AND OBSERVANCES OF SHAKSPEARE. 265 



Milton, in that sublimely awful description of Pandemonium and 

 the employment of the fallen spirits, has gone infinitely beyond 

 Virgil :— . 



'* Part on the plain, or in the air sublime, 

 Upon the wing, or in swift race contend, 

 As at th' Olympian games or Pythian fields ; 

 Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal 

 With rapid wheels, or fronted brigades form. 



Others more mild, 

 Retreated in a silent valley, sing 

 With notes angelical to many a harp 

 Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall 

 By doom of battle ; and complain that fate 

 Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance. 

 Their song was partial, but the harmony 

 (What could it less when spirits immortal sing ?) 

 Suspended hell, and took with ravishment 

 The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet 

 (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense) 

 Others apart sat on a hill retired, 

 In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high 

 Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 

 Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 

 And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost." 



We find the punishment, or the Tnwot, of every country, correspond- 

 ing in the same way with the sufferings of earth. "In climates, 

 where they are exposed to inconvenience from excess of heat, the 

 increase of it has been suggested as the mode of future punishment. 

 Thus Homer speaks of the Titans being chained on burning rocks, 

 which was a torment generally promised by the religion of hot 

 countries ; but in cold ones the contrary ideas prevailed."* " The 

 Hell, or Tartarus, there, was a place dark, cloudy, and destitute of 

 food, and, above all, extremely cold, which was esteemed the most 

 terrible circumstance of any, and from which the place derived its 

 name and character. They gave it the name of Isaurin, that is, 

 the Isle of the Cold Land, or Climate."t 



Milton, who, though he borrowed more, yet, from the value he 

 added, owes less to the ancients than almost any author, has im- 

 proved, perhaps, upon this idea of Shakspeare's : — 



" Thither, by harpy -footed furies hal'd, 

 At certain revolutions, all the damn'd 



* Falconer. 



f See Smith's Gallic Antiquities, p. 22. 



VOL. V. NO. XVIII. 2 L 



