222 Briareos, or Typhon, whom the den Moors by his side under the lee, while night s So stretch'd out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,8 < "Genus antiquum terræ, Tilania pubes." Mn. vi. 580. Briareus is here a word of four syllables, though in Greek and Latin it has only three; and one of the first two syllables is long, though in Greek and Latin both are short. Milton follows Pindar (Pyth. 130), Homer (II. ii. 783), and Pomponius Mela (de S. 0. i. 14), in placing his den in Cilicia, of which Tarsus was the ancient capital. (Hom. II. i. 403.) 2 Though the leviathan, first mentioned in Job xli. l, is considered by some of the best biblical critics to be the crocodile, from the mention of scales in that passage, yet it is evident that Milton here means the whale, as the crocodile is not found on the Norway coast, and is too small and agile an animal to answer the description here. "Scaly rind," is but a poetic figure to express the rough, wrinkled, hard skin of that animal. "The ocean stream," WXEXVOY TOTKμOv. (Homer, Odys. xi. 638.)—(N. T.) "Haply," quasi, happeningly, accidentally.—"Foam," a boisterous sea throwing up a high surf, or foam.—"Night-foundered skiff," a boat prevented by the darkness of the night from proceeding; founder is a nautical word applied to a disabled ship. Comus, 483:— —"some one like us night-foundered here/' Benlley proposes "nigh foundered," as the word is used ii. 940. But the words, "whils night invests the sea," after, appear to me to decide for the present reading. "Under the lee," i. e. under the lee or sheltered side of him. "Invests," i. e. clothes, as if with a mantle. So Fairy Queen, I. xi. 49.— "By this the drooping daylight 'gan to fade Though several books of voyages in Milton's time stated the fact of vessels anchoring under shelter of a sleeping whale, yet he avoids the responsibility of its truth by saying "as seamen tell." 3 Mɛyxs μɛyaλwort Execto. (II. xviii. 26.) The last foot in this line must be read as a spondee. * The first fool in this lino is a trochee. 248 Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 3 1 That felt unusual weight; till on dry land With stench and smoke. Such resting found the solo "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"— "That we must change for Heav'n?—this mournful gloom, "For that celestial light? Be it so, since He, 6 "Who now is Sov'reign, can dispose, and bid "What shall be right! Farthest from him is best," Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme • The conception here bears a slrong resemblance to Spenser's, in his description of the dragon, Fairy Queen, I. ii. 18:— "Then with his waving wings displayed wide. * So Virg. Eel. vi. 33, “liquidi simul ignis." s Pearce and other commentators propose to read winds here, as in 235. But it may be a question whether Milton did not here mean to express the element collectively, and in the other passage its various currents, whose contrary qclion partly caused the disruption. It is generally believed that Sicily was separated from Italy by a convulsion of nature. Pelorus, now Capo di Faro, is a promontory of Sicily at the straits, which are there about two miles broad. Ma. iii. 087, 571:— "Angusta ab sede Pelori... Torrificls juxta tonat Etna ruinis." An expression in chemistry, by which is meant the separation of the finer parts (from the grosser), which thus mount and acquire additional force. 11 is opposed to precipitated. « This phrase, "such retting found the sole of unblest feet," 1 think must induce the supposition that Milton had in view the dove sent out of the ark, Gen. viii. 9, which "found no resting for the sole of her feet, and returned unto him." s Sovran, i. e. sovereign, from the Italian sovrano, which is evidently derived from supernut, is another reading. 7 Πορός Διος και κεραυνον. Greek proverb. Bentlcy. 274 1 "Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Thus answer'd : 6 "Leader of those armies bright, "Which but the Omnipotent none could have foil'd! l Addison has remarked, that though the poet puts very impious sentiments in the mouth of Satan here, jet they are made so extravagant as not to shock the reader. Besides, Satan, notwithstanding all his defiance, is obliged to acknowledge the omnipotence of God. » Ajax, in Sophocles, before he kills himself, exclaims in a similar strain, (but this line is a great improvement on that passage): Ιω σκοτος, εμον φαος, ερεμβος Ω φκενον ὡς εμοι, Ελέσθ', ελεσθ' οικήτορα, Ελεσθε με. - (Ν.) This was a maxim of the Stoics (the most obstinate and uncompromising sect 6f all the old philosophers,) who often carried it to a preposterous extent. It is here quite characteristic of the doggedness and vanity of Satan. Horace, in ridicule of the maxim, represents a Stoical cobbler as maintaining that he was a king. B. i. Sat. 3. The following passage has been often quoted as analogous to this.— "Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare enrrnnt Hot. Ep. 1. J. I. e. any thing for the possession of which he could envy us. 5 It was a remarkable saying of Julius Cæsar, that he would rather be the first man in a country town than the second in Rome. The passage is a great improvement on the reply of Prometheus to Mercury, Eschyl. Prom. Vinct. 955.—(T.) e The same as "aslounded," a few lines after, and vi. 838, and "astonied," ix. 896:— alUunili, as if deprived of sense and motion by a thunderbolt. "Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft He scarce had ceas'd, when the superior fiend Over the burning marie,--not like those steps 897 On heaven's azure; and the torrid clime i The following passage from Shakspeare, 2 Henry IV. act i. has been quoted as similar to this.— "You know he walked o'er perils on an edge, More likely to fall in lhan to get o'er." But edge here, and vi. 108, is used like acies in Lalin, which not only means the edge of any thing, but, figuratively, an army drawn up in line of battle. So Fairy Queen, V. v. 3:— "And on her shoulder hung her shield, bedeckt As the fair moone. in her most full aspect." So Iliad, XIX. 373: Αυταρ επειτα σακος, μέγα τε στιβαρον τε, Είλετο, του απάνευθε σελας γενετ' ηύτε μηνής. Milton uses the comparison here to signify not its splendour only, but chiefly its size; large as the moon seen through a telescope,—an instrument first invented by Galileo, a native of Tuscany, whom he again, v. 262, makes honourable mention of, as a tribute to his genius, and his own intimacy with him during his travels in Italy. See also Callimachus, Hymn to Diana, 53; and Tasso, Gier. vi. 40. "Fesole," the ancient Fesulæ, near Florence. "Valdarno," or the Vale or the Arnd, where Galileo resided; both in Tuscany. Homer compares the club of Polyphemus to the mast of a ship.—osaov 6' cirov vnos (Odyss. ix. 322.) Virgil, £n. iii. 659, compares it to the trunk of a pine tree— "Trunca manum plnus regit, et vestigia firmat." Ovid, Metamorph. xiii. 782, more fully conveys Milton's sentiment.— "Cui postquam pinus, baculi quæ prabult nsum, Milton, as the reader will easily see, not only embodies, but surpasses the descriptions of all three. "Amiral" means any large or capital ship, such as an admiral's ship. Masts of the largest size were furnished, in Milton's lime, from the pine-woods of Norway. Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 6 4 While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd > I.e. not the less, nevertheless; a word often used by the old English poets. 1 /. e. besides the lire on the burning ground, the fire above him smote him sorely also. * Homer, Virg'l, and the ancient poets often use the comparison ol leaves to multitudes. Georg.: "Quam multa in silvis autumn! frigore prlmo (See Tassier. ix. 66; Dante, Inferno, iii. 112; Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xvi. 75.) But the comparison of Milton possesses a peculiar beauty and appropriateness; for it not only expresses the number of angels, but their position also, covering the "enflamed sea," as the leaves cover the "brooks." Besides, the amplification of the similitude presents a new landscape. It has been urged by some critics that, as in Vallombrosa, (quasi vallit umbrosa, or shady vale,) in Tuscany, the trees are mostly evergreen, and therefore do not shed their leaves all at once in the autumn, Milton is botanically wrong; still It Is asserted that the leaves drop off by degrees (as the same leaves do not always continue), and accumulate continually; and this circumstance is a sufficient justification of Milton (see todd). 1 may observe, that Milton must have seen this famous valley; and, as being a botanist, must have been aware of the nature of evergreens, and of the autumnal State of the foliage there, and therefore made the comparison knowingly. Besides "autumnal," (the word on which the objection has been mainly hung,) independently of Its poetical fitness, is materially right, as the accumulation of leaves in autumn, after the dry seasons, must be greater than that in spring, after the wet and rotting seasons. In addition, I may state that, besides evergreens, there ate many other kinds of trees there whose leaves drop off autumnally. * Orion is a constellation represented in the figure of an armed man, and supposed to I* attended with stormy weather. Mn. i. 539: Assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion." Some learned travellers object to the accuracy of this simile, on the ground of their having seen no sedge flung by storms on the shores of the Bed Sea. But Milton's full justification, I think, is, that, from the real or supposed quantity of sedge thrown on the shore, that sea was, in Hebrew, called "the sedgy sea," and he had, therefore, not merely historical but sacred authority for the assertion. Besides, it may be urged, that this want of knowledge on the part of sojourners, during a certain time, cannot be considered as a disproof of a circumstance that the name "sedgy sea" did establish, at one period, as a credited fact. Vexed here is used in the sense of vexare. « Goshen was the district allotted to the Israelites in the kingdom of Egypt. The commentators remark, that Milton (in imitation of Homer and Virgil) goes off here from the main purpose of the similitude, and, by the introduction of the floating carcasses, introduces an additional beauty and a new image. Milton does not use a poetic license in making this Pharaoh, Busiris, as he has the authority of some previous writers for it.— "Chivalry" means all those who fought on horseback, and from chariots. So 765; so Par. Reg. I. 343.—Pharaoh's pursuit is called "perfidious," because he previously agreed to allow the Israelites to depart unmolested.—(P. H.) |