For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve,
And more blasphemous ? which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world to thee were giv'n,
Permitted rather, and by thee usurp’d,
Other donation none thou canst produce:
If giv'n, by whom but by the King of kings
Gon over all Supreme? if given to thee,
By thee how fairly is the giver now
Repaid? but gratitude in thee is lost
Long since. Wert thou so void of fear or shame,
As offer them to me the Son of GOD,
To me my own, on such abhorrèd pact,
That I fall down and worship thee as GOD?
Get thee behind me; plain thou now appear'st
That evil one, Satan for ever damn'd.
To whom the fiend with fear abash'd replied.
Be not so sore offended, Son of GOD,
Though sons of GOD both angels are and men,
If I, to try whether in higher sort
Than these thou bear'st that title, have proposed
What both from men and angels I receive,
Tetrarchs of fire, air, flood, and on the earth
Nations besides from all the quarter'd winds,
God of this world invoked and world beneath;
Who then thou art, whose coming is foretold
To me so fatal, me it most concerns.
The trial hath indamaged thee no way,
Rather more honour left and more esteem;
Me nought advantaged, missing what I aim'd.
Therefore let pass, as they are transitory,
The kingdoms of this world; I shall no more
Advise thee; gain them as thou canst, or not.
And thou thyself seem'st otherwise inclined
Than to a worldly crown, addicted more
To contemplation and profound dispute,
As by that early action may be judged,
When, slipping from thy mother's eye, thou went'st
Alone into the temple, there wast found
Amongst the gravest rabbies disputant
On points and questions fitting Moses' chair.
Teaching, not taught; the childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day. Be famous then
By wisdom; as thy empire must extend,
So let extend thy mind o'er all the world
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend:
All knowledge is not couch'd in Moses' law,
The Pentateuch, or what the prophets wrote;
The Gentiles also know, and write, and teach
To admiration, led by nature's light;
And with the Gentiles much thou must converse,
Ruling them by persuasion as thou mean'st;
Without their learnin· how wilt thou with them,
Or they with thee, hold conversation meet?
How wilt thou leason with them ? how refute
Their idolisms, traditions, parado. os ?
Error by his own arms is best evinced.
Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west, behold
Where on the Ægean shore a city stands
Built nobly, ure the air, and light the soil,
Athens the eye of Greece,' mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits,
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades;
See there the olive grove of Academe,2
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird3
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flow'ry hill Hymettus with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream; within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages; his' who bred
Great Alexander to sudue the world;
Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
180 called by Demosthenes.-NEWTON. "A gymnasium, or place of exercise,"
In the suburbs of Athens, surrounded by woods. It took its name from Academus, one of the heroes. In this Academe, or Academy, Plato taught.
• The nightingale; i..., Philomela, the
daughter of Pandion, King of Athena was changed into a nightingale.
4 Aristotle. The Lyceum was school of Aristotle. Stoa was the schoo of Zeno, whose discipies were lience called Stoics This Stoa or portico, wal adorned with a variety of paintings.
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Eolian charms1 and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer call'd,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave tragedians taught
In Chorus or Iambick, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received,
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life;
High actions and high passions best describing
Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne:
To sage philosophy next lend thine ear,
From heav'n descended to the low-rooft house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounced
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools
Of Academics 3 old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics,' and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe;
These here revolve, or, as thou lik'st, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire join'd.
To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied.
Think not but that I know these things, or think
I know them not; not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought: he who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,
1 Eolian charms. The poems of Alcœus and Sappho; the Dorian lyric odes were those of Pindar.--NEWTON.
2 Homer was so called by his mother because he was born near the River Meles.
8 The old Academic philosophers were those who followed Plato; the new, those who followed Carneades.-See DUNSTER.
4 Pupils of Aristotle, so called because they aught while walking.
No other doctrine reeds, though granted true
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm.
The first and wisest of them all1 professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew;
The next to fabling fell and smooth conceits; 2
A third sort doubted all things,3 though plain sense;
Others in virtue placed felicity,
But virtue join'd with riches and long life;
In corporal pleasure he and careless ease;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride,
By him call virtue; an his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to GOD, oft shames not to preier,
As fearing Gc. nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which when he lists he leaves, or boasts he can,
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of GOD much more,
And how the world began, and how man fell
Degraded by himself, on grace depending?
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves
All glory arrogate, to God give none,
Rather accuse him under usual names,
Fortune and fate, as one regardless quit
Of mortal things. Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion
Far worse, her false resemblance only meets,
An empty cloud. However, many books
Wise men have said are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek P
3 The Pyrrhonians, or disciples of Pyrrho, who were sceptics.-NEWTON
An allusion to the fable of Ixion, who embraced a cloud which had the form of Juno. NEWTON
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge;
As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore.
Or if I would delight my private hours
With music or with poem, where so soon
As in our native language can I find
That solace? all our law and story strew'd
With hymns, our psalms with artful terms inscribed,
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon,
That pleased so well our victor's ear, declare
That rather Greece from us these arts derived;
Ill imitated, while they loudest sing
The vices of their deities and their own
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets, thick laid
As varnish on a harlot's cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where GoD is praised aright, and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies, and his saints:
Such are from GOD inspired, not such from thee,
Unless where moral virtue is express'd
By light of nature not in all quite lost.
Their orators thou then extol'st, as those
The top of eloquence, statists indeed,
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our prophets far beneath,
As men divinely taught, and better teaching
The solid rules of civil government
In their majestic unaffected style,
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat;
These only with our law best form a king.
So spake the Son of GOD; but Satan, now,
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