434-438. "the birds. . . gratulate the sweet return of morn." In a Latin oratorical exercise of Milton during his days of Cambridge studentship, on the odd subject of the respective merits of Day and Night ("Utrum Dies an Nox præstantior sit?"), there are passages of description similar to some in this place. Thus, "How pleasant and desirable Day is to the race of living things what need is there to expound to you, when the very birds themselves cannot conceal their joy, but, leaving their little nests, as soon as it has dawned, either soothe all things by their sweetest song of concert from the tops of trees, or balancing themselves upward, fly as near as they can to the sun, eager to congratulate the returning light?"

449. "in wonted shape." In his usual shape, no longer disguised.

454. "flaws." See Par. Lost, X. 698 and note.-Mr. Ross annotates here:-"That it is derived from the Latin flatus is a mistake. It is from the same Teutonic root as flag and flake, and denotes a break, or crack, or sudden blast. The Swedish phrase for a 'flaw of wind' is a vind-flaga."

455. "pillared frame of Heaven." Job xxvi. 11. (Thyer.) Compare Comus, 597 et seq.

457-459. "Are to the main as inconsiderable," &c. : i.e." are as inconsiderable to the physical universe, or sum-total of things, called the macrocosm, as a sneeze is to man's individual body, which is sometimes called the microcosm, or little universe." Satan has just said that, during the storm of the preceding night, he was himself far-off-away at such a distance in the physical universe that he could hear the roar going on without being in it.

467-475. "Did I not tell thee . . . time and means.” Dunster notes, "Here is something to be understood after Did I not tell thee? The thing told we may suppose to be what Satan had before said, Book III. 351:

"Thy kingdom, though foretold

By prophet or by angel, unless thou
Endeavour, as thy father David did,
Thou never shalt obtain; ' &c."

There is certainly, as Dunster says, a sense of a deficiency of some words in the passage as it stands; for, though the syntax is complete if we connect line 467 with line 473, and read “Did Í not tell thee . . . thou shalt be what thou art ordained," &c., the meaning so resulting is not perfect. This gives interest to a note of Mr. Browne's on the passage. "There is," says Mr. Browne, "a copy of this Poem [the First Edition of Par. Reg.] in the King's Library [British Museum] carefully corrected throughout, apparently at the date of publication, in accordance with the printed directions [i.e. according to the printed list

of Errata]. At this place, in the same handwriting, occurs the following alteration, for which those directions give no authority :

"Did I not tell thee, soon thou shalt have cause

To wish thou never hadst rejected thus

The perfect season offered, with my aid

To win thy destined seat,

All to the push of Fate?

prolonging still

Pursue thy way,' &c."

478-480. "What I foretold thee," &c. See antè, line 374 et seq.

500. "virgin-born" said sarcastically.

502. "have heard." So in the original, but altered into "had" in most editions.

511. "flocked." So in the original, but changed into "flock" in many editions.

517. "which," i.e. "which phrase."

519. "stands," continues, endures.

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533, 534. a rock of adamant," ie. of diamond. The word also meant steel; but it originally meant simply "unsubduable " (from a priv., daμaw, I subdue), and was transferred by metaphor to these substances.

534. as a centre, firm": from the notion of the necessary stability of the centre of any sphere. Dunster quotes a similar expression from Chaucer's Squire's Tale: "Of his courage, as any centre, stable.”—In all the modern editions there is a semicolon after "firm"; but there is no point at all in the original edition. Nor is it necessary; for, instead of reading "both wise and good to the utmost of mere man," we may construe “firm, as a rock of adamant and as a centre, to the utmost of a mere man who is both wise and good."

542. "hippogrif": in allusion to Ariosto's Hippogrif, or winged horse, in the Orlando Furioso.

549. "the highest pinnacle." Matt. iv. 5, and Luke iv. 9. In Matthew this incident of the Temptation occurs in the middle; in Luke it comes last. Milton follows Luke. The word reруyov, which in both places is rendered "pinnacle" in our version, meant rather the parapet or ridge of the roof, spires and pinnacles in our sense hardly belonging to ancient architecture. Clearly, however, what Milton imagines is the very point of a spire: hence he makes it an equal miracle to stand there or to escape thence unhurt.

554. "progeny," descent, pedigree.

556.

"it is written," &c. Ps. xci. 11, 12.

560, 561. "Also it is written," &c. Deut. vi. 16.

561. "and stood": thus proving his divine power. Stood is emphatic, as also fell in the next line.

563. “As when Earth's son, Antaus (to compare small things with greatest)," &c. Twice in Par. Lost (II. 921, and X. 306) Milton has used this phrase from Virgil in introducing comparisons; and it occurs also in his Latin poems. Two comparisons are here brought in to illustrate Satan's fall from the pinnacle-that of the great Antæus, the son of Terra and Neptune, who, wrestling with Hercules (Alcides) in Irassa (a city in North Africa, where Pindar places the conflict), and always recovering from his falls by touching his mother Earth, was at length carried up into the air by the hero and there throttled; and that of the Theban Sphinx, who, when Edipus solved her riddle, flung herself headlong from the Cadmeia, or citadel of Thebes (called here "the Ismenian steep" as being on the river Ismenus).

576. "So, strook." See note, Par. Lost, II. 165.

581. "So Satan fell." Observe that this is the fifth time that the word fell is introduced in the description. The poet dwells on the contrast between Satan's falling from the pinnacle and Christ's standing.

581, 582. "a fiery globe of Angels": literally a sphere or globalar body. See note, Par. Lost, II. 512.

598, 599. "enshrined," &c. John i. 14; 2 Cor. v. I. (Dunster.)

600. "whatever place": i.e. in whatever place.

604. "thief of Paradise." See Par. Lost, IV. 192.

605. “debel”: war down, from the Latin debellare.

Richardson in

his Dict. gives an instance of the word from Warner's Albion's England, and instances of debellate and debellation from Bacon and Sir Thomas More.

611. “his snares are broke." Ps. cxxiv. 7. (Dunster.)

612. "be failed": has disappeared—in allusion to the notion, assumed in Par. Lost (see XI. 829 et seq. and note), that after the fall, or at least at the Deluge, the site of Paradise was obliterated.

619. an autumnal star": a meteor or falling star. frequent in August.

These are

620, 621. "or lightning," &c. Luke x. 18 (Newton), and Rom. xvi. 20 (Dunster).

624. "Abaddon." In Rev. ix. 11, Abaddon or Apollyon is the name of the Angel of the bottomless pit; but in the Old Testament, as Mr. Keightley remarks, the word Abaddon (Destruction) is used for the pit itself, or as equivalent to Hell or Erebos.

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628. thy demoniac holds," i.e. the terrestrial elements and all other haunts in our Universe-the expulsion of the Devils from which back to Hell was to be, according to the poem, the true consummation of Christ's victory. But there is a reference to demoniac possession of

the human body, as is shown by what follows. See Matt. viii. 28-32, and Rev. xviii. 2.

633. "both Worlds": Heaven, or the Empyreal World, to which the Angels who are singing belong; and the Universe, or Man's World.

634. "Queller of Satan." Compare Par. Lost, XII. 311.

636-639. "Thus they," &c. Warton thinks these four lines a rather feeble ending for the poem, and regrets that it did not end at line 635. Few will agree with him. On the contrary, the quiet ending of the poem by the private or unmarked return of Christ to his mother's house, thence to begin his mission, will seem fine to most.