"_Trepidation talk'd_" (Vol. iii., p. 450.).--The words attributed to
Milton are--
"That crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talk'd, and that first moved."
Paterson's comment, quoted by your correspondent, is exquisite: he
evidently thinks there were two trepidations, one _talked_, the other
_first moved_.
The _trepidation_ (not a tremulous, but a turning or oscillating motion)
is a well-known hypothesis added by the Arab astronomers to Ptolemy, in
explanation of the precession of the equinoxes. This precession they
imagined would continue retrograde for a long period, after which it
would be direct for another long period, then retrograde again, and so
on. They, or their European followers, I forget which, invented the
_crystal_ heaven, an apparatus outside of the _starry_ heaven (these
cast-off phrases of astronomy have entered into the service of poetry,
and the _empyreal_ heaven with them), to cause this slow turning, or
trepidation, in the starry heaven. Some used _two_ crystal heavens, and
I suspect that Paterson, having some confused idea of this, fancied he
found them both in Milton's text. I need not say that your correspondent
is quite right in referring the words _first moved_ to the _primum
mobile_.
Again, _balance_ in Milton never _weighs_. _Scale_ is his word (iv. 997.
x. 676.) for a weighing apparatus. Where he says of Satan's army (i.
349.),
"In even balance down they light
On the firm brimstone,"
he appears to mean that they were in regular order, with a right wing to
balance the left wing. The direct motion of the crystal heaven,
following and compensating the retrograde one, is the "balance" which
"_was_ the trepidation _called_;" and this I suspect to be the true
reading. The past tense would be quite accurate, for all the Ptolemaists
of Milton's time had abandoned the _trepidation_. As the text stands it
is nonsense; even if Milton did _dictate_ it, we know that he never
_saw_ it; and there are several passages of which the obscurity may be
due to his having had to rely on others. Witness the lines in book iv.
995-1002.