Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his miter'd locks, and stern bespake, 110 How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies sake 107.—my dearest pledge?] My dearest child, as children were simply called by the Latins pignora, pledges. Richardson. 109. The pilot of the Galilean lake, &c.] Milton finely raises the character of St. Peter by making him the pilot of the lake of Genesareth in Galilee. See how artfully he takes this hint from Luke v. The two keys (which he hath likewise painted poetically) Christ himself gave him. Matt. xvi. 19. But the mitre, which has so fine an effect in this picture, Milton would not have allowed him a very few years afterwards. See his treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy. Richardson. It seems somewhat extraordinary to introduce St. Peter after Apollo, Triton, &c. a Christian bishop among heathen deities; but here Milton's imagination was dazzled, his taste corrupted, and his judgment perverted by reading the Italian poets. 110. The golden opes,] Saint Peter's two keys in the Gospel, seem to have supplied modern poetry with the allegoric machinery of two keys, which are variously used. See Dante's Inferno, cant. xiii. and c. xxvii. And hence perhaps the two keys, although with a different application, which Nature, in Gray's Ode on the Power of Poetry, presents to the infant Shakespeare. In Comus, an admired poetical image was perhaps suggested by Saint Peter's golden key, v. 13. Where he mentions -That golden key That opes the palace of eternity. T. Warton. 112. He shook his miter'd locks,] It is much that this inveterate enemy of prelacy would allow Peter to be a bishop. But the whole circumstance is taken from the Italian satirists. Besides I suppose he thought it sharpened his satire to have the prelacy condemned by one of their own order. Warburton. King was intended for the church. T. Warton. 114. Enow of such &c.] As Milton has frequently imitated his master Spenser in this poem, so in this place particularly he has had an eye to Spenser's invectives against the corruptions of the clergy in his fifth, seventh, and ninth Eclogues. 114. Thus in P. L. b. iv. 193. So clomb this first grand theif into God's fold: So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. Where lewd signifies ignorant. Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold? 115 Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought else the least 120 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! What recks it them! What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Even after the dissolution of the hierarchy, he held this opinion. In his sixteenth Sonnet, written 1652, he supplicates Cromwell, During the usurpation, he published a pamphlet entitled "The "likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the church," against the revenues transferred from the old ecclesiastic establishment to the presbyterian ministers. See also his book of Reformation in England, Prose Works, vol. i. 28. T. Warton. 119. Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, &c.] See instances of the like construction in Paradise Lost, v.711. and the note there. I will here add another from Horace, Sat. ii. ii. 39. Porrectum magno magnum spectare catino Vellem, ait Harpyiis gula digna râpacibus. 120. A sheep-hook,] In the tract on the Reformation he says, “Let him advise how he can re"ject the pastorly rod and sheep"hook of Christ." Pr. W. vol. i. 15. Wickliffe's pamphlets are full of this pastoral allusion. T. Warton. 191. That to the faithful herdman's art belongs!] Peck would read shepherd, because a herdman does not keep sheep. But herdman (not herdsman) has a general sense in our old writers; and often occurs in Sydney's Arcadia, a book well known to Milton. In our old Pastorals, heard-groome sometimes occurs for shepherd. T. Warton. 122. See note on Comus, 404. He might here use reck as a pastoral word occurring in Spenser's Kalendar, Decemb. "What "recked I of wintry age's waste." T. Warton. 123. And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ;] No sound of words can be more expressive of the sense: and how finely has he imitated, or rather improved, that passage in Virgil! Ecl. iii. 26. ―non tu in triviis, indocte, solebas Stridenti miserum stipula disperdere carmen ? I remember not to have seen the word scrannel in any other au 125 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; thor, nor can I find it in any dictionary or glossary that I have consulted; but I presume it answers to the stridenti of Virgil. 124. Scrannel is thin, meagre. "A scrannel pipe of straw" is contemptuously for Virgil's "te"nuis avena." T. Warton. Scrannel is vile, worthless. Johnson. 128. Besides what the grim wolf &c.] We offered some explication of this difficult passage in the Life of Milton, that the poet meant to accuse Archbishop Laud of privily introducing popery, and therefore in his zeal threatened him with the loss of his head; which notion was suggested to me by Dr. Pearce, the Lord Bishop of Bangor. We exhibit too Mr. Warburton's explanation of this passage in the note on v. 130. But if neither of these accounts seem satisfactory to the reader, we will lay before him another, in which we have the concurrence of Mr. Thyer and Mr. Richardson. Besides what the grim wolf &c. Besides what the popish priests privately pervert to their religion: and Spenser, in his ninth Eclogue, describes them under the same image of wolves, and complains much in the same manner. Yes but they gang in more secret wise, And with sheep's clothing doen hem disguise, They talk not widely as they were woont, For fear of raungers and the great But privily prolling to and fro, And nothing said, this agrees very well with the popular clamours of that age against the supposed connivance of the court at the propagation of popery. In Milted out, and it is corrected by ton's Manuscript nothing is blothis own hand-and little said, which is juster and better. But is, the axe of reformation, is upon that two-handed engine &c. that the point of smiting once for all. It is an allusion to Matt. iii. 10. Luke iii. 9. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. An axe is properly a two-handed engine. At the door, that is, this reformation is now ripe, and at Matt. xxiv. 33. Behold the judge hand; near, even at the doors, standeth before the door, James v. 9. And it was to be a thorough and effectual reformation, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no of Scripture, 1 Sam. xxvi. 8. Let more, in allusion to the language me smite him, I pray thee, with once, and I will not smite him the the spear, even to the earth at the more probable, as it agrees second time. This explication is so well with Milton's sentiments and expressions in other parts of his works. His head was full of these thoughts, and he was in Daily devours apace, and nothing said, expectation of some mighty alteration in religion, as appears from the earliest of his prose works, which were published not four years after this poem. In the second book of his treatise of Reformation in England, he employs the same metaphor of the axe of God's reformation, hewing at the old and hollow trunk of papacy, and presages the time of the bishops to be but short, and compares them to a wen that is going to be cut off. Vol. i. p. 17, 18. edit. 1738. And in his Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defence, addressing himself to the Son of God, he says, but thy kingdom is now at hand, and thou standing at the door. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth, for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed, p. 91. The reading of these treatises of Milton will sufficiently make appear what his meaning must be, and how much about this time he thought of lopping off prelatical episcopacy. 128. It has been conjectured, that Milton in this passage has copied the sentiments of Piers, a protestant controversial shepherd, in Spenser's Eclogue, May. Of this there can be no doubt: for our author, in another of his puritanical tracts, written 1641, illustrates his arguments for purging the church of its rapacious hirelings and insidious wolves, by a quotation of almost the whole of Piers's speech; ob 130 serving, that Spenser puts these words into the mouth of his righteous shepherd, "not with"out some presage of these re"forming times." Animadv. on the Remonstr. Def. ubi supr. vol. i. p. 98. T. Warton. 130. But that two-handed en- These are the last words of Peter predicting God's vengeance on his church by his ministry. The making him the minister is in imitation of the Italian poets, who in their satiric pieces against the church, always make Peter the minister of vengeance. The two-handed engine is the twohanded Gothic sword with which the painters draw him. Compare P. L. vi. 251, where the sword of Michael is "with huge two"handed sway brandished aloft." Stands ready at the door was then a common phrase to signify any thing imminent. To smite once, and smite no more, signifies a final destruction, but alludes to Peter's single use of his sword in the case of the high priest's servant. Warburton. In these lines our author anticipates the execution of Archbishop Laud by a two-handed engine, that is, the axe; insinuating that his death would remove all grievances in religion, and complete the reformation of the church. Doctor Warburton's supposition only embarrasses the passage. Michael's sword "with 66 huge two-handed sway" is evi Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use dently the old Gothic sword of In the mean time, it coincides just as well with the tenour of Milton's doctrine, to suppose, that he alludes in a more general acceptation to our Saviour's metaphorical axe in the Gospel, which was to be laid to the root of the tree, and whose stroke was to be quick and decisive. It is matter of surprise, that this violent invective against the Church of England and the hierarchy, couched indeed in terms a little mysterious yet sufficiently intelligible, and covered only by a transparent veil of allegory, should have been published under the sanction and from the press of one of our Universities; or that it should afterwards have escaped the severest animadversions, at a period when the proscriptions of the Star-chamber, and the power of Laud, 135 were at their height. Milton, under pretence of exposing the faults or abuses of the episcopal clergy, attacks their establishment, and strikes at their existence. T. Warton. 132. Return Alpheus, &c.] As he had before distinguished the voice of Apollo, so here he far more exalts that dread one of St. Peter, that quite shrinks up the stream of Alpheus. Now this is past, return Sicilian Muse, Sicelides Musa. Virg. Ecl. iv. 1. Now comes pastoral poetry again, and calls the vales to cast their flowers on Lycidas's hearse, according to the custom of the ancients. Richardon. 136.—where the mild whispers use] The word use is employed in the same sense by Spenser, Faery Queen, b. vi. st. 2. Guide ye my footing, and conduct me well In these strange ways, where never foot did use, Ne none can find, but who was taught them by the Muse. 138. On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,] The swart star is the dog-star, Sirius ardens, burning and drying up things, and making them look black and swarthy. But he sparely looks on these valleys, as he approaches not Horace's fountain of Blandusia, Od. iii. xii. 9. |