P. 90. the Wise Man: Ecclesiastes xi. 8.

P. 90. Lynceus: the keen-sighted Argonaut.

To Cyriac Skinner

P. 91. 1. this three years' day: this day three years ago. Milton became completely blind in 1652, so this sonnet must have been written in 1655. though clear: see passage from Second Defence, p. 13.

P. 91. 7. bate: from 'abate.'

P. 91. 8. bear up and steer right onward: the nautical sense of 'bear up,' i.e. to put the ship before the wind, is indicated by what follows. 10. conscience: consciousness.

P. 91.

P. 91. 12. talks: the Trin. Coll. Ms. reading; the word 'rings' was substituted by Phillips in his printed copy of 1694; 'talks' does not sound so well, in the verse, but it is more modest.

P. 91. 13. mask: masquerade.

On his deceased wife

P. 91. 1. my late espoused saint: his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, whom he married November 12, 1656; she died in February, 1658. P. 91. 2. Alcestis brought back to life by Herakles (Hercules). her glad husband: Admetus, King of Phere in Thessaly. See Browning's 'Balaustion's Adventure, including a Transcript from [the Alkestis of] Euripides.'

P. 91. 5. as whom as one whom.

P. 91. 6. Purification: Leviticus xii.

P. 91. 10. her face was veiled: Alcestis was still in his mind. Browning's Balaustion's Adventure,' when Hercules returns with her:

P. 92. d. 1689.

'Under the great guard of one arm, there leant

A shrouded something, live and woman-like,
Propped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion coat.
There is no telling how the hero twitched

The veil off and there stood, with such fixed eyes
And such slow smile, Alkestis' silent self!'

To Emeric Bigot. (Familiar Letters, No. XXI.)

In

Emeric Bigot: a French scholar, native of Rouen; b. 1626,

P. 92. King Telephus of the Mysians: wounded by Achilles and by him healed with the rust of his spear; and in return Telephus directed the Greeks on their way to Troy.

Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost

P. 96. 2. Or of the Eternal: or may I, unblamed, express thee as the coeternal beam of the Eternal.

P. 96. 6. increate: qualifies 'bright effluence.'

P. 96. 7. Or hearest thou rather: or approvest thou rather the appellation of pure ethereal stream; 'hearest' is a classicism: 'Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis' (father of the morning, or if Janus thou hearest more willingly).— Horace, Sat. II., vi. 20, cited by Bentley.

P. 97. 13. wing: flight.

P. 97. 17. With other notes: Orpheus made a hymn to Night, which is still extant; he also wrote of the creation out of Chaos. See 'Apoll. Rhodius,' i. 493. Orpheus was inspired by his mother Calliope only, Milton by the heavenly Muse; therefore he boasts that he sung with other notes than Orpheus, though the subjects were the same. Richardson. P. 97. 21. hard and rare: evidently after Virgil's Æneid, vi. 126–129. P. 97. 25. a drop serene: gutta serena, i.e. amaurosis.

P. 97. 26. dim suffusion: cataract.

P. 97. 34. So appears to be used optatively, as Lat. sic, Greek is, would that I were equalled with them in renown.

P. 97. 35. Thamyris: a Thracian bard, mentioned by Homer, Iliad, ii. 595:

'he, over-bold,

Boasted himself preeminent in song,

Ev'n though the daughters of Olympian Jove,
The Muses, were his rivals: they in wrath,
Him of his sight at once and power of song
Amerced, and bade his hand forget the lyre.'

- Earl of Derby's Translation, 692–697.

P. 97. 35. Mæonides: a patronymic of Homer. P. 97. 36. Tiresias: the famous blind soothsayer of Thebes, cui profundum cæcitas lumen dedit' (to whom his blindness gave deep sight), says Milton, in his De Idea Platonica, v. 25.

P. 97. 36. Phineus: a blind soothsayer, who, according to some authorities, was king of Salmydessus, in Thrace. By reason of his cruelty to his sons, who had been falsely accused, he was tormented by the Harpies, until delivered from them by the Argonauts, in return for prophetic information in regard to their voyage.

P. 97. 39. darkling: in the dark.

P. 97. 42. Day: note the emphasis imparted to this initial monosyllabic word, which receives the ictus and is followed by a pause; Milton felt that the loss of sight was fully compensated for by an inward celestial light.

P. 98. 1. Urania: the Heavenly Muse invoked in the opening of the poem.

P. 98. 4. Pegaséan wing: above the flight of 'the poet's winged steed' of classical mythology.

P. 98. 5. the meaning, not the name: Urania was the name of one of the Grecian Muses; he invokes not her, but what her name signifies, the Heavenly one. See vv. 38, 39.

P. 98. 8. Before the hills appeared: Prov. viii. 23–31.

P. 98. 10. didst play: the King James's version, Prov. viii. 30, reads, 'rejoicing always before him'; the Vulgate, 'ludens coram eo omni tempore.' P. 98. 15. thy tempering: the empyreal air was tempered for, adapted to, his breathing, as a mortal, by the Heavenly Muse.

P. 98. 17. this flying steed: ie. this higher poetic inspiration than that represented by the classical Pegasus; unreined: unbridled, infrenis. P. 98. 18. Bellerophon: thrown from Pegasus when attempting to soar upon the winged horse to heaven.

P. 99. 19. Aleian field: in Asia Minor, where Bellerophon, after he was thrown from Pegasus, wandered and perished; πedíov тò 'Aλýïov, Iliad, vi. 201, land of wandering (ăλŋ).

P. 99. 20. erroneous there to wander: to wander without knowing whither; Lat. erroneus; forlorn: entirely lost; 'for' is intensive. P. 99. 21. Half yet remains unsung: half of the episode, not of the whole work, .. the episode has two principal parts, the war in heaven, and the new creation; the one was sung, but the other re

...

...

mained unsung, . . . but narrower bound, . . . this other half is not rapt so much into the invisible world as the former, it is confined in narrower compass, and bound within the visible sphere of day.' - Newton.

narrower more narrowly.

P. 99. 26. on evil days though fallen: a pathetic emotional repetition; note the artistic change in the order of the words. Macaulay justly characterizes the thirty years which succeeded the protectorate as 'the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. . . . Then came those days never to be recalled without a blush the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of

the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival [Louis XIV.] that he might trample on his people, sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. . . . Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.'

P. 99. 33. Bacchus and his revellers: Charles II. and his Court, from whom Milton had reason to fear a similar fate to that of the Thracian bard, Orpheus, who was torn to pieces by the Bacchanalian women of Rhodope.

P. 99. 38. so fail not thou: i.e. to defend me as the Muse Calliope failed to defend her son, Orpheus.

P. 99.
1. no more of talk: i.e. as in the foregoing episode.
P. 99. 5. venial: allowable, fitting.

P. 100. 14–19. the wrath of stern Achilles . . . Cytherea's son : these are not the arguments (subjects) proper of the three epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid; as Newton pointed out, the poet mentions certain angers or enmities, the wrath of Achilles, the rage of Turnus, Neptune's and Juno's ire; 'the anger, etc. (v. 10) of Heaven which he is about to sing is an argument more heroic, not only than the anger of men, of Achilles and Turnus, but than that even of the gods, of Neptune and Juno;' his foe: Hector; Turnus: king of the Rutuli when Æneas arrived in Italy; Lavinia: daughter of King Latinus, betrothed to Turnus, but afterward given in marriage to Eneas; the Greek: Ulysses; Cytherea's son: Æneas; Cytherea, a surname of Venus, from the island Cythera, famous for her worship.

P. 100.

19. Perplexed the Greek: a respective construction, 'perplexed the Greek' looks back to 'Neptune's ire,' 'Cytherea's son,' to Juno's ire. Bentley's note is remarkable: 'Juno's that long perplexed the Greek: when, contrary, the Greek was her favourite all along.'

P. 100.

20. answerable: corresponding to the high argument.

P. 100. 21. my celestial Patroness: Urania, the Heavenly Muse.

P. 100.

23. inspires: Milton regarded himself as inspired by the Holy Spirit in the composition of Paradise Lost.'

P. 100. 25. Since first this subject: Milton, as has been seen, had meditated, as early as 1638, an epic poem to be based on legendary British history, with King Arthur for its hero, a subject which it appears he abandoned in the course of two or three years. While still undecided, he jotted down ninety-nine different subjects, sixty-one Scriptural, thirty-eight from British history. Among the former, ' Paradise Lost' appears first of all. These jottings occupy seven pages of the Cambridge Mss. It is evident that by 1640, Milton was quite decided as to the subject of 'Paradise Lost,' but not as to the form of his work. It was first as a tragedy that he conceived it, on the model of the Grecian drama with choruses. His nephew, Edward Phillips, informs us that several years before the poem was begun (about 1642, according to Aubrey), Satan's address to the sun (Book iv. 32-41) was shown him as designed for the beginning of the tragedy. The composition of the poem was begun, according to Phillips, about 1658, the poet being then fifty years of age. The student should read, in connection with this subject, the thirteenth chapter of Mark Pattison's Life of Milton.'

P. 100. 35. Impresses: devices or emblems used on shields or otherwise.' Keightley alludes to the enumeration of the devices of the nobles of England, in the tenth Canto of the 'Orlando Furioso.'

P. 100. 36. bases: the base was a skirt or kilt which hung down from the waist to the knees of the knight when on horseback.'

P. 100. 37. marshalled feast: from Minshew's "Guide into Tongues," it appears that the marshal placed the guests according to their rank, and saw that they were properly served; 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, or place; and the Seneshal was the household-steward.' Todd.

P. 100. 41. Me... higher argument remains: i.e. for me.

P. 101. 44. an age too late: Milton might well feel, in the reign of the 'merry monarch,' that he was treating his high argument in an age too late.

P. 101. 45, 46. my intended wing depressed: 'wing' is used, by metonymy, for flight.' Keightley incorrectly puts a comma after 'wing,' 'intended wing depressed' being a case of the placing of a noun between two epithets, usual with Milton, the epithet following the noun qualifying the noun as qualified by the preceding epithet. Rev. James Robert Boyd, in his edition of the P. L.,' explains ' intended,' 'stretched out'; but the word is undoubtedly used in its present sense of 'purposed.'