Of charming symphony they introduce 66 Thee, Father," first they sung, Omnipotent, Eternal King: thee, Author of all being, Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st In whose conspicuous count'nance, without cloud 1 i. e. except. 2 Milton has the same thought of darkness occasioned by glory, v. 599, "Brightness had made invisible." This also explains his meaning here; the excess of brightness had the effect of darkness, invisibility. What an idea of glory! the skirts only not to be looked on by the beings nearest to God, but when doubly or trebly shaded by a cloud and both wings. What, then, is the full blaze?-Richardson. The same thought in Spenser's hymn of Heavenly Beauty, but more languidly expressed: "With the great glory of that wondrous light, And hid in his own brightness from the sight -Thyer. 3 Cf. Is. vi. 2. 4 John i. 18, xiv. 9. Thee only1 extolled, Son of thy Fathers might, Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail man Thus they in Heaven, above the starry sphere, Of this round world, whose first convex divides From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old, It seemed, now seems a boundless continent, 1 i. e. thee, and thee only. 2 Supply "than' or "but" before "he." 3 Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble: as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless, unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild.-Addison. 4 Imaus is a celebrated mountain in Asia; its name significs "snowy," in the language of the inhabitants, according to Pliny, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs But in his way lights on the barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive With sails and wind their cany waggons light; Of all things transitory and vain, when sin All who have their reward on earth, the fruits All th' unaccomplished works of Nature's hand, Till final dissolution, wander here, Not in the neighbouring moon,' as some have dreamed; Those argent fields more likely habitants, Translated saints, or middle spirits, hold, lib. vi. cap. 21, "incolarum lingua nivosum significante;" and therefore it is said here, "whose snowy ridge." It is the boundary to the east of the Western Tartars, who are called "roving," as they live chiefly in tents, and remove from place to place for the convenience of pasturage, their herds of cattle and what they take in hunting being their principal subsistence. Ganges and Hydaspes are famous rivers of India; and Serica is a region betwixt China to the east, and th mountain Imaus to the west; and what our author here says of the Chinese he seems to have taken from Heylin's Cosmography, p. 867, where it is said, "Agreeable unto the observation of modern writers, the country is so plain and level that they have carts and coaches driven with sails, as ordinarily as drawn with horses, in these parts." -Newton. 1 Ariosto particularly, in his "Orlando Furioso," cant. 34, st. 70, &c. Betwixt the angelical and human kind. Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born Of Sennaar,1 and still with vain design New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build : Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised; Shinar. 2 The scholar of Pythagoras, a philosopher and poet, born at Agrigentum, in Sicily: he wrote of the nature of things in Greek, as Lucretius did in Latin verse. He, stealing one night from his followers, threw himself into the flaming Etna, that being nowhere to be found he might be esteemed to be a god, and to be taken up into Heaven; but his iron pattens, being thrown out by the fury of the burning mountain, discovered his defeated ambition, and ridiculed his folly. Hor. de Art. Poet. 464: 66 "Deus immortalis haberi Dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Ætnam -Hume. 3 The name is rightly placed the last word in the sentence, as 'Empedocles" was before. He was called Ambraciota of Ambracia, a city of Epirus in Greece. Having read over Plato's book of the "Soul's Immortality and Happiness in another Life," he was so ravished with the account of it that he leaped from a high wall into the sea, that he might immediately enjoy it.-Newton. 4 An allusion to Luke xxiv. 5 sq. 5 He speaks here according to the ancient astronomy, adopted and improved by Ptolemy. "They pass the planets seven," our planetary or solar system, "and" beyond this "pass the fixed," the firmament or sphere of the fixed stars; "and" beyond this that crystalline sphere," the crystalline Heaven, clear as crystal, to which the Ptole And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems Blows them transverse ten thousand leagues awry Cowls, hoods, and habits with their wearers tost The sport of winds: all these upwhirled aloft Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high; And waking cried, 'This is the gate of Heaven.' Who after came from earth, sailing arrived, maics attributed a sort of libration, or shaking (the "trepidation" so much talked of), to account for certain irregularities in the motion of the stars; "and" beyond this "that first moved," the primum mobile, the sphere which was both the first moved and the first mover, communicating its motions to all the lower spheres; and beyond this was the empyrean Heaven.-Newton. 1 Tired, wearied. |