Thou Spi'rit who ledd'st this glorious eremite Into the desert, his victorious field, Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence 10 As thou art wont, my prompted song else mute, was only fifteen, Milton has His chosen people he did bless Perhaps he borrowed the expres- is eremita, which the French, and we after them, contract into hermite, hermit. 11. -inspire, As thou art wont, my prompted song else mute.] See the very fine opening of the Far hence (quoth he) in wasteful wil ninth book of the Paradise Lost, derness His dwelling is But in this place he had evidently Isaiah li. 3. in his recollection. "The Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Dunster. 8. Thou Spirit who ledd'st this glorious eremite] The invocation is properly addressed to the Holy Spirit, not only as the inspirer of every good work, but as the leader of our Saviour upon this occasion into the wilderness. For it is said, Matt. iv. 1. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. And from the Greek original gnus the desert, and tenTs an inhabitant of the desert, is rightly formed the word eremite, which was used before by Milton in his Paradise Lost, iii. 474. and by Fairfax in his translation of Tasso, cant. xi. st. 4. and in Italian as well as in Latin there Above heroic, though in secret done, Now had the great Proclaimer, with a voice 16. And unrecorded left through many an age, Worthy have not remain'd so i long unsung.] Milton had before noticed Vida's Christiad, and had specified the temptations of Christ as making a material part of the subject. Vida was a native of Cremona; of which he was also elected bishop. His godlike acts, and his temptations fierce, And foriner sufferings otherwhere are found; Loud o'er the rest Cremona's trump doth sound. Ode on the Passion, st. 4. Temptations indeed here only mean trials; but of these the temptation in the wilderness made a part. Vida's description of this however is very short. Dunster. 15 20 More awful than the sound of Lift up thy voice like a trumpet, To all baptiz'd:] I conceive the construction to be not that he cried to all baptized repentance, &c. but heaven's kingdom nigh at hand to all baptized. Heaven's kingdom was nigh at hand to all such as were baptized with John's baptism; they were thereby disposed and prepared for the reception of the Gospel. 19. In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is nigh at hand. Matt. iii. 1, 2. Dunster. 21.-to his great baptism flock'd With awe the regions round,] Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan. Matt. iii. 5. Dunster. To the flood Jordan, came as then obscure, 24. To the flood Jordan, came as then obscure,] In Mr. Fenton's and most other editions it is pointed thus, To the flood Jordan came, as then obscure, punc but we have followed the tuation of Milton's own edition; for there is very little force in the repetition, and with them came, to the flood Jordan came; but to say that he came with them to the flood Jordan, and came as then obscure, is very good sense, and worthy of the repetition. 25. —but him the Baptist soon Descried, divinely warn'd,] John the Baptist had notice given him before, that he might certainly know the Messiah by the Holy Ghost descending and abiding upon him. And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. John i. 33. But it appears from St. Matthew, that the Baptist knew hin and acknowledged him, before he was baptized, and before 25 330 the Holy Ghost descended upon him. Matt. iii. 14. I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? To account for which we must admit with Milton, that another divine revelation was made to him at this very time, signifying that this was the person, of whom he had had such notice before. 26.-divinely warn'd] To comprehend the propriety of this word divinely the reader must have his heaven, since the word divinely eye upon the Latin divinitus, from in our language scarce ever comes up to this meaning. Milton uses it in much the same sense in Paradise Lost, viii. 500. She heard me thus, and though divinely brought. Thyer. 33.the Adversary,] Satan, in Hebrew, signifies the Adversary. Hence Par. Lost, i. 81. -to whom the arch-enemy, And thence in heaven call'd Satan. Dunster. About the world, at that assembly fam'd answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. Job i. 7. Compare 1 Pet. v. 8. Dunster. 41. Within thick clouds &c.] Milton in making Satan's residence to be in mid air, within thick clouds and dark, seems to have St. Austin in his eye, who speaking of the region of clouds, storms, thunder, &c. says, ad ista caliginosa, id est, ad hunc aerem, tanquam ad carcerem, damnatus est diabolus &c. Enarr. in Ps. cxlviii. s. 9. tom. v. p. 1677. Edit. Bened. Thyer. But Milton, in his Par. Lost, places the Deity also "amidst thick clouds and dark." 35 40 in imitation of Virgil, Æn. iii. 677. Cernimus astantes nequicquam lumine torvo Etneos fratres, cœlo capita alta ferentes, Concilium horrendum. By the word consistory I suppose Protinus acciri diros ad regia fratres Che sia comanda il popol suo raccolto Thyer. Forth rush'd in haste the great con- Dunster. O ancient powers of air and this wide world, For much more willingly I mention air, 44. O ancient pow'rs of air and this wide world,] So the Devil is called in Scripture, the prince of the power of the air, Eph. ii. 2. and evil spirits the rulers of the darkness of this world, Eph. vi. 12. Satan here summons a council, and opens it as he did in the Paradise Lost: but here is not that copiousness and variety which is in the other; here are not different speeches and sentiments adapted to the different characters; it is a council without a debate; Satan is the only speaker. And the author, as if conscious of this defect, has artfully endeavoured to obviate the objection by saying, that their danger -admits no long debate, But must with something sudden be oppos'd: and afterwards -no time was then For long indulgence to their fears or grief. The true reason is, he found it impossible to exceed or equal the speeches in his former council, and therefore has assigned the best reason he could for not making any in this. 44. The object of this council, it should be recollected, is not to debate, but merely for Satan to communicate to his compeers his apprehensions of their approaching danger, and to receive from them a sort of commission to act, in prevention of it, as circumstances might require, and as he should judge best. This gives the poet an opportunity of 45 laying open the motives and general designs of the great antagonist of his hero. A council, with a debate of equal length to that in the second book of the Par. Lost, would have been totally disproportionate to this brief epic; which, from the nature of its subject, already perhaps abounds too much in speeches. In the second book of this poem, where this infernal council is again assembled, a debate is introduced, which, though short, is very beautiful. Dunster. 44. O ancient powers of air, and this wide world, (For much more willingly I mention air, This our old conquest, than remember hell, Our hated habitation,) well ye know, &c.] This passage is an eminently striking instance of the fine effect of a parenthesis, when introduced into a speech, and containing, as Lord Monboddo says, "matter of weight and pathos." "The ancients," observes the same writer, 66 were fond of the parenthesis; and particularly Demosthenes. Milton in this as in other things followed their taste and judgment, thinking he could not vary his composition sufficiently, nor sometimes convey the sense so forcibly as he could wish, without the use of this figure." (See the Origin and Progress of Language, part ii. b. iv. 6. and the Dissertation on the Composition of the Ancients.) Dunster. |