THE ARGUMENT. THE Son of God presents to his Father the prayers of our first parents now repenting, and intercedes for them: God accepts them, but declares that they must no longer abide in Paradise; sends Michael with a band of Cherubim to dispossess them; but first to reveal to Adam future things: Michael's coming down. Adam shews to Eve certain ominous signs; he discerns Michael's approach, goes out to meet him; the Angel denounces their departure. Eve's lamentation. Adam pleads, but submits: The Angel leads him up to a high hill, sets before him in vision what shall happen till the flood. PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI. THUS they in lowliest plight repentant stood 1. Thus they in lowliest plight &c.] Milton has shewn a wonderful art in describing that variety of passions, which arise in our first parents upon the breach of the commandment that had been given them. We see them gradually passing from the triumph of their guilt through remorse, shame, despair, contrition, prayer, and hope, to a perfect and complete repentance. At the end of the tenth book they are represented as prostrating themselves upon the ground, and watering the earth with their tears: to which the poet joins this beautiful circumstance, that they offered up their penitential prayers on the very place where their Judge appeared to them when he pronounced their sentence. There is a beauty of the same kind in a tragedy of Sophocles, where Edipus, after having put out his own eyes, instead of breaking his neck from the palace battlements, (which furnishes so elegant an entertainment for our English audience,) desires that he may be conducted to mount Citharon, in order to end his life in that very place where he was exposed in his infancy, and where he should then have died, had the will of his parents been executed. As the author never fails to give a poetical turn to his sentiments, he describes in the beginning of this book, the acceptance which these their prayers met with, in a short allegory formed upon that beautiful passage in holy writ: (Rev. viii. 3, 4.) And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne: and the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God. We have the same thought expressed a second time in the intercession of the Prevenient grace descending had remov'd Inspir'd, and wing'd for heav'n with speedier flight Praying.] Dr. Bentley thinks that the author intended it repentant kneeled, because it is said in ver. 150, and in x. 1099, that they kneeled and fell prostrate: but stood here has no other sense than that of the noun substantive were. So in ii. 55. stand in arms signifies are in arms. In the same sense stetit and wornxi are often used by the Latins and Greeks. See my note on ii. 56. Pearce. Stood here, and in ver. 14. hath no relation to the posture, but to the act itself, and the continuance of it. Standing in arms is not only being armed or having armour on, but being in arms with a determined resolution not to lay them down without endeavouring to attain some end proposed. Thus stood praying means, not only that they prayed, or were praying, but that they persevered in their devotions, and, as the apostle expresses it, continued instant in prayer, in the humble postures of sometimes kneeling, and sometimes falling prostrate. Greenwood. 5. that sighs now breath'd Unutterable,] 5 That sighs inexpressible burst forth, which God's Holy Spirit, the Spirit of supplication and intercession, breathed into them, and wafted up to heaven with nimbler speed, than the most audible and loudest oration could ever reach: according to St. Paul, Rom. viii. 26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Hume. 8. yet their port &c.] This yet refers so far back as to line the first, Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood praying, yet their port not of mean suitors, all the intermediate lines being to be understood as in a parenthesis. Nor did their petition seem of less importance, than when the ancient pair so nowned in old fables, yet not so ancient a pair as Adam and Eve, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, in order to restore the race of mankind after the deluge, stood devoutly praying before the shrine of Themis, the goddess of justice, who had the most famous oracle of those days. The poet could not have thought of a Not of mean suitors, nor important less Seem'd their petition, than when th' ancient pair more apt similitude to illustrate his subject, and he has plainly fetched it from Ovid, Met. i. 318. Hic ubi Deucalion (nam cætera texerat æquor) Cum consorte tori parvâ rate vectus adhæsit; Corycidas Nymphas et numina montis adorant, Fatidicamque Themin, quæ tunc oracla tenebat. Non illo melior quisquam, nec Vir fuit, aut illâ metuentior ulla Atque ita, Si precibus, dixerunt, Victa remollescunt, si flectitur ira Dic, Themi, qua generis damnum reparabile nostri Arte sit et mersis fer opem, mitissima, rebus. High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion wafting, moor'd his little skiff. He with his wife were only left behind Of perish'd man; they two were human kind. The mountain-nymphs, and The. mis they adore, And from her oracles relief implore. The most upright of mortal men was he, The most sincere and holy woman she. VOL. II. 10 15 O righteous Themis, if the Pow'rs above By pray'rs are bent to pity and to love; If human miseries can move their mind; If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind; Tell how we may restore, by second Mankind, and people desolated earth. Milton has been often censured for his frequent allusions to the heathen mythology, and for ixing fables with sacred truths: but it may be observed in favour of him, that what he borrows from the heathen mythology, he commonly applies only by way of similitude; and a similitude from thence may illustrate his subject as well as from any thing else, especially since it is one of the first things that we learn at school, and is made by the ancients such an essential part of poetry, that it can hardly be separated from it; and no wonder that Milton was ambitious of shewing something of his reading in this kind, as well as in all others. 16. Blown vagabond or frustrate] It is a familiar expres T Dimensionless through heav'nly doors; then clad sion with the ancient poets, to Audiit, et voti Phoebus succedere partem Mente dedit: partem volucres dispersit in auras. Sterneret ut subitâ turbatam morte And it is in allusion to this manner of speaking, that Milton says here of the prayers of our first parents, that they were not by envious winds blown vagabond or frustrate. By envious winds, as in Ovid, Met. x. 642. Detulit aura preces ad me non invida blandas. 17. Dimensionless through heav'nly doors;] As these prayers were of a spiritual nature, not as matter that has dimensions, measure, and proportion, they passed through heaven's gates without any ob struction. Richardson. As heaven gates are described (vii. 205, &c.) as ever-during, and moving on golden hinges, and opening wide to let forth and let in the King of Glory, it might be wondered how these prayers could pass through them without their opening, and for this reason, I suppose, the poet added the epithet dimensionless. And as he glanced before at the heathen manner of expression in saying that their prayers were not by envious winds blown vagabond or frustrate, so here he may intend a remote reflection upon that other notion of the heathens contained in the fable of Menippus, who was taken up into heaven, where Jupiter is represented as opening a trapdoor to hear the requests of mankind, and shutting it again when he was unwilling to attend to any more petitions. 19.- -came in sight &c.] Milton, in this allegorical description of the repentant prayers of our first parents, very much exceeds the two great masters of Italian poetry, Ariosto and Tasso, who have attempted something in the same way. See Carlomagno's prayer in the former, cant. xiv. st. 73 and 74. and in the latter Raimond's prayer, cant. vii. st. 79. and Godfrey's, cant. xiii. st. 72. As the quotations would be too long, we only refer the reader to the places. Thyer. 19. In the Revelation an angel offers incense with the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar, ch. viii. 4. See also Spenser, Faery Queen, i. x. 51. of Mercy. Thou dost praiers of the righteous seed Present before the maiestie divine. |
