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Most shines and most is acceptable above.

Therefore God's universal law

Gave to the man despotic power

Over his female in due awe,

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Nor from that right to part an hour,

Smile she or lour:

So shall he least confusion draw

On his whole life, not sway'd

By female usurpation, or dismay'd.

But had we best retire, I see a storm?

SAMSON.

Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain.

CHORUS.

But this another kind of tempest brings.

SAMSON.

Be less abstruse, my riddling days are past.
CHORUS.

Look now for no inchanting voice, nor fear
The bait of honied words; a rougher tongue
Draws hitherward, I know him by his stride,
The giant Harapha of Gath, his look

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Haughty as is his pile high-built and proud.
Comes he in peace? what wind hath blown him hither
I less conjecture than when first I saw
The sumptuous Dalila floating this way:
His habit carries peace, his brow defiance.
SAMSON.

Or peace or not, alike to me he comes.

CHORUS.

His fraught we soon shall know, he now arrives. 1075

1075. His fraught] For fraught read freight. Meadowcourt.

HARAPHA.

I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance, As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, Though for no friendly' intent.

I am of Gath,

Men call me Harapha, of stock renown'd
As Og or Anak and the Emims old
That Kiriathaim held, thou know'st me now
If thou at all art known. Much I have heard
Of thy prodigious might and feats perform'd
Incredible to me, in this displeas'd,
That I was never present on the place

Of those encounters, where we might have tried
Each other's force in camp or listed field:
And now am come to see of whom such noise
Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey,
If thy appearance answer loud report.
SAMSON.

The way to know were not to see but taste.

1079. Men call me Harapha, &c.] This character is fictitious, but is properly introduced by the poet, and not without some foundation in Scripture. Arapha, or rather Rapha, (says Calmet,) was father of the giants of Rephaim. The word Rapha may likewise signify simply a giant. Of stock renowned as Og, for Og the king of Bashan was of the race of the Rephaim, whose bed was nine cubits long, and four broad, Deut. iii. 11. Or Anak, the father of the Anakims, and the Enims old, Deut. ii. 10, 11, a people great, and many, and tall as the Anakims; which also were

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accounted giants or Rephaim, as the Anakims, but the Moabites call them Emims. That Kiriathaim held, for Gen. xiv. 5. Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, or the plain of Kiriathaim.

1081. -thou know'st me now If thou at all art known.] He is made to speak in the spirit, and almost in the language, of Satan, Paradise Lost, iv. 830.

Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.

HARAPHA.

Dost thou already single me? I thought

Gyves and the mill had tam'd thee. O that fortune
Had brought me to the field, where thou art fam'd

To' have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw; 1095
I should have forc'd thee soon with other arms,
Or left thy carcase where the ass lay thrown:
So had the glory' of prowess been recover'd
To Palestine, won by a Philistine

From the unforeskinn'd race, of whom thou bear'st 1100
The highest name for valiant acts; that honour
Certain to' have won by mortal duel from thee,
I lose, prevented by thy eyes put out.

SAMSON.

Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st, thou seest it in thy hand. 1105 HARAPHA.

To combat with a blind man I disdain,

And thou hast need much washing to be touch'd.
SAMSON.

Such usage as your honourable lords

Afford me' assassinated and betray'd,

Who durst not with their whole united powers
In fight withstand me single and unarm❜d,

1093. Gyves] Chains, fetters. Cymbeline, act v. sc. 3.

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That lets it hop a little from her

hand,

Like a poor prisoner in his twisted

gyves,

And with a silk thread plucks it back

again,

So loving jealous of his liberty.
Fairfax, cant. v. st. 42.

These hands were made to shake
sharp spears and swords,
Not to be tied in gyves and twisted
cords.

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Nor in the house with chamber ambushes
Close-banded durst attack me, no not sleeping,
Till they had hir'd a woman with their gold
Breaking her marriage faith to circumvent me.
Therefore without feign'd shifts let be assign'd
Some narrow place inclos'd, where sight may give thee,
Or rather flight, no great advantage on me;
Then put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet
And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,
Vant-brass and greves, and gauntlet, add thy spear,
A weaver's beam, and seven-times-folded shield,
I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,

1120. And brigandine of brass, &c] Brigandine, a coat of mail. Jer. li. 3. Against him that bendeth, let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his brigandine. Habergeon, a coat of mail for the neck and shoulders. Spenser, Faery Queen, b. ii. cant. 6. st. 29.

Their mighty strokes, their habergeons dismail'd,

And naked made each other's manly spalles.

Spalles, that is, shoulders. Fairfax, cant. i. st. 72.

Some shirts of mail, some coats of plate put on,

and some a habergeon. Vant-brass or Vantbrace, avantbras, armour for the Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 6. Nestor speaks.

arms.

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1120

His left arm wounded had the knight

of France,

His shield was pierc'd, his vantbrace cleft and split.

Greves, armour for the legs.
1 Sam. xvii. 6. And he had greves
of brass upon his legs. Gauntlet,
i. sc. 3. old Northumberland
an iron glove. 2 Henry IV. act
speaks.

-Hence therefore, thou nice crutch;
A scaly gauntlet now with joints of

steel

Must glove this hand.

A

1121. -add thy spear, &c.] This is Milton's own reading: the other editions have and thy spear, which is not so proper, for it cannot well be said in construction, put on thy spear. weaver's beam, as Goliath's was, 1 Sam. xvii. 7. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam: and his brother's, 2 Sam. xxi. 19. the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. And seventimes folded shield, as was Ajax's, clypei dominus septemplicis Ajax, Ovid. Met. xiii. 2.

And raise such outcries on thy clatter'd iron,
Which long shall not withhold me from thy head, 1125
That in a little time while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath to boast
Again in safety what thou would'st have done
To Samson, but shall never see Gath more.
HARAPHA.

Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms,
Which greatest heroes have in battle worn,
Their ornament and safety, had not spells
And black inchantment, some magician's art,

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Arm'd thee or charm'd thee strong, which thou from heaven

Feign'dst at thy birth was giv'n thee in thy hair, 1135 Where strength can least abide, though all thy hairs Were bristles rang'd like those that ridge the back

1132. -had not spells &c.] This is natural enough in the mouth of Harapha, and no ways inconsistent with the manners of the age in which this scene is laid, since we are informed in Scripture that they were at that time much addicted to magical superstition. But yet it is very probable, that Milton adopted this notion from the Italian Epics, who are very full of inchanted arms, and sometimes represent their heroes invulnerable by this art. So Ariosto's Orlando is described. Thyer.

Milton's idea is immediately and particularly taken from the ritual of the combat in chivalry. When two champions entered the lists, each took an oath, that he had no charm, herb,

or any inchantment about him. Dugd. Warw. p. 73. or, in the exact words of the oath of the Judicial combat," that ye have "no stone of virtue, nor hearb " of virtue, nor none other in"chantment by you, &c." Dugd. Orig. Jurid. p. 166. And this was injoined so early as in the Laws of the Longobards. "Nul"lus campio adversus alterum "pugnaturus audeat super se ha"bere herbas, nec res ad male"ficia pertinentes, &c." Compare Comus, 647. Milton's Harapha of Gath is as much a Gothic giant, as any in Amadis de Gaul: and Harapha, like a Gothic giant, engages in an unjust cause against a virtuous champion. T. Warton.

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