Most shines and most is acceptable above. Therefore God's universal law Gave to the man despotic power Over his female in due awe, 1055 Nor from that right to part an hour, Smile she or lour: So shall he least confusion draw On his whole life, not sway'd By female usurpation, or dismay'd. But had we best retire, I see a storm? SAMSON. Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain. CHORUS. But this another kind of tempest brings. SAMSON. Be less abstruse, my riddling days are past. Look now for no inchanting voice, nor fear 1060 1065 1071 Haughty as is his pile high-built and proud. Or peace or not, alike to me he comes. CHORUS. His fraught we soon shall know, he now arrives. 1075 1075. His fraught] For fraught read freight. Meadowcourt. HARAPHA. I come not, Samson, to condole thy chance, As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, Though for no friendly' intent. I am of Gath, Men call me Harapha, of stock renown'd Of those encounters, where we might have tried The way to know were not to see but taste. 1079. Men call me Harapha, &c.] This character is fictitious, but is properly introduced by the poet, and not without some foundation in Scripture. Arapha, or rather Rapha, (says Calmet,) was father of the giants of Rephaim. The word Rapha may likewise signify simply a giant. Of stock renowned as Og, for Og the king of Bashan was of the race of the Rephaim, whose bed was nine cubits long, and four broad, Deut. iii. 11. Or Anak, the father of the Anakims, and the Enims old, Deut. ii. 10, 11, a people great, and many, and tall as the Anakims; which also were 1080 1085 1090 accounted giants or Rephaim, as the Anakims, but the Moabites call them Emims. That Kiriathaim held, for Gen. xiv. 5. Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, or the plain of Kiriathaim. 1081. -thou know'st me now If thou at all art known.] He is made to speak in the spirit, and almost in the language, of Satan, Paradise Lost, iv. 830. Not to know me argues yourselves unknown. HARAPHA. Dost thou already single me? I thought Gyves and the mill had tam'd thee. O that fortune To' have wrought such wonders with an ass's jaw; 1095 From the unforeskinn'd race, of whom thou bear'st 1100 SAMSON. Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do What then thou would'st, thou seest it in thy hand. 1105 HARAPHA. To combat with a blind man I disdain, And thou hast need much washing to be touch'd. Such usage as your honourable lords Afford me' assassinated and betray'd, Who durst not with their whole united powers 1093. Gyves] Chains, fetters. Cymbeline, act v. sc. 3. 1110 That lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving jealous of his liberty. These hands were made to shake 1115 Nor in the house with chamber ambushes 1120. And brigandine of brass, &c] Brigandine, a coat of mail. Jer. li. 3. Against him that bendeth, let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his brigandine. Habergeon, a coat of mail for the neck and shoulders. Spenser, Faery Queen, b. ii. cant. 6. st. 29. Their mighty strokes, their habergeons dismail'd, And naked made each other's manly spalles. Spalles, that is, shoulders. Fairfax, cant. i. st. 72. Some shirts of mail, some coats of plate put on, and some a habergeon. Vant-brass or Vantbrace, avantbras, armour for the Troilus and Cressida, act i. sc. 6. Nestor speaks. arms. 1120 His left arm wounded had the knight of France, His shield was pierc'd, his vantbrace cleft and split. Greves, armour for the legs. -Hence therefore, thou nice crutch; steel Must glove this hand. A 1121. -add thy spear, &c.] This is Milton's own reading: the other editions have and thy spear, which is not so proper, for it cannot well be said in construction, put on thy spear. weaver's beam, as Goliath's was, 1 Sam. xvii. 7. And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam: and his brother's, 2 Sam. xxi. 19. the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. And seventimes folded shield, as was Ajax's, clypei dominus septemplicis Ajax, Ovid. Met. xiii. 2. And raise such outcries on thy clatter'd iron, Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms, 1130 Arm'd thee or charm'd thee strong, which thou from heaven Feign'dst at thy birth was giv'n thee in thy hair, 1135 Where strength can least abide, though all thy hairs Were bristles rang'd like those that ridge the back 1132. -had not spells &c.] This is natural enough in the mouth of Harapha, and no ways inconsistent with the manners of the age in which this scene is laid, since we are informed in Scripture that they were at that time much addicted to magical superstition. But yet it is very probable, that Milton adopted this notion from the Italian Epics, who are very full of inchanted arms, and sometimes represent their heroes invulnerable by this art. So Ariosto's Orlando is described. Thyer. Milton's idea is immediately and particularly taken from the ritual of the combat in chivalry. When two champions entered the lists, each took an oath, that he had no charm, herb, or any inchantment about him. Dugd. Warw. p. 73. or, in the exact words of the oath of the Judicial combat," that ye have "no stone of virtue, nor hearb " of virtue, nor none other in"chantment by you, &c." Dugd. Orig. Jurid. p. 166. And this was injoined so early as in the Laws of the Longobards. "Nul"lus campio adversus alterum "pugnaturus audeat super se ha"bere herbas, nec res ad male"ficia pertinentes, &c." Compare Comus, 647. Milton's Harapha of Gath is as much a Gothic giant, as any in Amadis de Gaul: and Harapha, like a Gothic giant, engages in an unjust cause against a virtuous champion. T. Warton. |