Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T01:11:43.110Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Animal Simile in Paradise Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James Whaler
James Whaler*
Affiliation:
Goucher College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

From Homer on, certain images have been part of the epic poet's inheritance and equipment. Not only has he felt obliged to introduce them somewhere into his work, but to distribute them in the very proportion observed by his predecessors. Beasts, plants, any phenomena used in previous epic simile belonged to him, too, if he could make them at home in a new context. Of course he was free to originate novel images from contemporary events or his own personal experience; but Homer's high precedent, or Vergil's, prescribed the old images as well. Milton's choice of imagery, however, is distinguished from that of other important epic poets of Western Europe by an iron control over, a virtual renunciation of, animal similes.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1932 , pp. 534 - 553
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In this article as well as in others on the Miltonic simile published elsewhere I employ the following terms of analysis. A = the thing compared; S = the simile; r = the point of relationship or resemblance between these two terms; σ = an S in which the terms are generically alike, read “Homogeneous S;” Σ = an S in which the terms are generically unlike, read “Heterogeneous S.” There are four general patterns of similes:

is Pattern 1 (Simple); Pattern 2 (Complex with Perfect Homology) may be thus pictured,

where a, a′, a″, etc., and s, s′, and s″, etc. = details of A and S respectively, explicit in the poet's amplification; in Pattern 3 (Complex with Logical Digression) there are significant details in S which have no homologues in A; Pattern 4 (Complex with Four Terms in a Ratio) is used to express relative magnitudes,—A 1>S 1=A 2>S 2.

2 Ajax was accounted “in face and form goodliest of all the Danaäns after the noble son of Peleus” (Odys. xxiv, 17–18).

3 Art of Poetry, 290–303 (Pitt's tr., Cook's ed., pp. 96–97). Cook has a valuable note on Vida, 257–259, in which he quotes from Addison (Spectator, no. 160), who contrasts the ancients' similes with “the nicety and correctness of the moderns' ”: “Provided there was a likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison … The moderns would make some amends for our want of force and spirit by a scrupulous nicety and exactness in our compositions.” The italics are mine, suggesting that Addison recognized the essential difference between Homeric and Miltonic simile.

J. C. Scaliger (Poetics, 2d ed., 1581, p. 326) also condemns Homer's ass and Homer's flies in favor of Vergil's greater propriety. He lays stress upon sermonis castitas, especially in comparisons.

4 When he would emphasize the fearless spirit, the pent reservoirs of passion, that are at once the glory and the fault of Turnus, he likens Turnus to a lion (ix, 792–796; x, 454–456; xii, 4–8), a wolf (ix, 59–64; 565–566), a tiger (ix, 730), an eagle (ix, 563–765), a stallion (xi, 492–497), and a bull (xii, 103–106; 715–722); and in the final combat with Aeneas, Turnus is the hunted stag, Aeneas the hunter (xii, 749–755). Only two other warriors are illustrated by lion-similes: Euryalus (ix, 339–341) and Mezentius (x, 723–728). Only two others are likened to birds of prey: Camilla (xi, 721–724) and Tarchon (xi, 751–756).

5 A striking instance of Apollonius' care in delimiting the meaning of r in animal simile is at Argo. iv, 1338–1342, where Jason, driven by storms to the Libyan shore, rallies his companions round him in the night.

“He … leapt to his feet, and shouted afar to his comrades, all squalid with dust, like a lion when he roars through the woodland seeking his mate; and far off in the mountains the glens tremble at the thunder of his voice; and the oxen of the field and the herdsmen shudder with fear; yet to them Jason's voice was no whit terrible—the voice of a comrade calling to his friends.” (R. C. Seaton tr.)

It is the absence of some such corrective qualification that gives to the lion-simile at Isaiah 31:4 its Homeric timbre.

6 Like Homer, Spenser, in his serpent-simile in FQ iv, iii, 23, 7–9 isolates the purely pictorial. Cambell, reinvigorated by his magic ring, is likened to a snake

whom wearie winters teene
Hath worne to nought, now feeling sommers might,
Casts off his ragged skin and freshly doth him dight.

Vida twice uses a serpent-image, first with loose (Homeric), and next with strict homologation. At Christiad i, 505–510, Jetrus, healed by Jesus, steals forth as whole and sound and energetic as a snake (anguem) which, hid among gathered leaves, a shepherd has tossed upon a fire and thus roused into instant vitality. At ii, 407–411 the men of Dan enter the Temple as dejected as a serpent (coluber) whose vigor is benumbed by frosty autumn (N.B. There was ancient prophecy that Antichrist was to come out of Dan; therefore Vida obtains exact point to his simile and fulfils the rule of r).

7 For analysis of this simile see my article “The Miltonic Simile,” PMLA, xlvi, 4 (Dec., 1931), p. 1050.

8 At Odys. xxii, 299–301 Odysseus' comrades, assailing the suitors, are likened to gadflies assailing cattle (Apollonius, on the other hand, in Argo. i, 1265–1269, using the same imagery, observes the rule of r). At Iliad ii, 469–471 the Achæans are likened to flies swarming about the milk-pails. Even if we do not, with Vida (Art of Poetry, 282–289, Cook's ed. p. 96), condemn this simile as “low,” we certainly feel it to be naïve. Homer expects us to dismiss the idea of despicable verminousness in a swarm of flies, and concentrate on numbers and mobile audacity (cf. by way of contrast Spenser's comparison of the pertinacious and filthy spawn of Error to a swarm of gnats in FQ i, i, 23, and his later fly-similes in v, ii, 33; v, xi, 58; and vi, xi, 48).

9 Look at summaries of class-distribution in other important epics, and set them beside distribution in Milton. In preparing such lists, one cannot avoid overlapping; e.g., a simile drawn from navigation, yet containing much learned allusion, may fall under “encyclopedic learning” as well as under “human life.” Inasmuch, however, as I have overlapped to about the same extent for each list, the result is accurate enough to point to the truth.

ILIAD
Total Of Complex Pattern
Lower animals 158 123
Inanimate nature 124 80
Human life 76 57
Plant life 26 16
Religion (myth) 22 5
Encyclopedic none
ARGONAUTICA
Human life 32
Inanimate nature 31
Lower animals 28
Plant life 8
Myth AENEID 5
Inanimate nature 45 24
Lower animals 33 31
Human life 23 15
Religion (myth) 14 10
Plant life 12 8
Encyclopedic 10 5
PHARSALIA
Encyclopedic 84
Human life 34
Inanimate nature 31
Lower animals 19
Plant life 4
THEBEID
Lower animals 58
Encyclopedic 53
Human life 35
Inanimate nature 31
Plant life JERUSALEM DELIVERED 4
Inanimate nature 98 59
Human life 65 50
Lower animals 55 46
Encyclopedic 49 39
Plant life 21 16
Religious, biblical 9 6
PARADISE LOST

Total Of Complex Pattern In all M.'s Poems
Inanimate nature 143 48 178
Human life 109 49 135
Encyclopedic 89 37 118
Relig. ideas, Bible, folklore 28 14 36
Lower animals 20 11 43
Plant life 21 10 33

We see that lower animals are prominent in Homer, Apollonius, Vergil, Statius, and Tasso, but are held in leash by Lucan, and are scarce in Milton. Again, “encyclopedic similes” are as rare in Apollonius as in Homer, so that they in themselves would not define Alexandrianism. They appear sparingly in Vergil, but in Lucan outnumber all other categories. Their importance in Milton, though great, is tempered by his frequent requisitioning of the realms of human life and of inanimate nature.

10 Subtract from the Aeneid the complex animal similes of the battle-scenes and you have left about the same number of complex similes (84) as in Paradise Lost. Does not such remarkable agreement as this constitute the English poet's veiled acknowledgment of the Roman's skill in proportioning and adjusting simile to fable?

11 See R. T. Holbrook, Dante and the Animal Kingdom (N. Y., 1902) and Luigi Venturi, Le Similitudini Dantesche (Florence, 1874).

12 I note bees (three times), dogs (five times), snakes (twice), wolves (three times), deer (five times), lions (four times), sheep (twice), doves (twice), hen and chicks, migrant birds, stag and boar, bull, eagle, horse, fish, swan, and phœnix.

13 In Books i-iv (using the Verona ed. of 1729) I find bees (p. 9, col. 1, ll. 18–22); migrant swallows (p. 21, col. 2, ll. 28–33); snake (p. 22, col. 1, ll. 30–34); deer (p. 22, col. 2, ll. 16–19); chickens (p. 26, col. 1, ll. 23–25); flocks of birds (ll. 26–27); dog (p. 34, col. 2, ll. 25–30); bear (p. 38, col. 1, l. 17). Turning casually to Book xviii I find exhausted stags (p. 189, col. 2, ll. 32–33); lion vs. deer (p. 188, col. 2, ll. 43–51); hunters and dogs vs. lion or boar (p. 190, col. 2, ll. 39–19; also p. 191, col. 2, ll. 29–30); shepherds vs. lion (p. 194, col. 1, ll. 34–37; also p. 195, col. 1, ll. 3–7). A parting glance farther on at Book xxi discovers a 13-line portrait of a lion at bay (p. 222, col. 1, ll. 30–42).

14 The lion is used in GL i, lxxxv, 7–8; ii, lxxxix, 4; vi, xxxviii, 4; vii, xcvi, 8; viii, lxxxiii, 1–8; x, lvi, 3–4; xiii, xxviii, 6; and xx, xliii, 7–8, cxiv, 3–4. (I follow Fairfax in my citations, for Milton read him carefully.) The wolf is in vii, cvii, 7; x, ii, 1–6; xii, li, 1–2; xix, xxxv, 1–1; xx, xliv, 5–8. The serpent is in i, lxxxv, 5–6; vii, lxxi, 5–6; ix, lxix, 5–6; xviii, xvi, 7–8; xx, lv, 3–4. Other animals: ii, lxviii, 8 (flies); ii, lxxii, 1–2 (elephants); iii, i, 8 (bees); iii, xxxii, 1–6 (bear and curs); iii, lii, 8 (doves and hawk); iv i, 8 (bulls); v, lxii, 3–4 (falcon); v, lxx, 7 (steed); vi, xxx, 1–2 (tiger, panther, leopard); vi, xlv, 1–4 (bear wounded); vi, lxxx, 5–8 (bird); vi, cxc, 1–8 (hind pursued); vii, ii, 1–4 (hounds and deer); vii, xlvi, 1–8 (fish trapped by tide); vii, lxxxviii, 1 (ram); vii, xcvi, 8 (eagle); ix, xlvi, 5 (bull); ix, xlviii, 2 (boar); ix, lxvi, 3–4 (migrant birds); ix, lxxv, 1–8 (steed); ix, lxxxviii, 3–4 (dog); x, xxxiii, 2 (camel); xi, xxxvi, 8 (sheep); xi, xlviii, 3 (bees); xi, lxxxiv, 7–8 (steed); xii, liii, 8 (bulls); xii, xc, 3–8 (nightingale); xiii, lxxii, 3 (bird); xiv, xlvi (owls); xv, v, 1–8 (dove); xv, xiv, 1–4 (eagle); xvi, xxiv, 1–2 (peacock); xvii, xxxv, 3–8 (phœnix); xvii, lxix, 3 (dog); xx, ii, 3–6 (migrant cranes).

15 I note cursorily three dozen different species in La Semaine: lion, tiger, bear, wolf, ram, bull, stag, hare, hound, mole, badger, ferret, chameleon, fish, game-cock, raven, falcon, hen, peacock, magpie, geese, partridge, bees, spider, fly, locusts, etc.

16 Complete lists are given in the Appendix to Harry V. Wann's Tradition of the Homeric Simile in Eighteenth Century Poetry (Terre Haute: Indiana State Teachers College Press, 1931), pp. 98–105. Out of 130 extended similes in Alaric 36 have animals; out of 55 in La Pucelle 22 have animals.

17 From a glance at Books i-xii of the Orlando Furioso: i, xxiv, 1–8 (fawn fleeing tiger); lxii, 1 (lions and bulls); lxxv, 3–4 (fawning spaniel); ii, v, 1–6 (two fighting dogs); xxxix, 1–4 (kite vs. chicken); xliv, 2–6 (fox vs. eagle); xlix, 1–6 (migrant cranes); l, 3–4 (falcon vs. duck); iv, xxii, 5–8 (cat playing with mouse); viii, xxxiii, 1–6 (hounds vs. hare); lxxvi, 3–8 (wolf vs. lost lamb); ix, lxv, 6–8 (hunters and fishers); lxvii, 1–4 (fowler and decoy); lxix, 1–6 (frog hunter); x, ciii, 1–8 (eagle vs. snake); cv, 1–8 (mastiff vs. fly); xi, i. 5–8 (bear and honey); xlii, 1–4 (wild bull lassoed); xlix, 1–4 (yelping curs vs. bear at a fair); xii, lxxvii, 1–8 (wolf or bear vs. swine); lxxxvii, 1–6 (hounds and hare).

Boiardo has fewer extended animal similes than Ariosto, but he has many short references. From a glance at Books i-ix of the Orlando Innamorato: i, lxxiv, 5 (crow); lxxxi, 5–8 (cat, leopard); ii, iv, 1–4 (lions); lvi, 1–4 (bull); lvi, 7–8 (frog); iii, xxvi, 5–8 (dog, bull, lion, snake); xlvii, 1–8 (dog); xlix, 7 (snake, lion); lxii, 5–6 (owl); iv, xlix, 5 (goats); liii, 1–2 (elephant); lxxi, 6 (leopard); lxxiii, 1–4 (sea-bird vs. small bird); lxxvii, 2 (frog); xciv, 1–2 (serpent); xcv, 8 (bird); v, xi, 4 (mad dog); lix, 3–4 (dolphin); vi, v, 4 (leopard); xiii, 4 (chicken); xiv, 6 (snake); xxxiv, 6 (sheep); vii, xi, 8 (boar or pig); xiv, 8 (bird); xxv, 1–2 (lion); xxx, 1–6 (bull); viii, xxvii, 3 (snake); xliii, 56 (lion, snake); ix, xxxv, 3 (hunted beasts).

18 I am indebted to Miss Louisa F. Whildin of Goucher College for this reference to Ercilla.

19 Among Camoen's animals are ants, frogs, a lion, a lioness, a heron, a dog (twice), a bull (three times), and a leech. See Lusiads i, lxxxviii; ii, xxiii; ii, xxvii; iii, xlvii; iv, xxxiv, 3–8 and continued through xxxv, 1–4; iv, xxxvi, 5–8 and continued through xxxvii, 1–2; v, xxi; ix, lxxiv.

20 Fournel's 9th ed. (Paris, 1858), p. 130. Also given by Wann, op. cit, p. xix. Charles Cotton, in his scabrous adaptation, lowers the key of Scarron's playfulness to dull taproom buffoonery (Scarronides, 14th ed., London, 1765, pp. 74–75; 1st ed. 1670).

21 Hudibras, Part i, iii, 403–408.

22 Maronides or Virgil Travesty (London, 1673), Book v, p. 36.

23 W. L. Lewis, who translated the Thebeid into heroic couplets in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1767), dissents from such a judgment. He especially commends the two lion-similes in Thebeid ix, 739–743 and xi, 741–744. Of the former he speaks this praise: “This simile is bold with Correctness, natural without being vulgar, and copious without Prolixity: and what is still adding to its Merit, is that it is an Original.” The simile reads:

Ut leo, cui parvo mater Gaetula cruentos
Suggerii ipsa cibos, cum primum crescere sensit
Colla iubis, torvusque novos respexit ad ingues,
Indignatur ali; tandemque effusus apertos
Liber amat campos, et nescit in antre reverti,

an animal simile that fully deserves such praise.

Cowley tried epic with a Bible theme in classical dress, but how stricken are his animal similes! Who could have endured those tinsel comparisons of Saul to an angry lion (Davideis i, 649–660), of Goliath to a Scythian tiger, and the Jews to cattle (iii, 401–408)! Yet Cowley is so proud of his “Tyger” that he recklessly parades it through a special note, asserting his provenience in Seneca and Pliny. The Davideis appeared in the same year as Chapelain's La Pucelle (1656).

Southey, in a preface to his Joan of Arc, avows high admiration for Statius, preferring him even to Vergil, but at the same time says: “I have avoided what seems useless and wearying in other poems, and my readers will find no … lion, tyger, bull, bear and boar similes”—perhaps a lesson learned from Chapelain, whom he had recently been reading with some care.

In Sir Richard Blackmore a student of simile can find virtue—that of entertainment among the wildest of beasts. Each of his epics has the same number of extended similes, each the same Homeric quota of animals (in Prince Arthur, 1695, 21 animal similes out of 43; in King Arthur, 1697, 19 out of 43). All the old favorites of the bestiary he wakes up from sleep and exhibits as if it were a privilege, as if lions in England were as welcome as house-cats. At least on one occasion he seems to depend on personal experience for his choice of animal: it is when he compares two mighty heroes contending in full armor (Prince Arthur, p. 222—sixteen lines) to two cocks in a cock-fight. (But Du Bartas had previously compared two fighting lords to two old fighting cocks. See Sylvester's tr. of La Semaine, London, 1641, p. 196). In King Arthur (p. 121) Arthur is fighting with one Gaston the Frank.—

The Frank no longer could in Combate stand,
But threw his Spear and Buckler on the Sand,
And held his reeking Entrails in his Hand.
Off from the Field the wounded Chief did fly,
And fill'd the Region with a dismal Cry.
So when a bold Rhinoceros in Fight
With a strong Elephant compares his Might:
The noble Combate all the Forest fills,
And terror strikes thro' all th' ecchoing Hills.
This with his Trunk invades, and every Blow
Rings on the scaly Armor of the Foe:
Who with his Horn do's on th' Assailant rush,
And makes a furious but a fruitless push.
The Warriours long a doubtful Fight maintain,
And spend a thousand noble Strokes in vain.
Till the Rhinoceros do's gore by chance
The Foe's soft Belly with his Horny Lance.
Then do's the Monster roar in tort'ring Pain,
And flying drags his Entrails o'er the Plain.

24 Animal similes of more than two lines occur in Paradise Lost at i, 200–08 (leviathan); i, 338–43 (locusts); i, 768–775 (bees); iii, 38–40 (nightingale); iii, 431–439 (vulture); iv, 183–187 (wolf); v, 271–274 (phoenix); vi, 73–76 (birds); x, 273–278 (vultures). Similes from plant-life of over two lines occur at i, 292–294; i, 302–304; i, 304–306; i, 612–615; iv, 980–985; viii, 212–216; xi, 27–30.

Observe Pope's defense of Homer's frequent repetitions of similes drawn from the same subject (from the Essay on Homer's Battles):

“Is it not more reasonable to compare the same man always to the same animal, than to see him sometimes a Sun, sometimes a Tree, and sometimes a River? though Homer speaks of the same Creature, he so diversifies the circumstances and accidents of the Comparisons, that they always appear quite different. And to say Truth, it is not so much the Animal or the Thing, as the Action or Posture of them that employs our Imagination: two different animals in the same Action are more like each other than one and the same animal is to himself in two different actions. And those who in reading Homer are shocked that 'tis always a Lion, may so well be angry that it is always a man.”

I suspect that the logician here yields to the enthusiast.

25 A wolf-simile in Tasso, GL xix, 35, shows Milton's superiority to Tasso in apt homologation. Tasso here disregards, Homerically, the rule for r. He compares his hero-knight Rinaldo, who is trying to enter the Temple-fort in Jerusalem and wrest it from the pagan, to a wolf, without, of course, any possible biblical association.

Like as a Wolf about the closed Fold
Rangeth by Night his hoped Prey to get,
Inrag'd with Hunger and with Malice old,
Which Kind 'twixt him and harmless Sheep hath set,
So search'd he high and low about that Hold … (Fairfax)

26 Before Milton Du Bartas (op. cit. p. 132) had likened to locusts the Northern barbarian tribes that swarmed down over Europe. It is interesting to observe that Milton's simile immediately following his locusts compares Satan's hordes to the Northern barbarians. Probably a remote echo of Milton's studious boyhood?

27 PL v, 272–274.

28 GL xvii, 35.

29 Marini (La Strage degli Innocenti n, 133) had previously compared an angel to the Phœnix. Vida (Christiad vi, 306–312; also in Hymnus Dei Filio, 294–298 and In Jesu Christi Crucem, 29–34) uses the Phoenix in simile as the type of the resurrected Christ.

30 Used by Lyly, and recorded in the collections of Breton (1616) and Clarke (1639). See M. P. Tilley, Elizabethan Proverb Lore in Lyly's Euphues, etc. (N. Y., 1926), p. 164. W. C. Hazlitt omits Lyly's saying from his English Proverbs on the ground that it merely “wears a proverbial shape” without ranking among popular sayings, i.e. those current before 1579 (Preface to 2d ed., London, 1882, p. xvi). Nevertheless its occurrence in Euphues—even if it was Lyly's invention—would have been enough to make it familiar to all who then read books; and the fact that parœmiologists of the two following generations record it points to its continued quasi-proverbial currency among so literate a body of readers as Milton addressed.

31 A few random examples: Bible, Deut. 1:44; Ps. 118: 12; Aeschylus, Pers. 126–127; Plato, Phaedo 91 C; Ovid, Ars Am. i, 95 f., Fasti iii, 555 f.; Seneca, Ep. 84, §3; St. Chrysostom, Migne xlix, 35, 1; lii, 405, 49; Trissino, Italia Liberata, Book I (ed. 1729, p. 9, col. 1, ll. 18–22); Tasso, GL iii, i, 8; xi, xlviii. 3; Du Bartas, La Semaine, 1st Week, 7th Day (tr. Sylvester, ed. 1641, p. 64); E. A. Robinson, Merlin (Coll. Poems, p. 279).

Marcus Aurelius (Med. v, 6) says: “A man who has done a good deed should be like a bee that has gathered its honey: in other words, he ought not to proclaim it from the housetops, but go seek an opportunity to do likewise.” Jeremy Taylor (ed. Hughes, vol. i, p. 89) says that the prayer of a good man ascends to God … “till it returns, like a useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.” And in recommending marriage he says (i, p. 318): “Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies and feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys its king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.”

Even Southey, who proscribes, in general, the use of animal imagery in epic, cannot resist bees when he tells of the courtiers' murmur of admiration for Joan (Joan of Arc, 2d ed., Bristol, 1798, vol. i, Book iv, p. 228):

As o'er some flowery field the busy bees
Pour their deep music, pleasant melody
To the tired traveller, under some old oak
Stretch'd in the chequer'd shade …
… rose the murmur, etc.

32 Noted by Venturi, op. cit., p. 272.

33 In Vida's comparison (Christiad i, 229–231) of the hosts of Hell to bees, which is the first of a group of two, r is multitude and nothing more, because the second simile (232–233) likens the followers of Satan to earthly troops led by a warlike monarch. So it is evident that in this passage Vida pictures his fiends as moving about in two dimensions only. Later, in ii, 30–33, where he presents the hordes of Hell swarming through the streets of Jerusalem, spreading false rumors about Jesus, he likens them to migrant birds which halt on Italian shores. But is it not inept? Can migrant birds be imagined ever to plague Italian shores as the fiends plagued the good name of Jesus? Vida's image actually carries with it, on the contrary, benficence and boon, because one cannot help thinking of the Italian peasant pot-shooters, greedily gathering their bags of waterfowl, landfowl, birds of little quill, robins, skylarks, nightingales—anything that bears the godsend of a morsel for their clamant bellies. So gross an ignoring of the rule of r would never have been countenanced by Milton.

34 Immediately following Lucifer's opening speech to the legions of Hell,—a situation not unlike Milton's,—Scudéry, in Book vi of his Alaric (1654), briefly compares their buzz of conversation to the murmur of an excited hive:

Comme un nombreux Essein, que la Ruche abandonne,
Murmure sourdement, fait du bruit et bourdonne;
Ainsi tous les Demons qui parlent bas entr' eux,
Forment le mesme bruit dans un Antre si creux,

where r is intended, more than in its Vergilian model (Aenid xii, 587–592), to be, above all else, confused buzzing noise. Earlier in the same book, describing the defeated legions as they flock together at Lucifer's summons, Scudéry compares them to “mouches ménagères.” After “Belzebuth's” speech, which follows Satan's, the clamor of applause is likened to the uproar of waves on a stormy seacoast, paralleling Milton's simile that describes the effect of Mammon's speech in PL ii, 284–290. Book vi of Alaric is a preserve full of traps for the unwary source-hunter.

35 Ever since Newton, critics, for all their praise of this simile, have passed over Milton's mastery of prolepsis not only here but elsewhere (I have analyzed in another article PL i, 200–208; ii, 662–666; 885–887; iii, 543–551; iv, 268–272; 499–501; 714–719; ix, 522; 634–642; x, 306–311; xii, 629–632). The latest commendatory criticism is by Lascelles Abercrombie (The Theory of Poetry, London, 1924, pp. 207–208), though he, too, omits to point out prolepsis as part of Milton's conscious technique. But what he says is worth citing because it emphasizes a most important implication—mystery, with its resultant emotionalizing of the image:

“The comparison with the familiar spectacle of a beehive simply helps us, it may be said, to see clearly and exactly what the sublime daring of Milton's imagination had created. But surely the simile does much more than make us see; or hear either. The care with which the business of the hive is brought before us … compels us to recollect the enigma everyone must have felt in that inscrutable earnest bustle of the bees' commonwealth; and at once we transfer that feeling to the vision of the fiends: we feel ourselves spectators of the vision, as though it were objectively present; as though we had suddenly come upon it, and were marvelling what it is that can animate that horde of mysterious winged creatures: a feeling as ”realistic“ as if we had found ourselves in the presence of an excited mob in a foreign town. For the feeling of enigmatic business in the hive, and the transference of this feeling to the vision of the fiends (with its objectifying effect on the vision), are both encouraged by the terms of the simile: the simile is to compare fiends with bees, but the bees in the simile are themselves described in metaphors of human city-life. The result is, of course, a moment of extraordinarily enriched consciousness: fiends suggest bees, bees suggest men, and so back to fiends, with a new range of suggestion brought in at every stage.”

The preceding discussion has been concerned only with complex animal similes. Newton first pointed out (Essay on Milton's Imitation of the Ancients, p. 9) how Milton may surpass Homer and Vergil in simpler forms. E.g., in PL vi, 73–77:

As when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array, on wing
Came summon'd over Eden to receive
Their names of thee; so over many a tract
Of Heaven they march'd, and many a province wide.

Comparisons of a host with birds, particularly with migrating birds, are almost commonplace in classic epic (e.g., Iliad ii, 459–463; iii, 2–7; Argo. iv, 238–340; Aeneid vi, 310–312; vii, 699–705; x, 264–266; Pharsalia v, 711–717; Thebeid v, 11–16; xii, 515–522; Val. Flac. iii, 359–361; Vida, Christiad ii, 30–33, which in note 33 supra I have pointed out as infelicitous). But Milton's simile is, we feel, the only one perfectly mated to Adam's comprehension. As in the bee-simile, A includes winged multitude, thus approximating σ very closely. Lastly, as Newton says, Milton has “raised the image in proportion to his subject” by including in it “more than any one particular species of bird, or a collection of birds in any particular place, but the total kind.” No previous migrating-bird simile had thus combined immensity with an inevitable fitness.

Newton also first pointed out the superiority of the simple simile at PL vi, 856–857:

[Satan's hosts were gathered for rout] as a herd
Of goats or timorous flock together throng'd.

Homer, too, had compared hosts of warriors with flocks of goats (Iliad ii, 474–475) and with flocks of sheep (Iliad iii, 197–198; 433–435; xiii, 492–493). But unlike Milton, who is always vigilant in providing that the essential moral connotation of r be in Σ, Homer unconcernedly exposes himself to a charge of “lowness.” “But we may observe that this [Milton's] low simile is not applied as Homer's are, to the persons he meant to honor, but to the contrary party; and the lower the comparison, the more it expresses their defeat.”