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MILTON,.?,      --


PARADISE LOST
Edited by
A. W. VERITY, M.A.
Sometime Scholar of Trinity College
Cambridge:
at the University Press
191o




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J5q
Cambribge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS,....


I




PREFACE


T     HIS edition of Paradise Lost is based on the smaller
editions edited by me for the Pitt Press Series and
issued between the years 1892 and 1896. All the editorial
matter has been set up afresh and much of it recast; and
a considerable amount of fresh material has been added.
I desire to repeat with emphasis the acknowledgment
made in my earlier editions of my great indebtedness to
previous editors. It is a pious pleasure to make special
mention of the immortal labours of Todd and Masson; nor
should Newton and Keightley be forgotten. An editor is
powerless to estimate what he owes to them (above all, to
Masson), and to others who have wrestled with the
allusions of a poem that for its full elucidation would exhaust the last resources of scholarship. Some specific items,
however, of my own obligations may be recorded here,
while many instances are indicated in the course of the
volume.
The text is founded u,. that of Masson's "Globe"
edition, but with a simpler system of punctuation, such
as I thought might be in rather closer conformity with the
original.
Nearly all the biblical and classical references given in
this volume have been pointed out by, and taken from,
other editors.
2<?082i3o


t




Vi


PREFACE.


A large proportion of the Milton references had their
origin in the Concordance to Milton's poems by the
American student Cleveland, a work of immense labour
and great accuracy which has never, I think, received its
due. I may mention in passing that, to prevent misconception, I avoided consulting at all the Milton Lexicon
published recently by another American student. On the
other hand, I have used with much profit the scholarly and
exhaustive dictionary of The Classical MP/hology of Mi/ton's
English Poems, by Mr C. G. Osgood, one of those fine
studies in English literature for which we have to thank the
University of Yale.
The extracts from the Milton MSS. are quoted (without,
of course, any modernisation) from the beautiful facsimile
published by the University Press, under the editorship of
the Vice-Master of Trinity College. The textual variations
are shown so simply by the editor's very ingenious typographical arrangement that the work of collating is practically
done away.
The extracts from Milton's prose works are taken from
the edition published in "Bohn's Standard Library." Apart
from my general indebtedness to this edition, I must note
that its footnotes are the source of many of my references to
Milton's Christian Doctrine.
All the translations of passages from Dante, and most of
the Dante information, come from the editions of the
"Temple" series. Except in a few specified cases, the
passages are such as had struck me.
The etymological material of the Glossary, together with
a great deal of other miscellaneous information throughout
the volume, is summarised from standard works of reference.
Unfortunately, in attempting to edit a vast work like
Paradise Lost, one has to "get up" all sorts of subjects


e




PREFACE...
Vil


outside the scope of one's own circumscribed interests, and
this rather involves the affectation of knowledge.
I owe not a little to the suggestions and criticisms of
many unknown correspondents; and in going through
examination-answers I have sometimes come across things
that I was very glad to make a note of-which is not
surprising, now that English is taught so well in many
schools. I recollect that the note on II. 497-502 came in
a schoolboy's answer.
The Indexes, apart from some expansion of the second,
were compiled for me at the University Press; and it is a
very great satisfaction to express my gratitude to the reader,
or readers, of the Press whose vigilance over the proofsheets has saved me from many slips.
I hope now that I have made adequate acknowledgment
of my obligations; and perhaps it will not be undue egotism
to add that in the course of twenty years of editing one
necessarily accumulates a good deal of material and miscellanea.
A. W. VERITY.


BOSCOMBE,
November i6, 1909.




4V 0p  ~I.




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION
PARADISE LOST.
NOTES..
APPENDIX.
GLOSSARY.
INDEXES


PAGES. xi-lxxii
I — 362
* 363-658. 659-692. 693-724
*     * 725-750


P. L




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4
167




INTRODUCTION


LIFE OF MILTON.
MILTON'S life falls into three clearly defined divisions. The
first period ends with the poet's return from Italy in I639; the
second at the Restoration in I66o, when release from the fetters
of politics enabled him to remind the world that he was a great
poet; the third is brought to a close with his death in I674.
Paradise Lost belongs to the last of these periods; but we
propose to summarise briefly the main events of all three.
John Milton was born on December 9, I6o8, in London. He
came, in his own words, ex genere honesto. A family of Miltons
had been settled in Oxfordshire since the reign of Elizabeth.
The poet's father had been educated at an Oxford school, possibly
as a chorister in one of the College choir-schools, and imbibing
Anglican sympathies had conformed to the Established Church.
For this he was disinherited by his Roman Catholic father. He
settled in London, following the profession of scrivener. A
scrivener combined the occupations of lawyer and law-stationer.
It appears to have been a lucrative calling; certainly John Milton
(the poet was named after the father) attained to easy circumstances. He married about I6oo, and had six children, of
whom several died young. The third child was the poet.
The elder Milton was evidently a man of considerable
culture, in particular an accomplished musician, and a composer whose madrigals were deemed worthy of being printed
side by side with those of Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and other
leading musicians of the time. To him, no doubt, the poet
owed the love of music of which we see frequent indications in
b2




Xii


INTRODUCTION.


the poems'. Realising, too, that in his son lay the promise
and possibility of future greatness, John Milton took the utmost
pains to have the boy adequately educated; and the lines Ad
Pattem show that the ties of affection between father and child
were of more than ordinary closeness.
Milton was sent to St Paul's School about the year I620.
Here two influences, apart from those of ordinary school-life, may
have affected him particularly.  The headmaster was a good
English scholar; he published a grammar containing many
extracts from English poets, notably Spenser; it is reasonable
to assume that he had not a little to do with the encouragement
and guidance of Milton's early taste for English poetry2. Also,
the founder of St Paul's School, Colet, had prescribed as part
of the school-course the study of certain early Christian writers,
whose influence is said to be directly traceable in Milton's poems
and may in some cases have suggested his choice of sacred
themes2. While at St Paul's, Milton also had a tutor at home,
Thomas Young, a Scotchman, afterwards an eminent Puritan
divine —the inspirer, doubtless, of much of his pupil's Puritan
sympathies.  And Milton enjoyed the signal advantage of
growing up in the stimulating atmosphere of cultured home-life.
Most men do not realise that the word 'culture' signifies
anything very definite or desirable before they pass to the
University; for Milton, however, home-life meant, from the
first, not only broad interests and refinement, but active
encouragement towards literature and study. In I625 he left
St Paul's. Of his extant English poems3 only one, On the
1 Milton was very fond of the organ; see II Penseroso, 16I, note.
During his residence at Horton Milton made occasional journeys to
London to hear, and obtain instruction (probably from Henry Lawes)
in, music. It was an age of great musical development. See "Milton's
Knowledge of Music" by Mr W. H. Hadow, in Milton Memorial
Lectlres (I908).
2 See the paper "Milton as Schoolboy and Schoolmaster" by
Mr A. F. Leach, read before the British Academy, Dec. Io, 1908.
3 His paraphrases of Psalms cxiv. cxxxvi. scarcely come under this
heading. Aubrey says in his quaint Life of Milton: "Anno Domini
i6I9 he was ten yeares old, as by his picture [the portrait by Cornelius
Jansen]: and was then a poet."




LIFE OF MIILTON.


xiii


Death of a Fair Infant, dates from his school-days; but we are
told that he had written much verse, English and Latin. And
his early training had done that which was all-important: it had
laid the foundation of the far-ranging knowledge which makes
Paradise Lost unique for diversity of suggestion and interest.
Milton went to Christ's College, Cambridge, in the Easter
term of 1625, took his B.A. degree in 1629, proceeded M.A. in
I632, and in the latter year left Cambridge. The popular view
of Milton's connection with the University will be coloured for
all time by Johnson's unfortunate story that for some unknown
offence he " suffered the public indignity of corporal correction."
For various reasons this story is now discredited by the best
judges. It is certain, however, that early in I626 Milton did have
some serious difficulty with his tutor, which led to his removal
from Cambridge for a few weeks and his transference to another
tutor on his return later in the term. He spoke of the incident
bitterly at the time in one of his Latin poems, and he spoke of
Cambridge bitterly in after years.  On the other hand he
voluntarily passed seven years at the University, and resented
strongly the imputations brought against him in the " Smectymnuus" controversy that he had been in ill-favour with the
authorities of his college.  Writing in I642, he takes the
opportunity "to acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind,
that more than ordinary favour and respect, which I found above
any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned
men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some years: who
at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is,
signified many ways how much better it would content them
that I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving
respect, both before that time, and long after, I was assured of
their singular good affection towards mel." And if we look into
those uncomplimentary allusions to Cambridge which date from
the controversial period of his life we see that the feeling they
1 An Apology for Smectymntus, P. W. II. III. Perhaps Cambridge
would have been more congenial to Milton had he been sent to Emmanuel
College, long a centre of Puritanism. Dr John Preston, then Master
of the college, was a noted leader of the Puritan party.




xiv


INTRODUCTION.


represent is hardly more than a phase of his theological bias.
He detested ecclesiasticism, and for him the two Universities
(there is a fine impartiality in his diatribes) are the strongholds
of what he detested: " nurseries of superstition "-" not yet well
recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages"given up to "monkish and miserable sophistry," and unprogressive in their educational methods. -But it may fairly be
assumed that Milton the scholar and poet, who chose to spend
seven years at Cambridge, owed to her more than Milton the
fierce controversialist admitted or knew. A poet he had proved
himself before leaving the University in 1632. The short but
exquisite ode At a Solemn Music, and the Nativity Hymn
(1 629), were already written.
i    Milton's father had settled at Horton in Buckinghamshire.
Thither the son retired in July, I632. He had gone to Cambridge
with the intention of qualifying for some profession, perhaps the
Church1. This purpose was soon given up, and when Milton
returned to his father's house he seems to have made up his
mind that there was no profession which he cared to enter. He
would choose the better part of studying and preparing himself,
by rigorous self-discipline and application, for the far-off divine
event to which his whole life moved.
It was Milton's constant resolve to achieve something that
should vindicate the ways of God to men, something great that
should justify his own possession of unique powers-powers of
which, with no trace of egotism, he proclaims himself proudly
conscious. The feeling finds repeated expression in his prose;
it is the guiding-star that shines clear and steadfast even through
tife mists of politics. He has a mission to fulfil, a purpose
to accomplish, no less than the most fanatic of religious enthusiasts; and the means whereby this end is to be attained are
1 Cf. Milton's own words: "the church, to whose service, by the
intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and
in my own resolutions" (The Reason of Church Government, P. W.
II. 482). What kept him from taking orders was primarily his
objection to Church discipline and government: he spoke of himself
as " Church-outed by the prelates."




LIFE OF MILTON.


xv


devotion to religion, devotion to learning, and ascetic purity
of life.
This period of self-centred isolation lasted from 1632 to I638.
Gibbon tells us among the many wise things contained in that
most wise book the Autobiography, that every man has two
educations: that which he receives from his teachers and that
which he owes to himself; the latter being infinitely the more
important.   During these five years Milton completed his
second education; ranging the whole world of classical1 antiquity and absorbing the classical genius so thoroughly that
the ancients were to him what they afterwards became to
Landor, what they have never become to any other English
poet in the same degree, even as the very breath of his being;
pursuing, too, other interests, such as music, astronomy2 and
the study of Italian literature; and combining these vast
and diverse influences into a splendid equipment of hard-won,
well-ordered culture.  The world has known many greater
scholars in the technical, limited sense than Milton, but few
men, if any, who have mastered more things worth mastering
in art, letters and scholarship3.  It says much for the poet that
1 He was closely familiar too with post-classical writers like Philo
and the neo-Platonists; nor must we forget the medieval element in
his learning, due often to Rabbinical teaching.
2 Science-"natural philosophy," as he terms it-is one of the
branches of study advocated in his treatise On Edtcation.  Of his
early interest in astronomy there is a reminiscence in Paradise Lost,
II. 708-Ii; where "Milton is not referring to an imaginary comet,
but to one which actually did appear when he was a boy of 10 (I6i8),
in the constellation called Ophiuchus. It was of enormous size, the
tail being recorded as longer even than that of i858. It was held
responsible by educated and learned men of the day for disasters.
Evelyn says in his diary, 'The effects of that comet, f6r8, still working
in the prodigious revolutions now beginning in Europe, especially in
Germany'" (Professor Ray Lankester).
3 Milton's poems with their undercurrent of perpetual allusion are
the best proof of the width of his reading; but interesting supplementary
evidence is afforded by the Common-place Book discovered in I874, and
printed by the Camden Society, 1876. It contains extracts from about
80 different authors whose works Milton had studied. The entries seem
to have been made in the period I637-46.




xvi


INTRODUCTION.


he was sustained through this period of study, pursued ohne
Hast, ohne Rast, by the full consciousness that all would be
crowned by a masterpiece which should add one more testimony to the belief in that God who ordains the fates of men.
It says also a very great deal for the father who suffered his
son to follow in this manner the path of learning.
True, Milton gave more than one earnest of his future fame.
The dates of the early pieces-L'A llegro, I Penseroso, Arcades,
Comnus and Lycidas —are not all certain; but probably each was
composed at Horton before 1638. Four of them have great
autobiographic value as an indirect commentary, written from
Milton's coign of seclusion, upon the moral crisis through which
English life and thought were passing, the clash between the
careless hedonism of the Cavalier world and the deepening
austerity of Puritanism.  In L'Allegfro the poet holds the
balance almost equal between the two opposing tendencies. In
II Penseroso it becomes clear to which side his sympathies are
leaning. Comus is a covert prophecy of the downfall of the
Court-party, while Lycidas openly "foretells the ruine" of the
Established Church. The latter poem is the final utterance of
Milton's lyric genius. Here he reaches, in Mr Mark Pattison's
words, the high-water mark of English verse; and then-the
pity of it-he resigns that place among the lyrici vates of which
the Roman singer was ambitious, and for nearly twenty years
suffers his lyre to hang mute and rusty in the temple of the
Muses.
The composition of Lycidas may be assigned to the year
I637. In the spring of the next year Milton started for Italy.
It was natural that he should seek inspiration in the land where
many English poets, from Chaucer to Shelley, have found it.
Milton remained abroad some fifteen months. Originally he
had intended to include Sicily and Greece in his travels, but
news of the troubles in England hastened his return. He was
brought face to face with the question whether or not he should
bear his part in the coming struggle; whether without selfreproach he could lead any longer this life of learning and
indifference to the public weal. He decided as we might have
expected that he would decide, though some good critics see




LIFE OF MILTON.


xvii


cause to regret the decision. Milton puts his position very
clearly in his Defensio Secunda: " I thought it base to be
travelling for amusement abroad, while my fcllow-citizens were
fighting for liberty at home."  And later: "I determined to
relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to
transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this
one important object" (i.e. the vindication of liberty).
The summer of 1639 (July) found Milton back in England.
Immediately after his return he wrote the Epitafphium Damonis,
the beautiful elegy in which he lamented the death of his school
friend, Diodati. Lycidas was the last of the English lyrics: the
Epitaphlium, which should be studied in close connection with
Lycidas, the last of the long Latin poems. Thenceforth, for a
long spell, the rest was silence, so far as concerned poetry. The
period which for all men represents the strength and maturity
of manhood, which in the cases of other poets produces the best
and most characteristic work, is with Milton a blank. In twenty
years he composed no more than a bare handful of Sonnets,
and even some of these are infected by the taint of political
animus. Other interests claimed him —the question of Churchreform, education, marriage, and, above all, politics.
Milton's first treatise upon the government of the Church
(Of Reformation in England) appeared in 1641.     Others
followed in quick succession. The abolition of Episcopacy
was the watchword of the enemies of the Anglican Churchthe delenda est Carthago cry of Puritanism, and no one
enforced the point with greater eloquence than Milton. During
1641 and 1642 he wrote five pamphlets on the subject. Meanwhile he was studying the principles of education. On his
return from  Italy he had undertaken the training of his
nephews. This led to consideration of the best educational
methods; and in the Tractate of Education, 1644, Milton
assumed the part of educational theorist. In the previous year,
May, 1643, he marriedl. The marriage proved unfortunate.
His wife (who was only seventeen) was Mary Powell, eldest
daughter of Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, a village some little
distance from Oxford. She went to stay with her father in July,




Xviii


INTRODUCTION.


'Its immediate outcome was the pamphlets on divorce. Clearly
he had little leisure for literature proper.
The finest of Milton's prose works, the Areopfagitica, a plea
for th'e free expression of opinion, was published in I644. In
16451 appeared the first collection of his poems. In I649 his
advocacy of the anti-royalist cause was recognised by the offer
of a post under the newly appointed Council of State. His bold
vindication of the trial of Charles I., The Tenure of Kings, had
appeared earlier in the same year.   Milton accepted the offer,
becoming Latin2 Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs.
I643, and refused to return to Milton; why, it is not certain. She
was reconciled to her husband in 1645, bore him four children, and
died in I652, in her twenty-seventh year. No doubt, the scene in P. L.
x. 909-36, in which Eve begs forgiveness of Adam, reproduced the
poet's personal experience, while many passages in Samson Agonistes
must have been inspired by the same cause.
1 i.e. old style. The volume was entered on the registers of the
Stationers' Company under the date of October 6th, I645. It was
published on Jan. 2, I645-46, with the following title-page:
" Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, Compos'd at
several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick
by Mr. Henly Lawies Gentleman of the Kings Chappel, and one of His
Majesties Private Musick.
-----   Bacce arefrontem
Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.' VIRGIL, Eclog. 7.
Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth
Razworth for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at the sign'e of the
Princes Arms in Pauls Churchyard. 1645."
From the prefatory Address to the Reader it is clear that the collection was due to the initiative of the publisher. Milton's own feeling is
expressed by the motto, where the words " vatifuturo " show that, as
he judged, his great achievement was yet to come. The volume was
divided into two parts, the first containing the -English, the second the
Latin poems. Comus was printed at the close of the former, with a
separate title-page to mark its importance. The prominence given to
the name of Henry Lawes reflects Milton's friendship.
2 A Latin Secretary was required because the Council scorned, as
Edward Phillips says, "to carry on their affairs in the wheedling,
lisping jargon of the cringing French."  Milton's salary was ~288, in
modern money about 90oo.




LIFE OF MILTON.


xix


There was nothing distasteful about his duties. He drew up
the despatches to foreign governments, translated state-papers,
and served as interpreter to foreign envoys. Had his duties
stopped here his acceptance of the post would, I think, have
proved an unqualified gain. It brought him into contact with the
first men in the state, gave him a practical insight into the
working of national affairs and the motives of human action; in
a word, furnished him with that experience of life which is
essential to all poets who aspire to be something more than
"the idle singers of an empty day." But unfortunately the
secretaryship entailed the necessity of defending at every turn
the past course of the revolution and the present policy of the
Council. Milton, in fact, held a perpetual brief as advocate for
his party. Hence the endless and unedifying controversies into
which he drifted; controversies which wasted the most precious
years of his life, warped, as some critics think, his nature, and
eventually cost him his eyesight.
Between I649 and I66o Milton produced no less than eleven
pamphlets. Several of these arose out of the publication of the
famous Eikon Basilike. The book was printed in I649 and
created so extraordinary a sensation that Milton was asked to
reply to it; and did so with Eikonoklastes. Controversy of this
barren type has the inherent disadvantage that once started it may
never end. The Royalists commissioned the Leyden professor,
Salmasius, to prepare a counterblast, the Defensio Regia, and
this in turn was met by Milton's Pro Popiulo Anglicano Defensio,
I65I, over the preparation of which he lost what little power of
eyesight remained'. Salmasius retorted, and died before his
Perhaps this was the saddest part of the episode. Milton tells us
in the Defensio Secunda that his eyesight was injured by excessive study
in boyhood: " from twelve years of age I hardly ever left my studies or
went to bed before midnight." Continual reading and writing increased
the infirmity, and by I650 the sight of the left eye had gone. He was
warned that he must not use the other for book-work. Unfortunately
this was just the time when the Commonwealth stood most in need of
his services. If Milton had not written the first Defence he might have
retained his partial vision, at least for a time. The choice lay between




XX


INTRODUCTION.


second farrago of scurrilities was issued: Milton was bound to
answer, and the Defensio Secuznda appeared in I654. Neither
of the combatants gained anything by the dispute; while the
subsequent development of the controversy in which Milton
crushed the Amsterdam pastor and professor, Morus, goes far to
prove the contention of Mr Mark Pattison, that it was an evil
day when the poet left his study at Horton to do battle for the
Commonwealth amid the vulgar brawls of the market-place.
"Not here, O Apollo,
Were haunts meet for thee."
Fortunately this poetic interregnum in Milton's life was not
destined to last much longer. The Restoration came, a blessing
in disguise, and in i66o0 the ruin of Milton's political party
and of his personal hopes, the absolute overthrow of the cause
for which he had fought for twenty years, left him free. The
author of Lycidas could once more become a poet.
Much has been written upon this second period, I639-6o.
We saw what parting of the ways confronted Milton on his
return from Italy. Did he choose aright? Should he have
continued upon the path of learned leisure? There are writers
who argue that Milton made a mistake. A poet, they say,
should keep clear of political strife: fierce controversy can
benefit no man: who touches pitch must expect to be, certainly
will be, defiled: Milton sacrificed twenty of the best years of
his life, doing work which an underling could have done and
was not worth doing: another Comnzs might have been,a loftier Lycidas: that literature should be the poorer
absence of these possible masterpieces, that the second
7:,.- good and public duty. He repeated in I65o the sacrifice of I639... is brought out in his Second Defence. By the spring of 1652
was quite blind  He was then in his forty-fourth year. Probably
--  ase from which he suffered was amaurosis. See the Appendix
I'.? -: 3, 683) on P. L. III. 22-26. Throughout P. L. and Samson.-: -.  es there are frequent references to his affliction.
ilton probably began Paradise Lost in I658; but it was not till
-le  i;toration in 1660 that he definitely resigned all his political
and became quite free to realise his poetical ambition.




LIFE OF MILTON.


xxi


greatest genius which England has produced should in a way
be the "inheritor of unfulfilled renown," is and must be a thing
entirely and terribly deplorable. This is the view of the purely
literary critic.
There remains the other side of the question. It may fairly
be contended that had Milton elected in 1639 to live the scholar's
life apart from "the action of men," Paradise Lost, as we have
it, or Samson Alonistes could never have been written.- Knowledge of life and human nature, insight into the problems ot
men's motives and emotions, grasp of the broader issues of the
human tragedy, all these were essential to the author of an epic
poem; they could only be obtained through commerce with the
world; they would have remained beyond the reach of a recluse.
Dryden complained that Milton saw nature through the spectacles of books: we might have had to complain that he saw
men through the same medium. Fortunately it is not so: and
it is not so because at the age of thirty-two he threw in his
fortunes with those of his country; like the diver in Schiller's
ballad he took the plunge which was to cost him so dear. The
mere man of letters will never move the world. tEschylus fought
at Marathon: Shakespeare was practical to the tips of his
fingers; a better business man than Goethe there was not
within a radius of a hundred miles of Weimar.
This aspect of the question is emphasised by Milton himself.
The man, he says, "who would not be frustrate of his hope to
write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a
true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and
honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic
men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience
and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy'." Again, in
estimating the qualifications which the writer of an epic such as
he contemplated should possess, he is careful to include
"insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs2."
Truth usually lies half-way between extremes: perhaps it
does so here. No doubt, Milton did gain very greatly by
1 An Apology Jor Snectymnuus, P. W. IIl. 118.
The Reason of Church Government, P. W. II. 481.




XXIi


INTRODUCTION.


breathing awhile the larger air of public life, even though
that air was often tainted by much impurity. No doubt, too,
twenty years of contention must have left their mark even on
Milton. In one of the very few places where he "abides our
question," Shakespeare writes (Sonnet CXI.):
"0! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,
Than public means, which public manners breeds:
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."
Milton's genius was subdued in this way. If we compare
him, the Milton of the great epics and of Samson Agonistes,
with Homer or Shakespeare-and none but the greatest can
be his parallel-we find in him a certain want of humanity,
a touch of narrowness. He lacks the large-heartedness, 'the
genial, generous breadth of Shakespeare; the sympathy and
sense of the lacrimze rerum that even in Troilus and Cressida or
Tinmon of Athens are there for those who have eyes wherewith
to see them. Milton reflects in some degree the less gracious
aspects of Puritanism, its intolerance, want of humour, one-sided
intensity; and it seems natural to assume that this narrowness
was to a great extent the price he paid for twenty years of ceaseless special pleading and dispute. The real misfortune of his
life lay in the fact that he fell on evil, angry days when there
was no place for moderate men. He had to be one of two
things: either a controversialist or a student: there was no via
media. Probably he chose aright; but we could wish that the
conditions under which he chose had been different. And he
is so great, so majestic in the nobleness of his life, in the purity
of his motives, in the self-sacrifice of his indomitable devotion
to his ideals, that we could wish not even to seem to pronounce
judgment at all.
The last part of Milton's life, I660-74, passed quietly. At
the age of fifty-two he was thrown back upon poetry, and could
at length discharge his self-imposed obligation. The early




LIFE OF MILTON.


Xxiii


poems he had never regarded as a fulfilment of the debt due to
his Creator. Even when the fire of political strife burned at its
hottest, Milton did not forget the purpose which he had conceived
in his boyhood.  Of that purpose Paradise Lost was the attainment. Begun about I658, it was finished in I663, the year of
Milton's third' marriage; revised from   I663 to I665; and
eventually issued in I667. Before its publication Milton had
commenced (in the autumn of I665) its sequel Paradise Regained, which in turn was closely followed by Samson Agonisles.
The completion of Paradise Regained may be assigned to the
year I666-that of Samson Agonistes to I667. Some time was
spent in their revision; and in January, i671, they were published together, in a single volume.
In 1673 Milton brought out a reprint of the I645 edition of
his Poems, adding most of the sonnets2 written in the interval3
1 Milton's second marriage took place in the autumn of I656, i.e.
after he had become blind. His wife died in February, i658. Cf. the
Sonnet, " Methought I saw my late espoused saint," the pathos of which
is heightened by the fact that he had never seen her.
2 The number of Milton's sonnets is twenty-three (if we exclude the
piece "On the New Forcers of Conscience"), five of which were
written in Italian, probably during the time of his travels in Italy,
I638, 1639. Ten sonnets were printed in the edition of 1645, the last of
them being that entitled (from the Cambridge Ms.) "To the Lady
Margaret Ley." The remaining thirteen were composed between 1645
and i658. The concluding sonnet, therefore (to the memory of Milton's
second wife), immediately preceded his commencement of Paradise Lost.
Four of these poems (xv. xvI. xvii. xxii.) could not, on account of
their political tone, be included in the edition of 1673. They were
published by Edward Phillips together with his memoir of Milton, 1694
(Sonnet xvII. having previously appeared in a Life of Vane). The
sonnet on the " Massacre in Piedmont" is usually considered the finest
of the collection, of which Mr Mark Pattison edited a well-known
edition, 1883. The sonnet inscribed with a diamond on a window pane
in the cottage at Chalfont where the poet stayed in i665 is (in the
judgment of a good critic) Miltonic, if not Milton's (Garnett, Lzfe of
Milton, p. 175).
3 The i673 edition also gave the juvenile piece On the Death of a
i7a;' Infant and At a Vacation Exercise, which for some reason had
been omitted from the 1645 edition.




xxiv


INTRODUCTION.


The last four years of his life were devoted to prose works of no
particular interest1. He continued to live in London. His third
marriage had proved happy, and he enjoyed something of the
renown which was rightly his. Various well-known men used
to visit him-notably Dryden2, who on one of his visits asked
and received permission to dramatise3 Paradise Lost. It does
not often happen that a university can point to two such poets
among her living sons, each without rival in his generation.
Milton died in 1674, November 8th. He was buried in St
Giles' Church, Cripplegate. When we think of him we have to
think of a man who lived a life of very singular purity and
devotion to duty; who for what he conceived to be his country's
good sacrificed-and no one can well estimate the sacrificeduring twenty years the aim that was nearest to his heart and
best suited to his genius; who, however, eventually realised his
desire of writing a great work in gloriam Dei.
1 The treatise on Christian Doctrine (unpublished during Milton's
lifetime and dating, it is thought, mainly from the period of his theological treatises) is valuable as throwing much light on the theological
views expressed in the two epic poems and Samson Agonistes. See
Millon Memnorial Lectures (I908), pp. 109-42. The discovery of the
MS. of this treatise in 1823 gave Macaulay an opportunity of writing
his famous essay on Milton, which has been happily described as a
Whig counterblast to Johnson's Tory depreciation of the poet.
Milton's History of Britain, though not published till 1670, had
been written many years earlier; four of the six books, we know, were
composed between 1646 and 1649.
2 The lines by Dryden which were printed beneath the portrait of
Milton in Tonson's folio edition of Paradise Lost published in I688 are
too familiar to need quotation; but it is worth noting that the younger
poet had in Milton's lifetime described the great epic as " one of the
most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation
has produced" (prefatory essay to The State of Innocence, I674).
Further, tradition assigned to Dryden (a Roman Catholic and a Royalist) the remark, "this fellow (Milton) cuts us all out and the ancients
too."
3 See Marvell's "Commendatory Verses," 17-30, and the Noles,
PP. 72, 73 -



PARADISE LOST.


XXV


PARADISE LOST.
We have seen that the dominating idea of Milton's life was
his resolve to write a great poem-great in theme, in style, in
attainment. To this purpose was he dedicated as a boy: as
Hannibal was dedicated, at the altar of patriotism, to the cause
of his country's revenge, or Pitt to a life of political ambition.
Milton's works-particularly his letters and prose pamphletsenable us to trace the growth of the idea which was shaping his
intellectual destinies; and as every poet is best interpreted by
his own words, Milton shall speak for himself.
Two of the earliest indications of his cherished plan are
the Vacation Exercise and the second Sonnet. The Exercise
commences with an invocation (not without significance, as we
shall see) to his "native language," to assist him in giving
utterance to the teeming thoughts that knock at the portal of
his lips, fain to find an issue thence. The bent of these thoughts
is towards the loftiest themes. Might he choose for himself, he
would select some "grave subject ":
"Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door
Look in, and see each blissful deity.
Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldam Nature in her cradle was."
But recognising soon that such matters are inappropriate to
the occasion-a College festivity-he arrests the flight of his
muse with a grave descende cello, and declines on a lower range
of subject, more fitting to the social scene and the audience.
This Exercise was composed in 1628, in Milton's twentieth year,
or, according to his method of dating, anno cetatis XIX. It is
important as revealing-firstly, the poet's consciousness of the
divine impulse within, for which poetry is the natural outlet;
secondly, the elevation of theme with which that poetry must
deal. A boy in years, he would like to handle the highest
'arguments,' challenging thereby comparison with the sacri
P. L.




xxvi


INTRODUCTION.


vaoes of inspired verse, the elect few whose poetic appeal is to
the whole_ world. A vision of Heaven itself must be unrolled
before his steadfast eagle-gaze: he will win a knowledge of the
causes of things such as even Vergil, his master, modestly
disclaimed. Little wonder, therefore, that, filled with these
ambitions, Milton did not shrink, only two years later (I629-30),
from. attempting to sound the deepest mysteries of Christianity —
the Nativity and the Passion' of Christ; howbeit, sensible of his
immaturity, he left his poem on the latter. subject unfinished1.
The Sonnet to which reference has been made deserves
quotation at length:
"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the, truth,
That I to manhood.am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or' high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I' have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master's eye."
Mr Mark-Pattison justly calls these lines "an inseparable
part of Milton's biography": they bring out so clearly the poet's
'solemn devotion to his self-selected task, and his determination
not to essay the execution of that task until the time of complete
"inward ripeness" has arrived. The Sonnet was one.of the last
poems composed by Milton during his resid.dnce *i.: Cambridge.
1    A passage in the sixth Elegy shows that -the 2tvivity Ode (a
prelude in some respects to Paradise Lost) was begun on Christmas
morning, I629.- The Passion may have been composed fir the following
Easter;' it breaks off with the notice-" This Sabiject te Author
finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing
satisfied with what was begun, left it 'unfinished."  Evidcntl' Milton
was minded to recur to both subjects; see later.




PARADISE LOST.


XXViI


The date is I63I. From 1632 to 1638 was a period of almost
unbroken self-preparation, such as the Sonnet foreshadows. Of
the intensity of his application to literature a letter written in
1637 (the exact day being Sept. 7, 1637) enables us to judge.
"It is my way," he says to Carlo Diodati, in excuse for
remissness as a correspondent, "to suffer no impediment, no
love of ease, no avocation whatever, to chill the ardour, to break
the continuity, or divert the completion of my literary pursuits.
From this and no other reasons it often happens that I do not
readily employ my pen in any gratuitous exertions'." But these
exertions were not sufficient: the probation must last longer. In
the same month, on the 23rd, he writes to the same friend, who
had made enquiry as to his occupations and plans: " I am sure
that you wish me to gratify your curiosity, and to let you know
what I have been doing, or am meditating to do. Hear me, my
Diodati, and suffer me for a moment to speak without blushing
in a more lofty strain. Do you ask what I am meditating? By
the help of Heaven, an immortality of fame. But what am
I doing? Trrrpopv, I am letting my wings grow and preparing
to fly; but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar
aloft in the fields of air2." Four years later we find a similar
admission-" I have neither yet completed to my mind the full
circle of my private studies...3."
This last sentence was written in I640 (or 1641). Meanwhile
his resolution had been confirmed by the friendly and flattering
encouragement of Italian savants-a stimulus which he records
in an oft-cited passage 4:
"In the private academies5 of Italy, whither I was favoured
1    WP I. 492. I2. W                  492..
3    P. W II. 476.
4 The Reason of Church Government, P. W. II. 477, 478; a few
lines have been quoted in the Life of Milton. A passage similar to the
concluding sentence might be quoted from the pamphlet Animadversions,
published the same year (I641) as the Church Governzment; see P. W
III. 72.
5 He refers to literary societies or clubs, of which there were several
at Florence, e.g. the Della Crusca, the Svogliati, etc.
C 2




xxviii


INTRODUCTION.


to resort, perceiving that some trifles' which I had in memory,
composed at under twenty or thereabout, (for the manner is,
that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading
there,) met with acceptance above what was looked for; and
other things2, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and
conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received with
written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow
on men of this side the Alps; I began thus far to assent both
to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to
an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by
labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this
life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps
leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not
willingly let it die."
It was during this Italian journey (I638-39) that Milton
first gave a hint of the particular direction in which this ambition
was setting: at least we are vouchsafed a glimpse of the possible
subject-matter of the contemplated poem, and there is that on
which may be built conjecture as to its style. He had enjoyed
at Naples the hospitality of the then famous writer Giovanni
Battista Manso, whose courteous reception the young English
traveller, ut ne ingralum se ostenderet, acknowledged in the piece
of Latin hexameters afterwards printed in his Sylvcr under the
title Mansus. In the course of the poem Milton definitely speaks
of the remote legends of British history —more especially, the
Arthurian legend-as the theme which he might some day treat.
"May I," he says, "find such a friend3 as Manso,"
1 i.e. Latin pieces; the Elegies, as well as some of the poems
included in his Sjlvaz, were written before he was twenty-one.
2 Among the Latin poems which date from his Italian journey are
the lines Ad Salsillum, a few of the Epigrams, and Mansus. Perhaps,
too, the "other things" comprehended those essays in Italian verse
which he had the courage to read before a Florentine audience, and
they the indulgence to praise.
3 i.e. a friend who would pay honour to him as Manso had paid
honour to the poet Marini. Manso had helped in the erection of a
monument to Marini at Naples; and Milton alludes to this at the
beginning of the poem. From Manso he would hear about Tasso.




PARADISE LOST.


xxix


"Siquandol indigenas revocabo in carinoza reges,
Arturauque etia/n sub terris bella liiovenilez,
Aut dicam invictac sociali feedere mensae
/1ai-nani.nos heroas, et (0 moodo spibitus adsit)
Frianfgam Saxonicas Brifonunm sub larte phalangaoes!
This was in 1638.     In the next year, after his return to
England, he recurs to the project in the Epitai/dhium Damonis
(I62-7I), his account being far more detailed:
"Ipse2 ego Dardanias Rutupi(n  per cequora petipes
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regnunm vetus Inogenice,
Brcnnumque Arviragumque duces, priscumiquzt  Belilunz,
Et tandenz Armoricos Britonuwz   sub lege colonos;
Turt gravidam Arturo fatali fraude logernen;
Alendaces vultus, assunrptaque Gorlbis arna,
Mee/ini dolus. 0, mihi turn si vita sutpersit,
TuZ procul annosa pendebis, fisztla, piut,
Afultun." mihi, aul patriis tmutata Canznsis
Brittonicum strides! "
Here, as before, he first glances at the stories which date
from the very dawn of British myth and romance, and then
1 "If ever I shall revive in verse our native kings, and Arthur
levying war in the world below; or tell of the heroic company of
the resistless Table Round, and-be the inspiration mine!-break the
Saxon bands neath the might of British chivalry" (MAnsus, 80-84).
His Common-place Book has a quaint reference to "Arturs round
table."
a " I will tell of the Trojan fleet sailing our southern seas, and the
ancient realm of Imogen, Pandrasus' daughter, and of Brennus, Arviragus, and Belinus old, and the Armoric settlers subject to British laws.
Then will I sing of Iogerne, fatally pregnant with Arthur-how Uther
feigned the features and assumed the armour of Gorlois, through
Merlin's craft. And you, my pastoral pipe, an life be lent me, shall
hang on some sere pine, forgotten of me; or changed to native notes
shall shrill forth British strains." In the first lines he alludes to the
legend of Brutus and the Trojans landing in England. Rutttpin a =
Kentish. The story of Arthur's birth at which he glances is referred to
in the Id/yls of the King.  The general drift of the last verses is that he
will give up Latin for English verse; strides is a future, from strido (cf.
/Eneid v. 689).




XXX


INTRODUCTION.


passes to the most fascinating of the later cycles of national
legend-the grey traditions that cluster round the hero of the
Idylls of the King, the son of mythic Uther. And this passage,
albeit the subject which it indicates was afterwards rejected by
Milton, possesses a twofold value for those who would follow,
step by step, the development of the idea which had as its
final issue the composition of Paradise Lost. For, first, the
concluding verses show that whatever the theme of the poem,
whatever the style, the instrument of expression would be
English.  Just as Dante had weighed the merits of the
vernacular and Latin and chosen the former, though the choice
imposed on him the creation of an ideal, transfigured Italian
out of the baser elements of many competing dialects, so Milton
-more fortunate than Dante in that he found an instrument
ready to use-will use that "native language" whose help he had
petitioned in the Vacation Exercise. An illustration of his
feeling on this point is furnished by the treatise on Church
Gove-nment. He says there that his work must make for "the
honour and instruction" of his country: "I applied myself to
that resolution which Ariosto followed...to fix all the industry
and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue; not
to make verbal curiosities the end (that were a toilsome vanity),
but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things
among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother
dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens,
Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their
country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above, of being
a Christian, might do for mine1; not caring to be once named
1 P. W. II. 478. Reference has been made so frequently to this
pamphlet on 7The Reason of Church Gove'rnment urged against IPrelay,
(I641), that it may be well to explain that the introduction to the
second book is entirely autobiographical. Milton shows why he embarked on such controversies, how much it cost him to do so, what
hopes he had of returning to poetry, what was his view of the poet's
mission and of his own capacity to discharge that mission. His prose
works contain nothing more valuable than these ten pages of selfcriticism.




PARADISE LOST.


xxxi


abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with
these British islands as my world." Here is a clear announcement of his ambition to take rank as a great national poet. The
note struck is patriotism. He will produce that which shall set
English on a level with the more favoured Italian, and give his
countrymen cause to be proud of their
"dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world'."
To us indeed it may appear strange that Milton should
have thought it worth while to emphasise what would now
be considered a self-evident necessity: what modern poet,
with a serious conception of his office and duty, would dream
of employing any other language than his own? But we must
remember that in those days the empire of the classics was
unquestioned: scholarship was accorded a higher dignity than
now: the composition of long poems in Latin was still a custom
honoured in the observance: and whoso sought to appeal to
the "laureate fraternity" of scholars and men of letters, independently of race and country, would naturally turn to the
linguafranca of the learned. At any rate, the use of Englishless known than either Italian or French-placed a poet at a
great disadvantage, so far as concerned acceptance in foreign
lands; and when Milton determined to rely on his fatrice
Camnence, he foresaw that this would circumscribe his audience,
and that he might have to rest content with the applause of his
own countrymen.
Again, these lines in the Epitathium give us some grounds
of surmise as to the proposed form of his poem. The historic
events-or traditions-epitomised in the passage were too far
separated in point of time, and too devoid of internal coherence
and connection, to admit of dramatic treatment. Milton evidently contemplated a narrative poem, and for one who had
drunk so deep of the classical spirit a narrative could scarce
have meant aught else than an epic.  Indeed thus much is
implied by some sentences in The Reason of Church Govern1 Richard!I. II. I. 57, 58.




Xxxii


INTRODUCTION.


meznt, which represent him as considering whether to attempt
'that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those
other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job
a brief model...or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein
Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal
and exemplary to a nation'."
But 'dramatic' introduces a fresh phase; and as the first
period of the history of Paradise Lost, or rather of the idea
which finally took shape in that poem, closes with the Efitaf/ium (I639), it may not be amiss to summarise the impressions
deduced up to this point from the various passages which we
have quoted from Milton. We have seen, then, Milton's early
resolve; its ambitious scope; his self-preparation; the encouragement he received in Italy and from friends at home;
his announcement in 1638, repeated in 1639, that he has
discovered a suitable subject in British fable-more especially,
in the legend of the Coming and Passing of Arthur; his formal
farewell to Latin verse, in favour of his native tongue; his desire
to win recognition as a great national vates; and his selection
of the epic style.
In respect of chronology we have reached the year I639 -40. The second period extends from 1640 to 1642. We shall
see that some verses of Paradise Lost were written about 1642:
after 1642, up till I658, we hear no more of the poem-proof
that the idea has been temporarily abandoned under stress of
politics. Therefore I642 may be regarded as the ulterior limit
of this second period. And it is not, I think, fanciful to consider
that Paradise Lost entered on a fresh stage about I640, because
between that year and 1642 Milton's plans underwent a twofold
change by which the character of the poem was entirely altered.
First, the subject for which he had shown so decided a bias
is discarded: after I639 no mention is made of King Arthur.
We have no hint of the cause which led Milton to drop the
subject; but it may well have lain in his increasing republicanism. He could not have treated the theme from an


1. P  /. ii. 478, 479.




PARADISE LOST.


xxxiii


unfavourable standpoint. The hero of the poem must have
been for him, as for the Milton of our own age, a type of
all kingly grandeur and worth; and it would have gone sore
against the grain with the future apologist for regicide to exercise
his powers in creating a royal figure that would shed lustre on
monarchy, and in a measure plead for the institution which
Milton detested so heartilyl. Only a Royalist could have retold
the story, making it illustrate "the divine right of kings," and
embodying in the character of the blameless monarch the
Cavalier conception of Charles I.  Perhaps too he was influenced by discovering, after fuller research, the mythical
character of the legend. So much is rather implied by some
remarks in his History of Britain. Milton with his intense
earnestness was not the poet to build a long work on what he
had found to be mainly fiction. Be this as it may, Milton
rejected the subject, and it finds no place in a list of one
hundred possible subjects of his poem.
Secondly, from this period, I640-42, dates an alteration
in the design of the contemplated work. Hitherto his tendency
has been towards the epic form: now (I640 or I64I) we find
him preferring the dramatic. Shall he imitate Sophocles and
Euripides? Shall he transplant to English soil the art of the
"lofty grave tragedians" of Greece? The question is answered
in a decided affirmative. Had Milton continued the poem of
which the opening lines were written in 1642 we should have
had-not an epic but-a drama, or possibly a trilogy of dramas,
cast in a particular manner, as will be observed presently.
This transference of his inclinations from the epic to the
dramatic style appears to date from I641. It is manifested in
the Milton MSS. at Trinity College.
When the present library of Trinity College, the erection of
which was begun during the Mastership of Isaac Barrow, was
completed, oneof its earliest benefactors was a former member
of Trinity, Sir Henry Newton Puckering. Among his gifts was
a thin MS. volume of fifty-four pages, which had served Milton
as a common-place book. How it came into the possession of
Sir Henry Puckering is not known. He was contemporary
1 See the notes on P. L. XII. 24, 36.




xxxiv


INTRODUCTION.


with, though junior to, Milton, and may possibly have been one
of the admirers who visited the poet in the closing years of his
life, and discharged the office of amanuensis; or perhaps there
was some family connection by means of which the MS. passed
into his hands. But if the history of the book be obscure, its
value is not; for it contains-now in Milton's autograph, now
in other, unidentified handwritings-the original drafts of several
of his early poems: notably of Arcades, Lycidas and Conmus,
together with many of the Sonnets. The volume is not a
random collection of scattered papers bound together after
Milton's death: it exists (apart from its sumptuous modern
investiture) exactly in the same form as that wherein Milton
knew and used it two centuries and a half agone. And this
point is important because the order of the pages, and, by
consequence, of their contents, is an index to the order of the
composition of the poems. Milton, about the year I631, had
had the sheets of paper stitched together and then worked
through the little volume, page on page, inserting his pieces as
they were written. They cover a long period, from I6 to I658:
the earlier date being marked by the second Sonnet, the later
by the last of the series-" Methought I saw." It is rather more
than half way through the Ms. that we light on the entries
which have so direct a bearing on the history of Paradise Lost.
These are notes, written by Milton himself (probably in
I64I), and occupying seven pages of the manuscript, on subjects
which seemed to him suitable, in varying degrees of appropriateness, for his poem. Some of the entries are very brief-concise
jottings down, in two or three words, of any theme that struck
him. Others are more detailed: the salient features of some
episode in history are selected, and a sketch of the best method
of treating them added. In a few instances these sketches are
filled in with much minuteness and care: the 'economy' or
arrangement of the poem is marked out-the action traced from
point to point. But, Paradise Lost apart, this has been done in
only a few cases-a half dozen, at most. As a rule, the source
whence the material of the work might be drawn is indicated.
The subjects themselves, numbering just one hundred, fall, in a
rough classification, under two headings- Scriptural and British:




PARADISE LOST.


XXXV


and by 'British' are meant those which Milton drew from the
chronicles of British history prior to the Norman Conquest.
The former are the more numerous class: sixty-two being
derived from  the Bible, of which the Old Testament claims
fifty-four. Their character will be best illustrated by quotation
of a few typical examples:
Abram in AEgypt.
Josuah in Gibeon.   Josu. I0.
Jonathan rescu'd   Sam. I. 14.
Saul in Gilboa   I Sam. 28. 3I.
Gideon Idoloclastes  Jud. 6. 7.
Abimelech the usurper.   Jud. 9.
Samaria liberata1  2 Reg. 7.
Asa or AEthiopes.   2 chron. 14. with
the deposing his mother, and burning her Idol.
These are some of the subjects drawn from the New Testament:
Christ bound
Christ crucifi'd
Christ risen.
Lazarus   Joan. 1 r.
Christus patiens
The Scene in ye garden beginning fr6 ye comming thither till
Judas betraies & ye officers lead him away ye rest by message &
chorus. his agony may receav noble expressions
Of British subjects2 there are thirty-three. The last page is
assigned to " Scotch stories or rather brittish of the north parts.'
Among these Macbeth is conspicuous. Practically they may be
grouped with the thirty-three, and the combined list is remarkable-first, because it does not include the Arthurian legend,
1 The title is an obvious allusion to Tasso's Ger-usalemme Liberata.
2 Milton's attitude towards them is illustrated indirectly by his
History of Britain. In his paper on " Milton as an Historian" read
before the British Academy recently (Nov. 25, Igo8) Professor Frith
says: "It was not only by his treatment of the mythical period of
English history that Milton's interest in the legendary and anecdotic
side of history was revealed. It appeared in the later books as well
as the earlier, and the introduction of certain episodes, or the space
devoted to them, might often be explained by their inclusion in the
list of suggested subjects for his ' British Tragedies.'




Xxxvi


INTRODUCTION.


which had once exercised so powerful a fascination on Milton;
secondly, because in its brevity, as compared with the list of
Scriptural subjects, it suggests his preference for a sacred poem.
Of the Scriptural subjects the story of the Creation and Fall
assumes the most prominent place. Any friend of Milton
glancing through these papers in 1641 could have conjectured,
with tolerable certainty, where the poet's final choice would fall.
For no less than four of the entries refer to Paradise Lost.
Three of these stand at the head of the list of sacred themes.
In two at least his intention to treat the subject in dramatic
form is patent. The two first-mere enumerations of possible
dramatis personc-run thus1; it will be seen that the longer list
is simply an expansion of the other:


the Persons
Michael.
Heavenly Love
Chorus of Angels
Lucifer
Adam]
dve    with the serpent
Eve
Conscience
Death
Labour
Sicknesse
Discontent  mutes
Ignorance
with others
Faith
Hope
Charity


the Persons
Moses2
Justice3. Mercie Wisdome
Heavenly Love
Hesperus the Evening Starre
Chorus of Angels
Lucifer
Adam
Eve
Conscience4
Labour
Sicknesse
Discontent I
mutes
Ignorance
Feare
Death
Faith
Hope
Charity


1 Neither is introduced with any title.
2 Milton first wrote "'Michael," as in the other list, but substituted
"Moses."
3 The epithet Divine, qualifying Justice, was inserted and then
crossed out again.  "Wisdome" was added.
4 After Conscience Milton added Death, as in the first list; then
deleted it, and placed Death among the 'mutes' (mutce peersone,
characters who appeared without speaking).




PARADISE LOST.


*XX XVII


These lists are crossed out; and underneath stands a much
fuller sketch, in which the action of the tragedy is shown, and
the division into acts observed. Here, too, we first meet with
the title Paradise Lost. The scheme is as follows:
Paradise Lost         The Persons
Moses 7rpoXoyie~r recounting how he assum'd his true bodie, that it
corrupts not because of his with god in the mount declares the
like of Enoch and Eliah, besides the purity of ye pl  1 that certaine
pure winds, dues, and clouds preserve it from corruption whence
horts' to the sight of god, tells they2 cannot se Adam in the state of
innocence by reason of thire sin3
Justice ]
Mercie   - debating what should become of man if he fall
WisdomeJ
Chorus of Angels sing a hymne of ye creation4
Act 2.
Heavenly Love
Evening starre
chorus sing the marage song5 and describe Paradice
Act 3.
Lucifer contriving Adams ruine
Chorus feares for Adam and relates Lucifers rebellion and fall6
Act 4.
Adam)Adam   fallen
Eve
Conscience cites them to Gods examination7
Chorus bewails and tells the good Ada hath lost
1 The margin of the Ms. is frayed here.
2 they, i.e. the imaginary audience to whom the prologue is
addressed. Cf. the commencement of Comus.
3 After this the first act begins.
4 Cf. VII. 253-60, note.
6 Cf. IV. 71I.  6 Cf. bks. v-VI.
7 Cf. x. 97 et seq.




xxxviii


INTRODUCTION.


Act 5
Adam and Eve, driven out of Paradice
presented by an angel with1
Labour
greife
hatred
Envie
warre
famine
famPestilene  mutes to whome he gives thire names
Pestilencsse   likewise winter, heat Tempest2 &c
sicknesse
discontent
Ignorance
Feare
Death enterd
into ye world
Faith
Hope ~ comfort him and istruct him
Charity}
Chorus breifly concludes
This draft of the tragedy, which occurs on page 35 of the
MS., is not deleted; but Milton was still dissatisfied, and later
on, page 40, we come to a fourth, and concluding, schemewhich reads thus:
Adam unparadiz'd3
The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering4, shewing since
this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth, as in heavn,
describes Paradise. next the Chorus shewing the reason of hiss comming
to keep his watch in Paradise after Lucifers rebellion by command from
god, & withall expressing his desire to see, & know more concerning
this excellent new creature man. the angel Gabriel as by his name
1 Cf. bks. xI-XII.               2 See x. 65i, note.
3 Underneath was written, and crossed out, an alternative titleAdams Banishment.
4 Cf. Comus, "The Attendant Spirit descends or enters" (ad init.).
5 his, i.e. the chorus's; he makes the chorus now a singular, now a
plural, noun.




PARADISE LOST.


xxxix


signifying a prince of power tracing1 paradise with a more free office
passes by the station of ye chorus & desired by them relates what he
knew of man as the creation of Eve with thire love, & mariage. after
this Lucifer appeares after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks
revenge on man the Chorus prepare resistance at his first approach
at last after discourse of enmity on either side he departs wherat the
chorus sings of the battell, & victorie in heavn against him & his
accomplices, as before after the first act2 was sung a hymn of the
creation. heer3 again may appear Lucifer relating, & insulting in what
he had don to the destruction of man. man next & Eve having by this
time bin seduc't by the serpent appeares confusedly cover'd with
leaves conscience in a shape accuses him, Justice cites him to the place
whither Jehova call'd for him in the mean while the chorus entertains4
the stage, & his [sic] inform'd by some angel the manner of his fall heer3
the chorus bewailes Adams fall. Adam then & Eve returne accuse one
another but especially Adam layes the blame to his wife, is stubborn in
his offence Justice appeares reason5 with him convinces him the3 chorus
admonisheth Adam, & bids him beware by Lucifers example of
impenitence the Angel is sent to banish them out of paradise but before
causes to passe before his eyes in shapes a mask of all the evills 6 of this
life & world he is humbl'd relents, dispaires. at last appeares Mercy
comforts him promises the Messiah, then calls in faith, hope, & charity,
instructs him he repents gives god the glory, submitts to his penalty
the chorus breifly concludes. compare this with the former draught.
" It appears plain," says Todd, " that Milton intended to have
marked the division of the Acts in this sketch, as well as in
the preceding. Peck has divided them; and closes the first Act
with Adam and Eve's love." The other Acts may be supposed
to conclude at the following points: Act 2 at " sung a hymn of
the creation"; Act 3 at "inform'd...the manner of his fall";
Act 4 at "bids him beware...impenitence"; Act 5 at "the chorus
breifly concludes."
It is in regard to the first Act that this fourth draft, which
1 passing through; cf. Comus, 423.
2 i.e. in the third draft.
3 Each of these sentences was an after-thought, added below or in
the margin.
4 occupies.              5 i.e. reasons; or ' io reason.'
6 See XI. 477-93, note.




XI'


INTRODUCTION.


Milton bids us "compare with the former," marks a distinct
advance. Milton made Moses the speaker of the prologue in
the third draft because so much of the subject-matter of
Paradise Lost is drawn from the Mosaic books of the Old
Testament. But the appearance of a descendant of Adam,
even in a prologue, where much latitude is allowed by convention, seems an awkward prelude to scenes coincident with
Adam's own creation. It is far more natural that, before the
subject of man's fall is touched upon at all, we should be told
who man is, and that this first mention of him should come
from the supernatural beings who had, or might have, witnessed
the actual creation of the universe and its inhabitants.  The
explanation, too, why Moses is able to assume his natural body
is very forced. And altogether this fourth draft exhibits more
of drama, less of spectacle, than. its predecessor.
With regard to the subject, therefore, thus much is clear:
as early as i641-2 Milton has manifested an unmistakeable
preference for the story of the lost Paradise, and the evidence
of the Trinity MSS. coincides with the testimony of Aubrey and
Phillips, who say that the poet did, about i642, commence the
composition of a drama on this theme-of which drama the
opening verses of Paradise Lost, book iv. (Satan's address to
the sun), formed the exordium. It is, I think, by no means
improbable that some other portions of the epic are really
fragments of this unfinished work. Milton may have written
two or three hundred lines, have kept them in his desk, and
then, years afterward, when the project was resumed, have made
use of them where opportunity offered. Had the poem, however,
been completed in accordance with his original conception we
should have had a tragedy, not an epic.
Of this there is abundant proof. The third and fourth
sketches, as has been observed, are dramatic. On the first
page of these entries, besides those lists of dramatis persona?
which we have treated as the first and second sketches, stand
the words "other Tragedies," followed by the enumeration of
several feasible subjects. The list of British subjects is
prefaced with the heading-" British Trag." (i.e. tragedies).




PARADISE LOST.


xli


Wherever Milton has outlined the treatment of any of the
Scriptural themes a tragedy is clearly indicated. Twice, indeed,
another form is mentioned-the pastoral, and probably a
dramatic pastoral was intended1.  These, however, are exceptions, serving to emphasise his leaning towards tragedy.
But what sort of tragedy? I think we may fairly conclude
that, if carried out on the lines laid down in the fourth sketch,
Adam uanparadizd would have borne a very marked resemblance to Samson Agonistes: it would have conformed, in the
main, to the same type-that, namely, of the ancient Greek
drama. With the romantic stage of the Elizabethans Milton
appears to have felt little sympathy2: else he would scarce have
written II Penseroso, 101, I02.  Nor do I believe that his
youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare remained unmodified3:
certainly, the condemnation of one important aspect of Shakespearian tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes is too plain
to be misinterpreted. So had Milton been minded to dramatise
the story of Macbeth-we have marked its presence in the list
of Scottish subjects-his Macbeth would have differed toto calo
from Shakespeare's. In the same way, his tragedy of Paradise
Lost would have been wholly un-Shakespearian, wholly unElizabethan. Nor would it have had any affinity to the drama
of Milton's contemporaries4, those belated Elizabethans bungling
with exhausted materials and forms that had lost all vitality.
Tragedy for Milton could mean but one thing-the tragic stage
of the Greeks, the "dramatic constitutions" of Sophocles and
Euripides: and when we examine these sketches of Paradise
1 These are the two entries in the MS.: " Theristria. a Pastoral out
of Ruth "; and-" the sheepshearers in Carmel a Pastoral. I Sam. 25."
There is but one glance at the epical style; in the list of " British Trag."
after mentioning an episode in the life of King Alfred appropriate to
dramatic handling, he adds-" A Heroicall Poem may be founded
somwhere in Alfreds reigne. especially at his issuing out of Edelingsey
on the Danes. whose actions are wel like those of Ulysses."
2 See Appendix to Samson Agonistes.
8 See note on L'Allegro, I33, I34.
4 In the treatise On Education, 1644, he speaks of "our common
rhymers and play-writers" as "despicable creatures," P. W. III. 474.


P. L.


d




xlii


INTRODUCTION.


Lost we find in them the familiar features of Athenian drama
-certain signs eloquent of the source on which the poet has
drawn.
Let us, for example, glance at the draft of Adam un5paradiz'd.
Milton has kept the 'unities' of place and time. The scene
does not change; it is set in some part of Eden, and everything
represented before the eyes of the audience occurs at the same
spot. But whoso regards the unity of place must suffer a
portion of the action to happen off the stage-not enacted in
the presence of the audience (as in a modern play where the
scene changes), but reported. In Samson Agonistes Milton
employs the traditional device of the Greek tragedians-he
relates the catastrophe by the mouth of a messenger. So here:
the temptation by the serpent is not represented on the scene:
it is described-partly by Lucifer, "relating, and insulting in
what he had don to the destruction of man"; partly by an angel
who informs the Chorus of the manner of the fall. Again, the
unity of time is observed. The time over which the action of a
tragedy might extend, according to the usual practice of the
Greek dramatists, was twenty-four hours. In Samson Agonistes
the action begins at sunrise and ends at noon, thus occupying
seven or eight hours. In Adam un5aradiz'd the action would
certainly not exceed the customary twenty-four hours. Again a
Chorus is introduced (sure sign of classical influence), and not
only introduced, but handled exactly as Milton, following his
Greek models, has handled it in Samson Agonistes: that is to
say, closely identified with the action of the tragedy, even as
Aristotle recommends that it should be. Further, in the fourth
scheme the division into acts is carefully avoided-an advance
this on the third scheme. Similarly, in Samson Agonistes
Milton avoids splitting up the play into scenes and acts, calling
attention to the fact in his preface.  Proofs1 of Milton's
1 Thus, apart from P. L., the Scriptural themes whereof the fullest
sketches are given, are three tragedies severally entitled "Abram from
Morea, or Isack redeemed-Baptistes" (i.e. on the subject of John the
Baptist and Herod)-and "Sodom Burning." In each two unities
(time and place) are kept, and a Chorus used. In "Isack redeemed" the




PARADISE LOST.


xliii


classical bias might be multiplied from these Milton Msss.;
and personally I have no doubt that when he began the tragedy
of which Aubrey and Phillips speak, he meant to revive in
English the methods and style of his favourite Greek poets.
But the scheme soon had to be abandoned; and not till a
quarter of a century later was it executed in Samson Agonistes".
With Milton as with Dante the greatest came last-after long
delay: the life's work of each marked the life's close: and,
the work done, release soon came to each, though to Dante
sooner2.
The third period in the genesis of Paradise Lost dates from
I658. In that year, according to Aubrey, Milton began the
poem as we know it. By then he had gone back to the epic
style. He was still Secretary, but his duties were very light,
and allowed him to devote himself to poetry. At the Restoration
he was in danger, for some time, of his life, and was imprisoned
for a few months. But in spite of this interruption, and of his
blindness3, the epic was finished about I663. The history of
incident of the sacrifice is reported, and the description of the character
of the hero Abraham as Milton meant to depict him is simply a
paraphrase on Aristotle's definition of the ideal tragic hero. Most of
the other subjects have a title such as the Greek tragedians employede.g. "Elias Polemistes," "Elisseus Hydrochoos," "Zedechiah veorepiv."
1 The point is important because it disposes of the notion that
Milton borrowed the idea of writing a tragedy on the classical model
from the play of Samson by the Dutch poet Vondel.
2 "There is at once similarity and difference in the causes which
made each postpone the execution of his undertaking till a comparatively
late period in his life; and a curious parallel may be observed in the
length of time between the first conception and the completion of their
monumental works, as well as in the period that elapsed between the
end of their labours and their death." (Courthope.)
3 According to Edward Phillips, Milton dictated the poem to any
one who chanced to be present and was willing to act as amanuensis;
afterwards Phillips would go over the MS., correcting errors, under his
uncle's direction. The original transcript submitted to the Licenser is
extant, and is one of the many literary treasures that have gone to
d2




xliv


INTRODUCTION.


each of his longer poems shows that he was exceedingly careful
in revising his works-loth to let them go forth to the world till
all that was possible had been done to achieve perfection'. It is
Aubrey's statement that Paradise Lost was completed in I663;
while Milton's friend Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker, describes
in a famous passage of his Autobiography, how in I665 the poet
placed a manuscript in his hands-" bidding me take it home
with me and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done,
return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came
home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he intituled Paradise Lost." Ellwood's
account may be reconciled with Aubrey's on the reasonable
supposition that the interval between I663 and i665 was spent
in revision. Still, some delay in publishing the poem ensued.
On the outbreak of the Plague in I665 Milton had left London,
retiring to Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, where Ellwood had
rented a cottage for him. He returned in the next year, I666;
but again there was delay-this time through the great Fire
of London which disorganised business. Not till I667 did
Paradise Lost appear in print. The agreement (now in the
possession of the British Museum) drawn up between Milton
and his publisher-by which he received an immediate payment
of /5, and retained certain rights over the future sale of the
book-is dated April 27, I667. The date on which Paradise
Lost was entered in the Stationers' Register is August 20, I667.
No doubt, copies were in circulation in the autumn of this year.
America. It "passed from the possession of the first printer of the
poem, Samuel Simmons, to Jacob Tonson [the publisher], and thence
to his collateral descendants, remaining in the same family...until
1904," when it was bought by an American collector. (From an
article in The Athenaum on " Miltoniana in America.")
1 Cc When we look at his earlier manuscripts, with all their erasures
and corrections, we may well wonder what the Paradise Lost would have
been if he had been able to give it the final touches of a faultless and
fastidious hand. When we think of it composed in darkness, preserved
in memory, dictated in fragments, it may well seem to us the most
astonishing of all the products of high genius guided by unconquerable
will" (J. W. Mackail).




PARADISE LOST.


xlv


The system of licensing publications, against which Milton
had protested so vehemently in his Areopag~;itica, had been revived
by the Press Act of I662 and was now strongly enforced. " By
that act," says Dr Masson, " the duty of licensing books of general
literature had been assigned to the Secretaries of State, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London; but it
was exceptional for any of those dignitaries to perform the duty
in person. It was chiefly performed for them by a staff of underlicencers, paid by fees." Five or six of his chaplains acted so for
the Archbishop; and according to tradition one of them, to
whom Paradise Lost was submitted, hesitated to give his imprimatur on account of the lines in the first book about eclipses
perplexing monarchs with fear of change (r. 594-99). Milton
must have remembered grimly the bitter gibes in his pamphlets,
e.g. in the Animadversions (164I) against "monkish prohibitions,
and expurgatorious indexes," and "proud Imprimaturs not to be
obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow hand of
some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain." The
wheel had come full circle with a vengeance.
This first edition of Paradise Lost raises curious points1 of
bibliography into which there is no need to enter here; but we
must note three things.   The poem was divided into-not
twelve books but-ten.   In the earlier copies issued to the
public there were no prose Arguments; these (written, we may
suppose, by Milton himself) were printed all together and
inserted at the commencement of each of the later volumes of
1 For example, no less than nine distinct title-pages of this edition
have been traced. This means that, though the whole edition was
printed in 1667, only a limited number of copies were bound up and
issued in that year. The rest would be kept in stock, unbound, and
published in instalments, as required. Hence new matter could be
inserted (such as the prose Arguments), and in each instalment it would
be just as easy to bind up a new title-page as to use the old one. Often
the date had to be changed: and we find that two of these pages bear
the year 1667; four, I668; and three, i669. Seven have Milton's
name in full; two, only his initials. Mr Leigh Sotheby collated them
carefully in his book on Milton's autograph, pp. 81-84.




xlvi


INTRODUCTION.


this first edition-an awkward arrangement changed in the
second edition.  Milton prefixed to the later copies the brief
prefatory note on The Verse, explaining why he had used blank
verse; and it was preceded by the address of The Printer to the
Reader. It seems that the number of copies printed in the first
edition was I500; and the statement of another payment made
by the publisher to Milton on account of the sale of the book
shows that by April 26, I669, i.e. a year and a half after the date
of publication, I300 copies had been disposed of.
In i674 the second edition was issued-with several changes.
First, the epic (said to be 670 lines longer than the.Eneid)
was divided into twelve books, a more Vergilian number, by the
subdivision of books vii. and x. Secondly, the prose Arguments were transferred from the beginning and prefixed to their
respective books. Thirdly, a few changes were introduced into
the text-few of any great significance. It was to the second
edition that the commendatory verses by Samuel Barrow and
Andrew Marvell were prefixed. Four years later, I678, came
the third edition, and in I688 the fourth. This last was the
well-known folio published by Tonson; Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes were bound up with some copies of it, so that
Milton's three great works were obtainable in a single volume.
The first annotated edition of Paradise Lost was that edited by
Patrick Hume in I695, being the sixth reprint. And during
the I8th century editions' were numerous. "Milton scholarship2," it has been justly said, "was active throughout the whole
period."
There is, indeed, little (if any) ground for the view which one
so frequently comes across-that Paradise Lost met with scant
appreciation, and that Milton was neglected by his contem1 Pre-eminent among them is Bishop Newton's edition (1749). He
was the first editor who took pains to secure accuracy of text, doing,
on a smaller scale, for Milton what Theobald did for Shakespeare.
His services too in the elucidation of certain aspects (notably the Scriptural) of Milton's learning have never been surpassed.
2 See Professor Dowden's Tercentenary paper "Milton in the
Eighteenth Century (1701-1750)."




PARADISE LOST.


xlvii


poraries, and without honour in his lifetime. To the general
public epic poetry will never appeal, more especially if it be
steeped in the classical feeling that pervades Paradise Lost;
but there must have been a goodly number of scholars and
lettered readers to welcome the work-else why these successive
editions, appearing at no very lengthy intervals? One thing,
doubtless, which prejudiced its popularity was the personal
resentment of the Royalist classes at Milton's political actions.
They could not forget his long identification with republicanism;
and there was much in the poem itself-covert sneers and
gibes-which would repel many who were loyal to the Church
and the Court. Further, the style of Paradise Lost was
something very different from the prevailing tone of the
literature then current and popular. Milton was the last of the
Elizabethans, a lonely survival lingering on into days when
French influence was beginning to dominate English taste.
Even the metre of his poem must have sounded strange to ears
familiarised to the crisp clearness and epigrammatic ring of the
rhymed couplet'. Yet, in spite of these obstacles, many whose
praise was worth the having were proud of Milton: they felt
that he had done honour to his country. He was accorded that
which he had sought so earnestly-acceptance as a great
national poet; and it is pleasant to read how men of letters
and social distinction would pay visits of respect to him, and
how the white-winged Fame bore his name and reputation
abroad, so that foreigners came to England for the especial
purpose of seeing him.  And their visits were the prelude of
that foreign renown and influence from which he seemed to
have cut himself off when he made his native tongue the
medium  of his great work. " Milton was the first English
poet to inspire respect and win fame for our literature on the
Continent, and to his poetry was due, to an extent that has not
yet been fully recognised, the change which came over European
ideas in the eighteenth century with regard to the nature and
scope of the epic. Paradise Lost was the mainstay of those


1 Cf. Marveli's "Commendatory Verses," 45-54.




xlviii


INTRODUCTION.


critics who dared to vindicate, in the face of French classicism,
the rights of the imagination over the reason in poetry."
There has been much discussion about the 'sources' of
Paradise Lost, and writers well nigh as countless as Vallombrosa's autumn leaves have been thrust forth from their
obscurity to claim the honour of having 'inspired' (as the
phrase is) the great epic. Most of these unconscious claimants
were, like enough, unknown to Milton; but some of them do
seem to stand in a relation which demands recognition.
I should place first the Latin tragedy Adamus Ex-ul (I60o),
written in his youth by the great jurist Hugo Grotius after the
model of Seneca. Apart from the question of actual resemblances
to Paradise Lost, it might fairly be conjectured, if not assumed,
that Milton read this tragedy. He knew Grotius personally and
knew his works. Describing, in the Second Defence, his Italian
tour in I638, Milton mentions his stay in Paris and friendly
reception by the Engli-h ambassador, and adds * "His lordship
gave me a card of introduction to the learned Hugo Grotius, at
that time ambassador from the Queen of Sweden to the French
court; whose acquaintance I anxiously desired2." He quotes the
opinions of Grotius with high respect in his treatise on divorce3.
The alternative titles of the fourth draft of Milton's own contemplated tragedy, viz. Adam unf;aradizd and Adams Banishment, certainly recall the title Adamus Exul; and it may be
1 Professor J. G. Robertson, 'Milton's Fame on the Continent,"
a paper read before the British Academy, Dec. Io, i908.
Perhaps the strangest and most delightful evidence of Milton's
acceptance among foreigners was Mr Maurice Baring's discovery of the
popularity of Paradise Lost, in a prose translation, amongst the Russian
peasantry and private soldiers:
" The schoolmaster said that after all his experience the taste of the
peasants in literature baffled him. 'They will not read modern stories,'
he said. 'When I ask them why they like Paradise Lost they point to
their heart and say, " It is near to the heart; it speaks; you read, and
a sweetness comes to you."'"
2 P. W. I. 255.
3 See chapters xvII., xviii. of The Doctrine and Discipline.




PARADISE LOST.


xlix


noted that this draft was sketched in that period (about I64I)
of Milton's life to which his meeting with Grotius belongs.
Of the likeness between Paradise Lost and the Adazmus Exul,
and other works dealing with the same theme, it is impossible to
say how much, if not all, is due to identity of subject and (what
is no less important) identity of convention as to the machinery
proper for its treatment. But I do not think that community of
subject accounts entirely for the resemblances between Paradise
Lost and Grotius's tragedy. The conception of Satan's character
and motives unfolded in his long introductory speech in the
Adamus, the general idea of his escaping from Hell and surveying Eden, his invocation of the powers of evil (amongst them
Chaos and Night)-these things and some others, such as the
Angel's narrative to Adam of the Creation, seem like far-off
embryonic drawings of the splendours of the epic. It should be
added that Grotius's other religious plays were known in England.
A free rendering of his Christus Patiens into rhymed heroics
was published in London in I640 under the title Christs Passion;
while his tragedy Sophonz5aneas, or Joseph, appeared in an
English version in I65o. And a sidelight may be thrown not
merely on the contemporary estimate of Grotius by the exceptionally eulogistic mention of his works in the Theatrumn
Poetarum (1675) of Milton's nephew Edward Phillips. The
Theatrum is commonly supposed to reflect in some degree
Milton's own views' and it is significant therefore to find
Grotius described as one "whose equal in fame for Wit &
Learning, Christendom of late Ages hath rarely produc'd,
particularly of so happy a Genius in Poetry, that had his Annals,
1 See v. T77, 673, notes. Other touches in the Theatrumn of
Miltonic interest are the accounts of Spenser and Sylvester, and the
praise of Henry Lawes in the notice of Waller. One may conjecture,
too, that the obscure Erycus Puteanus would not have had his niche
but for Comnus. The Theafrcum includes also Andreini-but not Vondel.
Phillips's account of Milton himself is admirably discreet: and he
expressly terms Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained "Heroic Poems."
The relations between uncle and nephew were more than ordinarily
close.




1


INTRODUCTION.


his Book De Veritate Christianae Religionis...and other his
extolled works in Prose, never come to Light, his extant and
universally approved Latin Poems, had been sufficient to gain
him a Living Name."
It is an easy transition from the Adamus Exul to the Adamo
of the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Andreini (I578-I652), a
Florentine, which is said to owe something to Grotius's tragedy.
Voltaire, in his Essaisur la Posie Epicque written in 1727, related
that Milton during his residence at Florence saw "a comedy
called Adanzo l.......The subject of the play was the Fall of Man:
the actors, the Devils, the Angels, Adam, Eve, the Serpent,
Death, and the Seven Mortal Sins....... Milton pierced through
the absurdity of that performance to the hidden majesty of the
subject; which, being altogether unfit for the stage, yet might be,
for the genius of Milton, and his only, the foundation of an epick
poem." What authority he had for this legend Voltaire does not
say. It is not alluded to by any of Milton's contemporary biographers. It may have been a mere invention by some ill-wisher
of the poet, a piece of malicious gossip circulated out of political
spite against the great champion of republicanism.  But the
authenticity of the story is not perhaps very important, for independently there seems to be evidence in the Adamo itself that
Milton was acquainted with it even before his visit to Italy. One
cannot read the scene of the Adamo (v. 5) in which the World,
personified, tempts Eve with all its pomps and vanities, without
being reminded of the scene in Comus of the temptation of the
Lady. And, as with the Adamus Exul, some of the coincidences
of incident and treatment between the Adamo and Paradise
Lost, or Milton's early dramatic sketches of the action, seem to
constitute a residuum of resemblance after full allowance has
1 It had been printed in I613 (Milan), and again in I617. The
title-page of the first edition describes the work as "L'Adamo, Sacra
Rapresentatione." It is more " a hybrid between a miracle play and an
opera" (Courthope) than a "comedy." A translation by Cowper and
Hayley was printed in their edition of Milton; and it is in this
translation that the work is known to me. The fact that Cowper took
the Adamo theory seriously is significant.




PARADISE LOST.


li


been made for the influence of practical identity of theme.
Thus the list of characters in the A damzo has abstractions like
the World, Famine, Labour, Despair, Death: and the appearance of these and kindred evils of life to Adam and Eve
(Act Iv., scenes 6 and 7) recalls the early drafts of the scheme of
Paradise Lost and also the vision shown to Adam in the
eleventh (477-99) book of the poem. Andreini makes Michael
drive Adam and Eve out of Paradise and depicts a final struggle
between Michael and Lucifer. Andreini's representation of the
Serpent's temptation of Eve has been thought to have left some
impression on the parallel scene in Paradise Lost. After the
Fall Lucifer summons the spirits of air and fire, earth and watera counterpart to Paradise Regained, Ii. I I 5 et seq. And occasionally a verbal similarity arrests-as where Lucifer says (iv. 2, end)'
"Let us remain in hell!
Since there is more content
To live in liberty, tho' all condemn'd,
Than, as his vassals, blest1 "
(" Poi, ch' maggior contents
viver in liberta tutti dannati,
che studditi beati");
and inveighs (IV. 2):
" Ahi luce, ahi luce odiata!"
or where the Angels describe Man (II. I):
"For contemplation of his Maker form'd"
("Per contemrlar del suo gran Fabro il merlo").
l See I. 263, note; but of course the idea was not peculiar to any
writer. So tradition, literary or theological, may explain the following
similarity, which is at least an interesting illustration of P. L. v. 688,
699. Andreini makes Lucifer (i. 3) address his followers:
"I am that Spirit, I, who for your sake
Collecting dauntless courage, to the north
Led you far distant from the senseless will
Of him who boasts to have created heav'n."
The reference occurs again in the Adamzo, inI. 8.
Tradition also may account for another feature common to the
Adamo, the Adamnus and Paradise Lost, viz. the long description of the
convulsions and deterioration in the physical universe after the Fall of
Man.




lii


INTRODUCTION.


Leaving the matter for a moment we will pass to the third
claimant, the Dutch poet, Joost van den Vondel. He was
contemporary with Milton, and the author of a great number of
works. Among them were several dramas on Scriptural subjects.
With three of them Milton is supposed by some writers to have
been acquainted. These are Lucifer (i654), a drama on the
revolt of the angels and their fall from heaven; John the Messenger
(1662), and Adac in Banishment (I664). In a work published
a few years since it was contended that Milton borrowed a good
deal from these three poems.
That Milton had heard of Vondel may be conceded.
Vondel enjoyed a great reputation; beside which, there was
in the I7th century much intercourse between England and
Holland, and Milton from his position as Secretary, no less
than from his controversies with Salmasius and Morus, must
have had his thoughts constantly directed towards the Netherlands. Also, we learn that he had some knowledge of the Dutch
language. But it will be observed that the earliest of the poems
with which he is thought to have been too conversant, namely
Lucifer, was not published till after his blindness, while by the
time that the last of them, Adam in Banishment, appeared,
Paradise Lost was almost completed. It is impossible that
Milton read a line of the works himself; if he knew them at all,
it must have been through the assistance of some reader or
translator; and considering how many details concerning the
last years of Milton's life have survived, it is exceeding curious
that this reader or translator should have escaped mention, and
that the Vondelian theory should not have been heard of till a
century after the poet's death. For there were plenty of people
ready to do him an ill-turn and damage his repute; and
plagiarism from his Dutch contemporary would have been
an excellent cry to raise. As it is, Milton's biographers-and
contemporaries-Phillips, Aubrey, Toland, Antony i Wood,
are absolutely silent on the subject. Phillips indeed and
Toland expressly mention the languages in which Milton used
to have works read to him. The list is extensive: it includes
Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and French:




PARADISE LOST.                     liii
and it does not include Dutch. I think that this fact tells
heavily against the hypothesis of Milton's indebtedness to
Vondel. Still, it must be admitted that critics of eminence
accept it.
There remains the so-called Caedmon Paraphrase. In the
Bodleian is the manuscript of an Old English metrical Paraphrase of parts1 of the Old Testament. This work was long
attributed to the Northumbrian religious writer Caedmon, of
whom Bede speaks. Caedmon lived in the seventh century.
He is supposed to have died about 670. There is no reason for
thinking that he was not the author of sacred poems, as Bede
represents him to have been; but there is also no possibility of
believing that the Pa-ra/phrase, as we have it, was written by
him. It is a composite work in which several hands may be
traced, and the different styles belong to a date long subsequent
to Caedmon2. The MS. was once in the possession of Archbishop
Ussher.  He presented it in I65I to his secretary, the Teutonic
scholar, Francis Dujon, commonly called Franciscus Junius.
Junius published the MS. at Amsterdam in I655. Milton never
saw the Paraphrase in print, for the same reason that he never
saw Vondel's Lucifer. But inasmuch as Junius had been settled
in England since I620, it is quite likely that he knew Milton3;
if so, he may have mentioned the Paraphrase, and even
translated4 parts of it.  Here, however, as in the previous cases
of Andreini and Vondel, we cannot get beyond conjecture,
1 Namely Genesis, Exodus and Daniel. It is the paraphrase of
Genesis that would have concerned Milton most.
2 See the article by Mr Henry Bradley in the Dictionary of National
Biography. There is also a good discussion of the authorship of the
work in the Appendix to Professor Ten Brink's Early English Literature.
3 This was first pointed out by Sharon Turner; see also Masson,
Life, vI. 557.
4 In a very ingenious paper in Anglia, Iv. pp. 401-405, Professor
Wuelcker argues that Milton had not much knowledge of Anglo-Saxon.
In his History of Britain he habitually quotes Latin Chronicles, and
in one place virtually admits that an Old English chronicle was not
intelligible to him.




liv


INTRODUCTION.


since there is no actual record or external evidence of Milton's
acquaintance with the Paraphrase or its translator.
These then are the four possible 'sources' of Paradise Lost
seemingly most deserving of mention; and of them the Adamnes
Exul and the Adamzo strike me as unquestionably the most
important, for various reasons. Milton's acquaintance with them
may be referred to the early period when the influence on him
of other writers would be greatest. The Adamzs and the Adamo
both present some points of resemblance to the early drafts of
Paradise Lost. With the Adamus there is the special consideration of Milton's personal knowledge and admiration of
its author. With the Adamo, apart from the possibility that
Voltaire's story had some basis, there is the consideration of
Milton's special devotion to Italian literature. With neither is
there, at least not in the same degree as in the case of Vondel's
works and the Caedmon Paraph/rase, the difficulty involved by
the poet's blindness. That he knew the Adamusl and the Adamo
appears to me, now, hardly an open question. In these and
similar works disinterred by the industry of Milton's editors lay
the general conception, the theological machinery, the cosmic
and supra-cosmic scene of a poem on the Fall of Man. So
much is simply a matter of history; and to claim for Milton or
any other writer who chose this theme the merit of absolute
originality is simply to ignore history. The composition of
religious poetry was the great literary activity of the earlier part
of the I7th century, and Milton did on the grand scale what others
did on the lower. The work of these lesser writers could not be
without its influence on him, since no poet can detach himself from
the conditions of his age or the associations of a subject that
has become common property and passed into a convention.
But that the qualities which have made Paradise Lost
immortal were due, in the faintest degree, to any other genius
1 As regards the Adamns Exul William Lauder had some case, but
spoilt it by his forgeries; for a sample of his libellous malevolence see I.
26I-63, note. Todd (II. 585 —89) has an Appendix on ".Lauder's
Interpolations."




PARADISE LOST.


Iv


than that of Milton himself: this is a fond delusion, vainly
imagined, without warranty, and altogether to be cast out.
We must indeed recognise in Paradise Lost, the meetingpoint of Renaissance and Reformation, the impress of four
great influences: the Bible, the classics, the Italian poets,
and English literature.    Of the Bible Milton possessed a
knowledge such as few have had.       There are hundreds of
allusions to it: the words of Scripture underlie some part of the
text of every page of Paradise Lost; and apart from verbal
reminiscences there is much of the spirit that pervades that
noblest achievement of the English     tongue.   Scarcely less
powerful was the influence of the classics. Milton's allusiveness
extends over the whole empire of classical humanity and letters,
and to the scholar his work is full of the exquisite charm of
endless reference to the noblest things that the ancients have
thought and said. That he was deeply versed in Italian poetry
the labours of his early editors have abundantly proved; and
their comparative studies are confirmed by the frequent mention
of Dante1, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto and others in his prose works
and correspondence. In English literature I imagine that he
had read everything worth reading.     Without doubt, he was
1 See Dr Paget Toynbee's Dante in English Literature, I. 2, 120,
486, II. 587. Among the points noted are these: Dante resemblances
occur in Milton's early poems before his visit to Italy; in his Commonplace Book Milton illustrates his views several times by references to
Dante; his rendering of three lines of the nfernzo in his treatise Of
Reformation (see P. L. III. 444-97, note) is the first instance of the use
of blank verse as a medium for the translation of Dante and may have
suggested the use of that metre to Cary; Milton was one of the first
English poets to use Dante's terza rina-see his translation of Psalm ii.,
headed " Done August 8, I653. Terzetti." Dr Toynbee also states that
Milton's copy (the 3rd ed., Venice, I529) of the Convivio is extant:
" Milton has written his name in the book and the date, 1629. The
volume belonged to Heber [the book-collector, half-brother of the
bishop], and was sold at his sale in I834." It contained also the
Sonnets (I563) of the Italian poet Casa and the marginal markings,
if made by Milton, show that he had "read the Sonnets with great
attention.";aJ;jr




Ivi


INTRODUCTION.


most affected by "our admired Spenser''"       He was, says
Dryden, "the poetical son of Spenser. Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original." And there was a
Spenserian school of poets, mostly Cambridge men, and some
of them contemporary with Milton at the University, with
whose works he evidently had a considerable acquaintance.
Among these the two Fletchers were conspicuous-Giles
Fletcher, author of the sacred poems Christ's Victorie on Earth
and Chrzst's Triunph in Heaven; and Phineas Fletcher,
author of The Purple Island. The influence of the Fletchers
is manifest in Milton's early poems2, and it is traceable in
Paradise Lost. Finally, we must not forget Sylvester. Joshua
Sylvester (of whom little is known beyond that he was born in
I563, died in I618, and diversified the profession of merchant
with the making of much rhyme) translated into exceedingly
Spenserian verse The Divine Weeks and Works of the French
poet, Du Bartas3. The subject of this very lengthy work is the
story of Creation, with the early history of the Jews. The
translation was amazingly popular. Dryden confessed that he
had once preferred Sylvester to Spenser4. There is no doubt
1 Animadversions, P. W. III. 84. On Milton's feeling for Spenser
see the note to 1 Penseroso, 16-20.
2 See the Introductions to Comus and Lycidas. Phineas Fletcher's
Apollyonists might also be mentioned (see II. 650, 746, notes). Besides
the Fletchers, there was Henry More, the famous "Cambridge
Platonist." Milton must have known him at Christ's College.
o Sylvester translated a good deal from Du Bartas beside the Divine
Weeks; and rhymed on his own account. The first collected edition of
his translation of the Divine Weeks was published in I605 —606,
instalments having appeared between I592 and I599. Dr Grosart
collected Sylvester's works into two bulky volumes.
4 Spenser himself admired Du Bartas greatly; see the Envoy
addressed to the French poet Bellay at the end of The Ruines of Rome.
In a paper read before the British Academy on some MS. notes,
"dealing mainly with the place of astronomy in poetry," by Spenser's
Cambridge friend Gabriel Harvey, Professor Gollancz gave the following
extract referring to Du Bartas and Spenser:
"Mr Digges hath the whole Aquarius of Palingenius by heart,




PARADISE LOST.                    lvii
that Milton studied Tie Divine Weeks in his youth. "That Poem
hath ever had many great admirers among us " is the suggestive
comment of his nephew Edward Phillips. It is certainly one
of the works' whereof account must be taken in any attempt to
estimate the literary influences that moulded Milton's style.
But a writer may be influenced by others, and not 'plagiarise'; and it is well to remember that from Vergil downwards
the great poets have exercised their royal right of adapting the
words of their forerunners and infusing into them a fresh charm
and suggestion, since in allusion lies one of the chief delights of
literature. It is well, also, to realise wherein lies the greatness
of Pa;radise Lost, and to understand that all the borrowing in
the world could not contribute a jot to the qualities which have
rendered the epic "a possession for ever." What has made the
poem live is not the story, nobly though that illustrates the
eternal antagonism of righteousness and wrong, and the overthrow of evil; nor the construction, though this is sufficiently
architectonic; nor the learning, though this is vast; nor the
characterisation, for which there is little scope: not these things,
though all are factors in the greatness of the poem, and in all
Milton rises to the height of his argument-but the incQj
parable elevation o    style, "theshaping spirit of Imagjination," and the mere majesty of the music.
and takes much delight to repeat it often. Mr Spenser conceives the
like pleasure in the fourth day of the first Week of Bartas which he
esteems as the proper profession of Urania."
1 See some remarks and illustrations in Professor Mackail's The
Spring o'f sel'con (19 ), pp. 195, 196.


P. L.




Iviii


INTRODUCTION.


THE STORY OF THE POEM.
A sketch of the action of the whole poem, following-the
sequence of the twelve books, may be useful to those who are
acquainted only with parts of Paradise Lost:I. The scene Hell-the time nine days after the expulsion
of Satan and his followers from Heaven. They lie on the
burning lake, stupefied. Satan first recovers, rouses Beelzebub,
discusses with him their position, and then makes his way from
the lake to a "dreary plain" of dry land. Beelzebub follows;
Satan calls to his comrades to do likewise. Rising on the wing
they reach the same firm land. Their numbers and names
described. They range themselves in battle-array before Satan,
who addresses them. They may still (he says) regain Heaven;
or there may be other worlds to win-in particular, a new world,
inhabited by new-created beings, of which report had spoken:
let these matters be duly conferred of. Straightway, a vast
palace-Pandemonium-is made, to serve as council-chamber.
Here a council is held; only the great Angels are present.
II. The scene-at first-Pandemonium; the debate begins.
Satan invites their counsel-" who can advise may speak."
Moloch, Belial and Mammon speak-their several counsels:
last Beelzebub, who reverts to Satan's hint of the new world.
Why not ruin it? or make it their own? or win its inhabitants
to their side? What better revenge against the Almighty?
The plan approved-but who will discover this world? None
volunteer: and then Satan offers to undertake the journey.
His offer accepted; the council leaving Pandemonium breaks
up; the result announced to the rest of the Angels. How they
pass the time till his return-some exploring Hell (now more
closely described). Meanwhile he reaches Hell-gates, is suffered
to pass by Sin and Death, voyages through Chaos (described),
and at last comes within sight of the Universe hung in space
(i.e. Chaos). We leave him directing his course towards the
World.




PARADISE LOST.


lix


III. The scene-at first-Heaven. The Almighty perceives
Satan, points him out to the Son, tells what his design is, and
its destined success; tells also that Man will be saved ultimately
-if he can find a Redeemer. "The Son of God freely offers
himself a ransom for Man"; is accepted by the Father, and
praised by the Angelic host. Meanwhile-the scene changing
-Satan, having reached the outer surface (described) of the
Universe, wanders through various regions (described), until,
coming to the single opening in the surface, he descends into
the inside of the Universe. He arrives at the sphere of the
Sun; disguising himself as a young Angel from Heaven, enquires from Uriel, the Sun-spirit, the way to Earth-pretending
"desire to behold the new Creation"; is directed by Uriel,
descends again, and alights on Mt Niphates.
IV. There, pausing awhile, he gives way to regret that he
has rebelled, and rage at his outcast state; passion distorts his
face, so that Uriel, watching, now knows him for an evil spirit.
Thence, recovering self-control, Satan journeys on towards
Eden, the main scene (described); sees Adam and Eve (famous
description of them); overhears what they say concerning the
Tree of Knowledge, and perceives at once the means whereby
to compass their fall. At nightfall he essays to tempt Eve in a
dream; is discovered by Gabriel, who, warned by Uriel, has
lescended to Eden to defend Man. A battle between Satan
and Gabriel imminent, but averted. Satan flies.
V   The scene still Eden: A further picture of Adam and
Eve-their worship and work. Raphael (the scene having
changed for a brief space to Heaven) comes to warn them of
their danger, at the bidding of the Almighty-so that Man, if he
falls, may fall knowingly, by his own fault. Raphael received
and entertained; admonishes Adam; explains who his enemy
is, and why. which leads to an account oi the rebellion in
Heaven-its beginning described.
VI. The scene of the events narrated by Raphael Heaven.
He describes the three days' war in Heaven, at the end of which'
Satan and his followers were cast into Hell. The warning to
Adam repeated.
2
/
^:*




/X X I 4 - / -


CTION.


I'
I


V,-I. -The scene Eden. Raphael describes the Creation of,the World, which is,acromplished by the Son of God.
VIII.. The scene the same. Adam enquires concerning
the stars and Heavenly bodies;, Raphael answers' doubtfully.
Adam?' recounts his own first- experience of Eden-how the
Almighty forbade him to touch the Ti;ee of Knoawledge,, under
pain of what penalty; how he first saw Eve. The day-declines,
and Raphael departs —once more warning Adam.
IX. The scene the same. "Adam and Eye,.go forth to
their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places,
each.labouring apart."  Adam dissuaades  she persisting, he
yields. So,Satan (in.the form of a serpent) fid-.: 'Bher alone andtempts her.  She eats- of the fruit and in'ducesA-dam to do so.
Their sense "of sin and shame.
X. The Son of God descends to Eden, and pronounces
doom on Adam. and Eve and the Serpent. Meanwhile Satan,
returning to Pandemonium, announces the result ofhis journey,,
and lo! on a sudden he and his followers are changed to reptiles. }i
Sin,and Death' now ascend from Hell, to Edeni,, to claimn the,- \
World as- theirs,;: but the Almighty foretells their, ultimate-,oYer-;
throw by.the Son, and commands the Angels to make -changges
in the- elements and stars, whereby theEarth becomes less fair.
The repentance of Adam and Eve, who seek comfort in suppliy I
cation of the Deity. The scene has changed.often..
XI. The' Son 'intercedirig, the Father sends' Michael tod
Eden (henceforth the scene) to reveal the future to Addmabove all, his hope of redemption. After announcing to Adam
'hisapproaching banishment from Eden, Michael takes him to a,
high mountain and unrolls before him a vision of the World's
history tillthe Flood..    '
XII. Then he traces the history of Israel after the Flood,
till, the coming of Christ, with the subsequent,:progress of Christianity; ending with renewed promise of redemption. The'fier
Cherubim now descend   Michael leads Adam and Eve to the, gates of Eden/l arid they go; f6rth, sad yet:consol0ed' with 'the
hope of salvation at the last




PARADISE LOST.


Ixi


MILTON'S PREFACE ON "THE VERSE" OF
PARADISE LOST.
Milton's attitude towards rhyme reminds us of the condemnations showered on it by Elizabethan critics. Ascham in the
Schoolmaster (I 570) sneers at "our rude beggerly ryming, brought
first into Italie by Gothes and Hunnes, whan all good verses
and all good learning to, were destroyed by them...and at last
receyued into England by men of excellent wit indeede, but of
small learning, and lesse judgement in that behalfe." "Barbarous " is his darling epithet for rhymed verse. Puttenham is of
a like mind, waving aside " the rhyming poesie of the barbarians,"
and Webbe in his Discourse of English Poety (1586) takes up
the tale, ridiculing it as "tinkerly verse " —" brutish poesie"" a great decay of the good order of versifying." Why Milton
should have adopted the same position as these Elizabethan
critics who approached the question in a spirit of the merest
pedantry, and based their objections to rhyme solely on the
fact that, as a metrical principle, it was not employed by the
ancients, it is not easy to say. He uses rhyme occasionally in
Samson Agonistes, in spite of his denunciation of it here; and
his own early poems are sufficient refutation of the heresy that
therein lies "no true musical delight." Moreover, though he
appeals to the example of some European poets "of prime
note" in support of his view, yet he must have foreseen the
obvious and just retort that the weight of" custom " was against
him, and that, in particular, the Italian exponents oi versi
sciolti whom he could cite on his side made a poor showing
beside those great masters of rhyme-Dante, Ariosto, Tasso —
to whom he himself owed so much. His contemptuous dismissal of what " in every country of modern Europe had been
adopted as the basis of metrical composition2" was a characteristic touch of his resentment of criticism and defiance of
authority.
1 See, however, p. 367.
2 Courthope.




*xii


INTRODUCTION.


There is a polemical tone in his remarks, as though he were
replying to some unnamed antagonist; and I cannot help
thinking that this preface was meant to be his contribution to
the controversy then raging over the comparative advantages of
rhymed and unrhymed metres on the stage. In fact, significant
in itself, Milton's opinion becomes doubly so if regarded from
the standpoint of his contemporaries. Hardly could they fail to
see in it a retort to what Dryden had written in the behalf of
rhyme-notably in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (I665), in
which the rhymed couplet had been set forth as the best vehicle
of dramatic expression. In play after play Dryden had put his
theory into practice: others had followed his example: to
rhyme or not to rhyme-that had become the great question;
and here was Milton brushing the matter on one side as of no
moment, with the autocratic dictum that rhyme was a vain and
fond thing with which a " sage and serious " poet need have no
commerce. His readers must have detected the contemporary
application of his words-just as later on they must have
interpreted his preface to Samson Agonistes, with its pointed
eulogy of the Greek stage and its depreciation of Restoration
tragedy (and "other common interludes"), as a counterblast to
the comparison which Dryden had drawn between the modern
and the classical drama, in the interests of the former. There
is force too in the suggestion that the association of rhyme
with the amatory Caroline poets (Lycidas, 67 —69) would not
make Milton more favourable to it.
Curiously enough, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained both
contain a good deal of rhyme. We may compare it with the rare
rhymed verse, accidental or designed ("leonine "), in the Latin
poets. Cowper noted some instances in his fragment of a commentary on Paradise Lost. " Rhyme," he said, " is apt to come
uncalled, and to writers of blank verse is often extremely troublesome'." Indeed complete absence of rhyme argues some artificiality. To quote Mr Robert Bridges: "Rhyme occurs in Paradise;' The blank verse Italians have often done this [i.e. rhymed]: in
fact, it is excessively difficult to prevent in Italian" (Saintsbury).




PARADISE LOST.


Ixiii


Lost (see I. 146,8, 51; II. 220, I; IV. 24-27), but only as a natural
richness among the varieties of speech; and it would seem that
it cannot be forbidden in a long poem but by the scrupulosity
which betrays art." Possibly, however, the amount of rhyme
in the two epics exceeds what Milton would have desired. It
illustrates, I think, the terrible difficulty of revision imposed by
his blindness. Yet such is the spell of the rhythm of his verse
that one may be unconscious of the rhyme till its presence
is pointed out. Of consecutive rhymed lines, some being actual
rhymed couplets, the following passages are examples: Paradise
Lost, II. 220, 22I; IV. 956, 957; VI. 709, 710; IX. I05, Io6, 477,
478; XI. 230, 231, 597, 598, 671, 672; Paradise Reg ained, III. 214,
215; IV. 591, 592. In II. 893, 894, a slight difference of pronunciation, indicated by Milton's spelling, may account for what
appears to the eye as a couplet.   In v. 167, i68, 274, 275,
IX. 191, 192, the assonance has the effect of rhyme. Of course,
the most frequent rhyme is that which comes with an interval of
one or two intervening lines, as in two out of the three passages
remarked by Mr Bridges. Other examples1 are: Paradise Lost,
I. 274, 276, 7II, 7I3, 764, 767; II. 390, 393, 942, 944; III. 140, 142,
i68, 170; IV. 222, 224, 288, 290, 678, 680; v. I60, 162, 383, 385,
857, 859; VI. 14, I6, I6I, 163, I74, 176; VIII. I, 3, 171, 173, 229,
231; IX. 590, 59I, 606, 608; XI. 201, 204, 206, 637, 639, 740, 74I;
XII. 353, 355, 366, 368; Paradise Regained, II. 206, 208, 245, 247,
250; IV. 25, 27, 145, I47, 222, 224. As remarked before, I cannot
help thinking that a portion of this rhyme represents Milton's
inability to focus the full measure of his fastidious taste2 on the
revision of his work.
Superfluous as it may seem to us that he should justify his
adoption of blank verse-wherein his surpassing skill is the
best of all justifications-we have cause to be grateful to the
"stumblings" of the unlettered which led him to write this
1 The list is illustrative, not exhaustive.
2 It would have resented surely the substitution of Chersonese in
most modern texts for the Chersoness of the original editions in
Paradise Regained, IV. 74. See the termination of the previous line.




Ixiv                INTRODUCTION.
preface, since it happily defines the qualities for which the metre
of Paradise Lost is remarkable.
The distinguishing characteristic of Milton's blank verse is
his use of what Mr Saintsbury calls the vese-aparagrah.
Blank verse is exposed to two dangers: it may be formal and
stiff by being circumscribed in single lines or couplets; or
diffuse and formless through the sense and rhythm being carried
on beyond the couplet. In its earlier stages, exemplified by
works like Gorboduc, the metre suffered from   the former
tendency. It either closed with a strong pause at the end of
every line, or just struggled to the climax of the couplet.
Further it never extended until Marlowe took the " drumming
decasyllabon" into his hands, broke up the fetters of the
couplet-form, and by the process of overflow carried on the
rhythm from verse to verse according as the sense required.
It is in his plays that we first get verse in which variety of
cadence and pause and beat takes the place of rhyme. Milton
entered on the heritage that Marlowe and Shakespeare bequeathed, and brought blank verse to its highest pitch of
perfection as an instrument of narration.
Briefly, that perfection lies herein: if we examine a page of
Paradise Lost we find that what the poet has to say is, for the
most part, conveyed, not in single lines, nor in rigid coupletsbut in flexible combinations of verses, which wait upon his
meaning, not twisting or constraining the sense, but suffering it
to be "variously drawn out," so that the thought is merged in
its expression.
These combinations, or paragraphs, are informed by a
perfect internal concent and rhythm -held together by a chain
of harmony. With a writer less sensitive to sound this free
method of versifying would result in mere chaos. But Milton's
ear is so delicate, that he steers unfaltering through the long,
involved passages, distributing the pauses and rests and allitera1 Cf. Professor Mackail's fine metaphor for it-"the planetary
wheeling of the long period "-" that continuous planetary movement '
(Lecture II. on Milton in The Spjrings of Helicon, pp. 156, 196).




PARADISE LOST.


Ixv


tive balance with a cunning which knits the paragraph into a
coherent, regulated whole. He combines, in fact, the two essential qualities of blank verse-freedom and form: the freedom
that admits variety of effect, without which a long narrative
becomes intolerably monotonous; and the form which saves an
unrhymed measure from drifting into that which is nearer to
bad prose than to good verse. And restoration of form was
precisely what the metre needed. With the later Jacobean and
Caroline dramatists metrical freedom had turned to "licence
and slipshodness...then comes Milton,...takes non-dramatic
blank verse in hand once for all, and introduces into it the
order, proportion, and finish which dramatic blank verse had
then lost'."  Milton in fact was the re-creator of blank verse,
"the first to establish this peculiarly English form of metre in
non-dramatic poetry'." Nor was he unconscious of the character
of his achievement. Here, in the last lines of his preface, he
congratulates himself upon "an example set"; and many years
before, in the grandpassage apostrophising the Divine Goodness
at the end of the treatise Of Reformation, he had written, with
obvious reference to the great design that ruled his whole life:
"Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one
may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and
lofty measure to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and
marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages2." It
were hard to frame an apter summary of the metre of Paradzse
Lost than " new and lofty."
As he lays such stress upon the internal economy and
balance of his verse-paragraphs, much must depend on the
pause or rest which in English prosody answers, to some extent,
to the classical ccesura. Dr Masson notes that Milton's favourite
pause is at the end of the third foot. These are typical
specimens:
"I, at first, with two fair gifts
Created him endowed | -with happiness
Saintsbury, History of English Prosody, II. pp. o28, 224.
2   Ip. II. 418.




lxvi                 INTRODUCTION.
And immortality; I that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe.
Till I provided death: ( so death becomes
His final remedy" I (xI. 57-62).
Next in frequency comes the pause after the second foot; cf.
"ere fallen
From innocence" I (xi. 29, 30).
"Made one with me, I as I with thee am one " (x. 44).
Scarcely need we say that in this, as in everything else,
Milton never forgets that variety of effect is essential.
It remains to note two other remarks made by Milton.
One of the elements, he says, of "true musical delight" is
"fit quantity of syllables." By this, I think, he meant that
every word should bear its natural accent, i.e. that a word
should not be forced by the exigence of the metre to bear
an accent alien to it. Rather, a poet should be careful to
"span words with just note and accent1,"' so that each stress
should fall naturally, and the " fit quantity" of the component
parts of a line not be violated. Considering the length of
Paradise Lost, it is marvellous how he maintains an unfaltering
appropriateness of accent. But another interpretation of his
words is possible, namely that by " fit quantity of syllables" he
meant "that blank verse might be extended beyond the usual
number of ten syllables when its sense and feeling so required2."
Taken in this way, "quantity" would have reference to the
trisyllabic element in his verse by which the number of syllables
in a line is increased, and perhaps more obviously to the
hypermetrical element.
One peculiarity of the metre of Paradise Lost, pointed out
by Coleridge, is the rarity of verses with an extra syllable (or
two extra syllables) at the close. Shakespeare, of course, uses
1Sonnel to Henry Lawes.
2 Courthope, History of English Poetry, III. 428. Personally I
think that in a specifically metrical context " quantity " conveys the
notion "long" or "short," i.e. with or without accent (stress).




PARADISE LOST.                    lxvii
them freely-especially in his later plays, and the percentage of
them in Comus and Samson Agonistes is high. But in Paradise
Lost Milton avoids them. There are several varieties of this
extra-syllable verse-e.g. lines (i) where the supernumerary
syllable comes at the close; (ii) where it comes in the course
of the line, particularly after the second foot; (iii) where there
are two extra syllables at the end, as in the line, "Like one I that
means I his prolper harm, I in mAnacles" (Coriolanus, I. 9. 57);
and (iv) where there are two extra syllables in the middle, as in
Coriolanus, I. I. 230, "Our mustly sulperfluily 1. See our I best
elders."  In Comus there are examples of all four varieties: in
Paradise Lost of only two —(i) and (iii). This paucity is an
illustration of what must be recognised as the great metrical
feature of the epic-that its metre is mainly iambic, and consequently decasyllabic in character. Such verse has a slower,
statelier movement, and is therefore appropriate to a narrative
poem that deals with the loftiest themes in an elevated, solemn
style. Verse, on the other hand, that admits the supernumerary
syllable at the close of the line tends towards a conversational
rapidity of rhythm which makes it suitable for the purposes of
the dramatist. It is typical of Milton's "inevitable," almost
infallible, art that he should vary his style so precisely to fit the
several characteristics and requirements of the drama and of
epic narration. Such variation illustrates "a quality for which
he seldom or never gets the full credit due to him, a dramatic
sense of extreme delicacy. With him, as with Sophocles, this
quality is so fine that it may easily elude observation2.2"
Again, another element of the pleasure offered by poetry
lies in "apt numbers."  Here Milton referred to that adaptation
of expression to subject whereby the sound becomes an echo to
the sense. This adaptation is shown in its simplest form by the
1 In most of the cases of one extra syllable it is a present participle
that is affected. I believe that the cases with two such syllables arein Milton-confined to words like society; cf. P. R. I. 302, "Such
solitude before choicest society." So in P. L. vIII. 216. Of course in
these cases an " Alexandrine " solves the difficulty.
2 Th/e Springs of Helicon, p. 175 (see also p. 78).




Ixviii


INTRODUCTION.


suggestion of specific effects such as movement or sound1.
But it dominates the whole relation of the manner to the matter.
No one has understood the art of blending the thought with
its expression better than Milton. "What other poets effect,"
says Dr Guest2, "as it were by chance, Milton achieved by the
aid of science and art; he studied the aptness of his numbers,
and diligently tutored an ear which nature had gifted with the
most delicate sensibility. In the flow of his rhythm, in the
quality of his letter sounds, in the disposition of his pauses, his
verse almost ever fits the subject, and so insensibly does
poetry blend with this-the last beauty of exquisite versification-that the reader may sometimes doubt whether it be the
thought itself, or merely the happiness of its expression, which
is the source of a gratification so deeply felt."
We have seen that Milton may have had in view the scansion of his verse when he referred to the "fit quantity of syllables."
That scansion has as its basic principle the "pure iambic"carmen iambicum-so much canvassed by Elizabethan metricists.
This stately, self-contained line of five feet in rising rhythm"O Prince, O chief of many throned powers-" lies at the centre
of the prosody of Paradise Lost. So much is patent; nor are the
main means by which it is varied obscure. By letting the lines
run on so that the rhythm of the unit of five feet passes into the
richer harmony of groups of units Milton gives us the "verseparagraph." And by substituting each of the possible variations
of the disyllabic foot-namely, the trochee (or inversion of
rhythm), the spondee and the pyrrhic —he tempers the monotony
of a single-foot measure to "stops of various quills." But these
foot-modifications had become part of the machinery of blank
1 Cf. e.g.. 742-46, 768, II. 947-50, IOI, 1022, VII. 495 (note),
x. 521-28 (note). So in II. 64Iwe get the sense of vast space; in II.
879-83 of combined movement and jarring noise; in II. 890-906 of
confusion; in Iv. I8I (note) of scornful laughter; in viI. 480 of length.
A very elaborate example (admirably analysed in Mayor's Modern
English Metre, pp. 99-I06) is the description of the march of the fallen
angels in I. 549-62.
2 English Rhythms, p. 530.




PARADISE LOST.


Ixix


verse as developed since the pioneer days. There is nothing
specifically Miltonic about the use of them in Paradise Lost,
except possibly as regards the spondee.  Cowper was inclined to think that "the grand secret to which his [Milton's]
verse is principally indebted for its stately movement" is the
frequent employment of spondaic feet: " the more long syllables
there are in a verse, the more the line of it is protracted, and
consequently the pace, with which it moves, is the more majestic."
That Milton's use of the trochee (or rare double trochee) was
due to the partiality of the Italians for this foot seems a needless
assumption, the trochee having been firmly established by
Marlowe. And "pyrrhic" is merely a rather pedantic-sounding
term for a quite ordinary feature of blank verse-namely, the
occurrence of a foot with a weak stress. Dr Abbott estimates
that of Shakespc,,'s lines "rather less than one of three has
the full number of five emphatic accents." I doubt whether the
instances are so frequent in Milton; but they are sufficiently
common to make it desirable to remember that five stresses are
not indispensable-rather that for variety's sake it is necessary
that one or more should occasionally be remitted. Taken as a
whole, the obviously disyllabic element of Milton's poetry does
not present much difficulty: the crux lies in the less obviously
trisyllabic strata.
This is a subject on which irreconcilable opinions are held;
the Miltonic blank verse described by Dr Masson is simply a
different thing from the Miltonic blank verse described by Mr
Bridges; and the essential truth seems to me to lie very much
nearer to the views of the latter critic. I think that Milton
himself would have been astonished at the elaborate trisyllabic
apparatus-bacchics and amphibrachs and cretics rare-with
which the verse of Paradise Lost has been credited. The baseprinciple of the slow-moving, majestic iambic decasyllable is
lost in the mazes of so complex a system. On the other hand,
to attempt to ban the trisyllabic foot altogether from his metre
involves impossible twistings and distortions. We shall not be
far astray if we steer a middle course and admit the anapaest




lxx


INTRODUCTION.


(" the foot-of-all-work of English prosody ") and (to a much less
important share) the dactyl and the tribrach'. These may be
taken to represent collectively "the trisyllabic foot, which was
inherent in the nature of the [English] language, and had
been recognised by long poetical usage2." It reproduces "the
swift triple rhythm2" of Old English poetry, while the iambic
element corresponds with the typical movement of the Greek
senarius. And in the verse of Paradise Lost it is the iambic
movement that prevails, especially perhaps in the first six books,
which are cast more in the typically grand Miltonic manner
than the second half of the poem, where the less impressive
and less coherent interest of the subject is reflected in the style.
But the measure of this iambic predominance depends on the
degree to which the principle of elision of vowels applies.
"Elision " comprehends not merely the cases where a vowel
must be dropped altogether in pronunciation, but those more
numerous cases where the metre indicates, or seems to indicate,
that a vowel has something les3 than its normal quantitative
value, so that it is either slurre(' or made almost to coalesce
with a preceding or succeeding e.-. Such elision resolves
itself practically into cases of the open vowel and the vowel
(or double vowel) followed by a liquid. Elision of the former
type belongs to poetic usage, of the latter to the currency
of everyday speech; and each is permissive, not obligatory.
Moreover, elision is a matter of scansion, not necessarily of
pronunciation and reading. It is, I think, perfectly true to say
that " Milton came to scan his verses one way, and read
them another." But is it not true of all poetic elision? Who
1 See Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody, I. 403, II. 259, 26o.
2 Courthope. Compare also Mayor (Modern English Metre, p. 15):
"Anapaestic rhythm was familiar to the Elizabethan poets, not merely
from its use by older writers, such as the author of Piers Ploughman,
but from the later 'tumbling verse' as used by Skelton and Udall."
And again (p. 44): "Trisyllabic rhythm is a marked feature of the
Old English alliterative verse, and of the 'tumbling measure' which
followed it."




PARADISE LOST.


Ixxi


knows what precisely happened to the elided vowels of Greek
and Latin verse? Metrically their suppression may have been
absolute, as it is (I am told) in Greek MSS.: but in actual
declamation? Similarly, though I cannot doubt that Milton
scanned "th' Aonian mount" and "th' oblivious pool," yet I
should not like to say that he read the words so. Nor should I
like to have to determine whether in scansion he extended this
principle of the elision of the open vowel beyond monosyllables
like the and to and the terminaly which slides so easily into a
vowel at the beginning of the next word. Thus it satisfies my
"gross unpurged ear" to scan "Who highly thus t' entitle me
vouchsaf'st" (x. 170); but to wrest an iambus out of the second
foot of the line " Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw and pined "
(IV. 848) by eliding the double vowel ue (" Virtue in I her shape")
seems a needless violence, when the easy access of the anapaest
(" Virtue I in her shape ") solh es all. And so with many another
line.
Some light is thrown on his difficult question of Milton's
elisions by the Cambridge a.;ographs of his earlier poems. The
evidence, indeed, is not A' i'iusive because the MSS. are not
consistent in giving always an elided form where the metre
requires one as an alternative to a trisyllabic scansion. But one
cannot help drawing some inference from elisions like "Temper'd to th' oaten flute," and elided forms such as watriewestring-batning-wandring —toured, and the many contractions of the inflections of verbs, such as honoust-tun'stJforct-nur'st-stoopt-stolze —dan'ct'.  With some of these
examples before us, it is not hard to conjecture how Milton
would have scanned, say, Paradise Lost, XI. 779, "Wandering
that watery desert; I had hope." Similarly when we come
across lines of the epic in which Heaven appears to be equivalent
to a monosyllable, it is apposite to remember that his autograph
has heavn in the prose draft of Adam unparadiz'd (line 2).
1 Cf. Lycidas, 4, i2, 23, 29, 31, 33; Arcades, 21; Comus, 39;
Sonnets ii. and xIII.




lxxii                 INTRODUCTION.
Andfaen in the prose draft of Isaac redeemd serves as a metrical
gloss on I. 84, "< If thou beest he-but Oh how fallen! how
changed!"    The drift of such elisions and contractions is
obviously to diminish the trisyllabic element, and maintain that
iambic rhythm which was ever present' to Milton's ear and ever
wafting the proud full sail of his verse.
1 Two groups of exceptions to the general movement of his lines
have been remarked, viz. passages where he indulges his taste for
sonorous proper names, and passages " where he follows the Authorised
Version of the Bible-especially where the speaker is the Deity."




COMMENDATORY VERSES.
IN PARADISUM AMISSAM SUMMI POETIE
JOHANNIS MILTONI.
QUI legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni
Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis?
Res cunctas, et cunctarum primordia rerum,
Et fata, et fines, continet iste liber.
Intima panduntur magni penetralia mundi,
Scribitur et toto quicquid in orbe latet;
Terraeque, tractusque maris, ccelumque profundum,
Sulphureumque Erebi flammivomumque specus;
Quaeque colunt terras, pontumque, et Tartara caeca,
Quaeque colunt summi lucida regna poli; -       I
Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam;
Et sine fine Chaos, et sine fine Deus;
Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine,
In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor.
Haec qui speraret quis crederet esse futurum?
Et tamen hac hodie terra Britanna legit.
0 quantos in bella duces, quse protulit arna!
Quae canit, et quanta, praelia dira tuba!
Ccelestes acies, atque in certamine ccelum!
Et quse ccelestes pugna deceret agros!          20
Quantus in setheriis tollit se Lucifer armis,
Atque ipso graditur vix Michaele minor!


P. L.


I




2


COMMENDATORY VERSES.


Quantis et quam funestis concurritur iris,
Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit!
Dum vulsos montes ceu tela reciproca torquent,
Et non mortali desuper igne pluunt:
Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus,
Et metuit pugnae non superesse suse.
At simul in coelis Messiae insignia fulgent,
Et currus animes, armaque digna Deo,            30
Horrendumque rotae strident, et sseva rotarum
Erumpunt torvis fulgura luminibus,
Et flamms vibrant, et vera tonitrua rauco
Admistis flammis insonuere polo,
Excidit attonitis mens omnis, et impetus omnis,
Et cassis dextris irrita tela cadunt;
Ad pcenas fugiunt, et, ceu foret Orcus asylum,
Infernis certant condere se tenebris.
Cedite, Romani Scriptores; cedite, Graii;
Et quos fama recens vel celebravit anus:        40
-Iaec quicunque leget tantum cecinisse putabit
Maeonidem ranas, Virgilium culices.
S. B., M.D.
ON   PARADISE LOST.
WHEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,
In slender book his vast design unfold,
Messiah crowned, God's reconciled decree,
Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heaven, Hell, Earth, Chaos, all; the argument
Held me a while misdoubting his intent,
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song
(So Samson groped the temple's posts in spite),
The world o'erwhelming to revenge his sight.      Io




COMMENDATORY VERSES.


3
13


Yet as I read, soon growing less severe,
I liked his project, the success did fear;
Through that wide field how he his way should find
O'er which lame Faith leads Understanding blind;
Lest he perplexed the things he would explain,
And what was easy he should render vain.
Or, if a work so infinite he spanned,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill imitating would excel)                20
Might hence presume the whole Creation's day
To change in scenes, and show it in a play.
Pardon me, mighty Poet; nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinced, and none will dare
Within thy labours to pretend a share.
Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit;
So that no room is here for writers left,
But to detect their ignorance or theft.          30
That majesty which through thy work doth reign
Draws the devout, deterring the profane.
And things divine thou treat'st of in such state
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horror on us seize;
Thou sing'st with so much gravity and ease,
And above human flight dost soar aloft
With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The bird named from that Paradise you sing
So never flags, but always keeps on wing.        40
Where could'st thou words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expense of mind?
Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.
Well might'st thou scorn thy readers to allure
With tinkling rime, of thy own sense secure;
I-2




4             COMMENDATORY VERSES.
While the Town-Bayes writes all the while and spells,
And, like a pack-horse, tires without his bells.
Their fancies like our bushy points appear; -
The poets tag them, we for fashion wear.
I too, transported by the mode, offend,
And while I meant to praise thee, must commend.
Thy verse created like thy theme sublime,
In number, weight, and measure, needs not rime.
A. M.




THE VERSE'.


The measure is English heroic verse, without rime, as that
of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rime being no
necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in
longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to
set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by
the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom,
but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to
express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse,
than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause,
therefore, some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note
have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have
also, long since, our best English tragedies; as a thing of itself,
to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight;
which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables,
and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another,
not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the
1 Preceded by some remarks from the publisher:
The Printer to the Reader.
Courteous Reader, there was no Argument at first intended to the
book; but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have
procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others,
why the poem rimes not.-S. Simmons.




,6              ~THE- VER:SL;
learnedl anclients, both in  oer  and, all good orator  This
~eget then, of rirae. so little~is to, be taike:nf for a de~fect, though
ijmay ~seemi so perhaps, to -vulgar, readeifs, that- it rafheri is, to 'be
steemed an exaifipl:e et, thie first in, Enlso anien  iet
tcovered to heroic po~1ifrdrnm the ttoublesome and modern
~.,ondage of kiming.,




BOOK I.




THE ARGUMENT.


This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole sulbect, Man's
disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was
placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the Serpent, or rather
Satan in the Serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his
side many legions of Angels, was by the command of God driven out
of Heaven with all his crew into the great Deep. Which action passed
over, the Poem hastes into the midst of things; presenting Satan with
his Angels now fallen into Hell, described here, not in the Centre (for
Heaven and Earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet
accursed) but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: here
Satan with his Angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and
astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion; calls up
him who, next in order and dignity, lay by him; they confer of their
miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the
same manner confounded; they rise: their numbers, array of battle,
their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in
Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech;
comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven; but tells them lastly
of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an
ancient prophecy or report in Heaven; for that Angels were long before
this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find
out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers
to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium,
the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: the infernal
Peers there sit in council.




BOOK 1.


F Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more. and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss,
And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark




PARADISE LOST.


Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great argument
')"  I may asser.t Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Say first (for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell) say first what cause
lMoved our grand parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off        30
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides.
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The Mother of Mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,       40
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
7Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition; there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night 50
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded though immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain




BOOK I.


II


Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild:             60
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As ore great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With, ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared          70
For thonS rebellious; here their prison ordained
In utter darkness, and their portion set,
As far reknoved from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh how <unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the,companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns; and, welteri  by his side,  "-y
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named         So
Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy,
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:
"If thou beest he-but Oh how fallen! how changed
From him, who in the happy realms of light,
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright! if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope




12


PARADISE LOST.


And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined      90
In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
From what highth fallen, so much the stronger proved
He with his thunder: and till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind,
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along       I00
Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,  y
His utmost power with adverse power opposed  /
In dubiouls battle on the plains of Heaven,  /
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost: the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might        Ho
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grate
With suppliant knee, and deify his power
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late
Doubted his empire-that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods
And this empyreal substance cannot fail;
Since, through experience of this great event,
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
WVe may with more successful hope resolve        120
To wage by force or guile eternal war,




D 0 0 I.


13


Irreconcilable to our grand foe,
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven."
So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain,
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
And himn thus answered soon his bold compeer:
"O Prince, 0 Chief of many throned powers,
That led the embattled Seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds       103
Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual King,
And put to proof his high supremacy,
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate!
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as gods and Heavenly essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,            140
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe almighty, since no less
Than such could have o'erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire;
Or do him mightier service, as his thralls
By right of wear, whate'er his business he,     150
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do his errands in the gloomy deep?
What can it then avail, though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being


Id




I4


PARADISE LOST.


To undergo eternal punishment?"
Whereto with speedy words the Arch-Fiend replied:
"Fallen 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,              i60
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 labour 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 recalled
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit            170
Back to the gates of Heaven; the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid
The fiery surge that from the precipice
Of Heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Winged 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 the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,     80o
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering 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 harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend




BOOK 1.


15


Our enemy, our own loss how repair,
How overcome this dire calamity,
What reinforcement we may gain from hope,        Igo
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,
TitaniaA, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or 'Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast       200
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream.
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixbd anchor in his scaly rind,
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence     2I0
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
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
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 poured.    220




PARADISE LOST.


Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights-if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue, as when the force      230
X Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering LEtna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate,
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,    240
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat
That we must change for Heaven? this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,  250
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.




BOOK I.


I7


/jhe mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.,
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:      260
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
The associates and co-partners of our loss,
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
And call them not to share with us their part
In this unhappy mansion, or once more
With rallied arms to try what may be yet
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?"  270
So Satan spake; and him Beelzebub
Thus answered: "Leader of those armies bright
Which but the Omnipotent none could have foiled,
If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge
Of hope in fears and dangers-heard so oft
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal-they will soon resume
New courage and revive, though now they lie
Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,    230
As we erewhile, astounded and amazedNo wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth!"
He scarce had ceased when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shicld,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast. The broad circumference


P. L.


2




IS8


PARADISE LOST.


Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb.
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,              290
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
His spear-to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wandHe walked with, to support uneasy steps
Over the burning marle, not like those steps
On Heaven's azure; and the torrid clime
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire.
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called         300
His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcases       310
And broken chariot-wheels: so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He called so loud that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded: "Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the flower of Heaven, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal Spirits: or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose




BOOK I.


19


Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find       320
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
kOr in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the conqueror, who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
'With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates discern
The advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!"            330
They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch
jOn duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir them-elves ere well awake.
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud  340
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile:
So numberless were those bad Angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires;
Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear
Of their great Sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:   350
A multitude, like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
2-2




20


PARADISE LOST.


Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Forthwith, from every squadron and each band,
The heads and leaders thither haste where stood
Their great Commander; godlike shapes, and forms
Excelling human, princely dignities,
And powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones;  360
Though of their names in Heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased
By their rebellion from the Books of Life.
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve
(Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the Earth,
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of Man,
By falsities and lies the greatest part
Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
God their Creator, and the invisible
Glory of him that made them to transform        370
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned
With gay religions full of pomp and gold,
And devils to adore for deities.
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof.     380
>, The chief were those who, from the pit of Hull
Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst fix
Their seats long after next the seat of God,
Their altars by his altar, gods adored
Among the nations round, and durst abide




BOOK I.


21


Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned
Between the Cherubim; yea, often placed
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned,      390
And with their darkness durst affront his light.
First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears,
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite
Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain,
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream
Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart       400
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build
His temple right against the temple of God
On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell.
Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines,       410
And Eleale to the Asphaltic pool.
Peor his other name, when he enticed
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate;
Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell.




22


PARADISE LOST.


With these came they who, from the bordering flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts         420
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth-those male,
These feminine. For Spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure,
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,                 430
And works of love or enmity fulfil.
For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their living Strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads as low
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon        440
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock         450
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood




BOOK I.


23


Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,         460
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshipers:
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man
And downward fish; yet had his temple high
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,
And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.
He also against the house of God was bold:      470
A leper once he lost and gained a king,
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared
A crew who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek          480
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape
The infection, when their borrowed gold composed
The calf in Oreb; and the rebel king




24


PARADISE LOST.


Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan,
Likening his Maker to the grazed oxJehovah, who, in one night, when he passed
From Egypt marching, equalled with one stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd  490
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself. TOP him no temple stood
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage; and when night          500
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.
These were the prime in order and in might;
The rest were long to tell, though far renowned,
The Ionian gods-of Javan's issue held
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth,
Their boasted parents: Titan, Heaven's first-born,  5IO
With his enormous brood, and birthright seized
By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found;
So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in Crete
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top
Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air,
Their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian cliff,




BOOK I.


25


Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric land; or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields,         520
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles.  V1
All these and more came flocking; but with looks
Downcast and damp, yet such wherein appeared
Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their Chief
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost
In loss itself; which on his countenance cast
Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised
Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears:  530
Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound
Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared
His mighty standard. That proud honour claimed
Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall:
Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled
The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind,
With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed,
Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds:           540
At which the universal host up-sent
A shout. that tore Hell's concave, and beyond
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.
All in a moment through the gloom were seen
Ten thousand banners rise into the air,
With orient colours waving; with them rose
A forest huge of spears; and thronging helms
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array
Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood            550




26


PARADISE LOST.


Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised
To highth of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle, and instead of rage
Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat;
Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage,
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase
Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they,
Breathing united force with fixed thought,      560
Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil; and now
Advanced in view they stand, a horrid front
Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise
Of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield,
Awaiting what command their mighty Chief
Had to impose. He through the armed files
Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse
The whole battalion views-their order due,
Their visages and stature as of gods;            570
Their number last he sums. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength
Glories; for never, since created Man,
Met such embodied force as, named with these,
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes: though all the giant brood
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,             580
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,




1~


BOOK I.                     27
Damasco, or MAarocco, or Trebisond;
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed
Their dread Commander. He, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent,             590
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon,
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone
Above them all the Archangel; but his face        6oo
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
For ever now to have their lot in pain;
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
Of Heaven, and from eternal splendours flung      6io
For his revolt; yet faithful how they stood,
Their glory withered: as, when Heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines,
With singed top their stately growth, though bare,
Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared
To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend




It


28                PARADISE LOST.
From wing to wing, and half enclose him round
With all his peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last  620
Words interwove with sighs found out their way:
"   myriads of immortal Spirits! 0 Powers
Matchless, but with the Almighty!-and that strife
Was not inglorious, though the event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change,
Hateful to utter. But what power of mind,
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth
Of knowledge past or present, could have feared
How such united force of gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse?     630
For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to re-ascend,
Self-raised, and re-possess their native seat?
For me, be witness all the host of Heaven,
If counsels different, or danger shunned
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in Heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom, and his regal state            640
Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know our own,
So as not either to provoke, or dread
New war, provoked; our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not; that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.




BOOK I.


29


Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife    650
There went a fame in Heaven that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the Sons of Heaven.
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere;
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial Spirits in bondage, nor the Abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired,    66o
For who can think submission? War, then, war
Open or understood, must be resolved."
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 illumined Hell. Highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven.
There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top  670
Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,
The work of sulphur: Thither, winged with speed,
A numerous brigad hastened: as when bands
Of pioners, with spade and pickaxe armed,
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field,
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell      679
From Heaven, for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold,




30


PARADISE LOST.


Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beatific. By him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire    690
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortrl things, and wondering tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength, and art, are easily outdone
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 prepared,       700
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion-dross.
A third as soon had formed within the ground
A various mould, and from the boiling cells
By strange conveyance filled 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              7Io
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
With golden architrave; nor did there want


t




BOOK I.


31


Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven;
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat            720
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile
Stood fixed her stately highth, and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide
Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth
And level pavement: from the archid roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude              730
Admiring entered, and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In Heaven by many a towered structure high,
Where sceptred Angels held their residence,
And sat as princes, whom the supreme King
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
Each in his Hierarchy, the Orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell        740
From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements:_from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star
On Lemnos, the AEgoean isle. Thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before; nor aught availed him now


I




32


PARADISE LOST.


To hivea built in Heaven high towers; nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong sent        750
With his industrious crew to build in Hell.
Meanwhile the winged haralds, by command
Of sovran power, with awful ceremony
And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim
A solemn council forthwith to be held
At Pandemonium, the high capital
Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called
From every band and squared regiment
By place or choice the worthiest; they anon
With hundreds and with thousands trooping came   760
Attended. All access was thronged, the gates
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall
(Though like a covered field, where champions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair
Defied the best of Panim chivalry
To mortal combat, or career with lance)
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air,
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive   770
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state-affairs. So thick the aery crowd
Swarmed and were straitened; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! they but now who seemed
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that pygmean race        780
Beyond the Indian mount; or faery elves,




BOOK I.


33


Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Inoon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,   790
Though without number still, amidst the hall
Of that infernal court. But far within,
And in their own dimensions like themselves,
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim
In close recess and secret conclave sat,
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,
Frequent and full. After short silence then,
And summons read, the great consult began.


P. L.


3




- At




BOOK II.




THE ARGUMENT.
The consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battle be to
be hazarded for the recovery of Heaven: some advise it, others dissuade.
A third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the
truth of that prophecy or tradition in Heaven concerning another world,
and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, about this time to be created. Their doubt who shall be sent
on this difficult search: Satan, their chief, undertakes alone the voyage;
is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake
them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations
lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his
journey to Hell-gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard
them; by whom at length they are opened, and discover to him the
great gulf between Hell and Heaven; with what difficulty he passes
through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight
of this new world which he sought.




K


" BOOK     II.'
H    TGH on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus displayed:           o1
"Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heaven!
For since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen,
I give not Heaven for lost: from this descent
Celestial Virtues rising will appear
More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate.
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heaven,
I)id first create your leader, next, free choice,
'With what besides, in counsel or in fight,      20
-lath been achieved of merit, yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more




38


PARADISE LOST.


Established in a safe unenvied throne,
Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferior; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes.Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? -Where there is then no good    30
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction; for none sure will claim in Hell
Precedence, none whose portion is so small
Of present pain that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. With this advantage then
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in Heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assured us; and by what best way,     40
Whether of open war or covert guile,
We now debate; who can advise may speak."
He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.
His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse,
He recked not, and these words thereafter spake:  50
"My sentence is for open war: of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait




BOOK II.


39


The signal to ascend, sit lingering here
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling-place
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his tyranny who reigns
By our delay? No! let us rather choose,            60
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine he shall hear
Infernal thunder, and for lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his Angels, and his throne itself
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps             70
The way seems difficult and steep to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still,
That in our proper motion we ascend
Up to our native seat; descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight          80o
We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then;
The event is feared: should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction-if there be in Hell
Fear to be worse destroyed! What can be worse
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned
In this abhorred deep to utter woe;
Where pain of unextinguishable fire




40


PARAiXDISE LO.ST.


Must exercise us without hope of end,
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge       go
Inexorably, and the torturing hour,
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than thus,
We should be quite abolished, and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the highth enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential-happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being!Or if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst         I00
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge."
He ended frowning, and his look denounced
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On the other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed      H10
For dignity composed, and high exploit.
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropt manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began:
"I should be much for open war, 0 Peers,
As not behind in hate, if what was urged        120
Main reason to persuade immediate war




BOOK II.


I


Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success;
When he who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution, as the scope
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled
With armed watch, that render all access         1;0
Impregnable; oft on the bordering deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night,
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all Hell should rise
With blackest insurrection, to confound
Heaven's purest light, yet our great enemy
All incorruptible would on his throne
Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould
Incapable of stain would soon expel              140
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire,
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair: we must exasperate
The almighty victor to spend all his rage,
And that must end us, that must be our cureTo be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated Night,            150
Devoid of sense and motion? And who knows,
Let this be good, whether our angry foe
Can give it, or wvill ever? How he can
Is doubtful; that he never will is sure.




42


PARADISE LOST.


Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire,
Belike through impotence, or unaware,
To give his enemies their wish, and end
Them in his anger, whom his anger saves
To punish endless? 'Wherefore cease we, then?'
Say they who counsel war; 'we are decreed,       i60
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe;
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more,
What can we suffer worse?' Is this then worst,
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms?
What when we fled amain, pursued and strook
With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us? this Hell then seemed
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay
Chained on the burning lake? that sure was worse.
What if the breath that kindled those grim fires,  170
Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage,
And plunge us in the flames? or from above
Should intermitted vengeance arm again
His red right hand to plague us? What if all
Her stores were opened, and this firmament
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire,
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall
One day upon our heads; while we perhaps,
Designing or exhorting glorious war,
Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled,       180
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey
Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains;
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end! This would.be worse.
War therefore, open or concealed, alike




BOOK II.


43


My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
Views all things at one view? He from Heaven's highth
All these our motions vain sees and derides,      I91
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles.
Shall we then live thus vile, the race of Heaven
Thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer here
Chains and these torments? Better these than worse,
By my advice; since fate inevitable
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree,
The victor's will. To suffer, as to do,
Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust         200
That so ordains: this was at first resolved,
If we were wise, against so great a foe
Contending, and so doubtful what might fall.
I laugh, when those who at the spear are bold
And vent'rous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear
What yet they know must follow-to endure
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain,
The sentence of their conqueror. This is now
Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear,
Our supreme foe in time may much remit            210
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed,
Not mind us not offending, satisfied
With what is punished; whence these raging fires
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames.
Our purer essence then will overcome
Their noxious vapour, or inured not feel,
Or changed at length, and to the place conformed
In temper and in nature, will receive
Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain;
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light;  220




44


PARADISE LOST.


Besides what hope the never-ending flight
Of future days may bring, what chance, what change
Worth waiting, since our present lot appears
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,
If we procure not to ourselves more woe."
Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb,
Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon spake:
"Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven
We war, if war be best, or to regain            230
Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife.
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain
The latter; for what place can be for us
Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's Lord supreme
We overpower? Suppose he should relent
And publish grace to all, on promise made
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive        240
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing
Forced Halleluiahs; while he lordly sits
Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes
Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers,
Our servile offerings? This must be our task
In Heaven, this our delight; how wearisome
Eternity so spent in worship paid
To whom we hate! Let us not then pursue,
By force impossible, by leave obtained          250
Unacceptable, though in Heaven, our state
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own




BOOK IT.


45


Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile plomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things Qf small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
WVe can create, and in what place soe'er          260
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and endurance. This deep world
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all-ruling Sire
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured,
And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar,
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles Hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil          270
WVants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements, these piercing fires
As soft as now severe, our temper changed
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain. All things invite
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state
Of order, how in safety best we may               280
Compose our present evils, with regard
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise."
He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled
The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long




46


PARADISE LOST.


Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by chance,
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay
After the tempest: such applause was heard      290
As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
Advising peace; for such another field
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the fear
Of thunder and the sword of Michael
Wrought still within them; and no less desire
To found this nether empire, which might rise,
By policy, and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven.
Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave       300
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin. Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake:
"Thrones and imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now           311
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote
Inclines, here to continue, and build up here
A growing empire-doubtless! while we dream,
And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league




BOOK II.                     47
Banded against his throne, but to remain          320
In strictest bondage, though thus far removed,
Under the inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude. For he, be sure,
In highth or depth, still first and last will reign
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over Hell extend
His empire, and with iron sceptre rule
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and war?
War hath determined us, and foiled with loss      330
Irreparable; terms of peace yet none
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given
To us enslaved, but custody severe,
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,
But, to our power, hostility and hate,
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least V
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel?         340
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need
With dangerous expedition to invade
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,
Or ambush from the deep. What if we find
Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven
Err not), another world, the happy seat
Of some new race called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more        350
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath,




48


PARADISE LOST.


That shook Heaven's whole circumference, confirmed.
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould,
Or substance, how endued, and what their power,
And where their weakness, how attempted best,
By force or subtlety. Though Heaven be shut,
And Heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lie exposed,  360
The utmost border of his kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it; here, perhaps,
Some advantageous act may be achieved
By sudden onset: either with Hell-fire
To waste his whole creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive, as we are driven,
The puny habitants; or if not drive,
Seduce them to our party, that their God
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works. This would surpass       370
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance; when his darling sons,
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse
Their frail original, and faded bliss,
Faded so soon! Advise if this be worth
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here
Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised
By Satan, and in part proppsed; for whence,     380
But from the author of all ill, could spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race
Of Mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell
To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great Creator? But their spite still serves




BOOK II.


49


His glory to augment. The bold design
Pleased highly those infernal States, and joy
Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent
They vote: whereat his speech he thus renews:
"Well have ye judged, well ended long debate,  390
Synod of gods, and, like to what ye are,
Great things resolved; which from the lowest deep
Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate,
Nearer our ancient seat; perhaps in view
Of those bright confines, whence, with neighbouring arms
And opportune excursion, we may chance
Re-enter Heaven; or else in some mild zone
Dwell not unvisited of Heaven's fair light,
Secure, and at the brightening orient beam
Purge off this gloom;,the soft delicious air,    400
To heal the scar of these corrosive fires,
Shall breathe her balm. But first, whom shall we send
In search of this new world? whom shall we find
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss,
And through the palpable obscure find out
His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight,
Upborne with indefatigable wings
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive
The happy isle? What strength, what art, can then 410
Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe
Through the strict senteries and stations thick
Of Angels watching round? Here he had need
All circumspection, and we now- no less
Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send
The weight of all, and our last hope, relies."
This said, he sat; and expectation held
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared


P. L.


4




5o


PARADISE LOST.


To second, or oppose, or undertake
The perilous attempt; but all sat mute,          420
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; and each
In other's countenance read his own dismay,
Astonished. None among the choice and prime
Of those Heaven-warring champions could be found
So hardy as to proffer or accept,
Alone, the dreadful voyage; till at last
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake:
"0 Progeny of Heaven, empyreal Thrones!        430
With reason hath deep silence and demur
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light;
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire,
Outrageous to devour, immures us round
Ninefold, and gates of burning adamant,
Barred over us, prohibit all egress.
These passed, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next,
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being        440
Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf.
If thence he scape into whatever world,
Or unknown region, what remains him less
Than unknown dangers and as hard escape?
But I should ill become this throne, 0 Peers,
And this imperial sovranty, adorned
With splendour, armed with power, if aught proposed
And judged of public moment, in the shape
Of difficulty or danger, could deter
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume        450
These royalties, and not refuse to reign,




BOOK II.


5I


Refusing to accept as great a share
Of hazard as of honour, due alike
To him who reigns, and so much to him due
Of hazard more, as he above the rest
High honoured sits? Go therefore, mighty Powers,
Terror of Heaven, though fallen; intend at home,
While here shall be our home, what best may ease
The present misery, and render Hell
More tolerable; if there be cure or charm        460
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain
Of this ill mansion; intermit no watch
Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad
Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all: this enterprise
None shall partake with me." *Thus saying, rose
The Monarch, and prevented all reply;
Prudent, lest, from his resolution raised,
Others among the chief might offer now
(Certain to be refused) what erst they feared,   470
And, so refused, might in opinion stand
His rivals, winning cheap the high repute
Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they
Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice
Forbidding; and at once with him they rose;
Their rising all at once was as the sound
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone; and as a god
Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven.
Nor failed they to express how much they praised  480
That for the general safety he despised
His own; for neither do the Spirits damned
Lose all their virtue; lest bad men should boast
Their specious deeds on Earth, which glory excites,
4-2




52


PARADISE LOST.


Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal.
Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief:
As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element      490
Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower;
If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
O shame to men! Devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds, men only disagree
\Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace; and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife          500
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars,
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy:
As if (which might induce us to accord)
Man had not hellish foes enow besides,
That day and night for his destruction wait!
The Stygian council thus dissolved; and forth
In order came the grand infernal Peers;
Midst came their mighty Paramount, and seemed
Alone the antagonist of Heaven, nor less
Than Hell's dread Emperor, with pomp supreme,    510
And god-like imitated state; him round
A globe of fiery Seraphim enclosed
With bright emblazonry, and horrent arms.
Then of their session ended they bid cry
With trumpet's regal sound the great result:
Toward the four winds four speedy Cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy,




BOOK II.


53


By harald's voice explained; the hollow Abyss
Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell
With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim.  520
Thence more at ease their minds and somewhat raised
By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers
Disband; and, wandering, each his several way
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice
Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find
Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain
The irksome hours, till his great Chief return.
Part on the plain, or in the air sublime,
Upon the wing or in swift race contend,
As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields;      530
Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal
With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form:
As when, to warn proud cities, war appears
Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush
To battle in the clouds; before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.
Others, with vast Typhcean rage more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air   540
In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar:
As when Alcides, from CEchalia crowned
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of CEta threw
Into the Euboic sea. Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom -of battle; and complain that Fate       550




54


PARADISE LOST.


Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
Their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)
Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,      560
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!
Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,        570
On bold adventure to discover wide
That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers that disgorge
Into the burning lake their baleful streams:
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,     580
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls




BOOK II.


55


Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems       590
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Bums frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither, by harpy-footed Furies haled,
At certain revolutions all the damned
Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice         6oo00
Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immovable, infixed, and frozen round
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.
They ferry over this Lethean sound
Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so near the brink;
But Fate withstands, and, to oppose the attempt,  6io
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on
In confused march forlorn, the adventrous bands,
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,




56


PARADISE LOST.


Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,            620
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, inutterable, and worse
Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire.
Meanwhile the Adversary of God and Man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,  630
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell
Explores his solitary flight; sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.
As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood,    640
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
Ply stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed
Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear
Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable Shape.




BOOK II.                    57
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,    650
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting. -About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts     66o
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
Eclipses at-their charms. The other ShapeIf shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either-black it stood as Night,  670
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.
The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired,
Admired, not feared-God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he nor shunnedAnd with disdainful look thus first began:      68o
"Whence and what art thou, execrable Shape,
That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance




58


PARADISE LOST.


Thy miscreated front athwart my way
To yonder gates? Through them I mean to pass,
That be assured, without leave asked of thee. '
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,'
Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heaven.'r
To whom the Goblin, full of wrath, replied:
"Art thou that Traitor-Angel, art thou he,
Who first broke peace in Heaven and faith, till then 690
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's sons,
Conjured against the Highest, for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?
And reckon'st thou thyself with Spirits of Heaven,
Hell-doomed, and breath'st defiance here and scorn,
Where I reign king, and, to enrage thee more,
Thy king and lord? Back to thy punishment,
False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,     700
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."
So spake the grisly Terror, and in shape,
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burned,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair   7'
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levelled his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With Heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on




BOOK II.


59


Over the Caspian, then stand front to front --
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid-air:
So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell
Grew darker at their frown; so matched they stood; 720
For never but once more was either like
To meet so great a foe. And now great deeds
Had been achieved, whereof all Hell had rung,
Had not the snaky Sorceress, that sat
Fast by Hell-gate and kept the fatal key,
Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between.
"O father, what intends thy hand," she cried,
"Against thy only son? What fury, 0 son,
Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart
Against thy father's head? and know'st for whom;  730
For him who sits above, and laughs the while
At thee ordained his drudge, to execute
Whate'er his wrath, which he calls justice, bidsHis wrath, which one day will destroy ye both!!"
She spake, and at her words the hellish Pest
Forbore; then these to her Satan returned:
"So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange
Thou interposest, that my sudden hand,
Prevented, spares to tell thee yet by deeds
What it intends, till first I know of thee       740
What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why,
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son.
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now
Sight more detestable than him and thee."
To whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:
"Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem
Now in thine eye so foul? once deemed so fair




60


PARADISE LOST.


In Heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combined          750
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee; dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining Heavenly-fair, a goddess armed,
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized
All the host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign      760
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing
Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st
With me in secret, that my womb conceived
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose,
And fields were fought in Heaven; wherein remained
(For what could else?) to our almighty foe
Clear victory, to our part loss and rout         770
Through all the Empyrean. Down they fell,
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down
Into this deep, and in the general fall
I also; at which time this powerful key
Into my hands was given, with charge to keep
These gates for ever shut, which none can pass
Without my opening. Pensive here I sat
Alone; but long I sat not, till my womb,
Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown,
Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes.        780
At last this odious offspring whom thou seest,




BOOK II.


Thine own begotten, breaking violent way,
Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transformed; but he, my inbred enemy,
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded Deafth!
I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems,   790
Inflamed with lust than rage) and, swifter far,
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed,
And, in embraces forcible and foul
Engendering with me, of that rape begot
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry
Surround me, as thou saw'st, hourly conceived
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me; for, when they list, into the womb
That bred them they return, and howl, and gnaw
My bowels, their repast; then, bursting forth    800
Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round,
That rest or intermission none I find.
Before mine eyes in opposition sits
Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on,
And me, his parent, would full soon devour
For want of other prey, but that he knows
His end with mine involved, and knows that I
Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane,
Whenever that shall be; so Fate pronounced.
But thou, 0 father, I forewarn thee, shun        8o10
His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope
To be invulnerable in those bright arms,
Though tempered heavenly; for that mortal dint,
Save he who reigns above, none can resist."




62


PARADISE LOST.


She finished; and the subtle Fiend his lore
Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth:
"Dear daughter-since thou claim'st me for thy sire,
And my fair son here show'st me, the dear pledge
Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and joys
Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change  820
Befallen us unforeseen, unthought of-know,
I come no enemy, but to set free
From out this dark and dismal house of pain
Both him and thee, and all the Heavenly host
Of Spirits that, in our just pretences armed,
Fell with us from on high. From them I go
This uncouth errand sole, and one for all
Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread
The unfounded deep, and through the void immense
To search with wandering quest a place foretold,  830
Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now
Created vast and round, a place of bliss
In the purlieus of Heaven, and therein placed
A race of upstart creatures, to supply
Perhaps our vacant room, though more rentoved,
Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude,
Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught
Than this more secret, now designed, I haste
To know; and, this once known, shall soon return,
And bring ye to the place where thou and Death  840
Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen
Wing silently the buxom air, embalmed
With odours: there ye shall be fed and filled
Immeasurably; all things shall be your prey."
He ceased, for both seemed highly pleased, and Death
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear
His famine should be filled, and blessed his maw




BOOK II.


63


Destined to that good hour. No less rejoiced
His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire:
"The key of this infernal pit, by due          850
And by command of Heaven's all-powerful King,
I keep, by him forbidden to unlock
These adamantine gates; against all force
Death ready stands to interpose his dart,
Fearless to be overmatched by living might.
But what owe I to his commands above,
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound,
To sit in hateful office here confined,
Inhabitant of Heaven and Heavenly-born,          86o
Here in perpetual agony and pain,
With terrors and with clamours compassed round
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed?
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou
My being gav'st me; whom should I obey
But thee? whom follow?  Thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss, among
The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
Thy daughter and thy darling, without end."     870
Thus saying, from her side the fatal key,
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;
And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train,
Forthwith the huge portcullis high up-drew,
Which but herself not all the Stygian powers
Could once have moved; then in the key-hole turns
The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
Unfastens: on a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,         880




64


PARADISE LOST.


The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut
Excelled her power; the gates wide open stood,
That with extended wings a bannered host,
Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through
With horse and chariots ranked in loose array;
So wide they stood, and like a furnace-mouth
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.
Before their eyes in sudden view appear           890
The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension; where length, breadth, and highth,
And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
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         go900
Of each his faction, in their several clans,
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
He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns; next him, high arbiter,
Chance governs all. Into this wild Abyss,         910
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




BOOK II.


65


Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worldsInto this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed     920
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) than when Bellona storms,
With all her battering engines bent to rase
Some capital city; or less than if this frame
Of Heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn
The steadfast Earth. At last his sail-broad vans
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smokeUplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides            930
Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuiy: 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 stayedQuenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land-nigh foundered, on he fares,  940
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
P. L.




66


PARADISE LOST.


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.  950
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
Might in that noise_reside, of whom to ask
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies
-- - s
Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread           96o
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,
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,          970
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,
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, the Ethereal King
Possesses lately, thither to arrive




BOOK II.


67


I travel this profound. Direct my course:      980
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 the advantage all, mine the revenge!"
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,  990
That mighty leading Angel, who of late
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,       Iooo
Encroached on still through our 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."
He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply,   10io
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renewed
5 —2




68


PARADISE LOST.


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 the other whirlpool steered:  I020
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour he;
But, he once passed, soon after, when Man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain,
Following his track (such was the will of Heaven)
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,
From Hell continued, reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the Spirits perverse  1030
With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
As fro   pher outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less and with less hostile din;    1040
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,




BOOK IL                     69
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal Heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his nativesseat;        1050
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous reven
Accurst, and in a cursed hour, he hies.




I




BOOK III.




THE ARGUMENT.


God, sitting on his throne, sees Satan flying towards this World,
then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand;
foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own
justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created Man free, and
able enough to have withstood his Tempter; yet declares his purpose of
grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did
Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his
Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards Man; but
God again declares that grace cannot be extended towards Man without
the satisfaction of Divine Justice: Man hath offended the majesty of
God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore, with all his progeny,
devoted to death, must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to
answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God
freely offers himself a ransom for Man: the Father accepts him, ordains
his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in Heaven and
Earth; commands all the Angels to adore him: they obey, and, hymning
to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this World's outermost
orb; where wandering he first finds a place since called the Limbo of
Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither: thence comes to the
gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the
firmament that flow about it. His passage thence to the orb of the
Sun: he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb, but first changes
himself into the shape of a meaner Angel, and pretending a zealous
desire to behold the new Creation, and Man whom God had placed
here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed: alights
first on Mount Niphates.




BOOK III.


HAIL, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born I
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest         Io
The rising World of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite!
Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,
Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight,
Through utter and through middle darkness borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,          20
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou




74


PARADISE LOST.


Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,     30
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Moeonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year    40
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.      50
So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate: there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.


11
t.




BOOK III.


75


Now had the Almighty Father from above,
From the pure Empyrean where he sits
High throned above all highth, bent down his eye,
His own works and their works at once to view:
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven          6o
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received
Beatitude past utterance; on his right
The radiant image of his glory sat,
His only Son. On Earth he first beheld
Our two first parents, yet the only two
Of mankind, in the Happy Garden placed,
Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love,
Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love,
In blissful solitude. He then surveyed
Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there,     70
Coasting the wall of Heaven on this side Night
In the dun air sublime, and ready now
To stoop with wearied wings and willing feet
On the bare outside of this World, that seemed
Firm land imbosomed without firmament,
Uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
Him God beholding from his prospect high,
Wherein past, present, future, he beholds,
Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake:
"Only-begotten Son, seest thou what rage      80o
Transports our Adversary? whom no bounds
Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains
Heaped on him there, nor yet the main Abyss
Wide interrupt, can hold; so bent he seems
On desperate revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head. And now,
Through all restraint broke loose, he wings his way
Not far off Heaven, in the precincts of light,




76


PARADISE LOST.


Directly towards the new-created World,
And Man there placed, with purpose to assay      90
If him by force he can destroy, or, worse,
By some false guile pervert: and shall pervert;
For Man will hearken to his glozing lies,
And easily transgress the sole command,
Sole pledge of his obedience; so will fall
He and his faithless progeny. Whose fault?
Whose but his own?   Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have ( I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall
Such I created all the ethereal powers           1oo
And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed:
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,
Where only what they needs must do appeared,
Not what they would? what praise could they receive,
What pleasure I, from such obedience paid,
When will and reason-reason also is choiceUseless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,         I10
Not -me? They therefore, as to right belonged,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if predestination overruled
Their will, disposed by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,      120
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,




BOOK Ill.


77


They trespass, authors to themselves in all,
Both what they judge and what they choose;/for so
I formed them free, and free they must remain
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained
Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fag
The first sort by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved; (Man falls, deceived  130
By the other first: Man therefore shal fin-d rac^)
The other, none. (in mercy and justice both,
Through Heaven and Earth, so shall my glory excel;
But mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine)
Thus while God spake ambrosial fragrance filled
All Heaven, and in the blessed Spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused.
Beyond compare the Son of God was seen
Most glorious; in him all his Father shone
Substantially expressed; and in his face         140
Divine compassion visibly appeared,
Love without end, and without measure grace;
Which uttering, thus he to his Father spake:
"O Father, gracious was that word which closed
Thy sovran sentence, that Man should find grace;
For which both Heaven and Earth shall high extol
Thy praises, with the innumerable sound
Of hymns and sacred songs, wherewith thy throne
Encompassed shall resound thee ever blest.
For should Man finally be lost, should Man,      150
Thy creature late so loved, thy youngest son,
Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joined
With his own folly? that be from thee far,
That far be from thee, Father, who art judge




78


PARADISE LOST.


Of all things made, and judgest only right!
Or shall the Adversary thus obtain
His end, and frustrate thine? shall he fulfil
His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught?
Or proud return, though to his heavier doom,
Yet with revenge accomplished, and to' Hell     I6o
Draw after him the whole race of mankind,
By him corrupted? or wilt thou thyself
Abolish thy creation, and unmake,
For him, what for thy glory thou hast made?
So should thy goodness and thy greatness both
Be questioned and blasphemed without defence."
To whom the great Creator thus replied:
"O Son, in whom my soul hath chief delight,
Son of my bosom,J Son who art alone
My word, my wisdom, and effectual might,        I70
All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all
As my eternal purpose hath decreed.
Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will;
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsafed. Once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit, and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires:
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foe;
By me upheld, that he may know how frail        180
His fallen condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to none but me.
Some I have chosen of peculiar grace,
Elect above the rest; so is my will:
The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warned
Their sinful state, and to appease betimes
The incensed Deity, while offered grace




BOOK III.


79


Invites; for I will clear their senses dark,
What may suffice, and soften stony hearts
To pray, repent, and bring obedience due.        I90
To prayer, repentance, and obedience due,
Though but endeavoured with sincere intent,
Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut.
And I will place within them as a guide
My umpire Conscience; whom if they will hear,
Light after light well used they shall attain,
And to the end persisting safe arrive.
This my long sufferance and my day of grace
They who neglect and scorn shall never taste;
But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more,     200
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall;
And none but such from mercy I exclude.
But yet all is not done, Man, disobeying,
Disloyal breaks his lealty,/ali&sinAgainst the high supremacy of Heaven,
Affectipg Godhead, and so, losing all,
To expate his treason hath naught left,
But, to destruction sacred and devote,
He with his whole posterity must dieDie he or justice must; unless for him           210
Some other, able and as willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death for death.
Say, Heavenly powers, where shall we find such love?
Which of ye will be mortal, to redeem
Man's mortal crime, and just the unjust to save?
Dwells in all Heaven charity so dear?"
He asked, but all the Heavenly quire stood mute,
And silence was in Heaven: on Man's behalf
Patron or intercessor none appearedMuch less that durst upon his own head draw      220




8G


PARADISE LOST.


The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set.
And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to Death and Hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renewed:
"Father, thy word is passed, Man shall find grace;
And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all           230
Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought?
Happy for Man, so coming! He her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;
Atonement for himself, or offering meet,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring.
Behold me, then: me for him, life for life,
I offer; on me let thine anger fall;
Account me Man: I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put of, and for him lastly die            240
Well pleased; on me let Death wreak all his rage:
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquished: thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever; by thee I live;
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due,
All that of me can die, yet, that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave,
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue          250
My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.
Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed;




BOOK III.


I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and show
The powers of Darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of Heaven shalt look down and smile,
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcase glut the grave;
Then, with the multitude of my redeemed,         26o
Shall enter Heaven, long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement: wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire."
His words here ended; but his meek aspect
Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shone
Filial obedience: as a sacrifice
Glad to be offered, he attends the will          270
Of his great Father. Admiration seized
All Heaven, what this might mean, and whither tend,
Wondering; but soon the Almighty thus replied:
"0 thou in Heaven and Earth the only peace
Found out for mankind under wrath, 0 thou
My sole complacence! well thou know'st how dear
To me are all my works; nor Man the least,
Though last created, that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By losing thee a while, the whole race lost!     2c0
Thou therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join;
And be thyself Man among men on Earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth; be thou in Adam's room
The head of all mankind, though Adam's son.


P. L.


6




82


PARADISE LOST.


As in him perish all men, so in thee,
As from a second root, shall be restored
As many as are restored; without thee, none.
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit,  290
Imputed, shall absolve them who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So Man, as is most just,
shall satisfy for Man, be judged and die,
And dying rise, and rising with him raise
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life.
So Heavenly love shall outdo Hellish hate,
Giving to death, and dying to redeem,
So dearly to redeem what Hellish hate            300
So easily destroyed, and still destroys
In those who, when they may, accept not grace.
Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume
Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own.
Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss
Equal to God, and equally enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted all to save
A world from utter loss, and hast been found
By merit more than birthright Son of GodFound worthiest to be so by being good,          310
Far more than great or high; because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds;
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne:
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and Man, Son both of God and Maln,
Anointed universal King. All power
I give thee; reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits; under thee? as Head supreme,




BOOK III.


83


Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions, I reduce: 320
All knees to thee shall bow of them that bide
In Heaven, or Earth, or under Earth in Hell.
When thou, attended gloriously from Heaven,
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send
The summoning Archangels to proclaim
Thy dread tribunal, forthwith from all winds
The living, and forthwith the cited dead
Of all past ages, to the general doom
Shall hasten: such a peal shall rouse their sleep.
Then, all thy Saints assembled, thou shalt judge  330
Bad men and Angels; they arraigned shall sink
Beneath thy sentence; Hell, her numbers full,
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile
The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And after all their tribulations long
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth.
Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay by,
For regal sceptre then no more shall need;      340
God shall be all in all. But all ye gods,
Adore him who, to compass all this, dies;
Adore the Son, and honour him as me."
No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but-all
The multitude of Angels, with a shout
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet
As from blest voices, uttering joy-Heaven rung
With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled
The eternal regions. Lowly reverent
Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground  350
With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold:




84


PARADISE LOST.


Immortal amarant, a flower which once
In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life,
Began to bloom, but soon for Man's offence
To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows
And flowers aloft, shading the Fount of Life,
And where the River of Bliss through midst of Heaven
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream.
With these that never fade the Spirits elect     360
Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams.
Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled.
Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung; and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high:
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join    370
Melodious part; such concord is in Heaven.
Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,
Eternal King; thee, Author of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible
Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st
Throned inaccessible, but when thou shadest
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,    380
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest Seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee next they sang, of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,
In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud




BOOK III.


Made visible; the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold: on thee
Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides;
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.
He Heaven of Heavens, and all the powers therein, 390
By thee created; and by thee threw down
The aspiring Dominations. Thou that day
Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not spare,
Nor stop thy flaming chariot-wheels, that shook
Heaven's everlasting frame, while o'er the necks
Thou drov'st of warring Angels disarrayed.
Back from pursuit, thy powers with loud acclaim
Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father's might,
To execute fierce vengeance on his foes;
Not so on Man; him, through their malice fallen,  400
Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity incline.
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail Man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined,
He, to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and justice in thy face discerned,
Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat
Second to thee, offered himself to die
For Man's offence. 0 unexampled love!            410
Love nowhere to be found less than divine!
Hail, Son of God, Saviour of men! Thy name
Shall be the copious matter of my song
Henceforth, and never shall my harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin!
Thus they in Heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Meanwhile, upon the firm opacous globe


t




86


PARADISE LOST.


Of this round World, whose first convex divides
The luminous inferior orbs, enclosed              420
From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old,
Satan alighted walks. 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;
Save on that side which from the wall of Heaven,
Though distant far, some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest loud:
Here walked the Fiend at large in spacious field.  430
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light:.      So, on this windy sea of land, the Fiend          44
Walked up and down alone, bent on his prey;
Alone, for other creature in this place,
Living or lifeless, to be found was noneNone yet; but store hereafter from the Earth
Up hither like aerial vapours flew
Of all things transitory and vain, when sin
With vanity had filled the works of men:
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things
Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or the other life.           450
All who have their reward on earth, the fruits




BOOK III.


87


Of painful superstition and blind zeal,
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find,B.: '
Fit retribution, empty as their deeds;
All the unaccomplished works of Nature's hand,  J
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Dissolved on Earth, fleet hither, and in vain,
Till final dissolution, wander here;,
Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed:
Those argent fields more likely habitants,       460
Translated saints, or middle Spirits, hold,
Betwixt the angelical and human kind.
Hither, of ill-joined sons and daughters born,
First from the ancient world those giants came,
With many a vain exploit, though then renowned;
The builders next of Babel on the plain
Of Sennaar, and still with vain design
New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build;
Others came single: he who, to be deemed
A god, leaped fondly into -Etna flames,          470
Empedocles; and he who, to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leaped into the sea,
Cleombrotus; and many more, too long,
Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars,
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.
Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek
In Golgotha him dead who lives in Heaven;
And they who, to be sure of Paradise,
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.        480
They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved;
And now Saint Peter at Heaven's wicket seems




88


PARADISE LOST.


To wait them with his keys, and now at foot
Of Heaven's ascent they lift their feet, when, lo!
A violent cross wind from either coast
Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry,
Into the devious air. Then might ye. see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost  490
And fluttered into rags; then reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds: all these, upwhirled aloft,
Fly o'er the backside of the World far off
Into a limbo large and broad, since called
The Paradise of Fools; to few unknown
Long after, now unpeopled and untrod.
All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed;
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam
Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste     500
His -travelled steps. Far distant he descries,
Ascending by degrees magnificent
Up to the wall of Heaven, a structure high;
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, inimitable on Earth
By model, or by shading pencil drawn.
The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw        510
Angels ascending and descending, bands
Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled
To Padan-Aram, in the field of Luz
Dreaming by night under the open sky,
And waking cried, "This is the gate of Heaven."
Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood
There always, but drawn up to Heaven sometimes




BOOK III.


89


Viewless; and underneath a bright sea flowed
Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon
Who after came from Earth sailing arrived,
Wafted by Angels, or flew o'er the lake,
Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds.
The stairs were then let down, whether to dare
The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate
His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss
Direct against which opened from beneath,
Just o'er the blissful seat of Paradise,
A passage down to the Earth, a passage wide;
Wider by far than that of after-times
Over Mount Sion, and, though that were large,
Over the Promised Land to God so dear;
By which, to visit oft those happy tribes,
On high behests his Angels to and fro
Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard,
From Paneas, the fount of Jordan's flood,
To Beersaba, where the Holy Land
Borders on Egypt and the Arabian shore.
So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set
To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave.
Satan from hence, now on the lower stair,
That scaled by steps of gold to Heaven-gate,
Looks down with wonder at the sudden view
Of all this World at once. As when a scout,
Through dark and desert ways with peril gone
All night, at last by break of cheerful dawn
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill,
Which to his eye discovers unaware
The goodly prospect of some foreign land
First seen, or some renowned metropolis
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned,


520
530
*.v
540         '.'.'I...?     I  4' -;
c,,.  '  f.


550




go


PARADISE LOST.


Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams:
Such wonder seized, though after Heaven seen,
The Spirit malign, but much more envy seized,
At sight of all this World beheld so fair.
Round he surveys (and well might where he stood,
So high above the circling canopy
Of Night's extended shade) from eastern point
Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas
Beyond the horizon; then from pole to pole      56o
He views in breadth; and, without longer pause,
Down right into the World's first region throws
His flight precipitant, and winds with ease
Through the pure marble air his oblique way
Amongst innumerable stars, that shone
Stars distant, but nigh-hand seemed other worlds.
Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles,
Like those Hesperian Gardens famed of old,
Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales,
Thrice happy isles; but who dwelt happy there    570
He stayed not to inquire. Above them all
The golden sun, in splendour likest Heaven,
Allured his eye. Thither his course he bends,
Through the calm firmament (but up or down,
By centre or eccentric, hard to tell,
Or longitude) where the great luminary,
Aloof the vulgar constellations thick,
That from his lordly eye keep distance due,
Dispenses light from far. They, as they move
Their starry dance in numbers that compute      580
Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp
Turn swift their various motions, or are turned
By his magnetic beam, that gently warms




BOOK III.


9I


The Universe, and to each inward part
With gentle penetration, though unseen,
Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep;
So wondrously was set his station bright.
There lands the Fiend, a spot like which perhaps
Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb
Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw.     590
The place he found beyond expression bright,
Compared with aught on Earth, metal or stone;
Not all parts like, but all alike informed
With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire:
If metal, part seemed gold, part silver clear;
If stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite,
Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone
In Aaron's breast-plate, and a stone besides,
Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seenThat stone, or like to that, which here below    600o
Philosophers in vain so long have sought;
In vain, though by their powerful art they bind
Volatile Hermes, and call up unbound
In various shapes old Proteus from the sea,
Drained through a limbec to his native form.
What wonder then if fields and regions here
Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run
Potable gold, when, with one virtuous touch,
The arch-chemic sun, so far from us remote,
Produces, with terrestrial humour mixed,         6o10
Here in the dark so many precious things
Of colour glorious and effect so rare?
Here matter new to gaze the Devil met
Undazzled. Far and wide his eye commands;
For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade,
But all sunshine, as when his beams at noon




92


PARADISE LOST.


Culminate from the equator, as they now
Shot upward still direct, whence no way round
Shadow from body opaque can fall; and the air,
Nowhere so clear, sharpened his visual ray       620
To objects distant far, whereby he soon
Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,
The same whom John saw also in the sun.
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind
Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings
Lay waving round: on some great charge employed
He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep.
Glad was the Spirit impure, as now in hope     630
To find who might direct his wandering flight
To Paradise, the happy seat of Man,
His journey's end, and our beginning woe.
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay:
And now a stripling Cherub he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffused; so well he feigned.
Under a coronet his flowing hair                 640
In curls on either cheek played; wings he wore
Of many a coloured plume sprinkled with gold,
His habit fit for speed succinct; and held
Before his decent steps a silver wand.
He drew not nigh unheard; the Angel bright,
Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned,
Admonished by his ear, and straight was known
The Archangel Uriel; one of the seven
Who in God's presence, nearest to his throne,




BOOK III.                   93
Stand ready at command, and are his eyes         65o
That run through all the Heavens, or down to the Earth
Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,
O'er sea and land. Him Satan thus accosts:
"Uriel! for thou of those seven Spirits that stand
In sight of God's high throne, gloriously bright,
The first art wont his great authentic will
Interpreter through highest Heaven to bring,
Where all his Sons thy embassy attend;
And here art likeliest by supreme decree
Like honour to obtain, and as his eye            66o
To visit oft this new creation round;
Unspeakable desire to see and know
All these his wondrous works, but chiefly Man,
His chief delight and favour, him for whom
All these his works so wondrous he ordained,
Hath brought me from the quires of Cherubim
Alone thus wandering. Brightest Seraph, tell
In which of all these shining orbs hath Man
His fixed seat; or fixed seat hath none,
But all these shining orbs his choice to dwell;  670
That I may find him, and with secret gaze
Or open admiration him behold
On whom the great Creator hath bestowed
Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces poured;
That both in him and all things, as is meet,
The Universal Maker we may praise;
Who justly hath driven out his rebel foes
To deepest Hell, and, to repair that loss,
Created this new happy race of Men
To serve him better: wise are all his ways!"     68o
So spake the false dissembler unperceived;
For neither man nor Angel can discern




94


PARADISE LOST.


Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks
Invisible, except to God alone,
By his permissive will, through Heaven and Earth;
And oft, though Wisdom wake, Suspicion sleeps
At Wisdom's gate, and to Simplicity
Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems: which now for once beguiled
Uriel, though regent of the sun, and held        690
The sharpest-sighted Spirit of all in Heaven;
Who to the fraudulent impostor foul,
In his uprightness, answer thus returned:
"Fair Angel, thy desire, which tends to know
The works of God, thereby to glorify
The great Work-master, leads to no excess
That reaches blame, but rather merits praise
The more it seems excess, that led thee hither
From thy empyreal mansion thus alone,
To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps,    700
Contented with report, hear only in Heaven;
For wonderful indeed are all his works,
Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all
Had in remembrance always with delight!
But what created mind can comprehend
Their number, or the wisdom infinite
That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep?
I saw when at his word the formless mass,
This World's material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar       710
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding Darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
Swift to their several quarters hasted then
The cumbrous elements-earth, flood, air, fire;




BOOK III.


95


And this ethereal quintessence of Heaven
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;   720
The rest in circuit walls this Universe.
Look downward on that globe, whose hither side
With light from hence, though but reflected, shines:
That place is Earth, the seat of Man; that light
His day, which else, as the other hemisphere,
Night would invade; but there the neighbouring moon
(So call that opposite fair star) her aid
Timely interposes, and, her monthly round
Still ending, still renewing, through mid Heaven,
With borrowed light her countenance triform      730
Hence fills and empties, to enlighten the Earth,
And in her pale dominion checks the night.
That spot to which I point is Paradise,
Adam's abode; those lofty shades his bower.
Thy way thou canst not miss; me mine requires."
Thus said, he turned; and Satan, bowing low,
As to superior Spirits is wont in Heaven,
Where honour due and reverence none neglects,
Took leave, and toward the coast of Earth beneath,
Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped success,  740
Throws his steep flight in many an aery wheel,
Nor stayed till on Niphates' top he lights.




ki




BOOK    IV.
P. L.                        7




THE ARGUMENT.


Satan, now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place where he must
now attempt the bold enterprise which he undertook alone against God
and Man, falls into many doubts with himself, and many passionsfear, envy, and despair; but at length confirms himself in evil; journeys
on to Paradise, whose outward prospect and situation is described;
overleaps the bounds; sits, in the shape of a cormorant, on the Tree
of Life, as highest in the Garden, to look about him. The Garden
described: Satan's first sight of Adam and Eve; his wonder at their
excellent form and happy state, but with resolution to work their fall;
overhears their discourse; thence gathers that the Tree of Knowledge
was forbidden them to eat of under penalty of death, and thereon
intends to found his temptation by seducing them to transgress; then
leaves them a while, to know further of their state by some other
means. Meanwhile Uriel, descending on a sunbeam, warns Gabriel,
who had in charge the gate of Paradise, that some evil Spirit had
escaped the Deep, and passed at noon by his Sphere, in the shape of a
good Angel, down to Paradise; discovered after by his furious gestures
in the mount. Gabriel promises to find him ere morning. Night
coming on, Adam and Eve discourse of going to their rest: their bower
described; their evening worship. Gabriel, drawing forth his bands of
night-watch to walk the rounds of Paradise, appoints two strong Angels
to Adam's bower, lest the evil Spirit should be there doing some harm
to Adam or Eve sleeping: there they find him at the ear of Eve,
tempting her in a dream, and bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel;
by whom questioned, he scornfully answers, prepares resistance, but,
hindered by a sign from Heaven, flies out of Paradise.




BOOK IV.
FOR that warning voice, which he who saw
The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
"Woe to the inhabitants on Earth!" that now,
While time was, our first parents had been warned
The coming of their' secret foe, and scaped,
Haply so scaped, his mortal snare! For now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
The tempter ere the accuser of mankind,          10
To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell:
Yet not rejoicing in his speed, though bold
Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast,
Begins his dire attempt; which, nigh the birth
Now rolling, boils in his tumultuous breast,
And like a devilish engine back recoils
Upon himself. Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The hell within him; for within him Hell         20
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
7-2




I00


PARADISE LOST.


By change of place. Now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse: of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue!
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:        30
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began:
"O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new World; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,     40
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King!
Ah, wherefore? He deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,
How due? Yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice. Lifted up so high,
I sdeined subjection, and thought one step higher  50
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome, still paying, still to owe;
Forgetful what from him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind




BOOK IV.                   101
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged-what burden then?
Oh, had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferior Angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised          6o
Ambition. Yet why not? some other power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part. But other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst. Whom hast thou then, or what, to accuse,
But Heaven's free love dealt equally to all?
Be then his love accursed, since, love or hate,
To me alike it deals eternal woe.                 70
Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven.
0, then, at last relent! Is there no place      'i
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?       So
None left but by submission; and that word      -
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know    -
How dearly I abide that boast so vain,
Under what torments inwardly I groan.




102               PARADISE LOST.
While they adore me on the throne of Hell,
With diadem and sceptre high advanced,           90
The lower still I fall, only supreme
-..'     In misery: such joy ambition finds!
But say I could repent, and could obtain
By act of grace my former state; how soon
Would highth recal high thoughts, how soon unsay
C.          W... ' -.  What feigned submission swore! Ease would recant.        \:...  Vows made in pain, as violent and voidFor never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deepWhich would but lead me to a worse relapse      o00
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission, bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging, peace.
All hope excluded thus, behold, instead
Of us, outcast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this. World!
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
'  Evil, be thou my good: by thee at least          nIo
j Divided empire with Heaven's King I hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;, As Man ere long and this new World shall know."
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face,
Thrice changed with pale-ire, envy, and despair;
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld;
For Heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware
Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,    120
Artificer of fraud; and was the first




B:OOK IV.


103


That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge:
Yet not enough had practised to deceive
Uriel, once warned; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured, more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce
He marked and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.          130
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champain head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up-grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend         140
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung;
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed;
On which the sun more glad impressed his beams   I50
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,
When God hath showered the earth: so lovely seemed
That landskip. And of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires




104


PARADISE LOST.


Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair; now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past       I6o
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabwean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest: with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles:
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend
Who came their bane, though with them better pleased
Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume
That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse
Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent       I7o
From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow;
But further way found none; so thick entwined,
As olde continued brake, the Undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed
All path of man or beast that p'assed that way.
One gate there only was, and that looked east
On the other side: which when the Arch-Felon saw,
Due entrance he disdained, and in contempt      I8o
At one slight bound high overleaped all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve,
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold;




BOOK IV.


Io5


Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault,    90o
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles:
So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold:
So since into his Church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life  -           ' 5
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect what, well used, had been the pledge  200
Of immortality. So little knows
Any but God alone to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him, with new wonder, now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,
In narrow room Nature's whole wealth; yea, moreA Heaven on Earth; for blissful Paradise
Of God the garden was, by him in the east
Of Eden planted: Eden stretched her line         210
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings,
Or where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar. In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained.
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees  n, ta
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to life,             220.2




io6


PARADISE LOST.


Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast byKnowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden-mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which, through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many arill
Watered the garden; thence united fell           230
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears;
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed         240
Flowers worthy of Paradise; which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place,
A happy rural seat of various view:
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm;
Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable-Hesperian fables true,             250
If true, here only-and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed,




BOOK IV.


I07


Or palmy hillock; or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall        260
Down the slope hills dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis            270
Was gathered-which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle,
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea, and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard,        280
Mount Amara, though this by some supposed
True Paradise, under the Ethiop line
By Nilus' head, enclosed with shining rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian garden, where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind




I


Io8               PARADISE LOST.
Of living creatures, new to sight and strange.
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
God-like erect, with native honour clad,
In naked majesty seemed lords of all,            290
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pureSevere, but in true filial freedom placed,
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed:
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.
His fair large front and eye sublime declared    300
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil down to the slender waist,
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils-which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,       310
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame. Dishonest shame
Of Nature's works, honour dishonourable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man's life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence!
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight




BOOK IV.


log


Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill;        320
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love's embraces met:
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Under a tuft of shade that on a green
Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side,
They sat them down; and after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and make ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite         330
More grateful, to their supper-fruits they fell,
Nectarine fruits, which the compliant boughs
Yielded them, sidelong as they sat recline
On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers.
The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind,
Still as they thirsted, scoop the brimming stream;
Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles
Wanted, nor youthful dalliance, as beseems
Fair couple linked in happy nuptial league,
Alone as they. About them frisking played        340
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase
In wood or wilderness, forest or den.
Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw
Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards,
Gambolled before them; the unwieldy elephant,
To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed
His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly,
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine
His braided train, and of his fatal guile
Gave proof unheeded. Others on the grass         350
Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat,
Or bedward ruminating; for the sun,




IIO


PARADISE LOST.


Declined, was hastening now with prone career
To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale
Of Heaven the stars that usher evening rose:
When Satan, still in gaze as first he stood,
Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad:
"O Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold?
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, Earth-born perhaps,    360
Not Spirits, yet to Heavenly Spirits bright
Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue
With wonder, and could love, so lively shines
In them divine resemblance, and such grace
The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured.
Ah! gentle pair, ye little think how nigh
Your change approaches, when all these delights
Will vanish, and deliver ye to woeMore woe, the more your taste is now of joy:
Happy, but for so happy ill secured              370
Long to continue, and this high seat, your Heaven,
Ill fenced for Heaven to keep out such a foe
As now is entered; yet no purposed foe
To you, whom I could pity thus forlorn,
Though I unpitied. League with you I seek,
And mutual amity, so strait, so close,
That I with you must dwell, or you with me,
Henceforth: my dwelling, haply, may not please,
Like this fair Paradise, your sense; yet such
Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me,         380
Which I as freely give. Hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest gates,
And send forth all her kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring; if no better place,




BOOK IV.


II I


Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge
On you who wrong me not, for him who wronged.
And, should I at your harmless innocence
Melt, as I do, yet public reason justHonour and empire with revenge enlarged         390
By conquering this new World-compels me now
To do what else, though damned, I should abhor."
p\ So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
Then from his lofty stand on that high tree
Down he alights among the sportful herd
Of those four-footed kinds himself now one,
Now other, as their shape served best his end
Nearer to view his prey, and unespied
To mark what of their state he more might learn  4co
By word or action marked. About them round
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare;
Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close; then, rising, changes oft
His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground,
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both,
Griped in each paw: when Adam, first of men,
To first of women, Eve, thus moving speech,
Turned him all ear to hear new utterance flow:  410
"Sole partner and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all, needs must the Power
That made us, and for us this ample World,
Be infinitely good, and of his good
As liberal and free as infinite;
That raised us from the dust, and placed us here
In all this happiness, who at his hand
Have nothing merited, nor can perform




PARADISE LOST.


Aught whereof he hath need; he who requires
From us no other service than to keep            420
This one, this easy charge-of all the trees
In Paradise that bear delicious fruit
Ai t'  So various, not to taste that only Tree.   Of Knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life;
So near grows death to life, whate'er death is;
Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou know'st
God hath pronounced it death to taste that TreeThe only sign of our obedience left
Among so many signs of power and rule
Conferred upon us, and dominion given            430
Over all other creatures that possess
Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard
One easy prohibition, who enjoy
Free leave so large to all things else, and choice
Unlimited of manifold delights;
But let us ever praise him, and extol
His bounty, following our delightful task,
To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers;
Which, were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet."
To whom thus Eve replied: "O thou for whom     440
And from whom I was formed, flesh of thy flesh,
And without whom am to no end, my guide
And head! what thou hast said is just an3c right.
For we to him indeed all praises owe,
And daily thanks; I chiefly, who enjoy
So far the happier lot, enjoying thee
Pre-eminent by so much odds, while thou
Like consort to thyself canst nowhere find.
That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed         450
Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where




BOOK IV.


I I 3


And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain; then stood unmoved,
Pure as the expanse of Heaven. I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite            460
A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me: I started back,
It started back; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love. There I had fixed
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me: 'WMhat thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes: but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays      470
Thy coming, and thy soft embraces-he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called
Mother of human race.' What could I do
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall,
Under a platane; yet methought less fair,
Less winning soft, less amiably mild,
Than that smooth watery image. Back I turned;    480
Thou, following, cried'st aloud, 'Return, fair Eve;
Whom fliest thou? whom thou fliest, of him thou art,
His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent
Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart,


P. L.


Is




l114


PARADISE LOST.


Substantial life, to have thee by my side
Henceforth an individual solace dear:
Part of my soul, I seek thee, and thee claim
My other half.' With that thy gentle hand
Seized mine: I yielded; and from that time see
How beauty is excelled by manly grace            490
And wisdom, which alone is truly fair."
So spake our general mother, and with eyes
Of conjugal attraction unreproved,
And meek surrender, half-embracing leaned
On our first father; half her swelling breast
Naked met his, under the flowing gold
Of her loose tresses hid. He, in delight
Both of her beauty and submissive charms,
Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter
On Juno smiles when he impregns the clouds       500
That shed May flowers, and pressed her matron lip
With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned
For envy; yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained:
"Sight hateful, sight tormenting! thus these two,
Imparadised in one another's arms,
The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill
Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust,
Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire,.Among our other torments not the least,          5IO
Still unfulfilled, with pain of longing pines.
Yet let me not forget what I have gained
From their own mouths. All is not theirs, it seems;
One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless! why should their Lord
Envy them that? can it be sin to know?




BOOK IV.


IIS


Can it be death? and do they only stand
By ignorance? is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?    520
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Their ruin! Hence I will excite their minds
With more desire to know, and to reject
Envious commands, invented with design
To keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt
Equal with gods. Aspiring to be such,
They taste and die: what likelier can ensue?
But first with narrow search I must walk round
This garden, and no corner leave unspied;
A chance but chance may lead where I may meet    530
Some wandering Spirit of Heaven, by fountain-side,
Or in thick shade retired, from him to draw
What further would be learned. Live while ye may,
Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return,
Short pleasures; for long woes are to succeed."
So saying, his proud step he scornful turned,
But with sly circumspection, and began
Through wood, through waste, o'er hill, o'er dale, his roam.
Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where Heaven
With Earth and Ocean meets, the setting sun      540
Slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise
Levelled his evening rays. It was a rock
Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds,
Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent
Accessible from Earth, one entrance high;
The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung
Still as it rose, impossible to climb.
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,   -
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night;     550
8-2




nI6


PARADISE LOST.


About him exercised heroic games
The unarmed youth of Heaven; but nigh at hand
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears,
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold.
Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired
Impress the air, and shows the mariner
From what point of his compass to beware
Impetuous winds. He thus began in haste:         56o
"Gabriel, to thee thy course by lot hath given
Charge and strict watch, that to this happy place
No evil thing approach or enter in.
This day at highth of noon came to my sphere
A Spirit, zealous, as he seemed, to know
More of the Almighty:s works, and chiefly Man,
God's latest image. I described his way
Bent all on speed, and marked his aery gait;
But in the mount that lies from Eden north,
Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks  570
Alien from Heaven, with passions foul obscured.
Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade
Lost sight of him. One of the banished crew,
I fear, hath ventured from the Deep, to raise
New troubles; him thy care must be to find."
To whom the winged warrior thus returned:
"Uriel, no wonder if thy perfect sight,
Amid the Sun's bright circle where thou sitt'st,
See far and wide. In at this gate none pass
The vigilance here placed, but such as come      580
Well-known from Heaven; and since meridian hour
\ No creature thence. If Spirit of other sort,
So minded, have o'erleaped these earthy bounds




BOOK IV.


I117


On purpose, hard thou know'st it to exclude
Spiritual substance with corporeal bar.
But if within the circuit of these walks,
In whatsoever shape, he lurk of whom
Thou tell'st, by morrow dawning I shall know."
So promised he; and Uriel to his charge
Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised 590
Bore him slope downward to the sun, now fallen
Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb,
Incredible how swift, had thither rolled
Diurnal, or this less volubil Earth,
By shorter flight to the east, had left him there,
Arraying with reflected purple and gold
The clouds that on his western throne attend.
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,         6oo
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung:
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw;
When Adam thus to Eve: "Fair consort, the hour   6io
Of night, and all things now retired to rest,
Mind us of like repose, since God hath set
Labour and rest, as day and night, to men
Successive; and the timely dew of sleep,
Now falling with soft slumberous weight, inclines
Our eye-lids. Other creatures all day long




I I8


PARADISE LOST.


Rove idle, unemployed, and less need rest;
Man hath his daily work of body or mind
Appointed, which declares his dignity,
And the regard of Heaven on all his ways;        620
While other animals unactive range,
And of their doings God takes no account.
To-morrow, ere fresh morning streak the east
With first approach of light, we must be risen,
And at our pleasant labour, to reform
Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green,
Our walk at noon, with branches overgrown,
That mock our scant manuring, and require
More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth.
Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums,    630
That lie bestrewn, unsightly and unsmooth,
Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease;
Meanwhile, as Nature wills, night bids us rest."
To whom thus Eve, with perfect beauty adorned:
"My author and disposer, what thou bidd'st
Unargued I obey; so God ordains:
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman's happiest knowledge, and her praise.
With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons and their change: all please alike.  640
Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the Sun,
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming-on
Of grateful Evening mild; then silent Night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair Moon,
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train:




BOOK IV.


lI I


But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends     65o
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showcrs;
Nor grateful Evening mild; nor silent Night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet.
But wherefore all night long shine these? for whomn
This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?"
To whom our general ancestor replied:
"Daughter of God and Man, accomplished Eve,      66o
Those have their course to finish round the Earth
By morrow evening, and from land to land
In order, though to nations yet unborn,
Ministering light prepared, they set and rise;
Lest total Darkness should by night regain
Her old possession, and extinguish life
In nature and all things; which these soft fires
Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat
Of various influence foment and warm,
Temper or nourish, or in part shed down          670
Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow
On Earth, made hereby apter to receive
Perfection from the sun's more potent ray.
These then, though unbeheld in deep of night,
Shine not in vain. Nor think, though men were none,
That Heaven would want spectators, God want praise.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the Earth
Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep:
All these with ceaseless praise his works behold,
Both day and night. How often, from the steep 68o
Of echoing hill or thicket, have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,




120


PARADISE LOST.


Sole, or responsive each to other's note,
Singing their great Creator! Oft in bands
While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk,
With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds
In full harmonic number joined, their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to Heaven."
Thus talking, hand in hand alone they passed
On to their blissful bower. It was a place       690
Chosen by the sovran Planter, when he framed
All things to Man's delightful use. The roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub,
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamine,
Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought
Mosaic; under-foot the violet,                   700
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone
Of costliest emblem. Other creature here,
Beast, bird, insect, or worm, durst enter none;
Such was their awe of Man. In shadier bower
More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph
Nor Faunus haunted. Here, in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs
Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial bed,       710
And Heavenly choirs the hymensean sung,
What day the genial Angel to our sire
Brought her, in naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely, than Pandora, whom the gods
Endowed with all their gifts; and, 0! too like




BOOK 1V.


121


In sad event, when, to the unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared
Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,  720
Both turned, and under open sky adored
The God that made both sky, air, Earth, and Heaven,
Which they beheld, the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole: "Thou also madest the night,
Maker Omnipotent; and thou the day,
Which we, in our appointed work employed,
Have finished, happy in our mutual help
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss
Ordained by thee; and this delicious place,
For us too large, where thy abundance wants      730
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.
But thou hast promised from us two a race
To fill the Earth, who shall with us extol
Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake,
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep."
This said unanimous, and other rites,;
Observing none but adoration pure,
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and, eased the putting-off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,       740
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused:
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity, and place, and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Mlaker bids increase; who bids abstain




I22


PARADISE LOST.


But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Hail, wedded Love, mysterious law, true source    750
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise of all things common else!
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.
Far be it that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,            760
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels: not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition; nor in court-amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.     770
These, lulled by nightingales, embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair! and, 0! yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more!
Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Half-way up-hill this vast sublunar vault;
And from their ivory port the Cherubim
Forth issuing, at the accustomed hour, stood armed
To their night-watches in warlike parade;         780
When Gabriel to his next in power thus spake:




BOOK IV.


123


"Uzziel, half these draw of, and coast the south
With strictest watch; these other wheel the north:
Our circuit meets full west." As flame they part,
Half wheeling to the shield, half to the spear.
From these, two strong and subtle Spirits he called
That near him stood, and gave them thus in charge:
"Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed
Search through this garden; leave unsearched no nook;
But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge,  790
Now laid perhaps asleep, secure of harm.
This evening from the sun's decline arrived
Who tells of some infernal Spirit seen
Hitherward bent (who could have thought?), escaped
The bars of Hell, on errand bad, no doubt:
Such, where ye find, seize fast, and hither bring."
So saying, on he led his radiant files,             A1
Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct
In search of whom they sought. Him there they found
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,      800
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams;
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise
Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise
At least distempered, discontented thoughts,
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,
Blown up with high conceits engendering pride.
Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear          8io
Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper, but returns
Of force to its own likeness: up he starts,
Discovered and surprised. As when a spark




124


PARADISE LOST.


Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid
Fit for the tun, some magazine to store
Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain,
With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air:
So started up in his own shape the Fiend.
Back stept those two fair Angels, half amazed    820
So sudden to behold the grisly King;
Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon:
"Which of those rebel Spirits adjudged to Hell
Com'st thou, escaped thy prison? and, transformed,
Why sat'st thou like an enemy in wait,
Here watching at the head of these that sleep?"
"Know ye not, then," said Satan, filled with scorn,
"Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar!
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,        830
The lowest of your throng; or if ye know,
Why ask ye, and superfluous begin
Your message, like to end as much in vain?"
-— To whom thus Zephon, answering scorn with scorn:
"Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,
Or undiminished brightness, to be known
As when thou stood'st in Heaven upright and pure.
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.     840
But come; for thou, be sure, shalt give account
To him who sent us, whose charge is to keep
This place inviolable, and these from harm."
So spake the Cherub; and his grave rebuke,
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible. Abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw




BOOK IV.


I25


Virtue in her shape how lovely; saw, and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed          ~50
Undaunted. "If I must contend," said he,
"Best with the best-the sender, not the sent;
Or all at once; more glory will be won,
Or less be lost." "Thy fear," said Zephon bold,
"Will save us trial what the least can do
Single against thee, wicked and thence weak."
The Fiend replied not, overcome with rage;
But, like a proud steed reined, went haughty on,
Champing his iron curb: to strive or fly
He held it vain; awe from above had quelled      860
His heart, not else dismayed. Now drew they nigh
The western point, where those half-rounding guards
Just met, and closing stood in squadron joined,
Awaiting next command. To whom their chief,
Gabriel, from the front thus called aloud:
"0 friends, I hear the tread of nimble feet
Hasting this way, and now by glimpse discern
Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade;
And with them comes a third, of regal port,
But faded splendour wan, who by his gait        870
And fierce demeanour seems the Prince of Hell;
Not likely to part hence without contest.
Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours."
He scarce had ended, when those two approached,
And brief related whom they brought, where found,
How busied, in what form and posture couched.
To whom, with stern regard, thus Gabriel spake:
"Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed
To thy transgressions, and disturbed the charge
Of others, who approve not to transgress        880




126


PARADISE LOST.


By thy example, but have power and right
To question thy bold entrance on this place?
Employed, it seems, to violate sleep, and those
Whose dwelling God hath planted here in bliss."
To whom thus Satan, with contemptuous brow:
"Gabriel, thou hadst in Heaven the esteem of wise,
And such I held thee; but this question asked
Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his pain?
Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,
Though thither doomed? Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt, 890
And boldly venture to whatever place
Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change
Torment with ease, and soonest recompense
Dole with delight; which in this place I sought:
To thee no reason, who know'st only good,
But evil hast not tried. And wilt object
His will who bound us? let him surer bar
His iron gates, if he intends our stay
In that dark durance. Thus much what was asked:
The rest is true, they found rme where they say;  goo
But that implies not violence or harm."
Thus he in scorn. The warlike Angel moved,
Disdainfully half smiling, thus replied:
"0 loss of one in Heaven to judge of wise,
Since Satan fell, whom folly overthrew,
And now returns him from his prison scaped,
Gravely in doubt whether to hold them wise
Or not who ask what boldness brought him hither
Unlicensed from his bounds in Hell prescribed!
So wise he judges it to fly from pain           910
However, and to scape his punishment!
So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the wrath,
Which thou incurr'st by flying, meet thy flight




BOOK IV.


127


Sevenfold, and scourge that wisdom back to Hell,
Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain
Can equal anger infinite provoked.
But wherefore thou alone? wherefore with thee
Came not all Hell broke loose? is pain to them  -
Less pain, less to be fled? or thou than they
Less hardy to endure? Courageous chief,          920
The first in flight from pain, hadst thou alleged
To thy deserted host this cause of flight,
Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive."
To which the Fiend thus answered, frowning stern:
"Not that I less endure, or shrink from pain,
Insulting Angel! well thou know'st I stood
Thy fiercest, when in battle to thy aid
The blasting vollied thunder made all speed,
And seconded thy else not dreaded spear.
But still thy words at random, as before,        930
Argue thy inexperience what behoves,
From hard assays and ill successes past,
A faithful leader; not to hazard all
Through ways of danger by himself untried.
I therefore, I alone, first undertook
To wing the desolate Abyss, and spy
This new-created World, whereof in Hell
Fame is not silent; here in hope to find
Better abode, and my afflicted powers
To settle here on Earth, or in mid air;         940
Though for possession put to try once more
What thou and thy gay legions dare against;
Whose easier business were to serve their Lord
High up in Heaven, with songs to hymn his throne,
And practised distances to cringe, not fight."




128


PARADISE LOST.


To whom the warrior Angel soon replied:
"To say and straight unsay, pretending first
Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy,
Argues no leader, but a liar traced,
Satan; and couldst thou 'faithful' add?  0 name,  950
O sacred name of faithfulness profaned!
Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew?
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head,
Was this your discipline and faith engaged,
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to the acknowledged Power Supreme?
And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem
Patron of liberty, who more than thou
Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored
Heaven's awful Monarch? wherefore, but in hope  960
To dispossess him, and thyself to reign?
But mark what I areed thee now: Avaunt!
Fly thither whence thou fledst. If from this hour
Within these hallowed limits thou appear,
Back to the infernal pit I drag thee chained,
And seal thee so as henceforth not to scorn
The facile gates of Hell too slightly barred."
So threatened he; but Satan to no threats
Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied:
"Then, when I am thy captive, talk of chains,  970
Proud limitary Cherub! but ere then
Far heavier load thyself expect to feel
From my prevailing arm, though Heaven's King
Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers,
Used to the yoke, drawest his triumphant wheels
In progress through the road of Heaven star-paved."
While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright




BOOK IV.


129


Turned fiery red, sharpening in mooned horns
Their phalanx, and began to hem him round
With ported spears, as thick as when a field    980
Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends
Her bearded grove of ears which way the wind
Sways them; the careful ploughman doubting stands
Lest on the threshing-floor his hopeful sheaves
Prove chaff. On the other side, Satan, alarmed,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:
His stature reached the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp
What seemed both spear and shield. Now dreadful deeds 990
Might have ensued; nor only Paradise,
In this commotion, but the starry cope
Of Heaven perhaps, or all the elements
At least, had gone to wrack, disturbed and torn
With violence of this conflict, had not soon
The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray,..
Hung forth in Heaven his golden scales, yet seen
Betwixt Astrma and the Scorpion sign,
Wherein all things created first he weighed,
The pendulous round Earth with balanced air     iooc
In counterpoise-now ponders all events,
Battles and realms. In these he put two weights,
The sequel each of parting and of fight:
The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam;
Which Gabriel spying thus bespake the Fiend:
"Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine;
Neither our own, but given; what folly then
To boast what arms can do! since thine no more
Than Heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now
P. L                                   9




130              PARADISE LOST.
To trample thee as mire. For proof look up,   1010
And read thy lot in yon celestial sign,
Where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak
If thou resist." The Fiend looked up, and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night.




I


BOOK V.


9-2




THE ARGUMENT.
Morning approached, Eve relates to Adam her troublesome dream;
he likes it not, yet comforts her: they come forth to their day labours:
their morning hymn at the door of their bower. God, to render Man
inexcusable, sends Raphael to admonish him of his obedience, of his
free estate, of his enemy near at hand-who he is, and why his enemy,
and whatever else may avail Adam to know. Raphael comes down to
Paradise; his appearance described; his coming discerned by Adam
afar off, sitting at the door of his bower; he goes out to meet him,
brings him to his lodge, entertains him with the choicest fruits of
Paradise got together by Eve; their discourse at table. Raphael
performs his message, minds Adam of his state and of his enemy;
relates, at Adam's request, who that enemy is, and how he came to be
so, beginning from his first revolt in Heaven, and the occasion thereof;
how he drew his legions after him to the parts of the North, and there
incited them to rebel with him, persuading all but only Abdiel, a Seraph,
who in argument dissuades and opposes him, then forsakes him.




BOOK V.


N    OW Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed,.and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,      Io
As through unquiet rest. He, on his side
Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then, with voice
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus: "Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven's last, best gift, my ever-new delight!
Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field   20
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,




134


PARADISE LOST.


What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How Nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet."
Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake:
"O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My glory, my perfection! glad I see; '-:  Thy face, and morn returned; for I this night     30
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed,
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee,
Works of day past, or morrow's next design,
But of offence and trouble, which my mind
Knew never till this irksome night. Methought,
Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk
With gentle voice; I thought it thine. It said,
'Why sleep'st thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time,
The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake        40
Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns
Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light,
Shadowy sets off the face of things-in vain,
If none regard. Heaven wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire,
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze?'
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not:
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I passed through ways   50
That brought me on a sudden to the Tree
Of interdicted Knowledge. Fair it seemed,
Much fairer to my fancy than by day;
And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood
One shaped and winged like one of those from Heaven




BOOK V.


I35


By us oft seen: his dewy locks distilled
Ambrosia. On that Tree he also gazed;
And, 'O fair plant,' said he, 'with fruit surcharged,
Deigns none to ease thy load and taste thy sweet,
Nor god, nor man? Is knowledge so despised?     60
Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?
Forbid who will, none shall from me withhold
Longer thy offered good, why else set here?'
This said, he paused not, but with venturous arm
He plucked, he tasted. Me damp horror chilled
At such bold words vouched with a deed so bold;
But he thus, overjoyed: 'O fruit divine,
Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropped,
Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit
For gods, yet able to make gods of men!         70
And why not gods of men, since good, the more
Communicated, more abundant grows,
The author not impaired, but honoured more?
Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve,
Partake thou also: happy though thou art,
Happier thou may'st be, worthier canst not be;
Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods
Thyself a goddess; not to Earth confined,
But sometimes in the Air, as we; sometimes
Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see       80
What life the gods live there, and such live thou.'
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked; the pleasant savoury smell
So quickened appetite that I, methought,
Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The Earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide




136


PARADISE LOST.


And various: wondering at my flight and change
To this high exaltation, suddenly                 go
My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down,
And fell asleep; but, 0, how glad I waked
To find this but a dream!" Thus Eve her night
Related, and thus Adam answered sad:
"Best image of myself, and dearer half,
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep
Affects me equally; nor can I like
This uncouth dream, of evil sprung, I fear;
Yet evil whence? in thee can harbour none,
Created pure. But know that in the soul          I00
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things,
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell when Nature rests.
Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes             110
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams,
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find
Of our last evening's talk in this thy dream,
But with addition strange; yet be not sad:
Evil into the mind of god or man
May come and go, so unapproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind; which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,    I20
Waking thou never wilt consent to do.




BOOK v.


137


Be not disheartened, then, nor cloud those looks,
That wont to be more cheerful and serene
Than when fair Morning first smiles on the world;
And let us to our fresh employments rise
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers,
That open now their choicest bosomed smells,
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store."
So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was cheered,
But silently a gentle tear let fall              I30
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he, ere they fell,
Kissed as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that feared to have offended.
So all was cleared, and to the field they haste.
But first, from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the sun-who, scarce uprisen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim,    140
Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landskip all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains-;Lowly they bowed adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,  150
More tuneable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness: and they thus began:
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty! thine this universal frame,




I38


PARADISE LOST.


Thus wondrous fair: thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these Heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye Sons of Light,    i6o
Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing-ye in Heaven;
On Earth join, all ye creatures, to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling Morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere
~     While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.      170, ' o      Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st.
Moon, that now meet'st the orient sun, now fliest,
With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies,
And ye five other wandering Fires, that move
In mystic dance not without song, resound
His praise who out of darkness called up light.
Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth           I80
Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix
And nourish all things, let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,




BOOKi V.


139


In honour to the world's great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,   I90
Rising or falling still advance his praise.
1-is praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye Pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living Souls; ye Birds,
That singing up to Heaven-gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk        200
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep,
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord! be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil, or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark."
So prayed they innocent, and to their thoughts
Firm peace recovered soon, and wonted calm.      210
On to their morning's rural work they haste,
Among sweet dews and flowers; where any row
Of fruit-trees over-woody reached too far
Their pampered boughs, and needed hands to check
Fruitless embraces: or they led the vine
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with her brings
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves. Them thus employed beheld
With pity Heaven's high King, and to him called  220




'. = l
140                   PARADISE LOST.
Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deigned
To travel with Tobias, and secured
His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid.
"Raphael," said he, "thou hear'st what stir on Earth
Satan, from Hell scaped through the darksome gulf,
Hath raised in Paradise, and how disturbed
This night the human pair; how he designs
In them at once to ruin all mankind.
@.     Go, therefore half this day, as friend with friend,
Converse with Adam, in what bower or shade               230
Thou find'st him from the heat of noon retired
To respite his day-labour with repast
Or with repose; and such discourse bring on
As may advise him of his happy stateHappiness in his power left free to will,
Left to his own free will, his will though free
Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware
He swerve not, too secure. Tell him withal
His danger, and from whom; what enemy,
Late fallen himself from Heaven, is plotting now  240
The fall of others from like state of bliss;
By violence? no, for that shall be withstood;
But by deceit and lies. This let him know,
Lest wilfully transgressing he pretend
Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned."
So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfilled
All justice; nor delayed the winged Saint
After his charge received; but from among
Thousand celestial Ardours, where he stood
Veiled with his gorgeous wings, upspringing light,  250
Flew through the midst of Heaven; the angelic quires,
On each hand parting, to his speed gave way
Through all the empyreal road, till, at the gate




BOOK V.


141


Of Heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide,
On golden hinges turning, as by work
Divine the sovran Architect had framed.
From hence-no cloud or, to obstruct his sight,
Star interposed, however small-he sees,
Not unconform to other shining globes,
Earth, and the Garden of God, with cedars crowned 260
Above all hills; as when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon;
Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing kens,
A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing
Now on the polar winds; then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air, till, within soar         270
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phcenix-gazed by all, as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun's
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns,
A Seraph winged. Six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments divine: the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair             280
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled




V


142               PARADISE LOST.
The circuit wide. Straight knew him all the bands
Of Angels under watch; and to his state
And to his message high in honour rise;
For on some message high they guessed him bound. 290
Their glittering tents he passed, and now is come
Into the blissful field, through groves of myrrh,
And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and balm,
A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here
Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will
Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.
Him, through the spicy forest onward come,
Adam discerned, as in the door he sat
Of his cool bower, while now the mounted sun     300
Shot down direct his fervid rays, to warm
Earth's inmost womb, more warmth than Adam needs;
And Eve within, due at her hour, prepared
For dinner savoury fruits, of taste to please
True appetite, and not disrelish thirst
Of nectarous draughts between, from milky stream,
Berry or grape: to whom thus Adam called:
"Haste hither, Eve, and, worth thy sight, behold
Eastward among those trees what glorious shape
Comes this way moving; seems another morn        3Io
Risen on mid-noon; some great behest from Heaven
To us perhaps he brings, and will vouchsafe
This day to be our guest. But go with speed,
And what thy stores contain bring forth, and pour
Abundance, fit to honour and receive
Our heavenly stranger; well we may afford
Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow
From large bestowed, where Nature multiplies
Her fertile growth, and by disburdening grows




BOOK V.


143


More fruitful; which instructs us not to spare."  320
To whom thus Eve: "Adam, Earth's hallowed mould,
Of God inspired, small store will serve where store,
All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the stalk;
Save what by frugal storing firmness gains
To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes.
But I will haste, and from each bough and brake,
Each plant and juiciest gourd, will pluck such choice
To entertain our Angel-guest, as he
Beholding shall confess that here on Earth
God hath dispensed his bounties as in Heaven."    330
So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent,
What choice to choose for delicacy best,
What order, so contrived as not to mix
Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change:
Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk
Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields
In India East or West, or middle shore,
In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where            340
Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat
Rough or smooth-rined, or bearded husk, or shell,
She gathers, tribute large, and on the board
Heaps with unsparing hand. For drink the grape
She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths
From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed
She tempers dulcet creams-nor these to hold
Wants her fit vessels pure; then strews the ground
With rose and odours from the shrub unfumrned.
Meanwhile our primitive great Sire, to meet     350
His godlike guest, walks forth, without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete




144


PARADISE LOST.


Perfections; in himself was all his state,
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
On princes, when their rich retinue long
UTli6orses led, and grooms besmeared with gold,
Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape.
CNearer his presence, Adam, though not awed,
Yet with submiss approach and reverence meek,
As to a superior nature, bowing low,             360
Thus said: "Native of Heaven (for other place
None can than Heaven such glorious shape contain),
Since, by descending from the Thrones above,
Those happy places thou hast deigned a while
To want, and honour these, vouchsafe with us,
Two only, who yet by sovran gift possess
This spacious ground, in yonder shady bower
To rest, and what the Garden choicest bears
To sit and taste, till this meridian heat
Be over, and the sun more cool decline."         370
Whom thus the angelic Virtue answered mild:
"Adam, I therefore came; nor art thou such
Created, or such place hast here to dwell,
As may not oft invite, though Spirits of Heaven,
To visit thee; lead on, then, where thy bower
O'ershades; for these mid-hours, till evening rise,
I have at will." So to the sylvan lodge
They came, that like Pomona's arbour smiled,
With flowerets decked and fragrant smells; but Eve,
Undecked save with herself, more lovely fair     380
Than wood-nymph, or the fairest goddess feigned
Of three that in Mount Ida naked strove,
Stood to entertain her guest from Heaven; no veil
She needed, virtue-proof; no thought infirm
Altered her cheek. On whom the Angel "Hail!"




BOOK V.


I45


Bestowed, the holy salutation used
Long after to blest Mary, second Eve:
"Hail! Mother of Mankind, whose fruitful womb
Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons
Than with these various fruits the trees of God   390
Have heaped this table!" Raised of grassy turf
Their table was, and mossy seats had round,
And on her ample square from side to side
All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here
Danced hand-in-hand. A while discourse they holdNo fear lest dinner cool-when thus began
Our Author: "Heavenly stranger, please to taste
These bounties, which our Nourisher, from whom
All perfect good, unmeasured-out, descends,
To us for food and for delight hath caused        400
The Earth to yield: unsavoury food, perhaps,
To spiritual natures; only this I know,
That one celestial Father gives to all."
To whom the Angel: " Therefore, what he gives
(Whose praise be ever sung) to Man, in part
Spiritual, may of purest Spirits be found
No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure
Intelligential substances require
As doth your rational; and both contain
Within them every lower faculty                   410
Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,
Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,
And corporeal to incorporeal turn.
For know, whatever was created needs
To be sustained and fed; of elements
The grosser feeds the purer: earth the sea;
Earth and the sea feed air; the air those fires
Ethereal, and, as lowest, first the moon;


P. L.


IO




146


PARADISE LOST.


Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurged
Vapours not yet into her substance turned.       420
Nor doth the moon no nourishment exhale
From her moist continent to higher orbs.
The sun, that light imparts to all, receives
From all his alimental recompense
In humid exhalations, and at even
Sups with the ocean. Though in Heaven the trees
Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines
Yield nectar; though from off the boughs each morn
We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground
Covered with pearly grain; yet God hath here     430
Varied his bounty so with new delights
As may compare with Heaven; and to taste
Think not I shall be nice." So down they sat,
And to their viands fell; nor seemingly
The Angel, nor in mist-the common gloss
Of theologians-but with keen dispatch
Of real hunger, and concoctive heat
To transubstantiate: what redounds transpires
Through Spirits with ease; nor wonder, if by fire
Of sooty coal the empiric alchemist             440
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn,
Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold,
As from the mine. Meanwhile at table Eve
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups
With pleasant liquors crowned. O innocence
Deserving Paradise! If ever, then,
Then had the Sons of God excuse to have been
Enamoured at that sight; but in those hearts
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy
Was understood, the injured lover's hell.        450
Thus when with meats and drinks they had sufficed,




BOOK V.


I47


Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose
In Adam not to let the occasion pass,
Given him by this great conference, to know
Of things above his world, and of their being
Who dwell in Heaven, whose excellence he saw
Transcend his own so far, whose radiant formsDivine effulgence-whose high power, so far
Exceeded human; and his wary speech
Thus to the empyreal minister he framed:         460
"Inhabitant with God, now know I well
Thy favour, in this honour done to Man,
Under whose lowly roof thou hast vouchsafed
To enter, and these earthly fruits to taste,
Food not of Angels, yet accepted so,
As that more willingly thou couldst not seem
At Heaven's high feasts to have fed: yet what compare?"
To whom the winged Hierarch replied:
"0 Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,        470
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Endued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and, in things that live, of life;
But more refined, more spiritous and pure,
As nearer to him placed or nearer tending,
Each -in their several active spheres assigned,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportioned to each kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves 480
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,


IC- 2




I48


PARADISE LOST.


To intellectual; give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding; whence the soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or intuitive: discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing but in degree, of kind the same.      490
Wonder not, then, what God for you saw good
If I refuse not, but convert, as you,
To proper substance. Time may come when men
-With Angels may participate, and find
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare;
And from these corporal nutriments, perhaps,
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit,
Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend
Ethereal, as we; or may at choice,.Here or in heavenly Paradises dwell,           500
I:* If ye be found obedient, and retain
Unalterably firm his love entire,
Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy
Your fill what happiness this happy state
Can comprehend, incapable of more."
To whom the Patriarch of Mankind replied:
"0 favourable Spirit, propitious guest,
Well hast thou taught the way that might direct
Our knowledge, and the scale of Nature set
From centre to circumference, whereon,           510
In contemplation of created things,
By steps we may ascend to God. But say,
What meant that caution joined, If ye be fouxd
Obedient? Can we want obedience, then,
To him, or possibly his love desert,
Who formed us from the dust, and placed us here
Full to the utmost measure of what bliss




BOOK V.


149


Human desires can seek or apprehend?"
To whom the Angel: "Son of Heaven and Earth,
Attend! That thou art happy, owe to God;         520
That thou continuest such, owe to thyself,
That is, to thy obedience; therein stand:
This was that caution given thee; be advised.
God made thee perfect, not immutable;     -.;
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power-ordained thy will
By nature free, not over-ruled by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity.
Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated; such with him              530
Finds no acceptance, nor can find; for how
Can hearts not free be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose?
Myself, and all the angelic host, that stand
In sight of God enthroned, our happy state
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds;
On other surety none: freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.        540
And some are fallen, to disobedience fallen,
And so from Heaven to deepest Hell: O fall
From what high state of bliss into what woe!"
To whom our great Progenitor: "Thy words
Attentive, and with more delighted ear,
Divine instructor, I have heard, than when
Cherubic songs by night from neighbouring hills
Aerial music send; nor knew I not
To be, both will and deed, created free.
Yet that we never shall forget to love           550




150


PARADISE LOST.


Our Maker, and obey him whose command
Single is yet so just, my constant thoughts
Assured me, and still assure; though what thou tell'st
Hath passed in Heaven some doubt within me move,
But more desire to hear, if thou consent,
The full relation, which must needs be strange,
Worthy of sacred silence to be heard.
And we have yet large day, for scarce the sun
Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins
His other half in the great zone of heaven."     560
Thus Adam made request; and Raphael,
After short pause assenting, thus began:
"High matter thou enjoin'st me, 0 prime of men,
Sad task and hard; for how shall I relate
To human sense the invisible exploits
Of warring Spirits? how, without remorse,
The ruin of so many, glorious once
And perfect while they stood? how, last, unfold
The secrets of another world, perhaps
Not lawful to reveal?  Yet for thy good          570
This is dispensed, and what surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate so,
By likening spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best-though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought!
"As yet this world was not, and Chaos wild
Reigned where these Heavens now roll, where Earth now
rests
Upon her centre poised; when on a day
(For time, though in eternity, applied           sSo
To motion, measures all things durable
By present, past, and future), on such day




BOOK V.


I5I


As Heaven's great year brings forth, the empyreal host
Of Angels, by imperial summons called,
Innumerable before the Almighty's throne
Forthwith from all the ends of Heaven appeared
Under their Hierarchs in orders bright:
Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,
Standards and gonfalons, 'twixt van and rear,
-Stream in the air, and for distinction serve    590
Of Hierarchies, of orders, and degrees;
Or in their glittering tissues bear emblazed
Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love
Recorded eminent. Thus when in orbs
Of circuit inexpressible they stood,
Orb within orb, the Father Infinite,
By whom in bliss embosomed sat the Son,
Amidst, as from a flaming mount, whose top
Brightness had made invisible, thus spake:
"'Hear, all ye Angels, progeny of light,      600
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,
Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand!
This day I have begot whom I declare
My only Son, and on this holy hill
Him have anointed, whom ye now behold
At my right hand; your head I him appoint,
And by myself have sworn, to him shall bow
All knees in Heaven, and shall confess him Lord.
Under his great vicegerent reign abide
United as one individual soul,                   6io
For ever happy. Him who disobeys
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day,
Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls
Into utter darkness deep engulfed, his place
Ordained without redemption, without end.'




152


PARADISE LOST.


"So spake the Omnipotent, and with his words
All seemed well pleased; all seemed, but were not all.
That day, as other solemn days, they spent
In song and dance about the sacred hill;
Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere       62
Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels
Resembles nearest-mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular
Then most when most irregular they seem;
And in their motions harmony divine
So smooths her charming tones that God's own ear
Listens delighted. Evening now approached
(For we have also our evening and our morn,
We ours for change delectable, not need),
Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn   62
Desirous: all in circles as they stood,
Tables are set, and on a sudden piled
With Angels' food, and rubied nectar flows
In pearl, in diamond, and massy gold,
Fruit of delicious vines, the growth of Heaven.
On flowers reposed, and with fresh flowerets crowned,
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy, secure
Of surfeit where full measure only bounds
Excess, before the all-bounteous King, who showered 64
With copious hand, rejoicing in their joy.
Now when ambrosial night, with clouds exhaled
From that high mount of God whence light and shade
Spring both, the face of brightest Heaven had changed
To grateful twilight (for night comes not there
In darker veil), and roseate dews disposed
All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest,
Wide over all the plain, and wider far
[o:  -..:-!O;0


[o




BOOK V.                    153
Than all this globous Earth in plain outspread
(Such are the courts of God), the angelic throng,  650
Dispersed in bands and files, their camp extend
By living streams among the trees of lifePavilions numberless and sudden reared,
Celestial tabernacles, where they slept
Fanned with cool winds; save those who, in their course,
Melodious hymns about the sovran throne
Alternate all night long. But not so waked
Satan-so call him now; his former name
Is heard no more in Heaven. He, of the first,
If not the first Archangel, great in power,     660
In favour, and pre-eminence, yet fraught
With envy against the Son of God, that day
Honoured by his great Father, and proclaimed
Messiah, King anointed, could not bear
Through pride that sight, and thought himself impaired.
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain,
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved
With all his legions to dislodge, and leave
Unworshipped, unobeyed, the throne supreme,      670
Contemptuous; and, his next subordinate
Awakening, thus to him in secret spake:
"'Sleep'st thou, companion dear? what sleep can close
Thy eyelids? and rememberest what decree,
Of yesterday, so late hath passed the lips
Of Heaven's Almighty? Thou to me thy thoughts
Wast wont, I mine to thee was wont, to impart;
Both waking we were one; how, then, can now
Thy sleep dissent?  New laws thou seest imposed:
New laws from him who reigns new minds may raise 6So
In us who serve —new counsels, to debate




I54


PARADISE LOST.


What doubtful may ensue: more in this place
To utter is not safe. Assemble thou
Of all those myriads which we lead the chief;
Tell them that by command, ere yet dim night
Her shadowy cloud withdraws, I am to haste,
And all who under me their banners wave,
Homeward with flying march where we possess
The quarters of the North, there to prepare
Fit entertainment to receive our King,            690
The great Messiah, and his new commands,
Who speedily through all the Hierarchies
Intends to pass triumphant, and give laws.'
"So spake the false Archangel, and infused
Bad influence into the unwary breast
Of his associate. He together calls,
Or several one by one, the regent powers,
Under him regent; tells, as he was taught,
That, the Most High commanding, now ere night,
Now ere dim night had disencumbered Heaven,       700
The great Hierarchal standard was to move;
Tells the suggested cause, and casts between
Ambiguous words and jealousies, to sound
Or taint integrity. But all obeyed
The wonted signal, and superior voice
Of their great Potentate; for great indeed
His name, and high was his degree in Heaven:
His countenance, as the morning-star that guides
The starry flock, allured them, and with lies
Drew after him the third part of Heaven's host.   710
Meanwhile, the Eternal eye, whose sight discerns
Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount,
And from within the golden lamps that burn
Nightly before him, saw without their light




BOOK V.


i55


Rebellion rising-saw in whom, how spread
Among the Sons of Morn, what multitudes
Were banded to oppose his high decree;
And, smiling, to his only Son thus said:
"'Son, thou in whom my glory I behold
In full resplendence, Heir of all my might,      720
Nearly it now concerns us to be sure
Of our omnipotence, and with what arms
We mean to hold what anciently we claim
Of deity or empire: such a foe
Is rising, who intends to erect his throne
Equal to ours, throughout the spacious North;
-Nor so content, hath in his thought to try
In battle what our power is or our right.
Let us advise, and to this hazard draw
With speed what force is left, and all employ    730
In our defence, lest unawares we lose
This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.'
"To whom the Son, with calm aspect and clear,
Lightening divine, ineffable, serene,
Made answer: 'Mighty Father, thou thy foes
Justly hast in derision, and secure
Laugh'st at their vain designs and tumults vain,
Matter to me of glory, whom their hate
Illustrates, when they see all regal power
Given me to quell their pride, and in event      740
Know whether I be dextrous to subdue
Thy rebels, or be found the worst in Heaven.'
"So spake the Son; but Satan with his powers
Far was advanced on winged speed, an host
Innumerable as the stars of night,
Or stars of morning, dew-drops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower.




I56


PARADISE LOST.


Regions they passed, the mighty regencies
Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones
In their triple degrees-regions to which         750
All thy dominion, Adam, is no more
Than what this Garden is to all the earth
And all the sea, from one entire globose
Stretched into longitude; which having passed,
At length into the limits of the North
They came, and Satan to his royal seat
High on a hill, far-blazing, as a mount
Raised on a mount, with pyramids and towers
From diamond quarries hewn and rocks of gold,
The palace of great Lucifer (so call             760
That structure, in the dialect of men
Interpreted) which not long after he,
Affecting all equality with God,
In imitation of that.mount whereon
Messiah was declared in sight of Heaven,
The Mountain of the Congregation called;
For thither he assembled all his train,
Pretending so commanded to consult
About the great reception of their King,
Thither to come; and with calumnious art         770
Of counterfeited truth thus held their ears:
"'Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,
If these magnific titles yet remain
Not merely titular, since by decree
Another now hath to himself engrossed
All power, and us eclipsed under the name
Of King anointed; for whom all this haste
Of midnight march, and hurried meeting here,
This only to consult, how we may best,
With what may be devised of honours new,         780




BOOK V.


157


Receive him coming to receive from us
Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile!
Too much to one! but double how enduredTo one and to his image now proclaimed?
But what if better counsels might erect
Our minds, and teach us to cast off this yoke!
Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend
The supple knee?  Ye will not, if I trust
To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves
Natives and Sons of Heaven possessed before     790
By none, and if not equal all, yet free,
Equally free; for orders and degrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist.
Who can in reason, then, or right, assume
Monarchy over such as live by right
His equals-if in power and splendour less,
In freedom equal? or can introduce
Law and edict on us, who without law
Err not? much less for this to be our Lord,
And look for adoration, to the abuse             8oo
Of those imperial titles which assert
Our being ordained to govern, not to serve!,
"Thus far his bold discourse without control
Had audience, when among the Seraphim
Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal adored
The Deity, and divine commands obeyed,
Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe
The current of his fury thus opposed:
"'o argument blasphemous, false, apd proud!
WVords which no ear ever to hear in Heaven      8IO
Expected, least of all from thee, ingrate,
In place thyself so high above thy peers!
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn




r58


PARADISE LOST.


The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn,
That to his only Son, by right endued
With regal sceptre, every soul in Heaven
Shall bend the knee, and in that honour due
Confess him rightful King? Unjust, thou say'st,
Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free,
And equal over equals to let reign,            820
One over all with unsucceeded power!
Shalt thou give law to God? shalt thou dispute
With Him the points of liberty, who made
Thee what thou art, and formed the powers of Heaven
Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their being?
Yet, by experience taught, we know how good,
And of our good and of our dignity
How provident he is-how far from thought
To make us less; bent rather to exalt
Our happy state, under one head more near      830
United. But to grant it thee unjust
That equal over equals monarch reign:
Thyself, though great and glorious, dost thou count,
Or all angelic nature joined in one,
Equal to him, begotten Son? by whom,
As by his Word, the mighty Father made
All things, even thee, and all the Spirits of Heaven
By him created in their bright degrees,
Crowned them with glory, and to their glory named
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, 840
Essential Powers; nor by his reign obscured,
But more illustrious made; since he, the head,
One of our number thus reduced becomes;
His laws our laws; all honour to him done
Returns our own. Cease, then, this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease




BOOK v.


I59


The incensed Father and the incensed Son
While pardon may be found, in time besought.'
"So spake the fervent Angel; but his zeal
None seconded, as out of season judged,          850
Or singular and rash; whereat rejoiced
The Apostate, and more haughty thus replied:
" ' That we were formed, then, say'st thou? and the work
Of secondary hands, by task transferred
From Father to his Son? Strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learned! Who saw
WVhen this creation was?  Remember'st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised     86o
By our own quickening power, when fatal course
Had circled his full orb, the birth mature
Of this our native Heaven, Ethereal Sons.
Our puissance is our own; our own right hand
Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try
Who is our equal: then thou shalt behold
Whether by supplication we intend
Addres's, and to begirt the Almighty throne
Beseeching or besieging. This report,
These tidings, carry to the anointed King;       870
And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight.'
"He said; and, as the sound of waters deep,
Hoarse murmur echoed to his words applause
Through the infinite host; nor less for that
The flaming Seraph, fearless, though alone,
Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold:
"'0 alienate from Grod, 0 Spirit accursed,
Forsaken of all good! I see thy fall
Determined, and thy hapless crew involved




I6o


PARADISE LOST.


In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread     880
Both of thy crime and punishment. Henceforth
No more be troubled how to quit the yoke
Of God's Messiah; those indulgent laws
Will not be now vouchsafed; other decrees
Against thee are gone forth without recall;
That golden sceptre which thou didst reject
Is now an iron rod to bruise and break
Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise;
Yet nor for thy advice or threats I fly
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath      890
Impendent, raging into sudden flame,
Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.
Then who created thee lamenting learn,
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.'
"So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found;
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;        9oo
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed,
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained
Superior, nor of violence feared aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turned
On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed."




BOOK VI.
P. L.




THE ARGUMENT.
Raphael continues to relate how Michael and Gabriel were sent
forth to battle against Satan and his Angels. The first fight described:
Satan and his Powers retire under night he calls a council'; invents
devilish engines, which, in the second day's fight, put Michael and his
Angels to some disorder,; but they at length, pulling up mountains,
overwhelmed both the force and machines of Satan. Yet, the tumult
not so ending, God, on the third day, sends Messiah his Son, for whom
he had reserved the glory of that victory. He, in the power of his
Father, coming to the place, and causing all his legions to stand still on
either side, with his chariot and thunder driving into the midst of his
enemies, pursues them, unable to resist, towards the wall of Heaven;
which opening, they leap down with horror and confusion into the place
of punishment prepared for them in the deep. Messiah returns with
triumph to his Father;,




BOOK VI.


cc LL night the dreadless Angel. unpursued,
A    Through Heaven's wide chamnpain held his way,
till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night;
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour      o10
To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here. And now went forth the Morn
Such as in highest Heaven, arrayed in gold
Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view:
War he perceived, war in procinct, and found
Already known what he for news had thought      20
To have reported; gladly then he mixed
I I-2




i64


PARADISE LOST.


Among those friendly powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,
That of so many myriads fallen yet one,
Returned not lost. On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard:
"'Servant of God, well done! Well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained      30
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy careTo stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse. The easier conquest now
Remains thee-aided by this host of friends,
Back on thy foes more glorious to return
Than scorned thou didst depart, and to subdue    40
By force who reason for their law refuse,
Right reason for their law, and for their King
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.
Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince,
And thou, in military prowess next,
Gabriel; lead forth to battle these my sons
Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints,
By thousands and by millions ranged for fight,
Equal in number to that godless crew
Rebellious; them with fire and hostile arms      so
Fearless assault, and, to the brow of Heaven
Pursuing, drive them out from God and bliss,
Into their place of punishment, the gulf
Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide




BOOK VI.


His fiery chaos to receive their fall.'
"So spake the Sovran Voice, and clouds began
To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll
In dusky wreaths reluctant flames, the sign
Of wrath awaked; nor with less dread the loud
Ethereal trumpet from on high gan blow:           6o
At which command the powers militant
That stood for Heaven, in mighty quadrate joined
Of union irresistible, moved on
In silence their bright legions, to the sound
Of instrumental harmony, that breathed
Heroic ardour to adventurous deeds
Under their godlike leaders, in the cause
Of God and his Messiah. On they move,
Indissolubly firm; nor obvious hill,
Nor straitening vale, nor wood, nor stream, divides  70
Their perfect ranks; for high above the ground
Their march was, and the passive air upbore
Their nimble tread; as when the total kind
Of birds, in orderly array, on wing
Came summoned over Eden to receive
Their names of thee; so over many a tract
Of Heaven they marched, and many a province wide,
Tenfold the length of this terrene. At last,
Far in the horizon to the North, appeared
From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched     80
In battailous aspect; and, nearer view,
Bristled with upright beams innumerable
Of rigid spears, anrd helmets thronged, and shields
Various, with boastful argument portrayed,
The banded powers of Satan hasting on
With furious expedition; for they weened
That self-same day, by fight or by surprise,




166


PARADISE LOST.


To win the mount of God, and on his throne
To set the envier of his state, the proud
Aspirer; but their thoughts proved fond and vain  go
In the mid-way. Though strange to us it seemed
At first that Angel should with Angel war,
And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet
So oft in festivals of joy and love
Unanimous, as sons of one great Sire,
Hymning the Eternal Father. But the shout
Of battle now began, and rushing sound
Of onset ended soon each milder thought.
High in the midst, exalted as a god,
The Apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat,    Ioo
Idol of majesty divine, enclosed
With flaming Cherubim and golden shields;
Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now
'Twixt host and host but narrow space was left,
A dreadful interval, and front to front
Presented stood, in terrible array
Of hideous length. Before the cloudy van,
On the rough edge of battle ere it joined,
Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced,
Came towering, armed in adamant and gold.       Ho
Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood
Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds,
And thus his own undaunted heart explores:
"'O Heaven! that such resemblance of the Highest
Should yet remain, where faith and realty
Remain not! Wherefore should not strength and might
There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove
Where boldest, though to sight unconquerable?
His puissance, trusting in the Almighty's aid,
I mean to try, whose reason I have tried        120




BOOK VI.


I67


Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just
That he who in debate of truth hath won
Should win in arms, in both disputes alike
Victor; though brutish that contest and foul,
When reason hath to deal with force, yet so
Most reason is that reason overcome.'
"So pondering, and from his armed peers
Forth-stepping opposite, half-way he met
His daring foe, at this prevention more
Incensed, and thus securely him defied:         130
"'Proud, art thou met? Thy hope was to have reached
The highth of thy aspiring unopposed,
The throne of God unguarded, and his side
Abandoned at the terror of thy power
Or potent tongue. Fool! not to think how vain
Against the Omnipotent to rise in arms;
Who, out of smallest things, could without end
Have raised incessant armies to defeat
Thy folly; or with solitary hand,
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow,         I40
Unaided could have finished thee, and whelmed
Thy legions under darkness! But thou seest
All are not of thy train; there be who faith
Prefer, and piety to God, though then
To thee not visible when I alone
Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
From all: my sect thou seest; now learn too late
How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.'
"Whom the grand Foe, with scornful eye askance,
Thus answered: 'Ill for thee, but in wished hour  I50
Of my revenge, first sought for, thou return'st
From flight, seditious Angel, to receive
Thy merited reward, the first assay




i68


PARADISE LOST.


Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue,
Inspired with contradiction, durst oppose
A third part of the gods, in synod met
Their deities to assert; who, while they feel
Vigour divine within them, can allow
Omnipotence to none. But well thou com'st
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win
From me some plume, that thy success may show
Destruction to the rest. This pause between
(Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee knowAt first I thought that liberty and Heaven
To heavenly souls had been all one; but now
I see that most through sloth had rather serve,
Ministering Spirits, trained up in feast and song:
Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of Heaven,
Servility with freedom to contend,
As both their deeds compared this day shall prove.'
"To whom, in brief, thus Abdiel stern replied:
'Apostate! still thou err'st, nor end wilt find
Of erring, from the path of truth remote.
Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains,
Or Nature: God and Nature bid the same,
When he who rules is worthiest, and excels
Them whom he governs. This is servitude,
To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled
Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,
Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled;
Yet lewdly dar'st our ministering upbraid.
Reign thou in Hell, thy kingdom; let me serve
In Heaven God ever blest, and his divine
Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed;
Yet chains in Hell, not realms, expect: meanwhile,




BOOK VI.


i69


From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight,
This greeting on thy impious crest receive.'
"So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high,
Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell   Igo
On the proud crest of Satan that no sight,
Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield,
Such ruin intercept. Ten paces huge
He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee
His massy spear upstayed: as if, on- Earth,
Winds under ground, or waters forcing way,
Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat,
Half-sunk with all his pines. Amazement seized
The rebel Thrones, but greater rage, to see
Thus foiled their mightiest; ours joy filled, and shout,
Presage of victory, and fierce desire            20I
Of battle: whereat Michael bid sound
The Archangel trumpet; through the vast of Heaven
It sounded, and the faithful armies rung
Hosannah to the Highest; nor stood at gaze
The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined
The horrid shock. Now storming fury rose,
And clamour such as heard in Heaven till now
Was never; arms on armou~r clashing brayed
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels         210
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise
Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss
Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew,
And, flying, vaulted either host with fire.
So under fiery cope together rushed
Both battles main, with ruinous assault
And inextinguishable rage; all Heaven
Resounded, and, had Earth been then, all Earth
Had to her centre shook. What wonder, when




170


PARADISE LOST.


Millions of fierce encountering Angels fought    220
On either side, the least of whom could wield
These elements, and arm him with the force
Of all their regions?  How much more of power
Army against army numberless to raise
Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb,
Though not destroy, their happy native seat!
Had not the Eternal WKing Omnipotent
From his stronghold of Heaven high overruled
And limited their might; though numbered such
As each divided legion miight have seemed        230
A numerous host; in strength each armed hand
A legion; led in fight, yet leader seemed
Each warrior single as in chief —expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war. No thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory. Deeds of eternal fame                243
Were done, but infinite; for wide was spread
That war, and various: sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight; then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale
The battle hung; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms
No equal, ranging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confused, at length
Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled  230
Squadrons at once: with huge two-handed sway
Brandished aloft the horrid edge cam-le down




BOOK VI.


I7I


Wide-wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb
Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield,
A vast circumference. At his approach.                     '
The great Archangel from his warlike toil
Surceased, and, glad, as hoping here to end
Intestine war in Heaven, the Arch-foe subdued
Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown  260
And visage all inflamed, first thus began:
"'Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt,
Unnamed in Heaven, now plenteous as thou seest
These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all,
Though heaviest, by just measure, on thyself
And thy adherents: how hast thou disturbed
Heaven's blessed peace, and into Nature brought
Misery, uncreated till the crime
Of thy rebellion! how hast thou instilled
Thy malice into thousands, once upright          270
And faithful, now proved false! But think not here
To trouble holy rest; Heaven casts thee out
From all her confines; Heaven, the seat of bliss,
Brooks not the works of violence and war.
Hence, then, and evil go with thee along,
Thy offspring, to the place of evil, Hell,
Thou and thy wicked crew! there mingle broils,
Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom,
Or some more sudden vengeance, winged from God,
Precipitate thee with augmented pain.'           280
"So spake the -prince of Angels; to whom thus
The Adversary: 'Nor think thou with wind
Of airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these
To flight-or, if to fall, but that they rise




I72


PARADISE LOST.


Unvanquished-easier to transact with me
That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats
To chase me hence? Err not that so shall end
The strife which thou call'st evil, but we style
The strife of glory; which we mean to win,       290
Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell
Thou fablest; here, however, to dwell free,
If not to reign. Meanwhile, thy utmost force
(And join him named Almighty to thy aid)
I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh.'
"They ended parle, and both addressed for fight
Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue
Of Angels, can relate, or to what things
Liken on Earth conspicuous, that may lift
Human imagination to such highth                 300
Of godlike power? for likest gods they seemed,
Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms,
Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven.
Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood
In horror; from each hand with speed retired,
Where erst was thickest fight, the angelic throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion: such as (to set forth         310
Great things by small) if, Nature's concord broke,
Among the constellations war were sprung,
Two planets, rushing from aspect malign
Of fiercest opposition, in mid sky
Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound.
Together both, with next to almighty arm
Uplifted imminent, one stroke they aimed
That might determine, and not need repeat,




BOOK VI.


173


As not of power at once; nor odds appeared
In might or swift prevention. But the sword      320
Of Michael from the armoury of God
Was given him tempered so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer; nor stayed,
But, with swift wheel reverse, deep entering shared
All his right side. Then Satan first knew pain,
And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Passed through him; but the ethereal substance closed, 330
Not long divisible, and from the gash
A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed,
And all his armour stained, erewhile so bright.
Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run
By Angels many and strong, who interposed
Defence, while others bore him on their shields
Back to his chariot, where it stood retired
From off the files of war; there they him laid
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame     340
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power.
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits, that live throughout
Vital in every part-not, as frail Man,
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reinsCannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air:
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,  350
All intellect, all sense; and as they please




I74


PARADISE LOST.


They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
"Meanwhile, in other parts, like deeds deserved
Memorial, where the might of Gabriel' fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king, who him defied,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threatened, nor from the Holy One of Heaven
Refrained his tongue blasphemous; but anon,     360
Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing
Uriel and Raphael his vaunting foe,
Though huge and in a rock of diamond armed,
Vanquished-Adramelech and Asmadai,
Two potent Thrones, that to be less than gods
Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight,
Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.
Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy
The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow      370
Ariel, and Arioch, and the violence
Of Ramiel, scorched and blasted, overthrew.
I might relate of thousands, and their names
Eternize here on Earth; but those elect
Angels, contented with their fame in Heaven,
Seek not the praise of men: the other sort,
In might though wondrous and in acts of war,
Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom
Cancelled from Heaven and sacred memory,
Nameless in dark oblivion let th.            380
For strength from truth divided,..: just,
Illaudable, nought merits but die.
And ignominy, yet to glory aspil-.
Vain-glorious, and through infam      ae:




BOOK VI.


I75


Therefore eternal silence be their doom.
"And now, their mightiest quelled, the battle swerved,
With many an inroad gored; deformed rout
Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground
With shivered armour strown, and on a heap
Chariot and charioter lay overturned,            390
And fiery foaming steeds; what stood recoiled,
O'er-wearied, through the faint Satanic host,
Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surprised,
Then first with fear surprised and sense of pain,
Fled ignominious, to such evil brought
By sin of disobedience; till that hour
Not liable to fear, or flight, or pain.
Far otherwise the inviolable Saints
In cubic phalanx firm advanced entire,
Invulnerable, impenetrably armed;                400
Such high advantages their innocence
Gave them above their foes-not to have sinned,
Not to have disobeyed; in fight they stood
Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained
By wound, though from their place by violence moved.
"Now Night her course began, and, over Heaven
Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed,
And silence on the odious din of war;
Under her cloudy covert both retired,
Victor and vanquished. On the foughten field     410
Michael and his Angels prevalent
Encamping placed in guard their watches round,
Cherubic waving fires: on the other part,
Satan with his rebellious disappeared,
Far in the dark dislodged, and, void of rest,
His potentates to council called by night,
And in the midst thus undismayed began:


i I




I76


PARADISE LOST.


"'0 now in danger tried, now known in arms
Not to be overpowered, companions dear,
Found worthy not of liberty alone,               420
Too mean pretence, but, what we more affect,
Honour, dominion, glory, and renown;
Who have sustained one day in doubtful fight
(And if one day, why not eternal days?)
What Heaven's Lord had powerfullest to send
Against us from about his throne, and judged
Sufficient to subdue us to his will,
But proves not so: then fallible, it seems,
Of future we may deem him, though till now
Omniscient thought. True is, less firmly armed,  430
Some disadvantage we endured, and pain
Till now not known, but, known, as soon contemned;
Since now we find this our empyreal form
Incapable of mortal injury,
Imperishable, and, though pierced with wound,
Soon closing, and by native vigour healed.
Of evil, then, so small as easy think
The remedy: perhaps more valid arms,
Weapons more violent, when next we meet,
May serve to better us and worse our foes,      440
Or equal what between us made the odds,
In nature none: if other hidden cause
Left them superior, while we can preserve
Unhurt our minds, and understanding sound,
Due search and consultation will disclose.'
"He sat; and in the assembly next upstood
Nisroch, of Principalities the prime;
As one he stood escaped from cruel fight,
Sore toiled, his riven arms to havoc hewn,
And, cloudy in aspect, thus answering spake:     450




BOOK VI.


I77


"'Deliverer from new Lords, leader to free
Enjoyment of our right as gods! yet hard
For gods, and too unequal work, we find
Against unequal arms to fight in pain,
Against unpained, impassive; from which evil
Ruin must needs ensue; for what avails
Valour or strength, though matchless, quelled with pain,
Which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands
Of mightiest? Sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine,       460
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and, excessive, overturns
All patience. He who, therefore, can invent
With what more forcible we may offend
Our yet unwounded enemies, or arm
Ourselves with like defence, to me deserves
No less than for deliverance what we owe.'
"Whereto, with look composed, Satan replied:
'Not uninvented that, which thou aright          470
Believ'st so main to our success, I bring.
Which of us who beholds the bright surface
Of this ethereous mould whereon we standThis continent of spacious Heaven, adorned
With plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems and goldWhose eye so superficially surveys
These things, as not to mind from whence they grow
Deep under ground, materials dark and crude,
Of spiritous and fiery spume, till touched
With Heaven's ray, and tempered, they shoot forth  480
So beauteous, opening to the ambient light?
These in their dark nativity the deep
Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame;
P. L.                                 12


/I




178


PARADISE LOST.


Which, into hollow engines long and round
rhick-rammed, at the other bore with touch of fire
Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth
From far, with thundering noise, among our foes
Such implements of mischief as shall dash
To pieces and o'erwhelm whatever stands
Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmed  490
The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.
Nor long shall be our labour; yet ere dawn
Effect shall end our wish. Meanwhile revive;
Abandon fear; to strength and counsel joined
Think nothing hard, much less to be despaired.'
"He ended; and his woeds their drooping cheer
Enlightened, and their languished hope revived.
The invention all admired, and each how he
To be the inventor missed; so easy it seemed
Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
Impossible. Yet, haply, of thy race,           Sol
In future days, if malice should abound,
Some one intent on mischief, or inspired
With devilish machination, might devise
Like instrument to plague the sons of men
For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent.
Forthwith from council to the work they flew;
None arguing stood; innumerable hands
Were ready; in a moment up they turned
Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath       510
The originals of Nature in their crude
Conception; sulphurous and nitrous foam
They found, they mingled, and, with subtle art
Concocted and adusted, they reduced
To blackest grain, and into store conveyed.
Part hidden veins digged up (nor hath this Earth




BOOK VI.


179


Entrails unlike) of mineral and stone,
Whereof to found their engines and their balls
Of missive ruin; part incentive reed
Provide, pernicious with one touch to fire.      520
So all ere day-spring, under conscious night,
Secret they finished, and in order set,
With silent circumspection, unespied.
"Now when fair Morn orient in Heaven appeared,
Up rose the victor Angels, and to arms
The matin trumpet sung: in arms they stood
Of golden panoply, refulgent host,
Soon banded; others from the dawning hills            Ai.
Looked round, and scouts each coast light-armed scour, 7
Each quarter, to descry the distant foe,         530
Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for fight,
In motion or in halt. Him soon they met
Under spread ensigns moving nigh, in slow
But firm battalion; back with speediest sail,
Zophiel, of Cherubim the swiftest wing,
Came flying, and in mid air aloud thus cried:
"'Arm, warriors, arm for fight! The foe at hand,
Whom fled we thought, will save us long pursuit
This day; fear not his flight; so thick a cloud
He comes, and settled in his face I see          540
Sad resolution and secure. Let each
His adamantine coat gird well, and each
Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbed shield,
Borne even or high; for this day will pour down,
If I conjecture aught, no drizzling shower,
But rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire.'
"So warned he them, aware themselves, and soon
In order, quit of all impediment;
Instant, without disturb, they took alarm,


12-2




186


PARADISE LOST.


And onward move embattled: when, behold!        550
Not distant far, with heavy pace the foe
Approaching gross and huge; in hollow cube
Training his devilish enginry, impaled
On every side with shadowing squadrons deep,
To hide the fraud. At interview both stood
A while; but suddenly at head appeared
Satan, and thus was heard commanding loud:
"'Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold,
That all may see who hate us, how we seek
Peace and composure, and with open breast       560
Stand ready to receive them, if they like
Our overture, and turn not back perverse;
But that I doubt: however, witness Heaven!
Heaven, witness thou anon! while we discharge
Freely our part. Ye, who appointed stand,
Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch
What we propound, and loud that all may hear.'
"So scoffing in ambiguous words, he scarce
Had ended, when to right and left the front
Divided, and to either flank retired;           570
Which to our eyes discovered, new and strange,
A triple mounted row of pillars laid
On wheels (for like to pillars most they seemed,
Or hollowed bodies made of oak or fir,
With branches lopt, in wood or mountain felled),
Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their mouths
With hideous orifice gaped on us wide,
Portending hollow truce. At each behind
A Seraph stood, and in his hand a reed
Stood waving tipt with fire; while we, suspense,  580
Collected stood within our thoughts amused;
Not long, for sudden all, at once, their reeds




BOOK VI.


181


Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied
With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame,
But soon obscured with smoke, all Heaven appeared,
From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar
Embowelled with outrageous noise the air,
And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul
Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts and hail
Of iron globes; which, on the victor host       590
Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote,
That whom they hit none on their feet might stand,
Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell
By thousands, Angel on Archangel rolled,
The sooner for their arms: unarmed, they might
Have easily, as Spirits, evaded swift
By quick contraction or remove; but now
Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout;
Nor served it to relax their serried files.
What should they do?  If on they rushed, repulse  6oo
Repeated, and indecent overthrow
Doubled, would render them yet more despised,
And to their foes a laughter; for in view
Stood ranked of Seraphim another row,
In posture to displode their second tire
Of thunder; back defeated to return
They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight,
And to his mates thus in derision called:
"'O friends, why come not on these victors proud?
Erewhile they fierce were coming; and when we,  6io
To entertain them fair with open front
And breast (what could we more?), propounded terms
Of composition, straight they changed their ininds,
Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell,
As they would dance: yet for a dance they seemed




i82


PARADISE LOST.


Somewhat extravagant and wild, perhaps
For joy of offered peace. But I suppose,
If our proposals once again were heard,
We should compel them to a quick result.'
"To whom thus Belial, in like gamesome mood:   6mo
'Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight,
Of hard contents, and full of force urged home,
Such as we might perceive amused them all,
And stumbled many: who receives them right
Had need from head to foot well understand;
Not understood, this gift they have besides,
They show us when our foes walk not upright.'
"So they among themselves in pleasant vein
Stood scoffing, highthened in their thoughts beyond
All doubt of victory; Eternal Might              630
To match with their inventions they presumed
So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn,
And all his host derided, while they stood
A while in trouble: but they stood not long;
Rage prompted them at length, and found them arms
Against such hellish mischief fit to oppose.
Forthwith (behold the excellence, the power,
Which God hath in his mighty Angels placed!)
Their arms away they threw, and to the hills
(For Earth hath this variety from Heaven         640
Of pleasure situate in hill and dale)
Light as the lightning-glimpse they ran, they flew;
From their foundations loosening to and fro,
They plucked the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands. Amaze,
Be sure, and terror seized the rebel host,
When corning towards them so dread they saw




BOOK VI.


I83


The bottom of the mountains upward turned;
Till on those cursed engines' triple row        650o
They saw them whelmed, and all their confidence
Under the weight of mountains buried deep;
Themselves invaded next, and on their heads
Main promontories flung, which in the air
Came shadowing, and oppressed whole legions armed.
Their armour helped their harm, crushed in and bruised
Into their substance pent, which wrought them pain
Implacable, and many a dolorous groan,
Long struggling underneath, ere they could wind
Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light,  660
Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown.
The rest, in imitation, to like arms
Betook them, and the neighbouring hills uptore;
So hills amid the air encountered hills,
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire,
That underground they fought in dismal shade;
Infernal noise! war seemed a civil game
To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped
Upon confusion rose. And now all Heaven
Had gone to wrack, with ruin overspread,       670
Had not the Almighty Father, where he sits
Shrined in his sanctuary of Heaven secure,
Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen
This tumult, and permitted all, advised,
That his great purpose he might so fulfil,
To honour his anointed Son, avenged
Upon his enemies, and to declare
All power on him transferred: whence to his Son,
The assessor of his throne, he thus began:
"'Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved,       6So
Son in whose face invisible is beheld




184


PARADISE LOST.


Visibly, what by Deity I am,
And in whose hand what by decree I do,
Second Omnipotence! two days are passed,
Two days, as we compute the days of Heaven,
Since Michael and his powers went forth to tame
These disobedient. Sore hath been their fight,
As likeliest was when two such foes met armed;
For to themselves I left them; and thou know'st,
Equal in their creation they were formed,        690
Save what sin hath impaired-which yet hath wrought
Insensibly, for I suspend their doom:
Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last
Endless, and no solution will be found.
War wearied hath performed what war can do,
And to disordered rage let loose the reins,
With mountains, as with weapons, armed; which makes
Wild work in Heaven, and dangerous to the main.
Two days are, therefore, passed, the third is thine:
For thee I have ordained it, and thus far        700
Have suffered, that the glory may be thine
Of ending this great war, since none but thou
Can end it. Into thee such virtue and grace
Immense I have transfused, that all may know
In Heaven and Hell thy power above compare;
And this perverse commotion governed thus,
To manifest thee worthiest to be Heir
Of all things-to be Heir and to be King
By sacred unction, thy deserved right.
Go, then, thou Mightiest, in thy Father's might;  710
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake Heaven's basis; bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh;




BOOK VI.


is5


Pursue these Sons of Darkness, drive them out
From all Heaven's bounds into the utter deep;
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God and Messiah his anointed King.'
"He said, and on his Son with rays direct
Shone full; he all his Father full expressed     720
Ineffably into his face received;
And thus the Filial Godhead answering spake:
"'0 Father, 0 Supreme of Heavenly Thrones,
First, Highest, Holiest, Best, thou always seek'st
To glorify thy Son; I always thee,
As is most just. This I my glory account,
My exaltation, and my whole delight,
That thou in me well pleased declar'st thy will
Fulfilled, which to fulfil is all my bliss.
Sceptre and power, thy giving, I assume,         730
And gladlier shall resign, when in the end
Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee
For ever, and in me all whom thou lov'st:
But whom thou hat'st I hate, and can put on
Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on,
Image of thee in all things; and shall soon,
Armed with thy might, rid Heaven of these rebelled,
To their prepared ill mansion driven down,
To chains of darkness and the undying worm,
That from thy just obedience could revolt,       740
Whom to obey is happiness entire.
Then shall thy Saints, unmixed, and from the impure
Far separate, circling thy holy mount,
Unfeigned halleluiahs to thee sing,
Hymns of high praise, and I among them chief.'
"So said, he, o'er his sceptre bowing, rose
From the right hand of Glory where he sat;




i86


PARADISE LOST.


And the third sacred morn began to shine,
Dawning through Heaven. Forth rushed with whirlwind
sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,                   750
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel, undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed
By four Cherubic shapes. Four faces each
Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between;
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber and colours of the showery arch.
He, in celestial panoply all armed               760
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored;
And from about him fierce effusion rolled
Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire.
Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints,
He onward came; far off his coming shone;
And twenty thousand (I their number heard)
Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen.  770
He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime
On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned,
Illustrious far and wide, but by his own
First seen; them unexpected joy surprised
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed
Aloft by Angels borne, his sign in Heaven;
Under whose conduct Michael soon reduced
His army, circumfused on either wing,
Under their Head embodied all in one.




BOOK VI.                   187
Before him Power Divine his way prepared;        780
At his command the uprooted hills retired
Each to his place; they heard his voice, and went
Obsequious; Heaven his wonted face renewed,
And with fresh flowerets hill and valley smiled.
"This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured,
And to rebellious fight rallied their powers,
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair.
In Heavenly Spirits could such perverseness dwell?
But to convince the proud what signs avail,
Or wonders move the obdurate to relent?          790
They, hardened more by what might most reclaim,
Grieving to see his glory, at the sight
Took envy, and, aspiring to his highth,
Stood re-embattled fierce, by force or fraud
Weening to prosper, and at length prevail
Against God and Messiah, or to fall
In universal ruin last; and now
To final battle drew, disdaining flight,
Or faint retreat: when the great Son of God
To all his host on either hand thus spake:       800
"'Stand still in bright array, ye Saints; here stand,
Ye Angels armed; this day from battle rest.
Faithful hath been your warfare, and of God
Accepted, fearless in his righteous cause;
And as ye have received, so have ye done,
Invincibly. But of this cursed crew
The punishment to other hand belongs;
Vengeance is his, or whose he sole appoints:
Number to this day's work is not ordained,
Nor multitude; stand only and behold             81o
God's indignation on these godless poured
By me; not you, but me, they have despised,




188


PARADISE LOST.


Yet envied; against me is all their rage,
Because the Father, to whom in Heaven supreme
Kingdom and power and glory appertains,
Hath honoured me, according to his will.
Therefore to me their doom he hath assigned,.That they may have their wish, to try with me
In battle which the stronger proves-they all,
Or I alone against them; since by strength       820
They measure all, of other excellence
Not emulous, nor care who them excels;
Nor other strife with them do I vouchsafe.'
"So spake the Son, and into terror changed
His countenance, too severe to be beheld,
And full of wrath bent on his enemies.
At once the Four spread out their starry wings
With dreadful shade contiguous, and the orbs
Of his fierce chariot rolled, as with the sound
Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host.        830
He on his impious foes right onward drove,
Gloomy as night; under his burning wheels
The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God. Full soon
Among them he arrived, in his right hand
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent
Before him, such as in their souls infixed
Plagues; they, astonished, all resistance lost,
All courage; down their idle weapons dropt;
O'er shields, and helms, and helmed heads he rode  840
Of Thrones and mighty Seraphim prostrate,
That wished the mountains now might be again
Thrown on them, as a shelter from his ire.
Nor less on either side tempestuous fell
His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged Four,




BOOK VI.


89


Distinct with eyes, and from the living wheels,
Distinct alike with multitude of eyes;
One spirit in them ruled, and every eye
Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire
Among the accursed, that withered all their strength, 85o
And of their wonted vigour left them drained,
Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen.
Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked
His thunder in mid-volley; for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of Heaven.
The overthrown he raised, and, as a herd
Of goats or timorous flock together thronged,
Drove them before him thunderstruck, pursued
With terrors and with furies to the bounds
And crystal wall of Heaven; which, opening wide,  86o
Rolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed
Into the wasteful deep. The monstrous sight
Strook them with horror backward, but far worse
Urged them behind; headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of Heaven; eternal wrath
Burned after them to the bottomless pit.
"Hell heard the unsufferable noise; Hell saw
Heaven ruining from Heaven, and would have fled
Aifrighted; but strict Fate had cast too deep
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound.   870
Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy; so huge a rout
Encumbered him with ruin. 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.
Disburdened Heaven rejoiced, and soon repaired




Igo


PARADISE LOST.


Her mural breach, returning whence it rolled.
Sole victor, from the expulsion of his foes     880
Messiah his triumphal chariot turned.
To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood
Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts,
With jubilee advanced; and as they went,
Shaded with branching palm, each order bright
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious King,
Son, Heir, and Lord, to him dominion given,
Worthiest to reign. He, celebrated, rode
Triumphant through mid Heaven, into the courts
And temple of his mighty Father throned         890
On high; who into glory him received,
Where now he sits at the right hand of bliss.
"Thus, measuring things in Heaven by things on Earth,
At thy request, and that thou may'st beware
By what is past, to thee I have& revealed
What might have else to human race been hid;
The discord which befell, and war in Heaven
Among the angelic powers, and the deep fall
Of those too high aspiring, who rebelled
With Satan: he who envies now thy state,        90o
Who now is plotting how he may seduce
Thee also from obedience, that, with him
Bereaved of happiness, thou may'st partake
His punishment, eternal misery;
Which would be all his solace and revenge,
As a despite done against the Most High,
Thee once to gain companion of his woe.
But listen not to his temptations; warn
Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard,
By terrible example, the reward                 910
Of disobedience. Firm they might have stood,
Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress."


V




BOOK VII.




THE ARGUMENT.
Raphael, at the request of Adam, relat   xvandwhereforethis
Wo      as irst created: that God, aftjhe _         fnSatan anAngels out of Heaven,declared his pleasure to create another World, and
oth                           seercreatures to dweliere;  i  dance
of Angels, to perform the work of creation in six days: the Angels
celebrate with lymns the performanc    an    d his reascension into
Heaven.




BOOK VII.
DESCEND from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call; for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwell'st; but Heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play     Io
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee,
Into the Heaven of Heavens I have presumed,
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air,
Thy tempering: with like safety guided down,
Return me to my native element;
Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once
Belleroph6n, though from a lower clime)
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall,
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn.          20
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal sphere.
P. L.                                 I3..../




I94


PARADISE LOST.


Standing on Earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,      30
Urania, and fit audience find, though few;
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son. So fail not thou who thee implores;
For thou art Heavenly, she an empty dream.
Say, Goddess, what ensued when RaphaeJ,         40
The affable Archangel, had forewarned
Adam by dire example. to.beware
Apostasy, by what befell in Heaven
To those apostates, lest the like befall
In Paradise to Adam or his race,
Charged not to touch the interdicted Tree,
If they transgress, and slight that sole command,
So easily obeyed amid the choice
Of all tastes else to please their appetite,
Though wandering. He with his consorted Eve       50
The story heard attentive, and A.s filled
With admiration and deep muse, to hear
Of things so high and strange, things to their thought
So unimaginable as hate in Heaven,
And war so near the peace of God in bliss,




BOOK VII.


195


With such confusion; but the evil, soon
Driven back, redounded as a flood on those
From whom it sprung, impossible to mix
With blessedness. Whence Adam soon repealed
The doubts that in his heart arose; and now      6o
Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know
What nearer might concern him _how this World
Of —ieaxen and Earth conspicuous first bega n_;
When, and whereof, created; for what cause'
What within-den, -or without, was done
Before his memory-as one whose drouth
Yet scarce allayed still eyes the current stream,
Whose liquid murmur heard new thirst excites —
Proceeded thus to ask his Heavenly guest:
"Great things, and full of wonder in our ears,  70
Far differing from this World, thou hast revealed,
Divine interpreter! by favour sent
Down from the Empyrean to forewarn
Us timely of what might else have been our loss,
Unknown, which human knowledge could not reach;
For which to the infinitely Good we owe
Immortal thanks, and his admonishment
Receive with solemn purpose to observe
Immutably his sovran will, the end
Of what we are. But, since thou hast vouchsafed  80
Gently, for our instruction, to impart
Things above earthly thought, which yet concerned
Our knowing, as to highest Wisdom seemed,
Deign to descend now lower, and relate
What may no less perhaps avail us known:
How first began this heaven which we behold
Distant so high, with moving fires adorned
Innumerable; and this which yields or fills


13- 2




I96


PARADISE LOST.


All space, the ambient air wide interfused,
Embracing round this florid Earth; what cause    90
Moved the Creator, in his holy rest
Through all eternity, so late to build
In Chaos; and the work begun how soon
Absolved; if unforbid thou may'st unfold
What we not to explore the secrets ask
Of his eternal empire, but the more
To magnify his works the more we know.
And the great light of day yet wants to run
Much of his race, though steep; suspense in heaven,
Held by thy voice, thy potent voice, he hears,   00oo
And longer will delay to hear thee tell
His generation, and the rising birth
Of Nature from the unapparent Deep;
Or if the star of evening and the moon
Haste to thy audience, Night with her will bring
Silence, and Sleep listening to thee will watch;
Or we can bid his absence till thy song
End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine."
Thus Adam his illustrious guest besought;
And thus the godlike Angel answered mild:        II
"This also thy request, with caution asked,
Obtain; though to recount almighty works
What words or tongue of Seraph can suffice,
Or heart of man suffice to comprehend?
Yet what thou canst attain, which best may serve
To glorify the Maker, and infer
Thee also happier, shall not be withheld
Thy hearing; such commission from above
I have received, to answer thy desire
Of knowledge within bounds_ beyond abstain      120
To ask, nor let thine own inventions hope




BOOK VII.


I97


Things not revealed, which the invisible King,
Only omniscient, hath suppressed in night,
To none communicable in Earth or Heaven:
Enough is left besides to search and know.
But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.        r
"Know then that after Lucifer from Heaven
(So call him, brighter once amidst the host
Of Angels than that star the stars among)
Fell with his flaming legions through the Deep
Into his place, and the great Son returned
Victorious with his Saints the omnipotent
Eternal Father from his throne beheld
Their multitude, and to.hisSgonthus spake:....
7 "'At least our envious foe hath failed who thought
All like himself rebeilious; by whose aid         i,
This inaccessible high strength, the seat
Of Deity supreme, us dispossessed,  G-.      -
He trusted to have seized, and into fraud
Drew many whom their place knows here no more:
Yet far the greater part have kept, I see,
Their station; Heaven, yet populous, retains
Number sufficient to possess her realms
Though wide, and this high temple to frequent
With ministeries due and solemn rites.
But lesthi    t exalt him in the harm           I5
Already dne, to hay:speoled-Heaven —
My damage fondly. deemed -I can repair
That detriment, if such it be to lose
Self-lost, and in a moment will create


30;o




I98


PARADISE LOST.


Another world, out of one man a race
Of men innumerable' there to6- Dwell,
Not here, till, by degrees of merit raised,
They open to themselves at length the way
Up hither, under, long obedience tried,
AiEn-arth be changedfto-leaven, and Heaven to Earth, i6o
One kingdom, joy and union without end.
Meanwhile inhabit lax, ye Powers of Heaven;
And thou, my Word, begotten Son, by thee
This I perform; speak thou, and be it done.!..
My overshadowing Spirit and might with thee
I send along; ride forth, and bid the Deep
Within appointed bounds be Heaven and Earth;
Boundless the Deep, because I am who fill
Infinitude; nor vacuous the space,
TtL-oiugh I uncircumscribed myself retire,      170
And put not forth my goodness, which is free
To act or not: Necessity and Chance
Approach not me, and what I will is Fate.'
"So spake the Almighty, and to what he spake
His Word, the Filia Godhead, gave effect. a-lc-.
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift
Than time or motion, but to human ears
Canormt-without process of speech be told,
So tol.asearthly notion can receive.
Great triumph and rejoicing was in Heaven,     I80
When such was heard declared the Almighty's will;
Glory they sung to the Most High, good-will
To future men, and in their dwellings peace;
Glory to Him whose just avenging ire
Had driven out the ungodly from his sight
And the habitations of the just; to Him
Glory and praise whose wisdom ha_ ordained




BOOK VII.


199


Good out of evil to create; instead
Of-Spirits malign, a better race to bring
Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse      I90
Hi-iiQod to worlds and ages infinite.
"So sang the Hierarchies. Meanwhile the Son
On his great expedition now appeared,
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned
Of majesty divine, sapience and love
Immense; and all his Father in him shone.
About his chariot numberless were Hpoured. -. ---<.Cherub and Seraph, Potentates and Thrones,           0   -*,
And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged
From the armoury of God, where stand of old     20o
Myriads, betweentwo brazen-m.ountains lodged  /D
Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand,
Celestial equipage; and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived,
Attendant on their Lord. HgaveaQpened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving, to _et-forth
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word
And Spirit coming to create new worlds.
On Heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore 210
They viewed the vast immeasurable Abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault
Heaven's highth, and with the centre mix the pole.  )
"'(inceye troubledwayes,.   and, thou.Deep,. peace!'
Said thenthe omnific Word:. 'your discord end!'
Nor stayed; but, on the wings of Cherubim
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode
Far into Chaos and the World unborn;            220




200


PARADISE LOST.


For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his train
Followed in bright procession, to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then stayed the fervid wheels and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, 'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds;  230
This be thy just circumference, 0 World!'
Thus God the heaven created, thus thei Earth,
Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound
Covered the Abyss; but on the watery calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread,
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth,
Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged
The black, tartareous, cold, infernal dregs,
Adverse to life; then founded, then conglobed
Like things to like, the rest to several place   240
Disparted, and between spun out the air,
And Earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.
"'Let there. be light!' said God; and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the Deep, and from her native east
To journey through the aery gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun
Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good;
And light from darkness by the hemisphere        250
Divided: light theDay, and darkness Night,
He named. Thus was the first day even and morn;
Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung




BOOK VII.


201


By the celestial quires, when orient light
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld,
Birth-day of Heaven and Earth; with joy and shout
The hollow universal orb they filled,
And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised
God and his works; Creator him they sung,
Both when first evening was, and when first morn.  260
"Again, God said, 'Let there be firmament
Amid the waters, and let it divide '
The waters from the waters!' And God made
The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure,
Transparent, elemental air, diffused
In circuit to the uttermost convex
Of this great round-partition firm and sure,
The waters underneath from those above
Dividing; for as Earth, so he the World
Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide     270
Crystalline ocean, and the loud misrule
Of Chaos far removed, lest fierce extremes
Contiguous might distemper the whole frame:
And heaven he named the firmament So even
And morning chorus sung the second day.
"The Earth was formed, but, in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon, immature, involved,
Appeared not; over all the face of Earth
Main ocean flowed, not idle, but, with warm
Prolific humour softening all her globe,       280
Fermented the great mother to conceive,
Satiate with genial moisture; when God said,
'Be gathered now, ye-waters under heaven,
Into one place,. and let dry land appear!'
Immediately the mountains huger appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave




202


PARADISE LOST.


Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky.
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow, bottom, broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters; thither they             290
Hasted with glad precipitance, uprolled,
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry;
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,
For haste; such flight the great command impressed
On the swift floods. As armies at the call
Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)
Troop to the standard, so the watery throng,
Wave rolling after wave, where way they found:
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft-ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill;     300
But they, or underground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore;
Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,
All but within those banks where rivers now
Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.
The dry land Earth, and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters he called seas;
And saw that it was good, and said, fLet the Earth
Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed,  310
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the Earth!'
He scarce had said whenthe bare Earth, till.ten
Desert and bare. unsightly, unadorned,
_Brought forth the tender grass whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered,
Opening their various colours, and made gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet; and, these scarce blown,




BOOK V1I.                  203
Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth crept 320
The smelling gourd, up stood the corny reed
Embattled in her field: add the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last
Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemmed
Their blossoms. With high woods the hills were crowned,
With tufts the valleys and each fountain-side,
With borders long the rivers; that Earth now
Seemed like to Heaven, a seat where gods might dwell,
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt        330
Her sacred shades; though God had yet not rained
Upon the Earth, and man to till the ground
None was, but from the Earth a dewy mist
Went up and watered all the ground, and each
Plant of the field, which ere it was in the Earth
God made, and every herb, before it grew
On the green stem. God saw that it was good;
So even and morn recorded the third day.
"Again the Almighty spake, 'Let there be lights
High in the expanse of heaven, to divide         340
The day from night; and let them be for signs,
For seasons, and -for days, and circling years;
And let them be for lights, as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of heaven,
To give light on the Earth!' and it was so.
And God made two great lights, great for their use
To Man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern; and made the stars,
And set them in the firmament of heaven
To illuminate the Earth, and rule the day        330
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,




20o4


PARADISE LOST.


Surveying his great work, that it was good:
For, of celestial bodies, first the sun
A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first,
Though of ethereal mould; then formed the moon
Globose, and every magnitude of stars,
And sowed with stars the heaven thick as a field.
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed   360
In the sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light, firm to retain
Her gathered beams, great palace now of light.
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns draw light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar, though, from human sight
So far remote, with diminution seen.
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,     370
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the grey
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon,
But opposite in levelled west, was set,
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none
In that aspect, and still that distance keeps
Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,  380
Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere. Then first adorned
With her bright luminaries, that set and rose,




BOOK VII.


205


Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day. -
"And God said, 'Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul;
And let fowl fly above the Earth, with wings
Displayed on the open firmament of heaven!'      390
And God created the great whales, and each
Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously
The waters generated by their kinds,
And every bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying,
'Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas,
And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill;
And let the fowl be multiplied on the Earth!'
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay,
With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals           400
Of fish that with their fins and shining scales
Glide under the green wave in sculls that oft
Bank the mid-sea. Part, single or with mate,
Graze the sea-weed, their pasture, and through groves
Of coral stray, or, sporting with quick glance,
Show to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food
In jointed armour watch; on smooth the seal
And bended dolphins play; part, huge of bulk,    410
Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Tempest the ocean. There leviathan
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a-promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores,
Their brood as numerous hatch from the egg, that soon,




200


PARADISE LOST.


Bursting with kindly rupture, forth disclosed
Their callow young; but feathered soon and fledge  420
They summed their pens, and, soaring the air sublime,
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
In prospect. There the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar-tops their eyries build.
Part loosely wing the region; part more wise,
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
Their aery caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight; soQ ters, thee prudent crane  430
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes.
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings,
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays.
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast; the swan, with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit     440
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aerial sky. Others on ground
Walked firm: the crested cock whose clarion sounds
The silent hours, and the other whose gay train
Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenished, and the air with fowl,  g
Evening and morn solemnized the fifth day.,
"The sixth, and of Creation last, arose
With evening harps and matin; when God said,     450
'Let the Earth bring forth soul living in her kind,




BOOK VII.


207


Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the Earth,
Each_in their kind!' The Earth obeyed, and straight,
Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full-grown. Out of the ground up rose,
As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among thetrhey rose, they_ walked;
The cattle in the fields and meadows green:      460
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks; the swift stag from underground
Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould 470
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved
His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose,
As plants; ambiguous between sea and land,
The river-horse and scaly crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or worm. Those waved their limber fans
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
In all the liveries decked of summer's pride,
With spots of gold and purple, azure and green;
These as a line their long dimension drew,       480
Streaking the ground with sinuous trace: not all
Minims of nature; some of serpent kind,
Wondrous in length and corpulence, involved
Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept




208


PARADISE LOST.


The parsimonious emmet, provident
Of future, in small room large heart enclosed;
Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes
Of commonalty. Swarming next appeared
The female bee, that feeds her husband drone     490
Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells
With honey stored. The rest are numberless,
And thou their natures know'st, and gav'st them names,
Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field,
Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes
And hairy mane terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.
"Now Heaven in all her glory shone, and rolled
Her motions, as the great First Mover's hand     500
First wheeled their course; Earth in her rich attire
Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth,
By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked,
Frequent; and of the sixth day yet remained.
There wanted yet the master-work, the end
Of all yet done; a creature who, not prone
And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of. reason, might erect
His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence   510
Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends; thither with heart, and voice, and eyes,
Directed in devotion, to adore
And worship God supreme, who made him chief
Of all his works. Therefore the omnipotent
Eternal Father (for where is not he




BOOK VII.


209


Present?) thus to his Son audibly spake:
"'Let us make now Man in our image, Man
In our similitude, and let them rule             520
Over the fish and fowl of sea and air,
Beast of the field, and over all the Earth,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground!
This said, he formed thee, Adam, thee, 0 Man,
Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breathed
The breath of life; in his own image he
Created thee, in the image of God
Express, and thou becam'st a living soul.
Male he created thee, but thy consort
Female, for race; then blessed mankind, and said,  530
'Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the Earth;
Subdue it, and throughout dominion hold
Over fish of the sea, and fowl of the air,
And every living thing that moves on the Earth I'
Wherever thus created (for no place
Is yet distinct by name), thence, as thou know'st,
He brought thee into this delicious grove,
This garden, planted with the trees of God,
Delectable both to behold and taste;
And freely all their pleasant fruit for food     540
Gave thee: all sorts are here that all the Earth yields,
Variety without end; but of the Tree
Which tasted works knowledge of good and evil
Thou may'st not; in the day thou eat'st, thou diest.
Death is the penalty imposed; beware,
And govern well thy appetite, lest Sin
Surprise thee, and her black attendant, Death.
"Here finished he, and all that he had made
Viewed, and behold! all was entirely good.
So even and morn accomplished the sixth day;     550
P. L.                                  14




2IO


PARADISE LOST.


Yet not till the Creator, from his work
Desisting, though unwearied, up returned,
Up to the Heaven of Heavens, his high abode,
Thence to behold this new-created World,
The addition of his empire-how it showed
In prospect from his throne, how good, how fair,
Answering his great idea. Up he rode,
Followed with acclamation and the sound
Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tuned
Angelic harmonies. The Earth, the air           56o
Resounded (thou remember'st, for thou heard'st),
The heavens and all the constellations rung,
The planets in their stations listening stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
'Open, ye everlasting gates!' they sung;
'Open, ye Heavens, your living doors! let in
The great Creator, from his work returned
Magnificent, his six days' work, a World!
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men,         570
Delighted, and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.' So sung
The glorious train ascending. He through Heaven,
That opened wide. her blazing portals, led
To God's eternal house direct the way;
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear
Seen in the Galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest      580
Powdered with stars. And now on Earth the seventh
Evening arose in Eden, for the sun
Was set, and twilight from the east came on,




BOOK VII.


21I1


Forerunning night; when at the holy mount
Of Heaven's high-seated top, the imperial throne
Of Godhead, fixed for ever firm and sure,
The Filial Power arrived, and sat him down
With his great Father; for he also went
Invisible, yet stayed (such privilege
Hath Omnipresence), and the work ordained,     590
Author and end of all things, and, from work
Now resting, blessed and hallowed the seventh day,
As resting on that day from all his work;
But not in silence holy kept: the harp
Had work and rested not; the solemn pipe,
And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop,
All sounds on fret by string or golden wire,
Tempered soft tunings, intermixed with voice
Choral or unison; of incense clouds,
Fuming from golden censers, hid the mount.     6oo
Creation and the six days' acts they sung:
'Great are thy works, Jehovah! infinite
Thy power! what thought can measure thee, or tongue
Relate thee? greater now in thy return
Than from the Giant-angels: thee that day
Thy thunders magnified; but to create
Is greater than created to destroy.
Who can impair thee, mighty King, or bound
Thy empire? Easily the proud attempt
Of Spirits apostate and their counsels vain    6io
Thou hast repelled, while impiously they thought
Thee to diminish, and from thee withdraw
The number of thy worshippers. Who seeks
To lessen thee, against his purpose serves
To manifest the more thy might; his evil
Thou usest, and from thence creat'st more good.


14-2




212


PARADISE LOST.


Witness this new-made World, another Heaven'
From Heaven-gate not far, founded in view
On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea;
Of amplitude almost immense, with stars
Numerous, and every star perhaps a world
Of destined habitation; but thou know'st
Their seasons; among these the seat of Men,
Earth, with her nether ocean circumfused,
Their pleasant dwelling-place. Thrice happy Men,
And sons of Men! whom God hath thus advanced,
Created in his image, there to dwell
And worship him, and in reward to rule
Over his works, on earth, in sea, or air,
And multiply a race of worshippers
Holy and just; thrice happy, if they know
Their happiness, and persevere upright!'
"So sung they, and the Empyrean rung
With halleluiahs. Thus was Sabbath kept.
And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked
How first this World and face of things began,
And what before thy memory was done
From the beginning, that posterity,
Informed by thee, might know. If else thou seek'st
Aught, not surpassing human measure, say."




BOOK VIII..1




THE ARGUMENT.
Adam inquires concerning celestial motions; is doubtfully answered,
and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledge.
Adam assents, and, still desirous to detain Raphael, relates to him
what he remembered since his own creation: his placing in Paradise;
his talk with God concerning solitude and fit society; his first meeting
and nuptials with Eve. His discourse with the Angel thereupon; who,
after admonitions repeated, departs.




BOOK VIII.


THE Angel ended, and in Adam's ear
So charming left his voice that. he a while
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear;
Then, as new-waked, thus gratefully replied:
"What thanks sufficient, or what recompense
Equal, have I to render thee, divine
Historian, who thus largely hast allayed
The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed
This friendly condescension to relate
Things else by me unsearchable, now heard       I0
With wonder, but delight, and, as is due,
With glory attributed to the high
Creator? Something yet of doubt remains,
Which only thy solution can resolve.
When I behold this goodly frame, this World
Of Heaven and Earth consisting, and compute
Their magnitudes; this Earth, a spot, a grain,
An atom, with the firmament compared
And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll
Spaces incomprehensible (for such               20
Thkeir distance argues, and their swift return
Diurnal) merely to officiate light




216


PARADISE LOST.


Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night, in all their vast survey
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire
How Nature, wise and frugal, could commit
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand
So many nobler bodies to create,
Greater so manifold, to this one use,
For aught appears, and on their orbs impose        30
Such restless revolution day by day
Repeated, while the sedentary Earth,
That better might with far less compass move,
Served by more noble than herself, attains
Her end without least motion, and receives,
As tribute, such a sumless journey brought
Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light:
Speed, to describe whose swiftness number fails."
So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed
Entering on studious thoughts abstruse; which Eve  40
Perceiving, where she sat retired in sight,
With lowliness majestic from her seat,
And grace that won who saw to wish her stay,
Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers,
To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom,
Her nursery; they at her coming sprung,
And, touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew.
Yet went she not as not with such discourse
Delighted, or not capable her ear
Of what was high: such pleasure she reserved,      50
Adam relating, she sole auditress;
Her husband the relater she preferred
Before the Angel, and of him to ask
Chose rather; he, she knew, would intermix
Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute




BOOK VIII.


217


With conjugal caresses: from his lip
Not words alone pleased her. Oh, when meet now
Such pairs, in love and mutual honour joined?
With goddess-like demeanour forth she went,
Not unattended; for on her as queen              6o
A pomp of winning Graces waited still,
And from about her shot darts of desire
Into all eyes, to wish her still in sight.
And Raphael now to Adam's doubt proposed
Benevolent and facile thus replied:
"To ask or search I blame thee not; for heaven
Is as the Book of God before thee set,
Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn
His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years:
This to attain, whether heaven move or Earth      70
Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire. Or if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions wide
Hereafter, when they come to model heaven,
And calculate the stars; how they will wield      80
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive,
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.
Already by thy reasoning this I guess,
Who art to lead thy offspring, and supposest
That bodies bright and greater should not serve
The less not bright, nor heaven such journeys run,




2i8


PARADISE LOST.


Earth sitting still, when she alone receives
The benefit. Consider, first, that great          90
Or bright infers not excellence: the Earth,
Though, in comparison of heaven, so small,
Nor glistering, may of solid good contain
More plenty than the sun that barren shines,
Whose virtue on itself works no effect,
But in the fruitful Earth; there first received,
His beams, unactive else, their vigour find.
Yet not to Earth are those bright luminaries
Officious, but to thee, Earth's habitant.
And for the heaven's wide circuit, let it speak  I00
The Maker's high magnificence, who built
So spacious, and his line stretched out so far,
That Man may know he dwells not in his own;
An edifice too large for him to fill,
Lodged in a small partition, and the rest
Ordained for uses to his Lord best known.
1Q tns of tho~crles atrbute,
Thiugh _uberu  etoispmipotence,
That to corporeal substances could add
Speed almost spiritual. Me thou think'st not slow,  IO
Who since the morning-hour set out from Heaven
Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived
In Eden, distance inexpressible
By numbers that have name. But this I urge,
Admitting motion in the heavens, to show
Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved;
Not that I so affirm, though so it seem
To thee who hast thy dwelling here on Earth.
God, to remove his ways from human sense,
Placed heaven from Earth so far, that earthly sight, 120
If it presume, might err in things too high,




BOOK VIII.


2Ig


And no advantage gain. What if the sun
Be centre to the World, and other stars,
By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various rounds?
Their wandering course, now high, now low, then hid,
Progressive, retrograde, or standing still,
In six thou seest; and what if seventh to these
The planet Earth, so steadfast though she seem,
Insensibly three different motions move?          130
Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe
Moved contrary with thwart obliquities,
Or save the sun his labour, and that swift
Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed.
Invisible else above all stars, the whedl
Of day and night; which needs not thy belief,
If Earth, industrious of herself, fezch day,
Travelling east, and with her part averse
From the sun's beam meet nigJit, her other part
Still luminous by his ray,  Ihat if that light,.   40
Sent from her through the wide transpicuous air,
To the terrestrial moon be as a star,
Enlightening her by day, as she by night
This Earth-reciprocal, if land be there,
Fields and inhabitants? Her spots thou seest
As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce
Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat
Allotted there; and other suns, perhaps,
With their attendant moons, thou wilt descry,
Communicating male and female light,              150
Which two great sexes animate the- World,
Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live.
For such vast room in Nature unpossessed
By living soul, desert and desolate,




.220


PARADISE LOST.


Only to shine, yet scarce to contribute
Each orb a- glimpse of light, conveyed, so far
Down to this. habitable, which returns
Light back to them, is, obvious to dispute...
But whether thus these. things, or whether not —.
Whether, the sun, predominant in heaven,.       6o.-..16o
R1:, on the Earth, or Earth rise on the sun,;.
He frtal the east his flaming road begins
Or she frcmn west her silent,'course advance
With'inoffen.ve pace that spinning sleeps.
On her' soft a4e, while she paces even,.
And bears thee 'nft with.the smooth air along-:.Solicit not thy thoughts with matters. hid:.
Leave them' to God above; him serve and fear.,
Of other creatures, as lim pleases best,.
Wherever, placed, let him dispose'; joy thbu     170.
In what, he gives to thee, tais Paradise
And thy fair Eve; Heaven i for thee too' high
Tob know what asss there_ belowlJyie; we
Think only what. concemrs jhe.ndLthy being;;
Dream not of other worlds, wh a creatures-there   ~     \
Live, in what state, -condition, ot degree;  -
Contented that thus far hath beea revealed.
Not of Earth only, but 'of highest Heaven."'
To whom thus Adam, cleared of doubt, replied:
"How 'fully hast thou,satisfied me, pure..'   8o
Intelligence of Heaven, Angel serene,
And, freed from intricacies, taught to live
The easiest way, -nr -with perplexing 'thoughts  -
To interrupt the sweet of life, from which..
God hath bid dwell' far off all anxious cares,.
And not molest us, unless we ourselves.
Seek them with wandering thoughts, and. notions vain.




BOOK VIII.


221


But apt the mind or fancy is to rove
Unchecked,      of her roving is no end,
Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn  I90
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom: what is more is fume,
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence,
And renders us in things that most concern
Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.
Therefore from this high pitch let us descend
A lower flight, and speak of things at hand
Useful; whence haply mention may arise           2o0
Of something not unseasonable to ask,
By sufferance, and thy wonted favour, deigned.
Thee JI have heard relating what was done
Ere my remembrance; now hear me relate
My story, which perhaps thou hast not heard.
And day is yet not spent; till then thou seest
How subtly to detain thee I devise,
Inviting thee to hear while I relateFond, were it not in hope of thy reply.
For while I sit with thee, I seem in Heaven;     210
And sweeter thy discourse is to my ear
Than fruits of palm-tree, pleasantest to thirst
And hunger both, from labour, at the hour
Of sweet repast: they satiate, and soon fill,
Though pleasant; but thy words, with grace divine
Imbued, bring to their sweetness no satiety."
To whom thus Raphael answered, Heavenly meek:
"Nor are thy lips ungraceful, Sire of Men,
Nor tongue ineloquent; for God on thee
Abundantly his gifts hath also poured,           220




222


PARADISE LOST.


Inward and outward both, his image fair:
Speaking or mute, all comeliness and grace
Attends thee, and each word, each motion, forms.
Nor less think we in Heaven of thee on Earth
Than of our fellow-servant, and inquire
Gladly into the ways of God with Man;
For God, we see, hath honoured thee, and set
On Man his equal love. Say therefore on;
For I that day was absent, as befell,
Bound on a voyage uncouth and obscure,           230
Far on excursion toward the gates of Hell,
Squared in full legion (such command we had),
To see that none thence issued forth a spy
Or enemy, while God was in his work;
Lest he, incensed at such eruption bold,
Destruction with Creation might have mixed:
Not that they durst without his leave attempt;
But us he sends upon his high behests
For state, as sovran King, and to inure
Our prompt obedience. Fast we found, fast shut,  240
The dismal gates, and barricadoed strong;
But, long ere our approaching, heard within
Noise, other than the sound of dance or song;
Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage.
Glad we returned up to the coasts of light
Ere Sabbath-evening; so we had in charge.
But thy relation now; for I attend,
Pleased with thy words no less than thou with mine."
So spake the godlike Power, and thus our sire:
"Fa-MaLntQ tell how human life began           250
Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?
Desire with thee still gongerto converse
Induced me. 4s new-waked from soundest sleep,




BOOK VIII.


223


Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid,
In balmy sweat, which with his beams the sun
Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed.
Straight toward Heaven my wondering eyes I turned,
And gazed a while the ample sky, till raised
By quick instinctive motion up I sprung,
As thitherward endeavouring, and upright         260
Stood on my feet. About me round I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these,
Creatures that lived and moved, and walked or flew,
Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigour led;
But who I was, or where, or from what cause,     270
Knew not. To speak I tried, and forthwith spake;
My tongue obeyed, and readily could name
Whate'er I saw. 'Thou Sun,' said I, 'fair light,
And thou enlightened Earth, so fresh and gay,
Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell,
Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here
Not of myself; by some great Maker then,
In goodness and in power pre-eminent.
Tell me, how may I know him, how adore,          280
From whom I have that thus I move and live,
And feel that I am happier than I know!'
While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither,
From where I first drew air, and first beheld
This happy light, when answer none returned,
On a green shady bank, profuse of flowers,




224


PARADISE LOST.


Pensive I sat me down; there gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seized
My drowsed sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state            290
Insensible, and forthwith to. dissolve:
When suddenly stood at my head a dream,
Whose inward apparition gently moved
My fancy to believe I yet had being,
And lived. One came, methought, of shape divine,
And said, 'Thy mansion wants thee, Adam; rise,
First Man, of men innumerable ordained
First father! called by thee, I come thy guide
To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared.'
So saying, by the hand he took me, raised,       300
And over fields and waters, as in air
Smooth sliding without step, last led me up
A woody mountain, whose high top was plain,
A circuit wide,'enclosed, with goodliest trees
Planted, with walks and bowers, that what I saw
Of Earth before scarce pleasant seemed. Each tree
Loaden with fairest fruit, that hung to the eye
Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite
To pluck and eat; whereat I waked, and found
Before mine eyes all real, as the dream          310
Had lively shadowed. Here had new begun
My wandering, had not He, who was my guide
Up hither, from among the trees appeared,
Presence Divine. Rejoicing, but with awe,
In adoration at his feet I fell
Submiss. He reared me, and, 'Whom thou sought'st I am,'
Said mildly, 'Author of all this thou seest
Above, or round about thee, or beneath.
This Paradise I give thee; count it thine




BOOK VIII.                  225
To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat:       320
Of every tree that in the garden grows
Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth.
But of the Tree whose operation brings.
Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set,
The pledge-of thy obedience and thy faith,
Amid the garden by the Tree of Life,
Remember what I warn thee, shun tq_!aste,
And shun the bitter consequence: for know,
The day thou eat'st thereof, my sole command
Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt-die,_.       330
From that day mortal, and this happy.state
Shalt lose, expelled trom hence into a world
Of woe and sorrow.'- Sternly he pronounced
The-rigidnterd cfio, which resounds
Yet dreadful in mine ear, though in my choice
Not to incur; but soon his clear aspect
Returned, and gracious purpose thus renewed:
'Not only these fair bounds, but all the Earth
To thee and to thy race I give; as lords
Possess it, and all things that therein live,    340
Or live in sea or air-beast, fish, and fowl.
In sign whereof, each bird and beast behold
After their kinds; I bring them to receive
From thee their names, and pay thee fealty
With low subjection; understand the same
Of fish within their watery residence,
Not hither summoned, since they cannot change
Their element to draw the thinner air.'
As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold
Approaching two and two; these cowering low      350
With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing.
I named them as they passed, and understood
P. L.                                   5




226


PARADISE LOST.


Their nature; with such knowledge God endued
My sudden apprehension. But in these
I found not what, rethought, I wanted still,
And to the Heavenly Vision thus presumed:
" '0, by what name-for thou above all these,
Above mankind, or aught than mankind higher,
Surpassest far my naming-how may I
Adore thee, Author of this Universe,            360
And all this good to Man, for whose well-being
So amply, and with hands so liberal,
Thou hast provided all things? But with me
I see not who partakes. In solitude
What happiness? who can en.oy alone,
Or, ail enjoying, "wi atcontentment find?'
Thus I presumptuous; and the Vision bright,
As with a smile more brightened, thus replied:
"'What call'st thou solitude? Is not the Earth
With various living creatures, and the air,     370
Replenished, and all these at thy command
To come and play before thee? Know'st thou not
Their language and their ways? They also know,
And reason not contemptibly; with these
Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is large.'
So spake the universal Lord, and seemed
So ordering. I, with leave of speech implored,
And humble deprecation, thus replied:
"'Let not my words offend thee, Heavenly Power!
My Maker, be propitious while I speak.          380
Hast thou not made me here thy substitute,
And these inferior far beneath me set?
Among unequals what society
Can sort, what harmony or true delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion due




BOOK VIII.


227


Given and received; but in disparity,
The one intense, the other still remiss,
Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove
Tedious alike. Of fellowshipL-speak,
Such as I seek, fit to participate               390
All rational delight, wherein the brute
Cannot be human consort: they rejoice
Each with their kind, lion with lioness;
So fitly them in pairs thou hast combined;
Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl,
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape;
Worse then can man with beast, and least of all.'
"Whereto the Almighty answered, not displeased:
'A nice and subtle happiness, I see,
Thou to thyself proposest, in the choice         0oo
Of thy associates, Adam, and wilt taste
No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary.
What think'st thou then of me, and this my state?
Seem I to thee sufficiently possessed
Of happiness, or not? who am alone
FromalLeternity; for none I know
Second to me or like, equal much less.
How have I then with whom to hold converse,
Save with the creatures which I made, and those
To me inferior, infinite descents                410
Beneath what other creatures are to thee?'
"He ceased; I lowly answered: 'To attain
The highth and depth of thy eternal ways
All human thoughts come short, Supreme of thingsl
Thou in thyself art perfect, and in thee
Is no deficience found; not so is Man,
But in degree-the cause of his desire
By conversation with his like to help


5 —2




228


PARADISE LOST.


Or solace his defects. No need that thou
Should'st propagate, already infinite             420
AnI-ftlirough all numbers absolute, though One;
But Man by number is to manifest
HN single imperfection, and beget
Like of his like, his image multiplied,
In unity defective; which requires
Collateral love, and dearest amity.
Thou, in thy secrecy although alone,
Best with thyself accompanied, seek'st not
Social communication; yet, so pleased,
Canst raise thy creature to what highth thou wilt  430
Of union or communion, deified;
I, by conversing, cannot these erect
From prone, nor in their ways complacence find.'
Thus I emboldened spake, and freedom used
Permissive, and acceptance found; which gained
This answer from the gracious Voice Divine:
"'Thus far to try thee, Adam, I was pleased,
And find thee knowing not of beasts alone,
Which thou hast rightly named, but of thyself,
Expressing well the spirit within thee free,      440
My image, not imparted to the brute;
Whose fellowship therefore, unmeet for thee,
Good reason was thou freely shouldst dislike;
And be so minded still. I, ere thou spak'st,
Knew it not good for Man to be alone,
And no such company as then thou saw'st
Intended thee-for trial only brought,
To see how thou couldst judge of fit and meet.
\What next I bring shall please thee, be assured,
Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self,       450
Thy wish exactly to thy heart's desire.'




BOOK VIII.


229


"He ended, or I heard no more; for now
My earthly by his Heavenly overpowered,
Which it had long stood under, strained to the highth
In that celestial colloquy sublime,
As with an object that excels the sense,
Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair
Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, called
By Nature as in aid, and closed mine eyes.
Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell      460
Of fancy, my internal sight; by which,
Abstract as in a trance, methought I saw,
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the Shape
Still glorious before whom awake I stood;
Who stooping opened my left side1 and took
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm,
And life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound,
But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed.
The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands;
Under his forming hands a creature grew,         470
Man-like, but different sex, so lovely fair
That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained
And in her looks, which from that time infused
Sweetness into my heart unfelt before,
And into all things from her air inspired
The spirit of love and amorous delight.
She disappeared, and left me dark; I waked
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure:        480
When, out of hope, behold her not far off
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable. On she came,




230


PARADISE LOST.


Led by her Heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice, nor uninformed
Of nuptial sanctity and marriage riues.
Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.
I, overjoyed, could not forbear aloud:           490
"'This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfilled
Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign,
Giver of all things fair, but fairest this
Of all thy gifts! nor enviest. I now see
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, my self
Before me; Woman is her name, of Man
Extracted; for this cause he shall forgo
Father and mother, and to his wife adhere,
And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul.'
"She heard me thus; and, though divinely brought, 5co
Yet innocence and virgin modesty,
Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired,
The more desirable-or, to say all,
Nature herself, though pure of sinful thoughtWrought in her so, that, seeing me, she turned;
I followed her; she what was honour knew,
And with obsequious majesty approved
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower          510
I led her blushing like the Morn; all Heaven,
And happy constellations, on that hour.Shed their selectest influence; the Earth
Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill;
Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs
Whispered it to the woods, and from their wings
Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub,




BOOK VIII.


23I


Disporting, till the amorous bird of night
Sung spousal, and bid haste the evening star
On his hill-top to light the bridal lamp.         520
"Thus have I told thee all my state, and brought
My story to the sum of earthly bliss
Which I enjoy, and must confess to find
In all things else delight indeed, but such
As, used or not, works in the mind no change,
Nor vehement desire-these delicacies
I mean of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits, and flowers,
Walks, and the melody of birds: but here,
Far otherwise, transported I behold,
Transported touch; here passion first I felt,     530
Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else
Superior and unmoved, here only weak
Against the charm of beauty's powerful glance.
Or Nature failed in me, and left some part
Not proof enough such object to sustain,
Or, from my side subducting, took perhaps
More than enough; at least on her bestowed
Too much of ornament, in outward show
Elaborate, of inward less exact.
For well I understand in the prime end            540
Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind.
And inward faculties, which most excel;
In oioutward also her resembling less
His image who made both, and less expressing
The character of that dominion given
O'er other creatures. Yet when I approach
Her loveliness, so absolute she seeni
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best:     550
All higher Knowledge in her presence falls



232


PARADISE LOST.


Degraded; Wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows;
Authority and Reason on her wait,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed."
To whom the Angel, with contracted brow:       560
"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part;
Do thou but thine, and be not diffident
Of Wisdom; she deserts thee not, if thou
Dismiss not her, when most thou need'st her nigh,
By attributing overmuch to things
Less excellent, as thou thyself perceiv'st.
For what admir'st thou, what transports thee so?
An outside: fair, no doubt, and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love;
Not thy subjection. Weigh with her thyself;      570
Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right,
Well managed; of that skill the more thou know'st,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
And to realities yield all her shows:
Made so adorn for thy delight the more,
So awful, that with honour thou may'st love
Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise.
But if the sense of touch, whereby mankind
Is propagated, seem such dear delight            580
Beyond all other, think the same vouchsafed
To cattle and each beast; which would not be
To them made common and divulged, if aught
Therein enjoyed were worthy to subdue
The soul of Man, or passion in him move.




BOOK VIII.


233


What higher in her society thou find'st
Attractive, human, rational, love still:
In loving thou dost well; in passion not,
Wherein true love consists not. Love refines  \
The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat  590
In Reason, and is judicious; is the scale
By which to Heavenly love thou may'st ascend,
Not sunk in carnal pleasure; for which cause
Among the beasts no mate for thee was found.",NV
ro whom thus, half abashed, Adam replied:
"Neither her outside formed so fair, nor aught
In procreation common to all kinds
(Though higher of the genial bed by far,
And with mysterious reverence, I deem),
So much delights me as those graceful acts,      6oo00
Those thousand decencies, that daily flow
From all her words and actions, mixed with love
And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned
Union of mind, or in us both one soul;
Harmony to behold in wedded pair
More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear.
Yet these subject not; I to thee disclose
What inward thence I feel, not therefore foiled,
Who meet with various objects, from the sense
Variously representing, yet, still free,         6io
Approve the best, and follow what I approve.
To love thou blam'st me not; for love, thou say'st,
Leads up to Heaven, is both the way and guide;
Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask.
Love not the Heavenly Spirits, and how their love
Express they? by looks only, or do they mix
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?"
To whom the Angel, with a smile that glowed
Celestial rosy-red, love's proper hue,




234


PARADISE LOST.


Answered: "Let it suffice thee that thou know'st  620
Us happy, and without love no happiness.
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy
In eminence, and obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, union of pure with pure
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.
But I can now no more; the parting sun           630
Beyond the Earth's green Cape and verdant Isles
Hesperean sets, my signal to depart.
Be strong, live happy, and love! but first of all
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command; take heed lest passion sway
Thy judgment to do aught which else free will
Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons
The weal or woe in thee is placed; beware!
I in thy persevering shall rejoice,
And all the Blest. Stand fast; to stand or fall,  640
Free in thine own arbitrement it lies.
Perfect within, no outward aid require;
And all temptation to transgress repel."
So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus
Followed with benediction: "Since to part,
Go, Heavenly guest, Ethereal messenger,
Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore!
Gentle to me and affable hath been
Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever
With grateful memory; thou to Mankind            650
Be good and friendly still, and oft return!"
S -parted they, the Angel up to Heaven
From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower.




BOOK IX.




THE ARGUMENT.


Satan, having comipassed the Eartlh witJcin editated guile returns as
a mist by night into Paradise  enters into the Serpent sleeping. AJnam
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     tto be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges hger oinq  aart, the rathi  esirotslnake
trial of her strength; Adam at last yields. The Serpent finds her..aloe:
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 hunnan speech and such understanding, not till now; the Serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain
tree in the garden n  hattained both to speech and reasou, 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 lenth to eat; she,
pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to
Adam or notj 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.




BOOK IX.


NO more of talk where God or Angel-guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change
Those notes to tragic; foul distrust and breach
Disloyal on the part of man, revolt
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven,
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,       10
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,
Death's harbinger. Sad task! yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused;
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son:
If answerable style I can obtain                 20
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,




238


-PARADISE LOST.


And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse,
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me, l   og Choosing a -nd beginning-late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite.
Wars,, hitherto the, only argument1
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights          3o
In battdes.feignied (the better fortitudeOf pat.ience and. heroic-martyrdom
Unsung),_ or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, imblazonied shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,.Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and. tournament;. then marshalled, feast,
Served. up i-n.hall with sewers and seneshals:.
The skill of artifice. or office mean.;
Not that which. justly gives heroic name  '         40,
To persoon or to-poem. Me, of these:Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument',Lema.ins,.sufficient of-itself to raise
That name, unless an age: too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depressed; and much. they may, if all be: mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to mty-ear.
The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office' is to.bring
Twilight upon the Earth, short arbiter..     g50
'Twixt day and night, and- now from end to end'
Night's hemisphere had veiled the horizon ronund;.
When S atan, who oleatfied. ree       ts
Of Gabriel-out of Eden- now. imp roved
n- meditated' fraud and.malice,:-bent
~ ---_ f,..., vMY~PI  I Q ~PL~LNIdU~ Ci



BOOK IX.


239


On Man's destruction,-maugre. w.hat. mjght hap
Of 'heavier on himself, fearless returned.
By night he fled, and at midnight returned
From compassing the Earth; cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descried         60
His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim
That kept their watch. Thence, full of anguish, driven,
The space of seven continued nights he rode
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line
He circled, four times crossed the car of Night
From pole to pole, traversing each colure;
On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse
From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place
(Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change) 70
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise,
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part
Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life.
In with the river sunk, and with it rose,
Satan, involved in rising. mist.then sought
WAhere.Qj lie hid. Sea he had searched and land
From Eden over Pontus, and the pool
Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob;
Downward as far antarctic; and in length
West from Orontes to the ocean barred            80
At Darien, thence to the land where flows
Ganges and Indus. Thus the orb he roamed
With narrow search, and with. inspection deep
Considered every creature, which of all
Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.
Him, after long debate, irresolute
Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose




240


PARADISE LOST.


Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide          90
From sharpest sight; for in the wily snake
Whatever sleights _nonewouJd isui a   rk,
As from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding, which, in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured:
" 0 Earth ho_ w liketo Heaven, if not preferred
More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built     I0o
With second thoughts, reforming what was old!
For what God, after better, worse would build?
Terrestrial Heaven, danced round by other Heavens
That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps,
Light above light, for thee alone, as seems,
In thee concentring all their precious beams
Of sacred influence! As God in Heaven
Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou
Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee,
Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears  Io
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man.
With what delight could I have walked thee round,
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains,
Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned,
Rocks, dens, and caves! but I in none of these
Find place or refuge; and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel          20o
Torment within me, as from the hateful siege




BOOK IX.


241


Of contraries; all good to me becomes
Bane, and in Heaven much worse would be my state.
But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heaven
To dwell, unless by mastering Heaven's Supreme;
Nor hope to be myself less miserable
By what I seek, but others to make such
As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroyed,  I30
Or won to what may work his utter loss,
For whom all this was made, all this will soon
Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe;
Ip woe then, that destruction wide may range!
To me shall be the glory sale among.
The infernal Powers, in one day to have marred
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days
Continued making, and who knows how long
Before had been contriving? though perhaps
Not longer than since I in one night freed      I40
From servitude inglorious well nigh half
The Angelic name, and thinner left the throng
Of his adorers. He, to be avenged,
And to repair his numbers thus impairedWhether such virtue spent of old now failed
More Angels to create, if they at least
Are his created, or to spite us 'moreDetermined to advance into our room
A creature formed of earth, andhim endow,
Exalted from so base original,                  ISO
With Heavenly spoils, our spoils. What he decreed,
He effected; Man he made, and for him built
Magnificent this World, and Earth his seat,
Him lord pronounced, and, O indignity!


P. L.




242


PARADISE LOST.


Subjected to his service Angel-wings,
And flaming ministers to watch and tend
Their earthy charge. Of these the vigilance
I dread, and, to elude, thus wrapt in mist
Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry
In every bush and brake, where hap.y find        I60
The serent sleeping, in whose mazy folds,To hide me, and the dark intent I-bring.
O foul descent! that I, who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast, and, mixed with bestial slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the highth of deity aspired!
But what will not ambition and revenge
Descend to?? Who aspires must down as low
As high he sbared, obnoxious first or last       170
To basest things. Rvenygeapt.fir.est.houghlsaeet,
Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.
Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed
(Since higher I fall short) on him who next
Provokes my envy, this new favourite
Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite,
Whom, us the more to spite, his Maker raised
From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid."
So saying, through each thicket, dank or dry,
Like a black mist low-creeping, he held on       I8o
His midnight search, where soonest he might find
The serpent. Him fast sleeping soon he found,
In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles:
Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den,
Nor nocent yet, but on the grassy herb,
Fearless, unfeared, he slept. In at his mouth




BOOK IX.


243


The Devil entered, and his brutal sense,
In heart or head, possessing soon inspired
With act intelligential; but his sleep           190
Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn.
Now, whenas sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed
Their morning incense, when all things that breathe
From the Earth's great altar send up silent praise
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill
With   atfismell, forth came the hnuman pair,
And joined their vocal worship to the_ quire
Of creatures wanting voice; that done, partake
The season, prime for sweetest scents and airs;  200
Then commune how that day they best may ply
Their growing work; for much their work outgrew
The hands' dispatch of two, gardening so wide:
And Eve first to her husband thus began:
"Adam, well may we labour still to dress
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and fiwr,
Our pleasant task enjoined  but till more hands
Aid us,.          o         ow_
Luxurious by restraint: what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,       210
One night or two with wanton growth derides,
Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise,
Or hear what to my mind first thoughts present:
Let us divide our labours-thou where choice
Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind
The woodbine round this arbour, or direct
The clasping ivy where to climb; while I,
In yonder spring of roses intermixed
WVith myrtle, find what to redress till noon.
For, while so near each other thus all day      220


i6-2




244


PARADISE LOST.


Our task we choose, what wonder if so near
Looks intervene and smiles, or object new
Casual discourse draw on, which intermits
Our day's work, brought to little, though begun
Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned!"
To whom mild answer Adam thus returned:
"Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond
Compare above all living creatures dear!
Well hast thou motioned, well thy th9ougts employed
How we might best fulfil the work which,...ere   230
God hath assigned us, nor of me shalt pass
Unpraised; for nothing lovelier can be found
In woman than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed
Labour, as to debar us when we need
Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,
Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse
Of looks and smiles; for smiles from reason flow,
To brute denied, and are of love the food-       240
Love, not the lowest end of human life.
For not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined.
These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands
Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long
Assist us. But if much converse perhaps
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield;
For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.         250
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm
Befall thee severed from me; for thou know'st
What hath been warned us,- what malicious foeL




BOOK IX.


245


Envying our happiness, and of his own.
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame
By sly assault; and somewhere nigh at hand
Watches,.. no. uQ)t...with. greedy.hQopeto-fied
His wish and best advantage, us asunder,
Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each
To other speedy aid might lend at need.          26o
Whether his first design be to withdraw
Our fealty from God, or to disturb
Conjugal love, than which perhaps no bliss
Enjoyed by us excites his envy more;
Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful side
That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects.
The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures."
To whom the virgin majesty of Eve,             270
As one who loves, and some unkindness meets,
With sweet austere composure thus replied:
"Offspring of Heaven and Earth, and all Earth's lord!
That such an enemy we have, who seeks
Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn,
And from the parting Angel overheard,
As in a shady nook I stood behind,
Just then returned at shut of evening flowers.
But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt
To God or thee, because we have a foe            280
May tempt it! expectednot to he;ar.
His violence thou fear'st not, being such
As we, not capable of death or pain,
Can either not receive, or can repel.
His fraud is then thy fear; which plain infers
Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love



246


PARADISE LOST.


Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced;
Thoughts, which how found they harbour in thy breast,
Adam! misthought of her to thee so dear?"
To whom with healing words Adam replied:       290
"Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve!
For such thou art, from sin and blame entire;
Not diffident of thee do I dissuade
Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid
The attempt itself, intended by our foe.
For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses
The tempted with dishonour foul, supposed
Not incorruptible of faith, not proof
Against temptation. Thou thyself with scorn
And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong,      300
Though ineffectual found; misdeem not then,
If such affront I labour to avert
From thee alone which. o -.us both at.once
The enemy, though _lbold,. will hardly _are,
Or daring, first on me the assault shall light.
Nor thou his malice and false guile contemnSubtle he needs must be, who could seduce
Angels-nor think superfluous others' aid.
I from the influence of thy looks receive
Access in every virtue; in thy sight             310
More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need were
Of outward strength; while shame, thou looking on,
Shame to be overcome or overreached,
Would utmost vigour raise, and raised unite.
Why shouldst not thou like sense within thee feel
When I am-present, and thy trial choose
With me, best witness of thy virtue tried?"
So spake domestic Adam in his care
And matrimonial love; but Eve, who thought




BOOK IX.                   247
Less attributed to her faith sincere,            320
Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed:
"If this be our condition thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endued
Single with like defence wherever met,
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?
But.harm precedes not sin: only our foe
Temting. affronts us with his foul esteem
Of our integrit Lhis foul esteem
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns      330
Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared
By us? who rather double honour gain
From his surmise proved false, find peace within,
Favour from Heaven, our witness, from the event.
And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed
Alone, without exterior help sustained?
Let us not then suspect our happy state
Left so imperfect by the Maker wise
As not secure to sin le or_ cminbad.
Frail is our happiness, if this be so,           340
And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed."
To whom thus Adam fervently replied:
"O0 Woman, best are all things as the will
Of God ordained them; his creating hand
Nothing imperfect or deficient left
Of all that he created, much less Man,
Or aught that might his happy state secure,
Secure from outward force: within himself
The danger lies, yet lies within his power;
Against his will he can receive no harm.         350
But God left free the will; for what obeys
Reason is free, and Reason he made rght.




248


PARADISE LOST.


But bid her well be ware, and still. erect,
Lest, by some fair appearing good surprised,
She dictate false, and misinform the will
To do what God expressly hath forbid.
Not then mistrust, but tender love, enjoins
That I should mind thee oft, and mind thou me.
Firm we subsist,. yet o.ssible.to.swerve,
Since Reason not impossibly may meet           360
Some specious object by the foe suborned,
And fall into deception unaware,
t keeping srictestwatchase ws watchas was rned.
Seek not temptation then, which to avoid
Were better, and most likely if from me
Thou sever not: trial will come unsought.
Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve
First thy obedience; the other who Fan know,
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?
But if thou think-trial unsought may find      370
Us both securer than thus warned thou seem'st,
Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more;
Go in thy native innocence, rely
On what thou hast of virtue summ.on all;
For God towards thee hath done his part; do thine."
So spake the patriarch of mankind; but Eve
Persisted; yet submiss, though last, replied:
"With thy permission then, and thus forewarned,
Chiefly by what thine own last reasoning words
Touched only, that our trial, when least sought,  380
May find us both perhaps far less prepared,
The willinger I go, nor much expect
A foe so proud will first the weaker seek;
So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse."
Thus saying, from her husband's hand her hand




/
BOOK IX.                   249
Soft she withdrew, and. like a wood-nymph light,
Oread or Dryad, or of Delia's train,
Betook her to the groves, but Delia's self
In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport,
Though not as she with bow and quiver armed,     390
But with such gardening tools as art, yet rude,
Guiltless of fire, had formed, or Angels brought.
To Pales, or Pomona, thus adorned,
Likest she seemed-Pomona when she fled
Vertumnus-or to Ceres in her prime,
Yet virgin of Proserpina froi Jove.
Her long with ardent look his eye pursued
Delighted, but desiring more her stay.
Oft' he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engaged              400
To be returned by noon amid the bower,
And all things in best order to invite
Noontiderepast, or afternoon's repose.
O much deceived, much failing, hapless Evc,
Of thy presumed return! event perverse!
Thou never from that hour in Paradise
Found'st either sweet repast or sound repose;
Such ambuisah,_hidL-anng s,weetQfers and shades,
Waited with hellish rancour imminent
To intercept thy way, or send thee back          410
Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss.
For now, and since first break of dawn, the Fiend,
Mere serpent, in. aplparance,.forth was come,.
And on his quest, where likeliest he might find
The only two of mankind, but in them
The whole included race, his purposed prey.
In bower and field he sought, where any tuft
Of grove or garden-plot more pleasant lay,




250


PARADISE LOST.


Their tendance or plantation for delight;
By fountain or by shady rivulet                 420
He sought them both, but wished his hap might find
Eve searate; he wished, but not with hope
Of what so seldom chanced; when to his wish,
Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies,
Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
Half-spied, so thick the roses bushing round
About her glowed, oft stooping to support
Each flower of tender stalk, whose head, though gay
Carnation, purple,-azure, or specked with gold,
Hung drooping unsustained: them she upstays     430
Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh.
Nearer he drew and many     walkj_ k rsed
Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;
Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers
Imbordered on each bank, the hand of Eve:
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis, or renowned               440
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son,
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.
Much he tlhe-place-admcired4-t-hej-person.moxre.
As one who, long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delightThe smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,    450
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;




BOOK IX.


25 1


If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,
What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more,
She most, and in her look sums all delight:
Such pleasure took the Serpent to behold
This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve
Thus early, thus alone. ier heyavenly form
Angelic, but more soft and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action, overawed              460
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent itbrought:
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, oLenmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge.
But the hot hell that always in him burns,
Though in mid Heaven, soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordained; then soon       470
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites:
"Thoughts, whither have ye led me? with what sweet
Compulsion thus transported to forget
What hither brought us? hate, not love, nor hope
Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste
Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy,
Save what is in destroying; other joy
To me is lost. Then let me not let pass
Occasion which now smiles: behold alone           480
lThe woman, opportune to all attempts,
Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh,
WVhose- higher intellectual more I shun,
And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb




252


PARADISE LOST.


Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould;
Foe not informidable, exempt from wound,
I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain
Enfeebled me, to what I was in Heaven.
She fair, divinely fair, fit love for Gods,
Not terrible, though terror be in love           490
And beauty, not approached by stronger hate,
Hate stronger under show of love well feignedThe way which to her ruin now I tend."
So spake the Enemy of mankind, enclosed
In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve
Addressed his way-not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear,
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold, a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;           500
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape
And lovely; never since of serpent kind
Lovelier; not those that in Illyria changed
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god
In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline, was seen,
He with Olympias, this with her who bore
Scipio, the highth of Rome. With tract oblique  510
At first, as one who sought access but feared
To interrupt, sidelong he works his way.
As when a ship by skilful steersman wrought
Nigh river's mouth or foreland, where the wind
Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail:
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve,




BOOK IX.


253


To lure her eye; she, busied, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used
To such disport before her through the field,     520
From every beast, more duteous at her call,
Than at Circean call the herd disguised.
He, bolder now, uncalled before her stood,
But as in gaze admiring. Oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning, and licked the ground whereon she trod.
His gentle dumb expression turned at length
The eye_of Eve to mark his. play; he, glad
Of her attention gained, with serpent-tongue
Organic, or impulse of vocal air,                 530
His fraudulent temptation thus began:
"Wonder not, sovran mistress, if perhaps
Thou canst who art sole wonder; much less arm
Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate, I thus single, nor have feared
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and thy -celestial beauty adore,         540
With ravishment beheld-there best beheld
Where universally admired; but here
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee? (and what is one?) who shouldst be seen
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served
By Angels numberless, thy daily train."
So glozed the Tempter, and his proem tuned;
Into the heart of Eve his words made way,         550




254


PARADISE LOST.


Though at the voice much marvelling; at length,
Not unamazed, she thus in answer spake:
"What may this meanL Language of Man pronounced
By, tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.
Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field  560
I knew, but not with human voice endued;
Redouble then this miracle,.ndcsay,
How cam'st thou speakable of mutes and how
To me so friendly grown above the rest
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight:
Say, for such wonder claims attention due."
To whom the guileful Tempter thus replied:
"Empress of this fair World, resplendent Eve!
Easy to me it is to tell thee all
What thou command'st, and right thou shouldst be
obey'd.                                     570
I was at first as other beasts that graze
The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low,
As was my food, nor aught but food discerned
Or sex, and apprehended nothing high:
Till on a day, roving the field, I chanced
A goodly tree far distant to behold
Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed,
Ruddy and gold. I nearer drew to gaze;
When from the boughs a savoury odour blown,
Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense      580
Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats
Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even,




BOOK IX.


255


Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play.
To satisfy the sharp desire I had
Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved
Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once,
Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent
Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen.
About the mossy trunk I wound me soon;
For, high from ground, the branches would require  590
Thy utmost reach or Adam's: round the tree
All other beasts that saw, with like desire
Longing and envying stood, but could not reach.
Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung
Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill
I spared not; for such pleasure till that hour
At feed or fountain never had I found.
Sated at length, ere long I_might perc<Qiye
Strange alteration in me.,Jo__degree
Of reason in my inward powers, andspeech       600
Wanted not long,. tho-ugLtothis-shape-retained.
Thenceforth to speculations high or deep
I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind
Considered all things visible in Heaven,
Or Earth, or middle, all things fair and good:
But all that fair and good in thy divine
Semblance, and in thy beauty's heavenly ray,
United I beheld; no fair to thine
Equivalent or second, which compelled
Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come     6io
And gaze, and worship thee of right'declared
Sovran of creatures, universal Dame!"
So talked the spirited sly Snake; and Eve,
Yet more amazed, unwary thus replied:
"SerpentI thyQyerraising leaves in doubt




256


PARADISE LOST.


The virtue of that fruit in thee first proved.
But say, where grows the tree? from hence how far?
For many are the trees of God that grow
In Paradise, and various, yet unknown
To us; in such abundance lies our choice,        620
As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched,
Still hanging incorruptible, till men
Grow up to their provision, and more hands
Help to disburden Nature of her birth."
To whom the wily Adder, blithe and glad:
"Empress, the way is ready, and not long;
Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat,
Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past
Of blowing myrrh and balm: if thou accept
My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon."     630
"Lead then," said Eve. He leading swiftly rolled
In tangles, and made intricate seem straight,
To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest. As when a wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame
(Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends),
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way  640
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,
There swallowed up and lost, from succour far:
So glistered the dire Snake, and into fraud
Led Eve, our credulous mother, to theree
Of prohibition, root of all our woe;
Which when she saw, thus to her guide she spake:
"Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither,
Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess,




BOOK IX.


257


The credit of whose virtue rest with thee;
Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects!      650
But of this tree we may not taste nor touch;
God so commanded, and left that command
Sole daughter of his voice: the rest, we live
Law to ourselves; our reson is our law."
To whom the Tempter guilefully replied:
"Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit
Of all these garden-trees ye shall not eat,
Yet lords declared of all in Earth or air?"
To whom thus Eve, yet sinless: "Of the fruit
Of each tree in the garden we may eat;           660
But of the fruit of this fair tree amidst
The garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat
Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die."'
She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold
The Tempter, but with show of zeal and love
To Man, and indignation at his wrong,
New part puts on, and, as to passion moved,
Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely, and in act
Raised, as of some great matter to begin.
As when of old some orator renowned              670
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence
Flourished, since mute, to some great cause addressed,
Stood in himself collected, while each part,
Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue,
Sometimes in highth began, as no delay
Of preface brooking through his zeal of right:
So standing, moving, or to highth upgrown,
The Tempter, all impassioned, thus began:
"O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving Plant,
Mother of science! now I feel thy power          63S
Within me clear, not only to discern


P. L.


I7




258


PARADISE LOST.


Things in their causes, but to trace the ways
Of highest agents, deemed however wise.
Queen of this Universe!.do.inot. bbelye
Those rigid threats of death,. Ye shall not die:
How should ye? by the fruit? it gives you life,     G' t)
To knowledge; by the threatener? look on me,...
Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live, j,  c
And life more perfect have attained than Fate //
Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot. /    690
Shall that be s.it. toMan.which.to the-beast
Iso.en.? or will God incense his ire
For such a petty trespass, and not praise
Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain
Of death denounced, whatever thing death be,
Deterred not from achieving what might lead
To happier life, knowledge of good and evil?
Of good, how just! of evil-if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?,
God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;      700
Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed:
Your fear itself of death removes the fear.
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers?  He knows that in the day
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall bet asp Gods,
Knowing both good and evil, as they know.
That ye should be as Gods, since I as Man,      710
Internal Man, is but proportion meet:
I, of brute, human; ye, of human, Gods.
So ye shall' die perhaps, by putting off
Human, to put on Gods; death to be wished,




BOOK IX.


259


Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring 1
And what are Gods, that Man may not become
As they, participating godlike food?
The Gods are first,.and that advantage use
On our belief, that all from them proceeds:
I question it; for this fair Earth I see,        720
Warmed by the sun, producing every kind,
Them nothing: if they all things, who enclosed
Knowledge of good and evil in this tree,
That whoso eats thereof forthwith attains
Wisdom without their leave? and wherein lic3
The offence, that Man should thus attain to know?
What can your knowledge hurt him, or this tree
Impart against his will, if all be his?
Or is it envy? and can envy dwell
In Heavenly breasts? These, these and many more 730
Causes import your need of this fair fruit.
Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste!"
He ended, and his wvords, replete with guile,
Into her heart too easy entrance wvon.
Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold
Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound
Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned
With reason, to her seeming, and with truth.
Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked
An eager appetite, raised by the smell           740
So savoury of that fruit, which with desire,
Inclinable now grown to touch or taste,
Solicited her longing eye; yet first,
Pausing a while, thus to herself she mused:
"Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits,
Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admired,
WXhose taste, too long forborne, at first assay
17 —2




2600


PARADISE LOST.


Gave elocution to the mute, and taught
'~1i&~to1Tgu~bth'ade for''p eech to speak thy praise.
Thy praise he also who forbids thy use           750
Conceals not from us, naming thee the Tree
Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste; but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it infers the good
By thee communicated, and our want;
For good unknown sure is not had, or had,
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know?
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise!
Such prohibitions bind not. But if death         76o
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom?  In the day we eat
Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die
How dies the Serpent? He hath eaten and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? or to us denied
This intellectual food, for beasts reserved?
For beasts it seems; yet that one beast which first
Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy      770
The good befallen him, author unsuspect,
Friendly to Man, far from deceit or guile.
What fear I then? rather, what knowv to fear
Under this ignorance of good and evil,
Of God or death, of law or penalty?
Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?"
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour         780




BOOK IX.


26I


Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked,. sheeat.
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost. Back to the thicket slunk
The guilty Serpent, and well might, for Eve,
Intent now only on her taste, naught else
Regarded; such delight till then, as seemed,
In fruit she never tasted, whether true,
Or fancied so through expectation high
Of knowledge; nor was Godhead from her thought. 790
Greedily she ingorged without restraint,
And knew not eating death. Satiate atlength,
And hightened as with wine, jocund and boon
Thus to herself she pleasingly began:,/v.'
"O sovran, virtuous, precious of all trees
In Paradise! of operation blest
To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed,
And thy fair fr-uit let hang, as to no end
Created! but henceforth my -early care,    'Not without song, each morning, and due praise, -"8oo
Shall tend thee, and the fertile burden ease?
Of thy full branches, offered free to all;  '
Till, dieted by thee, I grow mature     _
In knowledge, as the Gods whoallthigs.kn.aw
Though others envy what they cannot giveFor, had the gift been theirs, it had not here
Thus grown! Experience, next to thee I owe,
Best guide: not following thee, I had remained
In ignorance: thou open'st Wisdom's way,
And giv'st access, though secret she retire.   8Io
And I perhaps am secret; Heaven is high,
High, and remote to see from thence distinct
Each thing on Earth; and other rare perhaps




262              PARADISE LOST.
_\5May have divcrted from continualwatch  I ME    7
-'` v -  Our.great Forbidder, safe with all his.pies/  e
\I      Abouthjii_~T        itim  whin sort
G /hall Iappear? Shall I to him make known
As yet my change, and give him to partake
I~  '.- Full happiness with me, or rather not,
j   But keep the odds of knowledge in my power      S:
owJ i-~' WVithout copartner? so to add what wants
'     /rid,-.  In female sex, the more to draw his love,
i:      And render me more equal, annderhaps
A thing not undesirable, someti.me
Superior; for, inferior, who is free?
This may be well: but what if God have seen,
And death ensue? th e.k.lhali he...Q.moxe,
fAid Adam, wedded to another Eve,
hall live with her enjoy!lg,.!_.Iextinct!
_ to ti1nk! Confirmed then I resolve,       8
Adam shall share-withl _:-e:t ine Miss or woe_.
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life."
v So saying, from the tree her step she turned,
But first low reverence done, as to the Power
":cThat dwelt within, whose presence had infused
V\   J/' Into the plant sciential sap, derived
Add    From nectar, drink of Gods. Adam the while,
'-        Waiting desirous her return, lad wove
Of choicest flowers a garland, to adorn         8
Her tresses, and her rural labours crown,
As reapers oft are wont their harvest queen.
Great joy he promised to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, so long delayed;
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill,
Misgave him; he the faltering measure felt,




BOOK IX.


263


And forth to meet her went, the way she took
That morn when first they parted. By the Tree
Of Knowledge hernust pass; there he. her mt,
Scarce from the tree returning; ins her hand     850o
A bough of fairest fruit, that downy smiled,
New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused.
To him she hasted; in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology to prompt,
Which, with bland words at will, she thus addressed:
"Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay?
Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived
Thy presence-agony of love till now
Not felt, nor shall be twice; for never more
Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought,      86o
The pain of absence from thy sight. But strange
Hath been the cause, and wonderful to hear.,
This tree isnot,. as.we.are told,.a tree' 1.Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown i
Opening the way, but of divine effect l
To open eyes, and make them _Gods who taste;
And hath been tasted such. The Serpent wise,
Or not restrained as we, or not obeying,
Hath eaten of the fruit, and is become,
Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth  870
Endued with human voice and human sense,
Reasoning to admiration, and with me
Persuasively hath so prevailed, that I
Have also tasted, and have also found
The effects to correspond-opener mine eyes,
Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart,
And growing up to Godhead; which for thee
Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise.
For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss;




264


PARADISE LOST.


Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious soon.    880
Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot
May join us, equal joy, as equal love;
Lest, thou not tasting, different degree
Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce
Deity for thee, when fate will not permit."
Thus Eve with countenance blithe her story told;
But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed.
On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard
The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed,
Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill     890
Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed;
From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve
Down dropt, and all the faded roses shed.
Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length
First to himself he- inward silence broke:
"0 fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost! how on a sudden lost,        9oo
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!
Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress
The strict forbiddance, how to violate
The sacred fruit forbidden? Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined; for with thee
Certain my rsglution is to die:
How can I livewithout thee? how forgo
Thy sweet converse and-love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?       910
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee




BOOK IX.


265


Would never from my heart; no, no! I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,  1"
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe."
So having said, as one from sad dismay
Recomforted, and, after thoughts disturbed,
Submitting to what seemed remediless,
Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned:    920
"Bold deed thou hast presumed, adventurous Eve,
And peril great provoked, who thus hast dared,
Had it been only coveting to eye
That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence;
Much more to taste it, under ban to touch.
But- past - lo can recall, or done undo?
Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate! Yet so
Perhaps thou shalt —not die; perhaps the fact
Is not so heinous now-foretasted fruit,
Profaned first by the Serpent, by him first      930
Made common and unhallowed ere our taste,
Nor yet on him found deadly; he yet lives,
Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live, as Man,
Higher degree of life: inducemeat-strong
To us _as likely, tasting, to attain
Proportional ascent; which cannot be
But to be Gods, or Angels, demi-gods.
Nor can I think that God,_ Creator.wise,
Though threatening, will in earnest so destroy
Us his prime creatures, dignified so high,       940
Set over all his works, which in our fall,
For us created, needs with us must fail,
Dependent made; so God shall uncreate,
Be frustrate, do, undo, and labour lose;
Not well conceived of God, who, though his power




266


PARADISE LOST.


Creation could repeat, yet would be loth
Us to abolish, lest the Adversary
Triumph and say: 'Fickle their state whom God
Most favours; who can please him long? Me first
He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next?'    950
Matter of scorn not to be given the Foe.
However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom: if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own,
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine.
Our state cannot be severed; we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself."
So Adam, and thus Eve to him replied:         96o
"O glorious trial of exceeding love,
Illustrious evidence, example high!
Engaging me to emulate; but, short
Of thy perfection, how shall I attain,
Adam? from whose dear side I boast me sprung,
And gladly of our union hear thee speak,
One heart, one soul in both; whereof good proof
This day affords, declaring thee resolved,
Rather than death, or aught than death more dread,
Shall separate us, linked in love so dear,      970
To undergo with me one guilt, one crime,
If any be, of tasting this fair fruit;
Whose virtue (for of good still good proceeds,
Direct, or by occasion) hath presented
This happy trial of thy love, which else
So eminently never had been known.
Were it I thought death menaced would ensue
This my attempt, I would sustain alone




BOOK IX.


267


The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die
Deserted, than oblige thee with a fact           90o
Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured
Remarkably so late of thy so true,
So faithful love unequalled; but I feel
Far otherwise the event-not death, but life
Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys,
Taste so divine, that what of sweet before
Hath touched my sense flat seems to this and harsh.
On my experience, Adam, freely taste,
And fear of death deliver to the winds."
So saying, she embraced him, and for joy       990
Tenderly wept, much won that he his love
Had so ennobled, as of choice toincur
Divine displeasure for her sake, or death.
In recompense (for such compliance bad
Such recompense best merits), from the bough
She _gavehjim._of_.that. fair. enticing fruit
With liberal hand, he scrupled not to eatAgainst his better knowledge, ot dg.eiyed,  '
But fondloy overcome vwithfemale charm.
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again      1ooo
In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;
Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original; while Adam took no thought,
Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate
Her former trespass feared, the more to soothe
Him with her loved society; that now,
As with-new- wine intoxicated both,
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings             1010o
Wherewith to scorn the Earth. But that false fruit




268


PARADISE LOST.


Far other operation first displayed,
Carnal desire inflaming: he on Eve
Began to cast lasqivious eyes; she him
As wantonly repajid  in lust they burn,
Till Adam thus 'gan Eve to dalliance move:
"Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste,
And elegant, of sapience no small part;
Since to each meaning savour we apply,
And palate call judicious. I the praise   I-.    I020
Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purveyed.
Much pleasure wev have lost, while -we abstained
From this delightful fruit, nor known till now.,;
True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be   [,.
In things to us forbidden, it might be wished,
For this one tree had been forbidden ten. /
But come; so well refreshed,' now let uLs play,
As meet is, after such delicious -fare;
For never did thy beauty, since the day'
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned        1030
With all perfections, so inflame my sense
With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now
Than ever-bounty of this virtuous tree!"
So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.
Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank,
Thick overhead with verdant roof embowered,
He led her, nothing loth; flowers were the-couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,              1040
And hyacinth-Earth's freshest, softest lap.
There they their fill of love and love's disport
Took -largely,. of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin, till  y  lep     '1




BOOK IX.


269


Oppressed them   earied with the  r    lay.
Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit,
That with exhilarating vapour bland
About their spirits had played, and inmost powers
Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep,
Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams  1050
Encumbered, now had left them, up they rose
As from unrest, and, each the other viewing,
Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds
How darkened. Innocence, that as a veil
Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone;
Just confidence, and native righteousness,
And honour, from about them, naked left
To guilty Shame: he covered, but his robe
Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong,
Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap         o06o
Of Philistean Dalilah, and wak'd.
Shorn of his strength; they.destitute and bare
Of all their virtue. Silent, and in face
Confounded, long tey sa  asst.uckenr mute;
Till Adam, though not less than Eve abashed,
At length gave utterance to these words constrained:
"O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear
To that false worm, of whomsoever taught
To counterfeit Man's voice, true in our fall,
False in our promised rising; since our eyes   1070
Opened we find indeed, and find we know
Both good and evil, good lost and evil got:
Bad fruit of knowledge if this be to know,
Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void,
Of innocence, of faith, of purity,
Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained,
And in our faces evident the signs




270


PARADISE LOST.


Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store,
Even shame, the last of evils; of the first
Be sure then. How shall I behold the face       Io080
Henceforth of God or Angel, erst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld? those Heavenly shapes
Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze
Insufferably bright. Oh, might I here
In solitude live savage, in some glade
Obscured, where highest woods, impenetrable
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad,
And brown as evening! Cover me, ye pines!
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs
Hide me, where I may never see them more!       1090
But let us now, as in bad plight, devise
What best may for the present serve to hide
The parts of each from other that seem most
To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen;
Some tree, whose broad smooth leaves together sewed,
And girded on our loins, may cover round
Those middle parts, that this new comer, Shame,
There sit not, and reproach us as unclean."
So counselled he, and both together went
Into the thickest wood; there soon they chose   I0oo
The fig-tree-not that kind for fruit renowned,
But such as at this day, to Indians known,
In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms
Branching so broad and long that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother tree, a pillared shade
High overarched, and echoing walks between:
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loop-holes cut through thickest shade. Those leaves iiio




BOOK IX.


271


They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe,
And with what skill they had together sewed,
To gird their waist; vain covering_ if _to hide
Their guilt and dreaded shamel Oh how unlike
To that first naked glory! Such of late
Columbus found the American, so girt
With feathered cincture, naked else and wild
Among the trees on isles and woody shores.
Thus fenced, and, as they thought, their shame in part
Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind,       II20
They sat them do.n. to_..eep_;. nor only tears
Rained at their eyes, blut high.winds wosewithin
Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate,
Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore
Their inward state of mind, calm region once
And full of peace, now tost and turbulent:
For Understanding ruled not, and the Will
Heard not her lore, both in subjection now
To sensual Appetite, who, from beneath
Usurping over sovran Reason, claimed           1130
Superior sway. From thus distempered breast
Adam, estranged in look and altered style,
Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed:
"Wouldtho iahSahearkqea    K my a-iords, and stayed
With me, as I besought thee, when that strange
Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn,
I know not whence possessed thee! we had then
Remained still happy, not, as now, despoiled
Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable!
Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve 1140
The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek
Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail."
To whom, soon moved with touch of blame- thus Eve:




272


PARADISE LOST.


"What words have passed thy lips, Adam severe!
Imput'st thou that to my default, or will
Of wandering, as thou call'st it, which who knows
But might as ill have happened, thou being by,
Or to thyself perhaps? Hadst thou been there,
Or here the attempt, thou couldst not have discerned
Fraud in the Serpe  pe gnt.. sein, seapake;  1150
No ground of enmity between us known,
Why he should mean me ill, or seek to harm.
Was I to have never parted from thy side?
As good have grown there still, a lifeless rib.
Being as I am, why didst not thou, the head,
Command me absolutely not to go,
Going into such danger, as thou saidst?
Too facile then, thou didst not much gainsay,
Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss.
Hadst thou been firm, and fix.d. in.thy dissent,  I60
Neither had I transgressed nor thou with me."
To whom, then first incensed, Adam replied:
"Is this the love, is this the recompense
Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, expressed.
Immutable when thou wert lost, not I,
Who might have lived, and joyed immortal bliss,
Yet willingly chose rather death with thee?
And am I now upbraided as the cause
Of thy transgressing? not enough severe,
It seems, in thy restraint! What could I more?  1170
I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold
The danger, and the lurking enemy
That lay in wait; beyond this had been force,
And force upon free will hath here no place.
But confidence then bore thee on, secure
Either to meet no danger, or to find




BOOK IX.


273


Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps
I also erred in overmuch admiring
What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought
No evil durst attempt thee; but I rue             II80
That error now, which is become my crime,
And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall
Him who, to worth in women overtrusting,
Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook;
And, left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
Shle first his weak indulgence will accuse."
Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;
And of their, vain contest appeared no. end.


P. L.


18




i~i_~I
I




BOOK X.




TIHE ARGUMENT.


Man's transgression known, the guardianl Angels forsake Paradise,
and return up to Heaven to approve their vilance,  are aproved;
God declaring that the entrance of Satan could not be by them prevented. He sends his Son to judge the transgressors; who descends,
and gives sentence accordingly; then in pityclothes_ thenlLoth, and
reascends. Sin and Death, sitting till then at the gates of Hell, by
wondrous sympathy feeling the success of Satan in this new World, and
the sin by Man there committed, resolve to sit no longer confined in
Hell, but to follow Satan, their sire _up to the jlaco.g_.La. To make
the way easier from Hell to this World to and fro, tihey _ ae abroad
hi   ay or ride ver Chaos according to the track that Satan first
made; then, preparing for Earth, they meet himE proud of his success,
returning to Hell; their mutual gratulation. Satan arrives at Pandemonium; in full assembly relates. with.oasting.his auccess against
Man; instead of applause is entertained nith a gener:a hiis by all his
audience, transformed, with himself also, suddenly into serpents, according to his doom given in Paradise; then, deluded with a show of
the Forbidden Tree springing up before them, they, greedily reaching
to take of the fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes. The proceedings of
Sin and Death: God foretells thle final victory of his Son over them,
and the renewing of all things; but for the present commands his
Angels to make several alterations in the heavens and elements. Adam,
more and more perceiving his fallen conditionlheavily bewails, rejects
the condolement of Eve. she persists, and at length aeaieslm:
then, to evade the curse likely to fall on their offspring, proposes to
Adam violent ways, which he approves not, but, conceiving better hope,
puts her in mind of the late promise made them, that her seed shpuld
be revenyed eon g xAeIne, 2and exhorts ler, with him, to seek peace
of the offended Deity by repentance and supplication.




BOOK X.


M      EANWHILE the heinous and despiteful act
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
He, in the Serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit,
Was known in Heaven; for what can scape the eye
Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart
Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just,
Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind
Of Man, with strength entire and free will armed,
Complete to have discovered and repulsed         IO
Whatever wiles of foe or seeming friend.
For still they knew, and ought to have still remembered,
The high injunction not to taste that fruit,
Whoever tempted; which they not obeying
Incurred (what could they less?) the penalty,
And, manifold in sin, deserved to fall.
Up into Heaven from Paradise in haste
The Angelic guards ascended, mute and sad
For Man; for of his state by thisjjhejy knew,
Much wondi     how the subtle fiend had stolen   20
Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome news
From Earth arrived at Heaven-gate, displeased




278


PARADISE LOST.


All were who heard; dim sadness did not spare
That time celestial visages, yet, mixed
With pity, violated not their bliss.
About the new-arrived, in multitudes,
The ethereal people ran, to hear and know
How all befell. They towards the throne supreme
Accountable made haste to make appear
With righteous plea their utmost vigilance,       30
And easily approved; when the Most High
Eternal Father, from his secret cloud
Amidst, in thunder uttered thus his voice:
"Assembled Angels, and ye Powers returned
From unsuccessful charge, be not dismayed,
Nor troubled at these tidings from the Earth,
Which your sincerest care could not prevent,
Foretold so lately what would come to pass,
When first this Tempter crossed the gulf from Hell.
I   toldye  tn h _ishol_pexYailand speed       40
On his bad errand; Man should be_ seduced
And flattered out of all, blelievyglies,
Against his Maker; no decree of mine
Concurring to necessitate his fall,
Or touch with lightest moment of impulse
His free will, to her own inclining left
In even scale. But fallen he is; and now
What rests, but that the mortal sentence pass
On his transgression, death denounced that day?
Which he presumes already vain and void,          50
Because not yet inflicted, as he feared,
By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find
Forbearance no acquittance ere day end:
Justice shall not return, as bounty, scorned.
But whom send I to judge them? whom but thee,




BOOK X.


279


Vicegerent Son.? to thee I have transferred
All judgment, whether in Heaven, or Earth, or -lell.
Easy it may be seen that I intend
Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee,
Man's friend, his Mediator, his designed         60
Both ransom and Redeemer voluntary,
And destined Man himself to judge Man fallen."
So spake the Father; and, unfolding bright
Toward the right hand his glory, on the Son
Blazed forth unclouded deity; he full
Resplendent all his Father manifest
Expressed, and thus divinely answered mild:
/" Father Eternal, thine is to decree,
Mine both in Heaven and Earth to do thy will
Supreme, that thou in me, thy Son beloved,        70
May'st ever rest well pleased. LI_-gt._judge
On Earth these thy tra.nsgressors4 but thou knouwst,
Whoever judged, the worst on me must light,
When time shall be; for so I undertook
Before thee, and, not repenting, this obtain
Of right, that I may mitigate their doom
On me derived; yet I'shall temper so
Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most
Them fully satisfied, and thee appease.
Attendance none shall need, nor train, where none  8o
Are to behold the judgment but the judged,
Those two; the third best absent is condemned,
Convict by flight, and rebel to all law:
Conviction to the Serpent none belongs."
Thus saying, from his radiant seat he rose
Of high collateral glory; Him Thrones and Powers,
Princedoms, and Dominations ministrant
Accompanied to Heaven-gate, from whence




280


PARADISE LOST.


Eden and all the coast in prospect lay.
Down he descended straight; the speed of Gods   90
Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes winged.
Now was the sun in western cadence low
From noon, and gentle airs due at their hour
To fan the Earth now waked, and usher in
The evening cool, when he, from wrath more cool,
Came, the mild Judge and Intercessor both,
To sentence Man. The voice of God they heard
Now walking, in the garden, by soft winds
Brought to their ears, while day declined; they heard,
And from his presence hid themselves among      100
The thickest trees, both man and wife, till God,
Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud:
"Where art thou, Adam, wont with joy to meet
My coming seen far off? I miss thee here,
Not pleased, thus entertained with solitude,
Where obvious duty erewhile appeared unsought.
Or come I less conspicuous, or what change
Absents thee, or what chance detains? Come forth."
He came, and with him Eve, more loth, though first
To offend, discountenanced both, and discomposed; Io
Love was not in their looks, either to Godl
Or to each other, but apparent guilt,
And shame, and perturbation, and despair,
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.
Whence Adam, faltering long, thus answered brief:
"I heard thee in the garden, and of thy voice
Afraid, being naked, hid myself." To whom
The gracious Judge without revile replied:
"My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast not feared,
But still rejoiced; how is it now become        120
So dreadful to thee-?- That thou art naked, who




BOOK X.


28I


Hath told thee? Hast thou eaten of the tree,
Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?"
To whom thus Adam, sore beset, replied:
"O  Heaven! in evil strait this day I stand
Before my Judge-either to undergo
Myself the total crime, or to accuse
My other self, the partner of my life;
Whose failing, while her faith to me remains,
I should conceal, and not expose to blame       130
By my complaint; but strict necessity
Subdues me, and calamitous constraint,
Lest on my head both sin and punishment,
However insupportable, be all
Devolved; though should I hold my peace, yet thou
Wouldst easily detect what I conceal.
This woman, whom thou mad'st to be my help,
And gav'st me as thy perfect gift, so good,
So fit, so acceptable, so divine,
That from her hand I could suspect no ill,      140
And what she did, whatever in itself,
Her doing seemed to justify the deed;
She gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
To whom the Sovran Presence thus replied:
"Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice? or was she made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her
Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place
Wherein God set thee above her, made of thee
And for thee, whose perfection far excelled     150
Hers in all real dignity? Adorned
She was indeed, and lovely, to attract.
Thy love, not thy subjection; and her gifts
Were such as under government well seemed,




282


PARADISE LOST.


Unseemly to bear rule; which was thy part
And person, hadst thou known thyself aright."
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelmed,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge      I60
Bold or loquacious, thus abashed replied:
"The Serpent me beguiled, and I did eat."
Which when the Lord God heard, without delay
To judgment he proceeded on the accused
Serpent, though jrut e,_ nable to transfer
The guilt on him who made him instrument
Of mischief, and polluted from the end
Of his creation; justly then accursed,
As vitiated in nature. More to know
Concerned not Man (since he no further knew),  170
Nor altered his offence; yet God at last
To Satan, first in sin, his doom applied,
Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best;
And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall:
"Because thou hast done this, thou art accursed
Above all cattle, each beast of the field;
Upon thy belly grovelling thou shalt go,
And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life.
Between thee and the Woman I will put
Enmity, and between thine and her seed;         I8o
Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel."
So spake this oracle, then verified
When Jesus, son of Mary, second Eve,
Saw Satan fall like lightning down from Heaven,
Prince of the air; then, rising from his grave,
Spoiled Principalities and Powers, triumphed
In open show, and with ascension bright




BOOK X.


283


Captivity led captive through the air,
The realm itself of Satan long usurped,
Whom he shall tread at last under our feet;      I90
Even he who now foretold his fatal bruise,
And to the Woman thus his sentence turned:
"Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply
By thy conception; children thou shalt bring
In sorrow forth;_and to_ thy- husband's- will
Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule."
On Adam last thus judgment he._pronounced:
"Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife,
And eaten of the tree, concerning which
I charged thee, saying, 'Thou shalt not eat thereof,' 200
Curs'd is the ground for thy-sake; thou in sorrow
Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee forth
Unbid; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
Till thou return unto the ground; for thou
Out of the ground wast taken: know thy birth,
For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return."
So judged he Man, both Judge and Saviour sent,
And the instant stroke of death, denounced that day, 210
Removed far off; then, pitying how they stood
Before him naked to the air, that now
Must suffer change, disdained not to begin
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume;
As when he washed his servants' feet, so now,
As father of his family, he clad
Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain,
Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid;
And thought not much to clothe his enemies.
Nor he their outward only with the skins         220




284


PARADISE LOST.


Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more
Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousness
Arraying, covered from his Fafther's sight.
To him with swift ascent he up returned,
Into his blissful bosom reassume'd
In glory as of old; to him appeased,
All, though all-knowing, what had passed with Man
Recounted, mixing intercession sweet.
Meanwhile, ere thus Was finned and judged on Earth,
Within the gates of Hell sat Sin and Death,      230
In counterview within the gates, that now
Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame
Far into Chaos, since the Fiend passed through,
Sin opening; who thus-now to Death began:
"O Sonwhy sit we here each other viewing
Idly, while Satan, our great author, thrives
In other worlds, and happier seat provides
For us, his offspring dear? It cannot be
But that success attends him; if mishap,
Ere this he had returned, with fury driven       240
By his avengers, since no place like this
Can fit his punishment, or their revenge.
Methinks I feel new strength within me rise,
Wings growing, and dominion given me large
Beyond this Deep, whatever draws me on,
Or sympathy, or some connatural force,
Powerful at greatest distance to unite
With secret amity things of like kind
By secretest conveyance. Thou, my shade
Inseparable, must with me along;                 250
For Death from Sin no power can separate.
But, lest the difficulty of passing back
Stay his return perhaps over this gulf




BOOK X.                    285
Impassable, impervious, let us try
Adventurous work, yet to thy power and mine
Not unagreeable, to found a path
Over this main from Hell to that new World
Where Satan now prevails; a monument
Of merit high to all the infernal host,
Easing their passage hence, for intercourse      260
Or transmigration, as their lot shall lead.
Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn
By this new-felt attraction and instinct."
Whom thus the meagre Shadow answered soon:
"Go whither fate and inclination strong
Leads thee; I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way, thou leading; such a scent I draw
Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste
The savour of death from all things there that live.
Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest        270
Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid."
So saying, with delight he snuffed the.smell
Of nmtaL change.on. Jarth. As when a flock
Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,
Against the day of battle, to a field,
Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured
With scent of living carcases designed
For death the following day in bloody fight:
So scented the grim Feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air,            280
Sagacious of his quarry from so far.
Then both, from out Hell-gates, into the waste
Wide anarchy of Chaos damp and dark
Flew diverse, and with power (their power was great)
Hovering upon the waters, what they met
Solid or slimy, as in raging sea




286


PARADISE LOST.


Tossed up and down, together crowded drove,
From each side shoaling, towards the mouth of Hell;
As when two polar winds, blowing adverse
Upon the Cronian sea, together drive             290
Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way
Beyond Petsora eastward, to the rich
Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil
Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry,
As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm
As Delos, floating once; the rest his look
Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move,
And with asphaltic slime; broad as the gate
Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered beach
They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on   300
Over the foaming Deep high-arched,_a bridge
Of length prodigious, jogining.tohe. wall.Ava
Immovable of this now fenceless World,
Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad,
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell.
So, if great things to small may be compared,
Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke,
From Susa, his Memnonian palace high,
Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont
Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined,       310
And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves.
Now had they brought the work by wondrous art
Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock,
Over the vexed Abyss, following the track
Of Satan, to the self-same place where he
First lighted from his wing, and landed safe
From out of Chaos, to the outside bare
Of this round World. With pins of adamant
And chains they made all fast, too fast they made,




BOOK X.                   287
And durable; and now in little_ space           320
The confines met of empyrean Heaven
And of this World, and on the left hand Hell
With long reach intgrpp.s kreesvera  ays,
In sight, to each of these three places led.
And now their way to Earth they had descried,
To Paradise first tending, when, behold
Satan, in likeness of an Angel bright,
Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering
His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose!
Disguised he cameL but those his children dear  330
Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise.
He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk
Into the wood fast by, and; changing shape
To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act
By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded
Upon her husband, saw their shame that sought
Vain covertures; but when he saw descend
The Son of God to judge them, terrified
He fled, not hoping to escape, but shun
The present, fearing guilty what his wrath     340
Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned
By night, and listening where the hapless pair
Sat in their sad discourse and various plaint,
Thence gathered his own doom; which understood
Not instant, but of future time, with joy
And tidings fraught, to Hell he now returned,
And at the brink of Chaos, near the foot
Of this new wondrous pontifice, unhoped
Me; who to meet him came, hi.sffpring-dear.
Great joy was at their meeting, and at sight    350
Of that stupendous bridge his joy increased.
Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair




288


PARADISE LOST.


Enchanting daughter, thus the silence broke:
"0 Parent, these are thy magnific deeds,
Thy trophies, which thou view'st as not thine own;
Thou art their author and prime architect;
For I no sooner in my heart divined
(My heart, which by a secret harmony
Still moves with thine, joined in connexion sweet)
That thou on Earth hadst prospered, which thy looks 360
Now also evidence, but straight I felt,
Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt
That I must after thee with this thy son;
Such fatal consequence unites us three.
Hell could no longer hold us in her bounds,
Nor this unvoyageable gulf obscure
Detain from following thy illustrious track.
Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined
Within Hell-gates till now; thou us empowered
To fortify thus far, and overlay               370
With this portentous bridge the dark Abyss.
Thine now is all this World; thy virtue hath won
What thy hands builded not, thy wisdom gained
With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged
Our foil in Heaven: here thou shalt monarch reign,
There didst not; there let him still victor sway,
As battle hath adjudged, from this new World
Retiring, by his own doom alienated,
And henceforth monarchy with thee divide
Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds,  380
His quadrature, from thy orbicular World,
Or try thee now more dangerous to his throne."
Whom thus the Prince of Darkness answered glad:
"Fair daughter, and thou son and grandchild both,
High proof ye now have given to be the race




BOOK X.


289


Of Satan (for I glory in the name,
Antagonist of Heaven's Almighty King),
Amply have merited of me, of all
The infernal empire, that so near Hea-yein's door
Triumphal with triumphal act have met,           390
Mine with this glorious work, and made one realm
Hell and this World-one realm, one continent
Of easy thoroughfare. Therefore, while I
Descend through darkness, on your road with ease,
To my associate Powers, them to acquaint
With these successes, and with them rejoice,
You two this way, among these numerous orbs,
All yours, right_ down to Paradise descend;
There dwell and reign in bliss; thence on the Earth
Dominion exercise and in the air,                400
Chiefly on Man, sole lord of all declared;
Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill.
My substitutes I send ye, and create
Plenipotent on Earth, of matchless might
Issuing from me: on your joint vigour now
My hold of this new kingdom all depends,
Through Sin to Death exposed by my exploit.
If your joint power prevail, the affairs of Hell
No detriment need fear; go, and be strong."
So saying, he dismissed them_ hey withseed    4o
Their course through_ thickest constellations5-held,
Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan,
And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse
Then suffered. The other way Satan went down
The causey to Hell-gate; on either side
Disparted Chaos over-built exclaimed,
And with rebounding surge the bars assailed,
That scorned his indignation. Through the gate,
P. L.                                 I1




290


PARADISE LOST.


Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed,
And all about found desQlate_ forthose          420
Appointed to sit there had left their charge,
Flown to the upper World; the rest were all
Far to the inland retired, about the walls
Of Pandemonium, city and.proud.. seat
Of Lucifer, so by allusion called
Of that bright star to Satan paragoned;
There kept their watch the legions, _while the Grand
In cpuncil sat, solicitous what chance
Might intercept their Emperor sent; so he
Departing gave command, and they observed.       430
As when the Tartar from his Russian foe,
By Astracan, over the snowy plains
Retires, or Bactrian Sophi, from the horns
Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond
The realm of Aladule, in his retreat
To Tauris or Casbeen: so these, the late
Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost Hell
Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch
Round their metropolis, and now expecting
Each hour their great adventurer from the search  440
Of foreign worlds. He through the midst unmarked,
In show plebeian Angel militant
Of lowest order, passed; and, from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible
Ascended his high throne, which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while
He sat, and round about him saw unseen.
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter, clad  450
With what permissive glory since his fall




BOOK X.


29I


Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed
At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng
Bent their aspect, and whom they wished beheld,
Their mighty Chief returned: loud was the acclaim.
Forth rushed inTiaste~tieeat consulting peers,
Raised from their dark divan, and with like joy
Congratulant approached him, who with hand
Silence, and with these words attention, won:
"Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers! 460
For in possession such, not only of right,
I call ye, and declare ye now, returned,
Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth
Triumphant out of this infernal pit
Abominable, accursed, the house of woe,
And dungeon of our tyrant! Now possess,
As lords, a spacious World, to our native I-leaven
Little inferior, by my adventure hard
With peril great achieved. Long were to tell
What I have done, what suffered,-with what pain  470
Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep
Of horrible confusion, over which
By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved,
To expedite your glorious march; but I
Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride
The untractable Abyss, plunged in the womb
Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild,
That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely opposed
My journey strange, with clamorous uproar
Protesting Fate supreme; thence how I found      480
The new-created World, which fame in Heaven
Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful,
Of absolute perfection; therein Man
Placed in a Paradise, by our exile


9 —2




292


PARADISE LOST.


Made happy. Him byfraud,_I have seduced
From his Creator, and, the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple! He, thereat
Offended-worth your laughter!-hath given up
Both his beloved Man.and all his Wo.rld
JTo Sin and Death a -reya.o.us,                  490
Without our hazard, labour, or alarm,
To range in, and to dwell, and over Man
To rule, as over all he should have ruled.
True is, me also he hath judged, or rather
Me not, but the brute serpent, in whose shape
Man I deceived: that which to me belongs
Is enmity, which he will put between
Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel;
His seed-when is not set-shall bruise my head:
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,    500
Or much more grievous pain? Ye have the account
Of my performance; what remains, ye Gods,
But up and enter now into full bliss?"
So having said, a while he stod,,.expecting
Their universal shout, and, high applause
To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears,
On all sides, from innumerable tongues,
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more;      510
His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,
His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining
Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell
A monstrous serpent _on his belly_ prone,
Reluctant, but in vain,; _a. greater-pnwer
Now _ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned,
According to his doom. He would have spoke,




BOOK X.


293


But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transformed
Alike, to serpents all, as accesrie              520
To his.bold riot. Dreadful was the din
Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now
With complicated monsters, head and tail,
Scorpion, and asp, and amphisbaena dire,
Cerastes horned, hydrus, and ellops drear,
And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil
Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle
Ophiusa); but still greatest he the midst,
Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun
Engendered in the Pythian vale on slime,         530
Huge Python; and his power noless heseemed
Above the rest still to retain. They all
Him followed, issuing forth to the open field,
Where all yet left of that revolted rout,
Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array,
Sublime with expectation when to see
In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief;
They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd
Of ugly serpents! Horror on them fell,
And horrid sympathy; for what they saw           540
They felt themselves now changing: down' their arms,
Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast,
And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form
Catched by contagion, like in punishment,
As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant
Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame
Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood
A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change,
His will who reigns above, to aggravate
Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that  550




294


PARADISE LOST.


Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the Tempter. On that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude
Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain,
But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curled Megera. Greedily they plucked        560
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;
This, more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chewed bitter ashes, which the 'offended taste
With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws,
With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell   570
Into the same illusion, not as Man
Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued
And worn with famine -long, and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted they resumed;
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy for Man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the heathen of their purchase got,
And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called     5So
Ophion, with Eurynome (the wideEncroaching Eve perhaps), had first the rule
Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven


t




BOOK X.


295


And Ops, ere yet Dictsean Jove was born.
Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin there in power before,
Once actual, now in body, and to dwell
Habitual habitant; behind her..Death,
Close following pace for. pace, not mounted yet
On his pale horse; to whom Sin thus began:       590
"Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!
What think'st thou of our empire now, though earned
With travail difficult? not better far
Than still at Hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?"
Whom thus the Sin-born Monster answered soon:
"To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven;
There best, where most with ravin I may meet;
Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems  6o00
To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corpse."
To whom the incestuous Mother thus replied:
"Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl,
No homely morsels; and whatever thing
The scythe of Time mows down devour unspared;
Till I, in Man residing, through the race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect,
And season him thy last and sweetest prey."
This said, they both betook them: several ways,  6o10
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendent seat the Saints among,
To those bright Orders uttered thus his voice:
"See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance




296


PARADISE LOST.


To waste and havoc yonder World, which I
So fair and good created, and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute        620
Folly to me (so doth the Prince of Hell
And his adherents), that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heavenly, and conniving seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,
That laugh, as if, transported with some fit
Of passion, I to them had quitted all,
At random yielded up to their misrule;
And know not that I called and drew them thither,
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth  630
Which Man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure; till, crammed and gorged, nigh burst
With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last,
Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.
Then Heaven and Earth, renewed, shall be made pure
To sanctity that shall receive no stain:
Till then the curse pronounced on both precedes."  640
He ended, and the Heavenly audience loud
Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas,
Through multitude that sung: "Just are thy ways,
Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works;
Who can extenuate thee?" Next, to the Son,
Destined restorer of mankind, by whom
New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages rise,
Or down from Heaven descend. Such was their song,
While the Creator, calling forth by name




BOOK X.                    297
His mighty Angels, gave them several charge,     650
As sorted best with present things. The sun
Had first his precept so to move, so shine,
As might affect the Earth with cold and heat
Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call
Decrepit winter, from the south to bring
Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc moon
Her office they prescribed; to the other five
Their planetary motions and aspects,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite,
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join            660
In synod unlbenign; and taught the fixed
Their influence malignant when to shower;
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set
Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll
With terror through the dark aerial hall.
Some say he bid his Angels turn askance
The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun's axle; they with labour pushed     670
Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun
Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road
Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven
Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins,
Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain
By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime: else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on 1Earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those        68o
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,




298


PARADISE LOST.


To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east or west; which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit
The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned
His course intended: else how had the World
Inhabited, though sinless, more than now         690
Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat?
These.changes-in..the. heavens,. thiough slow, produced
Like change on sea and land, sideral blast,
Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot,
Corrupt and pestilent. Now from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice
And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw,
Boreas and Caecias and Argestes loud
And Thrascias rend the woods and seas upturn;    700
With adverse blasts upturns them from the south
Notus and Afer black with thundrous clouds
From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce
Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds,
Eurus and Zephyr with their lateral noise,
Sirocco, and Libecchio. Thus began
Outrage from lifeless things; but Dis cord first,
Daulghter of Sin, among the irrationaL
Death introduced through fierce antipathy:
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl, 710
And fish with fish  to graze.thelierhb allleaving
Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe
Of Man, but fled him, or with countenance grim
Glared on him passing. These were from without
The growing miseries, which Adamll saw




BOOK X.


299


Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade,
To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within,
And, in a troubled sea of passion tost,
Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint:
"0 miserable of happy! is this the end        720
Of this new glorious World, and me so late
The glory of that glory? who now, become
Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face
Of God, whom to behold was then my highth
Of happiness 1 Yet well, if here would end
The misery; I deserved it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve:
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse. 0 voice, once heard
Delightfully, 'Increase and multiply';           730
Now death to hear!.for what can. -ILincrease
Or multiply, but curses on my head?
Who, of all ages to succeed, but, feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head?   'Ill fare our Ancestor impure!
For this we may thank Adam!' but his thanks
Shall be the execration; so, besides
Mine own that bide upon me, all from me
Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound,
On me, as on their natural centre, light         740
Heavy, though in their place. 0 fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man? did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden? As my will
Concurred not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust,




300


PARADISE LOST.


Desirous to resign and render back
All I received, unable to perform               75o
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? inexplicableThy justice seems. Yet, to say truth, too late
I thus contest; then should have been refused
Those terms whatever, when they were proposed.
Thou didst accept them: wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions? i[Ti though God
Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son    760o
Prove disobedient, and, reproved, retort,
'Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not!'
Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee
That proud excuse? yet him not thy election,
But natural necessity, begot.
God made thee of choice his own,. LaL-of-his own
To serve him; thy reward was of his.grace;
Thy punishment -then -justly- is -at —his will.
Be it so, for I submit; his doom is fair,
That dustIlTam,';and Sh&aIi to dust return.     770
O welcome hour whenever! Why delays
His hand to execute what his decree
Fixed on this day? Why do I overlive?
Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out
To deathless pain? How gladly would-I meet
Mortality, my sentence, and be earth
Insensible! how glad would lay me down
As in my mother's lap! There I should rest
And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more
Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse      780
To me and to my offspring would torment me




BOOK X.


301


With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt
Pursues me still, lest all I-cannot-di-;
I.estf-hat pure breath of life, the spirit of Man
Whichi Ghod.spire-di cannot together Derish
With this corporeal clod: then, in the grave,
Or in some other dismal place, who knows
But I shalI die a living death?  O thought
Horrid, if true! Yet why?  It was but breath
Of life that sinned: what dies but what had life  790
And sin? the body properly hath neither.
All ofjnme then shall die: let this appease
The doubt, since human reach no further knows.
For though the Lord of all be infinite,
Is his wrath also? Be it, Man is not so,
But mortal doomed. How can he -exercise
Wrath without end on Man, whom death must end?
Can he make deathless death? That were to make
Strange contradiction; which to God himself
Impossible is held, as argument                  80o0 \
Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out,
For anger's sake, finite to infinite
In punished Man, to satisfy his rigour
Satisfied never?  That were to extend
His sentence beyond dust and Nature's law;
By which all causes else according still
To the reception of their matter act,
Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say
That death be not one stroke, as I supposed,
Bereaving sense, Ibut endless misery             810
From this day onward, which I feel begun
Both in me and without me, and so last
To perpetuity   Ay me! that fear
Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution




302


PARADISE LOST.


On my defenceless head! Both Death and I
Am found eternal, and incorporate both:
Nor I.on my,, part sitgle. in me.all
Posterity stands cursed. Fair patrimony
That I must leave ye, sons! Oh, were I able
To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!      820
So disinherited, how would ye bless
Me, now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind,
For one man's fault, thus guiltless be condemned,
If guiltless? But from me what canproceed
But all corrupt, both mind and wilL depraved
Not to do only, but to will the, same
With me? How can they then acquitted stand
In sight of God? Him, after all disputes,
Forced I absolve; all my evasions vain
And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still 830
But to my own conviction: first and last
On me, me only, as the source and spring
Of all corruption, all the blame lights due;
So might the wrath! Fond wish! couldst thou support
That burden, heavier than the Earth to bear;
Than'all the World much heavier, though divided
With that bad woman? Thus.,._wlst..thou desir'st,
And what thou fear'stl alike destroys all hope
Of refuge, and concludes thee. miserable
Beyond all past example andjuture;             840
To Satan only like, both crime and-donm.
O Conscience! into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!"
Thus Adam to himself lamented loud
Through the still night, not now, as ere Man fell,
Wholesome and cool and mild, but with black air




BOOK X.


303


Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom;
Which to his evil conscience represented
All things with double terror. On the ground     85o
Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, and oft
Cursed his creation; Death as oft accused
Of tardy execution, since denounced
The day of his offence. "Why comes not Death,"
Said he, "with one thrice-acceptable stroke
To end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word,
Justice divine not hasten to be just?
BLt Death comes not at call; Justice divine
Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries.
O woods, 0 fountains, hillocks, dales, and bowers!  S6o
With other echo late I taught your shades
To answer, and resound far other song."
Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld,
Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed;
But her with stern regard he thus repelled:
"Out of my sight, thou serpent! that name best
Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as false
And hateful: nothing wants, but that thy shape,
Like his, and colour serpentine, may show        870
Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee
Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended
To hellish falsehood, snare them.,But for thee
I had persisted happy, had not thy pride
And wandering vanity, when least was safe,
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained
Not to be trusted, longing to be seen,
Though by the Devil himself, him overweening
To overreach; but, with the Serpent meeting,
Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee,     880




304


PARADISE LOST.


To trust thee from my side, imagined wise,
Constant, mature, proof against all assaults;
And understood not all was but a show,
Rather than solid virtue, all but a rib
Crooked by nature-bent, as now appears,
More to the part sinister-from me drawn;
Well if thrown out, as supernumerary
To my just number found! IOh, why did God,
D Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With Spirits masculine, create at last              890
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With men, as Angels, without feminine;
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind? ' This mischief had not then befallen,
And more-that shall befall-innumerable
Disturbances on Earth through female snares,
And strait conjunction with this sex. For either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;        go900
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
By a far worse, or, if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame:
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound."
He added not, and from her turned; IbuLt EYe,
Not so repulsed, with tears that ceas4d -lot flowLing, 910io
And tresses all disordered at his feet
Fell humble, and, embracing them,_biesought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her- plaint:




BOOK X.


305


"Forsake me not thus,.'dam.! witness Heaven
What love sincere and reverence in my heart
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,
Unhappily deceived! Thy suppliant
I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,           920
My only strength and stay: forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace; both joining,
As joined in injuries, one enmity
Against a foe by doom express assigned us,
That cruel Serpent. On me exercise not
Thy hatred for this misery befallen;
On me already lost, me than thyself
More miserable. Both have sinned; but thou        930
Against God only; I..against_ God and thee,..
And to the place of judgment will return,
There with my cries importune Heaven, that all
The sentence, from thy head removed, may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe,
Me, me only, just.object of His ire."
She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
Immovable till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration. Soon his heart relented            940
Towards her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, vwhom she had displeased, his aid;
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
Andthus with1 peaceful words upraiscd her soon:


P. L.


20




306


PARADISE LOST.


"Unwary, and too desirous, as before.
So now, of what thou know'st not, who desir'st
The punishment all on thyself!. Alas!
Bear thine own first, ill able to-sustain        950
His full wrath, whose thou feel'st as yet least part,
And my displeasure bear'st so ill. If prayers
Could alter high decrees, I to that place
Would speed before thee, and be louder heard,
That on my head all might be visited,
Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven,
To me committed, and by me exposed.
But rise; let us no more contend, nor blame
Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive
In offices of love, how we m     eay^.ighten     960
Each other's burden, in, our__sharenf_ e;
Since this day's death denounced, if aught I see,
Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil,
A long day's dying, to augment our pain,
And to our seed (O hapless seed!) derived."
To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied:
"Adam, by sad experiment I know
How little weight my words with thee can find,
Found so erroneous, thence by just event
Found so unfortunate; nevertheless,              970
Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place
Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain
Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart,
Living or dying from thee I will not hide
What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen,
Tending to some relief of our extremes,
Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable,
As in our evils, and of easier choice.
If care of our descent perplex us most,




BOOK X.                    307
Which must be born to certain woe, devoured      980
By Death at last (and miserable it is
To be to others cause of misery,
Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring
Into this cursed World a woeful race,
That after wretched life must be at last
Food for so foul a monster), in thy power
It lies, yet ere conception, to prevent
The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.
Childless thou art, childless remain; so Death
Shall be deceived his glut, -and with us two     990
Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw.
But if thou judge it hard and difficult,
Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain
From love's due rites, nuptial embraces sweet,
And with desire to languish without hope,
Before the present object languishing
With like desire, which would be misery
And torment less than none of what we dread;
Then, both our selves and seed at once to free
From what we fear for both, let us make short,  1000
Let us seek Death, or, he not found, supply
With our own hands his office on ourselves.
Why stand we longer shivering under fears
That show no end but death, and have the power,
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy?"
She ended here, or vehement despair
Broke off the rest; so much of death her thoughts
Had entertained as dyed her cheeks with pale.
But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed,     1010
To better hopes his more attentive mind
Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve replied:
20-2




308


PARADISE LOST.


"Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems
To argue in thee something more sublime
And excellent than what thy mind contemns;
But self-destruction therefore sought refutes
That excellence thought in thee, and implies,
Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret
For loss of life and pleasure overloved.
Or if thou covet death, as utmost end           1020
Of misery, so thinking to evade
The penalty pronounced, 'doubt not but God
Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire than so
To be forestalled; much more I fear lest death
So snatched will no t'exempt' us from the pain
We are byd-6omoi fitopay';, rather such acts
Of contumacy will provoke the Highest
To make death in us live. Then let us seek
Some safe rr-fesi-uti6h, 'which methinks
I have in view, calling to mind with heed       I030
Part of our sentence, that thy seed s__all bruise
The Serpent's head: piteous amends! unless
Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand foe,
Satan, who in the serpent hath contrived
Against us this deceit. To crush his head
Would be revenge indeed; which will be lost
By death brought on ourselves, or childless days
Resolved as thou proposest; so our foe
Shall scape his punishment ordained, and we
Instead shall double ours upon our heads.      1040
No more be mentioned then of violence
Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness,
That cuts us off from hope, and savours only
Rancour and pride, impatience and despite,
Reluctance against God and his just yoke




BOOK X.


309


Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild
And gracious temper he both heard and judged,
Without wrath or reviling; we expected
Immediate dissolution, which we thought
Was meant by death that day; when, lo! to thee  io50
Pains only in child-learing were foretold,
And -]ringing forth, soon recompensed with joy,
Fruit of thy womb; on me the curse aslope
Glanced on the ground: with lalour I must earn
My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse;
My labour will sustain me; and, lest cold
Or heat should injure us, his timely care
Hath, unlesought, provided, and his hands
Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he judged;
How much more, if we pray him, will his ear     IO60
Be open, and his heart to pity incline,
And teach us further by what means to shun
lThe inclement seasons, iin, ice, hail; and snow!
Which now the sky with various face begins
To show us in this mountain, while the winds
Blow moist and keen, shattering the graceful locks
Of these fair spreading trees; which bids us seek
Some better shroud, some better warmth to cherish
Our limbs benumbed, ere this diurnal star
Leave cold the night, how we his gathered beams  1070
Reflected may with matter sere foment,
Or by collision of two bodies grind
The air attrite to fire; as late the clouds,
Justling or pushed with winds, rude in their shock,
Tine the slant lightning, whose thwart flame driven down
Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine,
And sends a comfortable heat from far,
Which might supply the sun. Such fire to use,




3IO


PARADISE LOST.


And what mnay else be remedy or cure
To evils which our own misdeeds have wrought,    I080
He will instruct us praying, and of grace
Beseeching him; so as we need not fear
To pass commodiously this life, sustained
By him with many comforts, till we end
In dust, our final rest and native home.
What better can we do, than, to the place
Repairing where he judged us, prostrate fall
Before him reverent, and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air  Io090
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek?
Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn
From his displeasure; in whose look serene,
When angry most he seemed and most severe,
What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone? "
So spake our father penitent; nor Eve
Felt less remorse. They, forthwith to the place
Repairing where hle judged them, prostrate fell
Before him reverent, and both confessed          II0oo
Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears
Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek.




BOOK XI.




THE ARGUMENT.
The Son of God presents to his Father the prayers of our first
parents now repenting, and intercedes for them. God accepts them,
but declares that they must no longer abide in Paradise; sends Michael
with a band of Cherubim to dispossess them, but first to reveal to Adam
future things: Michael's coming downi. Adam shows to Eve certain
ominous signs; he discerns Michael's approach; goes out to meet him:
the Angel denounces their departure. Eve's lamentation. Adam pleads,
but submits: the Angel leads him up to a high hill; sets before him in
vision what shall happen till the Flood.




BOOK XI.


THUS they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying; for from the mercy-seat above
Prevenient grace descending had removed
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breathed
Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer
Inspired, and winged for Heaven with speedier flight
Than loudest oratory. Yet their port
Not of mean suitors, nor important less
Seemed their petition than when the ancient pair  Io
In fables old, less ancient yet than these,
Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha, to restore
The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine
Of Themis stood devout. To Heaven their prayers
Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds
Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed
Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then, clad
With incense, where the golden altar fumed,
By their great Intercessor, came in sight
Before the Father's throne. Them the glad Son    20
Presenting thus to intercede began:
"See, Father, what first-fruits on Earth are sprung




314


PARADISE LOST.


From thy implanted grace in Man-these sighs
And prayers, which in this golden censer, mixed
With incense, I, thy priest, before thee bring;
Fruits of more pleasing savour, from thy seed
Sown with contrition in his heart, than those
Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees
Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen
From innocence. Now, therefore, bend thine ear    30
To supplication; hear his sighs, though mute;
Unskilful with what words to pray, let me
Interpret for him, me his advocate
And propitiation; all his works on me,
Good or not good, ingraft; my merit those
Shall perfect, and for these my death shall pay.
Accept me, and in me from these receive
The smell of peace toward Mankind: let him live
Before thee reconciled, at least his days
Numbered, though sad; till death, his doom (which I 40
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse),
To better life shall yield him, where with me
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss,
Made one with me, as I with thee am one."
To whom the Father, without cloud, serene:
"All thy request for Man, accepted Son,
Obtain; all thy request was my decree.
But longer in that Paradise to dwell
The law I gave to Nature him forbids;
Those pure immortal elements, that know          50
No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul,
Eject him, tainted now, and purge him off,
As a distemper, gross, to air as gross,
And mortal food, as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by sin, that first




BOOKI Xi.


3 I 5)


Distempered all things, and of incorrupt
Corrupted. I, at first, with two fair gifts
Created him endowed-with happiness
And immortality; that fondly lost,
This other served but to eternize woe,           6o
Till I provided death: so death becomes
His final remedy, and, after life
Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined
By faith and faithful works, to second life,
Waked in the renovation of the just,
Resigns him up with Heaven and Earth renewed.
But let us call to Synod all the Blest
Through Heaven's wide bounds; from them I will not hide
My judgments, how with Mankind I proceed,
As how with peccant Angels late they saw,         70
And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed."
He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watched. He blew
His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps
When God descended, and perhaps once more
To sound at general doom. The angelic blast
Filled all the regions: from their blissful bowers
Of amarantine shade, fountain or spring,
By the waters of life, where'er they sat
In fellowships of joy, the Sons of Light          8o
Hasted, resorting to the summons high,
And took their seats, till from his throne supreme
The Almighty thus pronounced his sovran will:
"0 Sons, like one of us Man is become
To know both good and evil, since his taste
Of that defended fruit; but let him boast
His knowledge of good lost and evil got,
Happier had it sufficed him to have known




3 I6


PARADISE LOST.


Good by itself, and evil not at all.
He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite      go
My motions in him; longer than they move,
His heart I know how variable and vain,
Self-left. Lest, therefore, his now bolder hand
Reach also of the Tree of Life, and eat,
And live for ever-dream at least to live
For ever-to remove him I decree,
And send him from the garden forth, to till
The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil.
Michael, this my behest have thou in charge:
Take to thee from among the Cherubim             100
Thy choice of flaming warriors, lest the Fiend,
Or in behalf of Man, or to invade
Vacant possession, some new trouble raise;
Haste thee, and fiom the Paradise of God
Without remorse drive out the sinful pair,
From hallowed ground the unholy, and denounce
To them, and to their progeny, from thence
Perpetual banishment. Yet, lest they faint
At the sad sentence rigorously urged
(For I behold them softened, and with tears     1IO
Bewailing their excess), all terror hide.
If patiently thy bidding they obey,
Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal
To Adam what shall come in future days,
As I shall thee enlighten; intermix
My covenant in the Woman's seed renewed.
So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace;
And on the east side of the garden place,
Where entrance up from Eden easiest climbs,
Cherubic watch, and of a sword the flame         120
Wide-waving, all approach far off to fright,




BOOK XI.


317


And guard all passage to the Tree of Life;
Lest Paradise a receptacle prove
To Spirits foul, and all my trees their prey,
With whose stolen fruit Man once more to delude."
He ceased, and the archangelic Power prepared
For swift descent; with him the cohort bright
Of watchful Cherubim. Four faces each
Had, like a double Janus; all their shape
Spangled with eyes more numerous than those     130
Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drowse,
Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile,
To resalute the world with sacred light,
Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed
The Earth; when Adam and first matron Eve
Had ended now their orisons, and found
Strength added from above; new hope to spring
Out of despair; joy, but with fear yet linked;
Which thus to Eve his welcome words renewed:    140
"Eve, easily may faith admit that all
The good which we enjoy from Heaven descends;
But that from us aught should ascend to Heaven
So prevalent as to concern the mind
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will, -
Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer,
Or one short sigh of human breath, upborne
Even to the seat of God. For, since I sought
By prayer the offended Deity to appease,
Kneeled and before him humbled all my heart,    150
Methought I saw him placable and mild,
Bending his ear; persuasion in me grew
Ihat I was heard with favour; peace returned
Home to my breast, and to my memory




3 I8


PARADISE LOST.


His promise that thy seed shall bruise our Foe;
Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now
Assures me that the bitterness of death
Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to thee!
Eve rightly called, Mother of all Mankind,
Mother of all things living, since by thee      i6o
Man is to live, and all things live for Man."
To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek:
"Ill-worthy I such title should belong
To me transgressor, who, for thee ordained
A help, became thy snare; to me reproach
Rather belongs, distrust and all dispraise.
But infinite in pardon was my Judge,
That I, who first brought death on all, am graced
The source of life; next favourable thou,
Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf'st,       170
Far other name deserving. But the field
To labour calls us, now with sweat imposed,
Though after sleepless night; for see! the Morn,
All unconcerned with our unrest, begins
Her rosy progress smiling. Let us forth,
I never from thy side henceforth to stray,
Where'er our day's work lies, though now enjoined
Laborious, till day droop; while here we dwell,
What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks?
Here let us live, though in fallen state, content."  ISO
So spake, so wished, much-humbled Eve; but Fate
Subscribed not. Nature first gave signs, impressed
On bird, beast, air-air suddenly eclipsed,
After short blush of morn. Nigh in her sight
The bird of Jove, stooped from his aery tour,
Two birds of gayest plume before him drove;
Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods,




BOOKI X I.


31I9


First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace,
Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind;
Direct to the eastern gate was bent their flight.  I90
Adam observed, and, with his eye the chase
Pursuing, not unmoved to Eve thus spake:
"O Eve, some further change awaits us nigh,
Which Heaven by these mute signs in Nature shows,
Forerunners of his purpose, or to warn
Us, haply too secure of our discharge
From penalty because from death released
Some days; how long, and what till then our life,
Who knows? or more than this, that we are dust,
And thither must return, and be no more?         200
Why else this double object in our sight,
Of flight pursued in the air and o'er the ground
One way the self-same hour? Why in the east
Darkness ere day's mid-course, and morning-light
More orient in yon western cloud, that draws
O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,
And slow descends, with something Heavenly fraught?"
He erred not; for, by this, the Heavenly bands
Down from a sky of jasper lighted now
In Paradise, and on a hill made halt;            210
A glorious apparition, had not doubt
And carnal fear that day dimmed Adam's eye.
Not that more glorious, wvhen the Angels met
Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw
The field pavilioned with his guardians bright;
Nor that which on the flaming mount appeared
In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire,
Against the Syrian king, who to surprise
One man, assassin-like, had levied war,
Wzar unproclaimed. The princely Hierarch        220




320


PARADISE LOST.


In their bright stand there left his Powers to seize
Possession of the garden; he alone,
To find where Adam sheltered, took his way,
Not unperceived of Adam; who to Eve,
While the great visitant approached, thus spake:
"Eve, now expect great tidings, which perhaps
Of us will soon determine, or impose
New laws to be observed; for I descry,
From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill,
One of the Heavenly host, and, by his gait,      230
None of the meanest-some great Potentate
Or of the Thrones above, such majesty
Invests him coming; yet not terrible,
That I should fear, nor sociably mild,
As Raphael, that I should much confide;
But solemn and sublime; whom, not to offend,
With reverence I must meet, and thou retire."
He ended; and the Archangel soon drew nigh,
Not in his shape celestial, but as man
Clad to meet man. Over his lucid arms            240
A military vest of purple flowed,
Livelier than Meliboean, or the grain
Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old
In time of truce; Iris had dipt the woof.
His starry helm unbuckled showed him prime
In manhood where youth ended; by his side,
As in a glistering zodiac, hung the sword,
Satan's dire dread, and in his hand the spear.
Adam bowed low; he, kingly, from his state
Inclined not, but his coming thus declared:      250
"Adam, Heaven's high behest no preface needs:
Sufficient that thy prayers are heard, and Death,
Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress,




BOOK XI.


321


Defeated of his seizure many days,
Given thee of grace, wherein thou may'st repent,
And one bad act with many deeds well done
May'st cover. Well may then thy Lord, appeased,
Redeem thee quite from Death's rapacious claim;
But longer in this Paradise to dwell
Permits not: to remove thee I am come,          260
And send thee from the garden forth, to till
The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil."
He added not; for Adam at the news
Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood,
That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen
Yet all had heard, with audible lament
Discovered soon the place of her retire:
"O unexpected stroke, worse than of Death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise? thus leave
Thee, native soil? these happy walks and shades,  270
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both. 0 flowers,
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, which I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave ye names,
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower, by me adorned      280
With what to sight or smell was sweet, from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?"
Whom thus the Angel interrupted mild:


P. L.


21




322


PARADISE LOST.


*'Lament not, Eve, but patiently resign
What justly thou hast lost; nor set thy heart,
Thus over-fond, on that which is not thine.
Thy going is not lonely; with thee goes          290
Thy husband; him to follow thou art bound;
Where he abides, think there thy native soil."
Adam, by this from the cold sudden damp
Recovering, and his scattered spirits returned,
To Michael thus his humble words addressed:
" Celestial, whether among the Thrones, or named
Of them the highest —for such of shape may seem
Prince above princes-gently hast thou told
Thy message, which might else in telling wound,
And in performing end us. What besides           300
Of sorrow, and dejection, and despair,
Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring;
Departure from this happy place, our sweet
Recess, and only consolation left
Familiar to our eyes; all places else
Inhospitable appear, and desolate,
Nor knowing us, nor known. And, if by prayer
Incessant I could hope to change the will
Of him who all things can, I would not cease
To weary him with my assiduous cries;            310
But prayer against his absolute decree
No more avails than breath against the wind,
Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth:
Therefore to his great bidding I submit.
This most afflicts me, that, departing hence,
As from his face I shall be hid, deprived
His blessed countenance. Here I could frequent,
With worship, place by place where he vouchsafed
Presence Divine, and to my sons relate,




BOOK XI.                   323
'On this mount he appeared; under this tree       320
Stood visible; among these pines his voice
I heard; here with him at this fountain talked.'
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of lustre from the brook, in memory
Or monument to ages, and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling gums, and fruits, and flowers.
In yonder nether world where shall I seek
His bright appearances, or footstep trace?
For, though I fled him angry, yet, recalled       "lo
To life prolonged and promised race, I nowNV
Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts
Of glory, and far off his steps adore."
To whom thus Michael, with regard benign:
"Adam, thou know'st Heaven his, and all the Earth,
Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills
Land, sea, and air, and every kind that lives,
Fomented by his virtual power and warmed.
All the Earth he gave thee to possess and rule,
No despicable gift; surmise not, then,            340
His presence to these narrow bounds confined
Of Paradise or Eden. This had been
Perhaps thy capital seat, from whence had spread
All generations, and had hither come
From all the ends of the Earth, to celebrate
And reverence thee their great progenitor.
But this pre-eminence thou hast lost, brought down
To dwell on even ground now with thy sons.
Yet doubt not but in valley and in plain
God is, as here, and will be found alike          350
Present, and of his presence many a sign,
Still following thee, still compassing thee round


21-2




324


PARADISE LOST.


With goodness and paternal love, his face
Express, and of his steps the track divine.
'Which that thou may'st believe, and be confirmed,
Ere thou from hence depart, know I am sent
To show thee what shall come in future days
To thee and to thy offspring. Good with bad
Expect to hear, supernal grace contending
With sinfulness of men; thereby to learn         360
True patience, and to temper joy with fear
And pious sorrow, equally inured
By moderation either state to bear,
Prosperous or adverse: so shalt thou lead
Safest thy life, and best prepared endure
Thy mortal passage when it comes. Ascend
This hill; let Eve (for I have drenched her eyes)
Here sleep below while thou to foresight wak'st,
As once thou slept'st, while she to life was formed."
To whom thus Adam gratefully replied:          370
"Ascend; I follows thee, safe guide, the path
Thou lead'st me, and to the hand of Heaven submit,
However chastening; to the evil turn
My obvious breast, arming to overcome
By suffering, and earn rest from labour won,
If so I may attain." So both ascend
In the visions of God. It was a hill,
Of Paradise the highest, from whose top
The hemisphere of Earth, in clearest ken,
Stretched out to the amplest reach of prospect lay.  380
Not higher that hill, nor wider looking round,
W\hereon for different cause the Tempter set
Our second Adam, in the wilderness,
To show him all Earth's kingdoms and their glory.
His eye might there command wherever stood




BOOK XI.


325


City of old or modern fame, the seat
Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls
Of Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can,
And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir's throne,
To Paquin of Sinmean kings, and thence           390
To Agra and Lahor of Great Mogul,
Down to the golden Chersonese, or where
The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since
In Hispahan, or where the Russian Ksar
In Mosco, or the Sultan in Bizance,
Turchestan-born; nor could his eye not ken
The empire of Negus to his utmost port
Ercoco, and the less maritime kings,
Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind,
And Sofala, thought Ophir, to the realm         400
Of Congo, and Angola farthest south;
Or thence from Niger flood to Atlas mount,
The kingdoms of Almansor, Fez and Sus,
Marocco, and Algiers, and Tremisen;
On Europe thence, and where Rome was to sway
The world. In spirit perhaps he also saw
Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,
And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat
Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoiled
Guiana, whose great' city Geryon's sons          410
Call El Dorado. But to nobler sights
Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed
Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue
The visual nerve, for he had much to see,
And from the well of life three drops instilled.
So deep the power of these ingredients pierced,
Even to the inmost seat of mental sight,.4




326


PARADISE LOST.


That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes,
Sunk down, and all his spirits became entranced,  420
But him the gentle Angel by the hand
Soon raised, and his attention thus recalled:
"Adam, now ope thine eyes, and first behold
The effects which thy original crime hath wrought
In some to spring from thee, who never touched
The excepted tree, nor with the Snake conspired,
Nor sinned thy sin, yet from that sin derive
Corruption to bring forth more violent deeds."
His eyes he opened, and beheld a field,
Part arable and tilth, whereon were sheaves      430
New-reaped, the other part sheep-walks and folds;
I' the midst an altar as the landmark stood,
Rustic, of grassy sord. Thither anon
A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought
First-fruits, the green ear and the yellow sheaf,
Unculled, as came to hand; a shepherd next,
More meek, came with the firstlings of his flock,
Choicest and best; then, sacrificing, laid
The inwards and their fat, with incense strewed,
On the cleft wood, and all due rites performed.  440
His offering soon propitious fire from heaven
Consumed with nimble glance and grateful steam;
The other's not, for his was not sincere:
Whereat he inly raged, and, as they talked,
Smote him into the midriff with a stone
That beat out life; he fell, and, deadly pale,
Groaned out his soul with gushing blood effused.
Much at that sight was Adam in his heart
Dismayed, and thus in haste to the Angel cried:
"O Teacher, some great mischief hath befallen  430
To that meek man, who well had sacrificed:


9




BOOK XI.


327


Is piety thus and pure devotion paid?"
To whom Michael thus, he also moved, replied:
"These two are brethren, Adam, and to come
Out of thy loins. The unjust the just hath slain,
For envy that his brother's offering found
From Heaven acceptance; but the bloody fact
Will be avenged, and the other's faith approved
Lose no reward, though here thou see him die,
Rolling in dust and gore." To which our Sire:   460
"Alas, both for the deed and for the cause!
But have I now seen Death?  Is this the way
I must return to native dust? 0 sight
Of terror, foul and ugly to behold!
Horrid to think, how horrible to feel!"
To whom thus Michael: "Death thou hast seen
In his first shape on Man; but many shapes
Of Death, and many are the ways that lead
To his grim cave, all dismal; yet to sense
More terrible at the entrance than within.       470
Some, as thou saw'st, by violent stroke shall die,
By fire, flood, famine; by intemperance more
In meats and drinks, which on the Earth shall bring
Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew
Before thee shall appear, that thou may'st know
What misery the inabstinence of Eve
Shall bring on men." Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark;
A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased, all maladies           480
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,




3`28


PARADISE LOST.


Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; Despair
Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;    490
And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked
With vows, as their chief good and final hope.
Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept,
Though not of woman born: compassion quelled
His best of man, and gave him up to tears
A space, till firmer thoughts restrained excess,
And, scarce recovering words, his plaint renewed:
"O miserable Mankind, to what fall            500
Degraded, to what wretched state reserved!
Better end here unborn. Why is life given
To be thus wrested from us? rather why
Obtruded on us thus? who, if we knew
What we receive, would either not accept
Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down,
Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can thus
The image of God in Man, created once
So goodly and erect, though faulty since,
To such unsightly sufferings be debased          5Io
Under inhuman pains? Why should not Man,
Retaining still divine similitude
In part, from such deformities be free,
And for his Maker's image sake exempt?"
"Their Maker's image," answered Michael, "then
Forsook them, when themselves they vilified
To serve ungoverned Appetite, and took




BOOK XI.


329


His image whom they served-a brutish vice,
Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.
Therefore so abject is their punishment,         5zo
Disfiguring not God's likeness, but their own;
Or, if his likeness, by themselves defaced
While they pervert pure Nature's healthful rules
To loathsome sickness; worthily, since they
God's image did not reverence in themselves."
"I yield it just," said Adam, "and submit.
But is there yet no other way, besides
These painful passages, how we may come
To death, and mix with our connatural dust?"
"There is," said Michael, "if thou well observe  530
The rule of Not too much, by temperance taught
In what thou eat'st and drink'st, seeking from thence
Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,
Till many years over thy head return.
So may'st thou live, till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
Into thy mother's lap, or be with ease
Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature.
This is old age; but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To withered, weak, and grey; thy senses then,   540
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo
To what thou hast; and, for the air of youth,
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry,
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life." To whom our Ancestor:
"Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong
Life much, bent rather how I may be quit,
Fairest and easiest, of this cumbrous charge,
Which I must keep till my appointed day          550




330


PARADISE LOST.


Of rendering up, and patiently attend
My dissolution."  Michael replied:
"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest
Live well; how long or short, permit to Heaven.
And now prepare thee for another sight."
He looked, and saw a spacious plain, whereon
Were tents of various hue; by some were herds
Of cattle grazing; others, whence the sound
Of instruments that made melodious chime
Was heard, of harp and organ, and who moved      560
Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and high,
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.
In other part stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods, on mountain or in vale,
Down to the veins of Earth, thence gliding hot
To some cave's mouth, or whether washed by stream
From underground); the liquid ore he drained     570
Into fit moulds prepared; from which he formed
First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought
Fusil or graven in metal. After these,
But on the hither side, a different sort
From the high neighbouring hills, which was their seat,
Down to the plain descended: by their guise
Just men they seemed, and all their study bent
To worship God aright, and know his works
Not hid; nor those things last which might preserve
Freedom and peace to men. They on the plain     580
Long had not walked, when from the tents behold
A bevy of fair women, richly gay
In gems and wanton dress! to the harp they sung




BOOK XI.


33I


Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on.
The men, though grave, eyed them, and let their eyes
Rove without rein, till, in the amorous net
Fast caught, they liked, and each his liking chose.
And now of love they treat, till the evening-star,
Love's harbinger, appeared; then, all in heat,
They light the nuptial torch, and bid invoke     590
Hymen, then first to marriage rites invoked:
With feast and music all the tents resound.
Such happy interview, and fair event
Of love and youth not lost, songs, garlands, flowers,
And charming symphonies, attached the heart
Of Adam, soon inclined to admit delight,
The bent of Nature; which he thus expressed:
"True opener of mine eyes, prime Angel blest,
Much better seems this vision, and more hope
Of peaceful days portends, than those two past:  6oo
Those were of hate and death, or pain much worse;
Here Nature seems fulfilled in all her ends."
To whom thus Michael: "Judge not what is best
By pleasure, though to Nature seeming meet,
Created, as thou art, to nobler end,
Holy and pure, conformity divine.
Those tents thou saw'st so pleasant were the tents
Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race
Who slew his brother: studious they appear
Of arts that polish life, inventors rare;        6Io
Unmindful of their Maker, though his Spirit
Taught them; but they his gifts acknowledged none.
Yet they a beauteous offspring shall beget;
For that fair female troop thou saw'st, that seemed
Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay,
Yet empty of all good wherein consists




332


PARADISE LOST.


Woman's domestic honour and chief praise;
Bred only and completed to the taste
Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance,
To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye;  620
To these that sober race of men, whose lives
Religious titled them the Sons of God,
Shall yield up all their virtue, all their fame,
Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles
Of these fair atheists, and now swim in joy
(Erelong to swim at large) and laugh; for which
The world erelong a world of tears must weep."
To whom thus Adam, of short joy bereft:
"O pity and shame, that they who to live well
Entered so fair should turn aside to tread        630
Paths indirect, or in the midway faint!
But still I see the tenor of Man's woe
Holds on the same, from Woman to begin."
"From  Man's effeminate slackness it begins,"
Said the Angel, "who should better hold his place
By wisdom, and superior gifts received.
But now prepare thee for another scene."
He looked, and saw wide territory spread
Before him-towns, and rural works between,
Cities of men with lofty gates and towers,        640
Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening war,
Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise;
Part wield their arms, part curb the foaming steed,
Single or in array of battle ranged,
Both horse and foot, nor idly mustering stood.
One way a band select from forage drives
A herd of beeves, fair oxen and fair kine,
From a fat meadow-ground, or fleecy flock,
Ewes and their bleating lambs, over the plain,




BOOK XI.                   333
Their booty; scarce with life the shepherds fly,  65o
But call in aid, which makes a bloody fray:
With cruel tournament the squadrons join;
Where cattle pastured late, now scattered lies
With carcasses and arms the ensanguined field
Deserted. Others to a city strong
Lay siege, encamped, by battery, scale, and mine,
Assaulting; others from the wall defend
With dart and javelin, stones and sulphurous fire;
On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds.
In other part the sceptred haralds call          66o
To council in the city-gates: anon
Grey-headed men and grave, with warriors mixed,
Assemble, and harangues are heard; but soon
In factious opposition, till at last
Of middle age one rising, eminent
In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong,
Of justice, of religion, truth, and peace,
And judgment from above: him old and young
Exploded, and had seized with violent hands,
Had not a cloud descending snatched him thence,  670
Unseen amid the throng. So violence
Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law,
Through all the plain, and refuge none was found.
Adam was all in tears, and to his guide
Lamenting turned full sad: "Oh, what are these?
Death's ministers, not men! who thus deal death
Inhumanly to men, and multiply
Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew
His brother; for of whom such massacre
Mlake they but of their brethren, men of men?    68o
But who was that just man, whom had not Heaven
Rescued, had in his righteousness been lost?"




334


PARADISE LOST.


To whom thus Michael: "These are the product
Of those ill-mated marriages thou saw'st;
Where good with bad were matched, who of themselves
Abhor to join, and, by imprudence mixed,
Produce prodigious births of body or mind.
Such were these Giants, men of high renown;
For in those days might only shall be admired,
And valour and heroic virtue called;             69o
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory, and for glory done
Of triumph, to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of godsDestroyers rightlier called, and plagues of men.
Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on Earth,
And what most merits fame in silence hid.
But he, the seventh from thee, whom thou beheld'st 7c0
The only righteous in a world perverse,
And therefore hated, therefore so beset
With foes, for daring single to be just,
And utter odious truth, that God would come
To judge them with his Saints-him the Most High,
Rapt in a balmy cloud with winged steeds,
Did, as thou saw'st, receive, to Walk with God
High in salvation and the climes of bliss,
Exempt from death: to show thee what reward
Awaits the good, the rest what punishment;       710
Which now direct thine eyes and soon behold."
He looked, and saw the face of things quite changed;
The brazen throat of war had ceased to roar;
All now was turned to jollity and game,
To luxury and riot, feast and dance,




BOOK XI.


335


Marrying or prostituting, as befell,
Rape or adultery, where passing fair
Allured them; thence from cups to civil broils.
At length a reverend sire among them came,
And of their doings great dislike declared,      720
And testified against their ways: he oft
Frequented their assemblies, whereso met,
Triumphs or festivals, and to them preached
Conversion and repentance, as to souls
In prison, under judgments imminent;
But all in vain. Which when he saw, he ceased
Contending, and removed his tents far off;
Then, from the mountain hewing timber tall,
Began to build a vessel of huge bulk,
Measured by cubit, length, and breadth, and highth, 730
Smeared round with pitch, and in the side a door
Contrived, and of provisions laid in large
For man and beast: when lo! a wonder strange!
Of every beast, and bird, and insect small,
Came sevens and pairs, and entered in, as taught
Their order; last, the sire and his three sons,
With their four wives; and God made fast the door.
Meanwhile the south-wind rose, and, with black wings
Wide hovering, all the clouds together drove
From under heaven; the hills, to their supply,   740
Vapour, and exhalation dusk and moist,
Sent up amain; and now the thickened sky
Like a dark ceiling stood: down rushed the rain
Impetuous, and continued till the Earth
No more was seen. The floating vessel swum
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else
Flood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp




336


PARADISE LOST.


Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea,
Sea without shore: and in their palaces,         750
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped
And stabled: of mankind, so numerous late,
All left in one small bottom swum embarked.
How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold
The end of all thy offspring, end so sad,
Depopulation! Thee another flood,
Of tears and sorrow a flood, thee also drowned,
And sunk thee as thy sons; till, gently reared
By the Angel, on thy feet thou stood'st at last,
Though comfortless, as when a father mourns      760
His children, all in view destroyed at once;
And scarce to the Angel utter'dst thus thy plaint:
"0 visions ill foreseen! Better had I
Lived ignorant of future! so had borne
My part of evil only, each day's lot
Enough to bear; those now, that were dispensed
The burden of many ages, on me light
At once, by my foreknowledge gaining birth
Abortive, to torment me, ere their being,
With thought that they must be. Let no man seek 770
Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall
Him or his children; evil he may be sure,
Which neither his foreknowing can prevent,
And he the future evil shall no less
In apprehension than in substance feel
Grievous to bear. But that care now is past;
Man is not whom to warn; those few escaped
Famine and anguish will at last consume,
Wandering that watery desert. I had hope,
When violence was ceased and war on Earth,       78o
All would have then gone well, peace would have crowned




BOOK XI.


337


With length of happy days the race of Man;
But I was far deceived, for now I see
Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste.
How comes it thus? Unfold, Celestial Guide,
And whether here the race of Man will end."
To whom thus MiTc    '"Th- ' e-hoom last thou saw'st
In triumph and luxurious wealth, are they
First seen in acts of prowess eminent
And great exploits, but of true virtue void;     790
Who, having spilt much blood, and done much waste,
Subduing nations, and achieved thereby
Fame in the world, high titles, and rich prey,
Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth,
Surfeit, and lust, till wantonness and pride
Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in peace.
The conquered also, and enslaved by war,
Shall, with their freedom lost, all virtue lose,
And fear of God, from whom their piety feigned
In sharp contest of battle found no aid         800
Against invaders; therefore, cooled in zeal,
Thenceforth shall practise how to live secure,
Worldly or dissolute, on what their lords
Shall leave them to enjoy; for the Earth shall bear
More than enough, that temperance may be tried.
So all shall turn degenerate, all depraved,
Justice and temperance, truth and faith, forgot;
One man except, the only son of light
In a dark age, against example good,
Against allurement, custom, and a world          8I0
Offended. Fearless of reproach and scorn,
Or violence, he of their wicked ways
Shall them admonish, and before them set
The paths of righteousness, how much more safe


P. L.


22




338


PARADISE LOST.


And full of peace, denouncing wrath to come
On their impenitence; and shall return
Of them derided, but of God observed
The one just man alive; by his command
Shall build a wondrous ark, as thou beheld'st,
To save himself and household from amidst        820
A world devote to universal wrack.
No sooner he, with them of man and beast
Select for life, shall in the ark be lodged,
And sheltered round, but all the cataracts
Of Heaven set open on the Earth shall pour
Rain day and night; all fountains of the deep,
Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp
Beyond all bounds, till inundation rise
Above the highest hills. Then shall this Mount
Of Paradise by might of waves be moved           830
Out of his place, pushed by the horned flood,
With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift,
Down the great river to the opening Gulf,
And there take root, an island salt and bare,
The haunt of seals, and ores, and sea-mews' clang:
To teach thee that God attributes to place
No sanctity, if none be thither brought
By men who there frequent or therein dwell.
And now what further shall ensue behold."
He looked, and saw the ark hull on the flood,  840
Which now abated; for the clouds were fled,
Driven by a keen north-wind, that, blowing dry,
Wrinkled the face of deluge, as decayed;
And the clear sun on his wide watery glass
Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew,
As after thirst; which made their flowing shrink
From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole




BOOK XI.


339


With soft foot towards the deep, who now had stopt
His sluices, as the heaven his windows shut.
The ark no more now floats, but seems on ground,  850
Fast on the top of some high mountain fixed.
And now the tops of hills as rocks appear;
With clamour thence the rapid currents drive
Towards the retreating sea their furious tide.
Forthwith from out the ark a raven flies,
And after him, the surer messenger,
A dove, sent forth once and again to spy
Green tree or ground whereon his foot may light;
The second time returning, in his bill
An olive-leaf he brings, pacific sign.            860
Anon dry ground appears, and from his ark
The ancient sire descends, with all his train;
Then, with uplifted hands and eyes devout,
Grateful to Heaven, over his head beholds
A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a bow
Conspicuous with three listed colours gay,
Betokening peace from God, and covenant new.
Whereat the heart of Adam, erst so sad,
Greatly rejoiced, and thus his joy broke forth:
"O thou, who future things canst represent      S7o
As present, Heavenly Instructor, I revive
At this last sight, assured that Man shall live,
With all the creatures, and their seed preserve.
Far less I now lament for one whole world
Of wicked sons destroyed, than I rejoice
For one man found so perfect and so just,
That God vouchsafes to raise another world
From him, and all his anger to forget.
But say, what mean those coloured streaks in Heaven,
Distended as the brow of God appeased?            880




340


PARADISE LOST.


Or serve they as a flowery verge to bind
The fluid skirts of that same watery cloud,
Lest it again dissolve and shower the Earth?"
To whom the Archangel: "Dextrously thou aim'st.
So willingly doth God remit his ire,
Though late repenting him of Man depraved;
Grieved at his heart, when looking down he saw
The whole Earth filled with violence, and all flesh
Corrupting each their way; yet, those removed,
Such grace shall one just man find in his sight,  g9o
That he relents, not to blot out mankind,
And makes a covenant never to destroy
The Earth again by flood, nor let the sea
Surpass his bounds, nor rain to drown the world
With man therein or beast; but, when he brings
Over the Earth a cloud, will therein set
His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look
And call to mind his covenant. Day and night,
Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost,
Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new, 9oo
Both Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell."




BOOK XII.




THE ARGUMENT.
The Angel Michael continues, from the Flood, to relate what shall
succeed; then, in the mention of Abraham, comes by degrees to explain
who that Seed of the Woman shall be which was promised Adam and
Eve in the Fall; his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension;
the state of the Church till his second coming. Adam, greatly satisfied'
and recomforted by these relations and promises, descends the hill with
Michael; wakens Eve, who all this while had slept, but with gentle
dreams composed to quietness of mind and submission. Michael in
either hand leads them out of Paradise, the fiery sword waving behind
them, and the Cherubim taking their stations to guard the place.




BOOK XII.


AS one who in his journey bates at noon,
2    Though bent on speed, so here the Archangel paused
Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Then, with transition sweet, new speech resumes:
"Thus thou hast seen one world begin and end,
And Man as from a second stock proceed.
Much thou hast yet to see; but I perceive
Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine
Must needs impair and weary human sense:       10
Henceforth what is to come I will relate;
Thou, therefore, give due audience, and attend.
"This second source of men, while yet but fqwv,
And while the dread of judgment past remains
Fresh in their minds, fearing the Deity,
With some regard to what is just and right
Shall lead their lives, and multiply apace,
Labouring tle soil, and reaping plenteous crop,
Corn, wine, and oil; and, from the herd or flock
Oft sacrificing bullock, lamb, or kid,          20
With large wine-offerings poured, and sacred feast,
Shall spend their days in joy unblamed, and dwell
Long time in peace, by families and tribes,




344


PARADISE LOST.


Under paternal rule; till one shall rise,
Of proud, ambitious heart, who, not content
With fair equality, fraternal state,
Will arrogate dominion undeserved
Over his brethren, and quite dispossess
Concord and law of Nature from the Earth;
Hunting (and men, not beasts, shall be his game)  3o
With war and hostile snare such as refuse
Subjection to his empire tyrannous.
A mighty hunter thence he shall be styled
Before the Lord, as in despite of Heaven,
Or from Heaven claiming second sovranty;
And from rebellion shall derive his name,
Though of rebellion others he accuse.
He, with a crew, whom like ambition joins
With him or under him to tyrannize,
Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find  40
The plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge
Boils out from under ground, the mouth of Hell.
Of brick, and of that stuff, they cast to build
A city and tower, whose top may reach to Heaven;
And get themselves a name, lest, far dispersed
In foreign lands, their memory be lost,
Regardless whether good or evil fame.
But God, who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through their habitations walks
To mark their doings, them beholding soon,        so
Comes down to see their city, ere the tower
Obstruct Heaven-towers, and in derision sets
Upon -thir ftoniues a various spirit, to rase
Quite out their native language, and, instead,
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown.
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud




BOOK XII.


345


Among the builders; each to other calls,
Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage,
As mocked they storm. Great laughter was in Heaven,
And looking down, to see the hubbub strange       60
And hear the din; thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named."
Whereto thus Adam, fatherly displeased:
"O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brethren, to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given
He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
Dominion absolute; that right we hold
By his donation: but man over men
He made not lord; such title to himself          70
Reserving, human left from human free.
But this usurper his encroachment proud
Stays not on Man; to God his tower intends
Siege and defiance. Wretched man! what food
Will he convey up thither, to sustain
Himself and his rash army, where thin air
Above the clouds will pine his entrails gross,
And famish him of breath, if not of bread?"
To whom thus Michael: "Justly thou abhorr'st
That son, who on the quiet state of men          ao
Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue
Rational liberty; yet know withal,
Since thy original lapse, true liberty
Is lost, which always with right reason dwells
Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being.
Reason in Man obscured, or not obeyed,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart passions catch the government
From reason, and to servitude reduce




346


PARADISE LOST.


Man, till then free. Therefore, since he permits  go90
Within himself unworthy powers to reign
Over free reason, God, in judgment just,
Subjects him from without to violent lords,
Who oft as undeservedly enthral
His outward freedom: tyranny must be,
Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse.
Yet sometimes nations will decline so low
From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong,
But justice, and some fatal curse annexed,
Deprives them of their outward liberty,          100
Their inward lost: witness the irreverent son
Of him who built the ark, who, for the shame
Done to his father, heard this heavy curse,
Servant of servants, on his vicious race.
Thus will this latter, as the former world,
Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last,
Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw
His presence from among them, and avert
His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth
To leave them to their own polluted ways,        I1o
And one peculiar nation to select
o     all th jstfjwhom        be invokedA nation from one faithful man to spring.
Him on this side Euphrates yet residing,
Bred up in idol-worship-Oh, that men
(Canst thou believe?) should be so stupid grown,
While yet the patriarch lived who scaped the Flood,
As to forsake the living God, and fall
Tlo worship their own work in wood and stone
For gods!-yet him God the Most High vouchsafes   123
To call by vision from his father's house,
His kindred, and false gods, into a land




BOOK XII.


347


Which he will show him, and from him will raise
A mighty nation, and upon him shower
His benediction so, that in his seed
All nations shall be blest. He straight obeys;
Not knowing to what land, yet firm believes.
I see him, but thou canst not, with what faith
He leaves his gods, his friends, and native soil,
Ur of Chaldxea, passing now the ford             130
To Haran; after him a cumbrous train
Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude,
Not wandering poor, but trusting all his wealth
With God, who called him, in a land unknown.
Canaan he now attains; I see his tents
Pitched about Sechem, and the neighbouring plain
Of Moreh; there, by promise, he receives
Gift to his progeny of all that land,
From Hamath northward to the Desert south
(Things by their names I call, though yet unnamed), 140
From Hermon east to the great western sea;
Mount Hermon, yonder sea, each place behold
In prospect, as I point them: on the shore,
Mount Carmel; here, the double-founted stream,
Jordan, true limit eastward; but his sons
Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of hills.
This ponder, that all nations of the Earth
Shall in his seed be blessed. By that seed
Is meant thy great Deliverer, who shall bruise
The Serpent's head; whereof to thee anon         150
Plainlier shall be revealed. This patriarch blest,
Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call,
A son, and of his son a grandchild, leaves,
Like him in faith, in wisdom, and renown.
The grandchild, with twelve sons increased, departs




348


PARADISE LOST.


From Canaan to a land hereafter called
Egypt, divided by the river Nile;
See where it flows, disgorging at seven mouths
Into the sea. To sojourn in that land
He comes, invited by a younger son               i6o
In time of dearth, a son whose worthy deeds
Raise him to be the second in that realm
Of Pharaoh. There he dies, and leaves his race
Growing into a nation, and now grown
Suspected to a sequent king, who seeks
To stop their overgrowth, as inmate guests
Too numerous; whence of guests he makes them slaves
Inhospitably, and kills their infant males:
Till, by two brethren (those two brethren call
Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim          170
His people from enthralment, they return,
With glory and spoil, back to their promised land.
But first the lawless tyrant, who denies
To know their God, or message to regard,
Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire:.
To blood unshed the rivers must be turned;
Frogs, lice, and flies must all his palace fill
With loathed intrusion, and fill all the land;
His cattle must of rot and murrain die;
Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss,    I80
And all his people; thunder mixed with hail,
Hail mixed with fire, must rend the Egyptian sky,
And wheel on the earth, devouring where it rolls;
What it devours not, herb, or fruit, or grain,
A darksome cloud of locusts swarming down
Must eat, and on the ground leave nothing green;
Darkness must overshadow all his bounds,
Palpable darkness, and blot out three days;




BOOK XII.


349


Last, with one midnight-stroke, all the first-horn
Of Egypt must lie dead. Thus waith ten wounds   Ix1)
The river-dragon tamed at length submits
To let his sojourners depart, and oft
Humbles his stubborn heart, but still as ice
More hardened after thaw; till, in his rage
Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the sea
Swallows him with his host, but them lets pass,
As on dry land, between two crystal walls,
Awed by the rod of Moses so to stand
Divided, till his rescued gain their shore:
Such wondrous power God to his Saint will lend,  200
Though present in his Angel, who shall go
Before them in a cloud, and pillar of fireBy day a cloud, by night a pillar of fireTo guide them in their journey, and remove
Behind them, while the obdurate king pursues.
All night he will pursue, but his approach
Darkness defends between till morning-watch;
Then through the fiery pillar and the cloud
God looking forth will trouble all his host,
And craze their chariot-wheels: when, by command,:2o
Moses once more his potent rod extends
Over the sea; the sea his rod obeys;
On their embattled ranks the waves return,
And overwhelm their war. The race elect
Safe towards Canaan from the shore advance
Through the wild Desert, not the readiest way;
Lest, entering on the Canaanite alarmed,
War terrify them inexpert, and fear
Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather
Inglorious life with servitude; for life         22
To noble and ignoble is more sweet




350


PARADISE LOST.


Untrained in arms, where rashness leads not on.
This also shall they gain by their delay
In the wide wilderness: there they shall found
Their government, and their great Senate choose
Through the twelve tribes, to rule by laws ordained.
God, from the mount of Sinai, whose grey top
Shall tremble, he descending, will himself
In thunder, lightning, and loud trumpet's sound,
Ordain them laws; part, such as appertain        230
To civil justice; part, religious rites
Of sacrifice, informing them, by types
And shadows, of that destined Seed to bruise
The Serpent, by what means he shall achieve
Mankind's deliverance. But the voice of God
To mortal ear is dreadful; they beseech
That Moses might report to them his will,
And terror cease; he grants what they besought,
Instructed that to God is no access
Without Mediator, whose high office now          240
Moses in figure bears, to introduce
One greater, of whose day he shall foretell,
And all the Prophets, in their age, the times
Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus laws and rites
Established, such delight hath God in men
ObedientL ohi-s wI,lthat he vouchsafes
Among them to set up his tabernacleThe Holy On'- vi mnrty i           1. to dwll
B         l     e dcu-O i-xoe
OTedar     yaidwithgd       therein              250
An ark, and in the ark his testimony,
The records of his covenant; over these
A mercy-seat of gold, between the wings
Of two bright Cherubim; before him burn




LOOK XII.


35I


Seven lamps, as in a zodiac representing
The heavenly fires. Over the tent a cloud
Shall rest by day, a fiery gleam by night,
Save when they journey; and at length they come,
Conducted by his Angel, to the land
Promised to Abraham and -hiiseed. The rest       253
Were long to tell: how manyi -attles fought;
How many kings destroyed, and kingdoms won;
Or how the sun shall in mid-heaven stand still
A day entire, and night's due course adjourn,
Man's voice commanding, 'Sun, in Gibeon stand,
And thou, Moon, in the vale of Aialon,
Till Israel overcome!' so call the third
From Abraham, son of Isaac, and from him
His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan win."
Here Adam interposed: "O sent from Heaven,     270
Enlightener of my darkness, gracious things
Thou hast revealed, those chiefly which concern
Just Abraham and his seed. Now first I find
Mine eyes true opening, and my heart much eased,
Erewhile perplexed with thoughts what would become
Of me and all mankind; but now I see
His day, in whom all nations shall be blest,
Favour unmerited by me, who sought
Forbidden knowledge by forbidden means.
This yet I apprehend not, why to those           280
Among whom God will deign to dwell on Earth
So many and so various laws are given:
So many laws argue so many sins
Among them; how can God with such reside?"
To whom thus Michael: "Doubt not but that sin
Will reign among them, as of thee begot;
And therefore was law given them, to evince




352


PARADISE LOST.


Their natural pravity, by stirring up
Sin against law to fight; that, when they see
Law can discover sin, but not remove,            290
Save by those shadowy expiations weak,
The blood of bulls and goats, they may conclude
Some blood more precious must be paid for Man,
Just for unjust, that in such righteousness,
To them by faith imputed, they may find
Justification towards God, and peace
Of conscience, which the law by ceremonies
Cannot appease, nor man the moral part
Perform, and not performing cannot live.
So law appears imperfect, and but given          300
With purpose to resign them, in full time,
Up to a better covenant, disciplined
From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to spirit,
From imposition of strict laws to free
Acceptance of large grace, from servile fear
To filial, works of law to works of faith.
And therefore shall not Moses, though of God
Highly beloved, being but the minister
Of law, his people into Canaan lead;
But Joshua, whom the Gentiles Jesus call,        310
His name and office bearing, who shall quell
The adversary Serpent, and bring back
Through the world's wilderness long-wandered Man
Safe to eternal Paradise of rest.
Meanwhile they, in their earthly Canaan placed,
Long time shall dwell and prosper, but when sins
National interrupt their public peace,
Provoking God to raise them enemiesFrom whom as oft he saves them penitent,
By Judges first, then under Kings; of whom       320




BOOK XII.


353


The second, both for piety renowned
And puissant deeds, a promise shall receive
Irrevocable, that his regal throne
For ever shall endure. The like shall sing
All Prophecy-that of the royal stock
Of David (so I name this king) shall rise
A Son, the Woman's Seed to thee foretold,
Foretold to Abraham, as in whom shall trust
All nations, and to kings foretold, of kings
The last, for of his reign shall be no end.      330
But first a long succession must ensue;
And his next son, for wealth and wisdom famed,
The clouded ark of God, till then in tents
Wandering, shall in a glorious temple enshrine.
Such follow him as shall be registered
Part good, part bad; of bad the longer scroll;
Whose foul idolatries and other faults,
Heaped to the popular sum, will so incense
God, as to leave them, and expose their land,
Their city, his temple, and his holy ark,        340
With all his sacred things, a scorn and prey
To that proud city, whose high walls thou saw'st
Left in confusion, Babylon thence called.
There in captivity he lets them dwell
The space of seventy years; then brings them back,
Remembering mercy, and his covenant sworn
To David, stablished as the days of Heaven.
Returned from Babylon by leave of kings,
Their lords, whom God disposed, the house of God
They first re-edify, and for a while             350
In mean estate live moderate, till, grown
In wealth and multitude, factious they grow.
But first among the priests dissension springs,
P.I,                                    23




354


PARADISE LOST.


Men who attend the altar, and should most
Endeavour peace; their strife pollution brings
Upon the temple itself; at last they seize
The sceptre, and regard not David'si'sons;
ThenfiTse —t to aistranger, that the 'true
Anointed-King_.Meessiianh{ might be born
Barred of his-right.. Yet at his birth a star,   360
Unseen before in Heaven, proclaims him come,
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold:
His place of birth a solemn Angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire
Of squadroned Angels hear his carol sung.
A Virgin is his mother, but his Sire
The Power of the Most High. He shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign       370
With Earth's wide bounds, his glory with the Heavens."
He 'ceased, discerning Adam with such joy
Surcharged as had, like grief, been dewed in tears,
Without the vent of words; which these he breathed:
"0 prophet of glad tidings, finisher
Of utmost hope! now clear I understand
What oft my steadiest thoughts have searched in vain;
Why our great Expectation should be called
The Seed of Woman. Virgin Mother, hail!
High in the love of Heaven, yet from my loins    380
Thou shalt proceed, and from thy womb the Son
Of God Most High; so God with Man unites.
Needs must the Serpent now his capital bruise
Expect with mortal pain: say where and when
Their fight, what stroke shall bruise the Victor's heel."
To whom thus Michael: "Dream not of their fight




BOOK X11.


3~,55


As of a duel, dr the local wounds
Of head or heel. Not therefore joins the Son
Manhood to Godhead, with more strength to foil
Thy enemy; nor so is overcome                   "90
Satan, whose fall from Heaven, a deadlier bruise,
Disabled not to give thee thy death's wound;
Which he who comes thy Saviour shall recure,
Not by destroying Satan, but his works
In thee and in thy seed. Nor can this be,
But by fulfilling that which thou didst want,
Obedience to the law of God, imposed
On penalty of death, and suffering death,
The penalty to thy transgression due,
And due to theirs which out of thine will grow:  400
So only can high justice rest appaid.
The law of God exact he shall fulfil
Both by obedience and by love, though love
Alone fulfil the law; thy punishment
He shall endure, by coming in the flesh
To a reproachful life and cursed death,
Proclaiming life to all who shall believe
In his redemption, and that his obedience
Imputed becomes theirs by faith-his merits
To save them, not their own, though legal, works.  4IO
For this he shall live hated, be blasphemed,
Seized on by force, judged, and to death condemned,
A shameful and accursed, nailed to the cross
By his own nation, slain for bringing life;
But to the cross he nails thy enemies,
The law that is against thee, and the sins
Of all mankind, with him there crucified,
Never to hurt them more who rightly trust
In this his satisfaction. So he dies,


23-2




356


PARADISE LOST.


But soon revives; -Death over him no power        420
Shall long usurp; ere the third- dawning light
Return, the stars of morn shall see him rise
Out of his grave, fresh as.'the dawning light,
Thy ransom paid, which. Man from Death redeems,
His death for Man-as. many as offered life
Neglect not-.and the benefit embrace
By faith not void of works. This godlike act
Annuls thy doom, the death thou shouldst have died,
In sin for ever lost from life; this act
Shall bruise the head of Satan, crush his strength,,  430
Defeating Sin and Death, his-.two main arms,
And fix far deeper in his head their stingsThan temporal. death shall.bruise the Victor's heel,
Or theirs whom he redeems-a death like sleep,
A gentle wafting to immortal life.
Nor after-resurrection shall he stiay
Longer on Earth than certain times.to appear
To his disciples, men who in his life
Still followed him'; to them shall4eave in charge
To teach all nations what bf him they learned-     40
And his salvation, them who shall believe
Baptizing in the profluent. stream-the sign
Of washing them from guilt of sin to life.
Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall,
For death like that which the Redeemer died.
All nations they shall teach; for from; that day
Not only to the sons of Abraham's loins
Salvation shall be preached, but to the sons.
Of Abraham's faith wherever through the world;
So in his seed all nations shall be blest.        450
Then to the Heaven of Heavens he shall ascend
With victory, triumphing through the air




BOOK XII.


357


Over his foes and thine; there shall surprise
The Serpent, Prince of air, and drag in chains
Through all his realm, and there confounded leave;
Then enter into glory, and resume
His seat at God's right hand, exalted high
Above all names in Heaven; and thence shall come,
When this world's dissolution shall be ripe,
With glory and power, to judge both quick and dead-  460
To judge the unfaithful dead, but to reward
His faithful, and receive them into bliss,
Whether in Heaven or Earth; for then the Earth
Shall all be Paradise, far happier place
Than this of Eden, and far happier days."
So spake the Archangel Michael; then paused,
As at the world's great period; and our Sire,
Replete with joy and wonder, thus replied:
"0 Goodness infinite, Goodness immense!
That    t        v   i shall producie           470
p                           47
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
ThWaWt wjinxFcitby creation nrst brought forth
Light nlut nf darlrnce! Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned, or rejoice
MIuch more, that muc. more good thereof shall spring;
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
But say, if our Deliverer up to Heaven
Must reascend, what will betide the few,        4So
His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd,
The enemies of truth. Who then shall guide
His people, who defend? Will they not deal
Worse with his followers than with him they dealt?"
"Be sure they will," said the Angel; "but from Heaven




358


PARADISE LOST.


He to his own a Comforter will send,
The promise of the Father, who shall dwell,
His Spirit, within them, and the law of faith,
Working through love, upon their hearts shall write,
To guide them in all truth, and also arm         490
With spiritual armour, able to resist
Satan's assaults, and quench his fiery darts;
What man can do against them not afraid,
Though to the death; against such cruelties
With inward consolations recompensed,
And oft supported so as shall amaze
Their proudest persecutors. For the Spirit,
Poured first on his Apostles, whom he sends
To evangelize the nations, then on all
Baptized, shall them with wondrous gifts endue   500
To speak all tongues, and do all miracles,
As did their Lord before them. Thus they win
Great numbers of each nation to receive
With joy the tidings brought from Heaven: at length
Their ministry performed, and race well run,
Their doctrine and their story written left,
They die; but in their room, as they forewarn,
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves,
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn          510
Of  riec       tor   n       rudth
Vfth su   sttions and traditions taint,
Left oQrlay those written records pure,
Though not but by the     t understood.
Then shall they seek toames
Places, and titles, and with these to join
Secular powe ttHoupl-           Q   ct
By spiritual; to themselves appropurating




BO0K XII.


359


The Spirit of God, promised alike and given
To all believers; and, from that pretence,      520
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force
On every conscience, laws which none shall find
Left them enrolled, or what the Spirit within
Shall on the heart engrave. What will they then,
But force the Spirit of Grace itself, and bind
His consort, Liberty? what but unbuild
His living temples, built by faith to stand,
Their own faith, not another's? for, on Earth,
Who against faith and conscience can be heard
Infallible?  Yet many will presume:             530
Whence heavy persecution snalarise
On all who in the worship persevere
Of Sp't _anTUt;       e        r e g reater parrt,
Will deem in outward rites and specious forms
Religion satisfied; Truth shall retire
Bestu   Withslanderous darts,    orks of faith
Rarely be found. So shall the.. orld go on,
To good malighant, to bad men benign,
ineir eown weight groaning till the day
Appear of respiration to the just,              540
And vengeance to the wicked, at return
Of Him so lately promised to thy aid,
The Woman's Seed-obscurely then foretold,
Now amplier known thy Saviour and thy Lord;
Last in the clouds from Heaven to be revealed
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perverted world; then raise
From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
New Heavens, new Earth, ages of endless date,
Founded in righteousness and peace and love,    550
To bring forth fruits, joy and eternal bliss."




360


PARADISE LOST.


He ended; and thus Adam last replied:
"How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest,
Measured this transient world, the race of time,
Till time stand fixed! Beyond is all abyss,
Eternity, whose end no eye can reach.
Greatly instructed I shall hence depart,
Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill
Of knowledge, what this vessel can contain;
Beyond which was my folly to aspire.             560
Henceforth I learn that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly-strong, and worldly-wise
By simply meek; that suffering for truth's sake
Is fortitude to highest victory,                 570
And to the faithful,_death the gate of life;
Taught this by his example whom I now
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest."
To whom thus also the Angel last replied:
"Thisshaving.learned, thou hast attained_ the sum
Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars
Thou knew'st by name, and all the ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God inH-eavenf, air,-Earth, or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoy'dst,      580
And all the rule, one empire. Only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,
By name to come called charity, the soul




BOOK XII.


36I


Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far.
Let us descend now, therefore, from  tlistop
O   pecuRa-    fihour preise
Exacts our parting hence; and, see! the guards,  590
By me encamped on yonder hill, expect
Their motion, at whose front a flaming sword,
In signal of remove, waves fiercely round.
We my no longer stay: go, waken Eve;
Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed,
Portending good, and- a -nhe 'spirits composed
To meek submission: thou, at season fit,
Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard;
Chiefly what may concern her faith to know,
The great deliverance by her seed to come        600
(For by the Woman's Seed) on all mankind;
That ye may live, which will be many days,
Both in one faith unanimous; though sad
With cause for evils past, yet much more cheered
With meditation on the happy end."
He ended, and they both descend the hill.
Descended, Adam to the bower where Eve
Lay sleeping ran before, but found her waked;
And thus with words not sad she him received:
"Whence thou return'st, and whither went'st, I know; 6o1
For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise,
Which he hath sent propitious, some great good
Presaging, since with sorrow and heart's distress
Wearied I fell asleep. But now lead on;
In me is no delay; with thee-fro —
Is to stya-yhere; vihut'fhu Ife to stay
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me




362


PARADISE LOST.


Art all things under Heaven, all places thou,
Who for my wilful crime art banished hence.
This further consolation yet secure              620
I carry hence: though all by me is lost,
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed,
By me the Promised Seed shall all restore."
So spake our mother Eve, and Adam heard
Well pleased, but answered not; for now too nigh
The Archangel stood, and from the other hill
To their fixed station, all in bright array,
The Cherubim descended; on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist
Risen from a river o'er the marish glides,       630
And gathers ground fast at the labourer's heel
Homeward returning. High in front advanced,
The brandished sword of God before them blazed,
Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat,
And vapour as the Libyan air adust,
Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat
In either hand the hastening angel caught
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappeared.        640
They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.




NOTES




I                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         I




NOTES
COMMENDATORY VERSES.
First printed in 1674. I number the lines of each poem for convenience of reference.
I. The Latin elegiacs: the author of these was Samuel Barrow, a
Cambridge man of note. Born in 1625 he graduated from Trinity in
I643, and afterwards attained to some celebrity in medicine. He was
appointed Physician in Ordinary to Charles II. in August, x660, and
died in I682. His Royalist sympathies evidently did not prevent him
from being an admirer of Milton. Curiously enough, his poetic summary of the contents of the Epic includes no direct reference to the
Temptation and Fall of Man. He is most struck with the war in
Heaven and Satan's expulsion.
I. Amissanm; the masculine were more correct; cf. the title of
Hogg's once well-known translation-Paraphrasis Poetica in tria
7ohannis Miltoni Poemata, viz. Paradisum  Amissum, Paradisum
Recuperatum, et Samsonem Agonisten (1690).
9. ponttum; no doubt, the right reading. It may, however, be
noted that both the second and third editions of Paradise Lost have
portumn (which Keightley retained, with what sense is not clear).
15. fltaurum; so the second and third editions, but many later
texts print futura. As the line stands it seems to mean (if we may
reproduce the baldness of the original), 'who could believe that there
would be any one who would conceive hopes of these things?' i.e. be
so ambitious. But probably the author intended futura (or wrote hoc).
17-38. These lines, nearly half the poem, allude to bk. vI. of
P. L.; see VI. 245-327, 634-70, 749-879.
30. currus animes, the Cherubic chariot (vi. 750-56).
39-42. Lauder placed these verses-ironically-on the title-page
of his Essay (1750).
42. Alluding to the Homeric "Battle of the Frogs and Mice,"
and the Vergilian "Culex."  Cf. Dryden's lines on Milton.
II. The English verses: the writer was Andrew Marvell (i620 -78), poet and politician. In 1657 he had been made assistant secretary
to Milton while the latter still held office under the Council. At the
Restoration he did Milton good service-" acted vigorously in his




366


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


behalf and made a considerable party for him " (says Phillips, XMemoir).
Marvell's poetry shows Milton's influence clearly; see Lycidas, 40, note.
9. Samson Agonistes had been published ( 67 ).
I2. success, result, issue.
26. pretend, claim falsely.
37-40. See P. L. I. 13-15. A correspondent of Notes and Queries
pointed out that " the bird" (39) meant is the bird of Paradise and that
Marvell refers to the old notion, believed till the end of the last century,
that it was footless: cf. "always keeps on wing."  So in Lyly's play,
Love's Metamorphosis, iv. i, the bird of Paradise is described as " that
bird that liveth only by air, and dieth if she touch the earth" (Bond's
Lyly, III. 319). Cf. too a complimentary poem  (I647) to Fletcher
(p. xlii. vol. I. in the Cambridge Beaumont and Fletcher):
"But thou art still that Bird of Paradise
Which hath no feet and ever nobly flies."
42. expense; some texts print expanse.
43. See P. L. IIi. 32-36.
47-50. A sarcasm    against Dryden, who, as the champion of
rhymed plays, had under the name of "Bayes" been satirised in
Buckingham's Rehearsal (r671)-an attack which he repaid with
interest in Absalom and Achitophel. The allusion comes naturally
from Marvell, who had himself borrowed the title of The Rehearsal
for his chief prose work, The Rehearsal Transprosed, a long polemical
pamphlet in two parts (1672-73), in which his opponent figures
throughout as "Mr Bayes."   Milton was thought to have helped him
in writing Part I., but Marvell denies this in Part II. See Aitken's
Marvell, "Poems," p. og9, and Birrell's Life, chap. v. Dryden (as
we learn from Aubrey) on one of his visits to Milton asked permission to "put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme. Mr Milton
received him cordially, and told him he would give him leave to tag his
verses": the outcome being his opera The State of Innocence and Fall
of Man, published in I674, the very year in which, apparently, Marvell
wrote these verses.  Milton may have talked the matter over with
Marvell (so Masson thinks); or, perhaps, it had become a piece of
contemporary gossip among literary men. Either way, the reference
here is not to be mistaken.
49. fancies. Keightley faces. points, the tagged laces used to tie
parts of the dress, especially the breeches; mentioned often in
Shakespeare.
5I, 52. the mode, the fashion of rhyming. He means that he
would use the word praise rather than the weaker term commend,
had he not to find a rhyme with tffend.




NOTES.


367


THE   VERSE.
l. rime; the older and more correct spelling of rhyme.
10. Cf. the similar appeal to the example of Italian writers in the
Preface to S. A.  Italian works in blank verse (versi sciolti) which
illustrate what Milton says in both places are:-Trissino's tragedy
Sofonisba, written about 1514, and his heroic poem Italia Liberata,
published 1 548 (cf. Johnson's /ife of M. adfin.); Ruccelai's Rosmitnda
(1516), modelled on Sofonisba; Tasso's poem on the Creation; and
Alamanni's didactic work La Coltivazione (I546). The influence of
Italian poetry on Milton is seen also in the free ('Apolelymenos')
measures of the choruses of Samson Agonistes, and in Lycidas.
"Among the Spanish poets, Mr Bowile mentions Francisco de
Aldana, who translated the Epistles of Ovid into Spanish blank verse;
and Gonsalvo Perez, who, in like manner, translated the Odyssey of
Homer" (Todd).
II, 12. Scarcely pleasant reading for Dryden who had defended
rhyme, and whose rhymed dramas were appearing in quick succession.
We have, I believe, a similar hit at him in the Preface to S. A. In
the Preface to his Juvenal Dryden retorted that whatever might be
Milton's "alleged" reasons for "the abolishing of rhyme," the real
reason was "that rhyme was not his talent."
2o. Practically it was quite true that Paradise Lost was the first
great English poem, of a non-dramatic type, written in blank verse,
though Surrey had used a rhymeless measure in his translation of the
second (I557) and fourth (1548) books of the,Eneid; cf. Ascham's
Schoolmaster (I570), " The noble Lord Th' Earle of Surrey, first of all
English men, in translating the fourth booke of Virgill...auoyded the
fault of Ryming" (Bohn's ed., p. 217). There are also some blank verse
pieces by Nicholas Grimald in Tottel's Miscellany (1557)-e.g. "The
Death of Zoroas," Arber's ed., pp. i20-23, and "Ciceroes death,"
pp. 123-25. And Gascoigne's Steele Glas (1576) is "written without
rime," as he notes in the " Epistle Dedicatorie " (Arber, p. 45). But
these works, though interesting to the student, have no great intrinsic
merit, and Milton's claim is substantially unimpeachable. The next
long epic after Paradise Lost in blank verse was Phillips' Cider (1706),
an imitation of the Georgics; and Thomson (Autumn) in addressing
Phillips says:
"the second thou
Who nobly durst in rhyme-unfettered verse
With British freedom sing the British song";
an obvious allusion to Milton (whom Thomson imitates constantly)
and this Preface.




368             PARADISE LOST.       BOOK    I.
BOOK I.
Abbreviations:M. = Milton, or Milton's poetry, as distinguished from his prose.
P. W. = Milton's prose-works (in "Bohn's Standard Library").
P.R. = Paradise Regained.
S.A.= Samson Agonistes.
Nat. Ode= Ode On the I orning of Christ's Nativity.
Other books of Paradise Lost are indicated by Roman numerals.
i-6. Like Homer and Vergil he indicates the theme of his poem
at the outset. Cf. the beginning of Paradise Regained:
"I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness."
2. mortal, deadly-the late Lat. use of mortalis.
4. Eden= Paradise. one greater Alan, the Messiah; Romans v. 19.
6-i6. The invocation of the IMuse is an epic convention; like
Dante and Tasso, M. follows therein Homer and Vergil. The significance lies in his choice of a power to be addressed: not one of the
Nine Muses to whom a Greek or Roman poet would have appealed, but
the Muse of sacred song, the Heavenly power which inspired Moses on
Sinai, and David on Zion, and the other prophets of Israel. Twice he
speaks of great singers as "taught by the Heavenly Muse" (III. I9,
Comus, 515), and in VII. I-4 he gives her the name "Urania," ' the
Heavenly.' Book vii. i-39, where, having completed half his task,
the poet petitions the Muse afresh, should be compared with this
passage.
6. Perhaps secret= Lat. secretus, 'apart, retired'; cf. II. 891.
7. Oreb, or...Sinai. M. may be referring to the two occasions on
which Moses received a Divine communication —() when the Lord
appeared to him in a burning bush, Exod. iii.; (2) when he was given
the Law, Exod. xix.-xxxi. Myself, I believe that only the latter is
intended, and that M., contrasting Exoda xix. 20 with Dent. iv. Io,
does not decide whether the mountain where Moses received the Law




NOTES.


369


should be called "Oreb or Sinai."  The accounts can be harmonised
easily: I-oreb was the whole range, Sinai its lower part. Why in P. L.
(cf. XI. 74) MI. prefers Oreb to Horch, I do not know: in the Cambridge
Mss. is the entry: "the golden calfe, or the massacre in Ioreb."
S. that shetpherd, Moses, who "kept the flock of Jethro" on Horeb,
Exod. iii. i. first taught; in Genesis i. Of course, MI. drew largely on
the Mosaic books of the Old Testament.
9, io. the leavients, i.e. the sky and starry realms of this Universe.
Chaos= "the vast Abyss,"  1; " the gloomy deep," i52.
10-12.   Cf. III. 30, 31.
Siloa's brook; more familiar to us in the description "pool," through
rohn ix. 7, I; but Isaiah's words, of which M. may be thinking-" the
waters of Shiloah that go softly," viii. 6-imply that the waters of the
pool overflowed into the garden below and so formed a streamlet,
which would find its way into the Kidron.     Josephus notes the
abundant water of Siloa (which he always calls a spring, tr7ys7),
Bellum 7utdaicum, v. 4. i. The form Sizoa illustrates Milton's dislike of
sh; see the note on 398. The Septuagint has ZiXwadu, the Vulgate Siloe.
The reason, doubtless, why MI. specially refers to Siloa is this. The
Muses (says Hesiod, at the beginning of the Theogony) frequent "the
dark-coloured spring (Aganippe)...and altar of Zeus."  Imitating that
passage in Lycidas, 15, r6, M. addresses the Muses as
"Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring."
Hie connects the spring with the altar-cf. Ii Penseroso, 48-to show
the sanctity of poetic inspiration.  Here he takes Hesiod's thought,
which he before presented in its classical dress, and gives it a Scriptural
investiture: the result being a complete parallel between the classical
Muses who haunt the spring that rises by the altar of Zeus, and the
Heavenly Muse who haunts the spring that flows by the Temple ("the
oracle") oi the Almighty.
i2. fast by, close by. Siloa was outside Jerusalem, in the valley
that skirted Mt Moriah, on which stood the Temple. oracle, "thy
holy oracle," Psalm xxviii. 2.
14. The metaphor in "flight," "soar," is a lavourite with M.
Cf. II. I3, VII. 3, 4, IX. 45. no middle flight, i.e. he will ascend to
the highest Empyrean.
I4, i5. He hopes to be filled with a higher inspiration, so as to
treat of higher things, than the classical poets whose inspiration came
from  the Muses of antiquity.   the Aoniazn Imount, Helicon, in
Boeotia; sacred to the Muses-whence their title Aonides.   Pope


P. L.


41




370


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


calls them  " Aonian maids" (Messiah), and Campbell, "Aonian
Muses" (Pleasures of Hope).
15. pursues, treats of; " in the sense of the Latin sequor. E noto
fictum carmen sequar, Horace, Ars Poetica 240" (Keightley).
I6. This claim to novelty of theme recalls Cotmus, 43-45:
" I will tell you now
What never yet was heard in tale or song,
From old or modern bard, in hall or bower,"
i.e. "in prose or rhyme" (a phrase of Ariosto). Similar claims might
be instanced in Vergil, Spenser, and other poets, e.g. Horace's carmina
non prius  a audita...canto (Od. III. I. 2-4). Dante says that he has seen
in Paradise "things which whoso descendeth from up there hath nor
knowledge nor power to retell," though he will try to (Paradiso, I. 5, 6).
rhyme, verse.
17-26.   Cf. the similar invocation of the Holy Spirit in P. R. I.
8-17: a higher power than the Muse addressed above. "There can
be little doubt that Milton believed himself to be, in some real sense, an
inspired man" (Masson). In The Reason of Church Government, II.,
he says that a great poem can only be achieved through "devout prayer
to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge"
(P. W. II. 481); and in The Christian Doctrine, I. 6, he explains that
sometimes the Spirit means in Scripture " that impulse or voice of God
by which the prophets were inspired" (P. W. iv. 52).
19. for thou know'st. Cf. Homer, Iliad SI. 484, Ea-ETr vUv 0xo,
Mouviac... | i'ues ya&p Oealt E re, 7rdpeorT 7re, ta rT TrIr aTa; and Theocritus XXII. 116, elar OEd, o-6?y&p otao-a.
20, 21. Cf. the account of the Creation in vii. 234, 235. In Genesis
i. 2 the Heb. verb rendered "moved" in A.V. (ferebatur in the Vulgate)
means either 'fluttered' (Luther has schwebete), as in Deut. xxxii. iI,
where it is used of an eagle hovering; or 'brooded' (intcubabat in Basil
and others of the Latin Fathers), like a bird hatching eggs. Cf. Sir
Thomas Browne, Religio, xxxiII., "This is that gentle heat that brooded
on the waters, and in six days hatched the world."
21. dove-like. The allusion, I believe, is to the descent of the
Holy Ghost "in a bodily shape like a dove" (Luke iii. 22); cf. P. A'.
I. 30, 83. This may be inferred from The Christian Doctrine, I. 6.
22, 23. zwhat in me is dark illumine; the thought is expanded in
III. 40-55 -24. argument, subject =Lat. argumttmllreztt; cf. ix. 28.
25. assert, vindicate.
26. Cf. S. A. 293, 294:
"Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to men ";




NOTES.


37I


the Scriptural reference being to passages like Ps. cxlv. 17 and Rcv.
xv. 3, "just and true are thy ways."  Pope professed the same design;
cf. the Essay on Mlan, I. I5, 16:
"Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man."
See also Gray's Progress of Poesy, 47. justjif, i.e. " to men."
29. grand, i.e. first, original.
31, 32. i.e. transgress his will because of ("for") one restraint.
Keightley makes for one restraint qualify what follows-'lords of the
world (cf. ix. 658), but for a single restraint.'
33. Cf.liadl.8.
36. what timC', at the time when, Lat. quo tempore. " What time
I am afraid, I will trust in thee," Psalmn vi. 3. So in Comus, 291,
Lycidas, 28.
39. peers, equals, Lat. pares; cf. Lycidas, 9.
40. See Isaiah xiv. i -1 5.
45. flaming; cf. Luke x. I8, " And he said unto them, I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven." the ethereal sky, the Empyrean.
46. ruin=Lat. ruina, 'falling'; see iii. 258, note.
combustion, utter destruction.
47. there; in " the bottomless pit" (vi. 866-see note).
48. in adamantine chains. Cf. 2 Pet. ii. 4, "if God spared not the
angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them
into chains of darkness" (see 72); also 7ude 6, Rev. xx. i, 2. See
II. 169, 183, 196, il. 82.
50. nine, traditionally a significant number, being a multiple of
three (see 619). Their fall from Heaven lasted nine days (vi. 871), as
did that of the Titans in Hesiod. Dante students will remember the
great significance that is attached to the number nine in the Vita
INuo-va.
55. pain, physical suffering. Cf. 125, 147, 336; the point is
emphasised by Milton (and lost if we interpret pain= 'punishment').
Later, M. shows how the fallen angels first became sensible of pain
through their sin (see vi. 327, note).
56. baleful, full of woe.
57. witnessed, showed, testified to.
58. Scan obdzirate, as always in M.; cf. vi. 79o.
59. The original editions haveAtngels kenn. Throughout the volume
the apostrophe indicative of the genitive was omitted (as often happened
then): hence Angels may have stood also for Angels or Angels' (cf. 754).
Some modern texts print Angels ken, making ken a noun. But M.
uses ken as a verb (v. 265, XI. 396), and I prefer to take it so here
24- 2




372


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


-with the sense, 'as far as angels see.' -Cf. 2 He,'ry V. III. i. io1,
"As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs."
6o. dismal; a much more poetic word then.
61. " Of all the articles, of swhichthe dreadful scenery of Milton's
Hell consists, Scripture furnished him only with a Lake of Fire and
Brimstone" (Cowper). See II. 575, 576, note.
63. no lighti i.e. there was. It was a popular-belief that the flames
of Hell gave no light (Keightley). Cf. Herrick's Noble Numbers.
"The fire of Hell this strange condition hath,
To burn, not shine (as learned Basil saith)."
darkiness visible; an obvious oxymoron (see 692). What M. means is
-not absolute darkness ('pitch darkness,' as we say), for then the
"szihts of woe" would have been invisible-but the gloom which half
conceals and half reveals objects, and itself (to borrow Pope's words)
" strikes the sense no less than light." T'ze Dzunciad, Iv., I-4, is an, apt
parody. Mr Beeching reminds us of yob x. 2.
66, 67. Doubtless from Eiripides, Troades 68r, 682, ieol ya&p oo3'
Tradt. eteraTt  pporTOs I {  VEaTLV  Xirts ('to me even hope, which all
mortals have, is lost'). Probably too there is an echo of Dante's
famous words-"All hope abandon, ye who enter here"-placed over
the gates of Hell, Inferno, II. 9.
- 68. urges, afflicts, plies-Lat-. ugere'; cf. "exercise," iI. 89.
72.' utter darkness; again 'in HI..6, v. 614. utter, outer.
74, 75. He makes the distance of Hell from the Empyrean =:three
times the distance of-the Earth (" the centre "). from the "utmost pole"
of 'uhe:1obe or Universe (i.e. that point in the surface of the globe
which is ne earest to the Empyrean).' The calculation is suggested by
Iliad vmlx. 16, A; w^-n > 1X; 7-79*
-,,81. 5Bcdiv; s Is i. 299, note.
3. SalcZ-   '- adCve'y'-ry: a name first given to him  when he
rebelled: ahis "-lormer name" being thenceforth heard.no more (v. 658,
659). It is not, I think, clear whether this "former n-ae" -a.S-' "Lucifer"
(cf. 13. I3-33), or some other title which, like the ititls of the other
rebels, was utterly blotted out (cf. 36r-63,  I. 376-8o). I believe,
however, that M. means us to understand that both ' Lucifer" and
"Satan" were later names, givene after the rebellion.
84, 85. A double allusion-to Isaiah xiv; It, ".hoE.rl. i t  ifallten from
heaven," and;Eneid Ir. 274, 7-5, quantum nmuzrta;  a3 i/A!.Y ectore.
86., didst"; grammar requires did: the sense imltpies t.bhu.':.87-9.   Cf. v. 676 ---78, where Satan sa'vs to Beizhebub that
they had ever been wont to share each others. tho ugt a,:d "were
onel"  To Beelzebub he first hinted his purpoze-, to -rebel. (v 673).




NOTES.


373


87. if hte, i.e. if thou beest he; the sentence is not completed
(anacohtthon). AM. often uses this abrupt style to suggest the speaker's
agitation; cf. v. 30 et seq.
9*, 92. into awhat...Jfrom what; cf v. 543 and P. R. II. 30, 3r.
An imitation perhaps of Gk. oto....otog-as in Sophocles, Tr7achinice
994, iepwv oi'av otwv...Xadptv, 'what a return (i.e. how poor) for what
sacrifices' (i.e. how great); and Electra 75r, o~' pya Spdaas oTa Xa-yX'dvet KOaKd.
93. Cf. the account of the battle in tll. 392, 393, vi. 836-38.
94. Satan's defiant spirit recalls the stubborn attitude of Prometheus
tawards Zeus in AEschylus's play.
97. fixed mind; cf. // Penseroso, 4, The I:zerie Quecne, IV. 7. 16,
"Yet nothing could my fixed mind remove" (change).
98. haigh disdain. A common phrase with our old poets-Spenser
(The Faerie Qucene, I. i. 19), Sylvester and others; taken from the
alto sdegno of Italian writers (Todd).  " High" is a favourite epithet
of Dante, especially in abstract phrases like "the high virtue" (l'alta
zirth), " God's high decree" (alto fato di Dio), "the high Providence"
(l'alta Provvidenza); see the Inferno, xxIt. 55, XXVI. 82, XXXI. I19;
i'ur-atorio, XXVI. 72, XXX. 40, 142; Paradisa, I. o106, xxVII. 6r.
104. dubious, because the battle lasted for three days (bk. vi.).
105. shook his throne. A boastful exaggeration; cf. I 14 and see
VI. 833, 834. field, battle (II. 768); cf. Lat. campus. The Second Ed.
has the note of interrogation at the end of the line.
107. study, pursuit of; like Lat. stiedizum, it often meant 'endeavour,' as in King Lear, I. i. 279; cf. XI. 577.
108-I I. The Second Ed. has at the end of Io8 a colon; of 109
a note of interrogation; and in I I r a full stop after rme. This punctuation, variously altered in many texts, I retain. Some editors remove
the interrogation in o109, treating the line as a relative clause, as though
Satan said: 'I retain my will (Io6), my hate (o107), my courage (oS8),
and all other qualities in me that cannot be overcome.' This gives
good sense. But the interrogative form may, I think, be interpreted
thus: 'to retain one's hate, one's courage etc., is not that to be still
unsubdued: in what else but this lies the test of being not overcome?' In one of the last of Tonson's editions (1738), I find line
o109 bracketed, i.e. treated as a parenthesis.
what...else; to be taken together; cf. 683.
110io. Regarding i09 as parenthetical, I take that glory to refer
back to Io8: ' never' (says Satan) ' shall the Victor extort from me the
glory-to him-of my submission.' Some explain-'the glory (i.e.
Satan's) of not being overcome'; but does this suit "'extort"?




374


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


I15. Scan ignomy; see II. 207, note.
r6. byfate; important because Satan denies (v. 860-63) that the
angels were created by the Almighty: they were, he says, self-begotten
by their own " quickening power," at the time decreed by the course of
fate. Fate, not the Almighty, he recognises as superior.
gods, divine beings; cf. v. 60, note.
117. Can the fiery substance (see II. I39-42, 274, 275, notes)
of their forms perish (" fail")? Satan thinks not: Moloch and Belial
are less certain (II. 99, I46-54).
120. successful hope, hope of success; so in Shakespeare often.
Cf. "sterile curse"=the curse of sterility, J7ulius Casar, I. 2. 9.
122. grand, great (like Fr. grand); cf. 11. 507.
J123. triumphs; Dryden always accents the verb triuztph; cf. The
Hind and the Panther,; i. 566:
"Who but the Swallow now triumphs alone?
The canopy of heaven is all her own."
See the Relioio Laici, 56.
124. tyranny.   M. makes him use the most offensive word-not
"monarchy," as in 42, where the poet was speaking in his own person.
See II. 59, note.
128. thronedpowers; Satan's followers in general ("throned"-cf.
360-merely suggesting their dignity): not the particular Order of the
Hierarchies called Thrones, since Satan is an Archangel.
I38. essences, beings.
139. remains; singular, because "mind and spirit" form    one
idea. This is a common usage in Shakespeare; cf. Troilus and
Cressida, Iv. 5. 170, "faith and troth...bids thee."  See Lycidas, 7.
14I. though...gloay extinct. Cf. 394, 395, and S. A. 738, 739.
I think that these are absolute constructions, modelled perhaps on the
Lat. ablative absolute; but there may be an ellipse of the auxiliary
verb. extinct, quenched (like a flame).
144. offorce, perforce; so Iv. 813.
148. suffice, satisfy =Lat. siffcere.
149-52A. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 9, "They (evil angels) are
sometimes permitted to wander throughout the whole earth, the air
(cf. 430), and heaven itself, to execute the judgments of God."
I50. his business, the work he appoints for us to do.
55. to undergo, i.e. so as to undergo (not dependent on avail, 153).
158. doing or suffering, i.e. whether in an active or passive state;
cf. the common antithesis 5pav...-raOedv; see II. I99, P. R. III. 194,
195.
i67. if Ifail not, if I am not mistaken, Lat. nifallor.




NOTES.                          375
70o. his ministers, the good angels; but, essentially, the expulsion
of the rebels was due to the Messiah, "sole victor" (vi. 880).
I71-77. See vI. 858-79.     laid, i.e. to rest, stilled; cf. P. R.
IV. 429, and Tennyson, Margaret, "Your spirit is the calmed sea,
Laid by the tumult of the fight," and Queen  la ry, I. 5, "God lay the
waves and strow the storms at sea."  So sternere (rzEneid v. 763) and
ponere in Lat.; cf. ponerefreta, Horace, Odes I. 3. 16.
176. his=its; or he may be personifying "thunder."
178. slip, let slip; cf. Macbeth, II. 3. 52, "I have almost slipped
the hour."
I85. A reminiscence of Richard II. v. i. 5, 6:
"Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth
Have any resting for her true king's queen."
i86. afflicted, struck down, routed (Lat. afflictus). powers, forces.
S87. offend= Lat. offendere, 'to strike at, harm'; cf. vi. 465.
191. Cf. vI. 787, "hope conceiving from despair." if not, i.e.
if we may not gain reinforcement.
197. as wwnm, as those whom. fables, the mythological stories
of the classics; Milton generally speaks of them contemptuously as
"fabulous."
198. Earth-born, the Giants; like the Titans (with whom writers
confused them much) they were reputed the offspring of Uranus and Ge
(Earth); see 509, note, and 778. that warred; referring to the Giants
only; the legend of their conflict with Zeus (or Jove) seems to be due
to the earlier revolt of the Titans against Uranus.
I99. Briareos or Typhon; the former (centumgeminus Briareus,
AEn. vi. 287), being the son of Uranus, is meant to represent the Titans
-the latter, the Giants. The legends about both were conflicting.
Scan Briareos, though classically the name is Briareus.
or Typhon. Cf. Fairfax, Tasso, II. 9r, "He looked like huge Tiphoius
loos'd from hell." Typhon, or Typhoeus, is commonly described as
a hundred-headed serpent-monster, who, trying to seize sovereignty
over gods and men, was vanquished by Zeus with a thunderbolt and
buried under,Etna. See II. 539.
2oo.  Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia; M. alludes here to Pindar and,Eschylus who describe Typhon as living in "a Cilician den"; cf.
sEschylus, Prometheus Vinctus 351-54, Trb 717yev7 re KRLAXKclv oLKIJTopa |
avirpwo...Tv6wva ('the earth-born inhabitant of Cilician dens'), where.Esch. seems to be quoting Pindar, Pyth. I. I7, [Typhon] rbv 7rote|
KIX\K1ov Op1eEv roXvw'vv!Oov avrpov. So Pyth. VIII. x6, Tvpw'p KiXet.
This Typhon is said to be not the same as the Egyptian Typhon
of the Nativity Ode, 226, and of the wonderful allegory of Isis and




376


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


Osiris in the Arcopagitica (P. IT. II. 89); the latter Typhon being the
Egyptian god Set. But M. either identifies them in the Nativity Ode,
or else transfers to the Egyptian Typhon the description ("Typhon
huge ending in snaky twine") proper to his Greek namesake.   See
Osgood's Classical Mythology inz Milton, pp. 83, 84.
o2I. The Bibles of that time identified the Leviathan with the
whale, and M. probably did so; but the Heb. livzycthldn was used of
any huge monster, e.g. the crocodile, Psalm lxxiv. r4.
202. ocean-stream; Homer's p6os (or woratuobs) KEci~Voto.
203-208. Todd quotes a story to this effect from the Swedish
writer Olaus Magnus, whose History of the Northern NAations had been
Englished (1658). Evidently some remarkable 'traveller's tales' as to
the size of whales were in circulation: Heylin, Cosmography (1682 ed.),
tells us of 'Leviathans' four acres big (iII. 19I, 192). Cf. Milton's own
description, VII. 412-16.
204. pilot, steersman (S. A. 198); or 'master of the vessel.'
nightfoundered, benighted; literally 'plunged or sunk in night' (and
so unable to continue his course). Cf. Comu/s, 483.
206. i.e. with anchor fixed in his rind. Such inversions of the
order of words are common in Shakespeare; cf. Richard II.. I.. 9.
As a matter of natural history, whales have not "scaly rinds"; but M.
alludes to yob xli. I5 (where, however, the crocodile is meant).
207. the lee, the sheltered side.
208. invests; in the Latin sense 'to wrap' (investire).
211. heaved, lifted; cf. Germ. heben. To "heave the head" occurs
in S. A. 197, Comus, 885, L'Alle-ro, 45; Dryden borrowed it (St
Cecilia's Day).
232. rears, raises; as often in Spenser and Shakespeare.
226. incumbent, leaning, resting, on (Lat. incumbens).
229. liquidffire; a Vergilian phrase; cf. Eclogue vI. 33.
230-33. This notion of earthquakes being caused by the escape of
winds from underground recurs in vi. I95-98, 5: A. I647, I648.
232. Pelorus, the north-east promontory of Sicily, now Cape Faro;
near tEtna, by whose volcanic action M. implies that it wvas affected.
233 —37. Editors compare Encid III. 571-77.
233. whose. The antecedent is Pelorus as well as zEtna, the
description that follows being applied to both.
235. sztblimed, kindled into pure flame.
236. involved, wrapped in (Lat. involvere).
239. Stygian flood, the "fiery gulf" (52).
242. clime; here and in 297 the sense seems to be 'climate, temperature'; but in II. 572, 'region, realm.'




NOTES.


377


244. change for, take in exchange for.
246. sovranz; the Italianised form used by MI.
248. i.e. they were his equals in reason, but not in power.
2.3. Cf. Horace's co-lmm non animn)t   mutant quzi zirans mare
currusnt (Epis. I. I I. 27).
254. A glance at the teaching of the Stoics (Thyer). its; see
Iv. 813. Goldsmith probably remembered these lines when he wrote:
"Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find " (The Trazeller1e).
Compare also Hamlet's sentiment that "there is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so" (II. 2. 2-55-57); where editors cite
similar passages from Montaigne's Essays (I. 40) and Lyly, in illustration of the Elizabethan love of aphorism.
255. A reminiscence, I suppose, of A lli2dsummer-Night's Dream,
I. I. 243, "I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell."  Hartley
Coleridge says, "One sinful wish would make a hell of heaven."  For
this conception of Hell as not a place, but a mental state, of punishment, see IV. 20-23; also xII. 587, note. Sir Thomas Browne writes,
Religio Medici, LI., "every devil is an hell unto himself; he holds
enough of torture in his own ubi." In Marlowe's Faustus, when the
Doctor asks, "Where is the place that men call hell?", Mephistophilis
replies (v. ri9, I20):
"IIell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place; for where we are is hell."
257. / all but less than = nearly equal to. The phrase is a combination of ' only less than' and ' all but equal to' (Beeching).
259. i.e. in building Hell the Almighty has created a place such
that he could never grudge Satan its possession.
26I-63.   When William Lauder published in 1750 his infamous
Essay on Milton, the object of which was to show that the poet had
plagiarised from a number of obscure writers (mostly foreign scholars
of the 16th and i7th cents.), he took these three lines, translated them
into what he conceived to be Iambic verse, said that he had found
them in the Adamus Exul (i6oi) of Grotius, and printed them as a
convincing proof of Milton's dishonesty.  His version runs-or limps
-thus: tamr, mefudice, i -ret-are digsium estaambiil, etsi in Tartaro;
alto prcesse Tartaro siquidem (sic) ju2val, I celis quam in ipsis servi
obire munia. In I752 he reprinted the Adamus in his Delectus, but
did not venture to interpolate his forgery. The mischief, however, had
been done; for Bishop Newton printed the lines in his notes on this
passage as genuine, and remarked that M. had evidently 'translated'
them from  Grotius. Of course, the fraud was eventually exposed.




378


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


Bishop Newton, whose own work in editing Paradise Lost was of
signal merit, had no reason to suspect Lauder, and probably no
opportunity of consulting the Adamus.
263. Probably the germ of this famous line (varied in vr. i83, 184)
is Homer, Od. xi. 488, where Achilles (in Hades) says that he would
rather serve on earth as a poor man's slave, than reign over all the dead.
Fletcher says of the fallen angels, "In Heaven they scorn'd to serve, so
now in Hell they reign" (The Purple Island, VII. io).
266. oblivious, causing forgetfulness; cf. II. 74.
276, 277. Cf. VI. io8. edge= Lat. acies, the front line of a fight.
281. amazed, utterly confounded; a far stronger word then; cf. 313.
282. pernicious, destructive, ruinous; some, however, explain it
'great,' 'excessive.'
284-87. his...shield; see vt. 254-56. like the moon; Spenser had
appropriated the sun for this simile; cf. The Faerie Queene, II. 2. 21,
"His sunbroad shield about his wrest (i.e. wrist) he bond."
285. temper=a thing tempered (cf. II. 813): abstract for concrete.
288. optic glass; apparently not an uncommon phrase for the telescope; I find it in Giles Fletcher, Christ's Victory on Earth, 60, and
in Henry More, Song of the Soul:
"The Opticke glasse has shown to sight
The dissolution of these starrie crouds"
(p. 212, Cambridge ed. 1647). Cf. "optic tube," III. 590 (borrowed
by Thomson, Autumn).    Galileo did not invent the telescope, but he
developed it: hence it is generally associated with his name; cf. Bacon,
"those glasses (illa perspicilla) discovered by the memorable efforts of
Galileo," Novunr Organon, xxxix.
A Tuscan by birth, Galileo (cf. v. 26I-63, note) passed the latter
part of his life in, or near, Florence. M. saw him (1638-39); cf. the
Areopagitica: "There (in Italy) it was that I found and visited the
famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking
in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers
thought," P. V/. II. 82.  Another great Englishman who visited
Galileo not long before M. (in 1636) was Hobbes. The poet would
remember that, like himself, Galileo lost his sight (about i638). See
an article, "Galileo in the Val D'Arno," in The Monthly Review,
April, I907.
289, 290. There is true pathos in the mention, here and in 302 -304, of Italian scenes. M. is revisiting in memory places associated
with what was, perhaps, the happiest period of his whole life, viz. his
stay in Italy: "times when...I tasted bliss without alloy" (as he wrote
in 1647, Letter). IIe always spoke of Italy with the deepest affection:




NOTES.


379


especially of Florence which he loved for its language (Letter, 1638),
"its genius and taste" (Second Defence), and the friends whom he should
ever remember with pleasure (vestri nunquam  meminisse piigebitEpitaphiun Damonis, 125). He was much courted there by men of
letters, says his nephew (Life of M., 1694).
Fesol, Fiesole, classical Fcestule; a hill about three miles north-east
of Florence. Valdarno, the valley of the river Arno, in which Florence
lies. Here (290) M. has in mind Galileo's last residence at the villa
called I Gioello ('the Gem') at Arcetri, on the left hank of the Arno,
i.e. west of the main part of the city. Near this villa "an old tower is
still pointed out as having once been his observatory" (Masson). There
is a passage in one of Milton's Letters from Florence, in which he speaks
of his "visiting with delight the stream of the Arno, and the hills of
Fesolae" (P. W. III. 497).
292, 293.  his spear...the mast.  I find the comparison twice in
Fairfax's famous translation (r6oo) of Tasso's epic Jerusalem Delivered
(briefly referred to in these Notes as "Fairfax, Tasso"); cf. IrI. 17,
"Mast-great the spear was which the gallant bore," and vi. 39.
293. Norwegian hills.  Norway, of course, was a great timberemporium: thence, says Hexham's 4Mercator (1636), "the high
masts for shipping, the plankes and boords of Oak and firre trees
are sent yeerely in great abundance into Germanie, Holland, France,
England, Spayne, and other places" (I. 93). And Jonson says that the
appearance of the tall-masted vessels of the Armada was as if "half of
Norway with her fir trees came," Prince Henry's Barriers. See also
Dryden, Annzs Mirabilis, st. 143.
294. ammiral, the chief vessel of a fleet, the flagship.
296. marle, soil; more correctly used of rich, moist earth.
those, i.e. the well-known, famous (Lat. illi).
298. Cf. VI. 214, and P. R.. 116.
299. nathless=not the less: A. S. nda=not.
302. The comparison of a multitude to fallen autumnal leaves is
found in Homer, Vergil, Dante, and other epic poets. Cf. Dryden
(who has obviously recollected this passage), "Thick as the leaves in
autumn strew the woods...the army stands," -En. vI. 428. M. was
himself at Florence in the autumn (September, 1638). The Italian
allusion in 302-304 follows naturally on the other (288-90).
303, 304. Vallombrosa, 'shady valley'; about I8 miles from Florence.
The name is applied not only to the valley itself, but to the wood-covered
amphitheatre of hills rising therefrom. High up stands a monastery (now
secularised) where M. was said to have spent some days (a tradition of
which Wordsworth makes effective use in his "At Vallombrosa"), and




3So


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


in the chapel an organ used to be shown as that on which M. played.
The reference to the fallen leaves is appropriate, the approach to the
monastery being through forests of chestnut and beech trees, deciduous
species. Dean Stanley wrote, "inasmuch as the whole mountain is
furrowed with streams, which gave to the place its original name of
Bellacqua, the leaves constantly falling on these streams, and almost
choking their currents, give the exact picture" painted by M.: "an
instance" (he added) "of the tenacity of Milton's memory in retaining,
through all the vicissitudes of civil war, age, and blindness, the precise
recollection of what he had seen in early youth "-No/es and Queries,
V. v. 306, XI. 488, 489.
There is a good description of Vallombrosa in a once popular book
of travel, Eustace's Classical Tour through Italy', vol. iii. chap. 2.
He says that the monastery was " at all times celebrated in the literary
history of Italy" (Ariosto, for instance, mentioning it in terms of high
eulogy); so that Milton's reference is really a touch of his literary
allusiveness, as well as an echo of happy personal experience. Eustace
also notes that the description in Paradise Lost, Iv. 131-42, has been
thought by some to be a recollection of the scenery at Vallombrosa.
embower, form as it were bowers.
sedge; "in allusion to the Hebrew name of the Red Sea, Yam
Stf, i.e. Sea of Sedge, on account of the quantity of sea-weed in it"
(Keightley). As the angels are afloat on waves (of fire), the simile is
in the highest degree appropriate.
305. The rising of the constellation Orion (at midsummer) and his
setting (at the beginning of November) being attended with storms, the
name became proverbial of rain and " fierce winds."    Cf..Eneid
I. 535, nimbosus Orion, Iv. 52, aquosus Orion; and Grotius, Adamus
Exul-illic procellis tumidus Orion fizrit. So Marlowe, Faustus, I. 2,
"Orion's drizzling look"; and   Heywood's Hierarchie, " Orion...
riseth in the winter season, disturbing both earth and sea with showres
and tempests " (ed. 1635, p. 177).
armed; from.dEneid III. 517, armatumque auro circuzmspicit
Oriona. "After his death, Orion [the great hunter] was placed among
the Stars where he appears as a giant with a girdle, sword...and club"
(Class. Did.).
306-rI. Exodus xiv. vexed; in the sense ('to disturb violently,
to buffet') of Lat. vexare, as applied to a storm, e.g. in Vergil,
Eclogue VI. 76, Horace, Odes II. 9. 3.   Cf. "the still-vex'd Bermoothes," The Tempest, I. I. 229; and Tennyson's Ulysses, line it.
See IT. 660, and P. Ik. iv. 416.
307. Late Greek writers (cf. the xith Oration of Isocrates) speak




NOTES.


of an Egyptian king Busiris, unknown to Homer and Hesiod, and not
mentioned in Egyptian records. Some describe him as builder of
Thebes. Legend said that he was slain by Hercules-an event depicted
often on vases. Why M. identifies him with the Pharaoh who perished
in the Red Sea, no one has ever explained. Some editors say that MI.
follows Raleigh's History; but Raleigh expressly states that Busiris
was "the first oppressor of the Israelites" (p. 204), and that after two
intervening reigns came "Cenchres drowned in the Red Sea" (p. 197,
I62i ed.). Cf. again p. 2i8, "through which (i.e. Red Sea) Moses
past, and in which Pharaoh, otherwise called Cenchres, perished."
Either M. follows some unknown authority, or he treats Busiris as
a general title for the rulers of Egypt, like 'Pharaoh.'
AMemtphian = Egyptian; cf. 694. The same use occurs in Sylvester;
cf. "The Meemphian Sages then, and subtill Priests," where the margin
has, "The Magicians of Egypt" (Grosart's ed., I. I87). He calls the
Egyptians variously "Memphites," "Memphists," and " Memphians."
Memphis was the ancient capital (before Thebes) of Egypt; founded
by Menes (ist monarch of ist dynasty), and called 3Men nefer, 'the
good station,' from its position at the apex of the Delta.
chivalry, forces, as P. R. ll. 344. In neither place need we limit
it to 'cavalry' (with which chivalry is etymologically identical).
308. perfidious; because he had given the Israelites leave to go.
309. "Israel dwelt...in the country of Goshen," Gen. xlvii. 27.
311. broken; cf. xI. 210.
312. abject, cast down.
320. virtue, valour= Lat. virtus.
321. the vales of Heaven. In v. L.2-55 he describes the angels
sleeping in Heaven, "among the trees of life."
330. One of the earliest allusions to Paradise Lost seems to occur
in Marvell's Satires ("Britannia and Raleigh," 1673 or 1674): "Awake,
arise from thy long blest repose!" (Aitken's ed., p. 82).
335. nor did they not, i.e. and they did-Lat neque non.
337. For "obey to" (Fr. obeir a), cf. Greene, Friar Bacon, IX. 142,
"I charge thee to obey to Vandermast"; Troilus and Cressida, II 1. 1. 165,
and The Phenix, 4, "To whose sound chaste wings obey."  There is a
single instance in the Bible-R'omans vi. I6.
338-43. Exod.     -. 1-15. See the account of the ten Plagues
in xiI. 184-86. Amwram's son, Moses; see Exod. vi. 2o.
34o. a pitchy cloud, dark as pitch; the expression occurs in the
deleted lines of Comus, between 356 and 357; cf. I Henry VI. II. 2. i, 2:
"The day begins to break, and night is fled,
Whose pitchy mantle over-veil'd the earth."




382


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


341. warping, working themselves, undulating, forward; the metaphor of a ship.
345. cope, roof, covering; cf. IV. 992.
35i-55. Alluding to the invasions of Italy and the Roman empire
by the Goths (as early as 248 A.D.); the Huns, notably under Attila,
defeated at Chalons-sur-Marne, 451; and the Vandals. Genseric, or
Gaiseric, the leader of the Vandals, crossed from Spain into Numidia,
428, captured Carthage, 439, and built up an empire in Africa.
Observe the effectiveness of the three similes whereby M. conveys
an impression of the numbers of the angels. They are comparedresting on the water, to fallen leaves (or floating sea-weed): flying, to
a cloud of locusts that "darkens" the land (Exodus x. I5): alighted,
to a vast host that throngs a plain. Each aspect has its simile.
353. Rhene, from Lat. Rhenus= Rhine, and Danaw or Donau, the
German form of Danube, were current forms in the 17th cent.; they are
in Hexham's Mercator (I636) and Heylin's Cosmography (I682 ed.),
perhaps the two most popular geographical works of the time. So
"Rhenish wine "= Rhine wine, The Merchant of Venice, I. 2. 104,
Hamlet, I. 4. 10.
355. beneath, south of; alluding to the Vandals.
356. eve;y...each. A favourite variation with Milton; cf. Comus,
19, "Of every salt flood and each ebbing stream," and 311, "I know
each lane, and every alley green."   Etymologically ever-y=evereach.
36i-75. Again in vI. 379, 380, he tells us that the original
names of the apostate angels were " Cancelled from Heaven and sacred
memory."   How then is he to describe them? He must give them
some titles. So he adopts (see pp. 672-74) the view that they became
the gods of heathenism, oriental and classical, and here, by anticipation, uses those "new names" (365) which later ages assigned to
them.
363. Bentley thought that M. dictated Book; cf. Rev. iii. 5. A
passage in I7'e Christian Doctrine, I. 4, seems to make this probable:
"mention is frequently made of those who are written among
the living and of the book of life, but never of the book of
death."
370, 37I. See A'omans i. 23.
372. relig'ions, religious rites. fudl of pomp; M. often expresses
dislike of ceremony and ritual in worship (see XlI. 534)... 376. who first, who last; rtva 7rpTrov, riva 8' Va-70rov, Iliad v.
703. The long list of the deities is intended as a counterpart to
Homer's catalogue of the ships and Vergil's list of warriors.




NOTES.


383


38r. Those who led astray "the chosen people" come first.
382-9g. Texts probably glanced at are: I Pet. v. 8; Ezek. vii. 20,
xliii. 8; Exod. xxv. 22; 2 Kings xix. 15. For the setting up of altars
to heathen gods inside the Temple, see Manasseh's reign, 2 Kings xxi.
386. thundering; " perhaps taken from Exodus xx., where Jehovah
thunders the Ten Commandments from Sinai" (Beeching).
386, 387. The reference is to the golden images of Cherubim, with
expanded wings, placed over the mercy-seat covering the ark in the
Tabernacle. Cf. Psalm lxxx. I.
389. abominations; the Bible word for idolatrous worship.
391. affront; commonly taken in its primary sense 'to confront,' 'face' (Lat. ad+frons)-cf. Hamlet, III. i. 3I; but IX. 328
and P. R. III. I6I make the ordinary sense, 'to insult,' more
likely.
392. gMoloch; god of the Sun regarded as a destroying power; "the
abomination of the children of Ammon," I Kings xi. 7; worshipped
with human sacrifices, 2 Kings xxiii. 1o, Ps. cvi. 37, 38. The name,
better written 'Molech,' means 'King' (cf. Amos v. 26, margin),
and M. generally adds "King" (cf. IL. 43, vI. 357).  He comes
"first" because "fiercest" (II. 44). With these lines, 392-96, cf.
the Nativity Ode, 20o5-1, where Warton pointed out Milton's
probable obligation to Sandys.
396. Sandys, whose Relation (I6I5) of his travels in Palestine was
certainly known to Milton (see again xII. 143, I44, note), gives, no
doubt, the picture of the idol handed down by Jewish tradition, and
describes it as "of brasse, hauing the head of a Calfe, the rest of a
kingly figure,,ith armes extended to receive the miserable sacrifice,
seared to death with his burning embracements. For the Idol was
hollow within, filled with fire.  And least their lamentable shreeks
should sad the hearts of their parents, the Priests of Molech did deafe
their eares with the continual clang of trumpets and timbrels," Relation,
p. 186 (ed. 1637). This sacrifice of children by fire was due to the
notion that the fierce summer heat of the god would be allayed thereby
(Sayce).
396-99. Rabba, the capital of the Ammonites, "the city of waters,"
n Sam. xii. 27: Argob, a district of the mountain range of Bashan:
Arnon, the boundary river between Moab and the Amorites: all E.
of Jordan. Part of this territory (as Keightley notes) belonged to-not\
the Ammonites, spite of their claim (fudg. xi. 13)-but the Amorites.
398. Basan; the form used in the Septuagint, Vulgate, and
Prayer-Book. M. always avoids sh; cf. Hesebon, 408, Sittim, 413,
Beersaba (Beersheba), III. 536, Silo (Shilo), S. A. i674 (as in Sandys,




384


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


p. so1). It will generally be found that he has the authority of either
the Septuagint or Vulgate (or both) for his Scriptural proper names,
where they differ in form from the Authorised Version.
401-403. Solomon, persuaded by his wives (cf. 443-46), built
"high places" to Moloch, Chenlos and Astarte on the Mount of Olives
(I Kings xi. 5-7)-thence called the "mount of corruption" (2 Kinzgs
xxiii. 13), and later, the "mount of offence." These titles M. glances
at here (403), and in 416, 443.
401. byfraud, by deceit.
402. his tenmple, i.e. of Moloch.
404. The valley of Hinnom, lying S. and S.W. of Jerusalem,
skirted the southern part of Olivet. Having been the scene of rites
paid to Moloch, it was "defiled" (cf. 418) by Josiah (2 Kings xxiii. Io),
and made the common refuse-place of Jerusalem. Previously it formed
part of the royal gardens. Sandys says, " We descended into the valley
of Gehinnon, which divideth the Mount Sion from the Mountaine of
Offence...This valley is but streight (i.e. narrow); heretofore most delightful, planted with groves, and watered with fountains," Relation,
p. I86. The grove of Hinnom is not directly mentioned in Scripture.
405. Gehenna, hell; the Greek form of Ge Hinnom, 'valley of
Hinnom.'
406. " Moloch and Chemos ('the abomination of Moab') are
joined, I Kings xi. 7. And it was a natural transition from the god of
the Ammonites to the god of their neighbours the Moabites" (Newton).
Chemos (really the same deity as Moloch) was often identified with
Baal-Peor (4I2).
obscene, foul; referring to the character of the rites with which he
was worshipped. dread, i.e. object of dread.
407-1i. Roughly, all the places here mentioned (of which the
sites are known) lay in the territory assigned (Nuzmb. xxxii.) to the
tribe of Reuben-a region fringing the east shore of the Dead Sea,
bounded S. by the river Arnon, N. by Mt Nebo. It had belonged to
the Moabites till it was won from them by the Amorites (Nzmb. xxi. 26).
407. fromo Aroer to Nebo, i.e. irom S. to N. of the region. Aroer;
a small town on the bank of the Arnon; ci. Tennyson, A Dream of
Fair Women, "from Aroer on Arnon unto Minneth." Nebo, the
mountain (forming part of the range of Abarim) from whose summit,
Pisgah, Moses saw the Promised Land (Deut. xxxii. 49, xxxiv. i).
408. Besebon, Heshbon, "the city of Sihon the king of the
Amorites," Numb. xxi. 26.
410. The germ of the line lies in Isaiah xvi. 8, 'the vine of Sibmah"
(and verse 9). "Several rock-cut wine-presses are to be seen here,




NOTES.


and these are probably the remains of the vineyard industry for
which Sibmah was once so famous" (Murray's Palestine, p. 173);
the "flowery dale" is now "quite barren and uncultivated."
4rI. Eleal, mod. El-'Al, 'the High'; about I milesfrom IHeshbon.
the Asphaltic pool= the Dead Sea; cf. Blount, Glossographia, " Asphal.
tick of or belonging to the Dead Sea, or Lake called Asphaltites"; and
Sandys' Relation, p. 141, "that cursed lake Asphaltites; so named of
the Bitumen which it vomiteth."  The bitumen or " asphaltus" (729)
floating on its surface is called "slime" in Gen. xi. 3, or 'Jews' Pitch.'
See x. 298, 561, 562, notes. Compare the description of the Dead Sea
in The Talisman, chapter I.
412 —4. Peor, Baal-Peor. Sittim; see IVNumb. xxv.; it was situated "in the plains of Moab." to do...rites=l=epd p~etv, sacra facere
('to sacrjfice'); cf. Comus, 535, "Doing abhorred rites to Hecate."
cost them woe, i.e. the plague wherein died "twenty and four thousand."
In Milton's list (Cambridge Mss.) of possible Scriptural subjects for
his great poem occurs the entry: " Moabitides Num. 25 "; and later a
second entry: "Moabitides or Phineas," with a very brief outline of
the treatment of the theme.
415-18. He means that in later times, under Solomon, the rites
(="orgies") of Chemos were introduced at Jerusalem. of scandal,
i.e. of 'offence' or 'stumbling.' homicide; he received human sacrifice
(392-96).
4I5. orgies; cf. Jonson, Hymencli (footnote), "bpyra with the
Greeks value the same that ceremoniae with the Latins; and imply all
sorts of rites." enlarged, carried still further.
419-2I. bordering, i.e. Palestine, on the north. the brook, the
Besor, "the river of Egypt."  These limits comprise Canaan.
422.. Baalim. The supreme male deity of the Phcenician and
Canaanitish nations was the Sun-god, Baal: worshipped in different
places under different aspects and titles-e.g. Baal-Berith, Baal-Zebub,
Baal-Peor. The collective name of all these manifestations of the god
was 'Baalim' (plural). So 'Ashtaroth' (plural) was the collective name
of the different manifestations of the Moon-goddess Ashtoreth (sing.),
the supreme female deity of these nations, and counterpart of Baal.
423-25. Imitated by Pope, The Rape of the Lock, I. 69, 70:
"For Spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please."
Pope imitates Milton much-often most wittily.
See also vI. 351-53, where M. says that spirits "limb themselves,"
as they like, and assume "colour, shape, or size," according to their
pleasure. Sir Thomas Browne discusses curious beliefs concerning


P. L.


25




386             PARADISE LOST.        BOOK    I.
"mutation of sexes," in Vulgar Errors, iii. xvii. essence pure=the
"liquid texture" of spirits, vi. 348.
428. in what shape they choose. See 789, 790o. Satan takes several
"shapes" in P. Z.: e.g. in IV. 402, 403, he is first a lion (an allusion to
I Peter v. 8), then a tiger. In works on demonology popular in the
17th century evil spirits often appear in the shape of wild animals; see
the "Digression of Spirits" in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, I. ii. I. 2.
Thus in the Faust-buch (1587), chap. xxiii., numerous spirits are introduced to Faustus, each in the form of some animal; see Dr Ward's
Faustus, p. 141.
429. dilated, expanded. obscure, dark. M. invests the angels
with a radiance which they can lay aside.
433. Cf. "living Dread," S. A. I673, "living God" in Scripture.
434-36. bowing-...bowed. Sarcastic play on words.
The punctuation of the original editions makes bowed the main
verb, and sunk a participle.
436. before; implying 'under the onslaught of'; as if they
scarcely awaited it.
438-41I.   Astoreth, or Astarte, identical with the  Assyrian
Istar and Greek Aphrodite, was symbolised in the religion of
Phoenicians by the planet Venus or the Moon: in the latter case she
was represented as horned like the crescent moon. Cf. Selden, de Dis
Syriis-Lunam autem se ostendit Astarte, cum fr onte corniculata fueri
conspicua (1629 ed., p. 246). So M. regards her here and in the Nat.
Ode, 200, "mooned Ashtaroth, Heaven's queen"-a title due to her as
Moon-goddess (" the queen of heaven," Yeremiah vii. 18).     Cf.
"Assyrian queen" (i.e. Istar), Comus, 1oo2.  The name is cognate
with Sanskrit tara or stara, Lat. stella, E. star.
Sidon was the oldest, and for a time the chief, city of Phoenicia.
443-46. See 401-403, note, and cf. P. R. ii. I69-7i. large;
"God gave Solomon... largeness of heart," i Kings iv. 29. One of the
entries in the list of subjects in the Cambridge MSS. is "Salomon
Gynsecocratumenus or Idolomargus."
446-52. "In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz
mourn," Vat. Ode, 204. According to the legend, Thammuz, son of
Cyneras, King of Byblus in Phoenicia, was slain by a boar in Lebanon;
but every year his blood flowed afresh, and he came to life again-there
being annual festivals in his honour at Byblus and elsewhere, first to
lament his death, then to celebrate his revival. Thammuz, 'sun of
life,' is the Greek Adonis (the god of the solar year), and the story symbolises the alternation of summer and winter. The notion of his blood
flowing again was due to the reddening of the waters of the river Adonis




NOTES.


387


through the peculiar red mud brought down by spring torrents from the
Lebanon heights. M. alludes to the story in Ix. 440, Mansus, r, and
Eikonoklastes, 1 (" let them who now mourn for him as for Thammuz,
them who howl in their pulpits "-where "him" refers to Charles I.).
The story is given at some length in Sandys' Relation, p. 209.
450, 451. smooth, smooth-flowing. Smooth was used similarly of
the river Mincius in Lycidas, 86, but amplified to smooth-sliding.
native, i.e. from the river's source. ranpurple, i.e. with reddened waters.
454-57. Ezekiel viii. I4. Probably the Jews owed this worship
to their intercourse with the Phoenicians.
457-62. " Behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground
before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms
of his hands were cut off upon the threshold," I Sam. v. 4. Dagon, the
national god of the Philistines. See Samson Agonistes, passim, and
cf. an entryinrthe Camibridge MSS.: " Dagonalia. Jud. 16 "; the reference being to Judges xvi. 23-30 (the events dramatised in S. A.). His
worship seems to have been introduced from Babylonia, since cuneiform
Assyrian inscriptions mention a god Dakan or Dagan, probably identical with Dagon. The name has also been derived (i) from Heb.
Dag, 'a fish,' (2) from the Heb. word for ' corn,' Dagon being the god
also of agriculture.
458. in earnest, with better reason than the mourners just mentioned. captive ark; see I Sam. v. 2.
460. grunsel, threshold.
463. downwardfish; a symbol that he was a "sea-idol" (S. A. 13),
the Philistines themselves being a race who had come into Canaan
over the sea (from Crete), and dwelt along the sea-coast. Cf. i Sam.
v. 4, margin. Probably M. connected the name with Dag, 'a fish.'
464-66. He mentions the five chief cities of the Philistines, Ashdod and Gaza (cf. S.A.,passim) being the principal seats of the worship
of Dagon. Azotzs, the Greek form of Ashdod (Acts viii. 40); used in the
Vulgate; Selden, de Dis Syriis (p. 262), says, In Azoto sive Asdodo...
fanum  celebre erat Dagonis. Ascalon=Askelon; so the Septuagint
and Vulgate. Accaronz=Ekron, as in the Vulgate, which also has
Accaronitce = the people of Ekron. These must have been current forms
in the I7th century: cf. Sandys' Relation, p. i53, 1" Ten miles North of
Ascalon along the shore stands Azotus: and eight miles beyond that
Acharon, now places of no reckoning." Cf. also Scot, Discoverie, I584,
"Belzebub the god of Acharon" (vII. xiii.), and Heywood's Hierarchie,
"Baalzebub, of the Accarronites," p. 40. Gaza, the modern Guzzeh;
on the borders of the desert that separates Palestine from Egypt: hence
"frontier bounds."
25-2




388


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


467-69. Rnimmon, the Syrian deity of Damascus (2 Kings v. 18),
which lay between the rivers Abana and Phlarpar (2 Kings v. 12).
M. rightly stresses the name Abbana.
471r-76. a leper, Naaman (2 Kings v.). For the Syrian altar of
Ahaz, see 2 Kiings xvi. sottish, foolish.
476-82. Cf. the Nativity Ode, 211-r5.     The religion of the
Egyptians consisted in a pantheistic worship of nature that took
animals for its symbols. Thus Osiris, their chief god, was worshipped
under the symbol of a sacred bull, Apis; cf. the Essay on Man, i. 64,
"the dull ox...Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god."   Of Isis,
'goddess of the earth,' Herodotus says, "the statue of this goddess
has the form of a woman but with horns like a cow " (Rawlinson, II. 73).
Anubis again was represented with a jackal's head, which the Greeks
and Romans changed to that of a dog (cf. Plato, Gorg. 482 B and Vergil,En. VIIi. 698, latrator Anubis). Orus (or Horus), 'path of the sun,'
was their Sun-god.
Milton seems to be fond of referring to Egyptian mythology, drawing
mainly, it is said, on Plutarch's treatise of Isis and Osiris. Thus he
introduces the story of Isis and Osiris in his beautiful allegory of the
dismemberment of Truth (Areopagitica); cf. also the bitter gibe at
Charles I.'s death-scene in Eikonoklastes, I ("that I should dare to tell
abroad the secrets of their.Egyptian Apis "), P. W. I. 328. See also
his De Idea Platonica, 29-34.
477. crew; a depreciatory word in Milton (except in L' Allegro,
38), being used often of Satan and his followers; cf. 5I, 751.
479. abused, deceived, deluded; cf. Fr. abuser.
482-84. The worship by Israelites of the golden calf in the
wilderness (Exod. xxxii.) is traced to the Egyptian cult of Apis.
borrowed, i.e. from the Egyptians, whom they "spoiled," Exod. xii.
35, 36.
484-86. rebel king, Jeroboam, a rebel against Rehoboam (who
succeeded Solomon); he "doubled" the sin because he "made two
calves of gold," setting one in Bethel, the other in Dan (I Kings xii. 20,
28, 29). With 486 cf. Psalm cvi. 20.
487-89. Referring to the tenth plague, Exod. xii. See xII. I89,
190. he passed, i.e. Israel.
489. " The Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt...and
all the first-born of cattle," Exod. xii. 29. bleating; their deity Ammon
was worshipped under the form of a ram.
490. Strictly, Belial was not the name of any god, but an abstract
word meaning 'that which is without profit'= worthlessness, wickedness: hence generally found in phrases like 'son (or man) of Belial'




NOTES.


389


(5oi, 502). Cf. Dryden, Absalom and Achitoplhel, 597, 598:
"During his office treason was no crime,
The sons of Belial had a glorious time."
It has been treated so in the Bible sometimes, but more oftenincorrectly-as a proper name. M. makes Belial a type of effeminacy
and lust (cf. P. R. II. i50), and rightly does not limit his worship to any
particular place-although, to gratify his own hostility to the Church
(493-96) and the court (497), he cannot refrain from indicating his
opinion as to where Belial is most prevalent. Cf. P. R. II., where
Satan, speaking to Belial, says (I82, 183):
"Have we not seen, or by relation heard,
In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk'st?"
last; because "timorous and slothful" (II. 117).
495. See i Samuel ii. 12-I7.
497. Charles II. was then on the throne. The Licenser might
have been expected to raise objections to the line.
498-512. Macaulay suggested that M. had in mind " those pests
of London," the street bullies, known at different times under various
slang names, e.g. " Hectors," "Mohawks," "who infested London by
night, attacking foot-passengers and beating the watch" (Mark Pattison, note on Pope's Satires, I. 7I).
502o. flown, flushed; the combination of the abstract word, "insolence," with the literal "wine," suggests the figure called zeugma.
503-505.   Gen. xix.,.ydg. xix. The First Ed. had:
"when hospitable Dores
Yielded thir Matrons to prevent worse rape."
503. witness, i.e. let the streets bear witness, be a proof.
506. prime, first, foremost.
507. were long to tell. Cf. x. 469, xii. 261; an imitation of the
Latin; cf. Lucretius, Iv. 1r70, cetera de genere hoc longum est, si dicere
coner. Spenser has it in The Faerie Queene, II. 7. 14, and Drayton,
Polyolbion, xv. (Keightley). were; the subjunctive, rare now, but
common in Elizabethan English (Abbott).
508, 509. i.e. held (=considered) by Javan's descendants (the
Greeks) to be gods. confessed later, admitted to be of later origin;
see Deuteronomy xxxii. 17.
Javant, the son of Japhet; see Genesis x. 2. He stands for the
Greek race; the name being the same word as "Iwv (older form 'Idov),
whence lonians, the section of the Greeks with whom the Hebrews
were best acquainted through Phoenician trade. Cf. "isles of yavan"
=isles of Greece, S. A. 715, 716; see Isaiah lxvi. I9.  See IV. 717,
note.




390


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


509. Heaven and Earth, i.e. Uranus and Ge (or Gaia), whose 12
sons, according to the ordinary mythology, were called Titans (see I98,
note). One of them, Cronos (= Saturn in Roman mythology), deposed
his eldest brother (cf. 51I, 512), and afterwards was himself expelled
by his own son Zeus=Jove, whose mother was Rhea (cf. 512-14).
In 510 M. uses Titan as a name for the eldest ("first-born") of the I2
Titans.
5I I. enormous, monstrous.
5r4, 515. Ida, the mountain in Crete where Jove was born. In
II Penseroso, 29, M. associates "Ida's inmost grove" with Saturn.
5I5, 5I6. Olympus, a mountain range between Thessaly and Macedonia; early Greek poets speak of it, literally, as being the abode of
Zeus and the other deities; so Milton here and in vII. 7, x. 583, 584
(note). snowy; "its chief summit is covered with perpetual snow"
(Class. Diet.): hence Homer's epithet vYL6ets.
the middle air; an old theory of physics divided the air into three
regions (aeris trina spatia, according to the Adamus Exul of Grotius),
and M. refers to this view and means the middle region of the three.
See Appendix, pp. 674-76.
5I7. Delphian clif; the seat of the famous oracle of Apollo; on
the southern slope of Mt Parnassus. Keightley-quotes from Sophocles,
(Edipus Rex 463, AeX(is lrgrpa; cf. " steep of Delphos " (with the same
reference to Apollo), in the Nat. Ode, 78, and Gray'sProgress of Poesy,66.
518. Dodona, in Epirus. There was an oracle of Zeus here.
5 9, 520. Doric land, Greece. According to the common tradition,
Saturn came alone to Italy (" the Hesperian fields").
521. the Celtic, i.e. "fields "-cf. Comus, 60, "Roving the Celtic
and Iberian fields"; or he may be imitating Greek ) KieXrTLK (i.e.
Xcpa or 7yi, 'country'): in either case he means France-perhaps too
Spain. utmost isles, e.g. Britain (cf. Vergil, Eel. I. 67, penilus toto
divisos orbe Britannos) and ' ultima Thule.'
523. damp, depressed; cf. xI. 293.
528. recollecting, re-collecting, getting back again; cf. x. 471.
532. "A clarion is a small shrill treble trumpet" (Hume).
534. Azazel, from Leviticus xvi. 8, where the A.V. has "the scapegoat," while the margin has "Azazel," which the R.V. adopts. That
the word was the title of some evil demon is now generally held; and I
suspect that in making him one of the fallen angels M. simply
followed some tradition of the mediaeval demonologists.
536. advanced, uplifted; cf. v. 588. It was the term for raising a
standard; cf. Romeo and 7uliet, v. 3. 96, "And death's pale flag is
not advanced there."




NOTES.


391


538. emblazed=emblazoned: a term from heraldry.   Cf. v. 592.
and 2 Henry VI. IV. 10. 76. The banner had rich devices portrayed
on it.
540. metalblobwing; an absolute construction. The music changes
(cf. 551) when their spirits have been duly raised by the trumpet-notes.
542. Hell's concave, the vaulted roof of Hell; cf. II. 635.
543. reign, realm; so "regency," v. 748. See II. 894-96 (note),
959-63.
546. orient, lustrous, bright.
547, 548. helms, helmets. serried, locked together, Fr. serre.
549-62. Cf.vi. 63-68. Here M. is thinking of the description in
Thucydides (v. o7) of the Spartans advancing at the battle of Mantinea
vTro aUiX71Twv 7roXX6v, "to the strains of many flute-players" (Keightley).
55o, 55. The " Dorian" is one of the 'authentic' modes in music;
Plato calls it "the true Hellenic mode," and "the strain of courage,"
cdvpeta, in contrast to the effeminate "Lydian" mode (see L' Allegro,
136, note). It inspires "a moderate and settled temper in the listener,"
says Aristotle (Pol. viII. 5). In the Areopagitica M. speaks of music
which is "grave and Doric," P. W. ii. 73. Many old German chorales
are written in this mode (Grove). In On Education M. dwells on the
influence of music upon character, in a passage closely parallel to this
(P. W. III. 476). The lines seem an expression of his own devotion to
the same art and inspiration.
to, to the sound of, Gk. '7r6; cf. 561.
mood=- mode. recorders, flutes.
556. swage, assuage; lit. ' to make sweet,' Lat. suavis.
56I. in silence; cf. VI. 64.
562. the burnt soil; see 228, 229.
563. horrid; probably in the lit. sense 'bristling' (Lat. horridus),
i.e. with spears etc.; cf. II. 513 and vI. 82.
567, 568. files, ranks; cf. VI. 339. traverse, across.
573. i.e. since the creation of man, post hominem creatume: a Latinism often used by M. with after; cf. Cot'ms, 48, "After the Tuscan
mariners transformed."
574. embodied, assembled, brought together.
574, 575. i.e. any other army, compared with this host of angels,
would be as absurdly inferior as an army of pygmies.
that small bitfantzy, i.e. the Pygmies (cf. 780), the fabulous little
folk, of the height of a  urv-yrj, (131 inches), whom HIomer mentions,
II. II. 5. Sir Thomas Browne, not quite certain whether to believe in
them, is sure of one thing-that "if any such nation there were, yet it is
ridiculous what men have delivered of them; that they fight witih cranes




392


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


upon the backs of rams or partridges" ( Vulgar Errors, IV. xi.). Addison
was " afraid " that M. meant a pun on "small infantry."
576-87. Expanding the idea in 573-75, he takes the great cycles
of heroic story-Greek (576-79), British (579-81), mediaval, whether
French or Italian (582-87)-and says that all the warriors and armies
severally associated with these stories could bear no comparison with
Satan's followers.
577. Phlegra,'the old name of the peninsula of Pallene ill Macedonia,
uwhere (according to ancient legend) the Giants were born, and where
they were vanquished by the Gods. Cf. the Inferno, xiv. 58.
578, 579. Greek legend, as embodied in epic or tragic verse,
centres mainly round Thebes, Troy (Ilium), and Mycenae (the city of
the Pelopidoe). Thus in his first Elegy (45, 46) M. epitomises the chief
themes of Greek tragedy-sets mceret Pelopeia domus, seza nobilis Ii,
out luit incestos aula Creontis avos (Creon was king of Thebes). Here
he mentions only two of the cycles. By the "heroic race" that fought
at Thebes he means (i) Polynices and his six companions whose exploit
is told in AEschylus's play, Septem contra Thebas; (2) their descendants,
the Epigoni, who ten years later destroyed Thebes. The heroes of
the story of Ilium are those whom the Iliad presents to us. There
"auxiliar gods" take part, some helping the Trojans, some the Greeks.
579-81. Cf. Milton's own account of his youthful studies: "hear
me out now, readers, that I may tell ye whither my younger feet
wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which
recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood," An Apologyfbr Sm1ectymnuus (P. TV. III. 118). The interest of this reference to the legend
of King Arthur is explained in the Introduction.  M. discusses the story
at some length in his History of Britain, and evidently had studied it
closely. It had appealed to Dante. These lines are the reference
in the Introduction to Martnion, where Scott is speaking of King
Arthur:
"The mightiest chiefs of British song
Scorn'd not such legends to prolong:
They gleam through Spenser's elfin dream,
And mix in Milton's heavenly theme."
580. in fable; an allusion, suggests Keightley, in particular to
Geoffrey of Monmouth, who gives one of our earliest versions (I 40)
of the Arthurian legend. No doubt M. is thinking of Geoffrey whom
he used extensively in his Histoiy; but there he often refers also to
the Breton monk Nennius and to Gildas, yet earlier authorities than
Geoffrey-likewise to William  of Malmesbury.    "Fable" is his
favourite term in the History for these old Chronicles.




ISN OTES.


393


romance; e.g. Malory's Mforte Darthir, published by Caxton, 1485
(the basis of Tennyson's Idylls of the King).
Uther's son, King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon; cf. Tennyson,
Palace of Art, "mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son." In the Epitaphium Damonis, I66-68, M. glances at the story of Arthur's birth.
58I. The division of Arthur's " fabulous paladins" (as Drummond
calls them, Forth Feasting, 1617) into "British and Armoric" coincides
with P. R. II. 360, "By Knights of Logres or of Lyones ": where Logres
= Britain, more strictly England east of the river Severn; and Lyones =
Brittany (according to one theory), whence came Sir Tristram. Brittany
"was first called Armorica from its situation on the Sea, as the word
importeth in the old language of that people" (Heylyn, I. x67).
Brittany is closely connected with the Arthurian legend.
begirt with, surrounded by. Cf. Gray, The Bard, III.
582-87. The names are associated with romances (mainly Italian)
in prose or verse; see Appendix, pp. 676-80. jousted, tilted.
586. his peerage, the "douze pairs" (i.e. peers) or I2 "paladins" of
France (P.?. III. 343): the most famous being Roland, the Achilles
or brave man, and Oliver, the Ulysses or wvise man, of the Old French
epic poems and prose-romances which narrate the exploits of Charlemagne and his knights. fell; not literally true of Charlemagne himself;
M. may use it as a strong word = 'was utterly vanquished.'
587. Fontarabia, modern Fuenterrabia, a frontier fortress on the
Bay of Biscay-S. of Biarritz. Its position made it the scene of many
encounters between the Spanish and the French.
588. observed, obeyed.
591. like a tower; cf. Tennyson's Ode on the Duke of Wellington:
"O fall'n at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew!"
Vergil bids Dante not trouble about the surprise of the spirits in
Purgatory at the sight of him: "Follow me and let the people talk;
stand thou as a firm tower [sta come torre firma] which never shakes
its summit for blast of winds" (Puwgaiorio, v. 13-15).
592. her; he personifies "form."
596-99. The lines to which the Licenser for the Press took
exception when the MS. of the poem was submitted to him. It was
indeed somewhat early after the Civil War and Restoration to speak of
" change." The Licenser, as Chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury, might well have objected to Milton's attacks on the Church,
e.g. in XII. 507-37. Cf. iv. i93, note.
597. eclipse; proverbially of evil omen, the precursor of trouble;
see XI. I83, note. disastrous, boding disaster.




394


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


6or. intrenched, cut into; cf. O. Fr. trencher, 'to cut.'
603. considerate, considering, full of thought. Cf. Areopagitica,
"let us be more considerate builders, more wise," P. kV. II. 93.
605. remorse, pity. passion; in the general sense 'deep feeling.'
606. fellows of, partners in.
609. amerced of, deprived of, lit. fined with the loss of.'
613-15. scathed, damaged.    Whether lightning can be said to
"singe" the top of a tree seems doubtful. blasted heath; see Afacbeth,
I. 3. 77. blasted, withered by the lightning.
6I9. thrice, a conventional number; cf. Ovid, Afetamorphoses xI.
419, ter conata loquz, terfletibus ora rigavit. assayed, tried.
624. event, issue, result, Lat. eventus; so often in Milton and
Shakespeare.
632. Scan exile; cf. x. 484, Richard II. 3. 3. 5.
633. emptied Heaven; a mere boast; see II. 692, note.
634.f-ise sef-rised; see II. 75-77.
642. tempted...attempt. There are not a few of these jingling
phrases in M. Cf. "beseeching or besieging," v. 869, "feats of war
defeats," S. A. 1278. Generally he expresses sarcasm or contempt by
them. The use of this figure of speech (paronomasia) is specially
common in late Latin writers,-see Mayor's note on Cicero's 2nd
Philippic, XI. I3-and also in the Italian poets. Milton uses it in his
Latin writings; cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 2, "Natura natamn se
fatetur...et fatun quid nisi efatum divinum  omnipotentis cujuspiam
numinis potest esse?"  Something similar is found in Hebrew.
645. better part.  Luke x, 42 ("Mary hath chosen that good
part ").
650-54. See II. 345-53, 830-35, and x. 481, 482. The first hint
of the design against mankind comes from Satan (cf. II. 379 et seq.),
though Beelzebub afterwards developes it (II. 345-78). fame, report.
660. peace is despaired, i.e. pax desperatur; cf. vI. 495.
662. understood, i.e. among themselves, and so secret.
668. Like Roman soldiers applauding an oration of their general,
by smiting their shields with their swords (Bentley).
674. "It was the common opinion of chemists that metals were
composed of sulphur and quicksilver" (Keightley).
675. brigad; so the original editions here and in II. 532.
676. pioner; an Elizabethan form ofpioneer.
678. cast, form by throwing up the earth. Mammzon, like "Belial,"
is not really a proper name, but an abstract word = 'wealth.'
679. erected, lofty, elevated (=Lat. erectus).
682. "And the street of the city was pure gold," Rev. xxi. 21.




NOTES.


395


684. vision beaftiic= Visio Beatifica, the phrase used by Schoolmen
to express "seeing" God (Matlthew v. 8). Cf. "blessed vision," v. 613,
"happy-making sight," Ode on Time, i8. See iII. 6i, 62, note.
685. men also, i.e. as well as the fallen angels.
686. the centre; probably the centre of the earth; or the earth
itself.
688. Horace's aurum   irrepertlum et sic melius siturn (Od. III.
3- 49).
690. ribs, bars, large pieces. admire, wonder= Lat. admirari.
692. precious bane; an oxymoron (see II. 252-57).
694. Some interpret Babel= Babylon; but why not the Tower of
Babel (XII. 43-62)? There is a reference to Babylon in 717.
the works, i.e. the Pyramids; cf. Ben Jonson's Masque, Prince
Henry's!Barriers, "And did the barbarous Memphian heaps outclimb." Memphian, Egyptian; as in 307.
697. and in an hour, i.e. is performed (from 699).
698, 699. Cf. Pliny, speaking of the Great Pyramid, "it is said (see
H-erodotus II. I24), that in the building of it there were 366,ooo men
kept at worke twentie yeares " (Holland's Pliny, 160o, II. 577).
702. sluiced, led by sluices; cf. Tennyson, Arabian Nights.
703. founded, melted; it seems impossible to follow the Second
Ed., which readsfound out.
704. severing, separating. bullion-dross, the scum rising from the
bullion, i.e. the liquefied mass of unpurified gold. See v. 439-43, note.
7o8. M. would be likely to understand the mechanism   of the
organ, his favourite instrument; cf. xi. 558-63.
7 0 —I7. Cf. Pope (imitating the passage), The Temple of Fame, 9,
"The growing towers, like exhalations, rise"; and Tennyson, CEnone:
"Hear me, for I will speak and build up all
My sorrow with my song, as yonder walls [i.e. of Troy]
Rose slowly to a music slowly breathed,
A cloud that gather'd shape."
Peck noted that Milton's lines read like an account of some Jacobean
Masque (iv. 768, note), describing one of those elaborate structures
of stage-architecture designed by Inigo Jones and brought on the scene
by means of machinery, to the accompaniment of music. For instance,
in Jonson's Entertainment at 7'heobalds the main scene represented "a
glorious place, figuring the seat of the household gods...erected with
colzumns and architrave, fritze and cornice."  See xI. 20o, 206, note.
It should be remembered too that the classical architecture of the
Renaissance, familiar to Milton through his visit to Italy, had come
into vogue in this country.




396


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


712. symphonies, i.e. the harmonious strains of the instruments
accompanying the voices; see xi. 595, note.
713-17. pilasters, square columns usually set within a wall and
slightly projecting. architrave, the main or 'master' beam  (apX41 +
trabs) that rests immediately upon a row of pillars, the frieze coming
just above, and the cornice projecting above the frieze.
bossy sculptures, i.e. sculptures in relief.
frettedgold, gold wrought with designs, patterns.
718. Alcairo; he means Memphis, giving it the name of the later
capital built (ioth cent. A.D.) some few miles from the site of its predecessor. The form Alcairo (Arab. Al Kahirah, 'the city of victory')
seems to have been current then; compare Hexham's Mercator,
"Memphis...is called at this day (1636) Cairo or Alcairo" (II. 427).
720.  Belus.   Cf. Sandys' Relation (p. 207), "Belus Priscus,
reputed a God, and honored with Temples; called Bel by the Assyrians,
and Baal by the Hebrewes." The famous temple of Bel at Babylon
(Herodotus  I. 181-83), attributed to Semiramis, is described by
Raleigh, History, p. I83 (I621 ed.).
Serapis; there was a temple to him at Memphis, but more celebrated
was that at Alexandria, called the Serapeum, to which the great library
was attached. Serapis was identical with the Greek Hades, whose
worship was introduced into Egypt by Ptolemy I., some of the
attributes of Osiris being transferred to him. Serdpis and Serfpis are
found; the latter is more correct.
723, 724. stoodfixed, i.e. was now complete (Lat. stabat), having
reached its appointed height. discover, reveal; F. decouvrir.
725. Thyer quotes azmpa spatia from Seneca's Her-cules Furens III.
727. pendent by subtle magic. "I always like this, it is mystical"Tennyson. (In Tennyson's Life by his son there is an Appendix,
entitled " My Father's talk on Milton's Paradise Lost"; it is the source
of these criticisms by Tennyson, often conversational in form.)
728. cresset, a kind of hanging lamp.
729. naphtha and asphaltus; the former the liquid (for the lamps),
the latter the solid substance (for the cressets).
732. the architect. Masson thinks that Mammon is intended, M.
identifying him with Mulciber (or Vulcan). But M. only says that
Mammon discovered the gold out of which the fabric was made, and
leaves us, I think, to infer from what follows that the architect was
Vulcan or Mulciber-in classical mythology the god of fire and all
metal-work, and architect of the palaces of the gods (cf. 732-35). -He
was too famous to need mentioning by name.
733. towered structure highl. The order of the words-a noun




NOTES.


397


placed between two qualifying words-is a favourite with M. The
idiom is Greek; in his note on Lycidas, 6, Mr Jerram quotes Hesiod,
Theogony, 8i, 812, XdXKEOS oVLS6 do-re/aps, and Euripides, Phcenissee
234, vLq6f3oXov 6pos ip6v. Gray probably borrowed the device from
Milton; cf. his Elegy, 53, "Full many a gem of purest ray serene."
See II. 615, 6i6, V. 5 (note).
736. gave to rule. A Lat. idiom; cf. Eneid, I. 65, 66, tibi divum
pater...mulcere deditflectus. So in II. 243, XI. 339.
737. M. alludes to a mediaeval belief that the Heavenly beings
were divided into Hierarchies and Orders; see Appendix, pp. 680-82.
738, 739. his name...in... Greece. Hephaestus was "the god of fire
as used in art, and master of all the arts which need the aid of fire,
especially of working in metal."  All the palaces in Olympus (the
heaven of the classical gods) were built by Hephaestus.
Azsonian land, Italy, so called poetically from the Ausones, an
ancient Latin race who dwelt on the west coast of Italy before its
conquest by the Romans.
74o. Mulciber, ' the softener, welder' (i.e. of metal), from Lat.
mulcere, ' to soften.'
740-46. Partly a translation of Iliad I. 591 et seq., where IIephaestus describes his fall. Cf. two allusions in Milton's Lat. poems: sic
dolet amissun proles Yunonia rcelum, i inter Lemniacos precipitala focos
(Elegy, VII. 81, 82); and —qualis in &g-eam proles 7Junonia Lemnon
deturbata sacro cecidit de limine celi (Naturazm Non Pali Senium, 23).
74I. angy; because in a dispute between Jove and Juno, Vulcan
took the part of Juno, his mother.
742-44.   "We fall not from Virtue, like Vulcan from heaven, in
a day," says Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, I. 30.
746. Lemnos, sacred to Hephaestus, "the Lemnian God" (Spenser,
Muiopotmos); probably because it was volcanic. I think that we
should scan:
"On Lemjnos, th' ZEgl'an isle!. Thus they I relate."
750. engines, contrivances.
752. harald, herald.
756. Pandemonium, 'the home of all the demons'; cf. x. 424.
The word seems to have been coined by Milton (from Gk. risv, 'all'
+ 8aluwv, 'a demon'). Some prefer the form 'Pandemonium.' Milton's
picture, in itself, does not seem to me to owe anything to Dante's
description of the City of Dis (=Lucifer or Satan) in cantos VIII., Ix.,
of the Inferno; apart, possibly, from the suggestion of the idea.
758. squared regiment="perfect phalanx," 550.
763-66.   "He alludes to those accounts of the single combats




398


PARADISE LOST. BOOK I.


between the Saracens ('Panim chivalry') and Christians (cf. 582) in
Spain and Palestine, of which the old romances are full" (Callander):
using, as in S. A. in the dispute between Samson and Harapha, the
technical terms of the mediaeval duello. For a good description of such
scenes cf. The Faerie Queene, IV. 3. 4 et seq.
763. Possibly "covered field" = Fr. champ clos, the space for
combat, enclosed with barriers or 'lists'; cf. S. A. A. 1087, "listed field."
champions; the technical word for combatants-campiones qui in
campum descendant et duello seu monomachia decertant (Ducange).
764. wont, were wont. Soldan, the Sultan.
765, 766. Panim, pagan. He mentions the two kinds of combat(I) that fought out "to the utterance " (Macbeth, III. i. 72), i.e. till one
of the fighters was killed: cf. "mortal duel," S. A. II02; (2) that
which was merely an exhibition of skill, spears and swords with
blunted points being used. career, a short gallop at high speed.
767. Cf. II. 528.
768-75. as bees. The simile had been used by Homer, Iliad
II. 87 et seq., and Vergil, AEneid I. 430-36, VI. 707-709.
The prevalence of s is meant to suggest the scene-' sound
echoing sense'; so that one is tempted to print with the original
editions 'russling.' In King Lear, II. 4. 304, the Quartos have russel
(=rustle), for the less obvious ruffle (Folio).
769.  Taurus, one of the signs of the Zodiac; strictly, the time of
year defined is April 19-May 20o. Cf. x. 671-73.
with; not 'in company with,' since Taurus is a fixed constellation,
but 'in the neighbourhood of' (Beeching).
774. expatiate= Lat. spatior, 'walk abroad'; cf Blount, "Expatiate
to wander, to stray, to spread abroad." confer, confer of, discuss.
776. straitened, crowded, pressed together.
777-8o. Spirits, we have seen (428), can contract themselves.
A passage like this brings before us one of the great difficulties
inherent in the design of Paradise Lost, namely the representation of
the angels, good and evil. Milton (says Johnson) "saw that immateriality
supplied no images, and that he could not show angels acting but by
instruments of action [i.e. bodies]; he therefore invested them with
form and matter "-notably in his account (bk. vi.) of the battle in
Heaven. Yet sometimes they are viewed as "incorporeal Spirits"
(789), and it is seemingly as a spirit that Satan enters the form of
the toad (iv. 800), and of the Serpent (ix. 85, 86, i87-90). There
is in fact some inconsistency: "his infernal and celestial powers are
sometimes pure spirit, and sometimes animated body" (Johnson). The
difficulty is really insuperable, but Milton purposely modifies its effect,




NOTES.


399


particularly in the case of the evil angels, by several passages; see the
notes on I. 423-29, v. 478, VI. 327. As regards the good angels,
I suppose he would have argued that divine beings had the power to
assume corporeal forms and to resume their incorporeal being; whereas
the evil angels, through sin, gradually lost their immateriality and were
forced "to incarnate and imbrute" (ix. I66).
780, 781. Pliny (Nat. History, vii. 11. 26) placed the dwelling
of the Pygmies (575) "beyond the source of the Ganges-even in the
edge and skirts of the mountains."  So Batman vppon Bartholome
(1582 ed., p. 377), "Pigmei be little men of a cubite long...and they
dwell in mountaines of Inde."
that, the well-known, whose name needs no mention.
78. beyond the Indian mount; probably he means Imaus (cf. III.
431), in classical writers (e.g. Pliny) the western chain of the Himalayas,
i.e. between the Ganges and the Caspian. It should be noticed
that extra Imaum  (i.e. east of or "beyond") and intra Imaum
(i.e. west of) were phrases employed by map-makers of the I7th
century to describe (with convenient vagueness) regions of Central
Asia. Thus in Mercator's map of Tartary we have Scythia extra —and
Scythia intra — maum montein. Milton's readers might be reminded
of this common distinction.
781-85. A reminiscence of A Midsitummer-Ntht's Dream, II. I. 28,
29, I41 (a play constantly imitated by Milton). Cf. too, The Rape of
the Lock, 3I, " Of airy Elves by moonlight shadows seen." Commonly
"fairies" and "elves" (more rustic in character) are distinguished.
sees, or dreams he sees; from Vergil's aut videt aut vidisse putat per
nubila lunamaz- neid VI. 454.
785, 786. arbitress, witness; cf. Horace's non izfideles arbitrce
Nox et Diana-Epod. v. 50, 51. She comes " nearer to the Earth"
because influenced (iI. 665, 666) by the fairies. pale, with alarm.
790, 791. i.e. they had so contracted'their forms that, though
numberless, they had plenty of room to move about (Richardson).
795. recess, retirement. His application of the ecclesiastical word
" conclave" to the assembly of evil angels seems sarcastic: that being
the term specially applied to " the Meeting or Assembly of the
Cardinals for the Election [of the Pope], or for any important affair
of the Church" (Blount).   Cf. his contemptuous reference in Of
Reformation in England, I, to the "councils (i.e. of the Church) and
conclaves that demolish one another"' (P. W. Ir. 389), and the similar
use of "consistory," P. R. I. 42. See x. 313, note. Strictly "conclave," like Lat. conclave, meant the room in which a meeting took
place: then the meeting itself.




400


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


797. frequent= Lat. frequens, 'crowded, numerous.'
797, 798. after...summons read. Cf. 573 and Tennyson, Pelleas
and Ettarre, " after trumpet blown." consult, consultation; commonly
the result of a consultation, i.e. a decision, decree=Lat. consultum.
BOOK II.
i. There is a counterpart to this Council in Paradise Regained, II.
Ir5-235. The picture of the debate may reflect Milton's recollections
of the meetings of the Council of State to which he was Latin Secretary.
high on a throne. Cf. v. 756. The mock-heroic opening of the
second book of The Dunciad is modelled on this passage.
2. Ormus; the ancient Armuza, a town situate on an island near
the mouth of the Persian Gulf; called Armous in Webb's Travels (1590)
-see Arber's ed.,p. 23. It was much celebrated as a mart for pearls
and jewels; cf. Howell's Familiar Letters, " Ormus...the greatest
Mart in all the Orient for all sorts of jewels" (Jacobs' ed. 1892, I. 157),
and Marvell, Song of the Emigrants, "Jewels more rich than Ormus
shows." The Elizabethan traveller Coryat (i6ii) compares it with
Venice, "of which the inhabitants may as proudly vaunt as I have
read the Persians have done of their Ormus, who say that if the
world were a ring, then should Ormus be the gem thereof."  Hexham
(1636) calls it Ormus Emporium, and Heylyn says, "in regard of the
situation, it was one of the richest Empories in all the world; the wealth
of Persia and East-India being brought hither" (Cosmograp/hy, 1682 ed.,
III. I43). Tasso mentions it (Fairfax, xvII. 25).
2-4. Cf. Love's Labours Lost, Iv. 3. 222, 223:
"like a rude and savage man of Ind,
At the first opening of the gorgeous east."
Wordsworth borrowed the phrase in his Sonnet On the Extinction of
the Venetian Republic; cf. the first line, "Once did She hold the
gorgeous East in fee." The form Ind (or Inde) is common in poetscf. Comus, 606. The first settlements of the East India Company dated
from about I653, and English people were beginning to hear more
concerning the wealth of India (cf. 638).
or where, i.e. of the places where.  "It was the eastern ceremony, at the coronation of their kings, to powder them with golddust and seed-pearl" (Warburton); also to strew pearls and jewels at
the monarch's feet. Shakespeare knew of the custom (cf. Antony and
Cleopatra, ii. 5. 45, 46), which some traveller must have related. At
the end of his History of Aloscovia M. gives a list of authorities, mainly




NOTES.


401


'Voyages' and 'Travels' (e.g. Hakluyt and Purchas); and passages like
this and Ill. 437-39 show how he used such sources of information.
4. Cf. Pope, Temple of Fame, 94, "With diamond flaming
and barbaric gold."  Barbaricus is an epithet of aurum  in.Eneid
II. 504.
5. merit, i.e. of daring most against the Almighty (Cowper).
9. success, ill-fortune.
12-17.   He calls them  " Deities of Heaven" because he still
regards Heaven as theirs. Exactly similar parentheses are v. 361, 362
(note), and x. 460-62. In each case the clause introduced by for
explains some particular word or phrase in the previous sentence.
14. i.e. I do not consider Heaven lost. Cf. S. A. 1697, "So
Virtue, given for lost," and George Herbert, Church Porch, "Who
say, 'I care not,' those I give for lost."  See too The Winter's Tale,
III. 2. 96.
I7. i.e. have such trust in themselves as not to fear.
20. Cf. I. 635-37. counsel; some needlessly change to council.
23. unenvied, not to be envied, unenviable.
28. the Thunderer, the Almighty; an obviously fitting title here;
see I. 93, 174-77, 258. Cf. Tonans applied to Jupiter.
42. we now debate. The Councils of Diabolus and his followers
(Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial and other outcast spirits) in Bunyan's Holy
War (I682) may well have owed something to the model furnished by
Milton.
44. fiercest. See I. 392. Moloch ("furious king," VI. 357) is conspicuous in the great battle in Heaven. Newton reminds us of Hoomer's
phrase aKTrr7TOUXOS 8aotXe6s (Iliad I. 279).
50. thereafter; 'accordingly' (i.e. as not fearing God), or 'thereupon.'
51. sentence, opinion, vote, Lat. senztenzia; cf. 291.
52. more unexpert, less experienced in them than in war.
59. i.e. the prison assigned by his tyranny. For Milton no word
has worse associations than 'tyranny'; cf. his treatises, A Defence of
the People of England, xII., " the two greatest mischiefs of this life, and
most pernicious to virtue, tyranny and superstition"; and The Ready
Way, " the most prevailing usurpers over mankind, superstition and
tyranny" (P. W. I. 212, II. 13). See 255-57, note, and I. 124.
There is a good deal about "tyrants" and "tyranny" in Milton's
Common-place Book (see ix. 2oo00, note), which reflects his and his age's
deep interest in the question of forms of government.
60-70. Contrast Belial's reply, 129-42.
63. tortures, the things that torture us.


P. L.


26




402


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


67. fire and horror; cf. I. 502, note. equal, i.e. to his.
69.  Tartarean.  Milton applies to this nether world terms
drawn from the classics; see 506, 858, 883. Strictly, the practice
involves some incongruity of effect; cf. the mixture of classical and
Scriptural allusions in Lycidas. No doubt, M. was influenced by the
Renaissance fashion of identifying the Hell of Christian theology with
that of classical writers. We find the same combination of pagan
mythology and Hebrew story in the Italian poets, e.g. in the Paradiso,
xII. Io-I8, where the classical legend of Iris and the Biblical story
of the rainbow are interwoven.
73, 74. such, i.e. those who think the way difficult. Used as
a noun drench (' that which drenches,' i.e. wets thoroughly) was, and
is, commonly applied to a draught of physic for animals. Here therefore it is a contemptuous word-as in the Animadversions, 2, "to diet
their ignorance, and want of care, with the limited draught of a matin
and even-song drench," P. W. ill. 57. Moloch's object is to rouse
them to action by taunts. forgetful lake=" oblivious pool," I. 266.
75-8I. See I. 633, 634, and cf. the account of the expulsion of the
angels from Heaven, VI. 856-77. Not being subject to the law of
gravitation they did not fall, but were driven down by force.
75. proper, natural = Lat. proprius, 'belonging to oneself.'
77. but='that not'; usually in a negative clause; cf. The
Tetmpest, I. 2. o09, a"not a soul but felt a fever," i.e. that did not. So
Richard II.. I. 3  86. (See Abbott, Shakesp. Gram. p. 84.)
79. the deep, Chaos.
82-84. The lines give a supposed objection from one of the
audience. event, issue (I. 624).
89. exercise, torment; a Latinism.
go-92. Thyer quotes The Teares of the Auises, 12, 126:
"Ah, wretched world! and all that is therein,
The vassals of Gods wrath, and slaves of sin";
and A Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. r. 37, "To ease the anguish of a
torturing hour." The latter phrase is borrowed by Gray, Hymn to
Adversity, 3. inexorably; so the original editions; he may have
dictated inexorable.
92. calls; singular because the two subjects really form a single
idea ('punishment'); cf. I. I39.
97. essential, essence, substance, viz. of their angelic forms. In
M., as in Shakespeare, an adj.=a noun is very common (cf. 406, 409,
438): an illustration of Dr Abbott's remark that in Elizabethan E.
" almost any part of speech can be used as any other part of speech."
99, Ioo. Cf. I46-54, and I. 117.




r


NOTES.                          403
ioo, Toi. at worst, i.e. we have already reached the worst point
(cf. 162, 163), short of absolute annihilation. Satan argues somewhat
similarly in Paradise Regained, IIi. 204 —I.   To place at worst
between commas changes the sense.
104. fatal, upheld by fate (I. 33), hence secure.
1og. Belial; see 1. 490, note. In the systems of the demonologists
Belial holds high rank; Heywood (Hierarchie, I635, p. 436) makes
him head of the fourth of the nine Orders into which the fallen angels
were divided (corresponding with' the nine Heavenly Orders). In
assigning to Belial the two qualities of personal beauty and persuasive speech M. has followed tradition. Cf. Scot's Discoveric of
Witchcraft (r584), "This Beliall...taketh the form  of a beautifull
Angell, he speaketh faire" (xv. 2). humane, polished, refined.
113. manna, words sweet as manna, "the taste of [which] was
like wafers made with honey," Exod. xvi. 3r.
II3, 1i4. Alluding, as Bentley noted, to the profession of the
Sophists —Trv i7rrT   X6-yov KpEi6rr  TroLtev. The reproach was made
against Socrates; cf. Plato, Apology i8 a, which probably alludes to the
satirical lines referring to Socrates in Aristophanes' Clouds II2-15.
Bacon says: "So likewise we see that Anytus, the accuser of Socrates,
laid it as an article of charge and accusation against him, that he did...
profess a dangerous and pernicious science, which was, to make the
worse matter seem the better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence
and speech" (The Advancement of Learnzig, I. 2. I). Cf. Milton's
Tetrachordon, " as was objected to Socrates by them who could not
resist his efficacy, that he ever made the worst cause [i.e. X6yos]
seem the better," P.. W. I. 320. dash, confound, cast down.
17. timorous and slotlhful; as might be inferred (I. 490-503).
I19. The first part of his speech answers Moloch point by point.
124, in fact of arms=Fr. en fait fdarmes, i.e. in deeds, exploits;
fact=feat in sense as in etymology (Lat. factum).
127. scope, aim, mark; Gk. oKOT7-S.
129. " Note the great pauses in Belial's speech " (Tennyson).
I30. render; plural, because watch = watchmen.
I32. Scan dbscure (cf. Hamlet, IV. 5. 213), and see 21o, note.
139-42-.   mould, substance, i.e. of the angels, whom  Moloch
would assail with Hell-fire. Spiritual frames, M. has said (I. II7),
are formed of an " empyreal substance," i.e. of pure fire; cf. Psalm
civ. 4, " Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire."
And this fire, argues Belial here and in 2I5, 216, will, through its
greater purity, prevail over (i.e. be insensible to) the "baser" fire
of Hell.
26-2




404


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


143. fat, absolute, complete. Cf. King yohn, III. I. 298.
146. Gray's editors trace to these lines the stanza (Elegy, 85-88):
"For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned?" etc.
148. Cf. Wordsworth's lines on the statue of Newton at Trinity
College (The Prelude, bk. III.).
I51. motion; probably from   Measure for Measure, III. i. 120
Todd). See I8o, note.
i55-59. This thought that the evil angels must live, so that they
may suffer the more, is not peculiar to M. Thus Grotius (Adamus
Exul) makes Satan say, mors una... I mihi summa voti est; nec, qiod
extremzun est malis, I licet perire; and Sir Thomas Browne, Religio
Medici, i. li., has, "the devil, were it in his power, would do the like
[viz. destroy himself]; which being impossible, his miseries are endless,
and he suffers most in that attribute...his immortality."  He has the
same thought in his Christian Morals, II. xiii. (end).
I56. Ironical. belike, perhaps, no doubt; only here in M., but
many times in Shakespeare; cf. Hamlet, III. 2. 305.  impotence, lack
of self-restraint (= Lat. impotentia).
159. cease, i.e. from war: 'why give up the struggle?'
i6o. they who, Moloch: a courteously indirect reference, consonant
with Belial's "humane" character.
I62, I63. A very similar passage is P. R. III. 203-II.
i65. what when, i.e. how was it when-what was our state?
Many texts print a note of exclamation (not in the original editions)
after what, making the sentence an anacoluthon. Rhetorical questions
are a favourite literary device. amain, with all speed. strook; Milton's
preference for this form to struck is marked (Masson).
i66. afflicting; perhaps in the lit. sense of affligere; cf. I. I86.
I68, I69. See I. 50-53, 311-13. chained; see I. 48.
170. Isaiah xxx. 33.
174. red right hand= rubens dextera of Jupiter (Horace, Od. I. 2. 2,3).
I75, I76. this firmament, i.e. of "the horrid roof" (644) of Hell
to which he points. cataracts, floods, torrents; Gk. KaTappadKTr, 'a
waterfall.' See xi. 824, note.
i80-82. Editors compare JEneid VI. 75, rapidis ludibria ventis
(" the sport of every wind," Dryden), and 740, 74I. Probably M. had
in his thoughts Measurefor Measure, III. I. 124-26:
"To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world " [cf. o1052].
i82. racking; Keightley says, " sweeping, driving along. Clouds




NOTES.


405


thus driven are called the rack " (cf. " the racking clouds," 3 Henry VI.
I. I. 27). But perhaps= 'torturing.' Cf. I. I26.
I84. converse, dwell with; Lat. cum, ' with '+ versari, ' to dwell.'
I85. With M. (even in his prose, as Todd noted) and other poets
a favourite arrangement of words, expressing emphasis; cf. v. 899,
S. A. 1422, P. '. II. 429, Hamlet, I. 5. 77. Compare the repetition
in the Greek dramatists of adjectives compounded with the negative
prefix d- (=Eng. un-); e.g. in Euripides, Ifecutba 669, bIrarT, a6vav6pos,
a7oXLT, ~eq~pOapA1vr7; and Sophocles, Antigone o107, a.uoLpov, dCiT-r
p1'TroV, oavdoLOV V&KtV.
187. open or concealed. See I. 66[, 662.
i9o, 191. " He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord
shall have them in derision," Psalm ii. 4. motions, proposals, schemes;
cf. the verb in IX. 229.
194-96. A supposed objection; cf. 82-84.
I99. to sffer...to do. Editors quote: Et facere et pati fortia
Romanzun est, Livy, I. 12: quidvis et facere et pati, Horace, Od. III.
24. 43. Sir Thomas Browne says, "A man may confide in persons
constituted for noble ends, who dare do and suffer"-Christian Morals,
I. 25. See I. i58, note.
207. ignominy; a trisyllable (I. r15). The Ist Folio prints ignomy
in I Henry IV.  4. I. o, "Thy ignomy sleep with thee in the grave."
20o. Scan supreme. This throwing back of the accent in dissyllabic adjectives is usual in M. (and Shakespeare) when they precede a
monosyllable or a noun accented on the first syllable. Cf. I. 735, Comus,
273, "Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift," 421, " She that has
that is clad in c6mplete steel."
21. far removed; cf. 32, and see I. 74, 75, note.
215, 216. essence; see 439. vapour; used of hot exhalations, as
in XII. 635. inured, accustomed to the flames. To inure is literally
'to bring into practice' (=zure).
217-19. Cf. 274-78.    temper, temperament.
219. void of pain; a consideration appropriate to Belial, who
represents slothful ease and luxury.
220. light; a noun, surely; to take it as an adj., 'easy,' is to lose
the fine hyperbole that for them darkness may become-light.
Cowper notes the awkwardness of the rhyme in 220, 22 1: "rhyme"
(he adds) "is apt to come uncalled, and to writers of blank verse is often
extremely troublesome."
224. for happy, regarded as happy-looked at from that standpoint.
226-28. His counsel accords with his effeminate character (i. 490).
Cf. Comus, 759, "Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb."
ig~noble ease=ignzobile otium, Vergil, Georg. IV. 564.




406


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


228. thus Mammon.     See I. 678. His speech partly replies to
Moloch (since he dismisses the notion of war altogether), partly carries
Belial's counsel a step farther. The gist of what Belial said was-'let
us temporize, stay here and trust to chance-something may happen.'
Mammon answers-'let us indeed stay here, but not idly look to the
future: rather straightway set about founding a realm here to compensate
for what we have lost there.' Belial, type of ease and sloth, stands, as
it were, halfway between Moloch and Mammon.
This notion of a "realm" in Hell, the counterpart of that in
Heaven, is of course purely traditional, not invented by M. Thus in
the old Faust-book (1587) Mephistophiles tells Faustus that Hell is
divided into ten kingdoms, under five rulers (Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial,
Phlegethon and Ascheroth). See Thoms' English Prose Romances,
Ill. i85, i86.
23I, 232. then...when, i.e. then only= 'never.' A favourite phrase;
cf. Iv. 970, "Then, when I am thy captive, talk of chains."
233. the strife, between Fate and Chance (cf. 907-10); or
between the rebellious angels and the Almighty (less probable).
234, 235. the former, to unthrone the King of Heaven; the latter,
to regain our lost rights. to hope, to hopefor; cf. VII. I2I. argues, shows,
proves (Lat. arguere); this is a common Elizabethan use. Cf. Iv. 830.
241-43. See v. 161-63. forced; contrast vI. 744.
245. ambrosial, often used by M., as by Tennyson, of that which
delights the sense of taste or of smell. Cf. ambrosia = 'fragrance,' v. 57.
249. pursue, seek after, try to regain, i.e. "our state" (251).
254. Horace, Epist. I. I8. 107, io8, et mihi vivam I quod superest
mvi. We may note the oxymorons in these lines (252-57).
255-57. It was a favourite thought with Milton that many men
would rather have "Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty" (S. A.
271): i.e. would sacrifice their freedom to save the trouble of maintaining it. Sallust, his favourite historian (as M. writes in a Letter
to Lord  Henry de Bras), makes     Anmilius Lepidus say-accipite
ofium  cum servitio... mihi potior visa est periculosa libertas quieto
servitio. Aubrey (reflecting, no doubt, what he had heard from Milton's
nephew Edward Phillips and others acquainted with the poet) says that
Milton's intense "zeal to the liberty of mankind," and his republicanism,
came largely from his admiration of the Roman writers and Roman
Commonwealth. Similarly Hobbes complained that at the Universities
young men learnt from the classics to despise monarchy (see Marvell,
"English Men of Letters Series," pp. I, 12).
263-67. Cf. Psalm xviii. I, I3; and xcvii. 2, "Clouds and darkness are round about him."
270 —73. See T. 670 et seq.




NOTES.


407


271. wants not, does not lack.
273. mnagnificence; such as the palace described in r. 7Io et seq.
274, s75. All existing things were supposed to consist of four
elements or constituent parts-fire, air, water, earth; and in each
element dwelt certain Spirits or dzemons peculiar to it, ruling it, and
partaking of its nature. Cf. I7 Penseroso, 93, 94:
"And of those dremons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground."
That these dremons were the fallen angels was a common view; see
Appendix, pp. 672-74. When M. makes Mammon say that their
"torments" (i.e. Hell's fires) may become their "element," he clearly
alludes to these beliefs.
278. sensible, sense; adjective for noun.
281. compose, adjust, i.e. adapt ourselves to.
282. where; so the First Ed.; the Second Ed. has were.
284-90. Cf. v. 872, 873. Editors compare Iliad II. 144, AZnieid
x. 96-99. For the elaboration of the simile cf. the note on 488-95.
288. o'erwatched, tired with watching; cf. S. A. 405.
292. field, battle.
294. the sword of AMichazl, i.e. the "two-handed" sword, "from
the armoury of God" (vi. 25i, 321), with which in the battle in
-Ieaven Michael laid low the rebellious angels and disabled Satan
himself (vI. 320-30). Not mentioned in Daniel or Revelation.
299, 300. In Scripture Beel-zebub =Baal-zebub, 'lord of flies,' is
the Sun-god of the Philistines, i.e. a local manifestation of the great
deity Baal (see I. 422), his'chief oracle being at Ekron, "where
answers seem to have been obtained from the hum and motions of
flies" (Sayce). In P. L. he ranks next to Satan (see v. 671, note).
Perhaps this notion that he was one of the chief of the infernal powers
was due to the rendering of AMat. xii. 24, where the title "prince of
the devils" is really applied to Beel-zebul, 'lord of the heavenly
height' (cf. the margin).
301, 302. Scan aspect, as often in M. and Shakespeare; cf. v. 733,
vl. 45o. Newton quotes 2 Henr:y VI. I. r. 75, "Brave peers of England,
pillars of the state." front, brow, Lat.frons; cf. I-amilet, III. 4. 56.
306. Atlantean, worthy of Atlas, one of the Titans, who as a
punishment for making war on Zeus was condemned to bear heaven on
his shoulders. Cf. Spenser, sonnet to Lord Burleigh:
"As the wide compasse of the firmament
On Atlas mighty shoulders is upstayd."
"The myth seems to have arisen from the idea that lofty mountains
supported the heaven" (Class. Dict.).




408


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


309. thus he spake; and what he says sweeps on one side the main
arguments of the previous speakers. 'War,' he urges, recognising
their true position, 'with the Almighty (such as Moloch counsels), that
is ridiculous: peace (such as Belial and Mammon dream of), that is not
to be hoped for: suffer we must and shall, but suffering may be
lightened by revenge-and that of a subtler kind than Moloch proposes.'  The speech of each deity is carefully differentiated, and
consistent with his character. Similarly in the later books (v.-viii.,
xi., xII.) the good angels Raphael and Michael are drawn on contrasting
lines. But, in the main, the characters of the evil angels "are more
diversified" (Johnson).
311, 3r2. these titles; see I. 737. style, title, appellation; cf.
2 Henry VI. I. 3. 51, 52:
"Am I a queen in title and in style,
And must be made a subject to a duke?"
313. for so; alluding to the applause which Mammon had (284).
315. In the original editions doubtless has a semicolon before and
after, i.e. it is a parentheticesarcasm: 'build up here an empire-as is so
very likely!' Some remove the second semicolon and explain: 'while
we dream undisturbed by.y doubt.'
324. " I am Alpha afdf*Omega, the first and the last," eRev. i. I;
also xxi. 6, xxii. 13. Cf. Ben Jonson, MAasque of Augurs, "Jove is that
one, whom first, midst, last you call." highth or detlh, Heaven or Hell.
327, 328. Cf. Abdiel's warning to Satan, v. 886-88. In each
case there is an allusion to Psalm ii. 9, "Thou shalt break them
with a rod of iron" (cf. Rev. ii. 27).  The distinction between
iron typifying hostility and gold typifying benevolence is part of the
symbolism in which M. delights. Cf. Lycidas,  o, i l, where St Peter
bears "two massy keys"-the golden admitting to Heaven, the iron
excluding. A rod of gold, 'the Rod of Equity,' is among the regalia
of the English Crown.
those, his loyal subjects, the angels who had not rebelled with
Satan.
33o. determined, made an end of us, i.e. crushed us. Cf. vi. 318.
336. to, to the best of; cf. The Winter's Tale, v. 2. 182, "I will
prove so, sir, to my power," and Coriolanus, II. I. 262.
337. untamed, not to be tamed. reluctance, resistance.
345-51. Addison considered this ancient prophecy in heaven concerning the creation of man a wonderfully imaginative stroke: "Nothing
could shew more the dignity of the species, than this tradition which ran
of them before their existence. They are represented to have been the
talk of heaven before they were created... Milton gives us a glimpse of




NOTES.


4C9


them even before they are in being." See I. 65 —54, note. fame= Lat.
fama in the literal sense 'report'; cf. I. 65r.
352, 353. by atnoath. Cf. v. 607; see Ge7t. xxii. I6, "Bymyselfhave
I sworn, saith the LORD," and Isai. xlv. 23.
that shook; cf. /Eneid ix. io6, annuit et totum nutu tremefecit
Olympum-itself from Homer, Iliad I. 530, /,Jyav 5' X4Xt-eev 'OXv/,rov
(the subject of the verb being Zeus); echoed by Dryden, Alexander's
Feast, 35-37. Epic poetry has its conventions and formulas, handed
down from Homer to Vergil, from Vergil to the Italian poets.
360. Contrast 410-13; here he purposely lessens the danger.
375.  The First Ed. has originals, which shows that original
=originator, parent (i.e. Adam). Cf. The Reason of Church Government, i. 3, "run questing up as high as Adam to fetch their original,"
P.. W  II. 449, and A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. I. I 7, " We are
their parents and original."  Some explain it= 'earliest condition,
primitive state.'
376-78. advise, consider. or to, i.e. whether it is better to.
vain empires; such as Mammon foreshadowed.
382, 383. confound, utterly ruin. one root, Adam (r Cor. xv. 22).
384, 385. Cf. Raphael's warning that Satan would plot Adam's
fall, "As a despite done against the Most High" (vi. 906).
387. States; often used by Shakespeare of a body of representatives or parliament; cf. King John, II. 395, "How like you this wild
counsel, mighty states?"  So here; cf. the phrase 'estates of the
realm,' and itats in French.
391. synod, meeting, assembly; cf. vi. 156, xi. 67.
397-402. In later times, according to tradition, some of the outcast angels do become 'Spirits of air,' and dwell in "  ild seats" of the
middle region of air.
398. not unvisited; AM. is fond of this classical figure of meiosis or
under-statement.
404. tempt, try, essay, Lat. temptare.
406. obscure, obscurity: "palpable obscure"="palpable darkness," XII. i88, i.e. "darkness which may be felt," Exod. x. 21.
Drayton had used the phrase "darkness palpable," and the Preface to
the A.V. speaks of "thick and palpable clouds of darkness."  Without
doubt, the original of all these passages was Exod. x. 21 in the Vulgatetenebra tam densar ut palpari queant. (From Newton.) Lat. palpare=
'to stroke, feel.'
407. uncouth, strange; cf. 827.
409. the vast abrupt, the gulf between Hell and the World.
arrive, arrive at, reach; cf. Milton's divorce-pamphlet, The Judc



4IO


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


ment of tlartin Bucer, " if our things here below arrive him where he
is," P. W. III. 282; so Julizus Casar, I. 2. I O, "But ere we could
arrive the point proposed." In Elizabethan E. this omission of the
preposition with verbs of motion is common.
410. the happy isle, i.e. the Universe of this World, hung (o051)
in Chaos, which is a kind of "sea" (Ionl): hence the peculiar fitness
of comparing Satan, as he journeys through Chaos, to a vessel making
for its port (1041-44). See again III. 76.
412. senteries; so the original editions, and the metre requires
the form. Perhaps the form sentery was due to the notion that the
word came from Fr. sentier, 'a path,' Lat. semita; it is thought to be
a corruption of sentinel. stations= Lat. stationes, 'guards, pickets.'
413. had, would have.
4I5. choice, care in selecting by vote some one to send.
423. astonished, struck with dismay. prime, chief, Lat. primi.
425. proffer, offer himself, volunteer.
430. With this speech cf. P. R. I. 44-105. The scenes are
similar. In each case Satan undertakes a design from which his
followers shrink-here against Mankind, there against Christ. And
there he reminds them how he alone faced the former danger, and
argues that, having succeeded once, he will succeed again.
432, 433. An echo of AEneid VI. I26-29, where the Sibyl tells
iEneas that the descent into Avernus is easy:
"But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies" (Dryden).
The slow monosyllabic rhythm and the alliteration seem intended by
Milton to suggest the laborious effort of ascent.
434. convex, vault (=Lat. convexum); a poetical use; cf. viI. 266.
438. the void profound= Lucretius' inane profundum. Cf. Tennyson's line, " Ruining along the illimitable inane " (Lucretius).
439. unessential Night, i.e. having no substance or being. essence
=Lat. essentia (from esse)=Gk. ova-a (or -T o6, 'that which really
exists'). Night, he means, is a mere vacuity (932).
44r. abortive, monstrous, because unnatural, i.e. born prematurely.
He speaks of the gulf as though it were some monstrosity, horrible
through premature birth. Others says 'rendering abortive.'
448. moment, importance. Cf. "of great moment," Hamlet, III.
I. 86; "of no moment," 3 Henry VI. I. 2. 22.
450. ime; purposely emphatic by position.
45o. refusing, if I refuse: honours and dangers go together.
457. intend, consider; a Latinism.
461. deceive, beguile; cf. Cowper, " to deceive the time, not waste




NOTES.


411


it."  So Lat. decicere-e.g. in Horace's dulci laborurn decipitur sono=
is beguiled into forgetting his troubles (Od. 1l. 13. 38).
465, 466. The abrupt form of the ending is significant.
467. prevented, anticipated, forestalled.
468. raised, encouraged; agreeing with others.
478. awful, full of awe, respect; cf. Nat. Ode, 59.
483-85. i.e. "Let not bad men set much store by those casual
acts of seeming nobleness to which glory or ambition may doubtless
spur even the worst of them; for neither have that other class of evil
beings...lost such virtue as this " (Masson).
485. close, secret; often in Shakespeare. varnished...with, speciously
hidden by.
488-95. This simile is typical of many in Milton: similes classical
in manner, more like Vergil's than Shakespeare's. The peculiarity is
that he works the simile out, in all its bearings, into a picture complete
in itself but rather detached from the context. Cf. I. 768-75.
489. while the North-wind sleeps= Homer's &6p' e0oai -L/xvos Bopiao
(il. v. 524), "that wind generally.. dispersing clouds" (Newton). See
xI. 842, note.
490, 49I. element, sky.
492. if chance, if it chances that; cf. Comus, 5o8, " How chance
she is not in your company?" The verb-construction (e.g. 'how does it
chance that?') is influenced by the noun-phrase (' by what chance?').
So in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, I. i. 129, "How chance the roses
there do fade so fast?"
497-502. The Civil Wars in England; the Thirty Years' War in
Germany (I618-48); the Civil War of the Fronde in France (I648-52).
5oi. Dr Bradshaw notes that the phrase to levy war (see xi. 219),
which Johnson censured, was a technical term found in legal documents
and statutes. He cites from one of Barrow's Sermons (May 29, I676),
"those in the late times who, instead of praying for their sovereign,...
did raise tumults, and levy war against him."  Add Tennyson, Queen
Maay, Ii. i, "must we levy war against the Queen's Grace?"
503. to accord, to agree among ourselves.
508. Paramount, lord, chief.
5I2. globe, compact band; cf. P. R. IV. 58r. Lat. globus is used
similarly of a close mass of men.
513. emblazonry, i.e. shields emblazoned (i. 538) or figured with
designs. horrent, bristling (see I. 563, note).
514. Onlythe great angels had taken part in the council (I. 792-98);
the others were awaiting its result.




412


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


516. i.e. towards the four quarters of the compass; cf. III. 326,
and see Ezekiel xxxvii. 9, "' Come from the four winds, 0 breath, and
breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
517, 518. alchymy, trumpets made of the metal called 'alchemy
gold' or 'alchemy.' Misunderstanding the word, Bentley proposed
Orichalc; Gk. 6peIXaXKos, Lat. orichalcum (cf. /Eneid XII. 87), yellow
copper ore, and the brass made therefrom. harald; cf. I. 752.
522. ranged, assembled in ranks.
526. entertain, pass, while away; cf. the Argument of this book,
"to entertain the time till Satan return," a phrase used by Shakespeare; cf. Lucrece, 1361, "The weary time she cannot entertain,"
and Sonnet 39. The picture of the angels variously employed recalls
Vergil's description of the souls of the blessed in Elysium with their
diversions, zEneid VI. 640 et seq.
528-32. These "heroic games" (iv. 55I, a similar scene) are
Milton's counterpart to the Trojan sports, zEneid v. 577 etseq., and those
of the Myrmidons, withheld from war, Iliad II. 773 et seq.: whence too
the contests in The Dunciad.
528. sublime = Lat. sublimis in the literal sense ' aloft,' ' uplifted';
cf. P. R. Iv. 542, "through the air sublime."
530. Two of the great festivals of Greece were the Olympic games
held every fifth year at Olympia, a small plain of Elis, and the
Pythian at Delphi in honour of Apollo (the Pythian god).
53I, 532. Cf. xi. 643, "Part curb the foaming steed," i.e. in horseraces. or shun; alluding (cf. Areopagitica, P. W. II. 68) to Horace,
Od. I. I. 4, 5, metaque fervidis j evitata rotis, i.e. in chariot-races. To
the chariot-races at Olympia M. refers in his sixth Elegy, 26 (volat Eleo
pulvere fiuscus eques), in the lines on Pindar. Cf. Dryden, Annus
Mirabilis, stanza 56. brigads; cf. I. 675.
533. Probably the Azurora Borealis is meant. to warn; because
considered omens.
534. Newton quotes i HeL'ry IV. 1. i. o1, " like the meteors of a
troubled heaven."
535. van, vanguard; Fr. avant-garde.
539. Tyaphxan; see I. I99, and cf. Astrcea Redux, 37, 38:
"Thus when the bold Typhoeus scaled the sky
And forced great Jove from his own heaven to fly."
But Typhon is the commoner form in English.
540. ride the air; cf. Macbeth, IV. r. I38; see 662, note.
542. Alcides, Hercules, grandson of Alczeus. The story, as commonly told, was: Hercules, returning to Trachis from (Echalia where he




NOTES.


4I3


had killed Eurytus, landed at Cenaeum, the N.W. promontory of Euboea,
and sent Lichas, his companion, to Trachis to fetch a white robe wherein
to sacrifice to Zeus; Deianira, his wife, sent instead a robe dipped in
what she thought to be a love-potion that would make Hercules true to
her: the potion was a poison, and when Hercules put the robe on it
ate into his flesh, and could not be removed: in his agony he hurled
(i.e. from Cenreum) Lichas into the sea, and himself afterwards ascended
Mt CEta in Thessaly, raised a pile of wood, and was burnt thereon.
The story forms the subject of Sophocles' TraciWnice; it is told also by
Ovid, Metlamorplhoses ix., whom M. follows  losely, e.g. in making
Mt CEta the scene; cf. Marvell, The Loyal Scot:
"When CEta and Alcides are forgot,
Our English youth shall sing the valiant Scot."
There is a fine application of the tale in S. A. Io38, I039, where an
ill-matched wife is called " a cleaving mischief " to her husband.
from CEchalia crowoned; Ovid's victor ab (ENchaia (136). (Echalia,
a town in The.ssaly. The First Ed. has Oealia.
543. envenomed, because steeped by Deianira in the blood of the
Centaur Nessus, whom Hercules had slain with a poisoned arrow. Cf.
M. in In Obitznu Procancellarii Medici, 10, i (alluding to the same
story), ferus Hercules I Nessi venenatus cruore.
545. Lichas; see The AMerchant of Venice, II. i. 32-35.
546. Euboic sea, between Euboea and the mainland.
546-55. Heywood says of the infernal angels, " in Musicke they
are skill'd" (Ilierarchie, p. 441).
552. partial, prejudiced-in favour of themselves; it "was silent
as to the corrupt motive of their conduct, and dwelt only on the sad
consequences of it" (Cowper).
554. suspeinded, held rapt, thrilled. took, enchanted.
557. Cf. Scott's happy allusion-" others apart sat on a bench
retired, and reasoned highly on the doctrines of crime" (describing the
lawyers at the trial of Effie Dean, The Heart of Midlothian).
558-69. Cf. S. A. 300 et scq., P. R. iv. 286 et seq., where Greek
philosophies are sneered at; and contrast Comus, 476-80 (" How
charming is divine Philosophy ").
559, 560. Probably M. is ridiculing the theological controversies
of his own age: yet he himself discourses on free-will and predestination,
not only in The Christian Doctrine, I. iv. (P. W. IV. 43-77), but even
in P. L.; cf. III. 96-128, V. 524-40.
564, 565. Referring primarily to the Stoics, whose philosophy he
condemns in P. R. IV. 300 et seq.: apathy (Gk. a-, 'not'+ 7ra0eiv, 'to
suffer') signifying in their system insensibility to suffering, hence freedom




4r4


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


from passion or feeling-i.e. a passionless tranquillitas, "contemning
all," P. R. Iv. 304. Cf. the Essay on Man, II. 101, 102:
"In lazy apathy let Stoics boast
Their virtue fixed; 'tis fixed as in a frost."
There is a passing allusion to "Stoic apathy" in An Apology for
Smectymnuits (P. W. III. 136).
568, 569. Horace, Od. I. 3. 9, illi robur et cs triplex I circa
pectus erat, where es, like "steel" here, is figurative.  obdured; cf.
VI. 785.
570. gross, dense, compact.
572. clime, region; see I. 242.
575, 576. In the main this picture of the infernal rivers is modelled
on the classics (cf. 2Eneid VI.), with touches perhaps from the much
fuller treatment in the Inferno. But M. has added some details, e.g. the
making of the four rivers unite in the burning lake, i.e. the "lake of
fire" of the Revelation (xix. 20, xx. Io). He refers to the meaning of
each river's name, the collective allusion being to the lamentations of
the souls of the wicked, borne to their punishment. baleful, sorrowful.
577. Styx; from aorvyeZv, 'to hate, abhor'; the chief river of the
nether world, round which it flowed "with nine circling streams"
(Dryden)= novies Styx interfusa (lEneid vI. 439).
578. Acheron =6 &Xoa pwv, ' the stream of woe.'
579, 580.  Cocytus; Gk. KWKVTO6, 'wailing,' from KWKv6EV, 'to wail.'
580, 58I. Phlegethon; OX\e-ywOv, 'flaming'; also called " Pyriphlegethon "; waves of fire (7r0p), not water, flowing in its " torrent."
583. Lethe; Gk. Xr07t, ' a forgetting.' "A river in the lower world
was called Lethe. The souls of the departed drank of this river, and
thus forgot all they had said or done in the upper world" (Class. Dict.).
Cf. Dryden, /neied, VI. 957, "The gliding Lethe leads her silent flood,"
and 968, " In Lethe's lake they long oblivion taste." There is extant
a copy of Browne's Britannia's Pastorals with MS. notes pronounced
by some to be by Milton, and over against a description of this river
are written the words, "They who drinke of Lethe never think of love
or ye world."
"The topography of the infernal rivers is rather indefinite and
varied in classical writers. Lethe is generally removed from the rivers
of horror as in Milton" (Osgood, Classical Mythology in Milton, p. 73).
So Dante placed Lethe, not in Inferno but in Purgatorio (see canto
xxviii.), making it the cleansing influence by which all memory of
sin was washed out, and inventing a companion stream, Eunoe, by
which the memory of all good deeds was restored to a man.
589. dire hail; Horace's/jam satis...dire grandinis, Od. I. 2. i, 2.




NOTES.


415


590, 591. i.e. the ruin of some ancient building; cf. "pile highbuilt," S. A. o169.
592, 593. Lake Serbonis (now dried up) lay on the coast of Lower
Egypt, separated from the sea by a narrow strip of sand (Herodotus
III. 5); close to Mt Casius (Herod. II. 6).
Damiata, now Damietta on the easternmost mouth of the Nile; it
has been identified with Pelusium. Milton's reason for introducing the
name Damiata is, no doubt, its association with the great Italian epics.
Ariosto makes Orlando go to Damiata (Orlando lFurioso, xv. 48), and
Tasso (xv. I6) speaks of it; and in the Inferno, xIv. Io4, it "stands
for the Eastern civilisation which was superseded by that of Rome."
Burke quotes these lines (592-94) with great effect in his speech
on Conciliation with America (Payne's ed., I. p. 196); see also his
Reflections on the ]Revolution in France (II. p. 23I).
594. Primarily from Diodorus Siculus (i. 30), who says io the;tppwvis XI/LV7)-TlroXXoi rrJv yOTmyvoovTsv Trlv 1&6rI6Tra TOv 7rb6rovu /LET
7r7pareuVuaidTrWv 6ov ~45avilrsVa-cav. How this happened, Sandys' Relation
shows: the Lake, he says (and he had been there), was " borderd on
each side with hils of sand, which being borne into the water by the
winds so thickened the same, as not by the eye to be distinguished from
a part of the Continent: by means whereof whole armies have bin
devoured. For the sands neere-hand seeming firme, a good way entred
slid farther off, and left no way of returning, but with a lingring cruelty
swallowed the ingaged: whereupon it was called Barathrum.... Close to
this standeth the mountaine Cassius (no other than a huge mole of
sand)," p. 137. Seemingly the only historical basis of this story is the
fact that when Darius Ochus, the Persian, invaded Egypt he lost part
of his troops in the lake.
594, 595. parching, used of the drying, withering effect of cold
(cf. Lyc. 13, "parching wind") or heat (cf. XIi. 636). frore, frosty.
cold...fire; Newton aptly quotes Ecclus. xliii. 2r, "The cold north
wind...burneth the wilderness, and consumeth the grass as fire "; and
Vergil, Georg. I. 93, ne.. frigus adurat.  The r...r sound may be
meant to suggest shuddering. Aubrey says that M. "pronounced the
letter R very hard" (and adds, "a certaine signe of a satyricall wit ").
596-603. "This idea of making the pains of Hell consist in cold
as well as heat [i.e. by alternations] was current in the Middle Ages...
it seems to have come from the Rabbin [Jewish commentators], for
they make the torments of Gehenna to consist of fire and of frost and
snow " (Keightley). Cf. Dante, Inferno, III. 86, 87, where Charon says,
"Woe to you, depraved spirits! I come to lead you...into the eternal
darkness, into fire and into ice," and the Purgalorio, III. 31, 32. Dante




4I6


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


makes the last circle, the ninth, of the Inferno the frozen circle, where
the greatest sinners are confined (xxxii.-xxxiv.). I find the idea
worked out in Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victory on Earth, 2,- and in
the Faust-book (i587), where Mephistophiles describes Hell to Faustus
in a passage closely resembling these lines: also, when Faustus is
suffered to visit Hell, out of curiosity, he finds there "a most
pleasant, clear and cold water; into the which many tormented
souls sprang out of the fire to cool themselves, but being so freezing
cold, they were constrained to return again into the fire, and thus
wearied themselves and speiit their endless torments out of one
labyrinth into another, one while in heat, 'another while in cold,"
Thoms' English Prose Romances, iII. pp. i94, 2.2. The notion was
known to Shakespeare; see Measure for Medsure, III. I. r12-23.
And Sir Thomas Browne introduces it in his Urn Burial, iv.
596, 597. harpy-footed, with feet like the talons of Harpies (hideous
winged creatures, with hooked claws-see An. in. 21i-i8, P. R2. i.
403). haled= hauled, dragged; in First Ed. hail'd, i.e. summoned-a
possible reading. revolutions, i.e. of time......
6oo. starve, afflict, perish with cold. O.E. steruen= to perish, die.
604. sound, strait.
6II. Medusa, one of the three Gorgons; the one most mentioned
in classical writers. Her hair being changed into serpents by Athene,
her appearance became so terrible that all who looked at her were
changed into stone. See the allusion in Comus, 447, to "that snakyheaded Gorgon shield" worn by Athene, and cf. the note on x..526, 527.
So Gray, Adversity, 35, " Not in thy Gorgon terrors cad'.
612-14. According to legend, Tantalus, for divutlginge tL secrets
of Zeus, was "punished in the lower world by beinog ^filctei with a
raging thirst, and at the same time placed in the midst of -{ ae, the
waters of which always receded from him as soon. as he atte.npted to
drink them" (Class. Dict.). See S. A. 500, 501.
615-i8. See I. 733, note. first, for the first time,./:Jo:' two rest;
editors compare Mat. xii. 43, Luke xi. 24.
620. Alp; used of any high snow-capped mountain.
621. The number of monosyllables suggests variety, i.e,.f.. scenery.
625. prodigious, unnatural, monstrous.
628. Cf. x. 524 (for rhythm) and Coomus, 517. Hesi:oi mentions
three Gorgons, daughters of Phorcys, monsters with wings and.brazen
claws, and hissing serpents, instead of hair, on their he^ws. Tlhe
Lernean Hydra was a serpent with nine heads that ravag-ed. the
country near Argos; slain by Hercules (his 2nd 'labour'). In Of
Reformation in England, I, M. has the phrase "a continual 'Iy ri  o.f




NOTES.                          417
mischief and molestation," P. W. II. 411.  See also his Sonnet to
Fairfax. The Chimeara was a fire-breathing monster, irp6aOe X\cv,
OmriOev 6 6paKKWv, fLuaCTr 8& XiLuatpa (Iliad vI. I8I), i.e. part lion, part
dragon, part goat. M. mentions these three monsters together because
Vergil (En. vi. 287-89) and Tasso (iv. 5) had done the same.
634. shaves, skims; cf. radit iter liquidutm —Eneid v. '217.
635. concave, roof.
636. "What simile was ever so vast as this?" (Tennyson). His
other favourite simile in Paradise Lost was "the gunpowder one"
(iv. 814-19). Note here how fully the simile is worked out, beyond
the precise point of comparison (see 488, note): how also the
proper names convey an impression of mysterious remoteness (see
1. 583-87). Milton's great similes are introduced with a peculiar hush,
a thrill of expectancy.
637-40. hangs, i.e. seems to the distant spectator to be in the
clouds. equinoctial winds, "the trade-winds, which blow from east to
west at the time of the equinoxes " (Bradshaw); afterwards (640) M.
transfers " trading" from the wind to the sea. close, i.e. together, so as to
form, seen from far, a single object-like the single figure of Satan.
M. had in his mind's eye a fleet of East Indiamen (Newton). The
importance of the East Indian trade, especially the Dutch, is felt in
Dryden's Annus Mirabilis; cf. especially stanzas 2, 3, 4, 24-30, and 304,
with its picture of merchantmen "doubling the Cape" (cf. 64r). Cf.
also Marvell's description of the merchant ships sunk in the Thames to
prevent the victorious Dutch going further up the river in 1667 (Last
Instructions to a Painter, 660-74).
638. Bengala, a relic of the old form Bangdli=aBengal. In
Hexham's ed. of AMercator's Atlas the Bay of Bengal is marked " Golfo
di Bengala" in the map of Asia. Some of our earliest tradingsettlements were along the Bengal coast (cf. 2-4, note).
639. Ternate and Tidore, two of the Moluccas or ' Spice Islands'
in the Malay Archipelago, close together. Hexham   describes the
"Molluccoes" as "famous throughout the world, in regard of the
abundance of all sorts of sweete spices, but especially for the Cloues
which come from them...Tidor and Ternate are the principallest"
(I. 423, 424).
640. they, the ships. flood; used similarly of the sea by Shakespeare, e.g. in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. I. 127, " Marking the
embarked traders on the flood."
641. A glance at the map will show that Milton uses " the wide
Ethiopian" (i.e. sea)=the Indian Ocean-that is, the ocean east of
Africa. This was in accordance with classical usage, zEthiopia being


P. L.


27




4I8


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


limited to the only part of Africa south of the Red Sea which the
ancients knew, namely, its eastern coast. Gradually the use of the term
"Ethiopia" expanded with the progress of Portuguese geographical
discovery westward, until it applied to the vast region stretching from
ocean to ocean. And the name " Ethiopic Sea" was transferred from
the sea washing its eastern shores, which had come to be known as the
"Indian Ocean" (Mare Indicum), to the sea on its western side.
Thus in Hexham's Mercator, in the map of Africa, I find the name
Oceanus,Ethziopicus given to the sea west of Africa-what we call
the ' South Atlantic'; and in the letterpress the terms "'_Ethiopicke
Ocean," "AEthiopicke Sea," are always used so. The same is the case
in Heylin's map of Africa; while speaking of the Atlantic, he says,
"some parts hereof, which wash the Westerne Shores of (Ethiopia
Inferior, be called the CEthiopick Ocean" (Cosmographzy, Lib. IV. 7I).
One can scarce do else than conclude that for Milton's readers the
title Ethiopian might more naturally have meant the South Atlantic
(or western sea), not the Indian Ocean (= Oceanus Orientalis in
Mercator).
641, 642. Cape, of Good Hope. stemmting, pressing forward, i.e.
breasting the waves; cf. Julius Ccesar, I. 2. o09. thepole, the South
Pole.
643-48. Cf. 434-37. For nine as a sacred number, see I. 50.
impaled, encircled.  The double alliteration (i...i and p...p) has a fine
effect of emphasis.
648-73. The basis of the allegory of Sin and Death lies, appropriately, in Scripture: "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth
forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death,"James i. IS.
In ix. i2 Death is called the "shadow" of Sin, and in the poem we never
meet with them apart. How far M. means us to read an allegorical
meaning into his description is hard to say. I doubt, e.g., whether the
"yelling monsters " (795) should be regarded as typifying " the mental
torments that are the consequence of sin" (Keightley). To me they
seem to be introduced-without allegorical intent-partly because they
intensify the element of mere horror, partly for the sake of the literary
parallel. On the other hand, the "mortal sting" is plainly symbolical;
cf. i Cor. xv. 56.
650. the one. Milton's figure of Sin is own sister to Spenser's Error
(The Faerie Queene, I. I. 14, 5) and Phineas Fletcher's Hamartia or Sin
(The Purple Island, XII. 27-cf. also his Apollyonists, i. 0o et seq.):
their common origin being the classical accounts of Scylla, notably
Ovid's (Metamorphoses xiv.) and Vergil's (/Eneid III. 424 et seq.).
It is therefore as a study in a familiar style, not as a fresh creation,




NOTES.


419


that the picture should be viewed. So with his figure of Death. The
subject of his poem, in itself, supplied him with few characters.
65I, 652. So Hesiod describes Echidna, Theogony 298.
voluminous; perhaps with the literal sense 'in rolls or folds' (Lat.
volumen, from volvere, 'to roll'); cf. Pope, lWindsor Forest, "The silver
eel in shining volumes roll'd." So in Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, st. 123.
654-56. cry, pack. Cerberean, as of Cerberus, the many-headed
dog that guarded the entrance to Hades. list, wished, chose.
659-6I. According to the legend, Circe threw magic herbs into
the waters where Scylla bathed, so that she was changed in the way
M. implies. See Bacon's application of the myth Ih 7he Advancement
of Learning, I. 4. 6. abhorred, to be abhorred.  Calabria, in South
Italy. Trinacria, Sicily, so called from its triangular shape.
662. the night-hag; probably Hecate, the goddess of sorcery, is
meant. Cf. Macbeth, Ill. 5 (from which M. quotes in Comus, Io17),
especially so, where Hecate says, "I am for the air," and Dryden,
Annus Mirabilis, st. 248. See Comits, I35.
called, i.e. invoked to take part in rites; cf. Macbeth, Ill. 5. 8 and
34 (" Hark! I am call'd ").
664. infant blood; alluding to an ancient superstition. When the
witches in Jonson's Masque of Queens assemble and relate what they
have been doing, one says: " Under a cradle I did creep, By day; and
when the child was asleep, At night I sucked the breath"; whereto the
next: " I had a dagger: what did I with that? Killed an infant." In
the footnote Jonson adds, "Their killing of infants is common...
Sprenger reports that a witch confessed to have killed above forty
infants...which she had offered to the devil"; and then he cites
authorities, e.g. Horace, Epod. v. Cf., perhaps, Macbeth, Iv. I. 30.
to dance; like the witches in Macbeth; cf. iv. I. 32, stage-direction,
"The Witches dance, and then vanish, with Hecate." So Jonson
makes his witches, in the midst of their rites, fall "into a sudden
magical dance"-commenting that this is in accordance with tradition
(Masqze of Queens). Upon the significance of the custom, see Tylor's
Primitive Culture, II. I33.
665. Lapland was traditionally a home of witchcraft; cf. Burton's
Anatomy, I. ii. I, 2 ("Digression of Spirits"), The Comedy of Errors, Iv.
3. II, "Lapland sorcerers," and Hzidibras, III. I. 113, 114. Heylyn
calls the Laplanders "great sorcerers" (Cosmography, II. I22). Their
chief instrument of divination was an oval cylinder or drum figured with
various designs, notably of the moon and heavenly bodies. See " Regnard's Journey to Lapland" (i68I), which contains a full account of
the 'sorcerers' and their incantations; also the narrative of Leems
27-2




420


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


(I767), on the "Magic Arts of the Laplanders" (both in Pinkerton's
Voyages, 1808, vol. I.).
665, 666.   The belief that the moon (see I. 785, 786) and
heavenly bodies are affected by magic is very old and widespread.
Cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. II. xii. I, "As for the Moone, mortall men
imagine that by Magicke sorcerie, and charms, she is inchaunted"
(Philemon Holland's translation, i60o). See Vergil, Ecl. viI. 69,
Ovid, Metamorfphoses V1I. 192 et seq., Horace, Epod. v. 45, 46. Marlowe's Doctor Faustus claims (III. 38) that Mephistophilis must do
" whatever Faustus shall command,
Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere."
So in Fairfax, Tasso, IX. I5, " The moon and stars for fear of spirites
were fled," and xIII. 9.
labouring; cf. Cowper (translating Milton's Italian sonnet to
Diodati), "And from  her sphere draw down the labouring moon."
So Lat. labores= 'eclipse,' laborare, 'to suffer eclipse.' Cf. Vergil,
Georg. II. 478, defectus solis varios, lunaque labores.
666. the other Shape. Joseph Warton thought that Milton owed
the " person of Death" to the OdvaTos of Euripides in the Alcestis;
cf. the Sonnet, "On his Deceased Wife."  But Death as a personified
figure had been described by Spenser (F. Q. vII. 7. 46), and introduced
(as Todd noted) in Morality and early Elizabethan plays. I daresay
too that a similar allegorical presentment might be found in some
popular Book of Emblems, or in the famous wood-cuts, The Dance of
Death (1538). In any case we must remember that the tendency to
personify (fostered by the very important influence of the Morality-plays
and, later, of the Masque) was a characteristic of early i7th century
poetry. Roughly it may be said that this allegorising habit came from
the Latin tendency to personify abstract words, the two great masters
of it being Dante and Spenser.
670. Cf. Homer's epe/jv.J VVUKTI OLKtS, Od. XI. 605 (Newton).
672. The "dart" of Death, a symbol of the force by which humanity
is laid low, is mentioned in XI. 49I.
what seemed. In his fine criticism of this passage Coleridge notes
how the abstract vagueness of such description appeals to the imagination with a subtle force which concrete, more clearly defined, imagery
would lack altogether. Cf. IV. 990.
673. a kingly crown; cf.Job xviii. 14, Rev. vi. 2.
677. admired, wondered; cf. I. 690.
678, 679. Strictly, the construction includes "God and his Son"
among "created things "; but the sense is clear.
686, 687. taste, i.e. its effects. Hell-born! echoed in 697.




NOTES.


421


688. Goblin, demon, evil spirit. Cowper remarks on the variety of
titles for Death: "the poet...seems to exhaust both invention and
language for subtle appellations."
692. See Rev. xii. 4, and cf. v. 7Io, vi. 156. In IX. 141, 142
Satan boasts that his followers were "well nigh half" the angels. Their
number was a point of dispute among the Schoolmen.
693. conjured, sworn together (conjurati).
695. waste, spend, pass; cf. The Temnpest, v. 302.
7oi. whip of scorpions.  Cf. I Kings xii..
706. deform= Lat. deformis, 'hideous, unsightly.'
706 —I. Cf. IV. 985 et seq. (Satan's meeting with Gabriel).
708. The comparison of a warrior clad in armour to a comet
is at least as old as the -Eneid (x. 272, 273), and is finely employed by Tasso (II. 52). The vast scale of the simile here conveys a
profound impression of Satan's majesty.
709. Ophiuchus, a constellation of the northern (cf. "arctic") hemisphere, consisting of some 80 stars and extending about forty degrees in
length: lit. 'the Serpent-holder,' from Gk. o0ts, 'a snake' and exetv;
Lat. Angnitenens or Serpentarius; cf. Heywood's Hierarchie (p. 124),
and for an apt illustration of the simile, Henry More's Song of the Soul:
"Ye flaming comets wandering on high,
And new-fixt starres found in that Circle blue,
The one espide in glittering Cassiopie,
The other near to Ophiuchus high."
71o, 711. The appearance of a comet was traditionally held an
omen, generally of disaster. Cf. a passage in Batman vppon Bartholome (X582), VIII. 32, curiously like this: " Comneta is a starre beclipped
with burning gleames...and is sodeinly bred and betokeneth changing
of kings, and is a token of pestilence or of war...and they spread their
beames toward the North " (= "arctic sky").  horrid hair, i.e. the tail
of the comet (= Ko/r-q7rtS, 'long-haired,' from  K6itI, 'hair').  Cf.
I Henry VI. I. I. 2, 3:
"Comets, importing change of times and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky."
711. Cf. the encounter of Michael and Satan in the battle in
Heaven, compared to the clash of two planets, vi. 3Io-15.
715, 716. Cf. Dryden:
"Lightning and thunder (heaven's artillery)
As harbingers before th' Almighty fly."
But the phrase was common. Caspian; chosen as typical in poets
of a tempestuous region; cf. Tasso vI. 38, The Faerie Queene, II.
7. I4.




422


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


719. so, thus; completing the simile; cf. 947, I. 209, 311, 775.
that, so that; a constant use in M. Cf. lTe Tezzpest, I. 2. 370, 371:
"[I'll] make thee roar,
That beasts shall tremble at thy din."
722. foe, i.e. Christ. See I Cor. xv. 25, 26, fIeb. ii. 14.
730. and knovw'st, though knowing; in original eds. not a question.
739- spares to, refrains from; cf. Lat. parcere followed by infinitive.
So M. in prose; cf. Of Reformation in England, I, "neither doth the
author spare to record," P. W. II. 4 11.
746. Phineas Fletcher in his Apollyonists has the line, "The
Porter to th' infernall gate is Sin."
749-51. By a fitting stroke of allegory, the birth of Sin is made
to synchronise with the first sign of disobedience in Heaven.
755-58.   As Athene sprang from the head of Zeus.
787-89. Cf. Georgic IV. 525-27 (with Pope's imitation, St Cecilia's
Day, vi.), nwhere the river-banks re-echo the name 'Eurydice'; also
Tennyson's AIerlin and Vivien (end). Other Vergilian references are
Eclogue VI. 43, 4, tEneid II. 53.
809. So Satan recognises Fate as the highest power (I. i 6, note).
813. To tetmper metal is to harden it by cooling after it has been
heated; cf. I. 285, VI. 322. mortal dint, deadly blow.
815. lore, lesson, what he had to learn (lore and learn cognate).
Note the change in his tone. When in bk. Ix. Eve tells (659-63)
Satan that she may not touch the forbidden fruit under pain of death,
Satan affects (695) not to know what death is. He is "the father
of lies."
8 8. pledge; cf. the use of Lat. pigtus.
823. Cf. VI. 877 (note).
825. pretences, claims; or ' designs, ambitions'; cf. vI. 421.
829. unfounded, bottomless, lit. 'having no base' (Lat.fitendis).
830. foretold; see 345-53.
833. purlieus, outskirts.
836, 837. surcharged, overfull. broils, turmoils; Fr. broniller.
839-44. Cf. x. 397-409, where after the Temptation Satan bids
Sin and Death make Mankind their prey and the Earth their possession-"There dwell and reign in bliss."  See Psalm xlix. 14.
842. buzxom, yielding.   Cf. v. 270, and   The Faerie Queene,
I. iI. 37, "And therewith scourge the buxome aire so sore." The
phrase is a reminiscence, as Keightley noted, of Horace's pete cedenteme
['yielding'] aera disco (Sat. II. 2. 13).  embalmed, made fragrant;
cf. balmty='fragrant,' from balm ='aromatic resin or oil.'
847. famine, hunger; "the cause for the efhect" (Cowper).




NOTES.                         423
855. might; the edition of I678 (the third) has wight (from
613?).
868. Iomer's OEol Petia )LOVr7E, Iliad vI. 138; cf. Cozutts, 2-6,
and Tennyson, (LEno'te:
"the Gods who have attain'd
Rest in a happy place and quiet seats
Above the thunder, with undying bliss."
There is a similar passage in The Lotos-Eaters, 8.
869. As the Son sits at the right hand of the Father (v. 606,
vI. 892); profane sarcasm seems intended.
SSo. The sound, especially the r sound, echoes the sense; see II.
594, 595, note.
883, 884. That Sin cannot close the gates is symbolical.
885. that, so that; cf. 719.
889. re(doundting, in clouds, volleys; Lat. redundare, 'to overflow.'
890. In this picture of Chaos, to be compared with Ovid's, AMetamorphoses I. 5-20, Milton labours (as Masson notes) to convey to the reader
an impression of the utter confusion of the scene described: heaping image
on image, idea on idea, by which the imagination may be baffled (e.g.
in 892-94), and the mind bewildered with an insistent sense of the
inconceivable. And the rhythm heightens the effect. It is to this part
of P. L. that M. alludes in III. 15-2I.
89r. "One would think the deep to be hoary,"Job xli. 32. Perhaps
secrets='secret places,' Lat. secreta, here and again in 972 (Newton).
894-96. "All the ancient naturalists [i.e. men of science], philosophers, and poets held that Chaos was the first principle of all things;
and the poets particularly make Night a Goddess, and represent NigAht
or darkness, and Chaos or confusion, as exercising uncontrolled dominion
from the beginning" (Newton). But in personifying Chaos as a distinct
divinity Milton seems to have extended the classical conception. Iis
epithets referring to the antiquity of Night ("the ancestress of gods
and men") are drawn from the classics. (See Osgood, s.v. "Chaos"
and "Night.") Nature, the created Universe.
898. The four "elements" are meant, Milton's terms for them
being, I suppose, proverbial; cf. Drummond of Hawthornden, Flowers
of Sion (" The Muses' Library" edition of Drummond's Works, ii. 9).
See 274, 275, note, 912, Ill. 714, 715 (closely parallel); and cf. Dryden,
St Cecilia's Day, I-i:
"From harmony, from heav'nly harmony
This universal frame [cf. 924] began.
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,




424            PARADISE LOST.        BOOK    II.
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high:
Arise, ye more than dead.
Then cold and hot and moist and dry
In order to their stations leap,
And Musick's pow'r obey."
899. maste)y.   The original editions have the curious form
Maistrie, up till the fourth (x688), which changes to Ifast'ry.
900. embryon, embryo; the semina rerum of Lucretius.
903, 904. unnumbered, innumerable. Barca...Cyrene, the chief
cities of Cyrenaica in northern Africa, a region often treated as typical
of sand. Cf. Fairfax, Tasso, xvII. 5, "From Syria's coasts as far as
Cirene sands."
905, 906. levied, raised (Fr. lever), but also with the notion 'to levy
troops'-cf. "warring winds"; it qualifies sands. poise, give weight to
(Fr. peser). their...wings, i.e. of the winds. lighter, which would be
too light but for the sand.
906, 907. i.e. the element, or champion, to whom for the moment
most atoms cling, is victor.
90o-27. Satan's pause is artfully contrived so as to enable the
poet to describe Chaos without seeming to delay the narrative
(Richardson).
911. As Nature, i.e. the Universe, was born out of Chaos (="this
Abyss"), so may she at last fall back again into Chaos. He is varying
an old thought, that all things proceed from Nature and, perishing, pass
back into Nature. Cf. Romeo anddJuliet, II. 3. 9, 1o:
"The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
What is her burying grave that is her womb";
and Tennyson, Lucretius, "the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature"
(from Lucretius v. 260, omniparens eadem rerun commune sepulcrum).
The idea occurs also in Shakespeare's 86th Sonnet.
918, 9I9. i.e. standing looked. frith, channel, estuary,firth.
921, 922. Cf. Vergil's sic parvis componere magna solebam, Eel. I.
24, aild Georg. Iv. 176, siparva licet componere magnis; so in VI. 310,
3i I, x.,65, P. R. Iv. 563, 564. Bellona, the goddess of war; cf. Ilacbeth, I.:. 54.
923. engines; probably cannon are meant.
924. frame, fabric, structure.
927. steadfast, i.e. according to the Ptolemaic system; cf. VIII. 32
("the sedentary Earth"). vans, wings, Ital. vanni.
933. pennons, i.e. pinions, Lat. pennce.
934. fathom; in the original editionfadom (cf. the Middle E. form




NOTES.


425


fadme), and M. himself evidently intended this spelling, since the Ms. of
Comus (in his own beautiful handwriting) has the cancelled line " And
halfe the slow unfadom'd poole of styx " (i.e. Styx). The d sound gives
a stronger sense of depth.
937. instinct, filled, charged with. nilre, saltpetre.
939. Syrtis, quicksand.
941. consistence, substance or mixture, of sea and land.
943-47. Cf. Herodotus iii. Ii6, "The northern parts of Europe
are very much richer in gold than any other region: but how it is procured I have no certain knowledge. The story runs, that the one-eyed
Arimaspi purloin it from the griffins" (Rawlinson); and IV. 13, 27, where
he speaks of "the gold-guarding (Xpuv-o6XaKces) griffins." Pliny (Nat.
Hist. vii. 2) says that these Arimaspi live near the Scythians, "toward
the pole Arkticke," and that they "maintaine warre ordinarily about
the mettall mines of gold, especially with griffons, a kind of wild beasts
that flie, and use to fetch gold out of the veines of those mines: which
savage beasts strive as eagerly to keepe and hold those golden mines, as
the Arimaspians to disseize them thereof, and to get away the gold from
them" (Philemon Holland's translation, i6oi, I. 154). See Lucan,
Pharsalia II. 280, VIi. 756.
The legend, which Sir Thomas Browne places among his Vulgar
Errors, III. xi., may have had some connection with the fact that gold
is found in the Ural mountains near which the Arismaspi were thought
to dwell.
943. gryphon, a mythic monster, a sort of chimera; "sum men seyn
that thei han the body upward as an eagle, and benethe as a lyoune....
But a griffoun hathe the body more gret, and is more strong thanne
viij. lyouns, and more gret and strongere than an c (i.e. ioo) egles,
suche as we han amonges us"-Sir John Mandeville, who knew a
country where the "griffoun" was quite common. See The Faerie
Queene, I. 5. 8. Jonson makes it a type of "swiftness and strength,"
Masque of Queens.
945. Herodotus (iv. 27) says that the name Arimaspi means
'one-eyed,' "in the Scythian language."
948. dense, or rare, i.e. matter now thick, packed close-now thin;
raro e denso, as Dante says (Paradiso, II. 67, XXII. 141); "dense," or
"condense" (vi. 353), and "rare" are exact opposites. The rhythm
expresses the difficulty of Satan's journey.
958, 959. i.e. the nearest way to the point where darkness borders
on light. There should be no comma after "lies."
959-67. This picture of the palace of Chaos is as conventional and
classical as that of Sin. Cf. the cave of Death, thronged with personified Shapes of evil and disease (xI. 477-93); or the abode of Murder




426


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


in Milton's Latin poem on the Gunpowder plot, In Quintum N Aovcmnbris,
139-54. So Spenser describes the palace of Pluto: Payne and Strife
at his side: Revenge, Treason, Hate hard by: Care guarding the door
(The Faerie Qieene, II. 7. 21-25).  Such passages owe their similarity
to their common origin, viz. Vergil's account of the realm of Pluto,.Eneid VI. 273 —8. Of 959-63 Pope has a most felicitous parody in
The Dunciad, iv. (ad fin.); see also canto I. where he makes Dulness
the "Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night." Indeed, all Pope's burlesque of epic machinery and style, in 7'e Rape of the Lock and The
Dunciad, derives, I think, more from Paradise Lost than from the
classics. The same Miltonic influence is strongly felt in Gray's satirical
Hymnn to Ignorance, which starts, as his editors note, with a humorous
echo of P. L. I. 250.
960, 961. pavilion, palace; see Psalm xviii. Ir. wide...wasteful
(=vast, desolate), Milton's favourite form of alliteration. Cf. Ndat. Ode,
51, 64, Arcades, 47, Lycioas, 13, and compounds of wide; see VI. 253,
XI. I21, 487, I/ Penseroso, 75.
962. In Euripides, Ion I 150, u/eXLurre7rXos is said of night.
963. consort; in Hesiod (Theogony 123) Night is the daughter of
Chaos. It has been said that Milton sometimes makes his own
mythology, e.g. in his genealogy of Mirth, L'Allegro, i-8.
964. O-rcus, Adces; Lat. and Greek names of Pluto, god of Hell.
964, 965. zname of Demo'gorgon = Demogorgon himself; a Latinism.
Devmogorgon, a deity supposed to be alluded to by Lucan, Pharsalia vI.
744, and said to be first mentioned by name by Lactantius (fourth
century A.D.); also to be mentioned by the Italian writers, Boccaccio,
Boiardo, Tasso, and Ariosto.
Spenser makes Demogorgon the lord of Chaos —"Downe in the
bottome of the deepe Abysse "-The Faerie Queene, iv. 2. 47; Marlowe
recognises him as co-ruler with Beelzebub of the nether world, Fauzstzs,
llI. 18; Greene speaks of "Demogorgon, master of the fates," Friar
Bacon, xi. Io, and "Demogorgon, ruler of the fates," Orlando Fturioso;
and he is an important character in Shelley's Prometheus Unlbozund.
Apparently too he is identical with the " Great Gorgon prince of darkness and dead night," at the sound of whose name "Cocytus quakes,
and Styx is put to flight" (The Faerie Quecne, I. I. 37). The name has
been considered a corruption of 87itouvpyo6s; it is at least noticeable
that Demogorgon became the patron of alchemists. Thus Howell,
in his instructions for Forraine 'Travell, calls alchemists "devout
Naturalists and Disciples of Demogorgon" (Arber's ed., p. Si).
967. "A   thousand busy tongues the goddess bears"-Pope describing Fame (Temple of Fame).
977. confine with, border on.




NOTES.


427


983-86.   Cf. iv. 665-67.
988. Anarch; cf. 7he DZunciad, iv. 655.
989. izcomposed, disturbed, discomposed (Lat. incomp.ositus).
993-98. See the closely parallel passage, vI. 87 —74.
looi. oar; so the original editions; changed by some to your. But
by our Chaos proclaims himself an ally with Satan against their common
foe: their cause is the same.
1004, oo5. Hleaven, the sky of this world. chain; see o05i.
ioo6. Heavncz; here the Empyrean is meant.
oo07-9. Chaos, we see, directs Satan's course, as he had been
asked (980), and wishes him good speed. Yet when Satan, after the
Temptation, descends to Iell and announces to his followers the result
of his mission (x. 460 et seq.), he pretends that Chaos had "fiercely
opposed" (478) his journey.
ioII. Cf. xi. 750.
'1o7, loi8. Argo, the vessel in which Jason and the o5 Argonauts
sailed to AEa (afterwards called Colchis) to fetch the golden fleece.
Bospoorus, the Thracian Bosporus, now the Straits of Constantinople;
connecting the Propontis (Sea of Marmora) with the Pontus Euxinus
(Black Sea). At its eastern entrance, i.e. where it opens into the
Black Sea, stood two rocks, one on either side, the Symjplegades, so
called (from Gk. rvv + rXraofetv, 'to strike'), because when a ship was
passing through they clashed together and crushed it. By the advice
of the seer Phineus and the help of H-era, the Argonauts managed to
pass, and thenceforth the rocks were fixed motionless. Juvenal calls
them concurrentia saxa (Sat. xv. 19), i.e. "justling."
11o9, IOo2. Scylla (660) and Charybdis were two rocks, close
together, in the Straits of Messina between Italy and Sicily. The
currents or whirlpools were so strong that sailors seeking to avoid
the one rock were generally driven on the other: whence the proverbial
line, from the Alexandreis of Philip Gaultier, incidis in Scyllamn cupiens
vitare Charybdim. Cf. Milton's pamphlet the Animadversions, 4:
"you have rowed yourself fairly between the Scylla and Charybdis,
either of impudence or nonsense," P. W. iI. 67. It is a very common
poetic allusion; cf. The Merchant of Venice, III. 5. I8-2o.
larboard, the left side of a ship; Ulysses, by steering to the left,
nearer to Scylla, thus avoided Charybdis on his right.
1o28. a bridge; see x. 293 et seq.
1032, 1033. For the thought that Guardian Angels watch over men,
see Comzus, 216-20, 453-69, S. A. 1431. In The Christian Doctrine,
r. 9, Milton deals with the ministry on earth of Angels. Todd quotes
Richard I!. v. 3. 175, "God and good angels fight on Richmond's side."




428


PARADISE LOST. BOOK II.


I034. Cf. Ix. 107 (said of the stars), and 192. sacred; since "God
is light," III. 3. Cf. Dante's lume santo in the Paradiso, Ix. 7.
I037. gli'mmering dawn. Cf. Lycidas, 26, where the MS. shows
that M. first wrote " Under the glinimmering eyelids of the morne," but
substituted opening-which heightens the personification.
Jo39. her outmost works, i.e. Nature's.
1042-44. holds, makes for; cf. Lat. tenere, which implies, also,
reaching a destination (portum, terrami etc.).
1048. undetermlined qualifying heaven. "Its extent was such that
from the portion that was seen the eye could not determine whether its
margin was straight or curved" (Keightley). See x. 38[. "Take a
segment of a great circle, and you shall doubt whether it be straight or no"
(Selden, Table- Talk, Reynolds' ed., p. 198).
o050. living sapphire; again in IV. 605. M. is fond of this use of
living, exactly = 'vivid.' Cf. Dante's la viva lice of Paradise (xxiii. 31,
xxxI. 46), and vivo Itzme (xxxiII. Iio).
o05I. golden chain; alluding to Homer's story of the golden chain
of Zeus, suspended from Heaven, whereby he can draw up the gods,
and the earth and sea, and the whole universe, though they cannot draw
him down (Iliad VIII. I8-27). Cf. Chapman, Shadow of Night, "The
golden chain of Homer's high device."  Plato (Thecetetus 153 c) interprets it of the Sun. It is curious to note how poets apply the story.
Spenser uses it of the chain of Ambition by which men strive to rise in
the world (The Faerie Querne, II. 7. 46, 47). Dryden, in his character
of "The Good Parson," says:
"For, letting down the golden chain from high,
He drew his audience upward to the sf<y."
Milton himself in his Latin piece De Spherarum Concents says that
Homer meant the golden chain as a symbol of the chain of connection
and design that runs through the universe; and Pope follows him
(Essay on 2an, I. 33, 34):
"Is the great chain that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee?"
Jonson (AMasque of Hymen-see his note) writes of marriage, "Such was
the golden chain let down from heaven"; and Tennyson of prayer
(Morte D'Arthur):
"For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."
Among prose-references we may add Bacon, The Advancement of
Learning, I. i. 3, and ii. vi. I ("that excellent and divine fable, of the
golden chain"); Drummond of Hawthornden's Platonic discourse on
Death entitled A Cypress Grove (I623)-see "The Muses' Library" ed.,




NOTES.


429


II. 265; and Sir Thomas Browne: " There is a nearer way to heaven
than Homer's chain" ('Religo ilAedici, I. xviii.).
1052, 1053. i.e. the Universe, hung in space, looked in comparison
with the Empyrean as small as some minor star which being close to
the moon's superior light seems insignificant. Cf. Tennyson:
"a candle in the sun
Is all but smoke-a star beside the moon
Is all but lost" (Queen AMary, v. i).
"This pendent world," as Newton notes, cannot mean the Earth,
which Satan does not see till he has gained entrance through the outer
surface of the Universe (Ill. 498-543).
In IV. Iooo M. uses a similar expression-"the pendulous round
Earth"-in a different sense. There the Earth itself is meant, and
"pendulous" expresses its relation ("self-balanced," VII. 242) to
surrounding space within the Universe.
BOOK III.
The exordium ( —55), apart from its beauty of thought and diction,
has a twofold interest-personal, in that it is touched with the pathos
of Milton's resignation under his affliction of blindness; artistic, in that
it is a fitting prelude to a fresh development in the action of the poem.
Hitherto the scene has been the gloomy regions of Hell or Chaos: now
our imagination is lifted to the Empyrean and the new-created Universe,
still in its primal splendour. The transition from darkness to light is
aptly marked by this celebrated introduction.
Lines I, 2 and 2r-26 are (I believe) the first lines quoted from
Paradise Lost in any work by a writer contemporary with Milton. They
are cited contemptuously in The Transproser Rehears'd, or the Fifth Act
of Mr Bayes's Plasy, Oxford, I673, by Richard Leigh of Queen's College
(see Notes and Queries, iv. I. 456, 457); the title of which is an obvious
echo of Marvell's controversy with Parker (see p. 366).
I, 2. Either Light was subsequent to the Deity, as being the first
thing created by Him, or Light existed from Eternity equally with
Him. See vii. 243-52 (with notes).
first-born; cf. VII. 244, and S. A. 70, "Light, the prime work of
God, to me is extinct," and 83, "0 first-created beam."
It has been well said that there is something peculiarly personal and
sensitive in Milton's references to light.
2, 3. i.e. or may I, without blame, call,"express") thee co-eternal
with the Deity? since; he gives his reasons (from Scripture) for




430


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


terming Light "co-eternal."  Cf. i John i. 5, "God is light," and
I Tim. vi. i6, "Who only hath immortality dwelling in the light
which no man can approach unto."
4. The passage in Thomson's Summer beginning, "How shall
I then attempt to sing," is a typical example of the spell that Milton
exercised over him and his contemporaries, especially in the sphere of
blank verse.
7. hear'st thou rather, dost thou prefer to be called? A classicism;
cf. Gk. KX6\vI, Lat. audire, as in Horace's seu Jane libentius audis
(Sat. II. vi. 20).  So M. in his Lat. poems, e.g. in the E  sitaphium
Damonis, 209, sive cequior azudis I Diodotus; also in his prose-works,
e.g. in Areopagitica, "what more national corruption, for which England
hears ill abroad [KaKWS KX65et, male audit], than household gluttony?"
(P. W/. II. 73).
9-12.   Genesis i. 3-5. zuert; an old preterite, cognate with was.
io. invest, enwrap; Lat. investire. Cf. I. 2o8.
i2. won from the...infinite, formed out of the realm of Chaos.
void, i.e. of form, not of matter.
I3-i 5. wing...flight. His favourite metaphor, "wing" (likepenna)
being a natural emblem of that which uplifts the poet's genius. Cf. I. 14.
I4. the Stygian pool, i.e. Hell. The phrase occurs in a cancelled
line (early) of the Comus MS. Dante speaks of himself as having passed
"from the deepest pool [dall' infima lacuna] of the universe," i.e.
from Inferno, up to Paradise (Paradiso, xxxIII. 22-24).
long detained; the action of books I. and II. (up to 927) being laid in
Hell.
I6. ltter...darkness, of Hell, as always in M. (cf. I. 72, v. 614):
middle darkness, of Chaos. M. means that in II. 629-1055 he described the flight of Satan through Hell, and thence upward through
Chaos towards Heaven. utter, outer.
i7. i.e. with loftier strains than those of the Orphic Hymn to
Night (one of the poems of unknown authorship attributed to the
mythic Orpheus). M. says "other," implying 'greater,' because he
regarded himself as literally an inspired teacher-perhaps in the same
sense that the Hebrew prophets were inspired. See I. 17-26, note.
19. the heavenly Muse, Urania, the power whom he invokes
at the beginning of the poem (i. 6).
20, 21. An echo of.Eneid VI. 126-29; cf. II. 432, 433. rare,
seldom achieved. safe; carrying on the idea of "escaped" (14).
25, 26. drop serene... dim suffusion. See Appendix, pp. 682, 683.
quenched; the metaphor of putting out a light; cf. S. A. 95.
orbs; used of the eye-balls; cf. oculorum  orbes in Zneid XII.
670, and Gk. K6K\Xo, e.g. in Sophocles, Antigone 974 (67O&TCrvP K6KXot).




NOTES.


431


26-29.   His love of literature, in particular classical poetry, has
not failed. He is still devoted to those ancient poets inspired by the
Muses (note the plural here and contrast I9) who haunted the "hill'
of Helicon, with its "clear springs" Aganippe and Hippocrene (where
was the famous "grove" of the Muses), and Parnassus with the famed
Castalian fountain.
29. So Vergil (Georo. II. 476) describes himself as serving the
Muses, inzenti percussezs amore.
sacred; in the general sense 'divine.'
29-32. But his love of the classics is exceeded by his love of
Scripture. "Sion hill" (i. io), and "Siloa's brook" (I. ii) and the
brook Kidron: these scenes and the literature associated with themthe Psalms of David and the works of the singers of Israel-are dearest
to him. See the closely similar lines in bk. i. (6-13). For Milton's
preference of sacred Hebrew poetry to classical, cf. P. t'. Iv. 346, 347,
where he makes our Saviour say that the works of Greek poets
"Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling."
And in The Reason of Church Governmentz, i (Preface), he pronounces
"those frequent songs throughout the law and prophets...over all the
kinds of lyric poesy...incomparable," P. W. II. 479.
32. nightly. Milton was best inspired at night or daybreak. This
is clear from VII. 28-30 and IX. 2I1-24.  Newton in his Life of M.
says that the poet's widow, "being asked...who the Muse was, replied
it was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly."
(Cf. Shakespeare's famous 86th Sonnet.) Johnson refers to the statement
in Richardson's Life of Milton (1734), that M. "would sometimes lie
awake whole nights...and on a sudden his poetical faculty would
rush upon him with an impetus, and his daughter was immediately
called to secure what came" (a similar story is told of Pope).
nor sometimes forget, and constantly call to mind; see v. 178, note.
33. those other two, i.e. Thamyris and Maeonides, poets as well as
" prophets"-rather than Tiresias and Phineus, "prophets" alone.
equalled...in fate, i.e. blind.
34. i.e. and would that I might be equal; a parenthesis.
so; probably=Lat. sic introducing an imperative clause, i.e. as a
formula of wishing; cf. Horace's sic te diva potens etc., Od. I. 3. I-4.
M. apparently uses this Latin "formula of invocation" several times;
cf. P. R. II. I25, Lycidas, 19.
35.  Thanyris; according to Homer, Iliad II. 595-600, a Thracian
bard, who, for boasting that he could surpass the Muses in song, was
deprived of his sight and of the power of singing. Plato mentions him
together with Orpheus twice (Laws viII. 829 E, R'epublic x. 620 A).




432            PAI
Meaonides, i.e. H(
or as a native of A,
also called Meonius
Mconium carmen.
" Argument worthy c.:
Pope ironically lami
George II. (Satires, I
"Oh! cc
Your al
See also the quotatic
Homer's blindness is
Delian Apollo.
36. Tiresias, th(
fEdipus Rex of Sopl
Tiresias. In De Idel
cPer whnpe hlindlnpec


ST. BOOK III.


VMsonides, either as a son of Meon,:ient name of Lydia. Hence he is
his poems the Mceonie charts or
the praise of Queen Elizabeth an.;uill" (The Faerie Queene, II. o1. 3)..  cannot do justice to the merits of
on the Maonian wing,
r:ons, your repose to sing!":sworth on p. 688. The tradition of; early as the Homeric Hymn to the
sayer of Thebes, famous through the
Lny other works down to Tennyson's, 6, M. refers to him as "the Theban
-iept illminntinn "'   n in thte p.' ond


Defence (P. W. I. 236), where he is speaking of his own affliction.
Phineus, another blind prophet, king of Salmydessus in Thrace;
best known in connection with the Harpies (3Eneid III. 2I11-I3), from
whose torments two of the Argonauts freed him. In his second Letter
to Leonard Philaras (Sept. 28, I654) M. compares himself with Phineus,
quoting the account of the prophet's blindness in the Argonautica of
Apollonius Rhodius.
Dante was another sufferer, though from weakness of sight not
blindness, and seems to allude similarly to the fact in the Inferno, II.
97-98, where the note in the "Temple" edition gives other references,
e.g. the Vita Nuova, XL. 27-34.
38. numbers, verse. the wakeful bird, the nightingale, Milton's
favourite bird, if we may judge by his many references to it. See Iv.
602, 603, VII. 435, 436, II Penseroso, 56-64.
44. human face divine; his favourite word-order; cf. 396, 439,
692. See I. 733, note.
45. Cf. I. 22, 23 ("what in me is dark" etc.).. dark; an adj.=
noun is common in M.; cf. 380.
5o. and wisdom...shut out; an absolute construction, added
rather loosely as a sort of climax to the whole sentence. Cf. Lycidas,
128, I29:
"Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said."
This elliptical idiom occurs in Milton's prose-works. Cf. the Animadversions, 4: "seeing the power of Thy grace is not passed away with the
primitive times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but Thy Kingdom is
now at hand, and Thou standing at the door" (P. W. III. 72, 90).




NOTES.


433


55. His favourite claim (in some degree, traditional with epic
poets) to peculiar inspiration and novelty of theme.
57. Emptyrean, Heaven, the abode of the Deity and his angels.
60, 6i. the Sanctities, the divine beings; abstract for concrete.
Editors refer to 2 Henry IV. IV. 2. 21.
6I, 62. his sight, the sight of him.  An allusion to the Visio
Beatifica; see I. 684.  Hooker, speaking of the three types of
"angelical actions," says that the first is "most delectable love,
arising from the visible apprehension of the purity, glory and beauty
of God, invisible save only unto spirits that are pure," Ecclesiastical
Polity, I. iv. I. Cf. M. in The Christian Doctrine, I. 33, "Perfect
glorification [of the righteous] consists in eternal life and perfect
happiness, arising chiefly from the divine vision."  Sir Thomas Browne
has a fine passage on the idea (Christian Morals, III. xv.), and so has
Drummond (A Cypress Grove), giving it a BIatonic colouring (Works,
II. 277, 278).
62-64. "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express
image of his person...sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on
high," Hebrews i. 3. See 138-42, 384.
69-76. The last lines of bk. II. described Satan reaching in his
ascent from Hell the upper regions of Chaos and making his way
towards the Empyrean, close to which he perceived the globe of this
World hung in Chaos by that golden chain (II. ro05) which is fastened
to the Empyrean. Now he has arrived at the "crystal battlements"
(I. 742) that separate the Empyrean from Chaos, and is flying along
them-of course, on the outside. Below him lies the globe of the
World; he prepares to swoop down to its surface; by 422 he has
done so.
70. the gulf, Chaos, " the main Abyss" (83). there, in Chaos.
71. this side, i.e. the side nearest to the Empyrean. The realm of
Night (personified) lies in Chaos, between Hell and the Empyrean.
Into the upper regions of this realm penetrates the light reflected from
the battlements bf the Empyrean, and forms a kind of half-light, "a
glimmering dawn" (I. 1037)-what M. calls (72) a "dun" atmosphere,
i.e. brownish, dusky (like Dante's I' aer bruno). See again 427-29.
72. sublime= Lat. sublimis in its literal sense 'aloft; cf.
II. 528.
73. The alliteration may be meant to indicate Satan's exhaustion.
75. Viewed from outside, this Universe appeared to be a solid,
spherical mass of land, without sky (the sky which we see being
supposed to be inside the "first convex" or outer crust).
76. uncertain; it being uncertain. This is an absolute construction


P. L.


28




434


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


modelled on the elliptical use of Lat. incertuzm, e.g. in Livy XXXI. 41. 2,
clauserunlt ortas incertum vi an voluntate. Cf. Iv. 593.
in ocean. So in II. 41o Satan speaks of the World as "the happy
isle."  Chaos, in which it hung, was a mixture of land and sea (II. 939,
940).
80-343. This Council in Heaven has been called a less dramatic
counterpart to the Council in Hell in book Ii. It is perhaps to some of
these speeches that Pope would have pointed for the justification of his
famous sneer (" To Augustus," 99-o02, Imitations of Horace):
"Milton's strong pinion now not Heaven can bound,
Now serpent-like in prose he sweeps the ground;
In quibbles angel and archangel join,
And God the Father turns a School-divine."
Addison showed, with more sympathy, the difficulty inherent in the
subject: the poet here "dares not give his imagination full play."
82, 83. the chains. Cf. I. 48.
84. wide interrupt, with its wide division, i.e. between Hell and
Heaven. interrupt; a past participle= Lat. interruptus.
9o. assay, attempt.
93. glozing, flattering; with the idea of falsehood.
94. the sole command, i.e. to abstain from the forbidden tree.
Ioo. Cf. Satan's own words, iv. 63-68. That the rebellious
angels, like Adam and Eve, had free will, to obey or disobey, is
emphasised in v. 525-43 and elsewhere. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I.
3, "in assigning the gift of free will, God suffered both men and
angels to stand or fall at their own uncontrolled choice" (P. W. iv. 38).
ioI. failed. Bentley thought that M. dictatedfell; cf. 1o2.
io6, 107. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 4, "the acceptableness
of duties done under a law of necessity is...annihilated altogether"
(P. W. iv. 63).
xo8. "When God gave him [Adam] reason, he gave him freedom
to choose, for reason is but choosing," Areopagitica (P. W. II. 74).
Reason is speculative: will, practical-in fact, the power of putting
reason into action. It is by reason that we choose the right course,
by will that we take it. Such seems Milton's meaning.
129. the first sort, the fallen angels. sugfgestion, temptation; a
common Elizabethan sense; cf. Ix. 90.
135. ambrosial, delicious.
136. Cf. x Timothy v. 2I, "the elect angels," which M. explains in
The Christian Doctrine, I. 9, to mean "beloved, or excellent."
See 360, vI. 374, 375. In P. L. this Scriptural word marks off the
good angels from the revolted.




NOTES.


435


138-42.   Cf. vi. 68r, 682, note.
143. which, viz. his compassion, love and grace (=graciousness).
147. The hymns and songs are "innumerable," not their "sound."
I50. should AMan...be lost? 'would it be right that Man should be
lost?' The original editions mark that it is a question.
153, 54.  "That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay
the righteous with the wicked," Gen. xviii. 25.
156. The name Satan means 'adversary'; cf. Dante's I' antico
awersaro (Purgatorio, XI. 20); and " foe" in 179.
159. return, i.e. to Hell.
I63. abolish thy creation; as Beelzebub hoped (II. 368-70).
I66. blasphemed, impiously spoken ill of.
i68. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,"
Mat. iii. 17.
I69. "The only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the
Father," John i. 18. Cf. 239, 279.
I70. my word; referring to the use in the New Testament of
'Word,' Gk. X6-yos (Vulgate verbum), as a title of the Son; see 383,
note. effectual might, i.e. power by whom the will of the Father was
effected, e.g. in the creation of the World (John i. — 3; cf.
P. L. vii.).
I76. lapsed, lost through man's offence. forfeit, forfeited. The
tone and wording of the line are legal; cf. 2I9.
177. exorbitant, excessive.
179. mortal, deadly; cf. I. 2.
183, I84. The doctrine of predestination here alluded to is discussed
by M. at some length in The Christian Doctrine, I. 4.
i85, I86. i.e. be warned of their state and advised to appease.
189. Perhaps M. refers to Ezekiel xxxvi. 26.
197. persisting; in a good sense='continuing steadfast.'
safe arrive, i.e. attain salvation ultimately. Cf. Matthew x. 22.
206. The Serpent tempts Eve with the promise of godhead, IX.
708. Cf. Gen. iii. 5, "in the day ye eat thereof...ye shall be as gods."
affecting, seeking to win; Lat. affectare, 'to aim at.'
208. sacred and devote, utterly doomed. The words have practically the same meaning: sacred=Lat. sacer, 'dedicated to a deity for
destruction'; devote=Lat. devotus, 'set apart as by a vow (votum)' with
the same object.
211. as willing, i.e. not less willing than able.
2r5. mortal crime, i.e. deadly; the use of mortal in its two senses
(cf. 214) is an intentional quibble. Cf. I. 642, note, iv. I8I.
to save, i.e. which of ye will be so just as to save the unjust?
28-2




436


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


(Newton).  Cf. i Pet. iii. 18, "For Christ also hath once suffered for
sins, the just for the unjust."
216. charity, love.
217. All the angels of Heaven shrink from the task of saving man,
just as all the fallen angels-their leader excepted-shrank from undertaking the expedition to ruin man (II. 417-26). The Saviour himself
must achieve the one work, as the Tempter himself the other (Newton).
Dryden challenged comparison when he wrote The ]Hind and the
PIanther, II. 499-514.
218. "There was silence in heaven," Rev. viii. I.
219. The metaphor of the passage being legal, probably patron=
Lat. patronus in its legal sense, 'defender,' "advocate" (i John ii. i).
Cf. Minsheu's old DictionaZy (1625): "A  Patrone, or defender... L.
advocatus Gui alterunm defendit."
intercessor.  "And he saw that there was no man, and wondered
that there was no intercessor," Isaiah lix. 16.
225. "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,"
Colossians ii. 9.
226. dearest, most heartfelt, earnest.
227. passed, pledged.
23I. For this favourite form of verse see II. 185, note, and cf.
Hamlet, I. 5. 77, "Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled."
uznprevented, unanticipated (i.e. by prayer); grace comes before man
has prayed for her. prevent= Lat. prrEvenire, ' to come before.'
233. dead in sins; from Colossians ii. 13.
236, 237. me...me. For this emphatic repetition see vi. 812 —9.
243. given me to possess. A Latinism; cf. I. 736, xi. 339.
244 —65. Texts of Scripture referred to are: Jozhn v. 26; Psalms
xvi. o1, Ir, lxviii. I8; Acts ii. 27; i Cor. xv. 26, 55; Col. ii. I5;
Rev. xx. 14. In the speeches which he assigns to the Almighty
or the Son M. employs largely the words of Scripture.
246. all; qualifying i in the previous sentence: ' I am his due-at
least, all of me that can die.'
255. mangre, in spite of; O. Fr. maugre= modern Fr. malgre.
show, i.e. to the Almighty.
258. ruin, hurl down. M. uses ruin=Lat. ruina in its literal
sense 'fall.' Thus in I. 46 he speaks of the "ruin " of the angels from
heaven, and in S. A. 15r4, 1515 of the " ruin " of Dagon's temple, i.e.
'fall.'
266. Scan asp'ect, as usually in M. and Shakespeare; cf. Iv.
54I.
270. attends, awaits; cf. Fr. attendre.




NOTES.


437


271. admiration, wonder; cf. the verb in II. 677, 678.
2 75. under wrath; referring to the future, when man shall have
incurred the Almighty's wrath by the disobedience of Adam and
Eve.
276. complacence, pleasure, i.e. in whom pleasure is taken.
277, 278. An allusion to the proverbial phrase; cf. Julius Ccesar,
III. i. I89, "Though last, not least, in love"; and King Lear, I. I.
85, 86, " our joy, Although the last, not least."
285. soom, place, stead.
285-89. See i Cor. xi. 3, xv. 22 (" as in Adam all die ").
290-94. Referring to the doctrine of imputed righteousness which
M. deals with in the chapter " Of Justification," The Christian Doctrine,
I. 22. He writes, " As therefore our sins are imputed to Christ, so
the merits or righteousness of Christ are imputed to us through faith";
then he illustrates the doctrine from Scripture. Cf. P. L. XII. 407-1o.
299, 300. giving to, yielding, submitting, to; somewhat similar is
2 Henry IV. I. i. 164, i65, "if you give o'er to stormy passion," i.e.
yield to. Some interpret, ' giving himself.' so dearly, at such a cost.
306. equal to God. Philippians ii. 6.
312-4r. Among the texts embodied in these lines are: Phil. i.
9, ii. 10; Mat. xxiv. 30, 31, xxviii. 8; 1 Cor. xv. 5x, 52; I Thess. iv. i6.
317. anointed; alluding to the meaning of Messiah =' anointed.'
318, 3 9. Cf. Horace's szume snuperbiam I qzusitam meritis (Od. III.
30. 14, I5). merits, deserts.
319. Cf. Ephes. iv. I5, " the head, even Christ."  So in v. 606.
320. All titles of the three Hierarchies of Heavenly beings. Princedonms= 'Principalities' (vi. 447), Gk. cipXat. See Appendix, pp. 680-82.
326. i.e. from the four quarters of the compass. Cf. II. 516, note.
See The Merchant of Venlice, I. I. 168, and cf. Tennyson, Pelleas and
Ettarre:
"Then Arthur made vast banquets, and strange knights
From the four winds came in."
327. cited, summoned.
328. doom, judgment. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, III. 2. 67, "Then,
dreadful trumpet, sound the general doonm i "; and Lticrece, 924, " From
the creation to the general doom."
329. a peal, i.e. of the last trumpet (I Car. xv. 52). Cf. Nat. Ode,
155, i56.
330. Saints, righteous men; a favourite word in this sense with M.
and with the Puritans; cf. 46r, and xii. 200, note.
333-35.   Based on 2 Peter iii. 12, 13, as to which Dr Salmon




438


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


wrote-" Many parts of the Canonical Scriptures speak of fire as the
future punishment of the wicked; but I do not remember any other
place where it is said that the whole world itself shall be burned"
(Introduction to New Test.). The doctrine is conspicuous in works
like the Revelation of Peter which reveal the influence of the Second
Epistle. M. recurs to it xr. 9oo, 901, XII. 546-51.
335. " And I saw a new heaven and a new earth," Rev. xxi. i.
338. For the apparent accentuation (triinmphing), see I. 123, note.
340. need, be necessary; cf. IV. 235.
341. " That God may be all in all," r Cor. xv. 28.
gods; M. applies this title ( = ' angelic or divine being ') alike to the
"elect" and to the fallen angels (i. rI6).
344-415. A parallel to the account in II. 521-628 how the fallen
angels " spent their hours " (417) in Hell.
344-47. all the multitude...uttering; an absolute construction.
The Angels are a " Chorus" such as M. contemplated for his drama
on the subject of Paradise Lost (Dunster).
350. towards either throne; i.e. towards the Father and the Son.
See the vision of " the four and twenty elders," Revelation iv.
353. amarant, the unfading flower; "immortal"; see XI. 78,
note.
356. Perhaps the idea of the flower being transferred was suggested
by the Rabbinical doctrine that after the Fall of Man "the Garden [of
Eden], with its contents, was removed to Heaven " (Keightley).
357, 358. Alluding to the "pure river of water of life, clear as
crystal" (xxii. i), the " living fountains of waters" (vii. 17), mentioned
in Revelation; "on either side of the river was there the tree of life"
(xxii. 2).
359. Elysian, such as might grow in Elysium = in Vergil and other
classical writers the region in which dwelt the souls of the good. Cf.
Shelley, Prometheus, II. 2, " Elysian flowers, Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth." Milton's ' Heaven' is, in the main, the ' Paradise ' described
by the early apocalyptic writings of Christianity; and in this ' Paradise'
flowers are a conspicuous feature.
amber, clear, transparent as amber; one of those literary epithets
(cf. P. R. III. 288, Gray, Progress of Poesy, 69) due to the classics;
cf. Vergil's purior electro...amnis-Georg. III. 522.
362-64. ' Now the pavement was bright (" smiled ") with roses
in garlands which the angels threw down thick.'
363. "And before the throne there was a sea of glass, like unto
crystal," Rev. iv. 6.




NOTES.


439


364. impurpled, made brilliant. Cf. Lycidas, 14r, "And purple
all the ground with vernal flowers."
smiled; cf. the use of Lat. ridere=' to be bright, gay with,' e.g. as
a field with flowers.
368. symphony, harmonious strains; cf. I. 712.
371. part; used in its musical sense, as in ' part-song.'
375-77. Cf. 3-8. The construction is-' Invisible, except when
thou shadest...and thy skirts appear.'
380. dark with excessive bright. Scientifically a fact; as a figure
of speech, an oxymoron (see Iv. 314, note). Similar is v. 598, 599.
Cf. Drummond's Hymn of the Fairest Fair (apostrophising the
Trinity):
"Incomprehensible by reachless height,
And unperceived by excessive light."
Spenser had had the same idea; cf. An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie,
Ir8, 119, 176-79.
381, 382. Cf. Isaiah vi. 2, "Above it stood the seraphims: each
one had six wings; with twain he covered his face." M. chooses the
Seraphim  as being the most lustrous, the "brightest" (667), of
the Heavenly Orders; yet even they cannot bear the extreme radiance.
See Gray's lines on Milton, Appendix, p. 683.
383. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 5, "certain it is...that the
Son existed in the beginning, under the name of the logos or Word [see
170, note], and was the first of the whole creation" (P. W. IV. 80).
That chapter (" Of the Son of God ") reveals Milton's Arianism very
clearly.
389. Cf. vI. 704.
391-99. Closely similar to the account of the battle in Heaven in
which Satan and his host are overthrown by Messiah (vi. 831-92).
392. Dominations; the title (Gk. KVpLbTrrTES) of one of the Orders
of Heavenly beings.
395. frame, fabric; a favourite word with M.; cf. II. 924, v.
154 -398. thee only; since Messiah drove out the foe unaided (VI. 880).
406. Supply than or but; the main verb is ofered (409).
413, 414. my song...my harp. Probably the speaker is intended
to be the chorus of angels, regarded as one individual (in accordance
with the constant practice of the Greek dramatists-cf. the choruses of
S. A.); the reference to harp (cf. 365) makes this probable. But it
is possible that M. himself is speaking.
416. starry sphere, the starlit sky of this World; so in v. 620.


A




440


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


418. opacous, gloomy, because hung in Chaos.
419, 420. first convex, the Primut fMobile or tenth sphere, formed
of solid matter (cf. " firm," 418), and serving as the outer shell of the
World, and so dividing from Chaos the nine other spheres (= "luminous
inferior orbs ") which are inside. See Appendix, p. 666.
422, 423. The Universe was so vast that its spherical shape was
only perceptible from a distance; standing on its surface, Satan might
have supposed it to be a plain. Cf. II. 1047, 1048.
429. glimmering; a favourite epithet of Tennyson; it suggests
the faint light of early morning (II. 1037, Nat. Ode, 75) and twilight
(I. I82, I Penseroso, 27). The latter use is Gray's (Elegy, 5, "the
glimmering landscape "-recalling Macbeth, III. 3. 5).
430. at large, freely, without restraint; cf. I. 790.
431-39.   Upon the geography see Appendix, pp. 683, 684. The
elaborate form of the simile is very characteristic. Like Vergil, M. often
works a simile out in all its bearings. Here the comparison is very
apposite; the vulture = Satan; the flocks = mankind, Satan's prey; the
barren plains=the "continent" where he alighted. Addison dwells
on the peculiar grandeur of Milton's similes, which almost always
convey "some very great idea "-" some glorious image or sentiment."
Dante's similes, much more numerous than Milton's, are less classical
in form, and often drawn from homely subjects; sometimes he is very
minute in the details.
432. snowy. The name Inaus is cognate with the Sanskrit
himavat, ' snowy,' and survives in Himalaya, 'the region of cold.'
434. yeanling, newly born.
435, 436. Ganges or Hydaspes; both have their "springs" (i.e.
sources) in the Himalayas. Drummond mentions the two rivers, as
typifying India or the East, in the same couplet of Forth Feasting.
bydaspes was the classical name for the modem Jhelum. The form
of the line is a favourite with M.; cf. 36, and I. 469, "Of Abbana
and Pharphar, lucid streams."
438, 439. Newton quotes from Heylyn's Cosmography (the best
known English geographical work of the I7th century), "the country
[China] is so plain [flat] and level, that they have carts and coaches driven
with sails"; and I find in Jonson's News from the New World: " Herald.
Yes, but the coaches...go only with wind. Chronicler. Pretty! like
China -waggons."  The following is from Staunton's Embassy to China
(1797), cited by Todd: " The custom mentioned by sume old travellers,
of the Chinese applying sails to carriages by land is still, in some
degree, retained.  [He then quotes Milton's lines and continues:]


4




NOTES.


44I


Those cany waggons are small carts, or double barrows, of bamboo,
with one large wheel between them. When there is no wind to favour
the progress of such a cart, it is drawn by a man, who is regularly
harnessed to it, while another keeps it steady from behind, besides
assisting in pushing it forward. The sail, when the wind is favourable,
saves the labour of the former of these two men. It consists only of a
mat fixed between two poles rising from the opposite sides of the cart.
This simple contrivance can only be of use when the cart is intended to
run before the wind " (II. p. 76).
The plural Chineses was in regular use during the I7th cent.;
cf. the title of a work published in I6o6, "An exact Discourse of the
East Indians as well as Clyneses and Jauans " (see 'ezw English Dict.).
440. so; Milton's constant manner of completing a simile. Cf.
Iv. I66, I92, 819. sea; perhaps suggested by "sails" (439).
444-97. The germ of the whole idea lies in Ariotto's Orlando
Fzurioso, canto 34, of which M. himself translates several lines in Of
Reformation (P. kW. II. 383). The passage represents Astolfo, the
English knight, as being taken up in Elijah's chariot into the moon and
led by St John
"Into a goodly valley, where he sees
A mighty mass of things strangely confus'd,
Things that on earth were lost, or were abus'd."
M. says that there is (as people thought) a Paradise of Fools (496), the
rubbish-heap of the Universe: only it is situated, not in the moon
(459), but on this outside of the globe where Satan is walking. And
from the interior of the World it is approached thus (48I-86): vain
things and souls (448) mount upward from Earth past the ten spheres,
reach the opening in the globe's surface, where the ladder leads up to
Heaven (cf. 503 et seq.), and emerge on to the outside-when, lo!
(486-89) cross-winds suddenly sweep them clean away from the ladder,
and, whirled into space, they descend into their appointed Paradise, on
the backside (494) of the globe.
The almost burlesque satire of the passage seems scarce in keeping
with the dignity of an epic; it has too the demerit of improbability.
Probably Milton's main purpose was to introduce the attack on the
Church of Rome, carefully placed at the end as a climax. Hardly less
bitter, though less direct, are his assaults on the Church of England;
see Iv. 193, note. He could have pointed to the precedent of Dante's
invective against the Papacy, e.g. in the Furryalorio, xvI., and Paradiso,
XXVII.
Milton's brother Christopher became a Roman Catholic; see
Hearne's Collections, Doble's ed., I. 288, 289, II. 63.




442


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


For the Ariosto allusion see also Dryden's 2nd Prologue (I681) to
the University of Oxford, lines I-6.
444. store, plenty. "Store is no sore" (an old proverb).
449. fond, foolish; sofondly='foolishly' in 470.
451-54. Mainly a sarcasm against priestcraft. M., like Lucretius,
detested "superstition," classing it with "tyranny"; see II. 59,
note.
456. abortive, born before their time. unkindly, unnaturally.
457. in vain, at random, without purpose (Richardson).
459. some, viz. Ariosto. Cf. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, v. 13,
II4, referring to Belinda's tress:
" Some thought it mounted to the Lunar sphere,
Since all things lost on Earth are treasur'd there."
460, 461. Apparently M. thought that the moon is inhabited;
cf. vIII. 140-58. translated saints, e.g. Enoch (Gen. v. 24), Elijah
(2 Kings ii.). middle; explained in the next line.
463-65. He means the "mighty men...men of renown," who
were born of the "sons of God " and " the daughters of men " (Gen. vi.
4). In xi. 621-25 M. identifies the "sons of God" with the pious
descendants of Seth; in v. 447 and P. R. II. I78, 179 he regards them
as angels. Gen. vi. 4 has been interpreted in both ways. Dryden may
have recollected these lines; cf. The Hind and the Panther, I.
341-44.
466, 467. See the fuller reference to the building of Babel, XII.
38-62. Sennaar=Shinar (Gen. xi. 2). M. uses the Vulgate form of
the name; the Septuagint has Zevadp.
469-71.   Empedocles, a Greek philosopher of Agrigentum in
Sicily; 'flourished' about B.C. 444. "' He threw himself into the flames
of Mount iEtna, that by his sudden disappearance he might be believed
to be a god; but...the volcano threw up one of his sandals and thus
revealed the manner of his death" (Classical Dictionary).
Etna; this adjectival use of names (to avoid 's followed by s) is
common in Shakespeare; cf. "Philippi fields,"Julius Ccesar, v. 5. 19.
471-73.   Cleombrotus, a philosopher of Ambracia in Epirus;
according to the legend, he drowned himself after reading Plato's
description of Elysium in the Phedo, in order that he might exchange
this life for a better. too long, i.e. to tell.
474. embryos, beings in an immature, undeveloped state. He
uses embryon for the adjective; cf. II. 900, VII. 277.  eremites=
hermits; from Gk. E4p7]tr?7s, 'a dweller in a desert' (Gk. ipvuia).
friar= Fr. frere (cf. frere in Chaucer), the distinguishing title,of the
mendicant orders, of which, till the i5th century, there were four; cf.




NOTES.


443


Chaucer, Prologue, 210, " alle the ordres foure." M. mentions three, the
fourth being the Augustinian hermits or Austin Friars.
475. white, the Carmelites, so called after Mt Carmel, where the
crusader Berthold established the order, about II56. They wear a
white cloak.
black, the Dominicans, an order of preaching friars (Fralres Prcdicantes) founded in I215 by St Dominic, a Spaniard; cf. 479. A long
black mantle or cappa forms part of their dress.
grey, the Franciscans, founded in 1209 by St Francis of Assisi; cf.
480. They wear a grey gown of coarse cloth-what M. in his In
Quintum Novembris, Si, 82, calls cineracea vestis, i.e. ash-coloured.
From their respective garbs the three orders were known in England
as the White Friars, the Black Friars, and the Grey Friars.
476, 477. An allusion to the pilgrimages in the Middle Ages,
to the tomb of Christ in the garden (John xix. 41) of the place
Golgotha, where Christ was crucified.
478-80. Alluding to the belief that even laymen, if they died in
friars' robes ("weeds") would pass into Heaven (Masson).
48i-83. To understand these lines one must know something about
the Ptolemaic cosmology; see Apipendix, pp. 664-66.
A close parallel is Donne's Progress of the Soul, in which he describes
how the soul ascends through the air, passes the planets (he names
them) one after another, and so reaches Heaven.
48I. the fixed, i.e. stars, set in the eighth sphere= Ccehlm Stellatum.
Note that ' stars,' not 'sphere,' is the word understood: the stars in this
sphere are fixed, but the sphere itself revolves-nay, is marked by the
rapidity of its revolution (cf. v. 176, " orb that flies ").
482, 483. i.e. that sphere which with its balance determines the
amount of the swaying motion (" trepidation ") so much talked about.
See the notes on VIII. I30-40.
that, the well-known, Lat. ille. Scan crystdlline.
talked, talked of; this contemptuous word rather implies that M.
did not believe in the theory of the " trepidation."
that first moved, the Primumin M3obile, or tenth sphere; cf. The
Death of a Fair Infant, 39, "that high first-moving sphere."
484, 485. Intended as a sneer (cf. the depreciatory word "wicket ")
at the Roman Catholic doctrine of 'the power of the keys'; cf. AMat.
xvi. 19, " And I will give unto thee [Peter] the keys of the kingdom
of heaven." M. discusses the subject in The Christian Doctrine, I. 29.
Other references to it in his works are Lycidas, o108-  I; In Quintum
Novembris, o101; and Areopagitica, where, ridiculing the Roman Catholic
censorship of publications and the Papal imprimatur, he says: "as if




444            PARADISE LOST.        BOOK    III.
St Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also as well as of
Paradise!" (P. W. II. 60).
485-89. For a parallel to this idea see the extract from the English
Faust-book (i592) in the Appendix, p. 663.
488. transverse, in a cross-direction, aside.
489. devious, out of their course; the epithet is transferred (by
hypallage) from them to air (cf. 147).
490-93. All terms specially associated with the Roman Catholic
Church. reliques, relics, like the remains of the bodies or clothes of
Saints and Martyrs; Lat. reliqzuic. See the Prayer-Book, "Articles
of Religion," xxII. beads, of the rosary. indulgences, such as the
Roman Church grants. dispenses, dispensations. pardons, absolutions.
bulls, papal edicts; so called from the round leaden seal, bulla.
493. the sport; alluding to Eincid VI. 74, 75, where Alneas begs
of the Sibyl:
"But oh! commit not thy prophetic mind
To flitting leaves, the sport of every wind"
(ludibria ventis)-Dryden.
495. limbo, region.
496. Paradise of Fools; a proverbial phrase; cf. Romeo and Juliet,
II. 4. 176.
501. travelled; some interpret 'tired.'
502. degrees, steps; cf.Jzulius Cesar, Ii. r. 25, 26.
5Io. Gen. xxviii. II-17.   Probably Milton's notion of a stair
connecting the Universe with Heaven was suggested by Jacob's dream;
cf. the Paradiso, XXI. There is some verbal likeness (and possibly the
same Scriptural allusion) in a cancelled passage of Comus, after line
-215:
"I see yee visibly & while I see yee
this dusky hollow is a paradise
& heaven gates ore my head."
516. mysteriously, i.e. had a mystic, allegorical meaning.
517, 518. i.e. was drawn up and became "viewless" (=unseen).
518-22. He means the Crystalline sphere=the "wide Crystalline
ocean" (VII. 271), "the glassy sea" (vii. 619), which the angels
behold-through the opening (cf. 526-28) in the surface of the Universe-as they stand at Heaven's gate and look down the stairs (vii.
617-I9).   M. has already said that souls ascending Heavenward
from Earth must pass this sphere (482).
521. wafted, carried: like Lazarus (Luke xvi. 22).
522. rapt, caught up: like Elijah (2 Ki'ngs ii. ii). Cf. P. P. II.
x6, I7.




NOTES.


445


526-39.   This is the only opening in the surface of the outer
shell (Primumn Aobile) of the Universe.
527. i.e. immediately above the site of the Garden of Eden.
530. though that, i.e. the second passage mentioned in 53r. The
Old Testament often speaks of angels visiting the Earth, and here we are
told that there were two aerial paths for their descent, one leading
straight down from Heaven on to Mount Sion, the other extending over
the whole Promised Land.
534. his eye, viz. passed. choice regard, careful watch, look.
535, 536. i.e. "from Dan even to Beer-sheba"=from N. to S. of
Canaan. Paneas, the later Greek name of Dan, a little S. of Mount
Hermon, at the foot of which the Jordan has its chief source.
The form Bei;rsaba, instead of ' Beersheba,' illustrates M.'s avoidance
of the sound sh in proper names; cf. I. 398, note. He often uses the
Septuagint or Vulgate form. The Septuagint has Blpo-aeSi, the Vulgate
Bersabee.
540. on the lower stair, at the bottom of the stairs.
54I. scaled, ascended like a ladder (Lat. scala).
546. obtains, attains to, reaches (obtinet).
547. discovers, unfolds; Fr. decouvrir.
549. Was M. recalling to memory one of the Italian cities visited
on that tour in 1638-39 to which his thoughts reverted so gladly?
Perhaps Florence on which he had looked down from Fiesole (see I.
289, 290, notes); or, yet more likely, Romes  The epithet "glistering"
suggests an Italian scene. Cf. the famous description in P. R. of imperial Rome and the "glittering spires" of the Palatine (iv. 54).
55I. To complete the sense, understand some words like "he (the
scout) is seized with wonder " (Keightley).
552. though after, i.e. although he was familiar with the splendours
of Heaven. For the Latinism (post caclum visum) cf. I. 573.
555-57.   Standing at the topmost point of the globe, just at the
opening, Satan can survey the whole interior of the Universe-from E.
to W. (557-60), and from N. to S. (560, 56I).
He is far above the night that we know on Earth simply because he
is far above the sun. circling, surrounding. canopy; used somewhat
similarly, of the sky in general, in Hamlet, II. 2. 31I, and Coriolanus,
Iv. 5. 4f. Cf. "cope" in iv. 992.
558-60. the fleecy star, Aries, the Ram-exactly opposite in the
Zodiac (in the west) to Libra, the Balance (in the east). M. says that
the constellation Andromeda is borne by Aries because it lies above
Aries in the sky, though rather to the west. the horizon, i.e. of this
Earth.




446


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


No poet, I think, conveys a sense of vast distance so acutely as does
Milton, perhaps from his blindness, and these lines are a signal example
of his gift; excelling perhaps in the suggestion of sheer remoteness and
space even the simile of the ships (II. 636-43).
562. first region, i.e. the uppermost of the three "regions" (a
technical term) into which mediaeval physicists supposed the air to be
divided; it was distinguished by the pure dry heat of its atmosphere.
563. and winds. In his downward flight Satan has passed through
two spheres, the Primum Mobile and Crystalline. Now he is in the
Cealum Stellatum, moving up and down (cf. "oblique way") among the
host of fixed stars (cf. 48I). Till 573 we must picture him in this
sphere.
564. marble, lucid, bright as marble= marmoreus; cf. Cymbeline,
V. 4. 120, "the marble pavement," i.e. the sky, heavens.
565, 566. i.e. that at a distance seemed to be stars. A Greek idiom.
567. happy isles= those Islands of the Blessed, to which, according
to an early Greek belief, favoured mortals passed without dying. Later
these Fortunate Insulex came to be identified with islands off the west
coast of Africa (probably the Canaries). One of Ben Jonson's Masques
is called "The Fortunate Isles."
568. i.e. the gardens (cf. Comus, 98I-83, P. R. II. 357) in which
grew the golden apples (IV. 25o, Comrus, 393-97) guarded by the
daughters of Hesperus and the dragon Ladon. The Hesperidum Insulce
in which the gardens were commonly placed by writers have been
identified with the Cape de Verde islands (so perhaps by M. himself in
vIII. 63i, 632). There is a hitherto unpublished poem, of some length,
on The Hesperides by Tennyson, in his Life, and lines 981-83 of
Comus are prefixed to it as motto.
571. above, more than-not 'over,' connoting place, since the
sphere of the sun is below the sphere of the fixed stars; in fact, being
the middle one of the spheres of the seven planets (cf. Troilus and
Cressida, I. 3. 89-91), it is separated from the Cceltm Stellaturn by
three spheres, viz. those of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars (in that order).
574-76. Newton explains: up or down, north or south; by
centre or eccentric, towards the centre, or from the centre...by longitude,
east or west (cf. iv. 539). Other editors note (i) that M. leaves it
undetermined whether the sun (cf. viII. i22, I23) or the Earth is the
centre of the Universe, i.e. whether the Copernican or Ptolemaic
astronomy is right: (2) that he makes longitude =east to west, and
breadth (561), i.e. latitude=north to south: a use which we just reverse.
577. aloof, apart from; rare as preposition.




NOTES.


447


580, 581. numbers, measures=Lat. numeri used of the measures
of a dance. See VIII. i23-25.
compute days etc.; cf. Genesis i. 14. Plato speaks of the planets
as created by the Deity els 3&oplraLbv Kai fvuXaKltv dpLO/Lcv Xpovov, "for
defining and preserving the numbers of time," Timzaus 38 c.
586. virtue, efficacy; cf. 608. A favourite word with Dante; cf. the
Paradiso, II. 68, 70, 13, 139. the deep, the lowest part of the Universe.
588-o9. Probably he is thinking of Galileo, who in I609 constructed a telescope (" optic tube") by which the spots on the solar disc
were perceptible.  See I. 288, note.
tube; the common 17th century word for the telescope; cf. Marvell's
Satires (" To the King "):
"So his bold tube man to the sun applied,
And spots unknown in the bright star descried."
Sir Thomas Browne says: " Let intellectual tubes give thee a glance of
things which visive organs reach not" (Christian Morals, III. xiv.).
592. The First and Second Eds. have medal here, but metal
in 595.
593. informed, pervaded by, filled, inspired with. In this sense,
which does not occur elsewhere in M., inform  became one of the
stereotyped, poetic words of the I8th century.
594. glowing iron, i.e. 'like iron glowing with fire.'
596-98. chrysolite...ruby. Exodus xxviii. I7-20. In verse 20 the
Heb. tarshish, rendered "beryl " in the A.V., is a chrysolite according
to the Septuagint and Vulgate; and in verse 17 the margin of the A.V.
has "ruby" instead of "sardius."
to, to the full number of the twelve.
600. that stone= " the philosopher's stone "; cf. The Hind and the
Panther, II. 112, 113.
6ox. philosophers, alchemists, who tried to compose a stone which
would transmute other metals into gold. Cf. Reginald Scot, Discoverie
of Witchcraft, i584, xIv. II, speaking of alchemists, "Now you must
understand that the end and drift of all their worke is, to atteine unto
the composition of the philosopher's stone, called Alixer": i.e.
elixir.
602, 603. bind... Hermes, solidify and fix mercury or quicksilver.
Cf. Ben Jonson's Mercury Vindicatedfrom the Alchemists; the scene is
"a Laboratory or Alchemist's-workhouse," Mercury appears, and
Vulcan as the chief alchemist cries out-"Stay, see! our Mercury
is coming forth...call forth our philosophers [cf. 60I].  He will be
gone, he will evaporate... Precious golden Mercury, be fixt: be not so
volatile /"  And later (speaking to his assistants): " Begin your charm,




448


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


sound music, circle him in, and take him: if he will not obey, bind
him."
Hermes; the Greek name of Mercury (Lat. Mercurius).
603-605. old Proteus; the prophetic old man of the sea (cdXtos
-ypwv). To escape prophesying, he would transform   himself into
"various shapes" (cf. Protean='shifting, changeable'); but when he
was firmly seized, as by Menelaus (Odyssey Iv. 454, 455) and Aristseus
(Georgic Iv. 437-40), he would return to "his native form" and
foretell the future. Milton uses this legend to illustrate the processes
of alchemists: the matter on which they experiment is, like Proteus,
transformed by being drained through alembics (=' limbecs') or stills,
till at last they restore it to its original ("native ") form.
call zp. According to legend, no one had this power over
Proteus: he only issued from the sea of his own accord, at midday,
to sleep on the shore. But, to emphasise the "powerful art" of the
alchemists, M. suggests that they might even summon up Proteus at
their will.
606. here, in the sun: if the sun's heat can produce such marvellous
effects on the far-off Earth (6i I), how much more on its own orb! The
sun is compared with an alchemist in 1King ohn, II. I. 77-8o (Newton).
607, 6o8. breathe... elixir, i.e. exhale a force similar to that lifeprolonging force or principle called elixir viite, which the alchemists
believed to be contained in a tincture of gold called aztrum potabile
=the "potable gold" of 608.
61o. i.e. though mixed with moisture which weakens his power.
61I. here, on Earth. in the dark, underground. precious things,
precious stones, metals. " It was the belief of those times that these
were produced by the influence of the sun" (Keightley). Cf. Dryden's
Anmns Mirabilis, st. 3, with his footnote: "Precious stones at first
are dew condensed, and hardened by the warmth of the sun or subterranean fires." Dryden's editor in the Clarendon Press Series gives
other references (p. 244). The idea seems to be present in Pope's Moral
Essays, I. I41-48, II. 285-92, and Collins's Ode to Liberty (end).
613. gaze; often transitive; cf. v. 272, vIII. 258. Similarly the
noun is used in the sense of a thing gazed at; cf. Macbeth, v. 8. 23, 24:
"Then yield thee, coward,
And live to be the show and gaze o' the time."
6I6-I9.   "Where Satan was,-i.e. on the Sun itself,-all was
sunshine without visible shadow, just as, on Earth, at the equator at
noon, the Sun's beams striking vertically downwards, in the self-same
manner that they were now shooting directly upwards, cause opaque
objects to have no slanting shadow round them" (Masson).




NOTES.


449


6r7. This position of the sun is technically called his culmination.
620. visual ray =' power of seeing'; light which makes sight possible
is put for sight itself. Cf. S. A. I63.
623. "And I saw an angel standing in the sun," Rev. xix. 17.
Young (NAight Thoughts) says, "A Christian dwells, like Uriel, in the
sun."
625-28. Cf. The Passing of Arthur, 384-86:
"the light and lustrous curls
That made his forehead like a rising sun
High from the dais-throne";
and (Enone:
"his sunny hair
Cluster'd about his temples like a God's."
Tennyson has it too in Tithonus.
tiar, crown. illustrious, bright (Lat. illustris). fledge, feathered.
628. charge, office, duty; cf. 688.
634. casts, plans; perhaps the metaphor of cast=' calculate.'
637. i.e. not very young, yet youthful-looking (638); or 'not one
of the great Cherubim' (prime=' chief').
643, 644. habit, dress, Lat. habitus; probably in apposition to
wings, as Milton's angels are always "feathered" (v. 284), not clothed
(Newton). succinct, literally 'girt up'; hence ' ready, prepared,' taken
with habit= "wings." decent, graceful, becoming.
648, 649. In the chapter (I. 9) of The Christian Doctrine on angels,
M. says, "Seven of these, in particular, are described [i.e. in Scripture]
as traversing the earth in the execution of their ministry." They are
"the seven angels which stood before God," Rev. viii. 2, "the seven
Spirits which are before his throne," Rev. i. 4. Of these Uriel was
one. He is mentioned four times in 2 Esdras, and in three places
(iv. i, v. 20, x. 28) is called "Uriel the angel," but in the fourth (iv. 36)
"Uriel the archangel."  That he was "regent of the sun" (690) and
dispenser of heat was a tradition, due probably to his name which
signifies 'the fire of God.' Thus Heywood says that the four quarters
of the world are assigned to the government of four angelic beings, and
"The South, whence Auster comes, rules Uriel" (Hierarchie of the
Blessed Angells, i635 ed., p. 214). There is a passage to the same
effect in Scot's Discourse on Devils (I584), Nicholson's ed., p. 527.
Cf. too Henry More (Song of the Soul, Cambridge ed., 1647, p. 53):
"The fiery scorching shafts which Uriel
From Southern quarter darted with strong hand."
650-53. "Those seven: they are the eyes of the LORD, which
run to and fro through the whole earth," Zechariah iv. 1o.


P. L.


29




450


PARADISE LOST. BOOK III.


654. The sentence introduces Satan's reason for asking information
of Uriel: he does so because Uriel, as chief "interpreter" of God, is
likely to know about the new Universe and its inhabitants. But strictly
the sense is never completed; it takes a fresh turn in 662.
655. Only these seven archangels may come so near to the
Deity.
656. authentic, authoritative, because received at first-hand, i.e.
from God himself. Gk. au8O^PTs, 'one who does a thing himself.'
657, 658. Uriel brings the command of God to the inferior angels,
who await it at a distance. attend; cf. 270.
659. here, in the sun.
667. Seraph; strictly not applicable to Uriel (an archangel).
670. i.e. but hath his choice to dwell in all these orbs.
674. graces, favours, marks of grace.
68I. unperceived, not discovered, undetected.
686-89. A fine and just allegory that a wise man may be
deceived through the very greatness of his nature: for he is filled with
high thoughts, not mean suspicions: which makes him trust his fellowmen, and credit them with being as honest and true as himself.
Had M. not dwelt on the power of hypocrisy it might have seemed
strange to us that even Uriel should be deceived (Newton).
699. M. always accents empyreal (but empyrean).
704. had in remembrance; a Scriptural phrase; Acts x. 31.
708. I saw. Uriel must have been among the angels who accompanied Messiah when he went forth to create the World, vii.
192-215.   This rapid sketch (708-2I) prepares us for the full
narrative of the creation in book vII.; such links between the different
books are an important element in the construction of the whole. The
lines reveal the influence of Plato's account of the creation (Timceus)
and of Ovid's description of Chaos (Metamorphoses I. 5 et seq.). For
Milton's knowledge of the Timnaus cf. v. 580-82, note.
709. this World's material mould, i.e. the substance whereof the
World was made, being matter in its primal state; see v. 471,
note.
7 2. his...bidding, viz. "Let there be light," Gen. i. 3.
713. order from disorder. Els rdw Lv avTrb 6  yayv EK rTs drattas,
Plato, Timveus 30 A; id ex inordinato in ordinem adduxit, Cicero, De
Universo 3 (a translation of parts of the Timeus). Compare the discourse
on order in canto I. of the Paradiso, e.g. 103-105: "All things whatsoever observe a mutual order; and this is the form that maketh the
universe like unto God"; also xxix. 22-33.  See also Bacon, The
Advancement of Learning, 11. 25. 20.




NOTES.


45I


715. i.e. the four elements or constituent parts of which all things
were thought to consist. See II. 274, 275, 898, notes.
cumbrous; the epithet points the difference between them and the
"ethereal" fifth element. Cf. Batman (I582), "Heaven is the fift
Element, severed from the nether Elements, and distinguished by
propertie of kinde: for it is not heavie, for then it might come
downward" (p. 20o). flood, water.
716. M. refers to Aristotle's conception of a fifth element called
"ether," and he introduces the two main points of Aristotle's theory:
(i) that "the ether fills the celestial spaces, and of it the spheres and
stars are made" (cf. 718, 721); (2) that "the nature of the ether...
adapts it especially for circular motion" (cf. "orbicular," 718),
whereas the motion of the four elements is vertical, up and down.
Ueberweg, from whose summary of Aristotle's views the foregoing
quotations are made, says, "Ether is the first element in rank
[i.e. according to Aristotle]; but if we enumerate, beginning with the
elements directly known by the senses, it is the fifth, the subsequently
so-called irEnrrov ~roTxeiov, quinta essentia."
It is disputed whether this "fifth essence" ought to be called an
element, since it lacks the principle of contraries that belongs to the
four elements; and M. does not apply the title "element" to it.
Practically he identifies the "fifth essence" or "ether" with Light
(cf. VII. 243, 244), though "ether" (Gk. aieOp, from aWeOv, 'to glow')
rather implies very bright atmosphere.
Heaven, sky; cf. a definition of "ether" cited by G. H. Lewes
from an Alexandrian treatise: "Ether is the substance of the heavens
and the stars; so named because of its eternal circular motion " (an
allusion to the false derivation of alO7p from &el, 'always' + Oed, 'to run').
717. spirited, animated.
718. orbicular, with circular motion.
721. i.e. what remained of the ether after the stars were made.
730. See viI. 375-78, and cf. Hamlet, II. 2. 167, "moons with
borrowed sheen"; and Drummond, Flowers of Sion:
"The moon moves lowest, silver sun of night,
Dispersing through the world her borrowed light."
triform, referring to the three phases of the moon-crescent, full and
waning. But there is also an allusion to Lat. triformis as an epithet
of the moon indicating her threefold capacity as Luna, Diana and
Hecate; cf. Horace's diva triformis, Od. III. 22. 4. So in Ben
Jonson's Masque of Queens the moon is addressed as "thou threeformed star...to whose triple name...we incline"; cf. A MidsummerNight's Dream, v. 391, "By the triple Ilecate's team."
29-2




452


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


737. Cf. v. 360, "As to a superior nature, bowing low."
739. coast, region; as often in M.
740. the ecliptic, i.e. "as then understood, the Sun's orbit round
the Earth" (Masson).
741, 742. An instance of Milton's power of making the sound
an echo to the sense. The rapid movement of the latter half of 741
conveys an impression of Satan's swift descent, while the slow,
measured rhythm of 742 suggests rest.
Niphates, 'the snowy range'; a mountain of Armenia, part of
the Taurus range-on the borders of Assyria (iv. 126).
BOOK IV.
This book has been described as "the most varied of all in interest
and beauty." It introduces, at last, " Man, the central figure of the
Epic," and straightway (I-8) "raises the horror and attention of the
reader."
I, 2. 0 for, i.e. would that that voice had sounded.  he who, St
John. See Rev. xii. 12, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the
sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath."  Apocalypse, revelation, 'uncovering'; Gk. dar6, 'off'+KaXi7rretw, 'to cover.'
heard cry, i.e. the words; Woe to the inhabitants on Earth!"
3. then when; M. uses this emphatic phrase often; cf. 838, 970.
the Dragon, Satan; cf. "The old Dragon," Nativity Ode, i68. The
title is from Rev. xii. 7 and means 'Serpent' (Gk. pd&Kwv).
io. i.e. the tempter before he was the accuser. Cf. Rev. xii. Io,
"the accuser of our brethren is cast down." The word devil is a corruption of Greek &ct/oXos, 'slanderer,' from &8apad\Xtv, 'to slander.'
i I, 12. These lines give the main motive of Satan's action against
man. wreak... his loss, avenge himself for his loss.
12, I3. Contrast III. 740. The nearer Satan approaches to the
scene of his task the more he realises its enormity and peril, and the
less his confidence becomes.
20-23. For this conception of Hell cf. 75-78 and see I. 254, 255.
24, 25. i.e. muses the memory of what he was and the thought
(understood from memory) of what he is and will be. So Samson
Agonistes is beset by thoughts of "Times past, what once I was, and
what am now," S. A. 22. In both passages, but more particularly in




NOTES.                          453
the line in S. A., the influence is clear of Dante's famous words:
"There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness,"
Inferno, v. 21 —23. It has been shown that Dante paraphrased the
sentiment (an obvious one) from Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae,
and that Chaucer (Troilus and Cresside) had anticipated Milton in
imitating Dante; the latter being "the poet" of Tennyson's familiar
couplet in Locksley Hall:
"This is truth the poet sings
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
See also Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, II. x. Classical
parallels have been found in Pindar and Thucydides.
25. what must be worse, i.e. how he must become worse.  One of
the most powerful features of Paradise Lost is the presentment of the
gradual debasement and decline of Satan as the evil he works against
man masters himself-"back recoils."
27, 28. Eden...pleasant.  "Eden" means 'pleasure.' Cf. 132.
3r. much revolving, pondering many things (multa volvens). The
speech that follows throws much light on Milton's conception of
Satan.
32-41. The lines written as early as 1642; see Introduction.
Addison considered this speech (32-113) " the finest ascribed to Satan
in the whole poem."
35. One of the most familiar quotations from Milton. Cf. Pope,
Epistles, III. 281, 282:
"Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud Courts, withdraw your blaze!
Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays."
37-39.   Before his fall Satan was lustrous as the sun itself: now
his splendour is faded and wan (835-40, 870).
40. worse; because it adds fuel to the flame of pride (Hume).
43. In bk. v. when he is inciting the angels to rebel Satan pretends
that he and they are "self-begot, self-raised" (86o), i.e. not created by
the Almighty and so not justly his servants; cf. I. 116.
45. upbraided, reproached; cf. 7James i. 5.
50. sdeined, disdained.
51. quit, pay off, settle. Burke (who quotes Milton much) speaks
of "the immense, ever-growing, eternal debt, which is due to generous
Government from   protected freedom "-Conciliation  with America
(Payne's ed., p. 230).
55-57. On the one hand, true gratitude is in itself payment: on
the other, a grateful man, though he may formally have discharged his
debt, still retains a sense of indebtedness to his benefactor. Bentley
compared Cicero's sentiment, gratiam autem et qui retulerit habere, et




454


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV


qui habeat retulisse (De Officiis II. o20), i.e. he wl      I an
obligation is still conscious of it, and he who is consc.  '.ligation has repaid it.
66, 67. Cf. II. o102.
73. me miserable! Latin me miserun!
79. Satan addresses himself; or possibly the Alir
79, 8o. Cf. Hebrews xii. 17, "he found no place (         "
8I, 82. i.e. disdain forbids me (to use) that word   -...
84. other...other; see x. 86i, 862, note.
87. abide, suffer for.
90. advanced, raised to eminence; it qualifies me in 89. Cf. 359.
94. act ofgrace, doing penance, asking pardon (cf. Fr. grace).
97. violent, extorted by compulsion. void, of no effect, null.
Burke quotes these lines, 96, 97, with fine effect in his speech on Conciliation with America just before the other Milton allusion (line 5 I, note).
I Io. Just as evil is to be his good, so later (Ix. 122, I23) he
confesses, "all good to me becomes Bane" (i.e. evil).
1 12. by thee; repeated for emphasis. more than half; since he rules
Hell already and hopes to rule the World, thus leaving the Almighty
only Heaven. Cf. x. 375-382.
114, iI5. i.e. each of the three passions-anger, envy, despairdimmed his face which was three times changed with the paleness caused
by them. Cf. such expressions as 'pale with anger,' ' pale with envy.'
Newton notes that for ire the Argument of the book has fear.
passion; used by M., as by Shakespeare, of any strong emotion, deep
feeling. pale = paleness.
ii6. borrowed; see iii. 634-44.
II8, 119. An allusion perhaps (as certainly in vI. 788, Ix. 729,! 730) to KEneid i. ii. Cf. The Faerie Queene, II. 8. I:
"And is there care in heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base?"
123. couched with, united with; it implies lying hid (Fr. couche').
124-30. Cf. Uriel's words, 564-75.
i26. the Assyrian mount, Niphates; see II. 742.
132. Eden...Paradise.  Masson says: "Eden is the whole tract or
district of Western Asia [see 210-14] wherein the Creator has designed
that men should first dwell; Paradise is the Happy Garden [20o8-o]
situated in one particular spot of this Eden-on its eastern side." Cf.
Gen. ii. 8, "God planted a garden eastward in Eden." Paradise=
Gk. wrapace8oo, 'a park'; a word of Persian origin.
134. champain head, an open, level summit of open land.
The garden occupies a plateau or table-land, circular in shape (VIII.




NOTES.


455


304) and surrounded by a grassy mound or wall (143). On. the inner
side of this mound is a circling row of fruit trees; their tops are visible
from the outside.  On the outer side of the mound the hill slopes steep
down, covered with shrubs and trees, the tops of which, though lofty,
are below the level of the mound and so do not obstruct Adam's view
from it over the plain beneath.
This idea of setting the Garden on the summit of a hill is traced to
Ezekiel xxviii. 13, I4, "Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God...
thou wast upon the holy mountain of God." Dante and Ariosto had
previously given the Garden a similar site (Keightley).
Thus when Adam meets and converses with Dante in Paradise, he
says that he was placed by God "in the uplifted Garden " (nell' eccelso
giardino)-Paradiso, xxvi. o09, Io. See also the Puratlorio, xxvIIi.,
where Dante reaches and describes the Garden, which crowns the
summit of the Mount of Purgatory-an obvious piece of symbolism.
Collins has the allusion in the striking passage about Milton, in his Ode
on the Poetical Character, 3.
138, I39., Cf. 693, 694. The second line is intended to suggest
variety. Cf. Il, 621.
140. ranks; like the ascending tiers of seats in an amphitheatre;
cf. P. R. II. 294. Perhaps Vallombrosa was in Milton's thoughts;
see 1. 303, 304 (note). Verbally ("sylvan scene") there is just a
suggestion of AEneid I. 164, 65.
151  Cf. Cf Coms, 992, " Iris there with humid bow" (=the rainbow).
153. landskip, landscape.
of, after, following upon; cf. Wordsworth, Recluse, "Happier of
happy though I be." The idiom is modelled on the use of (K in Greek
and ex in Latin to express one condition following on another; cf. e.g.
T7U/5X6s K eSopKOTos (Sophocles, CEdipus Rex 454) or -orace's ex humili
polcns (Od. III. 30. 12). Cf. vi. 433,. 720, 723, xr. 167.
56. gales; the conventional i8th century word for a gentle wind,
in poems like Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
(15-20); Collins's Eclogues.
I58. native, i.e. of the trees, flowers etc.; implying 'natural, not/ '
artificial.'
159-65. "The fragrance thus wafted out to sea, sometimes to a
distance of twenty or more miles, is well known to everysailor who has
been in the West Indies or in the Indian Archipelago" (Keightley).
Editors quote various similar allusions in classical, Italian, and other
writers, e.g. Waller (Night-piece):
"So we the Arabian coast do know,
At distance, when the spices blow."


A




~,Jo' xj —J  L.J_    1.     OOK     IV.


Diodorus Siculus (ILI. 46) describes how in spring-time, when the
wind is from the land, the fragrance of the myrrh and similar trees
reaches the passing vessels, even far out to sea. Probably M. had
this special description in mind, as it is removed only a few chapters
from that account of Ammon and Amalthea which was the undoubted
source of 275-79.
I6r. Mozambic; more commonly Mozambique;       a Portuguese
province on the east coast of Africa, opposite Madagascar.
north-east; rather north, according to modern geography.
I62. Sabcan, of or from Saba= Sheba.
I63. Araby the Blest=Gk. 'Apap3ia L  ei6al.wv, Lat. Arabia Felix,
each epithet indicating the fertility of the region. The notion of the
fragrances and spices of Arabia-myrrh, frankincense etc.-is a commonplace of poetry; cf. Lady Macbeth's famous "all the perfumes of
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand " (v. I. 57, 58).
I66. so; hisfavourite completion of a simile; cf. 192, Inl. 440.
167-7i.   There is a similar allusion in v. 221-23 to the story of
Tobias and the evil spirit Asmodeus told in the Apocryphal Book of
Tobit. Tobias was sent on a journey by his father Tobit to fetch ten
talents of silver deposited with a friend in Media. The angel Raphael
appeared to Tobias in human form, acted as his guide, and bade him
marry a Jewish maiden, Sara, who lived at Ecbatana in Media. Her
seven husbands had been destroyed in succession by Asmodeus who
was in love with her. To escape their fate, Tobias was instructed by
Raphael to burn the heart and liver of a fish, since the smell ("fishy
fume ") would drive away the spirit. This he did after his betrothal to
Sara, and the plan succeeded: for Asmodeus "fled into the utmost
parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him " (chap. viii.).
Cf. Reginald Scot, Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), speaking of
burnt incense as a charm against evil spirits: "wheresoever the fume
or smoke thereof shall come, everie kind and sort of devils may be
driven awaie, and expelled; as they were at the incense of the liver of
fish, which the archangel Raphael made" (bk. xv. chap. 18). Dante
has the allusion, calling Raphael "him who made Tobias sound again "
(Paradiso, IV. 48). Sir Thomas Browne thought the story not quite
"naturally made out" (Vulgar Errors, I. to).
i68. Asmodeus, one of the rebellious angels expelled from Heaven;
called by M. Asmadai in VI. 365 and Assmodai in P. R. II. I51-forms
closer to the Heb. Aschmedai, 'the destroyer.' He is thought to be
connected with the Aeshmza Daevd (an evil demon) of the ancient
Persian religion. He is sometimes taken as a type of lust, perhaps
through the story in the Book of Tobit; cf. P. W. II. I50-52, and




NOTES.


457


Tennyson, St Simeon Sfylifes, 159, "Abaddon and Asmodeus caught
at me."
17o. withi a vengeance; an intensive phrase, used here with a certain
grim humour='in all speed.' Cf. Coriolantzs, II. 2. 6, "he's vengeance
proud," i.e. intensely; but there the use is more colloquial.
172. savage, wild; cf. P. R. IlI. 23, "savage wilderness."  It is
derived through the French from Lat. silvaticus, 'woody.'
176. perplexed, made difficult (or entangled).  "
I77. that passed, i.e. that might have passed.
I8I. bound...bound. Cf. I. 642 (with the note). Here Satan's
contempt of the barrier is expressed.
186. secure; implying a false sense of security; cf. Lat. securus. '
I92. Cf. the parable of 'the Good Shepherd,'John x.
I93. One of iMilton's prose-works was a treatise on "The Likeliest
Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church" (X659). It seemed to
him wrong that ministers of religion should receive salaries, and he was
ever ready to bring the charge of avarice and love of lucre against the
clergy of the Church of England. Cf. xII. 507-1 i, and the denunciation (appropriately assigned to Saint Peter-cf. i Pt. v. 2) in Lycidas
of the false, greedy shepherds who "Creep, and intrude, and climb
into the fold " (I 15). We must remember that he speaks as an enemy,
a bitter enemy, of the English Church. lewd, base.
194. the Tree of Life; Genesis ii. 9.
i96. i.e. in the shape of a cormorant, chosen because a ravenous
bird of prey (cf. Ill. 43I) and thus symbolical of Satan himself; cf.
Richard II. II. I. 38, Coriolanus, I. i. 125. As a sea-bird it does not
seem vety-appropriate in Paradise; but cf. Isaiah xxxiv. xi (where,
however, 'pelican-'js the correct rendering).
198. virtue, efficacy; cf. 671 and see III. 586, note.         /
I99-20I. well used. What use could Satan have made of the
tree? He was already immortal. Perhaps M. means that if Satan had
eaten of the tree's fruit its saving power might have given him true lifea regeneration of spirit that, leading to repentance, would have enabled
him to regain his true archangelic immortality.
203.  peerverts; the subject is he understood from   " before
him;.'"
210-14.    According to these limits, which indicate, however,
only its eastern and western points, Eden lay in Syria and Mesopotamia
-mainly in the latter.
211. Auran, or Hauran, a district of Syria, about 50 miles S. of
Damascus; Gk. AvpavpTis.  Probably M. remembered that it is mentioned in Ezek. xlvii. i6, 18, as an eastern bound of Palestine.




458


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


212. Seleucia; long the capital of Western Asia; on the right bank
of the Tigris, about 20 miles S.E. of the modern Bagdad; sometimes
called Seleucia ad Tigrin or Seleucia Babylonia. Here, and again in
P.R. III. 291, M. terms it "great Seleucia" to distinguish it from other
cities of the same name, such as the Seleucia near Antioch. It was
built by Seleucus, a Macedonian who became one of Alexander's
generals, and about 312 B.c. founded the dynasty of the Seleucidae,
kings of Syria (cf. "Grecian kings ").
213, 214. A second description of the site of Eden: it was in that
region of Telassar (or Thelasar) where the "children of Eden" dwelt
(2 Kings xix. 12, Isai. xxxvii. It). They "appear from the Assyrian
inscriptions to have inhabited the country on the east bank of the
Euphrates, about the modern Balis. Here they had a city called
Beth-Adina, which was taken by the Assyrians about B.c. 880"
(Speaker's Commentary).
J    29. blooming, bearing luxuriantly.
223. " And a river went out of Eden to water the garden," Gent.
ii. Io. In IX. 71-73 M. identifies this river with the Tigris.
224. shaggy; as a wood-covered hill appears, seen sideways;
see VI. 645, note.
225-35. The river flowing through Eden reaches the hill on the
level summit (cf. 134) of which is Paradise.  Part of the river goes
straight through by a subterranean passage and issues in the plain
(cf. 145) on the other side. But part of its water is drawn up through
the hill to the surface in the form of a fountain, the waters of which
become rills.  These rills irrigate Paradise and then, uniting into a
water-course, run down the "hairy side" (135) of the hill to join the rest
of the river where it emerges from its underground channel. Then the
whole river divides into four great streams.
233. See Genesis ii. 10-14; cf. Tennyson's Enid:
"And never yet, since high in Paradise
O'er the four rivers the first roses blew,
Came purer pleasure unto mortal kind
Than lived thro' her."
Dante pictures " Euphrates and Tigris welling up from one spring, and
parting like friends that linger" (PPugatorio, XXXIII. I12-14).
234- wandering; transitive; cf. xI. 779.
236, 237. The original texts have a comma after tell (236), not
after hozo in 237. Some modern texts reverse this punctuation; to the
detriment of the rhythm, I think.
sapphire, sapphire-coloured, i.e. light blue. fount, source; cf. III.
535. crisped, rippling; often used of wind ruffling the surface of




NOTES.


459


water; cf. Byron, ChZile Harold, IV. 2 r, " I would not their vile
breath should crisp the stream."  See Coamus, 984.
239. error; in the literal sense of Lat. error, 'a wandering.' Cf.  v
Tennyson, Gareth, "The damsel's headlong error through the wood."
241. nice, precise, fastidious. Supply some verb like 'set.'
242. curious knots, plots of ground laid out in a fanciful style.  /
boon, bounteous (Lat. ahla).
246. imrbrowned, darkened; an imitation of the Italian use.
246, 247. thus was, i.e. such was-seat being in apposition to place.
Some editors change the construction by removing the comma after
place. view, appearance, aspect.
248. gums, i.e. aromatic resins like myrrh and balsamt (=bal}),
produced by the balsam-tree (BaAXoau66evopov) and other trees of the
same genus. See 630, v. 23. wept; cf. Olhello, v. 2. 348-51.
25o. amiable, lovely; cf. "thy amiable cheeks," A AMidsiummer-..
Night's Dream, Iv. i. 2; and Psalm lxxxiv. i.
250, 251. Ikesperiant...here only; " the stories told of the apples of
the Hesperides being true only of this place, if at all." It is an absolute
clause in parenthesis. For the allusion see III. 568, and cf. the cancelled
passage (especially " fruits of golden rind ") at the beginning of Comus.
252. lawns, glades, wide spaces clear of trees.                   J
255. irriguouts, well-watered (Lat. irritmuls).
256. Thyer quotes Herrick, Noble Nuzmbers:
"Before man's fall the rose was born,
Saint Ambrose says, without a thorn."
Others of the Church Fathers held the same fancy, which seems to have
been applied also to the fabulous gardens of Adonis (see IX. 439, 440,
note); cf. Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, v. 3.
Part of the curse (Genesis iii. x8) was that the earth should bring
forth thorns and thistles; hence the presumption that there were no
thorns before Adam's sin (Newton).
258. mantling vine; Comus, 294.
264. apply; either 'practise' or 'add.'                       v
266-68. An allegorical way of saying, with classical imagery,
such as he had used in his fifth Latin Elegy (In Adventzumil Veris), that
in Eden only one season was known, viz. spring (see x. 678, 679,
note), and that it was a time of universal luxuriance of growth and
freshness. M. might well have had in mind some picture seen in
Italy, e.g. Botticelli's famous "Spring." Cf. too the allegorical dance
of the Virtues in the Purgatorio, xxIx.
Pan; here regarded as the god of all nature, and called " universal"
in allusion to his name (Gk. 7rdv, 'all ').




460


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


Graces, Lat. Graiike, Gk. XdpLTes; three goddesses (Euphrosyne,
Aglaia, Thalia) who personified the refinements and elevated joys of life.
Hours, Lat. HorEa, Gk. ppat; goddesses personifying the seasons of
the year; the course of the seasons was symbolically described as " the
dance of the Horce" (compare v. 394, 395).  Classical writers often
mention them along with the Graces.
led onz; the metaphor of a dance; cf. Milton's Sonnet "To the
Nightingale," 4, "While the jolly hours lead on propitious May." So
in Collins's Persian Eclogues, Ill. 39, 40.
268. Cf. Marvell's pretty lines on the Bermudas:
"He gave us this eternal spring,
Which here enamels every thing."
268-87. He indicates the beauty of Paradise by saying that it
surpassed various spots celebrated for their charm. In describing
Nature, Milton "on most occasions calls learning to his assistance"
(Johnson).
268-72.   According to the classical legend, Proserpine was
carried off by Pluto=Dis (270), to the nether world, unknown to her
mother Ceres, and became his wife. Latin poets (e.g. Ovid, Fasti Iv.
421-62) made Enna in Sicily the scene of the incident, the worship
of Ceres having been introduced into Rome from Sicily.
Scan Proserpin, and cf. the Latin accent and form in IX. 396.
Line 270 is echoed in IX. 432. Marvell in his poem Upon Appleton
House says of his pupil in her garden:
" she
Seems with the flowers a flower to be."
271. that, the well-known, Lat. ille; so in 272, 275.
272, 273. " Near the city of Antioch, on the Orontes, lay a grove
sacred to Apollo, in which was a temple of the god, whence he gave
oracles. It was named Daphne, and a spring which watered it was
called the Castalian spring, after that at Delphi" (Keightley).
275-79. See Appendix, pp. 685, 686; and cf. P. R. u. 356.
278. florid, ruddy, being the god of wine; cf. Dryden, Alexander's
Feast, 42, " Flushed with a purple grace " (said of Bacchus).
280-85.   Todd quotes Heylin: "the hill of Amara is a day's
journey high, on the top whereof are thirty-four palaces in which the
y.ounger sons of the Emperor [i.e. of Abyssinia] are continually enclosed
to avoid sedition;...though not much distant from the Equator, if not
plainly under it, yet [it is] blessed with such a temperate air that some
have taken (but amistaken) it for the place of Paradise."  M. had clearly
read this passage in Heylin, who seems to have been his chief authority
in matters relating to the customs of foreign nations and geography.




NOTES.


461


The tradition with regard to the Abyssinian princes is used by
Johnson in Rasselas, but he speaks of a single palace, and places it in
a 'happy valley,' not on the top of a mountain.
280, 281. Abassin, Abyssinian; the Arabic name.
Amara; correctly Amhara; it is rather a range of hills than a
single "mount."
282. Ethliop line, the equator. Ethiop; the people of Abyssinia
still call their land Itiopia and themselves Itiopyavan.
283. Shakespeare uses Ailus and Nile. head, source.
288, 289. The repetition of "erect" is important, since M. treats
man's stature as a symbol of his sovereignty over the "prone" beastcreation, VII. 506 —0.
M. "drew the portrait of Adam not without regard to his own
person, of which he had no mean opinion" (Newton); and which he
describes in the autobiographical part of his Second Defence of the People
of England (P. W. I. 235, 236).
29i, 292. See Genesis i. 26, 27.
295. whence; it refers to " truth, wisdom, sanctitude " (i.e. holiness),
these qualities, not birth and position, conferring true authority. Cf.  '
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, " There is no qualification for government, but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive"
(Payne's ed., p. 58).
295-99. This relation of woman to man-" not equal"-runs
throughout the scenes in which Adam and Eve are introduced. Johnson  J
says, "Both before and after the fall, the superiority of Adam is
diligently sustained" (Life of Milton). Such lines as these and 635-38
express Milton's personal conception of woman's status and capacities;
and how much it differed from modem views may be illustrated by
the single fact that his treatise On Education makes no reference to:
the education of women. There is only a touch of exaggeration in
Johnson's remark that Milton's works reveal "something like a Turkish
contempt of females as subordinate and inferior beings "; the contrast,
in fact, between Puritan austerity and the exaggerated chivalry of the
Cavaliers. See also ix. 823, note.
God in him; modified by Bentley to "God and him."
300. front, forehead (Lat. frons); often in Shakespeare.       /
301. hyacinthine; a classical epithet.  Homer speaks of hair
(KouLas) 'like to a hyacinth' (vaKtvO8vy avcOet 6/ooas), Odyssey VI. 231.
A dark colour, perhaps deep brown, seems implied. Milton's own hair
was auburn; the Bodleian Library has a lock of it, considered genuine.
303-306. See I Cor. xi. 14 and 15 (" if a woman have long hair, it
is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering"-in the margin,




462


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


veil). Some think that M. was condemning as effeminate (cf. "but
not beneath " etc.) the Cavalier fashion for men to wear the hair long.
wanton, unrestrained; cf. 629 and Arcades, 46, 47.
307, 308. implied subjection; M. infers this from i Cor. xi. 8-15.
310, 3Ii. coy, modest. The slow rhythm suggests "delay." This
line is the obvious original of Collins's line "Reluctant pride, and
amorous faint consent" (Verses written on a Paper, etc.).
J   313. dishonest, unchaste; cf. "honest" in the Prayer-Book.
314. honour dishonourable.   Cf. Tennyson's famous line, "His
honour rooted in dishonour stood" (Lancelot and Elaine). M. often uses
this classical figure of speech called oxymoron by which two words,
connoting opposite ideas are closely associated. Cf. I. 63, II. 252.
See i Cor. xii. 23, 24.
323, 324. A famous example of an idiom often used by Elizabethan,
as it had been by Greek, writers. It combines the comparative and
superlative constructions-thus: ' Eve fair-er than all her daughters'+
'Eve fair-est of all women.' So M. writes in Areopagitica, "this very
opinion...is the worst and newest opinion of all others " (P. W. II. 98);
and Shakespeare in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 250, " This is the
greatest error of all the rest." Examples in Bacon occur in The Advancement of Learning, I. 4. 8, and 5. Ir; and Sir Thomas Browne has it in
a curiously similar context; cf. the Vulgar Errors, I. I, where he refers
to Adam as (in the opinion of some) " the wisest of all men since." Its
independent existence in Greek and English proves that the idiom,
though illogical, is natural-due perhaps to over-emphasis. It is just
the sort of combined construction into which people slip in conversation.
329. recommend, make pleasant.
332. compliant; probably in the rare sense 'pliant, easily bent,'
v   due to the false derivation from  Fr. plier, Lat. plicare; the true
etymological connection being with Ital. complire, Lat. complere.
' 333. recline= Lat. reclinis, ' reclining.'. 334. damasked, variegated.
J 337- purpose, conversation.
340-47. Contrast x. 7I0-I4 (note).
J 343. ramped, sprang.
344. ounce, a lynx (felis uncia); from Persian yuz, ' a panther.'
347. Note that the serpent is the most fully described (Newton).
\7     348, 349. insinuating, winding himself into folds (Lat. sinus).
Gordian twine, intricate tangle. his braided train, his twisted, interlaced tail; or perhaps the whole length of his body.
" That intricate form into which he put himself was a sort of symbol
or type of his fraud, though not then regarded" (Richardson).




NOTES.                         463
352. bedward ruminating; chewing the cud (Lat. ruminantes)
before they go to bed (Hume).
354. the Ocean Isles, i.e. in the Atlantic, in which, according to the
classical fancy, the sun set; cf. Comus, 95-97. In VIII. 63I, 632, M.
seems to identify them with the Cape de Verde islands.
ascending scale; to be taken, I think, not literally as a reference to
an astronomical fact or theory, but merely as a metaphor for the
alternations of day and night.
355. Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet I32, "Nor that full star that ushers in
the even."
357. failed, that had failed him. The pause, indicating Satan's
"dumb admiration," has enabled the poet to "enlarge (288-355)
his description" (Newton).
360. moulod; in M. a constant word for ' material, substance.'
361, 362. " A little lower than the angels," Psalm viii. 5.
368. ye; often used in Elizabethan E. for the objectiveyou.
370. for so happy, considering how happy they are: their security
is not in proportion to their happiness. Cf.for in 372.
374. forlorn, defenceless, "ill secured" (370).
38 —83. An allusion to Isaiah xiv. 9.
387. for him, instead of him; or perhaps 'because of.'
389-91. 'Public reason-viz. honour and empire-compels.'
public reason; so in S. A. 865-70 Dalila excuses her treachery
to Samson on the ground that "the public good" of her country
required it.
393, 394. necessity. Perhaps an allusion to Charles's plea for shipmoney (Newton). Cromwell pleaded the same excuse for the execution
of Charles. Dryden puts the plea ironically in the mouth of the
"Panther" (III. 835-38). In On Education M. sneers at those to
whom "tyrannous aphorisms appear...the highest points of wisdom"
(P. W. IIl. 466).
398. end, purpose, aim, viz. "to view"; cf. "end" in 442.
402. a lion. Cf. i Peter v. 8. See I. 428, note.
404. purlieu, the outskirt of a forest.
405. couches; some modern texts misprint crouches.
408. M. always uses the older form gripe, not grip; cf. VI. 543
408-0o. The construction is-'When Adam, by beginning to
address Eve, made Satan turn.' Observe how naturally Satan gains
(419-32) the information he requires (Newton).
411. There is, I think, an almost quibbling use of sole=([) 'only,'
(2) 'unique' (implying 'chief').  Eve is the only sharer in Adam's joys
-and herself the chief element of them.




464


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


419. See Acts xvii. 25.
431. possess, occupy; cf. Romeo and Julief, II. 2. 27.
433. one; emphatic by position; 'only one.' easy, to keep (but
also to break); an unconscious irony.
441-43. flesh of thy flesh; cf. Genesis ii. 23. head; "the head
of the woman is the man," i Cor. xi. 3.
447. odds, superiority; often used so by Shakespeare; cf. Richard
I. III. 4. 89; Titus Andronicus, v. 2. I9.
449, 450. In vIII. 253-55 Adam likens his creation to awaking.
So death is often likened to sleep.
451. on flowers; so the First Ed.; the Second Ed. has of
flowers.
453-65. M. had in mind Ovid's story of Narcissus, Metamorphoses III. 407 et seq.
470. stays, i.e. for-awaits.
475. Cf. xi. I59. The name Eve is thought to mean ' life.'
478. platone, plane-tree (Lat. platanus).
483-85. "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman," Gen. ii. 23.
- -. 486. individual, in the literal sense ' not to be divided '=inseparable; cf. v. 6Io. Lat. individtus.
487, 488. So Horace calls Maecenas wee partem animne, and
Vergil anima dimidium mece (Odes Ii. 17. 5; I. 3. 8).
493. unreproved, not to be reproved, blameless; cf. 987.
5oo. impregns, impregnates; 0. Fr. enmpr-eigner, Lat. imprcegnare.
The word occurs in More's Song of the Soul (Cambridge ed., 1647,
p. 205).
503. envy; cf Ix. 264.
506. imparadised; used by other writers of the 17th century. Cf.
Giles Fletcher, Christ's Triumph after Death, 44, ".in his burning
throne he sits emparadis'd "; and Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island,
I. I5. Dante has it in the Paradiso, xxVIII. 3.
5ii. pines; probably transitive='makes me pine.' Cf. XII. 77,
and P.R. I. 325, "pined with hunger."
526. equal with gods. See III. 206, note.
530. a chance but, it is a chance, just a possibility, that chance
may lead, etc.: the grim sort of quibble in which bitterness (here
jealousy) finds vent.
539. in utmost longitude, in the farthest west. See III. 574-76.
540-43. The rays of the setting sun fell on the inner side of the
towering rock which formed the gate of Paradise on the east (XII. 638).
549. Gabriel, 'man of God'; one of the seven great Spirits; see




NOTES.


465


III. 648, 649, note. Following, no doubt, some tradition, M. makes him
in P. L. one of the chief warriors of the Heavenly host, though inferior
to Michael (vi. 44-46). In the Bible Gabriel is always a peaceful
intermediary between Heaven and Earth and the bearer of tidings to
man (cf. Daniel viii., ix., Luke i.), and that is the ordinary conception
of his office; see the sketch of Adam zunarpadiz'd in the Introduction,
and cf. Fairfax, Tasso, I. 1 1:
"Out of the Hierarchies of angels sheen
The gentle Gabriel call'd he [the Almighty] from the rest,
'Twixt God and souls of men that righteous been
Ambassador is he, for ever blest;
The just commands of Heaven's Eternal King,
'Twixt skies and earth, he up and down doth bring."
That aspect of Gabriel is presented in P. R. I. 129, Iv. 504.
55I-54. Cf. a similar scene in ii. 528-32 (note).
553. armoury, weapons; in apposition to "shields," etc.
555. the even; that part of the hemisphere where it was then
evening (Todd).
557. thwarts, crosses.
560. he thus began. This abruptness expresses his haste (Newton).
56i. When M. speaks of the offices assigned to the Heavenly
beings he seems to have in his mind the Temple-service of the Jews and
the distribution of the Levites " by lot," I Chronicles xxiii.-xxv. Note
also the "courses" of service in r Chronicles xxvii., and cf. P. L. v. 655.
565, 566. Cf. Satan's words in iii. 667-76.
567. God's latest imagre; the first being Christ; cf. III. 63.
described; Uriel had directed Satan's course, III. 722-35. Descried,
which some modern texts print, gives a more natural sense, but it has
no authority apart from the parallel passage in IX. 60-62.
568. aery gait, course through the air.
569-73.   Cf. 124-30.    in=on; a common Elizabethan use;
cf. the Lord's Prayer, "in earth, as it is in heaven."
580.  vigilance, guards: abstract for concrete.  Cf. II. I30
("watch").
590-92.   "While Uriel and Gabriel have been conversing, the
Sun has fallen to the horizon, so that the sunbeam on which Uriel
returns inclines from Paradise to the Sun" (Masson).
592. beneath the Azores, i.e. in the extreme west.
592-97. He will not decide whether the sun had revolved to the
west or the Earth to the east, i.e. whether the Ptolemaic astronomy
(according to which the Earth was a stationary body) or the Copernican
is right. Cf. IIl. 574-76, note. For the general purposes of his poem


P. L.


3~




466


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


M. accepts the old Ptolemaic system, but he lets the reader see that
he knows the Copernican. See the notes on vIII. 130-40.
prime orb; surely the sun, "the great luminary" (cf. prime=
chief), with "lucent orb," III. 576, 589, the "dizurnal star," x. Io69;
not, as some think, the Priurum Mobile.
593. incredible how swift; an absolute construction like IIl. 76.
594. volibil; in form, accent and sense= Lat. volibilis, 'rolling.'
The Latin accentuation of words derived from Latin was very marked
in Elizabethan E.; it has steadily declined, the Teutonic tendency in
E. being to throw the accent forward, e.g. vdluble; dspect, not aspJct=
Lat. aspictus (see 541, III. 266); edict, not edict (S. A. 301).
598, 599. Cf."the grey-hooded Even," Comus, I88.  livery, dress.
Thyer notes that Milton is very fond of describing twilight, perhaps
because of his eyesight.
603. she; see v. 41. descant, song with variations. Gray borrowed
Milton's phrase, in that Sonnet which Wordsworth took as a type of the
Augustan style of poetic diction: "The Birds in vain their amorous
Descant join."  Cf. Vergil, Geolr. Iv. 5 1-I5.
604. So in Comus, 557-60, when "The Lady" sang, "even
Silence" was enchanted.
605. living sapphires; cf. II. o150.
6o8. apparent queen, revealed a queen-manifestly a queen.
614. Cf. Richard III. Iv. i. 84, " the golden dew of sleep," and
Julius Caesar, I. i. 230, " Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber."
60o. regard, watch (cf. III. 534); in 877='look' (Fr. regard).
628. manurintg, cultivation.
632. ask, require; a common Elizabethan use; cf. The Taming of
the Shrew, II. 1r5, "Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste."
635. author, i.e. the source of her being (see book viII.).
640. seasons, times of the day, not year (see x. 678, 679).
64 1-56. A striking example of the poetic artifice called epanadiplosis or 'repetition'; cf. viI. 26, note. The passage illustrates
well Milton's love of Nature; see Ix. 445-54, note.
642. charm, song; used sometimes in the wider sense of harmonious notes, music; cf. The Holy WMar ("Temple" ed., p. 293): "The
men of Mansoul also were greatly concerned at this melodious charm of
the trumpets."
657, 658. Pope probably recollected this when he wrote the Essay
on 1ian, I. I31, 132:
"Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use?  Pride answers, ''Tis for mine.'"
659. our general ancestor; cf. "our general mother" (Eve), 492.




NOTES.


467


660. accomplished; a complimentary address; cf. Twelfth /Arhf,
Ill. 1. 95, " Most excellent accomplished lady! "
66i. those.  Newton substituted these, perhaps rightly; cf. 657,
674.
665. Darkness, i.e. the " original darkness " (1!. 984) of Chaos.
667-73. A reference to current astrology.
673. Cf. what is said of the sun's power in III. 606-e2.
674. Cf. Julius Ccesar, iv. 3. 226, "The deep of nigiht is crept
upon our talk"; and The Aler7ry Wives of Windsor, iv. 4. 0.
675. none; placed last for emphasis; cf. 704, XI. 6i2.
684-88. 'Often, while they keep watch or make the nightly
rounds, their songs, joined in harmonious measures ("number") with
the notes of instruments skilfully touched, divide the night.'
688. divide, i.e. into watches. divide the night; literally = the
Latin phrase dividere noctem used of Roman soldiers marking the
watches of the night by sounding on a trumpet the signal for relieving
guard. Cf. Silius Italicus vii. 154, 155, medalam somni cure buccina
nocteLm I divideret. So Lucan uses dividere horas, 1i. 689. Tennyson
gives a fresh turn to the phrase; cf. A Dream of Fair Women, "Saw
God divide the night with flying flame."
This part of Paradise Lost inspired, mainly, the graceful Miltonic
passage in Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, II., early ("Till Hymen
brought...").
697-703. Cf. the description of the flowers with which the bier of
Lycidas is to be decked, Lye. I39-5i. The "bower" in Tennyson's
tEnone owes something to these lines; cf. too the "moonlit sward" in
his Arabian Nights.
703. emblem, inlaid work; Gk.    /3PX/ua, 'a thing put on, an
ornament.'
706. feigned, i.e. by poets.
707, 708. Sylvanus, a Latin divinity of the fields and woods (Lat.
silva, wood), much the same as Faunas, the god of fields and shepherds,
or the Greek Pan, god of flocks and pastoral life. The three deities
were often identified.
71. the hyntenean, the marriage-song; from hIIymen, the classical
marriage-god.
712. genial= Lat. genialis in the sense 'nuptial'; cf. lccls-genialisl'"
713-19. To benefit mankind, Prometheus ('fore-thought') stole
the fire of Zeus (Jove); Zeus in revenge caused Hephaestus (Vulcan)
to make a woman out of earth who should bring misery on mankind.
She was called Pandora or All-gifted (Gk. 7rdvra, 'all'+ +&pa, 'gifts')
because each of the gods endowed her with some power fatal to
30-2




468


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


mankind. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, conducted her to
Epimetheus ('after-thought'), " the unwiser son"; and he, forgetting
the advice of his brother, Prometheus, not to accept anything from
Zeus, married her.  Pandora brought with her from heaven a box
containing all human ills and let them loose upon mankind. Thus
Zeus was revenged upon Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind.
Another version of the legend said that the box contained blessings, all
which, save hope, escaped and abandoned the world when Pandora
opened the lid.
M. had made a precisely similar application of the story in his
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 3, calling Eve "a consummate and
most adorned Pandora," and Adam "our true Epimetheus" (P. W.
III. 224).
716-19. The construction is-'when, brought by Hermes to
the unwiser son, she ensnared mankind, so as to bring vengeance (i.e.
of Jove) on him who etc.' event, issue, result, Lat. cventust. auwiser,
i.e. less wise than Prometheus. Some take it as a Latinism='not so
wise as he should have been' (itmprudentior).
717. Japhet= Gk. 'Iairero, one of the Titans, father of Prometheus
and Epimetheus. Apparently M. identifies him with the Japhet of
Scripture. Cf. S.. A.  5, 716, where, as in Isaiah 1xvi. 19, Javan
stands for the Greek race-Javan being the son of the Scriptural
Japhet, Genesis x. 2. See I. 508.
719. stole; so the original texts; we find it in Shakespeare; cf.
Macbeth, II. 3. 73, ulitus Caesar, II. I. 238.
authentic, original, genuine; cf. ill. 656.
720. stood.  In The Christian Doctrine, II. 4, M. says, "No
particular posture of the body in prayer was enjoined, even under
the law" (P. W. v. 34). He makes Adam and Eve sometimes stand
(xi. i, 2), sometimes kneel (xi. I5o), when they pray.
722. The use of both with more than two things is quite Elizabethan;
cf. Venus and Adonis, 747, " Both favour, savour, hue and qualities."
724-35. The words of adoration offered by Adam and Eve.
AM. may have had in mind Psalm lxxiv. I6, I7.
733. fill the Earth =" replenish the earth," Genesis i. 28.
735. "For so he giveth his beloved sleep," Psalm cxxvii. 2. Homer
speaks of the " gift of sleep," V7rvou 6Spov, Iliad Ix. 713, and Vergil has
a similar thought, EEneid II. 269.
736, 737. M. often shows his dislike of ceremonies and forms in
worship; cf. XII. 534, 535.
741-62. Various texts of Scripture dealing with marriage are
referred to, e.g. Gen. i. 28; I Tim. iv. i-s3; Ephes. v. 32; HIeb. xiii. 4.




NOTES.


469


744-47. The allusion is to monachism and the celibacy of priests.
751. sole propriety, the one thing held by its owners (Adam and /
Eve) as their exclusive possession. Lat. proprins, 'one's own.'
756. charities, feelings of love, affections (Lat. carinates).
763. According to legend, " winged Cupid" (A Aidsunzmmer-ALight's
Dream, I. I. -35), the god of love, had two sorts of arrows, one tipped
with gold to inspire love, the other with lead to repel love (Ovid,
AMetamorphoses I. 468-71). Cf. the Glosse to Spenser's The Shepheards
Calender, March, " He [Cupid] is sayd to have shafts, some leaden,
some golden."  Orsino in Twelfth Night, I. I. 35, speaks of love's
"rich golden shaft."  The allusion is common in Elizabethan poets.
764. constant lamp; cf. XI. 590. The antithesis to " constant"
is "casual" in 767. purple, lustrous. The imagery of the couplet
is classical; cf. 708-13.
767. court-anmozrs. Probably M. is glancing particularly at the
dissolute court of Charles II. Cf. a similar sarcasm in I. 497; also in
P. R. II. 183.
768. mixed dance. The Puritans greatly disliked the practice of
men and women dancing together. In Of Reformation in England, II.,
M. unites "gaming, wassailing, and mixed dancing" in one condemnation, P. W. II. 402.
mask, a private form of theatrical entertainment, the forerunner of
the opera; so called because originally the performers wore masks or
vizards. The mask was much patronised by the court (especially under
the Stuarts) and great nobles from Elizabeth's reign up to the outbreak
of the Civil War; after the Restoration mask-performances were very
rare, so that the allusion here had not very much point in i667.
M. was thinking of the past generation to which really he belonged.
He himself wrote a mask in Comus, i634; but the Milton of Paradise
Lost, I667, was a very different person. In the Preface to Eikonoklastes
he had ridiculed the "conceited portraiture...drawn  out of the full
measure of a masking scene," of Charles I. which was prefixed to Eikon
Basilike; and in his pamphlet on A Free Coommonwealth (166o) he had
condemned "masks and revels" as an appanage of court-life (P. W.. 312, II. ix6). See the account of the mask appended to Comus.
769. serenate, serenade. starved, perishing with cold; similarly I.
used in II. 600. Cf. Horace's picture of a lover shivering by night I
outside the house of his "proud fair" Lydia or Lyce (Odes I. 25 and
III. 10).
773. repaired, made good the loss of, i.e. with fresh roses.  \
775. know to know no more, are wise enough to seek no further
knowledge.




470


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


776, 777. "As the earth is a globe, her shadow, the sun being so
much larger than she is, must form a cone, which moves as the sun
moves, and on the opposite side. Night and day then in Paradise
consisting each of twelve hours, the earth's cone would, at midnight, be
in the meridian, and the half-way uphill to it [the meridian] would be
therefore nine o'clock, the commencement of the second watch"
(Keightley).
sublunar vault, the expanse of heaven below the moon. The epithet helps to fix how far up the heaven the Earth's shadow had climbed:
by nine o'clock it had not got as far as the moon.
778-80. M. always assigns to the Cherubim the duty of sentinels,
for the reason explained later (p. 68I).
778. port, gate (porta); cf. Coriolanus, v. 6. 6.
782. Uzziel, 'strength of God.' The name occurs in the Bible
(e.g. in Exod. vi. I8), but not as that of an angel, coast, skirt.
784. as flame; an apt simile, since the Cherubim are literally
lustrous beings-"radiant files " (797)
785. M. has borrowed the Greek phrases rt-' da7rloa, 'on the shield
side, i.e. to the left,' and eirl 86pv, 'to the spear side, i.e. to the right.'
We find Trap' iariloa and rrap& 66pv used thus. The military terms
suit the context and lend dignity.
786. fr'om these, i.e. from the band of Cherubim  which had
wheeled "to the spear" and were to be under the command of
Gabriel himself.
788. Ithuriel, 'the discovery of God.' Zephon, 'a looking out.'
The names suit the duty which Gabriel assigns to these two Cherubim.
J 79. secure of, unsuspicious of, not fearing.
792, 793. i.e. there arrived one who (Lat. qui) tells (namely, Uriel).
797. files, lines; cf. I. 567, "the armed files."
798. these, Ithuriel and Zephon.
799-809. This episode is made the occasion of a philosophical
explanation of dreams in v. I00-2.
8oo. Pope has an effective allusion to this line in the famous satire
on 'Sporus' (Lord Hervey), Epistle to Arbutzhnot. See also S. A. 857,
858, P. R. Iv. 407-409.
802. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5. 54, 55, "ere she
sleep... Raise up the organs of her fantasy" (=imagination).
803. list; a past tense, as in II. 656.
804. or if. M. varies the construction: 'trying to reach.. trying if
he might' etc.
8 1. lightly, i.e. with only a light touch,for etc.
812. temp'r, a thing tempered, i.e. a weapon: abstract for concrete.




NOTES.


471


814. "Tennyson used to say that the two grandest of all Similes
were those of the Ships hanging in the Air [II. 636-43], and 'the
Gunpowder one,' which he used slowly and grimly to enact, in the Days
that are no more" (Edward Fitzgerald, Letter, p. I56 of Life by
A. C. Benson).
815. Nitre or saltpetre is an ingredient of gunpowder; cf. VI. 512.
816. tun, barrel; Low Lat. tunna, a cask, Fr. tonneau.
8r7. against, in preparation for. Various battle-touches in P. L.
(especially in bk. vi.) seem like a reminiscence of the Civil War.  Cf.
Milton's Sonnet "When the Assault."
829. there, i.e. in the higher places of Heaven, where the inferior
angels would not "sit."
830. Cf. S. A. io8r, o182:
"thou know'st me now,
If thou at all art known."
argues, proves, shows (Lat. arguere); cf. 931. \  /
835, 836. Apparently M. uses think with different constructions,
thus: 'Do not think thy shape the same, or suppose thy undiminished
brightness to be known as it was in Heaven,' i.e. 'do not suppose thy
brightness to be undiminished and recognised.' Some interpret: 'Do
not think thy shape the same or thy brightness undiminished, so as to
be known.'
840. obscure; in the literal sense 'dark, gloomy' (Lat. obscurus). j '
843. these; Zephon points to Adam and Eve.
845-47. Remembered by Dryden; cf. The Hind and the Panther,
III. 1040, 1041:
"For vice, though frontless and of hardened face,
Is daunted at the sight of awful grace."
There are parallels to this scene in Paradise Regained, where Satan,
not insensible to goodness, is abashed in the presence of the Saviour
(e.g. in III. 145-49).
847-49. A reminiscence of Persius III. 38, viwrztem zvidaant, intabescantque relicta.
848. shape = Lat. forma in its philosophical sense 'outward manifestation of'; cf. forma honesti='shape of virtue,' Cicero, De Offciis )
I. 5. 5. So M. in his prose-works; cf. The Reason of Church Govern- /
ment, I. i, "the very visible shape and image of virtue"; and again,
I. 2, "the lovely shapes of virtues and graces," P. W. II. 442, 446.
856. Cf. S. A. 834, "All wickedness is weakness."
862. those half-rounding guards, i.e. the Cherubim under Uzziel
and the others under Gabriel. Each band had made half the circuit of
Paradise, and now they met at its western extremity (cf. 784).




472


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


869. port, bearing. "Their port was more than human," Comus,
297.
87o, 87r. Gabriel, belonging to one of the highest of the Heavenly
'.Orders, has known Satan (an archangel) in the past, and so recognises him here; Zephon, an inferior angel, did not (830, 83I).
872. contest. M. always accents the noun, as we do the verb, contest; cf. xi. 800, "In sharp contest of battle found no aid."
886. the esteem of wise, the reputation of being wise.
891-93. whatever, any; cf. 587. to change...with, to exchange
for; compare the double use of Lat. mutare.
894. dole; Lat. dolor, 'pain.' which...l sought, i.e. to do, viz.
'to exchange torment for ease' etc.
896. object, urge as an objection to my breaking from Hell.
899. durance, prison, strictly 'imprisonment.'
thus much, i.e. thus much in reply to your question. The style of
the speech reflects Satan's "contemptuous " bearing (885).
906. returns; probably the subject is "Satan," returns him being
the reflexive use so common in Elizabethan E. with many verbs now
intransitive; cf. I Henry VI. Ill. 3. 56. Some editors takefolly as the
subject, and return = 'bring back.'
9I. however, howsoever, by any means.
925. 'I do not come because I have less power to endure.'
926, 927. Either (1) 'I withstood, resisted, thy fiercest attack'-cf.
phrases like 'do thy worst'; or (2) 'I proved myself ("stood.") thy
fiercest foe.' The first way, which makes stood transitive, is preferable;
for the noun-use of thyfiercest, cf. II. 278, XI. 497.
927, 928. Book vi. describes how on the third day of the great
battle in Heaven the Messiah came forth to end the contest, and, hurling
"ten thousand thunders," smote the rebels down into Hell.
vollied; cf. Campbell, "From rank to rank your volleyed thunder
flew" (said of guns).
93o, 93i. i.e. show thy ignorance of what is the duty of a leader
after disaster; cf. "argue" in 949.
938. fame= Lat. fama in the literal sense 'report'; cf. I. 65 I.
t/ 1939. afflicted, struck down (afflictus); cf. I. I86.
940. An allusion to the Rabbinical view, commonly adopted by
mediaeval writers, that the angels who fell with Satan were the same as
the spirits or "daemons" who inhabited the "elements" of earth and
air. See II. 274, 275, note; and for the ancient division of the air into
three "regions," see Appendix, pp. 674-76.
941. put to try, made, forced, to try. Cf. Cymbeline, II. 3. I o,
"You put me to forget a lady's manners."




NOTES.                          473
942. gay, fine; perhaps a retort to "obscure and foul" in 840.
943-45. Here Satan is very like the Prometheus of /Eschylus;
cf. Prometheus Vinctus 937, 938 (Todd).
949. Gabriel is replying to Satan's words in 930-33.
953-56. In these lines Gabriel speaks to the host of Satan's
followers, as though they were present; your refers to them-not, of
course, to Satan, whom Gabriel addresses as thou. In Shakespeare thou
is often a contemptuous form of address.
958. patron, champion; see III. 219, note.
962. areed, advise.
965-67. drag; a vivid present. chained; see I. 48, III. 82. seal;
cf. Rev. xx. 3, "And [he] cast him [Satan] into the bottomless pit, and
shut him up, and set a seal upon him." facile, easily passed.
97. lzmitfay= Lat. limitaris, 'guarding the frontier' (Lat. limes). I
Satan refers sarcastically to "hallowed limits" in Gabriel's speech (964).
973-76. Alluding to the throne-chariot of the Deity conceived
as formed of the wings of the Cherubim. Cf. VI. 771. Satan called
Gabriel a cherub (971), though properly he was an archangel.
the road of Heaven.  Cf. VIL. 576-78, and the description of
"the floor of heaven" in T,he lfMerchant of Venice, v. 58, 59.
977-79. i.e. the close array of angels spread itself out in the shape
of a crescent moon. Cf. Fairfax, 7Tsso, xx. 22, "Like the new moon,
his host two horns did spread." phalanx, battalion (Gk. pcUXa-y).
98o. with ported spears, i.e. "with their spears held in their hands
across their breasts and slanting beyond the left shoulder, ready to be
brought down to the 'charge' if necessary.  The Angels have not the
points of their spears turned to Satan [as the phrase used to be explained
by editors]; they have them only grasped in the position preparatory to
turning them against him" (Masson). "Port" is really a military term.
Anyone who has ever executed, or seen executed, the command "Arms
port" (formerly "Port arms"), will be able to picture to himself the
band of Cherubim with slanting spears thick as the slanting stalks of
corn-a very appropriate simile, used by other poets; Newton compares
Iliad IT. 47. See vii. 321, 322.
98 1-83.  Ceres, corn; strictly the goddess of agriculture. The
beard is the prickles on the ears of corn. careful, anxious.
984. hopeful, from which he had hoped so much; or 'which had
made him so hopeful' (the epithet being transferred). MI. is thinking of
Vergil's expectata seges, Geor,. I. 226.
985. alarmed, prepared, on his guard.
986. dilated, expanded. Spirits (he says in I. 428, 429) can
distend or contract their shapes as they please.




474


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IV.


987. Atlas, the mountain in Libya on which the sky was supposed
by the Greeks to rest (II. 306). unremoved, not to be removed; cf. 493.
988, 989. his stature reached the sky. Editors compare Homer's
goddess of Discord and Vergil's Fame; and refer to the book of
Wisdom xviii. i6. crest, i.e. of his helmet. Probably M. remembered
Henry V. ii. Prol. 8. See also vI. 306, 307.
990. Cf. the picture of Death in II. 672, 673. The intentional
vagueness of such descriptions is so effective because it stirs but does
not satisfy the imagination, rousing a sense of the mysterious and
indescribable.
992. cope, "canopy" (IIr. 556), roof; akin to cape, cap. Cf. Pericles,
iv. 6. 132, "the cheapest country under the cope," i.e. firmament.
993. all the elements, the whole fabric of this Universe.
994. wrack, destruction; the old form of wreck.
996-1004. The general idea of the "golden scales" of the Almighty
is from Homer, Iliad vIII. 69-72: "then did the Father [i.e. Zeus]
balance his golden scales (Xpi5-taa TraXava) and put therein two fates of
death...one for horse-taming Trojans, one for mail-clad Achaians; and
he took the scale-yard by the midst and lifted it, and the Achaians' day
of destiny sank down" (Leaf). The idea is repeated in llxx. X. 209-12,
with reference to the contest between Achilles and Hector, and imitated
by Vergil, En. XII. 725-27, with reference to Aeneas and Turnus.
M. does not borrow without adding or varying, and we may note the
fresh turns which he has given to Homer's notion: (i) he identifies the
Scales with the sign of the Zodiac called Libra = 'the Balance'-a poetic
fancy which gives at once a certain reality to the fiction of the Scales
and a new association and interest to Libra itself; (2) he represents the
Scales as those with which the Almighty measured out the Universe
and its elements-and this, by adding to the importance of the Scales,
heightens our sense of the greatness of Satan whose fate is weighed
in them, and increases the grandeur of the whole scene.
M. had referred to the Scales —Fatorum lances-in his Latin poem
Naftn-am non Pati Seninm, 34, 35.   Pope employs them with file
mock-heroic effect in The Rape of the Lock, 7II-14.
998. Astraa; the constellation Virgo. the...sign, i.e. of the Zodiac.
999 —Ioo. Cf. Isaiah xl. I2, "Who hath measured the waters in
the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span,...and
weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?" also Job
xxviii. 25, xxxvii. I6.
pendulous, hanging (Lat.pendulsis), i.e. as the central body-"selfbalanced"-of the Universe; cf. "hung" in vII. 242 and the Naaivity
Ode, 122. This is what Bacon means by "the pensileness of the earth"




NOTES.


475


(The Advancement of Learning, I. 6. io). In II. o152, the idea is
different, though the wording is similar. ponders, weighs.
o100, 1003. Again M. varies the classical idea: (i) he does not
weigh Satan against Gabriel, as Homer weighed the Greeks against
the Trojans, Hector against Achilles, or Vergil Turnus against tEneas:
only Satan himself is weighed. The one weight represents the consequence (="sequel") to Satan of fighting, the other the consequence
of departing: the scale containing the weight that symbolises fighting
shows, by its ascent, that Satan's chance of success is light-weighed
and found wanting (Daniel v. 27); i.e. that the result of departing
will be better for him. (2) In Homer and Vergil the descent of the
scale, since it is weighted with death, is the evil sign. The English
use of the image is the reverse-ascent typifying worthlessness and its
consequences.
1004. beam, the cross-piece from which the scales of a balance are
suspended. To 'kick (or 'strike') the beam' means that one scale immediately ascends as far as it can, being greatly outweighed by the other:
hence the figurative application of the phrase to things 'of little weight.'
Cf. The Hinda    the an n the  ter, I1. 622-24:
"If such a one you find, let truth prevail;
Till when, your weights will in the balance fail;
A Church unprincipled kicks up the scale."
ioo8. since thine, i.e. can do; referring to "strength."
1oio. "To tread them     down like the mire of the streets,"
Isaiah x. 6.
o014. nor more, i.e. nor said more.  This omission of verbs of
saying (cf. v. 67) is common in Vergil, whose influence on M. was
so great. Addison thought that in regard to style Milton was affected
more by Vergil than by Homer.
o015. fjed the shades of night. The action of the next book begins
at daybreak.  Books v.-viII. are filled mainly with the account of
events which preceded the creation of man.  Satan, though spoken of,
does not appear again till ix. 53.
BOOK V.
r.  tow morn. "This is the morning of the day after Satan's
coming to the earth" (Todd).
rosy steps. Contrast Lycidas, T86, 187:
"Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,
While the still Morn went out with sandals gray."




476


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


So in VII. 373, 374, and P..'. iv. 426, 427.  Some scholars say that
the Homeric epithet for the Dawn, po0oSdaKrvXos, refers to her feet,
not hands; Milton, however, followed the ordinary interpretation
(VI. 3).
"Gray" and "rosy" (vi. 3) are, of course, traditional epithets for
the morning in its early and later stages. clime, region.
2. sowed; the metaphor of scattering corn, to which the dewdrops (" orient pearl ") bear some resemblance. Spenser speaks of the
sky "All sowd with glistring stars," An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie.
Cf. vii. 358. Shakespeare often likens moisture (746, 747), especially
tears, to pearl; cf. Lucrece, 1213, 1553. or'ient, lustrous.
3-5. i.e. Adam's sleep was not the heavy drowsiness that clouds
the brain with its vapours after intemperate eating or drinking. Cf. ix.
1046-51; Macbeth, I. 7. 63-68; Pope, Satires, II. 73, 74 (obvious
Miltonic reminiscences); and Thomson, Spring, e245, 246.
5. temperate vapours bland; Milton's favourite word-order; cf.
VI. 249, and see the note on I. 733, where an illustration might be
added from  Campbell's Pleasures of tHope, "Of cultured soul, and
sapient eye serene" (an echo of Gray's Elegy, 53).
bland, soothing. which, i.e. "sleep." the only sound, the single
sound, the sound alone. Todd quotes the phrase in The Faerie Queene,
V. I 1. 3o. This use of only is Spenserian; cf. " the only breath" ='only
the breath, the mere breath,' F. Q. I. 7. 13.
6. fuming, i.e. with the steam that rises in early morning; see
I85, i86. For this literal use of fume cf. vii. 600.
Aurora's fianz= the "leaves."  The wind which ushers in the dawn
(cf. S.A. o10, ii) stirs the leaves as a fan, and their rustling helps to
awake Adam.
i6. i.e. mild as the west wind ("that breathes the spring," L'Allegro,
I8) passing over a bank of flowers. Flora, the goddess of flowers,
symbolises the flower-world, as in P. R. II. 365. Her association with
Zephyrus is a poetic convention; cf. Garth's Dispensajry, i699:
"Where Flora treads, her Zephyr garlands flings,
And scatters odours from his purple wings."
I7-25. Keightley cites the Song of Solomon ii. 1o0-3. Cf. too
the lines "Wake now, my love, awake! etc." in Spenser's Epithalamion; the Song of Solomon is referred to directly in IX. 442, 443.
21. prime, daybreak, the early part of the day.
22. tended; so the First Ed.; but in many texts (as Dr Bradshaw
notes) it has been corrupted into tender. Compare, however, passages
like IV. 438, " To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers,"
and ix. 20o6. blows, i.e. blooms.




NOTES.


477


23. ban^Zy reed, i.e. balm (=balsamn, etymologically); cf. "corny
reed"=corn, VII. 321. drops; myrrh and balm are aromatic resins, of
much the same nature, produced by the balsam-tree (i3aXoaao66cev6pov)
and other trees of the same genus. Cf. iv. 248, and Othello, v. 2.
348-50:
"one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum ";
lines which Marvell remembered in the Nymph's lament over her dying
fawn:
"See how it weeps! the tears do come
Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum.
So weeps the wounded balsam; so
The holy frankincense doth flow;
The brotherless Heliades
Melt in such amber tears as these."
The perfume myrrh is to be distinguished from the resin; it is thought
to have been distilled from a kind of rock-roses.
30, 31....have dreamed. Explained by iv. 799 et seq. "The
author...shews a wonderful art throughout his whole poem in preparing
the reader for the several occurrences that arise in it" (Addison). The
abruptness of the sentences expresses Eve's confusion on just awakening,
and her agitation of mind.
35-93. Belinda's vision in the first canto of The Rape of the Lock
is an amusing but by no means "respectful perversion" of Eve's
dream.
39-41. i.e. the nightingale; the poet's favourite bird, as many
allusions show. Cf. his first Sonnet, Comzus, 234 (" the love-lorn
Nightingale "), Il Penseroso, 61-64, viI. 435, 436, and the fifth Elegy,
25-28. No doubt, the garden of his father's house at Horton (cf.
It Pen. 49, 50) was a haunt of the bird.
his; poetic tradition (due to the classical story of Philomela) would
say her, but the male bird is the songster. Elsewhere, however, Milton
follows the poetic convention; cf. IV. 602, 603.  Thomson, Spring,
speaks of the "love-taught song" of birds, remembering perhaps
Spenser, Epithalamion, 88 ("love-learned song").
43, 44. Contrast Iv. 657 et seq., where Eve asks wherefore, for
whom, do the stars shine all night, to which Adam replies that there
are "millions of spiritual creatures" on earth, unseen by men, and
that they behold and praise God's works by night as by day.
50-92. A foretaste of the much fuller passage in ix. 494-833.




478


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


54-57. It is implied that the figure which appeared was that of
Satan; cf. iii. 636-44 where, to deceive Uriel, he puts on the form
of a Cherub, winged and with flowing locks-as here.
56, 57. Almost a paraphrase of,Eneid I. 403:
Ambrosicque comnz  divinunz vertice odorem
Spiravere.
ambrosia, fragrance. The adjective is used in a similar context by
Tennyson, in the description of Aphrodite ((Enone).
60. god, i.e. angelic being; so in 7o and II7. In The Christian
Doctrine, I. 5, M. explains why he applies the word 'god'to angels
(P. W. iv. Io6).
6I. i.e. is it envy (cf. Satan's words in ix. 729, 730) or some
reservation, restraint, that keeps you from being tasted?
66. vouched, made good with, confirmed by; cf. Henry V. V. I. 77.
67. he thus, i.e. spake; cf. Iv. 10I4.
7I-73. See 3I8-2o, note.
76. The resemblance to Euripides, Alcestis 182, has been remarked.
There is a striking allusion to the Alcestis in Milton's Sonnet " On his
Deceased Wife."  Euripides was his favourite-after Homer-among
the Greek poets. A copy of Euripides with MS. notes by Milton is
extant, and one of his textual emendations-irOews for j/eiwv in the
Bacchce I88-is universally adopted.  In his edition of the Bacchce
(Cambridge Press) Dr Sandys points out several Euripidean reminiscences in Comus. He notes too what seems to have escaped Milton's
editors, viz. the fact that the year in which M. bought the copy of
Euripides above referred to, and may reasonably be supposed to have
devoted some special attention to the works of the Greek poet, was the
year which saw the production at Ludlow, and probably the composition, of Comus. The direct allusions to Euripides in Milton's proseworks are very numerous. See the Appendix to Sonnets VIII. and
XXIII., with the Notes on those Sonnets.
77, 78. Cf. Ix. 705-709. The allusion is to Genesis iii. 5.
79. in the Air. Satan speaks as "prince of air" (xII. 454). In
P. A. I. 39-46 he addresses his followers as "ancient powers of air,"
and in P. R. II. 117, "the middle region of thick air" is their councilchamber. The idea can be traced to Ephesians ii. 2. Lines 78, 79
are the appropriate motto of Wordsworth's poem, " Devotional Incitements. "
84-86. Cf. the scene of the Temptation in IX. 739-41. In XI.
517-19, Michael warns Adam against "ungoverned appetite," that
having been the main cause of Eve's sin.
9I. i.e. Ifound that he was gone; the sense connects wondering (89)




NOTES.


479


with (91). In the First and Second Eds. the punctuation is peculiar:
there is a colon after various and a semicolon after exaltation. Perhaps
by isolating the clause thus Milton intended an abruptness of speech
corresponding with the surprise which Eve felt when she found herself
alone.
94. sad, seriously.
98. uncouth, strange.
102-I05. For Milton "Fancy" is the loftiest form of imagina-   V
tion; cf. VIII. 46I, where he terms it " internal sight," i.e. the highest
power of conceiving mentally that which is not present to the eye.
We must remember what "Fancy" means to him when we read his
line on Shakespeare in L'Allegro, "Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's
child " (i33). "Fancy " is the normal i8th century word for 'imagination.' Cf. for instance, Collins's poems passim (e.g. the lines to Sir
Thomas IIanmer on his edition of Shakespeare).
Johnson considered Adam's discourse on dreams to be too philosophical for a new-created being. But "to find sentiments for the
state of innocence was very difficult; and something of anticipation
perhaps is now and then discovered."
104. represent, i.e. present, give representations of.
106, 107. frames, i.e. frames into what we affirm etc.
I 5. our last evening's talk; related in IV. 411-39, where
Adam reminds Eve of the prohibition not to taste of the tree of
knowledge.
Ii8. so, i.e. as in your case: evil, he says, if unapproved (by
Reason) in the way Eve has described, leaves no blame. Keightley
explains so='provided that it be.' Todd prints unreprov'd.
129. "A   manner of speaking that occurs in Jeremiah xx. 7:
'thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived'" (Newton).
I33. each...their. A frequent idiom in M.; cf. vII. 453, xi. 889.
In Elizabethan E. each could be used as a plural word; cf. Coriolanus,
III. 2. 44.
c;ystal; a constant epithet of tears; cf. Shakespeare, Venus and
Adonis, 956, 957:
"She vail'd her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopt
The crystal tide."
137. arborozis roof. Cf. the beautiful description of their bower in
iv. 690-708.
139. day-spring, dawn, daybreak; so in VI. 521, and S. A. iA.
Cf. Luke i. 78, "the day-spring from on high" (margin sunrising),
and Job xxxviii. 12 in the Authorised Version and also in Coverdale's
version (I535), "Haste thou shewed the daye springe his place?"




48o


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


I4I, 142. shot. Cf. IV. 539-43, Cotus, 98, 99.
144, I45. Cf. Ix. 197-99. lowly they bowed; contrast xi. i, 2.
orisons, prayers.
147. inor.. wanted they, nor did they lack; cf. 5 14.
149. We must observe the strong emphasis on " unmeditated," and
the repetition of "various" in 146-unmistakeable hints at the poet's
"preference of extemporary prayer over set forms" (Keightley). In
Eikonoklastes, 25, he sneers at the use of a "service-book." Iis poems
are full of these covert attacks on the Church (Iv. i93, note).
150. numerous, melodious.
15i. It is worth while to remember that the lute, now obsolete,
was in Milton's time a very popular instrument. Cf. the frequent
allusions to it in Shakespeare. "To hear the lute well touched" is one
of the pleasures that M. promises himself in the Sonnet to Henry
Lawrence, and without doubt he had often delighted in the skill of his
friend Henry Lawes, a famed lutenist.
153-208. The hymn is obviously based upon Psalm cxlviii. and
the Canticle, "0 all ye Works of the Lord."    Thomson's poem,
A Hymn ("These, as they change "), is inspired by the same sources
and by the present passage. Thomson's admiration of Milton finds vent
in frequent imitations and in the very Miltonic lines, addressed to
"Britannia," in Summer':
"Is not wild Shakespeare thine and nature's boast?
Is not each great, each amiable muse
Of classic ages in thy Milton met?
A genius universal as his theme,
Astonishing as chaos, as the bloom
Of blowing Eden fair, as heaven sublime."
I54. frame, fabric, structure; cf. II. 924, vII. I5. Bacon uses
"the frame of things" and "the universal frame of nature" as
synonyms for 'the Universe' (The Advancement of Learning, I. 8.
I, II. 7 7).
I60. See 7J6, note, and contrast vi. 715.
162. symphonies, harmonies; see xI. 595, note.
day without lizght; "that is, without such night as ours, for the
darkness there [i.e. in Heaven] is no more than 'grateful twilight'"
(Newton). See 645.
I63. circle. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 9, "They (the angels)
are represented (in Scripture) as standing dispersed around the throne
of God in the capacity of ministering agents." Cf. 655-57.
I65. Cf. II. 324, note.
166. He refers to the planet Venus, which, when wvest of the sun,




NOTES.


481


rises and sets before him, and is called the Morning-star, Lucifercf. the Gk. titles 'Ewaibpos ('dawn-bringer') and 4cwa'p6pos ('lightbringer'); when the planet is east of the sun, it rises and sets after
him, and is called the Evening-star, Hesperus (iv. 605).    Cf.
Tennyson, Itn Meiemoriam, cxxi.:
"Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name,
For what is one, the first, the last."
fairest of stars; cf. Iliad XXII. 3I8, "Eaorepos, s KdXXtoaros Av opupav3
-Ta'raat cdaTrp, and the Glosse to The Shepheards Calender, December,
"he seemeth to be one of the brightest of starres, and also first ryseth,
and setteth last."
171. Newton notes that Ovid (Metamorphoses Iv. 228) calls the sun
mundi ocztus, and Pliny (Nat. Iist. II. 4) munldi animus. With
Elizabethan writers "eye of heaven" is a favourite periphrasis; cf.
Marlowe, 2 Tamburlaine, IV. 3. 88, "A greater lamp than that bright
eye of heaven," and Shakespeare's Sonnets i8, 33.  See note on
/I Penseroso, I41 ("Day's garish eye").
175. The general sense is that the moon, together with the fixed
stars and the planets, is to resound his praise.
I76. the fixed stars; cf. III. 481, note.  "They are fixed in their
orb, but their orb flies, that is, moves round with the utmost rapidity"
(Newton). orb=' sphere'; M. treats the terms as interchangeable.
177. ye five, i.e. the planets; "wandering fire" is partly a translation of the Gk. 7rXavz'r)Ts, 'a wanderer,' from  rXavaoOat, 'to wander'
-whence planet. Cf. Drummond of Hawthornden, Forth Feasting
(I617), where he is celebrating James I.'s thirst for knowledge:
"Thou sought'st to know this All's eternal source,
Of everturning heavens the restless course,
Their fixed eyes [cf. 176], their lights which wand'ring run,
Whence moon her silver hath, his gold the sun."
Drummond (1585-1649) has not a little in common with Milton, and
the fact that his poems were issued in 1656 with a Preface by Milton's
nephew Edward Phillips is suggestive. In his Theatrum Poetarum
(1675) Phillips deplores that they are "utterly disregarded and laid
aside at present," in spite of their "smooth and delightful" style.
Drummond's lament for Prince Henry (I613) and his Pastoral Elegy
(1637) may be compared with Lycidas. He is fond, too, of geographical
names, especially river-names like "Hydaspes" (III. 436). And his
"constant preoccupation with the starry heavens and the Ptolemaic
universe" makes another link with Paradise Lost.
five. He has already mentioned the Sunt Moon (then reckoned
planets) and Venus (166-70): hence only four planets remain

P. L.


31




482


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Possibly M. by a mere error
said five instead of four (which Bentley read); but I think that he
intended to include Venus again. In 166-70 he addressed the planet
emphatically under its special aspect as the Morning-star, giving this
particular manifestation of it an individuality apart from that of Venus
considered generally as one of the seven planets. The Earth can
scarcely be taken as making up the five, since not (as Masson notes)
till VIII. 128-30 does Adam learn that it may possibly be a planet.
178. The metaphor in "dance" is Milton's favourite means of
suggesting the motions of stellar bodies; cf. III. 579, 580, and ix. Io3.
Shakespeare also applies "dance" (the vb.) to the heavenly bodiesapparently to suggest their quivering light; cf. Much Ado About
Nothing, II. I. 349. Cf. too Shelley, "I sang of the dancing stars,"
Hymn of Apollo.
not without; Lat. non sine. M. is fond of this classical turn of phrase
(meiosis); cf. III. 32. He has it in his prose; cf. the fine passage
(with its Horatian reminiscence) in the Areopagitica: "I cannot praise
a fugitive and cloistered Virtue...that...slinks out of the race, where
that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat"
(P. W. Ii. 68).
song,, i.e. "the music of the spheres"; cf. 625-27. Perhaps the most
elaborate account of this idea in the classics is that given in the Myth of
Er, bk. x. of the Republic (617, 6i8). Plato there says that on each of the
spheres-he recognises eight-" stands a siren, who travels round with
the circle (i.e. revolution), uttering one note in one tone; and from all
the eight notes there results a single harmony."  See Arcades, 61-73,
where M. has adapted Plato's words (which are quoted at length in
my note there), and recalled Lorenzo's speech in The Merchant of
Venice, v. 6o-65; Comus, 241, io02; Twelfth Night, III. i. I2I,
Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 84, As You Like It, II. 7. 6.
According to tradition, Pythagoras was the only man who ever
heard this music; cf. Milton's treatise De Spherarum Concentu: "solus
inter mortales concentum audisse fertur Pythagoras."  Plato explains
that the music is inaudible because continuous; we should hear it if
there were a break. M. (cf. The Merchant of Venice, v. 64, 65) offers
elsewhere a purely moral view-that sin has deadened the human senses,
once so keen. Cf. Arcades, 72, 73:
"After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould with gross unpurged ear."
Here, before the Fall, Adam and Eve possess the power which through
their sin humanity lost. Somewhat similar is the Ode At a Solernn
MIusic (19-24).




NOTES.


483


i80. Elements; see II. 274, 275, note. Among many illustrations
in Shakespeare of this belief cf. Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2. 292,
293, Julius Ciesar, v. 5. 73, Twelfth Night, II. 3. 9, Io.
I81-83. that in quaternion run. "That in a fourfold mixture
and combination run a perpetual circle, one element continually
changing into another" (Newton).  He shows that here and later,
415 —8, Milton is thinking of a passage in Cicero's De Natura
Deorum, II. 33.
Lines 180-83 should be compared with II. 910-16.
189. uncoloured, i.e. having a single colour, unvariegated.
I9r. advance, raise aloft; see 588.
I93, I94. Cf. Thomson, A Hymn, "Ye forests bend, ye harvests
wave, to Him."
198. Cf. Cymbeline, II. 3. 21, "Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's
gate sings," and Sonnet 29:
"Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate."
But Shakespeare 'conveyed' the idea from a song in Lyly's play,
Campaspe, where the lark "at heaven's gate claps her wings."
202-204. witness, bear witness. I.. my song. Bentley read we...
our song, and some other editors find the singular inappropriate, since
Eve joined in the hymn. Pearce thought that M. was following the
practice of Greek dramatists with whom "sometimes the plural, and
sometimes the singular number is used" in the choruses (cf. the choruses
of S. A.). Perhaps, after all, M. only means that each of the worshippers speaks for himself.
o25. to give us only good.  Editors think that M. had in mind
"that celebrated prayer in Plato ": "  Jupiter, give us good things,
whether we pray for them or not, and remove from us all evil things,
even though we pray for them." Xenophon in his Memorabilia says
"that Socrates was wont to pray to the gods only to give good things,
as they knew best what things were so." Cf. the Collect for the 8th
Sunday after Trinity. (Newton's note.)
212-15. Cf. iv. 625-29, IX. 209-12. pampered, too luxuriant.
Newton aptly observed that pamper used to be connected with Lat.
panmpinus, a 'vine-leaf,' and M. may have accepted the etymology.
Really pamper is of Old Low Germ. origin, being a nasalised form of
the word which we get in pap; Skeat mentions a Low Germ. vb.
slamnpampen, 'to live daintily.'
215-19. Alluding to the pretty classical fancy of the vine being
wedded to (because trained to grow up) the elm; cf. Horace, Od. iv.
5. 30, Epod. II. 9, io, Vergil, Georg. II. 367. M. in the Epitaphium
31-2




484             PAAISE LOST.          BOOK    V.
Damonis, 65, speaks of the innuba uva, and in Of Reformation in
England, I., writes: " I am not of opinion to think the Church a vine in
this respect, because, as they take it, she cannot subsist without
clasping about the elm of worldly strength and felicity," P. W. II. 380.
Cf. Fairfax's Tasso, III. 76, "The married elm fell with his fruitful
vine"; and xx. 99.
22r-23. There is the same allusion in IV. I67-7I (a passage
which Tennyson " hated") to the story of Tobias and his victory over
Asmodeus (one of the evil angels) as told in the Apocryphal Book of
Tobit. Cf. The Hind and the Panther, III. 750-54:
"Still thank yourselves, you cry; your noble race
We banish not, but they forsake the place:
Our doors are open. True, but ere they come,
You toss your censing Test and fume the room;
As if 'twere Toby's rival to expel,
And fright the fiend who could not bear the smell."
the sociable Spirit. Cf. VII. 41, " Raphael, The affable archangel,"
and xI. 234, where Adam says that Michael is not "sociably mild,
as Raphael."    The name means 'divine healer,' or 'health of
God.' Raphael and Michael (who in bks. vi. and XI. is entrusted
with high duties by the Almighty) are archangels, and therefore
intermediaries between Heaven and earth. Addison considered that
"the angels are as much diversified in Milton, and distinguished by
their proper parts, as the gods are in IIomer or Virgil."  See xi. 234,
235, note.
230. what, i.e. whatsoever, as often in M.
238. secure; it implies a false feeling of security.
248. after his charge received; M. uses this Latin idiom often;
see i. 573.
249. Ardours, i.e. Seraphim. "The poet, I suppose, only made
use of this term to diversify his language a little, as he is forced to
mention the word Seraph and Seraphim in so many places " (Thyer).
254. self-opened; suggested, perhaps, by Ezekiel i.; see vI. 749 -59 for an undoubted use of the Vision.
257, 258. i.e. no cloud or star being interposed to obstruct his
sight; an absolute construction. however small; qualifying star; but
some connect it with Earth in 260.
259. not unconform to, like to.
261-63. Cf. the well-known passage in I. 287-91. A similar
but indirect reference to Galileo occurs in III. 588-9o. Galileo died
in I642; "glass of Galileo" is only a general term for the instrument
associated with his name. Cf. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, v. 137, 138:




NOTES.                         485
"This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks thro' Galilao's eyes";
"this" being Belinda's lock, translated to the skies.
264-66. lie has just said that the earth, as it appeared from
afar to the angel, resembled the regions in the moon as they appear
to an astronomer; now he compares it to the dim speck in the
distance which the pilot perceives when first he comes within sight
of an island. Strictly, Delos (see x. 296, note) was, and Samos was
not, one of the circular group of islands in the Egx-ean called Cyclades
(from K6KXOS, ' a circle').
The lines as they stand in the First Ed. have no commas. Some
editors place a comma before kens, making cloudy spot the accusative
and taking Delos...appearing as an absolute construction. It seems to
me preferable to make Delos or Samos the object after kens-with cloudy
spot in apposition.
269, 270. The metaphor is that of separating grain from the chaff;
cf. Isaiah xxx. 24, "clean provender, which hath been winnowed with
the shovel and with the fan."  Fan is from Lat. vannus, whence also
van='a wing' (II. 927). M. may have recollected Fairfax, Tasso,
xvrII. 49, "with nimble fan the yielding air she rent."  winnows,
parts, cleaves; cf. Thomson, Spring:
"their self-taught wings
Winnow the waving element"
(i.e. the air). There is a similar use of the word in Tennyson's
early poem  T/e A'-aken. For buxom =' yielding,' see the note on
II. 842.
271-74. Cf. Fairfax, Tasso, xvii. 35, 36:
"As when the new-born Phoenix doth begin
To fly to Ethiope-ward, at the fair bent
Of her rich wings, strange plumes and feathers thin,
Her crowns and chains, with native gold besprent,
The world amazed stands; and with her fly
An host of wond'ring birds, that sing, and cry:
So past Armida, look't on, gaz'd on so."
A similar passage occurs in Dryden's lines to the Duchess of York in
the Preface to Antus lMirabilis.
Most accounts describe the Phoenix as a solitary bird, living "in
the Arabian woods" (S. A. 1700) for 50o years (so say Herodotus and
Ovid, Metamorphoses xv. 395); at the end of that time (but Pliny
who also tells the story-Nat. Hist. x. 2-gives the period as exactly
509 years), "when hee (the bird) groweth old, and begins to decay,
he builds himselfe a nest with the twigs and branches of the Canell




486


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


or Cinamon, and Frankincense trees: and when hee hath filled it
with all sort of sweet aromaticall spices, yieldeth up his life-thereupon...of his bones and marrow there breedeth at first as it were a little
worme: which afterwards proveth to be a pretie bird" (Philemon
Holland's Pliny, I60O, vol. I. p. 27I).  And the first thing that this
"pretie bird" does is to collect the 'reliques' of its former body (the
aforesaid "bones and marrow"), and carry them away to the temple of
the Sun at Heliopolis in Lower Egypt. M. however says at Thebes,
meaning the famous city of that name in Upper Egypt, which he calls
" Egyptian" to distinguish it from the Bceotian town. Why he should
prefer Thebes to Heliopolis does not appear; probably he is following
some version of the legend-and there are many —which has not been
traced. There is a famous application of the myth in S. A. I699 — 707.
271. towering,; cf. xi. 185, note.
272. gazed by all, i.e. gazed on; it is often a transitive verb in M.;
cf. viII. 258. What attracted the attention of the other birds was the
plumage of the Phcenix-his body caeruleuirz fulgdzs (as M. writes in
the Epitaphium Damonis, 188), his tail white, his neck and head golden.
Cf. Spenser, Visions of Petrarch:
"I saw a Phcenix in the wood alone,
With purple wings, and crest of golden hewe;
Strange bird he was, whereby I thought anone,
That of some heavenly wight I had the vewe."
The splendour of Raphael's wings (also cerulean) caused him to be
mistaken for a Phoenix.
sole bird. Only one Phoenix lived at a time; unica semper avis,
says Ovid, Amores II. 6. 54, and M. imitates him in the Epitaphium
Damonis, 187 (Pzhonix, divina avis, unica tcrris). Cf. Lyly's Euphues,
"as there is but one Phoenix in the world, so there is but one tree in
Arabia, wherein she buyldeth."
276, 277. i.e. "he seemed again, what he really was, 'a seraph
winged'; whereas in his flight he appeared, what he was not, a
Phoenix" (Newton).
277-85. A favourite passage with Tennyson.
277, 278. Suggested, obviously, by Isaiah vi. 2: "Above it stood
the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face,
and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." M. has
varied this account in certain details, borrowing something from the
description of the Cherubim in Ezekiel i. and x. lineaments, his limbs
generally; not merely the features of his face. So in vI. 477.
280. with regal ornament. This seems to show that the colour of
the first pair was purple; cf. xI. 241-44. So Gray (Hymni to




NOTES.


487


Adversity) speaks of "purple tyrants," i.e. 'born to the purple,' as
the phrase is. Cf. too Pope, Essay on Criticism, 320, 321:
"A vile conceit in pompous words expressed
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed."
The contrast between the first and second pairs of wings, i.e. between
purple and gold, is a favourite with M.; see iv. 596, 763, 764, vri.
479, Ix. 429.
283. i.e. colours brilliant as the lustrous hues of heaven; the reference to gold suggests that the rich hues of sunset are meant.
Pope arrayed the Sylphs in TheRae of'the Lock (I1. 21 3) in robes "Dipt
in the richest tincture of the skies "; and Wordsworth speaks of clouds
"Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light" (The Prelude, IV. 328).
283-85. the third etc. What hue is here intended? Dr Masson
says violet-Dr Bradshaw, purple. Perhaps light blue —in fact, the
colour technically called 'sky-blue.' This would suit the sense of grain,
and it adds to the variety of the whole picture.
mail, coat of mail, armour.  sky-tinctured; cf. Comus, 83, "These
my sky-robes, spun out of Iris' woof" (i.e. out of the rainbow). For
tinctured=' dyed,' cf. "vermeil-tinctured," Comus, 752. The "skyworn Robes" of Pity represent one of the many Miltonisms in Collins
(Ode to Pity, stanza 2).
285-87. Maia's son, Hermes (or Mercury), son of Zeus and
Maia-the winged messenger of the gods. Probably M. is thinking of
/Enzeid Iv. 222 et seq., where Mercury is sent by Jupiter to bid ASneas
leave Carthage; perhaps also of Hamlet, III. 4. 58, 59. The point of
the simile lies in the fact that Mercury was typical of grace and beauty.
So in the MAasque of Oberon Jonson makes a character say that Oberon
("Beauty dwells but in his face") surpasses even Mercury, whereon
Jonson's footnote comments, " Mercury...was called the giver of grace,
Xaptb67r-s, xat8pos Kal XeKo'."
Some of Milton's readers would bethink them of the Jacobean
Masque-stage, on which the god was a favourite character.  These
lines (285-87) would exactly describe the opening scene of Carew's
famous Cc'tgim Britannicuzi  (known almost certainly to M.), and
I doubt not that the heavenly herald "shook his plumes" in Jonson's
Penates.  For a similar episode, equally suggestive of the Masqueliterature, which had' evidently affected M. strongly, cf. the descent of
Peace in the Nativity Ode, 45-52.
288. state, stately bearing, majesty; a common Shakespearian sense
of a word then used with great variety of signification.
292, 293. The plants are often mentioned together-no doubt,
firom their association in Scripture. Cf. IX. 629, Comus, 991 (" Nard




488


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


and cassia's balmy smells").  So in Fairfax, Tasso, xv. 53, "The
winds breathed spikenard, myrrh, and balm around." The cassia
spoken of in the Bible was a spice of the nature of cinnamon; cf.
Cotgrave, " Casse aromatique: the aromaticall wood, barke, or bastard
cinnamon." Cassia is now used of an extract of laurel-bark. The
nard or spikenard (i.e. spiked nard, nardus spicatus) of Scripture (Mark
xiv. 3, John xii. 3) was a fragrant Indian root. The epithet 'IvLKOs is
often applied to it. The word comes from the Sanskrit nal, 'to
smell.' Probably the Jews got the perfume and its name through the
Persians.
295-97. In the First Ed. the lines read:
"and plaid at will
Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss."
With this punctuation, enormous bliss is in apposition to the previous
sentence; and pouring is intransitive. It appears to me a defensible
text; but editors place a comma after art, and make bliss the object
after pouring.  more sweet, more sweetly (i.e. than now).  eno'rmous,
out of all rule (Lat. norma, 'rule').
299. "And the Lord appeared unto him [Abraham] in the plains
of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day," Genesis
xviii. i. The whole chapter is in Milton's thoughts here where he
describes Adam's entertainment of Raphael.
302. needs; so the Second Ed.; the First has need.
306. milky. So in S. A. 550, "clear milky juice " is a periphrasis
for fresh water. Perhaps in each case milky= 'sweet as milk.' Drayton
(Polyolbion, XIII. I 7) speaks of "milch dew," where he seems to mean
'sweet' or ' fragrant.'
318-20.   Here, as in 71-73, M. remembers Conlts, 706 et seq.
where the magician argues that we should enjoy Nature's gifts and
'disburden' her of them:
"Who would be quite surcharged with her own weight,
And strangled with her waste fertility."
321, 322. inspired, i.e. filled with "the breath of life" (Gern. ii. 7).
The name Adam is said to signify 'red earth.'
324, 325. i.e. she has only stored (cf. 314) or put away such things as
are best kept awhile; for the rest, the trees and plants supply their daily
wants. In 322 store is used in two senses, viz. ' storing,' and 'abundance.'
327. gourd, i.e. melons of various sorts.
328. as=' that' is common in Elizabethan E.
331-49.   "The housewifery of our first parent" (Addison).
333. choice to choose. "This sort of jingle is very usual in Milton,
*v'....'. A




NOTES.


489


as to move motion, VITT. 13o.... And it is not unusual in the best classick
authors, as in....Eneid xii. 680" (Newton). Verbal repetition of the
sort is thoroughly Elizabethan. Mr Bond in his introductory Essay to
Lyly's Works (I. 120-24) notes that it is one of the characteristic
features of style in Euphues; imitated, doubtless, from the classics. It
explains and confirms the Folio's reading in Macbeth, v. 3. 44, where
emendations like load or grief for stuff, or fraught for stuff'd, really
proceed from ignorance of Elizabethan usage.
334-36. The punctuation of the First and Second Eds. (which I
have retained) seems to show that the sense is-' tastes which are
inelegant if not well joined.' Some take inelegant adverbially-'not
to mix inelegantly tastes which are not well joined.' Either way,
cf. ix. 1017, ioi8. bring, i.e. to bring-dependent on contrived: one
taste is to induce another. kindliest, most natural; cf. "the kindly
fruits of the earth" (The Litany).
338. Earth, all-bearing mother; 7rauA70Lrop 7Yr; Omniparens.
338-4r. He supposes the garden of Eden to produce the fruits for
which in after-times different parts of the world were famous; and, as
usual, he selects places round the names of which cluster literary (especially classical) associations.
339. middle shore, i.e. between the East and West Indies; the
countries on the seaboard of the Mediterranean are meant.
340. Pontus, in the N.E. region of Asia Minor, on the coast of
the Euxine or Black Sea, was noted for its fruit and nut trees. From
the town of Cerasus the cherry is said to have been introduced into
Europe by Lucullus, together with its name (Gk. Kipafaos). In Philemon
Holland's Pliny (i60o) we find: " Filberds and Hazels...also are a kind
of nut. They came out of Pontus into Natolia and Greece, and therefore
they be called Ponticke nuts. These Filberds are covered with a soft
bearded [cf. 342] huske," vol. I. p. 446. He mentions similarly the
introduction of the cherry-tree into Italy from Pontus (p. 448).
Punic coast, i.e. Africa, more particularly Carthage; it was remarkable for at least one kind of fruit, as the anecdote of Cato and the figs
reminds us. Cf. Holland's Pliny, " touching the Affricane Figs, many
men prefer [them] before all others," I. 442.
340, 341. Alcinous was the king of the Pheacians, a fabulous race
whom Homer places in the island of Scheria (afterwards identified with
Corcyra, now Corfu-whence Corcyra was called by Roman poets
Phceacia tellus; but probably Scheria was quite mythical). He entertained Odysseus, and Homer describes his palace and gardens at
length. M. refers in two other passages to those books (vI.-xIII.)




490


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


of the Odyssey in which Odysseus stays "where Alcinous reigned";
cf. the Vacation Exercise, 48-52 (alluding to Od. vIII.), and P. L.
IX. 439-41. See also his third Elegy, 43, 44:
Non dea tam variis ornavit floribus hortos
Alcinoi Zephyro Chloris amata levi.
342. rined; some texts print rind (i.e. the noun); but the First
and Second Eds. read rin'd, and M. meant it to be a participial
adjective, 'having a smooth rine (i.e. rind).' I think that we may
fairly hyphen the words and make a compound "smooth-rined," on
the analogy of "smooth-dittied," "smooth-haired," in Comus, 86, 7i6,
and "smooth-shaven" in I1 Penseroso, 66. It seems to me best to
make the adj. qualify coat.
345. Cf. Cotmus, 46, 47:
"Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine."
inofensive, not intoxicating, as it became through " the later invention
of fermenting the juice of the grape" (Thyer). must, new wine; Lat.
mutstum. Cf. The Faerie Queene, VII. 7. 39. meaths, sweet beverages.
347, 348. nor...wants. The construction seems to be due to a
combination of the personal use of want (which here would be plural)
and the impersonal, which is singular=' there wants.' "An abundance
of impersonal verbs is a mark of an early stage in a language....There
are many more impersonal verbs...in Elizabethan than in modern
English" (Abbott).
349. the shrub unfimed. "That is, not burnt and exhaling smoke
as in fumigations, but with its natural scent " (note in Todd).
354-57. One of those passing touches in which M. reveals his
republicanism and dislike of ostentation.
Scan retinue, as in P. A'. II. 419, "What followers, what
retinue canst thou gain?"  So in Tennyson, AylmcrI's Field, "The
dark retinue reverencing death"; and in Guinevere. Cf. revenue in
Shakespeare, e.g. in famlet, III. 2. 63. besmeared; editors compare
Horace's aurum vestibus illiltun (Odes IV. 9. 14).
36o-62. See III. 736-38. Cf. Adam's meeting with Michael in
xi. 249, and 296-98.
for; the clause gives the reason why Adam has addressed the angel
as " Native of Heaven."  Cf. Arcades, 26, 27:
"Stay, gentle Swains, for, though in this disguise,
I see bright honour sparkle through your eyes";
where "for I see" explains why they have been called "gentle," i.e.
well-born. Cf II. 12-14, x. 460-62.




NOTES.


491


37i. Virtue. The word must not be pressed, as in P. L. Raphael
is an archangel (cf. vi. 41). IHeywood in his Hierarchie (1635) ranks
Raphael among the Powers (l4ovo'ia).
378. Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit (Lat. pomum); she
" might well be supposed to have a delightful arbour" (Newton).
381, 382. Alluding to the judicicum Paridis. The three goddesses,
Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, each claimed the golden apple inscribed
with the words " to the fairest" which Eris (Strife) had thrown among
the guests at the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis. The matter was
referred to the shepherd Paris (afterwards the lover of Helen), who
decided in favour of Aphrodite-" the fairest goddess feigned."
Perhaps to many readers the story is most familiar through Tennyson's
CEnone.
Ida, the " many-fountained " mountain (7roXuvr-Zat 'Ia, Iliad viii.
47) in Mysia, Asia Minor. Spenser speaks of Paris as "The Shepheard
of Ida that judged beauties Queene," in The Shepheards Calender,
August.
384. virtue-proof, strong in (or 'through') virtue. Commonly in
these compounds proof implies being strong against a thing. Thus in
Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 513, shame-proof='strong against, i.e. impenetrable to, shame'; and in Arcades, 89, "branching elm starproof" means that the leaves are so dense that the star-light cannot
penetrate.
385-87. " And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou
that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among
women," Luke i. 28. Cf. P. R. ii. 66-68. second Eve; so Christ is
"the last Adam," I Cor. xv. 45.
388. Cf. xi. I59, " Eve, rightly called Mother of all Mankind."
393. her, the table's; he avoids using its.
394. all auttzulnf piled, i.e. had all the produce of the autumn
piled on it; the auxiliary verb can easily be understood from 392.
394, 395. i.e. the different charms of spring and autumn (as we
know them) were then united in one continuous season. Cf. Iv.
266-68, which anticipates the metaphor ("danced") of this passage.
Drummond, A Cypress Grove, uses the same image: "One year is
sufficient to behold all the magnificence of nature, nay, even one day
and night; for more is but the same brought again. This sun, that
moon, these stars, the varying dance of the Spring, Summer, Autumn,
Winter, is that very same which the golden age did see" (WVorks,
II. 256).
396. " A terrible bathos after the beautiful imagery, but shows
Milton's simplicity" (Tennyson).




492


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


Addison had noted that the line is one of the few colloquialisms in
Paradise Lost; another being x. 736.
407.  We hear of " angels' food," PsZalm   lxxviii. 25.  See
633.
409. as do/h; the singular verb is required, substance (not
substances) being understood from 408.
409-13. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 7, "spirit being the
more excellent substance, virtually and essentially contains within itself
the inferior one (i.e. body); as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporeal," P. 4. iv. I8I. The drift of Milton's thought
becomes clearer when we read lines 469 et seq., where he dwells upon
what he conceives to be the radical connection between matter and
spirit.
412. concoct, digest.
415-18. See 180-83.
419, 420. M. regards the spots in the moon as vapours not entirely
assimilated to her substance, and therefore visible against their luminous
background. So in viII. 145, 146 he compares them to clouds. A
somewhat similar notion is found in Pliny's Natural History; cf.
Philemon Holland's translation: " Now that planets are fed doubtlesse
with earthly moisture, it is evident by the Moone: which so long as
she appeareth by the halfe in sight, never sheweth any spots, because
as yet she hath not her full power of light sufficient, to draw humour
unto her. For these spots be nothing els but the dregs of the earth,
caught up with other moisture among the vapors" (I60o ed., vol. II.
p. 7). It seems as if the true explanation of the spots, that they
are unevennesses on the surface of the moon caused by mountains
and valleys, were really known to Milton; cf. I. 287-9I.
425, 426. For the poetic fancy that the sun rises from and sets in
the sea, cf. Comus, 95-97.
427, 428. The introduction of nectar (cf. 633) was doubtless due to
its classical associations as the drink of the gods. There are occasions
when Milton's classical touches seem a little out of harmony with the
Scriptural character of his theme. Instances of this confusion of effect
are very marked in Lycidas.
428, 429. A recollection of Anrcades, 5, " [I] from the boughs brush
off the evil dew." Everyone will recall Gray's " Brushing with hasty
steps the dew away," Elergy, 99. The emphatic word is " mellifluous ":
the dews of Eden are of no common kind.
430. pearly grain, i.e. dew-drops; cf. 2, 746, 747. But some take
it to mean manna; cf. Exodus xvi. 14.
433. nice, dainty, fastidious. It is a characteristic epithet of




NOTES.


493


the 18th century, "Augustan" school of writers; cf. Pope, Essay on
Criticism, 285, 286:
"Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious, not knowing, not exact but nice."
-- 434-36. i.e. the angel did actually eat-not merely appear to
eat, as theologians explain in such cases. Bishop Newton remarks"Several of the Fathers and ancient Doctors were of opinion, that
the Angels did not really eat, but only seemed to do so; and they
ground that opinion principally upon what the Angel Raphael says in
the book of Tobit, xii. I9, ' All these days did I appear unto you, but
I did neither eat nor drink, but you did see a vision.'"
We have already had an allusion to the Book of Tobit in lines
221-23; Keightley notes that it was evidently a favourite with M.;
probably he was here glancing at the verse cited by Newton.
435. gloss, interpretation, viz. of passages like Gve. xix. 3.
438. what redounds, i.e. all that is redundant, not assimilated.
439-43.   Cf. Of Reformation in England, II., "Their trade
being, by...alchemy to extract heaps of gold and silver out of the drossy
bullion of the people's sins," P. I. II. 403. The point of the present
comparison is that-" as by means of the heat produced by coal, the
alchemist can drive off the grosser particles and leave the pure gold
remaining; so the internal heat of the angelic body drives off through
the pores the innutritious particles of the food" (Keightley).
empiric, experimentising; Gk. e/u7reptK6s. Used with some notion of
contempt='quack'; cf. Of Reformation, I., " Did he go about to pitch
down his court, as an empiric does his bank, to inveigle in all the
money of the country?" (P. W. II. 376). drossiest, full of impurities;
cf. I. 704, and see The Faerie Queene, II. 7. 36, "Some scumd the
drosse that from the metall came."
443, 444- Eve minisler'd. The passage illustrates Milton's conception of the relation of the sexes.
444. flowingr cups; a Shakespearian phrase; cf. Henry V. Iv.
3. 55, " Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd," and Othello,
II. 3. 60.   So in   Lovelace's famous Song, To Althea from
Prison:
"When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames;
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames."
445. crowned, brimming; a reminiscence of Homer's (Iliad i.
470) Kp7rjrpas iirea-r4avro iroro0o (to which Vergil gave a fresh turn
in his socii cratera coronant-Georg. II. 528). Cf. The Faerie Queene,




494             PARADISE LOST.        BOOK V.
I. 3. 3r, and Dryden, Eneid, III. 688, "My sire Anchises crowned a
cup with wine" (where, however, corona is used literally of the chaplet
of flowers).
447. Sons of God. The phrase (from Gen. vi. 2) has been taken to
mean either the angels or the pious descendants of Seth. Here (and in
P. R. II. 178, 179) M. apparently adopts the former view; but in xi.
62I, 622, the other. Josephus, Antiq. I. iii. i, makes "sons of God"=
angelic beings.
451, 452. See xi. 53i, note.
460. framed; it implies care, skill; cf. " wary" in 459.
467. i.e. what comparison can there be between Heaven's feasts
and this? compare; not uncommon as a noun in Shakespeare; cf.
Venus and Adonis, 8, " The field's chief flower sweet above compare."
See vi. 705.
468. Hierarch, member of the Hierarchies, i.e. ' heavenly being';
used once elsewhere, XI. 220 (of Michael).
469 et seq. This is one of the passages in which the treatise on The
Christian Doctrine is valuable as explaining Milton's philosophical and
theological views. Chapter 7 of the first book treats "Of the Creation,"
and he expounds at great length his conception of the "one first matter."
His views, as admirably summarised by Dr Masson, amount to this" that all created Being, whether called soul or body, consists of but
one primordial matter, a direct efflux from the very substance of the
Eternal and Infinite Spirit...... that there are graduated varieties or
sorts of this first material efflux from Deity, all radically one, but
differentiated into an ascending series of forms, from the inorganic
as the lowest, up to the vegetable, thence to the animal, thence to the
human, and so to the angelic, or nearest in nature to the Divine
original." This passage in fact gives us what Adam afterwards (509)
calls " the scale of Nature."
The long discourses and explanations which Milton puts in the
mouth of Raphael seem to come much more naturally from him, an
archangel, than the discourses with which Beatrice enlightens Dante in
the Paradiso, e.g. on Free Will (v.), the Atonement (vii.), the motion
of the heavenly bodies, such as the Primuzm Mobile (xxvII.), the
Creation (xxix.).
471. created all, i.e. all things created such (namely "good ") to a
perfect degree, and all made of one first original matter. Cf. The
Christian Doctrine, I. 7, " For the original matter of which we speak,
is not to be looked upon as an evil or trivial thing, but as intrinsically
good, and the chief productive stock of every subsequent good. It was
a substance, and derivable from no other source than from the fountain




NOTES.


495


of every substance, though at first confused and formless, being afterwards adorned and digested into order by the hand of God" (P. W.
IV. 179). Cf. VII. 233.
The influence of these lines is very marked in the Essay on iMan, I.;
cf. especially 233-46, and the great passage, "All are but parts of
one.stupendous whole" etc.
478. This idea (cf. 497) of body refining into spirit (i.e. of matter
passing from a lower to a higher stage) is very characteristic of Milton.
Cf. Comus, 459-63:
"Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal."
In the same speech he passes (467-69) to the converse idea that,
as the body by self-discipline may become soul, so the soul by selfindulgence may become body:
"The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being."
Cf. again VI. 660, 66i, ix. i66. Newton thinks, very justly, that the
whole idea was suggested by the Scriptural doctrine (cf. i Cor. xv.) of
a natural body changed into a spiritual; perhaps also the influence of
Plato is to be traced; cf. the notes on the passage in Comus.
482. To take the first two feet as cases of inverted rhythm gives
a perfectly Miltonic effect-" spirits I 6dorlous" etc.
483. scale, ladder, Lat. scala; cf. 509, VIII. 591. Pope speaks of
the continuity of Nature, "Where, one step broken, the great scale's
destroyed," Essay on Man, I. 244. Cf. also Thomson, Spring:
"who knows, how raised to higher life,
From stage to stage, the vital scale ascends?"
sublimed, raised; the metaphor (as in I. 235) is probably from the
science of chemistry, in which to sublime is to 'raise or elevate by
heat.'  Cf. Bacon, "Metals are sublimed by joining them    with
mercury or salts." Cf. the chemical term 'sublimate.'
487-90. This contrast between intuition and discourse (in its old
sense) occurs often: intuition, as its derivation (Lat. intueri, 'to look
into') implies, being the faculty of seeing into things straightway and
apprehending truth without any process of reasoning: discourse, the
lower faculty of understanding things by means of reasoning processes.
M. naturally assigns the higher power to the angels; so in The
Chrislian Doctrine, I. 9, he says that the good angels understand by




496


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


means of "revelation."  Compare the analysis of the different types of
the intellectual faculty in the Purgatorio, XVIII., and the Paradiso,
xxix.; also Browne, Religio Medici, I. xxxiii.
493. proper, i.e. my own; Lat. proprius.
499. The underlying doctrine (taught by many of the Fathers) is
that Adam, had he not sinned and thereby become "mortal" (viii.
331), i.e. liable to death, would have been translated to Heaven.
504. yourfill, i.e. enjoy to your fill. This adverbial use is Biblical;
cf. Deuteronomy xxiii. 24, "When thou comest into thy neighbour's
vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure."
M. has the expression (now colloquial) in Sonnet xiv. 14, "And drink
thy fill of pure immortal streams." Cf. Leviticus xxv. I9, "And the
land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill."
509, 510. "Matter" (472) is the "centre," and "Nature" the
"scale" which reaches to the utmost of our conceptions, all round.
By ascending this ladder, i.e. by the study of Nature, we are led to
God (Richardson).
520. " The sentences here are very short, as everything ought to be
in the preceptive way. Quicquid pracipies, esto brevis, is the rule of
Horace de Arte Poelica, 335 " (Newton).
525-34. A discourse on free will and predestination, similar to
that in II. 96-128. It is one of the subjects whereof the fallen
angels dispute in II. 557-6I; and of course M. treats it at great
length in The Christian Doctrine, P. W. IV. 43-77.
535. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 3, "in assigning the gift of
fiee will, God suffered both men and angels to stand or fall at their
own uncontrolled choice" (P. W. Iv. 38).
538. i.e. on no other surety; in these cases none, from its peculiar
position, expresses emphasis. Cf. xi. 612.
543. from what...into what. An antithetic turn of phrase used by
M. more than once. Cf. I. 9I, 92.
546-48. Cf. the allusion to " celestial voices " in iv. 680-88.
552. single is yet so jzust, i.e. since he has laid on us only one
command, whereas he might have imposed many, we ought to feel
bound to obey that command, even if it were not "just," as it is.
556, 557. relation, report, account; a common Elizabethan use.
Cf. The Tempest, v. I64. Richardson noted the Horatian reminiscence
(Odes Ii. I3. 29, 30) in 557:
Utrumque sacro dig.a silentio
Mirantur umbrae dicere.
563. We may compare the long episodical description that follows of
the expulsion of the apostate angels from Heaven with /Eneas' narrative




N-OTES.


497


to Dido of the fall of Troy and of his subsequent fortunes. AEneas'
monologue occupies two books (II., III.) of the zEneid; Raphael is
briefer; his narrative closes at 892 of bk. vi. Such episodical narratives of what preceded the commencement of the action of the poem
have been part of the machinery of the epic, since Homer made
Odysseus relate his adventures to Alcinous (Newton).
Milton was bound to describe these events; and he appropriately
lays the description in the mouth of one who had taken part in them.
The obvious danger that besets a passage of this kind in which we are
lifted from earth to Heaven is, that the poet may seem to materialise
and degrade things spiritual and supernatural by delineating them under
imagery and in language associated with things corporal and earthly.
M. warns us of this difficulty at the outset (571-74); and hints that
after all earth may be but a symbol of Heaven-an idea which under
various forms has occurred to many thinkers. Dante also dwells on
the impossibility of describing (" figuring ") Paradise (XXIII. 61). The
other "episode" in Paradise Lost occurs in bks. xI., xII.; see note on
XI. 356-58. Newton notes that the form of the beginning (563, 564)
of RaphaeI's narrative recalls the opening words of iEneas in Aineidt i. 3.
Spenser's two Hymnes-Of Heavenly Love and Of Heavenly Beautie
— are like an introduction to Milton's narrative of the fall of the angels
and the subsequent creation of Man and the Universe. No part of
Spenser presents closer parallels to Paradise Lost.
566. remorse, pity.
578. these Heavens, i.e. the sky above them; not the upper Heaven
or Empyrean in which the Deity dwells (Masson).
579. Zplon her centre poised. See vII. 242. In each passage there
is an allusion to Ovid's account of the earth hanging ponderibus librafa
suis (Metamorphoses I. 3). So Pope, Temple of Fame:
In air self-balanced hung the globe below,
Where mountains rise and circling oceans flow."
when on a day. This curious phrase occurs in Cowper's Heroism, I 1.
580-82. M. refers to the definition of 'Time as the measure of
motion'; cf. Aristotle, Physics IV. I. 219, roUTro ydp EOrTtv 6 Xp6vos,
dpL6Oibs KLV7G'EWS Kra& TO 7rpOrepov Kal ba-rTpov: and Phys.II. Vi.. 251,
ei rj eiCrt 6 Xpvos KtV7'oewSc dpiO/Fibs  Kiv7J1ai T i.... The same idea had
occurred in Plato, Timnaes 37 D-39 D. Cf. Milton's second epitaph
on Hobson the carrier:
"Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time."
Milton's purpose in 580-82 is to justify his introduction of the
notion of Time in the word "day," 579: for that which he is


P. L.


32




498


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


describing took place before the creation of the universe: whereas,
says Plato, "days and nights and months and years were not before
the universe was created...he (the Deity) devised the generation of
them  along with the fashioning of the universe," Timaus 37 D;
and again, "Time then has come into being along with the universe "Xp6vos 6' o)'v pter' otpavoOv yyovev, Tim(eus 38 B. See Spenser's Hymne
of Heavenly Love, 22-28.   It would be impossible to discuss the
matter: we can only note that M. dissents from Plato-both here and
in The Christian Doctrine, I. 7, where he writes: "There is no
sufficient foundation for the common opinion, that motion and time
(which is the measure of motion) could not, according to the ratio of
priority and subsequence, have existed before this world was made"
(P. W. IV. 185).
by...past and future, i.e. by the standard of-or, in relation
to; cf. Aristotle's Kara rTb rp6Trpov Kat ftorepov, and the extract in
italics from The Christian Doctrine.
582-87. Editors refer to I Kings xxii. i9,Job i. 6.
583. great year.  He has borrowed Plato's conception of the
Annus Magnus. This was the vast period (estimated by Mr Adam in
his pamphlet on the Nuptial Number of Plato to be 36,000 years) at the
close of which the heavenly spheres, having completed their several
revolutions, come back to the position whence they started. Cf. the
passage from Censorinus (a scientific writer of Rome of the 3rd century
A.D.) quoted by Mr Newman, Politics of Aristotle, I. 576, Est preterea
annus...quen solis luna vagarumque quinque stellarum orbes conficiunt,
cuim ad idem signum, ubi quonzdam simul fuerunt, una referuntur.
Cf. too Heywood's Hierarchie (I635), p. 147:
"There is a yeare, that in Times large progresse
Is Annus Magnus call'd:...........in this 'tis sayd,
The Stars and Planets, howsoeuer sway'd,
Be they or fixt, or wandring; in this yeare
Returne to their first state, and then appeare
In their owne Orbs, unwearied, and instated
As fresh and new as when at first created";
and the Religio Mcedici, I. vi.: "To see ourselves again, we need not
look for Plato's year; every man is not only himself...men are lived over
again." Marvell (The First Anniversary, 17, I8), contrasting unprogressive rulers with Cromwell under an astronomical simile, says:
"And though they all Platonic years should reign,
In the same posture [they] would be found again."
M. conceives some such Platonic cycles to have existed "in




NOTES.


499


eternity," and the close of one of them to have been marked by the
event of which he proceeds to speak. There is a glance at the same
thought in 86i, 862. Wordsworth in the poem on his infant daughter
(" Hast thou then survived ") evidently had Milton's lines in mind,
though he seems to have quoted from memory, substituting " Heaven's
eternal year" for "great."
587. Hierarchs...orders; see Appendix, pp. 680-82.
588. advanced, uplifted; cf. I. 536, and King John, II. 207,
"These flags of France, that are advanced here."
589. gonfalons, flags, ensigns.
592-94. i.e. on the standards are portrayed scenes illustrative
of zeal or love. emblazed; see I. 538.
594. orbs, circles; cf. Pope, The Dunciad, IV. 79, 80:
"Not closer, orb in orb, conglobed are seen
The buzzing bees about their dusky queen."
So in The Rape of the Lock, 283, 284:
"He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend.
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend."
597. in bliss; cf. vi. 892.  embosomed. M. has the same allusion
(John i. 18) in ill. i69, 239, and 279. Cf. too Spenser, An Iymine of
Heavenly Love, 134-37:
"Out of the bosome of eternall blisse,
In which he reigned with his glorious syre,
He downe descended, like a most demisse
And abject thrall, in fleshes fiaile attyre."
598. flaming mount; see 643. Cf. Exodus xix.
599. Cf. IIi. 380, "Dark with excessive bright." Dante says of
angels: "in their faces the eye was dazed, like a faculty which by
excess is confounded" (Purgatorio, VIII. 35, 36). Cf. also the Paradiso,
v. (end).
600. progeny of light. Cf. III. 3, "God is light."
603-608. Upon the peculiar theological bearing of this passage it
is unnecessary to comment; we have-ill. 383 (note)-already seen
Milton's Arianism. Many texts of Scripture are alluded to here. Cf.
Ps. ii. 6, 7 ("Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion....
Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee"), Ps. cx. I (" The
LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand"), Ephes. iv. 15
("the head, even Christ"), Genz. xxii. iI6 ("By myself have I sworn,
saith the LORD "-see also Isai. xlv. 23), Philip. ii. 1o, i, Heb. i. 5.
"Milton was very cautious what sentiments and language he: ascribed to the Almighty, and generally confined himself to the phrases
and expressions of Scripture" (Newton).
32-2




500


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


6o5. anointed. 'Messiah' means 'anointed.'
6 to. individual; in the literal sense 'not to be divided '=inseparable. So Adam called Eve "an individual solace dear," Iv. 486.
M. uses dividual=' separable or separate' in VII. 382, XII. 85.
613. blessed vision; the "beatific vision" (I. 684).
614. utter darkness; cf. I. 72, III. I6.
618. solemn days, holy or festival days, Lat. solennis.
62o-27. Alluding again to the music of the spheres; see. I78,
note.  He compares the rhythmic movements of the angels to the
revolutions (" wheels ") of the planets and fixed stars.
623. eccentric; used three times by M.-here and in III. 575, vIl.
83; in each case there is a reference to its astronomical sense. Applied
to the heavenly bodies eccentric signifies ' moving in an orb that deviates
from a circle,' i.e. it connotes motion which is not strictly circular.
Here the " mystical dance" does not describe true circles.
624. then...when; his favourite form of emphasis; cf. 894, 895, Iv.
838, 970. So Pope, Essay on Criticism, 502, 503:
"Then most our trouble still when most admired,
And still the more we give, the more required."
Similarly we find there...where.
627. now; not in the First Ed., inserted in the Second.
633. Angels' food. See 407, note. rubied nectar, i.e. Homer's
VPEKTap pvOpiv. rubied=' red as rubies'; in S. A. 543, "dancing ruby"
is said of sparkling wine. Cf. Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam, V.:
"But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine."
636-4T. In the First Ed. the passage reads thus:
"They eat, they drink, and with refection sweet
Are fill'd, before th' all bounteous King, who showrd
With copious hand, rejoycing in thir joy."
It will be seen that the Second Ed. has three additional lines. The word
refection (refreshment) is not used elsewhere by M.
637, 638. communion; we are reminded of the doctrine of the
'Communion of Saints.' Cf. the " fellowships of joy " in xi. 80o, and
the "sweet societies" of Lycidas, 179. Newton noted the allusion in
638 to Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9, "thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy
pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life."
642. ambrosial, fragrant; an epithet of night in Iliad II. 57.
exhaled; Keightley connects it with clouds, but I think that viI. 255
shows that it belongs to night.
643. See VI. 4-12, VII. 584-86. The "high mount of God" is
what M. in The Christian Doctrine, I. 7, calls "the highest heaven...
as it were the supreme citadel and habitation of God " (P. W. IV. 182).




NOTES.


501


He cites the texts upon which he has based this conception-among
them  being I Kings viii. 27 ("behold, the heaven and heaven of
heavens cannot contain thee"), and Isaiah lvii. 15 (" I dwell in the
high and holy place").
645. night comes not there. See 162, and cf. Rev. xxi. 25, " for
there shall be no night there."
646, 647. dews; used, I suppose, figuratively (though somn take it
in the literal sense), as in Richard IZ. Iv. i.  84. Cf. Iv. 6,4-16.
See I1 Penseroso, 146 ("the dewy-feathered sleep ").
unsleeping: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber
nor sleep," Ps. cxxi. 4. The same is said of Zeus, Iliad II. i —3.
652. Cf. III. 357, 358 (note), xI. 79, Lycidas, 174, and the S~nnet,
The Religious A/emory, I4. We may remember Vergil's descri 'i.on
(zEneid vI. 673-75) of the lives of the blessed in Elysium:
"In groves we live, and lie on mossy beds
By crystal streams, that murmur through the meads" (I)ryden).
653, 654. pavilions, tents = tabernacles (from  Lat. tabernacildum,
a dimin. of taberna, 'a shed or hut').  Tabernacuhlm is used in the
Vulgate of the tent that sheltered the Ark, whence it passed into hhe
Authorised Version. Milton has the word (='tent') satirically in his
prose: "They had found a good tabernacle, they sat under a spreading
vine, their lot was fallen in a fair inheritance " (P. tV. II. 374).
655. in their course. Is he thinking of the Temple-service, and the
division of offices among the Levites? See iv. 561, note.
657. alternate, sing in turns. Cf. IV. 682-84, where Adam speaks
of the celestial voices he hears at night.
658, 659. Satan; cf. I. 82.
his former name; what this was we are not told, because, as M.
says in I. 361-63, the names which the apostate angels had before
their fall were "blotted out and razed," so that there might be no
memorial of them. Cf. vI. 373-85.
of the first. Cf. Milton's minor treatise on divorce, The Judgment
of Alartint Bucer, " a city for learning and constancy in the true faith
honourable among the first," P. kW. III. 279. The idiom is something
like the Gk. iv ros 7rpWro0.
665. impaired, perhaps' made unequal,' inferior, Lat. impar. Cf.
vi. 691.
671. his next subordinate, Beelzebub; see II. 299, 300, note. In
the scene (vi.) in Marlowe's Dr Fausfts in which Lucifer and Beelzebub
appear, the former announcing himself to Faustus says:
"I am Lucifer,
And this is my comianion-prince in hell";




502


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


cf. "companion dear" in 673. No doubt, M. knew Marlowe's play; cf.
I. 254, 255, IV. 20-23 and 75-78 with Dr Faustus, III. 75-77, v. 119 -r2. The suggestion has been made-not unreasonably, I think-that
the Theatrum Poetarum (I675) of Milton's nephew Edward Phillips, in
wh;ih short biographies and notices of the poets are given, "especially
the most eminent of all ages," reflects in some degree Milton's own
opinions. It is significant therefore that Phillips calls Marlowe "a
kind of a second Shakespeare," and specially mentions this tragedy:
" of all that he hath written to the Stage his Dr Faustus hath made the
greatest noise." The judgment pronounced on Shakespeare himself is
plainly/Miltonic, viz. that "where the polishments of Art are most
wanting, as his Learning was not extraordinary, he pleaseth with a
certain wild and native elegance"; cf. L'Allegro, i33, 134.
6;3. sleep's thou...? Cf. Iliad II. 60-62.
674. and rememberest, i.e. though remembering; cf. II. 730.
684. the chief, i.e. chiefs (which Bentley read).
'88, 689. homeward...the North. Cf. 726, 755, 756, and the
Argument of the book. So in Tennyson, The Last Tournament:
"Thieves, bandits...
Make their last head like Satan in the North."
Bunyan follows the same tradition; cf. The Holy War: "Now upon
Mount Diabolus, which was raised on the north side of the town
[Mansoul], there did the tyrant [Diabolus] set up his standard"
("Temple" ed., p. 252).
According to some systems of demonology the four quarters of the
world were assigned to four angels prior to the expulsion of the
rebels from Heaven. Commonly Lucifer was made monarch of the
north-in allusion to Isai. xiv. 12, 13, "How art thou fallen from
heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!...... For thou hast said in
thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the
stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in
the sides of the north."  But the systems varied; thus Dr Ward
in his edition of Marlowe's Faustus notes that in the old Faustbook it is Beelzebub who rules in the north, in Septentrione, while
Lucifer rules in Oriente; cf. the title "prince of the East" applied to
him by Marlowe (Faustus, v. o04).
The general reference to the north as the dominion of evil spirits
might be illustrated from many sources. Greene in FriarBacon speaks
of a demon Asmenoth as "guider of the north" (ix. 144), and "ruler of
the north" (xi. 1og). Cf. I Henry VI. v. 3. 6. In the Appendix
added in i665 to Scot's Discourse on Devils there are similar references
-e.g. in chap. viii., "Luridan is a Familiar Domestick Spirit of the




NOTES.


503


North, who is now become servant to Balkin, Lord and King of the
Northern Mountains" (p. 485, Nicholson's ed.); and again in chap. Ix.,
" These are the names...of Olyinmick Angels, governing the Northl, and
ruling over every Airy Spirit that belongs unto the Northern Climate,"
p. 487. A correspondent of Notes and Queries gives similar references
in the Old English poem "The Fall of the Angels," and Piers
Plowman, B text, I. 1r8, and quotes Skelton, Colin Clout:
"Some say ye sit in trones
Like princes aquilonis."
Dr Cheyne remarks that there was " a mysterious sanctity attaching to
the north," and that we have indications of this in Levit. i. i, Ezek.
i. 4,Job xxxvii. 22 (Prophecies of Isaiah, 3rd ed., I. 92).
It has been suggested that M. intended the passage as a sneer at
Scotland, the headquarters of Presbyterianism, to which he was bitterly
hostile (see the note on S. A. 1461-71); but the notion seems fanciful.
689-91. " He begins his revolt with a lie. So well doth Milton
preserve the character given of him in Scripture, John viii. 44, 'he is
a liar, and the father of it'" (Newton).
702. suggested, i.e. by Satan, 685-91.
703. ambiguous words, hints of disloyalty; cf..ineidII. 98, 99, hinc
spargere voces...armbiguas. For the obedience which his followers pay
to Satan, cf. I. 331-38.
7o8. Alluding to Satan's subsequent title Lucifer=' day-star.'
710. See ii. 692, vi. I56, and cf. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly
Love, 83, 84:
"The brightest Angell, even the Child of Light,
Drew millions more against their God to fight."
713, 714. " And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the
throne," Rev. iv..5. When M. speaks of Heaven his language, as we
have seen, is full of reminiscences of the Revelation.
716. Cf. the Nativity Ode, I 9, "But when of old the Sons of
Morning sung." The phrase is from Isaiah xiv. r2.
734. lightening. I should be inclined to take it as a noun, in
apposition to "Son"-cf. 457, 458-did not the First Ed. print it
Lightning, which implies that it was meant to be a participle (divine=
'divinely'). Contrast vi. 642: there it is a noun, and the First Ed. has
Lightning; so in I. 175, II. 66.
736, 737- Cf. il. 190, i9f, note.
739.  illustrates, makes illustrious.  Richardson  (Dict.) cites
Hakluyt, Voyages, I. 352, "to the illustrating of the Queenes most
excellent Maiestie, the honour and commoditie of this her highnesse
realme."  So in Ben Jonson's fine saying: "Good men are the stars,




504


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


the planets of the ages wherein they live and illustrate the times"
(Discoveries, LXXXVI.).
740. event, issue, result, Lat. eventus; a common Elizabethan
sense.. Cf. I. 624, Much Ado About Nothing, I. 2. 7, Hamlet, IV. 4. 50.
744. an host. So the First Ed.; we should say a. Cf., however,
Antony and Cleopatra, II. 5. 87, " An host of tongues"; and 2 Henry VI.
III. I. 342, "To send me packing with an host of men."
745-47. "What an imagination the old man had! Milton beats
everyone in the material sublime " (Tennyson).
Wordsworth uses inmpearl similarly of dew in To the Daisy.
748. regencies, dominions; the abstract (used passively) for the
concrete. So we find reign='realm'; cf. I. 543, and Gray's Elegy,
I2, "her ancient solitary reign."
750. in their triple degrees. Cf. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly
Love, 64, 65:
"There they in their trinall triplicities
About him wait, and on his will depend."
753, 754. i.e. elongated from its form as a globe.
Among the Schoolmen it was a vexed question, "whether some
angels fell from each of the Orders." In the Paradiso, xxix., Dante
only says " a part of the Angels," but in the Convivio, II. 6. 95-99, "he
had expressly declared that some, perhaps a tenth, of each Order fell"
(note in "Temple" ed.).
759. See VI. 364, note.
762-66. The main verb is called. The allusion is to Isaiah xiv. 13
(see 688, 689, note), where the "mount of the congregation" may be
Zion. See VII. I31.
763. affecting, aiming at, seeking to obtain; cf. Lat. affectare. Cf.
III. 206, "affecting Godhead," and 2 Ienry VI. Iv. 7. o04, "Have I
affected wealth or honour? Speak."
768. pretending...commanded; cf. perhaps S. A. 212, "pretend
they ne'er so wise," which may mean 'pretend to be wise.' M. is
imitating the Lat. simulo; cf. Livy xxv. 8 [Hannibal] agrumi
simulabat.
772. In the First Ed. there is only a comma at the end of this
line and I see no occasion to change the punctuation. Satan addresses
the angels by their habitual titles, and then sarcastically adds that he is
not quite sure whether they ought still to claim those titles. For the
same brevity of phrase, in which it is easy to trace the half-expressed
train of thought in the speaker's mind, cf. 360-62, note. Keightley
says, "it is evident there is a break at the end"-and marks the
supposed break in his text.




NOTES.                         505
782-88. See 6o6-6o8. Todd cites Richard II. 1. 4. 33, " And
had the tribute of his supple knee."  See also Hamlet, inI. 2. 66, and
cf. Gray's fragment of a tragedy, Agripipina, 99-102:
"Rubellius lives,
And Sylla has his friends, though school'd by fear
To bow the supple knee, and court the times
With shows of fair obeisance."
The whole drift of this passage (782-88) may be contrasted with Iv.
958-60,- where Gabriel taunts Satan with his previous servility.
789, 790. i.e. if I may be sure that I know you aright, or if you
know yourselves to be-as you are-sons of Heaven.
possessed; implying that formerly "Heaven" was equally enjoyed
by all its inhabitants, but now has been usurped by the Almighty as His
alone.
793. jar not with, harmonise with; a metaphor from    music.
Shakespeare uses the verb air=' to be discordant, out of tune' (cf. The
Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV. 2. 67, King Lear, IV. 7. i6), and the
noun jar=' discord '; cf. As You Like It, II. 7. 5, " If he, compact of
jars, grow musical." consist, are consistent with. Cf. Pope, Essay on
Man, IV. 81, 82:
"But health consists with temperance alone,
And peace, 0 Virtue! peace is all thy own."
798. Scan edict, as in S. A. 301, the only other place in M. where
it occurs. Shakespeare has both edi/c (A MAidsummer-Nihil's Dream,
I. i. I51) and edict (i Heny IV. Iv. 3. 79), the modern accentuation.
798, 799. who without law, i.e. who, as it is, without the restraint
of any law, avoid sin. Why, he contends, impose laws on those who
need no law to make them walk aright?
799. The line is a well-known crux. I think thatfor this='for
this reason, on this account' (cf.for that, 874), namely, that the angels
are "without law." 'If,' argues Satan, 'we can do right without the
restrictions of laws, surely that is a reason why we should not have
a law-giving lord set over us.' The clause seems added as an afterthought, to be having no strict construction, but depending on some
words like 'ought he' or ' is he' which the speaker has in his mind,
though he does not express them. We must remember that the line is
spoken, and that M. introduces into his speeches (see 772, note) just the
kind of verbal irregularities, the swift' turns of thought and phrase,
that belong to oratory-such e.g. as we get constantly in Thucydides.
They are frequent in S. A. where, as Coleridge happily said, the "logic
of passion" often prevails over the "logic of grammar."




506


PARADISE LOST. BOOK V.


Some take for this=' for this purpose': 'who can claim lordship
for the purpose of introducing laws and edicts?'
Others interpret: ' who can in reason...introduce law and edict upon
them?...much lessfor [i.e. because of] this introduction of law and edict
claim the right of dominion?'
805. Abdiel, ' servant of God.'
807. The Seraphim typified ardour, and the idea is reflected
appropriately in the passion (" flame ") of Abdiel's speech.
809. Scan blasphemouzs, as in VI. 360.
819. flatly; cf. I. 143, "flat despair."
821. unsucceeded, having no successor, i.e. everlasting.
822-25.   "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against
God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou
made me thus?" Romans ix. 20, where observe the marginal reading
" disutest with God."  The thought is worked out in S. A. 307-14.
835-4r. The main reference is to Colos. i. i6, I7; see 853-64.
his Word; cf. III. 170, 383, notes.
842-45. The argument seems to be that Christ, by becoming the
head of the angels, became in a measure one of them, and so ennobled
their nature.
853-64.   Contrast IV. 42, 43, where Satan admits (to himself)
what he here denies, viz. that he and the other angels were created by
God; and see IX. 146, 147. In The Christian Doctrine, I. 7, M. says,
" That the angels were created at some particular period, we have the
testimony of Numbers xvi. 22 and xxvii. i6"; and he instances other
texts, among them being Colos. i. i6.
The great distinction drawn in the Paradiso, xxIx., between the good
angels and the evil is that the former admitted their creation by the
Almighty. Beatrice says to Dante (58-60): "Those whom thou
seest here [in Paradise] were modest to acknowledge themselves derived from that same Excellence which made them swift to so great
understanding."
857, 858. Cf. VIII. 251.
86r, 862. See 583, note. fatal course, the course of fate. "Our
author [says Newton] makes Satan a sort of fatalist....No compliment to
fatalism to put it into the mouth of the Devil."
864. "Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things," Ps. xlv. 4.
869. beseeching or besieging; another of those jingles which M.
uses generally to express sarcasm or contempt-as here. Cf. I. 642.
The Elizabethan writers may have adopted this literary artifice from the
Italians; cf. Marlowe, 2 Tamburlaine, v. 3, "Hell and darkness pitch
their pitchy tents," and Faustus (first chorus):




NOTES.


507


"We must perform
The form of Faustus' fortunes."
872. "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude,
and as the voice of many waters," Rev. xix. 6.  It is, in character,
essentially a Miltonic simile. Cf. his pamphlet Animadversions,:
"O thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father!...
Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the
land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many
waters about thy throne" (P. It. III. 71).
Wordsworth applies the comparison to Milton himself in the first of
his two Sonnets on Milton (" Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like
the sea ").
875. flaming Seraph; cf. 807, and see p. 68i.
878-8r.   In the First Ed. there is no comma after crew, the
construction being, ' I see thy fall determined, thy crew involved etc.,
and contagion spread' (i.e. three clauses dependent on I see), spread
being a p.p. like determined and involved. Some editors place a comma
after crew and make spread an infinitive-' I see thy crew, being involved etc., spread destruction' (i.e. only two clauses dependent on
I see). "Foul contagion spread" occurs in Lycidas, 127.
886-88. See II. 327, 328, note. In his treatise Of Reformation
in England, I, M. writes: "let him advise how he can reject the
pastorly rod and sheephook of Christ, and those cords of love, and not
fear to fall under the iron sceptre of his anger, that will dash him to
pieces like a potsherd" (P. W. II. 412).
890. Cf. Numbers xvi. 26, " Depart, I pray you, from the tents of
these wicked men"-an appropriate allusion, as Moses is there dissuading the congregation of Israel from joining Korah and his followers
who, like Satan and his angels, were rebels. Cf. xi. 607, 6o8.
devoted, doomed. Abdiel's meaning, put rather tersely, is-' I do
not fly because of your advice (871) or threats, but lest the wrath etc.'
893. his thunder: see Vl. 834-38.
899. A favourite type of verse with M. and many other English
poets. Cf. II. I85, III. 231. Perhaps, when he wrote this line (899)
Milton had in mind his own position at the Restoration. The personal
note is strong in his poetry. Cf. vI. 29-37, note.
906, 907. retorted, flung back; for this, the literal use, cf. Romeo
and Juliet, llr. I. 169, Troilus and Cressida, 111. 3, soI.




508


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


BOOK VI.
Addison evidently considered this book one of the greatest in the
poem. He notes that our expectation has been raised by allusions to
the struggle in books I. and II.
I, 2. the...Angel, Abdiel. champain, plains.
2-4. From Ovid, Aetlamzophoses II. 1 12-14:
ecce vigil nitido patfec it ab orzu
purpureas Aurora fores et plena rosarum
atria.
Homer makes the Hours keep the gates of Olympus; cf. Giles Fletcher,
Death of Elizabeth:
"The early Howres were readie to unlocke
The doore of Morne, to let abroad the Day."
3. with rosy hand. Cf. Jonson, Masque of Oberon, " And with her
rosy hand puts back the stars" (said of the morn). It is suggested by
Homer's po8o8dKTvXos jWS, whence "rosy-fingered" became in poetry a
traditional epithet of the dawn; cf. Crashaw's pretty lines in To the
Morning:
"And the same rosy-finger'd hand of thine
That shuts Night's dying eyes shall open mine."
4-12. See v. 643, 644. The notion of light and darkness "dislodging by turns," the one going out as the other comes in, had its
origin in Hesiod, Thaeogony 747, 748 (Newton).
8. vicissiltde, alternation; cf. vII. 35 r.
IO. obsequious, obedient, doing its duty (cf. 783); not in the modern
depreciatory sense, 'servile.'
{I, I2. i.e. what is thought darkness in Heaven (where there is no
night, v. 645) would seem twilight on earth.
19. in procidct, ready. "The Roman soldiers were said to stand
in procinctu, when ready to give the onset" (Hume); from the noun
procinctus, 'a being prepared for battle.'  Cf. the p.p. procinctus,
'prepared'-literally 'girded up,' from procingere, 'to gird or tuck up
the dress.' M. uses succinct in that sense, III. 643.
29-37. Servant of God; see v. 8o5. Texts glanced at are: Mdlat.
xxv. 21; i Tim. Vi. 12; 2 Tim. iv. 7, " I have fought a good fight ";
Ps. lxix. 7, "for thy sake I have borne reproach"; and 2 Tim.
ii.   5.
Is Milton here thinking of himself? He too had sacrificed all to




NOTES.


5o9


"the testimony of truth" (as he judged), and borne reproach for his
allegiance to the cause of republicanism when the "revolted multitudes"
went back to the old order of things and acclaimed the Restoration.
There is a constant play of personal and contemporary allusion in his
poems. See 462, XI. 542-46, 632-36, 8o8-18, and S. A. 697
-7oo, 1457-72 (with the notes); and compare Dante's allusions to
his treatment by Florence, and her corruptions, e.g. in the Paradiso,
xxXI. 37-39.
34. "Evill deedes may better then bad words be bore," The Faerie
Quteee, IV. 4. 4.
42. rig/it reason; cf. XII. 84. M  seems to use the phrase='conscience'; cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 2, "that feeling, whether we
term it conscience or right reason" (P. IWV. Iv. i5). Pope has it in
a different sense= ' the reasoning faculty'; cf. the Essay on Criticism,
2II, 212:
"If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day";
where the "cloud" is the pride that obscures our judgment.  It was
a term of the Stoics, reproduced in the Schoolmen's phrase recta ratio.
See Selden's Table- Talk, cxx. (" Reason").
44-55- Revelation xii. 7 —9
44. Michael, 'who is like unto God?'; being an archangel he is
chosen to fulfil high office. In The Christian Doctrine, I. 9, M. writes:
"There appears to be one who presides over the rest of the good angels,
to whom the name of Michael is often given... Michael, the leader of the
angels, is introduced (Rev. xii.) in the capacity of a hostile commander
waging war with the prince of the devils, the armies on both sides
being drawn out in battle array" (cf. 105-I07). prince; cf. Dan. xii. I,
"Michael... the great prince."
45, 46. Gabriel; cf. IV. 549, note. He is inferior to Michael
("next," 45) because only an angel. Heywood (Hierarchie, 1635)
draws the same distinction.
52. from God and bliss; cf. III. 6i, 62.
53-55. Hell has already been created.    Trartars; cf. II. 69,
note, 858.
56-59. A reminiscence of Exodus xix. I6, I8.
57, 58. to roll, i.e. smoke began to roll flames in wreaths.
Keightley takes roll='enroll, enwrap.' reluctant, struggling, forcing
their way through the smoke; a Latinism; luctantes flammae  occurs in
Silius Italicus. Newton took reluctant in the opposite sense, ' slow and
unwilling to break forth,' but the word has its Latin notion ('struggling')
in Milton, except in Iv. 311.




5SI


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


59, 60. the.. trumpet. Cf. XI. 73-76, where the angels are summoned by a trumpet which M. suggests may be the one afterwards
heard on Mount Horeb (Exod. xix. 16-19):
"When God descended, and perhaps once more
To sound at general doom."
gan blow, i.e. began; Shakespeare also omits to; cf. Coriolanus, 1I.
2. 119, " the din of war gan pierce." Probably the omission was partly
due to the old use of gan, the pret. of ginnen, as an auxiliary verb=
'did.' Thus in Spenser " gan blow " might mean 'did blow '; and M.
may have revived the idiom, as some think. But wherever he uses gan,
'beginning' is implied; cf. IX. IOI6, x. 710, P. R. IV. 4I0.
62. stoodfor, fought for; cf. Coriolazus, II. 2. 45, IV. 6. 45.
63-68. Cf. the very similar scene in I. 549-62; there (as in Of
Education) M. dwells on the influence of music.
in silence. "Homer thus marches his Grecians silent and sedate,
Iliad IIi. 8" (Todd).
69. obvious, lying in their way-Lat. obvius; cf. x. 374.
73-76. A simile that would appeal to Adam. "And Adam
gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast
of the field," Gen. ii. 20. See viI. 493.
Milton's angels glide through the air like the classical gods (Newton).
79. to the North. See v. 688, 689, note. M. clearly places the conflict in some part of Heaven; but this was a point much disputed among
theologians. Cf. Reginald Scot, Discourse on Devils (1584): "Now
where this battell was fought...there is great contention. The Thomists
say...in the empyrean heaven, where the abode is of blessed spirits....
Augustine and manie others saie...in the highest region of aier; others
saie, in the firmament; others in paradise," p. 423.
8I-85. i.e. and at nearer view there bristled the banded powers.
bristled; this seems to be the main verb; it conveys the same impression as Lat. horrere, Gk. opla-aetv; cf. "horrent arms," II. 513. Many
editors take bristled as a p.p., supplying appeared from 79 as the main
verb to go with powers in 85-an awkward ellipse surely. beams,
shafts of the spears. various, varied, made diverse.
Heywood (Hierarchie, p. 341) says of the combat:
"No Lances, Swords, nor Bombards they had then,
Or other weapons now in use with men;
None of the least materiall substance made,
Spirits by such giue no offence or aid,
Onely spiritual Armes to them were lent."
Milton's description is throughout material and realistic. His battle is
a Homeric fray, slightly idealised. Editors refer also to many passages




NOTES.


5I I


in Ariosto and Tasso and Spenser (especially) which show what models
Milton had in his mind when he pictured the single combats between
the warrior angels.
84. argzment, designs, subjects; a Latinism. Cf. the Epitaphium
Damonis, i84, gemino calaverat argfumento (said of an artist working
designs on a goblet). Cf. too Milton's Lat. use of argument=' subjectmatter of a poem,' I. 24, IX. 13.
93. hosting, encounter. wont, are wont; but it may be a preterite,
as in I. 764.
o10, 10i. idol, image. flaming Cherubim; M. always invests the
Cherubim with brilliance, following Ezekiel (chap. i.-especially verses
13, 14). In Iv. 797 they are "radiant files"; in the Nativity Ode,
114, "glittering ranks."
o05. interval, the space between two armies; rb LETrayJuLov.
I07, io8. cloudy van, i.e. the van-guard (Fr. avant-garde) dense as
a cloud. edge, Lat. acies, the front line of a fight; cf. I. 276.
I14. Newton notes that such soliloquies (or thinkings aloud) are
common in epic poets, e.g. in Homer. Like speeches and dialogues
they serve, somewhat artificially, to vary the narrative which, cast in
one continuous form, would become monotonous. Somewhat similar is
Shakespeare's use of interruptions and questions to vivify a lengthy piece
of narrative, e.g. in The Tempest, I. 2, where Miranda breaks in on the
long story in which Prospero unfolds their history, and in Coriolanus,
I. I, in Menenius's "fable."  See XII. 270, note.
I15. realty, reality; the form occurs in Henry More's Life of the
Soul, II. I2.  Some editors explain realty='loyalty,' i.e. as used in the
sense of Ital. realta, ' loyalty,' reale, ' loyal.' But there is no evidence
that the word ever bore this meaning, and surely the ordinary sense
suffices: since what Abdiel deplores is that Satan retains the outward
semblance of greatness after the inward reality has gone from him. An
obvious correction is fealty.
1i6. Cf. the sentiment in Iv. 856, "wicked and thence weak."
120, i2I. Referring to the last scene in bk. v. (809 et seq.).
tried, i.e. tried, or tested, and found unsound.
124. Scan contest, as always in M.; cf. IV. 872, S. A. 46I,
865.
129. prevenlion, coming before; the lit. sense of Lat. przavenire.
130. securely, without anxiety, boldly-Lat. secure.
143. there be who, i.e. some who. Morris says: " The root be was
conjugated in the present tense, singular and plural, as late as Milton's
time." This phrase there be was common; cf. Contus, 519.




512


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


i147, 48. sect, followers (Lat. sequt); in modern E. depreciatory.
JLanguage tends to deteriorate in sense; few English words have risen
in meaning. M. may have brought in the word ironically, "in order
to sneer at the Loyalists of his time, who branded all Dissenters, of
whom he was one, with the opprobrious name of Sectaries " (Thyer).
151. soughtfor, i.e. by Satan; it qualifies thou.
56. See v. 7o1, note. synod; specially used by Shakespeare of an
assembly of the gods; cf. Coriolanus, v. 2. 74, "The glorious gods sit
in hourly synod about thy particular prosperity." So M. in II. 391,
xi. 67.
I 6. success, fortune; here ' ill-fortune.'
162, 163. this pause, i.e. let there be. Satan will pause a moment
to reply to Abdiel's speech, lest the latter should boast that his
arguments have been unanswered.
165, I66. M. is glancing at one of his favourite maxims, that too
many men had rather purchase ease at the expense of slavery than
liberty at the cost of effort.  Cf. S. A. 268-71, and contrast II.
255-57.
167-69. ministering.. minstrelsy. A contemptuous jingle, as in
v. 869 (note); both words are from Lat. minister. There is a reference
to Hebrews i. 14, "Are they not all ministering spirits?"
minstrelsy, minstrels; servility, slaves; freedom, free men. The
use of the abstract for the concrete (active or passive) is common in
M., as in Shakespeare, as we have seen.
174, 175. i.e. unjustly do you depreciate (" depravest") service to
God's Son by calling it servitude. For deprave=' detract, depreciate,'
cf. AZtuch Ado About Nothing, v. i. 95, "flout (i.e. jeer), deprave and
slander," and Troilus and Cressida, v. 2. I32, where depravation=
'detraction.'
I81. Editors compare Horace, Satires II. vii. 80-82. The thought
is expanded in P. R. II. 466-72.  See note on Sonnet XII. Ii, t2.
182. lewdly, basely.
183, I84. Cf. Satan's words in I. 263; see the note there.
thy kingdom, i.e. in the future.
i95. his...spear; taller than a vessel-mast (I. 292).
i95-98. These similes occur in I. 230, 23i and S. A. I647, 1648.
The idea that earthquakes were due to the escape of winds pent up
underground comes in Dante (Purgatorio, xxI. 55, 56).
207. In the description that follows editors find echoes of Hesiod's
account of the strife between the Titans and Zeus. M. evidently admired
the Theogony; cf. 4-I2, note, and Lycidas, I5, 16 (modelled on the
commencement of the Theogony).




NOTES.                          513
212, 213. the dismal hiss of...darts; the use of the abstract form
of phrase lends a touch of vagueness which increases the horror
of the scene.
2 5. cope; cf. IV. 992.
216. battles, armies; a common use in Milton and Shakespeare; cf.
Rzchard IIf. v. 3. 88, "Prepare thy battle early in the morning."
219. centre; sometimes used alone to signify the middle point of
the earth; cf. I. 686, Comus, 382.
222. i.e. the four elements; see II. 274, 275, note.
225. combustion, confusion, turmoil.
229-36.   " Each legion was in number like an army, each single
warriour was in strength like a legion, and, though led in fight, was
as expert as a commander in chief. So that the Angels are celebrated
first for their number, then for their strength, and lastly for their
expertness in war" (Newton).
229. nuzmbered such, so numerous; cf. VIII. 19.
236. ridges, i.e. the ranks of troops; the metaphor, perhaps, of
furrows in a ploughed field. Cf. Shakespeare, Lucrece, I439.
239. moment, the impulse that should turn the scale (cf. 245) on
the side of victory; Lat. momentum. Cf. x. 45-47 (a close parallel),
and The Christian Doctrine, I. io, "the balance of earthly happiness
or misery," where the original has tantunm vita momentum vel beatce
vel miserce.
248. no equal; he had been foiled temporarily by Abdiel, but the
combat between them was broken off (Newton).
249. For the order of the words cf. v. 5, note.
250-53. For the sword of Michael (mentioned neither in Revelation
nor in Daniel), see II. 294, 295, and XI. 247, 248, where it is called
"Satan's dire dread." Cf. the sword of AEneas and King Arthur's
mystic Excalibur in the Idylls of the Kizng. Supernatural equipment of
the hero is an epic convention.
two-handed, i.e. wielded with both hands because of its size and
weight; cf. 2 Henzy V. II. I. 46, " Come with thy two-hand sword."
This passage gave rise to the notion that the "two-handed engine"
of Lycidas, 130, meant Michael's sword, where the allusion, probably,
is to either " the axe laid unto the root of the trees " (Matthew iii. Io,
Luke iii. 9) or the sword of justice.
255. his...shield; vast as the moon's orb (I. 287). tenfold, with
ten layers; cf. "seven-times-folded shield," i.e. septemplex, S. A.
1122.
275, 2 76. evil...thy offspring. Cf. the famous allegory of Sin and
Death, II. 648 etseq.


P. L.


33




514            PARADISE     LOST.    BOOK    VI.
277. broils; cf. II. 837.
282. Adversary, Satan; see v. 658, 659, note.
285-87. i.e. even if they have fallen, yet they have risen
again. 'Have you,' says Satan, 'been so successful in putting these
to flight, that you should hope to deal ("transact") easily with
me?'
288. err not that, do not foolishly think that.
289. evil; we might have expected hateful (264); but Abdiel
implied (262) that the strife was part of the evil due to Satan.
291-93. Cf. I83, I. 255. to dwell, i.e. "we mean" to dwell.
296. Shakespeare and M. have both parle andparley.
306, 307. Cf. Henry V. II. Prologue, 8:
"For now sits Expectation in the air
And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets";
and Troilus and Cressida, Prologue, 20-22. Cf. the personification of
Horror in Iv. 989, and see II. 666, note.  The Faerie Queene gave
a lasting vogue to personification.
309. within the wind; the phrase recalls Hamlet, II. 2. 495.
310-15.   i.e. such commotion as there would be, if, nature's
concord having been broken, war should arise among the constellations,
and two planets should combat.  Cf. II. 533-38, 714-20.
3II. great things by small; see II. 921, 922, note.
313, 314. aspect; in Elizabethan E. often used as an astrological
term signifying the position of a planet in the sky, and its " influence,"
which was favourable or "'malign" according to its position.  Cf.
Troilus and Cressida, I. 3. 89-92:
"And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered
Amidst the other [i.e. planets]; whose medicinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil."
M. mentions the five main "aspects," x. 657-6r.
When two planets are distant from each other by half the circle,
i.e. are in diametrically opposite parts of the heavens, they are said, in
astrological language, to be "in opposition."  And it is "a malign
aspect," because the rays of the two bodies collide and strive for
mastery, shedding a " noxious efficacy" (x. 660) on the earth. The
Elizabethans often refer to this notion; cf. Dr Faustus, vi. 65, " why
have we not...oppositions, eclipses all at one time?"  Dr Ward in his
edition of Dr Faustus, p. 172, also relers to Marlowe's 2 Tamburlaine,
iiI. 5, and to Greene'sJames IV. I. I. See pp. 691, 692.
318. determine, make an end of the matter; cf. II. 330.




NOTES.


515


repeat, repetition; cf. its substantival use as a term in music.
320-23. Cf. Spenser's description of Artegall's sword, The
Faerie Queene, v. i. Io. the armoury; "The Lord hath opened his
armoury," Jeremiah 1. 25. Cf. VII. 200, and Tennyson's lines on
Milton:
"Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armories."
323-27. "Michael's sword with the down-stroke cut that of Satan
in two, and then with an up-stroke (cotp de revers) it 'shared' his side"
(Keightley).
shared, cut, laid open; used' by Spenser, e.g. in The Faerie
Queene, iv. 2. I7, v. 5. 9. Cf. shear, share (a portion), plough-share,all from the root skar, seen in Gk. Ketpetv, Lat. secare.
327. first knew pain. See 362, 394, 431, 432. Only the rebellious
angels are sensible of physical pain; and the reason is given in 69r"sin hath impaired."  Through sin they have made gross (cf. 66i) the
pure " essence " of their original forms; and spirit has deteriorated into
matter (cf. v. 478, note), rendering them vulnerable. The obedient
angels are invulnerable because innocent (400-403).
Johnson's criticism, however, seems just: " The confusion of spirit
and matter, which pervades the whole narration of the war of heaven,
fills it with incongruity."
329. griding, piercing, cutting through.  " Discontinuous wound is
said in allusion to the old definition of a wound, that it separates the
continuity of the parts" (Newton). In surgical language, vulnus est
sokitio continui. Bacon uses discontinuation in the medical sense,
'solution of continuity,' in a list of diseases (The Advancement of
Learning, II. io. 5). Cf. also his Essay Of Unity in Religion: "as
in the natural body a wound or solution of continuity is worse than
a corrupt humour, so in the spiritual."
330, 33I. Happily imitated in The Rape of the Lock, III. I5I, 152:
"Fate urg'd the shears, and cut the Sylph in twain
(But airy substance soon unites again)."
Cf. too Wordsworth, Laodamia, "The Phantom parts, but parts to
reunite."  Todd quotes from  Burton's Anatomy to the effect that
"devils...feele paine if they be hurt that, if their bodies be cut, with
admirable celerity they come together againe; that, in their fall,
their bodies were changed into a more...grosse substance [cf. 66i]."
M. has worked in all three ideas; he may have owed them to the
Anatomy (with which he was certainly acquainted-see Introduction to
L'A, lepo).
332. nectarous, divine, heavenly. Bentley with misdirected in33-2




516


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


genuity proposed ichorous, from Gk. 1Xc5p, Homer's name (cf. The
Dunciad, III. 92) for the fluid that issued from  the gods when
wounded; cf. Iliad v. 340, aU3poTro actla OeoZo, ] IXcp, dos 7r p Tr pEet!iaKadpeaaL Oeoict.
335. was run, i.e. Lat. cursum est; cf. x. 229. The whole
picture of the wounded chief being rescued by his friends and borne
from the field to his chariot is Homeric (e.g. I7iad XIV. 428-32).
339. files, ranks; cf. I. 567, "the armed files."
348, 349. liquid texture, i.e. the "essence" of which he speaks
in I. 424, 425-" soft and uncompounded."
no more than can the fluid air. A favourite poetic comparison;
cf. Hamlet, I. I. 143-46, referring to the Ghost, at which the
watchmen have struck with their halberds:
"We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery."
Macbeth, deeming himself invulnerable, says to Macduff (v. 8.
9, x):
"As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed";
where intrenchant='not to be cut' (Fr. trencher, 'to cut'), the whole
phrase being a variation on Hamlet, Iv. I. 44, "the woundless
air" (i.e. that cannot be wounded).  There is the same idea in
The Tempest, III. 3. 61-63.   Sir Thomas Browne writes: "The
ghosts are afraid of swords in Homer; yet Sibylla tells 2Eneas in
Virgil, the thin habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons " (Urn
Burial, IV.).
351-53.    Cf. I. 428, 429, II. 948, notes.
354-85. With regard to some of the names here and later we
have seen (I. 3'6 —75) that M. adopted the mediaeval notion that the
deities of heathenism, oriental and classical, were the apostate angels.
He could not describe their rebellion without giving them some titles:
this belief (based upon texts such as Levit. xvii. 7, i Cor. x. 20) supplied
him with suitable names.
355. the might of Gabriel, the mighty Gabriel; exactly the Homeric
use of Air, as in 'the might of Hercules,' or 'the Herculean might,' for
' the mighty Hercules.' Cf. the use of the abstract in Latin, as in
Horace's mitis sapientia Leli (' the wisdom of Laelius' = the wise Lalius),
or prisci Catonis...virtus. Cf. Dryden,..En. VI. 942, "the filial duty
thus replies," i.e. the dutiful son. See 371, 372, vI. 722, vII. 175.
357. Moloch illustrates his character in his speech in II. 51-105:




NOTES.


51 7


his "ferocious character," says Johnson, "appears, both in the battle
and the council, with exact consistency." Cf. I. 392, 393.
359, 360. Alluding to 2 Kings xix. 22. Scan blasphmzous.
362. uncouth, strange.
363. Uriel. See III. 648, 649, note. Raphael can speak of his
own exploits thus because his name was not known to Adam
(Bentley).
364. See note on 831-4r. Some editors interpret diamond=
'adamant' (cf. xIo, 255); the words, etymologically identical, were
sometimes treated as synonymous. But we hear of " diamond quarries,"
v. 759, and of "diamond rocks," Comus, 88r, where diamond must
bear its common sense: perhaps it does here: applied to angelic beings
the description would not be extravagant.
365. Adranelech, 'magnificence of the king'; a deity whose worship
was brought to Samaria by the colonists from Sepharvaim (2 Kings
xvii. 31). He represented an aspect of the Sun-god.
Asmadai; see IV. i68, where M. uses the form Asmodeus, now
generally employed (and perhaps most familiar through Le Sage's work,
Le Diable Boiteux). Editors refer to the account of Asmodeus in
the Book of Tobit v. (see 221 —23).
In the systems of demonology popular in the I6th and 7th centuries
Asmodeus held very high rank, and was a type of might; cf. "potent,"
366. Thus Heywood (Hierarchie, 1635) says that the fallen angels,
like the faithful angels, were divided into nine Orders, and that
Asmodeus was head of the fourth Order (p. 436). Reginald Scot
(Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584) speaks of "Sidonay, alias Asmooday,
a great king, strong and mightie" (Nicholson's ed., p. 32r); and in
the Faust-book (I594), second part, we read of "Asmody a king mighty
and puissant" (Thoms' Englzish Prose lRomnances, 1858, Ill. 319).
There can be no doubt that Milton was deeply versed in these mediaeval
traditions; and this particular tradition as to the might and prowess of
Asmodeus lends, I think, significance to the present passage.
Compare Dante's use of non-biblical tradition, as where he places
among the denizens of his Inferno "that caitiff choir of the angels, who
were not rebellious, nor were faithful to God; but were for themselves "
(III. 37-39).  "There is" (says the note in the "Temple" edition of
the Inferno, p. 34) "no mention of these angels in the Bible. Dante
evidently followed a popular tradition, traces of which may be found in
the medieval Voyage of St Brandan" (celebrated in Matthew Arnold's
poem).
368. plate, armour made of solid pieces of metal; mail, a sort of
chainwork.




5I8


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


37I. Ariel, 'lion of God'; cf. Isaiah xxix. I (margin), where
Ariel seems to be a title of Jerusalem; it is the name of one of the
"chief men" whom Ezra summoned (Ezra viii. I6). Probably M.
has used the name merely because its meaning is so descriptive of a
great warrior.
Arioch, 'lion-like'; cf. Gen. xiv. I, Dan. ii. 14 (where Nebuchadnezzar's " captain of the king's guard " is so called). That the name was
applied, possibly in Rabbinical writings, to some evil spirit, seems
proved by Nash's Pierce Pennilesse, "great Arioch, that is termed the
spirit of revenge" (Keightley, Life of Milton, p. 472).
372. Ramiel, 'exaltation of God'; whence M. took the name
(or whether he coined it) is not known. "Milton's proper names
are often chosen for their full sounds" (Tennyson).
373. 1 might relate.  A skilful way of closing this particular
account.
374. eternize, make eternal in fame, immortalise; rather a favourite
word with the Elizabethans. Cf. 2 Henry VI. v. 3. 29-31:
"Now, by my faith, lords, 'twas a glorious day:
Saint Alban's battle won by famous York
Shall be etemnized in all age to come."
So in The Faerie Queene, I. 10. 59, and The Teares of he Muses, 582.
374, 375. elect Angels; cf. II. I36, note. True fame is of Heaven
alone (Lycidas, 78-84).
379, 380. See I. 361-75, v. 658, 659, notes.
387. deformed, hideous, Lat. deformis.
390. charioter; for the form cf. "pioner" (i. 676).
391-96. what stood; unlike that which "lay overturned," 390.
The sense is-' such part of the army as had not been laid low, now
either retreated, all along the line of the Satanic host (which scarce offered
any resistance), or fled in utter disorder.' Orderly retreat and panicstricken flight are contrasted.
399. cubic, four-square; not an exact use of the word, but editors
compare Milton's Reason of Church Government, "as those smaller
squares in battle unite in one great cube, the main phalanx." Masson
takes cubic literally, arguing that as the angels are not subject
to the law of gravitation they can form a cube or any other solid
figure.
404. unobnoxious, not liable; a Latinism.
405. though...moved. "This circumstance is judiciously added
to prepare the reader for what happens in the next fight" (Newton).
407. inducing, bringing on; exactly Horace's jam nox inducere
tlrris umbras...parabat (Satires I. 5. 9, lo).




NOTES.


519


4I0. the foughten field; an old ballad-phrase. It occurs in
Henry V. iv. 6. i8, 19:
"As in this glorious and well-foughten field
We kept together in our chivalry l"
It is one of the old-world phrases revived by Tennyson; cf. The
Coming of Arthur:
"Then quickly from the foughten field he sent
Ulfius and Brastias and Bedivere
His new-made knights to King Leodogran";
The Holy Grail, and The Princess, v. 287. He uses foughten also
simply as a poetic variant form =fought:
" And ever since the lords
Have foughten like wild beasts among themselves,"
The Coming of Arthur.
413. Cherubic...fires, i.e. the "flaming Cherubim," 102, to whom,
throughout P. L., falls the duty of sentinels.
Cf. the description of the sword "which turned every way"
(Genesis iii. 24) in XII. 592, 593, 643.
415. i.e. far removed into the dark. dislodged; cf. v. 669.
421. too mean pretence, too mean ambition: they aimed at something better than mere liberty. Shakespeare uses pretence='design,
ambition'; cf. Coriolanus, I. 2. 20. So M. in II. 825. affect; see
v. 763.
429. of future; cf. phrases like 'of late,' of old.'
447. Nisroch; the Assyrian deity in whose temple Sennacherib
was murdered by his sons, 2 Aings xix. 37, Isaiah xxxvii. 38. Reginald
Scot says (Discourse on Devils, p. 435), "Nisroch signifieth a delicate
tentation "; but probably it means 'great eagle.'
455. i.e. against those who cannot be pained (cf. 404, 405) or suffer.
Cf. Dryden, speaking of the ghosts in Hades, " Forms without bodies
and impassive air," zEn. VI. 409.
458. remiss; used in the literal sense of Lat. remissus, 'slack,
relaxed, languid.'
462-64. A sentiment "suitable enough to a deity of the effeminate
Assyrians" (Newton).
In the reference to "pain" there may be a personal glance; see
XI. 542-46.
465. offend= Lat. offendere, ' to strike, hit.'
467, 468. to me deserves; i.e. in my opinion he deserves no less
gratitude than we owe to Satan for our deliverance. Cf. to in phrases
like 'to my thinking,' 'to my knowledge,' 'to my mind,' all found in
Shakespeare.




520


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


470. Editors show that the notion that cannon were invented in
Hell is found in Ariostos Orlando Furioso, IX. 28, The Faerie Queene,
I. 7. 13, and Drayton's-Pol/olbion, I8.
478. crude, in their raw (Lat. crudus), unwrought state; cf. 511.
479. spiritous; so the original editions; there seems no need to
change it to ' spirituous.' The materials, he says, "contain spirituous
and fiery particles (cf. 483) which, if they be melted, will foam up
out of them" (Keightley).
481. ambient light. Cf. VII. 89, and Shelley's Alastor:
"every sight
And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
Sent to his heart the choicest impulses."
482. nativity, native state (or place).  the deep, the underground.
495. i.e. to be despaired of, exactly Lat. desperandus; cf. I.
66o. So Macbeth, v. 8. 13, "despair thy charm."
496. cheer, spirits; generally high spirits, joy, but not always; cf.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 97, 13, "so dull a cheer," and Marlowe's Faustus,
XIII. 6I, " I go, sweet Faustus, but with heavy cheer." Properly cheer
means face, from 0. Fr. chzire= Late Lat. cara, 'face' (=Gk. cKdpa,
'head'?); and some editors think that it has that sense here.
498. and each, i.e. "admired "=' wondered.'
501-506. thy race, Adam's. Probably M. is thinking of the Civil
War. Descriptions of civil strife and its incidents must have appealed
with the force of personal experience to many of his readers. The same
thing is felt in reading Bunyan's Holy War.
502. in future days.  "This speaking in the spirit of prophecy
adds great dignity to poetry" (Newton).  He compares   Eneid IV.
625, and adds: "this, here, very properly comes from the mouth of an
Angel."
507-509. The abrupt style is "admirably contrived to express
the hurry of the Angels " (Newton).
512. Cf. "nitrous powder" in IV. 8I5.
5I3. found; surely the preterite of find; but it has been taken as
found='to melt or cast metals.' That scarcely suits "foam"; moreover,
founded (cf. I. 703) would be required.
5 I4. concocted and adusted, baked and dried.
518, 5I9. engines, i.e. cannon. When cannon were first used, the
balls were made of stone, not iron; cf. the allusion to " gunstones" in
Henry V. I. 2. 282, with the passage from Caxton's Chronicles quoted
by Steevens-" [he] lette make...grete gonne stones for the Dolphynne
to play wyth all." It should be remembered that gun originally meant


0




NOTES.


521


a sort of catapult for throwing stones. Cf. Selden's Table- Talk, LXXVI.:
" The Word Gun was in use in England for an Engine, to cast a thing
from a Man, long before there was any Gun-powder found out."
incentive reed, i.e. the gunner's match. incentive, enkindling.
520. pernicious...tofire, so full of destruction as to kindle-viz. the
powder. Newton takes pernicious=Lat. pernix, 'quick'; but could
the word bear this meaning? M. elsewhere (cf. 849) always uses
it=' fraught with destruction' (Lat. pernicium).
521. See v. I39. conscious, i.e. that witnessed what they did; Hume
aptly cites Ovid, Metamorphoses xIII. I5, quorum nox conscia sola est.
528, 529. dawning hills; "great Rarities," said Bentley, and read
"downs and hills." Many of his proposals justified Pope's sneer at
"Thy [i.e. of Dulness] mighty Scholiast, whose unwearied pains
Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains."
See Tennyson, CEnone:
"I waited underneath the dawning hills,
Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark,
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine."
535. i.e. the swiftest-winged Cherub. Zophiel, 'spy of God.' M.
seems to have invented the name-appropriately, since the Cherub is
one of the scouts sent out (529).
539. so thick a cloud. Cf. "cloud...of war" in the Sonnet to
Cromwell, where editors quote Vergil's phrase nubes belli —Eneid x. 809.
541. sad, steadfast. secure, without fear.
542. Cf. Horace's Martem tunica tectum adamantina, Od. I. 6. 13.
543, 544- gripe; cf. iv. 408, XI. 264. orbed, circular; cf. 254.
The shields were held either straight out from the body, or high to
protect the head (Masson).
546. barbed with fire, i.e. arrows with fire at their points; cf.
Shelley, Adonais, 99, "And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek,"
i.e. piercing. Cotgrave explains fleche barbelee by " a bearded or barbed
arrow." A barb is a hook or jag on an arrow-head.
547-49.   Most modern texts have a semicolon after themselves
and a comma after impediment-reversing the original punctuation.
inpediment; cf. Lat. impedimenta, 'the carriages and baggage of
an army.' The good angels are not encumbered, like their enemy, with
artillery.
took alarm, sprang to arms; this was a current phrase; cf.
Bunyan, The Holy War: " Now, Diabolus and his men being expertly
accustomed to night-work, took the alarm presently [at once], and were
as ready to give them battle as if they had sent them word of their
coning" ("Temple" ed., p. 267).




522


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


550. move; there is no authority for moved; but it is tempting, all
the verbs being in the past tense.
553. Cf. Henry V. III. Prologue, 33, "the devilish cannon."
training, dragging, Fr. trainer.
558-67. The irony and verbal quibbles-" discharge," "touch,"
etc.-are too obvious to need comment. This scene of the introduction
of artillery can scarce be reckoned among the great achievements in
Paradise Lost. Humour is not Milton's forte: and are there not signs
in what follows of some want of care? e.g. in the involved lines 571 -78, and in 579-8I, where stood occurs three times.
Addison considered this part " the most exceptionable in the whole
poem " (i.e. open to exception), on account of these quibbles.
56o. composure=" composition" in 613, i.e. agreement, settlement.
571-78. The sense appears to be: 'We saw a row of brazen or
iron pillars-at least things which but for their hollow mouths we should
have supposed to be pillars (for they were very like them).'
576. iron.. mould. M. may have recollected the description of
Sir Artegall's page, " His name was Talus, made of yron mould" (The
Faerie Queene, v. I. I2). mould, substance.
578. hollow, i.e. deceitful, as applied to "truce"; but there is a
quibbling reference to the hollow barrels of the guns.
580. stood, i.e. a "reed" stood. Some think that M. dictated
held, or some such verb, to which Seraph would be the subject.
suspense, in suspense, Lat. suspensi.
581. amused, musing, wondering (cf. 623); the original sense-cf.
Cotgrave, " to amuse, make to muse or think of, to gaze at." Fr. amuser
is a compound of a and 0. Fr. muser, 'to gaze at, muse over.'
582. at once, simultaneously.  It seems best to make all the
subject to put, and to mark this by placing at once within commas:
'all did it, and did it simultaneously.' Some editors take all at once
as a single adverbial phrase; but this is repetition after sudden, and
leaves put without a subject.
584. nicest, most exact, accurate.
586. Newton compares Othello, III. 3. 355, 356.
587. embowelled, filled.
589. glut, i.e. the ammunition wherewith they were charged.
595-97. Cf. 656 —6. M. attributes to spiritual beings the power
of reducing or expanding ("dilating," I. 429) themselves at will. Cf.
351-53, and I. 789, 790.
598. dissipation, scattering, flight; cf. Lat. dissipare, 'to rout, put
to flight.'
599. serried; cf.. 548.




NOTES.


523


6oi. indecent, disgraceful; cf. decent='graceful, comely,' Lat.
decens, III. 644, and /I Penseroso, 36.
605. displode, let off, fire. tire, rank, row; cf. The Hind and the
Panther, III. 316-19:
"Constrained to quit his cause, no succour found,
The foe discharges every tire around,
In clouds of smoke abandoning the fight;
But his own thundering peals proclaim his flight."
So in Marvell's The First Anniversa-y, 361, 362:
"An hideous shoal of wood Leviathans,
Armed with three tire of brazen hurricanes."
609-27. The two speeches are full of obvious quibbles.
620-27. Newton notes that the speech is appropriate to the
character of Belial as drawn in the first two books of the poem; that it
could not come from the statesman-angel Beelzebub or the fierce
warrior-angel Moloch. There Belial was described as a god of the
unwarlike (1. 493-502), himself "timorous and slothful" (ii. tI7), and
here, in the great battle, "we find him celebrated for nothing but that
scoffing speech" (Addison).
622. urged home, i.e. thoroughly, to the full effect; frequent in
Shakespeare; cf. King Lear, III. 3. 13, "revenged home," and III.
4. I6, "I will punish home."
625, 626. Cf. Twelfth Night,.III. I. 89, and The Two Gentlemen of
Verona, II. 5. 28: " Speed. I understand thee not...Launce. My staff
understands me."
635. Vergil's furor arma ministrat, -En. I. I50.
644-46. Cf. II. 539, 540.    shaggy; cf. Iv. 224, Lycidas, 54.
It is one of Gray's many Miltonic classical touches; cf. The Bard,
II, 12:
"As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array."
Similar is Lat. horrens or horridus applied to woodland scenery.
665. jaculation, Lat.jaculatio, 'a casting, hurling.' Addison compares the classical legends about Pelion and Ossa in the Giants' war.
668, 669. Cf. II. 993-96.
670. On the first day the struggle of the angels only makes Heaven
resound (217, 218); now it threatens to wreck the whole fabric of
the Empyrean.
673. i.e. guiding all things, directing the Universe. M. seems
to use "sum of things "=the summarum summa of Lucretius (v. 362),
i.e. the All, the Universe. "The All" and "this All" (r6oe Tr TravTinzeus 37 D) are favourite phrases of Drummond for the Universe.




524


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


Cf. Spenser's Hymne of Heavenly Beautie describing the creation of
the Universe, 41, 42:
"And, last, that mightie shining christall wall,
Wherewith he hath encompassed this All."
674. advised, advisedly, purposely.
679. assessor, i.e. the sharer of his throne-lit. ' one who sits by.'
This literal use occurs in Tennyson's Queen Mary, I. 5:
"He slew not him alone who wore the purple,
But his assessor in the throne."
68i, 682. i.e. in whose face that which is invisible-namely, what
I by Deity am-is visibly beheld. Cf. Colos. i. I5, "Who is the
image of the invisible God."  So in P. L. III. I38-42, 384-87,
vII. 192-96, x. 63-67. M. expounds the idea in The Christian
Doctrine, I. 5 (P. W. IV. 142-45).
invisible...beheld visibly; an instance of oxymoron.  invisible;
apparently a noun =' the invisible thing.'
691, 692. suspend, delay. The sense is-'Though sin has done
them some harm, yet it has not made them so inferior to the good
angels that the latter can win a decisive victory.'
695. " Within the compass of this one book we have all the variety
of battles that can well be conceived. We have a single combat, and a
general engagement" under many phases (Newton). And, as in Homer,
the "battles still rise one above another, and improve in horror"
(Addison).
698. the main, the whole "continent" (474) of Heaven, or the
whole Universe. For main= ' land' (not sea, as commonly), cf. King
Lear, III. I. 5, 6:
"Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,
Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main";
and Tennyson, The Princess, iv.:
"Each was like a Druid rock;
Or like a spire of land that stands apart
Cleft from the main, and wail'd about with mews."
703. virtue; cf. iII. 586.
709. Cf. v. 605; Psalm xlv. 7.
715, 716. Contrast v. 7i6 ("the Sons of Morn"). utter, outer.
719-2 I. Slightly varied in x. 63-67.
724-34. There are allusions to: John xvii. T, 4, 5, 21-23 (cf.
P. L. xi. 44); Matt. xvii. 5 (cf. P. R. I. 85); i Cor. xv. 28; Ps. cxxxix. 21.
738, 739. prepared. Cf. 53-55; and see Rev. xx. i, 2; 2 Pet. ii.
4; and Jude 6. The same reference occurs in I86, 1. 48, II. i69, III. 82,
XII. 454. the undying worm; Isai. lxvi. 24; AMark ix. 44.




NOTES.


525


744. Contrast II. 239-43.
747. See v. 606; cf. 679, 892.
748. Newton says-" Milton, by continuing the war for three days,
and reserving the victory upon the third for the Messiah alone, plainly
alludes to the circumstances of his death and resurrection." M. was
not alone in dividing the struggle into three parts. The Schoolmen
who discussed most things discussed the point how long the contest
lasted, and (writes Reginald Scot) " the greatest number affirme that...
it stood with God's justice to give them [the rebellious angels] three
warnings; so as at the third warning Lucifer fell downe like led to the
bottom of hell," Discourse, Nicholson's ed., p. 423. Another point
is-M. has assigned the overthrow of the rebels to Messiah, whereas
in Rev. xii. 3-9 it is implied that Michael was their vanquisher;
cf., however, verse ix on which M. may have based his view. In any
case it belonged to the scheme of his work to make the Messiah the
subduer of Satan in Heaven, as on earth: the first victory foreshadows
that later one by which Paradise Lost became for humanity Paradise
Regained.
749-59. This description of the throne-chariot of the Deity
(Iv. 973-76, vii. 218-20), and of the Cherubic Shapes whereby it
was convoyed, is modelled very closely on Ezekiel's Vision, chap. i.
M. has worked in detail after detail of the Scriptural original, and
the whole chapter should be compared with his narrative. Paradise
Lost contains no more striking instance of his skill in adapting
Scripture to the purposes of his work. With 752 cf. vii. 204.
756. beryl, a kind of crystal. Fr. briller, whence brilliant, represents
a corruption of Lat. beryllus=Gk. pipvXXos. careering, darting; the
metaphor of a tournament. Cf. I. 766.
758. sapphire throne; cf. Collins, Ode on the Poetical Character, 2,
one of the poems in which the influence of Milton, that affected Collins's
style so greatly, is specially conspicuous.
760. panoply, "the whole armour of God (rravoXrta)," EAphes.
vi. ii.
761. Concerning the much-discussed Urim, it seems to be agreed
that they were certain material objects placed inside the breastplate of
judgment which formed part of the high priest's ephod (Exod. xxviii.
30); and that they were a means by which, through him, the will of
Jehovah was ascertained. It has been variously suggested that these
objects were (I) diamonds and other precious stones, (2) metal slips
marked with affirmative and negative answers, (3) small images like the
'teraphim.' M. (cf. P. R. iii. I3-15) takes the first view, so that the
general sense is-'armed in celestial equipment wrought of precious




526


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


stones'; cf. 364, and the passage from An Apology for Smectymnuus,
quoted at 83I (" arming in complete diamond "). Tennyson seems to
follow this idea, where he describes (The Coming of Arthur, 297, 298)
King Arthur's sword Excalibur as
" rich
With jewels, elfin Urim, on the hilt,"
i.e. mysterious precious stones placed there magically.
That famous Elizabethan book, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witch.
craft (r584), speaks of the Jews being "informed by Urim: so as
the preests by the brightness of the twelve pretious stones conteined
therein, could prognosticate or expound anie thing" (bk. IX. chap. v.
p. 139, Nicholson's ed.).
The word Urim is said to mean 'light'-whence the view that the
Urim were of Egyptian origin, and connected with the symbol of light
worn by members of the priestly caste in Egypt; or 'revelation'-cf.
the rendering of it in the Septuagint, '7 drj\Xts, and in the Vulgate,
doctrina. In  The Reason of Church Government, I. 5, Milton
speaks of "the oracle of urim " and "the judgment of urim," P. W.
II. 455.
762, 763. Cf. the personification of Victory in Richard III. v.
3. 79, "Fortune and Victory sit on thy helm" (i.e. helmet). So
Expectation was personified, 306. Todd quotes Richard II. I. 3. I29
(" eagle-winged pride ").
766. bickering, quivering, flashing.
767-70. Jude r4; Ps. lxviii. I7; Rev. v. II.
770. Tennyson remarked on the "grand pause" in the line after
God, lending tremendous emphasis.
771. "And he rode upon a cherub and did fly," 2 Sam. xxii. iI;
Ps. xviii. io. M. generally uses sublime=Lat. sublimis in its literal
sense, 'uplifted'; cf. II. 528.
772. M. always scans crystalline; cf. vII. 271, S. A. 546, "Allure
thee from the cool crystalline stream."
776. "And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in
heaven," Mat. xxiv. 30.
777. reduced, brought back-Lat. reduxit; cf. x. 438. The word
is used similarly in the sense 'to bring back' in his treatise On
Education (P. W; III. 472).
779. their Hlead, i.e. the Messiah; see v. 606. Editors quote
Romans xii. 5, Colossians i. I8.
787.  insensate, senseless; once elsewhere in M.-cf. S. A.
1685, where the context shows that it is a very strong word.
788. Vergil's tantcene animis celestibus irre? -En. I. II. Cf. The




NOTES.                          527
Rape of the Lock, I, r:
"In tasks so bold can little men engage?
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage?"
So IX. 729, 730. Cf. Iv. 118, 119, note.
791. harden'd more; like Pharaoh.
797. last, at last; an obvious suggestion is lost.
80o. Exodus xiv. I3.
808. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord," Romans
xii. 9; cf. Deuteronomy xxxii. 35.
831-4I. This description recalls III. 392-96, and An Apology
for Smectymnuuzs: " then Zeal, whose substance is ethereal, arming in
complete diamond [cf. 364, 760, 761], ascends his fiery chariot, drawn
with two blazing meteors, figured like beasts, resembling two of those
four which Ezekiel and St John saw...with these the invincible warrior,
Zeal, shaking loosely the slack reins, drives over the heads of scarlet
prelates...bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels," P. W.
III. 129.
833, 834. Cf. 7I1, 712. In I. o05 Satan boasts that the battle did
shake the throne. Thyer compares Hesiod, Theogony 841.
838. astonished, thunder-struck, stupefied.
841. Spenser has the accentuation prostrdte; cf. The Faerie
Queene, III. 12. 39.
842, 843. " And [they] said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us,
and hide us from the...wrath of the Lamb," Rev. vi. I6. The irony of
the lines, in view of 639-66, is obvious.
864-66. Cf. I. 44-49, I69-77, P. R. I. 90, 360, 361. The
"bottomless pit" is the lowest region of Hell-that "fiery gulf" on
which the angels are depicted as tossing in I. 52. In the Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce, 3, M. calls it "that uttermost and bottomless gulf
of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied"
(P. W. III. 224). Similar allusions to "the bottomless pit" occur in
The Tenure of Kings (end), Areopagilica, and Of Reformation in
England, II. (P. W. II. 47, 6i, 417).
868. ruining, falling; see III. 258, and cf. Tennyson, Lucretius.
869, 870. Repeated from the Nativit, Ode, 123; see the note on
vII. 253-6o.   Cf. positi late fundamina Mundi in Milton's lines
Ad Patrem, 47. her, of Hell.
871. nine; traditionally a significant number. See I. 5o.
873. i.e. through his wild, disordered realm (" the wasteful deep");
cf. VII. 271, 272, X. 283. In II. 993-96 Chaos, speaking of the
expulsion of the angels, tells Satan how he "saw and heard."
874, 875. Isaiah v. 14.




528


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VI.


877. Cf. II. 823. Tasso, Ix. 59, calls it "the house of grief and
pain" (Newton). Compare too Dante's synonyms for Hell, such as
"the doleful houses" (dolenti case) and "the doleful realm" (dolente
regno); see the Inferno, Viii. 12o, Purgatorio, viI. 22.
880-92. Rev. xii. Io, iv. II; I Tim. iii. I6; Yeb. i. 3. Cf. II.
397-99.
885. The grave of Samson Agonistes (1735) is shaded with
"branching palm," a symbol of victory. See the Ode At a Solemn
Music, 14, and cf. Crashaw's picture of the "Assembly of the Saints ""The palm blooms in each hand, the garland on each brow." See
Rev. vii. 9.
886.  szung triumph.  M. is thinking perhaps of the Lat. lo
Triumgphe, the cry raised by the crowd and soldiers when a Roman
general celebrated his triumph. Cf. Horace, Odes IV. 2. 49, 50,
Epodes IX. 21, 23.
893. Cf. v. 570-74.  "The reader cannot but admire the dignity
and emphasis with which the Angel's speech concludes. The same brief
sentences, and solemn pauses, may be observed in the fine moral
instruction which the heavenly messenger gives Adam, at the close of
the eighth book" (Todd).
899. There is a ring of Milton in Pope's couplet (Essay on Man,
I. 127, i28):
"Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel."
See ix. 685-712, note.
goo. he who; him    would have been more regular.    But he
sounds more emphatic, and the context requires strong emphasis
(Dunster).
9oo-906. These lines give the two main motives of Satan's resolve
to ruin mankind, namely, envy and desire to spite God by marring his
creatures: man shall be ruined that Satan may be revenged on the
Most High for his defeat (IV. II, 12).
907. Cf. P. R.. 397, 398; Satan is the speaker:
"Envy, they say, excites me, thus to gain
Companions of my misery and woe! "
It is the sentiment expressed in the proverbial line of unknown origin,
solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris (or malorum). So Shakespeare,
Lucrece, 790, 79I:
"And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage,
As palmers' chat makes short their pilgrimage,"
and Romeo andJuliet, III. 2. Ii6. When Faustus asks why Lucifer
tempts mortals Mephistophiles in reply quotes the line solamen miseris




NOTES.


529


etc., Faustus, v. 42-where Dr Ward in his note cites Seneca, De Consolatione XII. 2: est autem hoc ijpsum solatii loco, inter mullos doloremn
stuum dividere. See x. 126-28.
Sir Thomas Browne gives the idea a moral turn: "Delude not
thyself into iniquities from participation or community, which abate the
sense but not the obliquity of them. To conceive sins less or less of
sins, because others also transgress, were morally to commit that natural
fallacy of man, to take comfort from society, and think adversities less
because others also suffer them" (Christian MAlorals, I. xviii.).
909. thy weaker; Eve, "the weaker vessel," I Pet. iii. 7.
BOOK VII.
I-39. With this exordium compare I. I-26; III. 1-55; IX.
I-47. All four passages mark a significant stage in the development
of the story, and in each passage the notion implied in "above the
Olympian hill I soar" finds expression. The first serves as prelude to
the whole poem and indicates the subject; the second transfers the
scene of the action from Hell to Heaven, and later to the Earth;
the third is a pause before the history of Creation is unfolded; and
the fourth prepares us for the Temptation and Fall of Man. Compare
Homer's method of stopping to invoke the Muse afresh before some
great event is narrated. Pope parodies this epic convention in the
Argument and (very Miltonic) first lines of the fourth book of The
Dunciad.
We may note in these four passages the number of personal allusions, e.g. to Milton's consciousness of the greatness of his subject
(I. I2 —6, 24-26, III. 54, 55, VII. t2-15, IX. I3-19, 4I-43); his
blindness (III. 21-55, VII. 27); loneliness (vII. 28); and advanced
years (Ix. 45).
i. descend from Heaven; cf. Horace's descende celo... Calliope- Odes
III. 4. i, 2. Here the invocation is specially appropriate as the scene
of the action of the poem passes literally from Heaven to Earth (the
Creation of which is about to be described).
2. if rightly thou art called; an indication that he was conscious
of using the name not in its usual classical sense.
3. the Olympian hill; Mount Olympus (cf. I. 5i6) in the north of
Greece. Like Mount Helicon in Boeotia, it was a resort of the Muses


P. L.


34




530


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


to whom classical poets appealed for inspiration. Hence lines 3, 4 are a
figurative way of claiming loftier inspiration than that of classical poets.
3, 4. soar... fight... wing; his favourite metaphor to describe uplifting inspiration; cf. I. 14, note, P. R. I. 14.
Pegasus was the famous winged horse (cf. "flying," I7) that
ascended to the heaven of the classical gods and afterwards used to bear
the thunder and lightning of Zeus. M. had ascended far higher, into
the Heaven of the Almighty.
5. "Urania" means 'the Heavenly one' and it is on a Heavenly
power that he calls, not on the classical Muse named 'Urania.' See
pp. 686-88.
In this book of Paradise Lost the classical influence, which predominated in the last, naturally gives way to the Biblical (Genesis); the
subject being the Creation.
6. nor of; understand art from the verb in the next line.
7. old; often in M. almost a title of reverence; cf. "Mount
Casius old," II. 593; "the fable of Bellerus old," Lycidas, 60o.  Cold
is a needless change.
8-12. The allusion is to Proverbs viii. 23-30, where the word
rendered "rejoicing" in verse 30o may mean 'playing' (ludens in
the Vulgate); cf. "didst play," io. M. quotes the verse in Tetrachordon (P. W. III. 331) and substitutes "playing" for "rejoicing"
(Newton).
9. eternal Wisdom. "The Eternal Wisdom created man an
excellent creature, though he fain would unmake himself and return into
nothing; and though he seek his felicity among the reasonless wights,
He hath fixed it above" (Drummond, A     Cypress Grove, Works,
II. 274).
converse, live in company with (Lat. conversari); cf. II. 184.
13. In books III., v., VI., he has described events which took
place in the "Heaven of Heavens," i.e. the Empyrean.
I4. drawn; cf. viii. 284.
I5. thy temipering, tempered by thee, i.e. made to suit the
breathing of "an earthly guest."
I6. element, i.e. the Earth.
17. He implies that, guided by the Muse (12), he has been borne
aloft on a winged Pegasus of his own, superior to the Pegasus (4) of
mythology. Diva Pegasea is a synonym for the Muse in Dante,
Paradiso, XVIII. 82. unreined, unbridled, Lat. infrenis.
i8, 19. An allusion to the legend that Bellerophon attempted to
ascend to heaven on the back of Pegasus, but was flung to the ground.
Incurring the anger of the gods, he roamed alone in the Aleian plain,




NOTES.


531


'the land of wandering' (Gk. adX\ =' wandering'), became distracted and
died; cf. Homer, Iliad vI. o00-202. clime, region; cf. II. 572.
20. erroneous; in the literal sense 'straying' (Lat. erroneus).
21. Henceforth the action of the poem, of which "half remains
unsung," takes place on Earth (save in some brief passages of books
X., XI.).
22. the visible diurnal sphere, i.e. "the Astronomical Universe of
Man, which appears to revolve round the Earth daily in twenty-four
hours" (Masson). Wordsworth (The Prelude, I. 459, 460), may have
recollected the line.
23. rapt, caught up.
the pole, the highest point of the Universe, i.e. where it is fastened
to the golden chain which suspends it from the Empyrean.
25-39. M. refers to his own position after the Restoration. There
are similar allusions in S. A.; see 697-700, with notes.
26. The verbal repetition gives an effect of pathos; cf. S. A. 80, 8r.
Note how he inverts the order of the words; cf. 184-87.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of the poetic device of
repetition in Paradise Lost is Iv. 641-56. It is a favourite artifice
(expressive of great emphasis) with Tennyson, from whose works many
striking illustrations might be quoted, e.g. the passage in Enoch Arden
beginning "The splendour on the waters," and the description of the
descent of the Grail in the Holy Grail, 473-76, where each line
commences with " blood-red." In the Marriage of Geraint five
consecutive lines start on the same note:
"Forgetful of his promise to the king,
Forgetful of the falcon and the hunt,
Forgetful of the tilt and tournament,
Forgetful of his glory and his name,
Forgetful of his princedom and its cares."
evil tongues. M. had many bitter enemies among the Royalist
party; as was only natural considering the attitude which he had
adopted towards Charles I. in The Tenure of Kings and Eikonoklastes.
Johnson (not always a friendly critic of the poet) grimly remarks that
Milton himself had " never spared any asperity of reproach or brutality
of insolence" in his polemical writings against Salmasius and others.
27. The original of Wordsworth's line-" Darkness before, and
danger's voice behind "-in the passage on Milton in The Prelude, III.
darkness, i.e. blindness. Cf. I. 22, III. 45.
dangers. At the Restoration M. was arrested and imprisoned for
some months, probably from August to December I660, for having
defended the execution of Charles I.; and though, thanks to the efforts
34-2




532           PARADISE LOST.         BOOK   VII.
of Andrew Marvell (see pp. 365, 366) and some other influential friends
he was eventually allowed to take advantage of the Act of Oblivion
(I660), yet he must for a time have felt insecure. After the publication of his great work his position was different.  He was, says
Burnet, "much visited by all strangers, and much admired by all at
home, for the poems he wrote...chiefly that of ' Paradise Lost.'"
28. solitude. It has been justly said of Milton that throughout his
life as a whole he "was aloof and solitary beyond any other great
English writer."  Cf. Wordsworth's famous description of him ("Thy
soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart").
29. nightly. Cf. III. 29-32 and IX. 21-24 (notes). "The poet
might here remember the nightly vision of Beatrice to Dante, Purgatorio,
xxx. 133)" (Todd).
30. purples, dyes with rosy hues.
31. Cf. Horace, Satires I. Io. 74, contentusfpaucis lectoribus. As
to the reception accorded to Paradise Lost on its publication see the
Introduction. Johnson says: "The sale, if it be considered, will justify
the public....The call for books was not in Milton's age, what it is
at present [I779-1781].'"  He notes that between I623 and i664 there
were only two editions, perhaps one thousand copies in all, of the
works of Shakespeare.
Part of this line (3I) is quoted by Wordsworth in the opening of
The Recluse, and the outline of his subject that follows is full of the
atmosphere of Paradise Lost.
32-38. Cf. the similar allusion in Lycidas, 58-63, to the classical
legend that Orpheus was torn to pieces, and his head thrown into the
river Hebrus, by Thracian women in their Bacchanalian orgies, his
mother Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, being unable to do aught for
his defence. See Ovid, Metamo7ophoses xI. I-55, Vergil, Georg. IV.
517-27; and cf. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, v. 48, 49:
"The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,
Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage."
No doubt M. intends a comparison between the "wild rout" (a contemptuous word) of Bacchanals and the dissolute court of Charles II.,
and perhaps hints (cf. "dangers," 27) that he himsell may suffer like
Orpheus. Other passages in his poems which probably refer to the
court are I. 497, P. R. II. 44-48, 183; see also the notes on S. A.
1418, 1605-I607.
34. 77hracian; Orpheus lived in a cave in Thrace.
35. Rhodope, a mountain range in Thrace; the Hebrus on the
banks of which Orpheus was killed rises in Rhodope. Ovid calls
Orpheus "Rhodopeius heros" (Metamoplhoses x. 50). Cf. Pope, Ode
on St Cecilia's Day, vI.




NOTES.


533


36. to rapture, i.e. to drink in strains that enraptured them,
though the "revellers" were deaf to the harmony. Cf. the song
"Orpheus with his lute made trees," Henry VIrZ. III. I. 3.
37. harp, the golden lyre given to Orpheus by Apollo.
39. thou, Urania. she, the Muse, Calliope.   M. always refers
contemptuously to classical mythology as mere 'fables' or 'dreams';
cf. I. I97, II. 627.
4r. affable; see VIII. 648, 649, and cf. v. 22I, "Raphael, the
sociable Spirit." Probably M. in depicting Raphael thus as a power
friendly to man is thinking of the story in the Apocryphal Book of
Tobit how the archangel befriended Tobias; cf. the two allusions to it,
IV. i67-71, v. 221-23.
43. apostasy, falling away from his obedience to God; cf. 61o.
46. Genesis ii. I7.
50. his consorted Eve, Eve his consort or partner. Cf. Richard II.
v. 3. I38, " With all the rest of that consorted crew," i.e. associated,
acting as partners.
52. admiration, wonder.
57. redounded, recoiled, came back upon.
59-69. The main sentence is 'Whence Adam repealed the
doubts and, being led on with desire to know, proceeded (69)
to ask.'
whence, from which subject. repealed, recalled; he did not let his
thoughts dwell any longer on that matter. For repeal= Fr. rappeler, in
the literal sense 'to recall,' cf. Julius Ccesar, I I. I. 5, Coriolanus, v. 5. 5.
62. nearer, more closely, i.e. than the subjects just mentioned
concerned him.
63. M., as we have seen, uses Heaven= () ' the Empyrean,' i.e.
'the abode of the Almighty,' (2) 'the sky,' i.e. of this World. Here
'sky' is meant; so in 86, I67, 232, 274, 283.
conspicuous, visible to the eye, as opposed to the unseen Empyrean,
the affairs of which concerned Adam less.
65. Eden; see IV. I32, note.
66. whose drouth, who being still thirsty; abstract for concrete.
72. interpreter, expounder, explainer; cf. Interpres divum (said of
Mercury), AEneid Iv. 378.    Cf. Ben Jonson, Discoveries, cxIx.:
"Speech is the only benefit man hath to express his excellency of mind
above other creatures.  It is the instrument of society; therefore
Mercury, who is the president of language, is called deorunm hominumque interpres."  See IIl. 157.
79. the end, the object, purpose; cf. Revelation iv. iI.
88, 89. yields or fills; "yields space to all bodies, and again fills




534


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


up the deserted space" (Richardson).  Cf. II. 842, "the buxom
air" = yielding.
92. so late, i.e. after having rested "through all eternity."  A
reason is indicated in I50-6o.
94. absolved, was completed; Lat. absolvere, 'to finish.'
97. "Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold,"
Job xxxvi. 24.
98. wants, has to. run; see 372, note.
99. though steep; i.e. "though he has passed the meridian and is
now on his descent, pronus" (Keightley). The standing-still of the
sun was probably suggested by Joshua x. 12-14.
I02. his generation, how he was created.
Io2, Io3. i.e. and how Nature (-the Earth and all its forms of
animal and vegetable life) was born and arose from the Deep.
unaapparent, not appearing, invisible, because hidden in the darkness
of Chaos; cf. 233, 234.
o04. the star of evening, Hesperus; the classical name of the planet
Venus when it appeared after sunset; seen before sunrise, it was called
"Lucifer" (cf. 133). Cf. vII. 519, 520.
io6. Sleep; personified, as in Comus, 554. watch, keep awake.
II6. infer, show, prove; cf. VIII. 9I, and 2 Henry IV. v. 5. 14.
120. For the sentiment "knowledge within bounds," cf. vIr.
173-97.
121. inventions, thoughts, foolish imaginations; cf. its use in
Psalm cvi. 29, "Thus they provoked him...with their inventions."
hope, hopefor, i.e. to know. Elizabethans use hope transitively;
cf. All's Well That Ends Well, II. I. I63, "hopest thou my cure?"
Cf. II. 234.
122. Cf. I Timothy i. 7.
123. Cf. Horace, Odes III. 29. 29, exitun I caliginosa noctepremit
deus; and Vergil,  Eneid VI. 267, pandere res alta terra et caligine
mersas.
131. The name Lucifer, 'light-bringer' (Gk. qwoq56pos), is properly
a Latin title of the morning-star, but it was applied by patristic writers
to Satan, in allusion perhaps to the tradition of the original "brightness"
of his person.  Cf. the common misinterpretation of Isaiah xiv. 12
(" How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer"), where "thou" refers
to " Babylon," not to Satan, and the Hebrew word translated "Lucifer"
should be rendered "day-star," as in the Revised Version.
Milton says that " Lucifer" and " Satan" were the names given to
the arch-rebel after his expulsion from Heaven: what he was called in
Heaven we do not know. See I. 361-75, note, and v. 658, 659. In




NOTES.


535


each of the early drafts of Milton's contemplated drama of Paradise
Lost the name "Lucifer," not "Satan," is assigned to him. No doubt,
Milton substituted " Satan" as more distinctively Scriptural.
I32. 'Bright as Lucifer' was almost a proverb like 'proud as
Lucifer.' Cf. Marlowe's Faustus, v. 155:
"beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall."
The old Faust-book says: "Lucifer [i.e. Satan] was so illuminated
that he far surpassed the brightness of the sun, and all the stars." This
brightness was dimmed after Satan's fall (I. 97, 591-99, Iv.
835-40, 870).
I34. Cf. I. 45, and the familiar lines in Henry VIII. Ill. 2. 37,
372:
"And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again."
Cf. also Absalom and Achitophel, 273, 274. In the Areopagitica M.
uses this image in mentioning (adfin.) the downfall of the Court (" she
is now fallen from the stars with Lucifer "). The " Fall of Lucifer" is
one of the subjects of the York and Chester Miracle-plays.
135. his place, the place prepared for him, viz. Hell; cf. Acts
i. 25.
I36. Saints, i.e. the Heavenly beings who had remained loyal.
137. "And, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the
throne," Revelation iv. 2. Cf. 556, 585, 586.
139. Thyer suggested At last as the true reading.
141. Cf. v. 643, note.
142. us dispossessed; an absolute construction; cf. "him destroyed,"
IX. I30, "mve overthrown," S. A. 463. In Shakespeare, as now, the
absolute case is the nominative; but in older English it was the dative.
Morris quotes Wyclif, Matthew xxviii. I3, "Thei han stolen him us
slepinge"-an exact parallel to "us dispossessed."  I believe that in
such cases M. meant the pronoun to be the dative and that he sometimes employed this old idiom (with pronouns) as suggesting the Latin
ablative absolute more than the nominative absolute does. Thus, " me
overthrown" has more of a Latin sound than "I overthrown."  He
also uses the nominative absolute with the present participle.
143. fraud, crime, sin; so Lat.fraus is used.
144. Cf. v. 710. whom their place; cf. Psalm ciii. I6, "and the
place thereof shall know it no more." SoJob vii. Io.
I45-49.   In I. 633 Satan, encouraging his downcast followers,
boasts that their revolt had "emptied Heaven."
146. station, post of duty. SeeJude 6.




536


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


1 52. i.e. which thing, viz. the "dispeopling" of Heaven, he foolishly
supposes to damage me.
157-6I. Cf. XII. 369-71, note.
162. inhabit lax, dwell at ease (having vanquished the rebels).
Some explain 'dwell at large' (cf. Lat. habitare laxe), as though
the expulsion of the rebels gave the others more room in Heaven.
I63-67. The Creation of the World is effected through the Son;
cf. John i. i-3, especially verse 3. See III. 170, 383, note.
i64-66. Cf. Luke i. 35.
x68. "There are no limits to Chaos [='the Deep'], because I
who fill it am infinite; and it is not vacuous or empty, because I am
everywhere in it, though I only exhibit my goodness in a limited space,
i.e. in Heaven" (Keightley's note).
I am, i.e. " boundless "= infinite. "Immensity and Infinity" are
among the "attributes" of the Almighty on which M. discourses in
The Christian Doctrine, I. 2.
I75. the Filial Godhead, the divine Son (vi. 722); an abstract
expression for a concrete seems specially appropriate when divine
powers are spoken of. Cf. 587.
178. Cf. II. 297, " By policy and long process of time."
179. earthly notion, the intellect of man. Cf. King Lear, I. 4. 248,
"his notion weakens " = ' his mind is failing.' So in Macbeth, III. i. 83.
i82, i83. gloiry...good-will...peace. Luke ii. 13, 14.
i86. just, righteous; Christ is called "the just," I Peter iii. I8.
I88. See 615, 6i6, and I. I62, I63; and cf. Thomson, A Hymn:
"From seeming evil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better still."
194. girt; a constant Biblical metaphor of arming; cf. Psalm
xviii. 39, "For thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle";
xxx. I I, "thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness."
I96. See Hebrews i. 3, and cf. III. I38-40.
197. poured. Cf. II. 997, P. R. III. 311. "The word shows the
readiness and forwardness of the Angels...they were so earnest as not to
stay to form themselves into regular order, but were poured numberless
about His [the Messiah's] chariot" (Pearce).
200. " The Lord hath opened his armoury," Jeremiah 1. 25. The
sword with which Michael overcame Satan in the great battle in
Heaven was "from the armoury of God" (vi. 32I).
201. "And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and,
behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains;
and the mountains were mountains of brass," Zechariah vi. I.
202. against, in readiness for.




NOTES.


537


204. Cf. VI. 750, 752. See Ezekiel i. 20.
5-207.     Cf. v. 253-55. ever-during=" everlasting," 565.
207. mooving, producing harmonious sound by their motion. " The
doors of Armida's palace turn on golden hinges," in Tasso, vI. 2
(Todd).
208. the King of Glory; Psalm xxiv. 8.
2 i2. wasteful, like a desolate plain. For Milton's favourite alliteration w...w in 212 —4, see II. 960, note, and cf. Lycidas, 13, "Unwept,
and welter to the parching wind."
215. Richardson explains: "There was such confusion in Chaos,
as if on earth the sea in mountainous waves should rise from its very
bottom to assault Heaven (i.e. the sky), and mix the centre of the
globe with the extremities of it." Of course, Chaos has no centre
or pole.
216. "A magnificent line " (Tennyson). Note the effect of finality
produced by the alliteration (p..p) and the assonance in the last two
words of the verse.
217. omnzfic, almighty; literally ' all-making.'
218. For the throne-chariot of the Deity formed by the wings of
the Cherubim see vI. 749-59.
22I. heard, i.e. and obeyed. With this passage compare the rapid
sketch of the Creation given by Uriel, IIl. 708-21.
224. fervid, glowing, i.e. with motion. M. remembered Horace,
Odes I. I. 4, 5. Cf. I. 53I, 532, note.
225. the golden compasses, prepared. Cf. Proverbs viii. 27, "When
he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon
the face of the depth."
226. circumscribe, mark out the limits of. So in the Paradiso, xix.
40-42: " He who rolled the compass round the limit of the Universe,
and within it marked out so much both hidden and revealed."
228. one foot, i.e. of the compasses.
229. For the word-order cf. I7, 270, 323, 477. See note on I.
733.
232. Milton's account of the Creation must be compared with
Genesis i., ii. He follows the Scripture closely, especially where the
Almighty speaks, but supplements it, giving free scope to his imagination (Newton). See also Ovid, Metamorphoses I.
233. unformed, formless; see v. 471, note.
darkness. In II. 961-63 he speaks of Night as the consort of Chaos
and co-ruler of his realm, personifying them as spirits: an allegory by
which we are to understand that the "Abyss," i.e. Chaos, is a region
of gloom. It is so represented in the poem always. See Genesis i. 2.




538           PARADISE LOST.        BOOK    VII.
234-37- Cf. I. 19-22.
235. wings, i.e. as of a dove, the idea being based on Luke iii. 22;
see the note on I. 21.
the Spirit of God; in The Christian Doctrine, I. 7, Milton explains that he understands this to mean, in this context, God's " divine
power, rather than any person" of the Trinity.
236. vital virtue, the efficacy of life.
237, 238. downward purged, caused to sink, i.e. down into Chaos.
The language seems to be recalled in Pope's Essay on Criticism,
526, 527:
"But if in noble minds some dregs remain,
Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain."
Milton's influence on Pope's diction has been observed already. See
I. 423, 424; also xI. 244.
tartareous, 'belonging to Tartarus or Hell'; hence 'gloomy.'
239-4I. founded...conglobed, established and caused to coalesce.
At first the Universe carved out of Chaos is a "fluid mass" (237) of
" matter unformed" (233). Now atoms (semina rerum) of a like nature
are brought together so as to form a solid substance.
I believe that by this process M. means us to understand the formation of the Earth, and that in what follows, "the rest...disparted," he
refers to the formation of the outer crust which encases the whole
Universe.  The air is diffused " between" the central Earth and this
crust = the Primum Mobile.
The rhythm of the passage seems to me to prove that founded and
conglobed are past tenses, not participles. They are in antithesis to
"fluid mass "; and conglobed also gives a contrast to " matter zuformed"
as it implies that the Earth, at first without form, now is moulded into
a spherical form: cf. v. 649, " this globous Earth."
239. founded; from  Lat. fundare, 'to lay the foundation of';
editors compare Psalm lxxxix. I, Proverbs iii. 19.
240. the rest, i.e. the matter which had not been used to form
the Earth. several; with the idea 'each thing to its own place.'
241. disparted, separated in different directions (dis-).
spun out; the metaphor of a spindle drawing out the wool on a
distaff.
242. self-balanced. "By this he probably meant to express the
adjustment of the Earth in the exact centre of the World " (Keightley).
See v. 579 (note), and cf. " pendulous Earth," iv. Io1o.
243-52.   Genesis i. 3-5. M. does not say that light was
created now: it existed previously (i.e. before the Universe itself)
and is now introduced into the new   region.  This accords with




NOTES.


539


III. I-6, where we read that light either existed from eternity and
was thus "co-eternal" with the Almighty; or, if not existent "from
eternity," was certainly the first thing made by the Almighty.
244. ethereal, partaking of the nature of ether. Properly ether
means very bright atmosphere; light, therefore, may well be called
'ethereal.' Bacon speaks of the "four mutable elements and one
immutable fifth Essence," i.e. the "quintessence." (Essay Of Atheism.)
See III. 716, note.
first of things; cf. III. i, "Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven
first-born! " and S. A. 83, "  first-created beam!"
245. sprung from, suddenly rose above; cf. the address to Light
in IIn. 8-Ii. He chooses the east as the home of light because they
are associated so in our minds through the rising of the Sun (cf. 370),
but we must remember his view (which he would have supported by
Genesis i. 3 compared with i. 14-18) that light exists independently
of the Sun.
248. tabernacle, dwelling; cf. Psalm xix. 4, " In them hath he set
a tabernacle for the sun." Cf. "her cloudy shrine," 360.
250. by the hemisphere; i.e. "one half of the sphere of the
Universe being in darkness while the other is in light" (Masson).
253-60.   See Job xxxviii. 4, 7; cf. the Nativity Ode, 117-24:
"Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the Sons of Morning [= Angels] sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced [cf. 242] world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations [cf. 239] deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep."
Note the third draft of Milton's intended tragedy of Paradise Lost and
the entry at the close of the first Act: "Chorus of Angels sing a hymne
of ye Creation."
255. exhaling; cf. v. 642.
257. the...orb, the globe of the Universe: "this great round," 267.
261-74. Genesis i. 6-8. There are "waters" in the Universe
because Chaos, of which it was a portion, was a kind of sea (21o15). At first these waters formed one great "Deep " (245): now they
are divided. Part are collected round the Earth, the middle point of
the Universe, and cover it (276-82). Part are placed in the Ninth or
Crystalline Sphere, i.e. in the uttermost but one of the regions of
space that surround the Earth. The "firmament," according to M.,
is the expanse of air, stretching from the Earth to this Crystalline




540            PARADISE LOST.        BOOK   VII.
Sphere (263-67). Hence the "firmament" intervenes between and
"divides" (262, 269) the waters that flow immediately round the Earth
and the waters of the Crystalline Sphere: the former being "the
waters which were under the firmament," the latter "the waters which
were above the firmament" (Genesis i. 7); as M. says, " The waters
underneath" and "those above" (268).
264. In Genesis i. 6, the margin has expansion instead offirmament.
Cf. 340.
266. the uttermost convex, the farthest rim.
27I. crystalline, clear as crystal, glassy; cf. 6I9, note. M. always
scans crystalline (like Latin crystdllinus); cf. III. 482, VI. 772. Contrast
Cymbeline, v. 4. I3, " Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline."
misrule. Cf. the allusion in VI. 871-73 to the "wild anarchy" of
Chaos.
272. Cf. II. 898-910, where we read how the elements of Heat
and Cold "strive for mastery" in Chaos, sometimes one, sometimes
the other, ruling supreme: hence there are "fierce" and rapidlychanging "extremes" of temperature in Chaos.
273. distemper, i.e. make the World (" the whole frame ") now too
hot, now too cold.
277. waters, i.e. those "under the firmament."  embryon, in an
undeveloped state. involved, wrapped; Lat. involvere.
281. Cf. the familiar phrase " mother earth"; see As You Like It,
I. 213.
282. genial, creative, fertilising. This seems to be partly the idea
in Gray's "genial current of the soul"; see Tovey's note (Pitt Press
ed.) on the Elegy, 52. So in the Essay on Man, I. 133, III. II8.
282-308. Genesis i. 9, Io.
285. immediately; the effect of the commands is instantaneous;
cf. "forthwith," 243; " He scarce had said," 313; "sudden," 317.
The alliteration in 285, 286 is probably intended to convey an impression of bulk and solidity. See a different alliterative effect in
480.
289-91.   See Psalm civ. 7, 8. bottom, valley.
293. In xII. 197, speaking of the passage of the Israelites through
the Red Sea, he says that they walked " As on dry land, between two
crystal walls."
The whole picture is that of a great wave just before it breaks on
the sea-shore.
296. of armies thou hast heard. Raphael had described to Adam
in bk. VI. the contests in Heaven between the good Angels and the
rebels.




NOTES.


541


'297. so; Milton's usual way of completing a simile. Understand
some verb (e.g. 'hastened') from troop.
300. soft-ebbing; cf. XI. 847, 848.
301, 302. i.e. either underground, or wandering over (cf. iv. 234)
a wide circuit above ground.
serpent, serpentine. error; cf. IV. 239.
306. The slow, long-drawn rhythm suits the sense.
309-38. Genesis i. Ii-I3.
319. smelling; referring to herbs.
321. swelling; a suitable epithet of the gourd, and in accordance
with the classical descriptions, such as Propertius Iv. 2. 43 (ccerzleus
cticumis tumidoque cucurbita ventre) and Georgic IV. I2I, I22. The
original editions have smelling, which is not appropriate in itself and
not likely to have been repeated so soon after 319. Bentley made the
change (Todd). corny reed; cf. v. 23.
322. embattled. Cf. the comparison in iv. 98o-83 between the
bristling spears of an army and ears of corn.
add; wrongly altered in some modern texts to and. Cf. Lat. adde
introducing a fresh point or detail =' moreover, besides'; as in Horace,
Satires II. 8. 7. humble, low-growing; cf. Lat. humilis used of trees,
as by Vergil, Eclog. iv. 2, humilesque m1yrics.
323. hair, leaves and branches; cf. Lat. coma used both of hair and
foliage. implicit= Lat. implicitus, ' entangled,' the p. p. of intplicare.
325. gemmed, budded; an imitation of Lat. gemmare, 'to put forth
buds,' from gemma, 'a bud.'
327. tufts. Bacon recommends that a garden should be planted
" with some pretty tufts of fruit trees" (Of Gardens).
331-37.   See Genesis ii. 5, 6; and cf. The Idylls of the King:
"she [Enid] did not weep,
But o'er her meek eyes came a happy mist
Like that which kept the heart of Eden green
Before the useful trouble of the rain."
338. i.e. the chorus of Angels celebrated this day like the others.
339-86. Genesis i. 14-19. Cf. I. 58, 58o,, note.
342. circling; cf. P.. I. 57, "the circling hours," and Gk.
KVKX\IV = 'to revolve,' as in Sophocles, Electra 1365. Perhaps Milton
has in mind Homer's reptrrXouevwv ivYtevrwv ('as the years go round').
351. vicissitude, alternation, Lat. vicissitudo; cf. VI. 8. "All
cannot be happy at once...there is a revolution and vicissitude of
greatness" (Browne, Religio Medici, I. xvii.). And again: "the line
of our lives is drawn with white and black vicissitudes," i.e. alternations
of fortune (Christian Morals, II. x.).




542


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


356. mould, substance; a common meaning in M.; cf. III. 709.
358. See V. 2, note, and cf. Tennyson, The Gardener's Daughter:
" The heavens between their fairy fleeces pale
Sow'd all their mystic gulfs with fleeting stars."
362. firm, yet firm, i.e. although "porous."
365. urns; used of vessels to hold water; see Titus Andronicus,
III. I. I7, where most editors adopt the correction urns for ruzis.
366. the morning planet, Venus (cf. I04, note); commonly called
"Lucifer" as the morning-star and then treated as masculine. The First
Ed. had "his horns" (i.e. Lucifer's), the Second Ed. her (i.e. of
Venus).
367, 368. 'By absorbing (being tinged with) or reflecting the sun's
rays they increase their own small possession, i.e. store (Lat. peculium),
of light.' For peculiar used as a noun cf. Pope, Moral Essays, I. xI, 16:
"There's some peculiar in each leaf and grain,
Some unmark'd fibre, or some varying vein."
372. invested, arrayed; Lat. investire, 'to clothe.' to run; cf.
Psalm xix. 4, 5, "the sun, which...rejoiceth as a strong man to run a
race." See 98, 99.
373. his longitude, his course direct from east to west; M. uses
longitude where we say latitude (III. 574-76, note).
374, 375.  " Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or
loose the bands of Orion?" Job xxxviii. 31. The Pleiades rise about
the spring equinox, and, according to a common belief, the Creation
took place in spring-indeed some said that before the Fall of Man
there was no change of seasons, but "the eternal Spring" (Iv. 268)
"Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers" (x. 679).
376. levelled west, due west-exactly opposite.
377. his mirror, i.e. reflecting the light from him. Cf. III. 730,
and Dryden, AEn. III. 765, "Nor could the moon her borrowed light
supply." So in his Religio Laici, i, 2:
"Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers."
Dante applies the same term "mirror " (specchio) to the sun, because
"he receives the divine light from above, the spheres intervening, and
reflects it downwards," i.e. according to Dante's cosmology (note in the
"Temple" edition of the Purgatorio, p. 46).
378. none; emphatic as coming last; cf. iv. 675, 704, XI. 6i2.
379. aspect, position (an astronomical term). For the accent see
II. 301, note, and cf. Lucrece, 13, 14:
"Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
With pure aspects did him peculiar duties."




NOTES.


543


382. dividual, divided, Lat. dividuus: she shares her "reign " with
the stars. In xII. 85 dividual = 'separable,' or ' separate.'
387-448. Genesis i. 20-23.
388. reptile, creeping things (reptilia, ep-rert in the Septuagint).
The term comprises fishes of all sorts. soul; used as a collective term
= 'creatures.' Note the marginal readings in Genesis i. 20.
390. displayed, spread out; Lat. displicare, 'to un-fold,' Fr.
deplier.
393. by their kinds, according to their species.
400. i.e. with fry (young fishes) and with shoals=sculls (402).
403. bank the mid-sea; as with a mackerel-shoal.
406. waved, undulating in the water. dropt with gold, i.e. with
gold spots. For a somewhat similar use cf. Cymbeline, II. 2. 38, 39:
"A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip."
407. attend, "watch" (408) for.
409. jointed armour, scales; lobsters and such like fish are referred
to: a very appropriate comparison. smooth, the smooth sea; cf. "on
the level brine," Lycidas, 98. See Eneid v. 594, 595.
4I0. bended; arching themselves as they rise and dive down again.
dolphins, "i.e. porpoises, delphines" (Keightley).
412. leviathan, the whale; cf. the similar description in I. 200 -205. Thomson imitates M.:
"More to embroil the deep, leviathan
And his unwieldy train, in dreadful sport,
Tempest the brine " (Winter, r1014-6).
417. tepid; their warmth serves to hatch the eggs.
419. disclosed, unclosed, let out. Cf. Hamlet, III. I. 174, "the
hatch and the disclose "; also v. i. 310, where it is again used so.
420. fledge, fledged.
42 I. summed their pens, acquired their full complement of feathers;
the term sum is from falconry. sublime; cf. VI. 77I.
422. Cf. XI. 835, "sea-mews' clang."  Lat. clangor is used of the
cry of birds; cf. Livy I. 34, afuila... cum magno clangore volitans.
422, 423. i.e. viewed from a distance (cf. 556) the ground would
have seemed to be " under a cloud," so great was the mass of birds.
Or he might mean that the birds seemed to fly almost into the clouds.
423, 424.  "Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make
her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag
of the rock, and the strong place,"Job xxxix. 27, 28.
cedar-tops. Cf. Richard llI. I. 3. 264, " Our aery [= eyry] buildeth
in the cedar's top."




544           PARADISE     LOST.     BOOK   VII.
425. loosely, singly, not "in common "= together. wing; used
transitively (II. 842). region, the upper air; cf. Hamlet, II. 2. 509,
607; so in Tennyson, In ]Memoriam, LXXVII.
426. wedge, i.e. cleave as with a wedge. He is thinking (as in P. R.
III. 309) of -the cuneus or ' wedge' of the Roman army, viz. the formation of troops into an acute angle, the point of which had to pierce
into the massed forces of the enemy; cf. Gk. f,u3oXov. The migrations
of some birds are described in similar language by Pliny, Natural
Zfistory x. 32, and by Dante, Purgatorio, xxiv. 64-66. Cf. too the
Essay on Man, III. 105-1-09:
"Who bids the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?"
A passage (" When the cranes," etc.) in Somerville's Chase illustrates
the immense influence of Milton's diction on the i8th century poets.
Crabbe, describing the flocks of wild-fowl passing over the east coast of
England, says (The Borough, I. 220-23):
"Far as the eye can glance on either side,
In a broad space and level line they glide:
All in their wedge-like figures from the North,
Day after day, flight after flight go forth."
428. caravan, troop; probably the word then had something of its
oriental associations.
429, 430. " After a little time the bird that forms the apex or point
[of the 'wedge' or angle] quits it and falls back, and another takes
his place"-Keightley. Hence M. says " with mutual wing easing."
430. prudent.  "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe
the time of their coming,"Jeremiah viii. 7. Cf. "intelligent of seasons,"
427. Dante, who was fond of illustrations drawn from bird-life, has two
crane-similes; cf. the Inferno, v. 46, 47 (" as the cranes go...making
a long streak of themselves in the air "), and Purgatorio, xxvI. 43-45.
432. floats, undulates. unnumbered, innumerable, "innumerous"
(455). The rhythm is notable.
434. painted; cf. pictee volucres (AEneid IV. 525).
435. nightingale; cf. III. 38-40, Iv. 602, 603, v. 39-41. solemn;
cf. the description of it in I1 Penseroso, 56-64.  See vIII. 518.
439. mantling, raised (viz. "wings") so as to form a kind of
mantle.
441. the dank, the water. pennons, pinions, Lat. penne.
446. starry, starlike; in the one place where Shakespeare uses'




NOTES.


545


starry (" the starry welkin," A Midsummer-Night's Dream, III. 2. 356)
it means 'adorned with stars.' eyes, the eye-shaped spots on the plumage
of the peacock.
450-98. Genesis i. 24, 25.
451. soul; the First Ed. misprints Foule; Bentley corrected.
453. each... their; cf. VITI. 342, 343, 393; the plural their is due
to the plural sense; it refers back to the plural noun or pronoun with
which each is in apposition.
454, 455. teemed, brought forth; cf. Macbeth, IV. 3. 176, "Each
minute teems a new one [grief]." a birth. It is generally after a preposition that a or an=' one'; cf. Othello, II. 3. 212, "both at a birth."
457. wons, dwells.
46I. rare, here and there, Lat. rarus.
462. at once, together; so in 475. broad herds, i.e. covering a wide
area (with the implied notion ' numerous'); cf. Homer's phrase ai7ro6ta
7rXrar' al-yv, Iliad XI. 679.
463. calved, brought forth young; cf. Coriolanus, III. I. 240.
466. rampant, rearing up. brinded, brindled.
ounce, a kind of lynx; cf. Iv. 344.
467. libbard; an Elizabethan form of the word leopard, so called
because thought to be a cross between a lion (leo) and a panther (pardus).
471. Behemoth, the elephant; cf. Thomson's Summer:
" in plaited mail
Behemoth rears his head."
474. river-horse, hippopotamus; Gk. Triros + 7roracib. The verb
understood is rose (472).
476. worm; the term includes serpents (cf. 482). The asp or serpent
by which Cleopatra was killed is called a worm in Antony and Cleopatra,
v. 2. 243, 256. Cf. IX. io68. limber, flexible.
477. smallest lineaments exact, very small, dainty limbs.  For
lineaments='limbs' generally, not 'features of the face,' cf. v. 278.
exact = Lat. exactus, 'precise, accurate'; here 'delicately made,
dainty.'
478. liveries, dress.
480. these; referring to worm. The alliteration (especially 1...1)
expresses length. Cf. Comus, 340, " With thy long levelled rule of
streaming light." Matthew Arnold uses the same obvious effect in The
Scholar-Gipsy: " The line of festal light in Christ-Church Hall."
482. minims, very small creatures.
484. and added wings, and had wings as well as " snaky folds."
Fabulous winged serpents such as dragons are meant.
485. parsimonious, thrifty; used in a good sense. emmet; in


P. L.


35




546


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


origin the same word as ant. M. recollected Horace's description
of the ant-haud ignara ac non incautafuturi (Satires I. I. 35).
486. Cf. Vergil, speaking of bees, ingentes animos angusto in
pectore versant (Georg. iv. 83). Note that " large " is not a mere translation of ingentes; it implies wisdom; cf. P. R. III. Io, and i Kings iv.
29, "God gave Solomon...largeness of heart."  M. generally lends a
fresh turn to what he borrows.
487. Milton shows his republicanism.
490. It was a common belief of Milton's time that the working-bees
were female, the males being drones (so called from their droning buzz).
Cf. Pericles, II. I. 50, 51, "We would purge the land of these drones,
that rob the bee of her honey."
493.  Genesis ii. I9, 20. Cf. VI. 73-76, VIII. 342-54.
495. Genesis iii. I. The s...s sounds in the whole description of
the reptiles give a hissing effect. Cf. I. 768-75, note.
"I hate sibilation in verse " (Tennyson).
496. brazen, of the colour of brass; see IX. 500oo, note.
497. mane. In the famous description of the serpents that strangled
Laocoon ({Eneid II. 203 et seq.) Vergil speaks (206, 207) of their sanguineajub&e, 'blood-red manes.'
497, 498. to thee not noxious. Fine 'irony.'
501, 502. 'Earth, being complete in her attire, was smiling and
fair.' Cf. Lat. ridere='to be bright,' e.g. as a field with flowers.
503. M. often uses a string of monosyllables to convey variety.
Cf. II. 621. Tennyson uses such lines, e.g. often in St Simeon Stylites,
where they give a suitable impression of austerity.
was flown; for this Latinism cf. vi. 335.
504. frequent, in throngs.
505. the end, the object for whom all was done.. In 505-34 M.
recalled Ovid's Metamorphoses I. 76-86.
5o6-ro. M. treats man's "upright" (509) stature as a sign of his
superiority to and authority over animals; cf. Iv. 288, 289, Comus, 52,
53. One feels a suggestion of the old thought that the purpose of this
" erection" of stature, peculiar to man, was "for to behold and look up
toward heaven"; see Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors, Iv. i,
where editors quote Cicero, De Natura Deorum II. 56, and Ovid,
Metamorphoses I. 84-86.
508. sanctity of reason, the divine attribute of reason; cf. v.
486-90.
509. front, brow; Lat. frons; as in II. 302.
5Io. from thence, therefore, i.e. through the possession of these
qualities.




NOTES.


547


51r. magnanimous, of lofty mind. to correspond with, so as to
hold intercourse or 'be in sympathy' with.
517, 518. Lines 163-66, 170, 171, 192-220, implied that the
Father remained in Heaven while the Son was sent forth; yet, in virtue
of his " omnipresence" (I68, I69, 588-9o), the Father was present in
the new Universe no less than in Heaven. Cf. "let us make" (5I9).
5I9-34.   Genesis i. 26-3I.
528. Cf. Hebrews i. 3, "the express image of his person" (Revised
Version "very"). Literally 'modelled,' Lat expressus; hence 'exact.'
535. wherever...created. That Adam was not created in Paradise,
the "Garden," but was taken there afterwards, seems implied by
Genesis ii. 8, 15. See viii. 296-99.
537. Cf. "delicious Paradise," IV. I32.
54I. allsortsarehere; cf. v. 337-47.
544. thou diest. In x. 21o, 2II we read how the sentence passed
upon Adam is relaxed, and "the instant stroke of death...removed," so
that after his sin he is still suffered by the Almighty to live, but no
longer in Paradise.
547. In the famous allegory in II. 648-870 Sin is represented as
the mother of Death. They are always in the poem introduced together,
Death attending Sin as "her shadow" (ix. I2).
56I. thou heard'st; cf. Adam's own words, Iv. 680-88.
563. Even the planets, the 'wandering' bodies (see vIIT. 128, I29,
note), stood still  stations; so the First Edition; the Second has
station.
564. pomp, procession.
565-67. Psalm xxiv. 7.
569-73. The Old Testament often speaks of Angels visiting the
Earth, and in III. 529-37 M. says that there were two aerial paths
for their descent, one leading straight down from Heaven on to Mount
Sion, the other extending over the whole Promised Land. In The
Christian Doctrine, I. 9, M. deals with the ministry on Earth of
Angels.
577, 578. Cf. Iv. 976, "the road of Heaven star-paved."
579. the Galaxy, 'the Milky way'; called lactee plagce ('the milky
regions') in Milton's poem In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis, 60. Cf.
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, II. 2. rIr, "that via lactea, a confused
light of small Stars, like so many nailes in a door" (I. 382, ninth ed.);
and Pope, Essay on Man, I. IoI, Io2:
"His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way."
58I. powdered with stars; a phrase in Sylvester's DuA Bartas.
35-2




548


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VII.


584, 585. the holy mount; cf. 141, v. 643 (note).
59 —93. Genesis ii. 2, 3, Exodus xx. iI (whence "hallowed").
596. dulcimer; a stringed instrument, played with small hammers;
said to be the primitive type from which the pianoforte was developed.
Mentioned in Daniel iii. 5, io, 15, and probably of Babylonish origin.
Our name for it comes from Spanish dulcemele, a dulcimer; so called
from its sweet sound (Lat. dulce + melos).
all organs, wind instruments, opposed to the stringed instruments in
597. Properly stop = 'that by which the sounds of wind instruments
are regulated'; hence='tone, notes.' M. speaks of a "lute or soft
organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil
ditties," On Education. A skilled musician himself, he uses musical
terms often, and precisely.
597. on fret, i.e. produced upon frets. "On stringed instruments
that have finger-boards, like the lute or guitar, the small pieces of
wood or other material fixed transversely on the finger-board at regular
intervals are called frets. The object they serve is to mark off the
length of string required to produce a given note. Frets correspond in
their use with the holes in the tube of a wind instrument."-Grove's
Dictionary of Music.
599. unison, i.e. solo opposed to in chorus.
599,6oo. incense...fuming; seeRev.viii. 3-5. Cf. xI. I7,18. Milton
"had seen their manner of incensing in the churches abroad" (Newton).
605, 606. the Giant-angels; a comparison is implied between the
rebellious Angels and the Giants of classical mythology who sought to
expel Zeus and the gods from Olympus. thy thunders; see the account
of the battle in Heaven, VI. 834-66. Cf. Dryden, The Hind and the
Panther, II. 535-37 (from the noble passage on the Catholic Church):
"Still when the giant-brood invades her throne,
She stoops from heaven and meets them half-way down,
And with paternal thunder vindicates her crown";
where "giant-brood " is an echo of Samson Agonistes, 1247.
617. witness, let this World bear witness.
619. thehyaline, " the glassy sea " = the Crystalline Sphere. Milton,
"when he uses Greek words, sometimes gives the English with them,
as in speaking of the rivers of Hell " (II. 577-83)-Newton. Cf. 579.
62, 622. M. refers more than once to the likelihood of the heavenly
bodies being inhabited; see VIII. I53-58, and cf. the quotation from
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy in the note on vmIII. 140-45.
622, 623. thou know'st their seasons; a parenthesis, qualifying the
suggestion that the stars will be fit for habitation (i.e. in respect of
temperature): the Angels do not know, but the Almighty does.




NOTES.


549


624. nether ocean, i.e. " the waters under the firmament."
628-30. Cf. 519-34. See Psalm viii. 6-8.
63, 632. 0 fortunalos nimium sua si bona norint, Vergil, Georg.
II. 458. persevere, remain steadfastly; cf. viii. 639.
634. halleluiah, 'praise ye the Lord'; cf. Psalm cxlvi. I, margin.
636. face of things, external nature; all natural objects about us.
BOOK VIII.
The discourse on astronomy in this book (extending down to
line 178) is interesting mainly as a proof that Milton was acquainted
with the teaching of Copernicus. Indeed, though he accepts the
Ptolemaic system throughout the poem, he makes Raphael refer to it
and its later developments in not very complimentary terms (77-84)
and seems to lean towards the Copernican theory. Grotius in his
Adamus Exul, the tragedy on the Fall of Man with which M. is
thought to have been acquainted, makes an angel explain to Adam the
astronomical system and laws of the Universe.
Some striking parallels to Milton's words are presented by the
chapter in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy entitled "a Digression of
the Ayre" (II. 2. III), which is a review of then current systems and
theories of astronomers. Astronomy (in which, as in so many other
things, he really belonged to a past generation) evidently had a great
attraction for Milton: hence the references to Galileo, the only one of
his contemporaries alluded to in Paradise Lost. And how significant
in itself is the famous reference in bk. I.! "'The Tuscan artist'that is the name which Milton gives to Galileo, as if to indicate that
science and art are in inseparable conjunction, as they were in his own
person, and in his own poetry" (Mackail). See I. 287-91, III.
588-90, v. 261-63 (with notes), and the Areopagitica, P. W. II. 82.
Dante, too, and Tennyson (says another critic) "loved the stars."
I-4. In the First Edition of Paradise Lost the two books which
are now VII. and VIII. of the poem formed only one book; and after
the line, "Aught not surpassing human measure, say" (viI. 640), came
the line (641), "To whom thus Adam gratefully replied." In the
Second Edition, when book vii. was divided into two books, M. added
the three lines, "The Angel ended...fixed to hear," to introduce
book vIII., and changed slightly what is now the fourth line of the
book. Cf. the similar alteration at the beginning of book xiI., which
in the First Edition formed one book with the present book xI.
2. charmingt; in the strong sense 'laying under a spell, enchanting.'




550           PARADISE     LOST.     BOOK    VIII.
3. stood; perhaps= 'remained, continued.'   It is not Adam's
attitude that is emphasised, but his great attention; probably he sat
(Richardson).
12. Scan attributed; cf. Io7.
14. resolve, explain, clear up.
I5. M. recollected Hamlet, II. 2. 3o0, "this goodly frame, the
earth."  Cf. "this universal frame "= the Universe, v. 154.
16. Heaven, sky; it bears this sense in most passages of this book.
See vii. 63, note.
I9-38. We have the same idea again in Ix. I03-107.
19. numbered; apparently = 'numerous' (cf. VI. 229, and Cymbeline,
I. 6. 36), unless M. has in mind passages like Psalm cxlvii. 4, "He
telleth the number of the stars."
22. officiate, supply.
23. opacous, dark, yielding no light; cf. 93 ("nor glistering").
punctual, small, no bigger than a point (Lat. punctum). Cf.
Drummond, A Cypress Grove: "This globe of the earth and water,
which seemeth huge to us, in respect of the universe, compared with
that wide, wide pavilion of heaven, is less than little, of no sensible
quantity, and but as a point....More, if the earth were not as a point, the
stars could not still in all parts of it appear to us as of a like greatness"
(Works, II. 260).
24. one day, i.e. only for one; cf. one (emphatic) in 29.
25. admire, wonder.
32. sedentary, stationary (from Lat. sedere, C to sit'); cf. 89, "Earth
sitting still," and II. 927.
33. If the Earth revolved, her circuit would be far less than that
of the heavenly.bodies.
35-37. The construction is, 'and receives as tribute her warmth
and light, brought such an incalculable distance with "speed almost
spiritual" (IIo).'
40. Milton's reason for making Eve withdraw is seen later (354 -629).
43. The number of monosyllables is, no doubt, intentional. They
give a slow rhythm which suggests the calm dignity of Eve's movement.
46. her nursery, things tended by her: an abstract expression for
a concrete. We speak of a 'nursery-garden.' There is a beautiful
picture in Ix. 423-62 of Eve among her flowers.
6I. ponp, train.
64. to Adam's doubt proposed, to the point of difficulty mentioned
by Adam, i.e. in 25-38; cf. 13, " something yet of doubt remains."
70, 7I. this to attain; referring probably to what has preceded




NOTES.


5  I


in 68, 69. 'To attain this knowledge, viz. of the seasons, hours etc.,
it makes no difference whether the heaven or the Earth moves. Such
knowledge is within our comprehension; but "the rest," viz. more
abstruse points, God has concealed' (Newton).
74, 75. ought...admire. There is one instance in Shakespeare of
this construction; cf. Julius Cesar, I. I. 3, "you ought not walk."
Elsewhere he always has to; cf.Julius Cesar, Ii. i. 270. In Middle
English the present infinitive was marked by the inflection en; when
this inflection became obsolete, to was used with the infinitive. Certain
'anomalous' verbs, however, on the analogy of auxiliary verbs, omitted
the to, and there was much irregularity in the practice of Elizabethan
writers. Cf. the two constructions with dare in modern English:
'I dare say this' and 'I dare to say.'
78. Cf. II. I90, I91, note.
wide, i.e. of the mark; 'erroneous'; cf. the adverb in Much Ado
About Nothing, Iv. I. 63, "Is my lord well, that he doth speak so
wide?"
80-84. The object of the devices which M. ridicules in these lines
was to support the Ptolemaic theory of the circular motion of the
heavenly bodies by accounting for difficulties which seemed to conflict
with that theory. See Appzendix, pp. 688-go.
80. calculate; "make a computation of everything relating to
them: their motions, distance, situation, etc." (Pearce).
82. appearances, apparent sizes, motions, etc. of the heavenly
bodies; it was a technical term of astronomers, occurring often in
Burton's chapter on Astronomy-" a Digression of the Ayre"Anatomy of Melancholy, II. 2. III. spheree, the globe of the Universe;
=" frame " in 8I.
83. " Centric are such spheres whose centre is the same with, and
eccentric are such whose centres are different from, that of the Earth"
(Richardson). scribbled; an intentionally contemptuous word.
84. epicycle. "A small circle, having its centre on the circumference of a greater circle...In the Ptolemaic system of astronomy each
of the 'seven planets' was supposed to revolve in an epicycle, the centre
of which moved along a greater circle called a deferent."-New English
Dict.
orb in orb, sphere within sphere.
86. who; its antecedent is contained in thy (85): ' the reasoning of
thee who art.' A common Shakespearian idiom; cf. Twelfth Night,
III. i. 69, "He must observe their mood on whom he jests," i.e. the
mood of those on whom.
and suzpposest; Raphael implies 'and art foolish enough to suppose.'




552


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VIII.


If Adam who is "to lead" mankind makes such mistakes, how much
more will his descendants err in their " quaint opinions "?
90, 9I. great...bright; each used as a noun; cf. 448, 453.
infers not, is no proof of; see vii. II6.
93. nor glistering, i.e. "opacous" (23). glistering; cf. The Merchant
of Venice, I. 7. 65, "All that glisters is not gold."
94-97. Contrast III. 606-12.
97. his; a clear case of his for its; cf. itself, 95.
99. officious, ministering = Lat. oqficiosus, 'ready to serve by doing
officia, i.e. kind acts.' This use of officious in a good sense occurs in
Titus Andronicus, v. 2. 202. Cf. IX. 104.
Io2. "Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or
who hath stretched the line upon it?" Job xxxviii. 5, where " it" refers
to the Earth (verse 4).
io8. numberless, that cannot be described in numbers; it refers to
swiftzess (cf. 38), not to circles (i.e. the Sun and heavenly bodies).
IIo. speed...spiritual, speed such as bodiless spirits use; cf. 37.
122, I23. the sun...centre; i.e. instead of the Earth (vII. 242, note).
I24. attractive virtue; as we say, 'power of attraction.' So in
III. 582, 583 he speaks of the constellations being "turned" by the
Sun's "magnetic beam."
I28, I29. six, i.e. the six planets or 'wanderers'; cf. "wandering
course" (i26). The six meant are the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter and Saturn. The "seventh" planet is the Sun, according to
the Ptolemaic system; but the Earth (I29), according to the Copernican.
Shakespeare treats the Sun and Moon as planets.
I29. the planet Earth; he does not mean to state definitely that
the Earth is a planet; he only hazards the supposition that she is. See
the quotation from Burton's Anatomy in the note on 140-45.
I30. "The three different motions which the Copernicans attribute
to the Earth are (i) the diurnal round her own axis; (2) the annual
round the Sun; and (3) the libration, as it is call'd, whereby the Earth
so proceeds in her orbit, as that her axis is [always] parallel to the axis
of the World" (Newton).
The third of these motions is the "trepidation talked," to which M.
refers in II1. 482, 483, and which is there attributed to the Crystalline
Sphere, in accordance with the Ptolemaic system. Here it is attributed
to the Earth, as the followers of Copernicus taught.
One of the points in Paradise Lost which Addison criticises adversely is Milton's "frequent use of what the learned call Technical
Words, or terms of art," and he instances more particularly the
astronomical terms. But Dante had set the example.




NOTES.


553


131-40. 'You must attribute the three motions just mentioned
either to several spheres moving in opposite directions and crossing each
other obliquely (the Ptolemaic view), or to the Earth (the Copernican
view). If you attribute them to the Earth, then you save the Sun his
X     labour, i.e. of revolving round the Earth; and you also get rid of
(" save ") that wheel or "rhomb" called the Primum AMobile, the
motion of which is supposed to cause the revolution of the nine inner
spheres round the Earth in twenty-four hours. It is only a theory that
this wheel or " rhomb " exists, because it is too far off to be visible;
and you need not believe in the theory, if the Earth revolves on her
axis from west to east every twenty-four hours, and thus illuminates
with the Sun's rays one-half of her globe while the other half, being
turned away from (" averse ") the Sun, is covered with darkness. The
theory of the Primum Mobile was only invented to explain certain
motions which really may be due to the Earth.'
132. thwart, crossing; cf. the verb thwart=' to go across,' IV. 557.
134. nocturnal and diurnal rhomb; alluding to its revolution in
twenty-four hours. "Wheel of day and night" at once varies and
explains the whole phrase. rhomb, wheel, Gk. p6/upsos. " Wheel or
wheels...throughout the Paradiso is used for the revolving heavens"
(" Temple" edition of Paradiso, p. 12). Cf. "the eternal wheels"
(eterne rote), I. 64; see also XIII. 12, xxII. 119. Pope borrowed
Dante's phrase, in the same sense; cf. the Moral Essays, iii. I68.
Sir Thomas Browne in one of his bold astronomical metaphors compares
the "encyclopaedie and round of knowledge" with "the great and
exemplary wheels of heaven " (Vulgar Errors, " To the Reader ").
137. fetch day, i.e. from the Sun.
140-45. Cf. Burton, "If the Earth move, it is a Planet, and
shines to them in the Moon, and to the other Planetary inhabitants, as the
Moon and they do to us upon the Earth; but shine she doth, as Galilie
[Galileo], Kepler, and others prove, and then per consequens, the rest of
the Planets are inhabited, as well as the Moon" (Anatomy of Melancholy,
ninth ed., I. p. 385). He had previously (p. 383) referred to "that
paradox of the Earth's motion, now (? I62i) so much in question." Some
theologians found support for it in Job ix. 6. The idea that the stars are
inhabited is satirised by Bunyan, as a contemporary delusion or imposture, in the introductory lines (" To the Reader ") to The Holy War.
145. M. seems to have thought that the Moon is inhabited. Cf.
III. 459-62. Drummond mentions, but refrains from expressing any
opinion about, the belief; cf. A Cypress Grove: " Some affirm there is
another world of men and sensitive creatures, with cities and palaces,
in the moon" (Works, II. 250). her spots; see v. 419, 420.




'O.


554          PARADISE LOST.        BOOK    VIII.
148. other suns. "He seems to mean Jupiter and Saturn, whose
satellites had been discovered by Galileo. Though he knew them to be
planets, he might have regarded them as suns with respect to their
attendant moons"; so Keightley, followed by other editors, explains.
But Burton, speaking of the "I Fixed Stars," says: ' If our world [i.e.
the Earth] be small, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds,
those infinite stars visible in the Firmament to be so many Suns, to
have likewise their subordinate planets? which some have held, and
some still maintain....Kepler (I confess) will by no means admit that
the fixed stars should be so many Suns, with their compassing planets"
(Anatomy of Melancholy, I. 386). That appears to me to be the
theory to which M. alludes.
I50. male, original direct light; female, reflected light; cf.
"borrowed," III. 730.
I53-58. 'That there should be such a vast unpeopled space,
only made for the purpose of shining, and from each of its orbs only
contributing (so great is the distance) a mere glimpse of light to
this Earth which itself sends back light: this notion is open to
dispute.'
157. this habitable, the Earth; an imitation of the Greek phrase
1 OtKOvLUJi'v7 (yi), 'the inhabited world.'
I59. i.e. whether the Copernican system or the Ptolemaic be
right.
I63 —66. It was objected to the Copernican theory "that if the
Earth mov'd round on her axle in twenty-four hours, we should be
sensible of the rapidity and violence of the motion." M. has this
objection in mind when he suggests that if the Earth does revolve, her
motion may be smooth and even, and that the atmosphere may move as
well as the Earth-which would, of course, make the sense of motion
less perceptible to us (Newton).
164. inoffensive, not striking against anything, not colliding
(Lat. inoffensus). spinning, i.e. like a top.
I73. Cf. Wordsworth's Ode to Dztty, 53, 54:
" Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice."
18I. Intelligence; in Spenser "a frequent term for the celestial
beings " (Todd). See the Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, 84, and cf.
Drummond, A Cypress Grove: " And if these [the " eternal habitation
and throne " of the Almighty] be so dazzling, what is the sight of Him,
for whom and by whom all was created; of whose glory to behold the
thousand thousand part, the most pure intelligences are fully satiate,
and with wonder and delight rest amazed; for the beauty of His light




NOTES.


555


and the light of His beauty are uncomprehensible" (Works, II. 277).
It is really a Dante word; cf. the Convivio, III. vi.
I83-97.   Some editors regard these lines as an objection against
study of the difficult problems of physical science. I think rather that
Milton protested against barren speculation of all sorts, and a spirit of
excessive enquiry in general; cf. II. 558-69, note.
194, 195. what is more, i.e. anything beyond that. fume, vanity;
literally ' smoke' (Lat. fumus). fond, foolish. imferlinence, irrelevance,
that which does not belong to or concern us.
197. still to seek, always deficient, at a loss. See Comus, 366, note,
and cf. the Utopia (Pitt Press ed., p. 13I), "They do daylie practise...
lest they should be to seek in the feate of arms," i.e. deficient in
skill.
205. Raphael says later (229-46), that he was not acquainted
with the story of Adam's creation, and mentions the reason why. The
poet naturally varies the speakers.
212. palm-tree, i.e. the date-palm.
213. from labour, i.e. when I come from = 'after' (Gk. eK).
218. " Grace is poured into thy lips," Psalm xlv. 2.
225. fellow-servant, so the Angel described himself to St John,
Revelation xxii. 9, "I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the
prophets."
229. that day, viz. the sixth of Creation (viI. 519-50).
230. uncouth, unfamiliar, strange.
241. barricadoed, fortified. Sin, who kept the gates of Hell, afterwards opened them "with ease" to let Satan out, but was unable to
close them again (II. 871-89).
243, 244. noise, i.e. of the outcast Angels, who for nine days after
their fall from Heaven lay prostrate on the lake of fire in Hell
(I. 50-53). When they arose and had re-formed their scattered ranks
then (I. 666-79)
" Highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven."
Those were the sounds of "furious rage " heard by Raphael. Addison
compares Vergil, Eneid VI. 552-58.
246. Sabbath-evening; the evening before the Sabbath or seventh
day on which the Almighty rested from all His work (vii. 592, 593)..47. relation, report, story; cf. Fr. relation and the verb relate.
251. i.e. who was ever conscious of being created? For the idiom
cf. v. 857, 858, and see Ix. 792, note.




556


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VIII.


260. thitherward. See vII. 506 —I, note.
266. fragrance; perhaps used figuratively to express an intense
sweetness of feeling. But I think that it refers literally to the sweetscented air, and is combined by a sort of zeugma with joy; cf. I. 502,
"flown with insolence and wine" (a similar combination of the literal
cause with the abstract).
268. went, walked; a common Shakespearian use. Cf. The
Tempest, III. 2. I2, 22, "We'll not run...Nor go neither."
269. as. The Second Edition prints and.
281. from whom I have that, to whom I owe it that; cf. Acts
xvii. 28.
284. drew air; cf. XKeIV rbp adpa (in rather late Greek writers).
Cf. VII. 14.
292-94.    dream...fancy; see v.   Ioo-I3    (the  passage  on
dreams).
stood at my head; Keightley quotes Iliad ii. 56-59. There is a
vague suggestion of I1 Penseroso, I47-50.
296-99. See VII. 535, note.
302. smooth sliding; an epithet of the river Mincius in Lycidas, 86.
303. M. always describes the "garden of bliss," i.e. Paradise, as
situate on the level summit of a lofty hill, the steep slopes of which are
covered with trees and shrubs (cf. " woody "). It is a plateau or tableland of circular shape (304). See IV. I34 (note), I72-77.
plain, flat (Fr. plain, 'level,' Lat. planus). Cf. A Midsummer-Night's
Dream, III. 2. 404, "Follow me...to plainer ground."
316. submiss, cast down, prostrate (submissus). In writing a letter
to "your superior," says Ben Jonson, "for your interest or favour
with him, you are to be the shorter or longer, more familiar or submiss,
as he will afford you time" (Discoveries, cxxvi.).
319-33. Genesis ii. 15-17.   See vII. 46.
323. The inverted word-order gives great emphasis. operation, effect.
330. die, be subject to death.
331. mortal; cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio MIedici, I. xxxiii.,
"before his fall, man also was immortal."  Many of the Fathers of the
Church taught the doctrine that Adam, if he had not sinned, would not
have died but been translated to Heaven. M. speaks doubtfully on the
subject (v. 493-505), and in The Christian Doctrine, I. 8, says, "it is
evident that God, at least after the fall of man, limited human life to
a certain term "-which implies that this limitation may have preceded
the Fall.
337. purpose, discourse; cf. Iv. 337. renewed; intransitive.
338-41. Genesis i. 28. See VII. 530-34.




NOTES.


557


343, 344. Cf. VII. 493- fealty; M. scans it as three syllables,
fealty; cf. ix. 262. Contrast Richard II. v. 2. 45, "And lasting
fealty to the new made king."
351. stooped, stooping.
352-54. M. says in The Christian Doctrine, I. 7 (ad fin.):
" Man being formed after the image of God, it followed as a necessary
consequence that he should be endued with natural wisdom, holiness,
and righteousness....Certainly without extraordinary wisdom he could
not have given names to the whole animal creation with such sudden
intelligence." Cf. too his Tetrachordon: " Adam, who had the wisdom
given him to know all creatures, and to name them according to their
properties, no doubt but had the gift to discern perfectly that which
concerned him much more; and to app-rehend at first sight the true
fitness of that consort which God provided him " (P. W. III. 336). See
Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, I. 3. 3, and 6. 6; Dryden, The
Hind and the Panther, I. 308-1o.
ap5prehension, perception; cf. Hamlet, II. 2. 319, "What a piece of
work is a man!...in apprehension how like a god!"   So also in
Henry V. III. 7. 145.
372, 373. The magic ring mentioned in the story of Cambuscan
(I1 Penseroso, og9 —5) enabled its owner to understand the language
of birds; see The Squyeres Tale, 138-57. Clouston says, "many
Asiatic tales turn upon a knowledge of the language of birds and
beasts" (Popular Tales, vol. I. p. 376)-e.g. the story in the Arabian
Nights of "The Page who feigned to know the Speech of Birds."
379. Cf. Abraham's words, Genesis xviii. 30.
384. sort, prove fitting, suit; cf. x. 65i, P. R. I. 200.
387. Hume explains: "the one intense; man high, wound up, and
strain'd to nobler understanding, and of more lofty faculty. the other
still remiss; the animal let down, and slacker, grovelling in more low
and mean perceptions.
"A musical metaphor [cf. 384], from strings, of which the stretch'd
and highest gave a smart and sharp sound, the slack a flat and heavy
one."  Lat. remissus =' slack, relaxed.'
The construction of the line is absolute-' the one being intense' etc.
388. The subject of the verbs is which (="society"), in 385..,.  farticipate; cf. Ix. 717.
96. converse, have fellowship with; cf. 418 (" conversation "), and
viI. 9.. 'o. nice, dainty; said with a touch of reproof to Adam for being
fastidious and " subtle " in his tastes.
402. in pleasure, in the midst of pleasant things. Eden means
'pleasure '; cf. IV. 27, 28.




558


PARADISE LOST. BOOK VIII.


405-407.   Passages like this, and III. 383, 384, v. 603-606,
reveal the Arianism of Milton's theology.
407. Newton quotes Horace, Odes I. 12. 17, I8:
unde nil majus generatur ipso,
nec vizet quicquam simile aut secundum.
409. and those; the Heavenly beings.
4I2-14. An allusion to Iomans xi. 33.
417. in degree, only relatively perfect. the cause, which thing,
viz. his imperfection, is the cause.
421. th1rough all numbers absolute. Newton noted that this is a
Iatin turn of phrase =' perfect in every respect'; from Lat. numerus in
the sense 'a part of a whole, detail.' Cf. omnibus numeris= 'in every
detail' in the following passages: perfectum  expletumque omnibus
suis numeris atque partibus-Cicero, De Natura Deorum II. I3; and
liber numeris omnibus absolutus-Pliny, Epistles ix. 38. Here M. uses
the Latinism with a kind of quibble, numbers being in antithesis to one.
For absolute=' perfect,' cf. 548.
423. his single imperfection, his imperfection in being single,
i.e. unwedded. Cf. phrases in Shakespeare like "single blessedness" =
blessedness in being single, A 4Midsummer-VigAs ht's Dream, I. I. 78;
cf. I. I20, note.
425. in unity defective, defective as long as he is single. unity; in
its literal sense, ' oneness, the state of being one.'
which, a thing which, viz. " to manifest...and beget."
433. from prone, from being prone, i.e. not upright. M. uses
this classical idiom several times in prose and verse, but commonly
with the preposition of. Cf. The Tenure of Kings, " raised them to
be high and rich of poor and base" (P. W. II. 47). See IV. i53, note.
440. free.  "Milton is, upon all occasions, a strenuous advocate
for the freedom of the human mind, against the narrow and rigid
notions of the Calvinists of that age " (Thyer).
441. my image; in apposition to thee (440); cf. VII. 519, 520.
443. freely, spontaneously; without warning from his Maker.
445. Genesis ii. i8.
450. other self; so in x. 128. Cf. the classical phrases for a friend,
6TEpoS auros and alter ego.
452-86. Genesis ii. 21, 22...
460, 461. the cell of fancy; for this idea cf. v. I2-109.  See
Numbers xxiv. 4 (" falling into a trance, but having his eyes open ').
462, 463. abstract, abstracted.  In Gen. ii. 21, the word ren.ered
"a deep sleep " implies a 'trance' (Newton).
465. my left side. " The Scripture says only 'one of his ribs,' but
Milton follows those interpreters who suppose this rib was taken from




NOTES.


559


the left side, as being nearer to the heart" (Newton).  Cf. cordial,
'belonging to the heart' (Lat. cor), in 466.  Sir Thomas Browne,
Religio Medici, I. xxi., says, "Whether Eve was framed out of the left
side of Adam, I dispute not; because I stand not yet assured which
is the right side of a man; or whether there be any such distinction in
nature." See also x. 886-88, notes.
466-70.   In his Tetrachordon, M. says: "That there was a
nearer alliance between Adam   and Eve, than could be ever after
between man and wife, is visible to any. For no other woman was ever
moulded out of her husband's rib" (P. TV. III. 335).
478. Cf. Milton's Sonnet "On his deceased Wife," 14 (Thyer).
488. Newton quotes Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Iv. 4. I20,
"The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek."
494. enviest, grudgest.
494-99.   Genesis ii. 23, 24; Matthew xix. 4-6; Mark x. 6-8.
498. adhere= the Scriptural word   "cleave" (Genesis ii. 24).
Newton notes that the Vulgate has adhierebit uxori suce.
5oo. divinely, by divine agency (cf. 485); Lat. divinitus. Cf.
S. A. 226, ' "The work to which I was divinely called."
502. conscience, consciousness = Lat. conscientia; cf. Hebrews x. 2,
"because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more
conscience of sins."  So in the second Sonnet (" To Cyriack Skinner")
on his blindness.
503. wooed...won. Proverbial; cf. Richard III. i. 2. 228, 229:
"Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
Was ever woman in this humour won?"
See I Henry VI. v. 3. 77, 78; Zitus Andronicus, 11. i. 82, 83;
Sonnet 41.
504. not obvious, retiring, modest; not' forward.'
508. honour. Cf. Hebrews xiii. 4, "Marriage is honourable in
all," and the Prayer-Book, "holy Matrimony....is an honourable
estate." Cf. 577.
513, 514. This notion of omens is imitated from   the classical
poets. Cf. IX. 782-84.
515-I7. gales. Speaking of the similar passage in bk. IV.-cf.
"sylvan scene" (iv. 140), "gentle gales" (156)-Tennyson justly remarked: " undoubtedly commonplace now, but M. introduced the
style": which the 18th century poets did to death.
5i8. the amorous bird of night; see v. 39-4I, note.
519, 520o. Cf. xI. 588, 589. The evening-star Hesperus was also
called stella Veneris. See viI. 366, note. on his hill-top; Newton
compares Catullus LXII. 1, 2; Vergil, Eclogues VIII. 30.




560           PARADISE     LOST.    BOOK    VIII.
532, 533- Cf. S. A. Io03-1007.
534-36. or...or; cf. Coriolanus, III. I. 208, 209:
"Or let us stand to our authority,
Or let us lose it";
andJfulius Ccesar, v. 5. 3, "he is or ta'en or slain."
537-39. So in S. A. o025-30 the Chorus ask why women are
fickle:
"Is it for that such outward ornament
Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts
Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant,
Capacity not raised to apprehend
Or value what is best,
In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong?"
In those lines, as here in 540-42, we have Milton's own opinion as to
the relative character and intellectual capacity of man and woman.
"Not equal" is his view (iv. 296); contrast Tennyson's-" diverse"
(The Princess).
547. absolute, perfect, "complete" (548). Cf. 471-74.
548. so well to know, i.e. she seems (547).
555, 556. i.e. designed by God from the first, not made to supply
some need or " occasion" that arose afterwards.
56o. contracted, frowning, in sign of displeasure.  Cicero has
contraherefrontem in this sense, Pro Cluentio 26.
561-78. Cf. the very similar passage in bk. x. (145-56), where,
after the Fall, Adam is rebuked by God for having yielded to Eve
(Genesis iii. I2) and eaten the forbidden fruit. Raphael's warning
prepares us for Adam's weakness in book Ix.
569. Ephesians v. 28, 29. Cf. the Prayer-Book, " I take thee to
my wedded wife...to love and to cherish."
570. not thy subjection; a favourite sentiment with M.; cf. IX.
1182-86, S. A..053-60.
573. that skill, that knowledge or wisdom, i.e. self-esteem.
574. " The head of the woman is the man," i Corinthians xi. 3.
576. adorn. The word is either an imitation of Ital. adorno=
adornato, and M. is fond of Italianised forms; or an instance of the
Elizabethan tendency to abbreviate participles.
579, 580. touch. Cf. Adam's words, 530.
590. hath his seat in reason, is based on. Compare Dante's
analysis of love into two kinds-" either natural or rational" (amore
o naturale o d' animo)-Purgatorio, xvII. 92, 93. That and the next
canto of the Purgatorio should be compared with 586-621. The
language recalls Twelfth Night, II. 4. 2i, 22:




NOTES.


56I


"It gives a very echo to the seat
Where Love is throned."
591. scale, ladder (Lat. scala); cf. v. 483, and Sir Thomas
Browne, Religio Iledici, I. xxxiii., "there is in this universe a stair,
or manifest scale, of creatures, rising not disorderly, or in confusion,
but with a comely method and proportion." He speaks too of "the
ladder and scale of creatures" (I. xxx.). See also Bacon, New Atlantis,
Pitt Press ed., p. 47. This idea of ascent is essentially Platonic and
Spenserian.
592. We find this idea of Heavenly love in Comus, I003 —1
(the allegory of Cupid and Pysche), Lycidas, 176, 177, and Milton's
Latin elegy, the Epitaphium Damonis, 217.  Note also that in the
first three drafts of his contemplated drama of Paradise Lost a personification of "Heavenly Love" appears among the characters. No
doubt, the idea was suggested by Plato's discourse in the Symposiumz
(i80 et seq.) on the two types of love-oopdvtos "Epws, 'divine love,'
and rdvoar-qos "Epws; cf. Milton's reference to "the divine volumes
of Plato" (by which probably he meant in particular the Symposium
and Phadrus) in a well-known passage of autobiography in An
Apologyfor Smectymnuus, P. W. III. 119. Spenser has An Hymze
of Heavenly Love, the sentiment of which is Christianised Platonism,
adapted from Italian sources; see the Pitt Press edition of the Fowre
Hymnes.
thou may'st ascend. Cf. Wordsworth, Laodamia, 145-47:
"Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend,
Seeking a higher object:-Love was given,
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end."
Thyer refers to the Symposium 211.
598. genial, nuptial; cf. Lat. genialis lectus (or torus); genialis is
connected withgignere, 'to beget, to produce, bring forth.' See iv. 712.
599. mysterious, full of awe, such as befits "a great mystery"
(Ephesians v. 32).
60o. decencies, graceful traits, touches of comeliness.
604. Cf. the definition of friendship as' one soul in two bodies.'
607. these subject not, these do not bring me into "subjection"
(570); i.e. the charming qualities of Eve mentioned above.
608. foiled, overcome.
609 —. i.e. though he meets with various objects presented to him
by his senses under various forms, yet he still preserves freedom of choice.
6i5. Cf. Wordsworth, Laodamia, 97, 98:
"He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure."


P. L.


36




562


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


624, 625. Cf. the description of spiritual forms in I. 424-28.
63I. Earth's green Cape, Cape Verd (='green'), on the west
coast of Africa. verdant Isles, the Cape Verd islands; commonly
identified with the classical Hesperidum  Insult, in which were the
"Hesperian Gardens " (iII. 568) where grew the golden apples guarded
by the daughters of Hesperus and the dragon Ladon. See iii. 568,
IV. 250, notes.
632. I think the rhythm shows that Hesperean qualifies sun (630),
not Isles.
633-43. Raphael "very properly closes his discourse with those
moral instructions which should make the most lasting impression on
the mind of Adam, and to deliver which was the principal end and
design of the Angel's coming " (Newton).
634. See I John v. 3, "For this is the love of God, that we keep his
commandments."
636. free will, your will unswayed by passion.
637. admit, approve of. Newton says 'commit' (=Lat. admittere).
639. persevering; cf. VII. 632.
648. See vn. 41, note.
651. good, propitious, gracious: sis bonus, o,felixque tuis, Vergil,
Eclogue v. 65. Milton had echoed that passage twice. Cf. the end
(207, 208) of his Epitaphium Damonis:
quin tu, cceli post jura recepta,
Dexter ades placidusque fave;
and Lycidas, 182-85:
"Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood."
oft return. Raphael does not appear again in the poem; after the
Temptation and Fall, a sterner Archangel (xI. 234, 235) is sent from
Heaven to lead Adam forth from Paradise.
BOOK IX.
r-5. This introduction refers mainly to Raphael's colloquy with
Adam in the four preceding books of Paradise Lost. We were told in
them how the Archangel came down to Eden, partook with Adam of
the "rural repast" which Eve prepared (v. 331-45o), and then held
long "talk" with him; narrating the rebellion of Satan and his




NOTES.                         563
followers (v. 577-9go), the contest and their expulsion from Heaven
(vi. 1-892), and the Creation of the World (book vii.); explaining
other points on which Adam asks questions (book viii.); and admonishing him against his Enemy (vi. go0-12, vIII. 635-43).
Raphael is referred to several times in books v. —vII. as Adam's
"Angel-guest" (v. 328), "godlike guest" (v. 35I), " Heavenly guest"
(vii. 69, vIII. 646), and it is to him that the description in lines 2-4 is
meant to apply.
This book "has more story in it, and is fuller of incidents, than any
other in the whole poem " (Addison).
i. no more of talk, i.e. there will be no more of this friendly conversation in the rest of the poem. In book XI. the Messenger sent from
Heaven is not Raphael "the affable Archangel" (viI. 41), but the
stern, warlike Michael, who has to announce to Adam and Eve their
banishment from Eden and to lead them forth.
where God; understand from what follows some words like 'conversed,' 'spoke.' The reference is to book vIII., where Adam says that
the Almighty gave him possession of the Garden of Eden, warned him
not to touch the Tree of Knowledge (vIIt. 316-33), and then promised
him a help-mate in Eve (vlII. 437-51).
2. as with his friend. Cf. Exodus xxxiii. 11.
6. tragic, i.e. "notes," to which the nouns "distrust," "breach"
etc. are in apposition. The style of books Ix.-XII. is less epical; we
must not "expect such lofty images and descriptions as before"
(Newton).
r. a world of, much of, a deal of. For the verbal quibble see
648, and cf. XI. 627. Addison quotes this line (iI) to illustrate his
remark that M. " often affects a kind of jingle in his words "-a figure
of speech, he adds, authorised by "some of the greatest ancients" but
"at present [1712] universally exploded by all the masters of polite
writing."
I2. Sin...Death; see x. 230. shadow, inseparable companion;
compare " shade," x. 249. There is in both cases an allusion to the
description of Death's appearance —"that shadow seemed," II. 669;
"the meagre Shadow," x. 264.
Misery, all kinds of physical pain and disease-the "harbingers,"
i.e. forerunners, of death. Cf. the vision revealed to Adam in XI. 477 -go of the " diseases dire " that Eve's disobedience brought upon men.
i3-I9. He means that as regards the "argument," i.e. subject,
with which it is now about to deal, his poem has an advantage over
the three great classical epics: (I) the Iliad, which commences with
the line " Sing, O Muse, the wrath of Achilles," and describes in book
36-2




564            PARADISE LOST.         BOOK    IX.
XXII. his pursuit of Hector (" his foe ") thrice round the wall of Troy;
(2) the Odyssey, which relates the wanderings that Odysseus ("the
Greek") experienced on his homeward journey after the Trojan war
because Neptune was hostile to him; and (3) the.4neid, which tells
of the hostility of Juno to ~Eneas, the son of Cytherea, i.e. Venus, and
of his betrothal to Lavinia (daughter of Latinus, king of Latium), who
had previously been promised in marriage to Turnus.
There is a similar summary of the themes of the three classical epics
in his Second Defence of the People of England, where he writes: " The
epic poet who adheres at all to the rules of that species of composition
does not profess to describe the whole life of the hero whom he
celebrates, but only some particular action of his life, as the resentment
of Achilles at Troy, the return of Ulysses, or the coming of AEneas into
Italy," P. W. I. 299.   It is remarkable, I think, how much more
repetition of thought and expression there is in Milton than in Shakespeare.
This claim to moral, not artistic, superiority, as of Christianity over
Paganism, occurs in the two other great passages of invocation in
Paradise Lost; cf. I. 12-16 and VII. i-12. In Milton's view the
great poet is a teacher in the first place, a singer in the second, and
he seems to have regarded himself as literally an inspired teacher.
"Wrath   (I4), "rage" (I 6) " ire" (i8) all point back to " anger"
in line io. "The anger that he is about to sing is an 'argument' more
heroic not only than the anger of men, of Achilles and Turnus, but than
that even of the gods, of Neptune and Juno. The anger of the true
God is a more noble subject than [the anger] of the false gods"
(Newton).
20. answerable; a style corresponding with the dignity of his
subject.
2I. mny celestial patroness, i.e. the "Heavenly Muse" (Urania)
whose aid he invokes at the beginning of the poem (i. 6). Milton's
references to this Muse of Sacred Song which gave him inspiration
have a reality that is lacking in the conventional poetical appeals to
the 'Muses.' Cf. P. A7. I. 8-17.
22. nigttly; cf. 47.   He elsewhere speaks of himself as best
inspired at night or just at dawn; cf. III. 29-32 and vii. 28-30.
These personal touches have been condemned by some critics as
alien from the impersonal elevation of epic poetry. " I cannot " (says
Newton) "but own that an author is generally guilty of an unpardonable self-love, when he lays aside his subject to descant upon his own
person. But that human frailty is to be forgiven in Milton; nay, I am
pleased with it. He gratifies the curiosity he has raised in me about




NOTES.                          565
his person; when I admire the author I desire to know something of
the man; and he, whom all readers would be glad to know, is allowed
to speak for himself. But this, however, is a very dangerous example
for a genius of an infirm order, and is only to be justified by success."
24. The inverted stress (" easy") in the first foot gives an easy
flow of rhythm corresponding with the sense.
25. sincefirst, i.e. about 1640; some lines of Paradise Lost (Iv.
32-41) were written as early as 1642.
this sub/jctfor heroic song.  See the Appendix, pp. 690, 691.
26. long choosing and beginning late; see the Introduction.
29. i.e. the chief mastery being to etc. dissect; referring to the
detailed descriptions of wounds in Homer and Vergil.
30, 3I. fabled...feigned.  A mythical subject would not appeal to
M. Probably one of his reasons for abandoning the story of King
Arthur, which he at one time intended to take as the subject of his great
poem, was that he found the story to be " fabled " and " feigned." His
three great poems all had a solid basis; so had Lycidas, and perhaps
Cozmus in a minor degree (see Introductions to them).
33. races and games. The allusion is to the classical poets; cf.
especially the description of the games in Iliad xxiii. and dEneid v.
M. makes the Angels who keep guard over the entrance to Paradise
"exercise heroic games" (iv. 551, 552), but does not describe them, to
avoid repetition of II. 528-38. Compare Johnson's comment: "There
is perhaps no poem, of the same length [as Paradise Lost], from which
so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no funeral
games, nor is there any long description of a shield "-such as Homer's
description of the shield of Achilles, and Vergil's of the shield of
~Eneas. Cf. line 34.
34-38. The allusion is to the Italian poets-e.g. Boiardo, Ariosto
and Tasso-and Spenser, who describe tournaments and scenes of
chivalry.
34, 35. tilting furniture, all the equipments of a tournament.
imblazoned, with coats of arms portrayed on them. Such descriptions
are a great feature of Boiardo's Orlando (Thyer). impresses, devices
on shields; the word was particularly associated with the heraldic
aspect of tournaments.
36. The base was a skirt or kilt, reaching from the waist to the
knees, worn by a knight on horseback.
tinsel trappings; Keightley quotes The Faerie Queene, III. I. 15:
"Her garments all were wrought of beaten gold,
And all her steed with tinsell trappings shone."
37, 38. "The marshal placed the guests according to their rank




566


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


and saw that they were properly served; the sewer marched in before
the meats, and arranged them on the table; the seneshal was the household steward " (Todd).
41, 43. me...remains= me manet.
43, 44. to raise that name, i.e. to raise up, create, for my poem the
title "heroic."
44. an age too late; i.e. in the world's history; implying that the
conditions favourable to epic poetry had passed away.   It is, I
suppose, true that no great epic poem (unless Tennyson's Idylls of the
King be an exception) has been written, at any rate in English, since
Paradise Lost.
In his Life of Milton Johnson says: " There prevailed in his time an
opinion that the world was in its decay....It was suspected that the
whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height
or bulk of their predecessors, and that everything was daily sinking by
gradual diminution. Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of
the general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is
to be written in 'an age too late' for heroic poesy."
The opinion to which Johnson refers (satirically, as might be
expected) "is said to have been first propagated by Dr Gabriel
Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, in a work entitled 'The Fall of
Man, or the Corruption of Nature proved by Natural Reason,' I6I6 "
(C. H. Firth). Ben Jonson seems to allude to it in his Discoveries, xx.
(Natura Non Effteta): "I cannot think Nature is so spent and decayed
that she can bring forth nothing worth her former years. She is always
the same, like herself; and when she collects her strength, is abler still.
Men are decayed, and studies: She is not." The idea is glanced at by
Thomson, Spring, 307, 308.
44, 45. or cold climate. Here he touches on what was a lifelong
opinion. Thus in his poem Mansus (I638) he apologises for his Latin
poems on the ground that his Muse was reared in the chill north;
while in the History of Britain he complains that the English lack
"the sun [which] ripens wits as well as fruits " (P. W. v. 24o). We
find the same idea in The Reason of Church Government, Preface to
book II. (" if there be nothing adverse in our climate, or the fate of
this age," i.e. adverse to the composition of a great poem), and in the
Areopagitica; see P. W. II. 53, 479. Cf. Pope's Essay on Criticism,
II., where he says that some people allow only foreign writers to have wit:
"Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes."




NOTES.


567


The influence of climate on national character is a leading idea in
Gray's philosophic fragment The Alliance of Education and Government.
oryears; perhaps not far short of sixty.
During the years that he was engaged over P. L. Milton could only
compose freely between the autumn equinox and May: " whatever he
attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted
his fancy never so much" (Phillips's IMemoir, 1694, substantiated by
Toland and Aubrey).
wing; his favourite emblem; cf. III. 13, VII. 4.
46. depressed; used proleptically, and with an antithesis to
"raise," 43.
53. The close of the fourth book describes how Satan was driven
out of Eden by Gabriel. In the intervening books, v.-viII., there is
very little advance in the action of the poem, except that Adam receives
warning of his Enemy through Raphael.
54, 55. At his first entrance into Eden Satan had overheard Adam
and Eve speaking about the Tree of Knowledge and thus learned the
one thing in which to tempt them and compass their ruin (Iv. 408 -535).
fraud; in the general sense 'deceit, guile'; see 89, 285. Cf. The
Prayer-Book, " Whatsoever hath been decayed by the fraud and malice
of the devil" (the Collect in " The Visitation of the Sick ").
56. maugre. Milton uses it in two other places (III. 255) and
P.R. III. 368, in each instance with a noun, not a clause.
59. from compassing the Earth. Cf. Job i. 7, "And the LORD
said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the
LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking
up and down in it."
Todd quotes from Sylvester's Du Bartas, where the passage is
versified thus:
"I come, said he, from walking in and out,
And compassing the earthlie ball about."
cautious of day; cf. " he rode with darkness," 63, 64.
6o-62. Cf. IV. 549-88, where Uriel is described as coming to
warn Gabriel, who guarded the eastern gate of Paradise with Cherubim, that one of the outcast evil angels has found his way into the
"garden."
Uriel; cf. III. 648, 649, note.
descried; this favours the change of text in IV. 567.
63-66. First he gives an astronomical, then a geographical (76 -82), account of Satan's wanderings.




568


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


"Of the seven days during which Satan went round and round
the Earth, always keeping himself on its dark side, three were spent
in moving from east to west on the equatorial line; four in moving
round from pole to pole, [i.e.] from  north to south and back,in which second way of moving he would traverse (or go along) the
two colures,-viz. two great circles, so named by astronomers, drawn
from the poles. Originally all great circles passing through the poles
were called colures (K6XovpoL, 'curtailed'); but the term was at length
confined to the two great circles drawn from the poles through the
equinoxes and the solstices respectively. The one was called the
Equinoctial colure, the other the Solstitial" (Masson).
67. the coast averse, the side of Paradise away from the gate where
the Cherubim kept watch (iv. 542-54); that this was the north side
is shown, as Keightley noted, by the position assigned to the river (the
Tigris) in IV. 223-32.
69-73. He identifies the Tigris with the river that " went out of
Eden to water the garden," Genesis ii. o10.
71-77. Paradise... Eden; see the notes on Iv. i32, 134.
73. rose up. We have the same rhythm expressing the same effect
in I. Io and iv. 229.
74. sunk; the incorrect form used by M., presumably as more
euphonious; similarly he nearly always has sung for sang.
76-82. "The Fiend, on leaving Eden, had gone northward over
the Pontus Euxinus or Black Sea, and over the Palus Meotis or Sea of
Azof, and so still northward, over what is now Russian territory, as far
as beyond the Siberian river Ob or Obe, which flows into the Arctic
sea; whence, continuing round the pole and descending on the other
side of the globe, he had gone southward again as far as the Antarctic
sea and pole. So much for his travels north and south. In length,
i.e. measured as longitude in an equatorial direction, his journeys had
extended from the Syrian river Orontes, west of Eden, to the Isthmus
of Darien, and so still west, completing the great circle [of the world]
to India on the east of Eden. Observe how true to the imagined
reality is the mention of Ganges here before Indus. In the circuit
described Satan would come upon the Ganges first " (Masson).
77. pool, i.e. inland sea; used in allusion to its classical name,
1 MclauTs \iXtUV7, Palus Maeotis. So in P. R. Iv. 79 he calls it "the
Tauric pool" (from the neighbouring Tauric Chersonese, i.e. the
Crimea). Cf. "the Asphaltic pool "= the Dead Sea, I. 411. The
river Ob is mentioned several times in Milton's History of Moscovia
(i.e. Russia), one of his minor prose-works, not published till
i682.


4




NOTES.


569


79. antarctic, south. "No particular place is mentioned near the
South pole, there being [there] all sea or land unknown " (Newton).
81. Darien, i.e. the Isthmus of Panama.
82. the orb, the whole world-orbis terrarum. A similar passage
comes in Milton's Latin piece In Quintumn Novembris (7-10), written
many years before.
83. narrow, careful, scrutinising closely.
86. "Now the Serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field
which the LORD God had made," Genesis iii. I. Cf. 56o.
87, 88. irresolute of thoughts revolved, i.e. a debate that for a long
time came to no decision in regard to-no settlement of-the thoughts
pondered over. sentence, decision, Lat. senenetia.
go. suggestions, temptations.
95. doubt, suspicion.
98. The alliteration emphasises the intensity of his emotion.
99. Cf. vii. 328, 329.
103. M. is fond of comparing the motions of the stellar bodies
(=" other heavens ") to a "dance"; cf. v. 178, 620-24, vII. 125.
104. officious; cf. VIII. 99.
o05. as seems. Cf. VIII. I5-38, where dealing with the same
thought M. makes Adam use the same cautious language-e.g. "that
seem," I9, "for aught appears," 30. Probably his reason was that
he thought that some of the heavenly bodies, especially the Moon,
might be inhabited (III. 459-62, vIII. 140-76).
107. sacred; used in reference to "light "; see I92, note.
113. growth, sense, reason. "The three kinds of life rising as it
were by steps ['gradual,' I 2], the vegetable, animal and rational; of
all which Man partakes, and he only; he grows as plants...he lives as
all other animated creatures, but is over and above indued with reason"
(Richardson). See note on v. 469.
ii5. joy in aught. One joy is left to him, but only one (477 -79).
I 9. place; implying 'fit place to dwell in.'
" Place or refuge" is not, at first sight, an obvious antithesis, and
Bentley suggested "place of refuge." But the sense Milton intended
is, no doubt: 'I find none of these delightful places, or parts of the
earth, permitted to be a residence for me; neither can I possibly
escape from that hell to which I am doomed'-the hell, namely, of
his outcast condition and "torment" within him (Dunster).
122. Cf Iv. o09, Io1. There, as here, Milton makes Satan
soliloquise on the brink of a momentous action, and the effect is to
heighten the sense of tension and expectancy.




570


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


126-28. For the sentiment, see VI. 907, note.
130. him destroyed; see VII. 142.
I33. follow, i.e. fall, like man himself; cf. x. 651, note.
I37-39. Meant as a sneer at the time which the work of creation
had taken its Creator, though "Almighty styled."
140-51. Cf. the "Argument" of bk. vII.: "Raphael...relates...
that God, after the expelling of Satan and his Angels out of Heaven,
declared His pleasure to create another World, and other creatures to
dwell therein."
140. in one night; that in which the rebellion in Heaven began;
see v. 642-71.
141. well nigh half; see II. 692, note.
"That a greater number of angels remained in heaven, than fell
from it, the Schoolmen will tell us; that the number of blessed souls
will not come short of that vast number of fallen spirits, we have
the favourable calculation of others" (Browne, Christian Morals, III.
xxviii.).
142. name; cf. Lat. nomen in the sense 'race, stock.'
146, I47. if they...are his created; which he denies when addressing his followers, v. 859-63, telling them that they are "self-begot,
self-raised," 860. Yet he knew and elsewhere (Iv. 42, 43) admitted
to himself the truth.
148-51. Cf. Satan's words at his first sight of Adam and Eve
(Iv. 358-60).
150. Bunyan uses original=' origin' several times in The Holy
War, e.g. "We will, if you please, first discourse of the original of this
Diabolus" (" Temple" edition, p. 12).
I55. "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee
in all thy ways," Psalm xci. i.
i56. flaming ministers, the Cherubim (61, 62); cf. iv. 797, 798.
157. earthy; so the original editions; the mis-reading earthly occurs
often in modern texts.
I66. this essence, i.e. the substance variously described as "ethereal"
and " empyreal" of which M. conceived the Angelic forms to consist;
cf. passages like I. II7, v. 499, VI. 330, 433, and the discourse on
Angels in The Christian Doctrine, I. 7. Atter their rebellion the
"liquid texture" (vI. 348) of the forms of the evil Angels degenerated
into a "gross" substance (vI. 66I). See v. 478, vI. 327, notes. That
the forms of the fallen Angels changed was a doctrine taught by many
of the Church Fathers.
to incarnate and imbrute; the construction is probably varied thus:
'I am now constrained into a beast, and to incarnate this essence.'




NOTES.


57I


i69. down; for this use of the adverb as a verb ('sink') Newton
compares 2 Henry IV. Iv. 5, 120, 121.
170. obnoxious; in the sense of Lat. obnoxius, 'liable, exposed to.'
I72. Cf. IV. I7, I8.
I74. higher, i.e. aiming higher, against the Almighty himself.
175-78. Jealousy is one of the motives that animate Satan against
man, but the strongest is desire "to spite the great Creator" (II. 384,
385). Cf. 178 and x. i, "the...despiteful act."
176. son of despite; modelled on Hebraic phrases like "sons of
valour," 2 Samuel ii. 7 (margin), "sons of Belial," i Samuel ii. 12.
I8o. like a...mist; the simile is used again, xII. 629-3r. It is
Homeric (Iliad i. 359). The external world had been " like a mist" to
the poet himself.
192. whenas, when; so whereas, where; both are common in
Elizabethan writers, and may perhaps have been originally rather more
emphatic than the simple forms, though the distinction, if it existed, was
soon lost.
sacred; because "God is light," i John i. 5.  Cf. the invocation
("Hail, holy Light") in III. 1-6.
193, I94. The origin of Gray's line, Elegy, 17:
"The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn."
I96, I97. Cf. passages like Genesis viii. 21, Leviticus i. 9.
198, I99. Cf. their "Morning Hymn," v. 153-208.
200. Newton aptly notes that M. himself was an early riser, quoting
the passage to that effect in An Apologyfor Smectymnuus, P. W. III. I 2.
Cf. L'Allegro, 41-68, Il Penseroso, I2I-30. Among the Milton MSS.
(a Common-place Book of miscellaneous jottings) found at Netherby Hall
in Cumberland and printed by the Camden Society was a piece of Latin
verse in praise of early rising. Aubrey in his brief Life of Milton says
that it was his custom to rise at 4.30 a.m., and that he always began the
day by having the Hebrew Bible read to him: "then he contemplated."
213. hear; so the First Ed.; the Second, bear.
218. spring, clump, thicket; commonly 'a sprig, single shoot of a
tree,' as in Venus and Adonis, 656, "This canker that eats up Love's
tender spring."
228. compare; used as a noun in III. 138, V. 467; so in Shakespeare.
229. motioned, proposed; cf. motion= 'proposal' in politics.
233. to study household good.  Cf. S. A. 1046-49.     Milton
brought up his daughters on this principle. Apparently he had good
reason to be satisfied in this respect with his third wife, "a genteel
person," says Aubrey, "of a peaceful and agreeable humour," who,
according to tradition, was careful "in providing such dishes" as he
liked best.




572


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


241. not the lowest end, i.e. the highest object, since "without love
no happiness," as Raphael tells Adam (viii. 62I).
245. wilderness, wildness; Todd compares Measurefor Measure,
III. I. 142 (evidently a favourite scene with Milton-cf. II. I80-82,
note).
247. Scan converse; cf. gog. So in Hamlet, II. I. 42.
249. Cf. Cicero's saying which has become proverbial, nunquam
minus solus quazm cum solus; and the familiar lines in Childe Harold,
iv., "There is a pleasure" etc.
The verse is noticeable as having two extra syllables.    Cf.
VIII. 2I6.
264. envy; cf. iv. 502, 503.
265. or this, or worse; whether this, or worse, be his desigz (26i).
265, 266. The creation of Eve (Genesis ii. 21, 22) is described in
vIII. 465-71. Cf. the allusion in 1153, 1154.
270. virgin, sinless, innocent.
276. the parting Angel, Raphael, whose last words to Adam were
a warning to "beware" and "stand fast" in his obedience (viii.
633-43).
282. thou fearst not. "Adam had not said so expressly, but had
implied as much in enlarging particularly upon [their Enemy's] 'sly
assault,' 256" (Newton).
288. thoughts which; the abrupt transition to the interrogative
form "how found they?" marks the agitation of the speaker.
harbour, dwelling-place, lodging; cf. 2 Henry VI. III. I. 335, 336:
"Let pale-faced fear keep with the mean-born man,
And find no harbour in a royal heart."
290. healing words; again in S. A. 605.
292. entire; in the literal sense of Lat. integer (from which entire
is derived), 'untouched by, free from.'
314. unite, i.e. with the virtues implied in the preceding lines.
320. less attributed to, too little credit given to. less, i.e. than
she deserved. Apparently M. scanned attributed; cf. vIII. I2.
327. only our foe; she quotes Adam's argument (296-99), and
then (329) endeavours to answer it.
330. front, brow, forehead (Lat. frons); used with quibbling allusion to "affronts" in 328.
334. event, issue, result, Lat. eventus; cf. 405, 984.
336. alone; emphatic. ' What is the value of these qualities till
they have been tested and stood the test by their own unaided merits?'
The sentiment is that of the fine passage in the Areopag'itica where
M. says, " I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue," i.e. one that
does not go out into the world and face evil (P. W. II. 68).




NOTES.


573


34I. no Eden, i.e. "no place of happiness, not what its name
denotes," i.e. 'pleasure' (Keightley).
35i, 352. but God left free the will. On this point, as might be
expected, M. dwells often; cf. III. 96-128, v. 524-40, x. 9. There
is much bearing on the subject in chapters 3 and 4-on "The divine
Decrees" and "Predestination " —of The Christian Doctrine, I.
what obeys reason is f/ee; cf. xII. 82 —IOI.
353. still erect, always on the alert.
358. mind, remind.
36i. suborned, procured for an evil purpose; qualifying object.
367. approve, give proof of, demonstrate; cf. 2 Cor. vii. r.
37I. securer, less on our guard, "less prepared" (38I).
'It may be (says Adam) that if we remain together and let the trial
come to us, instead of going to meet it, we shall not be so well prepared for it when it does come as you appear to be after my warning:
if you think so, then go.'
372-75. The rapid, rather abrupt style is meant, apparently, to
indicate some displeasure on the part of Adam.
Newton thought that Milton here had in mind the incident of his
own wife's leaving him soon after their marriage.
377. i.e. for all her submissiveness she has the last word. It is in
these side-touches that M. shows his own estimate of women. Indeed
the picture he draws of Eve in this book is not agreeable. She is
self-willed; easily flattered by the Serpent; disobedient of command
(780, 78I); selfish enough to drag down Adam in her fall (831);
deceitful (877, 878); and so mean-spirited as to reproach him (1155 -6i).
387. Oread, a nymph of the mountain (Gk. opos, a 'mountain ').
Dryad, a nymph of the wood-literally of the trees (Gk. SpOs, an 'oak' or
any tree). Delia, Artemis or Diana, who was born in the island of
Delos; the goddess of the chase, in which capacity she was attended by
a "train" of nymphs. Milton refers to her in Comus, 44I, 442, as
"the huntress Dian...
Fair silver-shafted queen for ever chaste."
392. The conception of fire and its uses occurs to Adam later
(x. 1070-82).
393-95.   Pales, a Roman divinity of flocks and shepherds.
Pomona, the goddess of fruit (Lat. pomum); cf. v. 378. The story of
Pomona's being wooed by Vertumnus, one of the lesser rustic deities of
Roman mythology, is told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses xiv. 623 et seq.
likest; misprinted likeliest in the Second Ed. Newton restored
the true reading.




574


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


395, 396. Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. yet virgin of, i.e.
before she had become the mother of Proserpine by Jupiter.
Proskrpina, the Latin form; cf. " the Gardin of Proserpina" in The
Faerie Queene, II. 7. 53. In IV. 269 Milton uses the Englished form
Proserpin.
On the appositeness of the comparisons in 386-96 Pearce has an
excellent note. " She [Eve] was likened to the Nymphs and Delia in
regard to her gait; but now that Milton has mentioned her being
' armed with garden tools,' he beautifully compares her to Pales,
Pomona, and Ceres, all three Goddesses like to each other [and to Eve]
in these circumstances, that they were handsome, that they presided
over gardening and cultivation of ground, and that they are usually
described by the ancient poets as carrying tools of gardening or husbandry in their hands."
401, 402. i.e. to be returned and to have all things, etc.; an instance
of zeugma.
409. hellish rancour imminent; his favourite word-order; cf. 5,
1047, and see the note on I. 733.
413. mere seypent. No doubt, M. knew, and perhaps wished to
brush aside, the Rabbinical gloss that Satan assumed a form half
angelical (or human), half serpentine, when he appeared to Eve. Cf.
Pope, Prologyue to the Satires, 330, 331 (part of the bitterly satirical
portrait of Lord Hervey-cf. IV. 8oo, note):
"Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have exprest,
A Cherub's face, a reptile all the rest."
See Mark Pattison's note on the passage.
418. more pleasant, i.e. especially pleasant.
419. tendance, that which they tended; the abstract word being
used in a concrete sense, as often in M.
423. to, agreeably to, in harmony with. Cf. S. A. i539, "And to
our wish I see one hither speeding," i.e. just as we wanted.
426. bushing; there is no authority for blushing.
432. Repeated from IV. 270.
436. voluble; in the literal sense of Lat. volubilis=' rolling.'
438. imbordered, planted so as to form a border on either side of
the "walk" (434). hand, handiwork.
439, 440. There is a fuller allusion to the legend of the ' Garden of
Adonis' in Comus, 998-100oo2. No doubt, M. knew the long description
of the 'Garden' in The Faerie Queene, III. 6. 29-49, which Keats in turn
followed in Endymion, II. The allusion is not uncommon in Elizabethan
writers. Cf. Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, v. 3, "I pray thee, light
honey-bee, remember that thou art not now in Adonis' garden, but in




NOTES.                         575
Cynthia's presence, where thorns lie in garrison about the roses"; and
Giles Fletcher, Christ's Victorie on Earth, 40, "Adonis' garden was to
this but vayne." The chief classical authority for the legend is Pliny,
NaturalHistory xix. I9, where the gardens of Adonis and Alcinous are
mentioned in the same sentence.
revived, i.e. after he was slain by the boar. According to the myth,
the prayers of Aphrodite (Venus) moved the gods of the lower world to
allow Adonis to return to the earth every year and pass six months
with the goddess. Spenser treats the story as an allegory of the immortality of love, and says (The Faerie Queene, III. 6. 46-48) that after
his restoration to life Aphrodite would not let Adonis descend to the
nether world but kept him in the ' Garden':
"There yet, some say, in secret he does ly,
Lapped in flowres and pretious spycery,
By her hid from the world, and from the skill
Of Stygian Gods, which doe her love envy."
440. renowned, i.e. through Homer's mention of him.
441. Alcinous; see the note on v. 340, 341, and compare the
allusion to Alcinous in Milton's Vacation Exercise, 49 ("In solemn
songs at King Alcinous' feast"). Laertes' son, Odysseus.
442, 443. Referring to the Garden of Solomon ("the sapient king")
mentioned in the Song of Solomon vi. 2. By "fair Egyptian spouse"
M. means "Pharaoh's daughter" (i Kings iii. i), to whom the Song
alludes in vii. I ("O prince's daughter").  Some critics regard the
Song of Solomon as an epithalamium on Solomon's marriage with this
princess. Addison could "not but take notice, that Milton, in the
conferences between Adam and Eve, had his eye very frequently upon
the book of Canticles" (i.e. Song of Solomon). See v. 17-25, note.
not mystic. M. inserts these words as the allusion is to Scripturenot as before, to classical legend. Contrast "feigned," 439.
445-54. Perhaps " only a narrative of what befell the poet in his
younger days, when living in his father's house in Bread Street, in the
City" (Keightley). Cf. the seventh of his Latin Elegies, where, speaking
of his youth, M. says:
Et modo qua nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites
et modo villarum proxima rura placent:
lines which Cowper renders:
"I shunned not, therefore, public haunts, but strayed
Careless in city, or suburban shade."
Probably the "public haunt" specially meant was Gray's-Inn Walk,
then the fashionable promenade, and not far from Milton's home.
No one can read Milton's works carefully without seeing that he




576


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


was a true lover of Nature, though not minutely accurate, like Tennyson,
in his descriptions of her. His favourite season was spring, and his
favourite times of the day the very early morning (cf. 2oo, note, and
447) and twilight (see IV. 598, 599). And, like his contemporaries,
Cowley and Marvell, he loved a garden (Il Penseroso, 49, 50).  "He
always had a garden where he lived," says Aubrey. At his ideal
College, gardening is to be part of the course.  Gardens, indeed,
were becoming the fashion: witness Evelyn and his Sylva.
In On Education M. does not forget the influence of Nature: 'in
those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it
were an injury and sullenness against nature, not to go out and see her
riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."
445. Editors note that "in populous cities" occurs in Othello, I. I.77.
See also Drummond's Pastoral Elegy, 83 (WJoirks, II. II6).
446. annoy, make noisome, pollute.
450. tedded, mown and spread out to dry. Thomson, who imitated
M. much, has the word in his Sumnmer, " Wide flies the tedded grain,"
i.e. the corn-sheaves are scattered to dry.
453. for her, because of her.
456. plat, plot.
467, 468. Cf. the sentiment of the famous lines, I. 254, 255.
47I. recollects; in the literal sense 're-collects,' i.e. gathers together
again; cf. I. 528.
476-78. i.e. not hope of enjoying pleasure but hope of destroying
all pleasure, save such as lies in the work itself of destroying.
485. of terrestrial mould, i.e. "formed of earth" (149), a "man of
clay" ( 76). mould='material, substance'; as often in M.
489. Cf. Tennyson's description of Helen of Troy in A Dream of
Fair Women:
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair."
490, 491. i.e. love and beauty inspire a certain awe unless there
is a still stronger influence of hate to counteract them.
not approached, i.e. if not; the metaphor is continued in "way"
and "tend" (= 'direct my course'), 493.
496. indented; "going in and out like the teeth of a saw," says
Newton, who refers to the snake in As You Like It, Iv. 3. 113, that
"with indented glides did slip away."
5oo. Todd aptly quotes the description of Pyrrhus in the Player's
speech in Hamlet (II. 2. 485), "with eyes like carbuncles," i.e. deep
red (a sign of passionate temperament and anger).  See Julius Ccesar,
I. 2. i86, Coriolanus, v. i. 63, 64, and Kenilworth, XXII. Cf. Dante's




NOTES.                         577
description of Cerberus: "his eyes are red" (,li occhi ha vermigli)Inferno, VI. 16. See VII. 496.
o50. spires, coils; Lat. spira, 'a coil, wreath.' Cf. The Rape of
the Lock, IV. 43, 44:
"Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires."
505, 506. "He here enumerates all the transformed serpents of
which antiquity had told, viz. those into which Cadmus and his wife
Harmonia were changed in Illyria; that which accompanied the Roman
ambassadors from Epidaurus to Rome; and those which were regarded
as the sires of Alexander the Great and of Scipio Africanus; of which
the former ['he'] was said to have been Jupiter Ammon, the latter
Jupiter Capitolinus" (Keightley).
not those that...changed, i.e. not those serpents that changed into
themselves Hermione and Cadmus. This interpretation-Keightley'sseems the best; but some editors insert a comma after changed, taking it intransitively and treating Hermione and Cadmus as in apposition to those.
Hermione; the name usually given is Harmonia. The story how
Cadmus king of Thebes and his wife Harmonia came to Illyria and
were changed into serpents is told by Ovid in the MAetamorphoses Iv.
562-602; a passage which M. seems to have had again in his mind
when he described the final change of Satan, x. 511-32.    The
Metamorphoses was one of Milton's favourite books, according to his
daughter's statement (see Johnson's Life); just as, in Golding's translation, it seems to have been a favourite with Shakespeare-the source,
probably, of much of his knowledge of classical mythology.
506, 507. thegod, Essculapius, the god of medicine, whose chief seat
of worship was at Epidaurus. At the time of a great pestilence at Rome
the oracle of Delphi bade the Romans seek the aid of AEsculapius; so
they sent ambassadors to Epidaurus and the god appeared to them in
the form of a serpent which accompanied them back and stayed the
pestilence at Rome, where AEsculapius was thenceforth worshipped.
This legend also is told by Ovid, Metamorphoses xv. 622-744.
507-Io. nor to which, i.e. nor those serpents into which Jupiter
Ammon was changed and was seen (i.e. by mortals).
The story that Jupiter Ammon-the "Libyan Jove," iv. 277, so
called in allusion to his shrine in the Libyan desert-was the father of
Alexander the Great occurs in Plutarch's Life of Alexander. Dryden
uses it, with obvious reference to this passage, in Alexander's Feast,
21-29. A similar fable represented Jupiter Capitolinus (i.e. of the
Capitol) as the father of Scipio Africanus, the vanquisher of Hannibal.
Olympias; the wife of Philip of Macedon.


P. L.


37




578


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


516. so; his habitual way of completing a simile. The comparison
of a ship with a serpent is not peculiar to any poet.
522. An allusion to the legend of the sorceress Circe who bewitched
men with magic drugs, and then by a touch of her wand transformed
them into animals (cf. "herd disguised") which she kept in subjection.
Cf. the account in Odyssey x. how Odysseus came to the island of iEsea
where she dwelt, and how she changed some of his followers into swine.
Milton represents Comus as the son of Circe and assigns to him the
attributes of the enchantress. See Comus, 50-77. In Eikonoklastes,
13, M. says that part of the nation is still bewitched with the
idea of monarchy, "like men enchanted with the Circean cup of
servitude."
525. turret, towering.  enamelled, smooth and variegated like
enamel. Perhaps M. recollected A Midsummer-Night's Dream, II. r.
255, "And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin " (i.e. throws off,
casts).
529, 530. i.e. either he actually used the serpent's tongue as an
instrument of speech (although "not made" for it, 749), or he caused a
voice to sound by impression of the air.
532. This description of the temptation should be compared with
Eve's account of the dream in which she supposed herself to be
tempted, v. 35-93.
533. sole wonder; cf. Comus's address to    "the Lady" in
Comus, 265, "Hail, foreign wonder!" and     The Tempest, I. 2.
426, 427.
544. shallow to, without sufficient intelligence to; rather a favourite
epithet of contempt with M.
549, 550. glozed, spoke flatteringly. proem, introduction; Gk.
irpool/tuov, a prelude in music (cf. "tuned"), hence a preface to
a poem   or speech.  Todd shows that M. remembered Comus,
I60-64.
553-66. Milton meets the objection of improbability. Cf. Sir
Thomas Browne: "It hath seemed strange unto some, she [Eve] should
be deluded by a serpent, or subject her reason to a beast, which God
had subjected unto hers. It hath empuzzled the enquiries of others to
apprehend, and enforced them unto strange conceptions, to make out,
how without fear or doubt she could discourse with such a creature,
or hear a serpent speak, without suspicion of imposture," Vulgar
Errors, I. I. The first two chapters of the Errors (i646) discuss the
" Causes of Errors," from that of Adam and Eve onwards, and " what
we may call the intellectual and moral by-play of the situation of
the first man and woman in Paradise, with strange queries about it"




NOTES.


579


(Pater). These chapters are very typical of Browne, and we may be sure
that Milton knew them.
558. the latter I demur; 'as to the latter-" sense," 554-I am
doubtful whether it was denied to brutes, for' etc. Probably this is an
expression of Milton's own opinion; cf. viiI. 373, 374.
560, 561. i.e. thee I knew to be the subtlest beast; because Raphael
had so described the serpent when speaking with Adam and Eve (vii.
494, 495).
563. of mute; for this classical idiom cf. 712 and see IV. 153, note.
575. roving the field; cf. Comus, 6o, "Roving the Celtic and
Iberian fields."  So "roam" is transitive in I. 521.
58i. fennel; of which serpents were supposed to be fond; cf.
Pliny, Natural History viII. 41, XIX. 56, xx. 95. lIe mentions the
belief that fennel causes snakes to cast their old skins. To this association with serpents it may have been due that fennel was an emblem of
dissembling and flattering: whence Ophelia's offer of fennel (probably)
to the treacherous Claudius-" There's fennel for you" (Hamlet, iv. 5.
18o). In An Apology for Smectymnuus M. mentions another popular
belief, given by Pliny, that connects serpents with fennel: " Something
I thought it was that made him so quick-sighted... now I know it was
this equal temper of his affections, that gave him to see clearer than
any fennel-rubbed serpent" (P. W. iii. 136). The snake was thought
to refresh its sight in spring-time by rubbing against the fennel-plant.
582. Serpents were supposed to suck the teats of sheep and goats
(Newton).
586-88. Cf. 740, 74r.
599, 6oo. to degree of reason, to the extent of giving me the faculty
of reason. inward; cf. "internal man," 71; externally there was
no change in him (6oi).
6oi. retained; in somewhat loose agreement with me (599). It is
a more appropriate word than restrained (Bentley's suggestion). " For
retain'd signifies the being kept within such and such bounds in a
natural state; restrain'd, to be kept within them in an unnatural; but
the serpent's being confined to his own shape, was being in his natural
state " (Warburton).
6o0. middle, in the air.
6o6. fair; similarly used as a noun by Shakespeare. Cf. Sonnet
i6, "Neither in inward worth nor outward fair," and Love's Labour's
Lost, IV. i. 17, "Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow."
For the Elizabethan use of an adj. =a noun cf. 483, 986.
612. universal Dame, mistress (domina) of all. Cf. " Empress of
this fair World," 568; "Queen of this Universe," 684.
37-2




58o


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


613. so talk'd.  " Milton has shown more art and ability in taking
off the common objections to the Mosaic history of the temptation, by
the addition of some circumstances of his own invention, than in any
other theological part of his poem " (Warburton).
spirited, possessed by a spirit.
For a more striking instance of the same alliterative effect (s...s),
designed to suggest the serpent's hiss, see x. 52 —28.
615, 616. She thinks that in his excessive compliments (cf.
606-12) he has scarcely shown such "reason" (60.o) as he said
that the fruit conferred.
623. to their provision, to enjoy what is provided for them.
624. birth, produce-'what she bears'; birth is from A.S. beran,
'to bear,' and in the original editions of P. L. the word is here spelt
bearth. As in the passages where the word occurs in its ordinary sense
it has its ordinary form, some editors think that M. intended the
peculiar form bearth to indicate the somewhat peculiar sense, and retain
the form.  The New English Dictionary (which does not recognise
bearth as an independent form) quotes Dryden, Georg. I. I96:
"The fruitful Earth
Was free to give her unexacted birth."
629. blowing, blossoming.  The epithet does not occur elsewhere
in Milton, though the Comus MS., at line 545, suggests that he thought
it a safer description than flaunting.
balm, i.e. the balsam-tree (Gk. PdXovaos), to which "myrrh," a
kind of thorny shrub, is akin. Cf. v. 23.
633, 634. Quoted by Burke in his speech on American Taxation,
in describing General Conway (the leader of the House of Commons)
after the debate when the Stamp Act was repealed (March I8, 1766).
wanderingfire, an ignisfatuus; cf. the German elf-licht.
634-42. Cf. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, " Fiery spirits or
devils are such as commonly work by blazing Stars, Firedrakes, or Ignes
Falui; which lead men often in filmina, aut praecipitia" (ninth ed.,
i8oo, I. 65). The chief of these spirits were Will-o'-the-Wisp and Jacko'-the-Lanthorn. M. alludes to the superstition in L'Allegro, 104 (see
the note), and Comus, 433; but whether he himself believes in it we do
not know, as he is careful to add the qualifying words " they say." Cf.
Conmls, 432-37:
"SoOme say no evil thing that walks by night,
In fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen,
Ilath hurtful power o'er true virginity."
635. compact of, composed of; cf. Titus Andronicus, v. 3. 88.




NOTES.


58i


640.  M. recollected A   MAidsumcmer-NAzih's Dream, II. I. 39,
"Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm" (said of the mischievous Puck; cf. also III. i. II2).
643. fraud, offence, crime (Lat.fraus); or 'hurt, damage.'
644. the Tree of prohibition; a " Hebraism for the prohibited or
forbidden tree" (Newton).
645. root, source;   used probably with   a grim   quibble on
"Tree."
648. fruitless...fruit; the same sort of jingle or word-quibble as in
line ii; see the note on I. 642. " The Italian poets...abound with such
verbal quaintnesses" (Newton).
653. sole; cf. Iv. 42, 433.
daughter of his voice; a literal rendering of a Hebrew phrase which
implies 'a voice from Heaven.' Wordsworth describes Duty as " Stern
daughter of the Voice of God," Ode to Dutty.
the rest, for the rest-' in all else' (Lat. cetera).
654. Cf. Romans ii. 14, " these...are a law unto themselves."
655-63.   Genesis iii. i-3, which M. follows very closely.
655. guilefully; because he knew that only one tree-not "all"was forbidden them.
667. new part puts on, assumes a new character, i.e. feigning
indignant sympathy with man. The metaphor is that of' playing a part';
cf. P. R. II. 239, 240, and Coriolanus, III. 2. 105, 1o6:
"You have put me now to such a part which never
I shall discharge to the life" (i.e. act).
As a young man Milton seems to have been fond of the theatre,
which often supplies him with a simile or illustration; cf. L' Allegro,
131-34, and his first Latin Elegy.
668. fluctuates; used literally; 'undulates' (Lat fluctuat) with his
body. in act, with his whole person addressed to its task; cf. 674.
670. some orator; such as Demosthenes, to whom M. refers in
P. R. Iv. 268 —71; or Isocrates, the "old man eloquent" of his
Sonnet (x.) "To the Lady Margaret Ley," and author of the X6-yo
'ApeoT0rayitK6s whence the title of the Areopagitica was adapted; or
Cicero (cf. 675, note).  In P. R. iv. 356-60 he makes the Saviour
speak of the Prophets of Israel as better teachers of the true principles of
statesmanship " Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome" (i.e. orators).
672. since mute, i.e. not merely in Greece and Rome, but altogether,
as though eloquence were an extinct quality.
673. in himself collected, i.e. completely master of himself=Ital.
in se raccolto (Thyer).
673, 674. each part, motion, each act, the orator's whole form, and




582


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


every movement and gesture. won audience; cf. the picture of Satan
addressing his followers, x. 458, 459.
675. in highth began, plunged right into the subject (iin medias res).
Probably M. had in mind the abrupt commencement of Cicero's first
Oration against Catiline-quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patienlia
nostra? (Thyer).
680. science; in its original wide sense ' knowledge ' (scientia); cf.
Gray's Elegy, I r9, " Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth."
68i, 682. Cf. Vergil's line felix qui potuit rerumt cognosce re causas
-Georg. II. 490.
685-712. Genesis iii. 4, 5. Bacon says: "Aspiring to be like
God in power, the angels transgressed and fell; Ascendam, et ero similis
allissimo: by aspiring to be like God in knowledge, man transgressed
and fell; Erilis sicut Dii, scientes bonum et malurn: but by aspiring to
a similitude of God in goodness or love, neither man nor angel ever
transgressed, or shall transgress. For unto that imitation we are called."
(The Advancement of Learning, II. 22. I5. The two Latin quotations
are respectively from Isaiah xiv. 14 and Genesis iii. 5, in the Vulgate,
whence Bacon usually quoted the Scripture.) See VI. 899, note.
687. to knowledge, i.e. in addition to.
700. ye; there is no need to substitute you.  Originally ye was
used for the nominative only and you for the objective cases; cf. "Ye
have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,"John xv. I6. Elizabethan
writers, however, often disregarded the distinction.
70o. not feared, i.e. not to be feared.
702. The Serpent's argument is-'Your fear of death implies
injustice on the part of God: but if He is " not just," then is I-e "not
God," and so not to be feared.'
710-12. So Adam also reasons; cf. 932-37.
710. shotld; so the original editions; shall, which some modern
texts print, is obviously due to 708.
711. internal Man; though externally he is still a serpent;
cf. 6o0.
713, 714. so ye shall die perhaps, i.e. this perhaps will be the
death meant for you, of which you spoke (663). Cf. the New Testament
often, e.g. Colossians iii. 9, o1, "ye have put off the old man with his
deeds, and have put on the new man."
722., if they, i.e. produce.
729, 730. can envy dwell etc.; a variation of Vergil's tanttene animis
cclestibus irce? Aeneid I. 11. So in vi. 788; see also iv. i18, 119.
732. humane; a complimentary term, 'gracious.' Some editors
interpret it= 'human' (a bold oxymoron); but it does not bear this




NOTES.                         583
sense in the two other places where Milton uses it, viz. II. o09,
P. R. I. 221.
737. imlpregned; cf. IV. 500.
740, 741. Cf. 586-88; v. 84-86. It is an addition to the
Scriptural account. "They were deceived through the conduct of their
senses, and by temptations from the object itself" (Sir Thomas Browne).
with desire; cf. Genesis iii. 6, " a tree to be desired."
742. inclinable; leaning to, inclined towards (Lat. inclinabilis).
758. in plain; cf. "in few," i.e. words, x. 157.
771. author, informant. unsuspect, not to be suspected.
773, 774. ' Being ignorant of good and evil, how can I know what
is to be feared?'
78I. eat; a preterite=ate; so often in Shakespeare; cf. Macbeth, II.
4. 18.
782-84. The introduction of " signs " and omens after the manner
of classical writers occurs at several important points in the action of
the poem. Cf. I000-1004; VIII. 513, 514; XI. I82-207. Similarly
Grotius in his Adamus Exul represents Eve's disobedient act as
accompanied by portents-arborque trepido tota subsiluit solo.
Moreover, "all Nature suffered by the guilt of our first parents"
(see x. 65 i), so that these signs are not merely prodigies but appropriate
"marks of her sympathising in the fall of man " (Addison).
783. The pathetic effect of the alliteration is noticeable; cf. the
Nativity Ode, 186.
792. knew not eating, i.e. that she was eating; an imitation of the
Greek use of a participle after verbs of knowledge or perception, as e.g.
in Euripides, Hecuba 397,  y  o la o e nr6oraS KEKTr77tvoS. The Romans
borrowed the idiom, as in sensit medios delapsus in hostes (lEneid In. 377).
So in S. A. 840, "Knowing, as needs I must, by thee betrayed."
793. boon, gay, cheerful; cf. ' boon companion.'
794. The Serpent has slunk away; she forgets him, in her joy.
795. virtuous...precious; equivalent to superlatives. Editors note
that Ben Jonson in his English Grammar, bk. II. chap. IV., refers to
this use of the positive, which may have been imitated from the Greek
and Latin idiom. Editors quote Nia Oedwv, Iliad v. 381, and sancte
deorum, AEneid IV. 576.
797. to sapience, even to the point of conferring wisdom; cf. 599
(" to degree "). infamed, without fame, unknown.
800. not without; cf. v. 178, note.
803-805. i.e. she intends to eat of the fruit till she equals the
gods ("others"), however much they may grudge (" envy") her the
knowledge.




584


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


805-807. The Serpent had argued that the tree was not the gift
of the gods, 718-28.
experience, making trial.
811-13. Cf. texts like Psalms x. II, xciv. 7,Job xxii. 13, 14.
8I 5. safe, not dangerous, not likely to harm; cf. the colloquial
phrase 'safe out of the way.' Macbeth (III. 4. 25) asks the murderer
"But Banquo's safe?" i.e. disposed of, so as not to cause trouble.
820. odds, balance, advantage; cf. x. 374.
823. more equal.   Cf. iv. 295-99, 635-38; Vill. 540-75;
X. I45-56, 888-98: passages which, taken together, are evidence
of Milton's own conception of the difference between man and woman.
There is indeed something curiously personal in the references to woman
in his poems, as though he could not refrain from expressing his own
views; cf. 377, note, and 1182-86.
832, 833. Cf. Horace's tecum vivere ameme, tecum obeam libensOdes III. 9. 24.
837. sciential, conferring knowledge, i.e. on those who partake
of it. There is a happy allusion to Milton in Lamb's essay Oxford in
the Long Vacation, where he describes his visits to the libraries: "I
seem to inhale learning...; and the odour of their [the books'] old
moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential
apples which grew amid the happy orchard " (i.e. of Eden).
845. divine of, foreboding = Lat. divinus in the sense 'prophetic
of,' as in Horace, Ars Poetica 2 8, 219, divinafuturi...sententia.
846. the faltering measure, the tremulous, uneven 'beat' of his
heart, excited by the foreboding of evil.
851. smiled; cf. Lat. ridere in the sense 'to look pleasant.'
852. The language is Vergilian-Georg. IV. 415.
853, 854. i.e. the pleading expression in her face, showing that she
was conscious of guilt, served to introduce the apology she was about to
make. The construction seems to be, 'excuse came as prologue and
(came) to lead up to apology'-prompt being a verb. The alteration
<too prompt" (adj.) is tempting, but has no authority.
864. tasted, if tasted.
872. to admiration; cf. Fr. a merveille.
875. opener mine eyes; cf. 70o6-70o8, 985.
877-85. A deceitful argument; contrast her reasoning in 817-25.
888. The strong medial pause marks Adam's horror.
890. asionied, astonished; cf. Job xvii. 8, "Upright men shall be
astonied at this." horror chill; cf. Vergilian expressions like gelidus
tremor and frigidus horror-ALneid It. I2o, I2I, III. 29.
899. amiable, lovely, pleasing to the eye; of the five epithets in the




NOTES.


555


line it is the one that carries on the notion in " fairest," 896, and "to
sight," 898. For the use of amiable cf. Iv. o 0.
90o. The alliteration seems to emphasise the certainty and hopelessness of her doom. to death devote; from Horace's line devota morti
pectora liberx —Odes iv. 14. I8. devote, doomed.
910. wild. The epithet well marks Adam's distress: even Paradise
has suddenly lost its beauty in his eyes and become " wild " and dreary.
914, 915. Cf. vIII. 494-96.
922, 923. hast; so the First Ed.; the Second hath.
The original editions have a comma after dared, with the sense'who hast been so daring, had it been only in gazing on the fruit
covetously.' Some editors remove the comma after dared and make
the construction dared to eye: a needless change, I think.
926, 927. Various classical renderings of this obvious sentiment
have been cited; the closest being a fragment of the poet Agathon,
which occurs in Aristotle, Nicom. Ethics VI. 2:
p.6vov yap a6roO Kal Oeis areptaKerat,
aiyp7Tra 7roLelv ador' &v j ireirpay/plva.
927. so, even so, i.e. though what is done cannot be undone.
928. perhaps. M. may have in mind the variation between the
Authorised Version in Gen. iii. 3 (" lest ye die") and the Vulgate's
"neforte moriamini."  Cf. Sir Thomas Browne,. Vulgar Errors, I. i.
fact; in the literal sense 'deed,' Lat.factum; cf. 980.
929. foretasted fruit, the fruit having been tasted already, i.e. "by
the Serpent."
932-37. This was the Serpent's argument to Eve; cf. 710-12.
945. not well conceived of, i.e. it is not to be supposed that the
Almighty would act thus. Cf. 938.
947, 948. lest the Adversary...say. Cf. Deuteronomy xxxii. 27.
For "the Adversary"= Satan, according to the meaning of the name,
cf.Job i. 6 (margin), r Peter v. 8.
953. certain to, resolved to. An imitation of Lat. certus, with
infinitive or gerund, =' determined to'; cf. certus eundi and certa moori-.Eneid IV. 554, 564.
965. I boast me spruntg; cf. the Homeric eIxocma etvat.
967. Cf. vIjl. 604.
974. by occasion, indirectly.
977-81. Contrast 826-33.
980. oblige; in the sense of Lat. obligare, 'to render liable to
punishment, make guilty.'
989. Cf. the proverbial phrase 'to scatter to the winds.' Newton
compares Horace, Odes I. 26. i-3.




586


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


998. not deceived; as Eve was by the Serpent; Adam sinned wilfully. Cf. i Timothy ii. 14, "And Adam was not deceived, but the
woman being deceived was in the transgression."
999. Cf. x. 151-53 -1ooo-1004. Cf. 782-84, note.
1003, 00oo4. It has been remarked that this is the only passage in
the poem where M. uses the phrase 'Original Sin'; the doctrine expressed by it he discusses in the treatise on The Christian Doctrine, I.
7 and II, attributing the first use of the expression (originale delictu})
to St Augustine, though it is said to have been used by Cyprian in the
third century A.D. (P. W. Iv. 191-94, 259 —6).
Ioo9. swim, revel; cf. xi. 625. So in The Faerie Queene, I. 12. 41,
"Yet swimming in that sea of blissful joy," and Ii. 3. 40.
Io i. Cf. Horace's spernit humumm fugientepenna-Odes III. 2. 24.
1018. elegant; in the sense of Lat. elegans, 'refined in taste,
fastidious.' Cf. v. 335, " tastes...inelegant."
o1I9, o02o. " Since we use the word savour in both senses [physical
and moral], and apply it to the understanding as well as to the palate"
(Newton). In this rather far-fetched thought M. is really playing upon
the two senses of Lat. sapere, 'to taste' and 'to have discernment, be
wise'-both sapience (roi8) and savour (through the French) coming from
sapere. Newton quotes the same quibble from Cicero's De Finibus II. 8,
nec enim sequitur ut cui cor sapiat ei non sapiatpalatum. " Taste," e.g.
'man of taste,' lends itself to the same sort of word-play.
I026. for, instead of.
1034. toy, caress.
I042. Cf. Proverbs vii. I8.
1046-52. Contrast the description of Adam's sleep (v. 3-5).
Io5o. unkindly, not natural. fumes, vapours, as of intoxication
(cf. 793); cf. Dryden, Aurengzebe:
"Power like new wine does your weak brain surprise,
And its mad fumes in hot discourses rise."
I058. Shame; personified, as in 1097. In the original editions the
sense was obscured by the omission of a stop after shame.
1o58, 1059. he covered; cf. Psalm cix. 29, "Let mine adversaries
be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own
confision, as with a mantle."
but his robe uncovered more, i.e. Shame, till then unknown to them
(iv. 313-18), made them conscious of their nakedness. The thought
is worked out in The Christian Doctrine, I. 12.
ro59-62. Judges xvi. 4-20o; cf. Samson Agonistes almost passim.
There is a striking application of the story in the conclusion of 7he




NOTES.


587


Reason of Church Government, ii.-P. W. II. 506; cf. also the
allusion in Eikonoklastes, 22.
the Danite; cf. the description of Samson's father Manoah in Judges
xiii. 2, " a man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites," i.e. of the Tribe
of Dan.
Io6i. Some editors have put forward the view that here and in the
three lines of S. A. where the name occurs M. treated the second
syllable of Dalilah as short or unaccented, e.g. Dalrlah, a scansion which
seems to me as unpleasant as it is needless. The correct accentuation
is Dalilah (=Daleclah), and the last two syllables may form a trochee
or " inversion of rhythm" such as M. admits into any foot of his blank
verse. Thus the present line, I think, runs
"Of PhillisteSan Dallilah, I and wak'd,"
the third foot having a light stress or accent.
The lines in S. A. in which the name comes are:
"Was in the vale of Sorec, Dallila," 229:
"Than, Dallilal thy wife," 724 (a short verse):
"The sumpltuous Da[lila I floating this way," o072.
In each verse the trochee is rhythmical and quite regular.
'Dalilah' follows the first syllable of the Greek form; the form in the
Authorised Version, ' Delilah,' is nearer to the IHebrew. As printed in
S. A. the name has no h, perhaps an intentional difference, M. being
extremely particular where sound was affected.
1064. strucken; cf. The Comedy of Errors, I. 2. 45, "The clock
hath strucken twelve upon the bell."  The forms of the preterite and
past participle of strike vary greatly in Elizabethan English.
o168. worm, serpent (vii. 476); cf. Antony and Cleopatra, v. 2.
243, 244, where Cleopatra asks for the asp or serpent to kill herself:
" last thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
That kills and pains not? "
1079. the last, the worst, greatest; cf. Lat. extrenmus, ultimus.
of thefirst, i.e. lesser evils, which they may well expect, seeing that
they have already experienced the greatest of evils, viz. shame.
Io8o-82.   Cf. x. 722-2, XI. 315-17.
Io83. this earthly, i.e. shape; or earthly might be a noun =mortal
nature,' as in VIII. 453, "My earthly by his Heavenly overpowered."
oS86-88.   Cf. Iv. 245, 246.
impenetrable to star. Newton quotes Statius, Thebais x. 85, 86, tulli
penetrabilis astro  lucus iners, which perhaps suggested Spenser's
description of the grove " Not perceable with power of any starr," 7he
Faerie Queene, I. I. 7. Cf. Arcades, 88, 89:
"Under the shady roof
Of branching elm star-proof."




588


PARADISE LOST. BOOK IX.


or Sunlight. Cf. poetic descriptions such as "sun-proof" applied to
shade, e.g. in Peele's play David and Bethsabe:
"This shade, sun-proof, is yet no shade to me."
So in Matthew Arnold's Church of Brou:
"The hills are clothed with pines sun-proof."
io88. brown, dark. cover me; cf. Revelation vi. I6.
I090. them; "those Heavenly shapes," o082.
o091. as in, seeing that we are in; Lat. ut; cf. x. 978.
IIoI-ii. The reference is to the banyan-tree or Indian fig
(Ficus religiosa or Indica). Warton pointed out that M. has followed
closely-cf. the numerous verbal similarities-the account of this tree
in Gerard's Herball, I597 (the standard Elizabethan work on botany),
where it is called "the arched Indian Fig-tree."  Gerard, who took
his information on the subject from Pliny, Natural History XII. 5, says:
"The ends [of its branches] hang downe, and touch the ground,
where they take roote and grow in such sort, that those twigs become
great trees; and these, being grown up unto the like greatnesse,
do cast their branches or twiggy tendrels unto the earth, where they
likewise take hold and roote; by meanes whereof it cometh to passe,
that of one tree is made a great wood or desart of trees, which
the Indians do use for couerture against the extreme heate of the
sun.  Some likewise use them  for pleasure, cutting downe by a
direct line a long walke, or as it were a vault, through the thickest
part, from which also they cut certain loopholes or windowes in
some places, to the end to receiue thereby the fresh cool air that
entreth thereat, as also for light that they may see their cattell that
feed thereby.... From which vault or close walke doth rebound such
an admirable echo or answering voice....The first or mother of this
wood is hard to be known from the children."
The description of the size of the leaves of this tree-" broad as
Amazonian targe," I I I I-is due to the same source, Gerard reproducing
Pliny's mis-statement that foliorum latitudo peltce effigiemn Amazonicce
habet. The description is inaccurate as the leaves of the banyan are
small: it is the banana or plantain-tree that has large leaves which
"are used, on the coast of Malabar, in the same manner as here by
Adam and Eve" (Keightley). Pliny in describing the Ficus Indica
evidently united the characteristics of the banyan and banana, and
apparently writers even later than M. repeat the confusion. The
banyan from its peculiar character is described in many early travels,
e.g. in Sir Thomas Herbert's (1634) and Tavernier's (I684).
It furnishes Sir Thomas Browne with a characteristic simile: we
must, he says, "bid early defiance unto mother-vices" (i.e. evil tendencies which lead to other evil): "Where such plants grow and




NOTES.


589


prosper, look for no champain or region void of thorns; but productions like the tree of Goa [Ficus Indica], and forests of abomination,"
Christian Morals, III. iv. Thomson (Summer) speaks of
" the maze,
Embowering endless, of the Indian fig";
and it is, doubtless, one of his many Miltonic reminiscences.
110 o3. Decan; the name was often applied to the Indian peninsula
in general, i.e. so as to include Malabar.
I I I r. Cf. Vergil's reference to the ' crescent-shaped shields ' (hinatce
peltwe) of the Amazons, AEneid I. 490.
1 13. Cf. the margin in Genesis iii. 7, "things to gird about."
i 15. of late, i.e. as compared with the remote events of which the
poem treats; not strictly " of late " in relation to Milton's own time,
because the date of Columbus's discovery was 1492.
r 17. with feathered cincture.  Hence Gray's phrase, "feathercinctur'd chiefs," spoken of the Indians of South America, The Progress
of Poesy, 62.
1127-31. Cf. 351-56.
1I40, I141. Cf. Eve's words, 335. approve; cf. 367. owe, possess.
I 144. Cf. Homer's 'ro6v ae tros q6?^yev 9pKOS 666vrTv.
1155. the head. An allusion to i Corinthians xi. 3, "the head of
the woman is the man."  So in IV. 443.
1159. Alluding to 372-75.
1163, 1164. the love, i.e. that you have to offer me; "thy love" is
a needless change.
1 I64, I I65. expressed immutable, shown to be unchangeable; the
words refer to Adam's love for Eve, which he had "expressed," i.e.
demonstrated, so strikingly; cf. 96i, 962.
1182-86. No doubt, an expression of Milton's own opinion. One
of his sneers at Charles I. is that he was influenced so by his wife:
"Examples are not far to seek, how great mischief and dishonour
hath befallen nations under the government of effeminate and uxorious
magistrates; who being themselves governed and overswayed at home
under a feminine usurpation, cannot but be far short of spirit and
authority without doors, to govern a whole nation" (Eikonoklastes, 7).
Professor Firth has recently noted a curious, hitherto unremarked
illustration of Milton's prejudice against women, viz. his treatment of
Boadicea in his History of Britain. "Previous historians had regarded
the warrior-Queen as a national heroine; he represented her merely as
a virago, 'a distracted woman with as mad a crew at her heels.'"
I 83. women; he may have dictated woman.
1189. contest. For the accent cf. xi. 8oo.




590


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


BOOK X.
I. heinous; cf. IX. 929. despiteful; see IX. 175-78, note.
5-7. Contrast ix. 8ii-16.
9. with...free will armed. Cf. 46 and see Ix. 35r, 352, note.
Io. complete to, fully equipped so as to; qualifying mind or man.
Some editors remove the comma of the original editions after armed,
which they connect with complete. But the rhythm seems to me to
favour a slight pause at the end of verse 9.
12. they, i.e. "Man" (9), used collectively, as in Genesis i. 26.
I6. manifold in sin.  "The Divines...reckon up several sins as
included in this one act of eating the forbidden fruit, namely, pride,
uxoriousness, wicked curiosity, infidelity, disobedience, etc." (Newton).
Milton has a passage to this effect in The Christian Doctrine, I. II
(P. W. IV. 254, 255).
I8. the Angelic guards, i.e. the Cherubim; cf. ix. 6r, 62, I56,
I57.
19. by this; cf.Julius Cesar, I. 3. 125, "And I do know, by this,
they stay for me."
20, 21. had stolen entrance; as is described in Ix. 69-76.
29. i.e. to make appear accountable= to explain, justify.
accountable; in the sense 'that can be accounted for'; not, as
more often, 'liable to render account.'
32. his secret cloud. The description is based on passages like
Exodus xxxiii. 9, ro; i Kings viii. Io, ir; Ezekiel x. 4: to which (and
others) M. refers in the chapter, i. 2, of The Christian Doctrine that
treats " Of God."  Cf. the fuller allusion in IIi. 378-8r.
33. "And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings
and voices," Revelation iv. 5. Where he is describing Heaven M.
draws largely on the book of Revelation, as we should expect.
35. charge, duty, office, viz. of guarding Man; cf. IX. I57.
38. foretold, having been warned. so latel,; see ill. 80 et seq.
40. speed, be successful in.
42. flattered; cf. Ix. 532-48, 6o6 —2.
lies; cf. Ix. 703-709, 716-32.
45. moment, force = Lat. momenztum, the metaphor being taken from
a balance; cf. "inclining" (46), "even scale" (47). So in vi. 239.
48. rests, remains, Lat. restat; cf. 3 Henry VI. v. 7. 42, 43:
"And now what rests but that we spend the time
With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows?"




NOTES.


591


pass, should be pronounced.
50. presumes...vain; cf. Adam's words, Ix. 927-37.
5 2. by some immediate stroke; see 2ro. Cf. The Christian Doctrine,
I. I2, " Under the head of death, in Scripture, all evils whatever,
together with everything which in its consequences tends to death, must
be understood as comprehended; for mere bodily death, as it is called,
did not follow the sin of Adam on the selfsame day, as God had
threatened."
53.  The proverbial form  of phrase seems hardly to fit the
context. For the proverb "omittance is no quittance" (i.e. you may
leave a thing undone, but not have done with it), cf. As You Like It,
II. 5. 133.
54. as bounty, i.e. has been "scorned."  Man had shown scorn of
the gifts of the Almighty by seeking something more which was forbidden him.
55-57. Cf. John v. 22, "For the Father judgeth no man, but
hath committed all judgment unto the Son."
59. mercy...justice. Cf. Psalm lxxxv. io and see the Nativity Ode,
141-44.
60. his Mediator. M. discusses " The Mediatorial office " of Christ
in The Christian Doctrine, I. 5.
63-67.    For similar passages see III. 138-42, 383-89, VI.
68o-82, 719-21; and cf. Hebrews i. 3, "Who being the brightness
of his glory, and the express image of his person,...sat down on the right
hand of the Majesty on high." Cf. 85, 86.
70, 71. Cf. in. 168.
74. when time shallbe; cf. III. 284.
for so I undertook; as was related in III. 227-65.
77. derived, turned aside. Lat. derivare, 'to divert a stream from
its channel,' hence figuratively, 'to turn aside, divert.'
77, 78  Todd compares The Merchant of Venice, IV. I. 196, 197.
79. them; "Justice " and "Mercy."
84. 'conviction, proving guilty; this is not necessary because the
Serpent has admitted his own guilt by flight. The line emphasises the
words "convict by flight " (i.e. convicted).
86-88. Compare the description of the Son accompanied to the
gate of Heaven by a host of Angelic beings as he goes forth to create
the Universe, vii. 192-209.
88, 89. Cf. vi. 6I7-25. coast, region; more often plural.
90, 91. Cf. Raphael's account of his descent from Heaven to
Paradise, VIII. I o-14.
92. The time is determined by Genesis iii. 8 (" in the cool of




592


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


the day"), where for "cool" the margin has "wind"-cf. "gentle
airs" (93).
95. more cool, i.e. than " the evening cool": not a very happy play
on words.
96. Intercessor. Cf. iiI. 219, XI. 19. Milton deals with the
subject of Christ's intercession for man, as one aspect of his office as
'Mediator,' in The Christian Doctrine, I. r5.
97-223.   The whole scene follows Genesis iii. 8-I2 closely, the
words of the Scripture being worked into the text, just as in Shakespeare's
Roman historical plays the language of North's Plutarch is constantly
reproduced and in Tennyson's Idylls of the King the language of
Malory's Morte Darthur.  In many passages of the poem, especially
where he represents the Deity as speaking, M. reproduces the Scripture
thus, merely adapting it to the form of blank verse.
xo6. obvious; in the sense of Lat. obvius, 'coming to meet.'
I2. apparent, clear, manifest.
I20. still, ever, always.
I21, 122. Cf IX. I051-59, 1070-98.
i28. my other self. Cf. vIII. 450, note.
13I, I32. The lines are suggestive of Lycidas, 6, 7.
I45-56.   See IX. 823, note.
149, 150. See IX. 265, 266 (note), and cf. Iv. 440, 441.
154. i.e. such as were seemly while subject to her husband's
government.
I55, I56. part...person; terms drawn from the stage. 'It was for
you to play the part (cf. Ix. 667) and character (Lat. persona) of ruler.'
So in P. R. II. 240.
157. in few; cf. Henry V. I. 2. 245. So "in plain," ix. 758.
i61. bold; as when she plucked the forbidden fruit (ix. 78o,
781).
loquacious; as in her argument with Adam (Ix. 973 et seq.).
I65. unable; qualifying Serpent.
I69. more to know, i.e. that the Serpent was only the instrument of
Satan.
173. mysterious, because they had an inner application, viz. to
Satan, which, for the time, was to be hidden from Adam, who would
suppose that they referred to the Serpent. Later (1032-35) Adam
perceives the application.
judgedas then best; an inversion of order; 'as was then thought best.'
175-81. Genesis iii. 14, 15.
18I. her seed, i.e. in the person of the Son of Man (183).
r82. then verified. The 'verification' described (183 —90) is of




NOTES.


593


the last and most significant words of the whole curse, viz. " IIr sced
shall bruise," etc.
"Here [182 —o] is a manifest indication, that, when Milton wrote
this passage, he thought Paradise was chiefly regained at our Saviour's
resurrection. This would have been a copious and sublime subject for
a second poem.    The wonders, then to be described, would have
erected even an ordinary poet's genius; and, in episodes, he might have
introduced His conception, birth, miracles, and all the history of His
administration, while on earth. And I much grieve, that, instead of
this, he should choose for the argument ['subject'] of his 'Paradise
Regained' the fourth chapter of Luke, the teniptation in the wilderness;
a dry, barren, and narrow ground, to build an epick poem on. In that
work he has amplified his scanty materials to a surprising dignity; but
yet, being cramped down by a wrong choice, without the expected
applause" (Bentley).
The poet was an old man, and tired, when he set about the
second epic, and wisely adapted his choice to his strength.
183. Mary, second Eve; repeated from v. 387. The thought is similar
to that which makes Christ "the last Adam," i Corinthians xv. 45.
I84. Cf. I. 45 -I85. Cf. Ephesians ii. 2, " the prince of the power of the air,"
referring to Satan.
185-90. Based on the following texts: Colossians ii. 15; Psalm
lxviii. x8; Romans xvi. 20 (marginal reading "tread"). Cf. III.
247-56.
i91. his fatal bruise, i.e. Satan's.
"213. suffer change; cf. 65I, note.
214. Phizippians ii. 7.
2 5. John xiii. 5.
217. slain; apparently for the purpose, as hitherto it has been
implied that the beasts were not killed by each other (see 70o, note) or
by Adam.
218. repaid, i.e. for the loss of their old skin.  "Pliny mentions
some lesser creatures shedding their skins in the manner of snakes, but
that is hardly authority sufficient for such a notion as this" (Newton).
2I9. thought not mzuch; cf. The Tempest, I. 2. 250-53:
"' Prospero.           Dost thou forget
From what a torment I did free thee?
Ariel.                                     No.
Pros.  Thou dost, and think'st it much to tread the ooze
Of the salt deep" (i.e. a great grievance).
his enemies; because it was their sin that necessitated His sacrifice.


P. L.


38




594


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


2 2 2. robe of righteousness; see isaiah lxi. Io.
225. Cf. III. i69, 239, 279.
229. was sinned andjudged; for the impersonal construction cf.
VI. 335.
230. Sin and Death. See the notes on II. 648, 650, 666.
Addison observes that book x. has a "greater variety of characters"
than any other. He compares it with the last act of a tragedy in
which all the main dramatis persona are introduced and the effect of
the action upon them is made clear. Compare especially Adam and
Eve in their abasement.
231. in counterview, i.e. opposite each other, one "on either side"
(II. 649) of the entrance; vis-a-vis. Cf. 235.
231, 232. the gates...now...open wide. Cf. the description in II.
871-89 how Sin, "the Portress of Hell-gate," opened "the infernal
doors " to let Satan pass out on his journey through Chaos to the newcreated World and then could not shut them. now; emphatic.
235, 236.  0 Son. See II. 727-814. author, parent.
24r. avengers; so the Second Ed.; the First Ed. has avenger; but
cf. "l their revenge," 242.
246. Cf. 263, 358, 359, and the "Argument" of the book, lines
6, 7 (" by wondrous sympathy ").
249. secretest; cf. Aazcbeth, IIl. 4. 126, "the secret'st man of blood."
thou, my shade, i.e. shadow; cf. Ix. 12, note. Sin and Death are
always introduced together in the poem: an obvious allegory.
256. found, build; Lat. fundare, 'to lay the foundation of.'
257. this main, the "sea "(286) of Chaos; "the foaming Deep "(3o0).
260, 261. "intercourse, passing frequently backward and forward;
transmigra/ion, quitting Hell once for all to inhabit the new creation;
they were uncertain which their lot should be " (Richardson).
264. meagre; in the literal sense 'lean,' Fr. matire; cf. the conventional representation of Death as a skeleton.
274. ravenous fowl. "Of vultures particularly it is said by Pliny,
that they will fly three days beforehand to places where there are future
carcases-triduo antea volare eos ubi cadavera futura sunt [Nat. fist.
X. 7]. And (what probably gave occasion to this similitude in Milton)
Lucan has described [viI. 831-37] the ravenous birds that followed
the Roman camps, and scented the battle of Pharsalia" (Newton). Cf.
Julius Ccesar, v. I. 85-87, where on the morning of the battle Cassius
says:
"ravens, crows, and kites
Fly o'er our heads, and downward look on us,
As we were sickly prey " (i.e. as if).




NOTES.


595


tlhough; the reading through has no authority.
279. so; cf. IX. 516. Feature, shape, form; as commonly in
Shakespeare, from the literal meaning 'make,' O. Fr. faiture, Lat.
factura. M. purposely uses rather a vague word which leaves much to
the imagination; cf. the description of Death in II. 666-70.
279, 280. Cf. Georgic I. 376, suspiciens patulis caltavit naribus
auras.
281. sagacious of, scenting (Lat. sagax).
282, 283. waste wide; one of Milton's favourite alliterative effects,
here suggestive of desolation.
anarchy; cf. Vl. 873. In II. 988 Chaos is personified as "the
Anarch old."
284-302. Lines 284-88 describe how Sin and Death collected
towards the mouth of Hell the materials for their causeway: lines
293-98 how Death made the materials coalesce into solid masses
suitable for the purposes mentioned in the next verses: lines 299-320
how the materials were used partly to form the foundation of the whole
structure, partly to construct the bridge raised on those foundations.
"Aggregated soil" in 293 and "gathered leach" in 299 refer to the
"solid" elements mentioned in 286, while "asphaltic slime" in 298
refers to the "slimy" elements, 286. By " the rest" in 296 he means,
I think, all such "solid" elements as are not included under "soil" in
293: the "slime," i.e. pitch, helps to bind these elements together: the
" soil" may be conceived as coalescing more easily under the petrifying
stroke of Death's sceptre. In 296-98 the sense obviously is that
Death bound the elements together by means of his look and by means
of the slime; the manner of expression is rather strained, but, as it seems
to me, quite Miltonic, the combination of an abstract word like "rigour"
and a literal word like "slime" being somewhat similar to I. 502,
"flown with insolence and wine."
288. shoaling; apparently transitive; 'driving it in a shoal or
bank.'
290. the Cronian sea, the Arctic Ocean; from the Lat. name Croniurm Mare (Pliny, Nat. Hist. IV. 30), less used than Mare Conzcretun.
29. the imagined way, i.e. the north-east passage, then thought to
be practicable and made the object of many voyages of discovery to India
and the East. Cf. a similar allusion in the Areopagitica, " a passage...
far easier and shorter than an Indian voyage, though it could be sailed
either by the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward" (i.e.
even though it could).-P. W'. II. 69.
292. Pelsora, the Gulf of Petchora in the Arctic Ocean, at the
mouth of the river of that name. M. speaks of the river "Pechora or
38-2




596


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


Petzora," and of the town of the same name in his Hislory qf jloscovia,
quoting as his authority the narratives of certain merchants of Hull who
had wintered in those parts in the year 16 1.
292, 293. the...Cathaian coast; commonly explained 'the coast of
China'-with doubtful correctness, however. Strictly 'Cathay' was
identical with China, Cathay being a corruption of Kitai, the name by
which China is still known in Russia and in many Asiatic countries.
But formerly, till some time after I6oo, the opinion prevailed that
'Cathay' was a great region distinct from China, lying north of it and
stretching right up to the Arctic Ocean; comprehending, in fact, East
Siberia. Cathay is marked so in many old maps, and its capital was
supposed to be Cambalu-i.e. Cambalu was regarded as a different city
from Pekin, the capital of China, though properly they were the same.
I believe that this was Milton's notion of Cathay, from the references to
it in the Histoiy of Moscovia and from the fact that in P. L. XI. 388 and
390 he treats "Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can" and " Paquin [Pekin]
of Sinteant kings " as two distinct cities.
rich. In the History of AIloscovia he touches several times on the
wealth and trade of the cities of Cathay-P. W. v. 407. Indeed the
wealth of this mysterious land had become proverbial through the
reports of travellers from the time of Marco Polo onwards. See
chapter xx. in Mandeville's Voiage.
294. mace, sceptre; cf. Zenry V. IV. I. 278, "The sword, the
mace, the crown imperial." Todd quotes from the play Dido, Queen
of Carthage, by Marlowe and Nash, "like pale Death's stony mace"
(II. I. 116, Bullen's ed., II. 320). Burke has a telling allusion to
this line in the Reflections on the Revolution in France, part II.,
section v. —"[he] will sooner thaw the eternal ice of his atlantic
regions, than restore the central heat to Paris, whilst it remains
'smitten with the cold, dry petrifick mace' of a false and unfeeling
philosophy" (Payne's ed., p. 288).
296. Delos; one of the Cyclades islands (v. 264, 265), in the AEgean
Sea. " According to a legend, founded perhaps on some tradition of its
late volcanic origin, it was called out of the deep by the trident [cf. 'as
with a trident,' 295] of Poseidon [=Neptune], but was a floating island
until Zeus fastened it by adamantine chains to the bottom of the sea,
that it might be a secure resting-place to Leto, for the birth of Apollo
and Artemis."-Classical Dictionary.
296, 297. his look, i.e. like the look of the Gorgons which turned
men into stone.
Gorgonian, petrifying; cf. ii. 6i I, " Gorgonian terror."
298. asphaltic slime, i.e. asphalt or bitumen (cf. 562), such as thai




NOTES.


597


which floats on the surface of the Dead Sea-thence called ' ILake
Asphaltites,' a name said to have been first given it by the historian
Diodorus Siculus (2nd century A.D.). Probably Milton here had in
mind Genesis xi. 3, where the Hebrew word used for this bituminous
substance is rendered ' slime.' The substance is "petroleum hardened
by evaporation and oxidation," and the lumps of it appear in the water
especially after earthquakes. See again 561, 562, note; also I. 411,
XII. 41, 42, notes.
299, 300. deep to the roots...they fastened, i.e. laid the foundation of
the structure.  mole, causeway = Latin moles, used of any massive
structure, e.g. a dam or pier.
Johnson considered that M. had here assigned to Sin and Death
"a work too bulky for ideal architects," i.e. too material for allegorical
figures. Addison had doubted whether " persons of such a chimerical
existence are proper actors in an epic poem," but showed that the
reason why M. introduced them lay in the subject of his poem, i.e. in
the paucity of dramatis persons which it afforded. And he praised
greatly the allegory in book ii., from the point of view of allegory.
305. inoffensive, free from obstacles (Lat. inoffensus); literally, ' not
causing one to offend, i.e. stumble against' (Lat. offendere).
306. if great things... M. has this Vergilian allusion in II. 92t,
922, v. 3o10, 311, P. R. IV. 563, 564.
307-Ii. Alluding to the invasion of Greece by Xerxes B.C. 480.
308. Susa; a Persian city of the province of Susiana and winter
residence of the kings of Persia; see P. R. III. 288. According to
tradition, Susa was founded by Tithonus, the father of Memnon (see Il
Penseroso, I8), and Memnon built its acropolis, called after him the
Memnonium. Susa is the Shushan of Esther i. 2 and Daniel viii. 2,
passages of which perhaps we have an echo in " Memnonian palace."
310o. bridging; with the bridge of boats described by Herodotus
VII. 36. See Mayor's notes on Juvenal x. 173-76.
311. The reference is to the story told by Herodotus (viI. 35), that
Xerxes in his anger at the destruction of his first bridge by a storm
ordered the Hellespont to receive three hundred lashes from a " scourge"
-rpqKOoa'ia K TrtLKerfOaLat lrdoTrry 'rX —ydas-and to have a pair of fetters
thrown into it. Cf. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, 231, 232:
"Fresh praise is try'd till madness fires his mindThe waves he lashes, and enchains the wind"
(said of Xerxes).
indignant; cf. Georg. ii. I6I, 162, REneid VIII. 728 (ponterm indignatus Araxes). See 417, 418.
313. pontifical; literally 'bridge-making' (Lat. pons +facere); cf.




598


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


pontifice, 348. It has been suggested that M. used the word with a
sarcastic allusion to its other sense 'belonging to the Pontiff, i.e. the
Pope.' Cf. I. 795, note.
314. vexed, storm-tost; cf. I. 306, and see Vii. 21-1-5.
316. first lighted. See III. 418-22.
317. The original editions have no comma after " Chaos," and the
construction intended might be "landed to the outside," i.e. on to; but
it seems better to regard the words "to the outside" as a kind of
explanation of "to the self-same place where": taken thus, they define
the place.
323. interposed, i.e. between "the confines" of Heaven and those
of the World. The bridge from Hell touched the outer surface of this
World at the point where (i) the stair from Heaven also touched the
surface, and where (2) the passage led down to the interior of the World.
The bridge therefore resembles the middle one of three roads which
form a junction.
327. in likeness, i.e. "disguised" (330), as in III. 634-44, 694.
328, 329. "Satan, to avoid being discovered (as he had been
before, iv. 569 et seq.) by Uriel regent of the Sun [see IX. 60-62, note],
takes care to keep at as great a distance as possible, and therefore,
'while the sun rose in Aries,' he steers his course directly upwards
'betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion,' two constellations which lay in
a quite different part of the heavens from Aries " (Newton).
steering, steering to. his zenith, i.e. straight upwards, towards that
opening in the surface of the globe through which he had descended
into the interior (III. 526 et seq.) and Sin and Death were about to
descend.
332. after Eve seduced; for the Latinised turn of phrase see 577,
687, and cf. I. 573. unminded, unnoticed, i.e. by Eve.
335. unweeting, ignorant, i.e. of the results of her action, or of
Satan's proximity. M. always (cf. 916) uses this form. seconded,
repeated.
336, 337- Cf. Ix. 1113, 1114.
344, 345. understood, i.e. being understood. The original editions
have a full stop after time in 345, making understood a past tense,
instead of participle, with the subject 'he' omitted. The correction
(Tickell's) seems certain and is generally adopted now.
345, 346. joy and tidings; probably meant as a hendiadys = 'joyful
tidings.'
347, 348. the foot; meaning, of course, the top of the bridge
(" pontifice ").
351. stupendous; in the original editions 'stupendious.'




NOTES.


599


358, 359. Cf. 246.
364. consequence, connection.
370. fortify, build.
372. virtue, courage (Lat. virlus); cf. 1. 320.
374. odds, advantage.
378. doom, judgment, decree.
379. Cf. Satan's own words in iv. Ir —12, where he means that
he rules Hell already and hopes to rule the World, leaving Heaven to
the Almighty.
380, 381. the empyreal bounds, the confines of the Empyrean or
Heaven, which M. here treats as a square (" quadrature ") in allusion to
the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation xxi. 16; previously
he left its shape an undecided question (II. 1048).
orbicular; the World is always spoken of in the poem    as a
globe.
382. try, i.e. and find.
383. the Prince of Darkness; a stereotyped phrase; cf. King Lear,
III. 4. 148, Alrs Well 7That Ends Well, Iv. 5. 44, 45.
386, 387. Alluding to the meaning of Satan, viz. 'Adversary.'
389. empire=" Powers" in 395.
389-91. The sense is-'That have met my triumphal act, my
work, viz. the discovery and conquest of the new World, with your
triumphal act, your glorious work, viz. the construction of this bridge.'
397, 398. See the account in IIi. 561-742 of Satan's own descent
to the Earth, "amongst innumerable stars " (IxI. 565)=" among these
numerous orbs" (397).
399-402. Cf. Satan's promise to Sin in I. 838-44, where he
tells her of the new World to which he is journeying.
409. no detriment. An allusion to the formula conferring supreme
power on the Consuls at Rome in times of great crisis, namely, videant
(or dent operam etc.) consules ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat.
413. " Strike " (='to blast') was the word applied to the evil "influence " which astrologists supposed the planets to exercise on the earth.
Cf. Hamlet, I. i. 162, "The nights are wholesome; then no planets
strike." The belief survives in ' moon-struck.' M. says that the planets
themselves were 'blasted' by bad "influence " as Sin and Death passed
near them.
415. causey, causeway, road.
424. Pandemonium; cf. 1. 756.
425, 426. Cf. VII. 131-34, notes.
426. paragoned, compared; cf. Antony and Cleopatra, I. 5.
71 I, 72:




6oo


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


"If thou with CQesar paragon again
My man of men."
So Drummond in A Cypress Grove, in the passage on the bliss of
the righteous after death: "all pleasure [i.e. on earth], paragoned with
what is here, is pain, all mirth mourning, all beauty deformity" (Works,
II. 279). The literal idea of the noun paragon is 'a model, pattern':
hence the notions ' rival' and ' comparison.' Shakespeare uses the verb
='to excel'-a natural extension of the sense 'rival'; cf. Othello, II.
i. 61-63:
"a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens."
427. the Grand, the great ones (Ital. i grandi), being "the great
consulting peers " (456) who held the council in bk. II.
430. observed, obeyed; cf. I. 588.
431, 432. Cf. the first lines of Milton's History of Moscovia:
"The Empire of Moscovia, or as others call it Russia, is bounded...
on the east by the river Ob, or Oby [see Ix. 78], and the Nagayan
Tartars on the Volga as far as Astracan."
433. Bactrian, Persian, the ancient Bactria or Bactriana having
been a province of the Persian empire; cf. P. R. III. 285.
Sophi, Shah.
from the horns, i.e. retreats before the Turkish armies. "During
the sixteenth century there was continual warfare between the Persians
and the Ottoman Turks, who were the masters of Asia Minor and
Syria" (Keightley).
horns; alluding to the shape-a half-moon or "crescent" of the
ensign of the Turks; cf. Sylvester's Du Bartas, " The moony Standards
of proud Ottoman" (Grosart's ed., I. 31; see also II. 42).
435. Aladzle; the Greater Armenia, so called by the Turks from
Aladules, the last king of the country, slain by the emperor Selim I.
(from Hume's note). A province of " Aliduli" is marked in the map of
the "Turkish Empire" in Hexham's English edition (1636) of Mercator's Atlas. There is reason to believe that M. made use of this
particular Atlas (which has full descriptions as well as maps), and took
from it the names "Namancos" and "Bayona" in Lycidas, 162.
436. Tauris, the modern Tabriz, in the north of Persia; not far
from the Armenian frontier.
Casbeen, Kazvin, north of Teheran, the capital of Persia.
438. reduced, led back; Lat. reducere, 'to lead back,' e.g. troops.
441-5o. Editors compare lEneid I. 439, 440, 586-89.
445. his high throne; described in II. I-4. state, canopy.




NOTES.


6oi


450-52. M. dwells more than once on the "faded splendour"
(IV. 870) of Satan's form.
451. perm -sive. Elizabethan writers treat the termination -ive as
passive in various adjectives. Cf. As You Like It, III. 2. Io, "The
fair, the chaste and unexpressive she," i.e. 'inexpressible.' So "insuppressive," not to be suppressed, Julius Cesar, II. I. 134; and " uncomprehensive," Troilus and Cressida, III. 3. 198.
453. Cf. "the Stygian council" (II. 506), used similarly of Satan's
followers. Milton's whole conception of "Hell" owes much to the
classics; cf. especially II. 575-86 with zEneid vi. 295 et seq.
456. forth rushed; since they sat in council " far within" the palace,
away from the inferior Angels who thronged "the hall" (I. 79I).
457. "The Devils are frequently described by metaphors taken
from the Turks. Satan is called the 'Sultan,' I. 348, as here the
council is styled the ' Divan'" (Newton).
divan, council; cf. Dryden's State of Innocence:
"'tis not fit
Our dark Divan in public view should sit."
The State of Innocence was based on Paradise Lost.  See Introduction.
458, 459. Cf. the picture of a great orator in IX. 670-76. Editors
compare Lucan, Pharsalia I. 297, 298.
461. They have, he says, a double claim to these titles implying
lordship and power: (I) the claim of possession, since they are
now to " possess a spacious World " (466, 467) and be lords thereof;
(2) the claim of ancient right, since these titles belonged to them in
Heaven. The form of the commencement of the speech resembles
II. 11-14, V. 361, 362.
465. the house of woe; repeated from vI. 877.
469. long were to tell; like Lat. longurn est; see I. 507.
470-80. Cf. the description of Satan's journey through Chaos
(="the Deep," 471, "the Abyss," 476) in bk. Ii. 629 et seq.
471. unreal; "because...always changing."
475. uncouth, unknown, strange. M. accents uncouth.
477. unoriginal, having no originator, being itself "eldest of things,"
II. 962.
478-80. Chaos, far from "opposing" his journey, directed him
on his course, II. 1o04-0oo9. He magnifies his exploits to win
"transcendent glory...above his fellows," II. 427, 428.
protesting Fate, i.e. objecting that Fate did not mean the "secrets"
of their realm to be explored thus.
481, 482. Cf. Beelzebub's speech at the infernal council in II. '
345-5 1




602


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


51 2. clung; probably a participle= ' pressed tight.'
513. supplanted; in the literal sense 'tripped up'; from Lat.
supplantare, 'to trip up, to throw a man off his feet'-a wrestler's
term.
514. "( Milton...had no doubt in mind the transformation of Cadmus
in the fourth book of the Metaamorphoses, to which he had alluded
before in IX. 506" (Newton); also Dante, Inferno, xxIv., xxv. (Todd).
Dante's description (canto xxv.) of the transformation of the five
criminals into reptiles is much more detailed than Milton's, and
repulsive.
5I5. reluctant; used literally =' struggling against'; Lat. rehlctari. Cf. 1045.
517. his doom; as pronounced on the Serpent in 175-77.  Cf. the
"Argument" of the book.
521. riot, i.e. rebellion in Heaven; cf. Lat. tumultuzs.
521-28. This passage is perhaps the most striking example of
alliteration and assonance in the poem, the effect being designed partly
to suggest to the ear the actual sound described, partly to convey to
the imagination a sense of the terror of the whole scene. Thus the
repeated sibilant represents the hissing; cf. I. 768, ix. 613. On the
other hand, the repetition of sound in "dreadful," "din," "dire,"
"drear" etc. seems to intensify the horror of the event. A similar,
though less striking, instance of the same effect occurs in XI. 489-92.
523. complicated, twisted, twined together; Lat. complicare, 'to
tie up.'
524. amphisbena; a kind of serpent, supposed to have a head at
either end of its body. Sir Thomas Browne has a chapter (xv.) "Of
the amphisbaena " in his Vulgar Errors, IIi., his conclusion being that
we must crave leave to doubt of this double-headed serpent."
525. cerastes; Gk. Kepda'Ts, 'a   horned snake,' from K9pas, 'a horn.'
Dante describes the Furies as "girt with greenest hydras; for hair,
they had little serpents and cerastes, wherewith their horrid temples
were bound" (Inferno, Ix. 40-42).
hydrus; a water-snake; cf. Gk. ih&p, ' water.'
ellops; Gk. 9XXot, 'mute'; an epithet of fish; then used substantively
for a certain sea-fish (probably the swordfish or sturgeon) and later=
'serpent.'
526. dipsas; a serpent whose bite caused great thirst (Gk. 5i'os),
526, 527. the soil, i.e. Libya in Africa. An allusion to the legend
that as Perseus was bringingback the head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons,
who had hissing snakes instead of hair, drops of her blood fell on the
soil and caused the country to abound with serpents. Ovid touches on




NOTES.


603


the story, Metamorphoses iv. 613-19, while Lucan enumerates the
kinds of serpents, and his account (Pharsalia IX. 700-33) was probably
in Milton's thoughts.
528. Ophiusa; the island of serpents=Gk. 60toraaa, i.e. dlp6Eara,
'abounding in serpents'; a small island in the Mediterranean, to which
the Romans gave the similar name 'Colubraria,' from cohlber, 'a snake,'
adder. Now Formentera, one of the Balearic group.
529. dragon; cf. "the dragon"=Satan in Revelation xii. Gk.
OpCdKWoy, 'serpent.'
529-3r.   Ovid speaks of the monstrous serpent Python, born from
the slime left on the earth by the flood of Deucalion-Metamorphoses I.
434 et seq.
535. in station...orjust array; "either on guard or drawn up in
military array to receive and do him honour" (Keightley). Lat. in
statione, a military term ='on guard'; cf. " stations "= ' sentinels,
pickets,' II. 412. just, regular, due (Lat. justus); cf. 888.
536. sublime= Lat. sublimis in its figurative sense 'uplifted.' Cf.
S. A. I669, " While their hearts were jocund and sublime."
54I. changing, i.e. changing into.
541-45. The partial repetition of the alliterative effect of 521-.
28, to recall and point the likeness to the previous scene of transformation, is surely a very happy device.
546. exploding, driving off the scene.
550. fair; accidentally omitted in the Second Ed.: hence a wrong
reading "like to that," current in later editions till Newton restored the
true text.
560. Meg(era; one of the Eumenides or Furies, who are described
as having serpents twined in their hair.
561, 562. Alluding to the apples of the Dead Sea=(" that bituminous
lake." Cf. Eikonoklastes, 24: " Thus these pious flourishes and colours
[i.e. excuses], examined thoroughly, are like the apples of Asphaltis
[see 298, note], appearing goodly to the sudden eye; but look well upon
them, or at least but touch them, and they turn into cinders."
lake; cf. the other common name for the Dead Sea, viz. 'Lake
Asphaltites.'
565. with gust; as we say, 'with gusto.'
567-70. The sound is meant to echo the sense.
568. drugged, nauseated as "with the hateful taste usually found
in drugs" (Richardson).
572. triumphed, i.e. over. once; emphatic. Man was deceived
(by the Serpent) but "once"; the serpents were duped "oft."
lapsed; a preterite, I think; 'fell into error.'




604


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


572, 573. The original editions read:
"Thus were they plagu'd
And worn with famin, long and ceaseless hiss."
It seems to me simplest to suppose that the printer misplaced the comma
after " famine "; if we put it after " long," then " famine " and " hiss "
(a noun) are balanced with their respective epithets, and the balance
gives an admirable rhythm, while the turn of phrase " worn with famine,
and hiss" is quite characteristic. Keightley printed:
"Thus were they plagued;
And, worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss";
taking " hiss " as a verb. Other editors have followed him (some placing
a comma instead of a semicolon after "plagued "). This interpretation
appears to me to be open to several objections. It rather implies that
the "famine" was the cause of the hissing; involves a most awkward
change from the past tense in 572 to the present in 573 and then back to
the past in 574, and yields, surely, an unpleasant rhythm.
575-77. No doubt, M. had some authority for this tradition,
but editors have failed to find it. The nearest approach to it known
to Newton was the speech of the Fairy Manto in Ariosto's Orlando
Furioso, XLIII. 98:
"Each sev'nth day we constrained are to take
Upon ourselves the person of a snake" (I-Iarrington's trans.).
some say; a convenient phrase, under cover of which he can
mention theories, yet avoid the responsibility of accepting them. Cf.
668, 671, Ix. 638.
578. We must remember that according to the ordinary patristic
and mediaeval belief which M. accepted (see Appendix, pp. 672-74), the
fallen Angels became the gods of classical mythology: hence there might
well be among "the heathen" some tradition of the story of Eve and
the Serpent. So M. identifies the Serpent (Satan) with Ophion (cf.
Gk. 6l0is, 'a serpent '), one of the Titans and the first ruler of Olympus;
and suggests that Eurynome, the daughter of Oceanus and wife of
Ophion, may have been the same as Eve. Newton showed that in the
allusion to Ophion and Eurynome M. had in his thoughts a passage of
the Argonautica (i. 503-509) of Apollonius Rhodius.
579. purchase, prey, i.e. mankind. In Comus, 607, "And force
him to return his purchase back," the first version (Cambridge IMS.)
has "And force him to release his new got prey."
58r, 582. wide-encroaching.  "Some epithet should be added to
Eve to shew the similitude between her and Eurynome, and why he
takes the one for the other; and therefore in allusion to the name
Eurynome [=' wide-ruling'] he styles Eve 'the wide-encroaching,' as




NOTES.


605


extending her rule and dominion farther than she should over her
husband, and affecting godhead" (Newton).
584.  Ops, the wife of Saturn. Dicezan, Cretan, from Dicte, a
mountain of Crete in which island Jupiter was brought up. The legend
that Zeus (Jupiter) expelled Cronos (Saturn) from Olympus (I. 516,
vlI. 3, 7), the ' heaven' of later classical mythology, and from sovereignty
over gods and men, is touched on in I1 Penseroso, 30.
586, 587. in power, potentially.
actual, the cause of an act, viz. Eve's act of disobedience. No
doubt, M. is alluding to the theological term "actual sin," which he
defines as "crime itself, or the act of sinning," and discusses in The
Christian Doctrine, I.  I (P. 1Z. Iv. 262).  Compare the PrayerBook, "Articles of Religion," xxxi.
588-90. Cf. Rev. vi. 8, "And I looked, and behold a pale horse:
and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
59I. second; Sin herself was first.
60o. unhide-bound, with the skin hanging loose about it, hence
capable of containing much.
606. scythe; the traditional attribute of Time and Death. Cf.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 12, "And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can
make defence."
616-40. This speech is noticeable as not being so Biblical in
character as most of those which M. assigns to the Almighty.
616, 617. M. seems to have had in his thoughts Julius Cesar, III.
I. 273, " Cry ' Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war." The phrase 'cry
" havoc,"' imitated from 0. Fr. crier havot, was an old military term for
'giving no quarter,' i.e. it was the signal for indiscriminate slaughter;
so that "to havoc yonder world " was an even stronger expression then
than it is now. dogs of Hell; cf. II. 653-59.
623. enter andpossess; "terms of English law" (Keightley). For
possess=' take possession of' cf. Romeo andJuliet, III. 2. 27.
624. conniving, tolerating, permitting, them.
632. cramme'd; suitable to the context; but in Comus, 713, Milton's
unerring taste substituted throntging for the first reading:
"Cramming the seas wth spawne innumerable."
638. Heaven and Earth = the World, as often in Scripture.
made pure, i.e. by fire, according to 2 Peter iii. 7, 10-13.  See ilI.
333-35.    In The Christian Doctrine, I. 33, lie treats of "the
destruction of the present unclean and polluted world, namely, its
final conflagration" (P. W. Iv. 488).
640. precedes; "shall go before those ravagers Sin and Death, and
shall direct and lead them on" (Newton). But might not the sense be




6o6


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


' has precedence = prevails,' the notion being that "the curse" has power
for a time but will in the end be annulled? Bentley suggested proceeds,
i.e. goes on, continues.
642. as the sound, resembling the sound, by reason of the multitude
of voices; being even "as the voice of many waters," Revelation
xix. 6. Cf. v. 872, 873.
643, 644. Cf. Revelation xv. 3, xvi. 7. To "justify the ways of
God to men" (I. 26) was Milton's aim in composing Paradise Lost.
645. extenuate, weaken; properly ' make slight' (Lat. tennis).
647, 648. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth...And the
holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven "Revelation xxi. i, 2; see also verse io and note "descending."
to the ages, i.e. for the succeeding ages. rise, i.e. from the conflagration.
650. his mighty Angels; meaning, probably, "the seven Spirits"
of God "which are before his throne" and execute his commands on
Earth. See the description of them in III. 648-53. Of these Uriel
was one.
65I. In The Christian Doctrine, I. I3, he says, "All nature is
subject to mortality and a curse on account of man "; and that thought
is the basis of this long passage dealing with the deterioration in the
physical Universe which followed the Fall of Man. The main Scriptural
authority for this thought which M. quotes is Genesis iii. 17, "cursed is
the ground for thy sake."  The idea comes in Drummond's "Hymn of
the Fairest Fair," 263-84 (Flowers of Sion). Cf. also the third draft
of Milton's contemplated tragedy of Paradise Lost, in the outline of the
action of Act v. Cf. ix. I32, I33.
656. blanc, ' pale' (Fr. blanc, ' white').
657. the otherfive, i.e. planets.
658-62. On the astrological terms in these lines, see pp. 69i, 692.
the fixed, i.e. stars; see III. 48I, note.
663. which of them; e.g. Orion "with fierce winds...armed," I. 305.
665. their corners, their respective quarters. when, i.e. and also
the times when. confound, mingle, make undistinguishable.
666. The winds are said to "roll the thunder" because they " roll"
the clouds which cause the thunder.
668-78. Dr Masson explains: "It is poetically assumed here
that, before the Fall, the ecliptic or Sun's path was in the same plane as
the Earth's equator, and that the present obliquity of the two planes, or
their intersection at an angle of 23i~, was a modification of the physical
Universe for the worse, consequent upon the moral evil introduced by
sin. But this physical alteration might be produced in either of two




NOTES.


607


ways: either by pushing askance the axis of the Earth the required
distance, leaving the Sun undisturbed; or by leaving the Earth undisturbed and compelling the Sun to deviate the required distance (' like
distant breadth ') from his former equatorial or equinoctial path. To
indicate what ' the like distant breadth' would amount to, Milton follows
the Sun in imagination after his deviation from the equatorial line:
tracing him, first, in his ascent north of the equator, through the constellations Taurus (in whose neck are the Pleiades, called the Seven
Atlantic Sisters, as being mythologically the daughters of Atlas) and
Gemini (called 'the Spartan twins,' as representing Castor and Pollux,
the twin-sons of Tyndarus, King of Sparta), up to his extreme distance
from the equator at the Crab, in the Tropic of Cancer; then returning
with him in his descending path by Leo and Virgo, till he again touches
the equator at Libra; and, for the rest, simply suggesting his similar
deviation from the equator to the south by naming the Tropic of
Capricorn as the farthest point reached on that side....He [Milton]
gives the larger space to the hypothesis of a change of the Sun's
path."
671. the centric globe, the Earth, the centre of the Universe,
according to the Ptolemaic system.
676. the Scales= Libra (II. 558).
678, 679. He has previously said that before the Fall only one
season was known in Eden, viz. "eternal spring," iv. 268: a view
held by some of the Church Fathers. See also v. 394, 395. When
Dante reaches the Garden of Eden he is told (Purgatorio, xxviII. 142,
143): "Here the root of man's race was innocent; here spring is everlasting, and every kind of fruit" (cf. v. 341). Classical mythology
spoke similarly of the Golden Age; see 7he Advancement of Learning,
II. 20. 9, where editors cite Ovid, iMelamorprhoses I. o07 (ver erat
aternum, etc.).
680-84. "If the Sun were to be always in the equator, there
could never be night at the poles, the sun going round and round
continually in the horizon" (Keightley).
685-87. i.e. the sun would have prevented the snow stretching
so far southward from the North Pole as it does at present, and conversely
an equal distance northward from the South Pole.
Estotiland; an old name, applied not very precisely, to the part of
North America lying between Baffin's Bay and Hudson's Bay. The
description (II. 436) of the chief provinces of North America in Hexham's
Mercator (1636) mentions both "Estotilandia" and " Norumbega"
(see 696).
Maagellan, i.e. the Strait of, in South America; named after the
Portuguese navigator Magelhaens.




608


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


688. An allusion to the story of the revenge taken by Atreus,
king of Mycenae, on his brother Thyestes, who had wronged him and
been banished: how " Atreus, pretending to be reconciled to Thyestes,
recalled him to Mycenae, killed his two sons, and placed their flesh
before their father at a banquet, who unwittingly partook of the horrid
meal "-(Classical Dictionary). This spectacle is said to have caused the
sun to turn aside, and M. suggests that the feasting on the forbidden
fruit worked a like effect.
Thyestean; I think that M. intended us to scan ' Thyest(e)an,' eliding
the e of the termination, instead of accentuating it according to the
correct rendering ' Thyestean.' Good critics, e.g. Mr Bridges, recognise
a similar scansion in S. A. 133, "' Chal'yb(e)an temlper'd steel, and frock
of mail"-instead of 'Chalybean.' Dr Abbot scans 'Epicurean' in
Antony and Cleopatra, II. i. 24, and says that "the Elizabethans
generally did not accent the e in such words."
689-91. i.e. the sun's course before the Fall must have differed
from its present course: otherwise the World would not have escaped
extremes of heat and cold then any more than it does now.
693. sideral, of the stars (Lat. sidelra). blast, i.e. blasting" influence."
696. Norumbega; an obsolete name for a great tract comprehending
in modern nomenclature southern Canada and the northern states of
America, e.g. New York and Maine. "Norumbega" is marked thus
both in Hexham's general map of America and also in that of " New
England." In Milton's time the application of names to these distant
regions was rather vague.
the Samoed shore, i.e. the shore of north-eastern Siberia, near the
Gulf of Obi in the Arctic Ocean. In Milton's History of Moscovia is a
chapter on " Samoedia, Siberia, and other countries north-east, subject
to the Muscovites," P. W. v. 403, 404; with references to Purchas's
Pilgrimage.
697. their brazen dungeon; suggested perhaps by the prison of the
winds guarded by AEolus; cf. Eneid I. 52 et seq.
698. flaw, a gust of wind. "Gust and flaw" seems to have been
a common combination; cf. Venus and Adonis, 456.
699, 700. Boreas, the north wind; Cezcias, the north-east, Gk.
KLKIals. Cf. Holland's translation (1603) of Plutarch's Morals, "like
unto the north-east winde Ccecias, which evermore gathereth the clouds
unto it" (p. 379, quoted in the Stanford Dictionary). Argestes, the
north-west wind; Thrascias, the north-north-west; Gk. OpaKilas, also
spelt OpaKdas, i.e. the wind that blew from Thrace.
702. Notus, the south wind; Afer, the south-west; lit. 'the
African' (Lat. afer), i.e. wind; cf. creber procellis Africus —EEneid
I. 85, 86.




NOTES.


609


703. Serraliona, i.e. Sierra Leone, off the west coast of Africa;
literally the ' Lioness Mountain,' from Spanish sierra, 'a saw,' hence 'a
jagged mountain ridge or chain of mountains,' and leona, 'a lioness.' It
was evidently proverbial for storms; cf. Hexham's Mercator, II. 426:
" Sierra Liona is...a very high Mount, the toppe whereof is continually
hidde with snowe: from whence there comes fearefull noises, and great
tempest."
703-706. To heighten the confusion of the contest between the
winds from the north (699, 700) and those from the south (701, 702),
there rush forth to the fray winds from either side, viz. Eurus, the east
wind, and Sirocco, the south-east: Zephyrus, the west wind, and
Libecchio, the south-west.
704. Levant and Ponent; the rising and setting winds, i.e. those
which come from the quarters where the sun respectively rises and sets.
From Fr. levant and ponent, used thus. Cf. levant=' sunrise,' e.g. in
Holland's Pliny (I60o), xvIII. 33, "the Sunne rising or Levant of that
day." A later word, with the same sense, is levanter.
705. with their lateral noise; qualifying, I think, "Eurus and
Zephyr," as being "lateral" in relation to the north and south winds;
but some editors connect the words with " Sirocco, and Libecchio " as
describing their relation to " Eurus and Zephyr."
706. Sirocco... Libecchio; Italian names (whereas all the others in
the passage are classical), the two winds being peculiar to the shores of
the Mediterranean and the south of Europe. Ital. sirocco, from Arabic
sharq, 'east.'
710-I4.   Previously (Iv. 340-47) the beasts had known neither
strife among themselves nor fear of man.
7I1. "It was [Milton's] notion that beast, fowl, and fish [all]
grazed the herb before the Fall" (Newton). Cf. Gen. i. 30, and see
P. L. VII. 403, 404.
714-17.   Newton well remarks on the skill with which the
transition to Adam again is effected. " We have seen great alterations
produced in nature, and it is now time to see how Adam is affected with
them, and whether the disorders within are not even worse than those
without."
718.    The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest,"
Isaiah lvii. 20. Todd quotes from one of Milton's minor pamphlets,
Colasterion: " Tost and tempested in a most unquiet sea of afflictions
and temptations" (P. W. III. 450); and remarks: "The sea of sorrou,
or of evils, is a frequent expression in the Greek and Latin, as well
as in our own, poets."  Cf. KaKiUv r-Xa-yos in AEschylus, Perse 433,
and the famous line in Hamlet (iII. I. 59).


P. L.


39




6io


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


In The Reason of Church Government, it., M. speaks of himself
giving up the quiet life of a student, " to embark in a troubled sea of
noises and hoarse disputes " (i.e. politics and controversy)-P. W. n. 48 1.
719. disburden, himself. "A metaphor taken from a ship in a
tempest, unlading, disburdening, to preserve itself from sinking by
its weight" (Richardson). The metaphor follows naturally on line
718. Cf. Richard IT. II. I. 228, 229:
"My heart is great; but it must break with silence,
Ere't be disburden'd with a liberal tongue."
720. miserable of happy; on this idiom see iv. 153 (note); cf. 723.
723. theface. Cf. IX. I080-82.
728, 729. "Meat and drink propagate it ['curse'] by prolonging
life, and children by carrying it on to posterity" (Newton).
In his Essay on Milton (see I. 261-63, note), William Lauder
translated these lines into quod comedo, polo, gigno, diris subjacet, and
pretended that the Latin occurred in the tragedy of Adamus Exul
1i6oi)-a very rare work-of the jurist Grotius. Two lines earlier in
this book (6i6, 617) were derived by Lauder from an equally fictitious
hexameter-infernique canes populantur cuncta creata-ascribed to a
work published in I654 by a certain Jacobus Masenius, professor in the
Jesuits' College at Cologne.
729, 730. Genesis i. 28. See VII. 530, 53I.
736. See v. 396, note.
737. the execration, i.e. " Ill fare our Ancestor impure!" 735. Cf.
82I, 822.
738. mine own; the only noun to which these words can well refer
is " curses" (732), but the sense is 'afflictions, evils.'
all from me, all the afflictions derived from me, i.e. those of his
descendants.
739. redound; in the literal sense ' flow back' (Lat. redundare).
The metaphor is changed in the next line (" light "). Some editions
misprint rebound.
740, 741. "These curses, though lighting on him their centre, will
weigh heavy, though according to the laws of physics they should not
weigh anything there, the weight of bodies being only their tendency
to the centre " (Keightley). Critics have censured the style as forced
and colloquial (cf. 736).
743. Isaiah xlv. 9.
748. equal, fair (Lat. cequus). reduce; in the literal sense 'to bring
back' (Lat. reducere), i.e. to the dust of which Adam was made.
758. thou didst; addressing himself, not his Maker, as in 743-55.
The abrupt transitions show his emotion.




NOTES.


6II


762. Isaiah xlv. Io.
773. this day; Adam should have said " tlhat day"-cf. 49, 21o.
The time of the action of this book is the day after Adam's sin. Cf.
the time references in 329 (" the sun rose ") and 342 (" by night ").
778. my mother's lap; a curious expression from Adam's lips; see
XI. 536.
783. all; cf. -Iorace's non omnis moriar-Odes III. 30. 6 (said,
however, in a different connection, viz. in reference to the immortality
conferred by his poetry).
784, 785. Genesis ii 7. Horace calls the breath of life divine particulam aurce (Sat. II. 2. 79). inspired; in the literal sense 'breathed.'
788. a living deatlh; a proverbial phrase; cf. S. A. too, " To live
a life half dead, a living death." So in Richard I I. I. 2. 153; Lucrece,
726.
789-92. The spirit, Adam is made to argue, constitutes life (cf.
"pure breath of life") and the spirit alone "sinned": the body is mere
' dust," a "clod," and as such " properly hath neither" life nor sin:
therefore "death," as the annihilation of life and punishment of sin,
must mean the death of the spirit. So the "end" (797) will be not
merely the dissolution of the mortal body into its dust but annihilation
of the whole being-" all of me shall die."
The subject is discussed in The Christian Doctrine, I. 13.
798-801. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 2, where, treating of the
"omnipotence" of the Almighty, he says, "It must be remembered
that the power of God is not exerted in things which imply a contradiction"; he quotes 2 Timothy ii. I3, Hebrews vi. I8. It was a doctrine
on which medieval theologians dwelt.
806-808. all causes else...  " All other agents act in proportion to
the reception or capacity of the subject-matter, and not to the utmost
extent of their own power [' sphere']. An allusion to the axiom: omne
efficiens agit secundum vires recipientis, non suas (Newton). So, Adam
argues, he cannot be punished after death because death is the utmost
punishment that he has the capacity to suffer: with death that capacity
ends.
8Io. bereaving sense; cf. "insensible," 777.
812. without, outside; cf. Macbeth, III. I. 47, "They are, my lord,
without the palace gate."
8i6. am; attracted to the nearer and, in Adam's view, more
important subject "I." incorporate; cf. Romans vii. 20.
832. me, m'e. Cf. 936 and Vergil's line me, me,-adsum, qui feci,in me convertile ferrum — Eneid IX. 427.
840. past example, i.e. of the fallen Angels.
39-2




6I2


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


842. In each of Milton's drafts of a tragedy on the theme of
"Paradise Lost," Conscience is one of the abstract dramatis personce.
852-59. Cf. 923, note.
858. Death comes not at call. Cf. XI. 491-93.
858, 859. Newton compares Horace's pede Paena claudo-Odes III.
2. 32.
860. Todd shows that this form of invocation is " after the manner
of the Italian poets." Cf. too Tennyson's cEnone.
86r, 862. other...other; a favourite form of emphasis with M. Cf.
Comus, 612, 613:
"Far other arms and other weapons must
Be those that quell the might of hellish charms ";
and Lycidas, 174. Cf. the Inferno, III. 9r, 92, where Charon refuses
to convey Dante across the great river of hell: "By other ways,
by other ferries, not here, shalt thou pass over" (per altra via, per altri
porti). So Marvell in Upon the Hill at Billborow:
"'Much other groves,' say they, 'than these,
And other hills, him once did please"';
and in his beautiful little poem The Garden; and Tennyson in Tithonus:
"Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch!"
M. uses the artifice in his prose; cf. On Education, P. W. III. 474.
song; cf. "their vocal worship," ix. 198, 199 (note).
872, 873. pretended to; literally 'stretched before,' Lat. praetentus;
hence 'serving as a screen to, masking.'
883. understood; the subject " I " is easily supplied from 880.
886. sinister; used quibblingly in its literal sense 'left'-a reference
to the tradition that the rib out of which Eve was fashioned was taken
from Adam's left side (vIII. 465, note)-and also in the figurative sense
'unlucky.'
Scan sinister, as in Henry V. II. 4. 85, "'Tis no sinister nor no
awkward claim."    This accentuation survived at least as late as
Dryden; cf. The Hind and the Panther, III. 492:
"In which sinister destinies ordain
A dame should drown with all her feathered train."
In M., as in Shakespeare and Elizabethan writers generally, many
words bear the original Latin (and French) accent which later has
yielded to the Teutonic tendency to shift the accent on to an earlier
syllable.
887, 888. It was an old belief that Adam as created had thirteen
ribs on the left side and that Eve was formed out of the extra one.




NOTES.                          613
888-98. Editors cite similar passages from other poets, in particular a close parallel from Milton's favourite writer Euripides, viz.
Hippolytls 6i6 et seq. See the chorus io0o-60 in S. A.
898-906. The passage is like a commentary on the proverbial line,
"The course of true love never did run smooth," A l11idsuzmmer-Night's
Dream, I. I. 134. That M. when he wrote the lines was thinking of
the circumstances of his own first marriage cannot be doubted.
904-906. A personal allusion appears to be intended. Edward
Phillips, the poet's nephew and one of his biographers, states that after
Milton's first wife refused to live with him he paid much attention to a
Miss Davis (possibly the lady addressed in his Sonnet "To a Virtuous
young Lady "); so that " too late " represented his own experience.
Probably "already linked, and wedlock-bound" refers to " he," and
"fell adversary" to his wife, now a source of "hate or shame" to him;
but the sense might be that the man meets "his happiest choice"
after she is "linked" to his enemy, which state of things occasions
him " hate or shame."
921. forlorn of; cf. Tennyson's (Enone:
" Hither came at noon
Mournful CEnone, wandering forlorn
Of Paris."
923. scarce one short hour; in her grief she, like Adam (852-59),
forgets the words of their Judge which clearly showed that "the instant
stroke of death" was "removed far off" (2I0, 211). Contrast 962,
963.
937-46. Probably Milton's reconciliation with his own wife was
present to his thoughts; cf. S. A. 1003-1007:
"Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possessed, nor can be easily
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt,
And secret sting of amorous remorse."
959. elsewhere, at " the place " (cf. 932, 953, 1098, 1099), where
their Judge appeared to them and pronounced their sentence; or
perhaps he means 'in Heaven.'
978. as in our evils, considering that we are in such evils; Lat. ut.
Richardson aptly quotes from Cicero's letters Adfamiliares XII. 2, nonnihil, ut in tantis malis, est profectum. Cf. IX. o091.
979. descent; abstract for concrete; 'descendants.'
987. prevent, anticipate, forestall.
989. In the early editions the words "so Death" were placed at
the beginning of 99o; doubtless an error, since there is no other instance




614


PARADISE LOST. BOOK X.


in the poem of a short line (as 989 would be without the two words), or
of an Alexandrine.
996. the present object, the object of your love who is present.
1004-1oo6. and have.     'Though we have the power, through
choosing the quickest of the many ways of dying, to destroy destruction
(i.e. Death's future work of destroying mankind) by destroying ourselves.'
1032-I035.   Contrast 169-73 (with notes).
1045. reluctance, struggling.
1046-48.   Cf. 96, " the mild Judge "; and 1094-96.
1053, Io54. He means that the curse in 198-208 applied more to
the ground than to himself; so he says quibblingly that it ' glanced' off
him and 'fell to the ground,' e.g. like an arrow that just grazes the
object aimed at.
io65. this mountain; see the note on IV. 134.
o166. shattering. Cf. Lycidas, 5, " Shatter your leaves before the
mellowing year"; where shatter is one of Milton's many felicities of
alteration, displacing the prosaic word crop.
locks. Cf. Lat. comta with its two senses, 'hair' and 'foliage.' See
Horace, Odes IV. 7. - (arboribusque comae).
io68. shroud, shelter.
o069. this...star, the sun; 'the day-star' (cf. "diurnal"), as it
was sometimes called in contrast to the other heavenly bodies.
Cf. Lycidas, I68, and Sylvester's Du Bartas, " While the bright daystar rides his glorious round," Grosart's ed., I. 143. (But commonly
"day-star" meant the morning-star, Lucifer.)
o070. how, i.e. to see how; understood from seek in Io67.
I07I. foment, keep warm. M. uses the word in allusion to its
(ultimate) derivation from Lat. fovere, 'to warm'; cf. Lat. fomes,
'tinder, touchwood.' Editors cite rEncid I. 174-76.
They are to try to reflect the sun's rays in some mirror-like substance
so as to kindle dry leaves and grasses, etc.
1072, 1073. "He seems to suppose that in the collision of two
bodies, as two flints or a flint and steel, it is the air that yields the fire"
(Keightley). attrile, worn by friction; Lat. attritns. The idea is
Lucretian.
as late; referring to the changes in the elements (65I et seq.).
I075. tine, kindle. thwart, flashing across the sky. Probably
he alludes to one of the theories as to the origin of fire on earth which
Lucretius gives, v. I091-94, viz. that it came through the thunderbolt
and lightning.
Io8. prayinhg; conditional. of grace, for mercy, pardon.
Io85. native home; cf. 206-208.




NOTES.


615


o091. frequenzing,  filling (Lat. frequentare).  Cf. frequent=
'crowded' (frequens), I. 797.
IO98-I104. For a similar instance of repetition (a figure imitated
from the classics) cf. iv. 641-56, vii. 26 (note), Comnus, 221-24.
prostratefell. It is curious that the next book begins
"Thus they, in lowliest plight, repentant stood
Praying."
BOOK XI.
r, 2. stoodpraying.  Either this means 'continued praying,' or MI.
has forgotten x. o199. In The Christian Doctrine, II. 4, he cites
2 Chronicles xx. 5, and Luke xviii. 13, as illustrations of standing to
pray (P. W. v. 34, 35). See IV. 720.
the mercy-seat above. Cf. a beautiful passage in the treatise Of
Reformation in England, II.: "had God been so minded, he could
have sent a spirit of mutiny amongst us [the English and Scots]...but
he, when we least deserved, sent out a gentle gale and message of
peace from the wings of those his cherubims that fan his mercy-seat"
(P. W. II. 406). See XII. 252-54.
3. prelvenient grace. Cf. the Collect, " We pray thee that thy grace
may always prevent and follow us."
3-5. An allusion to Ezekiel xi. 19, "and I will take the stony
heart out.of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh" (see also
xxxvi. 26). the stony; an example of the frequent substantival use of
adjectives in M.
5-8. An allusion to Romans viii. 26, "the Spirit itself maketh
intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." M. had
used the same reference many years before; cf. Eikonoklastes, i6:
"Though we know not what to pray as we ought, yet he with sighs
unutterable by any words, much less by a stinted liturgy, dwelling in us
makes intercession for us."
8. yet; referring back to line I-' though they were in lowly plight,
yet was their demeanour not mean.' port, bearing; as in IV. 869.
1o-14. The Greek story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, his wife,
corresponds to the Scriptural account of the Flood (cf. Coriolanus,
II. i.  02o, The Winter's Tale, IV. 4. 441). They were the only
survivors from the Deluge, and they consulted the sanctuary of Themis,
goddess of custom and equity, how the race of man should be re



6i6


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


stored. Ovid tells the tale, Metamorphoses I. 260 et seq., and M. is
thinking of his version.
Bishop Hall has the quaint couplet (Satires, v. 3):
" 0 happy dayes of old Deucalion,
When one was landlord of the world alone."
ii. fables. Cf. I. i97, note, II. 627, S. A. 500.
I4. stood. In Ovid's account (375, 376), procumbit uterque Pronus
zumi.
I4-i6. M. is glancing at his own description of the Limbo or
Paradise of Fools, the region into which foolish men who think to
reach Heaven by wrong means are, just "at foot of Heaven's ascent,"
blown clean away by a violent gust. See III. 485-89.
flew up; cf. Hamlet, III. 3. 97, 98. So in Eikonoklastes, I6,
speaking of the disadvantage (as he thought) of using a set form of
prayers in worship, M. says: "The prayer having less intercourse and
sympathy with a heart wherein it was not conceived, saves itself the
labour of so long a journey downward [i.e. into the heart], and flying up
in haste on the specious wings of formality, if it fall not back again
headlong, instead of a prayer which was expected, presents God with
a set of stale and empty words."
i7. dimensionless, i.e. as being spiritual, not material.
17-20. M. has followed Revelation viii. 3, 4 very closely; cf. also
ix. 13, and Ps. cxli. 2.
28. manuring, tending, cultivating; cf. IV. 628.
3I. sighs.. mute. It has been noted that the expression mula
suspiria occurs in Statius, Thebais xi. 604.
33. " And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins,"
i John ii. i, 2.
40, 41. Cf. x. 76, 77.
44. Alluding to John xvii.; cf. especially verses ii and 2 1-23.
50-53. Everything in Eden being pure would reject the pollution
in Adam. There may be a reference to Leviticus xviii. 25, " the land
is defiled...and itself vomiteth out her inhabitants."
56. of incorrujt, from the state of being incorrupt; for the idiom,
see Iv. 153, x. 720, XII. 167.
60. eternize, make everlasting; in VI. 374, the word has its commoner Elizabethan sense ' to immortalize,' especially with poetry.
64. Cf. xiI. 427.
67. Synod, meeting; see VI. i56. The word has retained its
ecclesiastical associations.
73-76. Cf. vi. 6o (where the "ethereal trumpet from on high"




NOTES.


617


sounds the signal of march to the hosts of Heaven against Satan and his
followers), XII. 227-30, and the third Elegy, 60 (Pura triumphali
personat acthra tuba).
The Biblical references are to the giving of the ten commandments
to Moses on Sinai, Exod. xix. I6-19, and to "the last trump,"
mentioned in the New Testament, e.g. in I Cor. xv. 52. M. qualifies
("perhaps") his suggestion that the trumpet may be the same. The
whole passage is anticipated in the Nativity Ode, I55-64.
74. in Oreb. Contrast I. 6, 7, where, as regards the form Oreb,
not Horeb, Mr Beeching compares the similar case, Ebrezw instead
of Hebrew, in S. A. 308.
77. regions, realms of air; cf. "the airy region thrilling," Nalivity
Ode, I03; see VII. 425.
78. Pope (Cecilia's Day, v.) recollected Milton.
The amaranth is a type of immortality, because &lcdpaCvros ('unwithering'), and therefore placed by M. in Heaven. See the fine
passage in III. 353-59, where he tells us that this flower once flourished
in Eden "by the tree of life," and then, after man's offence, "to
Heaven removed."   Cf. Tennyson, Romney's Remorse:
"Ah, my white heather only grows in heaven,
With Milton's amaranth."
79. Cf. III. 357, 358, note.
80. Cf. the "sweet societies" of "the saints above" in Lycidas,
178, I79.
86. defended, forbidden.
go. contrite, as always in M.; cf. "Be penitent, and for thy fault
contrite," S. A. 502. The accent shows the influence of the Latin.
91-93. Keightley thought that there was a break in the sense, or
that some word had been omitted. But the meaning seems to be,
'I know man's variableness after my influences cease to work in him.'
93-98. Genesis iii. 22, 23.
99. Michael had not yet been chosen for the discharge of any
duty in the action of the poem, as had Gabriel (bk. Iv.) and Raphael
(bk. v.). But he had been mentioned in bk. VI. as playing a great part
in the battle in Heaven, and it was natural therefore that some share in
the actual conduct of the story should be assigned to him (Newton).
Michael's name occurs in both Milton's first lists of dramatis persona'
(see the Introduction), whereas neither list has Gabriel or Raphael.
o05. remorse, pity; in Shakespeare the usual sense is 'pity, tenderness of heart.' Cf. The Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 20, "show thy
mercy and remorse." So in i. 605, IV. o09.




6i8


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


io6. denounce, announce, proclaim, with the notion of hostility or
menace. Cf. 815, and II. io6.
III. excess, transgression; cf. II. 696.
II8-22.   Genesis iii. 24; cf. xII. 590-93, 626-36.
128, I29. The description of the Cherubim accords with the account
in the vision of Ezekiel (see chaps. i. and x.). For their office as the
sentinels of Paradise Lost, see p. 681.
double, because the Latin divinity Janus was commonly represented
with two faces; cf. Vergil,,En. viI. I80, Janique bifrontis imago.
In the Areopagitica M. speaks of " the temple of Janus, with his two
controversial faces," P. W. II. 96. Janus sometimes appears as quadrifrons, i.e. with four faces.
I30-33. Argus, the hundred-eyed monster who was set by Hera
(Juno) to watch over Io; some of his eyes watched while the others
rested. Hermes (Mercury) soothed him to sleep with music, and killed
him. Cf. the fine passage describing the approach of Dulness, at the
end of The Dunciad:
"As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after art goes out, and all is night."
Dante describes the eyes of Argus as the pitiless eyes which could keep
awake longer than others (Purgatorio, xxxII. 64-66). Milton applies
the story of Io watched by Argus in his treatise Of Reformalion in
England, II. (P. W. II. 391).
more wakeful than to; an imitation of the Greek use of a comparative followed by ij Wo-re with the infinitive-in which idiom WSrre
is sometimes omitted.
to drowse charmed, to drowse under the charm of the pipe, as had
Argus. Cf. the end of the preface to The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce: "the Jews...thought it too much license to follow freely tihe
charming pipe of him who sounded and proclaimed liberty and relief to
all distresses"-i.e. Christ; and P. R. II. 363.
Arcadian, because "famous Arcady" (Arcades, 28) was the ideal
poets' land of "pastoral" life; cf. the title of Milton's poem, not to
mention Sidney's Arcadia.
pastoral reed; the shepherd's pipe or syrinx which Hermes was said
to have invented, after he invented the lyre. The Dauphin in Henry V.
III. 7. I6-19, in his extravagant praise of his horse, says: "the earth




NOTES.


619


sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical
than the pipe of Hermes."
opiate rod; his wand or caduceus, made of olive-wood and entwined
with two serpents (cf. Troilus and Cressida, II. 3. 13, 14), which conferred sleep on whomsoever he wished; described in The Faerie Queene,
II. 12. 41. Cf. Jonson, Love's Triutmph:
"The rod and serpents of Cyllenius (i.e. Hermes)
Bring not more peace than these";
and Sir Thomas Browne, Christian AM3orals, II. xiii.: "The Egyptians
were merciful contrivers, who destroyed their malefactors by asps,
chanring their senses into an invincible sleep, and killing as it were
with Hermes's rod."
Keightley notes that opiate is probably a reminiscence of Ovid,
Mletamorphoses I. 7i6, where the rod is medicata, i.e. steeped in drugs.
The word does not come elsewhere in M., except in the MS. of Comus,
696, where "the Lady" calls the magic draught of Comus his hel brewd
[i.e. Hell-brewed] opiate, for which M. substituted brewd enchauntments.
I33-36. meanwhile. This is the last day of the action of P. L.,
which Newton makes to cover eleven days.
135. The Greek Leucothea, the white or bright (XEUK6S) goddess,
was identified by the Romans with their deity Matuta or Mater Matuta,
the goddess of the dawn. Lucretius, v. 655, speaks of Matuta ushering
in the dawn; this office M. transfers to Leucothea (for whom see also
Comus, 875).
140o. i.e. which feeling (viz. of joy) made him address Eve again.
But Keightley takes it quite differently-' which feelings of hope and
joy his words renewed in, brought back to, the mind of Eve.'
I55. Genesis iii. I5; see x. 179-81, XII. I48-5I, 233-35.
I57. "And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past,"
I Samuel xv. 32.
I59, i60. Alluding to Gen. iii. 20, "And Adam called his wife's
name Eve; because she was the mother of all living." Cf. Iv. 475, 492
The name is said to mean ' life.'
I62. sad demeanour meek; Milton's favourite word-order; see
IL 733 (note).
172. now, i.e. since the time when the judgment was pronounced
upon Adam, Genesis iii. I7-19.
174, I75. Newton compares i Henry IV. IIi. I. 221, 222:
"The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Begins his golden progress in the east."
I82. subscribed, agreed, assented; the metaphor of signing a
document. Cf. S. A. I535.




620


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


I82-90. Illustrations of the deterioration in the Universe; see
x. 651, note, and cf. x. 706 — 2.
I82-207. In IX. 782-84 (see note) Milton makes Nature "give
signs of woe " when Eve plucks the forbidden fruit; and when Adam
eats thereof similar portents ensue, Ioo-I1004. Here the omens are
symbolical: the two birds and two beasts represent the human pair; and
the direction of their flight-" to the eastern gate "-foreshadows the
banishment from Eden. Keightley notes that in sEneid I. 393 Vergil
makes the number of swans twelve to denote the twelve vessels that had
escaped from the storm. Wordsworth refers to this passage of Milton
in his poem The Redbreast and Butterfly.
I83. eclipsed. An eclipse was traditionally of evil omen; cf. I.
597. In his History of Britain M. says, "The same year was seen an
eclipse of the sun in May, followed by a sore pestilence," P. W. v. 287.
The vessel in Lycidas was "built in the eclipse," iox.
I84-86. Cf. Eneid XlI. 247-56, where the eagle, fulvus Jovis
ales, carries aloft the swan, and lets it fall again-the incident being
regarded as an omen by the armies.
I85. the bird of Jove; cf. Cymnbeline, lV. 2. 348, "I saw Jove's
bird, the Roman eagle"; and the same play, v. 4. I 13,  Mount, eagle,
to my palace crystalline " (the speaker being Jupiter).
stooped, i.e. having swooped down to strike at his prey; cf.
Cymbeline, v. 4. 115, "the holy eagle stoop'd," and v. 3. 42. It was a
technical term in falconry; cf. The Taming of the Shrewz, I. I. I94.
So in the Essay on Man, III. 53, 54:
"Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?"
tour; so spelt in the First Ed., and some editors have thought that
it means 'wheeling motion,' from tour, 'a circuit.' But it seems to me
more probable that M. meant tower; it would be an effective description, by metaphor, of the proverbially lofty flight of the eagle. Cf.
L'Allegro, 43, where the lark sings " From his watch-tower in the skies."
That the spelling of tower is irregular in M. appears from comparison
of II. 635, where the First Ed. has touring high (said of Satan's flight),
with P. R. II. 280, where the First Ed. has high towring' (said of
the lark).
190. eastern gate. Cf. xII. 638, 639, the words of which echo this
verse. M. describes the gate in iv. 543-48.
196. too secure, i.e. feeling too certain of.
o23-207. The brilliance is that of the I-leavenly host led by
Michael, which is descending on the western region of Paradise.
205, 206. " It is not improbable that Milton had in mind the




NOTES.


621


frequent scenery of this kind exhibited in the masks of his time"
(Todd), i.e. to counterfeit the appearance of clouds and similar phenomena. See the notes on I. 710-17, IV. 768.
213-15.    See Gen. xxxii. i, 2.   pavilioned, encamped; cf.
Milton's paraphrase of Psalm iii.:
"encamping round about,
They pitch against me their pavilions."
216-20.   See 2 Kings vi. 13-I7. flaming, i.e. with "the
chariots of fire round about Elisha," the "one man" of line 219.
219. levied war; see II. 501, note.
220. war unproclaim'd. "The severe censure on this makes me
fancy that Milton hinted at the war with Holland, which broke out in
1664, when we surprised and took the Dutch Bourdeaux fleet, before
war was proclaim'd; which the Whigs much exclaimed against" (Warburton).
Hierarch; the title is applied to Raphael in v. 468.
227. of us... determine, i.e. make an end of us.
234, 235. Raphael is called "the sociable Spirit" in v. 22i.
"Among the angels, the virtue of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy
condescension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and
lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature"
(Johnson).
242-44. Cf. the description in v. 280-85 of the wings of the
angel Raphael.
242. i.e. more vivid (" livelier ") than any purple from Melibcea (a
town on the coast of Thessaly in Magnesia). Vergil mentions the
purputra Melibeea in /Eneid v. 25I; cf. also Lucretius II. 5oo.
grain of Sarra= Tyrian purple. Sarra was the old name of Tyre,
famous for its dyes procured from a shell-fish; cf. Vergil, Georg.
II. 506, Ut gemma bibat et Sarrano indormniat ostro.
243. worn by kings; cf. "regal ornament," v. 280 (note).
244. Iris had diptl the woof. Iris was the classical goddess of the
rainbow, and the verse is a poetical way of saying that the vest was
brilliant as with the hues of a rainbow. M. had used the same fancy in
Comus, 83, where the Attendant Spirit speaks of his "sky-robes spun
out of Iris' woof." See, too, the first reading (i645 edition) in the
Nativity Ode, 143, 144.
Pope could blend Miltonic passages with great skill; cf. his
account of the sylphs or air-spirits in The Rape of the Lock, II.
63-68:
"Loose to the wing their airy garments flew,
Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew,




622


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes,
While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings."
With this description cf. P. L. v. 283, 285, 592. See also The Rape
of the Lock, ii. 84.
247, 248. i.e. the sword ("with huge two-handed sway," VI. 251)
with which, in the fight against the rebellious angels, Michael encountered and wounded Satan; see VI. 250-53, note.
as in a...zodiac, as though it were one of the constellations contained
in the zodiac-an allusion to the flashing of the sword. This seems to
me to be the meaning; cf. the use of zodiac in XII. 255, but for which
we might, perhaps, interpret it here in the sense 'girdle' (to which the
sword would be attached).
249. state, stately bearing.
250. inclined. Editors show that this literal use is common in
the Italian writers and occurs in Spenser, e.g. in The Faerie Queene,
v. 9, 34.
254. i.e. disappointed of his prey for many days (seizure being
passive). Keightley noted that the language of the lines is mainly
legal; cf. the phrase 'to defeat the law,' Henry V. Iv. I. I 75, 176,
and Hen. VIII. II. I. 14.
259-62.   Repeated, almost, from 48, 49, 96-98.
It is a decree pronounced solemnly by the Almighty, and certainly
it would not have become the Angel who was sent to put it in execution,
to deliver it in any other words than those of the Almighty. And let
me add, that it was the more proper and necessary to repeat the words
in this place, as the catastrophe of the poem depends so much upon
them, and by them the fate of Man is determined, and Paradise is lost"
(Newton). He shows that the repetition of the words of messages and
the like is common in Homer. "Jupiter delivers a commission to a
Dream, the Dream delivers it exactly in the same words to Agamemnon, and Agamemnon repeats it a third time to the Council,
though it be a tautology of five or six verses together."
264. gripe, seizure, spasm; cf. IV. 408, VI. 543.
267. discovered, revealed.
retire; the Cambridge MS. shows that in Comus, 376, M. first wrote
"solitarie sweet retire " (noun), and substituted " sweet retired solitude."
268-85. Parallels have been noted in Sophocles, Philoctetes 1453
et seq., and Euripides, Alcestis 244. But speeches of farewell are apt
to have a family likeness.
270. native, "for she had commenced her existence in Paradise"




NOTES.                          623
(Keightley); whereas Adam, created elsewhere, was placed in Eden.
Cf. viii. 300 et seq., and Gen. ii. 7, S.
272. i.e. to spend the time granted as a respitefrom that day.
275. visitation; properly 'a visit,' here 'the thing visited,' i.e.
the flowers. Another example of Milton's use of the abstract for the
concrete, whether actively or passively (as here).
278. rank, set in order: the metaphor, perhaps, of a general
inspecting troops. Cf. Arcades, 59, where the Genius of the Wood visits
his plants-" I...Number my ranks, and visit every sprout."
29o-92. Cf. xiI. 615-I8. The line bears some resemblance to
the passage in Lyly's Euphues which editors quote in illustration of
Richard II. I. 3. 275-80, viz. "that every place was a country to
a wise man, and all parts a palace to a quiet mind" (Plato). There is
probably a reference in xiI. 646 to this scene in Richard 1.
293. damp, depression of spirits. We find the adjective in the
sense 'depressed'; cf. I. 523.  So the verb in the Areopagitica,
"this [i.e. the censorship of books] was it which had damped the
glory of Italian wits," P. W. II. 82.
298-300. Cf. S. A. I565-68, where the Messenger shrinks
from telling Manoa (the father) the news of Samson's death.
307. The jingle of sounds, knowing...known, suggests IV. 83o,
and S. A. o08i, o082.
309. who all things can. The verb can, ' to know how to,' i.e. 'to
be able,' was not then, as now, a mere auxiliary. In Shakespeare it
governs, but rarely, an accusative; cf. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, II.
4. I65, "all I can is nothing," and The Phoenix, "the priest...That
defunctive music can." Perhaps these are accusatives of respect: e.g.
here the idiom may be 'who is powerful in respect of all things.'
310. weary. Cf. Horace's use offatigare= 'to importune,' Odes I.
2. 26.
316, 317. Cf. passages like Psalms civ. 29, Ixvii. See xiI. io6 -o09, and S. A. 1749.
325, 326. For Adam the altars would serve as actual reminders (in
memory), for his descendants as memorials: it is the distinction between
personal experience and historical tradition. But it seems to me possible
that the true reading is "in memory and monument," a single phase
qualified by "to ages."  Todd shows that the two words are often
combined, much in this way, and there are other places in M. where or
appears to have taken the place of and through some error. Cf.
S. A. I82, " To visit or bewail"; and again in 545 ("gods or men,"
2nd ed.) and I653. Here the mistake might have been caused by the
fact that the two preceding lines, and the following one, begin with the




624            PARADISE     LOST.    BOOK    XI.
same letter. Milton's blindness introduces an element of uncertainty
in questions of text.
"We find from various parts of the book of Genesis, that the
patriarchs raised altars, where God had appeared to them. See xi. 7,
xii. 25. To this custom of the primitive and patriarchal ages Milton
seems to have alluded" (note in Todd).
332, 333. Cf. Exodus xxxiii. 23. Newton thought that 333 might
be an echo of Statius, Thebais xII. 817, Sed longe sequere et vestigia
semper adora.
336-38. Psalm cxxxix.; Jeremiah xxiii. 24; Acts xvii. 28, 29.
339. gave...to...rule. Cf. I. 736, III. 243.
347-50. M. always speaks of Eden as set on a hill; cf. 282, 283,
IV. 134 (note).
356-58. Cf. Daniel x. 14, where the angel says to the prophet,
"Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people
in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days." The whole
idea of the vision was probably suggested to Milton by the vision of
his descendants vouchsafed to AEneas in the last book of the 34neid.
Johnson says: " Of episodes, I think there are only two [in Paradise
Lost]-contained in Raphael's relation [v., VI.] of the war in Heaven,
and Michael's prophetic account of the changes to happen in this world.
Both are closely connected with a great action; one was necessary to
Adam as a warning, the other as a consolation."  Addison had noted
that the "vision" in bks. XI., xII. is designed to modify the feeling of
Adam's failure which the close of the poem leaves; for though Adam
himself has fallen, yet " he sees his offspring triumphing over his great
enemy, and himself restored to a happier Paradise."
The '"Mount of Vision " in The Dunciad, III., whence "Bays" (Colley
Cibber) surveys in a dream the realms of Dulness and her triumphs, is
one of the most elaborate of the Miltonic parodies in Pope.
366. mortal passage, passage from mortality; cf. Comus, io, "after
this mortal change," i.e. after death.
367, 368. Similarly M. "made Eve retire upon Raphael's beginning his conference with Adam" in bk. vIII. 4o-44 (Thyer).
369. Cf. VII. 452-77.
374. obvious, i.e. turned to meet the evil.
376, 377. Cf. Ezekiel viii. 3, and xl. 2, " In the visions of God
brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high
mountain." The phrase means 'visions sent by God'; see xiI. 121,
6II. One of Milton's subjects for a tragedy based on British history
was: " Edwin by vision promis'd the kingdom of Northumberland on
promise of his conversion..." (Cambridge Mss.).




NOTES.


625


380. the amplest; the First Ed. omits the.
381-84. that hill. Its name is not mentioned in Scripture. In
P. R. IIn. 251 et seq. (the scene of the Temptation), Milton is thought to
mean Mt Niphates (III. 742) in Armenia. That passage should be
compared with the list of names here, where the geographical sweep,
however, is much vaster.
388-4II. Many poets have delighted in the enumeration of proper
names-Milton not least. Cf. i. 396-411, 582-87. Editors note
that "Tasso, whose Godfrey is no very imperfect model of a regular
epick poem, has in his fifteenth canto employed thirty or forty stanzas
together, in a description of this sort; which had no necessary connection with his general plan" (Newton). Collins borrowed the trick of
Oriental names; cf. his Perszan Eclogues, III. and Iv.
388. Strictly Cathay was identical with China, and CamIbaluc, its
capital, was the same as Pekin (390). See x. 292, 293, note. In the
Areopagitica M. writes Cataio, P. IW. II. 69.
Cambaluc, built by Kublai Khan, was the capital of the Mongol
Emperors of China, from about I264 to I368.  The name is a corruption of the Mongolian Kaan-Balzgh, 'the city of the Khan,' and Pekin
is still called 'the city of the Khan' by many Asiatic races. The
name should be written and accented Cdmbalzuc: Camblzit, as M. and
Longfellow have it, was a popular form, where the wrong accent was
due to the Italian version of Marco Polo's Travels (through which
mediaeval Europe first heard of Cathay and Cambaluc); the French
(i.e. the original) Mss. of the Travels give the correct accent
Cambaluc.
389. Samarchand, in Central Russian Asia; once the capital of
Timur (i.e. Temir) whose grave is there. Its earlier name was Marachanda. It lies about 0oo miles from the river Oxus.
Temir, the great Oriental conqueror, Timur, the subject of Marlowe's
two tragedies of Tamburlaine; he lived I336-1405. Commonly called
Tamerlane (a corruption of Timur i Leng, 'the lame Timur').
390. Paquin, i.e. Pekin, the capital of China. Paquin is the form
in Hexham's Mercator; Heylyn writes it "Pequin or Pagnia." Sincaan;
the geographer Ptolemy calls the ancient inhabitants of China Since. The
word appears to be a corruption of Tsin, the title of the great dynasty
from which the country got its name Tsina (or China).
391. These names represent India, Lahore being in the Punjaub,
while Agra is the capital of the N.W. provinces.  Mogul=Arabic
Aughal= Mongol. The real founder of the Mughal empire in India,
Akbar the Great (died i603), made Agra his capital; later the seat of
government was transferred to Lahore.  The juggler in Jonson's


P. L.


40




626


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


Masque of Augurs says, in his affected English, that he can show the
audience "de Tartar cham," and "de groat king of Mogull."
392.  Here the survey has passed to the East Indies, " the
golden Chersonese" being the peninsula of Malacca, "thought
by some," says Heylyn, "to be Solomon's Ophir"; but see 400,
note.
393. Ecbatana (as M. writes in P. R. III. 286), in ancient Media,
was the summer capital of the kings of Persia down to the Greek
conquest (i.e. about 330 B.c.), as Susa was their winter residence.
394. Ispahan, or Isfahan, became the capital of Persia in the reign
of the Shah Abbas the Great, who ruled I586 —628.   It was very
celebrated in the 17th cent.; many European merchants and artificers
settled there.  Heylyn (who writes Hispaan) says that the circuit of
the city-wails was nine miles.
394, 395. Moscow (then the capital of Russia) is mentioned among
the Asiatic names because it was "considered as belonging to Asia in
the early part of the seventeenth century, and so included in the maps
of Asia of that period" (Masson).  One of Milton's last works was a
Brief History of Moscovia; the name of the city is there spelt Mosco.
Ksar is a corruption of Lat. Cesar; hence identical with Germ.
Kaiser.
Sultan, i.e. of Turkey. Bizance= Byzantium, Constantinople.
396. Turchestan-born.  The Turkish tribe, which founded the
Ottoman empire, came from Central Asia (i.e. Turchestan), whence
they were driven by the Mongols early in the i3th century.
nor could his eye not ken. The vision is directed now to Africafirst on its eastern coast.
397, 398. The empire meant is Upper Ethiopia (see Iv. 282, note)
or Abyssinia; Negus, 'king,' was the hereditary title of the monarch of
the country. Ercoco, now generally spelt Arkeeko, is a port on the Red
Sea, at the northernmost (i.e. "utmost ") point of Abyssinia.
398. less, i.e. lesser than, inferior to, Abyssinia.
399. Mombaza (or AMombas) and Melinda are on the east coast of
Africa, a little north of Zanzibar, Quiloa or Keelwa being a little south
of it, on a small island. All three were then noted centres of trade,
chiefly Portuguese. Heylyn speaks of the "commodius haven" of
Melinda.
It may have been in Milton's thoughts that this part of the world
was not without poetical, indeed epic, associations, perhaps better
known then than now. For Camoens had described the voyage of
TVasco da Gama up the east coast of Africa, and some of Milton's
readers would know the Lusiads through the translation by Milton's




NOTES.


627


Cambridge contemporary and successor in the post of Latin Secretary,
Sir Richard Fanshawe.
400. Sofa/a; on the same coast, but further south; won by the
Portuguese in 1505, the district of Sofala still forms part of their
colonial province of Mozambique. M. is alluding to the town of
Sofala (lying on the island of Chiloane in the estuary of the river
Sofala) which in the I7th century was famous as a mercantile port.
Strictly, the name should be accented Sofdla, though M. makes
it Sofa/d.
Ophir; whence Solomon's fleet brought gold and precious stones,
I zizngs ix. 28, x. i i. According to Genesis x. 29, 30, Ophir was in
southern Arabia, and not on the east side of Africa. One modern theory
connects it with Abyssinia. Speaking of Sofala, Heylyn says, "This
Country for its abundance of Gold and Ivry, is by some thought to
be that Land of Ophir to which Solomon sent"; he rejects the view,
adding, " of this opinion Ortelius in his Thesaurus was the first Author."
Another incorrect theory identified Ophir with the peninsula of
Malacca; cf. Josephus, Antiquities, V1II. vi. 4, "Solomon gave this
command, that they should go...to the land that was of old called
Ophir, but now the Aurea C/hersonesus, which belongs to India, to
fetch him gold." In Of Reformation MI. alludes to the "mines of
Ophir" as proverbial sources of wealth, P  W. IW. II1.   Cowley has
the line, "Though Ophir's starry stones met everywhere her eye"
(The Garden). The name came to be used as a synonym for pure
gold; cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, I. xxviii.: "There
is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human tempers; and he flieth
without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure metal in any."  He
was among those who identified Ophir with Malacca (Vulgar Errors,
II. 2).
40or. A glance at the map will show that the states of Congo and
Angola (Portuguese since the I7th century) are on the west coast of
Africa, practically on a level with Quiloa.
402. thence, i.e. still keeping to the west coast.
The Atlas Mountains are a range in northern Africa, between the
Great Desert and the Mediterranean, their chief heights being in
Morocco and Algiers.
403, 404. The five territories here mentioned formed part of the
country vaguely called Barbary, the seaboard of which lay along the
Mediterranean, and westwards was bounded by the Atlantic. There
is still a small town 6f Fez in Morocco; its name, says Heylyn, is an
Arabic word for gold. Sus, or Susa, is now Tunis.
MIarocco; spelt so in the First Ed., both here and in I. 584. IHeylyn
40-2




628


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


mentions a town of Tremisen (with a province of the same name) lying
inland to the south of Algiers.
403. Almansor, 'the victorious,' calif of Bagdad; he reigned
from 754 to 775; his conquests extended over the whole of North
Africa.
405. He just glances at Europe "as concentrated all in all in
Rome " (Masson)-of which, and of her empire, there is an elaborate
description in P. R. IV. 31-85.
406. in spirit, i.e. not with his eyes, because America was on the
opposite side of the globe (Newton).
407. AMontezume; spelt Motezune in the First Ed. The ordinary
form Montezuma is the Spanish form of the Aztec name Mloteuczoma.
M. is referring to the Emperor Montezuma, subdued by the Spanish
general Cortes, I5 19-20.
408. Cusco, i.e. Cuzco, in the centre of Peru (the word Cuzco meaning
'centre'); it was formerly the capital of the empire of the Incas, whose
last native sovereign, Atahuallpa-in the Spanish form, Atabalipa-was
conquered by the Spaniard, Pizarro, 1532-33.
richer; in the lines Ad Patrem M. glances (94) at the Periiana
regna as proverbial for wealth.
409 —I.   In the 16th and I7th centuries a popular belief obtained
that in the north-east of South America there existed a region of fabulous wealth, termed by the Spanish El Doorado, 'the Golden.' A
Spaniard named Martinez said that he had been cast adrift on the coast
of Guiana, and had made his way to a city Manoa, the roofs and walls
whereof were made of precious metals. It was to discover this region
that Sir Walter Raleigh ascended the Orinoco in i585. The belief may
have originated in the stories brought home by Spanish travellers of the
riches of their conquests in South America.
409. unspoiled, i.e. "not yet reached and plundered, like Mexico
and Peru,.by Europeans" (Keightley).
4Io. Guiana, between the rivers Amazon and Orinoco; the greater
portion is now divided between Venezuela and Brazil.
great ciot, i.e. Manoa. Geryon's sons, the Spanish; Geryon being
the Spanish king whose oxen Hercules carried off (tEneid vIII. 202,
203).
4rI 4I2. Newton pointed out that Tasso had made the same archangel, Michael, perform the same service for Godfrey in Jerusalem
Delivered, xviII. 93. Other parallels might be cited from Homer and
Vergil, e.g. -.En. II. 664-66, where Venus clears the mist away for
Aineas.
413. promised clearer sight. Cf. Satan's words to Eve, IX. 705-709.




NOTES.


629


414-19. Probably M. is thinking of his own blindness. According
to his nephew Edward Phillips, he damaged his sight by constant use of
specifics.
414. euphrasy, the plant 'eye-bright'; from e~fpaitvep, 'to cheer.'
According to the old doctrine of the Signatures (see the Preface to S. A.
and cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Vulgar Errors, II. 6), the efficacy of a
plant or mineral was indicated by its similarity in colour or shape to the
part of the body diseased: euzphrasy has a flower with an eye-like mark:
hence its use as a remedy for dim sight, which it was thought to clear.
Cf. Hood's MAidsummer Fairies, 1 14:
"With fairy euphrasy they purged my eyes
To let me see their cities in the skies."
purged; cf. a couplet in Pope's Alessiah, 39, 40:
"He from thick films shall purge the visual ray,
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day."
ruie, a herb that was supposed to have many valuable qualities, e.g.
as a specific against venomous bites. Keightley quotes from Gerard's
Herball (1598) to the effect that rue "if boiled and kept in pickle, like
samphire, when eaten 'quickeneth the sight,' and also that 'applied with
honey and the juice of fennell, it is a remedy against dim eyes.'"  The
popular name of rue, viz. "herb of grace" (cf. Zamntlet, iv. 5. I8I, 182),
may have been due to the esteem in which the plant was held on account
of these medicinal properties; but perhaps it was so called as symbolising
the grace of repentance (i.e. from rue, 'to repent').
Metaphors drawn from the eyesight come naturally to Miltone.g. "if we will but purge with sovereign eyesalve that intellectual
ray which God hath planted in us" (Of Reformation, I.); and "some
eye-brightening electuary of knowledge and foresight" (The Reason of
Church Government, II.).
416. Psalm xxxvi. 9.
418. mental sight; cf. IIt. 51-55, where M. contrasts the light
of the eyes with that of the soul. The blind Samson was "with
inward eyes illuminated," S. A. 1689. See the Appendix, pp. 682, 683,
on Milton's blindness.
419-22. Daniel x. 8; Revelation i. 17.
427. sinn'd thy sin; the expression is Scriptural; cf. Exodius xxxii.
30; iJohn v. i6 (Newton).
429-47. The story of Cain and Abel, Genesis iv.
430, 431. Genesis iv. 2. tilth, tilled land; commonly tilth is
active in sense ='husbandry, cultivation.' Cf. Cotgrave's definition,
"labouring, ploughing, or breaking up of the ground."
433. sord; a dialect form  of sward, A.S. sweard, 'a skin or




630


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


surface.' In The Winter's Tale, IV. 4. 157, the First Folio prints
greene-sord. Newton restored the proper reading, sord, for which sod
had been substituted in some texts (Todd).
436. unculled, not carefully picked out; contrast 438.
439. inwards, the inward parts; used so in Othello, II. I. 306.
441, 442. Gen. iv. 4 only says, "And the Lord had respect unto
Abel and to his offering "; but the verse is usually explained as M. has
interpreted it. Cf. Gideon's offering, Judges vi. 21; Elijah's, I K1ings
xviii. 38; Solomon's, 2 Czhron. vii.: each was "consumed" with fire
from heaven, in sign of acceptance.
448, 449. " This is very properly made the first vision, and is so
much enlarged upon, as it is of Adam's immediate descendants"
(Newton).
457. fact, deed; cf. Ix. 928.
458 459. Alluding to Hebrews xi. 4.
477-93. This notion of the "cave" of Death, crowded with
personified shapes of evil and disease, is purely conventional: many
such pictures have been painted by poets. See II. 959-67.
We may remember that the fourth draft (see Introduction) of
Paradise Lost contained "a mask of all the evils of this world";
some of the diseases here mentioned might have been among them.
Gray's sombre spirit inclined towards these gloomy abstractions, and
the Miltonic influence is strongly felt in the last stanzas of his Eton
Ode; cf. especially lines 61-70 and 81-9o; also The Progress of
Poesy, 42-45.
479. a lazar-house; a hospital for lepers, lazar coming from the
name of the beggar in Luke xvi. 20. The traveller Hentzner, who
visited England in Elizabeth's reign, noted that the English suffered
much from leprosy, and that there were many 'lazar-houses.'
485-87.   Three lines not in the First Ed.; inserted in the
Second, "to swell the horrour of the description.... Pope says they
are three admirable lines" (Newton).
485. phrenzy; commonly spelt so in M.
486-88. moon-struck madness, i.e. lunacy, so called from  the
supposed effect of the moon (Lat. luna) in causing or increasing
madness. Cf. Othello, v. 2. o09. atrophy, Gk. drpoola, a disease in
which the body wastes away through not being nourished by the food
taken (Gk. a-, 'not,' and rpdieLv, 'to nourish'). pizning=causing to
pine, i.e. active in sense, as in XII. 77. marasmus, the disease of consumption; Gk. papaoa-os, 'a wasting, withering.'
491. The "dreadful dart" of Death is mentioned in II. 672, 786.
492. oft invoked; cf. Sophocles, Philoctetes 797, 798:




NOTES.


631


Ovcdvarc OdaC,  7dvare,   dCE  KaXoJ/.uevos
OVfr KaT 77'/ap or6 a6vt uxoXev 7rore;
and Horace, Odes II. I8. 38-40.
shook; following its object dart. " I hate inversions, but this
line is strong" (Tennyson). He remarked on the fine effect of the
monosyllable shook and the pause after it.
494. deform= Lat. deformis, ' hideous, unsightly'; cf. IT. 706. The
Centzry Dictionary quotes Wyclif, Gen. xli. 19, " other seuen oxen...
defourme and leene." In S. A. 699 we find deformed= 'deforming,'
'that which makes unsightly.'
496, 497. The couplet, as editors note, is made up of reminiscences
of Shakespeare. Cf. Macbeth, v. 8. 30-3:
"Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last,"
and the same scene, 17, I8:
"Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cow'd my better part of man!"
So in Henry V. iv. 6. 28-32:
"The pretty and sweet manner of it forced
Those waters from me which I would have stopp'd;
But I had not so much of man in me,
And all my mother came into mine eyes
And gave me up to tears."
Cf. too the words of Laertes over Ophelia's dead body (Hamlet, Iv. 7.
I86-9o).
504-506. M. has in mind Seneca's Vitam nemo acciperet, si daretur
scientibus.  Cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, III. xxv.:
"When the Stoic said that life would not be accepted, if it were offered
unto such as knew it, he spoke too meanly of that state of being which
placeth us in the form of men."
So Drummond in A Cypress Grove: "0! who, if before he had a
being he could have knowledge of the manifold miseries of it, would
enter this woeful hospital of the world, and accept of life upon such
hard conditions?" (Works, II. 252).
5o8, 5o9. Genesis i. 26, "And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness." erect; see viI. 5o6-o1, note.
518, 519. his image, i.e. Appetite's. Eve's main inducement (he
says) to eat of the fruit was appetite; this agrees with the account in
IX. 740, 741.
53I. Alluding to the maxim of the ancients, /UrObv &yav-ne quid
znimis. The praises of a temperate life are often on Milton's lips. The




632


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


theme inspires a fine passage in Comus, 762-79. In 17 Penseroso, 46,
he invokes " Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet "; and in the sixth
Elegy (59, 6o), tells Diodati that the poet who would handle grave
matters and rival Homer must be ascetic in his life (ille quidem parce...
vivat).  No doubt, in the present passage, as in S. A. 553-57, M. is
thinking of his own habits. A "temperate man," says Aubrey; and
again: "very healthy and free from all diseases...till towards his latter
end" (LZe of M.).
535-37. Perhaps a reminiscence, as Newton thought, of Cicero,
De Senectute I9, quasi poma ex arboribus, cruda si sunt, vix evelluntur, si matura et cocta, decidunt, sic vitam adulescentibus vis aufert,
senibus maturitas.
542-46. M. is probably glancing at his own ill-health in later life.
There is a similar allusion in vI. 462-64, and S. A. 698-700. " He
died of the gowt struck in" (Aubrey). Cf. Johnson's Life of M.
Aubrey says that he bore his suffering very cheerfully.
544. Todd quotes a passage in which Burton in the Anatomy of
Melancholy reckons the chief cause of melancholy to be "old age,
which, being cold and dry, and of the same quality as Melancholy is,
must needs cause it, by diminution of spirits and substance."  M. often
refers to the old physiology of the four "humours," of which melancholy
(the black bile) was one; see Comzus, 8o9, 8Io, S. A. 600.
55 r, 552. The First Ed. had, somewhat abruptly, "Of rendering up.
Michael to him repli'd." There is an allusion here to Job xiv. I4.
553, 554.  " My father often quoted these lines, 'He that loveth his
life..."' (Life of Tennyson).
permit to Heaven; cf. Horace's Permitte divis cetera-Odes I. 9. 9.
556-73. Referring to the descendants of Cain; see Gen. iv. 20 -22. In 560 '"who moved" means Jubal, "the father of all such as
handle the harp and organ," Gen. iv. I2. See Dryden's Songa for
St Cecilia's Day, r6-24, and Marvell's Music's Empire, the last stanza
of which contains, I cannot help thinking, an allusion to Milton.
560. The organ was Milton's favourite instrument; he had been
taught to play it by his father.  See the accurate account of its
mechanism in I. 707, 708.
56x.  volant touch.  Todd aptly compared Dryden's lines in
Alexander's Feast:
"Timotheus, plac'd on high
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touch'd the lyre;
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire."


a




NOTES.


633


We may add Thomson's lines in The Castle of Indolence, I. 40, on an
AEolian harp:
"From  which, with airy flying fingers light,
Beyond each mortal touch the most refined,
The god of winds drew sounds of deep delight,
Whence, with just cause, the harp of zEolus it hight."
Cf. too Dryden. zEneid, vi. 879, 880, and Collins, The Passions, 88, 89.
562. instinct, instinctively.
563. transverse, across, i.e. across the keys of the instrument.
fugue.  In the tractate On Education a "skilful organist plies his
grave and fancied descant [cf. Iv. 603] in lofty fuges," P. W. III. 476.
A fugue (Ital. futga, 'a flight') is a form of musical composition. The
whole passage has often been cited as a striking instance of Milton's
accuracy in the use of technical terms of music. Indeed, the MSS. of
his early poems show that he was conscious of a tendency to carry this
use too far. Thus an earlier draft of the Ode At a Solemn Music had,
in place of the existing lines I9, 20, the curiously technical couplet:
"by leaving out those harsh chromatick Jarres
of sin that all our musick marres."
Again, in Comus, 243, comparison of the Mss. shows that he first wrote
"And hold a counterpoint to all heavns harmonies "-afterwards
changed to "And give resounding grace etc."
564. one who, i.e. Tubal-Cain, "an instructor of every artificer in
brass and iron," Gen. iv. 22.
573. i.e. cast in moulds (" fusil "), or carved.
573-92.    Referring to the descendants of Seth. According to
Jewish tradition they dwelt in the mountains near to Paradise (i.e. "on
the hither side "), whereas Cain went out to " the east of Eden," Gen.
iv. I6.  They are said by Josephus and other writers to have been
addicted to the study of physics and astronomy; cf. the Antiquities, I.
ii. 3, "They (i.e. the Sethites) were the inventors of that peculiar
sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and
their order." This tradition M. glances at in 578.
581, 582.  Genesis vi. i, 2.
582-97. This passage may be compared with P. R. II. 153-71,
and 362-65.   "Milton seems to have taken [these particulars] from
the Oriental writers" (Newton).
584. In I. 449 the Syrian women lament for Adonis "in amorous
ditties."
586, 587. M. repeats himself in P. R. II. I6i, I62:
"Skill'd to retire, and, in retiring, draw
Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets."




634


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


In his first Elegy, 60, he had spoken of the Aurea quez fallax retia
tendit Amor. Bowle notes that Ariosto has the phrase amorosa rete
(Orlando Furioso, I. I2); probably M. remembered it; he knew
Ariosto's work well. There may be a reminiscence of Milton in
Tennyson's Madeline:
"all my heart entanglest
In a golden-netted smile."
Milton's influence is almost as conspicuous in Tennyson's early
poems as in Keats.
587. fast; misprinted first in a number of the early i8th century
editions (Todd).
588, 589. The star Hesperus is called stella Veneris. Cf. IV. 605,
vIII. 5I9, 520.
591. Hymen, the classical god of marriage; cf. the invocation in
L'Allegro, r25, r26:
"There let Hymen oft appear
In saffron robe, with taper clear,"
i.e. the "nuptial torch" (590), which, strictly, had to be pine-wood.
Cf. the Maasque of Hymen, " entered Hymen...in his right hand a torch
of pine-tree," where, in the note, Ben Jonson cites Ovid-Expectet
purospinea t&eda dies. See also Milton's Epitaph on the Marchioness of
Winchester, 17-20. The colouring here (59o-92) is classical; editors
quote various parallels from the classics.
595. symphonies, harmonious sounds. The word, which now
signifies a special form of musical composition, in M. means no more
than 'harmony' (Gk. ~viw03via). Cf. Cotgrave, "Symphonie: Harmony, tunable singing," and Bullokar (i6I6), "Symphonie, consent in
Musick."
607, 608. the tents of wickedness. Psalm lxxxiv. io.
612. i.e. acknowledged none of his gifts; for the position of none,
cf. v. 538. So sometimes in Shakespeare. Cf. Twelfth Night, III. 4.
262, "satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death."
614. Michael has just said that Cain's descendants would beget a
beauteous race: here he appeals to the testimony of Adam's own eyes;
the " female troop" are that race.
620. troll j properly' to roll'; cf. the phrase 'to troll the bowl,' i.e.
to circulate it (in the game of bowls). Keightley quotes from Golding's
translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses x. 664, "Neptune's imp...trolled
down at one side of the way an apple."  But commonly troll was used
in phrases like 'troll a catch' (in music); cf. The 7em2pest, II. 2. 126,
"Let us be jocund: will you troll the catch?" and Jonson, Every Man
int his Humour, I. 2, "I'll troll ballads."  The notion there is 'to run




NOTES.


over glibly, fluently.' Probably, therefore, M. means that these " goddesses" are voluble of speech.
621-25. "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they
were fair," Gen. vi. 2. " It is now generally agreed, that this passage
is to be understood of the sons of Seth " (Newton). See v. 447, note.
624. trains, snares, wiles.
625-27.   In Milton, as in Shakespeare, the quibbling use of words
often expresses grim sarcasm: these lines contain two instances in point
-"swim " and "world."    See also 756, 757. Todd noted that the
figurative sense of swinm='revel' was not uncommon; cf. ix. 1oo9,
note.
627. Cf. IX. i, "That brought into this world a world of woe."
Phrases like "a world of care" (Richard IIZ. III. 7. 223), "world of
wealth" (Henry ViII. III. 2. 2iJ), meaning ' much of,' are frequent in
Shakespeare.
63i. paths indirect; cf. 2 Henry ZV. IV. 5. 184-86:
"God knows, my son,
By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways
I met this crown."
indirect; then a strong word-' wrong, unfair.'
63~2, 633. An expression of Milton's own opinion. Unhappy in
his first marriage, which led to the composition of his bitter pamphlets
on Divorce, and in the ill-behaviour of his daughters, he seldom let
pass an opportunity for invective against women. See IX. 377, 823,
notes, and S. A. passim (especially ioIo-6o).
There is probably a quibble here, an old derivation of woman
being woe to man!
635, 636. Again M. himself is the speaker. His conception of the
relative position of man and woman is summed up in a sentence that
occurs more than once in his prose-works-"woman was made for
man." Cf. IV. 295 —99, note.
638-73. Obviously modelled on the description of the shield of
Achilles, Iliad XVIII. 478 el seq. Cf. the use that Vergil makes of the
same passage in ^Eneid viii. 608-73I, describing the shield which
Venus brings to iEneas, figured with representations of the greatest
scenes in the history of Rome.
642. bold emprise. Todd notes that the phrase occurs in Comus,
6io, and often in Spenser; an echo, perhaps, of the first line of Ariosto,
Orlando Furioso: " Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese, io canto."
643. Repeated from II. 53I, " Part curb their fiery steeds," where
M. is describing (cf. Iliad II. 773, /Lneid VI. 642) the "heroic games"
of the rebellious angels after the Council at Pandemonium.




636


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


646-55. Editors compare Iliad XVII. 527 et seq.
65I. makes. The First Ed. has tacks; perhaps a misprint. M.
never uses the word; it would scarce give any sense here.
660, 66i. Clearly from IliadxvIII. 503-506. haralds, i.e. heralds.
For councils (in Scripture) held "in the city-gates," see Genesis xxxiv.
20.
665. one rising, i.e. Enoch. of middle aoge; Enoch was 365 years
old when translated to Heaven-" i.e. not half the full age attributed
to the oldest patriarchs " (Masson).
669. exploded, hissed.
672. sword-law. "This was probably intended by the poet as
a reflection on the dangerous doctrine of his antagonist, Hobbes; who
wished to establish the false notion, that right is founded on might"
(Todd). He compares Richard III. v. 3. 31I, "Our strong arms be
our conscience, swords our law."
684. Milton's own "ill-mated" first marriage had strongly influenced his life and opinions; see x. 898-906, notes.
687, 688. prodigious; cf. II. 624, 625. The reference is to Gen.
vi. 4, "There were giants in the earth in those days."
690. valour...virtue; a glance at the fact that primarily virtue
meant 'valour,' Lat. virtZs.
694, 695. Keeping the punctuation of the original, I think that the
sense is-' and to be styled great conquerors shall be held the highest pitch
of triumph for glorious deeds accomplished.' This makes of triumph
depend on highest pitch understood from 693, andfor glory done depend
on of triumph: triumph signifying the honour which a man gets in
return for glorious achievements. To "do glory " is a curious phrase in
this sense-Shakespeare uses it differently in Sonnet 132-and Bentley
proposed 'for glory won.'
Newton interprets the passage: ' To overcome...... shall be held the
highest pitch of glory, and shall be done for glory of triumph, to be
(i.e. so as to be) styled great conquerors.' But the ellipse shall be is
awkward.
698, 699. Cf. the distinction suggested in Lycidas, 70-84, between
earthly fame and true Heavenly fame.
700-709.   Genesis v.; Jude I4, 15.
706. A variation on III. 522. He assumes that Enoch's translation
to Heaven resembled that of Elijah (2 Kin'zs ii. i ). Cf. P. R. II.
I6, 17, and his first Epigramz, Qualiter ille......Liquit Iordanios turbine
viaptus agros.
708. climes, regions; a common use in M. Cf. I. 242.
715. luxury; a much stronger word then than now. In Shake



NOTES.


637


speare it always means 'lust, lasciviousness'; so luxurious=' lustful';
cf. Of Reformation, II., " the luxurious and ribald feasts of Baal-peor."
Luxur-ia and luxuriosus were used thus in the Latin of the Church
Fathers, and lussuria by Dante; cf. the Inferno, v. 55. He speaks of
Cleopatras lussuriosa (63).
717. fair; cf. IX. 606, note.
719. reverend sire; Lycidas, 103.
723. triumtphs, public shows or festivities.
723-25.   See I Peter iii. 19, 20. Dunster observed that in several
details of the account of Noah in these lines M. has followed the
Antiquities of Josephus, bk. I. chap. iii.
728-53.   Genesis vi., vii. There are occasional echoes in the
passage of Ovid's description of the Deluge (Metamorphoses I.); e.g.
"sea without shore" in 750 suggests Ovid's deerant quoque litora ponto,
I. 292. Thomson followed Milton; cf. Spring (describing the Deluge):
"A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe."
738. the south-wind; the precursor of rain.
743. " Cieling may be thought too mean a word in poetry; but
Milton had a view to its derivation from caclum, cielo (Italian), 'heaven'"
(Richardson). The same consideration probably had determined its use
by other poets.
752. stabled, had their lairs; cf. Comus, 534, "stabled wolves,"
i.e. wolves in their haunts. From Lat. stabulum ='lair,' as in stabula
altaferarum, zEneid vI. I79.
753. bottom, vessel; cf. Twelfth Night, v. i. 60, "With the most
noble bottom of our fleet"; and The Merchant of Venice, I. i. 42,
"My ventures are not in one bottom trusted."
763, 764. A common sentiment. Cf. Comus, 362, "What need
a man forestall his date of grief?"; or Landor, Gebir, I.:
"Oh! seek not destined evils to divine,
Found out at last too soon."
765, 766. Matthew vi. 34, " Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."  dispensed, i.e. distributed so as to be the burden.
772. evil...sure. For the omission of the preposition of, cf. S. A.
1408.
773, 774. neither...and.  Rightly explained by Newton as an imitation of the Latin idiom neque...et ('not only not...but also'). He
quoted from Cicero, De Oratore-homo neque meojudicio stzltus, et suo
valde sapiens. Exactly parallel is the sentence cited by Todd from The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, " the Jews, who were neither won
with the austerity of John the Baptist, and thought it too etc."
779. For wander as a transitive verb cf. P. R. II. 246. So roam
in I. 52I, and rove in Comus, 60.




638


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XI.


798, 799. Milton's favourite idea (for which he might have quoted
the authority of Aristotle), that in the history of every nation moral
corruption and loss of political liberty go hand in hand: that a people
which is corrupt ceases to care for freedom. Cf. S. A. 268-70:
"But what more oft in nations grown corrupt,
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty!"
The thought is often insisted upon in his prose-works. See ii. 255-57,
note, and xII. 90 et seq.
800. For the accent, contest, cf. IV. 872, S. A. 46r, 865.
801-805. Interpreted by most editors as a political reference:
many Puritans, as M. knew, had silently acquiesced in the Restoration.
Cf. his covert attack in S. A. I464-66 on the Presbyterians.  "Hypocrisy Milton, in various parts of his poem, has branded as the most
abominable of crimes" (Dunster).
804, 805. The point whereon Comus and "the Lady" dispute
(710-80).
8o8-18. A picture of Milton himself in the lonely last years of
his life; perhaps he meant it as such. The " dark age " (from his point
of view) represented that in which the Restoration had been brought
about; the "wicked ways " were those of the courtiers of Charles II.;
the " wrath to come " stood for the second Revolution which he foretold
more plainly in S. A. See v. 899, vII. 26, 27 (notes).
821. devote; cf. III. 208. An entry in the Cambridge Mss. shows
that M. contemplated writing a "tragedy" on "The flood."
823. select, set aside.
824. cataracts. In Gen. vii. Ir, the Heb. word rendered by
windows in the A. V. (or flood-gates, margin) is translated KaraTppckrTa
in the Septuagint, cataract&z in the Vulgate. The word is appropriate
of tropical rain and water-spouts (Newton).
829-35. It was a generally held opinion that Paradise was obliterated by the Flood; but the particular explanation here given of its
removal appears to be of Milton's own invention.
83I. horned, branching into horns, i.e. channels, as a river does
when it meets some obstacle. Probably we get the same notion in the
Lat. tauzriformis as applied to rivers; cf. Horace's tanriformzis Azfidus,
Odes IV. I4. 25, and Vergil, Georg. Iv. 37I, 372. Todd noted that the
same phrase horned flood, in the same sense, occurs in Ben Jonson,
Fox, III. 7, and Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, II. 5 (of which work
Milton's own annotated copy survives. See Ii. 583, note).
833. Probably the Euphrates is meant-" the great river, the river
Euphrates," Genz. xv. I8. The Tigris is less likely. the... Gulf, i.e. the
Persian Gulf; called "the Persian bay," P. R. III. 273.




NOTES.


639


835. ores, a kind of whale; Ben Jonson speaks of" Proteus' herds,
and Neptune's orcs" in the 0Masque of Neptune's Triumph.
clang; used, like Lat. clangor, of the cries of birds in viI. 422.
840. 'To hull' is ' to toss or drive on the water, like the hull of a
ship without sails.'  Cf. Gervase Markham's Sir Richard Grinuile,
"Then casts he Anchor hulling on the maine"; and Twelfth Nigfht, I.
5. 217, "Will you hoist sail, sir?...No, I am to hull here a little
longer."  Sir Thomas Browne may have remembered Milton when he
wrote: " In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like the ark,
without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and bound for no port"
(Christian AMorals, I. i.).
842-49.   Cf. the account in viI. 285-306 of the subsidence of
the waters after the Creation of the earth.
"The circumstances [here] are few, but selected with great judgment. In this respect, Milton greatly excels the Italians, who are
generally too prolix in their descriptions, and think they have never
said enough whilst any thing remains unsaid" (Thyer).
842. "And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the
waters asswaged," Gen. viii. r. M. would naturally select the north as
the parching, drying wi.-i; see lI. 489, 594, 595, notes; cf. Proverbs
xxv. 23. He may, too, have recollected Ovid's account of the reappearance of the earth, nimbis Aquilone remotis (Newton).
The north-east is typically the sky-clearing wind of poetry; cf.
Dante, Paradiso, xxvIII. 79-84.
846. their; referring to wave. M. may have dictated waves, or
treated wave as a collective noun (and so avoided writing its).
848-67. There are continual references to Genesis viii.
85i. "And the ark rested...upon the mountains of Ararat," Genesis
viii. 4. Cf. Josephus, "After this the ark rested on the top of a certain
mountain in Armenia," Antiquities, I. iii. 5.
858. his. " In Gen. viii. 9 the dove is feminine " (Keightley).
866. three, red, yellow and blue (according to the belief then
held); cf. 879. Now the rainbow is resolved into seven colours.
listed, striped, streaked; from  list, a strip (of cloth, etc.). Cf.
Tennyson, Vivien, "Trees that shone white-listed through the gloom."
867. covenant; Genesis ix. I -7.     "The compact that God
made with Noah, that the world never shall be drowned again,"
Paradiso, XII. 17, I8.
870. thozt, who. In the First Ed. thou that.
880, 88I. Some editors place a note of interrogation at the end of
879, and explain 880, 88I thus-"are they (i.e. the streaks) distended...or do they serve?" The advantage of this is that it supplies a direct
alternative to "or serve"; on the other hand the ellipse in 880 is




640


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


awkward, and the line sounds, I think, more natural if taken as a
statement, not as a question, from Adam. 'What (he asks) mean those
streaks spread over the heaven? is it that they serve to bind? etc.'
The second question is a kind of after-thought, introduced by or,
though no regular alternative has preceded.
as the brow. The notion is that of a knitted brow relaxing its
wrinkled lines, i.e. the frown, expressive of anger or thought. M. uses
the same idea to suggest the influence of music; cf. 1 Pen. 55-58:
"And the mute Silence hist along,
'Less Philomel will deign a song,
In her saddest sweetest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of Night";
and P. R. II. I63, i64:
"Such object hath the power to soften and tame
Severest temper, smoothe the rugged'st brow"
(rugged in either case meaning ' wrinkled ').
886-901. A combination of Scriptural passages. Cf. Gen. vi. 6,
9, II, 12; viii. 22; ix. 11-I7; 2 Peter iii. 12, 13. late, lately.
889. Cf. vII. 453, " each in their kind."
895. The Scriptural phrase man acnd beast (Psalm xxxvi. 6,
Jeremiah xxi. 6) includes the birds (Pearce).
BOOK XII.
I-5. These five lines were added in the Second Ed., as a "transition," when bk. x. (of the First Ed.) was divided into the present xI.XIn.; just as, at the same time, the first three verses of viii. were inserted,
when vii. (of the First Ed.) was divided into what are now vII.-vIII.
In the First Ed. the line in Michael's speech, " Both Heaven and Earth
etc.," which forms the close of the present XI., was followed, without
any break, by " Thus thou hast seen" (6).
i. bates; printed so in the First Ed., and the sense must be
'slackens,' i.e. abates, his course. Some editors read baits, which is
used in S. A. I538; there, however, the word is spelt baits in the
First Ed.-an argument against altering the text here.
The word bait, 'to stop on a journey for refreshment' (cognate with
bite), is not very dignified now, but it may not have been open to this
objection in Milton's time. Thus Sidney calls sleep " The baiting-place
of wit, the balm of woe"; and Donne, in his Progress of the Soul,
describing the progress of a soul to Heaven, says: " She stays not in




NOTES.


641


the Air...she baits not at the Moon," i.e. does not stop there. Here it
suits the metaphor of the whole line.
8-1o. Till then all that Adam saw appeared in visions (xI. 377).
13-24. A picture of the world in the 'Silver Age,' when the
government was patriarchal (" under paternal rule "); that of iron soon
(24) begins (Richardson).
i8. labouring, cultivating. Used actively in S. A. 1298, with the
sense 'causing to labour.' As a transitive verb in Shakespeare it means
' to effect by labour'; cf. "he would labour my delivery," Richard 1ZZ.
I. 4. 253.
24. one, i.e. Nimrod. In what follows M. is giving expression to
his own republican feelings, and his dislike of a monarchy. Nimrod,
he says, was the first to claim sovereign power over his fellow-men:
and then Nimrod is depicted in the most unfavourable light, so that we
may infer that the institution (i.e. monarchy) which had such an evil
originator must be itself evil.
Milton's Common-place Book (see IX. 200), among some remarks
on the origin of monarchy, has the entries:
"The Lordly Monarchy first among men.-In Assyria under the
power of Nimrod called a great Hunter, an Hebraisme for a Great
Theife.-Before his time was no sovereign." (Camden Society's 2nd
ed., p. 42.)
25. of proud, ambitious heart. In the Purgatorio, XII. 34-36,
Nimrod is classed with Satan as a type of pride.
a8. dispossess. These compounds with dis. as a negative prefix,
implying 'to deprive of,' are very common in M.; cf. dispeople, disexercise, disenthrone (ii. 229).
30-35. The description of Nimrod in Gen. x. 9, " He was a mighty
hunter before the LORD," has been explained in two ways: literally, according to the obvious sense of the English rendering; figuratively, as
meaning that he was a great conqueror; this is implied by the preceding
verse, which speaks of his beginning to found an empire, while the
Hebrew translated "hunter" would appear, from other passages, to
have been applicable to a warrior making raids on his enemies. It is
under the second aspect that M. regards Nimrod-as a tyrannous ruler
extending his empire and persecuting all who resisted: men, not beasts,
were his prey. See the entries quoted above and Eikonoklastes, I i:
"the bishops could have told him [Charles I.] that Nimrod, the first
that hunted after faction, is reputed by ancient tradition the first that
founded monarchy" (P. W. I. 405). Compare the picture of him that
Josephus draws: "a bold man, and of great strength of hand....He
changed the government into a tyranny, seeing no other way of turning


P. L.


4I




642


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his own power," Antiquities, I. iv. 2. I think that in the
whole of this passage concerning Nimrod and the Tower of Babel
Milton had Josephus' narrative in his mind. Dryden makes Nimrod
the first of great persecutors; cf. The Hind and the Panther, I.
282, 283:
"Thus persecution rose, and farther space
Produced the mighty hunter of his race."
Similarly Pope (Windsor Forest, 6I, 62):
"Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,
A mighty hunter, and his prey was man."
One of the chieftains of Diabolus in The Holy War (end) is " Captain
Nimrod," leader of "the Tyrannical" band.
34. M. glances at the two interpretations which have been given
of the phrase " before the Lord ": (r) 'in defiance of God,' which is
certainly in accordance with Josephus' account; (2) 'under God,' i.e.
"as usurping all authority to himself next under God, and claiming
itjure divino " (Newton), just as in Milton's own day "the divine right
of kings" had been put forward so strongly. The second view seems
very improbable.
36. Alluding to the incorrect notion that Nimrod is connected
with the Heb. root mdrad, 'to rebel.' More probably, the name is
Assyrian. Of course, it suits Milton's sarcastic purpose to imply that
the first king in history was himself but a rebel. It is as though he
were flinging back the charge so often brought against his own political
party, that they were rebellious in their resistance to Charles I.
38-62. Cf. the account of the building of the Tower of Babel in
Gen. xi. 2-9. M. follows the original very closely. The Bible does
not directly associate Nimrod with the building of the Tower of Babel;
it only states (Gen. x. io) that Babel was one of his capitals. The view
which M. has followed here (as in the last chapter of Eikonoklastes) is
a later belief, given by Josephus (Antiquities, I. iv. 2); Dante has it in
the inferno, xxxi., Purgatorio, xII., and Paradiso, xxvI. The tradition
of Nimrod's connection with Babel or Babylon survives in the name of
the great temple-tower Birs-Nimrud, remains of which still exist.
41, 42. Cf. Josephus (speaking of the Tower), "it was built of
burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it
might not be liable to admit water," Antiquities, I. iv. 3.
the plain, i.e. in Mesopotamia, bordered by the Euphrates.
bituminous. The mineral pitch called bitumen (or asphalt) abounded
in Babylonia, and was employed, it is thought, in the buildings of the
city of Babylon. See the note on " asphaltic slime," x. 298.
42. the mouth of Hell. " This ' bituminous gurge' the poet calls




NOTES.


643


'the mouth of hell,' not strictly speaking, but by the same sort of figure
by which the ancient poets called Tzenarus or Avernus the jaws and
gate of Hell.  Vergil, Georg. IV. 467, TnZarias etiam fauces, alia ostia
Di/is "-Newton. Cf., too, fauces graveolentis Azverni (in the passage
describing the descent of AEneas to Hades), t En. VI..
52, 53. Cf. 2 Chronicles xviii. 22. See II. I90, 191, note.
55. Sylvester (Du Bar/as) describes the confusion of Tongues as
"a jangling noise." Dante puts unintelligible words in Nimrod's mouth,
in allusion to the Confusion of Tongues; see the Inferno, xxxi. 67-8T.
62. Cf. Gen. xi. 9, "Therefore is the name of it called Babel,"
where the margin has, "That is, Confusion."   Cf. also Josephus,
Anfiquities, I. iv. 3, "The place wherein they built the tower is now
called Babylon; because of the confusion of that language which they
readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel,
Confusion." It appears, however, that "the native etymology (of
Babylon) is Bab-il, ' the gate of the god II,' or perhaps more simply
'the gate of God'" (Smith's Bible Diet.).
73, 74. "This being not asserted in Scripture, but only supposed
by some writers, is better put into the mouth of Adam, than of the
Angel" (Newton).
Compare the reasons for the building of the Tower that Josephus
gives: "He (Nimrod) said he would be avenged on God, if he should
have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower
too high for the waters to be able to reach I and that he would avenge
himself on God for destroying their forefathers," Antiquities, I. iv. 2.
76-78. The knowledge of physics which the lines reveal is not
very appropriate in the mouth of Adam (Keightley).
77. pine; a transitive verb; cf. xi. 486, and Richard II. v. I. 77.
78. breath...bread. For Milton's use of these verbal quibbles and
jingling sounds, see I. 642, XI. 625-27, notes.
81. affecting to subdue, aiming at subduing; commonly used, like
Lat. affectare, with a direct accusative of the thing aimed at. Cf. III.
206, "affecting Godhead."
83-90. For the association of freedom with reason cf. III. xo8 —o
and Ix. 35I, 352.
84. right reason; cf. VI. 42, note.
85. twinned, i.e. closely united, as if they were twins; reason is the
very counterpart of liberty. Shakespeare several times uses the verb
twin in much the same way-to express close connection, as in Coriolanus, IV. 4. 15, or close resemblance, as in Cymbeline, I. 6. 35, "the
twinned stones upon the beach" (i.e. exactly alike). Editors compare
Tiron of Athens, Iv. 3. 3-5.
41 —2




644


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


95, 96. The form in which the thought is conveyed seems a reminiscence of Matthew xviii. 7, "it must needs be that offences come."
In Iv. 393 M. calls necessity " the tyrant's plea."
97. decline; used of deterioration. Cf. Hamlet, I. 5. 50.
Ioo, Io1. See the note on xI. 798, 799.
o01-I04. irreverent son, i.e.Ham, thefatherofCanaan.  Cf. Gen.
ix. 21-25, especially verse 25, "And he [Noah] said, Cursed be
Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."
I I. onepeculiar nation. Cf. passageslikeDeut. xiv. 2, Ps. cxxxv. 4.
M. discusses this point in The Christian Doctrine, I. 17.
i 13. The allusion is to Abraham. faithful; see 152.
114. on this side, i.e. eastward of; cf. Joshua xxiv. 2, 3. The
word Libri, whence Hebrew, which was first used of Abraham (Gen.
xiv. I3), signifies 'living across,' i.e. across, or east of, the Euphrates.
It was the term applied by the Canaanites to the Jewish immigrants
into Canaan.
15. bred up. M. infers this from Joshua xxiv. 2, where we are
told that "Terah, the father of Abraham...served other gods."  Cf.
The Christian Doctrine, I. 17, "He called Abraham from his father's
house...who was even an idolater at the time" (P. W. iv. 321).
II7. i.e. during the life-time of Noah. According to the chronology given in Gen. ix. and xi., Noah lived many years after the birth of
Terah; and we have just seen, from Josh. xxiv. 2, that Terah worshipped false gods.
I 8. Cf. S. A. 1140, "' My trust is in the Living God "; the phrase
is frequent in the Bible; cf. Heb. iii. 12, I Tim. iv. Io.
I20, I2I. Genesis xii.; Acts vii. In visions (see xi. 377) the highest
type of revelation was thought to be made; we often find the word
contrasted with dream. Cf. Comus, 453-58; so in Cowley's Essays
(p. 21, Pitt Press ed.), "I fell at last into this vision; or if you please
to call it but a dream, I shall not take it ill, because the father of
poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God" (where the Homeric
reference is the same as in 6r r). See Numbers xii. 6.
127, i28. "( By faith Abraham......went out, not knowing whither
he went," feb. xi. 8.
128. I see him, but thou canst not. A variation on the method of
narration adopted in book XI. (423). The wording is like Oberon's
"That very time I saw, but thou [Puck] couldst not," A MidsummerNight's Dream, II. i. 55.
129. Haran was the place where Abraham received the command
from God to journey to Canaan (Gen. xii. I-4). But M. is thinking
of Acts vii. 2-4, where it is said that "The God of glory appeared




NOTES.                         645
unto our father Abraham" before he came "out of the land of the
Chaldcans."
r30.  Ur; the capital of southern Chaldea, and a great commercial mart; it then lay close to the mouth of the Euphrates, as at
that time the waters of the Persian Gulf extended much further inland
than now. But from the reference to Haran we may conjecture that M.
supposed Ur to be in Upper Mesopotamia, i.e. at least 400 miles north
of its real site. In this he followed a view formerly held by many
scholars, and suggested by Acts vii. 2-4, the Scriptural passage, as we
have said, on which, mainly, this couplet is based. An old theory identified Ur with Orfah=the Greek Edessa, in northern Mesopotamia.
130, I3I. M. speaks as though Abraham's journey were continuous, and his stay at Haran a mere episode, whereas the Scripture
implies that he dwelt there some time (Gen. xi. 31, Acts vii. 4).
passing...the ford; this must refer to the crossing of the Euphrates;
but Haran, or Charran (the Carre, of the famous Parthian victory), was
on the western bank of the Euphrates. We must remember that in the
I7th century scholars had to depend on very imperfect maps, travellers'
narratives and such-like doubtful evidence.
132. servitude, servants: abstract for concrete.
135-51. In these lines M. first traces the journey of Abraham to
the Promised Land (cf. Gen. xii. 5, 6); then sketches in outline the
geographical position and extent of the Land, glancing at the number of
Scriptural texts which suit his purpose; and finally shows what was the
scope of the promise made to Abraham.
139-41. The four boundaries are: (i) the town (or district) of
IIamath, in Upper Syria, lying in the valley of the Orontes; afterwards
called Epiphaneia by Antiochus Epiphanes, and now again known as
Hamah; expressly mentioned as the northern limit of Canaan in Numnb.
xxxiv. 7, 8. (2) The Desert of Zin, forming part of the southern frontier
of the Holy Land (Numb. xxxiv. 3). (3) Mt Hermon, ' the lofty peak ';
the most conspicuous mountain in Palestine, and the great landmark
of the Israelites. In Scripture Hermon is associated with, not the
eastern but, the northern boundary; cf. Ps. lxxxix. I2, "The north
and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice
in thy name." Perhaps this was why M. afterwards added that the
Jordan was the "true limit eastward." (4) The "western sea," i.e.
the Mediterranean; cf. Numb. xxxiv. 6, "And as for the western
border, ye shall even have the great sea for a border: this shall be your
west border."
143, 144. Mt Carmel is one of the most striking geographical
features of Palestine, being the only headland which breaks the coast-line.




646


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


double-founted; probably an allusion to the old belief that the
Jordan, in its upper course, was formed by the union of two streams
thought to give the river its name; these were the Dan and theJor,
and their supposed place of confluence lay near Caesarea Philippi. In
reality, Jordan is from a Heb. root 'to flow down, descend,' and the
sources of the river must be looked for in the water-shed of Libanus on
the one hand, and of Mt Hermon on the other. Sylvester, however,
had mentioned its "double source," and, as Todd pointed out, the
traveller George Sandys speaks of it as "seeming to arise from Jor
and Dan, two not far distant fountaines."
Probably Sandys was Milton's main authority for the topography of
Palestine. His Travels, first published in 1615, were very popular, often
reprinted, and often quoted. They contain a vivid and detailed account
of the Holy Land. Milton mentions Sandys in Of Reformation in
England, P. W. II. 380, and borrowed from him (almost certainly) the
account of the rites of Moloch in the Nativity Ode, 204-0o, and
P. L. I. 392-96; and there is reason for thinking that in Samson
Agonistes the description of the amphitheatre in which the catastrophe
of the play occurs was inspired by a passage of the same writer. It is
quite likely therefore that Sandys was responsible for double-founledhere.
145, 146. true limit. The Jordan is mentioned as the eastern
boundary of Canaan in Numb. xxxiv. I2. Nine tribes and a half of
the Israelites dwelt west of it, only two tribes and a half (Manasseh) on
the eastern bank. The river is constantly spoken of as a boundary;
cf. such phrases as 'over Jordan,' ' beyond Jordan.'
his sons; the allusion is to I Chronicles v. 23. Senir is the
Amorite name for Mt Hermon; cf. Deut. iii. 9. But in the verse of
Chronicles just referred to, Senir and Hermon are distinguished, so that
Senir may also have been applied to some range of hills running off
from the great mountain in an eastern direction; and this, apparently,
was Milton's idea; cf "long ridge," which would be a very inappropriate description of Hermon. We know that Manasseh spread eastward
far beyond their original territory-even over the deserts between
Palestine and the Euphrates.
I5i-63. Cf. Gen. xvii. 5; also Gal. iii. 9, " So then they which
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham."  The historical allusion
in the lines is, of course, to Jacob's going down to Egypt at the bidding
of Joseph-Gen. xlv., xlvi.
I58. Cf. Vergil's septemgemini trepida ostia Nili (-En. vi. 801).
The allusion to its seven mouths is frequent.
i67. of guests he makes them slaves; on this classical idiom see the
notes on IV. i53, vIII. 433.




NOTES.


647


I72. "And they spoiled the Egyptians," Exod. xii. 36.
173-190. Exodus vii.-xii.
173. denies, refuses; cf. King Lear, 11. 4. 89, "Deny to speak with
me?"
18o. emboss, cover with swellings; cf. As Youz Like A/, II. 7. 67,
"embossed sores," and King Lear, II. 4. 227, "A plague-sore, an
embossed carbuncle." Cf. Fr. bosse, 'a lump.'
i82. rend. Cf. Hamlet, II. 2. 508, 509,
" the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region " (i.e. air).
r85-88. An echo of I. 338-43. Cf. also Sylvester, Du Bar/as
(Grosart's ed., I. i89):
"Then the Thrice-Sacred with a sable Cloud
Of horned Locusts doth the Sun becloud."
x88. palpable; see the note on II. 406.
191. the river-dragon, i.e. Pharaoh. The First Ed. has this instead
of the. Compare Ezekiel xxix. 3, "Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh
king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers."
Dragon (=draco in the Vulgate, and 6paKuWV in the Septuagint) is the
translation in several places of the Heb. word tannin, applied to any
monster; cf. Job vii. I2 (" whale ") and Ps. xci. 13, where the R.V.
substitutes "serpent" for "dragon."
197. Cf. Vii. 293, and Milton's paraphrase on Ps. cxiv., "Why
turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains? "; also that on Ps. cxxxvi.,
"The floods stood still, like walls of glass."
200. Saint. M. is very fond of this word, perhaps because Saints
was the name by which many of the Republican Independents called
themselves, in allusion to the sense 'holy man' in the Epistles of
St Paul.
201-14. Exod. xiii. 21, 22, xiv.
207. defends, forbids; cf. XI. 86. "This is the common sense of
defend in our ancient laws and statutes" (Todd).
210. craze, break, smash; only here and in S. A. 571.
21 1. A reminiscence of I. 338.
214-19. Exod. xiii. 17, i8. The march of the Israelites wasfirst, from Rameses to Succoth; thence to Etham; and then southwards,
through the wilderness east of the Red Sea. Their readiest way from
Succoth would have been by the north-east route, along the coast
of the Mediterranean; but this would have brought them into the
country of the warlike Philistines.  In 215 from the shore refers,
obviously, to the Red Sea. In 216 the wild Desert seems to be a
general term comprehending all the desert parts through which they




648


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


advanced to Canaan, such as the wilderness of Shur and Sin and
Sinai.
220. See xr. 798, 799 (note), and cf. the passage quoted there from
S. A. 268-71. We have the opposite sentiment in II. 255-57.
a220-22. more sweet, i.e. than liberty; the sense, I think, is'noble men and ignoble alike-if untrained in arms-prefer life to
freedom, except in cases where mere rashness transports them from
their usual characters.'
224-26.   Alluding to the "seventy of the elders of Israel,"
whom Moses was directed to associate with himself in the government of the Israelites (Exod. xxiv., Numb. xi. i6-24), in which
Council some scholars have seen the beginnings of the Jewish
Sanhedrim. There may also be a glance at Exod. xviii., where, on the
advice of Jethro, Moses delegates his judicial authority in minor cases
to the tribal heads, who "judged the people at all seasons."
227-38. Exod. xix., xx. See xI. 73-76, note, and cf. Milton's
Doctrine and Disciplizne of Divorce, 3: " Did God for this come down
and cover the mount of Sinai with his glory, uttering in thunder those
his sacred ordinances out of the bottomless treasures of his wisdom and
infinite goodness? " P. W. in. 220.
grey, i.e. with smoke and clouds (Exod. xix. I6, I8), says Newton; but
perhaps it is only an 'epithet of adornment,' like 'hoary' (i.e. with age).
228. he descending. Needlessly changed to him by Bentley. M.,
however, varies the idiom; see viI. 142 (note).
229. trumpet's; in the First Ed. trumfpets; the passage in Exodus
shows that the singular is required (Bradshaw). See I. 59, note.
233. i.e. of the Seed destined to bruise. For the inversion of order
see I. 206, note.
238. what they besought. So the Second Ed.; the First reads
"he grants them their desire."
239-41.   Cf. 310, 3 r, note.
24r, 242. "For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall
the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me,"
Acts iii. 22, where the reference is to Deut. xviii. 15-19.
249. prescript, command; cf. "the prescript of this roll," Antony.and Cleopatra, III. 8. 5. So in S. A. 308.
250. cedar. Some suppose that M. was thinking of the Temple
and had forgotten that shittim-wood was employed in the construction
of the Tabernacle. But may not M. have thought that the wood called
shittim was some kind of cedar (though scholars now identify it with
the acacia)?
253, 254. Referring to the two images of Cherubim, overlaid with




NOTES.


649


gold, which were placed, with expanded wings, over the mercy-seat
(cf. xi. 2) that covered the ark (i Kings vi.). The figures symbolised
the guardian powers that drove off evil spirits.
254-56. " That the seven lamps signified the seven planets, and
that therefore the lamps stood slope-wise, as it were to express the
obliquity of the zodiac, is the gloss [i.e. interpretation] of Josephus, from
whom probably Milton borrowed it" (Newton). See xi. 247.
256-58. Exod. xl. 34-38; cf. 333. This is the allusion in S. A.
1674, " In Silo, his bright sanctuary," and the Animtadversions, 4, " the
redoubled brightness of thy descending cloud, that now covers thy
tabernacle," P. W. III. 71.
258-6o. Exod. xxiii. 23.
263-67. Joshua x. 12, 13. This is one of the subjects mentioned
in the Cambridge MSS., in the list of schemes of Milton's great poem,
thus: "Josuah in Gibeon. Josu. o1."
267. Israel; the title ('prince or soldier of God') was first applied
to Jacob, Gen. xxxii. 28.
270. "These interpositions of Adam have a very good effect; for
otherwise the continued narrative of the Angel would appear too long
and tedious" (Newton). See vI. 114, note.
274. Alluding to the Serpent's false promise, " your eyes shall be
opened," Gen. iii. 5.
283. argue so many sins, prove so many sins to exist. The sentiment of the whole line is that expressed by Tacitus-corruiptissimaC
reipublicae plurimce leges (Peck). Cf. Milton's Second Defence of the
People of England: "since there are often in a republic men who have
the same itch for making a multiplicity of laws, as some poetasters have
for making many verses, and since laws are usually worse in proportion
as they are more numerous..." (P. W. 1. 293).
287-306. This is one of those theological passages into which
Milton distils the doctrines of a number of texts (as interpreted by
himself); such as Rom. iii. 20, iv. 22-25, v. I, 17,, vii. 7,8, viii. I5,
x. 5; Heb. vii. 19, ix. 13, 14, x. 1, 4, 5; and Galatians iii., iv.
pravity, tendency to evil, moral perversity. M. does not use the
word elsewhere. Johnson has it in his Life of Milton: "Ariosto's
pravity is generally known."
287. evince, demonstrate. Cf. Burton, Anatomy, " Arion made
fishes follow him, which, as common experience evinceth, are much
affected with music."  Milton has the word once elsewhere; cf. P. R.
Iv. 235, " Error by his own arms is best evinced." For the noun in the
same sense, cf. the first lines of Sir Thomas Browne's Vu&lar Errors,
speaking of "the common infirmity of human nature; of whose de



650


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


ceptible condition...there should not need any other eviction than the
frequent errors we shall ourselves commit, even in the express declarement thereof."
297-99. The sense is-' the law cannot appease the conscience,
nor can man perform "the moral part" of the law.'
307-309. Deuteronomy xxxiv. The passage is well illustrated by
The Christian Doctrine, I. 26: "The imperfection of the law was
manifested in the person of Moses himself; for Moses, who was a type
of the law, could not bring the children of Israel into the land of
Canaan, that is, into eternal rest; but an entrance was given to them
under Joshua, or Jesus."
3Io, 31i. Joshua, 'the Saviour,' is the same word as Jesus; in the
Septuagint Joshua is called 'I-qoos. Other forms areJehoshua, Hoshea
and Oshea; and Hosanna (a cry for help) is from the same stem meaning
' to save.' Joshua is treated as a type of Christ (cf. tebrews iv. 8), the
points of resemblance being many; and perhaps that which M. specially
refers to in the words " His name and office bearing" is, that as
Joshua led the Jews through the wilderness and brought them to the
Land of Promise, so Christ brings men, after their journey through the
world, into the presence of God, as being their Mediator (xI. 32-44)
and Advocate. (Smith's Bible Dictionary.)
quell, crush utterly; a stronger word then.
322. shall receive, i.e. by the mouth of the prophet, Nathan2 Sam. vii. r6.
324, 325. i.e. 'all the prophets (cf. 243) shall sing, or foretell, the
same, viz. that there shall rise etc.'; Prophecy being the abstract for
concrete. M. is thinking of passages like Isaiah xi. Io, Psalm lxxxix.
36, 37.
332. his next son, i.e. Solomon, who built the Temple; I Kings vi.,
vii., 2 Chron. iii., iv.
337, 338. heaped to the popular sum, i.e. the faults of the kings
added to the sum total of their people's sins.
342. saw'st; not literally; the angel had only related the event.
344-47.   The seventy years of Captivity, foretold by Jeremiah
(xxv. 12), dated from B.C. 606 to B.C. 536.
348-50. The "kings" are Cyrus, who first proclaimed the decree
for the rebuilding of the Temple, and his successors Artaxerxes and
Darius. The time occupied in the work was from B.C. 536 to B.C. 515.
This period of Jewish history is dealt with in the book of Ezra.
353-56. An allusion to the struggle for the high-priesthood, in the
2nd cent. B.C., between Jason and Menelaus (i.e. Joshua and Onias-each
had adopted a Greek name at a time when Greek influence was affecting




NOTES.                          65.
the Jews very strongly). Jason obtained the office from the Syrian king
Antiochus Epiphanes, circa 175 B.C.; afterwards it was transferred to
Menelaus, 172 B.C. The conflicts that arose between the rival highpriests gave Antiochus an excuse for assaulting Jerusalem and plundering
the Temple, 170 B.C. Two years later, i68 B.C., his troops again
occupied the city; the Temple was desecrated; "an idol altar" was
set up, and the Jews were forbidden the observance of their own
religion. These events are related in i, 2 Maccabees, and by Josephus.
Indirectly, lines 353-55 are an attack, like 507-37, on the
clergy.
356, 357. the'/=the Asmonean family, in whose line the office of
high-priest descended, B.C. I53-B.C. 35. The first of the race to
assume the title of king was Aristobulus T., B.C. 107. Their sovereignty
ended with the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, 63 B.C.
David's sons. The last ruler of Israel who could claim direct descent
from David was Zerubbabel, under whose leadership the Jews returned
from the Babylonish Captivity in 536 B.C. The names of his descendants we are told in the genealogies of Christ (given from somewhat
different points of view) by Matthew and Luke. That of Matthew
" exhibits the successive heirs of the kingdom (of David) ending with
Christ," i.e. it shows us to whom Milton refers when he speaks of
"David's sons," the rightful heirs, though not "regarded."
358. a stranger, i.e. Antipater an Idumean (the Greek form of
Edoizite), who was made governor of Jerusalem by Pompey in 61 B.C.,
and afterwards procurator of Judaea by Julius Caesar, 47 B.C. His
second son was Herod the Great, who was appointed king of Judea by
the Roman Senate in 38 B.C. During his reign Christ was born.
360. barred; he purposely uses a legal term.
360-67. This passage should be compared with the Nativity Ode,
and the similar account of Christ's birth in P..  I. 2.42-54. The
verbal resemblances are numerous. AMatthew ii.; Luke ii.
364. solemn; "sent in solemnity.... This single word solemn
expresses the importance of the message" (Richardson).
366, 367. thither, i.e. to Bethlehem; and M. speaks as though the
song of the angels was heard there-not merely " in the field."
squadroned, in troops; cf. the Nativity Ode, 21.
369 —i. The literary form of the passage is primarily from Vergil,
LEneid I. 287, Imperizum oceano, famam rqui terminet astris. The theological idea is that of the "glorious reign of Christ on earth with his
Saints, so often promised in Scripture, even until all his enemies shall
be subdued" (The Christian Doctrine, I. 33). In this theological work
Milton states his belief at length, quoting the passages of Scripture on




652


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


which it rests, such as Isai. ix. 7, Dan. vii. 13, 14, 22, Luke i. 32, 33,
Mat. xix. 28, Rev. ii. 25-27.
The editor of The Christian Doctrine in Bohn's edition of Milton's
prose-works says:
"The Millenarians or Fifth Monarchy men of the I7th century
were sufficiently numerous to occupy a place in the history of Milton's
times. It appears from this treatise that he himself was far from
holding the extravagant and fanatical opinions which characterised the
greater part of this sect." He held, in common with certain of the
Fathers and later theologians, the belief expressed in the sentence
quoted above. It is glanced at in vii. I57-6r, and inspires, as the
editor of the Doctrine points out, one of the finest passages of his
prose, viz. the close of the treatise Of Reformation in England.
373. Cf. the picture of Dalila in S. A. 728, "Like a fair flower
surcharged with dew, she weeps."
379, 380. Luke i. 28.
383. capital, deadly, fatal; cf. "my capital secret," S. A. 394.
Some editors think that in each passage there is a quibble on this and the
other sense-'pertaining to the head,' Lat. caput. The word is always
a dissyllable, cap'tal, in M.
386-88. Cf. P. R. I. 173-75, where the song is raised in Heaven:
"Victory and triumph to the Son of (od,
Now entering his great duel, not of arms,
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles!"
392. i.e. 'whose fall did not disable him from giving thee, etc.'
393. recure, heal; not elsewhere in M., but common in Elizabethan E. Cf. Vetnus and Adonzis, 465, "A smile recures the wounding
of a frown." So unrecuring=' incurable,' Titus Andronicus, II. I. 90.
401. appaid, satisfied, paid; often in Spenser; cf. The Faerie
Queene, II. I2. 28, "For she is inly nothing ill apayd."  Shakespeare
has it once-Lucrece, 914.
403, 404. "Love is the fulfilling of the law," Rom. xiii. io; and
verse 8.
406. "It is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,"
Gal. iii. I3, the reference being to Deut. xxi. 23; that passage, however,
seems to imply crucifixion after death, i.e. as a mark of disgrace. It
was not only among the Jews that crucifixion was held in the utmost
horror; many passages show that the Romans regarded it as the greatest
of degradations-a servile suppliciumt from which citizens and even
freedmen were exempt. See Juvenal vI. 219.
41o. to save; probably dependent on believe: 'who shall believe his
merits-not their own works, though done in conformity with the law



NOTES.


653


to save them.' The passage is commonly explained so, but it is obviously
very awkward, as the verb believe has already taken two different
constructions.
415-17. "The enemies of Adam were the law that was against
him, and the sins of all mankind as springing originally from him, and
therefore in some sense chargeable upon him. The author, in this
passage, alludes to Col. ii. 14" (Newton).
420, 421. Romans vi. 9.
424. thy ransom; so the First and Second Eds.; "Adam is here
spoken of, not as a single person,...[but] as one who was representative
of the whole human race" (Pearce). Cf. again 428. Many later texts
change thy to the.
427. faith...works. Cf. XI. 64.
434. a death like sleep; the "temporal death" of the redeemed is
not an everlasting state, but a "sleep" from which there shall be an
awakening (i Cor. xv. 5 I). Milton discusses the question in The Christian
Doctrine, I. 13, from which it is clear that by "temporal death" he
signified the death of the body.
The reading death-like sleep is a mere tampering with the
text.
435. wafting, passage; cf. I. 104o.
442. in the profluent stream. "It was the poet's opinion that
baptism should take place in running water" (Keightley). The passage
in which M. expressed this view occurs in his treatise on The Christian
Doctrine, I. 28, in which he speaks of baptism as a sacrament " wherein
the bodies of believers who engage themselves to pureness of life, are
immersed in running water [in profluentem aquam], to signify their regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and their union with Christ."
446-65. Cf. Gal. iii. 7, i6; Rom. iv. 16; Colos. ii. i5; Ephes.
iv. 8-io, i. 20, 21; Luke xxi. 27, xxiv. 26; John v. 28, 29; Rev. xi.
I8, xx. 2.
452. Scan triiimphing, as in I. 123; so sometimes in Shakespeare.
454. Prince of air. This title of Satan is illustrated by P. R. I.
39-47, where he summons an assembly of his followers "in mid air,"
and addresses them thus:
"O ancient Powers of Air, and this wide World;
(For much more willingly I mention Air,
This our old conquest, than remember Hell,
Our hated habitation) well ye know," etc.
See Appendix, p. 676.
458-63. Cf. III. 323 et seq.
460. "To judge the quick and the dead," Apostles' Creed.




654


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


467. period, end, conclusion. "The period of thy tyranny approacheth," I Henry VI. IV. 2. 17.
477-93. Many texts are alluded to: e.g. Rom. v. 20o; 2 Cor. iv. 15;
Luke xxiv. 49; Gal. v. 6 ("faith which worketh by love "); John xiv.
i8, 23, xv. 26, xvi. 3; iEphes. vi. It ("put on the whole armour of
God"), I3 and I6 ("to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked"); and
Ps. lvi. II.
495. Cf. S. A. 663, 664.
497-502. Acts ii.
505. Cf. S. A. 597, "My race of glory run, and race of shame."
It is St Paul's favourite metaphor of athletes competing on the
stadium (Heb. xii. i; I Cor. ix. 24).
507-   I. " For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous
wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock," Acts xx. 29. There
is the same allusion in iv. 193 (see note); and in the Sonnet on Cromwell
he speaks of the "hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw."
This passage (507-37), though it nominally traces (from Milton's
point of view) the history of the Church from Apostolic times, is perhaps
primarily directed against the Church of England; similar charges are
scattered passim through Milton's prose-works.  A close parallel is
the long piece (113-31) of invective, thinly disguised under pastoral
allegory, in Lycidas. Time had intensified Milton's opinions.
We have seen in many places Milton's anti-ecclesiastical bias;
a fresh and characteristic illustration has been noted recently by
Professor Firth.  He shows that in his History of Britain Milton
deliberately "avoided the ecclesiastical side of British and Saxon
history," and refused to supplement the meagre political records at his
disposal by "drawing upon the fund of information which his authorities
supplied about the religious life of the times. The development of a
scientific interest in the monuments and institutions of the past was one
of the characteristics of 17th century England, but so far as it showed
itself in researches into ecclesiastical antiquities Milton took no interest
in the movement."
511. M. often taunts the clergy with avarice and desire of preferment. Cf. An Apologyfor Smectymnuus, " they, for lucre, use to creep
into the Church undiscernibly," P. W. III. I64.
511-14.    In  his prose-works M. frequently depreciates the
writings of the Fathers: the "traditions" of the Church as to doctrine
and forms, are in his eyes " a broken reed " (Areopagitica).
superstitions; see III. 451-54, note.
5i6, 517. to join secular power." "On this subject he had been
particularly copious in his tract Of Reformation in England" (Todd).




NOTES.


655


Compare Dante's condemnation of the usurpation of temporal power
by the Papacy; see the Purgatorio, xvI.
519, 520. In The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the
Church M. says, "the Scriptures (are) translated into every vulgar
tongue, as being held, in main matters of belief and salvation, plain and
easy to the poorest: and such no less than their teachers have the Spirit
to guide them in all truth" (P. W. III. 24).
522-24. laws which; laws which are neither laid down in the
Scripture, nor dictated by the natural instincts of good men towards
piety. In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (preface) Milton
speaks ot " a law not only written by Moses, but charactered in us by
nature," P. W. III. 182. See Jeremiah xxxi. 33.
525, 526.  "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,"
2 Cor, iii. 17. Cf. The Christian Doctrine, I. 27, "liberty must be
considered as belonging in an especial manner to the Gospel, and as
consorting therewith" (P. /v. Iv. 398).
527. "The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are," I Cor.
iii. 17. Cf. the fine allusion in Macbeth, II. 3. 73. So in Comus,
460, 461.
532, 533- John iv. 23.
534, 535. Showing Milton's dislike of ceremonies in worship.
539. Romans viii. 22.
539-41.   There is an underlying political reference: M. never
hesitates to foreshadow the ultimate overthrow of the Royalists against
whom he and his party had struggled. We have a similar, but clearer,
attack on his enemies in P. R. II. 42-48. See also xi. 808-I8, note.
540. Newton noted that in Acts iii. 19, " when the times of refreshing shall come," the Gk. word dvd&/vts,, translated by " refreshing,"
is rendered by respiratio in one of the Latin Versions of the Bible
(though the Vulgate has refrigerium), and has the sense respiratio in the
Septuagint in Exodus viii. I5.
545-47. Afatt. xxiv. 30; 2 T/hess. i. 7, 8. See the Nativity Ode,
I63, 164, and the end of the treatise Of Reformation in England, in
which M. looks forward to "that day, when thou, the eternal and
shortly-expected King, shalt open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world," P. W. II. 419; also The Christian Doctrine, I. 33.
547-51. Cf. III. 333-35, XI. 900, 901. "This notion of the
Heavens and Earth being renewed after the conflagration, and made
the habitation of Angels and just men made perfect, was very pleasing
to Milton" (Newton).
554, 555. The time measured by the Archangel is that during which
this world lasts.




656


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


565 -68. Ps. cxlv. 9; Rom. xii. 2r, " Be not overcome of evil, but
overcome evil with good"; and I Cor. i. 27. "There is the sense of
Scripture, if not the very words " (Newton).
569, 570. Cf. Ix. 31, 32 and S. A. 654.
571. Morsjanua vite.
58I-84. Alluding to 2 Pet. i. 5-7, I Cor. xiii.
582. answerable, corresponding with; cf. IX. 20, S. A. 6ij, and
the Areopagitica, "a virtue answerable to your highest actions."
583-85. love...charity. Cf. the Tetrachordon, "Christ having...
interpreted the fulfilling of all through charity, hath in that respect set
us over law, in the free custody of his love," P. W. III. 323.
587. The thought is anticipated in Iv. 75, where Satan says
of himself, "Which way I fly is hell: myself am hell." Cf. too Iv.
20-23. It is one of those world-thoughts which occur independently
to many minds. This for instance is a close parallel from Fitzgerald's
Omar Khayydm:
'I sent my soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by-and-by my soul returned to me,
And answered, 'I myself am Heav'n and Hell."'
Cf. also the famous lines, i. 254, 255.
588, 589. this top of speculation, this hill whence we have looked
as from a watch-tower (Lat. specula). Cf. the description of it in xI.
377-80, and P. R. Iv. 236, "Look once more, ere we leave this
specular mount." Shakespeare uses speculation =' the act of watching,'
Henry V. Iv. 2. 3I.
592, 593. See xI. 120-22.
602. "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and
thirty years: and he died," Gen v. 5.
608. Contrast the Argument of the book where Adam " wakens
Eve."
6I. Cf. Iliad j. 63, Kat ydp r' ovap IK At6 lsrL; "the application
is very elegant in this place, as Adam's was a vision, and Eve's a dream;
and God was in the one, as well as in the other" (Newton). See the
passage from Cowley cited ante (20o, 121, note).
6I5. Newton pointed out the allusion to Vergil, Ecl. III. 52, in me
mora non erit ulla. Eve has laid to heart the words of Michael,
xI. 290-92.
627- station, post of watching; Lat statio, a military term='a
picket, guard.'
629, 630. M. used the simile in IX. I79, I8o, comparing Satan's
stealthy course through the garden to "a black mist low-creeping."




NOTES.


657


marish, marsh; an old word, said to be used often in the translations
of Ariosto and Tasso, and by Spenser and Drayton.
632. advanced, raised aloft, like a flag; cf. v. 588. Shakespeare
often applies it to a sword, perhaps by metaphor; cf. Coriolanus, I. 6.
6r, " Filling the air with swords advanced and darts."
633. The allusion (Genesis iii. 24) occurs in The Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce, 13, where he is arguing against those who condemn divorce because it did not belong to the earliest times of Jewish
history: "But still they fly back to the primitive institution, and would
have us re-enter paradise against the sword that guards it" (P. W.
III. 243). Cf. too Marvell's lines (with their happy reminiscences of
Richard II. II. I. 40 et seq.) in his beautiful country-poem, Upon
Appleton House, written not long after the Civil War:
"Oh thou, that dear and happy isle,
The garden of the world erewhile,
Thou Paradise of the four seas,
Which Heaven planted us to please,
But, to exclude the world, did guard
With watery, if not flaming swordWhat luckless apple did we taste,
To make us mortal, and thee waste?"
634. fierce as a comet. Dunster observed that the simile may be an
echo of Sylvester's Du Bartas, which speaks of the entrance to Eden as
guarded by
"A waving sword, whose body shined bright,
Like flaming comet in the midst of night."
In 11. 708 ---I M. compares the figure of Satan, at his meeting with
Death, to a comet. which; referring to the sword.
635- vapour, heat; cf. Horace's sidertum vapor, Epodes III. 1,5.
Libya is typical of a hot clime; for the position of air between the two
qualifying words, see XI. i62. adust, scorched, Lat. adustus. Bowle
noted that Tasso (vnI. 52) describes a comet shining per raria adusta.
M. often mentions Tasso in his prose.
636. parch; M. uses it of the drying, withering effect of either
cold (cf. ii. 594, 595, Lycidas, 13) or heat-as here.
637, 638. A reminiscence of Gen. xix. I6, "And while he (Lot)
lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his
wife...and they brought him forth." The destruction of the cities of the
plain was one of the themes on which Milton thought of founding a
poem.
638-40. the eastern gate. See XI. r18-20, and cf. the account
of the gate, Iv. 542-48.


P. L.


42




658


PARADISE LOST. BOOK XII.


640. subjected, lying below, Lat. subjectus; so the adjective
subject in Spenser; cf. The Faerie Queene, I. 11. 19, and Ill. 7. 4.
643. Most editors explain brand to mean 'sword,' a sense it often
bore in O. E., from the flashing of a sword-blade. Cf. Spenser, The Faerie
Queene, v. I. 8, "When so he list in wrath lift up his steely brand."
The old use of brand= 'sword' is revived in Tennyson; cf. the Morte
d'Arthur, where the word is used several times of King Arthur's sword
Excalibur, e.g. "So flash'd and fell the brand Excalibur." Curiously,
brand=' fire-brand' does not occur anywhere in Milton's poetry, except
in the MS. of Comus, 384, where "the noontyde brand " is a synonym
for " the mid-day sun," afterwards substituted.
646. Editors compare Richard IL I. 3. 2o6, 207 (Mowbray's
parting words):
"Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray;
Save back to England, all the world's my way."
648, 649. One of the subjects entered in the Cambridge MSS., under
the heading "tragedies," is "Adam in Banishment."
This couplet has been much discussed since Addison proposed to
omit it on the inadequate grounds that the lines strike a note of sadness,
whereas an epic is supposed to require a cheerful ending, and that they
are less impressive than the preceding couplet. Peck proposed to transpose 646, 647 and 648, 649, making the poem conclude with "and
Providence their guide." Bentley, by way of crown to his emendatory
toils, composed a distich, "as close as may be to the author's words,
and entirely agreeable to his scheme." But the lines stand in the First
and Second Eds., and are therefore as authentic as any other part of the
poem; and, apart from their entirely Miltonic style, their calm beauty
is appropriate to the feeling of mingled resignation and reluctance with
which we may suppose that the exiles left their Paradise. Pearce justly
notes that this feeling, indeed, corresponds precisely with the injunction
(xI. II7) laid on Michael. Shakespearian tragedy usually ends on a
quiet note.




APPENDIX.
A.
THE COSMOLOGY OF PARADISE LOST.
PARTS of Paradise Lost are not easily understood without some
knowledge of Milton's conception of the Universe. I shall attempt
therefore to set forth some of the main aspects of his cosmology: to
explain, in fact, what he means by constantly recurrent terms such as
' Empyrean,' ' Chaos,' ' Spheres,' and the like.
It is in book v. that he carries us back farthest in respect of time.
The events described by Raphael (from line 563, onwards) precede nut
only the Creation of the World, but also the expulsion of the rebels
from Heaven. And at this era, when the seeds of discord are being
sown, we hear of two divisions of Space-Heaven and Chaos: Heaven
lying above Chaos.
In book vi. the contest foreshadowed in book v. has begun. Now
a third region is mentioned-Hell (vi. 53-55): a gloomy region carved
out of the nethermost depths of Chaos. Its remoteness from Heaven
may be inferred from I. 73, 74. Milton's working hypothesis, thenhis general conception of space and its partitionment prior to the
Creation-may be expressed roughly thus: above1, Heaven; beneath,
Hell; between, a great gulf, Chaos.
Let us see what he has to say concerning each.
Heaven, or the Empyrean2, is the abode of the Deity and His
angelic subjects. It is a vast region, but not infinite. In x. 380
Milton speaks of its "empyreal bounds"; in II. 1049 of its "battlements3"; in vi. 86o of its "crystal wall."  These fence Heaven in
1 i.e. from the point of view of this World, the position of which we shall see.
2 The terms are synonymous. Enmtyrean= Lat. e;njyrius, from Gk. eu7rvpos.
The notion was that the Empyrean was formed of the element of fire (vrip). Compare
Balman zip of Barholomze (1582), a work which is a sort of encyclopedia of the
beliefs and "science" (so to speak) current in the Elizabethan time:
"Ceaturn Enmereumn is the first and highest heaven, the place of Angells, the
Countrey and habitation of blessed men. And hath that name Enmtireum from Pir,
that is fire...not for burning, but for light and shining...and is the highest dwellyngplace of God " (p. I22).
3 Cf. Lucretius'flamwmanztia mania tmundi (. 74) and Gray's "flaming bounds of
Space " (Progress ofPoesy).
42-2




66o


PARADISE LOST.


from Chaos. When Satan voyages through space, in quest of the
new-created World, he kens far off the crystal line of light that
radiates from the empyreal bulwarks, marking where runs the severance
betwixt Heaven and Chaos (II. 1034-37). In the wall of Heaven are
the "everlasting gates" (II. 565) opening on to Chaos (v. 253-56,
VII. 205-209). The shape of Heaven Milton does not determine
(II. 1048); perhaps it is a square (x. 38I).  Its internal configuration and appearance he describes in language which reminds
us of some lines (574-76) in book v. May not the Earth, says Raphael,
"Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought"?
Milton expands this idea, and developing to the utmost the symbolical,
objective presentment of the New Jerusalem in the Revelation, depicts
a Heaven scarce distinguishable from an ideal Earth1. In fact, his
Ieaven and his Garden of Eden have much in common; so that Satan
exclaims, "O Earth, how like to Heaven!" (ix. 99). Thus the
Heavenly landscape (if I may describe it in Miltonic language) has
its vales, wood-covered heights and plains (vi. 70, 639-46); it is
watered by living streams (v. 652); and fair with trees and flowers2
-immortal amaranth and celestial roses (iii. 353-64), and vines
(v. 635). Daylight and twilight and "dim Night" are known there
(v. 627-29, 645, 685, vi. I-15). And soft winds fan the angels as
they sleep (v. 654, 655).
These angelic beings, divided according to tradition into nine
Orders, each with particular duties, perform their ministries and
solemn rites (VII. 149) in the courts of God (v. 650) and at the high
temple of Heaven (vii. I48). Their worship is offered under forms
which recall, now the ritual of the Temple-services of Israel, now the
inspired visions of St John.  They celebrate the Deity who dwells
invisible, throned inaccessible (III. 377) on the holy mount (vI. 5),
howbeit omnipresent, as omnipotent, throughout Heaven and all
space: round whose throne there rests a radiance of excessive brightness, at which even Seraphim, highest of Hierarchies, veil their eyes
(II. 375-82).
It has been objected that Milton's picture is too material.  But he
himself takes special pains to remind us that the external imagery
under which he represents his concepts is symbolical, not literaladopted merely as a means of conveying some impression of that
which is intrinsically indescribable. The truth, I believe, is that he
has applied to Heaven the descriptions of ' Paradise' in the apocalyptic
1 The Earth deteriorates after the fall of man (x. 651 et seq.).
2 This is a descriptive detail most conspicuous in early Christian apocalyptic works,




APPENDIX.


66i


literature of the first centuries of Christianity.   The Revelalion of
Peter (dating perhaps from early in the second century A.D.) affords
an illustration of these   descriptions.   St Peter is represented as
asking our Lord where are the souls of the righteous dead —"of
what sort is the world wherein they are and possess glory?          And
the Lord showed him [me] a very great space outside this world shining
excessively with light, and the air that was there illuminated with the
rays of the sun, and the earth itself blooming with unfading flowers, and
full of spices and fair-flowering plants, incorruptible and bearing a
blessed fruit: and so strong was the perfume that it was borne even to
us' from   thence.   And the dwellers in that place were clad in the
raiment of angels of light, and their raiment was like their land: and
angels encircled them2."
The second region, for which Chaos seems the simplest title, is
also variously called "the wasteful Deep" (II. 961, vi. 862), "the utter
Deep" (vI. 716), "the Abyss," "the vast (or "main") Abyss" (I. 2I,
III. 83, VII. 2II, 234).  Here rules the God of Chaos with his consort
Night (II. 959-63). According to the long description in book II.
890 et seq., this region is an illimitable ocean, composed of the embryon
atoms (semina rerumn) whereof all substances may be formed-whereof
Hell and the World are afterwards formed.     It is a vast agglomeration
of matter in its primal state, " neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fires."
Here prevails eternal anarchy of storm and wind and wave and stunning
sounds.   In viI. 210, 21, the Messiah and His host stand at the open
gate of IIeaven and look forth on to Chaos; and what they behold is an
Abyss "Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild."
The creation of Hell, we may perhaps assume, just precedes the
fall of the angels4. It has been prepared for their punishment when,
I i.e. St Peter and the other disciples who are with our Lord on the Mount of
Olives. See The Gospel according to Peter, and the Revelation of Peter (Cambridge
University Press ed., 1892), pp. 48, 49.
2 Dr James (whose version I have just quoted) gives a similar passage from a
rather later work, the History of Barlaam and osaphzat, wherein the Paradise of the
just is revealed in a vision as "a plain of vast extent, flourishing with fair and very
sweet-smelling flowers, where he saw plants of all manner of kinds, loaded with
strange and wondrous fruits, most pleasant to the eye and desirable to touch. And
the leaves of the trees made clear music to a soft breeze and sent forth a delicate
fragrance, whereof none could tire...And through this wondrous and vast plain [he
passed] to a city which gleamed with an unspeakable brightness and had its walls of
translucent gold, and its battlements of stones the like of which none has ever seen.
And a light from above...filled all the streets thereof: and certain winged hosts, each
to itself a light, abode there singing in melodies never heard by mortal ears."
' (Cf. the description of Chaos in Spenser's Hymne in Honour of Love, 57-84.
4 Cf. the English ainust-book (1592) where Faustus asks when Hell was made and
Mephistophiles replies-" Faustus, thou shalt know, that before the fall of my lord
Lucifer was no hell, but even then was hell ordained" (Thoms' English Prose
iRo)mances, Il1. I85).




662                   PARADISE LOST.
after the proclamation in v. 6oo-I5, they have revealed their
rebellious spirit. To form Hell a part of the abyss has been taken.
In II. oo002, oo03, Chaos complains that his realm has been encroached
upon by Hell-" stretching far and wide beneath."  Round Hell runs
a wall of fire (I. 61, 62); overhead spreads a fiery vault or cope (I. 298,
345, 346). At the descent of the angels Hell lies open to receive them
(VI. 50-55); then the roof closes (vi. 874, 875), and they are prisoners.
Henceforth the only outlet from Hell into Chaos is through certain
gates, the charge whereof is assigned to Sin (II. 64. et seq.). At her
side, as protector, stands Death, ready with his dart to meet all comers
(II. 853-55).  To please Satan (her sire), Sin opens the gates.
Afterwards she cannot shut them; and all who will may pass to
and fro between Hell and Chaos.   Later on (when the bridge from
Hell has been made) this change becomes terribly significant. As to
the inside of Hell, we hear of a pool of fire (I. 52, 221); dry land
that burns like fire (I. 227-29); and drear regions of excessive
cold and heat, intersected by rivers (Ii. 574 et seq.). Here again the
picture is largely traditional, owing, no doubt, much to Dante, who
in turn owed much to the apocalyptic descriptions before mentioned.
Immediately after the expulsion of Satan the World is created
(vii. 13 et seq.). By "the World" is meant the whole Universe of
Earth, seas, stellar bodies and the framework wherein they are set.
The Son of God goes forth into the abyss (vii. 218 et seq.), and with
golden compass marks out the limits of this World; so that Chaos is
again despoiled of part of his realm (as he laments, II. Iooi-ioo6).
The new World is a globe or hollow sphere, suspended in the abyss,
and at its topmost point fastened by a golden chain (see II. io05, note)
to Heaven. In II. 1004-o006 Chaos tells Satan of this Universe:
"another world,
Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain
To that side Heaven from whence your legions fell."
The length of this chain, i.e. the distance of the World from the
Empyrean, is not stated, I believe; but the distance was not-comparatively-very great (II. o105-53, VII. 6i8).
Also, between the globe (again, on its upper side, i.e. that nearest
to the Empyrean) and the gate of Heaven there stretches a golden stair;
used by good angels for descent and ascent when they are despatched to
Earth on any duty such as that which Raphael discharges in books
v.-vIII. This stair (suggested by Jacob's dream?) is not always let
down (II. 501-I8). And hard by the point where the golden stair
touches the surface of the globe there is-in later times, after the fall
of man-another stair (or rather bridge), which leads, not upward to the




APPENDIX.


663


Empyrean, but downward to Hell: i.e. it extends over the portion
of Chaos that intervenes between Hell and the World (Ii. 1024 -33, X. 282 et seq.). This bridge', the work of Sin and Death, is
used by evil angels when they would come from Hell (its gates being
open) to Earth-"to tempt or punish mortals" (ii. o032).
Hence a good angel and an evil, visiting mankind simultaneously,
the one descending the golden stair, the other ascending the bridge,
will meet at this point of the surface of the globe. And to enter the
globe, i.e. to get through its outer surface to the inside, each must pass
through the same aperture in the surface, and descend by the same
passage into the interior: as Milton explains in book III. There he
describes how Satan journeys through Chaos, till he reaches and walks2
on the outer surface of the World (IIl. 418-30). But how to pass to
the interior? The surface is impenetrable, and there seems to be no
inlet. Then suddenly the reflection of the golden stair which chances
to be let down directs his steps to the point where the stair and the
bridge come into contact with the globe, and here he finds what he
seeks-an aperture in the surface by which he can look down into the
interior. Further, there is at this aperture a broad passage plunging
right down into the World-being, really, a continuation of the
golden stair. Thus Satan, standing on the bottom step of the stair,
and looking straight up, sees overhead the gate of Heaven; and
looking straight down, sees the interior of the globe, leagues beneath
(III. 526 et seq.).
Similarly on the seventh day of the Creation the angels, gazing fiom
Heaven's gate down the stair and down the broad passage which
continues the stair, see, as Satan did, into the new-made World
(vII. 617-19):
"not far, founded in view
On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea3."
In short, at the point in the surface of the globe nearest to the
Empyrean, there is a choice of ways: the stair leading to Heaven;
the bridge to Hell; and the broad passage to the interior of the
World:
In the English Faust-book, 1592 (Thorns' English Prose Romances, III. 194),
Mephistophiles says: " We have also with us in hel a ladder, reaching of exceeding
highth, as though the top of the same would touch the heaven, to which the damned
ascend to seek the blessing of God, but through their infidelity, when they are at
very highest degree, they fall down again into their former miseries." With the last
part of this extract cf. P. L. in. 484 et segf. It seems to me highly probable that
Milton studied the Faust-book (which was immensely popular), as well as Marlowe's
dramatic adaptation of it; see I. 596-603, v. 671, notes.
2 i.e. like a fly moving up a lamp-globe (Masson)
3 i.e. the Crystalline Sphere.




664


PARADISE LOST.


"in little space
The confines met of empyrean Heaven
And of this World, and on the left hand Hell
With long reach interposed; three several ways,
In sight, to each of these three places ledL."
And descending the broad passage what would an angel find in the
interior of the globe? What is this globe as Milton, following the
astronomy of his2 time, has described it?
The globe as then conceived may best be likened (in Plato's
comparison3) to one of those puzzles or boxes in which are contained
a number of boxes of gradually lessening size: remove the first, and
you shall find another inside, rather smaller: remove the second, and
you shall come on a third, still smaller: and so on, till you reach
the centre-the kernel, as it were, round which the different boxes
were but successive shells. Now, of the globe of the World the
Earth (they said) is the kernel (is it not often called 'the centre4'?);
and-a stationary body itself-it is encased by numerous shells or
Spheres: the number of the Spheres being a subject of dispute and
varying in the different astronomical systems. Milton, accepting5 for
the purposes of his epic the Ptolemaic system as expanded by the
astronomer Alphonsus X. of Castille, recognises ten Spheres. A
Sphere, it should be noted, is merely a circular region of spacenot necessarily of solid matter. Indeed, of the ten Spheres only one,
the Primum Mobile, appears in Milton's description to consist of some
material substance. Seven of them are the Spheres of the planets,
i.e. the orbits in which the planets severally move.
1 x. 320-24.
2 I do not mean to imply that the Ptolemaic system was still generally believed in
at the time when P. L. was published, but that it satisfied Elizabethan writers, of
whom Milton was the last.
" On the slowness with which the Copernican theory was diffused, and especially
Bacon's opposition to it, see Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, 1. 404 -I2, ed. I847.  Copernicus died in 1543, and his opinions were introduced into
England mainly through Giordano Bruno, who came over about I583" (note in
Clarendon Press ed. of The Advancement of Learning, p. 294).
3 See the Myth of Er in the Republic 617, 618; and the note on Arcades, 64, where
the passage is translated.
4 Cf. perhaps i. 686; and certainly The Winter's Tale, It. i. o02, Troilus
and Cressida, I. 3. 85.
5 He was evidently familiar with the Copernican system (cf. iv. 592-97, vin. 130 -40, notes); and the question has been asked why he did not follow it in the poem.
The Copernican theory was new, without a scrap of literary association and with no
poetic terminology: whereas the Ptolemaic view and its delightful fictions as to the
Spheres, their harmonies, and the like had become a tradition of literature, expressed
in terms that recalled Marlowe and Shakespeare and Jonson and the sacri votes of
English verse. To surrender this poetic heritage merely out of deference to science
had been impossible pedantry-a perverse concession to the cold philosophy that
"empties the haunted air and unweaves the rainbow' (Lamia).




APPENDIX.


665


The order of the Spheres, which fit one within the other1, is, if we
start from the Earth as the stationary centre2 of the Universe, as
follows: first, the Spheres of the planets successively-the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn; then, outside the
last of these (i.e. Saturn), the Firmament or Caelum Stellatum, in which
are set the 'fixed stars'; then, outside the Firmament, the Crystalline
Sphere; and last, the Primum Mlobile enclosing all the others. Compare the famous lines (481-83) in book III. describing the passage
of the souls of the departed from Earth to Heaven:
"They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved."
It remains to note three or four points in these lines. Milton treats
the Sun and Moon as planets (v. 171-77, x. 651-58).     Compare
7ioilus and Cressida, I. 3. 89, "the glorious planet Sol," and Antony
and Cleopa/tra, v. 2. 240, 241:
"now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine."
The 'fixed stars' are referred to four times in the poem-but only once
(v. 176) with the word 'star' added: in the other places (III. 481, x.
66 ) they are called simply "the fixed " or " fixed " (v. 621). Though
they are unmoved their Sphere revolves round the Earth, moving from
East to West, completing a revolution in twenty-four hours, and carrying
with it the seven inner Spheres3. The rapid motion of this Sphere is
glanced at in v. X76 ("their orb4 that flies "). The Crystalline Sphere
and the Primumzn iMfobile were not included in the original Ptolemaic
system. They were added later, to explain certain phenomena which
the earlier astronomers had not observed, and for which their theories
offered no explanation.  Thus the supposed swaying or "trepidation"
of the Crystalline Sphere was held to be the cause of the precession of
the equinoxes. This Sphere is described as a vast expanse of waters
(see the note on vii. 261-74).  It encircles the eight inner Spheres.
The original notion may perhaps be traced to the waters " above the
firmament" in Genesis i. 7. Compare the picture in vii. 270, 271 of the
World
"Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide
Crystalline ocean."
i Cf. Marlowe's Faustus, vI. 38, 39:
"As are the elements, such are the spheres,
Mutually folded in each other's orb."
2 Cf. viiI. 32, "the sedentary Earth "; it is "self-balanced " (vii. 242)= upon her
centre poised" (v. 579).: These have separate motions of their own.
'Orb' and 'Sphere' are interchangeable terms-when it suits Milton.




666


PARADISE LOST.


The main purpose that this "ocean" serves is to protect the Earth from
the evil "influences" of Chaos; those "fierce extremes" of temperature
which might penetrate through the outside shell (the Primum Mobile)
and " distemper " the whole fabric of the Universe, did not this wall of
waters interpose (vii. 269-73). The whole idea is well illustrated by
the following passage from a curious old work entitled The Treasurie
of Azncient and Moderne Times (1613):
"Aboue the Firmament, is the Heauen Christaline, or watry,
which learned men are of the minde, that it was created by God aboue
the other Heauens: to the ende that it might mitigate the great heat
which the other Heauens acquired by their motions, ind by the Stars
beUin, in them."
Keightley says that this Sphere was also known as the " Glacial."
Last comes the Primum Mobile1, the "' first2 convex" of the World,
i.e. the outside case of our box or puzzle. It is made, as we saw, of
hard matter; but for its crust of substance Chaos would break in on
the World, and Darkness make inroads (Ill. 419-21).       The first
moved itself, it communicates motion to the nine inner Spheres. In
Elizabethan literature allusions to it are not infrequent: we will conclude by giving three. Compare Spenser, Hymne of Heavenly Beaulie:
"these heavens still by degrees arize,
Until they come to their first Movers bound,
That in his mightie compasse doth comprize,
And carry all the rest with him around";
and Marlowe, Faustus3:
"He views the clouds, and planets, and the stars,
The tropic zones, and quarters of the sky,
From the bright circle of the horned moon
Even to the height of Primum    Mobile";
and Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles: "for the motions of the greatest
persons in a government ought to be as the motions of the planets under
Primurm AMobile."
l Dante's frimo giro (Purgatorio, i. 15); see also the Paradiso, I. 123 and xiii.
24, where he makes the Primun Mobile represent the swiftest motion, and xxx. 107.
He uses the expression "the First Mover" (lo Motor primo) in a different sense, viz.
as a synonym of" The Almighty" (Pirgatorio, xxv. 7o).
2 III. 419. To Satan coming from Chaos it is the first; in our calculation, as we
started from the Earth, it is the last.
s Scene vi. chorus, 5-18, in the third Quarto, 16i6; the passage is not in the two
earlier editions of I604 and i60o (Ward).




APPENDIX.


667


B.
ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON'S SATAN.
I have reserved for this Appendix notice of some points in Milton's
delineation of the character of Satan. First, as to the rank which
Milton assigns to him before his revolt, and the cause of that revolt.
Milton speaks of Satan as an archangell-"if not the first Archangel"
(v. 660): that is, he is inclined to give Satan pre-eminence over all
angelic beings. But this pre-eminence is not emphasised so much as we
might have expected.
The immediate cause of the rebellion in Heaven is the proclamation
that all should worship the Messiah as their Iead (v. 600-I5).  Satan
resents the command, conceiving himself " impaired" (v. 665) thereby;
and he makes its pretended injustice a means of drawing away a
third part of the angels from their allegiance. They are equal, he
says, to the Messiah: self-begotten, not created: not liable to pay
worship; and so, playing on their pride, he wins them    (v. 772 -8o2, 853-69).   Meantime, in his own heart an even stronger motive
is at work; to wit, ambition to be himself equal to the Deitynay, superior. He not only disclaims submission to the Son: he
strives "against the throne and monarchy" (r. 42) of the Almighty
Himself; and it is as the foe rather of the Father than of the Son that
the great archangel is set before us in Paradise Lost.
Touching both matters there was much tradition, whereof it may be
interesting to cite two or three illustrations from popular works2 with
which Milton is likely to have been familiar. To take, for example,
the English Faust-book: Faustus asks: "But how came lord and
master Lucifer3 to have so great a fall from Heaven? Mephistophiles
answered, My lord Lucifer was a fair angel, created of God as immortal, and being placed in the Seraphims4, which are above the
Cherubims, he would have presumed upon the Throne of God...upon
this presumption the Lord cast him down headlong, and where (i.e.
whereas) before he was an angel of light, now dwells in darkness5."
I Contrast the first extract from the Faust-book, later on.
2 I choose three works each of which may, I think, be regarded as a resume of
many of the current traditions of demonology. Two of the books-the Faust-book,
1592, and Scot's Discourse on Devils, 1584-were extremely popular, and personally
I believe that Milton had studied both. Scot devotes several chapters to " Lucifer
and his fall." The third work-Heywood's Hierarchie, 1635-is very serviceable
to an editor of Paradise Lost.
3 A common name of Satan.
4 The highest of tie Hierarchies.  We may note the forms 'Seraphims,'
'Cherubims.'
5 Thoms' Enlishz Prose Ronmances, ill. 84.




668


PARADISE LOST.


Later on Faustus returns to the subject, enquir ng "'in what estimation
his lord Lucifer was, when he was in favour w h God ": also touching
his form  and shape: to which Mephistophlles replies, "My lord
Lucifer...was at the first an angel of God, yea he was so of God
ordained for shape, pomp, authority, worthiness, and dwelling, that he
far exceeded all the other creatures of God, and so illuminated that he
far surpassed the brightness of the sun, and all the stars...but when he
began to be high minded, proud and so presumptuous, that he would
usurp the seat of God's Majesty, then was he banishedl."
The Faust-book, it will be seen, agrees with Milton on both points;
while, as regards one of them-Satan's rank-it is more explicit than
Paradise Lost. Equally explicit is Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed
Angels (1635).  There (p. 336) we read that of the angels Lucifer
was first-created and chief:
"As he might challenge a prioritie
In his Creation, so aboue the rest
A supereminence, as first and best."
Heywood mentions Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, and adds
(1. 337) that great as they were,
"Yet aboue these was Lucifer instated,
I-Ionor'd, exalted, and much celebrated."
Reginald Scot goes even further, remarking2 that according to the
teaching of some divines Satan even after his fall exceeded in power
any of the angelic host. It seems to me therefore something strange
that Milton did not unequivocally invest Satan with superiority over
all the angels.
As to Satan's motive Heywood 3 differs from Milton, making jealousy
of mankind the cause; while Scot writes4: "Our schoolemen differ much
in the cause of Lucifer's fall [some alleging one thing, some another,
while] others saie, that his condemnation grew hereupon, for that he
challenged the place of the Messias."  This accords more with Paradise
Lost, v. 661-65.
For Milton Satan is the type of pride. The type was already fixed.
As an epithet of Lucifer 'proud' had passed into a proverb. Thus
Gower said5:
" For Lucifer with him that felle
Bar pride with him into helle.
There was pride of to grete cost
Whan he for pride hath heven lost";
and Marlowe t:
T Thors, in. 187.
2 Nicholson's ed., p. 425.
P. 339.       4   P  423.
6 Cofessio A mantis, book I.
6 'ausitus, mi. 67-69.




APPENDIX.


669


"Fauzst. I-ow comces it, then, that he is prince of devils?
Jleph. 0, by, piring pride and insolence;
For which God threw him from the face of heaven";
and Greene1:        r
"proud Lucifer fell from the heavens,............
Lucifer and his proud-hearted friends
Were thrown into the centre of the earth."
Dante had made him ii primno supier-bo-that is, the archetype of all
pride (Paradiso, xix. 46; see also xxix. 55 —57).
Milton therefore did not wholly conceive or create the character of
the arch-rebel. Tradition, literary no less than theological, prescribed
the dominant idea in that nature: enough if Milton developed the idea
in harmony with the design of his poem. This he did. lie depicts
Satan as an embodiment of the spirit of pride and ambition 2: not the
ambition which is an honourable desire of praise-that last infirmity ofl
noble minds-but the fevered lust for power which springs from over-.
mastering self-esteem.  In Satan this spirit of egotism is the poison\
that permeates his whole being, vanquishing and vitiating all that \
is good in him.
For at the outset of the action of Paradise Lost Satan has much that 'is noble and attractive in his nature. To have made him wholly evil,
had repelled, and lessened the interest of the poem, which turns, in-no  (
slight degree, on the struggle between the good and evil elements in
him. Indeed, this very pride is not without its good aspect. Herein j
lies the motive power that nerves him at every crisis to face insuperable [
difficulties; to cherish immortal hope-though hope of revenge; andcl
to adventure "high attempts."
On the other hand, it is this same spirit that drives him onward to
his final fall. if at any moment he is min(led to repent and submitthrough pity for the friends whom he has ruined, or mankind whom /
lie schemes to ruin, or himself-through sense of his ingratitude (Iv.
42-45) towards the Allnighty-whatever the motive-relentless, resistless egotism sweeps aside compunction, and denies him retreat. To
sue for grace were to humble himself in the eyes of his followers and
in his own: which must not be (Iv. 79-86).
Steadily does Milton keep this idea before us. There is no possibility of missing or mistaking his intention. The very word 'pride'
recurs3 like some persistent refrain, ringing clearest at the great crises,
the fateful moments when the action of the epic enters on a fresh stage.
There are moments of relenting: as when in the fourth book (27 et seq.)
1 Friar Bacon, ix. 59, 65, 66.
3 Cf. Satan's own words in iv. 40.
a Cf.. 6, 58, 527, 572, 6o3 —with many other examples.




670


PARADISE LOST.


Satan looks down upon Eden from his resting-place on Mount Niphates,
and a brief while is inclined to give up his attempt and seek readmission into Heaven; or as when in the ninth book (455-72) he sees
Eve in the Garden and is touched by her beauty and innocence, and
disarmed of his ill thoughts. Always, however, the end is the same:
"the hot hell " of pride in his heart breaks anew into flame; and he
goes forward to his work'.  IHad not pride led him to undertake it?
Satan's resolve to compass the fall of man is prompted by several
feelings-each a phase of self-esteem. There is jealousy. Man has
usurped his place-dispossessed him and his followers. At sight of
Adam and Eve he exclaims (iv. 358-60):
"O Iell! what do mine eyes with grief behold?
Into our room of bliss thus high advanced
Creatures of other mould, Earth-born perhaps!"
The same feeling finds expression in almost the same words later on
(Ix. 148, 149). That others should receive favour from the Almighty
-and, as he thinks, at his expense-wounds his pride.
Again, there is desire to assert his supremacy by undertaking an
office from which the mightiest of his followers recoil in fear. Nowhere
does Satan stand forth so eminent and sublime " with monarchal pride "
as in the scene in the second book where he proffers himself for the
great enterprise. The counsel of Beelzebub has been applauded by all
(386-89): but who will carry it out? None dare: and then Satan,
proclaiming his readiness, once more confirms his sovereignty. Here
too pride has ruled.
But the strongest motive remains: desire
"To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss
Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell2."
"To spite the great Creator" (ii. 384, 385) he will bring ruin on the
earth and its inhabitants: which, if not victory, were revenge. The
notion flatters his self-conceit. It is born of the old pride. And
I Milton dwells on it with fitting insistence3.
) i  Is Satan the 'hero' of Paradise Lost?  We might think so did we
' not read beyond the first four books. But to trace his history in the poem
\  to its inglorious close is to dispel the impression. Milton can scarcely
'intend that we should regard as 'hero'-as worthy of sustained admiration-one who passes from the splendour of archangelic being to the
state of a loathsome reptile4. The hideous metamorphosis in x. 504 -/  ' 32 is the necessary contrast to those scenes at the beginning of the epic
in which the great rebel does appear in heroic grandeur: and we must
look on both pictures. If Paradise Lost narrates the fall of man, it
Cf. Mr Stopford Brooke's admirable Study of Milton, p. 148.
2 iv. II, 2.  8 Cf. vi. 9o5, 906.  4 Cf. Satan's words in ix. 163-71.




APPENDIX.


67I


narrates too-and no less clearly-the fall of man's tempter. The
self-degradation of Satan is complete: outward and inward: of the
form and of the spirit: a change-ever for the worse-of shape and
mind and emotion.
There is the outward sign. Before his expulsion he is pre-eminently
a lustrous being, clothed with ethereal radiance.and glory-so'fimch
does his name "Lucifer" argue1. And afterwards he retains some-   j
thing of this "original brightness," though much has passed from
him (I. 97, 591-94). But gradually what was left decreases in proportion as the evil in him prevails: so that Uriel perceives the foul
passions that dim his face/(Iv. 124-30), while Gabriel marks his
"faded splendour wan" (iv. 870), and the Cherub Zephon taunts him
therewith (iv. 835-40). Equal is his loss of physical force. On the
fields of Heaven he does not fear to meet Michael in combat (vl. 246
et seq.): in the Garden of Eden he doubts himself a match for Adam:
"Foe not informidable! exempt from wound,
I not; so much hath Hell debased, and pain2
Enfeebled me, to what I was in Heaven."
In fact, he is glad that he has to deal with the woman-not the man
(ix. 479-88).
Nor this because of lost strength alone. He shuns the " higher
intellectual" of Adam (Ix. 483), who would be better able than Eve to
see through his arguments and so resist temptation. I-e is conscious
of his own decline in intellect. The strong intelligence which inspires
his speeches in the first two books has degenerated, by perverse use,
into mere sophistical slyness, a base cunning-even as wine may lose
its savour and turn to vine-"   I He is no more the mighty-minded  /
archangel: he is naught but the serpent-"subtlest beast of all the
field."  Lastly, every impulse in him towards good has died out. The
element of nobility that redeemed his character at the outset from
absolute baseness has been killed. In evil he moves and has his being,
so that himself confesses "all good to me becomes bane"; and in   )
destroying lies his sole delight (Ix. I14-30).
Hardly therefore shall we believe that Milton meant us to see in the
fallen and ever-falling archangel the hero of Paradise Lost. One feels, r
rather, that there is a break at the end of the fourth book and that
thenceforth the continuity of Satan's characterisation is truer to theology i
than poetry. The hero, if there be one, is Adam, in whom suffering
works a purification that promises nobler things to come; or Messiah.
1 Cf. vI. 131, note, and the second extract from the Faust-book, and Marlowe,
Faustus, v. 155:
' beautiful
As was bright Lucifer before his fall."
2 See i. 55, VI. 327, notes.




672


PARADISE LOST.


C.
PARADISE LOST, I. 361-75; II. 274, 27,,397-402.
These' passages (with several in Paradise Regained) are illustrated
by the following in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, I. iv. 3: " The fall
of the angels was pride. Since their fall, their practices have been the
clean contrary unto those before mentioned. For being dispersed, some
in the air, some on the earth, some in the water, some2 among the
minerals, dens, and caves, that are under the earth; they have by all
means laboured to effect a universal rebellion against the laws, and as
far as in them lieth utter destruction of the works of God. These
wicked spirits the heathens honoured instead of gods, both generally
under the name of dii inferi, 'gods infernal'; and particularly, some in
oracles3, some in idols4, some as household gods, some as nymphs: in
a word, no foul and wicked spirit which was not one way or other
honoured of men as God, till such time as light appeared in the world
and dissolved the works of the Devil." The interest of this passage is
that Hooker identifies the fallen angels (I) with the heathen-more
especially classical-deities, (2) with the daemons supposed to inhabit
the four5 'elements.'   This twofold identification accords with the
apparently universal belief of medieval writers. The precise steps
whereby it was reached cannot perhaps be determined; but the process
may have been on this wise.
The belief in the existence of daemons is as old as Hesiod's time;
cf. the Works and Days 12 1-26.       It is found passinm in Greek
philosophy. The character attributed to these daemons varies in the
different authorities. In a rough generalisation we may say that they
were regarded as semi-divine powers intermediate between gods and
men.    Their dwelling-place also varies:.Eschylus (Persw 628) describes them as xO6vtot; Plato6 (Cratylus 398 A) as v-roxO6vtot.  The
theory which assigns the air as their special abode, and which is
brought forward very prominently in Paradise Aegained, dates from Neo1 I have to thank Mr R. D. Hicks for many of the references used in this sketch;
in fact, all the classical material in sections C and D is derived from him.
2 Cf. Plato's at(uoves vroX06vtoo.
Cf. the second passage quoted later on from Zeller.
4 Alluding perhaps to Ps. xcvi. 5-see later.
5 Hooker omits the daemons of fire (=Philo's r& 7rvp~yova?).
6 He is quoting Hesiod, 1. c. (where, however, our texts have ertxe6v&or).




APPENDIX.


673


Pythagorean writers1. Now the tendency of Greek popular superstition
and of later philosophy was to merge these daemons in the gods: a
tendency traceable as far back as Democritus2. He (says Zeller3)
"may be regarded as the first who, mediating between philosophers
and the popular religion, entered upon the course so often pursued in
after times, viz. that of degrading the gods of polytheism into daemons."
This course is carried further by the Neo-Pythagoreans-for whom,
"as for the other philosophers of that time, daemons take the place of
the popular gods in all cases where what is attributed to the gods was
found irreconcileable with a purer conception of the divinity, and yet
was not altogether to be denied. Divination4 proceeded from them,
expiations were made to them: Timaeus Locrus even affirms that the
gods committed to them the government of the world" (Zeller5). And
this identification of gods and daemons is completed in Philo Judaeus6
and Rabbinical writers. Not to multiply proofs, we may take a single
illustration which will readily occur to most readers, viz. I Cor. x. 20,
where St Paul (influenced, I presume, by Rabbinical teaching and
Greek philosophy) expressly, and appropriately since he is writing to
Greeks, calls the divinities of the Gentiles 5atjL6vta7. The notion may
be traced in many patristic works.
The next step is the identification of the daemons with the fallen
angels. This is made by Philo, who treats the daemons as intermediaries or messengers (ayyeXot) between God and the world, and
says that they are the beings whom Moses calls angels-o0Ds 6XXo
qtkX6~oqoo &aifaovas, dyyAXovs Mwioo' s etwOev 6voj.uditv, '^fvXal 5' elailv
KaTa rb   diopa TreT6/Leva 8. This identification is also a Rabbinical
doctrine. It suffices for our purpose again to recall St Paul's words in
Ephes. ii. 2, where Satan, chief of the fallen angels, is termed "the
prince of the power of the air," i.e. lord of the daemons of the air.
The daemons, then, having been identified on the one hand with the
heathen gods, and on the other with the fallen angels, the identification
of the fallen angels with the heathen gods naturally followed. Hence
1 i.e. from the first century B.C. onwards. "They imagine the daemons to be
souls dwelling in the space between the earth and the moon, and occupying, alike in
virtue of their nature and their abode, a place intermediate between gods and men"Zeller (Philosophie der Griechen, 111. 2, p. 138); he cites various Neo-Pythagoreans,
summarising their views thus.
2 Circa 420 B.C.
8 Pre-Socratics, English trans., 1I. p. 289.
4 Cf. Hooker, ante; Nat. Ode, I75 (note); P. R. L. 430, 431, where the Saviour
says to Satan (prince of the demons), "all oracles by thee are given."
Philosophie der Griechen, III. 2, p. 139.
B.C. 30-A.D. 40 (circa).
7 The same word is used in the Septuagint in Psalm xcvi. 5, where the A.V. has
"idols." Cf. Hooker, ante, and P. L. L. 375.
" De Gigant. 285 A (263, 7).


P. L.


43




674                   PARADISE     LOST.
it is common to find all three treated as the same in patristic and
mediaeval works. This is Hooker's view; it is also Milton's. The
identity of the fallen angels and the heathen gods is stated so explicitly
in P. L. I. 361-75 that it were superfluous to dwell on the point.
The identity of the fallen angels and the daemons' is less emphasised
in P. L. (but see II. 274, 275, 397-402, notes). In P. R. it is conspicuous. As a signal illustration P. R. II. 21r-26 may be instanced.
D.
PARADISE LOST, I. 515-17.
What are we to understand by the expressions "the middle air"
(P. L. I. 516) and "the middle region of air" (P. R. II. 117), the
meaning of which would appear to be the same? Most editors are
silent on the subject; some interpret "middle"=' between heaven and
earth.' This view, though possible, does not appear to me wholly
satisfactory, and I venture to offer another-that Milton alludes in both
places to a theory, evidently current at that time, of the division of the
air into three regions, and that "middle region" is really a quasiscientific term (media regio) which would be perfectly intelligible to
all scholars of the 17th century. As to the history of this threefold
division: the first hints of it that fell in my way were the passage in the
Adamus Exul of C.otius and one in Jonson's Mfasque of Hymen (adfin.).
The combined evidence of these led to the conclusion that the threefold partition must have been a conception then recognised: not indeed
a classical conception, but experience had often shown that in such
matters Milton's views are post-classical, what one may vaguely call
'mediaeval.' The kindness of Mr R. D. Hicks enables me to throw
some light on a doctrine which, in my opinion, fits the two Miltonic
passages with extreme appositeness. Of the references with which
Mr Hicks has supplied me space will admit but two or three.
First, then, the following extracts from the works of Bartholomaus
Keckermann2, the German savant, are important as coming from what
may be considered a compendium of contemporary science. Keckermann is speaking of the divisions of the air; and he remarks that there
are two main theories as to its partition-the older and less correct which
1 i.e. the damons of all four 'elements,' not of air alone.
2 D. Bartholomcei Keckermanni Dantiscani operum omnium quac exstant
Tomus Primus. Geneva. Apud Petrum A ubertum. MDCXIV.




APPENDIX.                             675
postulates two regions, the modem and more accurate which recognises
three.  He says: Aristoteles atque adeb veteres Physici locum     aeris
dividunt in TrpOrepov &' 5e6repov, id est, primum a& secundunt, sive
superiorem &S inferioremr...Recentiores autem accuratius paulb totnum ilud
spacium (sic) aereum partiti sunt in tres partes sive regiones... Perfectior
sive accuralior distinctio aeris est in tres regiones, nempe in Supremam,
Mediam   &- Infimam.    The genesis of this doctrine he traces thus:
Distinctio ista...ab interpretibus Aristotelis primum tradita fuit, nempe
ab Averroel, a Themistio 2 &  Simplicio2, &3 deinde latins explicata ab
Alberto4 M. &<S aliis Scholasticis, idque potissimum eo fine, ut doctrina
meteorum clarior atque illustrior fieret (as for sundry other reasons5).
lie discusses at some length the characteristics of each region; and
though we are most concerned with what he has to say of the middle
region (media)-his remarks being founded on what Albertus had
written-we may just note that he represents the upper region (sup remoa)
as the driest and hottest, and the lowest region (infima) as hot, through
radiation from the surface of the earth heated by the sun's rays, but also
moist. Now as to the media regio he writes (i) that it is peculiarly
cold-(a) because vapours collect there from land and sea, (b) because
of its reaction (dvrt7reptlaraots) against the heat of the upper and lower
regions; (2) that, beginning where the sun's rays lose their power-its
lowest point earthwards-it reaches to the tops of the loftiest mountains
-its highest point heavenwards. The diameter of this belt of air is
computed by some at seven English miles.
Keckermann has referred above to his authorities; let us glance at
Albertus Magnus. In his Commentary on the Meteora Albertus has a
chapter6 headed, Quare non sunt nubes in superiori regione aeris, sed in
media tantum. Here, after discussing the upper and lower regions, he
adds, est autem in medio duarum regionum, Acilicet superioris cestuose,
&' inferioris calide &a  humidce, tertia aeris zona sive regio...quza est
valdefrigida et excellentis frigiditatis. And then he goes on to explain
how vapour gathers there-infra altissimos montes-and condenses and
forms clouds, so that this middle region is the gathering place for rain7.
Later8 he writes to the same effect-tria sunt aeris inters/itia, infimum
I A.D. Io20-98.                   2 A.D. 330-90.
3 Circa A.D. 536.                 4 A.D. 1193-1280.
v Cf. op. cit. col. 2446.
6 Liber L., Tractatus i., Ca int viii.
7 Cf. the passage in Jonson; it is a description of some scenery used in the
Masque of Hymen, which represented "the three regions of air": the middle region
"all of dark and condensed clouds, as being the proper place where rain, hail, and
other watery meteors are made "; or as Averroes puts it-in quo fiunt luvia et nix
et grando (Meteorologicorum Lib. 1., Cap. iv.).
I Liber i., Tract. i., Cap. in.
43-2




676                   PARADISE LOST.
&' medium &- supremum-...medium frigidum excellenter &' humidum.
Now let us summarise the results of these descriptions of the media
regio, and see how they apply to the Miltonic "middle region."
(I) The media regio is the place of clouds and heavy vapours;
cf. P. R. i. 39-41, where Satan
"in mid air
To council summons all his mighty peers,
Within thick clouds and dark tenfold involved,"
and P. R. II. 117, where Satan ascends "Up to the middle region of
thick air."  Cf. also the piece In Quintum Novembris, 12, where M.
makes this region the gathering-place of storms: tic tempestates medio
ciet aere diras (the subject of the verb being Satan); and his Latin
academic "prolusion" De Spherarum Concentu, where he mentions
media aeris regio.
(2) It is peculiarly cold; and ' cold' is the precise epithet used in
P. L. I. 516. Cf. The Death of a Fair Izfant, 16, " Through middle
empire of the freezing air."
(3) It extends to the top of high mountains; and Mount Olympus
is the dwelling-place of the deities who " rule the middle air," P. L. I.
515, 516. Cf. the Vacation Exercise, 4r, 42.
(4) It is capped by another, perhaps broader, belt of air; and in
P. L. I. 517 Milton expressly sneers at the "highest heaven" of the
classical deities as not being so very high after all-which, according to
the whole system of this theory, is true enough.
It appears to me therefore that the explanation suggested fits the
passages at every turn. I imagine that to many of Milton's readers, as
to many of the spectators of Jonson's Masque, the notion of the three
regions was perfectly familiar1. From the frequency of Milton's own
references to it we may infer that it appealed to his imagination.
E.
PARADISE LOST, I. 582-87.
The enumeration of proper names is a favourite device with M., as
with many other poets, notably Vergil. Cf. the Nativity Ode, one of his
earliest poems (1629), P. L. xI. 388-411, P. R. III. 270 et seq. The
1 It has been pointed out to me that this conception of the media regio is
expounded in Sylvester's Dau Bartas, a work so familiar to Milton; see Grosart's
ed., I. 31. For another illustrative passage, cf. Burton's Anatomy, ninth ed., 1. 380.




APPENDIX.


677


charm of such passages lies in the musical sound of the names, in
their historical or literary associations, and in the impression of vague
remoteness and mystery that they convey. Bentley, however, with
something more than his usual infelicity as a critic of M., omitted
lines 579-87 (from "what resounds" to "Fontarabbia") as being
"Romantic Trash-a heap of barbarous Words."     Even Keightley
opined that the names are chosen "somewhat at random": whereas, in
truth, each has been carefully selected by M. for its associations.
In " all who since " Milton is thinking-mainly-of the great Italian
poems of chivalry with their accounts of contests between the Christians
("baptized") and Saracens ("infidel"-see 763-66, note): e.g.
Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, 148I-see the Areopagitica, P. W. i. '64;
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, 1495, recast by Berni, I541-see P. R.
III. 338-43; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, I5I6, of which there was a
famous English version by Sir John Harington, i591-see the extract
from Ariosto in Of Reformation, P. W. It. 383; and Tasso's Gerusalemme
Liberata. In a letter from Florence (I638), and elsewhere, M. manifests
his delight in Italian literature.
Aspramont (583) is situate 6 miles north of Nice. In Hexham's
Mercator (1636) I find it marked in the map of Provence, and
again in that of Italy. The castle belonging to the great family of the
Counts of Aspramont may still be seen. Probably the literary allusion
is to the Orlando Furioso, XII. 43, where Aspramont is mentioned as
the scene of a feat of arms performed by Orlando; and M. may have
known an Italian poem, entitled L'Aspramonte and published at
Venice in 1532-itself, possibly, based on the French 'Chanson de
Geste' Aspremont, which deals with Charlemagne's conquest of Apulia.
In any case, it is pretty clear that 'Aspramont' was a name familiar to
readers of medieval romances of chivalry: and does not Scott tell us of
jousts at the castle of Aspramont for the hand of the ' Lady of Aspramonte' (Count Robert of Paris)?  Also, as M. in his journey to Italy,
rejecting the route by Marseilles to Genoa which Sir Henry Wotton
recommended (see Comus), passed through Nice (so he says in
the Defensio Secunda), he may conceivably have visited the famous
castle, and viewed the scene of the exploits of Orlando and other
knights. The notion that Asprement in the Netherlands is meant
need only be mentioned to be dismissed.
Montalban, or Montauban, is another famous name. It was the
castle, in Languedoc, of the Knight Renaud, the Rinaldo of Pulci's
AMorgante Maggiore and Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. In the English
romance " The Foure Sonnes of Aymon" (published by Caxton, about
1489), Montalban is constantly mentioned as the scene of conflicts be



678


PARADISE LOST.


tween Charlemagne's troops and Renaud who is besieged there (see the
Early English Text Society's ed., pp. 395-422). Rodd in his Spanish
Ballads (1812) gives one "The Ancient Ballad of Count Claros of
Montalban" (and another "The Ancient Ballad of the Battle of
Roncesvalles ").
In "Damasco" the literary allusion is probably to the Orlando
]Furioso. In Harington's version the 'Argument' to book xvii. says,
"Martano at Damasco tilts "; stanzas X2-20 of that book describe the
city, with the meeting of the champions there, and stanzas 58-73 their
tournaments and jousts. No doubt, too, M. was thinking of Damascus
as the scene of battles in times of the Crusades; cf. Greene, Friar
Bacon, Iv. 27, "The virtuous fame discoursed of his deeds...Done at
the Holy Land 'fore Damas' walls," and vIII. 113, "that famous
Prince...Who at Damasco beat the Saracens." Note that M. uses the
form 'Damasco' here, but ' Damascus' at 468: the one suggests the
mediaeval, the other the Scriptural, city.
In "Marocco" the wars between the Spaniards and the Moors are
meant. The form AMarocco, given in the original editions here and in
XI. 404, is closer to the Arabic form Marrdkush.
Trebisond, Gk. Trapezus, in Cappadocia, was the seat of the empire
of the family of the Grand-Komnenos from A.D. 1204 to I461, when
the city was captured by Mohammed. Writers of the Middle Age and
later historians (Gibbon has only a brief allusion, VII. 327) celebrate
the extraordinary splendour of the court and magnificence of the city.
"Never," says the historian of Trebizond, Professor Fallmerayer, "was
there a land more fitted to provide material for romances of chivalry
(Ritlergeschichten) ": Trebizond "became in popular romance and in
the imagination of the Italians and Provenials one of the most famous
empires of the east, and the rallying point of the youth and flower of
Asia" (Geschichte des Kaiserthums von Trapezuizl). Now the great
exemplar of this romance associated with Trehizond (whose splendours
would naturally be reflected on Western Europe through an Italian
medium) was a heroic novel, II Caloandro, or 1( Caloandro Fedele,
written by Giovanni Ambrosio Marini of Genoa, published at Bologna
in i641 (but I am not sure that this was the ist ed.), and often reprinted.
This work, which had some historical basis, was one of the most famous
romances of the I7th cent. Twice translated into French (by Monsieur
de Scudery, brother of the novelist, and by the Comte de Caylus), it
may have been Englished-as was another novel by Marini, The
Desperadoes; and it seems to me quite likely that M. was thinking
of it here, or at any rate that many of his readers would think of it.
Those who knew the novel would recall the numerous jousts and




APPENDIX.


679


tournaments which take place at the court of Trebizond, e.g. the great
combat in book xxI. (it is a vast story) between the three champions of
the princess Tigrinde and the three representatives of the Persian and
Tartar armies-with many similar scenes. It is worth while to add
that the author (Cardinal Bessarion) of the curious Laus Trapezuntis
dwells on its tournaments and games as a special feature of the court;
and to remember how Scott makes the Templar say to Rebecca,
"I won him (his horse, Zamor) in single fight from the Soldan of
Trebizond" (Ivanhoe, chap. xliv.).
In line 585 the historical reference is to the Moorish invaders of
Spain, the literary to book II. of the Orlando Innamorato, where we
read how Agramant, 'King of Africa,' assembled his troops at Biserta
(the ancient Utica) for invasion of Christendom, landed in Spain,
and came up with the army of Charlemagne, when "a bloody battle
ensued."
The event to which M. refers in lines 586, 587, was this: Charlemagne, who had entered Spain to attack the Saracens, was retreating
into France, A.D. 778; his army had to pass through the defile of Roncesvalles (or Roncesvaux) in N.W. Spain; Charlemagne himself, with
main body, had got through the pass, when the rear-guard, through
Ganelon's treachery, was attacked in the pass by the Gascons (or
Basques), and cut to pieces, among those who perished being the
famous Roland, whose death became the subject of numberless
'Chansons de Gestes,' such as the great Song of Poland (see Eginhardus,
Vita Caroli lMagni, cap. 9).
Fontarabbia is 40 miles from Roncesvalles: why does M. place the
disaster at the former? Some will have it that he chose Fontarabbia
because the name has a very pretty sound, and that "by Fontarabbia "
was quite accurate enough, in poetry.  Some again say that M.
followed the historian Mariana and 'other Spanish writers.' Mariana,
however, does not mention Fontarabbia at all, but gives the ordinary
version, that the battle was at Roncesvalles. There may be some literary
allusion not yet traced.  Scott happily combines the two names,
ilarmion, VI. 33:
"0, for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,
That to king Charles did come,
When Rowland brave, and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,
On Roncesvalles died."
It was at Fontarabbia that Wellington forced his way into France
against Soult, over the ford of the river Bidassoa.




680


PARADISE LOST.


M. represents Charlemagne as having fallen in the fight, whereas
he lived till 814.  Here again Milton's authority is not known;
though Mariana does speak of Charlemagne dying through chagrin at
his defeat soon after. But perhaps "fell" means ' was overthrown';
as Dante says, "lost the holy emprise" (Inferno, xxxI. i6-I8).
Montaigne introduces the name Fontarabic in a short historical
anecdote in his Essay (I. xv.) entitled "Of the punishment of
Cowardise" in Florio's translation (t603).
It may just be added that "peer"-cf. "peerage"-is the word
regularly used of Charlemagne's nobles in the old poems and proseromances translated from the French; such as Caxton's Lyfe of Charles
the grete of France (I485) and the Foure Sonnes of Aymon (1489,
Caxton), both reprinted by the Early English Text Society. Cf. Huon
of Burdeux, where it is said that at the battle of Roncesvalles "al ye
xii peres of france were slayne, except one " (p. 2).
F.
PARADISE LOST, I. 737.
According to a medieval belief the Heavenly beings were divided
into three Hierarchies, and each Hierarchy was subdivided into three
Orders or Choirs. These Orders comprised the Seraphim, Cherubim and
Thrones (Op6vo), forming the first Hierarchy; Dominations (KvpL6r-,r-e),
Virtues (5VV&dues) and Powers (ieovtal), forming the second; Principalities ({px:al), Archangels and Angels, forming the third.  This
system was deduced, in the main, from St Paul's words in Ephes. i. 21
and Colos. i. I6. First formulated in the treatise 7repi Trjs oupapvia
lepapXtas, which was long attributed, though falsely, to Dionysius the
Areopagite, the notion had great influence in the Middle Ages; cf.
Dante, Paradiso, x. 15-I7, XXVIII. 98-126. Allusions to it are
frequent in Elizabethan writers. Works from which many illustrations
of the system might be quoted are:-Batman vppon Bartholome (1582),
Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), Thomas Watson's
Eglogue (1590), the Faust-book (1587), Spenser's Fowre Hymnes
(Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beautie), Bacon, Advancement of
Learning, I. vi. 3, Drummond, Flowers of Sion (Works, II. 42, 51),
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, I. Iviii., and Heywood's Hierarchic
of the Blessed Angels (1635), which deals with the subject at great
length.




APPENDIX.


68i


Milton acceptedl the tradition and made it the basis of the whole
angelical system of Paradise Lost.
Each of the Orders possessed some special quality. The Seraphim
were the "burning" lustrous beings; cf. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly
Beaulie, 95, 96:
"And those eterall burning Seraphins,
Which from their faces dart out fierie light."
This conception, due probably to the false derivation of Seraphim from
a root signifying 'to burn,' determines Milton's choice of epithets for
this Order of Hierarchies. It is a common allusion in the poets; cf. the
Essay on Man, I. o09, IIO (of the " poor Indian "):
"To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel's wings, no Seraph's fire";
and again 277, 278. So the Seraphim "are represented in medieval
art with the colour of flame or crimson."
The Cherubim had a wondrous power of vision: hence their main
duty in Paradise Lost is to keep watch.   See IV. 778-80.    And
through this power of vision they enjoyed in a peculiar degree the
Visio Beatifica or faculty of " contemplating " the Deity. In the words
of the treatise 7repl Trs lepapxtla they were distinguished Lia TO e OTOrTtKb
aTrwvc Kal COetoprTK6v. And this notion is the key to that difficult line
(54) in II Penseroso, " The Cherub Contemplation."
The archangels were, as their name implied, the "chief messengers"
of the Almighty and the intermediaries between him and Man. Cf.
Reginald Scot, "As for archangels, they are sent onlie about great and
secret matters"; and Heywood, "The Archangels are Embassadors,
great matters to declare."  Hence Milton makes Raphael in book v.
and Michael in books xI., XII., each one of the seven archangels
referred to in III. 648-53, the bearers of messages and charges from
the Almighty to Adam.
One other point in which Milton follows mediaeval tradition with
regard to the Heavenly beings may be noticed. Descriptions like
those in book III. 625-28 and 636-42 are purely traditional. We
must compare them with the presentment of angels in works of early
Christian art. Poets and painters alike drew upon religious tradition
and expressed it by certain conventional details. And this presentment
of angelic beings contained a considerable element of symbolism. In
Batman vppon Bartholome, ii. iii., iv., there is a long discourse on the
1 Thus in The Reason of Church Government, 1. 2, he says, "the angels themselves...are distinguished and quaternioned into their celestial princedoms and
satrapies," P. W. II. 442. He several times uses the special terms "Orders" and
"Hierarchies"-cf. P. L. L. 737, v. 591, VII. 192; while the titles "Seraphim,"
"Thrones," "Dominations," "Virtues" etc. occur constantly.




682


PARADISE LOST.


attributes which painters assign to angels and on their symbolical significance. The following brief extracts from it illustrate Milton's pictures
of Uriel and the " stripling Cherub ": " When Angells are paynted with
long lockes and crispe haire, thereby is understoode their cleane
affections and ordinate thoughts. For the hayre of the head betokeneth thoughts and affections that doe spring out of the roote of
thought and minde...And they be painted beardles: for to take consideration and heede, that they passe never the state of youth, neyther
waxe feeble in vertues, neither faile for age...Truely they be paynted
feathered and winged...[as a sign that] they be lifted up in effect and
knowledge, and rauished to the uttermost contemplation of the loue
of God."
G.
PARADISE LOST, iii. 2 —26.
"Drop serene " is a literal rendering of gutta setrena, the technical
Latin term for "complete amaurosis," i.e. amaurosis or disease of the
optic nerve in its worst form. It involves total blindness. " Suffusion "
(Greek V7r6Xvu/a, Latin suffusio) was also a technical term, employed
then by medical writers to denote imperfection or loss of sight
in general, whether caused by cataract or by affection of the nervous
structure. Blindness of the latter type is sometimes called suffusio nigra.
Milton's blindness was probably due to amaurosis, since that
disease commonly makes no external change in the eye. Thus he says
in the Second Defence, " so little do they [his eyes] betray any external
appearance of injury, that they are as unclouded and bright as the eyes
of those who most distinctly see" (P. TV. r. 235).
Cf. also his second Sonnet to Cyriack Skinner:
"Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot."
His weakness of sight was evidently inherited from his mother.
Aubrey in his Life of Milton says: " His father read without spectacles
at 84. His mother had very weake sight."
Milton undoubtedly believed that his loss of physical eyesight was
compensated by increased spiritual illumination:
"So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate" (III. 51-53).
With these lines we may compare a sentence in one of his letters:




APPENDIX.


683


" why should I not submit with complacency to this loss of sight, which
seems only withdrawn from the body without, to increase the sight
of the mind within?" (P. W. iII. 513). He writes to the same effect
in the Second Defence: " Let me then be the most feeble creature alive,
as long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational
and immortal spirit; as long as in that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the light of the divine presence more clearly shines, then, in
proportion as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in proportion
as I am blind, I shall see more clearly. O! that I may thus be perfected
by feebleness, and irradiated by obscurity. And, indeed, in my blindness,
I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity, who regards
me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to
behold nothing but himself" (P. IV. I. 239). Cf. Samson Agonistes,
i62, I63 and 1687-89; and Wordsworth, The Excursion, I. 95.
One of the finest allusions in literature to Milton's affliction is in
Gray's lines on him in The Progress of Poesy; as the third couplet of
them contains a reference to Paradise Lost, III. 380-82, they may not
inappropriately be cited here:
"Nor second He, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Extasy,
The secrets of th' Abyss to spy.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time:
The living Throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where Angels tremble, while they gaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Clos'd his eyes in endless night."
Dryden seems to have anticipated Gray in the reference; cf. The Hind
and the Panther, I. 64-69:
"But gracious God, how well dost Thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe Thee thus concealed,
And search no farther than Thy self revealed."
H.
PARADISE LOST, III. 431-39.
The geography of this passage has been criticised adversely on the
assumption that " Imaus " must mean the Himalayas. A bird flying
from the Himalayas to the sources of the Ganges would not pass over




684


PARADISE LOST.


any part of 'Sericana,' by which, probably, the north-west angle of the
Chinese Empire was signified. Masson, to meet the supposed difficulty,
argues that the vulture is not said to start from Imaus: it is only
"bred" there. But I think that Milton does mean us to regard Imaus
as the starting-point of the bird's flight.
" Imaus," however, need not mean the Himalayas in this passage.
True, the earlier classical geographers applied "Imaus" to the
Himalayas (the names being cognate); but in Ptolemy and later writers
the name is transferred to the great chain of mountains, the Bolor
range, which runs through Central Asia from North to South, dividing
the Chinese Empire from Turkestan. And this later use1 of "Imaus"
appears to have been that recognised by geographers of the I7th
century. Perhaps the best known collection of maps issued in England
between I6oo and I650 was the English edition2 of Mercator's Atlas,
doubtless known to Milton.
Now, in Mercator's map of Tartaria there is marked a chain of
mountains called Imaus Mons. It extends, roughly speaking, from
the north-eastern corner of the modern Afghanistan to the "Frozen
Ocean," i.e. Arctic Ocean. Its course is due North and South. When
Milton speaks of "Imaus" which bounds the "roving Tartars," he
means, I doubt not, this Imaus AMons which is so conspicuous
in Mercator's Tarlaria. And any one who could consult this rare
Atlas would perceive at once the accuracy of Milton's description. For
the northern part of Imaus Mons does "bound" the Tartar, separating his country from Russia; and a vulture starting from this
northern part and flying southward to the Ganges would pass over the
north-west plains of the Chinese Empire. Judged therefore from the
17th century standpoint the geography of the passage is qcuite correct.
Of course, very little was known then about Central Asia. Mercator
frankly calls it "that vast and unknown region."
Allusions to the passage occur in the Dunciad, III. 76, "He [the
Emperor of China] whose long wall the wandering Tartar bounds," and
in Thomson's Autumn.:
"From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretch'd
Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds."
1 Cf. Pliny's NAnatural History: "Above those, are other Scythians called
Anthropophagi...within a certain vale of the mountaine Imaus," Philemon Holland's
translation, I60o, p. I54.
2 Hexham's, I636.




APPENDIX.


685


I.
PARADISE LOST, v. 275 —79.
The key to this passage, as Bishop Newton pointed out, is in
Diodorus Siculus III. 67-70. Diodorus relates various legends as
to the birth of Dionysus or Bacchus; amongst them is the following.
There was a King of Libya named Ammon. He married Rhea,
daughter of the god Uranus. By a maiden called Amaltheia he had a
son. To save the mother and child from the jealousy of Rhea, Ammon
hid them in a place called Nysa, on an island off the Mediterranean
coast of Libya, not far from the modern Tunis. It was " girt with the
river Triton" (treptexotd,7 uirb TOO Tplrwvos iroraLov), and a spot of
most singular beauty and fertility. Here the infant was brought up
in a cave; and Ammon appointed the goddess Athene to guard him
"against the plots of his step-mother RAea" (7rpbs r&s dirb rs ftj -rpviar
'Peas 17rplouXds).  The child grew up, showed wonderful wisdom,
and having invented wine, became the god of wine. He was named
Dionysus" from Nysa his place of nurture.
This monarch Armmon is evidently a kind of deity, and Milton
identifies him with the god whom the Greeks called Zeus Ammon and
the RomansJupiter Ammon, and who is commonly associated with the
Egyptian sun-god Amon Ra. As in several other passages, Milton
has followed Diodorus very closely, merely translating one or two sentences; cf. the references to "the river Triton" and "his step-dame
Rhea."
Chamn, of course, is identical with Ham, the name of Noah's son;
cf. the Septuagint form of 11am, viz. Xayz, and the Vulgate form, Chamt.
Probably Milton had some patristic authority for the identification of the
Scriptural Cham or Hamn with the " Gentile " deity Ammon, also called
Harmmon2: an identification obviously due to the similarity of the names,
and strengthened by the traditional account that Egypt3 was colonised
by the descendants of Ham. Tennyson speaks of " the Chamnian oracle
divine," i.e. the shrine of Caam, meaning the famous temple of Jupiter
1 Note "Whom Gentiles Ammon call" (Iv. 277), i.e. the Greeks and Romans:
the implied antithesis between "Gentile" and Biblical shows that "Cham" in 276
refers to a Scriptural character, i.e. Noah's son.
2 Cf. M. in the Nativity Ode, 203, "The Libyc HIzmmon shrinks his horn."
Cf. Psatm cv. 23, where Egypt is called " the land of Ham."




686


PARADISE LOST.


Ammon in the heart of the Libyan desert. And this is the allusion in
Thomson's lines (Liberty, i i):
" the Libyan sands
Where Ammon lifts amid the torrid waste
A verdant isle, with shade and fountain fresh."
It may be added that romantic, more or less mythical, island-retreats
like " that Nyseian isle" were an indispensable feature of the literary
geography of the epic and quasi-epic world. There was, e.g. the
"Nilotic isle," Meroe (Paradise Regained, IV. 71); "the fairest and
most famous" of the islands in the Nile, says Sandys, Relation, p. 93.
Tasso's isle of Armida belonged to much the same category; and
the enchantress Acrasia was similarly secluded, The Faerie Queene,
II. 12. See also Comus, 517.
J.
PARADISE LOST, vII. I-12.
Milton's invocation is addressed to the Muse of sacred song and
inspiration-the Heavenly power which "taught" Moses on Sinai
(I. 6 —o), and inspired David on Sion (III. 29-32) and the other
prophets and singers of Israel. It is to her that he appeals at the
beginning of the poem c" Sing, Heavenly Muse," and there is a special
appropriateness in lines 6-io. Cf. Addison's remark: "His invocation to a work which turns in a great measure upon the creation of
the World, is very properly made to the muse who inspired Moses in
those books from whence our author drew his subject, and to the Holy
Spirit who is therein represented as operating after a particular manner
in the first production of nature."
As to the character of this divine power whose existence he postulates, he does not, naturally, speak with definiteness: in I. 17-26 he
expressly distinguishes her from the Holy Spirit; in P. R. I. 8-17 he
seems to identify them.
The important point is that for Milton this " Heavenly Muse" is a
truly divine power, in whom he believes with a conviction which gives
intense reality to his invocations.
With the classical poets (Homer perhaps excepted) the invocation of
the Muse was, I suppose, merely a literary convention-a piece of the
traditional 'machinery' of poetry: one does not credit Horace with
much faith in the Calliope whom he begged to "descend from Heaven."




APPENDIX.


687


Milton has faith, and when he asks Urania to aid him he means every
word of his petition.
It is in virtue too of his assistance by this higher and holier power
than the classical poets knew of that he speaks of his poetry as soaring
"above" theirs. Compare VII. 3, 4 and I. 12 —5, where, addressing
the " Heavenly Muse," he says:
"I
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount" (i.e. Mt Helicon).
He does not, I think, intend to suggest that he will surpass, say,
Vergil as an artist-as a master of style and imagery and other qualities
which constitute the art of poetry; but only that he is filled with a
higher inspiration to treat of higher things. In fact, his claim is to
moral, not artistic, superiority; it resolves itself almost into the difference between Christianity and Paganism. We should remember that
in Milton's eyes the poet is a teacher in the first place, a singer in the
second: he must write " to God's glory, by the honour and instruction
of his country," and be "an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest
things among his own citizens."  See the preface to book II. of The
Reason of Church Government, and cf. the Introduction to this volume.
The name "Urania" which he assigns to his Muse means, of course,
'the Heavenly One,' Gk. obpavia1l. In classical mythology Urania was
commonly regarded as the Muse of astronomy; compare a poem on
"The Muses" by Nicholas Grimald:
"Uranie, her globes to view all bent,
The ninefolde heauen observes with fixed face2."
In these lines Urania evidently typifies astronomy according to the
ordinary classical conception of her attributes; and a similar illustration might be cited from Sylvester's Du Bartas (Grosart's ed., II. 3).
In treating Urania otherwise than as the Muse of astronomy Milton had
been anticipated by other poets. Perhaps the earliest was Dante; cf.
the Purgatorio, xxIx. 40-42: "Now 'tis meet that Helicon for me
stream forth and Urania aid me with her choir to set in verse things8
hard to conceive." Dante had been followed by English poets. Spenser,
for example, in The Teares of the Muses makes her represent the highest
knowledge-" the heavenlie light of knowledge "; while for Drummond
of Hawthornden she meant, it would seem, the power of spiritual wisdom,
one section of his poems being entitled "Urania, or Spiritual Poems."
1 See Hesiod, Theogony 78.
2 Tottel's Mliscellany, 1557, ed. Arber, p. ioo.
s Cf. Milton's Dantesque use of "things," P. L. 1. x6.




688


PARADISE LOST.


Influenced, no doubt, by Paradise Lost, VII. i et seq., Shelley in Adonais,
II.-IV., and Tennyson in In Memoriam regard Urania as the Muse of
lofty verse: a conception very similar to Milton's though less distinctively religious. And Wordsworth has two directly Miltonic allusions to Urania; cf. the invocation in The Recluse:
"Urania, I shall need
Thy guidance, or a greater Muse, if such
Descend to earth or dwell in highest heaven!"
and the end of his poem on Ossian:
"such was blind
Maeonides of ample mind,
Such Milton, to the fountain-head
Of glory by Urania led!"
The " Urania" of Matthew Arnold's poem is less easily defined.
K.
PARADISE LOST, vII. 80-84.
In his note on this passage Professor Masson says: "The fundamental notion of the ancient astronomers was that all the motions of
the heavenly bodies were in circles, the strictly circular motion being
the most perfect kind.... From very remote antiquity, however, it had
been perceived that the simple circular motions of eight or even ten
spheres round the Earth, with whatever variety of rates and times among
themselves, would not account for all the observed phenomena of the
heavens,-would not account, for example, for the fact that the motion
of the Sun is faster or slower according to the season (acceleration and
retardation), or for the fact that the motions of the planets are sometimes
direct, or in the order of the signs of the Zodiac, and sometimes
retrograde (progression and regression). To remedy this defect, 'to
save these appearances,' two devices had been introduced, that of the
Eccentric and that of the Epicycle.
"Let it be supposed that, while the Earth is the centre of the Primum
Mobile [i.e. the outermost of the spheres] and consequently of the
whole mundane system, the inclosed planetary spheres, or at all events
that of the Sun, need not be strictly concentric, i.e. need not strictly
have this centre, but may be eccentric, i.e. may revolve round a point
somewhat to the side of the Earth; then, as the Earth would sometimes
be nearer to the moving body, and sometimes farther off, the acceleration or retardation of the motion would be sufficiently accounted for.




APPENDIX.


689


"Again, let it be supposed that the body of a planet is not fixed strictly
in its cycle, or the circumference of its wheeling sphere, but moves
flylike in an epicycle, or small circle revolving round a fixed point in
that wheeling circumference; then, according as the planet was in that
part of its epicycle which is beyond, or in that part which is within, its
cycle, its motion would for the time be progressive, i.e. with its cycle,
or retrograde, i.e. against its cycle. Actually, by a complicated use of
these two devices,...the Ptolemaic astronomers had contrived, with a
tolerable approach to completeness, to account for all the phenomena of
the solar and planetary motions, but only by such a dizzying intricacy
of conceived wheels within wheels (' centric and eccentric') and wheels
upon wheels ('cycle and epicycle') as Milton describes."
There is a great deal about these theories of the Eccent;'ic and
Epicycle in Burton's Anatomy of Mlelancholy, II. 2. ii, the chapter
entitled "a Digression of the Ayre"; see especially pp. 38i, 382, 384
in the ninth edition (I8oo). Like Milton, he ridicules the too-ingenious
speculations of astronomers, who, "to solve all appearances and
objections, have invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systems
of the World...The World is tossed in a blanket amongst them, they
hoyse the Earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and go at their
pleasures" (pp. 388, 389).
Compare also Bacon's Essay Of Superstition:
"It was gravely said of the prelates in the Council of Trent, where
the doctrine of the Schoolmen bare great sway, that the Schoolmen
were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and
such engines of orbs, to save the phenomena1, though they knew there
were no such things; and, in like manner, that the Schoolmen had
framed a number of subtle and intricate axioms and theorems to save the
practice of the Church."  See also his Essay Of IVisdomn for a Alan's
Self.
So in The Advancement of Learning, 11. 8. 5:
" As the same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by the received
astronomy of the diurnal motion, and the proper motions of the planets,
with their eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of
Copernicus, who supposed the earth to move, and the calculations are
indifferently agreeable to both, so the ordinary face and view of
experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies;
whereas to find the real truth requireth another manner of severity and
attention" (Clarendon ed., p. I27).
Sir Thomas Browne uses this astronomical metaphor in characteristic fashion:
1 Echoed, perhaps, in Milton's phrase (viII. 82).


P. L.


44




690


PARADISE LOST.


"In philosophy, where truth seems double-faced, there is no man
more paradoxical than myself: but in divinity I love to keep the road;
and, though not in an implicit, yet an humble faith, follow the great
wheel of the Church, by which I move; not reserving any proper
poles, or motion from the epicycle of my own brain" (Religio Medici,
I. vi.).
Compare too his Christian Morals, I. xix.: " Hang early plummets
upon the heels of pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle and
narrow circuit in thee."
For eccentric, see the note on v. 623, and compare one of Milton's
favourite astronomical metaphors in The Reason of Church Government,
I. I:
" Yet is it to be conceived that...our happiness [" of the blessed in
paradise "] may orb itself into a thousand vagancies of glory and delight,
and with a kind of eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable
planet of joy and felicity" (P. W. II. 442).
L.
PARADISE LOST, ix. '25-4r.
It was a subject of discussion among Milton's early critics whether
Paradise Lost should be called " heroic." The question was first raised
by Dryden in the Discourse on Satire (i693) prefixed to his translation
of Juvenal, thus:
" As for Mr Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his
subject is not that of an heroic poem, properly so called. His design
is the losing of our happiness; his event [i.e. end, termination] is not
prosperous, like that of all other epic works; his heavenly machines are
many, and his human persons are but two." And, " besides questioning
whether ' Paradise Lost' was an heroic poem, Dryden had argued [in the
preface to Vergil] that the devil was the hero and not AdamL."
Addison said: "' I shall waive the discussion of that point, which was
started some years since, whether Milton's 'Paradise Lost' may be
called an heroic poem. Those who will not give it that title may call it
(if they please) a divine poem." Addison held that an heroic poem
should not end unhappily and that therefore Paradise Lost, to this
extent, forfeits the title "heroic"; but he argued that the defect was
inherent in the subject, and that Milton showed exquisite judgment and
invention in remedying it (see the note on XI. 356-58).
1 C. H. Firth, Johnson's Life of Milton, p. I35. Several of the passages in this
section are taken from his full note.




APPENDIX.


69I


Johnson dealt with the objection more summarily:
"The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one,
whether the poem can be properly termed heroic, and who is the hero,
are raised by such readers as draw their principles of judgment rather
from books than from reason. Milton, though he entitled 'Paradise Lost'
only a 'poem,' yet calls it himself 'heroic song.' Dryden petulantly and
indecently denies the heroism of Adam, because he was overcome; but
there is no reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except
established practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily
together. Cato is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan's authority will not be
suffered by Quintilian to decide. However, if success be necessary,
Adam's deceiver was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his Maker's
favour, and therefore may securely resume his human rank."
The ordinary conception of an " heroical" poem would have been
fulfilled more obviously, at least, if Milton had carried out his design of
a poem on King Arthur1 or King Alfred2.
M.
PARADISE LOST, x. 658-62.
Dr Masson illustrates the astrological terms in these lines by a passage
translated from "an old Latin catechism or text-book of Astronomy
(Bebelius, De Sphcera, 1582) "; it runs as follows:
"What are the aspects of planets? They are such arrangements and
distances of the planets as allow them to intercommunicate their
influence. How many species of aspects are there? Five-Conjunction,
Sextile, Square, Trine, and Diametral or Opposition. What is the
first? The first kind of aspects, called Conjunction, is when two stars
or planets are conjoined and as it were connected in one line; by the
Greeks it is called Synod. What is the Sextile aspect? When two
planets or stars are distant from each other a sixth part of the Zodiac,
viz. two signs or 60~. What is the Square aspect (quadratus aspeczts)?
When two stars look at each other at an interval of three signs, making
a quadrant or go9. What is Trine (Trigonus) aspect?     When the
distance of the stars measures a third of the circle,-that is I20~ or four
signs. What is the Diametral aspect? It is the opposite configuration
1 See Introduction.
Cf. the Cambridge stss.: "A Heroicall Poem may-be founded somewhere in
Alfreds reigne." Curiously enough, of all the subjects enumerated in the Miss., this
is the only one to which he applies the word " heroical."
44-2




692


PARADISE LOST.


of two luminaries, which are distant from each other 180~ or half a
circle....
"How are the aspects divided?   Into happy and unhappy. Which
are the happy and prosperous aspects? The prosperous and benign are
the Trine1 and Sextile. Why are they called happy? Because the rays
of the planets, falling obliquely and mutually yielding, infuse and
communicate to inferior bodies gentler and less violent influences. What
are the unhappy aspects? The unhappy or malignant are Conjunction',
Square, and Opposition3. Why are they called malignant? Because,
the planets, meeting each other with their rays, mutually collide, and
neither can yield to the other on account of the directness of their onset.
Therefore they exercise greater force in stimulating and varying seasons,
and in mixing the temperaments of animals and the qualities of the air.
Whence is this variety of effects known? The effect and variety of
configuration were first observed in the case of the Moon, and afterwards
transferred to the other planets by artists (artifices) who, by great
sharpness of intelligence, and more attentive observation, endeavoured
to find out and display the causes of events from the very nature of the
heavenly motions and the species of the aspects." Dr Masson adds,
"Milton, it will be noted, names all the aspects, giving Conjunction its
Greek name of Synod." Milton had used very similar astrological
language in one of his pamphlets on divorce (Tetrachordon):
"For nature hath her zodiac also, keeps her great annual circuit
over human things, as truly as the sun and planets in the firmament;
hath her anomalies, hath her obliquities in ascensions and declinations,
accesses and recesses, as blamelessly as they in heaven. And sitting in
her planetary orb with two reins in each hand, one strait, the other
loose, tempers the course of minds as well as bodies to several conjunctions and oppositions, friendly or unfriendly aspects, consenting
oftest with reason, but never contrary" (P. W. III. 403).
I Cf. Dryden, AnSnus Mlirabilis, st. 292:
"Now frequent trines the happier lights among,
And high-raised Jove from his dark prison freed,
Those weights took off that on his planet hung,
Will gloriously the new-laid work succeed" (i.e. make to succeed)
In his note (Clarendon ed., p. 259) Mr Christie gives other illustrations from Dryden
(who "was learned in astrology and a firm believer"), e.g. his Ode to the Mlemoary
of Mrs Ann Killegrew:
"For sure the milder planets did combine
On thy auspicious horoscope to shine
And even the most malicious were in trine."
2 Cf. 2 Henry IV. II. 4. 286, 287. Selden in his Table-Talk has a section (xxvi.)
on the "Great Conjunction" (of Saturn and Jupiter).
3 Cf. Richard III. Iv. 4. 215, "Lo, at their births good stars were opposite," and
402, " Be opposite all planets of good luck."




GLOSSARY.
Milton's diction is essentially Elizabethan: the diction of the
Authorised Version (I61 ) of the Bible and of Shakespeare. Paradise
Lost, therefore, though published in I667, is best illustrated from the
works of the generation contemporary with Shakespeare. Hence many
of the illustrations in the Glossary and Notes are taken from the writers
who may collectively and conveniently be described as Elizabethan.
A marked feature of Milton's diction, as of his style, is his classical
bias. He employs many words in their classical sense, just as he
employs many classical idioms and figures of speech. This classicism
of diction is still more conspicuous in his prose, in which he introduces
numbers of long, sonorous words derived from the Latin. Sometimes
he invents such words. Paradise Lost contains innumerable examples
of his classical diction.
Another interesting feature is his partiality for Italianised forms.
This is more conspicuous in his verse, perhaps because he felt so
strongly, and wished his readers to be reminded of, the spell and
fascination of the great Italian epics. By his own statement, he had
studied Italian much before he went to Italy. His letters and proseworks reveal his love of it (I do not remember any interesting reference
in his works to French literature); and several short poems testify to
his very considerable mastery of the language. Instances of his leaning
towards Italian are-ammiral, harald, Soldan, sovran; sdein (iv. 50),
serenate (Iv. 769); azurn, Ital. azzurrino (Comus, 893).
Abassin, iv. 280, ' Abyssinian.' Abyssinia is from Arabic Habesch,
'mixture, confusion,' a name given to the country by the Arabs on
account of the mixed character of its inhabitants. This Arabic word
was Latinised by the Portuguese as Abassia and Abassinos, whence the
present form.
abide, iv. 87; cf. Julius Casar, III. 2. i 9, "If it be found so,
some will dear abide it," i.e. suffer for it. This sense is given in the




694


PARADISE LOST.


old Dictionaries, such as Cotgrave's (i6tr), and Minsheu's Guide into the
Tongues (i625). The metaphor is 'to await the consequences of a deed
and so, in the end, to pay for it.' Probably abide in this sense has been
influenced by, though etymologically quite distinct from, aby, ' to expiate, pay for'=A.S. intensive prefix d + bycgan, 'to buy.'
abject, I. 312, 'cast down,' the literal sense of Lat. abjectus, the
past participle of abjicere, 'to cast away or down.' In Tindale's New
Testament (I534), 2 Cor. vii. 6 is rendered "He that comfortith the
abjecte"=" those that are cast down" in the Authorised Version.
For the ordinary figurative use cf. Ix. 572.
abuse, I. 479, 'to deceive, delude'; cf. Fr. abuser (Lat. abuti, 'to
misuse'). This is a common Elizabethan use; cf. Cymtbeline, iii. 4.
123, King Lear, IV. i. 24.
abyss, I. 21, 658; Lat. abyssus, from Gk. apvoaos, 'bottomless'd, ' not' + vaa6s, 'bottom, depth.' Shakespeare always uses the older
form abysm, from Fr. abisme; cf. The Tempest, I. 2. 50, "In the dark
backward and abysm of time."
admire, I. 690, 11. 677, 'to wonder,' the literal sense of Lat. admirari.
Cf. admiration= 'wonder,' III. 27i, and in Hamlet, III. 2. 339, "your
behaviour hath struck her into amazement and admiration"; and
admcirable= 'to be wondered at,' in A Alidsummer-Night's Dream, v. 27.
adust, xI. 635, ' dried, scorched '; the p.p. of the verb adure, Lat.
adurere; cf. VI. 514. We also find a noun, adustion.  " It was a tall
figure, of a philosophic, serious, adust look," A Sentimental Journey
(" The Mystery").
advise, II. 376, ' to consider '; often used reflexively in this sense, like
Fr. s'aviser, 'to consider.' Cf. I Chronicles xxi. I2, "advise thyself
what word I shall bring again to him that sent me" (Revised Version
"consider").
alarmed, Iv. 985; Fr. alarme=Ital. all' arme, 'to arms!' (Lat. ad
illa arma); so that properly an alarm was a summons to take up arms,
i.e. prepare for battle. Here alarmed means that Satan was prepared
for the fight-not that he was afraid. Dryden (.En. III. 313, 314)
has the phrase take alarm (VI. 549):
'Misenus sounds a charge: we take th' alarm,
And our strong hands with swords and bucklers arm."
alchymy, II. 517, 'metal'; properly alchemy, from Arabic alkRaln:
al='the' (Arabic article), + kfmfd, a corruption of xtrda, used in late Gk.
for the chemical transmutation of metals. Probably Xttlca was the Gk.
form of the native name of Egypt (=' the land of KAiem '), and meant
'the Egyptian art.' Later, through confusion with x4eiv, 'to pour' (cf.
Xvyu6s, 'sap, juice'), there arose a form Xvuila: whence in E. the old




GLOSSARY.


695


spellings ' alchymy,' ' alchumie,' and ' chymist' (short for ' alchemist').
From meaning the art of amalgamating metals 'alchemy' came to be
used of the amalgam or metallic composition produced by the process.
A certain amalgam, like gold, was called 'alchemy gold' or 'alchemy';
cf. Fletcher, Purple Island, VII. 39, "Such were his arms, false gold,
true alchymie." This mixed metal, in which brass was the chief
constituent, was much employed for trumpets (II. 517).
alley, iv. 626, 'a garden-walk,' especially one "with branches
overgrown" (iv. 627). Cf.    ttuch Ado About Nothing, I. 2. o10, "a
thick-pleached alley," i.e. thickly interwoven overhead; and Tennyson,
Ode to Memory, 5:
"Or a garden bower'd close
With plaited alleys of the trailing rose."
0. Fr. alee, Fr. allee.
Alp, II. 620; formerly used, like Alpes in late Latin poets, of any
high (especially snow-capped) mountain. Cf. S. A. 628, "Nor breath
of vernal air from  snowy Alp "; and Hakluyt's Voyages, I. 112,
"Certaine Alpes or Mountaines directly Southward."  So the Italians
use alpestro='steep, alpine'; cf. the Inferno, xii. 2. A Celtic word;
cf. Gaelic alp, 'a high mountain.'
amarant, III. 352; Gk. &a/dpavros, 'unfading'-the word used in
I Peter v. 4 of the "crown of glory that fadeth not away." The flower
typifies immortality.  M. writes the correct form; the more usual
'amaranth' is due to confusion with Gk. tvOos, 'a flower.'
amain; an intensive word, emphasising the sense of the verb.
O.E. mergn ='power'; from the root whence /-Ayas, magnus.
ambrosial; used by M. of that which delights the sense of smell
(III. 135, IX. 852) or taste. Strictly, da/pipoala, from  duf6,ppo-os (a
lengthened form of a4u/poros, ' immortal'), meant the food of the gods.
amerce, I. 609, literally 'to punish'; cf. Romeo and Juliet, III. i.
195, "But I'll amerce you with so strong afine." Fr. amercier, ' to fine,'
which was derived from the 0. Fr. phrase estre a merci=' to be in the
mercy of any one as to the amount of a fine (Lat. merx) which he
could impose.' Legally an Amerciament differed from a fine thus:
"Fines...are punishments certain, which grow expressly from some
Statute; and Amerciaments are arbitrarily imposed by Assessors"
(Blount, Glossographia, 1656). Fr. merci, whence E. mercy, is connected
with merx (= ' a fine' in Late Latin), and not with misericordia.
amiable, Iv. 250, VIII. 484, ix. 899, 'lovely, pleasing'; cf. Psalm
Ixxxiv. i, "How amiable are thy dwellings" (Prayer-Book).    Lat.
amicabilis, ' friendly.'
ammiral, I. 294. The chief vessel of a fleet was called the 'admiral'




696


PARADISE LOST.


because it carried the admiral or chief officer. Cf. Hakluyt, I. 40I, " the
sayd William met with sixe ships......and tooke of them the Admirall."
The word was indeed quite common in the i6th century works of
travel; cf. Webb's Travels, I590: "her Ma.l sties shippe called the
Willoughby was our Admirall, and the Harry appertayning to the
company of the Merchants, was our Vice-adhirall, Maister William
Burrow then being our Captaine and maister" (Arber's ed., p. 19).
In the form ammiral M. imitates Ital. ammiraglia, which Florio (1598)
renders by "an admirall or chief ship."  Properly admiral means
'ruler, commander,' being derived from Arabic Amir, 'ruler' (cf.
Ameer of Afghanistan and Emir); and formerly the full phrase
"admiral of the sea" was used. The d in admiral (older form amyrel)
arose through confusion with Lat. admirabilis and admirable.
amphisbaena, x. 524; Gk. datjuiaratva, ' a kind  ' serpent that can
go either forwards or backwards' (Gk. dA01, ' on bot.'.ides' + patvew,
'to go'). See the Agamemnon I233. It was supposed to have a head
at either end of its body: hence the allusion in Tennyson's Queen
Mar)y, III. 4:
"For heretic and traitor are all one;
Two vipers of one breed-an amphisbaena,
Each end a sting."
Dante has the word in the Serpent-passage in the Injerno, xxIV. 87.
annoy; derived through O. Fr. anoi, 'vexation,' from Lat. in odio,
used in the phrase in odio est mihi, 'it is odious, to me.' In VI. 369
it has the old Shakespearian sense 'to hurt, harm.' Cognate with
'noisome '= 'unpleasant,' especially of smell, which practically is short
for ' anoisome'; cf. Ix. 946.
apparent, iv. 608, x. I i2=' visible, manifest' (Lat. a-parens); as in
P. R. II. 397. Cf. Richard II. III. 5. 30, "apparel-' open guilt,"
and Kingfohn, iv. 2. 93, "apparent foul play."
apply, IV. 264; commonly explained' to practise, ent  e in' (cf. the
abbreviated form ply); for this use, formerly not uncommc., cf. Fuller's
Worthies, " That he might the more effectually apply his private devotions," Works (ed. I840), III. 402. I believe, however, that the sense
intended by M. is 'add,' and that the word was so interpreted by
Collins and Thomson. Cf. The Passions, 49, 50:
"Dejected Pity at his side
Her soul-subduing voice applied";
and The Seasons (Spring):
"the woodlands round
Applied their quire."
'To add' may come fiom the general sense of app5Sly='to bring to




GLOSSARY.


697


bear upon'; or M. may simply have imitated the rare use of Latin
applicare=' to add.'
approve, ix. 367, I 40, 'to show' by bringing a thing to the test
(Lat. ad, 'to'+proba,..a test'). Cf. 2 Corinthians vii. II, "In all
things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter."
areed, or aread, Ix, 962, 'to advise'; A.S. d-redan =a-, intensive
prefix, + rddan, 'to advise.' Cf. rede (or read), 'counsel,' as in Hamlet,
I. 3. 51, "recks not his own rede." But the commoner meanings of
arced were 'to divine, conjecture' (cf. the cognate Germ. errathen,
'to guess'); and 'to declare, tell,' as often in Spenser; cf. The Faerie
Queene, I. 9. 28, II. 3. 14.
asphodel, Ix. I040; Gk. aiad5eXos, a kind of lily, supposed to
flourish especially in the Elysian fields; cf. Comus, 838. Daffodil is a
curious corruption of acr-06eXos through Low Lat. affodillus.
assay, I. 6.  iI.. go, x. 567, 865, 'to try, attempt'; M. always
uses this form, tfrm O. Fr. assai, a variant of O. Fr. essai, whence
comes our commoner form     essay.  Lat. exagium, Gk. edtcyiov, 'a
weighing, trial of weight.' Now assay is commonly used of the testing
of metals.
astonish, I. 266, VI. 838; formed from the older verb astony = 0. Fr.
estonner, modern Fr. eionner, from Lat. extonare, 'to thunder.' The
original notion ofastony (see IX. 890), astonish, and astound (I. 28r)
was 'to stupefy, strike senseless, as with a thunderbolt.'  Cf. the
Argument to bk. I., line I2, and     Milton's History of Britain,
"astonished and struck with superstition as with a planet."  See The
Faerie Queene, Iv. 8. 43.
ay me, iv. 86, 'alas'; cf. Lycidas, 56, " Ay me! I fondly dream  "
It is frequent in Shakespeare. Cotgrave (I6II) has, "Oh: aye me;
an interjection expressing sense of paine, or of smart."  0. Fr. aymi,
'alas, for me' of. Ital. ahime, Gk. o/iot.
baleful, I  %6, II. 576, 'full of sorrow, unhappy'; commonly
'full of harm' tcf. Comus, 255, "baleful drugs."  A.S. bealu =' evil,
sorrow.'
barricado, VIII. 241, 'to fortify.' The noun barricado is from Spanish
barricada, literally 'a rampart formed by barrels' (Span. barrica=
' barrel'), and so 'any rampart, fortification.' Cf. All's Well that Ends
Well, I. r. 124; and Milton's treatise Of Reformation in Englanzd, I.:
"the table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands
like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with
bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics"
(P. W. II. 378).
bases, IX. 36. Cf. The Faerie Queene, v. 5. 20:




698


PARADISE LOST.


"she made him to be dight
In womans weedes, that is to manhood shame,
And put before his lap a napron white,
Instead of Curiets [i.e. cuirasses] and bases fit for fight."
Peele in his Polyhymnia, 1590 (a description of a tournament), speaks
of a knight clad " In armour gilt and bases full of cost."
beest, I. 84. The verb be, from A.S. bMon (the infinitive), was
conjugated in the pres. tense indicative as late as Milton's time,
especially in the 2nd pers. sing. with if. M. indeed does not use "if
thou beest" elsewhere, but the idiom  is frequent in Shakespeare;
cf. The Tempest, III. 2. 137, "if thou beest a man," and v. 134, "if
thou be'st Prospero."
Behemoth, vII. 471. "This word is the Ileb. plural of beheadh, and
signifies 'beasts,' but in Job xl. I5-24 some large animal, e.g. the
hippopotamus, is evidently intended"-(Cambridge Companion to the
Bible). M. meant the elephant.
bicker, vI. 766; used of gleaming, darting light. Cf. Tennyson,
Geraint and Enid:
"turning round she saw
Dust and the points of lances bicker in it";
and The Princess, v. The word is also used of rippling water or a quickflowing brook, as in the first stanza of Tennyson's The Brook. Thomson
in The Castle of Indolence, I. 3, speaks of glittering streamlets that
"bickered through the sunny glade."
blanc, x. 656, ' pale,' from the literal sense 'white,' Fr. blanc. For
the form blanc (i.e. blank), obsolete as an adjective, cf. the noun blanc,
'white paint.'
bland, v. 5; used poetically of that which is "'soft, mild, pleasing
to the senses; gentle, genial, balmy, soothing."
blow, V. 22, 'to bloom, flower'; cf. Lycidas, 48, "When first the
white-thorn blows."  Minsheu has, "To blow as a flower, or to open
as a bud...bluhen, fleurir."  Blow, bloom, blossom are cognate, and
akin to Lat. flos and its derivatives, flower, flourish, etc.
boon, Iv. 242, 'gracious, bounteous'; a poetical use. Cf. Thomson,
Liberty, ii., "All that boon Nature could luxuriant pour"; and The Castle
of Indolence, I. 57:
"Of the fine stores he nothing would impart,
Which or boon Nature gave, or nature-painting art."
So in Collins's Ode The AManners (end):
"0 Nature boon, from whom proceed
Each forceful thought, each prompted deed."
Now only in the phrase "boon companion."  Fr. bon (Lat. bonus).




GLOSSARY.


brinded, vII. 466, 'striped, streaked'; cf. Comus, 443, "the brinded
lioness."  An older form than brindled, it means literally 'marked as
with a brand,' and generally indicates stripes of dark colour on the
tawny coat of an animal. See AMackteh, IV. i. I, "Thrice the brinded
cat hath mew'd."
brown, ix. io88, 'dark'; in poetry a constant epithet of shade and
twilight. Cf. I/ Penseroso, 134, "shadows brown"; P. IR.. 293,
"alleys brown," i.e. shady paths; and imbrown in Iv. 246. Imitated
from the similar use of bruno and imbrunire by Italian poets. Thus in
his 2nd Ital. Sonnet M. has " al imbrunir di sera," with which editors
compare Petrarch, Canzoni, IV. 3, and Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata,
v. 76. So in the Inferno, II. i, where l'aer bruno refers to twilight.
bull, III. 492; a papal edict, of an important character: "so
named from the bulla (or round leaden seal), which is attached to the
document...and gives authenticity to it" (Addis and Arnold, Catholic
Diet.).
bullion, I. 704; Fr. bouillon, Lat. bullio, 'a mass of metal,' from
bullire, 'to boil.' Bullion is connected with Lat. bulla, 'a seal,' in
so far as bulla itself is from bullire.
buxom, jI. 842, V. 270, 'yielding'; from A.S. blgan, 'to bend';
cf. Germ. beugsam, 'easily bent, pliant.'  Originally buxom meant
'obedient'; cf. the Glosse to Spenser's The Shepheards Calender,
September, "Butxome and bent, meeke and obedient."    Then came
the sense 'yielding, pliant'; cf. Fairfax, Tasso, xv. 12, "with strong
oars...brush the buxom wave."
Can, xi. 388. Kaan, or Khan, was the title of the supreme ruler of
China during the reigns of the Mongol Emperors descended from Chinghiz, or Genghis, Khan (the name corrupted into Cambuscan-see note
on II Pen. I to). In Elizabethan writers Kaan often appears as Cham;
cf. AIuch Ado About Nothing, II. I. 274-77, "will...fetch you a hair
off the great Cham's beard."  Frequently the Cham is spoken of as
the ruler of the district of Central Asia vaguely called Tartary. Cf.
Giles Fletcher's Of the Russe Common Wealth, i591, "The greatest
and mightiest of them (the Tartars) is the Chrim Tartar (whom some
call the Great Chamn) that lieth South, and Southeastward from Russia."
Hexham's edition, too, of MIercator's Atlas (1636) describes Tartary as
"the Empire of the Grand Cham."  Very little was then known about
Central Asia.
caravan, VII. 428. Properly (i) a company of merchants or pilgrims travelling together, as a protection agaiAst robbers, in the East.
Hence (2) any 'company, troop'; as here and in P. R. I. 323. Then
(3) 'a covered waggon'; cf. the abbreviation van. Persian kdrudn,
' escort.'




700


PARADISE LOST.


career, I. 766; a word specially associated with tournaments,
signifying 'a short gallop at high speed.' Cf. the Animadversions,
"all this careering with spear in rest" (P. W. ill. 90). Fr. carire,
Lat. carraria (i.e. via), 'a road for carriages.'
causey, x. 415, 'a raised way'; now obsolete except in dialects.
Cf., however, Proverbs xv. 19, "the way of the righteous is made
plain," where the margin has "raised up as a causey." In I Chronicles
xxvi. x6 the Bible of 61II had "by the causey of the going up,"
afterwards changed to causeway; the latter is a compound of the
old world causey + way. A causey implies a paved road, such as
a paved track across a moor or boggy land, or the Roman paved
roads in Northumberland; hence sometimes used colloquially of the
pavement or side-walk contrasted with the road proper. From Late
Lat. calciata (i.e. calciata via), literally 'a way made firm by treading
with the heel' (calx).
champain, iv. 134, 'open, flat'; applied to unenclosed land, downs,
large fields; cf. Lucrece, 1247, "a goodly champaign plain." Minsheu's
Dictionary entitled The Guide into the Tongues (1625) has: "champion,
or plaine ground."  The Dialect Dict. aptly quotes the title of Tusser's
Husbandry (i580): " Five hundred pointes of good Husbandrie, as well
for the Champion, or open countrie, as also for the woodland." Commonly a noun (vI. 2); cf. Deut. xi. 3o, "the Canaanites, which dwell
in the champaign over against Gilgal." O. Fr. champaigne, modern Fr.
campagne, Ital. camfpaiga, Lat. campania-from campus.
charity, III. 216, IV. 756, XII. 584; then often used='love,
benevolence.' Cf. I Cor. xiii., where the Revised Version of the
Bible substitutes love for charity throughout, the Greek being ayadr77
(Vulgate caritas).  In the three places where M. uses the word the
meaning is 'love.' Cf. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Ix. 238, "The
charities that soothe, and heal, and bless"; and Tennyson, The
Princess, VII., "fair charities."  Lat. carus, 'dear.'
charm, Iv. 642, 65 r, 'song.' M. may have supposed it to be derived
from Lat. carmen, 'song,' but really charm as used of the song of birds is
of Anglo-Saxon origin. It is a variant form of Middle E. cherme or chirm
=A.S. cirm. This old word (allied to chirp and the Germ. jammern)
meant a blended singing or noise of many children, birds or bees; cf.
Palsgrave (i530), " what a cherme these byrdes [birds] make, comme ces
oyseauxjargonnent." A Shropshire rustic might still say, " what charm
them childern bin makin i' the school" (i.e. what a confused noise). Cf.
also the dialect-expression 'to charm or cherm bees,' i.e. to follow a
swarm of bees, beating a tea-tray, or anything similar, to make them
settle. The noisy chatter of a flock of starlings is exactly a charm or
cherm. Tennyson uses charm accurately; cf. The Progress of Spring,




GLOSSARY.


70o


Iv., " I hear a charm of song thro' all the land." Probably cherme or
chirm would never have got this variant form charm but for the influence of Lat. carmen.
Cherubim; the correct form=Heb. A'hertbhim, the plural of
Kheruibh; adopted in the Revised Version of the Bible. The oldest
forms in English, as still in French, were Cherubin, sing., and Cherubins, plural. Cf. Coverdale, "Thou God of Israel, which dwellest upon
Cherubin," Isaiah xxxvii. i6; and Wyclif, " Two Goldun Cherubyns,"
Exodus xxv. 18. Later, as in the Bible of 16II, Cherub, sing., and
Cherubims, plural, were used, as being closer to the Hebrew. M. wrote
Cherube for singular (a still nearer approach in sound than ' Cherub' to
the u of the Heb. Kherubh), and the true plural Cherubim in his
poetry; but Cherubims occurs in Of Reformation in England, II.
(P. W. II. 406). Kherubh is said to come from the Babylonian word
for the figure of the winged bull which stood at the door of a house to
keep off evil spirits. The Jews probably owed it to the Phcenicians.
combustion, I. 46; properly 'conflagration,' from Lat. comburere,
'to burn up'; cf. Selden's 7hble-Talk: "After Luther had made a
combustion in Germany about religion" (Reynold's ed., p. 34). Hence
metaphorically ' utter confusion,' or 'destruction,' as here. Cf. vi. 225,
and Macbeth, II. 3. 63. In M. always a very strong word; cf. Of Reformation in England, II., "to threaten uproar and combustion, and shake
the brand of civil discord," P. W. II. 417.
concoct, v. 412; Lat. concoquere, 'to boil together, reduce by heat':
especially, 'to reduce into a state of nourishment,' i.e. digest. Cf. M.
in On Education, " The like also would not be inexpedient after meat,
to assist and cherish nature in her first concoction," P. W. IIl. 476.
conjured, II. 693, 'banded (literally 'sworn') together in a conspiracy'; Lat. conjuratus. Cf. Surrey's translation (1557) of AEneid II.,
"They bind themselves with the conjured bands," and The Facrie
Queene, v. Io. 26.
connive, x. 624; Lat. connivere, 'to close the eyes, wink,' hence
figuratively 'to shut one's eyes to a fault.' Now it always has the bad
sense of 'winking at something wrong'; but in Elizabethan E. it also had
the good sense 'to tolerate, be long-suffering.' Cf. S. A. 465-67:
"He [the Almighty]
Will not connive, or linger, thus provoked,
But will arise and his great name assert."
In Of Reformation in England, II., M. praises "the constancy of our
nobility and commons of England,...whose calm and temperate connivance could sit still and smile out the stormy bluster...," P. W.
II. 406.




702


PARADISE LOST.


couch, II. 536, 'to fix the spear in the rest' (Fr. coucher). The
'rest' was " a strong part of the armour at the breast, against which they
placed the butt of the spear to give more force to the charge" (Keightley). Cf. I Henry VI. III. 2. 134, "A braver soldier never couched
lance."
cresset, I. 728; a vessel of iron to hold some burning substance
(e.g. grease, oil, tarred rope) and serve as a lantern or beacon; usually
mounted on the top of a pole, or hung from a roof; cf. Scott, Mlarmiot,
" A cresset in an iron chain." It was an archaic word even in Milton's
time; cf. Minsheu (I625): "a Cresset, an old word used for a Lanterne,
or burning Beacon."  Cotgrave's Dictionary (ed. 1652) adds a curious
little detail: "Falot. A Cresset light (such as they use in Play-houses)."
Fr. cresset or crasset, 'a cup for holding grease.'
cry, II. 654, 'a pack'; cf. Coriolanus, III. 3. 120, "You common
cry of curs! " The sense comes from the hounds' cry or notes.
damasked, Iv. 334. The noun damask meant properly a rich kind
of silk ornamented with raised figures, originally manufactured at
Damascus. By metaphor, the word came to imply 'variegation'-as
here. Cf. As You Like Zt, III. 5. 123, and Shakespeare, Sonnet I30,
"I have seen roses damask'd, red and white."
darkling, III. 39, ' in the dark'; cf. A Miidsummer-Nigiht's Dream,
II. 2. 86, "0, wilt thou darkling leave me? do not so," and King Lear,
I. 4. 237. It is a substantival adverb, in which -ling or -long is a relic of
a dative case-ending; cf. headlong, sidelong (Middle E. hedling, sideling).
In Scotch the form is lins; cf. /hafflins='half,' e.g. in Burns, Cotter's
Saturday Night, 62, "While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak."
decent, IIl. 644, 'comely'; used by M. only here and in Il Penseroso,
36, in each place = Lat. decens, 'comely, graceful.' Cf. Pope, Elegy to
the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, 5, 52:
"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."
Cf. decencies=' graceful acts or words' in VIII. 6o0.
descant, iv. 603; strictly, a musical term for variations added to a
"plain song," i.e. a melody in its simplest form. Cf. Jeremy Taylor,
"after the angel had told his message in plain song, the whole chorus
joined in descant."  M., whose use of musical terms is very accurate,
employs descant here to signify the varied notes of the nightingale. Cf.
Isaac Walton's description-"the clear airs, the sweet descants, the
natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice"
(i.e. the nightingale's), Coomlete Angler, I. I.  So Spenser says of
the thrush, " the Mavis descant playes," Epithalamium, 8i. Contrast
"the plain-song cuckoo" in A 2M1idsummer-N.ight's Dream, III. I. 134,




GLOSSARY.


703


said in allusion to the bird's simple, monotonous note. In S. A. x228
descant has a figurative sense.
determine. The senses 'to put an end to, bring to an end,' and
'to come to an end, cease to exist to be in force,' are common in
Elizabethan writers, but now chiefly confined to legal documents.
Cf. 2 Henry ZV. IV. 5. 82, Coriolanus, III. 3. 43. The idea of 'end'
(Lat. terminius) is conspicuous in II. 330, VI. 318, XI. 227.
dint, II. 813, 'a blow,' its original sense; also used of the dent
(another form of dint) or impression left by a blow; cf. Shakespeare,
Antony and Cleopatra, II. 6. 39, "targes undinted," i.e. shields not
marked by blows. Dint is still a north-country word for 'a blow,
shock.'
disastrous, I. 597, ' boding misfortune.' Disaster (Lat. dis + astrum,
'a star') is one of the words belonging to astrology. Cf. Minsheu:
" disastre, misfortune...propri~ incommodum  aliquod ex influentjos
Astrorum."  Cf. 'ill-starred.'
divan, x. 457, 'a council,' properly the council of the Sultan or some
Oriental sovereign or governor; Arabic dizwdn, 'a council, tribunal.'
Fr. doitane, 'a custom-house,' comes from diwdn.
dole, iv. 894, 'sorrow, pain'; 0. Fr. doel, Fr. detuil= Late Lat. dolilmn,
from the stem of dolere, 'to grieve.' Cf. Hamlet, I. 2. 13, "In equal
scale weighing delight and dole."
draff, x. 630, 'refuse food,' especially food given to swine. Cf.
Cotgrave's French Dictionary (i6i ), "Mangeaille pour les porceaux:
Swillings, washings, draffe." Samson was given "the draff of servile
food," S. A. 574. Used figuratively; cf. Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, " the brood of Belial, the draff of men," P. W.
III. 173.  'As bad as draff'='utterly worthless' is a common
Yorkshire phrase. Cognate with drab, 'an untidy woman.'
element, II. 490, 'sky,' a common Elizabethan use; cf. Henry V.
IV.. 105, 10o7, " the king is but a man, as I am: the element shows to
him as it doth to me."  So in King Lear, III. I. 4.
elixir, IIi. 607= Arabic el ikslr, the philosopher's stone; see note
on iii. 6or, and cf. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, i633i: "the philosophers
ston | Elixir cleped." That was the strict sense of elixir; but it was
also variously used by alchemists of (I) a liquid by which metals might
be transmuted into gold, (2) a tincture of gold (aurum potabile), which
would prolong life; hence (3) a life-giving cordial, or substance, or
force. Arabic el iksir is really a Greek word (Ijpobv or ~Optov), and
means 'the dry-principle.'
emblem, iv. 703, ' inlaid or mosaic work,' i.e. ornamentation inserted
into the surface of an object, e.g. a floor (as here) or a table. Gk. 0 -



704


PARADISE LOST.


PXtLca, 'a thing put in, an ornament.' Now commonly= 'an allegorical
representation of, a symbol.'
empyreal; literally 'fiery, formed of fire,' I. 117, II. 430. But
M. uses it generally in the sense 'heavenly,' i.e. as the adj. from
emp)rean= 'heaven.' Lat. empyraus, Gk. u7r6patos, ' in the fire (irp),
fiery hot, burning.'  M. always accents the adj. enmpjreal, but the
noun empyrean (II. 771).
engine, I. 750; in its original sense 'contrivance,' i.e. something
made with ingenuity (Lat. ingenium). Later, 'an implement, instrument,' especially of war; so in II. 923, where it may mean 'cannon,'
as in vI. 484, 518. Cf. Othello, III.. 3 355, "you mortal engines"
(i.e. cannon).
enormous, I. 511, v. 297, 'monstrous, out of all measure,' rule-the
literal sense of Lat. enormis. Cf. Of Reformation in England, I.,
"misshapen and enormous prelatism," P. W. II. 373. Blount, Glossographia, has, "Enormity, want of measure, or rule, unevenness,
hugeness."
essence; properly 'being, existence' (Lat. essentia, from esse; cf.
Gk. ovoaia); hence 'something that is-an existence, entity-especially
something spiritual, a heavenly, immaterial being,' like the angels
(I. I38). Cf. Sir Thomas Browne, "those noble essences in heaven
bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-natures on earth" (Religio
Medici, I. xxxi.). In the singular M. always uses essence to mean
'constituent substance' (I. 425, I. 215, IX. i66).
exercise, II. 89; in the sense of Lat. exercere, 'to harass, torment';
cf. Vergil, tEneid v. 725, nate...liacis execite fatis. So in Ecclesiastes i.
13, " this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised
therewith"="to afflict them," as the margin reads.  See P. R. I. I56.
exorbitant, III. 177; strictly, 'going out of its circuit or track'
(Lat. orbita); e.g. like a star leaving its orbit. Cf. M. in The Reason
of Church Government, II. 3, " the proper sphere wherein the magistrate
cannot but confine his motion without a hideous exorbitancy from law,"
P. W. II. 497.   Here the general notion 'excessive,' e.g. of price,
demands. Minsheu has: " exorbitant, things properly out of circle,
square or rule, things irregular, enormious."
explode, x. 546, XI. 669; used=Lat. explodere, 'to drive off the
stage,' i.e. by clapping (ex, 'off, away' +plaudere, ' to clap '). So in the
Animradversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence, "ceremonies, liturgies
and tyrannies, which God and man are now ready to explode and hiss
out of the land," P. W. Ili. 43. Blount's Glossographia has, "explode,
publickly to disgrace, or drive out by hissing, or clapping of hands."
fame, I. 65, II. 346; for the literal sense 'rumour, report' (=Lat.




GLOSSARY.                          705
fama), cf. Bacon, Of Seditions: "as if fames were the reliques of
seditions past," and again: "seditious tumults and seditious fames
differ no more but as brother and sister, masculine and feminine"
(Pitt Press ed., p. 39).
fare, II. 940, IV. 13I, 'to journey, travel'; the literal sense of A.S.
faran; cf. Germ. fahren, 'to travel.' So often in Spenser; cf. The
Faerie Quzeene, II. I. 2, II. 2. 12.
flaw, x. 698, 'a gust of wind'; a poetic word. Cf. Hamlet, v. i.
239, "the winter's flaw"; and Tennyson, Marriage of Geraint, "Like
flaws in summer laying lusty corn."  In Scotland it is used of a storm
of snow, in Norfolk of a sharp shower. The same asflaw, 'a crack'=
Swedishflaga, 'a crack,' also 'a blast of wind'; the radical notion being
'a sudden burst.'
fledge, VII. 420; cf. II. 627. Minsheu has, "fledge, or feathered."
Cf. Holland's Pliny (I60o), x. 9, "The young cuckoo being once fledge
and readie to flie abroad."  This adj.fledge (whence fledge-ling) is
really older than the p. p. ledged which we use. Akin toflee, fly, flight.
foil, x. 375, 'a defeat'; cf. the Parapfhrase on Psalm cxiv. made by
M. in his boyhood, "As a faint host that hath received the foil." 0. Fr.
fouler, 'to trample under foot'; cf. foule, 'a crowd.'  The original
notion is seen in The Faerie Queene, v. I r. 33:
"Whom he did all to peeces breake, and foyle
In filthy durt, and left so in the loathely soyle."
fond, III. 449, viI. i95, 209, ' foolish'; its old meaning. Cf. King
Lear, Iv. 7. 60, " I am a very foolish fond old man."  Hence fondly=
'foolishly,' III. 470, VII. I52; cf. Lycidas, 56, "Ay me! I fondly
dream." It is still quite common as a dialect-word equivalent to 'daft,'
especially in north-country phrases like 'as fond as a besom' (or 'gate').
Originallyfond was the p. p. of a Middle E. verb fonnen, 'to act like a
fool,' from the noun fon, 'a fool.' The root is Scandinavian.
founder, I. 204, II. 940; properly 'to sink to the bottom' (Lat.
fundus, Fr.fond, 'bottom'); cf. night-foundered, I. 204, Comus, 483.
frame, II. 924, ' fabric'; a favourite word with M. and with writers
like Dryden and Thomson who were influenced by his diction (see II.
898, v. 154, notes). Similar is the Lucretian phrase moles et machina
mundi (v. 96); cf. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Love, 22, "this
worlds great frame," and his Hymnne of Heavenly Beaulie, 30, 3I.
frequent, i. 797, vII. 504; in the sense of Lat. frequens, 'crowded.'
Cf. Ben Jonson, Sejanus, "'Tis Caesar's will to have a frequent senate."
M. twice uses "in full frequence"='in full assembly' (Lat.frequeztia);
cf. P. R. I. 128, II. I30. Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, IV., "Not in this
frequence can I lend full tongue."


P. L,


45




706


PARADISE LOST.


fretted, I. 717; from the verb fret= Cto work or design withfrets.'
A fret was a small band; the word comes from O. Fr. frete, 'an iron
band'=Ital. ferrata, 'an iron grating' (cf. Lat. ferrum, 'iron').
"Fret-work" was specially used of a kind of gilding for the roofs of
halls; being a pattern formed by small gilt bands or frets intersecting
each other at right angles. Cf. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, II.
14. 9, "beautiful works and orders, like thefrets in the roofs of houses";
where Mr Aldis Wright says, "the Egyptian key pattern is a familiar
example." So Milton uses the word here, and Shakespeare in Hamlet,
II. 2. 313, "this majestical rooffretted with golden fire."  Quite distinct
is the other verb, fret, ' to adorn,' from A.S. fretwan.
frore, II. 595, 'frosty'; from A.S. froren, 'frozen,' the p. p. of
freosan, 'to freeze.' Spenser has the adj. frory, 'frozen,' in The
Faerie Queene, III. 8. 35, and frorne, 'frozen,' in The Shepheards
Calender, February.
galaxy, vII. 579; Gk. yaXattas (i.e. K6KXOS), 'Milky Way' (literally
'circle'); from -ydXa, ' milk.' Cf. Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott:
"Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy."
glozing, III. 93, 'flattering.' Middle E. glosen meant 'to make
glosses, explain,' from O.Fr. glose= Late Lat. glossa, Gk. yX\acaa, which
signified 'the tongue, a language, a word, a word needing explanation,
an explanation.' But since many explanations are false, the verb glosen
got the idea 'to interpret falsely,' whence 'to deceive.' So glozing=
'deceptive'; cf. George Herbert, The Dotage, " False glozing pleasures."
Especially used of flattering, false speech (Ix. 549); cf. Comus, 161,
"And well-placed words of glozing courtesy."
goblin, ii. 688. Derived through the French from Late Lat.
gobelinus, a diminutive of Lat. cobalus, 'a mountain-sprite, demon'= Gk.
K6paXos, ' a rogue,' or 'a goblin supposed to befriend rogues.'
gonfalon, v. 589, a " banner, or square standard born on the top of
a launce" (Cotgrave, I6Ii). The earlier form was gonfanon; cf. The
Romaunt of the Rose, "I bare of loue the gonfenoun." 0. Fr. govnfanon
=Middle High Germ. gundfano, 'battle-flag.'
Gordian, IV. 348= Lat. Gordius, 'pertaining to Gordius' (Gk.
r6ptios). According to the legend, Gordius, the first king of Phrygia,
tied an inextricable knot, the undoer of which was promised by an
oracle the sovereignty of Asia. Alexander the Great cut the knot
with his sword and fulfilled the oracle by conquering Asia. Cf. the old
play Lingua (I607):
"The Gordian knot which Alexander Great
Did whilom cut with his all-conquering sword."




GLOSSARY.


707


Hence Gordian= 'inextricable.' Cf George Herbert, Divinitie, "Who
can these Gordian knots untie? "
grain, v. 285, xI. 242; derived from O. Fr. graine, Lat. granum,
the Low Latin equivalent for the classical word coccum. Properly
coccum meant a 'berry'; but it was specially used of the cochineal
insect found upon the scarlet oak in Spain and other Mediterranean
countries; this insect being, from its shape, supposed to be a berry.
From the cochineal insect a certain dye was made, called cocciem;
whence coccinus='red.' In Low Latin granum took the place of
coccum. Strictly, therefore, grain signified a scarlet dye such as could
be extracted from this cochineal insect. Cf. Cotgrave: "Graine: the
seed of herbs, also grain wherewith cloth is dyed in grain, scarlet die."
But Cotgrave also has "Migraine: Scarlet, or Purple in graine," and
it seems as though the word had lost something of its original sense,
and could be applied to shades of blue or purple. Cf. Lycidas, 142
(the first draft of the lines).
grnmsel, I. 460=ground-sill. Minsheu (i625) has, "a Groundsell of
a doore; vide Threshold," and the old Latin Dictionary called Manifiulus
Vocabulorum (I57o) has, "A grunsen hypotheron" (Early English Text
Society's ed., p. 164). The second part of the word, sill, is akin to Germ.
schwelle, ' threshold.'
gryphon, II. 943; Lat. gryphus, from Gk. yp6tV; also in Late Lat.
grifus, whence the other form grifin. A third form in Elizabethan E.
was gripe; cf. Shakespeare, Lucrece, 543.
harald, I. 752, II. 5i8, 'herald'; always spelt harald-cf. Ital.
araldo-in the original editions of Paradise Lost. It illustrates Milton's
liking for Italian forms.
harbinger, ix. J3, xI. 589, 'a forerunner'; in P. R. I. 71, 277, John
the Baptist is called the " harbinger " of Christ. Originally it meant an
officer who went in advance of an army or prince to make provision
for the night's shelter.  Cf. Florio's Dictionary (I598), "Foriere, a
harbinger for a camp or a prince," and Bullokar's Expositor (16r6):
" Harbinger, one that taketh up lodging for others."  From Icelandic
herbergi, 'an army shelter'; cf. the cognate German words heer,
'army' + bergen, 'to shelter.'
heinous, ix. 929, x. i; spelt hainous in the original editions, as
often in old writers. Fr. haineux, 'hateful.'
highth, I. 24, II. 95; always written thus by M. The form is
common in Hakluyt's Voyages, and is said to survive in parts of
America. High-th is curious in that it retains the th of the A.S. word
hehJu, represented now by t-cf. heigh-t.
hosanna, IIl. 348, vi. 205, 'save, I pray' (or 'we pray'); na being a
45-2




708


PARADISE LOST.


particle expressing entreaty, while the first part of the word is from the
stem 'to save,' whence the nameJesus= 'Saviour,' andJoshua. Commonly hosanna is a cry for deliverance; but sometimes of praise, as
in Matt. xxi. 9, "Hosanna to the son of David... Hosanna in the
highest." From the use of hosanna in that passage Palm-Sunday was
called 'Hosanna-Sunday' in the mediaeval Western Church.
hosting, vi. 93, 'an encounter.' The more usual sense was 'the
raising or assembling of an army or host'; especially in the feudal
phrase 'hosting and hunting.'
hubbub, II. 95I, XII. 60, 'confused din'; put for hoop-hoop, a
reduplication of hoop, ' a cry of surprise '-cf. 0. Fr. houper, ' to shout.'
Also written whoobub, as in The Winter's Tale, Iv. 4. 628. Cf.
'whooping (or 'hooping ')-cough.'
hyaline, vii. 619, 'the glassy sea'; Gk. vaiXtvos, 'made of crystal or
glass,' from iaXos, 'glass'; cf. Lat. hyalinus, 'glassy' (borrowed from
Greek). No doubt, M. was thinking of Revelation iv. 6, where the
Greek is OaBXaaoa - aX\ivr bouoa KpvOrcTXXqJ= "a sea of glass like unto
crystal."  Cf. Tennyson'sJuvenilia, " Twin peaks shadow'd with pine
slope to the dark hyaline."
impair. The usual sense in Milton is 'to harm, damage,' which
agrees with the etymology, impejorare, 'to make worse'; cf. Ix. 144,
P. R. Iv. 592, where, in each case, it is the opposite of repair.  But
sometimes, e.g. in v. 665 and vi. 690, 691, there lurks the idea of
'equality,' as if M. connected it with Lat. impar, 'unequal.'
impress, Ix. 35, 'a device, generally with motto, on a coat of arms,
scutcheon, shield.'  Also spelt imprese=Ital. impresa, 'a device,
emblem'; literally' something impressed,' i.e. stamped. Cf. Richardl.
III. I. 24, 25:
"From my own windows torn my household coat,
Razed out my imprese, leaving me no sign";
i.e. the family coat of arms blazoned on the stained glass.
influence, II. 1034, Late Lat. influentia, literally 'a flowing in
upon.' It was an astrological term applied to the power over the
earth, men's characters, fortunes etc., which was supposed to descend
from the celestial bodies. Cf. "planetary influence," King Lear, I. 2.
136, "skyey influences," Measurefor Measure, III. i. 9. M. generally
uses influence with reference to this astrological notion; cf. iv. 669,
VII. 374, 375 (fromJob xxxviii. 31), vIII. 513. See also Bacon's Essays
Of Envy and Of Vicissitude (Pitt Press ed., pp. 21, 172). Other terms
due to astrology are 'disastrous' (I. 597), 'saturnine,' 'jovial.'
innumerous, vii. 455= Lat. innumerosus, 'numberless'; a poetic
use. Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, v., "A lisping of the innumerous
leaf." Thomson has it twice in Spring.




GLOSSARY.


709


intend, II. 457, 'attend to, consider.' A clergyman, says Selden,
"must seriously intend his calling" (Table-Talk, p. 1i6). Cf. Lat.
intendere animum.
inure, fi. 216, vii. 239, ' to accustom,' literally 'to bring into
practice' (=ure). For the obsolete noun ure (O. Fr. eure, Lat. opera,
'work'), cf. Bacon, Of Simulation, "it maketh him practise simulation in other things, lest his hand should be out of ure." Cf.
'manure.'
its. In Elizabethan English the regular neuter possessive pronoun
was his; cf. Genesis iii. I5, "<it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel."  About i6oo its came into use, but slowly. Bacon
has its rarely; the Bible of 61 i never; the nine instances in the
rst Folio (i623) of Shakespeare may be corrupt, since in every extant
work published during his lifetime the old idiom his is invariablecf. Julius Cesar, I. 2. 123, 124, "that same eye...did lose his lustre."
Milton, as an Elizabethan in his diction, avoids its: either (i) by
personifying the noun: thus in his prose abstract words like 'virtue,'
'truth,' are always followed by her; or (2) by retaining the old neuter
use of his.
The only places in Milton's verse where its occurs are I. 254, IV. 813:
and Nativity Ode, 1o6. I know but two instances of its in his proseAreopagitica and The Reason of Church Government, P. W. II. 94, 471.
justle, II. io8 =jostle; connected with joust (often spelt just), from
Lat. juxta, 'close to.' For the form (then common) cf. The Tempest,
V. 158.
knot, IV. 242, 'a flower-bed.' M. recollected Love's Labour's Lost,
I. I. 249, "thy curious-knotted garden," i.e. laid out in nicely-arranged
beds. The Elizabethan physician Dr Dee says in his Diary, " I hired
Walter Hooper, to kepe my hedges and knots in good order " (Camden
Society's ed., p. 3). Cf. Richard ZI. III. 4. 43-46. It survives as a westcountry word, though generally in the compoundflower-knot.
landskip, II. 491; here and in the three other places where it
occurs-IV. 153, v. 142, L'Allegro, 70-spelt lantskip in the original
editions. It was a term borrowed from Dutch artists (cf. Dutch landschap), and its forms in E. have been various-e.g. landschaft, Iindschape,
landshape, landscip. For landskip (apparently the oldest form in E.)
cf. Cotgrave (i6i i), "Paisage: Landskip, countrey worke"; and The
Spectator, 94, "a beautiful and spacious landskip."  Tennyson uses
landscip in Merlin and Vivien and Romney's Remorse. The suffix -skip
(or -scape), generally softened to -ship, is closely connected with the
noun shape.
lawn, iv. 252; properly 'an open, grass-covered space in a forest,




710


PARADISE LOST.


a glade clear of trees'; hence any 'pasture' or 'green.' A favourite
poetic word; cf. Comus, 568, 965, Lycidas, 25.
leviathan, I. 201, vII. 412; then commonly identified with the whale,
though the Hebrew lizydthdn " denotes any great sea or land monster,
as the crocodile...... or some large serpent."  Cf. Psalm lxxiv. 14,
"Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces," i.e. the crocodile,
symbolising Egypt; and Isaiah xxvii. I, "even leviathan that crooked
serpent."  In Psalm civ. 26, " There go the ships: there is that leviathan," leviathan stands for any large sea-monster.
libbard, vII. 467; an Elizabethan form of leopard, so called because
thought to be a cross-breed between a lion (leo) and a pard, i.e. panther
(pardus). Cf. Spenser, The Ruines of Time, "Who of the Grecian
Libbard now ought heares?"  So in Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 55.
limbec, III. 607; short for alembic, 'a vessel for distilling.' It is
one of those hybrid words of Arabic+ Greek origin which came into
Spain through the Moors and then passed into European languages.
Arabic al, 'the'+ anbik, 'a still,' from Gk. a/ 'ti, 'a cup.' See Macbeth,
I. 7. 67, and Dryden's Anlzs Mirabilis, stanzas I3 and 166.
limber, VII. 476, 'flexible'; correctly written limper, and akin to
limp. Cf. The Winter's Tale, I. 2. 47 (where the use is figurative),
and Giles Fletcher, Christ's Victorie in Heaven, 57, "And oft the
Sun would cleave the limber mould" (i.e. friable).
limbo, III. 495; strictly a term of Roman Catholic theology.
"The Latin word Limbus (or 'fringe') was used in the middle ages
for that place on the fringe or outskirts of hell in which the just
who died before Christ were detained till our Lord's resurrection
from the dead. It likewise signifies a place (also supposed to be
beneath the earth and on the outskirts of hell) inhabited by infants
who die in original sin" (Addis and Arnold, Catholic Diet.). The first
of these was the Limbus Palrum, the second the Limbus zfazntium.
Later arose the popular belief in a third region, the Limbus Fatuorumthe " Paradise of Fools " (IV. 496) after death and receptacle of all vain
and foolish things. See Henry VIII. v. 4. 67. Dante places Vergil in
Limbo (the First Circle of his Inferno) and makes him explain who are
there and why (Inferno, Iv. 31-63), viz. the just that "were before
Christianity."  See also the Purgatorio, VII. 28-36, XXII. 97-1r4.
list, 'wish, please'; commonly a present (II. 798), but also used as
a preterite by M. (II. 656, iv. 803). Shakespeare, who uses the
present tense often, once has listed; cf. Richard IIII. I. j. 84. Akin
to lust, which often meant ' pleasure' (Germ. lust); cf. Psalm xcii. io,
"Mine eye also shall see his lust of mine enemies" (Prayer-Book).
livery, Iv. 599, VI. 478; used by Elizabethan writers=any kind




GLOSSARY.


7II


of dress, garb; cf. L'Allegro, 62, "The clouds in thousand liveries
dight." Originally livery meant whatever was given (i.e. delivered) by
a lord to his household, whether food, money, or garments. Fr. livrer
=Low Lat. liberare, 'to abandon.'
malignant, x. 662, 'injurious, hostile'; often used by Elizabethans
with reference to astrology, as here. Cf. I Henry VI. IV. 5. 6.
manuring, iv. 628, xi. 28. The verb manure='to cultivate, till'
(properly with the hand) was not uncommon in Elizabethan E. Minsheu
(I625) has: "to manure, or till the ground, to worke and labour the
earth with the hand."  Cf. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, II. (ed.
Aldis Wright, p. 84), " It is one thing to set forth what ground lieth
unmanured, and another thing to correct ill husbandry in that which is
manured "; and Othello, I. 3. 328. M. has it often in his prose-works
(P. W. II. 463, IIl. 78). And good- (or well-) mannered is still quite
a common agricultural term for land with a good crop on it. From
Fr. manauvre= Low Lat. manzopeera, 'a working with the hand' (manus).
marble, Iin. 564, 'bright as marble' (from root mar-, 'to gleam').
Cf. Gk.,papualpeuv, 'to glisten,' pXapAadpeos, ' glistening,' used of the stars
or sky. In Cymbeline, v. 4. Io2, I21 Shakespeare applies "marble"
and "radiant" to the sky in the same sentence.
marish, xiI. 630; cognate with marsh; cf. also mere (as in Windermere) and Germ. meer, ' the sea.' Though common in earlier writers
(see The Faerie Queene, v. Io. 23), marish was becoming obsolete
when M. wrote; it only occurs once in the A.V., Ezekiel xlvii. 11,
" the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed,"
where the Genevan Bible (1562) had the same rendering. Baret's
Alvearie (I580) gives, "A fenne or marise, a moore often drowned
with water."  It is (ne of Tennyson's archaic words; cf. Mariana,
"The cluster'd marish-mosses crept," and The Dying Swan, 2 and 3.
maw, II. 847, x. 6o0, 991, 'stomach'; cf. Germ. magen. A vulgar
word applied rather to animals than men. Cf. Milton's Sonnet to
Cromwell:
"Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw."
meath, v. 345, a sweet wine, especially one made with honey;
'mead.'  Chaucer writes meth, the dialect-form  still current in
Cheshire; cf. the Welsh metheglin (a sweet beverage, mentioned in
The Merry Wives of Windsor, v. 5. I67), from Welsh meddyglyn,
'mead-liquor.' A.S. meodu, Gk.  6Ouv, Sanskrit madhu, 'honey,' are
cognate.
minim, VII. 482, 'a tiny creature'; from Lat. minimus, 'very
small.' The use is said to survive in Cornwall, e.g. "come in, you




712


PARADISE LOST.


minum!"    Cf. A Midsummer-Night's Dream, III. 2. 328, 329, "you
dwarf, you minimus."
mood, I. 550, or mode, 'key,' ' measure,' a musical term; cf. S. A.
662. Lat. modus; distinct from mood, 'disposition' (Germ. muth).
mysterious, viii. 599, 'full of awe' such as befits a mystery (cf. Iv.
743, 750) like marriage; cf. E:phesians v. 32, "This is a great mystery"
-said in allusion to marriage. So in Comus, 785, "The sublime notion
and high mystery." Mystery (Gk. Uva-rrptov, 'a secret rite,' from /e6tv,
'to close the eyes or mouth') used in a religious sense means a truth
specially revealed to men, or a spiritual rite of deep significance. Thus
in the Prayer-Book it is applied to the Holy Communion.
nice, Iv. 241, v. 433, vIII. 399; derived from Lat. nescius, 'ignorant,'
nice meant 'foolish,' then 'fastidious, dainty,' i.e. foolish in a particular
way. So here and in P. R. IV. I57, " Nothing will please the difficult
and nice," i.e. people hard to satisfy (dificiles). Few words improve
in sense as nice has.
oblivious, I. 266, 'causing to forget, producing forgetfulness'; cf.
Macbeth, v. 3. 43, "some sweet oblivious antidote."  So Horace uses
obliviosus of wine (Odes 11. 7. 21); and M. speaks of obliviosae...Lethes
aquc in De idea Platonica, 20.  Pope borrowed Milton's phrase; cf.
The Dunciad, III. 43, 44:
"Oh! born to see what none can see awake!
Behold the wonders of th' oblivious lake."
obnoxious; always used by M. in its Latin sense 'liable to' (obnoxius). Cf. The Tenure of Kings, "made obnoxious to the doom
of law," and The Reason of Church Government, I. 6, "from that time
his creature, and obnoxious to comply with his ends in state " (P. W.
II. 32, 46I). So in Ix. I70, 1o94, and S. A. xo6. Cf. Bacon, Of
Ambition, "as for the having of them obnoxious to ruin, if they be of
fearful natures, it may do well."
obvious; always used by M. in one of the senses of Latin obviuse.g. ' coming to meet' (vII. 504, X. io6), or 'lying in the way' (vi. 69).
officious, viii. 99; used = Lat. officiosus, 'obliging, ready to serve by
doing officia, i.e. kind acts.' Cf. P. R. II. 302, where Satan, coming
back after his first repulse, says, "With granted leave officious I return,"
i.e. eager to serve Christ.
opacous, III. 418, VIII. 23; from Lat. opacus, 'dark,' but more
commonly opague as in III. 6rg; cf. Fr. opaque.     Minsheu has,
" Opacuous, shadowie, darke and blacke."
orient, I. 546, Ii. 399, III. 507, 'bright, lustrous.' In Elizabethan
poetry it is a constant epithet of gems, especially pearls.  Perhaps, used
thus, it first meant 'eastern,' gems coming from the Orient or East;




GLOSSARY.


713


then as these were bright it got the notion 'lustrous,' which suits, I
believe, every passage where M. uses it, though in one or two places
(e.g. in Iv. 644) 'rising '=Lat. oriens is possible.  Commonly he
applies it to jewels or liquids; cf. v. 2, Comus, 65.
owe, I. II4I; in its original sense 'to have, possess.' Cf. Macbeth,
I. 4. o0, "To throw away the dearest thing he owed," and The Tempest,
III. I. 45. Closely akin to own.
panim, I. 765; another form of pagan, from Late Iat. paganus,
'heathen.' Strictly O.E. paynyme meant 'heathendom,' 'the country of
the heathen,' and a 'heathen man' was payen or payn. Tennyson uses
paynim often in the Idylls of the KIintg.
paramount, II. 508, 'lord, chief'; originally a legal term for the
lord of an estate under whom land was rented. Cf. Blount's Glossographia, "Paramount is in our Law the highest Lord of the Fee."
O. Fr. paramont, 'at the top, above'= Lat. per+ad montem.
pavilion, II. 960, 'palace.' M. refers to Psalm xviii. Ir, "He made
darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark
waters and thick clouds of the skies"-where, however, the sense is
less 'palace' than 'tent,' as sometimes in M. Cf. v. 653, XI. 215.
Through Fr. pavilion from Lat. papilio, 'a butterfly,' used by Late Latin
writers to mean 'a tent' because a tent is spread out like the wings of a
butterfly.
pioner, I. 676; 0. Fr. peonier, ' foot-soldier,' Ital. pedone. For -er=
-eer as a suffix in Elizabethan E. cf. "charioter," vI. 39; "mutiner,"
Coriolanus, I. I. 254; "enginer" and "pioner," Hamlet, I. 5. 163 and
III. 4. 206.
pitch, vIII. I98. A term in falconry for the height to which a hawk
soars. Cf. Richard IZ. I. i. Io9, " How high a pitch his resolution
soars!"  M. perhaps refers to this use; cf. "lower flight," 99.
plat, IX. 456; another form of plot, ' a small piece of ground.' Cf.
2 Kings ix. 26, "and I will requite thee in this plat...Now therefore
take and cast him into the plat of ground."  So in I Penseroso, 73:
"Oft, on a plat of rising ground,
I hear the far-off curfew sound."
plumb-down, II. 933, 'straight down, in a vertical line.' Plumb
meant (I) a mass of lead (Lat. plumbum), attached to a cord and used
in determining whether a wall is perpendicular; (2) the vertical or perpendicular position so determined. In modem E. b has softened into
p=plump, 'straight downward.'
pomp; apart from its ordinary meanings (I. 372, II. 257) it is used
like Gk. iro/LrO7, Lat. ponpa, in the two kindred senses 'solemn procession' (vii. 564), and 'train, retinue' (viii. 6I). Cf. King John,




714


PARADISE LOST.


II. I. 304. Bullokar's Expositor, an old (I6I6) English dictionary,
has, "Ponfe....a solemn traine."
ponder, iv. IOI; in the literal sense of Lat. ponderare, 'to weigh';
a rare use, but cf. Surrey's Poemzs:
"Hot gleams of burning fire, and easy sparks of flame,
In balance of unequal weight he pondereth by aim."
The old English-Lat. Dictionary called Manipulzs Vocabulorum (r 57o)
has, "to ponder, ponder are, librare."
portcullis, II. 874, a kind of grating, made of timber or iron, sliding
up and down in vertical grooves, and forming part of a gateway. Here
the portcullis came down over and protected the lock of the gate:
Sin had to raise it before she could get at the keyhole. Lat. porta
colatica, 'a sliding door'; cf. Fr. couler, 'to flow,' coulisse, 'a slide,
groove.'
prevent, II. 467, 739, x. 987, 'to anticipate, forestall'; cf. Psalm
cxix. 148, "Mine eyes prevent the night watches," and I Thessalonians
iv. 15, "we which are alive...shall not prevent them which are asleep,"
i.e. 'rise before.' Literally 'to come before,' Lat. pracvenire.
prick, II. 536, 'to ride hard,' literally 'to spur a horse on'; cf.
Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette, "And Gareth crying prick'd against
the cry."  See The Faerie Queene, I. i. I, v. Io. 31. In Piers the
Plowman "prykiere "= a rider.
puny, II. 367; perhaps in the literal sense 'born later, younger,'
mankind having been created after the angels; cf. the Areopagitica,
" like a puny with his guardian," i.e. a young man not yet of age (P. W.
II. 79). But 'weak, inferior' would also suit.  The term "Puisne
Judge" shows the etymology (Fr. puis ne).
purchase, x. 579, 'prey.' The verb purchase meant first 'to hunt
after' (0. Fr. purchacer= Fr. pour+ chasser); "then to take in hunting;
then to acquire; and then, as the commonest way of acquiring is by
giving money in exchange, to buy" (Trench).    'To acquire, gain'
was a common Elizabethan sense; cf.   'i mothy iii. 13, "they that
have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good
degree" (Revised Version "gain").
purlieu, II. 833, 'an outskirt'; strictly of a forest, as in Iv. 404. Sometimes land which had been taken from its owner and made part of a
forest was restored to him or his successor. The process whereby this
was done was called perambulatio =' a walking over the land to settle
its boundaries'; then the land itself came in legal Latin to be called
perambulatio, rendered in French by pouralle. The form purlieu,
from pourallce, was influenced by a wrong derivation from Fr. pur
lieu=purus locus, 'a space clear of trees.'




GLOSSARY.


715


purple, Iv. 764. Lat. puripureus, like Gk. 7rop06peoo, was not
limited to what we call 'purple,' but denoted almost any rich colour,
e.g. red, rosy, crimson, and in poets any dazzling, bright hue (as where
Horace applies it to white swans, Odes iv. I. Io). We find the same
wide use in English (especially the Elizabethan) poets.  Thus in
Shakespeare it is used of blood several times; cf. Romeo andJuliet,
I. i. 92. Often it is only a picturesque, literary epithet, as in Gray's
" The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love " (Progress of
Poesy, 41); cf. IV. 763, 764, and Vergil's lumen juvente pu-rpureum
(aEn. I. 590, 591).
purpose, iv. 337, VII. 337; in sense and origin=Fr. propos, 'conversation.' So the verb propose=' talk' in Shakespeare, e.g. in Much
Ado About Nothing, III. I. 2, 3:
"There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice
Proposing with the prince and Claudio."
Spenser often has purpose=' discourse'; cf. The Faerie Queene, i.
12, 13.
quarry, x. 28I, 'prey'; a hunting-term. 0. Fr. cuiree, the intestines of a slain animal, the part given to the hounds; so called because
wrapped in the skin-Fr. cuir, 'a skin, hide,' from Lat. corium, 'hide.'
quire, ii. 217, 666, viI. 254; the older form of choir; each from
Lat. chorus.  Cf. the Prayer-Book, "In quires and places where they
sing." Quire was one of the Latin words introduced through Christianity.
ramp, iv. 343, VI. 466; a word used in several allied senses,
e.g. 'to rage'-cf. "a ramping and a roaring lion," Psalm xxii. 13,
Prayer-Book; 'to tear, snatch'; 'to rear up on the hind legs '-cf. the
heraldic term "lion rampant"; 'to spring.' Cf. S. A. i39, "his lion
ramp "=lion-like spring. Fr. ramper, ' to climb.'
rapt, III. 522, VII. 23, 'caught up.' It should be written rapped,
being the p. p. of an old verb rap, 'to seize'; cf. Cymbeline, I. 6. 51,
"what...raps you?" i.e. excites you? The form rapt comes through
confusion (of sound and sense) with Lat. raptus, the p. p. of rapere,
'to seize.'
ravin, x. 599, 'prey'; cf. The Faerie Queene, I. ii. 12 (the description of the ' Old Dragon'):
"his deepe devouring jawes
Wyde gaped, like the griesly mouth of hell,
Through which into his darke abysse all ravin fell."
O. Fr. ravine, Lat. rapina, ' plunder.'
reck, 'to care'; A.S. reccan. M. uses the word both personally
(II. 50, IX. 173) and impersonally; cf. Lycidas, I22, "What recks it
them? What need they? They are sped," and Comus, 404. In Shake



7i6


PARADISE LOST.


speare it is always personal, as in Hamlet, I. 3. 51 ("recks not his own
rede"). M. uses reckoning with the strict etymological notion of 'caring,
troubling,' in the phrase to 'make little reckoning of'; cf. Comus, 642,
Lycidas, I16. The old word wretchless means 'careless,' the w having
been prefixed wrongly; cf. the Articles of Religion, xvii.
recorder, I. 551, a kind of flute or flageolet; cf. the title of a
musical work published in i686, "The Delightful Companion, or
Choice New Lessons for the Recorder or Flute." So called from the
old verb record=-' to sing'; cf. Fairfax, Tasso, II. 97, " to hear the lark
record her hymns." Selden says in his Table-Talk: "a bird, by often
whistling to, learns a tune, and a month after records to herself" (p. 149,
Reynolds' ed.). By "soft" M. implies not effeminate strains but the
sweet, subdued notes of the instrument; cf. Fletcher's Piscatorie Eclogues,
VII. 3, "the sad recorder sweetly plains."
rhyme; spelt (in the First Ed.) rhime in I. I6 but rime (the
proper spelling, A.S. rim) in the Preface.  Possibly M. used rhime
(i.e. rhyme) = poetry opposed to prose, and rime= rhymed metre
opposed to blank verse. The spelling rhyme is due to confusion with
rhythm, Gk. pvtO64s.
Sabsean, iv. i62, 'belonging to Saba.' Saba is the classical form,
used in the Septuagint and Vulgate, of Sheba, which "embraced the
greater part of Arabia Felix" (Smith's Bible Dict.).  The Elizabethans constantly write Saba; cf. Marlowe's Fanstus, v. I54, "As
wise as Saba" (i.e. the Queen of Sheba), and xii. 22, "India, Saba,
and farther countries in the east." In Comus, 996 ("Elysian dew"),
the Cambridge MS. shows that the earlier reading was Sabcean.
sad, v. 94, VI. 54r, 'serious'; the original sense was 'sated,' A.S.
saeed being akin to Lat. satis; then came the notion 'serious, sober,
grave,' as often in Shakespeare. Cf. An Apology for Smectymnuus,
"to be severe and ever of a sad gravity," and the History of Britain,
"this story, though seeming otherwise too light in the midst of a sad
narration" (P. W. III. 129, V. 387). Cf. Comus, I89, Il Penseroso, 43.
satiate, I. I79. Elizabethan English often makes the past participles of verbs of Latin origin conform with the Latin. This is the
case especially with verbs of which the Latin originals belong to the ist
and 3rd conjugations. Cf. elevate (II. 558)= Lat. elevatus and suspense
(I. 418) =suspensus. Further, participles not from the Latin are abbreviated by analogy; e.g. Milton (I. I93) has uplift=' uplifted,'
though lift is of Scandinavian origin.
scathe, I. 6i3, 'to injure'; rare as verb, but cf. Romeo and Juliet,
I. 5. 86. "This trick may chance to scathe you." For the noun cf.
King John, II. 75, "To do offence and scath in Christendom."  The




GLOSSARY.


717


AManimpulus Vocabulorum (t 570) has, "to scathe, nocere," and Minsheu
(1617), " to scathe, or hurt."
sciential, ix. 837, 'yielding knowledge.' Ben Jonson in a compliment to James I. says (Masque of Blackness):
"His light sciential is, and, past mere nature,
Can salve the rude defects of every creature."
scull, Vll. 402; the same word as shoal and school; cf. the nautical
expression 'a school of fish.' Scull is used specially of fish; cf. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, v. 5. 22. On some coasts (e.g. the
south-eastern) of England herring-shoals are still called sculls. In the
New Forest dialect scull is used contemptuously for 'a set of low
people.'
sdein, iv. 50; cf. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III. I. 55:
"For great rebuke it is love to despise,
Or rudely sdeigne a gentle hart's [heart's] request."
This form is modelled on Ital. sdegnare, while the common form disdain
comes through O. Fr. desdegner. Lat. dis-, a negative prefix, + dignari,
'to think worthy (dignus).'
secure, Iv. I86, v. 238, IX. 371, x. 779. Elizabethan writers often
use secure in the sense of Lat. securus, 'free from anxiety, unconcerned';
i.e. to indicate a false feeling rather than actual state of safety. Cf.
Fletcher's quibbling lines:
"To secure yourselves from these,
Be not too secure in ease";
and M. in Eikonoklastes, I8, "with a bloody surprise [he] falls on
our secure forces which lay quartering at Brentford, in the thoughts
and expectation of a treaty," P. W. I. 442. So security=' over-confidence, carelessness,' in Macbeth, II. 5. 32. "Captain Secure" is
slain alongside of "Captain Boasting" in The Holy War.
seneshal, ix. 38, 'steward'; literally ' old servant,' whence the idea
'senior in standing, chief.' Through O. Fr. from Gothic sins, 'old'
+ shalks, 'servant'; cf. marshal, literally 'horse-servant.'
Seraphim; then supposed to come from a Hebrew root 'to bum';
cf. Blount, "Seraphim, i.e. fulgentes aut conmburentes; so called, for
their burning with divine love and charity." Hence "fiery Seraphim,"
II. 512; " brightest Seraphim," III. 381, and in At a Solemn MIusick, 1o.
Really Seraphim is from a root 'to exalt,' and means 'the exalted
ones.'
The plural of Seraph (IIl. 667) has much the same history as Cherub;
Seraphins in some old writers-cf. Thomas Watson's Eglogue (1590),
"where Seraphins I doe Praise the highest in their glorious flames"
(Arber, p. I69); Seraphims in the Bible, Isaiah vi. 2, 6; Seraphim in




718


PARADISE LOST.


M. Crashaw uses Seraphim several times as a singular in his beautiful
poem The Flaming H~eart, on Saint Teresa, e.g.,
"This is a Seraphim, they say,
And this the great Teresia."
sere, x. Io71, dry'; also spelt sear, A.S. sear, 'dry.' Commonly
said of flowers or leaves, with the sense 'faded,' 'withered,' as in
Lycidas, 2, "ivy never sere."
sewer, ix. 38; a servant who set the dishes on the table at a feast
and removed them. In Eikonoklastes, 24, M. refers contemptuously
to the chaplains of Charles I. as "the sewers, or the yeomen-ushers
of devotion," P. W. I. 459.  Connected with A.S. seaw, 'pottage.'
shroud, x. io68. Properly shroud, A.S. scrid, meant 'a garment':
hence any 'shelter, covering,' as often in Elizabethan writers. Cf.
Comus, 147, "Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees."
Outside Old St Paul's Cathedral in London there was a covered place
called " the Shrouds," where sermons were preached in wet weather,
instead of at St Paul's Cross, which was in the open.
Soldan, I. 764,' Sultan'; cf. Minsheu (I625), "the great Soldane,
or Sultan among the Turks or Persians." It is a thoroughly mediaeval
word-cf. the Inferno, v. 60-used often in reference to the Crusades;
cf. The Talisman. From Arabic Sultdn, 'victorious,' Latinised as
Soldanus, whence Ital. soldano.
Sophi, x. 433; a corruption of Arabic safe, 'elect, chosen,' which
was a title, like the ' Caesar' of the Roman emperors, borne by each
Shah or sovereign of the dynasty that ruled Persia from i505 to 1725.
In Elizabethan writers the expression 'the Sophy' (or 'Sophi') is
exactly equivalent to 'the Shah' in modern English. Cf. The Merchant
of Venice, II. I. 25, "That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince"; and
Ben Jonson's Volpone, III. 5, "the Persian Sophi's wife." Persia is
called "the Sophian Empire" in Hexham's English edition (1636) of
Mercator's Atlas, II. 4I1.
sound, II. 604, VII. 399, 'a strait, narrow strip of water.' Cf.
Comus, 115, "The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove" (i.e.
shoals of fish).  A.S. sund meant literally 'a strait of the sea that
could be swum across.'
sovran, I. 246, II. 244; spelt thus always in P. L.; cf. Ital. sovrano.
The common form sovereign=O. Fr. soverain, later souverain. Lat.
superanus, 'chief.'
spangle, vti. 384, XI. 130, 'to ornament as with spangles.' Spangle
was used of small flashing ornaments like the little circles of silver in
'tinsel.' Elizabethan writers often apply it to the stars; cf. The
Taming of the Shrew, Iv. 5. 31, "What stars do spangle heaven with




GLOSSARY.


7I9


such beauty?"  So in Comus, 1003 (an echo of A Midsummer-Night's
Dream, II. I. 29), and Lycidas, 170.
state, x. 445, 'canopy'; more often 'chair of state, canopied
throne,' as in Macbeth, IIl. 4. 5, "Our hostess keeps her state."
Cotgrave, French Dictionary, I6rI, explains dais by: "A cloth of
Estate, Canopie or Heauen, that stands ouer the heads of Princes
thrones, also, the whole State or seat of Estate."
store, III. 444, V. 322, 'abundance'; common in Elizabethan E.
One of Heywood's Proverbs runs, " store is no sore."  Cf. L'Allegro,
I2I. O. Fr. estoire, 'store, provisions,' Low Lat. instaurum.
sublimed, I. 235. In chemistry to 'sublime' or 'sublimate' is "to
raise a solid substance into vapour by heat."  M. means that the
material substance catching fire is raised to a state of pure flame.
success, It. 9, I23; its usual sense in Elizabethan E. is 'result,
fortune'-how a person fares in a matter, or a thing turns out, whether
well or ill. Cf. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, II. 2. 117, "Nor
fear of bad success in a bad cause." So P. R. iv. I.
succinct, III. 643; Lat. succinclus, the past participle of succingere,
'to gird, tuck up.' Cf. 7he Rape of the Lock, Ill. 41, 42:
"Four Knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads, and halberds in their hands."
suggestion, ix. go, 'temptation'; cf. Macbeth, I. 3. 134, "why do
I yield to that suggestion?"  So the verb; cf. Richard II. IIr. 4.
75, 76:
"What Eve, what serpent, hath sucggested thee
To make a second fall of cursed man?"
summed, vII. 421; a term in falconry, applied to a hawk that
has the feathers full-grown and in full number. Cf. P. R. I. 14,
"with prosperous wing full summed"; and Drayton's Polyolbion,
Song Ix, "The muse from Cambria comes with pinions summed and
sound."
sung. In Elizabethan E. this incorrect form for the past tense is
much used. Shakespeare has sang only once (Sonnet 73), and then for
the rhyme. In M. sang occurs only three times, Ill. 383, VII. 192,
Lycidas, I86, and in each case he probably used the form for a special
consideration of sound (e.g. in II. 383, VII. I92 to avoid the jingle
sung...son). Similarly he has rung (II. 655, 723, IX. 737) as the past
tense of ring, except in the Nativity Ode, 158, where the rhyme requires
rang. Cf. too sprung (viI. 58, viii. 46).
surcease, vi. 258, 'to cease, stop'; cf. S. A. 404, and Shakespeare,
Lucrece, 1766, "If they surcease to be that should survive." Originally a surcease, 0. Fr. sursis (for the noun, cf. Macbeth, I. 7. 4), was
the arrest or stoppage of a legal suit. 0. Fr. surseior, 'to pause.'




720


PARADISE LOST.


Syrtis, II. 939, Gk. Z6prTL, the name of certain quicksands and sandbanks off the coast of N. Africa; the word came to mean any quicksand
or sandbank-as here.
take; a common Elizabethan sense was 'to enchant, captivate,'
especially by supernatural influence; cf. Hamlet, I. i. I63. Hence
the general meaning 'to charm' (II. 554); cf. Bacon, Of Masques,
"things...such as do naturally take the sense."  So in Tennyson's
Dying Swan, I II:
"The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy."
targe, ix. iIIx, 'a shield'; cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. 6. 39,
"targes undinted," i.e. not battered by blows.  Of course, target is
a diminutive of targe and formerly was used= ' shield'; cf. Coriolanus,
IV. 5. 26; Hamlet, II. 2. 334. A mark to fire at is called 'a target'
from its resemblance to a round shield.
ted, ix. 450, 'to spread mown grass'; a Scandinavian word. Cf.
Euphues: "When wealth cometh into the hands of youth before they
can use it, then fall they to all disorder that may be, tedding that with
a fork in one year which was not gathered together with a rake in
twenty" (Bond's Lyly, II. pp. I5, I6). So in Lyly's (?) prose-piece
Pap with a Hatchet: "What fool more covetous than he that seeks to
ted abroad the Church's goods with a fork, or scratch it to himself
with a rake?" (Bond, III. 412).
thrall, I. 149, x. 402; enthrall, II. 55; from  Icelandic b>rcll,
'a serf,' Danish tral; no doubt, thrall came into England through
the Danes. Strictly it meant 'a runner,' i.e. on messages, the original
root being that seen in Gk. rpeXew, 'to run.'
thwart, Iv. 557, 'to cross'; as a verb now only figurative='to
hinder,' but then used also in the literal sense ' to pass across'-as here;
cf. Pericles, IV. 4. Io. Minsheu has, " Traverser. To thwart, or goe
overthwart, crosse or passe over." The etymological sense is seen in
Milton's use of the adjective (x. o075).
tiar, II. 625, 'a crown'; strictly 'a wreathed ornament for the head'
(such as the Persians wore). Gk. rtdpa (or Paipas) is a Persian word,
perhaps from Persian tajwar, 'crowned'; hence Lat. tiara, Fr. tiare.
Tennyson speaks of flowers "studded white with disks and tiars"
(Arabian Ai,/tls).
tine, x. o075, 'to kindle'; cf. The Faerie Queene, III. 10. 13,
"To quench the flames which she had tyn'd before," and Fletcher's
Apoilyonists:
"Ohl why should earthly lights then scorn to tine
Their lamps alone at that first sunne divine."
An obsolete verb, also spelt tind; cf. tinder. The Dialect Diet. shows




GLOSSARY.


72I


that the word survives in several forms, e.g. tindle, 'a bonfire' (Derbyshire), teening-time, 'lighting-up time' (Cornwall), candle-teening (or
tining), ' dusk.'
tinsel, ix. 36; a shining, silver-like cloth. M. renders the Homeric
epithet for the goddess Thetis, dpyvp67re~a, ' silver-footed,' by ' tinselslippered,' Comus, 877. Fr. etincelle, Lat. scintilla, 'a spark.'
tire, VI. 605; the old form of tier; cf. The Faerie Queene, I. 4. 35.
It seems to have been specially used of a line of cannon; Skeat quotes
Florio (1598), "a tyre of ordinance." From Fr. tirer, 'to draw.'
touch, iv. 686; often applied thus to the action of the hand on
a musical instrument. Cf. The Passionate Pilgrim, 107, o, 8:
" whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense."
trains, xi. 624; cf. S. A. 533, "venereal trains"=snares of love,
and Comus, 15I. Shakespeare has the noun once (lMacbeth, Iv. 3. I 8),
the verb several times, e.g. in i Henry IV. v. 2. 21. From Fr. trainer=
trahere, which in Late Lat. = 'to betray': the metaphor (says Du Cange)
of alluring birds into snares. Cf. the Animadversions, " he...trains on
the easy Christian insensibly within the close ambushment of worst
errors," P. W. III. 43.
trepidation, III. 483; Lat. trepidatio, 'a trembling,' from trepidare,
'to tremble.' For the literal use of the word, cf. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, bk. II. 2. 8: "As it cometh to pass in massive bodies,
that they have certain trepidations and waverings before they fix and
settle, so it seemeth that by the providence of God this monarchy, before
it was to settle in your majesty and your generations (in which I hope
it is now established for ever), it had these prelucive changes and
varieties."
triumph, xI. 723, "a public festivity or exhibition of any kind,"
Schmidt, Lexicon; cf. A Alidsummer-Night's Dream, I. I. 19, "With
pomp, with triumph and with revelling." So often in Bacon, e.g. in
his History of Henry VII. p. 98 (" he kept great triumphs of jousting
and tourney "), p. 187, and p. 219, Pitt Press ed. See L'Allegro, 120.
In this sense the word is usually plural. Lat. triumphus= Gk. Opiats4os,
a hymn to Bacchus.
troll, xi. 620, 'to roll'; still used in its literal sense in many counties,
e.g. to troll a ball or hoop or wheel. In Yorkshire ' Troll-egg-day' was
an old name for Easter-Monday and Shrove-Tuesday, because on those
days children played with hard-boiled, dyed eggs, rolling them on the
grass.
uncouth, Ii. 407, 827; A.S. uncuft, 'unknown'-from    un, 'not'
+ cun, the p.p. of cunnan, 'to know.' In M. it means 'strange, un

P. L.


46




722


PARADISE LOST.


familiar,' perhaps with the implied notion ' unpleasant'; cf. v. 98, vI.
362.  So in Titus Andronicus, II. 3. 21I, "I am surprised with an
uncouth fear," and As You Like It, II. 6. 6.
unenvied, II. 23. Elizabethan writers constantly treat the termination -ed, which belongs to the passive participle, as equal to the
adjectival ending -able; especially with words which have the negative
prefix un-, and the sense 'that may not be.' Cf. II. 337, 903. So
" unvalued"=' invaluable,' "unavoided "=' inevitable,' Richard III.
I. 4. 27, IV. 4. 217. The use of the participial and adjectival endings
was less regular then than now.
unweeting, x. 335, 916. M. always uses this form, never unwitting;
the ee represents the sound of the long i in A.S. wilan, 'to know,'
which comes from the same root as Gk. otha and iev and Lat. videre.
utter, I. 72, III. x6, v. 614; the comparative of A.S. At, 'out,'
and an older form of outer. Lawyers still speak of " the utter bar" in
contrast with "the inner bar."  Cf. Blount's Glossographia (r656):
"The outward or Utter Barristers...these always plead without [i.e.
outside] the Bar."  In Ezekiel x. 5 the Bible used to read "utter
court."
vans, ii. 927, 'wings'; Ital. vanni, from Lat. vannus, 'awinnowingfan.' Cf. P. R. IV. 583, "plumy vans" (said of angels' wings), and
Tennyson's Love and Death, " Love wept and spread his- sheeny vans
for flight." For van=fan cf. vat-=fat as in ' wine-fat.' The Manipzuhls
Vocabulorum (1570) gives an old verb "to vanne, vannare," i.e. 'to
winnow.'
virtue; often (vII. 236, VIII. 95, IX. TIn, 145, 6i6, 649) used by M.
in the sense 'efficacy, might'; cf. Luke viii. 46, "virtue is gone out of
me": hence virtuous= 'full of efficacy' (ix. 795, 1o33). Also='courage'
(I. 320, X. 372), i.e. what a man (vir) should specially be, viz. 'brave';
Lat. virtus, 'worth, manly excellence, valour' (Lat. vir, 'man'). This
etymological use is well illustrated in the Life of Coriolanus in North's
Plutarch: "Now in those days valiantness was honoured in Rome above
all other virtues: which they call virtus, by the name of virtue itself,
as including in that general name all other special virtues besides. So
that virtus in the Latin was as much as valiantness."
vouchsafe, II. 332, VII. 80, vIII. 8. Spelt voutsafe in the original
editions, and perhaps we ought to keep the form, as some editors do.
M. may have wished to avoid the awkward sound ch before s, just as
in proper names he avoids sh.
waft, II. 1042; often used (as here) by Elizabethan writers with the
sense ' to journey, or carry, over water.' Cf. 2 Henry VI. IV. r. 114,
" I charge thee waft me safely cross the Channel "; and P. R. I. I04.




GLOSSARY.


723


wanton. The word means literally 'unrestrained'; hence 'luxuriant,'
as used of growth, IX. 2II. Cf. A Aidsuzmmer-Night's Dream, II. i.
99, Ioo:
"And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable."
Of motion it implies 'tossing about,' e.g. like the 'undulating' coils
of a serpent (ix. 517).
warp, I. 341; a nautical term (Scandinavian) =" to move into some
desired place or position by hauling on a rope or warp which has been
fastened to something fixed, as a buoy, anchor, or other ship at or near
that place or position: as, to warp a ship into harbor or to her berth "
(Century Dict.). M. uses it to describe 'undulatory forward motion,'
and Thomson imitates him; cf. Spring:
"Myriads on myriads, insect armies warp
Keen in the poisoned breeze."
In either case comparison with a sailing ship is implied.
weed, 'a garment'; A.S. wed, 'a garment, dress.' Quite a Miltonic
word; cf. L'AIlegro, I9, 12O:
"Where throngs of knights and barons bold,
In weeds of peace, high triumphs hold ";
which is an echo of Troizhs and Cressida, II. 3. 239, "To see great
I-ector in his weeds of peace."  So in Conmus, I6, 84, and 390 (" For
who would rob a hermit of his weeds? "). The singular is rare, but cf.
A.AiZidsummer-2Night's Dream, II. I. 255, 256:
"And there the snake throws her enameli'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in."
Now a poetical or dialect (e.g. Scottish) usage, apart from the phrase
"widow's weeds"; cf. Tennyson, In Aaimoriam, v.:
"In words like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er."
welkin, 'sky'; properly a plural word ='clouds'; cf. Germ. wolke,
'a cloud.'  The termination -in (for -en) is the plural ending which
we get in brethren, children, oxen. M. uses welkin only twice (II. 538,
Comus, iol5), and it was perhaps an affected word (Twelfth Night,
II. I. 65).
wight, II. 613, ' person, being '; A.S. uiht/, 'a creature.' It was
rather an old-fashioned word of ballad-poetry; Shakespeare seems to
ridicule it, putting it in the mouth of the bombastic Pistol; cf. The
Merry Wives of Windsor, I. 3. 23, Henry V. II. I. 64.
won, VII. 457, 'dwell'; cf. The Faerie Quteene, II. 7. 49, "The
fairest wight that wonneth under skie." From A.S. wuznian, which
meant (i) 'to dwell,' (2) 'to be accustomed'; now obsolete except in
the second sense and in the past participle wont or wonted. Similarly
46-2




724                  PARADISE LOST.
the cognate Germ. wohnen = (r) 'to dwell,' (2) 'to be wont.' M. uses
wont, in the second sense 'to be accustomed,' as a present tense and a
preterite; though I. 764 and the Nativity Ode, Io, seem the only undoubted cases of the latter.
wreak, iv. i, 'to avenge.' This was the original sense of wreak
(cognate with Germ. rdchen, 'to avenge'). The Manipulus Vocabulorum
(r570) has "to wreake, vlcisci, vindicare."  Cf. Tennyson, Gareth and
Lynette, "Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son." The first
two editions of P. L. have wreck, which is practically another form of
wreak.
yeanling, III. 434, 'just born.' " The difference between ean and
yean is easily explained; in the latter, the prefixed y- represents the
very common A.S. prefix ge-, readily added to any verb without affecting
the sense" (Skeat). Hence ean= A.S. ednian: yean= A.S. ge-eanianboth meaning 'to bring forth young,' i.e. of any kind; but now ean or
yean is commonly used of sheep. Shakespeare uses eanlinzg='young
lamb,' in The Merchant of Venice, I. 3. 80.




726
amber stream 438
ambient light 520
ambiguous words 503
ambrosia 478
ambrosial 406, 434, 500
amerced of 394
amiable 459, 584
ammiral (ship) 379
amorous bird of night 559
amphisbaena 602
Amram's son (Moses) 381
amused 522
an host 504
Anarch 427
anarchy 595
Angelic guards 590
Angelic name 570
Angels' food 492, 500
Angola 627
annoy 576
anointed 437, 500
answerable 564, 656
antarctic 569
Anubis 388
Aonian mount 369
apathy 413
Apocalypse 452
apostasy 533
appaid 652
apparent 466, 592
appearances 551
apply 459
apprehension 557
approve 573, 589
Araby the Blest 456
arbitress 399
arborous roof 479
Arcadian pipe 618
architrave 396
Ardours 484
areed 473
Argestes 608
Argo 427
Argob 383
argue 406, 471, 6-19
argument 370, 5I, 563
Argus 6i8
Ariel 518
Arimaspi 425
Arioch 518


INDEX.


armoury 465, 515, 536
Arnon 383
Aroer 384
arrive 409
as (=that) 488
as in 588, 6I3
as the sound of waters 507, 606
as whom 375
Ascalon 387
ascending scale 463
ask 466
Asmadai 517
Asmodeus 456
aspect 407, 436, 542
Asphaltic pool 385
asphaltic 385, 595
asphaltus 396
assay 394, 434
assert 370
assessor 524
Assyrian mount (Niphates) 454
astonied 584
astonished 4Io, 527
Astoreth 386
Astraea 474
at large 440
at once 522, 545
at worst 403
Atabalipa 628
Atlantean 407
Atlas 474
Atlas Mountains 627
atrophy 630
attend 436, 450, 543
attractive virtue 552
attributed 550, 572
attrite 6r4
Auran (Itauran) 457
Aurora's fan 476
Ausonian land 397
authentic 450, 468
author 466, 583, 594
auxiliar gods 392
awful 411
Azazel 390
Azores 465
Azotus 387
Baalim 385
Babel 395




I. INDEX OF WORDS, PHRASES AND
PROPER NAMES IN THE NOTES.
Some of the words will also be found in the Glossary.


a (=one) 545
a chance but 464
a world of 563
Abassin 461
Abbana 388
Abdiel 506
abhorred 419
abide 454
abject 381
abominations 383
abortive 410, 442
abrupt (n.) 409
absolute 558, 560
absolved 534
abstract (=abstracted) 558
abused 388
Abyss 537
Accaron 387
accomplished 467
accord (vb) 411
accountable 590
Acheron 414
act of grace 454
actual (sin) 605
Adam 488
adamantine chains 371
add 541
Ades 426
adhere 559
admiration 437, 533, 584
admire 395, 420, 550
admit 562
Adonis 574
adorn (p. p.) 56o
Adramelech 517


adust 520, 657
advance 390, 454, 483, 499, 657
Adversary (Satan) 514, 585
advise 409
advised 524
aery gait 465
aery tour 620
IEtna flames 442
Afer 608
affable 533
affect 435, 504, 519, 643
afflict 375, 404, 472
affront 383
after his charge received 484
after summons read 400
against 47I, 536
Agra 625
Aladule 600
alarmed 473
Alcairo 396
alchymy 412
Alcides 412
Alcinous 489, 575
Aleian 530
all but less than 377
all-bearing mother (Earth) 489
Almansor 628
aloof (=aloof from) 446
Alp 416
alternate (vb) 50o
amain 404
Amara 46r
amarant (amaranth) 438, 617
amazed 378
Amazonian targe 588




INDEX.


727


Bactrian 600
baleful 371, 414
balm 459, 580
balmy reed 477
bane 395
barbaric gold 401
barbed with fire 521
Barca 424
barricadoed 555
Basan 383
bases 565
bate 640
battles (armies) 513
beads 444
beam (of a spear) 5io
beam (of scales) 475
Beelzebub 372, 407
Beersaba 445
before the Lord 642
begirt with 393
Behemoth 545
Belial 388, 389, 403
belike 404
Bellona 424
Belus 396
beneath (south of) 382
Bengala 417
beryl 525
beseeching or besieging 506
better part 394
bickering 526
bind Hermes 447
bird of Jove 620
bird (of Paradise) 366
birth 58o
bituminous 642
Bizance 626
black (friars) 443
blanc 606
bland 476
blasphemed 435
blasphemous 506, 517
blasted heath 394
blessed vision 5oo
bloom (trans. vb) 458
blow (vb) 476
blowing 580
bold emprise 635
boon 459, 583
Boreas 6o8


Bosporus 427
bossy sculptures 396
both 468
bottom (=valley) 540
bottom (=vessel) 637
bottomless pit 527
bound...bound 457
bowing...bowed 386
braided train 462
brand 658
brazen 546
brazen dungeon (of the winds) 608
breadth 446
breathe elixir 448
Briareos 375
bridging 597
brigad 394, 412
bright (n.) 552
brinded 545
broad herds 545
broils 422, 514
brown 588
bulls (Papal) 444
bullion-dross 395
bushing 574
Busiris 38I
but (=that not) 402
buxom air 422, 485
by occasion 585
by this 590
Caecias 608
Calabria 419
calved 545
Cambaluc 625
can 623
canopy of Night 445
cany waggons (of the Chinese)
440, 441
Cape (of Good Hope) 418
capital 652
caravan 544
career 398
careering 525
careful 473
Carmel 645
Casbeen 600
Casius (Mt) 415
Caspian 421
cassia 488




728                       I
cataract 404, 638
Cathaian coast 596
Cathay 625
causey 599
cedar-top 543
celestial patroness 564
cell of fancy 558
Celtic 390
centre 395, 446, 513
centric 55, 607
cerastes 602
Cerberean 419
Ceres 473, 574
certain to 585
champain head 454, 508
champion 398
change for 377
change with 472
Chaos 369, 423
charge (n.) 449, 590
charioter 518
charity 436, 469
charm (=song) 466
charmed 618
charming 549
Charybdis 427
cheer 520
Chemos 384
Chersonese 626
Cherubic fires 519
Cherubim 5 I, 6 8
Chimaera 417
Chineses 441
chivalry 381
choice 410
choice regard 445
choice to choose 488
chrysolite 447
cieling 637
Circe 578
circling 445, 54r
circumscribe 537
cited 437
clang 543, 639
clarion 390
Cleombrotus 442
climate 566
clime 376, 414, 476, 53I, 636
close (adj.) 411
cloud (of soldiers) 521:NDEX.
cloudy van 5I
clung 602
coast (n.) 452, 568, 591
coast (vb) 470
Cocytus 414
combustion 371, 513
comet 657
communion 500
compact of 580
compare (n.) 494, 571
compasses 537
complacence 437
complete to 590
compliant 462
complicated 602
compose 407
composure 522
compute days 447
concave 391, 417
conclave 399
concoct 492, 520
confer 398
confine with 426
confound 409, 606
Confusion 643
conglobed 538
Congo 627
conjured 421
conniving 605
conscience 559
conscious Night 521
consequence 599
considerate 394
consist 505
consistence 425
consorted 533
conspicuous 533
consult (n.) 400
contest (n.) 472, 511, 589, 638
contracted brow 560
contrite 617
converse (n.) 572
converse (vb) 405, 530, 557
convex 410, 440, 540
conviction 59
cope 382, 474, 513
cormorant 457
corer 606
cornice 396
corny reed 541




INDEX.


729


correspond with 547
couched with 454
counterview 594
court-amours 469
covered field 398
coy 462
craze 647
cresset 396
crew 388
crisped brooks 458
Cronian sea 595
crowned (with wine) 493
crude 52o
cry (=pack) 419
crystal sluice 479
crystal wall 540
crystalline 443, 526, 540
cubic 518
curious knots 459
Cusco 628
Cyclades 485
Cyrene 424
Dagon 387
Dalilah 587
Damascus 388
damasked 462
Damiata 415
damp 390, 623
Danaw (Donau) 382
dance (n. and vb) 419, 482, 49r, 569
Danite 587
dank (n.) 544
Darien 569
dark (n.) 432
dark with excessive bright 439
darkness (of Hell or Chaos) 430,
467, 537
darkness (Milton's blindness) 5 i
darkness visible 372
dart (of Death) 420, 630
dash (vb) 403
daughter of his voice 58x
dawning hills 521
day without night 480
day-spring 479
dead in sins 436
dlearest 436
Death, see Sin and Death
death like sleep 653


Decan 589
deceive 410
decencies 561
decent 449
decline 644
deep (1.) 402, 447, 520
defend 617, 647
deform 42r, 631
deformed 518
degree of reason 579
degrees (steps) 444
Delia 573
Delos 485, 596
Delphian cliff 39go
Demogorgon 426
denounce 618
dense, or rare 425
deny 647
deprave 5 r2
derived 59r
descant 466
descent (=descendants) 613
despaired (passive) 394, 520
determine 408, 514, 62r
Deucalion and Pyrrha 6r5, 6i6
devious 444
devote (devoted) 435, 585, 638
devoted 507
dews (of sleep) 50o
diamond 517
Dictsean 605
dilated 386, 473
dim suffusion 430
dimensionless 6i6
dipsas 602
dire hail 414
disastrous 393
disburden 6io
disclosed 543
discontinuous wound 515
discourse (reason) 495
discover 396, 445, 622
dishonest 462
dismal 372
dismal hiss of...darts 513
disparted 538
dispenses (n.) 444
displayed 543
displode 523
dispossess 641




730


INDEX.


dissipation 522
distemper 540
divan 60I
divide the night 467
dividual 543
divine of 584
divinely 559
Dodona 390
dogs of Hell 605
doing or suffering 374, 405
dole 472
dolphin 543
Dominations 439
doom 437 599, 602
Dorian mood 39I
Doric land 390
double-founted stream (the Jordan) 646
doubt 569
dove-like 370
down (adv. used as vb) 571
Dragon 452, 603
draw air 530, 556
dread 384
drench 402
drop serene 430
dropt with gold 543
drossiest 493
drouth 533
drugged 603
Dryad 573
dulcimer 548
durance 472
each...their 479, 545, 640
Earth's green Cape 562
Earth-born 375
earthly 587
earthly notion 536
earthy 570
eastern gate of Paradise 620, 657
eat (=ate) 583
Ecbatana 626
eccentric 446, 500, 551
eclipse (n. and vb) 393, 620
ecliptic 452
Eden, 368, 453, 454, 455, 458,
533, 568, 573, 624
edge of battle 378, 5II
edict 505


effectual might 435
El Dorado 628
Eleale 385
elect Angels 434, 5I8
elegant 586
element (=sky) 411
elements (the four) 407, 483
elixir 448
ellops 602
Elysian flowers 438
embalmed 422
embattled 541
emblazed 391, 499
emblazonry 411
emblem 467
embodied 391
embosomed 499
emboss 647
embowelled 522
embower 380
embryo, embryon 424, 442, 540
emmet 545
Empedocles 442
empiric 493
emprise 635
empyreal 450, 599
Empyrean 433
enamelled 578
end (=object, purpose) 463, 533,
546, 572
engines 397, 424, 520
enlarged 385
enormous 390, 488
enter and possess 6o5
entertain 412
entire 572
enviest 559
envy 464, 572
epicycle 55
equal 6io
equal to God 437
equal with gods 464
equinoctial winds 417
Ercoco 626
erect 461, 631
erected 394
eremites 442
enr not that 514
erroneous 531
error 459, 541




INDEX.


731


essence 374, 386, 405, 410, 570
essential 402
esteem of wise 472
Estotiland 607
eternal Wisdom 530
eternize 518, 6i6
ethereal 37I, 539
Ethiop line 461
Ethiopian (sea) 417, 418
Euboic sea 413
euphrasy 629
Eurus 609
Eurynome 604
Eve 464, 619
even (n.) 465
event 394, 402, 468, 504, 572
ever-during 537
every...each 382
evil tongues 531
evince 649
exact 545
excess 618
exercise 402
exhale 500, 539
exile 394
exorbitant 435
expatiate 398
experience 584
explode 603, 636
express 547
expressed immutable 589
extenuate 6o6
extinct 374
eye (of plumage) 545
eye (=the sun) 481
eyry 543
fable 375, 392, 6i6
face of things 549
facile gates 473
fact 403, 585, 630
fair (n.) 579, 637
fairest of stars 4&1
faltering measure 584
fame 394, 409, 472
famine 422
fan (=wing) 485
fancy 479, 556
fast by 369
fatal 403


fatal bruise 593
fatal course 506
fate 374
fathom 424, 425
fealty 557
feared (=to be feared) 582
feathered cincture 589
Feature 595
feigned 467, 565
fellow-servant 555
fellows of 394
female light tof the moon) 554
fennel 579
fervid wheels 537
Fesole 379
fetch day 553
Fez 627
field 373, 398, 407
fierce as a conet 657
fiercest (used as noun) 472
fig-tree 588
files 391r, 470, 516
Filial Godhead 536
fire and horror 402
firmament 404, 539, 540
first convex 440
first of things (light) 539
five (planets) 48I
fixed (stars) 443, 481, 6o6
fixed mind 373
flaming Cherubim 5I1, 570
flaming mount 499
flat 404
flatly 506
flaw (=gust of wind) 608
fledge (fledged) 449, 543
fleecy star 445
flight 369, 530
float 544
flood 417, 451
Flora 476
florid son 460
flowing cups 493
flown with insolence 389
fluctuate 581
fluid air 516
foiled 56I
foment 614
fond 442, 555
Fontarabbia 393




732


INDEX.


for (=because of, instead of) 463,
576, 586
forfeit 435
forgetful lake 402
forlorn 463
forlorn of 613
fortify 599
foughten field 519
found (=build) 538, 594
found (=melt) 395
fount 458
fragrance 556
frame (n.) 424, 439, 480, 550
frame (vb) 479, 494
fiaud 384, 535, 567, 58I
free will 590
freedom (=free men) 512
frequent 400, 546
frequenting 615
fret 548
fretted gold 396
friars 442
frieze 396
frith 424
from (=after) 555, 558
from thence 546
from what...into what 496
front 407, 461, 546, 572
frore 415
fruitless...fruit 58I
fugue 633
full of pomp 382
fume 555, 586
fuming 476
furniture 565
fusil 633
Gabriel 464, 509
Galaxy 547
gales 455, 559
Galileo 378, 484, 549
gan blow 5Io
Ganges 440
garden of bliss 556
gave to rule 397, 624
gay 473
Gaza 387
gaze (trans. vb) 448, 486
Gehenna 384
gemmed 54I


general ancestor 466
generation 534
genial 467, 540, 56I
Geryon's sons 628
Giant-angels 548
girt 536
give us only good 483
given me to possess 436
giving to 437
glimmering 428, 440
glistering 445, 552
globe 411, 607
gloss 493
gloze 434, 578
glut 522
Goblin 421
god 374, 438, 478
golden chain 428
golden compasses 537
golden scales of the Eternal 474
gonfalon 499
good 562
goodly frame 550
Gordian twine 462
gorgeous East 400
Gorgon 416
Gorgonian 596
gourd 488
grace (=pardon) 454
graces (= favours) 450
Graces 460
grain of Sarra 621
grand (=first) 37I
grand (=great) 374
Grand (=great ones) 600
great (n.) 552
great river 638
great things by small 514
great year (Plato's) 498
grey 648
grey (friars) 443
griding 515
gripe 463, 521, 622
growth 569
grunsel 387
gryphon 425
Guiana 628
gulf 433
Gulf (Persian) 638
gum 459




INDEX.


gust 603
habit 449
habitable 554
had in remembrance 450
hair 541
haled 416
half-rounding guards 471
halleluiah 549
happy isle 410
happy isles 446
harald 397, 412, 636
Haran 644, 645
harbour 572
harp (of Orpheus) 533
harpy-footed 416
havoc 605
head 464, 526, 589
head (=source) 46I
healing words 572
hear'st thou rather 430
heaved 376
Heaven, Heavens (= sky) 369,
427, 451, 497, 533, 550
Heaven (=the Empyrean) 427
Heaven and Earth (=the classical deities, Uranus and Ge) 390
Heaven and Earth (=the World)
605
heavenly love 561
Heavenly Muse 368, 430
heinous 590
Hell's concave 391
Hell-born 420
helm 391
hemisphere 539
her (=its) 491
Hermes 447, 448, 487
Hermione 577
heroic race 392
Hesebon 384
Hesperian 459
Hesperus 481, 534, 559
hierarch 494, 499, 62I
high disdain 373
high mount of God 5oo
high throne 600
highth or depth 408
him destroyed 570
Hinnom 384


his (=its) 375, 552
hold 428
hollow (used quibblingly) 522
holy mount 548
homicide 385
honour dishonourable 462
hope (=hope for) 406, 534
hopeful 473
horned 638
horns (=the "crescent" of the
Turks) 600
horrent 41I
horrid 391
horrid hair (of a comet) 421
horror chill 584
hosting 51
Hours 460
house of woe (Hell) 528, 6ox
however 472
hull (vb) 639
human face divine 432
humane 582, 583
humble 541
humid bow 455
hyacinthine 46I
hyaline 548
Hydaspes 440
Hydra 416
hydrus 602
Hymen 634
hymenaean 467
Ida 390, 49I
idol 5Ir
if chance 411
ignoble ease 405
ignominy (scanned ignomy) 374,405
Ilium 392
illustrate 503
illustrious 449
Imaus 440
imblazoned 565
imbordered 574
imbrowned 459
imbrute 570
impaired 5or
impaled 418
imparadised 464
impearl 504
impediment 521




734
impenetrable to star 587
impertinence 555
implicit 541
impotence 404
impregn 464, 583
impresses (n.) 565
impurpled 439
in (=on) 465
in act 581
in bliss 499
in counterview 594
in degree 558
in fact of arms 403
in few (words) 592
in himself collected 581
in plain 583
in pleasure 557
in power 605
in procinct 508
in spirit 628
in station 603
in the air 478
in the dark 448
in their course 5or
in their triple degrees 504
in utmost longitude 464
in vain 442
incarnate 570
incense...fuming 548
incentive reed (match) 521
inclinable 583
inclined 622
incomposed 427
incorporate 6 r
incredible how swift 466
incumbent 376
Ind (India) 400
indecent 523
indented 576
Indian fig 588
Indian mount 399
indirect 635
individual 464, 500
inducing 518
indulgences 444
inexorably 402
infamed 583
infant blood 419
infantry 391
infer 534


INDEX


informed 447
inhabit lax 536
inoffensive 490, 554, 597
insensate 526
insinuating 462
inspired 488, 6II
instinct 425, 633
Intelligence 554
intend 410
Intercessor 436, 592
intercourse 594
internal Man 582
interpreter 533
interrupt (p. p.) 434
interval (of battle) 5II
into what...from what 373
intrenched 394
inured 405
inventions 534
invest 376, 430, 542
invisible...beheld visibly 524
involved 376, 540
inwards 630
Iris 621
iron...mould 522
irreverent son (Ham) 644
irriguous 459
Isis 388
Ispahan (Isfahan) 626
Israel 649
Ithuriel 470
jaculation 523
jangling noise 643
Japhet 468
jar not with 504
Javan 389
jointed armour 543
Jordan 646
Joshua 650
jousted 393
Jove, bird of, 620
joy and tidings 598
just (=righteous) 536
just array 603
ken 37I, 372
kick the beam 475
kind (n.) 543
kindliest 489




INDEX.


735


King of Glory 537
kingly crown 420
knots 459
know to know no more 469
knowledge within bounds 534
Ksar 626
labouring moon 420
labouring (= cultivating) 641
Laertes' son 575
Lahore 625
laid (=stilled) 375
landskip 455
Lapland witches 419
lapsed 435, 603
larboard 427
last (=at last) 527
last (=worst) 587
late (adv.) 640
lateral 609
lawn 459
lazar-house 630
lead on (a dance) 460
least...last 437
lee 376
Lemnos 397
leper (Naaman) 388
Lethe 414
Leucothea 6I9
Levant 609
levelled west 542
Leviathan 376, 543
levied (=raised) 424
levy war 41, 621
lewd 457
lewdly 512
libbard 545
Libecchio 609
Libya 657
Lichas 413
lightening 503
like a mist 57r
like a tower 393
likest 573
limber 545
limbo 444, 6i6
limitary 473
lineaments 486, 545
liquid fire 376
liquid texture 5I6


list (vb) 4r9, 470
listed 639
livery 466, 545
living death 6Ix
living God 644
living sapphire 428, 466
locks (= foliage) 6r4
long choosing and beginning late
565
long were to tell 60o
longitude 446, 464, 542
loosely 544
loquacious (Eve) 592
lore 422
lower stair 445
Lucifer 481, 534, 535
lute 480
luxury 636
mace 596
Maeonides 432
Magellan 607
magnanimous 547
magnificence 407
Maia's son 487
mail 487, 517
main (=land) 524
main (=sea) 594
male light (of the sun) 554
Mammon 394, 406
mane 546
manifold in sin 590
manna 403
mantling 544
mantling vine 459
manuring (=cultivation) 466
manuring (=tending) 616
marasmus 630
marble air 446
marish 657
marle 379
Marocco 627
marshal 565
mask (Masque) 395, 469, 487, 621
mastery 424
material mould 450
maugre 436, 567
me, me 436, 6ix
me miserable! 454
me...remains 566




736


INDEX.


meagre 594
meath 490
Mediator 591
Medusa 416, 602
Megaera 603
Melinda 626
mellifluous dews 492
Memnonian palace 597
Memphian 381, 395
mental sight 629
Mercury 487
mercy-seat 615
mere serpent 574
merit 437
Michael 509, 617
middle air 390
middle darkness 430
middle shore 489
might of Gabriel 5r6
milky 488
mind (vb) 573
minim 545
ministering...minstrelsy 512
mirror (the Moon) 542
miserable of happy 6Io
Misery 563
misrule 540
mixed dance 469
Mogul 625
mole 597
Moloch 383
Mombaza 626
moment 410, 513, 590
Montezume 628
mood 391
moon-struck madness 630
more pleasant 574
more unexpert 40o
more wakeful than to 618
morning planet 542
mortal 368, 422, 435, 556
mortal passage 624
Moscow 626
mother (Earth) 540
mother of all mankind 491
motion 404, 405
motioned 571
mould 403, 450, 463, 522, 542, 576
mouth of Hell 642
Mozambic 4,6


much revolving 453
Mulciber 397
must (=new wine) 490
my mother's lap 6I
mysterious 56I, 592
mysteriously 444
naphtha 396
nard 487, 488
narrow 569
nathless 379
native 387, 455, 622
nativity 520
Nature 423, 424
Nebo 384
necessity ("the tyrant's plea") 463
nectar 492, 500
nectarous 515
need (vb) 438
Negus 626
neither...and 637
nether ocean 549
new part puts on 58I
nice 459, 492, 557
nicest 522
night comes not there 5oi
night-foundered 376
night-hag 4 9
nightingale 477, 544
nightly 431, 532, 564
Nimrod 641, 642
nine (a significant number) 371,
418, 527
Niphates 452
Nisroch 519
nitre 425
nitrous 52o
no detriment 599
no equal 513
no more of talk 5r3
nocturnal and diurnal rhomb 553
none (emphatic by position) 467,
496, 542, 634
nor did they not 381
nor more 475
nor sometimes forget 431
nor...wanted they 480
nor wants 490
north-wind 411
Norumbega 608




INDEX.


737


Norwegian pine 379
not mystic 575
not noxious 546
not obvious 559
not the lowest end 572
not unconform to 484
not unvisited 409
not without 482, 583
notion 536
Notus 608
numbered 513, 550
numberless 552
numbers (measures) 432, 447
numerous 480
nursery 550
O for 452
Ob 568
obduirate 371
obdured 414
obey to 381
object (vb) 472
oblige 585
oblivious pool 378
obnoxious 571
obscene 384
obscure 403
obscure (n.) 409
obsequious 508
observed 393, 6oo
obtain 445
obvious 510, 559, 592, 634
Ocean Isles 463
ocean-stream 376
odds 464, 584, 599
CEchalia 413
o'erwatched 407
of (=after) 455, 579, 6io, 6i6, 646
of force 374
of future 519
of grace 614
of incorrupt 616
of late 589
of mute 579
of the first 50o
of us...determine 62x
offend 375, 519
officiate 550
officious 552, 569
old 530
P. L.


Olympian hill 529
Olympias 577
Olympus 390
omnific 537
on fret 548
on smooth (sea) 543
on this side 644
one (emphatic) 464
one root (Adam) 409
opacous 440, 550
operation 556
Ophion 604
Ophir 627
Ophiuchus 421
Ophiusa 603
opiate rod 619
Ops 605
optic glass 378
optic tube 447
or...or 56o, 572
oracle 369
orb 430, 466, 48i, 499, 539, 569
orb in orb 55i
orbed 521
orbicular 45I, 599
orc 639
Orcus 426
order from disorder 450
Orders of Heavenly beings 499
Oread 573
Oreb 368, 369, 6i7
organ 548
orgies.385
orient 391, 476
original (n.) 409, 570
original (sin) 586
Orion 380
orisons 480
Ormus 400
Orus 388
Osiris 388
other...other 454, 6i2
other self 558, 592
other suns 554
ought...admire 55I
ounce 462, 545
our general ancestor (Adam) 466
owe 589
pain 371
47




738


INDEX.


painted wings 544
pale (n.) 454
Pales 573
palm-tree 555
palpable darkness 647
palpable obscure 409
pampered boughs 483
Pan 459
Pandemonium 397, 599
Pandora 467, 468
Paneas 445
Panim 398
panoply 525
Paquin 625
Paradise 454, 455, 458, 568
Paradise of Fools 441, 444, 6i6
paragoned 599, 600
paramount 411
parch 415, 657
pardons 444
parle 514
parsimonious (ant) 545
part (in music) 439
part (stage-term) 592
partial 413
participate 557
pass 59I
passed 436
passion 394, 454
pastoral reed 618
paths indirect 635
patron 436, 473
pavilion 426, 50r
pavilioned 621
peace is despaired 394
peal (of the last trumpet) 437
pearly grain 492
peculiar (n.) 542
peculiar nation 644
peer 37I
peerage 393
Pegasus 530
Pelorus 376
pendent by subtle magic 396
pendent world 429
pendulous 474
pennon 424, 544
Peor 385
perfidious 381
period (end) 654


permissive 6oi
permit to Heaven 632
pernicious 378, 521
perplexed 457
persevere 549, 562
persisting 435
person 592
pervert 457
Petsora 595
phalanx 473
philosopher 447
Phineus 432
Phlegethon 414
Phlegra 392
phcenix 485
phrenzy 630
pilaster 396
pilot 376
pine (trans. vb) 464, 630, 643
pioner 394
pitchy cloud of locusts 38r
place or refuge 569
plain (flat) 556
planet 547, 552
plat (plot) 576
platane 464
plate 517
pledge 422
Pleiades 542
points (laces) 366
poise 424
pole 418, 531
Pomona 491, 573
pomp 547, 550
ponder 475
pontifical 597
Pontus 489
port (=bearing) 472, 6I5
port (=gate) 470
ported spears 473
possess 464, 505, 6o5
poured 536
powdered with stars 547
powers 375
pravity 649
precede 605
precious bane 395
precious things (stones, metals)
448
prescript 648




INDEX.


739


pretence 422, 519
pretend 366
pretended to 612
pretending...commanded 504
prevenient grace 615
prevent 41I, 613
prevention 5II
prime (=chief) 389, 410, 449, 466
prime (=daybreak) 476
prime orb 466
Prince of air 653
Prince of Darkness 599
Princedoms 437
process 536
procinct 508
prodigious 416, 636
proem 578
proffer 410
profluent stream 653
progeny of light 499
prone 558
proof 491
proper 402, 496
prophecy (= prophets) 650
Proserpin, Proserpina 460, 574
prostrate 527
Proteus 448
provision 580
public reason 463
punctual 55o
Punic coast 489
purchase 604
purged 538, 629
purlieu 422, 463
purple (vb) 532
purple (=lustrous) 469
purpose 462, 556
pursue 370, 406
put to try 472
pygmean race 399
Python 603
quadrature 599
quaternion 483
quell 65o
quenched 430
Quiloa 626
quit 453
Rabba 383


races and games 565
racking whirlwinds 404
Ramiel 518
rampant 545
ramped 462
ran purple 387
ranged 412
rank (n.) 455
rank (trans. vb) 623
Raphael 484
rapt 444, 531
rapture 533
rare (=here and there) 545
rare (=seldom achieved) 430
rare (=thin) 425
ravenous fowl 594
realty 5 I
rear (vb) 376
reason 569
rebel king (Jeroboam) 388
recess 399
recline (=reclining) 462
recollect 390, 576
recommend 462
recorder 391
recure 652
red right hand 404
redound 423, 533, 6io
reduce 526, 6oo, 6io
regal ornament 486
regard (n.) 445, 466
regency 504
region 446, 544, 6i7
reign 391
relation 496, 555
religions 382
reliques 444
reluctance 408, 614
reluctant 509, 602
remiss 519, 557
remorse 394, 497, 617
rend 647
renew (intrans. vb) 556
repaired 469
repealed 533
repeat (n.) 5 5
represent 479
reptile 543
resolve 55o
retained 579
47-2




740
retinue 49~
retire (n.) 622
retorted 507
returns him 472
reverend sire (Noah) 637
revolutions 416
revolving 453
Rhene 382
Rhodope 532
rhomb 553
rib (Adam's) 558, 559, 612
ribs of gold 395
ride the air 412
ridge 513
right reason 509, 643
rime 367
Rimmon 388
rined 490
riot 602
river-dragon 647
river-horse 545
road of Heaven 473
robe of righteousness 594
roll 509
romance 393
room 437
root 58i
rosy hand of Morn 5o8
rosy steps of Morn 475
roving the field 579
rubied nectar 500
ruby 447
rue (herb) 629
ruin (n.) 371
ruin (vb) 436
ruining 527
run 534, 542
Sabsean 456
Sabbath-evening 555
sacred 431, 569, 571
sacred and devote 435
sad 479, 521
sad demeanour meek 619
safe 584
safe arrive 435
sagacious of 595
saints 437, 442, 535, 647
Samarchand 625
Samoed shore 608


INDEX.
Samos 485
Sanctities 433
sanctity of reason 546
sapphire fount 458
sapphire throne 525
Sarra 621
Satan 372, 435, 501
savage 457
savour 586
scale 495, 56I
scaled 445
scales 474, 475
Scales (sign of Zodiac) 474, 6o7
scandal 385
scathed 394
science 582
sciential 584
scope 403
Scorpion sign 474
scribbled o'er 551
scull 543
Scylla 427
scythe of Time 605
sdeined.453
seal (vb) 473
seasons 466, 548, 607
second Eve 491, 593
seconded 598
secret 368, 423
secret cloud 590
secretest 594
sect 512
secular power 654
secure (adj.) 457, 484, 521, 573,
620
secure of 470
securely 51
sedentary Earth 550
sedge 380
select 638
Seleucia 458
self-balanced (Earth) 538
self-opened (gate of Heaven) 484
seneshal 566
Senir 646
Sennaar 442
sense 569
sensible (n.) 407
sentence 401, 569
senteries 410




INDEX.


74r


seraph 453, 507
Seraphim 439
Serapis 396
Serbonis (lake of) 415
serenate 469
serpent (= serpentine) 541
Serraliona 609
serried 391, 522
servant of God 508
servility (=slaves) 512
servitude (=slaves) 645
several 538
sewer 566
shade 594
shadow 563
shaggy hill 458, 523
shallow 578
Shame 586
shape 471
shared (cut) 515
shattering 6r4
shave 417
shoaling 595
shook his throne 373
shroud 614
shrub unfumed 490
sideral 608
Sidon 386
sighs...mute 616
sign (of the Zodiac) 474
Siloa's brook 369
Sin and Death 418, 420, 563, 594,
597
Sinaean 625
Sinai 368, 369
single imperfection 558
sinister 6I2
sinned thy sin 629
Sirocco 609
Sittim 385
skill 560
sky-tinctured grain 487
Sleep (personified) 534
slime 595, 597
slip (=let slip) 375
sluiced 395
small infantry (= the pygmies)
391
smallest lineaments exact 545
smooth 387


smooth (n.) 543
smooth sliding 556
so (completing a simile) 422, 441,
456, 54r, 578, 595
so dearly 437
soar 369, 530
sociable spirit (Raphael) 484
Sofala 627
soft-ebbing 541
Soldan 398
sole bird (the Phoenix) 486
sole command 434
sole propriety 469
sole wonder 578
solemn 544, 651
solemn days 5oo
solitude 532
some say 604
son of despite 571
sons of Belial 389
sons of God 494
Sophi 600
sord 629
sort 557
sottish 388
soul (= creatures) 543
sound (=strait) 416
south-wind 637
sovran 377
sowed 476
spares to 422
speculation 656
speed (vb) 59o
speed...spiritual 55
sphere 55i
spinning 554
spires 577
Spirit of God 538
spirited 451, 580
spiritous 520
sport 444
spots (in the moon) 492, 553
spring (thicket) 57I
spun out 538
squadroned 65I
squared regiment 397
stabled 637
star of evening 534
starry 544
starry sphere 439




742


INDEX.


starve 416
starved 469
state (=canopy) 600
state (=stately bearing) 487, 622
States 409
station 4IO, 535, 547, 603, 656
stay (for) 464
steadfast Earth 424
steering 598
stemming 418
still 592
still erect 573
still to seek 555
stole (p. p.) 468
stony (n.) 615
stood (to pray) 468, 615
stood at my head 556
stood fixed 396
stood for 5Io
stooped 557, 62o
stop (musical) 548
store 442, 488
straitened 398
strike (=to blast) 599
strook 404
strucken 587
study 373
study household good 571
stupendous 598
Stygian flood 376
Stygian pool 430
style 408
Styx 414
subject (vb) 56I
subject for heroic song 565
subjected 658
subjection 560
sublime 412, 433, 526, 543, 603
sublimed 376, 495
sublunar vault 470
submiss 556
suborned 573
subscribed 6I9
success 366, 401, 512
successful hope 374
succinct 449
suffer...do 405
suffice 374
suggestion 434, 569
Sultan 626


sum of things 523
summed their pens 543
sung triumph 528
sunk 568
superstitions 654
supplanted 602
supreme 405
surcharged 422
Sus, Susa 597, 627
suspend 524
suspended 413
suspense 522
swage 391
swelling gourd 541
swim 586, 635
sword of Michael 407, 513
sword-law 636
sylvan scene 455
Sylvanus 467
symphony 396, 439, 480, 634
synod 409, 512, 6i6
Syrtis 425
tabernacle 501, 539
talked 443
Tantalus 416
Tarsus 375
Tartarean 402
tartareous 538
Tartarus 509
Tauris 600
Taurus 398
tedded grass 576
teemed 545
Temir 625
temper (=a thing tempered) 378,
470
temper (=temperament) 405
temper (vb) 422
temperate vapours bland 476
tempering 530
tempt 409
tempted...attempt 394
tendance 574
tended 476
tenfold adamant 513
tents of wickedness 634
tepid 543
Ternate 417
terrestrial mould 576




INDEX.


743


texture 5 6
Thammuz 386
Thamyris 431
that (=so that) 422, 423
that (=the well-known) 399, 443,
460
that first moved 443
that hill 625
that shepherd 369
that stone 447
the great mother (Earth) 540
the only sound 476
the rest (=for the rest) 581
Thebes 392
then...when 406, 452, 500
there be who 511
this habitable 554
those (=the well-known) 379
thought not much 593
Thracian 532
Thrascias 608
three different motions (of the
Earth) 552
thrice 394
throned powers 374
through all numbers absolute 558
Thunderer 40I
thundering 383
thus much 472
thwart 465, 553, 614
thy weaker (Eve) 529
Thyestean 608
tiar 449
Tidore 417
tilth 629
tilting furniture 565
timorous and slothful 403
tinctured 487
tine 614
tinsel trappings 565
tire 523
Tiresias 432
Titan 390
to (=agreeably to) 574
to (=to the best of) 408
to admiration 584
to death devote 585
to do...rites 385
to drowse charmed 618
to me (=in my opinion) 5I9


to the ages 606
to the shield 470
to the spear 470
Tobias 456, 484
too long (to tell) 442
too mean pretence 519
too secure 620
took 413
took alarm 521
top of speculation 656
torturing hour 402
tour 620
towered structure high 396
towering 486
toy 586
tragic (notes) 563
training 522
trains 635
translated saints 442
transmigration 594
transverse 444, 633
travelled steps 444
traverse 39I
Tree of Life 457
Tree of prohibition 58I
Tremisen 628
trepidation talked 443
triform 45I
Trinacria 419
triple degrees 504
triumph (n.) 636
triumph (vb) 374
triumphed (= triumphed over) 603
triumphing 438, 653
triumphs (=public shows) 637
troll 634
try 599
tube 447
tuft 541
tun 471
Turchestan-born 626
turret (adj.) 578
Tuscan artist 378
twinned 643
two-handed sword 513
Typhoean 412
Typhon 375, 376
tyranny 374, 40I
unapparent Deep 534




744


INDEX.


uncoloured 483
unconform 484
uncouth 409, 479, 517, 555, 6oi
unculled 630
understood 394, 598, 612
undying worm 524
unenvied 401
unessential Night 410
unformed 537
unfounded 422
unfumed 490
unhide-bound 6o05
unison 548
unity 558
universal Dame 579
unkindly 442, 586
unminded 598
unnumbered 424, 544
unobnoxious 518
unoriginal 6o0
unperceived 450
unprevented 436
unreal Deep 6ox
unreined 530
unremoved 474
unreproved 464
unsleeping 501
unspoiled 628
unsucceeded 506
unsuspect 583
untamed 408
unweeting 598
unwiser 468
up or down 446
upbraided 453
upon her centre poised 497
upright (stature of man) 546
Ur 645
Urania 530
urge 372
urged home 523
Uriel 449, 517, 567
Urim 525, 526
urn 542
us dispossessed 535
Uther's son 393
utmost isles 390
utter 524
utter darkness (of Hell) 372, 430,
500


uttermost convex 540
Uzziel 470
vain empires 409
Valdarno 379
vales of Heaven 38r
Vallombrosa 379, 380
valour 636
van (= vanguard) 4I 2, 511
vans (=wings) 424
vapour 405, 657
various 5IO
varnished...with 411
vast abrupt 409
Venus 480, 534, 542
verdant Isles 562
Vertumnus 573
vexed 380, 598
vicissitude 508, 541
view 459
viewless 444
vigilance (=guards) 465
violent and void 454
virgin 572
virtue 381, 447, 457, 491, 524,
538, 599, 636
virtue-proof 491
virtuous 583
visible diurnal sphere 53r
vision 624, 644
vision beatific 395, 433, 500
visitation 623
visual ray 449
vital virtue 538
void 430, 454
void of pain 405
void profound 410
volant touch 632
vollied 472
volubil 466
voluble 574
voluminous 419
vouched 478
wafted 444
wafting 653
wakeful bird 432
wander (trans. vb) 458, 637
wandering fire 48I, 580
want 534




INTDEX.


745


wanton 462
wants not 407
war unproclaimed 621
warping 382
was flown 546
was run 516
waste 421
waste wide 595
wasteful 426, 537
watch (vb) 534
watch (=watchmen) 403
waved 543
weary (vb) 623
wedge 544
went 556
were long to tell 389
wert 430
what (=whatsoever) 484
what is more 555
what obeys reason is free 573
what rests? 590
what time 371
whatever 472
wheel of day and night 553
when on a day 497
whenas 571
whip of scorpions 42r
white (friars) 443
who first, who last 382
wide (of the mark) 551
wide Ethiopian 417
wide interrupt 434
wide...wasteful 426


wide-encroaching 604
wild (of the mark) 585
wild Desert 647
wilderness 572
wing (n.) 430, 530, 567
wing (trans. vb) 544
winnow 485
with a vengeance 457
with gust 603
within the wind 514
without (=outside) 6 I
witness (vb) 371, 389, 483, 548
won (=dwell) 545
won audience 582
won from the...infinite 430
wont 398, 5 1
wooed...won 559
Word 435, 439, 5o6
worm 545, 587
wrack 474
wreak...his loss 452
Xerxes 597
ye (=you, obj.) 463, 582
yeanling 440
your fill 496
zenith 598
Zephon 470
Zephyr 609
zodiac 622
Zophiel 521




II. GENERAL INDEX TO NOTES
AND APPENDIX.


absolute construction, instances of,
374, 391, 432, 433, 438, 466,
484, 535, 557
abstract words used in a concrete
sense 378, 433, 465, 470, 504,
512, 533, 536, 550, 574, 613,
623, 645, 650
Abyssinian  princes,  tradition
about, 461
accent, throwing back of, in dissyllabic adjectives 405
accentuation, Latin, 466, 612, 6 7
Addison, remarks of, on Paradise
Lost, 408, 409, 434, 440, 453,
475, 477, 484, 488, 492, 5o8,
522, 523, 524, 552, 563, 583,
594, 597, 658, 686, 690
adjectival use of names 442
adjectives used as nouns 402, 407,
432, 579, 6I5
adverb used as a verb 571
alchemists, allusion to, 447, 448,
493
allegory of Sin and Death 418,
420, 547, 594
alliteration, instances of, 410, 418,
426, 433, 537, 540, 545, 569,
580, 583, 585, 595, 602, 603
Ammon, legend of, 685, 686
anacoluthon 373, 404
Angels, representation of, 398,
399, 68i, 682; changes in the
fallen angels 515, 570


apostate angels and gods of heathenism, identification of, 382, i56,
604
architecture of the Renaissance
395, 396
Arianism 439, 499, 558
Ariosto, his description of the
Limbo of Vanity, 441; other
references to 370, 380, 415,
520, 604, 634, 635, 677, 678
Aristotle's theory of ether, reference to, 451
Arthurian legend 392, 393, 565
Aspramont 677
assonance 398, 423, 452, 537, 6o2,
603
astrological terms 599, 6o6, 69r,
692
astronomy, its great attraction for
Milton, 549
autumnal leaves, a multitude compared to, 379
Babel, Tower of, reference to, 642,
643
baptism, Milton's view as to,
653
barbarians, their invasions of the
south, 382
Barrow, Samuel, author of commendatory verses on Paradise
Lost, 365
bathos 491




INDEX.


747


battle-scenes modelled on Homer
5Io, 516, 524
bees, common belief as to, 546
Bentley, two of his emendations
usually adopted, 54I, 545
bird of Paradise 366
birds, migration of, 544
blank verse, on the use of, 367
blindness, Milton's description of
his, 682, 683
Bunyan's Holy War, compared
with Paradise Lost, 401, 520
Burke, quotes Milton, 415, 453,
454, 461, 580, 596
Celum Stellatum 443, 446
cannon invented in Hell 520
celibacy of priests, allusion to,
469
ceremonies and ritual in worship,
Milton's dislike of, 382, 468,
655
Chaos, palace of, 425, 426
Charles II., court of, probable
allusions to, 389, 469, 638
Chinese carriages with sails 440,
441
Church, attacks on the, 457, 480,
65r, 654
Civil War, probable reminiscences
of, 411, 471, 520
classical epics, summary of the
themes of, 563, 564
classical mythology referred to as
fables or dreams 375, 533
climate, supposedinfluence of cold,
566, 567
Collins and Milton 455, 462, 487,
525, 625, 633
colloquialism 492, 6io
comets, superstition as to, 421
comparative and superlative constructions, combination of, 462
Copernican system 465, 466, 549 ff.
cosmology of Paradise Lost 659 -66
crucifixion 652
Damasco 678
Dante illustrations 370, 371, 372,


373, 393, 397, 415, 416, 425,
428, 430, 432, 433, 435, 441,
447, 450, 452, 453, 455, 456,
458, 464, 494, 495, 496, 497,
499, 504, 5o6, 509, 5I2, 517,
528, 530, 532, 542, 544, 553,
555, 560, 576, 577, 602, 607,
612, 6i8, 637, 639, 642, 643,
654, 666, 669, 680, 687
Dead Sea 385; fruit 603
deities of heathenism and the
apostate angels, identification of,
382, 516, 604, 672-74
descriptions, where intentionally
vague, 420, 474
deterioration in the physical universe 606
dis- (negative prefix), compounds
with, frequent use of, 641
Drummond of Hawthornden and
Milton 481; illustrations from
423, 428, 439, 49I, 530, 550,
553, 554, 576, 6o6, 631, 687
Dryden and Milton 366, 367, 376,
47I, 548, 6oi, 632, 683, 690
-ean, Milton's scansion of the
termination, 608
early rising 571, 576
earthquakes, notion concerning
the cause of, 376, 512
East Indiamen 417
eclipses supposed to be of evil
omen 393, 620
Eden, position of, 457, 458
Egyptian mythology 388
emphasis, Milton's favourite form
of, 405, 436, 507
epanadiplosis, see verbal repetition
episodical description 496, 497
ether, definition of, 451
Euripides, resemblances to, 372,
478, 613
fire, supposed origin of, on Earth,
614
flight, Milton's favourite metaphor
of, 369, 430, 530, 567
Florence, see Italy
Fontarabbia 679, 680




Dn se


748


INDEX.


freedom associated with reason
434, 496, 573, 643
gardens, Milton's love of, 576
Geoffrey of Monmouth 392
geography, illustration of Milton's
accuracy in, 683, 684
golden apples of the Hesperides
446, 459, 562
golden chain, Homer's, 428
Gray, imitations of Milton, 37r,
3901 3:93, 397, 402, 4A T6, o
466', 5             ---
466, 492, 523, 571, 589, 60, 683
Greek and Latin idioms 373, 374,
381, 39I, 397, 409, 430, 431,
445, 446, 455, 462, 475, 501,
5I6, 535, 546, 558, 583, 6i8
Grotius' Adanus Exul 377, 549,
583, 6xo
Guardian Angels 427
heavenly bodies, views as to their
being inhabited 442, 548, 553,
569
Hebrew poetry, Milton's preference of, 431
Hell, Milton's picture of, 402,
414-16
hendiadys 598
"heroic," Milton's description of,
Paradise Lost, 690, 691
Hierarchies of Heavenly beings
680-82
high-priesthood, allusion to the
struggle for the, 65o, 65I
humours in old physiology 632
hypallage 444
hypocrisy 450
Imaus, see geography
impersonal construction 490, 516,
594
imputed righteousness, doctrine
of, 437
inversion of order of words 376,
396, 397, 432, 476, 5I3, 531,
537, 556, 574, 587 592, 619,
648
inversion of rhythm 587
irony, examples of, 522, 527, 546


Italy, Milton's stay in, 378, 379,
380, 445
-ive, passive use of, in adjectives
60o
jingles, see word-play
Johnson, comments on Milton,
398, 408, 431, 460, 461, 479,
515, 517, 53I, 532, 565, 566,
597, 621, 624, 69I
Latinisms 391, 397, 402, 40, 426,
436, 445, 468, 484, 509, 5II,
5r8, 546, 558, 598
Lauder, William, attacks on Milton, 365, 377, 378, 6IO
legal metaphors 436, 605
liberty, Milton and, 406, 638, 643
Licenser for the Press 393
light, passages on, 429, 430, 538,
539
lute, in Milton's time, 480
Marlowe and Milton 377, 501,
502, 663
Marvell and Milton 365, 366,
381, 413, 4 47, 460, 477 532,
632, 657
matter and spirit, connection between, 492
meiosis 409, 431, 482
middle air, theory of, 674-76
Milton, his sight, 430, 531, 629,
682, 683; person 461; hair
461; fondness of twilight 466;
favourite classical authors 478,
577; humour 522; favourite
season for composing 567; early
rising 571, 576; London home
in youth 575; austere life 63r,
632; health 632
monachism, allusion to, 469
monarchy, Milton's dislike of, 641
monosyllables, frequent use of,
416, 546
Montalban 677, 678
moon, supposed to be affected by
magic 420; whether inhabited
442, 553, 554; theory as to spots
of, 492




IND]
Muse, invocation of the, 368, 529
music, Milton's love of, 391
music of the spheres 482, 500
musical terms, accurate use of,
548, 557, 633
Nature, Milton's love of, 466, 576
night, Milton inspired at, 431, 564
nightingale, Milton's fondness of,
477
north regarded as the dominion
of evil spirits 502, 503, 510
omens or portents 559, 583, 620
opposition of planets 514
organ, Milton's favourite instrument 395, 632
original sin 586
oxymoron 372, 395, 406, 439, 462,
524, 582
pagan mythology and Hebrew
story, combination of, 402
pain, the fallen angels liable to,
5I5
Paradise, position of, 454, 455, 638
paronomasia, see word play
participles, abbreviation of, 560
personal and contemporary allusions 503, 507, 508, 509, 512,
529, 531, 532, 564, 583, 589,
613, 62I, 632, 635, 636, 638,
64I, 655
personification, instances of, 474,
5I4, 526
philosophical and theological views
494
Phoenix, legend of, 485, 486
planets, evil influence of, 514, 599
play on words, see word-play
Pope, imitations of or resemblances
to Milton, 371, 372, 385, 395,
399, 401, 426, 427, 442, 453,
466, 470, 474, 476, 477, 487,
495, 5I5, 528, 529, 538, 542,
544, 617, 618, 621, 622, 624,
629, 584
portents, see omens
precious stones, supposed origin
of, 448


EX.                       749
predestination, doctrine of, 435,
496
preposition, omission of, 4Io, 637
Primum  Mobile 440, 443, 445,
446, 553
proper names, enumeration of, 625,
676-80
proverbialisms 559, 59I, 61I
Ptolemaic system 443, 465, 466,
549 ff., 688-90
quibbles, see word-play
reason, discursive or intuitive,
495, 496
republicanism 490, 546, 641
rivers of Hell 414
Roman Catholic Church, Milton's
attitude towards, 399, 441, 443,
444, 597, 598
Sandys' Travels, Milton's obligations to, 383, 384, 646
Satan and Prometheus 473
Satan, character of Milton's, 667 -7I
scale of Nature, Milton's view of,
494-96
season, only one before the Fall,
459, 542, 607
sh-, avoidance of, in proper names
369, 383, 445
Shakespeare, Milton's imitations
of or resemblances to, 375, 377,
399, 404, 412, 427, 437, 463,
474, 477, 483, 493, 505, 5.4,
526, 543, 550, 559, 572, 576,
578, 58r, 59I, 6o5, 619, 623,
631, 636, 644, 658
sibilation 398, 546, 58o, 602
Signatures, doctrine of, 629
signs, see omens
similes, peculiar features of Milton's, 411, 417, 440, 471
singular verb used with two subjects 374, 402
soliloquies, use of, in epic poetry,
511
Spenser parallels 373, 378, 402,
418, 420, 422, 426, 439, 454,




750


INDEX.


476, 493, 497, 498, 499, 503,
504, 509, 515, 520, 522, 554,
56i, 565, 574, 575, 586, 587,
635, 66i, 666, 680, 68i, 686,
687
spiritual beings, their ability to
distend or contract 386, 398,
473, 522
Stoics, reference to, 377, 413, 414
Sylvester's Du Bartas, illustrations from, 567, 6oo, 614, 643,
646, 647, 657, 676, 687
Tasso, references to, 367, 379,
415, 420, 42I, 465, 485, 528,
537, 625, 628, 657, 686
temperate life, praises of a, 631,
632
Tennyson,.comments on or resemblances to Paradise Lost,
384, 393, 395, 396, 4I7, 423,
424, 462, 467, 471, 484, 486,
491, 504, 5I5, 5i8, 521, 526,
537, 542, 546, 559, 576, 617,
631, 632, 634, 685, 688
theological views 494
Thomson (Seasons) and Milton
367, 378, 430, 476, 480, 483,
485, 536, 543, 576, 589, 633,
637, 684, 686
Time as the measure of motion
497, 498
Tobit, Book of, 456, 484, 493,
5I7, 533


transformed serpents 577, 602
Trebizond, fame of, in Middle
Ages, 678, 679
tyranny, Milton's hatred of, 401,
463
Universe, change in, after the Fall,
606
Urania, Milton's name for the
Heavenly Muse, 686-88
Vallombrosa 379, 380, 455
verb used as noun 494, 57r
verbal repetition 466, 489, 531,
6i5
verbs of saying, omission of, 475,
478
visions, belief as to, 644, 656
woman's position and relation to
man, Milton's conception of,
461, 493, 560, 573, 584, 589,
613, 635
word-play, quibbles, jingles, &c.
386, 394, 435, 463, 464, 488,
506, 512, 522, 523, 558, 563,
572, 581, 586, 592, 612, 614,
623, 635, 643, 652
Wordsworth and   Milton  478,
487, 499, 507, 515, 53I, 532,
554, 56i, 581, 620, 688
zeugma 389, 556, 574


CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, AI.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
UN1IV. OF I          t!:i,,'i


MAY 24 1912








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