[Footnote 1: To this number there is added after a repeated advertisement of the Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff in 4 vols. 8vo, a repetition in Italic type of the advertisement of the Boarding School on Mile-end Green (ending at the words render them accomplish’d) to which a conspicuous place was given, with original additions by Steele, in No. 314.]
* * * * *
No. 333. Saturday, March 22, 1712. Addison.
—vocat in Certamina Divos.
Virg.
We are now entering upon the Sixth Book of Paradise Lost, in which the Poet describes the Battel of Angels; having raised his Readers Expectation, and prepared him for it by several Passages in the preceding Books. I omitted quoting these Passages in my Observations on the former Books, having purposely reserved them for the opening of this, the Subject of which gave occasion to them. The Authors Imagination was so inflam’d with this great Scene of Action, that wherever he speaks of it, he rises, if possible, above himself. Thus where he mentions Satan in the Beginning of his Poem:
—Him the Almighty Power
Hurl’d headlong flaming from th’
Ethereal Sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless Perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to
Arms.
We have likewise several noble Hints of it in the Infernal Conference.
O Prince! O Chief of many throned
Powers,
That led th’ imbattel’d Seraphim
to War,
Too well I see and rue the dire Event,
That with sad Overthrow and foul Defeat
Hath lost us Heavn, and all this mighty
Host
In horrible Destruction laid thus low.
But see I the angry Victor has recalled
His Ministers of Vengeance and Pursuit,
Back to the Gates of Heavn: The sulphurous
Hail
Shot after us in Storm, overblown, hath
laid
The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice
Of Heaven receiv’d 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.
There are several other very sublime Images on the same Subject in the First Book, as also in the Second.
What when we fled amain, pursued and strook
With Heavns afflicting Thunder, and besought
The Deep to shelter us; this Hell then
seem’d
A Refuge from those Wounds—