_Rex Lucifer._--It would be a most horrid barbarism to impute to such a
Latin poet as Milton the use of this word for the devil; although in his
theological poem he may have adopted that popular and discreditable
gloss upon Isaiah xiv. The palace of the light-bringing king is no other
than that known to our earliest school-days, in Ovid 1. ad fin. 2. ad
init. Phaëthon passes the "positos sub ignibus Indos," and then "patrios
adit impiger ortus," where
"Regia Solis erat sublimibus alta columnis," &c.
Milton uses the word as an adjective, as in Ovid, "luciferos, Luna
regebat equos." Otherwise it would necessarily signify the Planet Venus,
or morning star.