514. ~shallow~. Comp. _Son._ i. 6, "_shallow_ cuckoo's bill," xii_a_. 12;
_Arc._ 41, "_shallow_-searching Fame."
515. ~sage poets~. Homer and Virgil are meant; both of these mention the
chimera. Milton (_Par. Lost_, iii. 19) afterwards speaks of himself as
"taught by the heavenly Muse." Comp. _L'Alleg._ 17; _Il Pens._ 117,
"great bards besides In sage and solemn tunes have sung."
516. ~storied~, related: 'To story' is here used actively: the past
participle is frequent in the sense of 'bearing a story or picture'; _Il
Pens._ 159, "storied windows"; Gray's _Elegy_, 41, "storied urn";
Tennyson's "storied walls." _Story_ is an abbreviation of _history_.
517. ~Chimeras~, monsters. Comp. the sublime passage in _Par. Lost_, ii.
618-628. The Chimera was a fire-breathing monster, with the head of a
lion, the tail of a dragon, and the body of a goat. It was slain by
Bellerophon. As a common name 'chimera' is used by Milton to denote a
terrible monster, and is now current (in an age which rejects such
fabulous creatures) in the sense of a wild fancy; hence the adj.
_chimerical_ = wild or fanciful. ~enchanted isles~, _e.g._ those of Circe
and Calypso, mentioned in the _Odyssey_.
518. ~rifted rocks~: rifted = riven. Orpheus, in search of Eurydice,
entered the lower world through the rocky jaws of Taenarus, a cape in
the south of Greece (see Virgil _Georg._ iv. 467, _Taenarias fauces_);
here also Hercules emerged from Hell with the captive Cerberus.