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Nor shall I count it heinous to enjoy
The public marks of honour and reward

Conferred upon me, for the piety

Which to my country I was judged to have shown.

At this whoever envies or repines,

I leave him to his lot, and like my own."

Unwilling to detain you, I hurry on. Harapha comes up, and Samson is now the warrior. It is interesting to see how his spirit, untamed by the gyves and the labours of the prison, rises in the presence of the boasting Philistine. To the charge that he is a robber and a murderer, he nobly answers:—

"I was no private, but a person raised

With strength sufficient, and command from Heaven
To free my country; if their servile minds
Me, their deliverer sent, would not receive,

But to their masters gave me up for nought,

The unworthier they: whence to this day they serve."

Again and again, blind though he is, he challenges the Philistine to mortal combat. As thus :—

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Therefore, without feign'd shifts, let be assigned

Some narrow-place enclosed, where sight may give thee,
Or rather flight, no great advantage on me ;
And put on all thy gorgeous arms, thy helmet
And brigandine of brass, thy broad habergeon,
Vant-brass and greaves, and gauntlet; add thy spear,
A weaver's beam, and seven times folded shield;

I only with an oaken staff will meet thee,

And raise such outcries on thy clattered iron,
Which long shall not withhold me from thy head,
That in a little time, while breath remains thee,
Thou oft shalt wish thyself at Gath, to boast
Again in safety what thou wouldst have don e
To Samson; but shalt never see Gath more."

And now he is the prisoner again. He is summoned to make sport before the lords; and while arguing with his friends as to the warrantableness and wisdom of compliance, he is secretly moved to consent :

"If there be aught of presage in the mind,
This day will be remarkable in my life

By some great act, or of my days the last."

At this stage, perhaps, Samson is greatest of all. He puts himself in the Lord's hand: token of restoration and grace, and prelude to a glorious victory. For, to be truly great is to yield oneself to God; and whether it be on the wider or the more limited field; whether that which is at stake be for the benefit of a nation or the salvation of a world; he who gives himself into the Lord's hand for death or for life, is on the eve of a rich reward, and is blessed in the deed. It is a glorious attainment to be able to say, Lord, here am I: what would'st Thou have me to do?

"The greatest deliverances are wrought by self-sacrifice. 'The dead which 'Samson' slew at his death were more than they which he slew in

his life.'

His greatest victory, the most overwhelming and appalling blow he struck, was when he himself was humbled to the dust; when life had lost its charm; when no joy for himself was thought of; and when his only motive was to assert the might of Jehovah against the boastful worshippers of Dagon. It cost him his own life, but his life could not have been better spent. In his death his heroism first appears: we understand how he should be enrolled among the glorious names of history; we forget all his faults in his noble disregard of his own life. In this one moment, as he bows his mighty frame between the two pillars, a new light shines upon him, and we see that he is indeed a saviour worthy of Israel, and worthy of God."*

Milton has of course put forth his strength mainly on the delineation of his hero, but some of the minor characters are powerfully drawn, and one of these is the aged father. Mark his tender fatherly affection!

"His ransom, if my whole inheritance
May compass it, shall willingly be paid

And numbered down: much rather I shall choose

To live the poorest in my tribe; than richest,

And he in that calamitous prison left.

No, I am fixed, not to part hence without him.

For his redemption all my patrimony,

If need be, I am ready to forego

And quit: not wanting him, I shall want nothing."

Mark his fond hopes :

"It shall be my delight to tend his eyes,

And view him sitting in the house, ennobled
With all those high exploits by him achieved,
And on his shoulders waving down those locks
That of a nation armed the strength contained;
And I persuade me, God had not permitted
His strength again to grow up with his hair,
Garrison'd round about him like a camp
Of faithful soldiery, were not His purpose
To use him further yet in some great service;
Not to sit idle, with so great a gift

Useless, and thence ridiculous, about him.

And since his strength with eyesight was not lost,

God will restore him eye-sight to his strength."

And mark his noble patriotism, the lofty terms of his éloge on Samson's

death:

"Come, come; no time for lamentation now,

Nor much more cause; Samson hath quit himself
Like Samson, and heroicly hath finished

A life heroic, on his enemies

Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning,

And lamentation to the Sons of Caphtor

Through all Philistian bounds; to Israel
Honour hath left, and freedom, let but them

* "Israel's Iron Age."

Find courage to lay hold on this occasion;
To himself and father's house eternal fame;
And, which is best and happiest yet, all this
With God not parted from him, as was feared,
But favouring and assisting to the end.
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble."

I have said that Milton was drawn to the delineation of Samson by the force of personal sympathy. That being so, it was to be expected that his allusions to the painful privation which he and his hero experienced in common, should be marked by peculiar pathos. Hear how the blind bard, in the person of blind Samson, laments his case:—

"O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!

Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight

Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased,
Inferior to the vilest now become

Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors, or without, still as a fool,

In power of others, never in my own;

Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!"

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting in connection with this the famous sonnet to his friend Cyriack Skinner :—

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied
In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content though blind, had I no better guide."

Milton is severe on woman-unjustly severe. It is well known that his experience of the married life was none of the happiest; and it is probable that his early misunderstanding with Mary Powell, his first wife, and the cruel misconduct of his third, created such disgust, that he could

not think with patience of the sex. But surely this is unreasonable

severity:

"Is it for that such outward ornament

Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts
Were left for haste unfinished-judgment scant,
Capacity not raised to apprehend

Or value what is best

In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong?

Or was too much of self-love mixed,

Of constancy no root infixed,

That either they love nothing, or not long?"

Milton was a true patriot-one who had laboured for freedom, and whose heart to the last trembled for the ark of God. Well, after the Restoration he must have been often pained. If the Duke of York

could demean himself so far as to visit the noble bard in the days of his blindness, just to reproach him as having been thus overtaken of God for the sin of taking part with regicides, you may be sure that he often heard from lesser men of the same party many a taunt and gibe directed against the great ones of the civil war. He was well aware of the treatment awarded to the great uncrowned king: how his remains were dealt with, and how his memory was loaded with abuse. Don't you think, then, that he had Cromwell in his eye when writing thus? Samson is the speaker. He is arguing that, if Israel had only been alive to their opportunities, and had struck a blow for freedom, they might have come to lord it over the Philistines, and then he proceeds:

"But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,

And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty-
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
And to despise, or envy, or suspect,
Whom God hath of His special favour raised
As their deliverer? If he aught begin,
How frequent to desert him, and at last

To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds!"

I feel how very incomplete and unsatisfactory is my analysis of this powerful dramatic poem. But let me say, that the poem itself is worthy of your most patient study; and I do not know a better exercise of the sort than to sit down patiently beside it, and, by the friction of repeated perusal and careful thought, to bring out its excellences and defects. It will bear the most elaborate examination, and yield an ever fresh enjoyment; for "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." And, apart from all merely intellectual profit, the study of Samson's character and life, as recorded in Scripture, and as developed by the poet, is fitted to suggest to us, and in particular to the young, that the secret of moral power is faithfulness to God, and to foster just and salutary impressions as to the allwise Providence of God, especially that

"All is best, though we oft doubt

What the unsearchable dispose

Of Highest Wisdom brings about,

And ever best found in the close."

All this, then, I have brought before you, not as a model, but simply as a specimen of critical analysis, the sort of thing in which any of you could engage, and which, if intelligently pursued, either in secret or in conjunction with others, would supply a mental stimulus of no ordinary value. It will give me pleasure to know that these remarks have not been made in vain. T. W. B.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY BEFORE SOCRATES.*

ONE of the most important branches in the whole cycle of human knowledge is without doubt the history of ancient philosophy. It is curious to see how the wisest of heathens, having no guide but the light of reason, groped after the highest truths connected with God, the world, and our destiny here and hereafter. The study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Plotinus makes us appreciate better still the blessings of the Gospel, and we cannot conceive anything more profitable than an inquiry into the weakness of man's intellectual powers. Accordingly we have seen with unfeigned pleasure the two handsome volumes recently added by Me srs. Didot to their collection of Greek authors, and we hasten to introduce them to our readers. We need scarcely state here that Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, and all the leaders of Greek thought have repeatedly been edited, commented on, and translated; they are almost as well known to the English student as Bacon and Locke, and everything has been said about them that could possibly be said. Not so with metaphysicians of either more ancient date or of comparatively less importance; no decent edition of their fragments has been published since the one given by Henri Estienne in 1573, and even that contained only the poetical débris of Empedocles, Parmenides, and a few others. On the present occasion we have, collected together in two large octavos, supplemented with a Latin translation, notes, biographical notices, etc., all the known remains of ancient Greek philosophy; and the learned labours of Professor Mullach must henceforth be taken as the necessary introduction to an acquaintance with the writings of the predecessors of Socrates.

It is well known that the early Greek philosophers were physicists in the modern sense of the word. Thales was their most distinguished representative, and they are generally grouped together under the name of Ionian school. They fixed their attention chiefly upon the phenomena which appeal to our senses, and endeavoured to determine the composition or the material principle of the universe. But even from the point of view of physicism, there are two ways of studying the world: thus Thales, Anaximenes, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Heraclitus, placed themselves at the dynamic standpoint; that is to say, they devoted their

• "Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum collegit, recensuit, vertit, Annotationibus et Prolegomenis illustravit, etc., F. G. A. Mullach." Vols. i., ii. 8vo. Paris: Didot.

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