Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings : Lay waving round on some great charge employ'd Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope To find who might direct his wandering flight In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore He drew not nigh unheard; the angel bright, Who in God's presence nearest to his throne That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth Uriel, for thou of those seven spirits that stand All these his wondrous works, but chiefly man, & Uriel. 630 635 640 645 650 655 660 665 670 His name is derived from two Hebrew words, which signify God is my light. He is mentioned as a good angel in the second book of Esdras; and the Jews, and some Christians, conceive him to be an angel of light according to his name, and therefore he has, properly, his station in the sun.-NEWTON. ! That I may find him, and, with secret gaze Or open admiration, him behold, On whom the great Creator hath bestow'd Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces pour'd: The universal Maker we may praise; To serve him better: wise are all his ways. By his permissive will, through heaven and earth: Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill --- Fair angel, thy desire, which tends to know h Hypocrisy. 675 680 685 690 695 700 What is said here of hypocrisy is censured as a digression; but it seems no more than is absolutely necessary; for otherwise it might be thought very strange, that the evil spirit should pass undiscovered by the archangel Uriel, the regent of the sun, and the sharpest-sighted spirit in heaven; and therefore the poet endeavours to account for it by saying, that hypocrisy cannot be discerned by man or angel; it is invisible to all but God, &c. But yet the evil spirit did not pass wholly undiscovered; for, though Uriel was not aware of him now, yet he found reason to suspect him afterwards from his furious gestures on the mount.-NEWTON. The poet's recollection of his having been deluded by the matchless hypocrisy of Cromwell, might have inspired him with this admirable apology for Uriel.-HAYLEY. i And oft, though wisdom wake. He must be very critically splenetic indeed who will not pardon this little digressional observation. There is not in my opinion a nobler sentiment, or one more poetically expressed, in the whole poem. What great art has the poet shown in taking off the dryness of a mere moral sentence, by throwing it into the form of a short and beautiful allegory!-THYER. j Pleasant to know. This is one of those places where a negligence in metre is not only excusable, in Had in remembrace always with delight: That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep? 705 710 715 720 Look downward on that globe, whose hither side With light from hence, though but reflected, shines; 725 Night would invade; but there the neighbouring moon, Timely interposes; and her monthly round Still ending, still renewing, through mid heaven, With borrow'd light her countenance triform Thus said, he turn'd; and Satan, bowing low, 73) 735 740 taking away monotony, but carries with it a dignity which no smoothness of verse could give it, the words being in almost the same order as in Scripture.-STILLINGFLEET. And this ethereal quintessence. The four elements hasted to their quarters, but this fifth essence flew upward.-NEWTON. 1 On Niphates' top. The poet lands Satan on this mountain, says Hume, because it borders on Mesopotamia, in which the most judicious describers of Paradise place it.-Dunster. Satan after having long wandered upon the surface, or utmost wall of the universe, discovers at last a wide gap in it, which led into the creation, and is described as the opening through which the angels pass to and fro into the lower world, upon their errands to mankind. His sitting upon the brink of this passage, and taking a survey of the whole face of nature that appeared to him new and fresh in all its beauties, with the simile illustrating this circumstance, fills the mind of the reader with as surprising and glorious an idea as any that arises in the whole poem. He looks down into that vast hollow of the universe with the eye, or as Milton calls it in his first book, with the ken of an angel. He surveys all the wonders in this immense amphitheatre that lies between both the poles of heaven, and takes in at one view the whole round of the creation. His flight between the several worlds that shined on every side of him, and the particular description of the sun, are set forth in all the wantonness of a luxuriant imagination. His shape, speech, and behaviour, upon his transforming himself into an angel of light, are touched with exquisite beauty. The poet's thought of directing Satan to the sun, which in the vulgar opinion of mankind is the most conspicuous part of the creation; the placing in it an angel; is a circumstance very finely contrived, and the more adjusted to a poetical probability, as it was a received doctrine among the most famous philosophers, that every orb had its intelligence; and as an apostle in sacred writ is said to have seen such an angel in the sun. In the answer which this angel returns to the disguised evil spirit, there is such a becoming majesty as is altogether suitable to a superior being. The part of it in which he represents himself as present at the creation, is very noble in itself; and not only proper where it is introduced, but requisite to prepare the reader for what follows in the seventh book : I saw, when at his word the formless mass, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung. In the following part of the speech he points out the earth with such circumstances, that the reader can scarce forbear fancying himself employed on the same distant view of it.-ADDISON. BOOK IV. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. I BELIEVE that this book of the poem is a general favourite with readers: there are parts of it beautiful; but it appears to me far less grand than the books which precede it: it has, I think, not only less sublimity, but less poetical invention. It required less imagination to describe the garden of Eden than Pandæmonium or Chaos. Adam and Eve are the one noble, the other lovely ;-but still they are human beings, with human passions. Some criticisms might be made both on the described scenery, and on the occupations of our first parents. The gardener's skill and labours do not seem very necessary or natural at the first spring of the earth's creation. The bard seems for the moment so far to have forgot himself as to attempt rivality with the picturesque inventions of mere human poets: there is not that compression and massy strength, which is the usual quality of Miltonic painting. Grandeur was Milton's element, not beauty or tenderness! Invention will only be found where the natural strength lies, not where it is sought by labour and art. Where Milton drew a giant, he invented;-where he drew beauty, he borrowed. It has often been observed, that Satan is the hero of "Paradise Lost," not Adam; and this is true! Neither Adam nor Eve take a part sufficiently active and important. ARGUMENT. SATAN, now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place where he must now attempt the bold enterprise which he undertook alone against God and man, falls into many doubts with himself, and many passions, fear, envy, and despair; but at length confirms himself in evil, journeys on to Paradise, whose outward prospect and situation is described, overleaps the bounds; sits in the shape of a cormorant on the Tree of Life, as the highest in the garden, to look about him. The garden described; Satan's first sight of Adam and Eve: his wonder at their excellent form and happy state, but with resolution to work their fall: overhears their discourse; thence gathers that the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden them to eat of, under penalty of death; and thereon intends to found his temptation, by seducing them to transgress then leaves them awhile, to know farther of their state by some other means. Meanwhile Uriel, descending on a sunbeam, warns Gabriel, who had in charge the gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escaped the deep, and passed at noon by his sphere in the shape of a good angel down to Paradise, discovered afterwards by his furious gestures in the mount. Gabriel promises to find him ere morning. Night coming on, Adam and Eve discourse of going to their rest; their bower described; their evening worship. Gabriel, drawing forth his bands of night-watch to walk the rounds of Paradise, appoints two strong angels to Adam's bower, lest the evil spirit should be there doing some harm to Adam or Eve sleeping; there they find him at the ear of Eve, tempting her in a dream, and bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel; by whom questioned, he scornfully answers, prepares resistance, but, hindered by a sign from heaven, flies out of Paradise. The poet opens this book with a wish, in the manner of Shakspeare: "O, for a Muse of fire!" Prol. to Hen. V.; "O, for a falconer's voice!" Rom. and Juliet, a. ii. s. 2. And, in order to raise the horror and attention of his reader, he |