Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/330

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��SAMSON AGONISTES

��and given him power to vanquish the Phi- listines, when a Messenger enters to make known the catastrophe. The speeches of the Messenger, the calmness and reconcili- ation of Mauoa's tone after his oue touch- ing cry,

" O ! lastly over-strong against thyself," and the lyric quietness and elevation of the Chorus at the close, are all in the highest antique strain. It is impossible to turn from the play without feeling that it has accomplished that which the motto on the title-page declares to be the highest func- tion of tragedy, Per misericordiam et metum perficiens talium affectuum lustrationem, Through fear and terror to purge the heart of fear and terror.

Such an analysis, if it has been a true one, would seem to settle the question of the unity of action in Samson. The visits of Dalila and Harapha, so far from being purely episodic as they have sometimes been treated, are most vital to the denoue- ment, besides contributing immensely to the understanding of Samson's character in several of its phases. The large amount of reminiscence concerning Samson's early life is also indispensable in the painting of that elaborate portrait which constitutes the larger unity of the drama. The figure of the hero lives, not with the elemental typical life common to most of Milton's figures, but, one may say, with an idiomatic life, a special eloquence of reality. Yet its reality impresses us less, perhaps, than its monumental quality; carved larger than human, of the grey everlasting rock, it stands in its grey world, while the little generations of art go by and are forgotten.

II

Samson Agonistes contains Milton's most studied and artful verse ; but the key in which the poem is set is so low, its method so restrained, that its most finely calculated effects are likely to be passed over unre- garded. Even among those persons who

��are neither careless nor unequipped with the requisite technical knowledge, misun- derstanding of the metrical structure of the poem has been frequent. Mr. Robert Bridges, on whose treatise entitled Milton's Prosody the following paragraphs are based, was the first to make clear the very simple theory upon which the elaborate rhythmical effects of Samson are built up. In the typical blank-verse line of ten syllables, the stressed syllables fall in the even places, but this arrangement may in any of the five feet be inverted, so that the stressed syllable falls in the odd place. In such cases the regular iambic structure of the line, e. g.,

W f ^f f w'w'Vn/^

So they in Heav'n their odes and vigils tuned,

suffers various modifications, as in the fol- lowing, where the first and second feet are inverted and become trochaic :

/ ^ ^ w w ' w f w ?

Irresistible Samson, whom unarmed ;

or in this, where the second and fourth are inverted, and the first foot is weak, i. e. lacking a full stress :

v w ' w w t ' v w '

In their triple degrees ; regions to which.

This device of inversion, which in Para- dise Lost is used sparingly, appears in the choruses of Samson persistently, and is made, by artful manipulation, to produce varied rhythmical effects. In the last line quoted above, the first three feet, if taken alone, might constitute an anapaestic (^/ w /) rhythm ; and the last two might be read either as a single choriambus (/ w w ') or as a dactyl (/ v w) followed by an extra syllable. The combinations of metre made possible by the free use of inversion are, it will be seen, very numerous, and of all of these Milton has taken advantage. We are to consider the whole poem, then, in- cluding the choruses, as written in iambic metre, except those few lines (less than thirty in all) which are in trochaic metre, e.g.:

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