Of this new glorious world, and me so late Now death to hear! for what can I increase 725 730 735 740 728. All that I eat or drink, and catching at trifles, quirks, or shall beget, Is propagated curse.] Meat and drink propagate it by prolonging life, and children by carrying it on to posterity. 740. On me as on their natural centre light Heavy, though in their place,] Dr. Bentley has really made some very just objections to several lines here together. He finds fault with Adam's not keeping up a due decorum, and in that heavy seriousness and anxiety leaving his true topics, jingles, and other such prettinesses. He censures him, as Mr. Addison had done before, for using such low phrases, as, For this we may thank Adam ; and then for soaring so high inter nubes et inania; refluxes and natural centres; heavy, though in their place. Adam, it seems, was already a Peripatetic in his notions; he supposes here, that elementary bodies do not gravitate in their natural places; not air in air, not water in water: from which he fetches Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold a pretty lamentation. That contrary to the course of nature, his afflictions will weigh heavy on him, though they be in their proper place. Is not he sorely afflicted (says the Doctor) that talks at this rate? And yet the worst of it is, this notion is false, and long since exploded by the modern philosophy: water weighs in water, as much as it does out of it. And therefore the Doctor is for lopping off with a bold hand ten lines together and we heartily wish indeed that no such passages had been admitted into any part 745 750 755 of the poem, and especially into so fine a speech as this before us, and all that we can say for them is, Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus. 758. Thou didst &c.] The change of persons, sometimes speaking of himself in the first and sometimes to himself in the second, is very remarkable in this speech, as well as the change of passions. And in like manner he speaks sometimes of God and sometimes to God. Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son But natural necessity begot. God made thee' of choice his own, and of his own Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out 773. Fix'd on this day?] For God had said, In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die, Gen. ii. 17. But it may be questioned whether it was now this day; for the night of this day is mentioned before in ver. 342. and the sun's rising is taken notice of in ver. 329. 760 765 770 775 780 but Milton is not always very exact in marking the time; he neglects those little things for greater beauties. 783. ——lest all I cannot die,] A like expression in Horace. Od. iii. xxx. 6. Non omnis moriar. Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man 785 Of life that sinn'd; what dies but what had life 790 All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since human reach no further knows. Is his wrath also? be it, Man is not so, But mortal doom'd. How can he exercise 795 Wrath without end on man whom death must end? Can he make deathless death? that were to make Strange contradiction which to God himself Impossible is held, as argument 789. -It was but breath Of life that sinn'd;] 800 prove to himself that the breath of life (the spirit of Man which God inspired into him, ver. 784.) was to die with his body; and his argument here and in what follows runs thus. Nothing but breath of life sinned; nothing, but what had life and sin, dies; the body properly has neither of these, and therefore he concludes that the breath of life (or spirit of man within him) was to die; and that all of him was to die, because the body he knew was mortal. Pearce. 800. Impossible is held, as argument Of weakness, not of pow'r.] This is the doctrine of the Schoolmen: but as it is here Adam is here endeavouring to spoken in the person of Adam, Of weakness, not of pow'r. Will he draw out, In punish'd Man, to satisfy his rigour His sentence beyond dust and nature's law, Not to th' extent of their own sphere. But say we must suppose that it was held likewise by the angels, of whom he might have learned it in discourse. 804. that were to extend His sentence beyond dust and nature's law,] Dr. Bentley proposes to read, beyond just and nature's law; but dust is the true reading. Part of the sentence pronounced upon Adam, x. 208. was this, For dust thou art; and shalt to dust return. Hence Adam here argues, that for God to punish him after death would be to extend the sentence beyond dust, beyond what he thought implied in the words, thou shalt to dust return. See also ver. 748, 1085. where Adam speaks of being reduced to dust, as the final end of him. Pearce. 804. It may be added, that dust is that recipient, beyond the capacity of which even infinite rigour cannot act; according to v. 806, 807. See the next note. E. 806. By which all causes else &c] All other agents act in proportion to the reception or capacity of the subject matter, and not to the utmost extent of 805 their own power. An allusion to another axiom of the schools: Omne efficiens agit secundum vires recipientis, non suas. But this is not so bad as what Mr. Pope has objected to our author, Milton's strong pinion now not heav'n can bound, Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground; In quibbles angel and archangel join, And God the Father turns a Schooldivine. But it should be considered, that this sort of divinity was much more in fashion in Milton's days; and no wonder that he was a little ostentatious of shewing his reading in this, as well as in all other branches of learning. And for his creeping in prose, which Mr. Dryden has likewise objected to our author in the preface to his Juvenal, we are satisfied that he is thought to do so the more only because of his writing in blank verse: and if those two poets themselves (excellent as they are) were stripped and divested of their rhyme, it would appear in several places of their works, that they have little else to support them. |