1. 603. For the metamorphoses of old Proteus, see Georgics, iv. 441, &c.

1. 604. drain'd, &c., i. e. water purified by distilling it over and over again in an alembic (limbec). Keightley remarks that the Greek waterdeities alone have the power of assuming many forms, because water alone of the elements can change into snow, ice, vapour, &c.

1. 607. elixir. The wondrous powers of this great medicine are thus set forth by Sir Epicure Mammon, in Ben Jonson's Alchemist (ii. 1) : 'He that has once the flower of the sun,

The perfect ruby, which we call elixir,
Can confer honour, love, respect, long life;

Give safety, valour, yea, and victory,

To whom he will.'

1. 609. The sun 'plays the alchemist' in King John, iii. 1.

1. 616. The as in this line='like as;' that in the next='forasmuch as.' At the equator the sun is directly vertical at noon, and bodies cast no shadow.

6

1. 622-644. The figures here introduced have all the elegance and precision of a Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's harp!' (Hazlitt.)

1. 623. Rev. xix. 17.

1. 625. Cp. the description of Phoebus in Ovid, Met. ii. 40.

1. 627. Illustrious. Cp. Tennyson's mention of the 'light and lustrous curls' of Arthur,

'That made his forehead like a rising sun.'

(Morte D'Arthur.)

fledge for 'fledged' occurs in the old translation of Pliny by Holland, in Milton's Colasterion, in Browne's Britannia's Pastoral, and again in this poem (vii. 420).

1. 637. not of the prime, i. e. not full grown. Cp. Spenser's description of an angel (Faery Queene, ii. 8. 5); xi. 245; Comus 289; Lycidas 8. 1. 643. succinct, girt like the Roman tunic with a belt round the waist. (Horace, Satires, ii. 6. 107.)

1. 644. decent, in its classical sense of 'comely.' (Horace, Odes, iii. 27.53.)

1.650. and are his eyes. Zech. iv. 10; Rev. i. 4; v. 6; viii. 2.

1. 652. over moist and dry. Cp. Iliad, xiv. 308, and Sonnet xv. 13. 1. 654. Uriel means 'God is my Light' (Newton); or 'Light of God' (Keightley). Uriel' is not named in Scripture but in Esdras x. 28, and the rabbinical writings.

1. 664. delight and favour, abstract for concrete. Cp. Æneid, v. 541. 1. 693. In his uprightness. Cp. Job xxxiii. 3.

1. 704. Ps. cxi. 4 (Prayer Book version).

1. 713. So Cicero, translating Plato (whose Timæus furnished Milton with several hints), ' Id ex ordinato in ordinem adduxit.'

1. 715. cumbrous. Even air and fire were so, compared with the quintessence.

1. 716. Aristotle supposed, besides the four elements, a fifth essence, out of which the ethereal bodies were formed, and of which the motion was orbicular.

1. 721. The rest of the quintessence (not used for the stars) was employed to form the interior of the outer coat of the world. Lucretius says of it (v. 470),

Et late diffusus in omnes undique partes
Omnia sic avido complexu caetera sepsit;'

and elsewhere (v. 455) mentions the 'magni moenia mundi.'

1. 730. The diva triformis' of Horace (Odes, iii. 22. 4). The allusion here is to the phases of the moon, increasing with horns turned east, decreasing with horns turned west, and at the full.

1. 741. Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, iv. 24) makes his magician, mounted on a hippogriff, descend 'in large wheels.'

1. 742. Niphates, an Armenian mountain bordering on Mesopotamia. Milton followed the precedents of Virgil (Æneid, iv. 252, &c.) and Tasso, who makes Gabriel alight on Mount Libanus (Gierusalemme Liberata, i. 14. 15).

Book IV.

1. 1. Cp. Prologue to Henry V, 'O, for a muse of fire!'

1. 3. second rout. The first was that recorded in Bk. i; Rev. xii. 12. 1. 10. Rev. xii. 10.

1. 11. To wreak is to avenge (A. S. wrecan). Keightley remarks that to 'wreak vengeance' (an expression used by Dryden) is therefore incorrect. To wreak' is used for 'to revenge' in Titus Andronicus,

'Dum vice mutatâ qui sim fuerimque recordor.'

1. 27. Cp. the grief of Ulysses, Odyssey, xiii. 197.

1. 30. This metaphor is used by Virgil in his Culex (41), and is exactly translated by Spenser:

The fiery sun was mounted now on hight

Up to the heavenly towers.'

1. 32. This speech (which Milton once intended should open Lucifer's

part in the tragedy of Adam Unparadised) has a general resemblance to the first speech of Prometheus in Eschylus, who also appeals to the all-seeing orb of the sun.'

1. 37. Cp. Phædra's hatred of day (Euripides, Hippolytus 355), and Macbeth's weariness of the sun (v. 5).

1. 44. James i. 5.

1. 50. sdein'd, disdained, from Ital. sdegnare. Spenser uses the word often (e. g. Faery Queene, v. 5. 44).

1. 55. Cp. gratiam autem et qui retulerit, habere, et qui habeat, retulisse.' (Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 20.)

1. 79. This has been taken as addressed by Satan to himself. Keightley regards it as addressed to God, and thinks that line 81 is the correction and recall of the aspiration. Cp. Heb. xii. 17.

1. 82. my dread of shame, &c. Cp. Hector's speech, Iliad, xxii. 99-108.

1. III. So in the distich usually attributed to Virgil,

'Divisum imperium cum Jove Caesar habet.'

1. 112. By reigning in hell and the world, leaving to God only heaven.

1. 114. Cp. Faery Queene, i. 9. 16.

1. 126. Niphates divides Armenia from Assyria.

1. 133. Ezek. xxviii. 13, 14 appears to have led to the notion that the garden was on the summit of a hill, as described by Dante and Ariosto.

1. 141. Sidney, in his Arcadia, says: About it (as if it had been to enclose a theatre) grew such sort of trees as either excellency of fruit, statelinesss of growth, continual greenness, &c., have at any time made famous.' Cp. Æneid, v. 288.

1. 147. Milton, speaking of what hangs on the tree, calls it fruit; but when plucked, fruits. See ll. 249, 422, Bks. v. 341, 390, viii. 307, and Comus 396.

1. 149. enamell'd, (from Fr. esmailler), as in the process of enamelling or fixing colours by the action of fire. Cp. A. S. meltan, Germ. schmelzen.

1. 151. On fair evening cloud.' Bentley's emendation for 'in' of the early editions.

1. 153. Dr. Major observes that of' here implies succession or change of circumstance, in accordance with the Greek usage with è as in Sophocles, Antigone 1092.

1. 158. A common image with the Italian poets. Ariosto (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv. 51), describes the theft of the perfume by the gale, and the vernal delight thereby given. Shakespeare has the same idea in the opening of Twelfth Night.

1. 159. As when to them, &c. This is taken from Diodorus Siculus (iii. 45). The fragrance of spice is wafted out to sea for a distance of twenty miles, as is well known to every sailor in the West Indies or in the Indian Archipelago. But it is impossible that north-east winds could waft scent from the Arabian coast to a ship that had doubled the Cape and passed Mozambique. (Keightley.)

1. 165. smiles. The metaphor is from the ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα, the many-twinkling smile of the waves (Prometheus Vinctus 90).

1. 168. Than Asmodeus. The commentators unanimously condemn this semi-burlesque ending of a beautiful passage.

1. 177. that past, that would have passed, an expression founded on classic precedent, e. g. in the Ion of Euripides (1326); 'Have you heard how she killed me?' i. e. would have killed me.

1. 181. A similar play on words occurs in lines 286 and 530, and Bks. ix. II and xi. 627. The same words are thus dealt with by Romeo in his fantastic mood (Romeo and Juliet, i. 4).

1. 183. As when, &c. See John x. 1-16.

1. 193. The lewd were originally merely the lay people, the ignorant, as contrasted with the clergy. The idea of depravity became associated with that of ignorance (John vii. 49), and at last changed the meaning of lewd into its modern signification of lascivious, base. In Shakespeare and in the Authorised Version (e.g. Acts xvii. 5) the latter sense only occurs; in Chaucer, both senses. Cp. Germ. leute, Low Lat. laeti, the military retainers who may have given their name to the divisions of Kent, lathes. (Latham.)

1. 195. The middle tree. The Hebrew expression in the midst' denotes not merely locality but excellence.

1. 196. Keightley remarks that this placing a sea-bird on a tree was probably suggested by Isa. xxxiv. II.

1. 200. This passage has puzzled all commentators. What use could Satan have made of the tree? He was immortal already. True life could only have been regained by repentance, not by the mere eating of the tree. See Book xi. 95. The suggestion that well us'd applies to our first parents will not solve the difficulty. Well us'd and only us'd must apply to the same person. Besides, what ill use did they make of the tree of Life? Certainly not before the Fall, and after the Fall they were not permitted to use or eat of it at all.

1. 202. Cp. Juvenal, x. 2:

'Pauci dignoscere possunt

Vera bona.'

209. The province in which Paradise was situated extended from Auran, a city of Mesopotamia near Euphrates, eastward to Seleucia, a city built by Seleucus, one of the successors of Alexander, upon the

Tigris. Telassar (Isa. xxxvii. 12) is placed by Ptolemy in Babylonia on the common streams of Tigris and Euphrates.

1. 214. Eden (says Sir William Jones) is the same word as Aden, and means 'softness,' 'delight,' 'tranquillity,' as well as 'a settled abode.'

1. 222. So in Areopagitica: the knowing good and evil, that is, the knowing good by evil.'

1. 223. Milton correctly says that the river divided after leaving the garden. He judiciously avoids naming the river, a caution which he discards in ix. 71. The description of Paradise has many parts in common with that of the palace and garden of the third book of Boccaccio's Decameron. (Keightley.)

1. 242. Cp. Thy curious-knotted garden.' (Love's Labour's Lost, i. 1). boon, kind, (Lat. bona).

1. 246. imbrown'd. Cp. Il Penseroso 134. The Ital. imbrunir, for the dusk of the evening, occurs in the first line of one of Milton's Italian sonnets.

1. 248. So Ovid relates of the myrrh-tree (Metamorphoses, x. 500). Cp. Othello's comparison of his tears to the 'medicinal gum' of the 'Arabian trees' (v. 2).

1. 250. amiable, amabilis. Cp. 'thy amiable cheeks' (Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. 1).

fables true; fabula,' in its primary sense, is anything commonly talked of, whether true or false. From Hesperian to only is a parenthetical clause, 'here, if ever, were the tales of the Hesperian fruit realised.' The apples of the Hesperides were guarded by the dragon Ladon, and to obtain them was one of the labours of Hercules. 1. 255. irriguous, well-watered. Horace has this epithet for a garden (Satires, ii. 4. 16).

1. 256. St. Ambrose and St. Basil are given as the authorities for the thornless rose of Paradise.

1 262. Cp. Comus 890.

1. 264. apply, ‘join to' the melody of the Streams and the airs (Lat. applico). Cp. Spenser :

6

The birds thereto applied
Their dainty lays and dulcet melody.'

airs, 'gales' (aurae). Cp. line 156.

(Faery Queene, iii. 1. 40).

1. 266. That the world was created in the spring, was an article of poetic faith. (Virgil, Georgics, ii. 338; Ovid, Met. i. 107). For the dance of the Graces, cp. Horace, Odes, iv. 7. 5.

1. 269. Enna, a town in Sicily, said to be the centre of the island. Around it were extensive cornfields.