Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

He intended to say,
Chapter 16 -- Underground Rivers in English Fiction
There are more streams under the earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Ben Johnson likewise didn't write of subterranean waters, but he'd no right to daylight the
boatman. From Catiline (1611),
The rugged Charon fainted,
And asked a navy, rather than a boat,
To ferry over the sad world that came.
John Milton (1608-1674)
In Milton's Paradise Lost (1658), the archangel Lucifer rebels against the Almighty and is hurled
over the ramparts of Heaven and down through Chaos "nine times the space that measures day
and night" to the vaults of Hell, where,
Of four infernal Rivers that disgorge
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud
Heard on the ruful stream; fierce Phlegeton
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Farr off from these a slow and silent stream,
Lethe the River of Oblivion roules
Her watrie Labyrinth, whereof who drinks,
Forthwith his former state and being forgets,
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
The illustration is Gustave Doré's etching, "Satan Rising from the Burning Lake."
As Adam and Eve dwell joyously in Paradise, Lucifer ascends into Eden by means of an
underground river, disguising himself as a serpent and presenting the apple. What could worse
be recorded about an underground river than that it brought us sin?
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