It is remarkable that the same image, which does not appear obvious enough to have been the common inheritance of poets, is precisely used by old Regnier, the first French satirist, in the dedication of his Satires to the French king. Louis XIV. supplies the place of nature to the courtly satirist. These are his words:—"On lit qu'en Ethiope il y avoit une statue qui rendoit un son harmonieux, toutes les fois que le soleil levant la regardoit. Ce même miracle, Sire, avez vous fait en moi, qui touché de l'astre de Votre Majesté, ai reçu la voix et la parole."
In that sublime passage in "Pope's Essay on Man," Epist. i. v. 237, beginning,
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
and proceeds to
From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
Pope seems to have caught the idea and image from Waller, whose last verse is as fine as any in the "Essay on Man:"—
The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove,
On which the fabric of our world depends,
One link dissolv'd, the whole creation ends.
Of the Danger his Majesty escaped, &c. v. 168.
It has been observed by Thyer, that Milton borrowed the expression imbrowned and brown, which he applies to the evening shade, from the Italian. See Thyer's elegant note in B. iv., v. 246:
—— And where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noon tide bowers.
And B. ix., v. 1086: