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
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
Made happy him by fraud 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 world,
To Sin and Death a prey; and so to us,
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, awhile he stood 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 wonder'd, but not long
Had leisure, wondering at himself now more :
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 Power

с

d

Supplanted down he fell.

C

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We may observe here a singular beauty and elegance in Milton's language, and that is his using words in their strict and literal sense, which are commonly applied to a metaphorical meaning; whereby he gives peculiar force to his expressions, and the literal meaning appears more new and striking than the metaphor itself: we have an instance of this in the word supplanted, which is derived from the Latin "supplanto," to trip up one's heels, or overthrow, "a planta pedis subtus emota:" and there are abundance of other examples in several parts of this work; but let it suffice to have taken notice of it here once for all.-NEWTON,

A monstrous serpent.

Milton, in describing Satan's transformation into a serpent, had no doubt in mind the transformation of Cadmus in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses, to which he had alluded before in b. ix. 905. See Ovid. Met. iv. 575.-NEWTON.

Now ruled him, punish'd in the shape he sinn'd,
According to his doom. He would have spoke,
But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue
To forked tongue; for now were all transform'd
Alike, to serpents all, as accessories
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 amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horn'd, hydrus, and elops drear,
And dipsas (not so thick swarm'd 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
Ingender'd in the Pythian vale on slime,
Huge Python, and his power no less he seem'd
Above the rest still to retain. They all
Him follow'd, 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 indeed! a crowd
Of ugly serpents; horrour on them fell,
And horrid sympathy; for what they saw,

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540

They felt themselves, now changing: down their arms,

Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast;

And the dire hiss renew'd, and the dire form
Catch'd, by contagion; like in punishment,

As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant

545

Turn'd 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
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve
Used by the tempter: on that prospect strange
Their earnest eyes they fix'd, imagining
For one forbidden tree a multitude

Now risen, to work them farther woe or shame;
Yet, parch'd with scalding thirst and hunger fierce,
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain ;
But on they roll'd in heaps, and, up the trees
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks
That curl'd Megara. Greedily they pluck'd
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;

e Near that bituminous lake.

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The Dead Sea, or the lake Asphaltites, so called from the bitumen which it is said to have cast up; near which Sodom and Gomorrah were situated. Josephus mentions the apples of Sodom as dissolving into ashes and smoke at the first touch: but our country

Thus were they plagued,

This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived they fondly thinking to allay
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chew'd bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected: oft they assay'd,
Hunger and thirst constraining; drugg'd as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws,
With soot and cinders fill'd; so oft they fell
Into the same illusion, not as man
Whom they triumph'd once lapsed.
And worn with famine long and ceaseless hiss,
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed;
Yearly enjoin'd, some say, to undergo
This annual humbling certain number'd 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 call'd
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide-
Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born.

Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair
Too soon arrived; Sin, there in powers 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:
Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death!
What think'st thou of our empire now, though earn'd
With travail difficult? not better far,

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men, Sandys and Maundrell, who visited the Holy Land, are inclined to disbelieve that such fruit existed. Cotovicus, describing Sodom, &c., positively asserts the same particulars of these apples, which the Jewish historian mentions, and to which the poet very minutely alludes: "Hinc quoque arbores hillic spectes visu pulcherrimas, et poma viridantia producentes, adspectu ridentia et nitida, et quæ edendi generent spectantibus cupiditatem, sed intus favilla et cinere plena; quæ ipsa etiam, si carpas, fatiscunt, et in cinerem resolvuntur, et quasi adhuc arderent, fumum excitant." Itin. Hierosol. p. 312. See also Sir John Mandeville's Travels, ed. 1725, p. 122, where he is speaking of this delusive fruit.-TODD.

f Once lapsed.

When being once lapsed, they triumphed;-in opposition to themselves, who often fell into the same illusion.

Sin, there in power.

The sense is, that, before the Fall, Sin was in power, or potentially in Paradise; that once, viz., upon the Fall, it was actually there, though not Bodily; but that now, upon its arrival in Paradise, it was there in body, and dwelt there as a constant inhabitant. The words, in body, allude to what St. Paul says, Rom. vi. 6, "that the body of sin might be destroyed."-PEARCE.

h Not mounted yet

On his pale horse.

Milton has given a fine turn to this poetical thought by saying that Death had not mounted yet on his pale horse: for, though he was to have a long and all-conquering power, he had not yet begun, neither was he for some time to put it in execution.GREENWOOD.

Than still at hell's dark threshold to have sat watch,
Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved?

Whom thus the sin-born monster answer'd soon:
To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is hell, or Paradise, or heaven;
There best, where most with ravine I may meet:
Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems1
To stuff this maw, this vast un-hidebound 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,
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make
All kinds, and for destruction to mature
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing,
From his transcendant seat the saints among,
To those bright orders utter'd thus his voice:

See, with what heat these dogs of hell advance
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
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 call'd, and drew them thither,

My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth

Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed

On what was pure; till, cramm'd and gorged, nigh burst
With suck'd and glutted offal, at one sling

Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,

i Too little seems.

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600

605

610

615

620

625

630

Compare Prov. xxvii. 30. "Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied."-TODD.

i Un-hidebound.

Not tight-bound, as when creatures are swoln and full.-NEWTON.

* Dogs of hell.

Newton thinks some of the expressions in this description too coarse: they are particularly so from ver. 630, but they have a worse fault; they are the expressions of mere human indignation and scorn; and are therefore unsuitable to the Deity. The difficulty, however, of assigning to the divine displeasure terms of language according with his purity, as well as anger, is hardly surmountable.

Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave, at last,
Through Chaos hurl'd, obstruct the mouth of hell"
For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws.
Then heaven and earth renew'd shall be made pure
To sanctity, that shall receive no stain:
Till then, the curse pronounced on both precedes.
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
His mighty angels, gave them several charge,
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
In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd
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 terrour through the dark aëreal hall.

1 Death, and yawning grave.

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650

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665

Death and the grave, meaning the same, is a pleonasm; which adding force, and energy, and calling forth the attention, is a beauty common in the best writers; but not for that reason only has Milton used it: the Scripture has thus joined Death and the grave, Hos. xiii. 14; Cor. xv. 55; and Rev. xx. 13; where the word rendered 'hell' signifies also the grave.-RICHARDSON.

m Obstruct the mouth of hell.

Mr. Boyd, the learned and elegant translator of Dante's "Inferno," is of opinion that the sublime imagination of Dante,-"that the earthquake which attended the crucifixion, overthrew the infernal ramparts, and obstructed the way to hell," gave the hint to Milton, that Sin and Death first built the infernal bridge, whose partial ruin at least was the consequence of the resurrection. See the "Inferno," c. xxiii.-TODD.

n Just are thy ways.

The same song, says Dr Newton, that they are represented singing in Revelations, Rev. xv. 3; xvi. 7; as in the foregoing passage, which is remarked also by Addison, he alludes to Rev. xix. 6.-TODD.

• In sextile.

If an unnecessary ostentation of learning be, as Addison observes, one of Milton's faults; it certainly must be an aggravation of it, where he not only introduces but countenances, such enthusiastic, unphilosophical notions, as this jargon of the astrologers is made up of.-THYER.