here according to the ancient astronomy, adopted and improved by Ptolemy.-NEWTON. 29 Ver. 495. Into a limbo large and broad. The limbus patrum, as it is called, is a place that the schoolmen supposed to be in the neighbourhood of hell, where the souls of the patriarchs were detained, and those good men who died before our Saviour's resurrection. Our author gives the same name to his "Paradise of Fools," and more rationally places it beyond "the backside of the world.”NEWTON. The "Limbo of Vanity" has been censured as unbecoming the dignity of the epic. 30 Ver. 555. Round he surveys. He surveys the whole creation from east to west, and from north to south. But poetry delights to say the most common things in an uncommon manner. It is fine as it is natural, to represent Satan taking a view of the world before he threw himself into it.-NEWTON. 31 Ver. 590. Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw. The spots in the sun are visible with a telescope: but astronomer perhaps never saw, "through his glazed optic tube," such a spot as Satan, now he was in the sun's orb. The poet mentions this glass the oftener in honour of Galileo, whom he means here by the astronomer. NEWTON. 32 Ver. 623. The same whom John. See Rev. xix. 17:"And I saw an angel standing in the sun."-NEWTON. 33 Ver. 654. Uriel. His name is derived from two Hebrew words, which signify God is my light. He is mentioned as a good angel in the second book of Esdras; and the Jews, and some christians, conceive him to be an angel of light according to his name, and therefore he has, properly, his station in the sun.-NEWTON. 34 Ver. 683. Hypocrisy. What is said here of hypocrisy is censured as a digression; but it seems no more than is absolutely necessary; for otherwise it might be thought very strange, that the evil spirit should pass undiscovered by the archangel Uriel, the regent of the sun, and the sharpestsighted spirit in heaven; and therefore the poet endeavours to account for it by saying, that hypocrisy cannot be discerned by man or angel; it is invisible to all but God, &c. But yet the evil spirit did not pass wholly undiscovered; for, though Uriel was not aware of him now, yet he found reason to suspect him afterwards from his furious gestures on the mount.-NEWTON. The poet's recollection of his having been deluded by the matchless hypocrisy of Cromwell, might have inspired him with this admirable apology for Uriel.-HAYLEY. 35 Ver. 686. And oft, though wisdom wake. He must be very critically splenetic indeed, who will not pardon this little digressional observation. There is not in my opinion a nobler sentiment, or one more poetically expressed in the whole poem. What great art has the poet shown in taking off the dryness of a mere moral sentence, by throwing it into the form of a short and beautiful allegory!-THYER. 36 Ver. 703. Pleasant to know, &c. This is one of those places where a negligence in metre is not only excusable, in taking away monotony, but carries with it a dignity which no smoothness of verse could give it, the words being in almost the same order as in Scripture.-STILLINgfleet. 37 Ver. 716. And this ethereal quintessence. The four elements hasted to their quarters, but this fifth essence flew upward.-NEWTON. 38 Ver. 742. On Niphates' top. The poet lands Satan on this mountain, says Hume, because it borders on Mesopotamia, in which the most judicious describers of Paradise place it.-Dunster. Satan, after having long wandered upon the surface, or utmost wall of the universe, discovers at last a wide gap in it, which led into the creation, and is described as the opening through which the angels pass to and fro into the lower world, upon their errands to mankind. His sitting upon the brink of this passage, and taking a survey of the whole face of nature that appeared to him new and fresh in all its beauties, with the simile illustrating this circumstance, fills the mind of the reader with as surprising and glorious an idea as,any that arises in the whole poem. He looks down into that vast hollow of the universe with the eye, or as Milton calls it in his first book, with the ken of an angel. He surveys all the wonders in this immense, amphitheatre that lies between both the poles of heaven, and takes in at one view the whole round of the creation. His flight between the several worlds that shined on every side of him, and the particular description of the sun, are set forth in all the wantonness of a luxuriant imagination. His shape, speech, and behaviour, upon his transforming himself into an angel of light, are touched with exquisite beauty. The poet's thought of directing Satan to the sun, which in the vulgar opinion of mankind is the most conspicuous part of the creation; the placing in it an angel; is a circumstance very finely contrived, and the more adjusted to a poetical probability, as it was a received doctrine among the most famous philosophers, that every orb had its intelligence; and as an apostle in sacred writ is said to have seen such an angel in the sun. In the 174 NOTES ON PARADISE LOST. BOOK III. answer which this angel returns to the disguised evil spirit, there is such a becoming majesty as is altogether suitable to a superior being. The part of it in which he represents himself as present at the creation, is very noble in itself; and not only proper where it is introduced, but requisite to prepare the reader for what follows in the seventh book:I saw, when at his word the formless mass, This world's material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled; stood vast infinitude confined; Till, at his second bidding, Darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung. In the following part of the speech he points out the earth with such circumstances, that the reader can scarce forbear fancying himself employed on the same distant view of it.— ADDISON. |