composing. But there is also much of what is odious and intolerable. The terrific is then sublime, and then only, when it fixes you in the midst of all your energies, and not when it weakens, nauseates, and repels you.' - LANDOR.

651. Ended. Thus Hesiod's Echidna (Theog. 298-299) was half a beautiful woman, half a prodigious and dreadful serpent.

654 ff. Milton seems to have had Ovid in mind (Met. 14: 60-61, 64-65): 'She beholds her loins grow hideous with barking monsters;

as she examines the substance of her thighs, her legs, and her feet, she meets with Cerberean jaws in place of those parts.' Cf. also Spenser, F. Q. I. i. 15. Cry. Pack.

655. Cerberean. Who was Cerberus?

660. Vexed. What is its subject? Sea. Strait of Messina. According to Ovid (Met. 13 : 730) and Virgil (Æn. 3 : 420) Scylla was on the Italian side.

661. Trinacrian. Sicilian; so named from its three promontories. Cf. Ovid, Met. 13: 724, 'With three points this projects into the sea.' Hoarse shore is from Statius, Theb. 5: 291; Trinacrian shore from En. 1: 196.

665. Lapland. Like Thessaly, famous for sorcery. Laboring. Suffering (eclipse). 'Laboring moon' is found in Juvenal, 6: 443. 666. Eclipses. An obsolete sense. 666-673. The other . . . had on. Burke says (Sublime and Beautiful, Part 2, Sec. 3): 'In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the last degree.'

670. As Night. Od. 11: 606, 'He [Heracles], like black Night.' 676. So (Il. 7: 213, 215), as Ajax 'went with long strides,

sore trembling came upon the Trojans.'

677. Admired. Wondered, marvelled. An archaic sense. 681. An epic formula; so Il. 21:150, 'Who and whence art thou?' etc. Cf. Od. 1: 170; En. 8: 114.

678-679.

'God and his Son except, Created thing naught valued he.

This is not the only time when he has used such language, evidently with no other view than to defend it by his scholarship. But no authority can vindicate what is false, and no ingenuity can explain what is absurd.'-LANDOR. But cf. Lowell, Introduction,

p. 33.

688. Goblin. Scarcely conveys a sufficiently elevated notion here; cf. Comus 436, L'Al. 105.

689. In the vein of Spenser's apostrophe, F. Q. VI. vi. 25.

692. Third part. Suggested by Rev. 12: 4.

696. Spirits of Heaven. Cf. v. 687.

697. Hell-doomed. Cf. v. 687.

700. To thy speed add wings. Suggested by En. 8: 223: 'pedibus timor addidit alas,' 'fear added wings to his feet.'

701. Whip of scorpions. Cf. 1 Kings 12: 11.

702. This dart. Cf. v. 672.

706. Deform. Cf. P. L. 11: 494. Browning uses the word in Fifine at the Fair.

707. Incensed. Two meanings here?

708. Comet. Cf. En. 10: 270-273: 'The crest of the prince's helmet blazes, and a flame seems to pour forth from the plume at its top, and the golden boss vomits forth mighty fires, like as when sometimes on a clear night blood-red comets blush with baleful light.' 709. Ophiuchus. A constellation forty degrees long.

710. Hair. What is the etymology of 'comet'? Cf. Shak., 1 Hen. VI. I. i. 1-3:

Comets, importing change of time and states,
Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky.

712. Fatal. Cf. v. 786. What difference between the meaning here and in v. 104?

713. Intend. For this verb with an accusative, see v. 457; P. L. 5 867; 10: 58.

714. Clouds. Thus Amphiarus is called by Pindar (Nem. 10 : 12), 'the storm-cloud of war.' In Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (1: 16; cf. 24) Milton is anticipated in the elaboration of this simile.

715. Heaven's artillery. A Shakespearian phrase, T. Shr. I. ii. 205. Fraught. From what infinitive?

Caspian. Cf. Horace, Od. II. ix. 1-3; 'Not for ever do showers pour from the clouds upon the squalid plains, or fitful blasts trouble the Caspian sea unceasingly.'

722. So great a foe. See 1 Cor. 15: 26; Heb. 2: 14.

722-724. And now ... had not. Cf. Il. 7: 273-274:And now had they been smiting hand to hand with swords, but that,' etc.

724. Snaky. Cf. v. 651.

729. Bend. Direct, aim. How does the word come to have this meaning? Cf. Ps. 11: 2; P. L. 2: 923; P. R. 4 : 424.

731. Laughs. Cf. Ps. 2: 4.

735. Pest. Used like the Lat. pestis.

736. These. What?

741. Double-formed. So Scylla (pluralized) is called (biformis) in En. 6: 286.

743. Phantasm. Cf. v. 667.

745. Than. What part of speech here?

748. Foul.. fair. Thus antithetically employed by Shak.. Macb. I. i. 11.

752 ff. Cf. Homer's Hymn to Pallas (Chapman's trans.):

His [Zeus's] unbounded brows

Could not contain her; such impetuous throes
Her birth gave way to, that abroad she flew,
And stood, in gold armed, in her Father's view,
Shaking her sharp lance. All Olympus shook
So terribly beneath her, that it took

Up in amazes all the Deities there.

759. Scan the line.

761. Familiar grown. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man 2 · 217-220.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

768. Fields. Battles. How does the word come to this meaning? How is Ger. Kampf related to Lat. campus?

771. Empyrean. Define.

772. Pitch. Cf. P. L. 8: 198; 11: 693; Sams. Agon. 169.

786. Brandishing his fatal dart. From En. 12: 919, Telum fatale coruscat.'

787. Death. Cf. James 1: 15: 'Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.'

789. So Virgil, Æn. 2: 53: 'The caverns sounded hollow and

uttered a groan.' Death. The repetition as in Virgil, Georg. 4: 525-527 The voice and chilled tongue of themselves called "Eurydice, ah, hapless Eurydice!" as the spirit ebbed away; all along the stream the banks replied "Eurydice!"''

798. List. Cf. v. 656.

800-803. Lowell criticizes the sibilancy of these lines. In what words does it occur?

808. Bane. Define.

809. Fate. Newton observes: 'Milton with great propriety makes the fallen Angels, and Sin here, attribute events to Fate, without any mention of the Supreme Being.' Where has this been done before in the poem ?

810 ff. Cf. Od. 12: 117-120: Wilt thou not yield thee even to the deathless gods? As for her [Scylla], she is no mortal, but an immortal plague, dread, grievous, and fierce, and not to be fought with; and against her there is no defence.'

813. Heavenly. What part of speech? Cf. P. L. 8: 217. From OE. heofenlice, while in the more usual sense it is from heofenlic.

814. Save. What part of speech? Does the use of nisi, in such a sentence as the following, throw any light upon it ? 'Dicere nemo potest, nisi qui prudenter intellegit.'

815. Lore. Define.

816. Cf. v. 745. Smooth. What part of speech?

823. House of pain. So Spenser, F. Q. I. v. 34. 826. Go. Note the idiom, 'to go an errand.'

827. Uncouth. Cf. note on v. 407.

829. Void immense. Cf. v. 438.

830. Wandering. Cf. v. 404.

832. Place of bliss. Cf. v. 347. 833. Purlieus. Define.

834. Race. Cf. 1: 653.

phrase, F. Q. I. xi. 37, like Hence, buxom= unresisting,

842. Buxom air. A Spenserian Horace's cedentem aera, Sat. II. ii. 13. from the sense 'flexible,' 'pliant.' The word is first found in Middle English, ca. 1175, in the sentence, 'Beo būhsum toward Gode,' where buhsum means 'pliant,'' obedient.' The word has the same root as OE. bugan, to bow, bend.

846. Ghastly smile. So Ajax, Il. 7 : 212, rose up, 'with a smile on his grim face;' Inf. 5: 4:—

There Minos stands

Grinning with ghastly feature.

Drummond of Hawthornden (lived when?), in a madrigal, calls Death, 'grim grinning king.' Spenser has 'grinning griesly' (F. Q. V. xii. 16), like Statius' (Theb. 8: 582) 'formidabile ridens.' In the Odyssey (20 347) the wooers were laughing with alien lips' (cf. Hor., Sat. II. iii. 72; Od. III. xi. 21). See also Shak., Rich. II. III. ii. 162-163.

847. His famine. Cf. Hab. 2:5; Prov. 30: 15, 16; and P. L. 10: 601, 991.

849. Bespake. Cf. P. L. 4: 1005.

850. Infernal pit. Cf. 1: 657.

856 ff. Cf. Garnett's remarks in note on v. 648.

858. Gloom. Tartarus is 'black' (En. 6: 134), 'darkly deep' (Prom. Bound 219), 'murky' (ib. 1050), etc. Tartarus. Il. 8:13-14, 'misty Tartarus, where is the deepest gulf beneath the earth;' Plato, Gorgias 523, 'he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus.'

860. Heavenly-born. Cf. v. 749 ff.

868. The gods who live at ease. So exactly in Il. 6: 138; Od. 4: 805, etc.

869. Right. Cf. P. L. 3: 62-64.

872. All our woe. Cf. 1: 3.

873. Would the rhythm be improved by making rolling the second word in the line?

876-882. See note on 1: 540.

877. Wards. Define.

879 ff. Cf. p. 198, v. 209.

879-882. A remarkable instance of imitative sound (onomatopoia), modelled after Æn. 6: 573–574 (cf. 1: 449): –

Tum demum horrisono stridentes cardine sacræ
Panduntur portæ.

Contrast with this P. L. 7: 205-207.

883. Erebus. Suggested by Virgil, Georg. 4: 471, 'Stirred from the lowest abodes of Erebus.'

885. Wings. Cf. P. R. 3; 309; 4: 66.