Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/433

 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

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��of a mythical king of Cornwall in the time of Brut, and substituted Bellerus afterwards as more musical. He probably meant it to stand for some mythical king or giant of the region.

161. Viston of the guarded mount; St. Mi- chael's Mount, opposite Penzance, on which there were the ruins of an old Norman strong- hold and an ancient abbey. A craggy seat, looking out upon the sea, was called St. Mi- chael's Chair; there the apparition of the Arch- angel was fabled to appear. It is to this ghostly guardian that Milton refers.

162. Namancos and Bayona's hold; both these places were in Spain, Namancos in Gali- cia, east of Cape Fiuisterre, Bayona a little farther south, on the sea. Verity notes that Namancos is given only in two editions of Mer- cator's Atlas, and that the later of these, pub- lished in England in 1636, the year before Ly- cidas was written, was doubtless the one Milton used. In that edition the site of Namancos is marked on the map by a drawing of a tower, and that of Bayona by a castle. St. Michael is made, in his character of guardian angel and warrior, to look toward Spain, England s an- cient enemy; looking on the map for some defi- nite localities to mention, Milton's eye fell on these two, and he selected them, not because of their importance, but because of the musical value of the names.

176. Unexpressive, inexpressible. Compare this whole passage with the close of the Epita- phium Damonis. The idea of the nuptial song is a working over of the passage in Revelation concerning the " marriage of the Lamb." Rev. xix. 6-7.

186. Uncouth; from Anglo-Saxon unciitf, un- known. It will be remembered that in 1637 Milton was still an " unknown " poet. Perhaps there is also a tinge of the modern meaning.

189. Doric lay; cf. Sir Henry Wotton's letter to Milton, where he praises a " certain Doric delicacy in the songs."

192. Twitched; caught up from the ground, or perhaps pulled closer round his shoulders because of the coolness of evening.

LATER SONNETS.

Page 74. WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS IN- TENDED TO THE CITY.

10-12. The story is told by Pliny, in his Natu- ral History, vii. 19, that Alexander the Great, after conquering Thebes (the city in which Pin- dar spent most of his life), commanded that the house of the poet should be spared from de- struction. One reason for this action was that Pindar had praised in his odes Alexander of Macedonia, an ancestor of Alexander the Great. Emathian is from Emathia, a province of Mace- donia, where the monarchy originally had its seat.

12-14. "Plutarch relates, that when the La- cedaemonian general Lysauder took Athens [B. c. 404], it was proposed in a council of war entirely to raze the city, and convert its site into a desert." But while the matter was still undecided, "at a banquet of the chief officers, a certain Phocian sang some fine [verses] from

��a chorus of the Electra of Euripides; which so affected the hearers, that they declared it an unworthy act to reduce a place, so celebrated for the production of illustrious men, to total ruin and desolation. It appears, however, that Lysander ordered the walls and fortifications to be demolished." WARTON. The verses in question were part of the first chorus of the Electra, 167 et seq.

Speaking of Milton's learning, Johnson says : " The books in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most de- lighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's Metamorphoses and Eu- ripides " (Life of Milton). A copy of Euripides with MS. notes by Milton is extant, and one of his textual emendations >j5fW for >)2cW in the Bacchae, 188 is universally adopted. See Dr. Sandys s edition (1892) of the Bacchae (Cam- bridge Press), where in the notes on 188, 234- 236 and 314-318 several interesting parallels be- tween Comus and parts of Euripides are pointed out. VERITY.

Page 74. To A VIRTUOUS YOUNG LADY.

2. The broad way and the green; Matthew vii. 13, 14 : Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction. . . and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life.

4. Hill of Heavenly Truth; cf. Par. Reg. II. 217, " Seated as on the top of Virtue's Hill."

5. See Luke x. 42; Ruth i. 14-17.

8. Notice the repetition of the same rhyme- word as above; purists object to this license.

11. Hope that reaps not shame; " Hope mak- eth not ashamed," Romans v. 5.

Page 74. To THE LADY MARGARET LEY.

6. Dishonest; disgraceful, Lat. inhonestus.

8. Isocrates, the Athenian orator, on hearing of the battle of Chaaronea, B. c. 338, put an end to his life. The title of Milton's Areopagitica is taken from the Logos Areopagiticus of Iso- crates.

9-10. Milton was sixteen when James Ley was made Lord High Treasurer.

Page 74. ON THE DETRACTION WHICH FOL- LOWED UPON MY WRITING CERTAIN TREA- TISES.

1. Tetrachordon : This pamphlet was pub- lished in March, 1645. The title signifies "four-stringed," and is explained on the title- page : " Expositions upon the four chief places in Scripture which treat of marriage, or nulli- ties in marriage."

4. Numbering good intellects; since, because of the close-weaving of its matter, form, and style, only intelligent persons would read it.

7. 8. Mile-End Green; so called because it lay about a mile from the centre of old London. Masson says, " it was a common in Milton's time and the favorite terminus of a citizen's walk." It lay in the region now called White- chapel.

8. 9. The Scotch names are selected because the Scotch Presbyterians were most scandalized by the divorce pamphlets. When the sonnet was written the chief topic of talk was Mont- rose's campaign. Professor Masson says,

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