All that of me can die; yet that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His
prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul

For ever with corruption there to dwell:

But I shall rise victorious, and subdue

My vanquisher, spoil'd of his vaunted spoil;

Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop,
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarm'd.

I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead hell captive, maugre hell, and show

grave:

The powers of darkness bound. Thou, at the sight
Pleased, out of heaven shalt look down and smile;
While, by thee raised, I ruin all my foes,
Death last, and with his carcase glut the
Then, with the multitude of my redeem'd,
Shall enter heaven long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured
And reconcilement: wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire.

His words here ended, but his meek aspect
Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love
To mortal men, above which only shone
Filial obedience: as a sacrifice

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Glad to be offer'd, he attends the will
Of his great Father. Admiration seized

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All heaven, what this might mean and whither tend,
Wondering; but soon the Almighty thus replied:

O thou, in heaven and earth the only peace
Found out for mankind under wrath, O thou,
My sole complacence! well thou know'st how dear
To me are all my works; nor man the least,
Though last created; that for him I spare
Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save,
By losing thee a while, the whole race lost.

a With corruption there to dwell.

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Psalm. xvi. 10. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither suffer thine Holy One to see corruption;" applied to our Saviour's resurrection by St. Peter, Acts ii. 20, 21.NEWTON.

r His words here ended.

What a charming and lovely picture has Milton given us of God the Son, considered as our Saviour and Redeemer!—not in the least inferior in its way to that grander one in the sixth book, where he describes him clothed with majesty and terror, taking vengeance of his enemies. Before he represents him speaking, he makes "divine compassion, love without end, and grace without measure, visibly to appear in his face," v. 140; and, carrying on the same amiable picture, makes him end it with a countenance "breathing immortal love to mortal men." Nothing could be better contrived to leave a deep impression upon the reader's mind; and I believe one may venture to assert, that no art or words could lift the imagination to a stronger idea of a good and benevolent being. The mute eloquence which our author has so prettily expressed in his "silent, yet spake," is with no less beauty described by Tasso, at the end of Armida's speech to Godfrey, c. iv. st. 65.

Ciò detto tace, e la risposta attende

Con atto, ch' en silentio hà voce, e preghi.--THYER.

Thou therefore, whom thou only canst redeem,
Their nature also to thy nature join;
And be thyself man among men on earth,
Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed,
By wondrous birth: be thou in Adam's room
The head of all mankind, though Adam's son.
As in him perish all men, so in thee,

As from a second root, shall be restored,
As many as are restored; without thee none.
His crime makes guilty all his sons; thy merit
Imputed shall absolve them, who renounce
Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds,
And live in thee transplanted, and from thee
Receive new life. So man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die;
And dying rise, and rising with him raise

His brethren, ransom'd with his own dear life.
So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate
Giving to death, and dying to redeem ;
So dearly to redeem what hellish hate

So easily destroy'd; and still destroys

In those who, when they may, accept not grace.

Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume
Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own,

Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss
Equal to God, and equally enjoying

God-like fruition, quitted all to save

A world from utter loss; and hast been found

By merit more than birthright Son of God:
Found worthiest to be so by being good,

Far more than great or high. Because in thee
Love hath abounded more than glory abounds;
Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt
With thee thy manhood also to this throne;
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign
Both God and Man, Son both of God and Man,
Anointed universal King. All power

I give thee; reign for ever, and assume
Thy merits; under thee, as head supreme,t

Thrones, princedoms, powers, dominions, I reduce:
All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide

In heaven, or earth, or under earth in hell.
When thou attended gloriously from heaven
Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send

• As in him, &c.

See 1 Cor. xv. 22.-NEWTON.

t Under thee, as head supreme.

Here the speech begins to swell into a considerable degree of sublimity, and that of the purest and most perfect kind, in no way inconsistent with our most reverent ideas of the great Being who is the speaker, as he is portrayed to us in the Holy Scriptures -DUNSTER.

The summoning archangels to proclaim
Thy dread tribunal: forthwith from all winds
The living, and forthwith the cited dead
Of all past ages, to the general doom

Shall hasten such a peal shall rouse their sleep.
Then, all thy saints assembled, thou shalt judge
Bad men and angels; they arraign'd shall sink
Beneath thy sentence: hell, her numbers full,
Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile
The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And after all their tribulations long

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing and fair truth:
Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay by,
For regal sceptre then no more shall need;
God shall be all in all. But, all ye gods,
Adore him, who to compass all this dies
Adore the Son, and honour him as me.

es;

No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all
The multitude of angels with a shout,"
Loud as from numbers without number, sweet

As from blest voices, uttering joy; heaven rung

With jubilee, and loud hosannas fill'd

The eternal regions. Lowly reverent

Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground

With solemn adoration down they cast
Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold;
Immortal amarant, a flower which onee

In paradise fast by the tree of life

grows,

Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence
To heaven removed, where first it
grew, there
And flowers aloft shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream;
With these, that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams;

"With a shout.

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At this expression of angelic praise, it may be proper to give Addison's remarks unbroken upon the amazing colloquy which they had heard. The critic commences at ver. 56, and ends with ver. 415.

The survey of the whole creation, v. 56, and of everything that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience; and as much above that in which Virgil has drawn Jupiter, as the Christian idea of the Supreme Being is more rational and sublime than that of the heathens. The particular objects on which he is described to have cast his eye are represented in the most beautiful and lively manner.

Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed spirits, and in the Divine Person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and complacency.

I need not point out the beauty of the circumstance, wherein the whole host of angels are represented as standing mute; nor show how proper the occasion was to produce such a silence in heaven. The close of this divine colloquy, and the hymn of angels which follows upon it, are wonderfully beautiful and poetical.-ADDISON.

Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright
Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone,
Impurpled with celestial roses smiled.

Then crown'd again their golden harps they took,
Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side
Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part: such concord is in heaven.

Thee, Father, first they sung, Omnipotent,
Immutable, Immortal, Infinite,

Eternal King; thee, Authour of all being,
Fountain of light, thyself invisible

Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt'st
Throned inaccessible; but when thou shadest
The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud
Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine,
Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,
Yet dazzle heaven; that brightest seraphim
Approach not; but with both wings veil their eyes.
Thee next they sang of all creation first,
Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,

In whose conspicuous countenance without cloud
Made visible the Almighty Father shines,
Whom else no creature can behold: on thee
Impress'd the effulgence of his glory abides;
Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests.
He heaven of heavens and all the powers therein
By thee created, and by thee threw down
The aspiring dominations: thou that day
Thy Father's dreadful thunder didst not spare,
Nor stop thy flaming chariot-wheels that shook
Heaven's everlasting frame; while o'er the necks
Thou drovest of warring angels, disarray'd.
Back from pursuit thy powers with loud acclaim
Thee only extoll'd, Son of thy Father's might,
To execute fierce vengeance on his foes;
Not so on man; him, through their malice fallen,
Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not doom
So strictly; but much more to pity incline.
No sooner did thy dear and only Son
Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail man
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined;
He, to appease thy wrath, and end the strife
Of mercy and justice in thy face discern'd,
Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat

▾ Dark with excessive bright.

Bray has imitated this, speaking of Milton,

Blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

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Second to thee, offer'd himself to die
For man's offence. O unexampled love,
Love no where to be found, less than Divine!
Hail, Son of God! Saviour of men! Thy name
Shall be the copious matter of my song
Henceforth; and never shall my harp thy praise
Forget, nor from thy Father's praise disjoin.

Thus they in heaven, above the starry sphere,
Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent.
Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe

Of this round world, whose first convex divides,
The luminous inferiour orbs, inclosed
From Chaos and the inroad of Darkness old;
Satan alighted walks; a globe far off

W

It seem'd, now seems a boundless continent,
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless, exposed, and ever-threatening storms
Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky;
Save on that side, which from the wall of heaven,
Though distant far, some small reflection gains
Of glimmering air, less vex'd with tempest loud:
Here walk'd the fiend at large in spacious field.
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey

On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs

To gorge the flesh of lambs, or yeanling kids

Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;

But in his way lights on the barren plains

Of Sericana, where Chineses drive

With sails and wind their cany waggons light:

So on this windy sea of land the fiend

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Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble; as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was wrought into a world, and that shapeless unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild.-ADDISON.

As when a vulture.

This simile is very apposite and lively, and corresponds exactly in all the particulars. Satan coming from hell to earth, in order to destroy mankind, but lighting first on the bare convex of the world's outermost orb, "a sea of land," as the poet calls it, is very fitly compared to a vulture flying in quest of his prey, tender lambs or kids newyeaned, from the barren rocks to the more fruitful hills and streams of India; but lighting in his way on the plains of Sericana, which were in a manner "a sea of land" too; the country being so smooth and open, that carriages were driven (as travellers report) with sails and wind. Imaus is a celebrated mountain in Asia.-NEWTON.

y Chineses drive

With sails and wind.

Gray has caught the tone of this:

The dusky people drive before the gales.