his Son among "created things." But examples of this sort of construction are not uncommon.

692. "the third part," etc. See note, Book 1. 632-3; and compare Rev. xii. 4.

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709. Ophiuchus," called also Anguitenens or Serpentarius, is a large constellation in the northern heaven. the names mean "the serpent-bearer."

842. "buxom air": i.e. "flexible," " 'pliant," bowed," the original meaning of buxom.

» "easily

891-916. "the hoary Deep, a dark illimitable ocean," etc. Every part of this description of the Deep of Chaos, as seen upwards from Hell-gates, is minutely studied and considered. Altogether it would be difficult to quote a passage from any poet so rich in purposely accumulated perplexities, learned and poetical, or in which such care is taken, and so successfully, to compel the mind to a rackingly intense conception of sheer Inconceivability.

939. a boggy Syrtis."

The Syrtes were two quicksands

on the northern coast of Africa.

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943-947. As when a gryphon pursues the Arimaspian," etc. The Arimaspians, in legend, were a oneeyed people of Scythia; who, in trying to get gold, had constant fights with creatures, called gryphons, partly eagle and partly lion, that guarded the mines.

964, 965. "Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name of Demogorgon." Orcus and Hades were two names for Pluto or his realm among the ancients. Demogorgon was a vague being, of tremendous occult powers of mischief, mysteriously hinted at in the classical poets, but first distinctly named, it is said, by the Christian writer Lactantius in the fourth century. He figures in Boccaccio and in Spenser (Faery Queene, I. v. 22, and IV. ii. 47).

977-987. "or, if some other place, from your dominion won. mine the revenge." The exact meaning of this passage is worth attending to. Satan asks Chaos and Night

to direct him the nearest way to Heaven; or, if (as he surmises) the new Universe of which he is in search has by this time been cut or scooped out of the upper part of Chaos immediately under Heaven, then to direct him the nearest way thither. As this new Universe is a space seized and subtracted from the ancient dominion of Chaos,-a bit of upper Chaos, so to speak, forcibly reclaimed by the Deity,

organised, and appended to Heaven,-Satan naturally appeals to the resentment of the Powers of Chaos, and promises them that, if they assist him, he will do his best to re-conquer the lost territory and reduce it back to Darkness.

1001-1006. "Encroached on still... first Hell... now lately Heaven and Earth," etc. This is the first distinct intimation to Satan that the new Universe of Man had actually been created. He had guessed so before leaving Hell; but it was still only a guess in his speech to Chaos a few lines back (977-980). The Anarch, in his complaint of the encroachments on his dominion, makes the fact certain. First, he says, there had been the establishment of Hell at the bottom of Chaos; but since that there had been an excavation into Chaos at the top, above the point where he and Satan then stood, to form the Heaven and Earth of the Human World. See diagram in Introd. p. 33.

1017-1020. "than when Argo"-the ship in which Jason went to Colchis for the golden fleece, 'passed through Bosporus," the straits into the Black Sea, "betwixt the justling rocks," i.e. the Symplegades; “or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned Charybdis," i.e. kept to the left of it, "and by the other whirlpool steered," i.e. by Scylla.

1023–1028. “ But, he once passed . . . Sin and Death

paved after him a broad and beaten way,” etc. The building of this bridge between Hell and the Human Universe is afterwards described at length (x. 235 et seq.).

1029, 1030. "reaching the utmost Orb of this frail World": i.e. not the outermost star or the star nearest Chaos, but the outermost boss or circle of the starry sphere as a whole.

1034-1042. "But now at last the sacred influence of light appears," etc. Imagine Satan now nearing the external shell of the Human World, somewhere on its upper side (see diagram, Introd. p. 33), where he could be aware of the light from the Empyrean glimmering down into Chaos.

1048. "undetermined square or round." Heaven, or the Empyrean, being really unbounded, cannot be said to have a figure, though the imagination tends rather to the spherical in diagram.

1051-1053. "And, fast by," i.e. fast by the Empyrean, "this pendent World," etc. On the absurd and disastrous mistake in the usual interpretation of this passage, see Introd. p. 35.

BOOK III.

1-55. Observe that this noble passage, besides being a pathetic lyric on Milton's own blindness, is also an apt introduction to the part of the Epic now reached. Hitherto the story has been down in Hell and Chaos; but now it rises into the abodes of Light, and the poet, delayed a moment by the novelty of the blaze, apostrophizes the new element.

7, 8. "Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream," etc.: ¿.e. "Or dost thou prefer to be called the pure Ethereal stream," etc., this use of hear being a Latinism.

25, 26. "drop serene .. . or dim suffusion”: two phrases from the medical science of Milton's day. Gutta serena, literally "drop serene," was that form of total blindness which left the eyes perfectly clear and without speck or blemish. Such was Milton's (see Sonnet XXII.).

35, 36. "blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, and Tiresias and Phineus." Thamyris or Thamyras was a mythical poet and musician of Thrace, mentioned by Homer; Mæonides is Homer himself, reputed the son of Mæon. Tiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, is a great character in the legends and dramas of the Greeks; Phineus, a blind king and prophet, is made by some a Thracian, by others an Arcadian. 38, 39. the wakeful bird [the nightingale] sings darkling." In Shakespeare (Lear, I. iv.) we have-"So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.”

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84. "interrupt”: the past participle passive (interruptus), "thrown ruggedly between."

168-170. "O Son," etc. All the names for Christ here introduced are, as Bishop Newton points out, Scriptural: see Matt. iii. 17; John i. 18; Rev. xix. 13; 1 Cor. i. 24.

217. "all the Heavenly Quire stood mute." It is noted here, by Bishop Newton, as more than a coincidence, that so the Fallen Angels had "sat mute" in Hell, when the mission was proposed which Satan alone undertook (see Book II. 417 et seq.).

247-265. "Thou wilt not," etc. Various Scriptural texts are embodied in this passage,—such as Psalm xvi. 10, Acts ii. 20, 1 Cor. xv. 55, Psalm lxviii. 18, Coloss. ii. 15, I Cor. xv. 26.

317-343. "All power I give thee," etc. Another metrical coagulation of Scriptural texts. See Matt. xxviii. 18; Eph. i. 20; Phil. ii. 9; 1 Thess. iv. 16; Matt. xxiv. 30, 31; Rev. xx. II; I Cor. xv. 51; 2 Pet. iii. 12, 13; Rev. xxi. I; 1 Cor. xv. 24-28; Psalm xcvii. 7; John v. 23. It is worthy of remark that Milton, in these speeches of the Father and the Son, should have been thus careful to suppress his own invention absolutely, and to keep close to the words of the Bible. This speech is tinged with many

texts besides those here cited.

353. "Immortal amarant." Amarant, which in Greek means "unfading," is the name given' by Pliny to a purple flower, real or imaginary, described as preserving its bloom long after being plucked.

362-364. "Now in loose garlands . . . smiled." The construction seems to be, "The bright pavement that shone like a sea of jasper” (i.e. of different colours, with green predominant)" smiled impurpled with celestial roses (the red among the forementioned flowers), "now thrown off thick in loose garlands.'

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372-415. Thee, Father," etc. These forty-four lines represent the choral hymn of the Angels, in honour first of the Father, and then of the Son. Among the texts of Scripture fused into the language the commentators have noted Isaiah vi. 2; Col. i. 15, 16; Rev. iv. 14; Heb. i. 3; John i. 9; Micah v. 15.

383. "Thee next they sang." Here Milton uses what is now the ordinary conjugation of the verb-sing, sang, sung. But, in general, he makes sung the preterite tense, as well as the past participle; and there is an instance only eleven lines back (line 372), “Thee, Father, first they sung." 413-415. "my song. my harp," etc. These expressions suggest that, though the passage which they conclude (lines 372-415) may be read as Milton's report of a choral hymn of the Angels, Milton himself joins the chorus.

418-422. "Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe of this round World . . . Satan alighted walks." To understand this passage exactly, look first at the World or Cosmos as figured in the diagram in Introd. p. 33, and then at the enlarged representation of the same, with its interior filled up with the "luminous inferior Orbs," or Spheres of the preCopernican system, at p. 41. The first convex," on

which Satan alights, is the outside shell of the whole World, resting or turning in Chaos. Fancy a globe of very opaque brown glass round a lamp, in a room otherwise dark, and a fly or moth drawn upwards to it by its dull glimmer and alighting upon it, and that will be a homely image of Satan's arrival upon the outside of the Cosmos.

427-429. "Save on that side," etc. The glimmering of light is greatest on the upper boss of the outside of the Cosmos, where it is nearest the Empyrean; and it was on this upper boss, it appears from the sequel, that Satan had alighted.

431-441. "As when a vulture," etc. Milton's figure

for the motions of the Fiend on the outside of the Universe is far more poetical than that just suggested. It may be explained thus:-"As when a vulture, bred on Imaus (the Himalayas, or 'snowy mountains'), leaving the remoter regions of Asia, makes for the Ganges or the Hydaspes (the Jhelum, one of the tributaries of the Indus) in search of prey, but on its way alights on the barren plains of Sericana (a tract of south-eastern Thibet and south-western China, inhabited by a people called by ancient geographers 'the Seres,' from whom came 'Sericum' or Silk), so the Fiend, coming from Hell and Chaos, and seeking admission into the Starry Universe which contains his prey, is kept lingering a while on its bleak exterior." Of the " cany waggons of the Chineses," made of light bamboo with sails and driven by the wind, Milton had read accounts in books. 444-497. "None yet; but store hereafter," etc. fifty-four lines are one of the most extraordinary passages of the poem.Though the bleak, windy, outside shell of the Cosmos was totally uninhabited when Satan alighted upon it, that was not to be long the case. For precisely this outside shell of the whole Cosmos, and not the Moon, as some had fancied, was to be the true Limbo of Vanities or Paradise of Fools, to which all the nonsense and vain enthusiasms of the Earth and of Man would tend, and whither they would infallibly arrive. And how would they reach that comfortless dwelling-ground? In explaining this, Milton gives a sketch by anticipation of the constitution of the Cosmos, according to his fancy of the old Astronomical System, thus:-The only opening into the interior of the Cosmos, or outlet from it, is at its topmost point, where it

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