Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect have the description of such a 32. -cristis præsignis et auro; Igne micant oculi Ille volubilibus squamosos nexibus orbes Torquet, et immensos saltu sinuatur in arcus: Ac media plus parte leves erectus in auras, Despicit omne nemus &c. 500 and with the greater propriety, as he was himself now transformed into a serpent. And in this view it is said that none were lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus. Cadmus and his wife Harmonia or Hermione, for she is called by either name, and I presume Milton thought Hermione and Cadmus more musical Fire broke in flashes when he glanc'd in verse as it certainly is than his eyes; His tow'ring crest was glorious to behold, His shoulders and his sides were scal'd with gold. Spire above spire uprear'd in air he stood, And gazing round him overlook'd the wood. Addison. The reader may observe some touches very like Grotius's description of the same serpent in his tragedy of Adamus Exul. act iv. -oculi ardent duo: Harmonia and Cadmus. This Adrecta cervix surgit, et maculis ley, change Hermione and Cad nitet Pectus superbis; cærulis picti notis cant Auri colore &c. 504. ―never since of serpent kind &c.] Satan is not here compared and preferred to the finest and most memorable serpents of antiquity, the Python and the rest; but only to the most memorable of those serpents into which others were transformed; VOL. II. mus? or were not these, who were man and woman once, changed into serpents? And Dr. Pearce replies, We may excuse this as a poetical liberty of expression; it is much the same as the critics have observed in Ovid's Metam. i. 1. where formas mutatas in nova corpora stands for corpora mutata in noras formas. In both places the changing is attributed, not to the persons changed, but to the forms L Lovelier, not those that in Illyria chang'd or shapes into which they were -aceto Quod Methymnæam vitio mutaverat uvam, for in quod vitio mutata est uva Methymnæa. If this may not be allowed to pass, yet I see no reason (says Dr. Pearce) why the construction may not be this, not those that in Illyria (were) changed, viz. Hermione and Cadmus, &c. Or perhaps this; not those that Hermione and Cadmus changed, where changed stands for changed to, as in x. 540. we have the same way of speaking, -for what they saw, They felt themselves now changing. But after all these very ingenious conjectures, I conceive the meaning to be as it is expressed, and the expression to be the most proper and apposite that could be. The serpents changed Hermione and Cadmus, the form of serpents was superinduced, but they still retained the same sense and memory; and this Ovid says expressly. When Cadmus was first changed, iv. 595. -Ille suæ lambebat conjugis ora; Inque sinus caros, veluti cognosceret, ibat ; Et dabat amplexus, assuetaque colla petebat. The husband-serpent show'd he still had thought, With wonted fondness an embrace he sought; 505 Play'd round her neck in many a harmless twist, And lick'd that bosom which, a man, he kist. And after the wife was changed too, it is said, ver. 602. Nunc quoque nec fugiunt hominem, Fearless see men, by men are fear- Still mild and conscious what they once have been. Eusden. They were therefore still Hermione and Cadmus, though changed; as the devil was still the devil, though inclosed in serpent. And thus it may be said with the greatest propriety, that none of serpent kind were lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus, Esculapius the God of physic, or the God in Epidaurus, that is, the son of Apollo, who was worshipped at Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus, and being sent for to Rome in the time of a plague, assumed the form of a serpent and accompanied the ambassadors, as the story was related in the eleventh book of Livy, and may still be read in the fifteenth book of Ovid's Metamorphosis: but though he was thus changed in appearance, he was still Esculapius, In serpente Deus, as Ovid calls him xv. 670. the deity in a serpent, and under that form continued to be worshipped at Rome. Nor were those serpents lovelier, to which transformed Ammonian Jove or Capitoline was seen, Jupiter Am In Epidaurus; nor to which transform'd mon and Jupiter Capitolinus, the one the Lybian Jupiter, the other the Roman, called Capitoline, from the Capitol, his temple at Rome: He with Olympias, the first the pretended father of Alexander the Great, conversing with his mother Olympias in the form of a serpent; this with her who bore Scipio the highth of Rome, the latter fabled in like manner to have been the father of Scipio Africanus, who raised his country and himself to the highest pitch of glory. Dr. Bentley objects to this expression the highth of Rome. But, as Dr. Pearce observes in answer, this expression is much of the same nature with Ovid's Summa ducum Atrides, Amor. l. i. el. 9. v. 37. and with Cicero's expression Apex senectutis est auctoritas, de Senect.: the Italians, whose expressions Milton often imitates, use altezza in the same sense, if I remember aright. 513. As when a ship &c.] There are some Latin poems of Andrew Ramsay, a Scotchman in the time of Charles the First, under this title, Poemata sacra Andrea Ramsæi Pastoris Edinburgeni. Edinburgi 1633. The book is now grown very scarce, but there are few poems in it. 510 The principal is one in four books, the first of the creation, the second of the happy state of man, the third of the fall of man, the fourth of the redemption of man by Jesus Christ: and this poem was recommended to me as a performance to which Milton had been much obliged and indebted: but upon perusing it I do not well see how two authors could write so much upon the same subjects, and write more differently. There are few or no traces to be discovered of any similitude or resemblance between them, but in the simile before us, and the following one of the Scotch poet, and these are so different, and applied so differently, that they may both be originals, or at least not the copy the one of the other. Milton's is applied to the oblique motion of the serpent, this of Ramsay to the Devil tempting our Saviour, and when temptation would not avail, trying another: one -Ut vento portum qui fortè reflante Non potis est capere, is malos et lintea vela Carbaseosque sinus obliquat, tendere rectà Qua nequit, incurvo radit vada cærula cursu; Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind 515 520 525 Sic gnarus versare dolos, et imagine books which he has read withfalsa Mutat, et ad palmam converso tramite tendit. So that upon the whole it is to be questioned whether Milton had ever seen these poems of Ramsay, or knew any thing of them; and he might still say with truth that he pursued Things unattempted yet in prose or rhime. And in the general it may be said, that resemblance is not plagiarism. Different authors may possibly hit upon the same thought without borrowing from one another. An author, of great reading especially, may be tinged and coloured as it were by his reading; his writings may have something of the taste of the This out his knowing it, as the stream 522. Than at Circean call the herd disguis'd.] All beasts of the field used to play and sport before her, more obedient to her voice, than men turned into beasts by the famous inchantress Circe were at her beck. Ovid. Metam. xiv. 45. -perque ferarum Agmen adulantûm media procedit ab aula. Hume. His gentle dumb expression turn'd at length His fraudulent temptation thus began. Wonder not, sovran mistress, if perhaps Thou canst, who art sole wonder; much less arm 530. Organic, or impulse of vocal air,] That the devil moved the serpent's tongue, and used it as an instrument to form that tempting speech he made to Eve, is the opinion of some; that he formed a voice by impression of the sounding air, distant from the serpent, is that of others: of which our author has left the curious to their choice. Hume. 531. His fraudulent temptation thus began.] We see by this first speech of Satan what our author thought the most probable, the most natural, and the most successful way of begin 530 535 540 |