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 illumin'd hell: highly they rag'd
Against the High'est, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance tow'ard the vault of heav'n.

There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top
Belch'd fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire

667. -with grasped arms] The known custom of the Roman soldiers, when they applauded a speech of their general, was to smite their shields with their swords. Bentley.

And the epithet grasped, joined to arms, determines the expression to mean swords only, which were spoken of a little before, ver. 664. Pearce.

Mr. Upton is of opinion that Milton in what follows imitates both Spenser and Shakespeare, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. iv. st. 40.

And clash their shields, and shake their swords on high.

Julius Cæsar, act v.

665

670

Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth.

Milton in his imitations scarcely ever confines himself to the beauties or expressions of one author, but enriches his diction with the spoils of many, and hence surpasses any one. Letter to Mr. West on Spenser's Faery Queen, p. 23.

669. Hurling defiance toward the vault of heav'n.] Dr. Bentley reads the walls of heav'n. Heaven the habitation of God and angels being never described as vaulted; and Dr. Pearce approves the emendation; and without doubt the wall or walls of heaven is a common expression with our author. But may we not by the vault of heaven understand cœli convexa, our visible heaven, which is often described as vaulted, the sphere of the fixed stars above which God and angels inhabit? Hurling defiance toward the visible heaven is in effect hurling defiance toward the invisible heaven, the seat of God and angels.

671. Belch'd] So Virgil, Æn.

Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,

The work of sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed
A numerous brigade 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 Spi'rit that fell

675

From heav'n, for e'en in heav'n his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more

iii. 576. says eructans of Ætna, from which, or from mount Vesuvius, or the like, our poet took the idea of this mountain.

673. That in his womb] A very great man was observing one day a little inaccuracy of expression in the poet's making this mountain a person and a male person, and at the same time attributing a womb to it: and perhaps it would have been better if he had written its womb; but womb is used in as large a sense as the Latin uterus, which Virgil applies to a stag, Æn. vii.

681

674. The work of sulphur.] For metals were supposed to consist of two essential parts or principles; mercury, as the basis or metallic matter; and sulphur as the binder or cement, fixing the fluid mercury into a coherent malleable mass. See Chambers's Dict. of Sulphur. And so Johnson in the Alchemist, act ii. sc. 3.

It turns to sulphur, or to quicksilver,
Who are the parents of all other

metals.

678. Mammon] This name is Syriac, and signifies riches. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon, says our Saviour, Matt. vi. 24. and bids us make to ourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, Luke xvi. 9. and ver. 11. If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true? Some look upon Mammon as the god of riches, and Mammon is accordingly made a person by our poet, and was so by Spenser before him, whose description of Mammon and his cave our poet seems to have had his eye upon in several places.

The riches of heav'n's pavement, trodden gold,
Than ought divine or holy else enjoy'd

In vision beatific: by him first

Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

685

Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth

For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Open'd into the hill a spacious wound,
And digg'd out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wond'ring tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,

690

will dig, cleanse, melt, and se-
parate the metals. See G. Agri-
cola de Animantibus subterra-
neis. So that Milton poetically
supposes Mammon and his clan
to have taught the sons of earth
by example and practical instruc-
tion, as well as precept and
mental suggestion. Warburton.

684.] See T. Warton's note
on Comus, 436.
E.

687. Rifled the bowels of their
mother earth]

-Itum est in viscera terræ,
Quasque recondiderat, Stygiisque ad-
moverat umbris,
Effodiunter opes. Ov. Met. i. 138, &c.
Hume.

688. For treasures better hid.]
Hor. Od. iii. lib. iii. 49.

Aurum irrepertum, et sic meliùs
situm.

Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength and art are easily out-done
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 prepar'd,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluic'd from the lake, a second multitude
With wond'rous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scumm'd the bullion dross:

lude particularly to the famous
Pyramids of Egypt, which were
near Memphis.

Barbara Pyramidum sileat miracula
Memphis.
Mart.

695. Learn how their greatest

monuments of fame, And strength and art &c.] This passage has been misunderstood by Dr. Bentley and others. Strength and art are not to be construed in the genitive case with fame, but in the nominative with monuments. And then the meaning is plainly thus, Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, and how their strength and art are easily outdone,

&c.

699. And hands innumerable] There were 360000 men employed for near twenty years upon one of the Pyramids, according to Diodorus Siculus, lib. i. and Pliny, lib. xxxvi. cap. 12. 702. -a second multitude With wondrous art founded the

massy ore,] The first band dug the metal out of the mountain, a second multitude on the plain hard by

695

700

founded or melted it; for founded it should be read as in the first edition, and not found out as it is in the subsequent ones; founded from fundere, to melt, to cast metal.

704. and scumm'd the bullion dross:] Dr. Bentley supposes that the author gave it, and scumm'd from bullion dross. But I believe that the common reading may be defended. The word bullion does not signify purified ore, as the Doctor says; but ore boiled or boiling; and when the dross is taken off, then it is purified ore. Agreeably to this Milton, in his tract called Of the Reformation of England, says,

-to extract heaps of gold and silver out of the drossy bullion of the people's sins. And Milton makes bullion an adjective here, though commonly it is a substantive; just as in v. 140. we have ocean brim, and in iii. 284. virgin seed. And so bullion dross may signify the dross that came from the metal, as Spenser expresses it, or the dross that swam surface of the boiling ore. Pearce.

on the

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