By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,

640

Consent or custom; and his regal state
Put forth at full, but still his strength conceal'd,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know our own;
So as not either to provoke, or dread

645

New war, provoked; our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not: that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife 650
There went a fame in heaven that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant

A generation, whom his choice regard

B. C. i. 76.

'Se exercitum non deserturos neque sibi separatim a reliquis consilium capturos.'' RICHARDSON.

642. tempted our attempt: Ovid indulges in this play upon words: Fasti ii. 684. Romanæ spatium est urbis et orbis idem :' 787.Hostis, ut hospes, init penetralia Collatini.'

.

647. that he no less: Bentley would read, that lesson he At length may find;—that maxim, aphorism. But as Bp. Pearce remarks, it should have been, this lesson: for in propriety of gramınar this refers to what follows, that to what went before. The common reading therefore is better, that he no less, neanmoins, nevertheless, may find,' &c. The connexion is better explained in the following note. 'Satan had owned just before, 1. 642. that they had been deceived by God's concealing his strength. He now says, He also shall find himself mistaken in his turn; he shall find our cunning such, as that, though we have been overpowered, we are not more than half subdued.' RICHARDSON.

650, rife, a Saxon word; frequent, common, prevalent. In modern usage, applied to epidemic diseases. See ii. 345.

Should favour equal to the sons of heaven :
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption! thither or elsewhere;
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature: peace is despair'd;
For who can think submission? War then, war,
Open or understood, must be resolved.'

He spake; and, to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim : the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell; highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven.

There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top
Belch'd fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf; undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,

655

660

665

670

660. • Hom. Il. i. 140. ἀλλ ̓ ἤτοι μὲν ταῦτα μεταφρασόμεσθα καὶ abris. Cowper.

662. open or understood: openly declared or understood among themselves, implied, meant: as in ii. 187. War therefore, open

or concealed, alike My voice dissuades.'

664. Hom. Il. i. 190. φάσγανον ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ. 668. clashed on their sounding shields. Tac. Germ. 2. Si displicuit sententia, fremitu aspernantur; sin placuit, frameas concutiunt. Honoratissimum assensûs genus est, armis laudare.'

670. Grisly seems to signify rough or hideous, but perhaps answers more exactly in its import to the Latin word hispidus.' CowPER. See ii. 704.

671. belch'd fire. So Virgil, speaking of Etna, Æn. iii. 576. 'Interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis Erigit eructans.'

The work of sulphur. Thither, wing'd with speed,
A numerous brigad hasten'd; as when bands
Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe arm'd,
Forerun the royal camp to trench a field,
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on:
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

675

From heaven; for e'en in heaven his looks and

thoughts

Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught, divine or holy, else enjoy'd
In vision beatific: by him first

680

Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew

685

674. the work of sulphur. For metals are supposed to consist of two essential parts or principles; mercury, as the basis or metallic matter; and sulphur as the binder or cement, which fixes the fluid mercury into a coherent malleable mass.' N.

675. brigad: now written and pronounced brigáde: a division of troops, horse or foot.

676.pioneer, Fr. pionnier, contracted from piochnier, from pioche, a pickax; piocher, to dig, i. e. to pick, W. pigaw, Sp. and Port. picar.' WEBSTER'S Dict.

678. Mammon, a Syriac word, signifying riches, here personified as the god of riches. See Matth. vi. 24. Luke xvi. 9. 11.

682. So Homer speaks of the pavement of heaven, as if it was of gold, Xpvoé év dawédw, II. A. 2. And so the heavenly Jerusalem is described by St. John, Rev. xxi. 21. And the street of the city is pure gold." N.

687. Ovid Met. i. 138.

'itum est in viscera terræ,

Quasque recondiderat, Stygiisque admoverat umbris,
Effodiuntur opes, irritamenta malorum.'

688. Hor. Od. iii. 3. 49.

Open'd into the hill a spacious wound,

695

And digg'd out ribs of gold. Let none admire 690
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those,
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scumm'd the bullion dross:

'Aurum irrepertum, et sic melius situm,

Cum terra celat.'

700

694. The Pyramids of Egypt which were near Memphis. 696. And (now their) strength and art, &c. i. e. strength and art are nominatives not genitives.' N. Bentley proposes, For strength, &c. Bp. Pearce, In strength.

697. and (how easily that is out-done) in an hour, which in an age, &c.

699. hands innumerable. There were 360,000 men employed for near 20 years upon one of the Pyramids, according to Diodorus Siculus and Pliny.' N.

702. sluiced, conveyed by sluices, floodgates.

703. founded: melted, cast: from the Lat. fundere.

704. Bentley proposes as an emendation of this line and scummed from bullion dross. Bp. Pearce thus defends the common reading The word bullion does not signify purified ore, but ore boiled or boiling; and when the dross is taken off, then it is purified ore. Milton uses bullion as an adjective: as in v. 140. ocean brim, iii. 284. virgin seed. And so bullion dross may signify the dross that came from the metal, or the dross that swam on the surface of the boiling ore.'

A third as soon had form'd within the ground
A various mould, and from the boiling cells,
By strange conveyance, fill'd each hollow nook;
As in an organ, from one blast of wind,

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.
Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven ;
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,

Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence

703

710

715

713. pilasters, from Lat. pila. Square pillars, sometimes insulated, but oftener set within a wall, and only showing a fourth or fifth part of their thickness.' JOHNSON.

715. architrave: the lower division of an entablature, or that part which rests immediately on the column. It probably represents the beam which, in ancient buildings, extended from column to column, to support the roof. Fr. apxòs, chief, and It. trave, from L. trabs, a beam.' WEBSTER.

716. cornice: from L. coronis, Gr. Kopwvis, корúvη, a summit, a crown: the uppermost member of the entablature of a column, or the highest projecture; that which crowns an order.' WEB

STER.

frieze, or freeze: the part between the architrave and cornice, usually embossed with figures of animals and other ornaments of sculpture. In derivation, it is doubtless allied to the Gr. opioow. Virg. Æn. ix. 263. aspera signis pocula.'

717. Fret-work is fillets interwoven at parallel distances.' N. 718. Alcairo, or Grand Cairo, the capital of Egypt, called by its founder Al Kahirah, the victorious, Nicopolis. As this city was not built till towards the end of the 10th century, Milton could not say with propriety that the god Serapis was there enshrined, as Belus was in the ancient Babylon in Assyria. It is probable our author thought that Grand Cairo was built upon or near the ruins of