that there were two Gods, contrary and co-eternal, the one good and the other evil (the Ormuz and Ahriman of the heresiarch's old Persian theology); and that the world was created by the Evil Deity.

1. 462. Cp. Bk. ii. 214, and note thereon.

1. 486. John Hampden was an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought nor shunned greatness, who found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty.' (Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1854, i. 191.) Born in 1594, he first distinguished himself by his opposition to the exaction of ship-money. Having taken up arms against the royal cause, he was mortally wounded in an engagement with Prince Rupert at Chalgrove Field, near Oxford, in 1643; and died with the prayer on his lips, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit! O Lord, save my country! Algernon Sidney, son of Robert second Earl of Leicester, was born in 1621; espoused the side of the Parliament, and was nominated as one of the King's Judges, but refused to take part in the execution of Charles, and retired into private life on Cromwell's assuming the title of Protector. Though promised security in 1667, he was tried before Judge Jeffreys on a charge of being concerned in the Rye House Plot, and illegally executed in 1683. Cp. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sketches, Sonnet ix. Pt. 3:

'Ungrateful country, if thou e'er forget The sons who for thy civil rights have bled; How, like a Roman, Sidney bow'd his head.'

1. 502. the charities;-Cp. Par. Lost, iv. 756:

'Relations dear, and all the charities

Of father, son, and brother.'

Cicero, De Offic. i. 17: 'Sed quum omnia ratione animoque lustraris, omnium societatum nulla est gravior, nulla carior, quam ea quae cum republica est unicuique nostrum. Cari sunt parentes, cari liberi, propinqui, familiares: sed omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est.'

1.555. Cp. St. John i. 3.

1. 562. Cp. 2 Peter iii. 10-13.

1. 567. Cp. Psalm xiv. I.

1. 585. propense ;-prone, disposed by nature.

pense to waver,' Samson Agon. 1. 455.

1. 594. Cp. Bk. iv. 579; and Par. Lost, iv. 76: And in the lowest deep a lower deep,

Milton has hearts pro

Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.'

1. 625. A presage ominous;—as leading to 'pride, which goeth before destruction;' Proverbs xvi. 18.

1. 635. Cp. Genesis iii. I.

1. 650. Cp. Bk. ii. 432-7; and Churchill's Dedication to his Sermons, 1. 61:

6

No; 'tis thy inward man, thy proper worth,

Thy life and doctrine uniformly join'd,

And flowing from that wholesome source, thy mind;

Thy virtue, not thy rank, demands my lays,

'Tis not the Bishop, but the Saint, I praise.'

G Herbert, Country Parson, ch. 3: Neither will they believe him in the pulpit, whom they cannot trust in his conversation.' Some one has well said, The parson's life is his best sermon.' Yet Pope has pushed this sentiment to a sophism;-Essay on Man, Epist. iii. 305:

"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight:

His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right.' Cicero argues well against the converse of this: Tusc. Disput., lib. ii. capp. 4, 5: Quod est enim majus argumentum, nihil philosophiam prodesse, quam quosdam perfectos philosophos turpiter vivere? Nullum vero id quidem argumentum est; nam ut agri non omnes frugiferi sunt qui coluntur, sic animi non omnes culti fructum ferunt.' And then he goes on with an exact parallel to our Lord's Parable of the Sower.

1. 671. Cp. Psalm lxviii. 5.

1. 673. Cp. Par. Lost, iv. 846:

Abash'd the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely !'

And Cicero, De Officiis, lib. i. cap. 5: Formam quidem ipsam et tanquam faciem honesti vides: quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret sapientiae.' The passage of Plato referred to is in the Phaedrus, ch. 65 : ἡ φρόνησις οὐχ ὁρᾶται· δεινοὺς γὰρ ἄν παρείχεν ἔρωτας εἰ τοιοῦτο ἑαυτῆς ἐναργὲς εἴδωλον παρείχετο εἰς ὄψιν ἐόν.

1. 675. The First and only Fair. Cp. Pope's Essay on Man, Epist.

ii. 23:

'Go, soar with Plato to the empyreal sphere,

To the first Good, first Perfect, and first Fair.'

1. 681. Cp. 1 Corinthians xiii. I.

1. 685. Cp. 1 Kings xix. 12.

1. 702. Cp. Isaiah xi. 8; and 2 Corinthians xii. 9.

1. 706. Horat. Carm. lib. IV. ix. 10:

'Spirat adhuc amor

Vivuntque commissi calores

Aeoliae fidibus puellae.'

1. 718. Cp. Par. Lost, ix. 28:

'Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deem'd, chief mast'ry to dissect
With long and tedious havoc, fabled Knights
In battles feign'd; the better fortitude

Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung.'

11. 726-32. Cp. Par. Lost, xi. 698:

Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on Earth;

And what most merits fame in silence hid.'

1732. See Hume'-C.

·

[Chap. xxvii.; The glory of martyrdom

stimulates all the more furious zealots,' &c.]

1. 733. Cp. St. John viii. 32.

1. 737. Judges xvi. 7-10.

11. 738-43. Cp. Young, 1st Essay to Pope (S. vi. 120):

These, Nature's commoners, who want a home,

Claim the wide world for their majestic dome.'

1. 744. propriety;-a sense of absolute personal possession or property
(from Latin proprium). Cp. Par. Lost, iv. 750:

Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source

Of human offspring, sole propriety

In Paradise of all things common else.'

Owen Felltham, writing on the same subject (1628), says: The best
chastity of all I hold to be Matrimoniall chastity: when Paires keepe them-
selves in a moderate intermutualnesse, each constant to the other. And 'tis
fit even in Nature and Policy, that this propriety should be inviolable.'-
Resolves, i. 85.

1. 674. Cp. Acts xxii. 39; and Proverbs viii. 23-7.
1. 779. Cp. Job xxii 21.

1. 785. Cp. Ovid. Metamorph. i. 84:

Pronaque quum spectent animalia caetera terram
Os homini sublime dedit, caelumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.'

1. 793. Cp. Pope's Dunciad, iv. 455:

'See nature in some partial narrow shape,

And let the Author of the whole escape.'

1. 802. Result;-here used in its primary and proper sense, to leap or fly
back.' So in Pope's Homer's Odyss. xi. 736:

Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;

The huge round stone resulting with a bound
Thunders impetuous down.'

1. 809. Cp. Thomson, Hymn xxviii. :

'But wand'ring oft with brute unconscious gaze,
Man marks not Thee.'

1. 821. Job xxxviii. 7.

1. 828. Cp. Akenside's Pleas. of Imag.. 1. 204:

And fields of radiance, whose unfading light
Has travell'd the profound six thousand years,
Nor yet arrives in sight of mortal things.'

1. 846. Cp. Psalm cxix. 105.

11. 870-3. Cp. Pope's Essay on Man, i. 289:

All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;

All Chance, direction which thou canst not see.'

And own, neglecting sorrow's wound,
The consanguinity of sound.'

11. 30-2. Cp. Par. Lost, x. 1094:

'In whose look serene,

When angry most he seem'd and most severe

What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone?'

made an experiment

11. 50-3. Cp. Retirement, I. 406; where see note. Il. 54-6. Long before The Task was published, I one day, being in a frolicksome mood, upon a friend. We were walking in the garden, and conversing on a subject similar to these lines' [viz. the three above indicated], 'I repeated them, and said to him with an air of nonchalance, "Do you recollect those lines? I have seen them somewhere; where are they?" He put on a considering face, and after some deliberation replied, "Oh! I will tell you where they must be; in the Night Thoughts." I was glad my trial turned out so well, and did not undeceive him. At the same time I do assure you, on the faith of an honest man, that I never in my life designed an imitation of Young, or of any other writer, for mimicry is my abhorrence, at least in Poetry.'- To Lady Hesketh, May 25, 1786.

11. 57-82. Here follows a description of the walk leading up from the Rustic Bridge to the Alcove. Cp note on Bk. ii. 278.

1. 66. embattled tower;-of Emberton Church.

II. 76-84. Cp. W. Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, Bk. II. i. 789–96: 'Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song,

And silence girt the wood. ..

Only the curled streams soft chidings kept;

And little gales in fearful whisp'rings stirred

As loath to waken any singing bird.'

11. 88-97. Cp. Selden's Table Talk: 'No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with man.'

So Francis Quarles, in his Emblems:

'The curious hand of Knowledge doth but pick
Bare simples; Wisdom pounds them for the sick.
Knowledge, when Wisdom is too weak to guide her,
Is like a headstrong horse that throws the rider.'

Young's Love of Fame, Sat. vi. (S. vi. 129):

'Knowledge, of unmade happiness

The rude material,-Wisdom add to this;
Wisdom the sole artificer of bliss.'

Par. Lost, vii. 126:

'But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know

In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.'

With this Mr. Keightley compares Sir W. Davenant's poem on Gondibert (1651), ii. 8. 22:

'For though books are as diet for the mind,
If Knowledge, early got, self-value breeds,
By false digestion it is turn'd to wind,
And what should nourish on the eater feeds.'

1. 10. Cp. Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1. 418:
'What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonnetteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,

How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

1. 102. Cp. Table Talk, l. 542; and Pope's Essay on Criticism, 1. 305: 'Others for language all their care express,

And value books, as women men, for dress;
Their praise is still-The style is excellent!
The sense, they humbly take upon content.'

1. 126. Joshua x. 12–14.

11. 127-9. Cp. Psalm civ. 19.

11. 140-46. Cp. Thomson's Seasons, Winter, 1065:
Yet bear up a while,

And what your bounded view, which only saw
A little part, deem'd evil, is no more;

The storms of wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.'

Keble's Christian Year, 23rd Sunday after Trinity:
'Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing,

A thousand wild-flowers round them shall unfold,
The green buds glisten in the dews of Spring,
And all be vernal rapture as of old.'