120 



attempted to naturalise — the accusative with the infinitive. This 

 construction is quite familiar to us in such sentences as this, " We 

 know him to be a good man." But who would suspect to find it in 

 the following lines : — 



VI. 217. " All Heaven 



Eesoimded, and had Earth been then, aU Earth 

 Had to her centre shook. What wonder? when 

 MilUons of fiei'ce cncounteiiug angels fought 

 On either side, the least of whom could wield 

 These elements, and arm him with the force 

 Of all theii- regions :* How much more of power 

 Army against army numberless to raise, 

 Dreadful combustion waning, and disturb, 

 Though not destroy, their happy native seat." 

 The construction of the whole sentence is clear enough, except the 

 end — " How much more of power," &c. But this latter portion is 

 really obscure. Bentley says, " The construction is mutilous and 

 defective," and he suggests the alteration, " How much likelier then," 

 in V. 223. To me it seems that the subject of the sentence is expressed 

 by an accusative with infinitive, " Army against army, to raise com- 

 bustion and disturb their native seat ;" this is equivalent to " the 

 raising of combustion, &c., by armies numberless." To this subject 

 we must add, as predicate, — How much more of power, i.e., how much 

 more grand and awful is that I f I confess this explanation hardly 

 satisfies me, but it is the best I can give. 



Another accusative with infinitive is IX. 963, " Adam, from whose 

 dear side I boast me sprung." The cast of thought is Homeric 

 ov TToTs eSxo/j-ai ehat. In form it is a Latin accusative with infinitive, 

 in which the participle, without the auxiliaiy verb, performs the 

 function of the infinitive, — " Adamus a cuiits latere glorior me ortam." 

 We have met with some attempts at an ablative absolute, w^hich, as 

 the EugUsh language is without the ablative, might be called nominative 

 absolute. But ]\rilton has attempted to accustom the English ear to the 

 ablative also, in other combinations, for instance, to an ablative of 



* What are the regions of elements ? Did the poet mean north, south, east, 

 and west? or did he fancy regions of fire, air, water, and earth, arranged in strata, one 

 above the other ? Neither the one nor the other seems probable. Nor could the force of 

 the elements be well called the force of their regions, when it is only exercised within these 

 regions. I suspect, therefore that the text is here corrupted. The blind poet may have 

 dictated ragings, which word the copyist took for regions. The notion of raging elements 

 is familiar lo Milton, conf. 1, 175, II. 171, 213, 26S, X. 286. The commentators, as usual, 

 are silent where there is a real difficulty. 



+ As in Greek tJ) a/iapTci vnv avBpunrovs ovras ov Sa.vixa(n6v : or, o'lif irAeoc Topc- 

 X^i (TTpoTiaj Toiaurar iroAf/ueTcrSoi. 



