For given to me, I give to whom I please, No trifle; yet with this reserve, not else, On this condition,1 if thou wilt fall down, And worship me as thy superior lord, Easily done, and hold them all of me; For what can less so great a gift deserve?"
Whom thus our Saviour answered with disdain : "I never liked thy talk, thy offers less,
Now both abhor, since thou hast dared to utter The abominable terms, impious condition; But I endure the time, till which expired, Thou hast permission on me. It is written
The first of all commandments, Thou shalt worship The Lord thy God, and only him shalt serve;' And dar'st thou to the Son of God propound To worship thee, accursed, now more accursed For this attempt bolder than that on Eve, And more blasphemous? which expect to rue. The kingdoms of the world to thee were given, Permitted rather, and by thee usurped; Other donation none thou canst produce: If given, by whom but by the King of Kings, God over all supreme? If given to thee, By thee how fairly is the giver now Repaid? But gratitude in thee is lost
Long since. Wert thou so void of fear or shame, As offer them to me, the Son of God,
To me my own on such abhorréd pact,2 That I fall down and worship thee as God? Get thee behind me; plain thou now appear'st That evil one, Satan for ever damned."
To whom the fiend with fear abashed replied: "Be not so sore offended, Son of God,
Though sons of God both angels are and men, If I to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear'st that title, have proposed
1 "In my opinion," says Bishop Newton (and with good reason), "there is not anything in the disposition and conduct of the whole poem so justly liable to censure as the awkward and preposterous introduction of this incident in this place. The tempter should have proposed the condition at the same time that he offered the gifts, as he does likewise in Scripture; but, after his gifts had been absolutely refused, to what purpose was it to propose the 'impious condition." 2 Treaty, agreement.
What both from men and angels I receive, Tetrarchs of fire, air, flood, and on the earth Nations besides from all the quartered winds, God of this world invoked and world beneath; Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold To me so fatal, me it most concerns. The trial hath endamaged thee no way, Rather more honour left and more esteem; Me nought advantaged, missing what I aimed. Therefore let pass, as they are transitory, The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not. And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined Than to a worldy crown, addicted more To contemplation and profound dispute, As by that early action may be judged, When slipping from thy mother's eye thou went'st Alone into the temple, there wast found Among the gravest rabbis disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses' chair, Teaching, not taught; the childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world In knowledge, all things in it comprehend: All knowledge is not couched in Moses' law, The Pentateuch, or what the prophets wrote: The Gentiles also know, and write and teach To admiration, led by nature's light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse, Ruling them by persuasion as thou mean'st; Without their learning how wilt thou with them, Or they with thee, hold conversation meet? How wilt thou reason with them, how refute Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes? Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more ere we leave this specular mount1 Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold Where on the Ægean shore a city stands Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil; Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts And eloquence, native to famous wits
1 Like "mount of speculation" in Par. Lost, xii. 588.
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades; See there the olive grove of Academe,1 Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird2 Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream: within the walls then view The schools of ancient sages; his who bred Great Alexander to subdue the world, Lyceum there, and painted Stoa1 next: There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power Of harmony in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse; Eolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung, Blind Melesigenes,5 thence Homer called, Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own. Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received In brief sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate and chance, and change in human life; High actions and high passions best describing. Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.
To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
1 A favourite resort for the students and philosophers of Athens, taking its name from an ancient hero. Cf. Aristoph. Ran. iii. 3; Hor. Ep. ii 2, 45.
2 The nightingale, into which Philomela, the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens, is fabled to have been changed. Cf. Mart. Epigr.
3 The school of Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic philosophy. 4 The school of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy.
5 According to the life of Homer, falsely attributed to Herodotus, this was Homer's original name. See my introduction to Pope's Homer, in the National Illustrated Library edition.
6 As Pericles and others fulmined over Greece to Artaxerxes' throne against the Persian king, so Demosthenes was the orator particularly who fulmined over Greece to Moredon. against king Philip.-Newton.
From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools Of academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicuréan, and the Stoic severe :
These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home, Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight. These rules will render thee a king complete Within thyself, much more with empire joined." To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied: "Think not but that I know these things, or think I know them not; not therefore am I short Of knowing what I ought: he who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true; But these are false, or little else but dreams, Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm. The first and wisest of them all professed To know this only, that he nothing knew; The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits; A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense; Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue joined with riches and long life; In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease; The Stoic last, in philosophic pride,
By him called virtue; and his virtuous man, Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing, Equals to God, oft shames not to prefer, As fearing God nor man, contemning all Wealth, pleasure, pain, or torment, death and life, Which when he lists he leaves, or boasts he can, For all his tedious talk is but vain boast, Or subtle shifts conviction to evade. Alas! what can they teach and not mislead, Ignorant of themselves, of God much more, And how the world began, and how man fell Degraded by himself, on grace depending? Much of the soul they talk, but all awry, And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves All glory arrogate, to God give none, Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite
Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion, Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, An empty cloud. However, many books, Wise men have said, are wearisome: who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior
(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?), Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find
That solace? All our law and story strewed
With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed, Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,
That pleased so well our victors' ear, declare That rather Greece from us these arts derived ;1
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities, and their own In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame. Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest, Thin sown with aught of profit or delight, Will far be found unworthy to compare With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling, Where God is praised aright, and god-like men, The Holiest of Holies, and his saints; Such are from God inspired, not such from thee, Unless where moral virtue is expressed By light of nature not in all quite lost. Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those The top of eloquence; statists indeed, And lovers of their country, as may seem;
1 This was the system in vogue at that time. It was established and supported with vast erudition by Bochart, and carried to an extravagant and even ridiculous length by Huetius and Gale.-War
2 Statesmen, a word used by Shakspeare.
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