Thus Satan ; and him thus the anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered : “I know thee, stranger, who thou art 990
That mighty leading angel, who of late
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,

995
Confusion worse confounded ; and heaven gates
Poured out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here
Keep residence; if all I can will serve
That little which is left so to defend,
Encroached on still through our intestine broils,
Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first, hell,
Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath ;
Now lately Heaven and Earth, another world,

Word coined by Milton ? --989. Faltering .... incomposed. Why so represented ? — 990. I know thee, etc. A Greek idiom. See Luke iv. 34. Why does not Chaos call him by name? -- 997. Poured out by millions. So old Chaos thought; but his intellect was naturally or unnaturally muddled, and he had been too much frightened (he was easily frightened, as in I. 543 ?) to know the facts. Perhaps Satan (I. 170) and Moloch (II. 78, 79) thonght so too. But they all mistook thunderbolts, etc., for victorious angels? The Messiah vanquished single-handed the rebel host. VI 880–2. — 998. Frontiers. Prof. Himes remarks that as the darkest time of night is just before day,' so the pavilion of Chaos is on the frontiers. See his diagram, Introduction, p.xxvii.-999. Can do, will serve. “ Satan has judged rightly. The old Anarch is in a state of resentment.” Masson. — 1001. Our. Keightley and nearly all the commentators follow Dr. Pearce, who in 1732 substituted your for our. Masson restores our, 'a form of speech,' he says, 'which implicated all existing beings.' 'Your 'might have seemed impolite? It is just possible that the timid monarch means that his dominion would not be so encroached upon if its intestine broils did not exist ? — 1004. Heaven and Earth constituting another world. — 1005. Golden chain. Allegorical ? Love? Providence ? “the great chain of eternal order,' of which Burke makes mention ? 'the chain of being'? What did Milton know of the law of gravitation ? Compare, “Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround,” in Bowring's translation of Derzhaviu's Ode to the Deity; also in Thomson's Seasons (Summer), –

1005

1010

Hung o'er my re:ilm, linked in a golden chain
To that side heaven from whence 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.”

He ceased ; and Satan stayed not to reply,
But, glad that now his sea should find a shore,
With fresh alacrity and force renewed
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire,
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock
Of fighting elements, on all sides round
Environed, wins his way; harder beset
And more endangered than when Argo passed
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks,
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned
Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered.
So he with difficulty and labor hard
Moved on; with difficulty and labor he ;
But, he once passed, soon after, when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain,

“ 'Tis by thy secret strong attractive force,
As with a chain indissoluble bound,

Thy systeni rolls entire." The commentators cite Iliad, VIII. 19, where Jupiter boasts that he could rlraw up earth ocean, etc., with a golden chain, etc. ; but there is no resemblance between the two passages. -- 1013. Like a pyramid of fire. 'A magnificent sinuile, suggesting the dwindling radiance of the angel's bulk as it shoots rapidly upward from the sight.' Masson. — 1017-18. Argo passed ... betwixt. “A slight slip of memory, for it was after emerging that the Argo had to pass through the Symplegades." Keightley. But the rocks were only four or five miles from the Bosporus, and they were wandering rocks. Furtherniore, Herodotus, Polybius, and Appian make the Bosporus extend from these rocks 120 stadia to Byzantium, a fact that seems to have slipped from the commentator's memory! Argo. The famous ship in which Jason and his associates went after the golden fleece. See Class. Dict. — 1019. Ulysses being on the larboard. — 1020. Other whirlpool. Scylla. See Class. Dict. Ovid (Met. XIV. 51) calls this water parvus gurges, small whirlpool ; and Virgil (Æn. JII. 425) represents it as drawing ships upon the rocks.' – 1021-22. These lines illustrate that echoing of sense by sound which

1025

1030

Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length,
From hell continued, reaching the utmost orb
Of this frail world ; by which the spirits perverse
With easy intercourse pass to and fro
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good angels guard by special grace.

But now at last the sacred influence
Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night
A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire,
As from her outmost works, a broken foe,
With tumult less and with less hostile din;
That Satan with less toil, and now with ease,

1035

1040

Pope praises, “The line, too, labors, and the words move slow." - 1024. Amain. See 1. 165. — 1028. Bridge. This is described X. 293 to 320. “Milton tells in magnificent verse the making of the causeway. Nothing can be greater than the image of these two ghastly fornis (Sin and Death) ranging Chaos, and beating into a shoal the solid and the dry, bound with Death's petrific mace into fastness, wrought into a mole immense.” Stopfore it. Brooke. -- 1029. Orb. This is not the earth, but the outer hollow sphere inclosing our Universe. See diagram at the end of this book.* The Arabic Al Sirat (i. e. the path) stretches over hell and is narrower than the edge of a sword; yet on this bridge is the road to the Mohammedan paradise ! — 103334. God and good angels. Same phrase in Herrick's Noble Numbers, p. 74, “God and good angels guide thee”; and in Shakes. Richard III., V. III., “God and good angels fight on Richmond's side." Sacred. Why? See the beginning of Book III. Influence. Etymological meaning ? astrological ?.

1045

Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn;
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold
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 cursèl hour he hies.

1050

1055

etc. See III. 586. — 1037. Nature, creation, our world, cosmos as opposed to chaos! - 1042–43. Wafts himself! Holds the port. Lat. tenet portum, as in Virgil, Æn. 1.400. — 1046–47. Weighs, poises ? See l. 905. Empyreal. I. 117. – 1048. Undetermined etc. “From the portion that was seen, the eye could not determine whether its margin was straight or curved." heightley. Explanation sufficient? – 1019. Opal towers and battlements. Prof. Himes suggests that the crystal wall’ of heaven is simply the horizon wall. The idea is strikingly beautiful. If it is correct, then perhaps, like the Latin arces, the 'opal towers and battlements' may be mountain-peaks in that hori. zon, dipped in the colors of heaven. Angelic art and skill may have added to their beauty and grandeur. See I. 733, 749 ; IV. 542-8; V. 758–9. Coinciding with the horizon line may be precipices like the chalk cliffs of Albion, and at their base the ocean surges of Chaos may beat. See VII. 210 to 215; also the Preface. — 1051. Golden chain. See 1005. - 1052. This pendent world, Shakespeare's phrase in Measure for Measure, III. 1. 126. World. Not our earth, as so many commentators have thought, but our universe of stars, all seeming like a single shining point ! - 1053. Smallest. Is it the true relative size, or only the apparent, the optical effect, that is here sought to be indicated ? Reason for your opinion ?

END OF BOOK II.

VERTICAL SECTION.
See lines 1029 to 1055, Book II. ; also the Preface.