1. 12. fast by, hard by (l. 417). So in iii. 354, 'fast by the tree of life'; and elsewhere.

oracle, the Temple; elsewhere in Milton the word bears its ordinary sense, here he is influenced by the A.V. of 1 Kings vi, where the Holy of Holies is so called repeatedly.

1. 13. adventrous. So in Sylvester's Du Bartas, ed. 1621, p. 268:

'That mine adventrous rime,

Circling the world, may search out every clime.'—TODD.

1. 14. Pindar had compared himself to the 'bird of Zeus,' and his enemies to chattering ravens, whom he far outstripped (Olymp. ii. 159); the seed of the fine passage in Gray's Progress of Poetry (iii. 3). Horace (Od. ii. 20) imitates Pindar, but makes himself a swan :

'Non usitata nec tenui ferar

Penna biformis per liquidum aethera
Vates';

and as he dwells upon the image treats it humorously (' Jam
jam residunt cruribus asperae Pelles,' etc.).
Milton here
compares not himself, but his song, to a bird. See however
iii. 13, 'Thee I revisit now with bolder wing'; and ix. 44:-
'Unless an age too late, or cold

Climate, or years damp my intended wing

Depressed.'

And cf. vii. 17, where he likens himself to Bellerophon on Pegasus.

middle flight. Cf. 1. 515 (of the Greek gods) :

'On the snowy top

Of cold Olympus rul'd the middle air

Their highest Heav'n?

'Middle' therefore is not used for 'mean,' as it is usually explained, but 'middle flight' means flight through the 'middle air,' as contrasted with the ether above.

1. 15. above th' Aonian mount. Cf. vii. 3, 'Above the

Olympian hill I soar.' Aonia was a name for Boeotia, in which stood Mount Helicon and the fountain Aganippe, the abode of Apollo and the Muses, who were thence called 'Aonides' (Ovid, Metam. v. 333). Cf. Virgil, Georgics, iii. 11:— 'Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas.'

(Returning I will lead the Muses down from their Aonian summit.)

1. 16. 'So he says that the fable of his Comus was new, and "yet unheard in tale or song." Mr. Bowles remarks that it is frequent among the poets to speak of the novelty of their subjects; of which custom Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Statius, and Cowley afford examples. He adds the very phrase which Milton uses from Boiardo, Orl. Innam. ii.

XXX. I :

Avien, che ne in prosa è detta, o in rima
Cosa che non fia stata detta prima."

(So it is, that nothing is said in prose or rhyme that has not been said before.) And Dr. Pearce notes the same expression in Ariosto, Orl. Fur. c. i. st. 2 :—

"Cosa non detta in prosa mai nè in rima.”—Todd.

(A thing never said in prose nor in rhyme.)

rhime. 'Milton appears to have meant a different thing by rhime here, from rime in his preface, where it is six times mentioned, and always spelt without an h, and intended that we should understand by rhime not the jingling sound of like endings, but verse in general.'-PEARCE. The word, variously spelt rime, rhime, and (by confusion with ‘rhythm') rhyme, was commonly used in this general sense, e. g. 'The wanton Ovid whose enticing rimes, quoted by T. Warton from Fletcher's Ode to Beaumont.

1. 18. 1 Cor. iii. 16.

1. 19. Newton quotes Theocritus xxii. 116:—eiπè beá, où yàp oiola. Dunster compares Sylvester's Du Bartas: 'Tell, for I know thou know'st,' where the poet similarly invokes

the Holy Spirit; also Tasso in the opening of Il Mondo Creato. See also 1. 27.

1. 19. me. There is more in this assumption of purity and uprightness than the Puritan arrogance of the day. Milton had from the first consecrated his life to a high aim, that of leaving 'something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die' (Reason of Ch. Gov. ii. Pref.). And he had further recognised 'that he who would not be frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy.' (Apol. for Smect.) Cf. also another passage in the Reason of Ch. Gov. (ii Pref.) where he speaks of his promised epic as 'a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher-fury of a riming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.' Milton's widow 'being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness that he stole from nobody but the Muse who inspired him; and being asked by a lady present who the Muse was, replied it was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly' (Newton's Life of Milton) Cf. P. L. ix. 22:—

'My celestial patroness who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd,
And dictates to me slumbering.'

21. dove-like.

St. Matt. iii. 16, 'like a dove.'

sat'st

brooding. So the Hebrew of Genesis i. 2, ‘And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' See margin of R. V. Perhaps Milton says "dove-like" knowing that the Talmudists had thus critically illustrated the original word brooded, "Quemadmodum columba incumbit pullis suis, neque eos attingit aut laedit alis suis."-TODD.

1. 24. That I may tell God's purposes from the very first, even in so high a matter as the Creation of Man, and justify the loss of Eden by the story of the Fall.

argument, subject-matter. So ix. 13:-

'Sad task, yet argument

Not less but more heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursu'd
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd,
Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek, and Cytherea's son,
If answerable stile I can obtain

Of my celestial patroness.

1. 26. So the Chorus sing in Sams. Ag. 'Just are the ways of God and justifiable to men.' 'Pope has thought fit to borrow this verse, with some little variation, Essay on Man, Ep. i. 16, "But vindicate the ways of God to Man."NEWTON.

1. 27. for Heaven hides, etc. See quotation from Iliad in note on 1. 6; imitated also by Virgil, Aen. vii. 645 :—

'Et meministis enim, Divae, et memorare potestis.' (For you remember, Goddesses, and you can tell.)

extension of the Milton uses the

I. 29. grand parents, first parents, an ordinary use of grand in 'grandfather,' etc. word several times in the sense of 'great,' principally in the phrase 'our grand foe' (1. 122; vi. 149; x. 1033).

1. 32. For one restraint, on account of one restraint. Keightley puts a comma after 'will,' and takes this phrase with what follows, 'lords of the world except for one restraint.'

1. 33. ‘An imitation of Homer, Iliad i. 8 :—

τίς τ ̓ ἂρ σφῶε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι ;
Λητοῦς καὶ Διὸς υἱός.—HUME.

('Who then among the gods set the twain at strife and variance? Even the son of Leto and of Zeus.'-Lang and Leaf's translation.)

foul. Sol. 135, ‘foul defeat'; 1. 555, ‘foul retreat.'

1. 35. envy, at man's happiness; revenge, because to ruin the handywork was to vex the Maker. Cf. ix. 174:—

'Him who next

Provokes my envy, this new favorite

Of Heav'n, this man of clay, son of despite
Whom us the more to spite, his Maker rais'd
From dust spite then with spite is best repaid.'

With envy: with, like by, signifies juxtaposition, and in earlier English we frequently find one of these prepositions used where we should now use the other. Cf. Winter's Tale, v. 1. 13, ‘Assisted with your honoured friends,' and other examples in Abbott, Shakesp. Gram. 193. See l. 555. Johnson, in his Life of Milton, has the phrase 'He was now busied by Paradise Lost.'

1. 36. pride, 1 Timothy iii. 6.

what time. Cf. Lycidas, 28; Richard III, iv. 4. 450; Twelfth Night, iv. 3. 30. The preposition is not unfrequently omitted in adverbial phrases; for other examples see Abbott, Shakesp. Gram. 200.