Smit with the love of facred fong; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowry brooks beneath,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I vifit: nor fometimes forget

Those other two equal'd with me in fate,

30

So

botch at beft. The most probable explanation of this paffage I conceive to be this. Tho' he men. tions four, yet there are but two femble, and thofe he diftinguishes whom he particularly defires to reboth with the epithet blind to make the likenefs the more striking,

Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides. Meonides is Homer, fo call'd from the name of his father Mæon: and no wonder our poet defires to equal him in renown, whofe writings he fo much studied, admir'd and imitated. The character of Thamyris is not fo well known and establish'd: but Homer mentions him in the Iliad. II. 595; and Euftathius ranks him with Orpheus and Mufæus, the most celebrated poets and musicians. That luftful challenge of his to the nine Mufes was probably nothing more than a fable invented to exprefs his violent love and affection for poetry. Plato mentions his hymns with honor in the beginning of his eighth book of Laws, and towards the conclufion of the laft book of his Republic feigns, upon the principles of traninigration, that the foul of Thamyris paffed into a nightingale. He was a Thracian

So were I equal'd with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tirefias and Phineus prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the
Seafons return, but not to me returns

by birth, and invented the Doric mood or measure, according to Pliny, L. 7. c. 57. Plutarch in his treatife of Mufic fays that he had the finest voice of any of his time, and wrote a poem of the war of the Titans with the Gods: and from Suidas we learn that he compos'd likewise a poem of the generation of the world, which being fubjects near of kin to Milton's might probably occafion the mention of him in this place. Thamyris then and Homer are those other to whom the poet principally

defires to refemble: And it seems as if he had intended at firft to mention only these two, and then currente calamo had added the two others, Tirefias and Phineus, the one a Theban, the other a king of Arcadia, famous blind prophets and poets of antiquity, for the word prophet fometimes comprehends both characters as vates doth in Latin.

And Tirefias and Phincus prophets old.

35

year

40

Day,

And the verfe appears to be genuin by Mr. Marvel's alluding to it in his verses prefix'd to the fecond edition;

Juft Heav'n Thee, like Tirefias, to requite,

Rewards with prophecy thy lofs of fight.

And as Mr. Lauder observes, they
are all four joined together by
Mafenius;

Vatibus antiquis numerantur lu-
mine caffis
Tirefias, Phineus, Thamyrisque,
et magnus Homerus.

37. Then feed on thoughts, ] No

Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn,
Or fight of vernal bloom, or fummer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the chearful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair
Prefented with a univerfal blank

Of nature's works to me expung'd and ras'd,

thing could better exprefs the muf-
ing thoughtfulness of a blind poet.
The phrafe was perhaps borrowed
from the following line of Spenfer's
Tears of the Mules,

I feed on fweet contentment of
my thought.
Thyer.

37. that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; &c.] And the reader will obferve the flowing of the numbers here with all the eafe and harmony of the finest voluntary. The words feem of themfelves to have fall'n naturally into verfe almost without the poet's thinking of it. And this harmony appears to greater advantage for the roughness of fome of the preceding verses, which is an artifice frequently practic'd by Milton, to be careless of his numbers in fome places, the better to fet off the mufical flow of those which immediately follow.

45

And

thor, but I find it used feveral times in Shakespear and the authors of that age. Lear's fool fays, A&t I. So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

41. Seafons return, but not to me
returns] This beautiful turn
of the words is copied from the
rini's Paftor Fido.
beginning of the third act of Gua-
Mirtillo ad-
dreffes the fpring.

Tu torni ben, ma teco
Non tornano &c.
Tu torni ben, tu torni,
Ma teco altro non torna &c.
Thou art return'd; but the fe-
licity

Thou brought'ft me last is not re-
turn'd with thee:
Thou art return'd; but nought
returns with thee
Save my last joys regretful me

mory. Fanfhawe.

49. Of nature's works &c.] Dr. Bentley reads All nature's map &c. because (he says) a blank of X 3

works

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mift from thence
Purge and difperfe, that I may fee and tell
Of things invifible to mortal fight.

Now had th' almighty Father from above,
From the pure empyréan where he fits

High thron'd above all highth, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view:
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his fight receiv'd

60

the