BOOK IX. THE ARGUMEN T. SATAN having encompassed the earth, with meditated guile returns, as a mist, by night into Paradise; enters into the serpent sleeping. Adam and Eve in the morning go forth to their labours, which Eve proposes to divide in several places, each labouring apart: Adam consents not, alleging the danger, lest that enemy, of whom they were forewarned, should attempt her found alone: Eve, loth to be thought not circumspect or firm enough, urges her going apart, the rather desirous to make trial of her strength: Adam at last yields; the serpent finds her alone: his subtle approach, first gazing, then speaking; with much flattery extolling Eve above all other creatures. Eve, wondering to hear the serpent speak, asks how he attained to human speech, and such understanding, not till now: the serpent answers, that by tasting of a certain tree in the garden he attained both to speech and reason, till then void of both: Eve requires him to bring her to that tree, and finds it to be the tree of knowledge forbidden; the serpent, now grown bolder, with many wiles and arguments induces her at length to eat; she, pleased with the taste, deliberates awhile whether to impart thereof to Adam or not; at last brings him of the fruit; relates what persuaded her to eat thereof: Adam, at first amazed, but perceiving her lost, resolves, through vehemence of love, to perish with her; and, extenuating the trespass, eats also of the fruit: the effects thereof in them both; they seek to cover their nakedness; then fall to variance and accusation of one another. No more of talk where God or angel guest Venial discourse unblamed. I now must change And disobedience: on the part of Heaven 1. Where God, &c. The sense is, where God. or rather the angel sent by him, and acting as his proxy, used to sit familiarly with man as with his friend. 12. Misery here means sickness, dis ease, and all sorts of mortal pains. Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Of my celestial patroness, who deigns And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late; Wars, hitherto the only argument With long and tedious havoc fabled knights, The sun was sunk, and after him the star 26. Long choosing. Milton early designed to write an epic poem on the subject of King Arthur; but it was laid aside, though it was not till after the Restoration that he set about the present work in earnest; so that he was long choosing and beginning late. 35. Impresses quaint: emblems and devices on the shield, alluding to the name or the fortune of the wearer. 36. Buses: the mantle which hung down from the middle to about the knees or lower, worn by knights on From compassing the earth; cautious of day, His entrance, and forewarn'd the cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, On the eighth return'd; and, on the coast averse Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change Rose up a fountain by the tree of life: In with the river sunk, and with it rose, Satan, involved in rising mist; then sought 75 Where to lie hid: sea he had search'd, and land From Eden over Pontus, and the pool Downward as far antarctic; and in length, At Darien; thence to the land where flows Most opportune might serve his wiles; and found Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose; Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom To enter, and his dark suggestions hide From sharpest sight; for, in the wily snake 59. Compassing the earth. Job i. 7. 63. Satan was three days compassing the earth from east to west, and four days from north to south, but still kept always in the shade of night; and on the eighth day returned by stealth into Paradise.-NEWTON. 66. Each colure. The colures are two great circles, intersecting each other at right angles in the poles of the world, and encompassing the earth from north to south. 80 85 90 95 100 77. As we before had an astronomical, so here we have a geographical account of Satan's peregrinations.-NEWTON. 78. Ob, the Oby; Orontes, a river of Syria that empties into the gulf of Issus; Darien, the isthmus that seems to set a bar to the Atlantic, preventing its mingling with the waters of the Pacific 86. Gen. iii. 1. 89. Filtest imp: Fittest stock to graft his devilish fraud upon.-HUME. With second thoughts, reforming what was old! Is centre, yet extends to all; so thou, Centring, receiv'st from all those orbs: in thee, 105 110 115 120 Torment within me, as from the hateful siege Of contraries: all good to me becomes Bane, and in heaven much worse would be my state. But neither here seek I, no, nor in heaven To dwell, unless by mastering heaven's Supreme: 125 Nor hope to be myself less miserable By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound: To my relentless thoughts; and, him destroy'd, For whom all this was made; all this will soon 13. Of growth, &c. The three kinds of life, vegetable, animal, and rational, of all of which man partakes. 119. Place: Abiding-place. 130 135 140 145 places used the objective absolute instead of the nominative. 146. If they at least, &c.; thus doubt ing whether the angels were created by 130. Him. Milton has in two or three God. Determined to advance into our room A creature form'd of earth; and him endow, With heavenly spoils, our spoils: what he decreed, 150 155 160 165 But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires, must down as low As high he soar'd; obnoxious, first or last, 170 To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long, back on itself recoils: Let it; I reck not, so it light well aim'd, Since higher I fall short, on him who next 175 Of Heaven, this man of clay, son of despite; His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles: 156 and 157. See Ps. civ. 4 and xci. 11, and Heb. i. 14. 173. No speech in the whole work is, in my opinion, worked up with greater judgment, or better suited to the character of the speaker, than this of Satan's. There is all the horror and malignity of a fiend-like spirit expressed; and yet this is so artfullv tempered with Satan's 180 185 190 starts of recollection upon the meanness and folly of what he was going to undertake, as plainly show the remains of the archangel and the ruins of a superior nature.-THYER. 192. Sacred light. This is the morning of the ninth day, as far as we can reckon the time in this poem;-the last of man's innocence and happiness.-NEWTON. |