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--

Meanwhile the Son
On his great expedition now appeared,
Girt with omnipotence, with radiance crowned
Of majesty divine: sapience and love