Side 28 af 239

Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky. Book I., Lines 44, 45.

PARADISE LOST.

BOOK I.

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THE 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 falling 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 to 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 the same manner confounded. They rise; their numbers; array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterward 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 a 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 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,² 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

Few things are so fatal to the pleasant and profitable reading of an author, as the distraction occasioned by profuse, and often trivial, notes upon his text. Commentators on Milton have assigned a large space to coincidences between him and preceding writers—a wonderful larger space than we should have thought it worth while so to occupy. We doubt not that much the greater part of those coincidences are coincidences of which the author was wholly unconscious; and where it was otherwise, the matter is either so trivial as not to deserve to be mentioned, or the metal borrowed is borrowed almost invariably that it might receive an impress which the genius of Milton only could have given to it. In the annotation we submit to the reader, we hope to distinguish between what may be really useful, and what would be felt as only so much incumbrance and impediment.

"Sing, heavenly Muse.—Prayer for the inspiration breathed into the old Hebrew prophets. Milton's third wife, who survived him many years, related of him that he used to compose his poetry chiefly in winter; and on his waking in a morning would make her write down sometimes twenty or thirty verses. Being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood the question as indicating a suspicion that he may have made an undue use in some instances of those authors, and answered with eagerness—"He stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him;" and being asked by a lady present who the Muse was, she replied—"It was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly."—Necton's Life of Milton. Richardson also says—"Milton would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his poetic fancy would rush upon him with an impetus, or astrum."