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172. O'erblown. The meaning may be illustrated by Shak., Temp. II. ii. 114: 'Is the storm overblown?' The sense appears to be, 'The cessation of the hail hath calmed, stilled, the fiery surge.' If this is the meaning, it is an example of a past participle being used, as in Latin, for a verbal noun with a dependent genitive, - in this case the genitive being hail. But the syntax is not perfectly clear. 173. Surge. Image taken from what? Cf. P. L. 7: 214; 10: 417. What Latin verb underlies the word ?

176. Spent. Define. See P. R. 4: 366, 443; Sams. Agon. 1758.

Shafts. Cf. P. R. 3: 305: They issue forth, steel bows and shafts their arms,' referring to the Parthians. Here shafts evidently = arrows. Shaft may therefore be regarded as equivalent to bolt, which originally meant the same thing. The missiles or projectiles of the thunder are compared to arrows, as in Tennyson's sonnet, To J. M. K.:

Thou from a throne

Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings.

See also P. L. 6: 546, 845.

182. Livid. What color, and from what cause? See vv. 69, 350. 185. There rest. Ellipsis of what?

185-190. Landor and Lowell observe that Milton here uses rime, Lowell thinks intentionally. What are the riming words?

186. Affiicted. A Latinism. Define. See P. L. 2: 166; 4: 939; 6: 849-852.

187. Offend. Is this equivalent to displease? See P. L. 6: 465. 193. Uplift. Why is the form different from that in P. L. 1: 347; 2:7?

194. Sparkling blazed. So Spenser, F. Q. I. xi. 14: –

His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shields,
Did burne with wrath, and sparkled living fyre.

May Milton have derived any suggestions for this picture from
Virgil's account of the serpents that destroy Laocoon and his sons,
En. 2: 203-210?

195. Prone. Define. Large. Apparently a Gallicism. Meaning? 196. Rood. How much space is covered by Tityus, Æn. 6: 595597? How much in Odys. 11: 577 ?

198. Titanian. Who were the Titans, and for what were they

famous? Earth-born. See P. L. 4: 360; Vac. Exercise 93. It is the Greek ynyɛvns, an epithet used in the Prometheus Bound (see note on next line).

199. Briareos. Virgil makes Briareus war on Jove, Æn. 10: 565– 568: Ægæon [another name for Briareus] was such as this, of whom they tell that he had a hundred arms and a hundred hands, fifty mouths and fifty chests, from which flames blazed, in the day when he fought against the thunderbolts of Jove.' But in Il. 1: 401-406

he is an ally of Zeus.

Typhon. Prom. Bound 351-372 :·

I have also seen,

And pitied as I saw, the earth-born one,
The inhabitant of old Cilician caves,

The great war-monster of the hundred heads
(All taken and bowed beneath the violent hand),
Typhon the fierce, who did resist the gods,
And, hissing slaughter from his dreadful jaws,
Flash out ferocious glory from his eyes,

As if to storm the throne of Zeus! Whereat,
The sleepless arrow of Zeus flew straight at him, —
The headlong bolt of thunder breathing flame,
And struck him downward from his eminence
Of exultation! Through the very soul

It struck him, and his strength was withered up
To ashes, thunder-blasted. Now he lies

A helpless trunk supinely, at full length
Beside the strait of ocean, spurred into
By roots of Etna, - high upon whose tops
Hephæstus sits and strikes the flashing ore.
From thence the rivers of fire shall burst away
Hereafter, and devour with savage jaws

The equal plains of fruitful Sicily!

Such passion he shall boil back in hot darts

Of an insatiate fury and sough of flame,

Fallen Typhon; - howsoever struck and charred

By Zeus's bolted thunder!

Cf. Pindar, Pyth. 1: 16-17: 'Typhon of the hundred heads, whom erst the den Kilikian of many names did breed.'

200. In what province was Tarsus?

201.

Leviathan. Cf. P. L. 7: 412-415. Perhaps referring to Ps.

104 26. The leviathan of Job 41 is generally understood to be a crocodile, and not a whale.

202. Ocean stream. The ocean is called a stream by Homer

(I. 14: 245).

202. Lowell, Milton: When Mr. Masson tells us that . . . "either the third foot must be read as an anapæst or the word hugest must be pronounced as one syllable, hug'st," I think Milton would have invoked the soul of Sir John Cheek. Of course Milton read it

Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream.

So Milton wrote it, in fact, or at least so the first edition had it.' 203 ff. The story is an old one. It is told in the fabulous mediæval zoölogies (Physiologi), in the Old English poem entitled The Whale, in the Arabian Nights, and in Olaus Magnus' (1490–1568) History of the Northern Nations (tr. into English in 1658). See also Ariosto, Orl. Fur. 6: 37, Hakluyt's Voyages, and my comparison of the different versions in Modern Language Notes for March, 1894.

204. Night-foundered. Does this mean benighted, lost in the darkness, as in Comus 483? Nothing better suggests itself, but this meaning of founder seems to be peculiar to Milton.

206. Scaly. Perhaps from Job 41, but some of the writers mentioned above use terms which likewise suggest the crocodile or a huge turtle. Milton did not invent the confusion.

207. Lee. Define.

208.

Invests. See P. L. 3: 10. Wishèd morn. See Comus 574, 950; P. L. 6: 150.

209. Garnett calls attention to the 'sequence of monosyllables that paints the enormous bulk of the prostrate Satan.'

210. Chained. See 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude 6; Rev. 20: 1. 2 Pet. 2: 4 is now translated 'pits of darkness;' the former reading is explained as 'to darkness as if to chains,' which would make the Miltonic context easier of explanation (but see v. 48).

211. Had. Parse.

214-215. Garnett, Milton, pp. 153, 154: —

'It is easy to represent Paradise Lost as obsolete by pointing out that its demonology and angelology have for us become mere mythology. This criticism is more formidable in appearance than in reality. The vital question for the poet is his own belief, not the belief of his readers. If the Iliad has survived not merely the decay of faith in the Olympian divinities,

but the criticism which has pulverized Achilles as a historical personage, Paradise Lost need not be much affected by general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his innocent creature from the purely malignant motive

That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation,

without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in goodness, or` at best falsifies the declaration :

Necessity and chance

Approach me not, and what I will is fate.'

220. Treble. Name two synonyms. This use of treble in the sense of very great' suggests the use of Greek rois, English thrice, in such words as 'thrice-blessed.' Cf. P. L. 2: 569; 7: 631. Poured. Parse.

221. Pool. Is the word here used in its ordinary sense? Cf. P. L. 1: 411; 9: 77; P. R. 4: 79. If Milton sometimes used it to translate the Lat. palus, how might that modify the customary sense? The Bible sometimes has it with nearly the Miltonic meaning, thus Isa. 14: 23; cf. 41: 18.

222-224. Describe this scene as it appears to the eye of your imagination.

224. Cf. p. 193, v. 69.

225. Expanded wings. Cf. P. L. 2: 927.

226.

184. 227.

Incumbent. So the winds are incumbent on the sea in En.
Dusky air. Cf. P. L. 3: 72; 10: 280.

Unusual weight. Spenser, F. Q. I. xi. 18:

And with strong flight did forcibly divide
The yielding aire, which nigh too feeble found
Her flitting parts and element unsound,

To beare so great a weight.

228. Lights. Milton uses alight only twice, P. L. 3: 422; 4: 396. 229. Liquid fire. So liquidis ignis in Virgil, Ecl. 6: 33, from Lucr. 6 205, 349.

230. Hue. What color would this be?

231. Transports. Carries away.

232. Pelorus. Cape Faro in Sicily, opposite the Italian mainland, and near Etna. Ovid, Met. 5: 346-355: The vast island of Trinacria is heaped up on the limbs of the Giant, and keeps down Typhoeus, that dared to hope for the abodes of Heaven, placed beneath its heavy mass. He indeed struggles, and attempts often to rise, but his right hand is placed beneath the Ausonian Pelorus, his left under thee, Pachynus; his legs are pressed down by Lilyboum; Ætna bears down his head; under it Typhoeus, on his back, casts forth sand, and vomits flame from his raging mouth; often does he struggle to throw off the load of earth, and to roll away cities and huge mountains from his body.' Cf. En. 3: 571-582 (whence 'thundering Ætna '), and Longfellow's poem of Enceladus. Parse side. 234. Fueled. Define. Entrails. See P. L. 6:517; 9: 1000; and cf. viscera, Æn. 3:575. Conceiving. A Latinism, concipere ignem, as in Ovid, Met. 7: 108.

235. Sublimed. See P. L. 5: 483. Define and parse. Mineral fury. Like the furor æquinoctialis of Catullus 46 : 2.

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238. Unblest feet. Do you know Ruskin's comment on this passage, Mod. Painters, Part 3, Sec. 2, Chap. 3? Next mate. See v. 192. 241. Not. So Aias [Ajax] in Odys. 4 : 502-504: And so would he have fled his doom, albeit hated by Athene, had he not let a proud word fall in the fatal darkening of his heart. He said that in the gods' despite he had escaped the great gulf of the sea.'

243. See note on v. 5.

244. Change. Take in exchange. A classic idiom. Thus mutare, permutare in Virg., Georg. 1:8; Hor., Od. I. xvii. 1; III. i. 47; åhháooεiv, àμeíßev are similarly used in Greek. Cf. Ben Jonson, Drink to me only with thine eyes:

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

246. Sovran. From the Ital. sovrano. Account for the usual spelling. Dispose. See P. L. 3: 115; 4: 635; S. A. 210, 506. 247. Shall. Is this a mere future, equivalent to will?

248. Equaled. What words to be supplied? 249-255. Farewell . . . Heaven. Memorize.*

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