BOOK II

CHAPTER I

A PHILOSOPHICAL GARDEN PARTY

WHIL

HILE the guests were standing by the window, the beauty of the garden beneath so attracted and charmed them that they went down at once to enjoy a bracing walk in the open air and to get rid of the stiffness which follows a long journey.

A small door at the back of the house opened into a portico, often used as a summer-house, constructed of open lattice work on the sides adjoining the garden, and on the wall behind was executed in bas-relief the figures of a venerable old man and a boy climbing a hill together. The man bore a sacrificial knife and a lighted torch, the boy carried on his shoulders a bundle of faggots, and at the foot of the mount their asses, saddled, and their bridles thrown over their necks, were peacefully grazing. Not far off were two attendants raising their eyes in the direction of the hill-top-so well done, indeed, that you would have thought they were real men gazing on the scene. Some verses engraved on a vacant space explained the device, and described Abraham's soliloquy while ascending Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son.1

1 In the Greek romances of the Byzantine period the authors were very fond of giving descriptions of paintings and sculptures in gardens and elsewhere. In Hysmine and Hysmenias we constantly come across detailed accounts of allegorical pictures in the temples and

ABRAHAM APPROACHING MOUNT MORIAH'

To me reluctant now the third long day
Comes slowly on; oh, how it cuts my heart!
But yet, O God, I'm here to do Thy will,
And, with poor halting feet, submissive seek
Thy sacrificial mount. Alone am I,
Save for my son; the rest abide behind.
Alone with him! Ah, how much more alone
When all is done, and I must homeward turn

summer-house of the garden of Sosthenes, and the older romance Cleitophon and Leucippe had the same peculiarity. Milton, who read everything and, often no doubt unconsciously, reproduced his impressions, may have conveyed this literary artifice from Greek fiction, just as the curious description of the goblets (pocula) of Mansus, in the Epitaphium Damonis, points back to his reading of the earlier Alexandrian pastoral poets.

1 Milton mentions Abraham from Morea, or, Isaac Redeemed, as the title of a Scriptural drama he was meditating upon. He draws up a short summary of it in his Trinity College MS., p. 39. It has been supposed that he was led to the subject by Beza's tragedy of Abraham Sacrificing, which Beza first wrote in French, and which was soon afterwards turned into Latin iambics by Joannes Jacomotus, and published at Geneva in 1597, 4to. Milton most likely had read both these pieces (see Mitford's Life of Milton, p. cix.) Certainly the iambics in Nova Solyma, if they are Milton's, bear out the supposition, for although the lines above translated do not cover so much ground as the much longer drama of Beza and Jacomotus, yet they follow the Abrahamus Sacrificans very closely, and, so to speak, form a summary of the more diffuse iambics of Jacomotus. The part in Abrahamus Sacrificans corresponding to the little poem of Nova Solyma begins thus: Jam tertium nobis redonat Sol diem Ter mensus arduos polorum fornices Flammante curru, etc.

While our poem above begins:

Beza expands the

Jam me morantem tertius necat dies;
Paratus adsum, etc.

history at considerable length, but the arguments of Abraham are exactly similar to those in our text. These coincidences seem to point to Milton, but there are others stronger still, for Sylvester's Du Bartas has also an account of Abraham and Isaac where there is far greater similarity, and Du Bartas was young Milton's favourite author. In fact, there seems little doubt that in these Latin iambics Milton has reproduced (unconsciously) his various readings in a subject that had considerably interested him when young.

Bereft of life's great joy! See, even now
He pants and staggers 'neath his funeral pyre,
Th' unconscious willing slave of Death himself,
Whilst I, his father, bring the fire and knife
Wherewith to slay the son I once begat,
And on yon altar shed his blood to God.
O deed unspeakable! that my right hand
Should thus my undeserving offspring slay,
So young, so fair, his mother's only pride,
The son that ends my race; for none but he
Can ever now fulfil that promise old,

That in my seed should all the world be blessed
With numbers spreading like the starry host
That nightly shines on high, or as the sand

On ocean's vast illimitable shore.

Now, one fell stroke, and all these millions fall-
This countless progeny. Can I, their head,
Do them so great a wrong, and all alone
Commit a crime my servants may not see,
Or, if perchance they did, would disallow?
And must my murderous hand imbrue itself
In blood far dearer to me than my own?
Oh! must my son be slain? Is there no way,
No other penalty that shall suffice?

Must I, too, see him on the altar bound,

With his young life's blood oozing from his throat,

His reeking, gory entrails dragged apart

(Oh, monstrous thought!) by his own father's hands?

Nor will that end the deed, for custom holds

That in this sad and solemn sacrifice

The victim's ashes must complete the rite.'

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Sylvester's Du Bartas has several parallel passages. For example
That I (alas!) with bloody hand and knife,
Should rip his bosom, rend his heart and life;

Who can believe that such a cruel deed

Is pleasing in God's sight, or willed by Him?
Ah! who? Not one in all the widest range
Of human passion, deepest love, or hate,
From his sad mother to my bitterest foe..
Nay, hardly seems it true to my own self,
And oft I fear that bold and unjust tongues
Will wag at me with wily seeming truths,
For often lofty Truth misunderstood
Gives men a handle for a grievous wrong,
Just as the purest light oft mars their eyes.
Yea, oft I fear that superstitious men
May licence take for cruel deeds of wrong
Because of me, and let their altars reek

With their own children's blood-a deed like mine,
But all unsanctioned by the voice of Heaven.
O sanction sad to me! O monstrous Faith!
That has to prove itself by contraries!
Can I believe that God now bids me do
The very crime He by His Law forbids?
And in that act destroy His chosen seed
And quench the glorious Day-spring from on high?
Oh, what a mighty, far-extending crime.
Do I intend! Unless I stay my hand
The world is wholly lost by this one act.

But God hath spoken; I the witness am

To my own self, for I did hear His Voice,

That Voice which, heard but once, doth free man's mind

From doubt for evermore. Whate'er He wills

Is good and right, and when He speaks we hear

The highest utterance of the Law itself,

Its very Author, whom we know to be

Alone throughout all numbers absolute.

Let him but promise, and the thing is sure;
Let Him but will to do, and it is done.
Most surely He who formed and brought to life
The substance of my son within the womb
Can bring him back from death, alive in Him,
That so in His own time the promised seed
Shall spread throughout the world, as born again
E'en from the dead, this sad tomb's progeny.1
Of this I'm sure; but who can know the means?
So I will do whate'er to me belongs

And leave the rest to God.

See how my son

1 Heb. xi. 19.