keep at as great a distance as possible; and therefore, while the sun rose in Aries, he steers his course directly upwards, betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion, two constellations which lay in a quite different part of the heavens from Aries.-NEWTON. 22 Ver. 412. Spreading their bane. Ovid's description of the journey of Envy to Athens, and Milton's of Sin and Death to Paradise, have a great resemblance: but whatever Milton imitates, he adds a greatness to it; as in this place, he alters Ovid's flowers, herbs, people, and cities, to stars, planets, and worlds. Ovid, Met. ii. 793:— Quacumque ingreditur, florentia proterit arva, See an Essay upon Milton's Imitation of the Ancients,' p. 42.-NEWTON. 23 Ver. 412. Blasted stars look'd wan. So Tasso, speaking of Alecto, Gier. Lib. c. ix. st. 1 : Si parte, e dove passa i campi lieti THYER. 24 Ver. 413. Planets, planet-struck. We say of a thing, when it is blasted and withered, that it is planet-struck; and that is now applied to the planets themselves. And what a sublime idea doth it give us of the devastations of Sin and Death!-NEWTON. 25 Ver. 417. And with rebounding surge. Virg. Georg. ii. 161: Lucrinoque addita claustra, NEWTON. 26 Ver. 432. By Astracan. A considerable part of the Czar's dominions, formerly a Tartarian kingdom, with a capital city of the same name, near the mouth of the river Volga, at its fall into the Caspian sea; or Bactrian Sophi, the Persian emperor, named of Bactria, one of the greatest and richest provinces of Persia; from the horns of Turkish crescent, his Turkish enemies, who bear the crescent in their ensigns; leaves all waste beyond the realm of Aladule, the Greater Armenia, called Aladule of its last king Aladules, slain by Selymus the First; in his retreat to Tauris, a great city of Persia, now called Ecbatana, sometime in the hands of the Turks, but retaken in 1603 by Abas, king of Persia; or Casbeen, one of the greatest cities of Persia, towards the Caspian sea, where the Persian monarchs made their residence after the loss of Tauris, from which it is distant sixty-five German miles to the south-east.—HUME. 27 Ver. 441. He through the midst. This account of Satan's passing unmark'd through the midst of the angels, and ascending his throne invisible; and seeing there about him, himself unseen; and then bursting forth, as from a cloud, in glory; seems to be copied from a like adventure of Æneas, Virg. Æn. i. 439.-Newton. 28 Ver. 460. Thrones, dominations. It is common with Homer to make use of the same verse several times, and especially at the beginning of his speeches.-NEWTON. 29 Ver. 513. Supplanted down he fell. We may observe here a singular beauty and elegance in Milton's language, and that is his using words in their strict and literal sense, which are commonly applied to a metaphorical meaning; whereby he gives peculiar force to his expressions, and the literal meaning appears more new and striking than the metaphor itself: we have an instance of this in the word supplanted, which is derived from the Latin "supplanto," to trip up one's heels, or overthrow, "a planta pedis subtus emota:" and there are abundance of other examples in several parts of this work; but let it suffice to have taken notice of it here once for all.-NEWTON. 30 Ver. 514. A monstrous serpent. Milton, in describing Satan's transformation into a serpent, had no doubt in mind the transformation of Cadmus in the fourth book of the Metamorphoses, to which he had alluded before in b. ix. 905. See Ovid, Met. iv. 575.-Newton. 31 Ver. 562. Near that bituminous lake. The Dead Sea, or the lake Asphaltites, so called from the bitumen which it is said to have cast up; near which Sodom and Gomorrah were situated. Josephus mentions the apples of Sodom as dissolving into ashes and smoke at the first touch: but our countrymen, Sandys and Maundrell, who visited the Holy Land, are inclined to disbelieve that such fruit existed. Cotovicus, describing Sodom, &c., positively asserts the same particulars of these apples, which the Jewish historian mentions, and to which the poet very minutely alludes: "Hinc quoque arbores illic spectes visu pulcherrimas, et poma viridantia producentes, adspectu ridentia et nitida, et quæ edendi generent spectantibus cupiditatem, sed intus favilla et cinere plena; quæ ipsa etiam, si carpas, fatiscunt, et in cinerem resolvuntur, et quasi adhuc arderent, fumum excitant." Itin. Hierosol. p. 312. See also Sir John Mandeville's Travels, ed. 1725, p. 122, where he is speaking of this delusive fruit.-TODD. 32 Ver. 572. Once lapsed. Whom being once lapsed, they triumphed ;-in opposition to themselves, who often fall into the same illusion. 33 Ver. 586. Sin, there in power. The sense is, that, before the Fall, Sin was in power, or potentially in Paradise ; that once, viz., upon the Fall, it was actually there, though not bodily; but that now, upon its arrival in Paradise, it was there in body, and dwelt there as a constant inhabitant. The words, in body, allude to what St. Paul says, Rom. vi. 6. "that the body of sin might be destroyed.”— PEARCE. 34 Ver. 589. Not mounted yet On his pale horse. Milton has given a fine turn to this poetical thought by saying that Death had not mounted yet on his pale horse: for, though he was to have a long and all-conquering power, he had not yet begun, neither was he for some time to put it in execution.-GREENWOOD. 35 Ver. 600. Too little seems. Compare Prov. xxvii. 30. "Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied."-TODD. 36 Ver. 601. Un-hidebound. Not tight-bound, as when creatures are swoln and full.-NEWTON. 37 Ver. 616. Dogs of hell. Newton thinks some of the expressions in this description too coarse: they are particularly so from ver. 630: but they have a worse fault; they are the expressions of mere human indignation and scorn; and are therefore unsuitable to the Deity. The difficulty, however, of assigning to the divine displeasure terms of language, according with his purity, as well as anger, is hardly surmountable. 38 Ver. 635. Death, and yawning grave. Death and the grave, meaning the same, is a pleonasm; which, adding force and energy, and calling forth the attention, is a beauty common in the best writers; but not for that reason only has Milton used it: the Scripture has thus joined Death and the grave, Hos. xiii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 55; and Rev. xx. 13; where the word rendered 'hell' signifies also the grave.RICHARDSON. 39 Ver. 636. Obstruct the mouth of hell. Mr. Boyd, the learned and elegant translator of Dante's Inferno,' is of opinion that the sublime imagination of Dante,-" that the earthquake which attended the crucifixion, overthrew the infernal ramparts, and obstructed the way to hell,"-gave the hint to Milton, that Sin and Death first built the infernal bridge, whose partial ruin at least was the consequence of the resurrection. See the Inferno,' c. xxiii.-TODD. 40 Ver. 643. Just are thy ways. The same song, says Dr. Newton, that they are represented singing in the Revelations, Rev. xv. 3; xvi. 7. as in the foregoing passage, which is remarked also by Addison, he alludes to Rev. xix. 6.— TODD. 41 Ver. 659. In sextile. If an unnecessary ostentation of learning be, as Addison observes, one of Milton's faults; it certainly must be an aggravation of it, where he not only introduces, but countenances, such enthusiastic, unphilosophical notions, as this jargon of the astrologers is made up of.-THYER. 42 Ver. 668. Bid his angels. It was "eternal spring," b. iv. 268. before the Fall; and he is now accounting for the change of seasons after the Fall, and mentions the two famous hypotheses.-NEWTON. 43 Ver. 686. Estotiland. A great tract of land in the north of America, towards the arctic circle and Hudson's Bay; as Magellan is a country in South America, which, together with its straits, took their name of Ferdinandus Magellanus, a Portuguese, who in the year 1520 first discovered them.-HUME. VOL. III. |