1. 285. Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 344.

1. 290. Psalm civ. 7.

1. 299. torrent;-rushing (as 'current' =‘running' in line 67, and 'serpent' ='creeping' in line 302).

1. 306. perpetual;-unbroken. So sulcos perpetuos ducere' (Cato, De Re Rusticâ 33).

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1. 321. Bentley corrected smelling' of the early editions (inadvertently printed in the text) to swelling.' (Georgics, iv. 121.)

Corny;-bearing corn. Keightley remarks that in Gen. xli. 22, the word'stalk' should be translated reed.' In Lisse's Du Bartas it is said of the rain that it drown'd the corny ranks.'

1. 323. bair;- by a natural metaphor for the foliage, as 'coma' in Latin. (Horace, Odes, i. 21. 5; iv. 7. 2.)

implicit;-entangled (implico).

1. 327. Cf. L'Allegro 78.

1. 329. Like Calypso's bower. (Odyssey, v. 13.)

1. 335. Milton here follows the received (but incorrect) translation of Gen. ii. 5, which should be And no plant of the field was as yet in the earth.' (Keightley.) The translation of Tremellius and Junius (used by Milton for the references in his Christian Doctrine) has omnemque herbam agri, quae nondum fuisset oritura.'

1. 358. Cf. Spenser, Hymn to Heavenly Beauty 53

All sow'd with glistering stars, more thick than grass.'

1. 359. Keightley notes the discrepancy between this narrative and that in Bk. iii. 716.

1. 366. Venus is mentioned last for emphasis, a classic and Scripture usage. Galileo's telescope had shewn that Venus has phases like the moon. (Keightley.)

1. 372. Cf. Psalm xix. 5, and Faery Queene, I. v. 2.

1. 373. Cf. Carew's lines:

'The yellow planets, and the gray

Dawn shall attend thee on thy way.'

1. 375. Job xxxviii. 31. The picture by Guido, representing the chariot of the Sun, with Aurora flying before it, and seven nymphs (who may be intended for the Pleiades) dancing around it, is supposed to have suggested

these lines.

1. 382. Milton has here, and at xii. 86, anglicised the Ovidian adjective 'dividuus'; and in Areopagitica, he writes: So that a man may say, his religion is no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable.'

1. 388. The creeping things' here named are of the sea (Psalm civ. 25). Those of the earth are mentioned at line 452. The Hebrew word includes all kinds of fish.

1. 402. scull;-school or shoal (A.S. sceole). used in Norfolk.' (Todd.)

1. 409 On smooth (water).

"Scull of herrings" is still

1. 410. bended dolphins ;-cf. 'tergo delphina recurvo.' Ovid, Fasti, ii. 113. By dolphins here are meant porpoises. The modern dolphin is another kind of fish. (Keightley.)

1. 416. Ovid, Metamorphoses, iii. 686.

1. 420. fledge;-cf. iii. 627.

1. 421. summ'd;-a term of falconry, applied to a hawk when his feathers have grown to their full strength. Keightley remarks that the verb is never used actively, of the birds themselves, as here. pens='wing feathers' (pinnae).

1. 422. despised;-Milton (it has been suggested) may have mistaken the meaning of despectare' (to 'look down upon,' not to despise') in the passage he had in view, Aeneid, i. 396.

1. 424. Job xxxix. 27, 28. eyries = nests. An 'eyry' is a collection of eggs, an egg-ery. (Latham.)

1. 426. Jeremiah viii. 7.

1. 429. mutual;-because the bird flying at the point of the V after a while falls back, another taking his place.

1. 434. Aeneid, vii. 34; Georgics, iii. 243.

1. 435. For passages in which Milton dwells on the song of the nightingale, see Il Penseroso 61; Sonnet i.; Comus 234; Paradise Lost, iii. 38, iv. 602, 648, 771, v. 40, viii. 518.

1. 437. The birds never looked so beautiful since they left Paradise.' (Landor.)

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1. 439. mantling;-a term in falconry: when the hawk stretcheth one of her wings after her leg, and so the other.' (Gentleman's Recreation, quoted by Nares.)

1. 440. ber state.

The allusion may be to a barge of state. Cf. Donne

(Progress of the Soul, xxiv.) speaking of a swan :

It moved with state, as if to look upon

Low things it scorned.'

Herrick has 'swan-like state

1. 443, crested cock ;-cf. ' cristatus ales' of Ovid (Fasti, i. 455) and singing clearer than the crested bird

That claps his wings at dawn.'

clarion;-cf. Shakespeare (Hamlet i. 1).

(Tennyson.)

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn.'

1. 454. teem;-pour forth (Saxon tyman). Cf. Rosse's speech, Each minute teems a new one.'

1. 457. lair;-layer, bed (Germ. lager).

(Macbeth, iv. 3.)

wonns; dwells (A. S. wunian). Cf. Fairfax's Tasso xvi. 67.
'A thousand devils in Limbo deep that wonne.'

1. 462. at once;-cf. Wordsworth:

There are forty feeding like one.'

broad herds is a literal translation from Iliad, xi. 679.

'longum agmen' (Aeneid, i. 186).

Virgil has

1. 467. libbard;-leopard. This form is used by Spenser (Faery Queene,

I. vi. 25; II. iii. 28).

1. 471. Job xl. 15. Behemoth here is the elephant; in Job potamus of the Nile.

is the hippo

1. 476. limber;—(connected with limp') pliant. It is applied to an oar in a passage quoted in Latham's edition of Johnson's Dictionary. fans;-wings, like 'vans' in ii. 927.

1. 477. deckt is a verb. They decked their smallest (i. e. very small) bodies exact (i. e. exactly) with various hues. 1. 478. Cf.

'In pride of May the fields are gay.'

(Old Song, Percy Society Collection, vol. xiii.)

1. 482. minims;-very small things (minima).

serpent;-a more general word than the following 'snaky,' embracing all creeping things.

1. 484. add d;-active for passive; as in ix. 515, where a ship is said to steer' and 'shift her sail.'

1. 485. Horace, Satires, i. 1. 35; Virgil, Georgics, iv. 83.

1. 487. just equality. Milton had expanded this hint in his Ready Way. 1. 490. The working bees are males, The drone here meant is the

queen-bee.

1. 496. Virgil gives a mane to serpents (Aeneid ii. 206).

1. 505. Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 76, &c.

1. 535. Cf. 2 Esdras iii. 6: And thou leddest him into Paradise, which thy right hand had planted.'

1. 548. Plato represents the Creator as surveying his work and delighting in it, because it resembles the pattern he had worked from.

1. 563. station. The 'station' of a planet is a term of art, when the planet appears neither to go backwards nor forwards, but to keep the same place in its orbit.

1. 565. Psalm xxiv. 7.

1. 577. Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 168.

1. 579. See on line 619.

1. 581. Cf. Sylvester

'Powder'd with stars streaming with glorious light.'

1. 585. Isaiah vi. I.

1. 596. Laudate eum hydraulis et organo.' (Translation of Tremellius and Junius). Vide note on line 335.

1. 597. frets are the divisions by which the strings of a guitar or violin are lengthened or shortened at will. Cf. (Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1)

I did but tell her she mistook her frets,

And bow'd her hand to teach her fingering.'

1. 598. temper'd;-modulated. So in Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar, June: Birds of every kind

To the water's fall their tunes attemper right.'

1. 599. Rev. viii. 3, 4.

1. 605. giant;-with an allusion to the Titanic contest.

The word is used to express the fierce malevolence attributed to such beings. So in Isabella's speech (Measure for Measure, ii. 3) this quality is taken for granted, as if implied in the word itself.

1. 619. hyaline (like 'galaxy' in line 579) is followed immediately by its translation. See note to line 269.

1. 624. nether;-the ocean that went round her, according to ancient cosmology, as opposed to 'hyaline.' (Keightley.)

1. 628. Psalm viii. 6-8.

1. 631. Georgics, ii. 458.

1. 634. face of things;-visible appearance of things.

Book VIII.

1. 1. At this place in the first edition there was the single line To whom thus Adam gratefully replied.'

In the second edition (when the poem was in twelve books, the seventh and tenth being divided) this line was changed into the four that now begin Bk. viii.

1. 2. Cf. Iliad, ii. 41. Dante (Purgatorio, ii. 113) hears his friend Casella's

voice

Of which the sweetness still within me sounds.'

1. 3. stood;-i. e. continued (like Ital. stava). (Richardson.)

1. 15. Cf. this goodly frame, the earth' (Hamlet, ii. 2). Psalm viii. 3. 1. 19. Psalm cxlvii. 4. numbered may refer to this text, but is more probably 'numerous,' as at vii. 621.

1. 23. punctual;-i. e. no bigger than a point (punctum). Cf. Comus 5. 1. 61. pomp;-train (Toμm). See note on L'Allegro 127.

70. this to attain. The clause is ambiguous. 'This' may refer either to the knowledge previously spoken of, or to that of the point in dispute between the followers of Ptolemy and those of Copernicus.

1. 76. Cf. Bacon (Advancement of Learning, ii): As for the vertical point (of natural philosophy) opus quod operatur Deus a principio usque ad finem (Eccles. iii. II) we know not whether man's inquiry can attain unto it.' In the Vulgate (here quoted) the words immediately preceding are mundum tradidit disputationi eorum.'

1. 77. Cf. the passage from Bacon, quoted in note to vii. 8. Landor objects: I cannot well entertain this notion of the Creator's risible faculties. Milton here carries his anthropomorphism much farther than the poem (which needed a good deal of it) required.'

1. 83. Among the exploded theories of astronomy mentioned by Bacon in his De Augmentis Scientiarum (iii. 4), is that of the motion of the heavenly bodies in perfect circles. To explain their apparent irregularities, and preserve the hypothesis of a circular motion, the astronomers invented eccentrics and epicycles. The epicycle, according to Clavius, is a small orb immersed in the deferent orb in which the planet is borne. For the body of the planet is fixed in the epicycle, while the centre of the epicycle is continually carried along according to the motion of the eccentric or deferent orb.' (Keightley.) Cf. also the passage in the Advancement of Learning, ii: The same phenomena in astronomy are satisfied by the received astronomy of the diurnal motion and the proper motion of the planets with their eccentrics and epicycles, and likewise by the theory of Copernicus; and the calculations are indifferently agreeable to both.'

1. 122. The angel now expounds the Copernican, as Adam had set forth the Ptolemaic system.

1. 130. Three different motions;—(1) diurnal, (2) annual, (3) that of libration, by which the earth's axis is always parallel to itself. If the earth have not (1) the heaven must revolve around her; if she have not (2) the sun must journey annually round the ecliptic; and if she have not (3) that motion must be ascribed to the primum mobile, that swift nocturnal Thomb.' (Keightley.)

1. 145. All this is erroneous physics. Astronomers, with the aid of the most powerful telescopes, have not been able to discover any traces of either water or atmosphere in the moon. (Keightley.)

1. 148. other suns;-Jupiter and Saturn are meant.

1. 150. male and female means original and reflected' light. Pliny (Natural History, ii. 100) mentions the tradition that the sun is a masculine star, drying all things; on the contrary, the moon is a soft and feminine star, dissolving humours, and so the balance of Nature is preserved, some of the stars binding the elements, and others loosing them.

1. 155. contribute;-with the accent on the first syllable, as in May's Edward III. (1635):

Their several shares of woe

Must contribute to Philip's overthrow.'

1. 157. this habitable;—the earth (oikovμévŋ); adjective for substantive— a frequent use in Milton. Cf. vi. 78: this terrene.'

Cf.

1. 158. obvious;-exposed to; as in Aeneid, x. 694. Cf. note on x. 106. 1. 162. flaming;-applying to the road an epithet meant of the sun. the 'pale course of the moon in i. 786.

1. 164. The metaphor is from a top, as in Aeneid, vii. 378.

1. 165. inoffensive;-meeting no obstacle. Tacitus uses 'inoffensus' for 'uninterrupted': inoffensus cursus honorum.' (Historiarum, i. 48.)

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1. 183. Cf. Samson Agonistes 300-306.

1. 193. Shadowed from a verse in Homer (Odyssey, iv. 392), much admired and recommended by Socrates. (Bentley.)

1. 211. Odyssey, iv. 594-598; Virgil, Eclogues, v. 45-48.

1. 212. pleasantest to thirst. Hume says that there is one kind of palm (the Egyptian) which was called adipos, from its juicy fruit.

1. 216. Psalm cxix. 103.

1. 218. Psalm xlv. 3 (Prayer-book version).

1. 225. Rev. xxii. 9.

1. 238. Cf. Sonnet xv. II, 12.

1. 242. Aeneid, vi. 557.

Ariosto has represented Astolfo as hearing from

within the gates of Hell the noise of

'Plaint and howl, and everlasting wail.'

(Orlando Furioso, xxxiv. 4.)

1. 258. gaz'd;-cf. v. 272; Paradise Regained, i. 414. Elsewhere Milton has gazed on' (Paradise Lost, xi. 845) or upon' (Comus 54). 1. 269. The first edition has as lively vigour led.'

1. 281. Acts xvii. 28.

1. 287. Odyssey, xiii. 79.

1. 292. Iliad, ii. 16, 20.

1. 295. The idea of thus seeing in a dream what was really taking place seems to have been suggested by the dream of Aeacus in Ovid (Metamorphoses, vii. 634). So Dante (Purgatorio, ix.) dreams that he is carried up by an eagle, and on awaking, finds that he had in reality been carried up a part of the mountain of Purgatory during his sleep.

1. 302. In Sylvester's Du Bartas, there is the line

'Tis not a dance, but rather a smooth gliding.' Cf. xii. 629.