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John Milton Follow

Sonnet VIII. When The Assault Was

Intended To The City

Captain or Colonel, or Knight in Arms,

Whose chance on these defenceless dores may sease,
If ever deed of honour did thee please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms,
He can requite thee, for he knows the charms
That call Fame on such gentle acts as these,
And he can spred thy Name o're Lands and Seas,
What ever clime the Suns bright circle warms.
Lift not thy spear against the Muses Bowre,
The great Emathian Conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when Temple and Towre
Went to the ground: And the repeated air
Of sad Electra's Poet had the power
To save th' Athenian Walls from ruine bare.

'To this sonnet we have prefixed the title, which the author himself
has in the Manuscript. In the Manuscript this sonnet was written by
another hand, and gad this title "On his door when the City expected
an assault:" but this he scratched out, and wrote with his own hand
"When the assault was intended to the City." The date was also
added 1642, but blotted out again: and it was in November 1642 that
the King marched with his army as near as Brentford, and put the city
in great consternation. Milton was then in his 34th year.

(line 3: If deed of honor did thee ever please,): So this verse is

printed in the second edition in the year 1673. In the first edition of
1645, and in the Manuscript it stands thus,
"If ever deed of honor did thee please."

(line 10: The great Emathian conqueror &c): When Alexander the
great took Thebes, and entirely ras'd the rest of the city, he order'd
the house of Pindar to be preserv'd out of regard to his memory: and
the ruins of Pindar's house were to be seen at Thebes, in
Pausanias's time, who lived under Antoninus the philosopher.

(line 12: --- And the repeated air &c): I suppose this refers to a
passage in Plutarch's Life of Lysander. When that general had taken
Athens, he proposed to change the government. Some say he
moved in council that the Athenians might be reduced to slavery,
when at the same time Erianthus the Theban proposed wholly to
destroy the city, and leave the country desolate: but a little afterwards
at an entertainment of the captains, one of them repeated some
verses out of Euripides's Electra.'

~ Th. Newton, Milton's Works, 2nd edition, 1753.

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