234. Their idolisms, traditions, paradoxes?] Idolisms is, I believe, a word of Milton's fabrication. It seems to mean not so much the idolatrous worship of the Gentiles, as the opinions with which they might endeavour to 'defend it. Our author has idolists, Sams. Agon. 453.,

-and op'd the mouths Of Idolists and Atheists;

By traditions we may understand opinions collected from those philosophers who instructed publicly, without committing their precepts to writing; which was the case with Pythagoras, Numa, and Lycurgus. See the lives of the two latter by Plutarch. Paradoxes allude to the paradoxes of the Stoic philosophers, then in high repute. Evinced (v. 235.) is used in its Latin signification of subdued, conquered; in which sense it is more forcible and appropriate, than as we commonly use it for shewn, proved. Dunster.

236.this specular mount] This mount of speculation, as in Paradise Lost, xii. 588, where see the note.

237. Westward, much nearer by southwest,] This corresponds exactly to our Saviour's supposed situation upon mount Taurus. The following description of Athens and its learning is extremely grand and beautiful.

235

Milton's muse, as was before observed, is too much cramped down by the argumentative cast of his subject, but emerges upon every favourable occasion, and like the sun from under a cloud bursts out into the same bright vein of poetry, which shines out more frequently, though not more strongly, in the Paradise Lost. Thyer.

This might be understood W. by S. that is, one point from west towards southwest; which is nearly the actual position of Athens, with respect to Mount Niphates. Or it may only mean, that as Athens was four degrees south of Rome, our Lord must now direct his view so much more to the southwest, than when he was looking at Rome, which lay nearly west of Mount Niphates. Dunster.

And the words much nearer seem also to shew that the description had reference to the position of Rome, which was more distant from the specular mount. E.

238. Where on the Egean shore a city stands] So Milton caused this verse to be printed, whereby it appears that he would have the word 'gean pronounced with the accent upon the first syllable, as in Paradise Lost, î. 746. and as Fairfax often uses it, as was there remarked. Built nobly, and Homer in his time

-mother of arts

And eloquence] Justin (1. v. c. 9.) terms Athens Patria communis Eloquentiæ. And (1. ii. c. 6.) he says, Literæ certe et facundia veluti templum Athenas habent. Cicero abounds in panegyrics upon this celebrated seat of learning and eloquence. See Cic. De Orator. 1. i. 13. ed. Proust. Brutus, s. 39, 26, 49. Orat. pro L. Flacc. 26. See also Roger Ascham, (English Works, Lond. 1771. p. 235.) Dunster.

242. -hospitable] So Diodorus describes the Athenians, T πατρίδα κοινον παιδευτήριον παρεχο μενους πασιν ανθρωποις. 1. xiii. c. 27. The Athenians indeed were remarkable for their general hospitality towards strangers, for whose reception and accommodation they had particular officers called govor. Whilst the Lacedæmonians were noted for their ξενηλασίαις, or driving all strangers from their city. Thus Pericles according to Thucydides, Hist. ii. c. 39. την τε πολιν κοινην παρεχομεν, και ουκ εστιν ότε ξενηλασίαις απειργομεν τινα η μαθήματος, η θεαματος. Dunster.

244. See there the olive grove

of Academe, Plato's retirement, &c.] Επανελθών δε εις Αθήνας, διετρίβεν εν Ακαδημία, το δ' εστι γυμνασιον, προαστειον αλσώδες, απο τινος ήρωος ονο

μασθεν Ακαδήμου, καθα και Ευπολις εν Αστρατεύτοις φησιν,

Εν ευσκιοις δρομοισιν Ακαδημου θεου.

και ετάφη εν τη Ακαδημία, ενθα τον πλείστον χρονον διετέλεσε φιλοσο φων. όθεν και Ακαδημαϊκη προσηγο ρεύθη ή απ' αυτου αίρεσις. returned to Athens from his Being journey to Egypt, he settled himself in the Academy, a gymnasium or place of exercise in the suburbs of that city, beset with woods, taking name from Academus, one of the heroes, as Eupolis,

In sacred Academus' shady walks.

and he was buried in the Academy, where he continued most of his time teaching philosophy, whence the sect which sprung from him was called Academic. See Diogenes Laertius, and Stanley in the life of Plato. The Academy is always described as a woody shady place, as here in Laertius, and in Horace, ep. ii. ii. 45.

Atque inter sylvas Academi quærere

verum:

but Milton distinguishes it by the particular name of the olive grove of Academe, for the olive was particularly cultivated about Athens, being sacred to Minerva the goddess of the city, and he has besides the express authority of Aristophanes, ÑQλα, act iii. scene 3.

Αλλ' εις Ακαδημίαν κατίων, ὑπὸ ταῖς μορίαις αποθρέξεις.

Ludovicus de la Cerda in his notes upon Virgil observes, how often the ancient poets have made use of the comparison of the nightingale; Sophocles has it no less than seven times, Homer twice, and Euripides and several others: and we observed upon the Paradise Lost, how much Milton was delighted with the nightingale; no poet has introduced it so often, or spoken of it with such rapture as he; and perhaps there never was a verse more expressive of the harmony of this sweet bird than the following,

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.

So that upon the whole I believe it may be asserted, that Plato's Academy was never more beautifully described than here in a few lines by Milton. Cicero, who has laid the scene of one of his dialogues there, De Fin. lib. v. and had been himself upon the spot, has not painted it in more lively colours.

245

244. Akenside has well sketched this Athenian scene in his Pleasures of Imagination, i. 715. The reader will find a good account of the Academy and of the other public gardens which were the resort of the learned at Athens, in Falconer's Historical view of the Taste for Gardening and laying-out Grounds among the nations of Antiquity, p. 30. The nightingale is with peculiar propriety introduced in the description of the Academe; in the neighbourhood of which (see Pausanias, 1. i. c. 30.) lay the scene of the Edipus Coloneus of Sophocles, and which he celebrates as particularly abounding in nightingales. Ed. Col. 17. and 703. Homer has a description of the song of this bird not unlike Milton's trills her thickwarbled notes;

-Πανδαρίου κουρη χλωρηίς αηδων

Ησε θαμα τρωπωσα χεει πολυηχία pany. Odyss. xix. 521.

scribes the nightingale singing It is remarkable that Milton dethe summer long, when it is commonly supposed to sing only in the spring. Sappho calls it, (see the Scholiast on Soph. Electr. 148.)

Ηρος δ' αγγελος ιμερόφωνος αηδων. And Pliny says that its song continues in its greatest perfection only fifteen days, "afterwards, as summer advances, it loses all its variety and modulation." (1.x. 29.) So Shakespeare describes it as ceasing to sing as