allusions are principally three. First, they may be introduced in simile or comparison. Thus in the Second Book of Paradise Lost he describes the turmoil of the fiends who

Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar:-
As when Alcides from Echalia crowned
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Eta threw

Into the Euboic sea.1

At times the comparison may be very brief, as when the beasts are represented more obedient to the call of Eve

Than at Circean call the herd disguised."

Or it may even not exceed the mere mention of 'Typhoean rage" or 'Atlantean shoulders.''

Milton often masses classical allusions of this kind, piling them sometimes four or five deep, and obtaining by means of this accumulation an effect of great richThus of the tempter disguised as a serpent he

ness. says:

Pleasing was his shape

And lovely; never since of serpent kind
Lovelier-not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen,
He with Olympias, this with her who bore
Scipio the highth of Rome."

Even supposing that the reader is not familiar with all the allusions of this passage, the very succession of sonorous vowels and liquids, which Milton so often effected by his choice and arrangement of proper names,

1 P. L. 2. 540-546.

2 P. L. 9. 522; cf. 4. 250; 5. 16, 378; 10. 559; V. E. 93.

3 P. L. 2. 539.

4 P. L. 2. 306; cf. 655; 3. 359; 10. 444; Son. 15. 7.

6 P. L. 9. 503-510.

enhances the splendor of this massed comparison. In some cases such comparisons are reinforced or extended by allusions which are not mythological or even classical. Or mythological allusions introduced for another purpose than comparison may occur in close connection with these passages. It is by such treatment that the description of Eden, in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost,' expresses through its own rich luxuriance the luxuriance of the garden. We hear first the sound of clear water running over beds of pearl and gold, now sparkling in the sun, now lost in the green twilight of deep woods. Against the dark foliage is the gleam of fruits with golden rind, 'Hesperian fables true.' The air is filled with the fragrance of gorgeous flowers, and with the soft call of unseen birds. Where the leafy branches part little vistas invite exploration.

Airs, vernal airs,

Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis

Was gathered—which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world-nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne, by Orontes and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle,
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son,

Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind

Of living creatures, new to sight and strange.

1 205-287.

ART.

It will be noticed that Eden has been compared to three mythical gardens, and then to a garden of Abyssinia, and that besides these allusions, reference is also made to the Hesperides, to Pan, the Graces, and the Hours. This method of accumulation or massing of mythology is not confined to similes, but is also practised in other connections, as we shall see later.

Here we may pause to consider a characteristic of all great art which attempts to interpret the beauty of the natural world to men. Every work of art which maintains a strong and permanent influence over men contains some element which brings it in touch with humanity. However divine the truth which the artist feels, however radiant the beauty of nature is to him, his art is incomplete if his thoughts of these things are not brought home to men in terms of human life. It is for this reason that a painting or a description of a landscape which reproduces simply the landscape itself is imperfect. The best art therefore personifies the forces of nature, or perhaps is content with suggesting types or phases of human life which seem to correspond in spirit to the particular type or phase of nature. thus that in Corot's pictures of the glad morning, figures are seen dancing, or blithe and tuneful Orpheus appears, giving utterance to the joyful harmony around him. In Milton's description of Eden the same principle applies to the mention of Pan and the Hours. Furthermore, in the comparisons occurring here Milton has not stopped with mere allusions to myths, as in his description of the serpent-fiend, but has outlined in his concise and significant way the stories of Proserpina and Amalthea, and has suggested the voice heard in the Castalian spring sacred to the Apollo and Daphne of the Orient, thus furnishing appropriate personal types to reflect the natural beauty previously described.1

1 Other examples of accumulated mythology in simile or comparison are P. L. 1. 196-208, 575-587; 2. 628; 4. 705-719; 5. 377-382; 9. 14-19, 386-396, 439-444; P. R. 2. 353-365; Arc. 18-23; C. 441-452; Eleg. 1. 63–73.

Of all the allusions to mythology in simile by far the greatest strength and finest balance are found in a certain double mythological simile in the Fourth Book of Paradise Regained, in which each member is firmly and concisely outlined. It is where Satan, in the last temptation, commands Christ to leap from a pinnacle of the temple :

66

To whom thus Jesus: Also it is written
Tempt not the Lord thy God." He said, and stood.
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell.
As when Earth's son, Antæus (to compare
Small things with greatest), in Irassa strove
With Jove's Alcides, and, oft foiled, still rose,
Receiving from his mother Earth new strength,
Fresh from his fall, and fiercer grapple joined,
Throttled at length in the air expired and fell;
So, after many a foil, the Tempter proud,
Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride
Fell whence he stood to see his victor fall.
And, as that Theban monster that proposed
Her riddle, and him who solved it not devoured,
That once found out and solved, for grief and spite
Cast herself headlong from the Ismenian steep,

So, strook with dread and anguish, fell the Fiend.1

It may be observed that the similes and comparisons which have been cited are all from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. We may say that with few exceptions, principally in Comus, this manner of introducing mythological allusion is peculiar to these two longer and and later poems; but it is not just to infer from this

1 P. R. 4. 560-576. The strength of this passage is not due alone to the balance of these two similes, nor to the fact that not more than two are used. It lies partly in the grandeur of diction, but most of all in the deeper meaning common to the three solemn events here described. Each is the victory of a hero; each is the triumph of right over wrong, of light over darkness; and in each struggle is involved the fate of generations. The comparison of Christ to Heracles is implied in Pass. 13. The idea may have been suggested to Milton by some writer of the Renaissance, or more likely by one of the Fathers. Cf. P. L. 2. 1017-1020; 4. 713-719.

2 In Samson Agonistes, the nature of the subject and the form in which it was cast naturally prevented almost entirely the use of Greek mythology. Neither Samson nor his friends and enemies could very appropriately be made to talk of things so far removed from them as classical myths, and in the drama the poet may not appear in person, as in

that Milton ultimately came to prefer such a form of allusion. It seems more likely that the subjects of the two epics offered so little opportunity for the incorporation of classical mythology within the story itself that, if the poems were to be enriched to any extent by means of pagan lore, it must be accomplished by the somewhat more remote method of simile and comparison.

A second method of introducing allusions to classical mythology is illustrated in nearly all the poems, though the earlier and so-called minor poems supply the best examples. It consists in the incorporation of a myth or the ancient conception of a divinity into a poetical setting of Milton's own creation.

This is accomplished in two distinct ways. First, the myth or conception, of which the several details may come from several different sources, may be removed, for example, from the peculiar setting of Homer, Apollonius, or Ovid, and placed in the different setting of Comus, Il Penseroso, or the First and Second Books of Paradise Lost. Thus the indefinite and shadowy classical idea of Chaos, as either a place or a divinity, or merely an unordered condition of things, has been elaborated under Milton's treatment, and separated into two distinct meanings in the cosmography of Paradise Lost. On the one hand, the word is applied to the deep and confused region between heaven and hell. On the other, it names the divinity who rules in this region. The principal source of the latter conception is in Hesiod, though his representation is much less definite than Milton's, and amounts to little more than

the epic, to make these allusions in his own name. in this dramatic poem, and that a very remote one. of revealing God's secrets,

Strictly, only one such allusion occurs
It is where Samson accuses himself

a sin

That Gentiles in their parables condemn
To their abyss and horrid pains confined.

(499-501.)

But in addition to this one

He evidently means Tantalus and Prometheus (see p. 80). instance I have also discussed in their respective places the references to the Chalybeans (133), to 'dire Necessity' (1666), and to the phoenix (1699), as being mythological and having their probable sources among classical writers.