BOOK IX.

THE ARGUMENT.

Satan, having compassed the earth with meditated guile, re turns as a mist by night into Paradise, erters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her, found alone: Eve, loath to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength: Adam at last yields: The Serpent finds her alone; his subtle ap proach, first gazing, then speaking, with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve wondering to hear the Serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech and such understanding not till now: the Serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and rea. son; till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge, forbidden: The Serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments, in duces her at length to eat; she, pleased with the taste, deliberates a while whether to impart thereof to Adam or not, at last brings him of the fruit, relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam, at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her; and extenuating the trespass, eats also of the fruit: The effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another.

No more of talk where God or Angel guest

With Man, as with his friend, familiar used
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while

Venial discourse, unblamed: I now must change

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Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,

And disobedience: on the part of Heav'n

Now alienated, distance and distaste,

Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given,
That brought into this world a world of woe,
Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery,

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1. Milton has arranged the divisions of his poem with great skill. The reader is by turns filled with awe and delight, astonishment and wonder: after having been terror-stricken at the sublime account of the fall of the angels, he is charmed and soothed by the description of Paradise, and the sweet discourse of philosophy, carried on between Raphael and Adam. A new order of feelings are now to be awakened, and pity, mingled with fear, possesses us through the whole book.

11. Nothing can be in worse taste than this and other such puns; but not a great poet is perhaps to be found, with a taste so pure, that it could resist altogether the corruptions of the popular one.

Death's harbinger. Sad task! yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused,
Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's son:
If answerable style I can obtain

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Or tilting furniture, emblazon'd shields,
Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds;
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights

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21. The picture of Milton, which here rises to the mind, is among the most beautiful of the visions to which the poem gives birth. Blind, deserted, but inspired, how like a character in the work does he seem to the imagination, while thus speaking of his Communion with the heavenly muse.

26. He had, long before commencing Paradise Lost, or designing it even, determined to write an Epic on the subject of King Arthur's history.

28. Allusion is made in this passage to the principal Epics, the subjects of which are almost all drawn from the wars of one country or the other. The most ardent lover of the classic poems cannot but feel Milton's objection to be correct; the only caution to be observed, is, not to mistake his dislike of their subjects for any depreciation of the sublime geniuses which composed them.

35. Impresses quaint; witty devices on the shields-Bases, or housings-Sewers, servants who placed the dishes on the table. Seneschal, a principal servant, or steward.

Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name, unless an age too late, or cold
Climate, or years, damp my intended wing
Depress'd, and much they may, if all be mine,
Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear.

The sun was sunk, and after him the star
Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring
Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter

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'Twixt day and night, and now from end to end

Night's hemisphere had veil'd th' horizon round,
When Satan, who late fled before the threats
Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved
In meditated fraud and malice, bent

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On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap
Of heavier on himself, fearless return'd.
By night he fled, and at midnight return'd
From compassing the earth, cautious of day,
Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descry'd
His entrance, and forewarn'd the Cherubim

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That kept their watch: thence full of anguish driven,
The space of sev'n continued nights he rode
With darkness; thrice the equinoctial line

He circled; four times cross'd the car of night 65
From pole to pole, traversing each colure;

On th' eighth return'd, and on the coast averse
From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth
Found unsuspected way. There was a place,

Now not, tho' sin, not time, first wrought the change,

Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise

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Into a gulf shot under ground, till part

Rose up a fountain by the tree of life :

In with the river sunk, and with it rose

Satan involved in rising mist, then sought

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Where to lie hid. Sea he had search'd and land

From Eden over Pontus, and the pool

Mæotis, up beyond the river Ob;

Downward as far antarctic; and in length
West from Orontes to the ocean barr'd
At Darien, thence to the land where flows

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77. Pontus, the Euxine or Black Sea. The pool Meoli, Palus Mæotis, a lake on the coast of Crim Tartary.-Ob, a river of Muscovy, Orontes, a river of Syria.-Darion, the Isthmus which ioins North and South America.-Ocean bar'd, see Job xxxviii, 19,

Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roam'd
With narrow search, and with inspection deep
Consider'd every creature; which of all

Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found 85
The serpent subtlest beast of all the field.

Him, after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

To enter and his dark suggestions hide

From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake,

Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,
As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding, which in other beasts observed
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within beyond the sense of brute.
Thus he resolved; but first from inward grief
His bursting passion into plaints thus pour'd:

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O Earth, how like to Heav'n, if not preferr'd More justly! seat worthier of Gods! as built With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what God after better worse would build! Terrestrial Heav'n, danced round by other Heav'ns That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence! As God in Heav'n

Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou

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Centring receiv'st from all those orbs; in thee,
Not in themselves, all their known virtue' appears
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth
Of creatures animate with gradual life
Of growth, sense, reason, all summ'd up in Man.
With what delight could I have walk'd thee round,

86. The subtlety of the serpent has been always noticed. It is supposed, that Satan might choose this animal in preference to any other, for his purpose, since its subtlety being known it would excite less surprise in the minds of his victims, to find it speaking and reasoning, than would have been the case in respect to any other of the beasts of the field.

113. It were to be wished that Milton had not so nearly approached in expression the ideas of the materialists. He has been accused of formally supporting their doctrines, but the contents of the poem and the elevation of his sentiments on the mysteries of universal being tend greatly to prove he was by no means an advocate of opinions which are as insupportable by reason as they are by Christianity.

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If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains;
Now land, now sea, and shores with forests crown'd
Rocks, dens, and caves! but I in none of these
Find place or refuge; and the more I see
Pleasures about me, so much more I feel
Torment within me', as from the hateful siege

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Of contraries: all good to me becomes

Bane, and in Heav'n much worse would be my state. But neither here seek I, no, nor in Heav'n

To dwell, unless by mast'ring Heav'n's Supreme;

Nor hope to be myself less miserable

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By what I seek, but others to make such

As I, though thereby worse to me redound:
For only in destroying I find ease

To my relentless thoughts; and him destroy'd,
Or won to what may work his utter loss,
For whom all this was made, all this will soon
Follow, as to him link'd in weal or woe;
In woe then, that destruction wide may range.
To me shall be the glory sole among
Th' infernal Pow'rs, in one day to have marr'd
What he, Almighty styled, six nights and days
Continued making, and who knows how long
Before had been contriving, though perhaps
Not longer than since I in one night freed
From servitude inglorious well nigh half

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Th' angelic name, and thinner left the throng

Of his adorers; he to be avenged,

And to repair his numbers thus impair'd,

Whether such virtue spent of old now fail'd

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More Angels to create, if they at least

Are his created, or to spite us more,
Determined to advance into our room

A creature form'd of earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,

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With heav'nly spoils, our spoils. What he decreed

He' effected; Man he made, and for him built
Magnificent this world, and earth his seat,
Him lord pronounced, and, O indignity!
Subjected to his service Angel wings,

And flaming ministers, to watch and tend

156. Ps. civ. 4.

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