In billows, leave in 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 burn'd
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus", or the shatter'd side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuel'd 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

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Of unblest feet. Him follow'd his next mate;

Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian flood,

As gods, and by their own recover'd strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal Power.

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,

Said then the lost archangel, this the seat,

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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

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What shall be right: farthest from him is best,

Whom reason hath equal'd, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrours; hail,
'Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell,

And did itselfe divide with equall space,

That through she passed; as a thonder-bolt
Perceth the yielding ayre, &c.

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Milton, who tempered and exalted the extravagance of romance with the dignity of Homer, has here given us a noble image, which, like Spenser's, seems to have had its foundation in some description which he had met with in books of chivalry.— T. WARTON.

Incumbent on the dusky air

That felt unusual weight.

This conceit of the air's feeling unusual weight is borrowed from Spenser's description of the old dragon, Faer. Qu. 1. xi. 18:

The superiority of Milton in nerve and compression is striking. Spenser breaks his descriptions into too many parts, by which he distracts his pictures; and I must advocate the dignity of blank verse over the diffuseness of Spenser's stanza.

Torn from Pelorus.

Here again Milton brings in his learned allusions and illustrations: the picture is highly poetical and sublime. i Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy for ever dwells.

The pathos in this passage is exquisite.

Receive thy new possessour; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The 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:
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 copartners of our loss,
Lie thus astonish'd 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
Regain'd in heaven, or what more lost in hell?
So Satan spake, and him Beelzebub
Thus answer'd: Leader of those armies bright,
Which but the Omnipotent none could have foil'd,
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 battel when it raged, in all assaults
Their surest signal, they will soon resume
New courage, and revive, though now they lie
Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire,
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed:
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth.

He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend

Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders, like the moon', whose orb

The mind is its own place, &c.

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These are some of the extravagances of the Stoics, and could not be better ridiculed than they are here, by being put in the mouth of Satan in his present situation.-THYER.

Shakspeare says in Hamlet,

There is nothing either good or bad, but
Thinking makes it so.

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

Todd.

Dr. Newton observes that this line is a very fine improvement upon Prometheus's answer to Mercury in Eschylus. Prom. Vinct. 965, 967. Compare also P. Fletcher's "Locusts," 1627, p. 37.

1 The broad circumference

Hung on his shoulders, like the moon.

See the shield of Radegund. Faer. Qu. v. v. 3. Here Milton shines in all his majestic splendour: his mighty imagination almost excels itself. There is indescribable magic in this picture.

haraoh.

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening, from the top of Fesolé,
Or in Valdarno ", to descry new lands,
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 admiral, were but a wand,
He walk'd 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 call'd
His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High overarch'd imbower; or scatter'd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd P

Hath vex'd the Red-sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew

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There is a spell sometimes even in the poet's selection of proper names: their very

sound has a charm.

"Norwegian hills.

The hills of Norway, barren and rocky, but abounding in vast woods, from whence are brought masts of the largest size.-HUME.

The annotators leave unnoticed the marvellous grandeur of this description, while they babble on petty technicalities. The "walking over the burning marle" is astonishing and tremendous.

• Thick as autumnal leaves.

Here we see the impression of scenery made upon Milton's mind in his youth, when
he was at Florence. This is a favourite passage with all readers of descriptive poetry.
The account of Vallombrosa may be found in the volumes of numerous travellers.
P With fierce winds Orion arm'd.

Orion is a constellation represented in the figure of an armed man, and supposed to be attended with stormy weather:-" Assurgens fluctu nimbosus Orion." Virg. En. i. 539.-NEWTON.

Here the poet again introduces his learned historical allusions with a magnificent picture.

Hath ver'd the Red-sea coast.

The Red-sea abounds so much with sedge, that in the Hebrew Scriptures it is called the "Sedgy Sea." And Milton says "Hath vex'd the Red-sea coast," particularly because the wind usually drives the sedge in great quantities towards the shore. NEWTON.

↑ Busiris.

Pharaoh is called by some writers Busiris.

• Perfidious hatred.

Because Pharaoh, after leave given to the Israelites to depart, followed after them as fugitives.-HUME

From the safe shore.

Much has been said of the long similitudes of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, wherein they fetch a compass, as it were, to draw in new images, besides those in which the

And broken chariot-wheels: so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change.
He call'd 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 battel to repose

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Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find

To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn

To adore the Conquerour? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood,
With scatter'd 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!

They heard, and were abash'd, and up they sprung
Upon the wing; as when men wont to watch

On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,
Rouse and bestir themselves 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 obey'd,
Innumerable. As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,

Waved round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd 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

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direct point of likeness consists. I think they have been sufficiently justified in the general; but in this before us, while the poet is digressing, he raises a new similitude from the floating carcases of the Eyptians.-HEYLIN.

"The hollow deep

Of hell resounded.

This magnificent call of Satan to his prostrate host could have been written by nobody but Milton.

"Darken'd all the land of Nile.

The devils, at the command of their infernal monarch, flying abroad over the world to injure the Christian cause, are similarly compared by Tasso to black storms obscuring the face of day (Gier. Lib. iv. 18). And, where they are all driven back by Michael, it is said, ix. 66:

Liberato di lor quella si negra
Faccia depone il mondo.

DUNSTER.

C

Of their great sultan waving to direct
Their course, in even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain.
A multitude, like which the populous north
Pour'd never from her frozen loins, to pass
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;
Though of their names' in heavenly records now
Be no memorial, blotted out and razed

A multitude, like which the populous north
Pour'd never.

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This comparison doth not fall below the rest, as some have imagined. They were thick as the leaves, and numberless as the locusts; but such a multitude the north never poured forth. The subject of this comparison rises very much above the others, -the leaves and locusts. The northern parts of the world are observed to be more fruitful of people than the hotter countries: hence "the populous north," which Sir William Temple calls "the northern hive."-NEWTON.

Dr. Newton does not seem to be aware that the three comparisons which he refers to, relate to the three different states in which these fallen angels are represented. When abject they lie supine on the lake, they are in this situation compared, in point of number, to vast heaps of leaves which in autumn the poet himself had observed to bestrew the watercourses and bottoms of Vallambrosa. When roused by their great leader's objurgatory summons, and on wing, they are in this second situation again compared, in point of number, to the locusts which were sent as a divine vengeance or plague on the land of Egypt, when l'haraoh refused to let the Israelites depart: these two similes are admirable, and in their place could not, I believe, well be surpassed. That of the locusts, independently of its being taken from Scripture, far surpasses in every respect that of the birds of passage in Virgil and Tasso, which both poets have joined to that of leaves falling, to represent the numerous ghosts crowding on the banks of Styx, and the multitude of devils driven back by Michael to the infernal regions. The object of the third comparison is to illustrate the number of the fallen angels, when alighted on the firm brimstone; and, like soldiers, forming into bands, under their respective leaders. In this situation, I doubt if he could well have found anything so proper to compare them with, as the most numerous of troops which history records ever to have marched out upon any military expedition. But it must be allowed that the comparing one band of troops to another, where, though different in their nature, the description of them when embodied is so nearly similar, is rather an exemplification than a simile. Besides, comparing the numerous infernal legions to a circumstance of real undecorated history, is no very lucid or poetic illustration; and in this respect I much prefer the reference to the legends of romance and the fabulous ages, ver. 576, &c.—DUNSTER.

* When her barbarous sons.

They were truly barbarous; for besides exercising several cruelties, they destroyed all the monuments of learning and politeness wherever they came. They were the Goths, and Huns, and Vandals, who overran all the southern provinces of Europe; and, crossing the Mediterranean beneath Gibraltar, landed in Africa, and spread themselves as far as Libya. Beneath Gibraltar means, more southward, the north being uppermost in the globe.-NEWTON.

Though of their names.

Psalm ix. 5, 6:-"Thou hast put out their name for ever and ever: their memorial is perished with them." And Rev. iii. 5:-"I will not blot his name out of the book of life."- GILLIES.