Rather by this his last affront resolved,
Desperate of better course, to vent his rage,
And mad despite to be so oft repell'd.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Back'd on the north and west by a thick wood:
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless mood thus to him said.

Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of GOD,
After a dismal night: I heard the rack

As earth and sky would mingle, but myself

Was distant; and these flaws, though mortals fear them
As dangerous to the pillar'd frame of heav'n,
Or to the earth's dark basis underneath,

Are to the main as inconsiderable

And harmless, if not wholesome, as a sneeze
To man's less universe, and soon are gone;
Yet as being ofttimes noxious where they light
On man, beast, plant, wasteful, and turbulent,
Like turbulencies in the affairs of men,
Over whose heads they roar, and seem to point,
They oft fore-signify and threaten ill :
This tempest at this desert most was bent:
Of men at thee, for only thou here dwell'st.
Did I not tell thee, if thou did'st reject
The perfect season offer'd with my aid
To win thy destined seat, but wilt prolong
All to the push of fate, pursue the way

Of gaining David's throne no man knows when,
For both the when and how is no where told,
Thou shalt be what thou art ordain'd, no doubt;
For angels have proclaim'd it, but concealing
The time and means; each act is rightliest done
Not when it must, but when it may be best.
If thou observe not this, be sure to find,
What I foretold thee, many a hard assay

Of dangers, and adversities, and pains,
Ere thou of Israel's sceptre get fast hold;

Whereof this ominous night that closed thee round,
So many terrors, voices, prodigies,

May warn thee, as a sure fore-going sign.

So talk'd he, while the Son of GOD went on

And staid not, but in brief him answer'd thus.

Me worse than wet thou find'st not; other harm
Those terrors, which thou speak'st of, did me none;
I never fear'd they could, though noising loud
And threat'ning nigh; what they can do as signs
Betok'ning, or ill-boding, I contemn

As false portents, not sent from GOD, but thee;
Who, knowing I shall reign past thy preventing,
Obtrud'st thy offer'd aid, that I accepting

At least might seem to hold all pow'r of thee,
Ambitious spirit! and wouldst be thought my God.
And storm'st refused, thinking to terrify

Me to thy will. Desist, thou art discern'd
And toil'st in vain, nor me in vain molest.

To whom the fiend now swoll'n with rage replied.
Then hear, O Son of David, virgin-born;
For Son of GOD to me is yet in doubt:

Of the Messiah I had heard, foretold

By all the prophets; of thy birth at length
Announced by Gabriel with the first I knew,
And of the angelic song in Bethlehem field,
On thy birth night, that sung thee Saviour born.
From that time seldom have I ceased to eye
Thy infancy, thy childhood, and thy youth,
Thy manhood last, though yet in private bred;
Till at the ford of Jordan, whither all
Flock'd to the Baptist, I among the rest,
Though not to be baptized, by voice from heav'n
Heard thee pronounced the Son of GOD beloved.
Thenceforth I thought thee worth my nearer view
And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn
In what degree or meaning thou art call'd
The Son of GOD, which bears no single sense;

The Son of God I also am, or was,

And if I was I am; relation stands;

All men are sons of GOD; yet thee I thought

In some respect far higher so declared.

Therefore I watch'd thy footsteps from that hour,

And follow'd thee still on to this waste wild;

Where by all best conjectures I collect

Thou art to be my fatal enemy.

Good reason then, if I beforehand seek

To understand my adversary, who,

And what he is; his wisdom, power, intent,

By parl, or composition, truce, or league,

To win him, or win from him what I can.

And opportunity I here have had

To try thee, sift thee, and confess have found thee
Proof against all temptation, as a rock

Of adamant, and as a centre firm,

To the utmost of mere man both wise and good,
Not more; for honours, riches, kingdoms, glory,
Have been before contemn'd, and may again:
Therefore to know what more thou art than man,
Worth naming Son of GOD by voice from heav'n,
Another method I must now begin.

So saying he caught him up, and without wing
Of hippogrif bore through the air sublime
Over the wilderness and o'er the plain,

Samson Agonistes.

OF THAT SORT OF DRAMATIC POEM WHICH IS CALLED

TRAGEDY.

PREFACE WRITTEN BY MILTON.

TRAGEDY, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems; therefore said by Aristotle to be of power, by raising pity, and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is, to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion, for so in physic things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours. Hence philosophers and other gravest writers, as Cicero, Plutarch, and others, frequently cite out of tragic poets, both to adorn and illustrate their discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into the text of Holy Scripture, I Cor. xv. 31, and Paræus, commenting on the Revelation, divides the whole book, as a tragedy, into acts, distinguished each by a chorus of heavenly harpings and song between. Heretofore men in highest dignity have laboured not a little to be thought able to compose a tragedy. Of that honour Dionysius the elder was no less ambitious, than before of his attaining to the tyranny. Augustus Cæsar also had begun his "Ajax," but unable to please his own judgment with what he had begun, left it unfinished. Seneca, the philosopher, is by some thought the author of those tragedies, at least the best of them, that go under that name. Gregory Nazianzen, a father of the Church, thought it not unbeseeming the sanctity of his person to write a tragedy, which is entitled, "Christ Suffering." This is mentioned to vindicate tragedy from the small esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of many it undergoes at this day with other common interludes; happening through the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people. And though ancient tragedy use no prologue, yet using sometimes, in case of self-defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an epistle, in behalf of this tragedy coming forth after the ancient manner, much different from what among us passes for best, thus much beforehand may be epistled: that Chorus is here introduced after the Greek manner, not ancient only but modern, and still in use among the Italians. In the modelling therefore of this poem, with good reason, the ancients and Italians are rather followed, as of much more authority and fame. The measure of verse used in the chorus is of all sorts, called by the Greeks Monostrophie, or rather Apolelymenon, without regard had to Strophe, Antistrophe, or Epode, which were a kind of stanzas framed only for the music then used with the

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