Despoil'd of innocence—or faith—of bliss! For now, and since first break of dawn, the fiend, He sought them both, but wish'd his hap might find Of what so seldom chanc'd; when to his wish— Veil'd in a cloud of fragrance,1 where she stood, » 11. XV. 153 : Αμφι δε μιν Θυσεν νέρος εστεφανωτο. - (Τ. 2 This thought and manner or speaking must hare pleased our author, as they are here a repetition of iv. 269.—(N.) • The many pleasing images of nature which are intermixed in this part of the story with the several wiles which are put in practice by the tempter, and the gradual and regular progress to the catastrophe, are so very obvious, that it would be superfluous to point out their respective beauties.—{Ad.) I. e. Set as a border. The hanks were bordered with the flowers. "The hand of Eve;" the handiwork of Eve, as we say of a picture that it is the hand of such or such a master; and thus Virgil, Æn. i. 455:— "Artificumque manvs inter so operumque labores As Milton is comparing this particular spot to the garden of Alcinous, he uses "imbordercd" as illustrating a word of similar meaning in Homer's charming description of that celebrated garden, Odyss. vii. 127: Ενθα δε κοσμηται προσιαι παρα νειατον ορχου 5 The numerous disputes about this passage, and its defence, may be thus summon Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son; 2 Or that, not mystic,' where the sapient king 466 Of guile of hate—of envy—of revenge! 3 up. Although the gardens of Adonis, xnce Advedos, may have been nothing else (as Dr. Bentley says) than portable earthern pots filled with lettuce or fennel, and used at the yearly festival of Adonis, because Venus once laid him on a lettuce bed; still the reason why these little gardens were carried about in honour of him was, that the Greeks had a tradition (as Pearce shows) that when alive, he bad a magnificent garden in which he delighted. Pliny mentions the gardens of Alcinous and Adonis together, as Milton does (b. xix. c. 4): "Antiquity has admired nothing more than the gardens of the Hesperides, and of kings Adonis and Alcinous." So that this was sufficient ground for the poet to refer to them. But he had high poetic authority as well. Marino, in his L'Adone (c. 6), Spenser in his Fairy Queen (III. 6), and Shakspcare (K. H. VI. act i. sc. 6), refer to them in terms of high encomium. Besides all this, Milton fortifies himself against all cavil by calling these gardens "feigned." The gardens of Alcinous, king of Phnacia (now Corfu), who entertained Ulysses, are celebrated in the Seventh Book of the Odyssey. 1 Or the gardens of Solomon, which were not imaginary but real, where he was wont to enjoy himself with his beautiful wife, daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. See the book of Canticles; and also the description of them in Cotovicus of Utrecht, in his Iti— nerarium Hierosolymatanum.—(N., T.) * Grass just mowed, and spread for drying.—(K.) * See Fairy Queen, II. vi. 24.—(TA.) Compare this scene with that between the Saracen king Aladin, and the Italian virgin Sophronia, in the second canto of Tasso's Jerusalem, in which, however, the Engiishman far surpasses the Italian.—(Th.) "Et noslro same doluiiti dolore." These repetitions are common in the best poets. —(N.) 500 But the hot hell that always in him burns, 66 "Thoughts, whither have ye led me! with what sweet "What hither brought us! hate, not love; nor hope 3 Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head 1 /. «. Even were he in the midst of heaven; or it may refer to Job. ii. l: "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord : and Satan also came among them to present himself." So Satan speaks, Par. Reg. i. 366.— -"nor from Ihe heaven of heavens Hath be excluded my resort sometimes."—(N.) * Notched, going in and out, like the teeth of a saw. So Shakspcare, As You Like It. act iv. so. 3: "And with indented glides did slip away."—(N.) As the dragon, or serpent, is described by Orpheus, de Lap. Arg. 44.— rv«/j» Tw suxuz/ w; recvo igv pxxi , «ur« sir' Vt<,t A// ,-, Hilton has not only imitated Ovid, Met. iii. 32, in this description, but has With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect 1 At first, as one who sought access, but fear'd 512 To interrupt, side-long he works his way. ransacked all the good poets who ever made a remarkable description of a serpent. "Carbuncle his eyes." So Shakspearc in Hamlet's speech to the players :- "With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks."—(Steevens*) "Carbuncle." A jewel resembling in its colour a burning coal. • Satan here is compared and preferred to the most memorable of those serpents into which persons were transformed. Cadmus, together with his wife Hermione, or Harmonia, leaving Thebes in Boeotia, which he had founded, and for divers misfortunes quilted, went to Illyria, and were there turned into serpents for having slain one sacred to Mars. (See Ov. Met. iv. 562, etc.) Esculapius, the god of physic, who was worshipped at Epidaurus, having been supplicated by a deputation from Rome to allay a pestilence raging there, was said to have gone to Home for the purpose in the form of a serpent. See Livy, b. xi.j Ov. Met. xv. Jupiter Ammon was said to have had intercourse in the form of a serpent with Olympias, and thus to have begotten Alexander the Great. In like manner Jupiter Capitolinus was said to have begotten Scipio Africanus, who raised his country to the highest pitch of glory.—(N.) The critics hove observed a difficulty in the construction of the word "changed" here. Pearce says it may be excused as a poetic liberty of expression, much the same as critics have observed in Ovid, Met. i.:— "Fonnas ir.atas in nova corpora ;" /. e. corpora mutala in novas formas. So Horace, ii. Sat. 8:— -"aceto Quod Hetbymnæam vilio mutaverat uvam;" i. e. in quod vitio mutala est uva Methymnæa. Newton thinks the meaning is, that the serpents changed only the form of Cadmus and Hermione, for they still retained their sense and memory; just as £sculapius was still a god, though so disguised (Ovid states these facts, Met. iv. and xv.}, so was Satan Satan still. The alleged difficulty of the word "changed" will be removed, say Dunster and Todd, by placing a comma after it, and considering it as a neuter verb, in its usual signification of underwent a change or transformation. "The height of Rome," Pearce observes, is an expression of the same nature with Ovid's "Summa dueum Atrides." Amor. i. El. ix. 37. Agamemnon, the sum of chiefs. Todd quotes as parallel, "those the top of eloquence," far. Reg. iv. 353; and Shakspearc, Meas. for Meas. act ii. sc. 2 : --"how should you be, If he, which is the lop of judgment, should But judge you as you are." There is a passage in Lucian's Timon, when the flatterer calls him a wα Tuv AfrVxcuv which I think is most analogous. As when a ship,1 by skilful steersman wrought His fraudulent temptation thus began: "Wonder not, sov'reign mistress (if perhaps "Thou canst, who art sole wonder) much less arm 534 Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain, 66 1 Todd quotes a beautiful passage from Apollonius Hhodius, in whose works Milton manifestly delighted, where the progress of the ship Argo is compared to the motion and workings of a serpent; (and Milton particularly mentions this ship, ii. 1017;) Argon It. 1541. Meen says the simile may be traced to Nicander, (Ther. 266,) where the oblique movements of a particular species of serpent are compared to those of a ship rolling from side to side, as sudden gusts impel it, and marking by its keel the sinuosity of its track. The passages are these : Ως δε δράκων σκολιην ειλιγμενος ερχεται οιμον Αυταρ ογε σκαιος μέσατῳ επαλινδεται ολκῳ Εις ανεμον βεβιηται αποκρουστος λιθος ουρῳ.-(Nicander.) * Alluding to the men turned into beasts by the sorceress Circe, and fawning before her. Ov. Met. liT. 45:— -"per qne ferarum Agmen adulantum media procedlt ab aula."-(H.) a All the commentators agree in extolling this description of the serpent, and the masterly adulation by which Eve is thrown off her guard; and the ability with which Milton removes the common objections to the Mosaic history of the temptation. Millon, without giving his own opinion, states in general the disputed question whether the devil moved the serpent's tongue, and used that instrument to make the speech; or formed a voiee by impression of the sounding air distant from the serpent. —(H.) |