T'adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers, from Heaven-gates, discern
Th' advantage, and, descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked1 thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n."

CATALOGUE OF THE INFERNAL CHIEFS.

Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,'
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
At their great emperor's3 call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof.
The chief were those, who, from the pit of Hell
Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix
Their seats, long after, next the seat of God,
Their altars by his altar, gods ador'd
Among the nations round, and durst abide
Jehovah thundering out of Sion, thron'd
Between the cherubim ;6 yea often plac'd
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,
Abominations; and with cursed things
His holy rites and solemn feasts profan'd,
And with their darkness durst affront' his light.
First Moloch, horrid king, besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears;

Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud
Their children's cries unheard, that pass'd through fire
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite

Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain,

In Argob and in Basan, to the stream

Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such
Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build

1 See Virg. Aen. viii. 429.

2 Hom. Iliad v. 703.

3 Emperor (imperator) implies military supremacy.-See Adam's Rom. Antiq. (Boyd), pp. 18, 87, 140, 141, 322.

41 Pet. v. 8.

Alluding to the idolatries of many of the Judean and Israelitish monarchs.

6 Ps. lxxx. 1; xcix. 1. The Shekinah appeared between the cherubim above the ark of Affront was used sometimes as we use confront.

God.

See note 9, p. 182. Horrid, because human sacrifices were offered to him. “Passed through the fire."-Lev. xviii. 21; 2 Kings xxiii. 10. His idol was of brass, sitting on a throne, and wearing a crown; having the head of a calf, and his arms extended to receive the victims to be sacrificed; hence grim idol. Rabba, the capital of the Ammonites, called the "city of waters."-2 Sam. xi. 27. The river Arnon was the Ammonite boundary from Moab.-Newton. Moloch is by some identified with Saturn. "That the planet Mars was named Moloch by the Egyptians is mentioned by Beyer."-Dunster.

91 Kings xi. 7. The "opprobrious hill," "right against the temple of God," should be the Mount of Olives;" but Hinnom is considered generally the southern valley of Jerusalem, between Mount Sion and the " Hill of Offence." Hinnom was the scene of the idolatrous defections of the Israelites. Tophet is derived from toph (a drum); the cries of the sacrificed victims being drowned with the noise of drums. Gehenna is used in the New Testament for hell. Byron calls Venice "Gehenna of the waters."-Marino Faliero, Act III. Sc. 3.

His temple right against the temple of God,
On that opprobrious hill; and made his grove
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence
And black Gehenna call'd, the type of Hell.

Next, Chemos,1 the obscene dread of Moab's sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild

Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon
And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond

The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines,
And Eleäle to th' Asphaltic pool.

Peor his other name, when he entic'd

3

Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile,
To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe.
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarg'd
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove
Of Moloch homicide,-lust hard by hate ;*
Till good Josiah" drove them thence to Hell.

With these came they, who, from the bord'ring flood
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth ; those male,

These feminine: for spirits, when they please,
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb,

Nor founded on the brittle strength of bores,

Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condens'd, bright or obscure,

Can execute their aery purposes,

And works of love or enmity fulfil.7

For those the race of Israel oft forsook

Their living Strength, and unfrequented left

His righteous altar, bowing lowly down

To bestial gods; for which their heads, as low
Bow'd down in battle, sunk before the spear

1 See note 4, p. 182. See also Pictorial Bible, Numb. xxv. 3. Milton adopts the idea that Chemos and Baal-Peor are the same deity. The Moabite boundaries and localities mentioned in the text may be found in any map of Palestine, and in any Bible dictionary. 2 Sihon, the Amorite, seized a considerable portion of the Moabite territory; he refused a passage to the Israelites. On his defeat his country was allotted to the tribe of Reuben. -Numb. xxi. xxxi.; Deut. ii. 26, 27; Josh. xiii.; Ps. cxxxvi. 19-21.

3 Numb. xxv.

4 See 1 Kings xi. 7. The moral conveyed by Milton in "lust hard by hate" has been admired for the truth of its philosophy and the concentrated strength of its expression. Compare 2 Sam. xiii. 15.

5 See 2 Kings xxiii.

The whole territory from the Euphrates to the isthmus Suez passed under the general name of Syria. Tyre, in its native appellation Soor, preserves the common denomination of the country."The river of Egypt" is commonly supposed to be a brook on the southern border of Palestine. "Baalim and Ashtaroth are frequently mentioned together in Scripture."-Newton.

One of the great difficulties Milton has to contend with in the conduct of his subject is the extrication of the material from the immaterial in the actions and attributes of his

spiritual personages. "This passage," says Addison, alluding to the lines, "for spirits," &c. "is introduced with great judgment, to make way for several accidents in the sequel of the poem." The idea is derived from old works on demonology.-See Todd and Newton.

Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians call'd
Astarte, queen of Heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king, whose heart, though large,
Beguil'd by fair idolatresses, fell

To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day;
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, suppos'd with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye survey'd the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah. Next came one
Who mourn'd in earnest, when the captive ark
Maim'd his brute image, head and hands lopt off
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge,
Where he fell flat, and sham'd his worshippers :3
Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man
And downward fish: yet had his temple high
Rear'd in Azotus, dreaded through the coast
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon,

And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.
Him follow'd Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.

1 See note 6, p. 182. The name is used as singular or plural. The Greeks identified her with their Juno, Diana, or Venus; because in the oriental mythology she united the attributes of these divinities. Her worship at the temple of Aphek in Lebanon was licentious in the extreme, though her sacrifices, unlike those of her associate Baal (the sun), were bloodless. The Israelites were frequently seduced into her idolatry. Solomon, from his Phenician connections, was involved in this taint, and built her a temple on the Mount of Olives. Jeremiah calls her "Queen of heaven."-Jer. vii. 18. Her temples were always in the recesses of groves.-See Pictorial Bible, 2 Chron. xv. 16. Perhaps she is the Aestre or Eostre of the Saxons, from whom our term Easter is derived."--Brown's Bible Dict.

2 See note 8, p. 182. The Phoenician Thammuz, supposed to be a personification of the sun, gives origin to the Greek fable of Adonis. His festival was celebrated at the season when the river Adonis ran red with the mud and clay brought down from the mountains by the rains and the melting of the snow. Hence the allusion to the blood of Thammuz yearly wounded." The rites at Byblus were of the most detestable character. "To this day some vestiges of this mad revel remain at Aleppo." The Greek festival of this deity at Alexandria is described in one of the Idylls of Theocritus. See Spectator, No. 303. 3 See Pictorial Bible, 1 Sam. v. 4. Dag in Hebrew means a fish. Fish-idolatry was a practice both of Egypt and Syria. It is prohibited Deut. iv. 18. Grunsel (Ang. Sax. grund-syl); the foot-post of a door; another example is window-sill, The five cities of the Philistines.

5 See 2 Kings v. 18. The name Rimmon, as that of a deity, occurs nowhere in Scripture except in this passage. The particular idol meant cannot be identified. The commor meaning of the word is sometimes said to be a pomegranate tree: the idea elevation or exaltedness is also deduced from its syllables.

He also against the house of God was bold:
A leper once he lost, and gain'd a king,
Ahaz his sottish conqueror, whom he drew
God's altar to disparage and displace
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn
His odious offerings, and adore the gods
Whom he had vanquish'd.1 After these appear'd
A crew, who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus,2 and their train,

With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek

Their wandering gods, disguis'd in brutish forms
Rather than human. Nor did Israel 'scape

The infection, when their borrow'd gold compos'd
The calf in Oreb;3 and the rebel king
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan,*
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox,-
Jehovah, who in one night, when he pass'd
From Egypt marching, equall'd with one stroke
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods.
Belial came last, than whom a spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
Vice for itself: to him no temple stood
Or altar smok'd; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who fill'd
With lust and violence the house of God?"
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage: and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.7
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Expos'd a matron, to avoid worse rape.
These were the prime in order and in might :
The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd,
The Ionian gods, of Javan's issue; held

2 See note 10, p. 182.

1 See 2 Kings xvi. The leper is Naaman. Exodus xxxii. The Egyptian deity Apis was a bull. 4 Jeroboam. See 1 Kings xii. 27-33. Jeroboam's residence in Egypt, during his exile, seems to have been the cause of his choice of this form of idolatry. The calves, both of Aaron and Jeroboam, do not seem to have been intended as images of Egyptian gods, but of Jehovah himself. See Michaelis' Commentaries on the Laws of Moses(Smith) Art. 245-vol. iii. pp. 1-9.

5 Belial, in Hebrew, worthlessness. "Persons worthless, wicked, and unruly, or things horrid and abominable, are termed children, men, or things of Belial." It seems uncertain whether the word is intended to be the name of a personality. 61 Samuel ii. 12.

Milton was perhaps thinking of London, and the revels of the cavaliers after the Re

storation.

The "Isles of the Gentiles," denoting the countries beyond the Mediterrancan Sea, with respect to Palestine and Egypt, were peopled by the descendants of Javan (Gen. x. 5), from whose name is derived the term Ionian. This was an oriental appellation of the Greeks. For the ancestry of the Greek deities as taken from Hesiod, see Keightley's My

Gods, yet confess'd later than Heaven and Earth,
Their boasted parents: Titan, Heaven's first-born,
With his enormous brood, and birthright seiz'd
By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove,
His own and Rhea's1 son, like measure found;
So Jove usurping reign'd: these, first in Crete
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top
Of bold Olympus, rul'd the middle air,

Their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian cliff,”
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds
Of Doric land or who with Saturn old
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields,
And o'er the Celtic roam'd the utmost isles.3

FROM BOOK SECOND.

SATAN PRESIDING IN THE INFERNAL COUNCIL.

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,*
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd

To that bad eminence: and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue

Vain war with Heaven, and, by success untaught,
His proud imaginations thus display'd:

"Powers and dominions, deities of Heaven;
For since no deep within her gulf can hold
Immortal vigour, though oppress'd and fall'n,
I give not Heaven for lost. From this descent
Celestial virtues rising, will appear

More glorious and more dread than from no fall,
And trust themselves to fear no second fate.

thology, p. 41. The Uranides or Titans, the children of Uranos and Gaea (heaven and earth), were overthrown by the Kronides, the children of Kronos (Saturn): the seat of the former was Crete; of the latter the Thessalian Olympus. Titan by Virgil and Ovid is applied to the sun. It is of importance in the study of mythology to distinguish between particular national systems, and between the historic, philosophic, and religious schemes of writers on the subject. See Keightley, p. 10.

1 Rhea (the Operatrix), translated in Latin by the name Ops, was the female Titan, the wife of Kronos (Saturn): both deities are made the same with Cybele.

2 Delphos in Phocis, the seat of Apollo's oracle; Dodona in Epírus, the seat of the oracle of Jupiter (Zeus). The Dorians were the most powerful and conspicuous of the Hellenic tribes after the Trojan war.

3 The fable is, that the Titan Kronos (Saturn), dethroned by his son Zeus (Jupiter), fled into Italy (Hesperia). The Roman conquests spread the derived mythology of Greece over "the Celtic," the western counties of Europe, to the "utmost isles" of Britain. Milton's enumeration of the evil spirits is in imitation of Homer's Catalogue of Ships, and Virgil's List of Warriors. "He has comprised in 130 beautiful lines the two learned syntagmas which Selden had composed on the same abstruse subject."-Todd.

4 Compare Spencer, Fairy Queen, Book iii. Canto 4, 23. The facility with which Milton's touch converts into purer gold the beauties of his predecessors in all ages and languages is a conspicuous feature of his genius.

5 Compare Virg. Aen. ii. 504. A ceremony of the coronation of oriental monarchs was scattering over them gold dust and seed pearl. 6 In the sense of bad success.

7 Give not up.

8 Angelic essences.