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If that

way be

your walk, you have not far; So much the nearer danger; go and speed; Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.

He ceas'd; and Satan stay'd not to reply, But glad that now his sea should find a shore, With fresh alacrity and force renew'd Springs upward like a pyramid of fire

1009. Havoc and Spoil and ruin are my gain.] This is very agreeable to that character of Chaos by Lucan, Phar. VI. 696.

Et Chaos innumeros avidum confundere mundos.

1011. But glad that now his fea fhould find a fhore,] A metaphor to exprefs his joy that now his travel and voyage fhould end, fomewhat like that of one of the Ancients, who reading a tedious book and coming near to the end cry'd I fee land, Terram video.

1017-than when Argo pass'd&c.] The first long fhip ever feen in Greece, in which Jafon and his companions failed to Colchis to fetch the golden Fleece. Through Bofporus, the Thracian Bofporus, or the ftraits of Conftantinople, or the Channel of the Black Sea. It is fometimes writ Bofphorus, as in Mr. Fenton's edition, from Bes and peg but Milton is more exact and accurate, and writes Bosporus according to the best Greek authers, from Bes wop, bovis tran

1010

Into

fitus, the fea being fo narrow there that cattle are faid to have swum crofs it. Betwixt the juftling rocks, two rocks at the entrance into the Euxin or Black Sea, called in Greck Symplegades, and by Juvenal concurrentia faxa, Sat. XV. 19. which Milton very well tranflates the juftling rocks, because they were fo ncar, that at a distance they feemed to open and fhut again, and justle one another, as the hip varied its courfe this way and that as ufual. In Ponto duæ Cyaneæ, ab aliis Symplegades appellatæ, traditæque fabulis inter fe concurriffe: quoniam parvo difcrete intervallo, ex adverfo intrantibus geminæ cernebantur, paulumque deflexa acie, coeuntium fpeciem præbebant. Plin. Nat. Hift. L. 4. Cap. 13. The reader may fee a farther account of thefe rocks, and the paffage betwixt them in Apollonius, Argonaut. II. 317, &c. In fhort Satan's voyage through the fighting elements was more difficult and dangerous than that of the Argonauts through narrow feas betwixt justling rocks.

1019. Or

Into the wild expanse, and through the shock Of fighting elements, on all fides round

Environ'd wins his way; harder beset

And more indanger'd, than when Argo pass'd Through Bofporus betwixt the juftling rocks: Or when Ulyffes on the larbord fhunn'd Charybdis, and by th' other whirpool fteer'd.

1019. Or when Ulyffes on the lar. bord fbunn'd Charybdis, and by th' other whirlpool feer'd] Thefe two two verfes Dr. Bentley would throw quite away. Larbord (he fays) is abominable in heroic poetry; but Dryden (as the Doctor owns) thought it not unfit to be employ'd there and Milton in other places has ufed nautical terms, without being cenfur'd for it by the Doctor. So in IX. 513. he speaks of working a ship, of veering and shifting; and in I. 207. of mooring under the lee. So Virgil's legere littus is obferv'd to be a term borrow'd from mariners, by Servius in his notes on Georg. II. 44. and En. III. 127. But the Doctor has two very formidable objections against the sense of these verses. First he fays that larbord or left-hand is a mistake here for farbord or right hand, Charybdis being to the farbord of Ulyffes when he failed thro' thefe ftraits. This is very true, but it does not affect what Milton here fays; for the fenfe may be, not that Ulyffes fhunn'd

1015

1020

So

Charybdis fituated on the larbord of his fhip as he was failing; but that Ulyffes failing on the larbord (to the left hand where Scylla was) did thereby fhun Charybdis; which was the truth of the cafe. The Doctor's other objection is, that Scylla was no whirpool, which yet the is here fuppofed to have been: But Virgil (whom Milton follows oftner than he does Homer) defcribes Scylla as naves in faxa trahentem, Æn. III. 425. and what is that lefs than calling it a whirlpool? And Athan. Kircher, who has written a particular account of Scylla and Charybdis upon his own view of them, does not fcruple to call them both whirlpools. The truth is, that Scylla is a rock fituated in a small bay on the Italian coaft, into which bay the tide runs with a very frong current, fo as to draw in the hips which are within the compafs of its force, and either dafh them against the rock, or fwallow them in the eddies: for when the ftreams have thus violently rush'd into the bay, they

meet

So he with difficulty and labor hard

Mov'd on, with difficulty and labor he;
But he once paft, foon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, fuch was the will of Heaven,
Pav'd after him a broad and beaten way

1026

Over the dark abyfs, whose boiling gulf
Tamely indur'd a bridge of wondrous length
From Hell continued reaching th' utmost orb
Of this frail world; by which the Spirits perverfe
With easy intercourse pass to and fro

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom
God and good Angels guard by special grace.

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1031

But

interpolation: but the foregoing words, containing a repetition of what went before them, with difficulty and labor he, have no force nor propriety, unless it be added (as it is in these verses) that fome others afterwards went this way with more ease. Pearce.

It is evident that these lines are Milton's, and cannot be an interpolation of the editor. But yet I am afraid we cannot so easily get over the Doctor's other objection that this fame bridge is defcrib'd in Book X. for feveral lines together poetically and pompously, as a thing untouch'd before and an incident to furprise the reader;

and

But now at laft the facred influence

Of light appears, and from the walls of Heaven
Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night

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1040

A glimmering dawn; here Nature first begins
Her fartheft verge, and Chaos to retire
As from her outmost works a broken foe
With tumult lefs and with lefs hoftile din,
That Satan with lefs toil, and now with ease
Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light,
And like a weather-beaten veffel holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn ;
Or in the emptier wafte, refembling air,
Weighs his spread wings, at leifure to behold

1045

Far

and therefore the poet fhould not moft works of Nature mentioned

have anticipated it here. Let the lines themselves be approv'd; yet it must be allow'd, it is wrong conduct and want of oeconomy for the whole poem. And we cannot recollect a parallel inftance in Homer or Virgil, or any autho

riz'd poet.

1025.- -fuch was the will of Heaven,] ΔιΘ. δ' ετελείετο

Bean. Hom. Iliad. I. 5.

1039. As from her outmost works] Dr. Bentley reads his instead of her: but the meaning is not that Chaos retires as from his own outmost works, but retires as from the outVOL. I.

before.

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Far off th' empyreal Heav'n, extended wide
In circuit, undetermin'd fquare or round,
With opal tow'rs and battlements adorn'd
Of living faphir, once his native feat;
And faft by hanging in a golden chain
This pendent world, in bignefs as a star

1050

Of

the Angel Gabriel's flight, Cant. 1. menfely bigger than the Earth, a

St. 14.

E fi librò fu l' adeguate penne.

But I think notwithstanding the natural partiality one has for one's countryman, the preference muft be given to the Italian. The fame ftanza fuggefts another imitation. Taffo calls Gabriel's wings, Infaticabilmente, agili, e prefte. And Milton, ver. 408, Upborne with indefatigable wings. Thyer.

1049. With opal tor'rs] With towers of precious ftones. Opal is a ftone of diverfe colors, partaking of the carbuncles faint fire, the

amethifts bright purple, and the emeralds cheering green.

Hume and Richardson.

1052. This pendent world, in big

nefs as a ftar Of Smallest magnitude clofe by the moon.] By this pendent world is not meant the Earth; but the new creation, Heaven and Earth, the whole orb of fix'd ftars im

mere point in comparifon. This is fure from what Chaos had lately faid, ver. 1004.

Now lately Heav'n and Earth, another world,

Hung o'er my realm, link'd in a golden chain.

Befides, Satan did not fee the Earth yet; he was afterwards furpris'd at the fudden view of all this world at on the outfide of it; till at last he once, III. 542, and wander'd long faw our fun, and learned there of the Arch-Angel Uriel, where the

Earth and Paradife were. See III. muft mean the whole world, the 722. This pendent world therefore new created univerfe, and beheld

far off it appear'd in comparison with the empyreal Heaven no bigger than a far of smallest magnitude; nay not fo large, it appear'd no bigger than fuch a ftar appears to be when it is clofe by the moon, the fuperior light whereof makes any itar that happens to be near her difk, to feem exceedingly small and almoft difappear. Dr. Bentley has ftrangely mistaken the sense of

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