Strength undiminish'd, or eternal being

To undergo eternal punishment?

155

Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend replied:

Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable✓

Doing or suffering: but of this be sure,

To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb

His inmost counsels from their destined aim.

But

see, the angry victor hath recall'd

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

Back to the gates of Heav'n; the sulph'rous hail
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice

Of Heav'n received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,
Let us not slip th' occasion, whether scorn

160

165

170

175

157. Cherub. One of an order of angels next in rank to a seraph. Compare with Gen. iii. 24. Ezek. ch. x.

169. The account here given by Satan differs materially from that which Raphael gives, book vi. 880, but this is satisfactorily explained by referring to the circumstances of the two relators. Raphael's account may be considered as the true one; but, as Newton remarks, in the other passages Satan himself is the speaker, or some of his angels; and they were too proud and obstinate to acknowledge the Messiah for their conqueror; as their rebellion was raised on his account, they would never own his superiority; they would rather ascribe their defeat to the whole host of heaven than to him alone. In book vi. 830 the noise of his chariot is compared to the sound of a numerous host; and perhaps their fears led them to think that they were really pursued by a numerous army. And what a sublime idea does it give us of the terrors of the Messiah, that he alone should be as formidable, as if the whole host of Heaven were in pursuit of them.

Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimm'ring of these livid flames

Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
There rest, if any rest can harbor there,
And reassembling our afflicted powers,

180

185

Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy, our own loss how repair,

How overcome this dire calamity,

What reinforcement we may gain from hope,

190

If not, what resolution from despair.

Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size;
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,

195

192. The incidents, in the passage that follows, to which Addison calls attention, are, Satan's being the first that wakens out of the general trance, his posture on the burning lake, his rising from it, and the description of his shield and spear; also his call to the fallen angels that lay plunged and stupified in the sea of fire. (314-5.)

193. Prone on the flood, somewhat like those two monstrous serpents described by Virgil ii. 206:

Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta, jubæque

Sanguineæ exsuperant undas; pars cætera pontum

Pone legit.

196. Rood, &c.: a rood is the fourth part of an acre, so that the bulk of Satan is expressed by the same sort of measure, as that of one of the giants Virgil, Æn. vi. 596:

Per tota novem cui jugera corpus
Porrigitur.

And also that of the old dragon in Spenser's Fairy Queen, book i.

That with his largeness measured much land."

N.

198. Titanian, or Earth-born:

Genus antiquum terræ, Titania pubes

Æn. vi. 580

Briareos, or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream;
Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lea, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:

200

205

Here Milton commences that train of learned allusions which was among ais peculiarities, and which he always makes poetical by some picturesque epithet, or simile.-E. B.

199. Briareos, a fabled giant (one of the Titans) possessed of a hundred hands. "Et centumgeminus Briareus." Virg. Æn. vi. 287.

201. Leviathan, a marine animal finely described in the book of Job, ch. xli. It is supposed by some to be the whale; by others, the crocodile, with less probability. See Brande's Cyc.

202. Swim the ocean-stream: What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an idea it conveys of the size of that largest of created beings, as if it shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing! Force of style is one of Milton's great excellencies. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners is to take down the book and read it.-HAZLITT.

This line is by some found fault with as inharmonious; but good taste approves its structure, as being on this account better suited to convey a just idea of the size of this monster.

204. Night-foundered: overtaken by the night, and thus arrested in its The metaphor, as Hume observes, is taken from a foundered horse that can go no further.

course.

207. Under the lee: in a place defended from the wind.

208. Invests the sea: an allusion to the figurative description of Night given by Spenser:

"By this the drooping daylight 'gan to fade,

And yield his room to sad succeeding night,
Who with her sable mantle 'gan to shade
The face of Earth."

Milton also, in the same taste, speaking of the moon, IV. 609:

'And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.'

N.

So stretch'd out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay
Chain'd on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had ris'n or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heav'n
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enraged might see

210

215

How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shewn
On Man, by him seduced; but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance pour'd.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames

220

Driv'n backward slope their pointing spires, and roll'd
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight

225

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

209. There are many examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage. This line is an instance. By its great length, and peculiar structure, being composed of monosyllables, it is admirably adapted to convey the idea of immense size.

210. Chained on the burning lake: There seems to be an allusion here to the legend of Prometheus, one of the Titans, who was exposed to the wrath of Jupiter on account of his having taught mortals the arts, and especially the use of fire, which he was said to have stolen from heaven, concealed in a reed. According to another story he was actually the creator of men, or at least inspired them with thought and sense.

His punishment was to be chained to a rock on Caucasus, where a vulture perpetually gnawed his liver; from which he was finally rescued by Hercules. This legend has formed the subject of the grandest of all the poetical illustrations of Greek supernatural belief, the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus. Many have recognized in the indomitable resolution of this suffering Titan, and his stern endurance of the evils inflicted on him by a power with which he had vainly warred for supremacy, the prototype of the arch-fiend of Milton.-BRANDE.

226-7. That felt unusual weight: This conceit (as Thyer remarks) is borrowed from Spenser, who thus describes the old dragon, book i.

Then with his waving wings displayed wide

Himself up high he lifted from the ground,

That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, as if it were land that ever burn'd
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side
Of thund'ring Etna, whose combustible
And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire,

And with strong flight did forcibly divide

The yielding uir, which nigh too feeble found

Her flitting parts, and element unsound,

To bear so great a weight."

229. Liquid fire. Virg. Ec. vi. 33. "Et liquidi simul ignis.-N.

230

230. There are several noble similies and allusions in the first book of Paradise Lost. And here it must be observed that when Milton alludes either to things or persons he never quits his simile until it rises to some very great idea, which is often foreign to the occasion that gave birth to it. The simile does not perhaps occupy above a line or two, but the poet runs on with the hint until he has raised out of it some brilliant image or sentiment adapted to inflame the mind of the reader and to give it that sublime kind of entertainment which is suitable to the nature of an heroic poem.

In short, if we look into the poems of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, we must observe, that as the great fable is the soul of each poem, so, to give their works the greater variety, the episodes employed by these authors may be regarded as so many short fables, their similies as so many short episodes, and their metaphors as so many short similies. If the comparisons in the first book of Milton, of the sun in an eclipse, of the sleeping leviathan, of the bees swarming about their hive, of the fairy dance, be regarded in this light the great beauties existing in each of these passages will readily be discovered.-A.

231. Wind: this should be altered to winds, to agree with the reading in line 235; or that should be altered to agree with this.

232. Pelorus: the eastern promontory of Sicily.

234. Thence conceiving fire: the combustible and fuelled entrails, or interior contents, of the mountain, are here represented as taking fire, as the result of the action of the subterranean wind, in removing the side of the mountain. The fire thus kindled was sublimed with mineral fury, that is, was heightened by the rapid combustion of mineral substances of a bituminous nature. The poet seems to have in his mind the description of Ætna by Virgil (book iii 572, 578.)

Sed horrificis juxta tonat Ætna ruinis,
Interdumque atram prorumpit ad æthera nubem,
Turbine fumantem piceo, et candente favillâ ;
Attollitque globos flammarum, et sidera lambit: