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For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied heaven, shall fail to re-ascend,
Self-raised, and repossess their native seat?
For me, be witness all the host of heaven,
If counsels different, or danger shunned

By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns
Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent, or custom, and his regal state

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Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed;
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth his might we know, and know our own,
So as not either to provoke, or dread

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New war, provoked our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile,
What force effected not; that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.

Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife
There went a fame in heaven that he ere long

650

Intended to create, and therein plant

A generation whom his choice regard
Should favor equal to the sons of heaven.
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps

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Know repulse. Horace, Ol. III. 17, has virtus repulsæ nescia, valor that knows no repulse. — 633. Emptied. The exaggeration of a braggart and a liar. In Rev. xii. 4, we read of a 'great red dragon' that his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven.' Hence the belief that a third of the angels fell, as stated in Par. Lost, II. 692; V. 710; VI. 156. — 635. Of heaven. Meaning those to whom he speaks? or the good angels? or both? -636. Different. From what? 640. State, pomp. -642. Tempted our attempt. Keightley claims to have been the first to recognize in Milton's plays upon words imitations of Scripture. Par. Lost, I. 606; V. 869; IX. 11; XII. 78. — 647-8. No less (than we have found out his power?). He and us emphatic ?-650, Space. Why 'space' and not God'? Rife (Ger. reif, ripe), prevalent, frequent. 651. Fame. As Addison remarks, this previous fame beautifully exalts the human race. 654. Equal. Syntax ?-655. Thither. The first definite

Our first eruption; thither, or elsewhere;
For this infernal pit shall never hold

Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss

Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts

Full counsel must mature.

Peace is despaired ;

660

For who can think submission? War, then, war,
Open or understood, must be resolved."

He spake; and to confirin his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty cherubim: the sudden blaze
Far round illumined hell. Highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with graspèd arms.
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven.

665

There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top

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Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire

Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign

That in his womb was hid metallic ore,

The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed,
A numerous brigade hastened; as when bands

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suggestion of the diabolic plot on which the poem hinges! - 656. Eruption. Etymology and meaning?-658. Abyss, here, and usually in Par. Lost, Chaos. -660. Despaired (of). So Shakes. says, "Despair thy charm." Macbeth, V. VII. So think (of) submission,' next line. — 662. Understood. Secret. So 'understood relations.' Macbeth, III. iv. The kind of war is discussed, Book II.41, 187, etc. The speech closes very grandly. Point out its order of thoughts and its rhetorical merits. - 666. Illumined. "Another true Miltonic picture." Brydges. 668. Clashed, etc. So Roman soldiers applaud with sword smiting shield?-669. Heaven. "Milton forgets that the scene is in Hell." Keightley. No: the defiance is consciously against heaven, whose general direction they know, and whose zenith is the very throne of God. See III. 57, 58.-670. To the burning lake and the hot mainland he adds a volcano. — 672. Entire translates Lat. totum, or omne ? — 673. Womb, interior. So in Shakes. and Virgil. His. See note, l. 254. — 674. Work, etc. Metals were generally supposed to be composed of mercury as a metallic basis and sulphur as a cement. The plentifulness of ores in the form of sulphurets favored this belief? Winged with speed. Make prose of this. 675. Brigade (Fr. brigade, troop; Ital. brigata; Fr. briguée; brigue, contention). Our military terms mostly come from the Fr.; as platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, corps; two or more of each of these bodies form

Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed,
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field,
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on,
Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell

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From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent, admiring more

The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed

In vision beatific. By him first

Men also, and by his suggestion taught,

Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow
in hell that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.

And here let those

Who boast in mortal things, and, wondering, tell
Of Babel and the works of Memphian kings,

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ing one of the next higher. -676. Pioneers (Lat. pes, foot; Fr. pionnier), footsoldiers preceding an army as laborers.

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Angels are not promoted by compariTrue; but Milton's object at this promote! -677. Camp, army. Plutus, Greek god of riches, blind and heaven by Hercules as being a friend

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son with sappers and miners." Lan lor. instant is perhaps to satirize rather than 678. Mammon (Syriac, meaning riches). lame, alone of the gods was despised in of the bad and a corrupter of the good. He dwelt under Spain in regions full of mineral wealth. See Faerie Queene, II. VII; Matt. vi. 24; Luke xvi. 9, 11. 679. Erected. Upright in two senses?-682. Gold. Rev. xxi. 21, “The street of the city was pure gold.' - 683. Aught. . . else anything besides. 684. Vision beatific, 'the scholastic phrase for the joys of heaven.' In verses On Time, 1. 18, Milton literally translates visio beatifica, 'happy' making sight.' - 686. Centre, the earth itself, not the centre of the earth. So repeatedly in Shakes. Impious (Lat. impius, undutiful to a parent), unfilial. 688. Better hid. Aurum irrepertum et sic melius situm cum terra celat, gold undiscovered and so better situated, while the earth hides it. Horace, Od. III. iii, 49, Crew. Used disparagingly? - 690. Admire (Lat. admiror, to wonder). In hell. So in Spenser, "Twas but a little stride that did the house of riches from hell-mouth divide."-692. Bane (A. S. bana, murderer; destruction). - 694. Babel. Babylon, or the Temple of Belus? See Class. Dict. Works, etc., the pyramids! Memphian. See Class. Dict.

Learn how their greatest monuments of fame,
And strength, and art, are easily outdone
By spirits reprobate, and in an nour
What in an age they, with incessant toil
And hands innumerable, scarce perform.
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore

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Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross.

A third as soon had formed within the ground

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A various mould, and from the boiling cells

By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook;
As in an organ, from one blast of wind,

To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round

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696. Strength of strength? or how their strength? 698-9. Age innumerable. It took 360,000 men nigh 20 years to build one pyramid. 700. Cells that were prepared by them for this purpose.-702. Sluiced, conducted in flumes?-703. Founded, melted (Lat. fundĕre, to pour; Fr. fondre, to melt). — 704. Bullion (Fr. bouillir, to boil), boiling. Keightley makes bullion metallic. Others make it fr. Lat. bulla, a knob, seal, or stamp, and bullion dross, the uncoined ball or mass of gold.' 706. Various, variously wrought? Note the different bands of workmen simultaneously engaged.-709. Sound-board, a long box above the wind-chest, divided by thin partitions into grooves that run from the front to the back, conveying the wind to the different rows of pipes. The great temple is now finished, but is wholly underground! -710. Anon, etc. These gigantic beings lift the shining structure to its place! In 1637 Milton may have witnessed, in a court-masque in London, the following scene: "The earth opened, and there rose up a richly-adorned palace, seeming all of goldsmith's work, with porticos vaulted on pilasters . . . above these ran an architrave, frieze, and cornice

a peristylium of two orders, Doric and Ionic." The Stage Condemned, 1698, quoted by Todd. --711. Exhalation. Points of resemblance? - 713. Temple. Prof. Himes well points out the wonderful similarity to the Pantheon. See in our Introduction the extract, from Himes's Study of

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Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid

With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven:
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon
Nor great Alcairo such magnificence
Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat

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Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile

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Stood fixed her stately highth; and straight the doors,
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide

Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth

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And level pavement. From the arched roof,

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed

With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light

As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring entered; and the work some praise,
And some the architect. His hand was known

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Paradise Lost; see also our representation of the Pantheon. Pilasters, square columns usually set in a wall with a fourth or fifth of the diameter projecting. -714. Doric. The Pantheon has Corinthian pillars? Doric are more suitable for a council hall?-715. Architrave, the great beam resting on the pillars. 716. Cornice, the moulded projection above the frieze, which last is just above the architrave. See illustrations of architecture in the books. Bossy, in relief.—717. Fretted (A. S. fraetwian, to adorn; or Ital. fratto, broken, or ferrata, window-grating). 718. Great Alcairo, Memphis.-720. Serapis, a god typifying the Nile and fertility, by some identified with Osiris. See note on 1. 478.723. Her stately highth being fixed? Some explain by saying fixed as to her stately height. See l. 92.724. Folds (= Lat. valva, leaves or folds of a door). Discover, etc. Disclose ample spaces within 725. Within, adverb modified by wide? 727. Pendent row of lamps. -728. Cressets, open vessels, jars, or cages, in which tarred ropes, etc., are burnt for beacon lights; hence such lights themselves; any great lights. Fr. croisette?-729. Naph. tha, a limpid, bituminous, highly inflammable liquid. Asphaltus, native bitumen, compact, brittle, combustible. --730. As from a sky. The Pantheon is lighted from the sky by a round opening 26 feet in diameter in the centre of the roof. -732. Architect. Does Milton identify Mammon with Mulciber? Masson and nearly or quite all the critics but Professor Himes

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