Against the throne and monarchy of God Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes, The dismal situation waste and wild : A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 1 Nine times the space that measures day and night 45 50 55 60 63 The nine days' astonishment, in which the angels lay entranced after their dreadful overthrow and fall from heaven, before they could recover either the use of thought or speech, is a noble circumstance, and very finely imagined. The division of hell into seas of fire, and into firm ground impregnated with the same furious element, with that particular circumstance of the exclusion of hope from those infernal regions, are instances of the same great and fruitful invention.-ADDISON. No light. m Yet from those flames So the Wisdom of Solomon, ch. xviii. 5, 6:-"No power of the fire might give them light; only there appeared unto them a fire kindled of itself, very dreadful."-TODD. n Darkness visible. Milton seems to have used these words to signify gloom: absolute darkness is, strictly speaking, invisible; but where there is a gloom only, there is so much light remaining, as serves to show that there are objects, and yet that those objects cannot be distinctly seen. PEARCE. Seneca has a like expression, speaking of the grotto of Pausilipo, epist. lvii. : "Nihil illo carcere longius, nihil illis faucibus obscurius, quæ nobis præstant, non ut per tenebras videamus, sed ut ipsas." And, as Voltaire observes, Antonio de Solis, in his "History of Mexico," speaking of the place wherein Montezuma consulted his deities, says, "It was a large dark subterranean vault, where some dismal tapers afforded just light enough to see the obscurity." So Euripides, "Bacchæ," v. 510: Ως ἂν σκότιον εἰσορᾷ κνέφας. There is much the same image in Spenser, but not so bold, "Faer. Qu." 1. i. 14 :A little glooming light, much like a shade. Or, after all, Milton might take the hint from his own "Il Penseroso: Where glowing embers through the room And rest can never dwell; hope never comes, : See Dante's "Inferno," ch. iii. 9:-Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' intrate. P As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. 70 75 80 Thrice as far as it is from the centre of the earth, which is the centre of the world, according to Milton's system, b. ix. 103, and b. x. 671, to the pole of the world; for it is the pole of the universe, far beyond the pole of the earth, which is here called the utmost pole. Homer makes the seat of hell as far beneath the deepest pit of earth as the heaven is above the earth, Iliad viii. 16. Virgil makes it twice as far, Æneid, vi. 578: and Milton thrice as far; as if these three great poets had stretched their utmost genius, and vied with each other, who should extend his idea of the depth of hell farthest. But Milton's whole description of hell as much exceeds theirs, as in this single circumstance of the depth of it. And how cool and unaffecting the Τάρταρον ἡερόεντα, the σidhpelai Te múλαι кal xáλкeos oùdós, of Homer, -the "lugentes campi," the "ferrea turris,' and "horrisono stridentes cardine portæ," of Virgil, in comparison with this description by Milton, concluding with that artful contrast "O, how unlike the place from whence they fell."-NEWTON. a Tempestuous fire. Psalm xi. 6::- "Upon the wicked the Lord will rain fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest."-DUNSTER. To whom the arch-enemy. The thoughts in the first speech and description of Satan, who is one of the principal actors in this poem, are wonderfully proper to give us a full idea of him: his pride, envy, and revenge, obstinacy, despair, and impenitence, are all of them very artfully interwoven. In short, his first speech is a complication of all those passions which discover themselves separately in several other of his speeches in the poem. The whole part of this great enemy of mankind is filled with such incidents as are very apt to raise and terrify the reader's imagination. Of this nature, in the book now before us, is his being the first that awakens out of the general trance, with his posture on the burning lake, his rising from it, and the description of his shield and spear: to which we may add his call to the fallen angels, that lay plunged and stupefied in the sea of fire. Amidst those impieties which this enraged spirit utters in other places of this poem, the author has taken care to introduce none that is not big with absurdity, and incapable of shocking a religious reader: his words, as the poet himself describes them, bearing only "a semblance of worth, not substance." He is also with great art described as owning his adversary to be Almighty. Whatever perverse interpretation he puts on the justice, mercy, and other attributes of the Supreme Being, he frequently confesses his omnipotence; that being the perfection he was forced to allow him, and the only consideration which could support his pride under the shame of his defeat.-ADDISON. And thence in heaven call'd Satans,— with bold words : If thou beest he-But O, how fallen! how changed Join'd with me once, now misery hath join'd 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, Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind 85 90 95 100 That durst dislike his reign; and, me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battel on the plains of heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? 105 All is not lost; the unconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And thence in heaven call'd Satan. 110 115 For the word Satan, in Hebrew, signifies an enemy: he is THE ENEMY by way of eminence, the chief enemy of God and Man.-NEWTON. All is not lost. What though the field be lost? This passage is an excellent improvement upon Satan's speech to the infernal spirits in Tasso, c. iv. st. 15; but seems to be expressed from Fairfax's translation, rather than from the original: We lost the field, yet lost we not our heart.-NEWTON. For Satan supposes the angels to subsist by fate and necessity; and he represents them of an empyreal, that is, a fiery substance, as the Scripture itself does, Psalm civ. 4:"He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire."-NEWTON. Since, through experience of this great event, Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, O prince, O chief of many throned powers, - Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate : 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 120 125 130 135 140 Or do him mightier service, as his thralls Whereto with speedy words the arch-fiend replied: Vaunting aloud. 150 155 This speech is remarkable for brevity and energy of expression, and justness of the thought arising from the nature of the foregoing speech, and Satan's present misery.—CALLANDER. W Though all our glory extinct. As a flame put out and extinguished for ever. This word is very properly applied to their irrecoverable loss of that angelic beauty which accompanied them when in a state of innocence. The Latins have used the word "extinctus" in the same metaphorical sense. Thus Virgil, Æn. iv. 322 :— te propter eundem Extinctus pudor, et, qua sola sidera adibam, Fama prior. CALLANDER. Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering. To be weak is miserable, 160 165 Satan having in his speech boasted that the "strength of gods could not fail,” v. 116, and Beelzebub having said, v. 146, "If God has left us this our strength entire, to suffer pain strongly, or to do him mightier service as his thralls, what then can our strength avail us?" Satan here replies very properly, whether we are to suffer or to work, yet still it is some comfort to have our strength undiminished for it is a miserable thing, says he, to be weak and without strength, whether we are doing or suffering. This is the sense of the place; and this is farther confirmed by what Belial says, b. ii. 199:To suffer, as to do, : Dr. Bentley has really made a very material objection to this and some other passages of the poem, wherein the good angels are represented as pursuing the rebel host with fire and thunderbolts down through Chaos, even to the gates of hell, as being contrary to the accounts which the angel Raphael gives to Adam in the sixth book; and it is certain that there the good angels are ordered to "stand still only and behold," and the Messiah alone expels them out of heaven; and after he has expelled them, and hell has closed upon them, b. vi. 880: Sole victor from the expulsion of his foes, With jubilee advanced. In These accounts are plainly contrary the one to the other; but the author does not therefore contradict himself, nor is one part of his scheme inconsistent with another : for it should be considered who are the persons that give these different accounts. book vi. the angel Raphael is the speaker, and therefore his account may be depended upon as the genuine and exact truth of the matter: but in the other passages Satan himself, or some of his angels, are the speakers; and they were too proud and obstinate ever to acknowledge the Messiah for their conqueror as their rebellion was raised on his account, they would never own his superiority; they would rather ascribe their defeat to the whole host of heaven than to him alone; or, if they did indeed imagine their pursuers to be so many in number, their fears multiplied them, and it serves admirably to express how much they were terrified and confounded. In book vii. 830, the noise of his chariot is compared to "the sound of a numerous host;" and perhaps they might think that a numerous host were really pursuing. In one place, indeed, we have Chaos speaking thus, b. ii. 996 : and heaven gates Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands But what a condition was Chaos in during the fall of the rebel angels ! See b. vi. 871 :— Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roar'd And felt tenfold confusion in their fall |