Of highest difpenfation, which herein O lofs of fight, of thee I most complain! ; Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, 65 Light the prime work of God to me' is extinct, 70 And all her various objects of delight Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eas'd, Of man or worm; the vileft here excel me, 75 69. or decrepit age!] So it is printed in the first edition; the later editors have omitted or, concluding I fuppofe that it made the verfe a fyllable too long. Mr. Calton proposes to read - beggery in decrepit age! Want join'd to the weaknesses of 87. And O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Without all hope of day! O first created Beam, and thou great Word, Let there be light, and light was over all; Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree? And filent as the moon, When the deferts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 87. And filent as the moon, &c] There cannot be a better note on this paffage than what Mr. Warburton has written on this verse of Shakespear 2 Henry VI. A&t I. Sc. 8. Deep night, dark night, the filent of the night. The filent of the night is a claffical expreffion, and means an interlunar night amica filentia lunæ. So Pliny, Inter omnes verò convenit, utiliffime in coitu ejus fterni, quem diem alii interlunii, alii filentis lunæ appellant. Lib. 16.cap. 39. In imitation of this language, Milton fays, The fun to me is dark, 80 85 90 That That light is in the foul, diffus'd, She all in every part; why was the fight Where light and darkness in 90. Since light fo neceffary is to life, &c.] This intermixing of his philofophy very much weakens the force and pathos of Samfon's complaint, which in the main is excellent, but I think not altogether fo fine as the poet's lamentation of his own blindness at the beginning of the third book of the Paradife Loft; fo much better does every body write from his own feeling and experience, than when he imagines only what another would fay upon the fame occafion. 100. To live a life half dead, a 95 100 By privilege of death and burial From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs, But made hereby obnoxious more To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes. But who are these? for with joint pace I hear This, this is he; foftly a while, Let us not break in upon him; O change beyond report, thought, or belief! 105 110 115 As As one past hope, abandon'd, 120 And by himself given over; In flavish habit, ill-fitted weeds O'er-worn and foil'd; Or do my eyes mifreprefent? Can this be he, Irrefiftible Samfon? whom unarm'd 125 No ftrength of man, or fierceft wild beast could withstand; Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid, Ran on imbattel'd armies clad in iron, And weaponlefs himself, Made arms ridiculous, ufelefs the forgery 130 Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass, Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail Adamantean proof; But fafeft he who stood aloof, 135 When Fufaque erant toto languida membra toro. Thyer. 133. Chaly bean temper'd fteel,] That is, the beft temper'd steel by the Chalybes, who were famous among the Ancients for their iron works. Virg. Georg. I. 58. At Chalybes nudi ferrum - nounc'd Chalybéan with the third fyllable long according to Heinfius's reading of that verfe of Ovid. Faft. IV. 405. Es erat in pretio: Chalybeïa maffa latebat: but Milton makes it fhort by the fame poetical liberty, with which he had before ufed 'gean for Egéan, and Thyestean for Thyeftean. 136. When |