Collected stood within our thoughts amus'd, But soon obscur'd with smoke, all heav'n appear'd, 585 586. deep throated engines] So Shakespeare in Othello, act iii. And oh, you mortal engines, whose rude throats Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit. 586. -whose roar Imbowell'd with outrageous noise the air, And all her entrails tore,] The construction seems to be, The roar of which (engines) imbowelled with outrageous noise tore the air and all her entrails. So in ver. 740, 741. That from thy just obedience could revolt, Whom to obey &c. Thy for of thee; and to this sense the word whom refers. This is common in Milton's poem. Pearce. The most natural and obvious construction is, whose rour_imbowelled or filled the air with outrageous noise; but to this it is objected, that it is as much as to say that the roar filled the air with roar. Neither do I see how the matter is much mended by saying, that the roar of the cannon in bowelled with roar tore the air &c. The cannon I think cannot themselves be properly said to be imbowelled with noise, though they might imbowel with noise the air. I would therefore endeavour to justify this by other similar passages. It is usual with the poets to put the property of a thing for the thing itself: and as in that verse, ii. 654. (where see the note,) A cry of hell hounds never ceasing bark'd, we have a cry of hell hounds for the hell hounds themselves, so here we have the roar of the cannon for the cannon themselves; and the roar of cannon may as properly be said to imbowel the air with outrageous noise, as a cry of hell hounds to bark. 586. But to imbowel is not to fill, but to eviscerate, to deprive of the entrails; as in Shakespeare, K. Henry IV. part v. act i. sc. 9. Imbowell'd will I see thee by and bye, &c. The sense of the passage therefore seems to be, the roar of the cannon in consequence of the outrageous noise imbowelled the air, &c. E. Of iron globes; which on the victor host That whom they hit, none on their feet might stand, The sooner for their arms; unarm'd they might By quick contraction or remove; but now Nor serv'd it to relax their serried files. 590 595 What should they do? if on they rush'd, repulse 600 Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despis'd, And to their foes a laughter; for in view They worse abhorr'd. Satan beheld their plight, 605 O friends, why come not on these victors proud? Ere while they fierce were coming; and when we, 610 To entertain them fair with open front And breast (what could we more?) propounded terms Of composition, straight they chang❜d their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, As they would dance; yet for a dance they seem'd 615 For joy of offer'd peace: but I suppose, 599. -serried files.] The Italian word serrato, close, compact. Thyer. We should compel them to a quick result. To whom thus Belial in like gamesome mood. So they among themselves in pleasant vein Stood scoffing, highten'd in their thoughts beyond To match with their inventions they presum'd So easy', and of his thunder made a scorn, And all his host derided, while they stood 620 625 630 A while in trouble: but they stood not long; Rage prompted them at length, and found them arms Against such hellish mischief fit to' oppose. Forthwith (behold the excellence, the power, Which God hath in his mighty angels plac'd) Of pleasure situate in hill and dale) Light as the lightning glimpse they ran, they flew ; 620. To whom thus Belial] Whoever remembers the character of Belial in the first and second books, and Mr. Addison's remarks upon it, will easily see the propriety of making Belial reply to Satan upon this occasion and in this sportive man 636 640 ner, rather than Beelzebub, or Moloch, or any of the evil angels. 635. Rage-found them arms] Furor arma ministrat. Virg. En. i. 150. 643. From their foundations &c.] There is nothing in the They pluck'd the seated hills with all their load, Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops first and last day's engagement which does not appear natural, and agreeable enough to the ideas most readers would conceive of a fight between two armies of angels. The second day's engagement is apt to startle an imagination which has not been raised and qualified for such a description, by the reading of the ancient poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold thought in our author, to ascribe the first use of artillery to the rebel angels. But as such a pernicious invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such authors, so it entered very properly into the thoughts of that being, who is all along described as aspiring to the majesty of his Maker. Such engines were the only instruments he could have made use of to imitate those thunders, that in all poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the hills was not altogether so daring a thought as the former. We are in some measure prepared for such an incident by the description of the giants' war, which we meet with among the ancient poets. What still made the circumstance the more proper for the poet's use is the opinion of many learned men, that the fable of the giants' war, which makes so great a noise in antiquity, and gave birth to the sublimest description in Hesiod's works, was an allegory founded 645 upon this very tradition of a fight between the good and the bad angels. It may perhaps be worth while to consider, with what judgment Milton in this narration has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in the descriptions of the Latin and Greek poets; and at the same time improved every great hint which he met with in their works upon this subject. Homer in that passage, which Longinus has celebrated for its sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copied after him, tells us, that the giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa, He adds an epithet to Pelion (Quaλer) which very much swells the idea, by bringing up to the reader's imagination all the woods that grew upon it. There is further a great beauty in singling out by name these three remarkable mountains, so well known to the Greeks. This last is such a beauty, as the scene of Milton's war could not possibly furnish him with. Claudian, in his fragment upon the giants' war, has given full scope to that wildness of imagination which was natural to him. He tells us that the giants tore up whole islands by the roots, and threw them at the gods. He describes one of them in particular taking up Lemnos in his arms, and whirling it to the skies, with all Vulcan's shop in the midst of it. Another tears up mount Ida, with the river Enipeus, which ran down the Up-lifting bore them in their hands: Amaze, sides of it; but the poet, not From their foundations loos'ning to and fro They pluck'd the seated hills with Up-lifting bore them in their hands: We have the full majesty of Homer in this short description, improved by the imagination of Claudian, without its puerilities. I need not point out the description of the fallen angels seeing the promontories hanging over their heads in such a dreadful manner, with the other numberless beauties in this book, which are so conspicuous, that they cannot escape the notice of the most ordinary reader. There are indeed so many wonderful strokes of poetry in this book, and such a variety of sublime ideas, that 550 it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this paper. Besides that I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the end of my Lord Roscommon's Essay on translated poetry. I shall refer my reader thither for some of the master-strokes in the sixth book of Paradise Lost, though at the same time there are many others, which that noble author has not taken notice of. Addison. 643. See the extract from Roscommon's Essay given in the note on 1. 909. E. 648. When coming towards them so dread they saw] Does not this verse express the very motion of the mountains, and is not there the same kind of beauty in the numbers, that the poet recommends in his excellent Essay on Criticism? When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow. 648. There is a similar beauty in the following lines, They saw them whelm'd, and all buried deep; The pause at whelmed, and the close of the next line with the monosyllable deep, admirably assist the sense by the sound. E. |