Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.

Before their eyes in sudden view appear

The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,

890

Without dimension; where length, breadth, and height,

And time and place, are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of nature, hold

895

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.

For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring

Their embryon atoms; they around the flag
Of each his faction, in their several clans,

900

́Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands
Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring winds, and poise

Their lighter wings.

To whom these most adhere,
Chaos umpire sits,

He rules a moment;
And by decision more embroils the fray,
By which he reigns: next him high arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds;
Into this wild abyss the wary Fiend

Stood on the brink of Hell, and looked awhile,
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) than when Bellona storms,

904. Barca was for the most part a desert country, on the north coast of Africa, extending from Syrtis Major as far as Egypt. The ancient Cyrenaica, of which the capital was Cyrene, formed a part of this region.

906. To whom these most adhere.] The natural order is, "He, to whom these most adhere, rules (for) a moment." Most is here to be considered as an adjective, not an adverb. Moment

905

910

915

920

is in the objective, governed by for understood.

921. To compare great things with small.] Imitated from Virgil, who says,

Sic canibus catulos similes, sic matribus hædos
Nôram; sic parvis componere magna solebam.
Buc. i. 23.

922. Bellona was the Roman goddess of war, said by some to be the sister, and by others the daughter, of

With all her battering engines bent to raze
Some capital city; or less than if his frame
Of Heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn

925

The stedfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke

Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending, rides
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuity: all unawares,

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft; that fury stayed,
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea
Nor good dry land; nigh foundered, on he fares,
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half-flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon through the wilderness
With wingéd course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined

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thology. It plays a prominent part in the fairy tales and romances of the middle ages; and, like the dragon which was fabled to guard the golden apples of the Hesperides, its chief duties consisted in watching over hidden treasures, and in guarding captive princesses, or the castles in which they were confined. The griffin is at once the symbol of strength and swiftness, courage, prudence, and vigilance qualities which its form is well calculated to represent; and hence it has been adopted into the language of heraldry, where it constitutes a prominent feature in the armorial bearings of many princely and noble families."BRANDE. The Arimaspians were a one-eyed people of Scythia, and the Gryphons had continual wars with them about gold-the Gryphons trying to guard it, and the Arimaspians to take it when they had the opportunity

The guarded gold: so eagerly the Fiend

O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies:
At length a universal hubbub wild

Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,
Undaunted to meet there whatever power
Or spirit of the nethermost abyss

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955

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask

Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies

Bordering on light; when strait behold the throne
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread

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Wide on the wasteful deep; with him enthroned
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,

The consort of his reign; and by them stood
Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name

Of Demogorgon; Rumour next and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion, all embroiled,

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And Discord, with a thousand various mouths.

To whom Satan turning boldly, thus: "Ye Powers
And Spirits of this nethermost abyss,
Chaos and ancient Night! I come no spy,
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your realm; but, by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,

961-967. With him enthroned, &c.] There seems to be a very considerable resemblance between the characters here represented and those placed by Virgil in the vestibule of Hell. It would be quite uncandid to deny that the Mantuan Bard is not here surpassed by his modern imitator:

"Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci,

970

964-965. Orcus and Ades, or Hades, are names of Pluto - the god of the nether world.

The dreaded name of Demogorgon.] Spenser has the following lines :"A bold bad man, that dared to call by name Great Gorgon, prince of darkness and dead night;

At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight."

968. To whom Satan, &c.] The Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Se- ellipsis of the verb spake is very com

Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;

nectus,

Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis
Egestas,

Terribiles visu formæ; Letumque, Labosque;
Tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala
mentis

Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine
Bellum,

Ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia

demens,

Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis."
En. vi. 273-281.

mon in the ancient poets whom Milton imitates in this. "Boldly" may apply either to turning or to spake understood another instance of what the French call construction louche. In this case it matters little which way it be understood.

Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds

Confine with Heaven; or, if some other place,

From your dominion won, th' ethereal King

Possesses lately, thither to arrive

I travel this profound; direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof, if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway,
(Which is my present journey,) and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night:
Yours be th' advantage all, mine the revenge."
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,

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985

Answered. "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading Angel, who of late

990

Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown.

I saw and heard; for such a numerous host

Fled not in silence through the frighted deep,

With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates
Poured out by millions her victorious bands,
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,
Encroached on still through your intestine broils,
Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first Hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath;
Now lately Heaven and Earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell:
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger; go, and speed!
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin are my gain."

977. Confine with heaven.] i. e. border on or with heaven.

985. Which is my present journey.] i. e. which is the object of my present journey.

994. Frighted deep.] The adjective .6 frighted" is here by the figure personification made to qualify the noun deep, while it is really an attribute that must belong to a living agent. There

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1005

He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renewed,
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse; and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset,
And more endangered, than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks;
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labour hard

1013. Like a pyramid of fire.] "To take in the full meaning of this magnificent similitude, we must imagine ourselves in Chaos, and a vast luminous body rising upward near the place where we are, so swiftly as to appear a continued track of light, and lessening to the view according to the increase of distance, till it end in a point, and then disappear; and all this must be supposed to strike our eye at one instant.". BEATTIE.

1017. When Argo passed through Bosporus.] "Bosporus," or as it is now written Bosphorus, is the channel between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea. It got its name because Io crossed it in the form of a heifer, or because, the strait being so narrow, cattle often swam across it. "The justling rocks" referred to are the Symplegades two small islands or rocks of the Black Sea, which, according to the fable, alternately struck against and separated from each other, until the ship Argo passed them, after which time they remained fixed. The substance of the passage is that Satan's voyage was more beset with difficulty and danger than that of the Argonauts. This famous expedition is said to have taken place 79 years before the taking of Troy, that is, in 1263 B.C.

"Dr.

1019. Or when Ulysses.] Bentley has two very formidable objections against the sense of these verses. First, he says, that larboard or left hand, is a mistake here for starboard or right hand, Charybdis being

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1020

to the starboard of Ulysses, when he sailed through these straits. This is very true, but it does not affect what Milton here says; for the sense may be not that Ulysses shunned Charybdis situated on the larboard of the ship as he was sailing; but that Ulysses, sailing on the larboard (to the left hand where Scylla was), did thereby shun Charybdis; which was the truth of the case. The Doctor's other objection is that Scylla was no whirlpool, which yet she is here supposed to have been ; but Virgil (whom Milton follows oftener than he does Homer) describes Scylla as

'Naves in saxa trahentem,' and what is that less than calling it a whirlpool? The truth is, that Scylla is a rock situated in a bay into which the tide runs with a strong current, so as to draw in the ships which are within the compass of its force, and either dash them against the rock or swallow them in the eddies; for when the streams have rushed into the bay they meet with Scylla at the further end, and, being beaten back, form an eddy or whirlpool."— PEARCE.

1021-1022. So he with difficulty and labour hard, &c.] We have again to admire Milton's adaptation of the language he uses to the idea meant to be conveyed. The repetition of the words

difficulty and "labour," and the abrupt ending with "he" without any apparent predicate, remind one of walking up a sand-hill, when you go back about as fast as you go forward.