Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed

A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven

Deliberation sat and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin, sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night
Or summer's noontide air.

We must hate, he reasoned, and seek revenge. Nor will occasion want. There was prophecy in Heaven of a new world, and a new race called Man. We might look thitherward; perhaps ruin that new creation, so interrupt God's joy and upraise ours. Thus counselled Belial, as Satan first devised. All assent, and Satan speaks his approval; but he asks, "Who shall explore alone the infinite abyss in search of Man?" All are mute. Satan, again speaking, accepts for himself the peril, bids them search for ease, and watch while he is absent. Then the council rose.

Their rising all at once was as the sound

Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone; and as a god
Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven.

Then follows a passage, one of many in which Milton condemns the brutishness of war:

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief:
As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds
Ascending, while the north-wind sleeps, o'erspread
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element
Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower,
If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,
The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.
O shame to men! Devil with devil damned
Firm concord holds; men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope

Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars

Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:

As if (which might induce us to accord)

Man had not hellish foes enow besides,

That day and night for his destruction wait!

Again Satan is painted as he quits the council. Its result is proclaimed. The fallen angels then seek recreation, each

-where he likeliest may find

Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain The irksome hours, till his great Chief returns.

Races, and mimic war and rivalries of strength, occupied some.

Others, more mild,

Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall

By doom of battle, and complain that Fate
Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
Their song was partial; but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing :)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate —
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute—
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame :
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!-
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm the obduréd breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.

Milton shows here how little regard he had for the vain disputations in theology that clouded men's minds and obscured their sense of the love of God, when he set the devils arguing

Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate—
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute—
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.

When he resolved to shape into a grand poem the incident that lay at the heart of the religion of his country, Milton designed so to bring it home to men's hearts that they should escape from the confusions of debate upon predestination, and election, and free will that were in those days shaking faith in a God who seemed to be a God of Wrath, and should feel in God their Father and their Friend.

Some of the fallen angels explored Hell, and following them the poet describes what they found. Meanwhile through Hell Satan was flying to Hell's gatesAt last appear

Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat

On either side a formidable shape.

The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast-a serpent armed
With mortal sting. About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore;
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches, while the labouring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,

If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either-black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,

And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

Satan faced Death, who claimed to be his king. A conflict was impending, when Sin recognised in Satan the Father of Death. The portress of Hellgate recalls how she sprang from the head of Satan when he conspired in Heaven against God; how she was made sole opener of the Gates of Hell, and became by Satan the Mother of Death.1

To Sin and Death Satan made known his purpose, friendly to them. He will return and bring them to the place he goes to find: there they shall be filled with prey.

Sin opened wide the gates she could not shut. Beyond was Chaos, and the poet follows Satan's flight across the realm of Chaos, whose high arbiter was Chance. Through the confused roar he reached the throne of Chaos and his consort Night; asked for directions to the new world taken from them, on the confines of Light. He goes to restore it to their dominion, From Chaos he heard of that other world

Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain

To that side heaven from which your legions fell;
If that way be your walk, you have not far;
So much the nearer danger: go, and speed:
Havoc, and spoil, and ruin are my gain.

Satan proceeds with difficulty where afterwards will be a bridge and easy passage. A gleam of light appears, and Satan sees

Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide
In circuit, undetermined square or round,
With opal towers and battlements adorned
Of living sapphire, once his native seat;
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent world, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

The Second Bock ends here. Milton, following the track of Satan across Chaos, has passed from Hell through darkness up to light. He leaves Satan ready to set foot on the new world, but

1 When Addison objected to personifications of this kind in "Paradise Lost " he must have been ignorant or forgetful of the meaning of the personifications which constitute the main part of the Greek mythology. There was not more personification in Sin springing from the head of Satan than in Athene springing from the head of Zeus. What is Moloch but Hate personified, or Belial but Lust of Evil Pleasures, or Mammon but Lust of Gain? And what were the gods and goddesses of Homer but personifications used with the same subtle skill that Milton uses when he figures Sin and Death, who after the Fall are to find their way to earth?

does not allow his foot to touch it before he has changed the scene to Heaven, and taken care, as he does throughout the poem, to avoid the faintest suggestion of a doubtful conflict. The All-seeing God looks down upon the danger that approaches Man, who being free to choose, as he must be, will choose amiss, and thereby draw down upon himself the fullest measure of God's love and mercy. Before the Tempter has set foot upon the outer border of the world he sought, this has to be distinctly shown. Therefore, the Third Book opens in Heaven, with an invocation of its Holy Light, in which the poet prays that, although blind to all that earth can show, he may see by the inward spiritual light.

Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproachéd light Dwelt from eternity-dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, Before the heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre

I sung of Chaos and eternal Night,

Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend,
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn
So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt,
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill,
Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath,

That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,

Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget
Those other two equalled with me in fate,
So were I equalled with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old:
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

So much the rather thou, Celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

God, from his throne in Heaven, with the Son at his right hand, looks down upon Adam and Eve, and on the flight of Satan towards them. He speaks, foreseeing, to the Son, declares that Man shall fall, by his own fault, being made free.

Whose fault?

Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
Such I created all the Ethereal Powers

And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed;
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
Not free, what proof could they have given sincer
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,
Where only what they needs must do appeared,
Not what they would? What praise could they receive,
What pleasure I, from such obedience paid,
When Will and Reason (Reason also is Choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served Necessity,

Not Me? They, therefore, as to right belonged,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Their Maker, or their making, or their fate,
As if Predestination overruled

Their will, disposed by absolute decree

Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I.

But Man shall find grace, denied to those who fell self-tempted. The Son dwells on the grace of God to Man, and asks, Shall Satan attain his end and bring to naught God's goodness? The Creator replies, Man shall be upheld by the grace of God. The light of conscience shall be given him. They only who neglect and scorn shall fail to obtain mercy. But man must die, or justice; unless some able as willing to pay rigid satisfaction will give death for death. None dares draw on his head the forfeiture. The Son of God then speaks in fulness of Divine Love, and offers for man life for life. For he shall rise victorious and subdue his vanquisher. God accepts the sacrifice, and ordains the Redemption of the race of man through Christ, who shall reign in Heaven, and to whom every knee shall bow, who shall appear to judge the quick and the dead. There rises a shout of assent from the host of the angels; they bow with solemn adoration; they take their harps, and the scene in Heaven closes with their sacred song of love.

Not until he has thus shown the Heaven above the cloud, the Divine Love unassailable and ruling all, does Milton allow Satan to set foot upon the outer sphere of the world, as a vulture seeking prey. a vulture seeking prey. He walks up and down alone upon this windy sea of land, hereafter to be the Limbo of Vanities or Paradise of Fools. He descries the gate of Heaven, and from its lower stair looks down upon the world. Milton has in his mind throughout "Paradise

Lost" a cosmical geography, shaped partly from legend, partly from Ptolemy's system of the universe, which lent itself more readily than the new views of Copernicus to the necessity of imagining the movement of his angels and evil spirits through the spaces of the Universe. Milton imagined, following the old legend, Heaven above, Hell far below, and between them the great realın of Chaos. Out of the gate of Heaven the rebellious angels were cast down through Chaos, and fell through Hell-mouth into Hell. From the gate of Heaven hangs by its golden chain the new Creation, formed into harmony from the confused elements that with discordant noise whirl through the darkness of Chaos. The new Creation is not our Earth only, but the world of which our Earth, according to the astronomy of Ptolemy, was the fixed centre. Around the small sphere of the earth were the greater imagined spheres within which its seven attendant planets moved, and beyond those more. Outside all was the Empyrean, occupied by angels and spirits of the purer fire, with which all spiritual life was associated. Some called that the heaven of Contemplation, and, like Albertus Magnus, placed beyond it a twelfth heaven of the Trinity. Milton takes as the outer sphere of the world, the tenth heaven. On this Satan first set his foot, beside the stairs that lead down from the gate of the Empyrean. This was called in the old Astronomy the Primum Mobile, and was supposed to have a diurnal motion from east to west, with a return from west to east every twenty-four hours. Within that sphere was another, the ninth heaven, which had a double motion, one that of the Primum Mobile, the other a motion of its own upon its poles from west to east, completing a revolution in 49,000 years, called by some the great year of Plato. was called the Crystalline sphere, some called it the Watery sphere, because there was reference in Scripture to "waters above the firmament;" and the next imagined sphere, the eighth, was called the Firmament. In this eighth Heaven, or sphere, the fixed stars were supposed to be placed, having no other motion than the triple motion of the firmament itself. Then followed one within another, seven more spheres enveloping the earth, and these were the seven heavens of the planets. Outermost and nearest to the firmament was the seventh heaven, that of Saturn, the sixth was of Jupiter, the fifth of Mars, fourth of the Sun, third of Venus, second of Mercury, first of the Moon, and the centre of all these spheres was the Earth. The sphere, then, of the new Creation supposed to be hanging by the gate of Heaven is the sphere of the Primum Mobile, with all its inner heavens through which Satan standing on the stairs by the gate of the Empyrean looks down into the new Creation, at the heart of which is the Earth with Paradise upon it. Of all that he looks down upon, the fourth planet, the Sun, is the object that most strongly draws his sight, and he flies down to that. Standing upon the sun, he can look thence undazzled. In the sun is the Archangel Uriel, whose name means "God is my Light," and who was conceived in the old mythical hierarchies as the Angel of Light. Him Satan accosts with

This

His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The hell within him; for within him Hell
He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place. Now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue!
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven and the full-blazing Sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began:-
"O thou that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world-at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminished heads-to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,

66

That bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,

Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King!
Ah, wherefore? He deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks?
How due! yet all his good proved ill in me,
And wrought but malice. Lifted up so high,
I 'sdained subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude,
So burdensome, still paying, still to owe;
Forgetful what from him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged-what burden then?
Oh, had his powerful destiny ordained
Me some inferior angel, I had stood

Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? Some other power
As great might have aspired, and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part. But other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within

Or from without to all temptations armed!

Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand? Thou hadst. Whom hast thou then, or what, to accuse,

But Heaven's free love dealt equally to all?

Be then his love accursed, since, love or hate,

To me alike it deals eternal woe.

Nay, cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven."

He gives up hope, fear, and remorse, as Man shall know. Uriel, looking down from the sun, saw the passions in the face of Satan, as such thoughts passed through him-

Saw him disfigured more than could befall
Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce
He marked, and sad demeanour, then alone,
As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen.

Satan draws near to Eden. Its beauty is described. He comes to the gate of Paradise, and bounds over the wall.

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 fields 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, Crossbarred 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, The middle tree, and highest there that grew, Sat like a cormorant.

The poet then describes more fully Paradise, with its Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge. Then Adam and Eve are described.

Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honour clad
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure-
Severe, but in truc filial freedom placed,
Whence true authority in men: though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him.

They sit by a fountain; the beasts play in peace about them. Satan speaks his envy, and his threat of Hell, excusing his cruelty by necessity, the tyrant's plea. He changes into beast forms, lion, tiger, that he may more closely view his prey. Adam speaks to Eve. He names the prohibition, and has full content. Eve, answering in love, describes her first creation, and her part in Adam's happiness. Then follows the devil's envy and plaint to himself. But he knows now the prohibition, and the foundation upon which to build the ruin of the happy pair. Then Satan turns from them towards the gate of Paradise, where Gabriel holds watch. Uriel descends from the Sun to warn Gabriel that one of the banished crew is lurking near. Gabriel replies; Uriel returns to the Sun. Then follows evening and night in Paradise; the discourse of Adam and Eve expresses perfect innocence, in spiritual accord with the peace and beauty of the scene and the harmonies of creation. They seek their bower, adore God in entering, and sleep in peace and love.

He

About them in Paradise there is the night watch of the angels under Gabriel. The heavenly guards traverse the garden in two bands. Ithuriel and Zephon, bidden to search for the evil spirit who has entered Paradise, find Satan squat like a toad at the ear of sleeping Eve, distempering her dreams. Touched by Ithuriel's spear he starts into his true shape, scorns his questioners, is boldly answered, and stands abashed before the shape of virtue. is brought before Gabriel, where the squadrons join after each has completed its circuit. He gives scornful and false answer to the question, Why has he broken bounds? Gabriel replies by asking, Why is it he alone who flees from pain? He answers sternly that he alone dared seek for all a better abode. Gabriel observes the double answer. He threatens; Satan defies? The angelic squadrons menace attack, and Satan is at bay. But now God sets the golden balance in Heaven. Satan sees that he is weighed and found weak to resist. He flies murmuring, and with him fly the shades of night.

So ends the Fourth Book of "Paradise Lost." The fifth opens with morning in Paradise. Adam awakens Eve, who is disturbed by the foul dream with which Satan has poisoned sleep. She tells the dream, in which she has been tempted by false adulation, and by vision of an angel who had become more angelic by tasting the forbidden fruit, which he invited Eve to share with him, and be a goddess. She tasted and was exalted to the clouds. Adam replies that this was but the work of fancy without reason. Evil may come and go in the mind if unapproved. She is cheered. He kisses away her tears, and they begin their day's work with praise to their Creator.

So all was cleared, and to the field they haste.
But first, from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the Sun-who, scarce uprisen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim,
Shot parallel to the Earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landskip all the east
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains—
Lowly they bowed, adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence

Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,
More tuneable than needed lute or harp

To add more sweetness: And they thus began :—
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty thine this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable! who sitt'st above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye Sons of Light,
Angels-for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing-ye in Heaven;
On Earth join, all ye creatures, to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of Stars, last in the train of Night,
If better thou belong not to the Dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou Sun, of this great World both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st,
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fall'st.
Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fliest,
With the fixed Stars, fixed in their orb that flies;
And ye five other wandering Fires, that move
In mystic dance, not without song, resound
His praise who out of Darkness called up Light.
Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth
Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix
And nourish all things, let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,