f delicate scents and cool breezes which, as Milton
knew only too well, mean so much more to the blind than to those who
can see. Then his restless thoughts begin to crowd upon him--

"Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed
As of a person separate to God,
Designed for great exploits?"

The whole passage belongs naturally enough to Samson: but obviously
here, as well as in the blindness, the poet is already thinking of
himself. So again, when Samson proceeds to speak of being

"exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,"

one can scarcely miss a reference to the daughters who purloined and
sold the blind father's books. When the soliloquy draws to an end the
Chorus, men of his tribe, come to visit Samson. Not even Milton ever
made the arrangement and sound of words do more to enforce their
meaning than he does in this wonderful opening chorus--

{233}

"This, this is he; softly a while;
Let us not break in upon him.
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!"

They chant their inevitable wonder at the contrast between what Samson
was and what he is.

"O mirror of our fickle state,
Since man on earth, unparalleled!
The rarer thy example stands,
By how much from the top of wondrous glory,
Strongest of mortal men,
To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fallen."

No reader of Greek can fail to be reminded of more than one chorus in
the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles--

_io geneai broton_
_hos hymas isa chai to meden zosas enarithmo--_

"Alas, ye generations of men, how utterly a thing of nought I count the
life ye have to live! For what man is there who wins more of happiness
than just the seeming and after the semblance a falling away. With thy
fate before mine eyes, unhappy Oedipus, I can call no earthly creature
blest." Here and there, as in this passage, the parallel is very
close. But Milton's genius is too great and self-reliant for mere
imitation. He sometimes recalls the very words of Greek poets as he
{234} does those of the Bible: but that is not because he is
artificially imitating either, but because he has assimilated the
spirit of both and made them a part of himself.

The Chorus express their sympathy with Samson and he replies, bitterly
reproaching his own folly and that of the rulers of Judah who gave him
up to their enemies. But human blindness will not ultimately defeat
the ways of God: and the Chorus sing their song of faith, in