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 hôs hymas isa chai to mêden zôsas enarithmô—
"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.