Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears1 The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high 1 i. e. fix them in their rests. The rest was made in the breast of the armour, and derived its name from arrester, to stop.-Richardson. 2 As when Hercules, named Alcides from his grandfather Alcæus, "from Oechalia crowned with conquest," after his return from the conquest of Oechalia, a city of Boeotia, having brought with him from thence Iole, the king's daughter, "felt the envenomed robe," which was sent him by Deianira in jealousy of his new mistress, and stuck so close to his skin that he could not pull off the one without pulling off the other, "and tore through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, and Lichas" who had brought him the poisoned robe, "from the top of Oeta," a mountain in the borders of Thessaly, "threw into the Euboic sea," the sea near Eubœa, an island in the Archipelago.Newton. Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured1 breast That dismal world, if any clime perhaps Into the burning lake their baleful streams; Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon, Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks, Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 1 Hardened. 2 The Greeks reckon up five rivers in Hell, and call them after the names of the noxious springs and rivers in their own country. Our poet follows their example both as to the number and the names of these infernal rivers, and excellently describes their nature and properties with the explanation of their names. "Styx," so named of a Greek word σrvyew that signifies to hate and abhor, and therefore called here "abhorréd Styx, the flood of deadly hate;" and by Virgil, "palus inamabilis, Æn. vi. 438. "Acheron" has its name from axos dolor, and pew fluo, “flowing with grief;" and is represented accordingly "sad Acheron," the river "of sorrow," as Styx was of hate, "black and deep," agreeable to Virgil's character of it, Æn. vi. 107: "Tenebrosa palus Acheronte refuso." "Cocytus, named of lamentation," because derived from a Greek word кwków, signifying to weep and lament: as "Phlegethon" is from another Greek word plyw, signifying to burn; and therefore rightly described here "fierce Phlegethon, whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage," as it is by Virgil, Æn. vi. 550. We know not what to say as to the situa tion of these rivers. Homer, the most ancient poet, represents Cocytus as branching out of Styx, and both Cocytus and Phlegethon (or Pyriphlegethon) as flowing into Acheron, Odyss. x. 513; and perhaps he describes their situation as it really was in Greece; but Virgil and the other poets frequently confound them, and mention Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice, At certain revolutions all the damned Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, their names and places without sufficient difference or distinction. 1 Serbonis was a lake 200 furlongs in length and 1,000 in compass, between the ancient mountain Casius, and Damiata, a city of Egypt on one of the more eastern mouths of the Nile. It was surrounded on all sides by hills of loose sand, which, carried into the water by high winds, so thickened the lake as not to be distinguished from part of the conti nent, where whole armies have been swallowed up.-Hume. 2 Frostily. Cf. Ecclus. xliii. 20, sq.; Ps. cxxi. 6. 3 Dragged. So Spenser, F. Q. v. 226: "who rudely haled her forth without remorse." 4 Medusa was one of the Gorgon monsters whose locks were serpents so terrible that they turned the beholders into stone. Ulysses, in Homer, was desirous of seeing more of the departed heroes, but I was afraid, says he, Odyss. xi. :— "Lest Gorgon rising from the infernal lakes, With horrors armed, and curls of hissing snakes, The ford, and of itself the water flies In cónfused march forlorn, the adventurous bands O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death; A universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, Meanwhile the adversary of God and man, He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left; As when far off at sea a fleet descried Of Ternate and Tidore,2 whence merchants bring Ply stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemed Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, 1 Compare Tasso, iv. 5:— "There were Celano's foul and loathsome rout, There Sphinges, Centaurs, there were Gorgons fell, There serpents hiss, there seven-mouthed Hydras yell; 2 Two of the Molucca islands in the East Indian sea. Impenetrable, impaled' with circling fire, The one seemed woman2 to the waist, and fair, 1 Paled in, guarded with palings. Here begins the famous allegory of Milton, which is a sort of paraphrase on that text of the Apostle St. James, i. 15, "Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth Sin, and Sin when it is finished bringeth forth Death." The first part of the allegory says only, that Satan's intended voyage was dangerous to his being, and that he resolved, however, to venture.-Richardson. 2 It is not improbable, that the author might have in mind, Spenser's description of error in the mixed shape of a woman and a serpent, Faerie Queen, b. 1, c. 1, st. 14. 66 Half like a serpent horribly displayed, But the other half did woman's shape retain," &c. And, also, the image of Echidna, b. 6, c. 6, st. 10. A monstrous dragon, full of fearful ugliness."-Newton. 3 These superstitions, it is almost needless to be observed, were thought less ridiculous in Milton's time than in our own. 4 This poetical description of Death, our author has pretty evi dently borrowed from Spenser, Faerie Queen, b. 7, cant. 7, st. 46:"But after all came Life, and lastly Death, Death with most grim and grisly visage seen; Yet is he nought but parting of the breath, Ne ought to see, but like a shade to ween, Unbodied, unsouled, unheard, unseen."-Thyer. |