Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (31 page)

300.
dearly
: both “lovingly” and “expensively.”

301.
still
: always.

306.
Equal to God
: applies to
throned in highest bliss
, not to the Son’s divine nature.

307.
fruition
: enjoyment;
quitted:
both “left” (in becoming incarnate) and “paid, redeemed” (man’s debt of sin).

317–18.
all power/I give thee:
“All power is given to me” (Matt. 28.18).

318–19.
assume/Thy merits:
echoes Horace’s
Odes
3.30.14–15.

320.
The line lists the four orders of angels found in Col. 1.16; see also 5.840.

321–22.
“At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Phil. 2.10). See Satan’s resentment of this “knee-tribute” at 5.782.

326.
all winds
: all quarters of the compass.

327.
cited
: summoned.

328.
doom
: judgment.

329.
Cp.
Nat Ode
155–56.

330.
saints
: righteous worshipers.

331.
arraigned
: accused.

334.
The world shall burn
: See 2 Pet. 3.10–13.

340.
need
: be necessary. The regal conception of deity will in the end be abandoned.

341.
God shall be all in all
: See 1 Cor. 15.28.

342.
compass
: accomplish, but perhaps anticipating the compasses of 7.225.

343.
as me
: If this phrase means “as you do me,” God is simply prescribing rites of adoration, but if it means “as if me” he is sharing or even handing over his kingship. Cp. John 5.23.

348.
jubilee
: jubilation;
hosannas:
from the Hebrew “Save, we pray.”

353.
amarant
: a legendary immortal flower; see 11.78n,
Lyc
149.

357.
fount of life
: See Rev. 7.17, 22.1–2.

359.
amber
: clear.

363.
sea of jasper
: See Rev. 21.11.

367.
preamble
: musical prelude.

370.
exempt
: excluded.

377.
but
: except.

381.
that
: so that.

382.
veil their eyes
: See Isa. 6.2.

383.
of all creation first
: The phrase has biblical precedent (Rev. 3.14, Col. 1.15–17), but for Milton such verses were not, as they were for believers in the orthodox Trinity, metaphorical. On Christ as the first creation, see
CD
1.5, and, on Milton’s Arianism, Bauman 1987.

387.
Whom … behold
: See Exod. 33.18–20; John 1.18, 14.9.

388.
effulgence
: radiance.

392.
Dominations
: usually one of the nine angelic orders, but here apparently, by synecdoche, a name for all of the nine orders.

397.
powers
: angels.

412–15.
The promise to devote future songs to the praise of a god was conventional in classical hymns. See Callimachus,
Hymns
3.137.

418.
opacous
: opaque.

419.
first convex
: the outer sphere or
primum mobile
of our universe.

429.
vexed
: tossed about.

430.
at large
: freely.

431.
Imaüs
: mountains that were believed to stretch from Afghanistan to the Arctic.

432.
roving Tartar
: nomadic inhabitants of central Asia, “a people the most barbarous, bloody, and fierce of all mankind … the scourges of God on the civilized world” (Hume).
Tartar
is also a shortened form of
Tartarus
, or hell.

434.
yeanling
: newborn.

435.
the springs
: Both the
Ganges
and the
Hydaspes
(the modern Jhelum) have their
springs
, or sources, in the Himalayas.

438.
Sericana
: China;
Chineses
was the standard seventeenth-century plural form.

439.
With sails and wind
: Peter Heylyn,
Cosmography
(1620), notes that the Chinese “have carts and coaches driven with sails” (867);
cany:
made of cane or bamboo.

444–97.
Milton’s Paradise of Fools has its seed in Ariosto’s
OF
34, where the English knight Astolfo goes to the Limbo of Vanity on the moon in search of his lost wits. Milton may also have been influenced by Ovid’s House of Fame (
Met
. 12.52–61).

444.
store
: plenty.

449.
fond
: foolish.

452.
painful
: painstaking.

454.
empty
: The Latin for
empty
is
vanus
, the etymological root of
vanity
(447).

455.
unaccomplished
: unfinished, lacking.

456.
Abortive
: fruitless, useless;
unkindly:
unnaturally.

457.
fleet
: glide away.

459.
some
: Ariosto for one (
OF
34.73ff).

461.
Translated saints
: righteous men such as Enoch and Elijah, who were taken from Earth without having to die (cp. 11.670–71).

464.
giants
: sired by the Sons of God (fallen angels in one tradition) on human women (Gen. 6.4). See 11.573–627;
PR
2.178–81.

467.
Sennaär
: Vulgate form of Shinar (Gen. 11.2).

470.
fondly
: foolishly.

471.
Empedocles
: a philosopher who threw himself into Etna to hide his mortality. The volcano threw back one of his sandals. See Horace,
De Arte Poetica
464–66.

473.
Cleombrotus
: A philosopher who drowned himself after reading of Elysium in Plato’s
Phaedo
. See Callimachus,
Epigrams
25.

474.
Embryos
: beings in an unrealized state;
eremites:
hermits;
friars:
Franciscan friars taught that idiots and unbaptized infants went not to Heaven but to a limbo above the earth; Milton in a satirical gesture puts the friars in his Paradise of Fools along with
embryos and idiots
.

475.
The Carmelites wore a white mantle, the Dominicans a black, and the Franciscans a gray.
trumpery:
religious ornaments.

476–77.
The pilgrims to Golgotha repeat the error of the Apostles before learning of the Resurrection: “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen” (Luke 24.5).

478–80.
It was not uncommon for dying Roman Catholics to disguise themselves as members of religious orders to ease their passage to Heaven.

481–83.
This depiction of the Ptolemaic cosmos includes
seven
planetary spheres, the sphere of the
fixed
stars (the eighth), the
crystálline sphere
(ninth), and the
primum mobile
or
that first moved
(tenth). The crystalline sphere was a late and controversial insertion, invented to account for precession of the equinoxes and a perceived oscillation of the starry sphere, i.e.,
the trepidation talked
. The poles of this hypothetical crystalline orb were thought to correspond to the equinoctial opposites of Aries and Libra in the eighth. The
balance
that measures (
weighs
) the trepidation may thus refer to Libra (“the balance”) (Fowler). Or it may refer to the librating axis of the crystalline sphere, which imparts (
weighs
) irregular motions as it moves back and forth like a beam holding scales. Cp. “trepidation of the spheres” in Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

484.
wicket
: a small door made in, or placed beside, a large one.

485.
keys
: the keys of the kingdom of Heaven given to Peter (Matt. 16.19). Cp.
Lyc
108–11.

489.
devious
: off their main course.

491.
beads
: rosaries.

492.
For Protestants, sale of
indulgences
granting released time from Purgatory was a main Catholic abuse.
Dispenses
or dispensations voided obligations.
Pardons
absolved from offenses.
Bulls
were papal edicts.

494.
backside of the world
: the dark side of the
primum mobile
, farthest from Heaven.

495.
limbo
: fringe region.

496.
Paradise of Fools
: a proverbial phrase; see Shakespeare,
ROM
2.4.163.

501.
traveled
: punning on “travailed, wearied.”

502.
degrees
: steps, stairs.

506.
frontispiece
: ornamental pediment above an entranceway.

507.
orient
: lustrous as pearl.

510–15.
See Gen. 28.10–17.

513.
The 1667 and 1674 editions have no comma after
Padan-Aram
but include one after
Luz
. We insert the first and omit the second to avoid geographical confusion. Jacob’s vision occurs in the vicinity of
Luz
, or Bethel, just north of Jerusalem. He sleeps there en route to
Padan-Aram
in northwest Mesopotamia.

516.
mysteriously
: symbolically, as an allegorical figure.

518.
Viewless
: unseen.

518–19.
bright sea … pearl:
The Argument identifies this
bright sea
as “waters above the firmament that flow about [the gate of Heaven].” Cp. 7.619.

521.
Wafted
: gently floated, as Lazarus was (Luke 16.22).

522.
Rapt
: carried away or caught up, as Elijah was (2 Kings 2.11; cp.
PR
216–17)

526–28.
Direct … Earth:
At the bottom of the stairway, precisely above Paradise, a wide passage opened down to Earth.

530.
That
refers to the passage over the
Promised Land
, described in lines 531–37. It is distinct from the passage traveled by Satan and from the one
over Mount Sion
. These occasional thoroughfares are presented as avenues of divine purpose, like the stairway.

534.
eye with choice regard
: “His eye also passed, with preferential attention.” Angels are later identified as God’s eyes (ll. 650–53).

535.
Paneas
: mountain spring at the northern border of Israel, a chief source of the Jordan River (
flood
); also, Greek name for Dan, the city associated with this
fount
. Cp. the scriptural idiom “from Dan even to Beersheba” (e.g., 1 Sam. 3.20).

536.
Beërsaba
: Vulgate form of Beersheba, city on Israel’s southern border.

538–39.
The opening to the passageway occurs at the boundary separating light from the darkness of chaos.

543.
world
: cosmos, universe.

547.
discovers
: reveals.

552.
though after Heaven seen
: “Though previously he had witnessed the splendors of Heaven.”

556–61.
circling … breadth:
Satan views the interior of the cosmos from an opening in the
primum mobile
at its most eastern point (corresponding to
Libra
, the scales). Peering down (westward), Satan sees the dark side of the Earth and its rotating,
canopy-
like shadow (the shadow’s rotation would be annual in a Copernican cosmos; diurnal in a Ptolemaic). At the western extreme from Satan, behind the Earth and sun, lies Aries,
the fleecy star
(astrologically, the ram). Its position in the sky is below that of
Andromeda
(mythological princess threatened by a sea monster). From Satan’s perspective, the ram thus appears to bear the princess past the horizon of the western ocean (
Atlantic seas
). Finally, to observe the breadth of the cosmos before him, Satan looks north and south,
from pole to pole
.

562.
world’s first region
: uppermost portion of the universe, above the sphere of the moon.

563–64.
Satan dives straight down (
flight precipitant
) through the sparkling (
marble
) air. Once among the stars, however, he follows a characteristically indirect and slanted course (
winds … his oblique way
). 565–66.
shone/Stars distant:
“From a distance appeared to be stars” (Greek idiom).

567.
Or … or
: “either … or.” Various seventeenth-century authors, and some ancients, speculated about other inhabited worlds. Milton is notably persistent about this possibility. Cp. line 670; 7.621–22; 8.140–58, 175–76.
happy isles:
Islands of the Blessed in Greek mythology, where a favored few abide in bliss rather than face death.