PARADISE LOST.

JOHN MILTON, after Shakespeare the greatest of English writers, was born in London, England, Dec. 9, 1608, and died in the same city, Nov. 8, 1674 Educated at St. Paul's School, London, and Christ's College, Cambridge, he became a man of the highest cultivation. His attainments were increased by foreign trave), from which he returned in 1639, nobly determining to throw the weight of his influence on the side of liberty and right in the time of his country's peril. He had written his "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (see page 256), and other poetry of a high order, before his foreign trip, and had in mind a plan for a lofty epic; but giving up all the poetic aspirations that dominated him, he became a writer of energetic and most eloquent prose, and as the Latin Secretary of Cromwell, wielded a powerful influence in Continental affairs in favor of Protestantism and religious and civil liberty. Upon the restoration of the Stuarts he went into retirement, and devoted himself to poetry. At this period he produced "Paradise Lost," the greatest English epic, and " Paradise Regained." Milton's "Areopagitica" is his best prose work. Lord Macaulay spoke of it as "that sublime treatise, which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes." It is a splendid argument in favor not only of the freedom of the press, but of intellectual liberty itself

THE SUBJECT OF THE POEM PROPOSED.
OF man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
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

Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous 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 Before all temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first

Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread

Dove-like sat'st 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 eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.

Say first, for heaven hides nothing from thy view,

Nor the deep tract of hell; say first, what

cause

Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favored 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
Raised impious war in heaven and battel
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,
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 obdurate pride and stedfast 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

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

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 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 ad-
vanced,

We
may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war,
Irreconcilable to our grand foe,

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy

Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven.

So spake the apostate angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair.

Book i., lines 105 to 125.

Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable, Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, To do ought good never will be our task, 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 labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which ofttimes 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 harbor there,
And, reassembling our afflicted powers,
Consult how we may henceforth most offend
Our enemy; our own loss how repair;
How overcome this dire calamity;
What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair.

Booki, lines 157 to 191. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driven backward slope their pointing spires,

and rolled

In billows leave i' th' midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
He lights, as it were land that ever burned
With solid, as the lake with liquid, fire;
And such appeared in hue, as when the
force

Of subterranean wind transports a hill
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire,
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
And leave a singed bottom, all involved