BOOK IX.' Satan having compassed the earth, with meditated guile returns, as a mist, by night into Paradise; enters 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, loth 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 approach, 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 had attained both to speech and reason, 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, induces her at length to eat; she pleased with the taste, deliberates awhile 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. : 2 No more of talk where God, or angel guest, t Rural repast; permitting him the while - 1 The Ninth Book is raised upon that brief account in Scripture, Gen. iii. wherein we are told the serpent was more sublle than any beast of the field; that he tempted the woman to cat of the forbidden fruit; that she was overcome by his temptation; and that Adam followed her example. From these few particulars Milton has formed one of the most entertaining fables that invention ever produced. He has disposed of these circumstances among so many agreeable fictions of his own, that his whole slory looks only like a comment on Holy Writ, or rather seems a complete relation of what the other is only an epitome. The disposition and contrivance of the fable I look upon to be the principal beauty or the Ninth Book, which has more ttory in it, and is fuller of incidents, than any other in the whole poem.—(Additon,) "I cannot but own that an author is generally guilty of an unpardonable self-love, when he lays aside his subject to descant upon himself: but that human frailty is to be forgiven in Hilton; nay, I am pleased with it; he gratifies the curiosity he has raised in me about him. When I admire the author, I desire to know something or the man; and he whom all readers would be glad to know is allowed to speak or himself. But this, however, is a very dangerous example for a genius of an inferior order, and is only to be Justified by success."—(Voltaire, Etiay on Epic Poetry.) It is clear that Milton thought a great poet may digress rrom his subject to speak of himseir, long before he commenced this poem; for in his Discourse on "the Reason of Church Government," apologizing for saying so much or himself, he says: "A poet soaring in the high region of his fancies, with bis garland and singing robes about him, might without apology 29 Venial discourse unblam'd.' I now must change And disobedience on the part of heaven, Of my celestial patroness, who deigns And dictates to me slumb'ring; or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse; Since first this subject for heroic song Pleas'd me, long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument speak more of himself than I mean to do." The poet says that he must now treat no more of familiar discourse with God or angel. In the preceding episode, which was a conversation between Adam and the angel, it is slated that Adam held discourse with God (viii. 455). The Lord God and the angel Michael hold discourse with Adam in the following books; but these discourses are not familiar conversation as with a friend, for the one comes to judge, and the other to expel him from paradise. "The Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man spcaketh to his friend," Exod. xxxiii. 11. Milton, who knew the Scriptures thoroughly, and continually profits from their vast sublimity and treasures, has done it here remarkably. The episode is taken from the 18th chapter of Genesis, where the Lord, or (according to an ancient opinion, and that of many of the modern scholars,) Christ, and two angels are said to have been entertained by Abraham; or "God" may here mean that the divine presence was so effectually with his messengers that himself was also there.—(Th., R., N.) 1 As the author is now changing his subject, he professes likewise to change his style agreeably to it. The reader must not therefore expect henceforward such lofty images and descriptions as before; which may serve as an answer to those critics who censure the latter books as falling below the former.—(N.) "Venial" here is quoted as an example by Johnson, of the word meaning permitted, allowed, from venia. But to "permit permitted discourse" is awkward tautology. 1 rather imagine it means moderate, excusable, inoffensive." * Here means sickness, and all sorts of mortal pains. See i. 475. Attcrbury and Warburton think "a world of woe" is to be taken in apposition to "this world," (see viii. 332,) in order to avoid the low quainlness of making the words depend on "brought." -Vf., T.) 3 Though several particulars are specified as parts of his present subject, (6, etc.), that of the "anger of God," (10), was the consequence of those, and his only subject. It is this which he places in opposition to the anger of men and gods, in which he has the advantage of Homer and Virgil; the anger of the true God being an argument much With long and tedious havoc fabled knights, 2 more heroic than Iheirs. His theme was in truth mare sublime than the wrath of Achilles, who dragged his dead foe Hector thrice round the walls or Troy; or of Neptune, who caused the shipwreck of Ulysses; both celebrated by Homer in his Iliad and Odyssey: or of Turnus, who was deprived of bis espoused, or betrothed bride Lavinia, by Æneas, the son of Cytherea, or Venus ; or of Juno, who was the great persecutor of Eneas, fearing him as the remote cause of the foundation of Rome, the fatal rival of her favourite Carthage; both celebrated by Virgil in the Mneid. From this and iii. 32, and from passages in his 5th Elegy, 6 and 23, written when he was only twenty years old, It appears that the inspiration came upon him chiefly at night and in spring. See also vii. 29. It is stated that he first proposed as the subject of the epic poem the story of King Arthur, the British hero of romance, and changed it for the reasons here assigned. Aubrey relates in his manuscript account of Milton, preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, that Milton began bis Paradise Lost about two years before the Restoration, and completed it about three years after that event.—(Rich., T., Wart., N., T.) i As Virgil rivalled Homer, Milton rivals and surpasses both. Both occupied the provinces of war, morality, and politics; Milton took up another species, that of religion. The principal subjects of the heroic poems from the time of Homer downwards, were wars, games, and festivals. Homer, in the 23d book of the Iliad, Virgil, in the 5th book of the Eneid, and Slatius, in the 6th book of the Thebaid, have described games and races. So "jousts (or tilts) and tournaments," are often the subjects of the modern poets, as Ariosto, Spenser, etc. The joust usually meant the combat of lances between two persons only; the tournament included all martial games. The combatants were called tillers, from their running at each other on horseback, with uplifted spears, and then thrusting; most probably from the verb tollo, to raise. Tournament is supposed to be derived from the Italian tornare, turning, or wheeling round during the action, and returning to the charge." Emblazoned shields." He glances at the Italian poets, who were in general too circumstantial about these particulars.—"Impresses quaint," ». e. emblems and devices on the shield, alluding to the name, the condition, or the fortune of the wearer, which were often curious, obscure, and fantastical.—" Bases," the housings of the horses, which hung down to the ground.—" Marshalled, sewers, seneshals." The marshal placed the guests according to their rank, and saw that they were properly served. The" sewer" marched in before the meats, and arranged them on the table, and was originally called "asseour," from the French asseoir, to set down or place. And the "seneshal" was the household steward: a name of frequent occurrence in old books. (See N., H., Johns., T.) Nares, in his Glossary, says it is quite wrong to apply "bases" to the housings or saddle cloths of the horses; "bases" properly means a kind of embroidered mantle, reaching from the middle down to the knees, or lower, worn by knights on horseback. In Butler's Hudibras, I. ii. 769, it is used for a butcher's apron. In Fairy Queen, V. v. 20, a woman's petticoat and apron serve for cuirass and bases. > The usual construction in English is "skilled in a thing;" but the Latin construction is, "peritus alicujus rei," skilled of a thing.—(Monood.) "Remains." Milton That name,1 nnless an age too late, or cold The sun was sunk, and, after him, the star 'Twixt day and night and now* from end to end, That kept their watch; thence, full of anguish, driv'n, 67 On the eighth return'd; and, on the coast averse elsewhere uses this word actively, in the sense of "awaits;" as maneo is sometimes used in Latin. i And it is surprising that at his time of life, and after such troublesome times as he bad passed through, he should have so much poetical fire remaining; for he was near sixty when this poem was published.—(N.) See "Life of Milton" prefixed to this edition, c. ii. s. 7—end. 2 Job i. T: "And the Lord said unto Salan, Whence comest thou? And Satan answered, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." -(N.) » He travelled on with the night three times round the equator; he was three days moving round from east to west as the sun does, but always on the opposite side of the globe in darkness; "four times crossed the car of night from pole to poIe;" i. e. did not move directly on with the night as before, but crossed over from the northern to the southern, and from the southern to the northern pole. "Traversing each colure;" as the equinoctial line or equator is a great circle encompassing the earth from east to west, and from west to east again; so the colures are two great circles intersecting each o*ber at right angles in the poles of the world, and encompassing the earth from north to south, and from south to north again; and therefore, as Satan was moving from pole to pole at the same time that the car of night was moving from east lo west, if he would still keep in the shade of night as he desired, he could not move in a straight line, but must move obliquely, and thereby cross the two colures. In short, Satan was three days compassing the earth from east to west, and four days from north to south, but still kept always in the shade of night, and on the eighth night rcturned.-N.) "Colure," from xolos, mutilated, and ovpx, a tail, so named, because a part is always beneath the horizon. They are called the equinoctial and solstitial colures, one passing through the equinoctial points Aries and Libra, the other through the solstitial points Cancer and Capricorn, and divide the ecliptic into four equal parts. The points where they intersect the ecliptic are called the Cardinal Points. From entrance or Cherubic watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, Into a gulf shot under ground,' till part In with the river sunk, and with it rose, Where to lie hid: sea he had search'd, and land, Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found Of thoughts revolv'd, his final sentence chose To enter, and his dark suggestions hide Proceeding, which in other beasts observ'd 95 Doubt might beget of diabolic power 1 See iv. 224, etc. * So Thetis rose in the II. i. 359: αν ανεον πολίης αλος ηϋτ' ομιχλη.(Ν.) 3 As we had before an astronomical, so here we have a geographical account of SaLan's peregrinations. He searched sea and land, northward from Eden over Pontus Euxinus, the Euxine Sea, now called the Black Sea, north of Constantinople, and the Palus Mootis, now the sea of Azoph, above the Black Sea, and communicating with it by the Cimmerian Bosphorus; "up beyond the river Oby" in Muscovy, near tbe north pole; "downward as far as antarctic," as far southward. The northern hemisphere being elevated on our globes, the north is called "up," and the south "downwards;" "antarctic," south, the contrary to arctic, north, from Aptos, (be Bear, the most conspicuous constellation near the north pole. But no particular plaee is mentioned near the south pole, because in Milton's time all sea and land there were unknown.—In "length," i. e. west and east, (see note on iii. 555, and 574,) " from Orontes," a famous river in Syria, to the isthmus of "Darien," which separates North and South America, and hinders the ocean as it were with a bar from flowing between them; and thence to Bindostan or India.—(N.) So Gen. iii. l: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field." The subtlety of the serpent is commended likewise by Aristotle and other naturalists.-N.) * Fittest stock to graft his devilish fraud on.—(#.) "Imp," Welsh, properly a young slip of a tree; hence, offspring. Johnson says the word here means, "subaltern, or puny devil, a sense in which the word is still used." |