675. Brigade. Milton's spelling is briga. The stress is of course on the first syllable.

675-678.

Nothing is gained to the celestial host by comparing it with the terrestrial. Angels are not promoted by brigading with LANDOR. sappers and miners.'

pioners.

676. Pioneers. Milton spells, 677. Camp. Perhaps nearly army, as in Sams. Agon. 1497. 678. Cast. Cf. Od. Nat. 123. Mammon. This name is Syriac, and signifies riches. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon, says our Saviour, Matt. 6: 24. . . . Some look upon Mammon as the God of riches, and Mammon is accordingly made a person by our poet, and was so by Spenser before him, whose description of Mammon and his cave our poet seems to have had his eye upon in several places.' - NEWTON.

For Spenser's Mammon see F. Q. Bk. 2, Canto 7, the whole of which is well worth reading with care. For Milton's view of riches see P. R. 2: 426-456. For Mammon's speech see P. L. 2: 229–283.

679. Erected. Not only erect,' 'upright,' but also 'aspiring,' 'high-souled,' as in P. R. 3: 27; a sense of Lat. erectus. So Cicero couples celsus and erectus, now in the literal, now in the figurative

sense.

679-684. Mammon ... beatific. Memorize.

682. Heaven's pavement. Rev. 21: 21; cf. Il. 4: 2, 'golden floor.' 684. Vision beatific. Cf. On Time 18; P. L. 3: 62. The beatific vision is the direct vision of God, as described by Dante in the last canto of the Divine Comedy. Cf. vv. 97-105 (Cary's trans.): —

With fixed heed, suspense and motionless,
Wondering I gazed; and admiration still
Was kindled, as I gazed. It may not be
That one who looks upon that light can turn

To other object, willingly, his view.

For all the good that will may covet, there

Is summed; and all, elsewhere defective found,
Complete.

685-687. So Ovid, Met. 138-140: 'Men even descended into the entrails of the earth; and riches were dug up, the incentives to vice, which the earth had hidden.'

688. Treasures better hid. From Horace, Od. III. iii. 49-50: 'Undiscovered gold, then better placed when earth conceals it still.'

689. Wound. Cf. Ovid, Met. 1: 101-102: 'The earth wounded by no ploughshares.' Again, in Met. 2: 286-287, the Earth speaks: I endure wounds from the crooked plough.'

690. Digged. Why not dug? Admire. Wonder. So P. L.: 2:677. A Latinism.

690-692.

Let none ... bane. Memorize.

692. Precious bane. speare's (Rom. I. i. 186) sick health.'

An oxymoron, like 'pious fraud,' or Shake-
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,

693. Boast in. The in, for of, is possibly a Latinism. Cf. Ps. 44 8; also Ps. 34: 2.

694. Babel. Cf. P. L. 3: 466-468. Others explain it as Babylon, or the temple of Belus in that city. Works. Probably the Pyramids. Ancient authors relate that 360,000 men were employed for nearly twenty years on one of the Pyramids. Memphian. See note on v. 307.

696. Newton explains strength and art as nominatives. 700. Cells. Furnaces; see v. 706.

703. Founded. Fused, melted; so Lat. fundare. foundry.

Cf. Eng.

704. Bullion. Impure gold or silver. Here used as an adjective. Milton, in his Church Government, speaks of 'extracting gold and silver out of the drossy bullion of the people's sins.'

707. Hollow nook. When an iron furnace is tapped, the molten iron flows in a glowing stream down long channels in a bed of sand. Side channels branch out on each side of the main channels, as near to each other as possible, and these are filled with the iron. These smaller channels, called 'pigs,' are what Milton evidently means by 'hollow nooks.'

708. Organ. This simile is as exact as it is new. . . Milton frequently fetches his images from music, .. as he was very fond of it, and was himself a performer upon the organ and other instruments.' NEWTON.

710-712. Memorize.

711. Like an exhalation. See Il. 1: 359, 'rose like a mist;' Tennyson, Tithonus 63,' While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.' Thus buildings rose in some of the masques of the period, to the sound of music. At the Twelfth Night masque of 1637, at Whitehall, 'in the further part of the scene the earth opened, and there

rose up a richly adorned palace, seeming all of goldsmith's work, with porticoes vaulted on pillars of rustic work. . . . Above these ran an architrave, frieze, and cornice.'

712. Symphonies. Harmonies. See P. L. 3: 368; 5: 162; 11: 595; Od. Nat. 132.

713. Pilasters. Define this, Doric pillars, architrave, cornice, and frieze. See Addison's criticism of these terms at p. 41 of my edition.

714. Doric. Cf. v. 550.

Why not Corinthian ?

716. Bossy. In high relief, embossed.

717. Roof was fretted gold. 'Fretwork is fillets interwoven at parallel distances. This kind of work has usually flowers in the spaces, and must glitter much, especially by lamplight.' - NEWTON. Roof may be taken in the sense of ceiling,' and, since fretted, may translate Lat. laquear. Laquear aureum, as in En. 1: 726, would thus be exactly 'roof of fretted gold.'

718. Alcairo. El-Kahirah, the city of victory, now known as Cairo. The city was built, after the capture of Memphis by the Arabians in 638, about six miles distant from the latter.

720. Belus. The temple of Belus is described by Herodotus, 1: 181-183.

723. Her stately highth. An accusative of extent. Define straight.

724. So Ovid, Met. 4 : 762-763: 'The folding doors thrown open, the entire gilded halls are displayed.'

725. Ample spaces. Ampla spatia is found in Seneca, Herc. Fur. 673.

726-730. From... sky. Cf. Æn. 1: 726-727: 'From the fretted roof of gold hang down the burning lamps, and night gives place to flaming torches.'

728.

Cressets. Define.

729. Asphaltus. Define. Why are these substances used, instead of other illuminating oils?

730. Hasty. Adjective used almost as an adverb, somewhat as horizontal, v. 595.

734. Sceptred angels. Like the 'sceptred chiefs' of Il. 2: 86. 736. Gave to rule. Like Lat. mulcere dedit, En. 1: 66. Cf. P. L. 3: 243; 9: 818; P. R. 4: 385.

737. Hierarchy. The nine orders of the hierarchy are, according

to the Pseudo-Dionysius (see note on v. 129), (1) Seraphim, (2) Cherubim, (3) Thrones, (4) Dominions, (5) Virtues, (6) Powers, (7) Principalities, (8) Archangels, (9) Angels.

740. Mulciber. Another name for Hephaistos, or Vulcan, from Lat. mulcere, to soften, in allusion to this property of fire. See Ov. Met. 2: 5.

Fell. Homer puts into the mouth of Hephaistos the account of his own fall. Speaking to his mother Hera, he says (Il. 1 : 590–593) : 'Yea, once ere this, when I was fain to save thee, he [Zeus] caught me by my foot and hurled me from the heavenly threshold; all day I flew, and at the set of sun I fell in Lemnos, and little life was in

me.'

742. Sheer. Define. Crystal battlements. Cf. P. L. 2: 1049; 6: 860.

Daniel Webster, in a letter to Rev. Mr. Brazer (Nov. 10, 1828), makes the following comment on this passage: 'What art is manifest in these few lines! The object is to express great distance and great velocity, neither of which is capable of very easy suggestion to the human mind. We are told that the angel fell a day, a long summer's day; the day is broken into forenoon and afternoon, that the time may seem to be protracted. He does not reach the earth till sunset; and then, to represent the velocity, he "drops," one of the very best words in the language to signify sudden and rapid fall, and then comes a simile, "like a falling star."'

745. Landor calls this a noble line, but insists that 'the six following are quite superfluous,' and are 'insufferable stuff.'

For the simile, cf. Il. 4: 75-78: Even as the son of Kronos the crooked counsellor sendeth a star, a portent for mariners or a wide host of men, bright shining, and therefrom are scattered sparks in multitude; even in such guise sped Pallos Athene to earth.' Cf. P. R. 4: 619-620; Comus 80-81.

746. Find Lemnos on the map. Egæan. The stress on the first syllable.

748. Availed. Cf. the similar use of xpaioμεiv, as in Il. 5: 53, and of prodesse, Æn. 11: 843.

750. Engines. Contrivances, devices, inventions, like Lat. ingenia.

751. Sarcasm.

753. Awful. Cf. P. L. 4: 847. Define.

756. Pandemonium. It has been remarked that several features of the building erected by Mulciber (cf. especially lines 713-717, 723 ff.) suggest the Pantheon. This view was no doubt suggested by the fact that Milton coined the word Pandemonium on the evident analogy of Pantheon. The hint had been found in Henry More's Song of the Soul, 1642 (Part 1, p. 40), where we read:

On Ida hill there stands a castle strong;
They that it built call it Pantheothen.
Hither resort a rascal rabble throng

Of miscreant wights. But if that wiser men
May name that sort, Pandemoniathen

They would it clepe.

758. Squared. Cf. P. L. 8: 232. Squared regiment = squadron; see the etymology of the latter word.

759. With this assembly of the fallen angels cf. Fairfax's Tasso, Bk. IV. Which is the more impressive? 761.

8: 229.

Access. Entrance-way, channel of approach. So En.

763. Covered field. What notion does this give us of the size of the hall? What was the size of the lists described in the seventh chapter of Ivanhoe?

764. Wont ride. Wont is seldom used with the simple infinitive, without to (see v. 332). In Shakespeare the only instance is Oth. II. iii. 190 (Abbott's Shak. Gram. § 349), and here the folio editions have to. In OE., wunian sometimes had the prepositional, sometimes the simple infinitive. How is wont related to wunian? Soldan's. Soldan for Sultan, Ital. Soldano.

765. Paynim is a doublet of paganism, derived through the Old French. It was early used in OF. itself, however, and then in English, to denote 'pagan;' so by Spenser, F. Q. V. viii. 26, etc.

766. What difference between these two kinds of jousting? Cf. Ivanhoe, chap. viii.

767. Swarmed. Cf. P. L. 10: 526.

768. Hiss of rustling wings. Notice the sibilancy. Milton perhaps had in mind the Prom. Bound 124-126:

Alas me! What a murmur and motion I hear

As of birds flying near!

And the air undersings

The light stroke of their wings.