Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears1
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns.
Others with vast Typhoean rage, more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar.
As when Alcides,2 from Oechalia crowned
With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw
Into th' Euboic sea. Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall
By doom of battle; and complain that fate
Free virtue should enthral to force or chance.
Their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment

The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense),
Others apart sat on a hill retired,

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy:
Yet with a pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite

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
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adventure to discover wide

That dismal world, if any clime perhaps
Might yield them easier habitation, bend
Four ways their flying march, along the banks
Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge

Into the burning lake their baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls

Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems

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,
A gulf profound as that Serbonian1 bog
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old,
Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.
Thither by harpy-footed furies haled,3

At certain revolutions all the damned

Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce;
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine
Immoveable, infixed, and frozen round,
Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire,
They ferry over this Lethéan sound

Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment,
And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach
The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose
In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe,
All in one moment, and so near the brink;
But fate withstands, and to oppose the attempt
Medusa with Gorgonian terror guards

their names and places without sufficient difference or distinction.
Our poet, therefore, was at liberty to draw (as I may say) a new map
of these rivers; and he supposes "a burning lake" agreeably to
Scripture, that often mentions "the lake of fire;" and he makes
these four rivers to flow from four different quarters, and empty
themselves into this burning lake, which gives us a much greater idea
than any of the heathen poets.
Besides these there is a fifth river
called "Lethe," which name in Greek signifies "forgetfulness," and
its waters are said to have occasioned that quality, En. vi. 714.-Newton.

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,
Should fix me, stiffened at the monstrous sight,
A stony image in eternal night."

The ford, and of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus. Thus roving on

In cónfused march forlorn, the adventurous bands
With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast,
Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,

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,
Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimæras dire.'

Meanwhile the adversary of God and man,
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell
Explores his solitary flight: sometimes

He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars
Up to the fiery concave towering high.

As when far off at sea a fleet descried
Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore,2 whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape

Ply stemming nightly toward the pole.
Far off the flying fiend: at last appear

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 howling Scyllas, yawling round about,

There serpents hiss, there seven-mouthed Hydras yell;
Chimæra there spues fire and brimstone out."-Fairfax.

2 Two of the Molucca islands in the East Indian sea.

Impenetrable, impaled' with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;

The one seemed woman2 to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled,
Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these
Vexed Scylla, bathing in the sea that parts
Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore:
Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, called
In secret, riding through the air she comes,
Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance
With Lapland witches3 while the labouring moon
Eclipses at their charms. The other shape,*

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.
"Yet did her face, and former parts, profess
A fair young maiden, full of comely glee;
But all her hinder parts did plain express

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.