during which the Angels lay in stupor in Hell after their fall.

62, 63. "from those flames no light; but rather darkness visible," etc. It seems to have been a common idea that the flames of Hell gave no light.

73, 74. "As far removed," etc. See Introd. p. 34. The centre here is the Earth; pole is the extreme of the Mundane Universe.

75. "Oh how unlike the place from whence they fell." Not unlike one of the phrases in that passage of Cadmon's Anglo-Saxon Paraphrase which some suppose Milton to have consulted in the edition of Cadmon, with a Latin version by Francis Junius, published at Amsterdam in 1655 (see Introd. p. 15).

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80, 81. "Long after known in Palestine, and named Beelzebub." The word "Baal," meaning Lord," was a general name for "god" among the Semitic nations; and their different Baals or gods were designated by names compounded of this word and others either indicating localities or signifying qualities. Baal-zebub, or Beelzebub, means literally "the God of Flies." This particular deity was worshipped at Ekron in Palestine; and that he was an important deity may be gathered from his being referred to afterwards (Matthew xii. 24) as "Beelzebub, the prince of the devils."

82. "And thence in Heaven called SATAN." Satan, in Hebrew, means Enemy."

86. "didst outshine." The more usual construction would be "did outshine."

"All is

109. "And what is else not to be overcome?" not lost," Satan here says: "the unconquerable will, etc.

and courage never to submit or yield: and what else is there that is not to be overcome?" or " and what is there that else (ie. without the fore-mentioned qualities) is not to be overcome?" or "and in what else does not to be overcome (i.e. invincibility) consist?"

The Titans, in the

198. "Titanian or Earth-born." Greek mythology, were the progeny of Heaven and Earth, and were distinct from the Giants, who were represented either as sprung from the Earth itself or as sons of Tartarus and the Earth.

199, 200. "Briareos or Typhon," etc.

Briareos, a hun

dred-handed, fifty-headed monster, of Titan lineage, first aided Jupiter against the Titans, but afterwards helped the Giants in their war with him. Typhon or Typhoeus, a hundred-headed monster, who also warred against the gods, had his den in Cilicia, of which Tarsus was a city.

201-208. "Leviathan," etc. Commentators see in this passage a reference to the fables in books of vast whales and other rough-skinned sea-monsters seen by voyagers in the Scandinavian seas.

202. "Created hugest that swim the Ocean-stream”: a line purposely of difficult sound. 204. "night-foundered."

Milton has this exact word

once besides-Comus, 483. In both places he uses the word in the same sense, i.e. coming on of night.

brought to a stand by the

207. "under the lee," i. e. on that side of the monster which was protected from the wind.

232. "

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Pelorus," a promontory in Sicily.

235. Sublimed," etc. Sublimation in chemistry is the conversion of solid substances into vapour by heat, so that, in cooling, they may become solid again in a purer form.

254. "The mind is its own place." This is one of the only three places in which the word its occurs in Milton's poetry. The other two places are P. L., IV. 813, and Ode on the Nat. 106. See Essay on Milton's English, pp. 174-186.

257. "And what I should be, all but less than he": a phrase of difficult construction: meaning either "And what I should be-viz. all but just next to him," etc.; or "And what I should be, all but (except) that I am less than he," etc.

288-290. "Through optic glass the Tuscan artist . . . top of Fesole. or in Valdarno." The Tuscan artist is Galileo, who first employed the telescope for astronomical purposes about 1609. Fesolè is a height close to Florence. Valdarno is the valley of the Arno, in which Florence itself lies.

294. "ammiral," or admiral, here means the ship, not the commander.

303. "Vallombrosa." Literally "the shady valley," a beautiful valley eighteen miles from Florence, where Milton may have spent some days in 1638. See Wordsworth's verses "At Vallombrosa."

305. "Orion armed." The constellation Orion, called "armed" because of his sword and belt, was supposed to

bring stormy weather at certain seasons. Both Virgil and Petrarch have the exact phrase.

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307. Busiris," etc. An Egyptian king of this name figures in Greek legends as noted for his hostility to foreigners; and Milton follows Raleigh, in his Hist. of the World, in making him the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. -"Memphian," from the great city Memphis, stands for Egyptian generally.

339. "Amram's son," i.e. Moses. See Exod. vi. 16-20; also Exod. x. 12-15.

Rhine or the Danube.

353. "Rhene or the Danaw." 364-375. "Nor had they yet . . . got them new names,” etc. Observe in this passage Milton's adoption for his poem of the medieval belief that the Devils or Fallen Angels became the Gods of the various Heathen or Polytheistic religions. De Quincey, in one of his essays (Milton, vol. vi. of De Quincey's works), has ingeniously used the fact as a sufficient answer to the objection made by some to Milton on the ground that, in his Paradise Lost and other poems, he has blended the Pagan mythology and its names and forms with the Christian. Milton, De Quincey holds, had set himself right for ever on that subject by his adoption of the theory that the Pagan Deities, as but lapsed Angels, all belonged to the same Biblical concern.

381-505. "The chief were those," etc. In this splendid passage of 125 lines Milton, according to the idea mentioned in the preceding note, enumerates first the principal idols of the Semitic nations round about the Israelites.

392-405. First, Moloch, horrid king," etc. For the Scriptural accounts of Moloch (meaning "king" in Hebrew), here represented as more particularly the god of the Ammonites, see Levit. xviii. 21; 1 Kings xi. 7; 2 Sam. xii. 26-29: see also Judges xi. 12-18. The "opprobrious hill" is the Mount of Olives, on which Solomon built a temple to Moloch (1 Kings xi. 7, and 2 Kings xxiii. 13, 14). The "pleasant valley of Hinnom" (Ghe-Hinnom: see Jerem. vii. 31, 32) was on the east side of Jerusalem: here was Tophet, supposed to mean "the place of timbrels." The word " Gehenna, now "the type of Hell," or a synonym for Hell, is borrowed from the name of this valley, which, originally the most beautiful valley about Jerusalem, was afterwards, in consequence of its having been polluted by the worship of Moloch

and other idols, degraded by the pious kings, and converted into a receptacle for all the filth of the city.

406-418. " Next Chemos," etc. For references to this god of the Moabites and to the places mentioned in the passage, see I Kings xi. 7; 2 Kings xxiii. 13; Numb. xxi. 25-29, xxv. I-9; Deut. xxxii. 49; Isaiah xv. I, 2, 4, 5, and xvi. 2, 8, 9; and Jerem. xlviii. 1-47. The "Asphaltic Pool" is the Dead Sea.

Here are

419-437. "With these came they who," etc. suggested, under the general names of Baalim and Ashtaroth, a number of the miscellaneous gods, male and female, of various parts of Syria, from the Euphrates to Egypt.—The dilatability or compressibility of the Spirits at will is a postulate for the whole action of Paradise Lost.

437-446. "With these, in troop, came Astoreth," etc. Astoreth was more particularly the goddess of the Phoenicians. See Jer. vii. 18; 1 Kings xi. 4; 5; and 2 Kings xxiii. 13. 446-457. "Thammuz came next," etc. Thammuz, a Syrian love-god, originally of the parts about Lebanon. The legend was that he was killed by a wild boar in Lebanon; and the phenomenon of the reddening at a particular season every year of the waters of the Adonis, a stream which flows from Lebanon to the sea near Byblos, was mythologically accounted for by supposing that the blood of Thammuz was then flowing afresh. There were annual festivals at Byblos in Phoenicia in honour of Thammuz, held every year at the season referred to. Women were the chief performers at these festivals,-the first part of which consisted in lamentations for the death of Thammuz, and the rest in rejoicings over his revival. The worship spread over the East, and even into Greece, where Thammuz became the celebrated Adonis, the beloved of Venus. See Ezek. viii. 12-14.

457-466. "Next came one who mourned in earnest," etc. : i.e. Dagon, the god of the Philistines, whose cause for mourning, as related 1 Sam. v. 1-9, was more real than that of Thammuz. "Azotus" is the Ashdod of that passage. 66 Grunsel," i.e. "ground-sill" or "threshold."

467-476. "Him followed Rimmon," etc. Rimmon, another Syrian god, worshipped at Damascus. The "leper" whom he lost is Naaman (see 2 Kings v.): for his gaining of King Ahaz, see 2 Kings xvi. 10-20. 476-489. After these appeared a crew. . .

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Osiris, Isis,

Orus, and their train." Here we have the gods of Egypt, who were represented in all manner of grotesque animal forms. Hence the phrases "wandering gods” and “bleating gods."- -"Borrowed gold": it was with the gold borrowed from the Egyptians (Exod. xii. 35) that the Israelites were supposed to have made the golden calf (Exod. xxxii.) The "rebel king" who doubled that sin is Jeroboam (1 Kings xii. 26-33). See also Psalm cvi. 19, 20.

490-505. "Belial came last," etc. Next to the first place in such a procession the last place is, at least in poetic custom, the post of honour: hence Belial, who closes the procession, is a hardly less important personage than Moloch, who led it. See Deut. xiii. 13; 1 Sam. ii, 12.

502. "flown with insolence," etc., i.e. flowed, flooded, flushed.

503-505. The allusions here are to the narratives in Gen. xix. 8 and Judges xix. 22, 28. In the first edition the text stood thus :

"Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night

In Gibeah, when hospitable doors

Yielded their matrons, to prevent worse rape."

These words not being in strict accordance with the narratives referred to, Milton, for subsequent editions, altered the text to what it now is.

Having

507-521. "The rest were long to tell," etc. enumerated those great leading Spirits who afterwards became the chief Gods of the Semitic or Oriental nations, Milton does not think it necessary to be equally minute about those others, imagined by him probably as of inferior rank, who became afterwards the Gods of what we should now call the various Indo-European Polytheisms.- -At one of these Polytheisms, the Greek or Classical or Mediterranean, he does glance, because of its renown; for, in a few lines, we have the genealogy of "the Ionian gods," who were worshipped by the issue of Javan, the fourth son of Japheth, and the progenitor more particularly of the Gentiles of the Isles (Gen. x. 2-5). This theogony, however, is rapidly disposed of. Titan is named as the earliest supreme god; superseded by Saturn; who, in his turn, is dethroned by Zeus: the final expansion of the Greek mythology in its richest or Jovian stage being left to the imagination, helped by the