Prosérpine, accented as in Latin. So Spenser has the word in Faery Queene, i. 2. 2; but the usual accent is found in the Various Readings (Comus 355). The story is in Ovid (Metamorphoses, v. 341, &c.)

1. 271. that pain, i. e. that so often celebrated by poets.

1. 273. Daphne, a grove and temple sacred to Apollo, near the Syrian Antioch.

1. 275. Nyseian isle; the name Nysa was applied to several places sacred to Bacchus. The isle here meant is a rural retreat in the west of Africa, described by Diodorus Siculus, who makes Amalthea (not Semele) the mother of Bacchus. According to Diodorus they were not hidden. (Keightley.)

1. 280. Abassin Kings, kings of upper Ethiopia or Abyssinia.

1. 281. The hill of Amara is a day's journey high: on the toppe whereof are 34 pallaces, in which the younger sons of the Emperor are continually enclosed to avoid sedition.' (Heylin's Microcosmus, published 1627.)

·

1. 282. Ethiop line. Equinoctial line. In Purchas there is an eloquent description of the beauty of this region by Nilus' head,' and we are told that some take it for the place of our forefather's Paradise.'

1. 285. Assyrian garden. Strabo comprehends Mesopotamia in the ancient Assyria.

1. 299. Bentley read 'for God and him.' And this has been defended by 1. 440 and Bk. x. 150.

1. 301. hyacinthine, a very dark shade of hair (Odyssey, vi. 231). The hyacinth flower of the Greeks is called black in Theocritus. Cp. Virgil, Eclogue ii. 18.

1. 304. I Cor. xi. 15, where ' veil' is the marginal reading for 'covering.' 'Pro velamine,' is the translation in the Testament of Tremellius and Beza, used by Milton.

1. 311. This line was copied by Pope in his translation of Odyssey, ix. 32.

1. 315. ye, i. e. false shame and false honour.

1. 323. Milton placed the perfection of man in Adam. As Professor Maurice observes (in the passage from which the note to Bk. iii. 80 is taken), it was the tendency of his age. In 1662, South put forth a sermon, which he preached in St. Paul's, on Man created in the image of God. In it he affirmed that Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, Athens was but the rudiments of a Paradise.' (Maurice, Modern Philosophy, 343.)

of men since born, &c. Greek and Latin parallels to this expression are found in Homer, (Iliad, i. 505, ii. 673) and Horace (Satires, i. 1.

100). To these Keightley adds from Tacitus (Hist. i. 50), 'Solusque omnium ante se principum in melius mutatus est.'

1. 337. purpose, conversation, (Fr. propos). So Spenser's Braggadochio (Faery Queene, iii. 8. 14) makes 'gentle purpose' to his dame.

1. 348. insinuating, twining himself in curves. Cp. Virg. Æn. ii. 208. Gordian, intricate. See note on Vacation Exercise 90.

1. 354. ocean isles, isles in the Western Ocean.

ascending scale, according to the Ptolemaic system.

1. 362. Little inferior. Cp. Ps. viii. 5; Heb. ii. 7.

1. 381. Cp. Isa. xiv. 9.

1. 386. Madness (in the Hercules Furens of Euripides, line 858) calls Helios to witness that she is about to do what she wills not to do. 1. 402. Perhaps this is borrowed from the transformation of Bacchus into a lion (Euripides, Bacchæ 1019), or from 1 Pet. v. 8.

1. 410. Adam... moving speech, was the circumstance that turned Satan (already anxious to learn more of their state) all ear.

1. 419. Acts xvii. 25.

1. 458. The story of Narcissus (Ovid, Metamorphoses, iii. 457, &c.) is here imitated.

1. 478. platan, i.e. a plane-tree, so named from the breadth of its leaves (λaτús). Cp. Georgics, iv. 146; Faery Queene, i. I. 9.

1. 483. Gen. ii. 23.

1. 487. Part of my soul, 'animae dimidium meae (Horace, Odes, i. 3. 8.)

1. 493. unreprov'd, i. e. that could not be reproved, blameless. See L'Allegro 40 (note).

1. 499. As Jupiter, &c. As when the heaven smiles on the air, making all things fruitful in Spring.

1. 501. matron, married, as Ovid speaks of the matron cheeks of Lucretia.

1. 504. askance. Cp. Comus 413 (note).

1. 506. imparadis't, a word common with the writers of the time.

1. 512. Todd quotes from a work by Moses Barcephas, published in 1569, in illustration of this passage. The opinion of some commentators is there stated; that Adam was not created in Paradise, but afterwards led therein and then forbidden to eat of the tree; that Eve, subsequently created, was informed by Adam of this prohibition; that the devil overheard their conversation, and asked Eve, 'Hath God said?' by way of opening the colloquy of the temptation.

1. 539. utmost longitude, extreme west (iii. 576).

1. 542. eastern is an oversight of Milton's. The sun west. The inner side of the eastern gate is not meant. (Keightley.)

was in the See 1. 589.

1. 544. alablaster. See Comus 660 (note).

1. 549. Gabriel is mentioned in Dan. viii. and ix. and in Luke i. The name signifies 'Man of God.'

1. 551. So exercised the soldiers of Achilles during his quarrel with Agamemnon, and so also the fiends in ii. 528.

1. 555. gliding through the even. Cp. Georgics, iv. 59, and the flight of Iris (Æneid, v. 609).

1. 567. latest image. The first was Christ, and before man were the angels. (Newton.) Keightley objects that the angels are nowhere said to have been made in God's image. But the angels in Scripture usually bear a human form, and are always so described by Milton.

1. 580. vigilance, guards; abstract for concrete, like 'custodia.'

1. 590. Milton seems to regard the sunbeam as a material, inflexible line from the sun to the gate of Paradise, and as the sun had now sunk below the level of the garden, the opposite extremity of the beam was of course elevated. (Keightley.)

1. 592. th' Azores. These islands lie due west of Mesopotamia. (Keightley.)

1. 594. volubil. Here the word has the second syllable long, after the Latin accent; in ix. 436 it is short, and the word is written ' voluble.'

1. 599. sober livery. Cp. note on Il Penseroso 122.

1. 602. Cp. Comus 234, Paradise Lost, vii. 436; Virgil, Georgics,

iv. 514.

1. 603. descant, a variation by ornament of the main subject or plainsong.

1.605. sapphires. Keightley contends that 'sapphire' is the right word, expressive of the vivid azure of the antediluvian sky. The battlements of the empyreal heaven (ii. 1050) are 'living sapphire.' Hesperus is invoked by Spenser (Epithalamion) as the 'glorious lamp of love,'

That all the host of heaven in ranks dost lead.'

1. 628. manuring, cultivation, (Fr. main, œuvre), so used in Iago's speech about virtue (Othello, i. 3), and again in Paradise Lost, xi. 28. 1. 639. I forget all time. Todd refers to Gen. xxix. 20.

1. 640. All seasons, is all times of the day, not of the year. (See line 268 and x. 678. Keightley thinks that the repetition here may have been suggested by that in As You Like It, ii. 7 (the Duke's reply to Orlando).

1. 642. charm, musical sound; Ital. carme, Lat. carmen. In O. Eng. charm was a low, murmuring noise, whence a charm (or flock) of goldfinches. (Wedgwood.)

VOL. I.

A a

1. 645. Cp.

'Sweet after showers, ambrosial air.' (Tennyson, In Memoriam lxxxv.) 1. 661. Newton reads these instead of those in the early editions. Cp.

11. 657, 674.

1. 666. Bishop Pearce proposed to read 'life And Nature,' which would natural life.' Cp. 'joy and tidings' (x. 345).

1. 682. Cp. the aërial music in the Tempest, iii. 2, described by Caliban.

1. 688. Divide the night into watches, as the trumpet did when the Roman guard was relieved,

1. 700. Pope observes that Milton has here almost translated Iliad

xiv. 347.

1. 703. emblem, in the classic sense of an inlaid floor (emblema).

1. 704. insect is accented on the last syllable, as perhaps also in vii. 476.

1. 716. unwiser does not imply that Prometheus was unwise. It is the Latin use of the comparative, and means that Epimetheus was not so wise as he should have been. Least wise = 'most foolish,' in viii. 578. 1.719. stole. Landor says that stol'n' would be more satisfying, and would be also grammatical. In Comus 195, the edition of 1645 has 'stole,' but the MS. has stol'n' (Various Readings). If we read stol'n, who had will coalesce-a frequent use in Milton. In iii. 398–402, there are three instances.

authentic = original, as in iii. 656.

1. 720. The repetition of both is Virgilian (Eclogue vii. 4).

1. 722. Landor objects that both can only apply to two.

1. 724. Thou also. The transition resembles that in Æneid, viii. 293; and that in Ps. lxxiv. 12, 13.

1. 731. Uncropt, 'crop' for 'gather,' (Lat. carpo), as in Epitaph on Marchioness of Winchester 39, and Paradise Lost, v. 68.

falls to the ground. Compare the effect with Tennyson's line in the Idylls of the King (Enid),

'The prince, without a word, from his horse fell.'

1. 735. gift of sleep. Ps. cxxvii. 2.

1. 747. 1 Tim. iii. 2-4, 12; 1 Cor. vii. 2, 28, 36.

1. 748. 1 Tim. iv. 1-3.

1. 750. This passage is imitated from one of Tasso's Letters. St. Paul calls marriage a ' mystery' (Ephes. v. 32).

1.751. propriety, property, different spellings of the same word. (Trench.)

1. 755. Founded relates either to thee or relations.

1. 756. charities, including all the domestic affections. 'Omnes omnium caritates patria una complexa est' (Cicero, De Officiis, i. 17).

1. 761. Heb. xiii. 4.

1. 768. Mixt dance, i. e. a dance in which both sexes took part. The Puritans denounced such dances as unlawful. Stubbs had done so in his Anatomy of Abuses, and Prynne in his Histriomastix; and Milton in his Second Book on Reformation joins mixt dancing' with 'gaming, jigging, wassailing.' Wanton in 11. 306, 629, is used for innocent sportiveness, though here in censure. Keightley quotes from one of Jonson's masks (The Barriers) a speech parallel to this, in praise of marriage.

1. 769. serenate, Italian form of the more usual (French) ‘serenade.' starv'd, frozen. See note on ii. 600.

1. 776. The conical shadow of the earth, if visible to a spectator on the darkened side, would mount as the sun fell lower, and be at its greatest height in the vault of heaven at midnight. The shadowy cone had risen half way; therefore, supposing the day and night to be of equal length (as in x. 329), it would be nine o'clock.

1. 777. half-way up-bill, half-way towards midnight. 1. 782. Uzziel = Strength of God.

1. 784. As flame they part, &c. Heb. i. 7.

1. 785. shield is the left side (Ovid, Eleg. iv. I. 73), and spear the right. This expression for right and left also occurs in Xenophon (Anabasis, iv. 3. 26).

1. 788. Ithuriel = Discovery of God. Zepbon = Searcher of Secrets. (Hume.) Keightley gives 'Searcher of God' as the interpretation of Ithuriel; and a looking out' as that of Zephon. The latter name occurs in Num. xxvi. 15.

1. 804. inspiring venom. Cp. Æneid, vii. 351.

1. 830. Nobilem ignorari, est inter ignobiles censeri.'

J. C. Scaliger.)

(Life of

argues, proves. So used in Shakespeare (2 Henry VI, iii. 3; Richard III, iii. 7), and again at line 931.

1. 843. inviolable, inviolate. The converse usage at line 987.

1. 845. Cp. Eneid, v. 344.

1. 848. Cp. Virtutem videant, intabescantque relictâ.'

(Persius, Satires, iii. 38.)

1. 850. His lustre visibly impair'd. The deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will; he had no bodily deformity to excite our loathing and disgust. The horns and tail are not there. . . . . Milton was too magnanimous and open an antagonist to support his argument by the by-tricks of a hump and cloven foot, to bring into the fair field of controversy the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante