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BOOK II.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

IN tracing the progress of this poem by deliberate and minute steps, our wonder and admiration increase. The inexhaustible invention continues to grow upon us; each page, each line, is pregnant with something new, picturesque, and great: the condensity of the matter is without any parallel: the imagination often contained in a single passage is more than equal to all that secondary poets have produced: the fable of the voyage through Chaos is alone a sublime poem. Milton's descriptions of materiality have always touches of the spiritual, the lofty, and the empyreal.

Milton has too much condensation to be fluent: a line or two often conveys a world of images and ideas: he expatiates over all time, all space, all possibilities: he unites earth with heaven, with hell, with all intermediate existences, animate and inanimate; and his illustrations are drawn from all learning, historical, natural, and speculative. In him, almost always, "more is meant than meets the ear." An image, an epithet, conveys a rich picture.

What is the subject of observation may be told without genius; but the wonder and the greatness lie in invention, if the invention be noble, and according to the principles of possibility.

Who could have conceived, or, if conceived, who could have expressed,--the voyage of Satan through Chaos, but Milton? Who could have invented so many distinct and grand obstacles in his way? and all picturesque, all poetical, and all the topics of intellectual meditation and reflection, or of spiritual sentiment?

All the faculties of the mind are exercised, stretched, and elevated at once by every page of "Paradise Lost."

Invention is the first and most indispensable essential of true poetry; but not the only one: the invention must have certain high, moral, sound, wise qualities; and, in addition to these, such as are picturesque or spiritual. It is easy to invent what is improbable or unnatural. Nothing will do which cannot command our belief.

Inventions either of character, imagery, or sentiment, taken separately in small fragments, may still have force and merit: but when they form an integral and appropriate part of a long whole, how infinitely their power, depth, and bearings are increased!

In poetry, we must consider both the original conceptions and the illustrations: each derives interest and strength from the other: a mere copy of an image drawn from nature may have some beauty; but the invention and the essential poetry lie in their complex use, when applied as an embodiment to something intellectual. Imagery is almost always so used by Milton; and so it was used by Homer and Virgil. This gives a new light to the mind of the reader, and creates combinations which perhaps did not before exist: the poet thus spiritualises matter, and materialises spirit. When what is presented is merely such scenery of nature as the painter can give by lines and colours, it falls far short of the poet's power and charm. Poetry, purely descriptive, is not of the first order.

There are lines in the "Paradise Lost," which would seem to be mere abstract opinions; but they are not so; inset as they are into the course of a sublime, densewove narrative, they derive colour and character from the position which they occupy. So placed, their plainness is their strength and their spell: ornamented language would have weakened them. Of all styles, the uniformly florid is the most fatiguing.

That Milton could bring so much learning, as well as so much imaginative invention, to bear on every part of his infinitely-extended, yet thick-compacted fable, is truly miraculous. Were the learning superficial and loosely applied, the

wonder would not be great, or not nearly so great; but it is always profound, solid, conscientious; and in its combinations original.

Bishop Atterbury has said, in opposition to the general opinion, that the allegory of Sin and Death is one of the finest inventions of the poem. I agree with him most sincerely. The portress of the gates of hell sits there in a character, and with a tremendous figure and attributes, which no imagination less gigantic than Milton's could have drawn. Is it to be objected that Sin and Death are imaginary persons, when all the persons of the poem, except Adam and Eve, are imaginary? Realities, in the strict sense, do not make the most essential parts of poetry.

ARGUMENT.

THE Consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battel be to be hazarded for the recovery of heaven: some advise it, others dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferiour, to themselves, about this time to be created: their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search: Satan their chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways, and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell gates; finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at length they are opened, and discover to him the great gulf between hell and heaven; with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought.

HIGH on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand
Showers on her kings Barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised

To that bad eminence: and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high; insatiate to pursue

Vain war with heaven, and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus display'd:-

Powers and Dominions, Deities of heaven,
For since no deep within her gulf can hold

High on a throne.

See Spenser, Faery Queen, 1. iv. 8:

High above all a cloth of state was spred,
And a rich throne, as bright as sunny day,
On which there sate, &c.

b Or where the gorgeous east.

See Spenser, Faery Queen, III. iv. 23 :

STILLINGFLEET.

It did passe

The wealth of the East, and pomp of Persian kings.-NEWTON.

Showers on her kings Barbaric pearl and gold.

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It was the eastern ceremony, at the coronation of their kings, to powder them with gold-dust and seed-pearl. In the "Life of Timur-bec, or Tamerlane," written by a Persian contemporary author, are the following words, as translated by Mons. Petit de la Croix, in the account there given of his coronation, b. II. c. i. :—“Les princes du sang royal et les émirs répandirent à pleines mains," with liberal hand, sur sa tête quantité d'or et de pierreries selon la coutume."-WARBURTON.

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See Virgil, Æn. ii. 504 :--

Barbarico postes auro spoliisque superbi.

Immortal vigor, though oppress'd and fallen,
I give not heaven for lost; from this descent
Celestial virtues rising, will appear

More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate.

Me though just right and the fix'd laws of heaven
Did first create your leader; next free choice,
With what besides, in council or in fight,
Hath been achieved of merit; yet this loss,
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more
Establish'd in a safe unenvied throne,

Yielded with full consent. The happier state
In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw
Envy from each inferiour; but who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share
Of endless pain? Where there is then no good
For which to strive, no strife can grow up there
From faction; for none sure will claim in hell
Precedence; none, whose portion is so small
Of present pain, that with ambitious mind
Will covet more. With this advantage then
To union, and firm faith, and firm accord,
More than can be in heaven, we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old;
Surer to prosper than prosperity

Could have assured us and by what best way,
Whether of open war or covert guile,

We now debate. Who can advise, may speak.

He ceased; and next him Moloch, sceptred king,
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair:
His trust was with the Eternal to be deem'd
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Cared not to be at all: with that care lost
Went all his fear of God, or hell, or worse,
He reck'd not; and these words thereafter spake :-
My sentence is for open war: of wiles,

More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait
The signal to ascend, sit lingering here

d None, whose portion.

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The sense and syntax are plain enough. There is no one, whose portion of present pain is so small, that he will be ambitious to covet more.

• By what best way.

See Spenser, F. Q. vi. vi. 21.-TODD.

Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling place
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame,
The prison of his tyranny who reigns
By our delay? no; let us rather choose,
Arm'd with hell flames and fury, all at once

O'er heaven's high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms

Against the Torturer; when to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine he shall hear
Infernal thunder; and for lightning see
Black fire and horrour shot with equal rage
Among his angels; and his throne itself

Mix'd with Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
His own invented torments. But perhaps
The way seems difficult and steep, to scale
With upright wing against a higher foe.
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench
Of that forgetful lake benumm not still,
That in our proper
motion we ascend
Up to our native seat: descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce Foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursued us through the deep,
With what compulsion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? the ascent is easy then :-
The event is fear'd; should we again provoke
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find
To our destruction; if there be in hell

Fear to be worse destroy'd; what can be worse

Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemn'd
In this abhorred deep to utter woe;

Where pain of unextinguishable fire
Must exercise us without hope of end,
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge
Inexorably, and the torturing hour

f

Calls us to penance? more destroy'd than thus,
We should be quite abolish'd, and expire.
What fear we then? what doubt we to incense
His utmost ire? which, to the highth enraged,
Will either quite consume us, and reduce
To nothing this essential; happier far
Than miserable to have eternal being;—
Or if our substance be indeed divine,
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst
On this side nothing: and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,

The torturing hour.

Gray has borrowed these words at the opening of his "Hymn to Adversity."

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Though inaccessible, his fatal thrones:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.

He ended frowning", and his look denounced
Desperate revenge and battel dangerous

To less than gods. On the other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane:
A fairer person lost not heaven; he seem'd
For dignity composed and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropp'd manna, and could make the worse appeari
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels; for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began:-

I should be much for open war, O Peers,
As not behind in hate, if what was urged,
Main reason to persuade immediate war,

Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast
Ominous conjecture on the whole success:
When he, who most excels in fact of arms,
In what he counsels and in what excels
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair
And utter dissolution, as the scope

Of all his aim, after some dire revenge.

First, what revenge? the towers of heaven are fill'd
With armed watch, that render all access
Impregnable; oft on the bordering deep
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing
Scout far and wide into the realm of night,
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way
By force, and at our heels all hell should rise
With blackest insurrection, to confound
Heaven's purest light; yet our great Enemy
All incorruptible would on his throne
Sit unpolluted', and the ethereal mould
Incapable of stain would soon expel

Fatal throne.

That is, upheld by fate, as he expresses it, b. i. 133.-NEWTON.

h He ended frowning.

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Nobody of any taste or understanding will deny the beauty of the following paragraph; in the whole of which there is not one metaphorical or figurative word. In what then does the beauty of it consist? In the justness of the thought, in the propriety of the expression, in the art of the composition, and in the variety of the versification. MONBODDO.

And could make the worse appear.

Word for word from the known profession of the ancient sophists, Tòv XóYOV TÒV ἥττω κρείττω ποεῖν.-BENTLEY.

Sit unpolluted.

3 Would on his throne

This is a reply to that part of Moloch's speech where he had threatened to mix the throne itself of God with infernal sulphur and strange fire.-NEWTON

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