III. SCHEME AND MEANING OF THE POEM.

Paradise Lost is an Epic. But it is not, like the Iliad or the Eneid, a na tional Epic; nor is it an epic after any other of the known types. It is a epic of the whole human species-an epic of our entire planet, or indeed of th entire astronomical universe. The title of the poem, though perhaps the bes that could have been chosen, hardly indicates beforehand the full nature o extent of the theme; nor are the opening lines, by themselves, sufficiently descriptive of what is to follow. According to them, the song is to be

"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden."

This is a true enough description, inasmuch as the whole story bears on this point. But it is the vast comprehension of the story, both in space and time, as leading to this point, that makes it unique among epics, and entitles Milton to speak of it as involving

"Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."

It is, in short, a poetical representation, on the authority of hints from the Book of Genesis, of the historical connexion between Human Time and Aboriginal or Eternal Infinity, or between our created World and the immeasurable and inconceivable Universe of Pre-human Existence. So far as our World is concerned, the poem starts from that moment when our newly-created Earth, with all the newly-created starry depths about it, had as yet but two human beings upon it; and these consequently are, on this side of the presupposed Infinite Eternity, the main persons of the epic. But we are carried back into this pre-supposed Infinite Eternity, and the grand purpose of the poem is to connect, by a stupendous imagination, certain events or courses of the inconceivable history that had been unfolding itself there with the first fortunes of that new azure World which is familiar to us, and more particularly with the first fortunes of that favoured ball at the centre whereon those two human creatures walked. Now the person of the epic through the narration of whose acts this connexion is established is Satan. He, as all critics have perceived, and in a wider sense than most of them have perceived, is the real hero of the poem. He and his actions are the link between that new World of Man the infancy of which we behold in the poem and that boundless ante cedent Universe of Pre-human Existence which the poem assumes. For he was a native of that Pre-human Universe-one of its greatest and most con spicuous natives; and what we follow in the poem, when its story is taken chronologically, is the life of this great being, from the time of his yet unim paired primacy or archangelship among the Celestials, on to that time when, in pursuit of a scheme of revenge, he flings himself into the new experimental World, tries the strength of the new race at its fountain-head, and, by success in his attempt, vitiates Man's portion of space to his own nature, and wins possession of it for a season. The attention of the reader is particularly re quested to the following remarks and diagrams. The diagrams are not mere illustrations of what Milton may have conceived in his scheme of his poem.

They are what he did conceive and most tenaciously keep before his mind from irst to last; and, unless they are thoroughly grasped, the poem will not be inderstood as a whole, and many portions of it will be misinterpreted.

Aboriginally, or in primeval Eternity, before the creation of our Earth or he Starry Universe to which it belongs, universal space is to be considered, / tccording to the requisites of the poem, not as containing stars or starry ystems at all, but as, so to say, a sphere of infinite radius, divided equatorially nto two hemispheres, thus

Heaven,

or

The Empyrean.

Chaos.

The upper of these two hemispheres of primeval Infinity is HEAVEN, or HE EMPYREAN-a boundless, unimaginable region of Light, Freedom, Hapness, and Glory, in the midst whereof Deity, though omnipresent, has His mediate and visible dwelling, and where He is surrounded by a vast popu ion of beings, called "the Angels," or "Sons of God," who draw near to is throne in worship, derive thence their nurture and their delight, and yet e dispersed through all the ranges and recesses of the region, leading sevely their mighty lives and performing the behests of Deity, but organized into mpanies, orders, and hierarchies. Milton is careful to explain that all that says of Heaven is said symbolically, and in order to make conceivable by human imagination what in its own nature is inconceivable; but, this being lained, he is bold enough in his use of terrestrial analogies. Round the mediate throne of Deity, indeed, there is kept a blazing mist of vagueness, ich words are hardly permitted to pierce, though the Angels are represented from time to time assembling within it, beholding the Divine Presence and ring the Divine Voice. But Heaven at large, or portions of it, are figured racts of a celestial Earth, with plain, hill, and valley, wherein the myriads he Sons of God expatiate, in their two orders of Seraphim and Cherubim, in their descending ranks as Archangels or Chiefs, Princes of various rees, and individual Powers and Intelligences. Certain differences, how, are implied as distinguishing these Celestials from the subsequent race of akind. As they are of infinitely greater prowess, immortal, and of more ly spiritual nature, so their ways even of physical existence and action scend all that is within human experience. Their forms are dilatable or ractible at pleasure; they move with incredible swiftness; and, as they are

not subject to any law of gravitation, their motion, though ordinarily rep sented as horizontal over the Heavenly ground, may as well be vertical or any other direction, and their aggregations need not, like those of men, be squares, oblongs, or other plane figures, but may be in cubes, or other rect gular or oblique solids, or in spherical masses. These and various other pa culars are to be kept in mind concerning Heaven and its pristine inhabitar As respects the other half or hemisphere of the primeval Infinity, though it is inconceivable in its nature, and has to be described by words which are best symbolical, less needs be said. For it is CHAOS, or the Uninhabited – huge, limitless ocean, abyss, or quagmire, of universal darkness and lifele ness, wherein are jumbled in blustering confusion the elements of all matt or rather the crude embryons of all the elements, ere as yet they are dist guishable. There is no light there, nor properly Earth, Water, Air, or Fir but only a vast pulp or welter of unformed matter, in which all these lie ter pestuously intermixed. Though the presence of Deity is there potentially to it is still, as it were, actually retracted thence, as from a realm unorganized a left to Night and Anarchy; nor do any of the Angels wing down into its r pulsive obscurities. The crystal floor or wall of Heaven divides them from i underneath which, and unvisited of light, save what may glimmer throug upon its nearer strata, it howls and rages and stagnates eternally.

Such is and has been the constitution of the Universal Infinitude from ag immemorial in the Angelic reckoning. But lo! at last a day in the annals Heaven when the grand monotony of existence hitherto is disturbed an broken. On a day-" such a day as Heaven's great year brings forth 582, 583)—all the Empyreal host of Angels, called by imperial summons from all the ends of Heaven, assemble innumerably before the throne of th Almighty; beside whom, imbosomed in bliss, sat the Divine Son. They ha come to hear this divine decree :

"Hear, all ye Angels, Progeny of Light,

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,

Hear my decree which unrevoked shall stand!

This day I have begot whom I declare

My only Son, and on this holy hill

Him have anointed, whom ye now behold

At my right hand. Your Head I him appoint;
And by myself have sworn to him shall bow

All knees in Heaven, and shall confess him Lord."

With joy and obedience is this decree received throughout the hierarchies save in one quarter. One of the first of the Archangels in Heaven, if not th very first-the coequal of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, if not their superi -is the Archangel known afterwards (for his first name in Heaven is lost) Satan, or Lucifer. In him the effect of the decree is rage, envy, pride, the re solution to rebel. He conspires with his next subordinate, known afterward as Beelzebub; and there is formed by them that faction in Heaven which in cludes at length one third of the entire Heavenly host. Then ensue the war in Heaven-Michael and the loyal Angels warring against Satan and the rebe Angels, so that for two days the Empyrean is in uproar. But on the third da the Messiah himself rides forth in his chariot of power, and armed with te thousand thunders. Right on he drives, in his sole might, through the rebe ranks, till they are trampled and huddled, in one indiscriminate flock, incapabl of resistance, before him and his fires. But his purpose is not utterly to destro

them,-only to expel them from Heaven. Underneath their feet, accordingly, the crystal wall or floor of Heaven opens wide, rolling inwards, and disclosing a spacious gap into the dark Abyss or Chaos. Horrorstruck they start back; but worse urges them behind. Headlong they fling themselves down, eternal wrath burning after them, and driving them still down, down, through Chaos, to the place prepared for them.

The place prepared for them! Yes, for now there is a modification in the map of Universal Space to suit the changed conditions of the Universe. At the bottom of what has hitherto been Chaos there is now marked out a kind of Antarctic region, distinct from the body of Chaos proper. This is HELL

Heaven,

or

The Empyrean.

Chaos.

Hell.

a vast region of hre, sulphurous lake, plain, and mountain, and of all forms of fiery and icy torment. It is into this nethermost and dungeon-like portion of space, separated from Heaven by a huge belt of intervening Chaos, that the Fallen Angels are thrust. For nine days and nights they have been falling through Chaos, or rather being driven down through Chaos by the Messiah's pursuing thunders, before they reach this new home (VI. 871). When they do reach it, the roof closes over them and shuts them in. Meanwhile the Messiah has returned in triumph into highest Heaven, and there is rejoicing over the expulsion of the damned.

For the moment, therefore, there are three divisions of Universal SpaceHEAVEN, CHAOS, and HELL. Almost immediately, however, there is a fourth. Not only have the expelled Angels been nine days and nights in falling through Chaos to reach Hell; but, after they have reached Hell and it has * closed over them, they lie for another period of nine days and nights (1. 50—53) t stupefied and bewildered in the fiery gulf. It is during this second nine days it that there takes place a great event, which farther modifies the map of Infinitude. Long had there been talk in Heaven of a new race of beings to be created at some time by the Almighty, inferior in some respects to the Angels, but in the history of whom and of God's dealings with them there was to be a display of the divine power and love which even the Angels might contemplate with wonder. The time for the creation of this new race of beings has now arrived. Scarcely have the Rebel Angels been enclosed in Hell, and Chaos has recovered from the turmoil of the descent of such a rout through its depths, when the Paternal Deity, addressing the Son, tells him that, in order to repair the loss caused to Heaven, the predetermined creation of Man and of

the World of Man shall now take effect. It is for the Son to execute the of the Father. Straightway he goes forth on his creating errand. The e lasting gates of Heaven open wide to let him pass forth; and, clothed v majesty, and accompanied with thousands of Seraphim and Cherubim, anxi to behold the great work to be done, he does pass forth-far into that v Chaos through which the Rebel Angels have so recently fallen, and which r intervenes between Heaven and Hell. At length he stays his fervid whe and, taking the golden compasses in his hands, centres one point of th where he stands and turns the other through the obscure profundity arou (VII. 224-231). Thus are marked out, or cut out, through the body Chaos, the limits of the new Universe of Man-that Starry Universe which us seems measureless and the same as Infinity itself, but which is really onl beautiful azure sphere or drop, insulated in Chaos, and hung at its topm point or zenith from the Empyrean. But, though the limits of the new ex rimental Creation are thus at once marked out, the completion of the Creati is a work of Six Days (VII. 242, 550). On the last of these, to crown work, the happy Earth received its first human pair-the appointed lords the entire new Creation. And so, resting from his labours, and beholding that he had made, that it was good, the Messiah returned to his Father, ascending through the golden gates, which were now just over the zenith the new World, and were its point of suspension from the Empyrean Heave and the Seventh Day or Sabbath was spent in songs of praise by all t Heavenly hosts over the finished work, and in contemplation of it as it hu beneath them,

"another Heaven,

From Heaven-gate not far, founded in view
On the clear hyaline."

And now, accordingly, this was the diagram of the Universal Infinitude :

There are the three regions of HEAVEN, CHAOS, and HELL as before; b there is also now a fourth region, hung drop-like into Chaos by an attachme to Heaven at the north pole or zenith. This is the NEW WORLD, or th STARRY UNIVERSE-all that Universe of orbs and galaxies which man's visio can reach by utmost power of telescope, and which even to his imagination