"Will be aveng'd; and the other's faith, approv'd,
"Lose no reward; though here you see him di£,
"Rolling in dust and gore."

To which our sire:
"Alas! both for the deed, and for the cause!
"But have I now seen Death? Is this the way
"I must return to native dust? 0 sight
"Or terror, foul and ugly to behold!
"Horrid to think! how horrible to feel!

To whom thus Michael: "Death thou hast seen
"In his first shape on man: but many shapes
"Of death, and many are the ways that lead
"To his grim cave; all dismal! yet to sense
"More terrible at the entrance, than within.
66 Some, as thou saw'st, by violent stroke shall die;
"By fire, flood, famine; by intemp'rance more
"In meats and drinks, which on the earth shall bring
"Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew

"Before thee shall appear, that thou mayst know
"What misery the inabstinence of Eve

"Shall bring on men."

Immediately a place

Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisome, dark:
A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseas'd; all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,1
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac phrensy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,

2

Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. Dire was the tossing, deep the groans! Despair 4so Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;'

•aid before, and as the best Hebrew and Christian commentators understand the passage.-UV.)

i Febrium cohors.—(Hor., T.)

These lines (485—487) were introduced in the second edition, and Benlley would reject them. He objects to "phrensy, melancholy, and lunacy" being made thapet of death, as they are often attended with long life; but Pearce replies, that they are attended with misery, and so explains line 476. "Marasinus," μxpoμos, consumption accompanied by fever gradually wasting the body. "Atrophy," popix, a disease in which food has no power to sustain the body.

> This is entirely in the picturesque manner of Spenser, and seems particularly to allude to that beautiful passage, (Fairy Queen, II. vii. 21—24), when describing the passage to "Pluto's grisly reign," he represents Pain, Strife, Revenge, etc. as so many

519

And over them triumphant Death his dart
Shook, but dclay'd to strike, though oft invok'd
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept,
Though not of woman born; compassion qucll'd
His best of man, and gave him up to tears 2
A space, till firmer thoughts restrain'd excess;
And/ scarce recovering words, his plaint renew'd.
"0 miserable mankind! to what fall

66

Degraded—to what wretched state reserv'd!
"Better end here unborn.* Why is life given
"To be thus wrested from us? rather, why
"Obtruded on us thus? who, if we knew
"What we receive, would either not accept
"Life offer'd, or, soon beg to lay it down;
"Glad to be so dismiss'd in peace. Can thus
"The image of God in man, created once
"So goodly and erect, though faulty since,
"To such unsightly sufferings be debas'd

66

66

Under inhuman pains? Why should not man,
Retaining still divine similitude

"In part, from such deformities be free,

"And, for his Maker's image' sake, exempt?"
"Their Maker's image," answer'd Michael, "then
"Forsook them, when themselves they vilified
"To serve ungovern'd appetite; and took
"His image whom they served—a brutish vice;
"Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.

5

persons assembled; and over Ihem sat Horrour soaring with grim hue, and beating bis iron wings, etc.—(Th.)

i See Tibull. Elcg. I. i. 63, where there is the combination of "heart or rock" and "dry eyed."—(D.)

» Whalley and Dunslor have remarked that Milton's mind must have been impressed with the following passages from Shakspeare's Macbeth,

Hen. V.

"And thou oppos'd be not of woman born--
For It hath cow'd my better part of man.'

But all my mother came unto my eyes
And gave me up to tears."

3 "And" couples "renewed" here to "wept" before.—(P,)

See Edip. Colon. 1288:

Μη φύναι του απαντα για

και λόγον, το δ' επει φατη

Βήναι κείθεν όθεν περ ήκει

Πολυ δεύτερον, ως τάχιστα. — (Stll.)

The image of Appetite, the brutish vice, which is here personified as a carnal demon.—(N.)

Leading to, from induco.

554

66

Therefore so abject is their punishment,
"Disfiguring not God's likeness, but their own;
"Or if his likeness, by themselves defac'd,

"While they pervert pure nature's healthful rules
"To loathsome sickness;' worthily, since they
"God's image did not reverence in themselves."
"I yield it just," said Adam, "and submit.
"But is there yet no other way, besides
"These painful passages, how we may come
"To death, and mix with our connatural dust?"
"There is," said Michael, "if thou well observe
"The rule of 'Not too much;2 by temperance taught,
"In what thou eat'st and drink'st; seeking from thence
"Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight,

"Till many years over thy head return:

"So mayst thou live; till, like ripe fruit, thou drop
"Into thy mother's lap; or be with ease

"Gather'd, not harshly pluck'd, for death mature.

3

"This is Old Age; but then, thou must outlive
"Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
"To wither'd, weak, and gray; thy senses, then
"Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forego,
"To what thou hast; and, for the air of youth
"Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
"A melancholy damp of cold and dry,

4

"To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
"The balm of life."

To whom our ancestor:
"Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong
Life much; bent rather, how I may be quit,
"Fairest and easiest, of this cumbrous charge;
"Which I must keep till my appointed day"
"Of rendering up, and patiently attend

"My dissolution."

Michael replied:

6

"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv'st,
"Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven :7

i See Rom. i. SI, 24.—(Gil.)

» Ne quid nimis; an old maxim of philosophy.

» How much more dignified and poetic is Ihis summary than the shocking details of the miseries of old age which Juvenal gives, Sat. x.

"Damp" here means depression of spirits, dejection

8 Job xlv. !4.-(GiZ.)

e A Latinism, quod vivii, whatever life you live. "Nor love thy life, nor hale." Martia , %.

"Snmmum ncc metuas diem, Hoc orles."—(N.)

^ Perniill Phis. Hor. i. Od. ix.-.N.)

582

"And now prepare thee for another sight."

He look'd, and saw a spacious plain, whereon
Were tents of various hue: by some, were herds
Of cattle grazing others, whence the sound
Of instruments, that made melodious chime,
Was heard, of harp and organ; and who mov'd
Their stops and chords was seen; his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions, low and iigh,
Fled, and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.'
In other part, stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two,massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted, (whether found where casual fire
Had wasted woods on mountain, or in vale,
Down to the veins of earth; thence gliding hot
To some cave's mouth ; or whether wash'd by stream
From under ground;) the liquid ore he drain'd
Into fit moulds prepar'd; from which he form'd

First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought
Fusil, or grav'n in metal. After these,

But on the hither side, a different sort

From the high neighbouring hills, which was their scat,
Down to the plain descended; by their guise

Just men they secm'd, and all their study bent
To worship God aright, and know his works

Not hid; nor those things last, which might preserve
Freedom, and peace to men: they on the plain
Long had not walk'd, when, from the tents, behold!"
A bevy of fair women, richly gay

i A "fugue" is in music Ihc correspondency of parls, answering one another in the same notes either above or below, therefore elegantly styled resonant, as sounding the tame notes over again.—(H.)

From Lucretius, v. 1240:—

"Quod superest, æs atqne aurum, ferrumque rcpcrlum est,
Et simul argenti poodus, plumbiqae potestas
Ignis ubl iogentes sylvas adore cremarat
Moatibus in magnis."

Poteslat ignis expresses the consuming power of fire. So "potenlia solis." Virg.— (Jortin.) Gliding hot to some cave's mouth." Boiling up from the recesses of the earth to the mouth of some cave, where the smith first found it; the heat of the burned wood above working into the earth, and there melting the ore which boiled up.

> The descendants of Cain are first mentioned; after these, the descendants of the younger brother Selh, who were righteous meh, and therefore of a different sort; these came from the hills adjacent to Paradise, where their residence was, to the plain where the descendants of Cain dwelt, (Cain having been banished far off into the low country,) and there became corrupted by their intercourse with the female descendants of Cain. See Gen. iv. 20, etc. Though these accounts of the Sethites be in general conformable to Scripture, yet these particulars Milton seems to have taken from the oriental writers, particularly the annals of Eutychius. Josephus, Antiq. b. i. c. 2, says they were addicted to the study of natural philosophy, especially of astronomy.—(N.)

A company; a word often used by the old English poets.

592

In gems and wanton dress; to the harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on:

The men, though grave, eyed them ; and let their eyes
Rove without rein; till, in the amorous net

Fast caught, they lik'd; and each his liking chose.
And now of love they treat, till the evening star,
Love's harbinger, appear'd; then, all in heat,
They light the nuptial torch; and bid invoke
Hymen, then first to marriage rites invok'd:
With feast and music all the tents resound.1

< The description of the shield of Achilles is one of the finest and most admired pieces of poetry in the whole Iliad; and Milton has plainly shown his admiration and affection for it by introducing in this visionary part of his work so many analogous scenes and images; but they exceed the originals, and receive this additional beauty, that they are most of them made representations of real history and matters of fact. Thus, this passage, and ver. 583 and 584—

To the harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties, and In dance came on;

is a beautiful copy of Homer, II. xviii. 491 :

(See also Hesiod, Scut. Hercul. 272.—Stil.) So ver. 429—431 and 556—558, before, are taken from Homer, ver. 550, etc.:—

Εν δ' ετίθει τεμενος βαθυληΐον ενθα ε εριθει

Ημων, οξείας δρέπανας εν χερσιν έχοντες"

Δραγματα για αλλα μετ' αγμον επήτριμα πιπτον έραζε

Αλλα ο αμαλλοθετηρες εν ελλεδανοισι δεοντο.

And ver. 587, etc.:

Εν δε νόμον ποιησε περικλυτος Αμφιγυήεις

Εν καλη βηστη μεγαν οιων αργεννάων,

Σταθμούς τε, κλισιας τε, κατηρεφέας ιδε σήκους.

In like manner, the driving away of the sheep and oxen from pasture, and the battle that ensues thereupon (ver. 646, etc.), may be compared with the following passage in Homer, ver. 526, etc.:—

Οι μεν τα προϊδοντες επέδραμον, ωχα δ' έπειτα
Ταμνοντ' αμφι βοων αγελας και πωεκ καλα
Αργεννων εἴων κτεινον δ' επι μηλοβοτήρας.
Οι α

ως ουν επύθοντο πολυν κελαδον αμφι βουσιν,
Ειραων προπαροιθε καθημενοι, αυτίκ' εφ' ιππων
Βαντες αερσιπόδων μετεκίαθον· αίψα δ' ίκοντο

Στησαμενοι δ' εμάχοντο μαχην ποταμοιο παρ' όχθας,
Βαλλον ο αλληλους χαλκήρεσιν εγχείησι.

The representation of the city besieged, in Milton, ver. 655, etc. is a great improvement on that in Homer, ver. 509, etc.:

Την

وال

ετέρην πολιν αμφι δυο στρατοι ειατο λαών Τεύχεσι λαμπομενει.

So the council, in Milton, ver. 660, etc. is much more elaborately described, and appears more important than that in Homer, ver. 503, etc. :