by John Milton
606. here in the sun.
607. elixir the liquid form of the Philosopher’s Stone, capable of curing all diseases and prolonging life.
608. Potable drinkable.
virtuous energizing.
609. arch-chemic chief of the alchemists. The sun’s rays were thought to penetrate the earth and generate precious metals and stones. Cp. A Masque 732–6.
610. humour moisture.
617. equator the celestial equator, where (before the Fall) the sun would culminate or reach its highest point. After the Fall, direct (and therefore shadowless) beams occur only at the points where ecliptic and equator coincide.
620. visual ray The eye was thought to emit a beam onto the object perceived.
622. ken range of vision.
623. The same whom John saw Cp. Rev. 19. 17: ‘I saw an angel standing in the sun’.
625. *beaming OED’s earliest instance of the participial adjective. tiar crown.
627. Illustrious lustrous, gleaming.
634. casts schemes (OED 43) and casts off (his present shape).
636–9. Cherub… feigned Cp. II Cor. 11.14: ‘Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light’.
637. prime prime rank, with overtones of ‘prime of life’.
643. succinct *scant, close-fitting (OED 3a).
644. decent comely (OED 2).
648. Uriel Hebrew ‘Light (or fire) of God’. The name is not biblical, but it appears as the name of an angel in the apocryphal II Esdras (4. 1) and the pscudcpigraphal I Enoch (22. 2). Uriel is also prominent in cabbalistic lore.
one of the seven See Rev. 1. 5, 8. 2, and Tob.12. 15 for the seven angels before God’s throne. The Bible does not name them, but I Enoch lists them as Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Zerachiel, Gabriel, Remiel. Other lists exist, but this is the only one to place Uriel first (656).
650. are his eyes Cp. Zech. 4. 10: ‘those seven… are the eyes of the Lord which run to and fro through the whole earth’.
655. God The disguised Satan now speaks the name for the first time.
656. authentic authoritative (OED 1). Interpreter one who makes known the will of another; a title of Mercury as messenger of the gods (OED 3). Cp. vii 72.
664. favour favourite (OED id), perhaps also ‘resemblance’. See ii 350B.
667. wand’ring See ii 148n.
671–2. That I may… behold Cp. Herod’s question to the Magi concerning the Second Adam: ‘when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also’ (Matt. 2. 8).
694. tends inclines.
709. mould substance.
716. quintessence the fifth element, of which the heavenly bodies were made.
717. spirited with various forms presided over by various angelic spirits or Intelligences. Cp. Plato, Timaeus 41E.
718. rolled orbicular referring both to the spherical shape of the newly-created stars and the orbits that they follow.
726. Night earth’s night (but with a glance at Chaos and Night, who would invade the universe).
730. triform alluding to the moon’s phases; but ancient poets called the lunar goddess triformis because of her triple nature (Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Hecate or Proserpina in hell). Virgil associates ‘threefold Hecate’ with Chaos (Aen. iv 510–11).
731. Hence from here (the sun).
fills and empties M. often imagines light as a liquid. Cp. iii 7–8 and vii 359–65-
732. checks the night holds night in check. Ricks hears a pun on ‘ “chequers, variegates with its rays” as in Robert Greene: “checkt the night with golden rays” (1590, OED)’.
738. reverence including ‘obeisance, bow’ (OED 2).
740. ecliptic the sun’s orbit around the earth. sped including ‘prospered’ (hoped success).
742. Niphates a mountain on the border of Armenia and Assyria.
BOOK IV
3. second rout St John prophesies a second battle in Heaven at Rev. 12. 3- 12.
5. Woe… earth Cp. Rev. 12. 12: ‘Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knowcth that he hath but a short time’.
10. Accuser translating Greek diabolos. Cp. Rev. 12. 10: ‘the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night’.
11. wreck wreak, avenge (OED v2 3) and ruin (OED v1 4). Wreaking vengeance, Satan will ruin both man and himself. Cp. iii 241.
17. engine cannon and plot. Cp. i 750, ix 172–4.
18. distract drive mad (OED 6), draw in different directions (OED 1).
20. Hell within him Contrast Satan’s boast at i 254–5, CP. the words of Marlowe’s Mephostophilis in Doctor Faustus I iii 76: ‘Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it’. Cp. also II i 121–2: ‘where we are is hell, / And where hell is, there must we ever be’.
27. Eden Hebrew ‘delight’ (contrasting with grieved, sad).
31. revolving pondering.
32–113. O thou… know M.’s nephew and biographer Edward Phillips reports that this soliloquy (at least lines 32–41) was written ‘several Years before the Poem was begun’, and was intended to begin a tragedy on the Fall (Darbishire 72). Cp. the opening addresses to the sun in Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, and Euripides, Phoenissae.
33. Look’st both ‘survey’ and ‘seem to be’.
sole unique (and suggesting sol, ‘the sun’).
36–7. thy name / O sun See Nativity 83n for the pun on ‘Son’. This is the nearest Satan comes, after his expulsion from Heaven, to naming the Son or even acknowledging his existence.
37. hate thy beams Cp. John 3. 20: ‘Every one that doeth evil hateth the light’.
43. he created what I was Satan had claimed to be ‘self-begot’ (v 860). He might have been lying, or he might now be suddenly convinced of his creatureliness. See Empson, 64–5.
45. Upbraided none Cp. James 1. 5: ‘God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not’.
50. ’sdained disdained.
51. quit requite, pay.
53. still… still continually… continually (but in line 56 still includes ‘nevertheless’).
56. By owing owes not The first ‘owe’ means ’acknowledge as belonging to oneself (OED Ic). Thus a grateful mind, simply by acknowledging a debt, ceases to owe it. Fowler traces the idea to Cicero, Pro Plancio xxviii 68. See also Ad Patrem m-14.
61. Power celestial being (OED 7).
66, 67, 71. thou Satan himself.
75. myself am Hell See above, 20n.
79. O then at last relent The Church Father Origen had thought that Satan might be saved through repentance (80), but M.’s God excludes the rebel angels from grace at iii 129–32 and v 615. Cp. Matt. 25. 41, Rev. 20. 10.
79—80. is there no place I Left for repentance Cp. Heb. 12. 17: ‘when he [Esau] would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears’.
81. that word ‘submission’.
87. abide pay the penalty for (erroneous form of ‘abye’) and abide by, remain true to.
94. grace unmerited favour of God. Act of grace was also a legal term meaning ‘formal pardon, spec. a free and general pardon, granted by an Act of Parliament’ (OED 15b).
97. violent not free or voluntary (OED 5b).
110. Evil be thou my good Cp. Isa. 5. 20: ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil’. Satan need not be pledging himself to evil as an absolute. Stephen Fallon compares the moral relativism of Hobbes in Leviathan (1651) 24: ‘these words of Good, Evil, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common Rule of Good and Evill, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves’. For Satan, ‘good’ is ‘the arbitrarily imposed “good” of God, who first gave names to things’ (Fallon 219).
112. reign govern.
115. pale pallor.
116. borrowed assumed, counterfeit (OE
D 2a).
118. distempers disorders arising from an imbalance of the four humours. Cp. ii 218, 276–7.
122–4. practised… practised plotted evil (OED 9b)… become proficient.
123. couched lying hidden.
125. warned summoned to duty (OED 7a), a military term.
126. Assyrian mount Niphates (iii 742).
132. delicious Paradise ‘Paradise of delights’, translating the Vulgate’s in Paradiso deliciarum (Gen. 2. 15), which the A.V. renders as ‘the garden of Eden’.
134. champaign head treeless plateau.
135. hairy sides ‘The Freudian idea that the happy garden is an image of the human body would not have frightened Milton in the least’ (Lewis 47). Mound (134) even suggests the mons veneris. A myrtle-clad mount in Spenser’s Garden of Adonis has precisely this significance (FQIU vi 43).
136. grotesque *of landscape: romantic, picturesque (OED B 2b), from ‘grotto’.
140. sylvan scene echoing Virgil, Aen. i 164 (silvis scaena).
141. woody theatre Cp. Spenser, FQ III v 39: ‘And mighty woods, which did the valley shade, / And like a stately Theatre it made’.
149. enamelled bright and variegated in colour.
151. humid bow rainbow.
153. of out of (both Satan’s emergence and the transformation of pure into purer air).
154. inspires infuses (joy) and breathes in (air).
156. gentle gales breezes.
158–9. stole / Those balmy spoils Cp. Ariosto’s earthly Paradise: ‘From flowers, fruit and grass the breezes stole / The varied perfumes’ (Orl. Fur. xxxiv 51).
159–65. As… smiles Cp. Diodorus Siculus’s description of the fragrant breezes of Arabia Felix wafting out to sea (III xlvi 4); also Ariosto’s account of spice-laden breezes delighting ’sailors out at sea’ (Orl. Fur. xviii 138, xv 16).
160. Hope Good Hope (contrasting with Satan’s despair).
162. Sabéan of Saba (the biblical Sheba).
163. Araby the blest Arabia Felix (modern Yemen).
165. grateful pleasing.
old Ocean the Titan Oceanus.
167. bane destroyer, murderer.
168–71. Asmodéus… bound In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobias (Tobit’s son) travelled to Media and married Sarah, whose previous seven husbands had been killed on their wedding night by the demon Asmodeus. Instructed by the angel Raphael, Tobias burned the heart and liver of a fish. Smelling the fishy fume, Asmodeus ‘fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him’ (Tob. 8. 3). Tobias later cured his father’s blindness with the fish’s gall (Tob. 11. 8). Cp. v 221–3.
170. with a vengeance with great violence (OED 4b) and with a curse (OED 4a).
172. savage wild, wooded.
175. brake thicket.
176. had perplexed would have entangled.
181. bound… bound The contemptuous pun looks back to fast bound (171).
182. sheer entirely and perpendicularly.
183–7. wolf… fold Cp. John 10. 1 : ‘He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber’. Cp. also Ariosto’s Saracen Rodomonte leaping the moat of Paris ‘with one bound’ like a hunting dog (Orl. Fur. xiv 130, xvi 20). Once in the city, he slaughters Christians like a wolf among sheep (Orl. Fur. xvi 23). Cp. also Virgil, Aen. ix 59–64, 563–5.
186. hurdled cotes sheep-pens of wattled fences.
secure overconfident (OED 1), with a wry pun on ‘safe’.
191. In at the window climbs Cp. Spenser’s Kirkrapine, a ‘sturdie thiefe / Wont to robbe Churches’ who ‘in at the window crept’ (I iii 17). Spenser and M. both echo Joel 2. 9, where the thief is an avenging army: ‘they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The army turns ‘the garden of Eden’ into ‘a desolate wilderness’ (2. 3).
188. *unhoard take out of a hoard.
192. clomb archaic past tense of ‘climb’.
193. lewd unprincipled (OED 5), with a play on ‘not in holy orders’ (OED 1). Thus lewd hirelings implies that a paid clergy is not a real clergy. M. thought that ministers should support themselves. See his Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings Out of the Church (1659) and his condemnation of ‘hireling wolves’ in his sonnet To the Lord General Cromwell (14).
196. cormorant a seabird noted for gluttony, hence a symbol for human rapaciousness (OED 2). At Isa. 34. 11 the cormorant is associated with the day of God’s vengeance when Edom will lie waste: ‘The cormorant and the bittern shall possess it’. Contrast Raphael as phoenix, v 272.
198. virtue power, efficacy. M. is elsewhere evasive as to whether the Tree of Life was truly life-giving. See iv 219–20, xi 93–8 and notes.
200. well used i.e. by Adam and Eve. Satan only used the Tree of Life for prospect (lookout); Adam and Eve might have used it as a pledge.
211. Auran the province of Hauran on the eastern border of Israel (Ezek. 47. 18).
212. great Seleucia a city on the Tigris, built by Alexander’s general Seleucus Nicator (called great to distinguish it from other cities of the same name). See PR iii 291.
213–14. sons of Eden… Telassar Cp. II Kings 19. 11 and Isa. 37. 12, where the Assyrians destroy ‘the children of Eden which were in Telassar’.
219. *ambrosial divinely fragrant (OED IC). The etymology (Greek ambrotos, ‘immortal’) suggests that the Tree of Life might bestow immortality, but see xi 93–6.
220. vegetable gold Fowler hears an echo of ‘potable gold’ (see iii 68on) and ‘vegetable stone’ - both forms of the elixir of life or Philosopher’s Stone. Cp. also Virgil’s description of the golden bough (Aen. vi 143–4).
222. Knowledge… ill Cp. CD i 10: ‘It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because of what happened afterwards: for since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil’ (trans. Carey, YP 6. 352). Cp. ix 1070–73, xi 84–9.
223. a river the Tigris (identified at ix 71).
228. kindly natural.
233. *main streams Cp. Gen. 2. 10: ‘And a river went out of Eden… and became into four heads’.
237. crisped rippling.
239. error wandering; ‘the evil meaning is consciously and ominously excluded’ (Stein 66). Cp. vii 302.
241. nice fastidious.
242. knots flower-beds laid out in intricate designs (OED 7). boon bountiful.
246. *Embrowned darkened (OED 1).
248. odorous gums Cp. Spenser’s Garden of Adonis, where a grove of myrtles dropped ‘sweet gum’ and ‘Threw forth most dainty odours’ (FQ_ III vi 43). Spenser’s grove symbolizes the mons veneris (see above, 135n).
250. amiable desirable.
Hesperian fables See III 568; and A Masque 393. Ralegh in The History of the World (1614) notes that the dragon guarding the apples of the Hesperides was ‘taken from the Serpent, which tempted Evah’ (86).
255. irriguons well-watered.
256. without thorn a traditional inference from Gen. 3. 18.
257. umbrageous shady.
258. mantling enveloping (OED 2).
262–3. Myrtle and mirror are attributes of Venus, goddess of love and gardens.
264. airs breezes and melodies.
266. universal Pan A spurious etymology (Greek iixv, ‘all’) encouraged the notion that the wood-god Pan was a symbol of universal nature. See also Nativity 89n.
267. Graces, Hours See A Masque 986n.
268. eternal spring There are no seasons until earth is tilted on its axis, after the Fall (x 651–91). Ovid, Met. v 391, describes Enna, where Proserpine was ravished, as a land of perpetuum ver, ‘eternall Spring’ (trans. Sandys).
269–72. Enna… world Ovid tells how Dis (Pluto, Hades) snatched Proserpine, daughter of the grain-goddess Ceres, from the Sicilian meadow of Enna. The earth grew barren while Ceres searched for her daughter. Jove promised that Proserpine should be restored if she had eaten no food in
Hades, but she had eaten seven pomegranate seeds and so had to stay in Hades half the year (Met. v 38sff., Fasti iv 420ff.). Sandys notes that Proserpine’s pomegranate ‘is held to have a relation’ to the apple that ‘thrust –Evah out of Paradice’. See George Sandys, Ovid’s Metamorphosis (1632), 195.
270. Herself a fairer flow’r Cp. ix 432: ‘Herself, though fairest unsupported flow’r’; also Ovid, Met. v 398–401, where Proserpine’s gathered flowers (collecti flores) fall from her robe, and she grieves for them even as she herself is abducted. M. often alludes to Proserpine’s abduction in PL. See 381–51; below, ix 396, 838–42n.
273–4. Daphne a grove of laurels on the river Orontes in Syria. It had a Castalian spring named for that of the Muses on Mount Parnassus, and an oracle of Apollo (hence inspired).
275–9. Nyseian… eye Diodorus Siculus (III lxvii-lxx) tells how King Ammon of Libya had a son, Bacchus, by the nymph Amalthea. Fearing his jealous wife Rhea, Ammon hid Amalthea and Bacchus on Nysa, an island in the river Triton near modern Tunis. Christian commentators identified Jupiter-Ammon with Noah’s son Ham (Cham).
278. florid ruddy (Bacchus was the god of wine).
281. Amara a mountain-top fastness where Abyssinian kings raised their sons (issue) among secluded gardens and palaces. Peter Heylyn in his Cosmographie (1652) says it was ‘a dayes journey high’, adding ‘some have taken (but mistaken) it for the place of Paradise’ (iv 64).
282. Ethiop line equator.
286. *undelighted all delight ‘Eden’ means ‘delight’.
291. worthy here probably an adverb (OED B) signifying that Adam and Eve really were what they seemed to be.
293. severe austerely plain (‘like a severe style in music or architecture’, Lewis 118). Cp. xi 1144, 1169.
295. Whence from God’s image.
296. their sex not equal seemed Joseph Wittreich in Feminist Milton (1987) 86 argues valiantly but unpersuasively that Adam and Eve seem unequal only because we are seeing them through Satan’s eyes. Raphael and the Son both insist upon Adam’s headship (viii 561–78, x 145–56), as does M. in his prose (YP 2. 589–90, 6. 355).
299. He… him Cp. I Cor. 11. 3: ‘the head of every man is Christ; and he head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God’.