This uttered, straining all his nerves, he bowed,
As with the force of winds and waters pent,
When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars
With horrible convulsion to and fro ;

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew 1650
The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder,

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath-
Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, or priests,
Their choice nobility and flower, not only
Of this, but each Philistian city round,
Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.
Samson, with these immixed, inevitably
Pulled down the same destruction on himself;
The vulgar only scaped, who stood without.

CHORUS. O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious! 1660 Living or dying thou hast fulfilled

The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now liest victorious

Among thy slain self-killed;

Not willingly, but tangled in the fold

Of dire Necessity, whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
Than all thy life had slain before.

I SEMICHOR. While their hearts were jocund and sublime,

Drunk with idolatry, drunk with wine
And fat regorged of bulls and goats,
Chaunting their idol, and preferring
Before our living Dread, who dwells
In Silo, his bright sanctuary,

Among them he a spirit of phrenzy sent,
Who hurt their minds,

And urged them on with mad desire

To call in haste for their destroyer:
They, only set on sport and play,

Unweetingly importuned

1670

Their own destruction to come speedy upon them.

1680

So fond are mortal men,

Fallen into wrath divine,

As their own ruin on themselves to invite,

Insensate left, or to sense reprobate,

And with blindness internal struck.

2 SEMICHOR. But he, though blind of sight, Despised, and thought extinguished quite,

With inward eyes illuminated,

His fiery virtue roused

From under ashes into sudden flame,

And as an evening dragon came,

Assailant on the perched roosts

And nests in order ranged

Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle

His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

So Virtue, given for lost,

Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,

Like that self-begotten bird

In the Arabian woods embost,

That no second knows nor third,

And lay erewhile a holocaust,

From out her ashy womb now teemed,

Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most

When most unactive deemed;

And, though her body die, her fame survives,

A secular bird, ages of lives.

1690

1700

MANOA. Come, come; no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause. Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished

A life heroic, on his enemies

Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning,
And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor
Through all Philistian bounds; to Israel
Honour hath left and freedom, let but them
Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;
To himself and father's house eternal fame;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was feared,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us, in a death so noble.
Let us go find the body where it lies

Soaked in his enemies' blood, and from the stream
With lavers pure, and cleansing herbs, wash off
The clotted gore. I, with what speed the while

E

1710

1720

(Gaza is not in plight to say us nay),
Will send for all my kindred, all my friends,
To fetch him hence, and solemnly attend,
With silent obsequy and funeral train,
Home to his father's house.

There will I build him
A monument, and plant it round with shade
Of laurel ever green and branching palm,
With all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled
In copious legend, or sweet lyric song.
Thither shall all the valiant youth resort,
And from his memory inflame their breasts
To matchless valour and adventures high;
The virgins also shall, on feastful days,
Visit his tomb with flowers, only bewailing
His lot unfortunate in nuptial choice,
From whence captivity and loss of eyes.

CHORUS. All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose

Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide his face,

1730

1740

But unexpectedly returns,

1750

And to his faithful champion hath in place

Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist

His uncontrollable intent.

His servants He, with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind, all passion spent.

1 Tragedy, as it was antiently composed, &c. In a description of Athens, Paradise Regained, iv. 261, et seq., the poet speaks "What the lofty grave tragedians taught

of

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; High actions and high passions best describing." "Tragic strength must be based on exclusive self-reliance. Now exclusive self-reliance is the spirit that goes before a fall; and it is one of the functions of tragedy to illustrate, by the confutation of a fatal reverse, the insufficiency of such merely human strength, and the madness latent in such pride." (Edinburgh Review, No. 153, p. 356.)

9 Things of melancholy hue, &c. A practice introduced by Paracelsus about the year 1530. "Thus yellow things, as saffron, &c., were given in liver complaints, from their analogy of colour to the bile."

15 A verse of Euripides. φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ ̓ ὁμιλίαι κακαί. The author is not Euripides, but Menander.

17 Paraus. "A Calvinist theologian (1548-1622)." (B.)

Revelation. "And the Apocalypse of St. John is the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies; and this my opinion the grave authority of Paræus, commenting that book, is sufficient to confirm." (From Milton's Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.) Observe the stately music of Milton's periods, in prose as in poetry.

22 Dionysius the elder. "Tyrant of Syracuse. Born B.C. 431, died 367. The most famous of those who bore the name. He repeatedly contended for the prize of tragedy at Athens, and

succeeded just before his death in bearing away the first prize at the Lenaea." (C. C.)

23 Augustus Cæsar... his Ajax. "See Suetonius, Vita Augusti, lxxxv." (C. C.)

26 Seneca. "Lucius Annaeus Seneca, born a few years before Christ; died A.D. 65. It is still open to question whether the ten tragedies which go under his name were really written by him." (C. C.)

28 Gregory Nazianzen. "One of the most famous of the Greek Fathers, who played a very important part in the religious controversies of the fourth century. Born at Arianzus, near Nazianzus, of which place his father was bishop; died A.D. 389 or 390. The play which Milton alludes to was an attempt to Christianize the Greek drama. The work is little better than a cento of verses, principally from Euripides." (C. C.)

66

31 To vindicate tragedy, &c. Milton has a lofty sense of the superiority of his own tragedy to those of the day. Dryden almost boasts of his comic stuff." In the preface to the Spanish Friar he says, “I dare venture to prophesy that few tragedies, except those in verse, shall succeed in this age if they are not enlightened with a course of mirth." Shakespeare strikes a different note to either, in those bursts of the most tragic humour of Lear and of Hamlet.

40 That which Martial calls, &c. "An allusion to a passage in the preface to the second book of the Epigrams, 'Video quare tragoedi epistolam accipiant, quibus pro se loqui non licet.' It was usual on the Greek and Roman stage to prefix prologues or 'excu sations of the author' to comedies, but not to tragedies." (C. C.) 45 Still in use among the Italians. "As in the dramas of Andreini, Lancetta, and other contemporaries of Milton. Italian tragedy, from its first appearance in the hands of Galeotto del Carretto, in 1502, continued to cling to the Greek model." (C. C.) | 50 Apolelymenon. "A Greek word-ȧπoλeλvμévov, loosed from;' .e. from the fetters of, strophe, antistrophe, or epode monostrophic (uovóσтpopos) meaning literally 'single stanzaed; i.e. a strophe without answering antistrophe. So alloeostrophic (ảλλocóσtpopos) signifies stanzas of irregular strophes, strophes not consisting of alternate strophe and antistrophe." (C. C.) Special acknowledgment is due to Mr. Churton Collins for these notes on the Preface, which seemed to me better than I could make, or find elsewhere.

59 Beyond the fifth act. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 189, "Neve minor, neu sit quinto productior actu Fabula." 64 Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We must always recollect that Milton was, so to speak, soaked with the literature of Greece and Rome. For instance, he constantly uses words in the sense of the Latin word from which they are derived.