716 "The universal Maker we may praise, "To serve Him better. Wise are all his ways!" 1 Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heaven and earth; Resigns her charge, while Goodness thinks no ill In his uprightness answer thus return'd. 66 Fair angel! thy desire, which tends to know "The great Work-master, leads to no excess 66 "To witness with thine eyes what some, perhaps, "That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep? Light shone, and order from disorder sprang! "The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire; 3 1 This is a very proper and necessary digression, as giving the reason why the sharpest-sighted spirit in heaven was deceived.—(N.) * So Plato in Timæo:-es Zx Xvzo nyxyev z\ «rx-(z;.—{Th.) 3 Aristotle, and others or the ancient philosophers, supposed, as Milton does here, that "there was, besides the four elements, an ethereal quintessence, or fifth essence, out of 66 Flew upward, spirited with various forms, "That roll'd orbicular, and turn'd to stars 66 66 Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; Each had his place appointed, each his course : "The rest in circuit walls this universe.1 66 "Look downward on that globe, whose hither side His day, which else, as the other hemisphere, 66 66 Timely interposes; and her monthly round. "Still ending, still renewing, through mid heaven "Adam's abode; those lofty shades, his bower. 66 'Thy way thou canst not miss—me mine requires." (As to superior spirits is wont in heaven, Where honour due, and reverence, none neglects,) which the stars and heavens were formed, and that its motion was orbicular." See Diog. Laert. Life or Aristotle.—(N.) i /. e. And seest how they move." The rest," i. e. the rest of the fifth essence, that is not formed into the stars. Lucret. v. 470:— "Et late difTusus in omnes undique partes Omnia sic avido complexu cætera sepsit."—(N.J 2 "Triform," i. e. when increasing with horns towards the east, when decreasing with horns towards the west, and when at the full.—(N.) The ancients gave her three names as well as forms—Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Hecate in the regions below. "Diva triformis," (Hor. iii. Od. xxii.); "Tria virginis ora Dianæ." 3 Newton thinks this sort of motion was intended by Milton as expressive of Satan's joy. Thyer thinks it is only ejpressive of his speed. I think it expresses both. So iv. 567 :— "I described bis way Bent on all speed, and marked his aery gait." Niphates, meaning snowy, a mountain on the borders of Armenia (and part of the range of Taurus), not far from the springs of the Tigris. The poet lands Satan on this mountain because it borders on Assyria, in which the most judicious deseribers of Paradise place it. (H.) It is worth while to compare with this the flight of Mercury, (£a. iv.) from which several expressions are copied by Milton. BOOK IV.' 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 oulward prospect and situation is described: overleaps the bounds; sits in the shape of a cormorant on the tree of life, as highest in Ihe 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 penally of dealh; and thereon intends to found his temptation, by seducing them to transgress; then leaves them awhile to know further of their slate by some other means. meanwhile Uriel descending on a sun-beam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the gale 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 after by his furious gestures in Ihe 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 round 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 (hey 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. 0, for that warning voice! which he who saw The Apocalypse heard cry in heaven aloud, Then when the Dragon, put to second rout, Came furious down to be reveng'd on men; "Woe to th' inhabitants on earth!"—that now, 6 While time was, our first parents had been warn'd > Tbe poet opens this book with a wish, in the manner of Shakspenre in his famous prologue to Henry V. :— "0 Tor a muse or (Ire thai would ascend The highest heaven of Invention 1 and in order to raise the altention and the horror of his reader, he introduces his relation of Satan's adventures upon earth by wishing that the same warning voice had been uttered now at Satan's first coming, which St. John (who in a vision saw the Apocalypse or revelation of the most remarkable events which were to befal the christian church to the end of the world,) heard when the Dragon was put lo the second rout; Rev. xii.—(N.) There are two defeats sustained by Satan, mentioned in that chapter; first, his defeat in heaven, and expulsion from it; second, his defeat by the birth of Christ; and the "woe" there uttered is in reference to his temptation and persecution of Christ's followers :— "Woe lo the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea, for the Devil is come down unto you having great wrath, because he knowelh that he hath but a short time." He is there also called the Accuser:—"The accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night." See the enlire chapter, which is one of the chief pas The coming of their secret foe, and 'scap'd— His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir Of what he was, what is, and what must be- 3 30 Which now sat high in his meridian tower : 5 4 sages in Scripture from which Milton has taken the plot of the poem. 1 may observe, that, according to the arrangement of the verses there, the narrative appears very much involved; distinct events being mixed up together." Apocalypse." juozakupis, a revelation, is particularly referred to the revelation which St. John had in the island of Patmos, whither he was banished by the emperor Domilian. It was not at first received in all churches as canonical. It is not in the catalogue of the council of Laodicea: but about the fifth century it became generally established as a book of authority. In the primitive ages of Christianity there were other apocalypses circulated, and ascribed lo various persons, as Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Thomas, and Cerinthus the arch-apostate: but they were all, in the course of time, pronounced apocryphal, or unauthorized and uncanonical, and are now extinct. See Calmel. 1 "Yet" is to be connected with "rejoicing" (and not with "begins") inflamed with rage; not rejoicing, however, in his speed, because, when he is about to begin his dire attempt, horror and doubt distract bim. The copulative "and" is suppressed before "begins" by asyndeton. 2 En. xii. 666 .— "Tornns et obtuto tacito stetit: æsluat iigens Imo in corde pudor, mixloque Insanta luctu, > Memory here is recordalio, the thinking or reflecting on any thing, as well present and future, as past. Thus the bees in Yirgil (Georg. iv. 156) remember the approaching winter :— "Venturaque hyemis memores, æstale laborem Experlunlur, et In medium quæslta reponunt."-(N., p.) Hom. Odyss. xiii. 197: Στη γαρ αναΐξας, και ρ' εισιδε πατρίδα γαίαν Ωμωξεν τ' αρ' επειτ', ολοφυρομενος ο επος ηύδα.-(Stil.) » At noon the sun is lifted up as in a tower. The metaphor is used by Virgil, in his Culex 41: 62 Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began. 66 1 "0 thou, that, with surpassing glory crown'd, 66 66 In that bright eminence, and with his good Upbraided none; 3 nor was his service hard. "What could be less than to afford him praise, "The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks, "How due! Yet all his good prov'd ill in me, And wrought but malice: lifted up so high "So burdensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still receiv'd; 5 By owing owes not, but still pays, at once "Me some inferior angel, I had stood "Then happy! no unbounded hope had rais'd "As great might have aspir'd, and me, though mean, "Igncus æthereas jam sol penetrarat in arce«."—(R-) J When Milton designed to make only a tragedy of Paradise Lost, he intended to commence it with the first ten lines of this speech, which bears a general resemblance to the first speech of Prometheus, in the Promelh. Yinclut of ^schylus, and which is also indebted, as J. Warton remarks, to the opening of the Phamissw of Euripides. The thought of addressing the sun, as being the most conspicuous part of the creation, like the god of this world, is very natural, when so many of the heathen nations worshipped it as such. The opening of it is incomparably bold and noble, as the conflict of passions, in the subsequent part, is raised with great art.—(N., T., Ad.) s "Pride" here means the vice considered in itself, only as the tempter which raised him in his own opinion above what was just; and "ambition," that vicious excess and final aim of pride which carried him to aim at being equal to God. He lays the blame on his ambition elsewhere. See 61—92.—(H., P.) s James i. 5: "God givelh to all liberally, and upbraideth nol."—(T.) "Sdained," difdained. Spenser often uses the word. 5"Understood." So Cicero: "Gratiam autem et qui retulerit, habere, et qui habeat, relulisse." (Benf.) |