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allegory, the plain literal sense ought to appear probable. The story should be such as an ordinary leader may acquiesce in, whatever natural, moral, or political truth may be discovered in it by men of greater penetration. Addison. 444. None yet,&c.] Dr. Bentley is for rejecting this verse and fitty-four more, which follow as an insertion of the editor; but there can be no doubt of their genuineness, whatever there may be of their goodness. Of the Paradise of Fools Dr. Johnson says, "his desire of imitating Aristotle's levity has disgraced his works with the Paradise of Fools; a fiction in itself not ill imagined, but too ludicrous for the place."

460. Those argent fields, &c.] There is no question I believe now among philosophers, that the moon is inhabited; but it is greatly to be questioned whether this notion of our author be true, that the inhabitants there are translated Saints or Spirits of a middle nature between Angeis andMen: for as the moon is certainly less considerable in itself than our earth, it is not likely that its inhabitants should be so much more considerable.

463. Hither of ill join'd sons and daughters born, &c.] He means the sons of God ill-joined with the daughters of men, alluding to that text of Scripture, Gen. vi. 4.

467. Of Sennaar,] Or Shinar, for they are both the same name of this province of Babylonia.

471. Empedocles ;] The scholar of Pythagoras, a philosopher and poet, born at Agrigentum in Sicily: he wrote of the nature of things in Greek, as Lucretius did in Latin verse. He stealing one night from his followers threw himself into the flaming Ætna, that being no where to be found, he might be esteemed to be a God, and to be taken up into Heaven; but his iron pattens, being thrown out by the fury of the burning mountain, discovered his defeated ambition, and ridiculed his folly. Hor, de Art Poet. 464.

473. Cleombrotus ;] The name is rightly placed the last word in the sentence, as Empedocles was before. He was called Ambraciota of Ambracia, a city of Epirus in Greece. Having read over Plato's book of the Soul's immortality and happiness in another life, he was so ravished with the account of it, that he leaped from a high wall into the sea, that

he might immediately enjoy it. His death is celebrated by Callimachus in one of his epigrams.

It may be questioned whether Milton by this appearance of inaccuracy and negligence did not design to express his contempt of their trumpery as he calls it, by hustling it all together in this disorder and confusion.

475. White, black, and gray,] So named according to their habits, white friers or Carmelites, black friers, or Dominicans, gray friers or Franciscans, of their founders St. Francis, St. Dominic, and mount Carmel, where that order pretend they were first instituted. Our author here, as elsewhere, shows his dislike and abhorrence of the church of Rome, by placing the religious orders with all their trumpery, cowls, hoods, reliques, beads, c. in the Paradise of Fools, and not only placing them there, but making them the principal figures.

476. Here pilgrims, &c.] Those who had gone upon pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to visit our Lord's sepulchre, instead of practising his precepts at home.

482. And that chystalline sphere &c.] He speaks here according to the ancient astronomy, adopted and improved by Ptolomy. They pass the planets sev'n, our planetary or solar system, and beyond this pass the fix'd, the firmament or sphere of the fixed stars, and beyond this that crystalline sphere, the crystalline Heaven, clear as crystal, to which the Ptolemaics attributed a sort of libration or shaking (the tre pidation so much talked of) to account for certain irregularities in the motion of the stars, and beyond this that first mov'd, the primum mobile, the sphere which was both the first moved and the first mover, communicating its motion to all the lower spheres; and beyond this was the empyrean Heaven, the seat of God and the Angels.

When our poet mentions St. Peter at Heav'n's wicket with bis keys, he certainly intends to ridicule the fond conceit of the Romanists, that St. Peter and his successors are in a particular manner intrusted with the keys of Heaven. And he makes use of the low phrase of Heaven's wicket, the better to expose the notions of those whom he places here in the Paradise of Fools.

492. Indulgencies, &c.] The proposition which Milton's

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fiction tends to illustrate, is, that all who form a wrong estimate of the value of objects, are, in proportion to the erroneousness of the estimate, Fools. The illustration itself is too much confined. The follies which he particularizes are principally those of the Romish Church. Horace's illustration of a similar doctrine is much more general. See his second book, third Satire.

495. Into a Limbo large and broad,] The Limbus patrum as it is called, is a place that the Schoolmen supposed to be in the neighbourhood of Hell, where the souls of the patriarchs were detained, and those good men who died before our Saviour's resurrection. Our author gives the same name to the Paradise of Fools, and more rationally places it beyond the backside of the world.

506. With frontispiece of diamond and gold] Imitated from Ovid, Met. ii. 1.

The sun's bright palace, on high columns rais'd,
With burnish'd gold and flaming jewels blaz'd.

Addison. 510. The stairs, the degrees mentioned before, ver. 502, were such as whereon Jacob sarv, &c.] A comparison fetched from Gen. xxviii. 12. 13. But this line,

To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz,

must not be understood as if Padan-Aram was in the field of Luz; but he was flying to Padan-Aram or the country of Aram, that is Syria; and by the way rested and dreamed this dream in the field of Luz, for so the adjoining city was called at the first; Jacob upon this occasion gave it the name of Bethel, by which it was better known afterwards.

534. and his eye with choice regard] Dr. Pearce thinks that after regard a verse seems to be wanting to describe what bis eye did with choice regard: but it may be understood thus, his eye pass'd frequent, as well as his Angels to and fro on high behests or commands, and surveyed from Pancas, a city at the foot of a mountain of the same name, part of mount Libanus where the river Jordan has its source, to Beersaba or Beersheba, that is the whole extent of the Promised Land, from Paneas in the north to Beersaba in the south, where the Holy Land is bounded by Egypt and Arabia. The limits of the Holy Land are thus expressed in Scripture, from Dan even unto Beersheba, Dan at the northern and Beersheba at the

southern extremity; and the city that was called Dan was afterwards named Paneas.

540. Satan from hence, &c.] Satan after having long wandered upon the surface, or outmost wall of the universe, discovers at last a wide gap in it, which led into the creation, and is described as the opening through which the Angels pass to and fro into the lower world upon their errands to mankind. His sitting upon the brink of this passage, and taking a survey of the whole face of nature that appeared to him new and fresh in all its beauties, with the simile illustrating this circumstance, fills the mind of the reader with as surprising and glorious an idea as any that arises in the whole poem. He looks down into that vast hollow of the universe, with the eye, or (as Milton calls it) with the ken of an Angel. He surveys all the wonders in this immense amphitheatre that lie between both the poles of Heaven, and takes in at one view the whole round of the creation. Addison.

562. Down right into the world's &c.] Satan after having surveyed the whole creation, immediately without longer pause throws himself into it, and is described as making two different motions. At first he drops down perpendicularly some way into it, down right into the world's first region throws bis flight precipitant, and afterwards winds his oblique way, turns and winds this way and that, if he might any where espy the seat of Man; for though in ver. 527 it is said that the passage was just over Paradise, yet it is evident that Satan did not know it, and therefore as it was natural for him to do, winds about in search of it through the fure marble air. The first epithet pure determines the sense of the second, and shows why the air is compared to marble, namely for its clearness and whiteness, without any regard to its hardness: and the word marmor, marble, is derived from a Greek word that signifies to shine and glister.

Waller has said in his verses upon his mistress's passing through a croud of people;

The yielding marbie of a snowy breast.

And Othello, in Shakespear, is represented as swearing act iii.

-Now by yon marble Heaven.

It is common with the Ancients, and those who write in the spirit and manner of the Ancients, in their metaphors and similies, if they agree in the main circumstance, to have no regard to lesser particulars.

565-that shone

Stars distant,] They appeared by their shining to be stars. It is a Greek expression, as Plato in an epigram on his friend Stella preserved by Diogenes Laertes: You shone whilst living a morning star, but dead you now shine Hesperus among the shades.

568. Like those Hesperian gardens] So called of Hesperus, Vesper, because placed in the west under the evening star, Those famous gardens were the isles about Cape Verd in Africa, whose most western point is still called Hesperium Cornu. Others will have them the Canaries.

573-thither his course he bends &c.] His flight between the several worlds that shined on every side of him, with the particular description of the sun, are set forth in all the wantonness of a luxuriant imagination. His shape, speech, and behaviour upon his transforming himself into an Angel of light, are touched with exquisite beauty. The poet's thought of directingSatan to the sun, which, in the vulgar opinion of mankind, is the most conspicuous part of the creation, and the placing in it an Angel, is a circumstance finely contrived, and the more adjusted to a poetical probability, as it was a received doctrine among the most famous philosophers, that every orb had its Intelligence, and as an Apostle in Sacred Writ is said to have seen such an Angel in the sun. Addison. 580.--in numbers] That is in measures.

586. Shoots invisible virtue ev'n to the deep ;] Dr. Bentley says invisible makes mere tautology with though unseen; but I think not; the words though unseen relate to penetration, and invisible is the epithet to virtue, which is a distinct thing from the penetration before mentioned, and which might have been visible, though the other was not so. Pearce.

590. Through his glaz'd optic tube] The spots in the sun are visible with a telescope: but astronomer perhaps never yet saw through his glaz'd optic tube, that is his telescope, such a spot as Satan, now he was in the sun's orb. The poet

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