The second Day's Engagement is apt to startle an Imagination, which has not been raised and qualify'd for such a Description, by the reading of the ancient Poets, and of
Homer
in particular. It was certainly a very bold Thought in our Author, to ascribe the first Use of Artillery to the Rebel Angels. But as such a pernicious Invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such Authors, so it entered very properly into the Thoughts of that Being, who is all along describ'd as aspiring to the Majesty of his Maker. Such Engines were the only Instruments he could have made use of to imitate those Thunders, that in all Poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the Arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the Hills, was not altogether so daring a Thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an Incident by the Description of the Giants' War, which we meet with among the Ancient Poets. What
made this Circumstance the more proper for the Poet's Use, is the Opinion of many learned Men, that the Fable of the Giants' War, which makes so great a noise in Antiquity,
and gave birth to the sublimest Description in Hesiod's Works was
an Allegory founded upon this very Tradition of a Fight between the good and bad Angels.
It may, perhaps, be worth while to consider with what Judgment Milton, in this Narration, has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in the Descriptions of the
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