[Milton-L] Knowing no real TOAD durst there intrude

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Agreed, no acrostic "SAT" there to designate the squat toad, but Milton is obviously punning on the German "Tod" -- a death squats there!
 
More seriously, I have a question about the passage:
 
So saying, on he led his radiant Files,
Daz'ling the Moon; these to the Bower direct
In search of whom they sought: him there they found
Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve; [ 800 ]
Assaying by his Devilish art to reach
The Organs of her Fancie, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams,
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
Th' animal spirits that from pure blood arise [ 805 ]
Like gentle breaths from Rivers pure, thence raise
At least distemperd, discontented thoughts,
Vaine hopes, vaine aimes, inordinate desires
Blown up with high conceits ingendring pride.
 
[PL 4.797-809, Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, March, 2008.]
 
The angels "found [Satan] / Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve; / Assaying by his Devilish art to reach / The Organs of her Fancie." Does this imply that they recognized what Satan was trying to do?
 
Yet, a few lines later, in 4.825-6, Ithuriel asks, "Why satst thou like an enemie in waite / Here watching at the head of these that sleep?" Does he not know, or is he intent on hearing either a confession or catching Satan in a lie?
 
Jeffery Hodges


--- On Thu, 8/27/09, John Leonard <jleonard at uwo.ca> wrote:


From: John Leonard <jleonard at uwo.ca>
Subject: [Milton-L] Knowing no real TOAD durst there intrude
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 8:02 AM


With the sole possible exception of SATAN (the one plausible candidate, plausible due to context and "sidelong he works his way") all of the acrostics that have "discovered" in PL are absolute rubbish.  We do our poet no service when we foist them on him.  Just *listen* to him and listen to yourselves.  From him: mighty mouthed harmonies and a voice like the sea. 
> From you (the acrostic hunters): infantile vocabulary and monosyllabic 
ejaculations (COWS, BOAT, STARS, AHEM, TOAD).  As William Empson said of another toad,  "it is like dogs who cannot bear not to join in the singing." Empson was referring to Bentley's note on 4.810.  Bentley:

"May I not add one verse to Milton, as well as his Editor add so many: especially, since I do not do it, as He did, clandestinely: 'Him thus intent Ithuriel with his Spear, KNOWING NO REAL TOAD DURST THERE INTRUDE, Touch'd lightly"

Empson: "It is the Doctor who dare intrude anywhere."  Bentley--and the acrostic hunters with their intruding, yelping TOADS and COWS..

As for COWS, I am skeptical that Milton would have used the word even in everyday speech.  He thrice used the plural form "kine" in his poetry; but never "cows".

John Leonard


PS.  There has been a parallel debate about acrostics in Vergil.  See Don Fowler, "An Acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7, 601-4)?" CQ 33 (1983), 298. 
_______________________________________________
Milton-L mailing list
Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
Manage your list membership and access list archives at http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l

Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.richmond.edu/pipermail/milton-l/attachments/20090827/a86c2f1f/attachment.html