Thy difobedience. Well thou didst advise;
Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly
Thefe wicked tents devoted, left the wrath 890
Impendent, raging into fudden flame,
Diftinguish not: For foon expect to feel
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire.
Then who created thee lamenting learn,

When who can uncreate thee thoufhalt know.895
So fpake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithlefs, faithful only he;
Among innumerable falfe, unmov'd,
Unfhaken, unfeduc'd, unterrified,
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal;

900

Nor number, nor example, with him wrought To fwerve from truth, or change his conftant

mind,

Ver. 890. Thefe wicked tents devoted, left the wrath &c.] In allufion probably to the rebellion of Korah &c. Numb, xvi. 26, where Mofes exhorts the congregation, faying, "Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, left ye be confumed in all their fins." But the conftruction without doubt is deficient. It may be supplied (as Dr. Pearce fays) by understanding but I fly before the word left. See the fame elliptical way of speaking in B. ii. 483. But it would be plainer and easier with Dr. Bentley's alteration, if there was any authority for it;

Ibid.

"Thefe wicked tents devote, but left the wrath &c,"

left the wrath

NEWTON

Impendent, &c.] A learned friend points out the Prometheus Vinct. of Æfchylus, 1051–1053. Mr. Stillingfleet makes the fame reference; and adds, as a parallel to left the wrath diftinguish not, Homer, Iliad xv. 137. ToDn.

Though fingle. From amidst them forth he

pafs'd,

Long way through hoftile fcorn, which he

fuftain'd

Superiour, nor of violence fear'd aught; 905 And, with retorted fcorn, his back he turn'd On those proud towers to swift deftruction doom'd.

Ver. 907.

proud towers] 'Tis confeffed, fays Dr. Bentley, that Satan's feat, whither he had affembled his legions, and where he made his fearch, was adorned with pyramids and towers; but because Abdiel had, at a great distance from those towers, "long way past through hoftile fcorn," and "deftruction to the towers" is what to them is infenfible, I believe the author gave it, "on those proud troops;" those troops that had fo scorned and infulted him. I differ from this reafoning. If a perfonification be here required, towers may here mean those mighty and infulting fpirits, conformably to an interpreted personification in Ifaiah, Ch. xxx. 25. "In the day of the great flaughter, when the towers fall." However, we are not to forget the local description, juftified as it also is by paffages in other poets; as in Beaumont and Fletcher's Queen of Corinth, A. iv. S. iii. "fhe will demolish

"Each stone of this proud tower."

And in Sylvefter's Du Bart. P. ii. Day iii. Week iii. "In those proud towers." TopD.

THE END OF THE FIFTH BOOK.

THE ARGUMENT.

Raphael continues to relate how Michael and Gabriel were fent forth to battle against Satan and his Angels. The firft fight defcribed: Satan and his Powers retire under night: He calls a council; invents devilish engines, which, in the fecond day's fight, put Michael and his Angels to fome dif order; but they at length, pulling up mountains, overwhelmed both the force and machines of Satan: Yet, the tumult not fo ending, God, on the third day, fends MESSIAH his fon, for whom he had reServed the glory of that victory: He, in the power of his Father, coming to the place, and caufing all his legions to ftand still on either fide, with his chariot and thunder driving into the midst of his enemies, purfues them unable to refift towards the wall of Heaven; which opening, they leap down with horrour and confufion into the place of punishment prepared for them in the deep: MESSIAH returns with triumph to his Father.

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