Of echoing hill, or thicket, have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or responsive to each other’s note,
Singing their great Creator?
Par. Lost, iv.
Their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and th’ unrighteous ways.]
The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. Proverbs, xv. 3.
[62] So rue the nations when their kings offend.] Theobald, in a note on Cooke’s translation, proposes to change δημος, the people, into τημος, then: and renders αποτιση in the sense of punish, instead of rue: thus the meaning would be, “that he might then, at that instant, punish the sins of the judges.” Never was an interference with the text so little called for. The meaning which Theobald is so scrupulous to admit is exactly conformable with that of a preceding passage: