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335, 336. "though in my choice not to incur": i.e. "dreadful, . . . though it be in my choice not to incur the danger."

337. "purpose": discourse (Fr. propos), as at IV. 337. 342-354. "In sign whereof," &c. Gen. ii. 19.

350. "these": i.e. the beasts.

351. "stooped," this is the participle, and not the past tense. 356. "Heavenly Vision." Acts xxvi. 19. (Dunster.) 379, 380. "Let not my words offend thee," &c. (Newton.)

Gen. xviii. 30.

384. "sort": issue, come to pass, succeed (Fr. sortir). Instances of the word in this sense, from Holinshed, Bacon, and others, are given in Richardson's Dictionary.

386-388. "but, in disparity, the one intense," &c. The meaning is, "but, in a state of inequality between two creatures, in which the one is intense (tensely wound up like a musical string), the other still remiss (slack), they cannot well suit or harmonize."

395. "Much less," &c. The force of this expression depends on what has gone before. "It is the pairs of each kind that are found rejoicing with each other-the lion with the lioness, the tiger with the tigress, &c.; much less, if you take individuals of different kinds, as an ox with an ape, a bird with a beast, or a fish with a fowl, can there be fit society between them; and least of all can man and beast be companions."

406, 407. "none I know second to me or like." Horace (Od. 1. xii. 17):

"Unde nil majus generatur ipso,

Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum."

Newton quotes

410. "inferior infinite descents": i.e. "inferior by infinite descents." 412-414. "To attain," &c. Rom. xi. 33. (Hume.)

421. "through all numbers absolute." Bishop Newton quotes from Cicero the phrases "omnibus numeris absolutus," and "expletum omnibus suis numeris," as suggesting Milton's expression. Hume had preceded him in the first quotation.

445. "Knew it not good," &c. Gen. ii. 18.

453-459. "My earthly by his heavenly overpowered," &c. (Todd), and Numb. xxiv. 4 (Dunster).

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Dan. x. 17

465. "left side." This is an addition of the commentators, Scripture (Gen. ii. 21) not mentioning from which side the rib was taken. The left is chosen as nearest the heart; hence the significance of "cordial" in the next line.

485. "Led by her Heavenly Maker." Gen. ii. 22.

66

494. nor enviest": "nor grudgest," connected with "hast fulfilled." 495-499. "Bone of my bone," &c. Gen. ii. 23.

503. "That would be wooed, and not unsought be won." Shakespeare, Rich. III., I. ii. :

"She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed;

She is a woman, therefore to be won."

534. "failed in me": made a slip in my creation.

Todd quote

540-559. "For well I understand," &c. For farther information as to Milton's views of the relations of the sexes see his Divorce Tracts. See also Samson Agonistes, 1025-1033. The intellectual superiority of the Man over the Woman was one of Milton's characteristic tenets.

547. "absolute" perfect.

66

:

555, 556. "As one intended first, not after made occasionally." Hume recognises this as a contradiction of an opinion of Aristotle, who, according to an old commentator on Genesis ii. 18, calls woman “animal occasionatum, non per se et ex principali naturæ intentione generatum, sed ex occasione."--" occasionally," for a suppleimentary purpose.

565. "attributing;" accented on the first syllable. See antè, lines 107 and 155.

569. “Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love." Ephes. v. 28; 1 Peter iii. 7. There is a recollection also of the words of the English

Marriage Service.

571-573.

"Oft-times nothing profits more

Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well managed."”

This aphorism is peculiarly characteristic of Milton. His own life. was, in a great measure, founded upon it; and he frequently asserts and expounds it.

576. "adorn;" an adjective for "adorned," formed, as Mr. Keightley notes, from the Italian adorno.

578. "who sees when thou art seen least wise"; i.e. "who beholds thee in those moments when thou art to be seen in thy least wise condition.” 591. "judicious": full of judgment or correct apprehension: "scale" ladder, from the Italian scala.

609, 610. "from the sense variously representing": i.e. objects brought before me from the senses, which represent things in all their varieties.

631, 632. "the Earth's green Cape and verdant Isles Hesperean.” Cape Verd and the Cape Verd Islands to the west of Africa. Hesperean so spelt in the original edition.

634. "whom to love is to obey." 1 John v. 3.

(Newton.)

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645. “benediction." The word does not mean "blessing" here, but only "gracious speaking." "Since to part": i.e. "Since we are to part.' 653. "Adam to his bower." The conversation of Adam with Raphael had taken place in the bower; but Adam is to be supposed as having, at its close, followed Raphael (line 645) to the entrance of the bower.

BOOK IX.

2. “as with his friend," &c. Exod. xxxiii. 11. (Todd.)

13-19. "argument not less but more heroic than the wrath of stern Achilles... or the rage of Turnus . . or Neptune's ire, or Juno's," &c. Milton here asserts the theme of his poem to be more heroic than the themes of the three greatest Epics of past ages-the Iliad, the main subject of which, as the first line declares, is "the wrath of Achilles," and one of the incidents of which is the pursuit of Hector by Achilles round the walls of Troy; the Æneid, the latter portion of which relates the anger of Turnus on account of the promise of Lavinia to Æneas, and much of the plot of which turns on the hostility of Juno to Æneas, the son of Cytherea, or Venus; the Odyssey, the hero of which, Ulysses, is an object of persecution to Neptune.

21. my celestial Patroness": i.e. Urania. See Book VII. 1, 2, and

note.

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23, 24. inspires easy my unpremeditated verse." If this is to be understood literally, Milton's habits of composition had undergone a change since his earlier days. The manuscripts of his early poems show him to have been then, if not a laborious and slow writer, at least a most painstaking and fastidious one-erasing, altering, and correcting with extraordinary pains.

25, 26.

"Since first this subject for heroic song

Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late.”

The subject had first pleased him in or about 1640, when it was thought of for a Drama-after which there had been " long choosing" between it and other subjects; and not till about 1658, when Milton was fifty

years of age, had the actual composition of the Epic been seriously begun. See the story in detail, Introd. pp. 40-50.

29, 30. "chief mastery to dissect . . . fabled knights." For the construction of this, some ellipsis must be supposed between it and what precedes; thus "wars, hitherto deemed the only heroic argument, it being deemed chief mastery to dissect," &c.-Dissect, "to cut and carve :" an allusion to the minute descriptions of wounds in the Epic poets.

33-35. "races and games," as in Iliad, xxiii. and Eneid, v. (Newton); "tilting furniture, emblazoned shields," as in Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Spenser's Faery Queene, Ariosto, Boiardo, &c.

35. “impresses;" spelt "impreses" in the original text; from the Italian impresa, a device or emblem used on a shield or otherwise. Among the prose remains of Drummond of Hawthornden is a little Discourse upon Impresas, in which he distinguishes the impresa proper from the emblem in general. “An impresa,” he says, "is a demonstration and manifestation of some notable and excellent thought of him that conceiveth it and useth it; and it belongs only to him, and is his property, and so properly that the successors may not use the impresa of their predecessor and parents, except the impresas be incorporated into the arms of the house of which they are descended, or they would show they have the self-same thought which they had which went before them. It is quite contrary with the emblem: emblems of the deceased may be used by others." An impresa, he adds, may consist of some symbolical figure or figures only, or of such figures and some relative words or motto.

36. "Bases." According to Todd, on the authority of Nares's Glossary, this word signifies the kilt which hung from the waist of knights on horseback to about the knees. It seems, in fact, a heroic word for lower garments.-" tinsel trappings." Mr. Keightley quotes the exact phrase from Spenser, F. Q. III. i. 15.

"Another

37, 38. "marshalled feast. . . sewers and seneshals." allusion," says Todd, "to the magnificence of elder days. The marshal placed the guests according to their rank; the sewer marched in before the meats, and arranged them on the table, and was originally called asseour from the French asseoir, to set down; and the seneschal was the house-steward." Hume had noted to the same effect.

39. "The skill of artifice (i.e. mere artizanship) or office mean," &c. And yet writers of heroic poems of the kind described had been Spenser, Ariosto, and the like.

44-46. "unless an age too late, or cold climate, or years, damp," &c.: i.e. "unless the present late period of the world, or this cold climate of England, or my own years, now verging on sixty, damp," &c. In his Reason of Church Government, Milton similarly makes the probability

of his success in an epic dependent on there being "nothing adverse in our climate, or the fate of this age." When the words were written (1641), it was not necessary to speak of his years.

52. "Night's hemisphere." One half of the Earth being in shadow constitutes night.

59. "From compassing the Earth." Job i. 7. (Todd.)

60, 61. “Since Uriel . . . descried . . . and forewarned." See Book IV. 555-575

64-66. "thrice the equinoctial line he circled. . . each colure." Of the seven days during which Satan went round and round the Earth, always keeping himself on its dark side, three were spent in moving from east to west on the equatorial line; four in moving round from pole to pole, or from north to south and back--in which second way of moving he would traverse (or go along) the two colures-i.e. two great circles, so named by astronomers, drawn from the poles. Originally all great circles passing through the poles were called colures (Kóλovpot, curtailed); but the term was at length confined to the two great circles drawn from the poles through the equinoxes and the solstices respectively. The one was called the Equinoctial colure, the other the Solstitial. The term colure is little used now.

67. "on the coast averse": i.e. "on that side of Eden which was averse."

69-73. "There was a place, now not . . . where Tigris," &c. See Book IV. 223-246, and note.

70. "wrought;" spelt "wraught" in the original text.

76-82. "Sea he had searched . . . Ganges and Indus." Milton here returns upon Satan's seven days of wandering round and round the Earth, already described astronomically, in order to describe them more geographically. The Fiend, on leaving Eden (Book IV. 8611015), had gone northward over the Pontus Euxinus or Black Sea, and over the Palus Mæotis or Sea of Azof, and so still northward, over what is now Russian territory, as far as beyond the Siberian river Ob or Obe, which flows into the Arctic sea; whence, continuing round the pole and descending on the other side of the globe, he had gone southward again as far as the Antarctic sea and pole. So much for his travels north and south. In length, i.e. measured as longitude in au equatorial direction, his journeys had extended from the Syrian river, Orontes, west of Eden, to the Isthmus of Darien, and so still west, completing the great circle to India on the east of Eden. Observe how true to the imagined reality is the mention of Ganges here before Indus. In the circuit described Satan would come upon the Ganges first.

86-96. "The Serpent subtlest," &c. Gen. iii. 1. that Landor censured these lines as "some of the

Mr. Browne notes dullest in Milton,"

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