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Weakening the sceptre of old Night. First Hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately heaven and carth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell.
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger. Go and speed!
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin are my gain."

He ceased, and Satan stayed not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renewed,
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset
And more endangered, than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus, betwixt the justling Rocks;
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by the other Whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labour hard

Moved on with difficulty and labour he;

:

But, he once past, soon after when Man fell

Strange alteration !-Sin and Death amain

Following his track, such was the will of Heaven-
Paved after him a broad and beaten way

1010

1020

it was first given by Pearce, the poet's own and all the succeeding editions having our. This is one proof among many that we are not to regard the orthography, punctuation, etc., of the first two editions as being Milton's own. 1006. far, sc. to go.

1019. Through Bosporus, etc. There is a slight slip of memory here, for it was after emerging from the Bosporus into the Euxine that the Argo had to pass through the Symplegades, which he properly translates the justling rocks.' There is a similar slip in what follows, for Scylla is not represented by Homer or any other poet as a whirlpool. Perhaps the cause of his error was the recollection of the parvus gurges, in which Ovid says (Met. xiv. 51) Scylla used to bathe, and in which, by the art of Circe, she was transformed. 1023. But he, etc. This is narrated afterwards in the Tenth Book.

1013.

"And from his helmet sharpening like a spire
He looked like a pyramid on fire."

Drayton, David & Goliath.-T.

Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf

Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,
From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb

Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse, 1030
With easy intercourse, pass to and fro

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.

But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
As from her outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less and with less hostile din;
That Satan, with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light;
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,

1040

1029. the utmost orb, i.e. the outer circle or shell of the World: see the Cosmology in Life of Milton. The idea of this bridge may no doubt have been suggested by the Mohammedan Es-Sírat, which stretches over Hell, and is sharper than the edge of a sword, along which lies the road to Paradise.

1037. Nature, i.e. organized matter, the World.

1041. That Satan, etc., i.e. his toil gradually diminished, and finally became

ease.

1042. Wafts, sc. himself. This is nearly the idea which he expresses by warps, i. 341.

1046. Weighs, i.e. poises.

1048. undetermined, i.e. not to be determined. Its extent was such that from the portion that was seen the eye could not determine whether its margin was straight or curved. Its magnitude is further intimated by adding that the World was as small compared with it as the smallest star compared with the full-moon.

1033.

1043.

1046.

"God and good angels fight on Richmond's side."

Rich. III. v. 3.—T. "Haud aliter puppesque tuæ pubesque tuorum Aut portum tenet, aut pleno subit ostia velo." En. i. 399.-K. "E si librò su l' adeguate penne." Tasso, Ger. Lib. i. 14.—Th.

With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

1049.

1052.

"Whose walls and towers were builded high and strong
Of pearl and precious stone." F. Q. i. 10, 55.-T.
"And blown with restless violence about

The pendent world." Meas. for Meas. iii. 1.—T.

1050

NOTE ON v. S.

The custom here mentioned is frequently alluded to by Ferdúsee in the Shaknámeh. Thus, at the coronation of Túr, the son of Feridún," the great men strewed pearls at his feet;" of Siyawush it is said on a particular occasion, “He thought on the banquets in Sabulistán, on Rústem and the nobles, and how they had strewed gold and pearls;" of Ky Khosrú, that the old Shah Káús "came forth to meet him, and led him to the throne, and set the crown on his head; and they strewed precious stones wherever he trod." On another occasion when Káús went forth to meet Ky Khosrú on his return from his victories in Túrán, the latter "poured jacinths and rubies on the head of the Sháh." See the translations from the Shah-námeh, by Görres and Schack.

Warburton quoted the following passage from Shereef-ed-deen's Persian Life of Tamerlane, as translated by Petit de la Croix (ii. 1): "Les princes du sang royal et les émirs répandirent à pleines mains sur sa tête quantité d'or et de pierreries selon la coutume.” Lane (Thous, and One Nights, ii. 351) tells us from Ibn Khallikán, that on the occasion of the marriage of the Khaleefch El-Ma-mún with the daughter of his wezeer, "when he first entered the apartment of the bride and seated himself with her, her grandmother scattered over them both a thousand large pearls from a tray of gold.” In India, at the present day, in the ceremony named Nuzzeranah, gold and silver are poured on the head of the person for whom it is performed.

That such then was the custom of the East is clear; but now comes the question, Whence did Milton derive his knowledge of it? We have searched in vain Purchas, Hakluyt, and all the writers on Oriental matters anterior to him, and we have to as little purpose made inquiries of the learned. Golius, it is true, had published an Arabic Life of Tamerlane, which may contain a notice of this ceremony, but as he gave no translation it was inaccessible to Milton ̧ Our conclusion is, that he must have learned it, directly or indirectly, from one of the Orientalists of his time, such as Walton, Pocock, Hyde,-most probably

the last, who was well-skilled in Persian, and had, we may suppose, read the work of Shereef-ed-deen. From him too he may have derived a knowledge of the Direfsh-e-Kawenee: see on i. 536.

The following passage in Antony and Cleopatra (ii. 5) is, we may presume, merely a coincidence.

"I'll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail

Rich pearls upon thee."

Yet it is not impossible that Shakespeare may have heard of the Oriental

custom.

298

BOOK III.

THE ARGUMENT.

God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying toward this World, then newly created: shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace toward him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose toward man ; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended toward man without the satisfaction of Divine justice; man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore with all his progeny devoted to death must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains his Incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in Heaven and Earth; commands all the angels to adore him; they obey, and hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this World's uttermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and Man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on mount Niphates.

HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born!
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,

1. Hail, etc. Perhaps the words of Hercules, in Euripides' Hercules Furens, on his return from Erebus (v. 523 seq.), were in the poet's mind when he commenced this Book.-offspring, etc. He terms light the firstborn or eldest offspring of Heaven, but whether he meant by this the Deity or the material heaven is uncertain. Judging however by his theology, we would say the former.

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