1. 178. Keightley thinks that the more correct expression is 'let slip,' but Macduff says, I have almost slipt the hour' (Macbeth, ii. 3), and in Comus 743 the omission of 'let' would make the line correct in

metre.

1. 180. Cp. line 60.

1. 185. So in Richard II, v. 1:

'Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth

Have any resting.'

1. 186. afflicted,' afflictus,' beaten down. Cp. Paradise Lost, iv. 939. Powers, forces, as

'The gentle Archbishop of York is up,

With well-appointed powers.' (2 Henry IV, i. 1.)

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1. 191. Bentley suggested if none,' i. e. if no reinforcement. 1. 193. uplift; for uplifted. (Cp. Ps. xxiv, 7.) Elsewhere Milton uses 'lifted,' as does Shakespeare.

1. 198. Cp. Æneid, vi. 580.

1. 199. Intending to name one of each class, Milton makes a mistake as to Briareus, who was one of the hundred-handed (not of the Titans), and helped the gods. (Keightley.) Milton added Tarsus from Nonnus, who (at the beginning of his enormous epic in forty-eight books) treats at great length of Typhon, the last son of earth. Pindar places his den in Cilicia.

1. 201. Job xli. Leviathan is considered by Bochart to be the crocodile, but Milton here uses the name to designate the whale.

1. 202. Ocean stream is an Homeric phrase, Iliad, xiv. 245, xx. 7. Cp. Various Readings, Comus, opening speech.

1. 204. night-founder'd, here

=

benighted,' as in Comus, 483. 'Founder' (from Fr. fondre) is to sink from springing a leak, and is improperly used here. (Keightley.)

1. 205. The story rests on the authority of Olaus Magnus (whose History of the Northern Nations was translated into English in 1658) and Hakluyt.

1. 207. As the lee shore is that on which the wind blows, 'under the lee' = close under the weather shore, or under the wind.

1. 208. Invests, clothes. Paradise Lost, iii. 10; xi. 233.

1. 210. We are not told how he loosed himself. The poet was led into the employment of this term by his servile adherence to the letter of Scripture. 2 Pet. ii. 4, Jude 6. (Keightley.)

1. 226. Cp. Faery Queene, i. 11. 18.

1. 232. Pelorus, the north-east point of Sicily. Ovid says that the right hand of Typhoeus (or Typhon) is buried in this spot. There is no account of this cape having been affected by the eruptions of Ætna. (Keightley.)

1. 233. thundering Etna is a Virgilian epithet (Æneid, iii. 371).

1. 235. To sublime' is a chemical term for an operation wherein by fire the subtler parts are separated and mounted, and receive greater force.

1. 237. unblest feet. All this is too far detailed, and deals too much with externals; we feel rather the form of the fire-waves than their fury, we walk upon them too securely, and the fuel, sublimation, smoke, and singeing, seem to me images only of partial combustion; they vary and extend the conception, but they lower the thermometer. Look back, if you will, and add to the description the glimmering of the livid flames; the sulphurous hail and red lightning; yet all together, however they overwhelm us with horror, fail of making us thoroughly unendurably hot. Now hear Dante : "Feriami'l Sole in su l'omero destro, Che già, raggiando, tutto l'Occidente Mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro: Ed io facea con l'ombra più rovente Parer la fiamma." (Purg. xxvi. 4. 8.)

That is a slight touch; he has not gone to Ætna nor Pelorus for fuel; but we shall not soon recover from it-he has taken our breath away and leaves us gasping. No smoke or cinders there. Pure, white, hurtling, formless flame; very fire crystal, we cannot make

spires

nor waves of it, nor divide it, nor walk on it, there is no question about singeing soles of feet. It is lambent annihilation.' (Ruskin, Mod. Painters, Part iii. 2. 3.)

1. 241. Cp. Odyssey, iv. 504.

1. 244. The thing received is put first, in the Latin manner. To change here to take in exchange for. (Horace, Odes, iii. 1. 47.) 1. 250. So Ajax calls on Darkness and Erebus to receive him (Sophocles, Ajax 395).

1. 255. In Marlowe's Faustus, when Mephistophilis is asked how he has escaped from hell, he replies—

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Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it!'

1. 266. astonisht, Fr. estonner, Lat. attonare (strengthened to extonare.) So we use thunderstruck' to signify a high degree of astonishment. But probably the root ton in attonitus is used rather as the representative of a loud overpowering sound in general than specially of thunder. Thus we have din, dint, dun, dunt (a blow or stroke), A. S. stunian, Germ. erstaunen. (Wedgwood.) Cp. 1. 317 and Dan. viii. 27.

oblivious pool, pool that causes oblivion, like 'forgetful lake' (Paradise Lost, ii. 74). Cp. wandering wood,' Faery Queene, i. 1. 13. 1. 276. Cp. Paradise Lost, vi. 108. Edge Of battle is by many commentators taken to be a translation of acies, which means both

'edge of a weapon' and 'an army in battle array.' Cp. the 'bridge of war' (Tennyson's translation of #Toλéμoio yepúpai, (Iliad, viii. 553.) 1. 281. erewhile, aforetime, before.

1. 284. Was moving, i. e. began to move-classic use of imperfect.

1. 288. Galileo, the Tuscan artist, applied the telescope (which he greatly improved, if not invented) to the observation of the heavenly bodies, and so discovered the moon to be a body of uneven surface.

1. 289. Fesole or Fiesole, is the hill three miles to the north-east of Florence. On it are the remains of the ancient city of Fæsulæ.

1. 290. Valdarno. The Val' d' Arno is the valley in which Florence lies.

1. 294. ammiral, the principal vessel in a fleet. (Ital. ammiraglio.) It is derived from the Arabic 'Prince of Believers,' and the Spaniards understood by it simply 'commander,' as in their title Admiral of Castile.' (Keightley.) The final al is probably the Arabic article, and the ad or al in admiral, almirante, a corruption of the first syllable of amir or emir. (Wedgwood.) Falstaff calls Bardolph our admiral,' meaning the vessel that led the fleet.

1. 303. Vallambrosa is eighteen miles from Florence. The trees planted near the convent are mostly pines, but the natural woods are deciduous, and spread to a great extent.' (Wordsworth.)

1. 305. Orion, the mighty Boeotian hunter, was at his death placed among the stars, where he appears as a giant with a girdle and lion's skin, and armed with a sword and club. His setting, at the beginning of November, was attended by storms. (Horace, Odes, i. 28. 21; iii. 27. 18; Æneid, i. 535.)

1. 306. The Hebrew name of the Red Sea is Sea of Sedge, from the abundance of sea-weed therein. (Keightley.) But Bruce denied this, and supposed the name to refer to the large plants of white coral; one of which, with its branches, he asserted to have been twenty-six feet in circumference.

1. 307. Pharaoh being a mere title, Milton gives to the oppressor of the Israelites an individual name. The Busiris of Greek legend was an Egyptian king who sacrificed all strangers that visited Egypt. Hercules, on his arrival, was bound and led to the altar, but he burst his bonds and slew Busiris. Memphis was on the west bank of the Nile. It contained the palace of the Pharaohs, and the temples of Apis and Serapis. The pyramids are ten miles below the site of Memphis.

chivalry for cavalry.' Cp. Paradise Regained, iii. 344. Cavalleria in Italian has this double sense. Keightley says that Milton took this use of chivalry' from the Mort D'Arthur.

1. 309. Exod. xiv. 30.

1. 312. abject, thrown down, cast away.

1. 317. See note on line 266.

1. 320. virtue, valour, manhood (virtus).

1. 341. warping, proceeding in an undulatory manner, but improperly used here. When there is no wind, or a contrary one, the anchor is taken out to some distance, and the ship worked up to it; the operation beng repeated till the ship is got out sufficiently. This does not apply to the locusts, which rather 'hull' (Paradise Lost, xi. 840) or undulate with the wind. (Keightley.) To 'warp' is to move, or cause to move, in a curved direction, as when boards warp. 'With warped keels' is Surrey's translation of curvis carinis;' 'warp,' as a noun, is used by our old dramatists for twist.'

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1. 345. cope, cap or dome, the concave' of line 542.

1. 348. the spear. . . waving; an absolute use = Lat. ablat. absol.

1. 351. The fallen angels when lying on the pool are compared to fallen leaves; when on the wing, to locusts; when on the plain, to the northern barbarian hordes.

1. 353. Rhene is the Latin name (Rhenus) of the Rhine, Donau the German name of the Danube. Spenser uses Rhene (Faery Queene,

iv. 11. 21).

1. 355. Beneath, to the south of, 'infra.' The Vandals passed over from Spain and settled in northern Africa.

1. 361. Psalm ix. 5.

1. 372. religions, religious rites, 'religiones et caerimonias.' (Cicero de Legg. i. 15.)

1. 376. Iliad, v. 703.

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1. 378. Milton here uses Emperor,' as ‘Soldan' before, for 'supreme commander,' they being the names of the greatest potentates West and East.

1. 382. 1 Pet. v. 8.

1. 387. Keightley says that translation (Ps. lxxx. 1).

Milton was led into error by our The throne is borne by the cherubim (Ezek. i. 26). Cp. Jer. vii. 30; 2 Kings xxi. 5.

1. 391. affront, confront, face. Cp. Samson Agonistes 531. Shakespeare has the same use in Hamlet, iii. 1, and twice in Cymbeline (iv. 3, v. 3). The ordinary sense of the word is at least as old as Piers Plowman.

1. 392. 1 Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxii. 10. 'Moloch' has nearly the same meaning as 'Baal,' implying dominion and kingly power. Cp. Nativity Ode 205.

1. 397.* Rabbah on the Jabbok, 2 Sam. xii. 27. Milton, relying probably on Judges xi. 13, supposes the whole region between the Arnon, the north boundary of Moab, and the Jabbok by Mount Gilead, which included the region of Argob and Mount Bashan, to have originally belonged to the Ammonites, and to have been conquered from them by the Amorites

from the west of the Jordan. But this is disproved by Jephthah's reply, and everywhere else that region is said to have belonged to the Amorite kings Sihon and Og, while the territory of the children of Ammon lay to the east of it. The poet seems to intimate that even in the time of Solomon the Ammonites dwelt to the Arnon, but this was evidently a slip of his memory. (Keightley.)

1.403. that opprobrious bill; the hill south of the Mount of Olives, which lay due East of Mount Moriah, on which the Temple stood (1 Kings xi. 7). Milton may have meant the Mount of Olives itself. Cp. lines 416, 443. It is only said (Jeremiah vii. 31) that they built a high place: but as a grove was the usual appendage to the high place, Milton supplies it here. The word rendered 'grove' is properly a 'wooden pillar,' and is connected with the worship of Baalim rather than of Moloch. (Keightley.)

1. 404. In the valley of Hinnom, to the south-east of Jerusalem, was the King's garden. Tophet is derived from a word meaning 'timbrel;' see line 394. Josiah defiled it by burning there the refuse of the city. It is said that the bodies of malefactors were burnt in it also, and that from this use of it the Jews formed from its name the word Gehenna, the place of future punishment.

1. 406. Chemos seems to be confounded with Baal-peor, which latter is identical with Thammuz or Adonis. (Keightley.) But see note on Nativity Ode, 1. 197.

1. 407. Every place here enumerated is to the north of the Arnon, and therefore beyond the borders of Moab, and in the actual territory before assigned to the Ammonites. But Milton follows Isaiah and Jeremiah, who (Isaiah xv, Jeremiah xlviii.) give all these places to the Moabites, who may have seized part of the territory of Reuben and Gad at the overthrow of the kingdom of Israel. Abarim was the mountain range opposite Jericho (Deuteronomy xxxii. 49), now generally called the mountains of Moab, and visible from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Nebo appears to have been a part of it. Heshbon, Eleale, and Sibma all lie somewhat to the east of Mount Abarim. The site of Horonaim is not known. Milton, in these lines, seems to place the Asphaltic Pool, or Dead Sea, to the north of the cities enumerated, though it is actually west or south-west of them. But, like the ancient poets, he consulted the harmony of his numbers more than the accuracy of his description. (Keightley.)

1. 413. Sittim, on the plains of Moab (Num. xxv).

1. 414. to do bim rites is a literal translation of the Greek and Latin phrases ἱερά ῥέζειν, sacra facere.

1. 415. orgies, mysteries. The word was applied to the Eleusinian mysteries, and subsequently to the rites of Bacchus.