occult reference perhaps to the conduct of those in power in England after Cromwell's death, when Milton still argued against the restoration of the King.

247. "Used no ambition": "ambition" here in its literal sense of "going about" or "canvassing."

268-276. "But what more oft," etc. A plain reference to the state of England, and to Milton's own position there, after the Restoration.

278-281. "How Succoth," etc. Judges viii. 5 et seq. 282-289. "And how ingrateful Ephraim," etc. Judges xii. I et seq.

297, 298. "for of such doctrine," etc. Psalm xiv. I. Observe the peculiar effect of contempt given to the passage by the rapid rhythm and the sudden introduction of a rhyme. 300-306." Yet more there be," etc. Again observe the effect from the peculiar versification and the rhymes. 318, 319. "this heroic Nazarite." Numb. vi. 1-21, 453. "idolists": idolaters. See Par. Reg., IV. 234. 496, 497. "The mark of fool set on his front!

But I God's secret have not kept, his holy secret." So printed in the original edition, and also in the Second, only eight syllables in the first line, while there are thirteen in the second.

etc.

499–501. “a sin that Gentiles in their parables condemn,” An allusion to such stories as that of Tantalus.

516. "what offered means who knows but," etc.: "that offered means which who knows but," etc.—a peculiar Miltonic syntax.

66

531. affront": meeting face-to-face.

66

551. refreshed," i.e. refreshed myself.

557. "Whose drink," etc. Samson was a Nazarite (Judges xiii. 7), and therefore under the vow of the Nazarites (Numb. vi. 2-5).

569. "Robustious": full of force. Shakespeare has the word,- a robustious periwig-pated fellow." Ham. III. 2. 581-583. "caused a fountain .. to spring," etc. Judges xv. 18, 19. In our version of this passage it is said that "God clave a hollow space" in the jaw-bone with which Samson had fought; but Newton points out that another interpretation, which Milton follows here, supposed that the hollow space was cloven in a piece of ground (or rock) called Lehi, or "The Jaw."

In

590-598. "All otherwise," etc. Note the peculiar melancholy that breathes through this speech of Samson's, the singularly sorrowful cadence of the last five lines. reading two of these, one feels as if Milton were remembering Hamlet's soliloquy-

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world."

Note the sudden rhymes
See previous notes,

610-616. "But must," etc. in lines 610, 611, and lines 615, 616. lines 297, 298, and 300-306.

Observe the rhyme.

612. "accidents": attributes, properties. 658, 659. "with studied," etc. See previous note, 610-616.

667–686. Again note the rhymes introduced,-lines 668, 669, 672, 673, and 674, 675.

674-704. "Nor do I name of men the common rout," etc. It is impossible to read this passage without seeing in it a veiled reference to the trials and executions of the Regicides, and the degradation of the other chiefs of the Commonwealth, after the Restoration; and the description of Milton's own case is exact, even to the surprise that at the end of his temperate life his disease should have been gout.

688-691. "To life obscured," etc. These four lines form a peculiar rhymed stanza. See previous note, lines 300-306.

715, 716. "Tarsus," in Cilicia; "the isles of Javan," those of Greece and Ionia; "Gadire," Gades in Spain. 720. "amber scent," i.e. the fragrance of grey amber or ambergris. See note, Par. Reg., II. 344.

759-762. "That wisest and best men," etc., Milton himself among them; whose reconciliation with his first wife, in July or August 1645, after her desertion of him for about two years, is thus described by his nephew Phillips : "One time above the rest, he making his usual visit [at the house of a relative, named Blackborough, living in St. Martin's-le-Grand], the wife was ready in another room, and on a sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission, and begging pardon on her knees before him. He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than

bound, maugre the Roman" (B. C. 40),—not doing the same for Antigonus, as Milton's words seem to imply, but sustaining him on the throne of Palestine, with Parthian help, till B. C. 37, when the Romans overpowered him and put him to death, to make way for Herod the Great. Remembering these facts, might not Jesus draw the inference? Syria was still the debateable-land between the Romans and the Parthians, the Romans sometimes attacking the Parthians thence, and the Parthians sometimes retaliating by covering Syria with a cloud of their horse. What more likely, therefore, than that, if the Parthians heard of a native claimant for the throne of David, who was no mere Maccabee, but the lineal descendant of David, they would find it their interest to do for him against the Romans even more than they had done for Antigonus, the last of the Maccabees? Jesus, it is hinted (lines 368-385), need not cultivate the Parthian alliance longer than he finds it useful; nay, ultimately, a subversion of the Parthian power itself might be the true policy. For (and here is another subtle ingenuity suggested by historical knowledge) was not the very instrumentality by which the Hebrew monarchy could most easily and most nobly be restored lodged in the heart of the Parthian Empire ? Was it not "in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes " (2 Kings xviii. 11) that Shalmanezer, the King of Assyria, had put the Ten Tribes of Israel when he had carried them away captive; and would not the liberation of those lost Tribes in their Parthian fastnesses be at once a great exploit in itself, and the arming of an agency for the rest of the work?

377. "Ten sons of Jacob, two of Joseph." The ten captive tribes of Israel were those of Reuben, Simeon, Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Ephraim, and Manasseh, the first eight being Jacob's sons, and the last two Joseph's. It has been objected that the text is therefore incorrect that it should have been "". Eight sons of Jacob, two of Joseph." But it is correct enough. Joseph, being represented in Ephraim and Manasseh, brings the number of Jacob's sons concerned up to nine; and the tenth is Levi, many of whose descendants, the Levites, were, of course, carried away, mixed with the other tribes.

384. "From Egypt to Euphrates." Gen. xv. 18, and I Kings iv. 21.

409-412. "When thou stoodst up his tempter," etc. 1 Chron. xxi. 1-14.

415-431. "fell off from God to worship calves," etc. I Kings xvi. 32 and xi. 5; 2 Kings xvii.

BOOK IV.

10-14. "as a man who had been matchless held," etc. It is a shrewd guess of Dunster's that Milton may have thought here of his own antagonist Salmasius.

25. "to the western side": for the vision is now to be in that direction.

27-42. "Another plain," etc., i.e. the whole long strip of Italy west of the Apennines, with the Tiber and Rome visible in it. The vision was procured either by magical means, causing some “strange parallax,” or apparent elevation of distant objects, or by some arrangement of optical instruments. There had been much speculation on the point among Biblical commentators.

31. "thence," i.e. from the Apennines.

32, 33. "off whose banks on each side," etc. The original gives "of whose banks on each side," etc. I have little doubt that Milton dictated "off"; which, indeed, is but an emphatic form of "of."

33-39. Rome.

50-54.

turrets

...

an imperial city," etc. The city is, of course,

"Mount Palatine, the imperial palace ..

glittering spires." Here again Milton makes poetry overbear chronology and history. It was not till Nero's time that there was any such very splendid palace on the Palatine; and "turrets and " spires were hardly

features of Roman architecture.

66. "turms," troops, coined from the Latin turma.

68, 69. "on the Appian road, or on the Æmilian." The former led south, the latter north.

69-79. some from farthest south, Syene,” etc. Another of Milton's geographical enumerations. Syene, in Egypt, on the borders of Ethiopia, was accounted the southernmost point of the Roman Empire; Meroe was a celebrated island and city on the Nile in Ethiopia, far beyond Syene, and within the Tropics, so that twice a year shadows of objects

line informs us, chained or fettered at the ankles, though still so that he could walk slowly; but not handcuffed.

1238. "bulk without spirit vast," i.e. vast bulk without spirit the first three words almost forming one compound

noun.

:

1248, 1249. See previous note, line 1079, and see again 2 Sam. xxi. 15-22, for the fates of four of the five giants whom Milton takes the liberty of making sons of his Harapha. Their brother Goliath had previously been killed by David. As Samson's death, in the Biblical chronology, was eighty years before David's accession, Milton must have taken poetic licence in making the five giants killed in David's time full-grown in Samson's.

1308. "Ebrews." So spelt in the original edition. The word occurs three times in Sams. Ag., and each time so; it occurs but twice besides in the poetry (Far. Reg., IV. 336, and Ps. cxxxvi. 50), both times as an adjective, and both times with the H.

1461-1471. "Some much averse," etc. One may detect here a glance at the different degrees of vengefulness among the Royalists after the Restoration, and so a peculiar significance in the hint that the most vengeful of all were those that most reverenced Dagon and his priests."

1512. "inhabitation : community or inhabitants. So Shakespeare (Macb. IV. 1) :—

"Though the yesty waves

Confound and swallow navigation up."

1525, 1526. "The sufferers," etc. Is the rhyme here intentional?

1527-1535. "What if . . . and tempts belief." These nine lines are omitted in their proper place in the original edition, but printed on a page at the end, with a direction where to insert them.

1529. "dole." The word has two meanings, --a portion dealt out (as in "a beggar's dole"), and sorrow or grief (Lat. doleo). The two are combined here.

66

1537. Of good or bad," etc. This line also is not in its proper place in the original edition, but comes as an omission at the end. It seems to me that it may have been an afterthought with Milton to break up what was at first a continuous speech of the Chorus, by inserting ten additional lines,