If I, to try whether in higher sort

Than these thou bear'st that title, have proposed
What both from men and angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of fire, air, flood, and on the earth
Nations beside from all the quarter'd winds,
God of this world invoked and world beneath;
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me so fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me nought advantaged, missing what I aim'd.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute;

200

205

210

As by that early action may be judged,

215

When slipping from thy mother's eye thou went'st
Alone into the temple; there wast found
Among the gravest Rabbies disputant

On points and questions fitting Moses' chair, Teaching, not taught; the childhood shews the

man,

221

As morning shews the day. Be famous then
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend:
All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' law,
The Pentateuch, or what the Prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by Nature's light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion as thou mean'st;
Without their learning how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou reason with them, how refute

Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?

Error by his own arms is best evinced.

Look once more ere we leave this specular mount Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold

225

230

235

Matt. xxi. 2.

236. Par. Lost, xil, 588.

Where on the Egean shore a city stands

Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,

Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits

240

The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,

251

Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power

Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

255

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,

Blind Melesigenes thence Homer call'd,

Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own. 260 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; 205 High actions and high passions best describing: Thence to the famous orators repair,

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

238. The following passage has been justly pointed out as one of the most beautiful in the poem. It is pure, clear, and distinct;

like a prospect seen through a Grecian atmosphere.

253. The Lyceum was the school of Aristotle, as the Academy was that of Plate; and the Stoa, which was adorned with many paintings, was the school of Zeno.

Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Sirnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe;

280

These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, 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.
To whom our Saviour sagely thus reply'd :
Think not but that I know these things, or think
I know them not; not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought: he who receives
Light from above, from the Fountain of Light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all profess'd
To know this only, that he nothing knew;

283

290

The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits;

295

A third sort doubted all things, though plain sense; Others in virtue placed felicity,

But virtue join'd with riches and long life;

In corporal pleasure he, and careless ease;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,

300

By him call'd Virtue; and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,

304

Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas, what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves

310

293. The first; Socrates, who declared he could know nothing bit himself.-The next; Plato, whose mysticism and allegories are here alluded to.-The third; the scholars of Pyrrho, whose philosophy was altogether sceptical. The others who are mentioned ere the Academics and the Epicureans.

All glory arrogate, to God give none,
Rather accuse him under usual names,

Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite

Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these

True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion

315

Far worse, her false resemblance only meets, 320
An empty cloud. However, many books,

Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek?) Uncertain and unsettled still remains,

Deep versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,

And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge;

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poems, where so soon

330

As in our native language can I find

That solace? all our law and story strew'd

With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed,

Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,

336

That pleased so well our victors' ear, declare

That rather Greece from us these arts derived;

Il imitated, while they loudest sing

The vices of their deities, and their own,

340

In fable, hymn, or song, so personating

Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame : Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid

As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,

Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,

345

Will far be found unworthy to compare

With Sion's songs, to all true taste excelling,

Where God is praised aright, and godlike men,

The holiest of holies, and his saints;

Such are from God inspired, not such from thee, 350
Unless where moral virtue is express'd

By light of Nature, not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those
The top of eloquence, statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our Prophets far beneath

322. Eccles. xii. 12.

336. Ps. cxxxvii.

355

As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government

In their majestic unaffected style
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

800

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.

365

370

So spake the Son of God; but Satan now Quite at a loss, for all his darts were spent, Thus to our Saviour with stern brow replied: Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms nor arts, Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor aught By me proposed in life contemplative, Or active, tended on by glory, or by fame, What dost thou in this world? the wilderness For thee is fittest place; I found thee there, And thither will return thee; yet remember What I foretell thee, soon thou shalt have cause 375 To wish thou never hadst rejected thus Nicely or cautiously my offer'd aid,

Which would have set thee in short time with ease

On David's throne, or throne of all the world,

Now at full age, fulness of time, thy season,
When prophecies of thee are best fulfill'd.
Now contrary, if I read aught in Heav'n,

Or Heav'n write aught of Fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,

380

In their conjunction met, give me to spell,

385

Sorrows, and labours, opposition, hate

Attend thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,

Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death;

A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,

Real or allegoric I discern not;

390

Nor when, eternal sure, as without end,

Without beginning; for no date prefix'd

Directs me in the starry rubric set.

So saying he took (for still he knew his power Not yet expired) and to the wilderness

385

282. The astrologer Cardan, with a mixture of madness and Iripiety, pretended to cast the nativity of Christ, and to discover what must have been his lot from the situation of the planets at his birth.