Though the chief interest in the poem is centred in the Garden of Eden and its occupants, yet Milton was enabled, by the comprehensive manner in which he treated his subject, to introduce into his work a cosmology which embraced not only the system to which our globe belongs, but the entire starry heavens by which we are surrounded. But the universality of his genius did not rest here. In the utterance of his sacred song he soared beyond the starry sphere, describing himself as wrapt above the pole—the starry pole—up to the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the ineffable abode of the Deity and the blissful habitation of angelic beings who, in adoration and worship, surround the throne of the Most High.
Descending to that nether world at the opposite pole of the universe, in the lowest depth of Chaos, the place prepared by Eternal Justice for the rebellious, he unfolds to our horror-stricken gaze the terrors of this infernal region; its fiery deluge of ever-burning sulphur; its ‘regions of sorrow;’ its ‘doleful shades’—the unhappy abode of fallen angels who ‘in floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,’ alternated by exposure to unendurable cold and icy torment, experience the direful consequences of their apostacy.
Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ may be regarded as the loftiest intellectual effort in the whole range of literature. In it we find all that was known of science, philosophy, and theology. The theme, founded upon a Bible narrative, itself written under divine inspiration, embraces the entire system of Christian doctrine as revealed in the Scriptures, and many of the noblest passages in the sacred volume are introduced into the poem expressed in the lofty utterance of flowing and harmonious verse. The choicest classical writings of Greek and Latin authors; the mythological and traditional beliefs of ancient nations; historical incidents of valour and renown and all that was great and good in the annals of mankind were laid under contribution by Milton in the illustration and embellishment of his poem.
In order to obtain a basis or foundation upon which to construct his great epic, Milton found it necessary to localise the regions of space in which the principal events mentioned in his poem are described as having occurred. The unfathomable abyss of space may be regarded as an uncircumscribed sphere boundless on all sides round, and so far as we can comprehend of infinite extent. This sphere Milton divided into two hemispheres—an upper and a lower. The upper was called Heaven, or the Empyrean—a glorified region of boundless dimensions; the lower hemisphere embraced Chaos—a dark, fathomless abyss in which the elements of matter existed in a state of perpetual tumult and wild uproar. The occurrence of a rebellion in Heaven necessitated a further division of the sphere. The revolt, headed by Lucifer, one of the highest archangels, afterwards known as Satan, who drew after him a third of the angelic host, contested the supremacy of Heaven with Michael and the angels which kept their loyalty. After two days’ battle—
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.—i. 44-48.
Having been precipitated over the crystal wall of Heaven into the deep abyss, Milton says:—
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.—vi. 871-75.
Hell, Milton locates in the lowest depth of Chaos, a region cut off from the body of Chaos, through which the expelled angels fell for nine days before reaching their destined habitation. There are now three divisions of space: Heaven, Chaos, and Hell. But a fourth is required to enable Milton to complete his scheme for the delineation of his poem. The Earth and starry universe were not as yet called into existence, but after the overthrow of the rebellious angels, God, by circumscribing a portion of Chaos situated immediately underneath the Empyrean, created the Mundane Universe, or the ‘Heavens and the Earth.’[15] This new universe He reclaimed from Chaos, and with the embryo elements of matter—
His dark materials to create new worlds.—ii. 916.
He formed the Earth and all the countless shining orbs visible overhead, and the myriads more which the telescope reveals, scattered in apparently endless profusion over the circular immensity of space. It is this new universe—the Earth and Starry Heavens—that claims our chief attention, and in the delineation of Milton’s imaginative and descriptive powers it is to this latest manifestation of Divine wisdom and might that our remarks shall principally apply. After the expulsion of the rebel angels from Heaven, God sent His Son, the Messiah to create the new universe—a work of omnipotence described by Milton in a manner worthy of so magnificent a display of almighty power—