This is true glory and renown, when God
Looking on the earth, with approbation marks
The just man, and divulges him through heaven
To all his angels, who with true applause
Recount his praises: thus he did to Job,

When to extend his fame through heaven and earth,
As thou to thy reproach mayst well remember,
He asked thee, "Hast thou seen my servant Job?"
Famous he was in heaven, on earth less known,
Where glory is false glory, attributed

To things not glorious, men not worthy of fame.
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large countries, and in field great battles win,
Great cities by assault: what do these worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable nations, neighbouring, or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conquerors, who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove,
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy;
Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods,
Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,
Worshipped with temple, priest and sacrifice?
One is the son of Jove, of Mars the other;
Till conqueror Death discover them scarce men,
Rolling in brutish vices, and deformed,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.
But if there be in glory ought of good,
It may by means far different be attained,
Without ambition, war, or violence;
By deeds of peace, by wisdom eminent,
By patience, temperance: I mention still

Him whom thy wrongs, with saintly patience borne,
Made famous in a land and times obscure;
Who names not now with honour patient Job?
Poor Socrates (who next more memorable ?)
By what he taught, and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.
Yet, if for fame and glory ought be done,

One is the, &c.-Alexander and Romulus are intended.

Ought suffered; if young African for fame
His wasted country freed from Punic rage,
The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,
And loses, though but verbal, his reward.
Shall I seek glory then, as vain men seek,
Oft not deserved? I seek not mine, but His
Who sent me, and thereby witness whence I am.

ROME,'

He brought our Saviour to the western side
Of that high mountain, whence he might behold
Another plain,2 long, but in breadth not wide,
Washed by the southern sea; and on the north
To equal length backed with a ridge of hills,
That screened the fruits of the earth, and seats of men,
From cold Septentrion blasts; thence in the midst
Divided by a river, of whose banks
On each side an imperial city stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aqueducts,
Statues and trophies,+ and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves, presented to his eyes,
Above the height of mountains interposed:
(By what strange parallax or optic skill

"And now, in her turn, Rome under Tiberius is depicted, with the spirit indeed of a poet, but with the accuracy of a contemporary annalist: and her imperial palaces, the houses of her gods, the conflux of divers nations and languages at her gates; the embassies from far crowding the Emilian and Appian roads; the prætors and proconsuls hasting to their provinces, or on their triumphant return; all fill the mind's eye:" Quarterly Review, ubi supra. 2 Another plain, &c.-The "plain" is that part of Italy contained between the "southern sea," the Mediterranean, and the "ridge of hills," the "Apennines."

3

Porches-from the Latin porticus, a portico-a walk covered with a roof and supported by columns, a colonnade. These erections were very beautiful both at Athens and Rome, and were the favourite resorts of the fashionable and literary circles. See note 4, p. 351; and also Dr. Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities," article "Porticus."

4 Trophies-memorials or monuments of victory, consisting generally of the arms, shields, &c., of the enemy, fixed on some elevation.

5 Parallax-from the Greek Tagaλağıs, a difference-aberration, the distance between the true and the apparent place of a star; hence here, the elevation of the object to the eye, by which the city was seen "above the height of mountains interposed."

Of vision, multiplied through air, or glass
Of telescope, were curious to inquire)

And now the Tempter thus his silence broke :

"The city which thou seest no other deem
Than great and glorious Rome, queen of the earth,
So far renowned, and with the spoils enriched
Of nations; there the Capitol thou seest,
Above the rest lifting his stately head
On the Tarpeian rock, her citadel

Impregnable; and there mount Palatine,
The imperial palace, compass huge, and high
The structure, skill of noblest architects,
With gilded battlements, conspicuous far,
Turrets and terraces, and glittering spires.
Many a fair edifice besides, more like
Houses of gods, (so well I have disposed
My aery microscope) thou mayst behold,
Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs,
Carved work, the hand of famed artificers
In cedar, marble, ivory, or gold.

Thence to the gates cast round thine eye, and see
What conflux issuing forth, or entering in;
Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces

1

Hasting, or on return, in robes of state;

Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power,
Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings:
Or embassies from regions far remote

In various habits on the Appian road,3

Or on the Emilian; some from farthest south,
Syene, and where the shadow both way falls,
Meroe, Nilotic isle, and, more to west,

The realm of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea;

From the Asian Kings, and Parthian among these;

1

Hasting-"The rapacity of the Roman provincial governors, and their eagerness to take possession of their prey, is here strongly marked by the word hasting: Dunster.

2 Turms-from the Latin turma, a cavalry troop-troops of horse.

3 The Appian road, &c.-The Appian road led south, the Emilian north of Rome. The nations on the Appian road are enumerated in the seven lines beginning "Syene, &c.." those in the Emilian, in the three beginning "From Gallia, &c."

From India and the golden Chersonese,1
And utmost Indian isle, Taprobane,2

Dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed;
From Gallia, Gades,+ and the British west;
Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, north
Beyond Danubius to the Tauric pool.5
All nations now to Rome obedience pay,
To Rome's great emperor, whose wide domain
In ample territory, wealth, and power,
Civility of manners, arts, and arms,

And long renown, thou justly mayst prefer
Before the Parthian. These two thrones except,
The rest are barbarous, and scarce worth the sight,
Shared among petty kings too far removed;
These having shown thee, I have shown thee all
The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory.

ATHENS.6

Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by southwest; behold
Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly; pure the air, and light the soil;
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

Golden Chersonese-the Aurea Chersonesus, or Golden Peninsula, Malacca. 2 Taprobane-the island of Ceylon.

3 Dusk faces-a line noted for its picturesqueness.

5 Tauric pool-the Palus Mootis, or Sea of Azov.

6 "It [the mind's eye] is again carried away to the westward, and the flowery hill of Hymettus offers itself to our notice; and Athens, with its picturesque suburbs, is unfolded with a perspicuity and precision that might challenge the most scrupulous critic to quarrel even with an epithet (so true is Milton to his Grecian masters :) while her schools of philosophy, the sects into which they are divided, the dogmas they severally espoused, all pass in rapid review, leaving us confounded at the mental plentitude of this extraordinary man : Quarterly Review, ubi supra.

Ere we leave, &c.-It is Satan who speaks, after displaying from this "specular mount"-this hill of observation-the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. "It would be impossible," remarks the Rev. A. P. Stanley, "for any one to describe the view from the summit of Hymettus, more truly than in the words in which Milton has set forth his conception of Athens, not from ocular inspection, but such as, from the union of deep classical learning with his poetical faculty, he imagined it to have appeared in the vision from the specular mount in the Paradise Regained."" Classical Museum, vol. i, p. 57.

And eloquence, native to1 famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,

City or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird2

Trills her3 thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls

His whispering stream: within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next:

There shalt thou hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony in tones and numbers hit

By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Æolian charms5 and Dorian lyric odes;

And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes," thence Homers called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic,9 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.

1 Native to, &c.-i. e. a place noted for the famous men who were born there, and ever ready to welcome eminent strangers.

2 Attic bird-see note 3, p. 71.

3 Trills her, &c.-"There never was," says Dr. Newton, "a verse more expressive of the harmony of the nightingale than this."

4 Lyceum, &c.-The Lyceum was the school of Aristotle, the Stoa that of Zeno. The word Stoa answers to the Latin porticus, or porch. See note 3,

p. 348.

5 Æolian charms, &c.-" Eolia carmina," verses such as those of Alcæus, and Sappho, who were both of Mitylene in Lesbos, an island belonging to the Æolians: "Dorian lyric odes,"-such as those of Pindar: Newton.

6 And his, &c.-i. e. and his who not only cultivated those species of poetry, but the loftier field of epic.

7 Melesigenes-i. e. born at or near Meles, a river of Asia Minor.

8

Thence Homer, &c.—i. e. from his blindness called oungos, blind; this is one of the many conjectures respecting the etymology of the name.

9 Iambic―i.e. the dialogue part of the tragedy which was chiefly written in iambic measure, as distinguished from the chorus, which consisted of various measures. Newton.