Appendix
NOTES ON CERTAIN PASSAGES
I. 467. ‘Him followed Rimmon.’ The inversion could occur in prose. Cf. Daniel Apologie for Ryme, 1603. ‘Him followed Bessarion, Trapezantius, Theodore Gaza and others.’
II. 1006. ‘To that side Heav’n.’ This is not a mere ‘poetical periphrasis’ for ‘lower side’ or ‘bottom’. These expressions are avoided because there is no up or down in Chaos. Cf. 893.
III. 1–7. This is an example of the process whereby features that enter poetry for different reasons remain in it as ‘the adopted children of power’. The original reason for offering a number of alternative titles in addressing a god was doubtless practical: you wanted to be sure of getting in the name he liked. The custom, once established, becomes a means of showing the power addressed in various lights to the reader while retaining the solemnity which it inherits from its original use.
74. ‘Firm land . . . or in air.’ Milton is trying to make us realize that, though the spherical outer jacket of his universe was like land, those walking on it would have no sky to look up at. ‘Firm land, surrounded or enveloped in something that looked rather like water and rather like air, you couldn’t tell which, without any vault of heaven such as we see from the Earth.’
299. ‘Giving to death.’ Verity finds no object for giving and concludes that it has the intransitive sense of ‘yielding’. But his quotation from H. IV, Pt. II, does not prove that give (as opposed to give over) can have this sense. Better evidence, perhaps, could be found in Devonshire yeave (from giefan) ‘to thaw’, cited by Professor Wyld (Historical Study of the Mother Tongue, p. 278). But it is not needed, for giving in the text has as object what Hellish hate destroys. What Hellish hate destroys is Human Nature. What Christ gives to death is His Human Nature (cf. 246 and Mr. Sewell’s important comment on that line). What He dies to redeem is Human Nature.
IV. 36. ‘And add thy name.’ On the stage Satan would have had to do this in order to let the audience know whom he was addressing. Would Milton have inserted these words if the passage had been originally epic, not dramatic?
241. ‘Not nice art.’ Cf. Seneca’s description of the world in the Golden Age: prata sine arte formosa. Ep. XC.
V. 257. ‘No cloud . . . with cedars crowned.’ On the assumption that the Angel from heaven-gate looks right down through the ‘manhole’ in the cosmic jacket (v. III, 526 et seq.) it is just conceivable that he could see the Earth inside and Paradise on the Earth. But it would be difficult for him to see any ‘other shining globes’. I think Milton has here forgotten all about the enclosed universe of Bk. III.
349. ‘Shrub unfum’d.’ I think Milton is contrasting the practice of sweetening a room by fumigation (cf. Much Ado I, iii, 53, ‘I was smoking a musty room’) with the simplicity of Eden where the aromatic shrub in its natural state (unfumed) was sweetness enough.
VI. 236. ‘Ridges of grim Warr.’ I do not think, with Verity, that Milton has Shakespeare (Lucrece 1438) in mind. The whole passage is full of Homeric echoes, and the ridges reproduce πολέμοιο γέφυραι (Il. IV, 371, etc.). What they were, I do not know.
268. ‘Misery, uncreated till the crime.’ Cf. Donne, Litanie 10, ‘Two things, Sin and Death crept in, which were never made.’
VIII. 228. ‘Equal love.’ Probably in the sense of Latin aequus, propitious, benign (Pauci quos aequus amavit Iuppiter).
416–19. ‘You are perfect simpliciter. Man is not perfect in that sense, but only in his own degree (i.e. he may be a perfect man, but man is not a perfect being). That is why he has a desire to enrich his imperfect being by social intercourse with other members of his species.’
512. ‘Constellations’, i.e. of course, conjunctions: not ‘constellations’ in the modern sense.
IX. 157. ‘Of these the vigilance I dread’, etc. These four lines sound very much as if they had been originally written for the stage. (I may owe this observation to Mr. Fletcher, of St. Edmund’s Hall.)
442. ‘Not mystic’, i.e. not allegorical. Milton is protesting against an exclusively allegorical interpretation of Canticles. He thinks there were two real human lovers in a real garden.
482. ‘For I view far round.’ Again smacks of the stage.
506. ‘Hermione.’ Almost certainly either Milton’s slip of the tongue while dictating or the printer’s error for Harmonia.
686. ‘Life to knowledge.’ Verity takes this to mean ‘Life in addition to knowledge.’ But surely it is the A. V. construction as in ‘live unto righteousness’ (I Pet. ii, 24).
X. 329. ‘Aries.’ The sun was in Aries because the Creatour of alle kinde Vpon this signe ferst bigan The world whan that he made man. (Gower, Conf. Am. VII, 994).