Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive grove of Academe,1
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ílissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls, then view
The schools of ancient sages; his, who bred

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,
Eolian charms and Dorian3 lyric odes;

And his, who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own:
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat

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,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece1
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,

From Heaven descended to the low-roof'd house
Of Socrates: see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men, from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools
Of academics old and new," with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe,

These here revolve, or, as thou likest, 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.

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,
Not evenly, as thou rulest

The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute.

Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That, wandering loose about,

Grow up and perish, as the summer-fly,
Heads without name no more remember'd ;
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd,

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:
Yet toward these thus dignified, thou oft,
Amidst their height of noon,

Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard
Of highest favours past

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,—
Unseemly falls in human eye,

Too grievous for the trespass or omission;
Öft leav'st them to the hostile sword

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,
And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude.

If these they 'scape, perhaps, in poverty,

With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down,
Painful diseases and deform'd

In crude old age;

Though not disordinate, yet, causeless, suffering
The punishment of dissolute days: in fine,
Just, or unjust, alike seem miserable,
For oft alike both come to evil end."

FROM THE SONNETS.

ON HIS BEING ARRIVED TO THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE."

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so`near,

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet, be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,

Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,

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
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forget not in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese,' that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant:2 that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who, having learn'd thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.3

TRANSLATION OF HORACE, ODES, I. 5.
What slender youth, bedew'd with liquid odours,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bind'st thou

In wreaths thy golden hair,

Plain in thy neatness? Oh, how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain, and seas
Rough with black winds and storms,
Unwonted, shall admire!

Who now enjoys thee, credulous, all gold,
Who, always vacant, always amiable,

Hopes thee, of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they,

To whom thou untried seem'st fair! Me in my vow'd
Picture, the sacred wall declares to have hung

My dank and dropping weeds

To the stern god of sea.

221

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.
(1609-1641.)

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
Would not stay on which they did bring ;
It was too wide a peck:

And, to say truth-for out it must-
It look'd like the great collar just
About our young colt's neck.

Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they fear'd the light:
But, oh, she dances such a way,
No sun upon an Easter day
Is half so fine a sight!

Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisy makes comparison;

Who sees them is undone;

For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on a Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun.

Her lips were red; and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin,
Some bee had stung it newly;
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon them gaze
Than on the sun in July.

Her mouth so small, when she does speak,
Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break,

That they might passage get:

But she so handled still the matter,
They came as good as ours or better
And are not spent a whit.

[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.]