Hoxton.
_Palace of Lucifer._--In Milton's elegy upon the death of Bishop
Andrewes there is an allusion to a fabled _Palace of Lucifer_ which I do
not quite understand. It seems to refer to some romantic description or
other, and I shall be much obliged to any one that will kindly tell me
by whom. It is always important to know something of the train of an
author's reading, as we then can better understand the ordinary train of
his thoughts--
"Serpit odoriferas per opes levis aura Favoni,
Aura sub innumeris humida nata rosis,
_Talis in extremis terræ Gangetidis oris
Luciferi regis fingitur esse domus_."
Eleg. III. _In obitum Præsulis Wintoniensis_, l. 47.
And now I will give Thomas Warton's note in full. He says:
"I know not where this fiction is to be found. But our author has
given a glorious description of a palace of Lucifer in the
_Paradise Lost_, b. v. 757.:
"'At length into the limits of the North
They came, and Satan to his _royal seat_
High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount,
Rais'd on a mount, with pyramids and towers
From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold,
The _Palace of Great Lucifer_, so call
That structure, in the dialect of men
Interpreted; which not long after, he,
Affecting all equality with God,
In imitation of that mount, whereon
Messiah was declar'd in sight of Heaven,
The Mountain of the Congregation call'd,' &c.
"Here is a mixture of Ariosto and Isaiah. Because Lucifer is
simply said by the prophet 'to sit upon the Mount of the
Congregation on the sides of the North,' Milton builds him a
palace on this mountain, equal in magnificence and brilliancy to
the most superb and romantic castle. In the text, _by the utmost
parts of the Gangetic land_, we are to understand the north; the
river Ganges, which separates India from Scythia, arising from the
mountain Taurus."
Some of your learned correspondents will, I doubt not, be both able and
willing to throw some light upon a difficulty which may possibly have an
indirect connexion with other difficulties also.