630

And his adherents, that with so much ease
I suffer them to enter and possess
A place so heav'nly, and conniving seem
To gratify my scornful enemies,

625
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 call'd 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 cramm’d and gorg’d, nigh burst
With suck'd and glutted offal, at one sling
Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son,
Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last

635 Through Chaos hurl'd, obstruct the mouth of Hell For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws. Then Heav'n and Earth renew'd shall be made pure To sanctity that shall receive no stain: Till then the curse pronounc'd on both precedes. 640

635. Both Sin, and Death, nounc'd on both precedes.] On and yawning Grave at lust] both, that is, on heaven and earth, Death and the Grave meaning mentioned in ver. 638. the heathe same is a pleonasm, an ven and earth that were polabounding fulness of expression, luted, and shall be made pure to which adding force and energy, sanctity. But should we read and calling forth the attention, precedes, or proceeds with Dr. is a beauty common in the best Bentley? And is the meaning writers: but not for that reason (as Mr. Richardson explains it) only Milton has used this; the that the curse pronounced shall Scripture hath thus joined Death go before those ravagers Sin and and the Grave, Hos. xiii. 14. Death, and shall direct and lead 1 Cor. xv. 55. and Rev. xx. 13. them on? Or the curse shall where the word rendered Hell proceed, shall go on, shall consignifies also the Grave. Rich- tinue till the consummation of ardson.

all things, and heaven and earth 640. Till then the curse pro- shall be restored ?

He ended, and the heav'nly audience loud Sung Hallelujah, as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung: Just are thy ways, Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works; Who can extenuate thee? Next, to the Son, Destin'd restorer of mankind, by whom New heav'n and earth shall to the ages rise, Or down from heav'n descend. Such was their song,

645

be made pure

641. He ended, and the heav'nly I heard as il were the voice of a audience loud

great multitude, and as the voice Sung Hallelujah,]

of many waters, saying, HalleDr. Bentley reads, and to him the lujah. audience loud &c. without this 647. New heav'n and earth (says he) it is not said to whom shall to the ages rise, they sung; and the words Next, Or down from heav'n descend.] to the Son, ver. 645. shew that Heaven and earth is the Jewish they sung before to him, to the phrase to express our world; Father. But this objection is and the new heaven and earth founded

upon the Doctor's not must certainly be the same with observing the force of the word that just mentioned before, Hallelujah, where Jah signifies

Then heav'n and earth renew'd shall to God, the Father; and therefore there was no need of to

To sanctity ihat shall receive no him. See vii. 634.

stain : 642. -as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung :] to the Millennium, to the auræa

And they shall to the ages rise, This passage is formed upon

sæcula, as they are called, or to that glorious image in holy writ , which compares the voice ages of endless date, as he else

where of an innumerable host of an

expresses it, xii. 549. gels, uttering Hallelujahs to the New heav'ns, new earth, ages of voice of mighty thunderings or

endless date,

Founded in righteousness, and peace, of many waters. Addison.

and love. 643. —Just are thy ways,

Righteous are thy decrees Shall rise, for sometimes he The same song that they are speaks of them as raised from the represented singing in the Re- conflagrant mass, xii. 547. And velation. Just and true are thy springing from the ashes, iii. 394. ways, thou King of saints, Rev. Or down from heaven descend, for xv. 3. True and righteous are St. John describes the holy city, thy judgments, Rev. xvi. 7. As the new Jerusalem, Rev. xxi. 2. in the foregoing passage he as coming down from God out of alluded to Rev. xix. 6. And heaven.

650

While the Creator calling forth by name
His mighty angels gave them several charge
As sorted best with present things. The sun
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
Decrepit winter, from the south to bring

655

650.

-gave them several Faery Queen, b. vii. cant. vii. charge,] Under this head of st. 31. celestial persons we must like

In his right hand a tipped staff he wise take notice of the com

held, mand which the angels receiv With which his feeble steps he stayed to produce the several changes

still: in nature, and sully the beauty

For he was faint with cold, and

weak with eld, of the creation. Accordingly

That scarce his loosed limbs he able they are represented as infecting

was to weld. the stars and planets with ma

Thyer. lignant influences, weakening the light of the sun, bringing The expression of decrepit windown the winter into the milder regions of nature, planting winds Fletcher. A Wife for a Month, and storms in several quarters

act iv. of the sky; storing the clouds Decrepit winter hang upon my with thunder, and, in short,

shoulders. perverting the whole frame of

655. --from the south to bring the universe to the condition of Solstitial summer's heat.] its criminal inhabitants. As this Have a care (says Dr. Bentley) is a noble incident in the poem, of going too far south to bring the following lines, in which we summer's heat, the regions near see the angels heaving up the the southern pole being as cold earth, and placing it in a dif- as those near the northern: he ferent posture to the sun from therefore reads, what it had before the fall of

from the torrid zone Man, is conceived with that

Solstitial summer's heat. sublime imagination which was so peculiar to this great author.

But the word solstitial seems

sufficiently to determine, from Some say he bid his angels turn how far south Milton meant askance &c.

that this summer's heat was Addison.

brought, viz. so far from the 655. Decrepit winter,] Al- south as the sun is, when he luding perhaps to Spenser's de- is in the summer's solstice, or scription of winter under the about twenty-three degrees and figure of a decrepit old man, a half southward. Pearce.

a

1

Solstitial summer's heat. To the blanc moon
Her office they prescrib'd, to th' other five
Their planetary motions and aspects
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite
Of noxious efficacy, and when to join
In synod unbenign; and taught the fix'd
Their influence malignant when to shower,
Which of them rising with the sun, or falling,
Should prove tempestuous : To the winds they set

660

The ancient poets represent The Sov'reign of the heav'ns has set the south as the region of heat.

on high

The moon, to mark the changes of Statius. Thebaid. i. 160.

the sky, aut Boreâ gelidas, madidive When southern blasts should cease. tepentes

Dryden. Igne noti. Lucan, i. 54. very extravagantly, 659. In sextile, square, and

trine, and opposite] If a planet, Nec polus aversi calidus qua vergitur austri.

in one part of the zodiac, be disJortin.

tant from another by a sixth part 656. To the blunc moon &c.] their aspect is called sextile ; if

of twelve, that is by two signs, Of the French, blanc, white, as Virgil calls her candida luna, trine; and if by one half

, oppoVirgil calls her candida luna, by a fourth, square; by a third,

, Æn. vii. 8. and the Italian poets site, which last is said to be of frequently bianca luna.

And what is said here of the moon,

norious efficacy, because the pla

nets so opposed are thought to and of the stars, Which of them

strive, debilitate, and overcome rising with the sun, or falling,

one another : deemed of evil shoull prove tempestuous, was

consequence to those born under written probably not without an

or subject to the influence of the eye to Virgil, Georg. i. 335.

distressed star. Hume. Hoc metuens cæli menses et sidera

If an unnecessary ostentation

of learning be, as Mr. Addison Frigida Saturni sese quo stella receptet,

observes, one of our author's Quos ignis cæli Cyllenius erret in faults, it certainly must be orbes.

an aggravation of it, where he Ipse pater statuit quid menstrua

not only introduces, but counluna moneret,

tenances such enthusiastic unQuo signo caderent austri.

philosophical notions as this jarIn fear of this observe the starry

gon of the astrologers is made signs Where Saturn houses, and where up of. Thyer.

Hermes joins.

serva,

665

Their corners, when with bluster to confound
Sea, air, and shore, the thunder when to roll
With terror through the dark aereal hall.
Some

say

he bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more

668. Some say he bid his an- Pleiades daughters of Atlas, and gels &c.] It was eternal spring the Spartun Twins, the sign Ge(iv. 268.) before the fall; and he mini, Castor and Pollux, twinis now accounting for the change brothers, and sons of Tyndarus of seasons after the fall, and king of Sparta, up to the Tropic mentions the two famous hypo- Crab, the tropic of Cancer, the theses. Some say it was occa- sun's farthest stage northwards ; sioned by altering the position thence down amain, Dr. Bentley of the earth, by turning the reads as much, as much on one poles of the earth above twenty side of the equator as the other, degrees aside from the sun's but if any alteration were necesorb, he bid his angels turn askance sary it is easier to read thence the poles of earth twice ten degrees down again, by Leo and the Virand more from the sun's axle; and gin, the sign Virgo, and the the poles of the earth are about Scales, the constellation Libra, twenty-three degrees and a half as deep as Capricorn, the tropic distant from those of the eclip- of Capricorn which is the sun's tic; they with labour pushed farthest progress southwards. oblique the centric globe, it was This motion of the sun in the erect before, but is oblique now; ecliptic occasions the variety of the obliquity of a sphere is the seasons, else had the spring perproper astronomical term, when petual smiled on earth with verthe pole is raised any number of nant flowers, if the sun had condegrees less than ninety; the tinued to move in the equator. centric globe fixed on its centre, It is likewise Dr. Burnet's asserand therefore moved with labour tion, that the priinitive earth and difficulty, or rather centric, enjoyed a perpetual spring, and as being the centre of the world, for the same reason of the sun's according to the Ptolemaic sys- moving in the equator. But tem, which our author usually though this notion of a perpetual follows. Some say again this spring may be very pleasing in change was occasioned by alter- poetry, yet it is very false in ing the course of the sun, the philosophy; and this position of sun was bid turn reins from the the earth, so far from being the equinoctial road in which he had best, is one of the worst it could moved before, like distant breadth have, as Dr. Keill hath proved in both hemispheres, to Taurus excellently well in the fourth with the seven Atlantic Sisters, chapter of his Examination of the constellation Taurus with the Dr. Burnet's Theory of the seven stars in his neck, the Earth.