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Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vex'd wilderness, whose tallest pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks
Bow'd their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stood'st
Unshaken; nor yet stay'd the terror there,

415

420

Complêrunt, magno indignantur learned father observes, that

murmure clausi

Nubibus.

Dunster.

415. From the four hinges of the world,] That is, from the four cardinal points, the word cardines signifying both the one and the other. This, as was observed before, is a poetical tempest like that in Virgil, Æn. i. 85.

Unà Eurusque Notusque ruunt, cre-
berque procellis
Africus.

And as Mr. Thyer adds, though
such storms are unknown to us
in these parts of the world, yet
the accounts we have of hurri-
canes in the Indies
agree pretty
much with them.

417. Though rooted deep as high,] Virgil, Georg. ii. 291. Æn. iv. 445.

-quantum vertice ad auras Ethereas, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.

Richardson.

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Christ was tempted forty days and the same number of nights Και επειδήπερ ημεραις τεσσαρα novтa, xai Tais ToσAUTAIS VUŽIV ETSIGA(ro.

And to these night temptations he applies what is said in the ninety-first Psalm, v. 5 and 6. Ov Polninon año Pobov vuxtegivov, Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night, -απο πραγματος εν σκοτεί διαπορευομενον, nor for the danger that walketh in darkness. The first is thus paraphrased in the Targum, (though with a meaning very different from Eusebius's,) Non timebis à timore Dæmonum qui ambulant in noote. The fiends surround our Redeemer with their threats and terrors; but they have no effect. Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round Environ'd thee.

This too is from Eusebius, [ibid. p. 435.] Επείπερ εν τῷ πειράζειν δε

ναμεις ποιηραι εκυκλουν αυτον. quoniam dum tentabatur, malignæ potestates illum circumsta-bant. And their repulse, it seems, is predicted in the seventh verse of this Psalm: A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Calton.

Infernal ghosts, and hellish furies, round

Environ'd thee, some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd,
Some bent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Sat'st unappall❜d in calm and sinless peace.
Thus pass'd the night so foul, till morning fair

422. Infernal ghosts, &c.] This is taken from the legend or the pictures of St. Anthony's temptation. Warburton.

From a print which I have seen of the temptation of St. Anthony. Jortin.

In these lines our author copies Fairfax's Tasso, c. xv. 67.

You might have heard, how through

the palace wide, Some spirits howl'd, some bark'd,

some hist, some cride. It is where Armida, returning to destroy her palace, assembles her attendant spirits in a storm. Indeed, the circumstances and behaviour of Christ in this haunted wilderness, are exactly like those of the Christian champions in Tasso's inchanted forest, who calmly view, and without resistance, the threats and attacks of a surrounding group of the most horrid demons. See c. xiii. 28, 35. Milton adds,

Some bent at thee their fiery darts,
while thou
Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless
peace.

T. Warton.

424. their fiery darts,] Eph. vi. 16. the fiery darts of the wicked. The contrast which the next line, Sat'st unappall'd &c. gives to the preceding description of the horrors of the storm, has a singularly fine effect. Dunster.

426. till morning fair
Came forth &c.]

425

As there is a storm raised by evil spirits in Tasso as well as in Milton, so a fine morning succeeds after the one as well as after the other. See Tasso, cant. viii. st. 1.

But there the morn

ing comes with a forehead of rose, and with a foot of gold; con la fronte di rose, e co' piè d'oro; here with pilgrim steps in amice gray, as Milton describes her progress more leisurely, first the gray morning, and afterwards the sun rising: with pilgrim steps, with the slow solemn pace of a pilgrim on a journey of devotion; in amice gray, in gray clothing; amice, a proper and significant word, derived from the Latin amicio to clothe, and used by Spenser, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. iv. st. 18.

Array'd in habit black, and amice

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Came forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray,
Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar
Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, and laid the winds,
And grisly spectres, which the Fiend had rais'd
To tempt the Son of God with terrors dire.
And now the sun with more effectual beams

Not dissimilar is the justly admired description of evening coming on, Par. Lost, iv. 598.

Now came still Evening on, and twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things

clad.

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480

428. Who with her radiant finger still'd the roar

Of thunder, chas'd the clouds, &c.]

This is a very pretty imitation
of a passage in the first Æneid
of Virgil, where Neptune is re-
presented with his trident lay-
ing the storm which Æolus had
raised, ver. 142.

Sic ait, et dicto citius tumida æquora
placat,
Collectasque fugat nubes, solemque

reducit.

There is the greater beauty in the English poet, as the scene he is describing under this charming figure is perfectly consistent with the course of nature, nothing being more common than to see a stormy night succeeded by a pleasant serene morning. Thyer.

We have here the ῥοδοδάκτυλος Homer and Hesiod; but the Has, the rosy-fingered Aurora of

image, which in them is only pleasing, is here almost sublime. Dunster.

injudicious to retail this popular 430. And grisly spectres,] Very superstition in this place. War

burton.

432. And now the sun &c.] the bloom of Milton's youthful There is in this description all fancy. See an evening scene of the same kind in the Paradise Lost, ii. 488.

Had cheer'd the face of earth, and dried the wet
From drooping plant, or dropping tree; the birds,

Who all things now behold more fresh and green, 435
After a night of storm so ruinous,

Clear'd up
their choicest notes in bush and spray
To gratulate the sweet return of morn;
Nor yet amidst this joy and brightest morn
Was absent, after all his mischief done,

The prince of darkness, glad would also seem
Of this fair change, and to our Saviour came,
Yet with no new device, they all were spent,
Rather by this his last affront resolv'd,
Desp❜rate of better course, to vent his
And mad despite to be so oft repell❜d.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Back'd on the north and west by a thick wood;
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,

As when from mountain tops &c.

Thyer. Compare also part of Spenser's Sonnet xl.

is

➡the fair sunshine in summer's day,
That when a dreadful storm away
flit,
Through the broad world doth spread
his goodly ray;

At sight whereof each bird that sits
on spray,

And every beast that to his den was fled,

Came forth afresh out of their late

dismay,

And to the light lift up their drooping head.

rage,

440

445

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435. Who all things now behold] Doth not the syntax require, that we should rather read

Who all things now beheld?

449.-in wonted shape,] That is, in his own proper shape, and not under any disguise, as at each of the former times when he appeared to our Lord. He comes now hopeless of success, without device or disguise, and, as the

And the following stanza in poet expressly says,
Cowley's Hymn to Light;

When, goddess, thou lift'st up thy
waken'd head,

Out of the morning's purple bed,
VOL. III.

Desperate of better course, to vent

his rage

And mad despite to be so oft repell'd.
Dunster.

P

And in a careless mood thus to him said.

450

Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God, After a dismal night; I heard the wrack As earth and sky would mingle; but myself Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them As dang'rous to the pillar'd frame of heaven,

Mr. Dunster may be right in this; but there is perhaps an obscurity as to the degree of concealment assumed by Satan at different periods in the course of these temptations, which we shall in vain endeavour to clear up. At first indeed he appears disguised as an aged man in rural weeds, b. i. 314; and it would seem from v. 498. that he retained that disguise till his disappearance, at the end of the first book. But in the interval he had answered undisguised,

'Tis true I am that spirit unfor

tunate, &c. b. i. 358.

So again, at his next appearance he stood before Christ as a man, not rustic as before, but seemlier clad, &c. b. ii. 298. yet he accosts Jesus under his former character,

With granted leave officious I return, &c. ii. 301.

As indeed his super-human power was displayed in the sudden appearance and disappearance of the regal banquet, 337, 401. as well as by his conveying our Lord to the specular mount, and back again through the air to the wilderness, b. iii. 251, 394. And he had a second time openly declared his proper character, when he proposed the conditions on which he would be

455

stow the kingdoms of the world, 155-194. His wonted shape may very well therefore be understood of that in which he had now for so long a time conversed with Jesus. But it may be better to leave such matters undetermined. Milton did not display any want of judgment, considering the peculiar difficulties of his subject, if he designedly left these things unexplained. E.

453. As earth and sky would mingle;] Virgil, Æn. i. 137. Jam cœlum terramque, meo sine numine, venti,

Miscere, et tantas audetis tollere moles?

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