Acknowledge him thy greater; found his praise 174 Ver. 172. Acknowledge him thy greater;] It is not an improbable reading which Dr. Bentley propofes," Acknowledge him Creator," or as Mr. Thyer, " Acknowledge thy Creator:" but I fuppofe the author made use of greater answering to great. 66 "Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and foul, "Hunc So Ovid calls the fun the eye of the world, "Mundi oculus," Met. iv. 228. And Pliny the foul, Nat. Hift. Lib. i. C. 6. mundi effe totius animum." And the expreffion thy greater may be fitly paralleled with thy fierceft, B. iv. 927, and his greater in Paradife Regained, B. i. 279. NEWTON. Ver. 173. In thy eternal courfe,] In thy continual course. Thus Virgil calls the fun, moon, and stars eternal fires, Æn, ii.154. "Vos, æterni ignes;" and the facred fire that was constantly kept burning eternal fire, En. ii. 297. Eternumque adytis effert penetralibus ignem." NEWTON. Ver. 175. Moon, that now meet'ft the orient fun, now fly'ft, &c.] The conftruction is, "Thou Moon, that now meet'ft and now fly'ft the orient fun, together with the fix'd Stars, and ye five other wandering Fires, &c." He had before called upon the fun who governs the day, and now he invokes the moon, and the fix'd fars, and the planets, who govern the night, to praise their Maker. The moon fometimes meets and fometimes flies the fun, approaches to and recedes from him in her monthly courfe. With the fix'd Stars, fix'd in their orb that flies; they are fixed in their orb, but their orb flies, that is, moves round with the utmost rapidity; for Adam is made to speak according to appearances, and he mentions in another place, B. viii. 19 and 21, their rolling Spaces incomprehenfible, and their swift return diurnal. And ye five other wandering Fires. Dr. Bentley reads four; Venus, and the Sun, and Moon, being mentioned before, and only four more With the fix'd Stars, fix'd in their orb that flies; up light. 180 remaining, Mercury, and Mars, and Jupiter, and Saturn. And we muft either fuppofe that Milton did not confider the morning ftar as the planet Venus; or he must be fuppofed to include the earth, to make up the other five befides thofe he had mentioned; and he calls it elsewhere, B. viii. 129, The planet earth; though this be not agreeable to the fyftem, according to which he is fpeaking at prefent. Wandering Fires in oppofition to fix'd Stars. That move in myftick dance not without fong, alluding to the doctrine of the ancients, and particularly to Pythagoras's notion of the mufick of the fpheres. NEWTON. Doctor Newton fays, that wandering fires is given in oppofition to fixed fars; but it is, in fact, Milton's habitual mode of anglicifing fuch words as planet, by tranflating was in its primary fenfe. They were alfo ftyled by the Romans errores and ftella erratica, and Macrobius fpeaks of the " ftellas quinque quibus ab errore nomen eft." But compare here alfo Sylvester, Du Bart. Week 1, Pt. 7. "Seeft thou thofe ftars we wrongly wand'ring call, "While diverfe ways they dance, &c." DUNSTER. Ver. 181. that in quaternion run &c.] That. in a fourfold mixture and combination run a perpetual circle, one element continually changing into another, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus, borrowed from Orpheus. "Et cum quatuor fint genera corporum, viciffitudine eorum mundi continuata natura eft. Nam ex terra, aqua: ex aqua, oritur aer: ex aere, æther: deinde retrorfum viciffin ex æthere, aer: inde aqua: ex aqua, terra infima. Sic naturis his, ex quibus omnia conftant, furfus, deorfus, ultro, citro commeantibus, mundi partium conjunctio continetur." Cicero de Nat. Deor. ii. 33. NEWTON, 185 And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change With every plant, in fign of worship wave. 195 Ver. 193. and, wave your tops, ye Pines,] The Mountains, crowned with trees, bow their heads in fign of worfhip, in Marino's Strage de gli Innocenti, Lib. ii. Aud Pope has expreffed the fame reverence, in his Meffiah, where he describes the approaching Deity: "With heads declin'd, ye Cedars, homage pay." See also Spenfer, Faer. Qu. vii. vii. 8. "Moft dainty trees, that, shooting up anon, Ver. 195. Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,] So it an Ode of Ben Jonfon's to Joh. Afhmore, in Certaine selected Odes of Horace, 4to. 1621, p. 23. "Or circling ftreames that warble, paffing by." Milton ufes the fame elegant phrafe, B. iii. 31. TODD.. VOL. III. That finging up to Heaven-gate ascend, 200 Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise. Ver. 198. That finging up to Heaven-gate afcend,] The fame hyperbole, Dr. Newton remarks, as in Shakspeare's Cymbeline: · "Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's-gate fings:" Which is repeated in his xxix. Sonnet. Mr. Reed is of opinion, that Shakspeare had in his mind Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe; for it is there faid of the lark, "Now at heaven's gates the claps her wings." A paffage may be added from P. Fletcher's Purp. Island, 1633, C. ix. ft. 2. "The cheerfull lark, mounting from early bed, "With fweet falutes awakes the drowfie light; "The earth the left, and up to heaven is fled; “There chants her Maker's praises out of fight." So Milton, "Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise." I find this fentiment alfo expreffed in An Entertainment of Solitarineje, by Sir Richard Tempeft, 12mo. 1649, p. 24. "There can in no place be wanting groves, rivers, finging of birds:—the mufick of the birds without, are all God's creatures, which, as it were, in jo many diverfified notes, doe fweetly fing their Maker's prayfe." TODD. Ver. 202. Witness if I be filent,] Dr. Bentley thinks that Milton had forgotten that both Adam and Eve fhared in this hymn, and therefore he reads "If we be filent," and in the next verse but one "by our fong:" But Milton rather imitates here the ancient chorus, where fometimes the plural, and sometimes the fingular number is ufed. The fame is practised by our poet in the fpeeches of the chorus in Samfon Agonistes, where the reader will fee in every page almost that the number is thus varied. Dr. Bentley obferves that the whole hymn naturally di 205 To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade, vides itself into parts interlocutory, and that he has prefumed to put it fo, though not warranted by any edition. But this is not Dr. Bentley's invention; for this hymn was fet to mufick fome years ago, and in that compofition the feveral parts of it were af figned diftinctly to Adam and Eve. I think that fuch interlocutory parts are by no means fit for an heroick poem. PEARCE. Ver. 205. be bounteous ftill To give us only good;] He had his thought, as Dr. Bentley remarks, on that celebrated prayer in Plato, Ζεῦ βασιλεῦ τὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ καὶ εὐχομένοις καὶ ἀνεύκλοις "O Jupiter, give us good things, whether we pray for them or not, and remove from us all evil things, even though we pray for them." And we learn from the first book of Xenophon's memoirs of his mafter Socrates, that Socrates was wont to pray to the Gods only to give good things, as they knew best what things were fo. Εὔχετο δὲ πρὸς τῆς θεὺς ἁπλῶς τ ̓ ἀγαθὰ διδόναι, ὡς τὸς θεὸς κάλλισα ἐιδότας ὁποῖα ἀγαθά ίσι. And to the fame purpofe there is an excellent collect in our Liturgy, for the eighth Sunday after Trinity. "We humbly befeech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us thofe things which be profitable for us." NEWTON. Ver. 209. So pray'd they innocent, and to their thoughts Firm peace recover'd foon, and wonted calm. On to their morning's rural work they hafte, &c.] These verses are thus pointed in the best, that is, in Milton's own, |