Of goats or timorous flock together throng'd
Drove them before him thunder-ftruck, purfued
With terrors and with furies to the bounds
And crystal wall of Heav'n, which opening wide,
Roll'd inward, and a picious gap disclos'd

861

Into the wafteful deep; the monstrous fight
Struck them with horror backward, but far worse
Urg'd them behind; headlong themfelves they threw
Down

preffes their defeat. And there is the greater propriety in the fimilitude of goats particularly, becaufe our Saviour represents the wicked under the fame image, as the good are called the sheep. Mat. XXV. 33 And he shall fet the jeep on his right band, but the goats on the left. For which reafon Dr. Pearce is of opinion that by a timorous flock are not meant fleep but deer, that epithet being as it were appropriated by the poets to that animal. Virgil has timidi dame twice at leaft. Or the author (as Dr. Bentley and Dr. Heylin imagin) might have faid not or but a timorcus flock; and as a herd of goats a timorous flock. But he would hardly have call'd the fame a herd of goats, and then a flock immediately afterwards, and neither would he have used the expreffion of timorous flock for a herd of deer in contradiflinction to a herd of goats, tho' it is a proper phrate for fleep, which feem plain.. ly to be meant by it. And it is probable that in the highth and fury of his defcription he did not

Down from the verge of Heav'n; eternal wrath 865 Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.

Hell heard th'infufferable noise, Hell faw

Heav'n ruining from Heav'n, and would have fled
Affrighted; but strict fate had cast too deep
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound. 879
Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roar'd,
And felt tenfold confufion in their fall

871. Nine days they fell;] And fo in Book I. 50.

Through his wild anarchy, fo huge a rout

Incumber'd him with ruin: Hell at laft

876

Yawning receiv'd them whole and on them clos'd;
Hell their fit habitation fraught with fire
Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.
Difburden'd Heav'n rejoic'd, and foon repair'd
Her mural breach, returning whence it roll'd.
Sole victor from th' expulfion of his foes

Meffiah his triumphal chariot turn'd :

To meet him all his Saints, who filent ftood
Eye-witneffes of his almighty acts,

Nine times the space that measures day and night &c.

$80

With

ver. 868. muft be taken in its Italian fignification. Ingombrato is very poetical, and expreffes the utmok embarafment and confufion; bet incumber'd, tho' plainly the fame word, yet in its common acceptation has a meaning too weak and low for the author's purpofe in this verfe. of Thyer.

Thus in the first Iliad the plague continues nine days, and upon all occafions the poets are fond of the numbers nine and three. They have three Graces and nine Mufes. What might at firft occafion this way thinking it is not eafy to fay; but it is certainly very ancient, and we are now fo accuftom'd to it, that if here, instead of nine, Milton had faid ten days, I am perfuaded it would not have had fo good an effect. Poffibly it was in allufion to Hefiod's defcription of the fall of the Titans. Theog. 722.

Ένα γαρ νυκταστε και ηματα.

the house of woe and pain.] Very 876. Hell their fit habitation— like that in Fairfax's Taffo, Cani 9. St. 59.

Fit houfe for them, the house of grief and pain.

An inftance this, and there are x. 7. λ. others, that Milton made use of the tranflation of Taffo, as well as of the original.

874. Incumber'd him with ruin:] This too, like the word ruining in

878. Dif

With jubilee advanc'd; and as they went,

Shaded with branching palm, each order bright, 885
Sung triumph, and him fung victorious King,
Son, Heir, and Lord, to him dominion given,
Worthieft to reign: he celebrated rode
Triumphant through mid Heav'n, into the courts
And temple of his mighty Father thron'd
On high; who into glory him receiv'd,

890

Where now he fits at the right hand of bliss.
Thus measuring things in Heav'n by things on Earth,
At thy request, and that thou may'st beware

By what is paft, to thee I have reveal'd

895

What might have else to human race been hid;
The difcord which befel, and war in Heaven
Among th'Angelic Pow'rs, and the deep fall
Of those too high afpiring, who rebell'd
With Satan; he who envies now thy ftate,
Who now is plotting how he may feduce
Thee alfo from obedience, that with him

tions in this book, which tho' fome cold readers perhaps may blame, yet the coldeft, I conceive, cannot but admire. It is remarkable too with what art and beauty the poet from the highth and fublimity of the rest of this book defcends here at the close of it, like the lark from her loftieft notes in the clouds, to the most profaic fimplicity language and numbers; a fimpli city which not only gives it variety, but the greatest majefty, as Milton himfelf feems to have thought by always choofing to give the speeches

of God and the Meffiah in that

file, tho' thefe I fuppofe are the parts of this poem, which Dryden cenfures as the flats which he often met with for thirty or forty lines together.

900. With Satan; he who envies now thy ftate,] The conftruction requires him, as Dr. Bentley fays or it may be understood He it is who envies now thy ftate.

909. Thy weaker ;] As St. Peter

900

Bereav'd

calls the wife the weaker vessel. 1 Pet. III. 7.

the reader to find here at the conIt may perhaps be agreeable to clufion of this fixth book the commendations, which Lord Rofcommon has bestow'd upon it in his Effay on tranflated verfe, and to which Mr. Addison refers in a note

above. That truly noble critic and poet is there making his complaints and wishes that the English would of the barbarous bondage of rime, hake off the yoke, having fo good an example before them as the au

thor of Paradife Loft.

Of many faults rime is perhaps the cause ;

Too ftrict to rime, we flight more ufeful laws.

For that, in Greece or Rome, was never known,

Till by Barbarian deluges o'er

flown: