Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/424

 APPENDIX

��the Priests of Molech did deaf e their eares with the continual clang of trumpets and timbrels."

212. Isis; goddess of the Earth; Orus, or Horus, god of the sun ; Anubis, son of Osiris, represented with the head of a dog or jackal.

213-220. Osiris was worshiped by the Egyp- tians under the form of Apis, the sacred bull. He was said to have been put into a chest by conspirators and floated down the Nile. This chest or ark was preserved at Memphis as an object of worship.

226. Typhon, or Typhoeus, was represented by the Greeks as a hundred-headed monster, de- stroyed by Zeus. His Egyptian name was Suti ; he was worshiped in Egypt sometimes under the form of a crocodile, which fact Milton seems here to have in mind.

240. Youngest-teemed ; youngest-born.

Page 10. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV.

1. Terah's faithful son ; Abraham, whose " blest seed " were the children of Israel.

3. Pharian; Egyptian, from Pharaoh.

Page 11. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXXXVI.

46. Erythrean main; the Red Sea, from a Greek word meaning red.

65-66. Seon ... that ruled the Amorrean coast; a borrowing from Buchanan's Latin version of Psalm cxxxv. : Quique Amorrhceis Leon requavit in oris.

Page 12. ON THE DEATH OF A FAIR IN- FANT.

8-9. Grim Aquilo; Aquilo, or Boreas, the north wind, carried off Oreithyia, the daughter of King Erechtheus.

23-27. Hyacinthus, son of the king of Laconia, was slain by a quoit which Apollo threw and which the wind blew from its course. The flower hyacinth sprang from the ground where the boy's blood had flowed. Eurotas is a river of Laconia.

39. That high Jirst-moving sphere ; the Primum Mobile, or First-moved, the outer containing sphere of the Ptolemaic system. See Introduc- tion to Paradise Lost, on Milton's cosmology.

47. Earth's sons; the Titans, who strove to conquer Olympus and overthrow Zeus.

50. That just Maid ; Astraa, or Justice, who left the earth after the Golden Age.

68. The slaughtering pestilence ; referring to the plague which raged in England during the summer of 1625.

76. He will an offspring give; Edward and John Phillips scarcely fulfilled the prophecy.

Page 13. AT A VACATION EXERCISE.

7-8. Milton asks pardon for deferring the English portion of the exercise till the last.

14. The daintiest dishes; i. e. the dramatic speeches of Quantity, Quality, and the other Predicaments.

19-20. Those new-fangled toys, etc. ; an inter- esting reference to the Marinist school of con- ceitful writing, by which Milton himself was much affected in his youth.

74. Subject. . . to many an Accident; the lines preceding and following constitute a rid- dle on the Aristotelian doctrine of Substance ;

��so long as Substance remained absolute or unde- termined by the Accidents of quality, quantity, time, place, posture, habit, action, and passion, he " walked invisible ; " he was dependent upon them "for clothing" because undetermined substance is not perceptible.

90. Your learned hands; addressed directly to the student audience.

95-100. Sullen Mole, that runneth underneath, etc. ; the Mole, in Surrey, flows through a sub- terranean channel for a part of its course. The Severn derived its name from the maid Sa- brina, who was drowned in it (see Comus, 1. 824). The Dee, near Chester, was hallowed by Druidical associations. Humber was believed to have derived its name from an early Hun- nish invader. Thames is "royal-towered " be- cause it flows past Hampton Court, Windsor, and London.

Page 15. THE PASSION.

1^. This reference to the Hymn on the Na- tivity shows that the present poem was written later, probably on the following Easter.

6. Wintry solstice ; when the days are short- est.

24-26. The reference is to the Christiad, a Latin poem by Marco Girolamo Vida of Cre- mona, who flourished during the first half of the sixteenth century.

37. The prophet; Ezekiel.

43. That sad sepulchral rock; the tomb of Christ.

56. Had got a race of mourners, etc. ; refers to the fable Ixion, who mistook a cloud for Juno and begot the Centaurs.

Page 16. ON SHAKESPEARE.

10. Thy easy numbers ; " His mind and hand went together : And what he thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarcely re- ceived from him a blot in his papers," say the editors of the first Folio Shakespeare. Milton's habit of composition was very different.

12. Delphic lines, i. e. oracular, inspired.

14. Dost make us marble ; an extravagant and rather tasteless conceit ; the meaning is that Shakespeare excites our imagination so intensely that we are carried out of ourselves, become dead to our surroundings.

Page 17. ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER.

1. Girt; girth.

8. Dodged ; Masson quotes the following defi- nition of the word "dodge " from Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymologies ; " to jog, to move quickly to and fro ; hence to follow in the track of any one, to follow his ins and outs, . also to deceive one by change of motion."

Page 17. ANOTHER ON THE SAME.

5. Sphere-metal, i. e. of material as enduring as that of the heavenly spheres.

14. Too long vacation hastened on his term, a pun on the Long Vacation and Terms of the English universities.

32. His wain was his increase ; a pun on the word wain, a wagon, and wane, a diminishing.

Page 18. ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WIN- CHESTER.

24. To greet her of a lovely son; Charles Paulet,

�� �