To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil :
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
the angry Victor hath recall'd

But see,

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail,
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice

Of heaven received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe.

160

165

170

175

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;

180

185

There rest, if any rest can harbour there;
And, re-assembling our afflicted powers,

176. his for its: hail and thunder are personified. 177. Virg. Æn. viii. 526. mugire per æthera clangor.'

186. afflicted is here intended to be understood in the Latin

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 up-lift 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
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove;
Briareos, or Typhon, whom the den

་

190

195

sense, routed, ruined, utterly broken.' RICHARDSON. So afflicting thunder' ii. 166.

191. What reinforcement; to which is returned If not; a vicious syntax: but the poet gave it If none.' B. If not is the same as or else, otherwise: Lat. sin minus: Gr. ei dè ph. The sentiment may be assimilated to that in Livy iv. 28. where the Volscian addresses his routed comrades: 'virtute pares, necessitate, quæ ultimum ac maximum telum est, superiores estis.'

193. Virg. Æn. ii. 206.

Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta, jubæque
Sanguineæ exuperant undas; pars cetera pontum
Pone legit.'

N.

up-lift, for uplifted: as in Scripture: Psalm xxiv. 7. ' be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors.'

196. A rood is the fourth part of an acre, so that the bulk of Satan is expressed by the same sort of measure, as that of one of the giants in Virg. Æn. vi. 596. per tota novem cui jugera corpus Porrigitur.". N.

198. Virg. Æn. vi. 580. ' genus antiquum terræ, Titania pubes." N.

199. Briareös. In classical writers Briareus, three syllables: Virg. Æn. vi. 287.Et centumgeminus Briareus.' Hom. II. A. 403. ὃν Βριάρεων καλέουσι θεοί, ἄνδρες δέ τε πάντες Αἰγαίων'. See Virg. Æn. x. 565. Typhon is the same with Typhoeus. That the den of Typhoeus was in Cilicia, of which Tarsus was a cele

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-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind

Moors by his side under the lee, while night

200

205

brated city, we are told by Pindar and Pomp. Mela. (de S. O. i. 14.)' JORTIN. The passage of Pindar is in Pyth. i. 30. “Os ↑ èv aivą Ταρτάρῳ κεῖται, θεῶν πολέμιος, Τυφὼς ἑκατοντακάρανος· τόν ποτε Κιλίκιον θρέψεν πολυώνυμον ἄντρον. Schol. ὁ δὲ Πίνδαρός φησι τὸν Τυφῶνα ἐν Κιλικίᾳ τετράφθαι, ὡς καὶ Ὅμηρος (ΙΙ. Β. 783.) Είν Αρίμοις, ὅθι φασὶ Τυφωέος ἔμμεναι εὐνάς.

201. The leviathan in the Book of Job c. xli. is considered by Bochart to be the crocodile. To that animal scales are assigned, as here by Milton v. 15. 'His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.' Of the behemoth (according to Bochart, the hippopotamus) Job says, c. xl. 19. 'He is the chief of the ways of God.' Since however there are no crocodiles on the coast of Norway, Milton probably means the whale.

202. The roughness of this verse is doubtless designed to express the hugeness and unwieldiness of the creature referred to. The same may be observed of v. 209.

203. foam: a rough and troubled sea, worked up into froth or foam by the winds: Virg. Æn. i. 35. spumas salis ære ruebant." PEARCE.

204. night-foundered: overtaken by the night, and thence at a loss which way to sail : (compare 207.) Milton uses the same phrase in his Comus : ' for certain

Either some one, like us, night-foundered here, &c." PEARCE. Bentley would read nigh-foundered, i. e. almost foundered, ready to sink which also occurs in P. L. ii. 940. but the correction is not required.

207. Anchors by his side under wind. Mooring at sea is the laying out of anchors in a proper place for the secure riding of a ship: [probably from the Lat. moror.] The lee or lee-shore is

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays:

210

215

So stretch'd out huge in length the arch-fiend lay
Chain'd 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 pour'd.
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and
roll'd

In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.
Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land
He lights, if it were land that ever burn'd

220

225

that on which the wind blows, so that to be under the lee of the shore is to be close under the weather-shore or under wind. Au instance this among others of our author's affectation in the use of technical terms.' N.

208. A much finer expression than umbris nox operit terras' of Virg. Æn. iv. 352.' N.

215. Here Milton seems to have had in view Romans ii. 5. 'But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." CowPER.

219. on man: like the Latin in, for erga, towards.

230

235

With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
And such appear'd in hue, as when the force
Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shatter'd side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom all involved
With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
Of unblest feet. Him follow'd his next mate:
Both glorying to have escaped the Stygian flood
As gods, and by their own recover'd strength,
Not by the sufferance of supernal power.

6

240

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,' Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for heaven; this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he,

Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid

245

229. liquid fire: so 1.701. Virg. Ecl. vi. 33. Et liquidi simul ignis.'

231. Dr. Pearce conjectures that it should be subterranean winds, because it is said aid the winds afterwards, and the conjecture seems probable and ingenious: the fuell'd entrails, sublimed with mineral fury, aid and increase the winds, which first blew up the fire.' N.

232. Pelorus, a promontory of Sicily, now Capo di Faro, about a mile and a half from Italy. Virg. Æn. iii. 687. Ecce autem Boreas angustâ a sede Pelori Missus adest.'

233. thundering Ætna. Virg. Æn. iii. 571. ‘horrificis juxta tonat Etna ruinis.'

235. To sublime is a term of art in Chemistry, and is opposed to precipitating; the finer and more subtle parts are by fire separated, mounted, and receive greater force.' RICHARDSON.

246. Sovran. We retain our barbarous orthography sovereign from the Norman souvereign. The true spelling would be suveran, from the Latin supernus, superus; Fr. souverain; It. sovrano; Sp. and Port. soberano.' WEBSTER.