x

Made and set wholly on the accomplishment
Of greatest things. What woman will you find,
Though of this age the wonder and the fame,
On whom his leisure will vouchsafe an eye
Of fond desire? Or should she, confident,
As sitting queen adored on beauty's throne,
Descend with all her winning charms begirt
To enamour, as the zone of Venus once
Wrought that effect on Jove, so fables tell';
How would one look from his majestick brow,
Seated as on the top of Virtue's hill",
Discountenance her despised, and put to rout
All her array; her female pride deject,
Or turn to reverent awe! for beauty stands
In the admiration only of weak minds

"On whom his leisure will vouchsafe an eye
Of fond desire?

210

213

220

The "eye of fond desire" is very beautifully expressed by Eschylus, whom our author perhaps had in view, "Suppl." ver. 101.-THYER.

Eschylus has also the immediate expression, "the eye of desire," in "Prometh.” ver. 655.-DUNSTER.

*Or should she, confident,

As sitting queen adored on beauty's throne,

Descend with all her winning charms begirt, &c.

This is clearly from the same palette and pencil as the following highly-coloured passage, Par. Lost.,' b. viii. 59:

With goddess-like demeanour forth she went,

Not unattended; for on her as queen

A pomp of winning Graces waited still,

And from about her shot darts of desire

Into all eyes to wish her still in sight.-DUNSTER.

So fables tell.

These words look as if the poet had forgot himself, and spoke in his own person rather than in the character of Satan.-NEWTON.

One look from his majestick brow,
Seated as on the top of Virtue's hill.

Here is the construction that we so often meet with in Milton: "from his majestick brow," that is, from the majestic brow of him seated as on the top of Virtue's hill: and the expression of "Virtue's hill," was probably in allusion to the rocky eminence on which the Virtues are placed in the Table of Cebes; or the arduous ascent up the hill, to which Virtue is represented pointing in the best designs of the Judgment of Hercules.-NEWTON.

Milton's meaning here is best illustrated by a passage in Shakspeare, which most probably he had in his mind. Hamlet, in the scene with his mother, pointing to the picture of his father, says,

See what a grace was seated on this brow!
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars to threaten or command, &c.

See also "Love's Labour Lost," a. iii. s. 4. "Greatness, nobleness, authority, and awe," says Bentley, "are by all Greek and Latin poets placed in the forehead." See 'Par. Lost,' b. vii. 509. ix. 538.

And Spenser's Belphœbe:-

Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad table did itself dispread:
All good and honour might therein be read,
And there their dwelling was.-DUNSTER.

Led captive; cease to admire, and all her plumes
Fall flat, and shrink into a trivial toy,

At every sudden slighting quite abash'd".
Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy; with such as have more show
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise;
Rocks, whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd;
Or that which only seems to satisfy
Lawful desires of nature, not beyond:
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,

At every sudden slighting quite abash'd.

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. 1. 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.

e 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 in 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,
What I see excellent in good, or fair,

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

BB

Then forthwith to him takes a chosen band
Of spirits, likest to himself in guile",
To be at hand, and at his beck appear,
If cause were to unfold some active scene
Of various persons, each to know his part;
Then to the desert takes with these his flight;
Where still from shade to shade the Son of God,
After forty days' fasting, had remain'd,
Now hungering first, and to himself thus said:

Where will this end? four times ten days I've pass'd

210

215

Divine Person, the commanding majesty of whose invincible virtue he had just been describing with such seemingly heartfelt admiration This is managed with much address, by Satan's proposing to adopt such modes of temptation as are apt to prevail most where the propensities are virtuous, and where the disposition is amiable and generous: and, by the immediate return of the tempter and his associates to the wilderness, the poem advances towards the height of its argument. -DUNSTER.

To him takes a chosen band

Of spirits, like st to himself in guile.

"Then goeth he and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself," Matt. xii. 45.- DUNSTER.

Now hungering first.

There seems, I think, to be a little inaccuracy in this place. It is plain, by the Scripture account, that our Saviour hungered before the devil first tempted him by proposing to him his making stones into bread, and Milton's own account in the first book is consistent with this: is there not therefore a seeming impropriety in saying that he "now first hungered;" especially, considering the time that must have necessarily clapsed during Satan's convening and consulting with his companions?—THYER. Milton comprises the principal action of the poem in four successive days. This is the second day, in which no positive temptation occurs; for Satan had left Jesus (as was said, ver. 116 of this book) "vacant," i. e. unassailed, that day. Previous to the tempter's appearing at all, it is said (b. i. 303) that our blessed Lord had "passed full forty days" in the wilderness. All that is here meant is that he was not hungry till the forty days were ended; and accordingly our Saviour himself presently says that, during the time, he

human food

Nor tasted, nor had appetite.

As to the time necessary for convening the infernal council, there is a 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,
Though numberless, to his omnipotence,
That to corporeal substances could add

Speed almost spiritual: me thou think'st not slow,
Who since the morning hour set out from heaven
Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived

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
Nor tasted, nor had appetite; that fast
To virtue I impute not, or count part
Of what I suffer here; if nature need not,
Or God support nature without repast
Though needing, what praise is it to endure?
But now I feel I hunger, which declares
Nature hath need of what she asks; yet God
Can satisfy that need some other way,
Though hunger still remain: so it remain
Without this body's wasting, I content me,
And from the sting of famine fear no harm;
Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts, that feed
Me hungering more to do my Father's will'.

It was the hour of night, when thus the Son
Communed in silent walk, then laid him down 5
Under the hospitable covert nigh

Of trees thick interwoven"; there he slept,
And dream'd, as appetite is wont to dream,

Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet:
Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood ',
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bringing, even and morn,

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, 66

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after

righteousness," Matt. v. 6.-Dunster.

* 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.

The hospitable covert nigh

Of trees thick interwoven.

Thus Horace, Od. 11. iii. 9:

Qua pinus ingens albaque populus
Umbram hospitalem consociare amant
Ramis.

And Virgil, Georg. iv. 24:—

Obviaque hospitlis teneat frondentibus arbos.

Milton also, in 'Comus,' ver. 186 :——

Such cooling fruit

As the kind hospitable woods provide.- DUNSTER.

He 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,

Aut quibus in rebus multum sumus ante morati,
Atque in qua ratione fuit contenta magis mens,

In somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire.-NEWTON.

He saw the prophet also, how he fled
Into the desert, and how there he slept
Under a juniper; then how, awaked,
He found his supper on the coals prepared,
And by the angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,

The strength whereof sufficed him forty days:
Sometimes that with Elijah he partook,
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse.

k

Thus wore out night; and now the herald lark
Left his ground-nest, high towering to descry
The morn's approach, and greet her with his song':
As lightly from his grassy couch up rose
Our Saviour, and found all was but a dream ';
Fasting he went to sleep, and fasting waked.
Up to a hill anon his steps he rear'd,
From whose high top to ken the prospect round,
If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or herd;
But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw m;

To descry

The morn's approach, and greet her with his song.

270

275

280

2-5

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,
Salewith in her song the morrow gray;
And firy Phebus risith up so bright,
That all the Orient laugheth at the sight.

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, With sweet salutes awakes the drowsy light: The earth she left, and up to heaven is fled: There chants her Maker's praises out of sight.

See also Spenser's Astrophel, st. vi. :—

As summers lark, that with her song doth greete
The dawning day, &c.-DUNSTER.

But O! how glad I waked,

To find this but a dream!-DUNSTER.

m If cottage were in view, sheep-cote, or herd;

But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.

This mode of repetition our poet is fond of, and has frequently used with singular effect.