They measure all, of other excellence n So spake the Son; and into terrour changed His arrows from the fourfold-visaged Four. 1 At once the Four. Whenever he mentions the four cherubim, and the Messiah's chariot, he still copies from Ezekiel's vision. See ch. i. 9. 19. 24.-NEWTON. m Gloomy as night. From Homer, Il. xii. 462, where the translator uses Milton's words : Νυκτὶ θοῇ ἀτάλαντος ὑπώπια. A similar expression, translated in these words of Milton, is also in Odyss. xi. 609.— NEWTON. n Under his burning wheels. Job xxvi. 11 :-"The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof."— HUME. This sublime passage owes part of its magnificence to another sacred description, Daniel. vii. 9, of the Ancient of Days:-" His throne was as the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire." Milton's diction is here superior even to Hesiod's celebrated lines, Theog. v. 841 : Ποσσὶ δ ̓ ὑπ' ἀθανάτοισι μέγας πελεμίζετο Ολυμπος The majesty of the exception, which Milton adds, affords to the whole passage a solemnity unparalleled and inimitable : Under his burning wheels The stedfast empyrean shook throughout, • That wish'd the mountains. See Rev. vi. 16:-" They said to the mountains, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: which is very applicable here, as they had been overwhelmed with mountains, v. 655. before, they wished as a shelter now.- -NEWTON. What was so terrible |