legions of millions, that is no part of my present inquiry; Satan, the leader, guide and superior, as he was author of the celestial rebellion, is still the great head and master-devil as before; under his authority they still act, not obeying, but carrying on the same insurrection against God, which they began in heaven; making war still against heaven, in the person of his image and creature, man; and though vanquished by the thunder of the Son of God, and cast down headlong from heaven, they have yet reassumed, or rather not lost, either the will or the power of doing evil.
This fall of the angels, with the war in heaven which preceded it, is finely described by Ovid, in his War of the Titans against Jupiter; casting mountain upon mountain, and hill upon hill, (Pelion upon Ossa,) in order to scale the adamantine walls, and break open the gates of heaven; till Jupiter struck them with his thunder-bolts, and overwhelmed them in the abyss. Vide Ovid Metam., new translation, lib. i. p. 19.
“Nor were the gods themselves secure on high;
For now the giants strove to storm the sky:
The lawless brood with bold attempt invade
The gods, and mountains upon mountains laid.
But now the bolt, enrag’d, the Father took:
Olympus from her deep foundations shook:
Her structure nodded at the mighty stroke,
And Ossa’s shatter’d top o’er Pelion broke:
They ‘re in their own ungodly ruins slain.”
Then again speaking of Jupiter, resolving in council to destroy mankind by the deluge, and giving the reasons of it to the heavenly host, says thus, speaking of the demigods, alluding to good men below:
“Think you that they in safety can remain,
When me myself, who o’er immortals reign,
Who send the lightning, and heaven’s empire sway,
The stern Lycaon* practis’d to betray.”
Ib. p. 10.
* Satan.
Since then so much poetic liberty is taken with the Devil, relating to his most early state, and the time before his fall, give me leave to make an excursion of the like kind, relating to his history immediately after the fall, and till the creation of man; an interval which I think much of the Devil’s story is to be seen in, andf which Mr. Milton has taken little notice of; at least it does not seem completely filled up; after which I shall return to honest prose again, and pursue the duty of an historian.
Satan, with hideous ruin thus supprest,
Expell’d the seat of blessedness and rest,
Looked back, and saw the high eternal mound,
Where all his rebel host their outlet found,
Restored impregnable: the breach made up,
And garrisons of angels ranged a-top
In front an hundred thousand thunders roll,
And lightnings temper’d to transfix a soul,
Terror of devils. Satan and his host,
Now to themselves as well as station lost,
Unable to support the hated sight,
Expand seraphic wings, and swift as light
Seek for new safety in eternal night.
In the remotest gulfs of dark they land:
Here vengeance gives them leave to make their stand:
Not that to steps and measures they pretend,
Councils and schemes their station to defend;
But broken, disconcerted, and dismayed,
By guilt and fright to guilt and fright betrayed j
Rage and confusion ev’ry spirit possessed,
And shame and horror swelled in ev’ry breast;
Transforming envy their essentials burns,
And the bright angel a frightful devil turns.
Thus hell began; the fire of conscious rage
No years can quench, no length of time assuage.
Material fire, with its intensest flame,
Compar’d with this, can scarce deserve a name;
How should it up to immaterials rise?
“When we ‘re all flame, we shall all fire despise.
This fire outrageous, and its heat intense,
Turns all the pain of loss to pain of sense,
The folding flames concave and inward roll,
Act upon spirit, and penetrate the soul:
Not force of devils can its new pow’rs repel,
Where’er it burns it finds or makes a hell:
For Satan, flaming with unquenched desire,
Forms his own hell, and kindles his own fire: Vanquished, not humbled, not in will brought low 3
But, as his pow’rs decline, his passions grow:
The malice, viper-like, takes vent within,
Gnaws its own bowels, and bursts in its own sin:
Impatient of the change, he scorns to bow:
And never impotent in power till now;
Ardent with hate, and with revenge distract,
A will to new attempts, but none to act;
Yet all seraphic, and in just degree,
Suited to spirits’ high sense of misery,
Derived from loss which nothing can repair,
And room for nothing left but mere despair.
Here’s finish’d Hell! what fiercer fire can burn?
Enough ten thousand worlds to overturn.
Hell’s but the phrensy of defeated pride,
Seraphic treason’s strong impetuous tide,
Where vile ambition disappointed first,
To
