Into the wild expanse; and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environ'd, wins his way; harder beset
And more endanger'd than when Argo pass'd
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks :
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steer'd.
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once past, soon after, when man fell,

1015

1020

(Strange alteration!) Sin and Death amain

Following his track, (such was the will of Heaven)

1025

Tamely endured a bridge P of wondrous length,
From hell continued, reaching the utmost orb

Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse
With easy intercourse passed to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.
But now at last the sacred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn: here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less and with less hostile din ;
That Satan, with less toil, and now with ease,

Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light 9;

1030

1035

1040

Ibid. In Satan's voyage through Chaos there are several imaginary persons described, as residing in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those critics who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but, for my own part, I am pleased most with those passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened: of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit; his falling into a cloud of nitre and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upwards like a pyramid of fire; with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements, which the poet calls The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave. The glimmering light which shot into the Chaos from the utmost verge of the creation, and the distant discovery of the earth, that hung close by the moon, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.-ADDISON.

P Tamely endured a bridge.

Dr. Newton here agrees with Dr. Bentley in censuring this introduction of the infernal bridge, because it is described in the tenth book, for several lines together, as a thing untouched before, and an incident to surprise the reader; and therefore the poet should not have anticipated it here. Milton is said to have apparently copied this bridge, not as Dr. Warton has conjectured, from the Persian poet Sadi, but from the Arabian fiction of the bridge, called in Arabic Al Sirat, which is represented to extend over the infernal gulf, and to be narrower than a spider's web, and sharper than the edge of a sword.-Pocock in Port. Mos. p. 282. See Annotations on Hist. of Caliph Vathek, 1786, p. 314.-TODD. By dubious light.

In this line, and in the preceding description of the "glimmering dawn" that Satan

And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn ;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorn'd
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a starr
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

1045

1050

1055

first meets with, Milton very probably alludes to Seneca's elegant account of Hercules's passage out of hell, Herc. Fur. 668

By this pendent world is not meant the earth, but the new creation, heaven and earth, the whole orb of fixed stars immensely bigger than the earth, a mere point in the comparison. This is certain from what Chaos had lately said, v. 1004:

Now lately heaven and earth, another world,
Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain.

-

Besides, Satan did not see the earth yet; he was afterwards surprised "at the sudden view of all this world at once," b. iii. 542, and wandered long on the outside of it, till at last he saw our sun, and learned there of the archangel Uriel, where the earth and paradise were. See b. iii. 722. This pendent world, therefore, must mean the whole world the new-created universe; and "beheld far off," it appeared, in comparison with the empyreal heaven, no bigger than a "star of smallest magnitude," nay, not so large; it appeared no bigger than such a star appears to be when it is "close by the moon," the superior light whereof makes any star that happens to be near her disk to seem exceedingly small, and almost disappear.-NEWTON.

ADDITIONAL NOTE.

Although the text has not been altered, the following discovery merits to be laid before the accurate readers of Milton.

Living might would not except even God himself, the Ever-living and the Almighty. The author therefore gave it "by living wight:" as in this same book, ver. 613:— "All taste of living wight." This expression is established and consecrated by our Chaucer and Spenser.-BENTLEY.

In confirmation of the doctor's happy conjecture, "living wight" is the reading of Simmons's third edition, 1678, and was probably a correction dictated by Milton, after the second edition was printed. This Dr. Bentley was not aware of.-See Ed. 1678, p. 53.

BOOK III.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

I CANNOT admit this book to be inferior in poetical merit to those which precede it: the argumentative parts give a pleasing variety. The unfavourable opinion has arisen from a narrow view of the nature of poetry; from the theory of those who think that it ought to be confined to description and imagery. On the contrary, the highest poetry consists more of spirit than of matter. Matter is only good so far as it is imbued with spirit, or causes spiritual exaltation. Among the innumerable grand descriptions in Milton, I do not believe there is one which stands unconnected with complex intellectual considerations, and of which those considerations do not form a leading part of the attraction. The learned allusions may be too deep for the common reader; and so far the poet is above the reach of the multitude; but even then they create a certain vague stir in unprepared minds :-names indistinctly heard; visions dimly seen; constant recognitions of Scriptural passages, and sacred names, awfully impressed on the memory from childhood,-awaken the sensitive understanding with sacred and mysterious movements.

We do not read Milton in the same light mood as we read any other poet: his is the imagination of a sublime instructor: we give our faith through duty, as well as will. If our fancy flags, we strain it, that we may apprehend: we know that there is something which our conception ought to reach. There is not an idle word in any of the delineations which the bard exhibits; nor is any picture merely addressed to the senses. Everything therefore is invention;-arising from novelty or complexity of combination: nothing is a mere reflection from the mirror of the fancy.

Milton early broke loose from the narrow bounds of observation; and explored the trackless regions of air, and worlds of spirits,-the good and the bad. There his pregnant imagination embodied new states of existence; and out of Chaos drew form, and life, and all that is grand, and beautiful, and godlike: and yet he so mingled them up with materials from the globe in which we are placed, that it is an unpardonable error to say that "Paradise Lost" contains little applicable to human interests. The human learning and human wisdom contained in every page are inexhaustible.

On this account no other poem requires so many explanatory notes, drawn from all the most extensive stores of erudition.

Of classical literature, and of the Italian poets, Milton was a perfect master: he often replenished his images and forms of expression from Homer and Virgil, and yet never was a servile borrower. There is an added pleasure to what in itself is beautiful, from the happiness of his adaptations.

I do not doubt that what he wrote was from a conjunction of genius, learning, art, and labour; but the grand source of all his poetical conceptions and language was the Scripture.

I have defended the argumentative, as well as the imaginative parts of this poem. I use imaginative invention in its strict sense, to express that which consists of imagery. The argumentative may be equal invention;--but ideal or spiritual invention: every great poem must unite both in large proportions. There is great simplicity and plainness in the greater part of Milton's images taken separately;-the novelty and grandeur is in their position and association. When Satan beholds the pendent orb of this world floating in immense space, while numberless other globes are suspended in the same vacuity;—the sublimity of

the picture is mainly caused by reflecting on the character of him, on whose sight this object breaks.

Spenser's subject was confined to human nature, represented by a moral allegory; but the manners which he undertook to describe were factitious; and he is often therefore over-coloured and extravagant; but Milton's subject allowed all the flights of the most gigantic and marvellous imagination: he never therefore offends probability; while we are often obliged to consider Spenser as merely sportive.

ARGUMENT.

GOD sitting on his throne sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son, who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justness and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free, and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended towards man without the satisfaction of divine justice; man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore with all his progeny devoted to death must die, unless some one can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man; the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore him; they obey, and, hymning to their harps in full quire, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile, Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world's outermost orb; where wandering he first finds a place, since called the Limbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it; his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel, the regent of that orb; but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and, pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation, and man whom God had placed here, inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates.*

HAIL, holy Light a! offspring of heaven first born,
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam,

* Milton having in the first and second books represented the infernal world with all its horrors, the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory.

If Milton's majesty forsakes him anywhere, it is in those parts of his poem where the divine persons are introduced as speakers. One may, I think, observe that the author proceeds with a kind of fear and trembling, whilst he describes the sentiments of the Almighty he dares not give his imagination its full play, but chooses to confine himself to such thoughts as are drawn from the books of the most orthodox divines, and to such expressions as may be met with in Scripture. The beauties therefore which we are to look for in these speeches are not of a poetical nature; nor so proper to fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion: the passions which they are designed to raise, are a divine love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the speeches in the third book consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together, in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free-will and grace; as also the great points of incarnation and redemption, (which naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the fall of man,) with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than I have ever met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner in which he has treated them is very much to be admired; as is likewise the particular art which he has made use of in the interspersing of all those graces of poetry which the subject was capable of receiving.-ADDISON.

This celebrated complaint, with which Milton opens the third book, deserves all the praises which have been given it, though it may rather be looked on as an excrescence

F

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell ? before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

Thee I revisit now with bolder wing,

Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn; while in my flight

5

10

15

Through utter and through middle darkness a borne,
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre,

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;

Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend,
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veil'd. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song e; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath f,
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit; nor sometimes forget

than as an essential part of the poem. The same observation might be applied to that beautiful digression upon hypocrisy in the same book.-ADDISON.

Ibid. Our author's address to Light, and lamentation of his own blindness, may perhaps be censured as an excrescence or digression not agreeable to the rules of epic poetry; but yet this is so charming a part of the poem, that the most critical reader, I imagine, cannot wish it were omitted. One is even pleased with a fault that is the occasion of so many beauties, and acquaints us so much with the circumstances and character of the author.-Newton. b Since God is light.

See 1 John i. 5; and 1 Tim. vi. 16.-NEWTON.

Whose fountain who shall tell?

As in Job xxxviii. 19. "Where is the way where light dwelleth ?"-HUME.

d Through utter and through middle darkness.

Through hell, which is often called utter darkness; and through the great gulf between hell and heaven, the middle darkness.--NEWTON.

So Virgil, Georg. ii. 475:

• Smit with the love of sacred song.

Dulces ante omnia Musæ,

Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus amore.-NEWTON.

The flowery brooks beneath.

Kedron and Siloah. He still was pleased to study the beauties of the ancient poets, but his highest delight was in the songs of Sion, in the holy Scriptures; and in these he meditated day and night. This is the sense of the passage stripped of its poetical ornaments.-NEWTON.