39. "above thy sphere": the sphere of the Sun, the fourth of the Ptolemaic spheres.

126. “the Assyrian mount." Niphates, in Armenia, here included in the general name Assyria.

132-171. "Eden, where delicious Paradise," &c. Eden (meaning in Hebrew "Joy" or "Deliciousness") is the whole tract of Western Asia destined for primitive mankind; Paradise, now described (the word is Persian, meaning a Park or Pleasure-ground), is the Happy Garden in one part of this Eden (Gen. ii. 8).

159-165. "As when to them who sail," &c. Mr. Keightley says that what is here fancied is an impossibility. "When a vessel going to India has passed Mozambique, the coast of Arabia is due north of her, and at an immense distance, with a portion of the east coast of Africa interposed.' Saba was a town of Arabia Felix, here called "Araby the Blest." 168-171. "Than Asmodeus with the fishy fume," &c. In the Book of Tobit the evil spirit Asmodeus, in love with a Jewess named Sara, living in the Median city of Ecbatana, destroys her husbands in succession, till at last, after her betrothal to Tobias, the son of Tobit, he is foiled. Instructed by the Archangel Raphael, Tobias burns the heart and liver of a fish; "the which smell when the Evil Spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the Angel bound him."

210-214. "Eden stretched her line," &c. Milton here adopts the most orthodox hypothesis as to the site of Eden, placing it in Syria and Mesopotamia. He makes the limits in one direction to be from Auran on the west (Hauran, the Syrian district south of Damascus) to Seleucia on the east, i.e. to the capital of the Greek dynasty of the Seleucidæ, built on the Tigris about B. C. 300, near what is now Baghdad, in a region once called Telassar (Isaiah xxxvii. 12). The extent from west to east is about 450 miles: the boundaries north and south are not given. Paradise, according to Gen. ii. 8, is put in the east of Eden, i.e. in that part of the ancient Assyria where the Euphrates and the Tigris approach each other in flowing south.

&c.

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223-246. Southward through Eden went a river large," Much ingenuity has been spent in trying to identify the present river-system of the Syrian and Mesopotamian region with the Scriptural account of the rivers of Eden (Gen. ii.

10-14); but the difficulty of doing so has led many commentators to suppose an alteration of the river-system by the Deluge. Milton adheres to the Scriptural account, which speaks of one river watering the Garden and then dividing itself into four; but he adapts it to his purpose by making the head-stream pass underneath the hill of Paradise by a subterranean channel before dividing itself. He abstains from giving names here; but, as he afterwards distinctly names the head-stream the Tigris (IX. 71), the four divided streams must be, as in Scripture, the Pison, the Gihon, the Hiddekel (or Tigris continued), and the Euphrates.

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268-284. "Not that fair field," &c. The geographical and mythological allusions are somewhat complex.- -Enna, where Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, was carried off by Dio or Pluto, was in the heart of Sicily.--The famous Castalian spring of the Greeks was a stream of Mount Parnassus; but the one here meant was a spring which had borrowed the name, near Apollo's sacred grove of Daphne in Syria, not far from Antioch, where the Orontes flows into the Mediterranean.- The Nysa or Nyseian isle" of the passage is perhaps an island in the lake Tritonis about the middle of the northern coast of Africa, where the river Triton flows from the lake. Here, according to the account adopted by Milton (though other accounts make it at Nysa in Ethiopia), the infant Bacchus was educated. That god is generally made the son of Jupiter and the nymph Semele ; Milton prefers making him the son of the Libyan Jupiter and the nymph Amalthea. In the common legend Bacchus is brought up secretly at Nysa to avoid the wrath of Juno; here it is to avoid the wrath of Rhea, Saturn's wife and Jupiter's stepmother.- -Amara or Amhara is a tract of high table-land in the middle of Abyssinia, where the Blue Nile has its head, and where in the old maps the Nile as a whole is made to rise. Being about half way between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator, it may be said to be "under the Ethiop line." Here was the delightful mountain Amara, "a day's journey high," with its gardens and palaces, where, according to the tradition hinted at in the passage (used afterwards by Dr. Johnson in his Rasselas), the sons of the Abyssinian emperors were educated in strict seclusion. Some thought Amara to have been the original Paradise. 449, 450. "That day I oft remember," &c. It is surely

implied here that, in Milton's imagination, Adam and Eve had already been together in Paradise for some considerable time. Yet this is in apparent inconsistency with the thread of time given in the action of the poem. The Earth, with

the Mundane Universe round it, had been created in six of those nine days during which the Rebel Angels had been lying in stupor in Hell, and Milton has already stipulated (I. 50-53) that those nine days were literal days, according to human measure. It can even be fixed by the sequel (VIII. 228-246) that it was on the sixth day or Friday of the creative Week, the very day on which Man was made, that the Rebel Angels were roused from their stupor, and that it was on the following day, that Sabbath (Saturday) of Rest after the Creation which was spent in halleluiahs of joy over it among the Heavenly host of the faithful (VII. 551-634), that the Rebel Angels, in hideously contrasted occupation, held their council down in Hell and adopted Satan's plan for the ruin of the newly-made Universe. Now all that had happened since then in the action of the poem had been Satan's journey upwards through Chaos in quest of the new Universe, his discovery of it, his entrance into it, his arrival on the Earth near Eden, and his invasion of Paradise. Toilsome as the journey was, and with various interrupting incidents, one imagines, as one reads, that a day, or at most one or two days, sufficed for it. If so, at the date of the present speech of Eve to Adam, to which the Fiend is listening, Adam and Eve were but two or three days old. Yet in the phrase" That day I oft remember when from sleep I first awaked," &c., and also in other phrases and allusions in the poem, the day of the creation of Âdam and Eve seems already some considerable way back in the past. As Milton must have been perfectly aware of the apparent inconsistency, I can only suppose that he adopted imaginatively two measures or rates of time in his poem-a transcendental rate generally for events in Heaven, Chaos, and Hell; and a human rate for events within the Mundane Universe-sometimes (as in the account of the creative Week) harmonizing them, but at others (as in the account of Satan's upward journey through Chaos) disconnecting them.

486. "individual": i.e. not to be divided, inseparable (Lat. individuus). Compare Par. Lost, V. 610, and On Time, 12; also Par. Lost, VII. 382 and XII. 85.

542-543. "Against the eastern gate of Paradise," &c. Mr. Keightley thinks this a slip. The setting sun could not level his rays direct against the eastern gate of Paradise, unless, indeed, it were against the inside of that gate.

590-591. "whose point now raised bore him," &c. While Uriel and Gabriel had been conversing, the Sun had fallen to the horizon, so that the beam on which Uriel returned sloped from Paradise to the Sun.

592-597. "whether the Prime Orb," &c. A very interesting passage, as showing that, though Milton has adopted the Ptolemaic cosmology in his poem, he was quite well aware of the Copernican alternative, and perhaps appreciated its superior scientific worth. See Introd. pp. 37-39. The Prime Orb is the Primum Mobile, or Tenth and outmost sphere, of the Ptolemaists.

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605. Hesperus": the Evening Star.

628. "manuring" in the old sense of "tending with the hand" (manœuvring), "cultivating.'

639, 640. "I forget all time, all seasons, and their change." Another passage implying that Adam and Eve had been for some time on the Earth. See previous note, 449, 450.

642. "charm": i.e. song (Lat. carmen).

680-688. "How often," &c. Another passage of the same import as lines 449, 450, and 639, 640. For the ideas commentators compare Shakespeare's Tempest, iii. 2.

716, 717. "The unwiser son of Japhet," &c. : i.e. Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, both being sons of the Titan Iapetus. In revenge for the theft of the heavenly fire by the wise Prometheus, Jupiter created the first woman, Pandora ("the All-gifted "), and sent her to the Earth, under the conduct of Hermes or Mercury, with her box of evils, to be presented to the man she married. Prometheus avoided her; but Epimetheus was captivated, and the evils flew out among mankind from the opened box.

776, 777. "Now had Night measured," &c.

Prosaically,

it was about nine o'clock in the evening; but the clock here is that vast astronomical clock of which the great circle of the starry heavens is the dial-plate and the Earth's shadow the moving hour-hand. Night really is the shadow of the Earth shot like a cone of gloom into the part of space opposite to the Sun; and the shadow moves round the great circle with the Sun.

782-785. "Uzziel, half these draw off," &c. Here again, with the due poetic haze of expression, we have military accuracy and even military phraseology. Gabriel breaks his company of Angels into two divisions by the order " Right and left wheel" (the Latin equivalent for which was "Wheel to the spear Wheel to the shield," the right hand of course being the spear hand, and the left holding the shield); he takes command of one of the divisions himself, to march it round the north side of Paradise; he gives the other in charge to his lieutenant Uzziel (Strength of God), to be marched round the south side; the two divisions, having thus made the entire circuit of Paradise between them, are to meet at the western end, opposite to that eastern gate from which they now start; and meanwhile the two scouts, Ithuriel (Search of God) and Zephon (Searcher) are to go through the Garden, exploring it.

797. "So saying, on he led his radiant files.' "Filemarching" is marching two and two in a long string or column.

813. "Of force to its own likeness." See note, I. 254.

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847-849. saw Virtue in her shape," &c. almost a literal translation, as the commentator Hume pointed out, of Persius iii. 35--38.

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861-864. Now drew they nigh the western point," &c. Again military precision. The two subdivisions of Angels have met at the western end of Paradise as appointed, and there completed their junction into a single company again by the act known as closing," i.e. side-motion by quick short steps, so as to do away with the little gap left between the two subdivisions when halted.

وف

980. "with ported spears." Another military phrase, knowledge of the exact meaning of which is absolutely necessary for an appreciation of the beauty of the whole passage. Ported spears are not, as the commentators have supposed, spears thrust straight out against an enemy. To ". port arms, whether spears or bayonets, is to hold them aslant, butts downward to the right, and points over the left shoulder; and this is the position preparatory to the attack or charge,' which consists in bringing the weapon smartly down, with a half-wheel of the body, for firm opposition to whatever is in front of it. A body of men with spears well "ported" would present a resemblance to a field of corn-stalks blown aslant

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