PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX. THE ARGUMENT. SATAN having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns as a mist by night into Paradise, and enters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve, loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength: Adam at last yields: the serpent finds her alone; his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now; the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the Tree of Knowledge forbidden; the serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat: she, pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam, or not; at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her, and extenuating the trespass eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both: they seek to cover their nakedness: then fall to variance and accusation of one another. No more of talk where GoD or Angel guest With man, as with his friend, familiar us'd To sit indulgent, and with him partake Venial discourse unblam'd: I now must change And disobedience: on the part of heav'n Anger, and just rebuke, and judgment giv'n, And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleas'd me, long choosing and beginning late; 11 world] Atterbury proposed reading 'That brought into this world (a world of woe),' but such is not Milton's manner. 11 1826. a world of woe] See Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, ii. 178. ed. 'a private hell, a very world of woe.' Wars, hitherto the only argument Unsung; or to describe races and games, That name, unless an age too late, or cold The sun was sunk, and after him the star Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter 330 35 40 45 50 41 of these] The construction adopted by Milton occurs in Harrington's Ariosto, c. iv. st. 42. 'As holy men of humane manners skill'd. Todd. 45 years] Grief, want, wars, clime, or say, years. Bentl. MS. 50 arbiter] Sydney, in his Arcadia, calls the sun, about the time of the Equinox, 'An indifferent arbiter between the night and the day.' Newton. Twixt day and night, and now from end to end 55 60 On man's destruction, maugre what might hap 65 Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, Where Tigris at the foot of paradise 59 compassing] Sylv. Du Bartas, p. 896, of Satan, 66 colure] See Lisle's Du Bartas, p. 155, The second is, and call'd the nigh equall colure.' · 70 Satan involv'd in rising mist, then sought At Darien; thence to the land where flows Of thoughts revolv'd, his final sentence chose O earth, how like to heav'n, if not preferr'd 75 80 85 90 95 75 mist] Hom. I. i. 359, ἀνέδυ πολιῆς ἁλος, ηΰτ' ομιχλή, and Hymn Mercur. v. 141. Newton. 80 Orontes] Euphrates. Bentl. MS. 99 earth] Consult Heylin's note on this passage; who considers that there is an inconsistency between this speech of Satan and b. iii. 566. |