mp of the
enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should
be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as
in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a
nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in
the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a
remorse which could not weigh on Milton:--

"I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honour, I this pomp have brought
To Dagon, and advanced his praises high
Among the heathen round; to God have brought
Dishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouths
Of idolists and atheists; have brought scandal
To Israel, diffidence of God, and doubt
In feeble hearts, propense enough before
To waver, to fall off, and join with idols;
Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,
The anguish of my soul, that suffers not
My eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest."

Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but
not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be
said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully
apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high
commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified
nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to
fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude
would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be
ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify
all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think
they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as
rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton
refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to
establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English
nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson--a Samson, however, yet
to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson
Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the
world-drama of "Prometheus Bound."

Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the
last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore,
endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the
publication of his last poems, to which period of his life