Paradise lost [Second edition, first issued in hardback] 9781405832786, 3884284665, 1405832789, 9781138418370, 1138418374

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LONGMAN ANNOTATED ENGLISH POETS MILTON PARADISE LOST Edited by Alastair Fowler Praise for previous editions: ‘This is a very Bible of Milton, and the editors should be upheld forever as the supreme example to all future editors and annotators of English verse.’ Selina Hastings, The Daily Telegraph ‘Those familiar with the complexities and indecisions of Milton scholarship know how formidable a task it is to prepare an adequately annotated edition of the poems. Mr Carey & Mr Fowler have tackled the task with zest and discrimination as well as perseverance. For several years to come their work will be indispensable to both scholars and students.’ The Times Literary Supplement ‘It is true that Milton probably expected his readers to have the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis in their heads, but Paradise Lost carries a load of learning that is strange by the standards of its own day as well as ours. Theology and etymology and mythology combine in single lines. Luckily, we have the notes in Alastair Fowler’s Longman’s edition of the poem (one of the great scholarly books of modern times) to send us down the sideroutes of Milton’s imagination.’ John Mullan, The Guardian ‘It would have been difficult to imagine combining so sharp an alertness for irony . . . and passion for learning.’ Earl Miner ‘For forty years Fowler’s magisterial edition of Milton (done in partnership with John Carey) has established the benchmark for erudite commentary in his field.’ John Sutherland, The Guardian ‘This will surely become the standard working edition for student and scholar alike . . . a formidable task splendidly accomplished.’ The Oxford Magazine

LONGMAN ANNOTATED ENGLISH POETS General Editors: John Barnard and Paul Hammond Founding Editor: F. W. Bateson Titles available in paperback: BLAKE: THE COMPLETE POEMS (Third Edition) Edited by W. H. Stevenson DRYDEN: SELECTED POEMS Edited by Paul Hammond and David Hopkins THE POEMS OF ANDREW MARVELL (Revised Edition) Edited by Nigel Smith MILTON: PARADISE LOST (Second Edition) Edited by Alastair Fowler MILTON: COMPLETE SHORTER POEMS (Second Edition) Edited by John Carey SPENSER: THE FAERIE QUEENE (Revised Second Edition) Edited by A. C. Hamilton TENNYSON: A SELECTED EDITION (Revised Edition) Edited by Christopher Ricks

JOHN MILTON

PARADISE LOST EDITED BY

ALASTAIR FOWLER

SECOND EDITION

First published 1968 by Pearson Education Limited Second edition 1997 Revised second edition published in Great Britain in 2007 Published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 1968, 1971, 1998, 2007, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. ISBN 13: 978-1-4058-3278-6 (pbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Milton, John, 1608–1674. Paradise lost / John Milton ; edited by Alastair Fowler.—2nd ed. p. cm. — (Longman annotated English poets) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978–1–4058–3278–6 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 1–4058–3278–9 (pbk.) 1. Bible. O.T. Genesis—History of Biblical events—Poetry. 2. Adam (Biblical figure)—Poetry. 3. Eve (Biblical figure)—Poetry. 4. Fall of man— Poetry. I. Fowler, Alastair. II. Title. III. Series. PR3560 2006 821′.4—dc22 2006041005 Set by 35

Contents

Note by the General Editors Preface to the Second Edition From the Preface to the First Edition Abbreviations Selected Journal Abbreviations Chronological Table of Milton’s Life and Chief Publications

vii ix xiii xvii xx xxii

Introduction Composition Printing history Text Punctuation Sources and models Language and style Metrical structure Numerical composition Time-scheme Astronomy Theology Politics and allegory Criticism Portraits and illustrations

1 1 5 8 8 10 13 23 25 29 33 36 41 45 48

PARADISE LOST

49

The Printer to the Reader In Paradisum Amissam On Paradise Lost The Verse Dryden’s epigram Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Book VI

51 52 53 54 55 55 109 164 214 281 339 v

contents

vi

Book Book Book Book Book Book

VII VIII IX X XI XII

List of References

388 428 466 539 597 645 679

Note by the General Editors

Longman Annotated English Poets was launched in 1965 with the publication of Kenneth Allott’s edition of The Poems of Matthew Arnold. F.W. Bateson wrote that the ‘new series is the first designed to provide university students and teachers, and the general reader with complete and fully annotated editions of the major English poets’. That remains the aim of the series, and Bateson’s original vision of its policy remains essentially the same. Its ‘concern is primarily with the meaning of the extant texts in their various contexts’. The two other main principles of the series were that the text should be modernized and the poems printed ‘as far as possible in the order in which they were composed’. These broad principles still govern the series. Its primary purpose is to provide an annotated text giving the reader any necessary contextual information. However, flexibility in the detailed application has proved necessary in the light of experience and the needs of a particular case (and each poet is by definition, a particular case). First, proper glossing of a poet’s vocabulary has proved essential and not something which can be taken for granted. Second, modernization has presented difficulties, which have been resolved pragmatically, trying to reach a balance between sensitivity to the text in question and attention to the needs of a modern reader. Thus, to modernize Browning’s text has a double redundancy: Victorian conventions are very close to modern conventions, and Browning had firm ideas on punctuation. Equally, to impose modern pointing on the ambiguities of Marvell would create a misleading clarity. Third, in the very early days of the series Bateson hoped that editors would be able in many cases to annotate a textus receptus. That has not always been possible, and where no accepted text exists or where the text is controversial, editors have been obliged to go back to the originals and create their own text. The series has taken, and will continue to take, the opportunity not only of providing thorough annotations not available elsewhere, but also of making important scholarly textual contributions where necessary. A case in point is the edition of The Poems of Tennyson by Christopher Ricks, the Second Edition of which (1987) takes into account a full collation of the Trinity College Manuscripts, not previously available for an edition of this kind. Yet the series’ primary purpose remains annotation. The requirements of a particular author take precedence over principle. It would make little sense to print Herbert’s Temple in the order of composition vii

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even if it could be established. Where Ricks rightly decided that Tennyson’s reader needs to be given the circumstances of composition, the attitude to Tennyson and his circle, allusions, and important variants, a necessary consequence was the exclusion of twentieth-century critical responses. Milton, however, is a very different case. John Carey and Alastair Fowler, looking to the needs of their readers, undertook synopses of the main lines of the critical debate over Milton’s poetry. Finally, chronological ordering by date of composition will almost always have a greater or lesser degree of speculation or arbitrariness. The evidence is usually partial, and is confused further by the fact that poets do not always write one poem at a time and frequently revise at a later period than that of composition. John Barnard Paul Hammond

Preface to the Second Edition

The chief purpose of this new edition is to incorporate into the notes the Milton scholarship and criticism published since the appearance of the first edition in 1968. It is a great opportunity, to revise an edition after thirty years. But in the case of the Longman Paradise Lost it is not without its difficulties. In the interval many thousands of contributions on the poem have been published (to say nothing of studies of relevant historical and intellectual contexts); so that this new edition must begin with a general apology to those thousands of scholars and critics whose contributions have been overlooked, whether by exigences of space or my deficiencies as a slow reader. More has been written about PL in the last twenty-five years than in any previous quarter-century. In 1968, Milton Quarterly, under its original title Milton Newsletter, was only a year old. The other major Milton periodical, Milton Studies, did not come into being until 1969. As will be seen from the List of Abbreviations, articles about Milton have appeared intermittently in over seventy other periodicals. Out of consideration for my readers’ time, and to save space, I have kept references to books and articles brief – sometimes only a few words. But my aim has been to provide, in compact form, some of the advantages of a variorum. The form of reference in the present edition calls for comment. I refer to monographs by author’s surname and date of publication, as in the Harvard system (e.g. Allen (1949) 8). With primary works a brief cue-title is sometimes added. Full titles and other details of publication will be found in the List of References, which, however, does not list journal articles or contributions to books. Sufficient information to locate articles and chapters will be found in the notes: e.g. J. Hoyle, ELN, 12 (1974) 20, or D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 61. Contributors to a volume they also edited are treated as authors – Hunter (1971) 15, not W. B. Hunter, in Hunter (1971) 15. Works of joint authorship or editorship are referred to as by the first author or editor. To save space, I omit page references where a book cited is so organized as to make the reference unambiguous – as with other editions of PL, or seriatim commentaries like those of Zachary Pearce and the Jonathan Richardsons. So references may be found in such a form as ‘(Bentley)’. Usually, multiple references are put in the sequence: PL; other works by Milton; Bible and apocryphal writings; other primary works chronologically arranged; secondary works chronologically arranged. ix

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preface to the second edition

Three types of notes should be distinguished: (1) direct glosses, introduced by colon followed by lower-case (e.g. i 46n, ‘ruin: falling . . .’); (2) explanatory comments, introduced by colon followed by initial capital (e.g. i 11n, ‘Siloa: A spring . . .’); (3) textual notes, signalled by a closing square bracket after the lemma (e.g. i 12n, ‘God,] God; 1667.’). In some ways the emphasis of the commentary has not changed: I still try to involve readers in the poem rather than in philological learning. (On the shift in annotation policy my 1968 edition attempted, see A. C. Hamilton, in Quehen (1981) 159.) But the present annotation has changed its emphasis in response to relevance theory. I have adduced more non-literary contexts – political, scientific, biographical – when these seemed relevant. And I have less often noticed barely possible secondary meanings. Reference books that I have used include: Huckabay, John Milton: An Annotated Bibliography, 1929–1968 (1969); Boswell, Milton’s Library (1975); Hunter et al., eds., A Milton Encyclopaedia (1978–83); Ingram and Swaim, A Concordance to Milton’s English Poetry (1972); Shawcross, Milton: A Bibliography for the Years 1624–1700 (1984); Patrides, An Annotated Critical Bibliography of John Milton (1987); Huckabay, John Milton: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968–1988 (1996); and Parker and Campbell, Milton: A Biographical Commentary (1996). In preparing this second edition I have received generous help from a number of scholars. Professor Gordon Campbell of Leicester University, editor of Renaissance Studies, Professor Roy Flannagan, Tim Eyre, and Masahiko Agari, all sent me invaluable lists of errors (together with a few alleged errors) that they had noticed in the 1968 edition. For information on particular points relating to Milton’s Greek and Latin, I am indebted to Professor Ker Borthwick and Dr Roy Pinkerton of the University of Edinburgh, and Professors J. Daniel Kinney and Mark Morford of the University of Virginia. Professor David Daiches has kindly checked certain of the Hebrew references. On Milton’s use of the visual arts, I have learnt from Professors Paul Barolsky of the University of Virginia and Michael Bath of Strathclyde University; on the poem’s astronomy, from Professor John North, FBA, and Mrs Malabika Sarkar; on its alchemy, from Mr Paul Cheshire; on the acrostics, from Mr P. J. Klemp; and on its linguistic background, from Bridget Cusack of the University of Edinburgh. Among students who illuminated passages for me, I should like to mention Dr Dennis Kezar, Matthew Davis, and Tim Shelley. To all these, I wish to record debts that cannot be repaid but only acknowledged with gratitude.

preface to the second edition

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The editors of this manuscript – not an easy one to style or proof-read – made many valuable suggestions, and saved me from errors; in particular, I should like to thank Mrs Katy Courts and the editorial team at Addison Wesley Longman. I much regret that John K. Hale’s Milton’s Languages did not appear in time for me to benefit from its valuable explorations of the multilingual style of Paradise Lost. But at least it is not too late to recommend it warmly, particularly on the topic of Milton’s Latinism. University of Virginia August 1997

Alastair Fowler

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From the Preface to the First Edition

In preparing the text I have throughout followed a somewhat unusual plan. I have modernized old spelling but so far as possible reproduced the old punctuation. Usually a different, even an opposite, plan is followed. A modernized text is commonly modernized throughout; and it is even possible to find cases where an editor has retained old spelling but modernized the punctuation. But if the matter is considered in linguistic terms the plan adopted in the present edition will often appear preferable. Of course some readers need freely modernized texts, just as scholars for certain purposes need texts scrupulously diplomatic. In general with seventeenth-century texts, however, it is best to modernize only the spelling. Spelling and punctuation present quite separate problems to an editor for the good reason that they have different functions linguistically. Punctuation marks, together with word order, inflection and function words, are grammatical symbols. They are organic parts of the grammatical system, and as such their operation is subtle and complex. They obey not only conventions of logic but also others whereby they render the pauses and junctures and tones of spoken language; see the emphasis laid in, for example, Whitehall (1956) or Brown (1958). Consequently we ought to be almost as reluctant to alter the punctuation of an old text as we would be to alter, say, its word order. Moreover, punctuation is less standardized than the other types of grammatical symbols; which means that the gain from modernizing is reduced, while the difficulty of finding exactly equivalent modern conventions is increased. And unless exact equivalents are found, the modernizing editor must continually falsify the meaning (not to mention the rhythm). With subtle, complex poetry like Milton’s, decisions will have to be made about tone, juncture, and logic structure for which there is no basis in the punctuation of the early editions, and distinctions introduced that the poet himself may have taken care to avoid. Time and again ambiguities will have to be removed and enhancing suggestions lost. Yet even these are not all the problems with which the editor modernizing punctuation is faced. For he has next to maintain a sensible rank-ordering or relative frequency among the modern punctuation points he uses. He could make some sort of version of the meaning of Paradise Lost, for example, if he allowed himself a very high relative incidence of dashes or of commas. But this he may not do; since xiii

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from the preface to the first edition

the overall effect would be breathy and talkative in the one instance, unrhythmical and pedantic in the other. My aim, then, has been to provide a text that retains evidential value with respect to punctuation, equally with word order and the other grammatical symbols. The cost that has to be paid for this (a relatively low cost) is that readers may at first experience an occasional temporary difficulty in making out Milton’s syntax. But when they overcome the difficulty, it will at least be Milton’s syntax they have understood, and not an editor’s. The linguistic function of spelling is by comparison much cruder and simpler. It is not a grammatical symbol but a vocabulary symbol. That is to say, all that can generally be expected of orthographic signals is that they should enable readers to make the right vocabulary selection. Now, modern spelling is perfectly well able to do this for a seventeenthcentury text. It is easy to find exact modern equivalents for old spellings, because orthographic signals are usually simple, unambiguous instructions to select a particular string of words. True, spelling also conveys some information about how words sound. But in English the relation between orthography and phonetic realizations is not close. In the present state of our knowledge of the pronunciation of the seventeenth century there can be few instances where old spelling would indicate the sound to a modern reader better than new. The typical case, on which editorial practice must be based, is instead exemplifed by eternity (PL viii 406), where the early editions have eternitie. It is probable that Milton intended a pronunciation something like etarnity, or perhaps even etarrnity, since, according to Aubrey, ‘he pronounced the letter R very hard’ (Aubrey (1972) 363). But how are we to tell this from the old spelling of compositors? As for the special orthographic rules and preferences (distinctions between he and hee, me and mee, etc.) that some editors have ascribed to Milton, the case for accepting these as Milton’s now looks desperate. [See further in Introduction: Text.] Accordingly I have paid no attention in the present edition to spelling variants in the early editions. The early punctuation, on the other hand, is reproduced faithfully, although this should not be taken to imply that it is necessarily Milton’s punctuation. In the few instances where a misprint in the early editions had to be corrected, or punctuation altered for the sake of intelligibility, a note calls attention to the emendation. For the rest, I have retained the ‘original’ spelling in quotations from Spenser and earlier authors. And a very few obsolete words and words intended by Milton as archaisms also retain old spelling – but are given, for intelligibility, in the forms selected as commonest in OED. Similarly, verb terminals are given in standard spelling, regardless of contractions and

from the preface to the first edition

xv

elisions, unless modern spelling is likely to confuse the reader by suggesting an extra syllable. Thus, I have printed winged for wing’d (i 175), but kept count’nance (xi 317). Similarly the is usually printed for th’. To assist scansion, I have inserted a few diacritic marks, particularly where the accent has changed since Milton’s time; so blessèd (xi 317) and retínue (v 355). Old hyphenated words now amalgamated are given their new form. Old spelling of proper names is kept, but not their italicization – it is a typographical accidental not found in the manuscript of PL Bk i (MS). But a note is given where its presence or absence may have a bearing on, for example, personification. This textual policy may seem to oversimplify. But editorial policy is bound to be decided in terms of broad, simple issues; even though it is a different matter with editorial practice in individual cases. And if the policy seems a compromise, this too is inescapable. For no text is completely modern unless the editor is prepared to change word order and vocabulary; and none is completely diplomatic unless photographic facsimile is resorted to (perhaps not even then). I have tried to arrive at the best practicable compromise between the demands of evidential value and readability. Reference books used include: Bradshaw, A Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton (1894); Stevens, A Reference Guide to Milton (1930); Fletcher, Contributions to a Milton Bibliography, 1800–1930 (1931); Gilbert, A Geographical Dictionary of Milton (1919); Le Comte, A Milton Dictionary (1961); French, The Life Records of John Milton (1949–58); Fletcher, The Intellectual Development of John Milton (1956–61); and Huckabay, John Milton. A Bibliographical Supplement, 1929–1957 (1960). [For further details see the List of References.] In preparing my edition I have greatly profited from the pertinent observations of Mr F. W. Bateson, general editor of the series of Longman Annotated English Poets. Learned advice as well as kindly interest was offered by Mrs E. E. Duncan-Jones of Birmingham University; Mr George Merton; Mr B. D. H. Miller, the Revd L. M. Styler, Mr D. L. Stockton, and Mr F. V. Peach of Brasenose College; and Mr J. C. Maxwell of Balliol College. I should like to express gratitude to each. The remaining errors, needless to say, are my own. Brasenose College Oxford August 1966

A. D. S. E

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Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used, in addition to standard abbreviations for books of the Bible, classical works, and literary journals (for which see pp. xvi–xvii). 1667 = Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books (1667). 1668 = Paradise Lost. A Poem in Ten Books (1668). Edition 1, issues 3–4. 1669 = Paradise Lost. A Poem in Ten Books (1669). Edition 1, issues 5 and 6. 1674 = Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. The Second Edition Revised and Augmented (1674). 1688 = Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books (1688). Edition 4. CW = The Works of John Milton, ed. F. A. Patterson et al. (New York 1931–8). MS = Manuscript of Paradise Lost, Book i. J. Pierpont Morgan Library, NY City. Copy text for 1667. See facsimile ed. Helen Darbishire (Oxford 1931). Trin. MS = The Trinity Manuscript. Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R. 3. 4. See facsimile edition (Menston 1970). YP = The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, CT, 1953–80). Ad Pat = Ad Patrem. Areop = Areopagitica. Church Government = The Reason of Church Government. Civil Power = A Treatise of Civil Power. Cromwell = To the Lord General Cromwell. Dam = Epitaphium Damonis. De Doctrina = De Doctrina Christiana. Defensio = Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio. Easy Way = The Ready and Easy Way. History = History of Britain. Id Plat = De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit. Mans = Mansus. Muscovia = A Brief History of Muscovia. Nativity Ode = On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. Natur = Naturam non pati senium. PL = Paradise Lost. xvii

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abbreviations

PR = Paradise Regained. Prae E = In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis. Proc Med = In Obitum Procancellarii Medici. Prol = Prolusion. Q Nov = In Quintum Novembris. SA = Samson Agonistes. Tenure = The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Vacation Exercise = At a Vacation Exercise in the College. Aen. = Aeneid. Anat. of Melan. = Anatomy of Melancholy. Arg. = Argument. AV = AuthorizedVersion. BCP = Book of Common Prayer. Bk = Book. CHRP = Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, and Eckhard Kessler (Cambridge 1988). Comm. = Commentary. Donne, Sermons = John Donne, Sermons, ed. G. R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols (Berkeley, CA, 1953–62). Douay = Reims and Douai Version of the Bible (NT: Reims 1582; OT: Douai 1609). EB = Encyclopedia Brittanica (Eleventh Edition). EETS = Early English Text Society. Epig. = Epigram. FQ = The Faerie Queene. Geneva = The Geneva Bible (1560). Ger. Lib. = Gerusalemme Liberata. Herford and Simpson = Ben Jonson, Works, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson (Oxford 1925–50). Il. = Iliad. Inf. = Inferno. LXX = Septuagint. ME = Middle English. Metam. = Metamorphoses. Migne = Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P Migne (Paris 1844–55). Migne, P.G. = Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris 1857–66). ModE = Modern English. ns = new series. NT = New Testament. Od. = Odyssey.

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OE = Old English. Orl. Fur. = Orlando Furioso. Orl. Innam. = Orlando Innamorato. OT = Old Testament. Par. = Paradiso. Purg. = Purgatorio. STS = Scottish Text Society. Summa Theol. = Summa Theologica. Tremellius = Latin translation of the Bible by John Immanuel Tremellius (NT 1569; OT 1575–9). Variorum Spenser = The Works of Edmund Spenser: A Variorum Edition, ed. Edwin Greenlaw et al. (Oxford and Baltimore, MD, 1932–49). Vulg. = Vulgate. Wycliffe = Wycliffite manuscript versions by John Purvey and others, from about 1388.

Selected Journal Abbreviations

17C AJA AJP ANQ Art Bull. BAUE BJRL CL CLS CompD CQ DOP E&S ÉA EC ELH ELN ELR EM ERA ES HLQ HSELL HTR JEGP JGH JHI JTS JWI KR MCJN MFEFU MiltN MiltQ MiltS

The Seventeenth Century American Journal of Archaeology American Journal of Philology American Notes and Queries Art Bulletin The Bulletin of Aichi University of Education Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Comparative Literature Comparative Literary Studies Comparative Drama Classical Quarterly Dumbarton Oaks Papers Essays and Studies Collected for the English Association Études Anglaises Essays in Criticism Journal of English Literary History English Language Notes English Literary Renaissance English Miscellany The English Research Association of Hiroshima English Studies Huntington Library Quarterly Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature Harvard Theological Review Journal of English and Germanic Philology Journal of Garden History Journal of the History of Ideas Journal of Theological Studies Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Kenyon Review Milton Centre of Japan News Memoirs of the Faculty of Education, Fukui University: Series I: The Humanities Milton Newsletter Milton Quarterly Milton Studies xx

selected journal abbreviations MLN MLQ MLR MOKU MP NQ NYTM P&P PBA PLL PMLA Poetica PQ PULC RBPH RenN RenP RES RQ RS SAB SAQ SCN SCR SEL SLJ SP SPELL SR TER TLS TZ UTQ W&I

Modern Language Notes Modern Language Quarterly Modern Language Review Memoirs of Osaka Kyoiku University Modern Philology Notes and Queries New York Times Magazine Past and Present Proceedings of the British Academy Papers on Language and Literature PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Poetica (Tokyo) Philological Quarterly Princeton University Library Chronicle Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire Renaissance News Renaissance Papers Review of English Studies Renaissance Quarterly Renaissance Studies South Atlantic Bulletin South Atlantic Quarterly Seventeenth Century News South Central Review Studies in English Literature Scottish Literary Journal Studies in Philology Swiss Studies in English Language and Literature (Tübingen) Studies in the Renaissance The English Review The Times Literary Supplement Theologische Zeitschrift University of Toronto Quarterly Word and Image

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Chronological Table of Milton’s Life and Chief Publications 1608 (9 December) Born at his father’s house, The Spreadeagle, Bread St, London. 1615 (24 November) Brother Christopher born. 1618 Portrait by Cornelius Janssen. 1620 Enters St Paul’s School, under Alexander Gill (date uncertain). Friendship with Charles Diodati begins. Now or earlier, begins to receive tuition at home from Thomas Young and others. 1625 (12 February) Admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, under Chappell’s tutorship. (27 March) James VI and I dies; Charles I accedes. (?November) Epigrams on Gunpowder Plot. 1626 Perhaps rusticated temporarily. Removed to Tovey’s tutorship. 1627 Unpopular with fellow-students; dissatisfied with Cambridge syllabus (Prol I, III, and IV; CW xii 118–49, 158–99; YP i 218–33, 240–56). (11 June) Lends future father-in-law, Richard Powell, £500. 1629 Onslow portrait, also portrait (now in Christ’s College) by unknown artist. (26 March) Takes BA. 1630 Portrait probably painted by Daniel Mytens (now in St Paul’s School). (10 June) Edward King elected Fellow. 1631 (November) Brother Christopher admitted to Inner Temple. 1632 On Shakespeare published. (3 July) Takes MA. Retires to Hammersmith for life of study (Defensio Secunda, CW viii 120: ‘At my father’s house in the country, to which he had gone to pass his old age, I gave myself up with the most complete leisure to reading through the Greek and Latin writers . . . I occasionally exchanged the country for the town, for the sake of buying books or of learning something new in mathematics or music, in which I then delighted.’) 1634 (29 September) Comus acted. 1635 Moves with parents to Horton. 1637 Comus published. (3 April ) Mother dies. xxii

chronological table of milton’s life

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(September) Considers entering Inns of Court (see letter to Diodati, CW xii 28, YP i 327). 1638 Lycidas printed in Justa Edouardo King Naufrago. (1 February) Lends Sir John Cope and others £150 at 8 per cent. (April ) Meets Sir Henry Wotton; is kindly treated (Wotton to M., CW i 476f, YP i 339–43). (May) Sails for France; meets John, Viscount Scudamore, in Paris; calls on Hugo Grotius, the exiled Arminian. ( June–July) To Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa. (27 August) Charles Diodati buried. (August–September) Arrives in Florence; makes friends (see Defensio Secunda, YP iv 615ff: ‘There I at once became the friend of many gentlemen eminent in rank and learning, whose private academies I frequented – a Florentine institution which deserves great praise . . . Time will never destroy my recollection . . . of you, Jacopo Gaddi, Carlo Dati, Frescobaldi, Coltellini, Buonmattei, Chimentelli, Francini, and many others’). Visits Galileo (Areop, CW iv 329f; Cesare (1991) ). (October) To Siena; Rome (hospitably received by Cardinal Barberini). Either now or when returning early in 1639 meets Lucas Holstein, a Vatican librarian. Attends Barberini opera. Entertained at English College (see Parker (1996) 828 nn 42–4). (December) To Naples. Meets Manso. 1639 Receives news of Diodati’s death. Gives up plan of crossing to Sicily and Greece (Defensio Secunda, YP iv 618f: ‘The sad tidings of civil war from England [i.e. First Bishops’ War, March 1639] summoned me back. For I thought it base that I should travel abroad at my ease for the cultivation of my mind, while my fellowcitizens at home were fighting for liberty’). ( January–February) Revisits Rome. (March) Returns to Florence. Again reads poems at Svogliati Academy. (April) Excursion to Lucca (Diodati family home). To Bologna; Ferrara; Venice (stays a month; ships book parcel home). (May) To Verona and Milan. Travels through Lombardy. ( June) Visits Giovanni Diodati in Geneva (Charles’s theologian uncle). ( July) Returns horne. 1640 Moves to St Bride’s churchyard: begins tutoring nephews. Takes ‘a large house’ to accommodate self, books, and pupils, who include ‘the Earl of Barrimore, sent by his aunt the Lady Ranalagh, Sir Thomas Gardiner of Essex, and others’ ( John Phillips, in Darbishire

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1641

1642

1643 1644

1645

1646

chronological table of milton’s life (1932) 24f ). Occasionally leaves this secluded ‘pretty garden house . . . in Aldersgate Street, at the end of an entry’ and drops ‘into the society of some young sparks of his acquaintance, the chief whereof were Mr Alphry, and Mr Miller, two gentlemen of Gray’s Inn, the beaus of those times’, with whom he likes to ‘keep a gaudy day’ (Edward Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 62). Epitaphium Damonis published? (30 June) Takes Powell’s lands in Wheatley by mortgage. (May) Of Reformation published. (?June) Of Prelatical Episcopacy published. (?August) Animadversions published. (?December) The Reason of Church Government published. (?May) Apology against a Pamphlet published. Marries Mary Powell. (?July) Mary returns to her home. (September) Civil War begins. (?October) M. sends for Mary without success. (21 October) Brother Christopher’s name on Reading muster-roll: supports Royalist cause. Brother-in-law Richard Powell an intelligence agent for Royalists. (1 August) The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce published. (2 February) Tne Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (second edition) published. (5 June) Of Education published. M.’s attempts to repossess the Powell property begin. (6 August) The Judgment of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce published. (13 August) Divorce books attacked by Herbert Palmer in sermon before Parliament. (24–26 August) Stationers petition against his divorce books. (September) Notices deteriorating sight (letter to Philaras, 28 September 1654, CW xii 66). (24 November) Areopagitica published. (28 December) Examined before the House of Lords – ‘soon dismissed’ (Darbishire (1932) 24). Plans to marry ‘one of Dr Davis’s daughters, a very handsome and witty gentlewoman’ (Darbishire (1932) 66). Wife returns. (4 March) Tetrachordon and Colasterion published. (? September) Moves to larger house at Barbican. (6 October) Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin . . . 1645 registered. (2 January) Poems . . . 1645 published. (29 July) Daughter Anne born.

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1647 (1 January) Father-in-law Richard Powell dies. (13 March) Father dies, leaving M. the Bread St house and a ‘moderate estate’ (Darbishire (1932) 32f ). (16 July) Obtains a writ ordering an inventory of Powell’s compounded and mortgaged Wheatley estate. This disputed property to be considered a belated marriage jointure (Parker (1996) 309). (September–October) Moves to a smaller house in High Holborn ‘among those that open backward into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here he lived a private and quiet life, still prosecuting his studies and curious search into knowledge’ (Edward Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 68). (20 November) Takes possession of Powell property. 1648 (25 October) Daughter Mary born. 1649 (30 January) Charles I executed. (13 February) The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates published, defending regicide against Presbyterian criticism. (13 March) Invited by Council of State to be Secretary for the Foreign Tongues. (15 March) Appointed Secretary (at £288 p.a.). Ordered to answer Eikon Basilike. (11 May) Salmasius’s Defensio Regia appears. (16 May) Observations on the Articles of Peace published. (6 October) Eikonoklastes published. (19 November) Given lodgings for official work in Scotland Yard. 1650 (8 January) Ordered by Council of State to answer Salmasius. 1651 Active in support of Mylius’s diplomacy. (24 February) Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio published. (16 March) Son John born. (17 December) Moves for his health’s sake to ‘a pretty garden house in Petty France in Westminster . . . opening into St James’s Park’ (Edward Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 71). (November) Realizes his sight inadequate for further work. 1652 Visited by Leo van Aitzema (from Hanse towns) and Henry Oldenburg (from Bremen). Intercedes successfully on behalf of Davenant. Supports Brian Walton’s Polyglot Bible proposal. Assists John Dury in translating Eikonoklastes into French. Several attacks on the Defensio published, including Sir Robert Filmer’s Observations, without answer from M. (28 February) Totally blind about now. Begins to learn Dutch, and continues work for Council.

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1654

1655

1656

1657

1658

1659

chronological table of milton’s life (2 April) Racovian Catechism (a Socinian publication licensed by M.) publicly burned. (2 May) Daughter Deborah born. (5 May) Wife dies. (16 June) Son John dies about now. (August) Pierre du Moulin’s Regii Sanguinis Clamor published, attacking M.’s Defensio. M. ordered to reply by Council. (7 October) Davenant freed. M. released from routine work. (21 February) Recommends Andrew Marvell to John Bradshaw, without success (first evidence of their acquaintanceship). Philip Meadows appointed M.’s assistant. (20 April) Oliver Cromwell dissolves Rump Parliament and rules as military dictator. (3 September) Salmasius dies. (16 December) Cromwell installed as Protector. (30 May) Defensio Secunda published, including support of Cromwell’s dictatorship, yet praising John Bradshaw, Cromwell’s opponent. Allowed substitute in Secretaryship ( John Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 28). Resumes private studies. Starts compiling Latin and Greek dictionaries; works on De Doctrina. (8 August) Pro Se Defensio published. Heavily employed in translating for the Council. Enquires about Janssen and Blaeu atlases. (12 November) Marries Katherine Woodcock. Assists Spenser’s grandson to recover his estates (confiscated for recusancy). ( January–July) Enjoys leisure from translating letters of state. (24 March) Orders historical works through Emeric Bigot of Rouen. (19 October) Daughter Katherine born. Begins work on Paradise Lost, according to Aubrey. (14 January) Lends Thomas Maundy £500 and takes mortgage on Kensington property as security. (3 February) Wife dies. (17 March) Daughter Katherine dies. (4 May) Edition of his MS of Sir Walter Raleigh (attrib.), The Cabinet Council registered. ( June) Dunkirk captured; high point of Protectorate. (3 September) Cromwell dies. Succeeded by Richard Cromwell. Translates diplomatic correspondence for Council.

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(6 April ) Army demand separation of civil and military power. (22 April) Protector dissolves Parliament. (7 May) Republican government restored. (24 May) Richard Cromwell abdicates. (16 February) A Treatise of Civil Power registered. (August) The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church published. Lambert crushes Royalist insurrection. (26 October) Committee of Safety appointed as senate. (?November) M. dictates ‘Proposals’ advocating permanent senate and no ‘single person’ as ruler. (26 December) Rump Parliament restored. 1660 (3 February) Monk arrives at Westminster. (21 February) Long Parliament restored. (3 March) Tne Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth published. (April) Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon published, ostensibly defending Monk against the Royalist clergyman Matthew Griffith. (May) Goes into hiding in friend’s house in Bartholomew Close to escape persecution as a supporter of regicide (Edward Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 74). (29 May) Charles II accedes. (11–18 June) By intercession of friends (? Marvell, Davenant, Ranelagh), M.’s name removed from the list of 20 considered by the Commons for death sentences. (16 June) Proceedings for M.’s arrest begun. (13 August) Proclamation against Defensio pro Populo Anglicano and Eikonoklastes. (29 August) Act of Indemnity given assent: M. not excluded. (?September) Copies of M.’s books burned by the hangman (Parker (1996) 1086 n 33). (September) Salmasius’s Ad Ioannem Miltonum Responsio published posthumously. M. rents house in Holborn, near Red Lion Fields, but soon moves to Jewin St, near Redcross St. (?November) M. arrested and imprisoned. (15 December) Parliament orders M.’s release under the Indemnity Bill. (17 December) Andrew Marvell raises in Parliament the question of M.’s exorbitant jail fees (£150). 1662 Begins tutoring Thomas Ellwood (Parker (1996) 580). (19 May) Act of Uniformity, requiring use of liturgy of established church by 24 August.

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1663 On bad terms with daughters. (24 February) Marries Elizabeth Minshull. Two eldest daughters apprenticed as lace-makers. 1665 (?June) Thomas Ellwood takes house for M. in Chalfont St Giles, to avoid plague. (August) MS of Paradise Lost given to Ellwood. 1666 Wither, Cowley, Jeremy Taylor die. (2–6 September) Fire of London: house in Bread St destroyed. 1667 (?August) Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books published. 1669 Sells library, and moves to ‘a house in the Artillery Walk leading to Bunhill Fields’ (Edward Phillips, in Darbishire (1932) 75). Accidence Commenced Grammar published. 1670 Dryden appointed Poet Laureate. Portrait by William Faithorne. History of Britain published. M.’s publisher James Allestry dies. (?March) M. consulted by the Lords on the Manners v. Pierpont divorce case. (September) Alexander Morus dies. 1671 Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes published. 1672 Dutch War. Artis Logicae published by Spencer Hickman. 1673 Constitutional issues between Cavalier Parliament and king. Naval defeats by Dutch. Davenant’s Works published. M. tutors William Davenant II. Of True Religion published. Poems, etc upon Several Occasions published. (?February) Waller and Dryden visit M. (March) Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence to dissenters and recusants countered by Parliament’s Test Act. 1674 Traherne, Herrick die. L’Estrange refuses licence for M.’s Letters of State. Epistolae Familiares and Prolusions published. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books published. (17 April ) Dryden’s The Fall of Angels, and Man in Innocence registered. (8–10 November) Dies in Bunhill house. (12 November) Buried in St Giles, Cripplegate.

Introduction Composition It is likely that Paradise Lost was first conceived as a tragedy rather than an epic. Edward Phillips says so in his Life (1694), claiming PL iv 32–41 was shown to him as the ‘very beginning’ of a tragedy, several years (Aubrey makes it fifteen or sixteen) before the poem was begun; see Darbishire (1932) 12, 72f. And four drafts survive in Trin. MS, written about 1640, of an outline for a tragedy called ‘Paradise Lost’; see Milton (1970) 33, 38; YP viii 539–96. These bear suggestive resemblances to the epic: Draft i

Draft ii The Persons

The Persons Moses or Michael Wisdom Justice Mercy Heavenly love The evening star Hesperus Chorus of angels Lucifer Adam Eve Conscience Labour 5 Sickness 4 Discontent 6 mutes Ignorance 4 Fear 4 7 Death Faith Hope Charity.

Michael Heavenly love Chorus of angels Lucifer Adam 9 with the serpent Eve 8 Conscience Death Labour 5 Sickness 4 Discontent 6 mutes Ignorance 4 with others 7 Faith Hope Charity.

Draft iii

PARADISE LOST The Persons Moses προλογζει [speaks a prologue] recounting how he assumed his true body, that it corrupts not because of his [being] with God in the mount declares the like of Enoch and Eliah, besides the purity of the place 1

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that certain pure winds, dews, and clouds preserve it from corruption whence exhorts to the sight of God, tells they cannot see Adam in this state of innocence by reason of their sin Justice 9 Mercy debating what should become of man if he fall 8 Wisdom Chorus of angels sing a hymn of the creation Act 2 Heavenly love Evening star Chorus sing the marriage song and describe Paradise Act 3 Lucifer contriving Adam’s ruin Chorus fears for Adam and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall. Act 4 Adam 9 fallen Eve 8 Conscience cites them to God’s examination Chorus bewails and tells the good Adam hath lost Act 5 Adam and Eve, driven out of Paradise presented by an angel with Labour 5 Grief 4 Hatred 4 Envy 4 War 4 Famine mutes to whom he gives their names 6 Pestilence likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest &c. 4 Sickness 4 Discontent 4 Ignorance 4 4 Fear 7 entered into the world Death Faith 5 Hope 6 comfort him and instruct him 7 Charity Chorus briefly concludes. Draft iv ADAM UNPARADIZED The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering, showing since this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth, as in heaven, describes

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paradise. Next the Chorus showing the reason of his coming to keep his watch in Paradise after Lucifer’s rebellion by command from God, and withal expressing his desire to see, and know more concerning this excellent new creature man. The angel Gabriel as by his name signifying a prince of power tracing Paradise with a more free office passes by the station of the Chorus and desired by them relates what he knew of man[:] as the creation of Eve with their love, and marriage. After this Lucifer appears after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks revenge on man[;] the Chorus prepare resistance at his first approach[:] at last after discourse of enmity on either side he departs[;] whereat the Chorus sings of the battle, and victory in heaven against him and his accomplices, as before after the first act was sung a hymn of the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer relating, and insulting in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next and Eve having by this time been seduced by the serpent appears confusedly covered with leaves[:] Conscience in a shape accuses him, Justice cites him to the place whither Jehova called for him[:] in the meanwhile the Chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of his fall[;] here the Chorus bewails Adam’s fall. Adam then and Eve return[,] accuse one another[;] but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife, is stubborn in his offence[.] Justice appears[,] reasons with him[,] convinces him[:] the Chorus admonisheth Adam, and bids him beware by Lucifer’s example of impenitence[:] the angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise but before causes to pass before his eyes in shapes a masque of all the evils of his life and world[:] he is humbled[,] relents, despairs. At last appears Mercy[,] comforts him[,] promises the Messiah, then calls in Faith, Hope, and Charity, instructs him[:] he repents[,] gives God the glory, submits to his penalty[;] the Chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with the former draft. The drafts prepare one for seeing PL as in part tragical rather than purely heroic; although there is no question but that Milton was ‘profoundly fascinated by heroic epic’ (Ross (1943) 110). It is not only that the dialogue seems too extensive for classical epic (especially in Bks ii, iii, viii, and ix), but that the characters sometimes fall into tragic roles – become, as it were, tragic characters. Satan, who soliloquizes, may be thought of as choosing to be a Jacobean villain-hero – a line of thought begun in H. Gardner, E&S, 1 (1948), and extended in Burden (1967). Milton announces (ix 5f ) ‘I now must change / Those notes to tragic’; and in fact the subsequent portion approaches tragedy most closely of all. Indeed, its action has Unity of Time; not exceeding the twenty-four hours of ‘correct’ tragedy. There are even peripeteias or discoveries, when events reveal new aspects of the terms of God’s sentence of death and promise

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about the seed of Eve. The series of partial discoveries (like those in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus) are so presented as to communicate a sense of life’s capacity to keep disclosing new ironies. According to the prohibition, Adam is to die on ‘the day’ he eats the forbidden fruit (ix 762ff ); but new understanding of what this means continues to be arrived at (x 49–53n, 1050n; xii 588–9n). Later, the visions Michael shows to Adam are brief tragedies, some treating subjects that figure among the fifty-three biblical tragedies projected in Trin. MS. On Adam Unparadized, see F.T. Prince, in Patrides (1968) 53–63. Not that PL is tragedy imperfectly adapted as epic. But neither can one speak of tragedy merely as one of many modal ingredients – although the interplay of heroic and tragic elements has proved a fertile subject, for Steadman (1976) and Lewalski (1985). Loss of Paradise is the fundamental tragedy underlying all others, so that the tragic mode has a special place; see Kermode (1960) 85–123. Certainly it is not confined to the last books: through our knowledge of the dénouement, it pervades the whole poem. There are so many effects of dramatic irony, indeed, that this figure almost constitutes a general quality. Yet PL is not simply tragedy either. This is perhaps the first thing to say about it – that tragedy, however absolute, fails to outweigh Messiah’s triumph, creation, and regaining of ‘the blissful seat’ (i 5). Its high action and amazingly natural world can also be viewed (in Adam’s instructed vision) as gloriously heroic (xii 477). About the order of writing we know almost nothing. Gilbert (1947) predicates six stages of composition (iv 8–31 belongs to the first, ii 1–520 to the last), and succeeds in avoiding the usual false assumption that poems are composed seriatim. But his theory depends on alleged internal discrepancies, only two of which are established persuasively (iv 712n; ix 163–7n). Still, Gilbert’s findings count against the notion that Milton’s powers declined during composition; and the idea in Waldock (1961) that later books correct the early blunder of making Satan too heroic. It is naive to suppose that Milton could have failed to revise his work. In the present state of ignorance one has to regard PL as composed in toto when he decided to stop revising. He became responsible then for the text we have, with any inconsistencies that remain. Milton contemplated writing some epic from the beginning of his adult life. At one stage the subjects envisaged belonged to the Matter of Britain; see Vacation Exercise; Mans; Dam; Church Government ii Pref., YP i 812ff. As to why he changed to biblical epic, there are only speculations: perhaps his apocalyptic hopes rose during the Interregnum; perhaps the political implications of national epic became difficult; see Milner (1981) 46. He probably took some years over the poem. It seems that he mostly composed during the winter, in the night or early morning; that he

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sometimes lay awake unable to write a verse, sometimes wrote ‘with a certain impetus and oestro [frenzy, inspiration]’; that in the morning he dictated to any available amanuensis; that after dictating perhaps forty lines he would ‘reduce them to half the number’; and that he had his nephew Edward Phillips in from time to time to correct spelling and pointing, ‘a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time’; see PL iii 22ff; vii 25ff; ix 21ff; Darbishire (1932) 13, 73, 291. According to Edward Phillips and John Aubrey, the poem was written 1658–63; Thomas Ellwood was given the manuscript in August 1665. See McColley (1940); Gilbert (1947); Shawcross (1982); (1993) Appendix C; Parker (1996) 597. Printing history Early in 1667 PL was licensed (after some difficulty, according to John Toland), and on 27 April Milton signed a contract with the printer Samuel Simmons for a relatively large edition of up to 1500 copies, for which the poet was to receive £15 in three moieties – then a reasonable remuneration. Registered on 20 August, this first, quarto edition (1667) was soon on sale. In the event Simmons printed about 1300 copies in 1667, which he issued from 1667 to 1669 with five different and separately printed title-pages, giving the title (with insignificant variants) as Paradise Lost. A Poem in Ten Books. Despite appearances, all these issues are impressions of a single edition: variants in the text (in only sixteen of the forty-three gatherings) result from errors or corrections made in the course of printing. These variants – only a few of which obviously improve the text – are not in general thought to represent authorial corrections; see Moyles (1985) 18. At first 1667 sold rather slowly, doubtless because of Milton’s unpopularity as a supporter of regicide. In 1668 Simmons removed the poet’s name from the title-page, at the same time adding Arguments; Milton’s defence of blank verse; and an Errata list. At first the Arguments stood all together, not distributed through the several books. They have been compared with those in the Geneva Bible; a closer analogy, in some ways, is the Arguments in John Abbot’s biblical paraphrase, Devout Rhapsodies (1647). After the fourth title-page, PL sold well, perhaps because a new outlet was used, Henry Mortlack’s Westminster Hall shop (P. Lindenbaum, in Stanwood (1995) 249–62). See D. F. McKenzie, MiltQ, 14 (1980) 87–91. Perhaps prompted by Dryden’s April 1674 announcement of an operatic rhymed version of PL, in July Simmons brought out a second, octavo edition (1674), now entitled Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. To the preliminaries he added S[amuel] B[arrow]’s Latin verses ‘In Paradisum Amissum Summi Poetae Johannis Miltoni’ and A[ndrew]

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M[arvell]’s verses ‘On Paradise Lost’. The Arguments were now distributed through the books, and the Errata assimilated (or forgotten). Line numbering was omitted, perhaps because of the smaller format. As we shall see, 1674 reorders the poem as twelve books, besides making five textual additions – changes for which Milton, or his agent, was clearly responsible. 1674 introduces thirty-seven substantive variants, comprising eight where it is superior and thirteen where 1667 is superior (with sixteen indifferent). Neither edition has such authority as to make it the obvious choice for a copy text. The 800 or so accidental variants in 1674 mostly arose from the usual processes of printing-house standardization, although these also introduced some new errors. There is no evidence of regular authorial supervision of punctuation or indications of elision; see Moyles (1985) 22–7, 80–133. A manuscript (MS) of the first book only survives, which printer’s markup shows to have been used in setting 1667. Now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, MS has been edited, with a facsimile, by Helen Darbishire (1931), who draws from it unwarranted textual conclusions about spelling rules. MS was not transcribed from dictation, but copied by a professional scribe from a written text and corrected in five other hands. Although its four substantive variants from 1667 are probably authorial, there is no evidence that Milton had anything to do with its orthographic accidentals or punctuation. Even Darbishire does not credit MS with superior general authority for spelling or punctuation. Simmons or his staff standardized the accidentals of amanuenses in the usual inconsistent way. The MS spelling was changed about 1300 times, without evidence of authorial supervision. The nature of printing-house practices can be glimpsed from Joseph Moxon’s contemporary account: the carelessness of some good authors, and the ignorance of other authors, has forced printers to introduce a custom, which among them is looked upon as a task and duty incumbent on the compositor, videlicet to discern and amend the bad spelling and pointing of his copy . . . it is necessary that a compositor . . . know the present traditional spelling of all English words, and that he have so much sense and reason, as to point his sentences properly: when to begin a word with a capital letter, when (to render the sense of the author more intelligent to the reader) to set some words or sentences in italic. (Moxon (1962) 192–3) Perhaps after a slow start, PL sold well; and subsequent editions and translations have been printed at the astonishing rate of two a year. Clearly they can only be sampled here; for a fuller survey Oras (1930) and Moyles (1985) may be consulted. The two editions printed in Milton’s lifetime

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were followed in 1678 by a third edition, reprinting 1674 and introducing new errors. The fourth edition (1688), jointly published by Richard Bentley and Jacob Tonson, is a handsome folio embellished with twelve engravings (mostly by John Baptist Medina) and a frontispiece portrait adapted from William Faithorne. The sixth edition (1695), again a folio, added Patrick Hume’s unimpressive ‘Explanatory Notes’, the first to accompany the poem. In 1719 the Spenserian John Hughes was editor of a tenth edition. The editions of half a century were all reprints, usually of their immediate predecessors; the first that can be called critical was Richard Bentley’s notorious performance of 1732, full of extravagant emendations purporting to correct an ignorant printer’s corruptions of the text. Bentley now seems captious, imperceptive, and literal-minded; yet his close engagements with Milton’s diction brought significant advances in understanding. They provoked defences by Zachary Pearce (1732, 1733) and by J[onathan] Richardson, father and son (1734), who examined copies of 1667 and 1674. Thomas Newton’s first definitive edition appeared in 1749, using 1674 as copy-text and examining the major variants in a comparatively modern way. Newton’s text was used by H. J. Todd for his six-volume edition (1801) with copious commentary, and David Masson would have done better to use it for his careless modernized edition of 1874 (which, however, successfully disentangled the bibliography of the 1667 issues). Copy-text theory, uncritically applied, blighted editions by H. C. Beeching (1900), Herbert J. C. Grierson (1925) and Frank A. Patterson (1931–8). A. W. Verity’s solid commentary should be consulted in the revised edition of 1910. Harris F. Fletcher’s four-volume edition (1943–8) was thorough, although its photographic facsimiles of 1667 and 1674 have been faulted. Darbishire (1952–5) and Wright (1956) attempted to recover Milton’s orthography; but their careful editions were based on false bibliographical premises, and have not stood the test of time. (Milton had no special spelling rules for stress or grammatical distinction; even the allegedly emphatic spelling ‘wee’, despite the erratum in 1668, is no longer thought Miltonic.) M. Y. Hughes’s (1957) was the first annotated edition to bring non-literary contexts to bear. There is good commentary by B. Rajan (1964: Bks i and ii only), and excellent coverage of classical echoes and analogues in Douglas Bush’s edition (1966). John T. Shawcross’s edition (1963, revised 1971) is of textual interest, while Roy Flannagan’s (1993) offers shrewd glosses of primary meanings, for those not wishing to pursue intellectual contexts. Among editions with lighter annotation, by Christopher Ricks (1968), Scott Elledge (1975), Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (n. d. [1990] ), and Gordon Campbell (1992), the last stands out as exceptionally accurate and useful.

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See Darbishire (1931) and (1952–5); J. T. Shawcross, in Emma (1967); Milton (1971); J. Creaser, RES, 34 (1983) 279–303; 35 (1984) 45–60; and especially Moyles (1985). Text Although this is a practical, not a textual, edition, the text is freshly prepared. The printed copies followed – apart from supplementation in the case of the Arguments, and the corrected sheets of 1667 – were BM C 14 a 9 (1667) and BM 1076 f 20 (1674). Since orthographic accidentals are modernized, since 1667 and 1674 seldom differ substantively, and since neither early edition has superior authority, the choice of copy-text is relatively unimportant. The accidentals of 1667 have in general been followed: they are often preferable, and probably closer to Milton’s copy. For the reader’s convenience, however, I have included the additions of 1674, and followed the standard line numbering. 1669 is followed for the Arguments. Significant punctuation and spelling variants between MS, 1667 and 1674 are recorded in the notes. (MS punctuation is lighter than that of the printed editions.) Substantively, the present text will be found to differ very little from the received text; but see iii 592n, vii 588–90n, viii 332n, ix 394n, 944n, and x 989–90n. The original spelling cannot be shown to represent Milton’s preferences, and so has not been retained (ammiral, highth, sovran, voutsafe), even where a distinct pronunciation may conceivably be indicated (vild ii 194; fadom ii 934; wrack iv 994; banket x 688). Milton (or his printer) elided frequently, often merely to save space (xi 262) but sometimes with metrical implication. I have retained some elisions that may assist scansion (e.g. i 223 Driv’n). But many original (and inconsistent) indications of elision have been regularized, as heav’n to heaven. I distinguish syllabic and non-syllabic -ed and -eth wherever doubt might arise: sounded -ed is printed -èd. See Moyles (1985); Evans (1966); J. T. Shawcross, in Emma (1967) 120–53; Creaser, RES, 34 (1983) 279–303; 35 (1984) 45–60. Punctuation It is no longer thought possible to recover Milton’s own punctuation of PL; too many agents – amanuenses, compositors, and other intermediaries – had a hand in the transmission. In the punctuation of the 798 lines of MS, for example, 128 changes were made at the printing house alone, often (pace Mindele Treip) to normalize, however inconsistently. Nevertheless the punctuation is well-considered and often helpful, once its conventions are grasped. So I have retained it where possible, as ‘more appropriate for the verse than modernized punctuation would be’ ( J. Creaser, RES, 35 (1984) 45). Pursuing a conservative policy, I have

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modernized only where intelligibility demanded, and a reasonably close modern equivalent was available. For Milton’s long verse paragraphs to take full effect, they must be sustained grammatically and rhythmically beyond the ordinary syntactic breath, their sense ‘drawn out’ in such a way as to require light punctuation. Then, there are many metaphorical passages where multiple chains of discourse need to be left open rather than adjudicated between by decisive punctuation, and this might call for very judicious pointing or none at all. On the other hand Milton’s temperament, or the topic being handled, often led him to make nice discriminations; that would require closer, ‘slower’, pointing. Sometimes, too, rhetorical patterns are emphasized by multiplying pauses. Reconciling these demands would have been impossible if the punctuation of the time had not given room for manoeuvre. Seventeenth-century punctuation was often rhetorical: that is, it tended to reflect the physical pauses and stresses of speech directly, rather than to signpost logical or grammatical divisions of the sentence structure. B. A. Wright, in Milton (1956), goes so far as to say that the punctuation of PL ‘is strictly rhetorical inasmuch as it always conforms to the prosody’. But in a good poet, prosody is the handmaid of rhetoric, not rhetoric of prosody. Besides, Milton and his intermediaries seem to have paid unusually close attention to the grammatical implications of pointing. The main differences from modern conventions are these: 1. The full stop, besides being used like ours (although more seldom), is also used before comparisons (i 768) and before direct speech (i 272). It can be equivalent to the modern colon; see Malcolm (1994) i p. lviii citing Cooper, English Teacher (1687). 2. The colon can be much heavier than ours: it is often found where we should put a full stop (vi 669). But it has other uses, of different rhetorical weighting: namely, to mark logical divisions, and to introduce alternatives, reasons, concessions, comparisons, afterthoughts, interruptions, and defining clauses. 3. The lighter semicolon often separates stages in a narrative or items in a catalogue (ii 959, 961, 963, 965). 4. Exclamation and question marks occasionally seem oddly used (i 183). Sometimes this is due to error, or shortage of type; sometimes we may be encountering the punctus percontativus, used to indicate a rhetorical question; see Parkes (1992) 218f, 306f. 5. The comma may be omitted before a defining relative clause, before a vocative (v 388), before and after appositional phrases (iv 270), and at either end of a qualifying or parenthetic phrase (ix 1037–9).

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The punctuation of PL will not give much trouble if a fast enough reading pace is kept up to allow the movement of thought through the paragraph to assert itself, and if allowance is made for rhetorical pointing. Even so, difficulties are likely to be encountered with the colon and semicolon, which sometimes have no exact modern equivalent. It may be some consolation to reflect how disastrous the alternative course, thorough-going modernization, would have been. Even Verity, who modernizes more leniently than Masson, will render a passage such as a flame, Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends Hovering and blazing with delusive light . . . (ix 637–9) like this: a flame, (Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends), Hovering and blazing with delusive light . . . The old punctuation allows one to think of the spirit hovering and deluding; which may well be part of Milton’s meaning, in view of the superstition that the ignis fatuus was a spirit. But an editor modernizing must opt for a single chain of discourse, biting off other possibilities with a parenthesis that closes either after attends (with only the flame hovering) or after light (with only the spirit hovering). Such passages are not uncommon: there is another within a few lines, at ix 650. See Treip (1970); Parkes (1992); J. Creaser, RES, 34 (1983) 279 –303; 35 (1984) 45–60. Sources and models The principal source of PL is the Bible, with which it has a more intimate relation than with any other work, ancient or modern. Most of Milton’s scriptural allusions (particularly to Genesis, Psalms, and Revelation) have long been editorial stock. But it has been possible to add many new echoes and allusions, thanks in part to Sims (1962), Dobbins (1975), Sims (1984), Steadman (1984a), and Radzinowicz (1989), and in part to editions making accessible the versions Milton used – especially Tremellius’ Latin translation and the Geneva English version. It is now well understood that the Bible was provided with supplementation in the shape of multifarious commentaries. So Milton’s modern reader would do well to consult Williams (1948), which samples this gigantic corpus of unfamiliar exegetic criticism. In preparing the notes that follow I have drawn occasionally on exegetical sermons, and extensively on Calvin’s Commentary upon Genesis

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and on Willet, Hexapla (1608), a not very original multiple commentary that invaluably summarizes a range of contemporary and earlier interpretations. Rabbinical sources, which once seemed over-exploited, as in Fletcher (1930), have since been studied by better Hebraists and shown to be a richly rewarding area; see Lieb (1981); Rumrich (1987); Schwartz (1988); Rosenblatt (1994); Werman (1995). The last of these has displaced many previous studies by showing that some of the most difficult midrashim were accessible to Milton in a Latin translation of the seventeenth century – a period when rabbinic wisdom played a considerable part in Christian thinking. It remains to bring to bear such sources as Josephus and Philo Judaeus, both almost certainly in M.’s library. Milton read much patristic literature, but used it very selectively. As a Protestant and child of his time, he preferred the Greek and early Latin Fathers; although he imitates even St Augustine combatively. Corcoran (1945) blazed new trails in exploring Milton’s use of hexaemeral literature (accounts of the six days of creation); wider and sometimes deeper investigations will be found in Kurth (1959), Robins (1963), Hunter (1971), and Fiore (1981). Milton’s ideas about angels are studied at length in West (1955), which finds the sources to be numerous, the angelology unsystematic. The angels in PL may come into better focus, however, when they are compared with the angels of more contemporary occultists and neglected speculative philosophers like Robert Fludd and Henry More; see, e.g., More, Immortality of the Soul (1659). The ancient models of PL – particularly the Homeric epics and Virgil’s Aeneid – are very far from having been neglected. Already the discriminating Jonathan Richardson discussed many of Milton’s imitations of the classics; and he was followed by others still more minute. Deeper study of the classical echoes and narrative parallels came with Bush (1932) and Milton (1966); R. W. Condee, JEGP, 50 (1951) 502–8; Greene (1963); Burden (1967); DuRocher (1985); Blessington (1979). Milton’s allusions to ancient epics have turned out to be so consistently organized as to amount to a distinct strand of meaning – a kind of metapoetic accompaniment. Recently, attention has turned to his deployment of sources less obvious to amateur classicists – works like Claudian’s Rape of Proserpina and Lucan’s Civil War. This has helped to focus the political perspectives of PL, and to clarify Milton’s strategies in deploying canonical allusions. See Newman (1986); Martindale (1986); Burrow (1993); Quint (1993); and especially Schaar (1982). It remains to explore how far PL is tertiary rather than secondary epic – the extent, that is, to which it allegorizes the ancients, whether in the manner of Cristoforo Landino or of Edmund Spenser. The Faerie Queene is the most important vernacular model, even if not

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apparently so. It has received some attention from Miltonists, but probably not enough; see Hieatt (1975); K. Williams, in Wittreich (1975b) 25–55; Maresca (1979); Quilligan (1983) (overtheorized); J. D. Guillory, in The Spenser Encyclopedia (1990); Demaray (1981); Gregerson (1995). Milton studied many recent biblical epics and dramas, some of which must be considered as near analogues, if not sources (particularly of Bk vi), like Alfano, La Battaglia Celeste (1568); Vida’s Virgilian Christiados (1535), which Milton greatly admired in his youth; Valvasone, Angeleide (1590); Taubmanus, Bellum Angelicum (1615); Valmarana, Daemonomachiae (1623); and Vondel, Lucifer (1654). Others treated the creation: above all Tasso, Mondo Creato (1607), and, albeit on a somewhat lower plane, Peri, Caos (1642), and Du Bartas, Les Sepmaines. And many focused on the Fall and its consequences: Grotius, Adamus Exul (1601); Andreini, Adamo Caduto (1613); Peri, Il Mondo Desolato (1619); and Salandra, Adamo Caduto (1647). Some of these may be conveniently studied in Kirkconnell (1952) or Kurth (1959); but the study is not so rewarding as one might have hoped. Milton knew he could not allude to recent works in quite the same way as to Homer or Virgil. His profound debt to Tasso is discussed in Kates (1983) and Treip (1994) 142f; his debt to Du Bartas in Taylor (1934); his allusions to Camoens’s Lusiads in J. H. Sims, in Griffiths (1969) 36–46; D. Quint, in Brownlee (1985) 178–202; Quint (1993); and Armitage (1995) 217; while his intertextualities with all these works are incisively distinguished in Schaar (1982). A largely neglected genre of analogues is English biblical paraphrase. Overlapping with biblical epic, and like it linked with the Divine Poetry movement, this genre is also in part distinct. Milton’s early favourite, Joshua Sylvester’s version of Du Bartas’s Divine Weeks, belongs here, much used and perhaps overused; also Aemylia Lanyer, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611); Drayton, Noah’s Flood (1619); Sir John Stradling, Divine Poems (1625); George Sandys, A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems (1638); and J. Abbot, Devout Rhapsodies, reprinted in Frank (1968) 323–90. See Sims (1984). With a work so polymath as PL, extraliterary sources are naturally numerous – too numerous for comprehensive treatment here. Scientific sources are usefully reviewed in Svendsen (1956), now partly replaced by Marjara (1992). How far Milton went into contemporary science remains controversial; his familiarity with recent astronomy, at least, went beyond that of the ordinary virtuoso. Starnes (1955) attempts to show Milton’s dependence on encyclopedias and mythological handbooks, with real but limited success. In geography and ethnography, Milton’s reading included Pliny, Natural History; Augustine, City of God; Breydenbach, Peregrinatio (1486); Münster, Cosmography (1550); Sandys, Relation (1615); Selden, De

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Dis Syriis (1617); Heylyn, Cosmography (1652); Ralegh, History of the World (1614); and the biblical commentators. But it is hard to tell what he might not have read, his interests were so wide. He was formidably wellinformed through his associations with the Commonwealth government, the Hartlib circle, visiting diplomats, and the correspondents he networked with throughout Europe. He was the ‘grand assimilator’ (Frye (1978) 6) of a stream of information with many tributaries. His sources in visual art (or, more broadly, in iconography and picturing) have proved unexpectedly relevant. A key study here is Roland Mushat Frye’s, which, however, neglects the field of emblems, partly addressed in Mulryan (1996). The explanatory power of emblems is brilliantly demonstrated in M. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–77. For historical sources, consult YP iii (1962); Maltzahn (1991). For geographical sources, see Gilbert (1919) and Cawley (1938) and (1951); Svendsen (1956). On the sources generally, Fletcher (1956–61) may be consulted, despite many inaccuracies; also Boswell (1975). Language and style We are fortunate in having good stylometric analyses of PL, together with comparative measurements. Emma (1964) and (1967) uses samples too small to support his conclusions; but a sound basis for generalization is laid in Corns (1990). Milton’s syntax is highly unusual, characterized by more frequent embedded clauses than can be found in any other canonical seventeenth-century writer. He often mixes left- and right-branching clauses (word groups before, and after, what they modify), keeping all in suspension. Long sentences with lower subordination are particularly common, sometimes with long chains of dependent clauses. Yet dramatically short sentences are also unusually common for the time. The speeches in particular have a distinctive sentence structure, unlike that of any other narrative poet of the century, but closely resembling that of Milton’s own controversial prose – on which see Corns (1982). They are able to engage difficult issues at the edge of speculation. One naturally associates this elaborate yet improvising syntax with the use of frequently enjambed blank verse; see Corns (1990) 10–49. It both takes and gives pleasure in the successful resolving of complexity – in distinguishing alternatives or precipitating ambiguities. Turning to diction, one finds frequent coordinating conjunctions. This is a consequence of Milton’s many fine discriminations, obliquely introduced qualifications, and ultimately of the sentence structure itself, negotiating between energetic movement (fluent, continuous) and perpetual afterthoughts interposing, correcting, dividing the word of truth. Milton was modern in diction and accidence, avoiding obsolescent verb

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terminations. He was modern, too, in his narrative ranging in time and space, and his sudden changes in perspective; see J. R. Mulder, in Di Cesare (1991) 62. Inevitably this called for a composite diction, varying with topic and genre, and with the local decorums of a ‘various style’ (v 146); see Wittreich (1975b) 102, 129ff. On occasion, Milton resorts to demotic words like leer and snuffed; but in general he does so less often than in his prose, and much less than in his early prose. Perhaps he abandoned the demotic when he lost faith in the good sense of the people; see H. S. Davies, in Watson (1970) 190. The variation of diction with genre makes it hard to generalize. The georgic mode, however, appears so frequently as to be almost pervasive; qualifying or even standing against heroic aspirations. Appropriately, therefore, there are unexpectedly many technical words. In his prose, indeed, Milton pursues ‘treatable smoothness’ (YP i 817), an ideal that may seem to work against strange diction, technical terms, and unfamiliar proper names – ‘neither do I care to wrinkle the smoothness of history with rugged names of places unknown’ (YP v 239; Corns (1990) 112). In PL, however, Ronsard’s nommes propres des métiers abound – more even than in early Dryden – although they may not seem obviously technical: for example ‘ordered’ (i 565); ‘ported’ (iv 980). Or, they may be overlaid by technical ambiguities, like ‘waved’ and ‘dropped’ (vii 406). Many critics have noticed the frequent exotic names. Georgic too are the local decorums, like the onomatopoeic liquid consonants in ‘fry innumerable’ (vii 400), discussed by D. K. McColley, in Benet (1994) 82. Among Milton’s thematic words, several should be regarded as georgic: ‘fruit’, ‘seed’, and ‘wandering’ (as landscape description). See B. Rajan, MiltS, 17 (1983) 105–19, especially 112; A. Low, PMLA, 98 (1983) 152–69; Bush (1932); Lewalski (1985) 178ff; Low (1985) ch. 7; D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 15–31. Descriptive studies of the style of PL have replaced the polemics of F. R. Leavis, Scrutiny, 2 (1933) 123–36 (Milton’s monotonously ritualistic verse ‘incompatible with sharp, concrete realization’) and T. S. Eliot, E&S, 21 (1936) 32–40. In his British Academy Lecture of 1947, Eliot admitted his attack had been directed against Milton’s influence rather than his poetry (SR, 56 (1948) l85–209). His self-interested culture war against Georgian rivals was wholly destructive so far as Milton criticism is concerned; see H. Howarth, UTQ, 30 (1961) 150–62. Pernicious in its subsequent influence, Eliot’s criticism was bad in itself – dogmatic like Leavis’s and unsupported by plausible demonstration. More sensitive accounts of Milton’s style may be found in Lewis (1942); Stein (1953); MacCaffrey (1959); and Ricks (1963) – the last showing Leavis wrong by his own criteria.

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The most notorious feature of the style of PL is its Latinity. Already Jonathan Richardson commented: ‘Milton’s language is English, but ’tis Milton’s English; ’tis Latin, ’tis Greek English; not only the words, the phraseology, the transpositions, but the ancient idiom is seen in all he writes’ (Darbishire (1932) 313). Even this is far from Eliot’s negative reaction to ‘the remoteness of Milton’s verse from ordinary speech’. We should recall that in Milton’s time intellectuals spoke Latin, thought in Latin, and wrote private notes and letters in Latin. To call PL Latinate may only mean it is intellectually engaged and intimately expressive. Its sentence structure, at least, has little that is neoclassical about it. It is an English structure: loose rather than periodic, paratactic as much as syntactic. The verse paragraphs seldom keep one waiting for the sense; instead, the sense is ‘diffused throughout a larger block of words’ than is common (Prince (1954) 122). Often there are momentary stoppingplaces, from which the thought darts off in unforeseen side-trips. Each new phrase may show a syntactic schema, inferred earlier, to be wrong or incomplete. ‘Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit [consequence]’ passes to ‘fruit/ Of that forbidden tree’, suggesting also physical fruit. So sustained a syntactic breath conveys a strong sense of passion, or of thought in process. It is no ordinary syntax; but it is not extraordinary in a manner foreign to the genius of English. If the built order and flowing mass of the verse paragraphs are classical, to be classical in that sense is surely a virtue. On a smaller scale, many phrases have a Greek, Italian, or (especially) Latin structure; as if Milton were attempting to appropriate the linguistic qualities of all Europe and naturalize them in a single, universally intelligible, pre-Babelian utterance. Lewis (1942) 45f thought the Latinisms justified by the freedom of word order they secured. At its best, the word order has its own poetic reasons; still, Milton would naturally prefer his poetic syntax to have the additional validation of ancient or other customary usage. Frequent omission of the article, like the occasional use of after with a past participle (iii 552, ‘after heaven seen’), produces an effect that is first concise, spare, and pungent, and only secondarily Latinate. Latin constructions are particularly common in transitions (x 229), where they suggest an authoritative narrator, or the ordonnance of a magisterial poet. As much as anything, the frequent inversions have lent support to charges of unidiomatic, idiosyncratic remoteness. But the word order of Milton’s time is now understood to have been much freer than ours. Prince (1954) sensitively analyses many characteristic inversions, and relates them to contemporary literary practice – to the disposition of epithets in Italian poetic diction, for example, as in ADJECTIVE | NOUN | and | ADJECTIVE (v 564, ‘Sad task and hard’). Emma, working with

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inadequate samples, supposes the rare SUBJECT OBJECT VERB inversion (iv 304f, ‘She . . . Her unadornèd golden tresses wore’) to be commonest, and thinks rare the common OBJECT SUBJECT VERB and VERB SUBJECT sequences (i 76–8, ‘the companions . . . He soon discerns’; i 125, ‘So spake the apostate angel’). In fact, VERB SUBJECT ‘inversion’ was a common alternative in seventeenth-century English; see Mätzner (1874); Jespersen (1909–49) vii; M. Agari, HSELL, 27 (1982) 42–56 (showing certain inversions genre-linked, and others to be shared by PL and History of Britain). See Corns (1994) 110f; Lalia Phipps Boone, in Patrick (1953) 114–27; H. S. Davies, in Watson (1970) 191. For Latinate style as a consequence of universalism, see Belsey (1988) 35; for word order inverted to achieve circular patterns, Crump (1975) 48 et passim. Milton’s choice of words, similarly, has been called un-English, without sufficient study of the semantics of his time. An honourable exception is L. P. Boone, who already thought Milton’s Latinity exaggerated. Many so-called Latinisms are nothing of the sort; and many others imply ancient idioms only as enhancing suggestions. The diction of PL, while far from demotic, was of only average Latinity. In the spectrum of Latinity four bands may be distinguished: 1. The Latin sense primary, and new in English. Apart from compounds like ‘unfumed’ Milton seldom makes coinages or imports words from other languages. Probable exceptions include ‘omnific’ (vii 217) and ‘recline’ (iv 333, ‘then sat recline’). See Corns (1990) 86. 2. The Latin sense primary, but occurring in English poetic contexts – so-called ‘gradus diction’, as in ‘liquid lapse of murmuring streams’ (viii 263), where liquid = ‘flowing’. PL has only a few such Latinisms. 3. The Latin sense secondary, contributing an allusion or additional suggestion. For example ‘The firmament, expanse of liquid . . . air’ (vii 264f ), where expanse alludes to Latin expansum, supposed a closer equivalent than firmamentum in translating Gen. 1:6. PL has many Latinisms of this type but, far from impairing the style, they enrich and strengthen it. 4. Normal English prose usage, derived from Latin. Such words are frequent in PL, as in most intellectual and all scientific discourse of its time. If Latinate at all, they are so only in an etymological sense. Most of Milton’s alleged Latinisms fall in Band 4; they may not have been noticed as such in his time, any more than we think of aspirin as German or Latinate. Thus ‘to bear rule, which was thy part / And person’ (x 155f ), called by Thomas Newton (1749) ‘a pure Latinism’, had long been good English: OED has six instances of person = ‘role’ in non-technical prose before 1667. So too with vii 94, absolved = ‘completed’, which Ricks treats as Latinate (six earlier prose instances). There are difficult

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borderline cases, but that does not absolve one from distinguishing cases not borderline. To the extent that we have historical dictionaries, we are in a better position than Dr Johnson to estimate the degree of Milton’s Latinity. If a Latin-derived usage in PL occurred earlier in ordinary prose, I do not call it a Latinism, but simply gloss it, as falling within the range of seventeenth-century English meanings. Milton’s readers would know many etymologies, true or false. But, unless the Latin derivations are relevant in some way – foregrounded, say, for irony – they hardly concern modern readers. So I have ignored many ghost ‘Latinisms’ and allowed the diction’s intimacy to reassert itself. PL is the most direct of secondary epics: a fact that parade of its Latinity has obscured. In Milton (1968), however, I may have put this position too starkly. Subsequent criticism – especially Corns (1994) – has indeed confirmed my main contention. But it needs to be qualified, in view of Latin’s special role in a bilingual culture. For Milton’s first audience, Latin associations would have come readily to mind. Although these do not amount to Latinisms in the ordinary sense, they should be kept in mind. Milton’s language is fully English but also more than English. If the Latinisms have been overestimated, so have the ambiguities and ironies. There are many such effects – so many, in fact, as to constitute a characteristic style, an individual rhetoric. Unfortunately, that has made critics focus on them to excess, as I myself did in Milton (1968). We can now afford to detect local ironies less automatically. The effects I have in mind range from momentarily apprehended ‘double syntax’, through possible ironies, doubles entendres, and puns, to radical ambiguities challenging choices on the reader’s part. Double syntax occurs in words or word groups a, b, c when ab is taken up as forming one chain of discourse and bc another (so that b is reassigned): That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos (i 8–10) In the beginning may fleetingly be attached to first taught, until the reader makes a better connection, with Rose. Inversion assists the effect when by a local decorum it puts beginning at the beginning of its clause. Such double syntax has a further role in drawing out the sense through the paragraph. One is led on by the fluent movement of phrases relating first retrospectively then prospectively. This syntactic correctio (selfcorrection) is not so emphatic as to constitute full ambiguity. If it is noticed at all, indeed, its alternatives are likely to seem trivial or illusory.

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Milton’s puns, a related topic, are elaborately but not exhaustively treated by Le Comte (1981). Many take the form of unassertive ambiguities, although some (e.g. vi 609–27) are foregrounded. All depart from the style height proper to Virgilian epic, in which they would be considered faults. The poem’s allusions have occasioned energetic controversy, so complex are the intertextualities of biblical, classical and Renaissance texts. Here the best guides include Sims (1962) and (1984); D. Bush, in Milton (1966); Schaar (1982); and, especially on echoes of the Psalms, Radzinowicz (1989). The number of allusions in PL has been exaggerated by critics forgetting how recently the device had been introduced in English literature. Vernacular allusion was rare; and only a few classical authors would have been familiar enough for intertextualities to be recognizable. Still, one may allow that Ovid, Horace, and Virgil (particularly the Georgics) fell into a special category. And, of course, allusion to the Bible was a readily available resource: many knew the Psalms and much else by heart, both in Latin and English. In any event, modern readers easily read past the allusions and echoes. Not so with the radical ambiguities. These may positively challenge decision between subtly yet sharply distinct moral alternatives. In ‘Turned him all ear to hear new utterance flow’ (iv 410), him might refer to either Adam or Satan; so that Darbishire adds a brace of commas ‘to make the sense clear’. But Adam and Satan’s sharing the pronoun can seem highly effective (and even clearer), if one recalls other passages where Satan takes Adam’s place (v 40–1n; ix 532). A more obvious instance is Satan’s soliloquizing address to Adam and Eve: ‘league with you I seek, / And mutual amity so strait . . .’ (iv 375f ). Those gullible enough might choose to take strait to mean ‘intimate’ (OED 14); but those on their guard would recall that strait also meant ‘involving privation’. Many passages call for a similar discrimination. If the ambiguities challenge discrimination, the similes almost force it. Milton had lived through the vogue for witty tropes or ‘conceits’; so it is not surprising that he should engage his reader strenuously in this area. Earlier critics of the similes were sometimes content to see oases for refreshment, as with Homeric epic similes. As Dr Johnson says, ‘Milton’s great excellence is amplitude, and he expands the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion required’ (Lives (1905) i 179). One might still be inclined to continue on that plane of enjoyment, for digressiveness, after all, is a feature of the poem’s recurrent georgic mode. But closer study has made it difficult to remain content with this simple approach. See J. Whaler, PMLA, 46 (1931) 1034–74; JEGP, 30 (1931) 322–34; MP, 28 (1931) 313–27; Empson (1935); L. D.

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Lerner, EC, 4 (1954) 297–308; K. Widmer, ELH, 25 (1958) 258–69; Harding (1962); Ricks (1963); R. D. Bedford, EC, 25 (1975) 179–96; L. Gregerson, MiltS, 14 (1980) 135–52; Gregerson (1995) 249–57; J. Harada, BAUE, 16 (1967) 57–78; N. Harris, in Di Cesare (1991) 71–94. The main problem with the similes is that the grounds of resemblance between their tenors and vehicles often seem tenuous or elusive. Milton ‘does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison’ ( Johnson). This can hardly be accidental, in view of the rhetoricians’ high valuation of antapodesis, or strict analogical correspondence (e.g. Quintilian VIII iii 74–7). A doctrine has consequently developed that Milton uses similes ‘disjunctively’ – ‘with a clear sense of the fact that they don’t fit exactly’ (Ricks (1963) 127). There may be disparity in similes relating to Satan, where he travesties goodness; an example is i 338–44, discussed in Ricks (1963) 128f. Far more often, however, Milton’s similes are conjunctive but difficult. One will be required to discriminate between right and wrong applications, perhaps, or to supply an incomplete allusion. At iii 510–25, Satan looking up at heaven gate is compared to Jacob: The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw Angels ascending and descending, bands Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled To Padan-Aram in the field of Luz, Dreaming by night under the open sky, And waking cried, This is the gate of heaven. (iii 510–15) Strictly speaking, the comparison is between two flights of stairs, not between Satan and Jacob, who might be very different without the simile being disjunctive. Even between them, however, deeper grounds of similarity can be discovered. Both have sinned, both have tried to evade retribution; and both envision the scala naturae, with its symbolism of ascent to God, as a critical turning point. Disparity lies in the future, as they turn different ways: Jacob to repentance (Gen. 28:20f ), Satan to harden his heart (iii 200). A main item of the vehicle – namely, the biographical occasion of Jacob’s dream – is only implied. Many similes in PL belong to this type, in which the vehicle is partly suppressed, or depends on compressed allusion. (A good example would be the simile cluster at ix 439–43.) Several of the notes below attempt to identify such implied elements, and so reduce the number of disjunctive similes. Another difficulty with Milton’s similes lies in their variety and logical complexity. There are comparisons within comparisons (iv 165); comparisons in negative form (iv 268–85); double and triple vehicles (ix 670–6);

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and even double tenors (x 289–93). Sometimes this complexity results from compression: Milton has much to say. Elsewhere it serves an ideological purpose, as when he needs to veil some heterodox theological or political doctrine, or to relate the comparison to his moral vision. Most often, perhaps, the similes serve as exercises in discriminating judgement; see Gregerson (1995) 244f. The same is true of other stylistic features, even of individual words and their deployment. Much criticism has been devoted to attentive, exhaustive, not to say remorseless, listing of occurrences of certain key words, to bring out the strategy of their placement, associations, sequence, and the like (whether following or preceding the Fall; whether used of Satan or Adam). Among the most notable of such studies are Stein (1953); MacCaffrey (1959); Cope (1962); Ricks (1963); N. Forsyth, SPELL, 3 (1987). It is a rich vein. Almost any word in PL might prove susceptible to the treatment, it is so unified a poem. And when scepticism has been allowed its say – when it has been pointed out that in any work on the Fall words like fall and rise are bound to be ‘significant’ (like beetroot in a book on root vegetables) – thanks are still due to the theme detectives for retracing the poet’s steps so faithfully. There are many genuine key words in PL, whose study has put it beyond doubt that Milton chose and arranged words with an extraordinarily sustained awareness of ideological implication. It is characteristic, for example, that he should only use guiltless in the non-moral sense – ‘guiltless of fire’ (ix 392) – immediately before the Fall. The Jonathan Richardsons put it well when they wrote that ‘a reader of Milton must be always upon duty; he is surrounded with sense, it rises in every line, every word is to the purpose; there are no lazy intervals, all has been considered, and demands, and merits observation’ (Darbishire (1932) 315). Thematic words have most interest when they are associated with objects or events in the story. Naturally the themes Milton most attended to would be accorded more than verbal statement. So the best studies of key words often turn out to be studies of images and objects too, like Mindele Treip’s searching exploration of ‘balance’, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–77. Similarly with a word and theme introduced in the very first line, fruit, whose associations have been found to include no small proportion of the poem’s contents; see Christopher (1982) 19f. They range through accounts of the Fall’s consequences ( fruit in the abstract), many occurrences of fruit itself, literal and figurative (as well as of fruitless and fruition), and frequent references to vegetative nature. Eve is herself a ‘fairest unsupported flower’ (ix 432); Christ’s promise is to her ‘seed’; fallen angels lie like ‘leaves’ (i 302); the serpent is a ‘shoot’ of fraud (ix 89); and under the covenant mankind proceeds ‘as from a second stock [trunk]’ (xii 7). But none of

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this would matter so much, were it not for the actual trees that dominate the poem’s landscape. The sacred biblical trees of Life and of Knowledge, the emblematic trees and plants of virtue, the ordinary savage wilderness, the ‘one continued brake’ that forms a framing verdure – everywhere in Paradise vegetation burgeons luxuriantly. It seems only reasonable that the universe itself should be thought of as a plant whose ‘bright consummate flower’ breathes in heaven (v 481). As naturally, mankind is part and partner of a plant; so their misuse of a plant, disobeying the ‘sovereign planter’, must necessarily have the fruit of cosmic consequences. A part of Milton’s vocabulary that has attracted much attention is his proper names. Eliot and Leavis treated the ‘roll-calls’ of names as having only a vague atmospheric or auditory value. But more recent study of historical and theological contexts has shown that virtually every name, every naming, every narrative or spatial deployment of a name, is sharply edged. For example, each devil has two names: a true, innocent name in heaven – now ‘blotted out’ (i 362) and withheld – and a new, dyslogistic name after the angelic fall. The latter is assigned by Raphael (v 658, ‘Satan, so call him now’) or foreseen as to be used in the future (our past) in heathen cults (i 374, ‘Then were they known to men by various names’). Names analyse or signify (as Satan = ‘Adversary’); so that Adam and Eve’s naming of natural species carries implications about their wisdom, scientific knowledge, and power. Latin nomen means ‘noun’ as well as ‘name’; changes in nomenclature after the Fall may be seen as particular instances of the degeneration of language in general. So mazy error (iv 239) and even serpent error (vii 302) are innocent Latinisms before the Fall. Much criticism shows appreciation of this strategy, especially Ricks (1963) and Everett (1986). But knowledge of it was put on an entirely new footing in Leonard (1990), which explains the consistent logic with which Milton orders almost all introductions of names throughout his poem. Milton’s brilliance is nowhere more active than in his effortless manner of deploying materials for simultaneous effects. He will generally avoid sententiae – then decisively concentrate them in Bk ix, before the fatal separation; not delivering them in persona auctoris but through Adam (ix 232–4, 249, 250, 267f ): a disposition that at once foregrounds them, helps to establish the tragic mode, and illustrates Adam’s attempt at moral authority. Or, word order will concurrently serve grammatical, rhetorical, and topomorphic ends. Thus, many have noticed local decorums of mimetic grammar; already Jonathan Richardson remarked how the grammar of ii 910ff mimes Satan’s hesitation on the brink of chaos. ‘Into this wild abyss’ is followed not by ‘he plunged’ but by lines of description; and when it is repeated, and the drawn-out sense at last completed, the delayed main verb is unexpectedly indecisive:

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introduction Into this wild abyss . . . Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked awhile, Pondering his voyage. . . . (ii 910, 917–19)

Such effects are usually too delicate for rewarding analysis; although interesting exceptions will be found in Ricks (1963) 27ff, 78ff. It is no exaggeration to say that similar syntactic effects are to be enjoyed in almost any passage of the poem. Equally elusive, but for different reasons, is the rhetorical organization. This was once a chief glory; but rhetoric is so alien to the ways of modern education that an attempt to cultivate appreciation of it would be uphill work. Perhaps the most to be hoped for is a vague recognition of its operation in token instances. Identifying all the figures would be not only pedantic but ignorant: at its best, rhetoric aimed at a response far more discriminating than mere recognition. How is one now to appreciate the significantly unusual frequency of this figure, or the topical aptness of that? An example of which one can be fairly sure comes in Bk vi, where figures like puns, considered low and liable to excess, are concentrated. The ‘indecorum’ here, paradoxically, is appropriate to the subject, the ‘wild work’ of the angelic war (vi 498n, 566n, 578–94n, 698–9n). So, too, the description of the artillery at vi 572–84 is viciously inflated (bomphiologia), while immediately afterwards the firing goes to the other extreme, with diction as rhetorically low as belched, embowelled, entrails, disgorging, and glut. A contrasting example is Eve’s love song: Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild, then silent night With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train: (iv 641–9) The main scheme here, a large-scale repetition (epanalepsis or enumeratio) mimes Eve’s responsiveness. Its intricate magic circle excludes all schemes but those of completion and varied repetition; this expansive repose depending, semantically at least and by implication morally, on sustained

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rejection of the world of separation from Adam. The smooth returning flow of epanalepsis and epanodos, the copiousness of merismus within merismus, and the exquisite poising of similarity against variety in the poignantly negative reprise (iv 650–6), put this among the most satisfyingly eloquent of all elegies. The song’s patterning is carried to extraordinary lengths. Never content merely to list names or items, Milton invariably orders them, making the array significant. Here, Eve considers Paradise in six phases (number of perfection), arranging them sestina-wise in answering pairs: breath of morn and her rising; sun and showers; evening and night. This array is repeated in the predicated epithets, but with a variation: 1 sweet 2 sweet 3 pleasant 4 fragrant 5 sweet. Of the five epithets (number of sovereignty), pleasant dignifies the sun in the central place. And in the reprise, the dependent word-groups are subject to further variations suggesting narrative decorums. Thus, ‘herb, tree, fruit, and flower’ (iv 644) becomes ‘herb, fruit, flower’ (652). The sun has ceased to shine on the darkened tree. Throughout PL such topomorphic or spatial patterns may be found, often implying symbolism of sovereignty – not of course to dignify human monarchy, but rather to affirm Christ’s kingship and the moral hierarchy of creation. In the ‘roll-call’ of eastern empires at xi 388–96, for example, the names do more than sound out exotic grandeur: they honour the centrally placed Chersonese (Ophir), symbol of Messianic sovereignty – ‘I will make a man more precious than . . . the golden wedge of Ophir’ (Isa. 13:12). The vista of African principalities at xi 396–407n repeats the pattern, with ‘Sofala thought Ophir’ at its sovereign centre. Even brief landscape descriptions are similarly structured; for example ‘Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains’ (viii 275), where the virtuous rivers of Paradise are dignified. Metrical structure Seventeenth-century epics were mostly rhymed, whether in stanzas, like Fairtax’s Godfrey of Bulloigne (1600); Davenant’s Gondibert (1651); and Fanshawe’s The Lusiads (1655); or in couplets, like May’s Civil War (1627); Cowley’s Davideis (1656) and Civil War (1679). But Milton rejected rhyme, ‘the invention of a barbarous age’. As his Note on the Verse explains, he chose to follow the example of ‘some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note’ in preferring blank verse (probably Trissino, Alamanni, and the Tasso of Mondo Creato (1607)). This may be seen as a political decision: rhyme was compromised for Milton by its chivalric associations, particularly its use in monarchic epics. He looked beyond ‘modern bondage’ and the barbarous age of feudal or imperial oppression to the ‘ancient liberty’ of classical republicanism. On the strength of Milton’s

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citing the precedent of ‘our best English tragedies’, some have thought him canonizing the popular dramatic form. Shumaker (1967) 138f comments on his poem’s oral character; and Mackail (1938) 20 traces its parentheses to the example of Massinger and other dramatists. But this is not the whole story. In its weightiness Milton’s blank verse differs considerably from that of drama. The individual line in PL is an unusually stable rhythmic unit, strongly braced against the pell-mell possibilities of repeated enjambement. Most lines end in a long, or stressed, syllable; and most are separated by distinct interlinear pauses. This is by no means to consider Milton’s blank verse as endstopped heroic couplets with the rhyme removed. Indeed, its fluency has much of Shakespeare’s flow. But there is an even closer analogy, at times, to the monumentality of Tasso or of English sacred paraphrasts like Sandys. The standard line in PL has ten syllables, with stresses on those of even number: ‘United thoughts and counsels, equal hope’ (i 88). Naturally, a great many lines depart from this norm; but the departures are subject to certain restrictions. While the number of heavy speech accents in a line varies, the number of theoretical syllables remains the same. ‘Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived’ (i 35) has only four strong accents, while ‘Fall’n cherub, to be weak is miserable’ (i 157) may only have three. The syllables and, to, and -able, however, carry subsidiary stresses. As for the number of syllables, that will often seem greater than ten. But it has to be reducible to the theoretical ten by one or other of the customary procedures taken over from Italian prosody – elision, synaloepha, and contraction. Thus, in ‘Fall’n cherub’, Fall’n is contracted to a monosyllable. In the line ‘Till, as a signal giv’n, the uplifted spear’ (i 347), giv’n is contracted to a monosyllable while the uplifted is run together by synaloepha to th’uplifted; so the twelve syllables again yield a net total of ten. If synaloepha involves complete loss of a vowel, it is often called elision; this can occur within a word (i 1, ‘disobedience’) and even when the vowels are separated by h. Very occasionally Milton allows himself the licence of a final eleventh syllable – perhaps with mimetic intention. It happens most frequently at the end of Bk ix, where Adam is ‘estranged in look and altered style’. See Sprott (1953) 58f; Prince (1954). Many other ‘rules’ governing Milton’s metrical freedom have been prescribed. But they are all trivial, or merely statistical, or irrelevant to the critic. Who but a prosodist cares how often an nth foot is inverted? The fourth syllable is usually stressed; but this may only be the result of compensating for the inverted opening foot Milton was fond of (Sprott (1953) 102). Robert Bridges’ Milton’s Prosody (rev. 1921) is still worth reading but has effectively been replaced by Sprott. Both shy away from the vexed topic of quantity. Yet Alexander Gill (Milton’s headmaster at

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St Paul’s) deals with the matter at some length in his poetics, Logonomia Anglica (1619). He discusses how vowel length, internal accent, and position all affect syllable length; and how these considerations are overriden by ‘rhetorical’ (grammatical) accent; see Gill (1972) ii 132ff. If the poem’s opening line follows Gill’s system (in which prefixes like dis- are short where position allows), its scansion will be: ‘Of mán’s fírst disobédience, ánd the frúit’ – unless, that is, the grammatical accent enforced by the subsequent context decides otherwise. This neglected topic calls for enquiry; until more is known about syllable length, it is hard to solve the delicate problems of scansion PL occasionally presents. Not that we need to be shut out from appreciating all its metrical effects. Fortunately the grammatical accent is usually unambiguous. And even where this is not so, the stresses are often clear nevertheless. In ‘O’er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare’ (ii 948), most will agree that the stress gradients from or to steep and from rough to dense are different, and that this mimes the roughness of the rough patch. Sprott puts the effect down to the length of rough ‘because of the labial spirant’. Perhaps. But to be certain, one would have to know more about what Milton meant by ‘fit quantity of syllables’, and be able to allow for other features, like the unusually smooth liaison in or rare (contrasting with that in rough, dense), or the momentary difficulty occasioned by the ambiguous previous word (strait or straight? noun or adjective?). Nevertheless the brilliance of the effect itself is beyond doubt. Numerical composition Postwar criticism of PL has decisively enlarged our knowledge about its structure, largely through rediscovering Renaissance theories of proportion and compositional practices. The latter were often linked with a memory-art that ordered the contents of works for recall by assigning them to a numerical grid; see Doob (1990); Yates (1966). Both writers and readers were interested in the numerical proportions of literature, which they ordered according to number symbols drawn from biblical, Pythagorean, or musical sources; see Fowler (1970a); MacQueen (1985); Heninger (1994); Røstvig (1994). The pioneering work of Whaler (1956), based on debatable units and arbitrary meanings, has found little acceptance. But the analyses of speeches and paragraphs in Qvarnström (1961) and (1967) have proved of lasting value. Qvarnström draws attention to Messiah’s speeches at vi 723–45 and 801–23, between which he ascends his chariot to expel the rebel angels. Both speeches are of twenty-three lines, a number that signified vengeance on the heathen (Num. 25:9 Vulg.; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 441f ). This approach has been taken further by Dennis Danielson, whose instructive examinations of paragraph

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architecture find (perhaps rather too often) golden sections at sentence divisions. Others have explored the larger ordonnance of speeches, finding, for example, seven speeches in both Bk i and Bk ii (E. Miner, MiltS, 17 (1983) 3–25). Gunnar Qvarnström’s most striking discovery is that the centre of the entire poem by line-count comes in 1667 immediately after vi 761, where Messiah ascends his triumphal throne (Ascended being the first word of vi 762). This observation has led others to notice further symmetries about the same sovereign centre; see J. R. Watson, EC, 14 (1964) 148–55; J. T. Shawross, SP, 62 (1965) 696–718; A. Fowler, in Milton (1968); Fowler (1970a) 66f, 115–19, 131f; Crump (1975); Røstvig (1994). A typical example is the array i-ii Effects of angelic fall a

iii Council: Satan enters world b

iv vi vii ix x First Messiah’s Messiah’s Second Council: temptation triumph creation temptation Satan leaves world c D D c b

xi–xii Effects of human Fall a

Such symmetries are more fully analysed in Crump (1975), a persuasive account which nevertheless carries detail to the point of diminishing returns, and in Shawcross (1982) ch. 3. Comprehensive treatment of Milton’s numerology was not to come until Røstvig (1994), criticism of a distinctly higher order. It should be added that Qvarnström and Røstvig carried on their work in the face of astonishing prejudice. Serious criticism of the structure of PL must now begin with Røstvig’s analytic schemes. The symmetries implicitly glorify Messiah’s central exaltation to the apocalyptic throne of judgment (vi 749–59). The idea of Christ delivering judgment from a central position in the cosmos had long encouraged ‘the equation of the astrological notion, medium coeli, with the theological notion, medium coeli et terrae, presumed to be the seat of the Judge’ (Panofsky (1955) 262; cp. PL iv 30n, 1013–15n; vi 761n). As Qvarnström explains, Messiah’s sacerdotal armour of ‘radiant urim’ was associated with the philosopher’s stone; Tancke calls it ‘the right, true sun itself . . . the right Urim and fiery Carbuncle’. Cowley similarly conceives Elijah’s chariot alchemically – ‘rich in every part, / Of essences of gems, and spirit of gold / Was its substantial mould; / Drawn forth by chemic angel’s art . . .’ (‘The Ecstasy’ (1905) 205). On the throned Messiah’s right hand sits Victory, ‘eagle-winged’ in allusion to Michael Maier’s alchemic emblem of Jupiter sending eagles to determine the earth’s medium . . . locum (Atalanta Fugiens (1618) Emblem 46; see PL vi 762–3n). A forgotten model

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may have been Macarius Mutius, whose biblical epic De Triumpho Christi (1499) has at its numerological centre both Aaron’s breastplate and the solar chariot of Christ’s triumph. The numerological patterns are affected by fifteen lines added in 1674, with the net result that the centre moves four and a half lines, to vi 766. (Renaissance numerology was often confined to the editio princeps.) But the additions – ‘regular / Then most, when most irregular they seem’ (v 623–4) – break one pattern to make another. For in cabbalistic gematria the 15 of the addition signifies YH (Tah), the syncopated form of the tetragrammaton or divine name; while the poem’s new overall line-count, 10,565, signifies IHVH, the tetragrammaton itself; see E. Keller, MiltQ, 20 (1986) 23–5. As if imitating nature herself, Milton reveals the divine Signature. Division of the poem into books was also reordered in 1674. The extreme length of 1667 Bk x (1674 xi and xii) suggests that redivision was planned from an early stage. In the view of some critics, the redivided poem is more obviously structured (MacCaffrey (1959) 57n; contrast Røstvig (1994) 469). (1667) Book Line total i 798 ii 1055 iii 742 iv 1015 v 904 vi 912 vii 1290 viii ix x

1189 1104 1541

(1674) Book Line total i 798 ii 1055 iii 742 iv 1015 v 907 vi 912 vii 640 viii 653 ix 1189 x 1104 xi 901 xii

10550

649

(3 lines added at 636–9)

(3 lines added at 1–4)

(3 lines added at 485–7, 1 at 551–2) (5 lines added at 1–5)

10565

Of famous epics, Homer’s were both in 24 books, Virgil’s in 12, Dante’s in 100 cantos, Ariosto’s in 46, and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata in 20; only Camoens’s was in 10 (Wittreich (1975b) 132f ). Book-division attracted theoretical attention; often being treated in terms of number symbolism. In the Renaissance the preferred total was 12, a number associated with

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completeness and temporal fulfilment. Most critics interested in formal structure agree that 1667’s ten-book division implies a Pythagorean scheme, whereas the twelve books of 1674 have the two-part structure of Virgilian epic. In Pythagorean thought, created being arises from the monad, fount of number, through the principle of the sacred tetraktys (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10). This idea had long been accommodated to Platonic Christianity; see Bongo, Mysteria (1591); Lieb (1981) Index, Pythagoras; MacQueen (1985). The book division of 1667 reflects Pythagorean doctrine unambiguously. In it, invocations or prologues (italicized) begin Bks i, iii, vii, and viii (= 1674 ix): 1667 i, ii | iii, iv, v, vi | | vii | viii, ix, x 1674 i, ii | iii, iv, v, vi | | vii, viii | ix, x, xi, xii So, if prologues are taken as marking new structural parts, the books of 1667 form a tetraktys disposed 2 | 4 | | 1 | 3. This array corresponds to a narrative sequence moving from the evil and rebellious dyad (Bks i–ii: hell) through a tetrad of heaven and earth (Bks iii–vi: the tetraktys as vinculum of spirit and matter) to the creative monad (Bk vii: creation), and then to the triad of mediation between God and fallen world (Bks viii–x, 1674 ix–xii). Arthur Barker (1965) analyses the 1667 book-division as a scheme of five two-book acts; he sees 1674 as changing from a dramatic to a fully epic structure. This interesting idea finds some support in the cohesion of Bks i–ii and ix–x (1674 x–xii). But other of his ‘acts’ are only asserted to exist, having neither substantive nor formal coherence. Bks iii and iv, for example, do not belong together any more than iv does with v. Barker’s scheme cannot be said to explain the overall structure. Another fertile structural hypothesis is Michael Fixler’s, in Kranidas (1969) 131–78, proposing a structure of seven parts corresponding to the seven visions of Revelation, a principal source. To the four obvious invocations, Fixler adds three further supplications: the narrator’s desideration of ‘that warning voice’ (iv 1); Adam’s request at v 543–60; and Adam and Eve’s supplication (xi 1–14). Fixler proposes seven visions – of hell; heaven; Paradise; war in heaven; Creation; the Fall; and history. The scheme is in places vague and arbitrary, but of some interest for the idea that sequence may be reversed in imitation. In 1667, ‘Half yet remains unsung’ (vii 21) comes in the seventh of ten books, and can only refer to line totals. In 1674, however, it becomes a more obvious signpost to the structure. Now, the six-book halves balance one another. Each half is equally divided into parts (starting with an invocation) of two and four books. The parts in each half thus bear the diapason proportion 1:2, signifying harmony and control of passion.

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Italicizing Books with prologues, one may set out the parts of 1674 as i ii | iii iv v vi | | vii viii | ix x xi xii. Superimposed on this array is an ascent in the baroque manner to an emphatic double centre (vi and vii), followed by a descent in the Fall and Expulsion. The first centre, in Bk vi, is where Messiah, Sol iustitiae, ascends his throne in medio coeli; the second is the central day of creation, when he establishes his image, the sun. Many consonances now link contents of the first half with answering contents in corresponding books of the second half. Of the outermost two books in each, i–ii portray evil consequences of the angelic fall, xi–xii mixed consequences of the Fall of mankind. In the third Book, a divine council deliberates on redemption; in the third last (x), after an answering council, Messiah descends to judge and have compassion on mankind. Similarly, Satan enters the universe in Bk iii and in x leaves it. And the first temptation, in iv, corresponds to the second, in ix. A subsidiary pattern has the chaotic war in heaven closing the first half (Bks i–vi), which began with hell and chaos. Similarly, the second half is flanked by pairs of books revealing the Mirrors of Nature (vii–viii) and of History (xi–xii). Linking the two halves, the central four books v–viii form the ‘episode’ of Raphael. For similar structural patterns, particularly those based on the 1:2 diapason ratio, readers may be referred to Røstvig (1994) 468ff. 1674 can also be considered as a hexaemeron (so to say), of six twobook parts: i ii | iii iv | v vi || vii viii | ix x | xi xii The first, fourth and sixth parts of this array have a high degree of coherence. Indeed, Bks vii and viii actually formed a single book in 1667, as did xi and xii. Again, Bks i and ii have the same coherence as in Barker’s scheme. To notice so many patterns may seem counterproductive, until they are recognized as complementary rather than competing. Milton’s encyclopedic epic may include several structural types – hexaemeron, brief epic, Virgilian epic – just as it includes several genres. It has the overlapping, overdetermined patterns of the visual art of the time – pursuing an ideal of multum in parvo in order to imitate cosmic complexity. Time-scheme Critics used to occupy themselves in determining the exact duration of epic actions. Addison knew that ‘those who have criticized on the Odyssey, the Iliad and Aeneid, have taken a great deal of pains to fix the number of months or days contained in the action of each of these poems’ (Spectator No. 369 (1965) ii 543f; cp. No. 267, iii 391; probably referring to René Le Bossu, Traité du Poème Épique (1675) ii 5, 18; iii 12; see Fowler (1970a) 129–31). Homer’s Iliad was estimated at forty-eight days by Dryden, and

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recast consecutively as a journal in Tatler No. 6. The notion that the epic unity of time might be about a month was not uncommon. Yet Thomas Newton’s judgement that Milton was ‘not very exact in the computation of time’ (annotating xi 135n) has dissuaded modern critics from examining the poem’s time-scheme. Newton was probably swayed by apparent discontinuities, as when x 103, 119 refer to indeterminate but extensive durations. But one may exclude duration referred to but not represented or quantified (e.g. iii 499, Satan ‘long . . . wandered’). In Renaissance realism, there was no necessary continuity between vague durations (implied by words like ‘often’) and definite poem time. The latter fulfilled a time-scheme defined by specific temporal indications. Ricks (1963) 19, speaking of ‘characteristic pedantry about the passage of time’, is nearer the mark than Newton. For Milton takes pains to arrange precise indications of time, dwelling fondly on elaborate chronologiae of sunset, sunrise, noon, midnight, and nightfall (iv 352–633, etc.). Such temporal indications do not, indeed, suggest the superfluous detail of novelistic realism. But neither are they mere clocking-in, to obey the Unity of Time. The time-scheme of PL sets out thematic ideas. According to Addison, ‘from Adam’s first appearance in the fourth book, to his expulsion from Paradise in the twelfth, the author reckons ten days’ (Spectator No. 369 (1965) iii 391). But Milton counted in the older manner, inclusively: what Addison reckons ten days, Milton would reckon eleven. ‘As for that part of the action which is described in the three first books, as it does not pass within the regions of nature . . . it is not subject to any calculations of time.’ This tells one that Addison has not been able to follow his author. Raphael’s narration surely has to be included, on Le Bossu’s principles. Indeed, Milton himself hints broadly enough that extra-terrestrial ‘days’ are to be counted – ‘as we compute the days of heaven’ (vi 685). Milton’s time-scheme used also to be uncertain because of confusion about ‘day’. Some have assumed a 24-hour period beginning at midnight. Milton’s audience, however, were familiar with several other reckonings of a day, beginning at sunrise, noon, or sunset; see Riccioli (1651) i 31ff. And Raphael’s narrative follows the Bible in reckoning from evening to evening (v 227; vii 260, 338). Biblical ‘evening’ was itself a debated term (e.g. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 4 on Gen. 1:4); but Milton clearly followed Jerome in reckoning from sunset – ‘Evening arose in Eden, for the sun / Was set’ (vii 582f ). As Zachary Grey puts it, ‘we may trace our heroes, morning and night: This particular is always essential in poetry, to avoid confusion, and disputes among the critics. How would they have calculated the number of days taken up in the Iliad, Aeneid, and PL; if the poets had not been careful to lead them into the momentous discovery?’

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(Butler, Hudibras (1744) III iii 67). PL divides calendrically into biblical days consisting each of an evening followed by a morning. Its duration may also, however, be divided into 24-hour days beginning any time. A consequent potential ambiguity of reckoning is exploited when Adam waits for his sentence to be carried out on ‘the day’ he disobeyed (x 773n). The main lines of the time-scheme are as follows: DAY

EVENT

TEXT

1 2–4 4–13 13–22 14–20 17

Messiah’s generation war in heaven rebel angels’ 9-day pursuit rebel angels’ 9-day stupor week of creation sun and moon created: fourth day of creation crowned mankind created: sixth day of creation: hell gate barred Pandaemonium built in an hour; council Satan’s cosmic prospect (midnight); conversation with Uriel (noon) Satan at Eve’s ear; his expulsion (midnight); Raphael’s visit (noon to sunset) week of uncreation (midnight to midnight) Satan’s re-entry; the Fall (noon) Messiah’s judgment (before sunset) Michael’s visit (sunrise to noon); Expulsion (noon)

v 582f, 618, 664 v 642; vi 406, 524, 684–6, 748 vi 715f, 866, 871 i 50–3 vii 131ff vii 386

19

22 23

24

24–31 32

33

ii 348; vii 550; viii 229–44

i 697–798 iii 555–61; iv 564

iv 800, 1015 v 311; viii 630–2 ix 48–67 ix 67, 739 x 92–9 xi 184; xii 589

For a fuller account of the time-scheme of Days 32–3, see x 49–53n, 92–102n, 328–9n, 342n, 773n, and 1050n. From the time-scheme, several patterns emerge. (Number symbolism in the sequence of days of creation had long been a topic of hexaemeral speculation.) In 1667, terrestrial action occupies Bks iv–x, in all, seven books – number of the world and of creation. Of these seven, the

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central is Bk vii (1674 vii–viii), recounting creation and discussing the system of seven planets. Thus the central, fourth, day of creation, Day 17, the central day also of the poem’s 33-day action, occupies in 1667 the central book. On that day is created the sun, whose central place is suggested by Raphael at the centre (viii 123) of a long paragraph. These sovereign centralities are explicitly announced when the day is said to be ‘crowned’ (vii 386). To summarize: HEAVENLY AND HELLISH ACTION

CREATION

TERRESTRIAL ACTION

13 days

7 days

13 days

The duration of directly represented terrestrial action, however, is only eleven days (Days 23–33) – a striking symbolism, since 11 signified sin, transgressing the 10 of the decalogue (see Augustine, City of God XV xx; Qvarnström (1967) 90; Fowler (1964) 54; Frost (1990) 125). Further, the ratio of represented to narrated action is 11:22 or 1:2. This ratio, which figures also in the universe’s spatial disposition (i 73–4n) and the structure of book-division (Røstvig (1994) 466 and ch. 9 passim), signified the harmony of reason controlling concupiscence (see Pico (1573) i 79; Fowler (1964) 281 n 2). The form of the poem’s action, like that of its structure, seems designed to repair mankind’s Fall. A similar symbolism underlies the arrangement of directly represented action. Satan’s week of miscreation (ix 48–66) is framed by the four remaining days, Days 23–24 and 32–33. Thus, the 7 of mutability is contained (framed or structured) by a virtuous tetrad, the divine tetraktys. Some of the ordinal day numbers are also significant. Day 1, a unique ‘undivided’ day without a preceding evening, is aptly denoted by the monad. Its sole event is the generation of Messiah, under whose reign the angels are to abide ‘united as one individual soul’. By contrast, the angelic fall begins on the day denoted by the evil rebellious dyad. Mankind’s judgment is on Day 32, symbolic of justice (Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 486). And the last day, when Adam hears the redemptive history and leaves Paradise with Eve to enter it, is Day 33, the same number underlying the compositional pattern of Dante’s Divina Commedia. The overall duration of PL exceeds a month by two transgressive (dyadic) days – only to reach at last the total of 33, number of years in Christ’s life, a familiar symbol of human suffering and redemption. The prominence given to the succession of days and nights is amply justified, it seems, by its thematic content. For the patterns of the time-scheme are those of God’s covenant, which must be as sure ‘as the days of heaven’ (xii 344–7n). Adam discovers in the peripeteias of Bks x–xii that divine judgment is as sure as mathematics, and learns to say with the Psalmist ‘teach us to number our days’. The poem’s form leads,

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as it were, to the cave within the ‘mount of God’, where ‘light and darkness’ alternate naturally (vi 4–12), imaging divine transcendence over time as over good and evil. This imagery relates to the seventeenth-century vogue of philosophical optics and astronomical mysticism. Yet it would have been specially charged for Milton himself. He must painfully have regretted that ‘grateful vision’, even as he confessed faith in the just God who had made darkness replace light for him unnaturally. Astronomy If Milton’s God contains yet transcends both light and dark with the time they divide, the same is true of his relation to space. He is ‘high throned above all height’ (iii 58), while the spatial universe is mysteriously imagined as his Son’s vehicle. The poem’s central image is that of a triumphal cherubic chariot forming Messiah’s throne (vi 749–59n). About this centre are ten thousand stellar beings acknowledging his sovereignty. For the stars are associated – sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally – with angels (iii 622ff; v 700–16; Fowler (1996) ch. 2). Their revolutions perform the sacred choresis or ‘starry dance’ (iii 580) that ‘resembles nearest’ the ‘mystical dance’ of the angels ‘about the sacred hill’ (v 619–22). Thus Milton’s astronomical world represents the terrific idea of a material machina mundi that exalts Christ. Like the universe in Plato’s Timaeus it is alive: animate throughout, it moves, engages in metabolic exchanges (v 414f ), and exhales, transpiring fragrant spirit to God in prayer. The fabric of this world is not cut out of whole cloth – it is patched, rather, from Neoplatonic pieces and worn canonicals handed down from medieval Christian Platonism. But Milton’s passionately engaged vision of it seems original in its fullness of detail. And his cosmos, however orderly, has the capacity to surprise, as if instinct with life. The surprise is nowhere more amazing than in the poem’s panoramic vistas. When one scans one of these, or follows out the angels’ trajectories through space, or traces the chartings of heavenly bodies, Milton’s power of sustained spatial realization, whereby he imagines phenomena more fully than ever before, continually astonishes. He was probably the first English poet, for example, to describe a sunset in detail. Everything we see in PL tells us that Mahood (1950) 199–201 is right and T. S. Eliot, E&S, 21 (1936) 32–40 wrong. Milton had a strong spatial imagination. The first surprise, then, is at the strangeness of perspective. He opens up space that has not only the amplitude of Poussin but the dramatic viewpoint of a mannerist like Joachim Wtewael. The fascination of astronomy, which Milton shared with his contemporaries, colours everything; it is as if the heavens are being viewed de novo. And then a further surprise comes, when one notices how far Milton’s

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perspectives are ‘legitimate constructions’ from unique points of view – exact representations, correct in every detail, of prospects that might actually be viewed in the real world. This goes beyond literary decorum, although there is plenty of that. Always the details of Milton’s astronomy are significant. Thus, when Satan leaves earth after the Fall, ‘Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering / His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose:’ (x 328–9), one may at first see no more than a magnificent visual image – Sagittarius and Scorpio, with between them a starry serpent, the constellation Anguis. But then the details assert themselves as a chronographia. A point between Sagittarius and Scorpio will be 120°–150° from Aries; if the zenith at Paradise is such a point, the time there must be between 2.00 and 4.00 am. This is crucial information for keeping track of the day of judgment after the Fall, a day whose end is repeatedly postponed (x 773n). Indeed, representation so detailed may easily arouse false expectations of continuous novelistic realism. One has to make an effort to recognize that Milton’s is a Renaissance realism – discontinuous, local, exemplary. The point here is the dramatic irony that the sun will not rise always in Aries. Poignantly, the sun’s position in the thema coeli of creation is uniquely stated – only for it to be almost immediately displaced, as a result of the Fall (x 668ff ). It would be inappropriate to attempt here an account of the many planetary systems available to Milton. For that the reader may be referred to Dreyer (1953); Heninger (1977); North (1988) and (1994). On Milton’s own astronomy, see A. H. Gilbert, SP, 19 (1922) 152–85; SP, 20 (1923) 444–7; PMLA, 38 (1923) 297–307; G. McColley, MLN, 47 (1932) 319–25; SP, 34 (1937) 209–47; PMLA, 52 (1937) 728–62 (arguing for Ross and Wilkins as sources); M. Nicolson, ELH, 2 (1935) 1–32; SP, 32 (1935) 428–62; MP, 32 (1935) 233–60; Nicolson (1950); Nicolson (1956) ch. 4; Svendsen (1956); Marjara (1992). The old idea that Milton rejected the new astronomy of his day (A. O. Lovejoy, in Mazzeo (1962) 129–42), like the idea that he was a Copernican cynically using the Ptolemaic universe for poetic purposes, has been generally abandoned. The universe of PL is too subtly considered for it to have been constructed to persuade belief in the absolute truth of the Ptolemaic, Copernican, or Tychonic model. Not only does it combine elements of several systems but it even sometimes contrives to be geocentric and heliocentric at the same time (iv 592–7; viii 83n, 114–18n). And Milton always avoids resolving such uncertainties as the order of proximity of the inner planets. This is not just disinclination to back a theory soon perhaps to be invalidated by some new Galileo; although that was a real consideration at a time when astronomical discoveries followed hard on one another’s heels – ‘every silly fellow can square a circle, make perpetual motions,

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find the philosopher’s stone, interpet Apocalypsis, make new theorics, a new system of the world’ (Burton, ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 60). It is rather that Milton uses astronomical controversy to symbolize enquiry in general, into all ‘secret’ knowledge beyond the verge of human capacities or imposed limitations. It was a time when new cosmological theories might be forbidden on penalty of death, yet when a fruitful field of enquiry was nature’s ‘secrets’; see Schultz (1955); Eamon (1994); J. M. Walker, MiltS, 26 (1990) 109–24 on Milton canonizing Galileo as a martyr in the cause of intellectual freedom. Milton keeps open heliocentric and geocentric alternatives, so that his modern Adam may be just at the point of recognizing the Ptolemaic system’s inadequacies. In this way, he relates the Fall to contemporary cultural developments, actual exchanges of new knowledge for simpler happiness. At such junctures, moral awareness may matter as much as ability to choose the better scientific hypothesis. But one suspects a further reason for his sustaining uncertainty about the order of the planets. Perhaps he is trying to render the elusiveness of nature, which will not be enclosed within the girdling circles of Ptolemy or Copernicus or Brahe. New and old systems alike are faulty, devised as they are to describe a fallen world. The universe of PL is by contrast a visionary, perfected one. With striking originality, Milton has constructed an entire fictive astronomy, based on a premise untrue for the present world. His premise, that the ecliptic and equatorial planes coincide, has not been true since the Fall. So he has to work out its implications with ingenuity reminiscent of science fiction (e.g. iii 555–61; iv 209–16, 354f; v 18–25; x 328f ). Like Plato and Augustine, Milton believes creation is by number and measure – ‘this grand book, the universe . . . is written in the language of mathematics’ (Galileo (1957) 237f ). The geometry of Milton’s invented unfallen world is elegantly simple – and exhilaratingly easy to visualize. Its day and night are always equal, its sun remains constantly in the same sign, and the positions of its constellations are easily determined without astrolabe or planisphere. There are no variations in solar declination, no equinoctial points, no precession, no difference between sidereal, natural, and civil days. This lucid, rational world can be seen as figuring a simple innocence now lost. In consequence of the Fall, the prelapsarian, Golden Age stasis changes to crooked movements: the sun begins its oblique seasonal journey and the stars their precession. A Platonic Great Year, a cycle of decay, sets in (v 583; x 651–706). The original coincidence of ecliptic and equatorial is more than prolepsis to the Fall, more than a reminder of the present world’s defects, more than an explanation of bad weather. Milton envisions a purified, pristine world constituting a fit macrocosm for his righteous Adam and

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Eve. To rectify the zodiac – like removing hell outside the universe – is to revalue nature and appreciate its former (and potential) beauty. Milton’s golden world is just, in its division of light and darkness, as our present world is not: it remains constant while ours decays: it keeps clockwork regularity (emblem of temperance) while ours changes inordinately. Yet, with all this, the mise en scène of PL is perhaps the most naturalistic in the entire epic tradition. Milton was the last great epicist to take for granted a Christian worldpicture and to interpret nature as inscribed with the ‘signatures’ of divine meaning. In the next age, the intellectual reach (or the piety) for such imagining of nature no longer seemed possible. And when, after a century, it was partially recovered, the literary expression of such vision had taken very different forms. Nevertheless it is right to think of Milton as a nature poet, and to attend to the tradition that extends from him through James Thomson to Wordsworth and Keats. Theology When Dr Johnson writes that in PL ‘the want of human interest is always felt’, he overlooks the allegory whereby angels, devils, Sin, Death – even the divine persons – convey human insights and experiences. As for Adam and Eve themselves, they are far from portraying before the Fall all that is perfect, after it all that is not. Such passages as viii 530ff and 588ff disprove Johnson’s view that ‘human passions did not enter the world before the Fall’. Milton is well able to render stages of transition from innocence to experience. Indeed, during the last half-century the poem’s psychology has greatly interested critics. Many have enquired, for example, just when temptation begins, and when the Fall becomes inevitable. This line of enquiry, from M. Bell, PMLA, 68 (1953) 863–83 onward, has been pursued so energetically that prelapsarian experience has come to look pretty much like the passionate dynamics of ordinary life since the Fall. This is so much taken for granted, and the stages of Adam and Eve’s corruption so blurred, that their actual ‘first disobedience’ has become almost unimportant. It is as if the Fall that matters already occurred at their separation, say, or in Eve’s dream – or, for that matter, at the moment of Satan’s generation of Sin, or his whisper to his ‘mate’. This is not a ridiculous view. The idea of a gradual Fall had venerable proponents: Burden (1967) 79 cites Ames, Sacred Divinity (1642) 56 (‘man was a sinner, before he had finished that outward act of eating’); Broadbent (1960) 197 cites Augustine, City of God XIV xiii (‘our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted’). But this view is not Milton’s. Central to his moral theology was the Arminian doctrine that human will contributes decisively to individual destiny (Corns (1994)

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81–4; Quint (1993) 299 and ch. 7 passim). Will is free, determined neither by divine predestination nor by subliminal psychodynamics. Virtue is not cloistered innocence untroubled by passions, in Milton’s view, but rather the difficult experience of rationality, of perpetual rational choices between seductively deceptive alternatives. True, he was interested in causes of evil – but as ‘cause’ was understood in his time. He pushes his enquiry as far back as may be, carrying the action from the fallen society of devils sunk in darkness; up through confusion, to heaven’s clarity foreseeing the worst; then through a universe with Satan already subverting it; back to the angels’ fall; back to creation of a pristine universe. In Bk iii the action takes in an ultimate point of origin, the mind of God, who sees evil’s possibility as inevitably bound up with the freedom of created spirits – foresees, even, that evil will be chosen. Yet God avoids doing anything to curtail that freedom. For Milton, like his Arminian God, is obsessed with creaturely freedom. Consequently, he locates choice (and therefore evil in potentia) at the earliest, most fundamental stage imaginable. He puts the possibility of evil not only in Adam as created but in chaos before creation, even in the origin of matter in God himself. Hence, perhaps, Milton’s complex triple imagining of chaos – as void, as uncreated matter, as God-filled and God-retracted (Marjara (1992) 96). Yet a divine source of chaos raises no insuperable problem of theodicy, when evil in potentia is not evil (Gallagher (1990) 85). However dangerous the ground Milton’s enquiry invades, its end is always justification: ‘Evil into the mind of God . . . / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or blame behind . . .’ (v 117–19). As for causation in our sense, Milton was never preoccupied by it – far less with setting out a single series of cause–effect relations leading up to and ‘explaining’ the Fall. Issues of theodicy have naturally been raised in connection with the motives of Adam and Eve at the Fall. Waldock (1947, 1961) and Empson (1961, 1965) both exonerate Eve and blame Adam (or Raphael, or God). Why did Raphael not warn Adam more specifically? Why did God not prevent the temptation? These seem shallow responses to a profound dilemma. Milton presents Bk ix as tragic; so tragic action, and tragic predicaments, are what we should expect to find. Adam makes himself responsible by allowing Eve to work on her own – allowing it (in hindsight) too liberally, or too permissively, or too weakly. Yet to keep her against her will might have compromised her independence. This tragic conflict of virtues and good aims (freedom, obedience) at once distantly echoes and contrasts with the debate in the mind of God when he makes his supertragical choice (iii 236). True, Eve’s motives, even in her fall, are sometimes lofty. It would hardly have justified God, to show only his

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judgment upon base motives; it might then be objected that his injustice to noble souls remained unjustified. But to pretend she was not wrong to break her pledge of obedience is to loosen the poem’s whole moral nexus. Cowley might think that ‘Less hard ’tis not to err ourselves than know / If our forefathers erred or no’ (‘Reason’ (1905) 46); but Milton was of a different mind. At the separation Eve is ‘sinless’, as she still is at ix 659; she has not yet sinned by eating. Overvaluing the will, Milton makes a sharp distinction between premeditating evil and doing it (Gallagher (1990) 90f ). Having envisaged the fatal act’s complex antecedents – the satanic promptings, subliminal desires, high aspirations perverted, and errors of judgement – he nevertheless reduces it to a simple choosing between obedient freedom and disobedient slavery to self-will. A more promising approach to these matters is to be found in Diekhoff (1964); L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1946) 149–73; J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 88–105 = (1968) 23–43; JHI, 21 (1960) 180–97 = (1968) 139–59; Steadman (1976); Burden (1967); and especially Danielson (1982). All show respect, in various ways, for the poem’s logical structure, and all contribute to an understanding of its impressive coherence. Problematic details of the action, earlier treated as attempts at naturalism, are shown instead as working together to unfold logical ‘causes’of the fallen world, or to clarify the answering nature of virtue. The most trivial details have reasons for being precisely what they are. Some belong to an elaborate analysis of stages of repentance (x 1073n, 1088–92n), others to graded exercises in moral discrimination (as in the many namings and renamings). Others again need to be taken with distant counterparts, like the minutely contrasting portrayals of heaven and hell, or of Paradise before and after the Fall. It is no exaggeration to say that everything in heaven has a hellish travesty. There is infernal creation, infernal trinities, even a satanic incarnation. Looked at in such lights, Milton’s intentions become clear enough. The idea of Satan as his hero comes to seem childish, or else obsessively fixed on a single phase of his argument. God’s ways are to be justified in the whole poem, considering all its details comprehensively. To a remarkable degree PL is theologically informed throughout. This will not be surprising to anyone who has read Cowley’s notes to his Davideis, and knows how the smallest physical particulars might involve a seventeenth-century poet in exegetical implications. Milton is very often involved in exegetic controversy, finding scriptural authority for his Arminian position, perhaps, or to support his individual emphasis on the freedom of the disciplined life. For a list of many close parallels between PL and the De Doctrina, Kelley (1941) may be consulted. If Milton’s conscious intentions are mostly unambiguous, that need not

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be true of his actual performance. Many besides A. J. A. Waldock have argued that in the event PL fails to fulfil its intention to justify God. The most brilliant work in this line is Empson (1961, 1965), which subtly imagines Milton as having searched in all sincerity, but in vain, for ways to present God in a good light. God was too nasty: contradiction crept in and the poem ended up ‘better’ (more antitheistic) than Milton realized. Certainly PL focuses on weak parts of orthodoxy. But the fact remains that after hearing the strongest case against God Milton comes to the Christian conclusion Milton’s God is propaganda against. Still, there is more common ground between Empson and Milton than at first appears. In the seventeenth century God’s responsibility for evil was discussed with a hardihood that would shock many a liberal theologian today. There is a sense in which Milton might accept much of Empson’s view. Indeed, what makes PL one of the most serious epics ever written is partly its refusal to take the divine protagonist’s character for granted. All the same, if one is left at the end in any doubt as to God’s justice and love, the poem has failed, not on a single count, but altogether. Some critics call the portrayal of God in PL a failure, without considering how ludicrous it would be to call it a success, or a good likeness. Milton was bound to overreach himself, from the time he decided to introduce a divine character. But one should weigh performance against possibility. The divine conversations seem to me better than has generally been allowed. They are vigorous, subtle, intelligent. And their effects of poetic syntax, rendering the timelessness of God’s thoughts, or his reflective relationship with Messiah, rank among Milton’s finest (iii 125n, 261n). Of course, the high level of abstraction; the sustained abstention from all imagery but the simplest and least sensuous; the calm freedom from unresolved emotional expressions: all now arouse distaste in novelblinkered readers. But Milton’s fit audience will see the aptness of these qualities to images of divinity. Damrosch (1985) 81 wants God to be more anthropomorphic, and Lewalski (1985) 110–13 complains he is not a unified character. But Milton’s impersonal God is not a character at all in the novelistic sense; he is rather an allegorical fictio. He is accommodated, moreover, to several different viewpoints. To Satan he is the punitive God reprobates imagine; to Adam, a merciful father; to Michael, the source of promises and visions; and to Raphael, the source of the happiness an ‘inhabitant with God’ enjoys. Conceiving such a divinity – able ‘His own works and their works at once to view’ (iii 59) – deserves to be admired as a great imaginative feat, even as one acknowledges an inevitable failure. Besides the metaphysical impossibility, the additional difficulties Milton had to face are staggering. He must assimilate a world of theological debate,

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condense, and then transcend it; finally incorporating the whole in personal terms. And throughout he must make his own theological contribution in such a way as to avoid imputations of heresy. It would be enough if in face of these difficulties Milton conveyed any impression of a consistent divine being. But, as it is, his God is so distinctive that one comes to detect his presence in the poem’s events, and to hear his subtleties as overtones of the dramatic ironies. Milton’s God can be taken seriously as both theological and imaginative construct, in a way that would be hard to parallel. The question whether PL is coherent or ‘orthodox’ in terms of classical theology has declined in interest. It no longer seems scandalous to detect Arianism, or Mortalism (the doctrine that the soul dies with the body); see C. A. Patrides, NQ, 202 (1957) 250f; G. Campbell, MiltQ, 13 (1979) 33–6. For what it is worth, however, Mortalism now appears to have been comparatively orthodox; see Burns (1972); B. J. Gibbons, 17C, 10 (1995) 65f, citing Richard Overton, Man’s Mortality (1643). Milton has come to be seen as a creative rather than an heretical theologian – a return to the view of John Galt, whose Mr Balwhidder speaks of ‘an orthodox poem, like Paradise Lost’ (Annals of the Parish (1821) ch. 5). Milton’s account of creation, in which Denis Saurat saw a recherché heresy of divine ‘withdrawal’, is now understood as ordinary Christian–Platonic theistic materialism; see R. J. Z. Werblowski, JWI, 18 (1955) 90–113; A. S. P. Woodhouse, PQ, 28 (1949) 211–36; Curry (1957); G. Campbell, JTS, 30 (1979) 128–37. Similarly with his Christology. Milton was probably more Subordinationist than Arian: PL accords the Son as supreme a transcendence as any poem in the language. And he represents creation as the action of the Son, rather than (as in traditional iconography) of God himself. Leonard (1990) 103f suggests that Milton prefers the Hebrew name ‘Messiah’ so as to reach back before the incarnation. This would fit with his representing Christ as implicit in history, to be discerned only by the eye of faith. The ‘Arianism’ was perhaps an attempt – characteristic of his time – to get beyond the scholasticism of Trinitarian theology to the pure doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers; see W. B. Hunter, HTR, 52 (1959) 9–35; C. A. Patrides, JEGP, 64 (1965) 29–34; Patrides (1966); Robins (1963); Danielson (1982). Certainly Milton emphasized the unity, rather than the triunity, of God. He was not content, either, with the amalgam of Christianity and Platonism inherited from the Middle Ages, but always tried for a fresh synthesis. That his theology went through many changes is reflected in De Doctrina, which should be regarded as an unfinished work in progress. The so-called ‘contradictions’ in it – and between it and PL – may result from unassimilated transcription from other theologians; see

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Kelley (1941); G. Campbell, MiltS, 9 (1976) 243–60; MLR, 75 (1980) 507–14; M. N. Clark, ELR, 7 (1977) 207–42; Corns (1994); G. Campbell et al., MiltQ, 31 (1997) 67–119. The main emphases of Milton’s theology are twofold. Against the puritanical, he affirms a Christian materialism (not however atheism, as Milner (1981) 115 suggests). Second, against the orthodox (Presbyterian) Calvinists, he asserts an extreme form of Arminianism. His Arminian deity is highly responsive to human actions. Indeed, he shows distinct signs of passibility (iii 405; M. Lieb, MiltS, 25 (1990) 213–37). The Christocentric character of Milton’s theology once encouraged critics to see the felix culpa motif as a key to PL; see Lovejoy (1948) 277–95. But Milton’s view of the Fall was resolutely and realistically tragic, as is now agreed: V. R. Mollenkott, MiltQ, 6 (1972) 1–5; Danielson (1982); Geisst (1984) 102. Driscoll (1993) proposes a Jungian version of the emergence theory already discussed in Kelley (1941); but such a deity is surely too contingent even for so historically minded a theologian as Milton. PL expresses theological ideas not only directly but also implicitly, through narrative ordonnance, symbolic imagery, and mimetic structures. Thus, at the divine level the action moves from scenes in which Father and Son appear together (Bks iii, v) to others in which the Son emerges separately in creation and judgment (vii, x). On a smaller scale, God’s attributes are indirectly expressed by such dispositions as the sequence of topics in the divine conversations. By dealing with predestination to salvation before atonement, for example, Milton presents God’s thought as ‘mercy first and last’ (iii 134, 173–202n). Similarly, only God and Messiah fully share in the dramatic ironies, and only they show themselves capable of interior monologues free from self-dramatizing. By making them, in this way, the sole agents fully conscious of what they are doing, Milton suggests an intensely creative, living deity. Although perhaps not so religious as Dante, Milton has succeeded, by faith and honesty, in forming a religious concept as marvellous as that of the Divina Commedia. The God of PL is surprising enough to be a universal father-figure; enigmatic enough to challenge interminable debates; sublime enough to inspire awe; remote enough from human wishes to be partly true. There is hardly a divinity so interesting in all English poetry. See further in Patrides (1966); MacCallum (1986); Musacchio (1991); Danielson (1982). Politics and allegory Milton was one of the most politically engaged of all our poets, yet the politics of PL were neglected until comparatively recently. This is

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understandable, since they so easily elude modern understanding. Here is a committed revolutionary, a supporter of regicide, who nevertheless makes his rebel angels devils. Did Milton change his views after the failure of the Commonwealth? Or did he disguise them after 1660, from fear of persecution? Had he learned from his involvement in the suppressed Racovian Catechism? Annabel Patterson must be right to draw attention to this latter possibility; although she may have exaggerated its import. After the Restoration Milton was imprisoned, and for a time in danger of his life; see Patterson (1993) 241–73; Parker (1996) 569–76. The difficulties of interpretation seem to have arisen largely from misconceptions about the history of the Civil War and about the sort of allegory possible for Milton. The war was by no means a revolution, still less a class conflict between the people and their aristocratic oppressors. Many of the greatest nobles (like the Earl, later Duke, of Rutland) opposed the king. As for Milton himself, he was so far from being a democrat that he might be described as élitist; see Milner (1981) 101f; B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 584. True, he came to reject chivalric romance – but only to prefer (like Jonson) vera nobilitas. Milton’s contempt for chivalry was like the contempt of the noblesse de ville for the noblesse d’épee (Braudel (1982) 485). He opposed the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and hated the Presbyterians for their change to defence of the king in 1649; yet he admired Queen Christina of Sweden, and could claim in the Defensio Secunda that he had written ‘not a syllable against kings, but against . . . tyrants only’. Both sides in the Civil War, moreover, claimed to fight for ‘the Crown’. Invoking the doctrine of the king’s Two Bodies, Parliamentarians claimed to count Charles himself a rebel against the Crown (in the abstract – that is, against the state). So Milton’s rebellious Satan is as likely to ‘be’ Charles I as Cromwell, his God as likely to embody qualities of Cromwell as of Charles. In YP iii 502, Charles I figures as Lucifer. The misconception bedevilling interpretation of the allegory is that it offers a complete roman à clef – as Christopher Hill (1977) ch. 29 assumes in drawing parallels between Interregnum history and the poem’s narrative. Systematic political allegory would have been too dangerous for Milton, and in any case not to his purpose. He needed to deal in unobvious allusions setting tests of discrimination. Thus, the Satan of Bks i–ii has some of the virtues of Machiavelli’s prince, but challenges readers to detect where his boldness fails and where his flexibility (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 573–97). Recent criticism has been less inclined to discover references to the Civil War in the war in heaven (where the intertextualities of the artillery passage have proved instead to be with literature of the Gunpowder Plot). Attention has turned to reflections of postRestoration circumstances in the once-neglected Bks xi and xii, paraphrases

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of biblical history such as once were a natural genre for exposition of political ideas (Milner (1981) 207; Cantalupo (1991) 175). Postwar references have also been found in Milton’s Paradise, the ‘plantation’ which may allegorize (among other things) the American New World. Dr Johnson denies Milton’s subject to be ‘the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire’, but only to minimize the importance of a topic undeniably present. PL has an obvious point de repère in Du Bartas’s account of imperialism, that ‘adventurous rhyme’ Les Colonies (Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester II ii 3 l. 17 (1978) i 443). Here again, however, one should beware of imposing inappropriate modern equivalents. Milton was not against imperialism per se – nor, for that matter, was Cromwell. Far from indicting European expansionism – as Quint (1993) argues – PL adopts an ambivalent attitude to the New World settlements; see Stavely (1987) 62f; J. M. Evans, in Stanwood (1995) 229–38; Armitage (1995) 206–25; Evans (1996) 145–7. Milton displayed ambivalence on other political issues, too; all human rule seems latterly to have disgusted him. His Italian visit (1638–9) had been a revelation to him – his republicanism probably dates from that time; see Milner (1981); M. Dzelzainis, in Armitage (1995) 3–24; J. Mueller, in Stanwood (1995) 263–82; Peltonen (1996). Later, he was counted a member of the ‘fanatics’, those supporting continuation of the Rump (Benet (1994) 97–113). But Milton belonged to a republican party of his own. Believing in meritocratic hierarchy, he might have found a political home with the Presbyterians – had he not rejected their orthodox Calvinism and their defence of the king. As an Arminian, he found the religious Independents (Congregationalists) congenial. But Milton’s was a disciplined, rational, responsible moral freedom beyond the reach of most political activists. And his ideas of religious toleration went far beyond those of Cromwell’s regime (B. Worden, in Armitage (1995) 156–80). Like many idealistic ideologues, Milton looked to a future revolution to set everything right – an apocalypse, Second Coming, last judgment, and millennium of Christocracy. In this, the influence of his Cambridge tutor Joseph Mede – author of Key of the Revelation (1634) – may have played a part; just as the views of colonial associates affected his views of empire. See M. Cavanagh, ELH, 38 (1971) 206–22; Hill (1977); T. Amorose, MiltS, 17 (1983) 141–62; B. Worden, in Bock (1990) 225–45; in Armitage (1995) 156–80; M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 130–6; G. A. Rosso, in Low (1994) 47–64; J. Mueller, in Stanwood (1995) 263–82; Fallon (1996); Evans (1996) 11; Parker (1996). Committed though he was to the republican cause, Milton’s ideas were not all political. It may be a mistake, for example, to see every mention

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of ‘joy’ in PL as an undermining of the Golden Age rhetoric of the monarchists (Knoppers (1994) 87). PL has much theological and moral, as distinct from political, allegory. The general historical basis of this in Renaissance literary theory has been fully worked out by Treip (1994), and the same author follows an individual strand of allegory through various symbols of choice (M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–77). Moreover, Adam and Eve’s interactions set out a psychological allegory that novelistic readers are apt to overlook. One needs to go beyond literal fact, Satan’s instilling of a dream, to the dream’s tropological sense: Satan’s disturbing Eve (ratio) by phantasmata, to draw her away from Adam (mens). This sort of allegory receives attention in K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 101–33 and MiltS, 31 (1995) 45–72. The angelic action probably all has allegorical content (although some allowance has to be made for seventeenth-century interest in literal angels). Allegorizing the war in heaven, especially, had long been a popular activity (Voragine, Golden Legend (1993) ii 203ff; Hunter (1971) 115–30). That Milton takes this for granted is suggested by the war’s unreality as literal narrative. The reuniting of angelic substance after wounding (vi 330) is less likely to be literal speculation about spiritual bodies than allegory – perhaps signifying that after armed conflict opponents remain to be dealt with politically. The Pandaemonium conclave, similarly, has often suggested an allegory of Parliament, or of Cromwell’s Council of State. Identification of particular historical figures has been more controversial. Some find in Satan Charles I’s rigid absolutism; others, Cromwell; see YP vii 274; Hill (1977) 371; B. Worden, in Bock (1990) 241f; Zagorin (1992) 128 (doubting). Specific historical references seem far fewer than in Cowley’s Civil War. B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 573–97 reasonably discerns broader views about government, in the decline of hell under absolute monarchy, or in the resemblance of its citizens’ loss of autonomy to the condition of Restoration England. Thus, Moloch may not be any particular militant faction or individual major-general, but rather an embodiment of Machiavelli’s lion. Readers would be expected to supply appropriate ectypes. More broadly still, the angels’ fall may signify the fall of human reprobates. (With Milton the language of theology and of politics is one.) If so, Satan’s near-contrition on Mt Niphates implies an Arminianism so extreme as to approach universalism. If Satan had not hardened his heart, its softening might have affected his election (K. Stavely, MiltS, 25 (1989) 125–39). A broad allegorization might comparably make sense of Sin and Death, and other personifications, whose actions would then belong to the main action. Sin’s role as portress would not only signify (tropologically and anagogically) that sin is the way to be damned; but also that a reprobate like Satan, who tries to avoid submission and

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punishment, can only do so through further sin, incurring further damnation and punishment. Criticism Annotation of PL began early and elaborately, with Patrick Hume (1695), Richard Bentley (1732), and the discriminating Jonathan Richardsons (1734), all of historical importance as treating PL like a classic. That they also have continuing value is demonstrated by Ricks (1963). On the earliest commentators, see Oras (1930), an invaluable guide; on Bentley, A. H. Gilbert, RenP 1975 (1976) 43–51, and especially J. W. Mackail, PBA, 11 (1925) 1–21. Milton’s influence on eighteenth-century poetry was profound, as one can see (to look no deeper) in the ubiquity of the georgic mode, Miltonic diction, local decorum, and pre-Romantic blank verse. Criticism, however, was slower to emerge – with the grand exception of Joseph Addison’s remarkable Spectator essays, virtually a book-length critical study. Most critics, like John Dennis, were baffled by Milton’s breaking of the Virgilian epic mould, and in consequence concerned themselves narrowly with issues of correctness. The historical Bks xi–xii and the un-Virgilian pessimistic ending (still objectionable to C. S. Lewis) were chief difficulties. A related obstacle – not only for Dr Johnson – was Milton’s republicanism; although eventually this came to be separated from practical politics and valued as rational vision or ‘honest liberty of speaking’; see Griffin (1986) 20, 27; Shawcross (1991). Blake seizes on a more antagonistic aspect, when he has his own Devil say that Milton was ‘of the devil’s party without knowing it’ (‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’). The cant term ‘of the devil’s party’ (now generally misunderstood) was used by both sides in the seventeenth century to mean ‘partisan’. A shrewd comment by Blake, then, by no means approving Satan as hero; see Wittreich (1970) 34f; Newlyn (1992); Shawcross (1991). The next problem to occupy critics was that of the protagonist. For the later Romantics fell into strong (which is to say, weak) criticism; identifying Satan as the poem’s hero, and embracing him as an embodiment of rebellious, subversive energy. Shelley writes of ‘the sublime grandeur of a graceful but tremendous spirit’ (Wittreich (1970) 535). Intent on rejecting Christian assumptions, the Romantic critics quite misconceived Milton’s allegory, in which the rigid authoritarianism is Satan’s and freedom lies in faithful obedience to God. (As Defensio Secunda has it, ‘To be free is precisely the same thing as to be pious’.) Another misleading preoccupation was organic unity, a notion far from Milton’s purpose. Renaissance criticism (e.g. Spenser’s Letter to Ralegh, or Tasso’s Preface to Gerusalemme Liberata) proceeded from the very different assumption that epics are not simple, unified continuums, but articulations of parts.

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Renaissance heroes could be multiplied (or divided), and the resultant characters might contrast or be complementary; see Quinn (1968) 66; Treip (1994). The possibility that the virtue of Milton’s Satan is pagan or Machiavellian virtù, confused, inconsistent, and incoherent; and that Messiah embodies a humbler, less ostentatious, more profound heroism: all this eluded the Romantics (G. A. Rosso, in Low (1994) 47–64). So the problem of the protagonist’s identity and the poem’s unity remained unresolved in Saurat (1925, 1970) and Waldock (1947, 1961). Deeper consideration – J. T. Shawcross, MLQ, 27 (1966) 388–401; Burden (1967); Steadman (1968); Fish (1967); and Shawcross (1982) – has since settled the matter, in favour of a constructed unity of parts, with several heroes (good and bad), a heroine, and a divine protagonist. Criticism of PL now turned to the timing, and hence the causation, of the Fall. Did it occur when Adam ate the fruit? Or earlier, when Eve ate? Or when she dreamed of eating? When God allowed Satan to rise from the fiery lake? When Satan rebelled? Such questions occupied structuralists and deconstructionists – Bouchard (1974); Rapaport (1983) – but they were already mooted in Waldock (1947, 1961) and Tillyard (1951). Ricks (1963), too, opened the door by considering the exclusion, before the Fall, of evil meanings in phrases like ‘mazy error’ and ‘serpent error wandering’. These and similar details were seized on as evidence of inconsistency (or heterodox theodicy). Surely Eve’s ‘dishevelled’, ‘wanton’ tresses are a sign that she is already fallen (Miller (1991) 294)? Underlying most contributions to this debate, and delaying its resolution, was the same false assumption of novelistic realism. But Milton’s poem, although remarkably consistent, has no continuity of effective causes in the modern fashion – no single, unbroken, chronological sequence. Indeed, no moment completely antedates the Fall; since Milton’s imaginings are fallen as he writes. The episodes in PL are best regarded as multiple representations of the Fall, complementary to one another in the manner of Renaissance realism. Milton rejects unity of structure to the extent of counterposing different epic concepts (G. Hartman, PMLA, 99 (1984) 387). He aspires to a unity, rather, of Christian vision. In the last two decades the matter of Milton’s ‘feminism’ has been addressed. At first, feminists were more interested in Freud, Lacan, and cultural politics than in actual seventeenth-century social history, let alone PL. They hardly distinguished between ‘patriarchalism’ and hierarchy. ‘No feminist in her senses would try to find anything cheerful to say about Milton’s myth of male oppression divinely ordained’ (Belsey (1988) 59). However ill-informed this early feminism was, it served the turn of provoking excellent defences of Milton, by critics of both sexes. Milton was shown to have been a protofeminist, and to have been relied on as

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such by many eighteenth-century women; see M. R. Farwell, MiltS, 16 (1982) 3–20; Wittreich (1987). In a decisive contribution, Gallagher (1990) demonstrates that Milton everywhere revises Genesis in favour of Eve and against misogyny. But are not Milton’s own words (frequently cited by Catherine Belsey and others) plainly incriminating – ‘Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed’ (iv 296)? Not so plainly. D. M. Friedman, in Stanwood (1995) 203–12, shows that neither sex nor equal (‘alike’; ‘identical’) is used in its modern sense; and that Milton believed men and women equal ontologically (YP ii 661). No one now is likely to suppose Milton misogynistic. But a new cadre of subtler, better-informed theoretical feminists (notably the vigilant Mary Nyquist) have successfully highlighted Milton’s hierarchical or subordinationist assumptions about gender; see W. E. H. Rudat, Mosaic, 15 (1982) 109–21; Nyquist (1987) 99–127; M. Nyquist, in Attridge (1987) 212–43. One is asked to imagine a Milton who required submission as it was required of himself – no more but also no less. It seems special pleading, however, for Nyquist to accuse Milton of a hyper-Calvinistic denial of Eve’s divine image. Milton (no Calvinist) unambiguously says Adam and Eve are both images of ‘their glorious maker’ (iv 292f, italics mine). The combination of hierarchy with inwardness and reciprocity – on a higher plane than that of most love poetry – is nevertheless not modern, and has proved hard to assess. Milton strove for a NT understanding of sex as a relation of mutual love, not of power. The most sensitively balanced accounts of this are to be found in Turner (1987) 287 et passim; McColley (1983) and (1993). See K. Thomas, in Aston (1965) 317–40; B. K. Lewalski, MiltS, 6 (1974) 3–20; F. Peczenik, Mosaic, 17 (1984) 29–48; W. Shullenberger, MiltQ, 20 (1986) 69–84; Turner (1987) ch. 7; and (for further references) Benet (1994) 240 n 22; Gregerson (1995) 153 n 6. I should not wish to leave the impression that criticism of PL has been all debate. Cooperation across national and even ideological frontiers has resulted in impressive achievements, not least A Milton Encyclopaedia (1978–80), gen. ed. W. B. Hunter. Successive contributions from Patrides (1966) and Hunter (1971) to Danielson (1982) have clarified Milton’s Christology and theodicy. Still further advances in that direction are likely to follow the current examination of De Doctrina. This can no longer be taken to represent throughout Milton’s own final opinions; see W. B. Hunter, SEL, 32 (1992) 129–42; G. Campbell, MiltQ, 26 (1992) 129–30; Parker (1996) 1057 n 5. The important matter of PL’s biblical intertextualities is now far more precisely understood, thanks to source studies and to editions of the biblical versions; see Sims (1962), (1984); M. Forey, EC, 46 (1996) 302–18. One of the most impressive pieces of cross-disciplinary cooperation has brought to bear emblem studies,

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opening new routes to a grasp of Milton’s picturing. Study of PL as an interface between the sister arts has come a long way from Mario Praz, in Wilson (1938) 192–210; see, for example, Pointon (1970); Frye (1978); Roston (1980); M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–77; McColley (1993); and Mulryan (1996). Portraits and illustrations The known likenesses (or alleged likenesses) of M. number about 180 portraits and 327 engravings. Of these the main types are four: (a) those deriving from Cornelius Johnson’s Pierpont Morgan Library portrait showing M. at the age of ten; (b) those from the Onslow portrait (known from a copy by van der Gucht) of M. as a student at the age of 21; (c) William Marshall’s crude engraving of M. at 37, used for his 1645 Poems but derided by the poet himself in a Greek inscription; (d) the large type of William Faithorne’s engraving, an idealized representation of the blind poet, together with the closely related crayon drawing known as the Bayfordbury portrait (probably also by Faithorne) in Princeton University Library. Faithorne’s fine engraving in the French style was used as frontispiece to M.’s History of Britain (1670) and – in William Dolle’s version – for 1674. The crayon was followed by Robert White in the crayon drawing Deborah Milton exclaimed at as a very likeness of her father; an engraved version was used in 1688. Richardson’s etching, and many others, belong to this type. See Darbishire (1932) 344; Martin (1961) and J. R. Martin, PULC, 24 (1963) 168–73; Piper (1963); Pointon (1970); L. Miller, MiltQ, special issue (1976); D. Piper, NQ, 26 (1979) 70–2; Wendorf (1990) 137–50; Parker (1996) 1135f. The large subject of PL illustrations can only be noticed briefly here. Illustration began in the subscription edition of 1688, with energetic engravings mostly by Sir John Baptista Medina, and the splendid edition of 1720 with more thoughtful, but dull, engravings by Louis Cheron (H. Gardner, E&S, 9 (1956) 27–38). Native British illustrations by Hayman, Stothard, and Barry followed, and Fuseli’s striking Milton Gallery works; but the most significant achievement of the century was the strongly interpretative, although not very Miltonic, work of William Blake ( J. Treadwell, W&I, 9 (1993) 363–82). In the nineteenth century, both Gustave Doré and John Martin developed the landscape aspect; the latter’s twenty-four velvety mezzotints, in the visionary tradition of Turner, are much underestimated (K. Svendsen, SEL, 1 (1961) 63–74). Modern illustration has been little discussed; an exception is L. F. Dickson, MiltS, 25 (1990) 161–90 on Carlotta Petrina. See Todd (1946); C. H. Collins Baker, Library, 5th series, 3 (1948) 1–21, 101–19; M. Y. Hughes, JEGP, 60 (1961) 670–9; V. Tufte, in Crump (1986); Simonds (1995) 102–12.

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THE PRINTER TO THE READER Added in 1668 to the remaining copies of 1667: the text is that of the slightly revised form used in the fifth issue and in some copies of the fourth.

Courteous reader, there was no argument at first intended to the book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the poem rhymes not. S. Simmons IN PARADISUM AMISSUM SUMMI POETAE JOHANNIS MILTONI Added in 1674. Probably by Samuel Barrow, M.’s friend. See D. Masson, in Milton (1890) iii 375f; A. L. Wyman, Medical History, 18 (1974) 335–47; M. Lieb, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 71–8.

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Qui legis Amissum Paradisum, grandia magni Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis? Res cunctas, et cunctarum primordia rerum, Et fata, et fines continet iste liber. Intima panduntur magni penetralia mundi, Scribitur et toto quicquid in orbe latet. Terraeque, tractusque maris, coelumque profundum Sulphureumque Erebi, flammivomumque specus. Quaeque colunt terras, pontumque et Tartara caeca, Quaeque colunt summi lucida regna poli. Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam, Et sine fine chaos, et sine fine Deus: Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine, In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor. Haec qui speraret quis crederet esse futura? Et tamen haec hodie terra Britanna legit. O quantos in bella duces! quae protulit arma! Quae canit, et quanta praelia dira tuba. Coelestes acies! atque in certamine coelum! Et quae coelestes pugna deceret agros! Quantus in aetheriis tollit se Lucifer armis! Atque ipso graditur vix Michaele minor! Quantis, et quam funestis concurritur iris Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit! Dum vulsos montes ceu tela reciproca torquent, Et non mortali desuper igne pluunt: Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus, Et metuit pugnae non superesse suae. At simul in coelis Messiae insignia fulgent, Et currus animes, armaque digna Deo, 51

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Horrendumque rotae strident, et saeva rotarum Erumpunt torvis fulgura luminibus, Et flammae vibrant, et vera tonitrua rauco Admistis flammis insonuere polo: Excidit attonitis mens omnis, et impetus omnis Et cassis dextris irrita tela cadunt. Ad poenas fugiunt, et ceu foret Orcus asylum Infernis certant condere se tenebris. Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii Et quos fama recens vel celebravit anus Haec quicunque leget tantum cecinisse putabit Maeonidem ranas, Virgilium culices. S.B. M.D.

Title. Amissum] Amissam 1674. 9. pontumque] portumque 1674. 15. futura] futurum 1674; futura Fenton.

IN PARADISUM AMISSAM You who read Paradise Lost, the mighty Milton’s noble poem, what do you read but all things? This book takes in all things, and the beginnings of all things, and their fates and ultimate ends. The most secret depths of the great world are revealed, and every hidden thing in the whole cosmos is named and described. Here are earth and the paths of the sea, heaven’s vastness and the sulphurous cave of hell vomiting flames; and those living on earth, in the sea, and in black hell, and those, too, dwelling in the bright realms of loftiest heaven. And whatever anywhere is contained within limits, and limitless chaos, and limitless God; and more limitless still – if anything can be more limitless – the reconciling love towards men garnered in Christ. Who would have believed there would be anyone so ambitious as to conceive hopes of these things? And yet the British land reads them today! Oh what great captains he brought to war! What awful battles does he sing, and with how mighty a trumpet! Battlelines in heaven! And heaven itself at war! And what battles, befitting a heavenly field! How great Lucifer showed himself in ethereal war! And he walks scarcely less tall than Michael himself. With how great and how fatal a rage they meet, while the one fierce champion defends the stars, and the other pulls them down! While they tear up mountains and hurl them at each other as missiles, and they rain down from above with no mortal fire. Olympus waits, doubtful to which side it must yield, and fears it may not survive its own conflict. But as soon as the ensigns of Messiah shine forth in heaven, and you quicken your living chariots, and arms worthy of God, and the wheels’ grating appalls, and fierce thunderbolts burst from the wheels with grim flashes, and true thunder

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with flickering flames rumbles through the hoarse sky. Every passion and rage falls away from the thunderstruck rebels, and the weapons fall useless from their unnerved hands. They flee to their punishment, and as if hell were a refuge, they try to hide themselves in its infernal shades. Give in, you Roman poets, give in, Greeks, and those whom ancient or modern fame has honoured. Anyone who reads this poem will think Homer sang only of frogs, Virgil only of gnats. S[amuel]. B[arrow]. M. D. ON PARADISE LOST Added in 1674, the accidentals of which are here followed. There are no significant variants in the text printed in Marvell’s Miscellaneous Poems (1681). Discussed by S. M. Fallon, in Benet (1994) 178. Lines 18–26 refer to Dryden’s opera The Fall of Angels and Man in Innocence, licensed 17 April 1674 but apparently never performed. ( John Aubrey says that Dryden ‘went to him to have leave to put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme. Mr Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses’.) Bayes (line 47) is Dryden, whom Buckingham and his friends satirized in The Rehearsal (1672) under that character. Lines 51f allude to the immediately following Note on ‘The Verse’ (‘modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their . . . constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them’).

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When I beheld the poet blind, yet bold, In slender book his vast design unfold, Messiah crowned, God’s reconciled decree, Rebelling angels, the forbidden tree, Heaven, hell, earth, chaos, all; the argument Held me a while misdoubting his intent, That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) The sacred truths to fable and old song (So Sampson groped the Temple’s post in spite) The world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight. Yet as I read, soon growing less severe, I liked his project, the success did fear; Through that wide field how he his way should find O’er which lame faith leads understanding blind; Lest he perplexed the things he would explain, And what was easy he should render vain. Or if a work so infinite he spanned, Jealous I was that some less skilful hand (Such as disquiet always what is well, And by ill imitating would excel) Might hence presume the whole creation’s day To change in scenes, and show it in a play. Pardon me, mighty poet, nor despise

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My causeless, yet not impious, surmise. But I am now convinced, and none will dare Within thy labours to pretend a share. Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit, And all that was improper dost omit: So that no room is here for writers left, But to detect their ignorance or theft. That majesty which through thy work doth reign Draws the devout, deterring the profane. And things divine thou treatest of in such state As them preserves, and thee, inviolate. At once delight and horror on us seize, Thou singest with so much gravity and ease; And above human flight dost soar aloft With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft. The bird named from that Paradise you sing So never flags, but always keeps on wing. Where couldst thou words of such a compass find? Whence furnish such a vast expense of mind? Just heaven thee like Tiresias to requite Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight. Well mightest thou scorn thy readers to allure With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure; While the town-Bayes writes all the while and spells, And like a pack-horse tires without his bells: Their fancies like our bushy-points appear, The poets tag them, we for fashion wear. I too transported by the mode offend, And while I meant to praise thee must commend. Thy verse created like thy theme sublime, In number, weight, and measure, needs not rhyme. A[ndrew]. M[arvell].

THE VERSE Added in 1668, the fourth issue of the first edition. For the technical terms, see Sprott (1953) 39ff; T. N. Corns, RBPH, 69 (1991) 559f; Introduction: Metrical structure.

The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both

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Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of it self, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming. DRYDEN’S EPIGRAM Added in the fourth edition, 1668, below Dolle’s engraving of Robert White’s portrait of M., after Faithorne (Martin (1961) illus. 7; see Introduction: Portraits and illustrations). Translated into Latin by Cowper; see his Works, ed. Robert Southey (1837) x 237. Perhaps suggested by Selvaggi’s epigram on the young M. (Dryden (1958) iv 1991).

Three poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go: To make a third she joined the former two. John Dryden

Paradise Lost BOOK I The Argument

This 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 hastes into the midst of things, presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into hell, described here, not in the centre1 (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made,2 certainly not yet accursed) but in a

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place of utter3 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 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 afterwards 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 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.4 To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt.5 Pandæmonium the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the deep: the infernal peers there sit in council. Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste i Argument.1 not in the centre: i.e. not in earth’s centre. Secondarily referring to the in medias res narrative: hell is not at the centre of PL; see MacCaffrey (1959) 54. On the poem’s centre, where Christ is enthroned, see Introduction: Numerical composition. M. displaces hell since it was formed before earth was cursed: cp. De Doctrina i 33, YP vii 629–31; Cowley, Davideis (1656) i, n 11 (‘making hell to be in the centre of the earth, it is far from infinitely large, or deep; yet, on my conscience, where’er it be, it is not so strait, as that crowding and sweating should be one of the torments of it, as is pleasantly fancied by Bellarmin’). Arg.2 yet not made: Earth had not been created when Satan’s angels fell into hell; see Introduction: Time-scheme. Arg.3 utter: outer; utter. Arg.4 Cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 312–15: ‘Many at least of the Greek, and some of the Latin Fathers, are of opinion that angels, as being spirits, must have existed long before the material world; and it seems even probable that the apostasy which caused the expulsion of so many thousands from heaven, took place before the foundations of this world were laid.’ Angels were more commonly thought to have been created at the same time with the world. Arg.5 What his associates thence attempt: i.e. building Pandaemonium. 1–49. Rhetorically, invocatio, a prayer to the Muse; i 1–26 is also a principium, stating the scope of the action. M.’s overlapping of these opening topics combines Virgilian and Homeric plans, economically relating PL to three principal analogues. Setting up analogies with Achilles, Odysseus and Aeneas, between the loss of Paradise and the

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Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

loss of Troy (R. W Condee, JEGP, 50 (1951) 502–8). On the invocations’ placement, see Introduction: Numerical composition. 1–26. The two sentences divide the paragraph in divine proportion (golden section); see L. M. Johnson, in Danielson (1989) 65–78. 1–13. The widely separated persons and events referred to here had a typological connection: ‘the disobedience of Adam in Eden, the receiving of the Law by Moses on Sinai, and the placing of the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple on “Sion Hill” are not causally connected . . . but . . . centuries of Christians seeking to align the Old Testament with the New had . . . connected these events as successive stages in God’s plan for man’s redemption’ (Sims (1962) 11). The opening gives ‘the sensation that some great thing is now about to begin’ (Lewis (1942) 40f ). Creation is approached through recognition of the Fall; see Schwartz (1988) 2; Crump (1975) 42. 1–5. The sequence disobedience–loss of Eden–regain the blissful seat corresponds to that in Virgil’s principium, from the fall of Troy through a journey to the founding of Rome; see A. E. Barker, PQ, 28 (1949) 17f; MacCaffrey (1959) 83f. 1–2. Following the definition of the first sin in Calvin’s Catechism, in its Ursinian form; see Fletcher (1956–61) ii 95f. D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 56f finds in the alliterating first, fruit and forbidden an ‘acoustical’ allusion to oblation of firstfruits, prescribed in Lev. 23. The interlinear pause after fruit invites a connection with disobedience – ‘disobedience and its consequences’ – until Of (i 2) shows the grammatical link with tree. (Such double chains of discourse, ubiquitous in PL, will only be noticed when not obvious.) On the sevenfold reference of fruit (including ‘Messiah’), see Donne, Sermons ii 126 (‘the fruit, and offspring of our sin, calamity’); Christopher (1982) 19f. Of man’s: Perhaps ‘Eve’s’ – Hebrew for woman means ‘ofman’; cp. viii 496; G. Machacek, MiltQ, 24 (1990) 111. mortal taste: (1) death-dealing taste; (2) tasting by human beings. On the logical structure here, and M.’s concern with the Fall’s causes, see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 149–73. 3. all our woe: A key phrase; see MacCaffrey (1959) 84. 4–5. loss of Eden: Eden was not lost, but by synecdoche the whole is put for the part, Paradise. greater man: Christ, in Pauline theology the second Adam (e.g. Rom. 5:19). Repetition of man makes this point, besides glancing at Virgil’s virumque (Aen. i 1) and Homer’s RΑνδSα (Od. i 1). Virgil sings one man, but M. will sing two; adding the supernatural to the natural man, and so departing from pagan epic. For Christian precedents for doubled heroes, see Spenser, Letter to Ralegh, on Tasso’s example. Restore: replace in a state of grace (OED 4 a);

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Sing heavenly Muse, 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 Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed

make amends for (OED 2). In the latter sense, followed by an ethic dative: Emma (1964) 54n. Is the ‘blissful seat’ heaven, or a ‘new earth’? Cp. iii 285–9; PR ii 441f, Rev. 21:1; Corns (1994) 6f. 6–22. heavenly Muse: Possibly the Urania of vii 1, but here apparently associated with the divine Logos informing both Moses’ prophetic vision on Mount Oreb and the sacerdotal Temple worship of Sion hill, although not confined to these places (17f ). On Sinai and Sion as types of Law and Gospel, see Lieb (1981) 163; J. Hoyle, ELN, 12 (1974) 20–8. M. will assume a prophetic or a priestly role, as the Spirit wills; see D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 61. Boldly ignoring contemporary attacks on invocation (Davenant thought invoking the Holy Ghost in poetry to be ‘saucy familiarity with a true God’); cp. i 17–22n; Broadbent (1960) 67; Gregory (1989) 94 (not the Spirit); Steadman (1995) 4–6 (distinguishing Spirit and Muse). 6–8. Antonomasia, or periphrastic naming. Assuming common ground with the reader, like Dante in his prophetically obscure historical allusions, or Horace in Odes I xv 1. Implying Moses’ superiority to Hesiod, who as a shepherd had a vision of the Muses: Horace (1995) 74. As shepherd of Jethro’s flock, Moses envisioned a burning bush on Mt Horeb (Exod. 3); there or on its lower part, Mt Sinai, he received the Law (Exod. 19:20). 7. MS omits both commas. Oreb: As often, preferring the Vulgate form, whether for euphony or familiarity. Bentley (1732) wants to emend secret to ‘sacred’; but the top is secret as set apart (Lat. secretus) and concealed by storm clouds; cp. xii 227–9; Exod. 19; Stanford (1980) 44; Wood (1993) 36 (Horeb and Sinai paired). 8. chosen seed: Israelites, whom Moses, the first Jewish writer (emphatic: cp. i 1, 19, 27, 28, 33), taught about the beginning in Genesis, the main source of PL. M. believed himself ‘possessed’ by Moses in a Pythagorean sense – similarly inspired by divine afflatus. Gabriel Harvey thought the Pentateuch Prototypus, et Archetypus . . . Radix, fons – root and fountain of all books (Marginalia (1913) 209); see J. H. Hanford, UTQ, 8 (1939) 414f; Kerrigan (1974). 9. Mimetic inversion moves the Bible’s opening words earlier. 10. out of chaos: Creation de Deo; cp. iii 708–11; v 472; vii 168–73; YP vii 303. Sion hill: The sanctuary, a place of ceremonial song and oracular pronouncements (Isa. 2:3), associated with the most poetic parts of prophecy: Stevens (1985) 78. 11. Siloa: A spring just W of Mount Zion and near Calvary, often

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Fast by the oracle of God[,] I thence Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly thou O Spirit, that dost prefer

symbolizing the Spirit’s operation ‘in gentle mild manner’ (Lancelot Andrewes (1841–54) iii 267f ) or unobviously (Calvin, Comm. upon Isa. (1609) 8:6). The curative, purifying pool of Siloam (‘which is by interpretation, Sent’: John 9:7) may be intended, in self-referring analogy with the blind disciple given sight and insight by Jesus; see P. Lauter, NQ, 203 (1958) 204f. The brook beside the Temple mount counterposes the pagan Muses’ fountain – Aganippe, that ‘from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring’ (Lycidas 16). Sion and Siloa are Vulg. forms; cp. i 7n. 12. God,] God; 1667. 13. advent’rous] adventrous MS and early edns. Trisyllabic. 14. Distinguishing the narrator’s Muse-guided flight from Satan’s; see K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 122. In contrast to Du Bartas’s cautious Muse restricted to the ‘middle region’ (Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1978) i 115); see Lewalski (1985) 30. 15. Aonian mount: Helicon, sacred to the Muses. Believing the matter he pursues higher than any in pagan antiquity, M. makes the biblical mountains of inspiration more numerous; see D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 63. MS and early edns have th’ Aonian, indicating synaloepha. mount,] mount; MS. 16. Echoing Ariosto’s boast Cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima (Orl. Fur. i 2); cp. ix 27–47. The claim to novelty was a common opening topic; see Curtius (1953) 85f. unattempted: ‘Unattempted even in the Bible? . . . “unattempted in English literature”?’ asks D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 63. 17. Spirit,] Spirit MS. Cp. De Doctrina i 24, YP vi 499f; correcting the external Temple in Cowley, Davideis i (1905) 243. 17–22. Now, at least, the Logos or the Holy Spirit is addressed – despite De Doctrina i 6, YP vi 294–5 judging invocation of the Holy Spirit unbiblical. On the internalizing sequence Sinai . . . Sion . . . heart, with its implication of the ecclesia invisibilis, see Lieb (1981) 169. Interiorizing the holy place and rejecting local cults was a Protestant emphasis; cp. Comus 461. L. A. Cormican, in Ford (1956) 178f thinks the analogy between creation and poetic making to be Metaphysical in style; D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 66 traces its theology. Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 120: ‘As a good wit . . . on his book still muses: / . . . Or, as a hen that fain would hatch a brood / . . . Even in such sort seemed the Spirit eternal / To brood upon this gulf.’ Chaos was often pictured as an egg-shaped mass: e.g. Harvey, Exercitationes (1651); Jung (1953) 192f,

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Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou knowst; thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert the eternal providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view

etc.; Praz (1964) 197. For the dispute whether egg or chicken came first, see Jeanneret (1991) 167 citing Plutarch, Table Talk, and Macrobius, Saturnalia vii. temples: Cp. vii 417–20. brooding: Rendering the Heb. word that AV Gen. 1:2 translates ‘moved’ but St Basil and others give as incubabat (brooded). brooding . . . mad’st it pregnant: Mixed metaphor implying the Hermetic doctrine that God is both masculine and feminine, and indicating a vitalistic tradition; see Marjara (1992) 216. Cp. Cusanus, De Docta Ignorantia i 25 (1954) 57. Impregnation of chaos here is offset by vii 234–42 suggesting mere differentiation (Gallagher (1990) 11). Kendrick (1986) 180 thinks the Word not immediately present; but for M. the brooding is not mental only, but material, like a bird’s. vast: (1) large; (2) waste, deserted, unformed (Lat. vastus). 18. pure,] pure MS. 19. Cp. Homer, Il. ii 484: ‘Tell me, Muses . . . since you are divine and present and know all things.’ 22–6. Invocatory prayer echoing the Golden Sequence, ‘Veni sancte Spiritus’ (Veni, lumen cordium. / . . . Lava quod est sordidum, / . . . Rege quod est devium). argument: Redemptive history, not justification of God; see Steadman (1976) 9. justify: Not in a Pauline sense: God’s justice is inherent, not imputed (Rosenblatt (1994) 68–70). Following Tasso’s assertion of the superiority of Christian history (Treip (1994) 87). to men: Contrasting with the generalized singular at i 1: the Fall is universal, but M. writes for the ‘fit audience . . . though few’; see D. Daiches, in Kermode (1960) 57; Danielson (1982) 10n (finding an ambiguity – ‘justify to men’; ‘God’s ways to men’). 25. eternal] th’ eternal MS; 1667; eternal 1668 Errata. The 1667 compositor may have missed the deletion of the article in MS. 27–49. Rhetorically the initium, introducing the action and giving its cause. With i 28, cp. Virgil, Aen. i 8 (Musa mihi causas memor); with i 33, cp. Homer’s question about the cause of Achilles’ anger (Il. i 8). M.’s formulaic method involves ‘a whole segment of western culture’, counterpointing Adam’s deeds with those of classical heroes (R. W. Condee, JEGP, 50 (1951) 507). But counterpoint here approaches contrast: in pagan epic it is the gods’ anger that needs explanation.

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Nor the deep tract of hell, say first what cause Moved our grand parents in that happy state, Favoured of heaven so highly, to fall off From their creator, and transgress his will For one restraint, lords of the world besides? Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equalled the most high, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God

28–32. Turning to the Fall’s instrumental cause; see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 159. On Satan as the external, procatarctic cause, see Steadman (1968) 139ff. tract: Usually of a horizontal surface (Bentley). But hell mainly goes down. 29. grand: Implying not only ancestral antecedence (cp. ‘grandfather’) but generality of progeniture (cp. ‘grand total’). 32. ‘Because of a single prohibition, although their autonomy was otherwise unrestricted.’ 34–8. The ‘action’ summarized (Treip (1994) 182). Drawing together the various biblical archetypes of evil (serpent, dragon, Satan); see Stevens (1985) 91. 34. Rev. 12:9, ‘That old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan’ – because of his guile, dangerous to man, and because he entered a serpent to tempt Eve; cp. the devils’ metamorphosis to serpents (x 506–47). Deflecting blame from Eve, in contrast to the sexism of 1 Tim. 2:11–15 (Gallagher (1990) 52). 36–7. mankind,] mankind: MS (altered to semicolon). heaven,] heaven; MS. what time: often compared with Latin quo tempore, but good English (OED s.v. What C II 10). Cp. Comus 291, Lycidas 28. 38. aspiring: Feminine end-words are rare – only i 98, 102 and 606 in Bk. i; see Prince (1954) 135. 39. Satan’s fault was not his aspiring above his peers – he was already ‘high above’ (v 812) – but aspiring To set himself in [divine] glory. 40–8. Biblical intertextualities keep Satan’s fall and binding in view: e.g. 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6; Rev. 20:1–2; Isa. 14:12–15 (‘Thou hast said . . . I will be like the most high. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell’). Following Tremellius’ version of Isa. (Steadman (1968) 160ff ). 40. Past infinitive: standard English syntax. 42. God] God, MS.

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50

Raised impious war in heaven and battle proud With vain attempt. Him the almighty power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy the omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf

43. impious war: Perhaps with a Latinizing suggestion of bellum impium (internecine war). Introducing the theme of holy war, the theomachia of Renaissance theoreticians (Lieb (1981) 274). 44. With vain attempt: ‘The . . . Miltonic half-line of derision’ (Broadbent (1960) 69). Cp. i 746f. 44–5. Him . . . Hurled: One of the two commonest types of inversion in PL (Emma (1964) 143ff ). Larger samples show this the only common type; SUBJECT | OBJECT | VERB inversions are rare. 45. Mingling biblical allusion (Luke 10:18, ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven’) with classical (Homer, Il. i 591, Hephaistos ‘hurled from the ethereal threshold’). 46. ruin: falling, downfall (etymological Latinism). combustion: (1) burning; (2) obscuration due to near conjunction with the sun. 48. Jude 6 and 2 Pet. 2:4 (‘God spared not the angels that sinned, but . . . delivered them into chains of darkness’). For the fire metaphor, see Calvin, Harmony (1584) on Matt. 5:41 (‘that dreadful punishment which our senses are unable to comprehend’); ‘For Calvin, visualization is the mark of a failed reading’ (Bryson (1990) 118). adamantine chains: cp. Aeschylus, Prometheus 6. fire,] fire MS. 49. The elliptic Who (‘Him who’), common in Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne (Emma (1964) 57). ‘Satan dared to hope [God] could be defeated’ (Empson (1961) 37). Preparing the reader to recognize Satan’s delusions. 50–83. Rhetorically, exordium, giving stage directions for the opening scene; see R. W. Condee, JEGP, 50 (1951) 507f. The nine days the devils Lay vanquished (Days 14–22) immediately follow the nine of their falling from heaven: see vi 871; Introduction: Time-scheme. Alluding to the analogous fall of the defeated Titans for 9 + 9 days (Hesiod, Theogony 664–735). M. often reverts to Hesiod’s mythological supplement (and distortion) of the war in heaven, for which there was scant biblical authority (P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 121–48). 50. It was a postulate that time measures motion; see Marjara (1992) 193.

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Confounded though immortal: but his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels’ ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames

53–4: ‘His reprobation kept him from annihilation, to suffer God’s wrath further.’ 55. The devils became subject to pain when their natures were ‘impaired’ (vi 327, 691). 56. him;] him, MS. baleful: ‘full of evil’; ‘full of suffering’. Cp. MacCaffrey (1959) 43; Broadbent (1960) 69f (‘The tenses shift imperceptibly into an immediate Hell’). 57. witnessed: bore witness to. 59. angels’ ken: the field of vision of angels (OED 2). angels’] angels MS and early edns. The normal spelling, leaving open the possibility that ken is a verb; cp. xi 379, 396. 60. wild,] wild MS. Editors have found a colon necessary; but flamed (i 62) may be a past participle (‘aflame’: OED s.v. Flamed 1). dismal: A stronger word then – ‘dreadful’; ‘sinister’. Emma (1964) 73 thinks EPITHET | NOUN | EPITHET patterns infrequent; but less inadequate samples show it a favourite device of M.’s; cp. i 69, 180, 304f, etc. For Italian models, see Prince (1954) 112–19. 61. dungeon horrible: An inversion M. usually avoids; Emma (1964) 69f finds it in less than 5 per cent of adjectival phrases. On M.’s symbolic hell, see J. E. Duncan, HLQ, 20 (1957) 127–36; Hughes (1965) ch. 6; E. Schanzer, UTQ, 24 (1955) 136–45; Broadbent (1960) ch. 2. 62–4. Oddly censured by T. S. Eliot as ‘difficult to imagine’, when obviously not meant as physical description. Cp. the land of the dead in Job 10:22 (‘the light is as darkness’); OE Genesis B, 333 (‘thæt wæs leohtes leas / and wæs liges full’); A. Gossman, NQ, 206 (1955) 182 on Plutarch’s discussion as to ‘Whether darkness can be visible to us’. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. Suppl. xcvii 4, debates whether the damned have any light. A familiar topic of speculation and source of paradox. For classic accounts of flames without light, see Basil, Homily on Ps. 28 (God separates fire’s brightness from its burning power; the brightness is joy to the blessed, the burning, torture to the damned); Haymo, Migne cxvii 1188. Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 87 (‘The fires of hell in their place, in hell, have no light; but any degrees of the fires of hell, that can break out in this life, have, in God’s own purpose, so much light, as that through the

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No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed: Such place eternal justice had prepared For those rebellious, here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set As far removed from God and light of heaven

darkest smother of obduration, or desperation, God would have us see him’); Herrick (1956) 387 (‘The fire of hell this strange condition hath / To burn, not shine (as learned Basil saith)’); M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957) 183; J. M. Steadman, NQ, 20 (1955) 382–3; Schaar (1982) 39, 43. On sights of woe visible despite darkness, E. R. Daniels, NQ, 204 (1959) 369–70 finds authority in Thomas Adams for a special visual power granted to devils. On M.’s imagery of light generally, see Allen (1970); Hughes (1965) ch. 4. Bks i and ii ‘are full of paradoxical expressions – antithesis, antimetabole, oxymoron, etc.’ (Broadbent (1960) 71). The same could be said of other passages where the devils appear; e.g. vi 498n. 66. Cp. Euripides, Troades 681 (‘to me even hope, that remains to all mortals, never comes’); Dante, Inf. iii 9 (‘All hope abandon, you who enter here’). 68. urges: presses. 69. Cp. i 670–4n. The sulphurousness of the deluge is from Isa. 30:33 Vulg., and perhaps also Statius, Thebaid i 91 (Cocytus’s sulfureas undas). 71. those] these MS. prison: MS indicates elision (‘pris’ n’). On this convention see Parkes (1992) 138 n 75. 72. utter: Both ‘outer’ and ‘utter’. 73–4. See iv 20–3n. For the heaven associated with the celestial pole, cp. Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 40f, following Aratus, Phainomena. Where Homer simply places Hades as far below earth as heaven is above (Il. viii 16) and Virgil puts Tartarus twice as far below (Aen. vi 577), M. gives a more mathematical, ‘typically “geometrical” statement of relationships’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 78). Earth divides the interval between heaven and hell in the diapason 1:2 proportion Neoplatonists held advisable between reason and concupiscence: e.g. Pico, Conclusiones, ‘secundum mathematicam Pythagorae’ (1573) i 79. Jarvis (1991) 37 finds M.’s configuration difficult to imagine; but allegory need not be continuously visualized. The distance of hell from heaven was a moot point; cp. 1 Enoch xviii 5–16; Voragine, Golden Legend (1993) i 20. Wilkins (1972) 201 found the dimensions of hell in Revelation. See R. M. Myers, 17C, 5 (1990) 43–53.

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As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell! There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns, and weltering by his side One next himself in power, and next in crime, Long after known in Palestine, and named Beëlzebub. To whom the arch-enemy, And thence in heaven called Satan, with bold words Breaking the horrid silence thus began. If thou beest he; but oh how fallen! how changed

76. fall,] fall MS. 79. power,] Power MS. 81. Beelzebub: ‘Lord of the flies’ (Heb.); cp. Matt. 12:24 (‘prince of the devils’); Mark 3:22; etc. A future name only: like the other devils he has lost his original name; see Leonard (1990) 71. M. would know Beelzebub’s anthropological background in cults of deliverers from insect pests – e.g. Selden, De Dis Syriis (1617) ii 6 – but preferred to use Jerome’s allegorization, cit. Valeriano (1613) 320 à propos of the fly as Pertinacity. Beelzebub ‘never ceases to infest the human race in every way, and to lay now this snare, now that, for our destruction’. This pertinacious malignity makes Beelzebub an apt spokesman for Satan’s plan to ruin the ‘new race’ (ii 345–76). arch-enemy,] arch-enemy MS. 82. Satan: ‘enemy, (Heb.). After he rebelled, Satan’s ‘former name’ (by patristic tradition, Lucifer) ceased (v 658), and is irrecoverable; see H. Marks, in Nyquist (1988) 213; Leonard (1990), ch. 2, esp. 86f. In hell Satan is not called Satan (a different sort of name from ‘Beelzebub’). On ‘Sataneal’ as his earlier name, see 2 Enoch xvi 74f; Werman (1995) 194. 84. Rhetorically, the ianua narrandi opening the action proper. Echoing Aeneas’ exclamation when Hector’s ghost appears during the fall of Troy: ei mihi, qualis erat! quantum mutatus ab illo / Hectore (Aen. ii 274). Satan casts himself as a courageous Aeneas, and sees in Beelzebub not a reflection of his own deterioration but an image of Hector’s ghost (Stevens (1985) 114). Cp. Isa. 14:12 (‘How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 1 i (1989–) i 122 on mankind (‘Oh pitiful change! . . . a monster by a stupend metamorphosis, a fox, a dog, a hog, what not? . . . How much altered from that he was’). The first of the metamorphose, allegorizing moral decline (Lewalski (1985) 74ff ). On different traditions regarding the devils’ altered appearance, see Frye (1978) 61f. The 41-line speech beginning here, the first speech in Bk i, matches the last, also spoken by Satan and also 41 lines (i 622–62). For speech lengths in PL, see Introduction: Numerical composition. he;] he? MS (altered to comma). fallen! ] fallen MS.

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From him, who in the happy realms of light Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine Myriads though bright: if he whom mutual league, United thoughts and counsels, equal hope And hazard in the glorious enterprise, Joined with me once, now misery hath joined In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest From what height fallen, so much the stronger proved He with his thunder: and till then who knew The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those Nor what the potent victor in his rage Can else inflict, do I repent or change, Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind

85. him,] him MS. 86. didst: Vacillating grammar mimes Satan’s agitated uncertainty whether Beelzebub is present or whether third-person forms would be more appropriate. 87. if he: Ellipsis – ‘If thou beest he’; cp. i 84. For Beelzebub’s intimacy with Satan, cp. v 673–96. Patrick Hume (1695) glosses league as ‘A confederacy or siding of factious subjects against their sovereign, of which the Holy League in France, and its spawn the Solemn League and Covenant in our country, are two abominable instances’. ‘M. too had detested the Presbyterians of the Solemn League’ (Erskine-Hill (1995) 67). 88–9. hope] hope, MS. 1667 and 1674 move the comma to the line-end following. 90–1. Cp. Ovid, Metam. i 353: Deinde torus iunxit, nunc ipsa pericula iungunt. 91–2. into what . . . From what: Imitating the Greek construction hoios . . . hoios. Cp. v 543; PR ii 30. 92–124. Cp. i 245–63, 637–49. Satan opposes ‘consent’ and ‘custom’, watchwords of the monarchists; see R. Lejosne, in Armitage (1995) 114. 93–4. Admitting lack of foresight (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 577). 94–8. Perhaps echoing Aeschylus, Prometheus 987–96. Cp. Dante, Inf. xiv 52–60, where Capaneus, ‘Violent against God’, boasts that Jupiter’s thunderbolts will never crush his spirit. fixed mind: Cp. Il Penseroso 4 and Spenser, FQ IV vii 16 (‘nothing could [Aemylia’s] fixed mind remove’). high disdain: Elizabethan poetic diction, rendering Italian alto sdegno without disapprobation of the aristocratic sentiment. Satan’s words admit no fault, but betray contemptuous pride and fixed rigidity. 96. inflict,] inflict MS; 1667; inflict, 1674. 97. lustre,] lustre; 1667; 1674; lustre, MS. (Semicolon between verb and object was common.) A specious distinction between outward and inward change (Schwartz (1988) 94). Cp. Horace, Epistles I xi 27 (coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt).

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And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, That with the mightiest raised me to contend, And to the fierce contention brought along Innumerable force of spirits armed That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battle on the plains of heaven, And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace With suppliant knee, and deify his power Who from the terror of this arm so late Doubted his empire, that were low indeed, That were an ignominy and shame beneath

98–9. Contrast iii 309–11. Satan conceives merit in terms of might; Messiah, in terms of loving obedience; see vi 820n. Unlike Achilles, Satan’s merit has not in fact been injured (Lewalski (1985) 57). See D. Berthold, SEL, 15 (1975) 153–67. 105. shook his throne: False, as vi 834 shows. ‘It is the Son’s chariot rather than Satan’s armies which shake heaven to its foundations (vi 710–12)’; see B. Rajan, in Milton (1964). Cp. Cowley, Davideis (1656) i n 15 (‘it were improper for a devil to make a whole speech without some lies in it’). Satan sees himself as hero of the sort of martial epic the devils sing at ii 546–55 (Burden (1967) 64). Empson (1961) 44 thinks Satan’s argument false, yet his defiant belief in it somehow creditable. He has the bold impetuosity of princely virtù without the prudence and pragmatism Machiavelli thought essential (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 576). 105–8. Enlarging on Satan’s speech in Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax, iv 15 (‘We lost the field, yet lost we not our heart’). Kates (1983) compares ix 99. 107. study: pursuit of. 109. ‘What else is it’. Cp. the Lat. construction et si quid sit – ‘And if there is anything else (besides will . . . revenge . . . hate . . . courage) that is not to be overcome.’ 110. That glory: (1) The glory of overcoming me; (2) My glory of unconquerable will, etc. 114. Doubted: feared for. empire,] empire; MS. 115. ignominy: Possibly pronounced ‘ignomy’ (a common spelling). But tetrasyllabic at vi 383, and perhaps here, with synaloepha between -y and and.

68

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This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods And this empyreal substance cannot fail, Since through experience of this great event In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, 120 We may with more successful hope resolve To wage by force or guile eternal war Irreconcilable to our grand foe, Who now triúmphs, and in the excess of joy Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven. 125 So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair: And him thus answered soon his bold compeer. O prince, O chief of many thronèd powers, That led the embattled seraphim to war

116–17. Implying angels’ immortality (cp. Luke 20:36; De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 314) and continuing strength (Ps. 103:20; De Doctrina ibid.), assured by fate. Perhaps truthful: M. thought God unable to annihilate anything; he followed Aristotle in ‘subjecting God’s omnipotence to the principle of non-contradiction’ (Marjara (1992) 255). But Satan thinks he was self-begotten in ‘puissance’ (v 864). Cp. i 137–9, and contrast ii 92–100, 142–54, Moloch’s and Belial’s doubts. The devils acknowledge fate’s ultimate power but, like the Stoics of PR iv 317, deny its identity with God’s will (vii 173). gods: As used by God the Father (iii 341), ‘angels’. But Satan uses it more ambiguously (v 70–81; ix 708–18), implying a pagan pantheon. Cp. v 853–64, pretending the angels are uncreated. downfall;] downfall. MS. empyreal substance: stuff of highest heaven. Contrast Raphael’s ‘intelligential substances’ (v 408); Satan implies a substance independent of continuing rationality. 121. Machiavelli’s alternatives, the lion or the fox; see B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 575 n 5, 577. 122. foe: The devils avoid God’s name; cp. i 95, 131, etc. On the polysyllable following an enjambed line-break, see B. Richards, TER, 7 (1996) 22. 124. tyranny: Obvious partiality, exposed by joy (i 123); cp. Beelzebub’s substitution of ‘perpetual’ for ‘eternal’ (i 131). Conceiving reality in his own image, Satan ‘makes of God a stronger Satan’ (Grossman (1987) 33). 126. Not religious despair, rather the natural feeling of a defeated ‘commander who is not afraid to weep before his troops’ (Empson (1961) 31). But resisting God seems necessarily to come in a religious category. racked: tortured. 127. compeer.] compeer: MS (probably in error – elsewhere full stop before direct speech is regular). 128–9. thronèd powers: exalted and powerful beings. Obliquely evoking

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130 Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds Fearless, endangered heaven’s perpetual king; And put to proof his high supremacy, Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate, Too well I see and rue the dire event, 135 That with sad overthrow and foul defeat Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty host In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far as gods and heavenly essences Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains 140 Invincible, and vigour soon returns, Though all our glory extinct, and happy state Here swallowed up in endless misery. But what if he our conqueror (whom I now Of force believe almighty, since no less 145 Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours) Have left us this our spirit and strength entire Strongly to suffer and support our pains, That we may so suffice his vengeful ire, thrones and powers – orders, like the seraphim, in Pseudo-Dionysius’ angelic hierarchies. Seraphim are one of the offices or degrees of angels in De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 316ff. Cp. PL i 539, 794; ii 750; iii 381, 667; v 277, 749, 804, 875, 896; vi 249, 579, 604, 841; vii 113, 198; and see i 324n, ii 512n. 131. endangered . . . king: Verging on paradox (Empson (1961) 38); contradictory (R. Bentley, in Milton (1974)). For the metaphysical perpetuity of kingship, consult Kantorowicz (1957) chs 6, 7. Cp. Boethius’ distinction, following Plato, between aeternus and perpetuus: ‘God is eternal, but the universe is continual’ (De Consolatione v, Prose 6). 133. Chief powers in hell’s ideology. These explanations fail: the loyalists cannot win by strength; and (as Raphael explains at v 534) God never exacts obedience by destiny or fate. God’s divinity and goodness do not occur to Beelzebub. Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 76 (‘calamities proceed from the anger of God: we cannot discharge them, upon nature, or fortune’); 87 (‘destiny or fortune’). fate,] fate; MS. 135. sad: ‘Animizing transference’ (Shumaker (1967) 73). But sad = calamitous (OED 5 f ). 141. extinct: ‘put out, as a flame, or anything that burns and shines’ (Hume (1695) ); cp. Ricks (1963) 61. 144. By almighty he means only ‘able to defeat any opposing combination in battle’: Empson (1961) 38. From the devils’ defeat Beelzebub concludes that heaven’s king is upheld by strength (133) rather than chance. See i 116–17n, ii 232–3n. Of force: perforce. 148. suffice: satisfy (OED 5).

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Or do him mightier service as his thralls 150 By right of war, whate’er his business be Here in the heart of hell to work in fire, Or do his errands in the gloomy deep; What can it then avail though yet we feel Strength undiminished, or eternal being 155 To undergo eternal punishment? Whereto with speedy words the arch-fiend replied. Fall’n cherub, to be weak is miserable Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, To do aught good never will be our task, 160 But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to his high will Whom we resist. If then his providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end, 165 And out of good still to find means of evil; 149–52. ‘Each devil in some respect has a better grasp of reality than Satan himself, and . . . abandons his best insight’ (Christopher (1982) 80f ). ‘Bad angels are kept for punishment. . . . But sometimes they are able to wander all over the earth, the air, and even heaven, to carry out God’s judgments’ (De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347f ). For the picturing of hell, see Frye (1978) 126 with refs. business: purpose (OED 10). 154 –5. ‘Existence that is eternal, merely to prolong punishment’. 156. the arch-fiend] the Fiend MS; corr. th’Archfiend 1667. 157. cherub: Cherubim were the second angelic order, excelling in knowledge; see i 128–9n; vi 102n. 158. Doing or suffering: Cp. ii 199. Echoing Livy ii 12 (Et facere et pati fortia Romanum est, Mutius Scaevola’s famous words as he voluntarily burnt his own hand); Satan does not lack fortitude. But cf. Horace, Odes III xxiv 43, where poverty impels people quidvis et facere et pati, abandoning the steep path of virtue. Satan is beginning to harden his heart; see i 572n; Broadbent (1960) 76–8. 159–68. Wilful disobedience makes Satan’s heroic virtue into the corresponding excess of vice; see J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 88–105. 159. Richard Bentley, in Milton (1974) thinks the rhythm faulty; but, as often, juxtaposing accents makes for strong emphasis (here on never). 159–62. Lacking the flexible pragmatism of true Machiavellianism (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 579). 163–5. Anticipating xii 470–8 and Adam’s wonder at the Fall turning to good. On the pattern of reversals, see Treip (1994) 161. ‘The inmost counsel of God was the Fortunate Fall of man’ (Empson (1961) 39). But M. had little time for the doctrine of the Fortunate Fall; see Danielson (1982) 209ff.

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Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined aim. But see the angry victor hath recalled His ministers of vengeance and pursuit Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid The fiery surge, that from the precipice Of heaven received us falling, and the thunder, Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and boundless deep. Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn, Or satiate fury yield it from our foe. Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend From off the tossing of these fiery waves, There rest, if any rest can harbour there,

167. if I fail not: unless I am mistaken (OED, Fail 11). 169–71. Messiah was ‘sole victor’ at the expulsion (vi 880), but may subsequently have sent loyal detachments to pursue the falling rebels, as the unreliable Chaos says (ii 997–8). Raphael mentions no immediate pursuit; but this could be modesty on his part, or oversight on M.’s. If meant, the discrepancy might reflect Satan’s denial that Christ won singlehanded. Or does M. imply that to encounter God’s power is to prove nothing, but only to be ‘thunderstruck’ (vi 858) – that memory is confused and the problem of belief unresolved? Cp. Empson (1961) 43 (‘the rebels are as if emerging from a drug, and remember nothing of the intervening period’ since the war). 172. laid: caused to subside. 173. The fiery] This fiery MS. 174–6. On M.’s vitalism here, see Marjara (1992) 213. 178. occasion,] occasion: MS. 180–6. Freud planned to use these verses as epigraph for The Interpretation of Dreams; seeing an allegory, according to Harold Bloom, of the return of the repressed ( Jarvis (1991) 158). 181–3. See i 62–4n. The damned Oedipus ‘sees’ the livid Styx with sightless eyes in Statius, Thebaid i 57 (umbrifero Styx livida fundo). 185. Alluding to Shakespeare, Richard II V i 5–6 (‘Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth / Have any resting’) – aptly; Earth was rebellious as mother of the Titans, the ‘Earth-born’ (i 198).

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And reassembling our afflicted powers, Consult how we may henceforth most offend Our enemy, our own loss how repair, How overcome this dire calamity, 190 What reinforcement we may gain from hope, If not what resolution from despair. Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides 195 Prone on the flood, extended long and large Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge As whom the fables name of monstrous size, Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, Briarios or Typhon, whom the den 186–7. afflicted: downcast. offend: harm; strike at, hurt (OED 6). 191. For Satan despair may be preferable to hope; cp. vi 787–8 (‘. . . from hope if not . . . from despair’). 193–5. Cp. Virgil’s sea-serpents swimming towards Laocoon: pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta iubaeque / sanguineae superant undas; pars cetera pontum / pone legit . . . ardentisque oculos suffecti (Aen. ii 206–8, 210). Anticipating Satan’s serpent disguise and metamorphosis (Burden (1967) 56). For periodic conversion of devils to serpents, see x 556n. On Satan’s form-shifting as thaumaturgy, see Jacobus (1976) 71. 196. Similarly Tityon’s giant body covers nine iugera, as he suffers the tortures of Tartarus (Aen. vi 596), and Spenser’s ‘old Dragon’ from Revelation ‘with his largenesse measured much land’ (FQ I xi 8). Is it coincidental that both prone and rood referred to the same screen between nave and chancel, hated by Protestant Reformers? Notices of excommunications were posted on the prone; see OED, Prone sb. 1. 197–200. A lead-in for the devils’ thaumaturgy at i 392–521; continuing the devil–Titan analogy (i 50–83n). Serpent-legged Briareos was a Titan, serpent-headed Typhon (Typhoeus) a Giant; although the races were often confused. Both were children of Earth, Typhoeus being born to Earth and Tartarus after the expulsion of the Titans (Hesiod, Theogony 821; Homer, Od. xi 305–20; Virgil, Georgics i 279–82; Aen. vi 582–4). Both fought against Jupiter and were confined beneath Aetna (i 232–7). Typhon was powerful enough to make the Olympians change shape to escape him (Ovid, Metam. v 325–31, 346–58). Natale Conti and others interpreted the Titan rebellion as allegorizing ‘the fury of ambition’ (Mythologiae (1979) vi 22). For the giant size of the devils, cp. the Mishnah Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer xx 162. At Nativity Ode 226 M. conflates the snaky Typhon with an Egyptian deity representing the cosmic principle of divisive evil (Plutarch, De Iside); in Areop the Egyptian Typhon typifies those who dismember truth (YP ii 549). den / By ancient Tarsus:

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200 By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream: Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff, 205 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays: So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay

Biblical Tarsus was capital of Cilicia, and in Pindar and Aeschylus Typhon’s habitat is a Cilician den (Pythian Odes i 17; Prometheus 351–4). 200–8. Leviathan: The monster of Job 41, called ‘crooked serpent’ in Isa. 27:1 (a prophecy of judgment), sometimes thought of as a whale. The anecdote (from the Physiologus) was moralized as Satan’s deceptiveness; see J. H. Pitman, MLN, 40 (1925) 439. Retold in medieval bestiaries and Renaissance encyclopedias, the story was pictured in Gesner (1558) IV xcviii and, from there, in Topsell (1607–8); and as an emblem (NUSQUAM TUTA FIDES) can be seen at Hardwick House. See Freeman (1948) 92; Millar (1958) 38f, Pl. 76; White (1960) 197f, Baltrulaitis (1960) 130f, Fig. 20A; Henkel (1967) 680–2; Alexander (1992) 45; Werman (1995) 109. Ricks (1963) 6 cites J. Whaler, PMLA, 46 (1931) 1050; Svendsen (1956) 33–5; and D. M. Hill, NQ, 201 (1956) 158. ‘Extraneous’ (T. S. Eliot, PBA, 33 (1947) 74). But readers of Fish (1971) may recognize a warning not to trust Satan’s falsely great appearance. As an allegoria, posing further questions. Are we to join the commentators in following St Gregory and taking Leviathan as the devil? Or Donne, Sermons ii 86 (Leviathan as power) or ii 108 (sin)? Or Hobbes, in following Estienne or Schindler, and taking Leviathan as the state, or the king? See J. M. Steadman, JHI, 28 (1967) 575f; Fallon (1991) 207. Does the pilot make a natural assumption? (See Davies (1991) 122.) Is the frail skiff human nature, or the Church? Is the anchor Law, or misplaced hope? Is the pilot ratio (moral choice)? See Goedde (1989) 39, 215 n 67. that sea-beast: On the distancing that, see Leonard (1990) 281f. 202. ocean stream: Homeric diction ({[ος |Tε>νοιο). 203. foam: Inadequate support for a whale (Bentley). Ricks (1963) 16 defends the synecdoche’s mysterious, sinister effect. Cp. i 226f. 204. night-foundered: sunk in night, benighted. Cp. Comus 483. 207. lee: shelter. 208. Invests: (1) wraps, covers; (2) beleaguers. 209–13. See De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 348f: the ‘proper place’ of the devils is ‘hell, which they cannot leave without permission’; yet God is blameless, even when he tempts the wicked to sin. Lewis (1942) 66 cites

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210 Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will And high permission of all-ruling heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs, That with reiterated crimes he might 215 Heap on himself damnation, while he sought Evil to others, and enraged might see How all his malice served but to bring forth Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown On man by him seduced, but on himself 220 Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driv’n backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled In billows, leave i’ th’ midst a horrid vale. 225 Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights, if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;

St Augustine on God as exploiter of evil wills, voluntatum malarum iustissimus ordinator. God’s leading Satan into evil shocks (Empson (1961) 42f ); but Satan, already damned, is being used for the good purpose of ensuring Adam and Eve’s freedom of choice. Now that Satan cannot interfere with creation, it is safe to release him. heaved: raised. Donne, Sermons ii 110, discusses Augustine’s interpretation of lifting the head as pride ‘set against God’. 211–20. The devils’ aim to bring evil out of good (i 161–8) cannot succeed against providence (Steadman (1976) 55f ). 217–20. Cp. i 163–5; xii 470–8; De Doctrina i 8, YP vi 332f (‘The will being already in a state of perversion, he [God] influences it in such a manner, that out of its own wickedness it either operates good for others, or punishment for itself’). 221–4. For the iconography, see Frye (1978) 83, and add Beccafumi’s Siena Fall of the Rebel Angels. horrid: bristling (with spires). 226–7. incumbent: pressing with his weight. Cp. Spenser, FQ I xi 18, where the burden is similarly the old dragon. See Schaar (1982) 46. 229–30. fire;] fire, MS. hue,] hue; MS. Darbishire (1952–5) i 285 prefers the MS punctuation as putting the volcano simile ‘into relation with the whole phenomenon of the fiery liquid–solid land of Hell’, while the 1667 punctuation ‘relates it erroneously to the one aspect of colour’. But the complex reference of hue extended beyond colour to surface quality and texture.

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230 And such appeared in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Ætna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, 235 Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singèd bottom all involved With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblessed feet. Him followed his next mate, Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood 240 As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal power. Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost archangel, this the seat That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom 245 For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid

230–7. Continuing the allusion of 199; Typhon often symbolized the power of volcanoes: e.g. vi 195–8; Conti, Mythologiae vi 22. For the explanation of earthquakes and volcanoes as imprisoned winds swelling earth’s body, see Gabriel Harvey, in Variorum Spenser, Prose 449–59. Similar vitalism underlies the Etna of M.’s sources, Virgil, Aen. iii 571–7 (with viscera montis cp. entrails) and Ovid, Metam. xv 297–306, 340–55 (combustible material ‘containing the seeds of flame’). See Marjara (1992) 182, with examples from Aristotle to Boyle. Perhaps cp. Raban Maur’s interpretation of the ‘great mountain burning with fire’ in Rev. 8:8 as the devil (Migne cxi 365). For the volcano as an emblem of envy, see Henkel (1967) 65; Schaar (1982) 48. Cp. the dragon’s flames of ‘despight’ at FQ I xi 44. Some find symptoms of an ‘anal personality, both expulsive and retentive’ (Le Comte (1978) 76; J. T. Shawcross, in Lieb (1974) 295). 232–3. Pelorus: Cape Faro, the NE promontory of Sicily, near Etna. Cp. Virgil, Aen. iii 570f (the volcano’s uptorn entrails and the Giant Enceladus imprisoned beneath). For the geography, cp. Ger. Lib. iv 8. 235. Sublimed: converted directly into vapour by volcanic heat, to resolidify on cooling. 236. involved: wreathed. 239. Stygian flood: The ‘gulf ’ of i 52. Perhaps implying darkness, as in Elegia IV 95 (Stygiis . . . tenebris). 240–1. False, as i 210–20 shows. 244. change for: have instead of. 246. Giving the lie to his claims of total independence (i 96f, 253–5). On Satan’s Cartesianism, see Fallon (1991) 203f. sovereign: M.’s Italianate spelling, sovran, indicates a disyllable.

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What shall be right: furthest from him is best Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell happy fields 250 Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell Receive thy new possessor: one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself 255 Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than he Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free; the almighty hath not built 260 Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in hell: Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven. 251. ‘Satan addresses himself twice to one thing’ (Bentley). But cp. iv 76. 255. On Stoicism here, see Hughes (1965) 153ff; Schaar (1982) 229f. Heaven and hell were held states of mind by Amaury de Bene, a medieval heretic cited in M.’s time. Distinguished from Mephistopheles’ Ubiquism (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus 316) in D. C. Allen, MLN, 71 (1956) 325. Satan’s specious denial of ill effects from sin is inconsistent with his shock at Beelzebub’s changed appearance (i 84), and explicitly contradicted at iv 75ff (‘Which way I fly is hell’); see MacCaffrey (1959) 70f; B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 578 (Satan ‘wills’ what is already a fact). 257. all but less than: Vacillating between ‘all but equal to’ and ‘only less than’, and so betraying mental confusion. 258. To Satan, only power makes greater; cp. vi 820–3n; Hughes (1965) 190f; Schaar (1982) 228. 259. almighty: Sneering at the metaphysical sense (Empson (1961) 40). 262. ambition: striving for (Lat. ambitio). Not merely a mental state but an active effort (B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 200). Quint (1993) 276 compares Fletcher, Locusts (1627). 263. Almost proverbial; cp. or contrast Abdiel’s ‘Reign thou in hell thy kingdom, let me serve / In heaven God’ (vi 183f ); Ps. 84:10 (‘I had rather be a door keeper in the house of my God’); Homer, Od. xi 488 (‘better a living shepherd than king of the dead’); Aeschylus, Prometheus 965; Plutarch, Life of Julius Caesar xi 2 (‘rather be first here than second in Rome’); Salandra, Adamo Caduto (1647) ii 1 (a main source of the tyrant myth, according to M. Y. Hughes); Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (1633) vii 10 (‘In heaven they scorned to serve, so now in hell they reign’). In fact it is not Satan who reigns in hell, but Death (Frye (1978) 117). Cp. PL ii 698f.

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But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, 265 The associates and copartners of our loss, Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion, or once more With rallied arms to try what may be yet 270 Regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell? So Satan spake, and him Beëlzebub Thus answered. Leader of those armies bright, Which but the omnipotent none could have foiled, If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge 275 Of hope in fears and dangers, heard so oft In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge Of battle when it raged, in all assaults Their surest signal, they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lie 280 Grovelling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, As we erewhile, astounded and amazed, No wonder, fallen such a pernicious height. He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield 285 Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference 266. oblivious pool: The ‘forgetful lake’ of ii 74. Unlike the Lethe of ii 583–614 and of Hades – with which M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957) wrongly identifies it – this pool cannot expunge memory and woe. At ii 606–14 it tantalizes the devils with inability to drink – a torture they would be oblivious to, if they had drunk already. astonished: stunned; dismayed; stupefied. 268. mansion,] mansion; MS. Optimistically implying a temporary lodging. 276. edge: critical position; front line. Perhaps a muted Latinism (rendering the related acies); although OED’s Coverdale quotation shows the sense fully naturalized. Cp. vi 108. 281. amazed: stunned; stupefied; bewildered. The prostrate devils resemble the soldiers stunned by confrontation with Christ in manuscript illuminations (based, probably, on a sermon by Jean Gerson); see Alexander (1992) 143. 282. fallen . . . height: Ellipsis of preposition, as often. 284. Was moving: The continuative (for ‘started to move’) amplifies Satan’s haste. Cf. graphic uses of the imperfect in Latin and Greek. 285. Ethereal temper: tempered in celestial fire; cp. ii 139, 813. Ellipsis for ‘Ethereal in temper’ or ‘Of ethereal temper’. 286–91. Homer compares Achilles’ shield to the moon (Il. xix 373) in brightness, not size; but it, too, had a world on it, ‘the universal world’

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Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole, 290 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, 295 He walked with to support uneasy steps

(Chapman); see Blessington (1979) 10; Stevens (1985) 113; Kendrick (1986). And the shield of Spenser’s proud Radigund ‘shined wide, / As the faire Moone in her most full aspect’ (FQ V v 3). In Areop M. mentions visiting Galileo, the Tuscan artist (scientist, intellectual) who observed the moon with a telescope powerful enough to resolve surface features. The supererogatory details supply terrestrial counterparts to the lunar Rivers or mountains. Galileo described the moon’s mountainous surface in Siderius Nuncius (1610), and M.’s telescope lays evidential bases for the world of this ‘first modern cosmic poem’ (Nicolson (1956) 81). Galileo may represent ‘a culture . . . implicitly superior to . . . the military heroism’ of Satan (Broadbent (1960) 72). To Constantijn Huyghens, the telescope made man like a god; see Alpers (1983) 17. But J. M. Walker, MiltS, 26 (1990) 109–24 rejects any association of Galileo with Satan. Galileo was placed under house arrest by the Inquisition, in the Valdarno or Arno Valley, near Florence, overlooked by the hills of Fiesole; but whether M. visited him is in doubt; see YP ii 538n; Jarvis (1991); E. Chaney, in Cesare (1991) 113–46. For M.’s fascination with Galileo’s researches – reflected in iii 588–90 and v 261–3 – see G. McColley, PMLA, 52 (1937) 728–62. But cp. also PL v 263n. optic glass: telescope (not poetic diction). artist: R. Flannagan’s idea that M. used artist dyslogistically is refuted by Walker, op cit. 112, 121f: M. ‘canonized’ Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom. 292–4. Weapons as masts were common: e.g. Polyphemus’ club (Homer, Od. ix 322); Tancredi’s and Argante’s lances (Tasso, Ger. Lib. vi 40 and – Fairfax’s translation only – iii 17). Also suggesting the rude attribute of the lawless Wild Man; cp. Virgil, Aen. iii 659 (Polyphemus’ ‘lopped pine’); Spenser, FQ I vii 10 (proud Orgoglio’s ‘snaggy Oke’); Bernheimer (1952). A famous engraving of 1545 by Melchior Lorch shows the Pope as Satan-Antichrist with a roughly lopped tree (Cohn (1962) Pl. 2). equal: compare with. admiral: flagship. Ships’ masts were commonly made from Norwegian fir; and M. supported Andrew Sandelands’s scheme for using the fir-woods of Scotland for this purpose (Parker (1996) 426). On the European trade in masts, see Braudel (1982) 178.

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Over the burning marl, not like those steps On heaven’s azure, and the torrid clime Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire; Natheless he so endured, till on the beach 300 Of that inflamèd sea, he stood and called His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High overarched embower; or scattered sedge 305 Afloat, when the fierce winds Orion armed 296. marl: rich clay soil. Here a particularizing synonym for ‘ground’. In improvement schemes, marl was used to enrich soil; see Braudel (1982) 253f. Cp. FQ II xi 33, where A. C. Hamilton finds a suggestion of defilement; Schaar (1982) 38f. 297. azure,] azure; MS. 299. Natheless: Nevertheless. Perhaps archaic-poetic. 300–15. On the antimetabolic structure, see Crump (1975) 54f. 302–4. Cp. Isa. 34:4, ‘And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved . . . and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine.’ An age-old simile for numberless dead, with a copious critical literature: e.g. Homer, Il. vi 146; Virgil, Aen. vi 309–10 (‘multitudinous as the leaves of the forest that in the first frost of autumn fall away and drop’); Dante, Inf. iii 112–15. See C. A. Huttar, in Cesare (1991) 95–111; N. Harris, in ibid. 71–94, citing Claudian, Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica iv 216– 18); Boiardo; Alamanni; Trissino; J. C. Scaliger. M. adds concrete locality, again near Florence. Vallombrosa: Alluding to Ps. 23:4 (‘valley of the shadow of death’); Erasmus comments on the Hebrew ‘altissimam calignem, qualis est apud inferos’ (Harris, in Cesare (1991) 81). Mentioned in Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxii 36. If M. visited Vallombrosa he knew it was mostly shaded by pines; but leaves was used for ‘needles’ well into the eighteenth century (Frye (1978) 94). The metonymy (shades for woods) is a favourite with M.; see B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 205–8. On the aptness of ‘shades / High overarched’ to hell’s fiery vault, see Broadbent (1960) 86. For sins ‘as a roof, as a ceiling, as an arch’, see Donne, Sermons ii 97. MacCaffrey (1959) 124ff sees Satan’s legions as morally unfruitful and withering; Jarvis (1991) finds self-reflexive evocation of dead poets. E. Chaney, in Cesare (1991) 113–46, demolishes the legend of M.’s visit to Vallombrosa. On Vallombrosa as the site of a monastery whose order had been attacked for sloth, and which was associated with Peter Igneus’ ordeal by fire, see J. R. Manning, NQ, 237 (1992) 459f. 304–6. The acronychal rising of Orion’s belt anciently marked the season of storms; cp. Pliny, Nat. Hist. XVIII ccxxiii; Virgil, Aen. i 535; Riccioli, Almagesti Novi (1651) i 473. Pace Kendrick (1986) 142f, there is no astrology here, and little ambiguity; the simile depends on the

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Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 310 From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot wheels, so thick bestrewn Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He called so loud, that all the hollow deep 315 Of hell resounded. Princes, potentates,

biblical Orion’s usual symbolism of God’s power to raise tempests and execute judgment. See commentators on Job 9:9 and Amos 5:8; Riccioli, op. cit. i 408. A natural transition to judgment on the Egyptians (i 306–11). On Orion as a tyrant–giant like Nimrod and Satan, see Schaar (1982) 60– 3. sedge: In Heb., Red Sea is ‘Sea of Sedge’. armed: Cp. Virgil, Aen. iii 517 (armatumque auro . . . Oriona). vexed: tossed about. 306–11. Breaking his promise, the Pharaoh with his Memphian charioteers (‘Egyptian’ – a favourite word of Sylvester) pursued the Israelites out of Goshen and across the Red Sea. The Israelites passed safely; but the Egyptians’ chariot wheels were broken, and the engulfing sea cast their corpses on the shore (Exod. 14:25, 30). The Pharaoh shadows Satan (Raban Maur, Migne cxi 51); and the mythic tyrant Busiris was identified with the Pharaoh of Exod. 1: ‘Busiris . . . that king of Aegypt who so grievously oppressed the Israelites: and the author of that inhuman edict of drowning their male children’ (G. Sandys, on Ovid, Metam. ix 183 (1970) 321, citing Reinerus Reineccius). Calling the later Pharaoh of Exod. 14 Busiris was less usual; M. may have learned from the Chronicle of Carion, rewritten by Melanchthon, that ‘there were many kings with the same name, Busirises’ (D. C. Allen, MLN, 65 (1950) 11). Or perhaps M. conflates the two Pharaohs for dramatic effect – as again at xii 165–96. The similes’ paired vehicles change as the devils gradually arise from their stupor, from plants (leaves, sedge), through armies (carcasses, sentries), to multitudes (locusts, barbarians). The corresponding three targets of satire may be broadly identified as Roman Catholicism, tyranny, and paganism. As a symbol of baptism, the Red Sea prefigures ‘Satan’s second defeat’ (Schaar (1982) 65). See Steadman (1979) 185–212. coast: margin. 311. wheels,] wheels. MS, as commonly before similes. 313. amazement: consternation, stupefaction. 314–15. Cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax, iv 2: ‘Through wasteness wide it roared, and hollows vast’. deep] deeps MS (perhaps rightly). Cp. iv 76.

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Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost, If such astonishment as this can seize Eternal spirits: or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn To adore the conqueror? who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon His swift pursuers from heaven gates discern The advantage, and descending tread us down Thus drooping, or with linkèd thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf. Awake, arise, or be for ever fall’n. They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. As when the potent rod

316–17. ‘The flower of heaven no longer, if you are susceptible to such astonishment’. astonishment: mental prostration; cp. i 313n. 320. virtue: strength; courage. 322. Reminding the conspirators of their oath (ii 693). 324. seraph: See i 128–9n. Probably coinage from medieval Lat. angelology; previously English kept the Heb. plural inflection, ‘seraphim’. 328. Jupiter and Minerva used linked thunderbolts against the rebel Giants. 330. The unearned resurrection language (Eph. 5:14; Rev. 20:10) betrays Satan’s absurdity (Gallagher (1990) 3f ). 332. wing,] wing; MS. See i 311n. 335. Nor . . . not: Imitating Lat. neque non. 337. The unusual construction ‘obeyed to’ echoes Rom. 6:16 (sole occurrence in AV), where Satan’s followers are ‘servants . . . of sin unto death’. 338–44. Amram’s son: Moses, who with his rod brought a plague of locusts that ‘covered the . . . earth, so that the land was darkened’ (Exod. 10:12–15); cp. xii 185–8; Joel 2:4f (horsemen as locusts). Reflecting allegorizations of Exod. and Rev. 9:3 (e.g. Raban Maur, Migne cxi 257), which were familiar enough for Phineas Fletcher’s title Locustae. Cp. the insect schema for devils in Callot, Temptation of St Anthony (1617); Gombrich (1962)

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Of Amram’s son in Egypt’s evil day 340 Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile: So numberless were those bad angels seen 345 Hovering on wing under the cope of hell ’Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires; Till, as a signal giv’n, the uplifted spear Of their great sultan waving to direct Their course, in even balance down they light 350 On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain; A multitude, like which the populous north Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons Came like a deluge on the south, and spread 355 Beneath Gibralter to the Lybian sands.

68f; Frye (1978) 97; Schaar (1982) 69f (contexts suggesting association with false preachers and heretics, as with the darkness of heresy in Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 18, ix 66). In the complex travesty of Moses the devils imagine themselves pursued with hatred; see Stevens (1985) 96f, 116 (citing YP i 521, 614, and the locusts of Rev. 9:7); Lieb (1981) 274f. A difficult simile, like that similarly introduced at i 228–31, comparing things never seen (Achinstein (1994) 217). Lucifer has a rod in Isa. 14:5 (Geneva). See H. Marks, in Nyquist (1988) 221. warping: floating or turning through the air. 345. wing: Not biblical (Greene (1963) 379f; Frye (1978) 169ff ). cope: canopy. Cp. iv 992; vi 215. 351–5. The last of the similes in ascending degree, thaumaturgically raising the devils’ multitude to barbarian hordes. The sequence suggests increasing danger; in Prol V, barbarian hordes symbolize multifarious errors threatening truth. Particulars like the Rhine and the Danube may derive from the opening of Machiavelli’s Istorie Fiorentine. Cp. v 689n; Jer. 1:14; Habington, ‘Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam’ 25–32 (1948) 127 (‘Some Nation yet shut in / With hills of ice / May be let out to scourge his sin / ’Till they shall equal him in vice’). Combining northern savage barbarism with southern decadent tyranny (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 591). 352. frozen loins: ‘improper for populousness’ (Bentley). But the image is deliberately unnatural (MacCaffrey (1959) 129). For the north as the vagina gentium, cp. Fuller, Life of St Augustine, Holy State (1840) 231. But the N migrations are seen as beneficial in Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 vi (1989–) i 207: ‘A sound generation of strong and able men were sent amongst us, as those northern men usually are’.

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Forthwith from every squadron and each band The heads and leaders thither haste where stood Their great commander; godlike shapes and forms Excelling human, princely dignities, 360 And powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones; Though of their names in heavenly records now Be no memorial, blotted out and razed By their rebellion, from the books of life. Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 365 Got them new names, till wandering o’er the earth, Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man, By falsities and lies the greatest part Of mankind they corrupted to forsake God their creator, and the invisible 370 Glory of him, that made them, to transform Oft to the image of a brute, adorned With gay religions full of pomp and gold,

356. squadron: Cp. Abbott, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 179 (‘In squadrons ranged against the haughty elves’). 358. godlike: heroic. As often, heroic virtue being a reflection of the divine ( J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 95f ). On the relatively dignified, ‘rehabilitated’ devils of the Renaissance, see Frye (1978) 358f. 361–3. Cp. i 82n, v 658–9. books of life: Cp. Exod. 32:32–3; Rev. 3:5 (‘He that overcometh . . . I will not blot out his name out of the book of life’); Sims (1962) 13 (‘The Biblical overcomers of evil are given new names in heaven . . . while these fallen angels “got them new names” upon earth through . . . pagan idolatry’). Assuming an identification of pagan gods and fallen angels that went back at least to Augustine, Confessions I xvii (1992) 20. razed: From Exod. 32:32f (Geneva), in Moses’ prayer but not God’s reply; see H. Marks, in Nyquist (1988) 219f. 364–75. Cp. Hooker, Laws (1977) I iv 3 (‘These wicked spirits the heathens honoured instead of Gods, both generally under the name of dei inferi, gods infernal; and particularly, some in oracles, some in idols, some as household gods, some as nymphs’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 185f (‘the gentiles’ gods were devils’); A. W. Verity, in Milton (1910) 672–4; Seznec (1953) 252; Frye (1978) 70. The idea is biblical (e.g. 1 Cor. 10:20; Deut. 32:17 (‘They sacrificed unto devils’); but Platonic influence appears in its Augustinian version (City of God VII–X). 368–71. Rom. 1:23: the Gentiles ‘changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts’. 370. him,] him 1674. 372. religions: rites.

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paradise lost And devils to adore for deities: Then were they known to men by various names, And various idols through the heathen world. Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last, Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, At their great emperor’s 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 adored Among the nations round, and durst abide Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned Between the cherubim; yea, often placed Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, Abominations; and with cursèd things His holy rites, and solemn feasts profaned, And with their darkness durst affront his light. First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,

376. Echoing Virgil, Aen. xi 664 (Quem . . . primum, quem postremum), itself echoing Homer, Il. v 703. The list of heathen deities that follows (i 392–522) corresponds to Homer’s catalogue of Greek captains and ships (Il. ii 484–877). Cp. also Hesiod, Theogony, which M. regards as a satanic distortion (P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 125). then known: Prolepsis, anticipating names only later given to the fallen angels. 381–91. Introducing the first group (i 392–506), for whom there is biblical authority as gods of nations neighbouring Israel. Their proximity to Jehovah’s sanctuary shows special boldness. On the classification by evidential authority, see Sims (1962) 14; Thammuz-Adonis is prominent, on the strength of Ezek. 8:14. Between the cherubim: Formulaic in OT (2 Sam. 6:2; Isa. 37:16; etc.), but with fresh point here. Jehovah is thus throned, in that images of cherubim flank the ark in the tabernacle (Exod. 25:18–21). On the theomachia of the pagan deities against the holy, cp. i 43n; J. P. Rosenblatt, PQ, 54 (1975) 553–68; Lieb (1981) 274f. 383. seats] seats, MS. after] after, MS. 387–91. Apostate kings of Judah such as Manasseh followed ‘abominations [unclean practices] of the heathen’ and ‘built altars for all the host of heaven in . . . the house of the Lord’ (2 Kings 21:2–7). affront: confront; insult. 392–490. Satan calls twelve disciples, in travesty of Christ’s: Moloch, Chemos, Baalim, Ashtaroth, Astoreth–Astarte, Thammuz, Dagon,

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Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud 395 Their children’s cries unheard, that passed 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 400 Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove Rimmon, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Belial. Such schemes were current; cp. Counter-Reformation Christianized zodiacs; Agrippa’s Scalae; and Manilius’s rediscovered Twelve Olympian Guardians (Fowler (1964) 65, (1996) 78). 392–6. king: Translating Heb. Moloch, as at ii 43; vi 357. Moloch comes first as the ‘strongest and the fiercest’ (ii 44). Cp. Nativity Ode 205–10. passed through fire: Cp. 2 Kings 23:10 (‘that no man might make his son or daughter to pass through fire to Moloch’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 190 (‘bloody sacrifices of men to Saturn and Moloch, which are still in use amongst those barbarous Indians’); Sandys, Relation (1637) 186 (the idol was hollow, filled with fire; and ‘lest [the children’s] lamentable shrieks should sad the hearts of their parents, the priests of Molech did deaf their ears with the continual clang of trumpets and timbrels’); Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii 34. 397–9. Ostensibly magnifying Moloch’s empire, yet simultaneously pointing to his eventual defeat: Rabba, the Ammonite royal city, was captured by the repentant David (2 Sam. 12:26–31), and the Israelites also conquered Argob and Basan as far as the boundary river Arnon (Deut. 3:1–13). watery plain: From 2 Sam. 12:27. Basan: The LXX and Vulg. form; avoiding as usual the /sh/ sound. 399–403. Solomon’s wives drew him into idolatry (1 Kings 11:5–7); the ‘high places that were before Jerusalem . . . which Solomon . . . had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites’ were later destroyed by Josiah (i 418); cp. 2 Kings 23:13f. James I’s Solomon cult provoked the charge that he was punished through his son for whoring after the strange god of Catholicism. 403. opprobrious hill: The Mount of Olives, from Solomon’s idolatry called ‘mount of corruption’ (AV), mons corruptor or mons offensionis (Vulg.); cp. i 416, 443. Typology linked Solomon with both Adam and Christ; here his uxoriousness shadows Adam’s. Cp. vi 833–4n; ix 439–43n; xi 396–407n; xii 332–4n. Lieb (1981) associates Olivet with other ‘mounts of evil’ such as Niphates, Teneriff, Atlas. 403–5. To abolish sacrifice to Moloch, Josiah ‘defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom’ (2 Kings 23:10). Fuller explains

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The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence 405 And black Gehenna called, the type of hell. Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab’s sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Heronaim, Seon’s realm, beyond 410 The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool. Peor his other name, when he enticed Israel in Sittim on their march from Nile To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. 415 Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate; Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell.

Tophet as ‘Valley of the sons of Hinnom’, taking toph (‘drum’) as indicating Moloch’s ritual music (Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii 34). Gehenna: ‘Valley of Hinnom’; not OT, but in Matt. 10:28 a name for hell. As a place of sacrifice, the Valley of Hinnom (‘the Graveyard’) shadowed the ‘everlasting punishments afflicting sinners’ (St Jerome, Comm. on Matthew, Migne xxvi 68). The grove of Moloch, not biblical, may also come from Jerome. Before the grove was hewn down it was ‘most delightful’ and ‘a paradise’ (Sandys, Relation (1615) 186). 406. Chemos: following naturally, as grouped with Moloch in 1 Kings 11:7. obscene: ‘harsh accent’ (Bentley); but in M.’s time a usual pronunciation. 407–11. Mostly places named in Num. 32 as the Moabite inheritance Moses assigned to the tribes of Reuben and Gad; see Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) II i, map facing 61. Aroer: A town in the extreme N. Nebo: A southern town, near the Abarim mountains. Num. 21:25–30 rejoices at the Israelite capture of Hesebon (AV Heshbon), a Moabite city earlier taken by the Amorite king Seon or Sihon. Heshbon, Horonaim, ‘vine of Sibmah’, and Eleale all figure in Isaiah’s prophecy of Moab’s destruction (Isa. 15:5, 16:8f ). Heronaim] Horonaim MS; Errata; 1674. Asphaltic Pool: The Dead Sea or lacus Asphaltites, named from its bituminous scum; the SW Moabite boundary. 412–14. Num. 25:1–3; Hos. 9:10. woe: The plague that killed 24,000 (Num. 25:9). 415–17. hill of scandal: See i 399–403n. orgies: rites. Called lustful on the authority of Num. 25:1. Jerome identifies the Moabite Chemosh or Baal-Peor with the Roman Priapus (Migne xxv 896). 418. Josiah: A favourite with the Reformers for his iconoclasm; see Broadbent (1960) 88; Gilman (1986).

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With these came they, who from the bordering flood 420 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 425 And uncompounded is their essence pure, Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 430 Can execute their airy purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfil. For those the race of Israel oft forsook 419–21. An area stretching from NE Syria to the SW limit of Canaan, the river Besor. The Euphrates is old, as a river of Paradise (Gen. 2:14). 421–3. Baal: ‘Baal. That is, a lord, being the name general for most idols’ (Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii 23). Phoenician and Canaanite sun-gods were collectively Baalim, with local cults distinguished by suffix, as Baal-Peor. Similarly, variants of the moon goddess Ashtoreth were Ashtaroth. ‘Milton proves his control over the devils by sophisticated anthropological manipulation, and invites us to stand back from them without necessity of belief ’ (Broadbent (1960) 88). Militant Protestants sometimes called Catholic ceremonies ‘processions of Baal’ (Deursen (1991) 38). 423–31. This adaptability (recalling that of Machiavelli’s uomini virtuosi ) is lost when the devils are imprisoned in symbolic forms (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 590). Cp. vi 328–34n, 344–53. Burton gathers authorities for the corporeality of spirits: ‘that they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves’, most angelologists ‘credibly believe’ (Anat. of Mel. I ii I ii). On sources, see McColley (1940); West (1955) showing dependence on Michael Psellus. Satan assumes numerous different forms, including cherub (iii 636), cormorant (iv 196), lion (iv 402), tiger (iv 403), toad (iv 800), and serpent; for the occultism of his thaumaturgies, see Jacobus (1976) 71. In the Renaissance shape-changing was often evil: e.g. Spenser’s Archimago (FQ I ii 10). The final metamorphosis of the devils (x 507–47) is part of a punitive cyclic pattern (x 575f ); but the loyal Raphael also changes shape, at v 272. Dilated: expanded. 423–4: ‘Sexual otherness within the self-same’ (Belsey (1988) 66). M.’s spirits are free of sexism. For the Midrashic background, see Werman (1995) 171. 425. pure,] pure; MS. 432. those] these MS.

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Their living strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar, bowing lowly down 435 To bestial gods; for which their heads as low Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear Of despicable foes. With these in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phœnicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; 440 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, 445 Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer’s day,

433. 1 Sam. 15:29, ‘Strength of Israel’, formulaic periphrasis for Jehovah. 438–41. The image of Astoreth or Astarte, the Sidonian (Phoenician) moon-goddess and Venus, was ‘the statue of a woman, having on her own head the head of a bull, where the horns erected resembled the crescent moon’ (Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii 22, drawing on Selden, De Dis Syriis (1617) ii 2). Cp. Nativity Ode 200, ‘mooned Ashtaroth’. queen of heaven: Cp. Comus 1002 (‘Assyrian queen’); Jer. 44:17–19. Not accidentally, a title applied to the Virgin Mary. 442–6. See 399 – 403n. large: 1 Kings 4:29, ‘God gave Solomon . . . largeness of heart’ (capaciousness of mind). 445–6. fair . . . fell . . . foul: Phonic mime, regressing from front to back vowels (Madsen (1968) 150). 446. Thammuz follows aptly, as Astarte’s lover (Cicero, De Natura Deorum iii 23). The identification with Adonis depended on Jerome, Comm. on Ezek. 8:14: ‘he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord’s house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz’. The Syrian festival of Tammuz, after the summer solstice, mourned the young god killed by a boar, as a symbol of the death of vegetation from the sun’s withdrawal southward; cp. Macrobius, Saturnalia i 21; Selden, De Dis Syriis (1617) ii 11. The river Adonis’s seasonal discolouration with red mud renewed the god’s wound (Conti, Mythologiae v 26). Literary accounts like Fuller’s and Sandys’s popularized Tammuz: ‘the poets are almost hoarse with singing the sad elegies . . .’ (Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii). Cp. Nativity Ode 204; Mans 11.

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450 While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale Infected Sion’s daughters with like heat, Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 455 Ezekiel saw, when by the vision led His eye surveyed the dark idolatries Of alienated Judah. Next came one Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopped off 460 In his own temple, on the groundsel edge, Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers: Dagon his name, Sea Monster, upward man And downward fish: yet had his temple high Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast 465 Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, And Accaron and Gaza’s frontier bounds. Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 470 He also against the house of God was bold: A leper once he lost and gained a king, 450. Bentley objects to his as causing confusion with the person; but his = ‘its’ was normal usage. 457–63. When the Philistines put the captured ark of the Lord into the temple of Dagon, ‘on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face . . . and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold’ (1 Sam. 5:4). groundsel: threshold. Sea Monster: Taking the root meaning of Dagon as ‘fish’; it is now thought to be ‘grain’. Cp. Selden, De Dis Syriis (1617) ii 3; Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) II x 32 (‘Upwards man-like he ascended, / Downwards like a fish he ended’). 464–6. Azotus . . . Ascalon . . . Accaron: Vulg. forms (av Ashdod, Askelon, Ekron). Philistine cities whose destruction is prophesied in Zeph. 2:4. Azotus,] Azotus; MS. At Azotus (in the desert), Dagon was a fish out of water (Leonard (1990) 72). 467–71. When Elisha said washing in the Jordan could cure Naaman’s leprosy, the Syrian was angry (2 Kings 5:12, ‘Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?’) but humbled himself and was cured, thus typefying the regenerate sinner (Tuve (1952) 198). Pharphar: The LXX and Vulg. form. 471–6. After engineering the Assyrian overthrow of Damascus, the sottish (foolish) King Ahaz worshipped Rimmon and had a Syrian altar put in the Temple (2 Kings 16:9–17).

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paradise lost 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 vanquished. After these appeared A crew who under names of old renown, Osiris, Isis, Orus and their train With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape The infection when their borrowed gold composed The calf in Oreb: and the rebel king Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, Likening his maker to the grazèd ox, Jehovah, who in one night when he passed From Egypt marching, equalled 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 smoked; yet who more oft than he

476–506. Gods of weaker scriptural authority (Sims (1962) 14). 477–82. Cp. the flight of ‘brutish gods of Nile’ (Nativity Ode 211–28). wandering gods: Alluding to Ovid, Metam. v 319–31, where the Olympian gods flee from Typhoeus into Egypt and hide in the bestial forms later worshipped there. abused: deceived. 482–4. Best known of the Israelite apostasies was worship of ‘a calf in Horeb’ (Ps. 106:19) made by Aaron while Moses was receiving the Law (Exod. 32). Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1869) IV vii 20 identifies the calf as the golden ox image of Egyptian Apis. 484–5. rebel king: Jeroboam, who led the revolt against Rehoboam, Solomon’s successor, doubled Aaron’s sin by making ‘two calves of gold’, for Bethel and for Dan (1 Kings 12:28f ). 486. Ps. 106:20, ‘Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass’. 488–9. At the Passover, Jehovah smote all Egyptian firstborn, ‘both man and beast’ (Exod. 12:12). Calves could be described as bleating, although the word also expresses contempt. 490–3. last: As ‘timorous and slothful’ (ii 117) and lacking a local cult. Heb. Belial is an abstract noun (‘worthlessness’); but in 2 Cor. 6:15 Βελ6αS is a name for Satan: cp. the proverbial ‘sons of Belial’. Burton makes Belial prince of the third order of devils, ‘inventors of all mischief ’ (Anat. of Mel. I ii 1 ii). Cp. PR ii 150–224, where Belial is lustful. B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 35 thinks Belial ‘the cavalier type in Puritan eyes

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In temples and at altars, when the priest 495 Turns atheist, as did Ely’s sons, who filled 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, 500 And injury and outrage: and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night In Gibeah, when the hospitable door 505 Exposed a matron to avoid worse rape. These were the prime in order and in might; The rest were long to tell, though far renowned, – suave, dilettante, dissolute and lacking in courage’. See Leonard (1990) 72f. 494–6. For the impiety and fornication of Ely’s sons see 1 Sam. 2:12–24. Corns (1994) 140f finds anticlericalism here; noting the present tense. M. calls the Presbyterians sons of Eli at YP vii 296. 497–8. Cp. the satiric touch in PR ii 183. 498–502. flown: swollen, in flood; figuratively of people. Cp. James Ussher, Annals (1658) vi 250, ‘Being somewhat high flown with wine’. 504–5. Following the revision in 1674, based on Judges 19. MS and 1667 (based on Gen. 19) read: In Gibeah, when hospitable doors / Yielded their matrons to prevent [avoid MS] worse rape. The ‘brilliant metonymy’ in door exonerates the Ephraimite sojourner from blame in surrendering his Levite guest’s concubine (not matron) to the Benjamite sons of Belial to prevent homosexual rape (Gallagher (1990) 5). The woman was raped to death, an enormity introduced as an indisputable instance of demonic evil. Lot is ‘accomplice in . . . a capital crime’ (Robert Alter); see Schwartz (1990) 151f. M.’s revision avoids any palliation of the crime; matron conspicuously departing from AV and Vulg. ‘concubine’; see Lieb (1994) chs 5, 6, contrasting the account in Joseph Hall. Cp. M.’s draft tragedy on ‘Cupid’s Funeral Pile: Burning Sodom’: ‘the course of the city each evening every one with mistress, or Ganymed, gitterning along the streets, or solacing on the banks of Jordan, or down the stream’ (Trin. MS, YP viii 558f, 592). 506–7. See i 381–7n. 507–21. More perfunctorily listed gods with little or no scriptural authority. For the identification of pagan gods and fallen angels, see i 361–3n. The Ionian (Greek) people were thought the issue of Javan son of Japhet son of Noah, and divided according to genealogy, on the strength of Gen. 10:1–5; Isa. 66:19. Cp. iv 717; SA 715–16. Medieval maps, and maps in the Nuremberg Chronicle, show the races as descending from

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The Ionian gods, of Javan’s issue held Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth 510 Their boasted parents; Titan Heaven’s first born With his enormous brood, and birthright seized By younger Saturn, he from mightier Jove His own and Rhea’s son like measure found; So Jove usurping reigned: these first in Creet 515 And Ida known, thence on the snowy top Of cold Olympus ruled 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 520 Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, And o’er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. All these and more came flocking; but with looks Downcast and damp, yet such wherein appeared Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief the sons of Noah (Grafton (1992) 20, 68). On early theories of European origins, see S. Piggott, FMR, 49 (1991) 40; Piggott (1989). Hesiod and others make Heaven (Uranus, Coelus) and Earth (Ge, Terra) parents of Saturn and other Titans. The eldest Titan’s war against Saturn (Kronos) had the authority of the early Christian poet Lactantius. Saturn was rescued by his son Jove, who later banished him, so that he Fled over Adria (the Adriatic). See P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 121–48. first born: Falsified at iii 1; Light is earlier. 511. enormous: (1) huge; (2) outside the law. See MacCaffrey (1959) 153. 514–15. Cp. Il Penseroso 29. On Mt Ida, in Creet (Crete), Jupiter was born and secretly reared. 515–16. Cp. iv 938–40; the Homeric formula ‘snow-capped Olympus’ (Il. i 420, xviii 615); and Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 18f. middle air: the cold vaporous media regio, second of the Renaissance atmosphere’s three layers. See A.W.Verity, in Milton (1910) 674–6; Svendsen (1956) 88. Their highest heaven is not high enough for true gods (P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 128f ). 517. Delphian cliff: Cp. Nativity Ode 178 (‘steep of Delphos’). Delphi was the site of Apollo’s Pythian oracle, and of cults of Ge, Poseidon, and Artemis. 518. The oracle of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus was thought the most ancient in Greece. 519–21. Doric land: Greece. Hesperian fields: Italy. Celtic: French. utmost isles: Britain, perhaps together with Ireland and Iceland. Cp. Virgil, Georgics i 30 (ultima Thule). Without their absolute ruler the devils are ineffectual and cacophanous (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 591). 523. damp: depressed; stupefied. Cp. xi 293.

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525 Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost In loss itself; which on his countenance cast Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore Semblance of worth not substance, gently raised 530 Their fainted courage, and dispelled their fears. Then straight commands that at the warlike sound Of trumpets loud and clarions be upreared His mighty standard; that proud honour claimed Azazel as his right, a cherub tall: 535 Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled The imperial ensign, which full high advanced Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind With gems and golden lustre rich imblazed, Seraphic arms and trophies: all the while 540 Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host upsent 528. recollecting: recovering (OED v.1 4). Ironic, in view of the common devotional use – ‘concentrating the mind in mystical contemplation’ (OED v.2 4). 529. Authorial intervention, occasioned by Satan’s apparent nobility and tenderness. 530. fainted] fainting 1674. ‘The context supports fainted: the collapse is over, their courage is not fainting, it begins to revive’ (H. Darbishire, in Milton (1952–5) i 288). 531–53. On the ‘audio-visual distribution of images’, see Eisenstein (1957) 58f. Cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 2f, 9f. 532. clarions: shrill, narrow-tubed trumpets. 533–4. Azazel: A chief devil in the apocalyptic Book of Enoch, chs viii, x, xiii, liv, lv, and lix; see Charles (1913) ii 192–4, 196, 220–1, 233. To heal the earth he is bound and thrown into the same wilderness with the scapegoat; cp. Enoch x 4–8; Lev. 16, where azazel is associated with the scapegoat. Enoch was accessible in Vorstius’ Lat. translation (Werman (1995) 71). Besides, a cabbalistic tradition of Azazel as one of Satan’s four standard-bearers was transmitted via Reuchlin, Archangelus of Borgo Nuovo, and Fludd; see West (1955) 155f, who avoids inferring M.’s interest in cabbalism. 537. meteor: comet. Apt visually, and as a dire omen. 538. imblazed: adorned with heraldic devices. 539. Contrast heaven’s ‘ensigns high advanced’, emblazoned with ‘holy memorials, acts of zeal and love’ (v 593); see Rajan (1962) 47. Roman triumphal processions displaying trophies were revived in Renaissance processions; see Weisbach (1919); Fowler (1970a); McGowan (1976–); S. Davies, ÉA, 30 (1981) 389. 541. upsent: sent or discharged upwards (first OED instance).

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A shout that tore hell’s concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen 545 Ten thousand banners rise into the air With orient colours waving: with them rose A forest huge of spears: and thronging helms Appeared, and serried shields in thick array Of depth immeasurable: anon they move 550 In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised To height of noblest temper heroes old Arming to battle, and instead of rage Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved 555 With dread of death to flight or foul retreat, Nor wanting power to mitigate and swage, With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and chase 542. concave: vault (usually of the vault of heaven). 543. reign: realm (OED 2). Chaos and Night rule the unformed matter between heaven and hell (ii 894–909, 959–70). 546. orient: brilliant, resplendent; rising. The vertical movement (raised i 529, upreared 532, high advanced 536, upsent 541, rise 545, rose 546, raised 551) belongs to a larger pattern of ascents and falls; see Allen (1954) 108. 548. serried: Cp. Homer, Il. xiii 130ff (the Achaeans bracing for a Trojan attack); Schaar (1982) 92. 550. phalanx: square battle formation. Common; cp. the deceptive, hollow cube at vi 552–5, and contrast the loyal ‘quadrate’ at vi 62. See Church Government i 6, YP i 789: ‘as those smaller squares in battle unite in one great cube, the main phalanx, an emblem of truth and steadfastness’. For the virtuous quadrate and the cube of stable virtue, see Bocchi, Quaestiones (1555) Embl. xlviii; Tervarent (1958) 136f; Fowler (1964) App. 1; Watson (1993) 207 n 134. 550–61. Contrast the ‘instrumental harmony that breathed / Heroic ardour’ into the loyalists (vi 65–6). The devils use the best mode (mood ) for calm firmness – the Doric, as against the soft and indolent Ionian and Lydian modes; see Plato, Republic iii 10, 398E–9A; Areop, YP ii 523 (‘grave and Doric’ music); Lycidas 189; Of Education, YP ii 410–11 (music’s assuaging effect). 551–2. Evocations of noble courage ‘consciously designed to suggest the idea of heroic virtue’ ( J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 91). The Spartans went into battle to the sound of flutes, whereas the Romans used trumpets. 555. retreat,] retreat; MS. 556. swage: assuage.

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Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they Breathing united force with fixèd thought Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed Their painful steps o’er the burnt soil; and now Advanced in view they stand, a horrid front Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise Of warriors old with ordered spear and shield, Awaiting what command their mighty chief Had to impose: he through the armèd files Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse The whole battalion views; their order due, Their visages and stature as of gods, Their number last he sums. And now his heart Distends with pride, and hardening in his strength Glories: for never since created man, Met such embodied force, as named with these Could merit more than that small infantry Warred on by cranes: though all the Giant brood

560 –1. Loyal angels also ‘moved on / In silence’ (vi 64); cp. Homer, Il. iii 8: ‘The Achaians marched in silence breathing courage’. 563. horrid: bristling (with spears). Poetic Latinism; cf. Spenser, FQ I vii 31; Burton, Anat. of Melan. (1621) I ii 3 xiv; Evelyn, 27 June 1654 (1955) iii 103. front: foremost rank of a battalion; cp. vi 105; Shakespeare, Coriol. I vi 8. 565. ordered: with spears erect (military) (Richardson). 568. Not literal realism; Satan is no more experienced than the others: all have seen three days’ action. traverse: across. 569. views;] MS; 1667 some copies; views, 1667 most copies; 1674. battalion: main body of an army. Quint (1993) 276 compares Satan’s muster in Fletcher, The Locusts (1627) i 18–20. 572. hardening of the heart was a stage of reprobation; see De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 193. Showing the inflexibility condemned by Machiavelli (B. Reibling, RQ, 49 (1996) 577). 573. ‘Since man was created’ (Lat. construction). 574. embodied: united into one body. 575. small infantry: Pygmies (i 780), whose diminutiveness was exaggerated. From Homer’s simile (Il. iii 5) in the same passage used for i 561. Addison suspected a pun in infantry, perhaps justly (Spectator No. 297 (1965) 62). Cp. Jonson, Time Vindicated 176ff (‘Time whipt, for terror to the Infantery’). 576–90. Amplifying the angels’ stature, M. dismisses only to mention armies previously thought heroic; evoking the ‘matter of Rome’, the ‘matter of Britain’, the ‘matter of France’, and other pygmy arguments. 576–7. See i 197–200n, 713–17n. The Giants’ war with the Olympian

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Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds 580 In fable or romance of Uther’s son Begirt with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 585 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond gods was put on the Phlegraean plains in Ovid, Metam. x 151; Statius, Thebaid vi 35. Combat began at Phlegra in Macedonia (Pallene) and resumed at Phlegra in Italy, near Cumae. 577–9. Principal epic and tragic cycles featured the sieges of Thebes and of Ilium (Troy); cp. Il Penseroso 99–100. Auxiliar (allied) gods assisted mortal protégés in the battles of Homer’s Iliad, Statius’s Thebaid, etc. 579–87. ‘Romantic trash’ (Bentley). K. Williams finds a ‘brooding elegiac vision’ (Wittreich (1975b) 48); Lieb (1981) 304 sees Satan as a ‘mock crusader’; Stavely (1987) 78 links Satan’s heroism with chivalric warfare and Puritanism. 580–1. Uther’s son: King Arthur. For M.’s projected Arthurian epic, see Mans 81; Dam 165–70; Hanford (1947) 179–81; Parker (1968) Index, Arthur; Shawcross (1993) Index, Arthuriad. In PR ii 359–61 such fables are only a temptation. Armoric: from Brittany. 582. Ariostan diction; e.g. Orl. Fur. xviii 56 (Non men de le ’nfedel le battezzate). 583. Aspramont: A Calabrian mountain, site of a victory by Charlemagne over the Saracens, celebrated e.g. in Andrea da Barberino’s popular romance Aspramonte and in Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xvii 14. Montalban: Rinaldo’s castle in Luigi Pulci, Morgante Maggiore, Boiardo, Orl. Innam., and Ariosto, Orl. Fur. – all romances about chivalric wars between Christians and Saracens. 584. Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xvii describes baptized and infidel jousting at Damasco (Damascus). The splendid Byzantine city Trebizond was known for tournaments, from Bessarion’s Encomion Trapezountos (fifteenth century) and Giovanni Ambrosio Marini’s popular Caloandro Fedele (1640). Marocco: Not Morocco, but the Sultanate of Marrakech; cp. xi 404. 585. In Boiardo, Orl. Innam. ii, Saracens gather at Bizerta in Tunis to invade Spain. 586–7. M. would know late versions of the Charlemagne legend like Barberino’s Reali di Francia (c.1400). Charlemagne’s rearguard, led by Roland, one of the twelve peers or paladins, was massacred at Roncesvalles, about 40 miles from Fontarabbia (mod. Fuenterrabia).

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Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed Their dread commander: he above the rest 590 In shape and gesture proudly eminent Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured: as when the sun new ris’n 595 Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 600 Above them all the archangel: but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride

The Spanish historian Juan de Mariana put the defeat at Fuenterrabia; but there was no version in which Charlemagne fell. The reference may be more recent. After the August 1659 royalist rising, Charles II was rumoured to have gone to Fuenterrabia to plot with the French and Spanish. M. contrasts this dubious diplomacy with the greater Charles’s honest chivalry. See Clarendon State Papers lxv 148v; Everett (1986) 77–9; Leonard (1990) 75f. 588. observed: honoured. 591. Travesty of the biblical ‘tower of strength’, symbol of Christ. Cp. Shakespeare, Richard III V iii 12; Cope (1962) 39, 98; Schaar (1982) 200. Self-delusion, undercut by Isa. 2:12, 15 (Stevens (1985) 125). Perhaps the tower also suggests Babel. Cp. iv 30; x 528–32. Satan’s larger size than the other devils was a medieval convention (Frye (1978) 89). Cp. also Turnus’ eminence, Aen. vii 783f (M. Y. Hughes, in MacLure (1964) 137f ). 596–9. Double-edged: the ominous solar eclipse presages doom for creation in general and the sun king Charles in particular. According to Toland, Charles II’s Licenser for the Press regarded these lines as subversive; see Darbishire, in Milton (1931) p. x; Leonard (1990) 113f, citing Edward Chamberlayne. On the significance of such omens in political propaganda, see Geneva (1996). J. B. Broadbent, ELH, 21 (1954) 166f compares the shorn Samson. See Svendsen (1956) 69f; MacCaffrey (1959) 173f; D. Griffin, MiltS, 9 (1976), seeing allusion to Christ’s defeat of Satan. Cp. xi 183f, 203–7, the solar eclipse as an early corruption of nature. 600–2. On the literal status of the description, see Damrosch (1985) 77. 603. courage] valour MS. Revision gets in another hard consonant (Darbishire). considerate: deliberate.

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Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast 605 Signs of remorse and passion to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather (Far other once beheld in bliss) condemned For ever now to have their lot in pain, Millions of spirits for his fault amerced 610 Of heaven, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood, Their glory withered. As when heaven’s fire Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singèd top their stately growth though bare 615 Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half enclose him round With all his peers: attention held them mute. Thrice he assayed, and thrice in spite of scorn, 620 Tears such as angels weep, burst forth: at last Words interwove with sighs found out their way. O myriads of immortal spirits, O powers Matchless, but with the almighty, and that strife Was not inglorious, though the event was dire, 625 As this place testifies, and this dire change Hateful to utter: but what power of mind 605. Bentley objects to passion (rage, etc.) as incompatible with remorse. But Satan’s mind is a seat of contraries. 609–10. amerced / Of heaven: (1) deprived of heaven; (2) punished by God. 611. yet . . . stood: Take with ‘behold’ (605) – ‘to behold how they still stood’. 620. Recalling the false tears of proud Xerxes at the thought that all the vast army he was reviewing would some day die; see x 307–11n. As Seneca, De Brevitate i 16 observes, Xerxes caused the deaths himself. Implying corporeal angels, capable of weeping (Peter (1960) ); a strong line with shock effect. Contrast Marvell, ‘Eyes and Tears’ 48 (‘only human eyes can weep’). There was an iconographical tradition of angels mourning; see Réau (1956) II ii 491; Schiller (1971–) ii Pls. 600, 666, 708, etc. But it would hardly extend to devils (Frye (1978) 105). D. Davie, in Kermode (1960) 81f and B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) discuss whether the verse is sublime or matter-of-fact. Lewalski (1985) 57 compares Aeneas’ and Agamemnon’s tears. 623–4. almighty: Satan ‘cannot intend the metaphysical sense’, because he congratulates his followers on ‘having stood against him for a time’ (Empson (1961) 41). This too is a lie: there was no strife at all with Messiah (vi 423–4n). event: result. 626. ‘That power is reason’ (Fallon (1991) 218).

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Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth Of knowledge past or present, could have feared, How such united force of gods, how such As stood like these, could ever know repulse? For who can yet believe, though after loss, That all these puissant legions, whose exíle Hath emptied heaven, shall fail to re-ascend Self-raised, and repossess their native seat? For me be witness all the host of heaven, If counsels different, or danger shunned By me, have lost our hopes. But he who reigns Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute, Consent or custom, and his regal state Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed, Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. Henceforth his might we know, and know our own So as not either to provoke, or dread New war, provoked; our better part remains To work in close design, by fraud or guile What force effected not: that he no less At length from us may find, who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe. Space may produce new worlds; whereof so rife

628. feared,] feared MS. 630. stood: A thematic word, meaning, to the devils, ‘resisted’; to others, ‘withstood temptation’. Cp. iii 99; v 522n, 540. 632–3. Exaggeration; see ii 692n. 634. seat?] seat MS; seat. 1667. 635. me] me, MS; 1667. 636. different: differing. See B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 205. F. M. Stewart, NQ, 166 (1934) 79 argues for ‘deferring’. 637–49. In his carnal imagination, Satan takes the ‘monarchal metaphor of divinity’ literally (Stevens (1985) 101). Cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 1, 9–17. he who reigns: Periphrasis to avoid naming God. 641–2. Reducing all to power politics. In Empson’s arraignment of God, a principal charge is his deceiving Satan into thinking a rebellion might succeed (Empson (1961) 47). An earlier show of strength would doubtless have been harassment. 646. close: secret. 650. ‘The first hint . . . of Satan’s doubt whether God can really create anything’; see Empson (1961) 48 assuming a novelistic continuity of action. Space: Satan’s neologism; OED’s first instance in this astronomical sense (Leonard (1990) 184). On the background of academic debate, see A. K. Nardo, MiltS, 26 (1990) 209–41.

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paradise lost There went a fame in heaven that he ere long Intended to create, and therein plant A generation, whom his choice regard Should favour equal to the sons of heaven: Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere: For this infernal pit shall never hold Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts Full counsel must mature: peace is despaired, For who can think submission? War then, war Open or understood must be resolved. He spake: and to confirm his words, out flew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined hell; highly they raged Against the highest, and fierce with graspèd arms Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven. There stood a hill not far whose grisly top

651. heaven] heaven, MS. For the fame or rumour, cp. ii 345–53, 830–5; x 481–2; Dryden, Aeneis i 27f (where Juno ‘heard an ancient rumour . . . / (Long cited by the people of the sky)’ that Rome would displace Carthage). By a recurrent analogy, Carthage is to the devils as Rome is to mankind. 656. eruption] eruption; MS. eruption: (1) break-out (Latinism); (2) erupting of the Titan volcano (i 507–21, etc.). See J. D. Law, MiltS, 16 (1982) 35–60. 661–2. Reverting, after a tragic beginning, to ‘extraordinary epical crudity’ (Broadbent (1960) 73f ). Bentley objects to understood, missing the older sense of ‘not openly declared’, supplied by Pearce (Leonard (1990) 190). 663–6. The devils’ multitude is evil (Corns (1994) 43f ). from the thighs: Imitating παS= µηSοs (Homer, Il. i 190); see Schaar (1982) 95. 666–7. With the play on highly (proudly) and highest, cp. i 642 (‘tempted our attempt’). Sardonic wit suiting Restoration taste, but not always that of later editors: e.g. Empson (1950) 157–9. Leonard (1990) ch. 3 treats such wordplay as Satan’s swerving away from prelapsarian language. 669. Bentley refuses vault, since heaven, unlike hell, has none. But vault = ‘heaven’ was common. 670. hill: One of Satan’s high places, travesties of the cosmic mount; cp. i 713, 717–21, etc. (Lieb (1981) 155). 670–5. Cp. the mining of materials of war at vi 507–15. 670–90. Displacing the devilish physiognomy to the landscape, which is

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Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic ore, The work of sulphur. Thither winged with speed 675 A numerous brígade hastened. As when bands Of pioneers with spade and pickaxe armed Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 680 From heaven, for even in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific: by him first a body of death – all scurf, belching, ransacked womb, rifled bowels, entrails, spacious wound, and ribs (Broadbent (1960) 73, 84). Ignoring the medieval association of mercury and sulphur in the generation of metals (which persisted in the passive tria prima of Paracelsus), and following instead the more recent idea of generation and growth through a vital principle of ‘aerial nitre’, often linked with sulphur. Cp. vi 474–81; Marjara (1992) 169–73. 674. sulphur: From its active nature, thought father of metals; see Caron (1961) 161; Marjara (1992) 172–7. 678. Mammon: In Matt. 6:24 and Luke 16:13 an abstract noun (‘wealth’), but in John 12:31 ‘prince of this world’. Associated with Plutus (Greek god of riches) and hence confused with Pluto. M. admired Spenser’s Cave of Mammon (FQ II vii), where the god similarly presides over gold smelting. Cp. i 719, YP ii 516. Burton’s Mammon is prince of the lowest order of devils (Anat. of Mel. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 181. 679–84. Contrast the Senecan astral contemplative who despised worldliness and ‘wandering among the heavens enjoyed laughing at the pavements of the rich [divitum pavimenta]’ ( J. M. Steadman, NQ, 205 (1960) 220). Cp. Animadversions, YP i 697, ‘a pearl [cataract] in your eye, Mammon’s praestriction’. Mammon’s lust of the eye was still sinless in heaven, before the rebellion (Gallagher (1990) 86, correcting Summers (1962) 29). 679. erected: uplifted; high-souled. 682. The heavenly city street is ‘pure gold’ (Rev. 21:21). 684. vision beatific: In Scholasticism, the mystical glimpse of heaven’s glories – the ‘Sabbath’s sight’ Christians longed to share with angels; cp. iii 61–2; v 613 (‘blessed vision’); Time 18 (‘happy-making sight’); Of Reformation, YP i 616. 684–92. Cp. Ovid, Metam. i 125–42, locus classicus for the impiety of delving into earth’s bowels (viscera terrae) for wealth hid amidst ‘Stygian

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685 Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound 690 And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire That riches grow in hell; that soil may best Deserve the precious bane. And here let those Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings, 695 Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, And strength and art are easily outdone By spirits reprobate, and in an hour What in an age they with incessant toil And hands innumerable scarce perform. shades’; Spenser, FQ II vii 17; Fletcher, Purple Island (1633) viii 27–30 (‘O hungry metal, false deceitful ray, / Well laidst thou dark, pressed in the earth’s hidden womb, / Yet through our mother’s entrails cutting way, / We drag thy buried corse from hellish tomb’). Closest (e.g. the oxymoron precious bane) to Boethius, De Consolatione II metrum v, tr. Chaucer: ‘the anguysschous love of havynge brenneth in folk more cruely than the fyer of the mountaigne of Ethna that ay brenneth [cp. PL i 670f, the hill belching smoke]. Allas! what was he that first dalf up the gobbettes or the weyghtes of gold covered undir erthe and the precyous stones that wolden han be hydd? He dalf up precious periles’. Cp. vi 470–520. ribs: veins of ore (common usage). Empson (1950) 175f rightly salutes Pearce’s ‘profound’ discovery of an allusion ‘to the formation of Eve viii 463 he Opened my left, and took from thence a rib: – wide was the wound’; cp. Ricks (1963) 141f. This finds support in Eve’s role as universal mother, and the related concept mother earth (687). Renaissance mining was often concentrated in hilly areas, where weathering exposed ribs of ore (Marjara (1992) 173). Evans (1996) 37f compares Purchas on greedy miners ‘bringing to light those treasures of darkness, and living . . . in the suburbs of hell’. 690. admire: wonder. 692–9. Introducing the mirabilia of Mulciber’s architecture (i 730f ) and of the devils’ shape-shifing thaumaturgy. The marvellous, a requirement of epic in Italian theory, is here no more than a ‘lying wonder’ (Steadman (1976) 107; cp. Treip (1994) 84). For possible Italian contributions to Pandaemonium, see Frye (1978) 33. 694. The Tower of Babel, built by ambitious Nimrod; cp. xii 38–62; Gen. 11. works of Memphian [Egyptian] kings: Probably the Pyramids, regarded as memorials of vanity (B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 8). They attracted much attention: e.g. Greaves, Pyramidologia (1646); Kircher, Oedipus (1652–4, 1676); see Fowler (1996) ch. 4.

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700 Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared, That underneath had veins of liquid fire Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude With wondrous art founded the massy ore, Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross: 705 A third as soon had formed within the ground A various mould, and from the boiling cells By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook, As in an organ from one blast of wind To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes. 710 Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, 701–12. The exhalation accentuates Pandaemonium’s ‘obnoxious character’ (Marjara (1992) 181). M. may have known the Forum Vulcani near Naples, a volcanic landscape with abundance of pitch, where mineral resources were exploited (M. Nicolson, UTQ, 7 (1938) 500–13). 702. Sluiced: led through sluices. 703. founded: melted. founded ] MS; 1667; found out 1674. The easier 1674 reading has been defended (B. A. Wright, TLS (9 Aug. 1934) 553). But the ‘ribs’ were already discovered by the first gang (H. Darbishire, in Milton (1952–5) i 289; Moyles (1985) 25). 704. Bentley objects to bullion dross, thinking bullion to be ‘purified ore’. But bullion meant ‘impure gold’ (OED 3). On the process of gold smelting, in which light slags were progressively scummed (skimmed), see Agricola, De Re Metallica ix (1950) 381f. The gold has an in malo sense (Schaar (1982) 293). 707. nook,] nook: MS. 708–9. Cp. xi 556–73n, again associating music and metal-working, and the fallen angels’ arts restored by man. row of pipes] hundred pipe MS, corr. 710–12. Pandaemonium rises to music, as Thebes to Amphion’s lyre; in Renaissance thought, musical proportions governed architectural form; see Wittkower (1962). An exhalation could become a meteor or comet, ominous for man (Svendsen (1956) 87). It ‘suggests the insubstantial, elusive, mystifying . . . a façade for the ugly discomforts of Hell’; ‘the palace rises like the machinery of a masque – artificial, temporary, illusory’ (Broadbent (1960) 101f ). Schaar (1982) 289–305 compares Armida’s insubstantial castle; like Peck, Todd, Keightley, etc., he finds reference to Inigo Jones’s sets. Closer analogues in Spenser’s Cave of Mammon and Fletcher’s Locusts (1627) show Pandaemonium to be a House of the World. It also travesties Creation (i 728–30); cp. Marvell, ‘The First Anniversary’ 49–74, with Cromwell as Amphion. 712. sweet,] sweet: MS.

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Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 715 With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven, The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine 720 Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile

713–17. Cp. and contrast Ovid’s Palace of the Sun, built by Mulciber (Metam. ii 1–4), interpreted by Regius as an architectural symbol of the power of the Roman empire. Splendid architecture was combined with hell in Stefano della Bella’s Inferno after Alfonso Parigi, in Le Nozze degli Dei (Florence 1637). An ornate, partly classical design, gilt-roofed like the ancient (but still surviving) Pantheon. The pillars, like the music (i 550), are Doric, an order supposed to symbolize simple virtue. Cp. i 682; B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 47 (‘the roof of Pandaemonium is made of the same material as the pavement of Heaven’). R. W. Smith, MP, 29 (1931) 187–98 sees allusion to St Peter’s at Rome, in the pilasters, carved roof, gilding, brazen doors, adjacent council chamber, and even the bee simile (not just devilish georgic, but the arms of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII). But M. would hardly satirize those who had received him kindly (Parker (1996) 177, 828 n 42). Frye (1978) 138 rejects any reference to St Peter’s; finding rather, in the mixed styles, a suggestion of old St Paul’s in London. Stevens (1985) 104, 110 n 68 prefers a vaguer reference to the cellula phantastica, and to Eccles. (the empty breath of human wisdom). pilasters: engaged columns of square section; pilasters round is oxymoron, until the continuation shows round an adverb. Similarly overlaid / With golden suggests gilding (OED 2) until architrave indicates instead a superimposed spanning entablature (OED, s. v. Overlay 1, 1 b). frieze: the entablature member above the architrave. The cornice is above the frieze. bossy: projecting. fretted: carved with decorative reliefs. 717–22. In biblical exegesis Babylon, a place of proud iniquity, often figured Antichrist or hell (e.g. Raban Maur, Migne cxii 872). Alcairo: Memphis (modern Cairo), the most splendid city of heathen Egypt. magnificence: Not elevating the devils but condemning human pretension. George Sandys found such exotic wonders ‘barbarous monuments of prodigality and vain-glory’ (Broadbent (1960) 101f ). Belus: Bel, the Babylonian Baal, whose temple Herodotus describes; see i 421–3n; Jer. 51:44, ‘I will punish Bel in Babylon.’ Serapis: An Egyptian god often identified with Apis; see i 482–4n. Bentley rejects the prosody, thinking M. stresses ‘Sérapis’. But the rhetorical stresses fall Serápis, théir góds and Théir kíngs.

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Stood fixed her stately height, and straight the doors Opening their brazen folds discover wide Within, her ample spaces, o’er the smooth And level pavement: from the archèd roof Pendent by subtle magic many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets fed With naphtha and asphaltus yielded light As from a sky. The hasty multitude Admiring entered, and the work some praise And some the architect: his hand was known In heaven by many a towered structure high, Where sceptred angels held their residence, And sat as princes, whom the súpreme king Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright. Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece; and in Ausonian land Men called him Mulciber; and how he fell From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o’er the crystal battlements: from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,

723–4. Contrast the self-opening doors in Acts 16:26, which free St Peter (Schaar (1982) 304). 728–9. Solid asphaltus (asphalt, pitch) would go in the cressets or iron baskets, naphtha (an oily constituent) in the lamps. See x 296–8; Browne, Pseudodoxia (1964) iii 21; Piggott (1976) 88. A substitute heaven with lamps shining as from a sky, betraying superficial escapism (Broadbent (1960) 102). The devils have not yet seen sky, literalists object; missing the point of M.’s discontinuous, allegorical picturing. On the devils’ yearning for light, see Allen (1970) 103. naphtha . . . asphaltus: italicized in 1667, possibly as technical terms. 735. supreme: The stress, disliked by Bentley, was quite normal. 737. See i 128–9n. 738–40. The Greek god Hephaistos (Lat. Mulciber or Vulcan) presided over arts, like metal-working, that needed fire. He built the gods’ palaces (i 713–17n). Ross (1943) 104 thinks M.’s determination to make earth mirror heaven obliterates valuable distinctions. But M. shows architecture as spiritually indifferent; which was almost praise, when many Christians thought it unnecessary ostentation. Ausonian land: The Greek name for Italy. Mulciber’s name in heaven is never given (Leonard (1990) 83–5). 740 –8. Magnificently emulating Homer’s description of the daylong fall – then casually dismissing it (i 746–8; cf. Il. i 591–5); see T. Spencer, Listener, 70 (1963) 123f. The position of Erring may imitate the similarly devastating errat in Lucretius i 393. Cp. Elegia VII 81f; Natur 23f treating

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A summer’s day; and with the setting sun 745 Dropped from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos the Ægæan isle: thus they relate, Erring; for he with this rebellious rout Fell long before; nor aught availed him now To have built in heaven high towers; nor did he scape 750 By all his engines, but was headlong sent With his industrious crew to build in hell. Meanwhile the wingèd heralds by command Of sovereign power, with awful ceremony And trumpet’s sound throughout the host proclaim 755 A solemn council forthwith to be held At Pandæmonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers: their summons called From every band and squarèd regiment By place or choice the worthiest; they anon 760 With hundreds and with thousands trooping came Attended: all accéss was thronged, the gates And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall (Though like a covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the soldan’s chair Vulcan’s fall as a myth of cosmic destruction. E. Miner, MiltS, 17 (1983) 3–25 calls this a ‘dissimile’, a narrative intrusion like a simile but declared by the intrusive author to be unlike. In Italian art Vulcan often represented a primitive cultural phase; perhaps PL i gives a pagan view of the first age. 756. Pandæmonium: From Gk. pan, ‘all’, and daimonion, ‘evil spirit’ (NT); or, more classically, from daimon + ion, ‘assembly’, on the analogy of Panathenaion. Cp. More, Psychozoia (1642) I iii 23 (Pandaemoniothen, the devils’ mundane dominion); Fuller, ‘Of Building’, Holy State (1840) 134 (‘the hall, which is a pandocheum, ought to lie open’); T. J. B. Spencer, in Patrides (1968) 89, comparing the Pantheon (S. Maria dei Martiri). capital] Capitoll MS, corr. in a different hand to ‘Capitall’. Theobald and Darbishire think the earlier reading more precise: the Roman Capitol housed debates of peace or war, while the ‘high capitol’ with its ‘fretted gold’ (i 717) recalls Virgil’s Capitolia . . . alta (Aen. vi 836), aurea nunc (viii 348). But Adams (1955) 88, probably rightly, judges this allusion to be subsidiary; cp. Moyles (1985) 143. 758. squared: See i 550n. band and ] and band 1667, corr. in Errata. 760. hundreds] MS; 1667; hunderds Errata. 763. covered field: like a field, only covered. Cp. Fr. champ clos (‘closed lists’, prepared for a duel or judicial combat, as distinct from the ordinary ‘listed field’ (SA 1087) ); Dryden, Aeneis xii 1034 (where Turnus and Aeneas fight in ‘closed field’).

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765 Defied the best of paynim chivalry To mortal combat or career with lance) Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 770 Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothèd plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer 775 Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarmed and were straitened; till the signal given, Behold a wonder! they but now who seemed In bigness to surpass Earth’s giant sons Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 766. Varieties of chivalric encounter: combat à outrance and the less dangerous joust. ‘Milton makes chivalry almost peculiar to hell, and to earth as hell’s satellite’ (Broadbent (1960) 96). 768. The anti-temple full of rustling wings is a ghastly travesty of Ezekiel’s heavenly porch; ‘their agenda is not mercy but revenge and death’ (Budick (1985) 108). 768–75. Orders of bees are compared with orders of prelates in Thomas Cantipratensis, Bonum Universale de Proprietatibus Apum (Cologne, c. 1473). Subsequently bees were commonly symbols of the clergy – even Protestant clergy (Frye (1978) 97). The hive often symbolized the Roman church, because of its visual similarity to the papal tiara; see Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta (1992) 331; or van Sint Aldegone’s satire on Rome, De Bien Korf der H. Roomsche Kercke (1569), tr. J. Gilpin (1579). Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 194 (‘unclean spirits . . . go in and out of our bodies, as bees do in a hive’). In Homer, Il. ii 87–90, Akhaians going to a council are compared to bees; in Virgil, Aen. i 430–6, busy Carthaginians. But M.’s georgic epic is closer to Virgil, Georgics iv 149–227, a mock-epic account of the hive’s social organization. Cyclopes labouring at Etna are like bees in Georgics iv 170ff; see D. P. Harding, in JEGP, 60 (1961) 664–9; J. Whaler, PMLA, 47 (1932) 545ff. In the First Defence M. answers Salmasius’ argument that bees set an example of royalism. The simile ‘diminishes hell while it magnifies creation’ (Hartman (1970) 119). 769. Perhaps proleptic of the sun’s movement into Taurus after the Fall (x 673). By M.’s time the sun entered Taurus in mid-April ( Julian calendar). 774. expatiate: walk about at large (OED 1; not an obvious Latinism). 777–92. ‘Another of Milton’s mockeries of the falsely epical’; see Broadbent (1960) 105f citing Voltaire’s comment, ‘The true criterion for

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780 Throng numberless, like that pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or faerie elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon 785 Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course, they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms 790 Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, Though without number still amidst the hall Of that infernal court. But far within And in their own dimensions like themselves The great seraphic lords and cherubim discerning what is really ridiculous in an epic poem is to examine if the same thing would not fit exactly the mock heroic . . . Nothing is so adapted to that ludicrous way of writing, as the metamorphosis of the devils into dwarfs’ (Voltaire (1915) 137). On the occultist background of the shapechanging, see Jacobus (1976) 73 and ch. 3 passim. For the elasticity of refined angelic substance, see Marjara (1992) 228f. C. C. Brown, in Armitage (1995) 59 finds political ‘diminishing of the size of the people’, contra Orgel and Goldberg. 780–1. Cp. i 575n. Pliny located the Pygmies in mountains beyond the source of the Ganges: Nat. Hist. VII xxvi. Beyond: cp. iii 421; extra Imaum was cartographers’ discourse. 781–7. Cp. Shakespeare, MND II i 28f, 141; Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 179 (‘haughty elves’). arbitress: Because the moongoddess was queen of faery; cp. Horace, Epodes v 49–52: ‘O witnesses [arbitrae] not unloyal to my purposes, Night and Diana, who rulest the silence when mystic rites are performed.’ On faery mythology, consult Rathborne (1937); Briggs (1962). 783–4. Alluding to Aen. vi 451–4, Virgil’s comparison of Dido’s shade to the fleeting moon. On the application to Pandaemonium, see Lewis (1942) 41. Cp. i 573ff, 777–92n; B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 53f (‘The angels are giants in their potentiality for destruction . . . pygmies in the presence of righteousness’). 783. fountain] fountain, MS. 786. Dancing is often evil in PL; see Carter (1996) 46. 789–90. at large: a ‘superbly contemptuous pun’ (Ricks (1963) 15). To Bentley the ambiguity is ‘shocking’. Perhaps political ‘diminishing of the size of the people’ (C. C. Brown, in Armitage (1995) 59); although the diminishment is voluntary. 794. seraphic: Perhaps indicating rank.

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795 In close recess and secret conclave sat A thousand demigods on golden seats, Frequent and full. After short silence then And summons read, the great consult began. THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK

Paradise Lost BOOK II The Argument

The consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battle is to be hazarded for the recovery of heaven: some advise it, others dissuade: a third proposal is preferred, mentioned before by Satan, to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven concerning another world, and another kind of creature equal or not much inferior to themselves, about this time to be created: their doubt who should1 be sent on this difficult search: Satan their chief undertakes alone the voyage, is honoured and applauded. The council thus ended, the rest betake them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell gates, finds them shut, and who sat there to guard them, by whom at length they are opened, and discover to him the great gulf between hell and heaven, with what difficulty he passes through, directed by Chaos, the power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought.

795. close: secret. conclave: Any assembly in secret session. A specifically ecclesiastical application was already common. During the Commonwealth, the Council of State was a conclave (Corns (1994) 135). Schaar (1982) 82 discounts the Catholic associations, and compares Herod’s council in Marino, La Strage degli Innocenti (1632) ii 3. Nearer to home, there is a council in Phineas Fletcher’s anti-Catholic Locustae (1627), which M. uses throughout Bks i and ii (Quint (1993) 272–6). 797. Frequent: crowded (OED 1; not an obvious Latinism). Frequent and full was particularly idiomatic. 798. consult: consultation. ii Argument1. should ] shall 1668; first 1669 state; 1674; should second 1669 state.

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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 raised

1–520. The infernal council had notable antecedents in Herodotus; Claudian, In Rufinum; Vida, Christiados (1535); Valvasone, Angeleide (1590); Taubmanus, Bellum Angelicum (1597); Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 1–19; and Cowley, Civil War (1989–) i 378; see T. H. Sammons, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 14; Lewalski (1985) 87f. ‘A classic presentation of the abuses of democratic assembly’ (Daiches (1957) 166). M. was sometimes contemptuous of the State Council’s inexperience (Corns (1994) 134). Satanic councils regularly featured in the pamphlet wars with their demonized politics; see Benet (1994) 97–113; G. D. Hamilton, RenP (1990) 101–17; Achinstein (1994) 182ff. 1–4. Cp. v 756–66; Spenser, FQ I iv 8, proud Lucifera’s throne (‘High above all a cloth of State was spred, / And a rich throne, as bright as sunny day’). Satan is an eastern tyrant again at i 348. Hitting at monarchic splendour (Corns (1994) 137f ). The aim may be broader: Cromwell’s funeral display was so ostentatious it was stoned. Cp. Benet (1994) 91–113. Kings and sultans are all ectypes of the satanic archetype; M. made Turkish tyranny the measuring rod for Charles I’s England; cp. Eikonoklastes ch. 10, YP iii 453; ch. 27, YP iii 575; M. Y. Hughes, in MacLure (1964) 125–48. B. Rajan, in Stanwood (1995) 214f, compares the Peacock Throne of the Moguls. In the visual art tradition, Satan’s throne was usually a close stool, from which he defecated on the damned (Frye (1978) 138). 2. Ormus: Modern Ormuz, captured by the Persians in 1622. An island market in the Gulf, rendezvous for merchants from Surat or Mazulipatam, who returned with silver, jewels, or Shiraz wine (Braudel (1982) 127f ); cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 79 (‘a most famous mart-town’). 3. gorgeous East: Contrast Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost IV iii 218ff: ‘Who sees the heavenly Rosaline, / That, like a rude and savage man of Inde, / At the first opening of the gorgeous east, / Bows not his vassal head, and strooken blind, / Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?’ 4. barbaric: Italicized as a proper name in the early edns, perhaps by confusion with ‘Barbarian’ (native of Barbary). Cp. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis 74 (Paris’ clothing ‘gleaming with gold, barbaric bravery’); Virgil, Aen. ii 504 (barbarico postes auro spoliisque superbi). 5. A travesty of Messiah’s throne (vi 758–72), to which he too is exalted by merit (vi 43). Cp. i 21, 98n; vi 820n. M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957), like Erskine-Hill (1995) 53, sees allusion to Greville’s Alaham (1633), with an implication of usurpation. He compares Bodin’s ‘lordly monarchs’, who

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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 displayed. Powers and dominions, deities of heaven, For since no deep within her gulf can hold Immortal vigour, though oppressed and fallen, 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: Me though just right, and the fixed laws of heaven Did first create your leader, next, free choice, With what besides, in counsel or in fight, Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Established in a safe unenvied throne Yielded with full consent. The happier state In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw Envy from each inferior; but who here Will envy whom the highest place exposes Foremost to stand against the thunderer’s aim Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share Of endless pain? Where there is then no good

owe their crown to their own meritorious efforts, not heredity. The ‘cycle of constitutions’ still retains some republican virtue (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 588). 9. success: results. The modern sense is commoner in later books and in PR. 10. displayed: unfolded; uttered (OED 4a). 11. Powers and dominions: Two of the angelic orders mentioned in Col. 1:16; see i 128–9n. For angels as deities, cp. i 116–17n; Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 2f, 9f. 14–16. As if parodying the felix culpa, Satan describes what will happen only through God’s grace (MacCaffrey (1959) 65). 15. virtues: Perhaps punning on the angelic order. 23–4. Euphemisms with both advertising and political associations. 28. thunderer’s: Satan attempts to reduce God to a ruler superior only in power; cp. i 93, 122n, 258n. 30–8. Empson (1961) 48 finds it noble paradox in the high Roman manner to praise the benefits of hell, but Satan’s desperate irrationality rather suggests self-delusion. The egalitarian claim is belied by i 471–3. For fears of faction in the colonies, cp. ii 559f; Evans (1996) 35f. The devils subscribe to the view that the place inhabited indicates moral status; see

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paradise lost For which to strive, no strife can grow up there From faction; for none sure will claim in hell Precedence, none, whose portion is so small Of present pain, that with ambitious mind Will covet more. With this advantage then To union, and firm faith, and firm accord, More than can be in heaven, we now return To claim our just inheritance of old, Surer to prosper than prosperity Could have assured us; and by what best way, Whether of open war or covert guile, We now debate: who can advise, may speak. He ceased, and next him Moloch, sceptred king Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven; now fiercer by despair: His trust was with the eternal to be deemed Equal in strength, and rather than be less Cared not to be at all; with that care lost Went all his fear: of God, or hell, or worse He recked not, and these words thereafter spake. My sentence is for open war: of wiles, More unexpert, I boast not: them let those Contrive who need, or when they need, not now. For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,

MacCaffrey (1959) 69; Madsen (1968) 123. of old: The argument from antiquity, commonly used to justify imperial or aristocratic claims. 42. Infernal councils were a distinct genre of Civil War tracts; often they portrayed ‘rebels’, like Sir John Presbyter in Hell’s Triennial Parliament, Summoned Five Years Since by King Lucifer (1647). 43. For Moloch (1667 Moloc), see i 392n and vi 357ff. With the Moloch–Belial contrast, cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. ii 58ff (Argantes and Aletes). Frye (1978) 88 compares different visualizations of devils, with Moloch corresponding to the ‘malignant ruffians’ of Farinati, Calvaert, and Reni; Belial to the graceful demons of Lanfranco and Bononi. sceptred: Formulaic epithet of kings in Homeric councils; e.g. Il. ii 86; Od. ii 231. 46. deemed: judged, decided (OED 2, 2d); discerned (5b). 50. thereafter: accordingly. 51. sentence: opinion. 52–6. Eliot and Leavis see inconsistency between millions . . . stand and sit lingering. But stand is present, sit future; Moloch is being contemptuous. ‘The superb upward thrust of sit, stand, ascend is razed by the deliberate bathos of sit again’ (Ricks (1963) 13). Cp. Aen. xi 377–461 (Lewalski (1985) 87). unexpert: inexperienced.

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Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait The signal to ascend, sit lingering here Heaven’s fugitives, and for their dwelling place Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame, The prison of his tyranny who reigns By our delay? No, let us rather choose Armed with hell flames and fury all at once O’er heaven’s high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into horrid arms Against the torturer; when to meet the noise Of his almighty engine he shall hear Infernal thunder, and for lightning see Black fire and horror shot with equal rage Among his angels; and his throne itself Mixed with Tartarean sulphur, and strange fire, His own invented torments. But perhaps The way seems difficult and steep to scale With upright wing against a higher foe. Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench Of that forgetful lake benumb not still, That in our proper motion we ascend Up to our native seat: descent and fall To us is adverse. Who but felt of late When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, With what compulsion and laborious flight We sunk thus low? The ascent is easy then;

61. hell . . . fury: Violent zeugma of concrete and abstract, a characteristic figure; cp. i 67. 65. engine: machine of war. Used at vi 484, 586 of artillery, but here referring to Messiah’s thunder (vi 764), or his chariot with its ‘whirlwind sound’ (vi 749). 67. horror: A feature of hell: cp. ii 220, 616, 703, etc. For horror as an element in the tragic catharsis, see Steadman (1976) ch. 3. 69. The usual Renaissance synthesis of Christian hell and classical underworld; Tartarus becoming the place of sinners. strange fire: Cp. Lev. 10:1–2 (‘Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron . . . offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them’). Mixed: Polluted (OED, s. v. Mixed ); meeting Bentley’s objection. 73–4. drench: soporific drink. Perhaps punning on drench = ‘soak’. lake: The ‘oblivious pool’ of i 266. On forgetting as evil in PL, see Schwartz (1988). 79. Insulting: (1) making assaults; (2) exulting. 81. easy: Belied by the allusion to Aen. vi 126–9 (facilis descensus Averno:

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The event is feared; should we again provoke Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find To our destruction: if there be in hell 85 Fear to be worse destroyed: what can be worse Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned In this abhorrèd deep to utter woe; Where pain of unextinguishable fire Must exercise us without hope of end 90 The vassals of his anger, when the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour Call us to penance? More destroyed than thus We should be quite abolished and expire. What fear we then? what doubt we to incense 95 His utmost ire? which to the height enraged, Will either quite consume us, and reduce To nothing this essential, happier far Than miserable to have eternal being: Or if our substance be indeed divine, 100 And cannot cease to be, we are at worst On this side nothing; and by proof we feel Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven, And with perpetual inroads to alarm, Though inaccessible, his fatal throne: 105 Which if not victory is yet revenge.

. . . sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, / hoc opus, hic labor est). Cp. i 633; vi 856–77; B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 208f. Besides, they have already ascended in pride, and so have ‘fallen like a flake of snow’ (Augustine, Comm. on Job, Migne xxxiv 875); see Allen (1970) 132. 82. event: outcome. 87. utter: (1) extreme; out and out (OED a. 4); (2) express (OED v.1 6b); (3) outer, as in i 72. 89. exercise: subject to discipline; afflict (OED 3 and 4b); neither Latinism nor (as some hold) un-English. 90. vassals: slaves. Cp. Spenser, Tears of the Muses 126: ‘vassals of Gods wrath, and slaves of sin’. Perhaps alluding to Rom. 9:22, ‘vessels of wrath fitted to destruction’ (Bentley). 92. Denial, since penance implies reformatory punishment. 97. essential: essence. 99–101. Since angels are immortal, these doubts (like Belial’s at ii 146–51) are allegorically human. But see Schwartz (1988) 20. 100–1. ‘We are already in the worst state possible, short of being annihilated’. proof: practical experience. 104. fatal: (1) death-dealing; (2) destined; see i 116–17n.

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He ended frowning, and his look denounced Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous To less than gods. On the other side up rose Belial, in act more graceful and humane; A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed For dignity composed and high exploít: But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low; To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear, And with persuasive accent thus began. I should be much for open war, O peers, As not behind in hate; if what was urged Main reason to persuade immediate war, Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast Ominous conjecture on the whole success: When he who most excels in fact of arms, In what he counsels and in what excels Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair And utter dissolution, as the scope Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. First, what revenge? The towers of heaven are filled

106. denounced: announced. 109–17. Belial: See i 490n; vi 620–7. Constructing a Theophrastian ‘character’; see E. E. Stoll, MLN, 48 (1933) 419–27; R. Flannagan, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 9–11; W. B. Hunter, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 7–9. Shumaker (1967) finds good things to say for Belial: all he lacks is repentance. For occultist sources, see e.g. Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) xv 2: ‘This Beliall . . . taketh the form of a beautiful angel . . . he speaketh fair’. humane: courteous, elegant. 110. On the ambiguities (‘heaven lost not a fairer persona’, etc.), see Le Comte (1991) 91f. 110–18. On Belial as a Ciceronian orator, see T. H. Sammons, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 14–22; Lewalski (1985) 85f. Perhaps reflecting M.’s ambivalent attitude to rhetoric. However, in contemporary tracts ‘children of Belial’ were often Cavaliers. Belial and Mammon almost give a ‘wrong’ turn to the debate by urging the expediency of peace; Lewalski compares Thersites in Homer, Il. ii. 113–14. make . . . reason: The claim of the Sophists, and a charge against Socrates (Plato, Apology 18b). reason: argument. 124. fact: feat, deed. 127. scope: target. 129. Belial answers Moloch point by point, taking up particular phrases;

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130 With armèd watch, that render all accéss Impregnable; oft on the bordering deep Encamp their legions, or with óbscure wing Scout far and wide into the realm of night, Scorning surprise. Or could we break our way 135 By force, and at our heels all hell should rise With blackest insurrection, to confound Heaven’s purest light, yet our great enemy, All incorruptible would on his throne Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mould 140 Incapable of stain would soon expel Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope Is flat despair: we must exasperate The almighty victor to spend all his rage, 145 And that must end us, that must be our cure, To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 150 In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion? and who knows, Let this be good, whether our angry foe Can give it, or will ever? How he can Is doubtful; that he never will is sure. cp. ii 62; Tasso, Ger. Lib. ii 58–90 contrasting two Saracen ambassadors, the fierce Argantes and the smooth rhetorician Aletes. 130. access: way of entrance (OED 7). 134. Or could we: even if we could. 138–42. Criticizing Moloch’s proposal to mix God’s throne with sulphur (68f ) and shoot ‘black fire’ among his angels. This baser fire Belial contrasts with the ethereal stuff or fire of heaven. See Dan. 7:9 (‘his throne was like the fiery flame’); Ps. 104:4 (‘Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire’). God, himself a ‘consuming fire’ at Deut. 4:24, is ‘incorruptible’ in De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 144–5, from Rom. 1:23. 143. flat: (1) absolute; (2) dull. 146–51. Cp. Claudio fearing death will make ‘this sensible warm motion to become / A kneaded clod’ (Shakespeare, Meas. III i 120f ). Several places in Seneca discuss the soul’s ranging through heaven: e.g. De Consolatione xi 4f. Cp. PL i 679–84n. wander: A key word (e.g. i 365; xi 779; xii 648), suggesting ‘err’ (as Lat. erro). Cp. Areop, YP ii 527f (‘God . . . gives us minds that wander beyond all limit and satiety’); Stein (1953) 66f; Ricks (1963) 110. motion: emotion (OED 9). 154. See i 117 for the immortality of the angels’ ‘empyreal’ substance.

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155 Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, Belike through impotence, or unaware, To give his enemies their wish, and end Them in his anger, whom his anger saves To punish endless? Wherefore cease we then? 160 Say they who counsel war, we are decreed, Reserved and destined to eternal woe; Whatever doing, what can we suffer more, What can we suffer worse? Is this then worst, Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms? 165 What when we fled amain, pursued and struck With heaven’s afflicting thunder, and besought The deep to shelter us? This hell then seemed A refuge from those wounds: or when we lay Chained on the burning lake? That sure was worse. 170 What if the breath that kindled those grim fires Awaked should blow them into sevenfold rage And plunge us in the flames? or from above Should intermitted vengeance arm again His red right hand to plague us? what if all 156. Belike: No doubt. impotence: weakness of mind, lack of restraint. 159–61. The framing question and answer has a ‘sense of destiny rather than destination’ (Ricks (1963) 30; Crump (1975) 54). Hell’s endlessness was commonplace; cp. De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347–8) (‘The evil angels are reserved for punishment’); Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643) i 51; Christian Morals (1616) ii 13 (‘evil spirits, as undying substances, are unseparable from their calamities . . . bound up with immortality can never get out of themselves’). 160. they who: i.e. Moloch (courteous impersonality). 165. What when: ‘What about when’. amain: at full speed. struck: The 1667 spelling ‘strook’ may indicate M.’s preferred pronunciation; cp. the rhyme at Nativity Ode 95. 166. afflicting: striking down. 168–9. See i 48n, 209–13n. 170–86. Driving relentlessly on to a deliberately delayed conclusion (Ricks (1963) 30). 170. Isa. 30:33, ‘Tophet is ordained of old . . . the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.’ For Tophet as hell, see i 403–5n. 174–84. Following ancient myths of punished Giants, especially Typhon; cp. i 197–200n; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 353–68. 174. Cp. Horace, Odes I ii 1–4, on civil war horrors: ‘Enough . . . hath the Father smiting with the bolt from his red right hand (rubente dextera) . . . struck panic into Rome’.

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175 Her stores were opened, and this firmamet Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire, Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall One day upon our heads; while we perhaps Designing or exhorting glorious war, 180 Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk Under yon boiling ocean, wrapped in chains; There to converse with everlasting groans, 185 Unréspited, unpitied, unreprieved, Ages of hopeless end; this would be worse. War therefore, open or concealed, alike My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye 190 Views all things at one view? He from heaven’s height All these our motions vain, sees and derides; 176. cataracts: Perhaps flood-gates, like the cataractae in Gen. 7:11 Vulg. and Tremellius, in the Flood narrative. Alternatively, waterfalls; cp. Shakespeare, Lear III ii 2: ‘You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout.’ 180–1. Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 44f: to punish Ajax’ frenzy, Pallas ‘caught him in a whirlwind and impaled him on a spiky crag’. 181–2. Cp. Aen. vi 740f, the dead ‘hung stretched out to the empty winds (inanes . . . ventos’; Shakespeare, Meas. III i 124, ‘imprisoned in the viewless winds’. Virgil’s temporary punishment is made eternal (Schaar (1982) 50f ). racking: (1) torturing; (2) driving. 184. converse with: (1) dwell with (OED 1); (2) talk by means of. 185. A favourite scheme, combining asyndeton (omission of connectives) with repetitio, here of the prefix; cp. iii 231; v 899; SA 1422; Corns (1990) 84–6 (M. defines ‘what is by what is not’). Perhaps imitating the Greek tragedians (e.g. Sophocles, Antigone 1071); Spenser, FQ VII vii 46 (‘Unbodied, unsoul’d, unheard, unseen’); or Shakespeare, Hamlet I v 77 (‘Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled’). unreprieved: Coinage, as often in this motif. 187. Contrast the conclusion of Satan’s speech, i 661–2. 188–90. Cp. De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 150: ‘So extensive is the prescience of God, that he knows beforehand the thoughts or actions of free agents as yet unborn, and many ages before those thoughts or actions have their origin.’ Satan seems not to have believed God omniscient before his rebellion (v 682f ); but the devils may have been convinced by subsequent events (Empson (1961) 51f ). On the Creator’s synoptic vision, see iii 77n. 190–1. Ps. 2:4, ‘he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision’. M.’s God is not detached and impassible, but susceptible to a range of emotions. Cp. De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 134–5; Kelley (1941) 194. motions: schemes; emotions.

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Not more almighty to resist our might Than wise to frústrate all our plots and wiles. Shall we then live thus vile, the race of heaven Thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer here Chains and these torments? Better these than worse By my advice; since fate inevitable Subdues us, and omnipotent decree, The victor’s will. To suffer, as to do, Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust That so ordains: this was at first resolved, If we were wise, against so great a foe Contending, and so doubtful what might fall. I laugh, when those who at the spear are bold And vent’rous, if that fail them, shrink and fear What yet they know must follow, to endure Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain, The sentence of their conqueror: this is now Our doom; which if we can sustain and bear, Our súpreme foe in time may much remit His anger, and perhaps thus far removed Not mind us not offending, satisfied With what is punished; whence these raging fires Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames. Our purer essence then will overcome Their noxious vapour, or inured not feel,

199. To suffer, as to do: Mucius Scaevola’s phrase, with his hand in the fire; see i 158n. 200. Not quite admitting God’s justice. Drawing on the ancients for the devils’ thoughts, M. has Belial say they were defeated through some law of nature (Empson (1961) 51). The timorous Belial, fearing renewed pains and believing God overhears (i 189f ), prefers to trim a course between good and evil. Cp. Lewis (1942) 102. 207. ignominy: Probably trisyllabic; but see i 115n. 211. See i 73–4n. 213–16. According to Augustine, devils suffer everlasting fire through passible aery bodies, natures adapted to undergo pain without annihilation (City of God XXI x). inured: (1) habituated; (2) branded; see J. Leonard, ELN, 31 (1993) 41f. 215–16. Describing the incorruptibility of rebels and loyalists (ii 138– 41) by the same tropes, so that Empson (1961) 51 thinks them similar groups capable of rapprochement. But Belial hopes only that their essence may overcome the vapour if God stops blowing the flames – if he changes his mind.

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Or changed at length, and to the place conformed In temper and in nature, will receive Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain; 220 This horror will grow mild, this darkness light, Besides what hope the never-ending flight Of future days may bring, what chance, what change Worth waiting, since our present lot appears For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, 225 If we procure not to ourselves more woe. Thus Belial with words clothed in reason’s garb Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, Not peace: and after him thus Mammon spake. Either to disenthrone the king of heaven 230 We war, if war be best, or to regain Our own right lost: him to unthrone we then May hope, when everlasting fate shall yield To fickle chance, and Chaos judge the strife: The former vain to hope argues as vain 217–19. Taken up by Mammon at ii 274–8. ‘Adjusted psychologically and constitutionally to the new environment’. temper: temperament, humoral mixture or adjustment. 220. light: (1) easy to bear; (2) luminous. Bentley thinks only the first applies, in view of the parallel with horror . . . mild. But the paradox allows Belial to raise hopes without obvious absurdity (Empson (1950) 159). The rhyme at ii 220f offers a suitably jingling accompaniment to the cheerful fantasy. Despite its irrational self-contradiction, Belial’s wish is grimly fulfilled in the ‘darkness visible’ (i 63). 221. never-ending: A rare compound adjective (Emma (1964) 70f ). 223. waiting: looking forward to. 224. For happy: so far as happiness goes. 226. Cp. Comus 759: ‘false rules pranked in reason’s garb’. 227. Evans (1996) 37 compares criticisms of the Virginians’ ‘idleness and bestial sloth’. 228. For Mammon’s character see i 678–84. Echoing the Stoic stance of Horace, Epistles I xviii, but hypocritically, since for him an anti-war policy means resuming ostentatious display; see Lewalski (1985) 91; M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 128 (‘commercialism’). 232–3. Pretending the strife is between fate and chance, rather than between the devils and the king of heaven (Pearce). Bentley objects that yielding would prevent strife; but the strife precedes the yielding. Providence (the devils’ fate) would only yield to chance if Chaos were umpire (which, it is admitted, is never likely). Perhaps alluding to Empedocles’ universal Strife. M.’s devils concede more than Tasso’s Satan, who admits overthrow only by chance (Ger. Lib. iv 15); cp. PL i 116–17n, 144n; ii 551.

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235 The latter: for what place can be for us Within heaven’s bound, unless heaven’s lord supreme We overpower? Suppose he should relent And publish grace to all, on promise made Of new subjection; with what eyes could we 240 Stand in his presence humble, and receive Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing Forced alleluias; while he lordly sits Our envied sovereign, and his altar breathes 245 Ambrosial odours and ambrosial flowers, Our servile offerings? This must be our task In heaven, this our delight; how wearisome Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue 250 By force impossible, by leave obtained Unacceptable, though in heaven, our state Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek Our own good from ourselves, and from our own Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, 255 Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easy yoke Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear 243. alleluias: ‘praise Jehovahs’ (Heb.); hymns of praise (from the word’s occurring in many psalms). Contrast vi 744, Messiah’s promise that the loyal remnant will sing ‘unfeigned alleluias’. 245. Ambrosial: Fragrant, perfumed; immortal. Ambrosia – the food, or drink, of the gods – was identified with specific plants: e.g. John Gerard, Herbal (1597) 950: ‘The fragrant smell that this kind of Ambrosia or Oak of Cappadocia [sometimes ‘Oak of Jerusalem’] yieldeth, hath moved the poets to suppose that this herb was meat and food for the gods.’ On the stripping and removal of altars in the English Reformation, see Duffy (1992). 247. heaven,] heaven 1674. 249. pursue: seek to attain to. The compressed phrases between the verb and its distant object (state) form impediments miming the difficulty of access. 249–51. ‘Pursue by force we do not have’; or ‘pursue what is impossible to obtain by force’. 254. Live to ourselves: Echoing Horace’s isolationist resolve ‘let me live to myself for what remains of life’ (Epodes I xviii 107f ), but eliding the pious continuation. 255–7. Cp. SA 271 condemning those fonder of ‘bondage with ease than strenuous liberty’. An antithesis from M.’s favourite Roman historian, Sallust, who gives it to Aemilius Lepidus, an opponent of the dictator Sulla. Bentley

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paradise lost Then most conspicuous, when great things of small, Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse We can create, and in what place so e’er Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain Through labour and endurance. This deep world Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst Thick clouds and dark doth heaven’s all-ruling sire Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, And with the majesty of darkness round Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell? As he our darkness, cannot we his light Imitate when we please? This desert soil Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold; Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise Magnificence; and what can heaven show more? Our torments also may in length of time Become our elements, these piercing fires As soft as now severe, our temper changed

objects that the yoke was unacceptably hard; but Mammon cannot deny the obvious truth Matt. 11:28–30 testifies to: ‘my yoke is easy’; see Shawcross (1982) 4. Corns (1994) 138 compares the pomp of Charles II’s coronation pageantry. 258 –61. Mammon’s fashionably juxtaposed contraries betray the confusion underlying his impossible dream of compromise. Adam (xii 561–9) and Mammon recognize that to accomplish great things from small beginnings requires patience; but Adam adds obedience, Mammon liberty (ii 256); see M. C. Treip, NQ, 203 (1958) 209f. ‘Cautious, stabilized capitalism’ (Stavely (1987) 84). Re-enacting the 1650s, when English republicanism, like classic republicanism, failed, through lack of virtue in the wealthy; see M. Dzelzainis, in Armitage (1995) 23f; D. Armitage, ibid. 217. 264 –5. Taken from the ‘unfeigned alleluias’, Ps. 18:11–13 (‘He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. . . . The Lord also thundered in the heavens’) and 97:2 (‘clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgement are the habitation of his throne’); cp. 2 Chr. 5:13–6:1. 274. Encompassing Belial’s argument at ii 217 (Bentley). 275. Fallen angels were thought to inhabit the four elements, ‘being dispersed, some in the air, some on the earth, some in the water, some amongst the minerals, dens, and caves, that are under the earth’ (Hooker, Laws (1977) I iv 2); cp. Il Penseroso 93–6 (‘those demons that are found / In fire, air, flood, or underground, / Whose power hath a true concent / With planet, or with element’). M. (rather than Mammon) may allude to

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Into their temper; which must needs remove The sensible of pain. All things invite To peaceful counsels, and the settled state Of order, how in safety best we may Compose our present evils, with regard Of what we are and where, dismissing quite All thoughts of war: ye have what I advise. He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain The sound of blustering winds, which all night long Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Seafaring men o’erwatched, whose bark by chance Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay After the tempest: such applause was heard As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased, Advising peace: for such another field They dreaded worse than hell: so much the fear Of thunder and the sword of Michaël Wrought still within them; and no less desire To found this nether empire, which might rise By policy, and long procéss of time, In emulation opposite to heaven. Which when Beëlzebub perceived, than whom, Satan except, none higher sat, with grave Aspéct he rose, and in his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone,

Augustine’s devils, bound to tormenting fires as if to bodies (City of God XXI x). 278. The sensible of pain: The part of pain perceived through the senses ( J. C. Maxwell, RES, 5 (1954) 268). 281. Compose: order, adjust. 282. where] were 1674 (obviously in error: Mammon urges acceptance of the present situation). 291. sentence: opinion. 294. Michael: Trisyllabic; cp. vi 411, but also xi 453. In the war in heaven, Michael’s two-handed sword felled ‘squadrons at once’ and wounded even Satan (vi 250ff, 320ff ). 297. policy: statesmanship; often in the bad sense of Machiavellian stratagems. For the word’s history see Praz (1958) 90–145. 299. Beelzebub: Satan’s closest associate; see i 81n; v 671n. 302. pillar: Emblematic of fortitude or dependability; see Onians (1988); Tervarent (1958) 106. front: forehead (OED 1) or face (OED 2); in neither sense a conspicuous Latinism.

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305 Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer’s noontide air, while thus he spake. 310 Thrones and imperial powers, offspring of heaven, Ethereal virtues; or these titles now Must we renounce, and changing style be called Princes of hell? For so the popular vote Inclines, here to continue, and build up here 315 A growing empire; doubtless; while we dream, And know not that the king of heaven hath doomed This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt From heaven’s high jurisdiction, in new league 320 Banded against his throne, but to remain In strictest bondage, though thus far removed, Under the inevitable curb, reserved His captive multitude: for he, be sure, In height or depth, still first and last will reign 325 Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part By our revolt, but over hell extend His empire, and with iron sceptre rule Us here, as with his golden those in heaven. What sit we then projecting peace and war?

306. Burdened statesmen were often compared to Atlas: e.g. Shakespeare, Ant. and Cleo. I v 23; Spenser, dedicatory sonnet to Lord Burleigh. Here Atlantean belongs to the large complex of Titan allusions: Jupiter forced rebellious Atlas to shoulder the heavens as a punishment. 310–12. On the angelic orders, see i 128–9n; ii 11n. style: ceremonial title. The virtutes (Vulg. and Tremellius) are ‘mights’ in Geneva and AV (Leonard (1990) 64). 321. Answering Belial’s argument at 211f. 324. Contrast v 165, where Adam and Eve joyfully call on all creatures ‘to extol / Him first, him last’. Anticipating Rev. 1:11 (‘Alpha and Omega, the first and the last’); 21:6; 22:13. 327–8. Beelzebub refers to the golden and iron sceptres symbolic of merciful equity and rigorous justice. But the specific allusion to Ps. 2:9 (‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron’) suggests that Abdiel’s warning of v 886–95 is coming true. See Sims (1962) 16; Werman (1995) 173 (iron sceptre = ‘sword’ in the Heb. sources). M.’s own translation of Ps. 2 has the phrase ‘iron sceptre’. 329. What: why (colloquial: OED 19).

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330 War hath determined us, and foiled with loss Irreparable; terms of peace yet none Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given To us enslaved, but custody severe, And stripes, and arbitrary punishment 335 Inflicted? And what peace can we return, But to our power hostility and hate, Untamed reluctance, and revenge though slow, Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice 340 In doing what we most in suffering feel? Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With dangerous expedition to invade Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, Or ambush from the deep. What if we find 345 Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in heaven Err not) another world, the happy seat Of some new race called Man, about this time To be created like to us, though less 350 In power and excellence, but favoured more Of him who rules above; so was his will 330. determined: (1) finished (as at vi 318); (2) given a settled aim; (3) fixed on our fate. Schwartz (1988) 20 thinks Beelzebub sees the irony of discussing war, when war has already been fought; but allegorically every sin is a new rebellion. 332. Vouchsafed] Voutsaf ’t 1667, possibly indicating M.’s preferred pronunciation. 335. peace: ‘As if the devils were to treat upon a par with the almighty’ (Bentley). 336. to our power: to the extent of our power. 337. reluctance: resistance (OED 1). 345–51. Even before the Fall Satan was from jealousy ‘moved . . . to work man’s destruction’, foreseeing that ‘the son of God was to take upon him human flesh’ (Calvin, Comm. on Genesis, tr. Tymme (1578) 87); see Danielson (1982) 223. The first mention of creation is in a context of revenge (Schwartz (1988) 53). Cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 1, 9–17. Beelzebub proposes colonial expansion (Armitage (1995) 217ff ). Some connect M.’s anti-imperialism with his republicanism. But noble lords of both allegiances engaged in quasi-colonial ventures. 346–52. Clarifying the rumour about a new race (i 651ff ). Humankind’s creation was the subject of a divine decree, but its timing only rumour (Acts 1:7, ‘it is not for you to know the times or seasons’). Beelzebub uses the foreordinance to persuade the devils God means to supplant them. Dramatic irony: their spite makes the lie come true; their corrupting

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Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath, That shook heaven’s whole circumference, confirmed. Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn 355 What creatures there inhabit, of what mould, Or substance, how endued, and what their power, And where their weakness, how attempted best, By force or subtlety: though heaven be shut, And heaven’s high arbitrator sit secure 360 In his own strength, this place may lie exposed The utmost border of his kingdom, left To their defence who hold it: here perhaps Some advantageous act may be achieved humankind occasions the incarnation and the elevation of mankind. Uriel, however, evidently thinks of humankind as created to fill vacancies in heaven (iii 678–80); as does Raphael (vii 150–61). God’s ‘foreknowledge prevents the two stories from being inconsistent; he would have known throughout all past time that he was going to want to spite [the devils]’ (Empson (1961) 56). Cp. Ps. 8:5, ‘thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour’ – applied to Jesus in Heb. 2:6–9. 352–3. Editors treat this heaven-shaking oath as epic formula – e.g. Homer, Il. i 530; Virgil, Aen. ix 106 (totum nutu tremefecit Olympum) – but the thought is nearer Isa. 13:12–13 (‘I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the Heavens’), a key text for PL (e.g. vi 832f; xi 396–407). Cp. Gen. 22:16; Isa. 45:23; Heb. 6:17 (‘God, willing . . . to shew . . . the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath’); Heb. 12:26 (‘Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven’). gods: See i 116–17n and iii 341n. 356. endued: gifted. Mankind’s substance is of practical importance to the devils, as the material cause of the Fall; see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 161–3. 357. attempt: (1) try to entice or seduce; (2) attack, overthrow, rape. Both meanings are developed at ii 366–8. 359. arbitrator: arbiter, judge, sole controller. Yet another of the antonomasias by which the devils ‘assert dualistic equality with [their] Creator’ (Broadbent (1960) 130). Cp. ‘conqueror’ (ii 338), ‘king of heaven’ (ii 316), ‘heaven’s all-ruling sire’ (ii 264), ‘heaven’s lord’ (ii 236), ‘supreme foe’ (ii 210), etc. The devils usually avoid saying God. Evans (1996) 63 compares the western planters’ aggressive intentions against Spain. 360. To encourage the war-weary devils, Beelzebub minimizes the danger; but later (ii 410–13) he maximizes it, to ensure they choose a sufficiently meritorious explorer.

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By sudden onset, either with hell fire 365 To waste his whole creation, or possess All as our own, and drive as we were driven, The puny habitants, or if not drive, Seduce them to our party, that their God May prove their foe, and with repenting hand 370 Abolish his own works. This would surpass Common revenge, and interrupt his joy In our confusion, and our joy upraise In his disturbance; when his darling sons Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse 375 Their frail originals, and faded bliss, Faded so soon. Advise if this be worth Attempting, or to sit in darkness here Hatching vain empires. Thus Beëlzebub Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised

364. M. ‘momentarily transforms Satan into a demonic Sir Francis Drake setting off to singe God’s beard’ ( J. M. Evans, in Stanwood (1995) 233). 367. puny: (1) weak; (2) born since us (from Fr. puis né) (Hume, Newton). The word ‘superbly compresses Beelzebub’s contemptuous reasons for hating them (new favourites) and his reasons for revenge: they are weak’ (Ricks (1963) 66). drive: put to flight. M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957) compares Joseph Beaumont, Psyche (1648) i 24: ‘Was’t not enough, against the righteous law / Of primogeniture, to throw us down / From that bright home, which all the world does know / Was by confessed inheritance our own: / But, to our shame, man, that vile worm, must dwell / In our fair orbs, and heaven with vermin fill.’ Low (1985) 310–21 et passim sees admonition against the ‘false pursuit of imperial georgic’. 369–70. Cp. Gen. 6:7, ‘And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast . . . for it repenteth me that I have made them.’ On the ‘desperate repetition’ of Satan’s plan see Schwartz (1988) 99. Werman (1995) 53 compares the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer. 374. partake with us: (1) share our condition; (2) take sides with us. 375. originals] original 1674. Either is feasible. The 1674 reading could mean ‘origin, derivation; parentage; author, progenitor’ (OED 1, 2); ‘originals’ had only the last sense. 376–8. Dramatic irony: Beelzebub’s sarcasm against Mammon alludes to Ps. 107:10f (‘Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron; because they rebelled against the words of God’); suggesting ‘the ultimate fate of all rebels against God’ (Sims (1962) 16). Advise: consider.

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380 By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence But from the author of all ill could spring So deep a malice, to confound the race Of mankind in one root, and earth with hell To mingle and involve, done all to spite 385 The great creator? But their spite still serves His glory to augment. The bold design Pleased highly those infernal states, and joy Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent They vote: whereat his speech he thus renews. 390 Well have ye judged, well ended long debate, Synod of gods, and like to what ye are, Great things resolved; which from the lowest deep Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate, Nearer our ancient seat; perhaps in view 395 Of those bright confines, whence with neighbouring arms And opportune excursion we may chance Re-enter heaven; or else in some mild zone Dwell not unvisited of heaven’s fair light Secure, and at the brightening orient beam 400 Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious air, To heal the scar of these corrosive fires 380. Unmasking the civic participation as mere theatre: all virtù is concentrated in Satan (B. Reibling, RQ, 49 (1996) 591). whence] whence, 1667. 383. one root: Adam, root of mankind’s genealogical tree; cp. iii 288; ix 89, 645; etc. A biblical metaphor, used extensively in Reformation formulations about original sin; cp. the Westminster Confession (Adam and Eve ‘being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity’); B. Rajan, in Milton (1964). 384. involve: entangle in trouble, implicate; envelop. For mingling of good and evil in the fallen world, cp. Areop, YP ii 514, ‘Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is . . . involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil.’ 387. states: estates of the realm, people of rank and authority. 391. Synod: Used of the conjunction of stars as well as the assembly of councillors. Reminding that the devils were once stellar ‘sons of morning’; cp. v 700–14n; Nativity Ode 119. 400. Purge . . . gloom: Encouragement (‘clear away this depression’) undercut by catachresis (cp. ii 406, ‘palpable obscure’) – the darkness is so thick it has to be washed off.

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Shall breathe her balm. But first whom shall we send In search of this new world, whom shall we find Sufficient? Who shall tempt with wandering feet 405 The dark unbottomed infinite abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his airy flight Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive 410 The happy isle; what strength, what art can then Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe Through the strict sentries and stations thick Of angels watching round? Here he had need All circumspection, and we now no less 415 Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we send, The weight of all and our last hope relies. This said, he sat; and expectation held

402. breathe] breath 1667 (wrongly); breathe 1674. 403. new world: Cp. ii 867; iv 34, 113, 391; x 257, 377. Often used for America. Reversing the usual analogy and making Paradise resemble the plantation (Evans (1996) 45). 404. tempt: (1) try (OED 3); (2) venture upon (OED 2 c, first instance). Aphetic for attempt. 405. unbottomed: Pointing to the root meaning of abyss (Gk. Sτηµατα – ‘failures’ (Aristotle); ‘sins’ (NT). 761–7. Empson (1961) 58f infers that, to allow time for Death’s gestation, there must have been more than one rebel conference – implying much deep consideration. But the manner of Sin’s birth, or of Death’s (ii 783–5), hardly supports normal embryological assumptions. 764. Continuing the travesty of divine generation (Le Comte (1978) 75). Cp. ii 659–61n, 869–70n; iii 138ff. Frye (1978) 112f compares the Diabolus–Peccatum–Mors trinity in Hondius’ ‘Christian Knight’ world map.

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770 Clear victory, to our part loss and rout Through all the empyrean: down they fell Driven headlong from the pitch of heaven, down Into this deep, and in the general fall I also; at which time this powerful key 775 Into my hand was given, with charge to keep These gates for ever shut, which none can pass Without my opening. Pensive here I sat Alone, but long I sat not, till my womb Pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown 780 Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. At last this odious offspring whom thou seest Thine own begotten, breaking violent way, Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew 785 Transformed: but he my inbred enemy Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded Death. 790 I fled, but he pursued (though more, it seems, Inflamed with lust than rage) and swifter far, Me overtook his mother all dismayed, And in embraces forcible and foul Engendering with me, of that rape begot 795 These yelling monsters that with ceaseless cry Surround me, as thou sawst, hourly conceived And hourly born, with sorrow infinite To me, for when they list into the womb That bred them they return, and howl and gnaw 800 My bowels, their repast; then bursting forth Afresh with conscious terrors vex me round, That rest or intermission none I find. Before mine eyes in opposition sits Grim Death my son and foe, who sets them on, 805 And me his parent would full soon devour 772. pitch: apex, summit, height, slope. 787–9. Cp. ii 666–73n. 795. For the hounds, see Frye (1978) 123. 799–802. See ii 650–66n, 653–9n. Here Sin’s offspring are presented in a new aspect, suggesting pangs of remorse. Schaar (1982) interprets Sin herself as ‘guilt’; but her torso is surely too attractive for that. 801. conscious terrors: terrors of guilty knowledge. vex: harass, irritate, afflict, worry (both physical and abstract).

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paradise lost For want of other prey, but that he knows His end with mine involved; and knows that I Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, Whenever that shall be; so fate pronounced. But thou, O Father, I forewarn thee, shun His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Though tempered heavenly, for that mortal dint, Save he who reigns above, none can resist. She finished, and the subtle fiend his lore Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth. Dear Daughter, since thou claimst me for thy sire, And my fair son here showst me, the dear pledge Of dalliance had with thee in heaven, and joys Then sweet, now sad to mention, through dire change Befallen us unforeseen, unthought of, know I come no enemy, but to set free From out this dark and dismal house of pain Both him and thee, and all the heavenly host Of spirits that in our just pretences armed Fell with us from on high: from them I go This uncouth errand sole, and one for all Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread The unfounded deep, and through the void immense To search with wandering quest a place foretold Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round, a place of bliss In the purlieus of heaven, and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply

806–9. Like the devils, Sin regards fate as supreme; cp. i 116–17n; ii 721–2n. 811. arrow: Cp. ii 672n. 813. dint: stroke given with a weapon; thunder-clap (OED 1 b). 815. lore: lesson. See ix 695n. On the bathos of Satan’s volte-face from insult to flattery, see Lewalski (1985) 60. 823. house: Cp. Job 30:23 (‘the place of the dead’); Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax ix 59 (hell ‘the house of grief and pain’). pain] pain, 1667. 825. pretences: claims. 827. uncouth: (1) strange; (2) shocking, repellent. 829. unfounded: (1) bottomless; (2) uncreated. 830–5. On the prophecy, see ii 346–52n. Perhaps signs should be taken literally, in view of God’s ‘signs’ (iv 997, etc.) (Empson (1961) 57).

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835 Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest heaven surcharged with potent multitude Might hap to move new broils: be this or aught Than this more secret now designed, I haste To know, and this once known, shall soon return, 840 And bring ye to the place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen Wing silently the buxom air, embalmed With odours; there ye shall be fed and filled Immeasurably, all things shall be your prey. 845 He ceased, for both seemed highly pleased, and Death Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear His famine should be filled, and blessed his maw Destined to that good hour: no less rejoiced His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire. 850 The key of this infernal pit by due, And by command of heaven’s all-powerful king I keep, by him forbidden to unlock These adamantine gates; against all force Death ready stands to interpose his dart, 855 Fearless to be o’ermatched by living might. But what owe I to his commands above Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down Into this gloom of Tartarus profound, To sit in hateful office here confined, 860 Inhabitant of heaven, and heavenly-born, Here in perpetual agony and pain, With terrors and with clamours compassed round Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed: 835–7. ‘Standard justification for establishing precisely the kind of penal colony he himself now occupies’ (Evans (1996) 32f, seeing allusion to America as a transatlantic Bridewell). 836. surcharged: having an excess of inhabitants. Insinuating that as a tyrant God must always be on guard against rebellion (Rajan). 839–44. A promise later fulfilled when Satan hands over his ‘new kingdom’ to their ‘joint power’ (x 397–407). Empson (1961) 67 sees no malice towards mankind, only an expedient lie, ‘the only way to make them let him pass’. Yet Beelzebub’s counsel, which Empson admits to be malicious, was ‘devised / By Satan’ (ii 379f ). Satan probably improvises, on a first inkling of the possibilities of Sin and Death. 842. buxom: unresisting (poetic). embalmed: (1) balmy; (2) ‘rendered resistant to decay’ (the earth like a body temporarily preserved against corruption). 847. famine: hunger.

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Thou art my father, thou my author, thou 865 My being gav’st me; whom should I obey But thee, whom follow? Thou wilt bring me soon To that new world of light and bliss, among The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems 870 Thy daughter and thy darling, without end. Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, Sad instrument of all our woe, she took; And towards the gate rolling her bestial train, Forthwith the huge portcullis high updrew, 875 Which but herself, not all the Stygian powers Could once have moved; then in the key-hole turns The intricate wards, and every bolt and bar Of massy iron or solid rock with ease Unfastens: on a sudden open fly 864. Denying the true author of being, God. On the metaphor of authorship in PL, see Grossman (1987). 868. gods . . . ease: Homeric; e.g. Il. vi 138. 869–70. Parodying the Nicene creed (‘Jesus Christ . . . on the right hand of the Father . . . whose kingdom shall have no end’). In Sin’s fantasy she enjoys glory like Christ’s (cp. iii 62–4); Satan, Sin and Death forming an anti-Trinity (Rajan (1962) 47, 50). The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son has its counterpart in Satan’s begetting of Death on his own daughter. Cp. ii 759–61n, 764n; iii 138ff; Didron (1886) ii 21–2. 871–2. instrument: Perhaps in apposition to she, meaning ‘a person made use of for the accomplishment of a purpose’; cp. Empson’s idea that Satan is duping Sin (ii 839–44n). Burden (1967) 25 thinks Sin responsible for Satan’s leaving hell; she is Satan’s disobedient sin. But the allegory is more general, with Sin providing the means to enter a world of woe. The thought is close to that of Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 189: ‘Only thou misbegotten monster, sin / . . . Hell was shut. Thou wert the key to open it’. fatal key: An antitype of the key of eternal life opening the gates of death. A bold extension of the felix culpa motif is possible, with Sin’s key fatal as leading beyond the Fall to redemption (cp. ii 807–9). The key was also an attribute of Hecate, the Night-hag of ii 662. 877–82. For a Freudian interpretation see Le Comte (1978) 71. wards: incisions in a key’s bit, matching the projecting wards in the lock; not ‘tumblers’, as Rajan. For the allegory of Sin and Death cp. ii 727–30n; James 1:15; K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 110. 879–83. Contrast heaven’s gates (vii 205–7), which open harmoniously, ‘on golden hinges moving’. Messiah enters the abyss to create, Satan to destroy (B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 100).

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880 With impetuous recoil and jarring sound The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut Excelled her power; the gates wide open stood, 885 That with extended wings a bannered host Under spread ensigns marching might pass through With horse and chariots ranked in loose array; So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame. 890 Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark Illimitable ocean wíthout bound, Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height, And time and place are lost; where eldest Night 895 And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 881. grate] great 1667, corr. in Errata. ‘The correction shows M.’s dislike of the pun inadvertently contributed by the printer’ (Rajan, following Adams (1955) 86). But the Errata list cannot be assumed authorial; see Moyles (1985) ch. 4. Corns (1990) 91 suggests thunder (882) may be appositional. 883. Cp. Prol I, YP i 223, citing Hesiod, Theogony 123 (‘From Chaos sprang Erebus and black Night’). Erebus often referred to hell itself – as in Virgil, Georgics iv 471, where the dead are ‘startled from the lowest realms of Erebus’ by Orpheus’ song. 887. loose: (1) widely spaced, unserried (military); (2) lax. 888. furnace mouth: The hell mouth of medieval picturing; see Schmidt (1995). 889. redounding: surging, issuing. Quint (1993) 253f compares the storm in Camoens, Lusiads vi 84ff. 891. secrets: secret places or potentialities. Perhaps suggesting objects of forbidden knowledge: Satan is out of bounds. ‘An empty boast’; the secrets do not appear ( Jarvis (1991) 36). Danielson (1982) 46–7 distinguishes this deep from that of Gen. 1:2, won from chaos by establishment of a bound (iii 10–12; vii 225–31). Delimitation was a Greek emphasis (Schwartz (1988) 11f ). On the secrets tradition, see Eamon (1994); L. Daston, W&I, 11 (1995) 399. Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 73 (‘oh that this people would not go about to understand those unrevealed decrees, and secrets of God’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 iii (1989–) i 196 (witchcraft justified as res secreta). 892. without: On the accentuation, see B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 202f. Cp. iv 256, 656, etc. 894. Night: 1667 and 1674 fail to italicize (elsewhere the rule for proper names). 895–903. Theogonic or creation myths traced fundamental powers of nature

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Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring 900 Their embryon atoms; they around the flag Of each his faction, in their several clans, Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift or slow, Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands Of Barca or Cyrenë’s torrid soil,

like Eros, Ge (Earth) and Tartarus to the ancestors Chaos and (often) Night, which preceded the cosmos. Hesiod’s Theogony perhaps leaves mythology for metaphysics by making Chaos an initial void. But Plato’s and Ovid’s chaos, imitated by Macrobius (Dream of Scipio), Boccaccio (De Genealogiis) and many others, is a mass of unformed elements. With M.’s endless Empedoclean strife between contrary qualities cp. that in Ovid, Metam. i 19f (‘cold strove with hot, moist with dry, soft with hard, weightless with heavy’). On the authority of Philo (De Opificio) and early Church Fathers (e.g. Augustine, Confessions XII iii 3 – xxix 40 (1992) 247–70), medieval Christian Platonists and Protestant Reformers alike managed to reconcile chaos with Christian Creation. Cp. Ovid, Metam. tr. Golding (1961) 396–9, ‘To the . . . Earl of Leicester’; Du Bartas, Divine Weeks I i, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 112; Spenser, FQ III vi 36 (the garden of creation with its ‘huge eternall Chaos’); IV x 35 (Strife restrained by Concord). Sandys thought Ovid’s account of creation ‘so consonant to the truth, as doubtless he had either seen the Books of Moses, or received that doctrine by tradition’; but flinched from the seeming ‘eternity of his chaos’ (Ovid (1970) 49). See Ellrodt (1960) 79 citing Augustine, De Genesi; Svendsen (1956) 50; Taylor (1934) 67f; Morford (1991) 41–3; A. S. P. Woodhouse, PQ, 28 (1949) 211–36; A. B. Chambers, JHI, 24 (1963) 55–84; G. S. Koehler, Fabula, 10 (1969) 100–6; W. H. Boyd, MiltQ, 10 (1976) 83–7; and esp. Danielson (1982) 27, 46–9, et passim; Treip (1994) 137 (Chaos the ‘allegorical epitome of confusion, straying, error’ – too dark a conception for a power only in potentia evil). 898–910. Atomism (rejected by Aristotle) was highly controversial; Cudworth thought it atheistical; see Crombie (1961) Index, Atomism; Schwartz (1988) 25. Democritus denied matter to have been created – it was nullo a principio sed ex aeterno tempore (Cicero, De Finibus I vi). 899. mastery: Spelt Maistrie; disyllabic. 900. embryon atoms: Criticized by Bentley; but the trope is defensible, since in chaos (womb of matter) there are no formed atoms, only warring qualities. Cp. Lucretius i 59 (semina rerum). 904. Barca: Familiar from Virgil, Aen. iv 42; an ancient city of Cyrenaica, of which Cyrene was the capital.

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905 Levied to side with warring winds, and poise Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere, He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns: next him high arbiter 910 Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, 915 Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds, Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked awhile, Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith 920 He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed With noises loud and ruinous (to compare

905–6. Levied: ‘enlisted’ and ‘raised’, to balance or ballast the wings of the winds. The physical raising of the army puns on Lat. levare. 906. To whom . . . adhere: i.e. the one in numerical majority. Cp. Cicero’s account of Democritus’ atomism, De Finibus I vi (concursionibus inter se cohaerescant). 907–10. See ii 232–3n. 911. Cp. Augustine, Confessions XII xxviii 39 (1992) 268 (‘the sensible physical mass containing within its vast womb the natures now evident’); Spenser, FQ III vi 36 (chaos ‘the wide wombe of the world’, from Lucretius v 259, omniparens eadem rerum commune sepulcrum). Lucretius refers to Earth, not the abyss; but his whole demonstration of terrestrial mortality underlies M.’s echoing line. perhaps: Avoiding commitment to any particular cosmological theory. 912–14. Confusion not of the elements but their component qualities. 915. ordain: order; regulate; prepare. 917–18. Stood . . . and looked: standing looked (as often: cp. v 368f ). Bentley’s objection that Into this wild abyss cannot relate to stood is a critical felix culpa, leading to later notice of M.’s mimetic syntax. The conspicuous absence of action after the first ‘Into this wild abyss’ (ii 910), and of even a verb of motion after this repetition, render the wary fiend’s repeated hesitations. Having prepared to leap, he stood. Travesty, perhaps, of the Spirit’s brooding at i 20. 919. frith: Metathetic variant of ‘firth’. 920. pealed: stormed, dinned. 921–2. Cp. vi 310f; x 306; PR iv 563f. A formula made current by Virgil (e.g. Georgics iv 176). ruinous: falling, crashing. Bellona: Goddess

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Great things with small) than when Bellona storms, With all her battering engines bent to raze Some capital city, or less than if this frame 925 Of heaven were falling, and these elements In mutiny had from her axle torn The steadfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground, thence many a league 930 As in a cloudy chair ascending rides Audacious, but that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity: all unawares Fluttering his pennons vain plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour 935 Down had been falling, had not by ill chance The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud Instinct with fire and nitre hurried him As many miles aloft: that fury stayed, Quenched in a boggy Syrtis, neither sea, of war. On parallels between chaos and the war in heaven, see Schwartz (1988) 26f. 927. sail-broad: Suggesting Satan the voyager; cp. ii 410n, 636–41n. vans: fans (poetic diction for wings). 930. ‘A chair is too mean a carriage’ (Bentley). But cp. Edward Taylor’s Christ in his ‘bright sedan’ (Meditations I xx 8, Fowler (1991) 731). 933. On Satan’s dropping to hell, see Frye (1978) 61; Schaar (1982) 238. pennons: plumes, wings. Latinism (pennae); first instance in OED. Punning on pinion = ‘wing’ and pen = ‘feather, wing’, with metaphoric extension of a pennon’s fluttering (Corns (1990) 98f ). Cp. vii 441; Lucan, Civil War v (Caesar on the stormy Adriatic); Quint (1993) 255 (deflating exploration as an epic theme). 934. fathom: Spelt ‘fadom’ in 1667. this hour: The hour of M.’s writing, or our reading? Multiplying perspectives. 935. Making the temptation and Fall depend not only on evil will but on contingency. M. frequently returns to the fortuitousness of the threat to innocence; cp. iv 530; ix 85, 421, 423; Danielson (1982). Contrast Raphael’s smooth flight at v 266ff (Schaar (1982) 254). 936–8. Thunder and lightning were caused by vapours igniting – on one theory, by mixture of hot sulphurous and cold nitrous vapours, as in gunpowder (vi 512). See Svendsen (1956) 101, 269f; E. H. Duncan, PQ, 30 (1951) 442f. Instinct: ‘inflamed, impelled’ (OED 2); not ‘charged with’ (a more recent meaning). 939. The Syrtes were huge, proverbially dangerous sandbanks off the N African shore. Cp. Acts 27:17 Gk and Vulg. (timentes ne in Syrtim inciderent); Apollonius Rhodius iv 1235ff (a misty featureless wasteland stretching to the dim horizon); Lucan, Civil War ix 303f (Syrtes vel primam mundo

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940 Nor good dry land: nigh foundered on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying; behoves him now both oar and sail. As when a griffin through the wilderness With wingèd course o’er hill or moory dale, 945 Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold: so eagerly the fiend O’er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, 950 And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies: At length a universal hubbub wild Of stunning sounds and voices all confused natura figuram / cum daret, in dubio pelagi terraeque reliquit). In a letter to R. Jones (1 Aug. 1657), M. moralizes Syrtis: ‘beware the Syrtes . . . and the song of the Sirens’ (Parker (1996) 505, 1061 n 43). 941. Cp. FQ I xi 8, Spenser’s old dragon similarly ‘halfe flying, and halfe footing in his hast’. 943–7. A chaotically inverted simile, breaking the rule that illustrations should be drawn from familiar things (Aristotle, Topics viii 1, 157a). The legend of ‘gold-guarding griffins’, from whom the one-eyed Arimaspi steal, was often retold out of Herodotus (iii 116) or Pliny (Nat. Hist. VII x). The griffin (a composite monster: half eagle, half lion) is apt because it was subdued by the sun-god Apollo, as Satan will be by Christ (Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 279). Cp. the anecdote of how Alexander the Great captured two griffins, starved them, and attached them to his throne, holding meat on lances above their heads. They flew up for seven days, carrying him to heaven, where he was turned back because he didn’t yet know about the things of earth; see Schaar (1982) 242; Charbonneau-Lassay (1991). Raban Maur associates the gold-guarding griffin with Satan in an allegory: the griffin’s country (inhospitable Scythia) represents Satan’s subjects, those without the warmth of the Holy Spirit (Migne cxi 342). The treasure guarded is the gold of Ophir, which reappears at xi 396–407n. 948–50. ‘Verse-filling asyndeton’ (Curtius (1953) 285–7). Miming the atomized, unstructured state of chaos, and its hectic confusion of sensedata; cp. ii 621. Suggesting versus rapportati (correlative verse), but defeating attempts to assign correspondences with the means of locomotion, through confusion of categories; contrast the ordered correlative verses at vii 502f. On other erratic flights in romantic epics, like Ruggiero on a hippogriff, see Schwartz (1988) 17; Lewalski (1985) 68. rough . . . rare: Cp. Drayton’s georgic manifesto of local decorum (Poly-Olbion (1612, 1622) ii 17f ): ‘Here fruitful as the mead, there as the heath be bare; /

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Borne through the hollow dark assaults his ear With loudest vehemence: thither he plies, 955 Undaunted to meet there whatever power Or spirit of the nethermost abyss Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne 960 Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread Wide on the wasteful deep; with him enthroned Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign; and by them stood Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name

Then, as the gloomy wood, I may be rough, though rare’. straight] strait 1667. Indicating either ‘strait’ or ‘straight’. Only the latter yields antithesis with rough. For dense, rare, etc. as Aristotelian properties, cp. Bacon, Novum Organum (1620) i 15, 60. 953. Borne] Born 1667; 1674. Indicating ‘borne’ or ‘born’, the former clearly primary. 954. vehemence: force, intensity. Cp. vii 526n; ix Arg. 958. coast: side, region. 959–67. With this court of personifications cp. Hesiod, Theogony 116ff, Virgil, Aen. vi 268–81 (the halls of Pluto, with Discord ); Gower, Mirour de l’Omme 204–76; Spenser, FQ IV ii 47 (the house of the Fates, ‘Downe in the bottome of the deepe abysse, / Where Demogorgon in dull darkenesse pent / . . . / The hideous Chaos keepes’). Like Spenser’s, M.’s Demogorgon (a chthonic power almost coeval with Night), is from Boccaccio, De Genealogiis Deorum, where he comes first of the dark gods. Among his brood are Night, Tartarus, Erebus, the serpent Python, Litigium (cp. Tumult and Discord ) and Fama (Rumour). In Prol I, YP i 222, M. supposes Demogorgon ‘ancestor of all the gods . . . to be identical with the Chaos of the ancients’; see Fletcher (1956–61) ii 433–4; Marjara (1992) 95f; Turner (1987) 126; A. Fowler, in Logan (1989) 45–7. The presence of Rumour shows that chaos occurs at a social as well as a physical level. 961. wasteful: desolate, excessive, limitless. ‘An epithet peculiarly suited to Chaos, at once an inferno of fruitlessly warring elements, and the source of all fertility, when God commands’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 105). 962–7. 1667 fails to italicize the personifications as proper names. 962. A. B. Chambers, JHI, 24 (1963) 75f suggests that Night personifies prime matter. Perhaps she remains undescribed because unformed and ‘unapparent’. Some see contradiction with iii 1 and vii 243f, where light is ‘first of things’; like a good Jungian, M. gives light and dark equal claims. 964–5. name: divine nature. Alluding to Statius’ mention (Thebaid iv 514) of ‘the name whose knowing and whose speaking’ the ghosts

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965 Of Demogorgon; Rumour next and Chance, And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled, And Discord with a thousand various mouths. To whom Satan turning boldly, thus. Ye powers And spirits of this nethermost abyss, 970 Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy, With purpose to explore or to disturb The secrets of your realm, but by constraint Wandering this darksome desert, as my way Lies through your spacious empire up to light, 975 Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds Confine with heaven; or if some other place From your dominion won, the ethereal king Possesses lately, thither to arrive 980 I travel this profound: direct my course; Directed, no mean recompense it brings To your behoof, if I that region lost, All usurpation thence expelled, reduce dread – identified by the scholiast as Demogorgon. Orcus and Ades are names of the classical god of hell. 965. Chance: See ii 909f. 966. Broadbent (1960) 133 objects to Confusion being both a proper name and a common substantive (ii 897, 966; cp. Tumult, ii 1040). But this objection would rule out all ‘mixed allegory’ (as rhetoricians termed it). 967. thousand . . . mouths: Cp. Spenser, FQ IV i 27, where Ate, ‘mother of debate’, has a divided tongue. 970–2. Quint (1993) 254, pursuing anti-imperialism, rightly compares Camoens, Lusiads, tr. Fanshawe (1940) ii 80 (da Gama’s politic speech to the King of the Moors: ‘We are not men, who, spying a weak town / . . . / Murder the folks’); the sense of spy is different in M., however. Cp. Smith (1994) 229. secrets: places or things kept secret for security reasons: see ii 891n. 975. Cp. Spenser, FQ VI i 6, ‘Alone, and without guide’, of Calidore (Treip (1994) 137). 977. Confine with: border on. 980. profound:] profound, 1667. 983–5. Perhaps misleading Chaos and Night to get past them (Empson (1961) 67). After all, reduction of creation to original darkness was only one provisional plan at the infernal council; another was to occupy it (ii 364–6, 397–402). Hell and Chaos are allied at least in their entropy of ruin; and Orcus and Ades are Chaos’s retainers; cp. B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 591 (Chaos and tyranny not opposed). But in calling Chaos evil on the strength of 1 Enoch xxi 1–10, Schwartz (1988) goes too far.

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To her original darkness and your sway 985 (Which is my present journey) and once more Erect the standard there of ancient Night; Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge. Thus Satan; and him thus the anarch old With faltering speech and visage incomposed 990 Answered. I know thee, stranger, who thou art, That mighty leading angel, who of late Made head against heaven’s king, though overthrown. I saw and heard, for such a numerous host Fled not in silence through the frighted deep 995 With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, Confusion worse confounded; and heaven gates Poured out by millions her victorious bands Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here Keep residence; if all I can will serve, 1000 That little which is left so to defend Encroached on still through our intestine broils Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first hell Your dungeon stretching far and wide beneath; Now lately heaven and earth, another world 1005 Hung o’er my realm, linked in a golden chain

988. anarch: Chaos, anti-ruler of the ‘eternal anarchy’ (ii 896); perhaps a coinage by analogy with ‘mon-arch’. 989. incomposed: discomposed, disordered. 990. Words addressed by a devil to Jesus (Luke 4:34); again Satan’s story travesties Christ’s. On the inverted analogy, Chaos would not be evil. 993–8. Partly confirmed by Raphael’s narrative (vi 867–74). In the mention of bands / Pursuing, however, Chaos may be agreeing with Satan; cp. i 169–71n. Reports of the expulsion are graduated: Satan’s hold on the facts is feebler than Chaos’s. The latter’s account is merely chaotic; Satan’s, consistently perverted. 998–1000. Danielson (1982) 50 infers the existence of possible worlds never created. 1000. so: in this way (i.e. by keeping residence). 1001. our] your Pearce. Emending on the assumption that Chaos refers to the angels’ intestine broils, which weakened Night’s sceptre by leading indirectly to the ‘encroachment’ of creation (Adams (1955) 98f ). But M. Agari, in Yoshida (1983) 148, finds an alienation effect – M. momentarily breaks logic to allude to the Civil War. 1002. 1667 fails to italicize Night. 1004. heaven: the firmament, Earth’s sky. 1005. golden chain: See ii 1051n.

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To that side heaven from whence your legions fell: 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. 1010 He ceased; and Satan stayed not to reply, But glad that now his sea should find a shore, With fresh alacrity and force renewed Springs upward like a pyramid of fire Into the wild expanse, and through the shock 1015 Of fighting elements, on all sides round Environed wins his way; harder beset And more endangered, than when Argo passed Through Bosporus betwixt the jostling rocks: Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 1020 Charybdis, and by the other whirlpool steered. 1006. heaven: the empyrean. 1007. your: The polite form (M. Agari, Poetica, 42 (1994) 131). walk: ‘As a believer in the providence of God, Milton could not possibly have believed in the huge success-story of Satan fighting his way to Paradise’; Chaos ‘jeers at the heroic piece of space-travel’ (Empson (1961) 118). True, Satan later exaggerates his difficulties (x 477–9n); but Chaos, far from jeering at the heroic space traveller, is most respectful (e.g. ii 991f ). Walk may have religious overtones (‘manner of behaviour’, ‘course of conduct’; cp. Ps. 86:11). M. explicitly states that Satan moved with difficulty (ii 1021f ). not far: Earth’s nearness to chaos amplifies the fragility of its created order. 1013. pyramid: an elongated spire-like or pillar-like form; flame-shape. Cp. many examples in Hotson (1964) 86. Anciently derived from πsS (‘fire’); pyramid of fire is thus figura etymologica. Even outside hell, Satan cannot escape fire (Schaar (1982) 243). For the pyramid emblem, see v 758–9n. In Tourneur, Transformed Metamorphosis (1600) 70, ‘Ambition’s pyramis’ satirizes the church of Rome. 1017–18. When Jason and the Argonauts sailed through the Bosporus (Straits of Constantinople; mod. Karadeniz Bogazi) en route to Colchis, they narrowly escaped destruction between the Symplegades, the clashing or jostling rocks (Apollonius Rhodius ii 317, 552–611). jostling] justling 1667 (a common variant pronunciation). ‘The Argo in Greek mythology was the first ocean-going ship and Satan the first to cross chaos of his own will’ (B. Rajan, in Milton (1964) 108). The comparison may be apter still: the Argonauts were preceded by a dove, as Satan was by Messiah and by God’s creative spirit, who ‘Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss’ (i 21). 1019–20. Odysseus, following Circe’s advice, avoided Charybdis and sailed close to Scylla, the other whirlpool, in passing the Straits of Messina between Sicily and Italy (Homer, Od. xii). Sailing before a s wind, he

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paradise lost So he with difficulty and labour hard Moved on, with difficulty and labour he; But he once past, soon after when man fell, Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain Following his track, such was the will of heaven, Paved after him a broad and beaten way Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length From hell continued reaching the utmost orb Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse With easy intercourse pass to and fro To tempt or punish mortals, except whom God and good angels guard by special grace. But now at last the sacred influence Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night A glimmering dawn; here nature first begins Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire As from her outmost works a broken foe With tumult less and with less hostile din, That Satan with less toil, and now with ease Wafts on the calmer wave by dubious light

would have Charybdis on his larboard (port) side – not starboard, as Bentley (Pearce weakly agreeing). Bentley also objects to the georgic technicality: ‘this larboard in heroic style is abominable’. Cp. Pope to Cromwell, 28 Oct. 1710, deprecating a ‘tarpaulin-phrase’ of Dryden’s. 1024–30. Death constructs the bridge at x 293–305. See Schaar (1982) 245f: the Symplegides were fastened, as soon as Argo passed, by divine decree. 1024. amain: without delay. 1026. For the commonplace, conflated with the bridge of hell motif, see Schaar (1982) 164 with examples from Greek Anthology X iii to Grotius and Owen. 1028. Contrast Virgil, Aen. viii 728 (pontem indignatus Araxes). 1033. The angels’ ‘chief ministry concerns believers’ (De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 346, citing Heb. 1:14; Ps. 34:7; etc.). 1034–5. Cp. ix 107n. On the imagery of light, see Allen (1970) 100ff. 1037. nature: The agency of creation begins with light (iii 1ff ). 1038. farthest: Spelt ‘fardest’ in 1667. 1040. Local decorum; the stress on the second less is lessened. 1042. dubious light: Cp. Seneca, Hercules Furens 668, Hercules’ passage out of hell; Schaar (1982) 247 citing Marino and Crashaw, Sospetto d’Herode, in Steps to the Temple (1646) 15 (a vision of the ‘horrors of night routed and scattered by the divine light’ on the eve of the Nativity).

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And like a weather-beaten vessel holds Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn; 1045 Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, Weighs his spread wings, at leisure to behold Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wide In circuit, undetermined square or round, With opal towers and battlements adorned 1050 Of living sapphire, once his native seat; And fast by hanging in a golden chain

1043. holds: (1) remains in (OED 7 c, citing Gavin Douglas, ‘haldand the deip, see’); (2) reaches (Latinism: tenere). Cp. Catullus iv; Horace, Odes I xiv 2f (occupa portum); Shakespeare, Coriolanus IV v 62f. Schaar (1982) 247–9 compares emblems counselling against renewal of the Civil War. 1046. Schaar (1982) 250f compares Tasso, Ger. Lib. i 14 contrasting Satan’s offer of damnation to Eve with Gabriel’s annunciation of salvation to Mary. 1047–8. A boundary too wide to be obviously rectilinear or curved. Cp. x 381n; Rev. 16:21. Heaven’s reconciliation squares the circle (Fowler (1964) 267f ). 1049–50. In Rev. 21:19 one foundation of the wall of the heavenly city is garnished with sapphire (Ryken (1970) ). living: natural, uncut (goldsmiths’ term). D. Griffin, MiltS, 9 (1976) 151–67 compares the ‘naturally artful’ paradox of ‘vegetable gold’. The wall, like Jehovah’s altar, must not be ‘of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it’ (Exod. 20:25); see Tuve (1952) 183. On correspondences with the apocalyptic vision, see Fixler (1969) 157 et passim. 1051. Homer’s Zeus claims he could draw up all the other gods, with the Earth and the sea, and hang them from a pinnacle of Olympus by a golden chain (Il. vii 18–27). In Prol II, YP i 236, this chain is ‘the universal concord and sweet union of all things which Pythagoras poetically figures as harmony’. For the idea of a chain of being, cp. Plato, Theaetetus 153D; Boethius, De Consolatione iv prose 6 and metrum 6 (‘the bond of love’); Chaucer, Knight’s Tale I (A) 2987–93 (‘faire cheyne of love’); Spenser, FQ II vii 46; Wolff (1947); Edelstein (1953) 48–67; Lovejoy (1960) 63 et passim; Harvey (1975) 3 n 7. According to cabbalists and alchemical philosophers the chain (like Jacob’s ladder) symbolizes the scala naturae; cp. iii 516–17n, v 469–90n, 483n. Coming immediately after the principal treatment of chaos, the chain of Concord or Necessity serves to impose order. A liminal transition to the ordered worlds to follow. Sometimes the chain symbolized meditation on the sequence of causes and effects leading to God. But cp. Sir Thomas Browne, ‘There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer’s chain’.

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This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. Thither full fraught with mischievous revenge, 1055 Accursed, and in a cursèd hour he hies. THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK

Paradise Lost BOOK III The Argument

God sitting on his throne sees Satan flying towards this world, then newly created; shows him to the Son who sat at his right hand; foretells the success of Satan in perverting mankind; clears his own justice and wisdom from all imputation, having created man free and able enough to have withstood his tempter; yet declares his purpose of grace towards him, in regard he fell not of his own malice, as did Satan, but by him seduced. The Son of God renders praises to his Father for the manifestation of his gracious purpose towards man; but God again declares, that grace cannot be extended toward man without the satisfaction of divine justice; man hath offended the majesty of God by aspiring to Godhead, and therefore with all his progeny devoted to death must die, unless someone can be found sufficient to answer for his offence, and undergo his punishment. The Son of God freely offers himself a ransom for man: the Father accepts him, ordains his incarnation, pronounces his exaltation above all names in heaven and earth; commands all the angels to adore him; they obey, and hymning to their harps in full choir, celebrate the Father and the Son. Meanwhile Satan alights upon the bare convex of this world’s outermost

1052–3. pendent world: the whole created universe. It seems tiny by comparison to heaven, as a star seems by comparison to the moon. Earth will not be visible until Satan penetrates the ‘firm opacous globe’ of iii 418. pendent: hanging in the balance, undecided. Cp. Dante, Par. xxviii 19–21; P. Parker, ELR, 9 (1979) 321; Corns (1994) 2f (comparing the belittling detachment of Cowley, ‘The Ecstasy’ ii–iii). 1054. fraught with: destined to produce. Continuing the mercantile imagery of ii 636–42, 1043–4, etc.

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orb; where wandering he first finds a place since called the Limbo of Vanity; what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the gate of heaven, described ascending by stairs, and the waters above the firmament that flow about it: his passage thence to the orb of the sun; he finds there Uriel the regent of that orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the new creation and man whom God had placed there,1 inquires of him the place of his habitation, and is directed; alights first on Mount Niphates. Hail[,] holy light, offspring of heaven first-born, iii Argument.1 there] second 1669 state; here 1674. 1–55. A fresh exordium: the change of mise en scène from hell and chaos to heaven (iii 13–21; vii 1–39n) requires a ceremonial approach to the divine presence. More personal than the invocations in Bk i (to the heavenly Muse and the Spirit) or Bk vii (to Urania), yet richer in theological and aesthetic implications, with autobiography kept in proportion. The identity of the light addressed is debated: (a) Sewell’s light is the Son of God, the ‘living light’ of Dante, Par. xiii 55; (b) Kelley (1941) 92–4 takes iii 21–4 to imply ‘light in the physical sense’; (c) Williams (1948) 54, Allen (1954) 101, and E. Haan, CLS, 30 (1993) 115 –36 think the light both physical and divine, a divine emanation (effluence) as in the Platonic system, separating into beams to produce the various splendours of Creation. iii 2, 51–5 indicate more than physical light in the modern sense. And M. would have been influenced by the tradition going back to pseudoDionysius’s light mysticism (Simson (1964) 50–5) through the Cambridge Platonists, Vida’s Hymns, and the Florentine Neoplatonists: e.g. Ficino, De Sole, De Lumine, and Comm. on Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus. But in addressing ‘that immortall light’ which ‘from th’ eternall Truth . . . doth proceed’ (Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie 169–75), M. avoids assuming any particular system. See A. Cirillo, JEGP, 68 (1969) 45–56; Lieb (1981) 186 (‘enlightened perplexity’); L. Irwin, Alexandria, 3 (1995) 55 (Gnostic Wisdom); and Bauman (1987) 220 (a minute but parti pris analysis); L. M. Johnson, in Danielson (1989) 73 (on the symmetry). On the placement of the invocations, see ix 1–47n; Introduction: Numerical composition. 1–12. Cp. Drummond, ‘An Hymn of the Fairest Fair’ 125–30, 137–42 (‘O most holy One! / Unprocreate Father, ever-procreate Son, / Ghost breathed from both, you were, are, aye shall be, / Most blessed, three in one, and one in three, / Incomprehensible by reachless height, / And unperceived by excessive light. . . . so the spring, / The wellhead, and the stream which they forth bring, / Are but one selfsame essence, nor in aught / Do differ, save in order, and our thought / No chime of time discerns in them to fall, / But three distinctly bide one essence all’). On the hymn form and prayerful stance, see Lewalski (1985) 31 n 16;

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5

Or of the eternal co-eternal beam May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, And never but in unapproachèd light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hearst thou rather pure ethereal stream,

Schwartz (1988) 63; E. Haan, CLS, 30 (1993) 115–36. Cp. hymns to light at iii 708–32; iv 660–73; vii 243–60, 338–87; and vi 472–82 (Satan’s); PR iv 289. An ‘entrance liturgy’ before the Shekinah; cp. Cowley, Davideis (1656) iv. 1–8. The metaphors are Athanasian, not Arian ( J. H. Adamson, in Hunter (1971) 53–61). Rosenblatt (1994) 75 sees Arianism and Trinitarianism turned into ‘apparent equivalents’ by or; but in invocations alternatives were usual, implying prudence in covering distinct possibilities. Each form of address (offspring, beam, stream) associates divine light or wisdom with a distinct aspect of deity. Cp. Wisdom vii, Charles (1913) i 547 (God’s Wisdom addressed by 3 × 7 names); Tasso, Creation, tr. Tusiani (‘Father of heaven, and you of the Father eternal / Eternal Son, and uncreated offspring, / Of mind unchangeable the only child: / Image divine, to your divine example / Equal; and pure light of ardent light: / And you who breathe from both, and from both shine, / Or of doubled light the Spirit kindled / Who are pure holy light, from holy flame, / Like lucid stream within a fountain clear / And true image still of image true’). 1. Either ‘light the Son of God’ or (as Kelley) ‘light the first creation’; cp. vii 243–4, ‘light . . . first of things’. In NT, Christ is often ‘firstborn’: e.g. Col. 1:15, 18. Cp. Fuller, ‘Of Building’, Holy State (1840) 134, ‘light, God’s eldest daughter’. 2. ‘Or, light the beam of the eternal, equally eternal.’ Sewell imagines hesitation between Arian and Trinitarian formulations, the Word co-eternal and begotten in time. But the thought may be more speculative; Fludd questioned whether ‘light is increate or created by an increate light’ (Broadbent (1960) 141); Donne, Sermons iii 353: ‘Christ is not . . . called Light . . . by a metaphor, but truly, and properly.’ 3. express: represent symbolically, image. God is light: Cp. 1 John 1:5. 4–5. God ‘only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto’ (1 Tim. 6:16). M. distinguishes visible and invisible light (vii 243–9n). 6. effluence: effulgence, radiance; cp. Wisdom vii 25f, divine Sapience as ‘a clear effluence of the glory of the almighty; / Therefore can nothing defiled find entrance into her. / For she is an effulgence from everlasting light’ (Charles (1913) i 547). essence increate: the uncreated divine essence. Light was sometimes regarded as an ‘accident’ (quality), rather than a body (Fletcher (1956–61) ii 191). 7. hearst thou rather: do you prefer to be called? Lat. idiom, not earlier instanced in OED. ethereal stream: Cp. Lucretius v 267 (aetherius Sol).

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Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun, Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne With other notes than to the Orphéan lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to reascend, Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovereign vital lamp; but thou Revisitst not these eyes, that roll in vain

8. Cp. Job 38:19 (‘Where is the way where light dwelleth?’); Dante, Par. xxx 61–73 (grace as a river of light poured over creation). 9–12. Cp. vii 233–52; Gen. 1:1–5. invest: cover, wrap. In Ps. 104:2 God covers himself ‘with light as with a garment’. void: Cp. vii 228–33; Danielson (1982) 46 (on the second stage of creation). 13–16. The Stygian pool and utter (outer) darkness is hell, the middle darkness chaos. Cp. Dante, Par. xxxii 22–4, ascent from the ‘deepest pool of the universe’. On the structural relation with the descent of vii 12–16, 21–5, see MacCaffrey (1959) 58. Since M. has not been absent from his Muse, light and Muse are not identical (N. H. Henry, RenP (1968) 69–83; S. Davies and W. B. Hunter, SEL, 28 (1988) 101f; Driscoll (1993) 148–50; Hunter (1971) 149–56; Bauman (1987) 229). 17–21. Dissociating himself from the ‘generally-sung fable of Orpheus, whom they feign to have recovered his Eurydice from hell with his music, that is, truth and equity from darkness of barbarism and ignorance with his profound and excellent doctrines’ (Reynolds, Mythomystes (1632), Spingarn (1908–9) i 158f ). Orphic poetry was the work of furor (Stevens (1985) 128). Yet Orphic cosmogony underlies the account of Chaos’s court in Bk ii. On the fears M. associated with Orpheus, see Lieb (1994) 64ff. 17. other: Since M. claims not to have lost his Eurydice. 19. heavenly Muse: Cp. vii 1, Urania. The change to the third person differentiates the Muse from light (Gregory (1989) 95). venture down: Recasting ‘his voyage as a psychological journey’ (Lewalski (1985) 32) and as God’s action within him. 20–1. Re-echoing the Virgilian echo of ii 432–3n. 23. Obviously now physical light – but without change of address. The light of truth was brighter, but not categorically different from visible light;

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paradise lost To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, Smit with the love of sacred song; but chief Thee Sion and the flowery brooks beneath That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow, Nightly I visit: nor sometimes forget Those other two equalled with me in fate, So were I equalled with them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old.

cp. Spenser, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie 169–71 (the ‘immortall light’ of Truth ‘many thousand times more bright, more cleare, / More excellent, more glorious, more divine’ than sunlight). 25. drop serene: i.e. gutta serena, the eye disease M. suffered from. 26. suffusion: cataract (medical). dim suffusion: Perhaps specifying suffusio nigra. 29. Virgil prays that ‘smitten with a great love’ of the Muses (ingenti percussus amore) he may be shown nature’s secrets (Georgics ii 475–89). 30. Among the ‘places’ of sacred song M. chiefly visits Zion: i.e. Hebrew poetry. Cp. i 10–11n; PR iv 347 (‘Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling’). 32. M. often composed at night; see vii 29n. 34. ‘Would that I were also equally famous’. 35–6. Thamyris: Thracian poet (e.g. Homer, Il. ii 594–600) enamoured of the Muses. He challenged them to a contest with a blank wager, and the victorious Muses chose to take Thamyris’ eyes and lyre (sometimes, his ability to sing); ‘Thamyras insanit’ was proverbial of those who ventured beyond their talents: e.g. Estienne, Dictionarium (1579). No compositions of Thamyris’ survived; M. may mean that he pondered myths of blinded bards, or felt (reasonable) trepidation in case portraying heaven proved beyond his own talents. N. Flinker, in Walker (1988) 91–4, 96 defends the allusion’s exactness against R. H. Sundell. Maeonides: Homer’s surname; ‘blind Homer’ would have been infelicitous, since Gk ]µηSος = ‘blind’. The contrast between blindness and insight was commonplace. Pico, like several other Renaissance philosophers, mystically links sightlessness and initiation, instancing Homer and Tiresias: ‘many . . . enraptured by the vision of spiritual beauty, were by the same cause blinded corporeally’ (Wind (1965) 58). In Id Plat M. calls Tiresias ‘the Dirkaian augur, whose very blindness gave him boundless light’ (profundum lumen). The Thracian king Phineus lost his sight because he became too good at prophesying, and published the gods’ counsels (Hyginus, Fabulae xix). In Second Defence, YP iv (1) 484f, M. contests Apollonius Rhodius’ similar explanation: ‘recompensed with far more excelling gifts’ Phineus’ blindness (and by

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Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature’s works to me expunged and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. So much the rather thou celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence

inference M.’s) ‘is not to be considered as the punishment for any crime’ (Parker (1996) 390). 37–8. Poetic syntax; move seems intransitive until Harmonious numbers shows it transitive. ‘This flicker of hesitation about whether the thoughts move only themselves, or something else, makes us see that the numbers . . . are the very thoughts themselves, seen under a new aspect’ (D. Davie, in Kermode (1960) 73). numbers: verse. wakeful bird: nightingale. Thamyris’ soul passed into a nightingale (Plato, Republic 620A). 39. darkling: in the dark (not yet poetic diction). 47. book of knowledge: Book of Nature. A commonplace; cp. viii 67, ‘book of God’; Curtius (1953) 319–26 citing Quarles (‘The world’s a book in folio, printed all / With God’s great works in letters capital: / Each creature is a page; and each effect / A fair character, void of all defect’). Appropriately placed at the beginning of the part where the Book of Nature first appears. See Introduction: Numerical composition. 48. blank: (1) ‘blank page’ (OED 5–7) (continuing the book metaphor); (2) ‘void’ (OED 6 b). In the sense ‘white’, blank often had bad associations for M.; perhaps because of the film obscuring his vision. Leonard (1990) 69f defends the imagery against Bentley. blank] blanc 1667. Not to distinguish a different sense, as Grierson argues. 50. Assuming knowledge to be based on sensation, as in Aristotle’s epistemology, or Locke’s empiricist Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) II i 2 (‘All ideas come from sensation or reflection’). 51–5. On external blindness as an opportunity for inner illumination, see iii 35–6n; Wind (1965) 56. all mist . . . purge: Cp. Beelzebub’s hope that the devils may ‘purge off this gloom’ at heaven’s ‘orient beam’ (ii 399f ) – and M.’s own prayer at i 22–6.

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paradise lost Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. Now had the almighty Father from above, From the pure empyrean where he sits High throned above all height, bent down his eye, His own works and their works at once to view: About him all the sanctities of heaven Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received Beatitude past utterance; on his right The radiant image of his glory sat, His only Son; on earth he first beheld Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude; he then surveyed Hell and the gulf between, and Satan there Coasting the wall of heaven on this side night

56–79. The first of the panoramic views of creation, offsetting Satan’s ‘sudden view / Of all this world at once’ (iii 542f ). One survey looks to mankind’s salvation, the other their destruction. There are resonances with v 257–74; vi 673, where God sits eternally ‘consulting on the sum of things’. On the circular paragraph structure, with love at its centre, see R. Eriksen, in Cesare (1991) 420–2. On the conspective view motif, see K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 117. their works: Second-order works performed by creatures themselves the works of God. 60. sanctities: gods (metonymically represented by one of their qualities). Schaar (1982) 114f discerns a quasi-ecclesiastical rank, like bishops on earth. 61–2. On the supreme happiness of the beatific vision in heaven, cp. i 684n; De Doctrina i 33, YP vi 630 (‘Complete glorification consists in eternal and utterly happy life, arising chiefly from the sight of God’). A non-Arian metaphor ( J. H. Adamson, in Hunter (1971) 56). thick as stars: Cp. v 594n; vii 356ff. Schaar (1982) 117 traces the imagery to Manilius, Astronomicon v 723ff, with its comparison ‘between the stellar world and a well-ordered and stable society’. 63. Cp. De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 207, 272, admiring the ‘sublimity and copiousness’ with which ‘the generation of the divine nature is described’ in Heb. 1:2f (‘His Son . . . Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person . . . when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high’). 69–73. Changing scale, and reducing Satan to a ‘small night-bird’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 60). From the new perspective Satan’s apparent ascent (ii 1012f ) is seen to be a deflated descent (Stevens (1985) 131). on this side night: ‘Translates . . . a temporal unit into a physical area, as it

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In the dun air sublime, and ready now To stoop with wearied wings, and willing feet, On the bare outside of this world, that seemed Firm land imbosomed without firmament, Uncertain which, in ocean or in air. Him God beholding from his prospect high, Wherein past, present, future he beholds, Thus to his only Son foreseeing spake. Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage

would look if we could escape the limits of earthly knowledge’ (MacCaffrey, op. cit.); cp. iv 555n. sublime: aloft. stoop: swoop (esp. of bird of prey); perhaps also suggesting a posture of weariness, or even metaphorical degradation. Provocatively juxtaposed with the bird image of iii 38–40. dun air: Perhaps imitating Italian aer bruno (murkiness). 74. world: universe, not earth. See ii 1052–3n. 75. Being inside the opaque sphere Satan stands on, the firmament or atmosphere (vii 261–7) is invisible to him. 76. ‘It being unclear whether the surrounding matrix was liquid or gaseous.’ In chaos such categories do not exist; cp. ii 939f. 77. On the spatiality of God’s simultaneous vision, see MacCaffrey (1959) 53f. prospect: lookout point (OED 1b). Cp. Ps. 102:11, tr. Countess of Pembroke (‘From the prospect of thy heavenly hall / Thy eye of earth survey did take’). 80–343. Risking anthropomorphism in the interests of narrative and dramatic exposition, for the benefit of the listeners (angels and readers); see Corns (1994) 14–19. Allegory, not novelistic realism: ‘accidents’, in Le Bossu’s sense, resting only on ‘divine probability’ (Treip (1994) 123). Conversation of the Trinity transforms the celestial council traditional in epic to a vehicle for revealing God’s secret counsel; see M. Hammond, SP, 30 (1933) 1–16; I. Samuel, PMLA, 72 (1957) 601–11; Steadman (1976) 21; Lewalski (1985) 115; A. C. Labriola, Cithara, 25 (1986) 5–30; Schaar (1982) 142ff; Lieb (1989). On Gen. 1:26 as evidence for a council before creation, see C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 11; on councils of the four daughters of God, see H. Traver, PMLA, 40 (1925) 44–92. Cf. Bacon, ‘Of Counsel’ (1985) 63: ‘God himself is not without [a counsellor], but hath made it one of the great names of his blessed Son, The Counsellor’. Coming after i 209f and ii 1025, where Satan’s release is permitted by God, ‘this is the first of God’s grisly jokes’ (Empson (1961) 119). The sardonic tone (authorized by Ps. 38:13) is set by the pun on Transports. Ricks (1963) 60 admires the mimetic delay of can hold. Among many Renaissance analogues, cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. i 7f. 80–1. Establishing that the questions Father and Son ask one another imply no difference of knowledge (Corns (1994) 17).

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paradise lost Transports our adversary, whom no bounds Prescribed, no bars of hell, nor all the chains Heaped on him there, nor yet the main abyss Wide interrupt can hold; so bent he seems On desperate revenge, that shall redound Upon his own rebellious head. And now Through all restraint broke loose he wings his way Not far off heaven, in the precincts of light, Directly towards the new created world, And man there placed, with purpose to assay If him by force he can destroy, or worse, By some false guile pervert; and shall pervert; For man will hearken to his glozing lies, And easily transgress the sole command, Sole pledge of his obedience: so will fall,

83–4. Cp. ii 405–9. Wide: Adverbial use was common. interrupt: breached (not a recent Latinism). Fitting the etymology of chaos (Leonard (1990) 240). seems] is Bentley. Bentley misses God’s ironic tone and implication that the ‘revenge’ is provided for. Cp. M. Agari, in Yoshida (1983) 150. 88. precincts: ground immediately surrounding a holy place. 90. assay: test. with . . . assay: Modifying both wings (subject, Satan) and placed (subject, God), to convey providence’s enigmatic character. The purposefulness is both Satan’s and God’s. 92–3. Mercy is already present in God’s confounding of man’s transgression in Eve’s deception (Gallagher (1990) 121f ). Adam–Eve is a single unit. 93–125. Driscoll (1993) 14, reading anthropomorphically, thinks God’s unnecessary explanations defensive. But the divine fictio foresees accusations actually made by sceptics in M.’s time. 94 –5. sole command: i.e. not to eat the forbidden fruit. Sole pledge: Cp. iv 428 (‘the sign of our obedience’); v 551; viii 329; De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 352 (‘The tree of knowledge of good and evil was not a sacrament . . . for sacraments are meant to be used, not abstained from; but it was a kind of pledge or memorial of obedience’). A central, Augustinian, emphasis: the Fall was a lapse from ‘obedience, the mother and guardian of all the other virtues’, the single command being ‘easy to observe; and so short to remember’ (City of God XIV xii); see Lewis (1942) 67f. The fruit is not mentioned in Bk iii; sub specie aeternitatis it exists solely as a test (Burden (1967) 126). 95–8. God repents the creation of man; cp. De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 133– 5; Stevens (1985) 150f against Stanley Fish’s characterization of God as unemotional. So Christopher (1982) 114 criticizing the nonaffective, ‘passionless’ God of Irene Samuel, Peter Berek, and Gary Hamilton.

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He and his faithless progeny: whose fault? Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 100 Such I created all the ethereal powers And spirits, both them who stood and them who failed; Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have given sincere Of true allegiance, constant faith or love? 105 Where only what they needs must do, appeared, Not what they would, what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When will and reason (reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled, 110 Made passive both, had served necessity, 96–134. God submits to human and angelic judgment a case based on the remotio criminis plea, shifting responsibility and punishment to the Son. On the Ciceronian model, see Lewalski (1985) 120f. 96. The epithet faithless is transferred, like Adam’s guilt and its consequences, from He to progeny. These are involved in the original sin of breaking faith with God, because Adam ‘either stood or fell for the whole human race’ (De Doctrina i 11, YP vi 384); cf. iii 209. 97. Ingrate: See J. Hardy, NQ, 26 (1979) 422. 99. A contradictory myth ‘repeating itself in the falls of successive generations’ (M. N. Clark, ELR, 7 (1977) 207–42). Raising problems, returned to in iii 144–86, which will turn out to have been in God’s mind all along (Danielson (1982) 104–8). Free will, without determinism, caused the Fall; the doctrine of Sufficient Grace being common ground to most Christians (Corcoran (1945) 104f ). 100–2. Admitted by Satan at iv 63–72: the angels had the power to ‘persevere’ or remain faithful; their fall resulted solely from a free choice. Cp. v 525–43. 103–6. Cp. De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 189: if we do not use our free will, ‘whatever worship or love we offer to God is worthless and of no account. . . . Once force is imposed all esteem for services rendered grows faint and vanishes altogether’. 108. Probably alluding to Aristotle’s analysis of choice in Nicomachean Ethics 1112a; but see also YP i 363 n 2. Cp. Areop, YP ii 527: those are foolish who ‘complain of divine providence for suffering Adam to transgress, foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artifical [mechanical] Adam’. 110. God dissociates himself from necessity or fate, the devils’ supreme power; M. dissociates himself from the Westminster Confession’s

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Not me. They therefore as to right belonged, So were created, nor can justly accuse Their maker, or their making, or their fate; As if predestination overruled 115 Their will, disposed by absolute decree Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less proved certain unforeknown. 120 So without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I formed them free, and free they must remain, 125 Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change Their nature, and revoke the high decree theology, as well as from Hobbes’s compatibilism (Danielson (1982) 84, 140). 113–23. Avoiding Socinian limitation of God’s foreknowledge and Calvinist foreknowledge based on decree; see Danielson (1982) 155–7 against Patrides. In M.’s Arminian version of Election, Predestination is so formulated as to exclude determinism; cp. De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 164: ‘nothing happens because God has foreseen it, but rather he has foreseen each event because each is the result of particular causes which, by his decree, work quite freely and with which he is thoroughly familiar’. 120. As the logical term impulse indicates, God explicitly exonerates himself from responsibility for the ‘more proximate’ efficient causes of the Fall; see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 158; K. W. F. Stavely, MiltS, 25 (1989) 125–39. 125–8. Cp. De Doctrina i 3, YP vi 161, appreciating God’s predicament: ‘God is not mutable, if he makes no positive decree about anything which, through the freedom he decided to give man, could turn out otherwise. He would be mutable, and his intention would not be stable, if, by a second decree, he thwarted the freedom he had once decided upon, or cast the least shadow of necessity over it.’ See Stevens (1985) 162: ‘The logic, so carefully heightened by the repetition of a limited number of words as though they were mathematical symbols, appears to render the Father helpless.’ The solution to the impasse is through the metaphor of fealty, introducing the idea of pardon. Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 93: ‘He hath chosen that for his way of honour, of exaltation, that he may have mercy upon you.’ 125. they: Adam and Eve, as well as ‘ethereal powers’ (iii 100). Grammatical fluidity allows the Fall (undetermined whether angelic or human) to be future as well as present (iii 122f, 130) and past (iii 116–19, 128); rendering God’s eternal ‘prospect high, / Wherein past, present, future

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Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained Their freedom, they themselves ordained their fall. The first sort by their own suggestion fell, 130 Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls deceived By the other first: man therefore shall find grace, The other none: in mercy and justice both, Through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel, But mercy first and last shall brightest shine. 135 Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance filled All heaven, and in the blessèd spirits elect Sense of new joy ineffable diffused: he beholds’. R. Bradford, in Nyquist (1987) 179–96 thinks the interlinear pause after change indicates self-doubt. But M.’s God is immutable; he states the logical impossibility of revoking freedom divinely decreed. 129. suggestion: temptation; prompting from within; (hence) intention (OED 1 b). Cp. Leonard (1990) 148. sort: species. Some see contradiction of v 694–6 and 703–10, where Raphael implies that the angels were tempted by Satan. But M. contrasts the angels’ temptation from within their own kind, and mankind’s temptation from without, by the other species. Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 123 (‘The angels’ punishment is pardoned in no part’); 139. The notion of disparate accounts of the angels’ fall leans heavily on conflicting extraliterary traditions (E. F. Daniels, NQ, 205 (1960) 447–50). One need not infer that God is harsh towards the angels: Raphael may be partial in evaluating angelic behaviour. Fish (1971) 215 n 1 calls God’s rationale for grace ethically arbitrary; but it is well defended in Gallagher (1990) 115. 130. Neologisms showing concern with individual responsibility (Corns (1990) 86). 132. Not that repentance cannot help angels (as Corns (1994) 49); rather that God knows they will not in fact repent. See Benet (1994) 96f. 135. ambrosial: Cp. ii 245n; D. Reid, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 140–3, on religious explanations of the fragrance. There may be political associations, since the Court was heavily perfumed; e.g. Martin Parker, ‘Upon Defacing of Whitehall’ 21, Fowler (1991) 373 (‘rich perfume in every room’). 136. spirits elect: the ‘elect angels’ of 1 Tim. 5:21 – angels ‘who have not revolted’. Cp. De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 343f, rejecting the view that ‘good angels now maintain their position not so much by their own strength as by the grace of God’, and therefore ‘take great pleasure in examining the mystery of man’s salvation’. Instead they ‘stand by their own strength, no less than man did before his fall. . . . They are called elect, only in the sense that they are beloved. . . . They desire to contemplate the mystery of our salvation simply out of love’.

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Beyond compare the Son of God was seen Most glorious, in him all his Father shone 140 Substantially expressed, and in his face Divine compassion visibly appeared, Love without end, and without measure grace, Which uttering thus he to his Father spake. O Father, gracious was that word which closed 145 Thy sovereign sentence, that man should find grace; For which both heaven and earth shall high extol Thy praises, with the innumerable sound Of hymns and sacred songs, wherewith thy throne Encompassed shall resound thee ever blessed. 150 For should man finally be lost, should man

138–42. Ricks (1963) 140 contrasts ‘the passions and pains which scar Adam and Eve and Satan’, ‘defaced’ (ix 901) by sin. ‘It is not likely to be an accident that “Grace”. . . so plangently echoes “face”, nor that the rhyme is proffered by the magnificent chiasmus of the last line.’ Rhyme and chiasmus were often used to express likeness or correspondence. Contrast the evil trinities, ii 659–61n, 764n, 869–70n. 139–40. Belonging to an early, orthodox stage of M.’s Christology, thinks Sewell (1939) ch. 4, contrasting De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 212 (the Son denied to be co-essential with the Father). But Substantially expressed may mean ‘God imparted to the Son as much as he pleased of the divine nature, nay of the divine substance itself, care being taken not to confound the substance with the whole essence’ (De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 164) – glossing Heb. 1:2ff, the text underlying the present passage – and thus compatible with Arianism, according to Kelley (1941) 29f. Still, the emphasis in all his Father shows M. seeking (if only out of prudence) a widely acceptable formulation of divine generation. See Jacobus (1976) 182–4; G. Campbell, MLR, 75 (1980) 510. 140. expressed: In one chain of discourse an intransitive preterite (OED 8b); all his Father is the subject of shone, expressed, and appeared. Rendering the Father’s expression in the Son’s compassion. 142. The Son, Adam, and Satan are all heroes, but each is pre-eminent in a different heroic quality – the Son in grace ‘without measure’, Adam in ‘exceeding love’ (ix 961), and Satan in merit (ii 427–9) ( J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 92). 144. The Father speaks with the closed hand of logic, the Son with the open hand of rhetoric. Broadbent (1960) 148f calls ‘the Son’s rhetoric . . . more flexible’; but it reflects the Father’s, often miming the same ideas lyrically, in obedient response. 147–9. sound . . . resound: The internal rhyme, disliked by Bentley, is mimetic.

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Thy creature late so loved, thy youngest son Fall circumvented thus by fraud, though joined With his own folly? That be from thee far, That far be from thee, Father, who art judge Of all things made, and judgest only right. Or shall the adversary thus obtain His end, and frustrate thine, shall he fulfil His malice, and thy goodness bring to naught, Or proud return though to his heavier doom, Yet with revenge accomplished and to hell Draw after him the whole race of mankind, By him corrupted? Or wilt thou thyself Abolish thy creation, and unmake, For him, what for thy glory thou hast made? So should thy goodness and thy greatness both Be questioned and blasphemed without defence. To whom the great creator thus replied. O Son, in whom my soul hath chief delight, Son of my bosom, Son who art alone My word, my wisdom, and effectual might, All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all As my eternal purpose hath decreed: Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will, Yet not of will in him, but grace in me

152–3. ‘Even if mankind’s own folly did contribute to his circumvention’. 153–4. Cp. Gen. 18:25, ‘That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked . . . that be far from thee.’ 156. adversary: The root meaning of Satan; see i 82n. 163. At ii 367–70 Beelzebub speculates that, if the devils seduce mankind, God may be forced to ‘abolish his own works’. 166. blasphemed: defamed. ‘The Son is not challenging the Father, but explaining him’ (Stevens (1985) 157–9). Using the words of Abraham, the example of faith. 168–9. Cp. Isa. 42:1; Mark 1:11 (words from heaven at Jesus’ baptism: ‘Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’); John 1:18 (‘the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father’). 170. J. M. Steadman, NQ, 204 (1959) hears an echo of Aen. i 664 (nate, meae vires, mea magna potentia), Venus’ words to her son, transferred to the Christian God of love in Proba, Centones Virgiliani. Cp. also 1 Cor. 1:24, ‘Christ the power of God’. The Son is God’s effectual might as the Word by whom God’s creative will is performed; cp. John 1:1–3; Bauman (1987) 255. 173–202. M. was anti-Calvinist on Predestination, Election and Reprobation; yet Danielson (1982) 82 rejects the view of Kelley (1941)

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175 Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew His lapsèd powers, though forfeit and enthralled By sin to foul exorbitant desires; Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand On even ground against his mortal foe, 180 By me upheld, that he may know how frail His fallen condition is, and to me owe All his deliverance, and to none but me. Some I have chosen of peculiar grace Elect above the rest; so is my will: 185 The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warned Their sinful state, and to appease betimes The incensèd Deity, while offered grace Invites; for I will clear their senses dark, What may suffice, and soften stony hearts

15–18, that this is Arminian; suggesting instead exploration of Richard Baxter’s categories of grace (sufficient, invincible, and resisted). M.’s God makes salvation depend on people’s will to avail themselves of grace (iii 191), whereas Calvinists thought it impossible to contribute to one’s own salvation. In the logic of M.’s time, however, repentance was not one of a single chain of causes of salvation, but rather one of several parallel causes. Ideas of will as ‘helping cause’ (iii 173) and grace as ‘instrumental cause’ (iii 174) were relatively uncontroversial (L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 168). M.’s identifying of secret and revealed wills of God stands out from most predestinarian theology. God’s secret will is free only for good. Throughout – pace Empson (1961) 120 – the impasse of a capricious deity predestining reprobation is strenuously avoided; M.’s God longs (as it were) to save man. Cp. De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 173 (‘God did not predestine reprobation at all’); Schultz (1955) 129–31. 176. lapsed: decayed; forfeited (legal: OED 1b, 2, 3); fallen into sin; subject to the Fall (theological). The legal diction throughout iii 204–24 suits the Anselmic theory of the Atonement that M. mainly relies on; cp. iii 210–12n. Forfeit of control of passions is similarly described when it actually occurs; cp. ix 1127–31; xii 88–90; Lewis (1942) 68. 179. mortal: (1) implacable; (2) death-dealing. Cp. i 1–2n. 180–1. Ps. 39:4, ‘Lord, make me to know . . . how frail I am.’ 183. peculiar: A term acceptable to Calvinist opinion (Corns (1994) 83). 184. Elect: usually ‘each person who believes and persists in his belief ’ (De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 183); cp. YP vi 180 (‘ “the elect” are the same as “believers” ’). 189–93. Fulfilled at xi 1–47; cp. esp. xi 4n (‘grace . . . removed / The stony from their hearts’).

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190 To pray, repent, and bring obedience due. To prayer, repentance, and obedience due, Though but endeavoured with sincere intent, Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut. And I will place within them as a guide 195 My umpire conscience, whom if they will hear, Light after light well used they shall attain, And to the end persisting, safe arrive. This my long sufferance and my day of grace They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste; 200 But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall; And none but such from mercy I exclude. But yet all is not done; man disobeying, Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins 205 Against the high supremacy of heaven, Affecting Godhead, and so losing all, To expiate his treason hath nought left, But to destruction sacred and devote, He with his whole posterity must die,

190–1. Cp. the rhetoric of iii 138–42n. 194–5. Not the Comforter, sent to guide God’s ‘own’ (xii 486–90); although Stevens (1985) 176 takes conscience as an umpire guiding the regenerate to judge correctly – ‘consciousness or reason in the service of faith’. Elsewhere conscience is an umpire between God and man, whereby God’s ways may be justified; cp. x 754, 842. Contrast Chaos as umpire in the ‘wild abyss’ of life governed by chance, at ii 907 (Danielson (1982) 56). 197–200. Cp. Heb. 3:13f, ‘Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through . . . sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.’ Cp. De Doctrina i 8, YP vi 336: ‘when God . . . hardens the heart of a sinner or blinds him, he is not the cause of sin. For he does not do this by infusing wickedness into the man. The means he uses are just and kindly, and ought rather to soften the hearts of sinners than harden them.’ Lewalski (1985) 73 contrasts the opposite process, of spiritualization; cp. v 469ff. 203–12. Avoiding Voluntarism; and, in God’s Arminian ‘feeling’ of internal necessity, approaching Patripassianism. See Danielson (1982) 154. 206. Satan promises that Eve and Adam will ‘be as gods’ (ix 708–17). Affecting: seeking, aiming at. 208. sacred: dedicated, accursed. devote: consigned to destruction (OED s. v. Devoted 3).

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210 Die he or justice must; unless for him Some other able, and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death. Say heavenly powers, where shall we find such love, Which of ye will be mortal to redeem 215 Man’s mortal crime, and just the unjust to save, Dwells in all heaven charity so dear? He asked, but all the heavenly choir stood mute, And silence was in heaven: on man’s behalf Patron or intercessor none appeared, 220 Much less that durst upon his own head draw The deadly forfeiture, and ransom set. And now without redemption all mankind Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell By doom severe, had not the Son of God, 210–12. To God, death is not punishment, but satisfaction for the treason. Cp. xii 316–19, 402–4; De Doctrina i 16, YP vi 443f (‘Satisfaction means that Christ . . . fully satisfied divine justice by fulfilling the Law and paying the just price on behalf of all men’). Taking for granted the Anselmic satisfaction theory of the Atonement, while occasionally incorporating the earlier ‘ransom theory’ of Irenaeus, Augustine, etc. (iii 221–3). Ironically adopting ‘a satanically conceived role’ to provoke the Son’s act of faith (Stevens (1985) 216); cp. A. E. Barker, in Rajan (1967) 69. as willing: as willing as he is able. 214–15. will be mortal: is willing to be subject to death. Corresponding to willing at iii 211, as just (righteous, perfectly obedient, capable of offering worthy satisfaction) matches able. Cp. 1 Pet. 3:18, ‘Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust.’ With the play on just, cp. i 642; iii 252. 216. charity: compassionate love, caritas. 217–26. Contrast ii 418–26, 466–73, where ‘all sat mute’ at the hellish council, none daring to undertake the expedition against mankind. ‘Satan alone was fit to undertake the one [work], as the Son of God the other’ (Newton). But in M.’s meritocratic heaven, any angel has an opportunity to be mankind’s redeemer; see B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 585 comparing Machiavelli’s ideal republic, with its dependence on the individual virtù of its members. The passage challenged sustained imitation in Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687) ii 499–514. 218. Cp. Rev. 8:1; when the seventh seal was opened ‘there was silence in heaven’. 219. Patron: advocate (OED 1c). 221. ransom set: put down the ransom price, a life. 224–65. Contrast Satan at ii 426–66. 224. doom: judgment.

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225 In whom the fulness dwells of love divine, His dearest mediation thus renewed. Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace; And shall Grace not find means, that finds her way, The speediest of thy wingèd messengers 230 To visit all thy creatures, and to all Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought, Happy for man, so coming; he her aid Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost; Atonement for himself or offering meet, 235 Indebted and undone, hath none to bring: Behold me then, me for him, life for life I offer, on me let thine anger fall; Account me man; I for his sake will leave Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee 240 Freely put off, and for him lastly die Well pleased, on me let Death wreak all his rage; Under his gloomy power I shall not long Lie vanquished; thou hast given me to possess Life in myself for ever, by thee I live, 225. Col. 2:9, ‘In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.’ 226. Not implying disagreement but unfolding a further aspect of the complex synthesis of love and justice (Corns (1994) 18). 227. thy word is past: thy speech is uttered; thy promise is given. 231. unprevented: unanticipated, therefore unasked. Cp. the Collect ‘Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings’; and contrast Ps. 88:13, ‘in the morning shall my prayer prevent thee’. By the doctrine of Prevenience, divine love is prior to human response. For the conglobatio or repetitio scheme, cp. ii 185n. 232–5. Developing iii 207. Happy: fortunate. 233. Eph. 2:4f, ‘God . . . for his great love . . . even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us.’ 236–8. The dramatic repetitions recur at vi 812–18, where the Son is the agent not of grace but of revenge on the rebels. Cp. x 738–40, 832n. Perhaps echoing Nisus’ guilt-accepting cry in Virgil, Aen. ix 427–8 (Me, me adsum, qui feci, in me convertit ferrum, / O Rutuli! mea fraus omnis). life for life: Restoring the terms of Exod. 21:23 inverted at iii 224, fulfilling the Law, and showing the inadequacy of distributive justice. Cp. Matt. 5:17; Stevens (1985) 166f. 240. lastly die: The third (in logical rather than chronological order) of the diminishments incarnation entailed – its kenosis, or emptying of divinity. 243–4. Cp. John 5:26, ‘As the Father hath life in himself: so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.’

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245 Though now to Death I yield, and am his due All that of me can die, yet that debt paid, Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soul For ever with corruption there to dwell; 250 But I shall rise victorious, and subdue My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil; Death his death’s wound shall then receive, and stoop Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed. I through the ample air in triumph high 255 Shall lead hell captive maugre hell, and show The powers of darkness bound. Thou at the sight Pleased, out of heaven shalt look down and smile, While by thee raised I ruin all my foes, Death last, and with his carcass glut the grave: 260 Then with the multitude of my redeemed Shall enter heaven long absent, and return,

245–9. Kelley (1941) 32, taking All that of me can die to mean ‘the whole man . . . body, soul, and spirit’, detects Mortalism, the ‘heretic’ doctrine that both body and soul suffer death. M. was a Mortalist; but the passage could bear an orthodox interpretation. See G. C. Campbell, MiltQ, 13 (1979) 33–6. 248–59. A thunder of scriptural echoes, as usual with the divine utterances (Sims (1962) 18f ). 248–9. Cp. Ps. 16:10, where David (a type of Christ) prophesies, ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.’ 251–3. Cp. Col. 2:15, ‘having spoiled principalities and powers’. Death’s sting, implied at ii 653, will reappear in Michael’s prophecy of victory (xii 432), from 1 Cor. 15:55f (‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law’). Death his death’s wound: Precise wordplay; death, although fatally wounded at the Atonement, dies only after the second coming. 255–6. Cp. Ps. 68:18, applied to Christ in Eph. 4:8 (‘When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive’); Col. 1:13 (‘power of darkness’); 2:15 Geneva (Christ ‘spoiled the principalities, and powers, and hath made a show of them openly, and hath triumphed over them in the same cross’). maugre: in spite of. 259. Death last: 1 Cor. 15:26, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ Cp. Sin’s prophecy at ii 734. 261. The difficulty arises from typological linking of first with second coming, ascension with last judgment; as if Christ were absent not only during the Incarnation but throughout subsequent history. Perhaps M.

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Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud Of anger shall remain, but peace assured, And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more Thenceforth, but in thy presence joy entire. His words here ended, but his meek aspéct Silent yet spake, and breathed immortal love To mortal men, above which only shone Filial obedience: as a sacrifice Glad to be offered, he attends the will Of his great Father. Admiration seized All heaven, what this might mean, and whither tend Wondering; but soon the almighty thus replied: O thou in heaven and earth the only peace Found out for mankind under wrath, O thou My sole complacence! well thou knowst how dear To me are all my works, nor man the least Though last created, that for him I spare Thee from my bosom and right hand, to save, By losing thee awhile, the whole race lost. Thou therefore whom thou only canst redeem, Their nature also to thy nature join; And be thyself man among men on earth, Made flesh, when time shall be, of virgin seed, By wondrous birth: be thou in Adam’s room The head of all mankind, though Adam’s son.

dissembles his Millenarianism (which entailed a period of Christocracy on earth; cp. xii 461–5). See Empson (1961) 127–9. 265. On the bliss of God’s presence see Schaar (1982) 121 citing St Gregory, Comm. on the Song of Sol. ii 5. 267–70. obedience: Superior to caritas in M.’s hierarchy of virtues. Messiah is the only heroically obedient character; cp. vi 820–3n; vii 602–7n; ix 31–2n; J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 93. attends: awaits. 271. Admiration: (1) admiration; (2) wonder. Divine conversation is for the sake of the angels (Corns (1994) 17). 274. Eph. 2:14 Geneva, ‘he is our peace, which hath made of both one, and hath broken the stop of the partition wall’ (marginal note: ‘the cause of the division that was between the Jews and the Gentiles’). 276. complacence: source of satisfaction. See iii 210–12n. 277–8. Cp. Shakespeare, Lear I i 85: to Lear, Cordelia is ‘Although our last, not least’. 283–4. John 1:14, ‘The Word was made flesh.’ 285–6. Cp. 1 Cor. 11:3, ‘The head of every man is Christ.’ room: place.

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As in him perish all men, so in thee As from a second root shall be restored, As many as are restored, without thee none. 290 His crime makes guilty all his sons, thy merit Imputed shall absolve them who renounce Their own both righteous and unrighteous deeds, And live in thee transplanted, and from thee Receive new life. So man, as is most just, 295 Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die, And dying rise, and rising with him raise His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life. So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate, Giving to death, and dying to redeem, 300 So dearly to redeem what hellish hate So easily destroyed, and still destroys 287. 1 Cor. 15:22, ‘As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.’ Transcending, in its physical intermediation, the divine councils in Homer and Virgil, all of which centre on intercession (Stevens (1985) 146–8). 290–4. The argument follows Rom. 5:17–19. 290–2. Cp. Rom. 4:5–8 (‘the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputed to us through faith’). But Imputed Righteousness was a familiar topic: e.g. De Doctrina i 22, YP vi 486 (‘Just as our sins, then, are imputed to Christ, so Christ’s righteousness or merits are imputed to us, through faith’). both righteous and unrighteous: No pleonasm. Implying a conciliatory position on Justification: to renounce dependence on righteous deeds would be justification by faith; but ‘living faith’ (faith issuing in works) would also renounce unrighteous deeds. 293. transplanted: Continuing the biblical imagery of ‘seed’ (iii 284) and ‘second root’ (iii 288), from Rom. 4:16–24 et passim. Cp. De Doctrina i 21, YP vi 477, ‘Of engrafting in Christ, and its effects’ (‘This is the process by which God the Father plants believers in Christ. That is to say, he makes them sharers in Christ’). The first effect of engrafting is ‘new life and growth’. Such horticultural imagery, befitting a georgic epic, abounds; cp. ii 383n; iv 438; ix 1105. 295–6. Finessing on the climax scheme. 299. Giving to: (1) submitting; (2) giving (Christ) up to. The Father’s part in the Atonement, as dying is the Son’s; cp. iii 210–12n; Matt. 20:28. 301. The tenses, although not altogether inconsistent with the main verb’s prophetic future, almost suggest the Fall has already occurred. The effect is of timeless vision comprehending many temporal perspectives. ‘The fall is spoken of as a thing past; perhaps because all things, even future ones, are present to the divine Mind’ (Pearce). Cp. iii 151, 181, 261n, 287; Jarvis (1991) 141. still: ever.

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In those who, when they may, accept not grace. Nor shalt thou by descending to assume Man’s nature, lessen or degrade thine own. 305 Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss Equal to God, and equally enjoying Godlike fruition, quitted all to save A world from utter loss, and hast been found By merit more than birthright Son of God, 310 Found worthiest to be so by being good, Far more than great or high; because in thee Love hath abounded more than glory abounds, Therefore thy humiliation shall exalt With thee thy manhood also to this throne; 315 Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt reign Both God and man, Son both of God and man, Anointed universal king; all power I give thee, reign for ever, and assume Thy merits; under thee as head supreme 304. lessen] less’n 1667. Indicating the scansion Mán’s náture. 305–20. ‘Envisaging his abdication’ (Empson (1961) 137), arguing that the Son cannot be rewarded by exaltation to a throne he already occupies, and so must be destined for his Father’s. But with grace the question of reward never arises; cp. De Doctrina i 16, YP vi 443. On the descent to ascend, see Allen (1970) 133–42. 306. Equal to God: Seemingly Trinitarian; but the text alluded to (Phil. 2:6) could bear a very different interpretation, as De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 274f illustrates: ‘if the sense of the passage is that he is an equal, it rather refutes than proves the theory that he is of one essence with God. For equality cannot exist except between two or more essences’. As at iii 243f, M. veils his Subordinationism in biblical words. See C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 10; Bauman (1987) 238f. 307. fruition: joy (OED 1). Contrast Adam’s refusal to renounce fruit that makes him godlike (e.g. ix 717). quitted: (1) left; (2) redeemed, acquitted. Pace Corns (1990) 109. 309. God will approve the Son’s merit only after it is displayed. Contrast Phaethon’s seeking recognition of sonship prematurely. See Lewalski (1985) 117 n 16 citing Ovid, Metam., tr. Sandys (1970) 80f (‘By merit, as by birth, to thee is due / That name’). 312. See iii 267–9n. 317–18. Cp. Matt. 28:18 (‘All power is given unto me’), in De Doctrina i 5 a proof text that Christ and the Father are not of the same essence. 318–19. assume / Thy merits: Compressing Horace’s valediction to his Muse, Odes III xxx 14f (sume superbiam / quaesitam meritis). On the tense of give see iii 301n.

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320 Thrones, princedoms, powers, dominions I reduce: All knees to thee shall bow, of them that bide In heaven, or earth, or under earth in hell; When thou attended gloriously from heaven Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send 325 The summoning archangels to proclaim Thy dread tribunal: forthwith from all winds The living, and forthwith the cited dead Of all past ages to the general doom Shall hasten, such a peal shall rouse their sleep. 330 Then all thy saints assembled, thou shalt judge Bad men and angels, they arraigned shall sink Beneath thy sentence; hell, her numbers full, Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring 335 New heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell And after all their tribulations long See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With joy and love triúmphing, and fair truth. 320. Cp. the hierarchy in Col. 1:16; also Satan’s roll-call (PL v 840), discussed by Empson (1961) 138. princedoms: principalities. 321–2. Cp. Phil. 2:10, ‘At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.’ Not inconsistent with Bk i Arg. (rejecting the old hell at earth’s centre): the universe being under heaven (ii 1051), hell may well be under earth. 324–9. Drawing on visions of judgment in Matt. 24:30f; 1 Cor. 15:51f; and Rev. Cp. Nativity Ode 115f: ‘To those ychained in sleep, / The wakeful trump of doom must thunder.’ 326–8. all winds: all points of the compass. Perhaps combining the angels and winds of Rev. 7:1 with the resurrecting wind of Ezek. 37:9 (‘Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon those slain, that they may live’). cited: summoned. doom: judgment. 330. saints: elect (common usage). 334–5. Like xi 900f and xii 546–51 from 2 Pet. 3:12f, prophesying ‘the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat’; when the elect will ‘look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’. De Doctrina i 33 dismisses as unimportant whether the final conflagration means ‘the destruction of the substance of the whole world, or only a change in the nature of its constituent parts’. OT and NT apocryphal literature, however, dwells on fire that destroys. 337. On the keyword ‘fruit’, see MacCaffrey (1959) 83–6. The immediate link is with the first glimpse of Adam and Eve ‘in the happy garden placed, / Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love’ (iii 66f ). Cp. xi 20–2; xii 550f.

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Then thou thy regal sceptre shalt lay by, 340 For regal sceptre then no more shall need, God shall be all in all. But all ye gods, Adore him, who to compass all this dies, Adore the Son, and honour him as me. No sooner had the almighty ceased, but all 345 The multitude of angels with a shout Loud as from numbers without number, sweet As from blest voices, uttering joy, heaven rung With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled The eternal regions: lowly reverent 350 Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground 339–41. ‘The authoritarian metaphor of monarchy for God is finally abandoned’ (Stevens (1985) 177). On the effect of profundity, from the syntactic isolation (abbreviating AV 1 Cor. 15:28), see Corns (1990) 19. 339–43. The notion that M.’s God means to abdicate, becoming an immanent deity, is impossibly mutable for an absolute being. See Empson (1952) 101–4 on the repeated all – perhaps significant, although the frequency is no more than in the source, 1 Cor. 15:28 (‘When all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all’). need: be needful. gods: angels; cp. i 116–17n; Ps. 97:7, ‘Worship him, all ye gods.’ See De Doctrina i 5, CW 14:245, ‘the name of God is not unfrequently ascribed . . . even to angels and men’. The unique concession of the name by God himself contrasts with Satan’s presumptuous use of it (T. H. Banks, MLN, 54 (1939) 450–4). 343. John 5:23, ‘All men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.’ 344–415. The angels’ songs occupy 72 lines, the number of Christ’s disciples and of angelic names: see Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 557; MacQueen (1985) 135. On the colours, see Allen (1970) 98. 344–9. The sustained absolute construction angels . . . uttering joy resoundingly emphasizes the delayed main verb, with a syntactic difficulty or asprezza suiting the high subject. Adams (1955) 106, however, considers multitude the subject, heaven the object, of rung; see Empson (1950) 160. Contrast the ‘deafening shout’ ending the infernal council (ii 520). 348. jubilee: jubilation. Perhaps alluding to the Hebrew jubilee (when, every fifty years, slaves were freed and property reverted to its previous owner) as a ceremonial type of the Atonement. 350–71. Much of the iconography – thrones, gold crowns, jasper, harps – is from Revelation. Other details (e.g. the river) combine pagan and Christian visions. 350–2. In Rev. 4, twenty-four elders with ‘crowns of gold’ ‘cast their crowns before the throne’.

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With solemn adoration down they cast Their crowns inwove with amaranth and gold, Immortal amaranth, a flower which once In Paradise, fast by the tree of life 355 Began to bloom, but soon for man’s offence To heaven removed where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven Rolls o’er Elisian flowers her amber stream; 360 With these that never fade the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks enwreathed with beams, Now in loose garlands thick thrown off, the bright Pavement that like a sea of jasper shone Empurpled with celestial roses smiled. 352–7. crowns: Showing the ‘angels’ autonomy remains intact, while they acknowledge Christ’s inherent superiority’ (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 585). amaranth: unfading. From 1 Pet. 5:4, ‘Ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away’ (Gk =µαS>ντινον; Vulg. immarcescibilem; Geneva ‘incorruptible’). A purple flower, for (the then celebrated) Clement of Alexandria a ‘symbol of immortality’; cp. Paedagogus ii 8 (‘The fair crown of amaranth is laid up for those who have lived well. This flower the earth is not able to bear’) (Hume; Newton). M. would know that amaranthine crowns were also pagan, sometimes signifying tranquillity and health; cp. Philostratus, Heroicus ix 14; Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 690; Frye (1978) 186f (the amaranth as a real flower). Like Clement, M. appropriates a pagan symbol to Christian use; cp. xi 78; Lycidas 149. I know no reason to see amarantos as a symbol of spotless purity, as Allen (1970) 99. 357–9. Among scriptural rivers of joy, cp. especially Rev. 22:1; Ps. 36:8f (‘Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life’). Contrast the ‘baleful streams’ of hell, ii 575–81. The Fountain of Life emblemizes heavenly bliss in the anonymous ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’, Jones (1991) 461f. Rolls: flows (OED 11b, 16; a centuries-old usage, but probably still felt as Virgilian). Cp. Aen. vi 656–9, spirits chanting beside the Eridanus, in Elysium. o’er: Because amaranth flowers renewed their life when moistened. amber: pure; clear. Cp. Callimachus, Hymns vi 29; Virgil, Georgics iii 522. But amber was also a perfume: e.g. Lovelace, ‘Amyntor’s Grove’ 64, Fowler (1994) 268; Davenant, The Platonic Lovers I i (1636), sig. B1r. 362–3. R. Bradford, in Nyquist (1987) 198 sees ‘language coming adrift from things’ here; neglecting the comma after off. 363–4. The New Jerusalem shines ‘like a jasper stone, clear as crystal’ (Rev. 21:11); at Rev. 4:3 the throned deity is like a jasper. As often, M.’s descriptions veil a quasi-mystical passion almost like Crashaw’s. Contrast

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365 Then crowned again their golden harps they took, Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side Like quivers hung, and with preamble sweet Of charming symphony they introduce Their sacred song, and waken raptures high; 370 No voice exempt, no voice but well could join Melodious part, such concord is in heaven. Thee Father first they sung omnipotent, Immutable, immortal, infinite, Eternal king; thee author of all being, 375 Fountain of light, thyself invisible Mammon’s concentration on the pavement’s riches (i 679–84n), and hell’s ‘burning marl’ (i 296). 365–71. Divided like the Te Deum, the ‘only non-scriptural canticle’ in BCP; summing up the process of salvation that the angels are praising (D. McColley, in Benet (1994) 73–8). 366–7. Quivers containing both bow and arrows were harp-shaped. 367. preamble: prelude (first OED example in a musical sense). Terminology appropriate for the recitatives of oratorios performed at Rome about the time of M.’s visit, and described by André Maugars (M. Byard, in Cesare (1991) 310–11). 369. Echoing the preceding council, as the demonic songs in Bk ii echo the infernal council (Stevens (1985) 148). 370. exempt: excluded. 372. Cp. Rev. 19:6, the voice of a multitude saying ‘Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth’. Contrast the rebel angels’ song about ‘their own heroic deeds’ (ii 549): it is ‘partial’ whereas the hymn is in melodious parts. The midpoint of the book comes between iii 371 and 372, so that both halves begin with a hymn to God the fountain of light, M. joining the angelic praise. See iii 410–15n. On the hymnlike qualities of PL, see Schwartz (1988) 83. 373–4. Transplanted in its entirety from Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester I i 45 (1979) i 112 (‘God all in all . . . / Immutable, immortal, infinite, / Incomprehensible, all spirit, all light / All majesty, all-selfomnipotent / Invisible, impassive, excellent . . .’). Cp. the doxology in 1 Tim. 1:17, ‘unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible’. 375–81. Metaphors of God’s unknowability; see J. H. Adamson and W. B. Hunter in Hunter (1971) 94f, 150. Lieb (1981) 205–7 traces the negative theology of deus absconditus to Pseudo-Dionysius and Nicholas of Cusa, the Neoplatonism to Plotinus, Hermes Trismegistus, Ficino, and Fludd. Cp. v 599; Exod. 24:16f (God speaking from a cloud on Mt Sinai); 33:18–23 (God promising Moses a glimpse of his ‘back parts’ – to see his face would be fatal); Isa. 6:1f (God enthroned among seraphim who cover their faces); 1 Tim. 6:16 (God dwelling in light no one can approach); Colie (1966) 23–6; Ryken (1970) 95–117.

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Amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitst Throned inaccessible, but when thou shad’st The full blaze of thy beams, and through a cloud Drawn round about thee like a radiant shrine, 380 Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear, Yet dazzle heaven, that brightest seraphim Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes. Thee next they sang of all creation first, Begotten Son, divine similitude, 385 In whose conspicuous countenance, without cloud Made visible, the almighty Father shines, Whom else no creature can behold; on thee Impressed the effulgence of his glory abides, Transfused on thee his ample Spirit rests. 390 He heaven of heavens and all the powers therein By thee created, and by thee threw down 377. but: except. 380. Dark . . . bright: Imitating Drummond’s oxymoron in ‘An Hymn of the Fairest Fair’ 130 and 144 (1913) ii 41, where God is ‘unperceived by excessive light’ and ‘Angels dazzled are’. Cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. ix 57; Spenser, ‘An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie’ 118f, 176–9; Stevens (1985) 148 citing Pseudo-Dionysius (‘dark beyond all light’). 382. their: Bentley objects to the third person; but the hymn is still M.’s own. 383. first: Theologically dangerous, although supported by Rev. 3:14 (Christ ‘the beginning of the creation of God’) and Col. 1:15–17 (‘the firstborn of every creature. For by him were all things created. . . . And he is before all things’). These texts could bear an Arian interpretation; cp. De Doctrina i 5, 7, where Christ is himself created. Yet M. believed in Christ’s agency in creation. 384. John 3:16, ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.’ Danielson (1982) 54 argues that the Son’s similitude to the Father is fully orthodox and not Subordinationist. On the Son as metaphor of the divine, see Treip (1994) 203. 385–9. Cp. John 1:18; 14:9. Paradoxically, the Father is invisible when not hidden (without cloud ). conspicuous: clearly visible. Cp. vi 680–2. ample Spirit: Kelley (1941) 109 needlessly doubts whether the Holy Spirit is meant; cp. John 3:34, ‘God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him’ (‘abundance of all grace’, Geneva note). 390. Cp. the Te Deum: ‘To thee all angels cry aloud: the heavens and all the powers therein.’ heaven of heavens: A biblical phrase (e.g. 1 Kings 8:27) given prominence by Augustine, as proof of a pre-existent ‘intellectual, non-physical heaven’ (Confessions XII ix 9 – xiii 16 (1991) 250–3).

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The aspiring dominations: thou that day Thy Father’s dreadful thunder didst not spare, Nor stop thy flaming chariot wheels, that shook Heaven’s everlasting frame, while o’er the necks Thou drov’st of warring angels disarrayed. Back from pursuit thy powers with loud acclaim Thee only extolled, Son of thy Father’s might, To execute fierce vengeance on his foes, Not so on man; him through their malice fallen, Father of mercy and grace, thou didst not doom So strictly, but much more to pity incline: No sooner did thy dear and only Son Perceive thee purposed not to doom frail man So strictly, but much more to pity inclined, He to appease thy wrath, and end the strife Of mercy and justice in thy face discerned, Regardless of the bliss wherein he sat Second to thee, offered himself to die For man’s offence. Oh unexampled love, Love nowhere to be found less than divine! Hail, Son of God, saviour of men, thy name

392–9. Narrated more fully at vi 824–92. dominations: Mimetic distortion of ‘dominions’, one of the angelic orders created by Christ’s agency in Col. 1:16. shook: Cp. Satan’s false claim at i 105. 397–8. pursuit: By the powers, according to Satan, who salves his dignity by pretending loyal angels helped Messiah; cp. i 169–71n; vi 880f. 400–2. Explained at iii 129–32. 401. 2 Cor. 1:3, ‘Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort’. doom: judge. 406. Editors supply ‘but’ or ‘than’ before He, supposing that much more to pity inclined refers to the Father, as at iii 402. But it qualifies Son, the repetition miming his ‘divine similitude’ to the Father, so that but (iii 405) belongs to the main clause: ‘No sooner did thy . . . Son / Perceive . . . but . . . he . . . offered’. 407. On the basis of texts like Ps. 85:10, Predestination was often imagined as a debate between four divine attributes, mercy and justice, truth and peace (H. Traver, PMLA, 40 (1925) 44–92). 410–15. On the excited narratorial intrusion, see L. M. Johnson in Danielson (1989) 68f. Continuing M.’s hymn, as my song . . . my harp makes clear. Promise to resume a god’s praise was usual in ancient hymns; cp. Callimachus, Hymns iii 137; Donne, Sermons ii 71 (‘we join with that choir in that service, in that anthem’); Race (1988) 147,161, and especially 150, on the hymn as an inserted form. 412. Echoing Virgil’s hymn to Hercules (Aen. viii 301). Cp. iii 372n; Broadbent (1960) 157 on the echo of iii 1 (‘Hail holy light’); Leonard

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paradise lost Shall be the copious matter of my song Henceforth, and never shall my harp thy praise Forget, nor from thy Father’s praise disjoin. Thus they in heaven, above the starry sphere, Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent. Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe Of this round world, whose first convex divides The luminous inferior orbs, enclosed From Chaos and the inroad of darkness old, Satan alighted walks: a globe far off It seemed, now seems a boundless continent Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky; Save on that side which from the wall of heaven Though distant far some small reflection gains Of glimmering air less vexed with tempest loud: Here walked the fiend at large in spacious field. As when a vulture on Imaus bred,

(1990); H. Marks, in Nyquist (1988) 215–18; D. McColley, in Benet (1994) 67–90, rebutting Greene (1963) 383f. 416–21. starry sphere: The sphere of fixed stars, the coelum stellatum, inside the first convex (sphere), or primum mobile, the ‘bare outside’ Satan was ready to land on at iii 74. The opacous (opaque) shell offers necessary protection against the surrounding chaos; cp. ii 1052–3n; iii 481–3n; vii 269–73. Harmonizing various views on the universe’s limits, then a controversial topic (Marjara (1992) 102–5). 416–17. Contrast ii 522–628, on how the devils ‘entertain / The irksome hours’. 423. Cp. Astolfo’s amazement at the moon’s size when he reaches it (Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxxiv 71). 424–6. Chaos is italicized as a proper name in 1667 and 1674; but Night, perhaps in error, is not. 429. vexed: tossed about. 431. Maps like Mercator’s Tartaria showed Imaus as a mountain range extending from mod. Afghanistan to the Arctic: a vulture flying from it to the Ganges could pass Sericana in NW China. 431–41. Answered structurally by x 273–80 likening Death to a ‘flock / Of ravenous fowl’. As often in PL, a complex simile: the vulture has Satan’s rapacity, distant knowledge of his prey, and mode of locomotion; the lambs and yeanling (newborn) kids resemble mankind by division into innocent or redeemed sheep and reprobate goats (Matt. 25). In the vehicle, the journey is from snowy Imaus (which failed to bound the roving Tartar Genghis Khan) to rivers of India; in the tenor, from the ‘frozen continent’ (ii 587) of Tartarus (which did not stop Satan’s roving) to Paradise with its rivers;

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Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids 435 On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; But in his way lights on the barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive With sails and wind their cany wagons light: 440 So on this windy sea of land, the fiend Walked up and down alone bent on his prey, Alone, for other creature in this place Living or lifeless to be found was none, None yet, but store hereafter from the earth

see F.L. Huntley, ELH, 21 (1954) 107f; L. D. Lerner, EC, 4 (1954) 297–308. The plains of Sericana correspond to the primum mobile as barren stopping-places where the elements are confused. (The primum mobile is a windy sea of land; the Chinese have landships with sails.) The confusion of elements suggests that Satan’s entry constitutes an inroad of chaos (iii 420f ). As elsewhere, evil comes from the n; cp. v 689n. Ganges: Identified with the Pison of Gen. 2 in, e.g., Calepinus’ Dictionary – tenor and vehicle rivers coinciding. The diction may echo dictionary entries under Tartaria, Scythia, and Imaus (Starnes (1955) 322). 432. Satan carries Tartar(us) with him; see B. Rajan, in Stanwood (1995) 218, comparing Pope Alexander IV (‘the inhuman Tartars, erupting as it were from the secret confines of hell’). Tartars: Supposed ancestors of the Indians, having crossed the Bering Straits by an ice bridge; see Evans (1996) 108, citing josé d’Acosta. Cp. x 431–3. 436. Idiosyncratic diction; cp. i 469; iii 36. Hydaspes: the Chelum or Jhelum River in the Punjab, E limit of Alexander’s conquests. On the association of India with romantic (and narcotic) fancy, see Stevens (1985) 135, comparing Shakespeare, MND. 438–9. Chinese landships described by the traveller Juan Gonzales de Mendoza in The History . . . of China (tr. R. Parke, 1588) aroused European interest; Grotius himself rode in one of the copies constructed by the Dutch scientist Stevin and celebrated in Jacob de Gheyn II’s famous engraving The Sailing-car of Prince Maurice of Orange. 440–1. CP. Job 1:7, ‘Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered . . . From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’ 444–97. The digressive transition from Sericana to limbo implies georgic or satire – conservatively rationalist, humanist satire, suspicious of religious enthusiasm, scientific speculation, and all singularities and aberrations from ‘nature’. Orl. Fur. xxxiv, cited in Of Reformation, YP i 560, provided a model for antiprelatic satire with a science-fiction mise en scène. Thus,

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445 Up hither like aërial vapours flew Of all things transitory and vain, when sin With vanity had filled the works of men: Both all things vain, and all who in vain things Built their fond hopes of glory or lasting fame, 450 Or happiness in this or the other life; All who have their reward on earth, the fruits Of painful superstition and blind zeal, Nought seeking but the praise of men, here find Fit retribution, empty as their deeds; 455 All the unaccomplished works of nature’s hand, Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, Dissolved on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,

Ariosto’s Astolfo searches for his lost wits in a Lunar Limbo of Vanity, with a mountain symbolizing the Constantine Donation, ‘which once smelt sweet, now stinks as odiously’ (xxxiv 80, tr. Milton). Lighter than M.’s, Ariosto’s limbo contains ‘The precious time that fools misspend in play, / The vain attempts that never take effect, / The vows that sinners make and never pay, / The counsels wise that careless men neglect’ (xxxiv 75, tr. Harington). Addison thought the digression lacked probability enough for epic (Spectator No. 297); Bentley denied it to M. altogether. Satiric analogues include the attacks on intellectual folly by the Royalist bishop John Wilkins; Swift’s Laputa; and the tradition of Dutch and Spanish vanitas paintings that heap improbable congeries of things emblemizing transient illusions. M. Lieb, in Mulryan (1982) 109, compares M.’s account of the Malmesbury monk Elmer, who flew a furlong but broke his legs. See Broadbent (1960) 163 on the limbo of fools in the sixteenthcentury satire Julius Exclusus; Frye (1978) 212, on apotheosis ceilings; Treip (1994) 198, on M.’s use of Simone Fornari, Spositione sopra l’Orlando Furioso (1550), Satan himself ‘is blown about by chance in chaotic confusions and vacuities’ like those in the limbo of vacuities (K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 116). ‘The reader . . . is shown the Paradise of Fools that he may continue to recover his wits and truly see what he has been admiring’ (Stevens (1985) 132). On Ovid’s house of fame (Metam. xii 52–61) as a model, see Rumrich (1987) 93. 452. painful: laborious, diligent. 454. Fit: Etymologically so; ‘vanity’ derives from Lat. vanus, empty. 455–8. A corrupt nature in the void travesties God’s creation e nihilo (F. L. Huntley, ELH, 21 (1954) 110–12). The monstrous, or unkindly mixed (unnaturally conceived) correspond to the giant issue of ‘ill-joined’ unions (iii 463–5); the Abortive (prematurely born) to the ‘Embryos’ etc. of iii 474–80 and the suicides of 469–73, who began their life after death prematurely. unaccomplished: (1) unachieved; (2) untalented.

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Till final dissolution, wander here, Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed; 460 Those argent fields more likely habitants, Translated saints, or middle spirits hold Betwixt the angelical and human kind: Hither of ill-joined sons and daughters born First from the ancient world those giants came 465 With many a vain exploit, though then renowned: The builders next of Babel on the plain Of Sennaar, and still with vain design New Babels, had they wherewithal, would build: Others came single; he who to be deemed 470 A god, leaped fondly into Ætna flames, Empedocles, and he who to enjoy Plato’s Elysium, leaped into the sea, 459. some: E.g. Ariosto. Unlike Bruno, Cardan, Henry More, John Wilkins, and others, who speculatively peopled the moon with less abstract inhabitants – perhaps vainly, but not in frivolous curiosity, as Schultz (1955) 16 supposes. M. confesses his own vanity by offering a further speculation (iii 460–2; cp. iii 565–71n). 460. habitants: inhabitants. 461. Translated saints: E.g. Enoch and Elijah, types of religious enthusiasm; cp. Gen. 5:24 Geneva note (‘To enquire where he [Enoch] became is mere curiosity’); C. A. Huttar, NQ, 209 (1964) 86–8. 463–5. For the giants, ‘mighty men . . . of renown’ born of the misunion of ‘sons of God’ with ‘daughters of men’ (Gen. 6:4), cp. xi 621–2n; Friedman (1981); S. Mullaney, in Greenblatt (1988) 65–92; Baltrusˇaitis (1989). 466–8. The builders of Babel form their vain design out of a desire for fame (xii 45–7). Sennaar. Preferring the spelling of LXX and Vulg. Gen. 11:2 to Geneva and AV Shinar. New Babels: Suggesting the New Babylon of anti-Catholic propaganda; cp. Cohn (1962) Index, Babylon. Giants commonly symbolized Antichrist (Schultz (1955) 127). 469–73. Empedocles . . . Cleombrotus: Not associated by classical authors, but occurring together in Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones iii 18 (‘Pythagoreans and Stoics who, believing in the immortality of the soul, foolishly persuade a voluntary death’). Cleombrotus drowned himself after reading Plato’s Phaedo; see Lactantius, Migne vi 408; Callimachus, Epigrams xxv. Empedocles, who took his own life to conceal his mortality (Horace, De Arte Poetica 464–6), appears in Dante’s dignified limbo patrum (Inf. iv 138). M. may include suicides because Virgil, Aen. vi 426–39 puts nearest the threshold of Hades ‘those sad souls who in innocence wrought their own death’ ( J. Horrell, RES, 18 (1942) 417–24). single: (1) individual; (2) celibate.

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Cleombrotus, and many more too long, Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars 475 White, black and gray, with all their trumpery. Here pilgrims roam, that strayed so far to seek In Golgotha him dead, who lives in heaven; And they who to be sure of paradise Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, 480 Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised; They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed, And that crystálline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved; 473. too long: ‘Deficiently expressed’ (Bentley). But the ellipsis mimes impatient negligence; cp. PR ii 189. 474–5. Catholic tradition consigned idiots, cretins and unbaptized infants to a much-debated limbo infantum, which the Franciscans situated above earth in a region of light. White, etc.: Mendicant orders were distinguished by mantle colour – ‘white friar’ (Carmelite), ‘black friar’ (Dominican), ‘grey friar’ (Franciscan). The rainbow juxtaposition satirizes concern with externals. eremites: desert-dwellers, hermits. Referring to the Eremites of St Augustine, a branch of the Austin friars, fourth of the main orders. 476–7. Representing, pilgrims to Golgotha (where Christ was crucified and buried) as repeating the disciples’ error before they learned of his resurrection – Luke 24:5f, ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen’ (Newton). Cp. xi 836 on the vanity of special places for worship. 479–80. Another erroneous, unspiritual attempt to ascend; preparing for Satan’s attempt to pass disguised (iii 634ff ). Cp. Dante, Inf. xxvii 67–84, where Guido da Montefeltro, who had hoped to get into heaven by wearing a Franciscan robe, suffers for his error. The practice was common; see J. Horrell, RES, 18 (1942) 419; Huizinga (1955) 184. 481–3. Ascending to heaven, they pass (in Ptolemaic order) the seven planetary spheres; the eighth sphere of fixed stars; the ninth crystalline sphere; and the primum mobile (that first moved). balance: (1) ‘libration’, the balancelike movement of the coelum stellatum relative to the crystalline; this trepidation, together with Alfonsine calendrical precession, composing equinoctial precession in the modern sense; (2) the sign Libra, the Scales (which weighs trepidation, in that its first, equinoctial, point is the reference point for the measurement). On the ‘foolishness’ of the speculative theory of trepidation, see Dreyer (1953) 279; on the medieval theory, Price (1955) 104–6; on Renaissance developments, Svendsen (1956) 54–7; Fletcher (1956–61) ii 317–18; North (1994) Index, Precession. Copernicus thought irregularities of trepidation accounted for equinoctial precession, but Brahe showed them to be observational. On the

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And now Saint Peter at heaven’s wicket seems 485 To wait them with his keys, and now at foot Of heaven’s ascent they lift their feet, when lo A vïolent cross wind from either coast Blows them transverse ten thousand leagues awry Into the devious air; then might ye see 490 Cowls, hoods and habits with their wearers tossed And fluttered into rags, then relics, beads, Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls, The sport of winds: all these upwhirled aloft Fly o’er the backside of the world far off 495 Into a limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown Long after, now unpeopled, and untrod; All this dark globe the fiend found as he passed, And long he wandered, till at last a gleam 500 Of dawning light turned thitherward in haste His travelled steps; far distant he descries,

balance symbol, see iv 997–1004n. talked: disputed (not ‘called’, as Bentley). 484. wicket: The low word ridicules the Romanist doctrine that St Peter has the keys of heaven – which Protestants thought based on false allegoresis of Matt. 16:19. Cp. iii 505–22, representing the gate as beyond human control; Lycidas 110f. 490–3. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. III iv 1 ii (1989–) iii 354 on the silly multitude led into a ‘fools’ paradise’ by false prophets and ‘apt to be carried about by the blast of every wind’. 492. Sale of Indulgences was the immediate occasion of the Reformation. dispenses: dispensations; exemptions from a solemn obligation by licence of a prelate, especially the Pope. pardons: absolutions, bulls: papal mandates. Since Wycliffe (Grete Sentence xvi) reformers had inveighed against those who ‘magnyfien the popis bulle more than the gospel’. 493. Cp. Virgil, Aen. vi 74f, the Sibyl’s leaves as ludibria ventis (playthings of the wind). For the assocation of winds with limbo, see J. Horrell, RES, 18 (1942) 416. 494. Betraying the scatological tendency of religious satire (R. Flannagan, in Milton (1993) ). backside: the dark hemisphere of the primum mobile, furthest from gleam of heaven and the ‘glimmering air’ of iii 428f. 495–6. limbo: fringe region. Extending the Catholic concept of a place outside hell for souls of the prechristian righteous, in such a way as to suggest wishful thinking. ‘Fool’s paradise’ was already idiomatic. 501. travelled: (1) experienced in travel; (2) tired (Ital. tragagliato).

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Ascending by degrees magnificent Up to the wall of heaven a structure high, At top whereof, but far more rich appeared 505 The work as of a kingly palace gate With frontispiece of diamond and gold Embellished, thick with sparkling orient gems The portal shone, inimitable on earth By model, or by shading pencil drawn. 510 The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw

502. degrees: steps. 506–7. On the in bono associations of pure gold linked with eternal diamond, see Schaar (1982) 306–8 citing patristic authorities and contrasting the base gold of Pandaemonium. frontispiece: architecturally decorated portal. Cp. the New Jerusalem of Tob. 13:16, gem-studded with ‘stones of Ophir’ (Todd); the portico of Ovid’s palace of the sun carved by Mulciber (Metam. ii 1–19), a much-imitated set-piece symbolizing cosmic order; Richard Allestree, The Art of Contentment (1675) frontispiece showing Jacob’s ladder. orient: brilliant, lustrous (of gems, and especially pearls). The ‘twelve gates’ of the New Jerusalem are ‘twelve pearls’ (Rev. 21:21). Frye (1978) 200f sees the use of gems in describing heaven as paradoxically materialist; but precious stones were virtuous – ‘light materialized’. 508. inimitable: Jacob’s ladder was nevertheless a standard subject: e.g. Geisberg (1974) 577; Vasari, Jacob’s Dream, Walters Gall., Baltimore; Elsheimer, Jacob’s Dream, Robert von Hirsch coll. (Sotheby’s, 21 June 1978); Fludd, in Godwin (1991) Pl. 86; Petrus Plancius, Tabula Geographica (1590), a medallion vignette, illus. Nebenzahl (1986) 100f; Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1650), map to II xii; Didron (1886) ii 271, 350. 509. pencil: brush. 510–15. After he cheated Esau of their father’s blessing, the vision of a ladder to heaven terrified Jacob, awing him into repentance (Gen. 27–8). Cp. Par. xxi, Dante overwhelmed at the ladder’s foot by a cry of execration at the Church’s corruption. The ladder often figured humility, or ascent through contemplation; see C. A. Patrides, TZ, 18 (1962) 411–18; H. N. Davies, Library, 25 (1970) 49–52; M.-S. Røstvig, in Miner (1971) 6ff; Kuntz (1988); Carruthers (1990) 27; and especially Schaar (1982) 149–61 assembling many relevant associations such as de Montenay’s emblem A QUO TREPIDABO, Henkel (1967) 1416 (add Willet (?1592) xiv, DIVINE PROVIDENTIA). Implying that ascent is only by repentance, devotion, and meditation on nature. Like Jacob, Satan fleeing judgment has reached a parting of the ways set up by providential anticipation of the Fall. ‘ “Gate of paradise” is God’s promise when it is believed’ (Christopher (1982) 8). With Jacob’s vision, cp. Satan’s contemplation of ‘all this world at once’ (iii 542f ). Not, then, a disjunctive simile, as Ricks (1963) 127f and

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Angels ascending and descending, bands Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled To Padan-Aram in the field of Luz, Dreaming by night under the open sky, 515 And waking cried, This is the gate of heaven. Each stair mysteriously was meant, nor stood There always, but drawn up to heaven sometimes Viewless, and underneath a bright sea flowed Of jasper, or of liquid pearl, whereon 520 Who after came from earth, sailing arrived, Wafted by angels, or flew o’er the lake Rapt in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds. The stairs were then let down, whether to dare The fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate

M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 165 n 61 – except that Satan chooses not to repent like Jacob. 511. Angels . . . descending: The formula of Gen. 28; John 1:51. 513. Jacob’s Dreaming was at Bethel, ‘called Luz at the first’ (Gen. 28:19); Padan-Aram was Syrian Mesopotamia (Gen. 25:20 LXX ). Cp. xi 213–20. 514. God appears in the infidels’ country, rather than in Jacob’s father’s house (K. W. F. Stavely, MiltS, 25 (1989) 130 citing Diodati). 515. heaven.] heaven 1674 (which italicizes ‘This . . . heaven’). Cp. Gen. 28:17, ‘And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ 516–17. The ladder is Christ in Gen. 28:12 Geneva note. Cp. Bodin, Colloquium (1857) 23 (identifying it with Homer’s golden chain linking the universe to Jupiter; cp. ii 1051n); Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I xiv 15 (a hierarchical scala naturae extending ‘from God even to the bottomest dregs of the universe’). In alchemy, Jacob’s ladder figured purificatory ascesis; cp. Mutus Liber (1677), fig. 1, McLean (1991) 17; Jung (1953) 55, figs. 14, 15. An allegorical ‘marvel’ (Treip (1994) 85). stair: step. mysteriously: symbolically. 518–19. sea: The ‘water above the firmament’, flowing around the gate of heaven; see iii Arg.; vii 271n, 619n; Rev. 4:6 (‘sea of glass’). Spiritual water, according to Augustine, Confessions XIII xxxii 47 (1991) 301f. Water of baptism, suggests Whiting (1958) 96ff. jasper: See iii 363–4n. 520–2. The beggar Lazarus is carried by angels (Luke 16:22); Elijah by a ‘chariot of fire, and horses of fire’ (2 Kings 2:11). sailing: Recalling Dante’s angel-powered craft in Purg. ii. Cp. PR ii 16f; Prae E 47–50; Cowley, ‘The Ecstasy’ viii (1905) 205; and the sacred iconography of martyrdom generally.

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525 His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss. Direct against which opened from beneath, Just o’er the blissful seat of Paradise, A passage down to the earth, a passage wide, Wider by far than that of after-times 530 Over Mount Sion, and, though that were large, Over the Promised Land to God so dear, By which, to visit oft those happy tribes, On high behests his angels to and fro Passed frequent, and his eye with choice regard 535 From Paneas the fount of Jordan’s flood To Beërsaba, where the Holy Land Borders on Ægypt and the Arabian shore; So wide the opening seemed, where bounds were set To darkness, such as bound the ocean wave. 540 Satan from hence now on the lower stair That scaled by steps of gold to heaven gate Looks down with wonder at the sudden view Of all this world at once. As when a scout Through dark and desert ways with peril gone 545 All night; at last by break of cheerful dawn Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill, Which to his eye discovers unaware 525. doors of bliss: See Schaar (1982) 157 citing Rev. 4:1 and other biblical revelations of felicity. 527. Cp. i 5. 530. For Zion as a holy place, cp. i 10–11n, 386; iii 30f. 531. Planters often saw America as a Promised Land prepared for colonists (Evans (1996) 22f ). 534. eye: Additional subject of Passed. Cp. Rev. 5:6, ‘seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God, sent into all the world’. choice: careful, accurate. 535–7. Paneas: Greek name for Dan, ‘the easternmost fountain of Jordan’ (Fuller, Pisgah-Sight (1650) IV i 12). Beersaba: Preferring the LXX, Vulg., and Tremellius spelling to AV Beersheba; cp. i 397–9n. The S limit of Canaan, as Dan was the n; cp. the formula ‘From Dan even to Beersheba’ ( Judges 20:1; etc.). 538–9. Continuing the landscape figure, so that the darkness is not only chaos but pagan ignorance bounded by the Borders of the Holy Land; cp. Job 28:3, ‘He setteth an end to darkness.’ 542–51. On panoramic visions as images of order, see MacCaffrey (1959) 68; Frye (1978) 232f. Alluding to Num. 13:17ff, where scouts sent to spy out the land of Canaan return with a grape-cluster, type of Christ. 546. Obtains: reaches.

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The goodly prospect of some foreign land First seen, or some renowned metropolis 550 With glistering spires and pinnacles adorned, Which now the rising sun gilds with his beams. Such wonder seized, though after heaven seen, The spirit malign, but much more envy seized, At sight of all this world beheld so fair. 555 Round he surveys, and well might, where he stood So high above the circling canopy 552. though . . . seen: ‘even after having seen heaven’. The absolute construction (cp. i 573f; v 248; x 332; xi 48) is much used for brevity in M.’s histories: e.g. YP v (pt 1) 4. See M. Agari, HSLL, 27 (1982) 50. On Satan’s wonder at creation, see Steadman (1976) 109. 552–6. On the acrostic ‘STARS’, see Bauman (1987) 249. Satan is surrounded by lights of God. 555–61. Brilliantly realizing Satan’s vantage-point on passing through the primum mobile (iii 540), with the celestial poles marking points of extreme separation on the interior of the cosmic shell (iii 560f ). He looks from the eastern point / Of Libra, on the celestial equator – before the Fall identical with the ecliptic (x 668ff ). The fleecy star Aries recedes Beyond the horizon (sets behind earth), while Satan is diametrically opposite, in Libra. He looks west from . . . Libra along the ‘length’ of the universe, which lies on its side, with the axis in breadth. By common belief, the world was created at the vernal equinox (iv 268n; cp. Dante, Inf. i 38f; Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) ii 232), so that the sun is in Aries (x 329, ‘the sun in Aries rose’). So Satan, in Libra, stands above the circling canopy / Of night’s extended shade – on earth’s dark side, above the shadow it casts. Moreover, he stands just above Paradise (iii 527), so that it is midnight there – the hour also of his return at ix 58. For conical shadow diagrams in contemporary astronomy, see Marjara (1992) 196; Godwin (1991); Grafton (1993) 151. The topographia links Satan with Libra, an association sustained throughout. Libra is opposite the sun, which Satan avoids (cp. ix 63–6), and to the n contains the head of Anguis, the Serpent constellation. For other cosmic Serpent and Scales images, cp. ii 709; iv 997–1015; x 328. Satan enters the universe at the Serpent’s head and leaves at its tail, perhaps to symbolize his deterioration. Satan is also near Lupus, to the S, as Marjara (1992) 116 – which, however, is not above the horizon of Paradise. For the importance of the spring signs and their opposites in alchemy, see Mutus Liber, McLean (1991) 21, 62. Satan prefers creation to its Creator, dead images to their meaning (Stevens (1985) 138–40). 556 –7. canopy: Usually the whole sky (e.g. Hamlet II ii 318–21); here, the part in earth’s shadow. To Satan’s view, earth is almost entirely dark, casting to his feet a conical shadow, foreshortened to an apparent disk. (The canopy or baldachin over a throne was often conical.) A startling

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Of night’s extended shade; from eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 560 Beyond the horizon; then from pole to pole He views in breadth, and without longer pause Down right into the world’s first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way 565 Amongst innumerable stars, that shone perspective, based on sophisticated optics like those of baroque visual art. circling: (1) forming a circle round Satan; (2) revolving in a circular diurnal orbit. (The shade revolves irrespective of whether a geocentric or heliocentric model is adopted.) 557–8. Celestial longitude being measured eastward from the vernal equinoctial point of Aries, Satan, being opposite, is at the eastern point of Libra. Dramatic irony, since no vernal equinoctial point will exist until the ecliptic plane tilts (x 651–706n, 668–80n). 558–9. fleecy star: Not the Andromeda nebula, as R. Flannagan, in Milton (1993). Recorded 1612 by Simon Mayr, the nebula looked instead like a candle shining through horn (North (1994) 402). Rather, as usual, the constellation Aries; cp. Aratus 240; Manilius i 615 (where Lanigerique is a synonym for Aries). From Satan’s viewpoint the constellation Andromeda appears in the opposite sector of the firmament, just above Aries, as if carried on its back. (In prelapsarian astronomy, constellations and signs are undifferentiated.) Cp. Manilius i 616, associating Aries with ‘the lowest folds of Andromeda’s robe’. Andromeda was threatened, significantly, by a dragon (Qvarnström (1967)). 560–1. Celestial poles, not terrestrial, as Empson (1950) 155. Turning the universe on its side – a tour de force of visual imagination – as Satan sees without understanding; cp. Job 38:18 (‘Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?’). On the concept of space, see Frye (1978) 209–11. 562–7. Cp. v 266–70, Raphael’s descent ‘between worlds and worlds’. 562. Not the region of earth’s atmosphere (i 515–16n) next below the fiery element, but a fourth layer, fatal to mortals, reaching to the firmament; cp. xii 76f; Svendsen (1956) 88. 564. pure: cp. M.’s Trin. MS Third Draft of a tragedy; see Introduction: Composition. marble: smooth as marble (Latinism; e.g. Virgil, Aen. vi 729, marmoreo . . . aequore). Or from Gk. µαSµ>Sεος (sparkling, gleaming). Cp. Shakespeare, Othello III iii 461, ‘by yond marble heaven’. oblique: Already like a serpent (Stevens (1985) 141). 565–71. For M.’s conviction about life on other worlds, cp. iii 459, 670; v 263; vii 621; viii 140–58, 175. The plurality of worlds (although already a medieval idea) was a contemporary obsession, finding expression in accounts of cosmic voyages or of life on other planets or stars: e.g. Fontenelle,

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Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds, Or other worlds they seemed, or happy isles, Like those Hesperian gardens famed of old, Fortunate fields, and groves and flowery vales, 570 Thrice happy isles, but who dwelt happy there He stayed not to inquire: above them all The golden sun in splendour likest heaven Allured his eye: thither his course he bends Through the calm firmament; but up or down 575 By centre, or eccentric, hard to tell, Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes (1686); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 183; Donne, Devotions, Meditation 5, Solus Adest (‘every planet, and every star, is another world like this’); Nicolson (1950) 165; Lovejoy (1960); Fowler (1996) ch. 2. The space-travel element is sometimes complicated by metaphysical allusion to the ‘true earth’ of Phaedo 114B–C; e.g. the ‘broad fields of the sky’ among Hesperian gardens in Comus 977ff. 568–9. Hesiod places beyond the ocean the gardens where the Hesperides (Atlantides) unsuccessfully guarded apples Jupiter entrusted them with; cp. iii 559. Prolepsis to the Fall; or referring to the debate (between John Wilkins and others) whether extra-terrestrials were ‘infected with Adam’s sin’ (Lovejoy (1960) 109). 570. As elsewhere, Satan’s flight echoes epic voyages in Tasso, Ger. Lib.; Camoens, Os Lusíadas; and others (Quint (1993) 253, 270). happy isles: The Isles of the Blessed in Greek myth, where virtuous mortals spent idyllic afterlives. Commonly a figure for Britain (not England, as Quint). Cp. viii 631f. The downward journey through the spheres may also be seen, however, as a Hermetic myth of human birth; cp. K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 101–33. 571. above: In splendour, not spatially. 573–6. Combining cosmological with narrative alternatives: Satan might travel by an eccentric orbit (not having earth – or the sun – as its centre); by a centre (centric) route like the central meridian; or by the ecliptic, through degrees of celestial longitude. hard to tell: Because specifying further would involve opting for a particular astronomical system (Ptolemaic, Copernican, etc.), a choice M. avoids; cp. iv 592–7. Some speculated that the ‘individual globes of . . . stars [are] scattered, and all cling to their own foundations with no system, common middle or centre . . . like islands in an immense sea’ (Bacon, Descriptio vi (1653), in (1996) 117–19; cp. Lovejoy (1960) 109). Satan is in fact descending (Stevens (1985) 142). 575. centre: centric, a circle with earth (or the sun) as centre. Cp. viii 83: ‘the sphere / With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er’. Both Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomers introduced eccentric orbits to explain planetary motions.

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Or longitude, where the great luminary Aloof the vulgar constellations thick, That from his lordly eye keep distance due, Dispenses light from far; they as they move 580 Their starry dance in numbers that compute Days, months, and years, towards his all-cheering lamp Turn swift their various motions, or are turned By his magnetic beam, that gently warms The universe, and to each inward part 585 With gentle penetration, though unseen, Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep: So wondrously was set his station bright. There lands the fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the sun’s lucent orb 590 Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw.

576. longitude: distance measured by degrees of arc along the ecliptic (OED 4). 577. Aloof: apart from. Figuring the sun as a lord keeping apart from the mob. 578. ‘Eye of heaven’ was an Orphic description of the sun, interpreted as God’s omnipresence; see Wind (1965) Index, Eye; Fowler (1964) 74. 579–81. For the choresis, or cosmic dance, a favourite idea of M., cp. v 178; vii 374; viii 125; Comus 112. Related at v 617ff and ix 103 to the angels’ dance; see Rajan (1962) 151; Miller (1986); Doob (1990) ch. 10; C. T. Cox, MiltS, 26 (1990) 159–92. Treated elaborately in Davies, Orchestra (1596), the idea went back to the stars’ ‘choric dances’ in Timaeus 40C. God created planets ‘for the determining of the numbers of time’, day, month, and year (ibid. 38C). Cp. Gen. 1:14, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’ 580. starry] sarry 1667 (wrongly). numbers: rhythms. 583–6. Kepler’s theory that solar magnetic force regulated planetary motions continued Tycho’s emphasis on the sun’s supremacy (Marjara (1992) 124f ). Solar influence or virtue was supposed to penetrate beneath earth’s surface; cp. v 301–3; vi 472–83n; Svendsen (1956) 67. 588–90. Spots on the sun – supposed to show corruptibility – were observed by Virgil, Charlemagne, Johann Fabricius (1611), and telescopically by the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner (1612) and by Galileo (1613); see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 97; Moss (1993) 99f; Fowler (1996) chs 1, 2. perhaps . . . never: no astronomer has seen comparable signs of corruption. lucent: with light absorbed at creation; cp. vii 360–3; Marjara (1992) 191. glazed: fitted with glass lenses. optic tube: telescope.

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The place he found beyond expression bright, Compared with aught on earth, metal or stone; Not all parts like, but all alike informed With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire; 595 If metal, part seemed gold, part silver clear; If stone, carbuncle most or chrysolite, Ruby or topaz, to the twelve that shone In Aaron’s breastplate, and a stone besides Imagined rather oft than elsewhere seen, 591–613. In a tradition of Christian Platonism assimilating the Neoplatonic cult of the sun to mysticism of divine light. 591. Aristotle did not think the sun hot; cp. Meteorology i 3; Bacon, Novum Organum (1994) 85 n 70. For the sun as shadow of heaven, see Stevens (1985) 137. 592. metal] medal 1667; 1674. See Moyles (1985) 143. 594–605. Aaron’s twelve jewels (Exod. 25, 28) represent the twelve tribes of Israel; but allegorization gained support from their occurring in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:19f ). Aaron was a type of the true priest who ‘put on’ Christ and wore ‘light and perfections on the breast’ (Tuve (1952) 154) – a holy incorporation contrasting with Satan’s disguise as a cherub. Aaron’s vestments are elaborately interpreted in More, Conjectura (1662) 120f as a cosmic symbol. Miming the alchemic work, M. names one chemic stone (iii 600), two stages in the magnum opus (603f ), three metals (594f ), and four stones (596f ) – the 1, 2, 3, 4 of the creative tetraktys or fountain of nature. Cp. John Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), tr. C. G. Josten, Ambix, 12 (1964) 84–221. 594. With] Which 1667 (wrongly). 596–8. Aaron’s foursquare ‘breastplate of judgment’ has four rows of three stones: ‘a ruby, a topaz, and a carbuncle in the first row’ (Exod. 28:15–20, Geneva). Different versions vary greatly in their lists; Ruby suggests the Geneva version. Chrysolite is from the LXX, Vulg., and Geneva fourth row, where AV has jasper. All were associated with the sun in mineralogical theory, and supposed to shine in the dark; see Svendsen (1956) 29f; Marjara (1992) 247; Evans (1976) 29, 36, 72f, 146; Kuntz (1989) 143–75, 347. M.’s sun contains purer versions of terrestrial minerals. to the twelve: to complete the twelve. 598–601. stone besides: The urim of Exod. 28:30, Imagined by alchemists as the philosopher’s stone, which in turn was often interpreted as Christ’s regenerating grace: e.g. Benlowes, Theophila (1652) i 90 (‘grace . . . the chemic-stone’); ix 66. The lunar thummim could transform base metals to silver, the solar urim to gold. Cp. Jung (1953) Index, lapis; Qvarnström (1967) 60–4, 82f, 86, 175; Roberts (1994) Index, stone. Bentley objects to the philosopher’s stone being included, as if ‘literally a stone’; but mixing material and spiritual fully accords with M.’s vision.

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600 That stone, or like to that which here below Philosophers in vain so long have sought, In vain, though by their powerful art they bind Volátile Hermes, and call up unbound In various shapes old Proteus from the sea, 605 Drained through a limbeck to his native form. What wonder then if fields and regions here Breathe forth elixir pure, and rivers run Potable gold, when with one virtuous touch The arch-chemic sun so far from us remote 610 Produces with terrestrial humour mixed 601–5. ‘Alchemists have failed to find the philosopher’s stone, however adept at the preliminary stage of fixing philosophic mercury.’ The mythological Proteus was interpreted as matter, because of his changing forms (Wind (1965) Index, Proteus). Cp. v 472f: ‘first matter . . . Indued with various forms’. In alchemy, prime matter or philosophic mercury was the essence of ordinary mercury (Volatile Hermes), arrived at by binding (removing volatile air) and freeing from the liquid principle. The philosopher’s stone then acted on the native or prime matter to produce the qualities desired. See EB s. v. Alchemy; Roberts (1994) Index, mercury; Paracelsus (1951) 21 on the limbus, or prime matter, of mankind. In seeking power, Satan resembles alchemists without grace (the stone, or rock): he can only imitate his former brightness externally. Like Proteus unbound, he suffers transfigurations of passion, typifying wily politicians (Conti, Mythologiae (1979) viii 8); like deceptive Mercury, flying god of disguises, he is alchemically a serpent ( Jung (1953) 26, 241). So he must be bound, like Mercury, in a work of purification. As a spot in the sun (iii 588), he is again Mercurian: some astronomers attributed sunspots to Mercury (Moss (1993) 105). 601–2. For the adverbial run-on with sarcastic effect, cp. i 43f, 746f; x 235f, 513–15; xi 623f; xii 167; Prince (1954) 143; M. Agari, HSLL, 27 (1982) 46f. 605. limbeck: alembic, retort (to distil the mercury). 606. here: (1) in the sun; (2) in earth, where sunshine can be said to turn rivers to gold. 607–8. elixir: Any medium like the philosopher’s stone that transmutes base metals to gold. The ‘elixir of long life’, or Potable (drinkable) gold, was a goal of alchemy; according to Bernard of Treviso a ‘reduction of the philosopher’s stone to mercurial water’ (Caron (1961) 168). virtuous: powerful. 609. arch-chemic: pre-eminently alchemic. The sun’s influence, penetrating beneath the earth, was supposed to generate precious stones; cp. iii 583–6; vi 447–81; Marjara (1992) 72, 139. 610. humour: moisture; cp. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1667) st. 3 note:

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Here in the dark so many precious things Of colour glorious and effect so rare? Here matter new to gaze the devil met Undazzled, far and wide his eye commands, 615 For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, But all sunshine, as when his beams at noon Culminate from the equator, as they now Shot upward still direct, whence no way round Shadow from body opaque can fall, and the air, 620 Nowhere so clear, sharpened his visual ray To objects distant far, whereby he soon Saw within ken a glorious angel stand, The same whom John saw also in the sun: His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; 625 Of beaming sunny rays, a golden tiar Circled his head, nor less his locks behind Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings Lay waving round; on some great charge employed He seemed, or fixed in cogitation deep. ‘Precious stones at first are dew, condensed and hardened by the warmth of the sun.’ 613. gaze: Poetic when transitive. 617. Culminate: reach the highest, meridian, point of its orbit (astronomical). In our world, the sun culminates in the equatorial plane only at the equinoctial points where ecliptic and equator intersect. But before the sun left its ‘equinoctial road’ at the Fall (x 668–91), equator and ecliptic coincided, and shadows would disappear daily at noon. Elsewhere noon is associated with divine judgment (ix 739n); here, it expresses solar power over matter. Proteus had to be caught when he emerged at noon (Homer, Od. iv 400; Virgil, Georgics iv 401, 426), but on the sun prime matter is continually available. Cp. Button, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 v (1989–) i 234: ‘under the equator itself, is a most temperate habitation, wholesome air, a Paradise of pleasure’. 620–1. In Renaissance optics, it was debated whether rays emanated from the eye to external objects (extramission) or from the objects to the eye (intramission); cp. SA 162f: ‘inward light, alas, / Puts forth no visual beam’; Donne, Sermons ix 247; Grabes (1982) passim. 623. Cp. Rev. 19:17, ‘I saw an angel standing in the sun’. The angel’s prophecy to John the Divine ‘signifieth that the day of judgement shall be clear and evident; so that none shall be hid’ (Geneva note). 625–6. Cp. v 171; vi 806f; xi 756f; Psalm III 15–17 (for the inversion, in which M. Agari, HSLL, 27 (1982) 45 finds a psalmic effect). tiar: crown (poetic). 627. Illustrious: lustrous, shining. fledge: fledged, feathered.

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630 Glad was the spirit impure; as now in hope To find who might direct his wandering flight To Paradise the happy seat of man, His journey’s end and our beginning woe. But first he casts to change his proper shape, 635 Which else might work him danger or delay: And now a stripling cherub he appears, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffused, so well he feigned; 640 Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek played, wings he wore Of many a coloured plume sprinkled with gold,

630. impure;] impure 1674; 1667 copies with uncorrected sheet. 634. Satan later assumes other shapes: wolf (iv 183); cormorant (iv 196); lion (iv 402); tiger (iv 403); toad (iv 800); angel (v 55); serpent (ix 188, etc.). Schaar (1982) 263 compares the list of disguises in Avitus, De Orig. Pecc. 63ff, Migne lix 331. In Satan, as in Spenser’s Archimago, protean ‘fluctuations of shape’ connote evil; see Broadbent (1960); Fowler (1964) 8. Cp. 2 Cor. 11:13f (‘false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light’: Geneva note, ‘By false apostles here is not meant such as teach false doctrine . . . but such as were vainglorious, and did not their duty sincerely’); Apocalypse of Moses xvii 1; Werman (1995) 177. casts: resolves. 636–7. Empson (1961) 59–61 objects to stripling cherub (since Satan thinks the angels self-begot, and so ageless); suggesting that Satan disguises himself as a newly promoted angel. But ‘stripling’ may be sufficiently explained by cherubic iconography (a winged child). Cherubs excelled in knowledge, and would naturally ask many questions. Cp. Colasterion, YP ii 727, ‘a stripling divine or two of those newly fledge Probationers, that usually come scouting from the University’. For angels’ ability to assume shapes at will, cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 176: ‘they can assume other aerial bodies, all manner of shapes at their pleasures, appear in what likeness they will themselves’. On the reassuring disguise convention, see Schaar (1982) 258–62, comparing Satan as friar in Q Nov. prime: prime of life; chief cherubim. Cp. iii Arg., ‘a meaner angel’. 637–42. Spenser’s young angel at FQ II viii 5 is ‘a faire young man, / Of wondrous beautie, and of freshest yeares . . . / His snowy front curled with golden heares, / Like Phoebus face adornd with sunny rayes, / Divinely shone, and two sharpe winged sheares, / Decked with diverse plumes, like painted Jayes, / Were fixed at his backe, to cut his ayerie wayes.’ For angels as Cupids, cp. v 277–85; Tasso, Ger. Lib. i 13f; Tuve (1970) 127–9.

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His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand. 645 He drew not nigh unheard, the angel bright, Ere he drew nigh, his radiant visage turned, Admonished by his ear, and straight was known The archangel Uriel, one of the seven Who in God’s presence, nearest to his throne 650 Stand ready at command, and are his eyes That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth Bear his swift errands over moist and dry, O’er sea and land: him Satan thus accosts. Uriel, for thou of those seven spirits that stand 655 In sight of God’s high throne, gloriously bright, The first art wont his great authentic will Satan makes himself attractive in the manner of Marino’s and Raphael’s stripling guardian angels. 643. (1) his uniform suitable for speed; or (2) his clothing girt up. Satan produces equipment at need (Shumaker (1967) 125). 644. decent: mannerly; graceful. silver: Suspect material: ‘all they that bear silver are cut off ’ (Zeph. 1:11). Frye (1978) 177–9 shows the attributes to be those of a guardian angel. 648. Seven principal angels are ‘the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth’ (Zech. 4); cp. Tob. 12:15; Rev. 1:4 (‘the seven Spirits which are before his throne’); 5:6; 8:2. Uriel: ‘Light of God’. From 2 Esdras 4:1–5; see Werman (1995) 176. In cabbalism Uriel was prominent (with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael) as one of the archangels ruling the four corners of the world. As angel of the S, Uriel ‘rules in the power of the meridian sun’ (Henry More, cit. West (1955) 208). Whereas angels as Intelligences guiding spheres are familiar, Uriel’s assignment to the sun has puzzled. But, although doubtless arcane originally, it occurs in a standard textbook, Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 549: ‘Greek theology calls Michael’s power in God Venus; Gabriel it calls Mars; and Raphael Jupiter, to whom especially the throne of judgement was ascribed. Sol, the fourth, having both feminine and masculine power, manifest origin of all generation, is named in Hebrew both Uriel and Adonis.’ The context, highly relevant, is the cosmic chariot; cp. iii 656n; iv 549–50n; vi 749–59n; vii 197ff. 653. accosts.] accosts; 1674; 1667 copies with uncorrected sheet. 656. The chariot in Song of Sol. 3:9f was a type of the New Covenant, and carried believers to heaven. Angels formed its parts; Heb. argaman (chariot) being an acronym of the archangels’ names – R for Raphael, G for Gabriel, M for Michael, and Prima litera fit Uriel, per A enim illi scribunt (Valeriano (1613) 549). Uriel, the first good angel to appear in

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paradise lost Interpreter through highest heaven to bring, Where all his sons thy embassy attend; And here art likeliest by supreme decree Like honour to obtain, and as his eye To visit oft this new creation round; Unspeakable desire to see, and know All these his wondrous works, but chiefly man, His chief delight and favour, him for whom All these his works so wondrous he ordained, Hath brought me from the choirs of cherubim Alone thus wandering. Brightest seraph tell In which of all these shining orbs hath man His fixèd seat, or fixèd seat hath none, But all these shining orbs his choice to dwell; That I may find him, and with secret gaze, Or open admiration him behold On whom the great creator hath bestowed Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces poured; That both in him and all things, as is meet, The universal maker we may praise; Who justly hath driven out his rebel foes To deepest hell, and to repair that loss Created this new happy race of men To serve him better: wise are all his ways. So spake the false dissembler unperceived;

PL, was also first in the divine chariot; as usual, M. stresses the sun’s primacy. 657. Interpreter: On the implication of accommodated language, see Treip (1994) 203 comparing vii 72. 658. ‘Satan when disguised as a good angel gets a cosy piety into his speech chiefly by packing it with all’s’ (Empson (1952) 103). sons: angels ( Job 2:1). attend: await. 662–3. With consummate hypocrisy, Satan simulates an impeccable motive. Desire to praise God was a common defence (and often the real impetus) of scientific enquiry (Schwartz (1988) 47). Cp. viii 172–8n. 664. favour: object of favour (late instance). 668–70. Echoing the narrator’s antimetabole at iii 565–7 (Broadbent (1960) 165). 670. Satan tries to find out if any of creation is out of bounds to man. 671–2. Echoing Herod’s enquiry after Jesus, the second Adam (Matt. 2:8). 681–5. Always mistrustful of angelolatry, M. tends to make his good angels unsuccessful. Uriel’s sinless failure shows Eve’s gullibility consistent with original righteousness; cp. Gallagher (1990) 54. Perhaps cp. Francis Herring (tr. John Vicars) on Guy Fawkes’s use of clerical attire: ‘A priestlike habit

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For neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone, By his permissive will, through heaven and earth: And oft though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps At wisdom’s gate, and to simplicity Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill Where no ill seems: which now for once beguiled Uriel, though regent of the sun, and held The sharpest sighted spirit of all in heaven; Who to the fraudulent imposter foul In his uprightness answer thus returned. Fair angel, thy desire which tends to know The works of God, thereby to glorify The great work-master, leads to no excess That reaches blame, but rather merits praise The more it seems excess, that led thee hither From thy emp1real mansion thus alone, To witness with thine eyes what some perhaps Contented with report hear only in heaven: For wonderful indeed are all his works, Pleasant to know, and worthiest to be all Had in remembrance always with delight; But what created mind can comprehend

shapes his best disguise: / And marvel not, for thus the devil doth use, / Like angel bright God’s people to abuse’ (R. F. Hardin, ELR, 22 (1992) 76). unperceived: undetected. 685. permissive will: Distinguished from God’s positive will, which permits only good; cp. i 209–13n. 691. Insufficiently motivated on the verisimilar level (Treip (1994) 134). 694–6. The desire for knowledge may be blameless if (1) its objects are good (God’s works); and (2) it has a good motivation (to glorify God). In view of (2), Uriel’s affirmation only apparently clashes with iv 515. Renaissance Neoplatonists held ‘that no extreme in the contemplation of God and his works could violate Aristotle’s principle’ of the virtuous mean (M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957)). Cp. Wind (1965) 48, 64ff on Ficino’s doctrine of divine love: ‘Only by looking towards the Beyond as the true goal of ecstasy can man become balanced in the present.’ 699. mansion: dwelling place. 702–4. Ps. 111:2, 4, ‘The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. . . . He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered.’ 705–7. God being unsearchable has secrets from the angels; a fortiori, then, from mankind (Burden (1967) 110). Cp. De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347f: ‘The good angels do not see into all God’s thoughts, as the Papists pretend. . . .

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Their number, or the wisdom infinite That brought them forth, but hid their causes deep. I saw when at his word the formless mass, This world’s material mould, came to a heap: 710 Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung: Swift to their several quarters hasted then 715 The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire, And this ethereal quintessénce of heaven Flew upward, spirited with various forms, That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move; there are many things of which they are ignorant.’ Even Christ ‘does not know absolutely everything, for there are some secrets which the Father has kept to himself alone’ (De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 265). 706–7. Preparing for Raphael’s account of creation by the word of God in Bk vii. Cp. Prov. 3:19 (‘The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth’) and Prov. 8, where Wisdom’s part as master-workman is described. On the Lady Wisdom, see Chavasse (1939) 45–8. 708–15. Uriel witnessed creation with other loyal angels (vii 197–205). His excited creation narrative is couched in Augustinian, Christian– Platonic terms, creation being from pre-temporal, formless, primal matter given existence and form simultaneously; cp. Augustine, Confessions XII xii 15. Chaos was formed, according to Anaxagoras’ speculation, by separation of the four elements in interlocking layers; see Plato, Timaeus 30A, 32B–C; Ovid, Metam. i; Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I vi 23–40; Marjara (1992) 166. From Philo onwards, the Platonic cosmology had been synthesized with that of Genesis (cp. Gen. 1:3). mould: substance; cp. vii 356. Confusion: Personified as one of Chaos’s courtiers, ii 966. Cp. vii 163–242. 716. this: The sun Uriel stands on is composed of ether. ethereal quintessence: Cp. vii 243f. Unlike the four cumbrous elements, the fifth, ether, had no weight and consequently formed a layer above the atmosphere; cp. Ovid, Metam. i 23; Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I xxii 5; Marjara (1992) 166, 170. On Bartholomew Keckermann’s theory of light as a quasielement, see Fletcher (1956–61) ii 191; F. Pedrocco, FMR, 86 (1997) 100. 717: ‘Each several soul [God] assigned to one star . . . setting them each as it were in a chariot’ (Plato, Timaeus 41E). On the widespread belief in stellification after death, see Fowler (1996) ch. 2. 718–19. On the prominence of circularity, see Marjara (1992) 192. Aristotle held that ether tends to an orbicular (circular) motion, and is the stellar substance (De Caelo 270b).

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720 Each had his place appointed, each his course, The rest in circuit walls this universe. Look downward on that globe whose hither side With light from hence, though but reflected, shines; That place is earth the seat of man, that light 725 His day, which else as the other hemisphere Night would invade, but there the neighbouring moon (So call that opposite fair star) her aid Timely interposes, and her monthly round Still ending, still renewing, through mid heaven, 730 With borrowed light her countenance triform Hence fills and empties to enlighten the earth, And in her pale dominion checks the night. That spot to which I point is Paradise, Adam’s abode, those lofty shades his bower. 735 Thy way thou canst not miss, me mine requires. Thus said, he turned, and Satan bowing low, As to superior spirits is wont in heaven, Where honour due and reverence none neglects, Took leave, and toward the coast of earth beneath, 740 Down from the ecliptic, sped with hoped success, 721. The remaining quintessence forms a sphere above the atmosphere, enclosing the universe (Lucretius v 470). 724–32. Were it not for the sun, earth’s nearer hemisphere would be invaded like the other. There, although Night may invade, the moon’s pale dominion prevents her victory – dramatic irony in view of Satan’s imminent invasion. Conti, Mythologiae (1979) iii 15 gathers reasons why the moon goddess was anciently triformis – she is Luna, Diana and Hecate; she is Juno, Diana, and Proserpina; she rules in heaven, earth, and hell; etc. Explanation in terms of the lunar phases is especially relevant; cp. Prae E 56f; Virgil, Aen. iv 510–17; Jonson, Masque of Queens 237f, Herford and Simpson vii 295 (‘three-formed star . . . Whose triple name’); Shakespeare, MNDV ii 14 (‘triple Hecate’s team’). 731. Hence: from the sun. 733. Since Paradise is visible from the sun, sunlight is already reaching it: Satan’s journey from the primum mobile has taken at least the latter half of Adam’s night; see iii 527, 556–7n. As emerges later, the journey took twelve hours; see iv Arg., 564; Introduction: Time-scheme. 738. M. loses no opportunity to affirm hierarchy. 739. coast: side. 740. ecliptic: The sun’s orbit, lying (until the Fall) in the equatorial plane; see iii 617n. hoped success: Counting against the view that Uriel’s creation narrative convinced Satan of his creatureliness and threw him into the despair expressed on Mt Niphates (Empson (1961) 61).

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paradise lost Throws his steep flight with many an airy wheel, Nor stayed, till on Niphates’ top he lights. THE END OF THE THIRD BOOK

Paradise Lost BOOK IV The Argument

Satan now in prospect of Eden, and nigh the place where he must now attempt the bold enterprise which he undertook alone against God and man, falls into many doubts with himself, and many passions, fear, envy, and despair; but at length confirms himself in evil, journeys on to Paradise, whose outward prospect and situation is described, overleaps the bounds, sits in the shape of a cormorant on the tree of life, as the highest in the garden to look about him. The garden described; Satan’s first sight of Adam and Eve; his wonder at their excellent form and happy state, but with resolution to work their fall; overhears their discourse, thence gathers that the tree of knowledge was forbidden them to eat of, under penalty of death; and thereon intends to found his temptation, by seducing them to transgress: then leaves them awhile to know farther of their state by some other means. Meanwhile, Uriel descending on a sunbeam warns Gabriel, who had in charge the gate of Paradise, that some evil spirit had escaped the deep, and passed at noon by his sphere in the shape of a good angel down to Paradise, discovered after by his furious gestures in the mount. Gabriel promises to find him1 ere morning. Night coming on, Adam and Eve, discourse of going to their rest: their bower described; their evening worship. Gabriel drawing forth his bands of nightwatch to walk the round of Paradise, appoints two strong angels

741. with] in 1667 some copies; Errata; 1674; with 1667 other copies. 742. Niphates: A mountain on the Armenia–Assyria border, source of the Tigris. See iv 126; Strabo XI xii 4. The river of Paradise is called Tigris before it divides (ix 71), and some have suggested that Niphates is the place where Adam contemplates and Christ is tempted (xi 376– 84). For Satan’s soliloquy on Mt Niphates, see iv 32–113n. iv. Argument1. find him] find him out second 1668 state; second 1669 state.

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to Adam’s bower, lest the evil spirit should be there doing some harm to Adam or Eve sleeping; there they find him at the ear of Eve, tempting her in a dream, and bring him, though unwilling, to Gabriel; by whom questioned, he scornfully answers, prepares resistance, but hindered by a sign from heaven, flies out of Paradise. Oh for that warning voice, which he who saw The Apocalypse, heard cry in heaven aloud, Then when the dragon, put to second rout, Came furious down to be revenged on men, 5 Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now, While time was, our first parents had been warned The coming of their secret foe, and scaped Haply so scaped his mortal snare; for now Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down, 10 The tempter ere the accuser of mankind, To wreak on innocent frail man his loss Of that first battle, and his flight to hell: Yet not rejoicing in his speed, though bold Far off and fearless, nor with cause to boast, 15 Begins his dire attempt, which nigh the birth Now rolling, boils in his tumultuous breast, And like a devilish engine back recoils 1–12. The Apocalypse of St John tells of the fall of the star Wormwood: ‘I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!’ (Rev. 8:10–13). Cp. Rev. 12:7–12; M. Fixler, in Kranidas (1971) 131–78. Wishing for a prophetic voice ‘in order to raise the horror and attention of his reader’ (Newton). 6. Cp. Rev. 12:12, ‘but a short time’. Linking the end of the unfallen world with the end of his own. first parents] first-parents 1674. 9–23. On Satan as the back-recoiling Uroboros, see Driscoll (1993) 62. 11. wreak: avenge. 13–19. Empson (1961) 61–3 and Driscoll (1993) 79 attribute Satan’s horror to hearing Uriel’s account of creation (iii 740n): having been absent during it, Satan could doubt God’s power to create – a denial like mankind’s own. But M.’s explanation is simpler: nigh the birth of further sin, Satan shrinks from the crime. rolling: revolving in the mind; coming to term (OED, s. v. Role vb.2 14, of periods of time). Cp. iv 31; Schaar (1982) 184 – 6. doubt: fear. 17. engine: (1) mechanical device; (2) plot (OED 3). Cp. i 750; like other devilish plots, this backfires. As M. wrote, Christiaan Huygens was experimenting with a gunpowder engine; cp. the cannon at vi 469–500.

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paradise lost Upon himself; horror and doubt distract His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir The hell within him, for within him hell He brings, and round about him, nor from hell One step no more than from himself can fly By change of place: now conscience wakes despair That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue. Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad, Sometimes towards heaven and the full-blazing sun, Which now sat high in his meridian tower:

20–3. Cp. i 255n; Doctrine and Discipline ii 3, YP ii 294 (‘To banish for ever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottomless gulf of chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world’s diameter multiplied, [pagan authors] thought not a punishing so proper for God to inflict, as to punish sin with sin’); Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1616) v 124–6 (1987–) ii 19 (‘Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place, for where we are is hell, / And where hell is, must we ever be’); Browne, Religio Medici (1642) i 51 (‘men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensions represent hell. The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself ’); Shawcross (1991) 36f (citing Shakespeare, Richard III; Quarles; and Augustine, Comm. on Ps. 33). 23–4. The narcotic satanic epic is over; Satan knows ‘his escape from the reality of hell was imaginary’ (Stevens (1985) 144). 24–6. Bentley objects to the notion of remembering the future; but memory meant ‘recollection’ (cp. memento mori). Echoing Augustine’s great meditation on time (Confessions XI xxviii 37 (1992) 243): Satan can only remember, for he has no future. Cp. SA 22 (‘what once I was, and what am now’); Hollander (1975) 95; Belsey (1988) 42. 27–8. Etymologically, Eden was well known to mean ‘pleasure, delight’. 30. Which] Who Bentley, emending for accord with ‘his’; but ‘his’ was a normal neuter form. meridian tower: Cp. Virgil, Culex 42 (Igneus aetherias iam Sol penetrarat in arces); Spenser, ‘Virgils Gnat’ 65–6 (‘The fiery Sun was mounted now on hight / Up to the heavenly towers’); Schaar (1982) 188f (the tower as vigilance and loyalty). Noon, when the sun crosses the meridian, symbolized a time of judgment; cp. the Sol iustitiae metaphor of Mal. 4:1f (‘The day cometh, that shall burn as an oven. . . . But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise’); Bersuire, Repertorium Morale (1489) iii 194r (developing the metaphor astronomically, and stressing the sun’s noon position: ‘As the sun, when in the centre of his orbit, that is to say, at the midday point, 4 hottest, so shall

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Then much revolving, thus in sighs began. O thou that with surpassing glory crowned, Lookst from thy sole dominion like the God Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads; to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere; Till pride and worse ambition threw me down Warring in heaven against heaven’s matchless king:

Christ be when he shall appear in the centre of heaven and earth, that is to say, in judgement’); Panofsky (1955) 262 (equating ‘the astrological notion, medium coeli, with the theological notion, medium coeli et terrae, presumed to be the seat of the Judge’). The subject of pious speculation by Hugh of St-Victor and others. Noon and midnight are reversed for Satan and Adam (A. R. Cirillo, ELH, 29 (1962), 372–95). See vi 762n on structural positioning of the Sun of righteousness at the poem’s exact centre. For the symbolic noon, cp. iii 616–17n; ix 739n; Fowler (1964) 67, 70. The present juncture is critical, since Satan is about to begin his ‘dire attempt’. 31. revolving: pondering. Cp. iv 16 (‘rolling’); PR i 185f (‘Musing and much revolving in his breast, / How best the mighty work he might begin’). 32–41: The first of the poem’s five soliloquies, the others being iv 358–92, 505–35; ix 99–178, 473–93. Dramatic interior duologue between better and worse selves, like those between good and evil angels in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The self-dramatizing of despair is itself satanic – ‘The characters of Paradise Lost do not soliloquize until they have fallen’ (Broadbent (1960) 80); cp. Haskin (1994) 158. Shown to Edward Phillips and others ‘several years before the poem was begun’, when M. intended a tragedy; see Introduction: Composition; Darbishire (1932) 72f. Cp. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, similarly beginning with an address to the sun. 32–9. For the play on Son/sun, and the suggestion of Satan (‘Enemy’) in no friendly, see Leonard (1990) 102f. 33. sole: solitary. Unlike the moon, who is accompanied by stars (Richardson). Neoplatonists systematized the Orphic and Platonic doctrine of the sun as a divine image into a solar theology: e.g. Plato, Republic 508; Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus; Ficino, De Sole and Epistles vi, Orphica Comparatio Solis ad Deum. 37–9. Cp. John 3:20 (‘Every one that doeth evil hateth the fight’); Rev. 2:5 (‘Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent’). 41. matchless] glorious Edward Phillips. Perhaps from an earlier version; see iv 32–41n.

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paradise lost Ah wherefore! He deserved no such return From me, whom he created what I was In that bright eminence, and with his good Upbraided none; nor was his service hard. What could be less than to afford him praise, The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks, How due! Yet all his good proved ill in me, And wrought but malice; lifted up so high I sdeigned subjection, and thought one step higher Would set me highest, and in a moment quit The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burdensome, still paying, still to owe; Forgetful what from him I still received, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharged; what burden then? Oh had his powerful destiny ordained Me some inferior angel, I had stood Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised

42–3. From Satan’s volte-face some infer a change in intention; others, use of old material. Empson (1961) 64f unpersuasively denies that Satan’s first private speech confesses earlier public ones to be false. Earlier readers showed no surprise, expecting remorse when the offender had time for reflection. And when remorse led to hardened persistence, they would recognize a new phase of damnation; see iv 110–12n. 43. An important admission: during the rebellion Satan believed – or pretended – the angels were ‘self-begot, self-raised / By [their] own quickening power’ (v 860f; cp. iii 740n). 45. Cp. James 1:5, ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not’ (among precepts about temptation). Upbraided: cast up (OED 3). 50. For Satan’s height cp. Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 179. sdeigned: disdained (poetic). Imitating Ital. sdegnare, a word with aristocratic associations (Fowler (1964) 110). 51. quit: pay. 53–4. still: continually. 55–7. By owning an obligation gratefully one ceases to owe it. Cp. Cicero, Pro Plancio xxviii 68: ‘In a moral debt, when a man pays he keeps, and when he keeps, he pays by the very act of keeping.’ As Cicero plays on habere, so M. plays on owe (OED 1c, acknowledge as one’s own; 2, be under obligation to repay). 59. stood: (1) remained (OED 15e); (2) stood firm (OED 9b). A thematic word; cp. iii 99, 650, 654; iv 64; v 522n, 540.

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Ambition. Yet why not? Some other power As great might have aspired, and me though mean Drawn to his part; but other powers as great Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within Or from without, to all temptations armed. Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand? Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse, But heaven’s free love dealt equally to all? Be then his love accursed, since love or hate, To me alike, it deals eternal woe. Nay cursed be thou; since against his thy will Chose freely what it now so justly rues. Me miserable! Which way shall I fly lnfinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven. Oh then at last relent: is there no place Left for repentance, none for pardon left? None left but by submission; and that word Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame

66–70. Confirming iii 100–2 (God’s explanation that predestination left the angels’ wills free); cp. v 535–40. Satan blames his fall on the divine love that desired a free response. accuse: ‘impute as the first cause; he did accuse himself, his pride, ambition, malice’ (Richardson). 73. Me miserable: Cp. the penitential Ps. 51:1 (miserere me). The emphatic accusative (cp. Lat. me miserum) was common in drama (OED 7a, citing Greene, Menaphon, ‘Ay me unhappy’). Satan dramatizes the possibility of repentance. 75–7. Travesty of divine creation at vii 168–9. Cp. i 255n; iv 20–3n; Comus 384; Donne, Sermons ii 83 (‘thine own hell’); Belsey (1988) 74 (‘Himself is his own dungeon’). 76. lower deep: The dread of worse; ‘fear can have no bounds’ (Richardson). On the complexities of deep, see Corns (1994) 98f. Previously compared to Aeneas, Satan is now like the Turnus of Aen. vii 462–6 (Christopher (1982) 63f ). 79–89. Psychological fixity antithetic to Machiavellianism (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 580). 79–80. no place: Cp. Heb. 12:17: Esau having sold his birthright, ‘when he would have inherited the blessing . . . was rejected: for he found no place of repentance’ (‘way to change his mind’, AV margin). 81. Satan evidently supposes repentance possible for angels, pace Corns (1994) 49. 82. Not confession but self-justification; Disdain has the force of Ital.

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Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced With other promises and other vaunts 85 Than to submit, boasting I could subdue The omnipotent. Ay me, they little know How dearly I abide that boast so vain, Under what torments inwardly I groan; While they adore me on the throne of hell, 90 With diadem and sceptre high advanced The lower still I fall, only supreme In misery; such joy ambition finds. But say I could repent and could obtain By act of grace my former state; how soon 95 Would height recall high thoughts, how soon unsay What feigned submission swore: ease would recant Vows made in pain, as violent and void. For never can true reconcilement grow Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep: 100 Which would but lead me to a worse relapse And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear Short intermission bought with double smart. This knows my punisher; therefore as far

sdegno – ‘scorn, contempt for what is base, unbecoming to an angel and a gentleman’; cp. iv 50n. I see no trace of the humoral determinism diagnosed by Kendrick (1986) 170. Disdain: Italicized as a proper name in 1667. 84. A favourite scheme (a sort of ploce); cp. x 861f (‘With other echo late I taught your shades / To answer, and resound far other song’); Comus 612f; Lycidas 174; Dante, Inf. iii 91f. 87. abide: pay for, suffer for (by confusion with ‘abye’). A Spenserian word; cp. FQ V iv 36. 88. groan;] groan: 1667 some copies. 89. Such adulation ‘would be hard to avoid, and to worry about it only proves that [Satan] is a deeply conscientious republican’ (Empson (1961) 76f ). But adore is sufficiently explained as amplifying the contrast between outward supremacy and inward torment. Satan calls his advancement hollow, not excessive; his remorse does not extend to qualms about political inequality. 93–7. Satan cannot imagine circumstances in which his spoken submission would issue in actual repentance (Schwartz (1988) 66). ‘Language which prefigures the disorder of his mind’ ( Jarvis (1991) 39). act of grace: concession of favour, not of right (OED s. v. Grace 6); often in the political sense ‘free pardon by formal act of Parliament’ (OED 15b). 103. Arminian Predestination, God foreknowing Satan’s decision.

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From granting he, as I from begging peace: 105 All hope excluded thus, behold instead Of us outcast, exiled, his new delight Mankind created, and for him this world. So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost; 110 Evil be thou my good; by thee at least Divided empire with heaven’s king I hold By thee, and more than half perhaps will raign; As man ere long, and this new world shall know. Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face 115 Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy and despair, Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld. For heavenly minds from such distempers foul Are ever clear. Whereof he soon aware, 120 Each perturbation smoothed with outward calm, Artificer of fraud; and was the first That practised falsehood under saintly show, Deep malice to conceal, couched with revenge: Yet not enough had practised to deceive

110–12. On Satan’s hardening of his heart, see iii 200 (Broadbent (1960) 68). be thou . . . by thee . . . by thee: Distorted, doubled repetitio, miming the splitting of dyadic evil. 110. Cp. i 159–68n; ix 122f (the more painful converse: ‘all good to me becomes / Bane’); Isa. 5:20 (‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil’). 111. Divided: (1) shared; (2) divisive, dyadic. 112–13. If, i.e., Satan succeeds in conquering the world; cp. x 372–82. raign: Aphetic form of ‘arraign’; not ‘reign’, whose transitive was obsolete. 115–17. All three passions caused pale (pallor). As a cherub (iii 636), Satan should be red; cp. Cotgrave, Dictionary (1611), s. v. Cherubin: ‘Rouge comme un Cherubin, Red-faced, Cherubin-faced, having a fiery facies like a Cherubin.’ The hinted analogy with human sanguine ruddiness (the best complexion) suggests a moral application. Cp. iv Arg., ‘fear, envy, and despair’. 118. distempers: mental disorders due to a disturbed temper (proportion) of humours. 121. Artificer: inventor. Cp. the formula ‘father of lies’. 123. couched: hidden (OED 13); suppressed (OED 10). Miming intricacy: couched with introduces a further meaning, ‘inlaid with’. 124–30. Cp. Uriel’s report to Gabriel, iv 364–72.

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125 Uriel once warned; whose eye pursued him down The way he went, and on the Assyrian mount Saw him disfigured, more than could befall Spirit of happy sort: his gestures fierce He marked and mad demeanour, then alone, 130 As he supposed, all unobserved, unseen. So on he fares, and to the border comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound the champaign head 135 Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, 125. Gilbert (1947) 40 finds evidence of incomplete revision in warned. But it is not inconsistent: caught unawares, Uriel was temporarily deceived (iii 624, 629); once warned by Satan’s mad demeanour, however, he is no longer deceived, even when the perturbations are smoothed. The sun ‘is not deceived by god or man’ (Pindar, Pythian Odes iii 28). 126. Assyrian mount: Niphates; see iii 742n. 127. Spirits find it difficult to hide their true natures. ‘Nor may the various transfiguration of their shapes conceal their persons, no more than the disguises that are used by fraudulent men’ (More, Immortality (1659) III x 5). The transfiguring is left vague, omitting the usual devilish bat wings (Frye (1978) 73). 131. On the gradual approach to Paradise, see Lewis (1942) 47. 132–59. Refining on a rich European tradition of paradises, gardens, lands of the blessed, and other loci amoeni. Materials may come from Stephanus’ Hesperides entry and Conti’s description of Elysium (Starnes (1955) 310–15). 132. delicious Paradise: Rendering the deliciarum paradisum of the Fathers (Corcoran (1945) 20n). Paradise is a garden within the land of Eden; cp. i 4–5n; iv 209–10n. 134. Renaissance gardens often had a mound from which to view the formal layout (which might include a wilderness). Cp. iv 174–7; v 294–7; Strong (1979) Index, Mount, Wilderness; Evans (1996) 51 (the ‘pleasant gardens of Christ’ in New England, contrasted with a ‘hideous and desolate wilderness’ threatening on all sides, according to William Bradford). champaign: free from trees; unenclosed. Contrast the enclosure of Paradise itself. 135. hairy sides: Cp. Spenser, FQ III vi 43 (the Garden of Adonis with its mons Veneris); Lewis (1942) 47 (‘The Freudian idea that the happy garden is an image of the human body would not have frightened Milton in the least’); Ellrodt (1960) 88n; Fowler (1964) 135f. 136–7. grotesque: entangled, labyrinthine. Originally referring to a retrospective-antique style of ornament interweaving bizarre animated foliage

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Access denied; and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, 140 A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung: and other monstrous forms; cp. A. Chastel, L’Oeil, 21 (1956) 34–41; Gombrich (1979) Index, Grotesque; E. K., Epistle before Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender (‘In most exquisite pictures they use to blaze and portraict not only the dainty lineaments of beauty, but also round about it to shadow the rude thickets and craggy clifts, that by the baseness of such parts, more excellency may accrue to the principal’); Curtius (1953) 198f, 202 (naming the pleasance within a wild wood ‘the specialized Tempe motif ’). As an enclosed garden, recalling the hortus conclusus of medieval religious iconography, a principal symbol of Mary, the second Eve; see Stewart (1966); Comito (1979). ‘Adam planted thorns round about paradise’ (Taylor, Holy Dying (1651) i 5). Haskin (1994) 185 remarks that this wilderness is not caused by transgression. Consistently, M.’s pastoral is ‘hard’ and precarious; there is no loss of control, pace J. H. Miller, NYTM (9 Feb. 1986) 25. Wildernesses were an ingredient of gardens as formal as Wilton. 138–43. Recalling loci amoeni like Spenser’s Mt Acidale, ‘plaste in an open plaine, / That round about was bordered with a wood / Of matchlesse hight, that seem’d th’earth to disdaine, / In which all trees of honour stately stood / And did all winter as the sommer bud’ (FQ VI x 6); Belphoebe’s ‘pleasant glade, / With mountaines round about environed, / And mighty woods, which did the valley shade, / And like a stately Theatre it made, / Spreading it selfe into a spatious plaine’ (FQ III v 39); and the ‘second paradise’ round the Temple of Venus, ‘No tree, that is of count, in greenewood growes, / From lowest Juniper to Ceder tall . . . / But there was planted’ (FQ IV x 22). Paradise was supposed to contain all plants; cp. Gen. 2:5 (‘every plant of the field’); Dante, Purg. xxviii. For the tree catalogue, cp. iv 693–701; Comus 999ff; Spenser, FQ I i 8; Curtius (1953) 195. fir: Introduced to England about 1548, and not generally cultivated; to Thomas Fuller still a ‘curiosity’ (Worthies (1952) 523). palm: Cp. Ps. 92:12 (‘The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon’); Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1613) 189; Frye (1978) 243. Figuring in many emblems of marital chastity or fortitude under oppression. See Palmer (1988) 70, 245. loftiest shade: Oxymoron, in genre terms, shade suggesting pastoral, loftiest epic. See B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 205–8. sylvan scene: Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 164 (silvis scaena coruscis); Steadman (1976) 25 (‘the conventional scena satyrica’). theatre: Cp. the younger Pliny’s villa (M. Fagiolo, FMR,

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Which to our general sire gave prospect large 145 Into his nether empire neighbouring round. And higher than that wall a circling row Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit, Blossoms and fruits at once of golden hue Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixed: 150 On which the sun more glad impressed his beams Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow, When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed That landscape: and of pure now purer air

64 (Oct. 1993) col. 102b). On the verdurous wall replacing medieval paradises’ masonry, see Frye (1978) 236. 144. Cp. iii 565–71n; Dante, Purg. xxviii 91–102 (locating Paradise on the summit of the purgatorial mountain to secure it from atmospheric change); Voragine, Golden Legend (1993) ii 184 (‘close to heaven’); Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxxiv 48 (Paradise ‘nigh touched the circle of the moon’). Elevated paradises went back to Ezek. 28:13f (‘Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God . . . upon the holy mountain of God’); sometimes they reached the height ridiculed in Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 147. Lieb (1981) 152 thinks M.’s lofty Paradise a sacred mount foreshadowing heaven. Distant prospects were considered a chief beauty in country seats; see iv 246–7n. 148. at once: Simultaneous seasonal stages regularly characterized earthly paradises: e.g. Gen. 1:12, much debated, where God commands the earth to bring forth simultaneously ‘the bud of the herb’ (Vulg. herbam virentem) and trees bearing fruit; Homer, Od. vii 112–32 (Alcinous’s garden; cp. YP iv 566); Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxxiv 49; Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax xvi 10f (‘ere their fruit drop off, the blossom comes, / This springs, that falls, that ripeneth, and this blooms. // The leaves upon the selfsame bough did hide, / Beside the young the old and ripened fig’); Spenser, FQ III vi 42 (‘There is continuall spring, and harvest there / Continuall, both meeting at one time’); Willet, Hexapla (1608) 9 (the first fruiting supernatural – ‘in the beginning, trees did bear fruit in the year more than once’, like the tree of life in Rev. 22:2). This Golden Age stasis, usually unexplained, receives astronomical interpretation at x 651–706. 149. enamelled: lustrous, bright; variegated (without suggesting hardness). 151. humid bow: rainbow. Cp. Comus 992. 153. landscape] lantskip 1667. A recent borrowing from Dutch art terminology. Cp. ii 491n; D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 15–31; Gent (1995) Index, Landscape; Wood (1993) passim. purer air: Cp. xii 76– 8n; Stephanus, Dictionarium (1579) on Elysium (Hunc locum alii inferorum foelicitatibus plenum, alii fortunatas insulas, alii circa lunarem circulum esse dicunt, ubi iam aer purior est). of: from (expressing transformation from a former

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Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires 155 Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair: now gentle gales Fanning their odoriferous wings dispense Native perfúmes, and whisper whence they stole Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail 160 Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozámbic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabean odours from the spicy shore Of Arabie the blest, with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league 165 Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles. So entertained those odorous sweets the fiend

condition) (OED 20b, illustrating from English authors as venerable as Bede). Not a Latinism. 156–8. Echoing Conti on the Elysian fields (atque ventos plurimum suaves et odoriferos leniter spirare); although not very obviously: odoriferous was a familiar word, and perfumes often stolen by gales (winds). In nautical terminology, the ascending series went: calm, breeze, fresh gale, pleasant gale, stiff gale. Native: natural. (In contrast with fallen, exotic perfumes.) Evans (1996) 45 n 34 compares Barlowe’s description of America. 159–66. Reprise, after Satan’s journey, of the comparison made near its beginning (ii 636–41n). Cape of Hope: Cape of Good Hope. Cp. iv 108 (‘farewell hope’); as reprobate, Satan is now past hope (R. I. S. Jones, private information). Also called Cabo de Diable (Percival (1969) 7f ). Mozambic: Portuguese Mozambique, between which and Madagascar the trade route lay. Sabean: Of Saba or Sheba, now Yemen. Saba ‘in the Greek tongue signifieth a secret mystery’ (Pliny, Hist. XII xiv, tr. Holland (1634)). Drawing on Diodorus Siculus’s Arabia felix (III xlvi 4). Balsam and cassia grow along the shore, and inland thick forests of frankincense and cinnamon: ‘A divine thing and beyond the power of words to describe seems the fragrance which greets the nostrils and stirs the senses of everyone . . . When the wind is blowing off shore, one finds that the sweet odours exhaled by the myrrh-bearing and other aromatic trees penetrate to the nearby parts of the sea.’ Diodorus remarks, however, that the aromatic country is infested with poisonous serpents (III xlvii 1f ). Cp. Elegia V 59; PR ii 364. Met by the adverse north-east winds, the mariners slack their NE course, instead of tacking. 166–71. Tobias, sent on an errand into Media, there married Sara. She had been married seven times, but before the marriages could be consummated all seven husbands were killed by a jealous spirit Asmodeus. On the angel Raphael’s advice Tobias burned the entrails of a fish – ‘the which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of

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Who came their bane, though with them better pleased Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume, That drove him, though enamoured, from the spouse 170 Of Tobit’s son, and with a vengeance sent From Media post to Ægypt, there fast bound. Now to the ascent of that steep savage hill Satan had journeyed on, pensive and slow; But further way found none, so thick entwined, 175 As one continued brake, the undergrowth Of shrubs and tangling bushes had perplexed All path of man or beast that passed that way: One gate there only was, and that looked east On the other side: which when the arch-felon saw 180 Due entrance he disdained, and in contempt,

Egypt, and the angel bound him’ (Tob. 8:3). Lewis (1942) 42 faults ‘the pretence of logical connection’, thinking the simile introduced ‘to make us feel the full obscenity of Satan’s presence in Eden by bringing a sudden stink of fish across the sweet smell of the flowers’. But Tobias compares himself to Adam (Tob. 8:6), and is instructed by Raphael like M.’s Adam (v 221–3; Tob. 6); while Asmodeus’ being bound foreshadows Satan’s binding by the new Adam (xii 454). Amplifying Satan’s inappropriate welcome: though he lacks Asmodeus’ excuse of being enamoured, he gets no worse treatment, but is even pleased with perfumes. with a vengeance: The odd coupling of this intensive with the unemphatic sent signals a sardonic pun – Tobias’s success typologically avenged Adam’s failure. Tobias was a favourite subject in visual art, often used as a pretext for landscape painting (Elsheimer, Tobias and the Angel, Nat. Gall., London; Goudt’s 1613 engraving after it). Closer to the biblical narrative are Jan Steen, Wedding Night of Tobias and Sarah and Matthias Stomer, Tobias and the Angel, both in the Bredius Mus., The Hague. 168. Asmodeus: King of the demons, in the Heb. Tobit. For his part in the war in heaven, cp. vi 365; PR ii 151f (‘the fleshliest incubus’). Leader of the fourth of nine orders of devils, the ‘malicious revenging devils’, according to Cornelius Agrippa, Thomas Heywood, and Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 181. 172–357. Perhaps meant to be seen as roughly divided by golden section after iii 287, into 116 lines on Paradise and 70 on Adam and Eve (Ron Golden, private information). 172. savage: wild, rugged; deserted. 176. had perplexed: would have entangled. Conditional; not implying (pace Bentley) that anyone did pass. 178. For the single entrance, cp. iv 542–50n; Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer v 28f, cit. Werman (1995) 178.

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At one slight bound high overleaped all bound Of hill or highest wall, and sheer within Lights on his feet. As when a prowling wolf, Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, 185 Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, Leaps o’er the fence with ease into the fold: Or as a thief bent to unhoard the cash Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, 190 Cross-barred and bolted fast, fear no assault, In at the window climbs, or o’er the tiles; So clomb this first grand thief into God’s fold: So since into his church lewd hirelings climb. Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life, 195 The middle tree and highest there that grew,

181. Bentley dislikes the repetitio; but it may mime Satan’s dyadic duplicity; cf. Stavely (1987) 31f. 183–7. John 10:1, ‘He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.’ Cp. Lycidas 115. prowling: looking for prey, or an advantage, in an underhand way. Watching: With scopophiliac gaze; see Schwartz (1988) 54. cotes: shelters. secure: over-confident. 188–91. Perhaps cp. Joel 2:3–9, a vision of judgment: ‘The land is as the garden of Eden before them . . . they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.’ Cp. Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 189: ‘thou misbegotten monster, sin, / As bastards use stolest at the window in, / Ashamed of thy birth’. 188. unhoard: take out of hoard (probably M.’s coinage; cp. ii 185n). 191. tiles: Possibly hinting at a Masonic route to preferment; see OED, s. v. Tyler. 192–3. Applying the simile of iv 183–7 to the contemporary Church. M. opposed a salaried clergy, thinking ministers should support themselves (as many sectarians did) by practising a profession; see Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church (1659), YP vii 273–321. Cp. xii 507ff; Cromwell 11–14 (‘new foes arise / Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains: / Help us to save free conscience from the paw / Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw’). clomb: climed. Archaistic, perhaps to suggest a primordial time: Corns (1990) 112. lewd: untrained, ignorant. 195. On the middle position of the tree of life, cp. iv 217–21n; F. Hartt, Art Bull., 32 (1950) 193.

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Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life Thereby regained, but sat devising death To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought Of that life-giving plant, but only used 200 For prospect, what well used had been the pledge Of immortality. So little knows Any, but God alone, to value right The good before him, but perverts best things To worst abuse, or to their meanest use. 205 Beneath him with new wonder now he views To all delight of human sense exposed In narrow room nature’s whole wealth, yea more, 196. Travesty of Christ on the cross, especially the pious image of a compassionate pelican on the tree of life; see Schaar (1982) 266–9; Braunfels (1972) 146. Continuing the anticlerical implication: the cormorant emblemized greedy exploitation of the weak, in particular by ‘hireling’ clergy; cp. Whitney (1586) 52; Nashe, Anatomy of Absurdity (1966) i 36 (‘The cormorants of our age . . . having felt the sweetness of abbey lands, they gape after College living’). Birds had long symbolized preachers; cp. Augustine, Confessions XIII xxvi 40 (1992) 297f; Morrill (1993) 54. The immortal fruit of the tree of life is the reward of the faithful (Rev. 2:7; 22:14). Perhaps also proleptic of the day of judgment on Edom: ‘The cormorant and the bittern shall possess it’ (Isa. 34:11). The cormorant had a more than literary existence for M.: at his house in Petty France he would hear the King’s cormorants in St James’s Park across the road. Far from being ‘a dime a dozen’ (D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 110), the birds were ambassadorial gifts. For Satan’s inelegant physical movements, cp. ii 927–42; v 266–74; McColley, cp. cit. For Satan’s metamorphoses, see iii 634n. 196–201. Bentley asks how Satan could ever have used the tree well; which invites a tropological answer. Using it to ‘Reflect on the immortal happiness to be attained by repentance and future obedience’ (Richardson), Satan might have true life . . . regained. Instead he uses it as a vantage-point for a prospect of death. Cp. Gen. 2:9; 3:22; De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 353 (‘I do not know whether the tree of life ought to be called a sacrament, rather than a symbol of eternal life or even perhaps the food of eternal life’, a complement of the tree of knowledge, itself ‘a kind of pledge or memorial of obedience’); Willet, Hexapla (1608) 28, 55 (the Augustinian view that the tree was significative not effectual, ‘a sign of true immortality, which he should receive of God, if he continue in obedience’). 207–68. See Evans (1996) 44 on New World or ‘New Paradise’ accounts, comparing the description of America in T. Morton, New English Canaan (1632). 207–8. The baroque ideal of multum in parvo. For an instantaneous

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A heaven on earth: for blissful Paradise Of God the garden was, by him in the east 210 Of Eden planted; Eden stretched her line From Auran eastward to the royal towers Of great Seleucia, built by Grecian kings, Or where the sons of Eden long before Dwelt in Telassar: in this pleasant soil 215 His far more pleasant garden God ordained; Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste; And all amid them stood the tree of life, High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit

creation, with Paradise comprehending all potential future life, cp. iv 138–43n; Gen. 2:5, 9; Augustine, De Genesi; Spenser, FQ III vi 30 (the Garden of Adonis as ‘seminarie / Of all things, that are borne to live and die’); Ellrodt (1960) 75–81. For Paradise as heaven’s shadow, see v 574n. 209–16. Gen. 2:8, ‘The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.’ For controversies over the location of Paradise, see Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 127; Willet, Hexapla (1608). Some placed it in Chaldea, S of modern Iran, at the fertile confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates; others, N, at the source of the same rivers, near Mt Niphates. M. accommodates both theories – and another, going back to Bonaventura, that Eden was ‘under the Equinoctial’ – by making ecliptic and equator coincide before the Fall (x 651–706n). Cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 27. For a development of the first theory in cartographic terms, see Petrus Plancius, Tabula Geographica (c.1590), illus. Nebenzahl (1986) 100f. Auran: Vulg. Auran, AV Hauran, an E boundary of Israel (Ezek. 47:16–18); possibly confused with Haran, a name associated with Eden (Ezek. 27:23) and a place God commands Abram to leave (Gen. 11:31 – 12:4). great Seleucia: On the Tigris, SE from Auran. Built by Alexander’s general Seleucus Nicator as seat of government for his Syrian empire. Sometimes confused with Babylon (Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 129). Telassar: Another ominous name, alluding to 2 Kings 19:11f or Isa. 37:11f (lands ‘which my fathers have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran . . . and the children of Eden which were in Telassar’). 217–21. Cp. iv 138–43n; Gen. 2:9 (‘And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’); Spenser, FQ IV x 6 (Mt Acidale ‘In which all trees of honour stately stood’). All trees: The inclusiveness of Paradise was often stressed. blooming: causing to flourish. Rare as transitive; perhaps suggesting flowers and fruit were simultaneous. ambrosial: See ii 245n.

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220 Of vegetable gold; and next to life Our death the tree of knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill. Southward through Eden went a river large, Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill vegetable gold: Cp. Ovid, Metam. iv 637f, Hesperidean fruit gathered by Hercules, despite a dragon sentinel later emblemized as chastity. ‘Vegetable stone’ and ‘potable gold’ (iii 608n) were varieties of the philosopher’s stone that preserved health (OED, s. v. Vegetable 1 d); cf. Gen. 3:22, God’s provision in case the tree of life prove an elixir to fallen Adam. Both the tree of life and the Hesperian fruit that delayed Atalanta symbolized the alchemic magnum opus: e.g. Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618). For Fludd’s search for the vegetable stone, and achievement of a humor ‘like aurum potabile’, see C. H. Josten, Ambix, 11 (1963) 1–23. See OED, s. v. Orange; older authorities derived it from aurum, gold. 220. The tree of knowledge has no attractions to suggest provocativeness on God’s part (Burden (1967) 126). 222. Cp. De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 352 (‘It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because of what happened afterwards: for since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil’); Areop, YP ii 514 (‘It was from the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil’). The tree is described in the Hortus Sanitatis (Grafton (1992) 162). 223–32. The fertility of Paradise (iv 215–17) was not due to rain, ‘But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground’ (Gen. 2:5f ). A crux discussed in Willet, Hexapla (1608) 26f. Jerome’s Vulg. version substitutes a fountain (Sed fons ascendebat e terra, irrigans universam superficiem terrae). Dante, Purg. xxviii 121ff emphasizes that the moisture, being independent of rainfall, does not fluctuate, ‘but comes from a stable and certain source’. His main stream divides into Lethe and Eunoe, one removing memory of sins, the other restoring memory of good deeds. M. follows Philo, Quaestiones in Gen. i 12, locating Gen. 2:10–14 by speculation that ‘perhaps Paradise is in some distant place far from our inhabited world, and has a river flowing under the earth, which waters many great veins so that these rising send water to other recipient veins, and so become diffused. And as these are forced by the rush of water, the force which is in them makes its way out to the surface, both in the Armenian mountains and elsewhere.’ M. agrees that the source of the four rivers is not in Paradise itself; they are distributaries of a river flowing through Eden and into (or under) the garden. Cp. Gen. 2:10, ‘A river went out of Eden to water the garden.’ On the anthropomorphism

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225 Passed underneath engulfed, for God had thrown That mountain as his garden mould high raised Upon the rapid current, which through veins Of porous earth with kindly thirst up drawn, Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill 230 Watered the garden; thence united fell Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood, Which from his darksome passage now appears, And now divided into four main streams, Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm 235 And country whereof here needs no account, But rather to tell how, if art could tell, How from that sapphire fount the crispèd brooks,

of veins, cp. iv 135n; on visual art analogues, D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 19. 226. high raised: See iv 285n. 228. Suggesting capillary attraction; but that could not produce a fountain. Either the head of water behind the rapid current causes the fountain or there is a misconception. In M.’s time, Galileo’s pupils Benedetto Castelli (1578–1643) and Evangelista Torricelli (1608–47) had carried hydromechanics to new heights, and engineers like Martino Ferrabosco designed fountains of great sophistication (M. Fagiolo, FMR, 66 (Feb. 1994) 46); but capillary action was not measured accurately until 1709, by Francis Hawksbee. Usually M. tries to work out the Bible’s literal implications with all possible rigour. kindly: natural. 233–5. Gen. 2:10, ‘a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads’. Some took Gen. 2:5 to mean the whole earth was watered from Paradise, and Gen. 2:11–14 specifies three famous realms (Havilah, Ethiopia, and Assyria) irrigated by the distributaries Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates. Pace Madsen (1968) 102f, the rivers are those allegorized as the four cardinal virtues, springing from the fountain of grace – a tradition going back to Ambrose and Philo (A. Fowler, MLN, 75 (1960) 289–92). So More, Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653); but contrast Voragine, Golden Legend (1900) i 32, where the streams symbolize wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. For Hiddekel (Tigris), see ix 71n. M.’s blurring of the rivers’ geography avoids thorny choices between competing theories; cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 29. For reflection of the mystical geography of heaven, cp. iii 344–64; Treip (1994) 202. 237–8. Pison ‘compasseth . . . Havilah, where there is gold; And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone’ (Gen. 2:11f ). Eugubinus and Oleaster identified bdellium as ‘a kind of margarite or pearl’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 30). Whereas Vulg., Tremellius and AV have

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Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold, With mazy error under pendant shades 240 Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed Flowers worthy of Paradise which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but nature boon

‘bdellium and onyx’, Philo, Legum Allegoriae i 66, 79–81, following LXX, has ‘ruby and greenstone’, associating the latter (a symbol of ‘the man who exercises good sense’) with the sapphire in Aaron’s breastplate. Cp. PL ii 1049–50n; iii 594–605n; Kuntz (1989) Index, Aaron. The sapphire fount thus symbolizes wisdom underlying other virtues. A hint was enough to evoke the moralized landscape of Ezek. 28:13–15 – ‘Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold. . . . Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou was created, till iniquity was found in thee.’ See Kuntz (1989) Index, Ezekiel. crisped: curled into wavy folds; cp. Jonson’s land of perpetual spring, The Vision of Delight 186f (‘The Rivers run as smoothed by his [Zephyr’s] hand; / Only their heads are crisped by his stroke’). orient: lustrous; precious or excellent, as coming (originally) from the East (OED 2, 2b). 239. error: wandering. One of PL’s most resonant words (Stein (1953) 66f ). Cp. Ricks (1963) 110: ‘the evil meaning is consciously and ominously excluded . . . “wandering (not error)”. Certainly the word is a reminder of the Fall, in that it takes us back to a time when there were no infected words’. The pendant shades might similarly be proleptic of shadows that impend; see viii 653n. But A. Sherbo, MLR, 67 (1972) 747–51 rightly cautions against eroding Paradise’s innocence. 240. Ovid’s saturnia regna has flowing nectar (Metam. i 111); M.’s ‘river of bliss’ in heaven ‘rolls o’er Elysian flowers’ (iii 358f ). Cp. Dante, Purg. xxviii 143f (qui primavera sempre e ogne frutto; / nettare è questo di che ciascun dice’); Drummond, Flowers of Sion, sonnet ix (1913) ii 11 (‘Springs ran nectar, honey dropped from trees’). 241–2. Mankind’s commission is to ‘subdue’ the earth; cp. Gen. 1:28; Burden (1967) 44ff. At first M. gives this problematic notion an innocent interpretation: namely, putting profuse nature in order. nice: fastidious. knots: parterres laid out in intricate regular designs formed by herbs, flowers, or coloured earths; associated with an old-fashioned Tudor garden-art. Cp. Charles Cotton on Chatsworth, Fowler (1994) 377; J. R. Knott, MiltS, 2 (1970) 37–58; C. F. Otten, MiltS, 5 (1973) 249–67; G. S. Koehler, MiltS, 8 (1975) 3–40; Strong (1979); J. D. Hunt, MiltS, 15 (1981) 81–105; C. Wortham, Parergon, 9 (1991) 137–50; Chambers (1993). The newer Italian and international styles pursued broader symmetries and

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Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote 245 The open field, and where the unpierced shade Embrowned the noontide bowers: thus was this place, A happy rural seat of various view; Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm, Others whose fruit burnished with golden rind 250 Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste: Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, were interposed, Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap

dynamic ‘natural’ effects such as cascades Poured forth profuse (cp. iv 260f ). boon: bounteous, benign. 246. Embrowned: made dusky (poetic; earliest OED instance). Probably naturalizing Ital. imbrunire (to shade); shadows were painted brown and pictures given a brown glaze. Cp. Sonnet III 1 (al imbrunir di sera). 246–7. Mingling beauties, preserved or recovered, from many different sources; country house landscapes would be among the finest. On the valued view or prospect from a country seat, see Fowler (1994) 51. 248–9. Balsam (balm) and other trees producing aromatic resins figure prominently in Diodorus’s account of Arabia felix; cp. iv 159–66n; Shakespeare, Othello V ii 349f, ‘Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees / Their med’cinable gum’. rich: Newton finds antithesis between fruit trees and valuable aromatics. But Hesperian fruit would not come cheap. More relevant is the Heliades’ weeping for Phaethon’s fatal descent, a pagan type of the Fall (Ovid, Metam. ii 340–66). golden rind: Cp. the deleted opening of Comus in Trin. MS: ‘fruits of golden rind, on whose fair tree / The scaly harnessed dragon ever keeps / His unenchanted eye’. Empson (1950) 186f detects nostalgia for a lost Eden; finely suggesting ‘the same Nature produced the balm of healing and the fatal fruit; they cannot convey to Adam either its knowledge or the knowledge that it is to be avoided’. But M. might not have agreed that the trees ‘by their own nature foretell the necessity of the Fall’; for him, the balm precedes the wound as providence the Fall. Belsey (1988) 41 thinks the classical allusions diminish Eden’s reality, and Lieb (1981) 106 sees anthropological implications; both underestimating the immediacy of mythological associations then. burnished: (1) gleaming, glossy; (2) grew plump. 250. See iii 568–9n; iv 217–21n. amiable: desirable. 251. Surpassing the Hesperian apples, which were not for eating. 252. them: the groves.

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255 Of some irriguous valley spread her store, Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose: Another side, umbrageous grots and caves Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps 260 Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake, That to the fringèd bank with myrtle crowned, Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. The birds their choir apply; airs, vernal airs, 265 Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 255. irriguous: irrigated, well-watered. 256. Cp. Herrick, ‘The Rose’ (‘Before Man’s fall, the Rose was born / (S. Ambrose says) without the Thorn’). From the curse of Gen. 3:18 (‘thorns . . . shall it bring forth to thee’), Basil, Hexaemeron v 45 and Ambrose, Hexaemeron iii 11, Migne xiv 188 infer a prelapsarian thornless rose (Surrexerat ante floribus immista terrenis sine spinis rosa). For the thornless rose as a state of grace or sinlessness, cp. Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 686; G. W. Whiting, RES, ns 10 (1959) 60–2. 257. Another side: in another direction. umbrageous grots: shady grottos. From early in the century, many Italianate gardens featured grottos: e.g. Arundel’s Albury. 258–60. Emphasizing the fruitful vine (unlike flowery pagan paradises), although with dangerous luxuriance; cp. iii 68 (the vines of Diodorus’s Nysa); Comus 294; Vasari, Life of Piero di Cosimo (fondness for trailing vines); Tasso, Ger. Lib. xvi 11 (lussureggiante serpe in the temptation garden); Kates (1983) 145. Ancient philosophers regarded wine as containing pneuma, the stuff of life; see C. H. Dodds on Euripides, Bacchae 773. The heraldic metaphor in mantling (enveloping in ‘a curling cascade of fronds’) is a precise visual one; see Franklyn (1970) 216; Woodcock (1988) 87. It recalls the mantling of plants in feuilles d’aristoloche or ‘large leaf ’ tapestries; see N. F. Grazzini, FMR No. 72 (1995) 53B, 60A. With the generality of imagery D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 21 compares Poussin’s style. recess: retirement, private seclusion. 262–3. Both myrtle and mirror were attributes of Venus, who presided over gardens and the generative cycle of Graces and Hours. Paradises were often gardens of Venus: e.g. Spenser, FQ III vi; IV x. Myrtle was associated with an attempted rape of Venus, successfully repelled (Tervarent (1958) col. 274, 281f ). 263–6. Harmony of bird song, rustling leaves, and murmuring waters characterize the Tempe motif (Aelian, Varia Historia iii 1), and specially gardens of Venus; cp. Tasso, Ger. Lib. xvi 12 (the garden of Armida); Spenser, FQ II xii 70f (the Bower of Bliss); Curtius (1953) 195–200. apply: join. airs (1) breezes; (2) melodies. Hume (1695) notices the wordplay; cp. Empson (1950) 157; Ricks (1963) 104–6.

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The trembling leaves, while universal Pan Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance Led on the eternal spring. Not that fair field

266–8. Neoplatonists interpreted the triadic dance of the Graces as the movement underlying all natural generation; see Wind (1965) ch. 7; Frye (1978) 230; Carter (1996) 631f. In Ovid, Fasti v 193–222, Chloris– Flora, ravished by Zephyrus, brings forth flowers of spring, gathered by Seasons (Horae, Hours) and Graces. Renaissance mythographers interpret Pan (Gk. ‘All’) as universal nature, citing Homeric Hymns xix 47. Cp. Elegia V; Comus 986; Conti, Mythologiae (1616) V vi, (1979) 540; Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 730D. 268–85. Ranked comparisons recalling Spenser, FQ II xii 52: ‘More sweet and holesome, then the pleasaunt hill / Of Rhodope, on which the Nimphe, that bore / A gyaunt babe, her selfe for griefe did kill; / Or the Thessalian Tempe, where of yore / Faire Daphne Phoebus hart with love did gore; / Or Ida, where the Gods lov’d to repaire, / When ever they their heavenly bowres forlore; / Or sweet Parnasse, the haunt of Muses faire; / Or Eden selfe, if ought with Eden mote compaire.’ Orontes . . . Castalian spring . . . Triton . . . Nilus: Surrogates of the four undescribed rivers of Paradise (iv 235). Nile is common to both sets, being identified with the biblical Gihon; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 255; A. Fowler, MLN, 75 (1960) 292. The first comparison introduces a lunar deity; the second, solar and lunar deities together (iv 272–4n); the third, a solar deity; and the fourth, a just balancing of lunar and solar domains at the equinoctial line. For Adam as sun god, cp. iv 303n. 268–72. Ovid relates Proserpina’s rape by Dis in Enna (Metam. v 385ff; vi 103ff; Fasti iv 420ff ). During Ceres’ search for her the world was barren; after her recovery, it remained so for half of each year. She could not be recovered unconditionally, having ‘eaten seven grains of a pomegranate (a fatal lecherousness, which retains her in hell; as the apple thrust Evah out of Paradise, whereunto it is held to have a relation)’ (Sandys (1632), in Ovid (1970) 195). For the bad associations, cp. Spenser, FQ II xii 52; Treip (1994) 245f. For Bersuire’s allegory of Ceres as the Church, see Frye (1978) 277. The analogy is not merely ‘as Proserpine, so Eve’ but ‘as Eden above Enna, so Eve above . . . that other “flower” ’ (P. Parker, ELR, 9 (1979) 334f ). 268. The world was created in March, according to Eusebius, Bede, and Sts Cyril, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, John of Damascus, Ambrose, among others. This view rested on typology (Christ crucified the same day Adam was created); on chronology (Moses’ returning to primitive usage and instituting Nisan as the first month, Exod. 12:2); and on literalistic exegesis. Cp. iii 555–61n; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 8f; Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) ii 232.

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Of Enna, where Prosérpin gathering flowers 270 Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired Castalian spring, might with this Paradise 275 Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian isle Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, Hid Amalthea and her florid son Young Bacchus from his stepdame Rhea’s eye; 280 Nor where Abassin kings their issue guard, 270. Cp. ix 432 (‘Herself, though fairest unsupported flower’, of Eve); Empson (1950) 173 (‘Proserpina, like Eve, was captured by the king of Hell, but she then became queen of it, became Sin, then, on Milton’s scheme’). 272–4. The grove Daphne, beside the Orontes near Antioch, had an inspired Apolline oracle and a stream named after Parnassian Castalius. In Ovid, Metam. i 452, Daphne was there changed to a laurel after pursuit by Apollo (apparently one of Belial’s ‘lusty crew’, PR ii 187). Leonard (1990) 284–6 suggests M. uses ‘equivocal’ names with ambiguous referents to amplify the uncertainty of fallen understanding. 274. spring] spring, 1674. 275–9. Diodorus, iii 67–70 has already been echoed; now Nysa is referred to explicitly. Ammon, King of Libya, loved Amaltheia, who bore the marvellous Dionysus (Bacchus). To protect mother and child from his jealous wife Rhea, he hid them on Nysa, near mod. Tunis. For Ammon’s identification with Libyan Jupiter (in form a ram stellified as Aries) and with Noah’s son Ham (Vulg. Cham), see Sandys (1632), in Ovid (1970) 191; Starnes (1955) 237. Triton: A river in Tunisia where Minerva had a temple (hence Tritonia). florid: ruddy-complexioned – distinctive of Bacchus. 280–5. Mt Amara is ‘a day’s journey high; the rock so smooth and even . . . that no wall can be more evenly polished’ (Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iv 64). The summit is compassed with a high wall surrounding gardens and palaces where ‘the younger sons of the Emperor are continually enclosed, to avoid sedition: they enjoy there whatsoever is fit for delight or princely education’. The province ‘stretcheth towards the Nile’, and enjoys ‘such ravishing pleasures of all sorts, that some have taken (but mistaken) it for the place of Paradise’. Like most geographers, Heylyn thought Amara ‘not much distant from the equator, if not plainly under it’. On the fear of sedition as a reminder of the fallen world, cp. Treip (1994) 245f. Ethiop line: equator. Making explicit the earlier suggestion of an equinoctial Paradise enjoying eternal spring (iv 268). Proserpina’s itinerary

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Mount Amara, though this by some supposed True Paradise under the Ethiop line By Nilus’ head, enclosed with shining rock, A whole day’s journey high, but wide remote 285 From this Assyrian garden, where the fiend Saw undelighted all delight, all kind Of living creatures new to sight and strange: Two of far nobler shape erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native honour clad 290 In naked majesty seemed lords of all, And worthy seemed, for in their looks divine (iv 270n) between superior and inferior hemispheres was a seasonal allegory – ‘The seed, which is Proserpina, while the Sun is on the south of the equinoctial, lies hid in the earth, which is Pluto: but when he travels through the northern signs, it shooteth up, and grows to maturity; and then Proserpina is said to be above with Ceres’ (Sandys (1632), in Ovid (1970) 197). 286. Travesty of Hermes’ delighted reaction to Calypso’s isle (Homer, Od. v 51–76). Common elements include caves, vine, fourfold fountain and cormorant simile ( J. C. Maxwell, private information). On the demons’ delight in landscape, see More, Immortality (1659) III iv 7. all kind: every kind (OED s. v. All 3b). 288–99. On the vision of delicately poised hierarchy, see D. K. McColley, in Danielson (1989) 159f; M. Wilding, in Davidson (1994) 176–92; Ryken (1970) 193f. For the upright stance (erect and tall), cp. vii 506–11; Ovid, Metam. i 82–6. Halkett (1970); Turner (1987) 281; Corns (1994) 71; McColley (1983) 40; M. Wilding, in Stanwood (1995) 173, and others, suppose Adam and Eve are seen through Satan’s eyes. But I. Samuel, in Patrides (1968) 20 is surely right to reject this view. Satan never uses the name God (iv 299); and the view of iv 313 is obviously M.’s. 288. nobler: Nobler than Sin and Death, thinks Lieb, in Benet (1994) 121. ‘Nobler than the animals’ would be less strained. But the comparative as intensitive was a common classicism. 289. To evoke the superhuman, M. appeals to ‘innumerable remembered versions’ of pagan gods (MacCaffrey (1959) 98). native honour: Oxymoron; most portrayed the Golden Age as free from honour’s restraints: e.g. Tasso, Aminta II i 656–723. M.’s natural honour, contrasted with honour dishonourable (iv 314), resembles Guarini’s moralization of Tasso in Pastor Fido iv 9 (onor felice, verace onor). But M.’s ideal goes further, almost to Jonson’s vera nobilitas, Dryden’s ‘noble savage’, or Conrad’s ‘primitive honour’. 290. seemed: were seen to be. 291–3. ‘God created man in his own image’ (Gen. 1:27) in a precise sense; Adam and Eve’s virtues are those attributed to God by authorities from

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The image of their glorious maker shone, Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure, Severe, but in true filial freedom placed; 295 Whence true authority in men; though both Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed; For contemplation he and valour formed, For softness she and sweet attractive grace, He for God only, she for God in him: 300 His fair large front and eye sublime declared Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks Gregory the Great to Calvin. Neither wisdom nor any of the other virtues is gender-marked; cp. iv 490–1n. 295. Whence: i.e. from the divine image. 296. As their sexual differentiation (sex) shows, Adam and Eve are not identical (equal). The line is often taken to imply Eve’s inequality: e.g. Turner (1987) 216f, 282; Belsey (1988) 59; K. P. McColgan, SCR, 11 (1994) 75–86. But M.’s thought may be closer to Augustine, Confessions XIII xxxii (1992) 302 (‘as in his soul there is one element which deliberates and aspires to domination, and another element which is submissive and obedient, so in the bodily realm woman is made for man. In mental power she has an equal capacity of rational intelligence, but by the sex of her body she is submissive to the masculine sex’). 297–8. Related to ‘the three modes of life, Contemplation, Active (‘pragmatical’), and Voluptuous’ (Turner (1987) 207). attractive grace: Applied to Sin (ii 762); erotic language earlier associated with Satan is restored to Adam and Eve (Turner op. cit. 260 n 37, 300). 299. Following 1 Cor. 11:3 (‘The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man’) and 11:9 (‘Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man’); cp. Tetrachordon, YP ii 289; Donne, Sermons ii 132 (‘everything, except God himself, is inferior to man, and so, it is a declination, a stooping in man, to apply himself to any creature, till he meet that creature in God; for there, it is above him’). in] and Bentley. 300. front: forehead. sublime: uplifted. 301–8. Hairstyles reflecting St Paul’s hierarchic vision – ‘a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. . . . if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering’ (1 Cor. 11:7, 15) – but not the view of the AV annotator (11:10), that the covering is a ‘sign that she is under the power of her husband’. hyacinthine: Although M. lived before the hyacinth mania, hundreds of varieties were already known of this popular cultivar, which gave rise to commercial speculation; Taylor (1995) 2. Cp. Homer, Od. vi 231, Athena’s endowing Odysseus with superhuman glory, so that his hair flows ‘like the hyacinth

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Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad: She as a veil down to the slender waist 305 Her unadornèd golden tresses wore Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied Subjection, but required with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best received, 310 Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,

flower’ (symbolizing inspired reason). The beautiful youth Hyacinthus (‘natural understanding’), although beloved of Apollo, was doomed to die (Stevens (1985) 186 n 7, citing Sandys). Cp. Marino, Adone (1623) xvi; Le Comte (1978) 89f. If a colour is meant, it may be tawny (heraldic hyacinth, like M.’s own hair) or black (Eustathius’ gloss) or dark brown (Suidas’ gloss); if a shape, it refers to the idealized hair of antique sculpture. Frye (1978) 268f, 270–2 compares the relatively rare parted forelock, worn by M. himself and Oliver Cromwell; see Martin (1961). Pace Belsey (1988) 65, M. seems to have had a special sexual interest in hair; cp. iv 496f; Lycidas 69, 175; Parker (1996) Index, Hair. Miller (1991) 293f finds Eve’s Dishevelled . . . wanton hair culpable; but it is as poignantly innocent as Paradise’s mazy ‘errors’. True, in the early Renaissance loosened hair could be a bad sign (cp. Tasso’s seductress at Ger. Lib. xv 61 with hair lunghissimo in giù cadendo); but by M.’s time ‘sweet disorder’ was often blameless; cp. Jonson, ‘Still to Be Neat, Still to Be Dressed’ 9, Fowler (1991) 153 (‘hair as free’); Lieb (1994) 150. Rubens and Rembrandt painted their wives with loose hair; and the former pictures the Virgin Mary similarly (Immaculate Conception, Rooses (1977) Pl. 45). For the pattern of innocent and fallen wantonness, see Treip (1994) 219. In visual tradition, Eve was invariably blonde (Frye (1978) 273). 303. Clustering: Cp. Apollonius, Argonautica ii 678, Apollo’s hair. Adam was usually beardless in visual art, following Apolline types; cp. Cartari, Imagini (1963) 37; Panofsky (1955) 249–65. Adam’s locks hang like bunches of grapes, whereas Eve’s resemble the ancillary vine . . . tendrils – modifying towards reciprocity the marriage emblem of vine and elm; cp. ix 215–17; Whitney, Emblems (1586) 62. To Shumaker (1967) 51 wavy hair implies subjection; to Davies (1991) 109, ‘sexuality is a kind of powerplay from the beginning’. But this misses the subtle mutuality of M.’s hierarchy; cp. iv 288–99n. 306. wanton: unrestrained. ringlets: Implying the benign restraint of art. waved: undulated; swayed in the wind; wavered. 310–11. Paradoxes à la Cusanus, suggesting the otherness of Eve’s independence. Cp. Herrick’s ‘wild civility’, etc.; Colie (1966) passim. sweet . . . delay: Cp. Ovid, Ars Amatoria ii 717f (non est veneris properanda

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And sweet reluctant amorous delay. Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed, Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame Of nature’s works, honour dishonourable, 315 Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure, And banished from man’s life his happiest life, Simplicity and spotless innocence. So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight 320 Of God or angel, for they thought no ill: So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair That ever since in love’s embraces met, Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve. 325 Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain side They sat them down, and after no more toil Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed To recommend cool Zephyr, and made ease voluptas, / Sed sensim tarda prolicienda mora); W. Kerrigan and G. Braden, ELH, 53 (1986) 43 (‘Antifruition sets up happy fruition’). coy: reserved. 312–18. Going beyond Tasso’s and Guarini’s attacks on false honour (iv 289n). 313. shame,] shame. Bentley (thus obscuring the gradual incrementum from appositional phrases to angry apostrophe). dishonest: unchaste. 320–2. Perhaps taking Gen. 2:25 to imply prelapsarian sexuality (Gallagher (1990) 43). 321–4. For the syntax, cp. Homer, Il. ii 673; Horace, Sat. i 100. 321. Cp. xii 648: on entrance as at final exit, Adam and Eve go hand in hand to emblemize concord or trust. Such hieratic fides manualis, uncommon in erotic contexts, is prominent in PL; cp. iv 488f, 689, 738f; ix 1037; xii 648f; Whitney, Emblems (1586) 76; Peacham, Minerva (1612) 135; Frye (1978) 281–5. 323–4. Not specially poetic; cp. Browne, Pseudoxia i 1 (1964) ii 18, ‘As some affirm, [Adam] was the wisest of all men since’. 328. Varying the usual Golden Age pastoral occupation to gardening (Burden (1967) 41ff ). Garden pastoral responded to the contemporary passion for gardening; see Strong (1979); Prest (1981). sweet: Accepting the Reformers’ work ethic; work is not a mere curse, but a positive good, part of the prelapsarian plan. Geoffrey Hartman calls M.’s Eden a consumer’s paradise; he might as well have put ‘producer’s paradise’; see Quint (1993) 311. 329. Zephyr: the W wind, ‘the frolic wind that breathes the spring’ (L’Allegro 18). In Ovid and in Renaissance Neoplatonism, Zephyr initiated the generative cycle; cp. Ovid, Metam. i 107f; Wind (1958) 103, 113.

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330 More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite More grateful, to their supper fruits they fell, Nectarine fruits which the compliant boughs Yielded them, sidelong as they sat recline On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers: 335 The savoury pulp they chew, and in the rind Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream; Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems Fair couple, linked in happy nuptial league, 340 Alone as they. About them frisking played All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion ramped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, 345 Gambolled before them, the unwieldly elephant

He figured in many visions of eternal spring; cp. v 16n; Comus 988; Jonson, Vision of Delight. 330. easy: free; reposeful. 332. Nectarine: sweet as nectar. Perhaps specifically indicating malum persicum (peach). The modern nectarine is a variety of the peach. compliant: pliant (Latinism, from plicare). 333. The Golden Age sponte sua motif, common in estate poems (Fowler (1975) 130; (1994) 88). recline: reclining (Latinizing coinage from reclinis). 334. downy: soft as down. damasked: interwoven, variegated. Nature before the Fall was as fine as art can make it now. 335. savoury: (1) appetizing, fragrant; (2) spiritually edifying. 337. gentle purpose: polite conversation (OED, s. v. Purpose 4b); cp. Shakespeare, Much Ado III i 11f, ‘There will she hide her, / To listen our purpose’. 338. Wanted: were lacking. dalliance: caresses. Not ‘conversation’, which would be pleonastic after purpose. 340–52. An idyllic scene familiar from visual art; cp. Cranach’s Vienna Garden of Eden; Jan Brueghel I’s at the V. & A.; Cortona’s The Age of Gold (Pal. Pitti); countless Peaceable Kingdoms by Hicks and others; engravings like those in Andreini, Adamo (1617); the frontispiece to ‘Eden’ in Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1613); Frye (1978) 242f; Prest (1981). Implying (since animals symbolized passions) that conflicting feelings occasioned no tension (Shumaker (1967) 55f ). 341–2. The contrasting scene of enmity, at x 710–14, is anticipated by the proleptic wild and chase (Hume (1695)). 344. ounces: lynxes (loosely applied to various feline animals). 345. Bentley notices the mimetic rhythm, despite scanning wrongly.

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To make them mirth used all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis; close the serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile 350 Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass Couched, and now filled with pasture gazing sat, Or bedward ruminating: for the sun Declined was hasting now with prone career To the Ocean Isles, and in the ascending scale 355 Of heaven the stars that usher evening rose: When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood, Scarce thus at length failed speech recovered sad. O hell! What do mine eyes with grief behold, Into our room of bliss thus high advanced 360 Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps, Not spirits, yet to heavenly spirits bright Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue With wonder, and could love, so lively shines In them divine resemblance, and such grace Frye (1978) suggests the elephant (in Roman Catholicism a severe symbol) is being converted to entertainment; in Paradise, chastity is fun. 348. Insinuating: (1) penetrating sinuously; (2) ingratiating. Gordian twine: (1) convolution as hard to undo as the Gordian knot that Alexander the Great had to cut (cp. ix 499); (2) division, disunion. Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1613) 586: ‘Th’ unity dwells in God, i’ th’ fiend the twine’. Augustine, City of God XIV xi maintains that Satan chose the serpent as instrument because it was ‘slippery, pliable, wreathed in knots’. Gallagher (1990) 24 finds the description both innocent and ominous; cp. iv 347 (sly), 349 ( fatal). 350. proof: So that mankind might have no excuse (Burden (1967) 53). Or pointing the irony that no one notices this momentous creature. 352. bedward ruminating: chewing the cud before retiring. 354–5. Ocean Isles: the Azores, behind which the sun will set (iv 592). The sun being in Aries (iii 555–61n; x 329n), stars that usher evening rise in Libra, the ascending scale of the Balance, the opposite sector of the heavens. Another reminder of the equinoctial justice before the Fall; cp. iv 280–5n; ix 50f; x 651–706n. The sign’s visual representation originated in the idea of a balancing of light and darkness (Eisler (1946) 100). For the culmination of Libra at midnight, six hours later, see iv 1014f. 358. On the soliloquies, see iv 32–41n. 359. room: place. Loyal angels praise God for bringing ‘a better race’ into the rebels’ ‘vacant room’ (vii 189f ). 361–2. Cp. Heb. 2:7; Ps. 8:5 (‘thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and has crowned him with glory and honour’).

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365 The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured. Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh Your change approaches, when all these delights Will vanish and deliver ye to woe, More woe, the more your taste is now of joy; 370 Happy, but for so happy ill secured Long to continue, and this high seat your heaven Ill fenced for heaven to keep out such a foe As now is entered; yet no purposed foe To you whom I could pity thus forlorn 375 Though I unpitied: league with you I seek, And mutual amity so strait, so close, That I with you must dwell, or you with me Henceforth; my dwelling haply may not please Like this fair Paradise, your sense, yet such 380 Accept your maker’s work; he gave it me, Which I as freely give; hell shall unfold, 366–71. Predicting mankind’s peripeteia from delights to woe (Steadman (1976) 45). 370–4. Satan is capable of pity and love of God’s resemblance, but rejects them. The inaccuracy of ill secured is shown by Satan’s fear of approaching Adam (ix 483ff ). See Burden (1967) 36. Happy,] Happy; 1667 catchword only. forlorn: doomed; deserted. 375–7. Contrast the ‘nuptial league’ of iv 339. strait: (1) intimate (OED 14); (2) restricted; involving privation (OED 6b). Cp. Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 185: ‘Thinking erroneously ’tis some relief / To have companions in their endless grief ’. 377–8. I with you implies sin’s inner hell; you with me, consequential damnation in external hell. But God denies the must at xi 57–66 (Driscoll (1993) 81). 380–1. Travesty of Matt. 10:8 (‘freely ye have received, freely give’) and Rom. 8:32 (‘He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?’) in the manner of ironic blasphemy. 381–5. Cp. Isa. 14:9 prophesying Babylon’s fall: ‘Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.’ Empson (1961) 68f believes Satan sincere in offering high honour: ‘the irony . . . belongs only to the God who made hell’. But if high honour brings woe (iv 367–9), it can only be offered maliciously, for revenge, as Satan admits. The offer of room (iv 383) is sinisterly belied by strait (376). Bentley finds contradiction of ii 883f; but Satan need not mean hell gate itself.

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paradise lost To entertain you two, her widest gates, And send forth all her kings; there will be room, Not like these narrow limits, to receive Your numerous offspring; if no better place, Thank him who puts me loth to this revenge On you who wrong me not for him who wronged. And should I at your harmless innocence Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, Honour and empire with revenge enlarged, By conquering this new world, compels me now To do what else though damned I should abhor. So spake the fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds. Then from his lofty stand on that high tree Down he alights among the sportful herd Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one, Now other, as their shape served best his end Nearer to view his prey, and unespied To mark what of their state he more might learn By word or action marked: about them round A lion now he stalks with fiery glare,

387. for: instead of. 389. public reason: ‘Reason of state, a perversion of the Ciceronian principle (Laws III iii 8) that the good of the people is the supreme law . . . Henry Parker approved its use by Parliament and condemned the Royalists for too frequent appeals to it. . . . In Adamo Caduto (1647) V ii, Salandra has Satan tell the devils that they are going to corrupt mankind by inventing ragione di stato’(M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957) ). Casting Satan as a Machiavellian politician who justifies the means by appeal to ‘the common weal’, ‘policy’, and necessity (393). Cp. SA 865–8, Dalila’s appeal to ‘the public good’ to excuse betraying Samson. Tearful devils were extremely rare (Frye (1978) 104f ). 400. Satan’s overhearing the prohibition was uncommon. Exceptions include Bishop Moses bar Cepha, De Paradiso, and Serafino, Adamo (1647) I vii. See Hume (1695), note to i 34; McColley (1940) 155; M. Y. Hughes, in Milton (1957). 401–2. 1 Pet. 5:8, ‘your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour’. The real animals are gentle, but Satan insinuates their later, postlapsarian states (Burden (1967) 49f ). For Satan’s metamorphoses, see iii 634n. 402–8. Blurring boundaries of neoclassical ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ (Treip (1994) 149). Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 2, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 341 (‘Our freedom’s felon, fountain of our sorrow, / Thinks, now the beauty of a horse to borrow’, trying heifer, cock, dog, hart, and peacock, before choosing the serpent as best suiting his purpose); Abbot, Rhapsodies

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Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play, Straight couches close, then rising changes oft His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground Whence rushing he might surest seize them both Griped in each paw: when Adam first of men To first of women Eve thus moving speech, Turned him all ear to hear new utterance flow. Sole partner and sole part of all these joys, Dearer thyself than all; needs must the power That made us, and for us this ample world Be infinitely good, and of his good As liberal and free as infinite, That raised us from the dust and placed us here In all this happiness, who at his hand Have nothing merited, nor can perform Aught whereof he hath need, he who requires From us no other service than to keep This one, this easy charge, of all the trees

(1647), in Frank (1968) 187 (‘Aren’t there other beasts, the fox, the ape, / The dog, the elephant so wise as is / The serpent?’). In Augustinian tradition, Satan was only allowed to use the one creature. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 1 i (1989–) i 126. 404. purlieu: land bordering a forest. 405. Straight: at once. Punning with ‘Strait’ (OED 1, ‘tightly’); 1667 and 1674 ‘Strait’ could indicate either word. 410. him: Momentary uncertainty as to the antecedent insinuates Satan into Adam’s grammatical place. all ear: Cf. Catullus xiii 14 (totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum). 411. Sole: (1) only; (2) unrivalled (OED 5c); (3) ‘Soul’. Eve is the only sharer in Adam’s joys – and a chief part of them. ‘The only one of the joys which is a part of me’ (Newton); cp. iv 487 ‘Part of my soul’ (Richardson). Initiating the recurrent allegory whereby Adam and Eve represent complementary parts of human nature; cp. iv 487; v 486, 816; viii 604; Ficino, cit. Westra (1986) 176 (the soul ‘can fly back to the Father . . . on only two wings, intellect and will’); Donne, Sermons ii 72f (‘St Bernard calls it, A trinity from the Trinity, in those three faculties of the soul, the Understanding, the Will, and the Memory’); 79 (Adam = Adam and Eve); Burton, Anat. of Melan. ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 79 (‘soul, or intellectus agens’); A. K. Hieatt, JWI, 43 (1980) 221–6; K. Borris, MiltS, 31 (1995) 45–72. 421–4. Gen. 2:16f, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ On

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paradise lost In Paradise that bear delicious fruit So various, not to taste that only tree Of knowledge, planted by the tree of life, So near grows death to life, whate’er death is, Some dreadful thing no doubt; for well thou knowst God hath pronounced it death to taste that tree, The only sign of our obedience left Among so many signs of power and rule Conferred upon us, and dominion given Over all other creatures that possess Earth, air, and sea. Then let us not think hard One easy prohibition, who enjoy Free leave so large to all things else, and choice Unlimited of manifold delights: But let us ever praise him, and extol His bounty, following our delightful task To prune these growing plants, and tend these flowers, Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet. To whom thus Eve replied. O thou for whom And from whom I was formed flesh of thy flesh, And without whom am to no end, my guide And head, what thou hast said is just and right. For we to him indeed all praises owe, And daily thanks, I chiefly who enjoy So far the happier lot, enjoying thee Pre-eminent by so much odds, while thou Like consort to thyself canst nowhere find. That day I oft remember, when from sleep

Adam’s positive interpretation of the law, see Rosenblatt (1994) 16. Cp. iv 222n. 428. Cp. i 32; iii 95n (‘sole pledge of his obedience’). 430–2. Gen. 1:28 (‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’); 9:2. 433. easy: easy to keep; not constraining. 437–9. See iv 328n. 440–1. Cp. iv 299, 483; 1 Cor. 11:9 (‘Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man’); Gen. 2:23 (‘Adam said, This is now . . . flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man)’. 443. head: Cp. 1 Cor. 11:3, ‘The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man.’ 447. odds: difference, advantage. Then grammatically singular. 449–50. The same comparison Adam uses (viii 253f ) in describing his creation. Eve’s first confusion, according to Gallagher (1990) 79 n 66. On

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450 I first awaked, and found myself reposed Under a shade on flowers, much wondering where And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound Of waters issued from a cave and spread 455 Into a liquid plain, then stood unmoved Pure as the expanse of heaven; I thither went With unexperienced thought, and laid me down On the green bank, to look into the clear Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky. 460 As I bent down to look, just opposite,

the transtional moments of cognitio vespertina and self-reflection preceding choice, see P. Parker, ELR, 9 (1979) 319–42 comparing ii 1037, 1042; ix 50. reposed: placed. 449. That day: Implying she has lived two days at least, unless Adam and Eve were created with ready-made memories. Counting against the time-scheme of McColley (1940) 16 and others making this the very day of her creation. Cp. iv 610–20, 639ff, 681ff, 710ff; v 31, 145; Introduction: Time-scheme. The Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer limits the stay in the garden to one day; but contrast Jubilees iii 3–10. Turner (1987) 288 and M. Nyquist, ELR, 14 (1984) 199–206 find discontinuities – how did Eve know about times and seasons? But it is a mistake to expect post-novelistic continuity in Renaissance realism. 451. on] of 1674. 453–6. Paysage moralisé; cp. Homer, Il. v 708f (‘low Hyle’s [Matter’s] watery plain’); Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum (famously interpreting the Homeric cave and water as the Neoplatonic soul’s descent into material creation); More, Conjectura (1653) Defence i 6. Pace Ricks (1963) 101, issued, spread, and stood are transitive participles qualifying waters. 457. unexperienced thought: uninformed imagination. See Stevens (1985) 186: thought includes imagination and judgement, as in Aristotelian psychology. 460–71. ‘The most reflective, even philosophical account of sexual consummation in all of Renaissance literature’ (W. Kerrigan and G. Braden, ELH, 53 (1986) 39). ‘Confusing fancy with objective reality’ (Stevens (1985) 187). Cp. Ovid, Metam. iii 402–36; Roman de la Rose (with dream, guide, etc.); E. Sichi, in Mulryan (1982) 153–82. Ovid’s Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection, and pines with vain desire, like Eve, for ‘an unsubstantial hope, thinking that substance which is only shadow’. Genders are transposed: Eve does not take Echo’s role. Critics dispute whether Eve is innocently or culpably narcissistic. Cp. viii 505–7, 571–3; B. K. Lewalski, in Kranidas (1971) 101; Kendrick (1986) 154; R. Bradford, in Nyquist (1988) 191; Leonard (1990) 38–40; Gallagher (1990) 59; Musacchio (1991)

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A shape within the watery gleam appeared Bending to look on me, I started back, It started back, but pleased I soon returned, Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks 465 Of sympathy and love; there I had fixed Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire, Had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest, What there thou seest fair creature is thyself, With thee it came and goes: but follow me, 470 And I will bring thee where no shadow stays Thy coming, and thy soft embraces, he Whose image thou art, him thou shall enjoy Inseparably thine, to him shalt bear Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called 475 Mother of human race: what could I do, But follow strait, invisibly thus led? Till I espied thee, fair indeed and tall, Under a platan, yet methought less fair,

94; R. J. DuRocher, JEGP, 92 (1993) 325–41 (seeing a resemblance to Britomart’s looking in her glass); Gregerson (1995) 153 n 6 (with further refs.); M. Mori, MCJN, 17 (1996) 10. In view of the Porphyry allusion, Platonic contents seem more relevant. Eve learns that as a second-order image she should love another; see Knapp (1993) 53; Madsen (1968) 148f (Eve’s ascent from sensible beauty to metaphysical). Cp. Donne, Sermons iii 254; D. Bush, in Milton (1966) (‘Some of the newly created angels looked up to God, others fell in love with themselves’). 470. stays: (1) awaits; (2) delays. 472. Bentley faults the rhythm, missing the heavy caesura and stress on him. 474–5. Gen. 3:20, ‘Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living’ (‘Chavah, or, living’, AV note). Commentators say this was her postlapsarian name; before, she was simply ‘woman’; cp. Gen. 2:23; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 54. Departing from this tradition, M. enhances the status of sexuality and motherhood. Cp. iv 741ff; xi 168f. 476. strait: (1) immediately; (2) closely. 478–96. Eve makes her first rational choice, penetrating the illusion of fancy (Burden (1967) 84f ). Cp. viii 507; Dryden, Aureng-Zebe II i 159 (‘’tis resistance that inflames desire’); J. Earl, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 13–16; M. Edmundson, KR, 10 (1988) 17–37; A. Snider, UTQ, 55 (1986) 313–27. 478. platan: plane tree. A symbol of Christ, Adam’s ‘head’; cp. iv 299n, 443n; Ecclus. 24:14–16 (‘I . . . grew up as a plane tree by the water. . . . my branches are the branches of honour and grace’); Raban Maur, Migne cix 931.

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Less winning soft, less amiably mild, 480 Than that smooth watery image; back I turned, Thou following criedst aloud, Return fair Eve, Whom fly’st thou? Whom thou fly’st, of him thou art, His flesh, his bone; to give thee being I lent Out of my side to thee, nearest my heart 485 Substantial life, to have thee by my side Henceforth an individual solace dear; Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim My other half: with that thy gentle hand Seized mine, I yielded, and from that time see 490 How beauty is excelled by manly grace And wisdom, which alone is truly fair. So spake our general mother, and with eyes Of conjugal attraction unreproved, And meek surrender, half embracing leaned 495 On our first father, half her swelling breast Naked met his under the flowing gold Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight

483. Cp. iv 441; Gen. 2:23 (‘Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh’). 484. Cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 38 on Gen. 2:21f, ‘It is . . . a superfluous question, out of what side of Adam Eva was taken, whether out of the right or left: it is resolved by most, out of the left, because Adam’s heart lay there’. 485. Foreshadowing Adam’s choosing of physical shadow (Eve) over moral substance (Madsen (1968) 104). 486. individual: inseparable. But also ‘separate’ (Gallagher (1990) 42). 487. Cp. Horace, Odes II xvii 5, consoling Maecenas in illness (meae . . . partem animae). See iv 411n. 489. On Eve’s choice, see Burden (1967) 84f. 490–1. Wisdom undergoes gender marking, according to E. Cook in Nyquist (1987) 204 comparing xi 634–6 and contrasting iv 292–3. But Eve is surely idealizing her lover. 493. unreproved: innocent. Cp. L’Allegro 40. M. liked Latinizing participles: e.g. ‘unremoved’ (iv 987); ‘unconquerable’ (Comus 448: invictus); ‘unenchanted’ (Comus 395). Cp. Spenser, FQ II vii 16: ‘The antique world, in his first flowring youth, / Found no defect in his Creatours grace, / But with glad thankes, and unreproved truth, / The gifts of soveraigne bountie did embrace: / Like Angels life was then mens happy cace.’ 497–501. ‘The superiority of Adam is diligently sustained’ ( Johnson); but Belsey (1988) 61 rightly detects comedy. Cosmically, Jupiter was aether and Juno air or cloud, source of rain; cp. Conti, Mythologiae x, s. v.

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Both of her beauty and submissive charms Smiled with superior love, as Jupiter 500 On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers; and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure: aside the devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained. 505 Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two Imparadised in one another’s arms The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill Of bliss on bliss, while I to hell am thrust, Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, 510 Among our other torments not the least, Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines; Yet let me not forget what I have gained From their own mouths; all is not theirs it seems: One fatal tree there stands of knowledge called,

Iuno (1979) 1021 (‘from the air growing ardent, animals and plants are born’). Cp. Virgil, Georgics ii 325–7: ‘the Father almighty comes down in fruitful showers into the lap of his joyous spouse, and his might, with her mighty frame commingling, nurtures all growths’. impregns: impregnates. matron: Implying legitimacy; cp. Ovid, Fasti ii 828, Lucretia’s ‘matron cheeks’. 502. ‘Satan’s dimensions are reduced so effectively that we hardly notice how, in the process, his titles lose their lustre, how the “Archfiend” of the first book becomes “the Fiend” or “arch-felon” and how for the first time he begins to be “the Devil” ’ (Rajan (1962) 99). Cp. iv 393. 503. Instructed by Raphael, Adam later infers Satan’s envy of conjugal love (ix 263f ). Satan’s sexual jealousy was a Jewish idea; see Werman (1995) 181 comparing the Midrash Genesis Rabbah xviii 6. 505. For the soliloquies, see iv 32–41n. 506–7. Imparadised: enraptured. Romantic diction, used resentfully. happier: very happy (Latinism). 509–10. Cp. iv 183–7n; Corns (1994) 37 (‘sexual continence, far from being inherently meritorious, is a punishment fit for the fallen angels’). Empson (1961) 68 defends Satan against C. S. Lewis’s charge of voyeurism: ‘God has recently cut him off from his own corresponding pleasures.’ 511. Still: ever. pines: torments (transitive). 513. The devils’ knowledge being erroneous and limited, Satan must learn by eavesdropping. He could not know a silent person’s mind; see Schultz (1955) 86, citing Webster, Witchcraft (1677).

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515 Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be sin to know, Can it be death? And do they only stand By ignorance, is that their happy state, 520 The proof of their obedience and their faith? Oh fair foundation laid whereon to build Their ruin! Hence I will excite their minds With more desire to know, and to reject Envious commands, invented with design 525 To keep them low whom knowledge might exalt Equal with gods; aspiring to be such, They taste and die: what likelier can ensue? But first with narrow search I must walk round This garden, and no corner leave unspied; 530 A chance but chance may lead where I may meet Some wandering spirit of heaven, by fountain side, Or in thick shade retired, from him to draw What further would be learned. Live while ye may, Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return, 535 Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed.

515–22. The ‘crucial narrative action of Book iv’ (Grossman (1987) 83). Satan will lead mankind ‘to question the rational basis of what is deliberately without reason’ (Lieb (1981) 96). On the arbitrariness, see Willey (1934) 240–58; Lewis (1942) 71. Far from being ‘indignant’ (Empson (1961) 69), Satan is exhilarated to hit on a scheme for ruining mankind. He enthusiastically roughs out the speech that will excite Eve’s mind: Equal with gods (iv 526) will be improved on in ‘goddess among gods’ (ix 547). The injustice of the argument is underlined by the irony that God indeed intends mankind to be Equal with gods (v 499–501) and exalted to the divine throne (iii 303–17). Satan’s rhetoric is ‘forensic, flickering through ploce and traductio and erotema with suspicious speed’ (Broadbent (1960) 151); cp. Leonard (1990) 206. 515. Assuming a literal connection of tree and knowledge. Satan’s imagination is dominated by appearances. 523. Gen. 3:4f, ‘The serpent said unto the woman . . . God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ 530. A chance but chance: with any luck. Satan’s jaunty jingle recalls Lat. forte fortuna. For the contingency, cp. ii 935n. 533–4. Assigning to Satan exclusively the carpe diem sentiment of many earthly paradises: e.g. Tasso, Ger. Lib. xvi 15; Spenser, FQ II xii 74f; Broadbent (1960) 190.

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So saying, his proud step he scornful turned, But with sly circumspection, and began Through wood, through waste, o’er hill, o’er dale his roam. Meanwhile in utmost longitude, where heaven 540 With earth and ocean meets, the setting sun Slowly descended, and with right aspéct Against the eastern gate of Paradise Levelled his evening rays: it was a rock Of alablaster, piled up to the clouds,

538. roam: roaming (first instance in OED). 539. utmost longitude: furthest w. See iii 573–6n. 541. Bentley cavils at Slowly: the sun moves ‘with uniform celerity’. But M., a better astronomer, refers to apparent deceleration, due to atmospheric refraction at sunset; see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) ii 581, Problem 33, Tempus Apparens Ortus et Occasus Limborum Solis Definire. right aspect: The rays of the setting sun are perpendicular to the gate. 542. In Gen. 3:24 the cherubim excluding mankind from Paradise are posted ‘at the east of the garden’. The gate is so high that the sun’s horizontal rays – passing over the ‘insuperable height’ of the western ‘verdurous wall’ (iv 143) – illuminate it. 542–50. Drawing on Purchas’s and Heylyn’s paradise of Mt Amara (iv 280–5n), with its smooth overhanging rock and a single ‘ascending place, a fair gate’. Cp. iv 275–9n; Diodorus iii 69 (the marble ‘crag of immense height’ above Bacchus’s refuge). Five motifs may be distinguished: (a) rock piled . . . to the clouds indicating a supraterrestrial Paradise ‘in the air, under the circle of the Moon’ (cp. iv 135n; Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 127); (b) entrance high by an arduous path of virtue (Wind (1958) 79); (c) pillars symbolizing virtue or Christ (Tervarent (1958) 107; Onians (1988)); (d) the overhanging cliff foreshadowing impending retribution and the gate’s part in the Expulsion (xii 641–4; Wind (1948) 18); (e) the alablaster receptacle that kept the ointment of faith uncorrupted ( John 12:3 Vulg. (nardus pisticus); Matt. 26:7; Raban Maur, Migne cvii 1101f ). Allegorically, the receptacle of Paradise is the true Church (cp. iv 193), with Christ its gate ( John 10:7, ‘I am the door of the sheep’). In Giles Fletcher, Christ’s Victory (1610) ii 13, Christ’s legs are ‘as two white marble pillars that uphold / God’s holy place’. Cp. the alabaster gate of Meroe, the Queen of Sheba’s capital, according to Josephus (Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iv 62). See Corcoran (1945) 20. 544. alablaster: alabaster. A white marble variegated with other colours, anciently used to preserve unguents. On the taste for alabaster rocks and cliffs, see Frye (1978) 237f.

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545 Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent Accessible from earth, one entrance high; The rest was craggy cliff, that overhung Still as it rose, impossible to climb. Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat 550 Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night; About him exercised heroic games The unarmed youth of heaven, but nigh at hand Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears Hung high with diamond flaming, and with gold. 555 Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star In autumn thwarts the night, when vapours fired Impress the air, and shows the mariner

549–50. Gabriel: ‘Strength of God’, one of four archangels ruling the world; an attendant on the cosmic chariot (iii 648n). An ambassador rather than a warrior (Dan. 8, 9; Luke 1), but associated with Mars in Jewish and cabbalistic traditions convenient for M.’s scenario of spiritual war. Cp. 1 Enoch xx 7 (‘Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise’ – accessible to M. in a Latin translation of 1644; see Werman (1995) 6f ); Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 549; Lieb (1981) 305 (Paradise as an armed camp in the Holy War). 551. exercised: practised, used (transitive). 552. unarmed: Contrast the devils’ aggressive games (ii 532–8). Or do the arms laid aside indicate unguarded carelessness, as in Spenser, FQ VI? 555. Bentley objects to Uriel’s gliding through a temporal period; Pearce interprets even as the evening part of the sky; Richardson cites Virgil, Georgics iv 59, where bees sail through the summer. Only Empson (1950) 157f sees the wordplay: ‘the angel is sliding . . . down a nearly even sunbeam’. Cp. iv 590–1n. The good angels’ easy movement contrasts with the laboured, swarming, or zombie movement of the devils (Broadbent (1960) 87). See Frye (1978) 174–6 (the motif of the holy dove descending on a beam of light); T. N. Corns, in Eriksen (1997) 214 (the baroque solidity of the clouds). 556–60. thwarts (1) crosses (nautical); (2) obstructs (interrupting the victory of dark over light). Uriel resembles the shooting star as visually swift, and as warning the mariner Gabriel. Cp. Homer, Il. iv 75–9, Athena descending like a shooting star ‘portent to mariners’. Although swift, Uriel appears to have taken longer than Satan to reach earth (iv 30, 564). Perhaps he waited for sunset, when his diurnal task was complete. 557–8. Ancient but still current meteorology. Combustible exhalations from the earth caused meteors, shooting stars, and stormy winds (Svendsen (1956) 89f; Marjara (1992) 179).

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From what point of his compass to beware 560 Impetuous winds: he thus began in haste. Gabriel, to thee thy course by lot hath given Charge and strict watch that to this happy place No evil thing approach or enter in; This day at height of noon came to my sphere 565 A spirit, zealous, as he seemed, to know More of the almighty’s works, and chiefly man God’s latest image: I described his way Bent all on speed, and marked his airy gait; But in the mount that lies from Eden north, 570 Where he first lighted, soon discerned his looks Alien from heaven, with passions foul obscured: Mine eye pursued him still, but under shade Lost sight of him; one of the banished crew I fear, hath ventured from the deep, to raise 575 New troubles; him thy care must be to find. To whom the wingèd warrior thus returned: Uriel, no wonder if thy perfect sight, Amid the sun’s bright circle where thou sitst, See far and wide: in at this gate none pass 580 The vigilance here placed, but such as come Well known from heaven; and since meridian hour No creature thence: if spirit of other sort, So minded, have o’erleaped these earthy bounds On purpose, hard thou knowst it to exclude 585 Spiritual substance with corporeal bar.

561. As in the Hebrew Temple service, offices are assigned by lot; cp. iv 549–50n; v 655n; 1 Chr. 26:13 (‘they cast lots . . . for every gate’). 564. M.’s universe is on ‘Paradise time’; noon would be meaningless without specifying a particular horizon. Cp. iv Arg. 567. God’s first image being Christ; cp. iii 63, 384. described: descried (OED 7, a common confusion). 569. mount: Mt Niphates. 570–2. Avoiding the grotesque deformity of the visual tradition, and travestying Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Frye (1978) 73). Satan’s hypocrisy did not long escape Uriel; cp. iv 124–9. 572. shade: Probably implying trees, as at i 303. 577. Uriel: ‘Light of God’, one of God’s ‘eyes’ (iii 648–61n). 580. vigilance: guard, watch (by metonymy). 585. See i 423–31n; vi 344–53.

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But if within the circuit of these walks In whatsoever shape he lurk, of whom Thou tellst, by morrow dawning I shall know. So promised he, and Uriel to his charge 590 Returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised Bore him slope downward to the sun now fallen Beneath the Azores; whether the prime orb, Incredible how swift, had thither rolled Diurnal, or this less volúble earth 595 By shorter flight to the east, had left him there Arraying with reflected purple and gold The clouds that on his western throne attend:

586. On the frequently mentioned walks, see Frye (1978) 223. 590–1. ‘It is a rather special kind of materiality that may have its bulk thus supported’ (Corns (1994) 32). The sun having set, its rays slope up from the horizon, but slope downward relative to the sun itself. M. shared this notion of a ‘dual downward direction’ with Galileo (Marjara (1992) 149f ). Until Newton’s Royal Society paper of 1686 the force of gravity was little understood. The tilting sunbeam amplifies the swift directness of Uriel’s level (iv 543) flight; emphasizes the balancing of light and dark hemispheres; prepares for the marvel of the Balance (iv 997ff ); and signalizes sunset, a marker in the numerological pattern (iv 776–80n). point: tip, summit (OED A25, B2). Cp. Corns (1990) 101f. beam: (1) sunbeam; (2) balance beam. Cp. iv 354f (‘scale of heaven’), linked with Azores by ‘Ocean Isles’. 592–7. Cp. iii 573–6n. Apparent sunset could be caused by (PtolemaicTychonic) orbital motion of the sun about earth, or by earth’s (Copernican) rotation, a lesser movement. Combining these alternatives in brilliant ambiguities: (1) ‘whether the primum mobile (prime orb = first sphere) had rolled there carrying the sun with it, or the earth, rotating to the east, had left him’; (2) whether the sun (prime orb = principal planet) had rolled there, or etc.’ whether: Spelled ‘whither’ in 1667, momentarily allowing a further chain of discourse. See Moyles (1985) 143. rolled: (1) orbited; (2) impelled (transitive, with him (iv 595) as object). Diurnal: By its daily motion. The Ptolemaic primum mobile revolved in approximately one solar day. Incredible how swift: The Copernican hypothesis obviated the high velocities entailed by the Tychonic. Earth’s diurnal rotation had only to be about 0.06 German miles per second, as against 70 gmps for solar diurnal motion; cp. viii 25–38; Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 126f. voluble: moving easily. 596–7. Cp. L’Allegro 60–2. purple: The imperial colour.

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Now came still evening on, and twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad; 600 Silence accompanied, for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament 605 With living sapphires: Hesperus that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light, And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw. 610 When Adam thus to Eve: Fair consort, the hour Of night, and all things now retired to rest Mind us of like repose, since God hath set Labour and rest, as day and night to men Successive, and the timely dew of sleep

598–609. A masque-like procession much admired by Addison and other eighteenth-century poets. Cp. Drayton, Endimion and Phoebe (1595), and see D. Griffin, MiltS, 9 (1976) 153–9 on allegorizing of the moon as the Church (still in David Pareus) or Christ (Raban Maur). See iv 608n. 598. Cp. Comus 188f: ‘grey-hooded Even / Like a sad votarist in palmer’s weed’. 600–3. (1) Silence came with them; (2) Silence accompanied them musically, the nightingale singing descant. descant: any melodious birdsong (poetic). slunk: slipped quietly (no implication of stealth: OED 2). 604. Cp. Comus 557–60 (Silence’s wish to be displaced by the Lady’s song); Il Penseroso 51–6 (‘with thee bring . . . mute silence . . ./’ Less Philomel will deign a song’). 605. See ii 1049–50n; iv 237–8n. living: uncut. Hesperus: Cp. xi 588f (‘the evening star / Love’s harbinger’); ix 49ff (‘Hesperus, whose office is to bring / Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter / Twixt day and night’). With Hesperus leading his starry host in service of a greater light, contrast Satan as morning star misguiding his flock (v 708–10). 608. Apparent: (1) manifest; (2) heir-apparent (cp. v 720; vi 887). When clouded, her majesty was presumptive; now her light is peerless, her succession unchallenged. For the moon’s unveiling and mantling as allegory of Christ’s revelation, cp. iii 10; iv 598–609n. 614–22. Stavely (1987) 43 calls Adam stiffly sententious – a description then applicable to most believers. 614–15. Cp. Spenser, FQ I i 36 (‘the sad humour loading their eye liddes, / As messenger of Morpheus on them cast / Sweet slombring deaw’);

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615 Now falling with soft slumbrous weight inclines Our eyelids; other creatures all day long Rove idle unemployed, and less need rest; Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity, 620 And the regard of heaven on all his ways; While other animals unactive range, And of their doings God takes no account. Tomorrow ere fresh morning streak the east With first approach of light, we must be risen, 625 And at our pleasant labour, to reform Yon flowery arbours, yonder alleys green, Our walks at noon, with branches overgrown, That mock our scant manuring, and require More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth: 630 Those blossoms also, and those dropping gums, That lie bestrewn unsightly and unsmooth, Ask riddance, if we mean to tread with ease; Meanwhile, as nature wills, night bids us rest. To whom thus Eve with perfect beauty adorned. 635 My author and disposer, what thou bidst Shakespeare, Richard III IV i 83 (‘golden dew of sleep’); Julius Caesar II i 230 (‘honey-heavy dew of slumber’). 617. Rove: roam at random. For Evans (1996) 54–6 the animals symbolize indigenous inhabitants, commonly contrasted with the planters in such terms. He cites Shephard (‘we labour and work in building, planting, clothing ourselves, etc., and they do not’). 618–19. The medieval Adam lived a contemplative life before the Fall; but, from Luther on, Protestants revalued work and the active life. 620. regard: attention. 623–33. ‘Though man should not have toiled or wearied himself with any labour in Paradise, for that was laid upon him as a punishment afterward . . . yet it is evident that he should have exercised himself in some honest labour . . . his charge was . . . to dress the garden . . . in which kind of husbandry many even now do take a delight’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 33 on Gen. 2:15). ‘There is no anxiety here’ (Summers (1962) 169). But Stavely (1987) 43 misses any ‘relaxed savouring’ of Paradise. Cp. iv 327f; Haskin (1994) 224 (M.’s ‘Paradise as a process’ that mankind participates in strenuously). On the gardening as cultivation of imagination, see Stevens (1985) 184f. 627. walks] walk 1674. 628–9. manuring: cultivating. wanton: luxuriant, unrestrained. 632. Ask: call for. 635. Before the Fall titles have a splendour afterwards lost (M. Barstow, MLN, 31 (1916) 120f ). They are as much biblical as epic; for the second

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Unargued I obey; so God ordains, God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise. With thee conversing I forget all time, 640 All seasons and their change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 645 Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild, then silent night With this her solemn bird and this fair moon, And these the gems of heaven, her starry train: 650 But neither breath of morn when she ascends With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower, Glistering with dew, nor fragrance after showers, Adam as ‘author of life’ and ‘author and finisher of faith’ cp. Acts 3:15 (AV margin); Heb. 12:2. author: origin (viii 465ff ); initiator (OED 1d). disposer: Ominous; Adam will fail to be her disposer, and become ‘the victim of her disposing’ (Shumaker (1967) 98). 639–56. Magnificent rhetoric, exploiting circular or completive figures like epanalepsis (iv 641), epanodos and merismus (dividing 640 into the items of 641–9), and irmus (the long period iv 650–6). For Eve ‘Adam is Eden’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 77, comparing xii 617f, ‘thou to me / Art all things . . . all places thou’). The varied repetition of iv 641–9 in 650–6 ‘enacts a timeless recurrence’. The 16-line epanalepsis Sweet is . . . is sweet divides (9 + 7), a familiar symbol of virtuous, harmonious adjustment of mutable to heavenly, anima to mens, passion to intellect. See Fowler (1964) 269–88; D. Brooks and A. Fowler, in Fowler (1970b) 185–98; Leonard (1990) 257. The nine-line ‘spiritual’ part refers to Paradise with Adam; the mutable seven-line part, to a hypothetical Paradise without him – repudiating it by repeated negation. See Lewalski (1985) 188 n 43 on Drummond’s sonnet ‘The sun is fair, when he with crimson Crown’ as a source. 639. conversing: consorting. 640. seasons: times of day (cp. viii 69). Seasonal mutability has not yet begun. 641–9. Cp. the elegiac landscapes of Claude (D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 27). 642. charm: song (poetic, by false etymology from Lat. carmen). 648. Cp. vii 435: ‘solemn nightingale’. 652–3. herb . . . dew: Merismus at 644f, but now varied to a separate enumeratio. Such variations mime Eve’s independent responsiveness.

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Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night 655 With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon, Or glittering starlight without thee is sweet. But wherefore all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes? To whom our general ancestor replied. 660 Daughter of God and man, accomplished Eve, Those have their course to finish, round the earth, By morrow evening, and from land to land In order, though to nations yet unborn, Ministering light prepared, they set and rise; 665 Lest total darkness should by night regain Her old possession, and extinguish life In nature and all things, which these soft fires Not only enlighten, but with kindly heat Of various influence foment and warm, 670 Temper or nourish, or in part shed down Their stellar virtue on all kinds that grow On earth, made hereby apter to receive 656. without: Emphatic accentuation; cp. ii 892n. 657–8. Sounding casually abrupt after the preceding song. Not ‘egocentric questioning of the divine economy’ but innocent interested enqiry (D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 108). Eve arouses Adam’s curiosity, for he passes on the enquiry to Raphael (viii 15ff ). 660. Dramatic irony: ‘Mother of God’ (θεοτ[Tος) was a title of the second Eve, in Marian devotion. accomplished: A form of address in recent use; cp. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night III i 96 (‘Most excellent accomplished lady’). Adam’s courtesy is regal; see iv 635n. 661–73. Cp. vii 340–52; common to both accounts are duties of illumination, restraint of night, and various influence. Svendsen (1956) 76f traces these notions to encyclopedias like Bartholomew, De Proprietatibus Rerum; but they were received ideas. M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 159 thinks Adam’s astronomical preoccupation ‘not entirely practical’. 664. Echoing Ps. 74; see iv 724–5n. Ministering: Since light was a divine attribute (Marjara (1992) 192). 665. Cp. iii 725–32, where Uriel explains how darkness invades the nocturnal hemisphere, but the moon’s ‘pale dominion checks the night’ and prevents relapse into chaos and ‘original darkness’ (ii 984). 668–73. Pythagorean and Neoplatonic philosophers accorded the sun a unique value. Sol accomplished generation of life by acting through the other planets in turn; their function was only to modulate his influence or select from his spectrum of virtues: e.g. Ficino, In Timaeum (1576) xx, (1959) 1468. After the Fall stellar influence becomes less kindly (benign; natural); cp. x 660ff; Marjara (1992) 121f, 169.

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paradise lost Perfection from the sun’s more potent ray. These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain, nor think, though men were none, That heaven would want spectators, God want praise; Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ceaseless praise his works behold Both day and night: how often from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other’s note Singing their great creator: oft in bands While they keep watch, or nightly rounding walk With heavenly touch of instrumental sounds In full harmonic number joined, their songs Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heaven. Thus talking hand in hand alone they passed On to their blissful bower; it was a place

677. Cp. Il Penseroso 93f. In a still animistic universe, many spiritual creatures (angels or daimones?) could be left mysterious; cp. Leonard (1990) 258f. 681–4. Cp. Lucretius iv 586ff on Pan’s pipe music, often taken as the music of the spheres. 682–3. Socrates Scholasticus tells of Ignatius’s ‘vision of angels praising the Holy Trinity in responsive hymns’, the source of antiphony (Ecclesiasticae Historiae Autores (Paris, 1544) fol. 258v). Cp. iii 370f (the angels’ polyphony); Il Penseroso 47–8; Commonplace Book, YP i 383); Hesiod, Theogony 3–21, 35–52 (the Muses praising Zeus). 688. ‘Midrash Psalms on Ps. 19 gives the specific song that the angels sing to divide the night into its several watches’ (Werman (1995) 183). Divide: (1) mark the watches of the night with a signal to change the guard (Lat. dividere noctem); (2) perform with ‘divisions’ or florid melodic passages (OED 11a). 690–703. Art and nature collaborate, in delicate balance: ‘The more artificial nature’s works appear, the more they “illustrate” the immanence of God’ (Broadbent (1960) 179f ). 690–700. Owing much to rabbinic and talmudic sources like the Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, which M. may have known in Vorstius’ Lat. translation, or through Selden (Rosenblatt (1994) 96f; Friedlander (1965) ). On primitive architecture, see Rykwert (1972); J. F. Moffitt, Source, 12 (1992) 7. Cp. v 377; Spenser, FQ III vi 43f (the arbour of generation in a ‘grove of myrtle’); Evans (1996) 96 (the Indian arbours described by Thomas Hariot and John Smith). Laurel and myrtle: Associated in Virgil, Eclogues ii 54. Here symbolizing complementary roles of Apollo and Venus,

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Chosen by the sovereign planter, when he framed All things to man’s delightful use; the roof Of thickest covert was inwoven shade Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew 695 Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushy shrub Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower, Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought 700 Mosaic; underfoot the violet, male and female, mens and anima, reason and virtue, or intellect and will. Suggesting conjunction of opposites. Myrtle later figures, at a critical juncture just before the Fall, as a symbol of modesty (ix 426–31n). 691. sovereign: Applicable only to God; although Satan and fallen Eve do not observe this rule. planter: Cp. Gen. 2:8 (‘God planted a garden’); Evans (1996) 4 (‘language of colonialism’). 696. Acanthus: Probably, in a context of exotic fragrant trees, the evergreen Egyptian acacia Virgil calls semper frondens (Eclogues ii 119). Introduced as a continuing decorative motif in architecture. Traced, like the hyacinth (701), to metamorphosis of a love of Apollo; cp. iv 301–8n; Spenser, FQ III vi 45 (the Garden of Adonis). 697–701. Combining flowers of the Atlantic Isles with those cushioning Zeus and Hera on Mt Ida (Homer, Il. xiv 347–9: crocus, hyacinth). See Conti, Mythologiae iii 19 (1979) 143: Hi duas esse parvas insulas referebant mari . . . atque ventos ibi plurimum suaves et odoriferos leniter spirare, tanquam per incredibilem florum varietatem et amoenitatem transeuntes. Nam qualis odor est multis rosis, violis, hyacinthis, liliis, narcissis, myrtetis, lauris, cyparissis, talis aspirantium ventorum est suavitas. But crocuses, roses, hyacinths, and violets also covered the meadow where Pluto abducted Proserpina. flourished: flowered. 700. Mosaic: H. Marks, in Nyquist (1988) 222 finds a wordplay on Moses; fancifully but not impossibly. 700–3. emblem: any symbolic insert or ornamental inlay. Cp. Geoffrey Whitney, cit. Freeman (1948) 37: ‘such figures, or works, as are wrought in plate, or in stones in the pavements, or on the walls’. The later sense, ‘symbolic device’, is also active: the violet emblemized modesty and true love; the hyacinth prudence; the jessamin ( jasmine) amiability; etc. Messiah’s name is engraved on a precious stone in a Midrash cited by Werman (1995) 174. The bower’s intimate seclusion (iv 693, 704) reflects the marital relation’s particular belonging. Postlapsarian bowers, however, had other erotic associations: M. charged Alexander Morus with seducing a maidservant in a tuguriolum (summerhouse) with talk of grafting (Lieb (1994) 210ff ). See further in Frye (1978) 36.

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Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone Of costliest emblem: other creature here Beast, bird, insect, or worm durst enter none; 705 Such was their awe of man. In shadier bower More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned, Pan or Silvanus never slept, nor nymph, Nor Faunus haunted. Here in close recess With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs 710 Espousèd Eve decked first her nuptial bed, 705–8. Bentley and Empson need not be surprised at the introduction of Pan and Silvanus; they are ‘consistent with M.’s scena satyrica and with the theme of corrupted innocence’ (Steadman (1976) 25). All three gods were represented as half man, half goat. Pan was a god of sequestered places and symbol of fecundity; also of nature (iv 266–8n). Silvanus, sometimes Faunus’ son, presided over woods, gardens and limits. Faunus was a more ambiguous, haunting presence: the Roman Pan; a benignly priapic sylvan deity, nympharum fugentium amator (Horace, Odes III xviii 1); a forest oracle (Virgil, Aen. vii 81–4); but also father of satyrs; emblem of luxuria (Alciato, Emblemata (1621) lxxii; Ripa, Iconologia (1611) 315); even a surrogate of Satan (Fowler, HLQ, 24 (1961) 101f ). shadier] shady 1674. close: secret. 708–19. Distancing Hesiod’s predestinating myth. Cp. Theogony 570ff; Tertullian, De Corona, Migne ii 85; Starnes (1955) 270 (citing Charles Estienne’s version: ‘the first woman . . . was called Pandora, either because she was endowed with all their gifts, or because she was endowed with gifts by all. . . . she was afterwards sent with a closed casket to Epimetheus, since Jupiter wanted revenge on the human race for the boldness of Prometheus, who had stolen fire from heaven and taken it . . . down to earth . . . Epimetheus received her and opened the casket, which contained every kind of evil, so that it filled the world with diseases and calamaties’); Panofsky (1965); J. B. Trapp, in Patrides (1968) 260f; Frye (1978) 277; Gallagher (1990) 142f. Adam-Eve is first Prometheus (foresight) and then, in the sad event, resembles the unwiser Epimetheus (retrospect), experiencing sin’s consequences. Cp. i 507–21n; Doctrine and Discipline ii 3, YP ii 293 (‘Plato and Chrysippus with their followers the Academics and the Stoics . . . knew not what a consummate and most adorned Pandora was bestowed upon Adam to be the nurse and guide of his arbitrary happiness and perseverance, I mean his native innocence and perfection, which might have kept him from being our true Epimetheus’). Prometheus and Epimetheus were sons of Iapetus, Titan son of Coelus and Terra. Far from M.’s having invented the ‘interesting identification’ of Iapetus with Iaphet, Noah’s son (Gen. 9–10) by conflating dictionary entries (Starnes (1955) 260), it was a commonplace; see the anonymous Observationum Libellus

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And heavenly choirs the hymenean sung, What day the genial angel to our sire Brought her in naked beauty more adorned, More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods Endowed with all their gifts, and oh too like In sad event, when to the unwiser son Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire. Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood, Both turned, and under open sky adored The God that made both sky, air, earth and heaven Which they beheld, the moon’s resplendent globe And starry pole: Thou also mad’st the night, Maker omnipotent, and thou the day, Which we in our appointed work employed Have finished happy in our mutual help And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss Ordained by thee, and this delicious place For us too large, where thy abundance wants Partakers, and uncropped falls to the ground.

printed with Conti, Mythologiae (1653) (De Iapeto seu Iapheto primogenito Noachi Patriarchae filio extant plurima apud Ethnicos vestigia). The offspring of Japhet were supposed to have originally settled Britain; see Piggott (1989) Index, Japhet; Grafton (1992) 33 citing Nanni of Viterbo. authentic: original. 711. hymenean: wedding hymn (from Hymenaeus or Hymen, ancient marriage god). In Elegia V 105–8 youths shout the chorus ‘Io, Hymen’. 712. genial: nuptial, generative. In Divine Poetry mode, M. replaces the pagan Genius, deity of generation (cp. Spenser’s ‘Old Genius’ in the Garden of Adonis, FQ III vi 31f ), by a mysterious invisible genial angel (cp. iv 467–76). Gilbert (1947) 45, perhaps rightly, finds inconsistency with viii 484–7, where Eve is guided by God. The angel is not Raphael, then on a mission to hell gate (viii 229). 720. stood,] stood. 1667 some copies. lodge: (1) arbour; (2) fashionable second house, often in woodland for seclusion or hunting; see Girouard (1978). 722. both commonly qualified more than two nouns (OED 1b). 724–5. Perhaps joining their prayer in persona auctoris; see Leonard (1990) 243 citing Addison. Cp. Ps. 74:16 (‘The day is thine, the night also is thine: thou hast prepared the light and the sun’); Ps. 92:1–2 (written by Adam, according to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer); Werman (1995) 183. pole: sky (poetic). 729. place: Object of mad’st. 730–1. Cp. ix 202f. The language of the explorers and colonialists,

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But thou hast promised from us two a race To fill the earth, who shall with us extol Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake, 735 And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep. This said unanimous, and other rites Observing none, but adoration pure Which God likes best, into their inmost bower Handed they went; and eased the putting off 740 These troublesome disguises which we wear, Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused: who often mentioned the New World’s abundance; see Evans (1996) 46, 50, citing Columbus, John Hammond, Samuel Purchas, etc. Edward Waterhouse and others stressed the need for ‘more hands’ to harvest the abundance. 732–3. Before the Fall ‘God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth’ (Gen. 1:28, a strategic proof-text). Robert Bellarmine and Benedictus Pererius saw no precept to marry, only an ‘institution of nature’; but Protestants inferred that marriage had its ‘institution in man’s innocency’ and that ‘liberty [was] granted to all that will marry, that thereby mankind may still be propagated’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 21). 735. Ps. 127:2, ‘he giveth his beloved sleep’. Cp. Homer, Il. ix 713 (‘they . . . took the gift of sleep’); Virgil, Aen. ii 268f (‘rest begins, and by grace of the gods steals gratefully over them’). 736–7. M. preferred spontaneous prayer, thinking ‘outward rites and specious forms’ (xii 534) inadequate (Corns (1994) 142). 739. Handed: hand in hand. See iv 321n. 743–4. rites . . . love: intercourse. Supported by Augustine, City of God XIV x. Believing ‘marriage . . . prohibited to no order of men’ (De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 370), M. represents intercourse as antedating the Fall; following a Victorine tradition that ‘if we had remained in the state of innocence we should have generated sine carnis incentivo’ (Lewis (1951) 15). On sex before the Fall, see Jacob Cats, Grondt-Houwelijck (1625) ‘The Original Marriage’ (Philogamus remarking ‘I note that Adam and Eve had fleshly intercourse while in Paradise, which seems to me slightly questionable’); Williams (1948) 88; G. Bullough, in MacLure (1964) 118; W. E. H. Rudat, Mosaic, 15 (1982) 109–21; Turner (1987) 236, 246, 249; D. M. Friedman, in Stanwood (1995) 203–12; Werman (1995) 183 (common in Midrashim). Some accuse M. of allowing inconsistencies, to get in prelapsarian sex. (If Eve has sex before the Fall, she will conceive a child free from original sin.) But it was possible to imagine marriage instituted ‘in man’s innocency’ even though ‘Adam in the state of

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Whatever hypocrites austerely talk 745 Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all. Our maker bids increase, who bids abstain But our destroyer, foe to God and man? 750 Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source innocency should not have gotten so ungratious a son, as Cain was’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 60). Embryonic theory allowed scope for subsequent infection of children conceived innocently. In Gen. 4:1 Cain is conceived after the Fall (D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 110). Mysterious: In Eph. 5 coitus is ‘mysterious’ in that henosis (the state of ‘one flesh’) symbolizes the relation between Christ and the Church. 744–9. The apocalyptic 1 Tim. 4:1–3, applied by Protestants to the Roman church, warns ‘in the latter times some shall depart from the faith . . . Forbidding to marry’. The allusion to Gen. 1:28 at iv 732–3n is similarly ideological. 745. See iv 759. 747. 1 Cor. 7:1f, ‘to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife’; cp. De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 370 (‘marriage is not a command binding on all, but only on those who are unable to live with chastity out of this state’). 748–70. Occupatio, avoiding intrusion on the couple’s privacy (Corns (1994) 68). 750–65. Other Protestant hexaemeral poems praised married love; cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester (1613) 172: ‘Oh blessed bond! Oh happy marriage! / Which dost the match twixt Christ and us presage! / Oh chastest friendship, whose pure flames impart / Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart! / Oh holy knot, in Eden instituted / (Not in this Earth with blood and wrongs polluted . . . )’. On marriage’s three ends (society, procreation, remedy for lust) see Bailey (1952) 101–4. Like Martin Bucer, Thomas Becon, Jeremy Taylor, John Hooper, and most Anglican divines (but unlike Donne), M. placed society first – ‘The form of marriage consists in the mutual goodwill, love, help, and solace of husband and wife. . . . The end of marriage is almost the same as the form’ (De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 370–81). He regarded procreation merely as the ‘proper fruit’ of marriage. As for remedy, only ‘since Adam’s fall’ has ‘the relief of sexual desire . . . become a kind of secondary end’. So mutual love comes first (iv 728, 750, 760), then increase (732, 748). Remedy is ignored, except perhaps at iv 753. Cp. Jeremy Taylor, cit. Bailey (1952) 103: avoidance of fornication ‘came in by the superfoetation of the evil accidents of the world’. 750. Cp. iv 743n. law: Perhaps the natural law of Grotius, and Selden in De Iure Naturali et Gentium (1640); or an ‘originally benign, proto-Mosaic

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Of human offspring, sole propriety, In Paradise of all things common else. By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range, by thee 755 Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother first were known. Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame, Or think thee unbefitting holiest place, 760 Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets, Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced, Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs used. Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, law’: Rosenblatt (1994) 126. Belsey (1988) 56 oddly objects to M.’s purging of ‘arbitrary, momentary, contingent’ sexuality. 751–2. The exclusive mutual rights of Adam and Eve are the only propriety (proprietorship) in Paradise; property rights are not prelapsarian. Not merely ‘the property rights of the husband over the wife, but . . . the mutual rights of Pauline “due benevolence” ’ (Turner (1987) 233 refuting Quilligan). A ‘patriarchal sexual economy’ (Nyquist (1987) 236). But M. could also be seen as anticipating, remarkably, modern object relations psychology. 756. charities: affections. 761. Cp. Heb. 13:4, ‘Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.’ 762. patriarchs: On the implications for the origins of government, see Erskine-Hill (1995) 67. 763–9. Jarvis (1991) 147f criticizes the ‘tactic of negative definition’. The ‘gratuitous conjuration’ of unfortunate associations shows M., after Tetrachordon, ‘beleaguered by extreme opposition to his sexual idealism’. 763. Cupid’s sharp golden shafts kindle love; the blunt shafts of lead put love to flight (Ovid, Metam. i 468–71). Symbolism ubiquitous in the Renaissance; see Tervarent (1958) 186f. For the absence of lead arrows in marriage, cp. Erasmus, ‘Epithalamium Petri Aegidii’, Colloquies, tr. Thompson (1965) 228. 764. Contrasting love before and after the Fall; a lamp usually signifying (female) inconstancy; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica XLVI xix (1613) 582, Mulieris Amor (‘a burning lamp is the symbol of a woman who has been captivated by love; because their love is very light, inconstant and weak, and like a lamp can be extinguished by the influence of the slightest breeze’). Here a lamp lit by Love himself, unlike the one Psyche used for her attempted examination of Cupid. Allegorically, the lamps of the constant virgins expecting the divine bridegroom (Matt. 25:1–13). purple: On

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765 Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared, Casual fruition, nor in court amours Mixed dance, or wanton masque, or midnight ball, Or serenade, which the starved lover sings 770 To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These lulled by nightingales embracing slept, And on their naked limbs the flowery roof Showered roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek 775 No happier state, and know to know no more. Now had night measured with her shadowy cone Half way up hill this vast sublunar vault, And from their ivory port the cherubim Forth issuing at the accustomed hour stood armed 780 To their night watches in warlike parade, the strength of Ovid, Remedium Amoris 701; cp. Spenser, Shepheardes Calender March 33. But Ovid’s purpureas = ‘shining’, whereas purple together with Reigns (765) suggests imperial sovereignty. It is also Hymen’s colour (iv 711n). 765. Reigns . . . revels: Stealing from Marino, Adone ii 114, a tune there devoted to pagan Love (Quivi Amor si trastulla, e quindi impera). 767–8. Cp. i 497ff (sons of Belial); PR ii 183; Of Reformation ii, YP i 589 (attacking the Laudian Book of Sports (1633), which in M.’s view encouraged ‘gaming, jigging, wassailing, and mixed dancing’). On M.’s dislike of courtly dance, see Carter (1996) 36. masque: masque, masquerade. Spelled ‘mask’ in 1667. 769. serenade] serenate 1667; 1674. A common spelling. starved: (1) dying of love; (2) perished with cold (serenades were sung in sereno, on clear cold nights). 773. repaired: replaced. 774–5. Reversing Virgil, Georgics ii 458 (O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint). know . . . more: (1) know it is best not to seek forbidden knowledge; (2) know (OED 12) how to limit your experience. See Hartman (1970) 135. 776–80. Cp. iii 556–7. Imagining earth’s shadow, a cone circling round it opposite the sun, as the pointer of a cosmic clock. On the geometrical abstraction, see Marjara (1992) 196–8. The cone’s axis reaches the meridian at midnight; now it is Half way up the vault of the coelum stellatum, at nine o’clock (equinoctial nights being twelve hours long). For the Hebrew and Roman division of night into four equal watches, see Jerome, Comm. on Ps. 90:4 (Vulg. Ps. 89); Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 36. Numerologically, iv 777 measured the Half way moment between iv 539 (six o’clock, when the sun ‘in utmost longitude’ crosses the horizon) and iv 1015 (midnight, when ‘shades of night’ first begin to flee). The

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When Gabriel to his next in power thus spake. Uzziel, half these draw off, and coast the south With strictest watch; these other wheel the north, Our circuit meets full west. As flame they part 785 Half wheeling to the shield, half to the spear. From these, two strong and subtle spirits he called That near him stood, and gave them thus in charge. Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed Search through this garden, leave unsearched no nook, 790 But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge, Now laid perhaps asleep secure of harm. This evening from the sun’s decline arrived Who tells of some infernal spirit seen Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escaped 795 The bars of hell, on errand bad no doubt: Such where ye find, seize fast, and hither bring. So saying, on he led his radiant files, Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct In search of whom they sought: him there they found shadow cone is an innocent modulation of the thematic pyramid of proud ambition (v 759–9n). Cp. Church Government i 6, YP i 790: ‘hierarchies acuminating still higher and higher in a cone of Prelaty’. port: gate. Anciently, deceptive dreams issued from an ivory gate; cp. Virgil, Aen. vi 893; Spenser, FQ I i 40, 44; II xii 44 (the ivory gate of the Bower of Bliss). Perhaps the cherubim use an ivory port because they are to interrupt a false dream. 781. For Gabriel’s office, see iv 549–50n. 782–8. Uzziel: ‘Strength of God’; a human name at Exod. 6:18, like Zephon (‘Searcher of Secrets’) at Num. 26:15. But in rabbinic tradition Uzziel was one of seven angels before God’s throne; see R. H. West (1955) 154 and SP, 47 (1950) 211–23; Fletcher (1930) 252–5. The less canonical Ithuriel (‘Discovery of God’) may be from the Key of Solomon. 782–4. Cp. iv 797f, 974–6, 985–7n. The angels’ movements resemble those of the stars; Uzziel’s cohort corresponding to the stars of the S hemisphere, Gabriel’s to those of the n. Cp. Marvell, ‘Upon Appleton House’ xl: ‘the vigilant Patrol / Of Stars walks round about the Pole’. On the identification of angels and stars, see Fowler (1996). 785. shield . . . spear: left . . . right (ancient military terms). 786. these: His own, N, command. 791. secure: careless. 796. hither] thither Bentley (in view of iv 862). 799. Satan’s capture demonstrates how God could easily have stopped him: Burden (1967) 93. See iv 996n, 1012n.

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800 Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve; Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams, Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint 805 The animal spirits that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires Blown up with high conceits engendering pride. 810 Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear 800. For the toad in alchemic allegory, see P. Cheshire, MiltQ, 28 (1994) 39–41 citing Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618) Embl. v (a toad brings death to the woman but ‘a noble medicine’ to cure others). More generally, the toad symbolized death and the devil, and figured in medieval shapeshifting; cp. A. B. Chambers, PQ, 46 (1967) 191–3; Frye (1978) 100 (a dove at Mary’s ear at the annunciation); K. P. Wentersdorf, MiltQ, 13 (1979) 39 (toad as lecher); Salisbury (1994) 141. For Satan’s metamorphoses, see iii 634n. 802–3. organs: (1) instruments; (2) functionally adapted parts of the body. list: likes. phantasms: images; illusions. 805. animal spirits: fine vapours – either a separate soul or a medium between body and soul that ascended from blood to brain, and from there issued through nerves to the body to impart motion. Cp. iv 243–4; Marjara (1992) 232, citing Hobbes (‘Vital Spirits purified by the Heart and carried from it by the Arteries’). Angels could produce apparitions by affecting the mind through the animal spirits. So Satan can either manipulate the fancy directly, or else operate on the animal spirits, source of sense-data from past experiences. But he can have no access to the reason (W. B. Hunter, ELH, 13 (1946) 255–65). 807. distempered: disordered; troubled. 809. Soon the inventor of gunpowder is blown up like his desires (D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 100). See Stevens (1985) 134f on the wind metaphor of Eccl. 1:6, 14; 2:11. 810–13. Burden (1967) 100 thinks a magic spear is needed for Ithuriel to pierce Satan’s disguise better than Uriel. But any wakeful guard would be sufficiently alerted by a toad in the bower (iv 704). Besides, Satan has to be made presentable for his confrontation with Gabriel. The spear may emblemize perceptive interpretation, or (like Britomart’s) chaste integrity; see C. G. Martin, SEL, 33 (1993) 167–90. On the occultist background of Satan’s thaumaturgy, see Jacobus (1976) 71f. Cp. Church Government ii Pref., YP i 821: ‘that eternal spirit’ who ‘sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases’. temper: (1) tempering; (2) temperament (Ithuriel’s own).

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paradise lost Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness: up he starts Discovered and surprised. As when a spark Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid Fit for the tun some magazine to store Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air: So started up in his own shape the fiend. Back stepped those two fair angels half amazed So sudden to behold the grisly king; Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon. Which of those rebel spirits adjudged to hell Com’st thou, escaped thy prison, and transformed, Why satst thou like an enemy in wait Here watching at the head of these that sleep? Know ye not then said Satan, filled with scorn, Know ye not me? Ye knew me once no mate For you, there sitting where ye durst not soar; Not to know me argues yourselves unknown, The lowest of your throng; or if ye know, Why ask ye, and superfluous begin Your message, like to end as much in vain? To whom thus Zephon, answering scorn with scorn. Think not, revolted spirit, thy shape the same, Or undiminished brightness, to be known

813. Cp. iv 800. Short of metamorphosis, yet far enough beyond simile to signal allegory. 814–19. On the ‘alternating inflation and deflation of the devils’, see Broadbent (1960) 110. Cp. i 777f; iv 986–1015. nitrous: Combined with potassium nitrate (saltpetre) to form an explosive mixture. Digressing to amplify the imminent danger to Paradise. Fit for the tun: in good condition; ready for use. Against: in preparation for. smutty: (1) dark; (2) suggestive. grain: Resonating with corn and chaff in the next simile (iv 981–5). Satan’s running association with guns and gunpowder – commonly called ‘serpentine powder’ – serves to locate the Fall in recent and rumoured wars; cp. ii 937; iv 17; vi 469–500. 827–33. On Satan’s lack of self-knowledge, see Jacobus (1976) 29f. On the stages of recognition, cp. iii 636; iv 573–5, 823; Steadman (1976) 64f. Leonard (1990) 129–32 compares the protagonist’s proud withholding of his name from Aufidius in Shakespeare, Coriolanus IV v 69–79. 836. undiminished brightness: Mimetically resisting the expected inversion that would match shape the same.

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As when thou stoodst in heaven upright and pure; That glory then, when thou no more wast good, Departed from thee, and thou resemblest now Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul. But come, for thou, be sure, shalt give account To him who sent us, whose charge is to keep This place inviolable, and these from harm. So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke Severe in youthful beauty, added grace Invincible: abashed the devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is, and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pined His loss; but chiefly to find here observed His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed Undaunted. If I must contend, said he, Best with the best, the sender not the sent, Or all at once; more glory will be won, Or less be lost. Thy fear, said Zephon bold, Will save us trial what the least can do Single against thee wicked, and thence weak. The fiend replied not, overcome with rage; But like a proud steed reined, went haughty on,

840. obscure: (1) dark; (2) unknown (answering scorn with scorn). 845. Cp. Virgil, Aen. v 344, of Euryalus ( gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus). On angelic ageing, see iii 636–7n. Empson (1961) 60 takes ‘young’ angels to be replacements for the rebels. Alternatively, youthful may mean youthful; cherubim being supposed to enjoy perpetual youth. 848. A blow to Satan’s self-concept, weakening his epic rhetoric (Kennedy (1978) 178). Cp. ix 457–65, Satan abashed by Eve’s innocent ‘heavenly form / Angelic’. The notion of virtue affecting outward appearance is Platonic: e.g. Cicero, De Officiis i 5 (Formam quidem ipsam et quasi faciem honesti vides, quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret sapientiae); Dante, Convivio Ode iii 7 (applying to human love: ‘The soul whom this excellence [blessedness] adorns, / Holds it not concealed; / For, from the first when she weds the body, / She shows it forth till death’); Church Government i 1, YP i 751f (‘Discipline is . . . the very visible shape and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortal ears’). pined: mourned. 849–50. Satan’s chief concern is with image. 858–61. ‘It is a point of honour to refuse to fight except with his equals’ (Empson (1961) 60). But it is rather awe from above that dismayed Satan, making him think both fight and flight vain.

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Champing his iron curb: to strive or fly 860 He held it vain; awe from above had quelled His heart, not else dismayed. Now drew they nigh The western point, where those half-rounding guards Just met, and closing stood in squadron joined Awaiting next command. To whom their chief 865 Gabriel from the front thus called aloud. O friends, I hear the tread of nimble feet Hasting this way, and now by glimpse discern Ithuriel and Zephon through the shade, And with them comes a third of regal port, 870 But faded splendour wan; who by his gait And fierce demeanour seems the prince of hell, Not likely to part hence without contést; Stand firm, for in his look defiance lours. He scarce had ended, when those two approached 875 And brief related whom they brought, where found, How busied, in what form and posture couched. To whom with stern regard thus Gabriel spake. Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed To thy transgressions, and disturbed the charge 880 Of others, who approve not to transgress By thy example, but have power and right To question thy bold entrance on this place; Employed it seems to violate sleep, and those Whose dwelling God hath planted here in bliss? 885 To whom thus Satan, with contemptuous brow. Gabriel, thou hadst in heaven the esteem of wise, And such I held thee; but this question asked Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his pain? Who would not, finding way, break loose from hell, 862. Cp. iv 782–4, where the half circuits from the e gate were arranged. half-rounding: Sole instance in OED. 868. shade: trees; see B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 664–9. 869. port: carriage. 870–1. Since Gabriel, an archangel, easily recognizes Satan, the gibe at iv 830 may have had some foundation. 878–9. For Satan’s bound-breaking, cp. ii 436f, 690f; Schwartz (1988) 13. transgressions: M.’s early editors divide the pun into univocal shares (Bentley: ‘transcursions’; Pearce: ‘sins’). charge: (1) task; (2) ward, person entrusted to another’s care (OED 14); i.e. Eve. 886. esteem of wise: reputation of being wise. 887. Again attacking the question without giving a straight answer; cp. iv 832f, 930.

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890 Though thither doomed? Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt, And boldly venture to whatever place Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change Torment with ease, and soonest recompense Dole with delight, which in this place I sought; 895 To thee no reason; who knowst only good, But evil hast not tried: and wilt object His will who bound us? Let him surer bar His iron gates, if he intends our stay In that dark durance: thus much what was asked. 900 The rest is true, they found me where they say; But that implies not violence or harm. Thus he in scorn. The warlike angel moved, Disdainfully half smiling thus replied. Oh loss of one in heaven to judge of wise, 905 Since Satan fell, whom folly overthrew, And now returns him from his prison scaped, Gravely in doubt whether to hold them wise Or not, who ask what boldness brought him hither Unlicensed from his bounds in hell prescribed; 910 So wise he judges it to fly from pain However, and to scape his punishment. So judge thou still, presumptuous, till the wrath, Which thou incurr’st by flying, meet thy flight Sevenfold, and scourge that wisdom back to hell, 915 Which taught thee yet no better, that no pain Can equal anger infinite provoked. But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose? Is pain to them Less pain, less to be fled, or thou than they 920 Less hardy to endure? Courageous chief, The first in flight from pain, hadst thou alleged 894. Dole: (1) suffering (OED sb.2 1, 3); (2) deceit (OED sb.3 1). Cp. Shakespeare, Hamlet I ii 13: ‘In equal scale weighing delight and dole’. 896. object: adduce as a reason against (escaping) (OED 3, 4). 899. durance: imprisonment. thus much what: thus much in reply to what. 903–23. Analysing each of Satan’s lies in turn. 904. of wise: of what is wise; wisdom. Retorting Satan’s rhetoric of iv 886. 906. (1) folly . . . returns (transitive); (2) Satan . . . returns (reflexive; archaic). 911. However: howsoever; any way he can.

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paradise lost To thy deserted host this cause of flight, Thou surely hadst not come sole fugitive. To which the fiend thus answered frowning stern. Not that I less endure, or shrink from pain, Insulting angel, well thou knowst I stood Thy fiercest, when in battle to thy aid The blasting volleyed thunder made all speed And seconded thy else not dreaded spear. But still thy words at random, as before, Argue thy inexperience what behoves From hard assays and ill successes past A faithful leader, not to hazard all Through ways of danger by himself untried. I therefore, I alone first undertook To wing the desolate abyss, and spy This new-created world, whereof in hell Fame is not silent, here in hope to find Better abode, and my afflicted powers To settle here on earth, or in mid-air; Though for possession put to try once more What thou and thy gay legions dare against; Whose easier business were to serve their Lord High up in heaven, with songs to hymn his throne, And practised distances to cringe, not fight.

926. stood: withstood, endured (OED 59). 928. The] Thy 1674 (in error). all speed: Contradicted by Raphael – ‘half his strength he put not forth’ (vi 853). 930–3. ‘You’re still talking off the top of your head, showing how little you know about a defeated commander’s responsibilities’; cp. iv 887n. 938. See i 651–4n. 939. afflicted: ruined; outcast. Cp. i 186. 940. Eph. 2:2, ‘The prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.’ Cp. ii 275n; PR i 39–42. 942. gay: fine. As often, ironic (OED 6b), and perhaps enviously contemptuous: ‘showily dressed’ (OED 4) or ‘unafflicted’. 945. Zeugma: practised distances belong both to the footwork of combat and the ceremonies of obedience. See iv 959n. And] At Johnson, emending unnecessarily. cringe: Cp. Easy Way, YP vii 425f, 428 (‘the base necessity of court flatteries and prostrations’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 3 xv (1989–) i 305 (scholars unable to ride or ‘cringe and make congies, which every common swasher can do’ and so ‘accounted silly fools by our gallants’). But cp. Donne, Sermons iii 279: ‘no fear of God, though it have some servility . . . but it is good’.

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To whom the warrior angel soon replied. To say and straight unsay, pretending first Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy, Argues no leader, but a liar traced, Satan, and couldst thou faithful add? Oh name, Oh sacred name of faithfulness profaned! Faithful to whom? To thy rebellious crew? Army of fiends, fit body to fit head; Was this your discipline and faith engaged, Your military obedience, to dissolve Allegiance to the acknowledged power supreme? And thou sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem Patron of liberty, who more than thou Once fawned, and cringed, and servilely adored Heaven’s awful monarch? Wherefore but in hope To dispossess him, and thyself to reign? But mark what I aread thee now, avaunt; Fly thither whence thou fledst: if from this hour Within these hallowed limits thou appear, Back to the infernal pit I drag thee chained,

946. angel ] angel, 1674. 949. traced: (1) discovered (OED v.1 8); (2) twisted, interwoven (OED v.3 1). 950. See Leonard (1990) 126f citing Herbert Marx’s speculation that the ‘name’ is ‘Lucifer’. But no ‘name’ in the modern sense need be meant, rather ‘nature, power, numen’ (OED s. v. Name 3, 4, 6c). 954. your: Implying a plural antecedent (M. Agari, Poetica, 42 (1994) 131). 957–61. ‘Enough to prove that God had already produced a very unattractive Heaven before Satan fell’ (Empson (1961) 111). But Gabriel may refer to the beginning of Satan’s alienation, when he only seemed obedient, and concealed his rebelliousness for a day of dance (v 616– 875); see J. Leonard, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 101–5; Damrosch (1985) 92f. Or the target may be Roman Catholic piety; cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 40 (‘such kissing of paxes, crucifixes, cringes, duckings’). Patron: supporter. 962. aread: tell; advise. Cp. H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 214f, needlessly inventing the wordplay avaunt / a vaunt. 963–7. Letting Satan off with a warning is not weak but ‘statesmanlike’ (Empson (1961) 112). Cp. i 445–8; iii 82; Rev. 20:1–3 (‘An angel . . . laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent . . . and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled’). facile: easily moved.

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And seal thee so, as henceforth not to scorn The facile gates of hell too slightly barred. So threatened he, but Satan to no threats Gave heed, but waxing more in rage replied. 970 Then when I am thy captive talk of chains, Proud limitary cherub, but ere then Far heavier load thyself expect to feel From my prevailing arm, though heaven’s king Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers, 975 Used to the yoke, drawst his triumphant wheels In progress through the road of heaven star-paved. While thus he spake, the angelic squadron bright Turned fiery red, sharpening in moonèd horns Their phalanx, and began to hem him round 980 With ported spears, as thick as when a field

971. limitary: stationed on the boundary. Taking up Gabriel’s ‘limits’ (iv 964), or contemptuously implying a provincial posting. cherub: Mistitling Gabriel, a top seraph (iv 549–50n). 973–6. Referring to the central image, Messiah’s cosmic chariot (vi 750ff; cp. iii 656n). compeers: associates (often contemptuous; OED 2b). road of heaven: the Milky Way. See vii 577–81n. 978. red: The usual colour of cherubim, pace Schaar, turning fiery with angry ardour; cp. iv 115–17n; Chaucer, Gen. Prol. 624; Schaar (1982) 85 citing Aratus 796ff (a red moon foretelling storm) and apocalyptic texts like Joel 2:31; Acts 2:20; Rev. 6:12. mooned: Crescent-shaped formations, classic in warfare, were still used; cp. Gascoigne, A Hundreth Sundry Flowers (1572) (‘like a crescent cast themselves preparing for to fight’); Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1667) cxxv. Particularly apt, in that Ceres-Isis had crescent horns (Plutarch, De Iside 372D –E), and because Satan’s eclipsing darkness occupies the shadowed part of the imaginary lunar orb. 980. ported: held sloping upward, pointing towards him. See J. Leonard, NQ, 238 (1993) 315–18, citing Randle Holmes, The Academy of Armoury (1688). Not the ‘at ease’ arms-drill position, as A. Fowler, in Milton (1968). 980 –5. The most discussed simile in PL. Comparison of an excited army to wind-stirred corn is Homeric (Il. ii 147–50, implying secret fear and defeatism). ‘God is worried about his angels’ (Schaar (1982) 87). God was compared to a ploughman, from Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, Migne, P.G. vii 1086, to Walter Blith, The English Improver Improved (1653) 3f (‘the great husbandman’). ‘If God . . . is the ploughman, then he is anxious; another hint that he is not omnipotent. If the labouring Satan is the ploughman he is only anxious for a moment, and he is the natural ruler or owner of the good angels’ (Empson (1950) 172). But Satan has his own simile On the other side (iv 985). Unless one pays off the simile

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Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind Sways them; the careful ploughman doubting stands Lest on the threshing floor his hopeful sheaves 985 Prove chaff. On the other side Satan alarmed Collecting all his might dilated stood, Like Teneriff or Atlas unremoved: His stature reached the sky, and on his crest

as ‘beautiful but digressive’ (Ricks (1963) 129f ), the ploughman must be ‘like’ God – or Gabriel. If like God, he need not fear a storm (Bentley); he only doubts whether it is time to reap. Harvest and threshing were familiar metaphors for divine judgment; cp. Jer. 51:33 (‘Babylon is like a threshing-floor, it is time to thresh her’); Isa. 18:4–6 (God waiting before harvest); Hab. 3:12; Mâle (1961) 31. M.’s God is careful that judgment should not be premature, in case his hopeful sheaves (the elect) turn out badly. The ploughman also, however, resembles Gabriel, confronting Satan and doubting whether it is the time for another battle; see D. Kezar, NQ, 241 (1996) 274–6, comparing Virgil, Georgics i 316f, 335, 347 (the need for care not to ‘let any put his sickle to the ripe corn’ before homage has been paid to the gods and the signs of heaven have been marked, hoc metuens caeli mensis et sidera serva). 981. Ceres: The harvest goddess, by metonymy for ‘corn’; cp. Virgil, Georgics i 297 (at rubicunda Ceres medio succiditur aestu). 984. ‘A georgic in little’ (Hartman (1970) 143). Cp. the emblem AGRICOLAS SPES ALIT; see Peacham, Minerva (1612) 32; Wither, Emblems (1635) ii 44 and iii 10 (asking God the husbandman to harrow his ‘barren soul’); Low (1985) 206. 985–7. Cp. iv 814–19n. The dilation and impressive stance are, as usual, succeeded by bathos – the grumbling flight of iv 1014f. Broadbent (1960) 106 compares the miniaturization of i 777–92, also with a countryman as ‘mundane intensifier’ of the marvel. Satan sustains the pressure of the angels as Atlas sustained the stars (likened to angels at iv 782–4n) and like Atlas rebels against God, pace Schaar (1982) 206f. For the Titan Atlas and his punishment for rebellion, cp. ii 306; Hyginus, Fabulae cl; Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax, ii 91 (Argantes compared to ‘huge Tiphoius loosed from hell’). The mountain Atlas is the far W Moroccan range, not the Libyan; frequently clouded, it was one of the Pillars of Hercules. Teneriff: Tenerife, the pyramidal mountain on the Canary island of the same name, estimated at 15 or even 60 miles high; cp. v 758–9n; Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iv 88 (‘Our travellers and geographers hold it to be the highest in the whole world’). These W satanic sky-pillars confront the divine ‘rocky pillars’ on the E (iv 542–50n). unremoved: ?unremovable. See iv 493n. 988–9. Cp. Homer’s Strife, Il. iv 441–3 (‘her crest is lowly at first, but

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Sat horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp 990 What seemed both spear and shield: now dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to wreck, disturbed and torn 995 With violence of this conflict, had not soon The eternal to prevent such horrid fray Hung forth in heaven his golden scales, yet seen

afterwards she holds up her head in heaven, and her feet walk on earth’); M. Y. Hughes, in MacLure (1964) 137f (comparing Turnus’s chimaera crest, Aen. vii 785); Corns (1990) 103 (seeing metamorphosis beyond personification). 990. Satan produces equipment at need; cp. iii 640–4; Shumaker (1967) 125. 992. cope: firmament. Cp. i 345; vi 215. A dead metaphor from ‘canopy’ (iii 556) or ‘vault’. 996. Empson (1961) 112f thinks God should have allowed the fray (affray), scenery being unimportant compared with the risk of mankind’s Fall. But the risk extends to all species, even the angels of the starry cope. Taking free will seriously, M.’s Arminian God is not interested in preventing the Fall by force; see iii 90–133. In concluding ‘that God was determined to make man fall, and had supplied a guard only for show’, Empson falls into ‘anthropopathy’. See De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 134: ‘It is better not to think about God . . . in anthropopathetic terms . . . inventing more and more subtle theories about him. Rather we should form our ideas with Scripture as a model.’ The angelic guard is unnecessary (like everything else except God), as Gabriel admits at iv 1009. Yet their ceremonial role is not negligible either. Their interrupting Satan plays a part in preventing him from brainwashing away Eve’s free will. 997–1004. An allegorical miraviglia (marvel), keystone of the balance imagecomplex. Cp. iii 555–61n; iv 354–5n; M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 166–9; Fowler (1964) ch. 12 (on similar imagery in Spenser, FQ); E. R. Cunnar, ELN, 21 (1984) 13–21 (on the Victorine tradition identifying scales and cross: crux est nostrae libra iustitiae). As Treip brilliantly shows, the scales (related to Ripa’s Libero Arbitrio emblem and the Pythagorean ϒ) symbolize God’s avoidance of unconditional predestination. The moment during which the angels ‘do not seem to act’ (p. 169) is one of free will. To Satan, the scales (balance and ladder) show the sequel [consequence] . . . of fight to be disadvantageous. But to Gabriel they show parting to be

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Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign, Wherein all things created first he weighed, 1000 The pendulous round earth with balanced air In counterpoise, now ponders all events, Battles and realms: in these he put two weights The sequel each of parting and of fight; The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam; 1005 Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the fiend. Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowst mine, Neither our own but given; what folly then To boast what arms can do, since thine no more Than heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now 1010 To trample thee as mire: for proof look up, And read thy lot in yon celestial sign

God’s will. Homer’s Zeus balances the fates of Trojans and Akhaians, and Hector and Achilles, with golden scales (Il. viii 68–77; xxii 208–13, imitated in Virgil, Aen. xii 725–7); the first of these judgments being at the critical hour of noon (PL iv 1013–15n). In pagan Homer, the loser’s scale sinks down to death; in M. the inferior consequence rises, being ‘found wanting’ like Belshazzar in the writing on the wall (Dan. 5:27). ‘The scale . . . by ascending showed him that he was light in arms, and could not obtain victory’ (Pearce). Cp. Lewalski (1985) 60 (Satan discreditably unheroic). Homer does not identify God’s balance with the constellation Libra; although the idea of Libra as a ‘righteous ballance’ (FQ V i 11) was ancient (Fowler (1964) 196). The identification has a startling visual implication: at midnight (iv 1013–15n) the constellation Anguis lies immediately beneath the beam of Libra; giving Gabriel’s words an exact astronomical sense. Satan the old serpent is weighed on a cosmic scale. See iii 55–61n. 998. Astrea: Aptly put for Virgo, since in the Golden Age she lived on earth. Displaced by human wickedness to heaven, she is yet seen stellified: Ovid, Metam. i 149f; Spenser, FQ V i. 999–1001. Job 28:23–5 Geneva, ‘He knoweth . . . To make the weight of the winds, and to weigh the waters by measure.’ Cp. Job 37:16; Isa. 40:12, 15 (‘nations . . . are counted as the small dust of the balance’); 1 Sam. 2:3 (‘by him actions are weighed’); Prov. 16:2 (‘the Lord weigheth the spirits’). ponders: (1) weighs; (2) weighs up. 1006–7. Leonard (1990) 127 compares the Trin. MS Outlines for Tragedies, YP viii 560: Gabriel ‘by his name signifying a prince of power’. 1010. Isa. 10:6, ‘I will send him against an hypocritical nation . . . to tread them down like the mire of the streets.’

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Where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak, If thou resist. The fiend looked up and knew His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled 1015 Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night. THE END OF THE FOURTH BOOK

1012. Dan. 5:27, ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ Not fully compatible with iv 1002–4; either Gabriel uses language Satan will understand, or Gabriel himself does not fully comprehend the omen, not having had news of the heavenly council (iii 80–343; iv 581f, ‘since meridian hour / No creature thence’). God weighs the consequence of Satan’s ‘parting’ – that he will tempt Eve further, and perhaps occasion a Fall, Redemption and Last Judgment. Questions would arise as to how many souls will be saved – the Weighing of Souls (in a balance held by Michael and sometimes mounted by devils) associated with the Last Judgment; cp. Mâle (1961) 366, 376f; Geisberg (1974) 571. 1014. scale: (1) pan of a balance; (2) balance (OED 4). Cp. vi 245: ‘long time in even scale / The battle hung’. Satan imagines his destiny weighed against Gabriel’s in the pagan manner. 1014–15. ‘Satan must have outright sensory “proof ” ’ ( Jacobus (1976) 31). He does not flee at daybreak, as is often said; he flees ‘By night’ (ix 58). He begins to flee immediately after midnight, when the powers of light and dark are in equal balance, and continues fleeing with the shades of night during the six hours until sunrise. Cp. Breton, Fantastics xiv, ‘One of the Clock’ (1929) i 37 (‘It is now the first hour and Time is, as it were, stepping out of darkness, and stealing towards the day . . . I hold it the farewell of the night, and the forerunner to the day’). The state of the heavens confirms this: the angels, although on a mountain, look up to see Libra (iv 1010, 1013), which is hung forth at or about the zenith, in the central position of judgment; see iv 30n; Panofsky (1955) 261f. Since Sol is in Aries (iii 555–61n; x 329n), the opposing sign Libra culminates at midnight. At sunrise, however, Libra sets beneath the W horizon; Satan would not need to look up. Mâle (1961) 368 traces to Honorius of Autun, Elucidarium the idea that Christ the judge will appear at midnight, the hour of the resurrection. For the Book’s temporal numerology, see iv 776–80n.

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Paradise Lost BOOK V The Argument

Morning approached, Eve relates to Adam her troublesome dream; he likes it not, yet comforts her: they come forth to their day labours: their morning hymn at the door of their bower. God to render man inexcusable1 sends Raphael to admonish him of his obedience, of his free estate, of his enemy near at hand; who he is, and why his enemy, and whatever else may avail Adam to know.2 Raphael comes down to Paradise, his appearance described, his coming discerned by Adam afar off sitting at the door of his bower; he goes out to meet him, brings him to his lodge, entertains him with the choicest fruits of Paradise got together by Eve; their discourse at table: Raphael performs his message, minds Adam of his state and of his enemy; relates at Adam’s request who that enemy is, and how he came to be so, beginning from his first revolt in heaven, and the occasion thereof; how he drew his legions after him to the parts of the north, and there incited them to rebel with him, persuading all but only Abdiel a seraph, who in argument dissuades and opposes him, then forsakes him. Now Morn her rosy steps in the eastern clime Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl, v Argument.1 to render man inexcusable: in such a way that man is inexcusable. M. Wood, EC, 43 (1993) 102 thinks M.’s ‘tangled’ phrasing inadvertently suggests God tries to make mankind inexcusable. But the phrase is proleptic: God already knows mankind will have been such. Raphael introduces Pauline theology into the Hebraic Paradise (Rosenblatt (1994) 67); cp. Empson (1961) 107. Arg.2 whatever else . . . to know: Adam must be allowed adequate indirect knowledge of evil. Innocence was sometimes identified as a formal cause of the original sin (L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 161–3). 1–2. The Morn of Day 24 of the poem’s action; see Introduction: Time-scheme. clime: region. rosy steps: Cp. vi 2f; Homer, Il. i 477 (‘rosyfingered’ Eos); Jonson, Entertainment at Highgate 68; Vision of Delight 233 (rosy Aurora singing with Zephyrus); Gilbert (1948) 50. orient: (1) brilliant, lustrous; (2) eastern. pearl: Perhaps dew, sparklingly orient. But the singular suggests rather the lustrous grey light Morn throws before her; cp. Ps. 97:11 (‘Light is sown for the righteous’); Lucretius ii 211 (lumine conserit arva).

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When Adam waked, so customed, for his sleep Was airy light, from pure digestion bred, And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora’s fan, Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song Of birds on every bough; so much the more His wonder was to find unwakened Eve With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek, As through unquiet rest: he on his side Leaning half-raised, with looks of cordial love Hung over her enamoured, and beheld Beauty, which whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, Her hand soft touching, whispered thus. Awake My fairest, my espoused, my latest found, Heaven’s last best gift, my ever new delight,

4–7. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 3 ii (1989–) i 250: ‘sleepers, which by reason of . . . concourse of vapours troubling the fantasy, imagine many times absurd and prodigious things, and are troubled with incubus’. Sleep was supposed to be caused by vapours filling the nerves by which spirits should be conveyed (ibid. I i 2 vii (1989–) i 153). Contrast the ‘grosser sleep’ bred of ‘exhilarating vapour bland’ from digesting the forbidden fruit (ix 1046–51). After the Fall, vapours rising from stomach to brain would be injurious; before it, bland still implied ‘mild, genial’. Blandness characterized the sanguine temperament of Adam and Eve before the Fall (Klibansky (1964) 62, 103ff, et passim). 5–7. Small sounds were enough to rouse Adam. fuming: foaming (OED 1b). dispersed: Gentler than ‘dispelled’, Bentley’s substitution. shrill: Cp. L’Allegro 56 (‘echoing shrill’). Georgic diction, rendering argutus (e.g. Virgil, Georgics i 143, 294). 15–17. Ricks (1963) 91 thinks soft applies to hand as well as touching; but see ix 385–6n. peculiar graces: graces all her own. Theologically precarious. 16. Integrated with nature, Adam’s whisper has its counterpart in the wind. Zephyrus was usually mild; and describes himself in the Coleorton masque as ‘the gentle wind . . . as soft as lady’s breath’ (‘Masque’ 8ff ); cp. Gilbert (1948) 258. Zephyrus’s breath, like Flora’s (‘nymph of the blessed fields’), produced flowers (Ovid, Fasti v 197). For Zephyrus as awakener of vegetation, cp. iv 329n; Wind (1965) 115–27. At iv 500f Adam is cast as Jupiter, progenitor of ‘May flowers’. Eve’s associations with flowers symbolize both fertility and frailty (Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 683, Imbecillitas Humana). Cp. her Proserpina, Ceres, and Pomona roles (iv 269–71; ix 393–6, 426–32). 18–25. Cp. Song of Sol. 2:10–13; 7:12, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one,

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Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove, What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, How nature paints her colours, how the bee Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet. Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake. O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, My glory, my perfection, glad I see Thy face, and morn returned, for I this night, Such night till this I never passed, have dreamed, If dreamed, not as I oft am wont, of thee, Works of day past, or morrow’s next design, But of offence and trouble, which my mind Knew never till this irksome night; methought Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk With gentle voice, I thought it thine; it said,

and come away. For . . . the vines with the tender grape give a good smell . . . let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear.’ Cp. J. M. Petty, MiltQ, 19 (1985) 42–7 comparing Adam’s aubade with Satan’s serenade (v 38–47); Turner (1987) 234. prime: first hour of day. In M.’s time, either six o’clock or sunrise; but in Paradise these coincide, day and night being equal (x 651–706n). Liturgically, prime is a Canonical Hour; see v 145–52n. blows: blooms. 23. balmy reed: For the generalizing diction, cp. vii 321 (‘corny reed’). A balsam-bearing tree, of the Balsamodendron genus, like the myrrh. Both yielded aromatic resins used to soothe pain and treat wounds; from Coverdale on they were associated in translating Gen. 37:25 (‘Ishmeelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh’). Balm of Gilead (True Balsam) was venerated as the earliest balsam known. For the later noxiousness of myrrh, see Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 v (1989-) i 235. 31. On devil-induced dreaming, see Le Goff (1988) Index, Demons; Devils. On Eve’s dream as a test she passes, see H.V.S. Ogden, in Barker (1965) 308–27; W. B. Hunter, ELH, 13 (1946) 255–65; J. S. Diekhoff, MiltQ, 4 (1970) 5–7; Turner (1987) 263–5 (criticizing Damrosch’s novelistic interpretation). Stevens (1985) 189 rightly rejects the view of Hunter, Fish, and others that the dream is a separate attempt. As with Redcrosse’s dream in FQ I i 38–46, Eve’s is a stage towards her fall, forging several illusions that remain with her. Eve’s dream is the only nontraditional aspect of her seduction (Patrides (1966) 105). 34. offence: doubt.

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paradise lost Why sleepst thou Eve? Now is the pleasant time, The cool, the silent, save where silence yields To the night-warbling bird, that now awake Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns Full orbed the moon, and with more pleasing light Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain, If none regard; heaven wakes with all his eyes, Whom to behold but thee, nature’s desire, In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze. I rose as at thy call, but found thee not; To find thee I directed then my walk; And on, methought, alone I passed through ways That brought me on a sudden to the tree Of interdicted knowledge: fair it seemed,

38. The sort of ‘serenade’ ridiculed at iv 769f, contrasting with Adam’s considerate speech at v 95–118, and appealing to unreason (v 46, ‘ravishment’) (Burden (1967) 130ff ). See H. Schultz, PQ, 27 (1948) 17–26 comparing the style of Cavalier gallantry. 40–1. Unconventionally masculine, as Satan’s surrogate. Travesty of Song of Sol. 2, where the awakener is like a dove. Cp. v 18–25 imitating the same text straight. 43–5. Satan works on Eve’s doubt at iv 657f (‘for whom / This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?’). Testing Eve ‘for possibilities of envy’ (Shawcross (1984) 68–70); cp. Giles Fletcher, Christ’s Victory in Heaven (1610) lxxviii (‘Heaven awaked all his eyes / To see another sun at midnight rise’). sets off: (1) makes conspicuous by contrast; (2) shows to advantage. 44. Stars were often figured as eyes, sometimes witnessing clandestine love; cp. Catullus vii 7f (aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox, / furtivos hominum vident amores); Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xiv 99; Tasso, Ger Lib. xii 22 (Vorrìa celarla a i tanti occhi del cielo); Spenser, FQ III xi 45. Occasionally Satan figured as a many-eyed Argus. 45–90. Leading into themes developed in the second temptation: with v 45–7 cp. ix 532–48; with v 67–81, ix 679–732. But the last phases (v 86–90, ix 782–833) differ sharply; Eve’s aerial flight more resembles Christ’s temptation (Matt. 4). Many critics since Waldock (1961) 33 have seen Eve’s dream as a stage of her fall; at the least, the dream implants an evil motion (Burden (1967) 129f ). But that evil motions in themselves entail no sin is made clear. According to Aristotle, sleep interrupts moral responsibility (De Anima iii 3). 51–2. Eve’s second confusion (cp. iv 449–91), this time between tree and knowledge (Gallagher (1990) 79).

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Much fairer to my fancy than by day: And as I wondering looked, beside it stood One shaped and winged like one of those from heaven By us oft seen; his dewy locks distilled Ambrosia; on that tree he also gazed; And O fair plant, said he, with fruit surcharged, Deigns none to ease thy load and taste thy sweet, Nor god, nor man; is knowledge so despised? Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste? Forbid who will, none shall from me withhold Longer thy offered good, why else set here? This said he paused not, but with venturous arm He plucked, he tasted; me damp horror chilled At such bold words vouched with a deed so bold: But he thus overjoyed, O fruit divine, Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropped, Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit For gods, yet able to make gods of men: And why not gods of men, since good, the more Communicated, more abundant grows, The author not impaired, but honoured more? Here, happy creature, fair angelic Eve, Partake thou also; happy though thou art, Happier thou mayst be, worthier canst not be: Taste this, and be henceforth among the gods Thyself a goddess, not to earth confined,

53. The real tree is not provocative (Burden (1967) 128ff ). But in dream, with reason in abeyance, Satan can make its image provoke desire. 55–7. Cp. Virgil’s Venus outside Carthage: ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem/spiravere (‘From her head her ambrosial tresses breathed celestial fragrance’) (Aen. i 403f ). Ambrosia: The fabled anointing oil of the gods; cp. ii 245n; iii 135–7, 634n (Satan’s disguise). 60. Nor . . . nor: neither . . . nor. god: spirit. See i 116–17n; iii 341n. 61. Cp. ix 729. reserve: (1) restriction (on God’s part); (2) inhibition (on hers). 67–8. The fruit is intrinsically important only to the bad characters (Lewis (1942) 67f ). Satan pretends it communicates knowledge magically. 70–81. Gen. 3:5, ‘in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’. Cp. ix 700–32, carrying exploitation of god further still. 73. A non sequitur: although God cannot be impaired by the cropping of fruit, it does not follow he is honoured by it. 74. happy: Ironic; cp. viii 282n.

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paradise lost But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes Ascend to heaven, by merit thine, and see What life the gods live there, and such live thou. So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held, Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part Which he had plucked; the pleasant savoury smell So quickened appetite, that I, methought, Could not but taste. Forthwith up to the clouds With him I flew, and underneath beheld The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide And various: wondering at my flight and change To this high exaltation; suddenly My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down, And fell asleep; but oh how glad I waked To find this but a dream! Thus Eve her night Related, and thus Adam answered sad. Best image of myself and dearer half, The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep

79–80. as we: ‘So placed between the two sentences, as equally to relate to both’ (Pearce). in the air: Cp. i 515–16n; xii 454; PR i 39–42; ii 117f (the devils’ council in ‘middle air’). Eph. 2:2 refers to Satan as ‘the prince of the powers of the air’. See K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 120 citing Cudworth: ‘We think it a gallant thing to be fluttering up to heaven with our wings of knowledge and speculation; whereas the highest mystery of a divine life here . . . consisteth in nothing but mere obedience to the divine will.’ Satan travesties the ascent later outlined by Raphael (v 469–505); see Stevens (1985) 200f. Plato’s Phaedrus is distorted to make ascent depend on satisfying (rather than controlling) appetite. 84–5. savoury: (1) appetizing, fragrant (OED 1); (2) spiritually edifying, full of spiritual savour (OED 2b). At the second temptation, when ungoverned appetite is an immediate cause of sin, the fruit again smells savoury (ix 740n). Angels can fly but not human beings, so the very means of locomotion is evil (Burden (1967) 117f ). Even speculation about other worlds is suspect (viii 121). Musacchio (1991) 102, citing certain Protestant interpretations of Gen. 3:6, thinks Eve’s desire for knowledge already sinful – an un-Miltonic view of ‘inclination’. 87. Flying was highly suspect through its association with witchcraft ( J. DiSalvo, ELR, 18 (1988) 114–37). 88. Able in dream to ‘view all things at one view’, like God (MacCaffrey (1959) 61). Cp. iii 59n, 543. 89–92. Anacoluthon, expressing disturbed incoherence, or the dream’s abrupt end. 94. sad: grave, serious.

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Affects me equally; nor can I like This uncouth dream, of evil sprung I fear; Yet evil whence? In thee can harbour none, 100 Created pure. But know that in the soul Are many lesser faculties that serve Reason as chief; among these fancy next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful senses represent, 105 She forms imaginations, airy shapes, Which reason joining or disjoining, frames All what we affirm or what deny, and call 97. Stavely (1987) doubts Adam’s claim since he proceeds to place the dream in a structure of general truths. But allegorically the role of intellectus is to generalize. 98. uncouth: (1) unpleasant, distasteful (OED 4); (2) strange (OED 3). 100–13. ‘Adam’s discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-created being’ ( Johnson (1905) i 186). But the Augustinian tradition credited mankind’s original righteousness with superhuman intellectuality; cp. Du Bartas, Babilon, tr. L’Isle (1595) 44f (‘Adam a man perfectly wise before he sinned . . . enriched his language with all manner of ornaments that might be required to make it perfect: So that before his fall he spake more eloquently than any mortal man since . . . from him had we first our arts and sciences derived’); Goulart, Learned Summary (1621) 136 (‘Adam . . . had a great vivacity of spirit, to meditate and comprehend the nature of things’); Shakespeare, MND V i 14–17 (Theseus’s exposition); Williams (1948) 361f; Stevens (1985) 204. 102–8. Common knowledge then (however similar to the ‘agencies’ of cognitive scientists today); cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 2 vii (1989–) i 152f (‘Fantasy, or imagination . . . is an inner sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent . . . In time of sleep this faculty is free, and many times conceives strange, stupend, absurd shapes . . . it is subject and governed by reason, or at least should be’); Svendsen (1956) 38 citing Bartholomew (‘the imaginative virtue . . . is in the soul as the eye in the body, by beholding to receive the images that are offered unto it by the outward senses . . . Now after that the imagination hath received the images . . . then doth it as it were prepare and digest them, either by joining them together, or by separating them according as their natures require. They that distinguish imagination from fantasy, attribute this office to fantasy’); Harvey (1975) 49 (dreams attributed to the unruly imaginativa); Marjara (1992) 28, 272–4; Stevens (1985) 14; M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 161. fancy: imagination. Coleridge’s distinction between the two faculties lay in the future; but cp. Fuller’s account of the errors of fancy, Holy State (1642) III xi 1. 104. represent: bring before the mind.

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paradise lost Our knowledge or opinion; then retires Into her private cell when nature rests. Oft in her absence mimic fancy wakes To imitate her; but misjoining shapes, Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams, Ill matching words and deeds long past or late. Some such resemblances methinks I find Of our last evening’s talk, in this thy dream, But with addition strange; yet be not sad. Evil into the mind of god or man May come and go, so unapproved, and leave No spot or blame behind: which gives me hope That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream, Waking thou never wilt consent to do. Be not disheartened then, nor cloud those looks That wont to be more cheerful and serene Than when fair morning first smiles on the world, And let us to our fresh employments rise Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers That open now their choicest bosomed smells

109. I.e. retires from the warm dry front ventricle or cellula phantastica into the warm moist middle-brain, cellula logistica; cp. Spenser, FQ II ix 47–58 (Alma’s three-chambered turret); Klibansky (1964) 68f. cell: compartment of the brain. Not altogether metaphorical: the organ of imagination is ‘the middle cell of the brain’ in Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 2 vii (1989–) i 152. Ficino distinguishes the spatial distribution of faculties (usually imaginatio, ratio, and memoria, in that order, from front to back of the brain) from the hierarchical ordering imaginatio, ratio, and mens; see Klibansky (1964) 265; Harvey (1975) 1f, 10, et passim. 115. talk: About the prohibition (iv 421ff ). 116. By impressive reasoning, Adam diagnoses an unnatural factor – something ordinary dream material and dream work would not have produced (Corns (1994) 60). Without knowing any procatarctic (external) cause, he denies any proegumenic internal cause in Eve; see Musacchio (1991) 107 citing M.’s Artis Logicae, CW xi 37. 117–19. Probably god = angel (cp. iv 59, 70). Possibly also implying the doctrine that God’s omniscience extends to evil; cp. Thomas Aquinas, Summa I q 14 a 10 (‘God would not know good things perfectly unless he knew evil things’). 119–21. Patrides (1966) 106 thinks it wrong to assume Eve’s abhorrence; and Stavely (1987) finds Adam ‘complacent’. But Eve’s abhorrence is vouched for by her disturbed innocence. Cp. v 209; Empson (1961) 149; McColley (1983) 103. 121. do.] do: 1667 some copies. 127. bosomed: embosomed (cp. L’Allegro 78); hidden in intimate secrecy.

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Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store. So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was cheered, But silently a gentle tear let fall From either eye, and wiped them with her hair; Two other precious drops that ready stood, Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell Kissed as the gracious signs of sweet remorse And pious awe, that feared to have offended. So all was cleared, and to the field they haste. But first from under shady arborous roof, Soon as they forth were come to open sight Of day-spring, and the sun, who scarce up risen With wheels yet hovering o’er the ocean brim, Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray, Discovering in wide landscape all the east Of Paradise and Eden’s happy plains, Lowly they bowed adoring, and began Their orisons, each morning duly paid

Adam’s compliment was a common gallantry; cp. Marvell, ‘Upon Appleton House’ xxxviii. Release of scent by certain flowers announces morning. 128. Grim dramatic irony; after the Fall ‘the heavens and the earth . . . are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment’ (2 Pet. 3:7). 129–35. On the soul-making value of the experience of Satan’s evil, see Danielson (1982) 152. 130–1. The penitent Magdalene stood at Jesus’ feet ‘weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head’ (Luke 7:38). 132–3. Penitent tears, a prominent motif, were often moving and sometimes erotic; cp. Titian, St Mary Magdalen in Penitence; Marino, ‘La Maddelena di Tiziano’; Sir Edward Sherburne, ‘And She Washed His Feet’, Fowler (1991) 571; Crashaw, ‘The Weeper’; Marvell, ‘Eyes and Tears’ iii–xi (precious tears, double sluice); Turner (1987) 234. 134. sweet remorse: Oxymoron, reaching towards an imaginable aspect of the paradisal state. 136. all was cleared: Perhaps a meteorological trope – ‘the heavy weather cleared up’. 137. arborous: arbour-like. Cp. the ‘shady bower’ of iv 705. 139. day-spring: daybreak. Too common for allusion to Luke 1:78 (‘the day-spring from on high hath visited us’). 142. The desired wide prospect. Cp. ii 491n. 144. Contrast xi 1–2, where they stand to pray – in ‘lowliest plight’. 145–52. M. disliked set forms of worship (Eikonoklastes 16, YP iii 503–8); yet the hymn that follows draws on the liturgy. Before the Fall there is no antagonism between formal elaboration (various style) and inspired

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In various style, for neither various style Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise Their maker, in fit strains pronounced or sung Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence 150 Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse, More tunable than needed lute or harp To add more sweetness, and they thus began. These are thy glorious works, parent of good, Almighty, thine this universal frame, 155 Thus wondrous fair; thyself how wondrous then! Unspeakable, who sitst above these heavens To us invisible or dimly seen In these thy lowest works, yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine: 160 Speak ye who best can tell, ye sons of light, Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs And choral symphonies, day without night, spontaneity (rapture). Adam and Eve pray from the heart – ‘have words from their affections’ (YP iii 505). The absence of lute and harp implies no dislike of instrumental music, which contributes even to heavenly worship (vii 258). See Shuger (1988); Leonard (1990) 245f. numerous: measured, rhythmic. tunable: sweet-sounding. 151. harp] harp, 1667 some copies. 153–208. The morning hymn closely imitates Ps. 148 and the ‘Song of the Three Children’, added in LXX after Dan. 3:23 (Charles (1913) i 625–37) and used in Christian worship as the Canticle Benedicite, omnia opera, set for Matins as an alternative to the Te Deum in BCP. Versions and settings, some for home use, included those by George Wither, Orlando Gibbons, George Sandys, and Henry Lawes; see D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 114f. Also echoing Ps. 19 (‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork’), set for Monday at Prime, the dawn Office. On one theory the day here is Monday; see Introduction: Chronology. On the circular structure (patterned 7 | 20 | 5 | 20 | 4 ), see Hollander (1975) 39; Røstvig (1994) 476; L. M. Johnson, in Stanwood (1995) 48ff. 153–9. Omitting God’s wisdom (Madsen (1968) 142–4). 153. works,] works 1667 some copies. 154. frame: structure. Often of the universe as made by God: e.g. Calvin, Institutes i 21, tr. T. N[orton] (1561): ‘The knowledge of God . . . in the frame of the world and all the creatures is . . . plainly set forth.’ 156. heavens] heavens, 1667 some copies. 158. declare: show forth. Power depended on display ( Jarvis (1991) 160). 162. Heaven has nothing darker than twilight (cp. v 642–6). symphonies: concerted or harmonious music in parts.

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Circle his throne rejoicing, ye in heaven, On earth join all ye creatures to extol 165 Him first, him last, him midst, and without end. Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crownst the smiling morn With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere 170 While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.

163. Angels were often represented as circling God’s throne; cp. Brieger (1969) ii 458, 464, 479, 519. 165. A classical formula, modified by M.’s addition ‘and without end’; see Schaar (1982) 124f citing Theocritus, Theognis, Aratus, Ptolemy, etc. Cp. Rev. 1:11; Jonson, Masque of Augurs 444 (‘Jove is that one, whom first, midst, last, you call’). 166–70. For the transition from angels who Circle to circling stars, cp. iv 782–4n. Fairest: The planet Venus, which in w elongation, rising in the E just before sunrise, is known as the morning star. The astronomical events reverse the order of Evening’s procession (iv 593–609, recalled by train of night). Newton faults Venus’s being both morning and evening star at the same date. But M. was the better astronomer; whenever Venus passes from eastern to western elongation during hours of darkness, it is the evening star at sunset just before conjunction, the morning star at sunrise just after. (Conjunctions occur twice in each 584-day synodic period.) See, e.g., Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 661 citing Regiomontanus, Maurolycus, and others: ‘another peculiar appearance of the same planet, most worthy of note . . . occurs especially in extreme northern latitudes: namely, that on the same natural day it is seen in the evening a little after the setting of the sun, and is Hesperus; and the following morning it is seen in the morning a little before the rising of the sun, and is then Lucifer’. Kepler adds that the double appearances can persist for as many as three days. For Venus’s being near conjunction, see vii 366n. Adam’s calling on the star associated with Satan seems bitterly ironic; but in pious tradition Venus’s evening–morning identity symbolized Christ’s resurrection. Unlike the rebel angels, Adam and Eve distinguish Lucifer and Hesperus, seeing the former simply as a harbinger of day (Leonard (1990) 247f ). 170. prime: See v 18–25n. The first Day Hour occasions an address to the sun tracing its diurnal course. Cp. Ps. 19:4–6, set for Monday at Prime: ‘in them [the heavens] hath he set a tabernacle for the sun [Vulg. in sole posuit tabernaculum suum]. Which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth like a mighty man to run his race. His going out is from the end of the heaven, and his compass [Vulg. occursus; AV ‘circuit’] is unto the ends of the same, and none is hid from the heat thereof ’ (Geneva).

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Thou sun, of this great world both eye and soul, Acknowledge him thy greater, sound his praise In thy eternal course, both when thou climbst, And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fallst. 175 Moon, that now meetst the orient sun, now fly’st With the fixed stars, fixed in their orb that flies, And ye five other wandering fires that move In mystic dance not without song, resound His praise, who out of darkness called up light. 180 Air, and ye elements the eldest birth 171. For the sun as eye, cp. Spenser, FQ I iii 4 (‘great eye of heaven’); Shakespeare, Sonnets xviii (‘eye of heaven’); Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester I iv 551 (1979) i 221 (‘Day’s glorious eye’). The metaphor, thought Orphic (Ficino, De Sole vi), was common in antiquity; see Adams’s note to Plato, Republic 508B. It related sight and understanding, and hence the creative word. For the eye as divine omniscience, see Wind (1958) 186. The idea of the sun as world . . . soul, giving and sustaining life, echoes the animism of Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, Gilbert, Fludd, and Boyle (Marjara (1992) 218, 292). Cp. the solar mysticism of Ficino, Comm. on Dionysius’ De Divinis Nominibus: ‘A single sun with a single light generates, nourishes, vivifies, moves, distinguishes and unites the natures of all sensible things.’ 174. For the Victorine symbolism of times of day, cp. iv 30n. As early as Cyprian (De Oratione Domini) sunrise and sunset were added to the Apostolic Hours, which included noon. The dangerous hours of temptation and fall are ‘neutralized’ by ceaseless praise (Schwartz (1988) 72). 176. Improved ideas of stellar distances made the velocity of the coelum stellatum in its Ptolemaic or Tychonic diurnal revolution seem almost incredible – a suitable marvel to include in the hymn; cp. iv 592–7n; Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 419. 177. Only four, not five, planets remain unmentioned (Venus appeared at v 166–70) – perhaps an oversight, division into chief luminaries and five other planets being routine. If intentional, the discrepancy may mime uncertainty as to whether Earth counts as a planet: cp. viii 128f (‘six thou seest, and what if seventh to these / The planet Earth’). wandering: Latinate (stellae errantes = planets). 178. On the stellar dance, see iii 579–81n. not without: Perhaps felt as Latinate (non sine, a favourite litotes of M.). song: The music of the spheres, inaudible to fallen mankind; cp. Arcades 61–73; ‘At a Solemn Music’ 2, 21. 180–2. eldest birth: The four elements were a form of the creative tetraktys or quaternion. Pythagorean doctrine, familiar from Ovid, Metam. i and xv, and Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I vi 22–41, where stable concord depends

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Of nature’s womb, that in quaternion run Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix And nourish all things, let your ceaseless change Vary to our great maker still new praise. Ye mists and exhalations that now rise From hill or steaming lake, dusky or grey, Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, In honour to the world’s great author rise, Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky, Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers, Rising or falling still advance his praise. His praise ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave. Fountains and ye, that warble, as ye flow, Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise. Join voices all ye living souls, ye birds, That singing up to heaven gate ascend, Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise; Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep; Witness if I be silent, morn or even, To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.

on the elements forming a tetrad with two mean terms. For the transformation of the multiform elements, cp. Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 33: ‘the continuance of nature is caused by their reciprocal changes; for the water arises from the earth, the air from the water, and the fire from the air. . . . Thus by their continual motions . . . the conjunction of the several parts of the universe is preserved’. Perpetual: Perhaps implying the view (of Empedocles, Cicero, and others) that the constitution of the elements is permanent. Air is named separately, as the element corresponding to sanguine, the uncorrupted, specially human complexion prevailing before the Fall (Klibansky (1964) 103, 105, 110); and because the other three (eldest) elements emerged first after chaos (Ovid, Fasti v 11). The mutability is not scorned (Marjara (1992) 71, 231). 181. Honouring the sacred quaternion at the centre of the circularly structured hymn; cp. v 153–208n. 185–201. Cp. the Benedicite (‘O ye winds of God . . . O ye dews and frosts . . . O ye lightnings and clouds . . . O all ye green things upon the earth . . . O ye wells, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever’); see v 153–208n. 187. On M.’s vitalistic metaphors, see Marjara (1992) 213. 193. Breathe] Breath 1667; Breathe Errata.

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205 Hail universal Lord, be bounteous still To give us only good; and if the night Have gathered aught of evil or concealed, Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark. So prayed they innocent, and to their thoughts 210 Firm peace recovered soon and wonted calm. On to their morning’s rural work they haste Among sweet dews and flowers; where any row Of fruit-trees over-woody reached too far Their pampered boughs, and needed hands to check 215 Fruitless embraces: or they led the vine To wed her elm; she spoused about him twines Her marriageable arms, and with her brings Her dower the adopted clusters, to adorn His barren leaves. Them thus employed beheld 220 With pity heaven’s high king, and to him called Raphael, the sociable spirit, that deigned To travel with Tobias, and secured 205–19. Cp. the Collect for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (‘O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth: We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us’) and the Gospel for the same day, Matt. 7:15–21 (warning against false prophets and contrasting the fruit of ‘good’ and ‘corrupt trees’). The rural work of Paradise may have allegorical as well as practical value. 206–8. Modelled like v 166 on the hymn Somno Refectis, set for Monday at Matins in summer: Cedant tenebrae lumini, / Et nox diurno sideri, / Ut culpa, quam nox intulit, / Lucis labascat munere. For the day of the week, cp. v 153–208n, 170n. 214. pampered: indulged, left unpruned and woody. An etymological conceit, playing on Fr. pampre, leafy vine-branch (Newton). 215–19. The ‘vine-prop elm’, vitibus arbor amica, was a familiar symbol, already traditional in Horace, Odes II xv 4. The allegory of mutual dependence and complementary gifts also drew on Ovid, Metam. x 100 (amictae vitibus ulmi) and xiv 661ff (Vertumnus’s persuasion of Pomona). Sometimes the elm stood for firm masculine strength, the vine for fruitfulness, submission, and sweetness: e.g. Shakespeare, Errors II ii 172–9. But Renaissance emblems of friendship explored a contrary idea, of the vine supporting an old or dead elm: e.g. Veen, Emblemata (1608) 245; Whitney, Emblems (1586) 62. Cp. Dam 65; Horace, Epodes ii 9; Virgil, Georgics ii 367; Tasso, Ger. Lib. iii 75; Spenser, FQ I i 8; Svendsen (1956) 271n; J. Brown, PMLA, 71 (1956) 16f. Pace L. Lerner, EC, 4 (1954) 305, not a strikingly sexual passage. 221–3. Cp. iv 166–71n. In systems of correspondences, Raphael (‘Health of God’: Tob. 3:17) was Solar or Jovial. He is one of four archangels

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His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid. Raphael, said he, thou hearst what stir on earth Satan from hell scaped through the darksome gulf Hath raised in Paradise, and how disturbed This night the human pair, how he designs In them at once to ruin all mankind. Go therefore, half this day as friend with friend Converse with Adam, in what bower or shade Thou findst him from the heat of noon retired, To respite his day-labour with repast, Or with repose; and such discourse bring on As may advise him of his happy state, Happiness in his power left free to will, Left to his own free will, his will though free, Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware He swerve not too secure: tell him withal His danger, and from whom, what enemy Late fallen himself from heaven, is plotting now The fall of others from like state of bliss; By violence, no, for that shall be withstood, But by deceit and lies; this let him know, Lest wilfully transgressing he pretend Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned. So spake the eternal Father, and fulfilled All justice: nor delayed the wingèd saint After his charge received; but from among Thousand celestial ardours, where he stood

attending the cosmic chariot (iii 648n). A suitable choice for the present mission in view of his marriage counselling experience and psychological adjustment – Mixtum ex iis medicina et temperamentum Raphael (Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 549). For the contrast of Raphael’s and Michael’s embassies, cp. xi 203ff. 229. Cp. Exod. 33:11, ‘The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.’ 235–7. For the theology, see iii 96–125. Not relieving God of responsibility (Driscoll (1993) 68) but affirming human freedom and setting its conditions, in the manner of Arminius. 238. ‘Lest he err through nonchalance’. secure: carefree. 246–87. On Raphael’s descent, see Greene (1963) ch. 12. 246–7. Scriptural diction; e.g. Matt. 3:15, ‘it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’. For saint = angel, cp. Jude 14; Deut. 33:2 Geneva (‘The Lord . . . appeared clearly from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints’: ‘Meaning infinite angels’, margin). 248. After . . . received: Lat. syntax; cp. i 573. 249. ardours: flames; zeals, fervours. Possibly implying ‘seraphim’ (Thyer);

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250 Veiled with his gorgeous wings, up springing light Flew through the midst of heaven; the angelic choirs On each hand parting, to his speed gave way Through all the emp1real road; till at the gate Of heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide 255 On golden hinges turning, as by work Divine the sovereign architect had framed. From hence, no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight, Star interposed, however small he sees, Not unconform to other shining globes, 260 Earth and the garden of God, with cedars crowned Above all hills. As when by night the glass Of Galileo, less assured, observes Imagined lands and regions in the moon: Or pilot from amidst the Cyclades but any spirit could be regarded as ‘a flaming fire’ (Ps. 104:4). Raphael’s love answers the prayer of v 205–8, directing human love to God and explaining the origin of evil. ‘M.’s winged messengers . . . personify the operation of grace’ (Stevens (1985) 168, 206). Cp. iii 229. 254–6. Cp. Acts 12:10 (an iron gate opening to St Peter and an angel ‘of his [its] own accord’); Homer, Il. v 749 (heaven’s gates opening automatically for Hera). Addison, showing more neoclassical theory than technological vision, defends M. against the charge of allowing the marvellous ‘to lose sight of the probable’. The miraviglie of epic and romance had long included ingenious automata; cp. the mystical machinery of Ezek. 1 (prominent in PL vi; vii 203–8); Homer, Od. viii 555ff; Il. xviii 376 (automatic tripods); Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxx 10f; Spenser, FQ II vi 5 (a selfpropelled boat). On the rational, mathematical implications of architect, see Marjara (1992) 48. 257–61. no cloud . . . interposed: Participial phrases themselves interposed mimetically. small: Qualifying Earth. From Raphael’s startling viewpoint, earth is almost too small to be like other shining globes (stars). Cp. ix 811–13 (Eve’s visibility from heaven); Job 22:13 (‘How doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud?’); Gibson (1989) 8 (the preternaturally acute vision implied by Flemish world landscapes). A. Low, ELN, 8 (1971) 263–7 thinks the universe pictured is Ptolemaic. 257. New paragraph 1667 some copies. cloud,] cloud 1667 some copies. 261–3. Contrast i 286–91, where the reality of the lunar geography is unquestioned. On contemporary doubts about Galileo’s speculations, see Marjara (1992) 63. Even the best of minds deceive themselves with imaginary projections (Stevens (1985) 100f ). glass: telescope. Imagined: conjectured. 264–6. Cyclades: A circular archipelago in the S Aegean (Gk κpκλος, circle), in shape like the globe of earth. Delos: ‘Floating once’ (x 296), but fixed in the Cyclades as a birthplace for Apollo and Diana; anciently

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265 Delos or Samos first appearing kens A cloudy spot. Down thither prone in flight He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan 270 Winnows the buxom air; till within soar Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems A phoenix, gazed by all, as that sole bird

reverenced and scrupulously kept free from pollution. Samos: Not Cycladic, but the birthplace of Juno, who married Jupiter there; so, like Delos, a mythic analogue to Eden. Raphael’s unimpeded vision resembles the pilot’s glimpsing a distant island on the horizon. Whereas Satan is often likened to a merchant, Raphael resembles a navigator. 266–70. Emulating the earthward plunges of Mercury in Virgil, Aen. iv 238–58 and of Michael in Tasso, Ger. Lib. ix 60–2. Cp. Satan’s descent at iii 562–90, where scale is similarly suggested by comparisons from telescopy. ‘The effect is at once to expand our attention toward the significant regions beyond earth, and to contract it upon small, significant Paradise, as these spoke-like paths converge for their struggle’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 63). prone: downward sloping. fan: (1) wing (poetic; cp. ii 927); (2) winnowing fan (cp. Matt. 3:12, the fan of judgment). buxom: yielding. 270–4. Every 500 years the mythic phoenix immolated itself in a pyre or nest of spices (cp. v 292f ); whereupon a new phoenix arose from its ashes or bone marrow and flew to Heliopolis, City of the Sun, to deposit its relics; see Ovid, Metam. xv 391–407; Pliny, Nat. Hist. X ii. In Renaissance dictionaries Heliopolis and Egyptian [not Boeotian] Thebes were interchangeable (Starnes (1955) 272f ). The phoenix, in size like eagles, was unica semper; cp. Dam 187; Ovid, Amores II vi 54; Lactantius, De Ave Phoenice (emblem of ideal true love); Whitney, Emblems (1586) 177 (emblem of resurrection); Noodt, Theatre (1569) v (of Christ); Tervarent (1958) 304f (virtuous constancy); Charbonneau-Lassay (1991) 450 (fortitude and chastity). The phoenix being often a symbol of Christ, Allen (1970) 126 sees an ‘adventual allegory’. On the colours, see Schaar (1982) 256f citing Marino, Strage degli Innocenti (1633) ii 133. Proverbially, ‘a faithful friend is like a phoenix’ ( J. Whaler, PMLA, 47 (1932) 545). So Raphael resembles the phoenix as friend of mankind (ix 2), as unique among eagle-sized birds, as bound for a solar shrine (v 264–6n; iv 268–85n), and as virtuous. Cp. SA 1699–1707; Ripa, Iconologia (1976) 460 Resurrettione. On the range of sources, see Greene (1963) 379. For Raphael’s shape-shifting as thaumaturgy, see Jacobus (1976) 72–4. Contrast Satan’s cormorant shape (iv 396). 271. towering] towring 1667; 1674 (not determining between ‘towering’ = rising high, and ‘touring’ = wheeling). Cp. xi 185n.

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When to enshrine his relics in the sun’s Bright temple, to Ægyptian Thebes he flies. 275 At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise He lights, and to his proper shape returns A seraph winged; six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast 280 With regal ornament; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold And colours dipped in heaven; the third his feet Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail 285 Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia’s son he stood, And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled The circuit wide. Straight knew him all the bands Of angels under watch; and to his state, And to his message high in honour rise; 275. The only gate is on the E side (iv 178). Raphael’s entry contrasts with Satan’s climbing like a ‘thief into God’s fold’ (iv 178–92). Prepared for by the Tobias story at iv 165–71. 277–85. Cp. the seraphim in Isa. 6:2, ‘Each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.’ The first pair of wings is regal purple (cp. xi 241), the second gold, the third sky-tinctured; these colours, and the downy texture, are from Pliny’s phoenix (Nat. Hist. X ii), perhaps via Estienne, Dictionarium (Starnes (1955) 273f ). lineaments: figure. starry zone: Cp. Michael’s belt like ‘a glistering zodiac’ (xi 247). feathered mail: Overlapping feathers like scales of jazerant-work armour. As in Spenser, chivalric accoutrements indicate allegorical content (M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 126). Frye (1978) 180 compares the medieval angel’s stage costume. Skytinctured: Cp. Cowley, Davideis (1656) i n 60, ‘Sacred Blue. Because of the use of it in . . . all sacred ornaments. The reason of choosing blue, I suppose to have been in the Tabernacle to represent the seat of God, that is, the heavens . . . The art is lost of dying that kind of blue, which was the perfectest sky-colour.’ grain: in grain; fast dyed. Permanent, and perhaps rich, in colour; cp. Il Penseroso 35. 285–7. Maia’s son: Mercury, ambassador of the gods, whose graceful authority of stance was often pictured; cp. Hamlet III iv 58f (‘A station like the herald Mercury / New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill’). The shaking of wings, but not the resultant fragrance, is anticipated by Fairfax’s alighting Gabriel (Ger. Lib. i 14 – Tasso only has Gabriel smoothe his wings). In M.’s view, angels’ swiftness ‘is figuratively denoted by the attribute of wings’ (CW xv 34). 288–9. state: rank. message: mission.

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290 For on some message high they guessed him bound. Their glittering tents he passed, and now is come Into the blissful field, through groves of myrrh, And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and balm; A wilderness of sweets; for nature here 295 Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet, Wild above rule or art; enormous bliss. Him through the spicy forest onward come Adam discerned, as in the door he sat 300 Of his cool bower, while now the mounted sun Shot down direct his fervid rays to warm

292–4. blissful field: Recalling the Elysian fields, home of the blessed, filled with odours of sweet spices, and already drawn as a type of Paradise (iv 153n, 159–66n). myrrh: Prophylactic against devils (Broadbent (1960) 183 citing Hawkins (1633, 1971) ). flowering odours: Daring hypallage for ‘odorous flowers’; see Ricks (1963) 95 (the ‘beautifully [? ‘disgustingly’] unexpected substantiality of the scents’) citing Bentley, Pearce, and Richardson. But odour literally meant ‘a substance that emits a sweet smell . . . spice . . . odoriferous flower’ (OED 2); cp. Prior, ‘If Wine and Music’ (‘Thy Myrtles strow, thy Odours burn’). cassia: Cinnamon-like spice. Used in the holy oil for anointing the Tabernacle (Exod. 30:24). nard: The ointment poured over Jesus’ head to anoint him ‘to the burying’ (Mark 14:3, 8). Nard and cassia were often associated: e.g. Comus 991; Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax xv 53 (Armida’s isle of bliss). balm: See v 23n; prominent during Satan’s entry of Paradise (iv 159, 248). 294–7. played: represented or imitated in sport (OED 16c). sweet: sweetly. Wild . . . art: Arts (designed to repair the Fall) cannot reach innocent nature’s original level. enormous: deviating from ordinary rule (Lat. norma); immense. See MacCaffrey (1959) 153. Wantoned: Still an innocent word; although, like wilderness, with dangerous overtones. ‘It is not long after the Fall that Adam and Eve become liable to the grimmer meaning [at ix 1015]’ (Ricks (1963) 112). On the danger ‘that fancy’s wanton growth will transform the “wilderness of sweets” into a real wilderness’, see Stevens (1985) 185. The cosmic substrate of chaos tends to regress from order (B. K. Lewalski, in Kranidas (1971) 91). In garden-art, the so-called wilderness was a highly cultivated feature. Cp. iv 135n. 299–300. Imitating Abraham’s entertainment of three angels (Gen. 18:1, ‘the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day’). 301. direct: Implying, since ecliptic and equatorial planes still coincide, that Paradise is on the line; see iv 209–16n. rays] rays, 1667 some copies.

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paradise lost Earth’s inmost womb, more warmth than Adam needs; And Eve within, due at her hour prepared For dinner savoury fruits, of taste to please True appetite, and not disrelish thirst Of nectareous draughts between, from milky stream, Berry or grape: to whom thus Adam called. Haste hither Eve, and worth thy sight behold Eastward among those trees, what glorious shape Comes this way moving; seems another morn Risen on mid-noon; some great behest from heaven To us perhaps he brings, and will vouchsafe This day to be our guest. But go with speed, And what thy stores contain, bring forth and pour Abundance, fit to honour and receive Our heavenly stranger; well we may afford Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow From large bestowed, where nature multiplies Her fertile growth, and by disburdening grows More fruitful, which instructs us not to spare. To whom thus Eve. Adam, earth’s hallowed mould, Of God inspired, small store will serve, where store, All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the stalk;

302. For the sun’s penetration beneath earth’s surface to generate minerals, see iii 608–12n; Marjara (1992) 169. needs;] need 1667 some copies; need; 1667 other copies. 303. due: duly. Contrast ix 844–56 after the Fall, when time’s ‘measure’ falters and Eve is late. 304. savoury: appetizing. See v 84–5n. 306–7. nectareous: like nectar (probably M.’s coinage). Cp. vi 332; Homer, Il. tr. Pope xix 40 (‘Nectareous Drops, and rich Ambrosia’); S. Croxall, ‘The Vision’ (‘Nectareous Wine’). milky: sweet (of water; cp. SA 550). Often of fruit juice, so perhaps referring to Berry as well as stream. The Promised Land ‘flowing with milk and honey’ ( Josh. 5:6) would have been a less obvious association. 313–15. In his third marriage-contract, M. included culinary clauses (Parker (1996) 584; Turner (1987) 272 n 51). 318–20. Contrast Comus 710–29 misapplying this idea. 322. store: (1) cache; (2) abundance. Eve’s sarcastic wordplay chaffs Adam for his ignorance about her specialism. Stavely (1987) 35, missing the comedy, finds Adam ‘overbearing’ and Eve ‘nettled’. Showing Eve’s freedom and independence (S. Woods, in Walker (1988) 18). 321. Cp. Gen. 2:7, ‘God formed man of the dust of the ground.’ Perhaps cp. Josephus’s well-known etymology tracing Adam (Heb. ‘red’) to the red earth he was made from.

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Save what by frugal storing firmness gains 325 To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes: But I will haste and from each bough and brake, Each plant and juiciest gourd will pluck such choice To entertain our angel guest, as he Beholding shall confess that here on earth 330 God hath dispensed his bounties as in heaven. So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order, so contrived as not to mix 335 Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change, Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk Whatever earth all-bearing mother yields In India east or west, or middle shore 340 In Pontus or the Punic coast, or where 324–5. superfluous moist: And therefore bad for the health; cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 i (1989–) i 214ff. Too philosophical (i.e. scientific) for Eve, thought Thyer. But it is quite appropriate for a superintelligent prelapsarian woman to know about food storage. Eve stores only food that improves by keeping. 326–7. Eve distinguishes four sources of produce: bough (trees) for fruit and nuts; brake (bushes or briers) for soft fruit; plant (strawberry, rhubarb, etc.); and gourd (cucurbitaceous climbers like melon). The last may be specific enough to allude to Jonah 4:6–10, the gourd destroyed by a worm typifying human corruption. Bentley is sarcastic about the possibility of gathering ‘provisions from brakes’. 328. as: that. 335. ‘Tastes which, not well joined, would be inelegant’. Horribly travestied at ix 1017f. Tastes,] Tastes; 1667 one copy. 336. ‘French cook’: marginal note in Tennyson’s copy. upheld: sustained. kindliest: most natural. change,] change; 1667 one copy. 338. Cp. ancient titles like Omniparens (Apuleius, Golden Ass viii 25, of dea Syria) and ΠαµµOτωS (Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus II x). 339–41. Geographically conspective, like the produce in many Netherlandish tabletop still lifes, or representations of Autumn, Pomona, the Sense of Taste, etc. (e.g. Jordaens, Allegory of Fertility; Frans Snyders, Fruit Garland). Including exotic fruits later to be imported or introduced from India, SE Asia, and the Caribbean, from Pontus (the S shore of the Black Sea), from the Punic (Carthaginian) coast of the Mediterranean, and from Scheria, the island paradise of Homer’s hospitable Phaeacian king Alcinous (Od. vii 112–21). The places named form a pattern symmetrical from E to W – India | coast | Scheria | coast | India – honouring Alcinous’s ideal

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Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat, Rough, or smooth rined, or bearded husk, or shell She gathers, tribute large, and on the board Heaps with unsparing hand; for drink the grape 345 She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed She tempers dulcet creams, nor these to hold Wants her fit vessels pure, then strews the ground With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed.

kingdom, compared with Paradise at ix 440f. Carthage was known for figs and Pontus for rhubarb and hazel-nuts, while the orchards of Scheria abounded with apples, pears, and pomegranates. Among less favourable associations, Pontus was notorious for poisons (Virgil, Eclogues viii 96); and a Punic fig symbolized the threat to Rome when Cato famously dropped it on the Senate floor, saying ‘Produce of a country three days’ sailing away’ (Plutarch, Life of M. Cato xxvii 1). ‘Seats of luxurious food’ (T. J. B. Spencer, in Patrides (1968) 88, contrasting Eve’s vegetarian connoisseurship). 342. rined: rinded. 344–9. Taking the menu through stages of preparation. 345. must: unfermented grape-juice. Excluding wine as a familiar symbol of disturbed rationality at the Fall. Cp. St Bernard, Sermones in Cantica Canticorum ix 9f (‘the pleasures of the flesh, with which we were formerly enthralled and intoxicated as with wine’. Carnal desires are like wine because the grape ‘once pressed has nothing more to yield’). An emblem of Excess pictured a woman crushing grapes; cp. Eph. 5:18, (‘wine, wherein is excess’); Spenser’s Dame Excess (FQ II xii 55–7). On a mural at the Palace, Culross, drawing its motto MIHI PONDERA LUXUS from Paradin, Heroical Devices (1591) and Whitney, Emblems (1586) 133, PRUDENTES VINO ABSTINENT, see Bath (1994) 87. Wine was also suspect mythologically: ‘wine they say is blood, / Even the bloud of Gyants, which were slaine, / By thundring Iove in the Phlegrean plaine’; drinking it might ‘stirre up old rebellious thought’ (FQ V vii 10f, from Plutarch, De Iside 353B – C). Medical opinion agreed: cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 ii (1989–) i 222–4; Harvey (1975) 11, 18–20, 26f. Contrast ix 793, where Eve is ‘heightened as with wine’. M. himself was a moderate drinker. meaths: meads; sweet drinks. 347. tempers: mixes. With psychological overtones: the food has emblematic values. dulcet: sweet, bland. 348. For the moralized utensils, cp. 1 Thess. 4:4 (‘every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour’); Isa. 66:20 (‘bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord’). For the sort of vessels improvised in an age innocent of technology, see iv 335. 349. No papistical incense at this holy supper, only natural scents. As yet,

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350 Meanwhile our primitive great sire, to meet His godlike guest, walks forth, without more train Accompanied than with his own complete Perfections, in himself was all his state, More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits 355 On princes, when their rich retínue long Of horses led, and grooms besmeared with gold Dazzles the crowd, and sets them all agape. Nearer his presence Adam though not awed, Yet with submiss approach and reverence meek, 360 As to a superior nature, bowing low, Thus said. Native of heaven, for other place None can than heaven such glorious shape contain; Since by descending from the thrones above, Those happy places thou hast deigned awhile 365 To want, and honour these, vouchsafe with us

Adam and Eve are guiltless of fire; cp. v 396n; ix 387–92n; x 1078–81n. odours: scented flowers, spices; see v 292–4n. unfumed: Coinage; cp. ii 185n. 350–7. Inverting a Homeric formula to imply that the absence of a retinue does not diminish Adam’s status (C. A. Martindale, NQ, 24 (1977) 545–7). The idea of nobility shared by all creatures from their divine origin went back to Boethius, De Consolatione III pr. and met. vi. 353. On Adam’s alleged lack of ‘character’ before the Fall, see Broadbent (1960) 191f. state: dignity 356. besmeared with gold: Cp. Horace, Odes IV ix 14f (aurum vestibus illitum . . . regalisque cultus). A note in the Columbia MS reads: ‘English phrases derived from the Latin tongue etc.: A coat bedaubed with gold &c. Virgil: per tunicam squalentem auto. The words seem to be alike improper; but the Latin is thus vindicated by Servius; and from thence our phrase arises.’ ‘Bedaubed [Squalens] refers to abundance and thickness of gold, as “shining in bedaubed booty” [squammosum spolium nitenti]. Thus whatever was overladen and covered in an object; and had so striking an appearance as to make those who beheld it change countenance, was said to be bedaubed’ (CW xviii 226 citing Macrobius, Saturnalia VI vii 17). 358–71. Contrast Michael’s unbending stateliness (xi 249ff ). Cp. Aeneas’s greeting of his mother Venus, Virgil, Aen. i 327f (O – quam te memorem, virgo? namque haud tibi voltus / mortalis, nec vox hominem sonat; o dea certe! ). Evans (1996) 71 compares the welcome of Columbus by the natives of Hispaniola. 359. submiss: submissive. 365. want: be without.

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Two only, who yet by sovereign gift possess This spacious ground, in yonder shady bower To rest, and what the garden choicest bears To sit and taste, till this meridian heat 370 Be over, and the sun more cool decline. Whom thus the angelic virtue answered mild. Adam, I therefore came, nor art thou such Created, or such place hast here to dwell, As may not oft invite, though spirits of heaven 375 To visit thee; lead on then where thy bower O’ershades; for these mid-hours, till evening rise I have at will. So to the sylvan lodge They came, that like Pomona’s arbour smiled With flowerets decked and fragrant smells; but Eve 380 Undecked, save with herself more lovely fair Than wood-nymph, or the fairest goddess feigned Of three that in Mount Ida naked strove, Stood to entertain her guest from heaven; no veil She needed, virtue-proof, no thought infirm

366. sovereign: sov’ran 1667. 371. angelic virtue: Perhaps synecdoche for ‘angel’, as Homer puts ‘Priam’s strength’ for ‘Priam’ (Il. iii 105). Or, as a seraph, Raphael may subsume the qualities and titles of other ranks; cp. vii 41, where he is ‘archangel’. 374. Ellipsis – ‘attract visitors, even though they are spirits . . .’. 378–84. Distinguishing ways in which Eve is like and unlike Pomona and Venus, to amplify Eve’s spiritual adornment (nakedness symbolized integrity) and her historical reality (unlike her feigned mythological ectypes) (Burden (1967) 71). The Roman goddess Pomona presided over gardens and especially orchards. She shadows Eve again at ix 394f, but there as a fugitive. Undecked . . . herself: Identifying Eve with her beautiful, fragile flowers; cp. iv 270; ix 432 (‘Eve though fairest unsupported flower’). For her clothing of virtue, cp. iv 237–8n; Ezek. 28:13–15. 380. Cp. Joseph Beaumont, Psyche (1702) vi 233 (her ‘waist itself did gird / With its own graceful slenderness’). 381–2. Juno, Minerva, and Venus strove naked for the apple of Strife inscribed TO THE FAIREST, and Paris as arbiter pronounced judgment on Mount Ida. His fatal choice of Venus’s beauty led to Helen’s rape and the destruction of Troy, mythic type of the Fall (i 1–94n). Morally Paris resembles Adam not Raphael. As at v 266–70n, 285–7n, Raphael corresponds to Mercury – usually present in representations of the Judgment of Paris: e.g. the Paris Master’s at the Fogg Mus., Harvard. 384. virtue-proof: protected by virtue. The analogy of similar compounds (OED 1 b: ‘claret proof ’, 1602; ‘impudence-proof ’, 1709) suggests also

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385 Altered her cheek. On whom the angel Hail Bestowed, the holy salutation used Long after to blest Mary, second Eve. Hail mother of mankind, whose fruitful womb Shall fill the world more numerous with thy sons 390 Than with these various fruits the trees of God Have heaped this table. Raised of grassy turf Their table was, and mossy seats had round, And on her ample square from side to side All autumn piled, though spring and autumn here 395 Danced hand in hand. A while discourse they hold; No fear lest dinner cool; when thus began ‘proof against virtue’ – defended, then, against Raphael, the angelic virtue (v 371)? infirm: frail; cp. Spenser, Epithalamion 236f: ‘That suffers not one looke to glaunce awry, / Which may let in a little thought unsownd.’ 385–7. At the annunciation, Gabriel (come to tell the Virgin she will conceive Jesus) says ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women’ (Luke 1:28). second Eve: Cp. x 183; as Christ is the ‘last Adam’ (i 4–5n; 1 Cor. 15:45), so Eve is a type of Mary. 388. Cp. Michael’s greeting, ‘Hail to thee, / Eve rightly called, mother of all mankind’ (xi 158f ). Eve is mother of mankind as Mary is Theotokos or mother of God. Cp. Gen. 3:20, ‘Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.’ To many Reformers it was ‘a fond conceit, to derive Ave, the first word of the Angel’s salutation to Mary, of Eva, invented because she repaired what was lost by Eva; for the one is a Latin word, the other Hebrew’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 54). See further Leonard (1990) 49f; Turner (1987) 242 (the association of eating and sexuality). 391–2. Perhaps because cutting tools were postlapsarian; see Panofsky (1962) 33–67 on early theories of technological development. But turf tables were common enough in the Renaissance. 393. square: Emblematic of virtue, especially temperance; see Bocchi, Quaestiones (1574) cxliv; Wither, Emblems (1635) 164 (uprightness); A. Fowler, RES, 11 (1960) 143. Originally Pythagorean (the square as tetrad), the symbolism had become familiarly moral, as in square = ‘honest’ (OED 8); ‘a rule’ (OED 2); ‘four-square’. Cp. Calvin, Commentary on Ps. 1:6, tr. Golding (1571): ‘Whose duty it is to settle the state of the world according to the right squire [square].’ 394–5. Hinting proleptically at a dance of the three Horae (seasons) like that of the Graces; although in Paradise spring and autumn coincide (iv 148n). 396. Deliberately inhibiting symbolic resonances (M. Fixler, in Kranidas (1971) 144); this is real food. Some despise the domesticity, and

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Our author. Heavenly stranger, please to taste These bounties which our nourisher, from whom All perfect good unmeasured out, descends, 400 To us for food and for delight hath caused The earth to yield; unsavoury food perhaps To spiritual natures; only this I know, That one celestial Father gives to all. To whom the angel. Therefore what he gives 405 (Whose praise be ever sung) to man in part Spiritual, may of purest spirits be found No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure Empson (1950) 153 deprecates the vegetarian fare. But M. deserves credit for reasonably enriching the traditional menu of early mankind (acorns and water). ‘If the devils want feeding, our author made poor provision for them in his Second Book; where they have nothing to eat but hell-fire; and no danger of their dinner cooling’ (Bentley). The apparent naivety is occasioned by the problematic nature of cooking before the discovery of fire (v 349n; ix 387–92n; x 1078–81n). M. negotiates this by representing the disadvantage as freedom from potential inconveniences. 397. author: ancestor. Cp. iii 374 (God the ‘author of all being’); iv 144, 659; iv 635 (Adam Eve’s ‘author’). Similarly God is nourisher, and Eve nourishes by preparing food. In M.’s hierarchical universe ranks are analogous, Adam and Eve both made in God’s image. ‘The roles of God and Adam and Eve shift and intermingle’ (Flannagan). 399. James 1:17, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father’. 401–3. The first of Adam’s curious speculations begins (as true knowledge began and ended) with God (Burden (1967) 112). Verging on forbidden knowledge: questions about angels’ diet approach the matter of becoming a god by eating ‘Angels’ meat’ – as Cowley calls the forbidden fruit in ‘The Tree of Knowledge’ (1905) 45. unsavoury: For the pun, see v 84–5n. 404–33. Cp. v 469–505. On the genre (Lucretian epic or philosophical poem) see Lewalski (1985) 40. The symposiac meal with an angel realizes the ideal of the humanist banquet; see Jeanneret (1991) 33. 407–13. One of ‘the central texts of M.’s monism; higher being is higher by virtue of greater inclusiveness’ (Rosenblatt (1994) 72). On the metabolic metaphor, expressing the world’s animation, see Fallon (1991) 106. Cp. v 491–500; Tasso, Il Messaggiero (1582); Marjara (1992) 232, 269. Manna is ‘corn of heaven’ and ‘angels’ food’ (cp. v 633) in Ps. 78:24f; angels were commonly supposed to eat in some sense. But many thought the eating symbolic; and most distinguished ‘swallow’ from digest; cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 199 on Gen. 18:8; Rajan (1962) 149 n 5 citing Vermigli, Common Places, tr. A. Marten (1583). By insisting on digestion, M. rejects

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Intelligential substances require As doth your rational; and both contain 410 Within them every lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. For know, whatever was created, needs 415 To be sustained and fed; of elements The grosser feeds the purer, earth the sea, Earth and the sea feed air, the air those fires Ethereal, and as lowest first the moon; Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurged 420 Vapours not yet into her substance turned. Nor doth the moon no nourishment exhale From her moist continent to higher orbs.

the Scholastic angels’ immateriality. Emphasizing angelic nourishment, he prefers the Platonic theology of corporeal created spirits (Lewis (1942) 105f ). 408. Intelligential substances: angelic beings. 409. ‘Spirit, being the more excellent substance, virtually, as they say, and eminently contains within itself what is clearly the inferior substance; in the same way as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporeal, that is, the sentient and vegetative faculty’ (De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 309). 411. The external senses nourishing the soul (sight, hearing) ranked above the lower senses nourishing the body; see J. F. Kermode, BJRL, 44 (1961) 78; Vinge (1975); Harvey (1975) 18. 412. Medical theorists distinguished three ‘concoctions’: digestion in the stomach (concoct); conversion to blood (digest); secretion (assimilate). See Marjara (1992) 269. 414. Ideologically significant; many held that no angel needs to eat. Pace Flannagan, M. stresses the angels’ materiality. 415–18. On the feeding of elements, see v 180–2. 418–20. Aristotelian and medieval science denied that exhalations could rise to the moon’s sphere, let alone to the stars. But M.’s vitalism had Pythagorean sources, ancient and modern (Marjara (1992) 73). lowest: Of the planets. round: Only the full moon shows spots; cp. Pliny, Hist., tr. Holland (1634) II vii: the moon, ‘so long as she appeareth by the half in sight . . . never showeth any spots, because as yet she hath not her full power of light sufficient, to draw humour unto her. For these spots be nothing else but the dregs of the earth, caught up with other moisture among the vapours’. Raphael contradicts Galileo’s explanation of the spots as landscape features (i 287–91). The topic was controversial; see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 206f; Moss (1993) 313.

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The sun that light imparts to all, receives From all his alimental recompense 425 In humid exhalations, and at even Sups with the ocean: though in heaven the trees Of life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines Yield nectar, though from off the boughs each morn We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground 430 Covered with pearly grain: yet God hath here Varied his bounty so with new delights, As may compare with heaven; and to taste Think not I shall be nice. So down they sat, And to their viands fell, nor seemingly

423–6. ‘Cleanthes . . . allowed the matter of the sun to be fiery, and that it was nourished by humours attracted from the ocean. Also Anaximander and Diogenes, after whom Epicurus, and the Stoics’ (Swan, Speculum Mundi (1643), cit. Svendsen (1956) 66). Alimentary versions of the chain of being were popular with mystical and alchemic Platonists like Robert Fludd. Cp. Plato, Timaeus 49C; Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 33; Fludd, Utriusque Cosmi . . . Historia (1617) I v 6; Cowley, ‘Drinking’ (1905) 51 (imitating Anacreon: ‘The busy sun (and one would guess / By’s drunken fiery face no less) / Drinks up the sea, and when h’as done, / The moon and stars drink up the sun’); Marjara (1992) 73f, 191, 242. A hierarchy of alimentation is thematic: all turns on the manner of eating. 427–9. Cp. ii 245n; v 306; vi 332; Rev. 22:2 (the perpetual fruitage of the tree of life). Ancient gods ate ambrosia and drank nectar, types of Christian truth. Heavenly vines had dominical authority: ‘I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom’ (Matt. 26:29). mellifluous: sweet; honey-flowing. 430. Manna, ‘corn of heaven’ (v 407–13n), sustained the Israelites in the wilderness: ‘when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground’ (Exod. 16:14). It was represented as pearly pellets; cp. Dirck Bouts, The Gathering of the Manna, at St Peter’s, Louvain; Tintoretto, at S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; Réau (1956) ii (1) 198. Lewalski (1985) 141 instances grain as pastoral; but it is more characteristic of georgic. 431. Evans (1996) 72f compares Barlowe’s account of the Virginia colonists’ reception by Granganimo’s wife. 433–9. Asserting unity of substance, whether spiritual or corporeal, against the discontinuity of spirit and matter. nice: over-refined. 434–8. Cp. v 407–14n; J. Goldman, MiltQ, 11 (1977) 31–7. seemingly: Rejecting Docetist attempts to explain away as appearances the Bible’s materialistic angels (e.g. Gen. 18:8, ‘they did eat’). Many Protestants regarded

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435 The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss Of theologians, but with keen despatch Of real hunger, and concoctive heat To transubstantiate; what redounds, transpires Through spirits with ease; nor wonder; if by fire 440 Of sooty coal the empiric alchemist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold As from the mine. Meanwhile at table Eve Ministered naked, and their flowing cups 445 With pleasant liquors crowned: oh innocence Deserving Paradise! If ever, then, such explanations as evasions – ‘We neither think with Theodoret, that these angels seemed only [only seemed] to have bodies, and so also seemed to eat, but neither in truth’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 199). Raphael’s eating is decisive, since the biblical Raphael says ‘I did neither eat nor drink, but ye did see a vision’ (Tob. 12:19), a proof-text for immaterialists. (Contrast Luke 24:39–43, the risen Christ eating fish and honey.) In Voragine, Golden Legend (1900) ii 74, Raphael says ‘I use meat and drink invisible, which of men may not be seen’. transubstantiate: Departing from the technical sense (whereby in the Romanist mass the wafer became the body of Christ), matter is transformed to spirit by ordinary digestive processes. Suggesting nevertheless that Adam and Eve enjoy Communion with the gods. By presupposing consubstantiality of matter and ‘intelligential substance’ (v 408, 479–87, 492), M. contradicts De Doctrina; see J. C. Ulreich in Mulryan (1982); Rosenblatt (1994) 37. redounds: remains in excess. If angelic corporeality entails excretion, M. is prepared to envisage that. 437–43. Alchemic and physiological concoction and digestion (cp. v 412) were thought closely analogous, if equally obscure. Both refined matter through heat; see Marjara (1992) 169, 246. empiric alchemist: ordinary practitioner, or ‘puffer’, as distinct from the adept working philosophically; see Caron (1961) 69, 78f, 89. Pace R. Schwartz, in Benet (1994) 8, alchemic science is not in question. 443–4. Cp. Of Reformation, YP i 521, 547; Corns (1990) 106 (‘No priest distinguished by ecclesiastical garments borrowed “from Aaron’s old wardrobe, or the flamen’s vestry”, but rather the naked Eve; in place of the altar, set “fortified with bulwark and barricado” as a “table of separation”, a simple “table” ’). 445. crowned: filled; wreathed. Ceremonious; cp. Homer, Il. i 470; Od. i 148; Virgil, Georgics ii 528 (socii cratera coronant). 446–50. Gen. 6:2, ‘The sons of God [fallen angels?] saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.’ Although Raphael is free from jealousy, Satan may not be (iv 503). Contrast xi 621–2n.

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paradise lost Then had the sons of God excuse to have been Enamoured at that sight; but in those hearts Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy Was understood, the injured lover’s hell. Thus when with meats and drinks they had sufficed, Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose In Adam, not to let the occasion pass Given him by this great conference to know Of things above his world, and of their being Who dwell in heaven, whose excellence he saw Transcend his own so far, whose radiant forms’ Divine effulgence, whose high power so far Exceeded human, and his wary speech Thus to the empyreal minister he framed. Inhabitant with God, now know I well Thy favour, in this honour done to man, Under whose lowly roof thou hast vouchsafed To enter, and these earthly fruits to taste, Food not of angels, yet accepted so, As that more willingly thou couldst not seem At heaven’s high feasts to have fed: yet what compare? To whom the wingèd hierarch replied. O Adam, one almighty is, from whom

449. unlibidinous: For the negative coinage, cp. ii 185n. 451–2. Taking for granted a temperate moderation that Michael will have to prescribe (xi 531). meats: foods. 459. To amplify the range of Adam’s enquiries, M. shows him exploring a topic by any standard arcane. wary: For all Adam knows, he is about to broach a forbidden topic (Burden (1967) 113). 460. For the title, cp. Ps. 104:4 Geneva, ‘Which maketh the spirits his messengers, and a flaming fire his ministers’. 467. compare: comparison. 469–90. Raphael gently changes the subject to more practical matters. Situating food in a context of cosmic relations, he sets out a full account of the Scale of Nature (v 509). Madsen (1968) 120 makes heavy weather of departures from Neoplatonism; but the metaphysics of emanation and return were ordinary Christian Platonism. A full statement of M.’s one-substance monism, rejecting the meonic tradition and so dualism; see Danielson (1982) 40, 180; Fallon (1991) 103ff (emphasizing the materialism); Robins (1963) 75f (a source in Origen); J. H. Adamson, in Hunter (1971) 97 (a source in Nicholas of Cusa). For M., spirit and body differ merely in degree – the doctrine of Thnetopsychism. He rejects Aristotelian ‘ontological distinctions between the sub- and superlunary worlds’ (D. Friedman, in Cesare (1991) 164). M.’s analogy for the ascent of species

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470 All things proceed, and up to him return, If not depraved from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Indued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and in things that live, of life; 475 But more refined, more spirituous, and pure, As nearer to him placed or nearer tending Each in their several active spheres assigned, Till body up to spirit work, in bounds Proportioned to each kind. So from the root 480 Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More airy, last the bright consummate flower

is the successive purifications of the alchemic magnum opus, alluded to in first matter . . . refined . . . sublimed. The cosmic tree, identified with the Tree of Life, was a symbol in theoretical alchemy; cp. iv 217–21n; Jung (1953) Index, Tree; Rola (1988) 177, 206. Among other cosmic trees, cp. Mercator’s: ‘Chaos is the only trunk of all the species to be created, having his root and beginning in the Universal Idea Creatrix, which is in the mind, and divine will’ (Historia Mundi, cit. Svendsen (1956) 115). Raphael pictures cosmic organism as dynamic: he is clearly not against change, or free enquiry. A highly individual, quasi-evolutionary vision of striving nature, although with distant analogues, ranging from Aristotle to Boehme, Fludd, and the Cambridge Platonists. Not conceptualized elsewhere in M.’s works. 472. M. rejected the doctrine of Creation ex nihilo; making God the material cause of the world. Cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 307–10: the world is framed of an ‘original matter [that] was not an evil thing, nor to be thought of as worthless: it was good, and it contained the seeds of all subsequent good’. For primal matter in alchemy, see iii 601–5n. 477–9. Cp. Comus 459–63 (a moral application); Augustine, Confessions XIII xix 25 (1992) 287 (the elect ‘perfect but not yet like angels’); Spenser, FQ VII vii 58, combining the Pauline change from corruptible to incorruptible (1 Cor. 15) with Aristotle’s natural change as growth, and Plato’s triadic return to God: ‘all things . . . by their change their being doe dilate: / And turning to themselves at length againe, / Doe worke their owne perfection so by fate’. Disproving M. N. Clark’s notion, ELR, 7 (1973) 213, that ‘predestination and evolution are totally opposed concepts’. M.’s version of predestination was Arminian; cp. Nicolescu (1991). 481. airy: Implying lightness and upward tendency; cp. Adam’s ‘airy light’ sleep (v 4). The element air corresponded to the sanguine temperament of mankind before the Fall (Klibansky (1964) 105, 110f ). consummate: completed, perfected.

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Spirits odorous breathes: flowers and their fruit Man’s nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed To vital spirits aspire, to animal, 485 To intellectual, give both life and sense, Fancy and understanding, whence the soul Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive, or intuitive; discourse Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, 490 Differing but in degree, of kind the same. Wonder not then, what God for you saw good If I refuse not, but convert, as you, To proper substance; time may come when men With angels may participate, and find 495 No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare:

483. scale: ascent of the scala naturae or cosmic gradation. sublimed: (1) raised to a higher state; (2) sublimated (alchemic). For the alchemic ladder, see iii 516–17n; for the scala, Rajan (1962) 150 n 9; Klibansky (1964) 352. 484. vital spirits: Fine pure fluids derived from the blood of the heart and sustaining life. animal spirits: Produced from vital spirits, they controlled sensation and voluntary motion. Cp. iv 805; Harvey (1975) passim. 487. ‘Reason is the characteristic function of the soul’. 488–90. Simple, undifferentiated, intuitive operation of the contemplating intellect (mens) was contrasted with its discursive, ratiocinative, piecemeal operation together with the reason (ratio). Angels could reason intuitively, i.e. nondiscursively. Thomas Aquinas held they had perfect knowledge without discourse; and to Ramists intuitive knowledge was the goal of training the natural reason in contemplation. Cp. Plato, Republic 533–4; Augustine, Confessions XI vi 8 (1992) 224; Ficino, De Immortalitate Animae xiii 2 (1576) 290 (ratio cogitatrix et opinatrix. Mens autem illa quae est animae caput, et auriga, suapte natura angelos imitata, non successione, sed momento quod cupit assequitur: The intellect, which is head and charioteer of the soul, by its own nature imitates the angels, and pursues what it desires not successively but in an instant); West (1955) 47; Harvey (1975) 41 (Avicenna’s distinction between humanity’s intellectus in habitu and the perfection of intellectus accomodatus); Sloane (1985) 230 (‘intuitive . . . had within it the Lat. intueor – to gaze at, to contemplate’). Jacques Maritain calls preoccupation with intuitive knowledge the ‘heresy of angelism’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 53). 493. proper: fit, suitable (OED 9); my own (OED 2). 494. Not participate ‘in spiritual nature’ (as Flannagan), which they already do, but in fully angelic nature.

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And from these corporal nutriments perhaps Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend Ethereal, as we, or may at choice 500 Here or in heavenly paradises dwell; If ye be found obedient, and retain Unalterably firm his love entire Whose progeny you are. Meanwhile enjoy Your fill what happiness this happy state 505 Can comprehend, incapable of more. To whom the patriarch of mankind replied. O favourable spirit, propitious guest, Well hast thou taught the way that might direct 496–503. Simplifying the issues before humanity to a direct choice between eating obediently and eating disobediently ( pace Empson (1961) 150); eating in itself being a neutral act. For the idea that unfallen humanity would eventually have been raised to angelic nature, cp. Augustine, City of God XIV x; Lewis (1942) 66; Ball, Covenant of Grace (1645) 10 (rejecting ‘translation after some number of years spent on earth’); Rosenblatt (1994) 36. But M. is closer to Arminius (1956) ii 73 envisaging a soul-making theodicy; Raphael indicates that Adam and Eve are not fully developed (Danielson (1982) 178). Cp. Of Reformation, YP i 616 (a vision of the faithful rewarded with angelic titles); Harvey (1975) 41 (Avicenna’s ladder of being); Conway (1996) (the cabbalistic doctrine of the world as a soul capable of progressing up a ladder to perfection). tract: duration, lapse. tract of time was idiomatic: e.g. Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 127; Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 179 (‘plenitude of time’). 501. Isa. 1:19, ‘If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land’. Raphael’s sanguine meliorism passes over the continuation (‘But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it’). 503–5. ‘Inauspicious’; cp. iv 533–5; vii 162; M. Agari, in Yoshida (1983) 150. 503. progeny: Cp. Acts 17:28, St Paul’s Mars’ Hill sermon on the unknown god: ‘as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring’ (quoting Aratus, Phaenomena 5). In a marginal note M. compares Lucretius ii 991f (M. Kelley and S. D. Atkins, PMLA, 70 (1955) 1092). 504. Your fill: Biblical diction; e.g. Deut. 23:24, ‘When thou comest into thy neighbour’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel.’ 505. incapable: (1) unable (for it to comprehend more happiness), at least for the present; (2) unable, as you are, to do more than enjoy. 508–12. Affirming their ability to climb obediently, step by step; contrast

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Our knowledge, and the scale of nature set 510 From centre to circumference, whereon In contemplation of created things By steps we may ascend to God. But say, What meant that caution joined, If ye be found Obedient? Can we want obedience then 515 To him, or possibly his love desert Who formed us from the dust, and placed us here Full to the utmost measure of what bliss Human desires can seek or apprehend? To whom the angel. Son of heaven and earth, 520 Attend: that thou art happy, owe to God; That thou continu’st such, owe to thyself, That is, to thy obedience; therein stand. This was that caution giv’n thee; be advised. God made thee perfect, not immutable; 525 And good he made thee, but to persevere He left it in thy power, ordained thy will By nature free, not over-ruled by fate the sudden Fall; see Rosenblatt (1994) 37f; K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 101–33. Cp. the Jacob’s ladder of contemplation, refused by Satan (iii 510–15n, 516–17n) – another passage with an italicized biblical quotation. The alchemic version of the scala enacts creation (A. Versluis, Alexandria, 3 (1995) 26f ). 520–43. Repeating God’s rejection of deterministic predestination (iii 93– 128), now from the viewpoint of practical theology. Following Horace’s rule for brevity in precepts, Ars Poetica 335f (esto brevis, ut cito dicta / percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles). 522. stand: A thematic word, occurring (with derivatives) as often as 160 times in PL, often figuratively; cp. esp. iii 99 (‘sufficient to have stood’); v 540; Voragine, Golden Legend (1900) v 187 (of the angels: ‘Some standeth in working, some in teaching’). 524. Fallible, although perfect (complete). Less perfect than Messiah, thinks Musacchio (1991) 69, on the strength of i 4. But creatures of very different greatness might be equally perfect. 524–40. Reminding Adam of the connections between freedom, obedience, love, and justice. Cp. De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 189: ‘The will which is threatened or overshadowed by any external decree cannot be free, and once force is imposed all esteem for services rendered grows faint and vanishes altogether.’ The seemingly moralistic stress on obedience (v 514) follows from M.’s passionate Arminianism, affirming free will. Only when obedient can human freedom be meaningful. ‘Duty’ would be a nineteenth-century near-equivalent, ‘responsibility’ a modern. Cp. Lev. 26; Deut. 10:12, 27–32; 1 John 5:3; Rosenblatt (1994) 17.

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Inextricable, or strict necessity; Our voluntary service he requires, Not our necessitated, such with him Finds no acceptance, nor can find, for how Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve Willing or no, who will but what they must By destiny, and can no other choose? Myself and all the angelic host that stand In sight of God enthroned, our happy state Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds; On other surety none; freely we serve, Because we freely love, as in our will To love or not; in this we stand or fall: And some are fallen, to disobedience fallen, And so from heaven to deepest hell; oh fall From what high state of bliss into what woe! To whom our great progenitor. Thy words Attentive, and with more delighted ear, Divine instructor, I have heard, than when Cherubic songs by night from neighbouring hills Aërial music send: nor knew I not To be both will and deed created free; Yet that we never shall forget to love Our maker, and obey him whose command Single, is yet so just, my constant thoughts Assured me and still assure: though what thou tellst Hath passed in heaven, some doubt within me move, But more desire to hear, if thou consent, The full relation, which must needs be strange,

534. Like Satan, who embraces a tragic destiny (iv 58). 536. enthroned: Qualifying angelic host as much as God; expressing a vision of dispersed autonomy. 538. serve,] serve. 1667 (erroneously). 540. Cp. iv 66f; vi 911f; De Doctrina i 3, YP vi 163 (‘The matter or object of the divine plan was that angels and men alike should be endowed with free will, so that they could either fall or not fall’). 543. For the rhetoric, cp. i 91–2n. 548. Aerial music: Hymns of the cherub guards. Cp. iv 680–8; 2 Enoch xiii 33f. 551–2. Single: (1) unique, and so easy to obey (i 32; iv 419ff, 432); (2) absolute, therefore right to obey. yet: and also (OED 1a). On Adam’s positive view of the law of Paradise, see Rosenblatt (1994) 16. 556. On the taste for strange narratives and miraviglie in epic, see Treip (1994).

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Worthy of sacred silence to be heard; And we have yet large day, for scarce the sun Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins 560 His other half in the great zone of heaven. Thus Adam made request, and Raphael After short pause assenting, thus began. High matter thou enjoinst me, O prime of men, Sad task and hard, for how shall I relate 565 To human sense the invisible exploits Of warring spirits; how without remorse The ruin of so many glorious once And perfect while they stood; how last unfold The secrets of another world, perhaps 570 Not lawful to reveal? Yet for thy good This is dispensed, and what surmounts the reach 557. Cp. Horace, Odes II xiii 29f, tr. Bennett, the songs ‘worthy of sacred silence’ (sacro digna silentio) that Sappho and Alcaeus sing to the marvelling shades. As often, the continuation is also relevant: ‘but the dense throng, shoulder to shoulder packed, drinks in more greedily stories of battles and of tyrants banished’. 558. large: (1) ample (OED 2); (2) a day and more (OED 5). Raphael’s narration enlarges the time by its fictive duration. Yet the command to spend just six hours (v 229) is obeyed (viii 630–2); Raphael knows how to ‘redeem the time’. 560. zone: belt (often of the sun’s ecliptic path, the zodiac). 563. prime: first; original. A favourite word, often suggesting excellence, prelapsarian freshness, or principal rank; cp. iv 592; v 21, 170; viii 194; ix 200. 563–4. Raphael’s relation, which continues to the end of Bk vi, is one of two ‘episodes’ (inset narratives or digressions) concluding the poem’s two halves; see xi 356–8n; Introduction: Numerical composition. Such episodes, often relating events before or after the main action (like flashbacks in film), were regular in epic. Cp. Homer, Od. ix (Odysseus’ narration to the Phaeacians – an analogue made explicit at PL v 341); Virgil, Aen ii 3 (the opening of Aeneas’ narration to Dido: infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem). High: Formally and substantively; Raphael prepares to approach Messiah’s throne, at the poem’s elevated centre (vi 749–59). 566. remorse: pity (OED 3). Burden thinks Raphael must be without remorse because he (and God) are perfectly just. But the task will nevertheless be sad, and Raphael does not know whether he can get through it without breaking down; cp. xi 99. 569–70. Cp. vii 120; viii 174f, ‘It occurs rather often to Raphael that he is not sure how much God will allow him to tell’ (Empson (1961) 149). Perhaps Raphael wishes to remind Adam that not all knowledge is licit.

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Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By likening spiritual to corporal forms, As may express them best, though what if earth 575 Be but the shadow of heav’n, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought? As yet this world was not, and Chaos wild Reigned where these heavens now roll, where earth now rests Upon her centre poised, when on a day 580 (For time, though in eternity, applied To motion, measures all things durable

572–4. As an ambassador, Raphael conforms his communication to the ‘guise of the country’ (Fuller, Holy State, ‘The Ambassador’ (1840) 258f ). Cp. vii 70–2. A much discussed indication that M. practises a ‘method of accommodation’ – that the episode, or the poem, is not to be taken literally; see Hanford (1947) 416; Frye (1960) 14. Madsen (1968) 19, 87ff somewhat tortuously takes the shadow to be of future earthly events. Treip (1994) 194–6 sees an announcement of allegory; comparing Fornari on Ariosto, Orl. Fur., and suggesting a Victorine aesthetic. But M.’s allegory has broader validation (as Treip herself convincingly shows); cp. Rom. 1:20; Augustine, Confessions X vi 10; Dante, Par. xxiii 55–78 (the difficulty of figurando il Paradiso). In Shaw’s Man and Superman, Don Juan questions the possibility of describing heaven in metaphors; but there was a long tradition, from Pseudo-Dionysius on, of doing just that. To think M. ‘naive’ on this count is to show obliviousness to his allegory, like Tillotson (1942) 197. Evans (1996) 76 compares the rhetoric of John Eliot and other colonists, who accommodate their explanations ‘by some familiar similitude’ – allegory of another sort. 573. corporal ] corporeal Darbishire. (On the ground that M. distinguished corporeal = ‘having a body’ from corporal = ‘related to the body’.) But he did not observe this distinction regularly, if at all; see A. Fowler, in Milton (1968); OED s. v. Corporal 1c, 2. 574–6. Perhaps hinting materialism. In Platonic thought, the phenomenal world is to the world of ideas as shadow to object; cp. iv 207f; Plato, Republic x. 578–9. For the position of earth at creation, see vii 240–2n. these heavens: the astronomical spheres; the sky. 579–82. Navigating round Plato’s doctrine of time as an image of eternity, generated by astronomical motions, which ‘existed not before the heavens came into being’ (Timaeus 37E–38E), by positing motion in eternity (something Plato himself excludes). M. knows the limitations of human language about eternity. Cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 313–14: ‘It seems likely that that apostasy, as a result of which so many myriads

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By present, past, and future) on such day As heaven’s great year brings forth, the empyreal host Of angels by imperial summons called, 585 Innumerable before the almighty’s throne Forthwith from all the ends of heaven appeared Under their hierarchs in orders bright Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,

of them fled, beaten, to the lowest part of heaven, took place before even the first beginnings of this world [ante ipsa mundi primordia]. There is certainly no reason why we should conform to the popular belief that motion and time, which is the measure of motion, could not, according to our concepts of “before” and “after”, have existed before this world was made [ante mundum hunc conditum esse].’ Sound as this may be, M. supports it by a mere quibble on ‘eternal’ – ‘For Aristotle, who taught that motion and time are inherent only in this world, asserted, nevertheless, that this world was eternal.’ 582–94. Revard (1980) 267 contrasts i 531–67, where martial music of brazen trumpets summons to the assembly. Ross (1943) 107 imagines inconsistency with the opening of Bk ix and Adam’s simplicity (v 353–7). Cp. xi 238–47 (Michael, clad ‘as man . . . to meet man’ in impressive armour); v 563–75 (Raphael). See Schaar (1982) 136 (on the antanaclasis empyreal / imperial); Leonard (1990) 67 (‘the titles are properly “empyreal”, not “imperial” ’, as Satan and Beelzebub pretend). 583–6. Job 1:6, ‘Now there was a day when the sons of God [‘angels’, Geneva margin] came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’ great year: The cycle completed when all stars return to their original positions; often connected with the equinoctial precessional period. P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 135 speculates that a day in heaven equals 100 earth years, on the basis of Plato’s 36,000-year annus magnus. But there were many other estimates: 12,954 (Servius), 15,000 (Macrobius), etc. No ratio is implied: M. means the critical juncture when one cycle follows another. The Great Year was identified with the Politicus Cycles of Uniformity and of Dissimilarity (the deterioration begun when the Golden Age was lost). The day of the Son’s generation begins a new age – and the poem’s action; cp. Introduction: Time-scheme; J. Adams, in Plato (1929) ii 295–302; Fowler (1964) 37f, 193–5. 585. Dan. 7:9 Geneva note identifies thrones around the divine throne as ‘places where God and his Angels should come to judge these monarchies’ (Flannagan). 587. On the orders of angels see i 128–9n; West (1955). 588. Cp. Dan. 7:10 (‘thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him’); Ps. 68:17 (‘thousands

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Standards, and gonfalons twixt van and rear 590 Stream in the air, and for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of orders, and degrees; Or in their glittering tissues bear imblazed Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love Recorded eminent. Thus when in orbs 595 Of circuit inexpressible they stood, Orb within orb, the Father infinite, By whom in bliss embosomed sat the Son, Amidst as from a flaming mount, whose top Brightness had made invisible, thus spake. 600 Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, Hear my decree, which unrevoked shall stand.

of angels’). Ten and powers of ten were forms of the monad. On angelic multiplicity and unity see v 610–12n; vi 766n, 809–10n; Dante, Par. xxix 130–45; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 637–41, 658–60; Godwin (1991) 50 (Fludd’s illustration of the angelic orders as multiples of ten). 589. gonfalons: banners fastened to cross-bars (Standards being fasted to a flagpole). Often ecclesiastical. 590–1. On M.’s hierarchy of merit, see Zagorin (1992) 129. 593. Contrast the rebel ensigns (i 539n), lacking Holy memorials (chronicles, commemorations, often ecclesiastical) and instead sporting pagan or secular ‘arms and trophies’. The meritocratic heraldry risks pride in virtue, according to Stavely (1987) 71f. In the Civil War both sides carried such insignia, often emblematic or devout; see Young (1995) passim. 594–6. So the angels encircle God the spaceless centre in Dante, Par. xxviii. Cp. v 163n; Rosenblatt (1994) 31 (on the Israelites gathered round the holy mountain to receive the Law). orbs: Merging imperceptibly with astronomical spheres and ‘the orbs / Of his fierce chariot’, Messiah’s cosmic vehicle (vi 828f ). The angels accompany operations of providence throughout the universe of secondary causes. For the circular disposition of angels, cp. iii 60–2; vi 631; Frye (1978) 184 (the visual tradition in Raphael, Tintoretto, Camassei at Pal. Barberini). 597. embosomed: Cp. iii 168–9n, 239, 279. 598. whose top] whoseop 1667, corrected in Errata. 599. For God’s ‘majesty of darkness’ see ii 264–5n; for God’s skirts ‘dark with excessive bright’, iii 375–82n. 601. No mere roll-call of titles; cp. Col. 1:16 for Christ’s agency in the angels’ creation (‘whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him’).

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This day I have begot whom I declare My only Son, and on this holy hill 605 Him have anointed, whom ye now behold At my right hand; your head I him appoint; And by myself have sworn to him shall bow All knees in heaven, and shall confess him Lord:

603–6. Anti-Trinitarian; but, as Driscoll (1993) 73 says, the Son’s elevation is story, not doctrine. The motivation is from Ps. 2:6f (‘Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree . . . Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee’; M. inserts ‘though ye rebel’) and Heb. 1:5 (‘unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?’). Cp. v 832; De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 206 (interpreting these texts as referring to metaphorical generation: ‘begot’ = made king). The exaltation is distinct from ‘appointment to the function of mediator’ (PL iii 313ff ); a series of metaphorical generations seems to be envisaged (vi 760ff, 890–2). Empson (1950) 102 finds the passage shocking because it shows arbitrariness in God: ‘If the Son had inherently held this position from before the creation of all angels, why has it been officially withheld from him till this day? . . . to give no reason at all for the Exaltation makes it appear a challenge.’ Cp. Kendrick (1986) 137 (‘unmotivated’). But M., ever affirming God’s unconditioned freedom, may intend just this effect. Cp. De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 208f: ‘however the Son was begotten, it did not arise from natural necessity . . . God always acts with absolute freedom’. The Son’s right is not hereditary but meritocratic (iii 308–11) – a doctrine with Zanchius’ authority, perhaps applied politically; see Hunter (1971) 115f; M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 126f (adding less plausibly that the exaltation indicates ‘God’s relinquishment of power’). The idea that Christ’s exaltation occasioned angelic rebellion had some vogue; cp. v 673ff, 662ff; Valmarana, Daemonomachiae (1623) (Satan rebelling when God prophesies the incarnation); McColley (1940) 33; Christopher (1982) 90–5 (Satan’s rejection of the ‘primal decree’); Corns (1994) 19 (finding an ‘angelomorphic’ metaphor of a boardroom coup to test the angels). 606. ‘The Father’s delegation of His powers to the Son is paralleled by Satan’s sending Sin and Death to earth as his viceregents [sic]’ (Rajan (1962) 47). head: Cp. Eph. 4:15; Col. 2:9f, ‘in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.’ On the generation of the Son ‘above his fellows’, cp. Donne, Sermons iii 292, 299. 607–8. Cp. Gen. 22:16 (‘By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord’); Phil. 2:9–11 (applying Isa. 45:23 – ‘God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every

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Under his great vicegerent reign abide 610 United as one individual soul For ever happy: him who disobeys Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day Cast out from God and blessed vision, falls Into utter darkness, deep engulfed, his place 615 Ordained without redemption, without end. So spake the omnipotent, and with his words All seemed well pleased, all seemed, but were not all. That day, as other solemn days, they spent In song and dance about the sacred hill, 620 Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere knee should bow, . . . And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord’). Lord:] Lord, 1667 some copies. 609. vicegerent: viceregent. Applied to kings or priests as representatives of God. 610–12. Contrast of divine union with evil division or multitude informs much of the action: e.g. i 338ff; v 588n, 898–903n; vi 767n, 809–10n. For the dyad (principle of division) as opposed to the monad, see F. M. Cornford, CQ, 17 (1933) 6; MacQueen (1985) Index, Numbers, individual. For the Son as a means to unity, see Revard (1980) 57f; on the politics of unanimity, Benet (1994) 100. individual: indivisible, inseparable. 611–12. Attacked by Ezra Pound as ambiguous and un-English, but defended by L. M. Johnson, in Danielson (1989) 65f, as miming ‘shared properties of the Father and the Son’. 613. blessed vision: Cp. ‘beatific vision’ (i 684). ‘For M., damnation is synonymous with separation’ (Revard (1980) 58). 614. utter: outer. 615. without: For the varied stress, cp. ii 892n; B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 202f. 616. Some copies of 1667 have no new paragraph. 618–19. solemn days: holy days, festivals. Politically, these were opposed by Puritans. On the angels’ Apollonian dancing before feasting, see Carter (1996) 58. Cp. Dante, Purg. xix 38 (i giron del sacro monte); Schaar (1982) 129 contrasting i 787. 620–4. A positive presentation of obedience, offsetting Satan’s travesty at v 787–99. ‘That gaiety, innate yet ceremonial, those turning, pirouetting half rhymes and caesuras, reach to the heart of what discipline can give’ (Rajan (1962) 63). For the universe as a dance, cp. iii 579–81n; v 178n; Schaar (1982) 119 (citing Clement of Rome (Migne, P.G. i 249), who enjoyed a vogue in M.’s time, from discovery of new work). For the connection of angels with stars (e.g. iv 782–4n), an authority was Job 38:7, ‘the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’. The connection, then ubiquitous, extended to ‘angelic’

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Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels Resembles nearest, mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular Then most, when most irregular they seem: 625 And in their motions harmony divine So smooths her charming tones, that God’s own ear Listens delighted. Evening now approached (For we have also our evening and our morn, We ours for change delectable, not need) 630 Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn Desirous; all in circles as they stood, Tables are set, and on a sudden piled With angels’ food, and rubied nectar flows: In pearl, in diamond, and massy gold, 635 Fruit of delicious vines, the growth of heaven.

courtiers, often stellified in masques (Fowler (1996) chs 1, 2). sphere: the heavens. fixed: ‘fixed’ stars. The eccentric circles used in planetary systems (iii 575n) were instances of the irregular accommodated to a higher regularity. Cp. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V xxiv 69, where the vagi motus rata tamen et certa of planetary orbits delight the wise. On Renaissance faith in the regularity of astronomical movements, see Marjara (1992) 200–3. On mazes imitating cosmic patterns, see Doob (1990) Index, Cosmic labyrinths. 625–8. See Prol II on the music of the spheres. A Neopythagorean commonplace; cp. YP i 235n; CHRP 284f; Walker (1972) 22f, 185f; Kircher (1650). Neoplatonists held that astrological proportions could arouse resonance between soul and planet; cp. Il Penseroso 93–6 (‘a true concent / With planet’); Macrobius, Dream of Scipio II iii 15, tr. Stahl (‘harmony was thus forthcoming, the proportional intervals of which were interwoven into the fabric of the Soul and . . . into the corporeal universe’); Fludd, Monochordum Mundi, in Anatomiae Amphitheatrum (1623) 287–331, illus. Godwin (1991) Pl. 58. As late as Kepler, astronomers thought in terms of musical intervals (tones) between the planetary spheres (Dreyer (1953) 406–8). charming: magical. Cp. Macrobius, op. cit. II iii 11: ‘It is natural for everything that breathes to be captivated by music, since the heavenly Soul that animates the universe sprang from music.’ 627. Evening now] Evening 1667; Evening now 1674. Day 2 of the poem’s action; M. reckons days from sunset in the Hebrew manner; see Introduction: Time-scheme. Hence the sequence evening . . . morning. 631. circles: Cp. v 163, 182. An old-fashioned way of picturing angels (Frye (1978) 185f ). Desirous;] Desirous, 1667; Desirous; 1674. 633. flows:] flows 1674. rubied: Mediating between organic and inorganic (Fallon (1991) 198f ).

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On flowers reposed, and with fresh flowerets crowned, They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy, secure Of surfeit where full measure only bounds 640 Excess, before the all-bounteous king, who showered With copious hand, rejoicing in their joy. Now when ambrosial night with clouds exhaled From that high mount of God, whence light and shade Spring both, the face of brightest heaven had changed 645 To grateful twilight (for night comes not there In darker veil) and roseate dews disposed All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest, Wide over all the plain, and wider far Than all this globous earth in plain outspread, 650 (Such are the courts of God) the angelic throng Dispersed in bands and files their camp extend 636–40. On flowers . . . showered] So 1674; They eat, they drink, and with refection sweet / Are filled, before the all-bounteous king, who showered 1667. The addition of v 638 relates to Raphael’s present meal (cp. v 451f ), but adds nothing to its temperance ( pace Flannagan), since secure / Of surfeit means ‘reckless of excess’. Suggesting a eucharistic meal (communion). W. B. Hunter compares Maundy Thursday before Good Friday and the three-day war in heaven symbolizing Christ’s triumph over death (Hunter (1971) 126f ). Now the rebel angels ‘eat damnation’ (M. Fixler, in Kranidas (1971) 144). Lewalski (1985) 141–3 calls the ideal day pastoral; but prominent feasting was a georgic topic. Corns (1994) 47 sees allusion to coronation feasts. vines: See v 427n. flowerets: Presumably amarant; see iii 350–7n. communion sweet: Cp. ‘fellowships of joy’ (xi 80). immortality: Cp. John 4:10 (‘living water’); Ps. 36:8f (‘Thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life’). 642. ambrosial: fragrant. Cp. ii 245n; Homer, Il. ii 57 (of night). 643. Cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 312, distinguishing the visible heaven from an ‘invisible and supreme heaven’ containing ‘the heaven of the blessed’ as part. This ‘throne and dwelling-place of God’ existed before creation; cp. vi 4–12; vii 584–6; Augustine, Confessions XII viii–xviii (1992) 249–59. 645. Cp. v 162; Rev. 21:25 (‘There shall be no night there’). On the ‘grateful vicissitude’ or variety of heaven and Paradise, see Summers (1962) 71–86. 646. Cp. ‘the timely dews of sleep’ inclining Adam’s eyelids at iv 614. roseate: rose-scented (OED 3); rose-coloured. 647. Ps. 121:4, ‘he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep’. 649. Suggesting a plane projection as in Mercator’s world maps.

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By living streams among the trees of life, Pavilions numberless, and sudden reared, Celestial tabernacles, where they slept 655 Fanned with cool winds, save those who in their course Melodious hymns about the sovereign throne Alternate all night long: but not so waked Satan, so call him now, his former name Is heard no more in heaven; he of the first, 660 If not the first archangel, great in power, In favour and pre-eminence, yet fraught With envy against the Son of God, that day Honoured by his great Father, and proclaimed Messiah king anointed, could not bear 665 Through pride that sight, and thought himself impaired. Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain, Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved

652. living: Cp. v 636–40n; Rev. 22:1f (streams and trees of life together). 655–7. For offices of the Temple-service that alternate by course, see iv 561n. course: Astronomical diction; cp. the association of angels and stars (iv 782–4n; v 620–4n, 700–14n). 658–9. Cp. i 82n, 361–3, names of the unfaithful razed from the book of life. Satan: Not inevitably the Devil’s name; for other traditions, see Leonard (1990) 89. former name: Not exactly identified as ‘Lucifer’ (the Scholastic tradition accepted by Fludd); the original name is inaccessible. See Leonard op. cit. 86–146. 659. in heaven] heaven 1667, corr. in Errata. 660. Satan held high rank – ‘magister’ in Odoricus Valmarana; ‘viceroy’ in Joost van den Vondel; ‘head of all principalities’ in Heywood, Hierarchy (1635) (Revard (1980) 200). archangel: Probably ‘chief angel’ (v 812), rather than member of the archangelic order. Satan was the ‘equal’ of Michael (vi 246–8, 690). 662. Avoiding connection of Satan’s envy with the incarnation; such motivation departed from the main patristic tradition, and was rejected by Calvin; see A. Williams, SP, 42 (1945) 257; Evans (1968) 255; Revard (1980) 67f, 75. John Owen and others therefore took ‘begat’ (Ps. 2) more vaguely, as ‘exaltation’; so opening the door to M.’s fictional insert. 664. Messiah: anointed (Heb.). Cp. v 603–6n; Acts 10:38; Corns (1994) 46 (on the monarchic associations). 665. impaired: reduced in status; disrespected. 666. On Satan’s conception of Sin, see P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 6 (1976) 327, 331: Satan swallows wisdom, as Zeus swallows Metis (divine counsel).

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With all his legions to dislodge, and leave 670 Unworshipped, unobeyed the throne supreme Contemptuous, and his next subordinate Awak’ning, thus to him in secret spake. Sleepst thou companion dear, what sleep can close Thy eyelids? And rememberst what decree 675 Of yesterday, so late hath passed the lips Of heaven’s almighty? Thou to me thy thoughts Wast wont, I mine to thee was wont to impart; Both waking we were one; how then can now Thy sleep dissent? New laws thou seest imposed; 680 New laws from him who reigns, new minds may raise In us who serve, new counsels, to debate What doubtful may ensue, more in this place To utter is not safe. Assemble thou Of all those myriads which we lead the chief; 669. dislodge: (1) shift quarters (military); (2) displace (with throne as object). Raphael’s ‘miniature Iliad’ begins like it with ceremony, and withdrawal of an affronted hero (Lewalski (1985) 42). 671. his . . . subordinate: Later called Beelzebub (i 81, 271; ii 299, 378). Not named, because Bk v was written before Bk ii (Empson (1961) 99). Or, more likely, because Beelzebub is still innocent, and his prelapsarian name unknown; cp. v 658–9n; Leonard (1990) 155f. 672. in secret: But overheard, and so known to Raphael. No need to speculate, with Gilbert (1947) 63, about omniscient narration in a putative original version. In any case Raphael (or M.) might follow the historical convention of invented speeches. 673. Cp. Q Nov 90–2 (‘the crafty lying serpent . . . spoke these words: “Are you asleep, my son?” ’); Homer, Il. ii 23 (the opening of the baneful dream inciting Agamemnon to an attack that would increase not his but Achilles’ honour). dear: Usually of family relations; suggestive here of perverse intimacy. 674–80. On Satan’s voluntarist assumptions, eliding God’s goodness, see Danielson (1989) 113. 680. Corns (1994) 47 compares innovations during Charles I’s personal rule. But referring, as plausibly, to the Nineteen Propositions of the Long Parliament, which Charles rejected in June 1642, and so rebelled (Parliamentarians held) against the Crown. 681. new: Counting against the idea (Empson (1961) 72) that there had been earlier disloyal councils – or counsels – about God’s ‘claims’. debate: fight. See Leonard (1990) 151. 683. The ‘paranoia . . . of insecure rebellion’ (Flannagan). ‘Satan ought not to be unaware of God’s omniscience’ (Shumaker (1967) 120). Satan is aware, but denies it.

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685 Tell them that by command, ere yet dim night Her shadowy cloud withdraws, I am to haste, And all who under me their banners wave, Homeward with flying march where we possess The quarters of the north, there to prepare 690 Fit entertainment to receive our king The great Messiah, and his new commands, Who speedily through all the hierarchies Intends to pass triumphant, and give laws. So spake the false archangel, and infused 695 Bad influence into the unwary breast Of his associate; he together calls, Or several one by one, the regent powers, Under him regent, tells, as he was taught, That the most high commanding, now ere night, 700 Now ere dim night had disencumbered heaven, 685–93. This ‘ordinary wartime propaganda operation’ (Empson (1961) 72) deprives Satan’s subordinates of freedom, and makes it more difficult for them later to choose loyalty. See Leonard (1990) 153: the angels accept Satan’s explanations innocently. 689. north: See P. Salmon, Anglia, 81 (1963) 118–23. For association of the N with evil cp. patristic applications of Isa. 14:12–14 (‘O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . . thou hast said in thine heart, I will . . . exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north’); also Jer. 1:14 (‘Out of the north an evil shall beak forth’); 4:6; 6:1; Gregory, Commentary on Job 17:24, Migne lxxvi 26; Valmarana, Daemonomachiae (1623) (Satan’s rebelling in the N); Habington (1948), ‘Nox Nocti Indicat Scientiam. David’ 25–8 (‘from the furthest north; / Some nation may / Yet undiscovered issue forth, / And o’er his new got conquest sway’ – serving as the scourge of God against proud power). The localization gives point to passages like i 351–5n (multitudes from the ‘populous north’). On the historical location of the rebellion in the N, see Morrill (1993) ch. 9; Murrin (1994) 127f. 690. entertainment: On the ambiguity; see Leonard (1990) 150. 700–14. Sustained astronomical metaphor; Satan leading off a starry flock. Cp. v 620–4n; Empson (1950) 184f (‘Bentley complained . . . that the Morning Star disappears last of the stars in the morning, so cannot be said to lead them; Pearce smartly replied that a shepherd walks at the back. But the words are Drew after him, and the inversion acts as part of the conflict of feeling; he leads them only towards night’). Depending on familiar symbolism whereby the morning star represented both Satan and Christ. As evening star, Christ set in death; as morning star he was resurrected (Rev. 22:16). Satan–Lucifer travesties Christ – specifically, the Good Shepherd. Cp. Cowley, Davideis (1656) i 93f (‘Once general of a gilded

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The great hierarchal standard was to move; Tells the suggested cause, and casts between Ambiguous words and jealousies, to sound Or taint integrity; but all obeyed 705 The wonted signal, and superior voice Of their great potentate; for great indeed His name, and high was his degree in heaven; His countenance, as the morning star that guides The starry flock, allured them, and with lies 710 Drew after him the third part of heaven’s host: Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns

host of sprites, / Like Hesper, leading forth the spangled nights’); Crashaw, Sospetto d’Herode xxx (‘droves / Of stars’); Schaar (1982) 215f. 701. Cp. v 591, 692, 787–802n, etc. ‘Evocations of degree’ (Rajan (1962) 63). 702. suggested: insinuated (OED 1a). casts: machinates; schemes. 703. jealousies: suspicions. 703–10. John Peter, Dennis Burden, and others fancy a disparity between Raphael’s and God’s accounts of the angels’ Fall. But the angels, tempted by their own species, are fairly described as ‘self-tempted’ (iii 130). 705. wonted: traditional. On the signal, see Schaar (1982) 93f, citing Vida, Christiad (1535) and Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 3 for the trumpet summons. 707. Cp. Leonard (1990) 90: the imagery in effect implies ‘Lucifer’, although Raphael does not say it, since ‘his former name / Is heard no more in heav’n’ (v 658f ). ‘Raphael’s withholding of Satan’s “former name” calls into question this happy concinnity between name and nature.’ 708–9. Bentley questions the propriety of a countenance telling lies, and Pearce defends with analogues. But the face of ‘Lucifer, son of the morning’ (Isa. 14:12) is itself a mendacious impersonation. See Leonard (1990) 106f, citing Grotius (Satan ‘makes a false show of fading before the Son’s greater light’). countenance: appearance (OED 2b). Cp. Schaar (1982) 214. 710. third part: See ii 692n. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 183 (‘most hold that there be far more angels than devils’). Hill (1977) 372 compares ‘the proportion of M.P.s who adhered to Charles I’. But in fact the divisions of the Long Parliament were about even; see Hirst (1986) 200, 211; Morrill (1993) 265. The élitist M. was not interested in numerical majorities or in ‘the inconsiderate multitude’, but in ‘most reason’; cp. Easy Way, YP vii 414f, 446, 455. 711. eternal eye: Cp. iii 648–61n; Ps. 33:18; 54:7; Prov. 15:3 (‘The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good’). From Horapollo on, a single eye commonly emblemized divine omniscience (Wind (1965) 222ff, 232ff, figs. 84–6).

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Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount And from within the golden lamps that burn Nightly before him, saw without their light 715 Rebellion rising, saw in whom, how spread Among the sons of morn, what multitudes Were banded to oppose his high decree; And smiling to his only Son thus said. Son, thou in whom my glory I behold 720 In full resplendence, heir of all my might, Nearly it now concerns us to be sure Of our omnipotence, and with what arms We mean to hold what anciently we claim Of deity or empire, such a foe 725 Is rising, who intends to erect his throne Equal to ours, throughout the spacious north; Nor so content, hath in his thought to try In battle, what our power is, or our right.

713–14. Rev. 4:5, ‘There were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.’ Empson (1950) 184, identifying the lamps as planets, is partly supported by iii 648ff on the seven archangelic eyes. Perhaps, rather, ‘intelligences of planets’; cp. iii 648n, 656n. within] within, 1667 some copies. 716. Cp. v 708–9n; Job 38:7 (angels as morning stars). 717. The angels are neither all banded nor all innocent (Leonard (1990) 159, steering between Peter and Empson). 718. Indicating the speech is not meant in simple seriousness; despite Empson (1961) 96, one need not take God’s anxiety at face value, or share Satan’s disbelief in his omnipotence. Empson finds the joke ‘appallingly malignant’: God’s inaction will drive the rebels ‘into real evil’. But earlier action would have already decided their fate. For the OT idea of God mocking his foes, cp. ii 190–1n; Ps. 2:4; 37:13; Empson (1961) 121. God’s laughter shows omnipotence; the alternative to dualism is his ability to remain good-humoured in face of evil. Besides, why should God not smile at absurdity? 720. Heb. 1:2, ‘His Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds’. 726. Equal: In Luca Giordano’s Naples Fall of the Angels, Satan’s throne is inscribed SIMILIS ERO ALTISSIMO (Frye (1978) 63f ). In itself, Satan’s wish to be like God is not sin (Thomas Aquinas, Summa I q 63); the sin lies in desiring the likeness disobediently (Revard (1980) 62f ). 726. For the evil north, see i 351–5n; v 689n, 755. 727. try: test. 728. battle,] battle 1667 some copies.

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Let us advise, and to this hazard draw 730 With speed what force is left, and all employ In our defence, lest unawares we lose This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill. To whom the Son with calm aspéct and clear Lightning divine, ineffable, serene, 735 Made answer. Mighty Father, thou thy foes Justly hast in derision, and secure Laughst at their vain designs and tumults vain, Matter to me of glory, whom their hate Illústrates, when they see all regal power 740 Giv’n me to quell their pride, and in event Know whether I be dextrous to subdue Thy rebels, or be found the worst in heav’n. So spake the Son, but Satan with his powers Far was advanced on wingèd speed, an host 745 Innumerable as the stars of night, Or stars of morning, dewdrops, which the sun 729–32. God parodies the civic prudence of Cicero; showing ‘the difference between prudence and providence’ (R. Wiltenburg, MiltS, 25 (1990) 103f ). 731. unawares: Sardonic: ‘in no way could an omniscient God be “unawares” ’ (R. Flannagan, in Milton (1993) ). 734. Cp. Dan. 10:6 (the apocalyptic vision of ‘his face as the appearance of lightning’); Matt. 28:3 (the angel of the resurrection with a ‘countenance . . . like lightning’). 735–7. Cp. Ps. 2:4, tr. M. (‘he who in heaven doth dwell / Shall laugh, the Lord shall scoff them’); Revard (1980) 100. 739–40. Cp. Matt. 28:18, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth’. Illustrates: glorifies; illumines. event: result. 741. Matching the Father’s wit: Christ’s dextrous position (OED 1) ‘at the right hand of bliss’ results from his dextrous (skilful) defeat of Satan. Cp. vi 892; Mark 16:19. 743. powers: (1) armies; (2) angels. Cp. i 128–9n. 745. For angels as stars, see v 620–4n, 700–14. 746. stars of morning: Cp. v 708–9n; Callimachus, Hymn to Delos iv (Titans as numerous as constellations); Hartman (1971) 143 (‘already falling into the brightness of a natural dawn’); Schaar (1982) 102f; Leonard (1990) 91 (suddenly ‘Lucifer’s host of morning stars has fallen from heaven to earth’). dewdrops: Dew emblemized evanescent life; cp. v 2; Marvell, ‘On a Drop of Dew’; Henry King, ‘Sic Vita’ (‘Like to the falling of a Star; / . . . Or silver drops of morning dew; / . . . The Dew dries up; the Star is shot; / The flight is past; and Man forgot’); Schaar, op. cit. (finding allusion to the idolatry in Hos. 6:4 and 13:3 – ‘O Judah, what shall I do

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Impearls on every leaf and every flower. Regions they passed, the mighty regencies Of seraphim and potentates and thrones 750 In their triple degrees, regions to which All thy dominion, Adam, is no more Than what this garden is to all the earth, And all the sea, from one entire globose Stretched into longitude; which having passed 755 At length into the limits of the north They came, and Satan to his royal seat High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount Raised on a mount, with pyramids and towers From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold, unto thee? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away’). morning,] morning 1667 some copies. 748. regencies: dominions. 749–50. From Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy onward, the nine angelic orders were often considered as (3 x 3) ranks, expressing the Trinity; cp. Dante, Par. xxviii; Spenser, FQ I xii 39 (‘trinall triplicities on hye’); Agrippa, ‘Scala Novenarii’, De Occulta Philosophia (1531–3, 1992) 286f; Heywood, Hierarchy (1635); West (1955) 133f. potentates: Translating Lat. potestates, Heywood’s order in the second group, corresponding to Sol. 751. dominion: Playing on the name of another order of angels, the dominions (e.g. Col. 1:16). 753–4. globose: sphere (adj. for noun). Cp. vii 357. Stretched into longitude: in flat projection. Cp. v 649. 755. north: See i 351–5n; v 689n, 726. 756. Empson (1961) 77 exonerates Satan as a ‘grand aristocrat’ owing only loose allegiance to central government. But, as Chapman’s Byron plays show, thoughtful republicans regarded aristocratic autonomy with suspicion. Perhaps alluding to Charles I’s raising his standard (v 701) in the north, just before hostilities commenced. 758–9. pyramids: Spires or obelisks, rather than the squat form now assumed; cp. i 591n; ii 1013n (Satan a pyramid); iv 985–7; Church Government i 6, YP i 790 (prelacy’s ‘pyramid aspires and sharpens to ambition . . . it is the most dividing, and schismatical form that Geometricians know of’). Obelisk-pyramids were associated with Rome, and with fame, and in miniature form were fashionable in palaces; see Dibner (1970); Fowler (1994) 94, (1996) 117–26. Emblematically, diamond claims virtue and durability, but may betray hardness of heart. mount: Cp. Ovid, Metam. i 154–6 (the mountain raised in the Giant rebellion against the Olympian gods); Lieb (1981) 156f. When the law of the spirit replaced worship on the old sacred mountains, these came to embody pride; cp. Gal. 4:22–6; John 4:19–24; Rev. 21:22; Lieb (1981) 169.

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760 The palace of great Lucifer (so call That structure in the dialect of men Interpreted), which not long after, he Affecting all equality with God, In imitation of that mount whereon 765 Messiah was declared in sight of heaven, The Mountain of the Congregation called; For thither he assembled all his train, Pretending so commanded to consult About the great reception of their king, 770 Thither to come, and with calumnious art Of counterfeited truth thus held their ears. Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers,

760–6. The moment of Satan’s fall, casuistical tradition distinguishing evil thoughts from evil deeds (Gallagher (1990) 87). For proud imitation of the divine mount, cp. Isa. 14:12–15 (the King of Babylon, identified with Satan by Justin Martyr and Origen); Leonard (1990) 88f, 99. For Satan’s loss of his true name, cp. v 658–9n; vii 132; Boehme (1991) 64, 66; H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 213 (Lucifer = Heb. helel ‘whose verbal stem halal, “to shine”, is indistinguishable from the homograph “to be boastful” ’). On the recession of Satan’s name, Leonard (1990) 94f may be oversubtle – or too hopeful of post-Renaissance novelistic continuity. Lucifer as a place name (so call / That structure) reflects the identification of angels and stars (xii 575–7), rejected by Leonard op. cit. 97 as ‘unknowable’. On Raphael’s use of names to be acquired later, see ibid. 81. dialect: language (OED 1). Richardson compares Homer’s distinguishing the dialects of gods and men. Affecting: pretending to. mount: the ‘holy hill’ of v 604. Revard (1980) 84 compares the throne of Pandaemonium. 770. calumnious: false; defamatory. 771. All, that is, but Abdiel, who disproves Sin’s claim to have won the ‘most averse’ by Satan’s ‘attractive graces’ (ii 763) (Gallagher (1990) 93). 772. Repeating God’s speech at the anointing of Messiah; cp. v 601, 840. 772–7. Expressing M.’s contempt for decrees by tyrants (M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 135). Or, inviting contrast with God’s just decrees based on Messiah’s merit. 772–802. ‘The arrangement is for the sake of musical value, not for significance’, thought T. S. Eliot in 1936; see Eliot (1957) 142). Cp. Empson (1961) 27f (suggesting deliberate imprecision on Satan’s part; he sketches his position only, since the rebels ‘already hate God . . . so much that they do not require completed arguments’); Leonard (1990) 163f (propounding rhetorical summary in the Thucydidean manner, not meant to carry

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If these magnific titles yet remain Not merely titular, since by decree 775 Another now hath to himself engrossed All power, and us eclipsed under the name Of king anointed, for whom all this haste Of midnight march, and hurried meeting here, This only to consult how we may best 780 With what may be devised of honours new Receive him coming to receive from us Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile, Too much to one, but double how endured, To one and to his image now proclaimed? 785 But what if better counsels might erect Our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke? Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend

the whole burden of persuasion). Not wishing to expose fallible humanity to Satan’s sophistries unnecessarily, Raphael only sketches the deliberate confusions of a dishonest orator. Bauman (1987) 209 denies Hunter’s contention that Satan avoids referring to the Son; instancing v 772–84. But Satan never names him Messiah. 773–4. Pepublican titles and forms of address were sometimes comparably grandiose; cp. Deursen (1991) 225 (‘their High Mightinesses’). The gentry’s titles to estates formerly ecclesiastical had been called in question by Laudian policies, and by certain Puritans. 776. For the Son’s inheritance of power through merit not engrossment (monopoly), cp. v 720, 739. 777. See v 605. 782–3. Undercut by Gabriel’s account of Satan’s hypocrisy (iv 959). 787–802. A delicate issue; the same argument is later used against earthly monarchy (xii 64–74). ‘A perfectly orthodox version of the claim that monarchy is not grounded on the law of Nature’ (Rajan (1962) 63 citing Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex (1644)). Eliding, however, the obedience or discipline M. thought essential to republican freedom; cp. Church Government i, YP i 751f: ‘The flourishing and decaying of all civil societies . . . are moved to and fro as upon the axle of discipline.’ The angelic hierarchy was a supreme example of this: ‘The angels themselves, in whom no disorder is feared . . . are distinguished and quaternioned into their celestial princedoms, and satrapies, according as God himself hath writ his imperial decrees through the great provinces of heaven. The state also of the blessed in paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left without discipline.’ (Messiah is exalted because more prepared than the angels obediently to humble himself.) So Driscoll (1993) 22 is mistaken in seeing here existentialist denial of hierarchic order. Like Satan,

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The supple knee? Ye will not, if I trust To know ye right, or if ye know yourselves Natives and sons of heaven possessed before By none, and if not equal all, yet free, Equally free; for orders and degrees Jar not with liberty, but well consist. Who can in reason then or right assume Monarchy over such as live by right His equals, if in power and splendour less, In freedom equal? Or can introduce Law and edíct on us, who without law Err not, much less for this to be our lord, And look for adoration to the abuse Of those imperial titles which assert Our being ordained to govern, not to serve? Thus far his bold discourse without control Had audience, when among the seraphim Abdiel, than whom none with more zeal adored The Deity, and divine commands obeyed, Stood up, and in a flame of zeal severe The current of his fury thus opposed. Oh argument blasphémous, false and proud!

M. is in favour of degree; see M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 136; A. Himy, in Armitage (1995) 125. 788. supple knee: Idiomatic; e.g. Shakespeare, Richard II i iv 33, ‘the tribute of his supple knee’. 799. this: this introducing of Law. Perhaps cp. Luke 19:14, ‘We will not have this [man] to reign over us.’ 802. Recalling the Stuarts’ tendency to assert the divine right of kings to govern, rather than serve the rule of law. Satan avoids the question who ordained the titles; thus opting for the mystification of v 861 (‘fatal course’). Steadman (1995) 264 calls argument from titles philosophical nonsense. But M. did not reject ‘natural language’ (vera vocum notatio) (Leonard (1990) 58–60). 805–7. The first challenge to Satan (Benet (1994) 100). Abdiel (‘Servant of God’) occurs in the Bible only in a genealogy (1 Chr. 5:15). The occultists, being short of angelic names, pressed many such obscure names into service; cp. iv 782–8n; Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (1531–3, 1992); and the sensational Sepher Raziel. Agrippa artlessly remarks that the ‘inquisitive’ can find spirits’ names from those of notable men or places; see West (1955) 152–4; Gilbert (1947) 123. M. tended to see himself as an Abdiel (Zagorin (1992) 128). flame: The seraphim, especially ardent, were often pictured as flames; see ii 512n.

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810 Words which no ear ever to hear in heaven Expected, least of all from thee, ingrate In place thyself so high above thy peers. Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn, 815 That to his only Son by right endued With regal sceptre, every soul in heaven Shall bend the knee, and in that honour due Confess him rightful king? Unjust thou sayst Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free, 820 And equal over equals to let reign, One over all with unsucceeded power. Shalt thou give law to God, shalt thou dispute With him the points of liberty, who made Thee what thou art, and formed the powers of heaven 825 Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their being? Yet by experience taught we know how good, And of our good, and of our dignity How provident he is, how far from thought To make us less, bent rather to exalt 830 Our happy state under one head more near United. But to grant it thee unjust, That equal over equals monarch reign: Thyself though great and glorious dost thou count, 810. Cp. Leonard (1990) 175 suggesting the actual Words are new, as well as their meaning. 811. ingrate: ungrateful. Cp. iii 97f, of the fallen Adam. 812. For Satan’s status see v 660n. 817. Phil. 2:9–11, ‘God also hath highly exalted him . . . That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.’ 821. unsucceeded: never to be succeeded, everlasting. Although at iii 339– 41 God envisages the obsolescence of rule, as loyalty and duty are introjected and God is ‘all in all’. On M.’s theory of political evolution, see M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 120–41. 822–5. Rom. 9:20, ‘O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?’ The issue is whether liberty should be circumscribed by obedience (Danielson (1989) 115ff ). Repeating arguments of M.’s old enemy Salmasius (R. Lejosne, in Armitage (1995) 110). Exposing the true character of Satan’s appeals to liberty (Zagorin (1992) 130). 826–8. Interpreting by the light of experience (Achinstein (1994) 222). Cp. vi 33–6. 830. Cp. Col. 2:10, ‘Ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.’ one] our 1667 some copies (wrongly).

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Or all angelic nature joined in one, 835 Equal to him begotten Son? By whom As by his word the mighty Father made All things, even thee, and all the spirits of heaven By him created in their bright degrees, Crowned them with glory, and to their glory named 840 Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers Essential powers, nor by his reign obscured, But more illustrious made, since he the head One of our number thus reduced becomes, His laws our laws, all honour to him done 845 Returns our own. Cease then this impious rage, And tempt not these; but hasten to appease The incensèd Father, and the incensèd Son, While pardon may be found in time besought. So spake the fervent angel, but his zeal 850 None seconded, as out of season judged, Or singular and rash, whereat rejoiced The apostate, and more haughty thus replied. That we were formed then sayst thou? And the work Of secondary hands, by task transferred 855 From Father to his Son? Strange point and new! 835–40. Col. 1:16–17, ‘For by him [Christ] were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.’ Making explicit the allusions at v 601, 772. However Subordinationist M. may have been, he did not doubt Christ’s agency in creation as the divine Word. Cp. iii 170n, 383n; De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 206. 838. degrees: ranks, hierarchies. 839. ‘Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour’ (Ps. 8:5, often regarded as prophesying the incarnation). 842–5. Making rank depend on service. reduced: Anticipating the incarnational kenosis, Christ’s setting aside his divinity, at a later stage of divine emanation. 845–8. Cp. Ps. 2:12; Isa. 55: 6f. Abdiel’s mention of pardon perhaps counts against the view – Gallagher (1990) 89 – that Satan is still sinless. 853. Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer iv 20 says angels were created on the second day; and Exodus Rabbah adds that hell was created on the same day. 2 Enoch xi 37 has angels created on the first day (Werman (1995) 191). 855. Empson (1961) 83 holds that until now Messiah’s agency in creation has not been mentioned; that Satan’s reaction to the new doctrine

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Doctrine which we would know whence learned: who saw When this creation was? Rememberst thou Thy making, while the maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now; 860 Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised By our own quickening power, when fatal course Had circled his full orb, the birth mature Of this our native heaven, ethereal sons. Our puissance is our own, our own right hand 865 Shall teach us highest deeds, by proof to try Who is our equal: then thou shalt behold Whether by supplication we intend Address, and to begirt the almighty throne Beseeching or besieging. This report,

makes him deny his own creation; and that God kept the doctrine esoteric, ‘to issue a bare challenge’ at Messiah’s coronation. But the doctrine is known to Abdiel. Either an obedient angel can intuit it, or else God’s speech at v 600–15 was fuller than Raphael gives it. 857–63. In claiming his existence to be a function of his thought, Satan ‘fashions himself as the first Cartesian’ (W. Shullenberger, MiltQ, 27 (1993) 42). 860. The primal sin of wishing to exist autonomously; see Augustine, City of God XIV xiii; Lewis (1942) 65; Driscoll (1993) 20 (approving the wish). The moment of Satan’s fall; cp. v 877–9, 894f; Schwartz (1988) 21f; Gallagher (1990) 89. Satan’s ‘failure of self-knowledge’ ( Jacobus (1976) 31) contrasts with Adam’s acknowledgement of his limited experience (viii 251). Satan sustains his denial (in public at least) until i 116–17, but has abandoned it altogether at iv 43. A traditional stance for devils; cp. Par. xxix 49–63, where Dante contrasts the fallen angels with those who acknowledge their creaturely status and perform the cosmic dance. For the coinages, cp. iii 130n. 861–2. Secularized travesty of the Great Year expressing God’s will; see v 583n. birth mature: The birth of Sin (Gallagher (1990) 90). 864–9. R. Lejosne, in Armitage (1995) 114 compares Tenure, YP iii 230. The encounter of Satan and Abdiel is ‘an epitome of the pamphlet wars of the revolution’. 864–5. Ps. 45:4, ‘Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.’ Arrogating to himself the power of God. 869–70. An unprecedented declaration of war (Leonard (1990) 170). Forming the evil word besieging for the first time from its innocent near-homonym – and alternative. On the bathos of besieging, see ibid. 173f. Cp. v 868 (Address).

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870 These tidings carry to the anointed king; And fly, ere evil intercept thy flight. He said, and as the sound of waters deep Hoarse murmur echoed to his words applause Through the infínite host, nor less for that 875 The flaming seraph fearless, though alone Encompassed round with foes, thus answered bold. O alienate from God, O spirit accursed, Forsaken of all good; I see thy fall Determined, and thy hapless crew involved 880 In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread Both of thy crime and punishment: henceforth No more be troubled how to quit the yoke Of God’s Messiah; those indulgent laws Will not be now vouchsafed, other decrees 885 Against thee are gone forth without recall; That golden sceptre which thou didst reject Is now an iron rod to bruise and break Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise, Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly 890 These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath Impendent, raging into sudden flame Distinguish not: for soon expect to feel His thunder on thy head, devouring fire. Then who created thee lamenting learn, 895 When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know. So spake the seraph Abdiel faithful found, Among the faithless, faithful only he; Among innumerable false, unmoved, 872. Suiting Satan’s wish to be a god, this ‘voice of many waters’ is the sound of worship (Rev. 19:6). 875. flaming: See v 805–7n. 882–3. Cp. Christ’s promise: ‘my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matt. 11:30). 886–7. Cp. ii 327–8n; Ps. 2:9 (‘Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron’ – ‘iron sceptre’, Geneva and M.’s translation); Revard (1980) 101–2. bruise: Shadowing x 181 and Gen. 3:15 (‘shall bruise thy head’). 890. Cp. Moses’ warning not to support Korah’s rebellion: ‘Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their sins’ (Num. 16:26). devoted: consigned to destruction (OED 3, a familiar Latinism). lest: but lest. 893. Heb. 12:29, ‘For our God is a consuming fire.’ 898–903. For the confrontation of one and multitude, cp. v 620–2n; on its Pythagorean origin, see Fowler (1964) 5–7; Lawlor (1982) 23ff.

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Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified 900 His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; Nor number, nor example with him wrought To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained 905 Superior, nor of violence feared aught; And with retorted scorn his back he turned On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed. THE END OF THE FIFTH BOOK

899. On the rhetoric, see ii 185n. 906. retorted: (1) requited; (2) turned back (the root sense, mimed in his back he turned).

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Paradise Lost BOOK VI The Argument

Raphael continues to relate how Michael and Gabriel were sent forth to battle against Satan and his angels. The first fight described: Satan and his powers retire under night:1 he calls a council, invents devilish engines,2 which in the second day’s fight put Michael and his angels to some disorder; but they at length pulling up mountains overwhelm both the force and machines of Satan: yet the tumult not so ending, God on the third day sends Messiah his Son, for whom he had reserved the glory of that victory: he in the power of his Father coming to the place, and causing all his legions to stand still on either side, with his chariot and thunder driving into the midst of his enemies, pursues them unable to resist towards the wall of heaven; which opening, they leap down with horror and confusion into the place of punishment prepared for them in the deep: Messiah returns with triumph to his Father. All night the dreadless angel unpursued Through heaven’s wide champaign held his way, till morn, Waked by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave vi Argument.1 under night: under cover of darkness (Flannagan). Arg.2 devilish engines: The artillery invented at vi 470ff. 1. dreadless angel: Abdiel. 2–4. For the motif, cp. Ovid, Metam. ii 112–14, tr. Sandys: ‘The wakeful morning from the east displays / Her purple doors, and odoriferous bed, / With plenty of dew-dropping roses spread.’ hours: The spatial sidereal hours or sectors of the firmament, which appear to revolve about earth; in charge of heaven’s gates in Homer, Il. v 749. For their wakefulness, cp. Spenser, FQ VII vii 45 (‘the Howres, faire daughters of high Jove / . . . who did them Porters make / Of heavens gate (whence all the gods issued) / Which they did dayly watch, and nightly wake / By even turnes, ne ever did their charge forsake’); Hieatt (1960) 111–13. 4–11. The hours were often described as moving by turns (alternately) and forming light–dark pairs. Hesiod’s alternate home of Night and Day in the abyss (Theogony 744–57) is relocated fast by God’s throne. Time is thus allowed near to God (v 579–82n), whose mount however contains

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Within the mount of God, fast by his throne, Where light and darkness in perpetual round Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through heaven Grateful vicissitude, like day and night; Light issues forth, and at the other door Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour To veil the heaven, though darkness there might well Seem twilight here; and now went forth the morn Such as in highest heaven, arrayed in gold Empyreal, from before her vanished night, Shot through with orient beams: when all the plain Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright, Chariots and flaming arms, and fiery steeds Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view: War he perceived, war in procinct, and found Already known what he for news had thought To have reported: gladly then he mixed Among those friendly powers who him received

it, much as Spenser’s form-giving Venus imprisons the boar of darkness and chaos in a cave beneath the paradise mount (FQ III vi 48). M.’s audacious image draws on Rev. 7:15f; 22:5, transcending ordinary light and darkness. There is no real change in heaven, only ‘interchange’ (ix 115) (Madsen (1968) 101). Cp. Horapollo, Hieroglyphics (1950) 57 (‘When they wish to symbolize eternity, they draw the sun and the moon’); S. K. Heninger, in Wittreich (1975a) 73 (‘Day and night in their endless repetition signify eternity’ – an ancient idea to be found in hieroglyphics and alchemy); Lieb (1981) 323 on the expression of rest through motion, and its absence at ii 618 and xi 174. The Cave of Eternity was a contemporary subject in visual art: e.g. Luca Giordano’s fresco at the Pal. Medici-Riccardi. dislodge: move quarters (military; cp. v 669). vicissitude: change. On the variety epitomized, see Summers (1962) 71– 86. Obsequious: dutiful. 11–12. For the absence of night in heaven, see v 645n. On the knowledge of creatures as ‘a kind of twilight’, see Leonard (1990) 109f citing Augustine, City of God XI vii. morn: Day 2 of the action; see Introduction: Time-scheme. 14. Empyreal: purest; of the region nearest God. ‘Not as with us in a saffron coloured robe, ’tis here celestial golden tissue’ (Richardson). 16–17. embattled: set in battle array. steeds: Not necessarily horses. Embracing other traditions of demonic cavalry (centaurs, griffins, etc.): Frye (1978) 47. 19. in procinct: prepared. An uncommon Latinism (in procinctu = ready for battle); cp. Homer, Il., tr. Chapman xii 88f (‘gave up each chariot and steed / . . . to be kept in all procinct of war’); Burton, Anat. of Melan.,

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With joy and acclamations loud, that one That of so many myriads fallen, yet one Returned not lost: on to the sacred hill They led him high applauded, and present Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice From midst a golden cloud thus mild was heard. Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintained Against revolted multitudes the cause Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms; And for the testimony of truth hast borne Universal reproach, far worse to bear Than violence: for this was all thy care To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds Judged thee perverse: the easier conquest now Remains thee, aided by this host of friends, Back on thy foes more glorious to return Than scorned thou didst depart, and to subdue By force, who reason for their law refuse, Right reason for their law, and for their king Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.

‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 97 (‘a prepared navy, soldiers in procinctu’); T. N. Corns, RBPH, 69 (1991) 559; Murrin (1994) 136 (citing Taine: ‘What a heaven! It is enough to disgust one with paradise; one would rather enter Charles I’s troop of lackeys, or Cromwell’s Ironsides. We have orders of the day, hierarchy, exact submission . . . etiquette, furbished arms, arsenals, depots of chariots and ammunition. Was it worthwhile leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, buildings, artillery, a manual of tactics?’). M. strikingly privileges obedience, the means to freedom. 23–5. Luke 15:7, ‘joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons’. 26. Implying by change of tense that everything is present to God. 28. On the symbolism of clouds, see J. Dundas, CompD, 14 (1980–1) 332. 29–34. Cp. Matt. 25:21 (‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant’); 1 Tim. 6:12 (‘fight the good fight of faith’); Ps. 69:7 (‘for thy sake I have borne reproach’). Servant of God: Translating ‘Abdiel’ (v 805n). 41–3. On the sustained contrast between the devils’ force and God’s goodness, see J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 88–105. Right reason: upright, true reason; conscience. Translating the Stoic and Scholastic recta ratio. See xii 80–101n; Hoopes (1962). Christ’s meritocratic right to rule accords with Machiavelli’s Discorsi (B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 582). Contrast Satan’s claim to prior ‘rights’ at v 790f, 801f; cp. vii 176, 707, 888.

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paradise lost Go Michael of celestial armies prince, And thou in military prowess next Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons Invincible, lead forth my armèd saints By thousands and by millions ranged for fight; Equal in number to that godless crew Rebellious, them with fire and hostile arms Fearless assault, and to the brow of heaven Pursuing drive them out from God and bliss, Into their place of punishment, the gulf Of Tartarus, which ready opens wide

44–55. A calm commission, without promises of triumph; contrasting with the fury of God in the Christian epic tradition (Revard (1980) 167–71). Transforming the martial epic (Lewalski (1985) 126). 44. See Dan. 12:1; Rev. 12:7f (‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place any more in heaven’). Many Protestants interpreted Michael (‘Who is like to God?’) as Christ (West (1955) 125). But De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347 argues that ‘whereas Christ alone vanquished Satan and trod him underfoot, Michael is introduced as leader of the angels and ;ντ6παλος (antagonist) of the prince of the devils: their respective forces were drawn up in battle array and separated after a fairly even fight’. Here M. amplifies Christ’s transcendence similarly. For the equal power of Michael and Satan, cp. v 660n; vi 300–7n, 690–1n. Driscoll (1993) 73 discovers the hostile brothers archetype: Christ is Satan’s brother in Epiphanius. Ancient sources for the war include Rev. 12; Hesiod, Theogony; Ovid, Metam. v 319–31; Claudian, Gigantomachia. Renaissance analogues include Alfano, La Battaglia Celeste (1568); Valvasone, Angeleide (1590); Valmarana, Daemonomachiae (1623); Cowley, Davideis (1668) iii 374–82. The extensive critical literature includes Stein (1953); M. Y. Hughes, in Allen (1958) 237–53; Bainton (1960); Hughes (1965) ch. 8; Walzer (1965); Madsen (1968); J. P. Rosenblatt, PMLA, 87 (1972) 31–41; W. A. McQueen, SP, 71 (1974) 89–104; Revard (1980); Freeman (1980); Lieb (1981); Fallon (1984); Le Comte (1991); Murrin (1994). M.’s version is criticized as unserious; as iconoclastic; as propounding a Protestant holy war; or as unreal (although no more supernatural than Homer’s). 46. Gabriel: ‘Strength of God’. See iv 549–50n. 49. ‘So far as numbers go, the Equal of the rebels’. The loyalists are twice as numerous (ii 692n; v 710n); but Empson (1961) 41 rightly rejects the unnecessary speculation that only half of them fight. See vi 809–10n. 51. brow: verge; projecting edge (OED 7). 54–5. For Tartarus as a pagan type of hell, see ii 69n. fiery chaos: Exact, since hell ‘encroached’ on chaos (ii 1002). Presumably hell was created at the moment of Satan’s fall (vi 292n).

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His fiery chaos to receive their fall. So spake the sovereign voice, and clouds began To darken all the hill, and smoke to roll In dusky wreaths, reluctant flames, the sign Of wrath awaked: nor with less dread the loud Ethereal trumpet from on high gan blow: At which command the powers militant, That stood for heaven, in mighty quadrate joined Of union irresistible, moved on In silence their bright legions, to the sound Of instrumental harmony that breathed Heroic ardour to advent’rous deeds Under their godlike leaders, in the cause Of God and his Messiah. On they move Indíssolubly firm; nor obvious hill, Nor strait’ning vale, nor wood, nor stream divides Their perfect ranks; for high above the ground Their march was, and the passive air upbore Their nimble tread; as when the total kind Of birds in orderly array on wing Came summoned over Eden to receive Their names of thee; so over many a tract

56–60. Cp. the ‘fearful signs’ (Exod. 19:16–18 Geneva note) accompanying the communication of the Law: ‘thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud . . . mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly’. reluctant: (1) disinclined; (2) writhing. gan: began to. See xi 73–6n. 62. In hell the rebel ‘phalanx’ outwardly imitates the same virtuous shape; cp. i 550n; vi 552n. 63–8. Cp. i 549–61, where the devils march to flute and recorder music in the Dorian mode. 69. obvious: standing in the way. 71–2. M.’s angels move like ancient gods, above the ground. 73–6. For Adam’s naming of the birds, see viii 342–54. M. surpasses famous comparisons of gathering armies to birds in Homer, Il, ii 459 and Virgil, Aen. vii 699, both by numerical superiority (total kind ) and by superior propriety. Winged angels resemble birds more than earthbound armies do; and their hierarchies correspond to avian species. See Revard (1980) 172f; Leonard (1990) 117f (the contrast between the good angels (named like the birds) and the nameless devils).

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paradise lost Of heaven they marched, and many a province wide Tenfold the length of this terrene: at last Far in the horizon to the north appeared From skirt to skirt a fiery region, stretched In battailous aspéct, and nearer view Bristled with upright beams innumerable Of rigid spears, and helmets thronged, and shields Various, with boastful argument portrayed, The banded powers of Satan hasting on With furious expedition; for they weened That selfsame day by fight, or by surprise To win the mount of God, and on his throne To set the envier of his state, the proud Aspirer, but their thoughts proved fond and vain In the midway: though strange to us it seemed At first, that angel should with angel war, And in fierce hosting meet, who wont to meet So oft in festivals of joy and love Unanimous, as sons of one great sire

78–86. Used as an example of montage in Eisenstein (1957) 59, and imitated in his Alexander Nevsky. 78. terrene: earth (earliest OED instance of this absolute use). 79–86. Schaar (1982) 105 contrasts i 545ff, where the heraldry’s boastful argument is gone. 79. north: The source of evil; cp. i 352n; v 689n. 80. skirt: edge; outlying part of the army. 81. battailous: warlike. 82. beams: (1) shafts; (2) rays. 83–4. M.’s corporeal angels have arms much like those in Homer or Spenser. Contrast the angels in Heywood, Hierarchy (1635): ‘No lances, swords, nor bombards they had then. . . . Only spiritual arms to them were lent.’ Raphael is perhaps accommodating to human understanding (Flannagan). Both Civil War armies used imprese, often with boastful mottos; cp. v 592; Young (1995). Possibly cp. Euripides, Phoenissae 1108–40, the boastful arms of the Seven against Thebes; Virgil, Aen. vii 657, 789; ix 548. ‘M. is always antique’ (Richardson). argument: motif; proposition; mot. 86. expedition: celerity. 87. selfsame: Biblical diction; cp. Gen. 7:13. 88. ‘God’s omnipotence has been as carefully concealed as his omniscience’ (Shumaker (1967) 120). Rather has Satan denied what was plainly manifest. 91. midway: (1) halfway (vi 749–59n); (2) ‘between their hopes and the completion of them’ (Richardson). 93. hosting: hostile encounter. wont: were used.

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Hymning the eternal Father: but the shout Of battle now began, and rushing sound Of onset ended soon each milder thought. High in the midst exalted as a god The apostate in his sun-bright chariot sat Idol of majesty divine, enclosed With flaming cherubim, and golden shields; Then lighted from his gorgeous throne, for now ’Twixt host and host but narrow space was left, A dreadful interval, and front to front Presented stood in terrible array Of hideous length: before the cloudy van, On the rough edge of battle ere it joined, Satan with vast and haughty strides advanced, Came towering, armed in adamant and gold; Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds, And thus his own undaunted heart explores. O heaven! That such resemblance of the highest Should yet remain, where faith and realty Remain not; wherefore should not strength and might There fail where virtue fails, or weakest prove

97. began: Probably a variant of begun, the commoner past participle form. 100–2. An Idol or false image of majesty divine; the chariot travestying Messiah’s cosmic vehicle. The cherubim (characteristically bright) correspond to the ‘four cherubic shapes’ at vi 749–59n. But Satan’s chariot is sun-bright, whereas the divine chariot’s ‘amber’ throne (vi 759n) gleams with inner light. As with Phaethon’s sun-chariot, what began as a test of fatherhood becomes a test of obedient sonship. Quint (1993) 42 compares the Sun Kings of M.’s time, wielding dynastic power proper only to God. 107–10. adamant and gold occur together in a famous description of Vipsanius Agrippa, the general who established imperial Rome on the ruins of the republic; see M. Dzelzainis, in Armitage (1995) 196–200 identifying Satan as Cromwell–Agrippa. 108. edge of battle: front line. See i 276n. 114–26. Soliloquizing like Homer’s thoughtful combatants; cp. Hector’s soliloquy before engaging Achilles (Il. xxii 99–130). For Satan as a proud, jealous Achilles, cp. also i 286–91n; v 673n. Satan is challenged thus in two sources, Vondel’s Lucifer and Peri’s La Guerra Angelica (Revard (1980) 164f ). But Abdiel offers no olive branch (as in Vondel), only the choice between reconsidering – or hardening his heart. 115. realty: reality (OED 1a); sincerity (OED 2).

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paradise lost Where boldest; though to sight unconquerable? His puissance, trusting in the almighty’s aid, I mean to try, whose reason I have tried Unsound and false; nor is it aught but just, That he who in debate of truth hath won, Should win in arms, in both disputes alike Victor; though brutish that contést and foul, When reason hath to deal with force, yet so Most reason is that reason overcome. So pondering, and from his armèd peers Forth stepping opposite, halfway he met His daring foe, at this prevention more Incensed, and thus securely him defied. Proud, art thou met? Thy hope was to have reached The height of thy aspiring unopposed, The throne of God unguarded, and his side Abandoned at the terror of thy power Or potent tongue; fool, not to think how vain Against the omnipotent to rise in arms; Who out of smallest things could without end Have raised incessant armies to defeat Thy folly; or with solitary hand Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow Unaided could have finished thee, and whelmed Thy legions under darkness; but thou seest All are not of thy train; there be who faith

119. puissance: power. 120. tried: tested. 124. As Empson (1961) 54 remarks, M. was no pacifist; Eikonoklastes on the sword of Justice makes that clear (YP iii 583f ); cp. Parker (1996) 495. But he hated war, and thought it an inferior epic subject; cp. ix 27ff. So some think the angelic war burlesque: e.g. Stein (1953) 24. But M. would not consider this an ordinary war – rather a holy war, as Lieb (1981) 246–56, 265ff; or else an allegory of spiritual milites Christiani, as Treip (1994). The concluding phase, amplifying the transcendence of Christ, is beyond question profoundly serious. 129. prevention: obstruction (OED 4d). 130. Incensed: Referring to Satan, not to Abdiel (as Flannagan). securely: confidently. 131. Curtly dispensing with the usual angelic courtesy (Corns (1990) 20f ). 137. M. never considers creation as ‘out of nothing’ (Richardson). 143. there be who: there are those who (current usage).

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Prefer, and piety to God, though then 145 To thee not visible, when I alone Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent From all: my sect thou seest, now learn too late How few sometimes may know, when thousands err. Whom the grand foe with scornful eye askance 150 Thus answered. Ill for thee, but in wished hour Of my revenge, first sought for thou returnst From flight, seditious angel, to receive Thy merited reward, the first assay Of this right hand provoked, since first that tongue 155 Inspired with contradiction durst oppose A third part of the gods, in synod met Their deities to assert, who while they feel Vigour divine within them, can allow Omnipotence to none. But well thou com’st 160 Before thy fellows, ambitious to win From me some plume, that thy success may show Destruction to the rest: this pause between (Unanswered lest thou boast) to let thee know; At first I thought that liberty and heaven 165 To heavenly souls had been all one; but now I see that most through sloth had rather serve, Ministering spirits, trained up in feast and song; Such hast thou armed, the minstrelsy of heaven,

147. sect: sort. Perhaps glancing at the Royalist tendency to count all who opposed bishops ‘sectaries’; cp. Eikonoklastes, YP iii 348 (‘I never knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries’). 153. assay: trial, experiment. 156. For the size of the rebel party, see ii 692n. gods: Presumptuously claiming more than angelic status; see i 116–17n. synod: A general church council to determine doctrine; a Presbyterian ecclesiastical court. Ironic; see Corns (1990) 107. 161–3. ‘That your ill-success may be a warning to others’. plume: trophy. Cp. Shakespeare, 1 Hen. VI III iii 5–7: ‘Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while, / And like a peacock sweep along his tail; / We’ll pull his plumes and take away his train.’ 167–8. Cp. Heb. 1:13f, on the inferiority of the angels to Christ: ‘To which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand?. . . Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’ trained . . . song: Suggesting courtiers’ training. minstrelsy: minstrels. Playing on ministering.

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Servility with freedom to contend, 170 As both their deeds compared this day shall prove. To whom in brief thus Abdiel stern replied. Apostate, still thou errst, nor end wilt find Of erring, from the path of truth remote: Unjustly thou deprav’st it with the name 175 Of servitude to serve whom God ordains, Or nature; God and nature bid the same, When he who rules is worthiest, and excels Them whom he governs. This is servitude, To serve the unwise, or him who hath rebelled 180 Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee, Thyself not free, but to thyself enthralled; Yet lewdly dar’st our ministering upbraid. Reign thou in hell thy kingdom, let me serve In heaven God ever blest, and his divine 185 Behests obey, worthiest to be obeyed, Yet chains in hell, not realms expect: meanwhile From me returned, as erst thou saidst, from flight, This greeting on thy impious crest receive. So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high, 190 Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell On the proud crest of Satan, that no sight, 169–75. Cp. Leonard (1990) 177–9: ‘Satan and Abdiel . . . contend for a fit description of the good angels’ service to God.’ Bentley objects that Satan’s accusation was of servility, not merely servitude. But the meritocratic Abdiel insists that in the case of God no servitude can be too servile. deprav’st: defame. servility: Not a coinage, as Pearce thought; but perhaps extended to internal application. 169. Cp. ii 255–7n. 176. Satan’s vague gesture to liberty (vi 164) appealed to Natural Law (v 787–802n); hence Abdiel’s rebuttal. Agreement of Natural Law with eternal law was fundamental to Christian humanism: e.g. Hooker, Laws (1594–7, 1977) I iii 1–4 (nature as ‘God’s instrument’). Where all is arranged according to ‘degree’ of excellence, freedom consists in obediently taking one’s natural place (Rajan (1962) 64f ). 181. Cp. xii 90ff; PR ii 466–9 (the stoicism of him ‘who reigns within himself, and rules / Passions, desires, and fears, [and] is more a king’). 182. lewdly: seditiously. Cp. vi 152. 183–6. Remembered in hell; cp. i 263n (‘Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven’); Danielson (1982) 117 (‘service to God is freedom’s fulfilment’); Marjara (1992) 261–2. 185. obeyed,] A heavier point seems necessary. 187. So Ascanius hurls back Numanus’ gibe with the accompaniment of a blow (Aen. ix 599, 635).

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Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield Such ruin intercept: ten paces huge He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee His massy spear upstayed; as if on earth Winds underground or waters forcing way Sidelong, had pushed a mountain from his seat Half sunk with all his pines. Amazement seized The rebel thrones, but greater rage to see Thus foiled their mightiest, ours joy filled, and shout, Presage of victory and fierce desire Of battle: whereat Michaël bid sound The archangel trumpet; through the vast of heaven It sounded, and the faithful armies rung Hosanna to the highest: nor stood at gaze The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined The horrid shock: now storming fury rose, And clamour such as heard in heaven till now Was never, arms on armour clashing brayed Horrible discord, and the madding wheels Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss

193–5. Ten symbolized divine creativity; ten reversed, destruction (Whaler (1956) 100). For Satan’s spear, see i 292–4n. ruin: destruction. 195–8. Cp. i 230–7n, the geological aftermath of the Giant rebellion. For waters causing earthquakes, volcanoes, and subsequent exhalations, see Svendsen (1956) 104; Marjara (1992) 183. Here the effect is more of erosion; cp. FQ I xi 54 (the Old Dragon’s fall ‘as an huge rockie clift, / Whose false foundation waves have washt away, / With dreadfull poyse is from the mayneland rift’). Association of the devils with pines (emblematic of trust in fortune) is recurrent; cp. i 292, 613; ii 544. 199. thrones: Synecdoche for all the angelic orders (more fully listed at v 772; vi 102), to amplify the confrontation with the divine throne (vi 758). 200–3. Presage of final victory over evil, when ‘The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise’ (1 Thess. 4:16). 204. rung: proclaimed aloud (OED 12). 209. brayed: Of thunder, or any jarring sound; cp. Blackmore, Prince Arthur (1695) viii 375 (‘bucklers on bucklers bray’). 210. madding: frenzied. 212–14. Unusually sustained onomatopoeic alliteration. dismal: dreadful; sinister.

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paradise lost Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew, And flying vaulted either host with fire. So under fiery cope together rushed Both battles main, with ruinous assault And inextinguishable rage; all heaven Resounded, and had earth been then, all earth Had to her centre shook. What wonder? When Millions of fierce encountering angels fought On either side, the least of whom could wield These elements, and arm him with the force Of all their regions: how much more of power Army against army numberless to raise Dreadful combustion warring, and disturb, Though not destroy, their happy native seat; Had not the eternal king omnipotent From his stronghold of heaven high overruled And limited their might; though numbered such As each divided legion might have seemed A numerous host, in strength each armèd hand A legion; led in fight, yet leader seemed

213. Eph. 6:16, ‘the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked’. M.’s weapons are as allegorical as Spenser’s; see vi 83n. 215. cope: sky. See iv 992n. 216. battles main: the main bodies of the armies (OED, s. v. Battle 9), as distinct from wings or van (vi 107). 218–19. Contrast Hesiod, Theogony 679–81, where earth does shake. Insisting that Hesiod gives a distorted account of a much earlier conflict (P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 133). 221–2. ‘Had the power to wield the four elements of which these things around us were later to be created’. 223. regions: The layers into which the four elements were arranged, more or less according to what would now be called their density. 225. combustion: commotion, tumult (common usage). 229–36. The three aspects of power – numbers, strength, skill – in climactic order. On these virtuous soldiers’ autonomy, see B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 586 comparing Machiavelli’s ideal citizen army. numbered such: so numerous. leader . . . chief: ‘each single warrior seemed a commander-in-chief ’. ridges of grim war: Perhaps ranks of men (Richardson); but see Lewis (1942) 135 (‘the ridges reproduce πολ0µοιο γεφpSας (Il. iv 371, etc.). What they were, I do not know’). 231–46. Analysing the montage, Eisenstein (1957) 60f finds ‘an identical number of lines and shots’.

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Each warrior single as in chief, expert When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway Of battle, open when, and when to close The ridges of grim war; no thought of flight, None of retreat, no unbecoming deed That argued fear; each on himself relied, As only in his arm the moment lay Of victory; deeds of eternal fame Were done, but infinite: for wide was spread That war and various; sometimes on firm ground A standing fight, then soaring on main wing Tormented all the air; all air seemed then Conflicting fire: long time in even scale The battle hung; till Satan, who that day Prodigious power had shown, and met in arms No equal, ranging through the dire attack Of fighting seraphim confused, at length Saw where the sword of Michael smote, and felled Squadrons at once, with huge two-handed sway Brandished aloft the horrid edge came down Wide wasting; such destruction to withstand

233. Shumaker (1967) 124 objects to the angels’ experience in military matters; but for M. innocence consisted not in ignorance of evil but in its containment. 239. moment: determining influence (OED 5). Beginning the balance image of vi 245 – the moment of a balance (Vulg. momentum staterae) was a tiny increment able to alter its equilibrium (OED 3a). Cp. x 45–7; Isa. 40:15 tr. Wycliffe (‘Lo! Jentiles as a drope of a boket, and as a moment of a balaunce ben holden’). For the balance symbol, see iv 999–1012n; M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–78. 243. on main wing: fully airborne. 245. long time: Cp. De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347. Biblical authority for protracted war in heaven is slender; see E. F. Daniels, NQ, 206 (1961) 430–2. 248. No equal: For Gilbert (1947) 5, evidence that the Abdiel encounter is a late addition. But Abdiel’s advantage may have been only temporary (Newton). However just ‘That he who in debate of truth hath won, / Should win in arms’ (vi 122f ), things need not happen that way. 250 –1. With vi 318–21, used to explain the ‘two-handed engine’ in Lycidas; cp. M. A. Treip, NQ, 204 (1959) 364–6; T. B. Stroup, ibid. 366f. Michael’s sword (ii 294; xi 247f ) was a common attribute, although without biblical authority; see Biedermann (1992) 335; Davidson (1967) 194a.

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He hasted, and opposed the rocky orb 255 Of tenfold adamant, his ample shield A vast circumference: at his approach The great archangel from his warlike toil Surceased, and glad as hoping here to end Intestine war in heaven, the arch-foe subdued 260 Or captive dragged in chains, with hostile frown And visage all inflamed first thus began. Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt, Unnamed in heaven, now plenteous, as thou seest These acts of hateful strife, hateful to all, 265 Though heaviest by just measure on thyself And thy adherents: how hast thou disturbed Heaven’s blessèd peace, and into nature brought Misery, uncreated till the crime Of thy rebellion! How hast thou instilled 270 Thy malice into thousands, once upright And faithful, now proved false. But think not here To trouble holy rest; heaven casts thee out From all her confines. Heaven the seat of bliss Brooks not the works of violence and war. 275 Hence then, and evil go with thee along Thy offspring, to the place of evil, hell, 254–5. For Satan’s shield, see i 286–91n; vi 110. adamant: Anciently the hardest metal; in M.’s time usually = diamond. tenfold suggests the former, rocky the latter. Cp. vi 364 (‘in a rock of diamond armed’); SA 1122 (Harapha’s ‘seven-times-folded’ shield); Apol, YP i 900f (Zeal armed in complete diamond); FQ II v 6, viii 32 (Guyon’s ‘sevenfold’ shield); FQ V xi 10 (Arthur’s shield against the dragon); Phineas Fletcher, The Purple Island (1633) xii 24 (Fido’s shield ‘of one pure diamond’); Tervarent (1958) 147f (‘Courage toujours égal’). 258. Surceased: temporarily left off. 259. Intestine: internal, civil, war. 262–4. Pace Leonard (1990) 80f, there is no ‘anachronism’ in Raphael’s use of biblical names for the devils: their new names would be instantly intuited. Although extended by Leonard to the devils, Unnamed refers only to evil. Author: father (OED 2a); instigator (OED 1d). Only in a perverse sense ‘creator’. 263–76. Cp. B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 587 comparing the renovation to Machiavelli’s concept of ridurre ai principii. Or, more generally, cp. the Reformation. 267. The angels are not supernatural but part of celestial nature. 269. rebellion!] rebellion? 1667. (As often, question mark corresponds to modern exclamation mark.) 275–6. For Sin as Satan’s offspring, see ii 743–60.

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Thou and thy wicked crew; there mingle broils, Ere this avenging sword begin thy doom, Or some more sudden vengeance winged from God Precipitate thee with augmented pain. So spake the prince of angels; to whom thus The adversary. Nor think thou with wind Of airy threats to awe whom yet with deeds Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise Unvanquished, easier to transact with me That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats To chase me hence? Err not that so shall end The strife which thou callst evil, but we style The strife of glory: which we mean to win, Or turn this heaven itself into the hell Thou fablest, here however to dwell free, If not to reign: meanwhile thy utmost force, And join him named Almighty to thy aid, I fly not, but have sought thee far and nigh. They ended parle, and both addressed for fight Unspeakable; for who, though with the tongue Of angels, can relate, or to what things Liken on earth conspicuous, that may lift Human imagination to such height

277. mingle broils: concoct quarrels. 278. Prophetically wielding the sword emblem of the Word (Revard (1980) 123). Michael symbolized Christ’s victory over Satan (Schiller (1971–) ii 15). 282. adversary: The literal meaning of ‘Satan’. Cp. i 82n; Job 1:6 AV margin. 284–8. ‘Have you had any decisive success in battle, that you hope it may now be easier to negotiate (transact) with me, and frighten me off with threats?’ 288. Err not: don’t make the mistake of thinking. 292. Satan rejects even the word hell as a neologism (Leonard (1990) 185). fablest: Referring to vi 276. Hell has existed since vi 54, if not earlier; but God announced it to the loyal angels only. Only after joining them does Abdiel mention it (vi 183). 296. parle: parley, truce; debate. addressed: prepared. 297–301. Cp. 1 Cor. 13:1; Frye (1978) 43ff; C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 159–63 (tracing Raphael’s theory of accommodation to Augustine, City of God XV xxv and later authors popularizing him). 300–7. Unusually representing combat between Satan and Michael as equal (Frye (1978) 51f ); cp. v 660n; vi 44n, 690–1n.

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Of godlike power: for likest gods they seemed, Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms Fit to decide the empire of great heaven. Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air 305 Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields Blazed opposite, while expectation stood In horror; from each hand with speed retired Where erst was thickest fight, the angelic throng, And left large field, unsafe within the wind 310 Of such commotion, such as to set forth Great things by small, if nature’s concord broke, Among the constellations war were sprung, Two planets rushing from aspéct malign Of fiercest opposition in mid-sky, 315 Should combat, and their jarring spheres confound. Together both with next to almighty arm, Uplifted imminent one stroke they aimed That might determine, and not need repeat, As not of power, at once; nor odds appeared

301–2. On gods as Titans, see P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 131. For the godlike movement, cp. vi 71f. 306 –7. Personifying the angels’ apprehension. Cp. iv 988f; Shakespeare, Troilus Prol.; Henry V II Prol. (‘now sits Expectation in the air’). 310–11. For the formula, see ii 921–2n. 310–15. The syntax is not defective – ‘as, if war were sprung (nature’s concord broken), two planets should combat’. Strong dramatic irony; the Fall will soon break concord in the human microcosm. At x 657–61 the planets are taught ‘aspects / . . . Of noxious efficacy’. aspect . . . opposition: Astrologers recognized five spatial relations or aspects between planets. Opposition (the planets in diametrically opposite signs) was disharmonious, with a malign influence; see Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos i 13; Eade (1984) 61ff. mid-sky: the zenith. Cp. Shakespeare, Troilus I iii 85–111, Ulysses’ speech on degree, and the solar sovereignty that restrains ‘the ill aspects of planets evil’ and ‘commotion in the winds’, preventing universal ‘oppugnancy’. 317. Uplifted imminent: The contradiction imagined by Bentley and denied by Pearce is revalued as forceful paradox in Ricks (1963) 14f. Imitating Virgil, Aen. xii 729 (alte sublatum consurgit Turnus in ensem) (Richardson). Cp. vi 698–9n. Several editors remove the comma after arm and put it after imminent (Moyles (1985) 131). 318–20. determine: settle the issue. repeat: repetition. not . . . once: ‘beyond their strength to repeat immediately’. prevention: anticipation.

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320 In might or swift prevention; but the sword Of Michael from the armoury of God Was given him tempered so, that neither keen Nor solid might resist that edge: it met The sword of Satan with steep force to smite 325 Descending, and in half cut sheer, nor stayed, But with swift wheel reverse, deep entering shared All his right side; then Satan first knew pain, And writhed him to and fro convolved; so sore The griding sword with discontinuous wound 330 Passed through him, but the ethereal substance closed Not long divisible, and from the gash

320 –3. Cp. Jer. 50:25 (‘The Lord hath opened his armoury, and hath brought forth the weapons of his indignation’); Virgil, Aen. xii 739 (godgiven armour that breaks Turnus’ blade); Spenser, FQV i 10 (the sword of justice, taken from Jupiter, which Astraea gives Arthegall: ‘no substance was so firme and hard, / But it would pierce or cleave, where so it came; / Ne any armour could his dint out ward, / But wheresoever it did light, it throughly shard’). 325. Surpassing Virgil: Turnus’ sword is merely shattered (Aen. xii 741). 326. Michael follows through into a reverse (OED 2: back-handed) stroke. As a young man, M. assiduously practised fencing. shared: cut off. 327. Raphael is unaware that Satan first knew pain at the assembly of v 767. Cp. ii 752–61n; R. J. Gallagher, ELR, 6 (1976) 332. 328–34. ‘Three ideas which Psellus also connects closely: the demon’s pain when his substance is cut, his quick and thorough healing, and his “panorganic” substance’ (West (1955) 146f ). Cp. Ficino, De Daemonibus (Lyons, 1577) vi 360f (‘The body of the demon is through its whole self naturally sensitive . . . and without medium sees, hears, touches, suffers. It suffers with contact and division like a solid body, but . . . when it is cut soon is recreated in itself again and coalesces like water and air . . . Yet meanwhile it suffers while divided, for which cause it fears the edge of the sword’); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 176 (‘if their bodies be cut, with admirable celerity they come together again’). Or is M. satirizing chivalric romance, in which heroes make implausibly rapid recovery from wounds? The reconstitution of bodies reverses Lucan (Smith (1994) 224). convolved: contorted. griding: piercing or scraping through, causing intense, rasping pain. discontinuous: Medically, a wound was defined as ‘dissolution of continuity’. 331–4. From human wounds would flow blood, the humour produced from digestion that predominated in a sanguine disposition; angels, digesting nectar (v 633), would bleed nectarous humour . . . / Sanguine. For sanguine

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paradise lost A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed Sanguine, such as celestial spirits may bleed, And all his armour stained erewhile so bright. Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run By angels many and strong, who interposed Defence, while others bore him on their shields Back to his chariot; where it stood retired From off the files of war; there they him laid Gnashing for anguish and despite and shame To find himself not matchless, and his pride Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath His confidence to equal God in power. Yet soon he healed; for spirits that live throughout Vital in every part, not as frail man In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins, Cannot but by annihilating die; Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound Receive, no more than can the fluid air: All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear, All intellect, all sense, and as they please, They limb themselves, and colour, shape or size Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare. Meanwhile in other parts like deeds deserved Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought, And with fierce ensigns pierced the deep array Of Moloch furious king, who him defied,

as the purest temperament, see Klibansky (1964) 103, 105, 110f. Homer’s gods bleed ichor (Il. v 339); M. prefers to hint a connection with the best human humour. For devils bleeding in visual art, see Frye (1978) 54. 335. was run: Imitating Greek and Latin idiom (cursum est). 344–54. Angels have no organs, their substance being homogeneous or ‘uncompounded’ (i 425). So Satan can change in size (iv 986) and in shape, taking the form of cherub, cormorant, etc.; see iii 634n. 346. reins: kidneys. 348. liquid: flexible. 352. limb: Playing on ‘limn’ = paint, colour. 353. likes: pleases. condense: dense; condensed. 355. might of Gabriel: mighty Gabriel. Homeric diction; see v 371n. 356. ensigns: battle cries (OED 1). deep array: massive formation. 357–62. Cp. vi 698–9n; A. H. Gilbert, Italica, 20 (1943) 132–4 (comparing the grotesque battle of devils and saracens in Boiardo). For earlier appearances of Moloch, cp. i 392–6; ii 43–108. Wounds were still considered a ‘brave sight’: e.g. Fuller, Holy State (1642) III xv 5.

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And at his chariot wheels to drag him bound Threatened, nor from the holy one of heaven 360 Refrained his tongue blasphémous; but anon Down cloven to the waist, with shattered arms And uncouth pain fled bellowing. On each wing Uriel and Raphael his vaunting foe, Though huge, and in a rock of diamond armed, 365 Vanquished Adramelec, and Asmadai, Two potent thrones, that to be less than Gods Disdained, but meaner thoughts learned in their flight, Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail. Nor stood unmindful Abdiel to annoy 370 The atheist crew, but with redoubled blow Ariel and Arioc, and the violence Of Ramiel scorched and blasted overthrew. I might relate of thousands, and their names

358. So Achilles dragged Hector’s body (Homer, Il. xxii 395ff ). 359–60. 2 Kings 19:22, ‘Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed? . . . the Holy One of Israel.’ 362. uncouth: unfamiliar. Cp. Homer, Il. v 859, the behaviour of Ares. 363–8. With angelic objectivity, Raphael refers to himself in the third person. Pace Gallagher (1990) 89n, this is not inappropriate, since the auditors are unaware, being free from fallen curiosity about angels’ names. It was presumably Raphael who vanquished Asmodeus (Asmadai), in view of their biblical encounter (iv 168). Aptly, the solar Intelligence Uriel vanquished the sun-god Adramelec (2 Kings 17:31). Raphael uses names ‘he knows the rebels will later acquire’ (Leonard (1990) 81); cp. xii 140 (Michael: ‘Things by their names I call, though yet unnamed’). For angels’ knowledge of the future, see Harvey (1975) 49. For the identifying of devils with heathen gods, see i 364–75n. A medieval scheme put Asmodeus in charge of an order of devils; see West (1955) 157; Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 181. diamond: see vi 254–5n. 366. Gods: see i 116–17n. 370. atheist: impious. 371–2. Ariel (‘Lion of God’ or ‘Divine Light’) is Jerusalem at Isa. 29:1f; but West (1955) 152–4 traces a tradition from 1 Enoch, through an avatar of Mars at Arina in Aquila’s and Symmachus’s OT versions, to a spirit of earth in the occultists Agrippa, Fludd, and Kircher. Arioc (‘Lion-like’): The ‘king of Ellasar’ (Gen. 14:1) whom Abram fought; the ‘spirit of revenge’ in Renaissance demonology (West (1955) 154). Ramiel: ‘Deceiver of God’; one of the angels fornicating with women in 1 Enoch vi 7; cp. Werman (1995) 194. For the rhetoric, see v 371n; vi 355n.

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Eternize here on earth; but those elect 375 Angels contented with their fame in heaven Seek not the praise of men: the other sort In might though wondrous and in acts of war, Nor of renown less eager, yet by doom Cancelled from heaven and sacred memory, 380 Nameless in dark oblivion let them dwell. For strength from truth divided and from just, Illaudable, naught merits but dispraise And ignominy, yet to glory aspires Vainglorious, and through infamy seeks fame: 385 Therefore eternal silence be their doom. And now their mightiest quelled, the battle swerved, With many an inroad gored; deformèd rout Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground With shivered armour strewn, and on a heap 390 Chariot and charioteer lay overturned And fiery foaming steeds; what stood, recoiled O’er-wearied, through the faint Satanic host Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surprised, Then first with fear surprised and sense of pain 395 Fled ignominious, to such evil brought By sin of disobedience, till that hour Not liable to fear or flight or pain. Far otherwise the inviolable saints In cubic phalanx firm advanced entire, 374–5. elect / Angels: Biblical diction (e.g. 1 Tim. 5:21). Despite Gilbert (1947) there is no contradiction with vi 363–5, but rather a beautiful dramatic irony: Raphael modestly omits to give his own name, so that Adam and Eve cannot know he speaks of himself. At worst, a very muted sort of eternizing. 379. Cp. i 82n, 361–3n; v 658–9n; Leonard (1990) 155. 382. Rejecting chivalric glorifying of war (Revard (1980) 196). Illaudable: unworthy of praise. A Latinizing word M. also used in prose; cp. YP v 319 (‘his actions are . . . by Huntingdon not thought illaudable’). 387. inroad: passage (OED 3). 393. Defensive scarce: hardly capable of defending itself. 394. first: See vi 327n. 395–7. Unlike the invulnerable loyalists (vi 400), the rebels are ‘gross’ (vi 661) with sinning, and so liable to pain; see vi 328–34n. 398. saints: elect angels (cp. iii 330n; vi 47, 374f ). 399. More relevant to square formations in human war than may appear: even on a plane surface, vertical pikes could suggest a regular cube; cp. illustrations in arts of war like Wallhausen, Art Militaire de la Cavalerie

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400 Invulnerable, impenetrably armed: Such high advantages their innocence Gave them above their foes, not to have sinned, Not to have disobeyed; in fight they stood Unwearied, unobnoxious to be pained 405 By wound, though from their place by violence moved. Now night her course began, and over heaven Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed, And silence on the odious din of war: Under her cloudy covert both retired, 410 Victor and vanquished: on the foughten field Michaël and his angels prevalent Encamping, placed in guard their watches round, Cherubic waving fires: on the other part Satan with his rebellious disappeared, 415 Far in the dark dislodged, and void of rest, His potentates to council called by night; And in the midst thus undismayed began. O now in danger tried, now known in arms Not to be overpowered, companions dear, 420 Found worthy not of liberty alone,

(c. 1600), or in contemporary maps of the Holy Land, illus. Nebenzahl (1986). cubic: The shape of virtue and stability; cp. i 550n; vi 552n; Church Government I ii, YP i 758 (applying the ‘divine square and compass’ to the human soul); Num. 2 (a square camp); 1 Kings 6:20 (the cubic holy of holies); see H. F. Robins, in Evans (1961) 91–103. Contrast Vondel, Lucifer (1654), where Michael’s army uses a triangular (Trinitarian) formation, and Lucifer’s a crescent (Revard (1980) 171f ). 404. unobnoxious: not liable (OED 1). 406. Beginning Day 3 with nightfall in the Hebrew manner; see Introduction: Time-scheme. 407. Inducing: leading on; spreading as a cover (OED 1, 2, 7). Cp. Horace, Satires I v 9 (iam nox inducere terris / umbras . . . parabat). 410. foughten field: battlefield (poetic). 411. prevalent: victorious. 413. Cherubim, excelling in knowledge, are assigned to sentry duty; cp. iv 778ff; xii 590ff. Being fiery, they are their own watchfires. Raphael stresses their materiality at v 473, 510, 574 – ‘all material’ (Richardson). 415. dislodged: moved camp (military); cp. v 669. 416. Cp. Homer, Il. ix, the nocturnal council of war called by Agamemnon after defeat by Hector. 418–45. For rhetorical analysis, see H. Shitaka, MFEFU, 31 (1982) 9f.

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paradise lost Too mean pretence, but what we more affect, Honour, dominion, glory, and renown, Who have sustained one day in doubtful fight (And if one day, why not eternal days?) What heaven’s lord had powerfullest to send Against us from about his throne, and judged Sufficient to subdue us to his will, But proves not so: then fallible, it seems, Of future we may deem him, though till now Omniscient thought. True is, less firmly armed, Some disadvantage we endured and pain, Till now not known, but known as soon contemned, Since now we find this our empyreal form Incapable of mortal injury Imperishable, and though pierced with wound, Soon closing, and by native vigour healed. Of evil then so small as easy think The remedy; perhaps more valid arms, Weapons more violent, when next we meet, May serve to better us, and worse our foes, Or equal what between us made the odds, In nature none: if other hidden cause Left them superior, while we can preserve Unhurt our minds, and understanding sound, Due search and consultation will disclose. He sat; and in the assembly next upstood Nisroc, of principalities the prime;

421. mean pretence: (1) low ambition; (2) base dissimulation. affect: (1) aspire to; (2) feign. Conveying instruction by ironic wordplay, as often with Raphael. ‘Professed ideals of liberty have been superseded by naked ambition’ (Stavely (1987) 88). 423–8. Empson (1961) 41 supposes an argument about the ‘claims of God’; but the rebels have not so far encountered God, only angels. Cp. i 623–4n. 429. Of future: (1) of future events (OED 1); (2) in future (cp. ‘Of late’). 430. If Satan thought God Omniscient at v 682f, presumably keeping the rebellion ‘secret’ was mere pretence. But it is futile to look for consistency in Satan. 436. Soon closing: See vi 328–34n. 440. worse: worsen; injure. 444. sound: (1) healthy; (2) search into. 447. Suggesting a systematic hierarchy of evil; cp. vi 363–8n; West (1955) 134, 157. Nisroc: ‘Flight; soft or luxurious temptation’ (Heb. Nisroch); see Starnes (1955) 268, citing Stephanus, Dictionarium. A name apt to his

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As one he stood escaped from cruel fight, Sore toiled, his riven arms to havoc hewn, And cloudy in aspéct thus answering spake. Deliverer from new lords, leader to free Enjoyment of our right as gods; yet hard For gods, and too unequal work we find Against unequal arms to fight in pain, Against unpained, impassive; from which evil Ruin must needs ensue; for what avails Valour or strength, though matchless, quelled with pain Which all subdues, and makes remiss the hands Of mightiest. Sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life: But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience. He who therefore can invent With what more forcible we may offend Our yet unwounded enemies, or arm Ourselves with like defence, to me deserves No less than for deliverance what we owe. Whereto with look composed Satan replied. Not uninvented that, which thou aright

flinching attitude. Nisroch was the Assyrian idol Sennacherib perished worshipping (2 Kings 19:37; Isa. 37:38). 452. gods: Vaguely shifting from ‘angels’ to ‘autonomous beings’; cp. i 116–17n. 455. impassive: impassible, not liable to suffering (first instance in OED). 458. remiss: slack. 464–8. The second challenge to Satan (Benet (1994) 101). 465. offend: attack; hurt. 467. to me: it seems to me. 468. ‘No less for than what we owe our deliverer (Satan).’ Inviting a leadership contest. 470. The extra-historical devilish invention of artillery was associated with fraud; cp. Ariosto, Orl. Fur. ix 28f, 73–5; Spenser, FQ I vii 13 (‘that divelish Yron Engin wrought / In deepest Hell, and framd by Furies skill, / With windy Nitre and quick Sulphur fraught, / And ramd with bullet round, ordaind to kill’); Hale (1983) 389–420; Freeman (1980) 57–66. For M.’s use of Ariosto and Giovio, at once more historical and with more generalized perspective, see Murrin (1994) 131. For the defence of surprise attacks in De Doctrina ii 13, see Freeman op. cit. 175.

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Believ’st so main to our success, I bring; Which of us who beholds the bright surfáce Of this ethereous mould whereon we stand, This continent of spacious heav’n, adorned 475 With plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems and gold, Whose eye so superficially surveys These things, as not to mind from whence they grow Deep under ground, materials dark and crude, Of spiritous and fiery spume, till touched 480 With heaven’s ray, and tempered they shoot forth So beauteous, op’ning to the ambient light. These in their dark nativity the deep Shall yield us, pregnant with infernal flame, Which into hollow engines long and round 471. main: important. 472–81. For minerals formed by the action of heaven’s ray (a celestial equivalent of sunshine) upon spume (exhalation), cp. Aristotle, Meteorologica 341b, 348a; E. H. Duncan, Osiris, 11 (1954) 388; Svendsen (1956) 119f (the scheme of ‘chaos and cosmos, with a physical sense of the ominous minerals lying beneath the flowers and the gold . . . The cunning choice of touched, tempered, shoot and opening anticipates what follows; gunpowder is invented in the images before it occurs in the narrative’). crude: at an early stage of development. spiritous: refined, distilled. spume: Cp. ‘nitrous foam’ (vi 512). The spiritous and fiery spume ‘is the mixture of sulphur and nitre . . . present in chaos as the embryonic elemental material for the creation of the universe’ (Marjara (1992) 174). (Sulphur was ‘the heat principle in alchemy’ and Paracelsian chemistry.) Nitre’s foaminess relates it to Aristotelian pneuma and the ‘elements of the stars’ in William Harvey and Henry More. 473. ethereous: Neologism; see J. G. Mengert, MiltS, 14 (1980) 108; Leonard (1990) 186. 475. ambrosial: See ii 245n. 477. mind: recall. 482. nativity: Satan’s destructive inventions caricature God’s devices of incarnation and redemption. 483. infernal: Bentley objects that Satan does not yet know his punishment; Empson (1961) suggests extrapolation from ‘the previous day’s hints’. But any reference to hell is Raphael’s; Satan means only ‘flame belonging to the deep’. 484–90. Cp. vi 470n; Daniel, Civil Wars (1595) vi 26f (‘Artillery, th’ infernal instrument’); Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605) I xxxviii (The inventor of artillery receives the reward for his devilish invention in hell’); H. H. Scudder, NQ, 195 (1950) 334–7; Frye (1978) 49 (cannon in mystery plays); Braider (1993) 126. Recent associations are also relevant:

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485 Thick-rammed, at the other bore with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate shall send forth From far with thundering noise among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces, and o’erwhelm whatever stands 490 Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmed The thunderer of his only dreaded bolt. Nor long shall be our labour, yet ere dawn, Effect shall end our wish. Meanwhile revive; Abandon fear; to strength and counsel joined 495 Think nothing hard, much less to be despaired. He ended, and his words their drooping cheer

the Parliamentary forces were famed for their artillery; and sermons and tracts from 1605 onward treated the Gunpowder Plot as a ‘hellish invention’ (Cornelius Burges) brought into the world by ‘one of the Romish rabble’ (Sir Edward Coke); see Revard (1980) 88ff; Quint (1993) 44. M. himself wrote a short Latin epic Q Nov, in which Satan figures; four epigrams In Proditionem Bombardicam (‘On the Gunpowder Plot’); and another In Inuentorem Bombardae (‘On the Inventor of Gunpowder’). The war in heaven generated an extensive literature full of topical details like cannon; cp. Revard (1980) 145ff; Kirkconnell (1952) 81. Artillery is given prominence as the chief means of enforcing central authority, and because its action at a distance profoundly altered chivalry and heroism. 485. bore: (1) touch-hole; (2) cavity of the barrel. touch of fire: (1) contact with fire; (2) touch-powder, the fine gunpowder placed over the touchhole. The salvo of puns, applying with equal force to muzzle-loading and breech-loading ordnance, has made little impact, even on critics of the highest calibre. Two chains of discourse are: ‘a charge thick-rammed into the muzzle of hollow engines and dilated with touch-powder shall send forth . . . implements’ and ‘a charge thick-rammed into one end of hollow engines (the breech), at the other bore (the muzzle) shall send forth etc.’ Similar puns occur in a Royalist pamphlet poem of 1648; see Frank (1968) 196. 484. hollow] hallow 1667; 1674 (obsolete variant). 486–91. Cp. vi 584–90; Murrin (1994) 303 n 6. Satan takes the ‘modernist’ view that cannon outdo thunder; but M., anti-modernist, has God’s thunder win the war: i 92f, 171–7, 257f; ii 64–8, 165f; iii 392–6; vi 632, 763f, 835–8, 854, 858. 486. infuriate: maddened; exploded (perhaps M.’s figurative extension). 488. implements: cannonballs, chainshot, etc. 494. counsel: judgement. 496. cheer: mood, spirits.

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paradise lost Enlightened, and their languished hope revived. The invention all admired, and each, how he To be the inventor missed, so easy it seemed Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought Impossible: yet haply of thy race In future days, if malice should abound, Someone intent on mischief, or inspired With devilish machination might devise Like instrument to plague the sons of men For sin, on war and mutual slaughter bent. Forthwith from council to the work they flew, None arguing stood, innumerable hands Were ready, in a moment up they turned Wide the celestial soil, and saw beneath The originals of nature in their crude Conception; sulphurous and nitrous foam They found, they mingled, and with subtle art, Concocted and adusted they reduced To blackest grain, and into store conveyed: Part hidden veins digged up (nor hath this earth Entrails unlike) of mineral and stone,

498. Zeugma or adiunctio; easily missed, since the second admired (= ‘marvelled’) is elided. The devils’ rhetoric is tastelessly disordered, with mixed style heights, inappropriate figures like puns, and vices like bomphiologia (excessive elevation). Cp. vi 698–9n. 509–15. For matter to be morally neutral, the materials for war should exist in heaven (Svendsen (1956) 121). Chaos supplies the materials for Satan’s evil constructions; see Schwartz (1988) 27; Treip (1994) 162. Cp. Revard (1980) 188f, on the discovery of gunpowder in Valvasone, Angeleide (1590) ii 20. originals of nature: original elements. crude: See vi 472–81n. sulphurous: Sulphur, an ingredient of gunpowder, was also an original, and alchemically the father of minerals; cp. iii 601–5n; Caron (1961) 161. nitrous foam: Cp. ii 937 (where ‘nitre’ blows Satan up); iv 815 (where he is likened to ‘nitrous powder’, or gunpowder); vi 479 (‘fiery spume’). Potassium nitrate (saltpetre) was another ingredient of gunpowder. Concocted: prepared by heating (alchemic); digested (physiological). adusted: dried up by heat (alchemic). Physiologically, the corruption of humours by drying. 516–17. Necessary information for Adam and Eve: before the Fall there was no mining. Cp. i 684–92n. Entrails: (1) inner contents; (2) intestines (continuing the recurrent physical metaphors). 517. Cannonballs of stone were not uncommon.

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Whereof to found their engines and their balls Of missive ruin; part incentive reed Provide, pernicious with one touch to fire. So all ere day-spring, under conscious night Secret they finished, and in order set, With silent circumspection unespied. Now when fair morn orient in heaven appeared Up rose the victor angels, and to arms The matin trumpet sung: in arms they stood Of golden panoply, refulgent host, Soon banded; others from the dawning hills Looked round, and scouts each coast light-armèd scour, Each quarter, to descry the distant foe, Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for fight, In motion or in halt: him soon they met Under spread ensigns moving nigh, in slow But firm battalion; back with speediest sail Zophiel, of cherubim the swiftest wing,

518. found: cast, mould. engines: pieces of ordnance, especially of large size. 519–20. Grotesque, inflated rhetoric; cannon were base, unworthy of high-flown diction. ruin: destruction (effect for cause). incentive: kindling; provoking. The incentive reed is simply the match, held in a ‘serpentine’. pernicious: (1) quick; (2) destructive. (Punning between separate words from different Lat. roots.) touch: The same pun as vi 485. The slight strangeness of diction in missive signals wordplay: (1) missile (OED 3); (2) letter missive (OED 1). On the pamphlet controversy as a war of missiles, see Smith (1994) 18f, instancing a woodcut of ‘a pamphleteer as the barrel of a cannon, with his head at the breech. The fuse is being lit by a Jesuit . . . whispering sedition into his head.’ 521. day-spring: early dawn. conscious: (1) aware; (2) guilty (OED 4b). Both M. Y. Hughes and Roy Flannagan stress (1), implying the devils’ secrecy is illusory. But night is also guilty, as accessory to the attempted secrecy. Elsewhere Night is at best ambivalent – good when held in check, but given to incursions (see iii 726; iv 1015). 524. The morning of Day 3; cp. vi 406n. 532. halt] alt 1667; 1674. A common spelling, possibly activating the idiom in alt = ‘in an excited frame of mind’ (OED s. v. Alt 2 b). 533–4. Apparently displaying stoic resolution; but the slow pace is really occasioned by the concealed artillery (vi 555). 535. Zophiel: ‘Spy of God’. West (1955) 155 abandons the search for a source among a tangle of ‘mistranslations and mistransliterations’ in Agrippa and Fludd. But ‘Iophiel’, easy to mistake for ‘Zophiel’, was common in occultist sources: e.g. McLean (1994) 91; cp. 57, 63 (‘Ophiel’). And he

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Came flying, and in mid-air aloud thus cried. Arm, warriors, arm for fight, the foe at hand, Whom fled we thought, will save us long pursuit This day, fear not his flight; so thick a cloud 540 He comes, and settled in his face I see Sad resolution and secure: let each His adamantine coat gird well, and each Fit well his helm, gripe fast his orbèd shield, Borne even or high, for this day will pour down, 545 If I conjecture aught, no drizzling shower, But rattling storm of arrows barbed with fire. So warned he them aware themselves, and soon In order, quit of all impediment; Instant without disturb they took alarm, 550 And onward move embattled; when behold Not distant far with heavy pace the foe Approaching gross and huge; in hollow cube Training his devilish enginery, impaled On every side with shadowing squadrons deep,

appears in the Zohar (Numbers 154a) as assistant of Michael (Davidson (1967) 150, 330). 539. cloud: Cp. PR iii 326; Homer, Il. iv 274; Livy v (equitum peditumque nubes). Virgil, Aen. x 809 (nubes belli). For the allegory, see 2 Pet. 2:17 – false teachers are ‘clouds . . . to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever’. 541. Sad: sober, serious. secure: confident. 542–6. For spiritual armour against ‘fiery darts’, cp. vi 213n; Eph. 6:14–17. 543. gripe: grip. 545. conjecture: prognosticate, read the signs. 547. aware: Ellipsis for ‘be aware’ (OED 3), simulating an imperative. Reflexive use was perhaps unusual. 548. quit: freed. impediment: hindrance; baggage. 549. Instant: (1) instantly; (2) urgent. disturb: disturbance. Repeated apocope or brachiepeia miming haste. took alarm: responded to the call to arms. 550. embattled: in battle formation. 552. hollow cube: Outwardly the form of virtue (i 550n; vi 399n), but concealing a hollow, aggressive interior. Cp. Church Government, YP i 790: ‘Prelaty . . . must be forced to dissolve’ her ‘pyramidal figure’, ‘the most dividing, and schismatical form that geometricians know of . . . must be fain to englobe, or incube herself among the Presbyters’. 553. Training: pulling. enginery: artillery; see vi 518n. impaled: enclosed (military; heraldic).

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555 To hide the fraud. At interview both stood Awhile, but suddenly at head appeared Satan: and thus was heard commanding loud. Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold; That all may see who hate us, how we seek 560 Peace and composure, and with open breast Stand ready to receive them, if they like Our overture, and turn not back perverse; But that I doubt, however witness heaven, Heaven witness thou anon, while we discharge 565 Freely our part: ye who appointed stand Do as you have in charge, and briefly touch What we propound, and loud that all may hear. So scoffing in ambiguous words, he scarce Had ended; when to right and left the front 570 Divided, and to either flank retired. Which to our eyes discovered new and strange, A triple-mounted row of pillars laid 555–634. Degrading the traditional epic battle taunts into malicious in-jokes (Lewalski (1985) 83). 555. At interview: in mutual view (OED 2; uncommon). For the association of guns with fraud, see vi 470n. 560. composure: settlement. breast: (1) heart (OED 5a); (2) broad front of a moving company (OED 7). 562. overture: (1) opening of negotiations for a settlement (OED 3); (2) aperture, hole (OED 1). The ‘bore’ (vi 485) or ‘hideous orifice’ (vi 577) of the cannon. The confusion of parleying with combat evokes the pamphlet wars (Smith (1994) 224). perverse: (1) wicked; (2) turned the wrong way (in flight). Cp. Lat. perversus. 564. discharge: (1) do; (2) fire. 566. The pun on touch has been made so often (vi 479, 484–90n, 520) that it now seems laboured. Repeated puns, which easily seem excessive, suit the context; cp. vi 698–9n; Landor (1827–36) v 258 (‘the first overt crime of the refractory angels was punning’). 568. words, he scarce] words he scarce, 1674 (wrongly). 569–70. An actual stratagem in M.’s time (H. H. Scudder, NQ, 195 (1950) 335). The device of concealing weapons is from Giovio’s Life of Colleoni; but the updated guns are those of Gustavus Adolphus (Murrin (1994) 131). 572–8. Anticipating centuries of technological history, the devils immediately invent orgues. These ‘organs’ – ordnance consisting of several barrels mounted together – were used for siege warfare (EB xvii 238). triple-mounted: Travesty of Messiah’s ‘three-bolted thunder’ (vi 490f, 764). pillars: Emblemizing virtue, or Christ; see Tervarent (1958) 107;

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paradise lost On wheels (for like to pillars most they seemed Or hollowed bodies made of oak or fir, With branches lopped, in wood or mountain felled) Brass, iron, stony mould, had not their mouths With hideous orifice gaped on us wide, Portending hollow truce; at each behind A seraph stood, and in his hand a reed Stood waving tipped with fire; while we suspense, Collected stood within our thoughts amused, Not long, for sudden all at once their reeds Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame, But soon obscured with smoke, all heaven appeared, From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar Embowelled with outrageous noise the air, And all her entrails tore, disgorging foul Their devilish glut, chained thunderbolts and hail Of iron globes, which on the victor host Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote,

Onians (1988) 79 et passim. The pillars are hollowed, like the cubic array at vi 552–5. 576. Brass . . . mould: made of brass, etc. 578–94. Indecorously low diction. The scatological imagery (vent, belched, embowelled, entrails, disgorging, glut; cp. ‘concocted’ and ‘adusted’ at vi 514) amounts to a sustained allegory of alimentary and anal aggression (Lieb (1970) 20, 28). Devils were often pictured as defecating, vomiting, or belching flames: e.g. the Campo Santo frescos at Pisa; Melchior Lorch, The Pope as Antichrist (from Rev. 16:13). On hell mouth, and Satan defecating on sinners, see Frye (1978) 138, 140. 578. hollow: (1) insincere; (2) concave. See vi 566n. 580. Stood] Shook Dyce (unnecessarily); see Moyles (1985) 143. waving: To keep it alight. suspense: attentive, held in contemplation; undecided (adj.). Cp. Luke 19:48 Douay, ‘All the people was suspense’. 581. amused: puzzled; deceived as to the enemy’s designs (OED 5: military). Cp. vi 555n. 583. Put forth: The intransitive normally referred to plants shooting (OED 42 g (b)). Playing on reed as plant, and the visual resemblance of flame and flower. narrow vent: touch-hole. 586–9. The cannon ‘threaten to turn heaven into a jakes’ (Le Comte (1978) 77). Embowelled: disembowelled (OED 2); filled the bowels of (OED 3). glut: surfeit; excess of bile. 591. Levelled: Smith (1994) 224 suspects reference to Levelling satire, abhorred by M.

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That whom they hit, none on their feet might stand, Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell By thousands, angel on archangel rolled; The sooner for their arms, unarmed they might Have easily as spirits evaded swift By quick contraction or remove; but now Foul dissipation followed and forced rout; Nor served it to relax their serried files. What should they do? If on they rushed, repulse Repeated, and indecent overthrow Doubled, would render them yet more despised, And to their foes a laughter; for in view Stood ranked of seraphim another row In posture to displode their second tire Of thunder: back defeated to return They worse abhorred. Satan beheld their plight, And to his mates thus in derision called. O friends, why come not on these victors proud? Erewhile they fierce were coming, and when we, To entertain them fair with open front And breast, (what could we more?) propounded terms Of composition, straight they changed their minds, Flew off, and into strange vagáries fell,

594. The only line ‘that might be read to signify an archangelic order’ (West (1955) 133f ). Usually archangel indicates personal rank, as it may here. 597. For angels’ ability to change shape, see i 423–31n; iii 634n. 598. dissipation: dispersal in flight. Humiliation of the loyal angels is peculiar to M. (Revard (1980) 190). For the surprise effect, cp. Grafton (1992) 155 on Garcilasso’s account of artillery in the New World. 599. relax . . . files: space their close formation more loosely. 601. indecent: unbecoming. 605. posture: position in weapon drill (military). Cp. Markham (1625) 24: ‘The three postures or words of command . . . for the musket in the face of the enemy . . . 1. Make ready. 2. Present. 3. Give fire.’ displode: discharge. Cp. Lat. displodere (‘burst asunder’), but also ‘displosion’, glossed as English by Blount in 1656; see Corns (1990) 88. tire: volley. 608. mates: comrades. 611–12. open front: (1) candid face; (2) front line ‘divided, and to either flank retired’ (vi 570). For the pun on breast, cp. vi 560n. propounded: proposed. 614. vagaries: frolics; fantastic or capricious movements. Cp. Homer, Il. xvi 617f, Aeneas taunting Meriones with dancing to avoid his spear-throw.

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615 As they would dance, yet for a dance they seemed Somewhat extravagant and wild, perhaps For joy of offered peace: but I suppose If our proposals once again were heard We should compel them to a quick result. 620 To whom thus Belial in like gamesome mood. Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, Of hard contents, and full of force urged home, Such as we might perceive amused them all, And stumbled many, who receives them right, 625 Had need from head to foot well understand; Not understood, this gift they have besides, They show us when our foes walk not upright. So they among themselves in pleasant vein Stood scoffing, heightened in their thoughts beyond 630 All doubt of victory, eternal might To match with their inventions they presumed So easy, and of his thunder made a scorn, And all his host derided, while they stood Awhile in trouble; but they stood not long, 635 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 placed) Their arms away they threw, and to the hills 620–7. In the war, ‘timorous’ (ii 117) Belial is ‘celebrated for nothing but that scoffing speech’ (Addison, Spectator 309 (1965) iii 115). His puns (weight, force, upright, etc.) play on rhetorical and military senses. amused them: engaged their whole attention; see vi 581. stumbled: (1) puzzled; (2) tripped. understand: (1) comprehend; (2) prop (OED 9). 633–4. Anticipating apocalypse, the war’s principal lesson is patience; see Madsen (1968) 111f; J. H. Adamson, JEGP, 57 (1958) 690–703. 635. Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 150 ( furor arma minstrat). 639–66. Alluding to the Giants’ war against the Olympians, a pagan type of the angelic rebellion. Cp. i 197–200n, 231f (the hill ‘torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side / Of thundering Aetna’), 230–7n (rebels buried as the volcanoes of later time); vi 195ff (Satan as a displaced mountain); Hesiod, Theogony 713–18; Claudian, Gigantomachia 70f (war as a recrudescence of chaos: ‘Enipeus, gathered up with its beetling crags, scatters its waters over yon Giant’s shoulders’); MacCaffrey (1959) 88–90; Revard (1980) 192f. Allegations of inconsistent visualization (Shumaker (1967) 128f ) betray deficient appreciation of a ‘masterpiece of poetic description, compounded almost equally of suggestiveness and precise detail’ (Frye (1978) 55).

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640 (For earth hath this variety from heav’n Of pleasure situate in hill and dale) Light as the lightning glimpse they ran, they flew, From their foundations loosening to and fro They plucked the seated hills with all their load, 645 Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops Up lifting bore them in their hands: amaze, Be sure, and terror seized the rebel host, When coming towards them so dread they saw The bottom of the mountains upward turned, 650 Till on those cursèd engines’ triple-row They saw them whelmed, and all their confidence Under the weight of mountains buried deep, Themselves invaded next, and on their heads Main promontories flung, which in the air 655 Came shadowing, and oppressed whole legions armed, Their armour helped their harm, crushed in and bruised Into their substance pent, which wrought them pain Implacable, and many a dolorous groan, Long struggling underneath, ere they could wind 660 Out of such prison, though spirits of purest light, Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown. The rest in imitation to like arms Betook them, and the neighbouring hills uptore; So hills amid the air encountered hills 640–1. Implying monistic materialism (Fallon (1991) 81). 644. seated: fixed; deep-rooted. 646. amaze: bewilderment; stupefaction, panic. 650. triple-row: The ‘triple-mounted’ pillars of vi 572. 651. whelmed: turned over, to cover. 652. Perhaps cp. 1 Cor. 13:2, the power of faith to ‘remove mountains’. 653. invaded: attacked. 654. Main: whole, solid (OED 4b). 655. shadowing: (1) casting shade; (2) prefiguring, boding (apocalyptic defeat) (OED ppl. a 2). oppressed: weighed down. 658. Implacable: impossible to relieve. 659. wind: squirm. 660–1. Cp. ix 126–30; Frye (1978) 79f (instancing the joyless devils of Signorelli and Michelangelo). 664–7. Deliberately unimaginable in its huge scale; cp. vi 647 (‘Be sure’, an alienation device similarly collapsing the inset angelic fiction into the ordinary human action). Quint (1993) 41 compares Augustus’ and Antony’s clashing ships, Virgil, Aen. viii 692 (montes concurrere montibus altos). jaculation: hurling.

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665 Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire, That under ground they fought in dismal shade; Infernal noise; war seemed a civil game To this uproar; horrid confusion heaped Upon confusion rose: and now all heav’n 670 Had gone to wreck, with ruin overspread, Had not the almighty Father where he sits Shrined in his sanctuary of heav’n secure, Consulting on the sum of things, foreseen This tumult, and permitted all, advised: 675 That his great purpose he might so fulfil, To honour his anointed Son avenged Upon his enemies, and to declare All power on him transferred: whence to his Son The assessor of his throne he thus began. 680 Effulgence of my glory, Son beloved, Son in whose face invisible is beheld Visibly, what by deity I am, And in whose hand what by decree I do, Second omnipotence, two days are past, 685 Two days, as we compute the days of heaven,

666. ground] ground, 1674. 669. confusion: chaos. 670. The second day of war is more destructive than the first; cp. vi 218. 672. Shrined: tabernacled (OED 5); set as an offering (OED ld). 673. sum of things: Usually explained as ‘universe’, by analogy with Lucretius v 362 (summarum summa). But summa rerum (‘highest public interest’) is closer, and his great purpose confirms that ‘goal’ is meant (OED s. v. Sum 13). Cp. Natur 35; Ovid, Metam. ii 300 (rerum consule summae). 674. advised: after consideration. Adverbial participle – ‘very elegant’ (Richardson). 679. assessor: sharer; one who sits with. 680–2. Heb. 1:3 (‘brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person’); Col. 1:15 (‘image of the invisible God’). Cp. x 63–5, where the Son can see the Father. For the Son as the Father’s effulgentia, see C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 67. 683. What God decrees, the Son does. Bringing together God’s existence (what . . . I am) and promises (what . . . I do) (Lieb (1981) 177f ). Cp. vi 835; vii 163f, 224; ix 344; John 3:35. 684. Second omnipotence: No less an oxymoron than invisible . . . Visibly. Cp. Matt. 28:18 (‘All power is given to me’); Corns (1994) 20. 685. For time in heaven, see v 579–82n. Despite the difficulties, computing the days of the action is part of the epic contract. For numerological

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Since Michael and his powers went forth to tame These disobedient; sore hath been their fight, As likeliest was, when two such foes met armed; For to themselves I left them, and thou knowst, 690 Equal in their creation they were formed, Save what sin hath impaired, which yet hath wrought Insensibly, for I suspend their doom; Whence in perpetual fight they needs must last Endless, and no solution will be found: 695 War wearied hath performed what war can do, And to disordered rage let loose the reins, With mountains as with weapons armed, which makes Wild work in heav’n, and dangerous to the main. Two days are therefore past, the third is thine; 700 For thee I have ordained it, and thus far

implications, cp. v 579–82n; vi 4–11n, 698–9n; Introduction: Time-scheme. For the rabbinic idea of ‘an angel whose function it is to announce earthly time to the heavenly host’, see Werman (1995) 195. 689. thou knowst: Ridiculed, in view of the Son’s omniscience, or defended as an alienation effect underlining the difference from human discourse; cp. Peter (1960) 13; Ricks (1963) 19. But perhaps meaning, more simply, ‘you know, you of all people, by whom I created them’. 690–1. Equal: See v 660n; vi 44n, 300–7n. So far Satan is only insensibly (imperceptibly) impaired. 693. Why then fight at all? The war was of Satan’s seeking, to dispute God’s ‘right’ to generate the Son (v 674–6, 702). Unless Christ rules, the political chaos will be perpetual (Quint (1993) 43). 698–9. third: Allegorically, the day of resurrection (Luke 13:32, ‘the third day I shall be perfected’) (Hunter (1971) 126). Messiah ends the chaos of the earlier fighting. A more exalted style now succeeds to the grotesque portrayal of the wild work and diablerie; cp. vi 357–62n, 498n, 566n; Stein (1953). Messiah’s delayed entry is scriptural; cp. De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347, on Rev. 12:7f. It is necessary, for the war to have any duration. Numerologically, the two days’ fighting correspond to the dyad of rebellious division, the third to triadic virtue, limitation, order, and return to unity; see Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 95ff; Fowler (1964) 5f. On a Homeric analogue, see M. Mueller, CLS, 6 (1969) 292–316. main: whole; cosmos. 700–9. Empson (1961) 41f argues that God’s delay deceives Satan as to his omnipotence. But the opposite motive is assigned: to manifest the difference between angels and Christ. They are so different that Satan has to deny the third day’s fighting altogether (i 169–71n). For Christ as ‘leader of the heavenly angels’, cp. Eusebius, History II i (1989) 5. unction: anointing; cp. v 603–6.

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paradise lost Have suffered, that the glory may be thine Of ending this great war, since none but thou Can end it. Into thee such virtue and grace Immense I have transfused, that all may know In heaven and hell thy power above compare, And this perverse commotion governed thus, To manifest thee worthiest to be heir Of all things, to be heir and to be king By sacred unction, thy deservèd right. Go then thou mightiest in thy Father’s might, Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels That shake heaven’s basis, bring forth all my war, My bow and thunder, my almighty arms Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh; Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out From all heaven’s bounds into the utter deep: There let them learn, as likes them, to despise God and Messiah his anointed king. He said, and on his Son with rays direct Shone full, he all his Father full expressed Ineffably into his face received, And thus the filial Godhead answering spake. O Father, O supreme of heavenly thrones,

712. basis: foundation. war: Synecdoche; ‘weapons of war’. Cp. Dryden, Aeneis (1697) viii 572 (‘His broken axletrees, and blunted war’); Addison, Cato (1713) i 4 (‘th’embattled elephant, / Loaden with war’). 715. sons of darkness: Contrast v 716, ‘sons of morn’. 716. utter: outer. 718. anointed king: Literally translating Messiah. 720–1. Cp. iii 1–8n; x 63–7; 2 Cor. 4:6 (‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ)’. Ineffably: unutterably (because mysteriously, and because no one has seen God). 723 –33. Cp. John 17:1–23 ( Jesus’ prayer at the last supper – ‘Thou hast given him power . . . I have glorified thee on the earth . . . And now, O Father, glorify thou me . . . that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves . . . I in them, and thou in me’); Matt. 3:17 (‘my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’). For allegations of Arianism, see Kelley (1941) 120 comparing De Doctrina i 5; Hunter (1971). Driscoll (1993) 21 thinks the Son finds God’s goodness in a Kierkegaardian free act of faith. Or Messiah might be Arminian, affirming God’s goodness and human free will.

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First, highest, holiest, best, thou always seekst 725 To glorify thy Son, I always thee, As is most just; this I my glory account, My exaltation, and my whole delight, That thou in me well pleased, declar’st thy will Fulfilled, which to fulfil is all my bliss. 730 Sceptre and power, thy giving, I assume, And gladlier shall resign, when in the end Thou shalt be all in all, and I in thee For ever, and in me all whom thou lov’st: But whom thou hat’st, I hate, and can put on 735 Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on, Image of thee in all things; and shall soon, Armed with thy might, rid heaven of these rebelled, To their prepared ill mansion driven down To chains of darkness, and the undying worm, 740 That from thy just obedience could revolt, Whom to obey is happiness entire. Then shall thy saints unmixed, and from the impure Far separate, circling thy holy mount Unfeignèd alleluias to thee sing,

731–2. Cp. iii 339–43n; 1 Cor. 15:24, 28 (‘Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power . . . And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all’). 734. Ps. 139:21, ‘Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?’ 738. The grim obverse of Christ’s promise, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’ ( John 14:2). mansion: dwelling. Cp. Nativity Ode 140. 739. Cp. i 48n; Jude 6 (‘the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day’); Mark 9:44 (‘where their worm dieth not’); Isa. 66:24 Geneva note (interpreting worm as ‘a continual torment of conscience, which shall ever gnaw them and never suffer them to be at rest’). 741. Cp. vi 172–88, 729; contrast vi 29–32. Concluding Raphael’s study of obedience and servitude; see H. Shitaka, MFEFU, 31 (1982) 4f. 743. Cp. v 631. For heaven pictured as circles, see Frye (1978) 184. 744. Contrast ii 243, where Mammon rejects ‘forced alleluias’.

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745 Hymns of high praise, and I among them chief. So said, he o’er his sceptre bowing, rose From the right hand of glory where he sat, And the third sacred morn began to shine Dawning through heav’n: forth rushed with whirlwind sound 747. right hand: Cp. vi 892; x 64; xii 457. Theologically controversial: e.g. Thomas Cumming, Theses Theologicae de Sessione Christi ad Dexteram Patris (1611). 748. Day 4, although only the third . . . morn; see Introduction: Timescheme. Messiah’s triumph falls on the day numbered four, a form of the holy tetraktys. As Sol Oriens, Christ rises in the morn ‘with healing in his wings’ (Mal. 4:2), but at noon judges, as Sol Iustitiae in medio coeli, burning up the proud; see Panofsky (1955) 259–64. 749–61. The central allegory, prepared for by many partial anticipations; cp. i 311; ii 887; iii 394, 522, 656n (the seven archangels of the cosmic chariot); vi 100–3 (Satan’s chariot), 211, 338, 358, 390, 711; J. P. Rosenblatt, PMLA, 37 (1972) 31ff on structural placement. As a ‘triumphal chariot’ (vi 881) with a throne, Messiah’s ascent of it factitively asserts sovereignty. The triumph, a principal motif in Renaissance and baroque art (particularly masques), generally included such a throne-chariot; see Weisbach (1919); Van Marle (1932); C. Lorgues-Lapouge, L’Oeil, 35 (1957), 27–35. M.’s chariot, suggesting the Hebrew Merkabah, is more mystical and apocalyptic. Cp. Ezek. 1:4–6, 16, 26–8; 10:12, 16 (‘Behold, a whirlwind . . . and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber . . . four living creatures . . . And every one had four faces and every one had four wings . . . The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl . . . and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel . . . the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone . . . And I saw as the colour of amber . . . as the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain . . . And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them)’. For cosmic interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision as referring to tetrads like the four elements and seasons, and to the cardinal virtues, cp. St Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel, Migne xxv 22ff; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 243; G. McColley (1940) 36–8; M.-S. Røstvig, in Miner (1971) 21ff; Lieb (1981) 292 (citing Lightfoot); Schaar (1982) 310–33 (citing Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate, which similarly combines the divine chariot with the angelic rebellion); M. J. Docherty, MiltQ, 23 (1989) 89–121. M. envisions nature, including the stars of the biblical firmament, as a vehicle or image of divinity (Revard (1980) 256–60). On the throne-chariot in ancient ceremony, see L’Orange (1953). The king’s golden chariot or bed in Song of Sol. 3:9f attracted many meditations – e.g. Foliot (1643) 174f –

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750 The chariot of paternal deity, Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed By four cherubic shapes, four faces each Had wondrous, as with stars their bodies all 755 And wings were set with eyes, with eyes the wheels Of beryl, and careering fires between; Over their heads a crystal firmament, Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure Amber, and colours of the showery arch. 760 He in celestial panoply all armed Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, treating the chariot as the Church, or the New Covenant. For Solomon’s gold at the centre, cp. xi 396–407n. On ‘the paradoxical character of the chariot and the Son’s attributes’, cp. Schaar (1982) 333: ‘it is as if on closer inspection the frightening war machine, used for a devastating attack, changes to a dazzling chariot in a celestial trionfo d’amore, on whose very appearance the powers of evil give way and disappear’. In Church Government, YP i 817, M. sets out the ideal of a Christian poet able ‘to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God’s almightiness’. In visual art the chariot to heaven was a frequent motif: e.g. Geisberg (1974) 579. 751. undrawn: moving by its own power. In triumphs, the power of a smooth automaton (symbolizing immanence) was often simulated by large, low-geared, easily turned wheels. 752. instinct: animated; impelled. 755. Suggesting the ever-watching eyes of metamorphosed Argus (Schaar (1982) 321). 757–9. For the imagery of precious stones and metals, cp. iii 505–8n. Cabbalistically, amber was equivalent to ‘Messiah of God’ ( J. H. Adamson, in Hunter (1971) 112). For cabbalistic treatment of the Merkabah, influencing Reuchlin, Pico, and M., see J. H. Adamson, JEGP, 57 (1958) 690–703. showery arch: the throne of Sol Iustitiae was often on a rainbow; see Panofsky (1955) 259–64; Frye (1978) 156–8. 761. Urim: Exod. 28:30, ‘thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the Urim and the Thummim; and they shall be upon Aaron’s heart, when he goeth in before the Lord’. For its sacerdotal and alchemic symbolism, see iii 594– 605nn; Qvarnström (1967) 63 (citing Tancke and others who identified it with the philosopher’s stone, ‘the right Sun itself . . . the right Urim, and burning Carbuncle’); Featley, Clavis (1636); Cowley, ‘The Ecstasy’ viii (1905) 205 (Elijah’s chariot, ‘rich in every part, / Of essences of gems, and spirit of gold / Was its substantial mould; / Drawn forth by chemic angel’s art’); Lieb (1981) 57. Messiah’s armour asserts his agency in creation: as divine alchemist, he wears the stone that in Fludd’s philosophy

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Ascended, at his right hand Victory Sat eagle-winged, beside him hung his bow And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored, 765 And from about him fierce effusion rolled Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire;

mediates between God and the material world. The ascension interweaves a metaphorical passion narrative (Hunter (1971) 128). For the cross as triumphal chariot, cp. Calvin, Institutes II xvi 6; Christopher (1982) 130f. For the machina mundi or superna machina, cp. Plato, Timaeus 41E; Laws 899A; Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 iv (1989–) i 200 (citing Cajetanus on Ps. 104 – the heavens as vehiculum divinae virtutis); Borst (1993) 54; Jacoff (1993). 761–2. In 1667 the stone justly divides the poem’s central paragraph – a pattern Qvarnström (1967) 80–4 finds anticipated in Benlowes, Theophila (1652). The division is repeated in the equal speeches vi 723–45 and 801–23, both 23 lines, a number symbolizing vengeance on sinners (Num. 25:9 Vulg.) as well as salvation (Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 441–3). Cp. iv 30n, 1013–15n; Panofsky (1955) 262 (cosmic judgment at the centre equating ‘the astrological notion, medium coeli, with the theological notion, medium coeli et terrae’). Christ’s centricity was prominent in mystical theology like Fludd’s (Logos as centre of mens); see C. H. Josten JWI, 27 (1964) 329. Aptly, M. places the cosmic throne at the centre of 1667 by line-count; cp. iv 30n; Qvarnström (1967); Fowler (1970a) Index, Milton; Lieb (1981) 295 (listing biblical symbolic centres – Num. 2:17; Isa. 12:16; Ezek. 43:7; Zech. 8:3). Ascending the chariot, Messiah the ‘better man’ rides nature, using its power obediently. 762–3. Conflating Jupiter’s eagle – symbol of imperial majesty (Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 228f ) – with Victory, at whose feet it was sometimes placed (Ripa, Iconologia (1603) 516). In Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, Emblem 46 (1989) 197, Jupiter sends eagles e and w (medium explorare locum) to determine the earth’s central place (Paul Cheshire, private information). 764. Jupiter’s thunderbolts in the Giant War were sometimes interpreted as a type of Christ’s power, sometimes as a contrasting evil; cp. i 506– 21; Hesiod, Theogony 687ff; Stevens (1985) 109. And in contrast with Phaethon (another charioteer), Messiah’s true sonship allows him to wield three-bolted thunder (vi 572n) instead of having it used against him. 765. Ps. 18:8, ‘There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.’ See Lieb (1981) 235f, 241f comparing 1 Enoch, on the influence of the Temple cult and on the unbearable visio Dei. effusion: copious emission of smoke (OED 1c). Schaar (1982) 325f finds suggestion of blood. 766. bickering: flashing, coruscating. Richardson compares Ezek. 1:4, a

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Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, He onward came, far off his coming shone, And twenty thousand (I their number heard) 770 Chariots of God, half on each hand were seen: He on the wings of cherub rode sublime On the crystálline sky, in sapphire throned. Illustrious far and wide, but by his own First seen, them unexpected joy surprised, 775 When the great ensign of Messiah blazed Aloft by angels borne, his sign in heaven: Under whose conduct Michael soon reduced His army, circumfused on either wing, ‘fire catching itself’ (Heb.). Suggesting the diction of earlier martial epic (‘fighting’). 767–70. Rev. 5:11, ‘I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.’ Unlike the indeterminate rebel ‘multitudes’, the elect are numbered in multiples of ten (the tetraktys); cp. v 588, 610–12n, 898–903n; vi 31; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 659f, 667 (contrasting virtuous numbers generated by ten with evil multitudes). Ezekiel’s visionary chariot was sometimes linked with the second coming; but M.’s more spiritual meaning transcends this (Revard (1980) 125f ). saints: See vi 398n. 769. Ps. 68:17, ‘The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place.’ Separating the chariots in two wings puts Messiah in the centre, and makes ten thousand twice, expressing the angels’ supreme perfection (Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 658). 771. Ps. 18:10, ‘He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind’; cp. 2 Sam. 22:11. sublime: set aloft (not a Latinism). 772. ‘And above the firmament that was over their heads was . . . a sapphire throne’ (Ezek. 1:26). crystalline sky: the sphere next above the firmament; see vii 271n. 773–4. Although clearly visible far and wide, Messiah is First seen by those loyal to him. Quint (1993) 48 compares the return of Achilles to battle in Homer’s Iliad, reinstating heroism. 776. Matt. 24:30, ‘then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then . . . they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory’. 777. reduced: (1) led back (OED 2b); (2) took back to their origin (in God) (OED 4a citing De Imitatione Christi, tr. c.1450 (1893) III lix 139: ‘Grace reducith all thinges to god’). 778. circumfused: spread around.

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Under their head embodied all in one. 780 Before him power divine his way prepared; At his command the uprooted hills retired Each to his place, they heard his voice and went Obsequious, heav’n his wonted face renewed, And with fresh flowerets hill and valley smiled. 785 This saw his hapless foes, but stood obdured, And to rebellious fight rallied their powers Insensate, hope conceiving from despair. In heav’nly spirits could such perverseness dwell? But to convince the proud what signs avail, 790 Or wonders move the obdúrate to relent? They hardened more by what might most reclaim, Grieving to see his glory, at the sight Took envy, and aspiring to his height, Stood re-embattled fierce, by force or fraud 795 Weening to prosper, and at length prevail Against God and Messiah, or to fall In universal ruin last, and now To final battle drew, disdaining flight, Or faint retreat; when the great Son of God 800 To all his host on either hand thus spake. Stand still in bright array ye saints, here stand 779. Cp. v 606n; Col. 1:18 (Christ as ‘head of the body, the Church’). 780–4. Cp. Isa. 40:3f, moralized landscape: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain’ (Geneva note: ‘Fully accomplished, when John the Baptist brought tidings of Jesus Christ’s coming’). Martial epic is transcended by ‘creative uses of power’ (Lewalski (1985) 128). 783. his: Still a neuter pronoun. 785. obdured: hardened. For hardening of the heart of sinners, cp. iii 197– 200n. 787. Insensate: unaffected by the display of Messiah’s powers. 788. Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 11, a famous apostrophe at Juno’s malevolence (tantaene animis caelestibus irae?). 789–91. Cp. Exod. 14:4, Pharaoh’s heart hardened, despite miraculous signs. by . . . reclaim: Sinners were hardened by treatment that ‘ought rather to soften the hearts of sinners’ (De Doctrina i 8, YP vi 336). 801. Cp. iii 99; v 522n, 540; Exod. 14:13 (Moses telling the Israelites to stand and watch the Egyptians destroyed); Lieb (1981) 299, citing Clarendon (a ‘soldierly word’) on a battle tactic of Cromwell’s. On the associations of stand, see further Berry (1976); B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 587.

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Ye angels armed, this day from battle rest; Faithful hath been your warfare, and of God Accepted, fearless in his righteous cause, And as ye have received, so have ye done Invincibly; but of this cursèd crew The punishment to other hand belongs, Vengeance is his, or whose he sole appoints; Number to this day’s work is not ordained Nor multitude, stand only and behold God’s indignation on these godless poured By me; not you but me they have despised, Yet envied; against me is all their rage, Because the Father, t’ whom in heav’n supreme Kingdom and power and glory appertains, Hath honoured me according to his will. Therefore to me their doom he hath assigned; That they may have their wish, to try with me In battle which the stronger proves, they all, Or I alone against them, since by strength They measure all, of other excellence Not emulous, nor care who them excels; Nor other strife with them do I vouchsafe. So spake the Son, and into terror changed

808. The Bible reiterates that vengeance is a divine prerogative, not lightly delegated: e.g. Deut. 32:35; Ps. 94:1; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30. 809–10. Judgment depends not on force of numbers, but on Messiah alone (vi 820). One is not a number, since the monad is ‘source and origin of numbers’; see Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I vi 7f; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 13–61 (esp. 15, applying the idea to Lucifer’s illusion of autonomy). For unity versus multitude, cp. i 338ff; v 610–12n; vi 767n. There may be élitist implications; cp. Easy Way, YP vii 414f (‘The best affected also and best principled of the people, stood not numbering or computing on which side were most voices in Parliament . . . there being in number little virtue’); Fuller, Holy State (1840) 262 (the ‘Good General’ ‘acknowledgeth God the generalissimo of all armies; who in all battles, though the number be never so unequal, reserves the casting voice for himself ’). 815. Matt. 6:13, ‘deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever’. Plural subject with singular verb was still common. 818. try: test. 820–3. Censuring the devils’ ideal of excellence, and affirming a different hierarchy of virtues; cp. i 144, 273; ii 232; J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 93. 824 –77. Contradicting the devils’ version of the expulsion; cp. i 44–8,

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825 His count’nance too severe to be beheld And full of wrath bent on his enemies. At once the four spread out their starry wings With dreadful shade contiguous, and the orbs Of his fierce chariot rolled, as with the sound 830 Of torrent floods, or of a numerous host. He on his impious foes right onward drove, Gloomy as night; under his burning wheels The steadfast empyrean shook throughout, All but the throne itself of God. Full soon 835 Among them he arrived; in his right hand Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent Before him, such as in their souls infixed Plagues; they astonished all resistance lost, All courage; down their idle weapons dropped; 169–77, 325–30; ii 77–81, 165–8, 374, 767–77, 993–8; iii 390–9. For traditional accounts, see Frye (1978) 56f. 827. Cp. Lieb (1981) 296 (‘As though the entire meaning of holy war were consummated in this phrase’). four: The ‘four cherubic shapes’ of vi 753, their wings set with eyes; cp. Ezek. 10:12 (illus. in Geneva Bible); M. Lieb, in Labriola (1988) 21–58. starry wings: Less usual, underlining the equipage’s cosmic nature. Not a super-tank (as Knight (1942) 165) but a theophany. Cromwell’s chaplain Peter Sterry, however, associated the Drogheda victory with Ezekiel’s chariot. 828. contiguous: Cp. Ezek. 1:9, the wings of the cherubim ‘joined one to another’. 830. Ezek. 1:24, ‘The noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters’. 831. For the unwavering steadiness, cp. Ezek. 1:12: ‘they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not’. 832. Cp. vi 846; vii 218 (the ‘fervid wheels’ of Messiah’s chariot en route to creation); Passion 36 (‘See see the chariot, and those rushing wheels’). 833–43. Refuting Satan’s claim to have shaken the throne (i 105). Cp. Isa. 13:12f, ‘I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.’ A prophecy resonant throughout the poem: e.g. vi 749–59n (Solomon’s triumphal chariot), and xi 400 (Ophir central among empires). 836. ten thousand: See vi 767n. thunders: See vi 764n. 838. Plagues: blows, wounds (OED 1); afflicting visitations of divine anger. Not a Latinism (Corns (1990) 99). Allusion to the Egyptian plagues has been prepared by vi 801. For the ambivalence of the pagan type, Apollo

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840 O’er shields and helms, and helmèd heads he rode Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostráte, That wished the mountains now might be again Thrown on them as a shelter from his ire. Nor less on either side tempestuous fell 845 His arrows, from the fourfold-visaged four, Distinct with eyes, and from the living wheels, Distinct alike with multitude of eyes, One spirit in them ruled, and every eye

the shooter and averter of Plagues, see Faraone (1992). astonished: bewildered; stupefied. 840–1. Cp. iii 393–6; A. W. Verity, in Milton (1910) citing Apol, YP i 900f (the zeal needed to ‘astonish the proud resistance of carnal, and false doctors’). Against heresies and corruptions, ‘Zeal whose substance is ethereal, arming in complete diamond ascends his fiery chariot drawn with two blazing meteors figured like beasts, but of a higher breed than any the zodiac yields, resembling two of those four which Ezekiel and St John saw, the one visaged like a lion to express power, high authority and indignation, the other of countenance like a man to cast derision and scorn upon perverse and fraudulent seducers; with these the invincible warrior Zeal shaking loosely the slack reins drives over the heads of scarlet prelates, and such as are insolent to maintain traditions, bruising their stiff necks under his flaming wheels. Thus did the true prophets of old combat with the false; thus Christ himself the fountain of meekness found acrimony enough to be still [always] galling and vexing the prelatical Pharisees’). The image of discarded helms is quintessentially epic; cp. Homer, Il. xii 22f; Virgil, Aen. i 100f; viii 538–40; Conti, Mythologiae (1979) 65; and illuminations of Exod. 14:28. 842. What before caused ‘many a dolorous groan’ (vi 658) now seems preferable to Messiah’s wrath. Cp. Rev. 6:16 (the damned crying ‘to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb’); Lieb (1981) 229. 844–5. For the rain of missiles, see Revard (1980) 176f. 845. Ezekiel 10:14, ‘every one [wheel] had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second . . . of a man, and the third . . . of a lion, and the fourth . . . of an eagle’. 846. Cabbalists identified the living wheels with eyes (Ezek. 10:12) as cherubim, the second Dionysian order. So did H. C. Agrippa. West (1955) 157f links this with the association of wheels with cherubim at vii 218, 224. But Ezek. 10:9 might explain the association; a complete scheme of correspondences need not be inferred. Distinct: adorned (poetic); thick-set (Richardson).

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Glared lightning, and shot forth pernicious fire 850 Among the accursed, that withered all their strength, And of their wonted vigour left them drained, Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fall’n. Yet half his strength he put not forth, but checked His thunder in mid-volley, for he meant 855 Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven: The overthrown he raised, and as a herd Of goats or timorous flock together thronged Drove them before him thunderstruck, pursued With terrors and with furies to the bounds 860 And crystal wall of heav’n, which op’ning wide, Rolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed

849. pernicious: destructive, fatal; swift. 853–5. Contrast Hesiod, Theogony, where Zeus’ total energies are insufficient to end the Titanomachia (P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 142). 854. volley: storm; shower; salvo. 856–7. Early editors should not be patronized for labouring to raise the base simile by means of Homeric analogues; the baseness is there, to lower the rebels by making them ridiculous (Stein (1953) 25). Conflating the devils cast out into the Gadarene swine (Mark 5:11–13) with the reprobate souls in the parable of sheep and goats (Matt. 25:32–41) – at the Last Judgment the goats will be banished ‘into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels’. Shumaker (1967) 130 faults M.’s visualization (the overthrown are hurried in front of the wheels that overthrew them). But the chariot is never said to move rapidly. For maintaining the sacred place by separation of pure and impure, cp. vi 742f; xi 50–3, 105f; Lieb (1981) 131. 858. thunderstruck: Literal and figurative. Often applied to ecclesiastical censure (OED 2b); cp. More (1680) 132 (‘Gregory the seventh, when he had excommunicated the Emperor Henry the fourth, said, he was fulmine afflatus thunder-struck’); Quint (1993) 41 (citing Virgil, Aen. viii 675–728: in the centre (in medio) of Aeneas’ shield, the sun-god Apollo terrifies all Egypt on behalf of Augustus). 859. The first intimation of guilt or compunction (Richardson). Combining Job 6:4 (‘the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me’) with Isa. 51:20 (‘thy sons have fainted . . . they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God’). furies: Roman equivalents of the Erinyes or Eumenides; punishers of hubris. Later thought of as tormenting the dead in Tartarus. 860. crystal wall: Cp. i 742. 861. Rolled: turned on its axis. Cp. heaven’s automated gate, v 254–6n.

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Into the wasteful deep; the monstrous sight Strook them with horror backward, but far worse Urged them behind; headlong themselves they threw Down from the verge of heav’n, eternal wrath Burnt after them to the bottomless pit. Hell heard the unsufferable noise, hell saw Heav’n ruining from heav’n and would have fled Affrighted; but strict fate had cast too deep Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound. Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared, And felt tenfold confusion in their fall Through his wild anarchy, so huge a rout Encumbered him with ruin: hell at last Yawning received them whole, and on them closed, Hell their fit habitation fraught with fire Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain. Disburdened heaven rejoiced, and soon repaired Her mural breach, returning whence it rolled. Sole victor from the expulsion of his foes Messiah his triumphal chariot turned:

862. wasteful: desolate, uninhabited, void. 866. Linking with events in the flashback (i 44–52), said to have ended nine days before the first-order narrative of Bk i. See Introduction: Time-scheme. 868. A meritocratic distinction: those in high places who do not act accordingly must be expelled. On the iteratio on heav’n, see Corns (1990) 109. ruining: falling. 871. See vi 866n. On the significance of the interval, see i 50–83n. 873. rout: disreputable crowd; defeat. 874. At ii 995f, Chaos tells how at the angels’ fall he heard ‘ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, / Confusion worse confounded’. Encumbered: burdened; blocked up; involved; harassed. ruin: fall; destruction; failure. 875. Cp. x 288, 636f; xii 42; Isa. 5:14 (‘hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp . . . shall descend into it’). The medieval visual tradition of hell mouth continued in El Greco, Rubens, Heemskerk, and others; see Frye (1978) 140. 876–7. Cp. ii 823n; Mark 9:43 (‘It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched’). 880–3. Contrast Satan’s and Chaos’s accounts of the expulsion (i 169– 71n; ii 993–7n). The full extent of Messiah’s triumph only emerges now.

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paradise lost To meet him all his saints, who silent stood Eyewitnesses of his almighty acts, With jubilee advanced; and as they went, Shaded with branching palm, each order bright, Sung triumph, and him sung victorious king, Son, heir, and Lord, to him dominion giv’n, Worthiest to reign: he celebrated rode Triumphant through mid-heav’n, into the courts And temple of his mighty Father throned On high; who into glory him received, Where now he sits at the right hand of bliss. Thus measuring things in heav’n by things on earth At thy request, and that thou mayst beware By what is past, to thee I have revealed What might have else to human race been hid; The discord which befell, and war in heaven Among the angelic powers, and the deep fall Of those too high aspiring, who rebelled With Satan, he who envies now thy state, Who now is plotting how he may seduce Thee also from obedience, that with him Bereaved of happiness thou mayst partake His punishment, eternal misery; Which would be all his solace and revenge, As a despite done against the most high, Thee once to gain companion of his woe.

882–92. Apocalyptic; although – pace Shumaker (1967) – the palm also belongs to an allegory of the passion narrative. The palm of victory recalls that in Rev. 7:9; the song of triumph recalls Rev. 5:12; and reception into glory at the right hand of bliss recalls the ascension in Heb. 1:3. At the poem’s centre, M. loops back to the action’s beginning and forward to the end of redemptive history (MacCaffrey (1959) 57). Sung triumph: In Roman triumphs, soldiers processing with the triumphator shouted ‘Io triumphe’ on entering the Capitol. Renaissance festival triumphs followed this precedent; see vi 749–59n. 884–8. In Rev. 12:9f, when the ‘old serpent’ Satan is cast out, a loud voice celebrates the victorious Christ. jubilee: joyful shouting, jubilation. The Jewish jubilee was a year of emancipation and restitution, kept every fifty years. 900–7. The warning referred to in v Arg., which some suppose Raphael never delivered. Empson (1961) 151 thinks it insufficiently specific. But Raphael must carefully refrain from usurping Adam and Eve’s prerogatives: to give detailed instructions would reduce their independence, M.’s Arminian absolute. Raphael, a good judge of Satan’s character,

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But list’n not to his temptations, warn Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard 910 By terrible example the reward Of disobedience; firm they might have stood, Yet fell; remember, and fear to transgress. THE END OF THE SIXTH BOOK

recognizes two of the passions, envy and revengeful despite, that activate him (iv 115; ix 126–8). solace: The proverb Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris is the devils’ motive for tempting mankind in Marlowe, Doctor Faustus I v 42. Cp. Thomas à Kempis, Vallis Liliorum (1494), citing Publilius Syrus, Sententia 995; Mason (1612) 55 (‘Satan’s chiefest drift . . . is the enlargement of his own kingdom’). 909. weaker: Supply ‘vessel’. Cp. 1 Pet. 3:7, ‘ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life’- part of a homily on duties of spouses calculated to obviate any tendency to uxoriousness. The example (the narrative) is followed by epiphonema (vii 911f ) (H. Shitaka, MFEFU, 31 (1982) 2).

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Paradise Lost BOOK VII The Argument

Raphael at the request of Adam relates how and wherefore this world was first created; that God, after the expelling of Satan and his angels out of heaven, declared his pleasure to create another world and other creatures to dwell therein; sends his son with glory and attendance of angels to perform the work of creation in six days: the angels celebrate with hymns the performance thereof, and his re-ascension into heaven. Descend from heav’n Urania, by that name If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine vii Argument] As for 1674 – the first part only of the undivided Bk vii Arg. in 1668 and 1669. 1–50. The third of four preambles in persona auctoris (cp. i 1–49; iii 1–55; ix 1–47). On their placement, see ix 1–47n; on their rhetoric, R. W. Condee, JEGP, 50 (1951) 502–8. The sequence of invocations has descended to the astronomical level; see M. Fixler, PMLA, 92 (1977) 961 n 13 et passim comparing Plato, Symposium 187E (the four ‘furors’); L. M. Johnson, in Danielson (1989) 75f. 1–7. As ancient Muse of Astronomy, Urania aptly presides over the part chiefly concerned with the macrocosm (1667 Bk vii; 1674 vii–viii). Identifying the Muse (named only here) as Urania makes astronomical enquiry a form of praise (Schwartz (1988) 59). Nor of the Muses nine: Because the divine poetry movement reassigned her name to the Christian Muse; cp. Pontano, Urania (1505) 1f (Dic Dea, quae nomen coelo deducis ab ipso / Uraniae, dic Musa Iovis clarissima proles); Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax i 2 (‘O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays / Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring, / But sittest crowned with stars’ immortal rays / In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing’); Du Bartas, ‘L’Uranie’, La Muse Chrestiene (1574); Drummond, Urania (?1614); Curtius (1953) ch. 13; Campbell (1959); Christopher (1982) 72f (pagans misnamed the Muse); Treip (1985). 1. Descend: The progression seems downwards, but is ‘not simply downward or upward but both simultaneously’ (M. Fixler, PMLA, 92 (1977) 958). Cp. vii 12–25n; Virgil, Aen. vii 37–44 (the contrasting movement of the invocation); Horace, Odes III iv; Lewalski (1985) 34. Urania,] Urania 1667 some copies. 2. A hesitation conventional in ancient hvmns.

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Following, above the Olympian hill I soar, Above the flight of Pegasean wing. The meaning, not the name I call: for thou Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top Of old Olympus dwellst, but heav’nly born, Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed, Thou with eternal wisdom didst converse, Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play

3. Olympian hill: Mt Olympus, resort of the pagan Muses, like the ‘Aonian mount’ (i 15); diminished therefore to a hill. (Mountain and hill were already distinguished.) Following,] Following 1667 some copies. 4. The winged horse Pegasus striking the Muses’ spring from Helicon as it flew up to the heavens emblemized inspiration, contemplation, imagination, and sometimes ordinary inspiration excelled; cp. ‘Tragedy of the Poet Collingbourn’ 176–8, Mirror for Magistrates (1559–1610) (‘Like Pegasus a poet must have wings, / To fly to heaven, thereto to feed and rest: / He must have knowledge of eternal things’); Lebey-Batilly, Emblemata (1596) xlix; Wither, Emblems (1635) 105; Clements (1960) 51f, 55f, 229f. To surpass Pegasus, then, is something. 8–12. Cp. Tetrachordon, YP ii 596f (‘God himself conceals us not his own recreations before the world was built’); Prov. 8:24–5, 27, 30 (Wisdom, daughter of God, brought forth ‘before the mountains were settled’ and present when the Lord ‘prepared the heavens . . . when he set a compass upon the face of the depth’ – ‘Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing [Vulg. ludens] always before him’); Lieb (1981) 186. In Wisd. 7–8, a Wisdom ‘conversant with God’ and ‘privy to the mysteries of natural philosophy’ is imagined as a Muse: ‘in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them . . . prophets’. A divine consort Wisdom was current among Renaissance Platonists. M.’s Wisdom is not his Muse, however, but her sister. Showing the influence of the Zohar (Lieb (1981) 222). Fletcher (1930) 112 compares two rabbinical spirits, Understanding and Wisdom, accompanying God at the creation, and proposes an aspect of the Holy Spirit – a theory demolished by Kelley (1941) 115–18. More likely is the Logos, agency of creation, copresent with Wisdom at creation; cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 303f; Eusebius, History ii (1989) 6. Creation was often pictured as attended by abstractions: e.g. A. Sacchi, La Divina Sapienza at the Pal. Barberini, Rome, probably seen by M. See Robins (1963); Hunter (1971) 152f (Athena and Ouranian Aphrodite as manifestations of the Son); M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 155 (Ripa’s Sapienza Divina). 10. play: Like Vulg. ludere, closer to the Heb. ambiguity than AV ‘rejoicing’. Perhaps suggesting musical play (E. Cook, in Nyquist (1987) 200).

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paradise lost In presence of the almighty Father, pleased With thy celestial song. Up led by thee Into the heav’n of heav’ns I have presumed, An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air, Thy tempering; with like safety guided down Return me to my native element: Lest from this flying steed unreined (as once Bellerophon, though from a lower clime), Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall Erroneous, there to wander and forlorn. Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound Within the visible diurnal sphere; Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole, More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged

11. Father,] Father 1667 some copies. 12–25. Counter to the ascent of iii 13–22; the central eminence of Messiah’s triumph is behind. Cp. vii 1n; MacCaffrey (1959) 58f; Lieb (1994) 66–9 (M.’s anxiety). 13. heav’n of heav’ns: See iii 390n. The Heb. superlative; see Donne, Sermons iii 49. 14–15. The ‘first region’ (iii 562–4) of air could be fatal to mortals (Svendsen (1956) 88n). The adverse effect of high altitudes was well known; cp. xii 76–8, where Adam expects the builders of Babel to be famished of breath. Thy tempering: air tempered by you. The Muse has tempered (attuned) the poet himself. 16. native element: earth. 17–20. Bellerophon tried to fly to heaven upon Pegasus, but was thrown on the Aleian plain, where he wandered blind and lonely till death; cp. Conti, Mythologiae ix 4 (1979) 498; Starnes (1955) 240f (citing Calepinus’ and Stephanus’ dictionaries); S. M. Fallon, in Benet (1994) 161–79; Lieb (1994) 66 (‘Aspiration bordering on presumption’). On one interpretation, Bellerophon explored the stars as an astronomer. clime: (1) region; (2) climb (Bellerophon’s, not reaching heaven, was lower). Aleian: Close in meaning to Erroneous and wander (Richardson); redundantia, imitative of going round in circles. 19. Dismounted,] Dismounted 1667 some copies. 21. Half: Of the episode (Richardson); of the symmetrically structured paragraph (L. M. Johnson, in Danielson (1989) 74). More probably referring to the poem’s line-count and – especially in 1674 – its two-part structure; see ix 1–47n. 22. visible . . . sphere: The starry heaven, which seems to revolve with a diurnal motion. In the first half, M. has sung ‘things invisible’ (iii 55) (Flannagan). 23. rapt: enraptured. Cp. vii 37 (where Orpheus is rapt in another sense);

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To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, And solitude; yet not alone, while thou Visitst my slumbers nightly, or when morn Purples the east: still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive far off the barbarous dissonance

Leonard (1990) 237–9 (the latent violence). pole: The celestial pole; synecdoche for the cosmos. 25–8. Difficult syntax veiling dangerous topicalities. During the postRestoration reprisals M.’s life was in danger. He suffered arrest, and, although pardoned, lived subsequently in obscurity, subject to malicious tongues like Samuel Parker’s, in the darkness of blindness. See Darbishire (1932) 175–7 ( John Toland’s Life); Parker (1996) 576f; Corns (1994) 130. 25. days] tongues 1667 some copies. 27. compassed round: Cp. ii 862, of Sin. S. M. Fallon, in Benet (1994) detects loss of control – M. would never associate himself with Sin. But, on the contrary, M. believed everyone sinful. 29. nightly: Cp. iii 31f; ix 21–4; Ps. 17:3 (‘Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night’); Parker (1996) Index, Composition; Darbishire (1932) 33, 291 (Richardson: ‘he frequently composed lying in bed in a morning . . . I have been well informed that when he could not sleep, but lay awake whole nights, he tried; not one verse could he make; at other times flowed easy his unpremeditated verse, with a certain impetus and aestro, as himself seemed to believe. Then, at what hour soever, he rung for his daughter to secure what came’). 31. Élitist adaptation of Horace, Satires I x 73f, an encouragement to write with blunt integrity (neque te ut miretus turba labores, / contentus paucis lectoribus). Cp. Eikonoklastes, Pref., YP iii 339f: ‘readers; few perhaps, but those few, such of value and substantial worth, as truth and wisdom, not respecting numbers and big names, have been ever wont in all ages to be contented with’. The sacred counterpart is ‘the chosen seed’ (i 8). few.] few 1667 some copies. 32–8. Orpheus, pagan type of the inspired poet, is apt because of his solitariness. His sparagmos (dismemberment) by the wild rout of Thracian women (during a Bacchic orgy) focused deep fears in M.; cp. Lycidas 58–63; Lieb (1994) 60f (relating the sparagmos to chaos). Turning to a new, Christian, Muse, more able to protect. Rhodope: Mountain range in Thrace. woods and rocks: Enthralled by the Threicius vates, these nevertheless provided instruments for his murder. drowned: Orpheus’ singing head was thrown into the Hebrus river. harp: The lyre given him by Apollo or Mercury, which continued sounding autonomously; cp. Virgil, Georgics iv 453–527; Ovid, Metam. xi 1–60.

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paradise lost Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodopè, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamour drowned Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores: For thou art heav’nly, she an empty dream. Say goddess, what ensued when Raphael, The affable archangel, had forewarned Adam by dire example to beware Apostasy, by what befell in heaven To those apostates, lest the like befall In Paradise to Adam or his race, Charged not to touch the interdicted tree, If they transgress, and slight that sole command, So easily obeyed amid the choice Of all tastes else to please their appetite, Though wandering. He with his consorted Eve The story heard attentive, and was filled With admiration, and deep muse to hear Of things so high and strange, things to their thought So unimaginable as hate in heaven, And war so near the peace of God in bliss With such confusion: but the evil soon

33. Corns (1994) 25 compares YP vii 452f: ‘these tigers of Bacchus, these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating-tub’. 36. rapture,] rapture 1667 some copies. 37. Muse: Calliope, Orpheus’s mother. 39. heav’nly,] heav’nly 1667 some copies. 40. goddess,] goddess 1667 some copies. 41. archangel,] archangel 1667 some copies. Cp. v 221: ‘sociable spirit’. Adam later thanks Raphael for his ‘affable . . . condescension’ (viii 648–50). 45. If Adam does not sin, his race (offspring) will remain in Paradise on the same terms (Richardson). 46. Unlike many exegetes, M. equates touching and tasting the tree; cp. Eve’s careful formulation at ix 651. 47. sole command: Cp. i 32 (‘one restraint’); iv 421 (‘This one, this easy charge’), iv 423f (‘not to taste that only tree / Of knowledge’), 428 (‘only sign of our obedience’). 50. consorted: espoused, united as consort. 52. admiration: amazement. muse: meditation. admiration,] admiration 1667 some copies. 56. confusion:] confusion, 1667 some copies.

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Driv’n back redounded as a flood on those From whom it sprung, impossible to mix With blessedness. Whence Adam soon repealed The doubts that in his heart arose: and now Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know What nearer might concern him, how this world Of heaven and earth conspicuous first began, When, and whereof created, for what cause, What within Eden or without was done Before his memory, as one whose drouth Yet scarce allayed still eyes the current stream, Whose liquid murmur heard new thirst excites, Proceeded thus to ask his heavenly guest. Great things, and full of wonder in our ears, Far differing from this world, thou hast revealed Divine interpreter, by favour sent Down from the empyrean to forewarn Us timely of what might else have been our loss, Unknown, which human knowledge could not reach: For which to the infinitely good we owe Immortal thanks, and his admonishment Receive with solemn purpose to observe Immutably his sovereign will, the end Of what we are. But since thou hast vouchsafed Gently for our instruction to impart Things above earthly thought, which yet concerned

57–9. Cp. ii 138–41, Belial on ‘the ethereal mould / Incapable of stain’. redounded: flowed back. 59. repealed: abandoned (OED 2). Cp. More, ‘Psychathanasia’ (1647) II ii 23: ‘Therefore repeal / This gross conceit, and hold as reason doth reveal.’ 61. yet: still. To M., the impulse to enquire is in itself blameless; cp. ix 659. 63. conspicuous: visible. Distinguishing the astronomical heaven from the invisible ‘heaven of heavens’; cp. iii 390n; vii 13, 22. 72. interpreter: Cp. Virgil, Aen. iv 378 (Mercury interpres divurn, bringing Jupiter’s injunction to leave Dido); Lewalski (1985) 144 n 9 (contrasting God’s message – to live happily together). Cabbalists often associated Raphael with Mercury: e.g. McLean (1994) 73. 79. Eccl. 12:13 Geneva, ‘Let us hear the end of all: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’ Calvin’s Catechism begins ‘What is the principal and Chief End of Man’s Life? – To know God’.

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paradise lost Our knowing, as to highest wisdom seemed, Deign to descend now lower, and relate What may no less perhaps avail us known, How first began this heaven which we behold Distant so high, with moving fires adorned Innumerable, and this which yields or fills All space, the ambient air wide interfused Embracing round this florid earth, what cause Moved the creator in his holy rest Through all eternity so late to build In chaos, and the work begun, how soon Absolved, if unforbid thou mayst unfold What we, not to explore the secrets ask Of his eternal empire, but the more To magnify his works, the more we know.

83. seemed: seemed good (OED 7e). knowing,] knowing 1667 some copies. 88–9. Cp. ii 842, ‘buxom air’. Air yields to solids or fills the space they leave. 90–2. As if asking like a child what moved the prime mover. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 299 calls ‘anyone who asks what God did before the creation of the world . . . a fool’. The usual assumption that he ‘was occupied with election and reprobation’ will not do; for ‘it would clearly be disproportionate for God to have been totally occupied from eternity in decreeing things which it was to take him only six days to create’. M. rejects the Occasional Cause for creation – the dispeopling of heaven – at vii 145–9. Cp. ix 138–40; Augustine, Confessions XI ix–xiii, xxx–xxxi (1992) 228ff, 244f; Hunter (1980) 166f (finding a presentation ‘of the problem involved in trying to see motivation through process’); Lewalski (1985) 300 n 49 (citing Augustine, Confessions and Calvin, Institutes); J. Leonard, in Danielson (1989) 102–6 (the question is not ‘Why creation?’ but ‘Why creation now?’). florid: flowery; resplendent. what cause: See i 28n; M. Agari, in Yoshida (1983) 150. 93–4. Adam is interested in the work’s duration – in the Unity of Time, as it were. Absolved: finished, completed. Common in prose, and not a conspicuous Latinism, although Richardson (more familiar with Latin than with older English) thought it was. ‘Still innocent’ (Ricks (1963) 115). begun,] begun 1667 some copies. 97. Job 36:24, ‘Remember that thou magnify his work.’ Adam treads circumspectly, not wishing to pry into forbidden knowledge. Minimizing the limitation by amplifying the permissible ration as far from meagre (Burden (1967) 114f ). works,] works 1667 some copies.

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And the great light of day yet wants to run Much of his race though steep, suspense in heaven 100 Held by thy voice, thy potent voice he hears, And longer will delay to hear thee tell His generation, and the rising birth Of nature from the unapparent deep: Or if the star of evening and the moon 105 Haste to thy audience, night with her will bring Silence, and sleep listening to thee will watch, Or we can bid his absence, till thy song End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine. Thus Adam his illustrious guest besought: 110 And thus the godlike angel answered mild. This also thy request with caution asked Obtain: though to recount almighty works

98–100. The conventional appeal to continue a narration; cp. Homer, Od. xi 372–6. The sun’s daily race being steep must be near its end. Adam doubtless noticed the apparent deceleration caused by atmospheric refraction (iv 541n); this by pathetic fallacy becomes the sun’s reluctance to end Raphael’s narration. suspense: (1) hanging (OED 4); (2) attentive (OED 1); (3) undecided whether to set (OED 2). Probably referring to the anakuklesis or change in the sun’s course supposed to mark a new world cycle (here the cycle of decay); see Plato, Politicus 268E; Republic 545f, Plato (1929) ii 298; Fowler (1964) 42 (Spenser’s similar use of Josh. 10:12–14). Cp. v 583 (the new cycle); x 687ff (the sun turning away from human sin). 103. unapparent: invisible, secret. Because dark, and without form. 105. Haste . . . audience: (1) hurry to hear you; (2) hurry to attend your formal ambassadorial interview. Adam courteously acknowledges the ambassador’s time is limited. 106. watch: remain awake. 108. Adam carries his majesty too modestly to say outright that he will dismiss Raphael; as the antecedent of we could be Adam and Eve, so the subject of dismiss could be song. 112–14. or tongue] from tongue Bentley. But this loses ‘the completeness of the statement’; see Empson (1950) 161 paraphrasing as ‘How can any stage in the production of the speech of seraphs be adequate; how can they find words, and if they could how could their tongues pronounce them?’; ‘the merit of or is its fluidity; the way it allows “words from tongue” to be suggested without pausing for analysis’. Cp. vii 120f, 126f; viii 15–28, 120–2, 172f; 1 Cor. 2:9 (‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him’); Schwartz (1988) 42 (detecting caution about

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paradise lost What words or tongue of seraph can suffice, Or heart of man suffice to comprehend? Yet what thou canst attain, which best may serve To glorify the maker, and infer Thee also happier, shall not be withheld Thy hearing, such commission from above I have received, to answer thy desire Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain To ask, nor let thine own inventions hope Things not revealed, which the invisible king, Only omniscient, hath suppressed in night, To none communicable in earth or heaven: Enough is left besides to search and know. But knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her temperance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain, Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind. Know then, that after Lucifer from heaven (So call him, brighter once amidst the host

forbidden knowledge); Lewalski (1985) 44f (Raphael considering creation a higher subject than ‘the martial exploits of angels’). 113. Cp. Isa. 6:6, a seraph purifying the prophet’s mouth with fire. 116. infer: render (OED 1). the] thy 1667 some copies. 120. On forbidden knowledge, see Schultz (1955); C. Ginzburg, P&P, 73 (1976) 28–41; L. Daston, W&I, 11 (1995) 391–404; C. S. Wood, W&I, 11 (1995) 332–52. 121. inventions: reasonings. Cp. Eccl. 7:29, ‘God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.’ Perhaps referring to scientific discoveries; cp. viii 76. hope: hope for. 122–3. Cp. 1 Tim. 1:17 (‘the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God’); Horace, Odes III xxix 29–32 (prudens futuri temporis exitum / caliginosa nocte premit deus, / ridetque si moralis ultra / fas trepidat). 124. Matt. 24:36, ‘of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only’. For bounds set to astronomical enquiry, see viii 70ff. 126–30. Developing the metaphor elsewhere left implicit in ‘savour’, ‘savoury’, etc.; cp. v 84–5n, 304; ix 579, 741; Davenant, Gondibert (1651) II viii 22 (‘For though books serve as diet of the mind; / if knowledge, early got, self-value breeds, / By false digestion it is turned to wind; / And what should nourish, on the eater feeds’); Jeanneret (1991) 137 et passim. 126. as] a 1667 some copies. 132. Offering Lucifer (the morning star, Venus or Mercury), a light far below the unfallen Satan, as an intelligible human translation. Satan’s

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Of angels, than that star the stars among) Fell with his flaming legions through the deep 135 Into his place, and the great Son returned Victorious with his saints, the omnipotent Eternal Father from his throne beheld Their multitude, and to his Son thus spake. At least our envious foe hath failed, who thought 140 All like himself rebellious, by whose aid This inaccessible high strength, the seat Of deity supreme, us dispossessed, He trusted to have seized, and into fraud Drew many, whom their place knows here no more; 145 Yet far the greater part have kept, I see,

original name is suggested but not given. Cp. i 82n, 361–3; v 658f, 700–14n (developing the morning-star allegory); Leonard (1990) 97f (Raphael’s regret for what Satan once was: ‘M.’s tactful employment of the name creates an impression of Satan’s original splendour, while conceding that man, even unfallen man, can never fully apprehend that splendour’). 135. Acts 1:25, ‘Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.’ 136. saints: angels. Cp. vi 398n, 767. 139. least] last Adams (1955) 94, unnecessarily. 141. For the inaccessibility, cp. v 643n. 142. us dispossessed: Accusative absolute construction. Probably Latinism; but cp. Matt. 28:13, tr. Wycliffe: ‘they han stolen him us slepinge’. 143. fraud: faithlessness (OED 1). Perhaps a Latinizing passive sense – ‘state of being deluded’ (OED 5). Flannagan compares ix 643f: ‘So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud / Led Eve’. 144. Job 7:9f, ‘He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more.’ many,] many 1667 some copies. 145. On contradictory estimates of rebel numbers, see ii 692n. 145–56. Denying creation to be necessitated by the dispeopling of heaven. Cp. De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 209 (‘God always acts with absolute freedom, working out his own purpose and volition’); Empson (1961) 56, 87 (God creates us ‘to spite the devils’); M. N. Clark, ELR, 7 (1977) 220 (God needs creatures to realize his perfection); Rumrich (1987) Index, Creation. Raphael nowhere suggests a contingent cause of creation. Eventual repeopling of heaven (an idea, later patristic, that would naturally interest Raphael) is a convenient means, rather, of turning apparent evil into good. Cp. Augustine, City of God XXII i: ‘Gathering so many unto this grace as should supply the places of the fallen angels, and so preserve (and perhaps augment) the number of the heavenly inhabitants.’ Following

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Their station, heaven yet populous retains Number sufficient to possess her realms Though wide, and this high temple to frequent With ministeries due and solemn rites: 150 But lest his heart exalt him in the harm Already done, to have dispeopled heaven, My damage fondly deemed, I can repair That detriment, if such it be to lose Self-lost, and in a moment will create 155 Another world, out of one man a race Of men innumerable, there to dwell, Not here, till by degrees of merit raised They open to themselves at length the way Up hither, under long obedience tried, 160 And earth be changed to heaven, and heaven to earth, One kingdom, joy and union wíthout end. Meanwhile inhabit lax, ye powers of heaven, And thou my Word, begotten Son, by thee This I perform, speak thou, and be it done:

Dr Johnson, Gilbert (1947) 132–4 finds discrepancy with the rumour of creation ‘rife’ before the angelic fall (i 651ff; ii 345–53). But this may express God’s foreknowledge. See iv 136–8n. 151. done,] done 1667 some copies. 154. Self-lost: Cp. iii 130; Augustine, City of God XXII i (‘Nor had there been any evil at all, but that those spirits . . . procured such evil unto themselves by sin’); Burden (1967) 37; Danielson (1982) 213. and: ‘Misses causality by a hair’s breadth’ (Hunter (1980) 167). moment: In the Augustinian creation, all living creatures were present from the first as rationes seminales; cp. De Genesi i 1–3; Ellrodt (1960) 77ff. 156–60. See v 496–50On. innumerable,] innumerable 1667 some copies. 161. without: For accentuation on the first syllable, indicating emphasis, see B. A. Wright, NQ, 203 (1958) 202f. 162. inhabit lax: spread yourselves; live spaciously; annex the estates of the exiled rebels. Cp. Cicero, De Domo Sua xliv 115 (habitare laxe et magnifice voluit). 162. heaven,] heaven: 1667 some copies. 163–4. Subordinationism compatible with emphasis on Christ as Neoplatonic Logos, agent of creation; cp. iii 170n; v 601n; vi 683; vii 192–6, 205–9; De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 300–4 (Christ as instrumental cause of creation: ‘Creation is the act by which God the Father produced everything that exists by his word and spirit, that is, by his will’); John. 1:1–3.

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165 My overshadowing spirit and might with thee I send along, ride forth, and bid the deep Within appointed bounds be heaven and earth, Boundless the deep, because I am who fill Infinitude, nor vacuous the space. 170 Though I uncircumscribed myself retire, And put not forth my goodness, which is free To act or not, necessity and chance Approach not me, and what I will is fate. So spake the almighty, and to what he spake 175 His Word, the filial Godhead, gave effect. On the Trinitarian unity of God in creation, see C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 75. 165–6. might: Perhaps cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 304 (‘God’s divine power, not any particular person’). overshadowing: Gabriel says to Mary ‘The power of the highest shall overshadow thee’ (Luke 1:35). Cp. Gen. 1:2, ‘the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’. 166–9. Creation ex materia praeexistente, according to Kelley (1941). Actually, creation ex Deo; cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 308; Curry (1957) ch. 2 (ex Deo creation contradictory to the idea of historical creation); C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 167; M. N. Clark, ELR, 7 (1977) 218 (connecting ex Deo creation with M.’s materialism). For creation by filling, cp. Augustine, Confessions IV ix (1992) 61. 168. I am: The divine name (Exod. 3:14). Collapsed or conflated grammar (Treip (1994) 237). Metrically prominent, fill ‘aligns the plenitude of God against the emptiness of opposing forces’ (MacCaffrey (1959) 105 contrasting ii 932). 168–73. Stressing God’s freedom, and implying that, far from circumscribing God, the chaotic nature of the deep (where Chance governs, ii 909f ) shows him preferring not to extend there his form-giving goodness. For creation by ‘retraction’, cp. Pirkei de-R. Eliezer iii 15–17; Saurat (1970) Index, Retraction. See critiques in Kelley (1941) 209–11; R. J. Z. Werblowski, JWI, 18 (1955) 90–113. All the ideas are in Magiris’ textbook of natural philosophy (Fletcher (1956–61) ii 173). Anathema to the Arians; see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 169f; Robins (1963) 47f; C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 65. 173. Undercutting Satan’s Stoic fatalism (i 116–17n): there is no fate but God’s will (as Belial admits, ii 197–9). Cp. De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 130–1: ‘There are some who prattle about nature or fate, as if they were to be identified with this supreme being. But nature or natura implies by its very name that it was natam, born. Strictly speaking it means nothing except the specific character of a thing, or that general law in accordance with which everything comes into existence and behaves. Surely, too, fate or fatum is only what is fatum, spoken by some almighty power.’

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paradise lost Immediate are the acts of God, more swift Than time or motion, but to human ears Cannot without procéss of speech be told, So told as earthly notion can receive. Great triumph and rejoicing was in heaven When such was heard declared the almighty’s will; Glory they sung to the most high, good will To future men, and in their dwellings peace: Glory to him whose just avenging ire Had driven out the ungodly from his sight And the habitations of the just; to him Glory and praise, whose wisdom had ordained Good out of evil to create, instead Of spirits malign a better race to bring Into their vacant room, and thence diffuse His good to worlds and ages infinite. So sang the hierarchies: meanwhile the Son On his great expedition now appeared, Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned Of majesty divine, sapience and love

176–9. Implying that his creation narrative will be mythic, like that of the war. Cp. v 571–6; C. G. Shirley, SAB, 45 (1980) 51–61 (Raphael’s use of ‘accommodation’). Immediate: See vii 154n. Augustinian commentators explained the six days of creation as symbolizing implementation of a previous, instantaneous act. Cp. Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605) I vi 2 on a ‘double emanation’, of power and wisdom (the one making matter, the other disposing form): ‘In the history of creation, the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth was made in a moment; and the order and disposition . . . was the work of six days.’ notion: understanding. 182–3. Cp. Job 38:7 (‘the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’ at creation); Luke 2:14 (the angels’ hymn celebrating incarnation and new creation: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men’); M. Fixler, in Kranidas (1971) 142 (creation liturgically conceived as a hexaemeron with seven choruses). 183. peace:] peace; 1667 some copies. 188. Cp. vii 613–16n; xii 470f (‘evil turn to good’); Treip (1994) 161 (the pattern of reversals). 191. worlds] world 1667 some copies. 194. Girt with omnipotence: Cp. Ps. 18:39, ‘thou hast girded me with strength’. 195. For Christ’s association with sapience, see vii 8–12n; Ellrodt (1960) 166ff.

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Immense, and all his Father in him shone. About his chariot numberless were poured Cherub and seraph, potentates and thrones, And virtues, wingèd spirits, and chariots winged, 200 From the armoury of God, where stand of old Myriads between two brazen mountains lodged Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand, Celestial equipage; and now come forth Spontaneous, for within them spirit lived, 205 Attendant on their Lord: heaven opened wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound On golden hinges moving, to let forth The king of glory in his powerful Word And Spirit coming to create new worlds. 210 On heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,

196. Cp. iii 139–40n. 197. The glorious procession of a ‘triumph’ (vii 180) figures the glory of creation. Cp. vi 750ff, the triumphal chariots of the poem’s central metaphor of transcendence. poured: Cp. the ‘torrent floods’ of vi 830. 200. Jer. 50:25, ‘The Lord hath opened his armoury’. Apocalyptic imagery suggesting a perspective from the beginning of creation to its end. 201. Cp. Zech. 6:1,5, ‘there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass’. The chariots were ‘spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth’. 203. equipage: retinue; apparatus. Ominously suggesting apparatus of war for the solemn day of judgment. 204. For the animated chariots, cp. vi 846n; Ezek. 1:20. 205–8. Ps. 24:7, ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.’ Contrast hell gates, which opened with a ‘jarring sound’ (ii 879ff ) to give Satan his view of the abyss. On the syntax, see Lewis (1942) 46. For the automatic gates, cp. v 254–6n. 208–9. Formally Trinitarian, but with Word and Spirit subordinate aspects rather than separate persons. Cp. vii 163–4n. 210–15. Ps. 24:1f, ‘The earth is the Lord’s . . . he hath founded it upon the seas’. Outrageous: excessive; unrestrained. wasteful: desolate; excessive. Cp. ii 961n. Up . . . bottom: Cp. Virgil, Aen. i 84ff, 106ff, 124ff, seas upheaved a sedibus imis, but calmed by Neptune. centre . . . pole: Belonging to the simile’s vehicle; chaos itself is without place (ii 894).

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Up from the bottom turned by furious winds And surging waves, as mountains to assault 215 Heaven’s height, and with the centre mix the pole. Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace, Said then the omnific Word, your discord end: Nor stayed, but on the wings of cherubim Uplifted, in paternal glory rode 220 Far into chaos, and the world unborn; For chaos heard his voice: him all his train Followed in bright procession to behold Creation, and the wonders of his might. Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand 225 He took the golden compasses, prepared In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe 216. Numerous pauses making for weightiness (Treip (1970) 73). 217. Transforming the hexaemeral creation poem ‘into a second “brief epic” celebrating the power of God as exuberant vitality and creativity’ (Lewalski (1985) 124). In the cosmogonic battle, a central myth of the origin of evil, the creative act struggles with chaos; see Schwartz (1988) 30 citing Paul Ricoeur. M.’s more transcendent Messiah has no need of struggle. Contrast Death the evil Neptune in his creation travesty (x 293–8), imposing not peace but ‘rigour’. omnific : all-creating (earliest instance in OED). Latin coinage by analogy with ‘omniscient’ (Corns (1990) 89). 218. Contrast Satan on the edge of the abyss, who stayed repeatedly (ii 918); see Ricks (1963) 78f. Cp. the cherubim of Messiah’s chariot (vi 846n; vii 197–9). 220. Cp. Lewalski (1985) 133 (M.’s use of Lucretius’ vision of earth as magna mater). 224. fervid: burning. Paradoxically combining creation and destruction; cp. the chariot’s ‘burning wheels’ at vi 832, and frequently in Ezekiel’s vision. Sometimes interpreted as evangelical zeal. the] his 1667 some copies. 225–30. Cp. vii 170 (God himself ‘uncircumscribed’); Prov. 8:27 (Sapience saying ‘I was there: then he set a compass [Vulg. gyrus, an abstract circle] upon the face of the depth’). A concrete instrument for describing circles was substituted by commentators, poets, and artists, from AngloSaxon illumination to Renaissance emblems and printers’ devices like Christopher Plantin’s. Cp. Dante (1970–5), Par. xix 40f, tr. Singleton (God ‘turned his compass [sesto] round the limit of the world’); Fletcher (1930) 108; Klibansky (1964) 339 n 190; Frye (1978) 160f. Sometimes God holds compasses as well as scales; perhaps they should be associated with the symbolic objects discussed in M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–78. They imply a divine architect planning the universe by number and proportion (Wittkower (1962) 15, 101).

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This universe, and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, 230 And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy just circumference, O world. Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth, Matter unformed and void: darkness profound Covered the abyss: but on the watery calm 235 His brooding wings the spirit of God outspread, And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged The black tartareous cold infernal dregs Adverse to life: then founded, then conglobed 240 Like things to like, the rest to several place

227. Implying the angels are not created (Empson (1950) 167). But the context is the visible universe; cp. vii 256–60n; De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 313 (the angels created long before the material world). 230. Cp. Job 38:11, ‘here shall thy proud waves be stayed’. The second, circumscriptive stage of creation; see C. G. Shirley, SAB, 45 (1980) 55; Danielson (1982) 46f. 231. just: exact. 233. Matter unformed: The ‘first matter’ of v 472n. Plato’s formless substance (Timaeus 50ff ), long synthesized with the void of Gen. 1:2. Cp. Philo’s authoritative De Opificio Mundi; De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 306f (explicitly rejecting creation ex nihilo); Oldham, ‘Upon the Works of Ben. Johnson’ 33–5 (‘Unformed and void was then its poesy, / Only some preexisting matter we / Perhaps could see’). darkness: Cp. ii 962, Night as Chaos’s consort. 235. Gen. 1:2, ‘And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’ See i 17–22n for brooding as preferable to AV ‘moved’. Cp. De Doctrina i 7, CW xv 13 (Spiritus Dei incubabat), YP vi 304f. 236–42. virtue: influence; power. vital warmth: Developing Plato’s myth about God making the cosmic body from fire and earth (Timaeus 31B-C), Neoplatonists discussed a ‘primal heat’ of creation; cp. Ficino (1959) 1468. For stability, the opposites needed two intermediate terms; hence the four elements. See Ovid, Metam. i 21–31; Lucretius v 438ff; Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I vi 22–41. Adding psychological and physiological imagery: the infernal dregs are black and Adverse to life because earth corresponded to melancholy (whose low medieval status is accepted); see Klibansky (1964) passim. The metaphor of defecation is not ‘scatological’ (as Flannagan); see Kerrigan (1983) 69. conglobed: formed into a ball (separating the elements out from their chaotic confusion).

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Disparted, and between spun out the air, And earth self-balanced on her centre hung. Let there be light, said God, and forthwith light Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure 245 Sprung from the deep, and from her native east To journey through the airy gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun Was not; she in a cloudy tabernacle Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good; 250 And light from darkness by the hemisphere Divided: light the day, and darkness night He named. Thus was the first day even and morn: Nor passed uncelebrated, nor unsung By the celestial choirs, when orient light

242. Cp. iv 1000; v 578f (‘earth now rests / Upon her centre poised’); Nativity Ode 117–24; Job 26:7 (‘He . . . hangeth the earth upon nothing’); Ovid, Metam. i 12f (circumfuso pendebat in aere tellus / ponderibus librata suis); Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 115ff. 243–9. Cp. iii 1–55n, 6n, 8–12 (the primogeniture of light), 716n; Gen. 1:3 (‘God said, Let there be light: and there was light’). Supplementing Genesis with an Aristotelian creation of time. Commentators explained the delayed creation of the heavenly lights by calling the first day’s light unformed, and assigning its formal perfection to the fourth; see Fletcher (1956–61) ii 191 (light ‘not one of the four warring elements of chaos but a fifth element’ or quintessence); Svendsen (1956) 64; Hammond (1983) 59 (influence on Oldham); Gallagher (1990) 13. Ethereal: of the nature of ether, the purest element; celestial. Cp. iii 7, ‘pure ethereal stream’. 248–9. tabernacle: A fiçelle to resolve the biblical crux. Cp. Ps. 19:4 (God sets ‘a tabernacle for the sun’ in the sequence of days and nights); De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 316 (admitting the impossibility of conceiving ‘light without some source of light’, yet distinguishing visible light from the perpetual invisible light in the heaven of heavens); Swan, Speculum (1635) cit. Svendsen (1956) 64 (summarizing the controversy about presolar light – the ‘first light was made in motion, and was created in the eastern part of that hemisphere in which man was made’). 249–52. Gen. 1:4f, ‘God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’ even and morn: Following the Judaic system, which was ‘to account the natural day from evening to evening’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 4). The Genesis phrase was so controversial that M. could not have used it casually. He adopts Jerome’s exegesis, taking ‘evening’ as ‘night’ (not

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255 Exhaling first from darkness they beheld; Birthday of heaven and earth; with joy and shout The hollow universal orb they filled, And touched their golden harps, and hymning praised God and his works, creator him they sung, 260 Both when first evening was, and when first morn. Again, God said, Let there be firmament Amid the waters, and let it divide The waters from the waters: and God made The firmament, expanse of liquid, pure, 265 Transparent, elemental air, diffused In circuit to the uttermost convex Of this great round: partition firm and sure, The waters underneath from those above Dividing: for as earth, so he the world 270 Built on circumfluous waters calm, in wide

‘day’, as Ambrose and Chrystostom). The first evening of creation, beginning Day 14 of the action; see vii 255, 582f; Introduction: Time-scheme. 255. Exhaling: evaporating; breathing forth. 256–60. Job 38:4, 7: when God ‘laid the foundations of the earth . . . the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’. Most theologians held that the angels were created on the first day; but cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 312f; Rosenblatt (1994) 157f. 261–9. Gen. 1:6–8, ‘God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters . . . And God made the firmament [Geneva margin: ‘spreading over, and air’], and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament . . . And God called the firmament Heaven.’ The topic of one of the sharpest controversies in pre-Newtonian cosmology; see Svendsen (1956) 56–60, showing M. eclectic. In understanding the firmament or partition as permeable atmosphere (iii 574) rather than a hard shell, M. agrees with Raleigh, Petavius, Thomas Vaughan, and John Wilkins. But he retains an outer ‘firm opacous globe’ (iii 418), and will not explain away the circumfluous waters as clouds. Scientific diction: expanse (Lat. expansum) renders more precisely the Heb. word AV translates as ‘firmament’ (AV margin ‘expansion’). Even liquid, often a poetical Latinism, is technical; cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. II ii 3 i (1989–) ii 48 on Tycho’s view that the spheres are not ‘hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, etc., or making music . . . but still, quiet, liquid, open’. round: universe. world: universe. 270. circumfluous: surrounding as a fluid (rare, anticipated in OED only by John Wilkins). Matching Ovid’s coinage circumfluus (Metam. i 30).

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Crystálline ocean, and the loud misrule Of Chaos far removed, lest fierce extremes Contiguous might distemper the whole frame: And Heaven he named the firmament: so even 275 And morning chorus sung the second day. The earth was formed, but in the womb as yet Of waters, embryon immature involved, Appeared not: over all the face of earth Main ocean flowed, not idle, but with warm 280 Prolific humour softening all her globe, Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture, when God said Be gathered now ye waters under heaven 271. Crystalline ocean: Cp. iii Arg., 518–19n. Distinguished from the crystalline sphere by H. F. Robins, PMLA, 69 (1954) 904, but not by Svendsen (1956) – a fair reflection of confusions in M.’s time. Cp. Fuller, Holy State (1840) 283: ‘some astronomers, though erroneously, conceived the crystalline sphere to be made of water’. 272–3. Opposite qualities (extremes) in chaos are not held apart by intervening means, but Contiguous. distemper: (1) disturb the order of the elements (OED V1); (2) mix with water, impair by dilution (OED V2 ). 274. The Hebraic world picture distinguished sky, starry heaven, and a ‘third heaven’ inhabited by angels. 275. chorus] Treated in 1667 and 1674 as a proper name. second day: Day 15 of the action. 277. embryon: embryo. involved: enveloped. 278. face: Cp. Grosseteste I xviii 1 (1982) 77: facies signifies ‘diaphonitatem, hoc est perspicuitatem et naturalem potenciam secundum quam abissus fuit susceptiva illuminacionis et suscepta illuminacione manifestabilis’. 279–82. To the primus calor or ‘vital warmth’ (vii 236) of the Neoplatonic cosmogony is added primus humor or genial moisture. On the generative ocean in Renaissance Neoplatonism, see CHRP 250; Wind (1958) 117n (citing Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chemist (1661) ); Lieb (1989) 12 (contrasting vii 276, 553, and finding Aristotelian process). Main: uninterrupted. Prolific: generative. genial: generative. For the procreative, anthropomorphic metaphors, cp. i 20–2; v 300–2; vii 234–6, 454f; Lewalski (1985) 45; H. S. Marjara, MiltS, 6 (1991) 92; Marjara (1992) 166, 211. 283–91. Gen. 1:9f, ‘God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear . . . And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas.’ Immediately: Cp. vii 176ff, 243 (‘forthwith’). So high: Traditionally the seas’ depths and mountains’ heights matched; see Nicolson (1950) 20. tumid: swollen.

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Into one place, and let dry land appear. 285 Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky: So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep, 290 Capacious bed of waters: thither they Hasted with glad precipitance, uprolled As drops on dust conglobing from the dry; Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct, For haste; such flight the great command impressed 295 On the swift floods: as armies at the call Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard) Troop to their standard, so the watery throng; Wave rolling after wave, where way they found, If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain, 300 Soft ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill, But they, or underground, or circuit wide With serpent error wandering, found their way, And on the washy ooze deep channels wore; Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry, 292. Cp. vii 239. Repeating the unusual word conglobing implies analogy between separation of elements per se and separation of terrestrial earth and water. For the intellectual background, see Marjara (1992) 166. 293. Cp. xii 197, division of the Red Sea into ‘crystal walls’, a type of divine deliverance. 296. The simile would not have made things clearer to Adam and Eve, if Raphael had not already recounted the angelic war. Such alienations heighten consciousness of what Paradise includes and excludes. 297–306. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester I iii 135–70 (1979) i 177 makes the first falling of the rivers to the sea a set piece. train: The old metaphor of a trailed robe; cp. Countess of Pembroke, Psalms (1586) 78:20f (‘All that rich land, where over Nilus trails / Of his wet robe the slimy seedy train’). 299. rapture: force of movement (OED 2). Cp. Homer (1614–15), Od. tr. Chapman xiv 427f: ‘That ’gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash / With headlong rapture’. 302. By itself, error might be a Latinism for ‘winding’; but after serpent it indisputably anticipates the Fall; see Stein (1953) 66f; Ricks (1963) 110. Prolepsis to the Old Serpent entering Paradise underground. 304–39. For analogous motifs in visual art, see Frye (1978) 237. Gallagher (1990) 14f finds a struggle to reconcile Gen. 1:11–13 and 2:4–9. More probably referring to Augustine’s seminal creation followed by stages of realization; cp. vii 335–7n, 387–448, 456–92.

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305 All but within those banks, where rivers now Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train. The dry land, earth, and the great receptacle Of congregated waters he called Seas: And saw that it was good, and said, Let the earth 310 Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed, And fruit tree yielding fruit after her kind; Whose seed is in herself upon the earth. He scarce had said, when the bare earth, till then Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned, 315 Brought forth the tender grass whose verdure clad Her universal face with pleasant green, Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered Opening their various colours, and made gay Her bosom smelling sweet: and these scarce blown, 320 Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth crept The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattled in her field: and the humble shrub, And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last Rose as in dance the stately trees, and spread 325 Their branches hung with copious fruit; or gemmed Their blossoms: with high woods the hills were crowned, 306. Local decorum, miming slowness (Richardson). 307–12. Gen. 1:10f, ‘God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.’ congregated waters: Cp. Gen. 1:10Vulg. (congregationesque aquarum). 317–19. Cp. 2 Esdras 6:44, the odours of the third day’s creation. 321. swelling] smelling 1667; 1674 (wrongly); swelling Bentley emending. See Moyles (1985) 143. corny: (1) of corn; (2) hornlike (Lat. corneus). Cp. v 23 (‘balmy reed’); Virgil, Aen. iii 22f (tumulus, quo cornea summo / virgulta et densis hastilibus horrida myrtus – ‘The horn reed stood upright among the undergrowth of nature, like a grove of spears or a battalion with its spikes aloft’) (Hume (1695) ). 322. Embattled: Cp. iv 980–2, ‘ported spears’ like windblown corn. and ] add 1667 (wrongly); and 1674. Adams (1955) 102f argues for 1667, on the shaky basis of compositorial punctuation. humble: low-growing. 323. A Sylvestrian metaphor; cp. ‘periwig with wool the bald-pate woods’ (Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester II i 4 line 176 (1979) i 385). frizzled: curled crisply. implicit: interwoven. 325. gemmed: budded, put forth (OED 1). Metaphoric extension – ‘bejewelled’ (Corns (1990) 98).

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With tufts the valleys and each fountain side, With borders long the rivers. That earth now Seemed like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell, Or wander with delight, and love to haunt Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rained Upon the earth, and man to till the ground None was, but from the earth a dewy mist Went up and watered all the ground, and each Plant of the field, which ere it was in the earth God made, and every herb, before it grew On the green stem; God saw that it was good: So even and morn recorded the third day. Again the almighty spake: Let there be lights High in the expanse of heaven to divide The day from night; and let them be for signs, For seasons, and for days, and circling years, And let them be for lights as I ordain Their office in the firmament of heaven To give light on the earth; and it was so. And God made two great lights, great for their use

331–4. Cp. iv 646 (‘soft showers’); Gen. 2:5f (‘The Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground’). 335–7. Gen. 2:4f, ‘The Lord God made . . . every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew’. Cp. Philo, Legum Allegoria i 22–4; Augustine, De Genesi V iv 8 (inferring instantaneous creation of rationes seminales or generic forms); Ellrodt (1960) 77. 338. recorded: belonged to (OED 11; perhaps archaic); sang (OED 3). third day: Day 16 of the action. 339–45. Gen. 1:14f, ‘God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.’ For light and the lights as determining time, cp. iii 579–81; vii 254–6. expanse: see vii 261–9n. For the use of stars, see iv 661–73n. 346–52. Though formed of the quintessence (iii 716), ethereal matter ‘was at first opaque, without any light’ (Richardson); like the stars, the sun and moon were supplied from the ‘cloudy shrine’ or tabernacle (vii 247, 360) ‘where the light had been deposited’. Cp. vi 8; Gen. 1:16–18 (‘God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness’); Summers (1962) 71–86. altern: by turns. vicissitude: variety; reciprocal succession.

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To man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night altern: and made the stars, And set them in the firmament of heaven 350 To illuminate the earth, and rule the day In their vicissitude, and rule the night, And light from darkness to divide. God saw, Surveying his great work, that it was good: For of celestial bodies first the sun 355 A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first, Though of ethereal mould: then formed the moon Globose, and every magnitude of stars, And sowed with stars the heaven thick as a field: Of light by far the greater part he took, 360 Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed In the sun’s orb, made porous to receive And drink the liquid light, firm to retain Her gathered beams, great palace now of light. Hither as to their fountain other stars

355. unlightsome: dark. Rare; perhaps from Chapman, ‘Hymnus in Noctem’ (1594) 30–1 (‘When unlightsome, vast, and indigest / The formless matter of this world did lie’). Later a favourite word of Richard Blackmore. 356. ethereal mould: quintessential matter. The material of the sun’s body; cp. vii 346–52n; Nativity Ode 138 (‘earthly mould’); Corns (1994) 98 (Offering ‘light and ether as two forms of a single essence’). 358. Cp. vi 754; vii 133; Manilius, Astronomica v 726–30 (tum conferta licet caeli fulgentia templa / cernere seminibus minimis totumque micare / stipatum stellis mundum nec cedere summa / floribus); Schaar (1982) 113 (biblical passages linking stars with angels: e.g. Ps. 148:2f; Isa. 24:21–3; Dan. 8:10–12; Dent. 4:19f ). 360. cloudy shrine: Cp. vii 248 (the ‘cloudy tabernacle’ reserving light until its bodies were created); Marjara (1992) 121. 361–3. The sun’s density and permeability, opacity and diaphanousness, were all controversial; cp. Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 93. liquid light: Cp. vii 519; Lucretius v 281 (largus item liquidi fons luminis, aetherius sol); Schaar (1982) 155 (liquidus was often used with amnis, fons, etc., to suggest holiness and purity). 364–9. Combining alternative views of stellar light; see Svendsen (1956) 68f citing Swan, Speculum (‘The sun . . . is indeed the chief fountain from whence the whole world receiveth lustre . . . But according to the minds of the best authors [the stars have] their proper and peculiar light’). Aristotelians and others, as late as Kepler, held that the planets were self-luminous; see Dreyer (1953) 411; Marjara (1992) 63–8. The Platonic

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365 Repairing, in their golden urns draw light, And hence the morning planet gilds his horns; By tincture or reflection they augment Their small peculiar, though from human sight So far remote, with diminution seen. 370 First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all the horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run His longitude through heaven’s high road: the grey Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danced

theory of borrowed light accords better with M.’s Christocentric solar mysticism. tincture: (1) infusion of a quality; imbuing with an active principle (OED 5b, 6b); (2) alchemic elixir (OED 6a). Cp. iii 607, the sun exhaling ‘elixir pure’. peculiar: inherent, ‘proper’ light, as opposed to ‘strange’ or borrowed (semi-technical). 366. his] her 1674. 1667 ‘his’ is not obviously wrong: the morning star Lucifer or Phosphorus (‘Light-bringer’) is masculine. 1674 ‘her’ implies the morning star as Venus. Possibly an authorial change to blot out reference to Satan’s prelapsarian brightness (Leonard (1990) 270f ). horns: Venus appears horned when near conjunction, as the astronomical data in Bks iv and v show her to be; see v 166–70n. Taurus, Venus’s house, was pictured with gilded horns; cp.Virgil, Georgics i 217 (auratis . . . cornibus); Aen. v 366 (velatum auro . . . iuvencum, the gold implying a sacrificial bull); xi 627. It is possible for Venus to be at conjunction in Taurus while Sol is in Aries (iii 555–61n). In the Thema coeli or state of the heavens at creation, the planets occupied their own houses; although Venus was more often put in Libra. For observations of Venus’s phases by Galileo and others, see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 484. 370. R. Flannagan, following H. F. Fletcher, unnecessarily transposes his and the. But east is his as the place where the sun rises – ‘where the great sun begins his state’ (L’Allegro 60). 372–3. Cp. Ps. 19:5, where the sun ‘is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race’. A favourite image then; cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester I iv 588ff (1979) i 222. longitude: course round the ecliptic circle – contiguous with the equatorial, until the Fall (x 651–706n). 374–5. Job 38:31, ‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades . . . ?’ Dawn goes before the sun in his daily course, but the Pleiades do not, being in Taurus (sign and constellation were identical before the Fall). The sun, created at the vernal equinox, is in Aries (iii 555–61n; x 329). The Pleiades dance before him in that they occupy what will be his next position, in his annual motion round the ecliptic; almost imperceptibly, seasonal movement gathers way. Their propitious influence is vernal, when

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375 Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon, But opposite in levelled west was set His mirror, with full face borrowing her light From him, for other light she needed none In that aspéct, and still that distance keeps 380 Till night, then in the east her turn she shines, Revolved on heaven’s great axle, and her reign With thousand lesser lights dividual holds, With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared Spangling the hemisphere: then first adorned 385 With their bright luminaries that set and rose, Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth day. And God said, Let the waters generate they appear at dawn ahead of the sun (x 673f ) (Marjara (1992) 117). M. Y. Hughes, following Newton, compares Reni’s Aurora with nymphs, whom he takes for the Pleiades, beside the sun chariot. But they are Hours, as their arrangement shows; cp. Ovid, Metam. ii 26 (positae spatiis aequalibus Horae). They are seven because the four Hours or Seasons were often accompanied by the Graces (Hieatt (1960) 111). Reni’s painting is more relevant to Metam. ii 112ff, used at PL vi 2–4. 375–9. Svendsen (1956) 72f finds discrepancy with the self-luminous moon of vii 364–9n and viii 150. But ‘proper light’ is not excluded, only said to be unnecessary when the moon is in oppositional aspect. The thema coeli derives from Anastasius Synaita, In Hexaemeron iv, Migne, P.G. lxxix 890–914 (‘when God made these two luminaries, the greater – namely the sun – he placed immediately at the east of the firmament; but the moon at the west’). Luna was full, and at 180° from Sol. Bede and others thought the moon full on the fourth day of creation, being created perfect. For synthesis of this thema with Sol in Aries, see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) ii 232; D. Griffin, MiltS, 9 (1976) 151–67. levelled: (1) balanced (OED 1c); (2) put on the same plane (with earth) (OED 2). Further developing the Balance symbol of iv 997. Cp. Doctrine and Discipline 14, YP ii 323f, with moral application. 381. axle: axis, pole (of the sky). Cp. ii 926; viii 165; x 670; Comus 96; Nativity Ode 84. 382. dividual: divided, shared. 386. crowned: Since occupying the sovereign central place, fourth of the days of creation and seventeenth of the action (Introduction: Time-scheme). The greater luminaries were ‘regent’ (vii 371). Implying a solar mysticism like Anastasius’ (sun and moon as Sol iustitiae and Holy Church) or More’s in Conjectura (1653). 387–98. Gen. 1:20–2, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living

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Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul: And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings Displayed on the open firmament of heaven. And God created the great whales, and each Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously The waters generated by their kinds, And every bird of wing after his kind; And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas And lakes and running streams the waters fill; And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth. Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and bay With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals Of fish that with their fins and shining scales Glide under the green wave, in schools that oft Bank the mid-sea: part single or with mate Graze the seaweed their pasture, and through groves Of coral stray, or sporting with quick glance Show to the sun their waved coats dropped with gold,

creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.’ Cp. Lucretius v 783–800; Davenant, Gondibert (1651) II vi 57–64; Foster (1991) 110; D. K. McColley, in Benet (1994) 78–90. God sets up categories and distinctions (Schwartz (1988) ). Reptile: crawling creature. Cp. Gen. 1:20 Vulg. (producant aquae reptile animae viventis); Tremellius (reptilia animantia); Geneva (‘creeping thing that hath life’). Soul: animate existence. crept: wriggled: e.g. Breton, Fantastics i (1929) i 5 (‘worms creep’). Cp. Gen. 1:20 AV margin; Ps. 104:24f, ‘things creeping innumerable’. 394. Raphael has first-hand knowledge of the birds, having been one at v 268–74 (D. K. McColley, in Benet (1994) 86). 400. On the local decorums, see McColley, in ibid. 82 (although the ‘fry innumerable’ stir with liquids, not ‘labials’). 402. schools: large numbers of fish, whales, etc., swimming together (OED sb2 = shoal sb2). Cp. Psalm VIII 21f (‘fish that through the wet / Sea-paths in shoals do slide’). schools] sculles 1667; 1674. 403. Bank: form a shelving elevation just under the surface (verbal use of OED sb1 5). 404. A diet with ideological bearings; see x 710–14n. Distinguishing between ‘the nutriment of molluscs and the food of carnivorous crustaceans’; see J. B. Broadbent, in Patrides (1968) 105 stressing the conceptual richness and functionalism. 406–10. Allegoria comparing colour-patterns and heraldic coats; heraldry

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Or in their pearly shells at ease, attend Moist nutriment, or under rocks their food In jointed armour watch: on smooth the seal, 410 And bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait Tempest the ocean: there leviathan Hugest of living creatures, on the deep Stretched like a promontory sleeps or swims, 415 And seems a moving land, and at his gills Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea. Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens and shores

substituting for naming in the case of the fish. waved: (1) distorted by refraction; (2) divided undy or wavy (heraldic). Cp. Mackenzie (1680) 26: ‘Waved is so called, from the waves of the sea, which it represents, and is therefore called undé, and is used for signifying that the bearer got his arms for service done at sea.’ attend: wait for. dropped: spotted. Heraldically possible; the Grayndores bore ‘Party ermine and vert, the vert dropped with gold’. bended: (1) striped, banded; (2) bendy, having a bend (heraldic). Cp. Bossewell, Armory (1572) ii 85 (‘Armes Bended . . . In Armes Bendee the colours contained in the shielde are equally divided’). The stock epithet (curvus) for delphinus, especially as a constellation name; cp. Cicero, Arati Phaenomena 332; Sandys, Psalms (1638) 126; Browne, Pseudodoxia v 2 (1964) ii 340f; Allen (1963) 199; D. K. McColley, in Walker (1988) 233 n 19. jointed armour: Continuing the chivalric theme. Parliamentary troops were called ‘lobsters’ (OED 3) from the joints of their plate armour (Flannagan). smooth: smooth water. The substantive use would have a nautical tang (OED 1c, ‘a stretch of comparatively . . . calm water in a rough sea’). 412. Tempest: disturb violently. 415–16. Harmless illusion; contrast the deceptive Leviathan of i 200–8 (Leonard (1990) 270). gills: An understandable mistake. trunk: Error or metaphor for blow-hole, or else to suggest the sea elephant (Macrorhinus proboscideus) or giant squid. A Wunderkammer of marvels. 417–21. The ancient question whether egg or bird came first, debated by Plutarch, Macrobius, and others, was a topic of learned feasts. Cp. Hendrik Van der Putte, Ovi Encomium (1617); William Harvey, De Generatione Animalium (1651); D. C. Allen, MLN, 63 (1948) 264; Jung (1953) 64; Marjara (1992) 216; Jeanneret (1991) 167. the egg: The singular egg of Renaissance Orphism, hatching all animate nature (ex ovo omnia); see Wind (1968) 168f; Praz (1964) 196f ( Jesuit egg literature). kindly: natural. disclosed: hatched. callow: unfeathered. fledge: fledged, fit to fly. summed: brought to completion (falconry; the transitive probably poetic).

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Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg that soon Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed 420 Their callow young, but feathered soon and fledge They summed their pens, and soaring the air sublime With clang despised the ground, under a cloud In prospect; there the eagle and the stork

Cp. PR i 14; Turberville, Falconry (1575) 117 (‘When . . . hir principal feathers be ful sommed’). pens: feathers, plumage. soaring: flying up through. sublime: aloft, high up. 422–3. clang: harsh scream; resonant cry (poetic, after Lat. clangor, Gk κλαγγO). Cp. Homer, Il., tr. Chapman x 244 (‘By her clang they knew . . . it was a heron’); T. N. Corns, RBPH, 69 (1991) 559. ground . . . prospect: (1) ground seeming under a cloud of birds; (2) under a metaphorical cloud (prolepsis). 423–46. Epic catalogue implying categories, emblematic qualities, virtues, natural history, and perhaps divine signatures. Compressing Tasso, Creation (1607) v, where nineteen birds (including almost all M.’s seven) are assigned complex moral qualities. In systems of correspondences the birds were linked with planetary influences (the eagle Martian, stork Jovial, crane Lunar, nightingale Mercurial, swan Venerean, cock Solar, peacock Saturnian); see Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (1992) 134–42. 423–30. Suggesting hierarchic order by beginning with the birds’ primate, the eagle, symbolizing majesty, justice, spiritual illumination, divine grace, or snake- and dragon-slaying; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 234; Tervarent (1958) 6; Biedermann (1992) 108f; Salisbury (1994) 118, 139. Cp. Job 39:27f, ‘Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?’ The stork had access to fecund ‘waters of creation’; it symbolized impartial justice, familial love, meditation, snake-slaying; see Gesner, Historiae Animalium (1560); Freitag, Mythologia (1579), illus. Datta (1965) Pl. 9; Whitney (1586) 73; Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 203–7; Tervarent (1958) 97; Biedermann (1992) 328f. Cp. Ps. 104:17 (‘as for the stork, the fir trees are her house’); Valeriano, op. cit. 207 (signifying animus divinis intentus). Representing classes of birds that wing loosely (separately) and that fly in common (together): the eagle was proverbially solitary. The stork’s unanimity of movement emblemized military discipline; see Valeriano, op. cit. 231, 206 (their wedge formation). Intelligent [cognizant] of seasons: Cp. Jer. 8:7, ‘The stork . . . knoweth her appointed times . . . but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.’ Perhaps also cp. Browne, Pseudodoxia (1646) iii 27, ‘Storks Will only Live in Republics and Free States’ (1964) ii 256. caravan: convoy. mutual wing: St Basil thought storks supported their aged parents on their wings (Robin (1932) 63f ).

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On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build: 425 Part loosely wing the region, part more wise In common, ranged in figure wedge their way, Intelligent of seasons, and set forth Their airy caravan high over seas Flying, and over lands with mutual wing 430 Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air Floats, as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes: From branch to branch the smaller birds with song Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings 435 Till even, nor then the solemn nightingale Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays: Others on silver lakes and rivers bathed Their downy breast; the swan with archèd neck Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows 440 Her state with oary feet: yet oft they quit The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower In encyclopedic tradition, each crane rested its beak on the bird in front, taking turns at the double load of leading the flight wedge (Svendsen (1956) 158). More simply, large birds use their wings alternately (Richardson). All the references to migration are proleptic: earth has no seasons before the Fall (cp. vii 374f ). But see Leonard (1990) 265 taking seasons as occasions (OED 14). 430–2. The crane (like the stork a formation-flier) suggested endurance, wisdom, filial duty, diligence, snake-killing, and military vigilance (from their posting sentinels); cp. i 576; Prol VII, YP i 304; Cicero, De Natura Deorum II xlix 125 (wedge formations parting the air); Biedermann (1992) 79f; Salisbury (1994) Index, Cranes. Floats: undulates. 434. painted wings: Cp. Virgil, Aen. iv 525 (pictae volucres). 435–6. The nightingale, in central place of honour, is also prominent at iii 38–40; iv 602–4, 648; v 40; viii 518–20; Il Penseroso 62 (‘most musical, most melancholy’). Suggesting meditation, longing for paradise, suffering love, or faith; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 275f; Biedermann (1992) 237. Its singing in the dark made it for M. a personal symbol. There was also an extensive nightingale cult; cp. Crashaw, ‘Music’s Duel’ (1646) 439f, and see Martin’s note. 438–9. The swan symbolized music and poetry, purity of soul, snake-killing, Christ’s cry in extremis, or (in alchemy) volatile mercury; see Abraham (1990) 280; Biedermann (1992) 33f; Salisbury (1994) Index, Swans. arched neck: Cp. Donne, Progress of the Soul (1633) xxiv; Pennant (1768–70) ii 477 citing Silius Italicus. mantling: forming a mantle; stretching alternate wings for exercise (falconry). 441. dank: mere, pool. pennons: On possible wordplays with ‘pinion’

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The mid aërial sky: others on ground Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds The silent hours, and the other whose gay train 445 Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus With fish replenished, and the air with fowl, Evening and morn solemnised the fifth day. The sixth, and of creation last arose 450 With evening harps and matin, when God said, Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind, Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth, Each in their kind. The earth obeyed, and straight

= wing; ‘pen’ = feather, wing; and on the metaphoric extension of pennon = banner, see Corns (1990) 98f. tower: soar into (OED 5). 443. The cock suggested watchfulness; cp. Peacham, Minerva (1612) 139, VIGIL UTRINQUE; Salisbury (1994) 59, 107. clarion: small, shrill trumpet. 444–6. other: i.e. peacock, another serpent-slayer, and emblem of rebirth. Its shimmering colour came from changing snake venom to solar iridescence. starry eyes: Symbolizing divine omniscience, or the stars of night (offsetting the cock, Solar herald of day); see Ripa, Iconologia (1603) 210f; Klibansky (1964) 313n; Biedermann (1992) 257f. 448. fifth: Day 18 of the action. 449. Not an eyewitness account of the sixth day; Raphael was absent then on a mission to hell gate (viii 229), perhaps to guard creation from evil interference. Cp. M. Fixler, PMLA, 92 (1977) 957 on Satan’s absence from Bks vii and viii. On the phases and narrative strategies of the creation episode, see C. G. Shirley, SAB, 45 (1980) 54ff. 450–500. Departing in order and categorization from Gen. 1:24f and 3:1, to introduce the serpent as a relevant afterthought (Gallagher (1990) 17–26). 450–8. Gen. 1:24, ‘God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.’ 450. matin: (1) morning (OED 3, 5b); (2) the Office of Matins, set for morning or the previous night, according to the Genesis formula ‘evening and morning were one day’. Proleptic of postlapsarian worship. 451. soul] foul 1667; 1674; soul Bentley. His best emendation. Cp. vii 388 (‘living soul’); Adams (1955) 94f, ingeniously suggesting ‘foul’, a variant of ‘foal’ = young quadruped. But this lacks the requisite generality, and contradicts ‘full grown’ (vii 456).

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Opening her fertile womb teemed at a birth 455 Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limbed and full grown: out of the ground up rose As from his lair the wild beast where he wons In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den; Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked: 460 The cattle in the fields and meadows green: Those rare and solitary, these in flocks Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung. The grassy clods now calved, now half appeared The tawny lion, pawing to get free 465 His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce, The leopard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks; the swift stag from underground 470 Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mould Behemoth biggest born of earth upheaved His vastness: fleeced the flocks and bleating rose, As plants: ambiguous between sea and land 454. teemed: bore, produced. 455. Innumerous: numberless (not then exclusively poetic). 456–73. Coleridge, following Richardson and Newton, compares Raphael’s Vatican Loggie Creation of the Animals, and judges the motif unworthy of poetic expression; cp. Treip (1985); Frye (1978) 161–3. But the lion’s imprisoned hindquarters are not naive: they allude to Adargatis, the earth goddess from whom life emerges when she is quickened by the sun; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 14 (anterioribus partibus Solem exscribit, posterioribus vero Terram); Marjara (1992) 214. 457. wons: lives, stays. 461–2. Those: the wild beasts (‘The former’). these: the cattle (domestic livestock, OED 4), either in flocks (sheep, goats) or herds (cows). rare: far apart, spread out (OED 2a, 3a). broad herds: Homeric; cp. Il. xi 679: α8π[λια πλατ4 α8γ/ν. 464. lion: Naming first the primate of animals; cp. vii 423, 466. rampant: rearing (OED 1: heraldic). brinded: brindled, streaked. ounce: lynx or other large feline beast. Cp. iv 344. 467. leopard ] libbard (variant, not yet archaic). Heraldically a lion passant guardant, being considered borne of the adulterous union of a lioness and a pard (Woodcock (1988) 64, 203). 471. Behemoth: Italicized as a name. Cp. Job 40:15, ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee’ (Geneva note: ‘the elephant, or some other, which is unknown’). Rejecting Bochart’s alternative, the hippopotamus. 473. ambiguous: (1) of doubtful classification; (2) hesitating (OED 4).

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The river horse and scaly crocodile. 475 At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect or worm; those waved their limber fans For wings, and smallest lineaments exact In all the liveries decked of summer’s pride With spots of gold and purple, azure and green: 480 These as a line their long dimension drew, Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of nature; some of serpent kind Wondrous in length and corpulence involved Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept 485 The parsimonious emmet, provident Of future, in small room large heart enclosed, Pattern of just equality perhaps 474. river horse: hippopotamus (current until after M.’s time). 475. creeps: Rare as transitive. Cp. ‘creep the cross’ (OED 1c). 476. worm: Including serpents, and the grubs, maggots, and caterpillars that would become pests. 482. Minims: Forms of life least important or smallest (often contemptuous). Cp. Prov. 30:24 Vulg. (Quattuor sunt minima terrae, et ipsa sunt sapientiora sapientibus); Bocskay, Mira Calligraphica Monumenta (1992) passim; Andrewes, Sermons (1629) 279 (‘They be the base people, the minims of the world’); Thomas Moffett, Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum (1634). On Renaissance fascination with the diverse wonders of small creatures (ex minimis patet ipse Deus), see Datta (1965) 81–117 (‘Much in Little’); Allen (1968) 152–64; J. Kerrigan, PBA, 74 (1988) 324; L. Hendrix, W&I, 11 (1995) 373–90 on Hoefnagel; Fowler (1996) 18 n 65. 483. corpulence: bulk (not to be taken with involved, as M. Y. Hughes). involved: coiled. Preterite, not participle. 484. Cp. Isa. 30:6 (‘fiery flying serpent’); Herodotus ii 75; D. C. Allen, MLN, 59 (1944) 538 (winged serpents in natural history and mythology); Frye (1978) 101 (the absence of wings in Bk ix). 485. parsimonious: careful (not dyslogistic). Cp. Prol VII, YP i 304: ‘domestic economy owes much to the ants’. emmet: ant. ‘The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer’ (Prov. 30:25); therefore ‘Go to the emmet O sluggard’ (Prov. 6:6 Douay). Emblem of diligence; cp. Whitney, Emblems (1586) 175; Combe, Devices (1614) 100; M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 125 (‘Created with all its political evidency’). 486. large heart: capacious intellect; wisdom (OED, s. v. Large 3c). Cp. i 444; 1 Kings 4:29; Virgil, Georgics iv 83 (ingentis animos angusto in pectore). 487–9. Encyclopedists often noticed the prudence and commonalty (democracy) of ants; Aristotle’s idea that they have no kings was used as

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Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes Of commonalty: swarming next appeared 490 The female bee that feeds her husband drone Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells With honey stored: the rest are numberless, And thou their natures knowst, and gav’st them names, Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown 495 The serpent subtlest beast of all the field, Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes And hairy mane terrific, though to thee Not noxious, but obedient at thy call. Now heaven in all her glory shone, and rolled 500 Her motions, as the great first mover’s hand First wheeled their course; earth in her rich attire Consummate lovely smiled; air, water, earth, By fowl, fish, beast, was flown, was swum, was walked an argument for republicanism (Svendsen (1956) 150–2). perhaps: Hinting at the republican inference, explicit in Easy Way. 490–2. The bee’s civil merits are not monarchic, as is sometimes said; M. cites the republican bee against Salmasius. Nor does M. confuse the sexes of bees, as Le Comte (1978) 86f; worker bees are sterile females, drones male. Hartlib’s circle made the commonwealth of bees a model for reformation of the state; see T. Raylor, in Leslie (1992) 91–129, esp. 108. Deliciously: luxuriously. 493. For the naming, cp. vi 73–6; viii 342–54. See C. G. Shirley, SAB, 45 (1980) 54 relating Raphael’s alienation effect to his strategy of accommodation. 495–8. Singling out the serpent for mention last of the beasts, next to mankind. Gen. 3:1, ‘Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.’ Substitution of superlative for comparative allows striking dramatic ironies (Gallagher (1990) 17–26). Not noxious: (1) entirely good (vii 549); (2) not yet harmful; harmless to you in your unfallen state; (3) terrific to those others to whom it is not obedient. For the splendour of the prelapsarian serpent in midrashim, see Werman (1995) 201f. For the mane or crest, cp. Virgil, Aen. ii 206f (iubaeque [mane] / sanguineae). Troy’s destruction, in which the maned serpent that kills Laocoon is instrumental, is a type of the Fall; cp. PL i 1–49n; ix 496ff. 500. The first mover’s hand set the primum mobile and other spheres going, like clockwork, in their motions (movements). 502–3. Amplifying orderly abundance, by a correlative scheme like that of the medieval versus rapportati; cp. Raleigh (attrib.), ‘Hir Face, Hir Tong, Hir Wit’; Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 160 (‘The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword’); Curtius (1953) 286f. Consummate: completed;

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Frequent; and of the sixth day yet remained; 505 There wanted yet the master-work, the end Of all yet done; a creature who not prone And brute as other creatures, but endued With sanctity of reason, might erect His stature, and upright with front serene 510 Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with heaven, But grateful to acknowledge whence his good Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyes Directed in devotion, to adore 515 And worship God supreme, who made him chief Of all his works: therefore the omnipotent Eternal Father (for where is not he Present) thus to his Son audibly spake. Let us make now man in our image, man 520 In our similitude, and let them rule

perfect. was . . . walked: A Latin impersonal (M. Y. Hughes). But also an English passive (OED 15, 17). 504. Frequent: abundantly. 505–11. The manifest destiny of mankind’s upright posture was a hexaemeral commonplace; cp. iv 288; Plato, Timaeus 90A; Cicero, De Natura Deorum ii 56; Ovid, Metam. i 76–86, tr. Sandys (1970) 27 (‘The nobler creature, with a mind possessed / Was wanting yet, that should command the rest. . . . / And whereas others see with downcast eyes, / He with a lofty look did man endue, / And bade him heaven’s transcendent glories view’); Frye (1978) 267f. front: forehead, face. Magnanimous: great-souled, noble. On this elusive word, see Gauthier (1951); Greaves (1964); CHRP, Index, Magnanimity; Magnificence. Stressing, with poignant irony, human capacities for virtue ( J. P. Rosenblatt, in Mulryan (1982) 21–31). self-knowing: In contrast with Satan. Coinage; cp. iii 130n. 518. Contrast De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 239 (the Father est inaudibilis) (G. Campbell, JTS, 30 (1979) 136). Perhaps an exception, as internal dialogue; cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 316: ‘when God is about to make man he speaks like a person giving careful consideration to something’. 519–23. Gen. 1:26, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’ Avoiding the controversial distinction between Imago and Similitudo Dei (Broadbent (1960) 198 n 2). But similitude may be ominous, as recalling Rom. 5:14 (‘the similitude of Adam’s transgression’) and prohibitions like Deut. 4:16. creeping: crawling; squirming. See vii 475n.

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Over the fish and fowl of sea and air, Beast of the field, and over all the earth, And every creeping thing that creeps the ground. This said, he formed thee, Adam, thee O man 525 Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breathed The breath of life; in his own image he Created thee, in the image of God Express, and thou becam’st a living soul. Male he created thee, but thy consórt 530 Female for race; then blessed mankind, and said, Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, Subdue it, and throughout dominion hold Over fish of the sea, and fowl of the air, And every living thing that moves on the earth. 535 Wherever thus created, for no place Is yet distinct by name, thence, as thou knowst He brought thee into this delicious grove, This garden, planted with the trees of God, 524–8. Gen. 2:7, ‘the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul’. Siding with Chrysostom (soul created after body) against Origen (soul created earlier) and Thomas Aquinas (both together). Cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 32 on the ‘degrees’ of mankind’s creation: ‘The forming of his body, the giving of it life, the enduing of him with a reasonable soul.’ Express: Cp. Heb. 1:3, ‘Who being . . . the express image of his person . . . purged our sins.’ 529–30. Cp. Gen. 1:27 (‘in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them’); Col. 3:10; Wisd. 2:23; Ecclus. 17:3. Harmonizing Gen. 1 and 2 (Gallagher (1990) 27–9, 45). Eve is first a consort, only secondly for race. 530–4. Gen. 1:28, ‘God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea.’ 535–8. Cp. Gen. 2:8, 15 (‘God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed . . . And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it); 2 Esdras 3:6 (‘thou ledst him into paradise, which thy right hand had planted, before ever the earth came forward’). Following the literalism of Josephus, Antiquities i 1 (Adam physically transferred to Paradise rather than put there metaphorically). Cp. viii 296ff, Leonard (1990) 277 (M. combining the abstraction of Vulg. paradisum voluptate with the Protestant place name – AV ‘garden of Eden’, Tremellius hortum in Hedene). H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 231 n 1 argues against M.’s belief in mystifying ‘essentialism’. But M.’s concern here is with Roman Catholic local pieties. delicious: delightful.

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Delectable both to behold and taste; 540 And freely all their pleasant fruit for food Gave thee, all sorts are here that all the earth yields, Variety without end; but of the tree Which tasted works knowledge of good and evil, Thou mayst not; in the day thou eatst, thou di’st; 545 Death is the penalty imposed, beware, And govern well thy appetite, lest Sin Surprise thee, and her black attendant Death. Here finished he, and all that he had made Viewed, and behold all was entirely good; 550 So even and morn accomplished the sixth day: Yet not till the creator from his work Desisting, though unwearied, up returned Up to the heaven of heavens his high abode, Thence to behold this new created world 555 The addition of his empire, how it showed In prospect from his throne, how good, how fair, Answering his great idea. Up he rode Followed with acclamation and the sound Symphonious of ten thousand harps that tuned 539–41. Gen. 1:29; 2:9 (‘out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food’); 2:16. Mankind was created vegetarian. For the tradition that Paradise contained all species of trees, see iv 138–43n; v 339– 41n. 542–5. Cp. viii 323–33n, mitigated at x 210f; Gen. 2:16f. 545–7. Governed well, appetite for the forbidden fruit is not wrong; cp. ii 666–73n; Musacchio (1991) 84. attendant: Perhaps Raphael is innocent about Sin and Death’s incest – or wishes Adam and Eve to be so. 548–50. Cp. Gen. 1:31. Gallagher (1990) 22 – on the ‘enigmatic status’ of the ‘not noxious’ ‘entirely good’ serpent – glosses over how far the serpent is subsequently ‘vitiated’ (x 169). 552. unwearied: Obviating any false conclusion from Gen. 2:2 (God ‘rested on the seventh day’) (Burden (1967) 9). 553. heaven of heavens: Cp. iii 390; vii 13n. 557–81. Cp. the similarly triumphal return from the angelic expulsion (vi 880–92). 557. great idea: Cp. Plato, Timaeus 37C–D (God rejoicing in the universe’s resemblance to the paradeigma); Treip (1994) 151 (comparing De Doctrina i 3, CW xiv 65: ‘that idea of everything, which he had in his mind . . . before he decreed anything’). Contrast the Calvinist doctrine of prior decrees. 559. Symphonious: harmonious; sounding in concert. ten thousand: See vi 767n. tuned: gave vent to.

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560 Angelic harmonies: the earth, the air Resounded (thou rememberst, for thou heardst), The heavens and all the constellations rung, The planets in their stations listening stood, While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. 565 Open, ye everlasting gates, they sung, Open, ye heavens, your living doors; let in The great creator from his work returned Magnificent, his six days’ work, a world; Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign 570 To visit oft the dwellings of just men Delighted, and with frequent intercourse Thither will send his wingèd messengers On errands of supernal grace. So sung The glorious train ascending: he through heaven,

561–3. Cp. iv 680– 8: Job 38:7 (‘The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’). The Fall will make the heavens inaudible; cp. Nativity Ode 125f; Solemn Music 19–21. stations] station 1674. An astronomical term for planets’ apparent arrest at apogee or perigee, extended here to their initial, stationary dispositions in the thema coeli. 564. pomp: procession. 565–7. Ps. 24:7, ‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.’ For the living doors of heaven, cp. v 254–6n; vi 861; vii 205–8. 571. Cp. iii 528–37. 574–81. blazing portals: ‘Portals of the Sun’, the tropical signs Capricorn and Cancer; see Homer, Od. xxiv 12; Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum 28; Helpericus of Auxerre, De Computo ii, Migne cxxxvii 25; Macrobius, Dream of Scipio, tr. Stahl I xii 1f (‘The Milky Way girdles the zodiac, its great circle meeting it obliquely so that it crosses it at the two tropical signs, Capricorn and Cancer. Natural philosophers named these the “portals of the sun” because the solstices lie athwart the sun’s path on either side, checking further progress and causing it to retrace its course across the belt beyond whose limits it never trespasses. Souls are believed to pass through these portals when going from the sky to the earth and returning from the earth to the sky. For this reason one is called the portal of men and the other the portal of gods: Cancer, the portal of men, because through it descent is made to the lower regions; Capricorn, the portal of gods, because through it souls return to their rightful abode of immortality, to be reckoned among the gods’). Thus the route heightens Messiah’s solar symbolism. Cp. PL iv 976 (where Satan despises triumphs on the ‘road of heaven star-paved’); Ovid, Metam. i 170ff, tr. Sandys (1970) 30 (the route by which ‘the gods resort / Unto th’ almighty thunderer’s

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575 That opened wide her blazing portals, led To God’s eternal house direct the way, A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear, Seen in the galaxy, that Milky Way 580 Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powdered with stars. And now on earth the seventh Evening arose in Eden, for the sun Was set, and twilight from the east came on, Forerunning night; when at the holy mount 585 Of heaven’s high-seated top, the imperial throne Of Godhead, fixed for ever firm and sure, The filial power arrived, and sat him down With his great Father (for he also went Invisible, yet stayed, such privilege 590 Hath omnipresence) and the work ordained, Author and end of all things, and from work Now resting, blessed and hallowed the seventh day, As resting on that day from all his work, But not in silence holy kept; the harp high court . . . heaven’s Whitehall’); Heninger (1974) 381; Frye (1978) 197 (contrasting the smoke and flame of ii 888f ); Schaar (1982) 161f (comparing the portals of the sun in Ovid, Metam. ii 1ff, a frequent Renaissance symbol of ordered cosmos; also Pandaemonium, and the infernal road of x 293ff ). On the syntax, see Corns (1990) 25f: ‘the tenuous but perseverant syntax admirably suits the assiduity of the account’. Milky Way: Not necessarily Galilean astronomy, as M. Nicolson, ELH, 2 (1935) 12, 24; the theory of its stellar composition was Democritean; see Macrobius, op. cit. I xv 6. zone: belt, band. Powdered: scattered thickly (heraldic). 581–4. seventh / Evening: Beginning Day 20 of the action; see Introduction: Chronology. 584–5. holy mount: See v 643n. 588–90. The early edns wrongly punctuate With his great Father ( for he also went / Invisible, yet stayed (such privilege / Hath omnipresence). Most editors remove the first parenthesis; thus making Father subject of ordained, and the Author and end; see Moyles (1985) 143; Bauman (1987) 250–2. But Heb. 12:2 (Christ the ‘author and finisher’) supports removal of the second parenthesis; cp. vii 517f. 592. Gen. 2:3, ‘God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.’ hallowed: From Exod. 20:11. 594–9. The heavenly music is unusually detailed, suggesting a comprehensive angel concert like that of Geertgen tot Sint Jans at Rotterdam; see Spaeth (1963) 40; Winternitz (1967) ch. 11 and Pl. 65b. Music

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595 Had work and rested not, the solemn pipe, And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop, All sounds on fret by string or golden wire Tempered soft tunings, intermixed with voice Choral or unison: of incense clouds 600 Fuming from golden censers hid the mount. Creation and the six days’ acts they sung, Great are thy works, Jehovah, infinite Thy power; what thought can measure thee or tongue Relate thee; greater now in thy return 605 Than from the giant angels; thee that day Thy thunders magnified; but to create Is greater than created to destroy. Who can impair thee, mighty king, or bound Thy empire? Easily the proud attempt 610 Of spirits apostate and their counsels vain Thou hast repelled, while impiously they thought Thee to diminish, and from thee withdraw The number of thy worshippers. Who seeks on the Sabbath (absent from Du Bartas) implies rejection of strict Sabbatarianism; see Berry (1976) 61–101; Rosenblatt (1994) 158. The harp takes precedence as played by David, type of Christ. stop: register of an organ or harpsichord. fret: ridge dividing the finger-board of guitar-like stringed instruments, to regulate the fingering. string . . . wire: gut strings of instruments like the lute, and wire strings of those like the cittern. Tempered: adjusted the pitch (OED 15). Cp. Lycidas 33, ‘Tempered to the oaten flute’. Often in moral or psychological metaphor. tunings: sounds. 599–600. Angelic worship; contrast Eikonoklastes xvi, YP iii 504f, a simpler preference for human liturgy. The incense and censers are neither Roman Catholic nor High Church, but Judaic; cp. Rev. 8:3; Schwartz (1988) 74 (on their ‘opulence’). clouds: A frequent Protestant representation of God; cp. vi 28; Frye (1978) 152. 601–32. The concluding chorus of the hexaemeron, from Ps. 145 and the Song of Moses; see vii 182–3n. A ‘hymn of the creation’ is listed in M.’s Trin. MS Third Draft Paradise Lost outline; see Introduction: Composition. 602. The angels’ praise coincides with M.’s, as at iii 410–15n. 604–7. Putting creativity above power in the moral hierarchy; cp. iii 267–9n; vi 820–3n; J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 93. giant angels: Throughout, the Gigantomachia serves as a mythic type of Satan’s rebellion. In the Bible, giant renders Heb. gibber, ‘proud; aspiring’; cp. Steadman (1968) 179–85; Schaar (1982) 63 (bringing the Giant Orion (i 305) into the same complex); P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 9 (1979) 131. 613–16. Creative turning of evil to good, a central theme. Cp. i 216–19;

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To lessen thee, against his purpose serves 615 To manifest the more thy might: his evil Thou usest, and from thence creat’st more good. Witness this new-made world, another heaven From heaven gate not far, founded in view On the clear hyaline, the glassy sea; 620 Of amplitude almost immense, with stars Numerous, and every star perhaps a world Of destined habitation; but thou knowst Their seasons: among these the seat of men, Earth with her nether ocean circumfused, 625 Their pleasant dwelling place. Thrice happy men, And sons of men, whom God hath thus advanced, Created in his image, there to dwell And worship him, and in reward to rule Over his works, on earth, in sea, or air, 630 And multiply a race of worshippers Holy and just: thrice happy if they know Their happiness, and persevere upright. So sung they, and the empyrean rung, With alleluias: thus was Sabbath kept. vii 188; xii 469–73; Lewis (1942) 66; Rajan (1962) 45f. Contrast Satan’s opposite effort (i 164f ). 619. Perhaps suggested by the laver in the Solomonic Temple (Lieb (1981) 239f ). Cp. Rev. 4:6, the thalassa hyaline (‘sea of glass like unto crystal’) before God’s throne. Cosmically, the waters above the firmament; cp. iii 518–19n; vii 271n; Svendsen (1956) 55f; Corns (1990) 89f (on hyaline). 620–2. M.’s favourite idea of plural worlds (iii 565–71n), here expressing God’s continuous creativity. Cp. Lucretius ii 1067–76; Cusanus, De Docta Ignorantia (1954) 80; J. H. Adamson, in Hunter (1971) 99f. immense: immeasurable. 622–3. Acts 1:7, ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.’ 624. The terrestrial ocean, as distinct from the hyaline (vii 619). In ancient geography, the river Oceanus encompassed the earth. 629. Ps. 8:6, ‘Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands’. 631–2. Cp. viii 639ff; Virgil, Georgics tr. Dryden (1697) ii 458–60 (‘Oh happy, if he knew his happy state! / The swain’); Danielson (1982) 200 (Adam and Eve can know their happiness). persevere: continue in a state of grace (theological). The accent was shifting from the second syllable; M. consistently stresses the third, as in modern English. 634. alleluias: ‘Praise ye the Lord’ (Ps. 146:1, AV margin: ‘Halleluiah’). Italicized in early edns.

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635 And thy request think now fulfilled, that asked How first this world and face of things began, And what before thy memory was done From the beginning, that posterity Informed by thee might know; if else thou seekst 640 Aught, not surpassing human measure, say. THE END OF THE SEVENTH BOOK

Paradise Lost BOOK VIII The Argument 1

Adam then inquires concerning celestial motions, is doubtfully answered, and exhorted to search2 rather things more worthy of knowledge: Adam assents, and still desirous to detain Raphael, relates to him what he remembered since his own creation, his placing in Paradise, his talk with God concerning solitude and fit society, his first meeting and nuptials with Eve, his discourse with the angel thereupon; who after admonitions repeated departs. The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear So charming left his voice, that he awhile Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear; Then as new waked thus gratefully replied.

636. face: outward form. 639. The origin of sciences in Adam’s prelapsarian intellect was a common theme; cp. Goulart, Summary, tr. Lodge (1621) 138 (‘From him it is as from a living source, that this current of celestial science floweth unto us’); Du Bartas, Babilon, tr. L’Isle (1595) 45 (‘From him had we first our arts and sciences derived’); Curtius (1953) Excursus xxii, esp. p. 556. viii Argument] The latter half of 1668 and 1669 vii Arg. 1667 Bk vii was divided to become 1674 Bks vii and viii. Arg.1 Adam then] Adam 1674. Arg.2 search] seek second 1669 state; search 1674. 1–4. In 1667, vii 641 (corresponding to 1674 viii 4) reads To whom thus Adam gratefully replied. The three additional opening lines of 1674 viii

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What thanks sufficient, or what recompense Equal have I to render thee, divine Historian, who thus largely hast allayed The thirst I had of knowledge, and vouchsafed This friendly condescension to relate Things else by me unsearchable, now heard With wonder, but delight, and, as is due, With glory attribúted to the high Creator; something yet of doubt remains, Which only thy solution can resolve. When I behold this goodly frame, this world

incorporate into the narrative the pause between books. charming: spellbinding. still stood fixed: After epic digressions, audiences often remain rapt; cp. Homer, Od. xiii 1; Apollonius i 512–16 (after Orpheus’ song of creation). Contrast Satan’s merely technological ‘wonders’ (Treip (1994) 144). stood: Cp. Ital. stava, ‘remained’ (Richardson). For ‘stand’ as a thematic word, cp. iii 99; v 522n, 540. 14. solution: explanation. Introducing Raphael’s prototype of dialoguetreatises like Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, tr. Salusbury (1661); see Lewalski (1985) 46; Moss (1993) 257ff. 15. frame: universe. Cp. v 154n; Shakespeare, Hamlet II ii 317 (‘this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory’). 15–38. Adam poses more abstractly the same question posed to him by Eve (iv 657f ). A topic of the Schools; cp. Prol VII, YP i 292: the heavens do not exist just for our material convenience, but require meditation and reverence (‘Can we indeed believe . . . that the vast spaces of boundless air are illuminated and adorned with everlasting lights, that these are endowed with such rapidity of motion and pass through such intricate revolutions, merely to serve as a lantern for base and slothful men . . . ?’). Focusing the problem of a wasteful anthropocentric universe on the incredible kinetic energy entailed. Cp. iv 592–5: ‘whether the prime orb, / Incredible how swift, had thither rolled / Diurnal’. For the velocities involved and their bearing on the Copernican hypothesis (much discussed by Kepler, Gilbert, Galileo, and others), cp. iv 592–7n; Burton, Anat. of Melan. II ii 3 i (1989–) ii 50 (citing Gilbert on the unimaginable velocities with which the heavens must move in a geocentric system – ‘what fury is that . . . that shall drive the heavens about with such incomprehensible celerity in twenty-four hours’). Adam resembles a sceptical astronomer reasoning falsely about final causes, aspiring to astronomy beyond his spiritual capacity and effectually indicting providence; see Burden (1967) 116; Musacchio (1991) 74f (‘innocent error’). A certain kind of speculation apparently comes into the forbidden category – not as science per se but because it is of ‘no avail’ for mankind. Raphael’s volte-face at

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paradise lost Of heaven and earth consisting, and compute Their magnitudes, this earth a spot, a grain, An atom, with the firmament compared And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll Spaces incomprehensible (for such Their distance argues and their swift return Diurnal) merely to officiate light Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot, One day and night; in all their vast survey Useless besides, reasoning I oft admire, How nature wise and frugal could commit Such disproportions, with superfluous hand So many nobler bodies to create, Greater so manifold to this one use, For aught appears, and on their orbs impose Such restless revolution day by day Repeated, while the sedentary earth,

viii 122 shows that what avails is not any particular cosmic model but a sense of mankind’s situation in the universe (cp. viii 160–87). 16. compute] compute, 1667; 1674. 19. numbered: numerous. A rare usage; but cp. vi 229; Shakespeare, Cymbeline I vi 36 (‘numbered beach’). Perhaps alluding to Ps. 147:4, ‘he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names’. The line-total of Comus, 1022, is the total of stars in Ptolemy’s catalogue; see Fowler (1996) 52. 22. officiate: minister. Stars, like angels, are ordained to minister to men. 23. opacous: opaque. punctual: point-like (OED 3a). The minuteness of earth was not a Copernican discovery but a perennial topic, reiterated in medieval encyclopedias and astronomical works like Alexander Neckham’s (tanta est firmamenti quantitas ut ipsi totalis terra collata quasi punctum esse videatur) (Svendsen (1956) 40). But in M.’s time the topic occasioned a new question: How big would earth seem, viewed from the heavens? Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 57, citing Cleomedes (c.50 AD), answers that from the sun, earth would seem a point; from the stars, would be invisible. Scale had a bearing on the plurality of worlds; cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. II ii 3 i (1989–) ii 53 (Tycho would never believe that the huge stars ‘were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole’). Proleptically, Adam treats the paradox about little earth’s centrality as matter for doubt (viii 13) rather than wonder. 25. admire: wonder. 32. sedentary: (1) motionless; (2) slothful. Cp. Prol VII, YP i 292.

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That better might with far less compass move, Served by more noble than herself, attains Her end without least motion, and receives, As tribute such a sumless journey brought Of incorporeal speed, her warmth and light; Speed, to describe whose swiftness number fails. So spake our sire, and by his countenance seemed Entering on studious thoughts abstruse, which Eve Perceiving where she sat retired in sight, With lowliness majestic from her seat, And grace that won who saw to wish her stay, Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers, To visit how they prospered, bud and bloom, Her nursery; they at her coming sprung And touched by her fair tendance gladlier grew. Yet went she not, as not with such discourse Delighted, or not capable her ear Of what was high: such pleasure she reserved, Adam relating, she sole auditress; Her husband the relater she preferred Before the angel, and of him to ask Chose rather; he, she knew would intermix Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute With conjugal caresses, from his lip Not words alone pleased her. Oh when meet now Such pairs, in love and mutual honour joined? With goddess-like demeanour forth she went;

37. incorporeal speed: Cp. viii 110, ‘Speed almost spiritual’. warmth: Not merely heat but fomenting ‘influence’ (iv 669). 40. For the use of Eve before the Fall, cp. ix 291n, 1067n; Leonard (1990) 35 – 8. 42. Having heard Adam repeat her question, she rises, proud that her thoughts are to crown the colloquy. Cp. Satan’s distorted version at ix 539–42. 45–7. Eve surpasses the power of Venus; cp. viii 59–63; Marino, Adone (1623) iii 65 (‘every flower opened and lifted its head’). visit: inspect (OED 9). nursery: nursing; objects of care. tendance: attention. 48–56. Eve has to be absent for the subsequent discussion of Adam’s marital role; but M. stresses that this should not be taken to imply – as Corns (1994) 70f takes it – that her place is in the nursery. Cp. 1 Cor. 14:35, ‘And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.’ 59–63. The Graces attended Venus; cp. v 381; viii 46f. But Eve has the austerity of Minerva; cp. ix 457–62; Thickstun (1988) 82. pomp:

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paradise lost Not unattended, for on her as queen A pomp of winning graces waited still, And from about her shot darts of desire Into all eyes to wish her still in sight. And Raphael now to Adam’s doubt proposed Benevolent and facile thus replied. To ask or search I blame thee not, for heaven Is as the book of God before thee set, Wherein to read his wondrous works, and learn His seasons, hours, or days, or months, or years: This to attain, whether heaven move or earth, Imports not, if thou reckon right, the rest From man or angel the great architect Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge His secrets to be scanned by them who ought Rather admire; or if they list to try Conjecture, he his fabric of the heavens

retinue. shot: Intransitive, since darts were not Venus’s weapon but Cupid’s; see Tervarent (1958) 186f, Wind (1958) 76f. On the potentially dangerous darts of desire, see Stein (1953) 91; Ricks (1963) 98. 64. proposed: Not ‘anticipated’ (as Flannagan, forcing a Latinism). Adam’s doubt has already been proposed. 65. facile: easy of converse; kindly. 67–9. For the cosmos as the Book of Nature, setting out the Creator’s wisdom, see Curtius (1953) 222f, 320f, 339, 344; Pedersen (1992). Many of the creatures mentioned in Bk vii (bees, ants, behemoth, leviathan, etc.) featured as significant pages of the Book of Nature. Cp. vii 340–52; Gen. 1:14 (‘lights in the firmament . . . for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years’). 71–84. G. McColley, PMLA, 52 (1937) 759f sees opposition to the scientific movement; but Svendsen (1956) 77f and Schultz (1955) show M.’s targets to be groundless speculation and corrupted learning. Defensio, YP iv 339, defends astronomers ‘of good repute in their own fields’ against Salmasius’ attack. Proliferation of planetary systems – some anticipating relativity theory, like Cusanus (1954) 107ff – may have encouraged M. to remain detached from cosmological controversy. 74. scanned: examined minutely; passed judgment on. Cp. Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomy, tr. Golding (1583) 13:76 (‘When men will needs scan of God’s works and providence according to their own reason: they shall find things to grudge at’). 75. admire: wonder. 76–7. Cp. Eccles. 3:11 Vulg. (mundum tradidit disputationi eorum, ut non inveniat homo opus, quod operatus est Deus ab initio usque ad finem).

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Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move His laughter at their quaint opinions wide Hereafter, when they come to model heaven And calculate the stars, how they will wield The mighty frame, how build, unbuild, contrive To save appearances, how gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er, Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb: Already by thy reasoning this I guess, Who art to lead thy offspring, and suppos’st That bodies bright and greater should not serve The less not bright, nor heaven such journeys run, Earth sitting still, when she alone receives The benefit: consider first, that great Or bright infers not excellence: the earth

78–9. For God’s laughter, cp. ii 731; iii 257; v 718, 737; xii 59; Frye (1978) 153; Marjara (1992) 287f. wide: astray; mistaken. 80. calculate: number (OED 1); predict the motions of (OED 2); frame (OED 4, 5). 81–2. frame: structure. There were many planetary systems; see, e.g., Riccioli, Almagesti (1651); Dreyer (1953); Heninger (1977) ch. 3. save appearances: ‘save the phenomena’, reconcile observations with theory. Cp. Bacon, ‘Of Superstition’ (1985) 55: ‘like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, and such engines [devices] of orbs, to save the phenomena; though they knew, there were no such Things’. For the term, see K. Hammerle, Anglia, 62 (1938) 368–72. 83. See iii 573–6n. The terms eccentric and epicycle follow a logical sequence. The Ptolemaic system accounted for observed irregularities in stellar motions by hypothesizing displacements of the centres of orbit (hence eccentric circles); when this proved insufficient for planets other than the sun, epicycles were added – smaller circles whose centres ride on the circumferences of the eccentric circles and carry the planets. See Price (1955) 99; North (1988) 139–42; (1994) 91f, 100. Copernicus needed 34 auxiliary circles to account for the planetary motions (Dreyer (1953) 331, 343). 85. Raphael can tell from Adam’s propensity for speculation and delusions about cosmic hierarchy that erroneous astronomical systems will result. 90–1. Dissociating size and brightness from excellence, with general implications for the hierarchy of virtues and qualities; cp. vi 820–3. infers: implies. 91–9. A doubly a fortiori argument – ‘even if the chief luminary ministers, and ministers merely to earth, it is not unfitting’. Cp. Marlowe, Faustus v 191 (1987–) ii 21: the heavens were ‘made for man, therefore is man more excellent’. glistering: gleaming. barren: Proclus describes the

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Though, in comparison of heaven, so small, Nor glistering, may of solid good contain More plenty than the sun that barren shines, 95 Whose virtue on itself works no effect, But in the fruitful earth; there first received His beams, unactive else, their vigour find. Yet not to earth are those bright luminaries Officious, but to thee earth’s habitant. 100 And for the heaven’s wide circuit, let it speak The maker’s high magnificence, who built So spacious, and his line stretched out so far; That man may know he dwells not in his own; An edifice too large for him to fill, 105 Lodged in a small partition, and the rest Ordained for uses to his Lord best known. The swiftness of those circles áttribute, Though numberless, to his omnipotence, That to corporeal substances could add 110 Speed almost spiritual; me thou thinkst not slow, Who since the morning hour set out from heaven Where God resides, and ere mid-day arrived In Eden, distance inexpressible By numbers that have name. But this I urge,

sun as ‘unreceptive of generation’ (W.B. Hunter, MLR, 44 (1949) 89). Already containing a plenitude of life, the sun requires no addition from its own reflected beams. Officious: dutiful; efficacious. 102. Job 38:5, ‘Who laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon [the earth]?’ 107. circles: orbital courses. Cp. v 169: the morning star’s ‘bright circlet’. 108. numberless: innumerable. Cp. viii 38: ‘to describe whose swiftness number fails’. Possibly alluding to the number of stars in a geocentric universe that have to move, and hence the great number of circles. 110. spiritual: Cp. viii 37. The spheres were still commonly supposed to be moved by Intelligences or spirits; cp. Ficino, Comm. on Plotinus, Enneads ii 1–3 (comparing the movement of the heavens and the thinking soul); Donne, ‘Good Friday, 1613’ 2 (‘The Intelligence that moves’). 114–18. With an unexpected swerve the intellectually agile Raphael (contrast Marlowe’s glumly conventional Mephistophilis) disengages himself from Ptolemaic assumptions. By not resolving Adam’s doubts, he ‘removes astronomy from the province of revelation’ in the Calvinist manner, and puts it in the realm of speculation (Lewalski (1985) 46).

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115 Admitting motion in the heavens, to show Invalid that which thee to doubt it moved; Not that I so affirm, though so it seem To thee who hast thy dwelling here on earth. God to remove his ways from human sense, 120 Placed heaven from earth so far, that earthly sight, If it presume, might err in things too high, And no advantage gain. What if the sun Be centre to the world, and other stars By his attractive virtue and their own 125 Incited, dance about him various rounds? Their wandering course now high, now low, then hid, Progressive, retrograde, or standing still, In six thou seest, and what if seventh to these The planet earth, so steadfast though she seem,

122–3. The sun is numerologically at the centre of the paragraph viii 66–178; see Fowler (1970a); Crump (1975) 56. world: universe. 122–68. The elusive astronomy may reflect M.’s own difficulty in choosing among the planetary systems available, especially the Copernican (heliocentric) and the dominant Tychonic (geoheliocentric). More likely it makes the point that models matter less than obedience. As viii Arg. puts it, ‘Adam is doubtfully answered’ (Corns (1994) 61). Ingenious ambiguity allows viii 85–114 to fit both Ptolemaic and Tychonic systems. G. McColley, PMLA, 52 (1937) 728–62 compares contemporary debates – John Wilkins, Discourse that the Earth May be a Planet (1640); Alexander Ross, The New Planet No Planet: or the Earth no Wandering Star, Except in the Wandering Heads of Galileans (1646). But M. hardly means to criticize the Royal Society through its Secretary’s speculations. Wilkins’s opinions are distributed between Adam and Raphael. Cp. Bacon, Novum Organum i 10, tr. Urbach (1994) 45: ‘The subtlety of Nature is far greater than that of the sense and the understanding, so that all our beautiful speculations and guesses and controversies are absurd, only there is no one at hand to observe this fact.’ 124. For the theory that the sun’s magnetic influence moves the other planets, cp. iii 583–6n. attractive virtue: power of attraction (modern gravity). 125. For the cosmic dance, see iii 579–81n. rounds: Punning between ‘circles’ and ‘dances in a ring’ (OED 6, 11); cp. Comus 114. 126. wandering: Translating Gk πλανOτης. Common poetic diction. 127. retrograde: Apparently moving backwards, E to W, through the zodiac. 128. six: Saturnus, Iupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercurius, and Luna. Whether Tellus or Sol constituted the seventh planet was controversial.

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130 Insensibly three different motions move? Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe, Moved contrary with thwart obliquities, Or save the sun his labour, and that swift Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed, 135 Invisible else above all stars, the wheel

130. The three motions attributed to earth by Copernicus: diurnal rotation, annual orbital revolution about the sun, and a ‘third motion’ or ‘motion in declination’. This last, ‘whereby the axis of the earth describes the surface of a cone in [about] a year, moving in the opposite direction to that of the earth’s centre’, was unnecessarily introduced to account for ‘the fact, that the axis of the earth, notwithstanding the annual motion, always points to the same spot on the celestial sphere’ (Dreyer (1953) 328f, 361). Tycho was able to dispense with the third motion. It should not be confused with the slower resultant of axial and orbital annual revolutions, which since the Fall causes equinoctial precession (whose period Copernicus estimated at some 25,798 years). In the prelapsarian world ecliptic and equator coincide: there is no equinoctial point to precess. (Contrast iii 483, where ‘trepidation’ is referred to, in a real-time digression.) Before the Fall, the period of the third motion is presumably equal to that of orbital revolution. For the beginning of the distinction between ecliptic and equator, see x 651–706n; also Introduction: Astronomy. 131–2. ‘If you don’t ascribe motion to the earth, then the observed phenomena will call for a number of spheres moving in contrary directions’. Until Kepler, each planet’s motion was explained as the resultant of the circular motions of concentric spheres; see Crombie (1961) i 80f. thwart obliquities: Dramatic irony, proleptically suggesting a tilted zodiac; cp. Record (1556) 30 (‘The Zodiac (which many do call the Thwart circle)’). Presumably Adam takes Raphael to mean obliquity of the equator-ecliptic to the horizon (a fixed frame of reference in the Ptolemaic system), or simply ‘awkward indirections’. 134. rhomb: (1) from Gk {[µβος , ‘magic wheel’, the imaginary primum mobile or tenth sphere of the medieval planetary system, which revolved with incredibly swift diurnal motion about the earth, carrying the spheres of stars and planets with it; (2) a lozenge shape or rhombus, as in diagrams of eclipses (in which the triangle of the sun’s rays and the triangle of the umbra – darkest central part of the earth’s shadow – together formed an elongated rhombus, rotating about its centroid at the earth’s centre like a spoke of a parti-coloured wheel). More mystical diagrams showed a ‘pyramid of light’ intersecting with a ‘pyramid of shadows’; cp. iii 556f; v 758–9n; Godwin (1979) 42, 46; Kircher (1650) ii 450 (involving the tetraktys, and extending the rhombus of intersection beyond the heavens to the circulus universorum).

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Of day and night; which needs not thy belief, If earth industrious of herself fetch day Travelling east, and with her part averse From the sun’s beam meet night, her other part 140 Still luminous by his ray. What if that light Sent from her through the wide transpicuous air, To the terrestrial moon be as a star Enlightening her by day, as she by night This earth? Reciprocal, if land be there, 145 Fields and inhabitants: her spots thou seest As clouds, and clouds may rain, and rain produce Fruits in her softened soil, for some to eat Allotted there; and other suns perhaps With their attendant moons thou wilt descry 150 Communicating male and female light, 137. Contrast viii 32, the Ptolemaic ‘sedentary earth’. 140–5. that light: Solar light, reflected from earth’s other part . . . luminous. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. II ii 3 i (1989–) ii 51: ‘If the earth move, it is a planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she doth, as Galileo, Kepler, and others prove, and then per consequens, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon’ – an anthropocentric argument assuming that planets have no point unless they shine for creatures like us. Kepler shares this assumption with Adam, Eve (iv 568), and Raphael (viii 153–8). For the plurality of worlds, see iii 565–71n. transpicuous: pervious to vision (scientific). 144–5. Cp. i 290f, where Galileo can ‘descry new lands, / Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe’. 145–6. Reported changes of the moon’s spots were often ascribed to effects of the lunar atmosphere, as by Julius Caesar Lagalla; see Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 2071/2 (sic) (attributing the movements to lunar libration or faulty observation); Moss (1993) 80–2, 313. Raphael opts for the lunar clouds theory at v 418–20. 148. The idea of the stars as suns with attendant planets went back to Nicholas of Cusa; accepted by Bruno and rejected by Kepler, it remained controversial. Satellites of Jupiter were observed by Thomas Harriot, Nicolas de Peiresc, and others (North (1994) 330). 149. thou: Adam and his posterity together (Richardson). 150. Referring, as the context shows, to the fact that sunlight is ‘peculiar’, that of satellites reflected (vii 368). Thus leading into advice on sexual relations (viii 561ff ). Perhaps alluding to the Gnostic polarity of mental ‘male light’ and physical ‘female light’. In Pliny, Hist., tr. Holland (1634) I cxxixf, the sun is ‘a masculine star, burning up and absorbing everything’, the moon ‘a feminine and delicate planet’; a polarity derived from mythology.

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paradise lost Which two great sexes animate the world, Stored in each orb perhaps with some that live. For such vast room in nature unpossessed By living soul, desért and desolate, Only to shine, yet scarce to cóntribute Each orb a glimpse of light, conveyed so far Down to this habitable, which returns Light back to them, is obvious to dispute. But whether thus these things, or whether not, Whether the sun predominant in heaven Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun, He from the east his flaming road begin, Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she paces even, And bears thee soft with the smooth air along, Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, Leave them to God above, him serve and fear; Of other creatures, as him pleases best, Wherever placed, let him dispose: joy thou In what he gives to thee, this Paradise And thy fair Eve; heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee and thy being;

151–2. ‘Animate the universe, with its perhaps inhabited worlds’. 157. Imitating Gk Q ο8Tουµ0νη, ‘the inhabited (Greek world)’. 158. obvious: open. M. himself formally disputed it at Cambridge; cp. viii 15–38n. 162–6. Personifying sun and earth, to continue the metaphors relating astronomical and social hierarchy. For the metaphor of a top, cp. Virgil, Aen. vii 378. inoffensive: (1) harmless; (2) unobstructed (Latinism). 166. Providing for the anti-Copernican argument that earth’s rotation would cause violent winds, by having the air move along with it. Cp. Riccioli, Almagesti (1651) i 51. 167. Perhaps distinguishing between useful knowledge and useless speculation (curiositas); cp. iv 657f; vii 94–7, 639f; viii 75, 188–94; Schwartz (1988) 43–6, 49 n 9. The range of the conversation shows that scientific knowledge per se is not forbidden; although, like any other, it may come in this category; see Burden (1967) 121f; Schultz (1955); Musacchio (1991) 86. Solicit: disturb (OED 1). 168. Eccles. 12:13, ‘Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’

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175 Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there Live, in what state, condition or degree, Contented that thus far hath been revealed Not of earth only but of highest heaven. To whom thus Adam cleared of doubt, replied. 180 How fully hast thou satisfied me, pure Intelligence of heaven, angel serene, And freed from intricacies, taught to live, The easiest way, nor with perplexing thoughts To interrupt the sweet of life, from which 185 God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares, And not molest us, unless we ourselves Seek them with wandering thoughts, and notions vain. But apt the mind or fancy is to rove Unchecked, and of her roving is no end; 190 Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn, That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know 175–8. Speculation about life on other planets was rife; Kepler, e.g., wondered whether aliens were rational and had souls to be saved, and whether they were lords of creation. Cp. iii 565–71n; viii 140–5n; Haskin (1994) 234 associating state with the experimentalist divines’ identification of election and reprobation. 181. serene,] serene. 1667 some copies. Intelligence: spirit; intellectual being. 183–97. Directed less against science than metaphysics; speculative reasoning with no end but itself was a form of idolatry. See Fallon (1991) 2; Stevens (1985) 65, 106. Contrast viii 257. Like Bacon, and the Cambridge Platonists, M. thought it imperative to avoid phantasms of the fancy and idle speculations of the mind. Cp. John Smith, Discourses (1673) 4, 21 (‘The reasons why, notwithstanding all our acute reasons and subtle disputes, truth prevails no more in the world, is, we so often disjoin truth and true goodness, which in themselves can never be disunited. . . . Our own imaginative powers, which are perpetually attending the highest acts of our souls, will be breathing a gross dew upon the pure glass of our understandings’); Bush, citing Cudworth, sermon to the Commons, 31 March 1647 (‘We think it a gallant thing to be fluttering up to heaven with our wings of knowledge and speculation: whereas the highest mystery of a divine life here, and of perfect happiness hereafter, consisteth in nothing but mere [simple] obedience to the divine will’). Corns (1994) 61f detects Puritanism’s ‘philistine streak’; but Raphael’s narrowness may not altogether be M.’s. Cp. ii 557–61; PR iv (‘Deepversed in books and shallow in himself ’). 189. no end: For the biblical diction and the mimetic positioning, cp. xii 330; Eccles. 12:12; M. Agari, HSELL, 18 (1971) 18f.

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paradise lost That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom, what is more, is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us in things that most concern Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek. Therefore from this high pitch let us descend A lower flight, and speak of things at hand Useful, whence haply mention may arise Of something not unseasonable to ask By sufferance, and thy wonted favour deigned. Thee I have heard relating what was done Ere my remembrance: now hear me relate My story, which perhaps thou hast not heard; And day is yet not spent; till then thou seest How subtly to detain thee I devise, Inviting thee to hear while I relate, Fond, were it not in hope of thy reply: For while I sit with thee, I seem in heaven, And sweeter thy discourse is to my ear Than fruits of palm-tree pleasantest to thirst And hunger both, from labour, at the hour Of sweet repast; they satiate, and soon fill, Though pleasant, but thy words with grace divine Imbued, bring to their sweetness no satiety. To whom thus Raphael answered heavenly meek. Nor are thy lips ungraceful, sire of men, Nor tongue ineloquent; for God on thee Abundantly his gifts hath also poured Inward and outward both, his image fair:

194. fume: something unsubstantial, imaginary; that goes to the head and clouds the reason (OED 5, 6). wisdom,] wisdom; 1667 some copies. 195. fond impertinence: foolish irrelevance. 197. still to seek: ever deficient. Cp. Comus 366. 202. sufferance: permission. 211–16. Returning to the alimentary-epistemological analogy of v 84, 400–500, and preparing for ix 248 with its ominous suggestion that Adam’s converse satiates Eve. Cp. Ps. 119:103 (‘How sweet are thy words unto my taste!’); Virgil, Eclogues v 45–7 (Menalcas likening Mopsus’ song to the slaking of thirst in summer heat). 213. from: caused by. 218–20. Ps. 45:2, ‘Grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.’ ungraceful: Coinage; cp. ii 185n. 221. For mankind’s outward imaging of God, see iv 289–95. But cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 320: ‘it was chiefly with reference to his soul that

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Speaking or mute all comeliness and grace Attends thee, and each word, each motion forms. Nor less think we in heaven of thee on earth Than of our fellow servant, and inquire Gladly into the ways of God with man: For God we see hath honoured thee, and set On man his equal love: say therefore on; For I that day was absent, as befell, Bound on a voyage úncouth and obscure, Far on excursion toward the gates of hell; Squared in full legion (such command we had) To see that none thence issued forth a spy, Or enemy, while God was in his work, Lest he incensed at such eruption bold, Destruction with creation might have mixed. Not that they durst without his leave attempt, But us he sends upon his high behests For state, as sovereign king, and to inure Our prompt obedience. Fast we found, fast shut The dismal gates, and barricadoed strong;

Adam was made in God’s image’. Warburton sees evidence, oddly, of Anthropomorphitism. 225. The author of Revelation was not to worship his angel interpreter – ‘for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets’ (Rev. 22:9). 229. Day Six of creation, Day 19 of the action; see viii 242–4n; Introduction: Time-scheme. 230. uncouth: unfamiliar. 232. For other symbolically square formations, cp. i 550n, 758; vi 62. 233–40. Much criticized. It is as if the reason given for the expedition makes God seem less than omnipotent, so that a qualification is hurried in – ‘Not that . . .’. Cp. Empson (1961) 110: Raphael seems to feel ‘God gave him a job at the time merely to disappoint him’. But Raphael expresses a genuine wish to have witnessed mankind’s creation, at the same time giving a fair portrayal of duty as sometimes tedious. Another reason – a pretext for Adam’s narration – is to be suspected. 238–40. state: ceremony. That the errands are pointless is their point, as tests of obedience. See Burden (1967) 124f comparing Augustine’s view that to require a higher reason than God’s will insults him. 241. barricadoed: barred securely. Evil was totally absent from nature’s original state. At ii 877–84 Sin unbarred the gates, and now, with Satan, evil (although not yet human sin) has entered creation.

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But long ere our approaching heard within Noise, other than the sound of dance or song; Torment, and loud lament, and furious rage. 245 Glad we returned up to the coasts of light Ere Sabbath evening: so we had in charge. But thy relation now; for I attend, Pleased with thy words no less than thou with mine. So spake the godlike power, and thus our sire. 250 For man to tell how human life began Is hard; for who himself beginning knew? Desire with thee still longer to converse Induced me. As new waked from soundest sleep Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid 255 In balmy sweat, which with his beams the sun Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed. 242–4. Cp. Virgil, Aen. vi 557–9 (Aeneas’ terror outside the gate of Tartarus, as he hears ‘groans and the sound of the savage lash, then the clank of iron and dragging of chains’); Ariosto, Orl. Fur. xxxiv 4 (Astolfo hearing ‘sobs and howls and everlasting mourning, sure sign that it was hell’). That hell gate is barred shows that Day Six of creation lies between Days 13 and 22 of the action. If the furious rage Raphael heard was the raging of the devils at i 666, it would put human creation on Day 19 (Introduction: Time-scheme) – dramatically apt, in that the poem begins in medias res on that day. According to More, Immortality (1659) III xviii 10, however, demons begin their punishment by falling into ‘an unquiet sleep, full of furious tormenting Dreams’. 246. Sabbath evening: Evening beginning the Sabbath, the (seventh) day of rest after the creation of man. Reckoning day from sunset, like the Hebrews. 247. relation: narration. 249–520. In 1667 Adam’s narration is vii 886–1157, with three complete books to follow, in balance with Eve’s narration (iv 440–91), preceded by three books. For other such symmetries, cp. vi 761n. On resemblances between the narrations, see L. L. Langford, SEL, 34 (1994) 119–34. 253. For the visual art tradition of Adam’s sleep, and the bank of flowers, see Frye (1978) 259f. 254. flowery herb: soft plants; grass with flowers. 255. balmy: fragrant; healing. (Sometimes sweat was thought to have magical virtues.) Not the sweat of the Gen. 3:16 curse (Hartman (1970) 147). For the resemblance of Adam’s creation to birth, see Corns (1994) 57. 256. reeking: steaming. Cp. v 423–6, the sun’s feeding on terrestrial vapours; applying this to the microcosmic Adam is superbly grandiloquent.

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Straight toward heaven my wondering eyes I turned, And gazed a while the ample sky, till raised By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, As thitherward endeavouring, and upright Stood on my feet; about me round I saw Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains, And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these Creatures that lived, and moved, and walked, or flew, Birds on the branches warbling; all things smiled, With fragrance and with joy my heart o’erflowed. Myself I then perused, and limb by limb Surveyed, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran With supple joints, as lively vigour led: But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not; to speak I tried, and forthwith spake, My tongue obeyed and readily could name Whate’er I saw. Thou sun, said I, fair light, And thou enlightened earth, so fresh and gay, Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,

257–8. The ascent per viam eminentiae, rationalized at viii 511f (Stevens (1985) 65). As in Tasso, Discourses (1973) 35, the first exercise of reason is admiration. gazed: Transitive use was poetic. 260. On Adam’s upright posture, see vii 505–11n. 263. lapse: gliding flow (Latinism; first instance in OED). Cp. Ausonius, Mosella 61 (liquidorum et lapsus aquarum); Leonard (1990) 19f (a glimpse of the word’s original innocence; contrast xii 83); Ricks (1963) 111. 265. warbling: singing sweetly. 266. Richardson and Ricks (1963) 81 discuss the effect of letting in a comma somewhere; but that would spoil the effect of naif zeugma. 268. went: walked. 269. as] and 1674. 271–3. On Adam’s innate knowledge, see Corns (1994) 57. In Genesis, Adam does not speak before the naming (Leonard (1990) 23). 272. Gen. 2:19 says only ‘whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof ’; but like most commentators M. makes the Augustinian assumption that Adam assigns the true names of things. Cp. viii 343–56n; Leonard (1990) 14, 23 (the natural language Hebrew). On the language of Adam, see Fraser (1977). The first entity addressed is the sun, divine symbol par excellence; cp. the hymn at v 171n. 273–87. Some see the absence of any answer as reflecting a contemporary crisis in natural theology. Nature itself cannot reveal knowledge of God; see Madsen (1968) 143; Haskin (1994) 203.

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paradise lost And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell, Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? Not of myself; by some great maker then, In goodness and in power pre-eminent; Tell me, how may I know him, how adore, From whom I have that thus I move and live, And feel that I am happier than I know. While thus I called, and strayed I knew not whither, From where I first drew air, and first beheld This happy light, when answer none returned, On a green shady bank profuse of flowers Pensive I sat me down; there gentle sleep First found me, and with soft oppression seized My drowsèd sense, untroubled, though I thought I then was passing to my former state Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve: When suddenly stood at my head a dream, Whose inward apparition gently moved My fancy to believe I yet had being, And lived: one came, methought, of shape divine,

276. Biblical formula; cp. viii 281n. 277. The first purpose of naming other creatures is ‘that man seeing his excellent creation far surpassing all other, might thereby be stirred up to praise his Creator’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 36). 278. Cp. viii 357–60; Stevens (1985) 66 (Adam reaches the limit of unaided reasoning, deism); Musacchio (1991) 73f. 280 –2. ‘The Latinized elliptical construction . . . suddenly resolves itself with ease and grace’ (H. Smith, HLQ, 15 (1951–2) 162). 281. Cp. Acts 17:28, St Paul’s Mars’ Hill sermon on the unknown God: ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.’ 282. Dramatic irony; cp. v 74 (where Satan makes free with happy, and tells Eve she may be ‘Happier’); vii 631–2n (‘thrice happy if they know / Their happiness’). 288. oppression: weighing down; gentle pressure. Usually more violent, as of Adam’s satiety after the Fall (ix 1044); see Ricks (1963) 115. 291. Ambiguous syntax, rendering the ‘crumbling of consciousness’ (Lewis (1942) 46). 292–5. Revelation through imagination to intuitive reason; see Stevens (1985) 67 refuting W. B. Hunter, MLQ, 9 (1948) 283. For the dream psychology, cp. v 100–3 (fancy forming imaginations of external things represented by the senses); viii 460–1. dream: synecdoche for ‘figure seen in a dream’; imitating Homer, Il. ii 8, 16 (Oneiros personifying a dream). stood . . . head: The stance of the false dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon (Il. ii 20).

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And said, Thy mansion wants thee, Adam, rise, First man, of men innumerable ordained First father, called by thee I come thy guide To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared. So saying, by the hand he took me raised, And over fields and waters, as in air Smooth sliding without step, last led me up A woody mountain; whose high top was plain, A circuit wide, enclosed, with goodliest trees Planted, with walks, and bowers, that what I saw Of earth before scarce pleasant seemed. Each tree Loaden with fairest fruit, that hung to the eye Tempting, stirred in me sudden appetite To pluck and eat; whereat I waked, and found Before mine eyes all real, as the dream Had lively shadowed: here had new begun My wandering, had not he who was my guide Up hither, from among the trees appeared, Presence divine. Rejoicing, but with awe In adoration at his feet I fell Submiss: he reared me, and Whom thou soughtst I am, Said mildly, author of all this thou seest Above, or round about thee or beneath.

296–9. Adam was created outside Paradise and afterwards put in it; cp. vii 535–8n; Gen. 2:8, 15; Frye (1978) 261; Leonard (1990) 39. mansion: (1) dwelling-place, home; (2) temporary lodging. Cp. John 14:2, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions. . . . I go to prepare a place for you.’ wants: lacks. seat: residence; throne. 302. without: Accentuation implying emphasis; see ii 892n. Cp. Ennius, Annales 43, of a Vestal (semita nulla pedem stabilibat). 303–5. For the geography of Paradise, see iv 132ff. In visual art there was an early tradition of a flat-topped mountain (contrasting with iv 254f, 260f; ix 116) (Frye (1978) 235–7). 308. Tempting: Innocent here, but later taking on moral weight; cp. ix 595. The trees are all made provocative, so that the forbidden one may not seem specially so (Burden (1967) 127). 311. lively: realistically, to the life. 314. divine.] divine, 1674. 316. Submiss: submissive. Cp. Lat. submissus, ‘cast down’; but OED instances submiss in prose from 1570. Whom . . . am: Inversion puts enough stress on I am to suggest Exod. 3:14, God telling Moses his name (‘I AM THAT I AM. . . . Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you’). 318. Cp. Il Penseroso 152.

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This Paradise I give thee, count it thine 320 To till and keep, and of the fruit to eat: Of every tree that in the garden grows Eat freely with glad heart; fear here no dearth. But of the tree whose operation brings Knowledge of good and ill, which I have set 325 The pledge of thy obedience and thy faith, Amid the garden by the tree of life, Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste, And shun the bitter consequence: for know, The day thou eatst thereof, my sole command 330 Transgressed, inevitably thou shalt die; From that day mortal, and this happy state Shalt loose, expelled from hence into a world

320 –2. Gen. 2:15f, ‘And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.’ till: AV and Geneva have ‘dress’, and do not introduce tilling until Gen. 3:23, after the Fall. Cp. Gen. 2:15 Geneva note: ‘God would not have man idle, though as yet there was no need to labour.’ Refusing to consider labour a punishment, M. follows Heb., LXX, and Vulg., where the same word is used in both places. 323–33. Gen. 2:17, ‘But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’ From that day mortal: Formulated to address a crux puzzled over since patristic times – why ‘physical death, as it is called, did not follow on the same day as Adam’s sin, as God had threatened’ (De Doctrina i 12, YP vi 393). Some distinguished ‘degrees of death’: namely, guilt; spiritual death; bodily death; eternal death (De Doctrina i 12–14, YP vi 393–414). The first two degrees follow Adam’s transgression immediately (ix 1010ff ). Adopting Jerome’s view ‘that Adam began in the same day to die, not actually, but because then he became mortal and subject to death . . . so Symmachus readeth, thou shalt be mortal’ (Willet, Hexapla (1608) 35). Several Fathers speculate that if Adam had not sinned he would have been immortal. Cp. v 497; De Doctrina i 8, YP vi 339 (‘it is clear that God, at any rate after the fall of man, laid down a certain limit for human life’); Augustine, City of God XIV i. operation: effect. Echoed at ix 1012 to recall the warning. 325. Following Augustine’s view that eating the fruit is not in itself harmful: the tree is pledge only, not mystery or magic; cp. iii 95; Lewis (1942) 68; Lieb (1981) 105. 332. loose: (1) break up, do away with; violate (OED 7, 8); (2) lose (editors have assumed this the only word indicated).

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Of woe and sorrow. Sternly he pronounced The rigid interdiction, which resounds 335 Yet dreadful in mine ear, though in my choice Not to incur; but soon his clear aspéct Returned and gracious purpose thus renewed. Not only these fair bounds, but all the earth To thee and to thy race I give; as lords 340 Possess it, and all things that therein live, Or live in sea, or air, beast, fish, and fowl. In sign whereof each bird and beast behold After their kinds; I bring them to receive

334. interdiction: prohibition; interdict (exile). 337. purpose: discourse. 338–41. Cp. vii 530–4n; Gen. 1:28. bounds: tract of land. 343–56. For the naming, cp. vi 73–6; vii 493; viii 276; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 36 (listing causes of the ceremony: ‘1. that man seeing his excellent creation far surpassing all other, might thereby be stirred up to praise his Creator. 2. that there might be a trial of Adam’s wisdom: he brought them to see how he would call them. 3. that by this means the Hebrew language, wherein those names were given, might be founded. 4. that man’s authority and dominion over the creatures might appear: for howsoever man named every living creature, so was the name thereof. 5. that man finding among all the creatures no help or comfort meet for him (1:20) might have a greater desire thereunto, and more lovingly embrace his helper, which should be brought to him’). Adam’s wisdom appears in the effortless suddenness of his perceptions; cp. De Doctrina i 7, YP vi 324 (‘he could not have given names to the animals in that extempore way, without very great intelligence’); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. I xciv 2–4 (Adam’s angelic understanding was capable of moving through objects to concepts instantly); Mulcaster, Elementary (1582) (‘What a cunning thing it is to give right names’); Willet, Hexapla (1608) 37 (‘names were given at the first according to the several properties and nature of creatures’); Bacon, Advancement of Learning (1605) I vi 6; Donne, Sermons ii 78 (‘Adam was able to decipher the nature of every creature in the name thereof ’); MacCaffrey (1959) 36–8. The naming of creatures had great topical interest after such attempts at natural classification of species as Cesalpino’s and Joachim Jung’s; morphological systematization was gathering a momentum that would soon culminate in the work of Linnaeus. In 1682 John Ray classified 18,000 species of plants alone. For Adam’s scientific powers, cp. vii 639n. God does not endow man with ‘accurate language’ (as Stanley Fish), but rather with reason to form appropriate language – ‘voluntary’ names ‘appointed upon cause’ (Leonard (1990) 10–12). Leonard contrasts the uncompromisingly Behmenist Cratylism (‘absolute

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From thee their names, and pay thee fealty 345 With low subjection; understand the same Of fish within their watery residence, Not hither summoned, since they cannot change Their element to draw the thinner air. As thus he spake, each bird and beast behold 350 Approaching two and two, these cowering low With blandishment, each bird stooped on his wing. I named them, as they passed, and understood Their nature, with such knowledge God endued My sudden apprehension: but in these 355 I found not what methought I wanted still; And to the heavenly vision thus presumed. O by what name, for thou above all these, Above mankind, or aught than mankind higher, Surpassest far my naming, how may I 360 Adore thee, author of this universe, And all this good to man, for whose well-being So amply, and with hands so liberal Thou hast provided all things: but with me I see not who partakes. In solitude 365 What happiness, who can enjoy alone, Or all enjoying, what contentment find? Thus I presumptuous; and the vision bright, As with a smile more brightened, thus replied. What callst thou solitude, is not the earth 370 With various living creatures, and the air congruency’) in Webster, Academiarum Examen (1654) 29 (‘I cannot but conceive that Adam did understand both their internal and external signatures, and that the imposition of their names was adequately agreeing with their natures: otherwise it could not univocally and truly be said to be their names, whereby he distinguished them’). For an illumination of Aristotle, Historia Animalium showing the scientific associations of Adam and Eve’s naming, see Alexander (1995) 101f. For the naming as a colonial act, see Evans (1996) 57 (the animals symbolize Indians). 350. two and two: Not in Gen. 2. Showing that Adam’s needs for a companion are already recognized (Gallagher (1990) 36). Also, proleptic to the next mythic gathering of the beasts ‘two and two unto Noah into the ark’ (Gen. 7:9). 351. stooped: brought to the ground (OED 7). 354. On Adam’s intuition, see Corns (1994) 58; Leonard (1990) 25. 357. Following the order of natural theology, from creatures to their creator, and using an ancient formula of invocation; cp. Horace, Odes I ii 21–2.

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Replenished, and all these at thy command To come and play before thee, knowst thou not Their language and their ways, they also know, And reason not contemptibly; with these 375 Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is large. So spake the universal Lord, and seemed So ordering. I with leave of speech implored, And humble deprecation thus replied. Let not my words offend thee, heavenly power, 380 My maker, be propitious while I speak. Hast thou not made me here thy substitute, And these inferior far beneath me set? Among unequals what society Can sort, what harmony or true delight? 385 Which must be mutual, in proportion due Given and received; but in disparity The one intense, the other still remiss Cannot well suit with either, but soon prove Tedious alike: of fellowship I speak

371. Replenished: abundantly stocked (OED 1). God teases Adam (Leonard (1990) 26). 373. For a Jewish belief that until the Fall Adam understood the language of the beasts, see viii 272n; Josephus, Antiquities I i 4; Philo, Questions on Genesis i 32; Jubilees iii 28. The common language was variously identified as Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, or Aramaic; see Charles (1913) ii 17. Leonard (1990) 26f argues strongly – against A. Fowler, in Milton (1968) – that Their language means only the ‘inarticulate sounds’ of the animals. But our positions may be less distinct than he supposes: Philo admits human language is ‘more clear and distinct’. know: have understanding. 379–80. Cp. Gen. 18:30, Abraham’s apprehensive preface to a bold request (‘Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak’). Before the Fall, Adam is compared with Pentateuch heroes; after it, the OT is devalued (Rosenblatt (1994) 5). propitious: well-disposed; gracious. 384–9. Extended musical analogies with human society were common, from Plato, Republic 530D, 617B to Marvell, ‘The First Anniversary’ (1655) 49–75; see Fowler (1970a) 83f. Adam’s argument is that for true harmony there must be the right mathematical proportion – here punningly described as reciprocal. In a stringed instrument the strings should be in the right ratio of length and frequency. But the human string is intense (strained, and high in pitch); the animal string too remiss and low. The moral senses of remiss and intense, which give the allegoria its force, are dramatic irony: in the event it is not the animals who prove remiss. sort: fit, be in harmony.

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390 Such as I seek, fit to participate All rational delight, wherein the brute Cannot be human consort; they rejoice Each with their kind, lion with lioness; So fitly them in pairs thou hast combined; 395 Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl So well converse, nor with the ox the ape; Worse then can man with beast, and least of all. Whereto the almighty answered, not displeased. A nice and subtle happiness I see 400 Thou to thyself proposest, in the choice Of thy associates, Adam, and wilt taste No pleasure, though in pleasure, solitary. What thinkst thou then of me, and this my state, Seem I to thee sufficiently possessed 405 Of happiness, or not? Who am alone From all eternity, for none I know Second to me or like, equal much less. 390. participate: share (OED 2). 392. consort: Continuing the musical discourse (Leonard (1990) 28). 392–7. ‘Animals enjoy consorting with their own kind [species]. Less converse is possible across major divisions between species; and between man and animal least of all.’ Intercourse would be difficult between the ‘temperate’, emasculated ox (attribute of Diana) and the ape, proverbially lustful (Carroll (1954) 19, 92; Salisbury (1994) Index, Ape). The choice of examples introduces notions of the moral restraint and psychological adjustment necessary to rational delight. Adam has to show appreciation of the meaning of converse before he is judged ready for a consort (Leonard (1990) 29f ). Cp. Evans (1996) 58f (the planters’ description of Indian languages as gibberish); Salisbury op. cit. 145 (unnatural hybrids). converse: consort, associate familiarly. 398–411. God plays out the scene as if he does not know he is going to create Eve (Burden (1967) 31f ). Providence must not seem deterministic, even if God appears to improvise. Bauman (1987) 264 follows Arthur Sewall in finding denial of the Son’s divinity – God is alone / From all eternity. But the Son is explicitly called ‘equal’ (iii 306). As usual, M. emphasizes God’s singleness; cp. C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 76: ‘the “Presence Divine” amiably chatting with the first of men is neither the Father nor the Son, but God, addressing Adam in the unity of the Godhead’. 399. nice: fastidious. 402. in pleasure: (1) in a state of pleasure; (2) in Eden (Heb. = ‘pleasure, delight’. 406–7. Cp. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1154b, cit. M. Y. Hughes (God takes ‘single and simple pleasure’ in unchanging immobile activity);

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How have I then with whom to hold convérse Save with the creatures which I made, and those 410 To me inferior, infinite descents Beneath what other creatures are to thee? He ceased, I lowly answered. To attain The height and depth of thy eternal ways All human thoughts come short, supreme of things 415 Thou in thyself art perfect, and in thee Is no deficience found; not so is man, But in degree, the cause of his desire By conversation with his like to help, Or solace his defects. No need that thou 420 Shouldst propagate, already infinite; And through all numbers absolute, though one; But man by number is to manifest His single imperfection, and beget

Horace, Odes I xii 17f (unde nil maius generatur ipso, / nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum). 412–19. Adam expresses distinctively human desire (Leonard (1990) 31). 413. Rom. 11:33, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!’ 416–19. Adam and Eve when alone are imperfect (Musacchio (1991) 78–80). Adam’s awareness of deficience makes him a proegumenic or impulsive helping cause of the Fall: his need for companionship leads to creation of Eve, the procatarctic cause or occasion; see L. Howard, HLQ , 9 (1945) 160. Aristotle says a god ‘needing nothing . . . will not need a friend, nor have one’; but a virtuous man should not emulate the divine by dispensing with friends: Eudemian Ethics 1244b–1245b. On the importance of conversation to M., see D. M. Friedman, in Stanwood (1995) 205f. But: except. 421. Editors see wordplay between numbers in antithesis to one, and numbers in the Lat. sense ‘parts’; cp. Pliny, Epistles IX xxxviii (liber numeris omnibus absolutus). But the divine monad contains all other numbers, and is complete and perfect (OED 4, 5) through them all. Cp. vi 809–10n. See Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 13f (the monad fons et origo of numbers, as God of created being; distinguishing divine from created singularity). Creaturely singleness (single imperfection) means absence of peers, but God’s means universality (Unus si dicatur, non numeri, sed universitatis est nomen). 423–4. This desire for his own image is sanctioned (K. Kelly, in Allen (1990) 204). Hagstrum (1980) 42 stresses Adam’s susceptibility to Narcissus’s passion; but Kelly shows M.’s departing from Ficino’s conception of ecstasy

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Like of his like, his image multiplied, 425 In unity defective, which requires Collateral love, and dearest amity. Thou in thy secrecy although alone, Best with thyself accompanied, seekst not Social communication, yet so pleased, 430 Canst raise thy creature to what height thou wilt Of union or communion, deified; I by conversing cannot these erect From prone, nor in their ways complacence find. Thus I emboldened spake, and freedom used 435 Permissive, and acceptance found, which gained This answer from the gracious voice divine. Thus far to try thee, Adam, I was pleased, And find thee knowing not of beasts alone, Which thou hast rightly named, but of thyself, 440 Expressing well the spirit within thee free, My image, not imparted to the brute, Whose fellowship therefore unmeet for thee Good reason was thou freely shouldst dislike, And be so minded still; I, ere thou spak’st, 445 Knew it not good for man to be alone, And no such company as then thou sawst Intended thee, for trial only brought, – Adam and Eve’s loves are self-possessed and rational. 426. Collateral: accompanying; ranking with. 427–8. Cp. Cicero, De Re Publica I xvii 27, Cato’s description of Scipio Africanus (Numquam minus solum esse, quam cum solus esset). secrecy: seclusion. 431. union . . . communion: Distinguishing degrees of separateness; cp. v 438–9n. deified: absorbed in the divine nature; made like a god. ‘The elevation of the human soul to a supernatural state’ by sanctifying grace (Corcoran (1945) 103). 432. For the symbolic upright posture, see vii 505–11. 433. complacence: source of pleasure. Cp. iii 276, Messiah the Father’s ‘sole complacence’. As often, M. prefers modern pronunciation, stressing the second. 435. Permissive: allowed. 437–48. God is not only playing, but allowing Adam to discover his needs for himself (Danielson (1982) 122f ). Adam’s real trial is not giving names to the lower species, but judging what is fit and meet for himself (Leonard (1990) 32). Cp. viii 343–56n. 445. Gen. 2:18, ‘the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone’.

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To see how thou couldst judge of fit and meet: What next I bring shall please thee, be assured, Thy likeness, thy fit help, thy other self, Thy wish, exactly to thy heart’s desire. He ended, or I heard no more, for now My earthly by his heavenly overpowered, Which it had long stood under, strained to the height In that celestial colloquy sublime, As with an object that excels the sense, Dazzled and spent, sunk down, and sought repair Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, called By nature as in aid, and closed mine eyes. Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell Of fancy my internal sight, by which Abstract as in a trance methought I saw, Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape Still glorious before whom awake I stood; Who stooping opened my left side, and took

450. Cp. Gen. 2:18, ‘I will make him an help meet for him’. other self: close friend (Lat. alter ego; Gk 5τεSος ;υτ[ς). Cp. x 128; De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 374 (similar reasons for creating Eve – ‘when God originally gave man a wife he intended her to be his help, solace and delight’). M. follows the Reformers’ biblical emphasis on marriage as relationship rather than contract; see Bailey (1952) ch. 8. 452–86. Gen. 2:21f, ‘the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man’. Gallagher (1990) 33 differentiates Adam’s better informed account from Raphael’s (and from Gen. 1:28f ) – only man, e.g., is moved to the garden and instructed to keep it. But Adam was often taken to mean Adam and Eve. 453. earthly: Supply ‘nature’. For the difficulty of sustaining conversation with God, cp. Dan. 10:17 (‘straightway there remained no strength in me’). 460–1. cell / Of fancy: The cellula phantastica, or front part of the brain, where images derived from the senses were formed and reformed; see v 109n; Harvey (1975); CHRP 471. For the fancy’s role in dreams, cp. v 100–13n; viii 294. 462. Abstract: withdrawn, separated. The soul separated from the body in a state of ‘ecstasy’, when meditating divine truth. trance: Following Gen. 2:21 LXX, 3κστασιν, where AV has only ‘deep sleep’ and Geneva ‘heavy sleep’. Cp. Num. 24:4, ‘falling into a trance, but having his eyes open’. 465–6. Cp. iv 484. Gen. 2:21 does not specify which side, but commentators

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From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm, And life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound, But suddenly with flesh filled up and healed: The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands; 470 Under his forming hands a creature grew, Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair, That what seemed fair in all the world, seemed now Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained And in her looks, which from that time infused 475 Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before, And into all things from her air inspired The spirit of love and amorous delight. She disappeared, and left me dark, I waked To find her, or for ever to deplore 480 Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure: When out of hope, behold her, not far off, Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned With what all earth or heaven could bestow To make her amiable: on she came, thought the left, as nearer Adam’s heart. This theory is alluded to in cordial (i.e. cardiac) spirits, an old-fashioned term for ‘vital spirits’ (v 484n). Willet, Hexapla (1608) 37 considers the left side less important than the fact that Eve was formed ‘not out of his head, that she should not be proud’. Contrast, then, Sin’s birth from Satan’s head (ii 752–61n). And contrast also the sinister theory at x 884–8. For God as surgeon, and for the prolepsis to horrors of postlapsarian birth, see R. Schwartz, MiltQ, 27 (1993) 98–109. For the visual tradition, see Frye (1978) 260f. warm,] warm; 1674. 471–4. Cp. Marino, Adone (1623) ii 173, the destructive Helen (‘So well does beauty’s aggregate / In that fair face summed up unite, / Whatever is fair in all the world / Flowers in her’). sex: Implying that Eve represents a whole sex, so that sex is in apposition to creature. Possibly complicated by the contemporary use of sex = ‘feminine’ (OED 1f ); cp. Dryden, ‘Cymon and Iphigeneia’ (1700) 367f, (1958) iv 1750 (‘She hugged th’offender, and forgave th’offence, / Sex to the last!’). 472–84. Editors compare Sonnet XXIII, but the motif was not rare; cp. Shakespeare, Sonnets xxvii (Richardson). Eve is ‘an affirmation of human art’, born from Adam’s imagination – so that Sin is a counterfeit Eve (Stevens (1985) 119f ). 476. air: (1) mien, look; (2) breath, fragrance (gaining support from the still current physical sense of inspired = breathed). Cp. Lucretius iv 1054 (Et mulier toto iactans e corpore amorem); Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale V iii 78 (‘There is an air comes from her’). 481. out of: beyond. 484–94. Contrast the naming of the animals. In Adam’s attitude to Eve,

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485 Led by her heavenly maker, though unseen, And guided by his voice, nor uninformed Of nuptial sanctity and marriage rites: Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love. 490 I overjoyed could not forbear aloud. This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfilled Thy words, creator bounteous and benign, Giver of all things fair, but fairest this Of all thy gifts, nor enviest. I now see 495 Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself Before me; woman is her name, of man Extracted; for this cause he shall forgo Father and mother, and to his wife adhere; And they shall be one flesh, one heart, one soul. 500 She heard me thus, and though divinely brought,

Corns (1994) 65 sees un-Petrarchan conservative patriarchalism; but Gallagher (1990) 39–41, more convincingly, stresses Eve’s dignity and ‘unsubmissive submission’, with its dramatic irony (Adam ‘will not interfere with her freedom of choice’). 488. Cp. Shakespeare, Troilus IV iv 118 (‘The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek’), of Cressida. Possibly proleptic. 490. Ellipsis: ‘to say aloud’. 491–9. Cp. Gen. 2:23f (‘And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh’); Matt. 19:4–6; Mark 10:6–8 (basis of the doctrine of marriage as henosis or union in one flesh). Going beyond Genesis in the addition of soul; Adam has not forgotten the ‘higher conversation’ (Leonard (1990) 33). Cp. Tetrachordon, YP ii 602: ‘my image . . . not so much in body, as in unity of mind and soul’. For William Pemble’s belief that his soul was an incorruptible bone, seed of the resurrection, see B. J. Gibbons, 17C, 10 (1995) 71. myself: See viii 450n. adhere: Cp. Vulg. adhaerebit; AV has ‘cleave’. 494. enviest: give grudgingly (OED 3). Continuing from hast fulfilled (Pearce). 496–7. Standard etymology; but not recognition enough for Eve, who requires a name of her own (Leonard (1990) 35, 40). 499. Replacing the biblical ‘one flesh’ by a Platonic tripartite division, to preclude puritanical misunderstandings. Cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 39: ‘They shall be one flesh, not only in respect of carnal copulation . . . but in respect of their perpetual society, the conjunction both of their bodies and minds.’ 500. divinely brought: Cp. viii 485; Gen. 2:22.

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Yet innocence and virgin modesty, Her virtue and the conscience of her worth, That would be wooed, and not unsought be won, Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired, 505 The more desirable, or to say all, Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought, Wrought in her so, that seeing me, she turned; I followed her, she what was honour knew, And with obsequious majesty approved 510 My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower I led her blushing like the morn: all heaven, And happy constellations on that hour 501–7. The modesty springs not from guilt but a sense of the ‘sole propriety’, the exclusive privacy of love (Burden (1967) 46f ). M. has a problem, in that many passions are only imaginable in fallen communities larger than two. The reductive view that Eve measures her worth by flight – W. Kerrigan and G. Braden, ELH, 53 (1986) 44f – is like the view Marvell targets in ‘To His Coy Mistress’. Cp. Belsey (1988) 62 on Adam’s moralizing and theorizing of iv 477–91, where Eve ‘makes winning comedy out of her own artlessness’. But Eve’s majesty and ‘sweet reluctant amorous delay’ hardly seem artless. 502. conscience: consciousness. Cp. Virgil, Aen. xii 669, Turnus’s conscia virtus. 504. obvious: forward; open to influence. Still current in Brooke, Fool of Quality (1809) iii 13 (‘artless and obvious to seduction’). 508. Sexual appetite and the sense of its holiness are apparently both innate (Corns (1994) 59). Cp. viii 486f (the source of Eve’s knowledge); Heb. 13:4 (‘Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled’). In putting honour before the Fall, M. would recall Guarini, Pastor Fido (1590) iv 10 distinguishing Golden Age verace onor from the false honour of later times, to correct the dangerous First Chorus of Tasso’s Aminta (which declared the Golden Age free from honour altogether). Pace Danielson (1982) 185–7, Lewis agrees with Tasso, and dislikes the suggestion of sexual shame in blushing. 509. obsequious: compliant. Less violent an oxymoron then; cp. Spenser, Epithalamion (1595) 306f (‘proud humility’). 511. Empson (1961) 104f, 107 thinks pleasure in another’s blushes must imply an offensive mastery. But a desire for ‘sweet reluctant amorous delay’ (iv 311) is hardly offensive. Changes in sensibility have intervened: in the seventeenth century disdain overcome gave a strong charge; cp. Stanley, ‘Answer’ (1962) 55 (‘willing kisses yield no joy’). Besides, blushing could indicate joy (Danielson (1982) 261 n 55). On the complex trope, a literal likened to a figurative blush, see Corns (1990) 103f. 512–13. Linking cosmic and microcosmic generation; cp. the ‘sweet

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Shed their selectest influence; the earth Gave sign of gratulation, and each hill; 515 Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airs Whispered it to the woods, and from their wings Flung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub, Disporting, till the amorous bird of night Sung spousal, and bid haste the evening star 520 On his hilltop, to light the bridal lamp. Thus I have told thee all my state, and brought My story to the sum of earthly bliss Which I enjoy, and must confess to find In all things else delight indeed, but such 525 As used or not, works in the mind no change, Nor vehement desire, these delicacies I mean of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits, and flowers,

influence’ of the Pleiades (vii 375). Before the Fall Adam and Eve enjoy every astral advantage; they cannot attribute error to astrological causes. The stars have evil influence only after the macrocosmic changes at x 657–64. 514. See iv 499–501. Cp. Homer, Il. xiv 347ff, where earth gives sign of joy at the intercourse of Zeus and Hera. gratulation: congratulation. 515–16. gales: winds; cp. iv 156n. airs: (1) breezes; (2) melodies – underlined by Sung (viii 519), as Hume (1695) notices. See Ricks (1963) 106. wings: Implying putto-like personifications; cp. iv 156ff; Comus 989 (‘west winds with musky wing’). 518. amorous bird: nightingale. Cp. v 40f. 519. The planet Venus, mythologized as Hesperus, often figuratively supplied as the epithalamic lamp; cp. iv 605; Virgil, Eclogues viii 30; Apollonius Rhodius i 774; Catullus lxii 1–2 (Vesper adest, iuvenes, consurgite: Vesper Olympo / expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit); lxiv 329; Spenser, Epithalamion 281f. The rising of Venus signalled to light the bridal lamp and conduct the bride to the bridegroom. For the poem’s recurrent epithalamic concern, cp. iv 710–18, 741–70; xi 588–95; Lewalski (1985) Index, Genres; Lyric; Epithalamium. M.’s Trin. MS Second Draft includes a marriage song; see Introduction: Composition; Gilbert (1947) 19. 523–9. On Adam’s confession of weakness, see Turner (1987) 273–6 finding ‘Adam’s whole conceptual model [thrown] into greater disarray than perhaps his author intended’. 526. vehement: Proleptic, in view of its derivation from vehe-mens, lacking in mind. Cp. ii 954; ix Arg. 527–8. Omitting touch, lowest and most material of the senses; see J. F. Kermode, BJRL, 44 (1961) 68–99; Vinge (1975). By contrast, touch is prominent in the nuptials; cp. viii 530–1n, 579–85n.

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Walks, and the melody of birds; but here Far otherwise, transported I behold, 530 Transported touch; here passion first I felt, Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else Superior and unmoved, here only weak Against the charm of beauty’s powerful glance. Or nature failed in me, and left some part 535 Not proof enough such object to sustain, Or from my side subducting, took perhaps More than enough; at least on her bestowed Too much of ornament, in outward show Elaborate, of inward less exact. 540 For well I understand in the prime end Of nature her the inferior, in the mind And inward faculties, which most excel, In outward also her resembling less His image who made both, and less expressing 530–1. Transported (rapt; banished), passion, and Commotion (mental perturbation), while still innocent words, are cumulatively ominous. Adam and Eve experience passion but resist; see J. S. Diekhoff, MiltQ, 4 (1970) 5–7; Danielson (1982) 194–5 (refuting Tillyard (1951); M. Bell, PMLA, 68 (1953) 863–83; and Waldock (1961)). Arminians stressed fallibility before the Fall; but cp. also Donne, Sermons ii 124 (the ‘natural possibility’ of sinning). 533. charm: magical spell. 534–9. Adam blames nature since Eve seems more perfect, although his judgment shows her inferior (Musacchio (1991) 116f ). proof: impervious (of power to resist). subducting: subtracting. Coinage of the intransitive use (Corns (1990) 92). 539–59. Overawed by Eve’s nobility and royalty – almost divinity – Adam doubts his own perfect completeness. See Quint (1993) 291 (‘The voice of infatuation’). But the dramatic ironies can be seen as biting differently – showing, e.g., that Eve need not fall to become a goddess to Adam. 539–44. When Adam takes the forbidden fruit, however, he will think Eve ‘exact of taste, / And elegant, of sapience no small part’ (ix 1017f ). Cp. SA 1025–30: ‘Is it for that such outward ornament / Was lavished on their sex, that inward gifts / Were left for haste unfinished, judgment scant, / Capacity not raised to apprehend / Or value what is best / In choice’. Most commentators on Genesis agreed that Eve was the less perfect image (Williams (1948) 87). exact: perfect, consummate, finished (OED 1, 2). 541–9. See D. K. McColley, in Danielson (1989) 160f, on the balance between hierarchic ideas and Phil. 1:1; 2:2–3 (‘let each esteem other better than themselves’). absolute: perfect, entire.

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545 The character of that dominion given O’er other creatures; yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, 550 Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded, wisdom in discourse with her Looses discount’nanced, and like folly shows; Authority and reason on her wait, 555 As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and to consúmmate all, Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed. 560 To whom the angel with contracted brow. Accuse not nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine, and be not diffident Of wisdom, she deserts thee not, if thou Dismiss not her, when most thou needst her nigh, 565 By attribúting overmuch to things Less excellent, as thou thyself perceiv’st. For what admir’st thou, what transports thee so, An outside? Fair no doubt, and worth well Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love, 551–2. The ‘balanced perfection’ of life before the Fall ‘becomes less stable’ (Broadbent (1960) 197). 553. Proleptic of the argument at ix 205–385. Looses: (1) goes to pieces; comes unstuck (OED 5, quotation of 1526); (2) loses (the argument). 554. Adam resigns his powers to her ‘as if she was intended in his place’ (Richardson). 556. Occasionally: contingently (i.e. as a result of Adam’s need for a companion). 557. Greatness of mind: magnanimity. See vii 505–11n. 561–70. Raphael is alarmed at the possibility of narcissism in Adam, setting his own image (Eve) above higher knowledge (Shawcross (1982) 13). Cp. Christ’s censure, after the event (x 145–56). nature: i.e. God’s work in forming you. Adam may have blamed nature for a constitutional defect (viii 534); but he knew who subducted perhaps ‘more than enough’ from his side (viii 398, 536f ), and so accuses God. diffident: mistrustful. wisdom: Both Adam’s, and eternal Wisdom (vii 9f ); Raphael implies ‘Have faith in God’. 569. Cp. Eph. 5:28f, used in the BCP marriage service (‘So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth

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570 Not thy subjection: weigh with her thyself; Then value: oft-times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right Well managed; of that skill the more thou knowst, The more she will acknowledge thee her head, 575 And to realities yield all her shows; Made so adorn for thy delight the more, So awful, that with honour thou mayst love Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise. But if the sense of touch whereby mankind 580 Is propagated seem such dear delight Beyond all other, think the same vouchsafed To cattle and each beast; which would not be To them made common and divulged, if aught Therein enjoyed were worthy to subdue 585 The soul of man, or passion in him move. What higher in her society thou findst Attractive, human, rational, love still; himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church’); similarly 1 Pet. 3:7 (‘Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life’). 570–5. See Turner (1987) 280 taking shows = pretences: ‘Raphael’s cynical condemnation is particularly appalling because, in equating Eve with “shows”, he declares her intrinsically fallen’. But Raphael expounds a Platonism in which shows are externalities, and only ideas realities. 570. Not thy subjection: Cp. ix 1182–6 in M.’s own voice. 573. skill: not ‘self-esteem’, as Verity and M. Y. Hughes, but ‘managing well just and right’. 574. 1 Cor. 11:3, ‘The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.’ 575. shows;] shows: 1674. 576. adorn: Coinage on the analogy of Ital. adorno, contracted from adornato, adorned. the more: chiefly (Ital. il più). 577. honour: Not in the sense of viii 569 but rather of viii 508n. 579–85. Assuming the Neoplatonic scale of love, and the ordering of the five senses. Cp. Chapman, Ovid’s Banquet of Sense (1595) cxii: ‘Pure love (said she) the purest grace pursues, / And there is contact, not by application / Of lips or bodies, but of bodies’ virtues.’ Touch, ‘the sense’s emperor’, is the fifth course of the Banquet, associated with the sexual act. See J. F. Kermode, BJRL, 44 (1961) 97f; J. Hutton, MLN, 57 (1942) 657–61 (the quinque linea amoris scheme of erotic poetry); A. Fowler, SP, 56 (1959) 583–99.

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In loving thou dost well, in passion not, Wherein true love consists not; love refines 590 The thoughts, and heart enlarges, hath his seat In reason, and is judicious, is the scale By which to heavenly love thou mayst ascend, Not sunk in carnal pleasure, for which cause Among the beasts no mate for thee was found. 595 To whom thus half abashed Adam replied. Neither her outside formed so fair, nor aught 588. Since passion overthrew reason, it had to be wrong. On medieval condemnation of passionate love even within marriage, see Lewis (1951) 15f; Turner (1987) 230. The general view was that passion did not precede the Fall; cp. Johnson, Lives (1905) i 180 (‘human passions did not enter the world before the Fall’); but also Donne, Sermons ii 79 (‘man was passible before’). Raphael’s alarm is therefore intelligible: he has mistaken Adam’s problem. 589–94. Expounding the Neoplatonic distinction between divine love, human love, and bestial love. Human true love leads to propagating the earthly image of divine beauty, and may, in its ideal form, lead to the love of God (heavenly love). Or else it may descend to carnal pleasure. Cp. Comus 1003–11; Dam, conclusion; Doctrine and Discipline, YP ii 251 (‘what might this burning mean? Certainly not the mere motion of carnal lust . . . What is it then but that desire which God put into Adam in Paradise before he knew the sin of incontinence; that desire which God saw it was not good that man should be left alone to burn in; the desire and longing to put off an unkindly [unnatural] solitariness by uniting another body, but not without a fit soul to his in the cheerful society of wedlock’); Spenser, An Hymn in Honour of Love; Donne, Sermons ii 345 (citing Jerome: ‘There is not a more uncomely, a poorer thing, than to love a wife like a mistress’); Panofsky (1962) 143; Smith (1985) ch. 1. 590. enlarges: makes wise (vii 486n). 591. scale: (1) the Neoplatonic scala of love; (2) the balance in which Adam’s soul is weighed against Eve’s, or in which he weighs the courses of true love. Cp. iv 997–1004n; viii 570 (‘weigh with her thyself ’); M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–78 (the balance symbol). 595. Adam is only half abashed, and gives a spirited defence of his love. Presumably he is not abashed at all in the sense of ashamed. Gallagher (1990) 44 suggests he is abashed in the etymological sense of ‘amazed’. The conversation resembles a debate between heavenly love and human love, with the angel–man distinction intensified into antithesis. Perhaps cp. M.’s early drafts of a projected drama on the Fall, featuring a character Heavenly Love (Introduction: Composition). 596–604. See Leonard (1990) 31f; V. Kahn, in Quint (1992) 145 (Adam does not assume ‘either a necessary correspondence or a necessary

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In procreation common to all kinds (Though higher of the genial bed by far, And with mysterious reverence I deem) 600 So much delights me, as those graceful acts, Those thousand decencies that daily flow From all her words and actions, mixed with love And sweet compliance, which declare unfeigned Union of mind, or in us both one soul; 605 Harmony to behold in wedded pair More grateful than harmonious sound to the ear. Yet these subject not; I to thee disclose What inward thence I feel, not therefore foiled, Who meet with various objects, from the sense 610 Variously representing; yet still free Approve the best, and follow what I approve.

discrepancy between inside and outside’ but makes perception depend on Augustine’s ‘eye of the hear’). genial: marital. Cp. iv 712n. higher: (1) higher than animal mating; (2) higher than you do. 599. Cp. iv 750, ‘mysterious law’. mysterious: such as fits a mystery (only instance in OED; perhaps hypallage). Eph. 5:32 describes the relation of one flesh as a ‘great mystery’ – an analogy between married love and the love of Christ for the Church. Flannagan needlessly doubts whether (in view of the divorce tracts) M. agrees with Adam. M.’s politics were not such as to ‘demystify’ the biblical view of marriage. 600. me,] me 1674. 601. decencies: instances of comeliness. 603. compliance: civility, complaisance; amicability (OED 1, 2). See Turner (1987) 285 contrasting models of equal love and of hierarchic compliance. But M. seems to conceive henosis as a relation of symbolic hierarchy. 604. Appealing to the value of friendship, then often thought superior to sexual love; cp. viii 499. 607. ‘These [decencies, etc.] do not subject me’. 608. foiled: overcome; dishonoured. Adam denies yielding to passion. 609–11. ‘I experience various objects, and from these various appetites and fancies; but I am free to choose only the best’. Proleptic; cp. v 117–19 (‘Evil into the mind of god or man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or blame behind’); Rom. 7:15f (‘that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I’); Ovid, Metam. vii 20f, tr. Sandys (1970) 306 (‘I see the better, I approve it too: / The worse I follow’); D. Bush, JEGP, 60 (1961) 639; Marjara (1992) 277. The interplay of subject and objects is thematic; cp. Jonson, Hymenaei, ‘It is a noble and just advantage, that the things subjected to

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To love thou blam’st me not, for love thou sayst Leads up to heaven, is both the way and guide; Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask; 615 Love not the heavenly spirits, and how their love Express they, by looks only, or do they mix Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch? To whom the angel with a smile that glowed Celestial rosy red, love’s proper hue, 620 Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowst Us happy, and without love no happiness. Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyst (And pure thou wert created) we enjoy In eminence, and obstacle find none

understanding have of those which are objected to sense’ (Herford and Simpson vii 209). 615–17. Implicitly suggesting that human life may be beyond angelic understanding (Grossman (1987) 124). Expression by looks would be virtual (essential) contact; expression by Irradiance, immediate contact. In logic, real and virtual causes were distinguished. 618–20. Raphael’s response shows there is ‘nothing evil or ominous about Adam’s sexual feelings’ (Musacchio (1991) 122). See Marjara (1992) 248 (angelic mutability in accord with recent science); Frye (1978) 182f (gender of angels); Corns (1994) 37 (angelic congress not progenitive). Empson (1961) 105 has Raphael blushing at Adam’s successful riposte; but more likely the blush is from joy or ardour. Cp. iv 977f; Turner (1987) 265 (a virginal response appropriate). Raphael insists on the totality of angelic sex, much as he flaunts angelic digestion (v 433ff ). 624–9. In eminence: superlatively. Raphael is not bashful but superior; it is a point of honour with love’s servants that their modes of expression should not fall short in fullness or purity. On eminence as a technical term in medieval philosophy, see T. A. Copeland, MiltQ, 24 (1990) 122. More, Immortality (1659) III ix 4 imagines the angels as ‘reaping the lawful pleasures of the very animal life, in a far higher degree than we are capable of in this world. . . . Wherefore they cannot but enravish one another’s souls, while they are mutual spectators of the perfect pulchritude of one another’s persons, and comely carriage, of their graceful dancing, their melodious singing and playing’. For angelic fluidity and penetrability, cp. i 423–31 n; vi 328–34n; Donne, ‘Air and Angels’; Bredbeck (1991) 228 (unfallen spirits superior, in that they ‘can range freely’ not only throughout the system of sex and gender, but ‘outside of it’). Introducing angelic sex establishes the innocence of sex in general, relates it to transmutation of flesh to spirit, and counters disparagement of sex as a merely animal activity (Burden (1967) 158f ). Cp. Donne, ‘Air and Angels’.

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625 Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars: Easier than air with air, if spirits embrace, Total they mix, union of pure with pure Desiring; nor restrained conveyance need As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul. 630 But I can now no more; the parting sun Beyond the earth’s green cape and verdant isles Hesperean sets, my signal to depart. Be strong, live happy, and love, but first of all Him whom to love is to obey, and keep 635 His great command; take heed lest passion sway Thy judgment to do aught, which else free will Would not admit; thine and of all thy sons The weal or woe in thee is placed; beware. I in thy persevering shall rejoice,

628. restrained: restricting; confined; limited. conveyance: mode of expression or communication (OED 5, 9, 14). Angels being undifferentiated into flesh and soul, their love is simpler, more direct. The angels ‘neither marry, nor are given in marriage’ (Mark 12:25) because they need no institution or channel of expression. For conveyance in a sacramental sense, cp. Hooker, Laws (1594–7) V lxvii 4 (‘those mysteries should serve as . . . conveyances of his body and blood unto them’); Donne, ‘The Ecstasy’ (the souls acknowledge their bodies ‘Did us, to us, at first covey’). 631–2. Cp. iv 354, 592, the sun setting ‘Beneath the Azores’. The green cape is Cape Verde, the verdant isles the Cape Verde Islands. Cp. Starnes (1955) 314 citing Stephanus (Hesperium ceras . . . Africae extremum promontorium . . . Hodie vocant Caput viride. vulgo, Le cap verd); Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 v (1989–) i 235 (‘those Isles of Cape Verdo . . . [Sir Richard Hawkins] calls them the unhealthiest clime of the world’). Hesperean: (1) western (OED 1); (2) (qualifying isles) Hesperides; (3) (qualifying sun) Hesperian fruit, ‘vegetable gold’ (iii 607–8n; iv 217–21n). signal: See v 229, 376 for the term of Raphael’s mission. 633. Be strong: Cp. the exhortation of Josh. 1:6. 634–5. 1 John 5:3, ‘For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.’ See Marjara (1992) 262. 637–8. Adam’s posterity and its destiny of weal or woe are contained within the personal pronouns thine . . . thee, of which he is the antecedent. 639–40. Yet ‘joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons’ that persevere (Luke 15:7). persevering: continuance in a state of grace (theological). Cp. vii 632.

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640 And all the blest: stand fast; to stand or fall Free in thine own arbitrament it lies. Perfect within, no outward aid require; And all temptation to transgress repel. So saying, he arose; whom Adam thus 645 Followed with benediction. Since to part, Go heavenly guest, ethereal messenger, Sent from whose sovereign goodness I adore. Gentle to me and affable hath been Thy condescension, and shall be honoured ever 650 With grateful memory: thou to mankind Be good and friendly still, and oft return. So parted they, the angel up to heaven From the thick shade, and Adam to his bower. THE END OF THE EIGHTH BOOK

640–1. 1 Cor. 7:37, ‘he that standeth steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well’. Raphael repeats the tenor of his commission (v 235), which in turn echoes God’s words at iii 99. arbitrament: decision; choice. 642. require: look for; ask (OED 9, 2, 5). 646. ethereal: celestial. 648. Cp. vii 41, ‘affable archangel’. 651. return: He never does, except that v 222 alludes to a visit far in the postlapsarian future. Instead, a less affable archangel, Michael, comes for the expulsion. Cp. Lycidas 183–5 (‘thou art the genius of the shore . . . and shalt be good / To all that wander in that perilous flood’); Virgil, Eclogues v 65 (addressing the dead Daphnis: sic bonus o felixque tuis). 653. Cp. iv 693 (‘of thickest covert . . . inwoven shade’); v 367. Raphael leaves the thick shade of the lower world; Adam turns to thicker shade, which soon resonates with Sin’s ‘shadow’ (ix 12). ‘Shade’ and ‘shadow’, thematic words, are transformed from innocence (iv 138, 141, 245, 325, 532), through evil associations (iv 1015; ix 185; x 249), to types of salvation (xii 233, 291, 303).

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Paradise Lost BOOK IX The Argument

Satan having compassed 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 attempt1 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 a while 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,2 but perceiving her lost, resolves through vehemence3 of love to perish with her; and extenuating4 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 ix. Argument]The same as for 1668 and 1669 Bk viii. Arg.1 attempt: (1) tempt; (2) entice, seduce. Arg.2 amazed: stunned. Arg.3 vehemence: impetuosity; excessive ardour (Lat. vehementia, ‘mindlessness’). Cp. viii 526n; ix 431. Arg.4 extenuating: underrating; excusing. 1–47. Fourth and last of the personal prologues (cp. i 1–49; iii 1–55; vii 1–50). Avoiding direct address, to reflect increased distance. In 1674 the parts introduced by prologues (p) form a structural pattern of thematic 1:2 ratios, underlining the poem’s two-part symmetry – p 2 books | p 4 books || p 2 books | p 4 books. Broadly considered, Bks i-vi treat the angelic

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With man, as with his friend, familiar used To sit indulgent, and with him partake Rural repast, permitting him the while Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach Disloyal on the part of man, revolt, And disobedience: on the part of heaven

fall and its consequences, Bks vii–xii the creation and fall of mankind. (See further vi 76n; vii 21n.) In 1667, however, the prologues signal a four-part structure – p 2 books | p 4 books || p 1 book | p 3 books – a tetraktys of books. The creative number principle (1, 2, 3, 4) is reordered into a sequence, from the evil dyad, through the tetrad (symbolizing order: Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 193f ) and monad (fountain of creation), to the triad (mediation). See Introduction: Numerical composition; Qvarnström (1961); Røstvig (1994); S. Asahi, MOKU, 21 (1972) 1–11. 1–10. Replacing the ‘divine historian’, Raphael, with himself, a fallen man; cp. the double narrator (prophet, sinner) in Moses (xii 307–14). Restating the theme, as Tasso advised (Steadman (1995) 52). See Ricks (1963) 69–72 on the crescendo discourse . . . distrust . . . disloyal . . . disobedience . . . distance and distaste. Putting heaven where God is expected, and so inserting distance: ‘the distance is now moral and spiritual, and not merely material’. The force of distaste depends on the frequency with which the Fall is described as tasting. There is an ‘unspoken pun. On the part of man, taste; on the part of Heaven, distaste’ (ibid.). See ix 9n. 1–4. Cp. viii 651n; Ricks (1963) 36 (the ‘least pompous opening anywhere in a divine poem’). God talked with Adam (viii 316–51), but no common meal is mentioned. Pearce suggests ellipsis – ‘God or [rather] angel guest’. Obscurely implying that before the Fall there was some meal with God less tragic than Holy Communion, but that Bk ix will bring a very different meal – the disloyal feast with Satan. familiar: (1) informal; (2) on a family footing; (3) cp. ‘familiar angel’ = ‘guardian angel’ (OED 2 d). Rural: Georgic, in contrast to the tragic fallen meal to come. Referring to the meal partaken with the angel guest Raphael. Exod. 33:11 authorized the notion of God speaking ‘face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend’. 5. Venial: permissible (OED 3; rare). 6. The mode (notes) is tragic for the remainder of the poem. Among medieval narrative tragedies de casibus virorum illustrium, Adam’s fall, like Lucifer’s, was a common subject; cp. Chaucer, The Monk’s Tale. Newton infers that epic height is abandoned; but ix 13f counts decisively against this. Scaliger, Poetices (1964) 144 col. 1 praises epic for containing all genres. Just as Paradise was formerly pastoral and georgic, so now it moves out of the Golden Age; see iv 328n; Lewalski (1985). distrust: Recalling

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paradise lost Now alienated, distance and distaste, Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given, That brought into this world a world of woe, Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery Death’s harbinger: sad task, yet argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused, Or Neptune’s ire or Juno’s, that so long Perplexed the Greek and Cytherea’s son; If answerable style I can obtain

Raphael’s warning, ‘be not diffident’ (viii 562). breach: (1) breaking of friendly relation (OED 5d); (2) violation of God’s commandment (OED 3). 9. distaste: (1) aversion; (2) disrelish. Keeping up the theme of eating, prominent in the prologue (ix 1–9n, 3f, 37–9) and culminating at x 687f (‘At that tasted fruit / The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned’). 10–19. Achilles, stern in his wrath, refused any covenant with Hector; the more heroic Messiah is not implacable. Although he issued his sole commandment ‘sternly’ (viii 333), once disobeyed he works for reconciliation. And God’s anger, unlike Neptune’s and Juno’s, unravels perplexity and is just, not revengeful; cp. xii 275f (‘Erewhile perplexed . . . now I see’). ‘A characteristic exercise in close discrimination, turning on anger’ (Burden (1967) 11f ). Perplexed: plagued; bewildered. Cytherea’s son: Periphrasis, bringing out Juno’s petty motive for persecuting Aeneas (envy of Venus, after Paris’s fatal choice). 11. Cp. xi 627, ‘world . . . world of tears’. Moyles (1985) 131 unnecessarily suggests inserting brackets round ‘a world of woe’. Cp. Rom. 5:12 (a world brought into the world). 13. Bentley objects that misery often invokes death in vain. Referring to the idea of stages of death, developed to explain non-fulfilment of Gen. 2:17; cp. viii 323–33n; Burden (1967) 6f. Sin and Death do not enter the world until x 230ff; but the prologue introduces the whole fourth part, Bks ix–xii. Cp. v 564 (‘sad task’), without identifying M. and Raphael closely, as Treip (1994) 200. 16. An episode of the Iliad selected by Aristotle to exemplify epic’s incorporation of what in another genre would be ridiculous (Poetics xxiv 16; 1460a). Implying that Christian epic need not use such dubious material. 17. Amplifying Turnus’ claim to Lavinia, to discredit Virgil’s hero. 20. answerable: (1) equivalent; corresponding (OED 3, 5); (2) accountable (OED 1). Continuing the theme of Christian responsibility; see Stein (1953); Kennedy (1978) 171f.

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Of my celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored, And díctates to me slumbering, or inspires Easy my unpremeditated verse: Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me long choosing, and beginning late; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights In battles feigned; the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung; or to describe races and games,

21–4. For M.’s heavenly Muse, cp. vii 1–7n; J. H. Hanford, UTQ, 8 (1939) 415 (M.’s belief that he was possessed). nightly: For the poem’s nocturnal composition, cp. vii 29n; Bede, Ecclesiastical History IV xxiv 658–80 (Caedmon’s nightly visitations). 26. See Introduction: Composition. 27–41. Having disparaged classical epic (ix 10–19), M. turns to romantic and contemporary epic. Cp. i 16 (parodying Ariosto’s claim to originality); Steadman (1995) 151. Most previous epics had war as a main subject. (So has PL v–vi; but that subject is now to be transcended.) The claim to originality takes an unusual form; although one with precedents, especially FQ. Johnson, Lives (1905) i 175 judges the ‘extrinsic paragraphs’ of autobiographical digression to be beautiful ‘superfluities’; cp. Castelvetro, Poetica Sposto (1978) ii 161–9. argument: matter, subject. 29. mastery: art, skill. dissect: Ancient and Renaissance epicists described wounds with a technical minuteness like that of anatomists. Tasso, especially, dwells on honourable wounds as beautiful. In M.’s time, an aristocratic cult of wounds led to their being emphasized cosmetically. 30–1. Insisting on the inferiority of legendary and mythical subjects; cp. i 746f; iv 706. Yet earlier M. loved romance (Il Penseroso 110–20; YP i 891), practised swordsmanship, planned an Arthurian epic (Dam 162– 78), projected other British subjects (Trin. MS), and pursued medieval interests (History of Britain). His rejection of chivalry developed gradually; it may have had to do with social élitism, like the French upper bourgeois scorn for noblesse d’épee; see Braudel (1982) 485. feigned: fictional. 31–2. Implying a hierarchy of heroic virtues, with patience superior to fortitude; cp. iii 267–9n; vi 820–3n; vii 604–7n; J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 94. Tragic rather than heroic values (Burden (1967) 59). And existential, in view of M.’s personal situation after the Restoration. 33. In fact M. touches briefly on sports (ii 528ff; iv 551f ). In ancient epic races and games were regular: e.g. Homer, Od. viii 83ff; Il. xxiii 262ff;

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paradise lost Or tilting furniture, emblazoned shields, Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds; Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament; then marshalled feast Served up in hall with sewers, and seneschals; The skill of artifice or office mean, Not that which justly gives heroic name To person or to poem. Me of these Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument Remains, sufficient of itself to raise

Apollonius Rhodius ii 1ff; Virgil, Aen. v 104ff; Statius, Thebaid vi 255ff; Quintus Smyrnaeus iv 171ff; Nonnus xxxvii 103ff. But M. scores in compression; cp. Johnson, Lives (1905) i 175 (‘Here are no funeral games, nor is there any long description of a shield’). 34–7. Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser often describe such things. Gian Giorgio Trissino, La Italia Liberata (1547) has particularly elaborate imprese, as has Sidney (e.g. Arcadia (1590) I xvii 1, ‘Phalantus was all in white, having in his bases, and caparison embroidered a waving water: at each side whereof he had nettings cast over, in which were divers fishes naturally made, and so prettily, that as the horse stirred, the fishes seemed to strive, and leap in the net. But the other knight . . . was all in black, with fire burning both upon his armour, and horse. His impresa in his shield, was a fire made of Juniper, with this word, MORE EASY, AND tilting furniture: equipment or ornamental appointMORE SWEET’). ments for jousting. Impreses: heraldic devices. caparisons: horse armour or cloth housings. Bases: cloth housings. trappings: gaily ornamented coverings over the harness; cp. Spenser, FQ III i 15 (Florimell’s ‘steed with tinsell trappings shone’). tournament] torneament early edns: an Italianate spelling. 37–9. An important ceremonial occasion, with the splendid display aristocrats on both sides favoured, not excluding Cromwell. The sewers (ushers or waiters) superintended the seating; the seneschal was a steward, usually of gentle birth, with wider responsibilities; see Mertes (1988). artifice: mechanic art. Etiquette and heraldry are beneath epic’s dignity. Reflecting an unusual attitude – the herald’s office was generally respected, even under the Commonwealth. M. enjoyed chivalric epics like Tasso’s (echoed at ix 147–51n) and Spenser’s; see YP ii 516; Parker (1996) 635. His disgust at feasting has less to do with his own temperate diet (ibid. 1096) than with the degeneration from entertaining Raphael to gorging on forbidden fruit; cp. ix 1–4n, 9n; PR iv 291f (M.’s disengagement from his own humanism); A. Patterson, MiltS, 17 (1983) 187–208. 41–3. Me . . . Remains: Cp. Lat. me manet. 42. Steadman (1985) traces several ways in which M.’s argument is higher.

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That name, unless an age too late, or cold Climate, or years damp my intended wing Depressed, and much they may, if all be mine, Not hers who brings it nightly to my ear. The sun was sunk, and after him the star Of Hesperus, whose office is to bring Twilight upon the earth, short arbiter Twixt day and night, and now from end to end Night’s hemisphere had veiled the horizon round: When Satan who late fled before the threats

44. That name: i.e. of epic. The matter is not only heroic, but high enough to raise the reputation of epic. 44–7. Three factors might prevent success. First, cultural belatedness and nature’s general corruption; ‘the fate of this age’, ‘adverse’ to epicwriting. In Natur and Prol VII M. opposed cosmic pessimism; but notions of cosmic deterioration and historical apocalypse, intensified by astronomical discoveries, were hard to ignore; cp. Church Government ii Pref., YP i 814; Spenser, FQ V Proem (deterioration evidenced by changing declination); J. L. Livesay, MLN, 59 (1944), 469–72; Patrides (1984). Secondly, cold / Climate – something ‘adverse in our climate’; cp. YP i 814; Mans 24–9 (‘poorly nourished under the frozen Bear’); Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 67 (‘to be site in a bad clime, too far north’); I ii 2 v, p. 235 (cold air ‘almost as bad as hot . . . In these northern countries, the people are therefore generally dull, heavy . . . cold climes are more subject to natural melancholy’); Z. S. Fink, MLQ, 2 (1941) 67–80; T. B. Stroup, MLQ, 4 (1943) 185–9. Thirdly, M.’s years; when 1667 appeared, he was fifty-eight. All factors follow from x 651ff, the macrocosmic consequences of the Fall; not even a personal aside is merely digressive. Climate: (1) prevailing weather (to which M. was sensitive); (2) region (the place, as age is the time, of his life). damp: stifle. wing: flight. A common emblem for literary effort; cp. iii 13; vii 4; Clements (1960), esp. 164 on Alciato, Emblemata (1621) cxxi (poverty as a hampering clog). 48–9. star / Of Hesperus: Venus. Cp. iv 605; Leonard (1990) 104 citing Hume (1695) (‘in the morning called Lucifer . . . when seen at evening, Vesper, Hesperus . . . well styled, the quick and nimble umpire between day and night, by turns fore-running both, uncertain to which inclining’). office: Contrast ix 39 (‘office mean’); offices are of cosmic importance, not merely political places. 50–1. Twilight, like prelapsarian life, briefly balances light and dark. For the balance theme, cp. iv 354–5n, 998–1015nn; M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 147–77. 53. late: recently. A week earlier; cp. iv 1014.

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paradise lost Of Gabriel out of Eden, now improved In meditated fraud and malice, bent On man’s destruction, maugre what might hap Of heavier on himself, fearless returned. By night he fled, and at midnight returned From compassing the earth, cautious of day, Since Uriel regent of the sun descried His entrance, and forewarned the cherubim That kept their watch; thence full of anguish driven, The space of seven continued nights he rode With darkness, thrice the equinoctial line

54. improved: intensified; made worse (OED 4). Satan’s heart is hardened. 56. maugre: despite (archaic). hap: happen. 58. midnight: Of the eighth night (ix 67), after the journey of ix 63–6. Critical events like the incarnation and last judgment occur at midnight or noon, in Victorine tradition; cp. ix 739–40n; Borst (1993) 66. 59. Cp. iii 440–1; Job 1:7 (‘the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth’). 60. For Uriel’s regency, see iii 648; for his detecting Satan’s entrance, iv 564–75. 62. driven: At iv 1014f. 63. seven continued nights: From the night of Eve’s dream (Night 24) to Night 31; cp. vii 249–52n; Introduction: Time-scheme. Satan completes the preliminaries of the second temptation in a week – dyadic doubling of the divine week of creation. On similar doubling in Spenser’s FQ, see Fowler (1964) 7f. Cp. ix 136–8n, on corresponding times of creation and destruction. continued: By keeping to earth’s shadow, Satan ‘cautious of day’ contrives to spend a week of uncreating darkness. Cp. Medea’s nine-day journey in search of magic (Ovid, Metam. vii 235). 64–6. Satan’s repeated girdling of the earth, scarcely authorized by Job 1:7, modulates a motif of Marian iconography, the Virgin spurning the old serpent coiled round a globe. See Trens (1946) 144–6, 173, Figs 83f, 99. Three times, Satan turns day into night by traversing the equinoctial line (equator) from E to W, keeping ahead of the sun’s light. On the other four days, Satan allegedly follows colures or great circles, taking in the poles – an impossible journey, since the poles were never completely dark before the Fall. (Ecliptic and equator being then identical, earth’s axis was perpendicular to the plane of the solar orbit.) Not oversight, in view of x 680f; rather, prolepsis to the tilted poles of x 669 (thus allowing Pearce’s spiral itinerary for Satan, as he ‘describes’ a fallen world); cp. vii 226–32; M. Sarkar, NQ, 26 (1979) 417–22. Division of the nights into three and

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He circled, four times crossed the car of Night From pole to pole, traversing each colure; On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch, by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place, Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise

four travesties the body-forming property of (4 + 3) in creation; see Aratus, Phaenomena 467ff; Philo, De Opificio xxxviii 112; Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I vi 22–44; Dante, Par. i 39 (four circles and three crosses or intersections); Browne, Pseudodoxia IV xii (1964) ii 309; (1981) i 337 (citing Philo’s seven circles on the cosmic sphere). colure: one of two great circles intersecting at right angles at the poles. At the ecliptic, one passed through the solstitial points, the other the equinoctial points. Since the colures did not exist before the Fall, their mention is again prolepsis: Satan delineates the fallen macrocosm. car: The shadow of earth; contrast Messiah’s bright cosmic vehicle (vi 749–59n). 67–8. Midnight before Day 31; see Introduction: Time-scheme. On the eighth night Satan will descend into a serpent, unlike Christ, who ascends to heaven on the eighth day of Passion Week. Eight was regularly associated with the risen life; see Fowler (1964) 53; Eckhardt (1980) Index, Numbers; MacQueen (1985) Index, Numbers, individual. coast averse: side turned away. entrance: On the E of Paradise (iv 542); the river enters from the N, the direction of evil (iv 223; v 689n). 70. Indicating that the geography of Paradise is moral and spiritual: the Fall will remove natural access to the fountain of life. An allegorical change, enacted literally at xi 829. See xi 278–9n. 71–5. For the topography, cp. iv 223–32nn. Following Gen. 2:10 in tracing the undivided fountain to a river, not a source, but unusually calling this river Tigris. In Gen. 2:14, Tigris (Hiddekel) is one of four distributaries; it was not usually identified as the source river, although theories and nomenclatures abounded; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 29ff summarizes a dozen. Pace M. Y. Hughes, M. did not have the authority of Josephus, Antiquities I i 3. The undivided river was allegorized as Grace, or Water of Life; Tigris was usually Self-mastery or Courage. Cp. x 20; Philo, Questions on Genesis i 12f; Stevens (1985) 209f (Satan’s entry taints animal spirits physiologically, or manipulates the fancy). The mode of entry indicates that evil contaminates life’s origin; even the wariness of angels cannot exclude the possibility of sin (or, later, original sin). On the Tigris’ source on Mt Niphates, see iii 742n; on its subterranean course, Lucan, Civil War iii 261f (At Tigrim subito tellus absorbet hiatu / Occultosque tegit cursus rursusque renatum / Fonte novo: ‘Tigris, soon swallowed by the thirsty

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paradise lost Into a gulf shot under ground, till part 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 Where to lie hid; sea he had searched and land From Eden over Pontus, and the pool Maeotis, up beyond the river Ob; Downward as far Antarctic; and in length West from Orontes to the ocean barred At Darien, thence to the land where flows Ganges and Indus: thus the orb he roamed With narrow search; and with inspection deep Considered every creature, which of all Most opportune might serve his wiles, and found The serpent subtlest beast of all the field. Him after long debate, irresolute Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

earth, / Finds there a burial where it had its birth’); Heylyn, Cosmography (1652) iii 143. mist: Not mist in the ordinary sense, but from a fountain rising by capillary attraction. Often suggesting false consciousness; cp. ix 158, 180; Davies (1937) 44 (Charles I, e.g., thought ‘ “some few vipers” had cast a “mist of undutifulness” over the eyes of the majority’). 76–82. Rehearsing Satan’s cosmic journey in geographical terms. In his N–S circles he passes Pontus (Pontus Euxinus, Black Sea), Palus Maeotis (Sea of Azov), and the Siberian river Ob flowing N into the Gulf of Ob and so to the Arctic Ocean; his W circling crosses the Syrian River Orontes flowing into the Mediterranean and hence the Pacific ocean barred by the Darien Isthmus (Panama). Each feature is a river or sea, suggesting diffusion or infiltration. The seven features of uncreation divide 4 + 3, like the circlings of ix 64–6n; only here the N–S group numbers 3, the E–W group 4. Cp. Muscovia, YP viii 477 (‘Muscovia . . . bounded . . . on the East by the River Ob, or Oby, and the Nagayan Tartars on the Volga’); Ovid, Metam. vii 350–92 (Medea’s journey by dragon to the sacred spring). barred: Cp. Job 38:10f (at the separation of land and sea God ‘set bars and doors’ to the ocean). Ganges: Identified, by Jerome, Ambrose, Epiphanius, and others, with Pison, a river of Paradise in Gen. 2:10. 84. Contrast the forming and naming of species in creation (ix 63n). 86. Connecting the serpent’s subtlety with the temptation; cp. Gen. 3:1, ‘the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman . . .’. 87. irresolute: undecided. 88. sentence: judgment, decision. 88–9. Ironic; only the divine potter chooses ‘one vessel unto honour,

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Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom To enter, and his dark suggestions hide From sharpest sight: for in the wily snake, Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark, As from his wit and native subtlety Proceeding, which in other beasts observed 95 Doubt might beget of diabolic power Active within beyond the sense of brute. Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief His bursting passion into plaints thus poured: O earth, how like to heaven, if not preferred 100 More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built 90

and another unto dishonour’; cp. v 348n (‘fit vessels pure’); Rom. 9:20–4; Acts 9:15; 2 Tim. 2:21. Implying that a final sentence will judge Satan and the serpent ‘vessels of wrath fitted to destruction’ (Rom. 9:22). 89. imp: son, instrument (Richardson). Hume (1695) sees the horticultural metaphor, yet takes imp as the serpent stock on which fraud is grafted. But imp = ‘shoot’, ‘slip’: the serpent is fraud’s (Satan’s) scion or extension. Implying that from this slip a whole branch (world) of evil will grow – a travesty of St Paul’s allegory of incorporation in Christ as grafting (Rom. 11). 90. Cp. Bacon, Novum Organum i 50, tr. Urbach (1994): ‘every action of the spirits enclosed in material bodies lies hidden and escapes us’. suggestions: temptations. 92. Gen. 3:1 Geneva note, ‘God suffered Satan to make the serpent his instrument and to speak in him.’ Satan’s use of the serpent was much discussed; see x 175–81 n; Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 187 (‘But why did he assume the serpent’s shape? / Are not there other beasts, the fox, the ape, / The dog, the elephant so wise as is / The serpent? but he takes this vermin’s hiss, / To cheat our grandam: Satan will declare, / How near allied he and the serpent are. / All other creatures only will defend / Themselves’); Williams (1948) 114–17; Werman (1995) 61 (a possible source for Satan’s search of the animal kingdom in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer). none: Exonerating Eve; see Gallagher (1990) 61. 95. Doubt: suspicion. 99. Raphael too thinks earth like to heaven (vii 329). 99–178. Rajan (1962) 103f compares Satan’s earlier address to the sun (iv 32ff ): ‘as the sun once reminded him of the glory he had lost, the earth now suggests to him the glory he is to recover’. Amplifying Satan’s decline: the earlier soliloquy (of similar length) follows a cherub impersonation; this one is followed by a serpent metamorphosis.

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With second thoughts, reforming what was old! For what god after better worse would build? Terrestrial heaven, danced round by other heavens That shine, yet bear their bright officious lamps, 105 Light above light, for thee alone, as seems, In thee concentring all their precious beams Of sacred influence: as God in heaven Is centre, yet extends to all, so thou Centring receiv’st from all those orbs; in thee, 110 Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth Of creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man. With what delight could I have walked thee round, 115 If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange Of hill and valley, rivers, woods and plains,

101–2. Deliberately bad theology: a provident God cannot make mistakes or reform them. H. C. Agrippa, however, ‘made Eve’s late creation a sign of her superiority’; see Turner (1987) 109, 195 n 6. 103. For the stellar dance, cp. iii 579–81n. Terrestrial heaven means ‘heaven on earth’, whereas heavens means ‘spheres’; a suave transition characteristic of Satan’s sophistical style. 103–13. Applying perversely the geocentric alternative Raphael outlined at viii 86–114. Instead of human nature declaring ‘the maker’s high magnificence’, it is now an occasion for pride. bright officious lamps: Echoing ‘bright luminaries / Officious’ (viii 98f; cp. ix 48–9n), but edging officious with contempt; cp. ix 154f. as seems: Contrast Mephistophilis’ corroboration of Ptolemaic anthropocentricity in Marlowe, Doctor Faustus V 191 (1987–) ii 21. Not in themselves: Cp. viii 94–6 (‘the sun that barren shines, / Whose virtue on itself works no effect, / But in the fruitful earth’); ix 721f (using the same point as temptation). For the stars’ productive virtue (influence), see iii 608–12n; for light’s sacredness, iii 1–55n. 108–9. More confusion: receiving is not the same as extending. For the common idea that God is an infinite sphere with its centre everywhere and circumference nowhere, see Cusanus, De Docta Ignorantia (1932) 104. 112–13. gradual: arranged in grades or steps. Growth, sense, and reason were activities of vegetable, animal, and rational souls respectively. Plants manifested the first, animals the first and second, mankind and some higher animals all three. 114. round,] round 1667; round, 1674. 115. Satan’s sole joy now lies in destruction (ix 477–9). For angels’ pleasure in landscape, see More, Immortality (1659) III iv 7. 116–18. Reflecting contraries (hill–valley, etc.) like those in Satan’s mind

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Now land, now sea, and shores with forest crowned, Rocks, dens, and caves; but I in none of these Find place or refuge; and the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel 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; Nor hope to be myself less miserable By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound: For only in destroying I find ease To my relentless thoughts; and him destroyed, Or won to what may work his utter loss, For whom all this was made, all this will soon Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe; In woe then, that destruction wide may range: To me shall be the glory sole among The infernal powers, in one day to have marred

(ix 121f ). Seeming at first a pattern of 12 features (completeness) divided 5 + 4 + 3 (the Pythagorean triangle of rectitude). But if forest duplicates woods, the total becomes 11 (number of transgression). In the central line, crowned shores separate land and sea, suggesting a sovereign centre; cp. viii 275 (‘Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains’); x 860n; Fowler (1970a) ch. 4. 119. place or refuge] place of refuge Bentley. But M. departs from idiom to add an intensifying nuance – ‘I in none of these find place to dwell in or refuge from divine vengeance’ (Newton). 120–2. Although among Pleasures, Satan carries Torment within him; the siege / Of contraries is one of pain by its opposite. Reversing the usual allegory of a human soul besieged by Satan and pleasure. If siege = throne (OED 1, 2), Satan has brought Torment (iv 75) from his hellish kingdom. 122–3. Cp. iv 109f. worse: Because the pleasures there would be more intensely contrary. 125. heaven’s supreme: Avoiding ‘God’, to pretend that rivalry is possible. 126–8. Confirming Raphael’s analysis of Satan’s motives (vi 900–7). 129–30. Cp. ix 115, 477–9. 133. Follow: i.e. to destruction. Fulfilled at x 651ff. See ix 782–4n. A heavier stop is supplied after woe. 136–8. Anticipating the commentators’ difficulty with an omnipotent God needing time to create; cp. vii 154n, 176–9n. For equivalence between periods of creation and uncreation, cp. ix 63n. Since he only returned at

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What he almighty styled, six nights and days Continued making, and who knows how long Before had been contriving, though perhaps 140 Not longer than since I in one night freed From servitude inglorious wellnigh half The angelic name, and thinner left the throng Of his adorers: he to be avenged, And to repair his numbers thus impaired, 145 Whether such virtue spent of old now failed More angels to create, if they at least Are his created, or to spite us more, Determined to advance into our room A creature formed of earth, and him endow, 150 Exalted from so base original, With heavenly spoils, our spoils: what he decreed He effected; man he made, and for him built Magnificent this world, and earth his seat, Him lord pronounced, and, oh indignity!

midnight (ix 58), Satan cannot have overheard Raphael’s account of creation. Perhaps he learned from Uriel (Pearce). Alternatively, the creative period may have figured in the prophetic rumour (ii 346), or been a requirement, obvious to angelic intelligence, for such an undertaking. styled: The affected word casts doubt on God’s title (Leonard (1990) 53). 138–40. For the folly of speculating how God spent eternity before creation, see vii 90–2n. Satan contradictorily ascribes to God first laboriousness and then improvisation. The contingency is hardly compatible with the ancient rumours. 141. half: Exaggeration; see ii 692n; v 710n; vi 156n. 144–7. Contemplating nature – with its evidence of God’s creativity – leads Satan to the awkward matter of his own creatureliness; cp. iii 740n; iv 43n. He denies it in the hasty proviso if . . . created. virtue: power. created,] created 1667; created, 1674. 147–51. See iv 359n. Expressing contempt that the base, dust-born human race should be favoured by God (ii 350) and given the rebels’ possessions or offices (OED s. v. Spoils 1–4), but unwittingly prophesying mankind’s exaltation through the incarnation. Human nature was often referred to as ‘spoil’ (armour or body of the slain, OED 5–6) in Christ’s second victory over Satan. Cp. iii 250f (Christ prophesying Satan will be ‘spoiled of his vaunted spoil’); Tasso, Ger. Lib. iv 10f. original: origin. 154–7. Ps. 91:11 (‘he shall give his angels charge over thee’); Heb. 1:14 (‘ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation’). flaming: Cp. xi 101 (the cherubim as ‘flaming warriors’); Ps. 104:4.

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155 Subjected to his service angel wings, And flaming ministers to watch and tend Their earthy charge: of these the vigilance I dread, and to elude, thus wrapped in mist Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry 160 In every bush and brake, where hap may find The serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds To hide me, and the dark intent I bring. Oh foul descent! That I who erst contended With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained 165 Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and imbrute, That to the height of deity aspired; But what will not ambition and revenge Descend to? Who aspires must down as low 170 As high he soared, obnoxious first or last To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet, Bitter ere long back on itself recoils; Let it; I reck not, so it light well aimed, Since higher I fall short, on him who next 175 Provokes my envy, this new favourite Of heaven, this man of clay, son of despite, Whom us the more to spite his maker raised From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid. So saying, through each thicket dank or dry,

158. See M. Forey, EC, 46 (1996) 308 contrasting true wisdom, high on a pillar. 161. Cp. ix 182; Ecclus. 24:37 Geneva; Forey, op. cit. 307 (wisdom’s invasive search for sleeping creatures). 164. constrained: compressed (OED 7); forced (OED 1). 166. With Satan’s reluctance to incarnate his essence, even briefly, contrast Christ’s willingness to accept incarnation of his incomparably purer essence (iii 227f ). Cp. Ricks (1963) 73; Leonard (1990) 135f. For the angels’ ‘ethereal’ substance, cp. i 117, 138; v 499; vi 328–34nn. Gilbert (1947) finds it inconsistent that Satan’s previous bestial forms are not mentioned. But this incarnation, by allowing speech, may be in a different category. 170. obnoxious: exposed (OED 4). 172–4. Aptly aggressive allegoria, recalling the cannon simile of Satan’s first soliloquy (iv 13–19n). higher: ‘When I aim higher, at God, I fall short’. 175. For the motive, cp. ii 379–85; iv 358–92, 381–5; Augustine, City of God XIV xi (‘that proud, and therefore envious angel . . . envying man’s constancy’).

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180 Like a black mist low creeping, he held on His midnight search, where soonest he might find The serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled, His head the midst, well stored with subtle wiles: 185 Not yet in horrid shade or dismal den, Not nocent yet, but on the grassy herb Fearless unfeared he slept: in at his mouth The devil entered, and his brutal sense, In heart or head, possessing soon inspired 190 With act intelligential; but his sleep Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn. Now whenas sacred light began to dawn In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed Their morning incense, when all things that breathe, 195 From the earth’s great altar send up silent praise To the creator, and his nostrils fill With grateful smell, forth came the human pair And joined their vocal worship to the choir 180. Cp. ix 75. Editors compare Homer, Il. i 359; but Gen. 2:6 (‘there went up a mist from the earth’) may be more relevant – Satan camouflages himself. Loyal angels also move like mist, however; cp. xii 629–32. Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 2, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 342 (‘as in liquid clouds exhaled thickly / Water and air (as moist) do mingle quickly: / The evil angels slide too easily, / As subtile spirits, into our fantasy’). Grey or blue mists are usual in Paradise, not black (Richardson). For Satan’s metamorphoses, see iii 634n. 185. horrid: bristling; horrible. dismal: sinister; gloomy. 186. Not] Nor 1674. nocent: harmful; guilty (OED 1, 2). Contrasting the serpent when possessed – its part in the Fall and its change of habit after the curse (x 163–81), when it becomes physically harmful. grassy herb: Cp. Virgil, Eclogues v 26 (graminis . . . herbam). 187–8. The soul was often thought to enter and leave the body by the mouth; see Didron (1886) ii 173f. brutal: animal. 190. act intelligential: (power of ) intelligent action. In Aristotelian psychology, act was limited to rational agents (Eudemian Ethics 1224a). 191. close: concealed. See Leonard (1990) 135. 192. Morning on Day 32; see Introduction: Time-scheme. For light as sacred, cp. iii 1–6nn. whenas: when. 195–7. Cp. Gen. 8:21; Lev. 1:9 (God enjoying the ‘sweet savour’ of burnt offerings). If altar (designed for sacrifice) seems proleptic, cp. Ps. 51:17. Sacrifices of praise may be internalized, a prelapsarian equivalent of contrition. For the analogy between Paradise, Church, and heaven, see Lieb (1981) 127. 198–200. Less paradoxical than it now seems. Then choir = any orderly

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Of creatures wanting voice, that done, partake 200 The season, prime for sweetest scents and airs: Then cómmune how that day they best may ply Their growing work: for much their work outgrew The hands’ dispatch of two gardening so wide. And Eve first to her husband thus began. 205 Adam, well may we labour still to dress This garden, still to tend plant, herb and flower, Our pleasant task enjoined, but till more hands Aid us, the work under our labour grows, Luxurious by restraint; what we by day 210 Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, One night or two with wanton growth derides Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise Or hear what to my mind first thoughts present, Let us divide our labours, thou where choice group of people or objects (OED 6). But the modern sense activates airs = melodies (Ricks (1963) 106). The voiceless creatures and season utter almost audible praise, and the ecclesiastical associations of prime are unnecessary; cp. v 18–25n, 170n. 202. Untamed nature often symbolized moral proclivities needing to be trained; see Bedaux (1990) 127; Thomas (1984) 220–1. 204. Eve speaks first, as she has not done before; cp. ix 213; iv 408–10; v 17ff; Gallagher (1990) 63 (taking the initiative, she is ‘charmingly aggressive’). She continues, however, from Adam’s speech of iv 623–9 (K. P. McColgan, ANQ, 6 (1993) 196). 205–384. Much discussed; see J. S. Bennet, PMLA, 98 (1983) 388–404. Eve has to be alone intentionally and Adam must condone this, so that both are responsible (Burden (1967) 86ff ). J. M. Evans calls Eve’s motive ‘love of her own power’; and Arnold Stein sees her asserting independence; but to D. K. McColley she is sinlessly concerned about efficiency; see Musacchio (1991) 129ff. 206. flower,] flower. 1667. 207–8. Precluding notions of divine improvidence: the necessary labour force is provided for; cp. vii 531; Gen. 1:22, 28 (‘Be fruitful, and multiply’). 209–12. Gen. 1:28 authorized the hard pastoral view that prelapsarian nature had to be subdued. Luxurious: luxuriant (OED 4). wanton: profuse (OED 7). Cp. ix 202n. wild: grow wild. 213. hear] bear 1674 ( probably in error). 214. Discussing means without considering ends, like a modern efficiency expert (Ransom (1931) 133f ). Adam brings the discussion back to the ‘end of human life’ (ix 241). Allegorically, to divide what Adam and Eve represent is to open the way to the divisive principle, or dyad; cp. the separation

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215 Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind The woodbine round this arbour, or direct The clasping ivy where to climb, while I In yonder spring of roses intermixed With myrtle, find what to redress till noon: 220 For while so near each other thus all day Our task we choose, what wonder if so near Looks intervene and smiles, or object new Casual discourse draw on, which intermits Our day’s work brought to little, though begun 225 Early, and the hour of supper comes unearned.

of Redcrosse and Una in FQ I ii 9. See YP viii 24 summarizing critical views of the separation. 216–19. Contrasting pairs of plants. Adam need only direct the ivy to climb a ‘married elm’, to arrive at an emblem of married love (v 215–16n). Honeysuckle or woodbine was similarly associated with union – e.g. Manning, Ashrea (1665) Emblem vii, PACIS CONIUNCTIO FIRMA – as the location round the nuptial arbour suggests. Cp. Vaughan, ‘Upon the Priory Grove’ (1646) 13f (‘Only the woodbine here may twine, / As th’emblem of her love, and mine’); Stanley, ‘Love’s innocence’ 1–4 (1962) 26; Shakespeare, MND IV i 48–51 (‘So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle / Gently entwist; the female ivy so / Enrings the barky fingers of the elm’). By contrast the myrtle was associated with an attempt on Venus’ virtue; see ix 426–33nn. Emblematically, Eve embarks on a dangerous adventure of independence. Yet she is innocent, so that Ricks (1963) 144 seems uncalled for (Eve ‘doesn’t care what he does, and she knows very well what she will do’). Her substitution of ivy for vine shows ‘the sterility of the separation’ (Stevens (1985) 211). spring: grove of young trees. redress: raise again to an upright position (OED 1a; horticultural). In the event, Eve ‘ “herself, though fairest unsupported flower” will be “drooping unsustained” ’ (Ricks op. cit. 146). Cp. iv 135f; Frye (1978) 249 (the (Dutch) taste for flowers, here and at ix 426). 220–5. Some contrast Eve’s attitude in Bk viii, where she finds it pleasant to learn from Adam. ‘She supports her demand for independence in the terms of a good bourgeoise, contending that it will increase their production’ ( J. DiSalvo, in Wittreich (1975b) 160). But roses are Eve’s individual domain; productivity is not the point. On the irony that an object new, the serpent, will bring down more than the day’s work, see Ricks op. cit. 146. Eve only proposes their usual separate gardening (v 331–43; viii 44–7). It is ‘the sort of quarrel they would have had if they had remained unfallen’ (Turner (1987) 296 citing Addison). 225. Not only will supper be unearned, but its hour; since their crime carries sentence of death ‘that day’ (viii 331).

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To whom mild answer Adam thus returned. Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond Compare above all living creatures dear, Well hast thou motioned, well thy thoughts employed How we might best fulfil the work which here God hath assigned us, nor of me shalt pass Unpraised: for nothing lovelier can be found In woman, than to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote. Yet not so strictly hath our Lord imposed Labour, as to debar us when we need Refreshment, whether food, or talk between, Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse Of looks and smiles, for smiles from reason flow, To brute denied, and are of love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. For not to irksome toil, but to delight He made us, and delight to reason joined. These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands Will keep from wilderness with ease, as wide As we need walk, till younger hands ere long Assist us: but if much convérse perhaps Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield. For solitude sometimes is best society,

227. Sole Eve: universal mother (Gen. 3:20). Cp. ix 343–4; Leonard (1990) 41. ‘Repetition of the adjective “sole” stresses . . . the one-ness of Adam and Eve’ (Flannagan). 229. motioned: proposed. 234. Perhaps implying that Eve has shown anxiety ‘like the “bondage to works” ’ that the Reformers saw in the postlapsarian OT covenant (Rosenblatt (1994) 173). Cp. Stevens (1985) 210 (Eve ‘takes the gardening metaphor literally’). 241–3. Cp. The Shorter Catechism: ‘the chief end of man’ is ‘to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever’. 245. wilderness: wildness. Cp. ix 209–12n; MacCaffrey (1959) 131f. 247–8. Adam innocently mistakes Eve’s motive (Gallagher (1990) 69). Cp. Leonard (1990) 42 (Adam is not opposed to Eve’s individual need for short absence). 249. Cp. PR i 302; Cicero, De Republica I xvii 27, De Officiis III i 1 (numquam minus solus quam cum solus); Cowley, Essays (1906) 392 (‘a very vulgar [frequent] saying’). Defended in Mackenzie (1665), the aphorism was a strong-point in the campaign between devotees of retirement and of active public life.

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250 And short retirement urges sweet return. But other doubt possesses me, lest harm Befall thee severed from me; for thou knowst What hath been warned us, what malicious foe Envying our happiness, and of his own 255 Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame By sly assault; and somewhere nigh at hand Watches, no doubt, with greedy hope to find His wish and best advantage, us asunder, Hopeless to circumvent us joined, where each 260 To other speedy aid might lend at need; Whether his first design be to withdraw Our fealty from God, or to disturb Conjugal love, than which perhaps no bliss Enjoyed by us excites his envy more; 265 Or this, or worse, leave not the faithful side That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, Safest and seemliest by her husband stays, Who guards her, or with her the worst endures. 270 To whom the virgin majesty of Eve, As one who loves, and some unkindness meets, With sweet austere composure thus replied. Offspring of heaven and earth, and all earth’s lord, That such an enemy we have, who seeks 275 Our ruin, both by thee informed I learn, And from the parting angel overheard 250. Adam, who cannot bear to think of a long retirement, touchingly adds short, although it hardly helps his argument. 256. assault: (1) temptation (OED 6; e.g. SA 845); (2) wooing (OED 7). 262. fealty: obligation to a feudal superior; loyalty. 265. ‘Whether this, or worse (be his design)’. For Eve’s creation, see viii 465ff; rib, spirits, and blood were taken from the side nearer Adam’s heart, and so from the faithful side. 267–9. The sententious style suits the new tragic mode (ix 6); cp. ix 232–4. Adam’s generalizations show his moral responsibility, but contain ironies: they will indeed endure the worst, but not as he means. 270. virgin: chaste. So virgin majesty is more than honorific. As the Fall approaches, Eve’s innocence is made explicit in sexual terms; cp. ix 216–19, 287, 396, 426–31. 271. ‘The first check to conjugal happiness’ (Richardson). 272. replied.] replied, 1674. 273. Contrast ix 205; Eve becomes more formal. 276. Cp. viii 633–43. Commentators stressed Eve’s knowledge of the

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As in a shady nook I stood behind, Just then returned at shut of evening flowers. But that thou shouldst my firmness therefore doubt To God or thee, because we have a foe May tempt it, I expected not to hear. His violence thou fearst not, being such, As we, not capable of death or pain, Can either not receive, or can repel. His fraud is then thy fear, which plain infers Thy equal fear that my firm faith and love Can by his fraud be shaken or seduced; Thoughts, which how found they harbour in thy breast, Adam, misthought of her to thee so dear? To whom with healing words Adam replied. Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve, For such thou art, from sin and blame entire: Not diffident of thee do I dissuade Thy absence from my sight, but to avoid The attempt itself, intended by our foe.

prohibition (Williams (1948) 114). Pace Flannagan, Eve was also present during the warning at vi 900ff, as vii 50 implies; see Turner (1987) 285f. Musacchio (1991) 201ff thinks Adam says too much about a tempter here, and so drives Eve to self-justification. 278. shut: time of shutting (poetic). 279–80. Earlier, distrusting himself, Adam mistakenly thought Eve tired of his conversation; now she mistakenly thinks Adam distrusts her firmness (Gallagher (1990) 69f ). 285–6. Alliteration suggesting ‘either stubbornness or perseverence’ (McColley (1983) 171). Eve is no longer content with following Adam (Driscoll (1993) 97). Sharp logic – ‘a cornute syllogism, implying that if Adam fears Satan’s fraud when they are separated, then he doubts Eve’s constancy’ ( Jacobus (1976) 145). 288–9. Rendering the disjointedness of speech (Ricks (1963) 34f ). The construction shifts from Thoughts, which to the more direct how found they. The wordplay in misthought is indignant – ‘not thoughts, mis-thoughts rather’. breast,] breast 1674. 290–1. Balancing Eve’s formula at ix 273: she was created out of man, as Adam out of ‘earth’. It is healing, since it implies that to mistrust her would be to mistrust his own substance. Eve = ‘mother of all living’ (Gen. 3:20); so the line is symmetrical. She is Adam’s Daughter, as generated from his ‘side’ (often = ‘loins’). Eve was also taken as = ‘life’ or ‘a like creature’; cp. ix 343n, 1003–4n; Williams (1948) 228f. 292. entire: unblemished (not Latinate). 293. diffident: mistrustful. A theme of Bk ix is mistrust of various sorts; cp. ix 6, 355, 357.

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paradise lost For he who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses The tempted with dishonour foul, supposed Not incorruptible of faith, not proof Against temptation: thou thyself with scorn And anger wouldst resent the offered wrong, Though ineffectual found: misdeem not then, If such affront I labour to avert From thee alone, which on us both at once The enemy, though bold, will hardly dare, Or daring, first on me the assault shall light. Nor thou his malice and false guile contemn; Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce Angels, nor think superfluous others’ aid. I from the influence of thy looks receive Access in every virtue, in thy sight More wise, more watchful, stronger, if need were Of outward strength; while shame, thou looking on, Shame to be overcome or overreached Would utmost vigour raise, and raised unite. Why shouldst not thou like sense within thee feel When I am present, and thy trial choose With me, best witness of thy virtue tried. So spake domestic Adam in his care And matrimonial love, but Eve, who thought Less attribúted to her faith sincere,

296. asperses: spatters; falsely charges (OED 4). Kennedy (1978) 182f needlesssly finds contradiction of v 119. 298. faith: fidelity. 305. assault: attempt, temptation. 310. Access: addition. In Renaissance Neoplatonism, love inspired the lover to virtue: ‘Such is the powre of that sweet passion, / That it all sordid basenesse doth expell, / And the refyned mynd doth newly fashion / Unto a fairer forme’ (Spenser, An Hymne of Love 190–3). The effect was especially ascribed to sight of the beloved; cp. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella xlii (‘O eyes . . . Whose beames be joyes, whose joyes all vertues be’). Adam is wooing Eve. 312–14. As love’s influence would increase Adam’s virtue or power, Shame (a contrary passion) would increase his vigour or rigour, and join it to his virtue. 318. domestic: concerned for the family’s well-being. care: responsibility. 319. love,] love; 1674. 320. Less: too little (Latinism). sincere: pure, true. Fides sincera was a watchword of the Reformers.

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Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed. If this be our condition, thus to dwell In narrow circuit straitened by a foe, Subtle or violent, we not endued 325 Single with like defence, wherever met, How are we happy, still in fear of harm? But harm precedes not sin: only our foe Tempting affronts us with his foul esteem Of our integrity: his foul esteem 330 Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns Foul on himself; then wherefore shunned or feared By us? Who rather double honour gain From his surmise proved false, find peace within, Favour from heaven, our witness from the event. 335 And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed

322–41. Resembling M.’s own arguments in Areop; see Waldock (1961) 22; M. N. Clark, ELR, 7 (1977) 208; McColley (1983) 172 (‘packed with libertarian fervour’); but Christopher (1982) 156 (Eve’s ‘self-devised imperative for perfect household economy’ comes under M.’s proscription). However innocent Eve’s independence, it raises the moral stakes. Jacobus (1976) 146–8 compares the Scholastic technique of the sorites. Where Adam reasons from a hierarchy of values (conversant love being the higher good), Eve relies on syllogisms within the limits of second causes; see J. S. Bennett, PMLA, 98 (1983) 399; Driscoll (1993) 99 (her logic puts her in the position of God). But Eve is only being eager, ‘precipitate’. 328–30. affronts: (1) insults; makes ashamed; (2) sets face to face (playing on front = face). Cuckoldry dishonoured the husband’s front. 329. integrity: Emphasizing the singleness of innocent virtue; cp. ix 214n, 292 (‘entire’), 314 (‘unite’). 334. Not to be branded ‘justification by works’, as A. Fowler, in Milton (1968); Eve is expecting to discover God’s will through the event (result) of action. But M. may have thought this too simple an attitude in the circumstances. 335. Cp. Areop, YP ii 527: without freedom to meet temptation ‘what were virtue but a name?’ faith, love, virtue: The Neoplatonic Triad of Fidius; see Alciato, Emblemata (1621) ix, FIDEI SYMBOLUM; P. L. Williams, JWI, 4 (1941) 47–66. In the emblem, Veritas and Virtus link hands, with Love between them. The implied answer to Eve is ‘They emblemize Faith and Integrity only when linked’. The emblem related to Pico’s psychological triad Intellectus–Ratio–Voluntas, and may underlie passages of PL where Adam represents intellectus, Eve ratio. Cp. ix 358n, 360–1n, 385–6n; Gen. 5:2 (‘their name Adam’); Erasmus, Enchiridion, cit. Steadman (1985) 62n (‘ “woman” is man’s sensual part . . . our Eve is fleshly passion’); Burton,

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Alone, without exterior help sustained? Let us not then suspect our happy state Left so imperfect by the maker wise, As not secure to single or combined. 340 Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden thus exposed. To whom thus Adam fervently replied. O woman, best are all things as the will Of God ordained them, his creating hand 345 Nothing imperfect or deficient left Of all that he created, much less man, Or aught that might his happy state secure, Anat. of Melan. I i 2 ix (1989–) i 157 (‘The understanding which is the rational power apprehending, the will, which is the rational power moving’). The Fidius emblem was not too arcane for Montrose to use it on his Civil War banner; see Young (1995). 335–9. Faulty, Pelagian reasoning, since sufficiency is not innate, and man’s happiness must be frail (Danielson (1982) 145, 198f ). Quint (1993) 301 also finds Eve ‘too secure’, inclined to all-or-nothing Calvinism, rejecting the contingency of imperfection. But M. may have seen her stance as Arminian antinomianism (any law can be broken in deference to a higher purpose); see J. S. Bennett, PMLA, 98 (1983) 398. He involves his own aspirations in Eve’s dangerous individualism, whether to idealize her or discover himself. 341. no Eden: i.e. no pleasure. Cp. viii 535–8n; xii 40 (Eden a fallen name); Leonard (1990) 277. 342. fervently: Often taken to imply anger; but Adam is ‘first incensed’ at ix 1162. Such marital differences are natural, normal, innocent. Eve’s attitude, similarly, is ‘ominous, even tragic, but it is not sinful’ (Musacchio (1991) 136). 343. O woman: Not coldly formal, but referring to the ontological relation between man and wo-man (Gen. 2:23) and implying that she presses for unsuitable independence (Burden (1967) 88). Separate, Adam and Eve are defective (Musacchio (1991) 80). Vulg. renders the Heb. pun (isha–ish) by virago and vir. Cp. ix 290–1n. 347–8. The traductio on secure is ironic: Adam means ‘safe’ (OED 3 c), but Eve is overconfidently secure (OED 1 a). A key word, related to the faith–distrust complex; cp. iv 791; ix 293n, 339, 371. 351–6. Cp. Areop, YP ii 527: ‘Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering Adam to transgress, foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions [puppet shows]’ – applied very differently. still erect: (1) always attentive; (2) right; upright.

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Secure from outward force; within himself The danger lies, yet lies within his power: Against his will he can receive no harm. But God left free the will, for what obeys Reason, is free, and reason he made right, But bid her well beware, and still erect, Lest by some fair appearing good surprised She dictate false, and misinform the will To do what God expressly hath forbid. Not then mistrust, but tender love enjoins, That I should mind thee oft, and mind thou me. Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve, Since reason not impossibly may meet Some specious object by the foe suborned, And fall into deception unaware, Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warned. Seek not temptation then, which to avoid Were better, and most likely if from me Thou sever not: trial will come unsought. Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve First thy obedience; the other who can know, Not seeing thee attempted, who attest?

354. As in the event Eve is surprised by Satan (ix 551). 358. Repetition of mind (‘admonish’; ‘pay heed to’) brings into prominence the faculty of mens, often seen as complementary to ratio particularis or free will; cp. ix 335n (the Triad of Fidius); Harvey (1975) 55 (Thomas Aquinas). Reason’s logical and elective function was to reflect truth as contemplated by mind, translating it into practical choices. The symmetrical chiasmus I . . . thee . . . thou me mimes this reflexive relation. Throughout, chiasmus and similar figures of repetition express responsive, obedient love; cp. iii 131, 145, 227 (God and Messiah); iv 639–56n (Adam and Eve); x 1098–1104n (God and man). 360–1. Intuition or reasoning a priori would show Adam that it would take an object to tempt them; cp. ix 413n; Areop, YP ii 527 (‘God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object’). specious object: The serpent; as Eve corresponds to reason or free will; cp. ix 351f; Areop, YP ii 527 (‘reason is but choosing’). An allegory standard enough for a school textbook; cp. Valeriano, Hieroglyphica XIV xxvi–xxvii (1613) 176f, Eve as perception or judgment, Adam as intellect (Sensus a Voluptate, Mens a Sensu Decepta); Philo, De Opificio clxv, (1929) i 131 etc. (serpent : pleasure :: Eve : perception :: Adam : mind); Augustine, Comm. on Psalms 48 (caro nostra Eva est, quae seducit virum, id est, rationem). In Milton’s Arminian version Eve’s significance is strikingly promoted. 367. approve: show; test, make proof of.

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370 But if thou think, trial unsought may find Us both securer than thus warned thou seemst, Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; Go in thy native innocence, rely On what thou hast of virtue, summon all, 375 For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine. So spake the patriarch of mankind, but Eve Persisted, yet submiss, though last, replied. With thy permission then, and thus forewarned Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words 380 Touched only, that our trial, when least sought, May find us both perhaps far less prepared, The willinger I go, nor much expect

370 –5. Much discussed; see references in Gregerson (1995) 153 n 6. Some blame Eve’s ‘obstinate presumption’ for the fatal separation (Corcoran (1945) 54, 126). Others blame Adam’s failure to take responsibility or forbid Eve to go; cp. ix 1155–61; Waldock (1961) 34; Danielson (1982) 127f; A. Low, PQ, 47 (1968) 30–42 (citing SA 1372); V. P. Di Benedetto, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 1–14; Musacchio (1991) 137; Driscoll (1993) 98; and Eve herself, at ix 1155f. Both views were common in M.’s time. Gallagher (1990) 73f, rebutting Summers (1962) 174, makes Eve responsible for the separation by deliberately misinterpreting his conditional sentence. But J. S. Bennett, PMLA, 98 (1983) 391–401 more subtly finds Adam mistaken in giving permission (‘Go’) rather than detaining Eve until fuller understanding is reached. He mistakes her limitations (ix 1177–9). Others think Adam could not have acted otherwise; see F. Bowers, PMLA, 84 (1969) 271; E. B. Safer, MiltQ, 6 (1972) 12; S. P. Revard, PMLA, 88 (1973) 69–78; Quint (1993) 295f. Perhaps, as in other marital disputes, ‘both are right’ (McColley (1983) 176). But see Burden (1967) 89ff: M. has a theological problem; if Adam was not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14), how could his judgment fail unless God created him improvidently? Adam, image of God, experiences a dilemma like God’s (iii 100ff ): to restrain Eve would deny her freedom. Neoplatonically, the separation allegorizes failure to inform choices with the wisdom of mens. Cp. More, Conjectura (1653) 73: ‘the divine light again blamed Adam, that he kept his feminine faculties in no better order nor subjection, that they should so boldly and overcomingly dictate to him such things as are not fit’. 371. securer: more careless. Cp. ix 347f. 376–7. but . . . yet . . . though: Successive qualifications miming Eve’s persistence in having the last word. 378. ‘A forced permission, extorted by her persisting, yet built upon as a voluntary approbation’ (Richardson).

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A foe so proud will first the weaker seek; So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse. 385 Thus saying, from her husband’s hand her hand Soft she withdrew, and like a wood nymph light Oread or dryad, or of Delia’s train, Betook her to the groves, but Delia’s self In gait surpassed and goddess-like deport, 390 Though not as she with bow and quiver armed, But with such gardening tools as art yet rude, Guiltless of fire had formed, or angels brought. To Pales, or Pomona, thus adorned,

383. Ironic: Eve has hardly shown herself the weaker, except in a sense she is too innocent to understand. She cannot imagine Satan capable of sinking his self-respect. 385–6. Clasped hands emblemized trust; Eve’s withdrawing hers is ominous. The bond thus broken is not restored until xii 648. In the Fidii symbolum, Veritas (mens) and Virtus (ratio) clasp hands; see ix 335n. Ricks (1963) 90 finds the enhancing suggestion of Soft qualifying hand; but a monosyllabic adjective seldom follows a monosyllabic noun in English. For further, metrical objections, see R. Bradford, in Nyquist (1987) 181–3. For the manual imagery, cp. iv 488f, 689, 739, 742f; v 7; ix 780, 997, 1037; Musacchio (1991) 81. light: (1) nimble (OED 15); (2) unsteady, fickle (OED 16). Ambiguity proleptic of Eve’s impending ambivalence. 387. Oread: Mountain nymph such as attended Diana. dryad: wood nymph. Neither species was immortal; dryads and hamadryads perished with the trees they presided over. Delia’s train: Proleptic; one of its members, Callisto, was famously unchaste. 387–92. A simile so discriminating it is all qualification. Eve resembles immortal Diana – called Delia from Delos, her secluded island birthplace and refuge (x 293–6n) – in outward bearing (deport), but she lacks the quiver of counsel; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 525f. Instead she has gardening tools – but only rude ones: technology depending on fire was unknown before the Fall (v 396n). Guiltless of: inexperienced in (OED’s earliest instance); innocent of. Fire is one of the Fall’s macrocosmic consequences; see x 1078–81n. Perhaps cp. the myth of fire stolen from heaven by Prometheus – supposed a pagan distortion of the biblical Fall. 393–6. In respect of gardening tools, Eve resembles Pales (Roman pastoral goddess of folds and pastures), Pomona (georgic hamadryad or goddess of fruit-growing), and Ceres (goddess of agriculture). Representing stages or types of cultivation, but also making sharp discriminations. The Pomona analogy, common in visual art (Frye (1978) 276; Reid (1993) 912f ), might be thought morally irreproachable: Ovid, Metam. xiv 628–36 has

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Likest she seemed, Pomona when she fled 395 Vertumnus, or to Ceres in her prime, Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove. Her long with ardent look his eye pursued Delighted, but desiring more her stay. Oft he to her his charge of quick return 400 Repeated, she to him as oft engaged To be returned by noon amid the bower, And all things in best order to invite Noontide repast, or afternoon’s repose.

her shutting herself in her orchard to escape male attentions (‘Her hand a hook, and not a javelin bare: / Now prunes luxurious twigs, and boughs that dare / Transcend their bounds’). But Vertumnus raises other thoughts: Pomona fled only until Vertumnus’ persuasions awakened ‘answering passion’ (Metam. xiv 771). Cp. Stevens (1985) 211: ‘Pomona’s proposed union with Vertumnus is expressed in terms of the vine-prop elm image, so her flight signifies the disjoining of the vine’. Ceres’ commonest attribute was a lighted torch, implying the fire excluded at ix 392 as well as the search for Proserpina after her abduction by Pluto (another analogue of the Fall). Jove reverts to the time of Ceres’ virginity (and its loss); but also hints his serpent-disguised seduction of Proserpina. Inverting iv 268–72 (Proserpina the prelapsarian Eve and Ceres the postlapsarian), perhaps to signal change in Eve. The simile is again threefold, referring to two sub-deities and one goddess. But ix 387–92 compares Eve to powers of wild places (whereas she carries tools for cultivation); this simile compares her to powers of domesticated nature. For the wildness, cp. ix 245n. Flannagan fancies a wordplay in Pro-serpina, chosen instead of Persephone. But the names are all Latin, not Greek. 394. Likest] Likeliest 1674 ( perhaps rightly, as the less common word). For comparable elision, cp. ix 505. Likest [Likeliest]: portraying most accurately (OED s. v. Likely 1). An art-critical term, apt to the iconographical context. 395. prime: best time (before Proserpina’s loss brought cares upon her). No need to join Bentley or Empson (1950) 185f in asking whether goddesses experience old age (‘the very richness of the garden makes it heavy with autumn. Ceres when virgin of the queen of Hell was already in her full fruitfulness upon the world; Eve is virgin of sin from Satan and of Cain, who in the Talmud was his child’). Turner (1987) 292 rightly rejects Empson’s insinuation of consensual intercourse – Ceres was raped. 401. returned: ‘As if already done’ (Richardson). For noon as critical for judgment, cp. iv 30n; ix 739–40n. 402. Probably eliding some such verb as ‘put’ or ‘have’- ‘And (have) all things’.

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O much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve, 405 Of thy presumed return! Event perverse! Thou never from that hour in Paradise Foundst either sweet repast, or sound repose; Such ambush hid among sweet flowers and shades Waited with hellish rancour imminent 410 To intercept thy way, or send thee back Despoiled of innocence, of faith, of bliss. For now, and since first break of dawn the fiend, Mere serpent in appearance, forth was come, And on his quest, where likeliest he might find 415 The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his purposed prey. In bower and field he sought, where any tuft Of grove or garden plot more pleasant lay, Their tendance or plantation for delight, 420 By fountain or by shady rivulet He sought them both, but wished his hap might find Eve separate, he wished, but not with hope Of what so seldom chanced, when to his wish, 404 –5. 1 Tim. 2:14, ‘Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression’. At first failing is taken absolutely, as general apostrophe; ‘but then the next line . . . declares that she is deceived in the one present circumstance: her presumed return . . . both tragically prophetic and dramatically momentary’ (Ricks (1963) 97). hapless: Alone, Eve is more exposed to chance. A trap for unwary readers: her fall will not just be bad luck; cp. ix 421n. Event perverse: adverse outcome. At ii 622–5 Satan’s disobedient ‘universe of death’ is perverse. 411. Corresponding to the triad ‘faith, love, virtue’ (ix 335). Innocence is the bene esse of the virtuous part, as bliss of the appetitive. 413. Mere serpent: serpent plain and simple. Explaining Eve’s lack of suspicion, despite her knowing serpents could not speak (ix 553–7) (Gallagher (1990) 57). Carefully drafted, in view of controversies as to whether the tempter was a true serpent possessed or an apparition. Cp. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 45f disagreeing with St Cyril and Thomas Cajetan, ‘who by a continued allegory, by the serpent, would have the devil understood: that there was neither serpent in truth nor in show that appeared to Eva, but this temptation was altogether internal and spiritual: for by this means, the whole story of the creation may as well be allegorized, and so the truth of the narration called in question’. 418–19. The plot is a tendance (object of care), the grove a plantation. 421–5. Recursive, opportunistic rhetorical patterning based on repetitio and traductio; see Adams (1955) 89 (‘verbal frippery’); Ricks (1963) 38 (a net woven by Satan). In Satan’s world, events occur by necessity or by hap (chance); cp. iv 530; vii 172.

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Beyond his hope, Eve separate he spies, 425 Veiled in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood, Half spied, so thick the roses bushing round About her glowed, oft stooping to support Each flower of slender stalk, whose head though gay Carnation, purple, azure, or specked with gold, 430 Hung drooping unsustained, them she upstays Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while, Herself, though fairest unsupported flower, From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed 435 Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm, Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen Among thick-woven arborets and flowers 425–6. Amplifying ‘the multitude of roses’ (Richardson). Cp. Dante, Purg. xxx 28 (così dentro una nuvola di fiori); Ricks (1963) 95f (for a moment one imagines ‘the scent was so thick that it almost hid her’). 426–31. Cp. ix 214–19nn, 628f; Ovid, Fasti iv 138ff (when wanton satyrs surprised Venus bathing, she hid behind a myrtle); A. Fowler, HLQ, 24 (1961) 101f (satyrs commonly symbolizing concupiscence or Satan). The rose, and particularly its head, symbolized human frailty and the mutability of bliss; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica LV i (1613) 638f, Imbecillitas Humana; Ripa, Iconologia (1976) 17f, Amicitia (the rose signifies pleasures of friendship, ‘so long as a union of wills continues’; myrtle, the need to keep up the friendship). Eve’s supporting the roses with myrtle thus signifies the sustaining of felicity by virtue. For myrtus coniugalis, see Panofsky (1962) 161f; Frye (1978) 251. Eve’s encircling flower frame recalls a common Flemish devotional motif, often in representations of the Virgin; see Crump (1975) 46; Fowler (1996) 15f. purple, azure . . . gold: Colours of Minerva, virgin goddess; cp. Comus 448, where the Lady carries Minerva’s shield of ‘chaste austerity’. But Carnation symbolized the flesh. mindless: (1) heedless; (2) without the presence of mens or Adam. Cp. ix 358n. 432–3. Eve’s identification with the roses, already implied in echoes like stooping . . . drooping, almost becomes explicit; cp. iv 270 (Proserpina–Eve ‘Herself a fairer flower’ carried off by the king of hell). unsupported: Is Adam’s duty not to support this fairest flower? Adam as Eve’s prop recalls earlier emblems; cp. v 216–19; ix 216–19; T. J. B. Spencer, in Patrides (1968) 81–98. storm: Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 1 i (1989–) i 123 citing Chrysostom, Homilies v (Ubi peccatum, ibi procella). 435. For the trees, cp. iv 139. 436. voluble: (1) gliding easily with an undulating movement (OED 3); (2) glib, fluent (OED 5 a). Not Latinizing. 437. Foliage as tapestry. Part of M.’s personal environment in 1650: when Charles I’s collection was commandeered, six large landscape tapestries were

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Embordered on each bank, the hand of Eve: Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned 440 Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous, host of old Laertes’ son, Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse.

set aside for the comfort of the Latin Secretary; see Parker (1996) 377, 973 n 92; D. Chambers, JGH, 5 (1985) 20. 438. Embordered (spelled ‘Imborderd’ in 1667): (1) set as a border; (2) ‘imbordured’ (heraldic) – furnished with a ‘bordure’ (a bearing all round an escutcheon, like a hem) of the same tincture as the rest of the field. hand: handiwork (as of embroidery). 439–43. ‘The circumstances of these gardens of Adonis being to last but a very little while, which even became a proverb among the ancients, adds a very pathetic propriety to the simile: still more, as that ’tis not the whole garden of Eden which is now spoken of, but that one delicious spot where Eve was, this flowery plat and this was of her own hand, as those gardens of Adonis were always of the hands of those lovely damsels, less lovely yet than she’ (Richardson (1973) 416). The garden of Solomon (Song of Sol. 6:2) is relevant because the sapient king is ‘that uxorious King . . . / Beguiled by fair Idolatresses’ like Adam (YP i 444–6); see Ricks (1963) 133–5. An Augustinian analogy – as Solomon ‘yielded worship to idols . . . by his wives’ persuasions: so is it to be thought, that the first man did not yield to his wife in this transgression of God’s precept, as if he thought she spoke the truth; but only being compelled to it by his social love to her’ (City of God XIV xi). Cp. Basilius Zanchius, De Horto Sophiae (1540). sapient: Thematic; later (ix 1015–18) associated with ‘dalliance’ and (figura etymologica) ‘knowledge gained by tasting’ ( Jeanneret (1991) 137, 181). The gardens of Adonis and of Alcinous are feigned because mythic (mystic) and pagan. On Lactantius’s authority for comparing them, see Williams (1948) 108. Cp. the Observationum Libellus attached to Conti, Mythologiae (1653) s. v. Adonidis horti (Adonis sive Edonis regio (quae Edene est) ); Marino, L’Adone (1623) vi, passim. revived: After being killed by a boar Adonis was restored to life each growing season. Cp. Comus 998–1002; Spenser, FQ III vi (Adonis kept hidden by Venus in a secret garden). Laertes’ son: The sapient king Odysseus; much-travelled as he was, he marvelled at Alcinous’ garden (Homer, Od. vii 112–35), Periphrasis to bring in Laertes, who resigned kingship to tend a garden – unlike Satan, who keeps his crown and destroys one. Like several similes in Bk ix, tripartite and arranged AAB (two pagan, one sacred); cp. ix 393–6n. The pattern may express the conflict of monad and dyad, and the relation of reason to concupiscence, a 2:1 ratio; cp. i 73–4n; Fowler (1964) 281n (citing Pico); Røstvig (1994) 466ff.

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Much he the place admired, the person more. 445 As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer’s morn to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight, 450 The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound; If chance with nymphlike step fair virgin pass, What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more, She most, and in her look sums all delight. 455 Such pleasure took the serpent to behold This flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve Thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,

444. Applying to Solomon–Adam (viii 567f; ix 1178f ) as aptly as to Satan; cp. v 40–8 (also from Song of Sol.), where Satan similarly displaces Adam syntactically. 445–54. Casting Satan and Eve as pastourelle characters (P. J. Klemp, ÉA, 46 (1993) 260, 268). (In pastourelle a knight seduces a shepherdess met by chance.) But Eve, surprising Satan, has an unusually active role. Contrast the wanton milkmaids in Anon., Wit Restored (1658) 167f. The assumptions are pastoral or georgic: cities resemble hell, the country Paradise. Any sympathy with the city-dweller’s need for a holiday, or appreciation of beauty, fades before his taking advantage of the countrywoman’s innocence. Hunter (1980) 119, however, denies any moral pattern of malicious intent (ix 462). With the contrast of smells, cp. iv 168, Satan’s first entry into Paradise. It seems needless to adduce the autobiographical event of Elegia VII; M. must often have walked in the country (and lived at Chalfont St Giles in 1665). Still, the woman in the elegy affected him so deeply that his sadness at never seeing her again was like ‘the grief of Hephaestus for his lost heaven’. annoy: affect injuriously. tedded: spread out to dry. On M.’s participial adjectives, see Corns (1990) 88. kine: cows (archaic, decorously dialectal plural). nymphlike: Keeping the comparison of ix 387 in play. for: because of. 456. plat: patch of ground. 457–8. Bentley sneers at soft (if Eve’s form were softer than angelic she would be altogether fluid and ‘no fit Mate for her Husband’); Empson (1950) 153f finds the word ‘vague’ and conflicting ‘with concrete details already settled’. But soft need not mean ‘physically yielding’. More relevant here is ‘pleasing’ (OED 1 c). Angels, although genderless, were considered masculine (Richardson). Cp. x 890; xi 245. form: (1) appearance; (2) essence, Platonic idea. Eve’s beauty is close to an ideal (Flannagan).

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Her graceful innocence, her every air 460 Of gesture or least action overawed His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: That space the evil one abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained 465 Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; But the hot hell that always in him burns, Though in mid-heaven, soon ended his delight, And tortures him now more, the more he sees 470 Of pleasure not for him ordained: then soon Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites. Thoughts, whither have ye led me, with what sweet Compulsion thus transported to forget 475 What hither brought us, hate, not love, nor hope Of Paradise for hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying, other joy To me is lost. Then let me not let pass 480 Occasion which now smiles, behold alone 459–66. Cp. ix 166 (Satan constrained to ‘imbrute’ his essence in the serpent); G. D. Hildebrand, NQ, 197 (1952) 246 (citing Comus 418ff, the Elder Brother on chastity’s power). Virtue makes corporeality immortal, but lust defiles so that the soul ‘imbrutes’ (Comus 466–8). air: manner; mien. abstracted: (1) absent in mind; (2) removed from his evil incarnation and returned to his own essence. Cp. Comus 462. For a moment of ekstasis, Satan’s evil is externalized, a thing rather than a quality. This is reinforced by the wordplay evil one . . . own evil – then a full pun; see Dobson (1957) ii 676, 694. 465. Eve resembles the snake Scitalis in the Bestiary, so splendid that beholders stand stupefied and are easy prey; see Le Comte (1978); White (1960) 176. 467. Cp. i 255n; iv 20–3n. Present tense for Satan’s eternal punishment, past for the temporal narrative. 468. No mere hyperbole: in Job 1:6; 2:1 Satan is summoned to heaven. 470–9. Cp. ix 129f. Contrast ii 365f, 400ff (Beelzebub speaking for Satan, and holding out hope that the devils might enjoy earth’s ‘soft delicious air’). Perhaps Satan only now discovers pleasure to be bound up with goodness and so not for him ordained. gratulating: expressing joy (at meeting Eve). 480. Cp. ix 160, 421n (‘hap’). Occasion (opportunity) is a key term in Satan’s ideology of chance and necessity. On the relation of Occasio to

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The woman, opportune to all attempts, Her husband, for I view far round, not nigh, Whose higher intellectual more I shun, And strength, of courage haughty, and of limb 485 Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould, Foe not informidable, exempt from wound, I not; so much hath hell debased, and pain Enfeebled me, to what I was in heaven. She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods, 490 Not terrible, though terror be in love And beauty, not approached by stronger hate, Hate stronger, under show of love well feigned, The way which to her ruin now I tend. So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed 495 In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve Addressed his way, not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold a surging maze, his head Fortuna, see Patch (1927) 115ff; Panofsky (1962) 72; A. Fowler and J. Manning, JWI, 39 (1976) 263–6. 481. opportune: (1) liable, exposed (Latinism); (2) convenient. 482–8. Evidence that Adam and Eve’s separation is critical; cp. ix 404–5n, 1145. higher: Because Adam allegorically corresponds to mens, Eve to ratio; cp. ix 358n, 360–1n. Adam would be expected as a man to have a superior intellect; cp. viii 541. But M. held that when an exceptional woman exceeded her husband ‘in prudence and dexterity’ he should yield: gender was less fundamental than the ‘superior and more natural law . . . that the wiser should govern the less wise’ (Tetrachordon, YP ii 589). Eve’s fall may additionally typify the tragedy of a people betrayed by its leaders. intellectual: mind (OED 1). courage: spirit. 485. terrestrial mould: Cp. ix 149 (‘formed of earth’); ix 176 (‘man of clay’). Satan despises mankind’s grosser materiality. 486. Cp. ix 283. For the expiry of Satan’s own exemption, see vi 327. 489–93. Presenting the temptation as a seduction, as with the earlier attempt; cp. ii 727–8n; v 40–1n, 48; Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, tr. Sylvester II ii 291–2, (1979) i 346, the serpent ‘as a false lover that thick snares hath laid / T’intrap the honour of a fair young maid’. M.’s seducer is aggressive, motivated by hate, although perhaps half softened by amorous feeling. See Turner (1987) 262 (‘contorted syntax’ miming a ‘struggle to force love into hatred’). On M.’s own earlier ‘commitment to hatred’, see ibid. 214f. tend: turn my energies. 496–504. Gen. 3:14 says only that the serpent has gone on its belly since the curse. On its earlier gait, three theories predominated; see Willet, Hexapla

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500 Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape, And lovely, never since of serpent kind 505 Lovelier, not those that in Illyria changed Hermione and Cadmus, or the god In Epidaurus; nor to which transformed (1608) 47, 52: (a) the serpent always went prone; (b) it went upright; (c) its upright posture was induced by Satan. M. rejects (a) but does not decide between (b) and (c); cp. the ambiguity of iv 347–9 on the unpossessed serpent. indented: zigzag; the shape of a legal indenture or covenant. maze: Cp. ii 651 (Sin with ‘many a scaly fold’); Ovid, Metam. xv 689f, tr. Sandys (1970) 685 (the serpent ‘Indenteth through the city’). Combining two symbols of error (monster and labyrinth), juxtaposed in Spenser, FQ I i 11–15. carbuncle . . . eyes: reddish, implying rage; cp. Shakespeare, Coriolanus V i 64f. Glowing at night like coals (Lat. carbo), the carbuncle signifies Christ the true light, here travestied. Cp. Grotius, Adamus Exul IV iv (oculi ardent duo); Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax xv 48 (‘Armed with golden scales his head and crest / . . . / Flamed his eyes’); Frye (1978) 109 (the serpent’s eyes in the Medici tapestries); Schaar (1982) 274, 279f. Each aspect of the serpent’s loveliness covers allusion to ugliness. With the precious stone in a Crested serpent’s head, perhaps cp. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius iii 8 on Gyges’ ring, a legend ominously à propos. Eve, like Candaules’ wife, is shown naked by her husband; blames his weakness in allowing her dishonour (ix 1155–61); and arranges his death. The carbuncle (solar in many cosmic correspondence schemes) serves as chthonic antitype to the sun’s arch-chemic stone (iii 596–601n). See Ezek. 28:13 (‘Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold’), applied to Satan in Augustine, City of God XI xv. spires: coils, spirals. redundant: (1) copious, overflowing (perhaps Latinism); (2) wavelike (Latinism); (3) abundant to excess. 505–10. M. Y. Hughes cites Salkeld, Paradise (1617) 218 for the tradition that Eve was charmed by the serpent’s beauty. According to Bede, the serpent had the face of an attractive virgin; see Williams (1948) 116; J. B. Trapp, in Patrides (1968) 242, 262f; Frye (1978) 104. changed: metamorphosed. Cp. Ovid, Metam. iv 572–603: Cadmus changed into a serpent first; when he embraced his wife Hermione–Harmonia, to the horror of those present she too changed. So Eve is cause of a change in her spouse. Cp. x 540f; Empson (1950) 175 (‘Eve turned into a snake and became Satan’s consort’). Or, at least, imbrutes herself. The form Hermione, not Ovidian, is in Stephanus (Starnes (1955) 243f ). Alluding to

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Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen, He with Olympias, this with her who bore 510 Scipio the height of Rome. With tract oblique At first, as one who sought access, but feared To interrupt, sidelong he works his way. As when a ship by skilful steersman wrought Nigh river’s mouth or foreland, where the wind 515 Veers oft, as oft so steers, and shifts her sail; So varied he, and of his tortuous train Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, To lure her eye; she busied heard the sound Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used 520 To such disport before her through the field, From every beast, more duteous at her call,

Vulcan’s fatal gift to Hermione, which made her children impious. the god: Aesculapius, god of healing, who restored so many to life that he angered Pluto king of hell. When a Roman embassy came to Epidaurus to ask help, Aesculapius changed into a serpent ‘raised breast-high’ to accompany them (Ovid, Metam. xv 626–744). For the erect serpent, cp. ix 677–8n. 508. Ammonian Jove: Jupiter Ammon, the ‘Lybian Jove’ (iv 277). In Plutarch, Life of Alexander the ostensible father Philip of Macedonia withdrew his love from Olympias because she slept with a serpent, which, however, the Delphic oracle declared to be a form of Jupiter Ammon. Capitoline: Jupiter Capitolinus (from his temple on the Capitoline at Rome). 510–14. The initial letters of the lines form a sidelong acrostic, SATAN. Cp. Virgil, Aen. vii 601–4 (the MARS acrostic); P. J. Klemp, MiltQ, 11 (1977) 91f; Leonard (1990) 136f (‘Affixing the unacknowledged name of Satan as he hardens his heart to revenge’). 510. Scipio: Scipio Africanus, height of Rome because the greatest Roman. Cp. Topsell (1608) 5; Svendsen (1956) 169f (citing Camerarius, Living Library, tr. J. Molle (1621): ‘Alexander the great held for certain, that his mother Olympias was gotten with child of him by a serpent, which the superstitious pagans called Jupiter’s Genius . . . The like is reported of Scipio Africanus; C. Oppius that hath written his life, Titus Livius, Gellius, and Julius Higinus do say, that a great serpent lay with Scipio’s mother, and was seen often in her chamber, and when anybody came in, he would vanish away’). height: Cp. Ovid, Amores I ix 37 (summa ducum); Pearce (1733). 521–6. Not meant to bait Eve by making her a sorceress, as Empson (1950) 176 supposes. Circe symbolized the excess that imbrutes; see M. Y. Hughes, JHI, 4 (1943) 381–99. Cp. Homer, Od. x 212–19; Ovid, Metam. xiv 45f (Circe changing men into a herd of Fawning animals (agmen adulantem) ); Schaar (1982) 286 (the metaphor of flattery). bolder : The different

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Than at Circean call the herd disguised. He bolder now, uncalled before her stood; But as in gaze admiring: oft he bowed His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck, Fawning, and licked the ground whereon she trod. His gentle dumb expression turned at length The eye of Eve to mark his play; he glad Of her attention gained, with serpent tongue Organic, or impulse of vocal air, His fraudulent temptation thus began. Wonder not, sovereign mistress, if perhaps Thou canst, who art sole wonder, much less arm Thy looks, the heaven of mildness, with disdain, Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze Insatiate, I thus single, nor have feared Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired. Fairest resemblance of thy maker fair, Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore With ravishment beheld, there best beheld Where universally admired; but here

behaviour may be a clue for Eve, if she attends to it. crest: Invariably associated in PL with Satan; see Schaar (1982) 285, comparing Turnus’ helmet (Aen. vii 785f ). 525. enamelled: variegated in colour. 530. Organic: serving as an instrument (OED 1). Since the serpent lacks the organs of human speech, Satan uses its tongue, or else vocal air, as prosthesis. Commentators discussed how, exactly, the serpent spoke; see Williams (1948) 116f. impulse: (1) thrust, pulse (OED 1); (2) strong suggestion from a spirit (OED 3 a). Cp. Roger Coke, Elements of Power and Subjection (1660) 177: ‘If he by chance offend by the impulse of the Devil . . .’. 532–48. Developing themes of the dream temptation (v 38ff ) and adding flattery of Eve as a goddess (common in Renaissance poems on the Fall, but given contemporary immediacy). See D. S. Berkeley, NQ, 196 (1951) 337–9; M. Agari, in Kawai (1991) 542–56 (beginning with courtly rhetoric, Satan proceeds to logical equivocation); H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 1–18 (tracing Satan’s rhetoric, from complimentary ethos, comprobatio, parrhesia, and procatalepsis to the meiosis of enclosure wild, despising the georgic simplicities of ix 445–54n). 532. sovereign: Calling up the hierarchic cosmic order in which Eve’s actual role is quite different (Burden (1967) 141). 538. Bad theology, since in M.’s view only Adam was created in the image of God. See Turner (1987) Index, Image of God; Madsen (1968) 151.

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In this enclosure wild, these beasts among, Beholders rude, and shallow to discern 545 Half what in thee is fair, one man except, Who sees thee? (And what is one?) Who shouldst be seen A goddess among gods, adored and served By angels numberless, thy daily train. So glozed the tempter, and his proem tuned; 550 Into the heart of Eve his words made way, Though at the voice much marvelling; at length Not unamazed she thus in answer spake. What may this mean? Language of man pronounced By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed? 555 The first at least of these I thought denied To beasts, whom God on their creation-day Created mute to all articulate sound; The latter I demur, for in their looks Much reason, and in their actions oft appears. 545. Diverting Eve’s attention from Adam to himself, a ‘man, internal man’ (ix 710–11); see M. Agari, Poetica, 42 (1994) 127f. 548. Eve is always attended by a retinue, whereas Adam needs none (Flannagan) – characteristic of M.’s egalitarian domestic hierarchy. The offer of a numberless . . . train in exchange for Adam’s one admiration continues a thematic number symbolism; cp. vi 809–10n. The appeal to pride accords with a central Christian view of the causes of the Fall; cp. v 77f; Lewis (1942) 68 (citing Augustine on independent selfhood). By ix 790, Eve is lost in thoughts of ‘godhead’. 549. glozed: fawned, flattered; spoke smoothly and speciously. proem: prelude. 553–66. The abrupt opening shows Eve surprised and puzzled by the serpent’s speech. Yet Jacobus (1976) 154 thinks her unsurprised, citing Calvin’s view that Eve counted the serpent merely a ‘domestical beast’. Cp. Browne, Pseudodoxia (1646) i 1, (1964) ii 18 (commentators’ puzzlement ‘how without fear or doubt she could . . . hear a serpent speak, without suspicion of imposture’); Willet, Hexapla (1608) 47; Leonard (1990) 193f (M.’s Eve, by no means gullible or ignorantly carried away by words, is favourably presented: she shrewdly asks how the serpent came by its voice); Gallagher (1990) 59 (Eve innocently unaware of the flattery); Rosenblatt (1994) 34, 83 (Poole’s paraphrase of M. in Annotations (1683) ). M. partly exonerates Eve by making the serpent beautiful (ix 504ff ) and previously harmless (ix 185f ). D. K. McChrystal, ELR, 23 (1993) 502–4 finds uncharacteristic lexical inversions, reflecting Eve’s disorientation as she relates to Satan. It is this subjection, not independence, that leads to her error. 558–9. demur: hesitate about. Cp. vii 485 (the emmet’s wisdom); viii 374

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560 Thee, serpent, subtlest beast of all the field I knew, but not with human voice endued; Redouble then this miracle, and say, How cam’st thou speakable of mute, and how To me so friendly grown above the rest 565 Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight? Say, for such wonder claims attention due. To whom the guileful tempter thus replied. Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve, Easy to me it is to tell thee all 570 What thou commandst, and right thou shouldst be obeyed: I was at first as other beasts that graze The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low, As was my food, nor aught but food discerned Or sex, and apprehended nothing high: 575 Till on a day roving the field, I chanced A goodly tree far distant to behold Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mixed, Ruddy and gold: I nearer drew to gaze; When from the boughs a savoury odour blown, (Adam’s God saying that beasts ‘reason not contemptibly’). looks: Taking a step away from faith towards appearances (Stevens (1985) 213). 560–1. For the subtlety, see Gen. 3:1; 2 Cor. 11:3. I knew: Establishing Eve’s responsibility; cp. ix 307; Burden (1967) 101. Raphael’s narration has put her on her guard against subtlety. 563. speakable: capable of speech. Latinizing; cp. Horace, Odes II xiv 6 (inlacrimabilem) (Richardson). Cp. Joseph Beaumont, Psyche (1648) vi 276 (the serpent a ‘new Talker’); Leonard (1990) 195f (coinage to mime the res nova of a serpent speaking). of: from being. 572. abject: mean-spirited (OED 3). Ironic, since the curse will indeed sentence the serpent to be trodden. 574. sex . . . nothing high: Perhaps the first use of sex = sexual intercourse, gratification (OED 3 b, first instance 1929). Cp. Turner (1987) 304; D. M. Friedman, in Stanwood (1995) 204f (Satan’s reductive view of sex). 578–88. Cp. ix 740–2, Eve’s similar sensations. 578. Cp. iv 148, 219f; Frye (1978) 251–4 (tracing a line of uncomprehending objection to M.’s mineral fruit, from Joseph Warton to F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot). Giamatti (1966) 308ff finds the fruit sinister yet (oddly) undescribed; G. S. Koehler, MiltS, 8 (1975) 3–40 detects ‘suspicious complexity of colour’. But the colour need not be complex: gold used often to be ruddy. 579. savoury: appetizing; edifying, Cp. the wordplay at v 84–5n. Satan

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580 Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even, Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend their play. To satisfy the sharp desire I had 585 Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved Not to defer; hunger and thirst at once, Powerful persuaders, quickened at the scent Of that alluring fruit, urged me so keen. About the mossy trunk I wound me soon, 590 For high from ground the branches would require Thy utmost reach or Adam’s: round the tree All other beasts that saw, with like desire Longing and envying stood, but could not reach. Amid the tree now got, where plenty hung 595 Tempting so nigh, to pluck and eat my fill

has just connected food and sex with discernment; cp. ix 572f; Turner (1987) 243 (association of eating with sexuality); Jeanneret (1991) ch. 5. 581–3. One plant and the teats of two animal species; for the simile’s AAB pattern, cp. ix 439–43n. Milk from the teat and fennel were supposed favourite foods of snakes; fennel renewed it in spring by sharpening its sight or inducing it to cast its skin. Cp. Apol, YP i 909 (‘to see clearer than any fennel-rubbed Serpent’); Pliny, Nat. Hist. VIII xcix; XX ccliv. But fennel also emblemized flattery (OED 3, citing Robert Greene: ‘fennel I mean for flatterers’). For incubi that sucked teats of animals and of women, see Blamires (1971) 225; Le Comte (1978) 80. Turner (1987) 300 compares Satan’s earlier observation of Eve’s ‘swelling breast’ (iv 495). 585. Trivializing the fruit of the sole prohibition; cp. x 487. The fruit was an apple in popular imagination, as well as in the Ursinian (Heidelberg) Catechism; but many other fruits were suggested – Genesis Rabbah i 167 has grape, etrog, and fig. See Fletcher (1956–61) ii 96. 586. defer: delay. Renewing the desire Eve dreamt (v 84–6). 588. alluring: A lie. Cp. iv 221–2n; v 53n; Burden (1967) 133. 589. For the iconography of the tempter coiled round the trunk, see Frye (1978) 105f. 590–1. Satan insinuates a subliminal image of disobedience; but simultaneously M. amplifies divine providence – if the fruit is hard to get at, plucking it must be deliberate. 592. Another lie. In visual tradition, only apes showed interest in the fruit; see Frye (1978) 246 (Satan as the ape of God). 595–601. ‘Explaining’ the appearances of the first temptation: the dream tempter knew the fruit’s effect because he was the serpent. Cp. v 45–90n;

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I spared not, for such pleasure till that hour At feed or fountain never had I found. Sated at length, ere long I might perceive Strange alteration in me, to degree Of reason in my inward powers, and speech Wanted not long, though to this shape retained. Thenceforth to speculations high or deep I turned my thoughts, and with capacious mind Considered all things visible in heaven, Or earth, or middle, all things fair and good; But all that fair and good in thy divine Semblance, and in thy beauty’s heavenly ray United I beheld; no fair to thine Equivalent or second, which compelled Me thus, though importune perhaps, to come And gaze, and worship thee of right declared Sovereign of creatures, universal dame. So talked the spirited sly snake; and Eve Yet more amazed unwary thus replied. Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt The virtue of that fruit, in thee first proved: But say, where grows the tree, from hence how far? For many are the trees of God that grow In Paradise, and various, yet unknown

Jacobus (1976) 156 (as a Ramist, M. would expect Eve to enquire into causes; but she misses the efficient cause, Satan himself ). 599. degree: (1) a certain amount; (2) stage in an ascent. 600. Only Joseph Beaumont anticipated the serpent’s claim to have acquired language by eating; see Leonard (1990) 199; Evans (1968) 49, 276f. 602–5. The unchecked speculative fancy. The serpent uses its newly acquired reason not to glorify God but to engage in speculations high – doubtless such as Raphael dismisses as unprofitable (viii 173–8). Cp. viii 81f, 188f; Stevens (1985) 215. retained: restrained (OED 1). deep: Cp. the ‘causes deep’ of creation, hid by God as his secrets (iii 707). 605. middle: the space between. 609. Cp. Horace, Odes I xii 18 (nec viget quicquam simile ant secundum) – praise appropriate only to God, as at viii 406f. 612. dame: mistress (OED 1). 613. spirited: (1) imbued with an animating spirit; (2) possessed (OED 4; perhaps M.’s extension); (3) energetic (OED 2 b). 616. Eve, unwary, almost flirts – ‘Silly compliments like that don’t say much for the tree’s effect on you’. virtue: power. proved: tested. 618. trees of God: Biblical diction; cp. Ps. 104:16.

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620 To us, in such abundance lies our choice, As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched, Still hanging incorruptible, till men Grow up to their provision, and more hands Help to disburden nature of her birth. 625 To whom the wily adder, blithe and glad. Empress, the way is ready, and not long, Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat, Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past Of blowing myrrh and balm; if thou accept 630 My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon. Lead then, said Eve. He leading swiftly rolled In tangles, and made intricate seem straight, To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy Brightens his crest, as when a wandering fire 635 Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night Condenses, and the cold environs round, Kindled through agitation to a flame, Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive light, 640 Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way 620. Modern punctuation would call for heavier pointing after us. 623. provision: what is already (providentially) provided. 624. birth: fruit of the womb (OED 3 b). 627–8. The row of myrtles emblemizes Eve’s virtue; see ix 426–31n. In the context of seduction, specifically anatomical associations (myrtle as pudenda) may be relevant; cp. Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 639; Liceti, Hieroglyphica (1653) 377; W. E. H. Rudat, Mosaic, 15 (1982) 114. On the motif of a fountain on a flat near the tree of knowledge, see P. A. Underwood, DOP, 5 (1950) 43–138; Ringbom (1958) 63–6, 88–95; Frye (1978) 244. The medieval type of artificial fountain with masonry had come to be avoided as anachronistic; landscapists favoured a natural spring. 629. blowing: blooming. 630. conduct: (1) guidance (OED 1); (2) management (OED 5, 6). Cp. iv 470 (Eve following God’s voice); v 48; viii 485. Eve’s error is to rate mediated knowledge above her personal experience of God’s beneficence (B. K. Lewalski, Topoi, 7 (1988) 225). 632. made] make 1667 (wrongly). 634 –42. Cp. ii 754–8; Comus 433; Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 1 ii (1989–) i 184 (‘Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by . . . ignes fatui; which lead men often in flumina, aut praecipitia’); ibid. I iv 1 iii (1989–) i 405 (‘to one led about and variable still by that ignis fatuus of fantasy’); Swan, Speculum (1643) 88f (‘These kinds of lights are often seen in fens and moors, because there is always great store of unctuous matter fit for

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To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool, There swallowed up and lost, from succour far. So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud Led Eve our credulous mother, to the tree 645 Of prohibition, root of all our woe; Which when she saw, thus to her guide she spake. Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither, Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess, The credit of whose virtue rest with thee, 650 Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects. But of this tree we may not taste nor touch; God so commanded, and left that command

such purposes. . . . Wherefore the much terrified, ignorant, and superstitious people may see their own errors in that they have deemed these lights to be walking spirits. . . . They are no spirits, and yet lead out of the way, because those who see them are amazed, and look so earnestly after them that they forget their way’); Svendsen (1956) 108f (Renaissance meteorologists ‘regularly treated ignis fatuus and ignis lambens together, and nearly always as emblems of self-deception’); Ricks (1963) 126; Stevens (1985) 182f (Eve’s ignis fatuus implies ‘delusions of fancy ungoverned by reason’); Gallagher (1990) 65 (‘Perhaps the finest epic simile in Western literature’). Compact of: composed of. unctuous: oily, inflammable (OED 3). Cp. Cowley, Davideis (1656) iii n 40 (‘Lambent fire is a thin unctuous exhalation made out of the spirits of animals’). amazed: Cp. Eve’s amazement at ix 614. 643–5. See Ricks (1963) 75f on the silent pun in root; the oxymoron credulous mother; the accurate tree / Of prohibition (not Latinism but literal truth – ‘of all prohibitions’); and the ‘calculated brutality’ of snake, in PL an unusual alternative for ‘serpent’. See Burden (1967) 133: the forbidden tree is never attractive or provocative except when appetite is perversely aroused; hence the flatness. glistered: glittered, sparkled (OED a). Often of virtue, or brilliant oratory (Fuller, Worthies (1840) ii 45: ‘he glistered in the oratoric and poetic sphere’). fraud: error; detriment. This passive extension may be Latinism by analogy with fraus; cp. vii 143; PR i 372. 647–50. Slipping into the serpent’s wordplaying style. Eve’s frivolous puns are truer than she realizes – excess in a bad sense is not far off. See Ricks (1963) 73f. virtue: (1) virtuousness; (2) power. 651. Cp. ix 663, agreeing with Gen. 3:3, where touching the fruit is culpable. But the Gen. 2:17 prohibition was only against eating. Some faulted Eve for adding to God’s precept; cp. Browne, Pseudodoxia (1646) I i, (1964) ii 18f; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 49 (Eve ‘faithfully expoundeth the meaning of the precept’); C. Fresch, MiltQ, 12 (1978) 183–90 (refuting Browne); A. Low, MiltQ, 13 (1979) 20; Gallagher (1990) 78; Musacchio

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Sole daughter of his voice; the rest, we live Law to our selves, our reason is our law. 655 To whom the tempter guilefully replied. Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit Of all these garden trees ye shall not eat, Yet lords declared of all in earth or air? To whom thus Eve yet sinless. Of the fruit 660 Of each tree in the garden we may eat, But of the fruit of this fair tree amidst The garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die. She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold

(1991) 150 (Eve still able to resist temptation). M. uses the two versions almost indifferently; cp. vii 46 (‘not to touch’: Raphael, reported); ix 925 (Adam: ‘ban to touch’); D. K. McColley, in Danielson (1989) 156 (Eve’s motivation in approaching the tree is much more favourably imagined than the curiosity of misogynistic versions). 653. Sole, because there was only one prohibition, or because it implied the entire Law; see Willet, Hexapla (1608) citing Tertullian, and rabbis. daughter of his voice: Hebraism for ‘voice sent from heaven’. Less authoritative than God’s own voice, so Eve may be blurring the issue; see W. B. Hunter, MLQ, 9 (1948) 279f; Stevens (1985) 123f ( filia vocis as a test of faith). Dramatic irony, if Sole slights the obedience Eve owes to another daughter of God (vii 8–12), Wisdom. 654. Rom. 2:14, ‘When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.’ Cp. viii 188–90; Musacchio (1991) 84f (rational obedience to natural law is normal before the Fall); Rosenblatt (1994) 177 (most Edenic law is natural, identified by M. with benign Mosaic law; but the prohibition is positive law, transcending the natural). 656–8. A horned syllogism; see Jacobus (1976) 157; M. Agari, in Kawai (1991) 543. 659. sinless: Eve was not tainted by the dream temptation, by arguing with Adam, or by accepting the serpent’s guidance, in any way involving guilt. Being deceived is not culpable; see Gallagher (1990) 76f against Thomas Aquinas, Stanley Fish, and others. Nevertheless situations of increasing moral danger are presented as a graded series. 663. Commentators agreed that at Gen. 3:3 (Vulg. ne forte moriamini; AV ‘lest ye die’) Eve hedges. The correct form of the prohibition is ‘thou shalt surely die’ (Gen. 2:17); see Willet, Hexapla (1608) 48. So too fair tree amidst / The garden prefers Gen. 3:3 to the morally definitive Gen. 2:17 (‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’).

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665 The tempter, but with show of zeal and love To man, and indignation at his wrong, New part puts on, and as to passion moved, Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely, and in act Raised, as of some great matter to begin. 670 As when of old some orator renowned In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence Flourished, since mute, to some great cause addressed, Stood in himself collected, while each part, Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue, 675 Sometimes in height began, as no delay Of preface brooking through his zeal of right. So standing, moving, or to height upgrown The tempter all impassioned thus began. O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant, 668. Fluctuates: (1) undergoes changes of form (OED 2 a); (2) undulates, wavers (Latinism; cp. fluctuare). 670–6. Simile with three vehicles: oratorical, theatrical, and theological. Thus part means ‘dramatic role, moral act’; motion means ‘gesture, instigation, persuasion’; and act means ‘action, performance, the deed itself as distinct from motion’. Besides persuading (like any orator) Satan acts a false part – as Eve would realize if she applied moral theology. Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 2, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 344 (‘This self-dumb creature’s glozing rhetoric / With bashful shame great orators would strike’); Evans (1996) 68 (comparing the planters’ ostensible zeal to convert the Indians). in himself collected: in control of himself (cp. Ital. in se raccolto). The inward self-control is in antithesis to each (outward) part. Cicero’s first Catiline oration exemplifies beginning in height, without preface. audience: attention, hearing. 677–8. For the serpent’s erect posture, cp. ix 505–10n; J. B. Trapp, in Patrides (1968) 227, 237, 239, 256; Frye (1978) 106f (instancing widely current examples like Trechsel’s Bible (1538) and Cranach, in Luther’s German Bible (1534)). Add Robert von Hirsch Coll., Sotheby Parke Bernet Catal. (1978) i 7. 679–732. According to Thomas Aquinas, Eve has already fallen by believing this; see Gallagher (1990) 79. For the dazzling rhetoric, see H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 1–18: dehortatio, protrope, and exuscitatio, with martyria at ix 684–90 and 720–2; equivocation on virtue and known at ix 694 and 699; meiosis at ix 693, etc.; concessio at 713f; and more. 679–80. Having endowed the tree with power (‘virtue’, ix 616, 649), Satan now animates it; the step to idolatry (ix 835f ) is a short one. Contrast earlier insistence that the tree is simply a pledge of obedience (iii 94–5n; iv 428; viii 325). For recent superstitious worship at a single tree in an open space, see Wood (1993) 185–7. science: knowledge.

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680 Mother of science, now I feel thy power Within me clear, not only to discern Things in their causes, but to trace the ways Of highest agents, deemed however wise. Queen of this universe, do not believe 685 Those rigid threats of death; ye shall not die: How should ye? By the fruit? It gives you life To knowledge. By the threatener? Look on me, Me who have touched and tasted, yet both live, And life more perfect have attained than fate 690 Meant me, by venturing higher than my lot. Shall that be shut to man, which to the beast Is open? Or will God incense his ire

680 –90. An ‘artificial’ argument from his own improvement through eating. See K. Kelly, in Allen (1990) 206: Eve falls by believing she can be ‘the fulfilment Adam ascribed to her’. 682. Cp. iii 707; ix 602n; Burden (1967) 105 (Satan offers knowledge through exploring God’s secrets and doubting the wisdom of highest agents). 684–7. Perhaps persuading Eve to regard herself as ‘godded with God’ – an antinomian, Ranter heresy; see Hill (1977) 345, 397; Stavely (1987) 55. Satan’s entire argument is in the phrases ‘look on me’ and ‘do not believe’ (Fish (1971) 249). On the alternation of polite and intimate pronouns, see M. Agari, Poetica, 42 (1994) 132. 685–95. On this updated temptation see Rosenblatt (1994) 39 citing Poole, Annotations (1683): ‘the serpent changes the single prohibition into a minister of Pauline “terror” and “awe” and chides Eve for obeying it’. 685. Gen. 3:4f, ‘The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ Sir Thomas Browne and Maureen Quilligan blame Eve for not breaking off here; but see Gallagher (1990) 80. 687. knowledge.] knowledge? 1667; 1674 (wrongly). threatener?] threatner, 1667; 1674. To: in addition to. threatener: dissyllabic. 689–90. Substituting necessity and chance for awkward terms like commandment, obedience, natural law. Encouraging the wish for freedom unconditioned by organic limitations, Satan represents differentiation of species as chance (lot), enforced by fate yet escapable. Cp. Grotius, Adamus Exul (1601) 1075–80, where Satan uses an even cruder necessitarian argument. 692–7. An exegete’s questions; cp. ix 713–15; Schwartz (1988) 65; Rosenblatt (1994) 178f (Pauline abrogations of the Law to frame an antinomian temptation). incense: kindle, excite.

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For such a petty trespass, and not praise Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain 695 Of death denounced, whatever thing death be, Deterred not from achieving what might lead To happier life, knowledge of good and evil; Of good, how just? Of evil, if what is evil Be real, why not known, since easier shunned? 700 God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just; Not just, not God; not feared then, nor obeyed: Your fear itself of death removes the fear. Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, 705 His worshippers; he knows that in the day 694. Reducing the concept of virtue to little more than (inappropriate) ‘courage’. Cp. Empson (1961) 159, crediting Eve with high motives – ‘she feels . . . God wants her to eat the apple, since what he is really testing is not her obedience but her courage’. But in M.’s hierarchy, obedience takes precedence. 695. Acting innocent; at ii 781–816 Sin explained Death to him, and ‘the subtle fiend his lore / Soon learned’. 697. Timing identification of the tree, to convince Eve (unaware that he overheard at iv 424) of its educative power; see Leonard (1990) 207. 698–9. Perverting the doctrine that evil has no true existence, to insinuate that since it is real it must be created. Travesty of Lactantius’s famous use of Epicurus’s argument; see Rosenblatt (1994) 181. The prohibition being dangerous ground for Satan, he argues even more elliptically than usual, fallaciously altering the meaning of knowledge in mid-sorites. (To shun evil, it need not be known within the meaning of the prohibition.) The distinction between theoretical and experiential knowledge was standard; see Willet, Hexapla (1608) 50. 701. not God: Satan speaks of God to cancel the name, and never speaks it again (Leonard (1990) 201). 703–9. Following Gen. 3:5; cp. ix 685n. On Satan’s brilliance in suppressing genuine causes and making second causes seem primary, see Jacobus (1976) 159. M. Nicolson, PQ, 6 (1927) 17 compares More, Conjectura (1653) (‘God . . . knows very well that if you take your liberty with us, and satiate yourselves freely with your own will, your eyes will be wonderfully opened . . . so that you will . . . like God know all things whatsoever whether good or evil’), concluding that ‘man followed his instincts and will, not his reason’. But Satan’s words seem to Eve ‘impregned / with reason’ (ix 737f ); far from giving way to instinct, she is deceived by spurious reasons; cp. ix 404; 1 Tim. 2:14. Separated from Adam, she has ceased to respond to intellect (mens) by translating the mind’s contemplations into practice. It is not reason per se, but ‘higher intellect’ (ix 483)

512

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Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear, Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods, Knowing both good and evil as they know. 710 That ye should be as gods, since I as man, Internal man, is but proportion meet, I of brute human, ye of human gods. So ye shall die perhaps, by putting off Human, to put on gods, death to be wished, 715 Though threatened, which no worse than this can bring. And what are gods that man may not become As they, participating godlike food? The gods are first, and that advantage use On our belief, that all from them proceeds; 720 I question it, for this fair earth I see, Warmed by the sun, producing every kind, Them nothing: if they all things, who enclosed that she abandons. On the tricky shifts between the singular and a plural evasive rather than polytheistic, see Leonard (1990) 202f. 707. In fact their vision will be dimmed (Flannagan); cp. iv 114. 708. Cp. Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 186: ‘ “This will bestow an immortality, / And make you sharers in the deity.” ’ 710–12. Adam reasons similarly (ix 932–7). But God turns out to have ordained a different proportion – not serpent : man :: man : angel, but rather angel : imbruted angel : man : fallen man. For Satan’s punitive metamorphosis, see x 507ff. Internal man: See ix 600; the serpent pretends his ‘inward powers’ are human. 713–15. Travesty of Christian mortification and death to sin; cp. 1 Cor. 15:53; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:1–15 (‘Set your affection on things above . . . For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God . . . ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man’); D. Bush, JEGP, 60 (1961) 639; Schaar (1982) 16. 716–17. participating: sharing; partaking of. Corrupting v 493–500, Raphael’s prospect of evolution until ‘men / With angels may participate’. Eve’s choice is not between aspiration and stasis, but between right aspiration and wrong; see Burden (1967) 144. 720 –2. Lucretian perversion of Raphael’s argument at viii 93ff about earth’s fruitfulness compared with the sun (not God); see Rajan (1962) 161. Them: i.e. them producing. 722–8. If the prohibition seems unreasonable, God did not mean it literally; see Musacchio (1991) 158 (citing Luther on the satanic oratory of Gen. 3:4f ); Lewis (1942) 68 (Satan assumes the magical power of the tree). The dualism contradicts earlier monotheistic arguments; there are

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Knowledge of good and evil in this tree, That whoso eats thereof, forthwith attains 725 Wisdom without their leave? And wherein lies The offence, that man should thus attain to know? What can your knowledge hurt him, or this tree Impart against his will if all be his? Or is it envy, and can envy dwell 730 In heavenly breasts? These, these and many more Causes import your need of this fair fruit. Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste. He ended, and his words replete with guile Into her heart too easy entrance won: 735 Fixed on the fruit she gazed, which to behold Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregned With reason, to her seeming, and with truth; no clear metaphysics to accept or reject. Satan’s amoral argument, eliding obedience (moral duty), in the opinion of Belsey (1988) 81, ‘appeals precisely to reason’. Impart: communicate; give a share in. 729–32. Cp. ix 10–19n, 703–9n; Virgil, Aen. i 11 (tantaene animis caelestibus irae?). Presenting the choice as between fate and ‘free virtue’ (ii 551); Eve is invited to participate in a pagan epic about her ‘own heroic deeds’ (ii 549), complete with machinery of jealous gods. import: imply; occasion (OED 4). 730. these: Editors capitalize; but perhaps a full pause is avoided, to mime Satan’s fast talking. 732. humane: (1) condescending; (2) human. Satan feels sure enough to risk the wild oxymoron. 735–43. Gen. 3:6, ‘When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit threof, and did eat.’ For the first time the fruit is temptingly attractive; see Burden (1967) 134 citing the Puritan Thomas Cartwright on the heart’s corruption coming before the abuse of sight and taste (outward causes of the Fall). It would have been provocation for it to have seemed so earlier; but now Eve is deceived. For temptation through the eye, cp. ix 896–8; Madsen (1968) 163. impregned: impregnated; filled; diffused. savoury: (1) appetizing; (2) edifying. See v 84–5n; ix 579n. Inclinable: Narrated from Eve’s viewpoint; it is her desire that is so disposed (cp. x 46). Not implying sin; see Gallagher (1990) 81 citing Thomas Pierce, The Divine Philanthropy Defended (1657) 24 (‘her mere inclination to sin was not her sin’). now: Implying she never before desired the fruit. Reaching the second of three phases of sin in moral theology (suggestio, delectatio, consensus); cp. Augustine, City of God XIV xiii.

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Meanwhile the hour of noon drew on, and waked 740 An eager appetite, raised by the smell So savoury of that fruit, which with desire, Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, Solicited her longing eye; yet first Pausing awhile, thus to herself she mused. 745 Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired, Whose taste, too long forborne, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise: 750 Thy praise he also who forbids thy use, Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding Commends thee more, while it infers the good 755 By thee communicated, and our want: For good unknown, sure is not had, or had And yet unknown, is as not had at all. In plain then, what forbids he but to know, Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise? 760 Such prohibitions bind not. But if death

739–40. Both body and mind ‘are gone over to the enemy’ (Richardson). The increased appetite is in itself innocently natural – even Raphael was hungry at noon (v 301, 436ff ) – but M. runs excitingly close to a tragedy of necessity; see Burden (1967) 134ff. Probably noon is meant, as often in Scripture, ‘not as an indication of time, but for the sake of its ethical significance’ (Auerbach (1957) 7). Noon was the time of judgment; cp. iv 30n; xii 1n; MacCaffrey (1959) 52. In Victorine tradition, the Fall occurred, like the expulsion and Christ’s death, at the biblical sixth hour; see Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 280. 743–4. An indispensable pause, to form a deliberate resolution before acting; see Burden (1967) 136 citing Hobbes on the conversion of appetite into will. 745. virtues: powers. fruits,] fruits. 1674 (wrongly). 745–79. Mirroring earlier ideas and locutions of Satan. Eve trusts his magical account of the fruit, and so argues from false premises. assay: trial, test. elocution: utterance; eloquence (OED 3, 2). 750. Unlike her earlier encomia, this ‘praise collapses in on itself ’, and falls to negative periphrasis; Eve begins to withhold the name ‘God’ (Leonard (1990) 209, 254). Cp. H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 11. 758. In plain: plainly, in plain terms (OED s. v. Plain a.1 19 a).

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770

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515

Bind us with after-bands, what profits then Our inward freedom? In the day we eat Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die. How dies the serpent? He hath eaten and lives, And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, Irrational till then. For us alone Was death invented? Or to us denied This intellectual food, for beasts reserved? For beasts it seems: yet that one beast which first Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy The good befallen him, author unsuspect, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what know to fear Under this ignorance of good and evil, Of God or death, of law or penalty? Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both body and mind? So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate: Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat

761. after-bands: subsequent bonds. Possibly a coinage (OED’s only instance). 766–7. Powerful irony; from the divine colloquy (iii 208–16) we know death was invented for mankind – but the sentence transformed through Messiah’s offering of himself. 771. author unsuspect: (1) informant not to be doubted, authoritative witness; (2) unsuspected instigator. 773. ‘What fear I – or rather (since the occasion of fear is concealed) what do I know that should be feared?’ 776–9. Eve’s false conception of the fruit’s virtues; her desire for wisdom and godhead; and her appetite: all are proegumenic causes of the Fall (Musacchio (1991) 162f ). The causes of sin here become sin itself. cure: (1) remedy; (2) duty; (3) care, trouble (OED 2, 3, 7; cp. Lat. cura). inviting: Now provocative; cp. 735–43n. wise: (1) sagacious; (2) experienced, wise after the event instead of virtuous. 781. ate: spelt ‘eat’ in early edns, probably pronounced /ε t/. 782–4. Cp. ix 1000–4 (the ‘second groan’ at Adam’s fall); x 651–719 (the macrocosmic consequences of the Fall, partly anticipated by Satan (ix 132f: ‘all this will soon / Follow, as to him linked in weal or woe’) ). The idea, from Rom. 8:22 (‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain’), was common; M. Y. Hughes cites instances from Gower, Mirrour 26, 819ff to Joseph Beaumont, Psyche (1648) vi 254. Add Virgil, Georgics iv 493: when Orpheus breaks the condition and loses Eurydice, terque fragor

516

paradise lost

Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, That all was lost. Back to the thicket slunk 785 The guilty serpent, and well might, for Eve Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else Regarded, such delight till then, as seemed, In fruit she never tasted, whether true Or fancied so, through expectation high 790 Of knowledge, nor was godhead from her thought. Greedily she engorged without restraint, And knew not eating death: satiate at length, And heightened as with wine, jocund and boon, Thus to herself she pleasingly began. 795 O sovereign, virtuous, precious of all trees In Paradise, of operation blest To sapience, hitherto obscured, infamed,

stagnis auditus Avernis. signs: As yet, only portents; the woe itself will come after judgment and sentence. Du Bartas, ‘The Furies’, one of the fullest accounts of the Fall’s natural consequences, puts them after the expulsion (Divine Weeks II i 3, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 357–79). 789. Entering a world of doubtful appearances. Cp. ix 735–43n; Turner (1987) 266 (satanic associations of seemed). 790. godhead: See ix 532–48n. 791–2. Concupiscent or excessive eating; see Svendsen (1956) 128 citing Sebastian Franck, The Forbidden Fruit (1640): all men ‘do eat death, and yet . . . think themselves to eat life, and hope to be Gods’. Eve’s eating resembles Death’s own – ‘the release of inordinate appetite into the world brings on the insatiable devourer of all men’. knew . . . death: (1) did not know she was eating death (imitating a Greek construction with verbs of perception: e.g. Oppian, Halieutica ii 106, σπεpδοντες \λεθSον, ‘knew not hastening their death’); (2) mors edax (devouring death); cp. Leonard (1990) 210. satiate: Contrast the temperate eating of v 451f. 793. The only exaltation achieved is inebriation (Burden (1967) 145). Literally, fermented wine was unknown before the Fall (see v 345n). But in Porphyry, St Bernard, and others, drunkenness figured loss of rationality, whether from the Fall or fleshly existence itself. Cp. Bersuire, ‘Reductorium Morale’ (1489) VIII iii 33: ‘by wine can be understood the human will; . . . the human will burns with desire’. boon: convivial. Trivial gaiety, shocking in the circumstances. 795–804. Travesty of hymns to the Tree of Life; see Rosenblatt (1994) 186f (comparing Herbert, ‘The Sacrifice’); Lieb (1981) 108 (fetishistic worship). Renaissance ethnologists had some idea of taboo and fetish. Cp. ix 835f. precious: Positive for superlative; a classicism. Richardson instances Homer, Il. v 381 (δ9α θε>ων); Virgil, Aen. iv 576 (sancte deorum).

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805

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815

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And thy fair fruit let hang, as to no end Created; but henceforth my early care, Not without song, each morning, and due praise Shall tend thee, and the fertile burden ease Of thy full branches offered free to all; Till dieted by thee I grow mature In knowledge, as the gods who all things know; Though others envy what they cannot give; For had the gift been theirs, it had not here Thus grown. Experience, next to thee I owe, Best guide; not following thee, I had remained In ignorance, thou op’nst wisdom’s way, And giv’st accéss, though secret she retire. And I perhaps am secret; heaven is high, High and remote to see from thence distinct Each thing on earth; and other care perhaps May have diverted from continual watch Our great forbidder, safe with all his spies About him. But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known As yet my change, and give him to partake Full happiness with me, or rather not, But keep the odds of knowledge in my power Without copartner? So to add what wants

799. Eve is generally early at her business; cp. iv 623; ix 457; xi 275 (Richardson). 800. Replacing the morning hymn to God (v 145) with an idolatrous liturgy. 804–7. Parroting Satan’s ideas (‘God cannot have put knowledge in the tree if he forbids its use’, etc.) and getting them wrong; cp. iv 517; ix 722– 5, 729. gods: Eve learns to use the vaguer, pagan form; cp. ix 718. others: God. On Eve’s evasions in theology, increasing lapses in logic, her guesswork and expediency, see Jacobus (1976) 163f. Experience: Satanic hypostasis; cp. ‘chance’ and ‘fate’ (i 133n). owe: The absolute use is ‘very elegant’ (Richardson). 810. secret: uncommunicative; hidden; abstruse (OED 2 a, 1 c, 1 g). 811–13. Cp. Job 22:13f; Isa. 47:10; Ps. 10:11 (‘He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it’). Richardson compares Claudian, ‘Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of Honorius’ 515 (celsa dehinc patulum prospectans Narnia campum). 815. Another of Eve’s meioses (H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 11). 817–25. Reducing the social economy to power relations; see D. K. McChrystal, ELR (1993) 505. 821–30. Choosing between selfish ends – motives of domination, fear, and jealousy. The idea of Eve’s jealousy had both rabbinical and Christian

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In female sex, the more to draw his love, And render me more equal, and perhaps, A thing not undesirable, sometime 825 Superior; for inferior who is free? This may be well: but what if God have seen, And death ensue? Then I shall be no more, And Adam wedded to another Eve, Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; 830 A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve, Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe: So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life. So saying, from the tree her step she turned, 835 But first low reverence done, as to the power That dwelt within, whose presence had infused Into the plant sciential sap, derived From nectar, drink of gods. Adam the while

sources; see D. C. Allen, MLN 63 (1948) 262f; Williams (1948) 123; Werman (1995) 64f (citing Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer tr. Vorstius (1644) 29: ‘The holy one . . . will make another woman and give her to Adam’). 821–3. The first suggestion that Eve feels inadequate. 823–5. Self-deceiving: Eve desires to be superior – and not only sometime. Contrast her first appearance, at iv 296 (‘not equal, as their sex not equal seemed’). Cp. ix 881; J. T. Grimbert, in Maddox (1994) 29–37; D. M. Friedman, in Stanwood (1995) 211 comparing i 40 (‘to have equalled the most high’). 825. who: Everyone is free in a hierarchic society; see D. K. McColley, in Danielson (1989) 161. 832–3. Eve’s first expression of agonized love torn by an impulse to kill Adam out of jealousy and fear of loneliness. Confused interior monologue: living without Adam is not an alternative. Perhaps travesty of Horace, Odes III ix 24 (tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens). If so, the moral contrast is sharp: the scorned Lydia’s willingness to die for Calais if only he can survive her never occurs to Eve. Horace’s internal dialogue was popular – translated or imitated by Jonson, Herrick, Stanley, Ashmore (three times), Hannay, John Hall, Collop, and Flatman. 835–6. See Lewis (1942) 122: ‘She who thought it beneath her dignity to bow to Adam or to God, now worships a vegetable. She has at last become “primitive” in the popular sense.’ 837. sciential: endowed with knowledge. 838–42. See Frye (1978) 287: the garland is M.’s invention. Although earlier compared with the agricultural goddesses Pales, Pomona, and Ceres (ix 393–6), Eve brings an unnatural, bitter harvest. For the garlanding of

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Waiting desirous her return, had wove 840 Of choicest flowers a garland to adorn Her tresses, and her rural labours crown As reapers oft are wont their harvest queen. Great joy he promised to his thoughts, and new Solace in her return, so long delayed; 845 Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill, Misgave him; he the faltering measure felt; And forth to meet her went, the way she took That morn when first they parted; by the tree Of knowledge he must pass, there he her met, 850 Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand A bough of fairest fruit that downy smiled, New gathered, and ambrosial smell diffused. To him she hasted, in her face excuse Came prologue, and apology to prompt, 855 Which with bland words at will she thus addressed. Hast thou not wondered, Adam, at my stay? Thee I have missed, and thought it long, deprived Thy presence, agony of love till now

a queen at Harvest Home, see Brand (1913) 305; Hutton (1994) 44, 243; Fowler (1994) 120. 845. Since Eve had previously been ‘due at her hour’ (v 303). divine of: Lat. or Gk construction; cp. vi 428; Horace, Odes III xxvii 10 (imbrium divina avis). 846. measure: rhythm (of his own heartbeats, or nature’s ‘signs of woe’). Cp. ix 783; x 245–7 (Sin’s ‘sympathy’). 851. smiled: Enlivening the metaphor; see Ricks (1963) 59: nature’s smile is one of ‘heartless indifference’. But from Adam’s point of view this is a nondescript bough like any other; cp. ix 735–43n; Burden (1967) 138. In the Renaissance, the familiar device of the printers Stephanus was a branch broken off, with the motto NOLI ALTAM SCIRE. 852. ambrosial: (1) fragrant; (2) of divine food. Cp. ix 838 (‘drink of gods’). 853–4. Eve’s expression as she approaches is like the prologue-speaker of a play, and continues to help out her words, like the prompter. The actor prompted is apology ( justification) personified, not regret. Allegoria, recalling the theatrical simile of ix 670–6 and implying insincerity. 855. bland: Cp. ix 886, and the innocent blandness of v 5. 856–85. Subtly persuasive, leaving no stop unpulled; yet Tillyard (1930) 263 and Waldock (1961) 46, 48 imagine Adam falls without being tempted by Eve. Cp. ix 999 (‘fondly overcome with female charm’), M.’s only explicit comment on the matter.

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Not felt, nor shall be twice, for never more 860 Mean I to try, what rash untried I sought, The pain of absence from thy sight. But strange Hath been the cause, and wonderful to hear: This tree is not as we are told, a tree Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown 865 Opening the way, but of divine effect To open eyes, and make them gods who taste; And hath been tasted such: the serpent wise, Or not restrained as we, or not obeying, Hath eaten of the fruit, and is become, 870 Not dead, as we are threatened, but thenceforth Endued with human voice and human sense, Reasoning to admiration, and with me Persuasively hath so prevailed, that I Have also tasted, and have also found 875 The effects to correspond, opener mine eyes, Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart, And growing up to godhead; which for thee Chiefly I sought, without thee can despise. For bliss, as thou hast part, to me is bliss, 880 Tedious, unshared with thee, and odious soon. Thou therefore also taste, that equal lot May join us, equal joy, as equal love; Lest thou not tasting, different degree Disjoin us, and I then too late renounce 885 Deity for thee, when fate will not permit. Thus Eve with countenance blithe her story told;

863–5. Undermining her own case for the fruit’s efficacy (Leonard (1990) 211). 867–74. Dikaiologia, justifying her action on the ground of the serpent’s irresistible persuasion. Or . . . or: either . . . or. tasted: experienced, tested (OED 2, 3). 881. lot: Redolent of satanic ideology. 883. Despite repeating equal, Eve stands on her newly acquired superior degree, as Adam never did – although before the Fall she was not even his equal, in every sense (iv 296). 885. Other Eves seduce Adam sexually, but M.’s threatens rather than charms (Turner (1987) 292). fate: Adopting Satan’s language; see H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 8 comparing ix 856, 988, 936 with ix 532, 732, 711. Eve pretends readiness to renounce deity she does not have, yet will not renounce her claim on Adam even after her own death (ix 830). 886. blithe: Cp. ix 613 (‘spirited’, of the serpent).

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But in her cheek distemper flushing glowed. On the other side, Adam, soon as he heard The fatal trespass done by Eve, amazed, 890 Astonied stood and blank, while horror chill Ran through his veins, and all his joints relaxed; From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve Down dropped, and all the faded roses shed: Speechless he stood and pale, till thus at length 895 First to himself he inward silence broke. O fairest of creation, last and best Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! 900 How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, 887. On flushing in visual art, see Frye (1978) 275. With Adam’s reaction here, contrast his enamourment with her innocent blush after the dream temptation; cp. v 10–28, 384f; viii 511, 618; Turner (1987) 263f. distempter: intoxication (ix 793); disordered condition due to disturbed temperament of the humours. 890. Cp. Job 17:8 (‘Upright men shall be astonied at this’); Virgil, Aen. ii 120f (obstipuere animi, gelidusque per ima cucurrit / ossa tremor). Astonied: bewildered; stunned. blank: (1) resourceless; deprived of speech (OED 5); pale (OED 1). Cp. ix 894. ‘Void . . . Paleness of mind, not complexion’ (Richardson). 892. slack: Cp. xi 632–4 (‘man’s effeminate slackness’). The garland, meant as a tribute to his queen (ix 840–1), becomes a funerary motif, as if she were already dead. Adam’s slack grip, the relaxation of horror, poignantly conveys his failing hold on happiness. 893. The first instance of decay. Cp. Statius, Thebaid vii 149f, where Bacchus, dismayed by Thebes’s impending destruction, drops his thyrsus, and grapes fall from his head untouched. Adam was earlier (iv 279) cast as Bacchus. Cp. ix 426–31n (roses symbolizing human frailty and mutable felicity); E. M. W. Tillyard, TLS (1 July 1949) 429; Werman (1995) 212 (rose garlands used by Jewish brides and bridegrooms). 895. On the Fall as a breaking of inward silence, see Leonard (1990) 257. 896–9. ‘Fairest to sight, but not to thought’ (Madsen (1968) 154). last and best: Cp. ix 101–2; Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 11, citing Augustine (‘he that comes last is commonly best’). Cp. viii 565f; xi 634–6; F. Bowers, PMLA, 84 (1969) 272 (Adam’s motive is love for Eve ‘which he irrationally placed above the love of God’); Musacchio (1991) 167–9 (Adam trades places in the hierarchy with Eve). amiable: lovable, lovely. 900–1. Rhetorically, apokarteresis (abandonment of hope). Defaced: Cp. De Doctrina i 12 (‘a diminution of the majesty of the human countenance,

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Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote! Rather how hast thou yielded to transgress The strict forbiddance, how to violate The sacred fruit forbidden! Some cursèd fraud 905 Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown, And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee Certain my resolution is to die; How can I live without thee, how forgo Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,

and a conscious degradation of mind’), cited Stein (1953) 8. deflowered: (1) ruined (figurative); (2) seduced by Satan (cp. ix 270n). Resonating with earlier portrayals of Eve as ‘gatherer and guardian of flowers’ (Ricks (1963) 140). Cp. Werman (1995) 212: in the midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer Satan has intercourse with Eve. devote: consigned to destruction. devote!] devote? 1667 (as often, putting question for exclamation mark). 904–5. On the anthropology of sacred fruit at earth’s centre, see Tennant (1968). unknown: Qualifying fraud, not enemy; see Leonard (1990) 223 refuting J. Gagen, MiltQ, 17 (1983) 116. ‘Enemy’ is not yet distinct from ‘Satan’, whose enmity they have been warned to fear. Adam suspects a connection between Satan and the serpent – a shrewd guess showing his superior intellect (Burden (1967) 160). 906–7. (1) ‘my resolution to die with thee is firm’; (2) ‘certainly my resolution is to die with thee’; (3) ‘with thee, my religious confidence must fail’. Cp. ix 955–9; Driscoll (1993) 101 (Adam’s rationality may falter, yet ‘no facile delusion eases his transgression’). Critics dispute Adam’s motive: e.g. Waldock (1961) 51f (he falls ‘through true love’); Gardner (1965) 90 (‘he cannot live without her’); Belsey (1988) 82 (he chooses ‘on the basis of interest’). The comparative goodness of Adam’s motives amplifies our own corruption – a point missed by Gallagher (1990) 103f in denigrating Adam the ‘male chauvinist’. Adam’s choosing to die with Eve travesties Christ’s sacrifice, and is culpable; yet these prior reflections are not ignoble. He has not yet quite fallen. 908–9. Adam is not deceived (1 Tim. 2:14). Cp. ix 998; Augustine, City of God XIV xi; Lewis (1942) 67 (‘He did not believe what his wife said to him to be true, but yielded because of the social bond (socialis necessitudo) between them’). Lacking independent resolution he consciously surrenders to Eve’s false assumptions (ix 879–85). Eve again presses for what Adam cannot refuse her, except by opting for a higher love. Burden (1967) 163ff presents him as failing to choose separation (as at ix 342–75 he failed to refuse it) – as failing, in fact, to choose the divorce advocated in Tetrachordon. So Williams (1948) 123: ‘the human race would not have been involved if only Eve had sinned’. But see ix 919n. sweet converse: Ironic in view of the recriminations to come.

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910 To live again in these wild woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, 915 Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. So having said, as one from sad dismay Recomforted, and after thoughts disturbed Submitting to what seemed remediless, 920 Thus in calm mood his words to Eve he turned. 910. A. W. Verity, in Milton (1910), Brooks (1968) 273f, and M. Giovannini, Explicator, 12 (Oct. 1953) think the woods subjectively wild; G. Koretz, Explicator, 13 ( June 1954) retorts that Paradise was already a wilderness before the Fall (v 294, 297), but from being sweet is now forlorn. H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 12 detects false meiosis verging on self-pity. 911. Mention of another Eve avoids any appearance of improvidence in God, and removes the excuse that Eve is Adam’s only alternative to loneliness. M. himself married three times. 913–16. Taking ‘one flesh’ literalistically. Cp. viii 495–9n; ix 958f; Madsen (1968) 68f (Adam and Eve are in fact two, and when she is false ‘they are no longer metaphorically one’); Rosenblatt (1994) 196 (Adam dissevers natural from divine law, and prefers Eve’s love to obedience to God). By using the Dominical institution of the marital state of ‘one flesh’ against the prohibition, he obfuscates the choice before him. M. interpreted the Bible differently; Tetrachordon rejects the view that ‘flesh of my flesh’ (Gen. 2:23) refers to an indissoluble bond; taking it metaphorically as a state of love, solace, and mutual compatibility. Adam significantly omits the bond of soul (viii 499). See Burden (1967) 167 (nature is only an excuse if no higher power is acknowledged); Turner (1987) 297f (all this by no means negates the deeply tragic note of his human feeling). Cp. Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 189: ‘Oh, hadst thou loved God more, Eve not so well, / Thou wouldst have left us heirs of heaven, not hell.’ 919. seemed: Not endorsing Adam’s view. Possible remedies include consulting with God; divorcing Eve (urged by Burden); and offering to die instead of Eve. See Corns (1994) 76–8; D. Danielson, MiltQ, 23 (1989) 121–7; Leonard (1990) 215–20. After his fall Adam rightly sees his own sacrifice to be inadequate (x 947–57); before, all might have been different. But, to the extent that Adam and Eve allegorize a single person, ‘all was lost’ already when Eve sinned (ix 784). 920. calm: Adam’s fall is not excited like Eve’s, for he is ‘not deceived’ (ix 998–9n). He seems stoic, or fallen into ‘apathy’ (cp. ii 564). ‘The line cannot be pronounced but as it ought; slowly, gravely’ (Richardson).

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Bold deed thou hast presumed, adventurous Eve, And peril great provoked, who thus hast dared Had it been only coveting to eye That sacred fruit, sacred to abstinence, 925 Much more to taste it under ban to touch. But past who can recall, or done undo? Not God omnipotent, nor fate, yet so Perhaps thou shalt not die, perhaps the fact Is not so heinous now, foretasted fruit, 930 Profaned first by the serpent, by him first Made common and unhallowed ere our taste; Nor yet on him found deadly, he yet lives, Lives, as thou saidst, and gains to live as man Higher degree of life, inducement strong 935 To us, as likely tasting to attain Proportional ascent, which cannot be But to be gods, or angels demigods. Nor can I think that God, creator wise, 921. Responding to Eve’s presentation of her deed as epic; see Burden (1967) 146. Cp. Eve’s tragic horror at the tempter’s venturous act in her dream (v 65; contrast ix 690). adventurous: rashly daring. Spelled ‘adventrous’: metrically trisyllabic. 922. hast] hath 1674. See B. A. Wright, RES, 5 (1954) 170 (1674 makes the thought more general); Adams (1955) 92 (good reasons for preferring hast). 923. Gallagher (1990) 95 defends Eve’s adventurousness and coveting (‘yearning’): only when she touched the fruit did she sin. But see Rosenblatt (1994) 190: coveting was taken to represent the whole Decalogue. 924. Describing the fruit quite flatly; cp. ix 851n, 902. 925. ban: See ix 651n. 926–51. Rhetorically medela, palliating undeniable offences that cannot be undone (H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 13). 927. yet so: even so. In grouping God with fate, Adam slips into the satanic ideology; see Burden (1967) 172f. 928. Like Eve, Adam blurs the terms of the prohibition; cp. ix 663n. fact: crime (OED 1 c, then the commonest sense). 930. Uncritically accepting Eve’s recension of the serpent’s story, instead of exploring his ‘fraud’ as ix 904f led one to hope. See Rosenblatt (1994) 192: Satan is cast as gentile (cp. Acts 15:20, 29; 21:25), Eve as idolatrous. 936. Satanic reasoning; cp. ix 710–12n. Far from being persuaded by Eve, Adam pursues his own ambition. 938–51. See Rosenblatt (1994) 226 (comparing Num. 14, Moses’ argument on behalf of the Israelites); H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 15 (mankind are not in fact God’s prime creatures: Adam forgets the angels).

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Though threatening, will in earnest so destroy 940 Us his prime creatures, dignified so high, Set over all his works, which in our fall, For us created, needs with us must fail, Dependent made; so God shall uncreate, Be frustrate, do, undo, and labour loose, 945 Not well conceived of God, who though his power Creation could repeat, yet would be loath Us to abolish, lest the adversary Triúmph and say; Fickle their state whom God Most favours, who can please him long? Me first 950 He ruined, now mankind; whom will he next? Matter of scorn, not to be given the foe. However I with thee have fixed my lot, Certain to undergo like doom, if death Consort with thee, death is to me as life; 955 So forcible within my heart I feel The bond of nature draw me to my own, My own in thee, for what thou art is mine; Our state cannot be severed, we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

941–8. Correctly foreseeing nature’s involvement in the Fall, but attributing to God an unjust compunction. 944. labour: (1) work, effort; (2) work performed (OED 3, common). loose: Indicating either ‘lose’ or ‘loose, undo, do away with’ (OED 2, 7). 947–8. Cp. Dent. 32:27. For adversary = Satan, cp. vi 282n. With moving echoes of the Son’s plea at iii 156–64 (Leonard (1990) 226f ). 949. Working himself into an adversary role. 951. foe.] foe, 1674 (wrongly). 952. For the ideology of lot, see ix 881n. 953. Certain: resolved. Probably Latinism (certus); but see OED 5 b. doom: (1) judgment (OED 2); (2) irrevocable destiny (OED 4 a). The fallen angels’ sense; cp. ii 550 (‘doom of battle’); Burden (1967) 173. 954. Consort: Suggesting that Eve, like Sin, has Death as a sexual partner (Flannagan). Reminiscent of Satan’s ‘evil be thou my good’ (iv 110); but Adam’s antinomies are less abstract. 955–9. See K. Kelly, in Allen (1990) 206: Adam ‘cannot relinquish the image of himself in Eve’. Self-deceivingly he uses ‘Restoration language of passion’. Exactly contradicting Tetrachordon, YP ii 681, where not to divorce is ‘losing ourselves’; see Rosenblatt (1994) 200. bond of nature: Cp. ix 908–9n, 914 (‘link of nature’). The link now becomes a bond; cp. 1 Cor. 7:15 (the ‘bondage’ of marriage with an unbeliever); Burden (1967) 172f.

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paradise lost So Adam, and thus Eve to him replied. Oh glorious trial of exceeding love, Illustrious evidence, example high! Engaging me to emulate, but short Of thy perfection, how shall I attain, Adam, from whose dear side I boast me sprung, And gladly of our union hear thee speak, One heart, one soul in both; whereof good proof This day affords, declaring thee resolved, Rather than death or aught than death more dread Shall separate us, linked in love so dear, To undergo with me one guilt, one crime, If any be, of tasting this fair fruit, Whose virtue, for of good still good proceeds, Direct, or by occasion hath presented This happy trial of thy love, which else So eminently never had been known. Were it I thought death menaced would ensue This my attempt, I would sustain alone The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die Deserted, than oblige thee with a fact Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured Remarkably so late of thy so true,

961. exceeding: (1) extremely great; (2) excessive (dramatic irony). Satan, Eve, and Adam all display certain virtues in excess; see J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 92. 962. evidence: manifestation; proof, witness. Eve’s bomphiologia (inflated style) betrays her insincerity. 967. One heart, one soul: Contrast viii 604, their relations before the Fall (‘Union of mind, or in us both one soul’). The passionate heart displaces the intellectual mens; and instead of trust there is proof. 974. Direct . . . occasion: directly or indirectly. 975. Cp. ix 961. Eve’s test of love was a misogynistic feature of many literary treatments of the Fall; cp. Grotius, Adamus Exul (1601) 1398– 1468; Andreini, Adamo Caduto (1613) III i; Joseph Beaumont, Psyche (1648); Kirkconnell (1952) 180–4, 254–7; Turner (1987) 295 n 70. 976. eminently: conspicuously. Blasphemously playing on the theological sense (OED 4), whereby God possesses moral excellences not formally (in the ordinary, creaturely sense) but eminently. The apparent analogy between Adam’s and Christ’s offer of his life is actually contrast. Love is not Messiah’s dominant motive: ‘above . . . shone / Filial obedience’ (iii 268f ). 980. oblige: (1) tie; (2) make guilty, devote to death (obligare morti). Cp. Horace, Odes II viii 5 (Richardson). fact: crime. 981. chiefly assured: ‘especially since I have been assured’.

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So faithful love unequalled; but I feel Far otherwise the event, not death, but life Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys, Taste so divine, that what of sweet before Hath touched my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh. On my experience, Adam, freely taste, And fear of death deliver to the winds. So saying, she embraced him, and for joy Tenderly wept, much won that he his love Had so ennobled, as of choice to incur Divine displeasure for her sake, or death. In recompense (for such compliance bad Such recompense best merits) from the bough She gave him of that fair enticing fruit With liberal hand: he scrupled not to eat Against his better knowledge, not deceived, But fondly overcome with female charm. Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs, and nature gave a second groan, Sky loured, and muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completing of the mortal sin

984. event: result, outcome. 988. Satanic martyria; cp. ix 807f; H. Shitaka, ERA, 3 (1983) 17. 989. deliver . . . winds: cast away your fear. Also a horrible prolepsis to Death sniffing from afar ‘the smell / of mortal change on earth’ (x 267–81). 992. ennobled: put higher in the moral hierarchy than before. (And higher than it ought to be.) 994. compliance: unworthy submission, conformity (OED 6). Cp. ix 908–9n; Gen. 3:17. 996. enticing: Because Adam’s heart and appetite are corrupt; cp. ix 735–43n, 851n, 924n. 998–9. Cp. ix 856–85n, 908–9n; 1 Tim. 2:14. Leonard (1990) 192 sees inconsistency with iii 129, since Adam is not deceived by another ‘sort’. But in so far as Adam and Eve allegorize a single person, Satan tempts both, when he tempts Eve. fondly: foolishly. 1000–1. Cp. ix 782–4n (the first groan); Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer xxxiv 254 (when people cut down the wood of the tree that yields fruit, its cry goes from one end of the world to the other); Werman (1995) 213. 1002. The first thunder; until now showers have been gentle (iv 646). ‘A melancholy, mournful chiding’ (Richardson). 1003–5. As at ix 510–14, the initial letters of the lines form a relevant acrostic, here WOE (P.J. Klemp, private information). 1003–4. The only explicit mention of original sin. Cp. De Doctrina i 11, YP vi 382ff: ‘the sin common to all men’, ‘that which our first parents, and in them all their posterity, committed when they abandoned their

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Original; while Adam took no thought, 1005 Eating his fill, nor Eve to iterate Her former trespass feared, the more to soothe Him with her loved society, that now As with new wine intoxicated both They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel 1010 Divinity within them breeding wings Wherewith to scorn the earth: but that false fruit Far other operation first displayed, Carnal desire inflaming, he on Eve Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him 1015 As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn: Till Adam thus gan Eve to dalliance move. Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste,

obedience and tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree . . . a most atrocious offence’ which ‘broke every part of the law. For what fault is there which man did not commit in committing this sin? He was to be condemned both for trusting Satan and for not trusting God; he was faithless, ungrateful, disobedient, greedy, uxorious; she, negligent of her husband’s welfare; both of them committed theft, robbery with violence, murder against their children (i.e. the whole human race); each was sacrilegious and deceitful, cunningly aspiring to divinity although thoroughly unworthy of it, proud and arrogant.’ The sin is original in the Pauline sense that ‘all sinned in Adam’ (Rom. 5:12–21). ‘It is not only a constant principle of divine justice but also a very ancient law among all races and all religions, that when a man has committed sacrilege . . . not only he but also the whole of his posterity becomes an anathema’. 1008. For the Fall as intoxication, cp. ix 793n; Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 25 (‘Omnes errorem bibunt, before they come into the world, they are intoxicated by Error’s cup’). 1008–16. Cp. ix 1027–45; Homer, Il. iii 437–49; Shumaker (1967) 175f. 1010. The illusion of divinity breeding divine or angelic wings. Cp. v 86–90 (Eve’s dream of flying with her angel tempter); x 842. On flight as overreaching, see K. Borris, MiltS, 26 (1990) 105. 1012. operation: effect. 1013. Beginning an account of the Fall’s ‘formal cause’. The ‘form’ of human disobedience is the change in nature that accompanies sin; see L. Howard, HLQ, 9 (1945) 163f. 1017–20. Adam’s comprobatio, seeking favour through praise. Elaborately developing the thematic wordplays on tasting and discerning. E.g. exact of taste, / And elegant travesties Eve’s discriminating avoidance of ‘inelegant’ mixtures of tastes in preparing supper (v 332–6). Contrast viii 539–44n, the unfallen Adam admitting Eve’s ‘inward less exact’. He no longer

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And elegant, of sapience no small part, Since to each meaning savour we apply, 1020 And palate call judicious; I the praise Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purveyed. Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstained From this delightful fruit, nor known till now True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be 1025 In things to us forbidden, it might be wished, For this one tree had been forbidden ten. But come, so well refreshed, now let us play, As meet is, after such delicious fare; For never did thy beauty since the day

distinguishes mind from lower faculties. elegant: refined, delicate. Implying that Eve has made cuisine a fine art. For the play in sapience, see ix 796–7n; Schultz traces it to St Bernard, who writes that Eve ‘transgressed, with the fruit of ill-savour, the Apostle’s rule sapere ad sobrietatem’. savour: (1) tastiness (OED 1 b); (2) understanding (OED 5). Cp. v 84n; Erasmus, Convivium Profanum, in Colloquies tr. Thompson (1965) 597 (‘You have a most instructed taste’, palatum habes eruditissimum); Jeanneret (1991) 181 and ch. 5 passim (on the word-feast tradition, in which such wordplays were ancient and widespread). 1019. we] me 1674 (wrongly). 1021. purveyed: provided, made provision. 1023. known: Ellipsis for ‘have we known’. 1024–6. Proleptic of the covenant with its ten prohibitions. The original commandment is now broken ‘into countless refractive prohibitions’ (Rosenblatt (1994) 21). Cp. Bruno, Commentary on Rev. 12:3, Migne clxi 668A (to break one commandment is to violate the whole Decalogue; ten ‘includes all other numbers’). 1027. Exod. 32:6f, ‘The people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people . . . have corrupted themselves.’ play: Rendering LXX πα6ζειν: (1) sport, dance (often with evil associations in PL; see Carter (1996) ); (2) play amorously (supported by ix 1034ff ). 1027–45. Lewis (1942) 69 judges the contrast with unfallen sexuality a failure – ‘he had made the unfallen already so voluptuous’. But see Turner (1987): M. deliberately made sex before the Fall exciting, and foreplay here perfunctory by contrast. The suggestion of domination in seized (ix 1037) is without the ‘gentle’ qualifying ‘seized’ at iv 488f. Cp. also viii 508–11; Turner (1987) 301 (with darted contagious fire contrast the innocent darts of viii 62). For a Judaic idea that the fruit stimulated lust, see Williams (1948) 125; M. was not original in this, pace Turner (1987) 295. 1029–41. Cp. iv 697–703 (the nuptial bower); Homer, Il. xiv 327ff (Hera,

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1030 I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorned With all perfections, so inflame my sense With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now Than ever, bounty of this virtuous tree. So said he, and forbore not glance or toy 1035 Of amorous intent, well understood Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire. Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank, Thick overhead with verdant roof embowered He led her nothing loath; flowers were the couch, 1040 Pansies, and violets, and asphodel, And hyacinth, earth’s freshest softest lap. There they their fill of love and love’s disport Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal, The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep 1045 Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play. Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit, to deceive Zeus, comes to him seeming, thanks to Aphrodite’s zone, more charming than ever) (Addison). Adam and Eve’s couch shares hyacinth with Zeus and Hera’s. The Homeric analogy is sexist in implication; see M. Nyquist, in Attridge (1987) 223f. After the Fall, presentation of sexuality switches to misogynistic sexism. 1029–33. Cp. Homer, Il. iii 442ff; xiv 313ff (Paris’s sensuality); D. Bush, JEGP, 60 (1961) 640. 1033. Before the Fall Eve was adorned with virtues; now the tree is. See ix 616n, 649, 745, 778n, 795. 1038. embowered: Recalling the nuptial bower (iv 690–711); but now any shady bank will do for their casual copulation. For Plato’s moral contrast between lovemaking within an enclosure and ‘on the ground’, see M. Nyquist, in Attridge (1987) 228f. 1042–4. Cp. ix 914–15n; Prov. 7 (the impudent woman enticing to adultery: ‘Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves’). Debasing solace by applying it to physical sex rather than complete relations (Burden (1967) 166). Corns (1994) 67 sees an attack on the notion of sex as a postlapsarian compensation ‘to make life in the fallen world tolerable’. 1046–51. Contrast their ‘airy light’ sleep, bred of ‘temperate vapours bland’, at v 3–7. bland: pleasing to the senses (whereas ‘bland’ at v 5 = genial). unkindly: unnatural. fumes: vapours rising from stomach to brain, especially after drinking alcohol. Fumes were inevitable, but their quality was critical: when dense, they produced grosser sleep. Cp. Vives, De Anima (1538) 109f: Non potest quidem tolli omnino ea effumugatio, quae a ventriculo ascendit ad caput: sed eius densitas ad certum aliquem modum efficit somnum, subtilitas vigiliam, hoc est solutionem sensuum. Vives treats sleep as an image of death; perhaps cp. ix 1052–9n on degrees of death. For vapours as a psychiatric

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That with exhilarating vapour bland About their spirits had played, and inmost powers Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep 1050 Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams Encumbered, now had left them, up they rose As from unrest, and each the other viewing, Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds How darkened; innocence, that as a veil 1055 Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone, Just confidence, and native righteousness, And honour from about them, naked left To guilty shame: he covered, but his robe Uncovered more. So rose the Danite strong disorder, see Cheyne, English Malady (1733). conscious: guilty. Treip (1994) 213 compares fallacious fruit (‘man’s “inner capacity to fail” ’) with PR i 155. 1052–9. Gen. 3:7, ‘The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.’ Contrast v 384n, where Eve, ‘virtue-proof ’, needs no veil in Raphael’s presence. Nudity usually signified simplicity, integrity, sincerity, or virtue: e.g. Horace, Odes I xxiv 6f (Pudor . . . nudaque Veritas). See Panofsky (1962) 156 (Adam and Eve’s innocent nuditas virtualis replaced by nuditas criminalis); Steadman (1976) 67 (Aristotelian anagnorisis: they discover the ‘change from ignorance to knowledge’ is really a change from innocence to experience of evil). shame: For Horace a good quality, for M. guilty; cp. ix 1114. It was the first of four degrees of death; cp. viii 323–33n; De Doctrina i 12, YP vi 393f. The number of lost virtues listed was itself a number symbolizing virtue (the tetraktys; the four cardinal virtues); cp. ix 1074–6n. covered: Cp. iv 289n (‘with native honour clad’); Ps. 109:29 (‘Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame’); Guarini, Il Pastor Fido (1590) iv 9 (discrimination between true and false honour). robe: Referring, since mankind has no physical clothing until x 216, to the covering of guilty shame. At x 222 Christ supplies his own ‘robe’, which will be imputed to mankind. 1058. shame:] shame 1667; 1674 (in error). Shame is personified (as at ix 1097); with his robe (a vestige of Adam’s ‘robe of righteousness’) he covered (them), but no longer adequately. The absent object mimes the absent covering. See Moyles (1985) 130. 1059. more. So] more, so 1674 (wrongly). 1059–63. For Samson’s abandonment by God and betrayal by Delilah, see Judges 16. Samson’s father was of the tribe of Dan ( Judges 13:2). The first syllable of Dalilah is nearer the Gk form. M. Nyquist, in Attridge (1987) 212–43 or in Parker (1986) 343ff, rightly contends that Adam and Eve (they destitute) are both compared to Samson: to apply the comparison to Adam alone – as many critics have done – is ‘misogynistic’. She assumes Delilah is morally inferior to Samson. But Samson was disloyal

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1060 Hercúlean Samson from the harlot-lap Of Philistéan Daliláh, and waked Shorn of his strength, they destitute and bare Of all their virtue: silent, and in face Confounded long they sat, as strucken mute, 1065 Till Adam, though not less than Eve abashed, At length gave utterance to these words constrained. O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give ear To that false worm, of whomsoever taught To counterfeit man’s voice, true in our fall, 1070 False in our promised rising; since our eyes Opened we find indeed, and find we know Both good and evil, good lost, and evil got, Bad fruit of knowledge, if this be to know, Which leaves us naked thus, of honour void, 1075 Of innocence, of faith, of purity, Our wonted ornaments now soiled and stained, And in our faces evident the signs to Judah, so that ‘the Lord was departed from him’; his epithet Herculean is as heathen as that of Philistean Dalilah. Besides, Adam is more like Samson, in his uxoriousness and his being betrayed, than Eve is. The simile may be a trap for more than one sort of unwary reader – not only those in the same tradition with Willet, Hexapla (1608) 48. destitute: bereft of (innocence) (OED 2 a). 1067. Cp. ix 1029–41n, Zeus’ resentment after Hera seduced him. ‘The defensive self-deception that results when patriarchal superiority becomes unsettled’ (Nyquist, ibid.). More postlapsarian misogyny; see Ricks (1963) 103: Adam’s ‘cry proclaims that the word evil is derived from Eve, and that evil derives from her’. There was much speculation as to the significance of Eve, a name only used after the Fall (Gen. 3:20). See ix 291n; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 54; Hollander (1981) 48; Leonard (1990) 36, 228 (Adam’s false etymology shows his clouded perception of ‘names and natures’). Adam has acquired ignorance of the real source of temptation – or denies his knowledge of it. 1070–4. Cp. De Doctrina i 10, YP vi 352 (‘It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because of what happened afterwards: for since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil’); Willet, Hexapla (1608) 43 (citing Augustine: by transgression mankind got no wisdom, only ‘experimental knowledge’ of evil – a point often made). 1074 –6. Cp. ix 1054–7, the quadrate of virtue: honour and innocence are repeated; faith matches ‘confidence’, purity ‘righteousness’. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 38 discusses a Hebraic ‘curiosity’ reckoning the ornaments of Eve as twenty-four in number (completeness).

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Of foul concupiscence; whence evil store; Even shame, the last of evils; of the first Be sure then. How shall I behold the face Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy And rapture so oft beheld? Those heavenly shapes Will dazzle now this earthly, with their blaze Insufferably bright. Oh might I here In solitude live savage, in some glade Obscured, where highest woods impenetrable To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad And brown as evening: cover me ye pines, Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs Hide me, where I may never see them more. But let us now, as in bad plight, devise What best may for the present serve to hide The parts of each from other, that seem most To shame obnoxious, and unseemliest seen, Some tree whose broad smooth leaves together sewed,

1079. last: least. Shame, better than the guilty ‘mirth’ of ix 1009, is the first step to repentance (Richardson). 1082–4. After the Fall there will be ‘no unmediated contact with truth’ (Damrosch (1985) 76). 1083. earthly: earthly nature (cp. viii 453). 1085–90. The archetypal retirement. Revulsion from vice was sometimes a motive; cp. Vaughan, ‘Retirement’ (1957) 462; Røstvig (1962) ch. 4 (the association of shady woods with retirement); Fowler (1994) 266. It could take a sexual turn: e.g. Marvell, ‘The Garden’ 25f: ‘When we have run our passions’ heat, / Love hither makes his best retreat.’ woods impenetrable / To star or sunlight: Cp. Statius, Thebaid x 85f (Sleep’s dark grove, nulli penetrabilis astro, / lucus iners); Spenser, FQ I i 7 (the wood of Errour, whose trees ‘Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, / Not perceable with power of any starre’). Adam’s impulse to retire would not be approved by the activist in M. umbrage: shade; foliage (OED 1, 2 c). brown: See iv 246n. 1090. ‘In this one line is a greater distress shown than in all the tragedies that were ever written’ (Richardson). them: i.e. the shapes (ix 1082). 1091–8. Gen. 3:7, ‘They knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons’ (Geneva ‘breeches’; margin: ‘Hebrew: things to gird about them to hide their privities’). Cp. De Doctrina i 12, YP vi 394, taking the shame to arise from pollution of the ‘whole man’: ‘their mind and their conscience is defiled. Hence comes shame.’ obnoxious: (1) exposed (OED 1 a); (2) objectionable (OED 6). sewed: plaited. Cp. ix 1117, ‘cincture’. 1092–3. In 1674, for and from are wrongly transposed.

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And girded on our loins, may cover round Those middle parts, that this newcomer, shame, There sit not, and reproach us as unclean. So counselled he, and both together went 1100 Into the thickest wood, there soon they chose The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renowned, But such as at this day to Indians known In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 1105 The bended twigs take root and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillared shade High overarched, and echoing walks between; There oft the Indian herdsman shunning heat Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds 1110 At loopholes cut through thickest shade: those leaves They gathered, broad as Amazonian targe, And with what skill they had, together sewed, To gird their waist, vain covering if to hide 1097–8. newcomer: (1) arrival; (2) springer (horticultural). Ambivalence of the sacred appears in this postlapsarian notion of uncleanness. Cp. x 735; PR ii 328–69 ( Jesus rejecting the notion). 1100–10. Desacralizing a tree holy to Indians; see Svendsen (1956) 31f; S. Viswanathan, MiltN, 2 (1968) 43–5; B. Rajan, in Stanwood (1995) 22f. The banyan (Indian fig) was described by so many (Pliny, Raleigh, Purchas, and encyclopedists like Bartholomew) that a source is hard to assign. Cp. Gerard, Herbal (1597) 1330f: ‘The ends thereof hang down, and touch the ground, where they take root and grow in such sort that those twigs become great trees; and these being grown up to the like greatness, do cast their branches and twiggy tendrils unto the earth, where they likewise take hold and root. . . . Of one tree is made a great wood . . . which the Indians do use for coverture against the extreme heat of the sun. . . . Some likewise use them for pleasure, cutting down . . . as it were a vault, through the thickest part, from which also they cut certain loopholes or windows in some places, to the end to receive thereby the fresh cool air that entereth thereat; as also for light, that they may see their cattle. . . . The first or mother of this wood or desert of trees is hard to be known from the children.’ Not a ‘deep interior sanctuary’ (Svendsen) nor ‘pastoral arcades gulfed in some large, dreamlike silence’ (D. R. Pearce, in Barker (1965) 379), but travesty of the nuptial bower (iv 690–708); see P. Parker, ELR, 9 (1979) 327. Adam and Eve shun the ‘blaze / Insufferably bright’ of the Son’s presence, and so cut themselves off from God (ix 1083f; x 101). But see Stavely (1987) 25f: the fig is a tree of life, with loopholes letting in general grace. The proliferating tree may figure ramifying original sin; cp. Raleigh, History (1614) I iv 3 citing Thomas

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Their guilt and dreaded shame; oh how unlike 1115 To that first naked glory. Such of late Columbus found the American so girt With feathered cincture, naked else and wild Among the trees on isles and woody shores. Thus fenced, and as they thought, their shame in part 1120 Covered, but not at rest or ease of mind, They sat them down to weep, nor only tears Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within Began to rise, high passions, anger, hate, Mistrust, suspicion, discord, and shook sore 1125 Their inward state of mind, calm region once And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent: For understanding ruled not, and the will Heard not her lore, both in subjection now To sensual appetite, who from beneath 1130 Usurping over sovereign reason claimed Superior sway: from thus distempered breast, Adam, estranged in look and altered style,

Becon’s allegorization – as the fig-tree, so man grew upright towards God before the Fall; ‘then like unto the boughs of this tree, he began to bend downward, and stooped toward the earth, which all the rest of Adam’s posterity have done, rooting themselves therein and fastening themselves to this corrupt world’. Indian herdsman: An antitype, in his pastoral care, to the corrupt clergy (Rajan, op. cit.). Amazonian targe: crescentshaped shield. Aptly carried over from Gerard: now even women will begin to make war. 1117. cincture: (1) belt; (2) fillet dividing the shaft of a column from the capital and base (OED 3 b). Continuing the architectural trope from 1106f: the noble savages are pillars of virtue. For contemporary hopes of Paradise in America, and Hobbes’s warnings about the perils of sectarian experiment, see Smith (1994) 226f; Evans (1996) 100f (M. did not suppose Indians exempt from the Fall – ‘naked glory’ was lost on both sides of the Atlantic). 1121–2. Cp. x 910, 1089, 1101; xi 110; Ps. 137:1 (‘we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion’); Tillotson (1926) 90 (arguing against some casuists’ view, that without tears repentance is questionable); Rosenblatt (1994) 65 (‘M. conflates the expulsion from paradise and exile from the promised land’). The universalizing macrocosmic analogy looks back to ix 1102 and prepares for the meteorological disturbances of Bk x. With tears that Rained contrast Eve’s gentle tears at v 130. high winds: Cp. iv 156 (‘gentle gales’); but also x 695ff. 1127–31. With the politico-legal allegoria, cp. iii 176n, 204ff. 1132–3. estranged: changed, made unlike himself (OED 4). style: tone.

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paradise lost Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed. Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed With me, as I besought thee, when that strange Desire of wandering this unhappy morn, I know not whence possessed thee; we had then Remained still happy, not as now, despoiled Of all our good, shamed, naked, miserable. Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail. To whom soon moved with touch of blame thus Eve. What words have passed thy lips, Adam severe, Imput’st thou that to my default, or will Of wandering, as thou callst it, which who knows But might as ill have happened thou being by, Or to thyself perhaps: hadst thou been there, Or here the attempt, thou couldst not have discerned Fraud in the serpent, speaking as he spake; No ground of enmity between us known, Why he should mean me ill, or seek to harm. Was I to have never parted from thy side? As good have grown there still a lifeless rib. Being as I am, why didst not thou the head

1136. A stock misogynist accusation. Cp. the Trin. MS Draft iv (‘Adam then and Eve return accuse one another but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife, is stubborn in his offence’); N. Flinker, in Walker (1988) 86–99 (Adam makes himself sound ridiculous in the passage that follows); Introduction: Composition. 1140–2. Casting up Eve’s argument at ix 332–6. approve: demonstrate practically (OED 3). Miming Adam’s didactic manner: the common metre tails off ineffectually into prosy sententiousness. owe: (1) possess; (2) are under obligation to render (OED 1 a, 2). 1144. Cp. Homer, Il. xiv 83 (Odysseus’ disapproval of Agamemnon’s speech); Fish (1971) 140; Leonard (1990) 176 (Eve questions Adam’s use of words like ‘wandering’ in new senses; linguistic corruption sets in). 1146–50. Gallagher defends Eve on the ground that Satan’s disguise would equally have deceived Adam. But Satan admits he shuns Adam’s ‘higher intellectual’ (ix 483). Besides, seeing through disguises is not the only discernment called for; M. stresses the need for understanding, as against exertion of will. Eve’s happened recalls the satanic ideology of mischance (Burden (1967) 81). 1155. head: 1 Cor. 11:3, ‘The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.’ Having just

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Command me absolutely not to go, Going into such danger as thou saidst? Too facile then thou didst not much gainsay, Nay, didst permit, approve, and fair dismiss. Hadst thou been firm and fixed in thy dissent, Neither had I transgressed, nor thou with me. To whom then first incensed Adam replied. Is this the love, is this the recompense Of mine to thee, ingrateful Eve, expressed Immutable when thou wert lost, not I, Who might have lived and joyed immortal bliss, Yet willingly chose rather death with thee: And am I now upbraided, as the cause Of thy transgressing? Not enough severe, It seems, in thy restraint: what could I more? I warned thee, I admonished thee, foretold The danger, and the lurking enemy That lay in wait; beyond this had been force, And force upon free will hath here no place. But confidence then bore thee on, secure Either to meet no danger, or to find Matter of glorious trial; and perhaps I also erred in overmuch admiring

implied that Adam is no wiser than she is, Eve now blames him for not overruling her – thus reducing headship to a power relation. Contrast iv 442f. 1158–61. Cp. Aemilia Lanyer, ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’ (1611) 778– 80, (1993) 85: Adam ‘was most to blame; / What weakness offered, strength might have refused, / Being lord of all, the greater was his shame’. That Adam let her go is true (ix 372, 378); so is his defence that to Command her would have made her stay ‘not free’ (ix 372). Whether he was Too facile (compliant) is controversial; see ix 370–5n. Despite Eve’s confusion, her accusation seems partly just: a firmer Adam might have found a way between permission and prohibition. 1164. ingrateful: ungrateful. expressed: revealed by actions (OED 7). 1166. joyed: enjoyed. 1175. confidence: unfounded assurance; overboldness; presumption (OED 4, citing Hooker: ‘Their confidence, for the most part, riseth from too much credit given to their own wits’). secure: overconfident. Cp. ix 372. 1177. Matter: pretext, occasion (OED 13). 1178–86. Cp. viii 540–59, where Adam displeases Raphael by speaking of ‘greatness of mind and nobleness’ in Eve, ‘an awe / About her, as a guard angelic placed’. On the psychologizing, see M. Nicolson, PQ, 6

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What seemed in thee so perfect, that I thought 1180 No evil durst attempt thee, but I rue That error now, which is become my crime, And thou the accuser. Thus it shall befall Him who to worth in women overtrusting Lets her will rule; restraint she will not brook, 1185 And left to herself, if evil thence ensue, She first his weak indulgence will accuse. Thus they in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning, And of their vain contést appeared no end. THE END OF THE NINTH BOOK

(1927) 17 citing More, Conjectura (1653) for the identification of Adam and Eve with intellect and will. But M.’s Eve as often resembles ratio; see ix 703–9n. 1183. women] woman Bentley. The switch from plural to singular within the sentence can be defended as miming fallen Adam’s misogynistic confusion of general and particular. Cp., however, Terence, Eunuchus II i 10. 1187–9. Cp. vi 692; Quint (1993) 303 (Messiah will again have to break the impasse). fruitless: Enlivened by the thematic pun of ix 648.

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Paradise Lost BOOK X The Argument

Man’s transgression known, the guardian angels forsake Paradise, and return up to heaven to approve their vigilance, and are approved, God declaring that the entrance of Satan could not be by them prevented.1 He sends his Son2 to judge the transgressors, who descends and gives sentence accordingly; then in pity clothes them both,3 and re-ascends. Sin and Death sitting till then at the gates of hell, by wondrous sympathy4 feeling the success of Satan in this new world, and the sin by man there committed, resolve to sit no longer confined in hell, but to follow Satan their sire up to the place of man: to make the way easier from hell to this world to and fro, they pave a broad highway or bridge over chaos, according to the track that Satan first made; then preparing for earth, they meet him proud of his success returning to hell; their mutual gratulation. Satan arrives at Pandæmonium, in full assembly relates with boasting his success against man; instead of applause is entertained with a general hiss by all his audience, transformed with himself also suddenly into serpents, according to his doom given in Paradise; then deluded with a show of the forbidden tree springing up before them, they greedily reaching to take5 of the fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes. The proceedings of Sin and Death; God foretells the final victory of his Son over them, and the renewing of all things; but for the present commands his angels to make several alterations in the heavens and elements. Adam more

x Argument.] As for 1668 Bk ix. Arg.1 Cp. iii 682–5. Arg.2 Son] Angels 1669. Arg.3 Gen. 3:21 says nothing of pity. Arg.4 sympathy: influence at a distance. Cp. x 246–9. Arg.5 take] taste 1668.

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and more perceiving his fallen condition heavily bewails, rejects the condolement of Eve; she persists and at length appeases him: then to evade the curse likely to fall on their offspring, proposes to Adam violent ways which he approves not, but conceiving better hope, puts her in mind of the late promise made them, that her seed should be revenged on the serpent, and exhorts her with him to seek peace of the offended Deity, by repentance and supplication.

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Meanwhile the heinous and despiteful act Of Satan done in Paradise, and how He in the serpent had perverted Eve, Her husband she, to taste the fatal fruit, Was known in heaven; for what can scape the eye Of God all-seeing, or deceive his heart Omniscient, who in all things wise and just, Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind Of man, with strength entire, and free will armed, Complete to have discovered and repulsed Whatever wiles of foe or seeming friend. For still they knew, and ought to have still remembered

1–16. Both principium (stating the book’s subject) and initium (introducing the first scene). Recapitulating the theology of Bk iii, now to be developed in exchanges between Father and Son (x 34–84) and Son and Adam (x 124ff ). The decrees of the third book are reflected in the book third from last. Bk x ‘has a greater variety of persons in it than any other in the whole poem. The author upon the winding up of his action introduces all those who had any concern in it, and shows with great beauty the influence which it had upon each of them. It is like the last act of a well-written tragedy’ (Addison, Spectator No. 357 (1965) iii 329f ). 3–4. Gallagher (1990) 76, taking ‘per-verted’ = turned towards sin, fancies the syntax as disguising Eve’s corruption. perverted: led astray; subverted (OED 1). 5–7. Dashing Eve’s illusory hope of concealment (ix 811–16). For God’s all-seeing eye, cp. iii 534, 578n. An emblem of omniscience or divine judgment; see Biedermann (1992) 122f, illustrating from Hohberg, Lust- und Arzeney-garten (1675). Wind (1958) 186f relates the symbol to the day of judgment, which comes ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ (1 Cor. 15:52). 6. For God’s heart, cp. Gen. 6:6, ‘it repented the Lord that he had made man . . . and it grieved him at his heart’. 9. entire: unimpaired. 10. Complete: fully equipped. Qualifying mind. 12. still: ever.

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The high injunction not to taste that fruit, Whoever tempted; which they not obeying, Incurred, what could they less, the penalty, And manifold in sin, deserved to fall. Up into heaven from Paradise in haste The angelic guards ascended, mute and sad For man, for of his state by this they knew, Much wondering how the subtle fiend had stolen Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome news From earth arrived at heaven gate, displeased All were who heard, dim sadness did not spare That time celestial visages, yet mixed With pity, violated not their bliss. About the new-arrived, in multitudes The ethereal people ran, to hear and know How all befell: they towards the throne supreme Accountable made haste to make appear With righteous plea, their utmost vigilance, And easily approved; when the most high Eternal Father from his secret cloud, Amidst in thunder uttered thus his voice. Assembled angels, and ye powers returned

14. obeying: Dissyllabic by synaloepha – or possibly a rare, transgressive feminine ending. 16. manifold: numerous; multiplied. Cp. the call to confession at Matins in BCP (1662); cp. Amos 5:12 (‘manifold transgressions and sins’); Ps. 37:20 Vulg. (multiplicati, tr. ‘manifolded’ in early English versions); Keeling (1969) 6–7. For unity opposed to evil multiplicity, cp. vi 767n, 809–10n. The division of Adam and Eve now allegorizes their ‘manifolding’ in sin. For the ramifying first sin, see ix 1003–4n, 1100–10n. 18. angelic guards: The cherubim of iv 550ff; ix 61f. 20–1. For the mode of entry, see ix 69–76. 23–5. M.’s angels are free from the apatheia (impassibility) of pagan gods. 28–31. (1) made haste to the throne; (2) made haste to make their vigilance apparent. Accountable: liable to be called to answer for their responsibilities. 32. During the council, the persons of God are differentiated, but when he leaves heaven for the garden he is simply ‘God’ or ‘the Lord God’ (x 163). Cp. ii 264–5n; iii 375–82n; Rev. 4:5; C. A. Patrides, in Hunter (1971) 12. 34–62. Cp. 1 Sam. 7:10; Exod. 19:9. Initiating action, like all the divine speeches, through immediate response by the Son (x 85).

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paradise lost From unsuccessful charge, be not dismayed, Nor troubled at these tidings from the earth, Which your sincerest care could not prevent, Foretold so lately what would come to pass, When first this tempter crossed the gulf from hell. I told ye then he should prevail and speed On his bad errand, man should be seduced And flattered out of all, believing lies Against his maker; no decree of mine Concurring to necessitate his fall, Or touch with lightest moment of impulse His free will, to her own inclining left In even scale. But fallen he is, and now What rests, but that the mortal sentence pass On his transgression, death denounced that day, Which he presumes already vain and void, Because not yet inflicted, as he feared, By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find

39. gulf: Cp. Luke 16:26. 40. then: At iii 92f. speed: be successful. 41. man: mankind (i.e. Adam and Eve). 43–4. M.’s Arminian God avoids predestinarian decrees that could be taken as necessitating the Fall. Concurring: combining (with human will). 45–7. Against the compatibilists, who rejected this ‘indifferency’ of the will; see Danielson (1982) 141. On the balance symbol, see iv 997–1004n. Contrast the weighing of souls in visual art, where devils often cheated by leaning on a scale. Empson (1961) 116f ) finds discrepancy with Bk iv, where God moves the balance ‘to expose mankind to the tempter’. But, without temptation, free will would have been compromised. A moment was the smallest increment affecting a balance’s equilibrium; cp. vi 239n; M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 165. impulse: Cp. iii 120n, ‘without least impulse . . . of fate’. inclining: Cp. ix 742, where Eve’s desire is ‘inclinable’. 48. Cp. Treip (1994) 206–10. rests: remains. 49–53. See viii 323–33n. Taken literally, Gen. 2:17 (‘the day that thou eatest’) leads to sophisticated interpretation of ‘thou shalt surely die’; cp. Adam’s wishful argument at ix 927–37. ere day end: Christ the judge descends at sunset (x 92), the beginning of a new day by Hebrew reckoning (Introduction: Time-scheme). Yet at x 773 Adam reckons the subsequent night as still part of the fatal twenty-four-hour day, counting from the previous midnight or even sunrise. He fearfully postpones the terminus of the day of reckoning, until he learns the prohibition’s spiritual sense (x 1050).

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Forbearance no acquittance ere day end. Justice shall not return as bounty scorned. But whom send I to judge them? Whom but thee Vicegerent Son, to thee I have transferred All judgment, whether in heaven, or earth, or hell. Easy it may be seen that I intend Mercy colleágue with justice, sending thee Man’s friend, his mediator, his designed Both ransom and redeemer voluntary, And destined man himself to judge man fallen. So spake the Father, and unfolding bright Toward the right hand his glory, on the Son Blazed forth unclouded deity; he full Resplendent all his Father manifest Expressed, and thus divinely answered mild. Father eternal, thine is to decree, Mine both in heaven and earth to do thy will Supreme, that thou in me thy Son beloved Mayst ever rest well pleased. I go to judge On earth these thy transgressors, but thou knowst, Whoever judged, the worst on me must light,

53. acquittance: settlement of a debt. Cp. Shakespeare, As You Like It III v 133; ‘omittance is not quittance’ was proverbial. 54. ‘For my bounty (gracious liberality) to be scorned would not be just.’ return: Continuing the legal discourse from acquittance and so preparing for ‘ransom’ (ix 61). 56–7. Cp. John 5:22 (‘The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son’); De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 238 (‘The Son, who was a God on both counts, as messenger and as judge’). 58. may] might 1674. 59–62. Cp. De Doctrina i 15, YP vi 430: ‘His mediatorial office . . . by virtue of which he willingly performed, and still performs all those things through which peace with God and eternal salvation . . . are attained.’ For mercy allied with justice, cp. iii 131–4, 407; Nativity Ode 141–6. Ps. 135:10, usually cited, concerns four qualities, not two. Justice and mercy recall the imperial virtues iustitia and dementia; see F. A. Yates, JWI, 10 (1947) 67; S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 386f. colleague: allied. 64–7. Cp. iii 138–42, 384–9; vi 680–4, 719–21 – all drawing on Heb. 1:3. 70. Cp. Matt. 3:17. 73. Frye (1978) 163 compares a Bible Moralisée illumination that represents Christ carrying his cross at the expulsion.

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paradise lost When time shall be, for so I undertook Before thee; and not repenting, this obtain Of right, that I may mitigate their doom On me derived, yet I shall temper so Justice with mercy, as may illústrate most Them fully satisfied, and thee appease. Attendance none shall need, nor train, where none Are to behold the judgment, but the judged, Those two; the third best absent is condemned, Convíct by flight, and rebel to all law Conviction to the serpent none belongs. Thus saying, from his radiant seat he rose Of high collateral glory: him thrones and powers, Princedoms, and dominations ministrant Accompanied to heaven gate, from whence Eden and all the coast in prospect lay. Down he descended straight; the speed of gods Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes winged. Now was the sun in western cadence low

74. Cp. iii 284; Gal. 4:4 (‘When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law’) undertook: At iii 227–65. 75–9. Laying a theoretical foundation not given in Genesis for Christ’s clothing of mankind (x 211–21); see Burden (1967) 39f. derived: channelled; diverted (OED 1, 2). illustrate: make clear. Them: (1) justice and mercy; (2) Adam and Eve, the debt to God paid by Christ (OED s. v. Satisfy 1, debt as object). 82–4. third: Satan. On the distribution of guilt between Satan and the serpent, see x 164–74n. Convict: convicted. Conviction: (1) proof of guilt (legal); (2) condition of being convinced of sin (theological). The serpent can have no awareness of sin. Contrast, however, medieval trials of animals. 85–9. Cp. Messiah’s departure to the creation (vii 192–215). The new creation (2 Cor. 5:17, etc.) now begins. collateral: (1) side by side (OED 1); subordinate (OED 3). 86–7. For the titles, cp. v 601n. 89. coast: region; side (of the world). Cp. iii 739; vi 529. 90–1. ‘However swift he may be, Time cannot count gods’ speed.’ Cp. viii 110, ‘Speed almost spiritual’. Overgoing the common type of Time with wings representing the seasons and feathers the months; cp. vii 176f (‘Immediate are the acts of God, more swift / Than time or motion’); Cowley, Davideis (1656) i, (1905) 252 (‘Slow Time admires, and knows not what to call / The motion, having no account so small’); Panofsky (1962) 79 and fig. 50. 92–102. Gen. 3:8, ‘They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in

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From noon, and gentle airs due at their hour To fan the earth now waked, and usher in The evening cool when he from wrath more cool Came the mild judge and intercessor both To sentence man: the voice of God they heard Now walking in the garden, by soft winds Brought to their ears, while day declined, they heard, And from his presence hid themselves among The thickest trees, both man and wife, till God Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud. Where art thou Adam, wont with joy to meet My coming seen far off ? I miss thee here, Not pleased, thus entertained with solitude, Where obvious duty erewhile appeared unsought: Or come I less conspicuous, or what change Absents thee, or what chance detains? Come forth. He came, and with him Eve, more loath, though first To offend, discount’nanced both, and discomposed; Love was not in their looks, either to God Or to each other, but apparent guilt, And shame, and perturbation, and despair, Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile. Whence Adam faltering long, thus answered brief.

the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.’ Christ avoids noon, the time of dire judgment (iv 30n), yet does not ‘let the sun go down on [his] wrath’ (Eph. 4:26). cadence: falling (Latinism). airs: Cp. Gen. 3:8 (AV and Geneva margin: ‘wind’, alternative to ‘cool’). Ricks (1963) 107 traces the musical discourse in airs and cadence. evening: Beginning Day 33. voice . . . walking: a catachresis discussed in the midrash; see Corns (1994) 21. 101. God: For the merging of Father and Son, cp. De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 238 (‘The name of God is given to judges because . . . when they administer justice, they are God’s substitutes’); Eusebius, History ii 4–12 (1989) 4f (direct appearance of the pre-existent word); Treip (1994) 236 (as ‘vicegerent’ (x 56) Christ assumes the divine title while on earth). 102–8. Cp. Gen. 3:9. Elaborating God’s pretence of ignorance to give Adam a chance to be candid. obvious: (1) plain; (2) standing in the way. change . . . chance: Cp. the Collect after the Offertory at Communion: ‘the changes and chances of this mortal life’. God knows well they are not absent by chance, although now subject to it in a graver sense. See ix 404–5n, 421n, 480–1n. 112. apparent: evident.

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paradise lost I heard thee in the garden, and of thy voice Afraid, being naked, hid myself. To whom The gracious judge without revile replied. My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast not feared, But still rejoiced, how is it now become So dreadful to thee? That thou art naked, who Hath told thee? Hast thou eaten of the tree Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat? To whom thus Adam sore beset replied. O heaven! In evil strait this day I stand Before my judge, either to undergo Myself the total crime, or to accuse My other self, the partner of my life; Whose failing, while her faith to me remains, I should conceal, and not expose to blame By my complaint; but strict necessity Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, Lest on my head both sin and punishment, However insupportable, be all Devolved; though should I hold my peace, yet thou Wouldst easily detect what I conceal. This woman whom thou mad’st to be my help, And gav’st me as thy perfect gift, so good, So fit, so ácceptable, so divine, That from her hand I could suspect no ill, And what she did, whatever in itself, Her doing seemed to justify the deed;

116–18. Following Gen. 3:10. revile: reviling. 119–23. Gen. 3:11, ‘And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?’ still: always. 128. other self: Cp. viii 450. 135. Devolved: caused to fall upon (OED 3 c); caused to pass by legal succession, especially through the deficiency of one previously responsible (OED 3 a, b). 139. acceptable: For the stress, cp. Cooper, English Teacher (1687), ed. Sundby (1969) 114. 140. Lying: Adam’s actual response was horror; see Driscoll (1993) 102f. 141–3. A degenerate version of Adam’s enthusiasm of viii 548–50 (‘what she wills to do or say, / Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best’). Raphael’s rebuke there, insisting on headship, resembles God’s at x 144–56. See Cable (1995) 91: Adarn’s error is ‘to define the deed by the perfection of the doer’.

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She gave me of the tree, and I did eat. To whom the sovereign presence thus replied. Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey Before his voice, or was she made thy guide, Superior, or but equal, that to her Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place Wherein God set thee above her made of thee, And for thee, whose perfection far excelled Hers in all real dignity: adorned She was indeed, and lovely to attract Thy love, not thy subjection, and her gifts Were such as under government well seemed, Unseemly to bear rule, which was thy part And person, hadst thou known thyself aright. So having said, he thus to Eve in few: Say woman, what is this which thou hast done? To whom sad Eve with shame nigh overwhelmed, Confessing soon, yet not before her judge Bold or loquacious, thus abashed replied.

143. Exact quotation of AV Gen. 3:12. She: Heavily stressed from its position and rhetorical function (summing x 137–42). 144. Waldock (1961) 50 calls the following speech a false ‘official version’; but Burden (1967) 90f shows it consistent with M.’s expansion of Genesis. 147. or but equal: or merely equal. In fact she is intellectually inferior; but see Turner (1987) 284f. Cp. ix 823–5, where Eve considers keeping the fruit to herself, to make her ‘more equal, and perhaps . . . sometime / Superior’. 149–50. 1 Cor. 11:8f, ‘the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.’ 151. real: (1) royal; (2) actual. 154–5. See 1 Tim. 2:12. 155–6. Analysing Adam’s error as a wrong choice of role. part: (1) role; (2) part of human nature, i. e. intellect (cp. ix 360–1n). person: character in a play. Cp. PR ii 240 (‘some active scene / Of various persons, each to know his part’); Taylor, Sermons (1653) I xxi, p. 278 (‘put on a person and act a part’). Not a ‘pure Latinism’, as Richardson thought. 157. few: few words. Cp. Shakespeare, Hamlet I iii 126; 2 Henry IV I i 112. 159–61. On very brief sentences in PL, see Corns (1990) 16–21; here, the simplicity is moving. Eve feels emotions of attrition more readily than Adam; cp. ix 1188n; x 989–1008.

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The serpent me beguiled and I did eat. Which when the Lord God heard, without delay To judgment he proceeded on the accused 165 Serpent though brute, unable to transfer The guilt on him who made him instrument Of mischief, and polluted from the end Of his creation; justly then accursed, As vitiated in nature: more to know 170 Concerned not man (since he no further knew) Nor altered his offence; yet God at last To Satan first in sin his doom applied, Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best: And on the serpent thus his curse let fall. 175 Because thou hast done this, thou art accursed 162. Close to Gen. 3:13 AV. 164–74. See ix 186n. Burden (1967) 54f detects uneasiness at injustice to the innocent serpent; so that Satan must be made to grovel on his belly in the invented episode of x 508ff. So too Driscoll (1993) 106 finds arbitrary injustice. But punishment of animals had recently been common, and the serpent is vitiated. The consensus view was that of, say, Mercerus; see Willet, Hexapla (1608) 52: ‘God curseth the serpent because he was Sathan’s organ and instrument: and this standeth with God’s justice to punish the instrument with the principal [Lev. 20:15] . . . Though the serpent had no understanding, yet God curseth him for man’s instruction, that he might see how much this their action in seducing him, was displeasing to God.’ Some commentators (a) refer the whole curse to the serpent, some (b) to Satan ‘by way of allegory’, some (c) understand it literally of the serpent and mystically of Satan. A fourth group (d), including Calvin, apply the first part of the curse to the serpent, the last part to Satan. M. works all these in: at last (x 171) seems at first to refer to the last part of the curse (c, d) but turns out to refer also to the ‘last things’ of the apocalypse (x 190), as in (b); x 182–9 and 176– 81 support (c); and x 508ff, where Satan falls prone and eats dust, combines (a) and (b). unable: Qualifying serpent. no further: Adam and Eve know nothing yet of the prophecy’s enactment in the redemptive history (x 182–9), although Adam has a shrewd idea of the serpent’s role as an instrument (ix 904f ). mysterious: mystical. Adam’s still formidable intellect gives him some idea of the terms by x 1030ff. Reducing the Torah to a pattern of types, and making Gen. 3:15 a protevangelium; see Kermode (1983) 172; Rosenblatt (1994) 42. 175–81. Gen. 3:14f, ‘the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between

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Above all cattle, each beast of the field; Upon thy belly grovelling thou shalt go, And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life. Between thee and the woman I will put Enmity, and between thine and her seed; Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel. So spake this oracle, then verified When Jesus son of Mary second Eve Saw Satan fall like lightning down from heaven, Prince of the air; then rising from his grave Spoiled principalities and powers, triúmphed In open show, and with ascension bright Captivity led captive through the air, The realm itself of Satan long usurped, Whom he shall tread at last under our feet; Even he who now foretold his fatal bruise, And to the woman thus his sentence turned. Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply By thy conception; children thou shalt bring In sorrow forth, and to thy husband’s will Thine shall submit, he over thee shall rule.

thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel’. For Satan’s identification with ‘enmity’, see Leonard (1990) 134. 183. second Eve: Cp. v 386f ). 184. When the disciples reported they had found the devils subject to Jesus’ name, he said: ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven’ (Luke 10:18). 185. Eph. 2:2, ‘In time past ye walked . . . according to the prince of the power of the air.’ 186. Cp. Col. 2:14f – Christ put the condemnation of the Law out of the way, ‘nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.’ 188. Cp. Judges 5:12; Ps. 68:18 (‘Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive’). Applied to Christ at Eph. 4:8. 190. See Rom. 16:20 (Geneva): ‘the God of peace shall tread Satan under your feet shortly’, authority for mystical interpretation of the curse. 192. Ordering the curses to show God redemptive before punitive; cp. De Doctrina i 14, YP vi 416: ‘in pronouncing punishment upon the serpent, at a time when man had only grudgingly confessed his guilt, God promised that he would raise up from the seed of the woman a man who would bruise the serpent’s head, Gen. 3:15. This was before he got as far as passing sentence on the man.’ So with priorities in the divine conversation (iii 173–202n).

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paradise lost On Adam last thus judgment he pronounced. Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, And eaten of the tree concerning which I charged thee, saying: Thou shalt not eat thereof, Cursed is the ground for thy sake, thou in sorrow Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee forth Unbid, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, Till thou return unto the ground, for thou Out of the ground wast taken, know thy birth, For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return. So judged he man, both judge and saviour sent, And the instant stroke of death denounced that day Removed far off; then pitying how they stood Before him naked to the air, that now Must suffer change, disdained not to begin Thenceforth the form of servant to assume: As when he washed his servants’ feet, so now

197–202. Gen. 3:17, ‘Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.’ Following Luther, Calvin, and other Protestant exegetes in taking Cursed is the ground to mean the earth itself changed (against Thomas Aquinas, who thought only its relation to man’s work changed); see E. Goodman, in Mulryan (1982) 73–87. 203–8. The curse of agriculture; cp. Gen. 3:18–19, ‘Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’ Contrast the ‘immortal fruits’ of v 341ff; xi 285. know thy birth: Odd; Raphael has already told how Adam was formed of ‘dust of the ground’ (vii 525). 210–11. For the prohibition, see viii 323–33n. By mentioning ‘all the days’ of Adam’s future life (x 202), God removes the fear that physical death will follow at once. denounced: announced (usually of a warning). 211–19. On Christ’s immediately active pity, see Burden (1967) 39; on pity’s aptness to tragedy, Steadman (1976) 37. 213. For the change in the air, see x 692–706. 214. Phil. 2:7, ‘made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men’. assume:] assume, 1667; 1674. 215. feet,] feet 1667; 1674.

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As father of his family he clad Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid; And thought not much to clothe his enemies: 220 Nor he their outward only with the skins Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousness, Arraying covered from his Father’s sight. To him with swift ascent he up returned, 225 Into his blissful bosom reassumed In glory as of old, to him appeased All, though all-knowing, what had passed with man Recounted, mixing intercession sweet. Meanwhile ere thus was sinned and judged on earth, 230 Within the gates of hell sat Sin and Death,

216. father: Heb. 2:13, ‘the children which God hath given me’. 216–23. Cp. Gen. 3:21; Willet, Hexapla (1608) 54f (denying God killed animals and clothed Adam and Eve ‘to betoken . . . the clothing of the nakedness of the soul by repentance’. Instead he did it to show them how to care for the body; or to cover their nakedness with the Chaldee paraphrase’s vestimenta honoris; or to teach that to kill for clothing is permissible; or as memento mori). But M. allows one to suppose the beasts slain by each other, as at xi 185–8. slain: The first actual death. The snake slough may allude to a neat theory in the Targum, attributed to Jonathan ben Uzziel, that poetic justice met human needs from the skin of the serpent that caused them. Christ’s clothing sinners with the armor lucis of grace or the robe of righteousness was a common motif; cp. ix 1054–9 (Adam and Eve discover themselves without the veils of innocence, confidence, righteousness, and honour); Isa. 61:10 (‘he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness’); Rev. 7:14; George Herbert, ‘Sunday’ 52–5 (‘that robe we cast away, / Having a new at his expense, / Whose drops of blood paid the full price’); Christopher (1982) 40. 219. enemies: Rom. 5:10, ‘If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.’ 230. Allegory improper for epic (Addison). But contrast Thomas Newton: much of PL ‘lies in the invisible world . . . The actions of Sin and Death are at least as probable as those ascribed to the . . . angels.’ Other treatments of the Fall contain personification allegory; cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 3, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 364: Dearth, War and Disease, all with attendant abstractions, processing in ‘steely cars / On th’ever-shaking nine-fold steely bars / of Stigian Bridge’. For allegorical poetics in the

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paradise lost In counterview within the gates, that now Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame Far into chaos, since the fiend passed through, Sin opening, who thus now to Death began. O son, why sit we here each other viewing Idly, while Satan our great author thrives In other worlds, and happier seat provides For us his offspring dear? It cannot be But that success attends him; if mishap, Ere this he had returned, with fury driven By his avenger, since no place like this Can fit his punishment, or their revenge. Methinks I feel new strength within me rise, Wings growing, and dominion given me large Beyond this deep; whatever draws me on, Or sympathy, or some connatural force Powerful at greatest distance to unite With secret amity things of like kind By secretest conveyance. Thou my shade Inseparable must with me along:

Renaissance, see Treip (1994), strongly maintaining that much of PL is allegory. 231. Taking up from ii 884. Cp. ii 649, where Sin and Death sit ‘before the gates’ of hell, ‘on either side’. 232. open wide: As they have been since Sin failed to shut them (ii 883f ). outrageous: enormous; immoderate. 236. author: parent; inventor. 241. avenger] avengers 1674. like: so well as. 244. Cp. ix 1009f, where Adam and Eve, newly fallen, ‘fancy that they feel / Divinity within them breeding wings’. All three sets of Wings are bred simultaneously; for Sin’s subplot repeats the main action in another mode, as M. hints by the transition from mankind’s fall to Sin’s rise (x 229, 243). 246–9. Or . . . or: either . . . or. sympathy: affinity whereby influence was felt at a distance. Cp. ix 845f (Adam’s sympathy with Eve); x 616–40 (Sin mistakes for sympathy with Satan what is really God’s summons ‘to lick up the draff and filth’ made by the Fall); Pliny, Hist., tr. Holland (1634) II, A 6v (‘a fellow-feeling, used in Pliny, for the agreement or amity natural in divers senseless things, as between iron and the loadstone’); Porta, Natural Magic (1658) I vii; Bacon, Novum Organum i 85, tr. Urbach (1994) 95 n 79 (‘Those . . . who cultivate natural magic . . . explain everything by the sympathies and antipathies of things’); Lewis (1942) 66; Burden (1967) 167f. conveyance: communication.

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For Death from Sin no power can separate. But lest the difficulty of passing back Stay his return perhaps over this gulf Impassable, impervious, let us try Adventurous work, yet to thy power and mine Not unagreeable, to found a path Over this main from hell to that new world Where Satan now prevails, a monument Of merit high to all the infernal host, Easing their passage hence, for intercourse, Or transmigration, as their lot shall lead. Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn By this new-felt attraction and instínct. Whom thus the meagre shadow answered soon. Go whither fate and inclination strong Leads thee, I shall not lag behind, nor err The way, thou leading, such a scent I draw Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste The savour of death from all things there that live: Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid. So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell

252–323. The major construction work usual in classical epic: e.g. Virgil, Aen. i 423ff (the building of Carthage). The creation in Bk vii is doubled in the raising of Pandaemonium (i 670–751) and the bridge over chaos; see Røstvig (1994) 468ff. For parallels with creation from chaos, see E. M. W. Tillyard, SP, 38 (1941) 269. 253–4. Cp. Luke 16:26, the ‘great gulf ’ fixed between the elect and the reprobate, ‘so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence’. impervious: affording no passage (OED 1). 255. Adventurous: Spelled ‘Adventrous’; trisyllabic. 256. found: build; establish. 257. main: expanse (i.e. chaos). 260–1. The satanic ideology, with lot the determining power; cp. Eve (ix 881); Adam (ix 952). intercourse: communication; dealings. transmigration: permanent emigration. Euphemism for damnation. 264. meagre: emaciated (OED 1). Death was often represented as an almost fleshless skeleton; see M. A. Radzinowicz, MiltS, 23 (1987) 133–44. 266. err: mistake. 267. draw: inhale (OED 23). 268–70. For the wordplay in savour see ix 791–2n, 1017–20n.

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Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote, 275 Against the day of battle, to a field, Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured With scent of living carcasses designed For death, the following day, in bloody fight. So scented the grim feature, and upturned 280 His nostril wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry from so far. Then both from out hell gates into the waste Wide anarchy of chaos damp and dark Flew diverse, and with power (their power was great) 285 Hovering upon the waters; what they met Solid or slimy, as in raging sea Tossed up and down, together crowded drove From each side shoaling towards the mouth of hell. As when two polar winds blowing adverse

273–8. Cp. iii 431ff (Satan as vulture). living carcasses: Prolepsis. Cp. Pliny, Nat. Hist. X vii (triduo antea volare eos ubi cadavera futura sunt). Based, like the simile at x 307–11, on the numerousness of those who are to die. lured: The embedded metaphor from falconry makes Death God’s agent. 279. feature: form, shape; creature (OED 1 c). Cp. Areop, YP ii 549 (‘an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection’); Dante, Par. ix 10 ( fatture). 281. Sagacious: acute of perception (especially by smell). Cp. ix 1017 (Eve ‘exact of taste’); Lucan, Civil War vii 829f ) (quicquid nare sagaci /Aera non sanum motumque cadavere sentit, obscene dogs ‘and every creature that perceives by sagacious nostril air unwholesome and tainted by carrion’). 283. anarchy: Cp. ii 988; vi 873. 284. Reiterating that Sin and Death have power in pseudo-creation, not goodness. diverse: turning in different directions. 285–8. Contrast vii 235–40 – God’s spirit hovering over the same deep made it a ‘watery calm’ and ‘purged / The black tartareous cold infernal dregs’. shoaling: crowding together, assembling in swarms (OED v.3 2). 289–93. Cronian Sea: Arctic Ocean (as mare concretum, relevant to Death’s solidifying work). imagined way: The NE passage to Cathay searched for by Henry Hudson (1608), who failed to find a route through the ice. Petsora: Pechora, a river in N Russia mentioned in M.’s Muscovia. Cathay (xi 388) was a separate empire, N of China, rich enough to be an important trading partner. Simile (with double tenors carried on a single vehicle) figuring the explorer’s object, the earthly Paradise, but also heaven, goal of spiritual search. Access to both paradises is barred by Cronian ice (fallen

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290 Upon the Cronian Sea, together drive Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way Beyond Petsora eastward, to the rich Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry, 295 As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm As Delos floating once; the rest his look

human nature), formed by the ‘winds’ (Sin and Death), as a bridge leading only to hell. Cp. x 321–4n. 293–6. Whereas God infused ‘vital warmth’ into the ‘fluid mass’ of chaos (vii 236f ), Death works with cold and dry, inimical to life. Cp. Dante, Inf. xxxiv 46–52; Marlowe, Dido II i 115 (‘pale Death’s stony mace’); Cirlot (1962) 186 (suggesting annihilation, and yet travestying divine creativity); Treip (1994) 130. A mace of office was carried by or before every official with power or authority, including the Pope. Flannagan sees anti-papal satire (cp. x 313n); but the application may be to all absolutist political repression. Maces were heavy with ideology: at the Restoration the Commons Speaker’s mace was given a new head, an old one with monarchic symbols having been removed during the Interregnum. Cp. YP i 832, associating maces with repressive prelatical jurisdiction: ‘no other sergeants or maces about them but those invisible ones of terror and shame’. petrific: Neologism, mildly so in view of ‘petrify’ and ‘petrification’; see Corns (1990) 89. Alluding to the first Bishop of Rome, and the pun in Matt. 16:18 – ‘thou art Peter, and upon this rock (petra) I will build my Church’ – the biblical basis of papal authority. trident: Attribute of Satan (symbolizing the infernal trinity) and of Neptune–Poseidon the pacifier; see Cirlot (1962) 332; Schaar (1982) 164–6 (citing Fulgentius, Mythologies i 4 [not 3] on the triple strength of Neptune’s trident – mobility, fertility, potability – parodied by Death’s petrific, cold, and dry). Continuing the travesty of God’s pacification of chaos (vii 216f ); perhaps alluding to the Counter-Reformation Tridentine Council. Delos: A floating island made by the trident of Poseidon (Callimachus, Hymns iv 31) as a refuge where Latona could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, safe from Hera’s jealousy; later anchored by Zeus. Death’s rigidifying is as irrevocable as Zeus’s chains of necessity Cp. v 265; ix 387 (connecting Delos with Paradise, mankind’s refuge); William Uvedale, in Britannia Rediviva (1660) (‘England was then, what Delos was before, / The floating island; stood, like that, all o’er / Surrounded with a sea of blood . . . / . . . You first set on this happy shore / Did fix it so’); Quint (1993) 271 (‘This Restoration indeed puts chains upon Earth– Delos–England’ – suggesting parody of Royalist encomia like Uvedale’s). 296–8. The Gorgons turned to stone all whom they looked at; cp. ii 611n. For their association with Poseidon, see Hesiod, Theogony 278;

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Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move, And with asphaltic slime; broad as the gate, Deep to the roots of hell the gathered beach 300 They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on Over the foaming deep high arched, a bridge Of length prodigious joining to the wall Immovable of this now fenceless world Forfeit to Death; from hence a passage broad, 305 Smooth, easy, inoffensive down to hell. So, if great things to small may be compared, Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke, Ovid, Metam. iv 791; vi 119; Schaar (1982) 164f. Bentley objects to M.’s mixture of concrete and abstract – which, however, is the staple of allegory. rigour: (1) physical hardness, stiffness; (2) severity, rigorism; harsh enforcement of the law; austerity (Catholic or Puritan) (OED 1, 2, 5, 8; rigor mortis is not instanced before 1839). asphaltic slime: asphaltus, Jew’s pitch. Used by the devils at i 729; selected less for its black colour and connection with the Dead Sea (x 562) than for allusion to Ecclus. 13:1 (‘He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith; and he that hath fellowship with a proud man shall be like unto him’). Later proverbial; cp. Spenser, Shepheardes Calender May 74. slime: Gen. 11:3 AV, translating Heb. chêmâr, ‘pitch’ (LXX }σφαλτος ; Vulg. bitumen). Cp. xii 41: a proud attempt on heaven leads to hell. move,] move; Fenton. slime;] slime, Fenton. See Moyles (1985) 131, but also Schaar (1982) 166f on semi-colon of emphasis. 299–300. The bridge is fastened to hell, as the universe to heaven (ii 1051). beach: ridge of stones. Cp. x 313. mole: causeway. 301. For the bridge as triumphal arch, see S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 386; Fehl (1972) 48. Cp. Tourneur, Transformed Metamorphosis (1600) 182–8 (Sin, a serpent in female form, stands on a bridge seducing sinners to hell); Evans (1996) 42 n 26 (citing Crashaw, A Sermon (1610) E1v: ‘God himself had built a bridge for men to pass from England to Virginia’); Donne, Sermon to the Virginia Company (‘You shall have made this island . . . a bridge . . . to the new’). 302–3. wall: the outer shell (ii 1024–31) reached by the bridge, the ‘utmost orb / Of this frail world’. Despite the wall, the world is without defence ( fenceless) against Death, since the Fall. 304–5. The broad and narrow tines of the forking Y associated with the recurrent Balance symbol; see M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 169. 305. inoffensive: (1) not giving offence (i.e. to society – aimed at conformists); (2) not causing stumbling (Lat. inoffensus). Playing on fenceless. Cp. Matt. 7:13, ‘broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction’. The way to hell is easy, unlike the stairs to heaven (iii 501ff ). 306. Cp. ii 921–2n. 307–11. Not from Herodotus vii 33 but Stephanus (Xerxes, Persarum rex

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From Susa his Memnonian palace high Came to the sea, and over Hellespont 310 Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined, And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves. Now had they brought the work by wondrous art Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock Over the vexed abyss, following the track 315 Of Satan, to the selfsame place where he First lighted from his wing, and landed safe From out of chaos to the outside bare Of this round world: with pins of adamant And chains they made all fast, too fast they made 320 And durable; and now in little space

fuit filius Darii . . . Graeciae bellum intulit . . . tantum autem habuit navium apparatum, ut totum Hellespontum periret, et Asiam Europae ponte coniungeret); see Starnes (1955) 285. Death and Xerxes both build bridges, intend to subdue nations, are proud, and strike the deep (Xerxes had the Hellespont scourged when a storm destroyed his first bridge). Reviewing his army, Xerxes wept to think that in a century such numbers would be dead. With evil agents, as often, M. draws military analogies. Cp. YP i 704, 820 (‘the intolerable yoke of prelates, and Papal discipline’); Schaar (1982) 169f (Xerxes’ bridge or mole described as ‘yoking the sea’s neck’ in Aeschylus, Persae 71f, and so associated with a failed attempt to enslave; Death’s power is not what it seems); Quint (1993) 7 (a ‘hell’s pont’ of imperial conquest already applied to Julius Caesar by Lucan). Susa: Winter seat of the Persian kings, sometimes called Memnonia, after Memnon, son of Tithonus and Aurora. indignant: (1) resentful (Lat. indignans); (2) not deserving punishment (Lat. indignus). 313. Pontifical: (1) bridge-making (Lat. pons, facere); (2) episcopal. The Pope’s title Pontifex referred to his role as bridge-builder between this world and the next. Implying, therefore, that priests have special skill in easing the way to hell. Cp. x 348; Thomas Godwyn, Romanae Historiae Anthologia (1642) 65f (‘Pontifex is commonly translated a Bishop or Prelate . . . These Pontifies were wont to exceed in their diet, insomuch that when the Romans would show the greatness of a feast, they would say it was Pontifica coena’); Cirlot (1962) 31 (citing St Bernard); Hammond (1983) 147; Frye (1978) 144f (the visual tradition of bridges to hell); Grafton (1993) 177. pendent rock: A common symbol of guilt, probably from the impending atra silex iam iam lapsura cadentique / imminet that punishes Pirithoüs (Virgil, Aen. vi 601–3; elsewhere Tantalus). 314. vexed: torn by storms. Cp. ii 936; vii 212–15. 316. See iii 418–22.

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The confines met of empyréan heaven And of this world, and on the left hand hell With long reach interposed; three several ways In sight, to each of these three places led. 325 And now their way to earth they had descried, To Paradise first tending, when behold Satan in likeness of an angel bright Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose: 330 Disguised he came, but those his children dear Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise. 321–4. Previously the confines (common boundaries) of heaven and the world (universe) met, but now the bridge offers a choice of ways (x 289–93n). The three ways – to earth (iii 526ff ); to heaven (iii 510ff ); to hell – again present the Pythagorean Y; see M. A. Treip, SEL, 31 (1991) 169. left: The sinister, evil side, where reprobate goats go in the parable (Matt. 25:33). 327. For Satan’s disguise, see iii 634n. 328–9. A. W. Verity and M. Y. Hughes, following Thomas Newton, say that Satan to avoid discovery by Uriel steers between ‘two constellations which lay in a quite different part of the heavens’. But to hide from Uriel in Aries (the sun’s position), Satan would steer for the opposite sign, Libra, where he would be invisible behind earth. Instead he steers Betwixt the Centaur (Sagittarius) and the Scorpion, because the constellation conspicuously overlapping these two signs is Anguis, the serpent that Ophiuchus (Serpentarius) holds; see any celestial globe or contemporary star map: e.g. Snyder (1984) pls 44 (Blagrave), 59 (Blaeu), 63 (Cellarius). The head of Anguis is in Libra (where Satan enters the world: iii 551– 61n); its body extends through Scorpio and Sagittarius. For a similar reference to Ophiuchus, cp. ii 707–11n. The sun is not in Aries to exert astrological influence in its house of exaltation (as Svendsen (1956) 83) but because Aries was its position in the thema coeli (arrangement of the heavens at creation) prevailing until the Fall (iii 555–61n). Following as it does the traditional vernal schema, x 329 is decisive for interpreting iii 555ff; iv 267f, 354f. Since a point between Scorpio and Sagittarius is at Satan’s zenith, Paradise time is roughly 3.00 a.m. on Day 33, the day after the Fall. Sin and Death have not yet arrived at Paradise; and the sun has not yet risen there. Satan, flying straight up from Paradise (steering / His zenith) between Scorpio and Sagittarius, is at an aspect of 120°–150° to the sun in Aries; his aspect to a rising sun would be 90°. See x 773n. Bentley’s emendation of rose to rode (accepted by J. W. Mackail, PBA, 11 (1925) 3–21) is unnecessary, since the horizon of reference is not that of Paradise. From the viewpoint of Sin and Death, the sun seems to rise behind earth – just as, to a similarly positioned Satan, Aries seemed

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He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk Into the wood fast by, and changing shape To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded Upon her husband, saw their shame that sought Vain covertures; but when he saw descend The Son of God to judge them, terrified He fled, not hoping to escape, but shun The present, fearing guilty what his wrath Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned By night, and listening where the hapless pair Sat in their sad discourse, and various plaint, Thence gathered his own doom, which understood Not instant, but of future time. With joy And tidings fraught, to hell he now returned, And at the brink of chaos, near the foot Of this new wondrous pontifice, unhoped Met who to meet him came, his offspring dear. Great joy was at their meeting, and at sight Of that stupendous bridge his joy increased. Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair Enchanting daughter, thus the silence broke.

to bear Andromeda ‘Beyond the horizon’ (iii 558–60). Sin and Death follow ‘the track that Satan first made’ (x Arg.). zenith: What Corns (1990) 92 takes as metonymy for ‘course to the zenith’; may be meant to suggest nautical diction; cp. OED s. v. Steer 2 c, 1687 example: ‘we steered SE’. 332. after Eve seduced: Lat. construction; cp. i 573. unminded: unnoticed. 334. sequel: consequence. 335. unweeting: unwitting; unaware of the deception. seconded: repeated; supported. 337. covertures: (1) clothes (cp. ix 1110–14); (2) dissimulations (cp. x 116ff ) (OED 3, 7 f ). 342. night: The night of Adam’s complaint (x 716ff ). 344–5. Elision: ‘which they understood to be’. doom: judgment. The curse interpreted at x 1030ff. 347. foot: end of the bridge (OED 18 b). 348. pontifice (1) bridge (OED 2 ); (2) prelate (OED1). See x 313n. An ambiguity accentuated by foot. 351. stupendous: Spelled ‘stupendious’ in the early edns (then an accepted form). 351–2. A long interlinear pause followed by a spondee, miming Satan’s surprised admiration.

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O parent, these are thy magnific deeds, 355 Thy trophies, which thou viewst as not thine own, Thou art their author and prime architect: For I no sooner in my heart divined, My heart, which by a secret harmony Still moves with thine, joined in connection sweet, 360 That thou on earth hadst prospered, which thy looks Now also evidence, but straight I felt Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt That I must after thee with this thy son; Such fatal consequence unites us three: 365 Hell could no longer hold us in her bounds, Nor this unvoyageable gulf obscure Detain from following thy illustrious track. Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined Within hell gates till now, thou us empowered 370 To fortify thus far, and overlay With this portentous bridge the dark abyss. Thine now is all this world, thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not, thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged 375 Our foil in heaven; here thou shalt monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged, from this new world Retiring, by his own doom alienated, And henceforth monarchy with thee divide 354. Since Satan is author of all evil. 358. harmony: The ‘sympathy’ or ‘connatural force’ (x 246–9). 364. consequence: relationship of cause. 365. A lie: see i 209–13n; iii 80–6n. Satan–Sin–Death travesty the Trinity, so there may be parody of Matt. 16:18 (‘the gates of hell shall not prevail’) and similar texts. 370. fortify: (1) grow strong (OED 6); (2) strengthen (the bridge) structurally (OED 1). 371. portentous: (1) prodigious; (2) portending calamity (OED 2, 1). 372–3. Parody of Christ’s justification. virtue: power; courage. The usual senses, when evil agents speak of virtue; cp. i 320; ix 616n, 647–50n, 778n, 794n. 374. odds: advantage. 375. foil: defeat. 378. doom: judgment. 379. Cp. iv 111: ‘Divided empire with heaven’s king I hold’. For possible allusion to Pope Alexander VI’s division of the W world between the Spanish and Portuguese in 1493, see J. M. Evans, in Stanwood (1995) 234; Evans (1996) 65.

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380 Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds, His quadrature, from thy orbicular world, Or try thee now more dangerous to his throne. Whom thus the prince of darkness answered glad. Fair daughter, and thou son and grandchild both, 385 High proof ye now have given to be the race Of Satan (for I glory in the name, Antagonist of heaven’s almighty king) Amply have merited of me, of all The infernal empire, that so near heaven’s door 390 Triumphal with triumphal act have met, Mine with this glorious work, and made one realm Hell and this world, one realm, one continent Of easy thoroughfare. Therefore while I Descend through darkness, on your road with ease 395 To my associate powers, them to acquaint With these successes, and with them rejoice, You two this way, among those numerous orbs All yours, right down to Paradise descend; There dwell and reign in bliss, thence on the earth 381. The world (universe) is often orbicular (cp. iii 718, Uriel on the creation), a form incommensurate with the quadrature or square. Sin indulges delusory hopes of a live-and-let-live scenario. She misses the dramatic irony that squaring the circle symbolized the mysterious integration of spirit and matter in human nature, and hence the incarnation; see Fowler (1964) 267. Prolepsis, then, to the ‘greater man’ who will combine sovereignty over square and orbicular worlds alike. Cp. ii 1048; Rev. 21:16 (the heavenly ‘city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth . . . The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal’). On square and circle as fundamental geometrical forms ordering the universe, see Giorgio, Harmonia (1545); Wittkower (1962); Simson (1964). 382. try: (1) find by experience to be; (2) judge; (3) remove impurity with fire (OED 13, 3, 6 b). Cp. Zech. 13:9. 384. son and grandchild: As offspring of Satan’s incest with his daughter Sin. 386–7. Satan determines his damnation by acknowledging his name Satan (Adversary); see Leonard (1990) 141. 390. See x 301n. 397. those] these 1674. 397–8. Cp. Satan’s descent ‘amongst innumerable stars’ (iii 565); contrast Christ’s triumphal descent into chaos at the creation (vii 180ff ); and see MacCaffrey (1959) 61. All the spheres are now mutable; see Fowler (1996) 68. 399–402. Cp. ii 839–44; Rom 5:14, 17, 21 (‘death reigned from Adam

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400 Dominion exercise and in the air, Chiefly on man, sole lord of all declared, Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill. My substitutes I send ye, and create Plenipotent on earth, of matchless might 405 Issuing from me: on your joint vigour now My hold of this new kingdom all depends, Through Sin to Death exposed by my exploit. If your joint power prevail, the affairs of hell No detriment need fear, go and be strong. 410 So saying he dismissed them, they with speed Their course through thickest constellations held Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan, And planets, planet-strook, real eclipse Then suffered. The other way Satan went down to Moses . . . by one man’s offence death reigned by one . . . as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord’). thrall: John 8:34, ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.’ Echoing mankind’s commission (viii 338ff ) and implying that a new estate of subjugated mankind is now instituted. 404. Plenipotent: possessing full authority (diplomacy). Cp. iii 317ff, God’s commission of Messiah. 407. Rom. 5:12, ‘By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.’ 408. prevail] prevails 1674. The ‘Latinate’ subjunctive is preferable: Adams (1955) 103. 409. Cp. xi 8; Deut. 31:7f (Moses empowering Joshua to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land). Ironically, after Christ’s Redemption, death will indeed be a way to paradise. detriment: injury. Perhaps echoing the charge conferring supreme power on ancient Roman consuls in time of crisis (Videant consules ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat) (Newton). This commission, temporary like Satan’s, conferred no powers de iure; if the consuls put anyone to death, they would still have to justify the action legally. 412–13. Cp. x 630 (hell-hounds); Lucan, Civil War ix 647; Virgil, Georgics i 464–71 (wan sun, ominous dogs, dark uprisings); Marino, tr. Crashaw, ‘Sospetto d’Herode’ xlviii (1646); Schaar (1982) 172–5 (listing other impious, star-threatening wars against the gods). blasted: breathed on balefully; influenced by a malignant planet (OED 1). Application to the stars themselves suggests a chaotic inversion. planet-strook: stricken by an adverse planetary influence. Stars are literally struck when Phaethon’s pride leads him to drive unnaturally among them (Ovid, Metam. ii 205). eclipse: Usually an observational appearance, but in this case real darkening.

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415 The causey to hell gate; on either side Disparted chaos overbuilt exclaimed, And with rebounding surge the bars assailed, That scorned his indignation: through the gate, Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed, 420 And all about found desolate; for those Appointed to sit there, had left their charge, Flown to the upper world; the rest were all Far to the inland retired, about the walls Of Pandæmonium, city and proud seat 425 Of Lucifer, so by allusion called, Of that bright star to Satan paragoned. There kept their watch the legions, while the grand In council sat, solicitous what chance Might intercept their emperor sent, so he 430 Departing gave command, and they observed. As when the Tartar from his Russian foe 415. causey: causeway. Sometimes applied to a viaduct; cp. x 300f. 418. Cp. Virgil, Georgics ii 161f, the ocean indignatum at the Lucrine breakwater. 420. those: Sin and Death. 425–6. The name ‘Lucifer’ is the palace’s, no longer Satan’s; see Leonard (1990) 142. allusion: (1) literary reference; (2) illusion (OED 1). paragoned: compared. See v 700–14n; vii 132n. 426–9. Satan is his supporters’ enemy; see B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 593f: M. rewrites the narrative to square the devils’ inaction with Satan’s earlier commands. 427. grand: the ‘great seraphic lords and cherubim’ of the secret conclave at i 794ff. 428. solicitous: anxious, concerned. 431–9. Astracan: Tartar khanate and capital near the mouth of the Volga, often mentioned in M.’s Muscovia. Bactrian: Afghanian. Bactria was subject to the sophy (shah), the Persian (Iranian) king. crescent: Referring both to the Turkish ensign and their battle formations; cp. iv 978 (the angels’ ‘mooned horns’); Dryden, Annus Mirabilis (1667) st. 125 (‘Their huge unwieldy navy wastes away: / So sicken waning moons too near the sun, / And blunt their crescents on the edge of day’). Aladule: Last king of Armenia before its conquest by the Turks. Tauris and Casbeen: Tabriz and Kasvin, former capitals of Persia (Iran). snowy plains: Recalling hell’s ‘frozen continent’ (ii 587) where the devils are taken for punishment ‘at certain revolutions’, and so preparing for the punitive metamorphosis of x 507ff. The grand devils are compared to Saracens (cp. i 348; ii 1–4; etc.), whether barbarians (Tartars) or proud rulers (sophies). sophy: (1) shah; (2) sage. Many a: Requiring synaloepha or elision. reduced: led back (Latinism).

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paradise lost By Astracan over the snowy plains Retires, or Bactrian sophy from the horns Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond The realm of Aladule, in his retreat To Tauris or Casbeen. So these the late Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost hell Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch Round their metropolis, and now expecting Each hour their great adventurer from the search Of foreign worlds: he through the midst unmarked, In show plebeian angel militant Of lowest order, passed; and from the door Of that Plutonian hall, invisible Ascended his high throne, which under state Of richest texture spread, at the upper end Was placed in regal lustre. Down awhile He sat, and round about him saw unseen: At last as from a cloud his fulgent head And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter, clad With what permissive glory since his fall Was left him, or false glitter: all amazed

440. adventurer: (1) one engaged in a hazardous adventure; (2) merchant in foreign trade; see Braudel (1982) 448. 440–5. On Satan’s travesty of imperial Roman triumphs, see S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 386, 392–4; Lewalski (1985) 107–9. Satan departs from the conventional triumph by his secrecy (unless he has adopted the ‘disguised ruler’ ideal, associated with Severus, and favoured by James I). Perhaps, however, the travesty is of Messiah’s unostentatious humility. 441–506. Cp. Homer, Il. xxii 365–404, Achilles’ call for songs of triumph. 444–5. Plutonian: of Pluto, ruler of the classical underworld (first instance in OED). state: canopy (OED 20 b). For the throne, cp. ii 1–4. 448. Satan’s Severine disguise allows him to check on his followers’ loyalty. 449. fulgent: Travesty of Messiah’s ‘effulgence’ (vi 680); cp. S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 398. Hunter (1989) 63f finds comparison with a supernova, then thought ominous; but see Fowler (1996) 76. For the political implications of solar or astral light and its eclipse, see Bennett (1989) 36–9; Achinstein (1994) 210. Cp. x 412f, 426. 450 –2. Recalling Satan’s original form, to amplify his final, humiliating metamorphosis (x 511ff ). On the devils’ alternating inflation and deflation, see Broadbent (1960) 110. permissive: permitted (by God). Cp. i 591ff.

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At that so sudden blaze the Stygian throng Bent their aspéct, and whom they wished beheld, Their mighty chief returned: loud was the acclaim: Forth rushed in haste the great consulting peers, Raised from their dark divan, and with like joy Congratulant approached him, who with hand Silence, and with these words attention won. Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers, For in possession such, not only of right, I call ye and declare ye now, returned Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth Triumphant out of this infernal pit Abominable, accursed, the house of woe, And dungeon of our tyrant: now possess, As lords, a spacious world, to our native heaven Little inferior, by my adventure hard With peril great achieved. Long were to tell What I have done, what suffered, with what pain Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded deep Of horrible confusion, over which By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved To expedite your glorious march; but I Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride The untractable abyss, plunged in the womb Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild,

453. Stygian throng: Cp. ii 506, ‘Stygian council’. 457. divan: oriental council of state (italicized as a foreign word in early edns). Continuing the Saracen theme of x 431–9. 458. Congratulant: expressing congratulation (Lat. congratulantes). 460. Cp. ii 11–14; v 772, 601n. Empson (1961) 79 finds the repeated roll-call of titles sardonic; Satan is no longer morally conscious enough to see the irony of claiming to provide victims for them to rule. See Schaar (1982) 158 on the further irony of the powers’ own impending doom. 465. house of woe: Cp. ii 823n (‘house of pain’). 466. The ranks need no longer be ‘merely titular’, as Satan called them at v 773f. 469–502. Recapitulation supporting the thesis that a satanic epic runs parallel to M.’s; see Burden (1967) 9–13, 59, 63f, 72, 141–7, 197f. Inviting the devils (and tempting the reader) to think of themselves as enacting a falsely heroic epic. 471. unreal: Because formless, and therefore not fully material. Interlaced alliteration; see Corns (1990) 85. 475. uncouth: unfamiliar, strange; solitary (OED 2 b, 5). 477–9. Satan’s pagan, dualistic mythology of an uncreated, primordial state;

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paradise lost That jealous of their secrets fiercely opposed My journey strange, with clamorous uproar Protesting fate supreme; thence how I found The new created world, which fame in heaven Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful Of absolute perfection, therein man Placed in a paradise, by our exíle Made happy: him by fraud I have seduced From his creator, and the more to increase Your wonder, with an apple; he thereat Offended, worth your laughter, hath given up Both his beloved man and all his world, To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us, Without our hazard, labour, or alarm, To range in, and to dwell, and over man To rule, as over all he should have ruled. True is, me also he hath judged, or rather Me not, but the brute serpent in whose shape Man I deceived: that which to me belongs, Is enmity, which he will put between Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel; His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head: A world who would not purchase with a bruise,

see Danielson (1982) 51. unoriginal: uncreated (only instance in OED). Cp. ii 962 (Night the ‘eldest of things’). As usual, Satan is lying: neither Night nor Chaos opposed him – Chaos even helped (ii 1004–9). uproar: insurrection (OED 1). 481–2. For the rumour, see i 651–4; ii 346–52n; vii 145–56n. fabric: structure (OED 3). 484–5. Evans (1996) 105 casts the devils as dispossessed Indians avenging themselves on the planters. happy: fortunate. 485–90. Cp. the Trin. MS Fourth Draft (Introduction: Composition): ‘Here again may appear Lucifer relating, and insulting in what he had done to the destruction of man.’ 487. Cp. ix 585. In Satan’s reductive view, since ‘the apple has no intrinsic magic . . . breach of the prohibition becomes a small matter’ (Lewis (1942) 68). 489. his] this 1674. 496. that: Ellipsis: ‘that part of the judgment’; cp. x 164–74n. 497. Cp. ii 822 (‘I come no enemy’); Leonard (1990) 134 (‘As in his encounter with Sin, Satan denies the serpent’s claim upon him’). 500. Failing to understand the spiritual sense of the text. Like a literalistic exegete (Tayler (1979) 82). bruise: Reminding that Satan’s victory is indecisive, his claim to a triumph false; see Lewalski (1985) 109.

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Or much more grievous pain? Ye have the account Of my performance: what remains, ye gods, But up and enter now into full bliss. So having said, awhile he stood, expecting 505 Their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear, when contrary he hears On all sides, from innumerable tongues A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn; he wondered, but not long 510 Had leisure, wondering at himself now more; His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining Each other, till supplanted down he fell A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, 515 Reluctant, but in vain, a greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned, According to his doom: he would have spoke, But hiss for hiss returned with forkèd tongue 508. dismal: dreadful, sinister (cp. i 60n). universal hiss: See J. J. M. Tobin, MiltQ, 11 (1977) 38–43 (citing Luther on blasphemy: ‘when the holy fathers at the Council of Nicaea heard the doctrine of the Arians read, all hissed unanimously’); S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 394 (instancing classical triumphs that fell ludicrously flat); Tayler (1979) 97 (the ‘grim laughter’ that proceeds from the rational faculty, YP i 107); Schaar (1982) 108. 511–14. Cp. ix 506 (alluding to Cadmus’s metamorphosis, Ovid, Metam. iv 572–603); Lucan, Civil War ix 700ff; Dante, Inf. xxiv 137ff ; xxv 103–38 (serpent metamorphoses); Fletcher, Purple Island (1633) vii 11; M. Y. Hughes, ÉA, 20 (1967) 356–69; Frye (1978) 109; J. N. Swift, SAQ, 79 (1980) 433. clung: shrunk, shrivelled (OED 2). 513. supplanted: (1) tripped up, made to stumble; (2) caused to fall from a position of power (OED 1, 2). Cp. Ricks (1963) 64f: ‘Satan, on whom always evil “recoils” . . . is the great supplanter: “He set upon our first parents in paradise, and by pride supplanted them” (Thomas More, De Quatuor Novissimis (1522) ).’ 515. Reluctant: writhing, struggling (Lat. reluctari). 517. doom: judgment. Fulfilling literally the curse on the serpent (x 164–74n). Besides punishing, the judgment repudiates his false heroism, revealing his brutishness as a monstrous opponent of virtue; see J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 101f. Peripeteia: just when the devils seem to triumph as heroes in Satan’s epic (x 469–502n), they are shown to be monsters in God’s. M. Y. Hughes cites Boehme: after ‘the divine light went out of the devils, they lost their beauteous form and image, and became like serpents, dragons, worms, and evil beasts: as may be seen by Adam’s serpent’.

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To forkèd tongue, for now were all transformed 520 Alike, to serpents all as áccessories To his bold riot: dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion and asp, and amphisbaena dire, 525 Cerastes horned, hydrus, and ellops drear, And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropped with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa) but still greatest he the midst, Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun 530 Engendered in the Pythian vale on slime,

524–32. A common horror in epic; cp. i 392ff (the heathen gods); Virgil, Aen. vi 273ff; Lucan, Civil War ix 700–33 (ending with a giant snake like M.’s Python); Vida, Christiados (1535) i 139–55, (1978) 8; Tasso, Ger. Lib., tr. Fairfax (1600) iv 4f (‘The peers of Pluto’s realm . . . In hideous forms and shapes . . . With ugly paws some trample on the green, / Some gnaw the snakes that on their shoulders hing, / And some their forked tails stretch forth on high . . . There serpents hiss, there sev’n-mouthed Hydras yell, / . . . Besides ten thousand monsters therein dwells / Misshaped, unlike themselves, and like nought else’); Du Bartas, Divine Weeks, I vi 162–282, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 267–70; Svendsen (1956) 35f (citing the popular encyclopedists Batman, Topsell, and Swan); White (1960) 174–85; Schaar (1982) 109f. M. Y. Hughes, drawing on Aldrovandus’ natural history, assigns moral significances (the amphisbaena’s inconstancy, etc.). Seven monsters are named – the Deadly Sins? But there is too little differentiation for secure correlation. M. grapples, rather, with the problem why providence allows such species to exist; cp. Ecclus. 39:30–3. See Jacobus (1976) 75: God’s thaumaturgy defeats Satan at his own game. Contrast the ordered movement of v 619ff. amphisbaena: A serpent with a head at either end, and eyes like lamps (Lucan, Civil War ix 719). Cerastes: Equipped with four horns like a ram’s. hydrus: A water-snake whose venom caused dropsy. ellops: A serpent in Pliny, Nat. Hist. XXXII v. dipsas: Called torrida; its bite caused raging thirst (Lucan, op. cit. ix 718). 526–7. From Medusa’s severed head blood dropped on Libya, which was therefore full of serpents; cp. Ovid, Metam. iv 617–20; Lucan, Civil War ix 697–700. 528. Anciently, several islands, including Rhodes, were named Ophiusa (‘full of serpents’). 529–31. Satan’s dragon form is that of the apocalyptic ‘old dragon’; cp. Rev. 12:9 (‘the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan’). Python was engendered from slime after the Flood (Ovid, Metam. i 438–40), and slain by Apollo.

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Huge Python, and his power no less he seemed Above the rest still to retain; they all Him followed issuing forth to the open field, Where all yet left of that revolted rout Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array, Sublime with expectation when to see In triumph issuing forth their glorious chief; They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd Of ugly serpents; horror on them fell, And horrid sympathy; for what they saw, They felt themselves now changing; down their arms, Down fell both spear and shield, down they as fast, And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form Catched by contagion, like in punishment, As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant, Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change, His will who reigns above, to aggravate Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve Used by the tempter: on that prospect strange Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one forbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them further woe or shame;

535. in station: at their posts, or drawn up in orderly ranks for the triumph. 536. Sublime: uplifted. 539. At i 563f the devils’ front was ‘horrid’; now by a change of meaning (asteismus) they themselves experience horror. 541. changing: becoming. 546. exploding: hooting off the stage; driving away with scorn (OED 1). Cp. x 508n; Hos. 4:7 (‘they sinned against me: therefore will I change their glory into shame’). 547–65. On the ‘Sodom milieu’ here and in Bk i, see Lieb (1994) 123. Cp. S. Davies, ÉA, 34 (1981) 395–7: the vanquished ate only one apple; but the shame of the ‘victors’ is to be ‘reduced to innumerable selfdefeating attempts at many apples, annually’. As Davies notices, grew in Paradise is at the midpoint of Bk x in 1667. Cp. Gen. 3:3 Vulg. (in medio paradisi), a key text for compositional patterning; Fowler (1970a) 25. See Lieb (1981) 110: trees of knowledge are placed ‘within the context of the cultum institutum’. 550. penance: punishment (OED 5). fair] Erroneously omitted in 1674. 555. further] furder 1667 (obsolete spelling).

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Yet parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce, Though to delude them sent, could not abstain, But on they rolled in heaps, and up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks 560 That curled Megaera: greedily they plucked The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed; This more delusive, not the touch, but taste Deceived; they fondly thinking to allay 565 Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste With spattering noise rejected: oft they assayed, Hunger and thirst constraining, drugged as oft, With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws 570 With soot and cinders filled; so oft they fell

556. Cp. ii 596ff, similarly periodic punishment; see J. M. Steadman, JEGP, 64 (1965) 35–40: ‘the apples of the Tantalus myth are cross grafted with those of the Dead Sea and the tree of knowledge’. Tantalus’ fate, like the devils’, is a talion punishment. 560. curled: Cp. Ovid, Metam. iv 771 (crinita) (Richardson). Megaera: One of the three snaky-haired Furies (Eumenides), sometimes said to be born from Uranus’s blood. They avenged sin; ‘harpy-footed Furies’ take the devils for punishment at ii 596. 562. Deut. 32:32f, ‘Their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.’ The ‘vine of Sodom’ was taken to mean that the Israelites had become degenerate, ‘rotten at the core’. For the destruction of Sodom, see Gen. 13 and 19. lake: The Dead Sea, beside which Sodom was located. Cp. Eikonoklastes, YP iii 552; Josephus, Wars IV viii 4 (traces remained of the divine fire that burnt Sodom: ‘ashes growing in their fruits, which have a colour as if they were fit to be eaten; but if you pluck them with your hands, they dissolve into smoke and ashes’); Svendsen (1956) 28f (a favourite passage with the encyclopedists). 565. gust: relish. 566–70. Carrying out the sentence of x 178 (‘dust shalt eat’); cp. x 164–74n; Werman (1995) 218 (citing Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer: the serpent ‘should suffer pain once in seven years in great pain . . . and its food is turned in its belly into dust and the gall of asps, and death is in its mouth’). For the popular fallacy that serpents eat only dust, see Topsell (1608) 16. 568. drugged: nauseated (OED 2 b, first instance). ‘A metaphor from the general nauseousness of drugs’ (Richardson).

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Into the same illusion, not as man Whom they triúmphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued And worn with famine, long and ceaseless hiss, Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed, 575 Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain numbered days, To dash their pride, and joy for man seduced. However some tradition they dispersed Among the heathen of their purchase got,

571–2. (1) not like man, whom they triumphed over, after he lapsed; (2) not lapsed merely once, like man. See OED s. v. Triumph 2 c. Cp. x 547–65n. 574. Cp. x 451n. 578–84. In Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica i 503–9, Orpheus sings how Ophion and Eurynome daughter of Ocean ruled Olympus until they yielded to Kronos (Saturn) and Rhea (Ops). The latter ruled the Titans ‘while Zeus still . . . dwelt in the Dictaean cave’. See Starnes (1955) 269 citing Stephanus, Thesaurus: M. fuses this Ophion with another, a friend of Cadmus, one of those born from the serpent’s teeth, ideoque et nomen habet a serpente, qui Graece \φις dicitur. More obviously, Claudian has a serpent Ophion in De Raptu Proserpinae iii 332–56: in a dreadful grove with Jupiter’s spoils from the Giant war ‘hang the gaping jaws and monstrous skins of the Giants . . . and heaped up on all sides bleach the huge bones of slaughtered serpents’, and ‘spoiled Ophion weighs down the branches’. M.’s ‘There stood / A grove hard by’ (x 547f ) translates Claudian’s lucus erat prope. Recalling the devils’ further defeat under the type of Giants (i 50–83n, 197–200n). The devil-inspired tradition claims greater antiquity than Jupiter; but Jupiter’s triumph undercuts this. G. Sandys, in Ovid (1970) 27 associates Ophion directly with Satan: ‘Pherecides the Syrian writes how the devils were thrown out of heaven by Jupiter (this fall of the Giants perhaps an allusion to that of the angels) the chief called Ophioneus, which signifies Serpentine: having after made use of that creature to poison Eve with a false ambition.’ Empson (1961) explores Bentley’s impression that the serpent was Eve’s consort; she was wide- / Encroaching (Eurynome = wide-ruling) in that we are all her descendants. (Unless wide- / Encroaching means she transgressed far and wide.) The fabling is perhaps devils’ slander (Pearce), perhaps M.’s speculative interpretation; see Turner (1987) 291. Cp. ix 505–10n. purchase: (1) plunder, spoil (OED 8); (2) annual rent (OED 10) (alluding to the devils’ annual punishment); (3) concubinage (OED 3 b). See H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 226. Dictæan: Jupiter’s surname, after Dicte, the Cretan mountain where he spent his childhood.

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580 And fabled how the serpent, whom they called Ophion with Eurynome, the wideEncroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born. 585 Meanwhile in Paradise the hellish pair Too soon arrived, Sin there in power before, Once actual, now in body, and to dwell Habitual habitant; behind her Death Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet 590 On his pale horse: to whom Sin thus began. Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death, What thinkst thou of our empire now, though earned With travail difficult, not better far Than still at hell’s dark threshold to have sat watch, 595 Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half starved? Whom thus the Sin-born monster answered soon. To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is hell, or Paradise, or heaven, There best, where most with ravin I may meet; 600 Which here, though plenteous, all too little seems To stuff this maw, this vast unhidebound corpse. 581–3. Eurynome,] Eurynome M. Y. Hughes. Encroaching] Encroaching, M. Y. Hughes; see Moyles (1985) 131. 586–7. Sin was already present potentially (in power), but when committed (Once actual) is present more fully, as a body. Cp. Rom. 6:6, ‘Our old man is crucified with him [Christ], that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.’ Actual sin (a free act of will) is distinct from original sin, the state of institutionalized sinfulness prevailing since the Fall. Cp. De Doctrina i 11, YP vi 391 (‘The second subdivision of sin, after evil desire, is the evil action or crime itself, which is commonly called “actual” sin’); P. J. Gallagher, ELR, 6 (1976) 324 (overemphasizing Sin’s literal presence). 589–90. Rev. 6:8, ‘I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’ Death is not mounted yet because the Last Things are not yet happening – not because he has yet to exercise his power. Already there are dead animals (x 217) and vegetation (ix 893). 597–607. Transferring to Death the voraciousness usually ascribed to Satan; see Frye (1978) 118. 601. unhidebound: Coinage; see ii 185n. Being emaciated, Death might be expected to be hidebound; but his tattered skin is unbound; cp. OED s. v. Hidebound 1: ‘Having the skin clinging closely to the back and ribs . . . as a result of bad feeding and consequent emaciation.’

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To whom the incestuous mother thus replied. Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers Feed first, on each beast next, and fish, and fowl, No homely morsels, and whatever thing The scythe of time mows down, devour unspared, Till I in man residing through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect, And season him thy last and sweetest prey. This said, they both betook them several ways, Both to destroy, or unimmortal make All kinds, and for destruction to mature Sooner or later; which the almighty seeing, From his transcendent seat the saints among, To those bright orders uttered thus his voice. See with what heat these dogs of hell advance To waste and havoc yonder world, which I So fair and good created, and had still Kept in that state, had not the folly of man Let in these wasteful furies, who impute Folly to me, so doth the prince of hell And his adherents, that with so much ease

602. incestuous: See ii 790ff. 603–9. Evans (1996) 109 unnecessarily finds reference to the inhabitants of the New World, who were conceived as cannibalistic monsters. 606. Raphael held out hope that ‘tract of time’ (v 498) might raise human nature to spirit; but now time is the destroyer, edax rerum. For Time’s scythe, see Panofsky (1962) 69–94; Tervarent (1958) 164f. For Death’s scythe, see Tervarent op. cit. 165; Chew (1973) Index, Scythe. Cp. Spenser, FQ III vi 39. 609. season: ripen; make palatable; discipline by habit (OED 4, 1, 4 d). 611. unimmortal: Negative coinage amplifying Death’s insubstantiality; cp. ii 185n; x 595, 601. 613–706. See Lewalski (1985) 137 contrasting Du Bartas’s account, where the evil consequences are sent by a punishing God. 616. Cp. ii 653ff (the ‘hell hounds’ about Sin’s middle); Schaar (1982) 177ff. 617. havoc: devastate. Originally a signal for general pillage: e.g. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III i 270–3: ‘Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, / With Ate by his side come hot from hell, / Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice / Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.’ 621. Providence’s use of evil is a frequent theme; cp. i 162ff, 210ff; vii 613ff; xii 470ff; Lewis (1942) 66.

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640

paradise lost I suffer them to enter and possess A place so heavenly, and conniving seem To gratify my scornful enemies, That laugh, as if transported with some fit Of passion, I to them had quitted all, At random yielded up to their misrule; And know not that I called and drew them thither My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth Which man’s polluting sin with taint hath shed On what was pure, till crammed and gorged, nigh burst With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son, Both Sin, and Death, and yawning grave at last Through chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of hell For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws. Then heaven and earth renewed shall be made pure To sanctity that shall receive no stain: Till then the curse pronounced on both precedes.

623. enter and possess: Legal diction. 624. conniving: taking no notice (OED 1). 627. quitted: yielded, handed over (OED 5 b). 630. hell-hounds: The Dominicans are represented as Domini canes in a fresco M. may well have seen, in S. Maria Novella, Florence; see Braunfels (1972) 144f. draff: refuse. Often figurative; cp. YP ii 225: ‘the brood of Belial, the draff of men, to whom no liberty is pleasing, but unbridled and vagabond lust’. 633. Focusing on the disposal of evil; see Frye (1978) 165ff. Contrast iii 323–41; xii 458–65, 545–51 (focusing on restoration). The bulimic apocalypse may be original with M. sling: Cp. 1 Sam. 25:29, ‘The souls of thine enemies, them shall he sling out, as out of the middle of a sling.’ Perhaps alluding to David, type of Christ. 635–6. Cp. ii 734, 805ff; Hos. 13:14 ( ‘O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction’); 1 Cor. 15:54; Rev. 20:14 (‘death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death’). 638–9. Cp. the apocalyptic vision of 2 Pet. 3:7–13, ‘The heavens and the earth . . . are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment.’ We ‘look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’. heaven and earth: the universe (contrast ‘heaven of heavens’, iii 390n, etc.). See Burden (1967) 40: even the curse is to cleanse the world; there is positive activity in the darkest of divine speeches. 640. curse: The sentence pronounced in Gen. 3:17 (‘cursed is the ground’). both: heaven and earth (x 638; cp. 647). precedes: goes before (their renewal).

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He ended, and the heavenly audience loud Sung alleluia, as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways, Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works; 645 Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son, Destined restorer of mankind, by whom New heaven and earth shall to the ages rise, Or down from heaven descend. Such was their song, While the creator calling forth by name 650 His mighty angels gave them several charge, As sorted best with present things. The sun 642. Cp. v 872f; Rev. 19:6 (‘I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters . . . saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth’). 644. Rev. 16:7, ‘True and righteous are thy judgments’. Acclaiming, with unswerving obedience, the problematic decrees. 645. extenuate: disparage (OED 5). 647–8. ages: The millennium; cp. xii 549, ‘ages of endless date’. Or down: Cp. Rev. 21:2, ‘I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.’ 650. Cp. iii 648ff, the seven spirits. 651. Elaborating on nature’s ‘signs of woe’ ‘through all her works’ (ix 783). Nature’s involvement in the Fall was generally believed; cp. ix 782–4n; Ecclus. 39:29; Burton, Anat. of Melan. I i 1 i (1989–) i 125 (‘stars, heavens, elements . . . were indeed once good in themselves, and that they are now many of them pernicious unto us, is not in their nature, but our corruption, which hath caused it. For from the fall of our first parent Adam, they have been changed’). On the extent of corruption and mutability, Marjara (1992) 71f notices M.’s playing down of the Aristotelian contrast between sublunary and translunary levels. This is not, however, ‘lack of emphasis on corruption’; rather, M.’s recognition that astronomers like Galileo had demonstrated mutability – e.g. sunspots – beyond the moon’s sphere. See Moss (1993) ch. 4; Fowler (1996) ch. 2. sorted: associated; accorded (OED 19). 651–706. The cosmic system previously used in PL is not Ptolemaic – despite much scholarship to the contrary. Instead, it is an ideal, fictional model, in which ecliptic and equatorial planes coincide. On the ecliptic, every point is an equinoctial point; thus eliminating solstices and seasons. Spring is ‘perpetual’ (679). The cosmos described in the Ptolemaic, Copernican, and other systems is an accident of the Fall, and therefore posterior to the changes described here. M.’s invention of an entire prelapsarian astronomy, consistent throughout, represents a remarkable feat of the imagination. Implications of the ‘special case’ premise are followed out minutely, e.g. in details of astronomical motions as observed from

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Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call 655 Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer’s heat. To the blank moon Her office they prescribed, to the other five Their planetary motions and aspécts In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, 660 Of noxious efficacy, and when to join In synod unbenign, and taught the fixed Their influence malignant when to shower, Which of them rising with the sun, or falling, Should prove tempestuous: to the winds they set 665 Their corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, air, and shore, the thunder when to roll With terror through the dark aërial hall. Some say he bid his angels turn askance

Paradise (iv 209–16n). Cp. iii 555–61; iv 354f, 776–80; v 18–25; x 328–9. The pervasive equinoctial balancing of night and day, light and darkness, being dependent on the pattern of the prelapsarian cosmos itself, is highly thematic. See especially iv 997–1004n; Introduction: Astronomy. 652. precept: order. 655. Winter was commonly portrayed as old; cp. Ovid, Metam. xv 212 (senilis hiems); Ripa, Iconologia (1603) 503. In the microcosmic model, seasons corresponded with Ages of Man; see Klibansky (1964) 10 et passim. 656. blank: white, pale. 657. other five: i.e. planets, as at v 177. 658–61. Presenting malign astrological influences as a consequence of the Fall. See Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos i 13: sextile is an aspect of 60°, square (quartile) of 90°, trine of 120°, and opposite (opposition) of 180°. Sextile and trine are harmonious, quartile and opposition disharmonious. Synod (conjunction), not recognized by Ptolemy, is mentioned separately. Consult Eisler (1946) ch. 26; Eade (1984) 76ff. 661–2. Contrast the fixed stars’ ‘sweet influence’ when first created (vii 375). Words like taught remind that the macrocosmic changes are not random but controlled by God’s decrees; see Burden (1967) 184. 663–4. Meteorological lore about cosmical rising and acronycal setting of particular constellations figured largely in works like Aratus, Phaenomena; Virgil, Georgics; Ovid, Fasti; and Manilius, Astronomicon. 665–6. I.e. to confound the four elements; thunder implying fire and shore earth. On the Fall as chaos returned, see Schwartz (1988) 33. 668–80. Starting from the prelapsarian thema caeli (x 328–9n), the fallen universe can be arrived at either by tilting earth’s axis approximately

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The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more 670 From the sun’s axle; they with labour pushed Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins 675 Up to the tropic Crab; thence down amain By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn, to bring in change Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers, 680 Equal in days and nights, except to those Beyond the polar circles; to them day Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun To recompense his distance, in their sight Had rounded still the horizon, and not known 685 Or east or west, which had forbid the snow

23.5°, or by altering the inclination of the ecliptic correspondingly. (Not by ‘shifting the centre of the sun’s orbit’, as Svendsen (1956) 71.) The first alternative accords with heliocentric theories, the second with geocentric; M. does not decide. From its created position in Aries (x 329) the sun steers first to Taurus, anciently the sign beginning the year; cp. Hyginus, Poeticon Astronomicon iii 20 (Taurus ad ortum signorum dimidia parte collocatus). The sun’s annual course is next traced N from the equinoctial road (equatorial plane) to the tropic sign Cancer (23.5° N), then back S to the equinoctial point in the Scales (Libra). Its winter course, more summarily, is deep into the S hemisphere, to the tropic sign Capricorn. angels: Not the Son; see Corns (1994) 105 contrasting Messiah’s effortless creation. axle: ‘He has put the axle for the chariot and the chariot for the road. The sun’s axle then is the equinoctial road’ (Richardson); cp. viii 165. Cp. Comus 95f (‘the gilded car of day, / His glowing axle doth allay’); Ovid, Metam. ii 107 (the sun’s chariot with a gold axle, aureus axis erat). centric globe: earth. Like distant breadth: similar difference in declination. Atlantic Sisters: The Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, stellified as a group within the constellation Taurus; clinching the prolepsis at vii 374–5n. Spartan Twins: Castor and Pollux, sons of King Tyndarus of Sparta; the zodiacal constellation (and sign) Gemini. amain: at full speed. Georgic poets often described the sun’s journey thus; e.g. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks I iv, a passage Spenser had by heart. 678–9. clime: region. In Renaissance cosmography, the terrestrial sphere was divided into horizontal bands called climes; see Heninger (1977)42f. spring / Perpetual: Cp. iv 268n. vernant: flourishing in spring.

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From cold Estotiland, and south as far Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit The sun, as from Thyéstean banquet, turned His course intended; else how had the world 690 Inhabited, though sinless, more than now, Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat? These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced Like change on sea and land, sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, 695 Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north 686. Estotiland: Used vaguely for NE Labrador; relevant to Hudson’s 1610 search for a NW passage. 687. Not necessarily the Straits of Magellan: modern Argentina was labelled Magellonica, after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. See Heylyn’s map of the Americas, or Nikolaus Visscher, Planispherium Terrestre (1660), illus. Portinaro (1987) pl. 88. 687–9. See Seneca, Thyestes 776ff: Thyestes seduced Aerope, his brother’s wife; in revenge, Atreus invited Thyestes to a reconciliation banquet and served up to him his child’s flesh. The sun changed course to avoid seeing an act so obscene. Glancing back to the ‘marshalled feast’ (ix 37); see Fixler (1969) 168. 693. sideral: coming from the stars (OED 2). Probably the malign blasting effect of the stars (x 412). 694. exhalation: meteor (supposed to be ignited vapour). 695–706. Cp. ix 1122f (‘high winds worse within / Began to rise, high passions’); MacCaffrey (1959) 90 (the attack of Sin and Death on the abyss). The conflict of winds, reverting to chaos, often symbolized chaotic emotion; cp. Spenser, FQ IV ix 23 figuring erotic dispositions (when Aeolus ‘Sends forth the winds . . . / They breaking forth with crude unruliment, / From all foure parts of heaven doe rage full sore, / And tosse the deepes, and teare the firmament, / And all the world confound with wide uprore, / As if in stead thereof they Chaos would restore’); Abbot, Rhapsodies (1647), in Frank (1968) 181: ‘As when the heavens, the air, the winds conspire / With horrid thunder, and with flashing fire, / To terrify the world, and make us think, / Our sins had filled God’s cup even to the brink, / And the universe must end.’ M. possibly saw and used Jan Jansson, Orbis Maritimus (1650), with its polyglot windrose (illus. Putnam (1983) 20f ). G. Campbell, MiltQ, 18 (1984) 125–8 argues that M. adapted the anemology of antiquity (Aristotle, Meteorologica ii 4–6; Problemata xxvi; Theophrastus, De Ventis), which distinguished twelve directions, not the compass’s sixteen. (Vitruvius I vi 10, however, distinguishes twenty-four.) There is certainly a historical dimension in the mixture of ancient and modern names. But all M.’s winds are named in Janssen’s chart; see Whiting (1958) 121f; A. L. Turner, MiltQ, 4 (1970) 36–8. In any case, M.’s winds

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Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas, and Cæcias and Argestes loud And Thrascias rend the woods and seas upturn; With adverse blast upturns them from the south Notus and Afer black with thunderous clouds From Serraliona; thwart of these as fierce Forth rush the Lévant and the ponent winds Eurus and Zephir with their lateral noise, Sirocco, and Libecchio. Thus began Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first, Daughter of Sin, among the irrational Death introduced through fierce antipathy: Beast now with beast gan war, and fowl with fowl, And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving, Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe Of man, but fled him, or with countenance grim Glared on him passing: these were from without The growing miseries, which Adam saw Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade, To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within,

do not form pairs as in Aristotle, as Campbell supposes. There are not twelve, but eleven in all: the number of sin. Four northern winds – Boreas (NNE), Cæcias (ENE), Argestes (WNW), and Thrascias (NNW) – oppose two adverse southern winds, Notus (S) and Afer (SW). Thwart these rush five lateral E–W winds, Levant (E), Eurus (ESE), Zephir (W), Sirocco (SE), and Libecchio (SW). Levant was both a specific wind and a general description opposite to ponent (Ital. ponente, ‘western’). On the history of wind names and windrose notation, see Wallis (1987) 163f, 245f, with further references. Norumbega: SE Canada and NE USA; cp. Jodocus Hondius’ ‘America’ (1630, 1641), in Portinaro (1987) pls. 73, 76. Samoed: Samoedia, NE Siberia, mentioned in M.’s Muscovia. brazen dungeon: In Virgil, Aen. i 50ff, Aeolus imprisons the winds in a cave; this dungeon is brazen for durability and attempted security. Cp. Elegy V 5–6. flaw: sudden squall. Serraliona: Sierra Leone (then a Portuguese possession). 706. Libecchio. Thus] Libecchio, thus 1667. 707. Cp. the Trin. MS drafts (Introduction: Composition), where personifications like Discord appear. first,] first 1667. 710–14. Overstating, or expressing Adam’s subjective view; see Corns (1994) 105. Contrast the animals’ play in the Peaceable Kingdom of iv 340ff. herb: Prelapsarian diet; see Gen. 1:30, ‘To every beast . . . I have given every green herb for meat.’ fled: Fear contrasting with awe before the Fall.

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paradise lost And in a troubled sea of passion tossed, Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint. Oh miserable of happy! Is this the end Of this new glorious world, and me so late The glory of that glory, who now become Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face Of God, whom to behold was then my height Of happiness: yet well, if here would end The misery, I deserved it, and would bear My own deservings; but this will not serve; All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, Is propagated curse. Oh voice once heard Delightfully, Increase and multiply, Now death to hear! For what can I increase Or multiply, but curses on my head? Who of all ages to succeed, but feeling The evil on him brought by me, will curse My head, Ill fare our ancestor impure, For this we may thank Adam; but his thanks Shall be the execration; so besides Mine own that bide upon me, all from me

718. Macrocosmic disorder becomes subjective metaphor. Cp. Isa. 57:20, ‘The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest’. For the Sea of Troubles topic, cp. Horace, Odes I v; Augustine, Comm. on Ps. 107, Migne xxxvii 1425f, Chaucer, Man of Law’s Tale; Petrarch, Rime clxxxix; Spenser, FQ III iv 8–10; Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 59; Quarles, Emblems iii 11 (1993) 165; Vaughan, ‘The Storm’ (1957) (‘Huge sea of sorrow and tempestuous grief ’). 720. The first of all human Complaints; like other inset genres (ix 16n, 30–1n, etc.) occasioning discriminations – just and unjust causes, contrite and excessive sorrow. Cp. J. P. Posenblatt, in Benet (1994) 184 contrasting Satan at iv 73ff. 722. Perhaps contrast 1 Cor. 11:7, ‘glory of God’. 728–9. propagated: extended; handed down to later generations (OED 4, 1 d). Food prolongs life and so extends the curse; to beget will hand it on. Eating and sex are concerns of the concupiscible faculty, often regarded as the locus of concupiscence or the ‘body of sin’; cp. De Doctrina i 11, YP vi 388. 730. Cp. vii 530f, Gen. 1:28. 736. For . . . Adam: A colloquialism, according to Addison. 738–41. Cp. Ezek. 36:31 (self-loathing); J. Harada, PQ, 50 (1971) 544 n 10 (exhibiting the death-centred ‘Satanic cul de sac of “me”; guilt and depravity, the first two degrees of death’). Mine own: i.e. curses (x 732). For the repeated me, cp. x 832n. redound: (1) flow back (OED 4, 1 b); (2) recoil (of disgrace: OED 8).

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Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound, 740 On me as on their natural centre light Heavy, though in their place. Oh fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes! Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man, did I solicit thee 745 From darkness to promote me, or here place In this delicious garden? As my will Concurred not to my being, it were but right And equal to reduce me to my dust, Desirous to resign, and render back 750 All I received, unable to perform Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold The good I sought not. To the loss of that, Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added The sense of endless woes? Inexplicable 755 Thy justice seems; yet to say truth, too late, I thus contest; then should have been refused Those terms whatever, when they were proposed: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? And though God 760 Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort, Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not: 740–1. light: (1) alight; (2) not heavy (since already at their natural centre). Adam’s Metaphysical paradox suggests the contradictions of his fallen nature. 743–4. The complaint condemned in Isa. 45:9, ‘Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?’ 744–52. Evans (1996) 80–2 compares Adam and Eve to indentured servants. But work was more positive to M. than this implies; and in any case their labour is symbolic, of moral effort. 748. equal: just. 751. terms: One ‘easy prohibition’ (iv 433) now seems too hard. Cp. Treip (1994) 159: ‘unpleasantly legalistic’. 754. endless woes: Irrational exaggeration such as M. deprecated (Burden (1967) 186f ). 758. Taking God’s part, and then his own, in an internal debate. Cp. dialogue poems like Marvell’s ‘Dialogue between Soul and Body’ or ‘A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’. 760–5. Dramatic irony: we, better than Adam, know how the curse of Gen. 3:14–19 proliferates. Cp. x 743f; Isa. 45:10 (‘Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou?’). election: (1) choice; (2) predestination (denied in favour of natural necessity). 762. not:] not 1674.

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paradise lost Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? Yet him not thy election, But natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him, thy reward was of his grace, Thy punishment then justly is at his will. Be it so, for I submit, his doom is fair, That dust I am, and shall to dust return: Oh welcome hour whenever! Why delays His hand to execute what his decree Fixed on this day? Why do I overlive, Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet Mortality my sentence, and be earth Insensible, how glad would lay me down As in my mother’s lap! There I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would thunder in my ears, no fear of worse To me and to my offspring would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die, Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of man

769. doom: judgment. 770–820. See Treip (1994) 136 (expansion from the word ‘death’ to its fictive representation). 770. The Gen. 3:19 curse ends ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’. 773–82. Cp. xi 535–7; M. Nyquist, in Attridge (1987) 237f (emergent Oedipal subjectivity). Closer, perhaps, to Fairbairnian ontogeny. 773. Newton and Verity see careless error in this day, since night after the Fall has already been mentioned (x 342). But M. is elsewhere precise about the prohibition’s chronology (x 49ff, 210f, 1048ff ). Perhaps the present action takes place on the same night: x 329 does not refer to sunrise over Eden. Adam thinks God delays, because, by biblical reckoning, the day of the Fall is past (Introduction: Time-scheme). By another mode of reckoning, however, twenty-four hours from the noon of the Fall (ix 739) runs out only with the ‘hour precise’ of the expulsion (xii 589). Completion of each version of ‘that day’ brings a new peripeteia, a fuller understanding of God’s judgment; see x 49–53n, 854–9n, 923, 1050n. 778. Cp. xi 536. lap!] lap? 1667 (question mark often indicated modern exclamation mark). 779–80. See Rosenblatt (1994) 53: the thought of God thundering arises from guilty imagining; God’s voice has always been mild (x 96). 783. all: entirely (OED adv.). Cp. x 792.

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785 Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; then in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? Oh thought Horrid, if true! Yet why? It was but breath 790 Of life that sinned; what dies but what had life And sin? The body properly hath neither. All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since human reach no farther knows. For though the Lord of all be infinite, 795 Is his wrath also? Be it, man is not so, But mortal doomed. How can he exercise Wrath without end on man whom death must end? Can he make deathless death? That were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself 800 Impossible is held, as argument Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out, For anger’s sake, finite to infinite In punished man, to satisfy his rigour

786–92. Echoing iii 245–9: ‘to Death I yield, and am his due / All that of me can die’. The Mortalist heresy serves to palliate Adam’s apprehensions (cp. x 783), and delay the ‘conviction’ of sin (x 831) that fears bring. Far from expressing his own Mortalism, then, M. here condemns it. Contrast De Doctrina i 13, YP vi 403 (‘the whole man dies . . . body, spirit, and soul’) and i 16, YP vi 439f. See G. Campbell, MiltQ, 13 (1979) 33–6. Mortalism, however, was by no means eccentric; cp. x 808–13; xi 57–66; Kelley (1941) 13; G. Williamson, SP, 32 (1935) 553–79; N. H. Henry, SP, 48 (1951) 248; Patrides (1966) 264–6. living death: The fourth degree of death, mors aeterna; see De Doctrina i 33 passim; i 13, YP vi 414; Yet why?: why should this doubt (x 782) pursue me? appease: allay. 798–801. Cp. De Doctrina i 2, YP vi 146: ‘the power of God is not exerted in those kinds of things which, as the term goes, imply a contradiction’. But Adam should allow for the possibility that man may first die, then be brought to life again at the day of judgment; see De Doctrina i 13, YP vi 413–14. argument: evidence. His intellect corrupted, Adam falls into Voluntarism, the doctrine (rejected by M.) that God can do anything he wishes. See Jacobus (1976) 192: ‘Adam’s knowledge of God is thinning.’ 801. Contrast 2 Cor. 12:9, ‘my strength is made perfect in weakness’ (M.’s personal motto); see Turner (1987) 307 n 89; Parker (1996) 389. he] he, 1667; 1674 (wrongly).

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Satisfied never? That were to extend 805 His sentence beyond dust and nature’s law, By which all causes else according still To the reception of their matter act, Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, 810 Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity? Ay me, that fear Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution 815 On my defenceless head; both death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; oh were I able 820 To waste it all myself, and leave ye none! 804–8. As at x 798–801, comforting himself with an argument from the Schools; cp. Daniel Stahlius, Axiomata (1651) xiv 4 (Quod recipitur, per modum recipientis), from Aristotle, De Anima 424a; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. I lxxxix 4, etc. Usually applied to the way things are perceived, but here misapplied to appeal to the natural law that agents act according to their subjects’ capacities. 804. never?] never; 1667 in mistake for the reversed question mark used in the seventeenth century to indicate the end of a rhetorical question. See Parkes (1992) 218f, 306f on the punctus percontativus. 805. M. ‘carries the Mosaic law back to Eden’; see Rosenblatt (1994) 211. 809–16. Cp. Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 67–70: ‘To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / . . . Must give us pause.’ 810. Cp. De Doctrina i 33, YP vi 628: ‘The second death, the punishment of the damned, seems to consist of . . . eternal torment, . . . the punishment of sense.’ 816. Am: Singular, with plural subject; Bentley objects, forgetting his seventeenth-century grammar. Adam realizes death has become one with himself (Darbishire). His own body and ‘the body of this death’ (Rom. 7:24) share the same identity. Cp. Spenser, FQ II xi 45f, where Arthur shares pronouns with Maleger, the body of sin in himself. incorporate: (1) united in one body; (2) embodied, having bodily form (OED 1, 3). Cp. x 587n. 817. ‘Not only am I and Death double, but I myself am, in that I contain my descendants’. Cp. 2 Esdras 7:48, ‘thou art not fallen alone, but we all that come of thee’. single: (1) one; (2) simple, free from duplicity. Adam reflects on his dyadic state; cp. vi 809–10n.

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So disinherited how would ye bless Me now your curse! Ah, why should all mankind For one man’s fault thus guiltless be condemned, If guiltless? But from me what can proceed, 825 But all corrupt, both mind and will depraved, Not to do only, but to will the same With me? How can they then acquitted stand In sight of God? Him after all disputes Forced I absolve: all my evasions vain 830 And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still But to my own conviction: first and last On me, me only, as the source and spring Of all corruption, all the blame lights due; So might the wrath. Fond wish! Couldst thou support

825. Without holding the Calvinist doctrine of Total Depravity, M. believed fallen nature thoroughly corrupt. Cp. De Doctrina i 11, YP vi 389: ‘the depravity which all human minds have in common’ (communis haec mentis humanae pravitas). 826–7. Cp. Rom. 2:3, ‘thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?’ The reader cannot escape judgment by judging Adam. 827. they then] they 1667 (wrongly). 828–44. Reaching conviction of sin, but unable to pass on to contrition, Adam falls into despair. Cp. De Doctrina i 19, YP vi 468: ‘degrees of repentance may be distinguished: recognition of sin, contrition, confession, abandonment of evil, and conversion to good’. Satan similarly fell into conscience-stricken despair (iv 86–113); the ‘degrees [of repentance] are all equally distinguishable . . . in the penitence of the unregenerate as well’. 829. Adam, as the person best placed to detect any injustice in the treatment of the species, justifies the ways of God effectively. 830. Cp. ii 559–61, the devils’ speculations ‘Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, / . . . in wandering mazes lost’. These mazes, part of Satan’s fascination (ix 499), contrast with the cosmic labyrinth danced by angels in the presence of God; cp. v 622; Carter (1996) 61. 832. Cp. 1 Sam. 25:24 (Abigail to save Nabal crying ‘Upon me, my lord, upon me let this iniquity be’); Virgil, Aen. ix 427 (Nisus acknowledges his own guilt to save Euryalus – me, me, adsum, qui feci, in me convertite ferrum); Broadbent (1960) 151f (repeating ‘the central ploce on “me” ’ in the Son’s speech at iii 236, ‘Behold me then, me for him, life for life’: ‘the spring of self-sacrifice which Adam and Eve draw on . . . to recover sanity and love’). Cp. x 738, and the satanic travesty at x 494–8. 834. ‘Would that the wrath, like the blame, fell on me’.

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835 That burden heavier than the earth to bear, Than all the world much heavier, though divided With that bad woman? Thus what thou desir’st And what thou fearst, alike destroys all hope Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable 840 Beyond all past example and futúre, To Satan only like both crime and doom. O conscience, into what abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged! 845 Thus Adam to himself lamented loud Through the still night, not now, as ere man fell, Wholesome and cool, and mild, but with black air Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom, Which to his evil conscience represented 850 All things with double terror: on the ground Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, and oft Cursed his creation, death as oft accused Of tardy execution, since denounced The day of his offence. Why comes not death, 855 Said he, with one thrice ácceptable stroke To end me? Shall truth fail to keep her word, Justice divine not hasten to be just? But death comes not at call, justice divine Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries. 860 O woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales and bowers, With other echo late I taught your shades 835–6. world: universe. Not repeating earth but exaggerating still further. 840. The false perspective of despair, as iii 129ff makes clear. Adam knows only one analogy to his own fall – the case of the reprobate Satan, which he thinks similar; see Corns (1994) 84. 842. God placed his ‘umpire conscience’ in man ‘as a guide’ (iii 194–7). The first three Trin. MS drafts include Conscience among their personae. Adam is driven into an abyss, like Satan in Bk ii; see Danielson (1982) 56. 848. damps: noxious exhalations. 849–50. Cp. De Doctrina i 12, YP vi 394: ‘guiltiness is either accompanied or followed by terrors of conscience’. evil: guilty. 853. denounced: proclaimed as to happen. Cp. x 210. 854–9. Expecting the terms of the prohibition to be fulfilled by immediate physical death. The delay will reveal a more mysterious justice – merciful, yet accomplished in full; cp. x 773n. Mimetically problematic syntax; see Corns (1990) 35. acceptable: See x 139n. 860–1. Itself an echo of viii 275 – but with a difference. The other echo

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To answer, and resound far other song. Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld, Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh, Soft words to his fierce passion she assayed: But her with stern regard he thus repelled. Out of my sight, thou serpent, that name best Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, Like his, and colour serpentine may show Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended To hellish falsehood, snare them. But for thee I had persisted happy, had not thy pride And wandering vanity, when least was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdained Not to be trusted, longing to be seen Though by the devil himself, him overweening To overreach, but with the serpent meeting Fooled and beguiled, by him thou, I by thee, To trust thee from my side, imagined wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults, And understood not all was but a show Rather than solid virtue, all but a rib

honoured central ‘rivers’ of virtue; this honours central hillocks, symbolic of power. Cp. the morning hymn (v 202–4). 863–5. See Christopher (1982) 163–5 (critics have exaggerated Eve’s role; her love does not precede prevenient grace, although it is a ‘providential stimulus’); Rosenblatt (1994) 57 (the secondary law of Moses already at work, with the need to confront error with compassion). 867–908. Landor wanted a ‘pruning-knife’ to cut Adam’s invective against women; see Le Comte (1978) 117 citing Imaginary Conversations (1846) ii 71 (a ‘long and somewhat foul excrescence’). 867. name: Some commentators interpreted ‘Eve’ as ‘serpent’ (Leonard (1990) 229f ). 872. pretended: stretched in front as a covering (OED 1). 875–9. Adam, too late, is firm against separation. For the harsh account of Eve’s motives, cp. ix 335–86nn. 884 –8. sinister: (1) left; (2) corrupt, evil. For the true implication of Eve’s side of origin, see viii 465–6n. The recriminating Adam finds ammunition in stock antifeminist lore. See Utley (1944); Svendsen (1956) 184 (illustrating the notion of a crooked rib from misogynistic works like the Malleus Maleficarum and Joseph Swetnam, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women (1615) ); W. Shullenberger, MiltQ, 20 (1986) 69–85; B. K. Lewalski, in Minogue (1990) 46–69; Flannagan (echoes of

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885 Crookèd by nature, bent, as now appears, More to the part siníster from me drawn, Well if thrown out, as supernumerary To my just number found. Oh why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven 890 With spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With men as angels wíthout feminine, Or find some other way to generate 895 Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen, And more that shall befall, innumerable Disturbances on earth through female snares, And strait conjunction with this sex: for either He never shall find out fit mate, but such 900 As some misfortune brings him, or mistake, Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained By a far worse, or if she love, withheld By parents, or his happiest choice too late 905 Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame: Which infinite calamity shall cause William Prynne, M.’s old pamphlet war enemy). supernumerary: See Willet, Hexapla (1608) 38 (citing Mercerus and Calvin – Eve had to be made from an extra rib for Adam to be perfectly created. This was ‘supernumerary . . . above the usual number . . . not as a superfluous or monstrous part, but as necessary for the creation of the woman’); Sprott (1953) 58f (the supernumerary syllable at x 887 may be mimetic). 888–95. Another ancient antifeminist canard; cp. Euripides, Hippolytus 616ff. defect: Cp. Aristotle, De Generatione 735a25, 767a35, 775a15 (the female as a defective male); Keckermann, Systema Physica (1617) (are females monstrous, as involving a defect of nature? No: women are common, monsters rare); Fr. W.T. Costello, RenN, 8 (1955) 179–84; Fletcher (1956–61) ii 1777. 890–3. masculine: Implying a distorted, sexist view of the angels, who can take either sex; see i 424 (Flannagan). Eve’s being created last was not an argument against her at ix 896–9n. 898–908. Applied biographically in Le Comte (1978) 37. But even if M. might once have sympathized with Adam’s execrations, here he is more rational – and the exaggerated multiplication of griefs ludicrous. fit mate: appropriate companion. Cp. Tetrachordon, YP ii 598f; Gen. 2:18 (‘helpmeet’). A central idea in M.’s theology of sex. 899. Contrast viii 450; cp. Gen. 2:18.

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To human life, and household peace confound. He added not, and from her turned, but Eve Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing, And tresses all disordered, at his feet Fell humble, and embracing them, besought His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint. Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness heaven What love sincere, and reverence in my heart I bear thee, and unweeting have offended, Unhappily deceived; thy suppliant I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not, Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid, Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, My only strength and stay: forlorn of thee, Whither shall I betake me, where subsist? While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps, Between us two let there be peace, both joining, As joined in injuries, one enmity Against a foe by doom express assigned us, That cruel serpent: on me exercise not Thy hatred for this misery befallen, On me already lost, me than thyself More miserable; both have sinned, but thou Against God only, I against God and thee, And to the place of judgment will return, There with my cries importune heaven, that all The sentence from thy head removed may light On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe,

910–12. Recalling a great contemporary icon, the penitent Magdalen – especially in Titian’s version and its countless imitations. It has become remote; see, e.g., Davies (1991) 201: ‘The narrator’s tone combines a rather embarrassing mixture of pity, relish and respect.’ 913–36. Attempting to act as redeemer, thinks Summers (1962) ch. 7. But this is untenable in view of her proposal of suicide; see J. Harada, PQ, 50 (1971) 543–8 (Eve is disobedient, self-destructive, and emulous in despair, although less egotistic than Adam). 923. See x 773n, 1050n. 926. doom: Aptly remembering the judgment of x 179–81; the ‘enmity’ of Gen. 3:15 being specifically between ‘the woman’ and the serpent. 931. Cp. iv 299 (‘He for God only, she for God in him’); the Penitential Ps. 51:4 (‘Against thee, thee only, have I sinned’). 935–6. Not typological, since later than iii 236f (Treip (1994) 214). But events in heaven do not follow a linear sequence only.

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paradise lost Me me only just object of his ire. She ended weeping, and her lowly plight, Immovable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration; soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon. Unwary, and too desirous, as before, So now of what thou knowst not, who desir’st The punishment all on thyself; alas, Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain His full wrath whose thou feelst as yet least part, And my displeasure bearst so ill. If prayers Could alter high decrees, I to that place Would speed before thee, and be louder heard, That on my head all might be visited, Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven, To me committed and by me exposed. But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere, but strive In offices of love, how we may light’n Each other’s burden in our share of woe; Since this day’s death denounced, if aught I see, Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil, A long day’s dying to augment our pain, And to our seed (oh hapless seed!) derived.

936. For the repeated me, cp. x 832n. See J. Harada, PQ, 50 (1971) 547f: Eve imitates everything in Adam’s soliloquy. 937–40. Difficult syntax, with multiple incomplete chains of discourse miming interdependence: (1) ‘her plight, immovable till her fault was acknowledged, wrought commiseration’; (2) ‘wrought commiseration in Adam, immovable till her fault . . .’; (3) ‘humbly pledged herself, immovable until she obtained peace’. 950–1. Cp. x 834–7; Adam grasps more clearly what the punishment may involve, and controls her irrational excess. 957. Exaggerating the fault denied at ix 1170ff. 959. elsewhere: Either heaven or the ‘place of judgment’ (x 932). 960. offices: duties. 962–4. Seeing beyond the literal terms of the prohibition; cp. x 854–9n, 773n. 965. derived: passed on by descent. Cp. x 77.

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To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied. Adam, by sad experiment I know How little weight my words with thee can find, Found so erroneous, thence by just event Found so unfortunate; nevertheless, Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart, Living or dying from thee I will not hide What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen, Tending to some relief of our extremes, Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable, As in our evils, and of easier choice. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe, devoured By death at last, and miserable it is To be to others cause of misery, Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring Into this cursèd world a woeful race, That after wretched life must be at last Food for so foul a monster, in thy power It lies, yet ere conception to prevent The race unblest, to being yet unbegot.

967. experiment: experience. 969. event: consequence. 970. unfortunate: Cp. x 965 (‘hapless seed’); Burden (1967) 181f (Adam and Eve share a tragic ideology). Necessitarian tragedy has become possible: Eve sees the event is just, but imagines the effect on her descendants a necessary, ‘certain woe’ (x 980). She recognizes God’s justice but not his mercy. 978. As in: ‘considering our ill situation’ (Richardson). Cp. Cicero, Familiar Epistles xii 2 (nonnihil, ut in tantis malis, est profectum). 979. descent: descendants. perplex: torment. A thematic word; cp. ix 10–19n. 982. misery,] misery. 1667 some copies. 987. prevent: preclude; cut off beforehand (OED 6, 8). A reprehensible sentiment, when infant mortality was frequent and life expectation short, so that begetting children was a sacred duty. Implying ‘that so far no children have been begotten in Eden’ (Flannagan). But they might have been conceived and subsequently corrupted (iv 743–4n). See Werman (1995) 220 citing Rashi, on Gen. 4:23 (Lamech’s wives Ada and Zillah abstained from sex with him, not to bear children under Cam’s curse).

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Childless thou art, childless remain: 990 So death shall be deceived his glut, and with us two Be forced to satisfy his rav’nous maw. But if thou judge it hard and difficult, Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain From love’s due rites, nuptial embraces sweet, 995 And with desire to languish wíthout hope, Before the present object languishing With like desire, which would be misery And torment less than none of what we dread, Then both ourselves and seed at once to free 1000 From what we fear for both, let us make short, Let us seek death, or he not found, supply With our own hands his office on ourselves; Why stand we longer shivering under fears, That show no end but death, and have the power, 1005 Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy. She ended here, or vehement despair Broke off the rest; so much of death her thoughts Had entertained, as dyed her cheeks with pale. 1010 But Adam with such counsel nothing swayed, To better hopes his more attentive mind Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve replied.

989–90. Editors move So death back to the previous line to secure metrical regularity; perhaps unnecessarily. The lineation in 1667, 1674, and three subsequent edns may mime the deficiency of childlessness (x 989 defective) and the glut denied to death (990 hypermetrical). Cp., however, SA 496f. 995. On the emphatic accentuation wíthout, see ii 892n. Cp. Dante, Inf. iv 42 (che sanza speme vivemo in disio, without hope we live in longing). 996. object: Eve. 1002–6. See J. Harada, PQ, 50 (1971) 549: assuming their inability to abstain from intercourse (x 997f ), Eve proposes Liebestod. office: function (as executioner). 1004–6. ‘Choosing the shortest of many ways to die, have the power to destroy’. shortest: quickest, most immediate (OED 7). 1006. Effectively combining traductio with repetitio. 1007. vehement: passionate. Explained etymologically as vehe, ‘lacking’ + mens, ‘mind’. Cp. ‘mindless’ (ix 431); ix 358n. 1009. pale: pallor. 1010. nothing: not at all. 1012. The curse takes effect: raising his mind now involves Labouring.

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Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns; But self-destruction therefore sought, refutes That excellence thought in thee, and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overloved. Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of misery, so thinking to evade The penalty pronounced, doubt not but God Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire than so To be forestalled; much more I fear lest death So snatched will not exempt us from the pain We are by doom to pay; rather such acts Of contumacy will provoke the highest To make death in us live: then let us seek Some safer resolution, which methinks I have in view, calling to mind with heed

1013–24. Cp. Seneca, Moral Epistles lxx. For recent defences of suicide in the Stoic tradition, see G. Williamson, SP, 32 (1935) 576–70 (M. may have been the first to oppose that trend; but cp. Burton, Anat. of Mel. I iv 1 i (1989–) i 435). Discriminating between Stoic extremity (cp. the devils at ii 562–9) and Christian patience. In Commonplace Book, YP i 371 under ‘Death self-inflicted’ M. notes Dante, Inf. xiii and Sidney, Arcadia iv (1621) 419 (‘whether lawful, disputed with exquisite reasoning’). Cp. SA 505ff; De Doctrina ii 8, YP vi 719 (‘a perverse hatred of oneself ’, referring to Ps. 55:23, ‘Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days’). 1013–15. Discovering Eve’s better self; see J. Harada, PQ, 50 (1971) 545, 551: Adam reaches self-knowledge through her ‘unwary imitation’. Outwardly correcting her folly, ‘on the thematic level . . . he is realizing and controlling the self of the sinner: that is, himself ’. A peripeteia disclosing the significance of both curse and promise. 1025. snatched: Cp. Seneca, Moral Epistles lxx 28 (iniuriosum est rapto vivere, at contra pulcherrimum mori rapto). 1026–37. On Adam as the first believer, see Christopher (1982) 167f. 1026. doom: judgment. 1028. Cp. x 788n (‘living death’). 1030–40. Bringing in the prophecy of x 164–81 as originally made to obviate Eve’s despair; see Burden (1967) 178f citing Calvin, Institutes II xiii 2. Dawning realization of mankind’s mission and Christ’s brings a further stage in repentance. Adam’s rejection of suicide and acceptance of the prophesied role are free choices; whereas Satan’s serpent role is involuntary (x 510); see Burden op. cit. 31ff. According to Justin Martyr, Satanas = Sata (apostate) + nas (serpent); see Leonard (1990) 231.

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paradise lost Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall bruise The serpent’s head; piteous amends, unless Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand foe Satan, who in the serpent hath contrived Against us this deceit: to crush his head Would be revenge indeed; which will be lost By death brought on ourselves, or childless days Resolved, as thou proposest; so our foe Shall scape his punishment ordained, and we Instead shall double ours upon our heads. No more be mentioned then of violence Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness, That cuts us off from hope, and savours only Rancour and pride, impatience and despite, Reluctance against God and his just yoke Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild And gracious temper he both heard and judged Without wrath or reviling; we expected Immediate dissolution, which we thought Was meant by death that day, when lo, to thee Pains only in child-bearing were foretold, And bringing forth, soon recompensed with joy, Fruit of thy womb: on me the curse aslope

1045. Reluctance: struggling; resistance (OED 1). Cp. emblems of Death and the yoke of affliction or punishment for sin (Lam. 1:14; 3:27): e.g. De Montenay, Emblemes (1571) 4, RECTUM IUDICIUM; the pictura, Death strangling a man while God’s hand offers an easy yoke (Matt. 11:30). The epigram, counselling resignation, discourages rebellion against God’s just judgment. Pace Flannagan, emblems of the marriage yoke are not specially relevant. 1050. Understanding the figurative prophecy (x 1031ff ) depends on recognizing the figurative terms of the prohibition (viii 323–33n). The day of the Fall ended at sunset after all (x 49–53n, 773n); it is now Day 33. But see xii 588–9n for a further peripeteia in this sequence. 1052–3. John 16:21, ‘A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world’ – figuring the joy at the coming of the kingdom. Fruit of thy womb: A similar allusion, via Luke 1:42. 1053–5. Referring to x 201–5. Adam, resigned, feels he has got off lightly. Flannagan compares De Doctrina ii 9, YP vi 731f, on industry, ‘the virtue which enables one to make an honest living’, whereas ‘the idler’s desire is the death of him’ (Prov. 21:25f ).

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Glanced on the ground, with labour I must earn 1055 My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse; My labour will sustain me; and lest cold Or heat should injure us, his timely care Hath unbesought provided, and his hands Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he judged; 1060 How much more, if we pray him, will his ear Be open, and his heart to pity incline, And teach us further by what means to shun The inclement seasons, rain, ice, hail and snow, Which now the sky with various face begins 1065 To show us in this mountain, while the winds Blow moist and keen, shattering the graceful locks Of these fair spreading trees; which bids us seek Some better shroud, some better warmth to cherish Our limbs benumbed, ere this diurnal star 1070 Leave cold the night, how we his gathered beams Reflected, may with matter sere foment, Or by collision of two bodies grind

1058. unbesought: Probably a coinage; see ii 185n. 1060–81. Restoring technology to its right function of addressing human needs, in accordance with Christ’s instruction. The vision of modest progress is sustained by accompanying expressions of faith that God’s mercy allows life to continue and be ameliorated. Still, only the Fall makes applied science necessary; see Broadbent (1960) 103. Cp. v 349n, 396n. 1060–1. Biblical diction; cp. Ps. 24:4; 119:36, 112;1 Pet. 3:12. 1066. shattering: Cp. Lycidas 5. 1068. shroud: (1) shelter (OED sb.1 3); (2) loppings of a tree (OED sb.3). 1070–80. Blending hard and soft primitivism. Characteristic of the former is the rationalistic account of fire’s invention as a first step in civilization; see Panofsky (1962) 41. But to the extent that it is necessitated by macrocosmic disorders caused by the Fall, the world-view is soft-primitivistic. 1070. how: Introducing a word group dependent on seek (x 1067). 1071. sere: dried up; withered. foment: cherish. Playing on Lat. fomes (tinder). Adam’s formidable intellect at first seems able to envisage a parabolic mirror focusing sunlight onto dry combustibles. But Reflected could mean ‘deflected’ (OED 1); so that only refraction through any transparent solid that will act as a lens need be involved. Cp. Cowley, ‘The Vain Love’ 4 (1905) 81, (1989–) ii (1) 38 (‘burning-glass of ice’). For the Indians’ way of making fire, see Cawley (1938) 366; Evans (1996) 101 (on the frontispiece to Thomas Harriot, True Report of . . . Virginia (1990) showing the Fall, and savage Indians).

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paradise lost The air attrite to fire, as late the clouds Jostling or pushed with winds rude in their shock Tine the slant lightning, whose thwart flame driv’n down Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine, And sends a comfortable heat from far, Which might supply the sun: such fire to use, And what may else be remedy or cure To evils which our own misdeeds have wrought, He will instruct us praying, and of grace Beseeching him, so as we need not fear To pass commodiously this life, sustained By him with many comforts, till we end In dust, our final rest and native home. What better can we do, than to the place Repairing where he judged us, prostrate fall Before him reverent, and there confess Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek. Undoubtedly he will relent and turn From his displeasure; in whose look serene,

1073. attrite: (1) ground down by friction; (2) having an imperfect sorrow for sin, a bruising that does not amount to the utter crushing of contrition (OED 1, 2, and s. v. Attrition 4). The diction shows Adam’s mind working towards the contrition reached by x 1091 and 1103. 1074. Jostling] Justling 1667, a spelling and perhaps phonetic variant. 1075–8. Tine: tind, ignite. thwart: transverse. Fire originates with lightning in Lucretius v 1091–4. 1078–81. Until the Fall mankind was ‘guiltless of fire’ (v 349n, 396n; ix 387–92n). Imagining the good life without technology was not easy: at ix 392 M. depends on angels to supply its place. Like many, he regarded the arts as existing to repair the Fall; cp. Wilson, Rhetoric (1560) Pref. supply: take the place of (OED 11). of grace: for grace. 1083. commodiously: conveniently. 1088–92. Convinced of their sin, and contrite, they pass to confession, the third stage of repentance (x 828–44n). Cp. the 1662 BCP Invitation to general confession before Communion (Keeling (1969) 200). Frequenting: filling, crowding (OED 6; not a Latinism). 1090. Cp. Isa. 16:9 (‘I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon’); Quarles, Emblems iii 8 (1993) 152, on Jer. 9:1. Perhaps cp. Virgil, Aen. xi 191 (spargitur et tellus lacrimis). 1091. Cp. the Penitential Ps. 51:17, ‘a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise’.

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1095 When angry most he seemed and most severe, What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone? So spake our father penitent, nor Eve Felt less remorse: they forthwith to the place Repairing where he judged them prostrate fell 1100 Before him reverent, and both confessed Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek. THE END OF THE TENTH BOOK

Paradise Lost BOOK XI The Argument

The Son of God presents to his Father the prayers of our first parents now repenting, and intercedes for them: God accepts them, and1 declares that they must no longer abide in Paradise; sends Michael with a band of cherubim to dispossess them; but first to reveal to Adam future things: Michael’s coming down. Adam shows to Eve certain ominous signs; he discerns Michael’s approach, goes out to meet him: the angel denounces their departure. Eve’s lamentation. Adam pleads, but submits: the angel leads him up to a high hill, sets before him in vision what shall happen till the flood. 1096–7. Recognizing God’s mercy, the theme of the whole speech x 1046–96, and at last finding the word itself. Cp. iii 134, ‘mercy first and last shall brightest shine’. penitent: Drawing attention to the new stage; recognition of mercy leads to penitence, penitence to faith. Cp. De Doctrina i 19, YP vi 469: ‘In regenerate man repentance precedes faith . . . So that awareness of divine mercy which results in repentance should not be confused with faith.’ 1098–1104. Modulating x 1086–92 into narrative discourse, but with the last two verses in each case identical, to show that the actions truly reflect the words. Cp. the closure at iv 641–56, and contrast Cowley, Davideis (1656) i n 31, (1905) 274 (‘I do not like Homer’s repeating of long messages just in the same words’). xi Argument] Almost identical with the first half of 1668 Bk x Arg. Arg.1 and ] but 1674.

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Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood Praying, for from the mercy-seat above Prevenient grace descending had removed The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breathed Unutterable, which the spirit of prayer Inspired, and winged for heaven with speedier flight Than loudest oratory: yet their port Not of mean suitors, nor important less Seemed their petition, than when the ancient pair

1. Not contradicting ‘prostrate’ (x 1009). stood: (1) remained (OED 15 d); (2) stood (OED 46; cp. the idiom ‘stood in need’). Paradox, according to J. E. Parish, EM, 15 (1964) 89–102: they are prostrate in sin, raised by regeneration. 2. mercy-seat: The gold covering laid on the ark of the covenant, God’s resting-place (Exod. 25:17–23), replaced by Christ; see Rosenblatt (1994) 5. The two gold cherubim at its ends symbolized intercession in heaven; cp. i 381–7n; xi 34; Exod. 25:18; Rom. 3:25. 3–4. Prevenient grace: Preceding human choice, which, however, remains free to accept or reject it. In M.’s Arminian view, grace did not simply produce repentance; it was not irresistible. Prevenient: antecedent to human action (OED 2). Cp. Ps. 59:10 Vulg. (Deus meus, misericordia eius praeveniet me); Rom. 8:30; 2 Tim. 1:9. 4. Ezek. 11:19, ‘I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh.’ A common emblem of regeneration or its rejection; cp. George Herbert, ‘The Altar’; Christopher Harvey, ‘The Hardness of the Heart’, Schola Cordis (1647; 1874) 129 (‘Adamants are / Softer by far’), from Benedictus van Haeften’s much translated Schola Chordis (Antwerp 1629) CORDIS DURITIES; Vaughan, Silex Scintillans (1650) title-page. 5–7. Rom. 8:26, ‘we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’. 8. oratory: (1) exercise of eloquence; (2) ?Catholic place of prayer. port: bearing. 10–14. A mythic analogue of Noah’s salvation, itself a type of Christ’s. Advised by his father Prometheus, Deucalion built an ark and escaped the flood; when it subsided, he and Pyrrha consulted Themis, who told them to restore the race by throwing stones behind them, which became people. The fabulous pair were less ancient than the biblical Adam and Eve (these); in accounts of origins, antiquity lent authority. But Bentley, and Empson (1950) 179f, half-followed by H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 224, infer that Genesis is called fabulous too. Richardson puts this in perspective: if we ‘apply the word these to the fables, M. is supported

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In fables old, less ancient yet than these, Deucalion and chaste Pyrrha to restore The race of mankind drowned, before the shrine Of Themis stood devout. To heaven their prayers Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds Blown vagabond or frustrate: in they passed Dimensionless through heavenly doors; then clad With incense, where the golden altar fumed, By their great intercessor, came in sight Before the Father’s throne: them the glad Son Presenting, thus to intercede began. See Father, what first fruits on earth are sprung From thy implanted grace in man, these sighs And prayers, which in this golden censer, mixed

by very good authority; that term [ fabula] belongs to real, undoubted history . . . Jerome, Epistles i 38 . . . calls the scripture-history of Samson a fable . . . That term frequently occurs in authors of the best latinity, not implying the least untruth’ (further citing iv 250 (‘fables true’)); Pliny, Epistles L vi 15. The Deucalion myth is apt, being interpreted as an allegory of conversion; cp. G. Sandys, in Ovid (1970) 70: ‘God is said in the gospel to be able of stones to raise up children unto Abraham: the sense not unlike, though diviner; meaning the ingrafting of the Gentiles into his faith, hardened in sin through ignorance and custom. So the giving us hearts of flesh instead of those of stone, is meant by our conversion.’ 14–16. Cp. iii 487, the ‘violent cross wind’ blowing the superstitious into Limbo. 17–18. Dimensionless: without physical extension (OED 1 a). On M.’s concretizing of intangibles, see Corns (1990) 100. Cp. Ps. 141:2 (‘Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice’); Rev. 8:3 (‘there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne’). See Broadbent (1960) 157: the furnishings of M.’s heaven come ‘from the Jewish temple direct, not via a Roman cathedral’, and show vacillation between the apocalyptic and the emblematic. More simply, the imagery is perhaps related to M.’s spiritual materialism. 19. intercessor: Christ. Cp. Heb. 9:24 (‘Christ is . . . entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us’); Madsen (1968) 104ff (OT ‘royalist’ imagery of the true priest enacting a typological ascent). 22–66. For redemption as a georgic labour (cp. fruits; ‘sower’; ‘manuring’; ‘engraft’), see Lewalski (1985) 138. 24. Cp. Rev. 5:8 (‘golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints’). Pace Ross (1943), the Catholic ceremony is symbolic, as in Spenser, FQ.

600

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paradise lost With incense, I thy priest before thee bring, Fruits of more pleasing savour from thy seed Sown with contrition in his heart, than those Which his own hand manuring all the trees Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen From innocence. Now therefore bend thine ear To supplication, hear his sighs though mute; Unskilful with what words to pray, let me Interpret for him, me his advocate And propitiation, all his works on me Good or not good engraft, my merit those Shall pérfect, and for these my death shall pay. Accept me, and in me from these receive The smell of peace toward mankind, let him live Before thee reconciled, at least his days Numbered, though sad, till death, his doom (which I To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse) To better life shall yield him, where with me

26. The sweet savour of acceptable sacrifices is biblical: e.g. Ezek. 20:41. Resonant with the savoury fruit at v 84, 401; ix 741. 26–30. Varying the parable of the sower (Mark 4:14–30), with the help of Heb. 13:15 (‘Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name’). manuring: cultivating. 30–1. See Madsen (1968) 165: in Protestant imagery, regeneration tended to come (as the word) via the ear. For supplication as part of regeneration, cp. De Doctrina i 19, YP vi 466–70; Rom. 8:26 (‘The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’). 32–44. Emphatic ploce on me echoing Christ’s offer of atonement; cp. iii 236ff; x 832n. 32. pray,] pray 1667 some copies. 33. 1 John 2:1f, ‘We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins.’ 35. engraft: Continuing the horticultural metaphor with St Paul’s allegory of incorporation in Christ as grafting (Rom. 11:16ff ). 40–1. doom: judgment. Cp. x 76: ‘that I may mitigate their doom’. To God, death is a mercy, not a punishment. Numbered: limited; made meaningful. Cp. Ps. 90:12, ‘teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom’. Mankind at least belongs with the numbered regenerate, instead of with the unnumbered evil (vi 767n). Often numbered meant ‘elect’; cp. Exod. 30:12, ‘then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them’. Perhaps also self-reference, to the symbolic time-scheme.

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All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss, Made one with me as I with thee am one. To whom the Father, wíthout cloud, serene. All thy request for man, accepted Son, Obtain, all thy request was my decree: But longer in that Paradise to dwell, The law I gave to nature him forbids: Those pure immortal elements that know No gross, no unharmonious mixture foul, Eject him tainted now, and purge him off As a distemper, gross to air as gross, And mortal food, as may dispose him best For dissolution wrought by sin, that first Distempered all things, and of incorrupt Corrupted. I at first with two fair gifts Created him endowed, with happiness And immortality: that fondly lost, This other served but to eternize woe; Till I provided death; so death becomes His final remedy, and after life Tried in sharp tribulation, and refined

43–4. John 17:11, 21–3, ‘Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are . . . that they also may be one in us.’ 45. cloud: darkening of his countenance (OED 10). Cp. iii 262. Alluding also to the cloud of mystery God speaks from; cp. iii 378ff; vi 28; Num. 11:25; Mark 9:7. On the emphatic wíthout see ii 892n. 46. accepted: acceptable, approved. 49–57. The expulsion is not punishment but necessary consequence of the change in human nature. Adam earlier (x 805) appealed to ‘nature’s law’ against God’s supposed harshness; now a merciful God palliates nature’s harshness. purge him off: Cp. ii 138–42 (Belial’s optimistic hope that in heaven ‘the ethereal mould / Incapable of stain would soon expel / Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire’); Lev. 18:25 (‘The land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants’). Paradise’s ‘of pure now purer air’ (iv 153n) is countered here by of incorrupt / Corrupted. Distempered: disturbed the proper temperament or proportion (of elements, humours, weather, etc.). Death was held at bay only by right tempering of qualities, so that dissolution was a physical consequence of sin. For M.’s Mortalism, cp. x 786–92n, 808–13. 59. fondly: foolishly.

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paradise lost By faith and faithful works, to second life, Waked in the renovation of the just, Resigns him up with heaven and earth renewed. But let us call to synod all the blest Through heaven’s wide bounds; from them I will not hide My judgments, how with mankind I proceed, As how with peccant angels late they saw; And in their state, though firm, stood more confirmed. He ended, and the Son gave signal high To the bright minister that watched, he blew His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps When God descended, and perhaps once more To sound at general doom. The angelic blast Filled all the regions: from their blissful bowers Of amaranthine shade, fountain or spring,

64. In the regeneration process, reaching repentance and beginning faith. Cp. xii 427 (‘faith not void of works’); De Doctrina i 22, YP vi 490 (‘we are justified by faith without the works of the law, but not without the works of faith’). M. shared the general Protestant belief in Justification by Faith. 65. Cp. Luke 14:14, ‘resurrection of the just’. M.’s use of renovation is often political; cp. Animadversions, YP i 703 (‘as if a man should tax the renovating and re-engendering spirit of God with innovation’); Tetrachordon, YP ii 585 (‘glorious changes and renovations both in Church and State’); De Doctrina i 33, YP vi 624f. 66. 2 Pet. 3:13, ‘we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’. 67. synod: assembly. Cp. vi 156 (‘gods, in synod met’); x 661; Lewalski (1985) 136 n 59 citing George Sandys for synod = concilium. Often an astrological term. 73–6. Perhaps the same ‘ethereal trumpet’ that signalled battle at vi 60. Oreb: Horeb, where God descended to the sound of a trumpet, to deliver the ten commandments on Mt Sinai; cp. vi 56–60n; Exod. 19:16; Werman (1995) 224 (Michael’s trumpet in the Midrashim). general doom: the last judgment. Cp. Nativity Ode 157ff; 1 Thess. 4:16 (‘The Lord himself shall descend from heaven . . . and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first’); 1 Cor. 15:52 (‘The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed’). 77. regions: layers of atmosphere distinguished in Renaissance meteorology. Cp. i 515–16n; iii 562n. blissful bowers: Empson (1961) 108 compares Adam and Eve’s nuptial bower. 78. amaranthine: For the unwithering ‘amarant . . . flower’, symbol of immortality, see iii 353–7n.

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By the waters of life, where’er they sat In fellowships of joy: the sons of light Hasted, resorting to the summons high, And took their seats; till from his throne supreme The almighty thus pronounced his sovereign will. O sons, like one of us man is become To know both good and evil, since his taste Of that defended fruit; but let him boast His knowledge of good lost, and evil got, Happier, had it sufficed him to have known Good by itself, and evil not at all. He sorrows now, repents, and prays contrite, My motions in him, longer than they move, His heart I know, how variable and vain

79. Cp. iii 357–9nn, the ‘fount of life’ and ‘river of bliss’. 80. sons of light: Cp. ii 1034–40; iii 510–18; v 600; Allen (1954) 98; M. Y. Hughes, SEL, 4 (1964) 1–33; Ryken (1970) 38–41, 78f; A. R. Cirillo, MiltS, 3 (1971) 83–102; Frye (1978) 198 (light in representations of heaven). 84–98. Gen. 3:22f, ‘the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden’. Empson (1961) 108 detects ‘a mysterious tone of connivance’. More plausibly, Burden (1967) 7f thinks M. sharpening the irony in case the Genesis account seem to confess inadvertency. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 55 believes ‘with Mercerus and Calvin, that God speaketh ironically’, and with Rupert of Deutz that Adam ‘was so far from being as God, but he was almost become as the devil’. 86. defended: forbidden (OED 3 a). Not Latinism: Richardson illustrates from that well of English, Chaucer. 88–9. Contradicting the idea of the Fortunate Fall; see Driscoll (1993) 12. 90. Sorrow for sin and contrition are separate stages of repentance; cp. x 828–44n, 1073n. 91. Greene (1963) 407 objects to M.’s combining free will with predestination; but Danielson (1982) 61 resolves the apparent contradiction in terms of M.’s Arminianism. motions: inward promptings, impulses, stirrings of the soul. Semi-technical in homiletic contexts, of God’s operation on the soul (OED 9 b, citing Walton: ‘God . . . marked him with . . . a blessing of obedience to the motions of his blessed Spirit’). 91–3. ‘I know his heart, how variable it will become if left to itself longer than these motions.’ Mimetic delay of heart, and, even longer, of I know. Self-left: left to itself (unrecorded coinage; cp. iii 130n).

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Self-left. Lest therefore his now bolder hand Reach also of the tree of life, and eat, 95 And live for ever, dream at least to live For ever, to remove him I decree, And send him from the garden forth to till The ground whence he was taken, fitter soil. Michael, this my behest have thou in charge, 100 Take to thee from among the cherubim Thy choice of flaming warriors, lest the fiend Or in behalf of man, or to invade Vacant possession some new trouble raise: Haste thee, and from the Paradise of God 105 Without remorse drive out the sinful pair, From hallowed ground the unholy, and denounce To them and to their progeny from thence Perpetual banishment. Yet lest they faint At the sad sentence rigorously urged, 110 For I behold them softened and with tears 95. ‘The reinterpretative dream’ is M.’s addition to Gen. 3:22f (Bush). 98. fitter soil: Apparently implying the distinction between pura naturalia (properties of human nature per se) and donum supernaturale, Adam’s superadded ‘original righteousness’. The ground Adam was taken from (vii 535–8n) is the naturalia he will now have to work with. See Williams (1927) 363. 99. Michael: Cp. vi 44n; Newton (‘It would not have been so proper for the sociable spirit Raphael to have executed this order: but as Michael was the principal angel employed in driving the rebel angels out of heaven, so he was the most proper to expel our first parents too out of paradise’). Michael was the angel of the apocalypse, and the history he shows Adam is ultimately apocalyptic. Michael’s name appears in the dramatis personae of the first tragic draft; see Introduction: Composition. A chancel fresco in S. Croce, Florence, shows Michael presenting Seth with a branch from the Tree of Knowledge. On God’s leaving the selection of troops to Michael, see B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 585. 102. Or . . . or: either . . . or. behalf of: regard to. See Empson (1950) 165 (finding evidence of Satan’s nobility but missing the changed meaning, and God’s sarcasm); Adams (1955) 119. 102–3. invade . . . possession: encroach on my property while it has no possessor (legal). Vacant effects were ‘such as are abandoned for want of an heir, after the death or flight of their former owner’ (OED 1 c). Sustaining the ironic tone; cp. xi 84–98n. 105. See Burden (1967) 36: the faithful angels feel pity (v 566; x 25), but remorse would imply injustice on God’s part. 106. denounce: formally proclaim; announce. 108. faint: lose heart; become depressed (OED 1).

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Bewailing their excess, all terror hide. If patiently thy bidding they obey, Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal To Adam what shall come in future days, 115 As I shall thee enlighten, intermix My cov’nant in the woman’s seed renewed; So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace: And on the east side of the garden place, Where entrance up from Eden easiest climbs, 120 Cherubic watch, and of a sword the flame Wide waving, all approach far off to fright, And guard all passage to the tree of life: Lest Paradise a receptácle prove To spirits foul, and all my trees their prey, 125 With whose stolen fruit man once more to delude. He ceased; and the archangelic power prepared For swift descent, with him the cohort bright Of watchful cherubim; four faces each Had, like a double Janus, all their shape 111. excess: transgression; outrage (OED 3, 4). 113. not disconsolate: See Frye (1978) 309: ‘calm resignation and muted optimism’ distinguish M.’s treatment of the expulsion. 115–16. ‘intermix the theme of the cov’nant’, i.e. the contract between God and the Israelites, whereby they paid obedience and sacrificial worship. (Later the spiritual bond whereby righteousness, perfected by grace, was the offering.) Cp. xi 148–50; xii 232–4, 310–12, 327; H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 154 (tracing the intermixing). For angels’ knowledge of the future, see Harvey (1975) 49. 118 –22. Gen. 3:24, ‘he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life’. Cp. iv 549–50n (cherubim as guards of Paradise); xii 590ff, 643n (the sword); Philo, On the Cherubim vii 21, (1927) ii 21 (the sword of flame ‘an allegorical figure of the revolution of the whole heaven’). 128–9. For the four-faced cherubim in Ezekiel, see vi 749–59n. double Janus: Janus Quadrifrons, the four-faced Janus, god of gates and beginnings – including the January beginning of the Christian year. Apt for the expulsion into a world of historical change: Janus’ four heads, like the four doors of his temple, symbolized the seasons of the year. See Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 384; A. H. Gilbert, PMLA, 54 (1939) 1026–30 (Augustine on the faces as quarters of the earth). 129–33. Cp. Ezek. 1:18, cherubim with rings ‘full of eyes’. Argus was set to guard Io, since his hundred eyes could watch by turns; but Mercury lulled all hundred with his reed pipe and virga somnifera; see Ovid, Metam.

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130 Spangled with eyes more numerous than those Of Argus, and more wakeful than to drowse, Charmed with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile To resalute the world with sacred light 135 Leucothea waked, and with fresh dews embalmed The earth, when Adam and first matron Eve Had ended now their orisons, and found, Strength added from above, new hope to spring Out of despair, joy, but with fear yet linked; 140 Which thus to Eve his welcome words renewed. Eve, easily may faith admit, that all The good which we enjoy, from heaven descends; But that from us aught should ascend to heaven So prevalent as to concern the mind 145 Of God high-blest, or to incline his will, Hard to belief may seem; yet this will prayer, Or one short sigh of human breath, upborne Even to the seat of God. For since I sought By prayer the offended Deity to appease, 150 Kneeled and before him humbled all my heart, Methought I saw him placable and mild, Bending his ear; persuasion in me grew That I was heard with favour; peace returned Home to my breast, and to my memory i 671f, 682–4, 716, tr. Sandys (1970) 75 (quoting Pontanus on Argus as temporal change: ‘Argus is heaven; ethereal fires his eyes, / That wake by turns; and stars that set and rise’). 134–5. Leucothea: Mater Matuta, Roman goddess of dawn. Apt not only as excluding female slaves from her temple (Ovid, Fasti vi 479ff ) but also saving Odysseus (Comus 874). embalmed: Now with a mortal overtone; earth is decaying. 137. found,] found 1674. The 1667 comma makes Strength . . . above parenthetic. 139. Balancing joy and woe very finely; see Burden (1967) 199. No idea of a ‘fortunate Fall’ is allowed to cancel out the tragedy. linked;] linked, 1667 some copies. 141. The first mention of faith marks a new phase of regeneration; cp. x 828–44n, 1073n, 1096–7n; xi 3n, 91n. 142. James 1:17, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights’. descends;] descends 1667. 144. prevalent: efficacious, powerful (OED 1). 148. seat: Cp. xi 2 (the mercy-scat); xi 115–16n. 154–8. Until the maturer reflections of x 962f, 1030–40, Adam was too

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155 His promise, that thy seed shall bruise our foe; Which then not minded in dismay, yet now Assures me that the bitterness of death Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to thee, Eve rightly called, Mother of all Mankind, 160 Mother of all things living, since by thee Man is to live, and all things live for man. To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek. Ill worthy I such title should belong To me transgressor, who for thee ordained 165 A help, became thy snare; to me reproach Rather belongs, distrust and all dispraise: But infinite in pardon was my judge, That I who first brought death on all, am graced The source of life; next favourable thou, 170 Who highly thus to entitle me vouchsaf’st, Far other name deserving. But the field To labour calls us now with sweat imposed, Though after sleepless night; for see the morn, All unconcerned with our unrest, begins 175 Her rosy progress smiling; let us forth, I never from thy side henceforth to stray, Where’er our day’s work lies, though now enjoined dismayed to grasp that the curse on the serpent (x 175–81) implied removal ‘far off’ of the ‘instant stroke of death’ (x 210f ). He had expected to die, by the letter of the prohibition, ‘that day’ when he transgressed (viii 323–33n; x 773n). But now he grows over-confident, like Agag, who thought the bitterness of death was past, just before he was hewed in pieces (1 Sam. 15:32f ). The expulsion and the nightmare of history lie ahead. Assures: Perhaps alluding to John Goodwin’s controversial attack on the Calvinist doctrine of Assurance of the Elect; see Quint (1992) 285–7. 158. The ‘holy salutation used / Long after to blest Mary, second Eve’ (v 386f ): as type of Mary, Eve has the promise applied to her. See Summers (1962) 192: ‘The “Hail” is startling; it embodies both Adam’s “knowledge” and his ignorance of all the centuries which will ensue before the second Eve will be so addressed.’ 159. Gen. 3:20, ‘Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living’. Before, he called her Ishah, ‘of man / Extracted’ (viii 496); now, Havah (Heb. ‘live’). See Leonard (1990) 48f. 162. sad: serious. 165. help: Cp. x 899n. 169. next . . . thou: Adam is the next to address her with an high name. See Leonard (1990) 50: Eve’s name is a title. 171–2. Alluding to the curse on Adam; cp. x 205; Gen. 3:19.

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paradise lost Laborious, till day droop; while here we dwell, What can be toilsome in these pleasant walks? Here let us live, though in fallen state, content. So spake, so wished much-humbled Eve, but fate Subscribed not; nature first gave signs, impressed On bird, beast, air, air suddenly eclipsed After short blush of morn; nigh in her sight The bird of Jove, stooped from his airy tower, Two birds of gayest plume before him drove: Down from a hill the beast that reigns in woods, First hunter then, pursued a gentle brace, Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind; Direct to the eastern gate was bent their flight. Adam observed, and with his eye the chase Pursuing, not unmoved to Eve thus spake. O Eve, some further change awaits us nigh, Which heaven by these mute signs in nature shows Forerunners of his purpose, or to warn Us haply too secure of our discharge From penalty, because from death released Some days; how long, and what till then our life, Who knows, or more than this, that we are dust, And thither must return and be no more. Why else this double object in our sight Of flight pursued in the air and o’er the ground One way the self-same hour? Why in the east Darkness ere day’s mid-course, and morning light

180. Not comprehending how reality has altered with the Fall. Cp. x 1083f; H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 162. 182–90. Not signs of the Fall merely, as M. Y. Hughes: those were noticeable already at x 715. These new signs, given for the first time, are omens; see Marjara (1992) 114, 245. In all three signs, a sovereign or primate displays its power grimly changed. The eclipsed sun removes its benign astrological influence from the air; Jupiter’s eagle (bird of Jove) attacks two other birds; and the lion pursues hart and hind. Cp. the harmless lion at iv 343 and the prolepsis at iv 402ff. The pursuit to the gate foreshadows the expulsion (cp. xii 638f ), the two beasts, like the two birds, standing for Adam and Eve. 185. stooped: swooping for the kill (falconry). Cp. viii 351n. tower: lofty flight; soaring. (But cp. L’Allegro 43.) As often, spelled ‘tour’, and perhaps punning on ‘tour’ = circuit (OED 12). 196. secure: sure, over-confident. 204. Isa. 16:3, ‘Execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night in the midst of the noonday’. On the darkness of history in Bks xi–xii, seen Loewenstein (1990) 94ff. morning: Of Day 33.

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205 More orient in yon western cloud that draws O’er the blue firmament a radiant white, And slow descends, with something heavenly fraught. He erred not, for by this the heavenly bands Down from a sky of jasper lighted now 210 In Paradise, and on a hill made alt, A glorious apparition, had not doubt And carnal fear that day dimmed Adam’s eye. Not that more glorious, when the angels met Jacob in Mahanaim, where he saw 215 The field pavilioned with his guardians bright; Nor that which on the flaming mount appeared In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire, Against the Syrian king, who to surprise One man, assassin-like had levied war, 220 War unproclaimed. The princely hierarch In their bright stand, there left his powers to seize

205. orient: (1) bright; (2) eastern (paradoxical here). The W light is the glory of Michael’s ‘cohort bright’ (xi 127), already in position to drive the mortals to the eastern gate. For Michael’s association with the west wind, see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 549. See Treip (1994) 143 (the martial Michael similarly contrasted with Raphael in Tasso, Ger. Lib. i 11–17; xviii 92–6). 209. jasper. Cp. iii 363–4n; Rev. 4:3 (God in judgment ‘to look upon like a jasper’); 21:11 (the light of Jerusalem ‘descending out of heaven’ ‘like a jasper stone’ (‘meaning the Church’, Geneva margin)); Lieb (1981) 307. lighted: descended; arrived; shone (OED v1 6, 10 b; v2 1). 210. alt: halt (military; usually in the phrase ‘make alt’). 212. carnal: fleshly. Animal terror of the numinous. 213–15. Gen. 32:1–2; Jacob called the place of the meeting Mahanaim (‘Armies’ [Douay ‘Camps’; Geneva margin ‘Tents’]). Cp. M.’s ‘pavilioned’. 216–20. Juxtaposing 2 Kings 6:13–17 and Gen. 37:16f; see Werman (1995) 225. The Syrian king besieged Dothan to catch One man, Elisha, who was unconcerned to hear of this. At his prayer God opened the servant’s eyes ‘and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha’. For the theme of One man of faith, see H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 158. Cp. the saving heroes of faith, Eusebius, History ii 20 (1989) 8; Geisberg (1974) iv 954ff (heroes of the OT). 220. hierarch: Used also of Raphael (v 468). 221. stand: (1) station; (2) resting-place of a hawk (OED 14) (falconry). Cp. xi 185, Michael figured as an eagle.

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paradise lost Possession of the garden; he alone, To find where Adam sheltered, took his way, Not unperceived of Adam, who to Eve, While the great visitant approached, thus spake. Eve, now expect great tidings, which perhaps Of us will soon determine, or impose New laws to be observed; for I descry From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill One of the heavenly host, and by his gait None of the meanest, some great potentate Or of the thrones above, such majesty Invests him coming; yet not terrible, That I should fear, nor sociably mild, As Raphael, that I should much confide, But solemn and sublime, whom not to offend, With reverence I must meet, and thou retire. He ended; and the archangel soon drew nigh, Not in his shape celestial, but as man Clad to meet man; over his lucid arms A military vest of purple flowed

227. determine: make an end of; set limits to; decree the future of (OED 1, 3, 7, 14). 232–3. Ps. 93:1, ‘The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty . . . with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself.’ Michael’s clothing (xi 240–8) embodies aspects of deity. coming;] coming? 1674. 234. Cp. v 221 (Raphael ‘the sociable spirit’); xi 99n, 115n. 237. As at v 350–2, Adam goes alone to meet the angel. Conferring on Eve behaviour ascribed to Sarah; see Gen. 18:6–15; Werman (1995) 225. 240–8. Contrast Raphael’s wings, regal purple, gold, and blue (v 277– 85n). Michael wears purple. He has no wings; he comes to talk about terrestrial history and prepare Adam for a lowlier role, with instructions not to frighten him (xi 113, 212). lucid: bright; resplendent (OED 1). vest: A long, fitting, cassock-like garment, then fashionable at court; first worn by the king as an example of thrift. Melibœan: Vivid purple from Meliboea on the Thessalian coast was anciently famous; a cloak with a double line of purpura . . . Meliboea could be offered as a prize (Virgil, Aen. v 251). grain: dye. Cp. v 285n. Sarra: Tyre, famous for its dye. Cp. 2 Chr. 2:14. Iris dyed the woof (threads woven across a warp), because the iris flower was lilium purpureum, and because she was the rainbow, sign of God’s covenant or truce. Cp. xi 879ff; Nativity Ode 143; Comus 83 (‘sky-robes spun out of iris’ woof ’). zodiac: a belt of the celestial sphere extending about 8° on each side of the ecliptic – starry like Michael’s helm. The zodiac marks the limits of the sun’s postlapsarian, annual course,

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Livelier than Melibœan, or the grain Of Sarra, worn by kings and heroes old In time of truce; Iris had dipped the woof; His starry helm unbuckled showed him prime In manhood where youth ended; by his side As in a glistering zodiac hung the sword, Satan’s dire dread, and in his hand the spear. Adam bowed low, he kingly from his state Inclined not, but his coming thus declared. Adam, heaven’s high behest no preface needs: Sufficient that thy prayers are heard, and Death, Then due by sentence when thou didst transgress, Defeated of his seizure many days Given thee of grace, wherein thou mayst repent, And one bad act with many deeds well done Mayst cover: well may then thy Lord appeased Redeem thee quite from Death’s rapacious claim; But longer in this Paradise to dwell Permits not; to remove thee I am come, And send thee from the garden forth to till The ground whence thou wast taken, fitter soil. He added not, for Adam at the news Heart-strook with chilling gripe of sorrow stood, That all his senses bound; Eve, who unseen Yet all had heard, with audible lament Discovered soon the place of her retire. Oh unexpected stroke, worse than of death! Must I thus leave thee Paradise? Thus leave

and so is apt to Michael, whose mission relates to the new order. For the sword, cp. vi 250–1n; x 118–22n. 249–51. Unlike the leisurely meeting with Raphael, when it was Adam who spoke first. Cp. v 358–71n. state: dignity (OED 18). 254. ‘Frustrated in his attempt to seize’ or ‘dispossessed of what he had seized, his seisin’ (OED s. v. Defeat 5, 7 a; Seizure 1 a, 2 (legal)). Cp. viii 323–33n; x 773n; xi 258. 256–7. Cp. 1 Pet. 4:8. 258. quite: (1) completely; (2) free, clear (adj., now obsolete). 259–62. Delivering the divine decree verbatim, as befits his solemn mission (xi 96–8). On these words ‘the catastrophe of the poem depends’, so that the exact repetition, sometimes tedious in ancient epic, is justified (Newton). 264. Heart-strook: heart-stricken. gripe: spasm, grip. 267. Discovered: revealed. retire: withdrawal (OED 1).

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270 Thee native soil, these happy walks and shades, Fit haunt of gods? Where I had hope to spend, Quiet though sad, the respite of that day That must be mortal to us both. O flowers, That never will in other climate grow, 275 My early visitation, and my last At ev’n, which I bred up with tender hand From the first op’ning bud, and gave ye names, Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial fount? 280 Thee lastly nuptial bower, by me adorned With what to sight or smell was sweet; from thee How shall I part, and whither wander down Into a lower world, to this obscure And wild, how shall we breathe in other air 270. walks: A valued feature of Renaissance gardens; cp. iv 586; viii 305; xi 179; Fowler (1994) 59. 272. respite: delay; extension (OED 1). 273–9. Nyquist (1987) 100 states the obvious, that Eve’s naming is gendered differently from Adam’s. Plants may be Eve’s special care because she relates to the vegetable soul, as Adam to the animal. In great houses, flower and herb gardens were the lady’s concern. This high responsibility contrasts with the usual view of Eve’s ignorance of names, and indicates M.’s feminism; contrast Donne, Sermons ii 346 (‘God did not stay to join her in commission with Adam, so far as to give names to the creatures’), and see Leonard (1990) 47. On contemporary interest in the classification of species (tribes) see viii 343–56n. 279. ambrosial fount: Cp. iv 240, where the fountain ‘ran nectar’, another immortal food. The fountain of Paradise was often a Fountain of Life with an architecturally elaborate Well of Life, from John 4:10 (‘living water’). Cp. xi 71–5n, 416; Jan Gossart, Adam and Eve in the Queen’s Collection; Bedford Hours, BL Add. MS 18850 fol. 14 (a fountain with four distributaries). When mankind loses natural access to immortality, the rivers change course (iv 237–8n; xi 829–38n). 283. to: compared with. 284–5. Cp. xi 49–57n, the need to purge ‘gross to air as gross’. Bentley grossly asked what the fruits have to do with Eve’s breathing; provoking the fine reply, Empson (1950) 162: ‘In the tired repeated rhythm of the last two lines, she leaves floating, as things already far off, all that makes up for her the “atmosphere” of Paradise.’ But this nostalgic effect may be another test of reader discrimination. If Eve were really accustomed to immortal fruits only, and had no experience of ‘mortal taste’ (i 2), she would not now be leaving Paradise. Perhaps Michael interrupted her in mild reproof of her impudence in broaching the topic of fruit.

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285 Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits? Whom thus the angel interrupted mild. Lament not Eve, but patiently resign What justly thou hast lost; nor set thy heart, Thus overfond, on that which is not thine; 290 Thy going is not lonely, with thee goes Thy husband, him to follow thou art bound; Where he abides, think there thy native soil. Adam by this from the cold sudden damp Recovering, and his scattered spirits returned, 295 To Michael thus his humble words addressed. Celestial, whether among the thrones, or named Of them the highest, for such of shape may seem Prince above princes, gently hast thou told Thy message, which might else in telling wound, 300 And in performing end us; what besides Of sorrow and dejection and despair Our frailty can sustain, thy tidings bring, Departure from this happy place, our sweet Recess, and only consolation left 305 Familiar to our eyes, all places else Inhospitable appear and desolate, Nor knowing us nor known: and if by prayer Incessant I could hope to change the will Of him who all things can, I would not cease 310 To weary him with my assiduous cries: But prayer against his absolute decree No more avails than breath against the wind, Blown stifling back on him that breathes it forth:

287. patiently: Cp. xi 360–4n. 293–4. damp: stupor; loss of vitality; depression (OED 4, 5). scattered: disorientated, discomposed; allowed to drop (OED 1 b, 3 b). The scattering of Adam’s animal spirits – the spirits activating vitality, courage, and the will (iv 805; v 484) – ‘bound’ his senses at xi 265. 296–8. Before the Fall Adam showed no interest in the angels’ social ranks. 303–18. Adam must detach himself from the sanctity of particular places, and learn God’s ubiquity. After the Restoration M. himself had to reinterpret place and patria as ‘wherever it is well’ (YP viii 4). Cp. Loewenstein (1990) 109; Walker (1990). 307–10. The first of Adam’s many errors in the course of his instruction: importunate prayers are in fact effective (Luke 18:5–7). can: knows (OED 1). The ambiguity ‘is able’ underlines the irony.

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Therefore to his great bidding I submit. 315 This most afflicts me, that departing hence, As from his face I shall be hid, deprived His blessèd count’nance; here I could frequent, With worship, place by place where he vouchsafed Presence divine, and to my sons relate; 320 On this mount he appeared, under this tree Stood visible, among these pines his voice I heard, here with him at this fountain talked: So many grateful altars I would rear Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone 325 Of lustre from the brook, in memory, Or monument to ages, and thereon Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flowers: In yonder nether world where shall I seek His bright appearances, or footstep trace? 330 For though I fled him angry, yet recalled To life prolonged and promised race, I now Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts Of glory, and far off his steps adore. To whom thus Michael with regard benign. 335 Adam, thou knowst heaven his, and all the earth. 315–33. Newton unfairly contrasts Eve’s reasons for regret with Adam’s, who has had time to reflect. Besides, Adam has to make errors about local devotion, to provide occasions for Michael’s instruction (xi 335ff ). 316. Cp. Gen. 4:14, Cain’s complaint: ‘Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.’ 319. On the specially Renaissance doctrine of divine Presence, see Lieb (1981) ch. 10. 324–6. The patriarchs used to raise altars wherever God appeared to them. stone / Of lustre: shining stone. Apt to the prized rarity. memory: As aide-mémoire to himself, as distinct from monument to later ages (Pearce, countering Bentley’s charge of pleonasm). 327. Burnt offerings would hardly be appropriate for Paradise; cp. x 1078– 81n; Gen. 4:3 (Cain’s offering of ‘fruit of the ground’). sweet . . . gums: Aromatic gums burnt as incense. Cp. Jer. 8:22 (AV ‘balm’; Wycliffe ‘gum’); Spenser, Virgils Gnat 669 (‘sweet gum’). 331. promised race: The descendants whose destiny is to bruise Satan. Cp. x 175–92. 332–3. For the dazzling skirts of God, cp. iii 375–82n. 335–54. Cp. xi 303–18. Correcting Adam’s newfangled, postlapsarian tendency to local devotions, which M. regarded as Romanist superstition. For God’s omnipresence, cp. vii 168f; Jer. 23:24 (‘Do not I fill

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Not this rock only; his omnipresence fills Land, sea, and air, and every kind that lives, Fomented by his virtual power and warmed: All the earth he gave thee to possess and rule, No despicable gift; surmise not then His presence to these narrow bounds confined Of Paradise or Eden: this had been Perhaps thy capital seat, from whence had spread All generations, and had hither come From all the ends of the earth, to celebrate And reverence thee their great progenitor. But this pre-eminence thou hast lost, brought down To dwell on even ground now with thy sons: Yet doubt not but in valley and in plain God is as here, and will he found alike Present, and of his presence many a sign Still following thee, still compassing thee round With goodness and paternal love, his face Express, and of his steps the track divine. Which that thou mayst believe, and be confirmed,

heaven and earth saith the Lord’); Mal. 1:11. Not this rock only: Jesus warns the Samaritan woman, ‘The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father’ ( John 4:21). Substituting rock for mountain (Gk NT \Sει ; Vulg. ‘monte’; Geneva ‘mountain’) hits at the successors of St Peter (the rock) for their attempt to confine God’s presence within the narrow bounds of local pieties and institutionalized forms. Fomented: nurtured. virtual: exerting virtue or influence (OED 1). God’s omnipresence is the theme of Ps. 139, traditionally ascribed to Adam; see Charles (1913) ii 17. 342–8. From inhabiting a proud mountain, mankind is to be reduced to the humble even ground. See R. Lejosne, in Armitage (1995) 115: Michael argues against Filmer, Patriarcha (ptd 1680 but circulated in MS), with its view of kings as Adam’s heirs. Only an unfallen Adam might have had a capital seat. 349–50. Cp. xi 315–19. Achinstein (1994) 215 suspects muddle in Michael’s reassurance. 354. Teaching Adam God’s use of signs and symbols. Express: exactly imaging. Cp. vii 528 (‘the image of God / Express’); Heb. 1:3 (Christ ‘the express image of [God’s] person’). 355. The vision will confirm Adam’s faith, the theme of Bk xi, as repentance was of Bk x. Cp. x 828–44n, 1073n, 1096–7n; De Doctrina i 25, YP vi 502f (the ‘unbroken progression’ leading to ‘assurance of salvation and the perseverance of the saints’ – ‘Both regeneration and growth are

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Ere thou from hence depart, know I am sent To show thee what shall come in future days To thee and to thy offspring; good with bad Expect to hear, supernal grace contending 360 With sinfulness of men; thereby to learn True patience, and to temper joy with fear And pious sorrow, equally inured By moderation either state to bear, Prosperous or adverse: so shalt thou lead 365 Safest thy life, and best prepared endure Thy mortal passage when it comes. Ascend This hill; let Eve (for I have drenched her eyes) Here sleep below while thou to foresight wak’st, As once thou sleptst, while she to life was formed. 370 To whom thus Adam gratefully replied. accompanied by confirmation or preservation, and this is also the work of God’). 357. On precedents for the vision, see xi 423n. 359–60. The Augustinian conflict between civitas terrena and civitas Dei; see Loewenstein (1990) 95f. supernal: heavenly. Cp. vii 573: ‘winged messengers / On errands of supernal grace’. 360–4. Burden (1967) 189 takes pious sorrow to mean pity; concluding that the darker attitude to be learned is pity and terror, the correct response to the tragedies Adam is shown. True patience: Not the false, stubborn patience of ii 569 and ix 920. Calvin, Institutes III viii 8 contrasts Christian patience with the ‘too exact and rigid patience’ of Stoics or Puritans (Burden op. cit.). But earlier moderation too had been a Stoic and Aristotelian principle, later assimilated to Christianity, e.g. in Petrarch, De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae. 366. See Burden (1967) 189f: ascent of the mount of contemplation contrasts with the false, easy ascent by flying (v 87). Replacing the uninterrupted mountain habitation before the Fall. mortal passage: death. 367. drenched: administered medicine to (OED 1). In cabbalistic thought Michael often correlated with Mercury, whose ‘opiate rod’ was mentioned at xi 133; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 549C; Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (1992) 282. 368–9. foresight: prophetic vision. Cp. Gen. 15:12, Abraham’s vision described as ‘deep sleep’. Comparison with viii 40ff, where Eve retired during part of Raphael’s instruction, would be superficial; here Eve is to have her own instruction (xii 595). Cp. rather viii 452–78 (Adam’s sleep during Eve’s creation). Then, Adam had a vision of the creation of the first Eve; now he is to envision the ‘race’ leading to the second Eve and second creation. See Burden (1967) 188: Adam’s instruction makes him typical man, whereas before he was only archetypal. He leaves at the

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Ascend, I follow thee, safe guide, the path Thou leadst me, and to the hand of heaven submit, However chast’ning, to the evil turn My obvious breast, arming to overcome 375 By suffering, and earn rest from labour won, If so I may attain. So both ascend In the visions of God: it was a hill Of Paradise the highest, from whose top The hemisphere of earth in clearest ken 380 Stretched out to amplest reach of prospect lay. Not higher that hill nor wider looking round, Whereon for different cause the tempter set Our second Adam in the wilderness, To show him all earth’s kingdoms and their glory. 385 His eye might there command wherever stood

expulsion with historical ideas such as ordinary men have. Among many precedents, Jewish commentators put Adam’s vision before he was given bodily form, or when he ate the fruit, or after the expulsion; Christian commentators made it simultaneous with Eve’s creation; cp. B. K. Lewalski, PQ, 42 (1963) 25–35; F. T. Prince, in Patrides (1967) 233–48; Frye (1978) 297f. 371. Contrast ix 631, Eve’s ‘Lead then’ to Satan. 372. submit: Cp. xii 597; Broadbent (1960) 98 (submission or resignation, as distinct from ‘stoical apathy’, is characteristic of Christian patience as M. portrays it). 374. obvious: exposed, vulnerable (OED 2). 375–6. Echoing Heb. 4:11; Phil. 3:11 and implying hope of resurrection. 377–84. Cp. v 732; xii 360–464; PR iii 251ff; Ezek. 40:1–2 (‘In the visions of God brought he me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south’); Matt. 4:8 (the devil to tempt Christ ‘taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them’); Spenser, FQ I x; Burton, Anat. of Melan., ‘Democritus to the Reader’ (1989–) i 24 (‘I shall desire him to make a brief survey of the world, as Cyprian adviseth Donat, supposing himself to be transported to the top of some high mountain, and thence to behold the tumults and chances of this wavering world, he cannot choose but either laugh at, or pity it’); Lieb (1981) 147, 150 (‘M.’s fondness for high-place revelations’); Loewenstein (1990) 95, 98. On world prospects, see Lieb op. cit. 166f citing Greenhill (‘Rabbins conceive the land of Israel to be the highest of all lands’); on the world landscape genre, Gibson (1989). MacCaffrey (1959) 61 thinks the visions like static tableaux; but cp. xi 429–47n. 380. to amplest] to the amplest 1674.

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City of old or modern fame, the seat Of mightiest empire, from the destined walls Of Cámbalu, seat of Cathaian khan And Samarchand by Oxus, Temir’s throne, 390 To Paquin of Sinæan kings, and thence To Agra and Lahor of great mogul Down to the golden Chersonese, or where The Persian in Ecbatan sat, or since

387–8. Cambalu: Cambaluc, capital of Cathay; destined but not yet existing. Cp. Burton, Anat. of Melan. I ii 2 iii (1989–) i 226f: ‘as Benedict the Jesuit observed in his travels from the great Mogor’s court by land to Paquin, which Riccius contends to be the same with Cambalu in Cataia’. 388–95. Asian kingdoms arranged in an elaborately centralized yet antimonarchic pattern. Chersonese, the only place without a ruler, occupies the central position of sovereignty. Next to it are the mogul’s and the Persian’s realms, each with two capitals; then the Sinaean kings’ and the czar’s, each with one capital. In each flanking position is a pair of realms associated with the khans and the sultans respectively. Thus: Cambalu and Samarchand | Paquin | Agra and Lahor | CHERSONESE-OPHIR | Ecbatan and Hispahan | Mosco | Bizance and Turchestan. Or, Cathay and Tartary | China | Mogul’s empire | CHERSONESE-OPHIR | Persia | Russia | Byzantium and Turkestan. See further xi 396–407n, on the African array. Cp. YP i 566, on the ‘false glisterings’ of worldly glory. Purging these calls for a new, demythologized mode of historical vision. 388–9. khan: Genghis Khan’s medieval successors, who ruled Cathay, as well as the Tartars and Mongols, were known in Europe as great khans or chams, of Cathay or Tartary. Samarchand: Samarkand, near the Oxus river; Timur’s capital (Marlowe’s Tamburlaine). 390. Paquin: Pei-ching (Peking), capital of China, a separate kingdom from Cathay; cp. x 289–93n. Sinæan: Chinese. 391. Areas of N India. Agra: A kingdom in the centre N; Heylyn calls its capital, of the same name, ‘the seat royal, of late times, of the great monguls’. Lahor: Lahore, in NW Punjab. great mogul: European designation of emperors of E India. On seventeenth-century ideas of Asia, see William Foster, ed., The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Moghul, 1615–1619 (1899); D. F. Lach and E. J. Van Kley, 17C, 5 (1990) 93–109. 392. Chersonese: Gk ‘Peninsula’. Not the Tauric (Crimea) but the Wealthy Chersonese, vaguely located in India extra Gangem, to the extreme E – now Malacca in Malaysia. Identified with Ophir, which supplied Solomon with gold; cp. xi 396–407n, 400n; PR iv 74; Josephus, Antiquities VIII vi 4. 393–4. Ecbatan: Ecbatana, summer capital of the Persian kings. Ispahan

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In Hispahan, or where the Russian czar 395 In Mosco, or the sultan in Bizance, Turchestan born; nor could his eye not ken The empire of Negus to his utmost port Ercoco and the less marítime kings Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind, 400 And Sófala thought Ophir, to the realm (Hispahan) became a capital in the sixteenth century, when the Safavid dynasty moved their seat from Kazvin. 395–6. Mosco: Moscow. Bizance: Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul; capital then of the Turkish sultan. Turchestan born: The sultans belonged to a tribe that hailed from Turkestan, a central Asian region between Mongolia and the Caspian. Anomalous in having no associated capital; cp. xi 405n. 396–407. nor . . . ken: Signalling transition to African realms, which form a similar pattern to the Asian (cp. xi 388–95n). Again there are nine; again the last is anomalous (Rome is largely European). Thus: Abyssinia | Mombaza | Quiloa | Melind | SOFALA-OPHIR | Congo | Angola | Almanzor’s Barbary | Rome. In sovereign place is Sofala, which (like Chersonese earlier) is thought Ophir. The shared feature is the mysterious sovereignty of Ophir, associated with Solomon, the only biblical ruler mentioned. The just Solomon would befit the fifth position among rulers, since the fifth digit divides the others justly. Moreover, the ‘incorruptible’ five in its pentagram form was Solomon’s mystic knot; see Fowler (1964) 34 citing Iamblichus; MacQueen (1985) 70. But the vacant seat of sovereignty in both patterns implies something more – the absence of true sovereignty after the Fall, and the unseen sovereignty of Christ. Cp. Ps. 45:9 (‘upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir’, interpreted as prophecy of the majesty of Christ’s kingdom); Isa. 13:12f (‘I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir. Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove’). Ophir’s centrality thus resonates with the symmetry of PL as a whole; see Introduction: Numerical composition. For Solomon’s Temple in meditullio mundi (at the centre of the world), see Giorgio, Harmonia (1545) 158v. 397–8. The Abyssinian empire; Negus was its emperors’ hereditary title. Ercoco: Arkiko, a port on the Red Sea. maritime] maritine 1667; maritim 1674 (both current forms). 399. Mombaza: Mombasa. Melind: Malindi. Vasco’s last port of call before his audacious voyage to India to found Portugal’s short-lived empire. Enforcing a connection with Camoens’ Lusiads; see B. Rajan, in Stanwood (1995) 225. Quiloa: Kilwa. The first two are on the coast of mod. Kenya, the last, of Tanzania. 400. Sofala: A port in Mozambique, from its wealth sometimes supposed

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Of Congo, and Angola farthest south; Or thence from Niger flood to Atlas mount The kingdoms of Almansor, Fez and Sus, Marocco and Algiers, and Tremisen; 405 On Europe thence, and where Rome was to sway The world: in spirit perhaps he also saw Rich Mexico the seat of Motezume, Ophir (which however was variously identified; see Demaray (1991) 185). Gold of Ophir was proverbially pure: Mandeville says it could ‘drive souls into paradise’; cp. Browne, Christian Morals (1616) i 28, (1964) i 254, ‘There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure metal in any.’ Associated with the building of Solomon’s Temple, Gold of Ophir was often allegorized as Wisdom or Righteousness, or as Christ’s sovereignty; cp. ii 943–7n; YP vii 445, 449 (Messiah the ‘universal lord of all mankind’); Allen (1970) 67 (the vision of evangelism via trade); W. Tate, ELR, 26 (1996) 568 nn 15–17 (the Theobalds masque). Contrast YP i 615, however, where ‘mines of Ophir’ refers to Spanish gold from South America. For Ophir as Peru, see Grafton (1992) 150. Gen. 2:11 and 10:29 link it through Havilah with Pison, the river of Paradise signifying prudence; see A. Fowler, MLN, 75 (1960) 290 (sources in Philo); Loewenstein (1990) 117f (Adam viewing the river’s moral course of wise government and Christ’s secret lordship through the ages). 402–4. The Niger is in modern Guinea and Mali, the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Almansor: Mansur (Victorious) was the name of several Mohammedan princes; the one known to Europeans as Almanzor was the Almohad Emir Abû-Yusûf Ya’qûb al-Mansûr (1184–1199); see G. Campbell and R. Collins, MiltQ, 17 (1983) 81–4 seeing Leo Africanus as M’s chief source. The five territories named were parts of Barbary. Fez: Part of the Sultanate of Fez and Morocco. Sus: A province in S Morocco, formerly independent. Tremisen: Tlemcen, part of Algeria. 405. The placement of Barbary and Rome in similar positions to those of Byzantium (New Rome) and Turkestan in the previous array (xi 388–95n, 396–407n) implies a satiric analogy between papal and Saracen empires. True sovereignty lies not in sway (secular power), but in Christ’s headship of the invisible ‘true Church’. 406. in spirit: Even from the hill Adam could not physically see the other hemisphere. 407–11. Montezuma’s empire was plundered by Cortez; Atahuallpa’s Peruvian empire with its capital Cusco (Cuzco) was plundered by Pizarro; but Manoa, the fabulous capital of Guiana, El Dorado (more sovereign gold), remained yet unspoiled by the Spanish. Three territories, because the monster Geryon killed by Hercules had three bodies and heads. Geryon

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And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoiled 410 Guiana, whose great city Geryon’s sons Call El Dorado: but to nobler sights Michael from Adam’s eyes the film removed Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue 415 The visual nerve, for he had much to see; And from the well of life three drops instilled. So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam now enforced to close his eyes, 420 Sunk down and all his spirits became entranced: But him the gentle angel by the hand

was Dante’s guardian of the fraudulent; the Spanish are his sons because Spenser made him a symbol of ‘huge powre and great oppression’ (FQ V x 8ff ). Guiana was topical in 1667, when the British colony founded in 1663 between the Copenam and Maroni rivers was ceded to the Netherlands by the Peace of Breda, in exchange for New York. Motezume: A more correct form than the Spanish ‘Montezuma’. 411–12. So Homer’s Pallas clears Diomedes’ eyes (Il. v 127); Virgil’s Venus clears Aeneas’(Aen. ii 604); and Tasso’s Michael, Goffredo’s (Ger. Lib. xviii 92f ). 413–15. Satan, promising to ‘clear’ Eve’s eyes (ix 706–9), compares the forbidden fruit to curative fennel (ix 581); but Michael has now to apply two herbs as antidotes. Gerard’s Herbal mentions euphrasy (eyebright) and rue, among other herbs, as restoratives for the eyes. These were selected for the sake of wordplays: euphrasy is from Gk εrφSασ6α, cheerfulness; rue puns, as often, on OED Rue sb.2 1 b, ‘sorrow, pity, repentance’. Correlated with the ‘joy’ and ‘pious sorrow’ Adam is told to temper (xi 361f ). The tempering depends on the well of life, source of Christian grace. 416. Ps. 36:9, ‘With thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light.’ Cp. xi 278–9n. three drops: A well-assimilated structural signpost. See xii 5n; Loewenstein (1990) 95, 178 n 13 (M.’s tripartite history – Adam to Noah; the Flood to Christ; apostles to Second Coming – perhaps influenced by the Trinitarian thought of the revolutionary Millenarian Joachim of Fiore). 418. Cp. iii 51–5, an appeal to his Muse to ‘shine inward’ and ‘plant eyes’ in his mind. 421. In Dan. 10:8–14, one assisted by ‘Michael, one of the chief princes’ shows Daniel a ‘great vision’ of the future; first positioning him with ‘an hand’.

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Soon raised, and his attention thus recalled. Adam, now ope thine eyes, and first behold The effects which thy original crime hath wrought 425 In some to spring from thee, who never touched The excepted tree, nor with the snake conspired, Nor sinned thy sin, yet from that sin derive Corruption to bring forth more violent deeds. His eyes he opened, and beheld a field, 430 Part arable and tilth, whereon were sheaves New-reaped, the other part sheepwalks and folds; I’th’ midst an altar as the landmark stood

423. Beginning the second major ‘episode’, the first being Raphael’s narrative of war in heaven (v 563–4n). ‘Both are closely connected with the great action; one was necessary to Adam as a warning, the other as a consolation’ ( Johnson). Emulating Virgil, Aen. vi 756ff, a lesser vision of Rome’s destiny. The genre of M.’s episode, biblical history, had many English exemplars, notably Drayton, Harmony of the Church (1591); Noah’s Flood (1630); Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 4 onwards; Stradling, Divine Poems (1625); and Cowley, Davideis (1656). M.’s history is intellectually more organized than any of these, except perhaps Cowley’s. Improvement of sight symbolizes stages of faith (inner vision); see B. K. Lewalski, PQ, 42 (1963) 25–35. Many of the examples shown to Adam – e.g. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David – are from the register of the faithful in Heb. 11. Cp. the tradition of OT heroes: e.g. Donne, Sermons ii 54; Geisberg (1974) iv 954. 425. Not distinguishing Adam’s and Eve’s sins; he addresses Adam–Eve, as God refers to ‘man’ (iii 130); see Burden (1967) 77. 427. sinned thy sin: Biblical diction; cp. Exod. 32:30; 1 John 5:16. that sin] that 1674 (wrongly). 429–47. Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen. 4), the first of six scenes; see xi 377–84n. A. S. P. Woodhouse, UTQ, 22 (1953) 125–7 follows Richardson in comparing the shield of Achilles (Homer, Il. xviii); M’s vignettes are superior as thematically ‘essential’. MacCaffrey (1959) compares the scenes to tableaux; but they seem more like brief tragedies, focusing on single incidents of intense movement. The reader is to emulate and criticize Adam’s inexperienced but progressively discriminating role as observer; see Burden (1967) 188; H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964). 430–1. arable: land capable of being ploughed. tilth: ploughed field; crops. sheepwalks: pasture. 432. Not only because prominently visible, but because landmarks (limits) were symbols of the Law and the covenant (xi 115–16n). The 1667 spelling (Ith’ midst) indicates elisions.

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Rustic, of grassy sward; thither anon A sweaty reaper from his tillage brought 435 First fruits, the green ear, and the yellow sheaf, Unculled, as came to hand; a shepherd next More meek came with the firstlings of his flock Choicest and best; then sacrificing, laid The inwards and their fat, with incense strewed, 440 On the cleft wood, and all due rites performed. His offering soon propitious fire from heaven Consumed with nimble glance, and grateful steam; The other’s not, for his was not sincere; Whereat he inly raged, and as they talked, 445 Smote him into the midriff with a stone That beat out life; he fell, and deadly pale Groaned out his soul with gushing blood effused. Much at that sight was Adam in his heart Dismayed, and thus in haste to the angel cried.

433–9. Omitting names, doubtless to keep Adam from knowing which of his sons will be a murderer. The sacrifice is Homeric, thinks Richardson, since Mosaic law is not yet instituted. But that seems anthropologically unsound, besides being slavishly sequential; cp. Lev. 2:1–3. anon: soon. sweaty: In accordance with the curse (x 25). Unculled: undiscarded; not select. Coinage; see ii 185n. Obviating any suggestion that God’s preference for Abel’s Choicest sacrifice is arbitrary. 437. meek: A good quality in PL; cp. viii 217; PR iv 636; De Doctrina ii 12, YP vi 754 (Flannagan). 439–40. In accordance with Lev. 6:9–14; 7:16–34 (Flannagan). cleft wood: Cp. Abraham’s offering, Gen. 22:3. 441–2. A common sign that a sacrifice was acceptable; cp. Lev. 9:24; Judges 6:21; 1 Kings 18:38; 1 Chr. 21:26; 2 Chr. 7:1. In extrapolating to Abel’s sacrifice, M. may have followed visual tradition; see Frye (1978) 302. nimble: swift. glance: flash. grateful: acceptable; thankful. 445. Cp. Allen (1949) 178; Cowley, Davideis (1656) i n 16 (‘Neither is it declared [in the Bible] in what manner [Cain] slew his brother: and therefore I had the liberty to choose that which I thought most probable; which is, that he knocked him on the head with some great stone, which was one of the first ordinary and most natural weapons of anger’). But see Werman (1995) 227 on a Jewish tradition of Cain’s using a stone, e.g. Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer xxi 154. For Cain as a type of the unregenerate, cp. De Doctrina i 17, YP vi 458; Loewenstein (1990) 98. 447. Corns (1990) 88 sees no contradiction of M.’s Mortalism: the separation of body and soul constituted death.

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paradise lost O teacher, some great mischief hath befall’n To that meek man, who well had sacrificed; Is piety thus and pure devotion paid? To whom Michael thus, he also moved, replied. These two are brethren, Adam, and to come Out of thy loins; the unjust the just hath slain, For envy that his brother’s offering found From heaven acceptance; but the bloody fact Will be avenged, and the other’s faith approved Lose no reward, though here thou see him die, Rolling in dust and gore. To which our sire. Alas, both for the deed and for the cause! But have I now seen death? Is this the way I must return to native dust? Oh sight Of terror, foul and ugly to behold, Horrid to think, how horrible to feel! To whom thus Michaël. Death thou hast seen In his first shape on man; but many shapes Of death, and many are the ways that lead To his grim cave, all dismal; yet to sense More terrible at the entrance than within. Some, as thou sawst, by violent stroke shall die,

450–3. Distrusting God’s justice: a wrong response to the first tragedy (Burden (1967) 190). The proper effect of tragedy was for spectators to be moved; see Scaliger, Poetices (1561) III xcvi; Sidney, Defence (1973) 96; Weinberg (1961) Index, Moving of passions. 455–60. Referring to the regicide ‘martyrs’, argues Corns (1990) 88. 457. fact: crime (OED 1; then the commonest meaning). 458–9. Throughout the visions, faith is a prominent theme; cp. xi 355n; Lycidas 64–84. 465. Tragedy was supposed to move the passion of terror; cp. xi 495–7n; Burden (1967) 191. 466. Michael: Trisyllabic, as befits the passage’s slow gravity. 469–70. Recalling the Virgilian underworld; Aen. vi 236ff stresses access through a cave and terrors at the entrance. Cp. Aen. vi 273 (vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus); Sackville, Mirror for Magistrates (1563) Induction; Treip (1994) 136. dismal: dreadful. Then a much stronger word. 471–525. Cp. xii 79–104; Taylor, Holy Dying (1651) (the world as a hospital of diseases); Beaty (1970); D. Quint, in Nyquist (1987) 138 (the coupling of diseases and kingship – sickness in the body politic). 471–2. The first vision showed ‘violent deeds’, the Fall’s effect on irascible passions (xi 423, 428). Now the second shows concupiscible appetites and death by disease. So in Virgil’s hell, ‘pale Diseases inhabit the entry . . . ill-counselling Famine, and loathsome Destitution, shapes

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By fire, flood, famine, by intemperance more In meats and drinks, which on the earth shall bring Diseases dire, of which a monstrous crew Before thee shall appear; that thou mayst know What misery the inabstinence of Eve Shall bring on men. Immediately a place Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark, A lazar-house it seemed, wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased, all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. Dire was the tossing, deep the groans, despair Tended the sick busiest from couch to couch; And over them triumphant death his dart

horrible to see’ (Aen. vi 275ff ). Opposite these (adverso in limine) are War and Strife; cp. Spenser’s psychologized dichotomy (FQ II vii 24ff ). The second vision perhaps catalogues diseases because the second digit symbolized the corruptible body with its sicknesses and death; see Valeriano, Hieroglyphica (1613) 456 (Dualis numerus mystico significato corpoream indicat naturam); Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 48f, 76–8, 93; Fowler (1964) 9. 476. inabstinence: Perhaps a coinage; see Corns (1990) 86. 477–90. Raising the problem of ‘natural evils’; see Danielson (1982) 4. Du Bartas describes regiments of personified diseases by a military allegory in ‘The Furies’, Divine Weeks II i 3, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 366–74. lazarhouse: hospital (not exclusively for lepers). feverous kinds: Classification of fevers was then an important issue; cp. Du Bartas, op. cit., tr. Sylvester i 368 (‘Fever, whose inconstant fury / Transforms her ofter than Vertumnus can, / To tertian, quartan, and cotidian, / And second too’); Svendsen (1956) 179. stone: morbid concretion; calculus. Demoniac frenzy: Hyperarousal, whether manic or postepileptic; often attributed to possession by spirits. moping: dull; apathetic. melancholy: Then a more comprehensive category; see Button, Anat. of Melan. (1621 etc.) passim; Babb (1951); (1959). pining: wasting; emaciating. Marasmus: wasting of the body. rheums: rheumatic pains. 485–7. Not in 1667; first in 1674. 491. For death’s dart, cp. ii 672, 786; Frye (1978) 116 (citing Bosch, Brueghel I, etc.).

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paradise lost Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked With vows, as their chief good, and final hope. Sight so deform what heart of rock could long Dry-eyed behold? Adam could not, but wept, Though not of woman born; compassion quelled His best of man, and gave him up to tears A space, till firmer thoughts restrained excess, And scarce recovering words his plaint renewed. Oh miserable mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserved! Better end here unborn. Why is life giv’n To be thus wrested from us? Rather why Obtruded on us thus? Who if we knew What we receive, would either not accept Life offered, or soon beg to lay it down, Glad to be so dismissed in peace. Can thus The image of God in man created once So goodly and erect, though faulty since, To such unsightly sufferings be debased Under inhuman pains? Why should not man,

492. invoked: Cp. x 858 (‘Death comes not at call’); A. W. Verity, in Milton (1910) (citing Sophocles, Philoctetes 797f; Horace, Odes II xviii 38ff ). But Pliny, Nat. Hist. VII i 167 is closer (Tot morbi, tot metus, tot curae, totiens invocata morte ut nullum frequentius sit votum). 493. chief: Early use of the converted noun, translating summum bonum; see Emma (1964) 43. 494–5. Dry-eyed: Unrecorded compound. Corns (1990) 87, taking it with heart, finds it ‘curiously disconcerting’. But synecdoches like heart of rock are common in M.; cp. xi 4. 495–7. A man’s tears, and softer feelings generally, were attributed to his feminine part; cp. Shakespeare, Henry V IV vi 31 (‘And all my mother came into my eyes’); Hamlet IV vii 190 (‘The woman will be out’). compassion, or pity, is the second tragic passion; for the first, see xi 465n. 500. On the scansion (stress on what), see J. Creaser, RES, 35 (1984) 60 contrasting v 585 (‘innumerable’: final stress). 504–6. Adam makes the wrong, stoic, response. Cp. xi 360–4n; Seneca, De Consolatione xxii 3 (Non mehercules quisquam illam [vitam] accepisset, nisi daretur inscientibus); Drummond, A Cypress Grove, (1913) ii 80 (‘who if before he had a being, he could have knowledge of the manifold miseries of it, would enter this woeful hospital of the world, and accept of life upon such hard conditions?’). 509. erect: See vii 505–11n. 511–25. The imago Dei (often identified with man’s intellectual nature) was obscured but not lost by the Fall; whereas the similitudo Dei was

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Retaining still divine similitude In part, from such deformities be free, And for his maker’s image sake exempt? Their maker’s image, answered Michael, then Forsook them, when themselves they vilified To serve ungoverned appetite, and took His image whom they served, a brutish vice, Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve. Therefore so abject is their punishment, Disfiguring not God’s likeness, but their own, Or if his likeness, by themselves defaced While they pervert pure nature’s healthful rules To loathsome sickness, worthily, since they God’s image did not reverence in themselves. I yield it just, said Adam, and submit. But is there yet no other way, besides These painful passages, how we may come To death, and mix with our connatural dust? There is, said Michael, if thou well observe The rule of not too much, by temperance taught In what thou eatst and drinkst, seeking from thence Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, Till many years over thy head return: So mayst thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother’s lap, or be with ease

destroyed but restored by baptism. Protestant theology emphasized disfiguring of the imago. Cp. the moderate Protestant De Doctrina i 12, YP vi 396 (‘some traces of the divine image still remain in us, which are not wholly extinguished by this spiritual death’), instancing pagan wisdom and holiness. maker’s image: Probably referring to the similitudo Dei, as God’s likeness refers to the imago Dei. Contrast iv 291ff. 515–19. Deforming of human nature after the Fall began at ix 1013n; the diseases are supposed to be proliferating consequences of that initial change. 516. vilified: reduced to a lower standing (OED 1). 519. Inductive: giving rise (OED 2). 526. Submission and patience are themes of Bk xi; cp. xi Arg., 112, 551. 528. passages: deaths (OED 2 b). 531. rule: Alluding to the maxim µηδ2ν }γαν, inscribed in the temple at Delphi and quoted in Plato, Protagoras 343B. Moderation is a favourite topic of M.; cp. Elegia VI 59f; Il Penseroso 46; Comus 762ff; SA 553ff. True liberty is always for M. ‘within bounds’ (vii 120); see Tanner (1992) 156. 535–7. Cp. Cicero, De Senectute 19; Tanner (1992) 61 (remaining

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Gathered, not harshly plucked, for death mature: This is old age; but then thou must outlive Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change 540 To withered weak and grey; thy senses then Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgo, To what thou hast, and for the air of youth Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign A melancholy damp of cold and dry 545 To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume The balm of life. To whom our ancestor. Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong Life much, bent rather how I may be quit Fairest and easiest of this cumbrous charge, 550 Which I must keep till my appointed day Of rendering up, and patiently attend My dissolution. Michael replied. Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st temperate Adam may ‘in a measure reverse the physical consequences of his fall’). mother’s lap: Cp. x 778. 538–46. A commonplace; cp. Everyman’s abandonment by Strength, Beauty and Five-Wits; Shakespeare, As You Like It II vii 165f (‘Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’). In correlations of Ages, Elements, and Humours, melancholy was often assigned to old age, air and sanguine temperament to youth; see Klibansky (1964) 122, 149, 293. Sanguine was preferred, as the temperament prevailing before the Fall; melancholy was usually worst, as characteristic of the corruption that followed; cp. vi 331– 4n; Klibansky op. cit. 103, 105, 110f. Some thought melancholy born of the serpent’s breath; cp. ix 159 (Satan entering the serpent as a ‘midnight vapour’ foreshadowing the melancholy damp that will weigh Adam’s spirits); Klibansky op. cit. 79f. damp: depression (OED 5); the physiological ‘vapour’ causing it (extended from macrocosmic exhalations: OED 1, 2). Loewenstein (1990) 100 contrasts the optimistic vision of a people ‘not degenerated’, with ‘spirits pure and vigorous’, in Areop, YP ii 557. 546. balm: Cp. Donne, Sermons ii 81 (‘the spirits, or that which they call the balsamum of the body’); ii 51 (‘balsamum of mercy’). 551–2. Here 1667 has only one line, Of rendering up. Michael to him replied. The addition strengthens the idea of resignation; cp. xi 526n. attend: await. Cp. Job 14:14, ‘If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.’ 553–4. Cp. Martial X xlvii 13 (summum nec metuas diem nec optes); Horace, Odes 1 ix 9 (permitte divis cetera); Seneca, Epistles xxiv 29; lxv 18; Burden (1967) 193 (correcting Adam’s too-eager embracing of death; true patience is more detached). For permit with an indirect object, see OED 1.

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Live well, how long or short permit to heaven: 555 And now prepare thee for another sight. He looked and saw a spacious plain, whereon Were tents of various hue; by some were herds Of cattle grazing: others, whence the sound Of instruments that made melodious chime 560 Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved Their stops and chords was seen: his volant touch Instinct through all proportions low and high Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue. In other part stood one who at the forge 565 Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass Had melted (whether found where casual fire

556–97. The third vision, showing mankind in an apparently happier light. Besides being fortunate, three is the first marriage number (union of odd and even); hence the nuptials (xi 584–94). 556–73. The occupations of the three sons of Cain’s descendant Lamech represent technological and cultural advance: Jabal ‘father of such as dwell in tents’ and are shepherds; Jubal father of musicians; and Tubalcain ‘instructor of every artificer in brass and iron’ (Gen. 4:19–22). Broadbent (1960) 105 finds a dark archetype of Tubalcain’s smelting in the building of Pandaemonium. The same could be said of Jubal’s organ; cp. i 708ff. The Fathers of the Trades was a popular visual art subject; see Frye (1978) 304f. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 4, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 380–402 treats invention of ‘The Handicrafts’ at length, in an unreflecting, exclamatory tone much like Adam’s – ‘Happy device!’ Cp. Marvell, ‘Music’s Empire’ (1971) 50: ‘Jubal first made the wilder notes agree; / And Jubal tuned music’s jubilee: / He called the echoes from their sullen cell, / And built the organ’s city where they dwell. // Each sought a consort in that lovely place; / And virgin trebles wed the manly base. / From whence the progeny of numbers new / Into harmonious colonies withdrew.’ 561–3. The ancients attributed invention of the art of music to Pythagoras, who first intuited its mathematical proportions when he heard blacksmiths at a forge; see Macrobius, Dream of Scipio II i 9ff, (1952) 186f. volant: flying; nimble. Instinct: impelled. Cp. ii 937; perhaps a Latinism. fugue: Figura etymologica (Ital. fuga, flight), pursuing the sense of Fled at the beginning of the line. M. was himself an organist. 565. massy: massive. 566–70. Following Lucretius’s account of the discovery of metals, De Rerum Naturae v 1241–68. Attitudes to working in metal were still so ambivalent that Georgius Agricola devotes much of De Re Metallica Bk i (1556; 1950) 4–24 to rebutting charges that mining and metal-working are dishonourable. casual: accidental, chance (OED 1).

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paradise lost Had wasted woods on mountain or in vale, Down to the veins of earth, thence gliding hot To some cave’s mouth, or whether washed by stream From underground) the liquid ore he drained Into fit moulds prepared; from which he formed First his own tools; then, what might else be wrought Fusile or graven in metal. After these, But on the hither side a different sort From the high neighbouring hills, which was their seat, Down to the plain descended: by their guise Just men they seemed, and all their study bent To worship God aright, and know his works Not hid, nor those things last which might preserve Freedom and peace to men: they on the plain Long had not walked, when from the tents behold A bevy of fair women, richly gay In gems and wanton dress; to the harp they sung Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on: The men though grave, eyed them, and let their eyes Rove without rein, till in the amorous net Fast caught, they liked, and each his liking chose; And now of love they treat till the evening star

573. Fusile: cast. 573–80. Descendants not of Cain but of Seth, in the separate genealogy of Gen. 5; see E. E. Ericson, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 79–89. According to Eutychius they inhabited mountains neighbouring Paradise and so on the hither side of the plain, whereas Cain lived ‘on the east of Eden’ (Gen. 4:16). They invented physics and astronomy; hence their study of God’s works. Not hid: Being children of light they avoided meddling with secret causes; cp. viii 167. 576–7. Contrast iii 461–4 stressing the fabulous aspect of the biblical history; see H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 224f. 579. last] lost 1667 corr. in Errata. 581–92. Cp. iv 319f; v 384f, 446–50n; xi 622n; PR 153ff; Gen. 6:1f; Augustine, City of God III v; Spenser, FQ II xii; Williams (1948) 117, 152; Turner (1987) 268f. The unveiled–veiled paradox was common; cp. Herrick, ‘The Lily in a Crystal’ (1956) 75f. On M.’s addition of dance, see Deursen (1991) 37 (tracing the taboo on dancing to Judges 21); Carter (1996) 37f. 586. net: Stevens (1985) 112 compares Sandys on the ‘shameful chain’ devised to bind Mars and Venus by Vulcan, ectype of Tubalcain. 588–9. treat: talk. The appearance of Venus (evening star) signalled the lighting of the ‘bridal lamp’ at viii 519f; but Adam and Eve did not invoke the pagan Hymen nor experience the heat of passion. Cp. YP ii 249 (‘many

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Love’s harbinger appeared; then all in heat 590 They light the nuptial torch, and bid invoke Hymen, then first to marriage rites invoked; With feast and music all the tents resound. Such happy interview and fair event Of love and youth not lost, songs, garlands, flowers, 595 And charming symphonies attached the heart Of Adam, soon inclined to admit delight, The bent of nature; which he thus expressed. True opener of mine eyes, prime angel blest, Much better seems this vision, and more hope 600 Of peaceful days portends, than those two past; Those were of hate and death, or pain much worse, Here nature seems fulfilled in all her ends. To whom thus Michael. Judge not what is best By pleasure, though to nature seeming meet, 605 Created, as thou art, to nobler end Holy and pure, conformity divine. Those tents thou sawst so pleasant, were the tents Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race Who slew his brother; studious they appear 610 Of arts that polish life, inventors rare, Unmindful of their maker, though his Spirit Taught them, but they his gifts acknowledged none. who have spent their youth chastely are in some things not so quicksighted, while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch’); Donne, Sermons ii 345 (‘there is not a more uncomely, a poorer thing, than to love a wife like a mistress’); Turner (1987) 302 n 82 (contrasting the ‘indecent hurry’ of the sons of gods with the nightingale’s bidding haste at v 446–8). 594. Poignant to Adam: he must lose his own youth (xi 538ff ). 599–602. Misled by attractive appearances, Adam mistakes libertinism for pleasure; cp. viii 530 (Adam ‘transported’); Burden (1967) 193f; R. L. Entzminger, ELR, 8 (1978) 198f; Turner (1987) 305 (the ‘loose female troupe’). 604. pleasure: sensual pleasure (Richardson). 605–6. As the Shorter Catechism reminded, man’s chief end is to know God and enjoy him; whereas in the third vision Adam enjoys only nature – nature seems fulfilled. 607–8. Ps. 84:10, ‘I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.’ 611–12. The arts of children of Cain (founder of sedentary culture) aroused controversy; Calvin accounted for secular achievement by a doctrine of General Grace.

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paradise lost Yet they a beauteous offspring shall beget; For that fair female troupe thou sawst, that seemed Of goddesses, so blithe, so smooth, so gay, Yet empty of all good wherein consists Woman’s domestic honour and chief praise; Bred only and completed to the taste Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance, To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye. To these that sober race of men, whose lives Religious titled them the sons of God, Shall yield up all their virtue, all their fame Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles Of these fair atheists, and now swim in joy (Erelong to swim at large), and laugh; for which The world erelong a world of tears must weep. To whom thus Adam of short joy bereft. Oh pity and shame, that they who to live well Entered so fair, should turn aside to tread Paths indirect, or in the midway faint! But still I see the tenor of man’s woe

613. Cp. the ‘fair’ or ‘mighty’ offspring at xi 582, 642, 687. 616–20. See Carter (1996) 38 recalling ‘Christopher Fetherstone’s advice not to choose a wife at dances’. 618. completed: Perhaps ‘accomplished, equipped’ (rare before PL); or ‘graduated’ (OED 13 b: academic). 619. appetence: desire. 620. troll: wag. New in this use; see Corns (1990) 91. 621–2. Gen. 6:1f, ‘it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose’ – taken by Philo, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian to mean that fallen angels lay with women, an idea later thought heretical. At iii 461ff the surmise was dallied with (as a Limbo folly); but Bk xi consistently demythologizes. Cp. xi 642n, 696n; D. C. Allen, MLN, 61 (1946) 78; West (1955) 129f. 624. trains: enticements. 625–7. swim in joy: Idiomatic; cp. ix 1009. The play on swim anticipates the Flood of the fifth vision (xi 757). Erelong: soon. 631. Numerologically the midway of the first, destroyed, world. The midpoint between the first vision’s first line (xi 423) and the fifth vision’s last (xi 839). See Loewenstein (1990) 97, 101 (history is no linear advance). 632–6. Jacobus (1976) 102 contrasts Adam’s weakened understanding with his quick responses to Raphael. As often, the theme is worked out in marital terms; see Burden (1967) 196; Turner (1987). Applying also

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Holds on the same, from woman to begin. From man’s effeminate slackness it begins, Said the angel, who should better hold his place By wisdom, and superior gifts received. But now prepare thee for another scene. He looked and saw wide territory spread Before him, towns, and rural works between, Cities of men with lofty gates and towers, Concourse in arms, fierce faces threatening war, Giants of mighty bone, and bold emprise; Part wield their arms, part curb the foaming steed, Single or in array of battle ranged Both horse and foot, nor idly mustering stood; One way a band select from forage drives A herd of beeves, fair oxen and fair kine From a fat meadow ground; or fleecy flock, Ewes and their bleating lambs over the plain, Their booty; scarce with life the shepherds fly, But call in aid, which makes a bloody fray; With cruel tournament the squadrons join; Where cattle pastured late, now scattered lies With carcasses and arms the ensanguined field

to the dynamics of mind and will. woe . . . woman: The false etymology sometimes used to comment on Gen. 2:23 and 3:20; see Leonard (1990) 35–51. 637. scene: The ‘Adam Unparadized’ Trin. MS draft projects ‘a masque of all the evils’; see Introduction: Composition. 638–711. The fourth vision, of strife, the evil opposite to concord (the tetrad’s virtuous meaning). Cp. Spenser’s locating Ate in his fourth book; see Fowler (1964) 24–6. Reinforcing the number symbolism by division into four vignettes: foraging (xi 646–50); tournament (651–5); siege (656–9); council (660–71). Cp. Homer, Il. xviii 490–540 (the shield of Achilles, representing siege, ambush, battle, and conflict at a place of assembly); Virgil, Aen. viii 626–728 (Aeneas’ shield with images of Rome’s destiny). Strife personified appears on both shields. 641. Concourse: hostile encounter. 642. More than trope, in view of the tradition that Giants were offspring of angels (‘sons of God’; cp. xi 696, ‘sons of gods’). Cp. i 195–200; iii 461ff; xi 621–2n, 688; Philo, On the Giants, (1927) ii 446–79; Leonard (1990) 52; Treip (1994) 211. emprise: chivalric enterprise, prowess. 643–4. Cp. ii 531f (the warlike devils); Broadbent (1960) 96 (chivalry more salient in hell and sinful earth than in heaven). 651. makes] tacks 1667 (wrongly). 654. ensanguined: blood-stained (first instance in OED).

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655 Deserted: others to a city strong Lay siege, encamped; by battery, scale, and mine, Assaulting; others from the wall defend With dart and javelin, stones and sulphurous fire; On each hand slaughter and gigantic deeds. 660 In other part the sceptred heralds call To council in the city gates: anon Grey-headed men and grave, with warriors mixed, Assemble, and harangues are heard, but soon In factious opposition, till at last 665 Of middle age one rising, eminent In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong, Of justice, of religion, truth and peace, And judgment from above: him old and young Exploded, and had seized with violent hands, 670 Had not a cloud descending snatched him thence Unseen amid the throng: so violence Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law Through all the plain, and refuge none was found. Adam was all in tears, and to his guide 675 Lamenting turned full sad; oh what are these, Death’s ministers, not men, who thus deal death Inhumanly to men, and multiply Ten thousandfold the sin of him who slew His brother; for of whom such massacre 655–71. one rising: Enoch, translated when 365 years old (less than the usual patriarchal span; see Gen. 5:21–4; Jude 14; Heb. 11:5). Cp. YP i 804 (M.’s empathy with solitary just men); Loewenstein (1990) 101; Corns (1994) 89f (comparing M.’s own position in the falling republic). The un-biblical details may be from visual sources (Frye (1978) 306). For the cloud cp. Enoch xiv 8f, Charles (1913) ii 197 (‘Clouds invited me and a mist summoned me, and . . . the winds in the vision caused me to fly and lifted me upward, and bore me into heaven’) – a part of Enoch accessible to M. through Vorstius’ 1644 Lat. translation of the Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer. The form of PL Bks xi–xii is from the same tradition of vision literature. Enoch, like Michael, treats the Flood as judgment on sin; its account of evil’s origin and its angelology would interest M. Cp. xi 700–10n; Kates (1983) 128 (Satan as origin of the war ethos characterizing history). Exploded: shouted down. 656. scale: ladder. Not Latinizing. 661. gates: A common place for councils in biblical times; cp. Gen. 34:20; Zech. 8:16. 678. Enoch prophesied ‘the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all’ ( Jude 14f ).

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680 Make they but of their brethren, men of men? But who was that just man, whom had not heaven Rescued, had in his righteousness been lost? To whom thus Michael. These are the product Of those ill-mated marriages thou sawst; 685 Where good with bad were matched, who of themselves Abhor to join; and by imprudence mixed, Produce prodigious births of body or mind. Such were these giants, men of high renown; For in those days might only shall be admired, 690 And valour and heroic virtue called; To overcome in battle, and subdue Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch Of human glory, and for glory done 695 Of triumph, to be styled great conquerors, Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods, Destroyers rightlier called and plagues of men. Thus fame shall be achieved, renown on earth, And what most merits fame in silence hid. 700 But he the seventh from thee, whom thou beheldst The only righteous in a world perverse, And therefore hated, therefore so beset With foes for daring single to be just, 683. Michael.] Michael; 1667; Michael. 1674. 683–8. For the offspring of the sons of God, cp. xi 621–2n, 642n; Enoch vi–vii, paraphrased in many patristic authors. giants: Cp. Gen. 6:4, ‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’ Giants in prowess rather than size; cp. Calvin, Commentary on Genesis (‘Moses does not say they were of extraordinary stature’); Werman (1995) 67 (comparing the interpretation in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer). 689–90. Supporting Steadman’s contrast between two Miltonic hierarchies of heroic virtues – the Christian, based on goodness, and the satanic, on might. Cp. ii 5n; vi 41–3, 820–3n; Steadman (1968) and (1987); B. Reibling, RQ, 49 (1996) 594 distinguishing virtue and classical virtus (military heroism). 692–3. Cp. xi 643–4n. 696. sons of gods: Not ‘sons of God’. See Leonard (1990) 52: true titles are from God. 700 –4. Unmistakably personal; see Tanner (1992) 11 (‘a brave but futile defence of the “Good Old Cause” ’). 700 –10. Enoch is ‘seventh from Adam’ ( Jude 14). The cloud with winged

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And utter odious truth, that God would come 705 To judge them with his saints: him the most high Rapt in a balmy cloud with wingèd steeds Did, as thou sawst, receive, to walk with God High in salvation and the climes of bliss, Exempt from death; to show thee what reward 710 Awaits the good, the rest what punishment; Which now direct thine eyes and soon behold. He looked, and saw the face of things quite changed; The brazen throat of war had ceased to roar, All now was turned to jollity and game, 715 To luxury and riot, feast and dance, Marrying or prostituting, as befell, Rape or adultery, where passing fair Allured them; thence from cups to civil broils. At length a reverend sire among them came, 720 And of their doings great dislike declared, steeds (cp. xi 665–71n) may be from Elijah’s translation to heaven (2 Kings 2:11), often associated with Enoch’s. Willet, Hexapla (1608) 71f summarizes attendant controversies: Did Enoch escape death? Is he preserved in some terrene paradise? Will he come again to be slain by Antichrist? A type of the resurrection, ‘to show that there was a better life prepared, and to be a testimony of the immortality of souls and bodies’ (Gen. 5:24 Geneva note). walk with God: Cp. Gen. 5:24. High: Cp. xi 576 (‘Down . . . descended’), 665 (‘rising’); Cope (1962) ch. 3 (on cycles of falls and rises). climes: Cp. Comus 978f: ‘happy climes that lie / Where day never shuts his eye’. 710. punishment;] punishment? 1674 (wrongly). 712–53. Five symbolizing the senses, the fifth vision aptly represents sensuality through five pairs of actions (xi 714–17). This corruption is punished by the Flood, the pentad also symbolizing justice; see Hopper (1938) 86, 115, 180; Fowler (1964) 34f. 712. changed;] changed, 1674. 715. dance: Following feasting, as in anti-dance polemic (Carter (1996) 40). luxury: lust. 715–18. On the ‘loose female troupe’ of conventionally ‘male-directed’ women, see Turner (1987) 305. Cp. i 497ff; YP vii 425; Loewenstein (1990) 106f (an occasion ‘for the poet historical to assert yet again his ideological radicalism’ against the dissolute culture of ‘Laudian and Restoration England’). 717. passing: (1) passing by; (2) surpassing. 719–53. Following Gen. 6:9–9:17, with few divagations into the commentaries; see Allen (1949) 153f (improbably taking the literalism to be designed to rebut doubts as to the Flood’s factuality); Cohn (1996). For the loose antediluvian morals, cp. Luke 17:26f; Josephus, Antiquities

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And testified against their ways; he oft Frequented their assemblies, whereso met, Triumphs or festivals, and to them preached Conversion and repentance, as to souls 725 In prison under judgments imminent: But all in vain: which when he saw, he ceased Contending, and removed his tents far off; Then from the mountain hewing timber tall, Began to build a vessel of huge bulk, 730 Measured by cubit, length, and breadth, and height, Smeared round with pitch, and in the side a door Contrived, and of provisions laid in large For man and beast: when lo a wonder strange! Of every beast, and bird, and insect small 735 Came sevens, and pairs, and entered in, as taught Their order: last the sire, and his three sons With their four wives; and God made fast the door. Meanwhile the south wind rose, and with black wings I iii 1 (Noah’s remonstrations). A subject in visual art: e.g. G. Hoet’s engraving for the Cambridge Bible of 1660, Allen (1949) fig. 15. The Flood itself, a more important subject, focused apocalyptic fears of return to chaos. Prominent here as an analogue of the Fall, and a chief division in world history. 721. Heb. 11:7, ‘By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world.’ 723–5. 1 Pet. 3:18–21, Christ ‘preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein . . . eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us . . . by the resurrection.’ 730. Cp. Gen. 6:15. 734. The insects are not biblical. Following the more modern commentators, against the Jesuit Fr. Athanasius Kircher, whose Arca Noe (1675) held that insects, being spontaneously generated, were independent of the ark; see Allen (1949) 153, 185. 738–53. Ovid’s account of the Flood (Metam. i 262–347) includes south wind that crushes the clouds until heavy rain falls (a current theory; see Svendsen (1956) 97); sea without shore (omnia pontus); and a topsy-turvy panorama. Cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks I ii ad fin.; Drayton, Noah’s Flood (1630) 729–34 (‘The grampus, and the whirlpool, as they rove, / Lighting by chance upon a lofty grove / Under this world of waters, are so much / Pleased with their wombs [bellies] each tender branch to touch, / That they leave slime upon the curled sprays, / On which the birds

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Wide hovering, all the clouds together drove 740 From under heaven; the hills to their supply Vapour, and exhalation dusk and moist, Sent up amain; and now the thickened sky Like a dark ceiling stood; down rushed the rain Impetuous, and continued till the earth 745 No more was seen; the floating vessel swum Uplifted; and secure with beakèd prow Rode tilting o’er the waves, all dwellings else Flood overwhelmed, and them with all their pomp Deep under water rolled; sea covered sea, 750 Sea without shore; and in their palaces Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelped And stabled; of mankind, so numerous late, All left, in one small bottom swum embarked. How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to behold 755 The end of all thy offspring, end so sad, Depopulation; thee another flood, Of tears and sorrow a flood thee also drowned, And sunk thee as thy sons; till gently reared By the angel, on thy feet thou stoodst at last, 760 Though comfortless, as when a father mourns His children, all in view destroyed at once; And scarce to the angel utterdst thus thy plaint. Oh visions ill foreseen! Better had I Lived ignorant of future, so had borne 765 My part of evil only, each day’s lot sung their harmonious lays’); Cowley, Davideis (1656) i, (1905) 263 (sea creatures displacing land creatures). Comparison of Deucalion and Noah was standard in biblical Poetics. The analogy could be used to prove or disprove either myth’s historicity; see Allen (1949) 176f; H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 224. supply: assistance (OED 1). exhalation: mist, vapour. ceiling: ‘Too mean a word in poetry’ (Richardson). 750–2. See Broadbent (1960) 103 (logically concluding the line of satire begun with Pandaemonium’s spendours). stabled: (1) stuck in the mud (OED vb.3); (2) lived as in a stable (OED vb.2 2b). 753. bottom: boat. Cp. Ovid, Metam. i 319 (parva rate). 756–7. Cp. xi 625–7n. Critics tend to prefer Adam’s conclusion to Michael’s; see Allen (1949) 173 (modern and sceptical, sympathizing with Adam and the sufferers, rather than stressing the ark’s symbolism); Stafford (1994) 13–18. 765–6. Matt. 6:34, ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’

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Enough to bear; those now, that were dispensed The burden of many ages, on me light At once, by my foreknowledge gaining birth Abortive, to torment me ere their being, With thought that they must be. Let no man seek Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall Him or his children, evil he may be sure, Which neither his foreknowing can prevent, And he the future evil shall no less In apprehension than in substance feel Grievous to bear: but that care now is past, Man is not whom to warn: those few escaped Famine and anguish will at last consume Wandering that watery desert: I had hope When violence was ceased, and war on earth, All would have then gone well, peace would have crowned With length of happy days the race of man; But I was far deceived; for now I see Peace to corrupt no less than war to waste. How comes it thus? Unfold, celestial guide, And whether here the race of man will end. To whom thus Michael. Those whom last thou sawst In triumph and luxurious wealth, are they First seen in acts of prowess eminent And great exploits, but of true virtue void; Who having spilt much blood, and done much waste Subduing nations, and achieved thereby Fame in the world, high titles, and rich prey, Shall change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth, Surfeit, and lust, till wantonness and pride Raise out of friendship hostile deeds in peace.

767. On history’s ‘vicious pattern of decline or cycles’, see Loewenstein (1990) 115. 770–3. The error of Calvinistic predestinarian determinism, M.’s bête noire. 773–4. neither . . . And: Explained as imitating the Latin idiom neque . . . et; but it was good (ungrammatical) English; see OED s. v. Neither 1 g. 777–8. ‘There is no one left to warn’ (Latinate). consume: perish (OED 6 a). 782. See Loewenstein op. cit. 100 on the relinquishing of this meliorist myth. 790. true virtue: Cp. xi 689–90n.

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paradise lost The conquered also, and enslaved by war Shall with their freedom lost all virtue lose And fear of God, from whom their piety feigned In sharp contést of battle found no aid Against invaders; therefore cooled in zeal Thenceforth shall practise how to live secure, Worldly or dissolute, on what their lords Shall leave them to enjoy; for the earth shall bear More than enough, that temperance may be tried: So all shall turn degenerate, all depraved, Justice and temperance, truth and faith forgot; One man except, the only son of light In a dark age, against example good, Against allurement, custom, and a world Offended; fearless of reproach and scorn, Or violence, he of their wicked ways Shall them admonish, and before them set The paths of righteousness, how much more safe, And full of peace, denouncing wrath to come On their impenitence; and shall return Of them derided, but of God observed The one just man alive; by his command Shall build a wondrous ark, as thou beheldst, To save himself and household from amidst A world devote to universal wreck. No sooner he with them of man and beast Select for life shall in the ark be lodged, And sheltered round, but all the cataracts

797–806. Zeal cooling in adversity is a theme of SA. Cp. M. Y. Hughes (probably ‘an attack upon the time-servers in his own party’); Summers (1962) 204; Loewenstein (1990) 105f (M.’s ‘view of history as an often cyclical process characterized by long periods of national dissipation’); B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 595 (meek surrender as wrong as the preceding violent conquest). secure: heedlessly. 798. lose: Spelt ‘loose’, indicating either ‘lose’ or ‘loose’ (relax). 806. See Loewenstein (1990) 93 et passim on the conflict between degenerative and redemptive configurations of history throughout Bks xi–xii. 808–9. Cp. YP i 526, M.’s vision of Wycliffe’s ‘short blaze’. 815. denouncing: proclaiming, warning. 821. devote: doomed. wreck: Spelled ‘rack’ (variant): destruction. 824–7. Gen. 7:11, ‘The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.’ cataracts:

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825 Of heaven set open on the earth shall pour Rain day and night, all fountains of the deep Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp Beyond all bounds, till inundation rise Above the highest hills: then shall this mount 830 Of Paradise by might of waves be moved Out of his place, pushed by the hornèd flood, With all his verdure spoiled, and trees adrift Down the great river to the opening gulf, And there take root an island salt and bare, 835 The haunt of seals and orcs, and seamews’ clang. To teach thee that God áttributes to place No sanctity, if none be thither brought By men who there frequent, or therein dwell. And now what further shall ensue, behold.

Where Tyndale, Bishops’, Geneva, and AV have ‘windows’ (‘flood-gates’, AV margin), Vulg., Douay, and Tremellius have cataractae (cataracts; sluices). 829–38. The fate of Paradise at the Flood was much discussed. Pererius supposes it destroyed, but Kircher thinks it remains, and ridicules the notion of its being carried off to Armenia or the Antarctic or the Torrid Zone to become the Isle of Zealand (Formosa); see Allen (1949) 153f, 191. Cp. the difficult geography of the Tigris (ix 69ff: ‘sin, not time, first wrought the change’); although a merely geological explanation would be simplistic. The great river is mod. Tigris or Euphrates (Gen. 15:18); earlier exotic speculations about locations of the terrene Paradise (iv 280ff ) all come down to this, a bare island in the Persian Gulf. The lesson is homiletic Protestantism; Paradise, not to be superstitiously localized, lies within. Contrast Voragine (1900) v 182 (Michael commanding worship at a particular place). M.’s Michael teaches Adam not to define his relation to God in terms of place; see Loewenstein (1990) 107f. MacCaffrey (1959) 88 links the gulf with chaos, the uprooted mountain with those of hell. Cp. x 664–71; Ovid, Metam. viii 380–90 (islands carried out to sea); Treip (1994) 211. horned flood: Cp. Virgil’s Tiber, Aen. viii 77 (corniger Hesperidum fluvius regnator aquarum); Jonson, Volpone III vii 153 (‘With the blue Proteus, or the horned flood’); Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals (1613, 1616) ii 5 (a copy survives, perhaps annotated by M.). The metaphor suggests water dividing round an obstacle (Richardson). orcs: killer whales, or indeterminately ferocious sea-monsters, the enemies of whales. Associated with Orcus and the darkness of hell (Florio; OED 2). Cp. Ariosto, Orl. Fur., tr. Harington (1972) viii 51 (‘this most ugly orc’); Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II i 3, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 365 (‘Insatiate Orc, that even at one repast / Almost all creatures in the world would waste’). seamews’: gulls’. clang: harsh scream; cp. vii 422–3n.

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paradise lost He looked, and saw the ark hull on the flood, Which now abated, for the clouds were fled, Driven by a keen north wind, that blowing dry Wrinkled the face of deluge, as decayed; And the clear sun on his wide watery glass Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew, As after thirst, which made their flowing shrink From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole With soft foot towards the deep, who now had stopped His sluices, as the heaven his windows shut. The ark no more now floats, but seems on ground Fast on the top of some high mountain fixed. And now the tops of hills as rocks appear; With clamour thence the rapid currents drive Towards the retreating sea their furious tide. Forthwith from out the ark a raven flies, And after him, the surer messenger, A dove sent forth once and again to spy Green tree or ground whereon his foot may light; The second time returning, in his bill An olive leaf he brings, pacific sign:

840–69. The sixth vision. Six was a creation symbol, from the number of days of creation (Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 264ff ); hence the reprise of creation (xi 852–4). The covenant with Noah typifies redemption by Christ in the sixth age (ibid. 280); see xii 1n. 840–3. Cp. Sidney’s Fall myth, Arcadia (1590) I i (‘the carcase of the ship . . . hull there . . . blood had (as it were) filled the wrinkles of the sea’s visage’); Cowley, Davideis (1656) i, (1905) 263 (‘the face of shipwrecked nature naked lay’); E. M. W. Tillyard, TLS (6 Mar. 1953) 153. For the cloud-clearing wind, cp. Gen. 8:1; Ovid, Metam. i 328 (specifying north wind ). hull: drift. 844–6. On the sun’s drinking, see v 423–6n; the animism, attacked in Peter (1960) 139f, is defended in Shumaker (1967) 89. Whereas face and Gazed suggest glass = mirror, fresh . . . thirst suggests a draught renewing the old world of vanity. 847. For the personification, cp. 1 Kings 18:41 LXX (φωνP τ/ν ποδ/ν tripping: dancing, τοs qετοs); Horace, Epodes xvi 47f (Richardson). moving nimbly (OED 1). 849. Cp. xi 824–7n; Gen. 8:2 (‘The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained’). 851. Rejecting localization ‘upon the mountains of Ararat’ (Gen. 8:4). 852–4. Cp. vii 285ff, the receding waters at the creation. ‘One whole world’ (xi 874) has been destroyed, and the new creation is based on a new covenant.

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Anon dry ground appears, and from his ark The ancient sire descends with all his train; Then with uplifted hands, and eyes devout, Grateful to heaven, over his head beholds A dewy cloud, and in the cloud a bow Conspicuous with three listed colours gay, Betok’ning peace from God and covenant new. Whereat the heart of Adam erst so sad Greatly rejoiced, and thus his joy broke forth. O thou that future things canst represent As present, heavenly instructor, I revive At this last sight, assured that man shall live With all the creatures, and their seed preserve. Far less I now lament for one whole world Of wicked sons destroyed, than I rejoice For one man found so perfect and so just, That God vouchsafes to raise another world From him, and all his anger to forget. But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven, Distended as the brow of God appeased, Or serve they as a flowery verge to bind The fluid skirts of that same watery cloud, Lest it again dissolve and shower the earth? To whom the archangel. Dextrously thou aimst; So willingly doth God remit his ire, Though late repenting him of man depraved, Grieved at his heart, when looking down he saw The whole earth filled with violence, and all flesh

864. Grateful: (1) feeling gratitude; (2) pleasing. See Ricks (1963) 114. 865–7. See Svendsen (1956) 98. three: The primary colours red, yellow, blue. listed: arranged in bands. covenant: Gen. 9:13–15, ‘I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. . . . the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.’ For Michael’s brief to ‘intermix’ the covenant’s promise in the visions, see xi 115–16n. 868. erst: previously. 870. that] who 1674. 880. Distended: expanded (i.e. not frowning). Adam’s interrogative tone improves on earlier assertiveness; see R. L. Entzminger, ELR, 8 (1978) 203. appeased, / Or: Modern usage might call for a dash, indicating afterthought. 886 –7. Cp. Gen. 6:6, the reason for the Flood – ‘it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart’. 888–9. Gen. 6:11, ‘The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.’

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Corrupting each their way; yet those removed, 890 Such grace shall one just man find in his sight, That he relents, not to blot out mankind, And makes a covenant never to destroy The earth again by flood, nor let the sea Surpass his bounds, nor rain to drown the world 895 With man therein or beast; but when he brings Over the earth a cloud, will therein set His triple-coloured bow, whereon to look And call to mind his covenant: day and night, Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost 900 Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new, Both heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell. THE END OF THE ELEVENTH BOOK

890. Gen. 6:8, ‘But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.’ 892–901. Cp. Gen. 9:14–16; 8:22. Conspicuously omitting removal of the curse on the ground (Gen. 8:21) – not to avoid improvidence in God (as Burden) but to interpret the curse macrocosmically as a change to the present world. Mutability will continue until the last things: ‘Till then the curse pronounced on both [heaven and earth] precedes’ (x 623–40, 651). triple-coloured: Cp. xi 866. For the belief that the rainbow’s blue shows the Flood past, the fiery colour what is yet to come, see Svendsen (1956) 98. It stems from 2 Pet. 3:6ff, 13f, linking the Flood with a final conflagration, against those taking for granted the world’s continuance: ‘The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.’ Then ‘the elements shall melt with fervent heat’, but those within the covenant may ‘look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness’. Expectation that the present world will perish by fire was common; cp. viii 323–33n; De Doctrina i 33, YP vi 627f. An apocalypse aptly ends the vision of the first ‘world’ (xii 6). Stafford (1994) 31–3 thinks M.’s apocalypses unsuccessful, and suggests he lost his Millenarian faith. See T. Amorose, MiltS, 17 (1983) 141–62.

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Paradise Lost BOOK XII The Argument

Thence from the Flood relates, and by degrees explains, who that seed of the woman shall be;1 his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension; the state of the Church till his second coming. Adam greatly satisfied and recomforted by these relations and promises descends the hill with Michael; wakens Eve, who all this while had slept, but with gentle dreams composed to quietness of mind and submission. Michael in either hand leads them out of Paradise, the fiery sword waving behind them, and the cherubim taking their stations to guard the place.

5

As one who in his journey baits at noon, Though bent on speed, so here the archangel paused Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored, If Adam aught perhaps might interpose; Then with transition sweet new speech resumes.

xii Argument] The latter part of 1668 and 1669 Bk x Arg. Arg.1 Thence from the Flood . . . incarnation] 1668; 1669; The angel Michael continues from the Flood to relate what shall succeed; then, in the mention of Abraham, comes by degrees to explain, who that seed of the woman shall be, which was promised Adam and Eve in the Fall; his incarnation 1674. 1–5. Added when 1667 Bk x became 1674 Bks xi–xii. Thus 1674 xi 901 = 1667 x 896, and 1674 xii 6 = 1667 x 897. The paragraph inceptions at xii 1 and 6 are new in 1674; in 1667 the pause in the archangel’s metaphorical journey is not marked by a paragraph division. 1. baits: stops for rest. noon: The sixth hour of the biblical day, the hour when Fall, expulsion, and Jesus’ death occurred. A topic of Victorine speculation; cp. ix 739–40n; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 279–81. The six visions just shown, all in the Age of Adam (xii 466–7n), correspond to hours of Michael’s journey; the metaphorical ‘noon’ figures Adam’s expected execution, as the real noon (xii 589) marks expulsion into the mortal world. 5. sweet: Because yielding honey of doctrine. A transition to the second world, the second stock, the second source (xii 13), and the second of ‘three drops’ instilled into Adam’s eyes (xi 416; xii 466–7n). See Lewalski (1985) 54: this second part of Michael’s prophecy covers similar ground to Du

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paradise lost Thus thou hast seen one world begin and end; And man as from a second stock proceed. Much thou hast yet to see, but I perceive Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine Must needs impair and weary human sense: Henceforth what is to come I will relate, Thou therefore give due audience, and attend. This second source of men, while yet but few, And while the dread of judgment past remains Fresh in their minds, fearing the Deity, With some regard to what is just and right Shall lead their lives, and multiply apace, Labouring the soil, and reaping plenteous crop, Corn wine and oil; and from the herd or flock, Oft sacrificing bullock, lamb, or kid, With large wine-offerings poured, and sacred feast Shall spend their days in joy unblamed, and dwell Long time in peace by families and tribes

Bartas’s incomplete Second Week. The formal transition from vision to narrative is characteristic of prophecy. Wittreich (1975a) 135 finds a sevenfold vision replicating the poem’s overall pattern. Addison, Spectator, No. 369 (1965) iii 385f considers the change to narrative a blunder; Summers (1962) 207f defends it – Adam has to learn about redemption through history, ‘narration rather than spectacle; inward rather than physical vision’. Loewenstein (1990) 97f senses a demythologizing shift, from full dramatization (Bks ix–x), through tableaux (Bk xi), to narrative. R. R. Entzminger, ELR, 8 (1978) 210 finds a shift of didactic strategy, to ‘the elucidating word’, and a stylistic shift to M.’s late, georgic style of local decorums. Cp. H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 165–8 (baroque illusionism, to distance Adam); Allen (1949) 154 (M.’s selection ‘curiously without proportion’). 7. (1) Replacing one progenitor (Adam) with another (Noah); (2) grafting mankind onto the stock of Christ, as in St Paul’s allegory of regeneration (Rom. 11). The covenant with Noah was a type of the new covenant. 8–10. See Kennedy (1978) 176: ‘muted austerity . . . flatfooted parataxis’ adjusting his rhetoric to Adam’s weakness. 13. few,] few; 1674. 16–24. Cp. Ovid’s Silver Age, Metam. i 113ff (Richardson). 18. Labouring: cultivating, tilling (OED 1). 19. Corn . . . oil: The three associated in OT tithe law (Deut. 14:23, etc.). Echoing Ps. 4:8 (BCP, Office of Compline): ‘Thou hast put gladness in

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Under paternal rule; till one shall rise Of proud ambitious heart, who not content With fair equality, fraternal state, Will arrogate dominion undeserved Over his brethren, and quite dispossess Concord and law of nature from the earth; Hunting (and men not beasts shall be his game)

my heart: since the time that their corn and wine and oil increased.’ 24–63. Gen. 10 does not connect Nimrod the mighty hunter with tower building, but Josephus, Antiquities I iv 2f does, giving the derivation of Babel and the Tower’s composition. His Nimrod ‘changed the government into tyranny’; and from this, Jerome and others developed Nimrod into an archetypal tyrant who replaced the patriarchs’ paternal rule by dominion and empire. The Mennonites contrasted Babel with their pure community (Deursen (1991) 309). M.’s republican version is introduced by a Senecan idyll of virtuous primitive governors; see M. Y. Hughes, YP iii 118f (citing Seneca, Epistles lxxxi, a Fall myth in political terms). The appeal to Natural Law is republican, like the ideal fraternal state, obscurely unblamed. Cp. YP ii 276, 624. Summers (1962) 209 identifies Nimrod (‘Rebellious’) as a ‘human type of Satan’; Loewenstein (1990) 109f finds him the apocalyptic ‘Antichrist of history’ representing prelatical power and European monarchy (citing Eikonoklastes, YP iii 598). He is Charles I or II (M, Agari, in Yoshida (1983) 151); the Commonwealth (M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 131, 134); even Cromwell the imperialist (C. Jowitt, 17C, 10 (1995) 101–19; D. Armitage, cit. H. ErskineHill (1995) 74). (In the Civil War each side accused the other of rebellion against the Crown.) In the ‘fast’ sermons to the Commons (17 Nov. 1640), the theme was ‘the need for common action against the “Nimrods” . . . who had perverted religion and the laws’ (Hirst (1986) 193). Significantly, Babel becomes a metaphor for the unfinished Commonwealth in Easy Way, YP vii 423. For Nimrod and Abram as opposed founders, see Lewalski (1985) 53. 29. ‘A tyrant whether by wrong or by right coming to the crown, is he who regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction’ (St Basil, cit. YP iii 212; cp. ibid. iii 202 denying the natural right of kings and claiming the people gave them their power in trust). 30–3. Like many, Willet, Hexapla (1608) 117 allegorizes Nimrod’s venery, applying Lam. 4:18 (‘They hunt our steps’); cp. Eikonoklastes, YP iii 466, 598 (‘The bishops could have told him that Nimrod, the first that hunted after faction, is reputed, by ancient tradition, the first that founded monarchy; whence it appears that to hunt after faction is more properly the king’s game’); Dryden, Hind and the Panther (1687) i 282f; Oras (1930)

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paradise lost With war and hostile snare such as refuse Subjection to his empire tyrannous: A mighty hunter thence he shall be styled Before the Lord, as in despite of heaven, Or from heaven claiming second sovereignty; And from rebellion shall derive his name, Though of rebellion others he accuse. He with a crew, whom like ambition joins With him or under him to tyrannize, Marching from Eden towards the west, shall find The plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge Boils out from underground, the mouth of hell; Of brick, and of that stuff they cast to build A city and tower, whose top may reach to heaven; And get themselves a name, lest far dispersed In foreign lands their memory be lost, Regardless whether good or evil fame. But God who oft descends to visit men Unseen, and through their habitations walks To mark their doings, them beholding soon,

25. styled: Because no one has a just title over others; see Leonard (1990) 53f, not explaining, however, why Nimrod’s name is suppressed. 34–5. Gen. 10:9 (Before the Lord ) puzzled commentators. Like Vatablus and Mercerus, M. finds a constitutional meaning: ‘To say kings are accountable to none but God, is the overturning of all law’ (YP iii 204). Perhaps using the idea of Nimrod as second king to strike at the Divine Right of Kings; see Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, tr. Vorstius (1644) 25; Werman (1995) 69. 36–7. Starnes (1955) 267 argues that M. found his material in Estienne, Dictionarium (1579), which derives ‘Nimrod’ from Heb. mârad = Lat. rebellis. During the Civil War, each side accused the other of rebellion against the Crown. See Introduction: Politics and allegory. 41–4. The plain: In Shinar, or Babylonia. Cp. iii 466–8n; Gen. 11:2. The materials, brick with bitumen as mortar, are specified in Gen. 11:3 (Heb. chêmâr; Vulg. bitumen; Geneva and AV ‘slime’: see OED s. v. Slime 1 b). Bentley and Empson (1950) 155 take underground literally; but bitumen’s connection with hell is symbolic; cp. x 296–8n. gurge: whirlpool (first OED instance; cp. Lat. gurges). See Corns (1990) 90: the word’s ‘alienness felicitously anticipates the fissuring of the common language as Babel falls’. cast: (1) resolve; (2) shape. 45–6. Gen. 11:4, ‘let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth’.

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Comes down to see their city, ere the tower Obstruct heaven towers, and in derision sets Upon their tongues a various spirit to raze Quite out their native language, and instead To sow a jangling noise of words unknown: Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud Among the builders; each to other calls Not understood, till hoarse, and all in rage, As mocked they storm; great laughter was in heaven And looking down, to see the hubbub strange And hear the din; thus was the building left Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named. Whereto thus Adam fatherly displeased. Oh execrable son so to aspire

51–2. Ironic, pace Empson (1950) 155. derision: Cp. Ps. 2:4, ‘the Lord shall have them in derision’. 53–8. Differentiated natural languages were thought to have originated with the confusion of tongues at Babel. Achinstein (1994) 85 holds that the story of confused speech is about tyranny; but cp. Artis Logicae i 24, YP viii 294f (‘Languages, both the first one which Adam received in Eden, and those varied ones, perhaps derived from the first, which the builders of the tower of Babel suddenly received, were without doubt divinely given’); D. C. Allen, PQ, 28 (1949) 11. The Babel story fascinated many projectors of universal languages. For his, Sir Thomas Urquhart claims a pre-Babelian complete expression; see Jewel (1651, 1983) 61f; Logopandecteision (1653). various: causing differences. jangling noise: Sylvester’s phrase; cp. Du Bartas, Divine Weeks II ii 2, tr. Sylvester (1979) i 426 (‘A jangling noise not much unlike the rumours [uproar] / Of Bacchus’ swains amid their drunken humours’). 59. storm: rage. 62. Confusion: Cp. ii 951–67 (Confusion personified); Gen. 11:9 (‘Therefore is the name of it called Babel’ (‘that is, Confusion’, Geneva and AV margin)); Josephus, Antiquities I iv 3 (the same popular etymology from Heb. balal, ‘confound’); Calvin, Comm. upon Genesis, tr. Tymme (1578) (‘They gain, indeed, a name, but not such as they would have chosen: so God opprobriously casts down the pride of those who usurp to themselves honours to which they have no title’); Treip (1994) 211. 64–71. Making kingship postlapsarian, against the Royalists’ Adamic monarchy; see Corns (1994) 91. Adam’s republican argument against monarchic Authority resembles Satan’s (v 785–802). The issue turns on merit; Abdiel points out Satan is not Messiah’s equal. Cp. i 39; ii 466f; v 810–46;

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paradise lost Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given: He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free. But this usurper his encroachment proud Stays not on man; to God his tower intends Siege and defiance: wretched man! What food Will he convey up thither to sustain Himself and his rash army, where thin air Above the clouds will pine his entrails gross, And famish him of breath, if not of bread? To whom thus Michael. Justly thou abhorr’st

Broadbent (1960) 112 (Satan’s usurped kingship); M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 129, 137f; B. Riebling, RQ, 49 (1996) 583. 73–4. Nimrod persuaded the people to attribute their happiness to their own courage, not God, so as to turn them from believing and ‘avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers’ ( Josephus); cp. Calvin, Comm. upon Gen., tr. Tymme (1578) 11:4 (‘This is the perpetual infatuation of the world; to neglect heaven, and to seek immortality on earth, where everything is fading and transient’). 76–8. Cp. iii 562n (the upper air not for mortals). Throughout, atmospheres allegorize degree – moral and natural station. E.g. iv 153 (the ‘purer air’ of Paradise); viii 348 (‘thinner air’ fish cannot breathe). A prominent idea in the Trin. MS Third Draft; see Introduction: Composition. pine: distress. 79–101. Recalling the regicide tracts, and following Augustine, City of God XIX xi; cp. John 8:34: man was made lord ‘only over the unreasonable, not over man, but over beasts . . . justly was the burden of servitude laid upon the back of transgresssion. And therefore in all the Scriptures we never read the word servant, until such time as that just man Noah laid it as a curse upon his offending son. So it was guilt, not nature, that gave origin to that name.’ Servitude’s mother is sin, the ‘first cause of man’s subjection to man’. For loss of inward personal freedom through the Fall, and the link between psychological and political enslavement, cp. ix 1127–31n; xi 471–525; Milner (1981) 163; D. Quint, in Nyquist (1987) 138; Leonard (1990) 183f; Tanner (1992) 61. right reason: conscience. A Reformation watchword; cp. vi 41–3n; Articles of Peace, YP iii 330 (‘rectified’ reason); Christopher (1982) 97–9 (Luther’s recta ratio as faith). Twinned: Obedience being freedom, free will or true liberty has a close, reflective relationship with conscience. In Neoplatonic thought, the choosing faculty (ratio) reflected mind (intellectus). dividual: separate.

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That son, who on the quiet state of men Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue Rational liberty; yet know withal, Since thy original lapse, true liberty Is lost, which always with right reason dwells Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being: Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed, Immediately inordinate desires And upstart passions catch the government From reason, and to servitude reduce Man till then free. Therefore since he permits Within himself unworthy powers to reign Over free reason, God in judgment just Subjects him from without to violent lords; Who oft as undeservedly enthral His outward freedom: tyranny must be, Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. Yet sometimes nations will decline so low From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong, But justice, and some fatal curse annexed Deprives them of their outward liberty, Their inward lost: witness the irreverent son Of him who built the ark, who for the shame Done to his father, heard this heavy curse, Servant of servants, on his vicious race. Thus will this latter, as the former world, Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw His presence from among them, and avert His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth To leave them to their own polluted ways;

(Adam and Eve’s separation at ix 386 proved fatal; without his reason her liberty led to upstart passions.) Cp. iii 108–10; ix 351f. 94. On the punitive yoke, see Geisst (1984) 48. 95–6. Cp. iv 293, necessity ‘the tyrant’s plea’. 97–110. See Loewenstein (1990) 112, on God’s apparent withdrawal during certain historical periods. M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 130, suggests the Restoration was such a time. virtue . . . reason: Cp. xii 79–101n. 101–14. Because of Ham’s perverse act committed with the drunken Noah, his own son Canaan was cursed: ‘a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren’ (Gen. 9:25). race : descendants. Explaining the Canaanites’ subjugation to Israel, and later used to justify racial discrimination.

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And one peculiar nation to select From all the rest, of whom to be invoked, A nation from one faithful man to spring: Him on this side Euphrates yet residing, 115 Bred up in idol-worship; oh that men (Canst thou believe?) should be so stupid grown, While yet the patriarch lived, who scaped the flood, As to forsake the living God, and fall To worship their own work in wood and stone 120 For gods! Yet him God the most high vouchsafes To call by vision from his father’s house, His kindred and false gods, into a land Which he will show him, and from him will raise A mighty nation, and upon him shower 125 His benediction so, that in his seed All nations shall be blest; he straight obeys,

111–13. Another new beginning with another faithful ‘remnant’. Israel’s ‘national election’, as distinct from individual election to offices or to salvation. Pace M. Y. Hughes, M. by no means rejected the doctrine of ‘election to personal salvation’; cp. De Doctrina i 4, YP vi 174f. peculiar: special. Cp. Deut. 14:2, ‘the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself’. 114–15. On Abraham’s origins, see Joshua 24:2, ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.’ 117. patriarch: Noah, who lived for 350 years after the Flood (Gen. 9:28). 120. most high: The name used by Melchizedek in blessing Abram (Gen. 14:19). 121–34. Cp. Gen. 12; Acts 7 (Abram’s calling and covenant with God); Judith 5:6–9 (his departure from idolatry). All nations: Gen. 12:3, ‘In thee shall all families [cognationes Vulg.; ‘generations’ Tyndale; ‘kindreds’ Bishops’, Douay] of the earth be blessed.’ firm believes: ‘By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went’ (Heb. 11:8). Ironic: Adam will need similar faith at the expulsion. thou canst not: Cp. xii 9; Wittreich (1979) 189 (Michael, a seer, translates what he sees into words for Adam). ford: Probably across a minor tributary of the Euphrates. Haran was far to the NW, but also in Mesopotamia, where M. may have put Ur, on the strength of Acts 7:2. Or, a ford across the Euphrates, if he placed Ur s of the river. Cp. ix 209–16n. servitude: slaves and servants collectively (abstract for concrete).

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Not knowing to what land, yet firm believes: I see him, but thou canst not, with what faith He leaves his gods, his friends, and native soil 130 Ur of Chaldæa, passing now the ford To Haran, after him a cumbrous train Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude; Not wandering poor, but trusting all his wealth With God, who called him, in a land unknown. 135 Canaan he now attains, I see his tents Pitched about Sechem, and the neighbouring plain Of Moreh; there by promise he receives Gift to his progeny of all that land; From Hamath northward to the desert south 140 (Things by their names I call, though yet unnamed) From Hermon east to the great western sea, Mount Hermon, yonder sea, each place behold In prospect, as I point them; on the shore

135–51. The journey of Gen. 12:5f; the promise of Josh. 13:5f. Sechem: Shechem, ‘a part, or portion’ (Geneva glossary); the scene of Joshua’s covenant with Israel. Moreh: Where Jacob buried his people’s idols under the oak (Gen. 35:4); scene of a theophany to Abraham. Like Sechem, near the pass between Mt Ebal and Mt Gerizim. Hamath: Marking the N border of the Promised Land, as the great western sea the W, the wilderness of Zin the S (Num. 34:3–8). Mt Hermon is a boundary between Lebanon and Syria ( Josh. 13:5f ); the highest mountain in Palestine. prospect: In all M.’s perspectives, each place is visualized from a specific viewpoint. on the shore: Mt Carmel’s position is something to swear by ( Jer. 46:18): ‘As I live, saith . . . the Lord of hosts, Surely as Tabor is among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so shall he come.’ A landscape prophetic of deliverance. great . . . sea: Mediterranean. double-founted: Etymological geography. The notion that the Jor and Dan formed by confluence the Jordan, already in Jerome, is still in Sandys, Relation (1615), used by M. The E border of Canaan (Num. 34:12). Senir: The Amorite name for Hermon (Deut. 3:9). Nine places are named in the Holy Land – the number of heavenly things; see Fowler (1964) 270ff. Jordan comes eighth, aptly to the number of baptism; see Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 330f. The array of names foregrounded at xii 140–3 honours its sovereign centre Hermon, symbolizing Christ’s grace; see xi 396–407n; Song of Sol. 4:8; Augustine, Comm. on Psalms 133:3 (‘The light set on high is Christ, whence is the dew of Hermon’). 140. Cp. Harvey (1975) 49; H. Marks, in Nyquist (1987) 212; Leonard (1990) 280 (Michael’s knowledge of future names introduces Adam to the fallen world).

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Mount Carmel; here the double-founted stream 145 Jordan, true limit eastward; but his sons Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of hills. This ponder, that all nations of the earth Shall in his seed be blessèd; by that seed Is meant thy great deliverer, who shall bruise 150 The serpent’s head; whereof to thee anon Plainlier shall be revealed. This patriarch blest, Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call, A son, and of his son a grandchild leaves, Like him in faith, in wisdom, and renown; 155 The grandchild with twelve sons increased, departs From Canaan, to a land hereafter called Egypt, divided by the river Nile; See where it flows, disgorging at seven mouths Into the sea: to sojourn in that land 160 He comes invited by a younger son In time of dearth, a son whose worthy deeds Raise him to be the second in that realm Of Pharaoh: there he dies, and leaves his race Growing into a nation, and now grown 165 Suspected to a sequent king, who seeks To stop their overgrowth, as inmate guests Too numerous; whence of guests he makes them slaves Inhospitably, and kills their infant males: Till by two brethren (those two brethren call 170 Moses and Aaron) sent from God to claim His people from enthralment, they return 147–51. Cp. x 180ff; Gen. 12:1–3, the promise to Abram, renewing that of the serpent’s curse. 152. Abraham: Changed from ‘Abram’ (Gen. 17:5); implying by etymological wordplay ‘father of a (great) multitude’ (Geneva glossary; AV margin). 153. son: Isaac. grandchild: Jacob. 155–63. Jacob went down to Egypt at Joseph’s bidding, his younger son (Gen. 45–6). seven mouths: Symbolizing mortality and mutability, and contrasting with the nine promised places (xii 135–51n). A familiar number symbolism, like the contrast between Egypt (body, sin, present world) and the Promised Land (mind, regeneration, heaven); cp. Garnier, Cornélie, tr. Kyd (1594) IV ii 48; Fowler (1964) App. 1. increased: For the idiom, cp. Plautus, Truculentus II vi 35 (aucta liberis). 163. race: family, descendants. Cp. xii 121–34n. 164–8. Cp. Exod. 1. sequent king: Named as Busiris at i 307 (likening the devils to ‘Memphian chivalry’). overgrowth: excessive population increase (OED 1).

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With glory and spoil back to their promised land. But first the lawless tyrant, who denies To know their God, or message to regard, Must be compelled by signs and judgments dire; To blood unshed the rivers must be turned, Frogs, lice and flies must all his palace fill With loathed intrusion, and fill all the land; His cattle must of rot and murrain die, Botches and blains must all his flesh emboss, And all his people; thunder mixed with hail, Hail mixed with fire must rend the Egyptian sky And wheel on the earth, devouring where it rolls; What it devours not, herb, or fruit, or grain, A darksome cloud of locusts swarming down Must eat, and on the ground leave nothing green: Darkness must overshadow all his bounds, Palpable darkness, and blot out three days; Last with one midnight stroke all the first-born Of Egypt must lie dead. Thus with ten wounds This river dragon tamed at length submits To let his sojourners depart, and oft Humbles his stubborn heart, but still as ice More hardened after thaw, till in his rage Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the sea Swallows him with his host, but them lets pass As on dry land between two crystal walls,

172. spoil: Jewels and clothes extorted as a ‘loan’ when the Egyptians were anxious the Israelites should leave quickly (Exod. 12:36). 173. denies: refuses. 173–90. Cp. i 338–43 (the plague of locusts); Exod. 7–12, esp. 9:23. murrain: epidemic disease of cattle; plague. Botches: sores, boils. blains: sores, blisters. 188. Palpable: Cp. Exod. 10:21 Vulg. (Sint tenebrae super terram Aegypti, tam densae, ut palpari queant). 191. This] The 1674. Cp. YP iii 516 (applied to Charles I’s obstinate blindness); De Doctrina i 8, YP vi 331 (the Pharaoh an example of hearthardening); Ezek. 29:3 (the Pharaoh as ‘the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers’); Røstvig (1962) 187 (his typological identification as Satan); T. Amorose, MiltS, 17 (1983) 141–62; Loewenstein (1990) 111 (reminders of apocalypse ‘punctuate’ Michael’s history). river dragon: crocodile. 193–4. See Svendsen (1956) 99 citing Swan, Speculum Mundi (1635) (snow, ‘melting on the high hills, and after frozen again, becometh so hard, that it is a stone, and is called crystal’). 197. Cp. M’s early Psalm CXXXVI 49f (‘The floods stood still like walls

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paradise lost Awed by the rod of Moses so to stand Divided, till his rescued gain their shore: Such wondrous power God to his saint will lend, Though present in his angel, who shall go Before them in a cloud, and pillar of fire, By day a cloud, by night a pillar of fire, To guide them in their journey, and remove Behind them, while the obdúrate king pursues: All night he will pursue, but his approach Darkness defends between till morning watch; Then through the fiery pillar and the cloud God looking forth will trouble all his host And craze their chariot wheels: when by command Moses once more his potent rod extends Over the sea; the sea his rod obeys; On their embattled ranks the waves return, And overwhelm their war: the race elect Safe towards Canaan from the shore advance Through the wild desert, not the readiest way, Lest entering on the Canaanite alarmed

of glass [Sylvester’s version has ‘walls of crystal’], / While the Hebrew bands did pass’); vii 293 (the waters divided at creation: ‘Part rise in crystal wall’); Exod. 14:16–22; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exod. 14:22 (‘the waters crystallized like a wall’); J. M. Steadman, Archiv, 198 (1961) 34–7 (‘walls of glass’ from patristic commentators on Exod.); Werman (1995) 235. 199. As the Nile Divided Egypt (xii 157), Moses’rod Divided the water. Auspicious division symbolized justice; see Fowler (1964) 34, 206. 200–5. Cp. Exod. 13:21f. present . . . angel: Cp. De Doctrina i 5, YP vi 253–4: if God himself had gone with the Israelites, it would have destroyed them; he sent ‘the representation of his name and glory in some angel’. saint: Often applied to OT people of faith. 205–14. Cp. i 304–11; Exod. 14; Treip (1994) 211. defends: wards off, averts. war: army and apparatus of war (Richardson). Perhaps poetic diction: first instance in OED. race elect: chosen people. 216–19. Cp. Exod. 13:17f; a detour avoiding the warlike Philistines. readiest way: Cp. Loewenstein (1990) 122f (hearing an echo of the title of M.’s tract The Ready and Easy Way (1660) ); M. A. Radzinowicz, in Patterson (1992) 133f (finding reference to Restoration conditions). M. himself compares the Civil War to the years of wandering in the desert (Eikonoklastes, YP iii 580). Warburton, in Milton (1749) blames M.’s partisan omission of the moral cause of wandering (i.e. mutiny); Rosenblatt (1994) 222 praises it as ‘exquisite tact’.

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War terrify them inexpert, and fear Return them back to Egypt, choosing rather Inglorious life with servitude; for life To noble and ignoble is more sweet Untrained in arms, where rashness leads not on. This also shall they gain by their delay In the wide wilderness, there they shall found Their government, and their great senate choose Through the twelve tribes, to rule by laws ordained: God from the mount of Sinai, whose grey top Shall tremble, he descending, will himself In thunder lightning and loud trumpet’s sound Ordain them laws; part such as appertain To civil justice, part religious rites Of sacrifice, informing them, by types And shadows, of that destined seed to bruise The serpent, by what means he shall achieve Mankind’s deliverance. But the voice of God To mortal ear is dreadful; they beseech That Moses might report to them his will, And terror cease; he grants them their desire, Instructed that to God is no accéss

224–6. For the Seventy Elders, see Num. 11:16–25; Exod. 24. senate: The Seventy, origin of the Sanhedrin; called γεSουσ6α (LXX’s term for the Sanhedrin) in Acts 5:21. Taken by M. as a model for contemporary senates; cp. Of Reformation ii, YP i 575 (chronicling Jewish republics: ‘one manner of priestly government serve[d] . . . the Roman senate from without and the Jewish senate at home’); Easy Way, YP vii 435f. Many regarded the Jewish constitution as a pattern commonwealth; but Hobbes ‘expressly repudiated the view of Moses as the institutor of a conciliar government’; see M. Y. Hughes, YP iii 89n citing Leviathan iii 42. 227–30. Cp. Exod. 19:16–20. 229. trumpet’s] trumpets 1667; 1674. So sound could momentarily be taken up as a verb. 232–4. Cp. Heb. 8:5, earthly priests ‘serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God . . . make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount’. 235–8. Frightened by the thunder and lightning and trumpeting, the Israelites said to Moses: ‘Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die’ (Exod. 20:19). 238. them their desire,] what they besought 1674. 238–44. ‘For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things’ (Acts 3:22, quoting Deut. 18:15–19). figure: Of

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240 Without mediator, whose high office now Moses in figure bears, to introduce One greater, of whose day he shall foretell, And all the prophets in their age the times Of great Messiah shall sing. Thus laws and rites 245 Established, such delight hath God in men Obedient to his will, that he vouchsafes Among them to set up his tabernacle, The holy one with mortal men to dwell: By his prescript a sanctuary is framed 250 Of cedar, overlaid with gold, therein An ark, and in the ark his testimony, The records of his cov’nant, over these A mercy-seat of gold between the wings Of two bright cherubim, before him burn 255 Seven lamps as in a zodiac representing The heavenly fires; over the tent a cloud Shall rest by day, a fiery gleam by night, Save when they journey, and at length they come, Conducted by his angel to the land 260 Promised to Abraham and his seed: the rest Were long to tell, how many battles fought, How many kings destroyed, and kingdoms won, Or how the sun shall in mid-heaven stand still Christ in his office as mediator; cp. De Doctrina i 15, YP vi 431 (‘The name, and, in a sense, the office of mediator is also ascribed to Moses, as a type of Christ’). laws and rites: Typological in Heb. 9:19–23 (e.g. ‘without shedding of blood is no remission’). 247–56. Cp. Exod. 25–6. Mindful of his theme, Michael adds Heb. 9:4 identifying the testimony as records of his cov’nant. cedar: Not in Exod.; although Exod. 33:9 Geneva note identifies cedar with shittim wood. But cp. Num. 24:5–6 comparing tabernacles to cedar trees. mercy-seat: See xi 2n. heavenly fires: Josephus interprets the Tabernacle furniture cosmologically: e.g. Antiquities III vi 7 (the candlestick ‘terminated in seven heads, in one row . . . and these branches carried seven lamps, one by one, in imitation of the number of the planets’); III vii 7 (‘By branching out the candlestick into seventy parts, he secretly intimated the Decans, or [ten-degree] divisions of the zodiac’); Wars V v 5. A valuable idea to M., as unifying his astronomical and historical material. Contrast Lieb (1981) 58 emphasizing the spiritual architecture. 256–8. Cp. Exod. 40:34–8. 260. For the promise to Abram, cp. xii 137ff. 263–7. Josh. 10:12f, ‘Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites . . . and he said in the sight of Israel,

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A day entire, and night’s due course adjourn, 265 Man’s voice commanding; sun in Gibeon stand, And thou moon in the vale of Aialon, Till Israel overcome; so call the third From Abraham, son of Isaac, and from him His whole descent, who thus shall Canaan win. 270 Here Adam interposed. O sent from heaven, Enlightener of my darkness, gracious things Thou hast revealed, those chiefly which concern Just Abraham and his seed: now first I find Mine eyes true opening, and my heart much eased, 275 Erewhile perplexed with thoughts what would become Of me and all mankind; but now I see His day, in whom all nations shall be blest, Favour unmerited by me, who sought Forbidden knowledge by forbidden means. 280 This yet I apprehend not, why to those Among whom God will deign to dwell on earth So many and so various laws are given; So many laws argue so many sins Among them; how can God with such reside? 285 To whom thus Michael. Doubt not but that sin Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies . . .’ Exemplifying the power of faith; cp. Spenser’s Fidelia, who ‘would commaund the hastie Sunne to stay’ (FQ I x 20). A theme projected in Trin. MS is ‘Josua in Gibeon’. Israel: Jacob (Gen. 32:28). 274. true: Cp. xi 412ff; also ix 708, 985, 1053 (the falsely or ironically promised opening of their eyes, on eating the forbidden fruit). Adam, like the young M., believes the end of history imminent; see H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 164. 277. John 8:56, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.’ Christ claims ‘before Abraham was I AM’; but Adam means only that he can imagine Abraham’s time, thinking the promise will be fulfilled then. He has still to learn that the blessing of xii 147f holds a further mystery. For M., history’s tragic pattern was not linear; see H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 166f; Loewenstein (1990) 121f; R. Schwartz, MiltS, 24 (1988) 123–39 (arguing against easy typological optimism but neglecting the possibility that M. has arranged a test for readers – will they keep faith with the cosmic vision of Bks vi–vii?). 285–306. Outlining the central Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. Too concise for assignment of sources; but cp. Rom. 3:20; 4:22–5; 5:1–21; 7:7f; 8:15; 10:5; Heb. 7:19; 9:13f; 10:1–5; Gal. 3:4.

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paradise lost Will reign among them, as of thee begot; And therefore was law given them to evince Their natural pravity, by stirring up Sin against law to fight; that when they see Law can discover sin, but not remove, Save by those shadowy expiations weak, The blood of bulls and goats, they may conclude Some blood more precious must be paid for man, Just for unjust, that in such righteousness To them by faith imputed, they may find Justification towards God, and peace Of conscience, which the law by ceremonies Cannot appease, nor man the moral part Perform, and not performing cannot live. So law appears imperfect, and but given With purpose to resign them in full time Up to a better covenant, disciplined From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to spirit, From imposition of strict laws, to free Acceptance of large grace, from servile fear To filial, works of law to works of faith. And therefore shall not Moses, though of God

287. evince: (1) make manifest (OED 5); (2) subdue (OED 1). 288. pravity: depravity. 290. Rom. 3:19f; 7:23, the Law makes all guilty before God ‘for by the law is the knowledge of sin’. 291. Cp. xii 238–44n (the Law being only a type, its sacrifices could not be efficacious); Heb. 10:1 (‘For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect’). 293–4. 1 Pet. 1:18f, ‘ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from our vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot’. 297–8. Cp. Gal. 2:16. 300–6. Cp. Gal. 3:22–6; Madsen (1968) 76, 107f (contrast of OT shadows and NT light as a Protestant emphasis); Allen (1970) 122ff; J. C. Ulreich, in Mulryan (1982) 332–56 (Augustine on ‘the mystery [sacramentum] of the OT, in which the New is hidden’); Rosenblatt (1994) 149 (‘increased dependency on typological Moses . . . in the later books . . . results in a diminished Moses’). but: only. resign: consign (OED 2). better covenant: Cp. Heb. 8:6. 307–11. Cp. De Doctrina i 26, YP vi 519 (the law fails to promise what

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Highly belov’d, being but the minister Of law, his people into Canaan lead; But Joshua whom the gentiles Jesus call, His name and office bearing, who shall quell The adversary serpent, and bring back Through the world’s wilderness long wandered man Safe to eternal paradise of rest. Meanwhile they in their earthly Canaan placed Long time shall dwell and prosper, but when sins National interrupt their public peace, Provoking God to raise them enemies: From whom as oft he saves them penitent By judges first, then under kings; of whom The second, both for piety renowned And puissant deeds, a promise shall receive Irrevocable, that his regal throne For ever shall endure; the like shall sing All prophecy, that of the royal stock Of David (so I name this king) shall rise A son, the woman’s seed to thee foretold,

faith in God through Christ attains, eternal life: ‘the imperfection of the law was made apparent in the person of Moses himself. For Moses, who was the type of the law, could not lead the children of Israel into the land of Canaan, that is, into eternal rest. But an entrance was granted to them under Joshua, that is, Jesus’); Deut. 34; Josh. 1. Jesus: Gk equivalent of Heb. Joshua. Cp. Acts 7:45; Starnes (1955) 261 citing Estienne, Dictionarium s. v. Joshua: ‘Joshua and Jesus are the same name . . . Joshua, a type of Jesus not only in deeds but in name, crossed the Jordan’); H. R. MacCallum, in MacLure (1964) 154. 313–14. See Rosenblatt (1994) 220: Jesus’ triumph is typologically an entry into Canaan. Or, the rest in Canaan Joshua achieves is contrasted with the paradise won by Jesus. Cp. Røstvig (1962) 87. 316. but: except. 320. Cp. Judges 2:16. 321–4. The prophet Nathan promised David ‘thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever’ (2 Sam. 7:16). 324–30. See Tanner (1992) 172: at the numerical centre of Bk xii in 1674 ‘the tree which is in the midst’ (Gen. 3:3) is now the stock of David, ‘a climactic oracle of Christ’. The royal line of David had Messianic significance; cp. Ps. 89:36; Isa. 11:10; Luke 1:32 (applying this to Jesus: ‘He . . . shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David’). For the promise to Adam, confirmed to Abram, cp. x 180ff; xii 125f, 147ff.

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paradise lost Foretold to Abraham, as in whom shall trust All nations, and to kings foretold, of kings The last, for of his reign shall be no end. But first a long succession must ensue, And his next son for wealth and wisdom famed, The clouded ark of God till then in tents Wandering, shall in a glorious temple enshrine. Such follow him, as shall be registered Part good, part bad, of bad the longer scroll, Whose foul idolatries, and other faults Heaped to the popular sum, will so incense God, as to leave them, and expose their land, Their city, his temple, and his holy ark With all his sacred things, a scorn and prey To that proud city, whose high walls thou sawst Left in confusion, Babylon thence called. There in captivity he lets them dwell The space of seventy years, then brings them back, Remembering mercy, and his covenant sworn To David, stablished as the days of heaven. Returned from Babylon by leave of kings Their lords, whom God disposed, the house of God They first re-edify, and for awhile In mean estate live moderate, till grown In wealth and multitude, factious they grow; But first among the priests dissension springs,

332–4. Solomon, who built the Temple to give the ark its first fixed location (1 Kings 5–8; 2 Chr. 2–5) – the occasion of another divine covenant (1 Kings 9:1–9). 333. clouded: Cp. Exod. 40:34, ‘a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle’. 338. Heaped . . . sum: added to the people’s accumulated faults. 339–43. Cp. 2 Chr. 36; 2 Kings 17:24ff. 344–7. For the Babylonian captivity, cp. Jer. 25:12; 33:20–6 relating the return from exile to the covenant with David, sure as the succession of day and night (Ps. 89:29). 348–50. Jerusalem rebuilt is the subject of Ezra, and Neh. 1–6; the Persian kings are Cyrus, Artaxerxes and Darius. disposed: put into a good mood (OED 6). 353–8. 2 Macc. 4–6 relates strife between intriguing priests Jason ( Joshua), Menelaus (Onias), and Simon. Indirectly this led to Antiochus’ sacking Jerusalem and polluting the Temple. Greek forms of worship were imposed and the Temple rededicated to Jupiter Olympius. An exemplum of the Church’s betrayal by prelates and Presbyterians; see Corns (1994)

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Men who attend the altar, and should most 355 Endeavour peace: their strife pollution brings Upon the Temple itself: at last they seize The sceptre, and regard not David’s sons, Then lose it to a stranger, that the true Anointed king Messiah might be born 360 Barred of his right; yet at his birth a star Unseen before in heaven proclaims him come, And guides the eastern sages, who inquire His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold; His place of birth a solemn angel tells 365 To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night; They gladly thither haste, and by a choir Of squadroned angels hear his carol sung. A virgin is his mother, but his sire The power of the most high; he shall ascend 370 The throne hereditary, and bound his reign With earth’s wide bounds, his glory with the heavens. He ceased, discerning Adam with such joy 141. Cp. YP vii 325; Loewenstein (1990) 113 (alternation of ‘progress and regression’ in Michael’s history); I. Samuel, in Patrides (1968) 15–29 (the narrative reversals). 356. they: the Asmonean family, who dominated the high priesthood 153–35 BC; one of them seized The sceptre as Aristobulus I, ending the Israelite theocracy. See Josephus, Antiquities XIII xi 1. 357. sons: The descendants listed in Matt. 1; Luke 3. 358. stranger: Antipater the Idumean, father of Herod the Great and Procurator of Judaea from 47 BC, under Julius Caesar ( Josephus, Antiquities XIV viii 5). 360–9. Combining Matt. 2 and Luke 2. Barred: Legal diction. solemn: awe-inspiring. thither: To Bethlehem. squadroned: Cp. Nativity Ode 21; Spenser, FQ II viii 2. On nouns used to form participial adjectives, see Corns (1990) 88. power: Cp. De Doctrina i 14, YP vi 428 taking Luke 1:35 (‘the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the highest shall overshadow you’) to mean ‘the power and spirit of the Father himself ’. On the implied Subordinationism, see Hunter (1971) 144 contrasting Matt. 1:20. 369–71. Echoing Virgil’s prophecy of Augustus, Aen. i 287 (imperium Oceanc, famam qui terminet astris). But the thought is Millenarian, of Christ’s terrestrial reign prophesied in Isa. 9:7; Dan. 7:13–22; Rev. 2:25–7; etc. Cp. v 496–500n; De Doctrina i 33, YP vi 623–5 (perhaps distinguishing the kingdom of grace that began with Christ’s first advent from the kingdom to come with his second advent); Ps. 2:8 (a kingdom stretching to ‘the uttermost parts of the earth’).

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paradise lost Surcharged, as had like grief been dewed in tears, Without the vent of words, which these he breathed. O prophet of glad tidings, finisher Of utmost hope! Now clear I understand What oft my steadiest thoughts have searched in vain, Why our great expectation should be called The seed of woman: virgin mother, hail, High in the love of heaven, yet from my loins Thou shalt proceed, and from thy womb the Son Of God most high; so God with man unites. Needs must the serpent now his capital bruise Expect with mortal pain: say where and when Their fight, what stroke shall bruise the victor’s heel. To whom thus Michael. Dream not of their fight, As of a duel, or the local wounds Of head or heel: not therefore joins the Son Manhood to Godhead, with more strength to foil Thy enemy; nor so is overcome Satan, whose fall from heaven, a deadlier bruise, Disabled not to give thee thy death’s wound: Which he, who comes thy saviour, shall recure, Not by destroying Satan, but his works In thee and in thy seed: nor can this be,

373. Surcharged: overwhelmed (OED 4). 375–85. Erroneously expecting an ordinary epic hero; see Burden (1967) 197f. In correction, Michael will stress Christ’s tragic role. finisher: one who reaches the end. Ironic: Adam cannot understand how Christ is ‘finisher of our faith’ (Heb. 12:2). 379. seed of woman: Another facet of the promise becomes clear; cp. x 179–81. hail: Cp. xi 158n; Luke 1:28–33 (the angel’s address at the annunciation). 383. capital: (1) on the head (OED 1); (2) fatal (OED 2 d). 386–7. In patristic authors and medieval hymn writers, the duel was a favourite metaphor for Christ’s victory; see Aulén (1931) passim. Contrast PR i 173ff; De Doctrina i 9, YP vi 347: with the transcendent Christ there can be no conflict so equal and uncertain as a duel. 393. recure: heal. 394–5. 1 John 3:8, ‘For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.’ 395–465. Cp. iii 208ff. Setting out the faith Adam needs, to go forth a justified sinner. As brief summary of the gospel, failing; too much theology is compressed into too little emotional space. Effective, however, as conclusion of Adam’s confirmation course. The abstract spirituality irrupts into Jewish history as if from another level of discourse, yet

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But by fulfilling that which thou didst want, Obedience to the law of God, imposed On penalty of death, and suffering death, The penalty to thy transgression due, And due to theirs which out of thine will grow: So only can high justice rest apaid. The law of God exact he shall fulfil Both by obedience and by love, though love Alone fulfil the law; thy punishment He shall endure by coming in the flesh To a reproachful life and cursèd death, Proclaiming life to all who shall believe In his redemption, and that his obedience Imputed becomes theirs by faith, his merits To save them, not their own, though legal works. For this he shall live hated, be blasphemed, Seized on by force, judged, and to death condemned A shameful and accursed, nailed to the cross By his own nation, slain for bringing life; But to the cross he nails thy enemies, The law that is against thee, and the sins Of all mankind, with him there crucified, Never to hurt them more who rightly trust In this his satisfaction; so he dies, But soon revives, Death over him no power Shall long usurp; ere the third dawning light Return, the stars of morn shall see him rise

without breaking the continuity of pace. Gradually Michael’s narration has become more summary. 401. apaid: satisfied. 403–4. Rom. 13:10, ‘Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’ 406. cursed death: Cp. Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13. 409–10. In the Protestant doctrine of Justification by faith, Christ’s obedient righteousness was Imputed to the believer; by a legal fiction, Christ’s merits covered sinners’ misdeeds. Cp. De Doctrina i 22, YP vi 485. though legal: Fulfilment of the law cannot save, there being no justification by works. 412. Cp. iii 240n. 416. Col. 2:14, ‘Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us . . . and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross’. 419. satisfaction: Cp. x 803f. Payment of the penalty due to God for sin. Christ vicariously pays for human sin. Cp. YP ii 304–6. 422. The morning star emblemized resurrection, being the evening star set and risen again; cp. Rabanus Maurus, Migne cxii 1052, cxxix 1308,

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paradise lost Out of his grave, fresh as the dawning light, Thy ransom paid, which man from Death redeems, His death for man, as many as offered life Neglect not, and the benefit embrace By faith not void of works: this Godlike act Annuls thy doom, the death thou shouldst have died, In sin for ever lost from life; this act Shall bruise the head of Satan, crush his strength Defeating Sin and Death, his two main arms, And fix far deeper in his head their stings Than temporal death shall bruise the victor’s heel, Or theirs whom he redeems, a death like sleep, A gentle wafting to immortal life. Nor after resurrection shall he stay Longer on earth than certain times to appear To his disciples, men who in his life Still followed him; to them shall leave in charge To teach all nations what of him they learned And his salvation, them who shall believe Baptizing in the profluent stream, the sign Of washing them from guilt of sin to life Pure, and in mind prepared, if so befall, For death, like that which the redeemer died. All nations they shall teach; for from that day

clxv 734, etc. But stars may also be angels (cp. Job 38:7, etc.). Opposition of true and false morning stars was also patristic; cp. v 708ff; Rabanus Maurus, Migne lxxvi 520 (Christus verus lucifer, maxime in resurrectione; vesper autem). 424. Thy: Addressing Adam as representative of fallen mankind; cp. Matt. 20:28. 425–6. An Arminian doctrine of Election; cp. iii 173–202 (‘saved who will’). 427. faith . . . works: Cp. xi 64n. 433. temporal death: Death of the body, as distinct from eternal death. Cp. 1 Thess. 4:13–15. 442. profluent: flowing profusely. Cp. De Doctrina i 28, YP vi 544: ‘At baptism the bodies of believers who pledge themselves to purity of life are immersed in running water [in profluentem aquam]. This is to signify our regeneration through the Holy Spirit and also our union with Christ through his death, burial, and resurrection.’ As distinct from the affusion (pouring) or aspersion (sprinkling) of water that replaced immersion in the late Middle Ages. Some Protestants preferred adult baptism in running water. sign: Rejecting the Tridentine formulation whereby baptism conferred, as well as signified, grace. 446–50. Giving the promise to Abram (xii 25f, 147ff ) a more precise

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Not only to the sons of Abraham’s loins Salvation shall be preached, but to the sons Of Abraham’s faith wherever through the world; So in his seed all nations shall be blest. Then to the heaven of heavens he shall ascend With victory, triúmphing through the air Over his foes and thine; there shall surprise The serpent, prince of air, and drag in chains Through all his realm, and there confounded leave; Then enter into glory, and resume His seat at God’s right hand, exalted high Above all names in heaven; and thence shall come, When this world’s dissolution shall be ripe, With glory and power to judge both quick and dead, To judge the unfaithful dead, but to reward His faithful, and receive them into bliss, Whether in heaven or earth, for then the earth Shall all be paradise, far happier place Than this of Eden, and far happier days. So spake the archangel Michaël, then paused,

interpretation, extending it to gentiles (following Rom. 4:16 rather than 9:6–8); cp. Gal. 3:8. 454. Cp. Rev. 20:1f. prince of air: Cp. PR i 39–41, ii 117; Eph. 2:2. chains: Cp. 2 Pet. 2:4, ‘chains of darkness’. 458–65. The Second Coming foretold at iii 321ff. See Empson (1961) 127 (Whether in heaven or earth shows M. doubtful about the Millennium). But the phrase may include both; cp. v 499f: ‘at choice / Here or in heavenly paradises dwell’. both quick and dead: Cp. the Apostles’ Creed; Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5. 466–7. Michael’s second pause, the first being at xii 2. The three parts of Adam’s instruction match the ‘three drops’ clearing his eyes (xi 416; xii 5n). Whereas the first pause was compared to noon (the sixth hour), the second is likened to the world’s great period or historical cycle, implying a familiar historiographic scheme of six ages. Cp. Cowley, ‘The Resurrection’, (1905) 184: ‘The ordinary traditional opinion is that the world is to last six thousand years . . . and that the seventh thousand is to be the rest or sabbath of thousands.’ Diurnal and millennial measures correspond, because ‘one day is with the Lord as a thousand years’ (2 Pet. 3:8, eschatological prophecy). For the six periods of redemptive history, cp. Augustine, City of God XXII xxx, his ages being (1) Adam to the Flood; (2) the Flood to Abraham; (3) Abraham to David; (4) David to the captivity; (5) captivity to nativity; (6) the first to the second coming of Christ. Other schemes were available (e.g. Joachim de Fiore’s), but M. chooses an apocalyptic version close to Augustine’s; see Tayler (1979)

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As at the world’s great period; and our sire Replete with joy and wonder thus replied. Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense! 470 That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Than that which by creation first brought forth Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin 475 By me done and occasioned, or rejoice Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring, To God more glory, more good will to men From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.

71f. To tabulate: DROP 1: xi 429–901: six-part vision: Age of Adam | DROP 2: xii 1–468: four-part narrative divided by Adam’s interpositions at xii 63, 270, 375: four ages, Flood to Nativity | DROP 3: xii 468–605 : narration : Age of second Adam. 469–78. In tracing ‘causes’ (aspects) of the Fall, M. comes to its Final Cause (end): namely, greater glory for God. See L. Howard, HLQ , 9 (1945) 165 on the opportunity to show surpassing love through Christ’s sacrifice. For God’s turning evil to good in a pattern of reversals, cp. i 215ff; Lewis (1942) 66; Treip (1994) 161. On the idea of the Fortunate Fall, see A. O. Lovejoy, ELH, 4 (1937) 161–79. On the vexed question whether M. subscribed to Adam’s felix culpa doctrine, see E. Miner, PQ, 47 (1968) 43–54 with documentation; V. R. Molenkott, MiltQ, 6 (1972) 1–5; Danielson (1982) 204 (rightly but too extremely minimizing the importance of felix culpa in PL). M. the realist never loses sight of the unmitigated misery brought by the Fall; he rejoices in God’s grace, not that mankind gave occasion for it. From the classic hymn O felix culpa (Missal, Exultet for Holy Saturday), the Fortunate Fall is often called paradoxical; but M. noticeably avoids this aspect. (Contrast Salandra’s extravagantly paradoxical Adamo Caduto (1647) which concentrates on it, as at ii 14.) Still, some paradox is inescapable: mankind is triumphant in misery, Satan miserable in triumph (Addison). From v 497–503, Burden (1967) 37 concludes mankind to be worse off than if unfallen; but M. sees God’s will for mankind as fulfilled nonetheless, even if in a costly and surprising way. Further sufferings will be further answered, by the Comforter (xii 486), as in a game by turns – M.’s myth to accommodate providence to human understanding; cp. xii 353–8n. The ironic echo of i 162ff (Satan’s boast about bringing evil out of good) is one such resonance; see J. R. Watson, EC, 14 (1964) 148–55. On salvation as a greater marvel than creation, see Steadman (1976) 110. 478. Cp. Rom. 5:20 (‘where sin abounded, grace did much more abound’); 2 Cor. 4:15.

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But say, if our deliverer up to heaven 480 Must reascend, what will betide the few His faithful, left among the unfaithful herd, The enemies of truth; who then shall guide His people, who defend? Will they not deal Worse with his followers than with him they dealt? 485 Be sure they will, said the angel; but from heaven He to his own a Comforter will send, The promise of the Father, who shall dwell His Spirit within them, and the law of faith Working through love, upon their hearts shall write, 490 To guide them in all truth, and also arm With spiritual armour, able to resist Satan’s assaults, and quench his fiery darts, What man can do against them, not afraid, Though to the death, against such cruelties 495 With inward consolations recompensed, And oft supported so as shall amaze Their proudest persecutors: for the Spirit Poured first on his Apostles, whom he sends To evangelize the nations, then on all 500 Baptized, shall them with wondrous gifts endue To speak all tongues, and do all miracles, As did their Lord before them. Thus they win Great numbers of each nation to receive With joy the tidings brought from heaven: at length 505 Their ministry performed, and race well run, 483–5. See Corns (1994) 4 (possible reference to the ‘martyrdom’ of the regicides); 133 (the ‘Incarnation scarcely interrupts the . . . postlapsarian nightmare’). 486. Comforter: The Holy Spirit; cp. John 14:18; 15:26 (‘When the comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me’). In De Doctrina i 6, the Holy Spirit is either God the Father or his divine power. 488–9. Cp. Rom. 3:27 (‘of works? Nay: but by the law of faith’); Gal. 5:6 (‘neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love’); Heb. 8:10. 491. The chief part of the allegorical armour of Eph. 6:11–17 is faith: ‘Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.’ 495. Cp. SA 663–6: ‘consolation from above: / Secret refreshings’. 497–502. Referring to Pentecost (Acts 2). 505. race: A Pauline metaphor; cp. 1 Cor. 9:24; 2 Tim. 4:7; Heb. 12:1.

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Their doctrine and their story written left, They die; but in their room, as they forewarn, Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves, Who all the sacred mysteries of heaven 510 To their own vile advantages shall turn Of lucre and ambition, and the truth With superstitions and traditions taint, Left only in those written records pure, Though not but by the Spirit understood. 515 Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names,

507–8. Acts 20:29, ‘after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock’. For Satan as a wolf in the fold, cp. iv 183–7; Lycidas 113ff; Cromwell 14 (‘hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw’). Wolves: The clergy, whom M. regarded as impeding the ‘streaming fountain’ of the waters of truth, ‘the dynamic movement of history’; see Loewenstein (1990) 116f. 508–37. With the evocation of past history’s regressions, ‘the convoluted, bleak course of history that he had taken some 400 pages of dense, weary prose to chart in the History of Britain’, Loewenstein (1990) 116f compares YP i 535, 566, 703. M. condemns everything in the Church not built by faith. Contrast Schultz (1955) 127, arguing for a specifically Roman Catholic antichrist. 511. Cp. M.’s tract Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Christian Church, YP vii 273–321; 1 Pet. 5:2 (‘Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof . . . not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind’). 511–22. In Protestantism the ultimate doctrinal arbiter was individual conscience, not authority. Protestants like Henry Robinson even denied any ‘medium between an implicit faith, and that which a man’s own judgment and understanding leads him to’ (YP ii 543n). (‘Implicit faith’ was unquestioning acceptance of doctrines on the authority of the higher clergy.) M. despised the Church’s authority; cp. Areop, YP ii 543 (the ‘muddy pool of conformity and tradition’); De Doctrina i 30, YP vi 591 (‘Human traditions, written or unwritten, are expressly forbidden’); Deut. 4:2 (‘Ye shall not add to the word which I command you’); 1 Cor. 2:14f (‘the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit . . . because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things’); Matt. 15:9; Gallagher (1990) 2 (the ‘libertarian hermeneutic’). 515–24. Asserting the primacy of conscience over laws; see Corns (1994) 26 (the radical ideology of mid-century Protestantism). The Church’s corruption through pursuit of Secular power is treated at large in Of Reformation, YP i 517–617. Cp. De Doctrina i 30, YP vi 590 condemning enforced obedience to human opinions or authority (sanctiones quascunque

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Places and titles, and with these to join Secular power, though feigning still to act By spiritual, to themselves appropriating The Spirit of God, promised alike and giv’n To all believers; and from that pretence, Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force On every conscience; laws which none shall find Left them enrolled, or what the Spirit within Shall on the heart engrave. What will they then But force the spirit of grace itself, and bind His consort liberty; what, but unbuild His living temples, built by faith to stand, Their own faith not another’s: for on earth Who against faith and conscience can be heard Infallible? Yet many will presume: Whence heavy persecution shall arise On all who in the worship persevere Of spirit and truth; the rest, far greater part, Will deem in outward rites and specious forms Religion satisfied; truth shall retire Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works of faith

. . . et dogmata): ‘Much less can any modern church, which is unable to claim for itself . . . the presence of the spirit, and least of all can a magistrate impose rigid beliefs upon the faithful, beliefs which are either not found in Scripture at all, or only deduced from Scripture by a process of human reasoning which does not carry any conviction.’ laws . . . engrave: laws neither written in Scripture nor in the individual conscience. Cp. YP ii 237 (‘A law not only written by Moses, but charactered in us by nature . . . which law is to force nothing against the faultless proprieties of nature’); Jer. 31:33. 526. 2 Cor. 3:17, ‘Now the Lord is that spirit: and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ 527. Cp. i 18; 1 Cor. 3:17 (‘The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are’). 528–30. Striking at papal infallibility (which, however, only became a formal doctrine in 1870). Cp. Civil Power, YP vii 244: ‘all true protestants account the Pope antichrist, for that he assumes to himself this infallibility over both the conscience and the scripture’. But Rome is not the sole target: edicts of Oecumenical Councils and shared articles of faith were often held Infallible. 531–43. Loewenstein (1990) 118 compares attacks on spiritual tyranny in M.’s prose. 532–3. John 4:23, ‘True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.’ 536. works of faith: Cp. xii 427n.

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Rarely be found: so shall the world go on, To good malignant, to bad men benign, Under her own weight groaning, till the day 540 Appear of respiration to the just, And vengeance to the wicked, at return Of him so lately promised to thy aid, The woman’s seed, obscurely then foretold, Now amplier known thy saviour and thy Lord, 545 Last in the clouds from heaven to be revealed In glory of the Father, to dissolve Satan with his perverted world, then raise From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date 550 Founded in righteousness and peace and love, To bring forth fruits, joy and eternal bliss. He ended; and thus Adam last replied. How soon hath thy prediction, seer blest, Measured this transient world, the race of time, 537. on,] on 1667 some copies. 537–51. See Corns (1994) 116–18 analysing mimetic structures in the syntax. 539–40. Rom. 8:22, ‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now’. While groaning refers back to nature’s groans at the Fall (ix 783, 1001), respiration looks forward to a new breath like that which first inspired life (vii 526). The day of judgment is day . . . of respiration because of Acts 3:19f (‘Repent ye . . . that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come’), where AV refreshing translates Gk ;ναψpξεως (Vulg. refrigerium, Tremellius tranquillitas), elsewhere sometimes translated respiratio. Cp. Esther 4:14, ‘Then shall there enlargement [AV margin ‘respiration’] and deliverance arise to the Jews’; Geneva ‘comfort [marg. ‘breathing’] and deliverance’. respiration: breathing space (OED 3). Cp. iii 321ff; xii 446ff, apocalyptic prophecies drawing on similar biblical texts. The promise to Eve (x 179ff ) receives a final, eschatological gloss. 546–9. See Loewenstein (1990) 119f: after the ‘darkest depiction of history’, an apocalyptic movement releases the tension. dissolve: Cp. ii 149–51; xi 900–1n; Driscoll (1993) 80f (like purged and refined, solutio is ‘an alchemical term signifying reduction to original, undifferentiated matter’). endless date: Loewenstein compares the apocalyptic conclusion of Of Reformation, YP i 616 (‘the faithful in supereminence of beatific vision progressing the dateless and irrevoluble circle of eternity shall clasp inseparable hands with joy’). 551. Having begun with immediate ‘effects’ of eating of the ‘excepted tree’ (xi 424–6), Michael ends with final fruits. Cp. i 1ff; iii 67 (God’s eternal prospect of Paradise ‘Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love’).

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555 Till time stand fixed: beyond is all abyss, Eternity, whose end no eye can reach. Greatly instructed I shall hence depart, Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill Of knowledge, what this vessel can contain; 560 Beyond which was my folly to aspire. Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, And love with fear the only God, to walk As in his presence, ever to observe His providence, and on him sole depend, 565 Merciful over all his works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek; that suffering for truth’s sake 570 Is fortitude to highest victory, And to the faithful death the gate of life; Taught this by his example whom I now Acknowledge my redeemer ever blest. To whom thus also the angel last replied: 575 This having learned, thou hast attained the sum Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars Thou knewst by name, and all the ethereal powers, 555. stand fixed: Cp. Rev. 10:6, an angel swearing ‘there should be time no longer’. On the apocalyptic implications, see Loewenstein (1990) 115; on the closure of narrative time, Shumaker (1967) 58f. fixed:] fixed; 1667 some copies. 557–64. Far from Adam’s having to renounce knowledge, he is to have his fill of it, within obedience; see Jacobus (1976) 210. 559. vessel: Implying limitations in human nature, as in Jer. 18:4; 48:38; Rev. 2:27. Not the usual Pauline metaphor for the body (as at 1 Thess. 4:4). For the intellect’s submission, cp. viii 179ff. 561–73. Learning obedience and fortitude from Messiah’s example. Stripped of virtue in the Fall (ix 1062f ) Adam recovers it through regeneration; see J. M. Steadman, JWI, 22 (1959) 99f; Treip (1994) 161. 561. to obey is best: Cp. 1 Sam. 15:22, ‘to obey is better than sacrifice’. 565. Ps. 145:9, ‘his tender mercies are over all his works’. 566. Cp. i 163n; Rom. 12:21 (‘overcome evil with good’). 567. weak: Cp. 1 Cor. 1:27, ‘God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty’. 576–81. Cp. viii 167–78, Raphael’s exhortation. secrets: Recalling Uriel’s scepticism that any created mind could comprehend the divine wisdom that hid the causes of creation (iii 705ff ). The Book of Nature does not disclose the knowledge Adam needs; see Haskin (1994) 209.

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All secrets of the deep, all nature’s works, Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea, 580 And all the riches of this world enjoyedst, And all the rule, one empire; only add Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add faith, Add virtue, patience, temperance, add love, By name to come called charity, the soul 585 Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A paradise within thee, happier far. Let us descend now therefore from this top

581–7. Cp. 2 Pet. 1:5–7, ‘Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity [caritas].’ M. subtracts godliness and brotherly love, and adds Deeds, making an array of seven conditions of fruitfulness. In the fourth, central, place is virtue; the tetrad being a form of the Pythagorean tetraktys, fountain of virtue. Thus M.’s Adam resembles Cowley’s secular ideal, ‘Brutus’, 5 (1905) 195 (‘Virtue was thy life’s centre’). M. offsets this by making charity the soul / Of all, as in 1 Cor. 13, or in Neoplatonic cosmogonies (where love is the animating world soul). For Deeds as the ‘Puritan commitment’, cp. James 2:20; Loewenstein (1990) 104. The seven qualities constitute a microcosm, a paradise within replacing the lost terrestrial Paradise. See Honeygosky (1993) 216. 587. paradise within: Contrast Satan’s ‘hell within’ (iv 20ff ). G. C. Taylor, PQ, 28 (1949) 208 links the phrase with Robert Croft, A Paradise within Us (1640), a book of consolation teaching healthy integration and spiritual comfort – ‘Let us possess our minds with liveliness, quickness, perspicacity, and gallantness of spirit, with moderation, temperance, humility, meekness, tranquillity, mildness, with contentation, fortitude, cheerfulness, with humanity, affability, love, kindness, and with all joy and happiness . . . So as to enjoy even a paradise of delights and happiness within us.’ thee,] thee 1667 some copies. 588–9. top / Of speculation: (1) vantage-point (OED s. v. Speculation 2 c); (2) height of theological speculation. precise: (1) exact; (2) cut off. Cp. Lat. praecisus (Richardson). Emphasizing noon of Day 33, as completing the 24-hour period from the noon of the Fall (ix 739) – the ‘day’ of the Prohibition sentence (viii 329–32) – which however is not void, since by a last bitter peripeteia death is to be enforced after all, in the sense of expulsion from Paradise to the mortal world. On noon as the hour of Fall, expulsion, crucifixion, and last judgment, cp. x 1050n; xii 1n; Bongo, Mysteria (1591) 280 (from Hugh of St-Victor); Panofsky (1955)

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Of speculation; for the hour precise 590 Exacts our parting hence; and see the guards, By me encamped on yonder hill, expect Their motion, at whose front a flaming sword, In signal of remove, waves fiercely round; We may no longer stay: go, waken Eve; 595 Her also I with gentle dreams have calmed Portending good, and all her spirits composed To meek submission: thou at season fit Let her with thee partake what thou hast heard, Chiefly what may concern her faith to know, 600 The great deliverance by her seed to come (For by the woman’s seed) on all mankind, That ye may live, which will be many days, Both in one faith unanimous though sad, With cause for evils past, yet much more cheered 605 With meditation on the happy end. He ended, and they both descend the hill; Descended, Adam to the bower where Eve Lay sleeping ran before, but found her waked; And thus with words not sad she him received. 259–62. The expulsion thus faces Janus-like back to the Fall, forward to redemption. 590–3. see: Wittreich (1979) 187 contrasts the focus on seeing with that on hearing (a higher sense, for many Protestants) in Raphael’s episode. expect: await. motion: deployment, marching orders (military: OED 5). remove: departure (OED 5 b, citing Markham, Epistles of War (1622) v iii 171, ‘he may then cause the drum-major to beat a remove’). flaming sword: See xii 643n. 594–605. Recapitulation underlining the themes of the visions – faith and submission (resignation): faith in Christ’s victory, resignation to the Fall’s consequences – and balancing them as in the phrase one faith unanimous though sad. Throughout, the themes are subtly varied, the terms of prohibition and promise being repeatedly reinterpreted and rebalanced, as Adam gradually recognizes the mystery of providence. Michael now gives each series its final term; the expulsion becomes matter of fact, the bruising of the serpent matter for faith. The justice of the balance vouches for M.’s faith in the promise. 601. ‘For it will be by one born of a virgin’; cp. xii 368. mankind,] mankind. 1667 some copies. 602. many days: Adam lived to be 930 years of age (Gen. 5:5). 604. With cause for: with good reason, in view of. 607. Descended,] Descended 1667 some copies. 608. Belying xii Arg. (‘Adam . . . wakens Eve’).

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Whence thou returnst, and whither wentst, I know; For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise, Which he hath sent propitious, some great good Presaging, since with sorrow and heart’s distress Wearied I fell asleep: but now lead on; 615 In me is no delay; with thee to go, Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who for my wilful crime art banished hence. 620 This further consolation yet secure I carry hence; though all by me is lost, Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed, By me the promised seed shall all restore. So spake our mother Eve, and Adam heard 625 Well pleased, but answered not; for now too nigh The archangel stood, and from the other hill To their fixed station, all in bright array The cherubim descended; on the ground 610

610–23. Cp. x 738–40n, and contrast Eve’s song at iv 634–56 (every time of day is pleasing with Adam, none without). Submissively assimilating Michael’s exhortation, ‘where [Adam] abides, think there thy native soil’ (xi 292). For the attitude to special places, cp. xi 303, 836. Wittreich (1987) 103 sees ‘appropriation of male discourse’; but many women wrote sonnets. 611. Num. 12:6, ‘If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.’ Among authorities on types of dream were Artemidorus, Oneirocritica and Macrobius, Dream of Scipio I iii 2–17. Prophetic vision (Lat. visio) is a dream that ‘actually comes true’ (ibid. 9). 621. See Gallagher (1990) 107: Eve gets the last word, as in the separation scene. 628–32. See Budick (1985) 107: ‘the vision of evening is suggestively reattained’. On the time of day, see P. Parker, ELR, 9 (1979) 329 n 17. meteorous: meteoric (Gk µετ0ωSος); pertaining to the mid-air region (OED 1 a). ‘Meteor’ might refer to almost any atmospheric phenomenon, but especially to luminous exhalations like fireballs, shooting stars, comets, and ignis fatuus. marish: marsh. Richardson, approved by Ricks (1963) 109, returns to the derivation of meteorous (‘raised on high’) and contrasts the good angels’ raised, luminous mist with Satan’s ‘black mist low creeping’ (ix 180). But this is too simple: Satan can be a delusively bright mist (ix 633–41), and the guardian cherubim seem demons at xii 644 – ‘Adam’s sin has made the cherubim so, has altered their relation to him’ (Svendsen (1956) 107–12). Sin makes them seem frightening, if not viewed with

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Gliding metéorous, as evening mist 630 Ris’n from a river o’er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the labourer’s heel Homeward returning. High in front advanced, The brandished sword of God before them blazed Fierce as a comet; which with torrid heat, 635 And vapour as the Libyan air adust, Began to parch that temperate clime; whereat In either hand the hastening angel caught Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast 640 To the subjected plain; then disappeared. They looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate

eyes of faith. Accursed Adam is a labourer; but heel balances this with the promise to Eve (Gen. 3: 15). The expulsion means transition to a mortal world, as the labourer at evening passes from light to darkness. Yet Michael has shown that exiled mankind may eventually, like the labourer, return home. The mist may be a mortal terror, but ‘to the faithful death [is] the gate of life’ (xii 571). 632–4. Frye (1978) 310f and J. P. Pecorino, MiltQ, 15 (1981) 1–10 think the angel’s unbiblical position in front to be processional, not threatening; corrected by J. A. Clark, MiltQ, 25 (1991) 27f. On illustrations of the expulsion, see also M. Y. Hughes, JEGP, 60 (1961) 670–9. 633–6. adust: burnt up; dried up with heat. A sword-shaped comet signified war and destruction of cities; see Svendsen (1956) 92f citing Swan and Gadbury. Cp. Satan as a comet (ii 706–11). The ‘flaming sword’ of Gen. 3:24 was commonly glossed as ‘torrida zona, the parching country under the equinoctial’; see Willet, Hexapla (1608) 54 – not after Thomas Aquinas (as M. Y. Hughes), but Tertullian. The torrid clime was uninhabitable. For the equatorial location of Paradise, cp. iv 280–5n; for the origin of climatic extremes, x 651ff. 637–8. Details from Gen. 19:16f, angelic safe-conduct of Lot and his family from doomed Sodom; cp. xii 648; Lieb (1994) 123. 640. See MacCaffrey (1959) 59: descending ‘to our own mundane world’. On the ‘downward impetus’ of the last part of Bk xii, see Shumaker (1967) 57f. subjected: underlying, placed underneath (OED 1); submissive (OED 2). For the theme of submission, cp. xii 594–605n. 643. Gen. 3:24, ‘a flaming sword which turned every way’ (Heb. ‘flame of a sword’). M. like Willet (1608) 57 understands a literal sword ‘which by the shaking seemeth to glitter as the flame of fire’. Calvin, Comm.

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With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: 645 Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way. THE END

upon Genesis rejects allegories in which the turning sword shows the flat of the blade to give place for repentance. brand: sword (poetic). Cp. Spenser, FQ V i 9. 644. W. B. Hunter, MLR, 44 (1949) 89–91 cites John Petters, Volatiles (1674): ‘By this flaming sword . . . is meant an order of evil angels, appointed also to guard the way to the tree of life.’ But dreadful is subjective; guilt not uncommonly causes fear. See Corns (1994) 10 (the angels have become unfamiliar). Cp. the protecting warrior angels of xi 208–20; 2 Kings 6: 13–18; Tasso, Ger. Lib. xviii 92–6; Treip (1994) 144. 645. Balancing woe and joy (Burden (1967) 200). 646–7. A final Arminian emphasis, combining choice with providence: decisions of faith lie ahead. Corns (1994) 10f, however, contrasts the major role of special providence in the earlier prose. 648. Joined hands (not common in erotic contexts) emblemized pledging of faith; cp. iv 321 (‘hand in hand they passed’), 488f, 689, 738f; ix 385f (‘from her husband’s hand her hand / Soft she withdrew’); ix 1037 (‘Her hand he seized’); Svendsen (1956) 111f (citing Camerarius); Frye (1978) 281–5. wandering: Because confronted by a maze of moral options unapparent earlier; see Kennedy (1978) 184; Evans (1996) 101 (Adam and Eve ‘become savages’). The word wandering can be defended against Bentley on grounds of mystery (Ps. 95:11; Heb. 3:10f, 18; 4:1–11); see Tayler (1979) 92. It implies ‘erring’ as slow implies ‘reluctant’. Counterbalancing previous consolations and making terror the last passion, except for the hope resting in the clasped hands of faith. As often, the positive aspect is implicit. slow,] slow 1667 some copies. 649. The six words of the poem’s last line, symbolizing completion, contrast with the mutable seven of its first line. Eden: not Paradise but the country round it; cp. i 4; iv 209–16; Ps. 107:4 (‘They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in’). Those who heard this echo would remember the continuation: ‘They cried unto the Lord . . . And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.’ See A. W. Astell, SP, 82 (1985) 477–92.

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