NOTES TO PARADISE LOST.

BOOK I.

I-26. " Of Man's first disobedience . sing, Heavenly Muse," etc. It is expressly the HEBREW Muse that Milton invokes,-the Muse that may be supposed to have inspired the shepherd Moses, either on Mount Horeb, when he was keeping the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, and the Angel of the Lord appeared to him out of the burning bush (Exod. iii. 1, 2), or at a later date on Mount Sinai, when he was alone with the Lord for forty days, receiving the Law (Exod. xxiv. 12-18). On either of these occasions Milton supposes Moses to have received that inspiration which enabled him to reveal, in Genesis, how the Heavens and the Earth were made; and it was the same Heavenly Muse, he assumes, that afterwards, by Siloa's brook or pool, near the temple at Jerusalem (Isaiah viii. 6, and Nehem. iii. 15), inspired also David and the Prophets. This Muse, and no other, must inspire the present poet. For the theme that he proposes requires such aid: his song is one that intends to soar above the Aonian Mount-i.c. above that Mount Helicon, in old Aonia or Boeotia, which, with the neighbouring region, was the fabled haunt of the Grecian Muses. In the end, however, this form of an invocation even of what might be called, by a bold adaptation of classic terms, the true, primeval, or Heavenly Muse (Milton afterwards, P. L., VII. I, calls her Urania), passes into a direct prayer to the Divine Spirit. Milton believed himself to be, in some real sense, an inspired man.

50-53. "Nine times the space," etc. The nine days in this passage are not the nine days of the fall of the Angels out of Heaven into Hell (vI. 871), but nine subsequent days

during which the Angels lay in stupor in Hell after their fall.

62, 63. "from those flames no light; but rather darkness visible," etc. It seems to have been a common idea that the flames of Hell gave no light.

See Introd. p. 34.

73, 74. "As far removed," etc. The centre here is the Earth; pole is the extreme of the Mundane Universe.

75. "Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell.” Not unlike one of the phrases in that passage of Cædmon's Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase which some suppose Milton to have consulted in the edition of Cadmon, with a Latin version by Francis Junius, published at Amsterdam in 1655 (see Introd. p. 15).

80, 81. "Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub." The word "Baal," meaning "Lord," was a general name for "god" among the Semitic nations; and their different Baals or gods were designated by names compounded of this word and others either indicating localities or signifying qualities. Baal-zebub, or Beelzebub, means literally "the God of Flies." This particular deity was worshipped at Ekron in Palestine; and that he was an important deity may be gathered from his being referred to afterwards (Matthew xii. 24) as "Beelzebub, the prince of the devils."

82. "And thence in Heaven called SATAN." Satan, in Hebrew, means 66

Enemy."

86. "didst outshine." The more usual construction would be "did outshine.'

"All is

109. "And what is else not to be overcome?" not lost," Satan here says: "the unconquerable will, etc. and courage never to submit or yield: and what else is there that is not to be overcome?" or "and what is there that else (ie. without the fore-mentioned qualities) is not to be overcome?" or "and in what else does not to be overcome (i.e. invincibility) consist?"

The Titans, in the

198. "Titanian or Earth-born.” Greek mythology, were the progeny of Heaven and Earth, and were distinct from the Giants, who were represented either as sprung from the Earth itself or as sons of Tartarus and the Earth.

199, 200. "Briareos or Typhon," etc.

Briareos, a hun

dred-handed, fifty-headed monster, of Titan lineage, first aided Jupiter against the Titans, but afterwards helped the Giants in their war with him. Typhon or Typhoeus, a hundred-headed monster, who also warred against the gods, had his den in Cilicia, of which Tarsus was a city.

201-208. " Leviathan," etc. Commentators see in this passage a reference to the fables in books of vast whales and other rough-skinned sea-monsters seen by voyagers in the Scandinavian seas.

202. "Created hugest that swim the Ocean-stream"; a line purposely of difficult sound. 204. "night-foundered."

Milton has this exact word

once besides Comus, 483. In both places he uses the word in the same sense, i.e.

coming on of night.

brought to a stand by the

207. "under the lee," i.e. on that side of the monster which was protected from the wind.

232. "Pelorus," a promontory in Sicily.

235. "Sublimed," etc.

Sublimation in chemistry is the conversion of solid substances into vapour by heat, so that, in cooling, they may become solid again in a purer form.

254. "The mind is its own place." This is one of the only three places in which the word its occurs in Milton's poetry. The other two places are P. L., IV. 813, and Ode on the Nat. 106. See Essay on Milton's English, pp. 174-186.

257. "And what I should be, all but less than he": a phrase of difficult construction: meaning either “And what I should be-viz. all but just next to him," etc.; or "And what I should be, all but (except) that I am less than he,” etc.

288-290. "Through optic glass the Tuscan artist. top of Fesole. . . or in Valdarno." The Tuscan artist is Galileo, who first employed the telescope for astronomical purposes about 1609. Fesolè is a height close to Florence. Valdarno is the valley of the Arno, in which Florence itself lies.

294. "ammiral," or admiral, here means the ship, not the commander.

303. "Vallombrosa." Literally "the shady valley," a beautiful valley eighteen miles from Florence, where Milton may have spent some days in 1638. See Wordsworth's verses "At Vallombrosa."

305. "Orion armed." The constellation Orion, called "armed" because of his sword and belt, was supposed to

bring stormy weather at certain seasons. Both Virgil and Petrarch have the exact phrase.

307. Busiris," etc. An Egyptian king of this name figures in Greek legends as noted for his hostility to foreigners; and Milton follows Raleigh, in his Hist. of the World, in making him the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. —“ Memphian," from the great city Memphis, stands for Egyptian generally.

339. "Amram's son," i.e. Moses. also Exod. x. 12-15.

See Exod. vi. 16-20;

Rhine or the Danube.

353. "Rhene or the Danaw." 364-375. "Nor had they yet . . . got them new names,” etc. Observe in this passage Milton's adoption for his poem of the mediæval belief that the Devils or Fallen Angels became the Gods of the various Heathen or Polytheistic religions. De Quincey, in one of his essays (Milton, vol. vi. of De Quincey's works), has ingeniously used the fact as a sufficient answer to the objection made by some to Milton on the ground that, in his Paradise Lost and other poems, he has blended the Pagan mythology and its names and forms with the Christian. Milton, De Quincey holds, had set himself right for ever on that subject by his adoption of the theory that the Pagan Deities, as but lapsed Angels, all belonged to the same Biblical concern.

In this splendid

381-505. "The chief were those," etc. passage of 125 lines Milton, according to the idea mentioned in the preceding note, enumerates first the principal idols of the Semitic nations round about the Israelites.

392-405. "First, Moloch, horrid king," etc. For the Scriptural accounts of Moloch (meaning "king” in Hebrew), here represented as more particularly the god of the Ammonites, see Levit. xviii. 21; 1 Kings xi. 7; 2 Sam. xii. 26-29: see also Judges xi. 12-18. The "opprobrious hill" is the Mount of Olives, on which Solomon built a temple to Moloch (1 Kings xi. 7, and 2 Kings xxiii. 13, 14). The "pleasant valley of Hinnom" (Ghe-Hinnom : see Jerem. vii. 31, 32) was on the east side of Jerusalem: here was Tophet, supposed to mean "the place of timbrels." The word "Gehenna, now "the type of Hell," or a synonym for Hell, is borrowed from the name of this valley, which, originally the most beautiful valley about Jerusalem, was afterwards, in consequence of its having been polluted by the worship of Moloch

and other idols, degraded by the pious kings, and converted into a receptacle for all the filth of the city.

406-418. "Next Chemos," etc. For references to this god of the Moabites and to the places mentioned in the passage, see I Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 13; Numb. xxi. 25-29, xxv. I-9; Deut. xxxii. 49; Isaiah xv. 1, 2, 4, 5, and xvi. 2, 8, 9; and Jerem. xlviii. 1-47. The "Asphaltic Pool" is the Dead Sea.

419-437. "With these came they who," etc. Here are suggested, under the general names of Baalim and Ashtaroth, a number of the miscellaneous gods, male and female, of various parts of Syria, from the Euphrates to Egypt.-The dilatability or compressibility of the Spirits at will is a postulate for the whole action of Paradise Lost.

437-446. "With these, in troop, came Astoreth," etc. Astoreth was more particularly the goddess of the Phœnicians. See Jer. vii. 18; 1 Kings xi. 4, 5; and 2 Kings xxiii. 13.

446-457. "Thammuz came next," etc. Thammuz, a Syrian love-god, originally of the parts about Lebanon. The legend was that he was killed by a wild boar in Lebanon; and the phenomenon of the reddening at a particular season every year of the waters of the Adonis, a stream which flows from Lebanon to the sea near Byblos, was mythologically accounted for by supposing that the blood of Thammuz was then flowing afresh. There were annual festivals at Byblos in Phoenicia in honour of Thammuz, held every year at the season referred to. Women were the chief performers at these festivals, -the first part of which consisted in lamentations for the death of Thammuz, and the rest in rejoicings over his revival. The worship spread over the East, and even into Greece, where Thammuz became the celebrated Adonis, the beloved of Venus. See Ezek. viii. 12-14.

457-466. "Next came one who mourned in earnest,” etc. : i.e. Dagon, the god of the Philistines, whose cause for mourning, as related 1 Sam. v. I-9, was more real than that of Thammuz. "Azotus" is the Ashdod of that passage. Grunsel," i.e. "ground-sill" or "threshold."

66

The "leper"

his gaining

467-476. "Him followed Rimmon," etc. Rimmon, another Syrian god, worshipped at Damascus. whom he lost is Naaman (see 2 Kings v.): for of King Ahaz, see 2 Kings xvi. 10-20. 476-489. " After these appeared a crew.

VOL. III.

Osiris, Isis,