for any save poetic ends. It remains to be judged whether they are good poetry or bad. To Milton they were as ideal and profound as to Homer the laughter of the gods, and Ares wounded by Diomed; perhaps not more :-to us, neither need be profound or ideal. Like all other products of human mind, how great soever-and clearly it ranks among the very great-Paradise Lost is local and temporary it belongs to the puritan Milton, it belongs to the England of the seventeenth century, inspired by Hebrew religionists and poets, and fancying that it possessed a final criterion of truth, and almost a final interpretation of truth. Local and temporary it is in its constituent partsonly in its essence or outcome universal and undying like the Iliad of Homer, the Commedia of Dante, the Prometheus of Shelley, the Faust of Göthe.

"Thus at the rushing loom of Time I ply,

And weave for God the garment thou seest Him by."

"THE measure is English Heroic Verse without Rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint, to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse; than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, therefore, some both Italian and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhyme both in longer and shorter works; as have also, long since, our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good" Oratory. This neglect then of Rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Rhyming."

BOOK I.

THE ARGUMENT.

THIS First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed. Then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven; with all his crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into hell, described here, not in the centre, for Heaven and Earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed, but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos: Here Satan, with his angels, lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him; they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in

A

the same manner confounded; they rise; their numbers, array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in heaven; for, that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit in council.

OF man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos; or, if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,
And madest it pregnant: what in me is dark,
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That to the height of this great argument

I may assert Eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of hell; say first, what cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favour'd of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind; what time his pride
Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host
Of rebel angels, by whose aid, aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equalled the Most High,
If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in heaven, and battle proud,

With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurl'd headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquish'd, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay,
Mix'd with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
At once, as far as angels' ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild;

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes,
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
Such place eternal justice had prepared
For those rebellious; here their prison ordain'd
In utter darkness, and their portion set
As far removed from God and light of heaven,
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell!
There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelm'd
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
He soon discerns, and weltering by his side
One next himself in power, and next in crime,
Long after known in Palestine, and named
Beelzebub: To whom the arch-enemy,

And thence in heaven call'd Satan, with bold words
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began:

If thou beest he; but oh, how fallen! how changed

From him, who in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine
Myriads, though bright! If he, whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
And hazard in the glorious enterprise,

Join'd with me once, now misery hath join'd

In equal ruin; into what pit thou seest

From what height fallen, so much the stronger proved

He with his thunder: and till then who knew

The force of those dire arms? yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage

earlier the poet had commenced the great work of his life, Paradise Lost. He had entertained a project of writing on the same theme a tragedy according to the antique model; but this scheme was laid aside, and the narrative poem undertaken, and completed in or about 1665. It consisted originally of only ten Books (instead of twelve as now): the larger number was made up in 1674, in the second edition, by dividing the 7th and 10th sections. The poem, after much difficulty in getting it licensed, was published by Mr. Simmons in 1667. The price paid down for it was £5; to be followed by £15, contingent upon the sale of a second and a third large impression. As it turned out, the first edition, 1500 copies, sold off in two years to the extent of 1300: the remaining 200 took five years more to sell. Before Paradise Lost, blank verse in the English language had been almost confined to dramatic works: Milton adopted this measure as alone suitable to so august a theme, and, in his preliminary notice to the poem, went so far as to denounce rhyme as trivial and barbarous. In 1670, Michael Elwood, a well-meaning quaker admirer who acted from time to time as Milton's amanuensis, made a remark which set him upon the composition of Paradise Regained. This was published, along with Samson Agonistes, in 1671; the singular perversity of authorship which led Milton to prefer Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost has often been remarked upon.

There are not many more incidents to be noted in the closing years of this illustrious life. In 1665 the poet had quitted London, in which the great plague was then raging, and he lived awhile in the village of Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire. When the epidemic was over, he returned his last habitation was in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. His daughters did not reside with him during the final four or five years of his life. He suffered from gout; and an attack of this malady carried him off on the 8th of November 1674. His will, which was afterwards disputed in the interest of his daughters, left everything to his wife' -the total value being about £1500. His tomb is in the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

The principal writings of Milton not already mentioned were a Latin Grammar, published in 1661; a History of England, 1670, which he only brought down to the date of the Norman conquest; a System of Logic after the Method of Ramus, 1672; a Treatise of True Religion, 1673, in the course of which he inveighed against popery, and propounded, as the limit which deserved political toleration, any phase of religious thought which should recognize the Scriptures as sufficient guide; Familiar Epistles in Latin,