THE ARGUMENT. God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretels the success of Satan in perverting mankind, clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man: but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice: man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny, devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore him. They obey, and, hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Mean while Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity: what persons and things fly up thither: thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights first on mount Niphates. : PARADISE LOST. BOOK III. HAIL, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born, May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, The rising world of waters dark and deep, 5 10 2. Or may I without blame call thee the coeternal beam of the eternal God?' N. 3. From 1 John i. 5. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' And 1 Tim. vi. 16. 'Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light, which no man can approach unto.' N. 6. Thou bright overflowing of that bright, uncreated, selfexistent being.' RICHARDSON. 7. Or dost thou rather hear this address, dost thou delight rather to be called, pure ethereal stream? An excellent Latinism, as Dr. Bentley observes. Hor. Sat. ii. 6, 20. Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis.'' N. 8. As in Job xxxviii. 19. Where is the way where light dwelleth?' 9. Gen. i. 3. And God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light.' Won from the void and formless infinite. Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd 15 Through utter and through middle darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, I sung of Chaos and eternal Night; Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down 20 So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs, 25 12. Gen. i. 2. And the earth was without form and void.' 16. Through Hell, which is often called utter darkness, and through the great gulf between Hell and Heaven, the middle darkness.' N. 17.'Orpheus made a hymn to Night, which is still extant; he also wrote of the creation out of Chaos. Orpheus was inspired by his mother Calliope only, Milton by the heavenly Muse, therefore he boasts he sung with other notes than Orpheus, though the subjects were the same.' RICHARDSON. 20. Dr. Bentley objects to the words re-ascend up, thinking up superfluous; but to re-ascend signifies by returning to ascend, as in i. 633. and the phrase ascend up is in v. 198. and in ii. 75.' PEARCE. 21. A manifest allusion to Virgil, Æn. vi. 128. 'Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Diis geniti potuere." N. 25. Drop serene or gutta serena. It was formerly thought that that sort of blindness was an incurable extinction or quenching of sight by a transparent, watery, cold humor distilling upon the optic nerve, though making very little change in the eye to appearance, if any; it is now known to be most commonly an ob Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more Those other two equall'd with me in fate, 30 struction in the capillary vessels of that nerve, and curable in some cases. A cataract for many ages, and till about thirty years ago (i. e. from 1734.) was thought to be a film growing over the eye, intercepting or veiling the sight, beginning with dimness, and so increasing till vision was totally obstructed; but the disease is in the crystalline humor lying between the outmost coat of the eye and the pupilla. The dimness at the beginning is called a suffusion ; and when the sight is lost, it is a cataract, and cured by couching; which is with a needle passing through the external coat and driving down the diseased crystalline, the loss of which is somewhat supplied by the use of a large convex glass.' RICHARDSON. 26. Yet not the more forbear I to wander; I do it as much as I did before I was blind.' N. 29. Virg. G. ii. 475. 'dulces ante omnia Musæ, Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore.' N. 30. brooks: Kedron and Siloah. 31. warbling: applied to any melodious sound: as in v. 195. 'Fountains and ye that warble as ye flow 6 Melodious murmurs.' 32. and sometimes not forget, [sometimes remember:] nec and neque in Latin are frequently the same as et non.' PEARCE. 33. It has been imagined that Milton dictated Those other too. The most probable explanation of this passage I conceive to be this. Though he mentions four, yet there are but two whom he particularly desires to resemble; and those he distinguishes both with the epithet blind to make the likeness the more striking. Mæonides is Homer, so called from the name of his father Mæon : [or the country where he was born, Mæonia.] The character of Thamyris is not so well known and established; but Homer mentions him, Il. B. 595. and Eustathius ranks him with Orpheus and Musæus, the most celebrated poets and musicians. Plato mentions So were I equall'd with them in renown, 35 40 45 his Hymns with honor in the beginning of his 8th book of Laws, and towards the conclusion of the last book of his Republic feigns, upon the principles of transmigration, that the soul of Thamyris passed into a nightingale. He was a Thracian by birth, and invented the Doric mood or measure, according to Pliny vii. 57. Plutarch in his Treatise of Music says that he had the finest voice of any of his time, and wrote a poem of the war of the Titans with the Gods; and from Suidas we learn that he composed likewise a poem of the generation of the world, which, being subjects near of kin to Milton's, might probably occasion the mention of him in this place. It seems therefore as if Milton had intended at first to mention only these two, and then currente calamo had added the two others, Tiresias and Phineus, the one a Theban, the other a king of Arcadia, famous blind prophets and poets of antiquity; for the word prophet, as the Latin vates, sometimes comprehends both characters. Dr. Pearce corrects the false accent in Tiresias, by reading, 'And Phineus and Tiresias, prophets old.'' N. 34. Elliptically be it so, were I equalled; or as the optative, O that I were equalled! as is in Greek, and sie in Latin: 'Sic te diva potens Cypri-regat.' Hor. 39. darkling in the dark, without light: used also by Shakspeare. Compare Virg. G. iv. 511. Qualis populeâ,' &c. Hom. Od. T. 518. Soph, d. C. 671. Eur. Hel. 1107. |