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Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
From off the tossing of these fiery waves;

There rest, if any rest can harbor there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair ;
How overcome this dire calamity ;
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair."
Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate,
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge

180

185

190

195

Abbott's Shakes. Gram. 342.180. Forlorn and wild. The 'waste and wild' of 1. 60. Forlorn (Ger. verloren) is totally lost, abandoned, and hence desert, empty. Keightley. 183. Pale. Probably such a ghastly hue as livid (black and blue') flame casts on the face. "In Statius, Thebais, I. 57, the Styx is livida." Tend, extend our course (Lat. tendere, or tendere cursum). Rest, etc.

"Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth

Have any resting."- Richard II., V. 1. 5, 6.

Harbor. To take shelter? or give shelter? See Shakes. "Let's harbor here in York," and any place that harbors men.' A. S. here, army, and beorgan, to shelter, lodge; O. E. herbergage, lodging. —186. Afflicted (Lat. affligere, to dash down), beaten down. Powers (as in Macbeth, V. II. 1, "The English power is near," and often in Shakes.), forces, troops. - 187. Offend. In what sense?-190. Reinforcement. What kind, moral or physical? — 191. If not. Supply 'any.' Bentley would read if none.' - 192. Thus. Adverbial modifier of what? Classic usage? - 193. Uplift. See note on 179. The omission is for euphony. See Ps. xxiv. 7.— 195. Sparkling blazed. Of the Old Dragon, Spenser says (Faerie Queene, III. XI. st. 46), “His blazing eyes sparkled living fire." See Eneid, II. 206-210.194. Other parts besides. Besides seems to be superfluous after 'other'; but probably it would not have been so regarded in Milton's day. In Matt. xxv. 22, we read, "Thou deliveredst unto me two talents; behold, I have gained two other talents besides them." We still use " moreover ' in a similar way. -196.

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As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian or earth-born, that warred on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held; or that sea-beast
Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream:
Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff

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200

Wedgwood).

Rood (Dutch roede, a measure of ten feet in land-surveying. Often used in Old Eng. for rod. But square measure seems better here than long; as in Æneid, VI. 596, the earth-born giant, Tityos, extends over nine jugera (a jugerum being about five eighths of an acre). — 197. Fables, Greek myths?-198. Titanian (genus antiquum Terræ, Titania pubes,' the ancient race of earth, Titanian offspring, Æneid, VI. 580). The Titans were sons of Uranus (heaven) and Gaia (earth). They deposed Uranus, but were cast out of Olympus by Zeus (Jove). — 199. Briareos (the strong one, the mighty), quadrisyl. as the long o requires, though the old poets, for the sake of the metre, shortened reos to one syl. Says Keightley, "Milton makes a mistake as to Briareos, who was one of the hundred-handed (not of the Titans) and helped the gods." But Milton follows the account in Virgil (Æneid, X. 567, 568), pretty good authority, who says expressly that Egæon, the hundredhanded, fifty-mouthed (identified by Homer with Briareos), fought against Jove. His brothers were Gyges and Cottus, each hundred-handed and fiftyheaded. Hesiod makes them all sous of Uranus and Gaia, like the twelve Titans. Typhon (smoking), same as Typhoeus, youngest son of Gaia, located by Pindar and Eschylus in Cilicia. Briareos and Typhon we may regard as personifications of volcanic forces. Virgil calls the sun Titan, and the stars Titanian. 201. Leviathan. This beast in Ps. civ. 26, seems to be some sea monster of the whale kind. In Job xli. it is much like the crocodile, though the description does not wholly suit. Perhaps Milton conceived of a monster like some whose gigantic remains are the wonder of geologists. · 202. Hugest. The movement in the rhythm of this line is happily analogous to that of the monster described? Ocean-stream (the Homeric 'Keavós Tотаμós, okeanos potamos, which was supposed to encircle all the lands of the earth. Hazlitt thinks that in Milton's imagination the monster seemed so vast that the ocean dwindled to a stream!) 203. Him. etc. Olaus Magnus (1490-1568), a Swede who wrote a Latin 'History of the Northern Nations,' has much to say of anchoring on whales, kindling fires on them, etc. So in the first voyage of Sindbad in The Arabian Nights! See Ariosto's Orl. Fu. VI. 37.204. Pilot (Low Ger. peilen, to sound, measure; Du. loot, plummet; hence the thrower of the lead). Keightley suggests that it may be from Telparns, a pirate! Night-foundered (Fr. fondre, to sink; to founder is to be filled with water and sick as a ship), sunk into darkness. This

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,

Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays.

So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay,
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others; and, enraged, might see
How all his malice served but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown
On man by him seduced, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames,

205

210

215

220

Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled

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beautifully poetic epithet (used also in Comus, 483) is censured as improper by some of the prosy critics. They talk of 'foundered horses,' and ships 'springing a leak'! Skiff. Kind of craft?-206. Scaly, incrusted. Bentley justly observes that whales have no scales"! Keightley. Poets fare hard at the hands of ichthyologists and learned Dundrearies. Olaus (see 1. 203) says the whale 'has on his hide a surface like the gravel on the sea-shore.' - 207. Under the lee (A. S. hléo, shelter), under the shelter of the shore, on the side sheltered from the wind. Yet half the critics make it the other side, and censure Milton for 'affectation' or 'impropriety' in the use of nautical termis!-208. Invests (Lat. vestis; Sans. vas; Gr. Feoons, garment), robes. In Par. Lost, III. 10, 11, light invests, as with a mantle,' the world of waters. So IV. 609. Wished. With transitive verbs we use the preposition more than the Elizabethan writers did. Abbott's Shakes. Gram. 200.-209. This line analogous to what it describes ?-210. Chained. Servile adherence to the letter of Scripture." Keightley. See 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6; Rev. xx. 1; Par. Lost, I. 48, II. 169, IV. 965. Is the conception incongruous? What are symbolized by chains? Remorse? fear? shame?-211-213. Satan must be free, for the reasons so concisely and sublimely stated. — 219. On man. Why on rather than to? -220. Rom. ii. 5, 'Treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath.'-221. Pool. Etymology of the word? Milton several times calls the Sea of Azof a pool; also the Dead Sea. - 223.

Spires (Gr. σreîρa, Lat.

In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.

Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air

225

That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
He lights; if it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire,
And such appeared in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails, thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singèd bottom all involved
With stench and

Of unblest feet.

smoke. Such resting found the sole
Him followed his next mate,

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230

235

spira, a coil, or spire, any body that shoots out taperingly to a point). — 227. Felt unusual weight. Thyer quotes Faerie Queene, I. XI. 18, where the air is almost too feeble' to 'bear so great a weight' as the Old Dragon flying.— 230. Hue. What hue? - 231. Wind in this line, winds in 1. 235; because in the latter verse the winds rush in from every side and are 'aided' - Pelorus. The N. E. cape [increased]; in the former the wind is single. of Sicily, now Cape Faro, not far from Ætna, and the place where, according to Ovid, the right hand of Typhon (or Typhoeus) is buried. The Clar. Press ed. cites approvingly Keightley's assertion that there is no 'account of Pelorus being affected by earthquakes or by the eruptions of Etna'! They forget their Virgil. "These places, once convulsed with violence and with vast ruin, leaped apart, the sea came violently between them, and severed the Italian from the Sicilian shore." See Eneid, III. 411, 414, 233. Thundering 416, etc. The strait is now about a mile and a half wide.

Etna. Tonat Etna, Ætna thunders, says Virgil. See the passage, Eneid, III. 571 to 578.-234. Fuelled (Gr. Tûp; A. S. fyr; Ger. feuer; Fr. feu, fire; Lat. focus, fireplace; Low Lat. focale; Nor. Fr. fuayl, fuel), supplied with fuel. Thence. Whence? Conceiving fire, 'catching fire' (as in Lat. concipere ignem). -235. Sublimed (Lat. sublimis, lifted, high; to sublime is to bring by heat into a state of vapor and condense again by cold), forced aloft (or, perhaps, reduced by sublimation to a powder, as flowers of sulphur). 236. Involved with. Shakes. uses with for in (Sonnet XXIII.). The meaning of the two expressions is slightly different: with implies a more confused mixture of solids with gases; in, an enveloping of solids by gases. Which better suits Milton's idea? 238. Unblest feet. Ignoring Milton's purpose to assemble the rebel army on this burning soil, Ruskin says (and the Clar.

Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood.
As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost archangel, "this the seat That we must change for heaven?

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this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so! since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him is best,

240

245

Press ed. quotes it without comment) as follows: "All this [lines 228 to 238] is far too detailed, and deals too much with externals; we feel rather the formı of the fire-waves than their fury; we walk upon them too securely, and the fuel, sublimation, smoke, and singeing, seem to me images of only partial combustion; they vary and extend the conception, but they lower the thermometer.. fail of making us thoroughly unendurably hot. The essence of fire is not there. Now hear Dante" (the italics are Ruskin's)

"Feriami'l Sole in su l'omero destro
Che già, raggiando, tutto l'Occidente
Mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro :
Ed io facea con l'ombra più rovente
Parer la fiamma." — Purg. XXVI. 4-8.

[On the right shoulder smote me now the sun, that, raying out, changed all the West from azure aspect into white, and with my shadow I made the flame appear more red.] Ruskin continues: "This is a slight touch; he has not gone to Etna nor Pelorus for fuel; but we shall not soon recover from it, he has taken our breath away and leaves us gasping. No smoke or cinders there. Pure, white, hurtling, formless flame; very fire-crystal, we cannot make spires nor waves of it, nor divide it, nor walk on it; there is no question about singeing soles of feet. It is lambent annihilation." (Ruskin's Mod. Painters, Part III. 2, 3.) Whatever may be thought of Ruskin's extraordinary interpretation of Dante, it is not clear that he understands Milton! As if degree of hotness were the thing that Milton should have aimed to depict! (Milton seems to have had the passage from Dante in mind in Par. Lost, XI. 205-6.)-239. Stygian. The Styx (hate) being a river of hell, Stygian is infernal. —240. Sufferance. So Ajax (in Odyssey, IV. 503) declared that he would escape the great gulf of the sea in spite of the gods!-244. Change for heaven, a Latinism for 'change heaven for,' 'change' being equivalent to receive in exchange' (like Lat. mutare). See Hor. Odes, I. XVII. 1 ; III. I. 47. - 246. Sovran (Lat. supernus, superus, above; super, over; Fr. souverain; Sp. soberano; It. sovrano, sovereign). 247. Farthest. The Greeks had a proverb, "Far from Jupiter,

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