Smectymnuus.' 1641.
P. 69. _devised_: described, represented.
P. 70. _conversation_: in New Testament sense, mode or way of life,
conduct, deportment (ἀναστροφή).
P. 70. _apology_: defence, vindication.
P. 71. _propense_: inclined, disposed.
P. 71. _that place_: the University.
P. 71. _to obtain with me_: prevail, succeed with me, to get the better
of.
P. 71. _both she or her sister_: Cambridge or Oxford University; 'both'
requires 'and'; 'or' requires 'either.'
P. 71. _that suburb sink_: the 'pretty garden-house in Aldersgate
street,' as his nephew, Edward Phillips styles it, to which he removed
from 'his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard,' in 1640, and where he was
living when he wrote his 'Apology for Smectymnuus.'
P. 72. _I never greatly admired, so now much less_: in 'The Reason of
Church Government urged against Prelaty' ('The Conclusion. The mischief
that Prelaty does in the State'), Milton writes: 'The service of God,
who is truth, her (Prelaty's) liturgy confesses to be perfect freedom;
but her works and her opinions declare that the service of prelaty is
perfect slavery, and by consequence perfect falsehood. Which makes me
wonder much that many of the gentry, studious men as I hear, should
engage themselves to write and speak publicly in her defence; but that I
believe their honest and ingenuous natures coming to the universities to
store themselves with good and solid learning, and there unfortunately
fed with nothing else but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish
and miserable sophistry, were sent home again with such a scholastic bur
in their throats, as hath stopped and hindered all true and generous
philosophy from entering, cracked their voices for ever with
metaphysical gargarisms, and hath made them admire a sort of formal
outside men prelatically addicted, whose unchastened and unwrought minds
were never yet initiated or subdued under the true lore of religion or
moral virtue, which two are the best and greatest points of learning;
but either slightly trained up in a kind of hypocritical and hackney
course of literature to get their living by, and dazzle the ignorant, or
else fondly over-studied in useless controversies, except those which
they use with all the specious and delusive subtlety they are able, to
defend their prelatical Sparta.'
P. 72. _wisses_: knows.
P. 72. _the bird that first rouses_: the lark; see 'L'Allegro,' 41 _et
seq._
P. 72. _old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt lotion_: the
passage alluded to in the 'Animadversions,' is the following: 'We know
where the shoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and oh
what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased,
to have the periwigs plucked off, that cover your baldness, your inside
nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time, once every
year, when their slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if
the free-born people of England, with whom the voice of truth for these
many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in
corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious
indexes, your gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be
obtained without the shallow surview, but _not shallow hand_ of some
mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of
speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and
strait-laced almost to a brokenwinded phthisic, if now, at a good time,
our time of parliament, the very jubilee and resurrection of the state,
if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long-persecuted truth, could
not be suffered to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of
words, could not be excused after such an injurious strangle of silence,
nor avoid the censure of libelling, it were hard, it were something
pinching in a kingdom of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists,
have thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust themselves
under disguise into a popular throng, to stand the night long under
eaves of houses, and low windows, that they might hear everywhere the
utterances of private breasts, and amongst them find out the precious
gem of truth, as amongst the numberless pebbles of the shore; whereby
they might be the abler to discover, and avoid, that deceitful and
close-couched evil of flattery, that ever attends them, and misleads
them, and might skilfully know how to apply the several redresses to
each malady of state, without trusting the disloyal information of
parasites and sycophants; whereas now this permission of free writing,
were there no good else in it, yet at some time thus licensed, is such
an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and tenderest particular
truths, as makes not only the whole nation in many points the wiser, but
also presents and carries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar
concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or restrained good
among the commons, as that they shall not need hereafter, in old cloaks
and false beards, to stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller
for eaves-dropping, not to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead
emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those
that are guilty, with these free-spoken and plain-hearted men, that are
the eyes of their country, and the prospective glasses of their prince?
But these are the nettlers, these are the blabbing books that tell,
though not half your fellows' feats. You love toothless satires; let me
inform you, a toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleekstone,
and as bullish.'
P. 73. _antistrophon_: reasoning turned upon an opponent.
P. 73. _mime_: a kind of buffoon play, in which real persons and events
were ridiculously mimicked and represented.
P. 73. _Mundus alter et idem_ (another world and the same): a satire by
Bishop Hall.
P. 73. _Cephalus_: son of Mercury (Hermes), carried off by Aurora (Eos).
P. 73. _Hylas_: accompanied Hercules in the Argonautic expedition. His
beauty excited the love of the Naiads, as he went to draw water from a
fountain, on the coast of Mysia, and he was drawn by them into the
water, and never again seen.
P. 73. _Viraginea_: the land of viragoes.
P. 73. _Aphrodisia_: the land of Aphrodite (Venus).
P. 73. _Desvergonia_: the land of shamelessness. Ital. _vergona_, shame,
infamy.
P. 73. _hearsay_: the hearing of, knowing about.
P. 73. _tire_: head-dress.
P. 73. _those in next aptitude to divinity_: divinity students.
P. 73. _Trinculoes_: Trinculo is the name of a jester in Shakespeare's
'Tempest'; or, according to a note in Johnson's 'Life of Milton,' signed
R., referred to by J. A. St. John, 'by the mention of this name he
evidently refers to "Albemazor," acted at Cambridge in 1614.'
P. 73. _mademoiselles_: ladies' maids.
P. 73. _Atticism_: because he is here imitating a well-known passage in
Demosthenes's speech against Æschines.—_Keightley._
P. 74. _for me_: so far as I'm concerned.
P. 74. ἀπειροκαλία: ignorance of the beautiful, want of taste or
sensibility (Liddell and Scott).
P. 75. _elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce_: _i.e._ they
are much read in the schools.
P. 75. _numerous_: in poetic numbers; 'in prose or numerous verse.'—_P.
L._, v. 150.
P. 75. _For that_: because.
P. 75. _severe_: serious.
P. 76. _the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura_: Dante and
Petrarch.
P. 76. _though not in the title-page_: an allusion to his opponent's 'A
_Modest_ Confutation.'
P. 78. _Corinthian_: licentious, Corinth having been noted for its
licentiousness.
P. 78. _the precepts of the Christian religion_: J. A. St. John quotes
from Symmons's 'Life of Milton': 'It was at this early period of his
life, as we may confidently conjecture, that he imbibed that spirit of
devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: and
we need not extend our search beyond the limits of his own house for the
fountain from which the living influence was derived.'
P. 78. _had been_: _i.e._ might have been.
P. 79. _sleekstone_: a smoothing stone; a toothed sleekstone would fail
of its purpose as much as a toothless satire.
P. 79. _this champion from behind the arras_: probably an allusion to
Polonius, who, in the closet scene (A. III. S. iv.), conceals himself
behind the arras to overhear the interview between Hamlet and his
mother.
P. 80. _Socrates_: surnamed Scholasticus; a Greek ecclesiastical
historian; b. about 379, d. after 440; author of a 'History of the
Church from 306 to 439 A.D.'
P. 81. _St. Martin_: there are two saints of the name; which one is
alluded to is uncertain, but probably Bishop of Tours, 4th century.
P. 81. _Gregory Nazianzen_: a Greek father, surnamed the Theologian; b.
about 328, d. 389 A.D.
P. 81. _Murena_: Roman consul, 63 B.C.; charged with bribery by Servius
Sulpicius; defended by Cicero, in his oration _Pro Murena_. In Cicero's
answer to Sulpicius, 'three months,' as given by Milton, should be
'three days': 'itaque, si mihi, homini vehementer occupato, stomachum
moveritis, _triduo_ me jurisconsultum esse profitebor.'
_To Carlo Dati._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. X.)
P. 83. _tomb of Damon_: _i.e._ of Carolo Diodati.
P. 83. _that poem_: 'Epitaphium Damonis.'
_On his Blindness_
P. 84. 1. _spent_: extinguished.
P. 84. 2. _Ere half my days_: _i.e._ are spent; Milton was about
forty-four years old when his 'light' was fully 'spent.'
P. 85. 8. _fondly_: foolishly; _prevent_: to come before, anticipate,
forestall.
P. 85. 12. _thousands_: _i.e._ of 'spiritual creatures.' See 'P. L.,'
iv. 677.
P. 85. 14. _They also serve_: _i.e._ as Verity explains, those other
angels too, who, etc.
_To Leonard Philaras._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XII.)
P. 85. _Angier_ (_René_): resident agent in Paris for the English
Parliament.
_To Henry Oldenburg._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XIV.)
P. 87. _Henry Oldenburg_: b. at Bremen about 1615, d. 1677; sent in 1653
by the Council of Bremen as their agent to negotiate with Cromwell some
arrangement by which the neutrality of Bremen should be respected in the
naval war between England and Holland ('Dict. of National Biography');
became a member and secretary of the Royal Society of London, and was
afterward elected a fellow of the Society; corresponded extensively with
the philosopher, Benedict Spinosa; published the 'Transactions' of the
Royal Society from 1664 to 1677.
P. 87. _'Cry' of that kind 'to Heaven'_: the reference is to the _Regii
Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum, adversus Parricidas Anglicanos_ (The Cry
of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides).
P. 87. _Morus_: Alexander More, whom Milton supposed to be the author of
'The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven.' See note, p. 248.
_To Leonard Philaras._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XV.)
P. 89. _Phineus_: see note on 'P. L.,' iii. 36, in this volume.
P. 89. _Salmydessus_: a town of Thrace, on the coast of the Black Sea.
P. 89. _Argonautica_: a heroic poem on the Argonautic expedition, by
Apollonius Rhodius.
P. 89. κάρος δέ μιν ἀμφεκάλυψεν:
'A darkling maze now round about him drew,
The earth from underneath seemed whirling fast,
In languid trance he lay bereft of speech.'
_Prof. Charles E. Bennett's translation._
P. 90. _the Wise Man_: Ecclesiastes xi. 8.
P. 90. _Lynceus_: the keen-sighted Argonaut.
_To Cyriac Skinner_
P. 91. 1. _this three years' day_: this day three years ago. Milton
became completely blind in 1652, so this sonnet must have been written
in 1655. _though clear_: see passage from Second Defence, p. 13.
P. 91. 7. _bate_: from 'abate.'
P. 91. 8. _bear up and steer right onward_: the nautical sense of 'bear
up,' _i.e._ to put the ship before the wind, is indicated by what
follows.
P. 91. 10. _conscience_: consciousness.
P. 91. 12. _talks_: the Trin. Coll. MS. reading; the word 'rings' was
substituted by Phillips in his printed copy of 1694; 'talks' does not
sound so well, in the verse, but it is more modest.
P. 91. 13. _mask_: masquerade.
_On his deceased wife_
P. 91. 1. _my late espoused saint_: his second wife, Catherine Woodcock,
whom he married November 12, 1656; she died in February, 1658.
P. 91. 2. _Alcestis_: brought back to life by Herakles (Hercules). _her
glad husband_: Admetus, King of Pheræ in Thessaly. See Browning's
'Balaustion's Adventure, including a Transcript from [the Alkestis of]
Euripides.'
P. 91. 5. _as whom_: as one whom.
P. 91. 6. _Purification_: Leviticus xii.
P. 91. 10. _her face was veiled_: Alcestis was still in his mind. In
Browning's 'Balaustion's Adventure,' when Hercules returns with her:
'Under the great guard of one arm, there leant
A _shrouded_ something, live and woman-like,
Propped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion coat. . . .
There is no telling how the hero twitched
The veil off: and there stood, with such fixed eyes
And such slow smile, Alkestis' silent self!'
_To Emeric Bigot._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XXI.)
P. 92. _Emeric Bigot_: a French scholar, native of Rouen; b. 1626, d.
1689.
P. 92. _King Telephus of the Mysians_: wounded by Achilles and by him
healed with the rust of his spear; and in return Telephus directed the
Greeks on their way to Troy.
_Autobiographic passages in the Paradise Lost_
P. 96. 2. _Or of the Eternal_: or may I, unblamed, express thee as the
coeternal beam of the Eternal.
P. 96. 6. _increate_: qualifies 'bright effluence.'
P. 96. 7. _Or hearest thou rather_: or approvest thou rather the
appellation of pure ethereal stream; 'hearest' is a classicism:
'Matutine pater, seu Jane libentius audis' (father of the morning, or if
Janus thou hearest more willingly).—_Horace_, Sat. II., vi. 20, cited
by Bentley.
P. 97. 13. _wing_: flight.
P. 97. 17. _With other notes_: Orpheus made a hymn to Night, which is
still extant; he also wrote of the creation out of Chaos. See 'Apoll.
Rhodius,' i. 493. Orpheus was inspired by his mother Calliope only,
Milton by the _heavenly Muse_; therefore he boasts that he sung with
_other notes_ than Orpheus, though the subjects were the
same.—_Richardson._
P. 97. 21. _hard and rare_: evidently after Virgil's Æneid, vi. 126-129.
P. 97. 25. _a drop serene_: gutta serena, _i.e._ amaurosis.
P. 97. 26. _dim suffusion_: cataract.
P. 97. 34. _So_: appears to be used optatively, as Lat. _sic_, Greek
ὡς, would that I were equalled with them in renown.
P. 97. 35. _Thamyris_: a Thracian bard, mentioned by Homer, Iliad, ii.
595:
'he, over-bold,
Boasted himself preëminent in song,
Ev'n though the daughters of Olympian Jove,
The Muses, were his rivals: they in wrath,
Him of his sight at once and power of song
Amerced, and bade his hand forget the lyre.'
—_Earl of Derby's Translation_, 692-697.
P. 97. 35. _Mæonides_: a patronymic of Homer.
P. 97. 36. _Tiresias_: the famous blind soothsayer of Thebes, 'cui
profundum cæcitas lumen dedit' (to whom his blindness gave deep sight),
says Milton, in his _De Idea Platonica_, v. 25.
P. 97. 36. _Phineus_: a blind soothsayer, who, according to some
authorities, was king of Salmydessus, in Thrace. By reason of his
cruelty to his sons, who had been falsely accused, he was tormented by
the Harpies, until delivered from them by the Argonauts, in return for
prophetic information in regard to their voyage.
P. 97. 39. _darkling_: in the dark.
P. 97. 42. _Day_: note the emphasis imparted to this initial
monosyllabic word, which receives the ictus and is followed by a pause;
Milton felt that the loss of sight was fully compensated for by an
inward celestial light.
P. 98. 1. _Urania_: the Heavenly Muse invoked in the opening of the
poem.
P. 98. 4. _Pegaséan wing_: above the flight of 'the poet's winged steed'
of classical mythology.
P. 98. 5. _the meaning, not the name_: Urania was the name of one of the
Grecian Muses; he invokes not her, but what her name signifies, the
Heavenly one. See vv. 38, 39.
P. 98. 8. _Before the hills appeared_: Prov. viii. 23-31.
P. 98. 10. _didst play_: the King James's version, Prov. viii. 30,
reads, 'rejoicing always before him'; the Vulgate, '_ludens_ coram eo
omni tempore.'
P. 98. 15. _thy tempering_: the empyreal air was tempered for, adapted
to, his breathing, as a mortal, by the Heavenly Muse.
P. 98. 17. _this flying steed_: _i.e._ this higher poetic inspiration
than that represented by the classical Pegasus; _unreined_: unbridled,
_infrenis_.
P. 98. 18. _Bellerophon_: thrown from Pegasus when attempting to soar
upon the winged horse to heaven.
P. 99. 19. _Aleian field_: in Asia Minor, where Bellerophon, after he
was thrown from Pegasus, wandered and perished; πεδίον τὸ Ἀλήïον,
Iliad, vi. 201, land of wandering (ἄλη).
P. 99. 20. _erroneous there to wander_: to wander without knowing
whither; Lat. _erroneus_; _forlorn_: entirely lost; 'for' is intensive.
P. 99. 21. _Half yet remains unsung_: 'half of the episode, not of the
whole work, . . . the episode has two principal parts, the war in
heaven, and the new creation; the one was sung, but the other remained
unsung, . . . _but narrower bound_, . . . this other half is not rapt so
much into the invisible world as the former, it is confined in narrower
compass, and bound within the visible sphere of day.'—_Newton._
_narrower_: more narrowly.
P. 99. 26. _on evil days though fallen_: a pathetic emotional
repetition; note the artistic change in the order of the words. Macaulay
justly characterizes the thirty years which succeeded the protectorate
as 'the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. . . . Then
came those days never to be recalled without a blush—the days of
servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish
talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow
minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king
cringed to his rival [Louis XIV.] that he might trample on his people,
sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her
degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots,
and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which
had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to
persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. . . . Crime
succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of
God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of
the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the
nations.'
P. 99. 33. _Bacchus and his revellers_: Charles II. and his Court, from
whom Milton had reason to fear a similar fate to that of the Thracian
bard, Orpheus, who was torn to pieces by the Bacchanalian women of
Rhodope.
P. 99. 38. _so fail not thou_: _i.e._ to defend me as the Muse Calliope
failed to defend her son, Orpheus.
P. 99. 1. _no more of talk_: _i.e._ as in the foregoing episode.
P. 99. 5. _venial_: allowable, fitting.
P. 100. 14-19. _the wrath of stern Achilles . . . Cytherea's son_: these
are not the arguments (subjects) proper of the three epics, the Iliad,
the Odyssey, and the Æneid; as Newton pointed out, the poet mentions
certain angers or enmities, the wrath of Achilles, the rage of Turnus,
Neptune's and Juno's ire; 'the anger, etc. (v. 10) of Heaven which he is
about to sing is an argument more heroic, not only than the anger of
men, of Achilles and Turnus, but than that even of the gods, of Neptune
and Juno;' _his foe_: Hector; _Turnus_: king of the Rutuli when Æneas
arrived in Italy; _Lavinia_: daughter of King Latinus, betrothed to
Turnus, but afterward given in marriage to Æneas; _the Greek_: Ulysses;
_Cytherea's son_: Æneas; Cytherea, a surname of Venus, from the island
Cythera, famous for her worship.
P. 100. 19. _Perplexed the Greek_: a respective construction, 'perplexed
the Greek' looks back to 'Neptune's ire,' 'Cytherea's son,' to Juno's
ire. Bentley's note is remarkable: '_Juno's that long perplexed the
Greek_: when, contrary, the _Greek_ was her favourite all along.'
P. 100. 20. _answerable_: corresponding to the high argument.
P. 100. 21. _my celestial Patroness_: Urania, the Heavenly Muse.
P. 100. 23. _inspires_: Milton regarded himself as inspired by the Holy
Spirit in the composition of 'Paradise Lost.'
P. 100. 25. _Since first this subject_: Milton, as has been seen, had
meditated, as early as 1638, an epic poem to be based on legendary
British history, with King Arthur for its hero, a subject which it
appears he abandoned in the course of two or three years. While still
undecided, he jotted down ninety-nine different subjects, sixty-one
Scriptural, thirty-eight from British history. Among the former,
'Paradise Lost' appears first of all. These jottings occupy seven pages
of the Cambridge MSS. It is evident that by 1640, Milton was quite
decided as to the subject of 'Paradise Lost,' but not as to the form of
his work. It was first as a tragedy that he conceived it, on the model
of the Grecian drama with choruses. His nephew, Edward Phillips, informs
us that several years before the poem was begun (about 1642, according
to Aubrey), Satan's address to the sun (Book iv. 32-41) was shown him as
designed for the beginning of the tragedy. The composition of the poem
was begun, according to Phillips, about 1658, the poet being then fifty
years of age. The student should read, in connection with this subject,
the thirteenth chapter of Mark Pattison's 'Life of Milton.'
P. 100. 35. _Impresses_: 'devices or emblems used on shields or
otherwise.' Keightley alludes to the enumeration of the devices of the
nobles of England, in the tenth Canto of the 'Orlando Furioso.'
P. 100. 36. _bases_: 'the base was a skirt or kilt which hung down from
the waist to the knees of the knight when on horseback.'
P. 100. 37. _marshalled feast_: 'from Minshew's "Guide into Tongues," it
appears that the marshal placed the guests according to their rank, and
saw that they were properly served; the sewer marched in before the
meats and arranged them on the table, and was originally called
_Asseour_ from the French _asseoir_, to set down, or place; and the
_Seneshal_ was the household-steward.'—_Todd._
P. 100. 41. _Me . . . higher argument remains_: _i.e._ for me.
P. 101. 44. _an age too late_: Milton might well feel, in the reign of
the 'merry monarch,' that he was treating his high argument in an age
too late.
P. 101. 45, 46. _my intended wing depressed_: 'wing' is used, by
metonymy, for 'flight.' Keightley incorrectly puts a comma after 'wing,'
'intended wing depressed' being a case of the placing of a noun between
two epithets, usual with Milton, the epithet following the noun
qualifying the noun as qualified by the preceding epithet. Rev. James
Robert Boyd, in his edition of the 'P. L.,' explains 'intended,'
'stretched out'; but the word is undoubtedly used in its present sense
of 'purposed.'
_Letter to Peter Heimbach._ (_Familiar Letters_, No. XXXI.)
P. 102. _a country retreat_: 'a pretty box,' secured for him by his
Quaker friend, Elwood, at Chalfont St. Giles; the house still exists,
having undergone little or no change.
I hardly like to express in the text a fancy that has occurred to me in
translating the letter and studying it in connection with Heimbach's, to
wit, that Milton may not merely have been ironically rebuking Heimbach
for his adulation and silly phraseology, but may also have been
suspicious of the possibility of some trap laid for him politically.
Certainly, if this letter of Milton's to a Councillor of the Elector of
Brandenburg had been intercepted by the English government, it is so
cleverly worded that nothing could have been made of it. But Heimbach
may have been as honest as he looks. Even then, however, Milton, knowing
little or nothing of Heimbach for the last nine years, had reason to be
cautious.—_Masson._
_Passages in which Milton's Idea of True Liberty is Set Forth_
P. 104. _Deep versed in books_: Milton would, I conceive, have thus
characterized his old antagonist, Salmasius.—_Dunster._
P. 104. _trifles for choice matters_: as choice matters.