Dante's Lucifer falls with such force that he makes a conical hole in the earth to its centre, and forces out a hill on the other side--a physical prediction, as the antipodes had not yet been established.

The cavity is the seat of Hell; and the mountain, that of Purgatory.

So mathematical is his fancy, that in vignette illustrations we have right-lined drawings of these surfaces and their different circles.

Science had indeed progressed in Milton's time, but his imagination scorns its aid; everything is with him grandly ideal, as well as rhetorically harmonious: ...

Him the Almighty power, Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal power, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent in arms.
And when a lesser spirit falls, what a sad AEolian melody describes the downward flight: ...