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Halleck's New English Literature by Reuben Post Halleck
page 50 of 775 (06%)
of its strong passages show a marked likeness to certain parts of
Milton's _Paradise Lost_. As some critics have concluded that Milton
must have been familiar with the Caedmonian _Genesis_, it will be
instructive to note the parallelism between the two poems. Caedmon's
hell is "without light and full of flame." Milton's flames emit no
light; they only make "darkness visible." The following lines are from
the _Genesis_:--

"The Lord made anguish a reward, a home
In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade
That torture house abide the joyless fall.
When with eternal night and sulphur pains,
Fullness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames,
He knew it filled."[15]

With this description we may compare these lines from Milton:--

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round.
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible.
...a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed."[16]

In Caedmon "the false Archangel and his band lay prone in liquid fire,
scarce visible amid the clouds of rolling smoke." In Milton, Satan is
shown lying "prone on the flood," struggling to escape "from off the
tossing of these fiery waves," to a plain "void of light," except what
comes from "the glimmering of these livid flames." The older poet
sings with forceful simplicity:--

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