! Distinct alike with multitude of eyes; 850 i 1 Yet half his strength he put not forth, but check'd 855 860 865 Hell heard the unsufferable noise; hell saw 870 Incumber'd him with ruin: hell at last Yawning received them whole, and on them closed; Sole victor, from the expulsion of his foes, Messiah his triumphal chariot turn'd: P Half his strength he put not forth. 875 880 This fine thought is somewhat like that of the Psalmist, lxxviii. 38 :-" But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not; yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath." - NEWTON. ৭ With terrours and with furies. See Job, vi. 4:"The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me." And the fury of the Lord is a common expression in Scripture :-" They are full of the fury of the Lord," Isaiah, li. 20. NEWTON. Yawning received them. Hell at last This is a fine imitation of Isaiah, v. 14:- "Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it."-ToDD. Eye-witnesses of his almighty acts, Thus, measuring things in heaven by things on earth, By terrible example, the reward Of disobedience: firm they might have stood, Yet fell: remember, and fear to transgress. • Worthiest to reign. The angels here sing the same divine song which St. John heard them sing in his vision, Rev. iv. 11. NEWTON. Who into glory. See 1 Tim. iii. 16:-" Received up into glory; " and Heb. i. 3:-" Sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."-GILLIES. ▼Thus, measuring things in heaven. He repeats the same kind of apology here in the conclusion, that he made in the beginning of his narration. See b. v. 573, &c. And it is indeed the best defence that can be made for the bold fictions in this book, which, though some cold readers perhaps may blame, yet the coldest, I conceive, cannot but admire. It is remarkable too with what art and beauty the poet, from the height and sublimity of the rest of the book, descends here, at the close of it, like the lark from her loftiest notes in the clouds, to the most prosaic simplicity of language and numbers; a simplicity, which not only gives it variety, but the greatest majesty; as Milton himself seems to have thought, by always choosing to give the speeches of God and the Messiah in that style, though these I suppose are the parts of this poem which Dryden censures as the flats which he often met with for thirty or forty limes together. NEWTON. Thy weaker. As St. Peter calls the wife, "the weaker vessel," 1 Pet. iii. 7. NEWTON. |