mere mention of Crete, Ida, Olympus, Delphi, and Dodona. The original theogonies of the lands west of Greece-viz. : Italy and Spain ("the Hesperian Fields"), Gaul (“the Celtic"), and Britain (with other "utmost Isles")—are represented as branching off from the Grecian theogony in its Saturnian stage. This branching off is connected with the legend of the flight of Saturn into Italy, as in Æn. viii. 319-20.- -The Scandinavian and Slavonian mythologies, it will be seen, are not even named, any more than those of the Mongolian and Negro races. The founders of these were as yet among the obscurest of the Devils.

534. "Azazel." The name, according to Hume, signifies in Hebrew "the scape-goat (Levit. xvi.); but Newton translates it "brave in retreat."

550. "Dorian mood," i.e. the Doric or grave style of music, as distinct from the Lydian or Phrygian. Compare Alleg. 136.

565. "with ordered spear and shield." This and other passages show Milton's acquaintance with military terms and manœuvres. To order arms," which soldiers always do when they come to a halt, is to let them drop perpendicularly by their sides, the butts on the ground.

575, 576. "that small infantry," etc. : i.e. the Pygmies, a legendary nation of Indian or Ethiopian dwarfs.

576-587. "all the giant brood of Phlegra," etc. In this passage of finely-sounding proper names, Milton connects the great wars of epic legend, ancient and modern:-the primæval wars of the Giants and Gods at Phlegra in Macedonia; the Trojan and Theban wars sung by the Greek poets; those of the British Arthur; and the combats and joustings between the Christians and the Saracens all along the Mediterranean, celebrated in medieval romances. Among the legends of Charlemain and his Paladins is that of their defeat, and of the death of Roland, at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees, not far from Fontarabia.

609, 610. "amerced of Heaven," i.e. “ punished with the loss of Heaven." The word "to amerce" (noun amercement or amerciament) was an old law term, meaning "to punish by a fine at the discretion of the Court," and derived from the French phrase à merci.

618. "Attention held them mute." Another military phrase. When soldiers listen, they "stand at attention."

632, 633. "whose exile hath emptied Heaven." A rhetorical exaggeration only a third part of the heavenly host had joined Satan (11. 692, V. 710, VI. 156).

673, 674. "metallic ore, the work of sulphur." The science of the Middle Ages, inherited by Paracelsus, based itself on a doctrine that sulphur and mercury were the two all-pervading substances in nature (unless salt was to be taken as a third), generating all things between them.

686. "Ransacked the Centre.” Centre here is the Earth as a whole, not its interior merely. In old literature the Earth, as the supposed centre of the Universe, was frequently called "the centre" par excellence. Thus Shakespeare (Troil. and Cres. I. iii.):

"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place."

728. "cressets": open vessels, with tarred ropes or the like burning in them.

739, 740. "in Ausonian land [i.e. Italy] men call him Mulciber." Observe the identification here of Mammon with Vulcan, one of whose names was Mulciber (the Softener).

756. "Pandemonium." Some think Milton the inventor of the word, formed on the analogy of Pantheon.

etc.

789-792. "Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest shapes," See note 419-437. There is a quaint ingenuity in the present application of Milton's postulate as to the expansibility or compressibility of the forms of the Spirits.

2.

BOOK II.

"Ormus": now Hormuz, an island in the Persian Gulf. 9. "by success untaught." The word "success" is here used not for "good fortune," but as equivalent merely to "event "" or "issue."

76, 77. "descent and fall to us is adverse," i.e. inconsistent with our nature. It is a proposition with Milton, as to the physical nature of the Angels, that they are not, like men, subject to gravitation. The Rebel Angels had not properly fallen though Chaos into Hell; they had been driven down (lines 77-81). See Introd. p. 29.

100, 101.

"we are at worst on this side nothing." This

is sometimes printed, "we are, at worst, on this side nothing”; which spoils the meaning. Moloch means "We are now already at the worst that is possible on this side of total annihilation."

165. "strook." See Note to Od. Nat. 95.

278. "the sensible of pain," i.e. either the sensible property of pain, or the sensibility to pain.

Ob

299-309. "Which when Beelzebub perceived," etc. serve how Milton reserves the decisive speech for the great angel, Beelzebub, the chief next to Satan, and already in private possession of his plans. In the preceding speeches Milton intended, doubtless, to represent poetically three very common types even of human statesmanship. Some men,

The

in emergencies, take the Moloch view of affairs, which recommends boisterous action at all hazards; others take the Belial view, which recommends slothful and epicurean acquiescence; and others the Mammon view, which believes in the material industries and the accumulation of wealth. Angels in the Council are evidently inclining to Belial's view, or to that as modified by Mammon, when a greater statesman than any of the three strikes in with a specific plan of action, not vague and blustering like Moloch's, but subtly adapted to the exigencies.

379, 380. "first devised by Satan, and in part proposed." See 1. 650-656.

410. "The happy Isle." Not "the earth hanging in the sea of air," as Bishop Newton and the commentators generally have supposed, for the Angels know nothing whatever as yet of the Earth or its environment. They know only vaguely of some kind of starry world about to be created, or perhaps created already; and this world, the whole Mundane Universe, hung somewhere in Chaos between Heaven and Hell, is what Beelzebub imagines as "the happy Isle" that might be reached.

432-444. Long is the way," etc. In these twelve lines, we have, from Satan's lips, a farther general sketch of the Miltonic zones or divisions of infinite Space, taken in ascending series. First there is Hell, or the huge convex of fire in which the speaker and his hearers are; when that is burst, and the adamantine gates overhead are passed, Chaos is reached; and somewhere over Chaos is the unknown new Starry World.

512. "A globe of fiery Seraphim." Globe, though generally interpreted here as "a battalion in circle," means really, in Milton's fancy, a solid globe or sphere; for the Angels, by their nature, may cluster in globes, cubes, or other solid figures. See Introd. p. 29, and previous notes, I. 789-792, and II. 76, 77. See also Par. Reg., IV. 581-2.

532. "brigads": so spelt, and accented on the first syllable, as at I. 675.

542-546. "As when Alcides the Euboic sea." Alcides is Hercules; and the allusions are to the legend of his death, as told by Ovid, Metam. ix.

577-581. "Styx . . . Acheron . . . Cocytus . . . Phlege ton. Milton gives the etymologies of these names, which come from Greek verbs, meaning respectively "to hate," "to grieve," " to lament," and "to burn."- "Lethe," the great river" (line 583), means "oblivion."

66

592, 593. "that Serbonian bog betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old." Damietta is a town in Egypt close to the easternmost mouth of the Nile; Mount Casius, now Cape Kareroon, is on the Egyptian coast farther to the east ; the Serbonian bog is Lake Serbonis in that vicinity.

595. "frore": an old form for froze or frozen: German, gefroren.

638, 639. "from Bengala, or the isles of Ternate and Tidore." Bengala is Bengal; Ternate and Tidore are two of the Moluccas.

641, 642. "Through the wide Ethiopian," i.e. through the Indian Ocean on its African side; "to the Cape," i.e. to the Cape of Good Hope; 'ply stemming nightly toward the Pole," i.e. toward the South Pole, directed at night by the Southern Cross.

etc.

659-661. "Far less abhorred than these vexed Scylla,"

By Circe's bewitchment, the nymph Scylla, when she bathed, was changed below the waist into hideous barking dogs. Having thrown herself into the sea between the Calabrian coast of Italy and Sicily (called Trinacria), she was changed into the famous rock or whirlpool.

662-666. "the night-hag," etc. Milton here passes to the Norse or Scandinavian mythology, in which Lapland is a great region of witchcraft.

678. "God and his Son except," etc.

A curious construc

tion, inasmuch as, taken exactly, it would include God and

his Son among
of construction are not uncommon.

"created things." But examples of this sort

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

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

"buxom air": i.e. "flexible,' 66 842. bowed," the original meaning of buxom.

pliant,"

66

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.

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,