That death be not one stroke, as I suppos'd From this day onward, which I feel begun To perpetuity; Aye me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution Aye, there's the rub, &c. -that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head;] The thought is fine as it is natural. The sinner may invent never so many arguments in favour of the annihilation and utter extinction of the soul; but after all his subterfuges and evasions, the fear of a future state and the dread of everlasting punishment will still pursue him he may put it off for a time, but it will return with dreadful revolution; and let him affect what serenity and gaiety he pleases, will notwithstanding in the midst of it all come thundering back on his defenceless head. -both Death and I Am found eternal,] : 815. you bless 810 815 820 816. -and incorporate both,] Lodged both together in one mortal body, as St. Paul says, Rom. vii. 20. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Hume. 817. Nor I on my part single, in me all Posterity stands curs'd:] And this curse was the patrimony which he was to leave his sons. The author had in view 2 Esdr. vii. 48. O thou Adam, what hast thou done? for though it was thou that sinned, thou art not fallen alone, but we all that come of thee. Me now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind With me? how can they then acquitted stand Forc'd I absolve: all my evasions vain, 825 And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still 830 835 So might the wrath. Fond wish! could'st thou support 825. But all corrupt,] For, as Job says, xiv. 4. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? 834. So might the wrath.] So is used in the sense of wishing, as in iii. 34. So were I equall'd with them in 840 in the other: and that much is well thrown in, and raises the sense greatly; the burden is not only heavier than the earth to bear, it is heavier than all the world, nay, it is much heavier. 840. Beyond all past example and futúre,] As Adam is here speaking in great agonies of mind, he aggravates his own misery, 835. —heavier than the earth and concludes it to be greater renown. to bear, Than all the world much heavier,] We quote this only that the reader may observe the beautiful turn of the words, heavier the first in one line and the last and worse than that of the fallen angels or all future men, as having in himself alone the source of misery for all his posterity; whereas both angels and men had only their own to bear. Satan was only like him, as To Satan only like both crime and doom. Thus Adam to himself lamented loud The day of his offence. Why comes not death, being the ringleader, and this added very much to his remorse, as we read in i. 605. The accent upon the word future is indeed very uncommon, but it is the Latin accent, and there is a like instance in Fairfax's Tasso, cant. xvii. st. 88. 845 850 855 Sat in their sad discourse, and va. rious plaint, Thence gather'd his own doom; and the next morning, while the sun in Aries rose, ver. 329. he met Sin and Death in their way to earth; they discourse together, and it was after Sin and Death were arrived in Paradise, But not by art or skill, of things that the Almighty made that futúre Can the plain troth revealed be and told. speech from ver. 616, to ver. 641. and after that the angels are ordered to make the changes in nature: so that this, we conceive, must be some other night than that immediately after the fall. 854. why comes not death,— But death comes not at call,] Sophocles Philoctetes, 793. Ω θανατε, θανατε, πως αει καλυμενος Justice divine not hasten to be just? But death comes not at call, justice divine Mends not her slowest pace for pray'rs or cries. O woods, O fountains, hillocs, dales, and bowers, 860 With other echo late I taught your shades song. To answer, and resound far other 859. her slowest pace] Pede 860. O woods, O fountains, hillocs, dales, and bowers, With other echo late I taught your shades To answer, and resound far other song.] Alluding to this part of Adam's morning hymn, v. 202. Witness if I be silent, morn or even, To hill, or valley, fountain or fresh had now gained the dominion over him. The following passage, wherein she is described as renewing her addresses to him, with the whole speech that follows it, have something in them exquisitely moving and pathetic: He added not, and from her turn'd; but Eve &c. Adam's reconcilement to her is worked up in the same spirit of tenderness. Eve afterwards proposes to her husband, in the blindness of her despair, that to prevent their guilt from descending upon posterity they should resolve to live childless; or if that could not be done, they should seek their own deaths by violent methods. As those sentiments naturally engage the reader to regard the mother of mankind with more than ordinary commiseration, they likewise contain a very fine moral. The resolution of dying to end our miseries, does not show such a degree of magnanimity as a resolution to bear them, and submit to the dispensations of Providence. Our author has therefore, with great delicacy, represented Eve as entertaining this thought, and Adam as disapproving it. Addison. Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh, Out of my sight, thou serpent; that name best 865 870 875 880 885 Milton himself explains this phrase, p. 809. Tol. Edit. -but ecclesiastical is ever pretended to political. Thus Quintil. Pref. to 1. i. Vultum et tristitiam et dissentientem a cæteris habitum pessimis moribus prætendebant, speaking of the false philosophers. Richardson. 883. And understood not] The construction is, I was fooled and beguiled by thee, and understood not &c. |