The Nine Days Astonishment, in which the Angels lay entranced after their dreadful Overthrow and Fall from Heaven, before they could recover either the use of Thought or Speech, is a noble Circumstance, and very finely imagined. The Division of Hell into Seas of Fire, and into firm Ground impregnated with the same furious Element, with that particular Circumstance of the Exclusion of Hope from those Infernal Regions, are Instances of the same great and fruitful Invention.
The Thoughts in the first Speech and Description of Satan, who is one of the Principal Actors in this Poem, are wonderfully proper to give us a full Idea of him. His Pride, Envy and Revenge, Obstinacy, Despair and Impenitence, are all of them very artfully interwoven. In short, his first Speech is a Complication of all those Passions which discover themselves separately in several other of his Speeches in the Poem. The whole part of this great Enemy of Mankind is filled with such Incidents as are very apt to raise and terrifie the Reader's Imagination. Of this nature, in the Book now before us, is his being the first that awakens out of the general Trance, with his Posture on the burning Lake, his rising from it, and the Description of his Shield and Spear.
Thus Satan talking to his nearest Mate,
With head up-lift above the wave, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts beside
Prone on the Flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood—
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty Stature; on each hand the flames
Driv'n backward slope their pointing Spires, and roared
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—
—His pondrous Shield
Ethereal temper, massie, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his Shoulders like the Moon, whose orb
Thro' Optick Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev'ning, from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,
Rivers, or Mountains, on her spotted 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)
He walk'd with, to support uneasie Steps
Over the burning Marl—
To which we may add his Call to the fallen Angels that lay plunged and stupified in the Sea of Fire.
He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded—
But there is no single Passage in the whole Poem worked up to a greater Sublimity, than that wherein his Person is described in those celebrated Lines:
—He, above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a Tower, &c.
His Sentiments are every way answerable to his Character, and suitable to a created Being of the most exalted and most depraved Nature. Such is that in which he takes Possession of his Place of Torments.
—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.
And Afterwards,