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ERRORS IN PARADISE LOST.

MILTON undoubtedly had a strong memory, like every other man of genius; but he does not seem to have possessed one of that extreme fidelity which at times is given to inferior men. This, combined with his loss of sight, caused him occasionally to fall into errors; venial ones no doubt, but still such as should be noted. Such are the following.

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the Blest.-iv. 159.

What is here asserted is an impossibility. Any one who will look on a map of the world will see that when a vessel going to India has passed Mozambic, the coast of Arabia is due north to her, and at an immense distance, with a portion of the east coast of Africa interposed. In no case then, and in no part, could those who had sailed by the Cape of Hope and Mozambic meet with Sabean odours wafted by north-east winds. Milton's blindness amply excuses this mistake; but surely his commentators who had their sight might have looked at a map and so have discerned the error.

To the same cause may be assigned the error in the following passage:

Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades,

Delos, or Samos, first appearing, kens
A cloudy spot. v. 264.

Samos is not one of the Cyclades.

We cannot offer the same excuse for the following error, which we can only ascribe to the incuria which comes at times on even the most vigilant.

Meanwhile, in utmost longitude where heaven

With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun
Slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise

Leveled his evening rays.—iv. 539.

Here no critic seems ever to have asked himself the question, how the sun who was sinking in the west could level his rays directly against the eastern gate of Paradise? It might be said, that it was against the inner side of the gate, and that the rays came over Paradise; but this is contrary to all analogy; for no one but Satan entered the garden except at the gate, and Uriel came on one of these beams. Besides, it is refuted by the following passage:

And Uriel to his charge

Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised,

Bore him slope downwards, to the sun now fallen

Beneath the Azores.-iv. 589.

When describing the Serpent, Milton says,

Never since of serpent-kind

Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus.-ix. 504.

No ancient writer whatever names the wife of Cadmus Hermione, always Harmonia. The two names were evidently confounded in Milton's mind; and as Ovid does not mention the name, and he was perhaps no great reader of Apollodorus, and did not recollect the passage in the Rhodian poet in which the true name occurs, he fell into this error. It did not of course escape Bentley, but not one of the subsequent critics notices it.

The following are mere slips of memory:—

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned

Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered.-ii. 1019.

Scylla is nowhere called a whirlpool. But perhaps what

Ovid tells of her being changed by Circe when bathing, was running in his mind; see ii. 660.

Nor that Niseian isle

Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,

Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,

Hid Amalthea and her florid son,

Young Bacchus, from his step-dame Rhea's eyes.-iv. 275.

In the narrative of Diodorus Siculus, whom Milton here follows, they are not hidden.

When Charlemain with all his peerage fell

By Fontarabbia.—i. 586.

Charlemain was not among the fallen on that fatal day; but it had probably been many years since Milton had read the Morgante Maggiore.

As when the potent rod

Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Waved round the coast, called up a pitchy cloud
Of locusts warping on the eastern wind.-i. 338.

Warping is a technical term, and Milton appears to have misunderstood it. A ship is warped to get her out of port, when there is no wind, or it is contrary. It is performed thus: -an anchor, with a cable attached, is carried out ahead in a boat to some distance from the ship and there cast; the ship then, by means of the capstan, is brought up to that place; the anchor is then raised and carried out as before, and so on, till the vessel is got out sufficiently. Now this will not apply by any means to the progress of the swarm of locusts, whose motion seems rather to answer to what he afterwards (xi. 840) calls hulling, undulating with the wind.

In the first edition, the text stood thus:

In Gibeah, when the hospitable doors

Exposed their matrons, to prevent worse rape.-i. 504.

And though this might pass as a poetic license, yet in the second he gave it as it stands in the text at present.

Milton's errors are sometimes only apparently so. For in

stance:

So rose the Danite strong,

Herculean Samson, from the harlot lap

Of Philistean Dalila.

*

And in Samson Agonistes he terms her unchaste, without the warrant of Scripture. But when we recollect the sense which Milton puts on the Hebrew verb, play the whore, we shall see that he terms her a harlot and unchaste on account of her treacherous violation of her marriage vow.

We long thought there might be an error in

As in an organ from one blast of wind

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.-i. 708;

but on applying to an eminent and scientific musician,† we got the following explanation :

"The wind produced by the bellows is driven into a reservoir called the wind-chest, above which is placed the soundboard, and thence by intricate contrivance conveyed to each 'row of pipes.' When a stop is drawn, the supply of wind is prepared for every pipe in it, and it is admitted when the organist presses the key he wishes to speak. Therefore the 'sound-board breathes,' or sends the breath into 'many a row of pipes,' and Milton's description is correct; as, when speaking of music, it always is. There is a passage about fugueplaying (xi. 561), every word of which is pregnant with meaning to a musician, but to him only in its full extent. All other poets, except Milton and Shakespeare, constantly blunder when they use musical terms; they never do.”

The following lines contain an apparent error, which has perplexed the critics:

Their sumptuous gluttonies and gorgeous feasts

On citron tables or Atlantic stone.-Par. Reg. iv. 114;

But it is

for the Romans did not use marble dining-tables. probably the floor of the triclinium, which was often formed of Numidian marble (giallo antico), that the poet had in view;

See above, page 185.

+ Professor Taylor. See above, page 313.

and it is not at all unlikely that or may be a misprint for and, a very common printer's error, as we know by experience.*

We may not regard it as an error, but notice it as a peculiarity in Milton, that when a theory or an interpretation was not, as appeared to him, certain, he would give the different views at different times. Thus, though he generally follows the Ptolemaic astronomy, as most accordant with the literal sense of Scripture, he yet occasionally hints that the Copernican might be the truth. Of this we have an instance in the angel's discourse with Adam, in the beginning of the eighth book; and when describing the return of Uriel to the sun, "now fallen beneath the Azores,” he adds—

Whether the prime orb,

Incredible how swift, had thither rolled

Diurnal, or this less voluble earth

By shorter flight to the east had left him there,
Arraying with reflected purple and gold

The clouds that on his western throne attend.―iv. 592.

Of the passage in Genesis, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all that they chose," there were three interpretations, and Milton gives the three in different parts of his poems.

To the opinion of the Fathers, that the sons of God were the good angels, he alludes in this place :

If ever, then,

Then had the sons of God excuse to have been

Enamoured at that sight.-v. 446.

The second, that they were the descendants of Seth, he gives
thus:-
:-

*

To these, that sober race of men, whose lives

Religious titled them the sons of God,

Shall yield up all their virtue.-xi. 621.

Or make the peaceable or quiet Nile

Doubted of Cæsar.-Beaum. and Fletch.: The False One, i. 2.

Here the note of Mr. Dyce, the most cautious of critics, is "Query and ?" No doubt it is the right word. In Samson Agonistes, v. 1692, Milton probably dictated nor, not and, as there is an opposition intended.

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