O, then at last relent: is there no place
Left for repentance, none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath; whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit; boasting I could subdue
The Omnipotent. Ay me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain ;
Under what torments inwardly I groan;
While they adore me on the throne of hell:
With diadem and sceptre high advanced,
The lower still I fall; only supreme
In misery such joy ambition finds.

But say I could repent, and could obtain

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By act of grace my former state; how soon

Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feign'd submission swore! Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep;
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
This knows my Punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus; behold, instead
Of us outcast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind, created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell, fear;
Farewell, remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven's king 1 hold,
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As man ere long and this new world shall know.
Thus while he spake, each passion dimm'd his face
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair;

e This new world.

e

Satan being now within prospect of Eden, and looking round upon the glories of the creation, is filled with sentiments different from those which he discovered whilst he was in hell. The place inspires him with thoughts more adapted to it. He reflects upon the happy condition from whence he fell, and breaks forth into a speech that is softened with several transient touches of remorse and self-accusation; but at length he confirms himself in impenitence, and in his design of drawing man into his own state of guilt and misery. This conflict of passions is roused with a great deal of art, as the opening of his speech to The Sun is very bold and noble.

This speech is, I think, the finest that is ascribed to Satan in the whole poem.-ADDISON.

Each passion dimm'd his face.

Each passion, ire, envy, and despair, dimm'd his countenance, which was thrice changed

Which marr'd his borrow'd visage, and betray'd
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld :

For heavenly minds from such distempers foul
Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware

Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm,
Artificer of fraud; and was the first

That practised falsehood under saintly show,
Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge:
Yet not enough had practised to deceive

Uriel once warn'd; whose eye pursued him down
The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount
Saw him disfigured more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce
He mark'd and mad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,

Now nearer crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champain head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise up sprung;
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue,
Appear'd, with gay enamel'd colours mix'd:

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On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams,

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Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,

When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd

That landskip: and of pure now purer air

Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires

Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense

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with pale through the successive agitations of these three passions: for, that paleness is the proper hue of envy and despair, everybody knows; and we always reckon that sort of anger the most deadly and diabolical which is accompanied with a pale, livid counterance.-NEWTON.

& Vernal delight and joy.

In those vernal seasons of the

year,

when

So in Milton's Tractate of Education: the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."-TODD.

Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pass'd
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the bless'd; with such delay

Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles :

So entertain'd those odorous sweets the fiend

Who came their bane; though with them better pleased
Than Asmodeus' with the fishy fume,

That drove him, though enamour'd, from the spouse

Of Tobit's son, and with a vengeance sent

From Media post to Egypt, there fast bound.
Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journey'd on, pensive and slow;
But farther way found none; so thick entwined,
As one continued brake, the undergrowth
Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplex'd
All path of man or beast that pass'd that way.
One gate there only was, and that look'd east

On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw,

Due entrance he disdain'd; and in contempt,

At one slight bound high overleap'd all bound
Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within
Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf,
Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey,
Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes amid the field secure,
Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold :
Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross'd- barr'd and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles:
So clomb this first grand thief into God's fold;
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
Thence up he flew; and on the Tree of Life,

h Whisper whence they stole.

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This expression of the air's stealing and dispersing the sweets of flowers, is very common in the best Italian poets.-NEWTON.

i Sabæan odours.

Wakefield says that Milton delineated this beautiful description from Diodorus Siculus, hb. i. 46, where the aromatic plants in Sabea, or Arabia Felix, are described as yielding *inexpressible fragrance to the senses, not unenjoyed even by the navigator, though he sails by at a great distance from the shore: for, in the spring, when the wind blows off land, the odour from the aromatic trees and plants diffuses itself over all the neighbouring Notes on Gray, p. 10.—TODD.

ક .'

j Asmodeus.

This history of Asmodeus has by no means a good effect.-Dunster.

The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life
Thereby regain'd, but sat devising death

To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant', but only used

For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality. So little knows

Any, but God alone, to value right

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The good before him; but perverts best things

To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.

Beneath him with new wonder now he views,
To all delight of human sense exposed,

A heaven on earth: for blissful Paradise

In narrow room, Nature's whole wealth, yea, more,

Of God the garden was ", by him in the east
Of Eden planted; Eden stretch'd her line
From Auran eastward to the royal towers
Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings;
Or where the sons of Eden long before
Dwelt in Telassar. In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordain'd:
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to Life,

Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden" went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins

k The middle tree and highest.

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"The tree of life also in the midst of the garden," Gen. ii. 9. "In the midst" is a Hebrew phrase, expressing not only the local situation of this enlivening tree, but denoting its excellency, as being the most considerable, the tallest, goodliest, and most lovely tree in that beauteous garden planted by God himself. See Rev. ii. 7.-HUME.

Of that life-giving plant.

He should have taken occasion, from thence, to reflect duly on life and immortality, and thereby to have put himself in a condition to regain true life and a happy immortality. -NEWTON.

m Of God the garden was.

So the sacred text, Gen. ii. 8. "And the Lord God planted a garden castward in Eden," that is, eastward of the place where Moses wrote his history, though Milton says, "in the east of Eden;" and then we have, in a few lines, our author's topography of Eden.-NEWTON.

n Southward through Eden.

This is, most probably, the river formed by the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, which flows southward, and must needs be a river large by the joining of two such mighty rivers. Upon this river it is supposed, by the best commentators, that the terrestrial Paradise was situated. Milton calls this river Tigris in b. ix. 71.-NEWTON.

Of porous earth with kindly thirst up drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Water'd the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears;
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,

How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy errour under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise; which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain;
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade

Imbrown'd the noontide bowers. Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view:

Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balmı;
Others, whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed;
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant: meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirrour holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves; while universal Pan o,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring. Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers,

• While universal Pan.

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While universal Nature, linked with the graceful Seasons, danced a perpetual round, and throughout the earth, yet unpolluted, led eternal spring. All the poets favour the opinion of the world's creation in the spring. See Virgil, Georg. ii. 338, and Ovid, Met. 107. That the Graces were taken for the beautiful Seasons, in which all things seem to dance and smile with an universal joy, is plain from Horace, Od. iv. vii. 1. &c. Homer joins both the Graces and Hours hand in hand with Harmony, Youth, and Venus, m his Hymn to Apollo.-HUME.

And