With terrors and with clamours compassed round
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed?
Thou art my father, thou my author, thou
My being gavest me; whom should I obey
But thee? whom follow? thou wilt bring me soon
To that new world of light and bliss, among
The gods who live at ease,1 where I shall reign
At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems
Thy daughter and thy darling, without end."
Thus saying, from her side the fatal key,
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took;
And towards the gate rolling her bestial train,
Forthwith the huge portcullis high up drew,
Which, but herself, not all the Stygian powers
Could once have moved; then in the key hole turns
The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease
Unfastens on a sudden open fly,

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut

Excelled her power; the gates wide open stood,
That with extended wings a bannered host

Under spread ensigns marching might pass through
With horse and chariots ranked in loose array;
So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth
Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.
Before their eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of nature, hold

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.

For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring

1 Sin here speaks according to the Epicurean notion of the life of the gods. See Lucret. i. 56, sq. Apul. de Deo Socratis.

2 All the ancient naturalists, philosophers, and poets, hold that, Chaos was the first principle of all things; and the poets particularly make Night a goddess, and represent Night, or darkness, and Chaos or confusion, as exercising uncontrolled dominion from the begin.

Their embryon atoms; they around the flag

Of each his faction, in their several clans,

Light armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow,
Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands

Of Barca or Cyrene's1 torrid soil,

Levied to side with warring winds, and poise?
Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere,
He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns: next him high arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave,3
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds;
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend

Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed
With noises loud and ruinous (to compare
Great things with small) than when Bellona storms,
With all her battering engines bent to raze
Some capital city; or less than if this frame
Of Heaven were falling, and these elements
In mutiny had from her axle torn

ning. Thus, the pseud-Orpheus, in the beginning of his hymn to Night, addresses her as the mother of the gods and men, and origin of all things.

So, also, Spenser, in imitation of the ancients, F. Q. b. 1, c. 5, st. 22 :-

"O thou most ancient grandmother of all,

More old than Jove," &c.

And our author's system of the universe is, in short, that the empyrean Heaven, and Chaos and darkness, were before the creationHeaven above, and Chaos beneath; and then, upon the rebellion of the angels, first Hell was formed out of Chaos "stretching far and wide beneath;" and afterwards "Heaven and Earth, another world hanging o'er the realm of Chaos, and won from his dominion." See ver. 1002, &c. and 978.-Newton.

1A city and province of Libya.

2 i. e. give weight or ballast to.

3 Lucret. v. 260. Omniparens, eadem rerum commune sepulchrum."-Thyer.

The stedfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans1
He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke
Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,
As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides

Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets
A vast vacuity: all unawares,

Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft: that fury stayed,
Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea,
Nor good dry land; 2 nigh foundered, on he fares
Treading the crude consistence, half on foot,
Half flying; behoves him now 3 both oar and sail.
As when a gryphon through the wilderness
With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold: so eagerly the fiend

4

O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies;
At length a universal hubbub wild

Of stunning sounds and voices all confused,
Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear
With loudest vehemence: thither he plies,
Undaunted, to meet there whatever power
Or spirit of the nethermost abyss
Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask
Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies

1 As the air and water are both fluids, the metaphors taken from the one are often applied to the other, and flying is compared to sailing, and sailing to flying.-Newton.

2 From Lucan, ix. 304.

3 i. e. he now need use.

4 Gryphons are fabulous creatures, in the upper part like an eagle, in the lower resembling a lion, and are said to guard gold mines. The Arimaspians were a one-eyed people of Scythia, who adorned their hair with gold, Lucan. iii. 280. Herodotus and other authors relate, that there were continual wars between the gryphons and Arimaspians about gold, the gryphons guarding it, and the Arimaspians taking it whenever they had opportunity. See Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 7, cap 2.-Newton.

Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread

Wide on the wasteful deep; with him enthroned
Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things,
The consort of his reign, and by them stood
Orcus and Ades,1 and the dreaded name
Of Demogorgon; 2 Rumour next and Chance,
And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.

To whom Satan turning boldly, thus: "Ye powers
And spirits of this nethermost abyss,

Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy,

With purpose to explore or to disturb

Orcus is generally by the poets taken for Pluto, as Ades for any dark place. These terms are of a very vague signification, and employed by the ancient poets accordingly. Milton has personized them, and put them in the court of Chaos.-Richardson.

2 There was a notion among the ancients of a certain deity, whose very name they supposed capable of producing the most terrible effects, and which they therefore dreaded to pronounce. This deity is mentioned as of great power in incantations. Thus Erictho is introduced, threatening the infernal powers for being too slow in their obedience, by Lucan, Phar. vi. 744 :

"Yet, am I yet, ye sullen fiends, obeyed?
Or must I call your master to my aid,

At whose dread name the trembling furies quake,
Hell stands abashed, and earth's foundations shake,
Who views the Gorgons with intrepid eyes,
And your inviolable flood defies?"-Rowe.

And, likewise, Tiresias, by Statius, Thebaid iv. 514. And Ismen threatens in the same strain in Tasso, Cant. xiii. st. 10:

"I have not yet forgot for want of use,
What dreadful terms belong this sacred seat,
My tongue (if still your stubborn hearts refuse)
That so much dreaded name can well repeat,
Which heard great Dis cannot himself excuse,
But hither run from his eternal seat."-Fairfax.

The name of this deity is Demogorgon, which some think a corruption of Demiurgus; others imagine him to be so called, as being able to look upon the Gorgon, that turned all other spectators to stone; and to this Lucan seems to allude, when he says:

Spenser, too, mentions this infernal deity, F. Q. b. i. cant. 5, st. 22:"Which wast begot in Demogorgon's hall,

And saw'st the secrets of the world unmade:"

The secrets of your realm, but by constraint
Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light,
Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds
Confine with Heaven; or if some other place,
From your dominion won, the ethereal king
Possesses lately, thither to arrive

I travel this profound; direct my course;
Directed, no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof, if I that region lost,
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey), and once more
Erect the standard there of ancient Night;
Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge."
Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered: I know thee, stranger, who thou art:
That mighty leading angel, who of late

66

Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown. I saw and heard, for such a numerous host

Fled not in silence through the frighted deep

With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded; and Heaven-gates
Poured out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here

and places him, likewise, in the immense abyss with Chaos, B. 4, cant. 2. st. 47:

66 Down in the bottom of the deep abyss,

Where Demogorgon in dull darkness pent,

Far from the view of gods and heaven's bliss,

The hideous Chaos keeps, their dreadful dwelling is: "

and takes notice also of the dreadful effects of his name, B. i. c. 1, st. 37:

"A bold bad man, that dared to call by name

Great Gorgon, prince of darkness and dead night,

At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight."

Well, therefore, might Milton distinguish him by the dreaded name of Demogorgon:" and "the name of Demogorgon" is as much as to say Demogorgon himself, as in Virgil Æn. vi. 763. Albanum nomen is a man of Alba, Æn. xii. 515.-Newton.

1 i. e. secret places.

2 i. e. if you direct me, you will reap no little recompense.