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And let fowl fly above the Earth, with wings Display'd on the open firmament of Heaven. 390 And God created the great whales, and each Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously The waters generated by their kinds;

And every bird of wing after his kind;

And faw that it was good, and bless'd them, faying,

Be fruitful, multiply, and in the feas,

395

And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill; And let the fowl be multiplied, on the Earth. Forthwith the founds and feas, each creek and bay,

With fry innumerable swarm, and fhoals

400

of fish that with their fins, and fhining scales, Glide under the green wave, in fculls that oft

wide fea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beafs." TODD.

Ver. 391.

whales,] Milton most likely ufes the word whales for all forts of great fish, in imitation of the ancients, Pliny, Ariftotle, and Strabo; which removes Dr. Bentley's objection as to the mention afterwards made of the Levia than. STILLINGFLEET.

Ver. 402.

in fculls] Hume derives the word fcull from the Saxon Sceole, an affembly: And, in Barret's Alvcarie, 1580, it is rendered "examen vel agmen piscium." Dr. Newton remarks, that "thoals in fculls" feems an odd expreffion, and propofes to read "fhoals and fculls." However, Sculls and Jhoals, according to Mr. Ritfon in his note on Troilus and Creffida, Shakspeare, edit. 1793, vol. xi. 436, have not only one and the fame meaning, but are actually, or at leaft originally, one and the fame word; a scull of herrings on the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk being elsewhere called a foal. TODD.

Bank the mid fea: part fingle, or with mate, Graze the fea-weed their pasture, and through

groves

404

Of coral stray; or, fporting with quick glance,
Show to the fun their way'd coats dropt with gold;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend

Moist nutriment; or under rocks their food
In jointed armour watch: on smooth the feal 409

Ver. 404.

and through grotes

Of coral ftray;] Coral is a production of the sea, and is commonly ranked among the number of marine plants. The learned Kircher fuppofes entire forefts of it. to grow at the bottom of the fea, which may juftify Milton's expreffion, groves of coral. NEWTON.

Ver. 409. In jointed armour] The reader cannot but be pleased with the beauty of this metaphor. The fhells of lobsters, &c. and armour, very much resemble one another: And, in the Civil Wars, there was a regiment of horse so completely armed, that they were called Sir Arthur Haflerig's lobsters. Poffibly Milton might be thinking of them at this very time. NEWTON.

I think it will be evident, that Sir Arthur's lobsters could not claim the honour of fuggefting, in any degree, this image to the poet, when it is shown that the resemblance noted had been long before used. Thus, in Bright's Treatife of Melancholie, 1586, p. 28. "Such fea-fish as carie no armor of fhels, are either those that haunt the rocks, or other parts of the fea." So also, in Randolph's Mufes Looking Glasse, 1640, A. iv. S. i.

"She [Nature] spotted the ermin's skin, and arm'd the fish "In filver mail.”

Pope has availed himfelf of Milton's expreffion, jointed armour, Iliad xxiii. 949. TODD.

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And bended dolphins play:] The feal or fea-calf, and the dolphin, are obferved to sport on smooth seas in calm weather. The dolphin is called bended, not that he really is so more than

And bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempeft the ocean: there leviathan, Hugeft of living creatures, on the deep Stretch'd like a promontory fleeps or swims, And seems a moving land; and at his gills 415 Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.`. any other fish, but only appears crooked, as he forms an arch by leaping out of the water and inftantly dropping into it again with his head foremoft. Ovid therefore defcribes him "tergo delphina recurvo," Faft. ii. 113; and his fportive nature is alluded to by Virgil, Æn. v. 595. NEWTON.

Ver. 412. Tempeft the ocean:] Milton has here, with very great art and propriety, adapted the Italian verb tempeftare. He could not poffibly have expreffed this idea in mere English, without fome kind of circumlocution, which would have weakened and enervated that energy of expreffion which this part of his defcription required. Befides, no word could be more proper in the beginning of the verfe, to make it labour like the troubled ocean, which he is painting out. THYER.

He might adapt the Italian verb; but our own language was in poffeffion of it. See Sandys's Travels, 1615, p. 207.

"Blind night in darkneffe tempefts."—

Pope, with his eye on Milton, defcribes "the huge dolphin tempeting the main," Iliad xxi. 30. TODD.

Ibid. leviathan,] Here perhaps intended for the whale, not without an allufion to Pfalm civ. 26, and to Sylvefter, as Mr. Dunfter alfo remarks, Du Bart. 1621, p. 205, "the drad leviathan

"Turns upfide downe the boyling ocean."

In a preceding page, Sylvefter, fpeaking of the combats of feamonsters, gives this fimile, p. 93.

"Mefeems fomé tempeft all the feas doth tofs." TODD. and at his trunk Spouts out, a sea.] Ovid,

Ver. 416.

Met. iii. 686.

"et acceptum patulis mare naribus efflant." NEWTON:

Mean while the tepid caves, and fens, and fhores, Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg that foon

Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclos'd 419 Their callow young; but feather'd foon and fledge They fumm'd their pens; and, foaring the air sublime,

With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud

See alfo Sylvefter, Du Bart. 1621, p. 110.

"huge whales

"Or whatfoever other monster haunts

"In ftormlefs feas, raising a storm about,

"While in the fea another fea they spout." DUNSTER.

Ver. 420. fledge] So, in B. iii. 627. "His fhoulders fledge with wings." Dr. Newton thinks, that the poet preferred fledge to fledged, as being of a fofter found. It feems however to have been the ufual way of writing the adjective rather than the participle. Thus, in Milton's own edition of his Colafterion: "Newly-fledge probationers." And in Browne's Brit. Paft. B. i. S. iv. "Wrens but newly fledge."

TODD.

Ver. 421. They fumm'd their pens;] Pens from penna, a feather. Summ'd is a term in falconry; a hawk is faid to be full fummed, when his feathers are grown to their full ftrength. So, in Par. Reg. B. i. 14.

"With profperous wing full fumm'd." RICHARDSON. Ver. 422.

under a cloud *

In profpect;] That is, the birds were fo many that the ground from which they rofe, would have appeared to be under a cloud, if any one had feen it at a distance: In this fenfe we have "how it [the world] how'd in profpect from his throne," N. 555. PEARCE.

Under a cloud; the ground, being fhaded by the multitude of birds, feemed as when a cloud paffes over it. RICHARDSON. The fenfe is, "they foared fo high as to be just beneath the clouds."

In profpect; there the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build: 424
Part loosely wing the region, part more wife
In common, rang'd in figure, wedge their way,

Thus Theocritus, Idyll. xvii. Ὑπαὶ νεφέων υψόθεν ἔκλαγε αιετός. Ιπ prospect means not only actually feen, but to be feen. Thus we fay there is a fine prospect from such a place; whether any body be there or not. Befides, I may add that the whole description of the animals fuppofes fome spectator as much as this line.

STILLINGFLEET.

Ver. 424. On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build:] These birds build their eyries, that is, their nefts, in fuch high places. In Job, it is faid particularly of the eagle, "Doth the cagle mount up at thy command, and make her neft on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place," xxxix. 27, 28. And Pliny fays of them, "Nidificant in petris et arboribus." Lib. x. fect. 4. NEWTON. Ver. 426.

rang'd in figure, Intelligent of feafons,]

wedge their way, Jerem, viii. 7. "Yea the ftork in the Heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, obferve the time of their coming, &c." So very intelligent are they of feufons. See also Spectacle de la Nature, Dialogue xi. "As to wild ducks and cranes, both the one and the other, at the approach of winter, fly in queft of more favourable climates. They all affemble at a certain day, like fwallows and quails. They decamp at the fame time, and it is very agreeable to obferve their flight. They generally range themselves in a long column like an I, or in two lines united in a point like a V reverfed." And fo, as Milton fays,

- "rang'd in figure wedge their way."

"The duck or quail, who forms the point, cut the air, and facilitates a paffage to thofe who follow; but he is charged with this commiffion only for a certain time, at the conclufion of which he wheels into the rear, and another takes his poft." And thus, as Milton adds,

"with mutual wing "Eafing their flight." NEWTON,

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