing the clouds with thunder, and in short perverting the whole frame of the universe to the condition of its criminal inhabitants. As this is a noble incident in the poem, the following lines, in which we see the angels heaving up the earth, and placing it in a different posture to the sun from what it had before the fall of Man, are conceived with that sublime imagination which was so peculiar to this great auther.

Some say he bid his Angels turn ascance &c. Addison.

656. To the blanc moon &c.] Of the French, blanc, white, as Virgil calls her candida luna, Æn. vii. 8; and the Italian poets frequently bianca luna. And that is said here of the moon, and of the stars, "Which of them rising with the sun, or fall. ing, should prove tempestuous,' was written probably not without an eye to Virgil, Georg. i. 335.

In fear of this observe the starry signs,

Where Saturn houses, and where Hermes joins.-
The Sov'reign of the Heav'ns has set on high
The moon, to mark the changes of the sky,
When southern blasts should cease. Dryden.

659. In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite] If a planet, in one part of the Zodiac be distant from another by a sixth part of twelve, that is by two signs, their aspect is called sextile; if by a fourth, square; by a third, trine; and if by one half, opposite, which last is said to be of noxious efficacy, because the planets so opposed are thought to strive, debilitate, and overcome one another: deemed of evil consequence to those born under or subject to the influence of the distressed star. unnecessary ostentation of learning be, as Mr. Addison observes, one of our author's faults, it certainly must be an aggravation tof it, where he not only introduces, but countenances such enhusiastic unphilosophical notions as this jargon of the astrolog gers is made up of.

If an

668. Some say, be bid his Angels &c.] It was "eternal spring" (iv. 268.) before the fall; and he is now accounting for the change of seasons after the fall, and mentions the two famous hypotheses. Some say it was occasioned by altering the position of the earth, by turning the poles of the earth above 20 degrees aside from the sun's orb, "he bid his Angels turn ascance the poles of earth twice ten degrees and more from the sun's axle ;" and the poles of the earth are about 23 degrees and a half distant from those of the ecliptic; "they with labour push'd oblique the centric globe," it was erect before, but is oblique now; the obliquity of a sphere is the proper astronomical term, when the pole is raised any number of degrees less than 90; the centric globe fixed on its centre and therefore moved with labour and difficulty, or rather centric as being the centre of the world, according to the Ptolemaic system, which our author usually follows. Some say again this change was occasioned by altering the course of the sun, "the sun was bid to turn reins from the equinoctial road" in which he had moved before, like distant breadth" in both hemispheres, "to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters," the constellation Taurus with the seven stars in his neck, the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, and the Spartan twins," the sign Gemini, Caftor, and Pollux, twin-brothers, and sons of Tyndarus king of Sparta, "up to the Tropic Crab," the tropic of Cancer, the sun's farthest stage northwards; "thence down amain." Dr. Bentley reads as much, as much on one side of the equator as the other, but if any alteration were necessary, it is easier to read thence "down again, by Leo and the Virgin," the sign Virgo, "and the Scales," the constellation Libra, as deep as Capricorn," the tropic of Capricorn, which is the sun's farthest progress southward. This motion of the sun in the ecliptic occasions the variety of seasons, " else had the spring perpetual smil'd on earth with vernant flowers," if the sun had continued to move in the equator. It is likewise Dr. Burnet's assertion, that the primitive earth enjoyed a perpetual spring, and for the same reason of the sun's moving in the equator. But though this notion of a perpetual spring may be very pleasing in poetry, yet it very false in philosophy; and this position of the earth so far from being the best is one of the worst it could have, as Dr. Keill hath proved excellently well in the fourth

chapter of his Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth. 686.-Estotiland,] A great tract of land in the north of America, towards the Arctic Circle and Hudson's Bay; as Magellan is a country in South America, which, together with its straits, took their name of Ferdinandus Magellanus, a Portuguese, who in the year 1520 first discovered them. Hume. At that tasted fruit

687.

The sun as from Thyéstian banquet turn'd &c] Thyestes and Atreus, brethren, hated each other outrageously; the first in spite lay with the wife of Atreus, but he having gotten his brother's children in his power, pretended a desire of reconciliation, and invited him to a banquet. Thyestes, that he might see his children, dissembling his augmented malice, came; the feast being over, his brother informed him that he had been entertained with the flesh of his sons, and their blood mixed with the wine, and showed him the sad proof of what he had told him, their heads and hands, which he had reserved for that purpose. At this the sun is said to have turned away, as Milton here says he did when the more dreadful banquet was made on the fruit of the forbidden tree. Richardson.

699. Boreas] The north wind. Cacias the north-west. Argestes the north-east. Tbrascias blowing from Thrace northward of Greece. Notus the south wind. Afer or Africus, the south-west from Africa;

Notusque ruunt creberque procellis Africus. Virg. Æn. i. 85.

From Seirraleona or Lion Mountains; a range of mountains so called because of the perpetual storms there roaring like a lion. These are to the south-west of Africa, within a few leagues of Cape Verd, the western point. Richardson.

In this account of the winds is a needless ostentation of learning, and a strange mixture of ancient and modern, Latin and Italian names together. These are the foibles and weak parts of our author, and of these it may too truly be said,

Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a stile,

Amaze the unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.

720. O miserable of happy! &c.] The parts of Adam and Eve, or the human persons, come next under our consideration. Milton's art is no where more shown than in his conducting the parts of these our first parents. The representation be

gives of them, without falsifying the story, is wonderfully contrived to influence the reader with pity and compassion towards them. Though Adam involves the whole species in misery, his crime proceeds from a weakness which every man is inclined to pardon and commiserate, as it seems rather the frailty of human nature, than of the person who offended. Every one is apt to excuse a fault which he himself might have fallen into. It was the excess of love for Eve that ruined Adam and his posterity. I need not add, that the author is justified in this particular by many of the fathers, and the most orthodox writers. Milton has by this means filled a great part of his poem with that kind of writing which the French critics call the tender, and which is in a particular manner engaging to all sorts of readers. Adam and Eve, in the book we are now considering, are likewise drawn with such sentiments, as do not only interest the reader in their afflictions, but raise in him the most melting passions of humanity and commiseration. When Adam sees the several changes in nature produced about him, he appears in a disorder of mind suitable to one who had forfeited both his innocence and his happiness; he is filled with horror, remorse, despair; in the anguish of his heart he expostulates with his Creator for having given him an unasked existence.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould me Man? &c.

He immediately after recovers from his presumption, owns his doom to be just, and begs that the death which is threatened him may be inflicted on him,

why delays

His hand to execute what his decree
Fix'd on this day? &c.

This whole speech is full of the like emotion, and varied with all those sentiments which we may suppose natural to a mind so broken and disturbed. I must not omit that generous con cern which our first father. shows in it for his posterity, and which is so proper to affect the reader. Who can afterwards behold the father of mankind extended upon the earth, uttering his midnight complaints, bewailing his existence, and wishing for death, without sympathizing with him in his distress. Addison.

728. All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,

Is propagated curse.] Meat and drink propagate it by prolonging life, and children by carrying it on to posterity.

758. Thou didst &c.] The change of persons, sometimes speaking of himself in the first and sometimes to himself in the second, is very remarkable in this speech, as well as the change of passions. And in like manner he speaks sometimes of God and sometimes to God.

783

lest all I cannot die,] A like expression in Horace. Od. iii. xxx. 6.

Non omnis moriar. 789.

It was but breath

Of life that sinn'd ;] Adam is here endeavouring to prove to himself that the breath of life (the spirit of Man which God inspir'd into him, ver. 784.) was to die with his body; and his argument here and in what follows runs thus. Nothing but breath of life sinned; nothing, but what had life and sin, dies; the body properly has neither of these, and therefore he concludes that the breath of life (or spirit of man within him) was to die, and that all of him was to die, because the body he knew was mortal.

806. By which all causes else &c.] All other agents act in proportion to the reception or capacity of the matter, and not to the utmost extent of their own power. An allusion to another axiom of the schools: "Omne efficiens agit secundum vires recipientis, non suas.' But this is not so bad as what Mr. Popc has objected to our author,

Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound
Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground;
In quibbles Angel and Arch-Angel join,

And God the Father turns a School-divine.

But it should be considered that this sort of divinity was much more in fashion in Milton's days; and no wonder that he was a little ostentatious of showing his reading in this, as well as in all other branches of learning.

813.

Ay me, that fear &c.] This is somewhat like

the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, a&t iii.

Ay there's the rub, &c.

that fear

Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution

On my defenceless head;] The thought is fine as it is natu

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