SAMSON AGONISTES.

THE ARGUMEN T.

SAMSON, made captive, blind, and now in prison at Gaza, there to labour as in a common workhouse, on a festival day, in the general cessation from labour, comes forth into the open air, to a place nigh, somewhat retired, there to sit awhile and bemoan his condition; where he happens at length to be visited by certain friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek to comfort him what they can; then by his old father Manoah, who endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his liberty by ransom; lastly, that this feast was proclaimed by the Philistines as a day of thanksgiving for their deliverance from the hands of Samson, which yet more troubles him. Manoah then departs to prosecute his endeavour with the Philistine lords for Samson's redemption; who in the mean while is visited by other persons, and lastly by a public officer to require his coming to the feast before the lords and people, to play or show his strength in their presence: he at first refuses, dismissing the public officer with absolute denial to come; at length, persuaded inwardly that this was from God, he yields to go along with him, who came now the second time with great threatenings to fetch him: the Chorus yet remaining on the place, Manoah returns full of joyful hope, to procure ere long his son's deliverance: in the midst of which discourse a Hebrew comes in haste, confusedly at first, and afterwards more distinctly, relating the catastrophe, what Samson had done to the Philistines, and by accident to himself; wherewith the tragedy ends.

SAMSON, (Attendant leading him.)

A LITTLE Onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;

For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade;
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,

Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me,

Samson Agonistes, that is, Samson the he professes to imitate, opens his drama Champion, the combatant, from the with introducing one of its principal per Greek Ayoviarns, (agonistes) a comba-sonages explaining the story upon which tant or athlete at the Public Games. it is founded.-THYER. The words of this opening are very poetical, beautiful, and affecting.-BRYDGES.

1. A little onward. Milton, after the example of the Greek tragedians, whom

Where I, a prisoner, chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprison'd also, close and damp,
Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.—
This day a solemn feast the people hold

To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest
Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind

From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O, wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight
Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column charioting

His godlike presence,(and from some great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?

Why was my breeding order'd and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,

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Design'd for great exploits; if I must die

Betray'd, captív'd, and both my eyes put out,

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze;

To grind in brazen fetters under task

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With this heaven-gifted strength? O glorious strength,

Put to the labour of a beast, debased

Lower than bond-slave! Promise was, that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver:

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him

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Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke:
Yet stay; let me not rashly call in doubt

Divine prediction: whatif all foretold gh
Had been fulfill'd but through mine own default,
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodged, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep,
But weakly to a woman must reveal it,
O'ercome with importunity and tears.
O impotence of mind, in body strong!

10. The breath of heaven. This line and the next are exquisite.-BRYDGES.

21. But rush upon me thronging. The whole of this passage is pathetic, moral, and full of force.-BRYDGES.

24. Twice by an angel. Once to his mother, and again to his father Manoah

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and his mother both. Of all the wonderful acquirements of Milton, not the least is his astonishingly critical reading and retentive memory of the Scriptures, making every portion of them subservient to his grand and holy designs.

28. And from, that is, and as from.

But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom? vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command!
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.
But peace, I must not quarrel with the will
Of highest dispensation, which herein
Haply had ends above my reach to know :
Suffices that to me strength is my bane,
And proves the source of all my miseries;
So many, and so huge, that each apart
Would ask a life to wail; but chief of all,
O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

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Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

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Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased,
Inferiour to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:

They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily (fraud,) contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool,

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In power of others, never in my own;

Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

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Without all hope of day!

O first-created Beam, and thou great Word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;"
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark

And silent as the moon,

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it(bě true
That light is in the soul,

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He

tude and cruelty of his children. complained that they combined to defraud him in the economy of his house, and sold several of his books in the basest manner. IIis feelings on such an outrage, both as a parent and a scholar, must have been singularly painful: perhaps they suggested to him these very pathetic lines.—HAYLEY.

75. I, dark in light, &c. In these lines the poet seems to paint himself. The litigation of his will produced a collection of evidence relating to the testator, which renders the discovery of those long-forgotten papers peculiarly interesting: they show very forcibly, and in new points of view, his domestic infelicity, and his amiable disposition. The tender and sublime poet, whose sensibility and 80. O dark, dark, dark, &c. Few pas sufferings were so great, appears to have sages in poetry are so affecting as this, been almost as unfortunate in his daugh- and the tone of expression is peculiarly ters as the Lear of Shakspeare. A ser- Miltonic.-BRYDGES. Indeed there is very vant declares in evidence, that her de- extraordinary power of poetry in the ceased master, a little before his last mar-whole passage, down to line 109 riage, had lamented to her the ingrati

She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exíl'd from light,
As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,)
And buried; but, O yet more miserable!

My self my sepulchre, a moving grave;
Buried, yet not exempt,

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By privilege of death and burial,

From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs;

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But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

But who are these? for with joint pace I hear

The tread of many feet steering this way;
Perhaps my enemies, who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Their daily practice to afflict me more.

Enter CHORUS.

CHO. This, this is he; softly awhile;

Let us not break in upon him:

O change beyond report, thought, or belief!

See how he lies at random, carelessly diffused,

With languish'd head unpropp'd,

As one past hope, abandon'd,

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And by himself given over;

In slavish habit, ill-fitted (weeds

That heroick, that renown'd,

O'erworn and soil'd;

Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,

Irresistible Samson? whom unarm'd

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No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand;

Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid;

Ran on embattel'd armies clad in iron;

And, weaponless himself,

Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery

Of brazen shield and spear, the hammer'd cuirass,
Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail

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There he him found all carelessly displaid So Akenside

118. Diffused. This beautiful applica- | And again, tion of diffused, Milton has taken from the Latin, fusus, and diffusus. No one English word, and hardly any combination of words, can express its full, peculiar, and luscious meaning, which is, as near as I can define it, stretched upon the ground with relaxed and careless limbs. Spenser says

Pour'd out in looseness on the grassy ground.

-But Waller longs To spread his careless limbs amid the cool Of plantane shades, &c.

133. Chalybean. The Chalybes were a people of Pontus, famous for their iron works.

Adamantéan proof?

But safest he who stood aloof,

When insupportably his foot advanced,

In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools,
Spurn'd them to death by troops.

The bold Ascalonite

Fled from his lion ramp; old warriours turn'd

Their plated backs under his heel;

Or, grovelling, soil'd their crested helmets in the dust.
Then with what trivial weapon came to hand,

The jaw of a dead ass, his sword of bone,

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A thousand foreskins fell, the flower of Palestine,

In Ramath-lechi, famous to this day.

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Then by main force pull'd up, and on his shoulders bore

The gates of Azza, post, and massy bar,

Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old,

No journey of a sabbath-day, and loaded so;

Like whom the Gentiles feign to bear up heaven.
Which shall I first bewail,

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Thou art become (0 worst imprisonment!)

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Imprison'd now indeed,

The dungeon of thyself; thy soul,

(Which men enjoying sight oft without cause complain,)

In real darkness of the body dwells,

The rarer thy example stands,

By how much from the top of wondrous glory,

Strongest of mortal men,

To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen.
For him I reckon not in high estate,

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Whom long descent of birth,

Or the sphere of fortune raises;

But thee, whose strength, while virtue was her mate,

Might have subdued the earth,

Universally crown'd with highest praises.

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SAMS. I hear the sound of words; their sense the air

Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear.

CHо. He speaks: let us draw nigh. Matchless in might, The glory late of Israel, now the grief,

138. Ascalonite: An inhabitant of Ascalon.

145. Ramath-lechi. See Judges xv. 17. 147. Azza, another name for Gaza. 148. Hebron. See Josh. xv. 13, 14; Numb. xiii. 33.

172. Sphere of fortune: Alluding to the fact of Fortune being represented on a rolling stone, as in the "Tablature of Cebes."