occurs only a few times in Milton, three times according to Professor Masson, viz. 1. 254, 'The mind is its own place'; iv. 813, quoted on 1. 285; Ode on the Nativity, 106, ‘And that her reign had here its last fulfilling.' In each case there is special reason for the use.

1. 177. vast, a later form of 'waste,' both words being derived through French from Latin vastus. It is perhaps a mere synonym of boundless, as in the line of Lucretius (ii. 92),

'Spatium sine fine modoque Immensumque,'

but may contain the notion of desolation (cf. de-vast-ate). So vii. 211, 'the vast immeasurable abyss'; x. 471, ‘th' unreal, vast, unbounded deep.' Cf. l. 367 'falsities and lies,' 1. 121 'fraud or guile.'

1. 178. slip. Mr. Browne (Clar. Press ed.) points out that the omission of 'let'in Comus, 743, the only other place in Milton where this verb occurs, would correct the metre. 'If you (let) slip time, like a neglected rose.'

1. 179. satiate. The participial termination is often dropped in the case of verbs which end with a dental; see 1. 193 uplift and examples in Abbott, Shakesp. Gram. 342. But Milton may regard satiate as the English form of satiatus. 1. 181. seat. See 1. 5.

void of light save, &c. See note on 'darkness visible,' 1. 63.

1. 186. afflicted powers, again in iv. 939. Afflicted is used in the sense of the Latin afflicti, thrown down, whether literally or metaphorically.

1. 187. offend, injure, as in vi. 465 :—

'With what more forcible we may offend

Our yet unwounded enemies,'

a use borrowed from the Latin verb. Its usual sense in Shakespeare is to annoy.

1. 191. If not. 'What reinforcement, to which is returned "if not"; a vicious syntax: but the poet gave it "if none."

BENTLEY. The construction is changed, as often; if not standing for 'if we cannot ' (gain any).

1. 193. uplift, see note on 1. 179. 'Spenser's elaborate account of the Old Dragon's eyes was probably in Milton's mind, F. Q. i. 11. 14 :

"His blazing eyes like two bright shining shields

Did burne with wrath, and sparkled living fyre."'—TODD.

1. 194. Newton compares Virgil, Aeneid ii. 207:—

Pone legit.'

'Pars cetera pontum

besides is redundant.

1. 195. large, wide. Cf. iv. 144, 'a prospect large'; 1. 223, 'a river large'; 1. 300, ‘large front' (wide forehead).

1. 196. Newton compares the picture of Tityus in Virg. Aen. vi. 596 :

'Per tota novem cui jugera corpus

Porrigitur.'

1. 197. as (those) whom. Milton, influenced by the rules of Latin syntax, frequently omits the antecedent, very rarely indeed the relative. For the former, cf. 1. 333; viii. 647 :

'Sent from whose sovran goodness I adore.'

Instances of the latter-perhaps the only instances are x. 545, 750, 752; xi. 614; P. R. ii. 456; Lycidas 87, 126; Comus, 302; Sams. Ag. 227.

1. 198. Titanian or earth-born, i. e. Titans or giants; the spelling geant suggesting a derivation from yn, the earth (see 1. 778). Really it was the Titans who were earth-born (Aesch. Pr. 213, Τιτάνας Οὐρανοῦ τε καὶ χθονός τέκνα). The story goes that they maimed and deposed Uranus, and one of them, Cronus. reigned in his room. But a prophecy having declared that he in turn should be deposed by his children, he swallowed them as they were born, all but Zeus, whom his mother saved. Zeus made war on Cronus and the Titans, and defeated them and drove them down to Tartarus. According to the oldest

legends the giants were an autochthonous race dwelling in Thrinacia and destroyed by the gods for their insolence (Odyss. vii. 59, 206; x. 120). Later accounts make them a second brood of Ge, indignant at the fate of the Titans (Ovid, Met. i. 151; Trist. iv. 7).

1. 199. 'Briareos. Four syllables, for Briareus Three (Et centumgeminus Briareus et belua Lernae) cannot be justified.'-BENTLEY. Briareus, according to Hesiod, was not a Titan but a giant with a hundred hands who helped Zeus against the Titans. Milton is following Virgil, Aeneid, x. 565.

Typhon, a monster with a hundred heads, father of the evil Winds and Harpies, who wished to acquire the sovereignty of Gods and men. Pindar calls him 'he who lieth in dreadful Tartarus, the god's foe Typhon of the hundred heads, bred in the Cilician den! (Pyth. i.)

1. 201. Leviathan. The word means 'wreathed' or 'coiled,' and so is used of the great serpent in Isaiah xxvii. 1, ‘the swift serpent, the crooked serpent.' In Job xl. I the Leviathan is plainly the crocodile. In the Psalms (lxxiv. 14, civ. 26) the name is used generally for a sea-monster; and so here. Cf. vii. 412:—

'There leviathan,

Hugest of living creatures, on the deep

Stretch'd like a promontory sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land, and at his gills,
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out a sea.'

1. 202. 'This verse is found fault with as being too rough and absonous, but that is not a fault but a beauty here, as it better expresses the hugeness and unwieldiness of the creature, and no doubt was designed by the author.'NEWTON.

ocean stream. The phrase is common in our poetry: Drayton's Barons Wars, v. 20, and often in Spenser.'TODD. Cf. Iliad, xiv. 245, ποταμοίο ῥέεθρα Ωκεανού. Oceanus in Homer is the stream circling the earth.

1. 204. Some little boat, whose pilot dares not proceed in his course, for fear of the dark night: a metaphor taken from a foundered horse that could go no farther.'-HUME. So Comus 483:

'Either some one like us night-foundered here.'

Bentley conjectured ' nigh-foundered,' from ii. 940.

1. 205. as seamen tell. Olaus Magnus [Archbishop of Upsal in Sweden, died 1555] wrote a whole chapter De anchoris dorso ceti impositis. “Habet etiam cetus super corium suum superficiem tanquam sabulum quod est juxta littus maris; unde plerumque, elevato dorso suo super undas, a navigantibus nihil aliud creditur esse quam insula: Itaque nautae ad eum appellunt: et super eum descendunt, inque ipsum palos figunt, naves alligant, etc." There is a similar relation of the whale in Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 568.'—Todd.

1. 206. scaly in vii. 474, epithet of the crocodile. No doubt Milton is influenced by Job xli. 15, 'His scales are his pride,' although he takes Leviathan to be a creature more like a whale.

1. 207. under the lee, under the sheltered side. Skeat notes that the true English form is lew (lee being Norse), whence the pronunciation lew-ard.

1. 208. invests. So iii. 10 (of light) :—

'Before the heavens thou wert: and at the voice

Of God, as with a mantle didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep.'

wished. So vi. 150, 'in wish'd hour Of my revenge.' Comus, l. 574, ‘wish'd prey' ; l. 950, ' wish'd presence.' 'Wish for' does not occur in Milton, and only once or twice in Shakespeare.

1.210. chain'd. Cf. 1. 48, 'in adamantine chains and penal fire'; and in ii. 168, 'when we lay Chain'd on the burning lake.' We are not told how the chains were broken, and Belial in his speech (ii. 196) mentions them as a present

suffering :

'Thus expelled to suffer here

Chains and these torments.'

But cf. iii. 82 :

'Our adversary, whom no bounds

Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains
Heaped on him there can hold.'

1. 211. Cf. Sams. Ag. 197 :

'How could I once look up or heave the head?'

1. 213. at large. Widespread, with liberty to roam. So 1. 790. See note on l. 195.

1. 227. that felt unusual weight. "This conceit of the air's feeling unusual weight is borrowed from Spenser's description of the Old Dragon, Faerie Queene, i. 11. 18 :

"Then with his waving wings displayed wyde
Himselfe up high he lifted from the ground,
And with strong flight did forcibly divyde
The yielding ayre, which nigh too feeble found
Her flitting parts, and element unsound

To beare so great a weight."-THYER,

1. 230. and such appeared, i. e. the land.

1. 231. Milton clearly regards earthquakes as produced by the escape of pent-up wind. Cf. vi. 195:

'As if on earth

Winds under ground, or waters forcing way
Sidelong had push'd a mountain from his seat.'

And Sams. Ag. 1647 :—

'As with the force of winds and waters pent
When mountains tremble.'

Volcanic eruptions are, he would seem to think, the result of such winds forcing their way through combustible soil. Although therefore his comparison is between the land in Hell and the crater of Aetna, he allows himself to begin the picture with a more general earthquake.

1.232. Pelorus, the north-east cape of Sicily. There is no