Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts City or suburban, studious walks and shades. Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; His whispering stream: within the walls, then view Great Alexander to subdue the world; Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next: There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit By voice or hand; and various-measuerd verse, And his, who gave them breath, but higher sung, Of moral prudence, with delight received Of fate, and chance, and change in human life, High actions and high passions best describing:5 her hospitality to men of genius and to strangers generally. Cicero abounds in panegyrics upon this celebrated seat of learning and eloquence. 1 The school of Plato. See Potter, p. 44 Attic bird, the nightingale. Philo mela, who was changed into this bird, was the daughter of Pandion, king of Athens. -See Ovid. Met. vi. 424-675. Thick-warbled, one of Milton's picture words. The whole line has been admired for the beauty of its construction. Hymettus, a mountain district near Athens, is still celebrated for its honey. Ilissus, a stream near Athens, where Plato has placed the scene of his Phædrus.-Newton. 2 Aristotle, the founder of the Peripatetic sect, was the tutor of Alexander. His school at Athens was the Lycæum.-See Potter, p. 41. Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, taught in the stoa or portico called Poecile (painted): hence, in English poetry, such phrases as "soldiers of the porch" are applied to the Stoics. "Power of harmony;" music was one of the chief branches of a Greek liberal education.-See Potter (Boyd), pp. 665, 666. Eolian, alludes to the lyric poetry of Alcæus and Sappho, natives of the Isle of Lesbos, colonised by the Hellenic tribe Eolians. Doric refers to the odes of Pindar; for the latter, see Schlegel's History of Literature, lecture i. Melesigenes; Homer was alleged to have been born on the banks of the river Meles, near Smyrna, in Asia Minor.-(See note 1, p. 206): for the word Homer, as implying either blindness or witness, and for observations on the personality of the poet, see Schlegel's History of Literature, lecture i "Phabus challenged," etc., alluding to an epigram in the Greek Anthology. 5 Chorus or iambic:" The two constituent parts of the ancient tragedy were the dialogue, written chiefly in the iambic measure; and the chorus, which consisted of various measures."-Newton. "Brief sententious precepts;" "This particularly applies to Euripides, who, next to Homer, was Milton's favourite Greek author."Dunster. Fate, chance," etc. "The arguments most frequently selected by the Greek tragic writers, were the accomplishment of some oracle, or some supposed decree of fate."-Dunster. 'High actions," etc. "Actions" refers to fate and hance: “passions" to the peripetia or "change" of fortune.-Dunster. FROM SAMSON AGONISTES. Thence to the famous orators repair, Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece1 From Heaven descended to the low-roof'd house These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home. FROM SAMSON AGONISTES. CHORUS. God of our fathers, what is man! 5 That thou towards him with hand so various, Or might I say contrarious, 6 Temper❜st thy providence through his short course, The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute, Nor do I name of men the common rout, Grow up and perish, as the summer-fly, To some great work, thy glory 219 1 Alluding to Aristophanes, speaking of Pericles, Acharn. 531.-Newton and Dunster. Pericles "fulmined over Greece" to Artaxerxes' throne; Demosthenes to that of Philip of Macedon. 2 "From heaven," etc., alluding either to Juv. Sat. xi. 27 (Calton); or to Cicero, Tusc. Disp. v. 4 (Warburton and Thyer)-Newton. "Wisest of men;" see Plato in Apolog. Socrat. Cic. Acad. Quaest. Lib. i. Rollin, Book ix. Ch. 4, Sect. 3. 3 Socrates was the instructor of Plato, the founder of the Academic school. Quinctilian calls him "fons philosophorum," i, 10.-Newton. Or Milton alludes to Ælian, Var. Hist. xiii. 22.-Dunster. "Old and New;" "The Academic sect of philosophers, like the Greek comedy, had its three epochs-old, middle, and new.' -Dunster. 4 Satan addresses this to our Saviour. 5 An imitation of the chorus in Seneca's "Hippolytus."-Thyer. "This seems to me a harsh word, though Todd shews it was used by Chaucer." -Brydges And people's safety, which in part they effect: Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard From thee on them, or them to thee of service. Nor only dost degrade them, or remit To life obscured, which were a fair dismission, But throw'st them lower than thou did'st exalt them high,— Too grievous for the trespass or omission; Of heathen and profane, their carcasses To dogs and fowls a prey,1 or else captíved; Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times, If these they 'scape, perhaps, in poverty, With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down, In crude old age; Though not disordinate, yet, causeless, suffering FROM THE SONNETS. ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE." How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. And inward ripeness doth much less appear, It shall be still in strictest measure even Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven; As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye. 1 Hom. Il. i. 4. 2 Not an arraignment of Providence, but an attempted consolation of the sufferer. The whole passage has a peculiar reference to the fate of the republican party after the Restoration, and to the condition of the poet in his latter days. FROM THE SONNETS. "ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT. Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones To heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow TRANSLATION OF HORACE, ODES, I. 5. In wreaths thy golden hair, Plain in thy neatness? Oh, how oft shall he Who now enjoys thee, credulous, all gold, Hopes thee, of flattering gales To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me in my vow'd My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea. 221 SIR JOHN SUCKLING. THE father of Sir John Suckling was Secretary of State to James I., and Comptroller of the Household to Charles I. He died while his son was at College, and thus the poet succeeded to a large fortune, which he squandered in gambling, in courtly magnificence, and in services for the royalist cause. Having joined in a plot to rescue Strafford from the 1 Cromwell interfered, with great dignity and effect, to counteract the Savoyard persecutions. 2 The Pope wears a triple crown. 8 Babylonian woe, Antichrist.-Warburton. See Rev. xviii. 4. Tower, and the scheme being detected, Suckling fled to France, and there, as is believed, committed suicide. He wrote four plays, but is now only known for a few short felicitous poems. FROM "A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING." Her finger was so small, the ring And, to say truth-for out it must- Her feet beneath her petticoat, Her cheeks so rare a white was on, Who sees them is undone; For streaks of red were mingled there, Her lips were red; and one was thin, Her mouth so small, when she does speak, That they might passage get: But she so handled still the matter, [Among the other minor poets of the seventeenth century are Habington, Davenant, Cleveland, Fanshawe, Roscommon, Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, Randolph, Cartwright, etc. Some of them mark the fading characteristics of the age of Elizabeth and James; others are the originators of the school of which Dryden is the type and the chief.] |