This is one of the noblest and best spirited speeches in the whole Iliad. Is it not a probable presumption, that Milton (whose dislike to kings is very well known) by putting these sentiments into the mouth of the king of Hell, intended an oblique satire upon the kings of the Earth, whose practice is so often directly contrary to them?

465- -this enterprize

None shall partake with me.] The abruptness of Satan's conclusion is very well expressed by the speech breaking off in the middle of the verse.

476. Their rising all at once was as the sound

Of thunder beard remote.] The rising of this great assembly is described in a very sublime and poetical manner. Addison. 489.while the north wind sleeps,] That wind generally clears the sky, and disperses the clouds. Every body must be wonderfully delighted with this similitude. The images are not more pleasing in nature, than they are refreshing to the reader after his attention to the foregoing debate. We have a simile of the same kind in Homer, but applied upon a very different occasion, Iliad. xvi. 297. So when thick clouds inwrap the mounta.n's head, O'er Heav'n's expanse like one black cieling spread; Sudden the Thund'rer with a flashing ray,

Bursts through the darkness, and lets down the day: The hills shine out, the rocks in prospect rise, And streams, and vales, and forests strike the eyes, The smiling scene wide opens to the sight, And all th' unmeasur'd æther flames with light. Mr. Pope translates it as if Jupiter lighten'd, which makes it a horrid rather than a pleasing scene; but Homer says only that he removed the thick clouds to the mountain top, and so it is explained in the note of Pope's Homer, which shows that the translation and notes were not always made by the same person. We have a simile too, much of the same nature, in a Sonnet of Spenser, as Mr. Thyer hath observed. Sonnet 40.

Mark when she smiles with amiable chear,

And tell me whereto can you liken it: When on each eye-lid sweetly do appear An hundred Craces as in shade to sit.

Likest it seemeth, in my simple wit,

Unto the fair sun-shine in summer's day; That when a dreadful storm away is flit.

Through the broad world doth spread his goodly ray : At sight whereof each bird that sits on spray, And every beast that to his den was filed, Come forth afresh out of their late dismay,

And to the light lift up their drooping head. So my storm beaten heart likewise is chear'd,

With that sun-shine, when cloudy looks are clear'd. -o'er spread.

489.

Heav'n's chearful face,] Spenser, Faery Queen, b. ii cant. xii. st. 34.

And Heav'n's chearful face enveloped. Thyer. 494.-bleating herds] Dr. Bentley reads flocks, and says that berd is a word proper to cattle that do not bleat. But berd is originally the common name for a number of any sort of cattle hence Shepherd, that is Sheepherdsman, see vii. 462.

Pearce.

bleating herds is much such an expression as Spen

ser's fleecy cattle in Colin Clout's come home again.

496. O shame to men! &c.] This reflection will appear the more pertinent and natural, when one considers the contentious age in which Milton lived and wrote. Thyer.

512. A globe of fiery Seraphim] A globe signifies here a battalion in circle surrounding him, as Virgil says, Æn. x. 373. 513-borrent arms.] Horrent includes the idea both of terrible and prickly, set up like the bristles of a wild boar. Virgil in n. i. and x.

So

517.-the sounding alchemy] Dr. Bentley reads orichalc: but since he allows that gold and silver coin, as well as brass and pewter, are alchemy, being mixed metals, for that reason alchemy will do here; especially being joined to the epithet sounding, which determines to mean a trumpet, made perhaps of the mixed metals of brass, silver, &c. Pearce.

Alchemy, the name of that art which is the sublimer part of chemistry, the transmutation of metals, Milton names no particular metal, but leaves the imagination at large, any metal possible to be produced by that mysterious art; it is a metonymy, the efficient for the effect, Richardson.

527-till his great chief return.] So it is in the first edi tion: but in the second and some others it is, till this great chief return; which is manifestly an error of the press.

528. Part on the plain, &c.] The diversions of the fallen Angels, with the particular account of their place of habita→ tion, are described with great pregnancy of thought and copiousness of invention. The diversions are every way suitable to Beings, who had nothing left them but strength and knowledge misapplied. Such are their contentions at the race and in the feats of arms, with their entertainments in the following lines,

Others with vast Typhoean rage more fell, &c.

Their music is employed in celebrating their own criminal exploits, and their discourse in sounding the unfathomable depth of fate, freewill, and fore-knowledge. Addison.

Part contend on the plain in running, or in the air in flying, as at the famous Olympian or Pythian garnes in Greece, while another part contend on horseback or in chariot races, Part curb their fiery steeds, &c. These warlike diversions of the fallen Angels during the absence of Satan, resemble the military exercises of the Myrmidons during the absence of their chief from the war, Homer's Iliad. ii. 774, &c. only the images are raised in proportion to the nature of the Beings who are here described. The author may have had an eye to the diversions and entertainments of the departed heroes in Virgil's Elysium, Æn. vi. 642.

Their aery limbs in sports they exercise,

And on the green contend the wrestler's prize.

531or shun the goal

Wab rapid wheels,] Plainly taken from Horace, Od. i. lib. j. v. 4.

Metaque fervidis evitata rotis.

But with good judgment he says rapid not fervid: because in these Hell-games both the wheels and the burning marle they drove on were fervid even before the race.

Bentley.

539. Others with vast Typkœan rage, &c.] Others with rage like that of Typhoeus orTyphon, one of the giants who warred against Heaven, of whom see before i. 193. The contrast here is very remarkable. Some are employed in spor. tive games and exercises, while others rend up both rocks'

and hills, and make wild uproar. Some again are singing in a valley, while others are discoursing and arguing on a hill; and these are represented as sitting, while others march different ways to discover that infernal world. Every company is drawn in contrast both to that which goes before, and that which follows.

542. As when Alcides, &c.] As when Hercules named Alcides from his grandfather Alcæus, from Oechalia crown'd with conquest, after his return from the conquest of Oechalia, a city of Boeotia, having brough him from thence Iöle the king's daughter, felt the envenomed robe, which was sent him by Dejanira in jealousy of his new mistress, and stuck so close to his skin that he could not pull off the one without pulling off the other, an I tore through pain up by the roots Thessalian pires; and Lichas, who had brought him the poisoned robe, from the top of Oeta, a mountain in the borders of Thessaly, threw into the Euboic sea, the sea near Euboea, an island in the Archipelago.

Milton in this simile falls vastly short of his usual sublimity and propriety. How much does the image of Alcides tearing up Thessalian pines, &c. sink below that of the Angels rending up both rocks and hills, and riding the air in whirlwind!

Dryden.

554. Suspended Hell,] The effect of their singing is somewhat like that of Orpheus in Hell, Virg. Georg. iv. 481. E'en from the depths of Hell the damn'd advance, Th' infernal mansions nodding seem to dance; The gaping three-mouth'd dog forgets to snarl, The Furies hearken, and their snakes uncurl; 555 In discourse more sweet] Our poet so justly prefers discourse to the highest harmony, that he has seated his reasoning Angels on a hill as high and elevated as their thoughts, leaving the songsters in their humble valley. Though he had spent much time in Italy, the mother of operas, he was no admirer of musical nonsense.

560. Fix'd fare, free will, foreknowledge absolute] The turn of the words here is admirable, and very well expresses the wanderings and mazes of their discourse.

565. Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:] Good and evil, and de finibus bonorum et malorum, &c. were more parti

cularly the subjects of disputation among the philosophers and sophists of old; fredestination, free will, &c. were among the school-men and divines of later times. Milton seems to have considered such enquiries as useless, and probably for two reasons, first, that it is impossible on such subjects to attain truth; secondly, because if attained, it might not improve conduct and happiness.

572. The dismal worm,] The several circumstances in the description of Hell are finely imagined; as the four rivers which disgorge themselves into the sea of fire, the extremes of cold and heat, and the river of oblivion. The monstrous animals produced in that infernal world are represented by a single line, which gives us a more horrid idea of them, than a much longer description of them would have done. episode of the fallen Spirits and their place of habitation comes in very happily to unbend the mind of the reader from its attention to the debate. An ordinary poet would indeed have spun out so many circumstances to a great length, and by that means have weakened, instead of illustrated, the principal fable. Addison.

This

577. Abhorred Styx, &c.] The Greeks reckon up five rivers in Hell, and call them after the names of the noxious springs and rivers in their own country. Our poet follows their example both as to the number and the names of these infernal rivers, and excellently describes their nature and properties, with the explanation of their names, Styx so named from a Greek word that signifies to bate and abhor; Acheron, flowing with grief; and Cecytus named of lamentation, because derived from a Greek word signifying to sweep and lament: as Phlegethon is from another Greek word signifying to burn; and supposes a burning lake, agreeably to Scripture, that often mentions the lake of fire; and he makes these four rivers to flow from four different quarters and empty themselves into this burning lake, which gives us a much greater idea than any of the Heathen poets have done. Besides these there is a fifth river called Letke, which name in Greek signifies forgetfulness, and its waters are said to occasion that quality.

The river of oblivion is rightly placed far off from the rivers of hatred, sorrow, lamentation, and rage.

592.that Serborian bog} Serbonis was a lake 200 fur