With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, 995 1000 Confufion worfe confounded; and Heaven-gates Ver. 1001. through your inteftine broils] All the editions read, " through our inteftine broils." But it appears from the following verfes, that the encroachments which Chaos means, were the creation of Hell firft, and then of the new world: the creation of both which was the effect not of any broils in the realm of Chaos, but of the broils in Heaven between God and Satan, the good Angels and the bad, called inteftine war, and broils, in B. vi. 259, 277. We must remember alfo that it is Satan to whom Chaos here speaks; and therefore we may fuppofe, that Milton gave it, "through your inteftine broils." In the first editions there is no comma after broils: and there fhould be none, because broils is the fubftantive with which the participle weakening agrees: It was their broils which weakened Night's fcepter, becaufe the confequences of them leffened her kingdom. PEARCE. This change of our into your is so just and neceflary, that we thought it beft to admit it into the text. NEWTOR. Ver. 1005. link'd in a golden chair] There is mention made in Homer of Jupiter's golden chain, by which he can draw up the Gods, and the earth, and fea, and the whole univerfe; but they cannot draw him down. See the paffage If that way be walk, you your walk, have not far; So much the nearer danger; go, and speed! He ceas'd; and Satan ftaid not to reply, 1010 But, glad that now his fea fhould find a fhore, With fresh alacrity, and force renew'd, Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, at large in the beginning of the eighth book of the Iliad. It is moft probably and ingenioufly conjectured, that by this golden chain may be understood the fuperiour attractive force of the fun, whereby he continues unmoved, and draws all the reft of the planets toward him. But whatever is meant by it, it is certain that our poet took from hence the thought of hanging the world by a golden chain. NEWTON. A fimilar thought is noticed in Stafford's Niobe or his age of teares. 12mo, 1611. p. 24. "I will onèlie heere infert one or two things remarqueable in the Turkish Phyfiques: They hold, that the ftars hang by golden chaines, &c." TODD. Ver. 1009. Havock, and Spoil, and ruin, are my gain.] This is very agreeable to the character of Chaos by Lucan, Pharsal. vi. 696. "Et Chaos innumeros avidum confundere mundos.". NEWTON. Ver. 1013. Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,] To take in the full meaning of this magnificent fimilitude, we must imagine ourselves in Chaos, and a vaft luminous body rifing upward, near the place where we are, so swiftly as to appear a continued track of light, and leffening to the view according to the encrease of distance, till it end in a point, and then disappear; and all this must be fuppofed to ftrike our eye at one inftant. BEATTIE. Drayton, in his David and Goliah, 1630, affimilates the Philiftian champion to a pyramid on fire, because the fun fhone on his armour!" He look't like to a piramid on fire!" But compare Nabbes's Spring's Glory, a Mask, published in 1638: 1015 Into the wild expanfe; and, through the fhock "High Spirits strive to know "More than a common eye fees; and afpire Ver. 1017. than when Argo pass'd &c.] The first long ship ever feen in Greece, in which Jason and his companions failed to Colchis, to fetch the golden fleece. Through Bofporus, the ftraits of Conftantinople, or the channel of the Black Sea. It is fometimes written Bofphorus; but Milton, more exact and accurate, writes it Bofporus, according to the best Greek authors, from Bus ópos, bovis tranfitus, the fea being for narrow there, that cattle are said to have fwum across it. Betwixt the juftling rocks, two rocks at the entrance into the Black Sea, called in Greek Symplegades, and by Juvenal, Sat. xv. 19. "concurrentia faxa;" which Milton very well tranflates the justling rocks, because they were fo near, that at a diftance they feemed to open and shut again, and juftle one another, as the fhip varied its courfe this way and that as ufual. See Plin. Nat. Hift. lib. iv. cap. xiii; and Apoll. Rhodius, Argonaut. ii. 317, &c. In short, Satan's voyage through the fighting elements, was more difficult and dangerous than that of the Argonauts through narrow feas betwixt justling rocks. NEWTON. Ver. 1019. Or when Ulyffes on the larboard fhunn'd Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool fleer'd.] These two verfes Dr. Bentley would throw quite away. Larboard (fays he) is abominable in heroick poetry: but Dryden (as the Doctor owns) thought it not unfit to be employed there: and Milton in other places has ufed nautical terms, without being cenfured for it by the Doctor. So, in B. ix. 513, he speaks of So he with difficulty and labour hard working a ship, of veering and shifting; and in B. i. 207. of mooring under the lee. So Virgil's legere littus is observed to be a term borrowed from mariners, by Servius in his notes on Georg. ii. 44, and En. iii. 127. But the Doctor has two very formidable objections against the fenfe of thefe verfes. Firft he says, that larboard or left hand is a mistake here for starboard or right hand, Charybdis being to the ftarboard of Ulyffes, when he failed through thefe ftraits. This is very true, but it does not affect what Milton here fays; for the fenfe may be, not that Ulyffes fhunned Charybdis fituated on the larboard of his ship as he was failing; but that Ulyffes, failing on the larboard, (to the left hand where Scylla was) did thereby thun Charybdis; which was the truth of the cafe. The Doctor's other objection is, that Scylla was no whirlpool, which yet she is here supposed to have been; but Virgil (whom Milton follows oftener than he does Homer) defcribes Scylla as naves in faxa trahentem, Æn. iii. 425, and what is that lefs than calling it a whirlpool? And Athan. Kircher, who has written a particular account of Scylla and Charybdis upon his own view of them, does not fcruple to call them both whirlpools. The truth is, that Scylla is a rock fituated in a small bay on the Italian coaft, into which bay the tide runs with a very strong current, fo as to draw in the fhips which are within the compafs of its force, and either dafh them against the rock, or fwallow them in the eddies: for when the ftreams have thus violently rushed into the bay, they meet with the rock Scylla at the farther end, and, being beat back, muft therefore form an eddy or whirlpool. This account is gathered partly from Sandys's Travels, and partly from Hiftoria orbis terræ, &c. Vide Hoffman. Lexicon. PEARCE. Tamely endur'd a bridge of wonderous length, 1031 Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven Shoots far into the bofom of dim night 1036 Ver. 1028. Tamely endur'd a bridge] Dr. Newton hero agrees with Dr. Bentley, in cenfuring this introduction of the infernal bridge; because it is described in the tenth book for feveral lines together as a thing untouched before, and an incident to surprise the reader: And therefore the poet should not have anticipated it here. Milton is faid to have apparently copied this bridge, not, as Dr. Warton has conjectured, from the Perfian poet Sadi, but from the Arabian fiction of the bridge called in Arabick al Sirat; which is reprefented to extend over the infernal gulph, and to be narrower than a fpider's web, and fharper than the edge of a fword. Pocock in Port. Mof. p. 282. See Annotations on Hift. of Caliph Vathek, 1786, p. 314. However, in Sylvefter's Du Bart. 1621. p. 207, the Furies, leaving Hell, are defcribed “ rowling their fteely cars over the Stygian bridge." Compare alfo R. Nicols, in the Mir. for Magiftrates, 1610, p. 814. "And vp from darkfome Lymboes difmall ftage, "Came Night's black brood, Diforder, Ruine, Rage, &c." TODD. Ver. 1033. God, and good Angels,] So, in Shakspeare, Rich. 111. "God, and good Angels, fight on Richmond's fide." And in Herrick's Noble Numbers, 1647, p. 74. "God, and good Angels guide thee." TODD. |