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, The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look 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 Then follows a passage, one of many in which Milton condemns the brutishness of war: Thus they their doubtful consultations dark Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming peace, 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 By doom of battle, and complain that Fate 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 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— 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, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape. The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, If shape it might be called, that shape had none And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head 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; 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 Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge, 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 That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, 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 And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed; Not Me? They, therefore, as to right belonged, Their will, disposed by absolute decree Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed 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 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, Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised 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 Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? 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 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, 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. Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse, To add more sweetness: And they thus began :— In these thy lowest works; yet these declare |