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Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death;
A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives and nature breeds

Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things,

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived.-ii. 418. Through this region ran the four infernal rivers, Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, while that of Lethe separated it from a "frozen continent,"*

dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail.-ii. 588.

The vault of Hell is terminated by a portal,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed.-ii. 645.

After the expulsion of the rebel angels, the Son of God, on the wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in paternal glory rode

Far into Chaos and the world unborn.-vii. 218;

and there setting the "golden compasses" of God, he marked out the circumference of the World, which then came into existence under the influence of the Spirit of God. It was a "firm opacous globe," i.e. a hollow sphere, of which we shall presently describe the interior, restricting ourselves here to the outer surface.

When Satan lighted on it in coming out of Chaos,

A globe far off

It seemed, now seems a boundless continent,

Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms

Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky, (iii. 422,)

*These are also the four rivers of Dante's Hell, and he too places Lethe in a separate region.

except on the side facing the wall of Heaven, whence came
light that made a "glimmering air." As he proceeded along
it he discerned "a gleam of dawning light," which drew him
toward it, and there he saw a structure high" of golden stairs
ascending up to Heaven,

At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace-gate
With frontispiece of diamond and gold
Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems
The portal shone.*—iii. 504.

At the other extremity, on the surface of the globe

a bright sea flowed

Of jasper or of liquid pearl.

"Thence," says the Argument, "Satan comes to the gate of
Heaven, described ascending by stairs and the waters above
the firmament that flow about it," which waters we will
presently show to be the Crystalline of the Ptolemaic Astro-
nomy. Directly opposite the stairs a passage down to the
earth opened in the solid globe.

Milton's idea of the primitive earth was, that it occupied
the centre of the world, which had only been created for its
use (ix. 103 seq.). As we have just scen, he makes the angel
hint that it resembled heaven; and the same angel, in his ac-
count of creation, says,-

Earth now

Seemed like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt

Her sacred shades.-vii. 327.

Earth in her rich attire

Consummate lovely smiled.-ib. 501.

The poet also makes Satan exclaim :—

O earth! how like to heaven! if not preferred

More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old.

For what god after better worse would build ?—ix. 99.

*See Excursus I.

Milton, in fact, taxed his imagination to the utmost in his
conception of earth before it had been polluted by the entrance
of sin and death, and he was unable to go any further in that
of Heaven. Besides, the language of Scripture, to which he
bowed so submissively, led him to believe in the similitude.

Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams.—vi. 1.

The poet does not mention the mode or the exact time of
the formation of Hell. In the battle of the angels, Michael
(vi. 276) would seem to speak of it as in existence at that
time, and when God is sending the Son to drive them out of
Heaven, he speaks of them as being

To their prepared ill mansion driven down.-vi. 738.
And it is added :-

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Hell at last

Yawning received them whole and on them closed;
Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire

Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.-vi. 874.

The exact situation of Hell of course could not be assigned.
It lay in some part of Chaos,*

As far removed from God and light of Heaven

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.-i. 73 ;

that is, three semidiameters of the World. The rebel angels
first appear in it, weltering in a lake of liquid fire, while

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed.—i. 61.

Thence extended "dry land," which burned

With solid, as the lake with liquid, fire.

This land, like the soil of Heaven and Earth, contained within
it mineral riches, whence Mammon constructs

Pandaemonium, the high capital

Of Satan and his peers.-i. 756.

When the fallen angels proceeded to explore this land,-

"To banish for ever into a

*This idea occurs in Milton's carlier writings:
local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottom-
less gulf of Chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied.”
- Doctrine of Divorce, b. ii. ch. 4. The idea of Hell being in the centre occurs
also in Paradise Lost :-

In heaven or earth or under earth in hell.-iii. 321.
This however was probably only a slip of his memory.

See above, p. 209.

Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death;
A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives and nature breeds

Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things,

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived.-ii. 418. Through this region ran the four infernal rivers, Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, while that of Lethe separated it from a "frozen continent,"*

.. dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail.-ii. 588.

The vault of Hell is terminated by a portal,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed.—ii. 615.

After the expulsion of the rebel angels, the Son of God, on the wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in paternal glory rode

Far into Chaos and the world unborn.—vii. 218;

and there setting the "golden compasses" of God, he marked out the circumference of the World, which then came into existence under the influence of the Spirit of God. It was a "firm opacous globe," i.e. a hollow sphere, of which we shall presently describe the interior, restricting ourselves here to the outer surface.

When Satan lighted on it in coming out of Chaos,

A globe far off

It seemed, now seems a boundless continent,

Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night

Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms

Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky, (iii. 422,)

These are also the four rivers of Dante's Hell, and he too places Lethe in

a separate region.

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