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Ovid, in his description of Chaos, has lessened the grandeur by puerile conceits and quaint antitheses: every thing in Milton is great and masterly.

902. Light arm'd or heavy,] He continues the warlike metaphor; some of them are light-arm'd or beavy, levis or gravis armaturæ. Hume.

905.—and poise] Give weight or ballast to. Pliny speaks of certain birds, who, when a storm arises poise themselves with little stones, 1. xi c. 10. Virgil has the same thought of his bees, Georg. iv. 194. Richardson.

927.-bis sail-broad vans] As the air and water are both fluids, the metaphors taken from the one are often applied to the other, and flying is compared to sailing, and sailing to flying. This mode of speaking is adopted by Virgil among the ancients, and Spenser among the moderns.

938-that fury stay'd, &c.] That fiery rebuff ceased, quenched and put out by a sof: quicksand: Syrtis is explained by neither sea nor good dry land, exactly agreeing with Lucan, Phar. ix. 304.

941- -balf on foot,

Half flying;] Spenser, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. xi. st. 8. Half flying, and half footing in his haste.

943-As when a gryphon, &c.] Herodotus and other authors relate, that there were continual wars between the gryphons and Arimaspians about gold, the gryphons guarding it and Arimaspians taking it whenever they had oppor tunity. See Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. vii. cap. 2.

948. Over bog or steep, &c.] Dr. Bentley's reading is not amiss, O'er bog, o'er steep, &c. The difficulty of Satan's voyage is very well expressed by so many monosyllables as follows, which cannot be pronounced but slowly, and with frequent pauses. Spenser in the same manner represents the distress of his Redcrosse Knight in his encounter with the old dragon, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. ii. st 28.

Faint, weary, sore, embroiled, grieved, brent,

With heat, toil, wounds, arms, smart, and inward fire. 956.-the nether most abyss] B. rejects nethermost here, and in ver. 969, and charges Milton's blindness as the cause of his forgetting himself and being inconsistent. But it is the Doctor that mistakes, and not the Poet: for though the throne of

Chaos was above Hell, and consequently a part of the abyss was so, yet a part of that abyss was at the same time far below Hell; so far below, as that, when Satan went from Hell on his voyage, he fell in that abyss 10,000 fathom deep, ver. 934; and the poet there adds, that if it had not been for an accident, he had been falling down there to this hour. Pearce.

964. Orcus and Ades,] Orcus is generally by the poets taken for Pluto, as Ades for any dark place. These terms are of a very vague signification, and employed by the ancient poets accordingly. Milton has personized them, and put them in the court of Chaos.

964and the dreaded name

Of Demogorgon;] There was a notion among the Ancients of a certain deity, whose very name they supposed capable of producing the most terrible effects, and which they therefore dreaded to pronounce. This deity is mentioned as of great power in incantations. Thus Erictho is introduced, threatning the Infernal Powers for being too slow in their obedience, by Lucan, Phar. vi. 744.

Yet, am I yet, ye sullen fiends, obey'd?
Or must I call your master to my aid?

At whose dread name the trembling furies quake,

Hell stands abash'd, and earth's foundations shake?
Who views the Gorgons with intrepid eyes,

And your inviolable flood defies?

Rowe.

Demogorgon some think a corruption of Demiurgus ; others imagine him to be so called, as being able to look upon the Gorgon, that turned all other spectators to stone, and to this Lucan seems to allude, when he says

-qui Gorgona cernit apertam.

Spenser too mentions this infernal deity, Faery Queen, b. i. cant. v. st. 22; and takes notice also of the dreadful effects of his name, b. i. cant. i. st. 37.

A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name

Great Gorgon, prince of darkness and dead night,

At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight. 965.-Rumour next and Chance,] In Satan's voyage through the Chaos there are several imaginary persons described as residing in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those critics who are

pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but for my own part, I am pleased most with those passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit, his falling into a cloud of nitre and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upward like a pyramid of fire, with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements which the poet

calls

The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave. Addison.

1005.-Encroach'd on still through your intestin'd broils] Our in some editions is here necessarily changed to your.

1004.-link'd in a golden chain] There is mention made in Homer of Jupiter's golden chain, by which he can draw up the Gods and the earth and sea and the whole universe, but they cannot draw him down. You may see the passage at large in the beginning of the 8th book of the Iliad; and thus translated by Pope.

League all your forces then, ye Pow'rs above,

Join all, and try th' omnipotence of Jove?

Let down our golden, everlasting chain,

Whose strong embrace holds heav'n, and earth, and main:
Strive all of mortal or immortal birth,

To drag by this the Thund'rer down to earth:
Ye strive in vain! If I but stretch this hand,
I heave the Gods, the ocean, and the land,
I fix the chain to great Olympus height,
And the vast world hangs trembling in my sight.

Pope.

It is most probably and ingeniously conjectured that by this golden chain may be understood the superior attractive force of the sun, whereby he continues unmoved, and draws all the rest of the planets toward him.

1009. Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.] This is very agree able to that character of Chaos by Lucan, Phar. vi. 696.

1011. But glad that now bis sea should find a shore,] A metaphor to express his joy that now his travel and voyage should end, somewhat like that of one of the Ancients who read

ing a tedious book and coming near to the end, cryed I see land, Terram video.

1017.-than when Argo pass'd, &c.] The first long ship ever seen in Greece, in which Jason and his companions sailed to Colchis to fetch the golden fleece. Through Bosporus, the Thracian Bosporus or the straits of Constantinople, or the Channel of the Black Sea. Betwixt the justling rocks, two rocks at the entrance into the Euxine or Black Sea, called in Greek Symplegades, and by Juvenal concurrentia saxa, sat. xv. 19; which Milton very well translates the justling rocks, because they were so near, that at a distance they seemed to open and shut again, and justle one another, as the ship varied its course this way and that as usual. Plin. Nat. Hist. i. 4.

1019. Or ruben Ulysses on the larboard shunn'd

Charybdis, and by the other awhirlpool steer'd.] These two verses Dr. Bentley would throw quite away. Larboard (says he) is abominable in heroic poetry; but Dryden thought it not unfit to be employed there: and Milton in other places has used nautical terms. But the Doctor has two objections against the sense of these verses. First, that larbeard or left hand is a mistake here for starboard or right hand, Charybdis being to the starboard of Ulysses when he sailed through these straits: This is very true, but it does not affect what Milton here says; for the sense may be, not that Ulysses shunned Charybdis situated on the larboard of his ship as he was sailing but that Ulysses sailing on the larboard (to the left hand where Scylla was) did thereby shun Charybdis, which was the truth of the case. The ojection is, that Scylla was no whirlpool, which yet she is nere supposed to have been, but Virgil (whom Milton follows oftener than he does Homer) describes Scylla as naves in saxa trabentem, Æn. iii. 425; and what is that less than calling it a whirlpool?

1023. But be once past, &c.] Dr Bentley would throw out here eleven verses, as if they were an interpolation: hut the foregoing words, containing a repetition of what went be fore them, with difficulty and labour he, have no force nor propriety, unless it be added (as it is in these verses) that some others afterwards went this way with more ease. Peacce.

1049. With opal towers] With towers of precious stones. Opal is a stone of diverse colours, partaking of the carbuncle's faint fire, the amethyst's bright purple, and the emerald's green.

1052. This pendent world, in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.] By this pendent world is not meant the Earth; but the new creation, Heaven and Earth, the whole orb of fixed stars immensely bigger than the Earth, a mere point in comparison. This is sure from what Chaos had lately said, ver. 1004.

Now lately Heav'n and Earth, another world, Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain. Besides, Satan did not see the Earth yet; he was afterwards surprised at the sudden view of all this world at once, iii. 542, and wandered long on the outside of it; till at last he saw our sun, and learned there, of the Arch-Angel Uriel, where the Earth and Paradise were. See iii. 722. This pendent world therefore must mean the whole world, the new created universe; and beheld far off it appeared in comparison with the empyreal Heaven no bigger than a star of smallest magnitude.

VOL. III.

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