Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright! If he, whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope

And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

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,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change,

Though changed in outward lustre, that fix'd mind
And high disdain from sense of injured merit,
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
And to the fierce contention brought along
Innumerable force of spirits arm'd,

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?

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
Extort from me: to bow and sue for
With suppliant knee, and deify his power,
Who from the terrour of this arm so late
Doubted his empire; that were low indeed;
That were an ignominy and shame beneath

grace

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,
We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcileable 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,

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.

Since, by fate, the strength of Gods.

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.

Vaunting aloud, but rack'd with deep despair :
And him thus answer'd soon his bold compeer

O prince, O chief of many throned powers,
That led the imbattel'd seraphim to war
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds
Fearless, endanger'd 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;
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallow'd up in endless misery.

W

130

135

140

But what if he our Conquerour, whom I now

Of force believe Almighty, since no less

Than such could have o'erpower'd such force as ours

145

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 war, whate'er his business be,
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 undiminish'd, or eternal being,

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,

▾ 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 Thus Virgil, Æn. iv. 322:

sense.

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 do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight;
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 recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

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,

To suffer, as to do,

Our strength is equal.

But see! the angry Victor hath recall'd.

PEARCE.

160

165

170

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,
Messiah his triumphal chariot turn'd:
To meet him all his saints, who silent stood
Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts,

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, wo have Chaos speaking thus, b. ii. 996:—

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

Through his wild anarchy: so huge a rout
Incumber'd him with ruin.

We must suppose him therefore to speak according to his own fruitful and disturbed imagination; he might conceive that so much

Ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

could not all be effected by a single hand: and what a sublime idea must it give us of the terrors of the Messiah, that he alone should be as formidable as if the whole host of heaven were pursuing! So that the seeming contradiction, upon examination proves rather a beauty than any blemish to the poem.-NEWTON.

Wing'd 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,
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, reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair;
How overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution, from despair.a

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
Is whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,"
Briareos, or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast
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 fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

z To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.

A truly magnificent line.

a If not, what resolution from despair.

The sentiment in this verse may be referred to Seneca's Medea, ver. 163;"Qui nihil potest sperare, nihil desperet."-DUNSTER.

b Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove.

175

180

185

190

195

200

205

Here Milton commences that train of learned allusions which was among his peculiarities, and which he always makes poetical by some picturesque epithet, or simile.

The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff.

Some little boat, whose pilot dares not proceed in his course for fear of the dark night: a metaphor taken from a foundered horse that can go no farther; or night-foundered, in danger of sinking at night, from the term, foundering at sea. I prefer the former, as being Milton's aim.-HUME.

Surely Hume is wrong: the whole of this imagery is beautiful.

d Invests the sea.

A phrase often used by the poets, who call darkness the mantle of the night, with which he invests the earth. Milton, in another place, has another such beautiful figure. and truly poctical, when speaking of the moon, b. iv. 609 :

So stretch'd out huge in length the arch-fiend lay,
Chain'd on the burning lake; nor ever thence
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 shown
On man by him seduced: but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance pour'd.
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 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

And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

And in another place, b. ix. 52:—

Night's hemisphere had veil'd the horizon round.

210

215

220

225

Thus the epithet κvavómezλos is given to the night by Musaus. Statius has a similar expression to that of Milton, Theb., v. 51:

This is a material part of the poem; and the management of it is admirable. The poet has nowhere shown his judgment more, than in the reasons assigned, on account of which we find this rebel released from his adamantine chains, and at liberty to become the great, though bad agent of the poem. We may also notice the finely plain but majestic language in which these reasons are assigned.-Dunster.

On each hand the flames,
Driven backward, &c.

See the achievement of Britomart in Spenser, Faer. Qu. m. xi. 25. The circumstance of the fire, mixed with a most noisome smoke, which prevents her from entering into the house of Busyrane, is, I think, an obstacle which we meet with in "The Seven Champions of Christendom." And there are many instances in this achievement parallel to those in the adventure of the Black Castle, and the Enchanted Fountain :

Therewith resolved to prove her utmost might,

Her ample shield she threw before her face,

And her sword's point directing forward right

Assayl'd the flame; the which eftesoones gave place,

And did itselfe divide with equall space,

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

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.

g Incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight.

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