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Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools
Of academics old and new, with those

273. In the Clouds of Aristophanes, Strepoiades calls the habitation of Socrates, bixidor, ædicula. Dunster.

275. Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd ofw od Wisest of men ;]

The verse delivered down to us upon this occasion is this,

Ανδρων άπαντων Σωκρατης σοφωτατος.
Of all men Socrates is the wisest.

See Diogenes Laertius in vita Socratis. Mr. Calton adds, that the Tempter designs here a compliment to himself; for he would be understood to be the inspirer.

276.-from whose mouth issued forth &c.] Thus Quintilian calls Socrates fons philosophorum, i. 10. and as the ancients looked upon Homer as the father of poetry, so they esteemed Socrates the father of moral philosophy. The different sects of philosophers were but so many different families, which all acknowledged him for their common parent. See Cicero, Academic. i. 4. Tusc. Disp. v. 4. and particularly De Orat. iii. 16, 17. The quotation would be too long to be inserted. See likewise Mr. Warburton's account of the Socratic school, b. iii. sect. 3. of the Divine Legation.

276. Compare Cicero, Brutus, sect. 31. ed. Proust, and De Orator. i. 42. and De Nat. Deor. i. 34. Paterculus (lib. i. c. 16.)

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speaks of Philosophorum ingenia Socratico ore defluentia. See also. Minucius Felix, Octav. c. xiii. But, our author haps in his a well known passage of Elian (Var. Hist. lib. xiii. c. 22.) concerning Homer, whence also Manilius says, speaking of him, (lib. ii. 8.)

•cujusque ex ore profusos Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit, Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos

Unius fœcunda bonis.

And Ovid, 3 Amor, ix. 25.
Adjice Mæonidem, a quo, ceu fonte
perenni,

Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.
Dunster.

278. Of Academics old and new, &c.] The Academic sect had its three epochs, old, middle, and new. Plato was the head of the old academy, Arcelisas of the middle, and Carneades of the new. The Peripatetics were surnamed from the περιπατον or walk of the Lyceum, where Aristotle taught, as the Stoics from the or or portico where they attended the instructions of Zeno. "The common opinion adopted by Cicero and others that the Peripatetics were so named i Tov TECITATE, ex deambulatione, is refuted," says Dr. Gillies, " by the authors cited by Brucker, vol. i. p. 787." The severity of the Stoics is proverbial; see Se

Surnam❜d Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, 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 join'd.
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

neca de Clement. ii. 5. Cicero
Pro Murena, 35. Dunster.

283. These rules will render thee &c.] Ask what rules, and no answer can be regularly given: ask whose, and the answer is easy. There is no mention before of rules; but of poets, orators, philosophers, there is. We should read therefore,

Their rules will render thee a king

283.

complete.

Calton.

-a king complete Within thyself,] Alluding to what Jesus had said before, b. ii. 446.

Yet he who reigns within himself,

and rules Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.

Dunster.

285. To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied.] This answer of our Saviour is as much to be admired for solid reasoning, and the many sublime truths contained in it, as the preceding speech of Satan is for that fine vein of poetry which runs through it: and one may observe in general, that Milton has quite

280

285

throughout this work thrown the
ornaments of poetry on the side
of error, whether it was that he
thought great truths best ex-
pressed in a grave unaffected
style, or intended to suggest this
fine moral to the reader, that
simple naked truth will always
be an overmatch for falsehood
though recommended by the
gayest rhetoric, and adorned with
the most bewitching colours.
Thyer.

288. he who receives
Light from above, from the
fountain of light,

No other doctrine needs, though
granted true;]

This passage, says Mr. Warton, seems to favour Mr. Peck's notion, (grounded on Milton's acquaintance with Ellwood and Mrs. Thompson, to whom he has inscribed a Sonnet,) that the poet was a Quaker. But it is rather scriptural than sectical, being built on James i. 17. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights; which refers to ver. 5. in the same chapter; If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that

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 profess'd
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;

giveth to all men liberally, &c.
Dunster.

293. The first and wisest of them all Socrates professed to know this only, that he nothing knew. Hic in omnibus fere sermonibus, qui ab iis, qui illum audierunt, perscripti varie, copiose sunt, ita disputat, ut nihil adfirmet ipse, refellat alios: nihil se scire dicat, nisi id ipsum: eoque præstare ceteris, quod illi nesciant scire se putent; quæ ipse, se nihil scire, id unum sciat. Cicero Academic. i. 4.

293. Είδεναι μεν μηδεν, πλην αυτό τουτο ειδεναι was what Socrates frequently said of himself, according to Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Socrat. And so Flato makes him compare himself with some great pretender to wisdom, (see the Apology of Socrates, ed. Serran. vol. i. p. 21.) οὗτος μεν οιεται τι ειδεναι, ουκ ειδως· εγω δε, ώσπερ ουν ουκ οίδα, ουδε οιομαι εοικα γουν τουτου γε σμικρῳ τινι αυτῷ τουτῳ σοφώτερος είναι, ότι & μη οιδα, ουδε ειδεναί Dunster.

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295. The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;] See Parker's Free and impartial censure of the Platonic philosophy. Oxford 1667. p. 71. "Plato and his

"followers have communicated "their notions by emblems, ❝ fables, symbols, parables, heaps

VOL. III.

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295

"of metaphors, allegories, and "all sorts of mystical represent"ations, (as is vulgarly known.) "All which, upon the account "of their obscurity and ambi

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guity, are apparently the unfit"test signs in the world to ex"press the train of any man's

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thoughts to another: for be"sides that they carry in them "no intelligible affinity to the "notices which they were de

66

signed to intimate, the powers "of imagination are so great, " and the instances in which one thing may resemble another

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are so many, that there is "scarce any thing in nature, in "which the fancy cannot find " or make a variety of such symbolizing resemblances; so that " emblems, fables, symbols, alle

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gories, though they are pretty "poetic fancies, are infinitely "unfit to express philosophical "notions and discoveries of the "natures of things.-The end " of philosophy is to search into, "and discover the nature of "things; but I believe you un"derstand not how the nature "of any thing is at all discovered "by making it the theme of allegorical and dark discourses." Calton.

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A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;
Others in virtue plac'd felicity,

But virtue join'd with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;

Diogenes Laertius cites a verse of Timon to this purpose,

Ως ανέπλασε Πλατων πεπλασμένα θαυ
ματα είδως.

What wondrous fictions learned
Plato fram'd!

Compare the conclusion of Milton's Latin poem De Idea Platonica.-Smooth conceits are the Italian concetti; by which term an Italian writer would, I apprehend, characterise any farfetched or fine-spun allegories. Dunster.

296. A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense;] These were the Sceptics or Pyrrhonians, the disciples of Pyrrho, who asserted nothing, neither honest nor dishonest, just nor unjust, and so of every thing; that there is nothing indeed such, but that men do all things by law and custom; that in every thing this is not rather than that. This was called the Sceptic philosophy, from its continual inspection, and never finding; and Pyrrhonian from Pyrrho. See Stanley's Life of Pyrrho, who takes his account from Diogenes Laertius.

297. Others in virtue &c.] These were the old Academics, and the Peripatetics the scholars of Aristotle. Honeste autem vivere, fruentem rebus iis, quas primas homini natura conciliet, et vetus Academia censuit, et Aristoteles : ejusque amici nunc proxime videntur accedere. Cicero Academic. ii. 42. Ergo nata est sententia veterum Academicorum et

Peripateticorum, ut finem bonorum dicerent, secundum naturam vivere, id est, virtute adhibita, frui primis à natura datis. De Fin. ii. 11.

297. Cic. de Fin. ii. 6. Multi enim et magni philosophi hæc ultima bonorum juncta fecerunt, ut Aristoteles, qui virtutis usum cum vitæ perfectæ prosperitate conjunxit. Dunster.

299. In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;] Epicurus. Confirmat autem illud vel maxime, quod ipsa natura, ut ait ille, adsciscat et reprobet, id est, voluptatem et dolorem: ad hæc, et quæ sequamur et quæ fugiamus, refert omnia. Cicero de Fin. i. 7.

299. The he is here contemptuously emphatical. Compare Par. Lost, i. 93. And so Demosthenes, in the opening of his first Philippic, refers to Philip, whom he had not mentioned by name, και τη νυν ὑβρει ΤΟΥΤΟΥ, δι' ἣν ταραττόμεθα.

TagaTrousda. As to the principles of Epicurus, see his Epistle to Menæceus, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, where he points out as the only essential and truly interesting objects of a wise man's attention την του σώματος ύγίειαν, και την της ψυχής αταραξίαν

τουτο του μακαρίως ζην εστι τελος . . . and sometimes he explicitly places the To TOV Tapatos αγαθον in τας δια χυλων ήδονας, τας δι' αφροδισίων, τας δι' και τας δια μορφης κατ' οψιν ήδειας The passage is preserved in Athenæus, 1. viii. and Dioge

ακροαμάτων,

The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

By him call'd virtue; and his virtuous man,

nes Laertius, 1. x. Cicero exhibits the sense of it, Tusc. Disp. 1. x. c. 20. See also Lucretius, ii. 16. and Lucian, Necyomant. p. 460. Ed. Reitz. where also see the account of the Stoics and Peripatetics. Dunster.

300. The Stoic last &c.] The reason why Milton represents our Saviour taking such particular notice of the Stoics above the rest, was probably because they made pretensions to a more refined and exalted virtue than any of the other sects, and were at that time the most prevailing party among the philosophers, and the most revered and esteemed for the strictness of their morals, and the austerity of their lives. The picture of their virtuous man is perfectly just, as might easily be shewn from many passages in Seneca and Antoninus, and the defects and insufficiency of their scheme could not possibly be set in a stronger light than they are by our author in the lines following. Thyer.

300. The Stoics were held in esteem not only among the philosophers of antiquity, but among some of the earlier writers on Christianity. Clemens Alexandrinus in many parts of his works professes himself a Stoic. St. Jerome in his Commentary on Isaiah, c. 10. acknowledges that the Stoics in most points of doctrine agree with the Christians, "Stoici cum nostro dogmate in plerisque concordant." Hence the greater propriety in bringing forward, and censuring in this place, the exceptionable doctrines

800

of this sect. They maintained that the end or purpose of man was to live conformably to nature, (see Diogenes Laertius in his life of Zeno,) and that this consisted in an absolute perfection of the soul, of which they believed human nature to be capable; a doctrine which might tempt even the best of men to philosophic pride. See Mrs. Carter's preface to her translation of Epictetus. Plutarch mentions their arrogance and assumption of superiority over the Academics. De Stoicorum Contrarietatibus. Of their virtuous man, wise, perfect in himself and all possessing, see Cicero de Finibus, iii. 7. where Cato is introduced summing up the principles of the Stoic philosophy; cum ergo hoc sit extremum (quod Tλ05 Græcus dicat,) congruenter naturæ convenienterque vivere, necessario sequitur omnes sapientes semper feliciter, absolute, fortunate vivere, nullâ re impediri, nullâ prohiberi, nullâ egere. This is to ascribe to their wise man many positive attributes of divinity; but Seneca speaks more fully, and equals him to God, Epist. lxxxvii. Quæris quæ res sapientem efficit? quæ Deum. See also epist. lix. lxxiii. xcii. Indeed he every where abounds with such passages. Epictetus also says, (1. i. c. 12.) Ou beλsiç ouv καθ ̓ ὁ ίσος ει τοις Θεοίς, εκεί που τι θεσθαι το αγαθόν; oft shames not to prefer; Seneca, epist. liii. Est aliquid quo sapiens antecedat Deum; ille naturæ beneficio non timet, suo sapiens. See also, De

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