Severity, who had already been sent to execute similar justice on the Rebel Angels; and, secondly, because less has been heard hitherto of this Archangel, in the main story of the poem, than of Uriel, Gabriel, and Raphael.

128, 129. "Four faces each," etc. Ezek. x. 12-14.

131-133, "Argus," etc. The "Arcadian pipe" is the shepherd's pipe with which Hermes or Mercury charmed to sleep the hundred-eyed Argus, employed by Juno to watch Io; the "opiate rod" is the caduceus or wand of the same Mercury, which had the power of sending to sleep.

66

133-135. Meanwhile," etc. Here begins the last day of the action of the poem.

135. "Leucothea": the "Bright Goddess" of the Greeks, identified by the Romans with their Matuta or Morning Goddess.

159. "Eve rightly called," etc. Gen. iii. 20. Bishop Newton's note on the passage is, "He called her before Ishah, Woman, because she was taken out of Ish, Man (VIII. 496); but he now denominates her Eve or Havah, from a Hebrew word which signifies to live." But she has already been called Eve in the poem by Milton himself.

185. "the bird of Jove": the eagle.

205. "yon western cloud." This implies that Michael approached Paradise on its western side; which is the more fit, as Mr. Keightley noted, because he was to expel Adam and Eve at the opposite side.

etc.

213-220. "Not that . . . Mahanaim

Dothan,"

or

Gen. xxxii. 1, 2; and 2 Kings vi. 13-17. 242, 243. "Melibaan," from Meliboa in Thessaly, the grain of Sarra," i.e. the purple of Tyre, called Sar after the name of the shell-fish that yielded it. See note, V. 285.

See note, Ode Nat. 95.

264. "Heart-strook." 270. "native soil." Eve may say so, Hume notes, as having been created in Paradise; but Adam was created outside of Paradise, and brought into it.

377. "In the visions of God." Ezek. xl. 2.

385-411. "His eye might there command," etc. In this splendid geographical survey there is a certain order :— In lines 387-395 the eye sweeps over ASIA. It begins with the region there which was called Tartary in Milton's time

VOL. III.

2 C

(now divided between the Russian and Chinese empires), singling out the site of Genghis Khan's future capital of Cambalu in Cathay, and that of Tamerlane's future camp of Samarcand north of the Oxus; thence it stretches to China, represented by Paquin or Pekin; thence it returns by the Indian south, selecting Agra and Lahore, celebrated cities of the Mogul monarchs, and glancing at the East Indies as far as the Golden Chersonese or peninsula of Malacca ; and it concludes with a glance at the west of the continent, noting Persia with its successive capitals of Ecbatana and Ispahan, Russia or Muscovia (reputed to belong to Asia) with its capital Moscow, and Turkey with its capital Byzantium or Constantinople. AFRICA comes next, in lines 396-404. Here first we have Abyssinia, the Emperor of which is called "Negus" in the native Ethiopic, and the northernmost part of which on the Red Sea is Ercoco (Arkecko); then are seen the smaller maritime kingdoms of the east coast-Mombaza, Quiloa, Melinda, and Sofala; then the Cape is rounded, and we come to Congo and Angola, kingdoms on the west coast; and thence, by the Niger, we reach Mount Atlas, with the Barbary States of Northern Africa, once included in the dominions of Al-Mansur (the second of the Abbaside Khalifs) -towns or divisions of which are Fez, Sus, Morocco, Algiers, and Tremisen. EUROPE is dismissed rapidly in lines 405, 406, with but a look at Rome. Lines 406-411 range to AMERICA, foreseeing Mexico (the capital of Montezuma, who was conquered by Cortez), Cusco in Peru (the last native ruler of which was Atabalipa, conquered by Pizarro), and that great city in Guiana which the Spaniards (called 'Geryon's sons,” after Geryon, a legendary Spanish king) longed to reach and named El Dorado.-The whole passage, besides illustrating the strength of Milton's geographical memory, is another illustration also of his art in the music of proper names.

66

414. "euphrasy and rue." Euphrasy, popularly called "eye-bright, was supposed to have a specific effect in clearing the sight; and among the medicinal virtues attributed to rue-which was called "herb of grace (Richard II., III. 4, and Hamlet, IV. 5)—was also that of strengthening the eyes.

433. "sord." So spelt in the original,-sward, or turt. The spelling is found in other poets.

485-487. "Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence." These three lines do not occur in the First Edition, but are inserted in the Second.

486. "moon-struck.”

So here, and not moon-strook,

though strook is Milton's favourite form (note, Ode Nat. 95) and we have had "heart-strook" (XI. 264) and "planetstrook" a little while ago (x. 413). The reason is obvious. The sound strook would not suit in conjunction with the sound moon.

487. "Marasmus": consumption.

66

494. deform." This word (from the Latin deformis) is repeated from II. 706.

514. "for his Maker's image sake": a construction like "for conscience sake."

551, 552. "Of rendering up, and patiently attend

My dissolution.

Michael replied:"

This is an expansion, in the Second Edition, of what formed but one line in the First, thus

22.

Of rendering up. Michael to him repli'd."

556-573. "whereon were tents," etc.

573-592, After these.

Gen. iv. 20

a different sort," etc., i.e. the children of Seth, "on the hither side," or nearer to Paradise than the descendants of the banished Cain. Some of the particulars respecting the Sethites are from Josephus and Jewish tradition; others from Gen. vi. 1, 2.

621-627. "To these that sober race of men," etc. Here Milton adopts that opinion which makes the sons of God who married the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1, 2) to be the Sethites; elsewhere, however, he adopts the opinion which supposes them to have been the Angels. See Par. Lost, v. 447, and Par. Reg., II. 178-181.

632, 633. "Man's woe . . · from Woman." Is this an intended play upon the words?

66

665. Of middle age one rising." Enoch, represented as 365 years old at the time of his translation, not half the age attributed to the oldest patriarchs. See Gen. v. 24 and Jude 14, referred to also in line 700.

669. exploded": execrated, hissed at, drove off the

stage by hissing,—the literal meaning of the Latin explodo, from ex and plaudo.

681, 682. "But who," etc. The syntax of these two lines is very peculiar, the word whom having to be resolved, not as usual into and him, but into who. him-"that

just man who, had not Heaven rescued him, had been lost." 688. "these Giants.” Gen. vi. 4.

700. "the seventh from thee." Jude 14.

66

706. Rapt," etc. The manner of Enoch's translation is supposed to be the same as the manner of Elijah's. 2 Kings ii. II.

729-753. "Began to build a vessel," etc. Gen. vi. and vii.; but Milton has inserted recollections of descriptions of the Flood in Ovid (Met. i.) and other poets.

773, 774. "neither. . . and." A peculiar construction, in which neither is not followed as usual by nor.

829-835. "Then shall this Mount," etc. Adopting the opinion that Paradise was obliterated by the Flood, Milton here disposes of it very poetically. It was swept down "the great river," i.e. the Euphrates, to the Persian Gulf, where it took root as a miserable island. See IX. 69-73, and note, IV. 223-246.

835. "orcs": whales, or other huge fishes.

836-838. "To teach thee," etc. An undoubted expres

sion of Milton's anti-ceremonialism in ecclesiastical matters. 846. "their flowing"; a liberty of syntax, since " wave in the preceding line is in the singular.

66

striped '

866. "three listed colours." "Listed" is (A.-S. list, a hem or edge: Mid. Latin and Italian lista). The three colours meant are perhaps red, yellow, and blue. 884-901. In this speech of Michael's there is a coagulation of such texts of Scripture as these: Gen. vi. 6-12, viii. 22, and ix. 11-16; and 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13.

BOOK XII.

These

"As one who . . . new speech resumes. I-5. five lines were added in the Second Edition, to make a proper opening for the Twelfth Book. In the First Edition

there is no such break in Michael's speech, the line

"Thus thou hast seen one world begin and end."

following immediately after what is now the last line of the Eleventh Book.

24-37. "till one shall rise," etc., i.e. Nimrod. See Gen. x. 8-10.

38-62. "He, with a crew," etc.

Gen. xi. 1-9.

Com

mentators find no authority in the Bible for connecting Nimrod with the building of the Tower of Babel.

42. "the mouth of Hell": not the Hell of the rest of the poem, but the Hell of the ordinary mythology,—Tartarus under the Earth.

85. "dividual": separate or separable. 486 and VII. 382.

See notes, IV.

IOI-104. "witness the irreverent son," etc. Gen. ix. 22-25. Michael assumes that the story of Ham is known to Adam, though, as Thyer noted, there is no mention of it as having been as yet told him.

115. "Bred up in idol-worship." As Abraham's father Terah is mentioned, Josh. xxiv. 2, as having "served other gods," it is assumed that Abraham was bred up in a false religion.

117-120. "While yet the patriarch lived who," etc. In the Biblical chronology Noah survives the flood 350 years, and Terah, Abraham's father, was born 222 years after it.

130-137. "Ur of Chaldæa," etc. Milton here traces Abraham's route from his native Chaldæa (between the Euphrates and the Tigris) into Palestine. First, leaving Ur (now Orfah, once Edessa) in Chaldæa, he sees him crossing the Euphrates at a ford, with all his wealth and retinue (his father Terah among them, as we learn from Gen. xi. 31; where indeed Terah is represented as heading the expedition), and arriving in Haram in Mesopotamia. Thence, hardly allowing time for that stay in Haram during which Terah died (Gen. xi. 32, and Acts vii. 4), he follows Abraham in the continuation of his journey westward, till he reaches Canaan, and settles first about Sichem in the plain of Moreh, near the centre of the land (Gen. xii. 4-6).

139-146. "From Hamath," etc. A poetical survey of the extent of the Holy Land, according to these texts— Numb. xxxiv. 3-12, Deut. iii. 8, 9. Hamath is a town in northern Galilee; the Desert is the desert of Zin, bordering Palestine on the south; Hermon is the range of mountains of that name to the east of upper Jordan; the great western