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At length from us may find, Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife
There went a fame in heaven', that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant

A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the sons of heaven.
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption; thither or elsewhere:
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature: peace is despair'd;
For who can think submission? war then, war,
Open or understood, must be resolved.

He spake; and, to confirm his words, outflew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell: highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven.

There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top

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Belch'd fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire
Shone with a glossy scurf; undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore,

The work of sulphur. Thither, wing'd with speed,

A numerous brigad hasten'd; as when bands

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Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe arm'd,
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field,

Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on;
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent: admiring more

The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,

* There went a fame in heaven.

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There is something wonderfully beautiful, and very apt to affect the reader's imagination, in this ancient prophecy or report in heaven concerning the creation of man. Nothing could show more the dignity of the species than this tradition, which ran of them before their existence: they are represented to have been the talk of heaven before they were created. Virgil, in compliment to the Roman commonwealth, makes the heroes of it appear in their state of pre-existence; but Milton does a far greater honour to mankind in general, as he gives us a glimpse of them even before they are in being.-ADDISON.

"The sudden blaze

Far round illumined hell.

Another true Miltonic picture.

* Mammon led them on.

This name is Syriac, and signifies riches. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," Matth. vi. 24. Mammon is by some supposed to be the God of riches, and is accordingly personified by Milton, and had been before by Spenser; whose description of Mammon and his cave, Milton seems to have had his eye upon in several places.-NEWION.

Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd
In vision beatific: by him first
Men also, and by his suggestion taught,
Ransack'd the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Open'd into the hill a spacious wound,
And digg'd out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane. And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings,
Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength, and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate; and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toil
And hands innumerable scarce perform".
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore,

Severing each kind, and scumm'd the bullion dross :
A third as soon had form'd within the ground

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A various mould, and from the boiling cells

By strange conveyance fill'd each hollow nook:
As in an organ', from one blast of wind,

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose, like an exhalation", with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet;
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid

With golden architrave: nor did there want
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures graven;
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon,
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equal'd in all their glories, to inshrine
Belus or Serapis, their gods; or seat

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile

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There were 360,000 men employed for near twenty years upon one of the Pyramids, according to Diodorus Siculus, lib. i., and Pliny, lib. xxxvi. 12.-NEWTON.

As in an organ.

This simile is as exact as it is new: and we may observe, that Milton frequently fetches his images from music, more than any other English poet; as he was very fond of it, and was himself a performer upon the organ and other instruments.-NEWTON.

"Rose, like an exhalation.

Peck supposes that this hint is taken from some of the moving scenes and machines invented by Inigo Jones, for Charles the First's masques.

Stood fix'd her stately highth: and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover wide
Within her ample spaces o'er the smooth
And level pavement: from the arched roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring enter'd, and the work some praise,
And some the architect: his hand was known
In heaven by many a tower'd structure high,
Where sceptred angels held their residence,
And sat as princes; whom the supreme King
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,
Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright.
Nor was his name unheard or unadored
In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell
From heaven' they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropp'd from the zenith like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the Egean isle; thus they relate,
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout
Fell long before; nor aught avail'd him now

To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he 'scape

By all his engines; but was headlong sent

With his industrious crew to build in hell.

Meanwhile the winged heralds, by command

Of sovran power, with awful ceremony

And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim
A solemn council forthwith to be held

At Pandæmonium, the high capital

Of Satan and his peers: their summons call'd
From every band and squared regiment

By place or choice the worthiest; they anon

With hundreds and with thousands trooping came
Attended: all access was throng'd; the gates
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall,
(Though like a cover'd field, where champions bold
Wont ride in arm'd, and at the soldan's chair
Defied the best of Panim chivalry

And how he fell

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From heaven, &c.

Alluding to Homer, Il. i. 590, &c. It is worth observing how Milton lengthens out the time of Vulcan's fall. He not only says with Homer, that it was all day long; but we are led through the parts of the day, from morn to noon, from noon to evening, and this a summer's day. See also Odyss. vii. 288.-NEWTON,

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580.

To mortal combat, or career with lance')
Thick swarm'd, both on the ground and in the air,
Brush'd with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees'
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters: they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New-rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs: so thick the aery crowd
Swarm'd and were straiten'd; till, the signal given,
Behold a wonder! they, but now who seem'd
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons,

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that Pygmëan race,
Beyond the Indian mount or faery elves, Chivalry
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side,
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,

Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon

To mortal combat, or career with lance.

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Milton has carefully distinguished the two different methods of combat in the champ clos.-CALLANDER.

As bees.

An imitation of Homer, who compares the Grecians crowding to a swarm of bees, Il. ii. 87. There are such similes also in Virg. Æn. i. 430, vi. 707. But Milton carries the similitude farther than either of his great masters; and mentions the bees "conferring their state affairs," as he is going to give an account of the consultations of the devils.-NEWTON.

If we look into the conduct of Homer, Virgil, and Milton; as the great fable is the soul of each poem, so, to give their works an agreeable variety, their episodes are as so many short fables, and their similes so many short episodes; to which you may add, if you please, that their metaphors are so many short similes. If the reader considers the comparisons in the first book of Milton,-of the sun in an eclipse,-of the sleeping leviathan,-of the bees swarming about their hive,-of the fairy dance,in the view wherein I have here placed them, he will easily discover the great beauties that are in each of those passages.-ADDISON.

They among fresh dews and flowers.

It is not necessary to enlarge upon the poetry of this beautiful passage.

b Now less than smallest dwarfs.

As soon as the infernal palace is finished, we are told, the multitude and rabble of spirits immediately shrunk themselves into a small compass, that there might be room for such a numberless assembly in this capacious hall: but it is the poet's refinement upon this thought which I most admire, and which is indeed very noble in itself; for he tells us, that notwithstanding the vulgar, among the fallen spirits, contracted their forms, those of the first rank and dignity still preserved their natural dimensions.-ADDISON. • Whose midnight revels.

Olaus Magnus, treating of the night-dances of the fairies and ghosts, relates that travellers in the night, and such as watch the flocks and herds, are wont to be compassed about with many strange apparitions of this kind. See b. 111. ch. x. Engl. ed. fol. 1658.-ToDr.

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From Apollonius Rhodius, one of his favourite authors, Argonaut. iv. 1479.-TODD.

Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth'

Wheels her pale course they, on their mirth and dance
Intents, with jocund music charm his ear:

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms

Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large,
Though without number still, amidst the hall
Of that infernal court. But far within,
And in their own dimensions, like themselves,
The great seraphic lords and cherubim
In close recess and secret conclave sat";
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats,
Frequent and full.
And summons read,

After short silence then,
the great consult began.

* Sits arbitress.

Witness, spectatress. So Horace, Epod. v. 49:

O, rebus meis

Non infideles arbitræ

Nox et Diana-HEYLIN.

Nearer to the earth.

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This is said in allusion to the superstitious notion of witches and faeries having great power over the moon. Virg. Eclog. viii. 69. :—

Carmina vel cœlo possunt deducere lunam.-NEWTON.

Intent.

They, on their mirth and dance

One of those picturesque pastoral passages with which Milton's early poetry so abounds.

Secret conclave sat

An evident allusion to the conclaves of the cardinals on the death of a pope.

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