A Milton Dictionary

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A MILTON DICTIONARY

A

MILTON DICTIONARY By Edward S. Le Comte Columbia University

PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY New York

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Copyright © 1961 by Philosophical Library, Inc. 15 East 40th Street, New York 16, N. Y. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 60-15959 Manufactured in the United States of America

PREFACE A MILTON DICTIONARY, the only one of its comprehensive kind, is made up of three classes of entries. First, it is a dictionary of “hard” words in Milton’s verse and prose, capitalized or uncapitalized, his allusions geo¬ graphic and mythological, classical and Biblical, literary and historical, his characters, his correspondents and named friends and opponents, his vo¬ cabulary archaic, obsolete, or special, his puns and cruxes. Second, there is a descriptive entry for each of Milton’s works, down to the smallest Latin or Greek epigram and including the Familiar Letters (dealt with by re¬ cipient). Third, there are some fifty entries covering Milton, his mother and father, his wives, his nephews, and his biographers and editors and leading critics—including English poets influenced by or commemorating him— from Aubrey and Dryden down to Tillyard and Hanford and Eliot. The DICTIONARY is also an Index, for references are located by line num¬ ber for the poems and by page number of the Columbia Edition for the prose works (De Doctrina Christiana is by book and chapter number). To serve in this capacity, names are entered that the reader will be familiar with. Under, for example, Moses or Adam or Cleopatra a classified con¬ spectus of Milton’s references is offered. Conspicuous sources, named (e.g. Dante) or unnamed (e.g. DuBartas) also appear, with some indication of the nature of the influence. On the other hand, names occurring only in the History of Britain or Muscovia, self-explanatory in context there, are not given. Except for a descriptive entry for each, the Logic, the State Papers, the De Doctrina Christiana (with its host of Biblical citations) and the Uncollected Writings in Volume XVIII of the Columbia Edition (notably the Commonplace Book which has been so masterfully annotated by Ruth Mohl in the Yale Milton) have been similarly slighted. Volumes I through IX and Volume XII of the Columbia Milton are thus the main preserve from which the first class of entries has been drawn. So that the DICTIONARY may be used with any text, regard is had to variants in spelling and LatinEnglish conversions that might prove confusing. Otherwise the text is in modern form, apart from Milton’s title-pages. References that occur in a sonnet are mostly treated in the article on that sonnet. Among the alphabetical aids have been Laura E. Lockwood s Lexicon

to the English Poetical Works of John Milton (1907) (long out of print), Allan H. Gilbert’s A Geographical Dictionary of Milton (1919), Charles G. Osgood’s The Classical Mythology of Miltons English Poems

(1900),

A Milton Dictionary

Frank A. Patterson’s pioneering Glossary at the end of The Student’s Milton (1933), Walter Skeat’s “A Reader’s Guide” at the end of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the English Poems of Milton (1940), and the great Index to the Columbia Edition of the Works of John Milton, compiled by Profes¬ sor Patterson assisted by French Fogle (1940). On this last I have leaned as heavily for my second book on Milton as for my first, though in a different way. As is to be expected at this late day both of Milton studies and of ever accumulating reference books, I have ultimately drawn on hundreds of sources. I have also encountered enough errors to be worried about what my own share will be. Occasionally it has lain in my way to make a new point, such as I might have published separately. My favorite precedent is Sir Paul Harvey’s Oxford Companion to English Literature. So far as Milton specialists are concerned, tbe correct identification of Henry VIII’s “vicar of Hell” alluded to in Areopagitica came with Merritt Hughes’ edition of Prose Selections, 1947. But since 1932 all that the general reader had to do was look up “Vicar of Hell” in the Oxford Companion and follow the cross-reference Bryan, where the identification is pinned down with all necessary despatch and authority. E. S. L.

Key to Abbreviations of Titles

Paradise Lost is referred to (without title) by a small Roman numeral for the book number, followed by the line number (Arabic). Arabic numerals following an abbreviation for a prose title refer to page number in the Columbia Edition, volume numbers for which are given below. EM = Epitaph on the Marchioness of

A = Areopagitica (IV)

Winchester

AdP = Ad Patrem An = Animadversions upon the Remon¬

FC — On

strant’s Defence (III)

the

science

Arc = Arcades

New under

Forcers

of

Con¬

the Long Parlia¬

ment

B = History of Britain (X) BN — Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon

FE = Familiarum Epistolarum (XII) G = Accidence Commenced, Grammar

(VI) C = Comus (lines numbered according to the 1645 text, different by one from the 1673 text after line 167,

Christiana

liest Means to Remove Hirelings HM = History of Muscovia (X)

CB = Commonplace Book (XVIII) Doctrina

(VI) H = Considerations touching the like¬ (VI)

which was dropped in 1673) CD = De

EP = Early Prolusion (XII)

(XIV-

XVII)

Hor = Translation of the Fifth Ode of Horace IB = In Inventorem Bombardae

CE -= Carmina Elegiaca

Id = De Idea Platonica

CG = The Reason of Church Govern¬ ment (III)

In = On the Death of a Fair Infant IP = II Penseroso

Ci = Upon the Circumcision

JR = Ad Joannem Rousium

Col = Colasterion (IV)

K = Eikonoklastes (V)

CP = A Treatise of Civil Power in Ec¬ clesiastical Causes (VI) D = Doctrine

and

Discipline

L = Lycidas L’A = L’Allegro

of

vorce (III)

Di¬

Let = Letter to a Friend (XII) LF = Letter

to

a

ID = Defensio Prima (VII)

the

Ruptures

2D = Defensio Secunda (VIII)

wealth (VI)

Friend of

Concerning

the

Common¬

E = Of Education (IV)

LM = Letter to General Monk (VI)

EC = English Correspondence (XII)

Log = Artis Logicae (XI)

ED = Epitaphium Damonis

LP = A Declaration or Letters Patents

Ef = In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem EL = Elegia(rum)

of

the

Election of

King of Poland (VI)

this

Present

A Milton Dictionary

LR = Ad Leonoram Romae Canentem

Ps = Psalm

M = The

QN = In Quintum Novembris

Judgment

of

Martin

Bucer

Touching Divorce (IV)

R = Of Reformation (III)

Man = Mansus

RH =Apologus de Rustico et Hero

MAR = Marginalia (XVIII)

S —- Sonnet (followed by the number in

MM = Song on May Morning

the Columbia Edition)

MS = Cambridge Manuscript (XVIII)

SA = Samson Agonistes

Mus = At a Solemn Music

Sal = Ad Salsillum poetam Romanum

N = On the Morning of Christ’s Nativ¬

SD — Pro Se Defensio (IX)

ity

Sh = On Shakespeare

NS = Naturam non pati Senium

SL = State Letters (XIII)

NT = New Testament

Sm = An

O = Observations

on

the

Articles

of

Peace (VI) OT = Old Testament

Apology

for

Smectymnuus

(III) T = Tetrachordon (IV) Ten = The Tenure of Kings and Magis¬

P = Of Prelatical Episcopacy (III)

trates (V)

PAR = Philosophus ad Regem

Ti = On Time

Pas = The Passion

TR =

PB = In Proditionem Bombardicam

UC -

Of True Religion (VI) On the University Carrier

PE = In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis

V = At a Vacation Exercise

PL = Paradise Lost

W = The

Ready

and

Easy

Way

to

PM = In Obitum Procancellarii Medici

Establish a Free Commonwealth

PR

(VI)

- Paradise Regained

Prol = Prolusio(nes) (XII)

Names in the articles that are printed in small capitals have their own entries in the DICTIONARY.

A Aaron

lifted high,/Which hung not, but so

Elder brother of moses, xii 169. Mil-

swift with tempest fell/On the proud

his jew¬

crest of Satan” vi 189. Whereupon the

elled breastplate (iii 598; PR 3, 15)

prophecy in C 593, “But evil on itself

ton especially recalled

(1)

and other consecrated finery (R 2; An

shall back recoil” gets embodied: “Ten

172) as (2) the first high-priest of the

paces huge” satan “back recoiled” vi

Israelites (An 155; CG 200 ff.; H 53 ff.,

194.

88; CD 1,26, 29,33).

Abel

Abaddon

xi 429 ff. “The poet makes ... re¬

I.e. destroyer CD 1, 9; synonymous

spect unto Abel’s offering to be a fire from Heaven consuming it; and herein

with hell, PR 4, 623-4.

he is justified by the authority of the

Abarim

best commentators Jewish and Chris¬

“the wild Of southmost” i 407, hills

tian.”

newton.

E.g.

Lev.

ix,

24;

1

east of the Dead Sea.

Chron. xxi, 26. augustine’s view, re¬

Abassin

lated

to

Milton’s,

was,

“that

devil,

envy, did all the mischief which the

Abyssinian iv 280.

bad bear unto the good only because they are good.” City of God, XIII, v.

Abbana i. 469. 2 Kings v, 12; “Are not Abana

Abel also illustrated that “any believer

and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, bet¬

is

ter than all the waters of Israel? may I

minister” CD 1, 29.

not wash in them and be clean?”

Abiathar

abcie

competent to

High-priest

act as

whom,

an

ordinary

though

the

Lord’s anointed, Solomon “had put to

Primer An 127.

death, . . . had it not been for other

Abdiel

respects than that anointment.” K 295.

Literally “Servant of God” (vi 29). Taking what occurs only as a human name in the Bible (1 Chron. v, 15), Milton has

abide Suffer for, pay for, iv 87.

invented a seraph who,

like the politically deserted poet him¬ self,

ID 220.

“Among

the

faithless,

faithful

Abimelech the Usurper Possible subject, MS 236.

only he” v 897 (compare the equally

Implied

salient vi 30 ff.), resisted satan’s con¬

comparison with Charles I R 60. See

spiracy. Later his is the honor of strik¬

sechem. salmasius’ ridiculous use of

ing the first blow in the good fight

the story of that Philistine king’s end.

with sword also. “A noble stroke he

ID 136 f.

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A Milton Dictionary

Abiram The tract signed by 47 ministers of Sion College Jan. 18, 1649, A Serious and Faithful Representation of the Judgment of the Ministers of the Gos¬ pel within the Province of London, read, p. 10: “You know the sad exam¬ ples of corah, Dathan and Abiram in their mutinous rebellion and levelling design against magistracy and minis¬ try in the persons of Moses and Aaron.” R 31; Ten 6.

Absalom Rebellious son of david. Cf. Ps III, heading; BN 162; CD passim. abstract Literally, withdrawn, for better con¬ templation, viii 462. abuse(d) Deceive, PR 1, 455; i 479.

abject Literally, cast down, i 312.

Academe “The

abortive From which rises nothing, or noth¬ ing but the monstrous, ii 441. Abra ED 176.

of antioch (9th cent.). They argued for image worship as dating from apostolic times. P. 100.

HUMBER, q.v.

olive grove of Academe,/ retirement,” PR 4, 244, was near Athens and his followers were called the Academics down to the time of cicero (cf. Log 128): PR 4, 278;D 441; EL VII 107; Id 35. plato’s

Abraham (Abram)

acanthus

“Terah’s faithful son” of Milton’s first surviving line of verse (Ps CXIV), the divinely favored founder of “one peculiar nation” xii 111 ff., albeit at the time himself an idolater (PR 3, 434; CD 1, 17), leader of the migra¬ tion into canaan, the stages of which are pointed out by Michael. The Mes¬ siah was “Foretold to Abraham,” xii 328, in whose “seed all nations shall be blest” (450): cf. Galatians iii, 8. Often referred to as the progenitor of the chosen people: SA 29, 465; CG 182; Sm 363; RN 156; D 473; and his polygamy (CD 1, 8) and divorce of hagar (D 409; CD 1, 10) noted, while melchisedec’s paying of tithes to him is not a sound argument for ministers to build on (H 54 ff.: not the “grand¬ father,” 55-6, but the great grand¬ father of levi). Disdaining of goods from the king of sodom (Gen. xiv, 23): Sm 354; CD 2,9.

Species of plants native to the warmer regions of the Old World, having large, deeply cut, shining leaves that, models for decoration in Greek and Roman architecture, in par¬ ticular the Corinthian column, per¬ haps contributed to Milton’s train of thought — “Fenced up the verdant wall,” iv 696-7.

Abramites Gnostics of the school of Abraham

Accaron Vulgate form of Ekron (SA 981), most northern of the five chief cities of the Philistines, i 466. Accedence

Commenc'l

Grammar,

Supply'd with sufficient Rules, For the

use

of

such

as.

Younger or

Cider, are desirous, without more trouble then needs, to attain the Latin Tongue; the elder sort espe¬ cially,

with

little

teaching,

and

thir own industry

(“Accidence” meant a small book containing the rudiments of a gram¬ mar.) This was brought out by the

A Milton Dictionary

publisher of Paradise Lost, S. Sim¬ mons, about June 28, 1669. When the work was prepared is unknown, but it shows, along with the compilation of a Latin dictionary never finished, that the poet was not above undertaking humble tasks, masson conjectures: "There can be little doubt that the substance of the thing had been ly¬ ing among Milton’s manuscripts since the days of his pedagogy in Aldersgate Street and Barbican, when the possibility of a far swifter attainment of the Latin tongue than by the or¬ dinary school methods was one of his favourite ideas.” Two slightly differ¬ ent title pages are known, one of which gives Milton’s initials only. Of Education recommends for the begin¬ ner "some good grammar, either that now used, or any better” 281. lily’s was the only authorized one, and rival grammars that had come out had been careful to make deferential references to him, as Milton does not (mentioning in his “To the Reader” only linacbe ). His is a simplified, self-help gram¬ mar, “and in the English tongue.” (A modem parallel would be the Latin Grammar by the Cornell professor, Herbert Charles Elmer, 1928, the pref¬ ace of which opens: “This grammar owes its existence to a conviction, forced upon the author by many years of teaching, that the study of Latin in our secondary schools and colleges is made unnecessarily difficult at every turn.”) It is divided into two parts: “Right-wording, usually called ety¬ mology”—this part gives the inflec¬ tions; and “Syntaxis, or construction,” which is illustrated by many Latin proverbs and quotations labelled as to author. access Increase, ix 310.

accident V 74, pun on (1) mishap (2) a predicable of Substance (who is be¬ ing addressed). accidents Symptoms of an illness, SA 612. Achaemeniae(n) Persian, from Achaemenes, founder of the Persian dynasty, EL I, 65. Achan Possible subject for tragedy, MS 236. Accursed for his covetousness (Joshua VII) LF 103. Acheloian, Achelous “Repair the Acheloian horn of your dilemma how you can,” An 133. This river-god took the form of a bull to fight Hercules and was deprived of one of his horns. He was the father of the siren parthenope. LR III, 2. Acheron “Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep,” ii 578, the river of Hades, Prol I, 140, or standing for hell itself: C 604; QN 7. Acherontaeo(n) Hellish, QN 72. a(t)chievement In heraldry an escutcheon or em¬ blazoned coat of arms, T 109. Achilles “The wrath of stern Achilles,” ix 14, is the theme proclaimed at the be¬ ginning of the Iliad (but the adjec¬ tive is virgil’s “immitis,” Aen. II, 34; III, 87) (cf. 2D 252), which comes to a climax with the Greek hero’s brutal slaughter, in the twenty-second book, of the Trojan hector. Prol VI 208 refers to Achilles’, on the advice of the delphic oracle, having cured King telephus. The university beadle is

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A Milton Dictionary

compared to eurybates, one of the two heralds sent by agamemncn on the unwilling errand of taking away Achil¬ les’ concubine, EL II 15. The Greek hero was not afraid to stand up to a bad king: ID 312. Milton courted blindness rather than fail to do his duty, even as Achilles had the choice of early death and glory, or lost re¬ nown but a long life: 2D 68. Finally Milton, quoting quintus of Smyrna, remembers the contest for the arms of the dead Achilles between ajax and ulysses, 2D 84, whereby the judgment of enemies not of country¬ men, was appealed to. Achish King of gath, called Abimelech in the title to the 34th Psalm, T 145. Achitophel Possible subject, MS 237 (making a link with Dryden). acquisit Acquired, W 129. acquist Acquisition, SA 1755. acrimony (“sharpness”), carnal lust, T 89. Actaea(n) Attic, JR 60. Actisanes (6th cent. b.c. ) A king of Ethiopia, who conquered Egypt and governed it with justice, in the reign of ammosis.

Actium (31 b.c.) ID 318.

tacitus’

Annals quoted,

acuminating Tapering to a point, CG 218. Acworth, George (d. c. 1578). “The University Ora¬

tor” at Cambridge, whose praise of and facius (when, early in the reign of Elizabeth, tribute to such reformers was again permitted) is cited, M 4.

bucer

Ad loannem Rousium,

Oxen/ensis

Academiae Bibliothecarium

(To John Rous, Librarian of Oxford University). Dated January 23, 1647. Published 1673. Ode of 87 lines, in the mixed and experimental verse Milton describes in an appended note. This is the last of Milton’s Latin poems (not counting verses against salmasius and more). Apart from its being a bold metrical experiment foreshadowing the choruses and monologues of Sam¬ son Agonistes, the poem is interesting for Milton’s attitude towards his early poetry, towards the Civil War that was in its fifth year, and his own po¬ litical pamphlets. The eleven of these that he had published before 1645 he had sent to Rous (1574-1652), who became chief librarian of the Bodleian in 1620 and who is believed to have been “our common friend Mr. R.” (I, 476) who sent Wotton the 1637 Comus. Along with the pamphlets went the 1645 Poems, but this volume never reached its destination and Rous begged for another copy, which was provided with the ode that may still be found in MS. in the Bodleian copy interleaved between the English and Latin poems. The two divisions of the book, Latin and English, are men¬ tioned in the opening lines, with apol¬ ogy for work of a once youthful and airy hand. Then follows the question of who stole the book on its way to the limpid fountains of the Muses. But when will a god consider we have atoned enough for our earlier offenses, recall the Muses, and remove the harpy pest of war? My little book may yet escape Lethe, no matter in whose grimy mercantile hand it fell. Rous

A Milton Dictionary

has summoned you to join the treas¬ ures he guards, Ion-like. You shall be read among the lofty Greek and Latin lights. As for my prose labors, they surely have a future too, when envy and prejudice have yielded to a sane posterity. (This is consonant with Milton’s inscription in that volume, XVIII, 269.) Ad Leonoram Romae Canentem

(To Leonora Singing at Rome). 1. 10 elegaic lines, first of three epigrams to the diva, belonging to the winter of 1638-9. Leonora Baroni, whose mother Adriana and sister Caterina (b. in Mantua c. 1620) were also singers and instrumentalists, was de¬ scribed in Bayle as having “one of the finest voices in the world” and hon¬ ored by a polylingual volume of Applausi Poetici in 1639. As hanford dryly observes, she “was the friend and protegee, perhaps the mistress, of Rospigliosi [identified under barberini], and writers of continental tem¬ perament have sometimes suggested a similar relationship with Milton.” Un¬ der the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin she visited France to appear in operas by Cavalli. She also played the the¬ orbo and, like Milton and Pepys, the viola da gamba. Beginning with the idea of an attendant spirit (angel), Milton goes on boldly to sav that God or the Holy Spirit speaks in this voice. II. Ad Bandem

(To the Same). 12 lines. Another Leonora drove Tasso, q.v., mad. You could have cured him.

Ad Patrem

(To his Father). 120 hexameters. The poem has been dated as late as 1645, but most likely belongs to one of the early years at Horton (referred to 73-6?), 1632-4, when the business¬ man, JOHN MILTON THE ELDER, q.V., would have expressed his doubts about the son’s continuing choice of stud)' and poetry as over against a career in one of the professions, such as law. There is one of the earliest of Milton’s invocations in the “no middle flight” vein—cf. 4, followed by pro¬ fessed doubt as to how the best of fathers will receive this gift of verse. He should not scorn song, for its di¬ vine traces are everywhere—in dei.phic prophecy, in the Christian heaven, in the music of the spheres. Kings had their epic bard, orpheus wrought his wonders by means of fit words. The musician-father and poet-son share phoebus between them. The father only pretends to hate poetry, as dem¬ onstrated by the fact that he did not drive his son on the highroad of com¬ merce and legal strife, but permitted the cultivation of the muses far from the city noise. He encouraged the learning of French, Italian, and He¬ brew after Latin and Greek, and wide acquaintance with science. Let treas¬ ure-hunters gather wealth: I could not ask for more from jupiter himself, heaven excepted, learning being a greater gift than phaeton received from his father the god of light. I am confident of fame, immune to envy, and dare hope that these verses eulo¬ gizing my father will endure for ages past mine.

III. Ad Bandem

Ad

8 lines. This, treating Leonora as the Neapolitan that she was, says that parthenope is not dead but may be heard by the Tiber binding with her singing Romans and gods.

Aegrotantem. Scazontes

Poetam

Romanum

(Choliambics, To Salsillo, a Roman Poet, When he was Ill). 41 lines. Late fall 1638 (rather than on Milton's re¬ turn visit to Rome in the early winter

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Salsillum

A Milton Dictionary

of 1639 after Naples, since the poem’s position is before Mansus in the 1645 edition). Giovanni Salzilli (Joannes Salsillus) (fl. 1637) was a poetaster who contributed to a 1637 volume, Poesie de’ Signori Accademici Fantastici, 15 poems, of which 11 were sonnets. Milton refers first to the ‘limping” (scazontic) measure he has chosen (iambic trimeter in which a trochee or spondee has been inserted instead of the expected iambus in the last foot of each line, reversing the rhythm). Next comes allusion to Salsilli’s 4-line epigram ranking Milton above homer, virgii., and tasso (printed among the Testimonia in 1645, I, 156). Putting side by side his own name and that of his native city, with its bad climate, the traveler wishes Salsilli freedom from the bile that infests his reins. The healer apollo ought to help his priest, as should other indigenous numina, so that, recovered, he can with song con¬ trol the swelling Tiber. adagies Adages, Sm 286. Adam One of the two human principals in Paradise Lost, does not appear di¬ rectly until iv, 288, but then holds the stage, if only, like ulysses at the court of alcinous, as listener (through Books v-viii), until the end. The only other references in the poetry to Adam are in the sequel: Paradise Regained 1, 51, 102, 115; jesus, the “second Adam,” is a far different opponent for satan from “innocent frail man”: see 2, 132 ff.; 4, 607 ff. Aspiring Adam is condemned in the prose, CG 196, (the first reference “high as” is to a speech by Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, in the House of Lords, November, 1641); the first marriage analyzed, D 373, 396, 441, 457; T 83-95; Col 253. The

two most famous prose remarks are: “The end then of learning is to repair the mins of our first parents by re¬ gaining to know God aright,” E 277, and “It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil” A 310-11; cf. CD 1, 10. Note the description of “Adam Unparadised,” MS 228 ff. The name is thought to have reference to the ground from which man was formed: perhaps Mil¬ ton’s Adam thus has red hair: see hyacinthine. adamant The hardest substance, comparable with the diamond, ii, 436 (cf. Aeneid VI, 552); vi, 110, 255; x 318; PR 4, 534. adjectives: adamantean proof. Made of adamant or proof against weapons, SA 134. Adamantine, i, 48; ii 646, 853; vi 542. Adamites A sect of anabaptists much mocked for religious attendance in a nude state in imitation of the pristine purity of Adam and Eve, CG 217. Adams, Clement (1519P-1587) Author (in Richard Hakluyt’s Collections) whom Milton put to close use in compiling the His¬ tory of Muscovia, 382. Adamus, Melchior (c. 1550-1622) German biographer of Protestant divines, among them fagius: Vitae Germanorum Theologorum (Heidelberg, 1620), M 6. Addison, Joseph (1672-1719) Famous English essay¬ ist. In The Spectator for Dec. 31, 1711,

A Milton Dictionary

Addison announced,“As the first place among our English poets is due to Milton, and as I have drawn more quotations out of him than from any other, I shall enter into a regular criti¬ cism upon his Paradise Lost, which I shall publish every Saturday till I have given my thoughts upon that poem.” This he proceeded to do for eighteen consecutive Saturdays, Jan. 5-May 3, 1712, the first six essays being devoted to general questions and the others to an analysis of each book. These much reprinted papers (no less than 30 times within the century) (newton scattered them as footnotes to the passages to which they refer) gave a great impetus to the popularity of Milton and also to what would later be identified as the romantic concep¬ tion of poetry, whatever the differ¬ ences with the future doctrines of wordsworth (“a poet should take par¬ ticular care to guard himself against idiomatic ways of speaking” #285), or shelley (Addison denies “that the devil was in reality Milton’s hero” #297). The rising middle class was helped by Addison’s pointing out those beauties “which are not so obvi¬ ous to ordinary readers” (#321). As early as 1694 Addison had hymned Milton in fifteen couplets of “An Ac¬ count of the Greatest English Poets.”

Adiabene A plain PR 3, 320.

near

nineveh

in Assyria,

Admetus Never named by Milton, but cf. S XXIII, 3; Man 57. admirable Surprising, W 123. admiration Wonder, CG 239; A 343; W112. admire To wonder at, ii 677; vi 498; W 123 —marvel. Adolphus See

CHRISTINA.

Adonibezec King of Bezek, a Canaanite city, who, on being defeated by the tribe of Judah, received the same treatment he had inflicted upon seventy petty kings whom he had conquered: ampu¬ tation of the thumbs and big toes. Judges i, 3-7. Adonis

Col 264, pun on (1) Al(d)gate, the principal east gate of old London, and (2) addled. Milton’s opponent had said on p. 36 of An Answer: “this is a wild, mad, and frantic divinity, just like to the opinions of the maids of Algate”—(a church near there being associated with antinomianism).

The youth beloved by the Cyprian (NS 63) Venus, who, against her warning, entered the chase and was slain by a wild boar on Mt. Lebanon. From his blood sprang the anemone: EL I, 62. Following the common iden¬ tification with the Syrian thammuz (N 204 cf. Ezek. viii, 14), Milton treats Adonis as a river that annually ran red: i 450 ff. Other references are to the famous garden: C 999 ff.; ix 440; 2D 32, as a symbol of earthly pleasure. Cf. Faerie Queene, III, vi, 29.

Ades

Adoram

Aides, Hades, Pluto, ruler of the underworld, ii 964.

Adoniram, on being sent by King Rehoboam to collect the tribute, was

Addlegate

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A Milton Dictionary

stoned to death by the rebellious Is¬ raelites (1 Kings xii, 18) ID 228.

Aeacus Judge in the lower world, PM 45; Prol VI 206 (same adjective “mitis”).

Adram(m)elec(h) Aegaeon

A rebel angel, vi 365. An idol of the Sepharvites, who burnt their children to him (the first part of his name probably means fire) 2 Kings xvii, 31.

Identified by Homer (11. i, 403) with briareus, monster with a hun¬ dred arms ahd fifty heads, hesiod said that Aegaeon dwelt in the sea; ovid has him clasping the vast backs of whales in his arms, NS 59.

Adria The Adriatic Sea (cf. B 12) i 520; Prol III 170.

Aegean Adjective applied to lemnos in NS 23; i 746. The third reference is to Athens: PR 4, 238.

Adrian, Friar Dominican opposed D 448.

by verdune

at

TRENT,

Aegeria Adrian VI

See

(1459-1523) The only Dutch pope, who, in his short reign, 1522-3, tried at first by proposals of reform to win back Luther and the other Protes¬ tants, then sought to suppress their doctrines by force, K 247. On his death the Romans erected a monu¬ ment to his physician, “The Liberator of his Country.”

numa.

Aegialus The brother of the enchantress mewhom she threw limb by limb overboard to delay her father’s pur¬ suit of her when she escaped with jason and the Golden Fleece. PM 20. dea,

Aegle Milton

invents this daughter of ED 88. The name, which means brightness in Greek and is found in virgie’s sixth eclogue, 21, is attached to several mythological fe¬ males.

Adrian's wall

baucis,

The wall between the Solway and the Tyne erected by the emperor Ha¬ drian, beginning 122, to thwart inva¬ sion from the north, CG 215. “As Au¬ gustus and Tiberius counselled to gird the Empire within moderate bounds, he raised a wall with great stakes driven in deep and fastened together in manner of a strong mound, four¬ score mile in length, to divide what was Roman from barbarian,” B 81.

Aegon A pastoral name in 70.

theocritus,

ED

Aemilian The Aemilian Way, constructed by M. Aemilius Lepidus, was part of the Via Flaminia and led to the north, PR 4, 69.

adust(ed) Burnt, xii 635; vi 514. advowson(s)

Aeneas

Right of presentation to a vacant benefice or living, patronage, Ten 58.

“cytherea’s Son,” Virgil’s hero, is alluded to only once in the poetry:

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ix 19. Being misquoted is compared to the mangled state of deiphobus in SM 307. The historian takes note of that "affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman,” cit¬ ing the writers who assert “that Brutus was the son of Silvius; he of Ascanius; whose father was Aeneas a Trojan prince, who, at the burning of that city, with his son Ascanius and a col¬ lected number that escaped, after long wandering arrived in Italy,” B 7. This arrival is cited as an example of the epic unity of action in 2D 252.

“the three tragic poets un¬ equalled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy.” Pref. SA. The same lies back of the reference in IP to “gorgeous tragedy” “Presenting Thebes, or Pelops’ line” (99). The Prometheus Bound is re¬ garded as one of the two main dra¬ matic influences on Samson Agonistes, q.v. salmasius having quoted from The Suppliants, Milton replies that Aeschylus was not speaking in his own person: ID 306-10.

Aenon

Aesculapius

“John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim.” John iii, 23. PR 2, 21.

Referred to as the son of coronis in EL II 10, from whose womb he was cut: PM 27-8, this great physician was so clever a disciple of his father apollo that he went so far as to bring even the dead to life and was struck down for his presumption by one of jupiter’s thunderbolts. Type of the best healer in 2D 68. Mercenary in Pindar’s version (Pythian Odes III) that Milton annotated XVIII 293.

Aeolian charms Songs by such Asia Minor poets as Sappho and Alcaeus, PR 4, 257. Ho¬ mer is called Aeolian from a legend that he was born in Aeolis: Man 23. Aeolides See

cephalus.

Aeolus 6.

God or keeper of the winds, EL IV Cf. HIPPOTADES.

Aerians Followers of Aerius (4th cent.), a presbyter of Pontus who “held bishops and presbyters to be the same,” K 232, in function and rank. Not to be con¬ fused with arians, although epiphanius charged them with this heresy also. Aeschines (389-314 b.c. ), Athenian orator, op¬ ponent of demosthenes in arguing for appeasement of philip of macedon. Prol VI 210. SD 148; Log 166. Aeschylus (525-456

b.c.)

With

sophocles and

EURIPIDES

Aesonian (Aesonios) By a HAEMONIAN-THESSALIAN-breW, the witch medea rejuvenated Aeson, the father of her lover jason, making the old man forty years younger, EL II 8; Man 75. Aesop The legendary Greek fabulist, R 47, whom Milton would have been as¬ signed in Latin as a boy and whom he praised in his Logic 202. Fable of “The Cock and the Pearl” twice al¬ luded to: Prol V 196; ID 280. Possible reference to the Aesopian fable by Flavius Avianus, “The Ass in the Lion’s Skin,” CG 253. More is like Aesop’s upstart crow, decked in plumes not his own, SD 202 (cf. Robert Greene’s reference to the

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young Shakespeare as “an upstart crow beautified with our feathers”). aesymnetes Greek for the rulers, aristotle, Politics III, 14, classified as elective tyrants, ID 404. Aether A child of Night and erebus, ac¬ cording to hesiod. Prol I 126, 132.

101 (cf. 34), who captured New Car¬ thage in Spain in his twenty-fifth year, at the same time restoring a noble Spanish lady—“the fair Iberian maid,” PR 2, 200—to her lover, as livy tells. Africanisms Like “Carthaginian phrase” T 208, a set term for “the intricate and in¬ volved” Latin of some of the NorthAfrican fathers, R 4.

Aethon One of the horses of the sun (which, having entered aries three times, has thus signalled the passing of three winters since young went away), EL IV 33.

Agag

Aetna

Agamemnon

The flaming volcano in Sicily—Aetnaea(n) in PM 46 means Sicilian—is prominent in both the youthful Latin and in Paradise Lost-. QN 36; Prol I 122; III 170; VI 228; i 233; iii 470.

Mycenean king who led the Greeks the Trojan war, rebuked by achilles, ID 312; visited by the Dream (Iliad II), EP 288. His son (orestes) twice condemned, K 297.

King

of the amalekites whom “hewed ... in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal” (I Sam. xv, 33) Ten 4, 23; CD 1,11. samuei,

in

Afer The Southwest wind, x 702 (“black” suggested by the name).

Agar Hagar, given as concubine to abraby the barren Sarah: Milton, CG 198, is referring to Galatians iv, 24-5. ham

affatuated Infatuated, K 67.

Agatha, Council of affecting, affect(s) Prefer, C 386; PR 3, 22; SA 1030. afflicted

Agathias the historian

Latin afflictus, beaten down, i 186; iv 993: vi 852; x 863. Cf. ii 166; SA 114. Afranius An 141. See lucian’s: “The Way to Write History.” Africa, he surnamed of scipio

africanus,

q.v., PR 2, 199.

African (a)

Held at Agde in the south of France, near Marseilles, T 213.

HANNIBAL,

S XVII 4, (b) SCI¬ q.v., PR 3,

PIO africanus the elder,

(6th cent.) Carried on Procopius’ narrative from 553 to 558 (editio princeps of the Greek with a Latin translation, Leyden, 1594), T 219. Agesitaus King of Sparta (c 400-360 b.c. ), who defeated the Thebans and Ath¬ enians at chaeronea and Corinth. Lame, he “was always the first to pass a jest upon himself,” plutarch re¬ ported, Prol VI 220.

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A Milton Dictionary

Agis

Agrigentum

Spartan king condemned to death by ephors in 241 b.c., ID 406. Agnus Dei(s) A medallion or wax-cake stamped with the figure of a lamb. Blessed by the pope, it was worn to ward off evil, TR 179. Agra In northwestern India, formerly a great Mogul capital; site of the famous mid-17th century construction the Taj Mahal, xi 301 Agrican The Tartar king who, in Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, “Besieged Albracca, as romances tell” (compare ariosto, Orlando Furioso, in Harington’s translation, xxxiv, 72 and 79), a fabulous fortress in Cathay, to obtain the much-sought “fairest of her sex” Angelica, PR 3, 337 ff. Agricola. Julius f 37-93) “That wise and civil Ro¬ man, . . . who governed once here for Caesar (see B 71-80), preferred the natural wits of Britain before the la¬ boured studies of the French,” A 339. See his life by his son-in-law tacitus, Agricola 21: “He likewise provided a libei al education for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a preference for the natural powers of the Britons over the industry of the Gauls that they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence.” selden had said in a note to Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, Song VI: “For also in Agricola’s time ... it appears that matter of good literature was here in a far higher degree than there [Gaul].” Agonistes Explained under Samson Agonistes.

See

(63-12 b.c.) Son-in-law and adviser of the Emperor Augustus, was, when governor in the East (i.e. Syria, from c. 23), friendly to herod the great. He “paid what money the people of Chios owed to Caesar’s procurators, and discharged them of their tributes” Josephus, Antiq. XVI, ii, 3) ID 146. Agrippa, Menenius In 494 b.c. brought about a com¬ promise between plebeians and patri¬ cians by relating to the recalcitrant troops encamped on the Sacred Mount three miles outside Rome a fable of the belly and its members analogous to the tale Milton proceeds to tell (livy II, 32), R 47. Agrippa II, Herod (27-100?) Son of herod agrippa i, who, after listening to St. Paul, said, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian,” Acts xxvi, 28, K 163, 283. ague-cake An enlargement and hardening of the spleen, R 47. Agylia Ancient Greek name of the Etrus¬ can town of Caere (now Cerveteri) ID 324. Ahab (Achabus) “The proud king” (PR 1, 372) of a wicked house, led astray by his wife jezebel and false prophets, that “God had . . . many ways of punishing,” Ten 22. Subjects 38 and 44 of a pos¬ sible tragedy MS. Warned, after some hesitation, by the prophet Micaiah that his expedition against ramoth in Gilead would fail. A 348; Ten 38; K 88, 261, 265; ID 60. young in exile

11-

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PHALARIS.

Agrippa, Marcus

A Milton Dictionary

compared the

desert

to

Elijah

from

as

a

refugee

Ahab and

in

jezebel,

EL IV 99-100. Ahaz After he took Damascus, where the temple of the Syrian god rimmon stood, the latter “gained a king,/Ahaz his sottish conqueror” when Ahaz turned apostate and began to “adore the gods/Whom he had vanquished,” i 471-6. K 308. BN 153. Ahaziah jehu

own

at

elisha’s

bidding

legitimate king killed,

had

his

allowing, in his capacity as censor, the socinian Racovian Catechism to be printed, in consistency with the principles of Areopagitica. When am¬ bassador at The Hague he addressed a letter (CM XII, 314-6) Jan. 29, 1655 announcing his intention—apparently never carried out—of publishing Mil¬ ton’s tractate on Divorce in Dutch. Milton replied promptly from West¬ minster, Feb. 5, he would have pre¬ ferred a Latin version and listing his several treatises on the subject, end¬ ing with the hope for a faithful trans¬ lator, FE #16.

ID 232. Ajax

Aholah and Aholibah

Aialon (Ajalon)

In sophocles’ play went mad on losing to Ulysses the arms of achilles and slaughtered the Argive flocks, taking them for the rivals who had wronged him. Col 240; ID 40. Augus¬ tus caesar failed to finish his tragedy of that name, Pref. SA.

Modem Yalo, about 14 miles out of Jerusalem, xii 266. Cf. Joshua x, 12-3.

alab(l)aster

See heading of Ezek. xxiii. “God himself, in an allegorical fiction, re¬ presents himself as having espoused two wives” CD 1, 10. Sm 355.

Aistulphus the Lombard

(The superfluous "1” being usual in day.) A soft “rock” (iv 543: HM 334; PR 4, 548), generally equated with white marble but some¬ times parti-colored, C 660. Shakespeare’s

King (749-56) who, as sigonius re¬ lates, De Regno Italiae III, lost to pepin the short, king of the Franks, in 754 “the whole exarchate of Ra¬ venna,” which he turned over to Pope Stephen II. Ai(t)zema, Leo(n) van (1600-69) Dutch historian and states¬ man. His History of the United Prov¬ inces in 14 volumes (1657-71) covers the period from 1621 to 1668. In February-March 1652 he was accred¬ ited as Ambassador from Hamburg and the Hanse towns. Letters from the Speaker of the House dated April 16th approved his prudence and prob¬ ity, SL XXV, XXVI. In his manu¬ script report of his embassy under date of March 5 he told of Milton’s

Aladule, the realm of Armenia (named after King Aladeules, renowned for his stout resistance to the Turks), x 435. Alaric (370P-410.) “The Goths and Van¬ dals under . . . their king . . . took Rome," Prol V 192, B 98, 101. Alaricus II King of the Visigoths (484-507), set up a code for his Roman subjects based on an abstract of Roman laws and imperial decrees, T 219.

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A Milton Dictionary alarm

Alcibiades

Italian all’arme, to arms! vi 549; cf. ii 103; x 491.

See Cliniades. Alcides

alarmed

See HERCULES.

Ready for battle, iv 985. Alcinous

Alaunus

ED 175. There is a river Alne in Warwickshire, Hampshire, and North¬ umberland. Albion(um)

Reference to the Neptunian off¬ spring (Neptunia proles), QN 3, 27, the giant “who called the island [of Britain] after his own name,” B 4; cf. 5,13. Albracca

See Agrican. Alcaeus

Bom in Lesbos (Sal 22) around 600 b.c., “chief of lyric poets, whose songs most pleasing in themselves, were all the more acceptable to the people (Horace says, Carm. II, xiii, 29), because they contained the praises of those who had cast out tyrants from their cities” ID 312.

The happy ruler of the Phaeacians, where Ulysses heard the blind bard demodocus, V 49. Milton remembers most the fabulous paradisial gardens about the palace; v 341; ix 441; EL III 44; 2D 32 (paired likewise by pliny, Natural History, XIX, iv, 19, with the gardens of adonis). Alcoran

(Lit. the reading; cf. Bible=the Book) Neither the printing of the Koran or anything else was allowed in Turkey until the 18th century, A 337. Alcuin

(735-804) English scholar, "opened the eyes of Europe ... in arts,” D 377. "A learned and prudent man, though a monk,” B 189. Analyzes reasons for fall of Northumbria, 196. Alcyone (Halcyone)

Wife of King Ceyx mentioned in

Alcairo

chaucer’s “Book of the Duchess” and

Cairo, ancient Memphis i 718.

the “Man of Law’s Tale,” An 111.

Alcestis

See Sonnets, XXIII. Play by Euripi¬ des, E 285, alehymy

“Bell-metal they call alchemy” (ba¬ con), an alloy of which the main con¬ stituent is brass, ii 517. Alciat(i) of Milan, Andrea

(1492-1550) Writer on jurispru¬ dence, whose Parerga (Lyons, 1554), p. 48, Milton quotes, T 229. Best re¬ membered for his Emblemata.

Aleian field

Near Ale (=wandering) in Lycia, Asia Minor, scene of the last wander¬ ings of bellerophon, vii 19. Alexander the Great

(356-323 b.c. ) “The great Emathian conqueror,” S VII 10, “that Pellean conqueror,” PR 2, 196, spared “the house of Pindarus” even as he “over¬ passed” “the beauties of the East,” such as the wife and daughters of darius. Precocious (PR 3, 32) pupil

13-

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A Milton Dictionary

of

Alfred the Great

(4, 252; EL IV 25). Like world conqueror and philosopher; Prol VII 268. Graceful comparison; FE # 12 56. Knowledge better than conquest: Prol VII 278. Other references D 494; BN 157; etc. Aristotle

Augustus caesar

(849-901) A king whom Milton can and does admire, even in political con¬ troversy: K 299; ID 438; and through B 202-223 and in CB. Algarsife

Alexander Jannaeus

IP 111. See

King of the Jews, 103-76 b.c., whose subjects made war on him for six years because of his cruelties, ID 104, 238 ff.

cambuscan.

Algate See

ADDLEGATE.

Aligerio Alexander I Son

of

PTOLEMY

See VII

allaeostropha

“was forced by a popular uprising to leave

the

country

because

he

had

Having irregular strophes or stan¬ zas, Pref. SA.

killed his mother” with whom he had reigned conjointly from

107

to

90

b.c.,

ID 296.

Allegro See VAllegro.

Alexander II Son of the preceding, whom, “when he lorded it too insolently the people of Alexandria dragged out of the pal¬ ace and killed in the public gymna¬ sium,” ID 296.

Bishop, friend of origen; died prison in Caesarea c. 250. CG 268.

in

Alexander the Phrygian Helen.

alley A bosky walk (French allee), C 311, 990; iv 626; PR 2, 293. allusion Comparison, D 500.

Alexander of Jerusalem

Paris, the lover of 118, 166.

DANTE.

(pHYSCOn),

SD 52, 92,

Alexander the Third Pope, 1159-81, “who trod upon the neck of Frederic Barbarossa the Em¬ peror, and summoned our Henry II into Normandy about the death of Becket,” T 220.

Almanzor (Almansor) Mansur (939-1002) “the victorious” xi 403, Mohammedan ruler of Anda¬ lusia and North Africa, some of whose subject towns Milton names. (Such authorities as masson, Skeat, Lockwood are implausible in making iden¬ tification with the earlier al-Mansur, the second Abbasid Caliph of the 8th century, who in fact lost Africa and Spain.) aloof Preposition, apart from iii 577.

Alexandra Salome (d. 67 b.c.), wife of Alexan¬ who seized the throne of Judah after his death, ID 240 f.

der jannaeus,

alp Used in late Latin poetry for any high mountain, ii 620; SA 628.

14-

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A Milton Dictionary

alphabetical Adherent to the letter of the law, D 427. Alphesiboeus A pastoral name (the feminine is found in Propertius), ED 69. Alpheus

435. “Those beasts of Amalec, the pre¬ lates”: K 152. Amalthea (a) The mother of Bacchus, iv 278; (b) The nurse of the infant Zeus, pos¬ sessor of the cornucopia or hom of plenty, PR 2, 356. Amara, Mount

“Who by secret sluice/Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse,” Arc 30. The river-god Alpheus was said to have dived under the sea from the Peloponnesus in pursuit of the nymph Arethusa, and to have come up in Sicily, where his beloved was turned into a fountain and their waters min¬ gled. The Renaissance mythologist Conti said that Alpheus meant “im¬ perfection,” Arethusa “virtue,” and some recent commentators have found a hint of allegory in the Lycidas con¬ text, 132, 85. Amadis of Caul Which Southey, who translated it, labelled as “among prose what Or¬ lando Furioso is among metrical ro¬ mances—not the oldest of its kind, but the best.” Herberay’s 1540 French ver¬ sion of the original Spanish had been popular in England. K 89.

Of which Samuel Purchas wrote, “This hill is situate as the navel of that Ethiopian body, and center of their empire, under the equinoctial line,” iv 281. amarant The “immortal” (Greek meaning) flower of Paradise, iii 352. adj. amabANTINE, xi 78. amaranthus Perhaps love-lies-bleeding, L 149. Amaryllis in the shade L 68. The name and the shade are combined in vibcil’s Eclog. I, 4: “Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas.” Amasis II King of Egypt ID 294.

from c.

569-525

b.c.,

amate amain

To dishearten, B 62.

Literally, mightily, an intensifying adverb, L 111; PR 2, 430; SA 637; ii,

Amathusia

165 etc.

Venus, named from her temple at Amathus in Cyprus, EL VII 1.

Amale(e)k(ites)

amaze

A nomadic tribe which occupied the peninsula of Sinai and the wilder¬ ness intervening between the southern hill-ranges of Palestine and the border of Egypt. The “hateful Amalec,” Ps LXXXIII 26, frequently warred against the Israelites until, degene¬ rated into a horde of banditti, they were destroyed by david: ID 224. D

Amazement, vi 646. amazement Stupefaction, i 313; PR 4, 562. Con¬ sternation, C 356. Amaziah (a) 8th king of Judah. “Cowardly and idolatrous,” ID 234, he was mur-

15-

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A Milton Dictionary

dered in the 29th year of his reign, (b) Priest of the golden calf at bethel (Amos vii, 10) K 261. Amazonian See

TAEGE.

amber A scent, derived probably from the ambergris of the whale rather than from the equally fragrant amber-tree, SA 720; C 863. amber See

choaspes.

ambition “Going around” for public support, SA 247. ambones

References are few outside the State Papers, adam and eve in their figleaves are compared to the Indians columbus found “with feather’d cinc¬ ture,” ix, 1115 ff. American means sav¬ age in Prol VII 276. Like George Her¬ bert, Milton pointed to the number of “good Christians” whom “nothing but the wide oceans and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter from the fury of the bishops” R 50. The immigration to New Eng¬ land from 1629 to 1640 has been esti¬ mated at over 20,000. Bishop hall as author of the utopian Mundus Alter et Idem is called “this pretty prevarica¬ tor of America,” Sm 294. Ames, William

In the early churches elevated pul¬ pits or desks, usually two, one on each side of the nave, R 34. Ambrose, St. (340P-97) Bishop of Milan, church father, one of the four doctors of the Latin Church. Milton often cited his excommunication of the Emperor theodosius, R 70-3; CB 170; K 296; ID 196; and mentioned his resistance to valentinian, ib. 254. Quoted on divorce, T 211-12; on tithes, H 65. Criticized, ID 196-8, 248. ambrosia The sweet-smelling gods, v 57.

America(n)

food

of

the

Ambrosius Provided obigen with the necessary amanuenses for his commentaries on the OT and his dogmatic investiga¬ tions, M 6. amerced (a merci, at the mercy of) Penal¬ ized or mulcted, i 609; D 506. amerce Ten 53. amercements, CG 251. -

'(1576-1633) Puritan divine and con¬ troversialist who spent the greater part of his life on the continent, “prac¬ tically exiled by the high-church party.” Milton quotes him directly twice: T 102 (p. 321 of the Medulla Theologiae, published in English by order of the House in 1642); CD 2, 7, but his influence may be augured from e. Phillips’ statement that De Doctrina Christiana was the product of what Milton “thought fit to collect . . . from Amesius, Wollebius, etc.” Ames was a Calvinist who insisted that Adam fell entirely of his own free will, that faith is an act of man as a whole, in all his faculties, and that the “scale of perfection” may be as¬ cended by God’s creatures—three ideas found in Paradise Lost, and their stories of the temptation and the con¬ sequences of the Fall are similar (as is the way of thinking in Ames’s Eng¬ lish Puritanism, 1641, and Of Refor¬ mation). amiable Worthy of love, CG 238.

16-

A Milton Dictionary

amice A monastic hood or cape made of, or lined with, gray fur, PR 4, 427.

backwards because it had a head at each end, x 524. Amphitrite

ammiral

Wife of neptune, C 921.

The admiral’s ship, chief ship, i 294. Amphitryoniaden

Ammon (Hammon)

Patronymic of Hercules, QN 28.

The Egyptian or North African dei¬ ty, “Lybian Jove”: iv 277; Ps LXXXIII 25. “Libyc Hammon,” N 203 (here represented as a ram).

Amram

Ammonian Jove

amused

Father of moses, i, 339.

In a muse, stunned, vi 581, 623.

Changed to serpent to woo Olym¬ pias, ix 508.

amuse(s) Stun, perplex, D 477; T 186.

Ammonite A people hated by Israel and sub¬ dued by jephthah, SA 285; i 396.

Amymone

Ammosis

tune, PR 2, 188.

see actisanes and amasis.

Daughter of danaus, loved by nep¬

Amyntas

Amnon

A stock pastoral name, ED 70.

See RAVISHER. Amyntorides Amorrean

Patronymic of Phoenix, achilles’ tutor, EL IV 27.

See seon’s realm. Amos complains

Anabaptist(s)

K 264. See Amos, vii, 10. Amphiaraus This soothsayer joined, reluctantly, the impious expedition against Thebes, whereupon jupiter blasted him with a thunderbolt, EL VII 84. Chaucer’s reference: An 111. Amphion One of the most famous of mythical musicians, who fortified Thebes by playing on his lyre and thereby caus¬ ing the stones to dance into place, Prol VI 210. amphisbaena (Greek, “going both ways”) A fabu¬ lous serpent able to go forwards or

(Greek, “re-baptizers”) A Protestant sect that sprang up in various places on the Continent in the 16th century and their views brought to England by refugees from the Low Countries. “The Anabaptist is accused of denying infants their right to baptism; again they say, they deny nothing but what the Scripture denies them,” TR 169. Besides insisting on adult baptism by immersion, they advocated the separa¬ tion of church and state and abolished the idea of priestly hierarchy—CG 215 —and even priestly mediation, 202, 203. The term came to be one of abuse, with “fanatic,” D 426, associa¬ tions. 2D 146, 166-168; Col 233; T 69; TR 168.

17-

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A Milton Dictionary

Angelica

Anak

See

The Anakim were a race of giants. SA 528, 1080.

angels (Greek, messengers) In the Celes¬ tial Hierarchy of Dionysius the (pseu¬ do-) Areopagite (c. 500), they are arranged in three hierarchies contain¬ ing three choirs each, in the order of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, Dominations, Virtues and Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. The best-known remnant of this clas¬ sification is the thrice-repeated line, “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers” (v, 772, 840; x 460). Indicating that there are ranks (cf. CD 1, 9), Milton does not follow in detail any particular order, satan or

analytics System of logic (as in the Prior and Posterior Analytics of aristotle), T 134. Ananias (a) The high priest, CG 204; Sm 310; SD 254 (Acts xxiii, 3). (b) Fraud¬ ulent disciple, T 171 (Acts v, 1-5). Anastasius Bibliothecarius (c. 810-c. 878) Italian chronographer, transmitter of Greek learning to the West, whose Lives of the Popes was among the volumes Milton asked bigot to forward him, FE #22 88.

LUCIFER, URIEL, RAPHAEL, and MICHAEL

are named as archangels in Paradise Lost and perhaps gabriel is also to be included in this top class, which is by no means Dionysius’; moreover, Rapha¬ el is called both Seraph (1 277) and Virtue (1 371). See the names of indi¬ vidual angels, fallen or unfallen, viz.

Anatolius, St. (d.c. 282) “The learned bishop” of whose authority for the time of celebrating Easter was argued be¬ tween colman and Wilfrid. P. 99.

laodicea,

Anchises Father of aeneas and progenitor of SABRINA, C 923.

ABDIEL,

ARIEL,

ZEBUB,

BELIAL,

MOLOCH,

Andrew The brother of

agrican.

ARIOC,

UZZIEL,

AZAZEL,

ITHURIEL, ZEPHON,

BEEL¬

MAMMON, ZOPHIEL.

Angola fardest south peter,

PR 2, 7.

(of the Congo) Portuguese West Africa, xi 401.

Andrewes, Lancelot Anguilla

See Elegia III.

Latin for Ely, which means “Eelisland,” PE 14.

Andrla See

CHARINUS.

Anicetus Andromache See

Bishop of Rome from about 154 to 165, P 91, 99.

euripides.

Andromeda Milton represents this constellation as borne by “the fleecy star” aries, in¬ asmuch as it lies above aries in the sky, though somewhat to the west, iii 559.

Animadversions / upon / The Re¬ monstrants / Defence, / against Smectymnuus The third of Milton’s antiprelatical tracts, issued, like the first two, with¬ out his name. Following shortly upon

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A Milton Dictionary

Of Prelatical Episcopacy, it evidently belongs to July, 1641. Bishop Hall had replied to the first tract of the Smectymnuans (see under Of Reformation) with an April publication, A Defence of the Humble Remonstrance against the Frivolous and False Exceptions of Smectymnuus. It is this that Milton now analyzes satirically. The Smectymnuans also sprang to their own de¬ fence with A Vindication of the An¬ swer to the Humble Remonstrance, and received in reply from Hall, A Short Answer to the Tedious Vindica¬ tion of Smectymnuus, but these do not enter into the Animadversions, the second of them coming out too late for Milton to take cognizance of it. Throughout, Milton employs the quotation - and - reply method that marked similar Elizabethan writings, such as the Admonition Controversy and the Marprelate Tracts. (The lat¬ ter and he both considered at one point “Ha, ha, ha” a sufficient answer.) Milton’s satiric vein had burst out only rarely in the first two tracts, but now he shows his talent for japing and for reading out of context, and Hall re¬ ceives a rough treatment which, as Milton acknowledges in his first sen¬ tence, “to some men perhaps may seem offensive.” How else to treat “any notorious enemy to truth” but “to send home his haughtiness well bespurted with his own holy water.” We are in¬ formed that Hall’s god is his belly, that he is in no position to criticize the style of the Smectymnuans, that he is detectably a papist and a master of sleight of hand, that the clergy “spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting, their studies in unprofitable questions and barbarous sophistry, their middle age in ambi¬ tion and idleness, their old age in avarice, dotage, and diseases.” The objurgations are interrupted by one of

Milton’s characteristic passionate and patriotic prayers at the end of Section IV. There follow hits on simony and pestilential shepherds. In the post¬ script one answer is, “Wipe your fat corpulencies out of our light” and an¬ other is, “For certain your confutation hath achieved nothing against it, and left nothing upon it but a foul taste of your skillet foot, and a more perfect and distinguishable odor of your socks, than of your nightcap.” Anna The prophetess Luke, ii, 36-8 PR 1, 255. Anne of Cleve(s) Divorced by henry viii six months after marriage on grounds of impo¬ tence based on “misliking,” D 501. annoy To harm, vi 369. Anonymous Life of Milton Used by wood, known to Malone, rediscovered by Andrew Clark, first published by Edward S. Parsons as “The Earliest Life of Milton” (which it is, not counting Aubrey), English Historical Review, XVII (1902), 95110; reprinted in Colorado College Studies, X (1903), 1-23; Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton (1932), 17-34. This sober 4600-word account shows considerable acquaintance with Mil¬ ton’s public life, the symptoms of his blindness, his financial transactions, as well as his writings, but its style is such as to prompt the conjecture that it is a translation from the Latin. The approach is sedate and bland. It com¬ mences with the promise of “moral benefit” and ends on a note of Old Testament piety. It has been variously attributed to Dr. Paget, Andrew Allam, mauvell, john Phillips, and, perhaps most convincingly, cykiack

19-

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A Milton Dictionary

antimask

The their-thir spelling (see under Paradise Lost) is that of a member of the Milton circle. skinner.

A grotesque secondary mask (such as accompanies the first entrance of Comus), an interlude in a serious mask, K 247.

Anselm (1033-1109) Archbishop of Canter¬ bury from 1093, “who to uphold the points of his prelatism made himself a traitor to his country,” CG 208. The Commentary of Herveus Burgidolensis (12th century) was published as An¬ selm’s in the renaissance.

The doctrine, especially associated with John Agicola in Germany c. 1535, that faith frees the Christian from the claims and obligations of the moral law, D 425-6; Col 233.

Antaeus

Antioch

The giant who, since he got stronger each time he was thrown to mother earth, expired only when Hercules held him aloft and crushed him, PR 4, 563; Prol IV 172; 2D 76.

In Syria, capital city of the Seleucid empire (PR 3, 297), called by justinian Theopolis when he rebuilt it, P 88; in magnificence and luxury sur¬ passed in its time only by Rome and Alexandria, R 15; H 86; etc.

antinomian(ism)

antagony Antiochus Epiphanes

Antagonism, D 411.

Seleucid monarch who died in 163 Desecrated the temple in Jeru¬ salem (Apocrypha, I Maccabees i, 21-4; II, v, 15, ff.) D 474; Ten 38; ID 238.

Anteros

b.c.

Reciprocated Love, D 401. antic(s) Buffoon(s), SA 1325; Col 257.

Antiopa

antic Adj. quaint, IP 158 (a combination of the meanings of “antic” and “an¬ tique”—spelled the same way in the 17th century). Antichrist The Roman Catholic Church, D 372; Sm 354. Anticyra Either of two towns celebrated for their hellebore, the chief remedy in antiquity for madness, ID 300. Antigonus Became king of Judea, 40-37 b.c. with Parthian help (the opposite of Milton’s suggestion, PR 3, 367). Exe¬ cuted by the Romans.

A love of the disguised Jove, PR 2, 187. Antipater the Edomite Procurator of Jerusalem, 47-43 b.c., described by josephus as “very rich, and in his nature an active and sedi¬ tious man,” PR 2, 423. antistrephon An argument that is retorted upon an opponent, Sm 299. Antoninus Pius Emperor of Rome, 138-161 T 122; ID 374. Antony, Mark (83P-30 b.c.) Mainly a “monstrous tyrant, overturner of the Roman com¬ monwealth” to Milton: ID 106-08, 218,

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A Milton Dictionary

passim. But, like Izaak Walton (Venator’s speech in praise of the earth in the Complete Angler), remembers feast of eight boars set before Antony and cleopatha: Prol VI 234.

Apis, Aegyptian The sacred bull of Memphis, out of whose worship grew the mystery cult of sebapis, K 86. Apocalypse

Anubis “The Dog,” N 12. An Egyptian god, guardian of the dead, represented, as in the hieroglyphs, as having the head of a jackal or a dog.

iv 2: see Rev. xii, 7-9; St. John’s work called a tragedy: CG 238. apogaeum Apogee, D 401. apolelymenon

Aonia(n) Helicon in Boeotia, sacred to the Muses, EL IV 29; VI 17; AdP 75; JR

21.

A Greek word meaning “freed” (that is, from the obligation to follow a set pattern), Pref. SA. Apollinarii, the two

apeirokalia (Greek letters). Vulgar ignorance of the beautiful, Sm 301. Apelles Regarded as the greatest painter of antiquity (at the court of alexandeb the great). His masterpiece (there are no copies of his paintings extant) was “Venus Anadyomene,” Venus Ris¬ ing from the Sea, Prol I 140.

Apollinarius of Alexandria and his son the bishop of laodicea, who, when the Emperor Julian (361-3) prohibited Christians from teaching the classics, made over the OT into poems and dramas and the NT into dialogues in imitation of plato, A 307. “By this joint service to the Chris¬ tian cause, they baffled the emperor’s subtlety.” socraies scholasticus. Apol(l)inarius See above. An 178.

Apennines Indirectly referred to in PR 4, 29; named, QN 50. Milton crossed in 1639, 2D 126. Aphrodisia Place-name in Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem, Sm 300. Apician(am) There were three notorious Roman gluttons named Apicius, of whom Caelius Apicius was the reputed au¬ thor of a cook and confectioner’s man¬ ual still extant, Prol VI 234.

Apollo The sun-god, C 66, 190; EL III 34, passim, is seen mainly as the musician and god of poetical inspiration, and prophet: N 176; V 37; C 478; L 77; EL I 14; VI 33-4; Pas 23; S XIII, 10; PR 2, 190. Prol II 154; III 162. See also hyacinth and daphne. Man 57: see PHERETIADES. Apollonius of Perga Greek mathematician of 3rd cent. famed for his treatise on conic sections Ten 54. b.c.,

Apion

Apollonius of Rhodes

Alexandrian grammarian and antiSemite of 1st century, ID 136.

Greek epic poet of the late 3rd and early 2nd cent, b.c., whose Argonau-

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A Milton Dictionary

tica, II, 181-4 is quoted in 2D 64; the same book is an influence on ii, 1017 ff. See ophion, phineus. Milton had his pupils read this epic, e. Phillips reported. Apollonius Thyanaeus (of Tyana) Greek Pythagorean philosopher of 1st century, reputed a worker of mira¬ cles. An 172. Apollos A Jew from Alexandria who “wa¬ tered” that which Paul “planted”; I Cor. iii. 6. An 156; CD 1, 28. Apologus de Rustico et Hero (Fable of the Peasant and his Land¬ lord) First published 1673. 12 elegaic lines. Aesopian fable against greed, like that of the killing of the goose that laid the golden egg: the peasant’s fruit tree transplanted to the landlord’s land shrivels up. William Bullokar, Aescrp’s Fables in True Orthography, London, 1585, offered the story for schoolboys to imitate, giving it both in prose and in verse; his admitted source was Mantuan (Sylvarum, Paris, 1513, Book IV). An / Apology / Against a Pamphlet/ call'd /A Modest Confutation/of the Animadversions upon /the Remon¬ strant against / Smectymnuus Milton’s fifth and last antiprelatical tract, unsigned like the first three, ap¬ parently came out around April, 1642. The author, worrying (with an ob¬ lique paraphrase of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly) in his fourth sentence whe¬ ther he might fail to gain “due es¬ teem” for “the wearisome labors and studious watchings wherein I have spent and tired out almost a whole youth,” was ready for marriage. Mean¬ while he had to defend himself against the charges in an anonymous 40-page pamphlet he thought composed by

Bishop Hall and one of his sons: A Modest Confutation of a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libel, Entitled, Ani¬ madversions, etc., which accused him of loose living, as he had accused the clergy in Animadversions. The ac¬ count of himself Milton was thus stung to ranks with that in CG and 2D. After explaining that in Ani¬ madversions he was replying in kind to the “quips and snapping adages” that Hall had hurled at the Smectymnuans, Milton analyzes the arro¬ gance of the title of the new pamph¬ let, and proceeds to the subject of mimes, not neglecting Hall’s “Mundus Alter et Idem, the idlest and the pal¬ triest mime that ever mounted upon bank.” The false charges, such as Mil¬ ton’s having been “vomited out” of the university, follow, with Milton’s expansive corrections, including a statement “that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem” and an account of the ideals nourished by poetry and Platonic philosophy. A dis¬ course on chastity is succeeded by an elaborate defence, with precedents (including the Biblical) in behalf of “tart rhetoric” and outspoken language. The Long Parliament is praised. The libel that Milton is looking for “a rich widow” brings the reply: “I . . . would choose a virgin of mean fortunes, hon¬ estly bred, before the wealthiest wid¬ ow.” The prayer that breaks into Ani¬ madversions was not “ “big-mouthed.’ ” The Rome-like litany and liturgy are attacked. As for being “unread in the councils,” Milton is proud of that, though he could, if he had reason to, “in three months be an expert councilist.” At the end the greed and worldli¬ ness of those at the top of the ecclesi¬ astical hierarchy are given another full airing.

22-

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A Milton Dictionary

apostemated

by native forces led by b.c., ID 294.

Festering, T 70.

amasis

in 569

Apuleius, the gay rankness of

appaid Satisfied, xii 401. apparent Manifest or conspicuous, iv 608; x 112 (Latin apparens).

Lucius, whose Golden Ass romance (2nd century) priests prefer before “the native Latinisms of Cicero,” Sm 347. Apulia

apparitor(s)

SE region of Italy, T 219.

An official who serves the summons of an ecclesiastical court, R 15; An 158; K 101. appeached Impeached, doubted, D 502. appeachment

Aquila, the apostate (11. 130) After becoming a Christian turned proselyte to Judaism. Made an exceedingly literal translation of OT from Hebrew into Greek, R 34. Aquilo (Greek Boreas)

Criminal charge, M 20. appellant Challenger (who “calls out” the de¬ fendant), SA 1220. Appian Road Built by appius Claudius; ran south from Rome to brundusium, PR 4, 68.

The north wind, who abducted on his wings the Athenian princess Orithyia in a storm-cloud, In 8; NS 55. Aquinas, St. Thomas (1228-74) Milton, who took a dim view of the scholastics, mentions the great doctor only to call spenser “a better teacher,” A 311.

Appian Claudius Sumamed Caeeus (the blind), in 280 b.c., in his dying old age, induced by his oratory the Senate to reject the terms of peace which Cineas had pro¬ posed on behalf of pyrrhus, king of epibus, who had just defeated the Ro¬ mans at Heraclea, 2D 64. appoint not heavenly disposition Do not arraign (Latin adpunctare —point at disapprovingly)—or do not prescribe to—God, SA 373. Cf. A 350, “Neither is God appointed and con¬ fined. .. .”

Arabia Alluded to for (1) its deserts EL IV 99; Sm 352; PR 3, 274; and (2) the fertile portion known as “Araby the blest,” iv 163; EL V 59; ED 186; PR 2, 364; P 95. Arachosia Eastern boundary of parthia, west of the Indus River, PR 3, 316. Aracynthus A mountain in Boeotia associated with the rites of Bacchus, QN 65 Aratus

approve To prove, to test, ix 367, 1140. Apries The Biblical Pharaoh Hophra, whose army of mercenaries was overthrown

(c. 315-245 b.c. ) Of Soli, whose di¬ dactic poems the Phainomena and Diosemeia—now usually treated as one work—were purchased by Milton in 1631 in the Paris 1559 edition; the

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A Milton Dictionary

copy survives with Milton’s annota¬ tions. Recommended in E 284, and Phillips and aubrey listed Aratus among the authors read by the pupils. The fifth line of the opening invoca¬ tion to Zeus (which Milton in his mar¬ ginalia compared to lucretius II, 991-2) was quoted by st. Paul in his speech at the Athenian Areopagus, Acts xvii, 28, a fact alluded to in A 306 and the source of “Whose progeny you are,” v 503 and viii 281. todd con¬ nected x 661-4 with Aratus. Arausi Of the house or party of Orange in the Netherlands, 2D 36, 98, 140; FE # 28 104. Araxes (Aras) A river of Armenia which flows east into the Caspian, PR 3, 271. Arbaces Founder of the Median empire in 876 b.c. A general of sardanapalus, led a successful revolt against him, ID 298. arbitrary Discretionary, D 441. arbitrate th' event Determine the outcome, C 411. Arcades (Trisyllabic; Greek for The Arca¬ dians—cf. Prol IV 174, or Dwellers in Arcady, line 28: cf. C 341) Arcadia, 95, 109, was a district of central Pelo¬ ponnesus associated with pastoral, as in Sir Philip Sidney’s romance Arcadia (referred to K 86-9; A 317), or xi 132 —“Charm’d with Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed.” 109 lines, joNSONian masque consisting of three songs and a recitative in 29 heroic couplets be¬ tween Song 1 and 2, “part of an enter¬ tainment presented to the Countess

Dowager of Derby at harefield.” The circumstances are unknown, the date conjectured earlier than Comm—1632 or 1633. The performance was out¬ doors, late in the day (39). Did Milton or henry lawes take the part of the Genius of the Wood (77)? Alice Spencer (c. 1560-1637), the Countess Dowager of Derby, was a living link between edmund spenser and Milton. The Elizabethan poet, who claimed kinship with her (his northern branch of the family spelled the name with s), alluded to her as “Amaryllis left to moan” (Colin Clout, 435) the death of her husband the fifth Earl of Derby in 1594. But contrary to Spenser’s pre¬ diction she married again, in 1600. Her husband was Thomas Egerton, a widower who died in 1617 shortly after becoming Viscount Brackley. His son by his first marriage married her daughter by her first marriage: thus the matriarch honored in Arcades was the stepmother and mother-in-law of John Egerton, Viscount Brackley, who became Earl of Bridgewater in 1617 and commissioned Comm in 1634. spenser in dedicating The Tears of the Muses to her had praised her “ex¬ cellent beauty”; Milton’s first song is about her blazing majesty, her “radi¬ ant state,” as she was approached “by some noble persons of her family . . . in pastoral habit.” The fourth stanza (where MS has Ceres for Juno) was not out of place as referring to her numerous relatives and descendants. 10-13 in MS reads: “Now seems guilty of abuse And detraction from her praise: Less than half she hath expressed; Envy bid her hide the rest.” The Genius of the Wood, who, like the Attendant Spirit in Comm, was delegated by Jove (44), alludes to “this quest of yours” (34) as if he had come from the full-fledged and

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A Milton Dictionary

plotted Ludlow Castle Mask, and similarly he moves between magic and music (“such sweet compulsion” 68 returns, ix 473-4). 89 seems to show Milton’s knowledge of an actual avenue of thick elms at hakefield where maskers received Queen Eliza¬ beth in 1602. Of the first line of Song 3, A. E. Housman observed, “In these six simple words . . . what is it that can draw tears . . . when the sense of tire passage is blithe and gay? I can only say, because they are poetry, and find their way to something in man which is obscure and latent, some¬ thing older than the present organisa¬ tion of his nature, like the patches of fen which still linger here and there in the drained lands of Cambridge¬ shire.”

ARCADES.

Arcadius The first emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, 395-408. Gainas, Gothic general, wrested Constanti¬ nople from him in 400 for a time; there was further insurrection there in 403 and 404 because of Chrysostom’s exile H 64; ID 256. Arcady, star of See

Archimedes (287P-212 b.c. ) Greek mathema¬ tician, bom in Sicily; killed at the taking of Syracuse by the Romans, when, preoccupied, he said to one of the soldiers, “Stand away, fellow, from my diagram.” S XXI, 7; salmas rus mocked as global geometri¬ cian ID 406. Arctos (Greek, bear) Ursa Major and Ursa Minor Man 28. arede (aread). Advise, iv 962. Areopagitica; / A Speech of Mr. John Milton / For the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, / To the Parlament of England

Arcadia(n) See

either for expressing an unmartial sentiment or for his attack on Lycambes, A 300.

calisto.

arch-chemic sun The sun as the master chemist gen¬ erating precious stones in the earth, iii 609. Archelaus Son of herod the GREAT, deposed, by Augustus ID 242-4.

6

a.d.

Archilochus (7th cent. b.c. ) The “Graius vates” of PE 20, Greek lyric poet and writer of lampoons; banished from Sparta

(There follow on the title-page lines, Greek and English, from Euri¬ pides’ The Suppliants, 438-41.) This the best known and most enduring of Milton’s prose works, was out Novem¬ ber 23, 1644 (unlicensed, unregis¬ tered, and with no identification of publisher or printer). Without detect¬ able influence in Milton’s lifetime, it was the first English essay wholly on its subject, though insofar as it con¬ cerns the principle of religious tolera¬ tion it was anticipated by John Good¬ win’s Theomachia in behalf of a free pulpit, Roger Williams’ The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, and Henry Robinson’s Liberty of Conscience, all prior pub¬ lications of 1644. In the time of Wil¬ liam III Whig pamphleteers began borrowing without acknowledgment from Areopagitica, and it was in this period that Milton’s principles tri¬ umphed, although, except in the 1698

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A Milton Dictionary

collected prose works, Areopagitica remained unreprinted until 1738. Ed. T. H. White, 1819; J. W. Hales, 1874; E. Sirluck, Yale Milton, 1959. The censorship it assails was older in England than one learns from the pamphlet itself, but the Star Chamber Decree of July 11, 1637 was “the most elaborate instrument in English history for the suppression of unde¬ sired publication” (Sirluck). The edict had disappeared with the aboli¬ tion of the Star Chamber itself July 5, 1641, but early in 1642 Parliament moved towards imposing similar con¬ trols, ending with the strict order of June 14, 1643 that no “Book, pamph¬ let, paper . . . shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched or put to sale by any person or persons whatsoever, unless the same be first approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or persons as both, or either of the said Houses shall appoint for the licensing of the same. . . .” On August 26, 1644, the House of Com¬ mons heard a petition from the Sta¬ tioners’ Company that condemned such an unlicensed work as Milton’s “pamphlet . . . concerning divorce.” The title makes allusions that had come up recently in Milton’s work. Hall had corrected the Smectymnuans for the use of “Areopagi” to mean men: “I had thought this had been the name of place,” and Milton has to brush off the pedantic point: “A soareagle would not stoop at a fly, but sure some pedagogue stood at your elbow and made it itch with this parlous criticism: they urged you with a de¬ cree of the sage and severe judges of Athens, and you cite them to appear for certain paragogical contempts, be¬ fore a capricious pedanty of hotlivered grammarians” An, 110. “The judges of Areopagus,” A 299, literally Ares’ hill, constituted at one time the

supreme court of Athens, but in the time of Pericles became limited to trials for murder and homicide. Once a model for Milton’s perpetual senate, W 128, 130, it judged (according to Aeschylus’ Eumenides) the matricide Orestes, K 297. The Seventh Oration of Isocrates is named after it, his Areopagitic Discourse (or simply Areopagiticus) urging the restoration of the court’s former powers. Iso¬ crates, (436-338 b.c. ) had kept a famous school of rhetoric at AthensE 287, and is referred to in S X as “that old man eloquent.” But his was a written eloquence (he was a poor speaker), and this is the parallel by which Milton in his first paragraph explains his title: “I could name him who from Iris private house wrote that discourse to the Parliament of Athens, that persuades them to change the form of democraty which was then established.” Areopagitica, though never meant to be delivered as “a speech” (any more than Samson Agonistes was for the stage), is structured as a regular oration, (2D 134), and can be so analyzed. 1. Exordium. This puts the audience in the right frame of mind by praising the achievements of a parliament which is surely, unlike the late royal council, not immune to advice, and which is being addressed by a person with some qualifications to give it. 2. Proposition. The order for the licensing of books should be repealed. 3. Partition, Fourfold. 4. Concession. The potency of books is granted. “A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on pur¬ pose to a life beyond life.” 5. Historical narration, as promised under 3. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans censored books except “those either blasphemous and atheistical, or

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A Milton Dictionary

libellous.” But censorship did become a papistical practice, reaching a cli¬ max with “the Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition” and “the new purgatory of an Index.” Before mod¬ em times stifling a book before it was bom was unheard of. 6. Discussion of the second part of 3: “what is to be thought in gen¬ eral of reading.” St. Paul made an an¬ alogy with diet. “Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or noth¬ ing from unwholesome, and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil.” 7. Confirmation. “Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably.” “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees (not seeks, see Bohn) her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that im¬ mortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.” If there is danger of infection, it is to be found amply in holy writings also. Wisdom comes from comparison of ideas. 8. Reductio ad absurdum. Why should not censorship, which has al¬ ready proved unenforceable, extend itself to “all recreations and pastimes . . . delightful to man,” such as instru¬ mental music and madrigals? This is a utopian project like Plato’s. 9. Further argument on the nature of choice. 10. The order is impractical both from the point of view of qualified licensers and qualified authors, the latter not being children under a fer¬ ula at school. 11. Example of Galileo “grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition for think¬ ing in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.”

12. Neither truth nor religion is to be deputed to the care of others. 13. Admonition against being afraid of sects and schisms in a world where Truth is fractional. 14. Digression on the English na¬ tion as favored with particular light from on high. 15. Peroration. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above ail liberties.” Recapitulation of emotional appeals. Let Truth “and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open en¬ counter.” Milton’s proposal is that every book shall be permitted to come out, with the author’s and printer’s name on record. These may then be called to account. “I mean not tolerated popery and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supre¬ macies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled; that also which is impious or evil ab¬ solutely, either against faith or man¬ ners, no law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw itself.” Areopagus See Areopagitica. Arethuse See

See

ahezzo.

Aretius, Benedictus (1505-74) “A famous divine of Bern,” T 228, where he welcomed ramus Log 510. T refers to his Cal¬ vinist Problema Theologica (Mainz, 1583). pp. 579-82. Arezzo, that notorious ribald of

27-

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alpheus.

Aretino

The Italian satirist Pietro Aretino

A Milton Dictionary

sonality, and the like, they reject them as scholastic notions, not to be found in Scripture.” TR 169. Arianism, used rather loosely as a synonym for antitrinitarianism, became the favorite la¬ bel for De Doctrina Christiana (non¬ committal reference 1, 5).

(1492-1556), named from his birth¬ place, A 313. Argestes loud The northwest wind, x 699. Argo The ship that carried jason in quest of the Golden Fleece, ii 1017; Prol VI 204. Argob A region in the east of the Jordan in Bashan (Basan), i 398 (cf. Deut. iii, 4,13). argument

Ariel Sometimes translated as “lion-like,” thus his fierceness, vi 371, but also doubtless associated with Ares. Agrippa said: “Ariel is the name of an angel . . . sometimes also it is the name of an evil demon, and of a city which is thence called Ariopolis, where the Idol was worshipped.”

(1) theme, subject matter, i 24; ix 13, 28, 42; PR 1, 172; Sm 296. (2) summary Printer to the Reader PL; vi 84; Sm 312.

The Ram, the first sign of the Zo¬ diac, x 329.

Argus

Arimaspian

"Under the custody of . . . Argus with a hundred eyes of jealousy,” R 38: Io’s guard, set by her jealous rival Juno; but Hermes' “pastoral reed” and “opiate rod” put all the eyes to sleep, xi 130 if. QN 185; SD 188.

ii 945 goes back to Herodotus, III, 116: “The northern parts of Europe are very much richer in gold than any other region. . . . The story runs, that the one-eyed Arimaspi purloin it from the griffins.’

Arian(s), Arianism

Ariminum

Heresy named after Arius (c. 250-c. 336), condemned at the Coun¬ cil of nicaka, 325 R 17, for subordinationist teaching about the Person of Christ. Attracted Constantine, R 23, and his son constantius, R 25; ID 252. “Divided Christendom, wrought also in this island no small disturb¬ ance,” B 93. “Infections of Arian and Pelagian heresies,” K 224; cf. An 126 Taken “for no true friends of Christ,” R 10. Toleration urged, TR 178. “The Arian and Socinian are charged to dis¬ pute against the Trinity: they affirm to believe the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to Scripture and the Apostolic Creed; as for terms of Trin¬ ity, Triniunity, Coessentiality, Triper¬

Modern Rimini, on the Adriatic, R 16; II 87; B 94.

Aries

Arioc(h) Known to demonologists spirit of revenge, vi 371.

the

Arion Of whom Herodotus wrote: “as a player on the harp second to no man . . . was . . . the first to invent the dithyrambic measure . . . was carried to Taenarum on the back of a dol¬ phin” (cf. L 164), he having jumped into the sea to escape pirates Prol, II 152; AdP 60. Ariosto, Lodovico

28-

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as

(1474-1533) Whose chivalric epic

A Milton Dictionary

poem, Orlando Furioso, published in 40 cantos 1516, 46 cantos 1532, a se¬ quel to boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, was well known to Milton in both the original and in Sir John Harington’s version, 1591. Milton’s marginalia on the latter are in XVIII, 330-6, ending with the Sept. 21, 1642 statement that he had read the last canto twice. He was especially struck by Astolfo’s visit to the moon in Canto 34: CB 162; R 27 (where of two portions translated from a poet “equal in fame” to dante and petrarch, the first is identical except for two words with Harington’s version); iii, 444 ff., the Paradise of Fools. As Milton read in Harington’s biographical essay, Ariosto was also one who made the choice of “adorn¬ ing” the “native tongue”; CG 236. i 16 is Aristo’s “Cosa, non detta in prose mai, ne in rima” (as Pearce noted), x 575 may have behind it the confession by Manto, XLIII, 98, that fairies are forced to the shape of ser¬ pents every seventh day. XVI, 75 has an autumn leaves simile (cf. i, 302). In addition to Italian phrases—see e.g. Thyer’s note on iii, 135—some 50 phrases of Milton’s are in Harington, such as “cursed crew,” “high at¬ tempts,” “shady bank.” See, further, Damasco, hippogriff, Voltaire. Aristarchus Grammarian of the second century ID 16.

b.c.

Aristippus rout

with

all

his

Cyrenaic

Held, c. 400 b.c., that pleasure was the chief end in life, the more im¬ mediate the better, CG 274.

Aristobulus I (140P-103 b.c. ) Son of John Hyrcanus; high priest and king of Judea ID 238, 104. Aristobulus II (d. 48 b.c.) Son of Alexandra, warred with his brother hyrcanus for kingdom of Judea ID 242. Aristophanes (c. 448-c. 380 b.c.) “The loosest of’ the “old comedians,” A 299, approved by Plato to the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse, ib. and 316. His Frogs Prol, VI 236. 868-9 may have influenced AdP 115 ff. Line 1004 is L 11. Birds, SD 200. Compare with, PR 4, 270 ACHARNIANS, 530.

Aristorides argus,

son of Arestor, QN 185.

Aristotle (384-322 b.c. ) Overexposed at Cam¬ bridge to this philosopher, “the master of those who know” (dante), who so dominated the medieval curricu¬ lum, Milton produced such mixed testimonials as De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aristoteles Intellexit, Prolusiones, III-V, and his Ramist Logic, not to mention At a Vacation Exercise. Although he commemorated Aristotle as the teacher of Alexander, EL, IV, 25; PR 4, 251, and cited im¬ portantly the Poetics, Pref. SA; E 286, Milton found the idealism and soaring style of plato more congenial.Efflics cited (e.g., D 501 reference is to X, 9); Politics often in the political writ¬ ings; both, R 38. ark, captive

Aristobulus

i, 458. See 1 Sam. v, 4 ff.

(52-35 b.c.) Ill, brother of Mariamne, second wife of herod the great and grandson of aristobulus II (below), T 143.

Armagh See on Ussher under Of Prelatical Episcopacy.

29-

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A Milton Dictionary

Arminian(s), Arminius

Arno

“The acute and distinct Arminius,” A 313, Jacobus (Jakob Hermandszoon) (1560-1609) was an orthodox Calvinist minister at Amsterdam when he set out to answer, in 1589, “a nameless discourse written at Delft” and became “perverted” to ever graver reservations about the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, lest God be made “the author of sin,” D 440. Professor at Leyden from 1603, with J. J. Scaliger as a colleague and grotius as a pupil, Arminius formu¬ lated the teaching on salvation set forth in The Remonstrance at Gouda the year after his death. Both the supralapsarian and sublapsarian forms of predestination were rejected, and it was asserted that Christ died for all (not only for the elect) and it is pos¬ sible to resist, or to fall from, divine grace. “The Arminian ... is con¬ demned for setting up free will against free grace, but that imputation he dis¬ claims in all his writings and grounds himself largely upon structure only.” TR 169. The Arminians, at first “per¬ secuted” in the Netherlands, W 366, were mistakenly thought to “deny original sin,” Sm 330, the papists called them “heretics,” TR 168, and Calvin¬ ists were as ready to call Laud Ar¬ minian as to apply the same label to John Goodwin, the Independent. CD 1, 3 and 4, shows Milton was an Ar¬ minian.

Used as the region of the purest (Florentine) Italian in, S III, 10; Milton wrote to bonmattei from Flor¬ ence, Sept. 10, 1638, that he loved to visit“Arnum vestrum,” FE #8 34, and makes a similar allusion in, ED 129.

Armoric(a) Reference to Brittany (Britain in France), i, 581; ED 165: cf. B 118. Arnisaeus ningus

of

Halberstad(t),

Hen-

(c. 1580-1638). German writer on medicine and politics. See de Jure Connuborium (Frankfurt, 1613), p. 325, T 222, 227.

Arnobius (fl. 300) Rhetorician and Christian apologist in northern Africa, Sm 347; SD 110. lactantius was his pupil. Arnold, Matthew (1822-88) In his 1861 lectures (as professor of poetry at Oxford, as was Warton), “On Translating Homer,” Arnold applied to Milton the phrase “the grand style” which has since been inseparable from him. It recurs in his essay on Edmond Scherer (whom Saintsbury, another early user of the phrase, translated), “A French Critic on Milton,” in Mixed Essays, 1879, which also reviews addison, johnson, Macaulay. Two months before he died, Arnold delivered an address at the unveiling of a memorial window to Milton’s second wife in St. Marga¬ ret’s Church, Westminster. He made the point (Essays in Criticism, Second Series); “In our race are thou¬ sands of readers, presently there will be millions, who know not a word of Greek and Latin, and will never leam those languages. If this host of readers are ever to gain any sense of the power and charm of the great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is not through translations of the ancients, but through the original poetry of Milton, who has the like power and charm, because he has the like great style.” Arnon River entering the Dead Sea at the northern boundary of Moab, i 399.

30-

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Milton Dictionary

Aroar (Aroer) Town on

the river arnon, i

407.

Arsaces (1) Revolted against the seletjcjds to found the parthian empire, c. 250 b.c. PR 3, 295. (2) Phraates III (1st cent b.c.) parthian ruler courted by Mithridates, ID 36. Artabanus Murdered ID 302.

xerxes the great

in 465

b.c.

Artaxata Ancient capital of Armenia, on the river, PR 3, 292.

araxes

Artaxerxes I King of Persia 464-24 b.c., son of Obliquely referred to in, xii, 348; PR 4, 271; ID 294.

xerxes.

Artaxerxes Mnemon (Artaxerxes II)

Britain, hath been doubted hereto¬ fore, and may again with good rea¬ son,” B 127 f.; political—King James gloried in his descent from King Arthur to such an extent as to chal¬ lenge opponents of divine right, who insisted on the Anglo-Saxon tradition as over against the British; esthetic— Milton found he was not after all a poet “to dissect/With long and tedi¬ ous havoc fabled knights/In battles feigned,” ix 29 ff. His would not be the stuff of “fable or romance of Uther’s son,” i 580. Arthur, Prince (1486-1502) Elder brother of the future henry vrn and first husband of Catharine of Aragon, D 502. Artis Logicae See under Logic. artist, Tuscan i

288

GALILEO.

King of Persia from 404-359 b.c., whose two expeditions against the re¬ bellious Egyptians failed, ID 294.

Artists

Artaxerxes Ochus (Artaxerxes III)

Arviragus

King 359-338 b.c., son of above, at last, with great effort and cruelty, brought the Egyptians under sub¬ jection, ID 296.

Son of Cymbeline, resister of the Romans, B 56, 80-2; ED 164.

Hand-workers, H 71.

Asa King of Judah who “did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God” (2 Chron. xiv, 2) CG 227; K 210; CP 16, 34; MS 239; CD 1, 32; 2, 5,17.

artful Full of art, beautiful, skilful, C 494; S XX 11; PR 4, 335. Arthur, King Man 80-85, with its curious refer¬ ence to Arthur “etiam sub terris bella moventem” shows what epic subject Milton was considering, and, ED 165 ff. contains the same prospect. MS has 28 subjects from British history. Ro¬ mantically referred to, Prol VI 230. But Milton became aware of three ob¬ jections: historical—“who Arthur was, and whether ever any such reigned in

Ascalon One of the five cities of the lords of the Philistines, on the Mediter¬ ranean coast i 465; An 169. Ascalonite SA 138 See Judg. xiv, 19. Ascan, Mr.

31-

EC 330 Anthony Ascham is meant,

A

Milton Dictionary

English ambassador to Madrid, assas¬ sinated by English refugees on arrival May 27 (English reckoning), 1650. SL 14, 16, 24, 26, 40; Scriptum Contra Hispanos 526.

See above. As(h)dod (Vulgate Azotus) One of the five Philistine cities, SA 981; An 122.

of

Asphaltic Pool, the

asphaltus Pitch, i 729; K 263. asphodel

As(h)taroth Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called/Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns,” i 438-9, SyroPhoenician goddess identified vari¬ ously with Aphrodite, Selene, and Ar¬ temis, N 200; i 422; PR 3, 417- SA 1242.

A kind of lily, ix 1040; C 838. Aspramont Site (location uncertain) of a vic¬ tory by Charlemagne and feats by Orlando famous in medieval romance, i 583. assassinated

Askalon Ascalon

The influential configuration planets, vi 313; vii 379; x 658.

The Dead Sea, noted for the masses of asphalt or bitumen it casts up, i 411; cf. x 298.

Ascham

See 1187.

aspect

and

Ascalonite

Attacked by treachery, SA 1109.

SA

assay To essay, i 619; iii 90; x 567, 865.

Asmadai, Asmodai, Asmodeus Called by the Talmud “king of the Demons”; the Apocryphal Book of Tobit tells of his plaguing Sara the daughter of Raguel, who “had been married to seven husbands, whom Asmodeus the evil spirit had killed, before they had lain with her” (ch. iii, 8). He would have slain her eighth husband, Tobias, “Tobit’s son’ (iv 170), if, by Raphael’s advice, he had not burned the heart and liver of a fish on his wedding-night, “the which smell when the evil spirit had smelled, he fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him” (ch. viii, 3). By medieval tradition he was one of the fallen angels, chief of the fourth order, vi 365; PR 2, 151; iv 168. Asopus A river in Boeotia, with sources in QN 66.

asses, he who seeking PR 3, 242 Saul I Sam. ix, x. Asshur Assyria Ps LXXXIII 29. assoil Pardon, Sm 320. Assyrian blasphemer SENNACHERIB,

D 371 See 2 Kings

xix, 20-22. Assyrian Queen, the Aphrodite, with reference to the Oriental origin of the adonis story and to the Assyrians’ being, in Pausanias words, “the first of men to pay reverence to” her, C 1002. Astarte

MI. CITHAERON,

-32-

See

AS ( H ) TAROTH.

A

Milton Dictionary

Astolfo See a&iosto. astonisht Struck senseless as with a thunder¬ bolt (extonare), i 266; vi 838. “Aston¬ ished and strook with superstition as with a planet,” B 102. Astracan “From Moscow to Astracan”—“on the Volga”—'“is about 600 leagues,” HM 331, 335; Tartars of, 353; passim x432. Astraea The constellation Virgo, iv 998; “that just Maid” In 50, it being ques¬ tioned whether, as reputed, she was the last of the goddesses to flee the earth at the end of the Golden Age Prol IV 174; EL IV 81. Astraea The Astree of Honore d’Urfe (15671625) was a five-volume sentimental pastoral romance (modelled after the other works named by Milton) that attained immense popularity in the 17th century, K 89. It promised to show “les divers effets de I’honnete amitie.” asfriction Obligation, D 424. At a Solemn Music 28 lines, the same number as Upon the Circumcision but a verse-para¬ graph type of poem like On Time, with a similar rhyme scheme except that there is a greater tendency towards couplets, mostly pentameter. 4 different drafts in MS. Date range, 1630-3. “Content,” 6, 1645, is evi¬ dently a misprint for “concent,” de¬ fined by Phillips as “agreement of parts in music” (there is an implica¬ tion of “consent” too). The occasion

was a performance of sacred music, choir and accompaniment. The “sap¬ phire-colored throne” 7 comes from Ezek. i, 26; the harpers and “just spirits” 14 are those of Rev. xiv, 2-3. S. Spaeth labelled it, “in spite of its pagan imagery . . , essentially a Chris¬ tian prayer,” “Paradise Lost in minia¬ ture,” (n.b. 19 ff.), “the highest and most perfect expression of Milton’s doctrine of a universal harmony.” At a Vacation Exercise in the Col¬ lege, Part Latin, Part English 100 lines, heroic couplets. July, 1628, first published 1673. The Latin part was Prolusio VI, at the end of which Milton announced he was go¬ ing to overleap the University statutes ordaining that all the academic dis¬ courses should be in one of the learned tongues. He hails his native language in words anticipatory of Pope’s “I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came” (“Epistle to Arbuthnot,” 128). 6 seems to give the infor¬ mation that he began to speak at the age of two. Perhaps “The daintiest dishes shall be served up last” (14), especially as the style is to be differ¬ ent from that of “our late fantastics” q.v. Then Milton, in what ranks with On the Death of a Fair Infant as his earliest original English poem, soars to “Heaven’s door” (34) and aspires to epic poetry such as that produced by blind Demodocus in the Odyssey, even as, according to future custom, he started with invocation (15). But the poet realizes he is going against jocose “expectance” (54), puns on “predicament” (56), and gets on with presenting Substance the eldest son of Ens (the other nine are the Ari¬ stotelian accidents, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Posture, Ac¬ tion, Passion, and Habit—Possession). There is a bit of VAllegro magic at

-33-

A Milton Dictionary

the first, then the prophetic Sibyl doles out many an academic pun, “un¬ derling” (76) for instance translating Substance, and 88 referring to the in¬ compatibility of such opposite predic¬ aments as action and passion. The last ten lines, the Spenserian digres¬ sion on rivers, made a puzzle that was solved when it was realized that “Re¬ lation . . . called by his name” involved a pun on a student named Rivers, one or the other son, George and Nizell, of Sir John Rivers, Knight, whose names were entered in the Christ’s College admission book May 10, 1628.

Athelstan (895-940) King of England B 299 ff.; H 66; ID 416. Athenaeus, that detractor in Pontianus, Deipnosophists (3rd cent.), XI, 504b-509e Sm 293. “Leberide” Prol I 120 means emptier than a serpent’s slough, a proverb, Deip. VIII, 362b. Athenagoras Athenian Christian apologist of 2nd cent. ID 192. atheous Ungodly PR 1, 4S7.

Atabalipa Atahualpa (1500P-33), last Inca king of Peru, overthrown and con¬ demned to death by Pizarro, xi 409. Athaliah Usurping queen of Judah: 2 Kings, xi ID 234, 240; MS 238 (Racine pro¬ duced his Athalie in 1691).

Athos A lofty mountain at the extremity of the peninsula of Chalcidice in Macedonia, QN 174. Atlantean Pertaining to II 152.

atlas,

ii 306; cf. Prol,

Atlantic Sisters

Athamantaeos Reference to the fit of madness sent by Juno through one of the Furies on Athamas, king of Thebes, during which he caused the death of his wife Ino and their two sons Prol VI 230. Athanasius (293P-373) Patriarch of Alexandria from 328, who showed his episcopal inclinations as a child: CR 154. “Father of Orthodoxy”; lifelong op¬ ponent of Arianism. Athanasian Creed named after him but of a later cen¬ tury. “The faithful and invincible,” R 23; 31, 33; contra ID 194, 252.

The Pleiades x 674. Atlantic stone Marble from Mt.

atlas,

PR 4, 115.

Atlas Sometimes the mountain of NW Africa, sometimes he “whom the Gen¬ tiles feign to bear up Heav’n” SA 150; iv 987; xi 402. For “Hesperus,” C 982, Milton wrote “Atlas” in Ms. Id 24; Ad P 40. “Atlantis . . . nepos” Man 72 is Mercury. FE #20, 82 puns on the price of an adas and die price of a mountain. Atrides(ae)

atheist

EL

One who lacks a proper belief in God, to the extent of disregarding God’s ordinances, vi 370; xi 625; SA 453.

II

16:

Agamemnon.

See

ACHILLES.

Atropatia

-34-

Median province extending to the

A Milton Dictionary Caspian araxes,

and south PR 3, 319.

of

the

river

Atropos ("inflexible") The Fate who with her shears “slits the thin-spun life,” (L 76) EM 28. Attalic Pertaining to Attalus, any of three kings of Pergamum in Asia Minor proverbial for wealth (“Attalacis conditionibus” in Horace, Carm. I, i, 12, meaning the most extravagant terms) SD 284. Attendant Spirit In Comus. attent Attentive(ly), PR 1, 385. Attic bird The nightingale PR 4, 245. Attic boy IP 124

CEFHALUS.

Atticus, Titus Pomponius (109-32 b.c. ) Received his surname from his long residence in Athens. Edited cicero’s letters written to him, T 157; B 36; etc. Attorney's Academy, The A 1623 handbook by Thomas Powell, (c. 1572-c. 1635) with the subtitle The Manner and Form of Proceeding Practically upon any Suit, Plaint, or Action whatsoever in any Court of Record whatsoever within this Kingdom, Col 255. attrite (Latin past participle) friction, x 1073.

worn

by

vious edition in Vol. II of Letters Written hy Eminent Persons, 1813; the Milton was also printed by W. Godwin, 1815), helter-skelter but vivid notes prepared for the use of ANTHONY WOOD. In September 1681 he sent the greater part of his “Min¬ utes of the Life of Mr. John Milton” to the future author of Athenae Oxonienses. By 1682 the notes were, as com¬ plete as Aubrey was to make them. Whether or not, as wood asserted, Aubrey had been himself “well ac¬ quainted with” Milton, he gathered precious material from the poet’s wid¬ ow, the brother Sir Christopher, e. PHiLLrp.s the elder nephew, and dryden, among others. The details on Milton’s mode of living from the time of his third marriage are especially rich; on the first marriage Aubrey commented memorably, “Two opin¬ ions do not well on the same bolster.” A two-word interlinear entry is the source for the story—much doubted since—that Milton was whipped at Cambridge. The musical life of the family is emphasized. Although wood called him “maggoty-headed,” was in¬ deed, contemptuous of his all too tolerant and assiduous helper, Au¬ brey’s penchant for anecdote and per¬ sonal trivia has brought him modem appreciation: he anticipates Boswell. Augean See

HERCULES.

Augier (Augerium), Rene Formerly resident agent in Paris for the English Parliament, FE#12, 54. Augustine (Austin), St.

Aubrey, John (1626-97) Antiquary. Educated at Trinity College, Oxford; F. R. S. 1663. Author of the brief lives (ed. An¬ drew Clark, 1898, 2 vols.; only pre¬

(354-430), Bishop of Hippo. “Nei¬ ther accounted . . . those Fathers that went before, nor himself . . . for men of more than ordinary spirit, that might equally deceive and be de-

-35-

A Milton Dictionary

ceived,” R 30; one of the Fathers “whose assertion without pertinent scripture, no reformed church can ad¬ mit,” H 64. Taxed by beza with blas¬ phemy, D 413. His “crabbed” misog¬ yny, T 85; Col 253. On divorce, T 142 (De Conjugiis Aclulterinis ad Pollentium, I, 11), 179, 181, 212-3. salmasius’ doubtful use of ID 260-2, 198; passim. Originator of phrase original sin, CD 1, 11. Influence on ix 914 ff.: “it is to be thought that the first man did not yield to his wife in this trans¬ gression of God’s precept, as if he thought she spoke the truth; but only compelled to it by his social love to her” City of God, XII, xi; cf. 1 Tim. ii, 14 (cf. PL lx, 999).

Aurora The dawn, often personified in Milton. Proverbially the “friend of the Muses”: Prol I, 148 cf. 138-49. L’A 19; married to the aging tithonus: EL V, 49; ED 189; v 6. Ausonia(n) Reference to Italy, i 739; QN 49; Man 12; }R 7, EL I, 70. Auster The south wind, EL IV, 36. Austin See

AUGUSTINE.

author of our church history foxe,

R

68.

auxiliar

Augustine, St. (d. 604.) “The monk who first brought the Romish religion into Eng¬ land from Gregory the Pope,” H 66. B 142 ff.

Auxiliary, aid soldiers lightly armed, i 579. Aventine Southernmost of the seven hills on which Rome is built, QN 109.

Augustus Caesar (63 B.C.-14 a.d. ) Roman emperor from 27 b.c. His mental dominion more important than his earthly: Prol VII 268; VI 220 (cf. the product ajax, Pref. SA); moreover did not wish title Dominus, ID 194; CB 170; did not suppress Livy’s favorable treatment of pompey, A 301; but hypocritical in his quest for power, ID 320, 372.

The entrance to the infernal re¬ gions, EL II, 17, Prol VI, 228. aversations Aversions, T 185. Avitus, Marcus Maecilius Roman emperor deposed in 456. ID 256. Avon, rocky

Auran Vulgate form of Haran, in Meso¬ potamia, the place whither abraham migrated (Cen. xi, 31) iv 211. Aurelius, Marcus See

Avernus

marcus aurelius.

Azariah

Aurelius Victor (4th cent.) Roman historian, 374; B margin 89.

V 97, alluding perhaps to the small Wiltshire river that flows through the Salisbury plain near Stonehenge. Cf. Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, III 77 ff., and accompanying illustrated map.

ID

(1) The prophet of 2 Chron. xv, 1 ff. CG 227. (2) Son of amaziapi and himself king of Judah 780-740 b.c. ID 234.

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Milton Dictionary

Azaze!

Azotus

(The scape-goat of Leviticus xvi, 8; identified in newton as a compound of two Hebrew words meaning brave in retreating) Satan’s standard-bearer, following Cabalist tradition, i 534.

i

464:

the

Greek form of

as(h)dod.

Azzc

-37-

A variant of

gaza,

SA, 147.

B Bactl

The supreme male divinity of the Phoenicians and Canaanites, as ashtaroth was their supreme female di¬ vinity: the sun god, PR 3, 417; P 104; CD 2,10. Baalim

Plural of baal, N 197. i 422: collec¬ tive name for one group of rebel angels. Baal-peor

Cf. Num. xxv, R 54. Baal-zebub

Worshipped at ekron (2 Kings i, 2 3, 16) SA 1231. NT form is beelzebub.

Babel

Both the capital of the tvrant Nim¬ (i 694; D 424; T 119) and the early Semitic name of the Great Tow¬ er of babylon (Gen. xi) R 7, 54; E 277; K 306; W 118, a favorite symbol of vanity and confusion: iii 466, 468: cf. xii 44 ff. rod

Babylon

“That proud city,” xii 343, the capi¬ tal of Babylonia on the Euphrates about 60 miles south of modern Bag¬ dad, i 717; xii 348; PR 3, 280; 4, 336 (cf. Psalm cxxxvii, 1-3); CG 270 (cf. Rev. xviii, 10-13); K 293; ID 102. Babylonian woe, the

The papal court was identified with the Babylon of the Apocalypse (Rev.

xvii-xviii) S XVIII 14. petrarch called it “Fontana di dolore” in a sonnet (108) that Milton translated in part in R 27. Cf. “we have shaken off his Babylonish yoke,” TR 172. Baca

Ps LXXXIV 21. Anglican Version margin has “of mulberry trees.” Bacchus

Son of jove and amalthea, iv 279; father of eupkrosyne by Venus L’A 16; Comus (an invented myth) by circe, C 46, 522. Milton was divided as to whether the wine-god was the sine qua non of poetical inspiration: EL VI 14, 21 ff., 34, 51 being pro; the warning to jones, FE #25, 98 and the memory of orpheus’ fate, as in vii 33, being contra. Other refer¬ ences, Prol VI 42; An 171; W 139. Bacon, Sir Francis

(1561-1626) References to his Wise and Moderate Discourse, Concern¬ ing Church-Affairs, 1641, pp. 11, 7 An 111; Sm 295. Quotation in Modest Confutation from Certain Considertions Touching the Better Pacifica¬ tion and Edification of the Church of England, 1604, 1640, Sm 331. Other references to a Wise and Moderate Discourse (of which the 1589 manu¬ script and Speddirig title is An Ad¬ vertisement touching the Controver¬ sies of the Church of England), A 326, 332-3-CB 180 (same quotation). G. W. Whiting summarizes: “Bacon

38-

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A Milton Dictionary

sought by proposing reforms to paci¬ fy and strengthen Episcopacy; Milton labored to destroy Episcopacy and to establish a church government in harmony with Scripture and his love of freedom.” till yard (who calls Milton Baconian in taking all knowl¬ edge for his province): “The Ba¬ conians or educational reformers must have been a small but impor¬ tant minority in the Cambridge of Milton’s day.”

Balsamon, Theodore (c. 1140-after 1195) Expounder and commentator of Eastern canon law, whose Scholia (in part on the Nomocanon of Photius) held in the Ortho¬ dox Church the place of gratian’s Decretum in the West, T 196, 217. Balsara Basra, on the Persian Gulf, mis¬ takenly identified by ortelius with ancient teredon, PR 3, 321.

Bcictra

bandogs

Modem Balkh in Afghanistan, capital of the Persian province of Bactria, PR 3, 285.

Large fierce dogs, commonly mas¬ tiffs, kept chained or held with a band or leash, R 75.

Bactrian

bank

Reference to Persian, x 433 (the Sophy was the ruler of Persia), ID 302.

Stage (cf. mountebank), Sm 294. bankets Pastries, CG 206.

baffle

Barberini, Cardinal Francesco

To affront or cheat, R 72. Baiana fabula Baiae in campania was a city no¬ torious for profligacy, D 30. Balaam “Reprobate,” PR 1, 491, Midianite priest who was effectively forbidden both by the direct voice of God and by a speaking ass to curse the chil¬ dren of Israel, as commanded by the king of moab, R 53; An 137, 147; H 50; etc. Balak Charles I likened to K 227; ID 548, who hired Balaam to curse the Israel¬ ites.

(1597-1679) Nephew of Urban VIII; papal secretary; founder of the Barberini Library (joined with that of the Vatican in 1902). Diplomati¬ cally friendly with the English, he personally welcomed the poet at the magnificent Casa Barberini and its theater seating upwards of 3000 to a performance of one of the earliest Italian cornic operas, on Feb. 27, 1639, Chi Soffre Speri, written by Giulio Rospigliosi (1600-69), who became Pope Clement IX in the year PI. was published, and set by Mazzochi and Marazzuoli, with stage design by Bernini. Cardinal Mazarin was also present. FE #9, 40, 44. Barca

Balearic

The desert Tunis, ii 904.

Reference to the Balearic Islands (Majorca, Minorca, etc.) in the Medi¬ terranean east of Spain, NS 59.

Barclay, John

39-

-

(1582-1621)

between

Egypt

and

Scottish

satirist.

By

A Milton Dictionary

“his image of minds,” CG 224 Milton means the Icon Animorum (1614), the fourth part of his Satyricon, di¬ rected against the R. C. church, with which, however, he became recon¬ ciled in 1616 and spent the last years of his life in Rome. He had written that the English “hold abominable opinions unworthy of men, and are authors of their own superstition.”

“The contention was so sharp be¬ tween them, that they departed as¬ under one from the other” (Acts xv, 39), an argument for divorce, T 116. Other references, H 7; B 83; CD pas¬ sim.

Marvell’s English verses. The identi¬ fication of “S.B.” goes back at least to toland. Bom in Norfolkshire, he had been chief physician to Monk’s army in Scotland in 1659. masson notes that “having been one of the minor negotiators for the Restoration, he had been made physician in ordi¬ nary to the King and advocate gen¬ eral and judge martial of the army; he had a large medical practice in London; and he had married the wealthy widow of a knight.” His poem emphasizes the universal range of Milton’s poem and stresses what later critics have wanted to forget—Book vi—and ends by deprecating (com¬ pare dbyden’s epigram), homer and virgil in comparison.

Barnachmoni

Basan

Probably Nachmanides, Moses Ben Nachman (“Bar” is equivalent to “Ben” in Aramaic) (1194-c. 1270) Spanish rabbi who emigrated to Palestine in 1267, ID 118.

Vulgate form of Bashan, a district on the east of Jordan, i 398.

Barnabas the from Paul

Apostle

separated

base, to bid you the To challenge you to leave home base in a game of tag, An 126.

Barr.well(ianos), agros “One of the two areas of common arable land belonging to Cambridge before the Enclosure Acts” (tillyard ). Prol VI 226. Baronius, Cesare (1538-1607) Cardinal, author of the Annales Ecclesiastici (12 vols., 1588-1607), An 175. barrow A castrated pig, Col 261. Barrow, Samuel (1625-82) Whose 42 commenda¬ tory lines of Latin elegiacs, “In Paradisum Amissam Summi Poetae Johannis Miltoni,” signed S.B, M.D., were prefixed to the second edition of PL, 1674, and were followed by

Basel, Basle On the Rhine in Switzerland, sin¬ gled out as “a city for learning and constancy in the true faith, honorable among the first,” M 10. Scene of an important Council, 1431-49, K 297. bases Housings for horses. Or possibly the reference is to a kilt which hung from the waists of knights on horse¬ back to about their knees. The word is also used of the lower part of a shield, ix 36. Basil, St. (330P-379) Early church father mentioned neutrally or approvingly: Sm 286, 353; T 211; A 308; Ten 18; K 234.

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A Milton Dictionary

bates

Beatrice

Omits, K 269.

The poetical mistress of 303.

Batrachomuomachia “The Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” a short mock-epic originally attributed to homer but of a later period, Col 272. battening Feeding, fattening, L 29.

dante,

Sm

Becket, St. Thomas a (1118-70) Archbishop of Canter¬ bury from 1162 till his murder in the cathedral. This defier of henry h was not approved by the antiprelatist: R 45-6, 58; T 220. Bede, the Venerable (Beda)

battology Idle repetition of words, An 124; cf. SD 140; ID 64. Baucis Perhaps iust a type name for a mother rather than the wife of Phile¬ mon who hospitably entertained the disguised jove and mercury, ED 88. bauik (bauk) Leave untouched, spare, FC 17. Bavius An envious poetaster, enemy of Virgil and Horace, Col 272. bayard A brash ignorant person, Col 261. Bayona's hold A stronghold of Spain, and sea¬ port, on the southwestern coast of Galicia, L 162. bays

(673-7S5). The learned monk of Jarrow whose celebrated Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum was in¬ evitably a prime source for the His¬ tory of Britain, 47, 82, etc. P 98; ID 436. Beelzebub Satan’s second and echoer, “One next himself in power, and next in crime,” i 79. Called “the chief of the devils” in Luke xi,15; “the prince of the devils,” Matt, xii, 4. Literally “god of flies,” SD 278. burton wrote: “In the first rank are those false gods of the Gentiles, which were adored heretofore in several idols, and gave oracles at Delphi, and elsewhere: whose prince is Beelzebub.” After the infernal council of ii he loses his prominence. Charge that Christ was Beelzebub, Sm 131; CG 216. CD 1, 6. Spelled belzebub, D 437. baal-zebub, SA 1231. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus called him “Orientis princeps . . . infemi ardentis monarcha.”

Beersaba

The laurel wreath as a garland of honor (especially as connected with poetry), EM 57.

Town at the extreme south of Pales¬ tine, iii 536.

bear, outwatch the

begot

To work through the night (Ursa Major never sets), IP 87.

Used metaphorically in v 603 to denote not the production or creation of the Son, but his exaltation, as ex¬ plained in CD 1, 5: “it will be ap¬ parent from the second Psalm that

bearth (modern spelling birth) Noun, produce, ix 624.

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A Milton Dictionarxj

that the worst is the prostitution of the best. Belial descends to puns in vi 620 ff.

God has begotten the Son, that is, has made him a king” (XIV, 184-5). Behemoth Geneva Bible, marginal note on Job xl, 15-24: “The Hebrews say Be¬ hemoth signifieth elephant, so called for his hugeness, by the which may be understood the devil,” vii 471.

belike In all likelihood, probably, ii 156. Belinus

Bel Ten 59 refers to the History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon in the Apocrypha: “the priests of Bel . . . threescore and ten, beside their wives and children” devoured the food offerings of the Babylonians to the idol, but were exposed by Daniel. belawgiven Given laws to, D 371.

Legendary king of Britain, divided the kingdom with his brother brennus, B 23-5; ED 164. Belisarius (505P-565) General of the Eastern Roman Empire who served brilliantly under justinian i against the Goths and Vandals until he fell from favor, CG 237. Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert (1542-1621) Celebrated contro¬ versialist, as with James I, An 175.

beldam Grandmother, V 46. Belial

Bellerophon

In the Anglican Version, as in the Vulgate, this term, which means worthlessness, often appears a proper name to denominate the wicked: e.g. “the children of Belial,” Deut. xiii, 13; 1 Sam. x, 27; “sons of Belial,” Judg. xix, 22. The same or similar expressions are found in Milton’s prose: Sm 307; H 68; D 370. D 408, 410, 411 refer to 2 Cor. vi, 15, the opposite of Christ, Antichrist. “Sons of Belial flown with insolence and wine,” i 502, follows a traditional Puri¬ tan mode of referring to the dissi¬ pated, with perhaps a particular glance at the Cavaliers The first ad¬ jective applied to Belial, “lewd,” i 490 is not without its modern meaning, as his reappearance in PR, “the dissolutest spirit that fell.” 2, 150, and Satan’s rebuke of his proposal, show. Milton gave him a three-line rebuke in ii 226 ff. In 108 ff. he illustrates

The rider of the horse pegasus, who dared many things on his “fly¬ ing steed,” vii 18. When he presumed too far by attempting to mount to Olympus or Heaven, he was thrown; “hated of all the gods, then verily he wandered alone over the aleian plain, devouring his own soul, and shunning the paths of men” (Iliad VI, 200 ff.). His conquest of the flame-vomiting chimera; Prol VI 230. Bellerus Bellerium was the Roman name of Land’s End (the southwestern tip of Cornwall-) L 160. The “fable” is prob¬ ably that told in B 14 of the giant battle between Goemagog and coriNEUS.

bellman's drowsy charm Night-watchman’s soporific calling out of the hours, IP 83.

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A Milton Dictionary

Belionc

Benjamites

The Roman goddess of battle, ii 922.

See Judg. xx, xxi, K 197. Bentley, Richard

Belon Id 31. See

belus.

Belshazzar See Daniel v, R 55; K 109; CD 2,

1. Bel(l)ua The “beast” of Rev. xiii, 1 PB II 2. Belus Chief god of the Babylonians, i 720. Bembo, Cardinal Pietro (1470-1547) Elegant leader in the return to the classical tradition, CG 236. benefactors See Luke xxii, 25 Ten 23. benevolence Demonstrated affection, especially with reference to the act of copula¬ tion in marriage, “bodily benevo¬ lence,” T 102, 223. “But the duties of marriage contain in them a duty of benevolence, which to do by com¬ pulsion against the soul, where there can be neither peace nor joy nor love, ... is the ignoblest and the lowest slavery that a human shape can be put to” 121. D 413, 417; T 205, 216,

222. Bengala Bengal in Milton’s time was paid of the Mogul empire, ii 638. Benhadad King of Damascus. See 1 Kings xx. O 268. benjamin A perfume (benzoin), Sm 308.

(1662-1742) England’s greatest classical scholar, who won a Euro¬ pean reputation when he proved the Epistles of Phalaris’ to be spurious, 1697-9, who discovered the digamma in homed, and who daringly emend¬ ed Horace, 1711, decided there was much to be corrected in the text of Paradise Lost. The result was, at age 70, his notorious “new edition,” 1732, undertaken, it was said, at the re¬ quest of Queen Caroline and for which Tonson the bookseller paid 100 guineas. The Preface explained that the blind poet was the victim of poor printing and amanuenses who did not hear him right or who deceived him by writing what they pleased. Bentley wonders “How it could happen that for above sixty years’ time this poem with such miserable deformity bv the press and net seldom flat nonsense, could pass upon the whole nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless compo¬ sition?” His own “small improve¬ ments” consist of “conjectures that attempt a restoration of the genuine Milton, cast into the margin and ex¬ plained in the notes.” For instance, "No light but rather darkness visible,” i 63, becomes “No light but rather a transpicuous gloom.” The closing lines are turned into, “Then hand in hand with social steps their way/ Through Eden took, with heavenly comfort cheer’d.” Some of Bentley’s vagaries have been defended by Wil¬ liam Empson, and a very few of his most minute emendations have found some acceptance—“smelling gourd,” vii 321, to “swelling gourd,” “fowl,” 451, to “soul,” “women,” ix 1183, to “woman,” “nectarous humour,” vi 332, to “ichorous humour,” “thither,”

43-

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A Milton Dictionary

xi 344, to “hither,” “vassals,” ii 90, to “vessels” (cf, Remans ix, 22). Others could really have been the product of mishearing—e.g. “easy yoke,” ii 256, for “lazy voke,” “glory done,” xi 694, for “glory won,” “earth be chang’d,” vii 160, tc “earth be chain’d,” but most of Bentley’s emendations were im¬ pertinent in every sense of the word.

he “befriends us,” T 202, especially on divorce, but he is always men¬ tioned with respect: P 92; An 49; D 413 (see Annotationes Majores in Novum Testamentum, 1594, II, 189), 471, 474 (I, 111); T 108, 158. 194, 199, 227-8. His Vindications against Tyrants, 2D 98. leones (Geneva, 1580), M 3.

Bernard

bezzling Guzzling, An 119.

Probably a reference to the mystic saint (1091-1153) who was abbot of Clairvaux; mire cogitativus even from a youth, ID 46.

bickering

bespaul

Bidenbachius, Felix

Flickering, vi 766.

(1564-1612) German theologian whose De Causis Matrimonialibus Tractatus (Frankfurt, 1608), p. 99 is being cited, T 227.

To soil with saliva, An 134. beteemed Thought fit, An 159. Bethabara

Bigot, Emeric

The ford of Jordan, PR 1,184; 2, 20.

(1626-89) Letter to, from West¬ March 24, 1656/7, FE #21, in reply to one from him. Milton ends by asking for certain Byzantine his¬ tories of this French scholar from Rouen who had been one of the for¬ eigners that sought him out. “He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authoi-s; and he labored all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters” (Bayle).

minster

Bethany A village near Jerusalem, A 334. See Mark, xi, 12-14. Bethel One of the two cities in samaria where jeroboam set up golden calves (1 Kings xii, 28-9), i 485. It was 12 miles north of Jerusalem. PR 3, 431; R 39; H 59. amaziah belonged to its shrine; K 261. Bethesda A pool in Jerusalem with marvellous healing waters (John v, 1-4), Col 238. Bethshemesh

billmen Guardsmen armed with a bill or halberd, P 95. Bilson, Thomas

See I Sam. vi, 19 CG 187. betimes In time, before it is late, iii 186; S XXI 9. Beza, Theodore (1519-1605) calvin’s eminent suc¬ cessor at Geneva. It is not often that

(1547-1616) Bishop of Worcester and Winchester, whose The True Dif¬ ference between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (1585) is referred to, CG 244. Bson

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A reference to “The Lament for

A Milton Dictionary

Bion,” the Greek pastoral poet, at¬ tributed to Moschus of Syracuse (2nd cent. b.c. ), ED 2.

publishing firm and was the author of Novus Atlas, 1634-1662. FE #20, 84.

Birch, Thomas

blains

(1705-66) Divine and antiquary, edited A Complete Collection of His¬ torical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton . . . with an account of the IAfe and Writings of the Author, 1738- 2nd ed. 1753. For the biography Birch was a diligent gatherer of material, interviewing John Ward (who had known Milton’s youngest daughter) and Mrs. Eliza¬ beth Foster, Milton’s granddaughter. It is Birch who preserves Milton’s bon mot (which was or became a proverb) w’hen the question of his daughters’ knowing another language came up: “One tongue is enough for a woman.” Birch was the first to quote from the Cambridge. Manu¬ script. Biserta A seaport of Tunis, prominent in Orlando Furioso, canto 40: i 585.

ariosto,

bituminous lake The Dead Sea, x, 562. Bizance Constantinople, xi 395. black-jack A large drinking-can. Col 260. Blackmoor Sea ortelius’ Africum Pelagus, the Mediterranean as it borders on the land of the Moors, the Barbary Coast, PR 4, 72.

Blaeu (Blaviana), Jan (d. 1673) Dutch geographer whose Atlas Magnus came out between 1650-62 in 11 vols.; his father Willem (1571-1638) founded the Amsterdam

Pustules, xii 180. Blake, William (1757-1827) Blake was fascinated by Milton. His fascination—or obses¬ sion—took many forms, including bril¬ liant illustrations of PL, PR, C, L’A and IP, and N. “Milton loved me in childhood and showed me his face,” he said. A friend Butts found Mr. and Mrs. Blake sitting naked in an arbor reading PL. Milton enters Blake’s body in the prophetic book, Milton (1804-08) that exhibits at length the outstanding intellectual difference between them, namely that Blake was a mystic: “the real theme” of this poem “is the superiority of the visionary poet over other kinds” (Schorer). What a different revolu¬ tionary (against rationalism) the au¬ thor of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) was comes out in the famous paradox: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and God, and at liberty when of devils and hell is because he was a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” hanford com¬ ments: “Blake is a jealous Miltonist, whose whole vast effort in the pro¬ phetic Books may be interpreted as an attempt to rewrite the Scripture received from this potent master who alone of English poets seems to him worthy of a place among the in¬ spired teachers of mankind.” The way saurat had put it: “Blake is a wild brother of Milton: it might be said a Milton gone mad. . . .” The same first page of the monograph Blake and Milton sums up: “One funda¬ mental principle is clear. ... For

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A Milton Dictionary

both . . . the elemental parts of hu¬ man life are passion and reason; but in Milton reason rules over desire, while Blake’s aim is to set passion free from all control of reason.” blanc (Milton’s spelling). White or pale, x 656; iii 48; ix 890. blank Confounded or confound, PR 2, 120; SA 471; K 253; A 311; T 188. blanket Toss in a blanket. Col 268. Cf. “canvasing,” 238. blindness, Milton's See under S XVIII. blows Blooms, v 22; L 48. blown, vii 319. blowing, ix 629. Boaz See 2 Chron. iii, 17 Col 258. Bocchus King of mauketania in northern Africa c. 110 b.c.; father-in-law of Jugurtha, PR 4, 72.

. . . with a preface, preliminary Re¬ marks, and Notes by J. A. St. John, “Bohn’s Standard Library,” London, 1848-53, 5 vols. This, often reprinted, was the most complete edition of the prose in the 19th century (the first to include De Ductrina Christiana, but it lacked SD, Log, and CB) and re¬ mained standard until the Columbia milton. The text is not reliable. For example, “sallies out and sees her adversary,” A 311, becomes, spe¬ ciously. “sallies out and seeks her ad¬ versary”—and is so quoted by Ra¬ leigh, Quiller-Couch, ttllyaiid, Wil¬ ley, G. W. Knight, M. Larson, K. Hartwell, hanford, and saurat. The last sentence of the same work offers, instead of “a sumptuous bribe,” “a sumptuous bride.” Boiardo, Matteo Maria (1434-94) Author of the unfinished historical epic Orlando Innamorato, 69 cantos. Praised for his witty verses, CB 188; cf. 142, 145. See agrican. Suggester of the “two black clouds” simile, ii 714—1, xvi. His comic battle between devils and saracens, II, xxii, possible influence on vi. bolt

Bodin, Jean (1530-96) “The famous writer though a papist,” CG 253, reference to Les Six Livres de la Republique (Paris, 1576 or later versions), VI, i.

To sift finely (like flour), C 760. Cf. “his passing fine sophistical bo(u)lting hutch,” An 129 (the hutch being a sifter). bomolochus

Bohemian History Cited in connection with the Waldenses, K 230; PI 64: The History of the Bohemian Persecution, from the beginning of their Conversion to Christianity in the year 894 to the year 1632 (London, 1650), a version of a Czech publication (Prague, 1541). Bohn edition The Prose Works of John Milton

Greek for one that lurked about altars for the scraps that could be got there, any half-starved beggar: reference to a marginal note in Hall's Modest Confutation, Sm 312. Bonmatthei (Buonmattei), Bene¬ detto (1581-1647) FE #8 to from Florence, Sept. 10, 1638, on linguistic elegance and purity, apropos of what

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A Milton Dictionary

was to be published as Della Lingua Toscana. Libri Due, 1643. Having begun as a priest, Buonmattei held a succession of scholastic and profes¬ sorial posts, was a leading light in all the Florentine academies. Milton had probably met him through Jaco¬ po Gaddi, 2D 122. Bonner's broth, Bonner-like censure to burn

References, An 177; Col 235, to Ed¬ mund Bonner (1500P-69), bishop of London, who became the principal agent in the Marian persecution of Reformers; on refusing the oath of supremacy at accession of Elizabeth he was deposed and died in the Marshalsea, where he had also been imprisoned under Edward vi. Bononici Bologna, in Tuscany, ID 126. Bontia Variant of

pontia,

SD 240.

boon

Bosheth From idolatry to shame (Hebrew), P 104. bosky bourn Bushy brook, C 313. Bosporus (Literally, ox-ford, since io was supposed to have passed over it in her wanderings.) The narrow strait connecting the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea, ii 1018. botches Boils, xii 180. bout Involution, L’A 139. bowmen of the Arches “Bowmen” was slang for “slick” thieves, but there is at least a triple pun, An 117, in that the Court of Arches, the consistory court of the province of Canterbury, formerly met in Bow Church (St. Mary-le-Bow, Sta Maria de Arcubus) in Cheapside whose stone arches gave the court its name.

Bounteous, iv 242. brabble(s) Bootes

Quarrel, B 61; T 200.

Literally, ox-driver; the northern constellation whose brightest star is Arcturus, EL V B5; PE 51; Man 37.

Brackley see Arcades and Cornus. Bracton, Henry de

boots it, what? What does it avail? L 64; SA 560. Bordeaux (Burdeaux) gioss Pun, An 152 on (a) a note that glosses over, explains away, and (b) a shiny gloss (fair false exterior op¬ posed to inner truth) obtained from Bordeaux. Boreas The north wind, x 699.

4'

-

(d. 1268) “Our ancient and fa¬ mous jurist” ID 442, author of the first systematic treatise on laws of England in the Middle Ages, K 299; 1D 476-8, 532. Bradshaw, John (Joannes Bradscianus) (1602-59) The “incorrupt judge” who “on a request from the Parlia¬ ment that he preside on the trial of the King, refused not the dangerous

A Milton Dictionary

office,” 2D 156 ft. Praised in reply to abuse—and moke’s—SD 124. Milton wrote State Letters under Bradshaw’s seal as President of the Council, 42, 62, 76, 94. bigot told, FE #21, 86, MS. “On the Manner of Holding Parliaments” possessed by Bradshaw. In an English Letter Feb. 21, 1652/3 Milton makes “my due acknowledgments of your many fa¬ vors” and introduces Andrew marvell for the position of Milton’s assistant, 329-30. Bradshaw’s bequest of 10 pounds to Milton evidences their in¬ timacy—if not their cousinship. Brad¬ shaw was one of the four dead regi¬ cides attainted for High Treason: he was disinterred and his head, with those of Cromwell and Ireton, set on Westminster Hall in 1661.

quary who contributed to Certain Brief Treatises (Oxford, 1641) A Declaration of the Patriarchal Gov¬ ernment of the Ancient Church, CG 183.

Brahe, Tycho

Briareos

(1546-1601) The great Danish as¬ tronomer mentioned as guest at ban¬ quet for Ramus in Augsburg (Augus¬ ta ) in Bavaria, Log 512.

Hundred-armed monster who sided Zeus against the titans in hesiod but whom virgil (Aen. X, 565) makes the enemy of Zeus, i 199; Prol I 124. Oblique reference possibly, V 93.

salmasius’

Bran(d)t, Sebastian (1457P-1521) Author of the Narrenschiff (1494), which, in the Swabian dialect, was much translated and adapted, as by Alexander Bar¬ clay (1509). Referred to at begin¬ ning of Prol VI 204: “gregia ilia . . . navis stultifera.”

Gadfly, R 38. Brennus Brother of bet.inus, ED 164; took Rome 390 b.c. Prol V 192. Brentford Village of Middlesex where the Brent joins the Thames; sacked by Prince Rupert in 1642, K 236. brewess Fat broth, Sm 311.

with

bridegroom S IX, 12: Matt, xxv, 6. Bridge Street Allusion to Hall’s Toothless Satires, VII, ii, 1, 36, 40. Sm 329, 333. Bridgewater

Brass, de see

breere

see Comus, Arcades.

DE BRASS.

bravery

Brief Notes Upon a late Sermon, titl'd. The Fear of God and the King; Preachd, and since Publishd, By Matthew Griffith, D.D. And Chaplain to the late King. Wherin many Notorious Wresfings of Scrip¬ ture, and other Falsities are observd by J. M.

Finery, SA 717. braves Bullies, K 102. breeding, made an end of Become mature, Sm 328. Breerwood (Brerewood), Edward (1565-1613) Astronomer and anti¬

This appeared between the 1st and 2nd editions of The Ready and Easy

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A Milton Dictionary

Way, evidently in the first half of April, 1660. The royalist divine Grif¬ fith (1599P-1665), who had suffered imprisonment more than once under the Commonwealth, and who was to die rector of Bladon, Oxfordshire, having ruptured a blood vessel while giving his last sermon, was so eager for the Restoration that he embar¬ rassed Monk and the Council of State by coming out prematurely for the king in a sermon at the Mercers’ Chapel, March 25, on Proverbs xxiv, 21. When he compounded his tact¬ lessness by registering his sermon for publication March 31 and printing it, with a dedication to Monk (declaring to the general, who was by no means yet ready to show his hand, “It is a greater honor to make a king than to be one”) and a political “appendix annexed of the Samaritan Revived” 162, he received “the just censure” Milton notes v/ith satisfaction in his closing words: he was put in prison. Milton moves against the “pulpitmountebank” with vigor, giving cor¬ rections to his “notorious abuse of Scripture” and even of the fable of the frogs that petitioned Jupiter for a king. “Free commonwealths have been ever counted fittest and properest for civil, virtuous and industri¬ ous nations, abounding with prudent men worthy to govern: monarchy fittest to curb degenerate, corrupt, idle, proud, luxurious people.” The royalist pamphleteer Sir Roger L’Estrange (1616-1704) called Mil¬ ton’s tract “a bawling piece” in His Apology and answered it with No Blind Guides, which bore on the titlepage the date April 20, 1660 and the motto, “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch,” and which commences by attacking the divorce pamphlets, the Defensio Frima, and Eikonoklastes.

brigandine Metal-plated body armor, SA 1120. bright-harnessed Clad in bright armor, N 244; cf. vii 202. brinded Striped, streaked, C 443; vii 466. Bristow Bristol, K 236. Bromius Bacchus, QN 64. Brooke, Baron

Greville,

second

(1608-43) Adopted by his cousin Sir Fulke Greville, first Baron Brooke, Sidney’s biographer. Speaker, House of Lords, 1642; parliamentarian gen¬ eral killed in attack on Lichfield. "I shall only repeat what I have learned from one of your own honorable number, a right noble and pious lord,” A 346; reference to A Dis¬ course of the Nature of that Episco¬ pacy which is exercised in England. (1641). Milton also influenced in A by On the Nature of Truth (1640), which also apparently colored CG (but Of Prelatical Episcopacy may have influenced the Discourse). Brothers, First (Elder) and Second Characters in Comus. brown Dark, dusky (cf. imbrowned, iv 246), L 2; IP 134; ix 1088; PR 2, 293. Browne, William, of Tavistock (1591-1645?) Spenserian poet, whose Britannia’s Pastorals (1613-16) Milton left marginalia on (XVIII, 336-40), and was perhaps influenced by, especially in his early poetry: e.g., the last line of “On Time” is to he compared with what is said of the

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Robert

A Milton Dictionary

Bucer

words of Truth, Book I, Song 4, 221: “That made them triumph both on Time and Death.” “Gripe of sorrow,” xi 264, is Browne’s “gripes of sorrow,” I, iii, 157; “horned flood,” xi 831-11, v, 270. The Inner Temple Masque (1614) about circe and Ulysses agrees with comus in having an anti¬ masque made up of monsters other than just the Homeric swine.

see The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. Buchanan, George (1506-82) Famous Scottish his¬ torian, scholar, and writer of Latin verse. Tutor to mary queen of scots and James VI, ID 140, 414. Referred to—often differed with—in B 98, 106, 131, etc. Poet-foe of tyrants, 2D 78. His History of Scotland cited (Rcrum Scoticarum Historia, Edinburgh, 1582) Ten 28 ff. (His treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotes so execrated by royalists that as late as 1683 it was burned at Oxford; also used for Ten.) warton sometimes cited Bu¬ chanan, e.g. for Satan’s disguise in QN 80 ff. and PR 1, 314 ff: Franciscanus and Somnium. “Golden-tressed sun,” Ps CXXXVI 29=“auricomum solem” of Buchanan’s version, dr. Johnson declared Buchanan’s name has “as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modem Latinity.” hanford connected EL V with “Maiae Calendae,” EL VIII to “De Neaera.” “De Sphaera” also gets cited.

Brownism, Brownists Followers of Robert Browne (15501633), the English separatist clergy¬ man, latterly the Independents and Congregationalists. “For the word Puritan seems to be quashed, and all that heretofore were counted such, are now Brownists,” CG 214; cf. 213, 215, 217. Hall’s “book against the Brownists” (291) was A Common Apology of the Church of England against the . . . Brownists (1610). Cf. salmasius’ attack: ID 346. brunt Assault, CG 216. Brute The Trojan Brutus, legendary founder of Britain, grandfather of SABRINA, C 828.

Buckingham, Duke of

Brutus, Junius “That second founder of the Roman state” Prol VI 206, who after the rape of Lucrece led the successful up¬ rising against the tarquin tyranny; was one of the first two consuls (509 b.c. ) and known as father of the Re¬ public, P 92; ID 328.

George

Villiers,

1st

(1592-1628) Favorite of James I and Charles I; assassinated by Fel¬ ton. Accused of poisoning James—K 76; ID 140, 340, but saved by Charles. Immoral associate—ID 236; “while the Duke reigned,” K 165. buckled Truckled, Sm 336. buckler, that

Brutus, Marcus (85P-42 b.c.) Weakness of D 464; CB 163. Marcus aurelius revered this tyrannicide, ID 116. (Both Brutuses were household words as liberators: cf. 2 D 244.)

K 293 refers to the story told by in his Life of numa pompilius that, during a plague, a small round shield “fell from heaven into the hands of Numa, who gave” the citizens “this marvellous account of

plutarch

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A Milton Dictionary

it: that egeria and the Muses had assured him it was sent from heaven for the cure and safety of the city, and that, to keep it secure, he was ordered by them to make eleven others, so like in dimensions and form to the original that no thief should be able to distinguish the true from the counterfeit.” budge Referring to a kind of fur used on doctors’ hoods; secondary meaning, pompous, pedantic, C 707; BN 261.

smiles again” Everyman ed. Ill, p. 112, and L’A 28. L’Allegro and II Penseroso may have been suggested by Burton’s alternating octosyllabics pro and contra melancholy. Cf. xi 540 ff. and Everyman I, 210. Busiris The Pharaoh of Exodus (an identifi¬ cation prompted by melanchthon’s recension of Carion’s Chronicle), i 307. buslcin(ed) The high boot of Greek tragic actors; the cothurnus, IP 102; Sm 293, 328; Prol I 120.

Bull, the See On the University Carrier. Burgundy, Mary of

buxom

(1457-82) Daughter of Charles the Bold; duchess over what was a king¬ dom before it became a province of eastern France, K 252-3.

Yielding, soft, ii 842; v 270; L’A 24.

Burrow Bridge Boroughbridge, town in western 167.

a

small

Yorkshire,

marketK 105,

Burton, Robert (1577-1640) Whose Anatomy of Melancholy went through six editions between 1621 and 1651 and was an encyclopedic work that could have been suggestive to Milton at many points (but the same lore—e.g. his “Digression of Spirits”—was of course to be found elsewhere). On stylistic points cf. “With becks and nods and

Buxtorf(ius), Johannes, the Younger (1593-1664) Translated maimonGuide to the Perplexed, into Latin, 1629; son of Johannes the Elder (1564-1629), whose great rab¬ binical Bible (Basel, 1618-9) h. f. Fletcher considered Milton used extensively. ides,

by-ends Incidental or secret ends, D 370. Cf. the character of the name in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, First Part. by-wipe

51-

Side stroke. An 109.

c Group joined for intrigue to eifect some private or party purpose; dis¬ sembling and sophistical reasoners, K 252 (from the Cabala, the body of Jewish occult or mystic philosophy).

maximus 243-221 b.c., when he pre¬ sumably died shortly before the com¬ mencement of the second Punic War. In 241 b.c. he became blind in con¬ sequence of the heroic action Milton describes, 2D 64.

cabinet

Caen Book (ex libro Cadomensi)

A case, like a private desk, for the safe custody of papers, K 251; or pos¬ sibly the private room where members of the privy council or cabinet met, cf. R 74.

Named after the former capital of Normandy where William the Con¬ queror was buried, ID 412.

cabalists

Caeneus Originally a maiden named Caenis who, after being ravished by neptune, was changed into a man, Cae¬ neus, and rendered invulnerable Prol VI 240.

Cacus One of “the sons of vulcan,” (C 655), who stole Hercules’ cattle (Aen. VIII, 190 ff); “Cacus pastor,” SD 92 is a pun—bad (Greek kakos) shep¬ herd.

Caesar, Gaius Julius

Cadmus Founder of Thebes, who after he retired to Illyria prayed that he might be transformed to a serpent, and the prayer was granted (Meta. IV, 562 ff:). Harmonia or Hermione was the wife that helped Cadmus rank among “the happiest of mortals” (Pindar Marginalia 293) ix 506; Prol II 154. Cadmus A public executioner day: Sat. I, vi, 39 2D 80.

(100-44 b.c.) “Great Julius, whom now all the world admires,” PR 3, 39: the anecdote of his youthful tearful envy of Alexander’s early accomp¬ lishments is in plutarch. Demagogue K 67; tyrant 157; ID 320, 324-6, 336, 364, 386; B 51; author, ID 332; B 2, 31; wit Prol VI 220. Because of his invasion of Britain, 55-54 b.c. promi¬ nent in, B 34 ff. Caiaphas

of

Horace’s

The high-priest of the Jews of John xi, 49 ff. Sm 308; T 194; CD 2, 5.

Caecias Cain

The NE wind x 699. Caecilius Metellus, Lucius Roman consul, 251

B.C.;

Whom Milton, (CD 2, 11) and St. (City of God, XIII, v) treat as an example of envy: thus the

aucustine

pontifex

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A Milton Dictionary

space given to the murder of Abel, xi 429-60, a lesson in sin and death. R 60; K 264. Calaber See

SMYRNAEUS.

Calabria The “toe,” the southwest part, of Italy, extending toward Sicily (Trinacria), ii 661. Calandrino A simpleton on whom pranks are played in several of the stories in Boccaccio's Decameron Col 272. Calandrinus One of a family of Italian merchants settled in Geneva (and related to the Diodatis), most likely Jean-Louis Calandrini (1585-1656). He had sug¬ gested that Spanheim supply informa¬ tion against More FE #17, 74 Calchas

Arcadian follower of Artemis vio¬ lated by Zeus, PR 2, 186; turned into the Great Bear, her son Areas becom¬ ing the Little Bear: she is the “star of Arcady,” C 341, the northern constel¬ lation by which Greek mariners steered. Collides the rhetorician The reference, D 500, is to 482-510 of the Gorgias. Callimachus Poet and chief librarian at Alex¬ andria from 260 to c. 240 b.c. Six Hymns survive, and 72 epigrams that were incorporated in the Greek Anthology. FE # 9 44 quotes from Hymn VI, “To Demeter,” 58. CG 238; Marginalia, passim. His Hymn to Delos contributed to Man 46 8. Milton used B. Vulcanius’ edition, An¬ twerp, 1584. Calliope

Soothsayer of the Greeks at Troy, EL VI 69. Caledonia (n) Ancient name of Scotland, B 75, 84, 87, etc.; QN 4; Man 48.

The Muse (of epic poetry) that was mother: her name occurs only in the rejected line 58 of L: “what could the golden hayrd Calli¬ ope,” Columbia Milton I, 464. orpheus’

callow

Cales A town of Campania, Vesuvius, PR 4, 117.

Calisto (Callisto)

near

Mt.

A technical term for being un¬ fledged, without feathers, vii 420. Calvin, John

Cales Cadiz K 153: See cades. Caligula, Gaius Caesar (12-41) The third emperor of Rome (from 37), who degenerated into one of the worst, suetonius tells of his claims to be worshipped as a god, K 186, his exclamation “I wish the Ro¬ man people had but a single neck!” K 288, and his assassination by cassius Chaerea, tribune of a cohort of the praetorian guard, ID 328-30.

(1509-64) The great Genevan re¬ former is not alluded to with marked sympathy, though he asserted it law¬ ful to depose a tyrant, ID 64, 346, and acknowledged the chief end of marriage, D 391. Will not "be put off with Calvin’s name, unless we be con¬ vinced with Calvin’s reason,” An 149. Praises bucer, B 1, 5; bucer preferred by rainolds, T 224. Other references, P 92; D 402 (Praelectiones in Duodecim Prophetas Minores, Geneva, 1581, p. 753); T 109; A 339, 340; Ten 28,

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48, 52; ID 202; 2D 202; SD 126; CD 2, 7. Calvinist (s) “No heretics. . . Taxed with pre¬ destination and to make God the au¬ thor of sin, not with any dishonorable thought of God but it may be overzealously asserting his absolute power, not without plea of scripture,” TR 168-9. Cam (e) See

camus.

Camball See

CAMBUSCAN.

Cambalu The chief city of Cathay (modern China), now known to have been the same city as Peking, xi 388. Cambridge Manuscript, the Sir Henry Newton Puckering (16181701), a Royalist, in 1691 gave to Tri¬ nity College, Cambridge, nearly 4000 books and manuscripts, but the great¬ est treasure that was presumably part of the collection remained uncata¬ logued and unnoticed until the 18th century and unreproduced until the 19th: collotype Facsimile, ed. W. A. Wright, 1899; smaller selected repro¬ duction, ed. pattebson, 1933 (the poetry is also in Fletcher's facsimile edition). It was known to bdrch, peck, newton, and todd quoted from it ex¬ tensively in 1801. It contains in Mil¬ ton’s own hand drafts of Arcades, Comus, Lycidas, At a Solemn Music, On Time, Upon the Circumcision, Sonnets VII, IX-XV. In the hands of amanuenses are Sonnets VIII, Xl-XIV, XVI-XVII, XXII-III, lines 5-14 of XXI, arid On the New Forcers of Con¬ science. Also in Milton’s hand are “Letter to a Friend” and a list, belong¬ ing to the early 1640’s, of 99 subjects

for dramas, including 4 drafts for a “Paradise Lost” tragedy. The exten¬ sive look into Milton’s workshop thus afforded has been appreciated by scholars and critics whose attitude towards the successive drafts of a masterpiece is not the romantic one of Charles Lamb: “I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty —as springing up with all its parts absolute—till, in an evil hour, [a Mil¬ tonic phrase, ix 780, 1067] I was shown the original copy of it, together with the other minor poems of the author, in the library of Trinity, kept like some treasure to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them after the latter Cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their orel interlined, corrected! as if their words were mor¬ tal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure! as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good! as if inspiration were made up of parts, and these fluctuat¬ ing, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again.” Cambuscan IP 110 refers to Chaucer’s unfin¬ ished “Squire’s Tale”: “This noble kyng, this Tartre Cambyuskan, Iladde two sones on Elpheta his wyf, Of whiche the eldeste highte Algarsyf, That oother sone was cleped Cambalo. A doghter hadde this worthy kyng also, That yongest was, and highte Canacee. . . .” A wooer bestows on Canace a magic ring (giving powers similar to those of 170 ff.) and mirror, and the father

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a “hors of bras” of marvelous swift¬ ness. Cambyses King of Persia 529-522 300.

b.c.,

Campanian Referring to the west coast district of Italy, south of Latium, PR 4, 93; D 442; Log 84.

ID 294 Campensem Referring to a district in Belgium, Campine, SD 236.

Camden, William (1551-1623) Noted English anti¬ quary and historian, whose Latin compilation Britannia (six editions between 1586 and 1607) was a source of B (58, 81, etc.), his Annales of Elizabeth’s reigri frequently cited (ap¬ parently the two-part [1615-1627] edi¬ tion) in CB (130, 163, etc.); both works used for R, especially the lat¬ ter: 13, but of the author it is con¬ temptuously said, he “cannot but love bishops, as well as old coins, and his much lamented monasteries for an¬ tiquity’s sake,” 15; “known friend” of prelates, CG 226. Other references, W 142; ID 478. Cameron, John (1579-1625) Scottish theologian. Founder of moderate Calvinistic school of Saumur (he was professor of divinity at this principal seminary of the French Protestants), the Cameronites. “A late writer much ap¬ plauded,” T 146; “an ingenious writer,” 195. Cited 147 (Myrothecium Evangelicum, Geneva, 1632, pp. 92-3), 159, 160. 163, 198; CD 1, 27. Camillus, our (i.e. Cromwell) ID 210. Marcus Furius Camillus (d. c. 365 b.c. ), Roman soldier and statesman, the subject of one of Plu¬ tarch’s Lives. A semimythical hero, he was elected dictator five times, took Veii after ten-year siege, saved Rome from the Gauls under bkennus, defeated the Faliscans, Volsians, Aequians, and other nations. Died of the plague.

Camus reverend sire I. 103, the personification or patron god of the River Cam (cf. EM 59; EL I, 11, 89), as representative of Cam¬ bridge University in reedy academic garb. can Know, Sm 360 (Gower). Can Khan, ii 388. Canaan “Canaan Land,” Ps CXIV, 3, the Promised Land, the part of Palestine between the Jordan, Dead Sea, and Mediterranean, xii 135 (cf. Gen. xii, 5 ff.), 156, 215, 269, 309, 315; D 372; II 60; ID 420. Canaan, spy of See Numbers xiii, 16 ff. Sm 299. Canaanite In contrast to the ordinary use, xii, 217, SA 280 means Philistine, by ex¬ tension (referring to the first con¬ querors of Canaan): cf. R 45. Canaanites, Canaanitish R 45; D 406; T 123. CG 263; Ten 38: See meboz. Canace See

Candaor(Candahar) City and province of Afghanistan, PR 3, 316.

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CAMBUSCAN.

A Milton Dictionary

for believers in transubstantiation. An 161; T 98.

Canidi a The ugly opposite of Helen, Prol I 142 (a sorceress scorned by Horace).

Caphtor, sons of The Philistines (Jerem. xlvii, 4; Deut. ii, 23), SA 1713.

Canker Cankerworm, L 45; cf. Arc 53.

capital

canon bit

A pun (1) literally, pertaining to the head and (2) fatal, xii 383.

Pun, D 486, on an equestrian term found in The Faerie Queene, I, vii, 37.

Capito

canon Eaws

Wolfgang Fabricius Koepfel (14781541), follower of luther at Stras¬ bourg (from 1523) who sought a re¬ conciliation with the Swiss reformers. Shared with bucer the authorship of the Confessio Tetrapolitana. M 10; T 224.

A sneer, C 808, at ecclesiastical (especially Roman Catholic) rules and regulations. Cf. other contemptu¬ ous uses, e.g. An 174; D 392; T 65. canting Whining, Sm 343.

Capitoline Pertaining to the Roman Capitol, presided over by Jupiter Capitolinus, ix 508.

cantle Fragment, D 440. Canute

Capitolinus, Julius

Danish king of England (1016-35),

One of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, who lived in the reign of Diocletian (284-305) and wrote the lives of nine emperors, ID 116, 332; cited in margin of B 81, 84.

who supplemented the laws of edcar,

B 265 ff.: H 74; CB 144, 201; MS 244. cany waggons Wind-wagons made of bamboo, iii 43.

Cappadocian Canzone

Referring to province in Asia Miner and martial’s line: “Nee de Cappadocis eques eatastis,” X, 76, ID 82.

See under Sonnets. caparison An ornamental covering for a horse, ix 35. Cape., the Of Good Hope, ii 641.

Capras, tripudiantes Prol II 154, see aristotle, Meteorologica, I, iv, 341b. Capreae (Capri) See tiberius.

Cap (p) ellus, Ludovicus Louis Cappel (1585-1658), influen¬ tial French Protestant Hebraist at saumur, ID 188; CD 2, 4.

Capricorn (Goat-horn), the tenth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters at the winter solstice, x 677.

Capernaitcns A term (from John, vi 52) much used in the 16th and 17th centuries

carabines

56-

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Carbine, kind of firearm, K 169.

A Milton Dictionary

Caracalla, Antoninus (188-217) Roman emperor from 211; assassinated. Called by Gibbon “the common enemy of mankind.” “Teterrimus,” ID 72; “impious,” B 87. Carbo, Caius SD 162, see

ciceho,

VAllegro. Cf. Adam’s aubade to Eve, v, 20. 2. Untitled fragment beginning “Ignavus satrapum dedecet inclytum,” 8 lines, choriambic tetrameter. Lesson against slothful sleep based on Aen. IX, 176 ff.

Verrines, III, i, Carneades

3. Cardan, Jerome (1501-76) Italian mathematician and physician, author of De Subtilitate Rerum (1551), An 114.

(214P-129 b.c. ) Greek skeptic phi¬ losopher, so influential at Rome that cato banished him, A 300. Carpathian wizard

R 7, Richelieu (1585-1642), widely suspected of intending to separate the French Catholic Church from Rome, with himself as the patriarch.

Epithet from vircil and ovid of the Old Man of the (Carpa¬ thian) Sea between Crete and Rhodes (his island is Carpathus), who is a shepherd of seals in the fourth book of the Odyssey, 411 ff. C 872.

Carmel, Mount

Carr (e), Nicholas

“Carmel by the sea” (Jer. xlvi, 18), ridge of Palestine jutting into the Mediterranean, xii 144.

(1524-68) “A learned man,” M 4; 7, professor of Greek at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Carmina Elegiaca

Carthaginian Council

Cardinal, the French

proteus,

Elegaic verses, 20 lines, found by Alfred J. Horwood and first printed by him with the Commonplace Book, 1871. The name “Milton” was origi¬ nally visible on the recto of the leaf of foolscap paper, which side con¬ tained the Prolusion on Early Rising, while the other side contained two sets of verses (on the second, see be¬ low). The common subject of all three exercises, probably assigned in school or college, was sloth. One may be reminded by the opening couplet repeated at the close, of Robert Her¬ rick’s “Corinna’s Going A-Maying”: “Get up, get up, for shame, the bloom¬ ing mom. . . .” But the difference be¬ tween Herrick’s hedonistic carpe diem and Milton’s moral and hygienic ap¬ proach makes a gulf, as does the fact that Milton is addressing a male. Some of the images are similar to those in

A 302, as related in padre paolo History of the Council of Trent.

sarpi’s

Carthaginian phrase T 208, See Africanisms. Cartwright, Thomas (1535P-1603) Puritan ousted from his post of professor of divinity at Cambridge; answered by Richard hooker Ten 50. Carvilius Twice Roman consul, 234 and 228 T 82.

b.c.

Casbeen Kazvin, south of the Caspian Sea, NW of Teheran, once a capital of Persia, x 436. Casella

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See SXIII.

A Milton Dictionary

Casius, Mount

translated

On the NE border of Egypt, called by George Sandys “no other than a huge mole of sand, famous for the Temple of Jupiter and Sepulchre of Pompey,” ii 593.

Poetics in 1570.

Caspian

Men in armor on horses in armor, SA 1619.

This inland salt sea between Europe and Asia had a reputation for storminess, ii 716; PR 3, 271. Thus, also, “Caspia Tigris” is doubly appropriate QN 20 (a variant on hyrcanian).

and

annotated Aristotle’s

Cataio (Cathay) China, A 313. cataphracts

Cataphryges montanists, so called because the sect originated in phrygia. An 178.

catena Cassia

A “chain” of passages to support a doctrinal point, A 335.

A fragrant shrub, C 991; v 293. Cassian (is)

cates

Reference to Lucius Cassius Longi¬ nus, tribune of the second century b.c. who introduced secret balloting for Roman juries, SD 240. Cassibelaunus Rritish chieftain who offered skil¬ ful resistance to Caesar, B 30, 44 ff.; ED 149. Cassius See

Catesby, Robert (1573-1605) Chief instigator of the Gunpowder Plot, killed resisting ar¬ rest, K 213. Cathaian Mongolian, distinguished from Chi¬ nese as more northerly, x 293; xi 388. Catharist

CALIGULA.

Literally, “purist,” ascetic, T 78.

cast Sm 334, cast off. It is uncertain whether the “doublet” is a coat or a counterfeit jewel. cast T 177, defeat.

Catiline, Lucius Sergius (108-62 b.c. ) The Roman politician and conspirator whom cicero, while consul, exposed in four famous ora¬ tions, K 157; ID 336; 2D 56, 176. Cato, Marcus Porcius, the Censor (Cato the Elder)

cast To foretell or devise, C 360; iii 634; xii 43. Castalia (n) The original spring was on Mt. iv 274, the haunt of the muses—the source of poetical inspira¬ tion, EL IV 32; V, 9. Parnassus,

Castelvetro, Lodovico (1505-71)

Dainties, delicacies, PR 2, 348.

Critic

and philologist;

(234-149 b.c.) Whose only extant work is a treatise on agriculture, E 282; A 300-1; Prol VI 216. Cato, Marcus Porcius Uticensis (Cato the Younger) (95-46 b.c.) Stoic philosopher. Sui¬ cide at Utica on learning of julius caesar’s triumph at Thapsus. T 157-8 (Ad Atticum II, 1); ID 116; FE #23

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A Milton Dictionary

94; plural befitting either Cato, Prol VI 222.

ton used in the Basle, 1566 edition (CB 147); R 17; P 88, 100.

Catullus, Gaius Valerius

Celsus, Aulus Cornelius

(c. 84-54 b.c. ) Greatest Roman lyric poet; lover of “Lesbia,” lampooner of caesar, JR note; A 301; ID 124. C 560 “I was all ear” may reflect Catullus’s "Totum . . . nasum” XIII, 14. EL I 40XVIII. 18 on the paradox of sweet bitterness, viii 519 is in the atmos¬ phere of Catullus’s epithalamium (LXII).

(1st cent.) Roman encyclopedist whose 8 books on medicine are all that survive, E 283.

Caucasus The mountain range between the Rlack and Caspian seas, PR 3, 318; Prol III 164; VII 248. causey Causeway, x 415.

Celtic French or France, C 60; i 521. Centaur The constellation, x 328, with an implication of diversity or monstrosity of nature, as in An 172; “the bastards or the centaurs of their spiritual forni¬ cations”; T 86: “monstrous issue . . . the breed of Centaurs, a neglected and unloved race”—for being man from the waist up, horse below. centric

cautelous

Having the earth as the center, geo¬ centric, viii 83.

Cautious, CG 253. Crafty, A 314. caveats Warnings, Ten 25 (Latin “let him beware”). Cebes Of Thebes, the friend of socrates (of. e.g. Phaedo), to whom was attri¬ buted an allegorical picture of life, Cebetis Tabula, which is explained by an old man to a stranger, showing that the hill of eminence is reached by the pathway of temptation and incul¬ cating mental development and virtue as the basis of happiness; a popular Renaissance text in parallel columns of Greek and Latin, E 281.

Cephalus The “Attic boy” of IP 124, whose mistress, EL III, 67 (she “ravished” him: Sm 300), was the Dawn, EP 290; the hunter son of aeolus, EL V, 51; accidental slayer of his wife Procris, F.L VII 38. Cerastes horn'd Greek for a horned snake, x 525, said by the Italian Aldrovandi to be symbolic of “the devil and lust for power.” Ceraunia Mountains in

epirus,

N 31.

Cecropios . .. sales Attic salt or wit, ED 56, the best of life (from the legendary first king of Attica, Cecrops).

Cerberean mouths ii

655 fits Ovid’s description of (Met. XIV, 65), “Cerbereos rictus.” See Cerberus. scylla

Cedrenus, Georgius (11th cent.) Byzantine chronicler whose Compendium Historiarum Mil¬

Cerberus

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A Milton Dictionary

the threshold of Hades, L’A 2 (cf. EL VI 58); Pro! I 122; VI 230.

Chaldaea Southern province of Babylonia, xii 130. Chaldeans, A 306; K 173.

Ceres The Roman goddess of agriculture, EL V 126; VI 34, 51; QN 32; iv 981; IX 395; 2D 14; Prol VI 244. Her daughter proserpina was gathering flowers when the god of the infernal regions took her to be Queen of the Lower World: Milton immortalizes the mother’s frantic search for her lost daughter, the connection with eve, who is also to be snatched by Death and Hell, working powerfully: iv 268 ff; Prol III 166; FE #7 26. cesterris

Hall is classified with “the magi¬ cians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans” of Dan. ii, 2, Sin 343. Chaldee (Chaldey) or Chaldean (D 488). Aramaic, the language of Palestine after the Babylonian captiv¬ ity. Parts of Ezra and Daniel were transmitted in it. See also targumists. T 224; E 285. Chalonerus

Cisterns, An 126.

Thomas Challoner (d. 1661) Mem¬ ber of Long Parliament and Council of State mentioned by Milton to Mylius, p. 364.

Ceyx See

Chaldean, our

ALCYONE.

Chalybean

Chaeronea See S X. Chalcedon, the English bishop of CC 183, Richard Smith (1566-1655) who, having studied under bkllarminf., was chosen as Urban VIII's vicar-apostolic for England and Scot¬ land, 1625. Charged with treason for functioning as a Catholic bishop, he was recalled in 1629 and found refuge at the English Austin nunnery in Paris. Chalcedonian Council Held in 451 on the Bosporus oppo¬ site Ryzantium, this Fourth Oecumeni¬ cal Council dealt with the Eutychian heresy and made a large number of important decisions, P 83.

The Chalybes were renowned iron¬ workers, who dwelt on the southern shore of the Black Sea. SA 133. Cham Vulgate for Ham, Noah’s son, iv 276; K 254. Compare “Libyc Hammon,” N 203. Chamier, Daniel (d. 1621) French Protestant author of Panstratiae Catholicae, Frankfurt, 1627, of which III, 348 is cited, T 211. champain Open, flat country, iv 134; vi 2; PR 3, 257. champerty

Chalcidian Reference to region of Naples, set¬ tled by Greeks from Chaleis, LR III, 4; ED 182.

A criminal arrangement whereby one not a party to a suit bears ex¬ penses of litigation in return for a share of the matter sued for. Col 238.

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chandlery (chaunlerly)

Charing-Cross

Hucksterish, R 74 (church record of Easter offerings).

On the south side of the modern Trafalgar Square, was the site of one of the Eleanor’s Crosses Edward I erected in memory of his queen Elea¬ nor of Castile: this near the spot where the coffin of his consort was set down during its last halt on the way to Westminster Abbey, 1291. George Peele’s title is indicative of the “old wives’ tale,” An 149 referred to: “The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First . . . Lastly the Sinking of Queen Eleanor, who Sunk at CharingCross and Rose again at Pottershithe, now named Queen-hithe” (there hav¬ ing been confusion with Eleanor of Provence, henry hi’s queen, whose unpopular dues were payable at Queenhithe).

chanonies Appertaining to canons, R 73 . Chaonis Reference to

whence Alex¬ mother, olympias,

epirus,

ander the great’s

came, EL IV 26. Chaos (1) In PL “an amorphous mass of momentarily agglomerated atoms and rapidly shifting elemental qualities conceived by the poet to serve a vari¬ ety of epic purposes. It must furnish materials for the creation of Heaven, Hell, the Mundane Universe, and any other worlds which God may design; its consistence must be of such a na¬ ture as to permit Satan’s flight through and over it and facilitate the construc¬ tion of a symbolical highway, follow¬ ing satan’s track, from Hell to the outside shell of the World; and rebel¬ lious angels in Heaven tap its crude resources in manufacturing engines of war” (W. C. Curry). (2) Personified as “anarch,” ii 988, of a lawless king¬ dom, with Night as his queen. An 114 quotes ovid, Meta. I, 20. chapel of ease One built for the convenience of parishioners who live far from the parish church, P 99. character'd

Charinus in Andria A jealous youth in the comedy by (cited Log 352 also) Col 262.

TERENCE

Charis Grace (personified), ED 127. Charity Love (agape in the NT), iii 126; iv 756; xii 584. Charlemagne (742-814) The great king of the Franks, besides references in B and CB (divorce, 155), figures with his Twelve Peers in the poetry as he had in the medieval romances: i 586; PR 3, 343. tasso’s possible subject, CG 237. Ten 24. Charles I

Engraved, C 530. Charenton Pun on (1) charon and (2) Char¬ enton, the church near Paris, on the Seine, to which Milton is sorry to learn from Oldenburg that more has been appointed FE #24 96.

-61

(1600-49). For Milton’s attitude to¬ wards, see Eikonoklastes, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, and Defensio 1 and II. Charles II (1630-85). -

Mentioned in W 143,

A Milton Dictionary

and apropos of the books being an¬ swered, in K (e.g. 276, 278) and ID (12, 36, 56, etc.) and the other two Defensio’s.

pupil of Pythagoras; his preamble in Stobaeus’ Anthology was shown by Bentley not to date from antiquity, E 285.

Charles IV

charters, both our great

(1316-78) Holy Roman Emperor, issued Golden Bull, 1356, establishing new rule for the imperial election, ID 106.

Magna Charta (1215) is certainly one of these, CG 271; the other is either henry i’s Charter of Liberties, or Charta de Foresta (1217) under henry hi giving certain forest rights.

Charles V (1500-58) Holy Roman Emperor, always viewed with Protestant hostil¬ ity: CP 7 (“the first public reformers” are the princes of the Schmalkald League); R 8: Sm 314; Ten 27; K 160. CB 214.

The whirlpool in the Sicilian Straits opposite scyi.la, C 259; ii 1020; An 141. chase Sm 292, the reading of some copies, “chafe,” is probably correct.

Charles IX (1550-74) King of France; reign marked by fierce civil wars between Catholics (followers of Guise) and Huguenots (followers of Conde). Ten 43; O 253 (and CB 184). Charles X See S XXI. Charles, Duke See

Charybdis

BURGUNDY.

Charles Martel (689-741) Grandfather of Charle¬ magne. O 253 connects with CB 186, having a common source in du haillan.

charm Song, iv 642, 651.

Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340-1400). In IP: see cambusReference to as tityrus, Man 34 (following spenser’s Shepherd’s Cal¬ endar). “So wise,” R 36; “our re¬ nowned,” 59; “our learned,” An 111. Read in Speght’s London 1602 edition, CB page numbers show. “The Merry Friar” in the General Prologue, 221-2, R 36. Plowman’s Tale attributed to R 28, 44-5. Clanvowe also found in Speght: see S I. Possible influence of House of Fame on QN 170 ff.; SA 9714. “As thick ... As the gay motes that people the sunbeams,” IP 8, is “As thicke as motes in the sunne-beem” “Wife of Bath,” 868. can.

Chebar flood

Charon Son of erebus and Nox, who ferried the souls of the dead over the styx, a river of Hades, Prol I 132-4; FE #24 96; PM 35.

The river by which ezekiel had his vision of the cherubim and wheels, Ezek. i, i ff. Pas 38. Cheke See S XI.

Charondas

Chemmis

Law-giver of Catana in Sicily of un¬ certain date, supposed to have been a

diodorus’ (I, 63) name for Cheops, first king of the IVth (Memphite) dy-

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A Milton Dictionary nasty of Egypt, (reigned c. 2900-2877 b.c. ) builder of the biggest of the three pyramids of Gizeh, ID 292. Chemos

Chemosh, Vulgate Chamos, the na¬ tional deity of the moabites (Num. xxi, 29), identified by jerome with Baal-Peor.

what is read, A 312. “Rabbinical scho¬ liasts . . . have often used to blur the margin with Keri instead of Ketiv, and gave us this insulse rule out of their Talmud, ‘That all words which in the law are writ obscenely, must be changed to more civil words,’” Sm 316. Chilpericus

Chephren or Khafre

Pharaoh who reigned a generation after chemmis, ID 292. Cherith, brook of

Where, before Jordan, the ravens brought Elijah food (1 Kings xvii, 5 ff.) PR 2, 266. Chersonese, the golden

“Aurea Chersonesus . . . the same which is now called Sumatra” (Purchas); or possibly the Malay Penin¬ sula, xi 392; PR 4, 74. Cherubini, Alessandro

A prodigy of learning, son of an eminent lawyer Laertius in Rome; died at 28 FE #940. Cheshire rebels

LF 102 reference to a rising of Roy¬ alists under Sir George Booth in Au¬ gust, 1659 that GENERAL LAMBERT put down in this western county that had given difficulty during the Civil War, K 199.

“The rightful king of France,” R 43; CB 177, said by sigonius to have been unthroned by Pope zacharias in 750. In ID Milton says French authorities indicate a national council was responsible for this 264, 440, 526. Chimera (s)

Originally a fire-breathing (“ignivomam,” Prol VI 230) monster men¬ tioned by homer and hesiod, a com¬ pound of lion, goat, and dragon, hence any sort of real or imaginary monster, C 517; ii 628 (cf. Aen. VI, 287-9). Prol I 144; Col 261. Chineses

A plural in regular use in the 17th century, iii 438. The story of the Chi¬ nese wind-wagons was vouched for by several geographers, though one of them, the Spanish Jesuit Mendoza, had a name that encouraged skepti¬ cism. Chios

Island in the Aegean famous, like for wine, PR 4, 118.

Crete,

chest

Coffin, N 217.

Chiron

Chester

The wisest of the centaurs, whom appointed tutor to his son Aesculapius Man 60. See philyrean. apollo

In Chesire near the Irish Sea. diowrote Milton from there in 1626, EL I, 3. edward king was “unfortu¬ nately drowned in his passage from” there in 1637, L headnote.

Celebrated by Horace (she is “flava” in Carm. Ill, ix, 19) EL VI, 28.

Chetiv

Chloris

dati

What is written, as opposed to

keri,

Chloe

Wife of

63-

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zephyrus

and goddess of

A Milton Dictionary

flowers, EL III 44; IV 35; cf. ED 90, where perhaps an actual person is meant.

Apart from the title “On the Morn¬ ing of Christ’s Nativity” (and the ref¬ erence to it in EL VI 87), this desig¬ nation appears only once in Milton’s poetry, in the sonnet FC 6. “Jesus," except for six references in PR, is al¬ most as rare; x 183; xii 310.

on him; after which he departed in disgrace, as Milton relates; 2D 16, 98. Milton praises her good judgement 102-8. She knew his attack on tyrants was not meant for her, and his last compliment to her is that he hears she thinks so little of reigning she may abdicate (an allusion returned to, as some editors interpret it, at the end of PR 2). The Queen did “give a king¬ dom” to her cousin Charles X Gusta¬ vus, and became a Roman Catholic, dying, after a checkered life, in Rome. Milton answered more that such praises as ID 192 were but thanks: SD 84, 168-70. It was also his duty to compliment her officially in State Let¬ ters (#19 and 46). toland printed as Milton’s an 8-line Latin epigram to Christina: Columbia Milton XVIII, 356.

Christian ("Christiern") II

Chrysippus

(1481-1559). Known as “the Cruel,” king of Denmark 1513-23, when he was deposed and exiled and impri¬ soned.

(3rd cent. b.c.) Greek stoic phi¬ losopher, D 441 (his moderate posi¬ tion was nearer free will than fatalism, cicero, De Fato); CP 11; “More fully and better than Chrysippus and Crantor” (horace, Epist. I, ii, 4). Horace quoted again on this stoic’s porch, ID 530 (Sat. II, iii, 43-6).

Choaspes “The chief river of Susiana, empty¬ ing itself into Sinus Persicus (the Per¬ sian Culf), a river of so pure (per¬ haps Milton’s meaning of amber PR 3, 288) a stream that the great Per¬ sian kings would drink of no other water” Heylyn, Cosmography. Christ

Christian III (1503-59) “A worthy and pious king of Denmark” M 10, reigned over both Denmark and Norway from 1534; called “father of the people,” he was an ardent Lutheran. Christian city London An 122. Christina (1626-89) Queen of Sweden, 163254; daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, 2D 106. This masculine and scholarly ruler, a patroness of learning, had in¬ vited salmasius, among other men of letters, to her court, and after the pub¬ lication of his Defensio Regia he came (July, 1650), where he was honored until the blow of Milton’s answer fell

Chrysostom, St. John (345P-407) Given his surname after his death for his “golden-mouthed” eloquence; the most famous of the Greek church fathers. Born in antioch; patriarch of Constantinople 398-404. Favorably referred to, Sm 353; T 99; though “holy, . . . nightly studied” Aristophanes, A 299; Ten 17; against propertied ministers, K 233; CP 17; ID 164-6, 170, 176, 256, 432. Agrees that Hell is not within bowels of earth, CD 1, 33. A good man excels angels, CB 129 (leading to the PL idea of men replacing fallen angels in heaven?).

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A Milton Dictionary

Cicero, Marcus Tullius

circumfused

(106-43 b.c. ) ‘'Grave,” A 307; cf. Pref. SA. The model for oratory Prol VI 210 and Latin prose, Sin 347; a source of “graceful and ornate rhe¬ toric,” E 286, Cited most in Log. De Natura Deorum I, 23: A 299. De inventione I, 38: T 75. Cf. muraena, QUESTORSHIP.

Spread about, vi 778; vii 624. Cirrha

Seaport of Greece, near Delphi and sacred to apollo the god of medicine and the arts; figuratively Cambridge, PM 31. Parnassus,

Cithaeron

Cilician

Epithet of paul as coming from tarsus, a city in this district of SE Asia Minor EL IV 102. ID 240. Cimbrica

Danish, EL IV 16.

Mountain in Boeotia, associated with the rites of Bacchus, QN 67. citron

Expensive, aromatic wood, PR 4, 115; cf. v22. City Petition

Cimmerian

Reference to a mythical land men¬ tioned in the Odyssey (XI, 13 ff.) proverbial for darkness, “hidden in gloom and mist . . . malignant night.” L’A 10; QN 60; Prol I 146.

The Root and Branch Petition for abolishing episcopacy An 118. Civil Power

See Treatise of Civil Power, etc. clammed

Made clammy An 146.

Cinnamus

See

sinnamus.

Clandeboy

In NE Ireland, O 266.

Circe

The enchantress (her mother the oceanid perse, EL VI 73) of Odyssey X, “daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup/ Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape,/ And downward fell into a groveling swine,” C 50 ff.; represented by Milton as the mother of Comus, C522, 153, 253. Ulysses escaped by the aid of moly, EL I 87. Circean: ix 522; K 204; Prol VII 280; ID 510. Latent reference, SA 934.

classic, classical

The classis was a Presbyterian group of parishes; originally a presby¬ tery, by the proposal of the Westmin¬ ster Assembly a district, FC 7; Ten 6 (Classical, Provincial, and National Assemblies corresponded to the mod¬ ern Presbyterian church courts, the Presbytery, the Synod, and the Gen¬ eral Assembly). K 208; O 257, 264. Claudia (Pelletta)

circumcised

See Pro Se Defensio.

limited, D 471.

Claudianus, Claudius

Circumcision

See Upon the Circumcision. circumfluous

Flowing around, surrounding, 270.

vii

(4th cent.) Latin poet famous for his panegyrics, e.g. on Honorius, ID 184 (quotation), 302, 364. Phrase from De Raptu Proserpinae I, 6 (cf. EL VII 78) FE #2 8. Little sure in-

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A Milton Dictionary

fluence: e.g. EL I 35-6 could have been suggested by Nupt. Hon. Epith. 3-4, but also by ovid, Meta. IV, 32930. There are such points as the gar¬ dens of the Sun in Laud. Stil. II, 46776 for EL III 51-2, or Stil. I 152-60 for the panorama of PR 4, 70-86. QN 139 ff. is like In Ruf. I, 123 ff„ N 51 like Rapt. Pros. I, 42-3. warton’s ob¬ jection to “senectus Vernat,” Man 745 is answered by Laud. Stil’s “senio . . . vernante” I, 316. Claudius (10 B.C.-54 a.d. ) Roman Emperor 41-54 who invaded Britain, B 53 ff. Divorced messalina, T 179. “I fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius intended” A 304 (the breaking of wind). ID 164, 172, 188, 330. Mocking title, 2D 22. Reference to the emperor’s death by mushroom poisoning, SD 280.

according to title-page of his Marmor Pisanum (1666). Cleombrotus lactantius told how this young student of philosophy from Ambracia in epirus was so eager to taste the immortality of the soul after reading the Phaedo that he drowned himself, iii 473.

Cleopatra (69-30 b.c. ) Mentioned only in connection with a massive feast with antony Prol VI 234. climate Time zone E 279. Cliniades Patronymic of Alcibiades (c. 450404 b.c. ), socrates’ brilliant and er¬ ratic follower, EL IV 24.

Clement of Alexandria

Clink, the

(150P-215?) Early church father writing in Greek; teacher of oricen. Interesting for his “heresies” and free¬ dom of speech, R 21; P 86; A 312; ID 90; SD 110. On bishops P 98; on mar¬ riage of clergy, CB 148.

A prison in Clink Street, South¬ wark, Sm 321.

Clement of Rome, St.

Clodius, Publius

96) Successor to peter as bishop. His Epistle to the Corinthians rediscovered in 1633 and published at Oxford made no distinction between bishops and presbyters P 96-7; CG

(93P-52 b.c.) Notorious profligate and enemy of cicero, D 442; ID 356.

(fl.

c.

Clio The Muse of History, EL IV 31; AdP 14; Man 24.

close Cadence, N 100; C 548.

211, 221. Clementillo

clouted shoon

Apparently the Valerio Chimentelli c. 1670) who dati told Milton in 1648 had been appointed professor of Greek literature at Pisa (XII, 314) FE #10 52; 2D 122. He was later professor of Eloquence and Politics,

Patched up (or hobnailed) shoes C 635.

(d.

Clymene Mother of PR 2, 186.

66-

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phaethon

by

apollo,

A Milton Dictionary

Clytie

Colasterion: /A/Reply to/A/Name-

In love with apollo; deserted, she continued to follow his course in the sky, and was turned into the sun¬ flower or heliotrope Prol I 136.

les Answer / Against / The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. / Where¬ in / The trivial Author of that An¬ swer is disco-/ ver'd, the Licencer conferr'd with, and the / Opinion

Cnidos

which they traduce

A city of Caria renowned for its temple of Venus, EL I 83; Columbia Manuscript, XVIII 260. coarse

See corse. Cocieus, or Cochleus, Johannes (originally Dobeneck)

(1479-1552) German Roman catho¬ lic controversialist who opposed luther from 1521, and tried to prevent the printing of Tyndale’s English NT at Cologne, Sm 315; Ten 46. Cocytus

The river in hell w'hose etymology is correctly given, ii 579. Codinus, Georgius

(15th cent.) Compiler of Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis, folio in Greek and Latin desired by Milton FE #21 88. cog

To cheat Col 257. cog a die An 174 cheat at dice. Coke, Sir Edward

(1552-1634) English jurist; chief justice of King’s Bench, 1613. Rival of bacon. M. P. from 1620 who, by his defence of English liberties, was em¬ broiled with both James I and Charles I. Remembered for his four Institutes (1628-44), the first of which is known as Coke upon Littleton. II 74; ID 478. “Grandsire” of Cyriack Skinner, S XXL

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defended

By the former Author, J. M./ Prov. 26. 5. “Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own con¬ ceit.” Milton’s fourth (and last) di¬ vorce tract was issued on the same day as Tetrachordon, March 4, 1645, but was written later (since it twice makes an oblique allusion to that work) and in comparative haste. The pamphlet it answers, which dealt point-by-point with the 1st edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Di¬ vorce, had come out in November, 1644: An Answer to a Book Entitled . . . or A Plea for Ladies and Gentle¬ women and all other Married Women against Divorce. Milton chose for the title of the most contemptuous of his English prose pamphlets a Greek word that means an instrument of correction or punishment (it is used by plutarch of the whips with which xerxes lashed the Hellespont). Throughout he exhibits his disap¬ pointment at not having a worthier opponent than “an illiterate and arrogant presumer in that which he understands not,” a “mechanic,” “an actual serving-man . . . turned so¬ licitor,” “a trivial fellow,” who, as the argument warms, becomes “this dolt,” “this phlegmy clod of an an¬ tagonist.” “I mean not to dispute phi¬ losophy with this pork, who never read any.” More learned by far was prynne, whose “big margin, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations” (cf. the original line 17 of FC) is alluded to in the beginning because in Twelve Considerable Ser¬ ious Questions Touching Church

A Milton Dictionary

Government (1644) he had summed up Milton’s doctrine as "divorce at pleasure.” This calls for a retort to one who admittedly “above others . . . hath suffered much and long in the defence of Truth.” (prynne had been in prison most of the period 1633-40, his ears had been clipped down to the bone, and he had been pilloried, branded, and fined.) But as for the anonymous author of the one full argument Milton received, he has a low mind and a low view of marriage. “1 have now done that, which for many causes I might have thought could not likely have been my for¬ tune, to be put to this underwork of scouring and unrubbishing the low and sordid ignorance of such a pre¬ sumptuous lozel.” If any worthier con¬ troversialist comes along, he shall have worthier treatment.

ing party at the synod of whitby, 664, as bede relates (Historia Ecclesiastica, iii, 25 f. and iv, 4) P 99.

Colchester

Coltellini (Cultellinus), Agostino

See Sonnet XV.

Colne

River near Horton; ED 149.

cf.

colebrook

colonel

In S VIII, 1, trisyllabic: col-o-nel. colour

Pun on (1) redness from rubbing and (2) pretence, Sm 290. Colossians, St. Paul to the

R 4: see Col. ii, 8 ff.; T 74. Colossus

The gigantic statue of apollo set up in 280 b.c. on the shore of the har¬ bor at Rhodes, one of the Seven Won¬ ders of the World, Prol I 138. An¬ tiquity compared to An 140.

(1613-93) Florentine belletrist trained as an advocate. Founder of the academy of the “Apatisti,” “The Indifferents,” FE #10 52; 2D 122.

Colchis

Medea (cf. MAR 289) EL IV 10. cold-kind

Columba, the miraculous

See On the Death of a Fair Infant. Colebrook (now Colnbrook)

A town in Buckinghamshire, a mile from Horton, where, as camden wrote, “The Cole falls into the Thames,” K 235, 240. Colkitto

See Sonnet XI.

(521-97) Irish missionary who with twelve disciples founded a church and monastery on the island of Iona, 563. His “sanctity . . . testified by heavenly signs and the working of miracles” (bede, iii, xxv) became for st. colman an argument that St. Columba’s time for keeping Easter was not likely to be wrong, P 99.

Collogue

Columbia University edition

To deal flatteringly or deceitfully with, K 196.

The Works of John Milton, New York, .1931-8, 18 vols. in 21. The edi¬ torial board consisted of f. a. patterson, General Editor, and A. Abbott, H. M. Ayres, D. L. Clark, J. Erskine, W. Haller, G. P. Krapp, W. P. Trent. The only complete edition, supersed-

Colmanus

(d. 676) Bishop of Lindisfame and leader of the Celtic party in North¬ umbria who lost out to the Romaniz¬

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A Milton Dictionary

ing the bohn for the prose. “The text is based on the latest edition pub¬ lished in Milton’s lifetime, and in the case of writings that did not appear in print during Milton’s life, on manu¬ script copies, or on the earliest edition published after his death. The original punctuation and spelling are followed, except in the case of obvious mis¬ prints.” Textual variants are given, but, in the judgment of some critics, insufficiently for the poetry, at least. New or revised translations. No anno¬ tation. Vol. XVIII, The Uncollected Writings, contains much miscellane¬ ous material, including attributions or lists of attributions, apothegmata, ad¬ denda (see also Notes and Queries, Nov. 4, 1939; July 17, 1940; July 12, 1941; June 10, 1950; Aug. 30, 1952), corrigenda. 2 vol. Index (see above, p. vi). For the distribution of prose titles (the first two volumes contained the poetry), see under Abbreviations. Columbus, Christopher

of the ecliptic” (Oxford English Dic¬ tionary), ix 66. combust

“Burnt up” as regards influence by being within 8 degrees, 30 minutes of the sun, A 338. Comedia (Comoedia), Vetus

See

vetus comoedia.

Comenius

See Of Education. Comines (Commines), Philippe de

(1447P-1511?) Celebrated French historian, Milton’s references to whose Memoires in his CB fit the 1552 edi¬ tion, K 253; “author gravissimus,” ID 478. commentitious

Feigned, P 101. commercing

Communicating, IP 39. committing

(1451-1506). Hall as the author of Mundus Alter et Idem mockingly com¬ pared to Sm 294. The other reference, apropos of the newly fig-leaved adam and eve, ix 1116, is of course inaccu¬ rate in portraying the Indians as “girt with feathered cincture” but follows decorations and illustrations in Ren¬ aissance geographies and maps and SPENSER, F.Q., III, xii, 8. Columella

(1st cent.) Roman writer on agri¬ culture born in Spain. Left De Re Rustica in 12 books, E 282.

Latin, setting in conflict, S XIII 4. Commodus

(161-192) Though the son of Mar¬ aurelius was one of the worst Roman emperors, the twelve years of his rule ending in his assassination, ID 246, 330, B 82-4. (The Emperor is not to be confused with Constan¬ tine’s “nephew Commodus, a worthy man,” R 23, an erroneous reference, perhaps due to a bad text of Eutropius, to the son of Licinius and Con¬ stantine’s half-sister, named Licinian or Licinius.) cus

colure

common language of Christendom,

“Each of two great circles which intersect each other at right angles at the poles, and divide the equinoctial and the ecliptic into four equal parts. One passes through the equinoctial, the other through the solstitial, points

the

Latin, CP 1. Commonplace Book

Original Manuscript in British Mu¬ seum. Discovered at Netherby Hall,

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A Milton Dictionary

Longtown, Cumberland, by Alfred J. Horwood, who published the first edi¬ tion, 1876; revised 1877. Ed. Ruth Mohl, yale mu-ton, 1953. These notes by Milton on his reading belong to the period c. 1635-c. 1665, the latest entries being made with the aid of amanuenses as his sight grew dim. Entries appear on 71 pages in Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and English, under three headings—moral, domes¬ tic, political (with indexes). About 90 authors, many now obscure, are cited in this indispensable clue to the wide range of Milton’s reading in his early and middle period. It is clear that he pursued the study of history—the main content, including ecclesiastical history, chronologically and by coun¬ try. He often cites impartially oppo¬ site views, as on duelling and the separation of church and state. The raw material of some of his hetero¬ doxies, as on divorce and polygamy and the fallibility and limitations of kings, lies here ready for use. He re¬ veals sides of himself too, as in sin¬ gling out as very pleasing the coming of divine inspiration to Caedmon or in finding precedent in luther for in¬ decorous jests, or in calling “Norman gibberish” what survives of French law in English courts. Comnena (Commena), Anna

(1083?-1148) Learned daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, who, after failing to suc¬ ceed to his throne on her father’s death in 1118, wrote a laudatory his¬ tory of his reign, the Alexiad FE #21

88. Comnenus, Andronicus

(1110P-1185) “The Byzantine Em¬ peror, ... a most ciuel tyrant,” K 84; cf. CB 219. Deposed and murdered his uncle Alexius II; slain by mob.

compact of physics, general

Basic structure in natural science, E 283. “Descend” means to go from general principles to specific applica¬ tions. compellations

Modes of address, Sm 291. complexion

Blend of the four humors of the body, D 391. Comus

Published as A Maske/ Presented/ At Ludlow Castle,/ 1634:/ On Michelmasse night, [Sept. 29] before the/ Right Honorable,/ lohn Earle of Bridgewater, Vicount Brackly,/ Lord Praesident of Wales, And one of/ His Maiesties most honorable/ Privie Counsell. London, Printed for Hum¬ phrey Robinson, 1637. This Milton’s second English publication, appeared, like the first (On Shakespeare), without his name. The title-page included a protesting motto from virgil’s Eclogue II, 58-9, meaning; “Alas, what have I wished on my miserable self, for my own loss, letting the south wind in on my flowers.” henry lawes, who wrote the music and acted the part of the Attendant Spirit, explained the cir¬ cumstances of publication in a dedi¬ catory letter to Viscount Brackley: “Although not openly acknowledged by tire author, yet it is a legitimate offspring, so lovely and so much de¬ sired, that the often copying of it hath tired my pen to give my several friends satisfaction, and brought me to a necessity of producing it to the public view.” Milton was showing the same reluctance to proclaim himself “before the mellowing year” as at the start of Lycidas, which he wrote in tire year of this publication. However, A Mask/ Of the same/ Author has its

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separate title-page in the 1645 Poems, and was reprinted in 1673, in a slightly divergent text which drops line 167. The main variants occur in MS. There is also a shortened version, still in possession of the Egerton family, known as the Bridgewater Manu¬ script, which was the acting version. Thus there are five texts from Milton’s lifetime, none of which bears the title under which the Mask now goes. Columbia milton (I, 474) states, “The title, Comus, was first used in the stage version in 1737; it was later used by Dalton in his edition in 1747,” but the date both for the London pre¬ miere (“first American performance” in Town Hall, New York, Oct. 6, 1958) and printing of Dr. John Dalton’s highly adulterated version (with mu¬ sic by Thomas Arne) is 1738 (it is Paul Rolli’s operatic version Sabrina which came out in 1737), and the history of the gradual adoption of the title Comus needs setting forth. It was used by toland in his biography, 1698, and by Elijah Fenton, 1725. francis peck, 1740, was so sure of it he thought it omitted from the ori¬ ginal title-pages by mistake. It was established by the time of Warton’s edition, 1785 (he appended an ex¬ planatory note), with the help of the stage adaptations, Dalton’s and the shorter one by George Colman the elder, which superseded Dalton’s, 1772. What hanford considers the best text, 1645, has 1023 lines, mostly of blank verse, Milton’s first, and, ex¬ cept for translations, his last before PL. Comus’s first speech, that of a leader of song-and-dance, is in the rhymed octosyllabics of L’A and IP. In further variation there are the five songs—“Sweet Echo” by the Lady, that to Sabrina and that by her, with invocations in octosyllabics, and the Attendant Spirit's “Back Shepherds,

-71

back” and “Noble Lord and Lady bright.” Thus the blank verse comes to an end with line 858. Music for the third of these has not come down. In¬ stead, two of the five songs by lawes are derived by division of the Epi¬ logue. “From the Heavens now I fly,/ And those happy climes that lie” (cf. 976-7) opened the mask instead of its present solemn prologue; a two-part song, “Now my task is smoothly done” and “Noble Lord and Lady bright” closed it. The letter of praise and travel-advice by Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), who had been on many diplomatic missions but who from 1624 was provost of Eton (and whose life was to be written by Walton), was inserted in 1645, dropped 1673 along with lawes’ dedication. John Egerton, first Earl of Bridgewater (1579-1649) (on his relation to the Countess Dowager of Derby, see Arcades), had been appointed by Charles I “Lord President of the Council in the Principality of Wales and the Marches of the same” in 1631, but did not assume his official seat in Ludlow Castle in Shropshire (one of the four contiguous counties that con¬ stituted the “marches”) until several years later, when it was decided to commission a mask as part of the fes¬ tivities. henry lawes had written the music (and Inigo Jones designed the machinery) for carew’s coelum britannicum, a mask on the circe myth performed Feb. 18, 1634. On the Sep¬ tember 29th occasion, it is not known who took the parts of Comus and Sabrina, but the Lady was Alice Egerton, the Earl’s youngest daughter, about 15 (who, it is interesting to note, was to marry late—in her middle 30’s—and die without issue), and her two younger brothers completed the family roles; John Egerton, Viscount Brackley (1622-86), and Thomas, -

A Milton Dictionary

about 11. Milton includes a tribute (494 ff.) to the musical ability of Lawes as thyrsis. Court-entertainments or masks, usu¬ ally light, short, and mythological— with an emphasis on the visual, on stunning “effects” (elaborate cos¬ tumes, machinery, dances—including the grotesque anti(c)mask)—throve despite prynne’s Histriomastix (1633). ben jonson wrote 36. Comus, Greek for revelry, had been pictured as the spirit (daemon) of carousing by Philostratus; in jonson’s mask (acted 1618; printed 1640) Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, he is a coarse belly-god. In the philosophical romance (often errone¬ ously called a play) by the Flemish humanist Erycius Puteanus (15741646), Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cim¬ meria: Somnium (1608; Oxford, 1634), Comus is a pleasure god surrounded by masked figures (cf. Milton’s first stage-directions). So far as the plot goes—two brothers in search of a lost sister, it could have come from George Peele’s play, The Old Wives' Tale (1595); or from a story’s reaching Milton that the three children on their way to their father “in passing through Haywood forest were benighted, and the Lady Alice was even lost for a short time” (Warton from a MS. of Oldys); or it could easily have been invented. In John Fletcher’s Spenser¬ ian pastoral drama, The Faithful Shep¬ herdess (1st quarto ca. 1610; 1629; 1634), it has long been agreed that, as warton said, “Milton found many touches of pastoral and superstitious imagery, congenial with his own con¬ ceptions.” But Fletcher’s own source, tasso’s Aminta, is not to be neglected. Basically, Comus is an allegory sug¬ gested by the Circe episode in homer (Ody. X, 35 ff.) and ovid (Meta. XIV, 241-307). Cf. Faerie Queene, II, Canto xii (just as Sir Guyon’s palmer

has “His mighty staff, that could all charms defeat” 40, 3, so the Attendant Spirit has his magic plant “ ’Gainst all enchantments” 640) and william browne. The myth was endlessly Platonized, Neo-Platonized, and put to the uses of Christian morality, as can be seen in the last leaf of a book Milton bought in 1637, the Conrad Gesner anthology, Heraclides Ponticus, Allegoriae in Homeri fabulas de Diis (Basel, 1548), which ends with an “Anagoge” by the Byzantine school¬ man and neo-Platonic philosopher Michael Psellos “On Circe,” a trans¬ lation from the Greek of which would go as follows; “Circe wants to trans¬ form Ulysses and drive him into a pig-sty, and she made a mixture of everything that might bring this change about. But her plot is frusstrated, the hero drawing his sword on her. Yet he, being a prudent fel¬ low and wonderfully shrewd, was not readily driven to tbe act of revenge. Needless to say, that wholly corrupt wanton nearly breathed her last in her terror of the weapon. She so changed that you could see the change—nor does his fury abate, and he looks at her with dreadful gaze. As for his comrades, they are as yet no care of his, for he has been too busy thinking about himself. And there they stood—but alas! their faces! Her art worked its pleasure on them. On one man she had already com¬ pleted the metamorphosis. Another was still undergoing it, and a third was about to. Thus the first had his nose finished off to a snout, and was the victim of a change perfect in its swinishness. The second had suffered a transformation of eyes, and was just now yielding to shortness of features: not yet had his nose turned up to a point. The face of the third had swol¬ len, and the process was beginning.

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Now what was this mixing-bowl, and what did she mix in it? O friend, the poet has here veiled a philosophic meaning. Harken, and do not cen¬ sure the guise of a fable, for there lurk poetically under this various form the secrets of deep wisdom. Know that Circe is downright plea¬ sure-transformer of human souls—in which passionate direction all are moved. The potion is a blended drink, even the cup of utter forgetfulness. He who drinks of this cup estranges himself from his faculties, for it is a fact that souls forget their proper worth to drink the cup of sin. Where¬ fore, having disregarded innate rea¬ son, the soul takes on beastly form. Now Circe has power over such souls as these: terrible she seems to them, fierce and awful in her beauty. The spirits of the souls centered in the mortal body and nature undefiled are shaken, but by no means do they suc¬ cumb to the onslaught of Circe. They did not change in their outward form, but, confronting more nobly her whom they fear, they escape the transformation which relates to the passions. Such a miraculous thing is the love of wisdom, and not only from the rich swelling earth does it draw for itself fresh waters, but even from sharp crags is wont honey-sweet to flow.” In the first scene of Comus, “a wild wood,” the Attendant Spirit (remini¬ scent both of the guide-god mercury and an angel, but called in MS “A guardian spirit or daemon”—which is a platonic reference) prologuizes, in¬ dicating that he has come to guard the elect, such as the “fair offspring nursed in princely lore,” 34, of the Welsh governor. Comus, the son of bacchus and circe, “much like his father, but his mother more,” 57, has successfully tempted with his potion

many a weary intemperate traveler in this wood, where they roll “in a sen¬ sual sty, 77, with the faces of brutes. Comus and his transformed crew come rioting in after the Attendant Spirit announces that he himself will be disguised (as the faithful manorial swain Thyrsis) next time he is seen. Comus indulges in tripping octosylla¬ bics, welcoming or dismissing certain personifications (cf. L’A 26 ff.) and corruptly opining, “ ’Tis only daylight that makes sin,” 126. The tipsy dance is interrupted by the approach of the Lady. She is benighted, her brothers having left her “To bring me berries, or . . . fruit,” 186 (contrast 282), but though a thousand phantoms threaten she is girt with Faith, Hope, and Chastity, and sings “Sweet Echo” to draw help. Comus has not heard like music since he lived with his mother and the sirens. “I’ll speak to her/ And she shall be my queen,” 265. In stichomythia (alternating lines) she tells her truth and he starts glozing, he being now in the guise of a “gentle villager,” 304. He will find her broth¬ ers and offers safe overnight shelter. Next the two brothers come on, com¬ plaining, as their sister had done, of the utter darkness. The Elder Brother is confident that his sister, carrying an inner light, has no reason to be afraid. But the Second Brother replies that a beautiful girl faces a greater danger of violence than a hermit. The Elder Brother admits to a more opti¬ mistic nature and dilates on the supernatural power of that “hidden strength,” chastity, which armed diana and minerva. The soul can actually transform the body, either way. “Di¬ vine philosophy,” 476, wins an argu¬ ment that can be carried no further because “Thyrsis”—the musical shep¬ herd-bursts in with the news that the lost sister has unfortunately been

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found by Comus. The Second Brother reproaches the Elder for his false “confidence,” 583; the answer comes, “Virtue may be assailed but never hurt,” 589, Nevertheless, the Elder Brother draws his sword to prepare for the rescue, only to be informed that “Far other arms,” 610, are needed against an enchanter, namely haemony. “The Scene changes to a stately palace” where Comus has the Lady immobilized in a chair. He tries to talk her into drinking of his cup, for surely “mortal frailty,” 686, requires “refreshment after toil.” But scorning the “foul deceiver” with his “uglyheaded monsters,” 695-6, she enunci¬ ates the doctrine, “none But such as are good men can give good things, And that which is not good, is not delicious To a well-govern’d and wise ap¬ petite.” Comus appeals at length to Nature’s fecundity; the Lady answers that such goods merely await more equitable distribution. Her indignation grows with her realization that this is no audience before whom “to unfold the sage/ And serious doctrine of Virgin¬ ity”—such as “our sage and serious poet Spenser,” A 311, taught—though she could cause an earthquake with her “sacred vehemence,” 795, if she went on. Comus has an aside that ad¬ mits to her power, but he still proffers the cup, which the brothers now rush in and break. Comus escapes, leaving the Lady spell-bound to the enchanted chair: the Spirit has to summon up Sabrina, ever “swift/ To aid a Virgin,” 856. After mystic triple sprinklings by that goddess, the Lady is free to rise. The Spirit gives due thanks and guides —“while Heaven lends us grace,” 938 —the three young persons to their father’s castle, where there is a coun¬

try dance and a formal representation. In his epilogue the Spirit sings of the “happy climes,” 977, to which he is now returning, the realm of adonis and cupid and psyche. The last six lines show the way to salvation. concent Concord, Mus 6. (1645 has “con¬ tent.” ) concoct(ion) Digest (ion), v 412; CG 225; D 367; E 289; A 309. concocted Cooked, vi 514. confections, discussive Dissolving 265.

CG

Confessor, Edward the (1002-1066) “That Saxon king,” D 375. “We never read of any English King but one that was a Confessor; and his name was Edward,” K 244. Son of Ethelred the Unready; suc¬ cessor of Hardecanute; son-in-law of Godwin. Canonized 1161. His sym¬ bolic sword. Ten 24; ID 440 ff. K 159; H 66; ID 467 ff. etc. Faults, MS 244. confessors Those who in the early church suf¬ fered (short of martyrdom) for con¬ fessing their faith, R 11; An 120; CG 211; Sm 324, 327; Ten 52. confine with Border upon, ii 97. conflagrant Burning together, xii 548. conglobed Gathered into a sphere, vii 239. Conglobing, 292. Congo

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sweet medicines,

In Milton’s day a wide area that em-

A Milton Dictionary

braced most of western Africa south of Guinea; the governor of angola was a deputy of the king of Congo, xi 401.

but scandalous night of interruption” (in masson’s view a reference to the two-week usurpation of Richard’s par¬ liament and government by Fleetwood and other army officers known, from conjured their usual place of meeting, as the Literally, sworn together in a con¬ Wallingford House party; however. spiracy, ii 693. Smart, Grierson, and Wolfe see an allusion to Cromwell’s military dicta¬ conniving torship). May they now “deliver us Closing the eyes, winking at, x 624. . . . from the oppressions of a simonious decimating clergy,” i.e. a clergy conscience that demands a tithe or tenth of the See Sonnet XXII. people’s income. “The corruption of consectary teachers” is “most commonly the ef¬ fect of hire.” The first hireling was “The explication of some property, Judas, the second simon magus. The usually deduced from a definition,” present-day ministers under the gos¬ (Log 9) T 100, 102, 106. pel, “being neither priests nor Levites, Considerations/ Touching/ The like¬ . . . can have no just title or pretense liest means to remove/Hirelings/ to tithes.” Resist those who “by their out of the church./ Wherein is also wilful obstinacy and desire of filthy discourc'd/Of/Tithes,/Church-fees,/ lucre” would argue the contrary. (MilChurch-revenues;/And whether any ton was arguing against “a late hot maintenance / of ministers can be querist for tithes,” willjam prynne, settl'd/by law./ author of A Gospel Plea (Interwoven with a Rational and Legal) for the The author J.M. This sequel to A Lawfulness and Continuance of the Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiasti¬ cal Causes (“the former treatise” of Ancient Settled Maintenance and Tithes of the Ministers of the Gospel, the opening words after the signed 1653, and Ten Considerable Queries preface To the Parliament) was out about Tithes, 1659, and made use of six months later, August, 1659. Mean¬ one of prynne’s sources, henry spelwhile, in May, Richard Cromwell had man’s Concilia, Deer eta, Leges, Conabdicated and the Long Parliament, stitutiones, in re Ecclesiarum Orbis the “Rump,” had been reconstituted. Britanniae, 1639.) Nor do such serv¬ In June a petition for the abolition of ices as baptism call for special fees. tithes was referred to a committee, Milton’s scheme seems to call for selfand other petitions to the same effect had come from “many thousands best supporting congregational or itinerant preachers, “brought up to a compe¬ affected both to religion and to this tence of learning and to an honest your return” (“To the Parliament”). trade.” There will also be alms from, After pointing, as in the previous as the History of the Waldenses puts pamphlet, to his services against salit, “the good people whom we teach.” MAsrus, Milton goes on to greet warm¬ An expensive university training is a ly the Rump as “the authors and best patrons of religious and civil liberty perverted and needless luxury, in short “scholastical trash.” “Neither that ever these islands brought forth,” speak I this in contempt of learning welcoming their return “after a short

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Jus Graeco-Romanum, Frankfurt, 1596, Book II).

or the ministry, but hating the com¬ mon cheats of both.”

leunclavius,

consistory

Constantius II

Possibly, like conclave (i 795), an ironic reference to a high gathering in the Roman Catholic church, PR 1, 42. R 36.

(317-61) Second son of Constantine and Fausta, emperor from 337, R 25; H 87; ID 252.

consort

(d. 421) Made emperor of the West by his brother-in-law honorius, only to die at Ravenna after reign of seven months. Placidia threatened to divorce him unless a certain magician whom she disliked were made away with, D 479.

Constantius III

Harmony, IP 145; N 132. Mus 27 plays both on the “concert” meaning of the word and the Latin consortium, society. Constance On the Rhine, site of the Council, 1414-18, that denounced wycuffe and hus, K 297.

consubstantiation See

LUTHERAN ( S ).

conveiance (conveyance)

Constantine the Great (280P-337) The first Christian Ro¬ man emperor (from 306; cf. Sm 357) is not accorded the conventional ad¬ miration: R 10, 21 ff. (the prelates "extol Constantine because he extolled them,” 23). dante, petrarch, chauceh quoted 26-8; An 169; K 230. Com¬ parison with Charles, K 261; ID 252. His gifts to the church, the famous and disputed Donations, deplored, e.g.: Constantine, "out of his zeal thinking he could be never too liber¬ ally a nursing father of the church, might be not unfitly said to have either overlaid it or choked it in the nursing,” H 48; “your Constantinian silver,” An 141.

Low cunning, Sm 324: D 369. conventicle A religious meeting of any of the sects, dissenters from the established church, whose services were banned, A 332. conversation Often used in the divorce tracts to mean association on terms of inti¬ macy, D 382, 391, 393; T 101; M 53; etc. Cf. conversing, E 278. convince(d) Overcome in argument, PR 3, 3; C 792; P 86. cope

Constantinople Reference, P 85, to canon of the Council of CHALCEDON.

Mantle, especially a priest’s, worn at services, e.g. K 110, 197; B 136; figurative, i 345; iv 992; vi 215.

Constantinus Leo

copesmate

Leo III, the Isaurian, Eastern Ro¬ man Ernperor 717-41. Forced Caliph Suleiman to give up siege of Con¬ stantinople. Author of Ecloga Legum, 740. Ten 24; same quot. CB 174 (from

Adversary, Col 266. copyhold Land occupied by tenure. R 65; H 87.

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Corah (Korah)

Corinthian brass

Leader of the famous rebellion against his cousins moses and aaeon in the wilderness; through an earth¬ quake he and his followers “perished from among the congregation” (Num. xvi, 33), R 31; Ten 6; BN 162.

Extreme effrontery, in reference to the excellent brass (bronze) made anciently in Corinth, SD 248.

coral

cormorant

Corinthian laity Reference to the profligacy of that Greek town, Sm 305.

Literally, “sea-raven,” iv 196, like the vulture (iii 431) an established symbol of voraciousness.

A teething toy, Sm 328. Corallaeis Reference to a barbarous people of Lower Moesia, on the Danube, on the coast of the Black Sea, of whose visits to tomis ovid in his exile com¬ plained, EL VII 19.

Cornish rebels As J. R. Green writes under date of 1549, “The Comishmen refused to receive the new service “because it is like a Christmas game,’ ” K 220.

Corasius of Toulouse (1513-72) Distinguished French jurist slain in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, T 222, 229.

cornucopia Pun on the etymology, abundance of horns, Sm 329. Coronides

Cordelia The story of the daughters of Lear (Leir) is given its due, B 18-21, and the youngest daughter is found “worthy,” though rebelled against by “her two sisters’ sons, not bearing that a kingdom should be governed by a woman.” cordial

AESCULAPIUS,

EL II 10.

corporal Cloth, CG 262 (named for the Body-corpus—of the Lord). corporal rind Body', G 664. corpse

Pertaining to the heart (cor), viii 466.

A living body, x 601. corse

Corineus

Dead body In 30.

In rejected line 160 of L: “by the fable of Corineus old”; “Corineida,” Man 46. “To Corineus Cornwall . . . fell by lot, the rather by him liked for that the hugest giants in rocks and caves were said to lurk still there; which kind of monsters to deal with was his old exercise,” B 14.

Corus The NW wind, NS 53. corybcnt A frenzied reveler, priest of the goddess cybele, SD 62. Corydon

Corinth(ians) CG 211, 211, see

clement of rome.

A rustic L’A 83.

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A Milton Dictionary

even afterwards (its Parliamentary opposite was Mercurius Britanicus), A 320.

Cosbi (Cozbi ) see

phine(h)as.

Costobarus Brother-in-law of D 479.

cousenage (cozenage)

herod the great,

Pun K 87 on (1) deception and (2) relative—the king as cousinfather—of his people.

cote (coat) and conduct Taxes levied for clothing and mov¬ ing army recruits within a country, A 346.

cozened (cosen'd) Deceived, C 737.

Cotytto

Crab

Thracian goddess worshipped with nocturnal orgiastic rites, C 129 (cf. juvenal. Sat. II, 91-2); SD 80, 152.

Cancer, the sign of the Zodiac the sun enters June 21, x 675. Craig, John (1512P-1600) Scottish reformer, “learned divine” Ten 28, colleague of knox. Having been a Dominican friar, he fled a death sentence by the Inquisition in 1559.

couch their spears Fix the spears in the rest set at the breast, ii 536. coucht Concealed, PR 1, 97.

crambe

coulters Plough-blades, A 328 to 1 Sam. xiii, 19-20).

Crambo, a rhyme-matching game between two sides. An 124.

(reference

cranks Conceits, clever phrases L’A 27; D 375.

coure To cover, R 26.

Cranmer, Thomas

course, by By appointment, C 25. courtesy or convenience Law-terms, by tenure or by written agreement Ten 11.

(1489-1556) Archbishop of Canter¬ bury from 1533 till accession of Queen Mary, under whom he was burned at the stake for heresy. His martyrdom not sufficient reason to ad¬ mire him, R 8-10. T 231.

court-fucus Crantor

Paint or cosmetic, K 72.

(late 4th cent. b.c.) Greek philoso¬ pher; first commentator on plato. See

court-leet A district court of record presided over by the local lord or his steward, D 468.'

CHRYSIPPUS.

Crantz (Krantz), Albert

court-libel, that continued

(c. 1450-1517) SD 56, 276.

The royalist Mercurius Aulicus was a weekly 1642-5 and continued to make an underground appearance

Crantz(ius), George

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German historian,

A doctor of theology whose name

A Milton Dictionary

appears at the end of an address to the reader prefaced to vlacq’s Hague combined edition (Oct. 1654) of Milton’s Defensio Secunda and more’s reply, Fides Publica. He at¬ tacks Milton for his spleen and prosaic style and divorce doctrine, and partly defends More, SD 54-8, 64-6, 94, 118, 242, 276. CRANTZIAN, 124. Crapulia The land of wine-bibbing. An 138. Crashaw, Richard (c. 1613-49) Despite resemblances between C 381-2 and “Wishes to his (supposed) Mistress,” 79-81, xi 561 and “Music’s Duel,” and the coinci¬ dences of Crashaw’s version of Book I of La Strage degli Innocenti by marini (see In Quintum Novembris; also Mansus), there is no firm evi¬ dence of interaction with this Ro¬ manist and metaphysical poet, who was at Cambridge 1631-43. While it is interesting to compare the two Nativity Hymns, perhaps Milton is most like Crashaw in Pas 48-9 (cf. “Upon the Death of a Gentleman,”— “Sententious showers, O, let them fall,/Their cadence is rhetorical”); also Ci 7-8. crasis

creek Inlet of the sea, vii 399. Cremona's trump Reference, Pas 26, to the Christiad, an epic in Latin on the life of Christ by Marco Girolamo Vida (1480?1566), who was bom in Cremona, a city on the left bank of the Po. Creon Brother of Jocasta, succeeded the unfortunate Oedipus as king of thebes; appears in all three Oedipus plays by sophocles, EL I 46; ID 310-12. cressets Hanging lanterns, i 728. Crete An island in the Mediterranean, SE of Greece, of which Dionysius Periegetes wrote: “Honored Crete, nurse of great Zeus, wide and rich and stocked with cattle, above which is [Mt.] Ida,” i 514. pliny wrote of its wines, PR 4, 118. An 152; A 300. Creusa Daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, mother of ion by apollo, JR 60. crew

A characteristic mixture of consti¬ tutional elements, as of the blood, D 418.

Usually pejorative in Milton, of a disorderly band, i 51; C 653.

Crassus, Lucius

crime

(140-91 b.c. ) Roman orator and politician; a speaker in cicero’s De Oratore (see specifically 2, 43, 182), SD 162, 174-6; ID 182.

In the Latin sense of a formal ac¬ cusation or charge, ix 1181; x 127; T

68. crisped

Crassus, Marcus Licinius

Ruffled, rippled C 984; iv 237.

(115P-53 b.c.) Financial backer in the First Triumvirate, ID 288.

Crispinus

craze

Ridiculed by Horace (e.g. Sat. I, i, 120) for having written much rather than well; nicknamed “the

Break to pieces, xii 210.

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A Milton Dictionary

cruse

Babbler,” Crispinus was supposed to have produced an abundance of bad verses on the Stoic philosophy, ID 38.

Cruet, a vessel for table or eucharistic use, A 332. cry

Crispus, Flavius Julius

Pack, ii 654.

(d. 326) Son of Constantine by the concubine Minervina; his military exploits aroused a fatal jealousy in his step-mother fausta, who per¬ suaded the Emperor to put him to death, R 23.

Ctesias (5th cent, b.c.) Greek historian whose Persica, by using Persian sources, aimed to discredit the his¬ tory of HERODOTUS, ID 298.

Critias

Ctesiphon (Tesiphon)

The dialogue, which survives only as a fragment, in which plato de¬ scribes the legendary lost island or continent of Atlantis, Sm 294.

Ancient capital of parthia and of Babylonia, on the Tigris river, near seleucia, PR 3, 292, 300.

criticisms

A measure originally representing the length of the forearm from the elbow (Latin cubitum) to the tip of the longest finger; roughly 20 inches, xi 730.

cubit

Fine points, A 313. Critolaus (2nd cent, b.c.) Greek Peripatetic (Aristotelian) philosopher, A 300.

Cullen Cologne, on the Rhine, T 113; H 64.

crofts Pastures, C 531.

cullionly

Cromwell, Oliver

Mean, vile, Col 261.

see Sonnet XVI.

cummin (cumin)

Cronian Sea

See Matt, xxiii, 23 D 436.

Arctic Ocean, x 290.

Cupid

crop-full With a full belly, L’A 113. crow-toe The crowfoot or wild hyacinth, L 143 (cf. 106) (“tufted” describes the plant when in flower). crude

In Milton’s English poetry named only in C (but see iv 763, with its reference to the gold—inspiringarrow, cf. EL VII 47, as contrasted with the lead—repelling: Meta. I, 468) “frivolous” 445 versus mystic 1004. Prominent in the love elegy VII, 3 ff.; cf. EL I, 60; V, 97; VI, 52.

Unripe (Latin), L 3. Indigestible, C 479; CG 225 (cf. crudity).

Curetes

crudity

Cretan priests in the temple of rhea that clashed their weapons in a warlike dance (and thereby pre-

Attack of indigestion, E 283; R 13.

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vented Cronus from hearing the cries of the infant Zeus when the father was looking for him to destroy him), SD 284.

go” (XVIII, 260), in the Aegean, with at the center.

delos

cycle A celestial sphere, viii 84.

Curii see

curius,

Cyclops

CG 273.

curious Well-wrought, iv 242; CG 190. Curius Manius Curius Dentatus (fl. 290272 b.c.), a Roman general whose name became proverbial for frugality and unshakable honesty and patriot¬ ism, PR 2, 446; FE #4,'14; 2D 116.

One of a cruel race of one-eyed giant shepherds dwelling in Sicily, of whom polyphemus, whom Odys¬ seus blinded and outwitted, was the chief, T 174; 2D 58 (the Dedication by A. Vlacq to the Regii Sanguinis Clamor had applied to Milton virgil’s line about polyphemus, Aen. Ill, 658); SD 122-4. Cydonius

Curtius, M.

Cretan,

After whom the Lacus Curtius in the Roman forum was named, be¬ cause when a great chasm appeared (362 b.c.) and the soothsayers de¬ clared it could be filled up only by sacrificing Rome’s greatest treasure, he answered that Rome possessed no greater treasure than a brave and gallant citizen, and rushed forward on his steed in full armor “to leap into the midst and be no more seen,” CG 220.

859;

ovid,

EL VII 37 (cf. Aen. XII, Meta. VIII, 22).

Cyllene hoar (Cf. Aen. VIII, 139, “gelidus ver¬ tex”), a mountain in Arcadia where hermes was bom Arc 98. Cyllenius HERMES Or MERCURY,

EL II 13.

Cynic see

DIOGENES.

cynosure

Cusco in Peru

(Greek for the dog’s tail) The con¬ stellation of the Lesser Bear, contain¬ ing the pole-star, by which the Ty¬ rians or Phoenicians sailed: C 342; hence, an object of attraction L’A 80.

Cuzco, Inca capital, xi 408. cutting off CP 17, see Gal. v, 12. Cybele

Cynthia

The Phrygian rhea, mother of the gods, Prol VI 228; EL V 126; Arc 212 (the figure 100 comes from Aen. VI, 787), of “towered” crown in that, the earth mother, Magna Mater, she was the basis for, or instructress in, build¬ ing fortified cities. Her priests were emasculated, SD 84.

Cynthius

Cyclades

cypress

diana as goddess of the moon, IP 59; N 103; EL V 46.

apollo, named after Mt. Cynthus on the island of delos, his and his sister’s birthplace, Man 55.

“Islands . . . now called Archipela¬

81-

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(After

Cyprus )

lawn crape, IP 35.

A Milton Dictionary

Cyrenaic(k) rout

cypress bud

CG 274, THAT LIBERTINE SCHOOL OF A 299. Which exalted pleas¬ ure as the chief good.

A symbol of mourning, EM 22.

cyrene,

Cyprian, St. (d. 258) Bishop and martyr of Carthage, beheaded under Valerian. “Holy man,” R 29 admired for his “meekness,” 18 and “personal excel¬ lence,” An 117, and his Epistles fre¬ quently cited R 10, 16, 28, 30, 31. An 118, CG 258; M 31; H 86. Author¬ ship doubt CB 206. Besides formal treatises (Milton apparently used the 1593 Golartius Paris edition), some of his 65 letters (the number is raised by counting epistles to him and spurious epistles) amount to short practical treatises making clear his ideals as a bishop.

Cyrene A center of Greek learning in northern Africa, modern Libya, lucan described a sandstorm in the region, ii 904. (Pharsalia, IX, 463 ff.). E 287; A 299. Cyriack see Sonnets XXI, XXII. Cyril, St. (376-444) Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 and vigorous warrer against opposing opinions, ID 258. Cyrus the Great

Cyprians see

Cyprus,

(600P-529 b.c. ) Founder of the Persian Empire. One of the “Kings” of xii 38. PR 3, 33, 284. R 53; CG 185; BN 155; ID 220, 300; 2D 216.

K 232.

Cypris Venus, EL III 20; VII 48; NS 63.

Cytherea Cyprius

Venus, supposed to have risen from the sea-foam near the island of Cythera, EL V, 112.

cupm, EL VII, 11. Cyprus

Cytherea's son

Island south of Asia Minor; asso¬ ciated with Venus, EL I 84. K 230.

AENEAS,

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-

ix 19.

D Dacian (Dacico) A “barbarus” people FE #7, 28, troublesome to all who tried to con¬ quer them, equated with the Danes in B 25, 197. The later of two Ro¬ man provinces, Dacia Aureliani, lay south of the Danube. Dagon “Sea monster, upward man/And downward fish,” i 462 f., deity of the Philistines who “fell flat and sham’d his worshippers” (cf. 1 Sam. v, 4), “That twice-batter’d god of Pales¬ tine,” N 199, had a famous temple at gaza, SA 13, 437, 440, 450, 462, 468, 478, 861, 1145, 1151, 1311, 1360, 1370, 1463. CD 1, 5. Judges xvi had been listed as a possible subject, MS 236.

covert allusion to Joseph Mede, fellow of Christ’s College, who died in 1638 at age 52. Damasco Italian form of Damascus, used per¬ haps because ariosto laid a tourna¬ ment there of Christian and pagan knights, among them the king of “Marocco,” i 584. Damascus In Syria, EL IV 116 (see 2 Kings vii, 1-7); i 468; BN (see 2 Kings xvi,

10). Damasippus Object of separate satire and juvenal, ID 44.

by Horace

damasked Variegated (like the raised figures on damask silk), iv 334.

Dalila see Samson Agonistes. Daimatius

Damasus

(d. 337) Nephew of Constantine, who created him Caesar in 335. He received thrace, Macedonia, and Achaia as his portion of the empire, but was put to death when his uncle died, T 215.

(c. 304-84) Pope from 366, in a contested election. The Emperor Valentinian I had to intervene after bloodshed between his supporters and those of ursicinus, who had been chosen pope in the basilica of Julius, ID 258.

Dama Typical slave name (from see cadmus ), 2D 80.

Horace,

Damiata I.e. Damietta, in lower Egypt, ii 593.

Damaetas, old L 36, a pastoral name in Theocri¬ and virgil, sometimes taken as a

Damon's Epitaph

tus

83-

-

see Epitaphium Damonis.

A Milton Dictionary

Dan

Dante

1. Northernmost city of Palestine, i 484; PR 3, 431; R 39 (1 Kings xii, 27-33). 2. One of the twelve tribes of Israel, SA 332, 976, 1436.

(1265-1321) Milton’s references to the great Italian poet are few and traceable influences slight. He pairs him with petrarch; “the two famous renowners of Beatrice and laura who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, dis¬ playing sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression,” Sm 303; cf. FE #8, 34. He uses him polemically, translating Inferno, xix, 115-17, “in English blank verse,” R 26, and re¬ ferring to Par. xx, 55-60. Cf. FE #10, 50. CB 162 shows that Milton used the edition by Bernardino Daniello, Venice, 1568. For Purg. see S XIII. macaulay as a prelude to aligning the two declared, “The only poem of modern times which can be com¬ pared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy,” but E. E. Kellett replied, “Dante and Milton, as poets, ought never to be compared. . . . Milton, treating his subject . . . con¬ cretely, and as it were historically, finds it less, and not more, necessary than Dante to describe his scenes with precision and particularity. . . . Dante, ... to whom the thing symbol¬ ised is all in all, is constrained by the very nature of his purpose to describe the symbol precisely and clearly, in order that his readers may form (within the limits prescribed by the character of the theme) clear ideas of the thing symbolised. Thus the very mysticism of Dante leads him to a certain almost prosy defi¬ nition, whereas the unmystical Milton often shows a Shelleyan vagueness.” It was Tennyson’s view that “Milton’s vague hell is much more awful than Dante’s hell marked off into divi¬ sions.”

Danaus King of Argos, the story of whose 50 daughters is told in R, 5: “These daughters by appointment of Danaus on the marriage-night having mur¬ dered all their husbands, except Linceus, whom his wife’s loyalty saved, were by him at the suit of his wife their sister not put to death, but turned out to sea in a ship un¬ manned.” aeschylus’ The Suppliants quoted, ID 306 ff. Danaw The Danube, i 353. Dandolo, Enrico (1108-1205) Prince of Venice, blinded by Manuel, the emperor of Constantinople, 2D 66. Byron revived the fame of “blind old Dandolo” in Childe Harold, Canto IV, xii. Danegelt, four nobles of A tax originally levied to raise forces against—or to bribe—the Danish invaders, continued as a tax on land, A 346. A noble was a coin worth 6s 8d. Daniel Jesus dreams that “as a guest” with the prophet he partakes of “pulse,” PR 2, 278; the “subtle fiend” also mentions this instance, 329; cf. Daniel i, 8 ff. “Skilful in . . . learn¬ ing,” A 306 is Daniel i, 17. Ten 59: see Bel. ID 198, 298. Danite(s) ix 1059; “Chorus of” in SA; K 260. See Dan.

Danubius

84-

-

Variant of Danube (cf. i 353), the

A Milton Dictionary

river that flows 2000 miles from Baden to the Black Sea, PR 4, 79. Daphne “Root-bound, that fled Apollo,-’ C 662, changed into a laurel. Pursuer named as belial, PR 2, 187. “Daphne by Orontes,” the river in Syria, iv 273, was a “sweet grove” with a temple of Apollo and the “inspir’d/ Castalian spring.” Daphnis Neatherd mourned by Thyrsis in the 1st Idyl of theochitus, ED 1, 31. Dardanian Trojan. EL I 73; ED 162. Darien The Isthmus of Panama, which “barred” the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, ix 81. Darius the Great (Hystaspis) King of Persia 521-486 b.c., son-inlaw of CYRUS THE GREAT; took Over the kingdom by killing the usurper “the false smerdis.” Oblique reference, xii 348. K 291 If.: see Apocrypha, 1 Esdras, iii, iv. Darius the Mede According to Ahasuerus and lon; succeeded throne (ibid, v, Historically of tion, ID 298.

Daniel ix, 1, son of conqueror of Baby¬ Belshazzar on the 31). Favored Daniel. uncertain identifica¬

darkling In the dark, iii 39. Darwen

Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619-75) Italian scholar who cru¬ saded for classical linguistic purity in Italian, helped edit Vocabolario della Crusca. His Vite de Pittori Antichi appeared the same year as PL. Offered in Latin prose an “admirationis tributum” prefixed as one of the Testimonia to Milton’s Latin poems, 1645, (I, 164-6) and referred to in ED 137 2D 122. Milton ad¬ dressed him one of the longest and most interesting of his Latin letters, #10 (holograph in the N. Y. Public Library), April 21, 1647 (conveyed by george thomason, by Smart’s identification), on regretfully learn¬ ing that three from Dati had been lost, hanford speaks of Milton as under “the pressure of novel and exacting household cares” during the years 1646-9, and this letter contains a cri de coeur on the part of a man besieged in his Barbican house, crowded by in-laws and an 8-monthold baby, “gloomy master of an un¬ comfortable household” ( masson ), struggling with property, civil evils, and the return to tutoring. Milton looks nostalgically back at his Floren¬ tine visit and endeavors to be dis¬ arming about the asperity against the Roman Pope Dati will find in his Latin poems. Two replies from Dati survive (XII, 296 ff.) the second acknowledging receipt of the “eruditissime Poesie” and announcing his appointment to the chair in classics in the Florentine Academy. Daunian Italian

see

JR 10.

Daunus

see Sonnet XVI. Dathan

(apulian),

Father of Turnus, CE II, 3. Davanzati, Bernardo (1529-1606) Whose Scisma d'lng-

corah.

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A Milton Dictionary

hilterra con altre Operette was pub¬ lished in Florence, 1638, possibly while Milton was there. The permissives to print fit only this edition, A 303. The book is the source of the “vicar of hell” reference. David Prominent prophetically at the end of PL xii 321 ffi, 347, 357; in PR 1, 240; 2, 439; 3, 153, etc. Charles versus David, K 103, 162, 258, etc. David see

riccio.

Davus Comic slave in plautus and (e.g. Andria), Sm 293.

Ter¬

ence

day-spring Dawn (cf. Job xxxviii, 12), v 139; vi 521; SA 11. day-star The sun, L 168 (“diurnal star”, x 1069). De Brass, Henry Evidently a young foreigner who had sought Milton out, conversed with him, and obtained the advice contained in two letters from West¬ minster, July 15 and Dec. 16, 1657 (FE #23, 26), the first on sallust as the best Latin historian, the sec¬ ond continuing the subject of the qualities an historian should have. De Doctrina Christiana (Of Christian Doctrine). The manuscript of this, what masson calls Milton’s “solemn and last bequest to all Christendom,” remained unpub¬ lished until 1825. Robert Lemon, Deputy Keeper of the State Papers, encountered it in 1823 in the Old

State Paper Office at Whitehall, and George IV employed the Rev. Charles R. Sumner (1790-1874), who became Bishop of Winchester in 1827, to is¬ sue the Latin text and a translation in separate volumes, both of which appeared in 1825 (Cambridge Uni¬ versity Press), as did an American edition of the latter, while a reprint of the former came out in Braun¬ schweig, 1827. Sumner’s translation, revised, was included in the Bohn edition. The only combination of text and Sumner translation since has been Columbia Milton, XIV-XVII. The manuscript, now in the Public Records Office, has 735 numbered pages, of which 1-196 (the first 14 chapters of Book I) are in the hand of Daniel Skinner, the rest, apart from interpolations, in the hand of Jeremie Picard (cf. S XXIII), the latter fact leading to the conclusion that the work was primarily com¬ pleted by 1658-60. Skinner, a Cam¬ bridge student who was a relative of cyriack skinner, started to recopy in preparation for publication after Mil¬ ton’s death by Daniel Elzevir in Amsterdam. But Elzevir was shocked by the heretical content, which he “judged fitter to be suppressed than published,” and that was what hap¬ pened. Skinney threatened with seri¬ ous consequences by Isaac Barrow, master of Trinity College where he held a fellowship, if he persisted in any plan to “publish any writing mis¬ chievous to the Church,” relinquished the manuscript to Sir Joseph William¬ son, Secretary of State, whereupon it disappeared from view for 150 years. Its publication was the occasion of Macaulay’s famous essay. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), the Boston apostle of Unitarianism, was happy to welcome into the antitrini-

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A Milton Dictionary

tarian fold a trinity of minds, “the three greatest and noblest minds of modem times . . . Milton, Locke, and Newton. ’ Generally, there was shock that a seeming pillar of Christian orthodoxy had fallen. A reader in the Christian Journal lamented, “Once I knew Milton only, or chiefly, as a great poet . . . devoted to the cause of pure and undefiled religion: at least 1 saw nothing in any of his per¬ formances to lead me to question his soundness in the faith. But now what shall I say?” For De Doctrina Chris¬ tiana expounds Milton’s view of a graded Trinity, and shows him a mortalist or “soul-sleeper” (which his Adam was, x 782 ff.), an arminian, an anabaptist, a materialist (the world and all things were made out of the substance of God: creation was not “from nothing,” cf. i 10), an anti-Sabbatarian, and a defender of polygamy. The delicate problem since has been how far PL embodies these heterodoxies, whether, as Maurice Kelley is convinced, “the De Doc¬ trina should be decisive in any ques¬ tion of interpreting Milton’s epic.” Sumner, when the authorship was questioned, listed some 500 parallels with Milton’s English writings. Milton used Latin that he might reach “all the churches of Christ." He stoutly affirms in his introduction, “For my own part, I adhere to the Holy Scriptures alone—I follow no other heresy or sect.” He does not mind filling his "pages even to re¬ dundance” with quotations from the junius-tremellius Latin Bible (prob¬ ably the Geneva edition of 1630), for his is an attempt to deduce, without prejudices, a theology from the only legitimate source, “proving all things and holding fast that which is good.” The treatise is divided into two books, most space being taken up with Book

I, which is on the Knowledge of God, whereas II is on the Worship of God. Chapter V of I, “Praefatio de Filio Dei,” is the longest and the one that the author begins by admitting the difficulty of: it represents what has been variously and loosely called his arian or socinian or (least accurate) Sabellian position. The 50 chapters of the tract have headings indicating the topics systematically taken up, from the definition of Christian doc¬ trine and an outlining of the attributes of God to the private and “Public Duties towards our Neighbor.” Milton leaves little room for what an Anglican (not to say a Catholic) would call a church and a ministry, it being “competent to any believer whatever to preach the gospel” anywhere and administer sacraments, “provided he be furnished with the requisite gifts.” De Idea Platonica Quemadmodum Aristoteles Intellexit

(On the Platonic Idea as it was understood by Aristotle). 39 lines, iambic trimeter. Probably an aca¬ demic exercise, c. 1628-30 (1630-2, Parker), warton reported the poem “inserted at full length, as a specimen of unintelligible metaphysics, in a scarce little book, of universal bur¬ lesque, . . . about the year 1715,” a circumstance that gives recognition to the tongue-in-cheek quality of this set of questions and speculations as to where the eternal Idea or “archetypus” (22) of Man is to be found, if the muses or their mother or lazy Eternity know. Surely he does not lurk in jove’s brain. Does he wander in the stars, dwell in the moon, or wait for a body by lethe? Is he a giant? The wisest priests do not know. But plato, who exiled the poets from his Republic (III, 395-8; X, 595-607), ought to call them back or follow

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A Milton Dictionary them, since he is the greatest fabler himself, and responsible for the battle between the nominalists and the real¬ ists.

A Declaration or Letters Patents of the

Election of this present

of Poland John the

King

Third Elected

on the 22d of May last past. Anno Dom. 1674. Containing the Reasons

dear

of this Election, the great Vertues

“In the English of the period dear ‘is used of whatever touches us nearly either in love or hate, joy or sorrow’ ” (verity) L 6 (one meaning being dire).

and Merits of the said Serene Elect, His eminent Services in War, espe¬ cially

in

against

his the

last

great

Victory

Turks

and

Tartars,

whereof many Particulars are here related, not published before

dearn

Now faithfully translated from the Latin Copy. London, Printed for Brabazon Aylmer, at the Three Pigeons debel in Cornhil, 1674. July is a good guess To defeat in war, PR 4, 605. for the month of this anonymous pub¬ lication, which toland printed as Mil¬ Decan (Deccan) ton’s in 1698. Milton’s reasons for The peninsula of India south of the undertaking this translation in one of Narboda River, ix 1103. the last months of his life are obscurer than his reasons for translating bucer. decayed Aylmer was the printer who had ap¬ Sick, CG 252. proached the poet for his letters, in¬ cluding the State Letters, and, as Decemviral Laws masson notes, the present “document Laws formulated 451 b.c., on ple¬ is by no means a dry and formal beian demand, by ten new magis¬ affair but full of fervour, and with trates called decemviri, Prol VII 270. sentiments about popular rights and (Two laws being added, the term the nature of true sovereignty which Twelve Tables came into use.) it must have pleased Milton to present again, in any form, to his country¬ Decemviri men.” John III, Sobieski (1624-96), See above ID 372. son of Jakob or “James Sobietski, castellion [castellan] of Cracovia” (Kra¬ decent kow), so distinguished himself in the Latin sense of graceful, IP 36; iii defensive wars of Poland—which had 644; also, fitting, CG 187. suffered invasions of Swedes, Rus¬ sians, Tartars, and Turks—that he was decimating made “High marshal of the kingdom” Collecting tithes, the tax of one- in the year PL was published, 1667, and on the death of Michael Corybut tenth H 45. Wisniowiecki chosen king after one Decius of the nobles at the diet, Jablonowski, (201-51) In his short reign as Ro¬ was heard to cry, “Let a Pole rule man Emperor from 249 conducted over Poland.” His latest victory over especially cruel persecutions of the the Turks had been at Khotin a half year before. In 1683 he was to save Christians, A 307. Darn, CG 218.

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A Milton Dictionary

Vienna, in alliance with Charles of Lorraine, who had been a competitor for the Polish crown. Here was a hero who could be compared (and was) to Hercules and who succeeded to the throne by merit rather than birthright. The illustrious victories are enumer¬ ated, and so are the relatives. decretal(s) Reference to letter or rescript of the Pope determining some point in eccle¬ siastical law, R 58; H 74; D 505; T 219; Col 249. Dee (cf. Deva) “Ancient hallowed,” V 98, river flow¬ ing north into the Irish Sea and sepa¬ rating England and Wales, which “Britons long ygone Did call divine” (Faerie Queene IV, xi, 39), B 244. defend French, forbid, xi 86 xii 207; PR 2, 370. Oefensio Prima Published as Joannis Miltoni/ Angli/ Pro Populo Anglicano/ Defensio/ Contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasiij Defensionem Regiam. Londini, Typis Du Gardianis, Anno Domini 1651. Having at the request of the Council of State answered Eikon Basilike (printed by the now prisonreformed Dugard) with Eikonoklastes (cf. ID 8), the order went out on Jan. 8, 1650 “That Mr. Milton do pre¬ pare something in answer to the Book of salmasius, and when he hath done it bring it to the Council.” (cf. 6-8). Defensio Regia (see salmasius) had appeared in England in May, 1649, went through more than a dozen edi¬ tions between 1649 and 1652, could not be successfully suppressed at home, and in any case was damaging

the Commonwealth’s cause on the Continent. Milton spent his remaining eyesight—he refers to his poor health, 10—in preparing the longest of his Latin writings (apart from De Doctrina Christiana) and that of which he was proudest. The “noble task/ Of which all Europe talks from side to side” (S XXII, 12) was offered to the public Feb. 24, 1651, and a dozen more editions have been distinguished up through Utrecht, 1652. The next edition, the last in Milton’s lifetime, London 1658, has an added para¬ graph, 554-8. There are variations be¬ tween copies of the same edition. This costly, gigantic effort disappoints the modem reader in its vituperation and petty point-by point method of proce¬ dure, legalistic, outrageously personal, dully grammatical. (Hobbes professed to be unable to decide between the opponents whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst, and johnson commented, “No man forgets his original trade; the rights of na¬ tions, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them.”) As Mercurius Politicus, April, 1651, noted, Milton had to come down to salmasius’s level: “Some perhaps may find fault with the personal jerks therein; but the least review of salma¬ sius will shew what tuned the echo to such a key.” Milton was satisfied to “have prosperously, God so favoring me, defended the public cause of this Commonwealth to foreigners,” H 44 (cf. 2D 4; ID 554-6), and perhaps F. E. Hutchinson captures the author’s own attitude when he says, “In some true if incomplete sense he was de¬ livering to the world, in his first and second Defence of the English Peo¬ ple, that epic ‘doctrinal and exemplary to a nation’ [CG 237] to which he had early dedicated his powers.” The book was burned by the public executioner

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in Paris and Toulouse (cf. 2D 18890), and in England (with Eikonoklastes) at the Restoration. As salmasius’s book has a Preface and 12 chapters, so does Milton’s, but Milton begins by saying he hopes to avoid his adversary’s fatuousness and redundance, for defence of the com¬ monwealth and the actions that led to it is no mean undertaking. As salmas¬ ius’s title-page hints, this meddler was bribed with 100 Jacobuses by the king’s son. Even this mere gram¬ marian’s Latin is not good, as his use of “persona” proves (cf. 432). He is puerile and slavish, and goes back on his published anti-episcopal senti¬ ments of four years before, this pet¬ tifogging calumniator and rhetorican. The king was not the father, but the destroyer, of his country, and it has always been lawful to bring such a one to account. The great Protestant Reformers back this stand, salmasius would let a tyrant do what he feels like, but the Bible poses limits, as do JOSEPHUS, PHILO, ARISTOTLE, SULPITIUS

Roman writers, and the Rab¬ binical commentators are not on sal¬ masius’s side either, salmasius mis¬ interprets passages and contradicts himself, and blasphemes by suggest¬ ing that God is a tyrant. It is ridicuous to compare Charles to solomon. Nor are all things to be rendered unto Caesar, (salmasius is just a slave of his wife.) paul did not urge the Ro¬ mans to submit to nero. Roman his¬ tory shows that the source of power was the people. The church fathers offer the champion of tyranny no real assistance, salmasius only serves to remind the remaining monarchies that they are, by his view, the slaves to their kings. The kingdoms of the Jews show nothing to the craven point. Even if the primitive Christians were submissive, they are not good ex¬ severus,

amples, for they degenerated long be¬ fore Constantine. The law of God and the law of nature agree. Resist¬ ance to tyrants may be found through¬ out history, beginning with the Egyp¬ tians. The Greeks (including the tragedians) and Romans are sum¬ moned as witnesses. It can be shown that kings have their equals, who can judge them (lex rex). On Eng¬ lish law and such a question as the origin of parliaments, salmasius is confused, the interloper (whose bandying about of “hundreds” calls for satiric verses). The king is not above parliament, that supreme coun¬ cil of the nation, nor was the king granted an army or revenue to make war on his people. Chapters X-XII deal with Charles’s condemnation and final conduct and the legitimacy of the charges against him. Milton ends by congratulating his countrymen on having freed themselves from tyranny and superstition, “the two greatest evils in the life of men,” but warns that they must now conquer certain base passions to deserve their liberty and prove their slanderer wrong. Defensio Secunda

Title-page: Joannis Miltoni / Angli / Pro / Populo Anglicano / Defensio / Secunda. Contra infamem libellum anonymum / cui titulus, / Regii san¬ guinis clamor ad / caelum adversus parri / cidos Anglicanos. (John Milton, Englishman, his Second Defence of the English People, against the Infamous Anonymous Libel of which the title is The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides.) This appeared May 30, 1654, nearly two years after the work it answers. A reprint came out at The Hague about October (with More’s Fides Publica—See Pro Se Defensio and Milton’s complaint

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there, 44, on the corruption of the rising in wrath and dignity against the text) from the press of the printer enemies of truth.” of the Regii, Adrian Vlacq, whom The original rumor was that the Milton attacks and who takes oc¬ Regii was the work of Alexander casion to answer Milton in a preface, More or Morns, and it is on this basis “Typographus Pro Se Ipso.” Milthat Milton proceeds, although More ton says, SD 12-14, 56, 164, that he made indirect efforts to ward off the was told by the Council of State that coming blow by conveying word that it was his duty to answer the Regii he was not the author. He was, how¬ libel, but his health was poor at the ever, instrumental in the publication time, his wife and son had lately died, and wrote some of the early portion. and he was just beginning to adjust Aubrey reports Milton’s attitude when himself to his blindness. Moreover, he it was urged “that the book was writ was reserving his strength pending by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was the ever rumored appearance of a ail one, he having writ it, it should go reply from his chief adversary, salinto the world. One of them was as masius, 2D 20 (who died in 1653, bad as the other.” Milton was prob¬ leaving a fragment that had to wait ably not in fact told who the real for the Restoration before “his Dis¬ author was (cf. SD 10; FE #14 62) — section and Confutation of the Dia¬ that seems to have been a longbolical Rebel Milton in his impious guarded secret—but Aubrey is right in Doctrines of Falsehood” was made the attribution. Peter Du Moulin available). He had delegated to his (1600-84), elder son of the French nephew john Phillips the Responsio Protestant theologian of the same to another attacker, John Rowland, name, acknowledged authorship of author of Pro Rege et Populo Anglithe Regii in 1670: “I looked on in cano Apologia, contra Johannis Polysilence, and not without a soft pragmatici (alias Miltoni Angli) Dechuckle, at seeing my bantling laid at fensionem (An Apology for the King another man’s door, and the blind and and the English People, against the furious Milton fighting and slashing Defence by that Jack Fac-Totum, the air, like the hoodwinked horsealias Milton the Englishman). The combatants in the old circus, not Regii begins and ends with an attack knowing by whom he was struck and on Milton, with in between an as¬ whom he struck in return.” D. D. sault on the leaders of the Common¬ Leyden and Cambridge, like Milton wealth, all in violent terms. It is in he took opposite sides from his many ways more effective—if shorter brother in the Civil War and suffered accordingly, being ousted from his —than the Defensio Regia of salliving in Yorkshire, whereupon he masius, and the same holds true for wrote his Apologie de la Religion ReMilton’s answers, the Defensio Seformee, et cle la Monarchie et de la cunda having a force and passion and personal interest unique among the Monarchic et de VEglise d’Angleterre, contre les Calomnies de la Ligue ReLatin works. In the words of hanford, belle de quelques Anglois et Ecossois. “In the First Defense Milton’s ardor is in part factitious; he is more the Ten years later it was More who suf¬ fered the barbs that belonged by controversialist, using the accepted weapons of the day. In the Second rights to Du Moulin, More (1616-70), whose father was a Presbyterian Defense, he is John Milton himself,

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A Milton Dictionary

Scotch minister who had settled in Cashes and married a French wife. More’s career to date is traced con¬ temptuously, 2D 30 ff. He became professor of Greek at Geneva at 20, succeeded Spanheim in the chair of theology, remaining at Geneva until 1649, when, Milton says, he was forced to leave because of charges of adultery. He secured a post at Middelburg by Salmasius’s influence, and rewarded his friend by making preg¬ nant his servant-maid Pontia. This scandal Milton exhausts both in 2D and SD, as he does puns on Morus’s fertile name (two Greek meanings being “fool” and “mulberry”—re the latter there is an obscene jest about engrafting a mulberry in a fig and getting syco-Mores 32). 2D is like a piece of oratory (cf. Areopagitica) and begins with what is formally called an exordium (12; cf. SD 86) that reviews Milton’s achieve¬ ment against Salmasius and his coun¬ trymen’s blows for liberty. He has a better subject than ancient orators (cf. the attitude vis a vis previous epic poets in PL, i 15; iii 39; ix 27 if.), before the forum of Europe, and has been aided by the divine favor. The lies of another adversary call for re¬ futation, now that salmasius has ex¬ pired in disgrace and chagrin. But this is a nobody, who, moreover, makes no distinction between a king and a ty¬ rant. The author of the Regii can be ferreted out, is known to scandal, is one of a conspiratorial triumvirate, the others being salmasius, and Vlaccus the bookseller who signed the pre¬ liminary letter to Charles’s son. The mackerels—10 lines of verse (56) de¬ clare—ought to be rejoicing at the book-wrappings that await them. Having been compared by his adver¬ sary to a cyclops, Milton defends his appearance as not ugly and rolls out

a list of great men who were blind (cf. PL iii, 33 ff.). Let the slanderers cease their revilings: through his infirmities he shall be perfected. As for More’s two sets of verses, one in praise of salmasius, the other against Milton— making him “worse than Cromwell,” they are vile, even metrically. Nothing can convert the grammarian salma¬ sius into a great man. We know what Christina came to think. As for the charge that Milton was expelled from Cambridge, this calls for an auto¬ biographical account, 112 ff., begin¬ ning with birth in London and worthy parentage, and on to acclamation in the Italian travels and the first pamphlets of a patriotic and thought¬ ful citizen, and ending with official service in the government. Following an impatient review of old false charges against the Commonwealth, and the judges of the king ( bradshaw is singled out), and an explanation of how Bishop juxon interpreted Charles I’s words on the scaffold, “Remember, remember!” Milton defends the peo¬ ple and the sectarian army (with a fling at the former clergy). The coun¬ tries of Europe have not reacted as More hoped, and the teaching of the reformed churches has in fact been followed. Meanwhile More is being ousted from his church in Middelburg. Cromwell is defended, then praised, 202-232. The encomium embraces FAIRFAX, then FLEETWOOD, LAMBERT, DESBOROW,

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WHALLEY,

SIDNEY,

LAW¬

and others. Cromwell is given advice against the money-changers in the temple and the multiplying of laws. Freedom is upheld, including freedom to inquire and learn. The peroration admonishes the English (as at the end of ID) to be careful to deserve what they have won. “To be free is to be pious, wise, just and temperate, provident of one’s own. RENCE,

A Milton Dictionary

abstinent of another’s, and, in short, magnanimous and brave.” To be the contrary of these is to be a slave. An excellent foundation, which Milton is proud to have celebrated, has been laid. degrcdement degradation Ten 37.

of the Greek oracles. Delphian, 517; wotton’s adjective in letter on Comus, I, 477. Delphic Inspired Sh 12. JR 59: see Delphi, above, and opening of euripides’ Ion. Delphinus

Deiope “Most beautiful” (Aen.I, 72) of the nymphs attending Juno Sal 4.

A northern constellation, Prol II 152. Delphos

Deiphobus

Same as

Son of Priam and hecuba, who mar¬ ried Helen after the death of Paris and was slain and fearfully mangled by Menelaus, the marks of which mu¬ tilation his “ghost” still bore in the lower world (Aen. VI, 494 If.) Sm 307. Delf(t) A town in Holland, A 313. Delia Diana (from delos, her birthplace) ix 387-8; NS 49. delian SD 294.

Delphi,

N 178; PR 1, 458.

Demetrius the Rhetorician Traditionally identified with De¬ metrius Phalereus (345P-283 b.c. ), a pupil of theophkastus. Governed the city of Athens 317-07; upon resto¬ ration of democratic government con¬ demned to death and fled to Egypt. His treatise On Style speaks of four kinds: plain, stately, polished, and powerful, D 491. Democritian see Democritus, Prol I, 134.

delicious Democritus

Sensuous, E 279.

Atomist of late 5th and early 4th century b.c.; called “the laughing philosopher” because of his cheerful disposition, Prol VI, 206.

Delius apollo,

EL V 13, 14.

Delos “In the Islands Cyclades . . . the island of Delos was the mart of all Greece, where yet remaineth the ruin of Apollo’s temple,” Columbia Manu¬ script XVIII 260. JR 65; v 265; x 296: “floating” till Zeus made it “firm” with chains of adamant extending to the bottom of the sea. Man 45. Delphi “In Phocis, a part of Achaia, lying on the gulf of Corinth,” Columbia MS, XVIII 259, site of the most famous

Demodocus The bard of Odyssey, VIII, V 48. Demogorgon “Ancestor of all the gods, . . . also called Chaos by the ancients, . . . begot the Earth among many other children,” Prol I, 126. Associated with Nox (Night) 134, an unclassical pair¬ ing in Boccaccio, De Genealogia Deorum. The idea of the “dreaded,” ii 965 or forbidden name comes from lactantius on Statius.

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A Milton Dictionary

demons (daemons)

descent

Spirits ruling over the four ele¬ ments, IP 93. demonian, PR 2, 122. Oemophoon “King ... in a tragedy by euripides” [Heraclidae] Ten 13; “Theseus’ son, likewise king of the Athenians,” ID 310, same quotation. Demosthenes (385P-322 b.c. ) “More came to Athens to hear the two greatest orators, Demosthenes and aeschines, contending for oratorical supremacy,” Prol VI, 210. Called “too little of a man by his rivals and opponents” (during his enforced retirement from Athens), Prol VI, 242. “The spirit and vigor of,” E 286. ID 38; 2D 112. deprave Detract, vi 174.

Descendants, x 979. descry (discry) Old French descrier, with the double sense of (1) reveal and (2) decry, C 141. Desvergonia Place in Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem (cf. French devergondage, shamelessness), Sm 300. determine Terminate, ii 330; vi 318; xi 227; SA 843. Detford Place on the Thames near London, “that famous haven,” Sm 29, being Cuckold’s Haven, starting-point of an annual licentious procession. Deucalion

Deptford see Detford. deputy's execution Strafford’s, May 12, 1641, Sm 332.

Derby see Arcades.

Sole survivor with his wife Pyrrha, after “the race of mankind drowned” in a flood sent by Zeus. The pair got the advice from the oracle of themis to cast stones behind them, which turned into men and women, a new race called the Stone People, xi 12. Deva

derived 1. diverted, x 77; 2. attributed, x 965. Derwent (Darwen) see Sonnet, XVI. Desborough, John (1608-80) Cromwell’s brother-inlaw, major under the New Model. A major-general at Worcester, he nearly captured Charles II, 1651. Member of the Council of State, commissioner of the treasury and general of the fleet, 2D 232.

dee, called “wizard,” L 55 because, as Giraldus Cambrensis wrote, the waters “change their fords every month, and as it inclines more to¬ wards England or Wales” makes it possible to “prognosticate which na¬ tion will be successful or unfortunate during the year.” “Where Deva spreads” has its equivalent in John Pullen’s poem in the king memorial volume, “Qua Deva tribuit.” EL I 3.

DeVere, Robert (1362-92) Granted

94-

-

9th

Earl

of

Oxford, 126. Ireland,

Richard h’s “chief favorite,” K

regal

powers

in

A Milton Dictionary

1385; charged with treason, 1387; escaped to Continent. Killed in a boar hunt. devote(d) Doomed to destruction, v 890; iii 208; ix 901; xi 821.

command after a quarrel with prince Secretary of state and privy councillor, 1643. Lieutenant-general of the king’s forces north of the Trent, 1645. K 125, 142. rupert.

dight Adorned L’A 62; IP 159.

dew-besprent

Dillon, Thomas, Viscount

Sprinkled with dew, C 542.

(1615P-72?) “A Papist lord,” K 192; traitor, ID 520. O 245.

diagonial Diametrically opposed, D 436.

dimensionless diameter, in

Non-material (lacking the “dimen¬ sions” of Cartesian matter), xi 17.

Diametrically, Sm 331; D 500.

ding

Dian(a) Paean to the goddess of the hunt and chastity, C 441 ff. Goddess of the moon, PE 57. “Unconquered,” El V 101, except for endymion, EL I 78. Famous for her nymphs, PR 2, 355. See also cynthia, Delia. Diana Spanish. Reference, K 89 to the unfinished pastoral romance, Diana Enamorada, by Jorge de Montemayor (1521P-61), widely popular in Europe and Englished by Bartholo¬ mew Young, 1598. Its episode of Felix and Felismena furnished the main plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Cf. A 317. Dictaean Jove Reference to Mt. Dicte in Crete, the island where Jupiter was brought up, x 584. Didactics Reference to Comenius’ Didactica Magna, E 276. Digby, "the Lord," George, second Earl of Bristol (1612-77) Adherent of Charles I. Fought at Edgehill but gave up his

To fling, A 326. dingle Narrow valley, C 312. dint Blow (dent is another form of the same word), ii 813. Diocletian (245-313) Roman emperor 284305; previously friendly to Christians, he turned against them in 303 and initiated persecutions that raged (even after he himself had abdicated) for 10 years, A 307; ID 250, 374. Diodati, Charles (1609-August, 1638). Milton’s friend “from childhood” (Argumentum to ED), evidently the closest of his youth (much closer than edwabd king), and recipient of EL I and VI, S IV, FE #6 and 7, mourned in ED. His father Theodore (15731651), whom he was to follow in becoming a physician, emigrated from Geneva to England about 1598, helped with Florio’s translation of Montaigne, “married an English lady of good birth and fortune.” The family having moved from brent-

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A Milton Dictionary

Middlesex, Charles became a fellow-pupil of Milton’s at St. Paul’s School and lived near him until ma¬ triculating at Trinity College, Oxford, Feb. 7, 1623. He contributed a Latin poem to the Oxford memorial volume, Camdeni Insignia, 1624, in the same meter as In Obitum Procancellarii Medici, and sent Milton two Greek letters (XII, 292-4), the second of which was answered with EL I. B.A. 1625, M.A. 1628. Enrolled as a the¬ ology student at Academy of Geneva, 1630-1. Was evidently a student of medicine when Milton addressed him from London, Sept. 2, 1637 FE #6, reproaching him for not having writ¬ ten and not having paid a visit, and mentioning Diodati’s brother. Upon receiving Diodati’s (now lost) reply answered promptly on Sept. 23 with FE #7. This congratulates banteringly the physician entering upon his practice, then turns serious both about friendship and poetry: in this the document nearest in time to Lycidas. There is also a dark allusion to Diodati’s being in the midst of a “step-motherlv war.” August 27, 1638 Charles Diodati was buried in St. Anne’s churchyard, Blackfriars, Lon¬ don, the cause of his death not being on record. Milton was on his Italian journey: the sad news that would lead to Epitaphium Damonis may not have reached him until he arrived at Geneva in the spring of 1639. ford,

Diodati, Jean (Giovanni) (1576-1649) Uncle of Charles, above, theologian and professor at Geneva. Translator of the Bible into Italian (before 1607) and French (1644), T 109. Visited England 1619, 1627. Milton had “daily intercourse” with him in Geneva in the late spring of 1639, 2D 126. Diodati on more, SD 118, 276; out-of-date 206, 232.

Diodorus Siculus (Late 1st cent. b.c.) Greek his¬ torian born in Agyrium, Sicily. 15 of the 40 books of his universal Histori¬ cal Library survive. Example FE #26, 102; B 3. ID 292-4, 298, 394. Diogenes of "the Cynic tub" C 708 (he lived in one to show his scorn for luxury), of “the Cynic im¬ pudence,” A 299. (412P-323 b.c.) Not named and not to be confused with the Stoic, below. Looked in daylight with a lantern for “an honest man.” Rebuked Alexander the great for standing between him and the sun. Diogenes, the Stoic A 300, a native of seleucia in Babylon, was educated at Athens under chrysippus and succeeded Zeno of tarsus as the head of the stoic school at Athens. Was one of the three ambassadors sent by the Athenians to Rome 155 b.c. Diomedean Diomedes was one of the two or three greatest Greek warriors in the Trojan war, EL VII 112. Dion (402P-353 b.c.) Syracusan philoso¬ pher and politician, relative of the tyrant Dionysius. He was instru¬ mental in persuading the latter to invite plato a second time, but though theoretically austerely against tyranny, Dion, when he had suc¬ ceeded in ousting Dionysius, proved as bad a tyrant himself and was as¬ sassinated, ID 116. Dion Cassius Cocceianus (155?-after 230) Roman politician and historian, of Bithynia; twice con¬ sul. Author of a history of Rome writ¬ ten in Greek (80 books). On trajan (LXVIII, xvi) Ten 13; same quota-

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A Milton Dictionary

tion, ID 374 (used in different ways by John Goodwin and grottos), ID 318. Source for B 48, 51, 68, etc. Dion Prusaeus Sumamed Chrysostomos (the golden-mouthed”) for his eloquence. (40?-c. 117). Bom in Prusa in Bithynia; migrated to Rome; expelled by domitlan, but enjoyed the favor of Nerva and trajan, died a stoic. Of his 80 extant orations, the Rho¬ dian Discourse protested against the corrupt rhodian practice of erasing the old names on public monuments to make room for those of the reign¬ ing favorites, A 296. Dionysia see

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (d.c. 7 b.c. ) Greek rhetorician who settled, in Rome (c. 29 b.c.). Author of a history of Rome from mvthic times to 264 b.c. ID 460. T 82:' Ro¬ man Antiquities, II, 25. Dionysius, Pope In office 259-68; reorganized the church after the df.cian persecutions R 15. Dionysius the Areopagite Unknown author (6th cent.) for centuries identified with st. Paul’s concert (Acts xvii, 34), whose mysti¬ cal works had vast influence in the Middle Ages. See angels. P 100.

HORTENsrus.

Diotima Dionysius the Elder (c. 430-367 b.c. ) Tyrant of Syra¬ cuse from 405. Influential in en¬ couraging Greek letters. “To compose a tragedy . . . ambitious,” Pref. SA; won first prize at the Lenaea (Athens) with a tragedy, 367, “The Ranson of Hector.” plato’s recommendation of ARISTOPHANES to, A 299, 316. Dionysius the founger Son of the above. Was driven from the rule of Syracuse for the last time in 343 b.c., went to Corinth, and, ac¬ cording to some writers, turned schoolmaster, ID 74. Dionysius sumamed Periegetes Wrote in Greek sometime between the 2nd and 4th centuries a geographi¬ cal description (periegesis) of the habitable earth, E 284. Dionysius Alexandrinus, St. Head of catechetical school in Alexandria, 231. Patriarch from 247. Letter to Philemon in eusebtus, Eccles. Hist. VII, vi A 308; cf. CB 136.

The wise woman of Mantineia, Symposium 201D-212A D 398. Diotogenes the Pythagorean One of the 500 Greek authors in the anthology compiled by Joannes Stobaeus, c. 600. ID 302. Diotrephes “I wrote unto the church: but Dio¬ trephes, who loveth to have the pre¬ eminence among them, receiveth us not” 3 John 9. ID 62. Dippers Sects using immersion in baptism, especially anabaptists or Baptists. The “late equivocating treatise,” T 69 is Daniel Featley’s The Dippers Dipt, 1645, the “Epistle Dedicatory” of which mentions among “other most damnable doctrines” “A Tractate of Divorce, in which the bonds of mar¬ riage are let loose to inordinate lust, and putting away wives for many other causes besides that which our Saviour only approveth, namely, in case of adultery."

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dipsas (Greek) called “The Thirst Snake” from the deadly consequences of its bite, x 526.

the rich man in the parable who went to hell, while Lazarus rested in “abraham’s bosom” (Luke xvi, 19 ff.) An 143; CD 1, 13.

diptychs

divide

Tablets listing members of the church for whom prayers were to be offered, R 34.

To sing, share in a song with Pas 4. “divide the night,” iv 688, previous meaning plus “mark off the hours” or “mark the watches” (Latin military phrase, dividere noctem). The rest of the line, "and lift our thoughts to Heaven” is to be compared with Drummond’s “Sonnet to a Nightin¬ gale,” 12: “And lift a reverend eye and thought to Heaven.”

Dircaean Theban (after a stream or foun¬ tain by Thebes). augur^TiRESiAS, Id 26. pentheus (king of Thebes), LR II 7. Dis The Roman god of Hades; pluto.

divider An 157, quotation from Luke xii, 14.

stygian, NS 31; gloomy, iv 270.

disastrous

dividual

Boding ill, ill-starred, i 597.

Separate, xii 85. Shared in com¬ mon, vii 382 (modifies “reign”).

disbanded Sent away, D 406.

divine

discontinuous Breaking the continuity between parts, vi 329. dispenses Dispensations (special exemptions by papal authority), iii 492. disple A contraction of discipline, R 36.

(Like the verb divine) Prophetic, ix 845. "Divorce at pleasure" william prynne’s phrase for Mil¬ ton’s doctrine, in Twelve Considera¬ ble Serious Questions touching Church Government, 1644, p. 7, Col 233.

doctor

displode

A learned man (doctus), SA 299.

Explode, vi 605.

The/Doctrine/and Discipline of Di¬ vorce: Restor'd to the Good/of both

dissentanie

Sexes,/from the bondage of Canon

Contradictory, T 197.

Law,/and other mistakes, to Chris¬

disworship

tian freedom,/guided by the Rule

Dishonor, D 396.

of

Charity, / Wherein

also

many

places of Scripture, have/recover'd

divan Ironical reference to a Turkish or Oriental council of state, x 457. Dives (Latin rich) The popular name of

their long-lost meaning. / Season¬ able to be now thought on in the/ Reformation intended

[Motto follows from Matt, xiii, 52.] The first edition was out by Aug 1,

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A Milton Dictionary

1643. Like four of the antiprelatical tracts, it was unsigned. “My name I did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader either for me or against me,” M 12. The second edition, an expanded version on sale Feb. 2, 1644, had the author’s initials on the title-page, which read: The/ Doctrine 6- Discipline/of/Divorce:/ Restor’d to the good of both Sexes,/ From the bondage of Canon Law, and/other mistakes, to the true mean¬ ing of Scrip-/ture in the Law and Gospel compar’d. Wherin also are set down the bad consequences of/ abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the/Law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not./Now the second time revis’d and much aug¬ mented,/In Two Books:/To the Parlament of England with the Assem¬ bly./The Author J.M. [For epigraph, to Matt, xiii, 52 is significantly added Prov. xviii, 13.] The prefatory ad¬ dress to this edition, “To the Parli¬ ament of England, with the [West¬ minster] Assembly,” ended with the author’s full name. Two further edi¬ tions (formerly considered “states” of the second), of no importance textually, came out in 1645. None was licensed or registered. Milton’s writings on divorce were touched off by his unsatisfactory first marriage. Phillips tells the scant story of the sudden union of the 33-yearold poet with a girl half his age who belonged to royalist gentry and whose father owed his father 500 pounds that had gone unpaid for fifteen years. “About Whitsuntide it was, or a little after, that he took a journey into the country; nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recre¬ ation; after a month’s stay, home he returns a married man, that went out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the

eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of peace, of Forresthill, near Shotover in Oxford¬ shire; some few of her nearest rela¬ tions accompanying the bride to her new habitation; which by reason the father nor any body else were yet come, was able to receive them; where the feasting held for some days in celebration of the nuptials, and for entertainment of the bride’s friends. At length they took their leave, and returning to Foresthill, left the sister behind; probably not much to her satisfaction, as appeared by the sequel. By that time she had for a month or thereabout led a philo¬ sophical life (after having been used to a great house, and much com¬ pany and joviality), her friends, pos¬ sibly incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter, to have her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted, on con¬ dition of her return at the time ap¬ pointed, Michaelmas, or thereabout.” Whitsuntide in 1642 (the year now agreed on for the marriage rather than 1643) was May 29th. But Mary Powell Milton did not come back at Michaelmas, September 29th. “Nor though he sent several pressing in¬ vitations could he prevail with her to return, till about [three] years after, when Oxford was surrendered (the nighness of her father’s house to that garrison having for the most part of the meantime hindered any communication between them), she of her own accord came, and sub¬ mitted to him, pleading that her mother had been the inciter of her to that frowardness.” This authority, the Anonymous Biographer, makes a connection with Milton’s thinking about divorce, “the lawfulness and expedience of’ which “had upon full consideration and reading good au-

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thors been formerly his opinion, and the necessitv of justifying himself now concurring with the opportunity, acceptable to him, of instructing others in a point of so great concern.” Nothing is known about the mar¬ riage after Mary’s return except that she bore her husband three daugh¬ ters (and a son John that died in infancy), dying in childbirth of Deborah, May 5, 1652, by which time the poet was blind. Some have lately believed the tender Sonnet XXIII is about her. It is usual to conjecture that she affected the conception of eve and dalila. Is the 1647 letter to Dati, q.v., critical of her? To what extent did Milton “find himself bound fast to an uncomplying discord of nature, or ... an image of earth and phlegm,” D 400? Looking back, he saw the rationale of the divorce tracts as part of his championing of liberty, first ecclesiastical, then domestic, the latter class embracing the three di¬ visions, marriage, education, and freedom of the press, 2D ISO. The line of thinking in The Doc¬ trine and Discipline (which means the theory and practice) is covered by the chapter headings added to the second edition. The “custom” as¬ sailed in the preface was the canon law, which allowed separation from bed and board only on the grounds of adultery and forbade either party to re-marry. For impotence there could be an annulment. Milton was attacked (but his scandalous pam¬ phlet sold) for being “the sole ad¬ vocate of a discountenanced truth,” namely, that divorce should be granted for incompatibility. He states his position in Chapter I: “That in¬ disposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindering, and ever likely to hinder the main bene¬ -

fits of conjugal society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce than natural frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutual consent.” He faced the problem of reconciling Deut, xxiv, 1-2, with Matt, xix, 3-9, which he does partly by considering the special rebuking occasion of Christ’s speech to the Pharisees, and partly by reinforcing Deuteronomy with Genesis ii, 18. There is charity' for those who find themselves mis¬ matched rather than advice or cau¬ tion aimed at preventing misalliances. Dodona The oracle and temple of Zeus in Epirus i 518. Dodonian oak Rendered Zeus’ will by the rustling of its sacred leaves, Prol VII 282. Dog(star) Sirius, of the constellation Canis Major, most visible in the summer, QN ISO. Domesday Book Pun on (1) the day of final doom and (2) the tax-book compiled in the reign of William the Conqueror, K 103. Dominations see angels. Dominic(an) St. Dominic (1170-1221) was the Spanish-born founder of the order of the Preaching (black) Friars, A 330, 352. iii 479. Dominical jigs and may-poles. Statute for King James’s “Book of Sports” (“Dominical” pertains to Sunday or the Lord’s Day) was reissued in 1633 and the clergy who refused to read

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it to their congregations as a mani¬ festo were turned out of their livings, K 81, Domitian (51-96) From 81 till murdered by a freedman one of the worst of the early Roman emperors, K 22; CP 28; ID 194, 224, 326-8, 330. Envier of AGRICOLA, B 80.

Dorian mood (mode) One “which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stem resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death, or is over¬ taken by some other evil, and at every crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance” (plato, Republic, III, 399) i 5.50.

Domitius, Gnoeus (Ahenobarbus)

Doric

Censor with l. crassus in 92 b.c.: they violently disagreed, SD 174.

Lay L 189: Theocritus, bion, and Moschus wrote in the Doric dialect. (wotton praised Comus for “a cer¬ tain Doric delicacy,” I, 476.). Land, i 519: Greece, pillars, i 714 reference to the earliest perfected of the Greek orders of architecture, with columns of 20 shallow, sharp-edged channels, no bases other than steps, and plain echinus. Considerable resemblance has been found between pandaemonium and St. Peter’s in Rome, song, A 317: see Dorian mood, above.

Doni, Giovanni Battista (1593-1647). Florentine scholar, had been a protege of cardinal rarberini at Rome since 1623, was com¬ ing home to manage his family estates as well as to lecture FE #9, 42. Known for his dissertations on an¬ cient music and his invention of a type of double lyre, Lyra Barberina. ffe was succeeded in his chair by Dati, XII, 314.

Doris Donne, John (1572-1631) Unless “our late fantasties” be so taken, Milton never al¬ luded to Donne or the metaphysical school of English poetry (cf. crashaw) which he founded, tillyard inaugu¬ rates his study, The Metaphysicals and Milton (1956), with an interesting comparison of Donne’s sonnet on the death of his wife (“Since she whom I lov’d hath paid her last debt”) with “Methought I saw my late espoused saint,” (S XXIII). The book concludes —as other critics have concluded— that Milton “is more like jonson and marvell than he is like Donne and

Oceanid wife of nereus, mother of the nymphs or Nereids, EL IV 7. Dorislaus (Dorislai) see

HAGUE.

dorre Mockery, Sm 310. dorrs Beetles, Col 271. Dory, John The valiant but defeated hero of a ballad (Child #284) that enjoyed notable popularity in the 17th cen¬ tury, Col 255.

crashaw.”

doss Dorian lyric odes Those of Pindar dialect), PR 4, 257.

(in the Dorian

Dorse (Latin dorsum), the back of a book, K 221. (Wood spoke of books “richly bound with gilt dorses.”)

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Dothan

drowsy frighted

Having warned the king of Israel against the king of Syria, Elisha the prophet was besieged by the latter in Dothan, a city on a mound north of Samaria, whereupon the steep ap¬ peared miraculously “full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” (2 Kings, vi, 17), xi 217.

The reading of C 553 in 1637, 1645, 1673 is “drowsie frighted.” MS has “drousie flighted.” “Drowsy-freighted” has been conjectured.

double-founted Having two sources. See Jordan, xii 144.

druids The priests and bards of the an¬ cient Britons, Man 41 ff.; D 376; B 2, 50: cf. A 339. dryad(es) Wood nymph(s), C 964; ix 387; EL V 123.

doubt Hesitate, ii 94; PR 2, 368, 377. (“What”=why.), CG 195.

Dryden, John

Downam(e), George (d. 1634) Chaplain to James I, became bishop of Derry, 1616. Ed. Ramus’ Dialecticae Libri, 1610. An 115, 135. draff Refuse, offal, x 630; SA 574. dragon's teeth, fabulous Sown by cadmus on Athene’s ad¬ vice, the armed men that sprang up killed each other, with the exception of five who became the ancestors of the Thebans, A 298. dresser A kitchen sideboard, Col 256. drift(s)

(1631-1700) The poet laureate, dramatist, and critic, leading literary figure of his age, reacted to PL, ac¬ cording to Richardson, with “This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too.” He pursued the same line in his anonymous “pinchbeck” epigram for Milton’s portrait in Tonson’s edition, 1688: “Three poets, in three distant ages bom, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d. The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of Nature could no farther go; To make a third, she join’d the former two.” is the authority for Dryden's visit: “very much admires him and went to him to have leave to put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme: Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses.” The result was the “opera” The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, registered in April, 1674; never produced; evidently the object of Marvell’s scorn in his prefatory aubrey

Schemes, plots, PR 3, 4; S XVII 6; Ten 42; K 64; etc. drop serene (Latin gutta serena) “Amaurosis, given by Milton as a possible cause of his blindness, alternatively with ‘dim diffusion’ (i.e. cataract)” (Skeat) iff 25. (But Milton’s eyes looked clear.) -

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poem on PL, 45 ff. t.s eliot praised Du Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste, its sixth line, “Is all the sad variety of Seigneur hell (which James Thomson imi¬ (1544-90). Gascon Huguenot tated, “Winter,” 329: “And all the whose epic La Sepmaine, ou Crea¬ sad variety of pain”). It acknowl¬ tion (1578) and its unfinished sequel edges its source as “one of the great¬ La Seconde Semaine (1584), trans¬ est, most noble, and most sublime lated into English heroic couplets by poems, which either this age or na¬ Joshua Sylvester (1536-1618) as Du tion has produced,” but the extrava¬ Bartas His Divine Weeks and Works, ganza is memorable mainly as a first complete edition 1608, carried fusillade in a battle between rhymed hexameral commonplaces into the couplets and blank verse, Milton’s Renaissance and exerted paramount note “The Verse” being answered by influence on PL. This was first noted Dryden’s “for whatever causes he by the disreputable Lauder. Charles alleges for the abolishing of rhyme Dunster (1750-1816) in Considera¬ (which I have not now the leisure to tions on Milton’s Early Reading and examine), his own particular reason the Prima Stamina of his “Praadise is plainly this, that rhyme was not Lost (1800) pointed out borrow¬ his talent” (Discourse Concerning ings, beginning with the two psalms Satire). After his adaptation of PL translated at age 15. George Coffin Dryden went on to mine for his Taylor presented a volume of evi¬ rhymed tragedy Aureng-Zehe, 1675, dence “that no other work of the Samson Agonistes, borrowing par¬ Renaissance had a more important ticularly from the so-called “misogyand definite influence on Paradise nistic” part. The “satirical wit” at¬ Lost than Sylvester’s translation of tributed to Milton by Dryden (in Du Bartas” (Miltons Use of Du Bar¬ aubrey) links the two authors, as in tas, 1934). iii, 373, “Immutable, their glance at Hall’s title, “Tooth¬ immortal, infinite” is line 45 of Divine Weeks, and xii, 266 comes less Satires”: “let me inform you, a from Week II, Day III, Part iv. toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleekstone, and as bullish,” The two poets have a similar at¬ titude to the sacred muse, free will, An 114; cf. Sm 327; “Thy inoffensive Satan as serpent, the stellar virtues, satires never bite” MacFlecknoe, 200. the hymned gratitude of Adam and In many references scattered through Eve to God, the rumbling of earth at his essays and prose prefaces, Dry¬ the fall and the ensuing cosmic den’s praise of Milton easily out¬ changes, including disease, and sub¬ weighs the blame. A famous heresy sequent Biblical history. Book vii is originated in the Dedication of the in especial a condensation of parts of Aeneis with the passing remark, “Mila poem more than twice as long as ton, if the Devil had not been his PL. hero, instead of Adam. . . .” Cf. duck or nod BLAXE, SHELLEY. dryope

The curtsy or bow in a rustic dance C 960.

Loved by apollo; changed into a lotus-tree, according to Ovid, ED

Dudley, John, Duke of North¬ umberland (1502P-53) Who married his fourth

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A Milton Dictionary

son Guildford to Lady Jane Grey, in¬ duced Edward VI to sign in favor of her succession. He was executed for treason when mary became queen. The 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the prevailing view that edward VI, always sickly, died of consumption. “There were some suspicions that his death had been hastened by Northumberland, but al¬ though his malady showed at last some symptoms of poisoning, it is now believed that these were caused by accidental administrations of over¬ doses of mineral medicine.” K 155. Declared himself a Roman Catholic on the scaffold, R 8, 9, 68.

protestant theologian of Nismes (Nemausensis). Father of the real author of Begii Sanguinis Clamor. Formerly resident in England and correspondent with James I, he was minister at charenton, 1599-1620, then minister and professor at Sedan. An 177-8; FE #28 104. Du Moulin, Peter the younger See Defensio Secunda. Dun The river Don in Yorkshire, an af¬ fluent of the Ouse, V 92. Dunbar

Du Haitian, Bernard de Girard, Seigneur

See Sonnet XVI.

(c. 1535-1610) Ten 24; T 222. Re¬ ferred to as Girard, “a most noted historian” in ID 264, 414, and in CB 137, 140, etc., the page references fit¬ ting the 1576 Paris edition of L’Histoire de France. "Duke and Brother"

dunce Sophistical, CG 204. Duns Scotus See

scotus.

Dunstan, St.

EL III 9. “The two generals here mentioned, who died in 1626, were the two champions of the queen of Bohemia, the Duke of Brunswick and Count Mansfelt: frater means a sworn brother in arms, according to the military cant of those days” (warton). Both fell in the eighth year of the Thirty Years’ War. dulcimer Stringed instrument mentioned in Daniel, iii, 5, 10, 15 vii 596. Dulichian Odysseus, EL VI 72. Du Moulin (Molinaeus), Peter (Pierre) the elder (1568-1658) Distinguished French

(c. 909-88) Monk and abbot at Glastonbury. Archbishop of Canter¬ bury, 961, “A strenuous bishop, zeal¬ ous without dread of person, and for aught appears, the best of many ages, if he busied not himself too much in secular affairs,” B 253. An 109. Durie (Duraeus), John (1596-1680) Protestant divine. “Our Durie” FE #28 104; SL XIII 292 “has bestowed about 30 years time in travel, conference, and writ¬ ing to reconcile Calvinists and Lu¬ therans”—Moses Wall to Milton, XII 335. Conceived his great Protestant Union idea on a visit to Prussia in 1628 and converted grotius, who cor¬ responded with Laud on the subject

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in vain. Member of Westminster As¬ sembly.. 1643. In Amsterdam, April 1654, morus got Durie to write Milton two letters denying Morus’ au¬ thorship of Regii Sanguinis Clamor, SD 24,196, 238.

Dutch, quoted out of the Quoted in German

dyscrasy

105-

-

(Deutsch)

222.

General bad health, K 96.

T

E East-cheap

Echionian

A street in London, named after the (meat) market there, Sm 329.

theban, QN 65. (Echion sprang from the dragon’s teeth.)

Ebrew

Echo, sweetest nymph

This is the noun form in Milton’s poetry, SA 1308, 1319, 1540, only the adjective being spelled Hebrew.

Was first deprived of voluntary speech by Juno, then pined away in unrequited love for narcissus until she was only a voice, C 230 If. Her “airy shell” is the sky.

Ecbatan(a) Capital of ancient media, residence of cyrus and Alexander, xi 393; PR 3. 286.

ecliptic

Ecbert

economical

Egbert (d. 766), brother of king Eadbert of Northumbria, this “Arch¬ bishop of York built a library there,” B 181. “General ignorance and decay of learning . . . crept in . . . after the death of Beda and of Ecbert,” 196. Known for his “canons,” H 66, the Exceptiones Egberti. eccentric

The sun’s path, iii 740

CG 267; D 375, 467, see oeconomy. economics E 284 (the 1644 reading was “econ¬ omies”) household management. Ecphantas Pythagorean

(see

philosopher, ID 304

diotogenes ).

Eden

Away from the center, iii 575; v 623; viii 83. Ecchius Eck or Eckius, Johann (1486-1543), leading opponent of luther and the Reformation, Sm 315

A large tract (located, iv 210 ff.) (the name means “the plain” in Su¬ merian), within which “the happy gar¬ den” was situated; it is strictly not the Earthly Paradise itself, which was “planted . . . eastward in Eden” (Gen. ii, 8). Heb. “pleasure”; cf. viii 402.

Ecclesiastic History of Scotland Ten 29, meaning The History of the Reformation in Scotland, published in 5 books under knox’s name in 1644 (though the fifth book was by other Scotch divines). Book 4 covers 156164. -

Edgar (944-75) “King of all England at 16,” B 242. H. 74. “Dying before the age wherein wisdom can in others attain to any ripeness . . . with him died all the Saxon glory,” B 248.

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A Milton Dictionary edge

eglantine

Pun on Latin acies, which has the further meaning of the forefront of an army, i 276; vi 108.

egress

Honeysuckle; or dog-rose, L’A 48.

Departure, ii 437.

edify

Eikonoklastes! [in Greek capitals]

Construct, T 134.

in/Answer/To a Book Intitl'd/Eikon

Edom(ite), Edomitish

Basilike,/ [in Greek capitals] The/

Edom became the name of esau after he sold his birthright to his twin brother Jacob; his descendants, the Edomites, occupying the region south of moab, were regularly denounced by the later prophets. Ps LXXXIII 21; K 204 (cf Psalm lx, 8— cviii, 9); PR 2, 423; ID 204; An 168 (see Psalm cxxxvii, 7); Col 239. Education

see Of Education. Edward the Confessor see

CONFESSOR.

Edward II see

plantagenet.

Edward III (1312-77) King of England from 1377. His annual parliaments: K 116; ID 438, 422. Edward VI (1537-53). “That godly and royal child,” king from 1547, R 7 ff. An 119, 134; M 1, 3, 7, 10, etc. “Those best and purest times of,” T 66, 231. Death: see Dudley. Sick: HM 365, K 220, 247. ID 464. See also S XI. Edwards See Sonnet On the New Forcers of Conscience. effluences Outflowings, CG 185. Egeria See

numa.

Portrature of his Sacred Majesty/ in his Solitudes and Sufferings./The Author I. M.

[Mottos from Proverbs, xxviii, 15-7, and Sallust, Conspiracy of Catiline, the last words meaning, “To do with impunity what you please, that is what it is to be a king.”] The body of the executed King Charles I was scarcely cold when there appeared the memorial and royal defence whose title appears on Milton’s title-page. “Eikon Basilike” means the King’s Book or King’s Image, and “Eikono¬ klastes” is the Image-Breaker, “the famous surname of many Greek em¬ perors, who, in their zeai to the com¬ mand of God, after long tradition of idolatry in the church, took courage and broke all superstitious images to pieces.” Eikon Basilike achieved a popularity that resulted in about 50 editions the first twelve months and was such a potent instrument in stir¬ ring up sympathy for the martyred king that the Council of State ordered their new Latin Secretary to answer it—2D 138 (where Milton shows that his view of the correct transcription is Icon and Iconoclastes). This he did with no great rush of enthusiasm. The book, “Published by Authority” by Matthew Simmons, the same printer who had done the Tenure, was not out until October 6, 1649, by which time Eikon Basilike had received oth¬ er answers, including Eikon Alethine, The Portraiture of Truth’s Most Sa¬ cred Majesty, which Milton probably

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used, along with Thomas May’s His¬ tory of Parliament, 1647, and various official documents and proclamations. A second edition of Eikonoklastes, with some few changes and additions, appeared in 1650. Except for noting that the king is merely “said to be the author,” that his “household rhetorician” or a “se¬ cret coadjutor”—possibly a priest, may be the author, Milton treats Eikon Basil ike as what it purports to be, the king’s own composition. However, at the Restoration, John Gauden (160562), who became bishop of Exeter, claimed (in letters to Lord Chancel¬ lor Clarendon and the Earl of Bristol) to have written every word of it, and that he did write at least most of it is the prevailing view among scholars. Milton begins with a dignified sen¬ tence, “To descant on the misforiunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also paid his final debt both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable nor the intention of this discourse,” and goes on to disclaim any ambition to win fame by writing against a king. He is simply taking up in the interests of those still living and of the truth “a work assigned.” The king has chosen to stand at the bar again, intimating in the Latin motto that closes his book, “What he could not compass by war he should achieve by his meditations.” The king must be viewed without ceremony as the un¬ loved object that he was. Let not the Presbyterians answer with “all the odious names of schism and sectarism. 1 never knew that time in England when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries.” Eikon Basilike consists of 27 Chap¬ ters plus concluding Meditations upon Death. Milton answers point by point with 28 Chapters with the same head¬

ings that collectively form a sum¬ mary. The latter part of each chapter of Eikon Basilike contains a prayer or pious meditation, which Milton tri¬ umphantly discovers in the case of Chapter I to be “stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen fiction praying to a heathen god; and that in no serious book, but the vain amalorious poem of Sii Philip Sidney’s Arcadia” (The heroine Pamela cf. 259, was praying for mercy on her lover Musidorus.) “Poem” is used in the Renaissance sense of a composi¬ tion that, though lacking the form, has some of the ingredients of poetry, as is true of the ornately wrought and interminable pastoral romance that Sidney wrote for his sister the Coun¬ tess of Pembroke—“the Countess’s Ar¬ cadia” 88. Milton’s attitude towards that ideal poet of Elizabethan Eng¬ land Sidney (1554-86), whose heroic death at the battle of Zutphen Spenser mourned in Astrophel, sounds puri¬ tanical but is of course polemical, like the reference in the previous para¬ graph to SHAKt’SPEARE. As the prayer is not found in all editions of Eikon Basilike, only “the best editions” 86, Milton has been accused of conspir¬ ing with Bradshaw (and the printer Dugard) to insert it for the purpose of detecting it, but the available evi¬ dence points the other way. The late king (1600-49) is seen as greedy, false, bloodthirsty, conscience¬ less, implacable, perfidious, wilful, dominated by his Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, and the applier of “a Turkish tyranny.” He had in the courtiers and prelates the followers that he deserved. Interestingly, Milton puts reason above law: “I hold reason to be the best arbitrator, and the law of law itself”; “better evi¬ dence than rolls and records—reason.” The strong opening paragraphs of

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Ch. XIII are likewise very far from Eleale the Hobbesian position (to be enun¬ A town of moab, i 411. ciated in the Leviathan, 1651) of the Elean indivisibility of sovereign power. The The Olympic games were cele¬ author sounds like, though he does not brated at Elis, a district of the west¬ say he is, a republican. This work, like other pamphlets, ern Peloponnesus, EL YT 26. exhibits connections with the poetry. Eleazar Ch. XVI, which comes out for spon¬ Third son of Aaron, CG 204. taneous prayers (like those of adam and eve) as against liturgy, has a Electro phrase about “those who, being ex¬ (1) Daughter of atlas, one of the alted in high place above their merit, Pleiades, Prol II 154. (2) Daughter fear all change” that anticipates the of Clytemnestra. Quotation from eclipse that “with fear of change/ sophocles’ play, 1. 624 Sm 319; for Perplexes monarchs,” i 599, which the euripides’ play, see S VIII. licenser, Tomkyns, of PL, is said to have boggled at. “Confine by force electuary into a pinfold of set words” in the Sweet medicine, CG 231. same chapter looks back to C, 7. Both Elegia I at the beginning and end of his an¬ swer Milton assails the “new device 92 lines. Written about March, 1626 of the king’s picture at his prayers” in response to a Greek letter from diothat was the frontispiece of all but dati (XII, 294), who had temporarily the earliest editions of Eikon Basilike. left Oxford for the region of Chester (As The Censure of the Rota, 1660, (cf. line 3). Milton had been sus¬ punningly remarks, “You fight with pended after a quarrel with his first the King’s Picture.”) It was engraved Cambridge tutor, William Chappell. by William Marshall, who made Line 15 refers to this, and 16 may refer Charles far more attractive than he to unspeakable corporal punishment had made Milton some three years (“whipped him,” said aubrey). Milton previously. See In Effiigiei Eius does not find exile in London unpleas¬ Sculptorem. . . . The debate is al¬ ant: he is better off than ovid was. luded to in ID 8, 532; 2D 116, 144, When weary of his books, he goes to 172. the theater for comedies with plots that seem Roman, and tragedies that seem Greek (but 40-2 may refer to Ekron Romeo and Juliet, the first line even SA 981, same as accabon. having a tincture of “Parting is such sweet sorrow”). Perhaps in answer to El Dorado diodati’s having taxed him with being Raleigh’s legendary “golden city a bookworm, Milton adds 37 lines of Manoa,” rumored to exist in the in mythological praise of the British northern part of South America, xi girls encountered in groves near the 411. city. But moly will save from sensual traps, and Cam beckons again. Milton eld was ready to return under a different Old age, In 13. tutor, Nathaniel Tovey (1582-1649), -

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A Milton Dictionary

afterwards parson of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. Patronized by Laud, Tovey became bishop of Cork and Ross, 1638, and, objected to by cal¬ vinists as an arminian, suffered im¬ prisonment in Dublin, 1641. Elegia II 24 lines “On the Death of the Bea¬ dle (Praeconis) of Cambridge Uni¬ versity,” Richard Ridding (d. in the fall of 1626). The Senior Esquire Beadle or “crier” carried the mace (line 1) in assembling the Palladian flock on formal occasions: now beadle Death has, in turn, summoned him, however worthy he was of delay or rejuvenation, this efficient herald. It is unfortunate that the “queen of sep¬ ulchres” did not take some of the rabble instead, “pondus inutile terrae” (cf. “many a man lives a burden to the earth,” A 298). Elegia III 68 lines “On the Death of the Bish¬ op of Winchester,” close in time to Elegia II (and “In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis”), but a much more serious and ambitious poem, taking the medi¬ eval form of a dream vision (e.g. Pearl, chaucer’s Book of the Duch¬ ess), anticipatory both of the Sonnet “On his Deceased Wife” and passages in L 172 ff. and ED 203 ff. Lancelot Andrewes (1555-Sept. 25, 1626), whose sermons t. s. eliot (1926) placed above donne’s as ranking “with the finest English prose of their time, of any time,” was a fabulous scholar who became master of 15 languages —and of his alma mater, Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1589-1605. In the latter year he was appointed bishop of Chichester, of Ely in 1609, of Win¬ chester, 1619. He assisted with the translation of the Authorized Version of the Bible and refuted cardinal bellarmine in two books. He died at -

Winchester House, Southwark, during an especially severe visitation of the plague to which Milton alludes in his opening lines. The elegist, like a good patriot, first remembers two victims of the Thirty Years’ War (see “duke and brother”) and other heroes lost in the Low Countries (e.g. Henry Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, who fell at the siege of Breda, 1625), then launches into a complaint against Death, who ought to be satisfied with non-human victims. But night comes, bringing a brilliant dream of paradise: a shining scene in which the Bishop of Win¬ chester suddenly appears in radiant white, welcomed by angels to the place of eternal rest. “May such dreams befall me often!” Andrewes as the author of the tract A Summary View of the Government both of the Old. and New Testament in Certain Brief Treatises (see The Reason of Church Government) comes in for anti-prelatical attention in 1642 (see the headings of Chs. Ill and V, Book I, of CG), being paired with ussher “for their learning,” 196. The essay was “in the title said to be out of the rude draughts of Bishop Andrewes. And surely they be rude draughts in¬ deed, in so much that it is marvel to think what his friends meant, to let come abroad such shallow reasonings with the name of a man so much bruited for learning,” 201. But neither here nor in 206 is there anything in particular to justify Warton’s conjec¬ ture that “Milton, as he grew old in Puritanism, must have looked back with disgust and remorse on the pane¬ gyric” of EL III. Elegy IV See YOUNG,

THOMAS.

Elegia V 140 lines “On the Coming of Spring.” “Anno Aetatis 20” would put it in the

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A Milton Dictionary

spring of 1629. “Pagan from beginning to end, joyous in spirit, sensuous in flavor, perfect in form” (E. K. Rand), it follows a tradition going back to the Song of Songs (ii, 10-13) and Mele¬ ager in the Greek Anthology (ix, 363) and Horace (Car. I, 4; IV, 7). The poet feels inspiration grip him with the season (contrary to Phillips’ statement that his vein “never flowed freely but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal”). He writes of the nightingale, 25-6, as in S I, 1-2. The sun in these rites of spring is desired by the voluptuous earth. A shepherd makes a blunt remark, 43; phoebus a blunter, 49. Outspread earth woos, begging that her lap be visited, cupid runs rampant, hymen is summoned. Maidens pray to Venus. Jove and lesser deities, down to faunus and an obead, sport wantonly. May each grove have its divine lovers, and win¬ ter remain far off. Elegia VI 90 lines “To Charles diodati, while he was Visiting in the Country”—who, on the Ides of December—the 13th— 1629, sent Milton some verses (not ex¬ tant) begging his pardon if they were less good than usual amid the friendly hubbub of the Christmas season. Like ovid (Tristia III, i, 11) apologizing for the lame alternation of hexameters and pentameters, inadequate for ex¬ pressing Milton’s friendship, Milton proves with examples that poetry is not at odds with festivity and wine: ovid banished to a land without the vine wrote badly, Horace—with fouryear-old potations—well. Your own verses are sweet. For graver themes, however, heroic, celestial, infernal,— simple, chaste living is called for. Great examples, from ttoesias to the author of die Odyssey, are named. Then, appropriately, Milton reveals

that he has been writing the Nativity Hymn as his gift for the birthday of Christ. Elegia VII 102 lines (not counting 10-line post¬ script). Month of composition May (1, 14) more certain than the year, 1627-30. “Anno Aetatis Undevigesimo,” a departure from Milton’s usual practice of using an Arabic numeral, ought to indicate 1627, may mean 1628, and the position of the poem after EL VI (1629) has led to a con¬ jecture of a misprint for “uno & vigesimo”=1630. Milton, perhaps uncon¬ sciously predating what his recanta¬ tion shows he regarded as a youthful folly, may have placed the poem last, in hesitation whether to include it at all. It portrays a scorner of cupid who is visited by the god, reminded of past mythological instances of his power, and threatened. Milton laughs, but then comes what saurat argues must have been “a true incident: the young man caught sight in the street of a beautiful woman, lost as soon as seen; this ordinary happening must have been real, since many less thin sub¬ jects were at hand for artificial love poetry.” The preparation for the event was the praise of a bevy of British beauties in EL I (cf. L’A 79-80); the sequel, 79 ff. is a “paradise lost” situa¬ tion such as Hephaestus knew. The winged god has amply taken revenge: next time may he fix two with one dart. Divided by a thin line, 10 lines of retractation (labelled “sophomoric” by Tucker Brooke) are added for the 1645 edition, probably in reference to EL VII alone (though a neuter plural is used), apologizing for what was possible only before Milton entered plato’s “academia” and became icecold, his breast obdurate to flames.

- Ill-

A Milton Dictionary

thisbite”—“Native

elements

of Thebez,” PR, 2, 313, “vates Thesbitidis,” EL IV 97— “who on fiery wheels / Rode up to Heaven,” PR 2, 16; cf. PB I, 8; PE 49. Mocker of false prophets (1 Kings xviii, 22 ff.) Sm 371; K 88.

First principles of an art or science, T 134.

Eliot, T(homas) S(tearns)

element (1) sky, atmosphere, ii 490; C 299. (2) the eueharistic bread and wine, CG 262.

(1888). This most influential of living critics and poets, who re¬ “Any sort of refutation whether true ceived the Nobel Prize in 1948, has or false” (Log 382), A 354. been at the center of an anti-Milton cult. For this Tory, who found Milton Eleusinian (1) mysteries—at once the most “as a man . . . antipathetic,” Milton erred in breaking up the unified sensi¬ celebrated and the least known of the Greek mysteries, D 446. (2) city— bility of the metaphysicals, dissociat¬ ing thought and emotion. “There is Eleusis was in Attica, EL IV 12. more of Milton’s influence in the bad¬ Eleutherius, bishop of Rome ness of the bad verse of the eighteenth 174-89, R 39; B 82. For the story century than of anybody’s else.” His fatal defect was a lack of visual imagi¬ see Bede, I, iv. nation. These charges in “A Note on Elfric (Aelfric) the Verse of John Milton” (in Essays Possibly the “Alfric Archbishop of and Studies by Members of the Eng¬ Fork” mentioned, B 285 (d. 1051), con¬ lish Association, XXI, 1935—published secrated to York 1023, H 66. 1936) were echoed by F. R. Leavis, who kept repeating them even after Eli's (Ely's) sons Eliot’s so-called retractation, the 1947 “The old reverend Eli”—D 465--was British Academy Lecture, “Milton.” “high priest in Judaea,” B 14, but his There it was argued “that the remote¬ sons “were sons of Belial; they knew ness of Milton’s verse from ordinary not the Lord,” as detailed in 1 Sam. speech, his invention of his own po¬ ii, 12 ff. i 495; H 68; W 138; ID 88; etic language, seems to me one of the CD 1, 11. D 438; B 135; CD 2, 6, 15. marks of his greatness.” Study of Eliberis, Council of Samson Agonistes is recommended to Held early in the fourth century at “sharpen anyone’s appreciation of the justified irregularity,” and indeed 80 Elvira, near Granada, T 210. ff. of that dramatic poem had mean¬ Elijah (Elicth) while become part of the tapestry of “East Coker” (III) of the Four Quar¬ The greatest of the Hebrew proph¬ ets, adversary of the wicked king tets (1943). Among those who have attacked—or at least recorded grave Ahab, K 261, 265, is remembered in reservations about-Milton have been PR because, after being given food by an angel, he “went in the strength of Ezra Pound, Middleton Murry, Her¬ bert Read, Robert Graves, Mark Van that meat forty days and forty nights Doren, Hilaire Belloc, Lord David unto Horeb the mount of God” (1 Cecil (not to mention minor continen¬ Kings xix, 8); PR 1, 353; Jesus dreams tal scholars). of him, 2, 268, 277. He is “the great

elenchs

-

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A Milton Dictionary elixir

Emims

(Arabic el iksir, the philosopher’s stone—cf. iii 600), a life-prolonging essence—“potable gold,” iii 607.

A race of giants ('Deut. ii, 10-11), SA 1080.

Elizabeth I

(5th cent. b.c. ) Pre-Socratic philos¬ opher who professed miraculous and prophetic powers, and hurled himself into the crater in order that he might be thought a god from his sudden and total disappearance. “Fondly,” iii 470 may refer in part to the tradition that the volcano threw up one of his san¬ dals and so betrayed him.

(1533-1603) Queen from 1558. One reference in the (Latin) poetry only (see Thermodoontea), and hardly any in tlie published prose. Unlike, for instance, donne, Milton mentions this woman ruler only to remark that re¬ formation did not make headway in her reign, R 9, 13-4, 66; CG 226; Ten 29; W 142. ID 502; 2D 202. eliops

Empedocles

empiric

Experimental ist), v 440; R 15; Sm 307; cf. SD 156.

A mythical serpent, x 525. Elpenor

emprise

The youngest and most foolish of Odysseus’ shipmates that were trans¬ formed into swine and back into men by Circe; at the time for departure he lapsed into a drunken sleep on the goddess’ roof and fell and broke his neck, ID 510. Elysian

Fields, In 40; PM 48. Flowers, L’A 17; iii 359. Dew, C 996. See elysium. Elysium

The Greek paradise; abode of the happy dead, C 257; iii 472. Emathian (Aemafhia)

Urbe, EL IV 102 Philippi. PM 12, Thessalian. S VIII 10 Macedonian (reference to Alexander ). emblem

Enterprise, C 610; xi 642. empyreal

(Greek, “in the fire”) fiery; gener¬ ally, heavenly, i 117; ii 430; etc. empyrean

Heaven, ii 771; etc. enamell'd

So smooth and bright as to seem painted (though whether all green or spotted with flowers is hard to say), Arc 84: the variegated sense holds for L 139; iv 149; ix 525 (in Sidney’s Ar¬ cadia the meadows were “enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers”). enchanting (inchanting)

Pun, L 59, with singing, chanting, that being the source of orpheus’ magic.

Mosaic, iv 703. enchiridion embost

Embosked, hidden in the woods, SA 1700.

A play on (1) a manual of devotion and (2) a dagger (Greek) A 329. encomium, a trivial and malignant

Emilia

A 294 refers to Hall’s Modest Con¬ futation of a Slanderous and Scurri-

See Sonnet II. -

113-

A Milton Dictionary

lous Libel (1642), which flattered the Parliament while actually being “mal¬ ignant” against it. See Sm 333-4. endorst

Loaded on the back (dorsum) of PR 3, 329. Endymion

The shepherd whose “nocturnal trysts with the Moon,” Prol VII 248, “on Latmus hill,” Let 320, in Asia Minor were proverbial: she loved him while he slept and kept him sleeping in her cave forever. G 337. Adjective, EL I 78. enerve

To enervate, impair morally, PR 2, 165. enfolded

Enclosed within one another. Arc 64. engine at the door, that twohanded

L 130-31 is the most celebrated (non¬ textual) crux in English literature. Not less than 34 different explanations can be traced in print. The 1694 para¬ phrase by wtlliam hog is not very helpful: “Machina sed gemino ad portas armata flagello/ Protinus his uno parata ictu accersere fatum.” newton (1752) provided a popular interpre¬ tation: “the axe of reformation”; masson, another: “the English Parliament with its two Houses.” Much depends on how much prescience Milton is given credit for as of November, 1637 (the MS date of Lycidas): did he, for instance, foresee the axe that was to behead Archbishop Laud in 1645? The verse paragraph which ends with the disputed couplet is based on the parable in John x, the first verse of which makes it plain that “at the door” is not just, as verity opined, an ex¬ -

pression meaning “ready at hand” (then Milton would be merely repetitious in following with “Stands ready”), but refers to the door of the sheep-fold, which is the door of the church (which is, in turn, the way to heaven). In the 1950’s theological interpretations su¬ perseded the parliamentary one (cf. Ch. II of George W. Whiting’s Milton and this Pendant World, 1958). Death and damnation (as at the end of Of Reformation) is the probable twohanded doom. In the summing up of D. C. Allen (1954): “The two-handed engine which carries the double death of body and soul, the gladius Dei of iron and gold that twice damns the atheist priest, will avenge St. Peter’s wrongs.” Milton was possibly in¬ fluenced by Savonarola’s oft-repeated (in his sermons) apocalyptic threat, “Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter.” The two-handed sword was a well-known weapon of the 16th and early 17th centuries. The only time Milton ever used “twohanded” again was in reference to a sword (of Michael), vi 250-3 (com¬ pare, for a parallel to 131, vi 317-8). “Engine” makes the modern reader think only of a battery engine or a machine with moving parts. Rut Mil¬ ton’s use was covered by Definition 2 in Worcester s Dictionary as late as 1883: “Any instrument, implement, or weapon” (cf. Oxford English Diction¬ ary, Def. 5a), which quotes Raleigh: “The sword, the arrow, the gun, with many terrible engines of death.” No doubt conjectures will continue, and it is conceivable that Milton meant them to. The present writer, having men¬ tioned to a graduate class that it was his wife’s intuition that the twohanded engine was a clock striking the doom of the bishops, found his passing remark taken seriously by a student who set out to do an M.A.

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A Milton Dictionary

thesis on that Line, beginning with the tower clock of old St. Paul’s Church, where the admonitory arm of an angel pointed to the hours. engin(e)ry

Military engineering, E 283. English Pope, The Or a Discourse wherein the late Mystical Intelligence betwixt the Court of England and the Court of Rome is in part Discovered, an anonymous book of 1643 charging that Charles and particularly Henrietta Maria con¬ spired with Laud and other English bishops to move towards a reconcilia¬ tion with Rome, K 280. Enna

In central Sicily (cf. PM 46), the grove of which was famous among classical writers: ovro located the ab¬ duction of prosperina by pluto there (Met. V, 385 If.) iv269. Ens

Father of the Predicaments,” V note after 58. Literally, Being.

achilles,

ON

Epaminondas

(418P-362 b.c. ) theban general and statesman. Mortally wounded after de¬ feating Spartans at Mantineia, Prol VI 220; T 75 (cicero dramatizes his de¬ fense, De Inventione, I, xxxviii)- ID 216. Epaphroditus

A freedman and favorite of neho; helped him stab himself in the throat, ID 226, 328. Ephesian

Beasts, An 173, see 1 Cor. xv, 32. Books A 310 see Acts xix, 19. Goddess, K 279, see Acts xix, 26 ff. Ephesian's), Ephesus

Ruins south of modern Izmir, Tur¬ key, was a metropolis of ancient Ionia, Asia Minor, and capital of the Roman province of Asia; site of the temple of diana, P 85, 87, 88, 89, 97; CG 183; H 74; etc.

Grew nine inches every month; de¬ stroyed before manhood by apollo, Prol IV 172.

Blood-stained, xi 654. enthymeme(s)

“If some part of a syllogism is lack¬ ing, it is called an enthymene,” Log 460. 396. Sm 287; SD 224. enure

See inure. envermeil

ephod

A glittering vestment such as that worn by the Jewish high priest and containing sacred lots, thus “oraculous,” P 104; CG 204. ephori or ephors

To tinge with red, In 6. Enyo

Goddess of war and “waster cities” (Iliad V, 333) EL IV 75.

of

whose

Powerful supervising magistrates at Sparta and other Doric towns; five in number, W 130; ID 214, 350. Ephraim

Eos

Dawn-goddess,

was killed by

133.

Ephialtes, Neptune's son

ensanguined

The

memnon

son

Mt. Ephraim was in the hilly dis¬ trict of central Palestine inhabited by

- 115-

A Milton Dictionary

Epimenides

the tribe of Ephraim, “ingrateful,” SA 282, to jephtha 988; K 204.

(c. 596 b.c.) Cretan philosopher, prophet, and poet. An 157. The legend was that he fell asleep in a cave for 57 years, awoke supremely “wise” and learned. Sometimes replaces Periander as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.

Epictetus

(fl. 90) The Stoic philosopher, ID 286. Epicurean(s), Epicurism, Epicurus

References to the Greek philosopher (342P-270 b.c. ), taken with his fol¬ lowers to emphasize “corporal pleas¬ ure . . . careless ease,” PR 4, 299—thus supplying an adjective for the “paunches” of prelates, R 74—and the indifference or absence of Providence, A 299, 312, events being the result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, P 103; in this materialistic philosophy, CG 274. Only fragments of his writings are extant (cf. SD 174), but his views were versified by lucretius, A 301. “E nihilo nil fit:” Prol VII 284; Log 36.

Epimethcus

See

D 441.

(315P-403) Eastern church father; disciple of hilarion. Bishop of Con¬ stants (Salamis) in Cyprus from 367. Opponent of oricen. Put among those who “discover more heresies than they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion,” A 312, though he “should himself be orthodoxal above others,” since he was fa¬ mous for “writing against Heretics,” T 211; M 31; 80 heresies being at¬ tacked in his Panarion or “Refutation of all the Heresies.”

epicycle

A small circle with its center on the circumference of a greater circle, viii 84. Ptolemaic “theories set out from the simple conception of a planet uni¬ formly describing a circle with the Earth at the center, and then refined upon it by displacing the center of the circle from the Earth, referring the uniform motion to an arbitrarily cho¬ sen point within the circle, regarding the moving point on the circle as merely the center of a smaller circle in which the planet actually revolved, and so forth,” (A. Wolf).

Epirot(s)

See Sonnet XVII and Pyrrhus (A 342). Epistolarum Familiarium/[2nd line: 1st read Joann/s Miltonii Angli,] Liber Unus: /Quibus /Accesserunt, Ejusdem, jam olim in Col-/ legio Adolescentis, / Prolusiones / Quaedam / Oratoriae

the

Epidaurus, the god in

ix 507 refers to “the voice of Aescula¬ from his shrine in Epidaurus,” 2D 68, in Argolis, the Peloponnesus, where the deity of healing was sup¬ posed to put in an appearance as a serpent. pius

japhet,

Epiphanius, St.

(One Book of the Familiar Letters of John Milton, Englishman, to which are added certain Academic Exercises by the Same when he was a Young Man at College) Brought out May 26, 1674, by Brabazon Zylmer. (“Liber Unus” is peculiar as promising more, though no more was forthcoming.) The letters (see Prolusiones for the rest of the book) number 31, spanning (but the dates are not always accu¬ rately given) the years of early Cam-

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A Milton Dictionary

bridge residence through the Com¬ monwealth (only the last is later than 1659). They are dealt with under the names of the recipients, young, gill, DIODATL, BONMATTEI, HOLSTENTUS, DATE, MYLTOS, PHILARAS, HEATH, OLDENBURG, AIZEMA, SPANHEIM, JONES, HEIMBACH, bigot, de brass, LABADiE. 3 survive in holograph manuscript. The bohn edi¬ tion offered the letters (but not the prolusions) in English, and masson scattered his translations through his six-volume biography. Phyllis B. Tillyard retranslated, Private Correspond¬ ence and Academic Exercises, 1932. In addition there survive the Miltonmylius correspondence of 1651-2 and three letters in English, of which Letter to a Friend is the most impor¬ tant, the others being a note to whitelocke about mylius’ request for a safeguard for the count of oldenburg, and a note to bradshaw recom¬ mending MARVELL.

Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, An 74 lines, octosyllabic couplets, 1631. Jane, daughter of Thomas Vis¬ count Savage, of Rock-Savage, Che¬ shire, by Elizabeth, the eldest daugh¬ ter and co-heir of Thomas Darcy, Earl of Rivers (3), died the first wife of John Paulet, fifth Marquis of Win¬ chester (1598-1675), April 15, 1631, at the age of 23 (7). A news-letter re¬ ported she “had an imposthume upon her cheek lanced; the humour fell down into her throat, and quickly despatched her, being big with child; whose death is lamented, as well in respect of other her virtues as that she was inclining to become a Protestant.” Her husband was a staunch Catholic and loyalist in the Civil War whose house of Basing in Hampshire, turned into a fortress, was stormed by Crom¬ well in October, 1645 a few months

before this poem was published, and the Marquis himself imprisoned in the Tower and his property sequestered. The ‘lovely son” (24) Charles (d. 1699) became a supporter of William of Orange and was created Duke of Bolton in 1689. warton had heard that the Epitaph first appeared in “a Cambridge collection of verses on her death,” as seems to be implied by 55 ff., but this has never been found, ben jonson printed “An Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet” in Underwoods in 50 pentameter couplets that early, as with Milton, pauses over what “the heralds can tell. But Milton’s first couplet brings rather to mind jonson’s “Epi¬ taph on Elizabeth, L.H.”—“Under¬ neath this stone doth lie/ As much beauty as could die” and william browne’s “On the Death of Marie, Countess of Pembroke”—“Underneath this sable hearse/ Lies the subject of all verse. Milton then remembers the ill-omened marriage, the first child, and how with the fatal second childbed “atropos for lucina came,” 28. There follows a conceit about the mother’s womb as tomb worthy of donne’s last sermon. Death’s Duel, followed by a favorite comparison with a lan¬ guishing flower and “the laureate hearse” image of Lycidas. The poem ends with “blazing majesty and light” as if, as hanford has conjectured. Milton were remembering the Rachel of dante’s Paradiso, XXXII, 7-10. Bpitaphium Damonis (Damon's

Epitaph) As the Argumentum states, this is Milton’s memorial to his friend Charles diodati (cf. 210). 219 hexa¬ meters. 1640 (judging by 9 ff.). A unique printed copy of about this time, without title-page or date, is in the British Museum, a pamphlet of 4 leaves. This pastoral elegy follows

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A Milton Dictionary

the conventions of theocritus, bion, and Moschus. thyrsis mourns daphnis in Theocritus’ First Idyl; Milton be¬ gins by mentioning daphnis and as¬ sumes himself the name thyrsis. Each verse paragraph (except the first and last) is initiated with the same choral line: the grieving poet bids the sheep go home unfed 17 times, which is oftener, though only a little oftener, than any comparable refrain occurs in theocritus or Moschus. It has been said that the effect is one of “almost impatiently” thrusting aside the cares of the present. The friendship dis¬ played is more intimate than that in Lycidas. L 125 curiously parallels, ED 66-7. The title was probably sug¬ gested by Epitaphium Bionis, attri¬ buted to Moschus (cf. 2). Invoking the Sicilian nymphs, griev¬ ing Thyrsis recalls that two autumns have passed since Damon died. Thy¬ rsis, whom love of the muse had kept in the Tuscan city of Florence, at last goes home to his abandoned flock. The remaining paragraphs are direct quo¬ tation (like all but the last of L). mer¬ cury, escorter of souls, would not wish Damon to be lost in obscurity. Unless a wolf puts the eye of silence on me first, I shall see that shepherds honor you next after Daphnis, Damon. But what will become of me, now that I have lost my faithful comrade and aid? Who will be my confidant before the hearth? or at summer noon will confer your wit? I wander out alone, my work neglected, the friendly calls of other shepherds unheeded, mopsus and the nymphs wonder what is wrong. If man with difficulty finds a companion he is snatched away. Why did I cross the Alps and go to Rome, even if it were what it was in virgil’s (Tityrus’) day, when I might have been by my dying friend, himself a Tuscan. I made songs and thought of

my friend’s healing herbs back home. I meditate a British theme and shall give up the pastoral pipe, content to be understood only in my own land. I was going to show you the two cups [possibly books of poetry] manso gave me, with their depiction of arabia Felix, the phoenix, and Olympian cupid. This pure aether is your region too. Damon, by his youth without stain, receives the heavenly rewards of those “which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins” (Rev. xiv, 4). equal Fair-minded, CG 234; M 30; W 145. equal(s) Contemporary or approximately the same age, Sm 05 (cf. G 329); 297. equipollent Equal in weight, T 178. Erasmus, Desiderius (1466-1536). Dutch humanist, “who for learning was the wonder of his age,” T 223, bom in Rotterdam (cf. SD 110), frequent visitor and resident in England, taught Greek at Cam¬ bridge. Friend of sm thomas more, to whom he ironically dedicated his Encomium Moriae (Praise of Folly), his most enduring work Prol VI 220 (whose learned frustrated fool was an apparent influence on the fourth sen¬ tence of Sm). Edited NT in Greek, with a Latin translation (1516). Cf. CP 17; CD 1, 5, 13, 30. Wrote on divorce, M 60; T 103, 113, 145 (see Omnia Opera, Basle, 1540, V, 317), 231; Col 249, 266; 2D 114; SD 60. Endeavored to reform Roman Catholic Church from within; Luther “reapt” his “con¬ tempt” Sm 315, 366. Erastus, Thomas (1524-83) German-Swiss

118-

zwinglian

A Milton Dictionary

theologian, gave his name to Erastianism, the doctrine of state supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, “state-tyranny over the Church,” CP 17. Erato The muse of love poetry, EL VI 51. Ercoco Abyssinian port on the west shore of the Red Sea, xi 398. Erebus From Chaos, Erebus and black Night were bom” hesiod, quoted Prol I 126. Erebus then married his sister Night (contra L’A 2) Prol I 132; QN 69, and Day was said to be the off¬ spring Prol I 134: certainly not Death PE 33. But Erebus stands for dark¬ ness and the infernal regions, C 804; ii 883 (and compare Barrow’s intro¬ ductory poem, line 8). Erechtheides See Ion JR 57. erected High-souled, exalted, i 679; PR 3, 27. Active, attentive Ten 39; A 345. eremite, glorious Jesus Christ as dweller in the wil¬ derness, PR 1, 8. Erin(n)ys An avenging deity or Fury, PE 33. erroneous Wandering, vii 20. See aleian field and the presentation of Error as “ser¬ pentine,” D 368: cf. Faerie Queene I, i, 13-24. Erymanth A mountain range in 100.

arcadia

Erythraean main The Red Sea, Ps CXXXVI 46.

Arc

Esau Twin (elder) brother of Jacob, who sold his birthright to the latter for a mess of pottage, iff 512 (Gen. xxviii, 5 ff.); An 168 (Gen. xxv, 30); K 271. Eshtaol A town of the tribe of dan in the low country of Judah, SA 181. essence, fifth Quintessence; in ancient theory the highest and last or celestial essence over and above the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water: the consti¬ tuent of the celestial bodies. Essenes A Jewish ascetic sect referred to by and the eldeh pliny ID 110. josephus, philo,

Essex, Robert Devereux, third Earl of (1591-1646) Supported Petition of Right, 1628; voted for death of Straf¬ ford, 1640. Served as commander-in¬ chief of the Parliamentary army 16425, K 106. He was not efficient and his army by the end of 1643 sometimes had but “twenty men in a company,” E 289. Este(nses) This princely Italian line included Ippolito I, the Cardinal d’Este, ahiosto’s patron; Alfonso II, Tasso’s FE # 9 44. Esther, Queen CG 188, see Esther, ii, 12. Estotiland An island off Labrador, according to Mercator maps, x 686. Etham Etam, Judges, xv, 8, a natural stronghold in Judah, perhaps in the neighborhood of Bethlehem, SA 253.

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A Milton Dictionary

Ethelbert

Euboic

King of Kent from 561, according to B 133; ID 436. Married to the Chris¬ tian Bertha, he was baptized by St. AUGUSTINE, 597.

Euboea was a large island off the Greek mainland. South of thessaly, ii 546.

ethereal

(fl. c. 300 b.c.) The Greek geo¬ meter, alluded to for his clarity of demonstration—T 111; Ten 54—and published in Latin by Ramus Log 498, was evidently a favorite of skin¬ ner’s under Milton’s original pupilage S XXI 7.

Euclid

Heavenly Pas 1. Ethereous, vi 473. Ethiop(e) line The equator, iv 282; cf. EL V 31. Ethiop(e) queen Cassiopeia, transformed into a con¬ stellation for boasting of the beauty of her daughter andromeda (not her¬ self: Milton is either changing the myth or means by “her beauty’s” “her daughter’s,”) IP 19.

Euclion The miserly principal character of comedy the Aulularia, ID

plautus’s

280. Euergetae

Ethiopian, the wide The Ethiopian sea is the Indian Ocean, east of “the Cape” of Good Hope, ii 641.

Eugenius (d. 394) Roman emperor from 392, favored by Arbogast; both fell near Aquileia, ID 258.

ethnarch Viceroy, ID 242. ethnic(s)

Eumenides

Pagan(s) K 87; R 19.

The Furies in their favorable aspect QN 8; Prol VI 230.

Etruria(n) Tuscan (nw Italy), i 303; ED headnote. Etruscan Same as

A title of honor—“benefactors”—con¬ ferred by Greek states, ID 156.

etrurian

Man 4.

Eunomius (d. c. 393) Deposed as bishop of Cyzicus, 361, for his extreme abian views, st. Gregory of nyssa wrote his Contra Eunomium c. 382 Sm 286.

etymologicon

Euoe

A dictionary giving the derivations of words, such as the Etymologicon Magnum cited in the Pindaric Mar¬ ginalia (XVIII, 303) T 179.

The cry of the Bacchantes; cf. Euan EL VI 17. euphrasy A healing herb for the eyes, xi 414.

etymon The primitive word, SD 96.

signification

of

a

Which bounded Palestine on the east, formed the western boundary of Mesopotamia, and united with the Tigris, PR 3, 254, to empty southward

Euan bacchus,

Euphrates

EL VI 23.

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A Milton Dictionary

into the Persian Gulf, i 420: xii 114PR 3, 272, 384. euphrones As ordinarily applied to night means the propitious-timed but here prudentminded, Prol I 132. Euphrosyne

Euryalus (Eurialus) Raider with his friend Nisus of the camp of turnus (Aen. IX, 176-449), CE II 5. Eurybates See

ACHILLES.

Eurydice

Gieek for Mirth and the name of one of the three graces (Aglaia and Thalia), L’A 12. Euripides (480-406 b.c. ) Has been called “Milton’s favorite Greek dramatist.” “Sad electra’s poet,” S VIII 13—whose Orestes and Hercules were cited both by the Cambridge student, Prol I 120, and the late controversialist, 2D 74, was “doctrinal and exemplary,” CG 237 enough to be quoted by st. Paul —Pref. SA; ef. A 306—is on title-page of T and A, and one of four recom¬ mended for memorization, E 286. Mil¬ ton’s marginal notes on the Tragoediac, Geneva, 1602, survive (XVIII, 304-320). Critic of women. A 300 (Andromache 590-3); of tyranny, Ten 13; ID 310 (same quotation), 350. Debt to Euripedes in SA for such characterizations as harapha and dalila, for the prologos, and felt tone of the monody, 606f., and choral echo, 697-700, is generally acknowledged. Euripus Figuratively, a scene of violent changes, as in the tides and currents of the channel between Euboea and the mainland, 2D 150.

The wife of

orpheus,

L’A 150.

Eurylochus The only companion of Odysseus to escape from the house of circe when his friends were metamorphosed into swine, ID 510. Eurynome, the Eve perhaps

wide-Encroaching

Milton, x 581, translates literally the Greek and makes an excursion into comparative religion. See ophion. Eurypylus See

machaon,

PM 24.

Eusebian See

eusebius,

A 312.

Eusebius (260P-340?) “The ancientest v/riter extant of Church history,” P 85. Bishop of Caesarea, in favor with Constan¬ tine, and moderate at the council of nicaea (325). His Historia Ecclesiastica comprising 10 books was heavily used by Milton, R 20-1. 30; P 87, 91, 93, 97; An 178; CG 212; T 136, 207; A 308; H 64; etc. The “obscenities” of his Preparatio Evangelica, A 312; SD 110. Eustochium

Eurotas A river near Sparta that became a favorite of apollo after the accidental death of hyacinth, In 25. Eurus The east wind, EL IV 39; ED 60; x 705.

(370-c. 419) The nim, A 308, to whom st. jerome addressed 3 letters, of which Ep. 22, “De Virginitate,” tells about his dream when seized by a fever one Lent: the devil came and condemned him for being a Cicero¬ nian.

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A Milton Dictionary

Evagrius Scholasticus

exorbitant

(536P-600?) Byzantine church his¬ torian; legal adviser to pope Gregory. His History covers 431-594, continu¬ ing EUSEBIUS, P 84.

Out of orbit, inordinate, iii 177. Exorbitancy, a going beyond the proper orbit. CG 264: “the proper sphere wherein the magistrate cannot but confine his motion without a hide¬ ous exorbitancy from law”; K 271.

Evander Led a Pelasgian colony from Pallantium in arcadia into Italy and built a town of the same name at the foot of the Palatine Hill before the founding of Rome; ally of aeneas, Sal 28.

expatiate To walk abroad (Latin), i 774. explode

evanges Evangels, E 284. Eve Before her debut in iv, little men¬ tioned: in the MS proposals for a tragedy, XVIII, 228 ff., and T 83 ff. in the analysis of Gen. ii, 18, 23, 24. Ori¬ ginal state, T 170. irenaeus, cited P 94. Compared with pandora, D 441; cf. iv 714. Eve is critically dismissed in PR—“facile consort,” 1, 51; 2, 141; “crude apple that diverted Eve,” 2, 349; “but Eve was Eve,” 4, 5; 180.

To drive off the stage by clapping or hissing, xi 669; x 546; “Liturgies and tyrannies which Cod and man are now ready to explode and hiss out of the land,” An 106. expresses Messages, K 73. extenuate Disparage, reduce, SA 767; x 645. eyn Eyes, N 223. eyries

event

Nests of birds of prey, vii 424.

Often means outcome, consequence, i 624; ii 82; C 405, 411; W 130; etc.

Ezechiah HEZEKIAH.

evinced Pun, PR 4, 235, on (1) overcome and (2) made evident, exposed.

Ezekiel The prophet whose call by the river in Babylonia took place c. 595 b.c. His visions are remembered from Pas 36 f. on: i 455 (Ez. viii, 14); CG 1901 (Ez. xl); Sm 314 (Ez. i); D 367-H 91 (Ez. ii-iii), that of the cheru¬ bim and wheels being most men¬ tioned, CD 1, 6 (Ez. i). chebar

exarchate Patriarchy, B 59. exasperated Made stricter, D 489. excremental External, in the nature of an excre¬ scence, A 311.

Ezra

exercise

The famous scribe and priest, D 376, 407, 408, 411; M 8; T 110, 191, 193; K 210.

Exercere, torment, ii 89.

-

122

F Fabius See

QUINTILIAN.

Fabius Maximus (d. 203 b.c. ) Surnamed Cunctator, i.e. the Delayer, because in the Sec¬ ond Punic War he resisted Hannibal’s military strength by his "Fabian” strategy of conducting harassing oper¬ ations while avoiding—contrary to popular clamor—decisive conflicts, D 464.

divines in Germany,” M 12; “that faith¬ ful associate of’ buceb’s “labors,” 18; “so learned and so eminent in Eng¬ land once,” D 384: his Thar gum (Strassburg, 1546) referred to, sig. Q4 translated, 388, 498. Fairfax, Edward See

tasso.

Fairfax, Thomas See Sonnet XV. fairly

Fabricius

Quietly, C 168.

(d. after 275 b.c. ) Whose honesty held out against pybxhus’ attempts to bribe him after the Roman defeat at Heraclea (280), PR 2, 446.

The celebrated Falemian vineyards were in northern Campania, PR 4, 117.

Fabritii

fallows

Falerne

See above, CG 273.

Unsown ploughed fields, L’A 71.

fact

fame

Deed (Latin), ii 124; ix 928, 980; xi 457; SA 493, 736.

Latin sense of rumor, i 651; ii 346; x 481; iv 938; PR 1, 334; SA 1248.

factitious and defeated party

familiar

The Presbyterian, K 64.

Familiar spirit or associate, Sm 342.

fadge

Familiar Letters or Epistles

Agree, CG 204; D 382.

See Epistolarum Familiarium. Familism

fadom Milton’s spelling of fathom, ii 934. Fagius, Paulus (1504-1549?) The Latin name of Paul Bucher, successor at Heidelberg of capito; died at Cambridge as pro¬ fessor of Hebrew. “One of the chief

Put among “fanatic dreams,” D 4256. The “Family of Love” sect that rose in Holland and spread also in Eng¬ land in the 16th century and knew a revival in the 1640’s. They taught the dependence of religion upon love rather than faith, queen Elizabeth

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issued an edict against them in 1580; they eventually merged with the Quakers and other mystic bodies.

worshipped as god of agriculture and cattle-rearing, PR 2, 191; iv 708; EL V 127; Sal 27; ED 32; SD 108.

Familists

Fausta

See above, CG 213, 217. fangle, conceited Extravagant contrivance, SM 353. fantastics, our late V 20, variously taken as referring to the Euphuists (who had long since gone out of style by 1628), donne’s metaphysical poetry (available until 1633 only in manuscript), or, most likely, the budding (such as Milton’s fellow students who had just spoken) or full blown clergy, whose “Latin barbarous, . . . and in their choice pre¬ ferring the gay rankness of apueeius, abnobius, or any modern fustianist be¬ fore the native Latinisms of cicebo” is attacked in Sm 347. “Late” probably means “recent.”

(289-326) Wife of Constantine from 307; suffocated in a heated bath by his order when the charges that caused him to execute Crispus were proved false, R 23. Favonius The gentle west wind of spring (cf. Car. I, iv, 1) S XX 6; EL III 47. Horace,

favorite, a wicked Sejanus was the cruel favorite of Tiberius, PR 4, 95. Fawkes (Fauxe), Guy (1570-1606) The principal agent in the Gunpowder Plot (see In Quintum Novembris), PB I, 2, November 5th still being celebrated in England as Guy Fawkes Day.

fording fay(e)s

Farthing, Sm 310.

Fairies, N 235. far-fet feast of love

Far-fetched, PR 2, 401.

R 4, see Jude xii.

Farnesi(os) Odoardo Farnese (161246) was at the time a rival of the babbebini FE #9 44. Alessandro (1519-89), ap¬ pointed cardinal by his grandfather Paul III, completed the Famese pal¬ ace. Ranuccio (1569-1622) built a fine theater at Parma on the model of the ancient Roman theaters.

feature Shape, x 279; A 338. fee Fee simple, full legal possession, S XII 7; Col 270. Felix II

Matthis Pfarrer (c. 1485-1568) May¬ or of strassbubg 7 times; went on diplomatic missions, T 224; M 10.

Pope, 483-92, who began schism of 34 years between Eastern and West¬ ern churches, had asserted that peteb made icnatius a bishop, as ussheb reported, p. 6 of his Judgment, 1641, P 88.

faun(s), Faunus

fennel

Lewd goat-footed (“with cloven heel,” L 34) Roman woodland deity;

This vegetable was supposed to be a favorite with snakes, as helping

Farrerus

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A Milton Dictiontiry

them to shed their skins and to clear their sight, ix 581; Sm 323.

reign, thus were “feared,” T 70 as "tyrannical,” W 366; R 47.

Fenner, Dudley

figment

(1558P-87) Puritan divine; followed Cartwright to Antwerp, where he was a minister of the Reformed Church, and after difficulties and imprison¬ ment in England under Whitgift, at middelburg. Sacra Theologia, 1586, cited Ten 50, 51.

Image, CG 204. finny drove Fish, C 115 (the phrase is Spenser¬ ian, F. Q. Ill, viii, 29, 9). firecross A burning cross used in Scotland as a call to arms, R 57.

ferular A flat stick or rod (ferule) used for punishing children by striking on the palm of the hand, A 324; cf. ID 432 434.

firelocks Muskets (set off by musketeers, CG 271.

sparks)

or

fit

fescue(d) Referring to a stick used to point out the letters to children learning to read, A 324; An 124.

Division of a poem or piece of music, Sm 334. Floccus HORACE.

Fesole Fiesole, i 289, town 3 miles ne of Florence, the hills of which (suitable for an observatory) are mentioned FE #8 34. Fez

Flaccus, Lucius Praetor 63 B.c. and afterwards pro¬ praetor in Asia. In 59, on being ac¬ cused by D. Laelius of extortion, he was defended by both cicero and HORTENSIUS, ID 182.

In northern Africa, in Morocco, 95 miles from the Atlantic, one of the sacred places of Islam and trade source of the red hat, the fez, xi 403.

Priests serving a particular Roman deity, N 194; R 2.

Fife (Fifa)

flap

Maritime county of East Scotland. 2D 232.

flamens

An implement used to brush away flies with, Col 272.

Fift(h) Monarchy

flaw

Believers in an imminent millen¬ nium as foretold in Daniel ii, 44, the reign of Christ after the Assyrian, Per¬ sian, Greek, and Roman monarchies had passed away. The Fifth Monarch ists, among them overton, Harrison, Venner, vane, acknowledged no king but Jesus and were in favor of using the sword to hasten the millennial

A blast of wind, x 698; PR 4 454CG 222. fleam Phlegm, the cold and moist humor inducing sluggishness, CG 225. fleamy Phlegmatic, Col 254.

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A Milton Dictionary

fledge

Fletcher, Harris Francis

Fledged, full-fledged or feathered, iii 627; vii 420.

(1892). University of Illinois professor who began by studying Mil¬ ton’s connection with Hebrew, Mil¬ ton’s Semitic Studies and Some Mani¬ festations of Them in His Poetry (1926); The Use of the Bible in Mil¬ ton’s Prose (1929); Milton’s Rabbini¬ cal Readings (1930). Then went on to do outstanding editing, first com¬ pletely revising in 1941 the W. V. Moody Cambridge Edition (Hough¬ ton Mifflin) of the Complete Poetical Works and then launching the Illinois Photographic Facsimile Edition, 4 volumes (1943-48), in which the col¬ lation of the first edition of PL, for instance, was based on 146 copies. Finally after thirty years’ preparation, Fletcher has begun to trace The Intel¬ lectual Development of John Milton (Vol. I, 1956 II, 1960).

fledge with Feathered with (of a young bird becoming able to fly—a fledgling), Let 321. fleecy star The constellation of Aries, the Ram, iii 558. Fleetwood (Fletuode), Charles (d. 1692). Commanded regiment of foot in the New Model at Naseby, 1645. Sided with army against parlia¬ ment. Saw service at dunbar and worcesteb. Married Cromwell’s eldest daughter Bridget, the widow of Ireton, 1652. In the Protector’s council, 1654. “Fleetwood was a weak man, but very popular with all the praying part of the army” Clarendon. 2D 232.

Fletcher, John

Fleta

See Camus and L’Allegro.

was the first to print, 1647, this Latin book on English law, c. 1290. An imitation of bracton, its title derives from the belief that it was written in the Fleet prison by judges whom Edward I had committed there, K 299; ID 426, 444, 532. selden

Fletcher, Phineas

Fletcher, Giles, the younger (1588P-1623) Whose- Spenserian Christ’s Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth, 1610, in 8-line stanzas (ababbccc), influenced PR (the tempters have similar guises) and, in its debate between Justice and Mercy, offers an analogue to iii. Grosart cited “Heaven awakened all his eyes/ To see another sun at mid¬ night,” Christ’s Victory in Heaven, stanza 78, for v 44-5. But see F.Q. Ill, xi, 45, 7-8. hanford dates Milton’s reading of the Fletcher brothers around the time of N. -

(1582-1650) Like his brother Giles a continuing slight influence, as in the infernal council of the twin Gun¬ powder Plot poems of 1627, Locustae, vel Pietas Jesuitica and The Locusts or Apollyonists. “High on a throne of royal state . . . Satan exalted sat,” ii, 1, 5 joins “Soho turn Lucifer alto” (Locustae, 8) and “in state Sat Lordly Lucifer” (The Locusts, I, xviii, 2-3), while “Indomitumque odium” (Locus¬ tae, 53) is more suggestive for “stead¬ fast hate,” i 58, and “immortal hate,” i 107, than “never danted hate” (The Locusts, I, xxxiii, 2). The Purple Is¬ land (1633) also gets cited, e.g. I, xliv, 3, “That Trine-one with himself in council”—N 10-11. Flora The goddess of flowers and spring.

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A Milton Dictionary

v 16; PR 2, 365. Her festival was the Floralia, Prol VI, 238. florid Flowery, vii 90.

eusebius

Site of the celebrated park and pal¬ ace, enlarged by Henri IV, 37 miles se of Paris. CG 244. Foxe, John

Florinus See

Fountain Bleau (Fontainebleau)

V, xx, 5 P 91.

foil Setting of a gem, L 79. foikmooters Frequenters of popular assemblies, Col 263. fond(ly) Foolish (ly), iii 449, viii 195, 209; L 56; iii 470; vii 152; S XIX 8; vi 90; x 834; SA 228, 812. 1682; etc.

(1516-87). Whose “Book of Mar¬ tyrs,” the popular title for his Acts and Monuments (cf. An 120) 1st English edition 1563, many later editions, is cited, M 3, “the author of our church history” who does not “spare to record sadly the fall . . . and infirmities of these martyrs” under Mary, R 68. Mil¬ ton’s reference fits the 7th edition, 1631-2. Though unnamed, Foxe was a steady source for R, e.g. 5. Foxian confessors See above and Sm 324.

Fontarabbia 40 miles from Roncevalles (Roncevaux) in the Pyrenees, where legend has it that the most illustrious of the 12 Peers of France, Roland (not Charlemagne ), the emperor’s neph¬ ew, fell during the return from the campaign against the saracens (Arabs, thus perhaps the reason for Milton’s shift to Fontarabbia) of Spain, i 587. (The Chanson de Roland, most famous version of the story, was not discovered and made available until after the French Revolution.) force Belial puns on (1) persuasiveness and (2) impetus, vi 622.

confessors.

An 120;

Francini (Francinus), Antonio ED 137, whose 84-line Ode in Ital¬ ian (praising Milton’s mastery of 6 tongues) was prefixed to the 1645 Poems (I, 156-64). Greetings sent to, FE #10 52, and returned, 314. Re¬ membered, 2D 122. Francis(cus), 5t. of Assisi (1182-1226) who retired as a her¬ mit to Mount Alvemo and mixed soci¬ ably with the wild animals, QN 86. Franciscan Referring to the mendicant order of or Gray (iii 475) Friars instituted by St. Francis c. 1209, iii 480; A 330. Minorites

forestall Franekera

Anticipate, C 362.

Franeker, a university town in Fries¬ land, SD 158.

Fortescue, Sir John (1394P-1476?) Author of De Laudibus Legum Angliae, ID 476, 478.

freakt

Fortunation, Atilius

Frederic(k) Barbarossa ("redbeard")

(4th cent.) Roman grammarian, R 29.

Streaked, L 144.

(1123P-90)

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Emperor of the Holy

A Milton Dictionary

Roman Empire, engaged in a long struggle with the cities of northern Italy, was excommunicated, and lost the battle of Legnano, 1176, to Pope Alexander III, T 220. Frederic(k) II (1482-1556) Called the Wise. Elec¬ tor of the Palatinate from 1544. Influ¬ enced by mei.anchthon, he accepted the Protestant faith in 1546, M 12; T 224.

frith Estuary, firth, ii 919. frizzled hair implicit Curled foliage (Latin coma=both hair of the head and leaves) en¬ tangled, vii 323. Cf. frizzles, An 114. frontispiece FaQade, iii 506. frore Frozen, ii 595.

French, J(oseph) Milton

Frost(ium), Gualter (Walter), elder

(1895) Rutgers professor, be¬ sides co-editing XIII and XVIII of the Columbia milton and being the au¬ thor of numerous articles, is the meti¬ culous compiler of Milton in Chan¬ cery (1939) (dealing with the law¬ suits of THE ELDER MILTON also) and The Life Records of John Milton, 5 volumes (1949-58).

(d. 1652) Secretary to the Council of State from 1649. Mentioned in FE #11 54 from Petty France, West¬ minster, Jan. 1652 (XII, 354) to mylius; again 374 and 376. frounc't With hair crimped, IP 123. fruit-trencher Shallow wooden plate, Sm 321.

frequence, in full In full assembly, PR 1, 128; 2, 130.

frumps Jeers, Sm 286.

frequent Crowded (Latin), i 797; vii 504.

fucus Face-paint, CG 249.

Frescobaldi, Pietro Member of the Academy of the Apatisti of Florence and friend of heinsius FE #10 52: 2D 122.

fulgent Resplendent, gleaming, x 449. fulmin'd

fret Ridge on finger-board of a musical instrument such as a guitar, vii 597.

Thundered, PR 4, 270. Fulvius Marcus Fulvius Flaccus, consul 125

friar's lantern (lanthorn) The will-o’-the-wisp (with a hit at friars as poor guides), L’A 104. friars, white, black, and gray The Carmelites, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans respectively, iii 474-5. (Milton omits the Augustinians or “Austins.”)

b.c., ID 288.

furred Covered with morbid matter (like a sick person’s tongue), An 146. Fury, blind Actually one of the Fates, atrofos, L 75.

frieze

fusil

Coarse woolen cloth used for outer garment, C 722.

Foimed by melting or casting, mol¬ ten, xi 573.

128-

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G gabardine A long loose cloak, the prescribed garment of Jews in the middle ages, T 183. Gabriel Hebrew, “man of God.” One of the seven archangels of tradition, and one of the four principal angels in PL, “chief of the angelic guards” of para¬ dise, iv 549, 561, 781, 865, confronter of the invading satan, iv 886 ff.; ix 54. “In military prowess next” to Michael, vi 45 f., 355. The angel of the Annun¬ ciation, Luke i, 26: PR 1, 130; 4, 504. ID 104. CD 1, 5; MS 231: “by his name signifying a prince of power.” Gaddi, Jacobo Florentine poet and scholar of pa¬ trician family. Founder of the Acade¬ my mentioned as “Gaddian” at the end of the 1647 letter to Dati, FE # 10 52, the “Svogliati” or “Dis¬ gusted,” 3 meetings in a row of which Milton is on the minutes as attending in March, 1639. 2D 122. Gades Latin form of Cadiz, the ancient city on an island on the southern coast of Spain, west of Gibraltar, PR 4,77. Gadire Greek Gadera, Cadiz (see above), SA 716. Gadites The descendants of Gad, Jacob’s

7th son, the first-born of Zilpah, ID 80. Galasp See Sonnet XI. Galatians, the foolish Gal. iii, 1 Sm 355. CP 17: Gal. v. 17. Galba (5? B.C.-69 a.d.) Had joined insur¬ rection of Julius Vindex against nero, and on Nero’s death succeeded him as emperor, 68, but was killed by sol¬ diers after reign of about 6 months. Galen (2nd cent.) Greek physician. Pro! VII 272. Galilean lake, pilot of the St. Peter, from whose fishing boat “by the lake of Gennesaret (cf. PR 2, 23) (Luke v, 1) or Sea of Galilee, Jesus “taught the people,” L 109. Galilee of the Gentiles Sm 345: see Matt, iv, 15-6; Isaiah ix, 1-2. Galileo (1564-1642) “The Tuscan artist,” first close viewer of the moon “through optic glass,” i 288, and discoverer of sun spots through “his glaz’d optic tube,” iii 590 and the phases of Venus, “the Morning Plan¬ et,” vii 366, and tracer of the Milky Way, vii 576 ff.—the latest person to be named in PL v 262. “I found and

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A Milton Dictionary

visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition,” A 330, a statement doubted by Liljegren on the grounds that Galileo was inacces¬ sible to visitors and that Milton never alludes to the blindness that had over¬ taken the old astronomer by 1638-9 in his guarded home at Fiesole (but other visitors got through to him—why not Milton, who had good connec¬ tions, especially during his first stay in Florence). Gallaphrone King of Cathay, father of PR 3, 340.

angelica,

Gallia Gaul or France, PR 4, 77. Gaili(c) A pun on (1) more’s Gallic—French —origin or amorousness and (2) cock, Latin gallus, 2D 36; cf. ID 280.

Ganges The great “Indian stream,” iii 436, stands for the extreme east in EL III 49, for India in ix 82. Ganymede The beautiful lad whom jove, dis¬ guised as an eagle, snatched up to be his cup-bearer, EL VII 21-2; PR 2, 353 (paired with Hylas in both refer¬ ences ). Gard(i)ner, Stephen (c. 1483-1555) Bishop of Winchester, subservient to both henry vm and mary. As lord high chancellor under the latter he vigorously supported the persecution of Protestants and had Elizabeth declared illegitimate. “That subtle prelate . . . sought to divert the first reformation,” CG 222. gargarisms Gargles, CG 273.

Gallienus

Garter, the prelate of the

Roman emperor 253-68; son and till 260 colleague of his father Vale¬ rian ID 338.

andrewes in his capacity of Bishop of Winchester was the prelate of the Order of the Garter, CG 275.

galloping nun, an English

Gate-House, the

A temporal religious pensioner, without any vows, An 122.

A prison in

Westminster,

Sm 321.

Gath galloway A small spirited horse, An 169. Gallus, Cornelius (70-26 b.c. ) Roman elegiac poet mourned by virgil in Eel. X and praised by ovid (Trist. iv, 10, 5), but nothing attributed with certainty to him survives, Man 4. gaily pots (gallipots) Ointment jars (pyxides, SD 156), K 263.

Philistine city, SA 981, 1068, 1078, 1127, 1129; i 465; in SA 266 and An 169 Philistia generally: cf. 2 Sam. i, 20. See harapha. gay Specious, C 790; P 83. Gaza Scene of SA; a southern border city of the Philistines (Azzah in Deut. ii, 23 ) 41, 435, 981, 1558, 1729; i 466. gear

Gamaliel

Affairs, C 167 (This line was dropped in 1673).

CP 26: see Acts v, 39.

130-

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A Milton Dictionary

Gehazi

genius

The servant of Elisha, stricken with leprosy after he obtained fraudulently money and garments from Naaman, 2 Kings v, 20 ff. R 72; K 213; H 68, 69, 90.

Tutelary deity ("tutelaris deus” 2D 226), presiding spirit, N 186; L 183; IP 154. cf. Sm 318; D 418. Genius of the Wood in Arcades.

Gehenna The valley of Hinnom (cf. Jeremiah xix, 6) or of lamentation, a deep nar¬ row glen to the south of Jerusalem where the idolatrous Jews offered their children to moloch in holocaust, and by the time of jerome the image of the place of everlasting fire, “the type of Hell,” i 405; An 117. Gelasius I Pope 492-96, M 31. Gellius, Aulus (2nd cent.) Author of the miscel¬ laneous and anecdotal Nodes Atticae, T 82: IV, 3. Gellian, Prol VI 220.

genuine Innate Col 266. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100P-54) English chronicler, whose Historia Regum Britanniae traced the descent of British princes from the Trojans and gave impetus to the cycle of Arthurian romances. Used gingerly in B 6, 23, 25, 30, 49, 106, etc. “buchanan . . . reprehends him of Manmouth . . . for fabling in the deeds of art(h)ur” 131; Geofrey of Monmouth “whose weight we know” 150. George, St.

Gelonos A Scythian people on the Borysthenes, the modem Don in the Ukraine, NS 54. generous Noble, CG 241; E 280. Geneva “That envied city,” An 167, the home of Calvinism, cf. Ten 52. Visited by Milton on his return from Italy: see diodati, jean. Also early residence of more, 2D 30, to which he ought to return for discipline, SD 138. Genezaret The Sea of Galilee, an expansion of the upper Jordan, PR 2, 23.

“Our old patron by his matchless valor slew” “that huge dragon of Egypt” CG 275. Little is known of the life or martyrdom of England’s patron saint, whose “feast”—K 107— was April 23, and whose “red cross” —R 61—marks the English flag and marked the uniform of soldiers and sailors from the 14th century, the same century that saw edward III found the Order of the Garter under the saint’s patronage. Ger(h)ard, Johann (1582-1637) German Lutheran theologian; leader of orthodox luthrans and authority of Locorum Theologicorum, 9 vols., Geneva, 1639. T 200, 222, 227.

genial (1) nuptial, iv 712; viii 598; hence (2) procreative, vii 282; T 85; (3) pecu¬ liar to one’s disposition or “genius,” SA 594; CG 235.

Gergessa On the Sea of Galilee, whose in¬ habitants, when Jesus freed two from possession by devils (Matt, viii, 28

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A Milton Dictionary

ff.), “besought him that he would de¬ part out of their coasts,” EL IV 103. German(us), St.

league with joshua the day “the sun stood still” (Joshua x, 13) xii 265. Gibraltar

(378P-448) Bishop of Auxerre, 418 B 108. Twice sent to Britain to com¬ bat pelagianism 109-112. Deposer of vortigern 122; K 296; ID 436.

The famous promontory on the southern coast of Spain mentioned only in i 355, but see Hercules’ pil¬ lars.

Gersom, Ben (Levi ben Gerson) (1288-1344) French Jewish mathe¬ matician and religious philosopher, most versatile of the medieval rabbis. Milton was evidently quoting from a rabbinical Bible, such as buxtorf’s D 488. Geryon's sons Spaniards, xi 410 (from Geryon, a monstrous king of Erytheia, an island of Spain, whose cattle were stolen by Hercules, and who early was as¬ sociated with wealth, and, in dante’s Inferno, xvii, with treachery. With Milton compare Faerie Queene V, x, 9. giant-angels “Doubtless with allusion to the mythical giants who made war on the gods” (Lockwood), vii 605. Gibeah City “which belongeth to Benja¬ min” (Judges xix, 14) in Palestine where “certain sons of Belial” (22) satiated themselves on a concubine— “the Levite’s wife” An 154; D 488; ID 286—she having been “exposed . . . to avoid worse rape,” that of the host’s virgin daughter, i 504 ff. In 1667 “door” was plural and “Expos’d a Matron” was “Yielded their Matrons,” and “avoid” was “prevent”: bringing in Gen. xix, 8.

Gibson, James Minister of Pencaitland, was brought before the Privy council and imprisoned for expressing in a sermon in Edinburgh his “fear that if our King continue in his present course, he shall be the last of his race” Ten 30. This and the coin ref¬ erence were added in the second 1650 edition. Gideon “Matchless,” SA 280: see Judg. viii, 4-9, the greatest of the judges of Israel, among those praised by Jesus for his rise from “lowest poverty to highest deeds,” PR 2, 437. Refused to be king, BN 154; ID 134 (“greater than a king”). Gilby, Anthony (1510-85) Puritan pamphleteer (M.A. Christ’s College, 1535), whose prosecution for nonconformity was ordered by Parker, 1571. Thomas Ful¬ ler called him “a fierce, fiery, and furious opposer of the Church Disci¬ pline established in England” Ten 50. Gildas (d. c. 570). “The most ancient of all our historians” Ten 26, author of De Excidio Britanniae, ID 436; B 23, 30, 33, 69, 83, etc.

Gibeon

Gildas

Like gibeah means “hill” and was within the territory of Benjamin: in

Claudius”

-

“A

132-

British poet,” B 12.

“lived

under

A Milton Dictionary

Gilgal

gins

A city of Palestine: 1 Sam, xi, 15 ID 108.

Traps, SA 933 (short for engine). Girard

Gil(l), Alexander, the elder

See

(1565-1635). High master of St. Paul’s School (from 1608) during Milton’s attendance. His Logonomia Anglica, 1619, 1621, an English gram¬ mar for foreigners, shows an appre¬ ciation of English poetry, especially Spenser.

glancing Shooting, C 80. Glanville, Ranulf de (d. 1190) Justiciar of England and adviser of henry If, Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England ascribed to him, ID 528.

Gil(l), Alexander, the younger (1597-c. 1644). Usher at St. Paul’s School, succeeded his father as head¬ master. M.A. Oxford, 1619. “Ac¬ counted one of the best Latin poets in the nation” (wood). Anti-BUCKiNGham, vigorously Protestant, talked loosely in his cups and was con¬ demned to loss of his ears but par¬ doned before that part of his sentence was executed. Conducted pen-war with Ben Jonson. As High Master reputed hot-tempered and a flogger. Milton addressed him FE # 2, 3, and 5, admiring his Latin verses and in the 1634 letter enclosing his own Greek version of Psalm 114. Doubt¬ less Milton knew Gill’s Parerga, 1632 (Latin and Greek Verses), especially “In ruinam Gamerae Papisticae.” Gill’s “In Sylvam-Ducis” is referred to FE #2 8.

DU HAILLAN.

Glaucus A fisherman of Anthedon in Boeotia who in his old age became immortal after eating of a certain herb and was changed into a marine deity and oracle (destined to have a major role in Keats’s Endymion, Book III) C. 874. glebe Farming-land, PR 3, 259; H 80. gleeking Tricking, or perhaps good jesting An 175. glibbed Made smooth, PR 1, 375. globose Noun, sphere, v 753 (adjective vii 375). glouting

Gilles, Peter (Pierre) Swiss author of Histoire Ecclesiastique des Eglises Pieformees . . .en Quelques Valees de Piedmont . . . Appelees Eglises Vavdoises, Geneva, 1644, was born in 1571 and lived at least well into his seventies. Page 16 of his work is referred to H 81; CB 137.

Frowning, sullen R 4. glozing Flattering, iii 93; C 161; ix 549 (glozed); Sm 332; K 290. Glycas, Michael

ging Gang, Sm 307. -

133

(fl. middle 12th cent.) Byzantine scholar, whose Annales tracing the History of the World from the Crea¬ tion to a.d. 1118 did not appear till 1660 in Paris. FE # 21 88.

A Milton Dictionary

Glycera

Gomarus, Franciscus

Sung by Horace, Car. I, xix; xxx, 3; xxxiii EL VI 28.

(1563-1641) Dutch Calvinistic the¬ ologian, CD 2, 7.

gnomologies

gonfalons

Collections of wise sayings, T 174.

Banners usually of two or three streamers, v 589.

Gnostics

Goodman, Christopher

Opponents of the body and all its works, T 64.

(1520P-1603) “Minister of the Eng¬ lish Church at Geneva,” Ten 50-2. Margaret professor of divinity at Ox¬ ford went into exile under Mary; friend and colleague of knox at Gen¬ eva, on whose invitation he became minister at Ayr, 1559. References to How Superior Powers ought to be Obeyed of their Subjects: and Where¬ in they may Jawfidly by God’s Word be disobeyed and resisted (1558), a blast at female government issued the same year as knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet.

God(s) Often refers to the angelic order, i 116, 138, 240, 629; ii 352, 391; hi 341; v 60, 117 (probably); ix 164; x 90; etc. “The name of God is not infre¬ quently ascribed, by the will and con¬ cession of God the Father, even to angels and men” CD 1, 6 (XIV, 244). Godfrey of Bouillon (Boulogne) (1061P-1100) Leader in the First Crusade (1096-99); captured Jerusa¬ lem; defeated Sultan of Egypt at ascalon (1099). Subject of many legends; hero of tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, CG 237; LP 279; B 292. Golartius (Goulart), Simon (1543-1628) Minister at Geneva and editor of Cyprian’s Opera, Paris, 1593, CG 258.

CHARLES

“Knot,” V 90; “twine,” iv 348; “dif¬ ficulties,” D 494. ALEXANDER THE GREAT cut with his sword the hard knot that the Phrygian peasant king Gordius had tied, about which the prophecy was that whoever loosened it would rule all Asia. Gordon See Sonnet XI.

Golden Bull see

Gordian

IV.

Gordon, George, 2nd Marquis Huntly

Golgotha “Place of the skull,” Mt. Calvary near Jerusalem where Jesus was cruci¬ fied iii 477.

of

(d. 1649) Refused to subscribe to the Covenant, 1638, and fought for Charles. Captured by Col. Menzies at Dalnabo, 1647. Beheaded at Edin¬ burgh, O 268.

Goliah “These four were bom to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his serv¬ ants” (2 Sam. xxi, 22) and Goliath was the fifth, SA 1249. -

Gorgon(s) Three monstrous sisters, notably snaky-haired medusa, the mere sight of whom turned the beholder to stone. After Perseus beheaded medusa, “the

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soil” of Libya, “bedropt with blood,” “swarmed” with serpents, x 527, and the head on Minerva’s shield retained its old power, C 447; NS 22. ii 628; Prol 1144.

Confessio Amantis, a versification of love stories in English octosyllabics, Milton cites in the London, 1532 edi¬ tion: CB 211, and quotes Book II, 8475-96 in Sm 359-60.

Gorgonian

gown

See above, ii 611; x 297.

The toga as signifying peace, E 288.

Goring, George

Graces

(1608-57) Betrayed those whose “intention was to rescue the Earl of Strafford by seizing on the Tower of London”—the First Army Plot, K 94. Later declared for the king and com¬ manded left wing at Marston Moor.

Three nymphs, Euphrosyne (Mirth) L’A 12, 15, Aglaia (Brightness or Beauty), and Thalia (Good Cheer), offspring of Venus and Bacchus on the authority of Servius, but the al¬ ternative genealogy of L’A 17 ff. seems an invention. C 986; iv 267; Prol VI 212, 214 (Charites).

Gorlois Duke of Cornwall, Igraine’s hus¬ band, impersonated for one night by uther pendracon by means of Merlin the magician, ED 167. Goshen, the sojourners of The Israelites (Goshen being a part of Egypt on the eastern frontier), i 309. Goslyn

grain Purple or scarlet dye, v 285; xi 242. Color, C 750. MS of L four lines from 142 has “vermeil graine.” grand, the Grandees, x 427. grandfather H

See In Obitum Procancellarii Me¬ dici.

55

abraham

was

the

great¬

grandfather of LEVI.

Gratian Gothofridus (Latin for Godefroy), Jacques (1587-1652) or Denis the younger (1615-81), Genevan jurist, authority on Roman Law, SD 232.

(early 12th cent.) Italian ecclesi¬ astic, “the compiler of canon iniquity” D 505, Decretum Gratiani, “papal canons,” CG 208. Gratianus, Flavius

gourd, smelling 321, emended by bentley to swelling, but “smelling sweet” occurs 2 lines above, and McColley notes, “we have ... a pungently smelling gourd in the East Indian pepper of Du Bartas.” vii

Gower, John (c. 1330-1408). “Our old poet,” friend of chaucer, who referred to him as “the moral Gower,” whose

(359-83) Roman emperor from 375. Killed at Lugdunum (Lyons) by rebels under usurper Maximus, B 97. ID 258. gray-fly Probably war ton’s conjecture is best: the trumpet-fly (cf. breeze) L 28. Greek, the Ulysses, ix 19.

135-

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A Milton Dictionary

green Cape

toria Francorum); bishop of Tours from 573. Representative of “bar¬ barism” ID 200.

Cape Verde, viii 631. green figs A 334 Cf. Matt, xxi, 17-19; Mark xi, 12-14. Gregorian calendar The calendar as reformed in 1582 by Gregory XIII (1502-85), Pope from 1572. Not adopted in England till 1752. K 68. Gregorian decretals Papal letters with the force of law, collected in 1234 under direction of Gregory IX (c. 1148-1241), Pope from 1227 Col 249; cf. T 220. Gregory I (c. 540-604). Pope from 590. Fourth and last of the Latin “Doc¬ tors of the Church.” T 219 (Epistolarum Liber XI, XLV). Sent Augus¬ tine, “who first brought the Romish religion into England,” H 66, as nar¬ rated in B 142 if.

griding Cutting with a grating sound, vi 329. Grindal(l), Edmund (1519-83) “The best of” “moder¬ ate divines,” “afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,” 1575 R 13. camden wrote: “By the foul deceit and treacheries of his enemies he was suspected to be a favorer of the Con¬ venticles of those turbulent ministers, and such as were called Prophets. But the reason was indeed because he condemned as unlawful the mar¬ riage of Julius an Italian physican with another man’s wife, which much distasted the Earl of Leicester.” Annales, 1625, Book III, p. 45. gripple Covetous, O 261.

Gregory Nazianzen (329-89) “A father of the Church” Pref SA, bishop of Constantinople. “A tragedy Christ Suffering’ attri¬ buted to him Pref. SA (probably by a 12th century Byzantine Greek, though Gregory wrote poems). Quoted against councils Sm 358; K 248 (cf. “Nazianzenicum” FE # 29 110); against prelaty, K 234. Gregory Nyssen

grisamber steamed Steamed with gray amber, amber¬ gris from the sperm whale, used as a sauce, PR 2, 344. Grizons (Grisons) Before its incorporation in 1803 as easternmost canton of Switzerland, an independent republic, R 73; SL #40.

(c. 330-c. 395) One of the four great fathers of the Eastern Church, younger brother of basil and friend and ally of his fellow Cappadocian, GREGORY NAZIANZEN, against ARIANISM Sm 286. Reference in CB 149 fits Paris, 1638 Opera. CD 1, 7.

Groningen (Groningham)

Gregory of Tours

Grotius, Hugo (Huig de Groot)

(538?-93) Frankish historian (His-

Netherlands seaport and university seat SD 158. grotesque Connected with grotto, iv 136.

(1583-1645)

136-

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“One

of

the

best

A Milton Dictionary

learned,” D 384 of his age, whose De Jure Belli et Pads (1625) in¬ augurated the science of international law. On his European tour, begun in May, 1638, Milton was introduced by Scudamore at Paris “to that most learned man Hugo Grotius, then (1634-45) ambassador from the queen of Sweden to the king of France, and whom I was very eager to see 2D 122. Cited on divorce, D 380, 384, 481 (Annotationes in Libros Evangeliorum, Amsterdam 1641, pp. 98-99), 487 (ibid.), 498^ M 11. T 229. CP 17. De Veritate Religionis Christianae (1627) cited, Marginalia on euripides, 318. Mil¬ ton’s original interest may have been in Grotius’ scheme for uniting Conti¬ nental Protestant churches. Adamus Exul, Tragoedia, 1601, youthful pro¬ duct though it is, has some connec¬ tions wtih PL—such as a mentor angel sent to Adam, and Adam’s fall through passion for Eve, followed by desperate complaint. Specific paral¬ lels often have common sources, e.g. “Or is it envy, and can envy dwell/'In heavenly breasts?” lx 729—“Tanta quae menti sedet invidia” Act IV— go back to Aeneid I, 11—“Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?”

Grynaeus, Simon (1493-1541) Learned theologian of the Reformation, friend of melanchthon, sympathizer with Reuchlin and Erasmus. Active in Switzerland. His letter and three following are in bucer’s Scripta Anglicana, ed. C. Hubertus, Basle, 1577 M 1. Gualter of Zuric(h), Rudolph (1518-86) A well-known judicious commentator, son-in-law of zwingli T 226. Guendolen See

guerdon Reward, recompense, L 73. Guiana In the northern part of South America, xi 410; “yet unspoiled” re¬ flects Raleigh’s description: “a coun¬ try that hath yet her maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought.” Guildhall The corporation hall of the City of London, K 101 (cf. the Guild, R 47). Guion See

grunsel Ground-sill, door-sill, threshold, i 460. See dacon. Gruter(ian) Reference to Jan van Gruytere (1560-1627), Dutch humanist and archaeologist. Published Inscriptiones Antiquae Totius Orbis Romani (1603) SD 122.

SABRINA.

cuyon.

Guisian of Paris, like a Referring to the St. Bartholomew’s massacre of the Huguenots that be¬ gan on the night of August 23-24, sponsored by the Guise party, Sm 309. guly Adjective from gules, in heraldry the tincture rod, R 61.

gryfon (griffin) fabulous eagle-headed winged 943. See arismaspian. Cf. CRIFFON-LIKE, R 15. lire

lion,

ii

-

Guortemir (Guorthemirus) Vortimer, vortigern,

137 -

succeeded his father B 118-21; ID 436.

A Milton Dictionary (and not accompanied by the Pal¬ mer): the latter does help him over¬ throw the Bower of Bliss (Canto xii).

gurge

A whirlpool, xii 41. Guyon

A 311 the Knight of Temperance of Book II of the Faerie Queene is tempted by Mammon in Canto vii

-

gymnic artists

Gymnasts, SA 1324.

138-

H habergeon A coat of mail, SA 1120. Habor (modern Khabur) Tributary of the Euphrates; rep¬ resented as a country, PR 3, 376, as in 2 Kings xvii, 6, which Milton is remembering. hacksters Ruffians, K 102. Haddon, Walter (1516-72) English educator and legal scholar. Collaborated with sm john cheke on Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, 1571 T 231; M 4 Hadrian See ADRIAN. Haemonio See haemony and aesonian. harmony Invented name for the Attendant Spirit’s magic plant in C 638. One plausible explanation derives the word (cf. spenser, “Astrophel,” 3) from Haemonia, poetical name for thessaly, the land of magic. Milton was demonstrably alive to this associa¬ tion: “Haemonio,” EL II 7; cf. “Thessala saga” Prol VI 240. There may also be a connection with Greek haima—blood. The Attendant Spirit invites comparison with moly, Odys¬ sey, X, 302-06: “Therewith the slayer of Argos [Hermes] gave me [Ulysses]

the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the growth thereof. It was black at the root, but tlie flower was like to milk. Moly the gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit with the gods all things are possible.” pliny the elder, treating moly as an actual plant (Naturalis Historia, XXV, 4 (8)), assigned it, not a white, but, like haemony, “a bright golden flower” (florem luteum). Eustathius said that moly sprang from the blood of the giant Picolous, slain by the Sun when the former attempted to rape the latter’s daughter, circe. Coleridge essayed a Christian derivation for “haemony,” haima and oinos, the blood-wine of the sacrament, and though this analysis does not quite work because of the diphthong in oinos, the thought of a small allegory within the larger allegory may re¬ main. “This soil” becomes (to quote Lycidas) this “mortal soil,” man’s life here on earth, and the plant the favor from on high which only a virtuous few are willing and able to maintain amid trial and suffering until “hae¬ mony” blossoms for them in heaven. It has been pointed out that the plant physically resembles Christ’s-thom (or rhamnus), which, from the time it was put on Jesus’ head at the crucifixion, began to acquire a cer¬ tain supernatural reputation, as in the Herbals of Lyte or Turner or the

139-

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A Milton Dictionary

Hamath

demonology of Joannes Wierus. Com¬ pare the mysterious blood-red flower in Grimms’ fairy tale, “Jorinde and Joringel.” Recent critics are divided between treating haemony as grace from on high (Brooks and Hardy, Tuve) and as mere magic (Arthos, R.M. Adams), hanfohd saw in the herb a symbol of the transfer of Mediterranean culture, more spe¬ cifically, the platonic doctrine of vir¬ tue. Moly had long been put to al¬ legorical uses, and Guillaume Bude in De Transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum had drawn a distinction between “moly Homericum” (repre¬ senting Greek philosophical doctrine) and “moly nostrum” (the teaching of the Cross).

The principal city' of Upper Syria, the northern border of Canaan. Hamilton, James, Duke of (1606-49) Defeated at Preston, condemned and executed, 2D 232. Hammon See

Hammond, Henry (1605-60) Charles chaplin,” ID 66-68.

thrace,

I’s

“choicest

Hammond, Col. Robert (1621-54) Nephew of above. “Governor of the Isle of Wight,” 2D 208 and custodian of Charles I for one year 1647-8, who had mistakenly taken refuge with him.

Haemus Mountain in

ammon.

han(d)sel

NS 29.

Retainer fee Col 240.

Hagar

Hanford, James Holly

Same as Agar, “the fugitive bondwoman” of PR 2, 308. Remembered as divorced by abraham, D 409; CD

(1882) Former Western Re¬ serve University (Cleveland, Ohio) professor, dean of American Miltonists. He began a versatile output of articles in the second decade of the century. Such studies as “The Youth of Milton" and “Samson Agonistes and Milton in Old Age” (University of Michigan Studies in Shakespeare, Milton and Donne, 1925) are stand¬ ard. Hanford’s two principal books are the successive editions of A Milton Handbook (1926, 1933, 1939, 1946) and John Milton, Englishman, (1949) the best American biography.

1, 10. Hague, seen lately at the K 286 refers, as does 2D 194, to the assassination of Dr. Issaac Dorislaus (1595-1649), who had prepared the charge of high treason against Charles I. When envoy to the StatesGeneral 12 masked royalists set upon him with the cry, “Thus dies one of the king’s judges.” Halicarnassaeus See

dionysius

of

Halicarnassus.

haralds Heralds, i 752; ii 518; xi 660.

balings Haran

Enforced draggings, CG 251. Hall, Joseph See Of Reformation, Animadver¬ sions, Apology.

A town in Mesopotamia on an affluent of the Euphrates where abraham settled on leaving Ur xii 131.

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A Milton Dictionary

Harapha A name meaning “the giant”: See SA (the marginal note in the Anglican version has Rapha for giant in 2 Sam. xxi, 16; the Vulgate—Regum 2, xxi, 16—Arapha). Harbardus

ward VI was used by Milton in the 1630 edition, CB 215; an authority for R 11 and An 119, 134. heal (Gower). Salvation, Sm 360. heat

Harbart, Rurchardus. (1546-1614) Professor of theology at Leipzig who wrote on marriage, T 227.

Reference to inspiration, Sm 329. heat Lust, C 358; i 453; D 394.

Harefield Arc subtitle, Harefield House (pur¬ chased in 1601) at Harefield in Middlesex, 10 miles from Horton. Haringten See

ariosto.

Harmodius (plural)

Recipient of FE # 13 from West¬ Dec. 13, 1652. Evidently a clergyman and former pupil, apolo¬ getic at the thought of possibly pre¬ ferring to correspond in English. minster.

heave-offering

(d. 514 b.c. ) Used by salmastus as a type of avenger, but by Milton. ID 338 as tyrant-slayer, since Harmodius and Aristogeiton were honored by the Athenians for slaying Hipparchus, tyrant of Athens. Harmonia See

Heath (Hetho), Richard

cadmtjs.

An offering in the Jewish service heaved or raised by the priest: cf. Num. xv, 19-20 II 51, 60, 73. Hebe Goddess of youth and the cup¬ bearer of the gods, V 38; L’A 29; C 290; Sal 23. Hebrides

harpies Winged monsters, rapacious and loathsome, female of head and trunk, bird-like below, C 605; PR 2, 403; cf. JR 33. R 55; Ten 52; Prol I 144; IV 174. harpy-footed Clawed, ii 596.

Islands on the west coast of Scot¬ land, L 156. Hebron (Chebron) One of the oldest cities in the world, 20 miles south of Jerusalem. See Judges, xvi, 3; Num. xiii, 22, 33. SA 148; ID 108. Hebrus

Hartlib

A

river in thrace, near Mt. emptying into the Aegean, L 63. Cf. Virgil, Georg. IV, 524 ff.

See Of Education.

rhodope,

haut Plaughty, PS LXXX 35.

Hecaerge

Hayward, Sir John (c, 1560-1627) English historian, whose Life and Reign of King Ed¬ -

The name (but not the epithet) comes from Callimachus, Hymn. Del. 292 Man 47.

141-

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in Holland, 1656, where he inquired about an expensive Atlas (See Mauri¬ tanian). He had published in London a Latin eulogy of Cromwell. FE# 27 answered his from The Hague, Dec. 8 (English style), 1657, and civilly declined an application for Milton’s influence and indicated Milton s in¬ creasing withdrawal from the Coun¬ cil of State. FE# 31, in reply to Heimbach’s still extant (XII, 317), is the one letter written after the Restor¬ ation, and assures that the plague has not carried the poet off (his coun¬ try retreat having been Chalfont St. Giles, where ellwood found him a cottage—the one house of Milton’s that survives). Since April, 1664 Heimbach had held the rank of statecouncillor to the Elector of Branden¬ burg. Milton called him “Poetae Eleganti" in a presentation copy of his 1645 Poems (XVIII, 270).

Hecat(e) The “night-hag” of ii 62, who ap¬ pears in Macbeth as mistress of the witches and “close contriver of all harms” (III, v, 7), is the evil divinity of sorcery—PM 17—and the Lower World and darkness, C 135, 535; originally the moon-goddess. Hecatompylos The “hundred-gated” city was in PARTHIA, PR 3, 287,

hecatontomes 100-volumed collections An 175. Hector The “foe pursued/Thrice fugitive about Troy wall,” ix 15, could not do “ignobly” for “shame,’ CG 259 (cf. Iliad, VI, 440 ff.; XXII, 100), though Athene could and did trick him PM 14. Hecuba In euripides’ play of this name Polymes tor prophecies to the wife of Priam, “Thou wilt become a dog with bloodshot eye,” ID 342. Hedio Heid, Kaspar. (1494-1552) German Protestant minister, associate of zellius M 10; T 224.

hegemonicon “The authoritative part of the soul (reason),” according to Zeno. Sm 318. Hegesippus (2nd cent.) “A grave church writer of prime antiquity,” R 20, “not ex¬ tant but cited by eusebius” P 97. The surviving fragments deal for the most part with the early history of the Church at Jerusalem. Heimbach, Peter Recipient of three FE. This Dutch or German youth received FE# 20

Helen(a) The proverbial beauty Prol I 140, 142, over whom the Trojan War was fought, is remembered as the gracious hostess of Ody. IV, slipping an Egyp¬ tian anodyne into the wine of troubled Telemachus and Peisistratus, C 676, and as perhaps never having been in Troy except as a phantom, “air-born” CG 268, while the real Helen stayed in Egypt— euritides’ version and plato’s: “The Greeks fought about the shadow of Helen of Troy in ignor¬ ance of the truth” (Republic IX, 586). Helena, St. (d. c. 330) The “excessive devotion, that I may not say superstition,” R 24 of the mother of Constantine as the treasurer of the true cross goes back to a persistent legend embodied in the 1321 lines of Cynewulf’s AngloSaxon poem Elene or such Greek

142-

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A Milton Dictionary

church

historians

as

theodoret

or

SOZOMEN.

Helicon The mountain in Boetia haunted by the Muses, equated with Cambridge EM 56; PM 32; Prol VI 212. Cf.

mingsen). (1513-1600) Danish theo¬ logian, “an approved author, melanchton’s scholar,” T 103; “his works printed at Geneva” 226: see Opuscula Theologica, 1586, columns 941, 993.

aonia(n).

Henry I

Hell

(1068-1135) Had warred with his elder brother Robert, Duke of Nor¬ mandy, who was still alive when Henry was chosen king by the witan and crowned at Westminster, ID 442.

W 139, play on the name of a tavern near Westminster. Milton doubtless thinks of the royalists as drinking to the health of the king. During the trial of Charles I it was ordered that “all back doors from the House, called Hell, should be shut up.”

Henry II (1133-89) See becket and Alexan¬ The son considered as joint ruler with him in ID 408 is Richard I.

der m.

Hellespont The Dardanelles, the strait be¬ tween Asia and Europe, the Aegean and the Sea of Marmora, x 309. Helvetia

Henry III (1207-72) See

montfort.

Henry VII

Switzerland An 167. Helvicus, Christophorus (1581-1617) German Philologist and scholar, compiler of Theatrum Historicum (Giessen, 1609) T 229. Heividius Priscus (1st cent.) Son-in-law of Thrasea(s), banished when the latter was put to death by Nero, 66; recalled by galba but because of his open love of liberty again banished by Vespa¬ sian and shortly afterward put to death, as his son Heividius was by domitian, ID 116, 210. Heman Considered as the author of Psalm LXXXVIII (marginal note in Angli¬ can Version), “a prayer containing a grievous complaint.” Col 262. Hemingius Hemmingus, Nicolaus (Niels Hem-

(1457-1509) “Harry VII .. . with all his liege tombs about him,” A 351 refers to the chapel erected by this king in Westminster Abbey, where the Assembly of Divines was holding its meetings. The “liege tombs” in¬ clude Henry’s mother and mary QUEEN OF SCOTS.

Henry VIII (1491-1547) “The first that rent this kingdom from the Pope’s subjection totally ... his quarrel being more about supremacy than other faulti¬ ness in religion,” R 7. His children, R 9; T 231; his “vicar of hell.” Di¬ vorces, D 501-01; T 220. Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (1521) against LUTHER K 63. Henry (Henri) III (1551-89) King of France from 1574 until stabbed by a Jacobin monk O 246.

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Henry of Nassau (Nassovius), Frederick-Henry

to have been torn apart by Hercules,

(1584-1647) Prince of Orange-Nassau and stadholder of the Dutch Re¬ public from 1625, captured Groll from the Spaniards in August, 1627, Hertogenbosch in September, 1629: on the latter victory Gin wrote “In Sylvam-Ducis,” which, if Milton is referring to it, dates the letter later than “Maii 20, 1628" FE #2 8.

Hercynian wilderness

A 335; 2D 14; B 13.

The largest forest in Germany, a name which survives as the Har(t)z mountains A 340. Hermas (c. 148) A manumitted Christian slave, author of the Pastor, a work equated in the early Greek church with Scripture; the second part, the “Mandates,” has some references to church government CG 211.

Heraclitus (6th-5th cent, b.c.) Of ephesus, known as “the Weeping Philosopher” on account of his sombre view of life Prol I 120.

Hermes The wing-footed (“alipes,” EL II 14) or “volatile,” iii 603 (a punning reference to his Roman name Mer¬ cury or quicksilver) messenger of the gods. He brought the herb moly to Ulysses, C 637 (Od. X, 275 ff.) and pandora to “the unwiser son of Japhet,” Epimetheus, iv 717. xi 133: see arcus.

herald of the sea, the TRITON

L 89.

Herculean see

Hercules,

ix 1060; 2D 188; EL

VII 40. Hercules “Jove’s great son,” SXXIII 3, or that of Amphitryon, and slayer of Albion, QN 28; B 4, the greatest of the Greek culture heroes, “not begot in one night,” LP 276, named Alcides after his grandfather Alceus ii 542; PR 4, 565 (see antaeus); Man 58—famous for his “labours huge and hard,” Pas 14, such as the cleansing of the Au¬ gean stables. Col. 271; E 282 (which manured the Italian soil: pliny, Naturalis Historia XVII, 50); Prol III 160. His agonizing end (portrayed by euripides and seneca) PM 10; ii 5426; Prol I 120. In connection with kingship Ten 19; ID 326 (same quo¬ tation ); K 209; H 63. Hercules' (Herculean) pillars

Hermes (Trismegistus) “Thrice-great,” IP 88; Id 33. famous for his esoteric knowledge (“areani sciens,” ib.), patron of the arts and sciences: cf. JR 77, the Greek god as identified with the Egyptian Thoth and as author of 42 so-called Hermetic books—Iamblichus ascribed to him 20,0001—(actually written by Alexan¬ drian Neoplatonists in the third and fourth centuries a.d. and available to Milton in Ficino’s translation or as fragments in Lactantius). Sir Thomas Browne labelled him “counselor of osiris, the great inventor of their re¬ ligious rites, and promoter of good into Egypt.” Hermione

Pindar’s “the ends of the earth,” the westernmost limits of the known an¬ cient world, two hills on opposite sides of the straits of Gibraltar, said -

see

cadmus

ix 506.

Hermogenes (Late 2nd cent.) Greek rhetorician

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A Milton Dictionary

whose five treatises, notably his Progymnasmata as translated into Latin by priscian, were popular pedagogically in the Middle Ages and Renais¬ sance E 286. Hermon The highest mountain of Palestine xii 141-2. Cf. Joshua xiii, 5-6. Herod the Great (73?-4 b.c.) Of Judea, “the murd’rous king” of PR 2, 76 (possible sub¬ ject, MS 240), who “slew all the children that were in Bethlehem” (Matt, ii, 16) and from whom Joseph and mary were refugees. Bribed antony ID 146, 108. Father of arghelaus, 242-4. D 479.

Herodias Mother of Salome: see

herod an-

ttpas.

Herodotus (5th cent. b.c. ) The “Father of His¬ tory.” “The Halicamassian,” FE #26, 102. Traveled widely. Traced the Greco-Persian wars on an heroic scale in nine books, each named after a muse. Authority on the arimaspian, and arion, and luxury of the Lydians, R 53. Bom near “lofty mycale,” Man 22. ID 166, 294, 298; SD 108. Heroides ovid’s title for his imaginary verse epistles lovers

by

famous

women

to

then-

EL I 63.

Herod Agrippa I

Hesebon

(10? B.C.-44 a.d. ) Son of aristobuand grandson of hefod the great. King of Judea from 41. “Eaten up of worms for suffering others to com¬ pare his voice to the voice of God,” K 123: see Acts xii, 21-3.

Vulgate version of Heshbon, the capital city of Seon (Sihon), king of the Amorites, 20 miles east of Jordan i 408.

lus

Herod Antipas (d. after 40 a.d.) Ruler of Judea at time of Christ’s death; son of herod the great. “Galilean Tetrarch,” R 40; O 257. An 136: see Macrobius, saturnaliorum ii, iv. T 143-4: divorced daughter of Aretas to marry his own niece herodias; 152. Rebuked by Jesus 175, 180, 186, 209. ID 146-8, 154. Herodian(s) Reference to herod antipas, T 144, 147, or herod the great, ID 204, or both K 215. Herodicm (3rd cent.) Greek historian in Italy. Author of history of Rome, 180238. Cited ID 332; B 49, 50, 84, 85.

Hesiod (8th cent. b.c. ) Second Greek poet to homer, author of Works and Days and Theogony Possible or probable source of much of Milton’s mythology, and influence on such conceptions as chaos and titanic wars. Theogony 123-5 quoted, Prol I 126-8. His “divinum . . . somnum,” Prol VII 248. E 284. Hesperia Land of the West, in this case, QN 102, Spain, referring to the Spanish Armada. Hesperian “Gardens,” C variant (I, 479); iii 568; “tree,” C 393; “fields,” i 520; “isles,” viii 632; “fables,” iv 250—refer¬ ences to a pagan Elysium or islands of the Blest, a paradise in the west (Hesperian in viii 632 may just refer

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A Milton Dictionary

cording to the Liber Pontificalis, re¬ organized his clergy CG 257.

to the setting sun rather than the Cape Verde Islands) marked by a tree bearing golden apples, guarded by a dragon.

Hilary of Poitiers, St (c. 315-67) Called the “athanasius of the West”; leading theologian of his age, whose works were edited by ERASMUS, Basle, 1523 T 145; CD 1, 5.

Hesperides The daughters of hespebus (cf. C 982), guardians of the paradise named after them PR 2, 357.

hill of scandal Hill of offence or “stumbling,” i 416, the Mount of Olives (cf. 2 Kings

Hesperus Venus or Vesper, “the Evening Star,” MS 228 (cf. L 30; C 93); EL III 32; iv 605; ix 49, into which the father of the hesperides, C 982, was metamorphosed.

xxiii, 13). hill, the opprobrious same as above i 403. Himerides

Hetruria

Reference to Himera, a river of Sicily often mentioned by theocritus

Etruria QN 51. Heworth (Moor)

ED 1.

Village below Newcastle-on-Tyne

Presto (in juggling or legerdemain) An 134.

hinges The cardinal points (cardines): the north, south, east, and west points from which the four chief winds blow PR 4, 415.

Hexekiah

Hinncm

K 168. hey-pass

(Hezechiah, T 75), (Ezechiah, K 268) 12th king of Judah, one of the three best, destroyer of idolatry, 2 Kings xviii, 4, 15-16, CD 1, 3, 8, etc. Hierapolis City

seat of the see An 178.

of PHRYGIA

apol(l)inabius

of

see

gehenna

i 404.

Hippias (5th cent, b.c.) Of Elis, Greek sophist; lectured at Athens CG 202. See prologue of plato’s Hippias Ma¬ jor on his high fees. Hippocrates

Hieron (d. 466 b.c. ) Tyrant of Syracuse and subject of an imaginary dialogue by xenophon ID 304.

(460P-377 b.c.) Medicine.” K 254.

The

“Father

of

hippogrif

Milton’s consistent version (except for Arc 75) of height i 24, 92, 282,

Astolfo in ariosto’s Orlando Furioso rode to the moon on a monster that was the offspring of a griffin and a mare PR 4, 542.

etc.

Hipponensian

highth

Higinus (Hyginus) Bishop of Rome, 141-44?, who, ac¬

From Hippo in North Africa, like ID 198.

ST. AUGUSTINE

146-

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A Milton Dictionary

Hippotades aeolus,

son of Hippotas L 96.

hip-shot Lame (from dislocation of the hip) Sm 324. Hispahan Ispahan became the capital of Persia in the 16th century and ac¬ quired great fame in the 17th xi 394. hist Like hush, silence IP 55.

a word commanding

Histor(ia) de Combust(ione) Buceri & Fagii

By Conradus Hubertus, Strassburg, 1562, pp. 139-40 M 4. The / History / of / Britain, / That part especially now call'd / Eng¬ land. / From the first Traditional Beginning, continu'd to the / Nor¬ man Conquest. / Collected out of the antientest and best Authours / thereof by / John Milton

Out by November, 1670, with the frontispiece by William Faithome that is the best and best-known portrait of Milton in his maturity. Some copies of the same text issued in 1671 lack the engraving. 2nd edition 1677 (titlepage of some copies 1678). Reprinted 1695. toland’s version of 1698 (with separate title-page dated 1694) has some additions and changes. The History is in six books. The terminus ad quem for composition of the first four is March, 1649: 2D 136. Firth and hanford conjecture that Milton began the writing at about 1646. Re¬ sumption was after 1652 and probably after 1655. The author’s original plan, as explained in 2D, was to continue the History six centuries further, “ad haec usque tempora.” In CG the significant complaint was -

(273), “England hath had her noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks and mechanics.” Milton exhibits consider¬ able skill and critical faculty in com¬ piling from such varied and frequent¬ ly unsatisfactory sources as gildas, BEDE, HENRY

MATTHEW OF

OF

WESTMINSTER,

HUNTINGDON,

SIMEON

OF

and GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. He casts rational doubt on Arthur, finds a good deal “not worth re¬ hearsal” 182 in his superstitious sources, but has much detail to offer as a rival to Holinshed or camden. In the first four books he is particu¬ larly sharp on what john knox called “the monstrous regiment of women.” Any manifestation of “female am¬ bition,” 194, “female pride,” 60 (cf. D 475; PR 2, 219) arouses in him char¬ acteristic disdain, and he blasts Boadicea from her too lofty pedestal as the national idol, rewrites the story of Martia (“nothing more awry from the law of God and Nature than that a woman should give laws to men,” 26), and misconstrues gildas in such a way as to add double murder to the already sufficient sins of Maglocune’s second wife. At the end he finds the English in such a moral and physical state, “in drunkenness, attended with other vices which effeminate men’s minds.” that it was small wonder “they gave to William their Con¬ queror so easy a conquest,” 316. We may “fear from like vices without amendment the revolution of like calamities.” Topical at length was a digression omitted from all editions until 1738, but printed separately in 1681 as Mr. John Miltons / Character / of the / Long Parliament / and / Assembly of Divines. In MDCXLI. / Omitted in his other Works, and never before Printed, / And very seasonable for DURHAM,

147-

A Milton Dictionary

these times. This belongs early in the third book, the comparison being with the loss of liberty by the too supine Britons after the Romans left and the loss of liberty under those “who of late were extolled as our greatest deliverers” (XVIII, 253) but who “by so discharging their trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what liberty they pretended, but un¬ fitted also the people, now grown worse and more disordinate, to re¬ ceive or to digest any liberty at all.” Columbia milton prints a different version of the Digression X, 317-25, from a 17th century MS. owned by Harvard University. A Brief History of Moscovia

Published in 1682 by Brabazon Aylmer, who had done the Letters (see Epistolarum Familiarium). An “Advertisement” explains the circum¬ stances: “This book was writ by the author’s own hand, before he lost his sight. And sometime before his death disposed of it to be printed. But it being small, the bookseller hoped to have procured some other suitable piece of the author to have joined with it, or else it had been published ere now.” The Author’s Preface, after declaring “the study of geography . . . both profitable and delightful,” de¬ plores the opposite extremes of books “too brief and deficient” and “others too voluminous and impertinent” which “cloy and weary out the reader.” Milton’s educational enter¬ prise in the field “began” (and ended) “with Muscovy, as being the most northern region of Europe reputed civil, and the more northern parts thereof first discovered by English voyages.” He used the collection of accounts by English travelers in Hak¬ luyt’s Voyages, Purchas’s Pilgrimages, and the like, listing 18 sources at the -

end. Edited D. S. Mirsky, 1929. There are five chapters, with marginal notes for sources as in B. Descriptive geography is followed by a survey of customs under an absolute monarch who takes the wealth of a subject grown unserviceable to the state and gives it to the poor and more deserv¬ ing. Courtship is manifested by the man’s sending “to the woman a whip, to signify, if she offend, what she must expect; and it is a mle among them, that if the wife be not beaten once a week, she thinks herself not beloved.” Liberty of divorce is noted with satisfaction. II and III concern such outlying regions as Siberia. IV is a chronicle ending in 1613 with ‘peace . . . between the Russians and the Poles, and that partly by the medi¬ ation of King James.” V tells of “the first discovery of Russia by the north¬ east, 1553” by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor—explorations fatal to both these navigators seeking a new route to India. Under the latest date in this chapter, 1604, the visit to Moscow of James’s ambassador, sib thomas smith, is related in cere¬ monious detail. hit hit upon, produce Arc 77: PR 4, 255. hobnail Clown Col 257. Hobson, Margaret see Sonnet X. Hobson, Thomas see On the University Carrier. Hog(g), William aeus).

(Gulielmus

Hog-

(/?. 1694). Impoverished Scotchman who was encouraged by Dr. Daniel Cox of the Royal Society to make

148 -

A Milton Dictionary

Milton known beyond the British Isles by putting his poems into Latin verse. Paraphrasis Poetica in Tria Johannis MUtoni, Virt Clarissimi, Poemata, viz. Paradisum Amissum, Paradisum Recuperatum, et. Samsonem Agonisten came out in London in 1690, and was followed by versions of Lycidas and Comm (Comoedia) in 1694 and 1698.

Mansion near Northampton where Charles I was kept prisoner in 1647 K 264, 269.

by one “Whose poem phoebus chal¬ lenged for his own” PR 4, 260 see PL. ionian-EL I 23; A 300-Pro! VII 268, or aeolian Man 23. Abstemious EL VI 71 (as in Boccaccio’s De Genealogia Deorum, XIV, xix). Author of “Margites, a sportful poem not now extant,” A 308. Battle of the Frogs and Mice, ID 36; Prol VI 218. “Epic . . . diffuse,” CG 237. Said (by plato) “to have written undecent things of the gods,” Sm 304. Other references and quotations, D 418 (Od. XVII, 218), 441; E 291; ID 110, 302, 312. Etc.

holocaust

Honorius, Flavius

(Greek, entirely burnt) A sacrifice wholly consumed by the fire SA 1702.

(384-423) Roman emperor of the West from 395 D 479; ID 184.

Holstenius,

hook

Holmby

Lucas

(Lukas

Holste)

(1596-1661) Bom in Hamburg, educated at Leyden, researcher in England. Patronized by cardinal barberini, he became a librarian at the Vatican, where Milton met him. Associated with, in Rome 2D 122; recipient of FE #9, March 30, 1639 (holograph published in PMLA, 1953), thanking him for courtesies and regretting inability to be helpful towards the inspection of a Medicean codex. holy of holies

C

872, sec

Carpathian.

Hooker, Richard (1554P-1600). The celebrated au¬ thor of Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, of which III, xi, 11 is referred to CG 193: “The very words them¬ selves do restrain themselves unto some one especial commandment among many.” Hooper, John (d. 1555) After having been bishop of Gloucester (1550) and Worcester (1552), deprived of his see by queen mary and burned at the stake R 68.

The innermost apartment of the Jewish tabernacle and the temple, in which the ark of the covenant was kept, into which only the High Priest could enter, and he only on the day of atonement CG 205.

The Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa, discovered by Diaz in 1486 iv 160.

Homer

Hophni and Phine(h)as

(8th cent, b.c.?) “Whose two poems he could almost repeat without book” (toland), this reviver of “heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek.” Note on “The Verse” PL: for examples of influence

The two sons of eli who brought a curse on their father’s house, D 438. See 1 Sam. ii, 12 ff.

Hope,Cape of

Horace Quintus

149-

-

Horatius

Flaccus.

(65-8

A Milton Dictionary

ing: “Milton translates ‘the stem god of sea,’ not observing that ‘potens’ governs ‘maris’ as ‘potens Cypri,’ Car. i, 3, 1, and lyrae potens,’ Car. i, 6, 10.” The most famous poem to follow Milton’s meter is William Collins’ “Ode to Evening.”

“The Roman lyrist” who “sings sweetly,” EL VI, 27-8. Quoted (on jesting), Sm 318 (Sat. I, 24; X, 24) in apparently Milton’s translation; also T 137. Ars Poetica on epic E 286. Flaccus as satirist, A 301. On Fortune, ID 112 {Car. I, xxv, 9 ff.) chrysippus 530. Horatian monster, 2D 76. Other quotations FE #24, 96, 98 {Epist. i, 13, 4-8); Prol VI 232 (puns on names of college servants-Fp. xv, 1-2). CD 1, 5. Fishmonger’s son Prol VI 44, “a piece of gossip recorded by Sue¬ tonius” (Tillyard). Not so strong a general influence on the younger Milton as ovid, but supplier of telling details, e.g. “the tangles of Neaera’s hair,” L 69—“Die et argutae properet Neaerae / Murreum nodo cohibere crinem,” Car. Ill, xiv, 21-2. See below. b.c.)

Horae see horn Wing of an army, PR 3, 327. horned flood Stream divided into two channels or forks xi 831. horn-work

Horace, The Fifth Ode of. Lib, I “Rendered almost word for word without rhyme according to the Latin measure, as near as the language will permit.” First published 1673, where it is followed by the original Latin, with a prose headnote translatable as, “Horace, having escaped from the allurements of Pyrrha as from a ship¬ wreck, affirms the misery of those who are caught in her net.” This is the ode that Scaliger pronounced “pure nec¬ tar.” When Milton translated it is entirely uncertain, hughes places it early—1626? fletchek was originally inclined to place it late, appraising it as “one of the finest verse translations in English ... a product of his full poetic maturity, and not an early exercise.” The “word for word” prin¬ ciple Milton could deviate from in psalm versions and in prose, saying, M 60: “I deny not to have epitomized: in the rest observing a well-warranted rule, not to give an inventory of so many words, but to weigh their force.” Horace’s 19th-century editor, Rev. A. J. Macleane, carps at the end¬ -

hours.

Sm 366, possibly a quadruple pun: (1) made of horn (“mettle” means stuff but is also a pun with “helmet of salvation,” a phrase from Ephe¬ sians vi, 17); (2) “an hom is the hieroglyphic of authority, power and dignity, and in this metaphor is often used in Scripture” (Rrowne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica V, ch. ix “Of the Picture of Moses with Homs”); (3) in fortifications a single fronted out¬ work; (4) the English prelates are being as it were homed—cuckolded or deceived—by Rome. Horonaim A 409.

chief town of moab, unlocated i

horrent Rristling; but with perhaps overtones of abhorrent ii 513.

also

horrid Bristling, rough i 563; ii 63, 710; PR 1, 296; C 429. Hortensius, Quintus (114-50 b.c.) “Most renowned of all orators after” cicero Prol VI 242, nicknamed for his affectation Diony-

150-

A Milton Dictionary

sia, a well-known female entertainer, 210. ID 168 (perhaps with a glance at the dictator, 286 b.c., of the same name).

Hours

First of the minor prophets. Speak¬ ing “contemptuously of the king,” ID 134. D 439: see Hosea i, 2 ff.

According to hesiod and PE 39-40 the daughters of themis and Zeus (jove). Associated with the particu¬ lar season of spring S 14, and the graces, C 986; iv 267. Stress on time Ti 2 (is “leaden-stepping” a pun on the pendulum?); vi 3; PR 1, 57.

hospital

houses of heaven

Hosea

A charitable institution CG 255. hosting Hosts vi 93,

In astrology a division of the skyall but those parts that never rise and never set—into 12 houses. hoyden

Hotham, Sir John (d. 1645) Parliamentary com¬ mander of hull, the subject (with his son John) of Ch. VIII of K, “Upon his Repulse at Hull and the fate of the Hothams.” Refused to ad¬ mit Charles, 1642. While negotiating with Newcastle with a view to re¬ joining royalists was arrested, ex¬ pelled from parliament, sent to the Tower, 1643, and court-martialed and executed, as was his son. “For while Hotham continued faithful to his trust, no man more safe, more successful, more in reputation than he. But from the time he first sought to make his peace with the King, and to betray into his hands that town, into which before he had denied him entrance, nothing prospered with him,” 146. ID 500. Hotman (Hotomanus), Francis (1524-90) French jurist. A Protes¬ tant, he fled to Switzerland after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. His Vranco-Gallia (1573) (aimed at Charles IX) cited ID 264, 414, was censured by Catholics and Huguenots alike for its bold republicanism. Houn(d)slow A village in Middlesex, west of London K 240.

-.151

Bumpkin (of either sex) Col 256. Hubertus see Histor(ia). huddling Hurrying C 495; huddle K 259. Hugh, St. The unofficial saint of shoemakers, whose story of martyrdom—before that of Crispin and Crispianus—is told by Thomas Deloney in The Gentle Craft (1597), with an expla¬ nation of why shoemaker’s tools “ever since were called Saint Hugh’s bones” (end. Ch. IV) A 335. “To boot” is a pun. Hughes, Merritt Y(erkes) (1893- ) University of Wisconsin professor known for his annotated editions, the best since verity. Para¬ dise Lost, 1935; Paradise Regained, the Minor Poems, and. Samson Agonistes, 1937; Prose Selections, 1947. These were to some extent combined, but with new introductions and copi¬ ous addition of the latest scholarship in Complete Poems and Major Prose, 1957. which, despite errors (e.g. four on the first page on Lycidas), is indis¬ pensable.

A Milton Dictionary

Olbion, 1612. Hume was well quali¬ fied for his task as regards classical and Scriptural matters (he knew He¬ brew), and many of this pioneer’s notes have been echoed or require no modification by the hosts of sub¬ sequent editors.

hull To drift to and fro xi 840. Hull The seaport in Yorkshire, impor¬ tant in the Civil War for the munitions stored there. See hotham. K 141 ff., 167-9, 173. marvell’s “father was the minister of Hull,” EC 330 (even as the son was to serve as M.P. from there from 1660).

humorous (1) adaptable or condescending Sm 328. (2) whimsical D 485. Hunnius, Aegidius

humane Human E 286. Humber The estuary of the ouse and trent rivers, between Yorkshire and Lin¬ colnshire, “loud,” V 99 at flood tide (or because of its many whirlpools ED 176) and named after “a Scythian king” (Faerie Queene, IV, xi, 37. 8). Hume, Patrick

(1550-1603) “A doctor of Witten¬ berg,” T 226, Ltitheran polemicist. Commentarius in Evangeliurn de Jesu Christo Secundum Matthacum. cited. Huntingdon, Henry of (1084P-1155) Author of Historia Anglorum, compiled for the Bishop of Lincoln. Source of B, 124, 126, etc. Denounced for his “idle fancies” 127. Huntl(e)y

(fl. 1695) London schoolmaster identified as the “P.H. philopoetes” (Greek, a friend of poets) who wrote Annotations on Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Wherein The Texts of Sacred Writ relating to the Poem, are Quoted; The Parallel Places and Imitations of the most Excellent Homer and Virgil, Cited and Com¬ pared; All the Obscure Parts render’d in Phrases more Familiar; The Old and Obsolete Words, with their Originals, Explain’d and made Easie to the English Reader, in 321 pages that came out with Jacob Tonson’s folio edition of 1695. Milton thus re¬ ceived commentary after the manner of the Greek and Roman classics where Shakespeare had to wait until Rowe’s edition of 1709. There was scarcely any precedent for this—E. K’s notes on Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calen¬ dar, Thomas Speght’s notes on chaucer, selden’s learned annotations on the first 18 Songs of Drayton’s Poly-

See

Huss(e), John (1369-1415) “The Bohemian,” A 340 reformer; paired with wycliffe 303; with luther H 75. Educated at Prague. Influenced by wycliffe. Ex¬ communicated 1410. Burned as here¬ tic. hussite War followed, 1419-36. HUSSITES CG 217. hutch'd Shut up, hoarded C 719. Hyacinth Accidentally killed by apollo’s dis¬ cus In 25-6. His blood turned into the flower “inscribed with woe,” L 106AI, AI, in sign of apollo’s mourning. Oblique references EL I 61; NS 62. hyacinthine iv 301, perhaps, as beautiful as hya¬ whom apollo loved; or dark (maybe specifically deep red—cf.

cinth,

152-

-

GORDON, GEORGE.

A Milton Dictionary

“sanguine flower,” L 106) and curly like the flower; or flowing. Cf. Ody. VI, 231.

ready,” 2 Timothy ii, 16-8 CG 192; CD 2, 6. Plural SD 224: cf. 1 Tim. i,

hyaline

Hymettus

“The glassy sea,” vii 619 (cf. Rev. iv, 6; xv, 2).

Attic mount famed for its honey EL V 52; PR 4, 247.

Hyas

hyperbciton

Pastoral name connected with the Hyades, the “rainy” nymphs ED 88.

A figure of speech reversing normal word order An 149.

Hydaspes

Hyperborean

Modem Jhelum, westernmost of the five rivers of the Punjab iii 436.

Northern, e.g. English—QN 95; Man 26. Or a mythical country 2D 172.

hydra(s) Many-headed (cf. K 172) snakes C 605;'ii 628; R 67; S XV 7 (the last a reference to the circumstance that when one head was cut off—as by Hercules—two grew in its stead).

20.

Hyperboreans (In Greek) Hyperion(ios) A 99.

hydropic(k) Dropsical An 117.

Northerners FE #6,

20.

titan,

the original sun-god AdP

Hyrcanian

hydrus A sea-serpent x 525.

Bounded on the northeast by the referred to as the Hyr¬ canian—Sea and thus associated with the Caucasus Mountains PR 3, 317. Caspian—often

Hylas Reautiful youth, son of Thiodamas, companion of Hercules, “seized by a naiad,” EL VII 24 and drowned ED 1; PR 2, 353; Sm 300; T 104.

Hyrcanus

Marriage song iv 711; cf. last two references above.

(d. 30 b.c. ) Uncle of antigonus and grandfather of mariamne, son of salome Alexandra. Carried off to Babylon (40) by parthians; put to death by herod in Jerusalem PR 3, 367. “pompey deposed aristobulus, and left to Hyrcanus the priesthood and the royal rank to which ancestral law entitled him: thenceforward he was called High Priest and ethnarch” ID 242.

Hymen(a)eus

Hyrcanus I, John

Accused of “vain babblings” “say¬ ing that the resurrection is past al¬

Son of Simon, leader of Judea 134104 b.c. ID 238.

Hymen “The god that sits at marriage feast,” EM 18. L’A 125; EL V 106: xi 591. Hymenaean

153-

I with jove and Saturn, IP 29; i 515. (2) A mountain overlooking Troy, where Paris awarded the golden apple of discord “For the fairest” to Aphrodite over Hera and Pallas Athene v 382.

I but Aye (yes) but D 451. laccho (Bacchus) Wine EL VI 27. lapetus The father of Prometheus, the giver of fire IB 1, whose creation of man is referred to PM 4. Iberian Spanish C 60; QN 103, 126. PR 2, (see scipio africanus).

200

Iberian dales Referring to the country in Trans¬ caucasia, eastern part of modem Georgia, “whose whole extent is all covered over with such thick and palpable darkness that none can see anything therein” (Purchas) PR 3, 318.

Idaean(m) Idaea Mater was a common epithet for ops or cybele (e.g. Aen. X, 252) EL V 62. idea Ideal pattern vii 557; S IV 6; Sm 312; E 276 (platonic). idol Simulacrum vi 101. idolisms False notions PR 4, 234.

(cf.

bacon’s

Idols)

idolists Ibis (Ibida)

Idolaters SA 453.

“The Crane” was a satirical poem by ovid PE 18.

Idumanii According

Icarius

to

Icarius was the father of EL IV 56.

penelope

Ignatius, St.

Icenorum, Stoam tuam British Stoa, the Iceni (mentioned B 57, 64, 65) being the ancient in¬ habitants of the part of Britain, Stowmarket, where young was in residence FE #4, 14. Ida (1) A

the Blackin Essex ED 90.

camden

water river or bay

mountain in Crete associated -

(c. 35-c. 107) “The ancientest of the extant fathers,” R 15. Bishop of antioch. “Taking his last leave of the Asian Churches” in various Epistles, “went to martyrdom” under trajan, R 30, 18. Troubled by heresies 20. His “specious” P 82-3 authority came to be doubted; “I wonder that men teachers of the Protestant religion

154-

A Milton Dictionary

make no more difficulty of imposing upon our belief a supposititious off¬ spring of some dozen epistles, where¬ of five are rejected as spurious” 88; “many forgeries” 90; “perkin warbeck” 102; “patch up a leucippean ignatius” 103. Milton had the au¬ thority of the 1623 editor Vedelius for his doubts, which were strength¬ ened by ussher in 1644 and Isaak Voss in 1646. Many Protestant schol¬ ars were eager to reject all the letters because of Ignatius’s firm hierarchical stand.

Ilus The founder of

ilium

EL I 45.

Imaus The Himalayas, iii 431 (Sanskrit Himava “snowy”: cf. “snowy ridge”

imbosk To hide as in the woods R 35. imp Noun, offspring, especially a devil¬ ish one ix 89. imp

ignominy 3 syllables (ignomy—formerly a common spelling) at i 115; ii 207; PR 3, 136, but not vi 383.

Verb, to graft feathers on a broken wing (a term in hawking) S XV 8. impaired Play on (1) injured and (2) un¬ peered v 665; vi 691.

II Penssroso

see L’Allegro and 11 Penseroso.

impaled

Iliaca

Enclosed, 553.

Trojan EL I 68; II 13. Ilissus

surrounded

ii

647;

vi

impalement

Athenian stream originating on the slopes of Mt. hymettus and part of the pleasant mise en scene of plato’s Phaedrus PR 4, 249; “pellucid” FE #8 34.

Double meaning of (1) fence and (2) the torture of being impaled—a pointed stick forced through the body CG 193. impediment

Ilium (llion)

Latin impedimenta, baggage of an army vi 548.

Troy PM 14; i 578. illaudable

impertinence, fond

Unworthy of praise, vi 382.

Foolish irrelevance viii 195.

illustrate To make luminous or glorify, v 739; x 78; PR 1, 370. IMyria The region north and east of the Adriatic Sea ix 505.

impertinent Not belonging CG 240. impervious Literally, that cannot through x 254.

be

passed

implicit Entangled (implicitus) vii 323.

Iliyricum (lliricum) The Roman province made from the kingdom of Illyria T 219. -

imports not, it It does not matter Ten 20.

155-

A Milton Dictionary

which I do not commend his mar¬ shalling)”; see also article on K, end. For classicists the final joke is on Milton for “exposing himself to the severity of criticism by admitting into his verses disputable Greek and false metre” (C. Bumey), the epigram being “far inferior to those which are preserved in the Greek Anthologia on bad painters.”

impregned, impregns

Impregnate(d), iv 500; ix 737. impreses (impresses)

Emblems on knights’ shields (Ital¬ ian imprese—something stamped on) ix 35. impression

Emphasis D 455. impropriation

In Inventorem Bombardae

The act of appropriating the reve¬ nues of a church living to one’s own use (supposed to be derived from “improper") Sm 323. In Effigiei Eius Sculptorem

(On the Engraver of His Picture.) 4 lines of Greek iambics that Milton had carved under his portrait in the Poems of 1645. The bad picture was dropped in 1673, and the epigram put into the text. The portrait is sel¬ dom seen now, the William Faithome engraving that first appeared with B, 1670, being prefeired. William Marshall (fl. 1630-50) was the bun¬ gling portraitist whose ignorance of Greek Milton took advantage of by getting the inept artist himself to in¬ scribe the words meaning, “Who, that my real lineament has scanned Will not in this detect a bungler’s hand? My friends, in doubt on whom his art was tried. The idiot limner’s vain attempt deride.” As explained in SD 124, the book¬ seller importuned for a likeness— which Milton’s enemies would use against him!—and this clumsy en¬ graver was the only one who could be found in that time of war. Marshall had done a frontispiece for Featley’s Dippers (q.v.) Dipt that was a cari¬ cature of the sectaries; Milton had punned contemptuously in T 69 “(for -

(On the Inventor of Gunpowder). Appropriately grouped with the Gun¬ powder Plot epigrams, 4 lines, elegiac, this places above Prometheus’ theft of fire the stealing of jove’s lurid arms and three-forked thunderbolt. In Obitum Praesulis Eliensis

(On the Death of the Bishop of Ely). 68 lines of iambic verse, alter¬ nating trimeter and dimeter. Nicholas Felton (1556-October 5, 1626) had died less than a fortnight after bishop andrewes, Milton’s Elegia 111 on whom is referred to in the opening lines. Fuller drew the parallel between the two: both “scholars, fellows, and masters of Pembroke Hall; both great scholars and painful preachers in London for many years, with no less profit to others than credit to them¬ selves; both successively bishops of Ely.” The poet, on learning of this new death, calls for death to the god¬ dess of death (cf. Hosea, xiii, 14, in the Vulgate: “ero mors tua, o mors”), but the soul of the bishop of Ely speaks in correction, explaining that Death is the gatherer of God’s har¬ vests, whether to salvation or damna¬ tion. The soul, glad to leave its bodily prison, soars beyond the triform moongoddess, past the planets and into the Milky Way and to the gates of heaven. The delights of that place are indescribable.

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A Milton Dictionary

In Obitum Procancellarii Medici

(On the Death of the Vice-Chancel¬ lor, a Physician). 48 lines in Horatian stanzas. “Anno Aetatis 16” is a mis¬ take, two years early, for Dr. John Gostlin died Oct. 21, 1626, about the same time as the University Beadle commemorated in EL II. Bom c. 1566 in Norwich, Gostlin attended Gonville and Caius College, of which he be¬ came Master in 1619. M.D. 1602. He was Regius Professor of Physic, 1623, and was about to end his second term as vice-chancellor when he died. Milton s line is that neither favoritism of the gods nor magic nor science can repel death: even the physician great¬ er than Apollo, who perhaps has an¬ noyed Persephone by snatching from the black jaws of death prospective victims (reference to Zeus having been jealous of Aesculapius) can now hope only to be greeted by her smiles in the Elysian field. In Proditionem Bombardicam

(On the Gunpowder Plot). First of four epigrams among the Elegies, on this subject, c. 1626. 8 lines. This grimly jests on fawkes’ intention to transport in a chariot of fire to heaven King James and his nobles. 2. 10 lines. James has died without being blown to heaven by the Roman beast of Revelation (xiii), which had better propel there cowls (cf. the Par¬ adise of Fools, iii 474 ff.) and brute idols that otherwise will not arrive. 3. 12 lines. This refers to James hav¬ ing derided the purgatorial fire by say¬ ing, that he hoped for a brook there, “that in case I come ... I may have hawking upon it” (A Premonition to All Most Mighty Monarchs). The triple-crowned beast thereupon threat¬ ened fire and almost made James a burnt ghost. 4. 4 fines. Though she regards him -

as excommunicated, impious Rome wants to waft him to the stars and gods. In Quintum Novembris

(On the Fifth of Nevember). Writ¬ ten in 1626 for the twenty-first anni¬ versary of the Gunpowder Plot, Mil¬ ton’s longest Latin poem, 226 hexame¬ ters, a small-scale epic foreshadowing PL. The SATAN-like principal figure, the cruel tyrant” of hell, never named but obliquely identified as pluto, in his restless round of temptation and instigation envies “pious James,” who had securely occupied the joint king¬ dom of England and Scotland. This land of peace and plenty and right religion must be punished for its de¬ fiance. The tempter alights in Rome during the festivities of st. Peter’s eve (June 28), accosts the Pope (who was not accustomed to sleep alone any¬ way) in a dream, disguised like st francis, rouses him as the lying Dream roused Agamemnon (II. II, 1 ff.): he must avenge the Armada and the Catholic martyrs put to death by Elizabeth, lest Rome itself be threat¬ ened next. Not open war but guile is called for. Parliament is to meet: blow it up and expose the terrified land to French or Spanish invasion. Out of an array of personifications, the Babylon¬ ish priest (cf. S XVIII 14) next morn¬ ing chooses Murder and Treason to set the English Catholics plotting. At the bidding of God in heaven many¬ eared Rumor (Fama) swims through the English air and exposes the con¬ spiracy, a horrible revelation to citi¬ zens of all ages. The Papists are seized and punished. It will always be a day to remember, the fifth of November. Milton’s ending is huddled, and the many lines he devotes to Fama have little to do with history. The Gun¬ powder Plot was engineered by a half-

157-

A Milton Dictionary

dozen English Catholics led by Robert Catesby, goaded by renewed penal re¬ strictions on their faith. In the lumberroom immediately under the House of Lords they stored 36 barrels of gun¬ powder and stationed guy fawkes, a professional soldier, to apply the torch the day Parliament opened (Nov. 5, 1605). However, on October 26, Monteagle, one of the Catholic lords, received and passed on to the government an anonymous letter, warning him to absent himself from the opening of Parliament. Fawkes was found guarding the gunpowder the night of November 4 and put to the torture until he told all. Milton had probably read the Locustae (published 1627) of phineas fletcher. His model for fama was virgil, Aen. IV, 173 ff. and Ovid, Meta. XII, 38-63. As regards marini’s La Strage degli lnnocenti (the British Museum Catalogue gives bracketed dates of 1610 and 1620 for two Vene¬ tian editions), there is a basic resem¬ blance with Book I (to be translated by Crashaw in 1646), resting on the two Satans and their stirring up of trouble, in disguise, in a dream. Stan¬ zas 6-8 give similar details about the fiery-eyed, teeth-grinding fiend. Of final interest is the way Milton anticipates his English epic in tnis little epic, this epyllion, with its satan who swims through the air with his wings (45; cf. 208), and, like the sa¬ tan of PR, comes disguised as a gray eremite (79 ff.) on a mission of temp¬ tation. The author of PL was quoting the Cambridge undergraduate when he alluded to the “eyes That sparkling blazed” (i 193) (“Ignescunt oculi” 38); compare too, vi 848: “every eye Glared lightning and shot forth perni¬ cious fire”—of the “Artificer of fraud” (iv 121) (“fraudumque magister” 17). Both satans inaugurate an insidious

conspiracy at night (the one is “Prince of Darkness,” x 383, the other “niger urnbrarum dominus,” 78), rousing a subordinate with the question “Sleep’st thou?” (v 673) (“Dormis,” 92), and each puts himself in position “to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather” (i 605) (“Dinumerans sceleris socios, vernasque fideles,”10). God above is moved to laughter: “Laugh’st at their vain de¬ signs and tumults vain” (v 737) (“Vanaque perversae ridet conamina turbae,” 168). Ina (688-726) King of the West Saxons, ID 438. Responsible for Peter’s pence, H 66; CB 166, 201. Abdicated and died on pilgrimage to Rome, B 175, 177 ff. inartificial Having nothing to do with the art of logic, T 206. incentive Kindling, vi 519. incompetible Incompatible, P 84. incomposed Discomposed, ii 989. inconcileable Irreconcilable, D 427. incorporate Joined in one body, x 816; cf. SA 161. incubus A male demon that seduced women in their sleep, PR 2,152. Ind(e) India, ii 2; C 606. indecent Ungraceful, disgraceful, vi 601.

158-

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A Milton Dictionary

India East or West

infer

Tropical Asia and tropical America, v 339.

Prove, imply, vii 116; viii 91; ix 285, 754; C 408.

Indian steep

infinite abyss

Perhaps just a way of saying “east¬ ern hill”; perhaps the Himalayas, C 139. indictions

Fifteen-year papal cycles, R 34. indifference, with like

With the same impartiality. Ten 27.

Chaos, ii 405. influence

In the astrological sense of the pow¬ er—the “flowing in upon”—of the ce¬ lestial bodies over men, their charac¬ ters and their fortunes. Cf. adam’s explanation to eve, iv 668 ff.N 71; L’A 122; ii 1034; vii 375 (cf. Job xxxviii, 31); vii 513.

individual

infringed

(1) undividable, inseparable Ti 12; iv 486; T 102, 104;individually, D 458, (2) privately owned, W 138.

Shattered, broken to pieces, PR 1, 62. ingenuity

indocible

Frankness, T 67.

Unteachable, O 245.

inhabitation

The inhabited world (a Grecism), SA 1512.

indorsed

See endorsed.

Innocent II! inducing

Bringing in, vi 407 CG 272. Indus

A river of India emptying into the Arabian Sea, ix 82 PR 3, 272.

(1160-1216) Pope from 1198, who forced king John to recognize him as his feudal overlord and was the first to use the title Vicar of Christ, H 74. innumerous

Innumerable, C 349; vii 455. industry, of ln(n)ogen (Imogene)

On purpose,Ten 3. infamed

Defamed, ix 797. infancy

Literally, the time of speechlessness, CG 233.

Daughter of Pandrasus king of Greece of whom the wandering and invading Trojans successfully “demand first the king’s eldest daughter Inno¬ gen in marriage to their leader bbutus,” B 10. ED 163. Inquisition

tor

Blood,

An

(to

the

infantry

Parliament and the Army)

i 575, pun on (1) foot-soldiers and (2) diminutive people (“that pygmae¬ an race/ Beyond the Indian mount,” 780-1).

An anonymous pamphlet of July, 1649 by James Howell (1594P-1666), written while he was a royalist pris¬ oner in the Fleet, 1643-51, and be-

159-

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A Milton Dictionary

fore his famous Epistolae Ho-elianae: Familiar Letters. It freed Charles from “the transactions of the late Treaty” by arguing that he had acted “in his politic capacity.”

intergatories

Interrogations or questions, Sm 341, a marked feature of pp. 18-20 of the 1642 Modest Confutation. interludes

inscribed with woe

L 105: Walter Skeat of Christ’s Col¬ lege, Cambridge, comments: “The sedge of the Cam, when dry, shows markings like a palm-leaf MS. (or like the traditional marks of the hya¬ cinth ).”

Milton’s pejorative term for plays that are mere entertainments below the rank of tragedies, Pref. SA; CG 239. interlunar cave

The retreat of the moon between the Old Moon and the New, SA 89.

insensate interminable

Foolish, vi 787; SA 1685.

Boundless (of God), SA, 307. insinuating internal

Moving sinuously, iv 348.

Inner, SA 1334, 1686. inspired, inspiring

Breathed into, iv 804; v 322; x 785.

interrupt

Broken open, iii 84. instalment intestine war

Installation, Ten 9.

Civil war, vi 259. instant

vi 549, perhaps an adverb, instantly; or perhaps an adjective with the Latin sense of urgent: the model is in any case the Latin adverb “instanter.”

intimate

Inmost, SA 223. inure (enure)

To accustom, viii 239; cf., ii 216. Sm 328.

instinct

Instigated, ii 937; vi 752. inviolable insulse, insulsity

Immune to injury, vi 398.

Stupid(ity), P 89; Sm 291, 316; involved

D 441.

Coiled, vii 483. insupportably

Not to be borne, irresistibly, SA 136. intend

Attend to (Latin), ii 457.

io

Princess of Argos wooed by Zeus and transformed into a heifer by him or Hera; the latter sent a gadfly to goad her. See Argus. R 38.

intense

logern

Taut (of a stringed instrument), viii 387.

UTHER PENDRAGON,

Igraine, the mother of abthur by ED 166.

160-

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A Milton Dictionary

Ion

Irish Seas

Grandson of Erechtheus, king of Athens; son of cheusa by apollo, whose magnificent Delphic temple is the scene of euripides’ Ion, JR 56, 60. Ionia

Greek region of Asia Minor named after ion; traditional native region of HOMER, EL I, 23 (cf. Man 23); A 300Prol VII, 268.

See Lycidas. irresolute/Of thoughts revolved

Undecided about circling thoughts, ix 87 (“in wand’ring mazes lost,” ii 561). irriguous

Well-watered, iv 255. Isaac

The son of abraham, xii 153 and father of Jacob, 268; PS CXIV (Greek) 20. Blind, 2D 66 (Gen. xxvii, 1; xlvii, 10).

Ionian

Greek, i 508. Irassa

A fusion of two parts of Pindar, one (Isthmian Odes IV, 52 ff.) mentioning the struggle between the giant antaeus and Hercules, the other (Pyth¬ ian IX, 106) naming Iras(s)a (in Libya, near the lake tritonis) in con¬ nection with a later (according to the scholiast) Antaeus, PR 4, 564. Irenaeus, St.

(c. 130-c. 200) “Bishop of Lyons,” P 91, who “when he was a boy” had heard polycarp. Studied at Rome. Was commissioned to request tolera¬ tion for the Montanists. In 190 “worthily . . . reproved” Pope victor, R 20. His chief work Aclversus omnes Haereses is partly preserved in Greek and survives complete in a literal Latin version. Cited, P 94. One of the fathers who “discover more heresies than they well confute,” A 312. P 88, 92-3 (“rash”?), 96, 97, 100. Opp. Scrip¬ ture, ID 190, 194. Iris

The goddess who was messenger of the gods and personified (her name being the Greek for) the rainbow, C 83, 992; xi 244. iv 698 refers to the flower; FE # 15 66 to an iridescent blur. -

Isaiah

“The Prophet,” CG 206 (IS. Ixvi, 23); An 160 (Is. ix, 15); CG 247 (lii, 7); Sm 35 (lvi, 10-11); D 408 (lii, 11). A 313 (cf. Acts viii, 27-35). Ishmael

(1) “scornful,” Ps LXXXIII, 22, the son of abraham and hagar the bondwoman, SD 196-8 (“his irreligious wife and her son,” D 409), of whom it was prophesied, “his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” (Gen. xvi, 12). (2) Ismael, ID 200, the son of Nethaniah (Jeremiah xli). Isidore of Seville (Isidorus Hispalensis)

(560P-636) Archbishop of Seville, 600; church father; leading scholar of his time; encyclopaedist. “The first computer of Canons,” T 229. ID 200. Isis

Egyptian fertility goddess, some¬ times represented with a cow’s head or horns (and thus connected with, Io QN 186). Sister and wife of osiris and mother of orus (Horus), N 212. Id 31; i 478; An 173; A 338; SD 152. Treated as the first Queen of Egypt, ID 292.

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A Milton Dictionary

Ismenian steep

The cliff or hill from which the “that Theban monster, hurled herself when Oedipus guessed her riddle (after Ismenus, a small river) PR 4, 575. sphinx,

Isocrates

Named only in, E 287, but a figure in S X and A.

Eve,” one touch of Ithuriel’s spear re¬ turns this “falsehood ... of force to its own likeness,” 810 ff. The two cherubs escort “the Prince of Hell” back to their chief, 866 ff. its Used only thrice in Milton’s poetry: i 254; iv 813; N 106, the regular neuter possessive pronoun in Elizabethan times being his.

Ispahan

See Hispahan.

Ixion

Issachar

Son of Leah and Jacob; his name meant (marginal note Anglican Ver¬ sion Gen. xxx, 18) “an hire,” K 162. Ithuriel

Whose invented name means “Search of God,” is deputed by gabbiel to “search through this gar¬ den” with zephon, iv 788 ff., for Sa¬ tan. When the intruder is found “Squat like a toad, close at the ear of

-

A murderer pitied and purified and taken to heaven by jupiter, where he ungratefully (Pindaric Marginalia, 291) tried to win Juno and was pun¬ ished by jupiter’s “giving him a cloud instead of Juno, giving him a mon¬ strous issue by her, the breed of cen¬ taurs . . . and lastly giving him her with a damnation to that wheel in hell,” T 86-7, which rolled him round perpetually. The myth may have con¬ tributed to the last line of Pas.

162-

J jabberment

Idle talk, prating, CG 269. Jabesh Gilead

Placed by eusebius beyond Jordan, 6 miles from Pella. See Judges, xxi, 814 K 197. Jachin

One of the two pillars set up before the temple of Solomon, 2 Chronicles, iii, 17 Col 258. Jacob

James, St.

Second son of isaac and rebekah, bom with esau (cf. O 260), Abra¬ ham’s “grandchild,” xii 153, “Israel” 267 (cf. “sons of Jacob” for the northern Israelites, PR 3, 377). His vision of the ladder (Gen. xxviii, 12) iii 510 ff.; of the angels in Mahanaim, xi 214. Vow of “a prince bom,” Sm 363 (see Gen. xxviii, 20-22). K 266; H 59. Perhaps blind like his father, 2D 66. Jacobuses

See Defensio Prima

Anne of Denmark, 1589. Conventional praise of as “pius,” QN 1 ff. Gone to the stars, PB II, 1-6; III, 1 ff. Different attitude by 1649-50, (cf. K 305) e.g. gibson. Ten 30, and suspicion of poi¬ son, K 76, 154; ID 140, 340. Associ¬ ated with jigs and maypoles, K 81 and divine right, K 181, and equivocation in religion, 196, 226, and tyranny 277. Etc. No solomon, 277 (despite the Archbishop of York’s funeral sermon, “Great Britain’s Solomon”); ID 138.

and salmasius.

Jaculation

Throwing,vi 665.

“The brother of our Lord,” P 98. Sm 3.53. K 188 (James, iv, 3). Jannaeus

See

ALEXANDER JANNAEUS.

Jansen, John

Dutch publisher of Milton’s ID at Amsterdam and of Novus Atlas, 6 folio volumes, 1658. FE # 20 84. Januas

Literally “Doorways” to the ele¬ ments of language study, a contempt¬ uous reference, E 276 to Comenius’ Janua Linguarum Reserata and other “modem” introductions.

Jcel

Janus

compares, SA 989: see Judges, iv, 21; justified, CD 2, 13.

Roman divinity presiding over gates and the beginning of everything, such as the year (thus January) and sea¬ sons. Commonly represented with two heads looking east and west An 120; his temple was opened in times of war A 347. Sometimes he was "double,” xi

dalila

James, King

(1566-1625) Titular king of Scot¬ land as James VI from 1567; of Great Britain as James I from 1603. Married

163-

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A Milton Dictionary

the

129, with four heads signifying power in the four quarters of the earth.

portion

of the 40 years’ Ten 14; ID 108,

232. CD 1,10.

Japetus See

greater

reign of j(eh)oash

Jehoiada

iapetus.

(2) Priest to priest, GP 5.

Japhet, unwiser son of Epimetheus (After-thought) iv 717. brother of Prometheus (Fore¬ thought), and son of the titan iapetus, equated with Noah’s son Japhet (Gen. ix, 27; x, 1).

Seraiah

the high-

Jehoram “A successive and hereditary ty¬ rant,” Ten 22. King of Israel 896-884 b.c. Slain by Jehu. K 265.

Jason

Jehosaphat

The Colchian king promised to give up the golden fleece if Jason alone would yoke to a plough two fire¬ breathing oxen with brazen feet, and sow dragon’s teeth Frol VI 230; MAR

(d. 851 b.c.?) King of Judah for about 25 years. T 193; K 260; CP 16; etc.

Jehovah

295.

Name used thrice in PL—i 386, 487; vii 602. See CD 1, and 5 on this name for God.

jaunt A fatiguing journey, PR 4, 402. Javan

Jehu (lehu)

The son of japhet; identified with Ion, ancestor of the Ionians or Greeks, i 508. SA 716 (cf. Isaiah lxvi, 19; Ezek. xxvii 12-3, for association with tar-

“Had special command to slay Jehoram,” Ten 22; 28; RN 155; ID 232.

shish).

jehu Name for a fast or reckless coach¬ man, K 181.

Javellus, Chrysostomus (Crisostomo Javelio) (c. 1471-c. 1538) Dominican teacher at Rologna; commentator on aquinas Prol V 196. jealousy Suspicion, CG 202. Jebusites See 2 Sam. v, 6-8 Ten 57.

jehoiada

The “famous man in Israel,” D 381, who sacrificed his daughter. Rose “from lowest poverty to highest deeds,” PR 2, 439—freed Israel from the ammonites (Judges xi). SA 283 (see Judges xii, 5-6). Jeremiah, Jeremie

Jehoash (Joasum) See

Jephtha(h)

(1) Ten 14; ID 108.

“The sad prophet . . . laments,” CG 230. An 173; CG 231; CP 25. Jericho

Jehoiada (1)

High-priest at the time of athaliah’s usurpation of the throne of Judah (884-887 b.c.) and during -

“The city of palms” (cf. Deut. xxxiv, 3) PR 2, 20, on the western side of Jordan, near Dead Sea, ID 216.

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A Milton Dictionary

Jeroboam I

Ecclesiasticus (27) in the Apocrypha, T 110.

912 b.c.?) An Ephraimite who became after Solomon’s death the first king of the divided kingdom of Israel, R 39. See 1 Kings xii, 25 ff. CG 207; CP 34; ID 230.

moses’ father-in-law. Ex. xviii, 19 quoted, ID 18.

Jeroboam il

Jezebel (Jesabel)

744 b.c.) The son of Joash, the fourth of the dynasty of jehu, K 261. See Amos vii, 9 If.

ahab,

(a.

(d.

Jethro

(d. c. 846 b.c. ) Wicked wife of the “Sidoni dira” of EL IV 100, persecutor of Elijah. An 153—see Rev. ii, 20. Sm 307—see 1 Kings xxi, 10.

Jerome, St. (340P-420) One of the four Doctors of the Church. Studied and wrote in a monastery in Bethlehem from 386. Published the Vulgate (Latin) ver¬ sion of the Bible. “The leamed’st of the fathers,” CG 208 (reference to Letter CXLVI to Evangelus); one of “the prime fathers,” T 195. On mar¬ riage and divorce D 383, 487; T 212. Controversialist A 312. Charged with cicero NiANisM, A 307-08. See eustochium. K 230; CP 17; ID 88, 200. CD 1, 7. Jerome of Prague (1360P-1416) Bohemian convert (he had been a student at Oxford) to the teachings of wycliffe and fol¬ lower of huss; burned at the stake after being condemned as heretic by the Council of Constance, A 340.

jig Jocular ballad or parody, Sm 352. Joab Nephew of Sam xx, 9-10.

david

An 136. See 2

Joasus Same

as jehoash.

Job This book of the Bible having been called “a brief model” of the epic in CG 237 (st. jerome had said the same), it is not surprising that Job is frequently mentioned analogically in PR (1, 147, 369, 425; 3, 64 ff., 93ff.) —cf. “patientest of men,” D 409. Sm 320. Afflicted, D 425; T 77, Col 239. Comparison with Charles, K 173, 200, 249; W 113. TR 168. Plain speaker SD 110.

Jesus Besides being the hero of PR and in the opinion of some the hero of PL, “Iesus” occurs once in the Latin po¬ etry, (EL IV 103), and “Jesus” is the name for joshua as a type of Christ, xii 310 (on the authority of Stephanus’ Dictionary and the Greek Septuagint).

John (1167-1216). King of England from 1199. This bad monarch hardly men¬ tioned, and at first favorably vs. the bishops, R 46 (but compare “Norman grip,” 57). Decretal, H 74. “Deposed” 0 246. John of Antioch, Malalcs

Jesus who Sirach (B. 200

is

called the son of

b.c.)

Attributes to himself -

(491P-578) Byzantine historian whose Chronography was read by Ussher in MS. at the Bodleian, P 88.

165 -

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Milton Dictionary

John the Baptist “The great Proclaimer” of PR 1, 18 ff., 184. Cf. Angel, An 154. Jesus’ re¬ lation with, PR 1, 270 ff. The Temp¬ ter’s attitude, 328 ff.; 4, 510 ff. At Jordan 2, 2. Mary 84. Beheaded, T 186. Strict, Sm 312; and outspoken, D 387; T 144; K 219. CG 197, 210. John-a-Nokes

and

John-a-Stiles

Empty legal names like John Doe, Col 255. John, St. “He who saw the Apocalypse” (cf. Rev. xii, 7-9), iv 1. His “Apocalypse . . . the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy,” CG 238. Vision of angel “in the sun,” iii 622 ff.; of the four beasts (Rev. iv, 6 ff.), Sm 314; of church reformation, CG 194. In the moon with Astolfo, R27. Counter¬ manded by Jesus, A 352 (Luke ix, 50). Other references P 87, 93, 96, 98-9; An 173; CG 219, 244; T 207; K 307; H 77, 91. Johnson, Dr. Samuel (1709-84). In the words of Boswell this Tory’s “just abhorrence of Milton’s political notions was ever strong,” and it infects Johnson as biographer and perhaps as critic. The Life in the Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Most Eminent of the English Poets (1779) was the most hostile in the hundred years since wood’s and was easily the ablest before the nine¬ teenth century. In the fourth para¬ graph, Christopher Milton is approved for having “adhered, as the law taught him, to the king’s party.” At the end of the biographical part occurs the summary: “Milton’s republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen de¬ sire of independence; in petulance impatient of control, and pride dis¬

dainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was to destroy, rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty, as repugnance to authority.” This is followed by the epigram, “He thought women made only for obedi¬ ence, and man only for rebellion.” Lycidas is complained of as “not . . . the effusion of real passion; for pas¬ sion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions.” “The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.” Comus and L’Allegro and II Penseroso fare better. “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruc¬ tion, retire harassed and overbur¬ dened, and look elsewhere for recrea¬ tion; we desert our master, and seek for companions.” The problem of em¬ bodying spirits is acutely discerned. The Sonnets are not praised: “of the best it can only be said, that they are not bad.” (Johnson told Hannah More, “Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry¬ stones.”) The balanced last sentence reads: “His great works were per¬ formed under discountenance, and in blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first.” The Rambler, 1751, contains four Saturday essays (cf. Addison) on the versification of PL, and #139-40 of the same year carry a criticism of SA remembered for the assertion: “The poem ... has a begin-

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A Milton Dictionary

ning and an end, which Aristotle him¬ self could not have disapproved, but it must be allowed to want a middle, since nothing passes between the first act and the last that either hastens or delays the death of Samson.” jolly Arrogant, Col 233. Jonathan Eldest son of King saul, friend of T 119; ID 104,— see 1 Sam. xiv, 42; 118. Plural, Ten 4. david.

1657; simultaneous letters again April 21,1659. Jonson, Ben (1572-1637) Besides the direct al¬ lusion in L’A 132, there is evidence of the great classical dramatist’s influ¬ ence on the young Milton. See espe¬ cially Comus. Cambridge’s memorial volume to king was probably con¬ ceived as a parallel to Oxford’s Jonsonus Virbius: or the Memory of Ben Jonson Revived, 1638. Jorarn See

Jonathan (ben Uzziel) (fl. 30

) Jewish scholar, disciple of hillel; traditional author of the targum of the Prophets, Sm 316; CD 1, 14. b.c.

Jones, Richard

libna(h).

Jordan The chief river of Palestine, flowing south into the Dead Sea, is prominent in PR as the scene of Jesus’ baptism by John 1, 24, 329, etc. (The Latin adjective “Iordanios” occurs in con¬ nection with Elijah, PB 1,8.) “Doublefounted stream,” xii 144 goes back to Jerome’s erroneous belief in a Jor and a Dan, streams that joined to make the Jordan. See paneas.

(1641-1712). 3rd viscount and 1st Earl of Ranelagh. A former pupil, he received FE #19, 22 (which should be in reverse order), 25 and 30 in re¬ ply to letters of his (lost). He was room-mate at Oxford with oldenburg in the spring of 1656 and June 25 con¬ Joseph veyed a letter from him (FE #18 “Highly favored” son of “That fair 76). Jones’ mother Lady Ranelagh Syrian shepherdess” rachel, and was Milton’s friend, XII 80. olden- jacob, EM 65, the “younger son” of burg wrote to Robert Boyle the boy’s xii 160, whose position as “second” in uncle that he would remove him from the “realm of Pharaoh” is also alluded Oxford (April 15, 1657) to saumur. to in K 212. Two tribes named after Left Saumur in the spring of 1658 to ephraim and manasseh, his sons, PR travel in Germany. A year later they 3, 377. were in Paris (May, 1659). Became Joseph an absentee landlord in Ireland, and in 1670 joined the Buckingham cabal. Husband of mary the mother of One of the Conway Letters (Dec. 28, jesus (cf. PR 1, 23): their marriage, 1677) shows rakist tendencies. As M 47; T 103,180. paymaster-general (1691-1702) he Josephus, Flavius was convicted of defalcation. Milton seems to have known this ne’er-do(37P-100) Jewish historian and gen¬ well stood in need of admonition. He eral favored by Vespasian, Titus, and warns him against wine and writes to domitian. Settled in Judea on a pen¬ his tutor the same day, August 1, sion. Antiquities of the Jews (from

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Milton Dictionary

the Creation to 66) cited, preface CG 182; ID 78; D 479 (xv, 7). 488; T 143 (xviii, 5), 146; K 291; ID 146, 240. Against Apion (an apology of the Jews), ID 136.

the tribe of Judah, N 221; i 457; PR 2, 424, etc.

Joses, Rabbi

se-/cond Book of the Kingdom of

Commentator in the Gemara (the second, expository part of the Tal¬ mud) cited by salmasius, ID 100, along with Rabbi Judah,

Christ. And now Englisht./ Wherin

/ Judgement / of / Martin / Divorce, / Writt'n to Edward the sixt, in his

The

Bucer, / Concerning

a late Book restoring the/Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,/is heer confirm'd

and

justify'd

by

the/

authoritie of Martin Bucer./To the

Joshua (Jehosua)

Parlament of England

Successor of moses; one of the '‘Nine Worthies”; led Israelites in in¬ vasion and settlement of Canaan, xii 310. A 343, 352: see Num. xi, 29.

[John iii, 10: “Art thou a teacher of Israel, and know’st not these things?”] Entered in the Stationers’ Register July 15, out by Aug. 6,1644, Milton’s second divorce pamphlet was not anonymous, Josiah for, like the 2nd edition of D, it con¬ King of Judah, i 418. See 2 Kings tained an address To the Parliament to xxiii. D 369; K 88; CP 16, 25. which he appended his name. Here he explains that when the D “had been Josippus ("losippum") now the second time set forth wellError of salmasius for josephus nigh three months, as I best remem¬ (see, e.g. Defensio Regia, 1650, 12mo, ber, I then first came to hear that p. 101). Martin Bucer had written much con¬ cerning divorce: whom, earnestly turn¬ jostling ing over, I soon perceived, but not See justling. without amazement, in the same opin¬ ion, confirmed with the same reasons Jove, Jupiter which in that published book, with¬ In accordance with the practice of out the help or imitation of any pre¬ his time Milton uses the Roman name cedent writer, I had labored out, and —never Zeus—for the chief deity of laid together.” This was part of MilOlympus. Sometimes he, like dante, ton’s discovery—traceable too between means God (Hebrew Jehovah) by the first and the second edition of D— “Jove,” as in the first line of C and L that “more than one famous light of 82. the first reformation” could be enlisted as an ally, where he had thought him¬ Jove, son of self perhaps alone. He therefore has¬ ALEXANDER THE GREAT, PR 3, 84. See tened to bring out a translation of the OLYMPIAS. pertinent parts of Bucer’s posthumous publication, De Regno Christi (Basle, Judah (Judas), Rabbi 1577). It is of course Milton’s most See joses. extensive translation, and, though not Judah, Judea literal, has been found invariably hon¬ est. “I deny not to have epitomized,” That part of southern Palestine, west of the Dead Sea, occupied by he declares in A Postscript, proudly

168-

A Milton Dictionary

noting that he “never could delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions; whether it be natural dis¬ position or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator.” He evidently found the original verbose. Bucer or Butzer—the Latin trans¬ lated gives a vernacular name of Kuhhom (1491-1551) was one of the first and most honored (cf. the testimonials in M) of the German reformers. A correspondent of luther, he suc¬ ceeded zwingli as leader of the Re¬ formed Churches in Switzerland and South Germany. He defended Philip of Hesse against the charge of “bi¬ gamy.” Coming to England in 1549 he was welcomed by Edward vi and cranmkr and held the position of Regius professor of divinity at Cam¬ bridge until his death. At this post he elaborated, around 1550, the views that Milton was now happy to publi¬ cize: “That the ordering of marriage belongs to the civil power,” not to the Church (Ch. XV); that the early church showed some liberality in re¬ gard to divorce; and “That our Lord Christ intended not to make new laws of marriage and divorce” (XXVIII). Bucer also took up the question clos¬ est to his translator’s own situation; “Whether the Husband or Wife de¬ serted may marry to another” (XLI), as Milton was thinking of doing with a certain Miss Davis, the conclusion being “that the party deserted is not bound in case of causeless desertion, but that he may lawfully seek an¬ other consort, if it be needful to him, toward a pure and blameless conver¬ sation.” Milton, when attacked by the preacher Herbert Palmer, was able to reply that “the same censure con¬ demns of wickedness . . . Martin

Bucer, that elect instrument of Re¬ formation,” T 66. Other references are 72, 103, 104, 177, 224, 231; Col 266-7; SD 60. Bucer was also quotable against tyrants, Ten 48 (cf. 2D 202); ID 64, 202, 346. On the Sabbath, CD 2, 7. Julian the Apostate (331-63). Converted to paganism upon becoming Roman emperor, 361. “constantine’s . . . nephew,” R 25. Subtlest enemy of our faith made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning,” A 307; cf. CB 136. T 168. ID 252f. Traditional last words, “You have conquered, Gali¬ lean,” echoed SD 290 f. Julius, great JULIUS CAESAR,

PR 3, 39.

Junius, Franciscus, the elder (1545-1602) Frangois du Jon, Hu¬ guenot divine active successively at Geneva, Antwerp, Heidelberg, Ley¬ den. Famous with Tremellius for Latin version of the Bible. On Malachi, ii, 16 T 109; Col 263; CD 1, 10. Juno sat cross-legged “Over the nativity of” Hercules, A 305—or rather, she sent the goddess of childbirth, Ilithyia, to do so, prevent¬ ing his birth until the seventh night of labor, when a counter-trick freed Alcmena’s womb (Metamorphoses IX, 281-323). Cf. “Junonian” arts and quarrels, SD 188. Justin II (d. 578) Nephew of Justinian. Em¬ peror from 565-74, when he yielded administration to the general Tibe¬ rius, T 216. Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165) After ignatius the earliest of the church fathers. Turned

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Milton Dictionary

from Greek philosophy. His First Apology referred to P 86; An 125; T 207-8. Second, R 21; T 171. Col 249. ID 192.

thor of an epitome, Historiarum Philippicarum Libri XLIV, ID 394.

Justinian I

Bosporus,

(483-565) Byzantine emperor from 527. Famous for repelling barbarian invaders, and for public architecture, and for the Justinian Code—recom¬ mended, E 285, the foundation of law in most of continental Europe. The Corpus Juris Civilis had four parts: Institutes, Pandects (or Digest), Code, and Novellae (or Authentics). “Of high wisdom and reputed piety,” D 487, P 88; T 103, 111, 133, 155, 163, etc; K 298. Etc.

justling (jostling) rocks The Symplegades, twin rocks to the fabled to swing together and crush whatever tried to pass be¬ tween them, ii 1018. Juvenal (60P-140?) The Roman satirist was drawn on for the motto on the titlepage of the 2nd edition of W, q.v. Cited B 80; Log 48. Compare C 96-7 and SaturaXIV, 280: “audiet Herculeo stridentem gurgite solem”; 129-11, 912; EL V, 21-VI, 517 (“grande sonat”); PE 51-2-V, 23; SA 171-VIII, 1 (“stemmata . . . longo”); PR 2, 431—1, 74.

Justinianus

Juxon, William

Bernardo Giustiniani (1408-89), au¬ thor of De Origine Urbis Venetiarum Rebusque ab Ipsa Gestis Historia (Venice, 1492), subsequently pub¬ lished in Italian FE #7 28.

(1582-1663). “Dr. Juxton,” Charles I’s prayer given to, just before his exe¬ cution, K 86, 91. Succeeded Laud as bishop of London, 1633-49; attended Charles I at Newport and during his trial. Rewarded by being made arch¬ bishop of Canterbury at the Restora¬ tion.

Justinus, Marcus Junianus (3rd cent.?) Roman historian; au¬

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K keal

keck(ing) (at)

Broth featuring kale or cabbage. An 177; Sm 311.

Retch, K 96; Sm 298. keel

Keats, John

To cool, R 49.

(1795-1821) The greatest poem ever written under Milton’s influence is Hyperion (1818-9; published in La¬ mia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems, 1820), beginning, “Deep in the shady sadness of a Vale/ Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn.” But it remained a fragment, as did the inferior revision, The Fall of Hyperion. “There were too many Mil¬ tonic inversions in it,” Keats wrote Reynolds. “Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist’s humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up.” To his brother he put it, “The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our lan¬ guage ... I have but lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me.” These and other remarks in his Letters are better known than his “Notes on Paradise Lost” (Forman edition, III). He com¬ pared Milton and wordsworth. He wrote “Lines on Seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair,” and testified to his early reading in “Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke,” 53,58-9. “The Imagi¬ nation may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth” (to Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817) (cf. viii, 460-90).

Keightley, Thomas (1789-1872). Of Trinity College, Dublin, published books on mythol¬ ogy and edited the rural part of Virgil before producing his highly independ¬ ent annotations accompanying The Poems of John Milton, 1859, 2 vols. In a companion volume, the miscel¬ laneous Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an Introduction to “Paradise Lost,” 1855, Keightley, after declaring that ever since childhood “the poetry of Milton has formed my constant study,” proudly avers that “The expositor of Milton should endeavor to vie with Milton in knowledge.” keri “Read” (in a marginal note), Sm 316; A 312; SD 110. ketiv (chetiv) “What is written,” Sm 316; A 312. key-cold The keys of st. peter have become as cold as a key, CG 252: a once stand¬ ard expression for very cold, cf. Rich¬ ard III, 1, 2, 5: “Poor key-cold figure of a holy king.” The anonymous Tell-

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A Milton Dictionary Troth’s New Year’s Gift, 1593, p. 5, has “key-cold (kea-cold) winter.” kickshaws (kicshoes) Fancy (French) dainties, and by extension dapper fools, An 123; E 290.

Kiriathaim A town east of Jordan, SA 1081. See Gen. xiv, 5. knacks Toys, knick-knacks, T 212. knots

Kimchi, David

Flower-beds, iv 242.

(1160-1240) Biblical lexicographer and commentator, D 488. kindliness (kindlyness), mute Dumb instinct, T 101. kindly Natural, iv 228, 668; vii 419. v 336.

est,

King, Edward See

lycidas.

kindli¬

Knox,John (1505-72) “A most famous divine and the reformer of Scotland,” Ten 28, “the reformer of a kingdom,” A 326; “famousest,” Ten 49; “the first founder of Presbytery in Scotland,” O 266. His books, Ten 50. Drew his doctrine [on kings] from Calvin, 2D 202. ksar Czar (short for kaiser), xi 394.

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L Labadie, Jean (de)

Lachisum (Lachish)

(1640-74) French religious innovationist; a Jesuit who turned to Calvin¬ ism, c. 1650. In the Netherlands estab¬ lished the Labadists, dedicated to simple living and communal property, but Morus-like scandals, accusations of moral looseness, followed him, to which, however, Milton makes no al¬ lusion. He was deposed by the Protes¬ tant Synod of the Netherlands, 1668. Received FE #28 as minister of Orange (Pastori Arausionensi), prom¬ ising England and a ministry to a laborer in the gospel “ab infestis undique hostibus petitum atque obsessum” (106) (cf. vii 25-6). But Laba¬ die wandered instead (like morus) to Geneva and Middelburg, and died at Altona in the arms of a Mile. Schurmann.

City in sw Palestine (Judah) by Philistia, ID 234. Laconic(k) Spartan and thus terse, A 300; used geographically, ID 86, 404. Lactantius Firmianus (c. 260-340) Christian apologist. Tutor of Constantine’s son Crispus. Divinarum Institutionum Libri Septem, cited R 29; T 209-10 (VI, 23); Log 48. SD 110. Often named in CB. “There are too many instances of highly probable influence for one to be able to disregard Lactantius as one of Milton’s minor sources” (K. Hart¬ well ). Ladon A river in Arcadia flowing into the Arc 97.

Labeo(nem), Attius

alpheus.

A figure in persius, Satires I, 4-5, he was supposed to have translated homer very badly, Prol I 120. The purport of the quotation is, “It’s all one to him if a bad critic and a worth¬ less audience prefer a rotten poet to him” (tillyard).

Lady Character in Comus and unidenti¬ fied subject of Sonnet IX. Significantly, the word ceases to be used by Milton after his middle period. Laelius, Caius

Lacedaemon The capital of Sparta, A 300; ID 214. Lacedaemonian(s) Spartan(s) A 300; ID 312, 406.

(2nd cent. b.c.) Surnamed Sapiens, son of the Roman general of the same name. Interlocutor in several of Cic¬ ero’s essays. Helped import Greek culture. Example to terence and lucilius; the latter was advised by seneca to live like him, Prol VI 220.

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A Milton Dictionary

Laertes Father of Odysseus (Ulysses), ix 441. Laertius, Diogenes (3rd cent.) Presumed author of the anecdotal Lives of Eminent Philoso¬ phers, Sm 293; E 284. Lahor(e) Capital of the Punjab, in west Pak¬ istan. Flourished under Mogul rule in Milton’s time, xi 391. L'Allegro and II Penseroso

152 and 176 lines, octosyllabic coup¬ lets except for 10-line introductory strophe, a3b5b3a5c3d5d3e5e3c5. The number of syllables in the main body of the poems ranges from 7 to 9, and it is hard to say whether the free lines are catalectic trochaic or catalectic iambic. 121 of IP is even iambic pen¬ tameter, a deviation explained by warton’s “Hitherto we have seen the NIGHT of the melancholy man. Here his DAY commences. Accordingly, this second part or division of the poem is ushered in with a long verse.” “L’Allegro” means The Cheerful Man, “II Penseroso” (in modern Italian Pensieroso) not so much the clinically melancholy (though the Renaissance connected genius with melancholy) man as The Pensive or Contemplative Man. The date of the companion poems (which are not in MS) is con¬ jectural: in 1903 Mrs. Fanny Byse produced a book asserting that they “contain unmistakable proofs of hav¬ ing been written during the poet’s foreign tour, or on his return to Lon¬ don after it.” But the consensus is that the scenery is ideal and cannot be pinned down. Before tillyard the standard view had the poems written early in the Horton period. Now the trend is to make them products of

Milton’s last long Cambridge vacation the summer before Horton, 1631. There is no agreement as to whether the poems balance day versus night as in Prol I, or two different persons (such as diodati and Milton), or two moods in one person, or offer a debate between two ways of life, with Milton preferring the latter (as length, at least, would indicate). The parallel¬ ism, beginning with “Hence” and closing with the same rhyme and for¬ mula of welcome, has been carefully worked out, and it is, in the first place, between a moderate light and a modi¬ fied darkness. (Mutschmann saw evidence of photophobia.) After the banishing of the opposite, each per¬ sonification, Mirth or Melancholy, is given her genealogy of invented myth, along with three adjectives (L’A 24; IP 32). Other personifications come in train, and with suitable gait. L’Allegro is up with the lark, II Penseroso pre¬ fers the nightingale. The one watches daytime agricultural or pastoral occu¬ pations or dancing “On a sunshine holiday,” followed by superstitious stories before the fireplace. Then, leaving the laborers asleep, L’Allegro goes to the city for masques and comedies and the “giddy cunning” of song that would have aroused orpheus and melted pluto. II Penseroso walks in the country in the moonlight, hear¬ ing “the far-off curfew sound,” or is indoors in solitude before the glowing fire or up in a watchtower with the stars and the spirits of platonic phi¬ losophy. Tragedy draws him, mostly ancient, and orpheus and pluto re¬ appear in this poem, followed by chaucer and allegorical poets such as spenser. To one who has studied all night the morn is “civil-suited,” the rain is a pleasure, and when the sun comes, quiet “twilight groves” are sought for sleep. “Mysterious dream”

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A Milton Dictionary ought to be followed by mysterious music. II Penseroso loves cloisters and wishes for nothing in “weary age” but a “peaceful hermitage” and a hermit’s “prophetic strain.” The best source would have been the octosyllables, 96 lines, prefixed by burton to his Anatomy of Melancholy (1st edition, 1621), with the alterna¬ tion of welcoming and eschewing melancholy. Compare, for instance, L’A 117 ff. with “Methinks I hear, methinks I see Sweet music, wondrous melody. Towns, palaces, and cities fine; Here now, then there; the world is mine; Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine, Whate’er is lovely or divine.” John Marston (in the last satire of Scourge of Villany) and john fletcher (in Nice Valour, the “Pas¬ sionate Mad Man’s Song” commenc¬ ing, “Hence all you vain delights”) also wrote some lines suggestive for the beginnings respectively of L’A and IP. L’A 104 read, “And he by friar’s lantern led” in 1645, “And by the friar’s lantern led” in 1673, but who says good morrow at 45-6, the dawn, the lark, or the poet, remains obscure. Lambert, John (1619-83) Parliamentary general. Led cavalry at Marston Moor (1644); commander of army in north, 1647. Praised in memory of his aid in rout¬ ing Scottish army under Hamilton at Preston, 1648 2D 232. Helped install Cromwell as lord protector, 1653. After withdrawing his support from Richard Cromwell virtually ruled the country until Monk’s advance on Lon¬ don. Prisoner in Guernsey and Drake Island till his death. Lambeth “Your

Gehenna

at Lambeth” An 117

(cf. “haughty palace” R 12); “A medi¬ tation of yours doubtless observed at Lambeth from one of the Archiepiscopal kittens” An 137; ‘lordly impri¬ matur . . . from Lambeth house,” A 304. References to the chief residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Vi miles south of st. Paul’s cathedral. Lampridius, Aelius (4th cent.) One of the collaborators in Scriptores Historiae Augustae, R 17 (see I. Casaubon’s edition, Paris, 1603, p. 195 Rff.). ID 330. Lampsacus (Lampsacenum) Harbor on the coast of the Helle¬ spont that was chief seat of the wor¬ ship of priapus, 2D 110. Lancaster See

plantagenet.

Lancelot The ARTHURS

leading knight court, PR 2, 361.

at

King

Landaff (Llandaff) In Glamorganshire, Wales, on the river Taff, K 296; B 139; ID 436. Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864). Like Milton was rusti¬ cated while at college (Trinity, Ox¬ ford), owed Milton a great debt in his early poetry, and was himself a formi¬ dable classicist and skilful in Latin verse. Besides the poem “Shakespeare and Milton” in Last Fruit off an OldTree, 1852, he published among his Imaginary Conversations “Milton and Andrew Marvell,” “Andrew Marvell and Bishop Parker,” “Galileo, Milton, and a Dominican,” and “Southey and Landor,” the last of which, in two con¬ versations, meticulously criticizes in¬ dividual lines of Milton’s poetry, from Paradise Lost to the Latin poems.

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A Milton Dictionary

Languedoc Former province in S. France; his¬ toric capital Toulouse, Ten 31; B 4. Langus (Lange), Johann (1503-67) Translator into Latin of justin mabtyb’s Works (Basle, 1565), An 125.

eran Palace at Rome) was convoked by alexandeb in in 1179, H 74. Latimer, Hugh (c. 1485-1555) Bishop of Worcester 1535. Burnt at the stake under maby, with eidley, at Oxford. Denounced sudley falsely, R 9. Not to be idolized, though martyr, 9-10. Sermons, K 247.

lank Latins, making

Languid, drooping, C 836.

Writing Latin school, An 110.

lanthorn See

exercises,

as

for

fbiab’s lantebn.

Latium

lantskip (Dutch) landscape, L’A 70; ii 491; iv 153; v 142. Laodicean(s) Example of lukewarmness, CD 2, 6; An 132 (cf. Rev. iii, 16).

loudun.

By which “Russia is bounded on the north” HM 331, proverbial for witches, ii 665 (cf. HM 361), in which “they pass all nations in the world” (Hakluyt). lapse Pun on (1) lappings and (2) Latin sense of slipping past—a flowing, viii 263. Lares labs,

Prol VII 264.

La Rochelle See

The emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, QN 97. Latmus ENDYMION.

Latona

Lapland

See

satubn.

Latius .. . Caesar

See

Laodun See

See

bochel(le).

lars Tutelary gods, good spirits of dead ancestors, N 191. Lateran, Council of The third of four that rank as ecu¬ menical (and were held in the Lat¬

The mother of apollo Arc 20; S XII, 6, q.v.

and diana,

latter Later, V 8. Laud, William (1573-1645) Bishop of London, 1628. Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 until his condemnation and be¬ heading. The arch enemy of Puritan¬ ism and Presbyterianism figures doubt¬ less as early as the digression in L 107-31. His name is never used. “That arch Prelate of Canterbury,” O 252-3, “the see of Canterbury,” R 7, “the chair of pontifical pride [at a] haughty palace” (lambeth), 12, “independent and unsubordinate to the Crown,” 58, “an old disturber, a daily encroacher and intruder,” 63—in such terms are “the archbishop of Canterbury,” K189, and his ‘date breviary,” K 83, referred to.

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A Milton Dictionary

Lauder, Rev. William

Laverna

(d. 1771) Literary forger. The storm occasioned by bentley’s edition of PL was well within memory when this younger classicist, an M.A. from Edin¬ burgh, began publishing articles in the Gentlemans Magazine, 1747, charging that the epic was a hash of plagiarisms from such little known modem Latin poets as Masenius and Staphorstius. The subsequent book, An Essay on Miltons Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his “Paradise Lost,” 1750, quotes ironically on the title-page “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” (i 16). Johnson was “so far imposed upon as to furnish a Preface and Postscript to his work” (Boswell). John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, exposed the fraud by show¬ ing that Lauder had been quoting largely hog’s translation of PL. How¬ ever, Lauder did call attention to such genuine sources as grottos and du bartas. He drew ten books upon him¬ self, nearly 40 articles in a single magazine, was forced to retract and apologize, and “afterwards went to Barbadoes, where he died very miser¬ ably” (Malone).

The Roman goddess of thieves and impostors, SD 80. lavers Vessels for bathing, C 838, or for washing burnt offerings, CG 191; the water itself, SA 1727. Lavinia Daughter of “Latinus king of Latium,” B 7; as virgil’s Aeneid relates, betrothed to turnus but later wedded to aeneas, ix 17. Lowes, Henry See Comus and Sonnet XIII. lawn Glade or pasture, N 85; L’A 71; L 25; C 568, 965; iv 252. lawn, cypress See cypress. lawnie Pertaining to the bishops’ (linen) sleeves, CG 268.

lawn

Lawrence See Sonnet XX.

laughter

lax, inhabit

A pun on lofter (higher) has been suggested. Col 237.

Spread out widely, dwell at ease (in area one-third less populous be¬ cause of the revolt), vii 162.

Laura The mistress of

petrarch,

Sm 303.

lazar-house A pest house, xi 479.

Laurence, St.

Lea

(3rd cent.) “The constant martyr,” R 74. When the persecutor demanded of him as an archdeacon the riches of the Church, he loaded carts with the poor, and proclaimed, “These are the riches of the church.” Roasted alive on a gridiron.

See

lee.

Lear (Leir), King Story recounted, B 18-21. le(a)venous Depraving, K 154.

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A Milton Dictionary Lebanon

cedon,

widened

the jurisdiction

P 84.

Leo III

lee, under the Sheltered from the wind, i 207. Lee A small river emptying into the Thames n. of London, V 97. left (Gower) sky, Sm 360.

(c. 675-740). Byzantine Emperor from 717. From 726 to 729 he initiated the Iconoclastic Controversy by his edicts against image worship; such veneration was defended by Popes Gregory II and III, R 43. Leo VI (866-912) Byzantine Emperor, “the son of Basilius Macedo reigning about the year 886 and for his excellent wis¬ dom sumamed the Philosopher,” T 217. Involved in ecclesiastical dispute over his fourth marriage.

legantine Legatine, An 156. legers Residents, Col 238. Cf.

451,

of the church,

Mountain in Syria, i 447.

liegeh.

Legg(e), Colonel William (1609P-70) “One of those employed to bring the Army up against the Par¬ liament,” K 142. A leader in the sec¬ ond army plot, 1641; joined the king’s army, 1642; governor of Oxford, 1645. Imprisoned for treason, 1649-53.

(1475-1521) Giovanni de’ Medici, Pope from 1513. Excommunicated luther, 1520. A 303; M 61. Leonora See Ad Leonoram Romae Canentem.

Leicester See

Leo X

MONTFORT.

Leontius

Lemnos (Lemnian, EL VII 82) “The Aegean isle,” i 746 (cf. NS 23) where the lame son of Juno, Mulciber or hephaestus, landed after falling all day (Iliad I, 588-95); treated as arche¬ type of the Scriptural fall. lemures Ghosts, evil spirits, N 191.

(5th cent.) Bishop of magnesia, P 83, 85, 86. His “obscurity” rightly in¬ sisted on. Leontius of Antioch (fl. 350) This bishop was willing to admit Arians into the Church; at¬ tacked by ATHANASIUS, P 83. Lepos

lenient

Charm (personified), ED 127.

Softening, SA 659.

Lerna

Leo The Lion, the sign of the Zodiac July 23-Aug. 22 x 676.

A bog in Argolis where dwelt the monstrous hydra slain by Hercules, Prol VII 276; 2D 176.

Leo I

Lesbian

(d. 461) Pope from 440, whose dele¬ gates presided at the Council of chal-

An island off Asia Minor in the Aegean of which the lyric poets Al-

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A Milton Dictionary

caeus and Sappho were natives, L 63; Sal 22. lesing Lying, An 136. Lethe “The river of oblivion” in Hades, ii 583; QN 132; Id 20; JR 45; Prol I 140. Lethean See

lethe,

ED 201; ii 604.

Lethington, William Maitland of (1528P-73) Became foreign secre¬ tary to MABY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 1561, Ten 28. Letter to a Friend

This, part of the Cambridge MS, was first published by birch as part of his prefatory biography, 1753. The only personal letter in English that survives, it exists in two drafts, the first of which ends with Sonnet VII. The letter would have been drafted in 1633, after some months of “studious retirement” at Horton. The unnamed friend, perhaps thomas young, had, the second draft indicates, urged Milton to join the ministry. Milton de¬ fends himself against any imputation that the mere ‘love of learning” was making him idle, and he includes the sonnet as showing that “I am some¬ thing suspicious of myself, and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me.” The parable of the talent is al¬ luded to: cf. S XIX. A

Letter to

a

Friend, Concerning

is unidentified, but, as masson ob¬ serves, “the words of the Letter imply that he was some one very near the centre of affairs.” vane, whitelocke, or Secretary Meadows, frost? The occasion was general john Lambert’s dissolution of the “Rump” Parliament on October 13, 1659 after he and eight of his associates had been cashiered. Milton reflects “upon the sad and seri¬ ous discourse which we fell into last night, concerning these dangerous ruptures.” He is shocked that the army which restored the Rump has now been guilty of “backsliding,” “that a paid army should . . . thus subdue the supreme power that set them up.” The civil power, whatever it is to be—par¬ liament or council of state—and the military must convenant “not to desert one another till death.” Geoffrey Davies notes, “At first Milton was al¬ most alone, among spectators of this latest revolution, in his indignation against the army.” But he was to have an unexpected ally in General Monck, to whom Milton’s next public letter was to be addressed—The Present Means, etc. Letters, Familiar See Epistolarum Familiarium. Letters Patents

See A Declaration or Letters Pa¬ tents, etc. Leucippean After Leucippus (5th cent. b.c. ), proponent of the atomistic theory, P 103.

the Ruptures of the Commonwealth

Dated at the end October 29, 1659. First published by toland in the 1698 Prose Works, with the explanation that he received it from “a worthy friend, who, a little after the author’s death, had it from his nephew” ( Phil¬ lips ). The friend Milton is addressing

Leucothea “Fair-ankled Ino, Leucothea, who formerly was a maiden of mortal speech, but now in the depths of the salt sea she had won her share of wor¬ ship from the gods,” Ody. V, 333 ff. She gave Odysseus a sort of life-

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A Milton Dictionary

for Discussion of Sabbatary Doubts, 1641, dedicated to Ussher and in part an attack on Hall, identifies the author as “Pastor of Great Budworth in Che¬ shire.” He took the solemn league and covenant in 1643 and became presi¬ dent of Sion College, 1645.

preserver in the form of her veil. The sea had saved her and “her son” (C 876) Melicertes from her husband’s wrath. The mother and son became marine divinities, and the Greek name that means “shining goddess” is, ac¬ cording to ovid, Fasti VI, 545, the Roman Matuta, goddess of the dawn, C 875; xi 135.

Ley, Lady Margaret See Sonnet X.

Leunclavius

Libanius (Labanius)

Johann Lowenklau. (1533-93) Ger¬ man historian, jurist, and translator. Compiler of Jus Graeco-Romanum (Frankfurt, 1596), T 196; CB 151, 155, 156, 174 and a possible source for HM.

(4th cent.) “The Sophist,” T 168, Greek philosopher and rhetorician born at antioch, Syria. The story comes from theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, III, xviii. libbard

levant

Leopard, vii 467.

The eastern (sun-rising) wind, x 704.

Libecchio Italian name for sw wind (cf. siroc¬ co) x, 706.

Levi, Levite(s) References to the son of jacob, the grandson of abraham and “the law of tithes . . . partly ceremonial ... to the tribe of Levi,” H 54 ff., the Levites who became assistants to the priests in the temple. CD 1, 29. H 52 ff. R 40; CG 189-90, 197, etc.

Liber, Pater Roman god of wine, Prol I 124; VI 244 (the latter with a pun on liberi, children). Libitina Roman goddess of death and burial, EL III 4 (reference to the plague of 1625-6).

leviathan In Hebrew any great sea or land monster but commonly taken to be the whale, i 201; vii 412. Cf. Isaiah xxvii,

Libna(h)

1.

In sw Palestine, ID 232. See 2 Kings viii, 22; 2 Chron. xxi, 10.

Levite's wife, the See

GIBE AH.

Libra

Levitical Pertaining to the ceremonial laws for the priests and Levites as recorded in Leviticus, Col 265; H 51, 55. Ad¬ verb, CG 204. Ley, John (1583-1662) “Writ a treatise of the Sabbath,” An 137, whose Sunday a Sabbath, Or a Preparative Discourse

The Scales, at the eastern end of the zodiac, iii 558 (cf. iv 997). In An 138 Libra, which the sun enters Sept. 23, is “equal” because it is the autumnal equinox, and there is the implication both of the waning of the bishops’ cause and the coming of Justice. Liburnum Leghorn, Italy, 2D 122.

180-

A Milton Dictionary Libya (Libia)

limbec

Applied to the Sahara, S V 4.

Short for alembic, a still, iii 605; Sm 298.

Libyan Jove (Lybico lovi) See

ammon,

limber fans

EL IV 26.

Flexible wings, vii 476. Libyan (Lybian) sands i

355;

air xii

635: see

limbo

Libya.

(Literally, edge) iii 495 the para¬ dise of fools; Sm 307; A 305 under¬ world of the dead.

Libyc Hommon See

ammon.

limbo patrum

Libycos leones African lions, QN 89. Lichas Attendant of Hercules who, having brought him the poisoned robe, was slain by him in his dying frenzy, ii 545.

The limbo of the fathers was near heaven, where the souls of the preChristian saints awaited Christ’s de¬ scent into Hades, Sm 353; CD 2, 13. lirne-twigs For catching birds, C 646. limitary

Licinius (270?-325) Brother-in-law of Con¬ stantine; Emperor in the East from 311 until finally defeated at Adrianople, 324, by Constantine, who had him executed, ID 250-2, 374.

Play on (1) guarding the limits and (2) prescribing limits, iv 971. lin Cease, CG 274; D 381. Linacre (Linaker), Thomas

lickerish Tempting, C 700. lictors and rods Attendants of the chief Roman mag¬ istrates, carrying fasces (bundles of rods) in sign of their authority to punish, PR 4, 65.

lineaments Body’s lines or limbs, v 278; vii 477.

lieaer Resident, W 131

(1460P-1524) Renowned English humanist and physician. His Rudimenta Grammatices, composed for Princess mary, 1523, “though very learned, not thought fit to be read in schools,” G 285-6.

Linus (Linon)

(cf. legers).

A mythical

Ligea

theban

bard, EL VI 68.

Linus

A siren or sea-nymph, C 880. Lily, William (1468P-1522) First headmaster of St. Paul’s School, from 1512. Author of the standard beginning textbook in Latin, of which Milton knew the revi¬ sion first issued in 1574, E 281.

(1st cent.) Regularly mentioned, as by irenaeus and eusebius, as the first bishop of Rome after the Apostles peter and paul, P 96. Lions LYONS.

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A Milton Dictionary don

Lipsius, Justus (Joest Lips) (1547-1606) Flemish humanist; edi¬ tor of tacitus and senega, Prol IV 176.

), who came from eastern Greece,

PM 16. Locrine See

listed

SABRINA.

lofts Layers, V 42.

Striped, xi 866. listed field

Logic, Joannis Miltonl/Angli,/Artis

Enclosed with lists, as in a tourna¬ ment, SA 1087.

Logicae/ Plenior Institutio,/ Ad / Petri Rami/Methodum concinnata,/ Adjecta

Liternum Scipio Africanus (the elder) “forti¬ fied his villa" there, SD 6; 2D 216, a town on the coast of Campania where the great general retired to spend his last years. litter A vehicle containing a couch and drawn by horses, C 554. Littleton, Sir Thomas (1407-81) Jurist, famous for his Tenures (in legal French), a complete treatise on English land law, later re¬ vised by coke (Coke upon Littleton), Col 270. Livy (Titus Livius) (59 B.C.-17 a.d. ) Roman historian. Under patronage of Emperor Augus¬ tus (Octavius Caesar, A 301) wrote in 142 books his Annales, a history of Rome from its founding to 9 b.c., Ten 15; ID 188, 316; B 3. Locrian remnants, those By Timaeus of Locri in Italy, a Pythagorean philosopher represented as plato’s teacher, to whom was attri¬ buted a work in Doric dialect “On the Soul of the World and Nature” that may be nothing more than an abridg¬ ment of plato’s dialogue, Timaeus, E 284. Locrian spear That of

est

Praxis

Annalytica

&

Petri/ Rami vita. Libris duobus.

patrocles

(against

sarpe-

(A Fuller Institution of the Art of Logic, Arranged After the Method of Peter Ramus, by John Milton, an Englishman. An analytic praxis and a Life of Peter Ramus are appended. In two books.) This appeared in London c. May, 1672, following by three years its author’s first excursion into the realm of textbooks, the Latin Gram¬ mar (Accidence Commenced). The preface explains that the object is to make more lucid (rather than brief) the system named (which was, not at all incidentally, the system under which Milton himself had studied). Milton’s principal sources are the Dialectica of Ramus and the Commentarius on it (1610) by geohce downam (d. 1634, bishop of Derry). Milton appends an abridgment of the Life of Ramus by John Thomas Fieigius. Peter Ramus or Pierre (de la) Ramee (1515-72) promulgated a sys¬ tem of logic that was embraced by Protestants as over against the old scholastic Aristotelianism. Ramus took his Master of Arts degree at Paris with the thesis, “Whatever has been said by Aristotle is false,” and began per¬ fecting logic as an instrument of the other arts. He attracted such hostility that he was forbidden to teach. How¬ ever, he won the protection of Henry II. His spirit of free inquiry ultimately led him to become a Protestant, 1561:

-182-

A Milton Dictionary he fled Paris for his life, returned in 1571 and perished in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Ramism—which be¬ came widely diffused in France, Ger¬ many, Holland, and England and Scotland (the University of Glasgow led in adopting the logic)—has re¬ cently been defined (W. J. Ong) as "at root a cluster of mental habits evolving within a centuries-old edu¬ cational tradition and specializing in certain kinds of concepts, based on simple spatial models, for conceiving of the mental and communicational processes and, by implication, of the extramental world.” The division of logic followed by Milton is Lib. I, the Invention of Arguments, and II, The Disposition (Milton disagrees with Ramus that Disposition and Judgment are the same) of Arguments (axioms, syllogisms). Of interest for Milton’s last position in theology is the antitrinitarian statement, “solus pater est verus Deus,” 314.

Lombard(s) ("Lumbard") Teutonic tribe which invaded Italy in 568 and settled in the valley of the Po, R 43; CG 237; T 219. Londonderry A Protestant city of northern Ire¬ land, O 260. Longchamp, bishop of Ely, William (d. 1197) Papal legate, chancellor, and justiciar to Richard I, governed in the king’s absence abroad, 1189; won hostility on account of his arro¬ gance. Twice caught trying to escape in disguise at Dover before he finally succeeded in fleeing the country, 1191. Longinus (c. 213-73) One of the teachers of “a graceful and ornate rhetoric,” E 286 in the treatise that goes under his name, On the Sublime. Longobardis LOMBARDS

Logres Britain east of the sevebn; the Mid¬ lands, PR 2, 360. Same as Loegria, B 14.

FE #7 28.

lore Instruction, ii 815; ix 1128. Loret(t)o

lollard

The English followers of wycliffe in the 14th and 15th centuries, CG 217.

A shrine of the Virgin (featuring her own original house brought by angels from Nazareth in the 13th century) near Ancona, Italy, much re¬ sorted to by pilgrims, A 333. Richard crashaw was appointed to a post there in the last year of his life, 1649.

Lombard, Peter

Lorrainers

(1100?-c. 1160) Regarded in the medieval ages as the brother of gratian, Italian theologian; bishop of Paris, 1159. His Sententiae was widely used as a textbook in medieval theo¬ logical schools. “The tubalcain of scholastic sophistry,” D 505. Lombard laws, T 115.

K 251. As Clarendon relates, the king sent two ambassadors to Brussels, whose “main business was with the duke of Lorrain, to procure money for their journey into Spain,” the duke being a “prince that lived in a differ¬ ent manner from all other sovereign princes in the world: from the time

Play on (1) loller and (2) lollards (below), H 75. Lollards

- 183-

A Milton Dictionary that he had been driven out of his country by France, he had retired to Brussels with his army, which he kept up very strong, and served the king of Spain with it against the French” on well-paid terms. loshes Elks, HM 342. Lot

Maesta Christianiss: di Luigi XIII. il Giusto (Florence, 1644) FE #10 50. Louis XIV (1638-1715) The teen-age monarch (Cardinal Mazarin being the true power behind the throne) was ad¬ dressed some 18 SL, beginning with #56 on the Piedmont massacre. lourdan

T 116: Gen. xiii, 7 ff.

Lubber, clown, blockhead, R 49.

Lotharius

Lovain (Louvain)

(1070P-1137) Lothair “The Saxon,” T 219, King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor from 1125 in succes¬ sion to Henry V (crowned in Rome, 1133). Invaded Italy, 1136-7.

In Brabant, Belgium, P 87 T 113.

(see

POLYCRATEs);

lowbell A bell used to catch birds, H 93.

lotion, salt

Loxo

Urine, emptied from the windows into the street in that unsanitary age, An 113; Sm 299.

Daughter of boreas, one of the Hyperborean maidens who brought the worship of Artemis to delos (cf. Callimachus, “Hymn to Delos,” 291-

loubel See

4).

LOWBELL.

Loyola with his Jesuits

Loudun (Laodun) A town in west central France, FE #29 110. Louis VIII (1187-1226) King of France from 1223, was offered the English crown by barons in opposition to john but was defeated in an invasion attempt, 1216-7, O 246.

St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit order) devoted to the conver¬ sion of infidels and Protestants, R 39; Sm 309. Loyolite (Loiolitam) A reference to 334.

petavius,

ID 282,

lozel Louis XI (1423-83) King of France from 1461. After death of Charles the Bold, 1477, warred with his daughter maby of burgundy. The treaty of Arras, 1482, ceded her territories to him, K 252-3. Louis XIII (1601-43) His funeral described by dati in a pamphlet, Esequie della

A worthless fellow, Sm 333; Col 271. Lua Roman divinity of purification, Prol IV 176. lubber (lubbar) Double meaning of drudge and lout, L’A 110; a Lob-lie-by-the-fire, such as Robin Goodfellow (see Mid-

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A Milton Dictionary

summer Night’s Dream, II i 16, 32-58), a goblin that may do household or farm drudgery at night. Cf. Sm 332. Lucan (39-65) Roman poet. Committed suicide under Nero. Author of the epic Pharsalia on the civil war be¬ tween caesab and pompey. The first to use the name democorgon (Thar. VI, 744) and a likely influence in the snake metamorphosis passage, x 51433 ( Phar. IX, 700 ff.). Lucca (Luca) A city of tuscany and an independ¬ ent republic until Napoleon’s time. Visited by Milton for a few days in the early spring of 1639, 2D 126. An¬ cestral home of Charles diodatt (ED headnote; cf. 128). Lucian (2nd cent.) Greek satirist and wit. His “Way to Write History” referred to (indirectly), An 141. FE #26 102. Lucifer (“Light-bearer”). In early refer¬ ences the Morning Star (Venus) or the sun itself, N 74 (probably Venus); EL III, 50 (the sun); EL V, 46 (adj.). Name of satan in proposed tragedy, MS 288 ff., as in three pamphlets— equated with bishops, “the first prelate angel,” CG 196; with tyrant, K 218; and most cleverly, A 353: “A Star Chamber . . . fallen from the stars with Lucifer.” Cf. Isaiah xiv, 12, which leads to the three occurrences in PL, v 760; vii 131 ff.; x 425 ff. Cf. v 658. Similarly, Christ becomes “the prince of light,” N 62; “our Morning Star,” PR 1, 294 (cf. Rev. xxii, 16). Lucilius (d. c. 100 b.c. ) Founder of Latin satire. Extant only in fragments, A 301.

Lucina Goddess of childbirth, EM 26, 28. ID 348 (reference to the mountain laboring and bringing forth a mouse). lucky Propitious, L 20. Lucretius (96P-55 b.c.) Roman philosophical poet. “Without impeachment versifies Lis epicurism,” A 301 in De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Uni¬ verse), an evolutionary materialistic (atomistic) poem (edited by cicero, according to st. jerome). Recom¬ mended for “natural knowledge,” E 284. For lightning as source of fire cf. x 1075—De Rerum V, 1091 ff. On creation vii 463.—De Rerum II, 991 ff. Discovery of metals xi 565 ff.— De Rerum V, 1241-68. ii 911 trans¬ lates V, 260 (“omniparens eadem re¬ rum commune sepulcrum”). Lucrine Bay Near Naples, famous for oysters, as mocking the decadent Ro¬ mans, noted PR 2, 347. juvenal,

Lucumonis LUCCA.

Ludlow see Comus. Ludovicos Pius Louis I (le Pieux). (778-840) Holy Roman Emperor from 814. 3rd son of Charlemagne and father of Charles the Bald Ten 2; CB 182 (same quo¬ tation). Lullius Raymond Lully. (1235F-1315) Mis¬ sionary and martyr to Islam, of Cata¬ lan origin, remembered most vividly for his writings on medicine and al¬ chemy, A 306.

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A Milton Dictionary Lupercalia A February 15 ceremony in which the naked priests (Luperci) of faunus struck all women in their rounds with goatskin thongs to ensure fer¬ tility, ID 320-2. Lupercus, 322, was invoked by the shepherds as the pro¬ tector of their flocks against wolves. The origin of Milton’s jests about wolves is the fact that Salmasius had a small estate at St. Lou in France (named after St. Lupus, a German bishop who came over with St. Ger¬ man to England, 429). Iurr(e)y Cant formula, K 223; R 2 (plural).

Luz Ancient name of

bethel,

iii 513.

Lyaeus Epithet of Bacchus as freer of care and anxiety, EL VI 21. Lycaeus A mountain of Arcadia haunted by Arc 98.

pan

Lycambes Archilochus in an iambic poem execrated both Lycambes and his daughter Neobule for a promise of marriage that was not kept; the form¬ er was accused of perjury, PE 21.

Lycaon

lusty Lustful, PR 2, 178. Luther, Martin (1483-1546) The founder of the German reformation, “how great a servant of God,” T 222, might not have been known if wycliffe had been given free rein, A 340. Compared with bucer, M 19 (cf. 5); with poor predecessors, H 75. As reformer, An 178; Sm 366. Versus henry vm, K 63; Charles I, 211. Outspoken Sm 292, 314-5; CB 145. Versus princes and tyrants Ten 46 (cf. 2D 202); ID 64. a brownist? ID 346. Plural ID 202.

An impious king of Arcadia who tested Zeus’ divinity by putting be¬ fore him a dish of human flesh. His daughter callisto was changed into the constellation of the Bear, Ursa Major, Prol VI 242. Lycaonius Northern EL V 35 (see

lycaon).

Lyceum A tract of ground near Athens (named for its vicinity to the temple of Lycean apollo) in whose shaded walks aristotle taught PR 4, 253; E 288; ID 286 (uncapitalized).

Lutheran(s) “May have some errors, but are no heretics,” TR 168. Consubstantiation (a belief of the coexistence of the body and blood of Christ in union with the bread and wine in the Eu¬ charist developed in contrast to transubstantiation) “an error indeed, but not mortal,” 169. Of “the best reformed churches . . . none but Lutherans retain bishops,” K 232. luxurious Voluptuous, i 498; PR 3, 297; 4, 141.

Lycidas

Dated in MS November, 1637. A pastoral “monody” (headnote, 1645), that is, a mourning poem, an elegy presented by one person (“the un¬ couth swain” of 186 ff.) Contributed to the Cambridge, 1638 volume, Justa / Eclouardo King / naufrago, / ab / Amicis maerentibus (“Rites to Ed¬ ward King, drowned by shipwreck, from his Grieving Friends”). The last in a collection of 23 Latin and Greek pieces followed by 13 in English verse, the latter section having a

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A Milton Dictionary

separate title-page, bordered with black: Obsequies to / the memorie / of /Mr. Edward King. The other Eng¬ lish versifiers destined to have some later fame as poets were John Cleve¬ land (1613-58), Joseph Beaumont (1616-99), and Henry More (161487). The Henry King who made an offering both in Latin and English was the deceased’s brother, not the future bishop of Chichester and au¬ thor of “The Exequy.” Milton’s poem, occupying the last six pages and signed only with his initials, stands out the more strikingly for being pre¬ ceded by 12 earnest examples of “trash” (masson). 193 lines, iambic pentameter interspersed with tri¬ meters, a free improvisation for which no exact model has been found, but the Italian canzone as modified dur¬ ing the Cinquecento is most often named. Of the 11 verse paragraphs varying from 10 to 33 lines, the last is ottava rima (abababcc). Other¬ wise the rhymes are, as dr. johnson complained, “uncertain,” and 10 lines do not rhyme at all—1, 13, 15, 22, 39, 51, 82, 91, 92, 161. The MS drafts are of great interest (showing, for in¬ stance, that the flower passage was an afterthought), but the only outstand¬ ing textual problems today are the variant “he well knew,” 10 (Milton inserted “well” both in MS and in the presentation copy of 1638 now in the Cambridge University Library); “in¬ cessant,” MS 64; the question of whether 23-4 should begin a new paragraph: there is no 17th century authority for this, but with warton and through the 19th century this became a common editorial practice to which tillyard objects. The “learned friend, unfortunately drowned,” Edward King (1612-37) was a son of a civil officer in Dublin, Sir John King, of an English family.

With his older brother Roger entered Christ’s College 16 months after Milton, the two brothers being admitted June 9, 1626 after tuition by the famous schoolmaster Thomas Famaby. June 10, 1630 Edward King was awarded by royal mandate a fellow¬ ship to which Milton, three years his senior, had a superior claim. Milton was at Horton before King took his M.A., July, 1633. Besides being a Tutor and Fellow in Christ’s, King served as prelector, 1634-5, while qualifying for the church. During the Long Vacation of 1637 he arranged to visit his friends and relatives in Dublin, including his and Milton’s first tutor, William Chappell, who was serving there as Provost of Trinity College. He made his will 9 days before setting sail. The ship had not been long out of Chester when (as the Justa Latin prose preface says) it “struck on a rock, was stove in by the shock: he, while the other pas¬ sengers were busy in vain about their mortal lives, having fallen on his knees, and breathing a life which was immortal, in the act of prayer going down with the vessel, rendered up his soul to God Aug. 10, 1637, aged 25.” King and Milton must have been well acquainted while at college to¬ gether, although the friendship was not the same as with diodati (see ED). King’s surviving Latin ventures into verse, most of them obstetric pieces on royal births showed little promise that he would ever “build the lofty rhyme,” 11. However, in this as in other mat¬ ters, Milton was following—even while transcending—pastoral conven¬ tion. The most relevant precedents were Theocritus’ Idyls I and VII, bion’s “Lament for Adonis,” Moschus’ “I,ament for Bion,” virgil’s Eclogae V and X, Petrarch’s Ecloga IX,

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A Milton Dictionary spenser’s “Astrophel” and The Shep¬ herd’s Calendar—May, July, Septem¬ ber, and November, Castiglione’s Alcon, and Giles Fletcher the Elder’s Latin elegies on Clere Haddon (who drowned while swimming in the Cam, 1571) and on Clere’s professorfather, Walter. Beginning with references to 3 plants of poetic immortality (but the myrtle is more particularly for mourn¬ ing), the poet declares himself un¬ ready—but compelled—to contribute “some melodious tear” in memory of one who was himself a poet. He invokes the Muses, and projects the time when he may in turn be elegized. They were associates, this shepherd and Lycidas, made “song” 36 to¬ gether. There follows the convention of nature’s expressing the present loss “to shepherd’s ear” 49, followed by the equally antique—but topo¬ graphically exact—question, “Where were ye?”—the nymphs and the Muse who should have been in a position to save. But orpheus himself was torn to pieces, and it may well seem better to abandon high purpose for any light diversion, since Fame and Life are so doubtful. But apollo answers for jove (as st. peter is to speak for Christ), triton meanwhile alludes to the actual calmness of the sea (a fact) on the day of the wreck, and blames the ill-omened boat. The sedgy spirit of Cam mourns his dear¬ est son. “The pilot of the Galilean lake” 109, first bishop, true guardian of Heaven (and, by exclusion, of Hell), directs his anger at the bad shepherds, the greedy pushing fleec¬ ing clergy, whose occasional watery sermons contribute nothing to the feeding of the plague-stricken, wolfbesieged sheep. Following the mys¬ terious threat of the two-handed engine (alluded to in the headnote. -

“by occasion foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy”) is the lovely flower passage for an imagined hearse. But the body (never recov¬ ered) is in the distant deep, where st. Michael is bid to watch over it. The penultimate verse paragraph gives the Christian consolation, beginning with an analogy of the setting and rising sun and ending with Revela¬ tion (cf. with 181 Rev. vii, 17 and xxi, 4). But Milton, whose triumph it is to blend Christian and classical, also has the genius loci (which is also patron saint) idea. All this has been sung by “the uncouth swain” who now, at sundown, prepares for “fresh woods and pastures new”—perhaps the poet’s Italian journey. Mark Pattison called Lycidas "the high-water mark” of English poetry; tennyson, “A touchstone of poetic taste”; Arthur Machen, “probably the most perfect piece of pure literature in existence because every word and phrase and line is sonorous, ringing and echoing with music.” Lycisca

The name of (1) a bitch in virgil (Eel. Ill, 18) and ovid (Meta. Ill, 220) and (2) a vile woman in juvenal (VI, 123) ID 160. Lycophron

(3rd cent. b.c.) Greek poet whose only extant poem, Alexandra (in which Cassandra looks into the future of Troy and of the Greek and Trojan heroes), Milton purchased for 13s in 1634 in the Geneva, 1601 edition (with the commentary by tzetzes) and made Marginalia in (XVIII, 3205). Lycurgus (Licurgus)

(9th cent, b.c.) Lacedemonian ‘law-giver” A 300, “the first that

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A Milton Dictionary

brought out of ionia the scattered works of homer” (cf. Prol VII 268) “and sent the poet thales from Crete to prepare and mollify the Spartan surliness.” Subject of one of the most notable lives of plutarch. CG 186, 210; E 285. “Just and re¬ nowned laws of,” K 298. Wisdom as a king, ID 214, 312, 348-50. Lydian “Soft” among the 4 moods or modes of Greek music L’A 136, praised by Cassiodorus as contrived against care and worry. (For how ‘learnt Cyrus to tame” these people of Asia Minor, as herodotus relates, see R 53); CG 183; FE #2, 8.

-

Lynceus A member of the Argonaut expedi¬ tion famous for his keen sight FE #15, 70. Lyones(se) Mythical country that was King birthplace; west of Corn¬ wall, now submerged like Atlantis. PR 2, 360. Arthur’s

Lyons see Sonnet XVIII. Lysimachus see

189-

NICANOR.

M M.B., Mr. In wotton’s letter on Comus (I, 477) Michael Branthwait, former British agent to Venice, now “attend¬ ing” the son of viscount Scudamore (“the young Lord S.”). Mab Queen of the fairies L’A 102. Macarius (4th cent.) A presbyter of in Alexandria, R 31.

Athan¬

asius

Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-59) In the Edinburgh Re¬ view for August, 1825 Macaulay pub¬ lished the Essay on Milton that made him famous. It was virtually his debut as a writer, though he had contributed some papers to Knight’s Quarterly, one of them a "Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton touching the Great Civil War.” The Essay was in the form of a re¬ view-article on the newly discovered De Doctrina Christiana, which, how¬ ever, is dismissed in a few words. (Macaulay is not surprised by Mil¬ ton’s “arianism”: “we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the Paradise Lost without sus¬ pecting him of’ it.) Macaulay pro¬ vides the Whig answer to dr. Johnson, and the second half of the essay is largely given to condemning the Stuarts and eulogizing the Puritans. First the poetry is reviewed in the light of the relation of poetry to -

civilization and of such generaliza¬ tions as, “His poetry acts like an in¬ cantation,” no passages being better known “than those which are little more than muster-rolls of names.” There is an extended comparison of Milton and dante. The Sonnets “are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been.” Macaulay’s ringing last sentence was printed as the motto to the Columbia edition: “Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without as¬ piring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private ca¬ lamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptation and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame.” Macbeth “The tyrant,” B 299, 298, 320. Pos¬ sible subject, MS 245. Maccabaeus, Judas (d. 161 b.c. ) A levite who led the Jews to military victory and religious freedom, in the period 166-161 b.c., against Syrian domination, PR 3, 165. (The “mighty king,” 167 is antiochus

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A Milton Dictionary

rv. Cf. ID 238.) His career is re¬ counted in the Books of Maccabees, Apocrypha; his rededication of the Temple is celebrated in the feast of Hannukah. He was one of the Nine Worthies. Macdonnel

kings” were Zebah and Zalmunna, Judges viii, 4 ff. Madrid see

ascan,

K 286.

Maecenas, Gaius Cifnius (70?-8 b.c. ) Patron of Horace and Propertius and virgil, Man 4.

see Sonnet XI. Macedon

Maenal(i)us

PR 4, 271, evidently a reference to the Philippics of Demosthenes against philip of macedon (the location of Macedon as north of Athens, of thessaly, being also pertinent).

Mountains in Arcadia Pan EL V, 125; Arc 102.

sacred

to

Maeonides homer, after the tradition of his Lydian (Maeonian) origin, iii 35.

Machaerus A fortress east of the Dead Sea where john the baptist was im¬ prisoned and executed PR 2, 22.

Maeotis, pool The Sea of Azov (anciently Palus Maeotis), opening into the Black Sea (“Pontus”), ix 78. Cf. Tauric Pool.

Machaon Although the son of Aesculapius and the chief healer on the Greek side in the Trojan War, Machaon was slain by the lance of Eurypylus, king of Mysia, who had been bribed to assist the Trojans, PM 23. See quintus of Smyrna, Posthomerica, VI, 391 ff. Machiavell(i), Niccolo (1469-1527) The Florentine politi¬ cal philosopher is treated in the usual Renaissance sinister way in the two polemical references, Sm 321 (Modest Confutation, 1642, p. 5, has a margi¬ nal reference to the Discourses upon Livy, I, 8); D 471, but much and re¬ spectfully quoted in CB 160, 164, 197, etc.

Magellan The strait of Magellan, south of South America, x 687. Magnentius, Flavius Popilius (d. 353) Roman emperor of the West from 350, of barbarian birth. Suicide after defeat by constantius ii, ID 252. Magnesia A city of Lydia, now west Turkey, P 83. magnetic Magnet, PR 2, 168. Mahanaim (“Two hosts or camps”) Jacob’s name for the place where “the angels met” him (Gen. xxxii, 1-2), east of the Jordan, xi 214.

madding In furious motion, vi 210. Madian Midian (the SA 281 spelling being found in Acts vii, 29) was a nomadic Arabian tribe whose “vanquisht

Maia Mother of hermes or Mercury, the messenger-god, v 285.

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A Milton Dictionary

malting-kil(n)s

Maimonides

For drying malt, An 165.

(1135-1204) Renowned Jewish philosopher and rabbi who was bom in Cordoba, Spain, and studied under Arabic scholars, D 402; ID 102. See

Malvezxi, Virgilio

(d. 1654) Precocious Bolognese, a doctor of law at 17, whose Discourses upon Cornelius Tacitus was trans¬ lated by Sir Richard Baker, 1642; see Milton’s possible Marginalia, XVIII, 493-500. R 39.

BUXTOBF.

main, the

The universe, PR 4, 457. Malabar

SW coast of India ix 1103.

mammock(s)

(Hindustan),

Munch(es), R 19; H 99.

Malachi

Mammon

The “last of prophets,” CD 1, 10, remembered mainly as approving of divorce. Mai. ii, 16, D 403, 423, 469, 509; T 110; Col 263.

Which means “wealth” in Syriac, is used by St. Matthew (vi, 24; cf. Luke xvi, 9, 11, 13) as a personifica¬ tion of riches. Clergy’s “two gods in¬ stead, Mammon and their belly,” R 42; “the ministers of Mammon in¬ stead of Christ,” Ten 45. “Antichrist is Mammon’s son,” R 54. “Mammon’s praestriction” (blinding) An 137, is an eye blind to all but the material (with a pun on “pearl,” which means also a sort of cataract): cf. i 678-84. spenser’s cave of An 162; A 311: see guyon. In the middle ages, of the nine orders of demons “The ninth are those tempters in several kinds, and their prince is Mammon” ( burton ). Thus one of the chief rebel angels, i 678 ff.; characteristic speech, ii 228 ff., characteristically approved, 291.

Malatesta, Antonio

(d. 1672) Minor Florentine poet and friend of Galileo FE #10, 52. Sfinge (enigmas in verse), 1641. Malcolm III.

(d. 1093) King of Scotland from 1059, R 15. Milton is following Philemon Holland’s translation of Camden's Britannia, 1610, “Scotland,” p. 6. Maldonatus, Johannes

(1533-83) “The Jesuit,” T 139, Spanish theologican commissioned Gregory XIII to make a new edition of the Septuagint.

Manasseh

(d. c. 643 b.c. ) Denounced in the Bible as one of Judah’s worst kings, he later reformed, K 278. See 2 Chr. xxxiii.

malestrand

Maelstrom, HM 370. Malmsbury, William of

(c. 1090-1143) Librarian at Malms¬ bury Abbey who compiled Gesta Re gum Anglorum and its sequel Historia Novella, source for B.

manciple

A steward at an inn or college, R 74. Manes

malmsey

A rich sweet wine, A 334.

The spirits of the dead AdP 23; Man 15; ID 338.

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A Milton Dictionary

Maniche(an)s Adherents of the religion founded by the third-century Persian Mani which spiritualized the struggle be¬ tween light and darkness as warfare between good and evil, the latter being “that other principle,” Sm 394. manii Upstarts (salmasius’ word Praefatio), ID 32,

in

his

Manilius (Early 1st cent.) The poet, his Astronomicon IV, 116 quoted D 441. Recommended, E 284. maniples Subdivisions of the Roman legion, A 343. Manlius Capitolinus, Marcus (d. 384? b.c. ) Roman consul, 392 “Defended the Capitol and the Romans from their enemies the Gauls,” K 273. Roused by the cackling of geese. Later fell out of favor and was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock “for sedition.” Used in mockery of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning.

b.c.

Manoa The father of Samson, a Danite, native of the town of Zorah (Monoah, Judges xiii, 2). SA Dramatis Per¬ sonae, 328, 1441, 1548, 1565. Manso see

mansus.

Mansus 100 hexameters, c. Jan. 1639. The subject and circumstances of this poem of gratitude are identified in the headnote, and were to be again in 2D 122-4, where Milton explained that he went from Rome to Naples in the company of an eremite friar who introduced him to Manso; the latter proved “most friendly: for he -

guided me himself through the dif¬ ferent parts of the city and the palace of the Viceroy, and came more than once to visit me at my inn. On my leaving Naples he gravely apologized for not showing me still more atten¬ tion, alleging that although it was what he wished above all things, it was not in his power in that city, because I had not thought proper to be more close in the matter of re¬ ligion.” Milton’s stout Protestantism is also the only regret in Manso’s twoline epigram, repeating the old Anglus-Angelus pun of Gregory the great, that heads the Testimonia, I, 154. Giovanni Battista Manso (1561164-?), Marquis of Villa and Lord of Bisaccio and Panca, was better known as the wealthy friend of authors than as an author, although he had pub¬ lished two sets of philosophical dia¬ logues on love and beauty, a life of St. Patricia, a life of tasso (1619) that is still of value, and some marinistic poems, Poesie Nomiche, divise in Rime amorose, sacre e morali (Venice, 1635). Milton begins by identifying him as a maecenas de¬ serving ivy and laurels, for he had been hospitable to tasso between 1588 and 1594 (the poet, between fits of madness, had perhaps finished his Gerusalemme Conquistata in his house—and had introduced his host’s name in Book XX) and had also be¬ friended his fellow and junior Nea¬ politan, marini, whose Adone (1623) is referred to in 11. He made marinis monument, and his good offices to both poets went beyond the grave, for he became the biographer of both [there is no other record of Manso’s life of marini] like herodotus, the memorialist of homer. Let Manso therefore not spun) an alien and northern Muse, that of a visitor reach¬ ing shores that chaucer (Tityrus)

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visited long before. Whatever their cold climate, the English also culti¬ vate phoebus; they sing and celebrate like the dbuids of yore. But you are “fortunate senex” (cf. Virgil, Eel. I, 46) in that your name and fame are joined with tasso and marine You can be said to have had a willing apollo as guest, unlike him who served Admetus and moved the trees with his song. You must have been dear to the gods, as your still-green old age proves. I wish I might have such a friend as I contemplate doing an Arthurian epic. In my old age and death he would take care of the last rites and memorials, while I look down complacently from ethereal Olympus. On the “pocula,” ED 181, that were a gift from Manso, see that poem.

marasmus

Consumption, the “wasting” sick¬ ness, xi 487. marble

(Greek, shining) Bright as marble iii 564. Marcion, Marcionists

see

tertullian.

Marcus Aurelius

(121-180) Roman emperor from 161. “Best of emperors,” ID 116, 114, 376; B 82. Author of Meditations, pre¬ cepts of practical morality, Mareoti(da)s

A lake in Egypt, QN 171. margent

Margin, C 232; Sm 316, 323, 334, 358; Col 235; H 66.

mantling

Using the wings like a mantle, by raising them so that they meet, vii 439; v 279.

Margiana

manufacture (manifacture)

Marinaro

Craft, Sm 341. manumise

To manumit, to liberate a slave, T 164. manured

Handled, T 171. manuring

Cultivating (with the hands, Latin) iv 628; xi 28; “the manuring hand of the tiller,” CG 214; An 156; T 471.

A province of the parthian em¬ se of the Caspian, PR 3, 317.

pire

Antonius Marinarius. (d. 1570) “A learned Carmelite,” T 136. The in¬ cident is related by sarpi. Marino (Marinus), Giambattista

(1569-1625) Italian poet befriended by manso, mentioned Man 9, 51, and his extravagant Adone, an outstand¬ ing example of the concettism that was to be called Marinism, alluded to 11. He may have influenced In Quintum Novembris, q.v. See also crashaw, Mansus.

Manwaring, Roger

(1590-1653) Bishop of St. David’s, had insisted on the “peril of damna¬ tion” of those who resisted royal tax¬ ation, and was deprived of vote by the Short Parliament and imprisoned and persecuted by the Long Parlia¬ ment, BN 154.

marish

Marsh, xii 630. Marius, Gaius

(155P-86 b.c. ) Roman politician whose rivalry with sulla led to civil war, 88 b.c., W 130.

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A Milton Dictionary

Mcrtini(us), Martin

marl

(1614-61) Jesuit China FE #18, 78.

Soil, i 296.

missionary

to

Morocco (Morocco)

Most western of the Barbary States in north Africa, which were semi¬ independent under Turkish rule from the 16th century, i 584; xi 404; An 169. Maronilla

A hideous woman in mabtial I, x, wooed because she has a cough, Sm 343, 344. Mars, son ... of

Title given to romulus as ancestor of the martial Romans, PR 3, 84 (Mavortigenae QN 53). thrace was the war-god’s home, EL IV 77.

Martyr, Justin

See JUSTIN MARTYR. Martyr, Peter

Pietro Martire Vermigli (named after St. Peter Martyr). (1500-62) An Augustinian who after studying the Bible and reading bucer (M 5) and zwincli, became a Reformer. Forced to flee Italy he became professor of theology at strassburc and married a nun. At cranmer’s invitation Regius professor of divinity at Oxford, 1548. Returned to strassburc after mary’s accession; professor of Hebrew at Zurich from 1556. M 60; T 191, 225, 231; Col 266; Ten 49. Plural ID 202. SD 60.

Martel

see CHARLES MARTEL.

Marvell, Andrew

Martial

(1st cent.) Roman epigrammatist. Reference to the “epistula” prefacing his book of epigrams Pref SA. ID 158. Martin, St.

(d. 397) Bishop of Tours (Turon R 17) from 372. The son of a pagan, he became converted after he had given half his cloak to a beggar at Amiens. He was influential in the spread of monasticism. His life was written by sulpictus severus. The passage referred to R 12, K 234, is in Severus’ Opera (Leyden, Elzevir, 1635), p. 290; R 17, p. 190-1; R 26, Sm 358, p. “233” (for 333). Martin V

(1368-1431) Otto Colonna, pope from Council of Constance, 1417. The bull referred to A 302 is Inter cunctas.

(1621-78). The poet, went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Traveled abroad, 1642-6. Tutor to Mary, lopx> Fairfax’s daughter at Nun Appleton House in Yorkshire, 1651-2. Had written poems when he first came to Milton’s notice, but had published only two in English, tributes to Love¬ lace and Lord Hastings; his collected verse did not come out until 1681. Perhaps 27-8 of “Fleckno,” Only this frail ambition did remain, / The last distemper of the sober brain imi¬ tates L 70-1, a poem that might have been of special interest inasmuch as his own father, a Calvinist divine, drowned in the humber in 1641. February 21, 1653, in a letter to John bradshaw EC 330, Milton recom¬ mended Marvell as “a man whom both by report and the converse I have had with him, of singular desert for the State to make use of; who also offers himself, if there be any em-

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ployment for him. His father was the minister of hull and he hath spent four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, to very good pur¬ pose, as I believe, and the gaining of those four languages. Besides he is a scholar and well read in the Latin and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved conversation, for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax who was general, where he was entrusted to give some instructions in the languages to the lady his daughter.” As an assistant in the Latin secretaryship he could re¬ place “Mr. Wakerley,” that is, George Rodolph Weckherlin, a Ger¬ man by birth, whose state employ¬ ment in England dated back at least to 1628 but who was now either dead or whose death was expected mo¬ mentarily. toland said that Marvell “used to frequent” Milton “the oftenest of anybody”; Mrs. Anne Sadleir indicated Milton received help from him on Defensio I. But the response to Milton’s letter was the appoint¬ ment of Philip Meadows, Oct. 17. Marvell, writing Milton June 2, 1654 (EC 331-3) told of presenting 2D to bradshaw. He has been identified as the “vir doctus” who had been in saumur, mentioned in FE #24, 96 and who reported that the Defensios were in demand. Before that year, 1657, was out, Marvell had the offi¬ cial employment Milton had asked for him in 1653: it lasted until he became M.P. for Hull in 1659, serv¬ ing up to his death. According to Phillips, he “acted vigorously” and “made a considerable party for him” to save the blind libertarian at the Restoration. The Rehearsal Transprosed (1672) finds Marvell on the side of toleration against Samuel Parker; the Second Part (1673) has a defence of Milton, 377-80. “On -

Paradise Lost” in 54 coupleted lines, contributed to the 2nd ed. of 1674, and signed A. M., is unfortunately not one of Marvell’s best poems but is of historical importance as the earliest versified criticism in English, allusive, in all likelihood, both to Milton’s Samson (line 9) and dryden’s State of Innocence, 17 ff., 46 ff. Marvell was the first to apply the now common descriptive “sublime.” Mary

The mother of jesus, “second Eve,” v 387; x 183; “Virgin Mother, Hail,” xii 379. “The virgin pure / in Galilee” PR 1, 134-5 is given a troubled solilo¬ quy, 2, 61 ff., on Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness. On her marriage, see Joseph. “Her prophetic song” (Luke i, 52) Ten 23; ID 144 (same quot.). Mary I

(1516-58) “The Papist,” R 9 Queen of England from 1553. First reference to in an ambiguous “Marian” pun, QN 127 (“Mariana” equates Bloody Mary with the cruel marius). Re¬ strained references R 8, 13—“the weak estate which Queen Mary left the realm in” to “the bloody persecution,” Ten 52. “For piety grounded upon error can no more justify King Charles than it did Queen Mary, in the sight of God or man,” K 225. See tympany. Mary Stuart

(1542-87). Though “lawful and hereditary queen” of Scotland, de¬ posed (1567) Ten 29. Like grand¬ mother, like grandson Charles Ten 305, 308; ID 484. Beheaded by Prot¬ estants, ID 46. Scandals, ID 10. Masoreth(s)

The early Hebrew tradition as to the correct form of the text of the Jewish Bible, often embodied in mar-

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A Milton Dictionary

ginal notes, Sm 316; D 376; SD 110. T 174.

masorites,

Massic(a)

Massicus was a mountain in Cam¬ celebrated for its wine, EL VI 31. Cf. FALERNE. pania

Masson, David

(1822-1907) The great Milton bi¬ ographer and editor of the Poetical Works took an M.A. at Aberdeen at 17, was a friend of Thackeray and the Carlyles, founded and edited Macmillan’s Magazine, 1859-67, was a popular teacher as professor of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh University, 1865-95, edited Goldsmith and De Quincey, and published biographies of the latter and of Drummond of Hawthornden. But his magnum opus was The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Con¬ nexion with the Political, Ecclesiasti¬ cal, and Literary History of his Time (7 volumes with Index, 1859-94; 1st volume revised 1881; whole reprinted in New York, 1946). Working before the 16 volumes of S. R. Gardiner’s history of the period had come out, Masson pioneered by alternating bi¬ ography with history, year by year, month by month. Lowell opened a review of the first two volumes by opining, “If the biographies of liter¬ ary- men are to assume the bulk which Mr. Masson is giving to that of Milton, their authors should send a phial of elixir vitae with the first volume, that a purchaser might have some valid assurance of surviving to see the last.” Lowell pointed to in¬ felicities in Masson’s method and style; some 20th century critics such as Smart and saurat early declared their intention "to get Milton com¬ pletely and resolutely demassonized”; till yard noted in the 1930’s: “to de¬

ride what is at once the best informed and the least informing of all the great literary biographies in English would indeed be easy enough. Mas¬ son with his patriarchal manner, his treacly sentiment, and his sabbatical Nonconformity is the very simplest game for modem sophistication”; Haller showed the inadequacy of Masson’s contact with Puritan writ¬ ings. But Masson is indispensable, as the 1946 reprint proved, and his 3volume library edition of the Poetical Works (1874; revised 1890) is one of the best, the notes and introductions being on a grand scale. The best literary criticism in the Life is prob¬ ably of Samson Agonistes. Masson was three years younger than macaxjlay when he contributed a notable first essay, “The Three Devils; Luther’s, Milton’s, and Goethe’s” (Fraser’s Magazine, 1844; reprinted in Essays, Biographical and Critical, 1856). ' massy proof

Massive and strong, IP 158. (So massy means bulky elsewhere, in¬ cluding the keys in L 110—ancient keys being very large: cf. Isaiah xxii,

22). materious

Full of matter, T 149. matter

Reason, D 438. Matthaeus Monachus

Matthew the Monk was the name given to Matthew of Paris, q.v., T 196, 217; CB 156. Matthew of Westminster (Mathew)

Name assigned as author of Eng¬ lish chronicle from creation to 1326, Flores Historiarum, a compilation of several monks including Matthew of

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A Milton Dictionary

235. A monster of strength and cruel¬ ty. Slain by his own soldiers, ID 332.

Paris. Source of B 150, 170, etc. Trans¬ lated in a couplet 194.

Maximus (1)

maugre

See VALENTINIAN.

In spite of iii 255; ix 56; PR 3, 368.

Maximus (2) maukin

Magnus Clemens (d. 388) Roman emperor from 383, till killed at Aquileia by theodosius, ID 258.

Malkin, a kitchen-maid, Sm 328. Mauricus

K 296: cf. B 139-40.

Mazzoni, Giacomo

(1548-98). Friend of tasso who published defenses of dante’s Divine Comedy against rigid Aristotelian critics in 1573 and 1583.

Mauritanian (Maurusius)

Moroccan, AdP 40; FE #20, 82. Mauritius (Mauricius)

(539P-602) of Roman descent, was made Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire by Tiberius II, 582, the year he married the latter’s daughter. R 59: see foxe. Acts and Monuments (1631-2), I, 8.

Meander

mawls

honey, v 345.

Mauls, heavy hammers, CG 213.

phkygia,

Asia

meath

Mead, a fermented beverage of which the principal ingredient is

Mecca, those who have travelled to

Maximian

(d. 310). Made Caesar by Diocle¬ tian (285) and Augustus, (286). Ro¬ man emperor 286-305, ruling jointly with DIOCLETIAN, ID 374. Maximilian I

Moslems, whose duty it was to go on pilgrimage to this Arabian capital, birthplace of Mohammed, K 170. medal

Metal, iii 593. Medea the sorceress

(1459-1519). Holy Roman Em¬ peror from 1493, had in 1485, when separated from the army of his father Frederick III, been captured by the revolting citizens of Bruges, who slew his German knights and forced him to swear to humiliating terms. Shortly after his release he sent word he would not abide by his vow and in 1490 he took revenge on the city, executing leading citizens and ex¬ tracting an indemnity of 80,000 gold crowns. Ten 43. Maximin i

(173-238).

A winding river in Minor, C 232.

Roman emperor from

Whose mythological “evil doings, D 464 included the slaughter of her brother and her children: on the lat¬ ter occasion she said, “At last I under¬ stand the awful deed I am to do; but passion, that cause of direst woes to mortal man, hath triumphed o’er my sober thoughts” (euripides, Medea, 1078-80). Medes

see

Media

Ancient country ruled by the aruntil cybus the gbeat in the

baces

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A Milton Dictionary

6th century b.c. forcibly annexed it and made it nw part of Persia, iv 171; PR 3, 320. mediocrity

Moderation, CG 274.

the

“golden

mean,”

meditate

Practise, C 547; L 66 (“musam meditaris” Virgil, Eel. 1, 2). medulla

Compendium giving the “pith” or “marrow” (cf. “marrows of divinity, H 94) of a subject, D 378. Medusa

Who Odysseus feared on his visit to Hades would turn him into stone, ii 611. See gohgon(s). Medway

A river of se England that flows into the Thames, V 100. meed

Reward, L 14, 84. Megaera

One of the Furies, avenging god¬ desses, described in Aeschylus’ Eumenides and euripides’ Orestes. On the “snaky locks” of Megaera see claudian. In Ruf. I, 378, 134). megrim

A migraine, D 371. Mela, Pomponius

(1st cent.) “The Geographer,” B 4. His De Situ Orbis (translated Ar¬ thur Golding, 1585) is earliest known description of ancient world written in Latin, E 283.

Melanchton (Melanchthon) (in German, Schwarzerd), Philipp

(1497-1560). “Third great luminary of Reformation,” T 223; 103. Profes¬ sor of Greek at Wittenberg. Systemized luther. Principal figure at Diet of Augsburg, 1530. The first edition of his Loci Communes Rerum Theologicarum (1521) was the first or¬ dered presentation of Reformation doctrine. An erudite moderate. For T 223 see “De Conjugio” in Loci Communes (Basle, 1561), pp. 724-5. Melchisedec

“Priest of the most high God” who received tithes from Abram, Gen. xiv, 18 ff. H 54-9 (plural 56), 62, 69, 88. Adjective 73. Meleager

Whose mother. Althaea, on hearing from the Fates that her boy would die as soon as the piece of wood burning on the hearth would be con¬ sumed, snatched the firebrand and hid it, but burned it in revenge when her brothers, at the Calydonian boar hunt, fell at her full-grown son’s hands: she thus terminated his life, CG 202. Melesigenes homer, by the tradition that he was born in Smyrna near the River Meles (cf. I, 156, by Salsilli). PR 4, 259. The next line refers to an epi¬ gram in the Greek Anthology (IX, 455) that makes phoebus apollo the author and homer only the scribe.

Melibaean

A rich purple dye (“grain”) from the maritime Thessalian town of Melibaea (cf. Aen. V, 251), xi, 242.

Melanchaetes

Meliboeus

“Black-maned”—invented name for one of the horses of Night (Nox) QN 71.

Identified as spenser who tells, C 822, the “gentle nymph” sabrina’s story, Faerie Queene, II, x, 19, and

-

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A Milton Dictionary

who himself had referred to chaucer as tityrus (Shepherd’s Calendar, Feb. 92 etc.), the two pastoral names being paired in virgil’s First Eclogue.

and terence. (The Dyscolos was discovered complete in 1957.) A 301. plautus

meniaias (menaia) Melind

A seaport in East Africa, xi 399. Memmius Gemellus, Gaius

Praetor in 58 B.p. The dedicatee of De Rerum Natura, A 301.

lucretius’

(From Greek month; Milton scorn¬ fully uses a double plural, Greek and English) Twelve liturgical books (one for each month) containing offices for the immovable feasts of the Byzan¬ tine church, R 34.

Memmius Gaius

“Tribunus Plebis,” 11J b.c. was an ardent opponent of the oligarchical party during the Jugurthine war of which sallust was the historian, ID 90, 314.

Mcrcurius Britan(n)icus

Hall’s pseudonym as author of Mundus Alter et Idem (1605?), An 138. Mercury

The handsome Ethiopian prince (Od. XI, 522), son of the dawngoddess, QN 135, who had taken part in the Trojan War, was assigned a sister Hemera (Day) by Dictys Cretensis, IP 18.

The messenger god (in C 637 MS written for “hermes once”)—cf. Prol VII 248; Sm 318—but also the god of orators and thieves, Prol VI 212, and ingenuity, C 963 (he is mentioned in connection with the dance in jonson’s Pans Anniversary).

Memnonian

mere Englishman

Strabo is the authority for the tradi¬ tion that susa was founded by tithonus, who was the father of memnon, x 308. memnon built its acropolis, named in his honor the Memnonium.

One who can read only English, M 60.

Memphian

Merlin

Memnon

Egyptian (Memphis having been the ancient capital of Egypt), N 214; i 307, 694. Menalcas

Name of a shepherd who takes part in a singing match (but with Daphnis, not Lycidas) in theocritus. Idyl VIII. ED 132.

meridian

Pertaining to noon, iv 30, 581.

See

gorlois.

Meroe, Nilotic Isle

A town and region in the basin of the Nile, PR 4, 71, of which pliny wrote: “twice in the year the shadows are gone” and then mentions an In¬ dian mount where “the shadows in summer fall towards the south, and in winter towards the north” (cf. 70).

Menander

(343P-291? b.c.) Athenian writer of more than 100 “new” (i.e. realistic about men and manners) comedies, nearly all lost but some adapted by

Meroz

A place mentioned only in the Song of Deborah and Barak in Judges v, 23, and there denounced because its

200-

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A Milton Dictionary

inhabitants

had

take

any

Micah

with sisera,

Ten

Not the prophet, K 260-1, but the Israelite of Judges xvii.

refused

part in the struggle 38, 45; ID 60.

to

Micaiah

message

See ahab.

Messenger, SA 635.

Michael Messalina

(d. 48)

Third wife of Emperor Claudius, noted for her vices and profligacy. Executed, not “divorced,” T 179, (though that happened with Claudius’ first two wives). Messalinus, Walo

See

(“Like to God”) The militant arch¬ angel—“the guarded mount,” L 161— whose “sword” is significantly part of the first mention of him in PL, ii 294, who leads to battle in vi and is sent to oust the sinful pair, with explanations as well as sword, xi-xii. mickle

salmasius.

Much, great, C 31. Messena

SW Peloponnesus, sea, ID 214.

bordering

the

messes

Dishes (servings of food), L’A 85.

Middelburg

(Medioburg-SD 228, 236, 238, 284). Prosperous commercial town, Nether¬ lands, 2D 32, 198; SD 212. middleburrough, Ten 51. middle age, of, one rising

Metaphrastes (The Metaphrast), Simeon

(fl. c. 960) Byzantine hagiograplier whose saints’ lives, a re-working (meta¬ phrase) of older versions, abound in such miracles and marvels as to be called “fabulous” by Milton, P 98, though ussher had cited a work of his (of doubtful attribution) in his Judgment (1641), p. 13.

Enoch, who lived to 365, middleaged by comparison with Methuselah, mentioned next in Gen. v, 21 ff., and other patriarchs, xi 665. middle shore

A translation of Mediterranean, v 339. Mile-End Green

See Sonnet XI. mew (their feathers)

Milegast

To shed, moult, R 14.

Ten 24: see CB 182 for same refer¬ ence.

mewing

See muing.

Milesia(n)

Miletus in Caria was a city famous for luxury and dissoluteness, 2D 30.

Mezentius

“The tyrant,” ID 324, expelled from on account of his cruelty, took refuge with turnus, king of the Rutulians, whom he assisted in the war against aeneas and the Trojans, etruria

milk, sincere

Phrase from I Peter ii, 2 Sm 345. Milton, Elizabeth Minshull

(1637-1727) The poet’s third wife.

D 478; SD 224.

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A Milton Dictionary

age of 21, upon being disinherited “by They were married February 24, 1663. The blind widower was having trouble his father a Romanist, who had an with his daughters—Mary said “if she estate of five hundred pound a year at could hear of his death, that was some¬ Sta(i)ntin St. John in Oxfordshire, thing” and “his said children had for reading the Bible ... he came made away some of his books and young to London, and being taken would have sold the rest of his books care of by a relation of his a scriven¬ to the dunghill women.” The house¬ er” (Anonymous Biography) he took up that profession, was admitted to hold needed a mistress, and Dr. Nathan Paget “his old friend,” “re¬ the company of scriveners c. 1600— commended to him” this young kins¬ “they produced and copied legal pa¬ woman (phillips). All that is known pers of all kinds, served as notaries, of her up to her last days in her native and were in an especially advantage¬ Nantwich points to her having made a ous position to know of transfers of satisfactory wife (though not a good real and personal property” ( Flet¬ stepmother) in a marriage that could cher)— and about the same time ac¬ not have begun very romantically, quired a leasehold on the building in despite the fact that her hair, like Bread Street where the poet was born. eve’s, was gold. In his nuncupative Their coat of arms was the Spread (oral) will, Milton called her “my Eagle. Anne Milton was born first, loving wife.” The maidservant Eliza¬ presumably, and the only other child beth Fisher, author of the above de¬ that survived was Christopher (bap¬ position concerning the daughters, de¬ tized Dec. 3, 1615-1693), who fol¬ clared that in July, 1674 Milton said lowed his brother to St. Paul’s and to his wife in their house at Bunhill Christ’s College, was admitted to the Fields, “God have mercy, Betty, I see Inner Temple after only two years at thou wilt perform according to thy Cambridge, 1632, married early, lived promise in providing me such dishes for years with his father and family at Horton, was fined for delinquency as as I think fit whilst I live; and, when I die, thou knowest that I have left a Royalist, and died a Catholic. The thee all.” She treasured mementoes of father had prospered to such an ex¬ him and supplied aubrey with infor¬ tent that he could retire to Horton in 1632. A man of culture who could mation about his later years. savor his son’s hexameter tribute Ad Milton, John, the Elder Patrem, he had composed at 20 “an (c. 1563-1647). The poet’s father. In Nomine of forty parts, for which he The poet’s grandfather, Richard Mil- was rewarded with a gold medal and ton, was a recusant who “disinherited chain by a Polish prince, to whom he him [John Senior] because he kept presented it” (phillips) and went on not the Catholic religion” (aubrey). to gain, as a musician of the school of Byrd, “the reputation of a consider¬ aubrey is the sole authority for the assertion (omitted by wood) that able master in this most charming of John Milton “was brought up in the all the liberal sciences.” He was in¬ University of Oxford, at Christ vited by the great madrigalist Thomas Morley—who composed for As You Church.” Brennecke’s hypothesis is that he was a boy chorister there and Like It—to contribute to The Triumphs thus got his start in his serious and of Oriana, a cantus book of 1601 (is¬ skilful avocation, music. About the sued 1603) honoring queen eliza-

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His music appears in three other great collections, The ears or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul, 1614, Thomas Myriell’s Tristitiae Re¬ medium (The Remedy for Sadness), prepared for publication (but never published), 1616, and Thomas Ravenscroft’s Whole Book of Psalms, 1621. He essayed a commendatory sonnet to the very minor poet John Lane (who authored a continuation of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, the which may help explain why the author of IP 109 ff. singles this out of all Chau¬ cer’s tales). Besides Ad Pairem, 2D 118-20 refers to Milton.

beth.

Milton, John

(Dec. 9, 1608-Nov. 8, 1674) The poet. Born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London. Tutored by young, 1618-20. C. 1620-c. 1625 at St. Paul’s School. Beginning of friendship with diodati and the younger gil(l). Name en¬ tered on the registry of Christ’s Col¬ lege, Cambridge, Feb. 12, 1625. Ma¬ triculated April 9. Rusticated after a quarrel with his first tutor Chappell. Latin poems and prolusions. Vacation Exercise, Fair Infant. B.A., March 26, 1629. Nativity Ode, December. First sonnets, English and Italian. On Shakespeare, Epitaph on the Marchi¬ oness of Winchester. L’Allegro, II Penseroso. M.A. July 3, 1632. Horton, 1632-8. Arcades, Comus, Lycidas. Continental tour. May 1638-July, 1639: Paris, Florence (September, 1638), Siena, Rome (October), Naples (Jan¬ uary, 1639) (and Rome again in Feb¬ ruary, and Florence again in March), Lucca, Venice, Lake Leman, Geneva (May-June). Mansus was written be¬ fore his return to take up his perma¬ nent residence in London, Epitaphium Damonis (in memory of diodati) after¬ wards. Sketches and plans for poems. Commonplace Book. Begins tutoring

his two nephews, first at “a lodging in St. Bride’s Churchyard,” and then at Aldersgate. Anti-prelatical tracts, 16412. Married Mary Powell, May, 1642, only to be deserted by her in the sum¬ mer and for three years. Sonnet VIII, “Captain or colonel,” November, 1642. Divorce tracts, 1643-5. Of Education, Areopagitica, 1644. Upon his wife’s return, 1645, moves to a larger house in Barbican. Poems in English and Latin registered for publication, Octo¬ ber 6. First child, Anne, born July 29, 1646. Visited by wife’s family in Bar¬ bican house, where his father-in-law dies c. January 1, 1647. Ode to Rous, Jan. 23. March, father dies (buried March 15 in St. Giles’ Cripplegate, where the poet was also to be buried). Continues tutoring, until move to a smaller house in High Holboin. Psalms LXXX-LXXXVIII, April, 1648. Second child, Mary, born Oct. 25. Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, February, 1649. Appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues, March. Moves to charingcross, then to official apartments in or near Scotland Yard, Whitehall. Ob¬ servations upon the Articles of Peace, May. Eikonoklastes, October. Letters of State. Ordered, January 8, 1650 to answer salmasius’ Defensio Regia. Failing health and eyesight. Defensio (Prima) published, February, 1651. Third child, John, born, March 16 (died June 16, 1652). December, 1651, as blindness comes upon him totally, obliged to leave Whitehall for a house in Petty France. Much commu¬ nication at this period (Dec. 1651Feb. .1652) with mylius, about safe¬ guard for the Count of oldenburg. Sonnet XVI, to Cromwell, May, 1652. Fourth child, third daughter, bom, May 2. Her mother Mary Powell Milton died in childbed, May 5. Sonnet XVII, to vane, July. Regii Sanguinis Clamor appears in reply to Defensio,

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c. August. Psalms I-VIII, Aug. 8-14, 1653. Salmasius dies. Sept. 3. Defensio Secunda, May 30, 1654. Letter to philabas giving clinical de¬ scription of his blindness, Sept. 28. Less active as Secretary; salary re¬ duced. Sonnet XVIII, on the Pied¬ mont massacre, 1655. Sonnets XXI, XXII, to skinner. Defensio Pro Se, August 8. Work on History of Britain and De Doctrina Christiana. Bishop Hall dies, Sept. 8, 1656. Marries sec¬ ond wife, Katherine Woodcock, No¬ vember 12. Daughter Katherine born, Oct. 19, 1657 (died March 17, 1658). Begins work in earnest on Paradise Lost, 1658. Second wife dies, Feb. 3 Attends Oliver Cromwell’s funeral, Nov. 23 Treatise of Civil Power, Con¬ siderations touching . . . Hirelings, 1659. A Letter to a Friend Concern¬ ing the Ruptures of the Common¬ wealth, Oct. 20. Ready and Easy Way, Feb.-March, 1660; enlarged, April. Forced into hiding, May, "till such time as the current of affairs for the future should instruct him” (Phil¬ lips). June 16, Defensio (Prima) and Eikonoklastes ordered burned and the author ordered arrested. Free to re¬ sume private life, on not being named with the regicides as an exception to the Act of Indemnity; takes, in the fall, house in Holborn. Was in cus¬ tody, but ordered released, Dec. 15. on payment of fees. Financially much hurt by the Restoration; moves to Jewin Street, where ellwood made his acquaintance. Marries third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, Feb. 24, 1663. Moves to his last London residence “in the Artillery-walk leading to Bunhill Fields.” The only change was in the summer of 1665 when ellwood found him a cottage at Chalfont St. Giles as a refuge from the plague (till the beginning of 1666). Paradise Lost, 1667. Accedence Commenc’d [Latin]

Grammar, 1669. History of Britain, with Faithome portrait, 1670. Para¬ dise Regained, Samson Agonisies, 1671. Logic, 1672. Visited by dryden. Of True Religion, 1673. Second edi¬ tion of Minor Poems. Dryden’s drama¬ tization of Paradise Lost registered, April 17, 1674. Familiar Letters and Prolusions published. A Declaration or Letters Patents. Second edition of Paradise Lost, expanded to 12 books. Dies “in a fit of the gout,” in Bunhill. Buried November 12 in St. Giles Cripplegatc. Milton, Katherine Woodcock

See Sonnet XXIII. Milton, Mory Powell

See Doctrine and Discipline of Di¬ vorce. Milton, Sarah Jeffries (or Jeffrey, Jaffrey)

(c. 1572-April 3, 1637) The poet’s mother. Married c. 1599-1600. It has been conjectured that she was a wo¬ man of means, perhaps a widow. Phillips called her “a woman of in¬ comparable virtue and goodness.” Mil¬ ton’s only reference states that she was known in the neighborhood for her alms giving, 2D 118. He also re¬ fers to her death, 120, but not in two letters to diodati (FE #6, 7) written a few weeks after it. aubrey said she “had very weak eyes, and used spec¬ tacles presently after she was thirty years old.” Miltonist

In its first use a believer in more liberal divorce laws; “While like the froward Miltonist,/ We our old nup¬ tial knot untwist” (Christopher Wase, 1649). mimics

(misprinted mimirs—as if mimers?— in the 1st ed.). Actors, SA 1325.

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mincha

Mirror (of Justices)

Afternoon service of the Jews, An 127.

“A far ancienter law book,” K 117, “ancient law book,” 299, late 13th century', probably by Andrew Horn (d. 1328), called by the Cambridge History of English Literature “that apocryphal work . . . which, mainly through the influence of Coke, was long regarded as a serious authority on law.” K 121; ID 418, 438, 446. It is also the “ancient books of law” refer¬ ence, Ten 25. A translation from the original French to English had ap¬ peared in 1646.

Mincius

Mentioned by virgil (Eel. VII, 12) and associated with him, as it is a tributary of the Po, which it joins near his native city of Mantua, L 86. Minerva

Roman goddess associated with truth, D 370, and wisdom and militant chastity like Pallas Athene, C 447 (her “gorcon shield” was depicted in Iliad V, 741-2). She gives the intellec¬ tual gifts, Man 21; K 257. minims

Tiniest creatures, vii 482.

missificctte

Say mass, CG 203 (with reference to the mass as a “sacrifice” and Jewish priests as sacrificers). missive ruin

minorites

Sometimes misprinted as minorities, A 305: Franciscan friars (Fratres Minores), a term of humility here mocked.

Missile destruction, vi 519. Mithridates (-ic)

See

pompey.

Mispa (Mizpah) Minos

See 1 Sam x, ID 108.

Treated as one of the historical “an¬ cient lawgivers,” CG 186, which this king of Crete after whom the archaic Minoan Civilization was named, prob¬ ably was. After his death became one of the judges of the shades in Hades, Prol VI 206 (according to virgil and

Moab

An ancient kingdom east of the Dead Sea, i 406; R 531; Ten 20; ID 216 ( moabitarum ). rnoap'd

See

DANTE ).

Minsheu (Minshew), John

moped.

Modestinus, Herennius

A London teacher of languages whose Ductor in Linguae: The Guide into the Tongues, 1617 (the first book published by subscription) contained equivalents in 11 languages. An 294. Hall was likewise polylingual in in¬ venting names for his satire. minute-drops

Drops that fall at intervals of a minute, IP 130.

(fl. c. 250

) Roman jurist, T 104.

Modin

Judean PR 3,170.

birthplace

of

Maccabeus

Modona

Evidently Modena in northern Italy, perhaps once famous for stage-masks (modena came to mean a crimson¬ like color). A n 152.

205-

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b.c.

A Milton Dictionary

moment

Mogul, great

Small particle, K 64.

(Which means “Great Mongol”) Refers to the Moslem empire of India, with its capital first at acra, then at LAHORE, xi 391.

moments

(Latin momentum) movements, CG 185.

mole

Momus

Mass, x 300.

(Which means "disgrace”) The god of carping criticism, SD 168.

Mole

“The river Mole in Surrey,” An 148 which, before reaching the Thames, “meeting with obstruction from some hills, opens itself a subterraneous pas¬ sage like a mole, whence it seems to take its name” (camden): (cf. Faerie Queene IV, xi, 32) V 95. Moloch (Biblical Molech)

First met as “sullen” and defeated, having fled “his burning idol all of blackest hue” (cf. 2 Kings xxiii, 10), and called “the grisly king” (Melec= king), N 205 ff., this fire-god of the ammonites (essentially identical with the Moabitish chemosh) is next seen (with the same etymological refer¬ ence) as a fallen angel, i 392 ff., 417. He makes the typically blunt and forceful proposal at the great consult, "My sentence is for open war, ii 51. This boaster had been sent “bellow¬ ing” with “uncouth pain” by Gabriel, vi 357 (Milton remembering for the fourth time the “king” meaning of his name, which was also his title so far as the Israelites were concerned). moly

The magic herb of Odyssey X, 30206, EL I 88. See haemony. Mombaza

Kenyan port, an early center of Arab trade, held by Portuguese in Milton’s time, xi 399. “This kingdom lyeth between the borders of quiloa and melinde” (Purchas).

Mona

Island off the nw coast of Wales, same as Anglesey: B 63, L 54. monitories and mementos

Ten 5 alludes contemptuously to A Brief Memento to the Pre¬ sent Unparliamentary Junto Touching their Present Intentions .. .to Depose and Execute . . . their Lawful King

prynne’s

(1648). Mon(c)k, General George

(1608-70): see The Present Means, A Letter to a Friend Concerning, and The Ready and Easy Way. monody

See Lycidas. monostrophic

Having but one strophe or stanza, i.e. without a recurrent pattern, Pref SA; JR note. Montague (Montacutium), Edward

(1625-72) Raised foot regiment in Cambridgeshire and joined parlia¬ mentary army, 1643. Outstanding at Naseby and the storming of Bristol, 1645. Member of the Council of State, 1653, 2D 234. Supported Richard Cromwell, but on his fall won to Charles II. Became Earl of Sandwich, 1660, and admiral, with Samuel Pepys as his secretary. Montalban (Montaubon)

A castle and town in Languedoc

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A Milton Dictionary

(France), residence of Rinaldo in the romances by Pulci, boiabdo, and ariosto, i 583.

moot

In law, a debate, T 160. moped (moaped)

Rendered spiritless or stupid, K 290.

Montanists

Montanus in phrycia started this apocalyptic movement in the latter part of the 2nd century, which had marked elements of enthusiasm, prophecy, and asceticism, K 232. Montemayor (Monte Mayors)

Mopsus

A shepherd (Mopso in tasso’s Aminta understood the speech of birds), ED 76. There were two myth¬ ological seers of the name. More (Morus), Alexander

See Diana.

See Defensio Secunda and Pro Se Dejensio.

Montfort (Momfort), Simon de, Earl of Leicester

More (Morus), Thomas

(1208P-65) Became Henry Ill’s brother-in-law and a favorite, but be¬ gan parliamentary opposition to the king in 1254 and led in Barons’ War, 1263-65. Considered founder of House of Commons. Fell at Evesham, K 69. Long popularly revered as a martyr and saint, “Simon the Righteous.”

A

dishonored

comparison with SD 110 (it being hinted that the Utopia q. v., for lead¬ ing instance, mixes light with serious matters).

Alexander

more,

Morea

Montrose (Montrossius), James

(1) The Peloponnesus, the southern peninsula of Greece, K 164. (2) MS 232, Moriah (Gen. xxii, 2).

Graham, 1st Marquis and fifth

Moreh, plain of

Earl of,

(1612-50) Had joined the coven¬ anters in 1637 and invaded England with them in 1640, but sided with the king (and against Argyll) 1641. After victory at Tippermuir took Perth, 1644, 2D 164. Finally defeated at Invercarron and captured by betrayal. Hanged in the Grassmarket, Edin¬ burgh.

The first recorded halting-place of (Gen. xii, 6) after his entrance into the land of canaan, xii 137.

abram

Morgante, an Italian romance

II Morgante Maggiore by Luigi Pulci (1432-84), of which the giant Morgante was the hero, was the coarse serio-comic predecessor of ariosto’s epic, A 308.

mood, mode

Morpheus

Greek music had four modes or measures: Dorian, Ionian, Phrygian, and Lydian, i 550; SA 662.

(“Fashioner”) The god of dreams, IP 10 (“fickle” referring to their be¬ lieved propitiousness or unpropitiousness), son of Sleep.

mood, swelling

Proud heart or mind, CG 270. moorish

Boggy (on the moors), C 433.

morrice

Morris-dance (from Moorish) such as was customary at May-day festivals, C 116; SM 344.

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A Milton Dictionary

Mosa

The Meuse, the river running through ne France and Belgium and Holland, SD 234.

mountain (at the same time laying Iris hand upon his breast), be removed into that sea” (see). mourns

Longs, D 403.

Moses

Author of Genesis, i 8. amram’s son the wonder-worker, i 339. Law-giver, An 165, 182, 186, 190, etc.; E 285. Learned prophet, A 306, 342. Permitter of divorce, D 369 (cf. Dent, xxiv, 1), 376, 381, 383, etc. The name, spondee or trochee, Milton usually places at the beginning of a line, xii 170, 211, 241; PR 1, 352; 2, 15, but note the other positions—xii 198, 237, 307; PR 4, 219 (cf. Matt, xxiii, 2), 225. mostanend

For the most part CG 255.

Mozambic (Mozambique)

Portuguese East Africa opposite Madagascar, a “great haven and a safe, and able to receive all manner of ships” (Purchas), iv 161. muing

A regular old spelling for mewing =shedding, moulting, A 344, recog¬ nized by falconers as part of the proc¬ ess of renewal (hence conjectures about a misprint here for “newing” or “renuing” are unnecessary). Mulcibsr

Motezuma

Montezuma (1480P-1520), the Az¬ tec ruler (from 1502) whom Cortez overthrew, xi 407.

(“The softener, welder”—of metal) Or VULCAN. See LEMNOS, >740.

HEPHAESTUS

Mundus Alter et Idem (Another World yet the Same). Sa¬ tiric romance by Bishcp Hall (1605?).

motionists

Movers, Ten 57.

Muraena

motions

and THE OPPROBBIOUS HILL.

Lucius Licinius Murena, elected consul 63 b.c., was charged with brib¬ ery by Servius Sulpicius, an unsuc¬ cessful candidate, and the charge was supported by m. pobcius cato. cicero’s successful defense, Pro Murena, makes merry with the formulae and the prac¬ tice of lawyers, Sm 358.

Mountain, old Bishop

murmurs

Puppet-shows, A 319. Moulin

See

du moulin.

mountain, th' offensive

i 443, same as hill of scandal, q.v.,

Muttered charms, Arc 60; C 526. Musaeus

Semi-mythological Greek bard, sometimes accounted the son of Or¬ pheus and encountered by aeneas his underworld visit, Aen. VI, 667 IP 104, (the “bower” being the Elysian Fields).

208-

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.9 tti

George Montaigne (1569-1628) rose from humble Yorkshire origins to be archbishop of york after rising through royal favor to the sees of Lincoln, 1617, London, 1621, and Durham, 1627, R 19. He won York by saying to Charles, "Hadst thou faith as a grain of mus¬ tard seed, thou wouldst say unto this

A Milton Dictionan/

Musculus, Wolfgang

(1497-1563) “A divine of no ob¬ scure fame,” T 226, had been a Bene¬ dictine, became a Lutheran, and pub¬ lished at Basle the year he visited England In Evangelistam Matthaeum Commentarii (1548), to pp. 101-03 of which Milton refers. CD 2, 7. must ("moust")

archiv in Oldenburg. “In view of Mil¬ ton’s troubles his zeal for his friend’s cause is remarkable” (tillyard). Myrmidons

The

“trusty” followers of achilles;

by extension, any group that executes commands

without

question,

EL IV

28; K 106. myrrhine (murrhine)

Grape-juice, v 345; PR 4, 16.

Cups made of murra—a precious clay or chalcedony— or murra glass, PR 4, 119.

muting

Excretion, An 140.

Mysians

Mycale

Man 22 refers to herodotus, be¬ lieved to have come from the region of this mountain near samos in Asia Minor and to have written a biog¬ raphy of homer now regarded as spurious. Mylius, Hermann

Envoy for Anthon Gunther, Count of Oldenburg (1603-68), who was seeking a treaty or safeguard between England and Oldenburg, an effort that much involved Milton both in visits and in correspondence. The only letter Milton printed was FE #11, which can be dated Jan. 2, 1652. Milton refers apologetically to his had health, and indeed the time of this official relationship with Mylius, Octo¬ ber. 1651-March, 1652 was the time of Milton’s going totally blind, a circum¬ stance that Mylius noted in his Diary or Tagebuch. The Milton-Mylius cor¬ respondence, known to Alfred Stem, author of Milton und seine Zeit (1879), was published in the Columbia milton, XII, 338-79, and in corrected form by french, Life Records, III, from Mylius’ Tagebuch, in the Staats-

-

See

TELEPHUS.

mysteries

Professions, A 333. mysterious

Full of awe, as befits a mystery, such as st. paui, called marriage (Ephes. v, 32), iv 743, 750; viii 599; “a mystery of joy,” Col 263. mysteriously

Symbolically, iii 516. mystery, mysteries

That which transcends human rea¬ son, is a matter of divine revelation (with the idea of the sacramental at¬ tached), C 785; Sin 306; Col 263 (and see mysterious, above)—linked sub¬ jects. mystic, not

It is disputed whether this, ix 442, means (a) not mythical (unlike the garden of adonis) or (b) not sym¬ bolic or allegorical, contrary to com¬ mon Biblical interpretation. (The Song of solomon is called “a divine pas¬ toral drama” in CG 237.)

209 -

N naphta

Naoman

see

Fluid asphalt i 729.

GEHAZI.

Naples Nabal

Ten 43 refers to the revolt of the Neapolitans under Masaniello in 1647 against tire Spanish viceroy, which led to promises from the oppressive rulers that were afterwards cruelly broken: in 1648 the Spaniards meted out severe punishment instead. Belgia”—Belgium—had also been strug¬ gling against Spain, for religious free¬

The wealthy sheep-master who re¬ fused tribute to david An 316; CD 2, 5. See 1 Sam. xxv, 22. Naboth's vineyard

Coveted by King ahab and pos¬ sessed by him after Naboth, by jezebel’s plotting, was stoned to death (1 Kings xxi) K 76.

dom.

Naevius, Gnaeus

Narcissus

(d. c. 204 b.c. ) Though only fragmentarily extant, ranks with plautus as two “first Latin comedians,” A 301. After his first satiric play in 235 “was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen,” for, attached to the plebeian party, with the license of the Attic comedy he made the stage a vehicle for his attacks upon the aristocracy, notably scifio and the Metelli. Died in exile at Utica.

A beautiful youth (cf. SD 124) who, rejecting the nymph echo, fell in love with his own image in a fountain and pined till he died C 237; his corpse was metamorphosed into the flower that bears his name, ovid’s account (Meta, III, 407 ff.) influenced

Naiad(es)

Water-nymph(s) C 254; 355; EL VII 24; LR III, 3.

PR

2,

Naseby, the Battle of

At this village 12 miles above Northampton Fairfax and cromwell decisively defeated Charles i, June 14,1645, K 250. Naso OVID.

Namancos

A citadel of Spain near Cape Finisterre, L 162. Nantes, Council of

A provincial synod of date, perhaps 658 T 210.

iv 453-69.

uncertain

naturalities

Natural histories used illustratively, K 253. Naturam Non Pat! Senium

(That Nature is not Subject to Old

210-

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A Milton Dictionary

Age). 69 hexameters. Milton's first work to be printed, if it is the piece referred to in FE #3 to gill, 10 (though no such copies survive and the lines could have been De Idea Platonica). It was prepared for a Fellow too senior to bother with such trifles (nugas) himself. It would have been distributed by the University Beadles (cf. EL II) at the Cam¬ bridge Commencement held in St. Mary’s Church, Tuesday July 1, 1628. Milton, whether by youthful convic¬ tion or assignment, takes the side of the modems in the battle of ancients and modems that raged through the century from bacon to Swift—i.e., he is on the side of optimism and prog¬ ress in denying the popular notion of a gradual decadence or deteriora¬ tion of the physical universe. He thus allied himself with George Hakewell, Archdeacon of Surrey, who published the year before An Apology or Decla¬ ration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World; or an Examination and Cen¬ sure of the Common Error touching Nature’s perpetual and Universal De¬ cay. Cf. Pro! VII 278-80. After an introduction on the per¬ sistence of error, the wrong side is presented first in a series of ques¬ tions. Is mother Nature really getting wrinkled and barren and tottering? Will the heavens fall and the gods plummet down like hephaestus or phaeton? No, the omnipotent Father has built more strongly than that. The Primum Mobile (37) will con¬ tinue to function and each planet spin at its accustomed rate, the ele¬ ments will be faithful, the northern winds blow, the sea-forces remain the same, and the earth is as it was, and shall endure until the Second Coming (cf. 2 Peter iii, 10).

navel

Center, C 520. Nazareth

A town of Galilee where jesus spent his early years and afterwards preached PR 1, 23, 79. Though Milton said it no longer existed, CD 1, 14, a church still stands there over the tra¬ ditional place of the Annunciation. Nazarite

Name given to Samson in Bible as one bound by a vow of a peculiar kind to be set apart from others for the service of God (cf. Numbers vi, 1-21) SA 318, 1359, 1386; CG 276; K 257. P 98. Plural, An 164. Nazianzen

see

Neaera

A girl whose locks are mentioned by Horace, Car. Ill, xiv, 21-2, L 69. Nebaioth ishmael’s first-bom (Gen. xxv, 13), used for ishmael himself, the “fugi¬ tive bondwoman” being his mother hacar PR 2, 309.

Nebo

Elevation in the land of moab ne of the Dead Sea (cf. 1 Chron. v, 8) where moses took his first and last view of the Promised Land, i 407. Nebuchadnezzar

(d. 562 b.c. ) The greatest and most powerful of the Babylonian kings, “who twice / Judah and all thy Father David’s house/Led captive,” PR 3, 281-3. His “image” An 140 (Daniel ii, 31-35). Palace (not pinnacle) K 124. Another comparison with Charles, 215. Precedent ID 178, 298. Necessity

Fate Arc 69; vii 172; SA 1666.

211-

-

GREGORY NAZIANZEN.

A Milton Dictionary

Nectanebo

Nereus

Last native king of Egypt (361-340 ), who fled from artaxerxes ochus to Nubia, ID 294.

Son of oceanus, called by homer “the Ancient of the Sea,’ (II. XVIII, 141) C 835, 871, the kindly father of 50 daughters, the Nereids. By exten¬ sion the sea itself: NS 27; MAR 297.

b.c.

Negus

The title of the king of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) xi 397. Nehemia(h)

(5th cent, b.c.) Jewish leader, author of the book of the Bible named after him, who was appointed by Artaxerxes I governor of Judea, 445 b.c., and authorized to rebuild Jeru¬ salem. D 407, 411; M 8; T 110, 191, 193; CP 34. Nennius

(fl. 796) “The most ancient of our historians after cildas,” ID 436. Welsh compiler of Historia Britonum, which records early British legends, especially about king Arthur, B 5, 30, 90, etc.

Milton repeats Nero’s pun (Sue¬ tonius, Nero, XXXIII, 1) on morari (1) to delay and (2) to play the fool Prol VI 246; “I have fooled away enough time.” Nessus

A centaur who in revenge for be¬ ing foiled in his attempted abduction of the wife of Hercules left “an en¬ venomed robe,” ii 543 as a present which stuck to the hero and brought about his agonizing death PM 11. nether Jove PI.UTO,

C 20.

nettlers

Neobule (Neobolen)

See

Neronian sense

Irritants An 113.

LYCAMBES.

Neocaesarea, Council of

Neville, Henry

Held in Pontus, Asia Minor, some¬ time between 314 and 325, it passed 15 canons concerned chiefly with dis¬ ciplinary and marriage questions. nepenthes

Member of the Council of State from 1651, on Dec. 31 of which year he was appointed to a committee to meet with mylius. Figures in the Milton-MYLius correspondence, EC 41; XII, 364, 368, 374.

The magic anodyne of Od. IV, 221 C 675.

New Atlantis bacon’s (unfinished) scientific utopia, published in 1627, Sm 294.

Neptune

Latin name for the god of the sea whose Greek name, Poseidon, is not used (cf. jove), even in a reference to the harrying of Odysseus in the Odys¬ sey, ix 18. Made god of islands, C 18 (“earth-shaking,” C 869, is a Homeric epithet). Associated with Britain through aebion, his giant offspring, QN 27; PE 10; B 4.

Newcastle, Ear] of

William Cavendish (1592 1675), who became Duke of Newcastle, lent Charles I 10,000 pounds; joined him at york Was a resourceful commander in the north, K 105, 142. An author himself, his wife Margaret the Duch¬ ess wrote a famous biography of him.

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Newcastle On the river Tyne in Northumber¬ land Ten 37,166.

aca” and “Alexipharmaca” deal respec¬ tively with venomous animals and antidotes for poisons, E 284.

Newmarket

Nicanor, Lysimachus

Town in west Suffolk, O 245. Newport Capital of the Isle of wight, where Commissioners chosen by Parliament met King Charles on Sept. 18, 1648, but, contrary to what Milton indi¬ cates Ten 38; ID 520, did not make much progress with a firm “confes¬ sion.” Newton, Thomas (1704-82) Of Trinity College, Cam¬ bridge (where he studied the cambridge ms afresh), who became bish¬ op of Bristol in 1761, edited the first Variorum edition (“with notes of vari¬ ous authors”) of Milton s poems, 174952, among his collaborators being Warburton, Thyer, Jortin, Meadowcourt, Sympson, and space given to the previously published remarks of Hume, addison', bentley, Pearce, and peck. There are verbal indexes. “In Newton we find a typical erudite divine, a man of more culture and intelligence than originality” (Oras). He showed uneasiness at any sugges¬ tion of unorthodoxy in PL. His much reprinted edition, of necessity slighter for the poems other than PL, held its ground until warton and todd. Nicaea “First and best reputed Council,” R 30; “first and famousest,” 17. Con¬ vened in this Asia Minor city by Con¬ stantine (cf. 23), 325, to deal with the problems raised by arianism. “Nicene Council,” P 99; CG 258. Nicander (2nd cent, b.c.) Greek poet and physician whose extant poems “Theri-

Pseudonym, An 111; Sm 319, of John Corbet (1604-41), a renegade Presbyterian minister who issued in January, 1640 Epistle Congratulatory of Lysimachus Nicanor of the Society of Jesu, to the Covenanters in Scot¬ land, professing to see little difference between Scotch presbyter and Roman priest. “The Jesuit is called the Popish Puritan, and the Puritan . . . the Pro¬ testant Jesuit.” In the Irish rebellion Corbet was “hewn in pieces by two swineherds in the very arms of his poor wife.” nice Fastidious, C 139; v 433; iv 241; vi 584; viii 399; PR 4, 157. Nicene Council See nicaea. Nicephorus Phocas (913P-69) “The Greek Emperor,” R 17, ruled “tyrannically” over the Eastern Roman Empire from 963. Murdered by his Armenian successor Joannes Zirnisces. “In a reign of six years he provoked the hatred of stran¬ gers and subjects” (Gibbon). Nicetas Choniates (CB 219) or Acominatus (d. c. 1215) Byzantine historian, K 84. Milton used the Paris, 1647 edition, containing both Greek and Latin texts, of his Imperii Graeci Historia, which covers the Greek emperors from 1118 to 1206. Nieuport (Neuportius), William Served for years as “ambassador of the United Provinces,” SD 98. Asked by morus to make representations to

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Milton that morus of the Regii.

was

not the author

Nicomachus Aristotle’s son, after whom the Nicomacliean Ethics is named (pos¬ sibly because he edited it), to dis¬ tinguish it from the same philoso¬ pher’s Eudemian Ethics (named after Eudemus, a favorite pupil), D 501; Col 259.

Niger A 2600-mile river of western Africa, xi 402. night-foundered Lost in the night, C 483; i 204. Nimrod (“Rebel”; cf. xii 36) The “mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen. x, 9) whom Milton had ample non-Biblical authority for making, xii, 24-63, the builder of babel. “The first king, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel” (cf. Gen. x, 10), K 306; “the first that founded monarchy,” 185. “Cruel Nimrods,” An 173. ID 396 ( NIMBROTUS ).

Nineteen Propositions Made by Parliament to the King, June 1, 1642, and rejected by Charles as annihilating royal power, K 174.

Niphates (“Snow mountain”) “The Assyrian mount,” iv 126; cf. 569, actually part of the Taurus range in Armenia, iii 742. Nisibis Town in northern Mesopotamia on the Tigris, PR 3, 291. Nisroc (From 2 Kings xix, 37) The name (which may mean “the great eagle”) of an idol of nineveh in whose temple Sennacherib was worshipping when assassinated by his sons. This rebel angel, finding the fight too painful after the first day, welcomes in ad¬ vance Satan’s invention of gunpowder, vi 447. Nisus See

euryalus.

nitre Saltpeter, ii 937. nitrous, vi 512. Gunpowder, iv 815.

nitrous powder.

No More Addresses The charge that Buckingham mur¬ dered james i was revived in The Votes of the Lords and Commons As¬ sembled in Parliament, Touching No Farther Addresses to the King, a pub¬ lication of Feb. 18, 1648, K 76. nocent

Nineveh The capital of the Assyrian empire, on the Tigris. “Built by ninus old,” PR 3, 275-6. For its size cf. Jonah iii, 3. Fell in 612 b.c. to the medes and Chal¬ dean Babylonians.

(Latin) harmful, ix 186. noise Music, N 97; Mus 18. nomenclator A slave informant. An 109.

Ninon NINEVEH,

Nomentonus, Crescentius, Johannes

EL I 66.

Ninus Assyrian king, husband of semiramis, Id 30; PR 3, 276. See nineveh.

(d. 998) Assumed title of patrician and dominated Rome and the papacy, setting up antipope John XVI, but

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was crushed by the Emperor Otto III, 2D 248.

Norumbega

Roughly, the New England area, x 696.

Norfolk

A country on the east coast of Eng¬ land where in 1549 the people rose in protest against enclosures and for reli¬ gious reforms. The Earl of Warwick (who became Duke of Northumber¬ land) succeeded, where the Marquis of Northampton had failed, in quell¬ ing the “plain war” of 16,000 strong led by Robert Ket, a tanner, R 8. Norman Isles

(French, lies Normandes) The Channel Islands (e.g. Jersey, Guern¬ sey, Alderney), off the coast of Nor¬ mandy, D 376. Northumberland, Duke of

John Dudley (1502P-1553) who, after suppressing Ket’s rebellion {see Norfolk) and procuring the execu¬ tion of the Protector Somerset, “bent all his wit how to bring the right of the crown into his own line,” R 8, by promoting to the throne his daughterin-law Lady Jane (Grey) Dudley, 9. “His apostasy well showed at his death,” since on the scaffold he avowed himself a Roman Catholic, R

68.

Notus

The south wind, x 702. Novations

A rigorist schismatic group in the Western Church which arose from the decian persecution of 249-50 and was led by Novatian, a Roman presbyter. Numa (Pompilius)

Ranked among the “good kings,” Ten 15 and inspired “lawgivers,” CG 186, this second legendary king (715673 b.c. ) of early Rome was a Sabine who was instructed by the goddess Egeria whom he visited in a cave or grove and who honored him with her love. numbering Israel

See I Chron. xxi, 1 PR 3, 410. numerous

Metrical, v 150; Sm 302. Nyseian Isle

Nysa (from which dionysus, nur¬ tured there, derived his name) was near Tunis in north Africa, iv 275. The passage derives from diodorus siculus, III, 67.

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o oat

The oaten pipe of pastoral poetry, L 88. oath ex officio

This required those who appeared before the Court of High Commission to answer any question truthfully, no matter how irrelevant. Abolished with that Court July 5, 1641, Sm 326, 328. Ob

In Siberia, ix 78; HM 331, 333, 342, etc. obdured

Hardened, ii 568; vi 785. oblige

Entangle in guilt, ix 980. oblivious

Causing forgetfulness (like the river ), i 266.

LETHE

obnoxious

Exposed (to), ix 170, 1094; SA 106; CG 212; Ten 38; K 176. Observations upon the Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels, on the Letter of Ormond to Col. Jones, and the Representation of the Pres¬ bytery at Belfast. The last section of a small octavo issued May 16, 1649, the title-page of which reads: “Articles of Peace, made and concluded with the Irish Rebels, and Papists, by James Earle of Or¬ mond, for and in behalfe of the late

King, and by vertue of his Autoritie. Also a Letter sent by Ormond to Col. Jones, Governour of Dublin, with his Answer thereunto. And a Representa¬ tion of the Scotch Presbytery at Bel¬ fast in Ireland Upon all which are added Observations. Publisht by Autority.” Only the Observations, 242-71, are by Milton, whose authorship is known from the Council of State’s Order Book entry of March 28, 1649 “That Mr. Milton be appointed to make some observations upon the complication of interest which is now amongst the several designers against the peace of the Commonwealth. And that it be made ready to be printed with the papers out of Ireland which the House hath ordered to be printed.” The three objects of criticism are listed in the sub-title. James Butler (1610-88), earl and marquis (and from 1661 duke) of Ormond, had been appointed Charles I's lord-lieu¬ tenant of Ireland, January, 1644. Jan. 17, 1649, 13 days before the execution of his king, this royalist commander made peace with the Catholic Con¬ federacy of Kilkenny on terms that were designed to win the rebels’ mili¬ tary support and that struck Milton, speaking for the government, with “indignation and disdain, that those bloody rebels, and so proclaimed and judged of by the King himself, after the merciless and barbarous massacre of so many thousand English, . . . should be now graced and rewarded

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with such freedoms and enlargements as none of their ancestors could ever merit by their best obedience. . . 243. (Ormond in the same year pro¬ claimed Charles II, besieged Dublin, was defeated at Rathmines in August, and suffered the crushing of his garri¬ sons by Cromwell in the remaining months.) One article that Milton sin¬ gles out as showing the hopelessness of trying to civilize the Irish is #22, repealing “those acts prohibiting to plow with horses by the tail and bum oats in the straw.” His figure for the slain in the massacre “by those Irish barbarians” in 1641-2 is 200,000 (cf. ID 286) (where Clarendon’s is “forty or fifty thousand”). Secondly, Milton defends the parliament and army of England against the aspersions in Or¬ mond’s letter to Col. Michael Jones (who died of a fever late in 1649 as Cromwell’s second in command). Fi¬ nally, more than half of Milton’s pages are taken up with an answer to critics “from a barbarous nook of Ireland,” the Belfast Presbytery, whose protest against regicide and the “insolencies of the sectarian party in England” was issued Feb. 15.

who was the personification of the streams which encircle the earth. His Trumpeter (Tubicen), NS 58 was TRITON.

Ocnus

(Sloth) As with sisyphus, a proverb of futility, Prol III 168: Ocnus twists ropes (as s.almasius twists conclusions, ID 474), “which never served to bind with, but to feed the ass that stood at his elbow,” D 500. Odrysian

Poetical for Thracian, EL IV 78. The warlike character of the tribes of Thrace led to the belief that Ares (or Mars) had his residence in that coun¬ try (cf. Ody. VIII, 361). Oechalia (misprinted Oealia in 1667).

A town in either thessaly or Euboea (Milton, like the ancients, seems divided) that was the residence of Eurytus, whom Hercules defeated and slew, ii 542. oeconomy

(Greek) Household management, CG 188; oeconomize (verb) Ten 40.

obsequious

Oedipecm night (Oedipodioniam

Following or obedient, vi 10, 783; viii 509.

. . . noctem)

obstriction

Legal obligation, SA 312. obtunding

Deadening, Col 255.

Milton’s first reference, NS 3, to blindness, literal and figurative; the thwarted Oedipus of sophocles’ Oedi¬ pus Rex having blinded himself at the end of the tragedy. Oeta

A mountain in

obvious

thessaly,

ii 545; PM

12.

Latin obvius, lying in the way, vi 69; xi 374; SA 95; viii 504; x 106; M 15; D 401. Oceanus

The titan (associated with “great” in both homer and hesiod) C 868

Of Education. To Master Samuel Hartlib

Published June, 1644 without titlepage or author’s name, it was the first of the pamphlets to be registered (| une 4) and licensed. After Areopagitica it

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is the most often reprinted and read of Milton’s prose works. Originally 8 pages, the 2nd edition without textual change occupied 23 pages of the 1673 Poems (q.v. for title-page), where was added the explanatory note, “Written above twenty years since.” Facsimile, ed. O. Browning, 1890; ed. O. M. Ainsworth, 1928; ed. D. C. Dorian (yale milton), 1959. Hartlib (c. 1598-c. 1670) joined forces with John Dury and John Amos Comenius in England in 1641 as “a triumvirate of enlightenment pledged to mutual advice before publication of their thoughts on science, education, com¬ merce, religion” (D. C. Wolfe). This was the year of Hartlib’s own eco¬ nomic and agricultural utopia, A De¬ scription of the Famous Kingdom of Macaria (Greek for blessedness). “A person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this island,” E 275, Hartlib was born in Prussia of a Polish merchant and an English mother. Having attended Cambridge previ¬ ously, he returned to England to stay by 1628. After running an economic¬ ally unsuccessful school in Chichester, he became a zealous proponent of educational reform and translated or had published in England writings of the great Moravian educator Comen¬ ius or Komensky (1592-1670), such as the Janua Linguarum Reserata (the Open Door to Languages) and summaries of the Didactica Magna (Great Didactic), works which Milton brushes aside: “to search what many modern Janua’s and Didactics more than ever I shall read have pro¬ jected, my inclination leads me not” 276. Hartlib and Milton had met in Aldersgate Street by 1643; the latter was recognized by the former as a schoolmaster who “has written many

good books,” and Milton was willing, though “having my mind for the pres¬ ent half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions,” to yield to “your earnest entreaties” 275 and give “a general view in writing ... of that which at several times I had dis¬ coursed with you concerning the best and noblest way of education” 291. Milton derived more from his actual experience at that by no means typi¬ cal school, St. Paul’s, than from what he had read or heard of Comenius. The two agreed that Latin could and should be taught faster, that foreign languages are means to an end, not ends in themselves, and that the gen¬ eral educational progression should be from the sensible to the abstract: as bacon said, “scholars . . . come too soon and too unripe to logic and rhetoric.” But Comenius was demo¬ cratic (providing for the education of all classes, and girls as well as boys) and stressed vocational training, while slighting literature. “The end then of learning is to re¬ pair the ruins of our first parents by gaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imi¬ tate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.” “I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war.’ There is the Baconian emphasis “that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known.” Greek and Latin can be taught in much less time than is now customary, and the seven liberal arts should be taught in the order of dif¬ ficulty, beginning with those “most

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obvious to the sense.” Milton’s acad¬ emy, which combines school and col¬ lege (the university being needed only for professional training, as in law or medicine), will house boys be¬ tween the ages of 12 and 21. While learning Latin, which they will pronounce in the Italian fashion, the boys will be inspired by “some easy and delightful book of educa¬ tion” and by the example of their teacher “in willing obedience, in¬ flamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue.” Arithmetic will be followed by geometry, the evenings being devoted to “the easy grounds of religion and the story of scripture.” Then come Greek, geo¬ graphy, and agriculture, along with other sciences, and applied medicine. Actual practitioners and the ancient poets can serve in their different ways as teachers. Moral writings are reserved until about this time, age 15 or 16, when judgment can be brought to bear. The boys are ready to study house¬ hold management, and having picked up on the side Italian, can pursue the subject in plays in several languages. The historical study of political sci¬ ence, law, and theology (an hour be¬ ing set aside for Hebrew and its chief dialects) can then precede the highest reaches of literary reading, composi¬ tion and logic waiting until “they shall be thus fraught with an univer¬ sal insight into things.” Such a pro¬ gram will improve our politicians, to say nothing of our clergy. But let us not forget the importance of constant review. So much for their studies, according to the best ancient precedents. “Their exercise,” advisable before meals, will consist of swordplay and wrestling, with intervals of music. There will also be miltary maneuvers and educa¬

tional field trips. After they graduate they might well travel abroad “to en¬ large experience and make wise ob¬ servations.” The third topic, diet, calls for no more description than that it “be plain, healthful, and moderate” and under one roof. Milton ends with an intimation that he realizes that his program may be hard for any one but an extraordinary person to carry out. Hartlib, who received a pension of parliament for works on husbandry, 1646, was the friend whom the printer vlaccus approached in an attempt to get some writings of Milton to print, SD 72. Of/ Prelatical/ Episcopacy,/ and/

Whether it may be deduc'd from/ the Apostolical times by vertve of those Testi-/ monies which are alledg'd to that purpose/in some late Treatises:/ One whereof goes un¬ der the Name of/ lames/ Arch¬ bishop/ of/ Armagh Milton’s second antiprelatic tract (also anonymous) came out in June or July, 1641. The chief of the “Late treatises” that it briefly answers was The Judgment of Doctor Rainoldes Touching the Original of Episcopacy, More confirmed out of Antiquity, by James Ussher (1581-1656), who had been archbishop of Armagh, that is, primate of Ireland in Ulster, since 1625. He was one of the most learned men of the century and is famous for having established the standard chronology of the Bible that begins with the creation in 4004 b.c. Taking words from the mild Calvinist john rainolds, one of whose tracts the anti-episcopal faction had just re¬ printed, Ussher lined himself up at Hall’s request with Hall’s Episcopacy by Divine Right Asserted (1640). The

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copacy by Divine Right, 1640, with, in January, 1641, An Humble Remon¬ strance to the High Court of Parlia¬ ment, by A Dutiful Son of the Churcn, for the Long Parliament, which had been meeting since November, 1640, was now turning to questions of church government and reform, and in the month of Milton’s pamphlet the Root and Branch Bill abolishing archbishops and bishops altogether was introduced by Sir Edward Dering and passed two readings. Five Puritan divines, led by Milton’s former tutor young, put their initials together to fonn the name Smectymnuus as author of An Answer to a Book En¬ titled “An Humble Remonstrance” that was registered March 20. The col¬ laborators were, besides Young, Stephen Marshall (1594P-1655), who had been a great preacher before the Short Parliament and came to be con¬ sidered by Clarendon a more formid¬ able opponent on the one side than laud was on the other (he was destined to be exhumed from West¬ minster Abbey after the Restoration); Edmund Calamy (1600-66), incum¬ bent of St. Mary’s, Aldenr.anbury, 1638-62, a presbyterian who was to Of /Ref ormation/Touching/Churchshow himself intolerant of other sects; Discipline/in/England:/And the Matthew Newcomen (1609P-69), con¬ nected with Calamy by marriage after Causes that hilher-/to have hun¬ having been a student at St. Johns dred it./Two bookes,/Written to College, Cambridge, in Milton’s time; a Freind. This, Milton’s first pamphlet and and William (double-U) Spurstow (1605P-66), like Marshall a product the first of his five antiprelatical tracts of Emmanuel College, the Puritan of 1641-2, was published without his name in May, 1641. Next reprinted stronghold at Cambridge. While Hall with the other prose by toland in was already answering back the 1698, and birch, 1738. Ed. Will T. Smectymnuans with a pamphlet that Hale, 1916; D. M. Wolfe and W. Al¬ Milton mocked in his Animadversions, Milton, who may have been consulted fred in the yale milt on, 1953. Joseph Hall (1574-1656), a bishop with a by the Smectymnuans in the prepara¬ Puritan past, left the see of Exeter, tion of their first controversial work, which he had held since 1627, for that became their ally with this reasoned of Norwich in 1641: he followed Epis¬ historical review, which was written

pseudonymous Peloni Almoni, Cos¬ mopolites, A Compendious Discourse, Proving Episcopacy to Be of Apostoli¬ cal and Consequently of Divine Insti¬ tution, like Ussher's a May, 1641 tract, also figures in the controversy. Milton begins logically by stating that if episcopacy is only of human constitution it can be disregarded; if it is divine, what difference between presbyter and bishop can be found in scripture? As for “that indigested heap and fry of authors” reverenced as an¬ tiquity, let us take a closer look “by making appear . . . first the in¬ sufficiency, next the inconvenience, and lastly the impiety' of these gay [specious] testimonies.” “leontius, an obscure bishop,” proves a frail reed for the gadders after antiquity to lean on. Other authorities are late, or, like Ignatius, of doubtful authenticity. poly carpus is seen in a delusive glow of superstition, tebtullian is not even orthodox. After a cloud or rather a “petty fog” of witnesses, we shall be inconvenienced by being led away from the plain truth, and guilty of impiety for neglecting “the brightness and perfection of the gospel.”

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early in the year and added to ( 65 ff.) in order to deal with some objections to the London Petition (the Root and Branch Petition of December, 1640 signed by 15,000 Londoners) by lord digby and Falkland in February and Oxford University’s protest of April. Opening with a sentence of 146 words, and following it with one of •375, Milton comes out of his “deep and retired thoughts” with an ela¬ borate opposition between the body and the spirit of Christ’s church. wycliffe lit the first blaze of the Re¬ formation, but England’s “purity of doctrine” has not yet been equalled by her “discipline, which is the execu¬ tion and applying of doctrine home.” henry vni was sut rounded by bishops who “still hugged the popedom.” edward vi had civil troubles, and in his reign and the next there was still the gangrene of bishops, martyred or not. Elizabeth felt she had to proceed cautiously. The three present “hinderers of re¬ formation” are the Antiquitarians (“for so I had rather call them than antiquaries, whose labors are useful and laudable”), the Libertines, and the Politicians. To the first it is to be answered that episcopacy today is a far cry from what it used to be, as regards appointment and revenue and work; “secondly, that those purer times were corrupt, and their books corrupted soon after; thirdly, that the best of those that then wrote disclaim that any man should repose on them, and send all to the sciiptures.” Having presented in learned detail these typi¬ cally puritan conclusions, and having both used and attacked the church fathers, Milton dismisses at the end of the First Book the Libertines as unworthy of answer. The Second Book replies to the Politicians, who link church and state

and raise the cry, “No bishop, no king.” (a line of reasoning that origi¬ nated with James I). For the first point, the Church “can be a handmaid to wait on civil commodities and re¬ spects.” For the second, episcopacy “is not only not agreeable, but tending to the destruction of monarchy.” For instance, becket defied Henry II. At present the prelates are leeches bleed¬ ing the kingdom white. “Certainly a wise and provident king ought to suspect a hierarchy in his realm, being ever attended, as it is, with two such greedy purveyors, ambition and usur¬ pation.” Let them hope not for “a fraternal war.” Let us “cut away from the public body the noisome and diseased tumor of prelacy.” Let us not fear extremes when the extremes are correct, or be timid of the future. The book ends with a prayer and a curse, and in between a promise that as the millenium dawns “someone may perhaps be heard offering at high strains in new and lofty meas¬ ures to sing and celebrate Thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages.” The pamphlet is marked by images of greasy cooking and queasiness and disease that have led to the conjec¬ ture that the author was troubled by indigestion. However, there is a con¬ sistency with the puritan view that the Church-body has been corrupted. masson and Hale and Wolfe specu¬ lated that Milton may have been that author or compiler of A Postscript (reprinted Yale f, 966-75) that was joined to the original Smectymnuan Answer. Of/True Religion,/Haeresle,/ Schism,/Toleration,/And what best means may be/ us'd against the growth of/Popery/The Author J.M.

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offensive mountain pamphleteer, Milton returned to the See MOUNTAIN, OFFENSIVE. fray for the last time the year before he died with this, his most antiofficiate Romish tract, out by May 6, 1673. The To supply, viii 22. Declaration of Indulgence issued by Charles II, March 15, 1672, which officious suspended the penal statutes against Ministering or eager to serve, ix Catholics and Dissenters, was de¬ 104; viii 99; PR 2, 302; Sm 326. nounced by the latter as a subterfuge for paving the way for popery. When Og Parliament met Feb. 4, 1673, amidst A giant of Bashan (Deut. iii, 11) SA much “no popery” agitation, discus¬ 1080 (“And large-limbed Og he did sions began which forced the king to subdue” Ps CXXXVI, 69). rescind the indulgence early in March Ogygium (also by the calculating advice of louis xiv, whose secret pensioner THEBAN, EL VI 68. Charles II was). Milton wrote from old man eloquent a background of panic which Trevel¬ Isocrates the orator. See Sonnet X. yan itemizes: “The unnatural alliance with France to destroy the Protestant Oldenburg, Count of State of Holland, the presence of a See under mylius. standing army under officers whose religion was suspect, the ill-concealed Oldenburg, Henry Romanism of the Duke of York, who (1615P-77). Was agent for his na¬ commanded our fleets, and of Clifford, who controlled our counsels, the abey¬ tive Bremen when he made Milton’s acquaintance in 1654. FE #14 of July ance of the Penal Laws throughout 6 shows that Oldenburg was in doubt the country and the ‘flaunting of about the authorship of the Regii, Papists’ at Court.” Milton’s reply to which, 2D, he had In the circumstances and in dis¬ been given a complimentary copy of. illusioned old age, Milton’s toleration Milton defends his role as a contro¬ is less than it was in A Treatise of versialist: an “idle ease” (iners otium) Civil Power, 1659. “Heresy” is now a never was pleasing. With FE #18, bad word, for popery is the only or June 25, 1656, Oldenburg has entered greatest instance of that, and Roman into the role (that was to last until Catholic a contradiction in terms, 1660) of mentor to jones—first at Ox¬ “one of the Pope’s bulls” (pun). The ford and then on the Continent.— various sectaries “may have some #24, 29 (Aug. 1, 1657; Dec. 20, errors, but are not heretics,” “so long 1659). The last of these letters ends as all these profess to set the word of with Milton’s awaiting word of the God only before them as the rule of publication of salmasius’ posthumous faith and obedience.” But Romanism answer, amidst the civil troubles at is politically encroaching and idola¬ home that preceded the Restoration. trous. To hinder its growth it is neces¬ Oldenburg is of course praised in sary to heed scripture, “our only prin¬ letters to the pupil, XII, 82, 90, 100, ciple in Religion,” and “amend our 112. Oldenburg, whom masson de¬ nominates “a naturalized Englishman lives.”

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and a kind of second Hartlib,” was to marry john dury’s daughter, be a friend of Robert Boyle the chemist and correspondent of Spinoza, and serve from 1663 until his death as first secretary of the Royal Society and editor of their Transactions. He was not an unmitigated admirer of Newton. Olympian games

“In Elis, where was anciently that famous temple of Jove Olympius, in honor of whom were celebrated the Olympian games” Columbia MS. XVIII, 259 ii 530. Olympian hill

The mountain of the muses and gods in thessaly, vii 3: in general, Greek poetry. Olympias

The

mother of Alexander the reputedly by jupiter ammon, who came in the shape of a serpent, great,

ix 509. Olympiodorus

(5th cent.) Greek of a history of the Empire from 407 to abstract by photius B 100 (margin).

historian, author Western Roman 425, of which an survives, D 479;

Olympius jove,

NS 21.

Olympus

See

olympian hill.

omer

The moses’

measure that was used in rationing of manna (Ex. xvi,

16, 36) A 309. ominous

Full of portents or bad omens, C 61; PR 4, 481.

omnific

All-creating (Latin) vii 217. On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying

of a Cough 77 lines in 11 stanzas, iambic penta¬ meter with a final alexandrine, rhym¬ ing ababbcC, the same except for the extra last foot as rhyme royal and identical with a form that had been used in some unpublished poems by phineas fletcher and that Milton was soon to adopt again for the in¬ duction to the Nativity Hymn. The “Infant” is identified by edward Phil¬ lips as his own sister, Milton’s niece. The poem was not published until 1673, perhaps because its author thought it immature—or a too per¬ sonal family affair—and looking back almost fifty years he evidently ante¬ dated it, “Anno Aetatis 17,” for the child seems to have been Anne Phil¬ lips, baptised Jan. 12, 1626 and buried in the church of St. Martin-in-theFields, London, Jan. 22, 1628, to which year the epitaph thus belongs. masson noted the connection of the opening with Shakespeare’s Passion¬ ate Pilgrim fragment: “Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon vaded, Plucked in the bud, and vaded in the spring! Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded! Fair creature, killed too soon by death’s sharp sting!” The conceit (not necessarily meta¬ physical) of amorous “cold-kind” Winter is carried through 3 stanzas, the myth of the flower in the next stanza is still consistent, only V strik¬ ing a more personal note, as if the poet had seen his niece during her two years of life. There follow the typical starry references. In VIII, to

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mend the missing foot in the fourth line [Mercy] was inserted c. 1750 (cf. N 144). X points to the prevalence of plague at the time of composition. The last stanza tili.yard criticised as tactless in its assurance; it abashed EDWARD PHILLIPS, q.V.

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

An ode “composed 1629” when Milton was 21 and sent at Christmas time to diodati with EL VI (which refers to it, 79-90, as does The Pas¬ sion, 1-4). 244 lines, it was the leadoff poem in the 1645 volume. Not in MS. The four induction stanzas are in the same form as On the Death of a Fair Infant. “The Hymn” consists of 27 8-line stanzas a3a3b5c3c3b5d4d6. This “present to the infant God” (16) belongs to a line that includes Robert Southwell, “The Burning Babe,” ben jonson, “A Hymn on the Nativity of My Saviour,” Henry Vaughan, “Christ’s Nativity,” Thomas Traherne, “On Christmas Day,” Robert Herrick, “An Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour,” richard crashaw, “In the Holy Na¬ tivity of Our Lord God.” The poem has been praised as anticipating the organ strains of PL; it has been blamed for its alliteration and con¬ ceits, as in stanza xxvi, or in the 1645 reading of 143-4, “The enameled arras of the rainbow wearing,/And mercy set between,” changed to “Orbed in a rainbow, and like glories wearing/ Mercy will sit between” in 1673. It used to be called baroque; Wylie Sypher classifies it as mannerist. If the theme is “the triumph of the infant Christ over the gods of pagan¬ ism,” it is put in terms of the conquest of darkness by light, beginning with the Christinas pre-dawn, the winter night solstice of Jesus’ forsaking “the courts of everlasting day” to choose “with us a darksome house

of mortal clay” 13-4. Sinful nature hides under the snow; there is peace and expectation. The sun is abashed to appear before "a greater sun” 83. The announcement comes to the ears of shepherds by means of angelic music like that of the spheres, which can itself purify. But it is not the time of justice yet: “The babe lies yet in smiling infancy” 151, an etymologi¬ cal pun, “infans”—non-speaking. There must be noise before the final music: the “trump of doom must thunder” 156. However, Satan in wrath already “swinges” his scaly tail, as the oracles of the false gods fall silent, the divinities of Greece and Rome and the Orient flee (to be met again in PL, even as they had been doomed in the cry heard by Plu¬ tarch’s mariners, “Great pan is dead” cf. 181 £f.). Clirist like the infant Her¬ cules “Can in his swaddling bands control the damned crew” 228. The sun is arising; the shadows “troop to the infernal jail” 233. The guiding star stands over the cradle. On the New Forcers of Conscience

See

sonnets.

On the University Carrier

First of two pieces, 18 lines, heroic couplets, written early in 1631 on the notable Cambridge figure, Thomas Hobson (1544-Jan. 1, 1631), who drove his wain and horses weekly for some sixty years “betwixt Cambridge and the Bull” (8) Inn, Bishopsgate Street, transporting letters, parcels, and occasional passengers in either direction. He prospered both at this and by renting out horses, giving the scholars “Hobson’s choice,” that is, always the horse nearest the stabledoor, the most rested horse (see the spectator. No. 509). But the plague broke out in Cambridge in the spring of 1630, and Hobson, at 86, “being

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forbid to go to London,” “sicken’d in the time of his vacancy" of sheer in¬ ertia—as Milton postulates—and died, a loss remembered in dozens of sur¬ viving affectionate if not altogether respectful student poems. Milton’s two (for a possible third see, CM XVIII, 359) had their second printing in Wif Restored, 1658, author un¬ assigned and the first beginning dif¬ ferently: “Here lies old Hobson! Death hath his desire, And here (alas) hath left him in the mire.”

At a Solemn Music), 22 lines varying from iambic trimeters to the final alexandrine, rhymed mostly in pairs but beginning with interwoven rhyme, and then—as also at the endabba. “Leaden-stepping” 2 leads to “plummet” 3: the MS sub-title read: “set on a clock-case.” “Greedy” time is to be ended by Eternity, when “earthy grossness” shall be “quit” for the “happy-making” (translation of beati¬ fic) “sight” of God. (Not the only hint of Milton’s early reading of dante’s Paradiso: see EM). Oneal

Milton indulges in a series of witty paradoxes and puns (“shifter” 5, means both transporter and dodger), ending with the idea of death as a “chamberlain,” 14, i.e. inn attendant, the germ of which could have come from donne’s Second Anniversary (1612,1625), 85-6: “Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom Which brings a taper to the outward room.” II. Another on the Same.- 34 fines, heroic couplets, first printed anonym¬ ously in Archie Armstrong’s Banquet of Jests, 1640, and beginning (for identification), “Here Hobson lyes.” The puns this time are overwhelming and prove, as does Prol VI, that this student could jest with the others— ‘bis wain (wane) was his increase,” etc. Two words that require explica¬ tion today are “principles” 10 in the sense of a machine’s motive power (as well as a man’s, and there is reference too—with “ended”—to “principium” as meaning beginning), and “heaviness” 22 as a symptom of melancholy. 14 is of course academic word-play. On Time

Early poem of uncertain date (probably of the same period as

Daniel O’Neill. (1612P-1664) Be¬ came a royalist soldier, and in 1644 groom of the bedchambei to Charles I K 105. Onesimus

See ignatius. To the Ephesians, I, 3 T 88. Perhaps the same as St. Onesi¬ mus, the Phrygian slave on whose be¬ half st. paul wrote his Epistle to Philemon. Onkelos the Targumist

(fl. 1st or 2nd cent.) Reputed author of an Aramaic paraphrase of the Pentateuch, Sm 316; CD 1, 14. opacous

Dark (Latin) iii 418; viii 23. Ophion

(“The serpent”) titan who was forced to yield Olympus to Cronus (saturn) x 581. The Renaissance fol¬ lowed origen in making an identi fication with the serpent of Eden. Ophir

The region where King solomon obtained gold, xi 400. R 78 refers to Philip II (cf. 1 Kings x, 11) and Spain’s overseas possessions.

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Ophiueus

orb

(“Serpent-bearer”) A big northern constellation, ii 709.

bit, CG 186.

Ophiusa

Orbilius

(“Snake-abounding”) Greek name for one of the islands near Minorca, x

whose

528.

was the cane,

opiniaster

Orcades

(verb). To cause to move in an or¬

(b.

Dogmatist An 169.

113

b.c. ) Horace’s schoolmaster,

favorite

means

of

education

2D 82.

The Orkneys, a group of islands NE of Scotland, regarded as an “extreme” northern limit, ED 178; 2D 234.

opiniastrous

Opinionative Col 242.

ores

Oporinus, Johann

Whales, x 835.

(1507-68) Swiss printer, M 10. Oppian

Orcus

(3rd cent.?) Author of a long Greek poem on fishes and fishing popular in Latin translation, E 284. A poem of hunting by probably a different Op¬ pian is also mentioned by Phillips.

The Roman equivalent of Hades, god of the underworld, EL VII 83; Prol I 134; AdP 118; Man 18; ED 201; ii 964. Ordalium

opposite

The Ordeal, the “antiquated law” (before trial by jury became com¬ mon ) of appealing to divine authority to signify guilt or innocence, D 488.

Separated by 180 degrees, a malign sign, x 659. Cf. vi 314 and even ii 803. opprobrious hill

See

HILL, OPPROBRIOUS.

oread

Mountain nymph, ix 387.

Ops

Fertility goddess made wife of saturn by Romans (cf. ovm, Met. IX, 488) EL V 62; x 584. optic glass, tube

i 288; iii 390: the term telescopeused once by Milton, PR 4, 42—was adopted only gradually in mid-cen¬ tury to supplant the standard terms glass and tube. orb(s)

Celestial sphere(s); concentric and in the Ptolemaic astronomy conceived of as surrounding the earth and carry¬ ing the planets or stars with them in their revolution. “The utmost orb,” ii 1029 is the Primum Mobile.

Oreb

Horeb, “the mountain of God” (Ex. iii, 1 ff.) in Arabia near Mount sinai (sometimes identified with sinai or treated as a lower spur) where “the Angel of the Lord” appeared to moses in the burning bush, i 7, 484; xi 74. Orestis aemule

SD 278, as said by more means, “Rival of a madman.” Milton’s answer, as originally printed, “O restis aemule,” means “O emulous of the ropel”—a clever pun and insult that perhaps should not be emended. Orestes was driven frantic by the Furies after “killing his mother,” K

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297. His friend was Pylades—see quo¬ tation eubipides, Orestes, 795: 2D 74.

mabvell, “Bermudas,” 20: “Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.”

oretenus

Orontes

Latin ore tenus, “up to the mouth”: Milton means, contemptuously, spoon-feeding, the king’s needing a priest to attend on him hand and foot, K 260, spiritually. organic

Instrumental, means to an end, E 286; T 100. Orgilia

Place of “Pride” in Hall’s allegorical romance An 138. orient

Brilliant like the rising sun, i 546. Origen

(c,185-c. 254) Alexandrian Biblical exegete, successor of clement. “A lay¬ man, expounded the Scriptures pub¬ licly,” CG 258. Editor of the enormous Hexapla, Old Testament in six ver¬ sions in parallel columns. Errors, R 21, 34; ID 194. Corrupt text, R 22. On Song of Solomon as “divine pastoral drama,” CG 238. On divorce, D 481; M 32; T 209. On alms, H 86. Inter¬ preted Matt, xix, 12 literally, D 486. Orion

The mighty hunter who pursued the pleiades, EL VII 39, and became a constellation: a giant with a belt, sword, PE 54; AdP 39, a lion’s skin, and a club. Orion set at the beginning of November, a time of storms, as the Poet recognized, i 305. Ormond

See Observations on the Articles of Peace.

See

DAPHNE.

Orpheus

This

legendary early poet, “the bard,” vii 34, who was a member of the expedition of the Argo¬ nauts, MAR 294, and to whom was attributed the Orphic Hymns (ID 166; “To Aurora,” xxviii, 7-11 quoted Prol I 140) and a poem on the prop¬ erties of stones, the Lithica (which is evidently what is recommended in E 284), was supposed to have had the power to move stones and trees and streams, as well as beasts, with his “charming,” E 280 harp, “th’ Orphean lyre,” iii 17 and voice, Prol VI 210; VII 282; AdP 53. The most familiar story has to do with his loss of Eurydice, his wife: Orpheus went to Hades and with his music “won the ear/ Of pluto,” L’A 145 ff. to allow her to return, provided Orpheus did not look back at her on the way. He could not resist looking back once and lost her forever. The “iron tears down plutg’s cheek” had been educed in vain, L’A 105 If. His simple mode of living, EL VI 70. Milton twice recalled vividly this ideal poet’s end: he came upon the “wild rout” of Thracian women, angry Maenads in the midst of their Bac¬ chanalian orgies, whose “savage clam¬ or drown’d/ Both harp and voice,” and, undefended by the Muse, the poet was torn in pieces, and his head —“His gory visage down the stream was sent,/ Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore," L 58 ff.; vii 33 If. (personal identification). thbacian

Ormus

Ortelius

Island (Hormuz) that was chief mart for Persian Gulf area, ii 2. Cf.

Abraham Oertel or Ortell. (152798) Flemish geographer, whose atlas

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Theatrnm Orbis Terrarum (1570) was standard. An 138.

denial that more was the author of the Reg if).

orts

oughly-headed

Modernized as ugly-headed, C 695.

Scraps, leavings, K 87.

ounce

Orus

Lynx, C 71; vii 466; ix 344.

Horus, hawk-headed Egyptian god of day, son of isis and osmis, N 212. Rebel angel, i 478. Treated as an his¬ torical person, ID 292.

Ouse (Oose)

(Usa ED 175). Of the two main rivers of this name, one is in the north of England, the other in the south. Both are mentioned in B (224, 226, 228; 310). The former, a tributary of the humbep, is the likelier reference in the poetry, judging by the imme¬ diately surrounding names (e.g. Dun), V 92.

oscitant

Sluggish, D 440. Osiris

Egyptian god of agriculture and the Dead, brother and husband of isis, N 213; Id 31; i 478; sometimes mani¬ fest as a bull (“with lowings loud,” N 215). First king of the Egyptians? ID 290. On “that story ... of the Egyptian Typhori with his conspira¬ tors, how they dealt with the good Osiris,” A 338, see typhon.

overdated

Outdated D 469; K 185. over-exquisite

Over-particular, C 359. Overton, Robert

(fl. 1640-68) Who was to be im¬ prisoned as Fifth Monarchy leader after Restoration, singled out as Mil¬ ton’s friend “connected with me these many years most intimately in a more than brotherly union.” Conduct at Marston Moor and in Scotland, where he was Western commander, 1652-3, 2D 232. Opposed the Protectorate.

Ossa

See

pelion.

Otanes

For his speech against monarchy see herodotus, III, 80, ID 302. Otto of Freising (Ottonem Frinsingensem)

(1114?-58) German historian; bishop of Freising in Bavaria from 1137. Imi¬ tated aucustine’s City of Cod in De Duabus Civitatibus and commenced chronicle of Frederick I (Cesta Friderici Imperatoris), ID 200. Otto (Ottonus, also Hottonus)

Possibly Joh. Henricus Otto (161982), reformed theologian, bcin in Zurich, where he became professor of eloquence 1655, after visiting France and England. SD 24-6, 196, 264-6, 268 (all concerned with Otto’s hearsay -

Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)

(43 b.c.?-17 a.d. ) Though seldom mentioned, “poetarum elegantissimus” (Prol I 144—where the reference is Ex Ponto, I, ii, 41-2 or III, iii, 7), the leading influence on the style of Mil¬ ton’s Latin poetry and a fortiori a chief mythological source in his Meta¬ morphoses, “carmen istud Ovidianum” (Prol VI 174, reference to Met. I, 149-50), which gathers together all the stories involving miraculous trans¬ formations of fcrm—cf. x 504 ff. Ban-

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A Milton Dictionary

ished by Augustus (see tabpeia) to Tomi, EL I, 22—a passage that links him to the rusticated Milton and makes him a rival of homer and virgil —in 8 a.d.: “But that Naso was by him banished hi his old age for the wanton poems of his youth [e.g. Ars Amatoria, Amores] was but a mere covert of state over some secret cause,” A 301. See ccrallaeis. Satirist, PE 18. Fasti

VI, 292 quoted, Prol VI 232. Met. II, 541, adapted. An 120. E. K. Rand re¬ marks, “The youthful Milton . . . con¬ secrated liis earliest verses to Ovid,” and the same holds true for the myth¬ ology of the Prolusions. Oxus

A great river (Amu Darya) of Cen¬ tral Asia, xi 389.

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p pacification

A treaty of peace, K 165; W 139 (signed by some Scottish commission¬ ers with Charles on the Isle of Wight, Dec. 6, 1647, the prelude to the Sec¬ ond Civil War). packing

Pales

Roman protectress of flocks and herds, ix 393; ED 32. (Her festival was the Palilia April 21), Prol VI 238. Palinode

Collusion, FC 14.

See

Padan-Aram

spenser.

palisadoes

Country in Mesopotamia, iii 513.

Stakes used for fortification, D 479.

Paean

“The Physician,”

dows: Skeat compares PR 4, 243: “studious walks and shades.”

pall, scepter'd apollo,

Sal 25.

Royal mantle, IP 98.

Paeninas Alpes

palls

The Pennine Alps, crossed by Milton on his return from Italy, 2D 126, “lie between Haute Savoie and Wallis on one side, and Turin and Novara on the other, and include Mont Blanc” (Gilbert).

The pallium worn as a sign of pon¬ tifical power: a band of white wool with pendants of silk and adorned with crosses, R 2.

Palatine, Mount

The most central of the 7 hills of Rome, PR 4, 50. Palatine

Count palatine (=possessing royal privileges; cf. SD 96). Comes Palatii, ID 442, was a title of Roman origin applied from the 13th century to cer¬ tain German rulers, T 224; ID 106. pole

IP 156 if a noun=enclosure (redun¬ dant after “cloister”); possibly an ad¬ jective continuing the theme of sha¬

Palladian oil

Reference A 325 to Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom, the oil perhaps being that of the olive tree, sacred to her (cf. “burn the midnight oil”). “Palladiasque artes,” ED 34. Adjective for Cambridge students, EL II 2; PM 33. Palladium

Originally, the statue of Pallas Athene on the preservation of which depended die safety of Troy, R 24; 2D 64. Pallas

Reference to the myth of her being

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born full-grown and armed from the head of Zeus, Id 11; cf. ii 752 ff.

Pandora

(“All. . . gifts,” iv 715.) Linked with D 441; iv 714, “brought by hermes” to Epimetheus, as the gods’ revenge for prometheos’ theft of fire for man, there came with her a box or jar (Prol IV 172) containing all human ills, upon the opening of which all escaped and spread over the earth, Hope alone remaining. eve,

palmer

A pilgrim who, on his return from Jerusalem, bore a palm-branch or palm-leaf in sign thereof, C 189. Palmerin

Romances of the 16th century which first appeared in Spanish and Portu¬ guese and had a knightly hero of this name, K 89. palpable obscure

Pandrasidos

See

inogen.

Paneas

“Darkness which may be felt” (cf. Exodus x, 21). palsy, dead

Total paralysis, CG 214.

Banias, Greek name for Dan, a town in northern Palestine, near a source of the Jordan, iii 535. paneguries

(Greek) Ceremonious public assem¬ blies, CG 240.

Pam(m)ela

See Eikonoklastes. Pamphagonia

panim (paynim)

“Place of Gorging” in Hall’s ro¬ mance, An 138.

Another form of pagan, i 765; PR 3, 343. Panope

Pan

(1) N 89, Type of Christ as the Good Shepherd. “The name is most rightly . . . applied to him for Pan signifieth all, or omnipotent, which is only the Lord Jesus” E. K. gloss to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, May. (2) Goat-legged god of nature, patron of shepherds. “Universal,” iv 266. “Wanton” role, C 176; Arc 106; EL V 125; PR 2, 190. Sleeper in shade, ED 52; iv 707. Wood god, C 268. pancratically (pancratiee)

Athletically, like a fighter, Prol VI 240. pandemonium

The palace of “all the devils (op¬ posite of pantheon). Milton’s coinage (Henry More had Pandaemoniothen), i 756; x 424.

(“All-seeing”) A sea-nymph, one of the Nereids (see nereus), L 99. Paclo, Padre

Sarpi (1552-1623) “The great Vene¬ tian antagonist of the Pope,” R 46, “the great and learned,” 59, “the great unmasker of the trentine Council,” A 302, whose Historia del Concilio Tridentino (London, 1619) Milton be¬ gan reading in the early 1640’s (and checking at least some references): CB has 13 references, 149, 151, etc. Versatile reformer born in Venice, be¬ coming provincial of the Servite order in 1579, but also counselor of state to the Venetian republic in its conflict with Paul V. Advised banishment of Jesuits from Venice. His tract oppos¬ ing temporal power of pope was placed on the Index of Prohibited

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Books. He had said of the English in a letter Feb. 3, 1609: “Whenever they meet with a weak king, or have an archbishop of great pride, the royal authority will be laid low, and the bishops will aspire to absolute domi¬ nation.” Paphian

See

paphos.

Paphnutius, St.

(d. c. 360) Bishop of the Upper Thebaid, an Egyptian monk who had been a disciple of St. Anthony and whose mutilated body (he had suf¬ fered during the persecution of Maximin Daza, 305-13) was reverenced at the Council of nicaea. socrates and sozomen are. Milton’s authorities, B. 30; C.B 148. Paphos

In Cyprus, where Venus had her temple: MAR 291. EL I 84; adj. V 60; VII 2. Papias

(c. 60-130) “A very ancient writer,” P 93, bishop of hierapolis in Asia Minor, whom eusebius (III, xxxix, 813) described as “of very little intelli¬ gence.” Paquin

Peking (Peiping), China xi 390. Paradise lost./A/Poem/Written in/ Ten Books/ By John Milton

So read the title-page of the 1st edition, London, 1667. Later issues, 1668, 1669 (there are variant titlepages) added preliminary sheets con¬ taining “The Printer to the Reader,” the note on “The Verse,” and the Arguments for each book bunched to¬ gether on eleven pages, and, lacing the beginning of the text, Errata. The book, a small quarto, was licensed for sale at 3 shillings, Aug. 20, 1667.

The complete title-page of the 2nd edition was: Paradise Lost. / A / Poem / in / Tv)elve Books. / The Author / John Milton. / The Second Edition / Revised and Augmented by the / same Author. / London, / Printed by S. Simmons next door to the / Golden Lion in Aldersgatestreet, 1674. Physi¬ cally smaller than the 1st edition and in type that was harder to read but contained fewer errors, it was licensed at the same price July 6, 1674, by Roger L’Estrange, and thus could not have been out many weeks before Milton’s death. It had the FaithomeDolle portrait and the commendatory verses by barrow and marvell. The original contract with Simmons, dated April 27, 1667, is in the British Mu¬ seum. The increase from 10 books to the more conventional number of 12 (epics tend to contain multiples of six) was accomplished by dividing vii and x into two each. The 5 transi¬ tional lines added to the beginning of xii thus constitute Milton’s last new verse. 3rd ed. 1678; 4th ed. 1688 (“Adorn’d with sculptures”). Ed. p. HUME, 1695; R. BENTLEY, 1732; T. newton, 1749; and, with die other poems, by h j. todd, 1801; t. keightley, 1859; d. masson, revised, 1890; A. W. VERITY, 1910; F. A. PATTERSON, revised, 1933; h. f. fletcher, 1941; j. h. hanfofd, revised, 1953; m. y. hughes, 1957. The most elaborate editions textually are Helen Darbishire’s, Oxford, 1952, and Fletcher’s photographic facsimile, Urbana, 19458. The former also edited, 1931, the Manuscript of Book I (now in the Morgan Library), a fair copy (not of course in the blind poet’s hand) that was apparently used by the printer for the first edition. Paradise Lost in its second edition has 10,565 lines of blank verse—what Milton determined would be the

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A Milton Dictionary

“English heroic” equivalent of the dactylic hexameters in which the classical epics were written (Aeneid. 9896 lines; Iliad, 15,693; Odyssey, 12,110). A non-dramatic poem in blank verse had never been seen by Milton’s readers, who were “stum¬ bled” as to “why the poem rhymes not.” The poet replied that this was “an example set, die first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and mod¬ em bondage of rhyming.” It is true that going back to the 16th century only a handful of poems (not plays) in blank verse can be unearthed (e.g. Gascoigne’s satire. The Steel Glass). In the early 1640’s PL was in fact planned—and some lines of it written —as a drama, judging by the drafts in the Cambridge ms (of which the fourth, “Adam Unparadised,” is the most interesting) and Phillips’ recol¬ lection that he saw satan’s speech to the sun (incorporated as :v 2-41). Au¬ brey says the epic was finished in 1663. ellwood saw the complete manuscript in the fall of 1665. Work in earnest on it was begun 1658 (cf. the paragraph added to the 1658 edi¬ tion of ID, 558; Aubrey’s quotation of Phillips: “He began about 2 years before the K[ing] came in”). Han¬ ford’s 1949 opinion is that the poem was half written by the Restoration (to which vii 24 ff. alludes). Sources. The primary source was the Bible with all its commentators (including the rabbinical) and ex¬ panders. For a scholar of Milton s attainments Scripture meant the He¬ brew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, but he often is fol¬ lowing — even quoting — the King James version (x 143 is Genesis iii, 12). Much detail came from the hexameral tradition — strictly speaking, discourses and poems on the six days

of Creation, but more broadly the whole “celestial cycle” embracing the first three chapters in Genesis and the rebellion and battle in heaven indi¬ cated in Revelation xii, 4, 7-9 and Isaiah xiv, 12-15. The earliest Eng¬ lish work of the sort is the powerful Anglo-Saxon poem known as Caedmonian Genesis B. A popular work of Milton’s youth was Sylvester’s du bartas. His favorite poet, spenser, treated his subject in “An Hymn of Heavenly Love." The hexameral tra¬ dition began with the allegorizing of philo, who gave such church fathers as BASIL, GREGORY OF NYSSA, and AM¬ BROSE their cue; the first poem of ambitious length was by Avitus, bishop of Vienne in Central Gaul (published 507). Vida, Valvasone, Giles and phineas fletcher, dramas by grotius, Giambattista Andreini (L'Adamo, Milan, 1613), Serafino della Salandra (Adamo Caduto, Tragedia Sacra, Cosenza, 1647), and the great Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel (Lucifer, Amsterdam, 1654, and Adam in Ballingschap, 1664) — could have been suggestive, and some of them doubtless were. For instance, the vivid passage on Eve’s eating the apple, ix 791-2, has its equivalent in Avitus’ Poematum de Musaicae kistoriae gestis libri quinque, II, 231-2: “Adnuit insidiis pomumque vorata momordit. Dulce subit virus, capitur mors horrida pastu.” The other main line of influence was the great epics in Greek, Latin, and Italian, thought of both as com¬ petitors and models. Besides what they taught in form and structure and style, they have influenced the story. For instance, when battle is threaten¬ ing between satan and gabriel, God gets out “his golden scales,” iv 997, and weighs the issue because Zeus

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lish—a fact that lost him to some 20th century poets but not to Words¬ worth. Specific traits—apart from his great metrical principle of the verse paragraph (“the sense variously drawn out from one verse into an¬ other”)—include (as R. D. Havens enumerates them) (1) Inversion of the Natural Order of Words and Phrases (Latin construction—object first, verb held in reserve, as in the opening sentence; v 219-20; vi 193-4; ix 41-3), a facet of this being such a device as the placing of a noun be¬ tween two adjectives—“human face divine,” iii 44, “unvoyageable gulf obscure” x 366, “temperate vapours bland” v 5. (2) Omission of Words Not Necessary to the Sense (i 141-2; ii 357-8, 1047-8). (3) Parenthesis and Apposition—“Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams” i 469 (“lucid” being also an example of Milton’s Latin usage) (example of parentheses are ii 553, 556; iii 727). (4) The Use of One Part of Speech for Another— as, verbs for nouns—“the great con¬ sult began” i 798, Satan “began . . . his roam” iv 536-8, “without disturb they took alarm” vi 549, or adjectives for nouns—“the palpable obscure” ii 406, “the vast abrupt” ii 409, or ad¬ jectives for adverbs—“grinned horri¬ ble” (Latin usage) ii 846. (5) Achaic vocabulary, including use of a word in its original sense or the etymologi¬ cal pun. (6) Collocation of Proper Names (i 579-87; xi 388-411) for rich¬ ness of sound and reference. (7) Un¬ usual Compound Epithets—“doublefounted stream” xii 144; “night-war¬ bling bird” v 40 (characteristic of Homer). (8) Repetition, ranging from whole lines (v, 601, 772, 840, x 460; vii 495, ix 86, 560) to phrases closely Style. Milton’s “grand style” (m. following each other (i 27-8; ii 598Arnold ), “organ-voice” ( tennyson ) 9; iii 339-41) to scattered fixed epi¬ is cut on Greek and Latin and is as thets—“this fair fruit (ix 731, 763, far as possible from colloquial Eng¬

had done that in the Iliad (VIII, 6972; XXII, 209) and jupiTee in the aeneid (XII, 725-7). Some of the imitations come in through the back door, as it were, with a shock of recognition, as when just-fallen adam gazes on eve as if she were Hera equipped with Aphrodite’s girdle, and he says to her what Zeus said on that deceitful but sensually memorable oc¬ casion {11. XIV, 292-353; ix 1027 ff.), and the hyacinth helped make up the flowery bed of both couples. This is Milton’s forte, the blending of Christian and classical: the allegory of Sin and Death comes from James i, 15, from the myth of scylla (made a symbol of sin by st. john Chrysos¬ tom), from Athene’s birth from the head of Zeus, and from spenser’s picturizations of Error and Death (F.Q. I, i, 14; VII, vii, 46). Milton’s opening statement of his subjects—disobedi¬ ence, woe, restoration—have their Virgilian equivalent: the fall of Troy, the journey, the founding of Rome; there is the basic mythic theme of loss and return. The complexity of gauging influences may be illustrated by the fact that, leaving ancient litera¬ ture (including claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae) out of account, the in¬ fernal council bears a detailed re¬ semblance, here and there, to no less than eight Renaissance poems: Man¬ tuan’s Georgius (1507), Vida’s Christiados (1527), tasso’s Gerusalemme Liherata (1581), Erasmo di Valvasone’s L’Angeleida (1590), Marini’s La Strage degli Innocenti (1610), phineas Fletcher’s Locustae, v el Pietas Jesuitica and The Locusts or Apolloyonists (1627), and Cowley’s Davideis (1656).

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972); “holy mount” (v 712; vi 743; vii 584), “deadly hate” (ii 577; iv 99), “in bright array” (vi 801; xii 627) and hundreds of other phrases, and in¬ cluding the best instance of the rhe¬ torical device known to Puttenham as collectour or “the recapitulator” (iv 641-656). Textual problems. Not only are there differing issues of the first edi¬ tion, but there are minor differences between copies, fletcher concluding that no two bound copies can be found which are identical, as sheets stored for binding got damaged. Vari¬ ations, big or small, between the 1st edition and the 2nd have been esti¬ mated at 900. The original manuscript, “being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want cor¬ rection as to the orthography and pointing” (Phillips), and the problem in encountering an interesting vari¬ ation is to distinguish an author’s revi¬ sion from a printer’s error. There has been debate as to whether Milton wanted the personal pronouns spelled with an extra e when emphatic—hee, wee, shee, yee, mee, and “their” (as distinguished from unemphatic “thir”). 1667 is frequently regarded as supe¬ rior to 1674 in 11 instances—ii 483, “thir” over “her”; ii 527, “his” over “this”; iv 928, “The” over “Thy”; viii 269, “as” over “and”; ix 213, “hear” over “bear”; 1019, “we” over “me”; 1092, “for” over “from”; 1093, “from” over “for”; x 550, “fair fruit” over “fruit”; xi 427, “that sin” over “that”; xii 534, “Will” over ‘Well.” In 11 other in¬ stances a choice is more difficult: i 530 “fainted” (1667)—“fainting” (1674); i 703, “founded”—“found out”; ii 282, “where”—“were”; iv 451 “on”—“of’; iv 705, “Shadier”—“shadie”; vii 322, “add”—“and”; vii 366, “his”—“her”; ix 394, “Likest”—Likeliest”; ix 922, “hast” —“hath”; x 58, “may”—“might”; x 408,

“prevaile”—“prevailes”; xi 651, “tacks” —“makes.” In 15 cases both texts are so unsatisfactory that editors have largely settled on emendations as follows: i 756, “Capital” to “Capitol”; ii 1001, “our” to “your”; iii 592, “Medal” to “Metal”; iv 472, “shall” to “shalt”; iv 567, “describ’d” to “descried”; iv 592, “whither” to “whether”; vi 115, “realtie” to “reality” or “fealty”; vii 139, “least” to “last”; vii 321, “smelling” to “swelling”; vii 451, “Foul” or “Fowle” to “Soul”; ix 410, “or” to “and”; ix 1183, “Women” to “Woman”; x 989, print as part of that line, “So Death,” instead of prefixing it to the next line; xi 845, “Wave” to “Waves.” See, fur¬ ther, under bentley. There are also problems of possible or evident heretical thought in the poem, beginning with line 10, “Rose out of Chaos,” questions made acute by the heresies in De Doctrina Chris¬ tiana, q.v. Milton’s geocentric uni¬ verse, with its ten revolving spheres —of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars, Crystalline Sphere, and Primum Mobile, is further complicated for the modern reader by the circumstance that, in the words of W. F. Warren, it is “viewed at three distant epochs: (1) a time prior to the creation of the present heavens and Earth; (2) a time after the creation of the present heavens and Earth, but before the establishment of the present order of unequal days and diverse seasons; and (3) the time since the establishment of the present order.” Since the poet plunges in medias res, after the man¬ ner of epic writers, a summary of events in the actual order of happen¬ ing may prove helpful. Chronological Summary of “Para¬ dise Lost.” The first event is God the Father’s announcement to the assem¬ bled hierarchies (v, 600 ff.), “This

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day I have begot [q.v.] whom I de¬ clare/ My only Son” and “Your head I him appoint.” This stirs the prideprimal sin—and envy of Lucifer, who, being “of the first,/ If not the first Archangel, great in power” (659 f.), resents the unique honor to the Son to the extent that he initiates a mid¬ night conspiracy, and rallies his fol¬ lowers in their “quaiters of the North” (689) “to prepare/ Fit entertainment to receive our King,/ The great Mes¬ siah” (sarcasm is consistently a devil¬ ish trait). It was at this first assembly of the rebels—in which the only dis¬ senting voice was Abdiel’s—that Sin symbolically sprang full-grown from the Arch-rebel’s head (ii 749 ff.) (soon to please as his mistress and become the mother of Death in an Unholy Trinity paralleling the supernal one). The war in heaven lasts three days. The honor of the first blow, as of the first manifested loyalty and argument, goes to Abdiel. Michael shears Satan’s right side (vi 326). Other individual combatants are singled out, as in the Iliad, and as in that epic night im¬ poses a truce. Satan promises his co¬ horts “weapons more violent” (vi 439), invents gunpowder. The cannon are an unpleasant surprise to Michael’s army in the second day’s fighting, bowling the angels over in their armor, but they soon counter by hurling hills, like the giants against the Titans (Hesiod, Theog. 713-20). “And now all Heaven/ Had gone to wrack” (vi 669) but that the Father ordains an end after two days of in¬ conclusive fighting. The third day the Son, hitherto a non-combatant, rushes forth in “the chariot of Paternal Deity” (vi 750) and drives the foe “headlong flaming from the ethereal sky ... To bottomless perdition” (i, 45, 47). Before they fell the rebels had heard of plans for a new world (i

650). It is constructed in the six days of creation (vii) by God the Son, with a view to ultimate “repair” (vii 152) of the loss of one-third of the heavenly host, when “men innumerable” are “by degrees of merit raised . . . Up hither.” Raphael’s narrative ends with Milton’s expansion of Genesis i, except that the “divine historian” having been “absent” (viii 229) on guardduty on the day Adam and Eve were created, receives that moving story from Adam. The creation was complete before Satan rose from the burning lake, where he lay confounded with all his host (“Thick as autumnal leaves . . .” i 302, the most famous simile in Eng¬ lish), who are identified with heathen deities, false gods, in a listing like that of Homer's catalogue of the ships (cf. i 376; Iliad, II 484). In “the great con¬ sult” in Pandaemonium, Moloch, Be¬ lial, and Mammon give their opposing views. Beelzebub, Satan’s parliamen¬ tary whip, silences them with the scheme to “tempt . . .The dark un¬ bottomed, infinite abyss” (ii 405) on a mission of mischief to the new world. Satan makes his way past Sin and Death and the adamantine gates, wings by and through Chaos, and lands on the outside of the created universe, not unsurveyed by the Omni¬ scient and Foreknowing One, who thereupon in a heavenly assembly distinguishes between the tempted and the self-tempted: “Man falls de¬ ceived/ By th’other first: Man there¬ fore shall find grace.” As when Beelze¬ bub asked for a volunteer, there is a momentous silence, “all the heavenly choir stood mute,” iii 217, before the needed Redeemer—needed to satisfy divine justice, to pay a debt fallible man cannot pay—offers himself and precipitates hallelujahs. Meanwhile Satan, in quest of his

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prey, swoops down from the future Paradise of Fools and lights on the sun to deceive Uriel (“For neither Man nor Angel can discern/ Hypoc¬ risy/’ iii 682) as to the reason for his interest and to get directions. But he has an agonizing, self-exposing solilo¬ quy before and also after he glimpses the innocent pair and learns of the sole pledge of their obedience, the for¬ bidden tree of knowledge. The perfect marriage is amply seen before Satan is found by the angelic searchers “Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve” (iv 800), having given her a dream of temptation that makes the despatching of Raphael—to inform and warn—particularly timely. After Raphael’s narrative, v-vii, “Adam in¬ quires concerning celestial motions, is doubtfully answered, and exhorted to search rather things more worthy of knowledge.” flaving to some extent betrayed—he is warned against—the wrong kind of infatuation for Eve. Only “lialf-abashed” (viii 595), he presses upon his blushing visitor the question of how angels express their mutual love. In the great book of the Fall, ix, everything moves with exquisite sub¬ tlety towards the climax (if the fall is the climax of the poem: Tillyard, changing his mind, has come to feel that the climax is to be found rather in x, the scenes of repentance, recon¬ ciliation, and forgiveness). The night before the fatal day Satan enters into the serpent (a theological advance over Genesis iii in which it is just this beast “more subtil than any ... of the field” that tempts: there is no mention of the devil). In the morning Adam and Eve have their first marital differ¬ ence, a rift that becomes as wide as the mouth of hell. She wants to do the work of pruning separate, for greater efficiency (“division of labor,”

Cleanth Brooks), appointing to meet her husband at noon. Her pride is hurt at the suggestion that she could not cope alone with the foe if he did ven¬ ture to approach, and besides, “Frail is our happiness, if this be so” (ix 340). Adam, put on the defensive, can only strike a more muted note than that of Areopagitica: “Seek not temptation” (364). Having success¬ fully “persisted” (377), she continues to show the vanity that had been hinted at from her first Narcissean admiration of her own reflection (even as Adam had needed an admonition against uxoriousness: the potential of falling was of course in both, the sine qua non of their freedom). The wily serpent easily flatters Eve, leads her to the forbidden fruit, and persuades her at the hungry noon hour to taste in hope of outranking Adam on the chain of being: “nor was God-head from her thought” (790). Having done obeisance to the delusive tree, but un¬ able to keep out thoughts of jealousy and even death, she returns to her husband with a bough of the sweet¬ smelling fruit. He, “Against his better knowledge, not deceived,/ But fondly overcome with female charm,” decides to share her fate. Earth groans a sec¬ ond time. The couple, “as with new wine intoxicated” (1008), cast lasci¬ vious eyes on each other and lie down without further thought of pruning that dav (illustrating before they are done all the seven deadly sins, of which lust is one and sloth another). Afterwards in shame they cover them¬ selves with leaves from the Indian figtree and wrangle “in mutual accusa¬ tion,” 1187. God sends his “Vicegerent Son” (x 56) to pass judgment on the guilty pair. As in Genesis, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent. All three are told their different fates; yet

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A Milton Dictionary in pity the inward and outward naked¬ illness, Michael declares that it is largely the consequence of intemper¬ ness of the first humans are clothed. Sin and Death leave the wide-open ance), metal-workers on "a spacious gates of hell and make a broad cause¬ plain” (556), seduction of “the sons way of Satan’s route to “this now of God” (622), wars and oppression, fenceless world” (x 303). Their “great with Enoch as “The only righteous in author” meets them on his way back a world perverse” (701), Noah’s ark. In the last book (originally joined and there is mutual congratulation, in hell too, until, in an Ovidian meta¬ to the previous book) “Michael con¬ morphosis, what was to be applause tinues from the flood to relate what turns to hisses and all the fiends to shall succeed”: Nimrod the first king serpents clambering for delusive fruit and builder of Babel; Abraham; that dries to ashes—the first instance, Moses; the progress from “works of “some say,” of an “annual humbling law to works of faith” (xii 306); David ... To dash their pride” (576). and his sons up to Jesus, Virgin-bom, Death, and carnivorous wars of beasts, who will pay man’s ransom, which and an imperfect climate, possess the “God-like act . . . Shall bruise the world, which seems to Adam to be head of Satan, crush his strength” coming to an end. He speculates on (430). But His church on earth shall the nature of the personal death that become corrupt and the world go he longs for, and lashes Eve by calling from bad to worse till the Last Judg¬ her a serpent and a crooked rib and ment. Thus Adam learns a lesson that regretting the creation and propaga¬ will enable him to “possess/ A para¬ tive necessity of that defective sex, dise within thee, happier far” (587) causer of untold misery to come. than the place he and his errant wife, Weeping, she throws herself at his “hand in hand with wand’ring steps feet, asks forgiveness, and proposes and slow” (648), now quit. that they remain childless to deceive Paradise/ Regain'd./ A/ Poem./ In the “ravenous maw” (991) of death; if IV Books./ To which is added/Sam¬ such abstinence proves too hard they should commit suicide. But Adam is son Agonistes. The Author John wiser, remembers hopeful features in Milton London, 1671. Licensed July 2,1670; their Judge’s sentence and look: he and she should and do fall prostrate entered in Stationers’ Register Sept. 20. 2nd ed. 1680. 3rd ed. 1688 folio in contrition and prayer. The Son thus has an opportunity to (all with SA). In folio with PL, 1692. act as intercessor, but still Michael Ed. A. J. Wyatt, 1898; E. H. Blakeney, must go to eject them from the “hal¬ 1932. For other editions see PL. 2070 lowed ground” (xi 106) of Paradise. lines of blank verse. There are two This angel, less “sociably mild” (234) prime anecdotes about Paradise Re¬ than Raphael, is still a consoler and gained. The first comes from Thomas an instructor, assuring the stricken Ellwood (1639-1713), the Quaker pair that though they must leave the and associate of Fox, who in his auto¬ mount of Eden, God is everywhere. biography (The History of the Life Eve having been put to sleep, Adam of Thomas Ellwood. Or, an Account is given visions of the future: the of his Birth, Education, ire. . . .), pub¬ murder of Abel by Cain, the first of lished 1714, tells how in the intervals the many forms of death (but as for of being jailed for dissent he became

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the friend of Milton when he was in his early twenties and desirous of im¬ proving his Latin by reading to the blind poet. In June 1665 he secured him a cottage at Chalfont St. Giles to escape the plague; in visits towards the fall Ellwood was given an oppor¬ tunity, which he took, of perusing and commenting freely on the manuscript of Paradise Lost; “and after some fur¬ ther discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, ‘Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?’ He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another sub¬ ject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither. And when afterwards I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing, whenever my occa¬ sions drew me to London), he shewed me his second Poem, called Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone said to me, ‘This is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which be¬ fore I had not thought of.’” A com¬ pletion date of 1666 or 1667 is thus indicated. There is no reason to doubt Ellwood’s veracity, but both he and Milton were being admittedly “pleas¬ ant” in the interchange, and modern critics look deeper than Ellwood for the poem’s inspiration, which may go back to the days when Milton was calling Job a brief epic (CG 237) (as st. jebome had done) and to a desire to excel in all the principal forms. The other early anecdote has to do with the inevitable comparison with PL, PR having from earliest times been “generally censured to be much in¬ ferior to the other, though he could not hear with patience any such thing when related to him” (phillips). PR

is in a plain style in keeping with the asceticism of its hero and uninviting¬ ness of its setting. It is a debate, with just two characters, Jesus and Satan. Nearly all dialogue, it has been called dramatic and even thought originally designed, perhaps, as a play. There are, however, appropriate outbursts of the virtuoso allusive Milton of yore— 2, 182 ff„ 340 ff.; 3, 267-344; 4, 55 ff. Summary of “Paradise Regained.” PR is a poem dealing with the temp¬ tation of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness, the order of the three temptations being that of Luke (ix, 1-13) rather than of Matthew (iv, 1-11) (that is, the “pinnacle” tempta¬ tion is put last instead of second). Book I. After recalling his earlier epic (as vlrgil recalls his Georgies and Eclogues in lines found at the begin¬ ning of some editions of the Aeneid) and appealing to the Holy Spirit for inspiration, Milton has the Adversary, worried by certain portents at Jesus’ baptism by John at the Jordan, de¬ clare to an infernal council, “Who this is we must learn.” God tells Gabriel, the angel of the annunciation, that the devil should have learned a lesson from his failure with Job and proph¬ esies that Jesus’ “weakness shall o’ercome Satanic strength” (161) in the permitted bout to come. Jesus is led by the Spirit into Soli¬ tude, the better to meditate on his serious childhood, divine paternity, and the means of coming into his promised kingdom. After forty unfed days in the wilderness he is accosted by the tempter disguised as an aged rustic, who loses little time in asking —with a clever plea that the miracle will benefit more than one—that he turn the stones into bread. But “Man lives not by bread only,” comes the reply; besides, Moses and Elijah were

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perance invincible" (408), has the without food an equal period. The banquet whisked away and starts on questioner, turned upon, admits his the theme of power, offers wealth identity. He poses as an injured ad¬ such as has won thrones before. Jesus, mirer of the good and a seeker of mentioning Gideon, Jephtha, David, fellowship. He is rebuked as a liar, and certain Roman worthies, shows merely “serviceable to Heaven’s King that "highest deeds” can spring from (421); his “oracles are ceast” (cf. N poverty, and praises the inner king¬ 173). Glibly undiscouraged by dis¬ dom of self-control and teaching of dain, he temporarily vanishes with the truth as over against the pomp and coming of night. force of crowns and scepters, “oftest Book 2. Jesus’ followers, such as Andrew and Simon Peter, wonder better miss’t.” Book 3. “These Godlike virtues what has happened to him. His wherefore dost thou hide?” (21) Con¬ mother Mary has a soliloquy review¬ tinuing the central temptation of the ing the strange past and resolving kingdoms, Satan goes off on the facet patience for the future. But it is Satan of fame, which came to some generals who is most anxious and calls another when they were younger than Jesus. council, realizing he has an opponent But Jesus rejects both the vulgarity “far other” (132) than Adam and Eve. of praise (God’s approbation is what Belial does not share this realization, proposes, “Set women in his eye and' counts: cf. Lycidas) and such destruc¬ tive accomplishments as led to idola¬ in his walk” (154), is scornfully put try of “brutish” (86) emperors. Better down for judging others by himself. He take as examples men of patience or it was who seduced an array of myth¬ ological beauties too long to enumer¬ wisdom, such as Job and Socrates. The devil, thereupon twisting a stand¬ ate and put his “scapes” (189) on the ard doctrine, asserts that God Himself pagan gods, but if certain great men was glory-hungry in his acts of crea¬ such as Alexander and Scipio Afrition. The reply is that man owes God canus proved resistant (unlike Solo¬ mon) to female charms, how much gratitude, “But why should man seek likelier it is that “with manlier objects” glory? who of his own/ Hath nothing ’ (135). But is it not the Messiah’s duty the “constancy” (226) of Jesus must to free his country, at present bound be tried. in “heathen servitude” (176)? No, hu¬ Jesus, “hung’ring more to do my miliation and suffering may be the Father’s will” (259), nevertheless test decreed, and why such solicitude, dreams of food that night, of how when “my rising is thy fall” (201) ? Elijah was taken care of after his fast. This draws from the Adversary a frank The tempter, clad now as a gentle¬ wish for his own personal end, even man, meets him in the morning and as he pays Jesus the compliment of conjures up “A table richly spread in longing for his gentle intercession. But regal mode” (340), with exquisite Jesus ought to see more of the world foods and wine, music, and fragrances. of which he is so worthy to be king. “What doubts the Son of God to sit He is taken to a mountain-top for an and eat?” (369) But Jesus contemns extensive survey of past and present the “pompous delicacies” and counts kingdoms. He is shown the Parthians “thy specious gifts no gifts but guiles” riding forth in full battle array to fight (391): he could command the same, the Scythians: cavalry more formiat will. Satan, having met with “tem¬

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A Milton Dictionary

dable than any told of in romances of Charlemagne. These Parthian forces the Tempter offers as allies to secure the throne of David. The Saviour is not impressed. He doubts moreover whether the ten tribes deserve deliver¬ ance: they might just fall to idolatry again as so often in the past under the devil’s sway; or God will deliver them in “his due time.” Book 4. The rhetoric so successful with Eve is wasted on the Messiah. The foiled Tempter, stubborn in de¬ feat, takes Jesus to the western side of the mountain for a detailed view of the urbs aeterna on the Seven Hills, “great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth” (45), in all its imperial activity and conflux of embassies and races: a better ally than the Parthian. The feeble, childless Tiberius would be easy to succeed. Jesus, however, is no more allured by a vision of gran¬ deur and luxury than he was by arms: let a degenerate rule degenerates. In a return to the “impudent” (154) bluntness of the Bible (Luke iv, 4-8), the devil says, summarily, “The king¬ doms of the world to thee I give, . . . if thou wilt fall down/ And worship me” (167), receives the scriptural answer, “Get thee behind me.” But, for a last fling at suavity, there is the temptation of knowledge and the arts, which calls for a sight of Athens: the Academy of Plato, Aristotle’s Lyceum, the Stoa, the poets and tragedians and orators, other philosophical schools having their fount in Socrates, desig¬ nated by the Delphic oracle “wisest of men” (276). In rebuttal Jesus makes little of the perpetually differ¬ ing and misleading schools of philos¬ ophy, and little of formal education, as compared with “light from above” (289). As Ecclesiastes indicated, “many books are wearisome . . . worth a sponge” (329). Greek literature can¬

not rival “Sion’s songs, to all true tastes excelling” (347), nor the ora¬ tors the Prophets. (As Renan notes, Greek “culture was proscribed by the doctors of Palestine.”) This exhausts Satan’s offers; he is stung to an astro¬ logical forecast that Jesus’ earthly career will be one of sorrow. The “patient son of God” (420) is left in the wilderness to pass the night in the midst of a storm and hellish ap¬ paritions. He answers the hypocriti¬ cal greeting of the prince of darkness next morning with, “Me worse than wet thou find’st not” (which makes, in the view of many, line 486 the worst in Milton). The devil admits he has long been worriedly ponder¬ ing in what sense Jesus was “the son of God.” The time has come for a radical test. He carries Jesus through the air to the highest pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and bids him stand or fall. It is Satan who falls, literally as well as figuratively. The Lord is borne to a place of refresh¬ ment by angels, and heavenly an¬ thems salute his victory before he “Home to his mother’s house private return’d.” Paraeus, David (1548-1622) German Calvinist. Pub¬ lished “Neustadt Bible” and scripture commentaries. On Revelation as a tragedy, Pref. SA (Operum Theologicorum, Frankfurt 1628, II, 1077). On marriage, D 391, 436 (II, 488, a refer¬ ence that applies to several of Milton’s citations), 451-3, 474, 506-07; T 99, 102 (In Genesin, Geneva, 1614, col. 416), 139, 150, 162; Col 263. On rulers, Ten 49; 2D 202; ID 64; plural 202. paragogical contempts Errors in the spelling of word end¬ ings, An 110. paragoned Compared, x 426.

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Latin, Man 92; JR 66 (the twin peak was constantly remembered, EL IV 30; V 9; AdP 3).

parallax Apparent displacement of an object due to a shift in the observer’s posi¬ tion, PR 4, 40.

parochial Italicized in the original to empha¬ size pun (1) parish minister and (2) narrow-minded minister, A 335.

paramount Chief, ii 508. paranymph

Parthenope

The “friend of the bridegroom,” SA 1020 (the Greek word appears in St. John iii, 29).

A siren whose tomb Strabo (I, xxii, 26) located at Naples: LR III, 2. C 879.

Parcae Parthian horseman (Parthus eques)

The three goddesses of Fate, the “iron sisters,” PE 11, “the daughters of Necessity,” Arc 69, Clotho, Lachesis, and atropos, PB I, 7 (reference to Elijah); PM 2 (singular); Man 19.

Reference to the proverbial Parthian mode of victory—of pretending to re¬ treat and shooting arrows skilfully “post terga,” EL VII 36.

pard(s) Parthian(s)

Leopard(s), C 444; iv 344. pargeted Glossed or painted washed, An 170.

over,

white¬

pargetory (parjetory) A screen or cover or decoration, Sm 295; CG 258. Paris, Matthew (1200?-59) Of the monastery of st. Expanded Chronica Majora; made an abridgment, Historia Minor or Historia Anglorum for 1067-1253. “The best of our historians,” on st. Edward’s sword. Ten 25; ID 442. B 305, 309. albans.

Parisian dialectician Ramus, FE #1 4.

Of Scythian origin, the Parthians under arsaces in 250 b.c. shook off the rule of the seleucids and established an empire that in the 1st century b.c. extended into India; they defeated crassus in 53 b.c., and though beaten by the Romans 39-8 b.c. rebounded to defeat antony, 36: cf. ID 108. On the decline in Jesus’ time, they were still formidable, PR 3, 290, 294, 299, 362-3; 4, 73, 84. partial Biased in their own favor, ii 552. partitions, local Referring to the railing in of the altar or communion table by the high church party, CG 258. Passion, The

Parnassus

Unfinished poem (not in MS) writ¬

Though probably the “sunny hill” of iii 28 (but compare “Parnassides um¬ brae,” AdP 16), this mountain in Phocis, frequented by apollo and the Muses, with the castalian Spring and Delphi on its slopes, is named only in

ten for Easter week, March, 1630. 56 lines, in the same stanza form as the introductory stanzas to N, a sequel to which the poet begins by proclaiming it to be. However, whatever the fu¬ ture interest of his calling Christ “most

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perfect hero” (13) and soaring with ezekiel (VI), Milton endeavors in vain to work himself into an “ecstatic fit,” (42) with the appropriate Good Friday emotions. The Crucifixion was not a subject he ever kindled to. VII has one conceit that is topped by VIII’s family-of-echoes (with a cloud as the mother) extravagance that leaves the author “nothing satisfied.” With this and the unsuccessful Upon the Circumcision he gives up stanzaic poetry. “Latter” (22) became “latest” in 1673. patriarchal Pun on (1) paternalistic and (2) Laud’s alleged ambition to return the English Church to the Roman fold at the price of setting up a patriarchate with himself as the first Patriarch, A 325; cf. R 7. Patroclus achilles’ friend, whom hector slew. The line quoted, K 71, is one of homer’s profoundest, Iliad, XIX, 302; “Pretending to mourn Patroclus, but each for her own heart’s sorrows.”

Patterson, Frank Allen

“Men whose life, learning, faith and pure intent. Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics.” NF 9-11. Paul, St. (d. 350) “Orthodox bishop,” ID 252 of Constantinople, 336, displaced by the arian Macedonius, who had the support of the Emperor constantius. Paul's St. Paul’s was the cathedral church of the Bishop of London, A 304. Ruined in the fire of London, 1666, it was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. Paulus Emilius (c. 230-160 b.c. ) Surnamed Macedonicus, “the greatest and worthiest Roman of his time,” D 502. On being elected consul a second time, 168, de¬ feated Perseus of Macedon in the battle of Pydna, and was given a tri¬ umph that lasted three days. Dogged by domestic misfortune, he divorced his first wife Papiria, and lost his two sons by his second, plutarch gives the quotation. Pausilipi

(1878-1944). Columbia University professor who was General Editor of the Columbia Milton, particular edi¬ tor of the English poems, and chief compiler of that edition’s great Index. His The Student’s Milton, 1930, in the revised edition of 1933 contained the most Milton ever put into one volume and 170 pages of supplementary mate¬ rial. Paul, St. (d. c. 65) The only reference in the English poetry makes a splendid de¬ fense of his heirs (by way of Augus¬ tine and calvin) the Puritans:

Posilipo, a mountain between Na¬ ples and Puteoli. Milton, who may, like Evelyn, have visited it, is recalling that a noisy traffic-laden tunnel passes through it, LR III, 6. Pauui, Adriane Adrian de Pauw. Extraordinary Am¬ bassador from Holland, sent in an effort to prevent war June, 1652, and an answer to whom was prepared by Milton. He was dead by the time that Milton could return his praise, 2D 190. paynim See panim.

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of belleropiion, whose hoofprint made the spring of Hippocrene (sa¬ cred to the Muses), which gave gift of song to those who drank of it, vii 4; FE #7 26 (evidently referring to preparing to write L); JR 36 (refer¬ ring to Thames).

pealed Deafened by noise, ii 920. Cf. SA 235, 906. Peck, Francis

(1692-1743). Antiquary. M.A. Tri¬ nity College, Cambridge, where he saw the Cambridge manuscript. Rec¬ Pelagian(s) tor of Goadby-Marwood from 1723, Heretical followers of Pelagius: “A and prebendary of Lincoln from 1738, Briton found the leisure to bring new he began with a typical work, Desid¬ erata Curiosa (1732-5), and in the and dangerous opinions into the Church, and is largely writ against by same year in which he published St. Austin,” B 98. This monk came to Memoirs of Oliver Cromwell issued Rome in the time of Pope Athanasius his eccentric farrago New Memoirs of (399-401) and propagated the view the Life and Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton, 1740, which originated that man has perfect freedom of the will and takes the initial steps towards as an attempt to attribute to Milton salvation by his own efforts apart from a translation of george Buchanan’s Latin play Baptistes. “To understand the assistance of Divine Grace: he denied original sin, the phrase used by that poem and HIM the better, I read augustine in reply to him (CD 1, 11). over the rest of his poetical and most R 10. Liturgy used against. An 126; of his prose works. Besides which I K 224. dipped, and often pretty deep, into a great variety of other books, where I Pelcdes thought I might find any thing for my The son of Peleus, PM 15, was purpose.” Notable is the interest in aciiilles, in whose armor patroclus the minor poems at a time when they (see locrian spear) slew sarpedon. were relatively neglected. For in¬ stance, Lycidas is compared to a piece Pelion of music, consisting of so many bars, Pelion and Ossa, mountains in theswhich are represented by the para¬ saly, were piled one on top of the graphs, each rhyme being a chord, other by Otus and ephialtes in an and the lines without any answering assault on the gods of Olympus (Ody. rhyme being discords. He categorized XI, 307 ff.), QN 174. some fifty traits of Milton’s style. pectoral route (roll)

Pellean Conqueror

A roll of medicine, good for reliev¬ ing or removing affections of the chest, An 137.

Alexander the great, born at Pella, capital of Macedonia, PR 2, 196.

peculiar Private possessions, vii 368; H 99

Two of King 2, 361.

peeling Pillaging, PR 4,136.

Pelops

Pelleas, or Pellenore

Pegasean (adj.l, Pegasus (noun) The immortal “flying steed,” vii 17 ,

Arthur’s

knights, PR

Son of tantalus, was murdered by his father and his limbs served up to the gods. All refused to touch the

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meat except absent-minded ceres, grief-stricken for the loss of Proser¬ pina, who ate one of the shoulders. When Zeus restored Pelops to life ceres gave him an ivory shoulder in replacement, Prol VII 244; EL I 57. A curse was on “Pelops’ line,” IP 99, that provided the material for trage¬ dy, EL I 45 in the descendants Aga¬ memnon, Orestes, electra, Iphigenia. Pelorus The NE cape of Sicily. Diodorus records the belief that Sicily was once a peninsula, but that “the narrow neck of the continent was rent asunder by an earthquake, and by that means the sea burst into that part where the con¬ vulsion was made” (IV, 85) i 232; NS 56.

Pentateuch The first five books of the Bible, supposed to have been written by moses, PR 4, 226; D 384. Pentheus A king of thebes who, on opposing the introduction of the worship of Bacchus, was driven mad by the god and torn to pieces by his mother and aunts, when, in a Bacchic frenzy, they mistook him for a wild beast; the sub¬ ject of euripides’ Bacchae, LR II, 7; T 139. Penuel East of the Judges viii, 8-9.

Jordan,

SA 278. See

Peor “Other name,” i 412, of the licen¬ tious deity chemos, N 197.

penance Penitence, SA 738. Penates

Pepin

The Roman gods of the household, the home, EL I 17; IV 85; Man .54.

(714P-768) Son of Charles martel and father of Charlemagne, CB 153. King of the Franks from 751, R 43-4, 58. Pipinus, ID 264.

pendant world ii 1052, not “the pendulous round earth,” iv 1000, but the universe, the cosmos inside its shell unpenetrated as yet by satan.

“Chief regent of the Franks,” 687714, B 175.

Penelope(ia)

Peraea

Famous for her patient and loyal wait for her husband Odysseus’ return from Troy, the ideal wife, EL IV 56; CD 2, 9. Peneus (various endings) A river in the Vale of Tempe, thesthe river-god being the father of daphne, EL V 13; VII 33; Man 62.

saly,

pen(n)s See

summed.

pensioners Followers, IP 10.

Pepin (of Herstal)

Division of Palestine east of the JORDAN, PR 2, 24.

Percy, Sir Henry (d. 1659) An originator of the First Army Plot, 1641 (see goring), after which he retired to France, K 94. Though general of the ordnance for the king and made Baron Percy of Alnwick in 1643, he fell out of favor the next year through his desire for peace, gave up his command, and joined Queen Henrietta Maria’s party in France, 1645.

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Perse(iae)

perfect man

The wife of the Sun and mother of EL VI 73.

Legally of age (cf. Ephesians iv, 13), CG 247.

circe,

Persephone Greek form of

perfet (perfect) in Perfectly clear to, C 203.

PM 37.

Persepolis Former capital of Persia, PR 3, 284.

Pergamenos See

pboserpina,

Persius

ATTALIC.

(34-62) Roman author of six hexa¬ meter satires. Named and cited, Prol II 156 (Sat. II, 61); quoted but not named: see labeo.

Pericles (d. 429 b.c. ) The great Athenian statesman and orator after whom the golden age of Greece is often named was no “Prince . . . but a powerful and eloquent man in a democraty,” P 92, whose “epitaphian speech,” An 141, on the first to fall in the war against Sparta, as reported by Thucy¬ dides (II, 35 ff.), is one of the world’s most famous orations. His wit (as reported, e.g. by plutaech), Prol VI 220.

person Character in a drama, x 156 (cf. “part” 155); cf. “personating,” PR 4, 341. personage Pun on parsonage, Sm 323. person(s) Role or dramatis personae, x 156; PR 2, 240.

period (1) Sentence, C 585. (2) End, D 384.

pestered Shackled, but also with the modem meaning, C 7.

Peripatetics

Petavius. Denys Petau

The followers of aristotle, PR 4, 279; D 464; Prol VII 276; Log 20.

theologian

Perkins, William

(1583-1652) Jesuit historian and ID 190. (cf. loyolite). See SALMAsrus.

Peter, St.

(1558-1602) Highly esteemed theo¬ logical writer of Calvinistic bent. A Discourse of Conscience (Works, 1609-13, I, 520-1) D 467; Christian Occonomy (III, 672 ) 470; A Godly and Learned Exposition (III, 69) 495. Pern(e), Andrew (1519P-89) “The popish Vice-Chan¬ cellor of Cambridge,” M 3 (cf. 4), 1551, 1556, 1559, 1574, 1580, a proverbial turncoat in the adjustment of his theological opinions to the reigning monarch’s pleasure.

Apart from the oblique and arche¬ typal reference L 109, the references are more polemical than reverential, e.g. St. Peter’s feast, June 28, is com¬ pared to a Bacchic orgy QN 62 ff. He is the mirage of the Paradise of Fools iii 484. “Peter’s being at Rome as Bishop cannot stand with concord¬ ance of Scripture” P 88. Petition, City The Root and Branch Petition of 1641 (for the abolition of episcopacy) An 118.

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Petition, their Reference R 74 to The Humble Pe¬ tition of the University of Oxford in Behalf of Episcopacy and Cathedrals (April 4, 1641). Petra A city of Arabia Petraea, T 143. See HEROD ANTIPAS.

Ethiopians. Friend great. ID 244.

of

herod

the

Petsora “The river Pechora or Petzora hold¬ ing his course through Siberia, how far, the Russians thereabouts know not, runneth into the sea at 72 mouths, fuff of ice,” HM 332. x 292. Phaet(h)on

Petrarch, Francesco

“The whole course of his reign . . . hath resembled Phaeton more than phoebus,” K 181, son of the latter, who, on being allowed to drive the sun-chariot for one day, lost control and was starting to burn up the whole earth when Zeus struck him dead with a thunderbolt. Adj. EL V 92.

(1304-74) The poet laureate of the Italian renaissance, the renowner of Laura Sm 303, is used polemically: “his 108 [138] Sonnet” partially trans¬ lated R 26-7; wamer against the power of the papacy 43, 44. Praised with Dante FE #8, 34; cf. #10, 50. Accused by a French Cistercian monk “of blasphemy for dispraising the French wines” Sm 309: see Petrarch’s Apologia contra Galium. “A living death,” SA 100 is “O viva morte” (Son. 102). “By moderation either state to bear, / Prosperous or adverse” xi 363-4, suggests a title, De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae. Milton called his S VIII “my nightward thoughts . . . fitly made up in a Petrarchian stanza” EC 322, and Petrarch was an obvious influence on his sonnets, including the Italian. Does “108” affect the ending of the Piedmont sonnet; see Baby¬

Tyrant—cf. Ten 46—of Agrigentum in Sicily reputed to have burned alive the victims of his cruelty in a brazen bull, tried out first on the inventor, SD 224.

lonian woe.

note.

Phalaris

Phalereus, Demetrius (345P-283 b.c. ) Athenian orator and statesman, whose work on elocution, Of Expression, is probably by a later author, E 286. Phaleucia(n) (phalaecian) Trochaic hendecasyllabic verses, JR

Pharphar

Petronius, Gaius (1st cent.) “Whom Nero called his Arbiter [Elegantiarum], the master of his revels,” A 313 (cf. Tacitus, Annales, XVI, 18), “regiae . . . elegantiae,” ID 382. Author of the cleverly indecent Satyricon.

See

abb ana.

Pheretiades The son of Pheres, Admetus, king of Pherae in thessaly, whom apollo was required to serve for a set period as a herdsman on account of having slain the Cyclopes, Man 57.

Petronius, Gaius Succeeded Aelius Gellius in the government of Egypt, and carried on war in 22 b.c. against the invading

Philaras, Leonard (b. c. 1600) Born in Athens, edu¬ cated in Italy. Known as Villerd in

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Philippi Paris, where, 1640-54, he was an agent of the Duke of Parma at the French A citv in Macedonia where st. paul court. In the spring of the latter year established a church and suffered a rival “seized upon his goods, made stripes and was imprisoned (Acts xvi, him prisoner ... to avenge an old 12 ff.) An 151; cf. EL IV 102. hatred” and “found amongst his papers Phiiippicus a letter of civility Mr. Milton had written him.” Milton was proud to Byzantine emperor 711-33. Being a have this Greek’s praise of Defensio monothelete, i.e. an adherent to the Prima, 2D 190. Milton wrote him the heresy that there is in Christ only one first of two letters, FE #12, dated will, the divine, he revoked the can¬ June, 1652, after receiving from him ons of the Sixth Council of Constan¬ greetings, an inscribed portrait, and tinople that had ordained replacing a letter, perhaps with a complaint of the Lamb of God with a human like¬ the Turkish oppression of Greece, ness, R 43. Milton’s source is Cedrewhich Milton hints could not last if nus, Compendium (Basle, 1566), 360the Greeks were the Greeks of yore. 77. This letter does not allude to the author’s blindness; the other letter is Philips, John the most complete description of the (1676-1709). Poet of Christ Church, symptoms extant, FE # 15, from Oxford, shortlived author of “The Westminster, Sept. 28, 1654. See Splendid Shilling,” (1701), the most under, S XVIII. famous parody of Milton, 143 lines beginning, Philemon (361P-263? b.c. ) A rival of Men¬ Some surviving fragments of his comedies look like sources for Plautus’ Mercator and Trinummus, A 301. ander.

Philip, the Evangelist CD 1, 31. Baptized the eunuch, R 24—Acts viii, 26 ff. “His daughters . . . were prophetesses,” P 87 (Acts xxi, 8, 9). Philip (II) of Macedon (382-336 b.c.) King from 359, hus¬ band of Olympias, father of Alex¬ ander the great, PR 3, 32. Whimsical Prol VI 220. As good (bad) an author¬ ity as Charles I on the right of kings, ID 302, this overrunner of Greece who was assassinated by one of his own subjects and against whom the famous Philippics of Demosthenes were directed (cf. “Philippic prayer,” K 86).

“Happy the man, who void of cares and strife. In silken or in leathern purse re¬ tains A splendid shilling: he nor hears with pain New oysters cried, nor sighs for cheerful ale; But with his friends, when nightly mists arise. To Juniper’s, Magpie, or Town-Hall repairs: Where, mindful of the nymph, whose wanton eye Transfix’d his soul, and kindled amorous flames, Chloe, or Phillis; he each circling glass Wisheth her health, and joy, and equal love.” commented, “To degrade the sounding words and stately con¬ struction of Milton, by an application

dr. johnson

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to the lowest and most trivial things, gratifies the mind with a momentary triumph over that grandeur which hitherto held its captives in admira¬ tion.” Philips (not to be confused with Milton’s nephew, john Phillips) also wrote “Cider” (1708), in imitation of vergil’s Georgies. Philistian, Philistine(s) See Samson Agonistes. Phillips, Edward (1630?-96?) Elder son of Edward Phillips and Milton’s sister Anne; lived in his uncle’s household and under his tutelage 1640-c. 1646. Entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Became in 1663, tutor to John Evelyn’s son: the diarist found him a “sober, silent, and most harmless person.” A prolific hack whose superficial dictionary. New World of Words (1658) went into a half dozen editions, he ruefully admits that he and his brother did not fulfill what Milton “seems to predict” at the end of On the Death of a Fair Infant, and observes, after giving the formi¬ dable book list their uncle-tutor “manuducted” them into, “had they received his documents with the same acuteness of wit and apprehension, the same industry, alacrity, and thirst after knowledge, as the instructor was indued with, what prodigies of wit and learning might they have proved!” —a good commentary, from the merely average scholar, on Of Education. Be¬ sides editing Drummond of Hawthornden, 1656, and translating two of de Montalvan’s romances, Phillips contributed further to literary history with his 17th edition of Buchlerus’ S acrarum Profanarumque Phrasium Poeticarum Thesaurus, 1670, which contains the first printed tribute to PL; with his Theatrum Poetarum, 1675, with which Milton may have

helped him, which contains the fol¬ lowing entry: “JOHN MILTON: the author (not to mention his other works, both in Latin and English, both in strict and solute oration, by which his fame is sufficiently known to all the learned of Europe) of two heroic poems and a tragedy, [named] in which how far he hath revived the majesty and true decorum of heroic poetry and tragedy it will better be¬ come a person less related than myself to deliver his judgment”; and above all with his 1694 Life, the most au¬ thentic (despite errors, especially with dates) of the four early biographies and twice as long as the longest previ¬ ous (Anonymous). It was the un¬ signed preface to Letters of State (q.v.) (the authorship being testified to by toland and birch and in har¬ mony with what Phillips furnished aubrey). Perhaps written in part as an answer to wood’s objurgations, the product of a certain family pride (v. the preliminary emphasis on the re¬ spectability of Milton’s relatives), it has a rather colorless dignity and the authority of the author’s long con¬ tact with Milton, first as pupil, then as the chief amanuensis of PL, and finally as frequent and respectful visitor. It alone lists Milton’s eleven London residences, and friends who would otherwise have remained un¬ known, and tells of Milton’s employ¬ ment of the two youngest daughters as readers. “Thus I have reduced into form and order whatever I have been able to rally up either from the recol¬ lection of my own memory of things transacted while I was with him, or the information of others, equally con¬ versant afterwards, or from his own mouth by frequent visits to the last.” Phillips, John (1631-1706).

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nephew and pupil (not to be confused with the author of “The Splendid Shilling,” john philips), brother of edwaud, q.v. Darbishire attributes the anonymous life to him. Starting at nine he received from his uncle all the formal education he was to have, and became a hack-writer and satirist and journalist. When Milton received an answer to Defensio Prima, q.v. be¬ neath his notice, young Phillips girded himself for his maiden effort, Joannis Phillipi Angli Responsio, which saw 3 editions in 1652 and is included in CM XVIII, 426-59, on the chance the uncle had a hand in it (translated in George Burnett’s edition of the Prose Works, 1809). Next appeared, at the same time as Pro Se Defensio, the gross anti-Presbyterian Satyr against Hypocrites, 1655, sometimes absurdly attributed to Milton. The uncle did not live to hear of the infamy of his nephew’s consenting to be employed by Titus Oates to write on behalf of the reality of the Popish Plot, 1678. The year before he died he was char¬ acterized by the bookseller John Dunton: “He’ll write you a design off in a very little time, if the gout (or claret) don’t stop him.” Philo Judaeus (c. 20 b.c.-c. 50 a.d. ) Hellenistic Jewish philosopher and exegete, re¬ nowned for an allegorical interpreta¬ tion of Scripture that enabled him to find much of Greek philosophy in the Old Testament—see, e.g. Moses I, xxxix. D 435; T 82. Contemporary of josephus, T 146; ID 78.

Philoponus, Joannes (6th cent.) Alexandrian commen¬ tator on Aristotle Prol IV 186. philosophers Early scientists or alchemists (a common meaning through the 17th century), iii 601. Philosophus ad regem quendam... (A Philosopher to a certain King . . .). This Greek epigram, 5 hexameters long and to be dated 1642-5, is per¬ haps connected with Sonnet VIII. It is such a story of the cruel arbitrari¬ ness of kings and the worth of phi¬ losophers as befits antique legend (as it might be related by diogenes laertius) and a poet at odds with Charles I. At the end of his Great Didactic Comenius quoted luther: “A good and wise man is the most precious treasure of a state, and is of far more value than palaces, than heaps of gold and silver, than gates of brass or bars of iron.” Cf. the legend of curtius. In an appendix to warton’s edition Charles Burney has 8 pages of complaint about Milton s defective Greek in these 5 lines, and in masson’s edition S. H. Butcher comments, “An inferior production, consisting of a mixture of epic dialect and that of Attic prose.” Philyrean chiron the centaur, son of the Oceanid Philyra; on being wounded by one of Hercules’ poisoned arrows he yielded his immortality, PM 25; EL IV 27.

Phimostomus Philomel(a) (“Lover of song”) The nightingale, with reference to the Greek myth of the metamorphosis of the maiden who was violated by her brother-in-law Tereus IP 56; EL V 25.

(“Muzzle-mouth”) “Some burly standard divine, perhaps of Cullen [Cologne] or of Lovain [Louvain],” T 113—centers for the study of Catho¬ lic theology: “a Papist,” 223; peer of More, SD 60.

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A Milton Dictionary

Phine(h)as Son of Eleazar and grandson of aaron, he interrupted the licentious idolatry of Shittim by the zealous “killing of Zimri and Cosbi,” Sm 315, piercing the latter, not “through her belly,” as the Anglican Version has it (Num. xxv, 8), but, appropriately, through her vagina, D 438; SD 110. The rough act of justice Milton con¬ sidered a possible subject, MS 235-6. Phineus One of the blind “prophets old,” iii 36. The Harpies were sent to pluck food away from his table (Aen. Ill, 211-13), JR 36; Prol IV 174 (why “regis Arcadum” when he was of Thrace?). Apollonius quoted on 2D 64 (Argonautica II, 81-4); FE #15 68.

years burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth up another, is a conceit not new or altogether popular, but of great antiquity; not only de¬ livered by humane authors, but fre¬ quently expressed also by holy writers” (Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, III, 12) v 712; SA 1699-1707; ED 187; CG 244; SD 202, 200. Photius (c. 810-95) Patriarch of Constanti¬ nople, whose Bibliotheca (the P refer¬ ence is CCLIV) is a compendium or description of several hundred books, most of which are now lost, P 87; D 479; T 217. Phrica (Phrix) “Bristling-haired”—invented name for one of the horses of Nox, QN 73. Phrygia(n)

Phleget(h)on(tius) “Fierce,” ii 580, a river of Hades, the name indicating its “waves of tor¬ rent fire,” 581; QN 74 (the Pope).

District of Asia Minor bordering on the Hellespont, K 232; LP 279; etc.: see also Alexander the Phrygian. phylacteries

Phlegra

i 577.

Greek, “safeguard,” two small leath¬ er boxes containing strips of parch¬ ment with Scriptural verses, worn by Jews during prayers, Sm 310 (singu¬ lar), FC (q.v.) 17.

Phoebus

Phyllis (Phillis)

(“the shining one”). Apollo, God of the sun and of poetical inspiration, e.g Pas 23; S XIII, 10; L 77.

A conventional pastoral name, EL V 114; L’A 86.

The “Phlegraean battle,” Prol I 122 was that between the giants and the gods on an isthmus in Macedonia,

physical prescript Phoenicians

Medical prescription, CG 181.

Semitic-language people who occu¬ pied Tyre and Sidon, coast of present Lebanon, and by 1250 b.c. were estab¬ lished as navigators and traders; they introduced the alphabet to the Greeks,

The basis for medieval bestiaries on unnatural natural history, of little value as science, ID 278.

i 438.

Pickering (Picheringum), Gilbert

phoenix

(1613-68) Active parliamentarian who sided with the army, 1648, and was appointed one of Charles judges,

“That there is but one phoenix in the world, which after many hundred

physiologus

251-

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A Milton Dictionary

Pirene (Pyrenen)

though he did not sign the death warrant and thus escaped punishment after Restoration and lived to become a baronet of Nova Scotia, 2D 234.

A fountain in Corinth associated with the taming cf pecasus by bellebophon (cf. Pindar, Olymp. XIII, 61-9) EL V 10.

pied (pide)

Pisidia(n)

Variegated, L’A 75.

Region in southern Asia Minor, ID 240.

Pie(d)mont, Piedmontese See Sonnet XVIII.

pismire(s) Ant(s), W 122; Ten 41.

Pierian, Pierides Mt. Pierus or the region Pieria near Mount Olympus, where the muses were born and first worshipped and so are called Pierides, EL IV 31; Man 2; AdP 1; LR II, 5.

Piso, Lucius Calpurnius, surnamed Frugi

Piers (Pierce) Plowman, Vision and Creed of Allegorical poem of social protest attributed to William Langland (late 14th cent.), Sm 329. pigmean raee/Beyond the Indian mount “Higher in the country, and above these, even in the edge and skirts of the mountains, the Pygmaei Spythamei are reported to be” (27 inches high) (pliny, Naturalis Historia VII, 2) i 780-1. Pliny then goes on with the subject of i 575. pilasters

(2nd cent. b.c. ) Author of a history of Rome extant only in a few frag¬ ments, SD 108. Quoted here from cicebo, Ad Familiares IX, 22, who is dealing with the same subject of prud¬ ishness in speech. Piso, Lucius Calpurnius Caesonius (1st cent, b.c.) Father-in-law of Junius Caesar, who helped him obtain consulship 58 b.c. Involved in plot with clodius to banish cicero, who answered with De Provinciis Consularibus and In Pisonem, D 442; ID 314. Pius IV (1499-1565) Pope from 1559, who brought the Council of trent to a successful conclusion, K 228. Placaeus of Saumur

Columns, i 713. pilchers Small herring-like fish taken in large numbers off Cornwall and Devon: the joke is classical, Sm 333.

josue de La Place (c. 1606-65) French Protestant theologian, profes¬ sor of theology at Saumur from 1632, who published liberal views on the subject of original sin, CD 1, 5. plained

Pindar(us)

Complained, iv 504. Plaining, Pas 47.

See Sonnet VIII. pinfold

Plancius

A pen or pound for animals: in C 7 a metaphor for the world of human habitation; cf. K 221.

Whom cicero successfully defended of a charge of bribery, ID 182; 2D 166 (Pro Plancio 93, 94).

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A Milton Dictionary

Plantagenet, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster (1277P-1322) Enemy of Edward II’s successive favorites, Caveston and Hugh le Despenser; got them ban¬ ished, but was himself taken at boroughbmdge and beheaded. Later an object of popular idolization. K 69. plat Plot of ground, IP 73; ix 456. platan A plane-tree, iv 478.

the gravest subjects, SD 176 (More disagrees, 180). Mocked in De Idea Platonica. “His festival discourse” the Symposium, D 398; “the accidental concurrence of Plato’s wit, as if man at first had been created hermaphro¬ dite” (as abistophanes in the Symp. postulated), T 76. Critias as utopia, Sm 294. Gorgias, D 501. Protagoras, 464. Laws frequently cited, D 458-9; T 81; ID 166; FE #8 32 (Laws VII, 797). Epistles, ID 166 (8th), 304, 348, 350. Other direct references, R 39; CG 181; D 441; A 318; Prol II 150.

Plato

Plautus

(427P-347 b.c. ) The subject of two books: H. Agar, Milton and Plato (1928); I. Samuel, Plato and Milton (1947). The “divine,” Sm 305; Prol VII 264; ID 350 philosopher was an influence on the younger contempla¬ tive, as signified by the IP 89 If. refer¬ ence and the famous sentence, Sm 305 beginning, “Thus, from the laure¬ ate fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and read¬ ing led me to the shady spaces of phi¬ losophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his equal [con¬ temporary] xenophon . . .” (authors that have sogrates in common), and there has recently been speculation about Neo-Platonism in C. The older poet had his doubts, putting one ad¬ herent in the Paradise of Fools, iii 472 f., and giving praise of academe to the Tempter, PR 4, 245 ff., but Jesus contemns all the schools: “The next to fabling fell and smooth con¬ ceits,” 4, 295. “Moral works” recom¬ mended, E 284; cf. 286, 287, but though the Republic is used, CG 264; T 158, the absolutist fabler is admired ‘least of all for his commonwealth,” A 316-7. Plato’s reading of sophron, Sm 293; abistophanes, A 299. Wit (lepos) should be intermingled with

(254P-184 b.c.) Among “first Latin comedians,” A 301; “scurril,” 307; rail¬ lery, SD 112. 21 plays adapted from Greek originals extant. Example of cock in, ID 280. Vocabulary of abuse, 2D 80. Pleiades The seven daughters of atlas trans¬ formed into a group of stars, in the constellation taurus. vii 374 echoes “the sweet influences of Pleiades,” Job xxxviii, 31. Pleione(s) Mother of the Pleiades, one whom, Maia, was the mother HERMES, Id 27.

of of

plighted Folded, C 301. Pliny the Elder (23-79) The prodigies in his Naturalis Historia, Prol VI 240, an encyclo¬ pedic work in 37 books, E 283. Per¬ ished in the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. On Druids, B 50. Pliny the Younger (62-113)

Nephew

of

pliny

the

eldeb. Consul, 100, Governor of Bith-

ynia and Pontica, 111 or 112, from

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A Milton Dictionary

is interesting, as it was with Comus: “Rind my brow with baccar, lest an evil tongue harm the poet to be.” Servius Grammaticus explains that baccar is a plant that averts a misdeed. Mil¬ ton’s thought may thus be similar to that in S VIII, though the virgilian context is one of being spared the 346. wrong kind of praise from the wrong pluming and footing this seagull kind of critic.) This volume, referred Plucking and clawing this fool, Sm to as the 1645 Poems because of the 310. Old Style date on the title-page, actu¬ ally came out January 2, 1646. Pepys Plutarch and Evelyn were among the early (46P-120?) The greatest (Greek) biographer of antiquity is put among purchasers. A presentation copy to Ox¬ ford got lost: see JR. The volume is “gravest writers,” Pref. SA; SD 108. rarer today than a copy of the first Writer on education in the M or alia, edition of PL. A small octavo (with E 281, 284; ibid, on dogs’ use of dia¬ the wretched Marshall engraving—see lectic, Prol VII 282. His Parallel Lives In Effigiei) of 207 pages, the first 120 (which present character studies of were occupied by 22 English and 6 famous Greeks and Romans in pairs, Italian poems, beginning with Na¬ from Theseus and Romulus down to tivity Hymn and ending with A Mask contemporaries), ID 236. On Agis, (the latter with a separate title-page). 406. There follow the Latin (or Greek) Pluto poems, with this title-page: Joannis God of the underworld, “nether Miltoni/ Londinensis/ Poemata./ Jove,” C 20, Tartarean Jove, EL III Quorum pleraque infra/ Annum aeta16. Visits to, L’A 149; IP 107; see tis Vigesimum/ Conscripsit. (Poems orpheus; Odysseus (not named), EL by John Milton of London, most of VI 75; Prol VI 230. Denizen of dark¬ which he wrote before he was 20) (a ness, Prol I 138. Hero (villain) of QN proud or apologetic statement). Hum¬ 7 f. Protective helmet, 2D 28; Let 321 phrey Moseley (d. 1661), the pub¬ (cf. Iliad V, 845). Plutonian hall, lisher, specialized in poetry and pure x 444. literature in a time of troubles and Plutus civil conflict when political pamphlets God of riches, An 161. and sermons were “more vendible.” As he notes in “The Stationer to the Poems/of/Mr. John Milton,/Both/ English and Latin, / Compos'd at Reader” he had published Waller (December, 1644) (whose lyrics several times./Printed by his true Copies./The Songs were set in Mu- Lawes had also written music for), and now, not unsolicited, comes as sick by/Mr. Henry lowes Gentle¬ true a birth as the Muses have man of/the Kings Chappel, and brought forth since our famous Spen¬ one/of His Malesties/Prlvate Muser wrote.” Moseley was also the sick./—Bacc are frontem/Cingite, ne publisher of crashaw, Davenant, vati noceat mala lingua futuro,/ Cowley, Carew, Denham, reissues of Virgil, Edog. 7. the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama(The choice of motto—lines 27-28—

which he wrote to trajan regarding the treatment of Christians—one of the earliest historical references to Chris¬ tianity. Panegyricus addressed to tra¬ jan, cited ID 322, 326-8, 376. Lib. I, Epist. 10 cited by Hall, Modest Con¬ futation (1642), p. 23—answered, Sm

254-

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A Milton Dictionary

tists, and translations of Spanish, Italian, and French romances. Poems, &c./ upon/ Several Occa¬ sions./ By Mr. John Milton:/ Both English and Latin, &c./ Composed at

several

times./

With

a

small

Tractate of/Education/To Mr. Hartlib. /London,/. .. 1673

Second edition of the Minor Poems, out before Nov. 24th. In addition to the poems of 1645 this contains In, V, Sonnets XI-XIV, XVIII-XXI, XXIII, NF, Fifth Ode of Horace, Psalms IVIII, LXXX-LXXXVIII, Apologus de Rustico, JR. On the title-page the ad¬ dress of the publisher, Thomas Dring, differs in some copies. The separate title-page for the Latin poems is simi¬ lar to 1645, even to “Nunc primum Edita”—“now first published.” points Laces used instead of buttons in men’s dress Col 256. pole, the

pollute Polluted, N 41. Polybius (205P-125? b.c. ) Greek historian, friend of scipio the younger. Author of general history of Rome and neigh¬ boring countries from 266 to 146 b.c. (40 books, of which first 5 and frag¬ ments are extant). “Wise” praiser of Spartan and Roman constitutions (VI, 12, 43) R 63. Same book, ID 306. Recommended FE #26 102. Polycarpus, St. (c. 69-c. 155) The leading Christian figure in Roman Asia of his time. Had, according to Irenaeus, “intercourse with John and the rest of those who had seen the Lord.” Letter from ignatius survives, P 82, 91-2, 94-6, 99. Milton is skeptical that he was Bishop of Smyrna, is not impressed by his martyrdom (at a pagan festival). Con¬ ferred with Anicetus on the date of keeping Easter, P 87, 89.

The South Pole, ii 642. Pole (Poole), Reginald, Cardinal

Polycrates

(1500-58) Friend of sir thomas more, alienated henry vm by giving adverse opinion on divorce. Created cardinal by Pope Paul III, 1536, and almost elected pope, 1549. Archbishop of Canterbury under mary, 1557 (cf. M3), but accused of heresy by Paul IV.

(2nd cent.) Bishop of ephesus. Op¬ posed Pope victor “concerning the Feast of Easter,” P 87. Milton doubts the attribution of The Acts of Tim¬ othy to him, unmentioned by eusebius and jerome. ussher used Historiae Plurimorum Sanctorum issued in 1485 by “the Jesuits of Louvain,” P 87; 96.

poliantheas (polyantheas)

Polydamas

(“Many flowers”) Anthologies or dictionaries of quotations. An 174.

A Trojan hero, a friend of hector and brother of Euphorbus (cf. MAR 312) Prol I 120. For quotation see

politely

LABEO.

Smoothly, CG 224. Pollentius

Polyphem(us), your mighty

T 212 refers to Augustine’s De Conjugiis Adulterinis ad Pollentium,

The cannibalistic one-eyed giant outwitted and blinded by Ulysses, An 140.

1,17.

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A Milton Dictionary

bridge-building and (2) hits at pon¬ tiffs, x 313.

Pomona The Roman goddess of flowers and fruits, beloved by vertumnus, the di¬ vinity connected with the transforma¬ tion of plants and their progress from blossom to fruit, Ovid appropriately assigns her a pruning-hook {Met. XIV, 628), thus establishing a further connection with Eve, v 378; ix 393.

pontifice Bridge, x 348. Pontus The Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) or its southern shore v 340; ix 77; PR 2, 347.

pomp

Poole see pole.

Solemn procession, vii 564; viii 61. Pompey (Gnaeus Pompejus Magnus: cf. Prol VI 220)

Pope, Alexander (1688-1744) This genius of the he¬ roic couplet owed surprisingly much to Milton, whom he criticized in his “First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace” (99-102),

(106-48 b.c. ) The Roman general who was to join Julius caesar and crassus in the troubled A 301; B 31, First Triumvirate was not “young” when he “quelled / The Pontic King” PR 3, 35-6 Mithridates in 66, and he was 45 when he “triumph . . . rode.” Pride, An 168. His colonnade in the Campus Martius EL I 69. Cleared sea of pirates, 67 b.c. ID 288. Should not have given battle to caesar at Pharsalia, D 464. ID 242, 336. ponders In the literal sense, weighs iv 1001. ponent The western wind x 70. Pontia (sometimes given as Bontia) Servant of salmasius seduced by Pontian pun SD 122. See this work and 2D (34 ff, 46, 56, etc.) Her real name was Elisabeth Guerret (or Gerret); it is given in Article 26 of Actes des Synodes Wollones, Sept. 3-6, 1653: the Synod of Utrecht found the charge insufficiently proved.

more.

Pontic king see pompey. pontifical A pun that

“Milton’s strong pinion now not Heav’n can bound. Now, serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground. In quibbles Angel and Archangel join. And God the Father turns a Schooldivine,” the last line evidently being a shaft aimed at iii. warton noted that he “pilfered from Ccmus and the Penseroso” for “Eloisa to Abe¬ lard.” For instance, “Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn,” 20, is, except for two words, C 429. Cf. 24, 144, 163, with IP 42, 159-60, 133 respectively. The Preface to Pope’s Iliad mentions the advantages of “the mixture of some Graecisms and old words after the manner of Milton.” The Postscript to the Odyssey unhesitatingly declares: “The imi¬ tators of Milton, like most other imi¬ tators, are not copies but caricatures of their original: they are a hundred times more obsolete and cramp than he, and equally so in all places.” Popilius (Laenas)

(1)

means

literally -

Consul 172

256 -

b.c.

Took a letter from

A Milton Dictionary

the Romans to antiochus, king of Syria, whom the senate wished to abstain from hostilities against Egypt. When the king read it and postponed decision, Popilius at once with his cane described a circle in the sand around the monarch, and ordered him not to stir out of it until he had given his answer, whereupon antiochus, frightened at such boldness, straight¬ way yielded to the demand of Rome, D 474.

Marginal notes of commentaries An 174; Sm 348. postillers, T 174. potsherd (Pot + shard) A bit of a broken earthen pot (cf. Psalm ii, 9 and xxii, 15, or Job ii, 8) R 69. pounces Talons of a bird of prey, R 14. power Pour Sm 344.

porch Entryway, vestibule C Hamlet I, v, 63); i 762.

postils

839

(cf.

Powers The sixth of the nine orders of angels ii 11, 310; iii 320; v 601, 772, 840; x 86, 186, 460. See angels.

porches Church side-chapels or transepts, CG 240.

praetors (pretors)

Porphyrius (Porphyry)

pragmatical sidesmen

(c. 232-303) Possibly once a Chris¬ tian, became a Neoplatonist under the influence of Plotinus, whom he met at Rome in 262. His 15-book treatise Against the Christians, condemned to be burnt under theodosius in 448, survives only in fragments in works written to refute it A 302. Called “Britain ... a soil fruitful of tyrants” B 88. ported Carried aslant across the breast iv 980. Portsmouth Proposed port of invasion in Hamp¬ shire on the English Channel for the French army in the First Army Plot K 94, 99. Named from Porta, an in¬ vading Saxon, B 125. Portumnus Or Portunus, the guardian genius of ports (“curvi” in reference to the shape of a harbor?) Sal 41.

Chief magistrates PR 4, 63.

Meddlesome partisans Ten 44. prankt Adorned, C 759. Praxeas (fl. c. 200) Heretic known only through tertullian’s Adversus Praxean (c. 217) P. 97. He was so bent on maintaining the unity of the God¬ head that he declared that God the Father suffered; “Patrem crucifixit,” exclaimed his opponent. praxis Such as Milton’s own. Latin Gram¬ mar, Accidence Commenced E 278. prebend(s), prebendary A cathedral benefice R 73; An 162. Predieaments(s) See At a Vacation Exercise. Always used as a technical term, as in T 159: the different heads under one or other of which everything must fall that can be made an object of thought or

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A Milton Dictionary

predication by man, the 10 subdivi¬ sions of ens or being.

preventive

prelatess Bawd Sm 305.

Priapus

Going before CG 234.

The deity of copulation 2D 110, 142 (different form).

preposterous In the Latin sense of the hind part first, in reverse order, E 278.

prick To ride hard (by spurring a horse on) ii 536: cf. the first fine of The Faerie Queene, “A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.”

presbyter see FC. Present Means, The, and Brief De¬

primero

lineation of a Free Commonwealth, Easy

to

be

Put

in

Practice,

A game of cards from which mod¬ ern poker originates An 174.

and

without Delay. In a Letter to Gen¬ eral Monk. . .

Priscian

First published by Toland in 1698 (cf. A Letter to a Friend, Concerning, etc.) A 3-page briefing of the contents of The Ready and Easy Way for Gen¬ eral Monck, it apparently was sent to him with a copy of that work, and thus would be of date March, 1660. (The juvenalian motto on the titlepage of the 2nd edition of the Way refers to this advice.) Monck is pleaded with to insure a governing body of “the chief gentlemen out of every county” that will continue the commonwealth “without single per¬ son [king] or House of Lords.”

(fl. 500) Latin grammarian at Con¬ stantinople whose Institutionis Grammaticae or Commentariorum Grarnmaticorum in 18 books was so widely used and so highly regarded in the Middle Ages (more than 1000 manu¬ scripts survive) that phrase “to break Priscian’s head” came into use with reference to a violation of rules of grammar Prol VI 240. Priscus see

TARQUINIUS.

(Joannis

Miltoni/ Angli/) Pro

Se/

Defensio/ Contra/ Alexandrum Morum/ Ecclesiasten,/ Libelli famosi,

presentments

cui titulus,/ Reg ii sanguinis clamor

Illusions, C 156.

ad/

presidents

caelum

adversus

Parricidas/

Anglicano, authorem recte/dictum

Precedents M 17; Ten 4. pretended Latin, stretched out (like a screen) x 872. prevenient grace Grace acting upon the sinner before repentance, xi 3. prevent Go before and forestall N 24; ii 739; x 987.

(The Defence of John Milton, Eng¬ lishman, in His Own Behalf against Alexander More, Cleric, Rightly Named as the Author of the Infamous Libel, “The Cry to Heaven of the Royal Blood against the English Par¬ ricides”) Out August 8, 1655, it an¬ swers Alexandri Mori Ecclesiastae, Sacrarumque litterarum Professoris Fides Publica, Contra calumnias loannis Miltoni Scurrae (The Public Faith by Alexander More, Cleric and Pro-

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fessor of Sacred Letters, against the Calumnies of John Milton, Buffoon), which was published at The Hague by Vlacq around October, 1654, both with and without 2D. (Vlacq also duly followed with a reprint of Pro Se Defensio.) It answers too in a sup¬ plementary section More’s own Supplementum Fidei Publicae, 1655, which contains further testimonials to More (on whose early career see 2D). More became professor of Sacred History at Amsterdam, but was in France in search of a new post when his incomplete Fides Publica came out, and from there he forwarded the Supplementum. His last position was as minister of the Protestant Church of charenton; cf. Milton’s comments to oldenbubg FE #24 96, #29 110. He visited Eng¬ land, 1661-2. Evelyn commented in his diary Jan. 12, 1662: “At St. James’s chapel preached, or rather harangued, the famous orator, Monsieur Morus, in French.” Milton says that he has to expect the enmity of the unprincipled, and now he must stoop to find his adver¬ sary, even as the fortunes of scipio africanus likewise declined, but he remained equal to himself. More is guilty of the abusive Regii, and he is guilty of debaucheries. He is subject to expulsion under the terms of the peace between England and the United Provinces. Certain allegations in letters are reviewed. More’s name has been found subscribed to copies of the preliminary to Charles (II), and he was at the very least the editor of the whole libel, and thus legally re¬ sponsible. More’s evasive action is traced, and Vlaccus’s greedy cunning —in binding the adversaries together. The title of the previous work is de¬ fended, whatever the digressions (as on Christina and Milton). So is the

language justified, against hypocriti¬ cal indignation. Let not pontia be forgotten, nor that earlier Geneva scandal involving Claudia Pelletta. What sort of pastor is this? Milton can testify before God his own freedom from profligacy. But what vows or testimonials can More produce? The Responsio to More’s Supplementum says sarcastically the latter was eagerly awaited. Then the new refer¬ ences are refuted, and a two-line punning epigram about pontia (or bontia) and More (that first ap¬ peared in Mercurius Politicus, Sept. 30, 1652) is presented for the delecta¬ tion of readers (for the second time: cf. 2D 36). Indeed this last fifth of the Pro Se is the wittiest portion. proairesis Greek, moral choice E 284 (see Nicom. Ethics II, iv, 3).

aristotle,

procinct, in In readiness vi 19; cf. succinct. proclaimed the great JOHN THE BAPTIST

Proclus (410P-485) Athenian Neoplatonic philosopher, last of the great teachers of this school; keenly defended pa¬ ganism and opposed Christianity, A 302. Procopius (1) Official sent by theodosius i to summon Gregory nazianzen to the Council of Constantinople, 381 (where Gregory was appointed and resigned as bishop) Sm 358.

Procopius (2) (Early 6th cent.) “A good his¬ torian” T 216. Bom in Caesarea, he lived in Constantinople from 542 and wrote about the wars he had himself witnessed and, in De Aedificiis, about

259-

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A Milton Dictionary

find them as saleable (which is my chief personal concern) as those who originally heard them delivered found them enjoyable.” They are valuable documents of Milton’s college career (1625-32), and I, VI, and VII are of personal interest. Milton’s Prolusiones should be compared with others in MS. or in print, such as Oratio in Laudes Artis Poeticae by john

the buildings of justinian (a work which suffers from its excessive flat¬ tery of the emperor). His posthu¬ mous Anecdota bitterly attack the civil and ecclesiastical powers. proctorage of money, fogging Pettifogging extortion of fees byofficers ot ecclesiastical courts, R 72. proditory

RAINOLDS.

(To alliterate with prodigality) Treacherous, treasonable, K 97; cf. in same connection “proditos Rupellenses,” ID 532. profluent Flowing, xii 442. prog Prowl, R 71. progging Ten 44. progeny Ancestry, PR 4, 554. prognosticate Signify to the augurs, A 558. Prolusiones Quaedam Oratoriae

(Certain Oratical Exercises). 7 theses added to Epistolarum Familarium Liber Unus, 1674 (q.v. for titlepage), “to fill up the space and com¬ pensate for the paucity of the letters” (Brabazon Aylmer’s “Printer’s Pre¬ face to the Reader”) (there being governmental opposition to printing the State, Papers, q.v.). A mutual “friend prevailed upon” Milton “to look through his papers, scattered among which he eventually chanced upon these youthful productions.” Aylmer ingenuously concludes, “find¬ ing that they were approved by this common friend, in whose judgement I fully concurred, and that the Author himself was not dissatisfied with them, I had no hesitation in pub¬ lishing them, youthful work though they are, in the hope that I should -

I. “Utrum Dies an Nox praestantior sit?” (Whether Day or Night is More Excellent). In his exordium Milton confesses he is under an obligation to win the good will of his audience, but mordantly indicates he sees but a choice few friendly expressions in a group hostile to him perhaps because his intellectual interests are different, as he is proudly sure his style is. He ironically and mythologically launches into his assigned topic, discussing first the genealogy of Night and Day to the former’s disadvantage, then praising day as welcomed by the birds, four-footed beasts, and flowers, and worshipped by various races, bringing glad light to students and gods. Day is also of the utmost use, while Night is hateful and dreaded. Sleep can be overrated: let its pro¬ ponent be sleep-provoking to his audience. Vote for my cause, which is that of aurora and phoebus. tillyard argued that this debate is sig¬ nificantly analogous to L’A and IP as, respectively, day and night poems. II. “De Sphaerarum Concentu” (On the Music of the Spheres). Again, as in I, beginning with irony on the lack of triteness of his subject, Milton says he is going to prefer the “open palm” of Rhetoric to the “closed fist” of Logic. Pythagoras and plato are right in asserting “the celestial Sirens’ harmony,/That sit upon the nine en¬ folded spheres,” (Arc 63-4). If aris-

260

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does not believe this, he faces difficulties, the argument from myth¬ ology and even from the birds being strong. It is just that we do not hear what we do not deserve to hear, Pythagoras alone of mortals having had that privilege. Sin has blocked us. The conception is a favorite with Milton. francis peck, 1740, found in II “something, to my apprehension at least, so exceedingly beautiful, that I was immediately tempted to make a translation of it.” III. “Contra Philosophiam Scholasticam” (Against the Scholastic Phi¬ losophy). Milton here sides with bacon and the 16th-century human¬ ists in attacking the barren medieval curriculum at the universities, the en¬ forced pursuit through huge tomes of the “warty controversies” of the “sub¬ tle doctors” (such as duns scotus). Their style is such that it would be easier to clean the Augean stables. Poetry, rhetoric, and history can make valid claims, but these sophistical studies bring neither profit nor pleas¬ ure. Instead of becoming facile fools, let us study the world around us: re¬ member the range of Aristotle’s own writings. IV. “In Rei cujuslibet interitu non datur resolutio ad Materiam Primam” (In the destruction of anything there can be no resolution into First Mat¬ ter). After a playful personification of Error, Milton excuses himself for errancy and girds his loins for what was admitted in III to be a disagree¬ able task. He carries the technical dis¬ cussion through without pretending to be other than bored and boring. In¬ terestingly, the name of one of his authorities, philoponus, means “lover of irksome toil.” V. “Non dantur formae partiales in animali praeter totalem” (Partial Forms do not occur in an Animal in

totle

addition to the Whole). After an ex¬ ordium on the difficulties the Romans had as rulers of the world, the com¬ parison being with the struggle to up¬ hold Truth, the orator, after a brief narratio or statement of the problem, proceeds in the traditional way to his confirmatio and refutatio, returning in the end to a characteristic TruthError allegory. Compare Areopagitica. VI. “Exercitationes nonnunquam Ludicras Philosophiae studiis non obesse” (Sportive Exercises do not stand in the way of Philosophic Studies). This, delivered “in the sum¬ mer holidays,” consists of three parts, (1) The Oratio; (2) The Prolusion proper; (3) The English couplets At a Vacation Exercise, which, being dated “anno aetatis, 19,” determine the date of the whole as July, 1628— the one prolusion for which a date can be set. Milton with mock seriousness complains of being torn from phi¬ losophy to act the fool on this aca¬ demic occasion. Rut he has a friend¬ lier attention than he used io have (cf. Prol I), and hopes to prove equal to such a distinguished audience, however little his sportive talent. Great men have had their light mo¬ ments. Let the sour make allowances for the relaxations of a later day. Begging pardon in advance for any comic license contrary to his usual modesty, he launches into the Prolu¬ sion with reference to recent student horseplay and whips up a paean to laughter with several jokes about either end of the digestive tract. Then comes a Cerberean pun on a student named Sparks, followed by a series of jests on fire, purgatorial and spiri¬ tual. He next itemizes a feast. The “Lady of Christ’s” affects astonish¬ ment at now being made a Father (cf. At a Vacation Exercise): this

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who according to some ac¬ counts (e.g. Met. I, 82-3; Propertius, EL III, v, 7-10) created man either at the very beginning or after the flood of deucalion, CG 254; CD 2, 7; PM 4, but mainly remembered for having stolen fire for man from en¬ raged Zeus (IB 1-2; AdP 20; Prol II 156; ID 270), for which act and others that contributed to man’s civil¬ izing progress, including what Conti interprets as the “cognizance of phi¬ losophy and divine things,” Pro¬ metheus was fastened to Mount Cau¬ casus and his liver tom by a vulture Prol III 164; the “wisest of gods and men” Prol VII 248 clung, however, to a secret that Zeus wanted, namely that whoever married thetis and had a son by her (as the chief Olympian was thinking of doing) would have a son more powerful than himself.

iapetus,

calls for setting the audience right on the subject of effeminacy, before ac¬ knowledging his sons the predica¬ ments.

VII. “Beatiores reddit Homines Ars quam Ignorantia” (Learning Makes Men Happier than Ignorance). The grandest and evidently latest (perhaps for the M.A.) of the prolusions. Con¬ nection has been found with bacon s Advancement of Learning, Cicero s Pro Archia Poeta, plato’s Symposium, and the defences of ignorance by Erasmus, Encomium Moriae, and Pierre Charron, De la Sagesse. After praise of leisure (with reference to a rural retreat such as that of Horton), Milton says he is glad it did not after all fall to his lot to be the upholder of ignorance. Man’s immortal soul has seen ideally perfect forms of heavenly origin. To study the creation is to pay obeisance to the Creator. Do not be promiscuous misled by occasional co-existence in Mingled indiscriminately, i 380; PR one person of learning and wicked¬ ness, for barbarism and impiety have 3, 118. far more often gone together, and prom(o)ters knowledge can fortify the will. Official church prosecutors, R 15; Scholars are fit for the heights, if not the inanities, of conversation. The K 285; H 66. cycle of universal knowledge should propense be toured, for utility and for pleasure. Inclined to, SA 455; Sm 297. It brings “a paradise within . . . hap¬ pier far” (268 looks to xii 587). There properties of nature, faultless follows an historical and evolutionary Individual peculiarities of disposi¬ survey. Life is long and healthy tion for which one cannot be blamed, enough for real learning, as distin¬ guished from medieval disciplinary D 383. nonsense—logic, metaphysic, the law. propriety, sole We may conquer a greater world than Sole exclusiveness of possession Alexander at his early age. Let us not (property) iv 751. just wait passively for the end of the world. The joys of ignorance are the Proserpin(e)(a) joys of beasts—except that this is un¬ Greek Persephone, goddess of the fair to beasts. underworld, whose “rape” by pluto Prometheus, Promethean is remembered by the Second Brother (Comus MS after 356): (“Forethought”) A Titan, son of

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“So fares as did forsaken Proserpine When the big rolling flakes of pitchy clouds And darkness wound her in.” See ceres and fnna. prosopopaea Personification, a reference to Hall’s A Common Apology of the Church of England against the . . . Brownists (1610), Sm 291. prospective glass A play, V 71 on (1) perspectiveglass, the popular term for the tele¬ scope and (2) a magic glass for view¬ ing the future, future prospects.

Proteus The “Shepherd of the Sea,” (F.Q. Ill, viii, 30, 1), the sea-god “who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound,” A 348 and whom Odysseus had to surprise in the midst of his seals, (EL III 26; ED 99); when seized he would “take all man¬ ner of shapes,” (Od. IV, 417 ff.), e.g. a lion, a snake, a boar, water, and a tree. A metaphor for the transmuting elixir of the alchemists, iii 603-04. Applied to the hypostatical union CD 1, 5 (the quotation is from Horace’s Epist. I i, 90). prove(d)

Prosper, of Aquitaine, St.

Latin probare, test(ed), ix 616; PR 1, 370.

(c. 390-C.463) “A disciple of St. Austin,” H 86, to whom he wrote in 428 about some opposition his doc¬ trine was encountering. His ecclesi¬ astical Epitoma Chronicon cited, B 97, 108, 109.

Most renowned for prowess, PR 3, 342.

Protagoras

Prutenic(k) tables

(5th cent. b.c. ) Well-paid profes¬ sional purveyor of wisdom (cf. plato, Protagoras, and Meno 91d). Born Abdera in thrace, taught in Athens as first of the Sophists, CG 202. His On the Gods, for what would now be called its agnostic attitude, occasioned his banishment, A 299. Famous say¬ ing: “Man is the measure of all things: of those which are, that they are; of those which are not, that they are not.” Example of dilemma, Log, 464.

The Copernican planetary tables published by Erasmus Reinhold, 1551, and named from the Latin for Prusian in honor of the Duke of Prussia. They were superseded by the Rudolphine Tables of Kepler, 1627 D 389.

Protector, the Edward Seymour (brother of Jane, Henry VIH’s third wife), Duke of Somerset (1506P-52). Defeated the Scots at Musselburgh, 1547, but his religious innovations caused “rebel¬ lions on all sides,” R 8. Accused of conspiracy, he was beheaded on Tower Hill.

prowest

Prynne, William (1600-69) Prolific Puritan pamphlet¬ eer, author of some 200 books and pamphlets. B.A. Oriel College, Ox¬ ford, he first attracted attention with his Histriomastix, 1632, an attack on stage-plays that gave offence to Charles I and his Queen Henrietta Maria (she had acted in masques) and for which Prynne suffered the loss of his ears in the pillory. The closest Milton ever came to naming him was in the rejected line 17 of FC, but there was mutual attack: see Col and H.

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prytaneum Athenian town hall where a public table was kept for citizens of notable service and merit, 20 74 socrates, when formally convicted of impiety, declared that what he deserved was such maintenance. Psalm 114, A Paraphrase on 18 lines, iambic pentameter coup¬ lets. Although aubrey declared that Milton was a poet at ten, and H. C. Candy has argued with some persua¬ siveness for assigning to the child a paraphrase of ovid, this, “done by the Author at fifteen years old” along with Psalm CXXXVI, constitutes Milton’s earliest surviving composition, 1623-4. Thomas Stemhold (d. 1549) and John Hopkins (d. 1570) had been his most popular English predecessors in this activity of singable free paraphrase— as over against translation—of selected psalms. Milton’s work may have been part of a widespread “poetical revolt against Stemhold” (Brennecke). The boy could have used for his original any number of versions in several languages, from the Hebrew itself (which is in 8 lines, as in nearly all versions of the Christian Bible)—for he had at least a smattering of He¬ brew by then—to the Greek Septuagint (of interest for his own Greek version), to the Vulgate and Tremellius-Junius Latin versions, and the King James and Rheims-Douai Eng¬ lish versions, to say nothing of the earlier Geneva and Bishops Bible. There are no decisive indications. george buchanam’s Latin paraphrases may have encouraged his allusiveness. Sidney was equally quaint in his ver¬ sion.

7 and 14, 9 and 16, 11 and 18 are iden¬ tical, while 6 and 13, 8 and 15, 10 and 17 shift but slightly in the same proc¬ ess of changing from statement to question. Sent to gill the younger with FE #5 dated Dec. 4, 1634, with an explanation that it was the first Greek composition Milton had es¬ sayed since leaving St. Paul’s. Pub¬ lished among the “Sylvae,” 1645. All 3 bits of Milton’s Greek show that he read Greek much better than he wrote it: as was true of other scholars of his day. Professor S. H. Butcher found “this translation . . . interesting owing to a certain rhythmical swing in the verses rather than to any accuracy of diction.” He pointed out “mistakes in detail,” as had Charles Burney a cen¬ tury' earlier, though Burney and Joseph Warton allowed Milton had done better by this psalm than James Duport (1606-79), Regius professor of Greek at Cambridge.

Psalm 136 48 lines plus 2-line chorus for each couplet, tetrameter couplets (trochaic and iambic). Having a simpler origi¬ nal than 114, Milton produced a sim¬ pler poem, a hymn of praise. But there is such artifice as “the goldentressed sun,” (29) which is both Apol¬ lo-like and the “auricomum solem” of Buchanan’s version. There is “the Erythraean main,” (46). There is “The floods stood still like walls of glass,” (49) to compare with “two crystal walls,” xii 197, both being found in DU bartas:

“And on each side is flanked all along With walls of crystal, beautiful and strong.

Psalm CXIV (Greek) The longest and the first of the 3 Greek pieces. 22 dactylic hexameters.

Two walls of glass, built with a word alone.”

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Psalms l-VIII Translated 1653. Published 1673. This set is of greater merit both for faithfulness and metrical variety than LXXX-LXXXVIII. The poet, who had been blind and a widower for a year and a half, with three baby daughters to bring up, and who was still await¬ ing the threatened reply to ID by salmasius, must have found identifi¬ cation in “the cry of human trouble and the sense of God’s protection” here (Parker). I. 8 iambic pentameter couplets, of which the last is the roughest. II. “Done Aug. 8. 1653 Terzetti.” A rare experiment in the terza rima of La Divina Commedia, to which a dante translator, Lawrence Binyon, objected as “moving in a continuous motion” with “pauses without refer¬ ence to the stanzas”—i.e. with the freedom of the blank verse of PL rather than after the Italian model. III-VIII. Dated respectively Aug. 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 (the last two—the 14th was a Sunday). In Horatian stanzas or interwoven rhymes. Three phrases also to be found in PL are “holy mount” (III, 12; v 712; vi 743; vii 584); “countenance bright” (IV, 30; ii 756); “dishonor foul” (VII, 18; ix 297). Psalms LXXX-LXXXVIII “Nine of the Psalms done into Me¬ ter, wherein all but what is in a differ¬ ent character, are the very words of the Text, translated from the Origi¬ nal.” Published 1673. Dated April, 1648. All in the same common service meter of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter rhyming abab. It is un¬ inspired work, without so much merit of literalness as the headnote may sug¬ gest. That Milton did nine in a row suggests determined self-assignment, either for a new hymnal, or on the

first anniversary of his father’s death, or against depression at a time when the poet’s left eye was failing and his health poor, (sm francis bacon, sick and in disgrace, put out his Transla¬ tion of Certain Psalms into English Verse, 1625.) The choice of psalms lends itself to the latter hypothesis. Marginal transliterations of Hebrew words or more exact translations form the notes. Pieces of the future epic can be found: “encompassed round” (LXXXI, 30; v 876); “honor due” (LXXXIII, 59; iii 738; v 817); “the Cherubs bright” (LXXX, 5; “bright Cherubim” xii 254); “glory bright” —“gloriously bright” (LXXXIV, 42; iii 655); “hand in hand” (LXXXV, 44; iv 321, 689; xii 648); “utmost ends” (LXXXVII, 15; sing., x 1020); “sacred songs” (ibid., 26; iii 148); “dark oblivion” (LXXXVIII, 52; vi 380); “peace and righteousness”— “righteousness and peace” (LXXXV, 43; xii 550); “incessant prayers”— “prayer Incessant” (LXXXVI, 19; xi 307). Psyche (“Soul”) Beloved by Eros (“Love”) or cupid; she went through “wand’ring labors long” (C 1004 ff.) before the gods allowed a union that resulted in the child Pleasure. “Confused seeds . . . were imposed on Psyche [by jealous Venus] as an incessant labor to cull out and sort asunder,” A 310, but, in this fairy-tale-like myth best told by Apuleius ants performed the task for her. Ptolemaeus Euergetes (i.e. "bene¬ factor"), Ptolemy III (282P-221 or 222 b.c.) King of Egypt from 246; a military and cultural lead¬ er, T 110. Ptolemaeus (Euergetes il) Physcon (i.e. "fat paunch") (184P-116 b.c.) King of Egypt from

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145

b.c.; weak and dissolute, he was

actually expelled by a revolution led by

wife,

131-128,

but

returned,

purchase, thrifty Profitable bargain, CG 233.

2D

296.

purfled

Ptolemaeus Auletes (i.e. "flute player")

Banded with different colors, like the rainbow, C 995.

(95P-51 B.c.) King of Egypt from 80; vicious and debauched he was driven into exile, 58-55, but was re¬ stored by Roman power, ID 296.

purpose (French propos) Conversation, iv 337; viii 337. purs(u)ivant(s)

publicans

Attendant(s), R 75; K 101.

Tax-gatherers, A 334.

Pylades

pudder Cloud of dust; figuratively, confu¬ sion (cf. Locke, Human Understand¬ ing, IV, iii, 30: “Mathematicians . . . have avoided ... a great part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion which has so much hindered men’s progress in other parts of knowledge”) R 3; Sm 286. pulse Seeds of leguminous plants used as the simplest of food, C 721; PR 2, 278.

See

orestes.

Pyramus Lover of Thisbe; she arrived at the rendezvous first, and ran from a lion that had just torn to pieces an ox. She dropped a scarf or cloak that the lion stained with blood. Seeing this and the lion-tracks, Pyramus imagined her dead and committed suicide under a mulberry-tree, the fruit of which changed from white to red, 2D 34. Pyrene

punctual

See

pIrene.

Like a point, viii 23. Pyrrha punctualist

(1) Poetical mistress, Hor 3.

Formalist, CG 244.

Pyrrha

Punic Coast

(2)

Carthaginian coast of the Mediter¬ ranean-modern Tunisia, v 340. Punic rage See

scipio africanus.

puny Perhaps in the etymological sense of puis-ne, later born, and thus infe¬ rior, ii 367: so as a noun in A 325: “like a puny with his guardian.” purchase Prey, C 607; x 579.

deucalion.

Pyrrhus (Pirrhus) (1) (318P-272 b.c.) King of Epirus (a country of Greece west of Macedon, on the Ionian Sea), “the fierce Epirot” of S XVII 4, a military genius who went to Italy to aid Tarentum against the Romans, 281, and defeated the latter at Heraclea the next year, whereupon Florus (Epitome de Gestis Romanorum, I, 18) records the tri¬ bute, A 342. More famous was remark after victory at Asculum, 279, attended by heavy losses: “One more such vic-

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tory over the Romans, and we are utterly undone.” Pyrrhus (2) Neoptolemus, son of and Deidamia, B 7, 8.

achilles

Nations, I, ii): cf. A 339, clarified by R 50-51: the druids “may be thought to have studied Pythagoras.” Pythian fields South of Delphi, where the Pythian Games were held, ii 530. For other references see python.

Pythagoras (Late 6th cent. B.c.) “That god of the philosophers,” Prol II 150-6, pro¬ mulgator of the doctrine of the music of the spheres, and of the transmigra¬ tion of souls (referred to 152). Bom in samos, EL VI 59, advocated a diet of beans rather than meat, cf. 2D 54. One of the “famous schools,” E 287 (he left no writings) until the middle of the 4th century b.c. According to selden a legendary traveler even as far as England (Law of Nature and

Python This “huge” serpent was “Ingendered in the Pythian vale on slime” x 530-1, “a mass of slime and mud,” CG 275, left after the deluge of Deu¬ calion. He lived in the caves of Mt. pabnassus and was slain by apollo (EL VII 31; Sal 25; Prol I 146), who founded the Pythian games in com¬ memoration of his victory and as¬ sumed the surname Pythian (2D 192).

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Q quadragesimal and matrimonial

quaternion

Quadragesimal means, pertaining to the forty days of Lent and referring to permission (dispensation) to break the customary Anglican fast. Matri¬ monial refers to the bishops giving permission to marry without publish¬ ing of the banns, A 297.

Combination of the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), v 181.

quadrate

quaternioned

Grouped in fours, CG 185. Queen-hithe

See

CHARING CROSS.

Queen Regent, their

In “square” formation, vi 62.

Mary of Guise (1515-60), mother of Mary Queen of Scots; regent of Scotland 1554-9, Ten 28.

quadrature

Heaven is four-square like the Heavenly Jerusalem (of Rev. xxi, 16) x 381. quaestorship, he whom an honest . . . had endeared to the Sicilians

Cicero, who had served the is¬ landers so well as quaestor (treasurer) in 75 B.c. that they implored him to serve as prosecutor against Verres after the latter’s depredations several years later, A 330.

querist

One who asks questions (a refer¬ ence to WILLIAM PYRNNe), H 65. quick

Living, xii 460. quiddities

Supersubtie scholastic essences, CG 244. quillets

Quibbles, R 69. quails quills

See Num. xi, 31-33, D 448.

Reeds of a Pan’s pipe, L 188.

quaint

Quiloa

Skilfully or intricately made, Arc 47; ix 35; SA 1303.

An island port off the coast of Tan¬ ganyika, East Africa, controlled by the Portuguese from 1503 until 1652, when the Oman or Muscat Arabs took over Zanzibar, xi 399.

quaint enamelled eyes

Pretty varicolored blossoms, L 139.

quintessence

qualify

Mollify, M 20.

Fifth essence (q.v.), iii 716; vii 244.

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A Milton Dictionary

Quintilian, Fabius

(FE #8 36: reference to lib. X). (c. 35-c. 95). Roman rhetorician and stylist. Author of Institutio Oratoria in twelve books, which, besides being a rhetoric, is a treatise on education, E 281, and a keen handbook of liter¬ ary criticism. S XI, 113: 1, v, 8 warns against foreign words. On Cicero, FE #26 100.

small farm: he gathered troops, routed the enemy, resigned the dictatorship and returned to his plough, all within 16 days. Called on again in 439, he defeated and slew the traitor Spurius Melius. Legendary as a model of the antique simple virtues, PR 2, 446. quire

Milton’s spelling of choir. Quirinus

Quintius

Unidentified person to whom hobace addressed Epistle I, xvi, lines 4045 of which Milton translates, T 137.

romulus, the Arx Quirini being the Roman citadel, QN 53. quodlibets

Ridiculously subtle scholastic argu¬ ments, Sm 327.

Quintius, Lucius Cincinnatus

(b. c. 519 b.c. ) Roman general and statesman. Appointed dictator when the Aequians were threatening (458), he was found at the plough on his

quotidian

Anything which returns every day, D 478.

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R Rabba(h)

The chief city of the ammonites, east of the Jordan. Captured by david (2 Sam. xii, 27), i 397; “wat’rv plain” suggested by Jeremiah xlix, 4. Rabirius, Gaius

An aged senator, accused in 63 b.c., as part of a conspiracy against the senate by julius caesar, of having put to death the tribune L. Apuleius Saturninus in 100, nearly 40 years before, cicero eloquently spoke in his defense in his Pro Rabirio, 2D 196.

(d. 1222), were active in the period of the Crusades, 2D 188. Rainolds, John

(1549-1607) “Our famous Dr.,” T 224. After winning renown as a lec¬ turer on Aristotle became president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1598, and participated in the Hampton Court conference and in the transla¬ tion of the Prophets for the Author¬ ized Version. See Of Prelatical Epis¬ copacy. raised

Rased, scratched, Sm 309.

R(h)adamant(h)us

Brother of King minos of Crete, who lived such a just life that, with Minos and aeacus, he was appointed, after his death, a judge in the lower world, with power to strip a soul naked for examination (plato, Gorgias, 524a) A 305. Rahab

Of jericho, who received the spies sent by joshua (ii) to spy out the land, hid them in her house from the pursuit of her countrymen, was saved with all her family when the Israelites sacked the city, and became the wife of Salmon and the mother of Boaz, the line from which sprung david and eventually Christ, T 123.

rakeshames

Base fellows, worthless debauchees, R 56. Ramath-lechi

The marginal note on Judges xv, 17 translates “The lifting up of the jaw¬ bone” or “casting away of the jaw¬ bone.” SA 145. Southern Palestine is the presumed location. Ramiel

(“Thunder of God”) A rebel angel, vi 372. The name occurs in the Book of Enoch and Cabalistic demonologies. Ramoth

In gilead, appointed as a city of refuge, PR 1, 373. See 2 Chron. xviii.

Raimundis comitibus

These counts of Toulouse, e.g. Ray¬ mond IV (d. 1105) and Raymond VI

ramp

Spring, leap, SA 139; An 150.

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exarchs (governors) of Italy, R 44, 59. pepin the short deeded it to the Pope, 754, though the papal rule be¬ came truly effective only in 1509.

Ramus

See Logic. Ranelagh, Lady

Mother of

richabd jones, q.v.

ravenous rank

Noxious, L 126 (apparently a trans¬ lation of “gravem . . . nebulam” of Petrarch’s ninth Eclogue, which has a similar plaguish context). C 17 has the milder meaning of foul. Raphael

(“God heals”) Prominent in the Book of Tobit (see asmadai) and in Enoch, one of the seven archangels who stand in the presence of God, and one of the chief four in PL. He is “the sociable spirit,” v 221, delegated to “Converse with adam” in warning of the pending dangers. “The affable archangel,” vii 40 becomes the “divine historian” of the war in heaven (vi) and the creation (vii), but, he having been conveniently “absent” (viii 229) the day of adam’s creation adam tells him “My story” (205) and ends by asking him the question about angelic love that brings the “smile that glow’d/ Celestial rosy red,” 618-9. The only subsequent mention is that michael is not “sociably mild,/ As Raphael” (xi 234-5). rapt

Literally, caught up (into heaven), vii 23; iii 522; xi 706. Figuratively, transported (with emotion), IP 40; C 794. rathe

Early, L 142. Ravenna

A city of north central Italy, near the Adriatic; site of dante’s tomb. After 540 the seat of the Byzantine

The Renaissance attitude permitting serious word-play, the former pronun¬ ciation, and the mistaken notion that “raven” (the bird) and “ravenous” had the same etymology all contri¬ buted to justifying this, PR 2, 269, the grossest of the puns in the English poetry. ravin

Prey, x 599. ravisher, that

Amnon, david’s son, who ravished his half-sister Tamar, coaxing her into his bedroom under pretext that he was sick. Afterwards he “hated her exceedingly” (2 Sam. xiii, 15), CG 270. The/Readie & Easie/Way/to/Estab-

lish/A/Free Commonwealth,/and/ The Excellence therof/ Compar'd with/ The inconveniences and dan¬ gers of/readmitting kingship in this nation./ The author J.M. 1st edition, an 18-page quarto, came out the end of February or beginning of March, 1660. It has been deduced that all but the prefatory paragraph was written between Feb. 4 and 21. General Monck had entered London February 3, and his address to the Rump Parliament Feb. 6 seemed to leave the question of whether the monarchy was to be restored still moot. The opening paragraph of what Gooch called “by far the boldest and most passionate” pamphlet Milton ever wrote was written on or just after Feb. 22, when “writs for new elec-

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tions” were “recalled.” The 2nd edi¬ tion has the same title, is advertised on the title-page as “revised and aug¬ mented,” prudently omits name of printer or stationer (it is extant in only one copy), and adds as motto five words by juvenal (I, 15-16) and three by Milton, meaning, “We have advised sulla himself, advise we now the people,” “Sulla” being Monck (see The Present Means). A duodecimo of 108 pages, this is a considerably altered version almost twice the length of the first, Milton having modified his remarks in April to keep up with the onrush of events. The tragic note is struck in the words of the revised pre¬ fatory paragraph: “If their absolute determination be to enthrall us, before so long a Lent of servitude they may permit us a little shroving time first, wherein to speak freely and take our leaves of liberty.” On the eve of the Restoration, “probably in the last six days before the setting up of kingship on the 1st of May” (E. V. Clark, who edited the tract, 1915), not so much in hopes of stemming the tide “as to confirm them who yield not,” 140, Milton’s 2nd edition was published and constituted, as he feared, “the last words of our expiring liberty,” 148. The first edition had won him only jeers from Sir Roger L’Estrange and others. John Adams would even¬ tually comment, “Can one read it with¬ out shuddering? A single assembly to govern England? An assembly of Sena¬ tors for life? If no better system of government was proposed, no wonder the people recalled the Royal Family.” Argument against kingship occupies more space than Milton’s peculiar no¬ tion of “a free commonwealth.” The heroic blind author gives an out¬ spoken review of the Long Parlia¬ ment’s achievements in the face of tyranny. His readers are bluntly re¬

minded of what sort of king they had, and the likelihood that “our ungrateful backsliding” can only result in the need for another civil war. Are the people to be yoked under a worthless and extravagant court again? “I doubt not but all ingenuous and knowing men will easily agree with me that a free commonwealth without single person or house of lords is by far the best government, if it can be had.” What is called for is the vesting of power in a perpetual “grand council” “of ablest men.’ (Some passing atten¬ tion is given to Harrington’s proposal for partial rotation.) In any case there must not be mobocracy: “well qualify and refine elections, not committing all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permitting only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will; and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously, till after a third or fourth sifting and refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number and seem by most voices the worthiest.” Milton, who is insistent on Aristotle rather than plato as “our chief instructor,” is offering nothing “that ... is not prac¬ ticable.” A king in combination with the grand council can only be perni¬ cious. “A free commonwealth” is best for the church as well as the state. The upbringing of Charles II is glanced at forebodingly: “Whatliberty of conscience can we then expect of others, far worse principled from the cradle, trained up and governed by popish and Spanish counsels, and on such depending hitherto for subsist¬ ence?” realty

(Misprint for lealty or fealty or reality?) reality, vi 115.

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The/ Reason/ of/ Church-govern¬ ment/ Urg'd against/ Prelaty/ By Mr. John Milton./ In two Books The fourth of the antiprelatical tracts, the longest, and for its auto¬ biographical content the most interest¬ ing, appeared early in 1642 (dated Old Style 1641). It answers a 1641 compilation. Certain Brief Treatises, Written by Diverse Learned Men, Concerning the Ancient and Modern Government of the Church, but Ussher and Andrewes are alone deemed worthy of confuting, the lat¬ ter’s essay being referred to as “a little treatise lately printed among others of like sort at Oxford.” See EL III. Both received moderate treatment, as Ussher had in Of Prelatical Episco¬ pacy. In this, the first of the signed pam¬ phlets, the personal note is struck in the preface to the First Book, when the author, setting out to determine whether church-government “ought to be presbyterial or prelatical,” wonders if some will accuse him of under¬ taking “a task too difficult for my years” (he was 33). The contents, except for the digression prefacing the Second Book, are summarized in chapter headings, which can be re¬ duced to the following (after the first chapter, which is a paean to disci¬ pline): That Church government is prescribed in the Gospel, that it is not to be patterned by OT law (contra the two bishops), with aabon’s priest¬ hood as an example of episcopacy; that prelaty is of no use against sects and schisms and rebellions, which point, indeed, to the coming on of reformation. Book II argues that prel¬ aty in its lordly pride and ceremony and worldliness is contrary to the spirit and purpose of the gospel and works mischief in the state.

The most enduring part of CG is the digression that opens the Second Book. Starting with a reference to the parable of the talent that will figure in the sonnet on his blindness, Milton regrets that conscience and a love for truth require on occasions like the present “sharp but saving words.” He must speak out, even if he has not “yet completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies.” In prose con¬ troversy “I have the use, as I may ac¬ count it, but of my left hand.” He hopes to leave in his native tongue to posterity something “of highest hope and hardest attempting” on the order of an epic or a tragedy, or perhaps an ode, whatever “shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation.” Rebecca(h) Wife of Isaac, mother of Esau and Jacob, K 271. For quotation see Gen. xxv, 22. rebec(k)(s) Fiddle(s) of Moorish origin, L’A 94; A 317. RebufFus, Pierre Published a treatise on tithes, Ven¬ ice, 1585, that was cited by peynne, Ten Considerable Queries about Tithes, 1659, p. 3, H 66. recks “What recks it them?”=What do they care? L 122; cf. C 404. reclaims Protests, D 390. recollecting Withdrawing, D 500. recure Restore, xii 393. red cross R 61, see

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A Milton Dictionary

Red Sea Between Arabia and Africa (of. “ehythraean main”), consistently re¬ membered as “the troubled sea” (PS CXIV, 7), “into which our enemies had almost driven us,” An 148, but instead, “awed by the rod of moses,” xii 198, or “cleft” by God, PR 3, 438, its “waves o’erthrew” Pharaoh’s chari¬ ots and horsemen, i 306.

turn if he failed to negotiate peace and an exchange of prisoners. He bravely urged the Senate to refuse the offers, and kept his parole by return¬ ing to Carthage, where he was tor¬ tured to death, PR 2, 446. Rehoboam (Roboam)

The application or moral of a com¬ parison, Sm 324; cf. Log 152.

“The son of Solomon,” K 104, and his successor, Ten 15, like Charles a rejecter of wise advice “to the over¬ turning of all peace and the loss of his own honour and kingdoms,” K 277. ID 226-30.

redounds

reins

reddition

Is excessive or unassimilable, v 438.

Kidneys, vi 346; SA 609.

redshanks

reluctant

A term of contempt formerly given to the Scotch Highlanders, on account of their bare legs, O 271.

Struggling against opposing force, vi 68; x 515.

reduced

remark To distinguish, SA 1309.

Led back (Latin), E 284.

remember ye

reducing

Remind you, CG 270.

Bringing back, CG 272.

remora

reft

(Latin “hindrance”) A clog, drag D 410; K 218 (“that little pest at sea” being the fish of this genus that clings to ships by means of a suctorial disk on top of the head).

Taken, L 107. refused Put away, repudiated, M 29. regest(s)

Remus

Register(s), B 128, 139.

vii 425 probably means the middle stratum of the atmosphere: cf. “the airy region,” N 103; “the middle re¬ gion of thick air,” PR 2, 117.

In a dispute with his twin-brother Romulus over the proper site for the walls of Rome, Remus leapt over Romulus’ wall in scorn, whereupon his brother slew him and threatened others similarly tempted with the same fate, T 159; cf. Prol VI 246; FE #8 30.

Regulus, Marcus Attilius

Reno

region, the

(d. c. 250 b.c.) Roman hero who, after repelling the Carthaginians in the First Punic War, was captured by them and was sent with an embassy to Rome (250), on his promise to re¬

See Sonnet II. Rentius, Nicolaus Referred to also in CB 193, Niccolo or Cola di Rienzi (1313-54) Italian

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patriot, friend of petrarch, called “the last of the Romans.” Overthrew the aristocratic government of Rome in 1347, but was expelled the next year, and on his return in 1354 murdered in a riot, 2D 248. (Subject of Wagner’s opera and Bulwer-Lytton’s novel.) reprobate lawgiver Manasseh, king of Judah (2 Kings xxi, 11) D 439.

Rhene The Rhine, i 353. rheums Rheumatic pains, xi 488. rhime (rhyme) Perhaps in i 16 and certainly in L 11 poetry (whether rhymed or not) as opposed to prose (unlike “Rime” in the note on “The Verse”). Rhodians, Rhodienses

resonant

Inhabitants of the Aegean island off SW Asia Minor, largest of the Dode¬ canese. Connected with the colossus, a statue of apollo about 120 feet high (c. 280 B.c.): Prol I 138. A 296: see

Repeating, xi 559. resort A place of assemblage, C 379. respiration

DION PRUSAEUS.

A refreshing, xii 540. Rhodope retorted

Mountain-range between and Macedonia, vii 35.

(Latin) Turned back, v 906. retrenched

rhomb, nocturnal and diurnal

Diminished, PR 1, 4.54. Reubenites Descendants of Jacob’s first-bom child, by Leah; grouped with the gadites (Joshua i 12), ID 80. revolve

The night-and-day evolving wheel (Greek rombos), the Primum Mobile, viii 134. rhombs Diamond-shaped phalanxes, PR 3, 309. Riccio or Rizzio, David

Consider, D 494. Rhadamanthus See

thrace

RADAMANTH.

Rhea (1) Sister and wife of saturn and mother of jove, i 513. (2) The wife of ammon or Libyan jove and thus the step-mother of Bacchus, iv 279 (see diodorus siculus III, 67-70). Rhee, Isle of (Insula Reana) Opposite la rochelle, in the Bay of Biscay, “that unblest expedition to,” K 153; Prol VI 244, was an unsuccess¬ ful attempt under Buckingham to aid the Huguenots, 1627.

(1533P-66) Son of a musician at Pancalieri, near Turin, he became (1564) French secretary to mary queen of scots and was suspected of being her lover, ID 140. Richard II (1367-1400) King of England, 137799. The troubles that led to his de¬ position remembered, Ten 25; K 126; O 246; ID 464; CB 181-2, etc. Richard III See SHAKESPEARE. Richardson, Jonathan, father (1665-1745)

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and son

(1694-1771).

A Milton Dictionary

Collaborators on Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Miltons “Paradise Lost,” London, 1734, preceded by a 163 page Life by the elder Richardson that is the book’s most valuable feature, along with a portrait by the same—he was primarily a portrait painter and the author of treatises on painting— that is a version of the crayon drawing about which Milton’s youngest daugh¬ ter in her old age exclaimed, “’Tis my father! ’Tis my dear father! I see him!” (and De Quincey considered Richard¬ son’s etching a striking likeness of wordsworth). There is the painter’s eye in this biographer’s account of Milton in his latter years. The 546 pages of notes are remarkable for per¬ sonal enthusiasm and intuition more than for erudition, and based on the theory, “Were I called upon to define poetry in general ... I would do it by saying ’tis ORNAMENT.” The father leaned on the son for Greek and Latin: “my time of learning was em¬ ployed in business.” Milton’s charac¬ ters are analyzed in detail for the first time. ridges Ranks, vi 236. Ridley, Nicholas (c. 1500-55) Bishop of London, who, for his Protestant leanings and sup¬ port of Lady Jane Grey, was burned with latimer at the stake, but is placed among the “time-serving pre¬ lates,” R 8, 10. As foxe reported, he called the surplice “foolish and abomi¬ nable” and told hooper, “Let us shake those high attitudes, not with carnal but with spiritual weapons.” R 68. Rights of the Kingdom A 1649 treatise by John Sadler (1615-74), who was town-clerk of London that year and then served,

1650-60, as master of Magdalene Col¬ lege, Oxford. K 117. Rimmon (According to selden “most high”) Syrian deity i 467. The Biblical refer¬ ences are 2 Kings v, xvi. ringlets Referring to the curled foliage of trees. Arc 47. river-dragon A crocodile, figuratively Pharaoh, king of Egypt (Ezek. xxix, 3), xii 191. river-horse Translation (Greek), vii 474.

hippopotamus

Rivers For the play on a student’s name see At a Vacation Exercise. Rivet(us), Andre (1572-1651) “A diligent and learned writer,” D 445 (reference to Theologicae et Scholasticae Exercitationes, Leyden, 1633, pp. 222-30). Huguenot theologian, head of the School and College of the House of Orange from 1622. Author of more than 50 works. Praelectiones, 1637, quoted CB 163; Commentarius in . . . Exodus, in 1651 Opera (which has a commendatory poem by Alexander morus) 190. D 391, 440, 447. T 162 (Opera, III, 33336). Roboam See

REHOBOAM.

Rochel(le) French seaport on the Bay of Bis¬ cay, Huguenot stronghold taken by Richelieu, 1628. See Rhee. K 97, 153. ID 532; 2D 196. Ro(t)chester-Castle In Kent, overlooking the Medway.

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A Norman wall 12-ft. thick surrounds its ruins. The Chronicler is Speed, History, 1627, p. 467, asserting that becket “challenged from the Crown (to the King’s great offence) the cus¬ tody of Rochester Castle and other forts.” R 45. ro(t)chet(s) A surplice-like vestment worn by bishops, R 52, CG 208, K 113, 268. Rodolph Rudolf I of Hapsburg (1218-91). Holy Roman Emperor from 1273, secured recognition from Pope Greg¬ ory X on his promise to renounce im¬ perial rights in Rome, the papal terri¬ tories, and Sicily (and to lead a new crusade) FE #7 28. Romulean See

remus,

rout Always used pejoratively of a throng or tumultuous rabble, C 533; L 61; i 747; vii 34; x 534; SA 443, 674; Ps III 16. rubric Formal directions (originally writ¬ ten in red), PR 4, 393; Sm 343 (see rubrical). rubrical Play on (1) the rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer and (2) red, like a blush, An 169. rudiments of the world st. Paul’s

phrase, Colos. ii, 8 R 4.

ruin(ing) Often used in the Latin sense of fall (ing), as in i 46; R 47; and the second sentence of the headnote to L.

T 159; FE #8 30. run(n)agates

Romulus

Runaways, R 61.

The founder of Rome as absolute ruler, ID 314. Used as a periphrasis for Roman(s), EL I 68; LR III 7; AdP 79 (Latin). rood A measure of length varying from a rod (5/2 yards) to 7 or 8 yards, i 196. rook, n. and v. Cheat, R 56; -ed H 69; -ing R 15. Roscius Amerinus (i.e. from Ameria, a town in Umbria) (c. 80 b.c. ) His father having been murdered by two neighbors and rela¬ tives, they suborned witnesses to ac¬ cuse the son. Young cicero eloquently came to his defense, SD 126.

Rupella rochel(le).

Rupert, Prince (1619-82) Third son of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia (james is daugh¬ ter) and Frederick V, elector palatine; nephew of Charles I and a most active general, 1642-6. Generalissimo, 1644. W 140. Afterwards he proved his prowess at sea, 1649-53, beginning by commanding fleet sent to assist Or¬ mond in Ireland. Blockaded by Blake at mouth of Tagus, 1650, he escaped to the Mediterranean, made piratical cruise, and reached Barbados, 1652, further confirming Milton’s charge of “piracy,” K 267. Rupilius, Publius (Consul 132 b.c.) Sent into Sicily against the slaves, he brought the

Rotherford See FC.

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servile war to a close, ID 288. A friend

rutters

of SCIPIO AFR1CANUS.

(Cf. Reiter) Cavalrv soldiers, Sm 330.

Ruth See Sonnet IX.

Rutupina

Rutherford See FC. Rutilians Italian tribe led by turnus, CEII, 7.

“On the opposite shore” “from Bou¬ logne,” B 95, a port in Kent of “the greatest consequence ... in the time of the Romans,” “the most usual pas¬ sage into Britain” (camden), ED 162.

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s Sabean(s) Saba or Sheba was southern Arabia, iv 162. For its spices cf. 2 Chron. ix, 9. The Sabeans raided wealthy Job (i, 15) K 173. Sabin(e) The Sabines were an ancient people of central Italy, NE of Rome, QN 50. cato the censor had a farm there, as related in cicero’s De Amicitia (On Friendship), A 301.

portunities for music and pageantry. With Sabrina he returns to the typical masque incident that delighted Inigo Jones” (W. B. C. Watkins). sad In the sense of serious or grave, C 189: IP 103; vi 541; perhaps also v 94. sadly, C 509. sagacious In the now obsolete meaning of keen-scented, x 281.

Sabrina Goddess of the Severn (“guilty of maiden’s death,” V 96), whose mortal misfortunes are alluded to C 825 ff. She was born of the secret trysts of Locrine and Estrildis, while the former was married to Guendolen, who, after being divorced, gathered an army and took her revenge on all three: “Locrine shot with an arrow ends his life. But not so ends the fury of Guendolen, for Estrildis and her daughter Sabra she throws into a river, and to leave a monument of revenge proclaims that the stream be thenceforth called after the damsel’s name, which by length of time is changed now to Sabrina or Severn,” B 15-6. She is summoned “To aid a virgin, such as was herself,” C 856, and the consequence is two ex¬ quisite songs and triple sprinklings that release the Lady from the sor¬ cerer’s chair. There has been criticism that the Attendant Spirit and haemony ought to have sufficed: “one suspects Milton’s simple wish to increase op¬

Saint For its special meaning, including EM 71, see Sonnet XXIII. St. Alban(e)s In Hertfordshire, 20 miles from London; site of Benedictine abbey founded 793, rebuilt 1077, Ten 10; CB (same statement) 166. Verulamium, ID 442, is loosely considered the same place, though its site is a half mile away. St. Angelo, castle Or Mole of Hadrian, near the Vati¬ can, a papal prison in Milton’s time, A 329. St. Hugh There was no church of this name in London, A 335. But see huch, st. for Milton’s reference. St. Martin The church of St. Martin le Grand, London, A 335, Cheap “vendible ware

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of all sorts” were offered in its vici¬ nity. St. Thomas As Gilbert notes, this was the older name of the Mercers’ chapel in Cheapside, London. “Vestry” is a pun ap¬ posite in more than one way, not only to the clothes “trading” that went on in the neighborhood, but also as an echo of the circumstance that St. Thomas received the Virgin Mary’s girdle on her assumption. Compare “So that this rough garment to deceive we bring ye once again. Grave Sirs, into your own vestry,” O 261. Salamanca The university in western Spain, world-famous from its foundation c. 1230, originally for Arabic philosophy and then for Spanish theology (e.g. Loyola studied there, 1526-7), Sm 348. Salamis See

THEM1STOCLES.

Salem (1) Jerusalem (as Pas 39. (2) West of See aenon (Salim). which Melchizedek See Gen. xiv, 18.

in Psalm lxxvi, 2) Jordan, PR 2, 21. (3) The place of was king, H 55.

Sallust (86-34 b.c. ) “I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian,” FE #23 92. Again praised to de brass #26 100. Tribune, 52 b.c., and partisan of jui.ius caesar, whose defeat of pompey at Thapsus he witnessed, 46. On acquir¬ ing wealth as governor of Numidia he returned to Rome to write his Bellum Jugurthinum and Catilina, the latter a history of the Catiline conspiracy quoted on title-page of K and ID 90, 314; SD 108 (Cat. xiv, 2). ID 496.

Salmacis A fountain in Halicarnassus, the water of which was believed to have the property of rendering those who bathed in it effeminate. For the story of how Salmacis became one with the youth Hermaphroditus see ovid, Met. iv, 285 ff. ID 20; 2D 38. Salmanassar “Shalmaneser, king of Assyria” (2 Kings xvii, 3) 727-722 b.c., who be¬ sieged samaria “and carried Israel away into Assyria” (6), PR 3, 278. Salmasius, Claudius (Claude Saumaise) (1588-Sept. 3, 1653). The French classical scholar who was Milton’s opponent in ID, and who received posthumous attention in 2D and SD, passim. He was born at Semur-en-Auxois in Rurgundy on April 15, the son of a counselor of the parlement of Dijon who sent him to Paris at 16, where he became a Cal¬ vinist and the friend of the classicist Isaac Casaubon. His first publication was the editing of two 14th century tracts against the primacy of the Pope (1608). His magnum opus was a com¬ mentary on solinus’s Polyhistor in which he displayed such massive eru¬ dition (learning, for instance, Arabic in order to deal with the botanical part) that he had offers of professor¬ ships at Oxford, Padua, and Bologna, but chose to be the successor of Joseph Scaliger at Leyden, 1631, where he aroused the jealousy of Daniel Heinsius, who, as university librarian, re¬ fused him access to books he wished to consult. He issued a variety of pub¬ lications, mostly philological, includ¬ ing the work for which Milton called him “learned,” CG 211,De Episcopis et Presbyteris, contra D. Petavium Loiolitam Dissertatio Prima (Leyden, 1641), which documents the conten-

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tion that presbyters and bishops were originally the same. Milton was after¬ wards to quote Salmasius against Salmasius. Whatever the attractions for more of Salmasius’s maid, Salmasius's wife, Anne Mercier, was a ter¬ ror, by all accounts—and Milton hurled many a jest at her domination of her husband when it became his assign¬ ment to answer Defensio Regia Pro Carolo l, the intemperate publication of the spring of 1649 for which the author received from Charles II 100 pounds. An English translation has never been published (but Defensio Prima quotes amply from it), but Claudius himself rendered the work in French under the megalomaniac pseudonym of “Claude Le Gros.” Milton’s rejoinder cooled queen Chris¬ tina’s hospitality to Salmasius, though later she pressed him to return and against the charge that he died of shame at being worsted in Latin, law, history, logic, and invective is his life-long record of poor health: the Spa waters were probably what fin¬ ished him.

Whose presumption and arrogance were such that he deemed himself equal to Jove and imitated his thun¬ der and lightning, whereupon the father of the gods smote him with a thunderbolt and punished him in the lower world, 2D 160. Salmurium, Salmuriensem SAUMUR.

Oldest city of central Asia, the capi¬ tal of Tamberlane and site of his mausoleum, xi 389. Samaria The district between Judea and Galilee and its chief city, EL IV 115 (adj.: see Damascus); H 77. For ob¬ lique reference see salmanassar. Samaritan PR 3, 359, a reference to an unlikeli¬ hood: see John iv, 9. Samaritan Chronicle A MS. of the Pentateuch so referred to by Ussher and Hall. Milton replies with a reference to John iv, 22. The same chapter is referred to in CP 13. Samaritans CP 13, see John iv, 7-42. Samian PYTHAGORAS,

EL VI 59.

FE #15

An offshoot of the Sabines, fought for their freedom against the Romans for 53 years, 343-290 b.c., and resisted again 90-82 until they were wiped out, ID 188. Samoed “Northeast of Russia lieth Samoedia by the river Ob,” HM 342; x 696. Samos Aegean island ne of the cyclades, off the coast of ionia, v 265.

Salmydess(us) (Salmydessii) town in thrace,

Privileged exception, Col 239. Samarchand

Samnites

Salmoneus

A

salvo jure

68.

Samson Agonistes Salsilius

First published in 1671 with PR (q.v. for reading of volume’s title-page and early editions). The separate titlepage read:S«m.son/ Agonistes,/ A/

See Ad Salsillum. salve Save, PR 4, 12.

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Dramatic Poem/ The Author/ John Milton./ followed by the motto “Aristot. Poet. Cap. 6” begun in Greek and carried further in Latin, to the effect that “Tragedy is an imitation of a serious action,” and, as Milton pro¬ ceeds to translate in the first sentence of his preface, “of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions.” 1758 lines, mainly in blank verse (al¬ ways used for the dialogues, but free¬ dom in elision is marked by compari¬ son with PL and PR); for the choruses and for the monologues 80-109 and 606-51 partly rhymed lyric verse is used (154 lines are rhymed), the measures constituting an imitation of Greek tragedy. The liberties taken sometimes defy—or call for great in¬ genuity in—scanning (e.g. 115-22), having the effect of vers libre. The lengths of lines range from 12 sylla¬ bles (e.g. 137) to four (e.g. 123). “Agonistes” in Greek means a contes¬ tant in the games: i.e. Milton was dealing with the last phase of Sam¬ son’s career (what he once titled “Dagonalia”—MS 236), the blind wrestler or athlete at the public games of the Philistines. “Agonize” in the 17th century meant to “play the cham¬ pion” and had nothing to do with inner torment. Milton was defining the scope of his play (in the 1640’s he had listed other phases of Samson’s history as possible subjects), even as aeschylus distinguished Prometheus Bound from Prometheus Unbound. Krouse contended that “Agonistes” had the idea of moral struggle in it too, and ranged earlier literature for the view that “In the very title of this tragedy Milton invited his readers to think of Samson as a model of virtue, as a hero, as a champion of God, as a saint, a martyr, and a counterpart of Christ,” The main, conceivably the

only, source is Judges xiii-xvi, with emphasis on 21-30 of xvi. The refer¬ ences in CG 276 (a little allegory), A 344, K 179, 257, ID 218, and ix 1059 ff. are without exception interest¬ ing. The date of composition is un¬ known. newton expressed the view that has prevailed: “This I conceive to be the last of his poetical pieces.” 693-6 looks like a topical allusion to the exhuming of the bodies of Crom¬ well, Ireton, bradshaw, and Pride, to be “dragged to Tyburn, there to hang for some time, and afterwards be buried under the gallows,” the vengeful execution of vane (see Son¬ net XVII), and the imprisonment of Lambert. 697 ff. would refer to Mil¬ ton’s own painful gout, “not disordinate,” 701—not caused by intemper¬ ance. 566-71 corroborates Richardson’s picture of “Milton sitting in an elbow chair, black clothes and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk stones. Among other discourse he ex¬ pressed himself to this purpose: that was he free from the pain this gave him, his blindness would be tolerable.” More widely, Milton, in the recent words of Prince, “chose the Hebrew champion, whose mighty strength was given by God for the liberation of His people, as a fitting parallel to himself, his intellectual prowess dedicated to the achievement of truth and faith by his country. The seeming failure of Samson’s mission, partly through the unworthiness of those for whom he laboured; his ‘lot unfortunate in nup¬ tial choice’; his overthrow, his blind¬ ness: all these features of the story could draw upon deep springs of per¬ sonal emotion.” Correspondences pre¬ sent themselves, between harapha and salmasius, Milton’s own father and manoa, one chosen people and another. E. M. Clark saw a political

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A Milton Dictionary allegory: “a dramatization of the ap¬ parent death and predicted resurrec¬ tion of the Good Old Cause.” But A. Wolf finds Galileo in the story, and some are so bent on the autobiograph¬ ical that they neglect the Biblical and the work of art’s own dramatic neces¬ sities. Still, the odds are against the 1949 surmises of Parker and Gilbert for a composition date years before the Restoration. Unlike Greek tragedy, “this work never was intended” for the stage, and performances of it (as distinguished from Handel’s 1743 oratorio), such as the British Academy’s at the Milton Tercentenary, have been rare Like Greek tragedy, there is no “division into act and scene,” though Parker found “five distinct parts, each an artistic whole, and all of very nearly the same length” as follows: 1-325; 326-709; 710-1060; 1061-1440; 14411758. aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonos are regarded as the two main Greek influences. The title, the use of metri¬ cal variations, of a chorus, and a messenger, the strict observance of the unities of time and place, the quiet “all is best” conclusion—are all Greek, not Elizabethan. The play consists of a succession of interviews with Samson until he leaves the outdoor scene “before the prison in Gaza” for the catastrophe that oc¬ curs off-stage. He is permitted a breath of fresh air on this heathen holiday, but his thoughts of “what once I was, and what am now” 22 torment him. The promised “great de¬ liverer” 40 has been reduced, by his own folly, to blind servitude. “O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon! 80 The Chorus of Danites (not close enough yet for Samson to make out their words) are likewise struck with the contrast, recalling their hero’s past

exploits and pointing up the ancient definition of tragedy as a fall from a great height—“To lowest pitch of ab¬ ject fortune,” 169. They identify them¬ selves to Samson for his comfort, his mixed comfort, for they are friendly and didactic, yet wonder about his two bad marriages and remind him, unnecessarily, “Israel still serves with all his sons,” 240. He explains the cir¬ cumstances of his slaughter of the Philistines by means of “a trivial weapon” (the jawbone of an ass). The Chorus insist, “Just are the ways of God” (cf. i 26), but admit the diffi¬ culties of reasoning. Manoa now en¬ ters and mourns, so that the son has to comfort the father. Samson elabo¬ rates on the wiles of Dalila, getting in response the most famous understate¬ ment in English literature: “I cannot praise thy marriage choices. Son,” 420. Manoa and Samson discuss whether God will allow Dagon to be glorified this day. The father hopes it is a pro¬ pitious time “to treat/ About thy ransom,” 482. But Samson feels de¬ servedly punished. The Chorus change the subject to vinous intemperance. Manoa hopes for miracles, Samson for death. Samson-his father gone to seek his liberation—reverts to the pain of thoughts. The Chorus expatiate on patience and the ups-and-downs of Providence. They sarcastically an¬ nounce the elaborately streamered and scented oncoming of Dalila. She says she has come to make amends, but Samson would dismiss her as a false hyaena. She pleads “woman’s frailty,” 783, and tells a lie (800-1 contradicts Judges xvi, 5). Her hus¬ band scathingly answers, “All wicked¬ ness is weakness: that plea therefore/ With God or Man will gain thee no remission,” 834-5. The debate con¬ tinues with Dalila’s pointing out the manifold temptations to which she

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was exposed; Samson replies that a wife’s love and duty should have come first. Dalila offers to nurse him now, at least; Samson fears his own help¬ lessness in the hands of such a traitor. She must not touch him. Resentful, she professes to look forward to her fame among her own countrymen. “She’s gone, a manifest serpent by her sting/ Discover’d in the end, till now conceal’d,” 997-8. The Chorus give vent to their dim view of wives. Then the giant Harapha comes in to stare and taunt. He vaunts also, being the miles gloriosus (braggart soldier) type, but declines Samson’s challenge to combat in “some narrow place enclosed.” It is Israel’s God versus Dagon. Harapha blusters but departs. Samson gives the prophecy that those who plot against him may ruin them¬ selves as well as him (1267). The Chorus return to the counsel of pa¬ tience. A public officer enters bring¬ ing the order that Samson exhibit his strength at the public festival in honor of Dagon. “I will not come,” 1332. Samson and the Chorus argue the appropriateness of this defiance, and Samson, feeling “some rousing motions,” 1382 changes his attitude when the Officer comes a second time, and accompanies him, with the Chorus’s blessing. Manoa returns, having been busy about the ransom. Shouts in the distance interrupt his report: the irony is that he has great hopes now of freeing his son. A worst noise follows, a “universal groan” of destruction. Manoa and the Chorus wildly exchange conjectures. Is Sam¬ son, sight miraculously recovered, “dealing dole among his foes,” 1529, as of yore? “An Ebrew comes in haste,” a Messenger to reveal gradu¬ ally and distractedly the story of what happened—the Philistines and Samson dead: “The edifice where all were

met to see him/ Upon their heads and on his own he pull’d.” The details follow, how he was led in for a spec¬ tacle, how he performed amazing feats of strength, how he was “for intermission sake,” 1629, led to rest between the two main pillars, how he prayed and gave notice of his crowning achievement. The Chorus divides into two semichoruses hymn¬ ing the deed. Manoa commenting, “Nothing is here for tears,” 1721, fore¬ sees a green and musical memory. The Chorus go out in “calm of mind, all passion spent.” Samuel The last judge, the first of the regu¬ lar succession of prophets, and the founder of the monarchy. “Deposed,” Ten 15; K 289. Vis-a-vis Saul, K 151, 265. Much instanced by salmasius, ID 82, 84, 88, 92, 94, etc. Sanballat See Nehemiah, vi K 271. Sandys, Sir Edwin (1561-1629) Brother of George the poet and traveler. Later connected with the Virginia Company. Europae Speculum (written 1599) (London, 1638),pp. 165-6: “some of their Jesuits of late in Italy in a solemn sermon have censured St. Paul for a hot¬ headed person,” R 22. sanguify Produce blood (from the liver), D 484. sanguine Bloody or blood-red (i.e. the hya¬ cinth), L 106. Sanhedrin (Sanhedrim) (synedrium) “The Jewish Senate,” R 40; "the su¬ preme council of 70,” W 128. ID 80, 102-4,120, 230, 372, 454.

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San(c)ta Clara, Franciscus a

Sarepta

(1598-1680) Born Christopher Davenport in Coventry. Left Merton College, Oxford, for Douay, 1615, and joined the Franciscan order in Belgium, 1617. A liberal Catholic apol¬ ogist, he became chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria and friend of laud. The book referred to R7 is Apologia Episcoporum sen Sacri Magistratus (1640). Father Provincial in Flanders 1637-65; chaplain after the Restoration to Charles II’s queen, Catherine.

Zarephath, Sidonian city, CD 2, 16. See 1 Kings xvii, 8 ff.

sapient king Solomon,

Sarpedon A Lycian prince, son of Zeus and Laodamia; slain by patroclus, PM 15-16. The noble passage quoted, ID 110-2 is Iliad XII, 310 ff.

See

Literally, “it smells of the pot,” An 176, but in the transition to sapere aulam a brillant pun is created: “it stinks of Hall.” Sapphira ananias,

A tribe “north/ Beyond Danubius,” PR 4, 78 and east of Germania. Fierce¬ ly rebellious, FE #7 28.

Sarpi

ix 442.

sapit (sapere) oilam

Wife of

Sarmatians

T 171; CD 2, 13.

paolo.

Sarra Tyre, Phoenician seaport famous for its dyes, xi 243. Sartorius (1) A proper name meaning tailor and (2) =pun with “sarsisse,” SD 232.

Saracen(s) (Sarasin, Sarazens) Term used in the Middle Ages to mean Arabs and more generally Mos¬ lems (especially as hostile to the cru¬ saders ) and more particularly the Seljuk Turks: “Turcarum propemodum conditores,” Prol VII 270. Ten 21; R 44; B 131, 177, 292, 297. sarcenet

Sarum Old Sarum camden calls “a small village,” 2 miles north of modern Salisbury. Milton refers, An 174, to “the order of divine service used in the diocese of Salisbury from the 11th century to the Reformation” (Oxford English Dictionary). Satan

Fancy silk used for linings. Sardanapulus (9th cent. b.c. ) The effeminate and immoral ruler of Assyria who, after being besieged in ninevah by the Medes for two years, burned his pal¬ ace, queen, and himself, ID 298. Sardis The ancient capital of Lydia, and site of one of the seven churches of Asia (Rev. iii, 1), CG 217.

Outside his role in PL and PR (cf. the vaguely designated schemer of QN and “he of the bottomless pit,” A 304), the name, which means the Adversary, seldom occurs: “minister of Satan” (quot.), P 88; “Sathan and his instruments,” An 121; “in the cus¬ tody of Satan” (excommunication), CG 266; wife not “bound to be the vassal of him who is the bondslave of,” T 79; “if he would compel me, I know him for Satan,” D 495; “some

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mystery of,” T 221. “By the instigation of Satan partialities grew up in the Church,” K 231. Quotation, SD 152-4. Biblical quotation, CP 38; cf. ID 460.. Saturn Youngest of the titans (“Saturn’s crew,” C 805=the Titans, who ended up in tartabus, Prol I 138), father by his sister rhea (ops, x 584) of Jove, whom he wanted to destroy because of a prophecy that jove would over¬ throw him: the which jove, secretly reared on Mt. ida in Crete, did: i 51015. “Saturn old/ Fled” to Italy (51920; “Latium,” 2D 114) “paradise lost,” Prol V 190; his “reign” was the Golden Age “of such pleasing licence,” D 446. According to Milton only, he became by his daughter vesta the father of Melancholy (IP 23 ff.) (in remem¬ brance, no doubt, of “the cross dire¬ looking planet,” Arc 52; “sub tristi Saturno,” Prol III 162; unsmiling, Sm 394). The planet NS 39; ED 79. Saturninus, Lucius Appuieius (d. 100 b.c. ) Demagogue and tri¬ bune who had one of his political rivals murdered, was condemned as a public enemy by the Senate, and stoned to death by a mob, 2D 196-8. Saul The first king of Israel, ID 108, is mentioned once but obliquely in the poetry: “As he who seeking asses found a kingdom,” PR 3, 242, but naturally figures in the issue over Charles, the latter a greater tyrant, ID 60, “more unexcusable,” K 152. Ten 43; K 145, 151, 206, 265; W 114; BN 155; ID 82, 104, 118, 140, 218,

222-6.

not center. FE #2-4 96; #25 98; CD

1,5. Saurat, Denis (1890-1958) Bom in Toulouse, took his Doetorat es Lettres at the Sorbonne with La Pensee de Milton, 1920, the same year he published Blake and Milton (New York edition 1924). After posts at Glasgow and Bordeaux, he taught at London Uni¬ versity and was director of the Instituc Francais du Royaume Uni. His Milton Man and Thinker, 1925, of¬ fered a sensationally new appraisal, linking Milton to cabbalistic thought and Fludd and the Mortalists, but stressing his originality and his pride and endeavoring to uncover a com¬ plete system of ontology, cosmology, psychology, ethics, religion, and poli¬ tics. The book was but slightly revised in 1944, although modern criticism, which owed it much as a stimulus, had nibbled away at its excesses. Savonarola (Savonarola), Girolamo (1452-98) Dominican prior of St. Mark’s, Florence, who, for having “en¬ deavored to reform the church” in flaming denunciations from the pulpit that did not spare Pope Alexander VI, was tortured, hanged, and burned. He referred frequently to the “lukewarm ones,” An 125, “i tiepidi.” Oracolo della Renovatione della Chiesa (Ven¬ ice, 1560), pp. 48-9 quoted CB 165. saws Proverbs, moral sayings, C 110. Saxon leaders (Saxonicos ... duces) See Elegia IV.

Saumur (Salmurium, Salmuriensem)

Saxony, the Duke of

A town in France on the Loire, noted for its sparkling wine. Hugue¬

This was Maurice or Moritz (152153), who had been an ally of the

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Catholic Charles V, but finally forced him to leave Germany and to con¬ clude the Treaty of Passau, 1552, Ten 27. scale(s) iv 997, 1014 a dual reference to (1) the golden scales in which Zeus weighed individual destinies of Greeks versus Trojans in the Iliad and (2) the constellation Libra (cf. x 676). Scaliger, Julius Caesar (1484-1558) Italian physician, La¬ tinist, and humanist. Born in Padua. Practiced medicine in Verona and, from 1526, Agen, France. His Poetics (1561), important in the creation of neo-classic principles, discusses mime at I, 10, and III, 97 Sm 293. scandal, hill of See

HILL OF SCANDAL.

scantling Sample, R 23. scapes Oversights, D 450. Scarborow (Scarborough) Seaport in Yorkshire, the governor of which, Hugh Cholmley, after fight¬ ing half-heartedly for the parliament, deserted to Charles’s side in 1643 and brought about the surrender of the town. K 236.

Schneidew(e)in, Johann (1519-68) Law professor at Witten¬ berg, whose In Quattuor Institutionum Imperialium Justiniani Imp. Libros Commentarii, I, iv, 10 is cited, Col 268. scholiaze To write learned notes (scholia), T 178. sciences i.e. useful subjects other than lan¬ guages, CG 235. sciential Yielding knowledge, ix 837; T 107. Scipio Africanus (the Elder), Publius Cornelius (237-183 B.c.) Rome’s greatest gen¬ eral up to the time of julius caesar. “The highth of Rome” was rumored to have jove as his father: ix 510. Before “surnamed of Africa” began showing his military genius in Spain, where he was proconsul, 211: PR 2, 199-200. Then he “his wasted country freed from Punic rage,” PR 3, 102, “brought down/ The Carthaginian pride,” 34-5 with his “perfect armies,” CG 185, causing by his invasion of Africa, 204 b.c., the recall of hannibal from Italy, to be crushed in the great battle of Zama, 202. His later life was shadowed by Roman ingratitude, SD 4-6, and “frivolous accusations,” An 144 (see livy, XI, 212). See liternum.

scazontes See Ad Salsillum. Sceva the Jew

Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus (Scipio the Younger)

Residing at ephesus at the time of st. Paul’s second visit, the “seven sons” attempted to exorcise, to their sorrow: see Acts xix, 13-17, K 259.

(185-129 b.c. ) Grandson by adop¬ tion of scipio the elder. Captured Carthage in Third Punic War, 146. Figure in cicero’s De Amicitia. Prol VI 220; A 301.

scheme

"Scotch what d'ye call"

A figure of speech, T 168.

See FC.

A Milton Dictionary

Scotus, John Duns

scurra in trivio

(1265P-1308) The Franciscan “Doc¬ tor Subtilis,” cf. Prol III, 158, born in Duns, Scotland, studied and lectured at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne. Found¬ er of the scholastic system called Scotism (plural, T 115), as opposed to Thomism. Scorn such as Milton’s, A 311, gave rise to the word dunce, which for him meant not a blockhead but an oversubtle reasoner.

(Latin) A dandy on a street-corner. An 176.

scrannel

Shrivelled and thin and harsh (a word possibly of Milton’s invention), L 124.

Scylla

Rock on the Italian side of Strait of Messina, opposite charybdis on the Sicilian side; once a lovely nymph whom circe, her rival for glaucus’ love, made a monster from the waist down, beset by barking dogs, C 257 (Ody. XII, 73 ff.; Meta, xiv, 40 ff.). She was allegorized as a symbol of carnal sin, and is the admitted inspira¬ tion for Milton’s Sin, ii 660. Compare “CERBEREAN MOUTHS.” Scythian(s)

scrip

Bag, C 626. Scripture and Reason pleaded for Defensive Arms

An official publication attributed by Milton to Herbert Palmer, T 67-8, and at least partly by him, Ten 53: the divines appeal to their congrega¬ tions and sermons “whether we have taught anything but humble and holy obedience to all just and lawful au¬ thority.” scrowl

Scroll of parchment, CG 197. Scudamore, "Thomas" (his name was John), Viscount of Sligo

(1601-71) Son of Sir James, com¬ memorated for his “warlike deeds” in F.Q. Ill and IV (with recollection that the name means “shield of love”). Joint-ambassador at Paris, 1636-9, who introduced Milton to grotius, 2D 122. High steward at Hereford city and cathedral, he surrendered to Waller in 1643 and was kept in confinement four years.

Nomadic and warlike (cf. LP 277) horsemen who inhabited southern Eu¬ rope, speaking an Indo-Iranian lan¬ guage and trading with the Greeks and acting as Greek mercenaries, EL IV, 11; V 99 (see Humber); PR 3, 301; 4, 78. sdeined

Disdained, iv 50. Sechem (Vulgate form of Shechem or Sichem)

In a valley between Mounts Gerizam and Ebal in central canaan where abraham first “his tents/ Pitcht,” xii 136. “Tumults,” K 104: “mutiny . . . between Abimilech and the Sechemites,” R 60 (see Judges ix). “The Sichemites were punished with slaugh¬ ter and destruction for having adopted a new religion inconsiderately and from secular motives, Gen. xxxiv” CD 2, 4. secular

Living for ages or centuries, SA 1707. secure

sculls

Latin, without care, L’A 91; iv 186, 791; v 238; vi 672; etc. K 236.

Shoals or schools, vii 402.

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self-begotten bird

Selden, John (1584-1654) “The chief of learned men reputed in this land,” A 309, “our learned Selden,” D 505, jurist, anti¬ quarian, orientalist, after his educa¬ tion at Hart Hall, Oxford and in the law, early revealed his massive erudi¬ tion in his copious notes to the first 18 Songs of Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, 1613. His De Diis Syris, 1617, could have been suggestive for N and i. His De Jure Naturali et Gentium, Juxta Disciplinam Ebraeorum (1640), Book V, ch. ii was an acknowledged source of D, cf. CB 152 and Milton noted With satisfaction coincidental agree¬ ment of views in the later Uxor Ebraica, 1646, 2D 132: cf. CD 1, 10; CB 151. The A passage is based on the prefatory words of the De Jure Natu¬ rali. Selden was a member of the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, his History of Tithes, 1617, was suppressed, and he lived up to his Greek motto, “Liberty above all” suffi¬ ciently for Charles to have imprisoned him more than once. His urbanity apropos of a subject Milton dealt with (N 13; PR 1, 456) interestingly emerges: “Oracles ceased presently after Christ, as soon as nobody be¬ lieved them. Just as we have no for¬ tune-tellers nor wise-men when no¬ body cares for them. Sometimes you have a season for them, when people believe them, and neither of these, 1 conceive, wrought by the Devil.” Seleucia, Great (Pliny's adjective to distinguish it from lesser cities of the same name) A city on the Tigris, SE of Baghdad, “built by Grecian” or “Emathian” (Macedonian) Seleucus I Nicator (358P-280 b.c.), Alexander’s general, who helped plot and profited from his death and founded the Seleucid dynasty, iv 212; PR 3, 291.

The

SA 1699.

Semele “Unwillingly burned by her lover Jove,” Prol I 32 (identified as really Belial, PR 2, 187) when she, the mother of Bacchus, became dissatis¬ fied with Jove’s continual secrecy and disguise and insisted that he appear to her in all his flaming glory. Adj., EL V 91. Semiramis (also Semyramus) The legendary queen of Assyria, wife of ninus, founder of nineveh and herself the builder of babylon with its hanging gardens; mentioned in the Man of Law’s Tale, Parliament of Fowls, and Legend of Good Women An 111. Sempronius See

titus.

Senas Siena, in tuscany, visited by Milton after Florence, 2D 122; one of the richest art cities in Italy. senate, their great The Seventy Elders of Ex. xxiv, 1-9; Num. xi, 16-30 xii 225. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (4 b.c.?-65a.d.) Roman tragedian and Stoic philosopher, a favorite au¬ thor of the Renaissance. Born in Cor¬ doba, Spain, he went to Rome and was tutor and councilor of Nero, who, progressing in degeneracy, turned against him and ordered him to take his own life. Ten tragedies (translated 1581) and numerous moral or philo¬ sophic essays survive. Pref. SA; An 318. De Beneficiis, VII, 22 Col 259. Questionum Naturalium, E 283, a col¬ lection of natural facts, mainly astro¬ nomical and meteorological. Hercules

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phoenix.

A Milton Dictionary

Furens 922-4, Ten 19; same quot., ID 326. 352-4. Outspoken, SD 108. Usurer, B 65, though “in his books a philoso¬ pher.”

seraphim See

ANGELS.

Serapis An aspect of osiris Underworld, i 720.

seneschals

as

god of

the

House-stewards, ix 38. Serbonian bog Senir “Long ridge of hills” associated with Mt. Hermon, ne of the Sea of Galilee (1 Chron. v, 23), xii 146. Sennaar The plain of Shinar (Gen. x, 10; xi 2), iii 467. See babel. Sennacherib King of Assyria 705-681 b.c. Defied by hezekiah, he invaded Palestine and captured many cities of Judah, K 268. The miraculous destruction of his army (2 Kings xix, 32-5) referred to EL IV 113-4. Blasphemer, D 371. sensible Sensibility, ii 278.

A treacherous mixture of sand and water on the coast of Lower Egypt described by diodorus siculus, who said, “many, unacquainted with the nature of the place, by missing their way, have been there swallowed up, together with whole armies” (I, 86), ii 592. serene, drop See

DROP SERENE.

Sericana A region of central Asia roughly indicated by assuming that “the bar¬ ren plains” are the Gobi Desert, iii 438. Seriphia(n)

sensibly Painfully, SA 913. Seon's realm God “foiled bold Seon and his host,/ That rul’d the Amorrean coast,” PS CXXXVI 65-6 in Heshbon, “the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who had fought against the former king of Moab, and taken all his land” (Num. xxi, 26), i 409. septentrion Northern, PR 4, 31. Septuagint (Latin, “Seventy”) The Greek ver¬ sion of the OT reputedly made by 72 translators in 72 days for Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 b.c. ). Still used in the Eastern Church, D 488; T 145,

211.

Seriphus, an island in the Aegean employed by the Roman emperors as a place of banishment for state crimi¬ nals; it was so bleak and forbidding that the frogs there were proverbially mute, Prol I 120. Serraliona Sierra Leone, West African cape with a six-months’ rainy season, x 703. Serranus, C. Atilius Regulus Consul 257 b.c., was sowing when news of his elevation was brought him, and in the midst of his campaign against the Carthaginians asked for recall to attend to his farm and family, FE #4 14. Servius Tullius (6th cent, b.c.) Sixth legendary king (578-534 b.c.) of the early Romans; an Etruscan, son-in-law of tabquinius

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priscus,

ID 316

(Tacitus, Annales,

111,26). Sesell See

SEYSELL.

Sesostris herodotus tells II, 107, how the brother tried to bum to death at a banquet an Egyptian king of this name (probably a confusion with Ramses II), who was saved only by using two of his sons as a bridge upon the fire, ID 292.

Sestiada Apparently a jesting allusion to the love poem Hero and Leander by Mar¬ lowe and Chapman, which is in sestiads (divisions of six—six cantos). SD 188 (Pontia connected with “pontus,” sea). Sestius, Publius Tribune of the plebs 57 b.c. accused of violence, cickro won his acquittal, ID 370.

Severus, Sulpicius (c. 363-c. 425) Historian, the “good author,” H 87, of Sacrae Historiae Libri Duo, a summary of sacred history from the Creation in elegant and easy Latin. He had withdrawn into solitude as a monk under the influence of St. Martin. Page numbers in CB 160-1, 175 indicate Milton used Leyden, El¬ zevir 1635 edition. On the poverty and “simple plainness” of the early bi¬ shops, R 12, 16 (p. 157) (before cor¬ ruption, 25-6-pp. 41-2); P 98 (p. 157). Heretical interpolation in origen, R 22 (pp. 247-8). On kings, ID 88, 290. Sevil(le) In SW Spain, the center of the In¬ quisition from 1481. Jeremy Taylor in his Dissuasive from Popery (II, vi) wrote “Of the Expurgatory Indices in the Roman Church” that “the king of Spain gave a commission to the inqui¬ sitors to purge all Catholic authors” even, “but with a clause of secrecy,” A 321. sewers

Setia

Waiters, ix 38; An 111; K 259.

Near Rome; on its wine, see Martial XIII, 23, etc., PR 4,117.

sextile

Sara in the Book of Tobit, v 223; cf. iv 168 ff.

The (prosperous) aspect of two heavenly bodies which are 60 degrees or one sixth part of the zodiac from each other, x 659.

Severianus

Seysell (Sesell), Claude de

seven-times-wedded maid

See

AFRANTUS.

Severn River winding 200 miles from Plinlimmon, Wales, to Bristol Channel, V 96; C 825. See Sabrina. Severus, Alexander (208P-235). Roman emperor from 222 (age c. 13), having been adopted by heliogabalus. Pagan himself, he respected Christianity, R 17.

(1450-1520). Diplomat, archbishop of Turin, 1517, and for fifty years pro¬ fessor of law at the University there. Remembered mainly for his treatise La Grand’ Monarc-hie de France (1519), which Sleidan put into Latin a generation later. Milton has 3 Latin entries, CB 185, 209, 210, and quotes this “French statesman,” Ten 10.

291

shafts, golden See

cupid.

A Milton Dictionary

Milton’s only other direct reference Shakespeare, On (IP 101 may be an indirect reference: This epigram of 16 lines in heroic cf. EL I. 40-2) brings together Charles couplets (sometimes wrongly referred II and Richard III as hypocrites, K to as a sonnet) was Milton’s first Eng¬ 84-5, the author of the tragedy being lish publication. He gave it the date “one whom [sic] we well know was 1630. It appeared anonymously in the the closet companion of these his soli¬ Second Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, tudes.” 1632, under the title “An Epitaph on Milton’s traceable debt to Shake¬ the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. speare is far from being what his debt Shakespear.” It was reprinted in to the Puritan spenser was, although Poems: Written by Wil. Shake-speare. verbal parallels have been gathered in Gent. 1640, and Milton’s 1645 publi¬ the Index to the Columbia milton and cation was followed by a fourth print¬ by Alwin Thaler, who has quoted al¬ ing, in the third Shakespeare folio, most 300 passages. R. G. Cox has re¬ 1663-4: thus, with 1673, it had five marked that “Comus’s great tempta¬ printings in the poet’s lifetime, the tion speech: first of which gives “part” instead of ‘Wherefore did Nature pour her “heart” (10). The poem elaborates in bounties forth behalf of the dramatist Horace’s With such a full and unwithdraw“Exegi monumentum aere perennius” ing hand . . .’ (C 710 ff.) (Car. Ill, xxx) idea. An Epitaph on is Shakespearian in its varied liveliness Sir Edward Stanley that circulated in of diction and its expressive interplay MS. and was attributed to Shakes¬ of sound, movement, and imagery, peare himself reads, most suggestively: though not all of the masque has this “Not monumental stones preserves dramatic quality.” As for the prose, our fame; there are such casual references as in Nor sky-aspiring pyramids our Sm trinculos 300 and the Polonian name; “This champion from behind the ar¬ The memory of him for whom this ras,” 327. When Col 271 says, “the stands life of man is likened to a scene,” As Shall outlive marble and defacer’s You Like It, II, vii, 147 ff. is the best hands. authority for what was, however, a When all to time’s corruption commonplace. There are more specu¬ shall be given lative connections, as between “Root Standly for whom this stands shall of hemlock, digg’d i’th’dark” (Mac¬ stand in Heaven.” beth, IV, i 25) and “Built in th’eclipse, jonson had said in the First Folio and rigg’d with curses dark,” L 101. (1623), “Thou art a monument with¬ out a tomb.” Perhaps jonson and Milshares ton had in mind the Stratford bust. Bits, CG 224. The brother of the Muses (“son of sharked Memory,” 5) has built himself “a Got by fraud, K 90. livelong monument.” Milton, with Shaw, Doctor “Thy easy numbers flow” (10) con¬ tributes to the tradition of the spon¬ Ralph or John. (d. 1484) In a ser¬ taneous Shakespeare as in L’A 133-4. mon preached at St. Paul’s Cross June The conceit at the end, 13, is bolder 22, 1483 attacked the legitimacy of than IP 42. the late king Edward IV and his chil-

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dren by way of supporting the claim of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to the throne, which the usurper seized 4 days later. E. g. Stow, Annals (1615), p. 454, R 9. Shelley Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) Adonais, IV puts Milton “third among the sons of light” (the first two, according to Defence of Poetry, being homer and dante). Shelley was drawn to the rebel. “Noth¬ ing can exceed the energy and magni¬ ficence of the character of Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mis¬ take to suppose that he could ever have been intended for the popular personification of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; although redeemed by much that ennobles his defeat in one sub¬ dued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in a victor. Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mis¬ taken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments.” (Defence) The Preface to Prometheus Bound de¬ clares, “The only imaginary being re¬ sembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as

exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for per¬ sonal aggrandisement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest.” Cf. dryden, blake, and R. J. Z. Werblowsky, Lucifer and Prometheus (1952). It seems selfidentification, the fragment, “I dreamed that Milton’s spirit rose, and took/ From life’s green tree his Ura¬ nian lute;/ And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook/ All hu¬ man things built in contempt of man,/ And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked, / Prisons and cita¬ dels . . .” shibboleth See Judges xii, 5-6. SA 289. shift(s) Contrivance(s) or in an argument tricks, C 273, 617; PR 4, 308; SA 1116, 1220. Shimei Who cursed David, 2 Sam. xvi, 5, and was slain by Solomon, 1 Kings ii, 46 Sm 309; CD 2, 5. shogging Shaking, jogging, CG 188. shoot in Shoot with, E 291. shreeve (shrive) To lighten, unburden, An 164. shroud(s) n. and v. Shelter(s), N 218; C 147, 316; x 1068; PR 4, 419. shrouds The ropes of a ship’s rigging, ii 1044. Shroving-time The period just before the peniten¬ tial period of Lent, W 111.

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Sidney, Sir Philip

Sibma(h) A trans-Jordanic town close to Eleale, famous for its vineyards (Is. xvi, 8-9; Jer. xlviii, 32), i 410.'' sibyl

Sidonian “Dira”=jEZEBEL, EL IV 100. Sidon was a Phoenician (i 438) seaport, i

441.

A prophetic old woman, V 69.

Sien(n)a

Sibyllae The

Sibyls were priestesses of apollo who delivered his oracles in a trance and regularly in meter. The most famous, the Cumaean Sibyl, trembled as she prophesied to Aeneas (Aen. VI, 46-9) before he descended into the lower world, AdP 25. Sicanian Sicilian, EL IV 5. Diva Sicana= PROSERPINA, EL V 66. Sichardus (1160-1215) Historian. Bishop of Cremona from 1185. His Chronicon was a history of the world up to 1213. Author also of Suinma Canonum. ID 90, 104, 106. Sicilian muse Referring to the fact that theocritus, father of pastoral poetry, came from Sicily, L 133. Cf. “Sicelicum . . . carmen,” ED 3. Sicilians, endeared to the See

See Eikonoklastes.

QUAESTORSHIP.

See

senas.

Sigeius, iuvenis Ganymede, EL VII, 21, son of Tros, Sigeurn being the nw promontory of the Troad.

si(g)niories hughes quotes Raleigh’s The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State Discabineted (1692, p. 5): “A mon¬ arch signorial is he who by force of arms and just war is made owner of men’s bodies and goods, and governeth them as a master of a family governeth base servants and slaves.” A 296.

Sigonius, Carlo (1524-84) “A learned writer,” B 92, Italian humanist. Reference to De Regno Italiae (Frankfurt, 1591), pp. 74-6 R 43. Milton’s four CB references fit this or 1575. His references to De Occidentali Imperio (a history of the Western empire from Diocletian) fit Frankfurt, 1618.

Siciliensis, infamis ille reus

Silenus

Gaius Verres, extortionate proprae¬ tor in Sicily, 73-71 b.c., fled Rome after Cicero’s first Verrine oration, SD 136. Cf. A 330.

An older satyr, constant companion of bacchus, bald, fat, and generally intoxicated, Sm 295. silly

Sidney (Sidneium), Algernon

Simple, innocent, N 92.

(1622-83) Republican. Wounded at Marston Moor. Various parliamentary appointments till governor of Dover, 1648-50, 2D 234. Later isolated from both sides. Executed in connection with the Rye House plot.

Silo (A.V. Shiloh) A town of Palestine north of bethel where “the whole congregation of the children of Israel ... set up the taber¬ nacle of the congregation” after the

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conquest of Canaan (Josh, xviii, 1) “where it remained till taken by the Philistines at the death of eli” (mar¬ ginal note)—about 300 years (cf. Jer. vii, 12) SA 1674. Siloa One of the “flowery brooks” (iii 30) or a pool outside Jerusalem, not far from the Temple, i 11. Silvan(us) A wood-god, C 268; iv 707; PR 2, 191. Silvester See

simples Medicinal herbs, C 627. Simplicius (6th cent.) Greek Neoplatonic phi¬ losopher; author of commentaries on some of Aristotle’s works and on the Enchiridion of epictetus, ID 286. Sin The allegory of Sin and Death, ii 648-814, derives from James i, 15: “Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Cf. PALLAS and SCYLLA.

SYLVESTER.

Sinaean Simeon

Chinese, xi 390.

“Just,” PR 1, 255; “old,” 2, 87. See Luke, ii, 25-35. Simeon of Durham (fl. 1130) Author of one of the “vol¬ umes of rubbish,” used, faute de mieux, for, B 180, 181, 183, 184, etc. Precentor of Durham and compiler of a history of its church (not printed till 1732) and a history of the kings of Northumbria. Simoentis A river rising in Mt. ida in the Troad; there Paris awarded Venus the apple “To the Fairest,” EL I 83. Simon (1) Afterwards called peter, the Apostle, PR 2, 7 (John i, 39); An 151 (with play on 2). (2) Magus, so-called because he “used sorcery” and from whom the word simony derives be¬ cause he attempted to purchase the power of the Holy Ghost and was answered “with a curse,” R 72, by Peter (Acts viii, 9-24). An 151; Sm 364; Ten 58; K 265 (Acts viii, 24); H 49, 90, 93; W 114. ID 62. Plural, SD 224.

Sinai The Mount in the wilderness of Horeb (see oreb) where moses passed forty days and forty nights (PR 1, 351; 2, 15) and received, amid the “horrid clang,” N 157-8, of “thunders and lightnings . . . and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud” (Ex. xix, 16) —cf. xii 227-9 the Ten Commandments i 7; CD 1, 10; 15; CG 261; Sm 345; D 437, 466, 508. single Mere, C 204, 369. singular(ly) Not in conformity with the majority, v 851; PR 3, 57. sinister Pun on (1) the literal Latin mean¬ ing, left and (2) the subsequent figurative meaning of inauspicious or evil, x 886. Sinnamus (or Cinnamus), Johannes (12th cent.) Byzantine historian. Secretary to Emperor Manuel I Comnenus. His history of the period from 1118 to 1176 could not have been for-

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Sittim

warded, as Milton requested, FE #21 88, because Du Cange did not publish it till 1670. Sion (Zion) A hill in Jerusalem where the Tem¬ ple stood, i 10, 386; iii 30, 530. Thus Jerusalem itself, i 442, or its people. 453, or their “songs” in the OT: PR 4, 347. Later either the theocracy or the Heavenly City of God—thus, the ad¬ jective, ED 219, means heavenly. P 102; A 340. Ten 45, 57; K 215.

Skinner, Cyriack See Sonnets XXI, XXII. Skinner, Daniel

Sion's Plea An Appeal to the Parliament, or Sion’s Plea against the Prelacy, by Alexander Leighton, 1628, An 173. Siope (Greek) Silence, a horse of Night, QN 72. sire, a reverend Noah, xi 719. Sirens Minor sea-goddesses, said by Homer to be two (Od. XII, 52, 167—dual genitive): cf. SM 1, by later writers three, C 253, whose “sweet” songs, C 878 lured mariners to their destruc¬ tion. But Odysseus escaped, EL VI 74. See parthenope, ligea. Connected by Milton with the muses, CG 241 in an allusion to Plato’s Republic X, 617b Prol I 150; Arc 63 ff. Warning to the traveller, FE #25 98.

See De Doctrina Christiana. sleekstone A flat stone used for polishing, An 114; Sm 327, 328. Sleidan, Johannes (1506-56) Annalist of the German Reformation. Issued his Commentarii de Statu Religionis et Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto Caesare as professor of law at Strassburg, 1555: Milton used this first edition, as the 11 CB entries show, 135, 138, 145, etc., Sm 315. Praised fagius, M 6 (and in fact made a Latin version of bucer’s Shorter Catechism, 1544). Cited H 82; Ten 27, 46. slip-skin Slippery, evasive, An 129. slope Adj., slanting, declining, iv 261; C 98. Adverb, obliquely, iv 591.

sirocco The hot southeast wind, x 706.

slot

Sisera See

Shittim, the last stop, east of the opposite jericho, of the Is¬ raelites on their exodus from Egypt, where “the people began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab . . . and Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor” (Num. xxv, 1, 3), i 413. jordan,

Track, Col 266.

jael.

slubb(e)ring

Sisyphus Whose well-known punishment in Hades was to push up a hill a huge stone, which always rolled back, ID 478.

Slovenly, Sm 365; D 471. slug Relax, R 11; T 112.

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A Milton Dictionary

smach

8-11) P 89, 91, 94, 95, 96, 103, 1AN 96.

Smack, taste, Sm 353.

smyen-

5malcaldia

Smyrnaeus, Quintus

Schmalkalden, in central Germany, where a “solemn covenant” of German Protestant princes was subscribed in 1531, led by Philip of Hesse and John Frederick I of Saxony. Emperor Charles V crushed the league in the Schmalkaldic War, 1546-7, with his victory at Miihlberg. Ten 46.

Often called calaber from the cir¬ cumstance that the first copy through which his poem became known was found in. a convent at Otranto in Cala¬ bria. (5th cent.) Author of a 14-book epic sequel to the Iliad, the Postomerica. V, 157, 162-4 quoted 2D 82-4. e. Phillips and aubrey reported that Milton’s pupils went through this. See

Smectymnuus

machaon.

See Of Reformation.

snaffles

Smerdis See

Bridles, An 112.

otanes.

sneeze. Wholesome as a

Smith, Sir Thomas (1) (1513-77) “A statesman,” R 13, one of those entrusted, according to camden, Annals (1625, p. 10) with “the correcting of the liturgy.” Many state missions and offices. His impor¬ tant posthumous publication on the Tutor constitution, The Common¬ wealth of England, cited 5 times in CB 175, 176, 181, 182 and in Ten. 26; ID 402. (2) (1558P-1625) Governor of the East India Company continu¬ ally 1607-21. “Ambassador from King James to Boris then emperor,” 1604 HM 378. His Voyage and Entertain¬ ment in Russia (1605) a source, IIM 382. Smithfield, the sheep in their pews at The well-known meat-market in London, n of St. Paul s. Gilbert quotes Stow: “Then be the pens or folds so called of sheep there parted, and penned up to be sold on the market days,” H 76. Smyrna (Smirna) A large city of Asia Minor, site of one of the 7 churches (Rev. i, 11; ii,

Browne: “For sneezing being proj5L erly a motion of the brain, suddenly expelling through the nostrils what is offensive unto it, it cannot but afford some evidence of its vigour” (Vulgar Errors, IV, 9), PR 4, 458. snuff End of the candle, Sm 349. soar-eagle A young not yet fully fledged eagle, An 110. Sobietski See A Declaration or Letters Fatents, etc. Socinians A school of anti-Trinitarian, moder¬ ately Unitarian thought named after an uncle and a nephew, Lelio F. M. Sozini (1525-62) and Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539-1604), both from Siena. The Racovian Catechism, the first statement of Socinian principles, treated Christ as a man who by his marvellous life and resurrection was raised to divine power. Grouped with arians, TR 169, and with those that “may have some errors, but are no

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heretics,” 168, and should be tolerated, 178. Warning against making Adam “an idiot as the Socinians make him,” T 95, i.e. they were said to view Adam as ignorant until he ate the fruit of knowledge. sock The light shoe of comedy, L’A 132. Socrates (470P-399 b.c. ) Who pretended to know nothing, Prol VII, 280, whose method of teaching struck some as comic, Prol VI 238, “scurra Atticus,” SD 52—the Socratic was a school of raillery 112, 176; “doctissirne Graium,” EL IV 23, “the first and wisest of them all professed,/ To know this only, that he nothing knew,” PR 4, 293-4, who wrote nothing, but survives as the chief figure in most of Plato’s dia¬ logues, 4, 274-8 (on the “oracle” note a denied comparison with Milton, 2D 192). Condemned to drink poison for corrupting youth: “Poor Socrates (who next more memorable?) By what he taught and suffer’d for so doing. For truth’s sake suffering death unjust, lives now Equal in fame to proudest con¬ querors.” PR 3, 96-9.

Socrates the Historian, surnamed Scholasticus ("Lawyer") (c. 380-450) A native of Constanti¬ nople, he wrote in Greek a Church History in 7 books, covering 305 to 439. R 42. Cited Sm 357; A 307 (III, xiv-see apollinarii). CB 136, 138, 140, 147, 148, 150, 154, 162, 170. Socratic discourses, other Probably certain of Plutarch’s Moralia, e.g. “On the Education of Chil¬ dren,” E 281. sod Old past participle boiled, An 177.

of

“seethe,”

Sodom One of the cities of the plain in Syria, near the Dead Sea, destroyed, with Gomorrah, for abominations, by means of “brimstone and fire” (Gen. xix, 24) i 503; x 562; CG 278 (Gen. xviii, 32). Sm 354 (Gen. xiv, 21-4). “Sodom Burning” proposed subject, MS 233. Sofala A rich seaport in Portuguese East Africa (“on the coast of Mozambique,” Heylyn), xi 400. Sogdiana

Unlike the rewarded clergy, “never bargained with any for teaching,” An 161, “the Socratic school famously re¬ futed without hire,” CG 202. Pre¬ sented “merciless dilemmas” in plato, Sm 293, as against Callicles, D 500. “Objected . . . that he ever made the worse cause seem the better,” T 70 (Apology, 19) (cf. Belial, ii 113-4). Fable of Eros, D 398. Had a shrew of a wife, Prol VI 218 (Xanthippe, who, he was wont to say, helped to make him a philosopher).

A country in central Asia, ne prov¬ ince of the parthian Empire, between the oxus and Jaxartes rivers and far¬ thest conquest of Alexander; chief city samarchand, PR 3, 302. sol fa Scale, A 335. soldan Sultan, i 764. Solinus, Gaius Julius (3rd cent.) Author of Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium (revised in 6th cent, under title Polyhistor), a ram-

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bling description of the world of his day translated by Arthur Golding under the title Of the Noble Actions of Human Creatures, and edited by SALMAsrus, 1629, ID 366. E 283. Solomon (10 cent. b.c. ) The son of david, “for wealth and wisdom famed,” xii 332 and king of Israel and Judah is remembered in the poetry for his enormous capacity to be beguiled by his waves and concubines: they (ac¬ cording to 1 Kings xi, 3-4) were back of his building moloch’s “temple right against the Temple of God, ’ i 402, “that uxorious king,” 444. “Held dalli¬ ance” with Pharoah’s daughter, ix 443. belial’s vulgar approach to jesus as to another Solomon, PR 2, 169-71; 201 if. In the prose he is mainly the author of the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Can¬ ticles (the last “a divine pastoral drama,” CG 237). Also judged as a king, K 277; ID 108-10, 138-42, 22830, etc. MS 237. Solon (c. 638-c. 599 b.c.) Athenian law¬ giver. Elected archon, c. 594 during a severe depression and instituted ex¬ tensive reforms, including the giving of new power to the Areopagus. Life written by plutarch. CG210; Sm 281. T 75; E 285; K 298. SD 146. Song: On May Morning 10 coupleted lines of free penta¬ meter or tetrameter, ending in one of each ( h. f. fletcher calls it an “apocopated sonnet”). An “early song of uncertain date (it is not in MS), one of Milton’s paeans to the spring (cf. EL V). Just as in Buchanan’s “Majae Calendae,” “flamma calet,” so here “warm desire” is acknowledged. tillyard and Grierson thought it writ¬

ten for May Day, 1630. Venus as the “morning star” is Lucifer and the god¬ dess of growth (as in Lucretius). “Yellow cowslip” becomes “cowslip wan" in L 147, “the pale primrose” “the rathe primrose,” 142. Sonnets They total 23 (18 in English) plus the “tailed” Sonnet “On the New Forcers of Conscience.” Sonnets II-VI are in Italian, with a Canzone between III and IV. I-X were first published in the 1645 Poems. Publication data on XI-XXIII are given in the descrip¬ tion of them below. The outstanding modern edition is by J. S. Smart, 1921. There is no particular reason to doubt that Milton placed his sonnets in chronological order. All the sonnets have as their rhyme scheme in the first 8 lines abba, abba, thus follow¬ ing the pure Italian form rather than the Surrey-Shakespeare innovation of alternately rhymed quatrains (ababcdcdefefgg). The 7 variations in the tercets (the last 6 lines) are as follows: cde cde-IX, X, XVII, XIX, XXI; cdc dcd-I, VIII, XI, XIV, XXII, XXIII; cde dee—II, III, VII, XIII; cd cd ee—IV, V, VI; edd cde-XII, XV; cdc eed—XX; edd cee XVI. The Pe¬ trarchan rule of pause according to the metrical boundaries of quatrain and tercet, and particularly after the octave, is honored more in the breach than in the observance by Milton (but note VIII, X, XV, and XXI). Smart and Prince consider Giovanni della Casa (d. 1556), whose Rime Milton purchased in 1629, the prin¬ cipal influence. The sonnets break with the English tradition of pre¬ occupation with love, illustrating the author’s varied interests and friend¬ ships and representing—the last six¬ teen—the only genuine poetry he wrote during his prose period. He was

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keeping his hand in at a time when the English sonnet was otherwise dead and would so remain until the end of the 18th century and Words¬ worth. dr. Johnson criticised the son¬ nets on the grounds that “Milton was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.” There is at least this truth that Milton in the freedom he often took with the “Petrarchian stanza” (Let 322, 325) was practising “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another” of PL (“The Verse”). I. This (the date is c. 1630), the conventional opening words of which are translated in EL V, 25-6, presents Milton in the un¬ characteristic attitude of hoping for love, hoping that he will hear the nightingale before “the rude bird of hate,” the cuckoo (both birds are heard in England around mid-April) —a contest of portents recorded in Clanvowe’s “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” (in Speght’s edition of chaucer, 1598). With 4 cf. iv 266-8; “jolly hours” translates 11 XXI, 450. With pathos the young man says no “relief” has come to him yet, despite his readiness to serve “both” the muse and love. II. It used to be thought that the Italian sonnets, which, like Shake¬ speare’s, feature a “dark lady,” were composed during Milton’s Italian jour¬ ney, but the references to “l’erbetta strana e bella,” in III and “lingua ignota e strana” in the Canzone, 3, made it clear to Smart that the group was composed in England, probably years before. Their position points to c. 1630. Milton learned the language at an early age (AdP 83). II begins, in the riddling Renaissance fashion, with play on the lady’s name, which is evidently Emilia, that being the re¬ gion of Italy (named after the Via

Aemilia, PR 4, 69) of the “verdant valley” of the river Reno and the “fa¬ mous ford” of Rubicon. Her glances are arrows. Her voice could move a tree. Only grace from above may pre¬ serve a man’s heart from a lover’s longing. III. In an allegoiy of a shepherdess tending in an alien soil a plant, the poet conveys that Love willed him to write in Italian: To change the Thames for the Arno, 10 is to ex¬ change English for Tuscan. As in II a Christian note is struck again at the end. Canzone. A canzone “consisted of a complex, fully rhymed stanza of some length, repeated several times and followed by a shorter concluding stanza, the commiato” (F. T. Prince). The verse paragraphs of Lycidas thus approach the canzone form better than these 15 irregularly disposed lines, but Carducci praised the poem, with III it represents Milton’s best effort in Italian, and it does end with a commiato directly addressing the poem itself (cf. the last stanza of spenser’s Epithalamion). The poet is approached by young lovers of both sexes inquiring why he writes in a foreign tongue when he might achieve immortality in English. He answers that the language he is using is the language of Love. Noteworthy is Milton’s concern with the “fair guer¬ don” (L 73; ‘Timmortal guiderdon,” 11) of laurelled fame. IV. That this is addressed to diodati may be a clue that diodati introduced Emilia to Milton; there is at least this appropriateness, that, EL I, which had praised the blonde maidens of England, was addressed to the same friend: now Milton confesses a "nuova idea” has captivated him, a black-eyed, dark-tressed polylingual foreigner who could draw down the moon with her enchanting song. The fire of

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her eyes would make it futile to seal up the ears (as Ulysses did against the Sirens). A woman—and especially a woman’s hair—as an entanglement (3-5) is a recurring motiv in Milton (e.g. L 69; EL I 58-9). “La faticosa luna” 12 is “the labouring moon,” of ii 665 (cf. vxrgil’s Eel. VIII, 69). V. In this utterly conventional ad¬ dress to his lady, she is a sun, and he is a sigher from the side where his heart is. When the “vapor” reaches his eyes it makes tears all night. VI. The Petrarchan opening and clos¬ ing lines surround a hard core of self¬ revelation — a heart like that of Horace’s just and firm man (Car. Ill, 3), careless of all but the pursuits of genius. VII. This was enclosed in a “Letter to a Friend,” which, with its reference to “dream away my years in the arms of studious retirement” (XII, 320), sounds like a post-Cambridge Horton composition, as does the sonnet. Mil¬ ton’s peculiar usage in dating suggests that 2 refers to Dec. 9, 1632 rather than Dec. 9, 1631. (The title “On his Being Arrived to his 23rd Year was first added in 1713.) 4 may be a topical allusion to the hoy-wonder Abraham Cowley, whose Poetical Blossoms was entered in the Sta¬ tioners’ Register Oct. 24, 1632. Milton, unlike such “timely-happy spirits” as the 14-year-old Cambridge phe¬ nomenon, has not rushed toward pub¬ lication. He looks younger than he is (5-6). The sentiment of patience in the octave (to be most famous in XIX) and attendance on God s will has its problems of precise interpre¬ tation: “still” 10 may means always, and “even” is probably an adjective rather than an adverb, meaning com¬ mensurate, corresponding. Dorian interprets 13-4, “All time is, if I have grace to use it so, as eternity in God’s

sight.” Svendsen takes “it” 13 as hav¬ ing antecedent in “ripeness” 7 rather than “All” (13). The applicable part of Pindar’s Fourth Nemean Ode (Milton heavily annotated his copy of Pindar purchased Nov. 15, 1629), 37-43, reads (translated J. E. Sandys): “We shall yet be deemed to come forth in the light of day far stronger than our foes, while another, with envious glance, broodeth in darkness over some fruitless purpose that falleth to the ground. But, whatsoever excellence Lord Destiny assigned me, well I know that the lapse of time will bring it to its appointed per¬ fection.” VIII. In MS the first title, deleted, was “On his Door when the City Ex¬ pected an Assault”; then, inserted, “When the Assault was Intended to the City” (but Milton printed neither title). The year was the first in the Civil War, 1642, when “it was early proved by experience that London could not be overpowered by a frontal attack. When in November Charles advanced to take it by a coup de main from Oxford, the commercial world mustered for the week at Tumham Green, a well drilled and brilliantly equipped army of militia, over 20,000 strong. So small was the chance that this weighty shield could be broken through by the light field-army of the King that Milton wrote a jesting son¬ net ...; he would have been in no mood to trifle with such a prospect, if he had really expected the fate of Magdeburg to befall the island capital, where free¬ dom had found her strong place of ref¬ uge.” (Trevelyan.) “The great Emathiian conqueror,” 10 Alexander the great (“Emathia” being another name for Macedon) razed rebellious thebes, but reputedly spared the house of the poet Pindar. The repeating of the first chorus in euripides’ Electra by a Pho-

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A Milton Dictionary

cian at a meeting of the generals saved defeated Athens from razing at the end of the Peloponnesian War, according to Plutarch’s Life of Lysander. IX. From its position to be dated c. 1644. The “Lady” addressed is not known; “prime of earliest youth” may or may not point to a child. She may have been the Miss Davis whom Phil¬ lips said Milton thought of marrying during his estrangement from his first wife; or one of the daughters of the Thomasons (cf. XIV); or the Lady of Comus, Alice Egerton. As Smart explains, “That some one ‘fretted at her growing virtues’ can only mean that in a narrow spirit she had been thought precocious and priggish.” The first quatrain has a paths-and-hill allegory (cf. Pilgrim’s Progress) that is both classical (Hesiod, Works and Days, 287-92) and Christian (Matt, vii, 13-4) (many parallels in Milton, from AdP 69 to PR 1, 478; 2, 217, with prose in be¬ tween, CG 239, 261; FE #30 112). The rest of the allusions are Biblical— Mary being Martha’s sister, com¬ mended by Jesus for having “chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her” (Luke x, 42) and Ruth being Milton’s onlv ref¬ erence to the Moabite who decided to go to Judah with her Hebrew mother-in-law Naomi; “for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God" (Ruth i, 16). The parable of the five wise, and five foolish, virgins (Matt, xxv, 1-13) was also a Puritan favorite. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46 twice gives proof that identical rhyme such as “Ruth”—“ruth” (French rime riche) was once permitted. X. The MS heading “To the Lady Margaret Ley” (pronounced Lee) was first printed 1713. The date range

would be 1643-5. When his first wife left him in 1642, “our author, now as at were a single man again, made it his chief diversion now and then in an evening to visit . . . this lady,” who, “being a woman of great wit and ingenuity, had a particular honour for him, and took much delight in his company, as likewise her husband Captain [John] Hobson, a very accom¬ plished gentleman” (Phillips). They were neighbors on Aldersgate Street. She was “Daughter to” Sir James Ley (1550-1629), who became Lord Chief-Justice in 1622 and presided and pronounced sentence when Fran¬ cis bacon was convicted of venality (cf. 3). He became Lord High Treas¬ urer, 1624, first Earl of Marlborough, 1626, and Lord President of the Coun¬ cil, 1628. He died four days after the memorable dissolution of the Third Parliament, March 10, 1629, that caused Charles I such trouble that he ruled for eleven years without calling another. 5 seems to be an allusion to Sir John Eliot’s prophetic words on that occasion; “None have gone about to break Parliaments, but in the end Parliaments have broken them”; cf. “At first no man less beloved, no man more generally condemned than was the King, from the time that it became his custom to break Parliaments at home . . .” K 69. Isocrates, the Athen¬ ian orator, “that old man eloquent,” 8 died four days after the “dishonest,” 6. (Latin inhonestus, shameful) vic¬ tory of Philip of macedon over the combined Athenian and Theban forces at Chaeronea in Boeotia, 338 b.c., which ended Greek independence. Isocrates, 98, in his grief starved him¬ self. Smart pointed to sonnets by dante, tasso, and Claudio Tolomei that end with the complimentarily modified name “Margherita.” XI. First published 1673, with 2 mis-

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prints corrected in the Errata and see MS for variants. In MS the sar¬ donic sonnets XI and XII are in re¬ verse order, which may represent their true chronology. XI, the title of which, “On the Detraction which Followed upon My Writing Certain Treatises,” comes from MS, was written “a while,” 3, after the publication of Tetrachordon, March 4, 1645. The sonnet with its feminine rhymes in the octave and ugly “asp” rhymes in the sestet is a scholar’s hit at the vulgar public as contrasted with “good intellects,” 4. The window-shopper of the day—“the stall-reader”—is seen as “spelling false,” that is, misinterpreting or mispro¬ nouncing a title that required a knowledge of both music and Greek. Cf. jonson’s Epigram “To My Book¬ seller”: “Thou that mak’st gain thy end, and wisely well, Call’st a book good, or bad, as it doth sell. Use mine so too; I give thee leave: but crave, For the luck’s sake, it thus much favor have, To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought; Not offer’d, as it made suit to be bought; Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls, Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls For termers, or some clerklike serving-man. Who scarce can spell th hard names; whose knight less can. . . Mile-End Green was a common a mile east of the center of London. What follows “retaliates upon the barbarous Scottish names which the Civil War had made familiar to English ears

(Sir Walter Scott), the “rugged” (MS barbarian) names being of those who served with montrose in that year of his activity against Argyle or Presby¬ terian Scotland (he was at last de¬ feated by Leslie at Philiphaugh, Sep¬ tember, 1645). 9 may all refer to one person, Montrose’s lieutenant-general, Alexander Macdonald, son of Colkittoch (the left-handed), son of Gilles¬ pie. For the last three lines to be clear, modem construction requires chang¬ ing “like ours” to “unlike ours.” Mil¬ ton’s negative makes this interpreta¬ tion, masson’s, more plausible than Smart’s which has both ages hating learning. Milton is, however errone¬ ously. laudator temporis acti. Sir John Cheke (1514-57), “at that time counted the leamedest of English¬ men,” T 231, (he served on a com¬ mittee that proposed a liberalization of the divorce laws; also praised Bucer, M 1-2) the first professor of Greek at Cambridge, 1540-51, was also tutor to the prince of Wales be¬ fore the boy became king as Edward VI and remembered his master by generous grants of lands and offices. Roger Ascham (Toxoplulus) testified “how all men were provoked and stirred up by his counsel and daily example how they should come to learning.” After the Protestant king’s death Cheke suffered imprisonment and exile as a supporter of Lady Jane Grey. XII. First published 1673. Precedes XI in MS and belongs to 1644 or 1645. Not jocose like XI but angry and dis¬ illusioned. Milton’s proposal for “an¬ cient liberty,” 2, of divorce (Deut. xxiv, 1-2) has been attacked, as by prynne and Herbert Palmer and the nameless opponent dealt with in Colasterion. Perhaps Milton thinks of “twin-born progeny” because T and Col were given to the world the same

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day, March 4, 1645. Such tracts were as badly treated as the Lycian hinds treated Latona when she was fleeing Juno with her infant offspring Apollo and Diana (who “after held the sun and moon in fee”—i.e. in full posses¬ sion): the rustics forbade her to drink when she was thirsty and threatened and cursed her (Meta. VI, 361-2) and muddied the lake, whereupon at the goddess’s prayer they were turned into frogs whose only jeers were croaks. The sentiment in 11-12 was to be echoed in Ten 1: “none can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom but license.” MS has “buzzards” for “cuckoos,” 4, and 10 read: “And hate the truth whereby they should be free.” XIII. First published in 1648 in Choice Psalms put into Musick for three Voices: composed by Henry and Wil¬ liam Lawes, Brothers and Servants to His Mafestie, issued by the publisher of Milton’s 1645 Poems, Humphrey Moseley. 3 copies in MS (the third in the hand of the amanuensis), of which the first, a rough draft, is headed: “To my freind Mr. Hen. Laws Feb. 9, 1645” (New Style 1646), mak¬ ing this the only sonnet for which a precise date is known. MS 2 and 3 have no date but name as occasion “on the publishing of his airs.” How¬ ever, the Airs and Dialogues for One, Two, and Three Voyces were not ac¬ tually published until 1653. 1673 has “To Mr. H. Lawes, on his Aires.” Henry Lawes (1596-1662), connected intimately with the commissioning, performance (he was the Attendant Spirit), and first printing of Comus, had doubtless been a friend of the poet’s musical father and perhaps was first associated with the poet in Ar¬ cades. A pupil of Coperario and a member of the Royal Chapel, he be¬ came a much admired composer and

singer and a staunch Royalist (his brother fell in the king’s service at Chester, 1645). He joined the King’s Music, the Whitehall Orchestra, ac¬ companied Charles I on his 1633 visit to Scotland to be crowned at Holyrood. His Choice Psalms, 1648, contained a courageous dedication to the king, then a prisoner. He lived to write an anthem “Zadok the Priest” for the coronation of Charles II. The other poets he composed for were not of Milton’s party—Herrick, Carew (see under Comus), Lovelace, Davenant, Thomas Randolph, and Waller. The Concise Dictionary of National Biog¬ raphy sums up the achievement for which this last poet and Milton praised him: “the first Englishman who studied and practised with success the proper accentuation of words, and made the sense of the poem of paramount im¬ portance.” “Midas’ ears,” 4, were those of an ass: the unhappy transformation that befell the Phrygian king for pre¬ ferring Pan’s music to Apollo’s. “Com¬ mitting” means “misjoining” (Milton’s MS variant). MSS and 1648 read “lend” instead of “send”, 9. 1648 has a marginal note for “story,” 11: “The story of Ariadne set by him in music,” referring to Cartwright’s poem “Com¬ plaint of Ariadne” found in the begin¬ ning of the first book of Airs. Casella, dante’s musician friend, wrote the notes for some of dante’s poetry, in¬ cluding a ballad that he sings to him sweetly when they meet in Purg. II. The shades are “milder” than Hell, or milder because the travelers are still on the threshold of Purgatory, not having yet begun to climb the mount (1st draft has “mildest”). Can¬ to II stuck in Milton’s memory, help¬ ing to prove that the dead can sing (cf. the devils, introduced with the key word “mild,” ii 546 ff.), and giving precedent for a dear shade’s advanc-

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ing to embrace the living: cf. 76-9 with S XXIII, 13, On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament. In MS and 1673. This is a sonetto caudato, a 20-line sonnet with stinging code or tails, such as the Italians used for satire (from the 15th century). After abbaabbacdedec, Milton adds two tails or tercets, each consisting of a trimeter followed by a penta¬ meter couplet—cfffgg. Milton, on the side of the Independents, is hitting at the Presbyterian majority in the Westminster Assembly of Divines that, after the abolition of episcopacy, had started deliberations July 1, 1643 to¬ wards effecting a church settlement. The debates went on 1644-46 to the accompaniment of considerable pam¬ phlet warfare. Milton's versified ex¬ pression of disillusion belongs some¬ where towards the end of this period. “Plurality,” 3, (pluralism)—the holding of more than one ecclesiastical bene¬ fice at one time—had gone from “pre¬ late lord,” 1, to “great rebukers of non-residence” who “were not ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and non-residents themselves,” B 322, on the principle that to the victors belong the spoils. They were out also to force consciences, to deny to the Independ¬ ents the setting up of congregations outside the national church, to insist that the Presbyterian “classis” be everywhere the rule, 7. “Mere A.S., 8, Adam Steuart (d. 1654), not a com¬ missioner of the Kirk but a Scotch minister in London in 1644 before proceeding to Leyden as professor of philosophy (on the recomendation of salmasius), is reduced by Milton to mere initials, as he sometimes reduced himself in signing a pamphlet and was so reduced by the opposition (as in the tract M.S. to A.S. With a Plea for Libertie of Conscience). “Rotber-

ford,” 8 is Samuel Rutherford (160061), professor of divinity at St. An¬ drews, who was active both in the Assembly and with pamphlets, e.g. The Due Right of Presbyters and The Divine Right of Church Government. He was to reach an extreme position in 1649 with his Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Con¬ science, advocating a Protestant Inqui¬ sition and death for heretics. Against the bigots were aligned an articulate minority praised in 9-11, such clergy¬ men as Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye. The Apologetical Narration by five of these Congregationalists, ad¬ dressed pointedly to the Parliament rather than to the Westminster As¬ sembly, was answered by the Antapologia, 1644, of “shallow” (1st ver¬ sion in MS was “haire-brain’d”), 12, Thomas Edwards (1599-1647), who was to reach greater fame with his Gangraena; or a . . . Discovery cf many Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies, and pernicious Practices, 1646. “Scotch what d’ye call” is a more incisive and intemperate opponent of freedom of conscience, Robert Bailiie (1599-1662), author of A Dissuasive from the Er¬ rors of the Times, 1645, which has a swipe at Milton’s views on divorce (as does Edwards’ Gangraena). A third opponent of “divorce at pleasure was prynne, who lurks behind 17, as proved by the fact that Milton at first wrote, “Clip ye as close as marginal P-’s ears.” As Smart notes, “on second thoughts the line [in the MS] was cancelled, prynne’s former suffer¬ ings seeming no matter for jest.’ masson paraphrases the line as printed: “i.e. punish you to the extent of reduc¬ ing those badges of sanctity which you wear about your heads, ostenta¬ tiously broader than other people’s, like the phylacteries of the Pharisees (Matt, xxiii, 5): though passing over

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my Lord Fairfax.” Sir Thomas Fairfax your ears, and so treating you more (1612-71) became a general for the mercifully than you would treat your parliament in 1642, distinguished him¬ so-called ‘heretics’ if you had the self at Marston Moor, and became power.” 20 involves Milton’s knowl¬ commander-in-chief, Dec. 1644. In the edge that presbyter and priest derive Royalist uprising that precipitated the from the same Greek word, hughes Second Civil War in 1648 he starved quotes William Walwyn, The Com¬ out Colchester in Essex, June 15-Aug. passionate Samaritane, 1644: “Some 23, while his lieutenant-general Crom¬ say the tyranny over conscience that well dealt with “the false north” by was exercised by the bishops, is like winning at Preston, Aug. 17-9. It was to be continued by the presbyters.” evidently before this victory that MilXIV. “On the Religious Memory of ton wrote. 1 is to be compared with Mrs. Catharine Thomason, my Chris¬ XXII. 12. "Virtue,” 5, is Latin virtus, tian Friend, Deceased December, courage, for which Fairfax was fa¬ 1646.” The heading is from MS (2 of mous. The “broken league,” 8, was the 3 drafts being in Milton’s handwrit¬ Solemn League and Covenant made ing). 1673 has no title. The friend to by Scotland with Parliament in Sep¬ whom tribute is paid was the learned wife of the bookseller George Thoma¬ tember, 1643, violated when the Duke of Hamilton invaded England in be¬ son (d. 1666). He, between 1641-62 purchased and dated pamphlets as half of Charles in 1648. 13-4 refer to the “greedy sequestration” on which they appeared, the collection, now in the Digression on the Long Parliament the British Museum, amounting to in B 320-1 is eloquent. Fairfax did not nearly 23,000 publications. Mrs. become the statesman that Milton Thomason, nee Hutton, was the niece hoped. He went into eclipse after of Henry Fetherstone, a bookseller to 1648, having no taste for regicide, and whom her husband had once been ap¬ in June, 1650 withdrew to private life prenticed. Several of Milton’s pam¬ in Nunappleton (see marvell and phlets, including Areopagitica, in the Thomason collection carry on the titleEC 330). Milton gave him his due in page Ex Dono Authoris. Smart caught 2D 216-8 (of. 210), even commending an allusion to Thomason in FE #10. his conquest of ambition. But his daughter Mary was to marry Bucking¬ The allegorical sonnet has some of the abstractions to be found as characters ham in Nov. 1657, and Fairfax himself in the moralHy play Everyman. to assist in tire Restoration. Thus mas“Earthy load” (sometimes misprinted son comments; “Whether the omission as “earthly load”) is the “mole carnea” of the Sonnet to him in the edition of of PE 37, and the Christian paradox Milton’s Poems published two years of 3-4 is best illustrated by 2 Cor. v, after [Fairfax's death] marked any 1 ff. 6 ultimately rests on Rev. xiv, 13; change in Milton’s feeling occasioned 14 on xxii, 1, 17 (“immortal”=imrnorby Fairfax’s concern with the Restora¬ tality-giving). “Themes,” 12, has tion, or whether the Sonnet was probably a musical sense. omitted merely as savouring too much XV. “On the Lord General Fairfax at of pre-Restoration politics to be then the Siege of Colchester.” Title from allowable, can hardly be determined. MS. First published in 1694 in edward The second supposition is the more Phillips’ edition of Letters of State, probable.” at the end of “The Life”; headed “To XVI. First published (with 5 omitted)

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1694 (see XV). MS (in the hand of amanuensis, for Milton was hv then blind )dates it: “To the Lord General Cromwell May 1652” (i.e. it was writ¬ ten in the same month that Milton’s first wife died) “On the Proposals of certain Ministers at the Committee for Propagation of the Gospel.” “Our chief of men,” 1, was not to become Pro¬ tector till Dec. 1653, and the sonnet is not a general estimate but written for a particular occasion. Cromwell had conquered at Preston (see XV), which is on the banks of the Darwen, 7, in Lancashire, at Dunbar (cf. 2D 186) in Scotland, Sept. 3, 1650, and dis¬ pelled the last revolt at Worcester, 9, exactly one year later. Now that the first man in the Republic “was at home again, would not things be better managed than they had been in his absence by the persistent Rump of the Long Parliament and the Coun¬ cil of State” (masson)? Milton pleads against “new foes” who advocate a state-supported Church with limits of religious toleration that went against the religious voluntaryism (with com¬ plete separation of church and state) and liberty of conscience for which both Milton and Cromwell stood. Roth “the paw,” 13, and the “maw,” 14, are leading images in L 114, 128. Nothing is known of Milton’s relations with Cromwell. It has even been claimed that they were never in the same room together. The mention of Cromwell in 2D arises from the necessities of con¬ troversy, 204 If. (as in O 252; SD 12, 46), and the praise of him 212 ff. is modified by admonition. Here and in the sonnet there is ambivalence, as in Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (cf. ID 358). Milton also praised overton, who was disaffected with Cromwell and went to the Tower for revolting against him.

XVII. Heading in MS (crossed out): “To Sir Henry Vane the Younger.” First published on p. 93 of the [George Sikes] Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane, 1662, with the introductory w'ords, "The character of this deceased statesman ... I shall exhibit to you in a paper of verses composed by a learned gentleman and sent him July 3, 1652.” Thus XVII shortly follows XVI, Robert Baillie having linked the two subjects on an issue Milton was pursu¬ ing, “The great shot of Cromwell and Vane is to have a liberty for all reli¬ gions without any exceptions.” Second publication by Phillips, 1694 (cor¬ rupt). Naturally not included in 1673. since Vane (1613-62) had gone to the scaffold for treason (not as a regi¬ cide), his sturdy high and radical principles having isolated him from all parties. He had been elected gover¬ nor of Massachusetts at the age of 22, but having lost out on the issue of toleration sailed for England, 1637. He was a member of both the Short and Long Parliaments, and a friend of Roger Williams, having been the chief influence in obtaining a charter for Rhode Island. Called “young in years, although then in his fortieth year, to distinguish him from his father of the same name (1589-1655) (who like¬ wise had been active in the Long Parliament and against Strafford), as we today would say Junior. Pattison quotes Sylvester’s nu rartas: Isaac, in years young, but in wisdom growen.” At the time Milton wrote, die First Dutch War had alieady started and Blake and the Dutch Admiral Tromp exchanged broadsides, but the am¬ bassadors of the “hollow states, 6, (a pun) were still pretending to negoti¬ ate in London, and Vane, as a mem¬ ber of the Council of State, headed a Committee that was dealing with them. Milton recalls the Roman sen-

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ate’s firmness against the invasions of Pyrrhus “the fierce Epirot” and Hanni¬ bal “tile African bold,” 4. 8 has behind it maculavelli’s Discourses on Livy, II, x, where the statement of Quintus Curtius that money is the sinews of war is overbalanced by Solon’s view that “war was made with iron, and not with gold,” Machiavelli conclud¬ ing “contrary to the general opinion, that the sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers.” The question of “the bounds of either sword,” 12, Civil and Spiritual, was in perennial dis¬ pute, between churches and govern¬ ments. It was die dual problem limned in Vane’s last words before he was beheaded: “Father, glorify Thy serv¬ ant in the sight of men, that he may glorify Thee in the discharge of his duty to Thee and to his country.” Be¬ fore Vane suffered capital punishment for his defiance of Charles II he had also spent time in prison for speaking out against what he considered to be the tyranny of Cromwell. He was as heroic an associate as Milton ever had. XVIII. This, by far the most famous of Milton’s non-personal sonnets, seems personal, fcr there was no cause that this poet was likelier to take to heart than persecution by a Catholic prince of a pristine Protestant sect. The 14 lines are a veritable onomatopoeia of grief and rage (and were to be imi¬ tated on similar occasions, as in Oscar Wilde’s “Sonnet on the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria”), fletcher calls it “easily the most powerful son¬ net ever written.” Not in MS, it was printed in 1673 widx the heading, “On the late Massacher in Piedmont.” The date would be c. May, 1655. “The first Waldenses of Lyons,” Ten 31, “for the meanness of their condition called ‘the poor men of Lyons,’” H 75, de¬ rived their name from Peter Waldo (d. 1217) rather than from the Latin

word for valleys. Waldo, a rich mer¬ chant of Lyons, took Matt, xix, 21 literally, sold all he had and gave to the poor, and attracted followers as a preacher-mendicant. The Church re¬ sponded to his attacks on its worldli¬ ness by persecution of the group, first as schismatics, then as dangerous here¬ tics. The Waldenses or Vaudois were scattered or burnt; by the 15th cen¬ tury their center was in Savoy, where they underwent severe harassment from the ruling House. In the 16th century the Reformers of Geneva gave them aid and protection, but they had also learned to fight for themselves. The mountainous part of Piedmont, a region of NW Italy bordering on France and Switzerland, formed nat¬ ural fortresses, and the “Piedmontese Easter” massacre of April 24, 1655— the most shocking event since the Massacre of St. Bartholomew—could not have taken place except for treach¬ ery. In January Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, had announced that he was going to enforce the letter of the toleration treaty of 1561 by evict¬ ing certain Vaudois who had settled beyond the permitted territorial limits. These were driven out in April by an army under the Marquis of Pianezza. But the Marquis then went further: he stationed troops all through the valleys, within the permitted boun¬ daries, who on April 24 laid waste the villages with fire and sword, and these atrocities and the ravages of winter and hunger took the fives of an esti¬ mated 1712. Those who were able to escape through the snowbound passes told their tale in Paris and asked for the help of the Frotestant states. Cromwell promptly responded, wrote protests in Milton’s Latin, sent Sir Samuel Morland as special ambassa¬ dor to Savoy, and was in fact ready to go to war. Where Milton writes,

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exstinctum est. With any possible date “rolled . . . infant down the rocks,” 7-8, “Ere half my days,” 2, is a difficulty he prepared the same in Latin for (L. Kemp banished it by contending Morland to speak: '‘infantum autem that the sonnet is not about blindness alii in saxa contriti” (XIII, 480). The but about loss of inspiration and pro¬ result was a vanquishing of the in¬ posing a date of 1642), unless Milton vader by the regrouped and equipped took his own father, who reached 84, Vaudois themselves, bringing thirty as a prognostic for himself, but years of freedom. J. B. Stouppe pub¬ Dorian’s explanation that “half my lished at this time A Collection of days” means working days in life is narratives that had been sent to the an ingenious solution. The parable of Protector “concerning the bloody and the. talents (3) (Matt, xxv, 14-30) was barbarous massacres, murthers, and a favorite of the industrious Puritans: other cruelties, committed on many Milton is punninglv saying that no thousands of Reformed, or Protestants talent is to be buried, as happened dwelling in the Vallies of Piedmont, with the “wicked and slothful servant” by the Duke of Savoy’s forces, joined (26). Compare “those few talents therein with the French army and which God at that present had lent several Irish regiments,” of which the me.” CG 232. 7 connects with Jesus’ first sentence of “To the Christian remark when he saw the blind man: Reader” shows the Protestant attitude: “the night cometh when no man can “Amongst all the Churches of Christ that do profess the pure and holy work” (John ix, 4); “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is religion which He hath taught in His day.” Both this and “the terrible seiz¬ Word, that of the Waldenses is the ure of him that hid his talent” are most considerable, as well for her an¬ referred to in the early Let 320-1. The tiquity as for the sharp and continual “thousands,” 12, are the hosts of an¬ persecutions it hath suffered. Milton gels; cf. iii 650-3. The last line may begins by recalling Rev. vi, 9-10. 10-11 promote the contemplative as cer¬ surely refers to tertullian’s famous tainly not inferior to the active (cf. statement (Apologetic™, 50): “The Pam. XXVIII, 110 f.) and refer to blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Milton’s preparations to write an epic Church.” “The Babylonian woe,” 14, is (a conjecture in favor of a 1655 date the Papal court, called “Fontana di as over against 1652). Or it may sim¬ dolore” by petrarch in the sonnet ply promote patient acceptance of partly translated, R 27. God’s decrees (cf. Psalms xxvii, 14; XIX. Only text 1673. Given the title xxxvii, 7; cxxiii, 2). “On his Blindness” by Bishop newton Milton’s blindness came gradually in 1752. Although Milton was totally over a 9-year period, the left eye fail¬ blind by 1652, the modem tendency ing first. References are in XXII, (objected to by Parker and fletcher) XXIII, iii 1-55, vii 24-30, 2D 28, 58-76, is to date this sonnet 1655. Parker SD 14, 48, 122-4, SA, and some of the finds the sense of immediacy in the FE. A detailed clinical account was opening, but “consider can go the sent to philaras, FE #15. Specialists, other way and to the objection These including ophthalmologists, are un¬ lines neither say nor imply ‘When I able to agree on a diagnosis, conjec¬ consider how my fight was exnausted tures ranging from myopia, glaucoma, or has been spent’” it can be answered detachment of the retina, chorioretithat “is spent” is a Latinism-lumen

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nitis, chiasmal pressure produced by a suprasellar cyst—to congenital sy¬ philis (saubat), albinism (Mutschmann) and “psychic trauma” (hanford in the Postscript to his 1949 biography). XX. Only text 1673. Titled “To Mr. Lawrence,” 1713. Evidently written in the, winter of 1655-6. Mentioned in Phillips’ biography: “the son of him that was president of Oliver’s Coun¬ cil” visited the house at Petty France. The “virtuous Father,” 1, Henry Law¬ rence (1600-64), “polished by liberal studies,” 2D 234 at Emmanuel Col¬ lege, Cambridge, and fellow towns¬ man (at St. Ives) of Cromwell, served as Lord President of the Council of State, 1654-9. Cf. FE # 27 102. The “virtuous son” was Edward (1633-57) rather than the younger and frivolous Henry. A correspondent and friend of Oldenburg FE #24 98, he served in the House at 23 before his untimely death. This warm invitation to a young friend illustrates both Horatian conviviality and moderation. Milton was not all toil and no play; he uses the lily 8 of Matt, vi, 28 as a symbol of beauty in idleness. But the relaxa¬ tion, which includes wme and song, perhaps even a woman’s voice (he had been smitten in youth by Leonora Baroni’s and by Emilia’s, and in blind old age Richardson recounted, “hear¬ ing a lady sing finely, ‘Now will I swear’ (says he) ‘this lady is hand¬ some’”) is discriminating. The neat light repast is “Attic,” 10,—delicate Athenian, not Roman. There has been debate as to what “spare/ To inter¬ pose them oft,” 13-14, means. Does it mean spare time to interpose those delights often, or does it on the con¬ trary convey a warning against inter¬ posing them too often? For “spare” can mean “forbear,” “refrain from” (definition 6c of the OED as over

against 8c). This is the likelier in the context of the sonnet, which abounds in qualifications—“sometimes,” 3, is not “oft,” 14—and of the opera omnia (2D, the year before, attacked the clergy for oft feasting, “crebro convivantur,” 182). Cf. XXI, 5-6. XXI. This sonnet to cyriack skinner may have been written on the same occasion as XX. In any case it shows Milton in a similar “cheerful,” 14, mood. Published 1673. 5-14 occur in MS. Skinner (1627-1700), “whose grandsire” was sir edward coke, had as mother Coke’s daughter Bridget and was the posthumous son of Wil¬ liam Skinner. Skinner became Milton’s pupil in the house at Aldersgate Street, then like his renowned grandfather pursued the law, being admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1647. Pupil and for¬ mer teacher remained lifelong friends; “our Cyriack,” FE #18 78. marvell wrote June 2, 1654: “am exceeding glad to think that Mr. Skinner is got near you, the happiness which I at the same time congratulate to him and envy” (XII, 333). Skinner, himself an associate of the republican thinker James Harrington, helped the poet in his hour of danger on the eve of the Restoration. In the sonnet the seriousminded man is admonished to lay his geometry books aside and his concern over “what the Swede” under the mili¬ tant Charles X (then overrunning Po¬ land) and “what the French” under Cardinal Mazarin were up to. Horace in his convivial ode to Quintius Hirpinus gave parallel advice as regards “Quid bellicosus Cantaber et Scythes” (Car. II, xi, 1), but the Roman pro¬ ceeds with greater abandon to a carpe diem theme. XXII. The reference in (Milton has been blind but the idiom does not day) dates this sonnet as

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A Milton Dictionary

“To Mr. Cyriack Skinner upon his Blindness” by Phillips, who first printed it (along with the sonnets on Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane) in 1694, the polities of the sestet not being suitable for 1673. MS has “talks,” 12, where Phillips, transferring perhaps from the first line of XV which he had printed on a preceding page, has “rings.” “eyes, though clear/ To out¬ ward view, of blemish or of spot,” 1-2, virtually translates “oeuli . . . ita tamen extrinsecus illaesi, ita sine nube elari,” 2D 60: in short, Milton did not look blind. 4-6 lack the poignancy of iii 41 -4. “Bate,” 7, means diminish. “Con¬ science,” 10, means consciousness, as in viii 502. 13 with its reference to a mask, oddly recalls the lost Lady of Comus. XXIII. First published 1673. Entitled “On his Deceased Wife” 1713. Flet¬ cher comments: “This is the most moving and tender poem Milton ever wrote. The emotion contained in it is overpowering and almost insuffer¬ able.” In MS in the handwriting of Jeremy Picard, who was Milton’s amanuensis from 1658. The standard view is that this sonnet is to be dated 1658 and is about Milton’s second wife, Katherine Woodcock (christened in the church of St. Dunstan’s, Lon¬ don, April 2, 1628-Feb. 3, 1658). She was the eldest daughter of a ne’er-dowell father, William, and Elizabeth Sudbury, who, on being left a widow settled with her daughters in Hack¬ ney, a suburb, near two wealthy kins¬ men. The poet, who had been blind and a widower for more than four and a half years, married Katherine Woodcock (whom there is no reason to believe he had ever seen—much of the pathos of the sonnet depends on this) Nov. 12. 1656. A daughter named after the mother was born Oct. 19, 1657. The wife died Feb. 3, 1658, fol¬

lowed by the infant Elizabeth, March 17. These are the bare facts of a mar¬ riage that the sonnet indicates to have been as happy as it was brief. How¬ ever, in a 1945 Review of English Studies article, W. R. Parker put forth the heresy that the sonnet might be about Milton’s first wife, Mary Powell (and thus be of earlier date). His two main points are (1) that, in the words of birch and newton and on the au¬ thority of Elizabeth Foster, Milton’s granddaughter, the poet’s “second wife did not die in childbed, as Mr. Phil¬ lips and toland relate, but above three months after of a consumption”; (2) 7-8 imply that Milton is talking about a wife whom he had seen. The answer to (1) is that Milton’s refer¬ ence to “child-bed,” 5, is still appro¬ priate if Katherine, after giving birth, went into a decline: if the trauma of birth marked a turn for the worst from which she never recovered, though she lingered on for three and a half months. (2) Parker himself admitted in 1951: “My mistake . . . was in hold¬ ing Milton to strict grammatical logic here as I would not have held him elsewhere (e.g. iv 323, or PR 4, 583).” Milton had some sight of Katherine Woodcock in his dream, and hopes “yet once more” for “Full sight of her in Heaven.” 5-6 refer to Lev. xii, 5, which called for an 80-day purifica¬ tion period for the mother after the birth of a female child (the Christian service is The Churching of Women). However, it is futile to argue for one wife or the other on the basis of whether the proper time-lapse had taken place before she died (it had for Katherine; it had not for Mary) because it is impossible to tell whether “as whom,” 5, does or does not intro¬ duce a condition contrary to fact. hanford remarks, “It is to be noted that this ritual was discarded by most

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of the reformed churches. It had been in the English Prayer Book but was not in the Commonwealth Directory of Worship. Milton is the last person in the world to have been concerned whether his wife had or had not ful¬ filled the days of her purgation.” The issue could be settled by understand¬ ing “late,” 1, as an adverb rather than an adjective. If it is an adjective mean¬ ing “lately deceased”—a usage far less common in the 17th century than now —there is a measure of tautology, for, to quote hughes’ 1957 note, “Saint means ‘a soul in heaven,’ as it does in Winchester, 71.” “Late espoused” probably means “recently married’ (and thus can refer only to Katherine), as in the following passage from an anonymous play of circa 1600, Ed¬ mond Ironside (lines 1289-94, Malone Society, 1928): “As sadly as the late espoused man Greeves to Departe from his new maried wife How manie sighes I fetched at my Departe How manie tymes I turned to Come againe How oft I plaind how often I did weepe Were too too longe to writte or you to reade.”

was veiled”: leaving aside the most poignant, that as Milton had never actually seen his wife she was feature¬ less in his dream, we are invited to compare the situation with Alcestis, Admetus’ wife, who was veiled in the “like” circumstances, when, in Euripedes’ play of that name (such a tragedy “of household matters” was recommended in E 285), she was brought back alive from the gra'-'e by Hercules. Pier husband says: “O wom¬ an, whosover you may be, you have the form of Alcestis, and your body is like hers. . . . When I look upon her —she seems my wife—my heart is torn asunder—tears flow from my eyes.” The sonnet has some of the same words as viii 474 ff. sophisters (sophistoe) Cambridge students in their 2nd or 3rd year, Prol VI 226. Sophocles

One could not ask for neater illustra¬ tion of “late espoused” in the sense of “new married” and without any suggestion of death. It is even possible that the persistent references to “washed from spot,” 5, “Purification,” 6, “in white, pure as her mind,” 9, play on a name (compare Sonnet II and similar practices in Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer— The Book of the Duch¬ ess, 948: cf. 905 and 942), since “Katharine” derives from Greek “katharos,” pure. In any case, there is more than one logical reason for “Her face

(496P-406 b.c. ) Second in time of the 3 great Greek dramatists, Pref. SA. Defeated aeschylus for the prize for tragedy 468 b.c.; defeated by Euri¬ pides, 441. 7 plays extant (with part of an 8th—The Trackers). Oedipus the King, 316-7, CG 231. Reigns with Euripides in “dramatic constitutions” “doctrinal and exemplary to a nation,” 237. Electro, 624, translated. Sm 319. To be memorized, E 286. Oedipus the King and Antigone quoted, ID 310-2. Oedipus at Colonos ranks with Frometheus Bound as an influence on SA. Trachiniae (about the tragic end of the marriage of Hercules and Deianeira) a tragedy “of household matters,” E 285. Sophron Mimus (the mimer) (fl. c. 430 b.c.) Apparently the ori¬ ginator of that solo or duologue dra¬ matic composition known as the Mime

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“whereof we have no pattern from ancient writers except some frag¬ ments,” Sm 293. (Herondas was not discovered till 1891.) Favorite with flato, according to diogenes Laer¬ tius, Life, 18; Ibid.; A 316.

Anglicanism and dean of Windsor, attacked the papacy in De Republica Ecclesiastica, 1617. Recanted in his violent Sui Reditus ex Anglia Con¬ silium, 1623. He ended a prisoner to the Inquisition.

Sorbonists

Spanheim, Ezechie!

Linked with Jesuits, A 313, the Sorbonne being a college “completely addicted to papistical doctrine,” ID 202. The first endowed college of the Lhiiversity of Paris, it was founded by Robert de Sorbon c. 1257 for poor students, and the name extended to the whole institution, a center of scho¬ lastic teaching.

(1629-1710). Scholar and antiquari¬ an. Supplied Milton with information to be used against more, for which Milton thanked him in FE #17 from Westminster, March 24, 1655 (N.S.); son of friedrich, 74, “a most learned and most saintly father.”

sord Sward, turf, xi 433. Sorec Sorek (Judges xvi, 4), the Philistine city nearest Gaza in Palestine, home of Delilah, SA 229.

Spanheim, Friedrich (1600-49). Professor of divinity at Geneva and Leyden. Shared two ene¬ mies with Milton, saying on his death¬ bed that “salmasius had killed him and morus had been the dagger.” “A writer of evangelic doubts,” T 183, refers to Dubiorum Evangelicorum (Geneva, 1639). Disagreed with here but approved 2D 32, 140; SD 66, 206.

sotadic Sparta, their prelatical

Scurrilous satire, Col 272. Sozomen(us) (Early 5th cent.) “An ecclesiastic writer,” B 100, “scriptor ecclesiasticus,” ID 254. Greek church historian born in Palestine, whose history for the period 324-415 borrows freely from socrates the historian. K 230, 232; H 64. Spalc;t(t)o Modern Split in Yugoslavia, largest city of Dalmatia and a major Adriatic port, was a Roman Catholic archiepiscopal see till 1820. The “miscreant bishop,” An 174 is Marco Antonio de Dominis (1566-1624), archbishop 1602-16. Involved in quarrel between papacy and Venice, he crossed to England and, becoming a convert to

A reference, CG 273, to the hierar¬ chical system in that Peloponnesian city-state, with its ruling class whose sons alone became soldiers—“that city trained up their youth most for war,” E287—the artisans and tradesmen be¬ low them, the helots at the bottom: all headed by two kings and a su¬ preme law court of 28 other elders (like England’s two archbishops and 24 bishops). Spartacus (d. 71 b.c. ) “Gladiator,” ID 320. Leader of a slave insurrection, the Servile War, 73-7.1; finally fell in de¬ feat to crassus, 288. Spartan twins Gastor and Pollux, the constellation

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and sign of the zodiac (May 21-June 21), x 674. specular mount Lookout mountain, PR 4, 236; cf. “top of speculation,” xii 588. spell Study, interpret, IP 170; PR 4, 385. See Sonnets XI and XVII. Spelman, Sir Henry (1564P-1641) “Zealous antiquary”; author of Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones, in re Ecclesiarum Orhis Britanniae, an authority used by prynne, and in H, 71-2 being a refer¬ ence to I, 259: “That no priest shall presume to perform any religious serv¬ ice, or baptise, or bestow any spiritual gift for any kind of price.” Spenser (Spencer), Edmund (1552-99) The author of The Faerie Queene was mainly an influence on the young Milton, especially on Co¬ mm, but Greenlaw analyzed connec¬ tions with PL; dryden said (Preface to the “Fables”): “Milton has acknowl¬ edged to me that Spenser was his ori¬ ginal.” "Our admired,” An 166, “our sage and serious poet. . . whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than scotus or aquinas,” A 311. Evi¬ dently one of the “great bards” who sang “Of forests and enchantments drear,/ Where more is meant than meets the ear” (in the F.Q.), IP 11620. Honored as meliboeus. Oblique reference to Prothalamion, 37 ff. Man 30? Shepherd’s Calendar, 103-31, An 165-6. (Palinode stands for the Catho¬ lic Church), tales, K 110. Ireland CB 189. F.Q. II, x, 24 quoted, B 17. See under Poems 1645 for Moseley, the first to link Spenser and Milton.

sphere (sphear)-born Born of the traditional Pythagorean music of the spheres, Mus 2. sphinx “That Theban monster that pro¬ posed/ Her riddle, and him who solved it not, devoured,” PR 4, 572 If., a mon¬ ster in that she was a winged lion with a woman’s head. Her riddle con¬ sisted of asking what walks first on four, then on two, last on three legs: Oedipus correctly answered “Man” (the three legs being an old man hob¬ bling on a cane, the four a crawling infant). In a fury the foiled sphinx then committed suicide: see Ismenian. In PR, as iiughes summarizes Frye, “like Oedipus, Christ, the divine word, destroys the monster whose riddles threaten all human life.” Moralised, Prol 1 144. Punned, VI 228. K 133. ID 186. spinstry Spinning, CG 247. spires Loops, ix 502. spondee (spondaeum) A foot of two long syllables, JRn. sponge, worth a I.e. worth effort of expunging (and no more!), PR 4, 329. spring Thicket of young shrubs, ix 218. spur-galling Calling with a spur, An 169. square Ot planets separated by 90 degrees (a quarter of the zodiac) (malig¬ nant), x 659.

spets Spits, C 132.

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squint

state

Looking askance and too closely, C 413.

Canopy over a chair of state, x 445; Arc 81 (cf. headnote; 14 perhaps re¬ fers to her attendants).

stabled wolves

state

In their dens, C 534; cf. xi 752.

Stately progress, L’A 60.

Stagirite(s) ARISTOTLE, who was bom in Stagirus or Stagira, a town in Macedonia, and subsequently became the tutor of ALEXANDER THE GREAT, EL IV 25. stakes Shares, Sm 352. stale Device, decoy, Col 239. stales Prostitutes, R 8. stall epistle Open letter printed and sold in the bookstalls, Sm 333. Star Chamber That “commission of authority . . . exercised till all the land groan and cry out,” R 49, one of the “courts of loathed memory,” CG 215, that pro¬ ceeded without reference to common law. Abolished in 1641, “now fallen from the stars with lucifer,” A 353, this court was so called from the stars painted on the ceiling where it met in Westminister. “The people . . . threw down the High Commission and Star Chamber,” K 110, not the king, 160. 153. startling Skittish, T 111. starve Die (the original general sense) ii 600. star-ypointing Pointing to the stars, Sh 4.

State Papers (or Letters), The Columbia milton XIII is based pri¬ marily on Literae/ Pseudo-Senatus Anglicani,/ Cromwellii,/ Reliquorurnque Perduellium/ nomine ac jussu con-/ scriptae/ a/ Joanne Miltono. (Letters Written by John Milton in the name and by the order of the Socalled Parliament of Cromwell and the Other Traitors) Two forms of this volume, which contains 136 docu¬ ments, came out in 1676, and a trans¬ lation of it in 1694 was the occasion of the biographical sketch by e. Phillips. Daniel Skinner also prepared a tran¬ script containing 139 letters (of which 14 are not in the edition of 1676), which he meant to have published in 1675 through the Elzevirs, but the reaction was adverse, as it was to the De Doctrina Christiana, q.v. A third source is the Columbia Manuscript of 156 letters (including 10 in English). Other stray letters and obscure print¬ ings are known and gathered in XIII. The unnamed publisher of 1676 (said to have been Moses Pitt, while the printer was E. Fiicx of Brussels) was careful to say in a preface that the letters, wicked but harmless now, are of interest for their elegant style. These products of Milton’s official work as Secretary for Foreign Tongues for ten years, 1649-59, Milton himself intended to bring out with his Epistolae Familiares in 1674, but had to substitute the Prolusions to fill out that volume. As might be expected from Sonnet XVIII, no letters are more impassioned than the series ad-

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dressed to louis xiv and other princes on the Piedmont Massacre. states Statesmen, A 293.

as the royal residence, both Mary Queen of Scots and James VI having been crowned there. Ten 28; 2D 232. still Soft and low, Pas 28; IP 127.

statist(s) Statesman, PR 4, 354; R 8, 39; An 113; D 442; B 323; A 295; K 125. stead Service, C 611; PR 1, 473. steep L 52, variously conjectured to be Penmaenmawr (for which there is no particular reason, except for “a circle of standing stones of doubtful origin,” that would not also suit Conway, Bangor, or Caernarvon), Bardsey (geo¬ graphically remote: was Milton pun¬ ning with Bards 53?), Holyhead (whose mountain rises 709 feet above the sea, named according to Holmshed for the “holy men . . . buried” there—but Christian rather than Dru¬ id?), and Kerig-y-Druidon in South Denbighshire, a name camden trans¬ lates as Druids’ stones. Stefan(us), St. (d. 257) Stephen I, pope from 25-4. Had a long and bitter dispute with cyprian over the validity of baptism by heretics, which the latter held to be null and void. Cyprian to, R 30, 31 (but #75 is to Cyprian by St. Firmilian).

Stoa, painted The “Painted Porch” (Stoa Poecile) (cf. ID 286; FE #4 14) or marble colonnade in Athens, where Zeno (4th-early 3rd cent. b.c. ), the founder of the stoics, taught, was famous for its wall-paintings. PR 4, 253. Stoic(s) Connected with “severe,” PR 4, 280, and “apathy,” Sm 322 (cf. ii 564), and condemned for “philosophic pride” by Jesus, PR 4, 300 ff., the “budge doc¬ tors of the Stoic fur” intolerable to Comus for “abstinence,” C 707, a school never mentioned with approval, whatever the fame of such followers of Zeno as seneca, marcus aurelius, and epictetus, and the superficial con¬ nection with Puritanism of putting aside passion and indulgence in order to perform duty and gain true free¬ dom, and the stress on “reason” as “the common Mercury conducting with¬ out error those that give themselves obediently to be led accordingly,” Sm 318. But Milton was early scornful of the “bearded teachers’ with “their Stoically severe faces,” Frol VI 222. salmasius compared to ID 286, 480, 530, D 441.

stem stomach

n. Family stock, Arc 82.

Irritated pride, An 168; CG 231.

Stentor Originally a loud-voiced herald in the Iliad, SD 166 (referring to the author of Regii Sanguinis Clamor).

stooped from his aery tower. Swooped from its lofty flight, xi 185. storied windows

Sterling Stirling, in central Scotland, had a castle which long rivaled Edinburgh

Stained-glass windows picturing Biblical or ecclesiastical history, IP 159.

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Traveling agent of cromwell and thitrloe, FE #21 88. For him as author see under Sonnet XVIII.

of-hand man—with his Hey-passe or presto. There is doubtless contempt here for the mystical hocus-pocus and hypocrisy of the episcopacy, An 134.

Strafford, Ear! of

Sturmius, Johannes

Sir Thomas Wentworth. (1593-1641) M.P. from 1614 who at first in the Commons stood with Eliot and coke, but changed sides, rose in royal favor, was responsible as lord deputy of Ire¬ land for “the Rule of Thorough,” 16328, and in 1640 was prepared as lord lieutenant of Ireland to lead Irish troops against the Scots. His convic¬ tion under a bill of attainder was un¬ willingly assented to by the King, and this chief instrument of tyranny v/as beheaded on Tower Hill—“the most seasonable and solemn piece of justice that had been done of many years in the land,” K 91. Milton reindicts him here, 91-9, the King’s “chief and bold¬ est instrument,” 104. Other references, 156-7,165-6. 189, 191; O 252.

(1507-89) Educated at Liege and Louvain, became a Protestant under bucer’s influence, and was active in strasburgh from 1537 (founder of the University, 1,538, Log 510) until his expulsion for liberal tendencies in 1581, M 2, 10; T 224.

Stouppe (Stuppius), J. B.

Strusburgh (Strasborrow) Cultural and commercial capital of Alsace-Lorraine; an imperial city of Germany in the 16th century, playing an important part in the Reformation. Residence of bucer (who wrote his “comment upon Matthew,” there, M 10) and stukmius, M 2. Ramus there “Argentorati,” Log 510. Strickland (Striclandium), Walter (fl. 1642-57) Parliamentary and Commonwealth politician, 2D 234.

Stygian Pertaining to the river styx in Hades, thus “hellish”: associated with depth and darkness, L’A 3; C 132 (cf. EL IV 95); i 239; ii 506, 875; iii 14 (“Stygian pool” was a variant in C 4: r, 479); NS 31; EL II 9. Styx (“Hate”) “The flood of deadly hate,” ii 577, the best-known of the four rivers of Hell, Prol I 134; IV 172; EL I 43; PB IV, 2; PM 8. subducting Taking away, viii 536. subitanes prynne’s “subitane [sudden] appre¬ hension,” Col 234.

sublime Uplifted, lofty, ii 528, iii 72; vi 771; vii 421: PR 4, 542. sublimed Refined or vaporized by heat, i 235.

stripes Lashes, Sm 319.

sublunary

Sturbridge

Gross, D 416.

Site of what was England’s largest fair, held in barnweijl fields, Cam¬ bridge, where no entertainer was more important than the. juggler, the “mysti¬ cal man”—i.e. mystifying man, slight-

success Outcome (whether good or bad—“ill success,” Ten 33), ii 9, 123; iv 932; vi 161.

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succinct

sulphurous fire

Girt up, iii 643.

Gunpowder, xi 658. sumless

Succoth (“Booths”) A town between Penuel and Sechem, SA 278.

Immeasurable, viii 36. sumless sums Endless summas or digests, D 505.

Suckling, Sir John (1609-42) The celebrated Cavalier poet, who accompanied Charles to Scotland with a contingent of gayly bedecked soldiers, 1639, the author of such a lyric as “Why so pale and wan, fond lover?”, is mentioned only as one of the “conspirators” behind the First Army Plot, 1641, to free Strafford, K 156. Sudley, Lord, Thomas Seymour

Summanus The god of the nocturnal heaven; identified with pluto, QN 23. summed their pens Developed to full growth the wings, vii 421. summed, full Completely developed, PR 1, 14. sumpters

(1508P-49) Created lord high ad¬ miral by his brother Somerset, 1547, whom he schemed against. Flirted with the princess Elizabeth and pressed his suit for her hand after the queen-dowager Catherine Parr, whom he secretly had married in 1547, died in September, 1548. Executed for trea¬ son half a year later, R 9. Suetonius (fl. c. 120) Roman biographer and historian. Author of the gossipy and scandalous Lives of the Twelve Cae¬ sars. Outspoken, SD 108, as, e.g., in the unwholesome note to A 304 (see Claudius). On tiberius, ID 182; Nero 342. B 48, 56, 80. PR 4 90 ff. probably based on. That “Augustus caesar also had begun his ajax,” Pref SA comes from II, lxxxv. Suffenos Plural of Suffenus. A bad poet ridi¬ culed by catullus, SD 224.

Drivers of pack-horses, CG 241. supplanted (Latin) dipped up by the heels, x 513. supportless Unbearable, D 496. A Survey of that Foolish . . . A 1641 pamphlet sometimes attri¬ buted to Hall, Sm 319. Sus A province of Morocco, xi 403. Susa The winter capital of the Persian kings, EL I 66; x 308; PR 3, 288. Susiana A Persian-PARTHiAN province on the Persian Gulf, east of the Tigris, repre¬ senting for Milton the southern limit of the parthian Empire, PR 3, 321. sutlers

Sulpitius the lawyer See

muraena.

Who follow the troops them provisions, CG 228.

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Milton Dictionary

syllabe

swart star, the Sirius, the dog-star, so called be¬ cause at the time of its appearance the complexion or grass is turned to a swart, or dark, color, L 138.

Pronounce, C 208. Sylvan(us) See

silvan (us).

Sylvester (Silvester), St. swill'd

Bishop of Rome 315-35. “Constan¬ tine with his mischievous donations poisoned,” K 230. He baptized the Emperor and on territory assigned him established the Lateran church as the cathedral of Rome. H 81. “Sylvestro,” R 27.

Drunken, C 178. swin(d)ges Lashes, N 172. swinkt Hard-worked, C 293.

Sylvester, Joshuah sword-players

See

Fencers, SA 1323.

symbol Motto, Sm 322.

sybil See

DU BARTAS.

sibyl.

Symmachus

sycophanting In the obsolete sense of traducing, giving malicious information against, Sm 293. Sydenham (Sidnamum), William (1615-61) Ciomwellian soldier, eld¬ est brother of the celebrated physician Thomas Sydenham. Made by Crom¬ well councilor and commissioner of the treasury, 1654, 2D 234. Expelled from the Long Parliament, 1660. Syene Modern Aswan or Assuan, on the upper Nile, treated by Pliny (xii, 4) as the southernmost limit of the Ro¬

(Late 2nd cent.) Called “Judaized,” R 34, because he belonged to the sect of Jewish Christians known as Ebionites. He made a fresh translation of the OT into Greek, freer and more literary than that of Aquila. synod Conjunction of planets, x 661. synonymas Synonyms or collections of syno¬ nyms, Sm 333. syntagma Systematic treatise, A 339. syntaxis Syntax, “right-joining of words” (G

man Empire, PR 4, 70.

287), An 149; Sm 324.

Sylla Lucius Cornelius Sulla (138-78 b.c.) Known for his “tyranny,” W 130, as dictator of Rome, 82-79. Killed off most of the leading opposition in the party of Marius. Mon(c)k identified with, in quotation from Juvenal on title-page of 2nd edition of W.

Syriac A branch of Aramaic in the Semitic family of languages, T 146; A 310; CD 1, 2, 5, 13. Syrian dialect=Syriac, E 285. Syriacisms, T 177. Syrian shepherdess Rachel,

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the wife of Jacob, who met

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her when she “came with her father’s sheep” (Gen. xxix, 9) EM 63. She died in childbed like the Marchioness. Syrinx An Arcadian nymph whom pan pursued; she fled into the ladon and was changed into a reed, Arc 106-7; PR 2, 188; or Pan’s pipe, which is what the Greek word (used in PS CXIV, 11) means.

Syrtis The Greek name for each of two great ship-swallowing gulfs on the north coast of Africa; generically quicksands, ii 939; FE #25 98. Cf. Acrs xxvii, 17 (where the name occurs in the Greek).

Syrus See

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dama.

T Tacitus, Cornelius (55?-after 117) Author of the Historiae, covering the reigns of galba, Otho, Vitellius, vespasian, Titus, and domitian, and the Annales (of the Julian emperors from the death of Augustus). R 39: see malvezzi. ID 314, 316-8, 334, 364, 408. His life of agricola, his father-in-law, used in B 58-9, etc. Taenarian, Taenarum Reference to a promontory in La¬ conia where a cave was through which Hercules is said to have dragged Cer¬ berus from the Lower World, EL V, 66; PB IV, 2; PM 5. Tagus A river rising in East Spain and flowing through Portugal into the At¬ lantic at Lisbon; ovro testified to its golden sand (Met. V, 251), EL III,

Immoveable, resistless, without end; Who in his hand an iron flail did hold, With which he thresht out false¬ hood, and did truth unfold.” (Faerie Queene, V, i, 12), K 110. Tamar (Thamar) (1) Who so tricked her father-inlaw Judah, An 130: see Gen. xxviii, 11 ff. Possible subject, MS 235. (2) See ravisher, that. Possible subject, MS 237. Tamara (Tamar, B 236) The river “which divides/ The Cor¬ nish and the Devonshire confines” (F.Q. IV, xi, 31, 1-2), the valley being "anciently den).

in

tin

mines"

(cam-

Tamuz See

46.

rich

ED 178.

THAMMUZ.

Tantalus

taint-worm A worm or crawling larva noxious to cattle, L 46. Talmud (Hebrew, “Instruction”) The great collection of Jewish civil and canoni¬ cal law, Sm 316; T 133. adj. ID 102. TALMUDIST, A 312. Talus Artegall’s attendant: “His name was Talus, made of iron mould,

Milton hovers between two versions of why Tantalus received the punish¬ ment in Hades that led to the word “tantalizing.” Prol VI 242 refers to the story that, wishing to test the gods, he cut his son pelops in pieces, boiled them, and set them before the gods at a repast. But if SA 496-501 is an ob¬ lique reference to Tantalus (it could also apply to prometheus), it follows the version that his crime was the revealing of divine secrets, what Conti calls “loquacity.” In the Lower

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A Milton Dictionary

world he was forced to stand in a pool, the waters of which, ever close to his thirsty lips, always receded when he tried to drink: ii 607-14. Taprobane This “utmost Indian isle” would be either Ceylon (as in Camoens, The l,usiad) or Sumatra, PR 4, 75. targe, Amazonian Shield such as that carried by one of the fabulous female warriors, the Amazons, “crescent-shaped” in viugil, Aen. I, 490, ix 1111.

Tarsus Equated by Milton (and josephus) with Tarshish, the ships, SA 715, of which are so often mentioned in the OT as symbols of pride and affluence (e.g. 1 Kings x, 22) as to suggest any distant place, whether the port on the Guadalquiver in Spain or the thriving Cilician capital and harbor, in a cave near which typhon was supposed to be confined: i 199-200. Theodore’s Tarsus is the latter, Col 249; B 169; cf. PSEUDO-ICNATIUS, P 88. Tartar king CAMBUSCAN.

Targumists “Interpreters,” translators or paraphrasers of the OT from Hebrew into Aramaic, the works of the two named, Sm 316, being in use in the 3rd cen¬ tury. Tarpeia Musa Reference to the site of Ovid’s resi¬ dence, EL I 69.

Tartar(s) A “roving,” iii 432, people from east central Asia that, after having overrun parts of Asia and Europe under Mon¬ gol leadership in 13th century, con¬ tinued to dominate nearly all of Russia and Siberia, x 431. HM 331, 332, 335, 350, etc.; LP 277. Tartarus, Tartarean

Tarpeian rock At the Capitoline hill, where con¬ demned criminals were hurled to their death, PR 4, 49. Tarquin(ius) Priscus ("old"), Lucius Fifth of the Roman kings (616-578 ID 316.

b.c.),

Tarquin(ius) Superbus ("proud") Lucius Seventh and last of the legendary kings (534-510 b.c.) of early Rome. “The Romans . . . took occasion” from this “wicked prince to gain their lib¬ erty,” Ten 15, that is, abolish mon¬ archy. K 298; ID 322-4. His excesses, 316/

Placed by homer as far below Hades—cf. “tartareous,” vii 238—as Heaven is above the earth, and closed by iron gates, and regarded by later poets as particularly “the place of punishment” for the wicked, vi 53-4, is identified by Milton with Hell: ii 858, 69. Cf. QN 35; PM 36; EL V 20; PE 43; N 31; AdP 21; Prol I 134; VI 230. Tartarean Jove=PLUTO, EL III 16. Fire=gunpowder, PB III, 11; QN 161. Tartessian Reference to Spanish or Western or Atlantic ocean, EL III 33; V, 83 (cf. “Tartessian stream,” C 97n: I, 489). tassell'd horn

Tarquins See

tabquinius,

W 131.

The horn of the huntsman, Arc 57; cf. L’A 53-4.

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A Milton Dictionary

Tasso, Torquato (1544-95) Italian poet bom at Sor¬ rento and pupil of the Jesuits of Naples, where he was to be befriended by manso. Author of Jerusalem De¬ livered (Gerusalemme Liberata, 1575) (versified in English by Edward Fair¬ fax as Godfrey of Bulloigne, 1600), an example of the “diffuse” epic, CG 237. Taught “laws . . . of. . . true epic,” E 286 in his Discourses on Epic Poetry (Naples, 1594). Loved Leonora d’Este, sister of his patron Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, but his insanity over a period of 20 years—paranoiac—was doubtless not mainly caused by frustrated pas¬ sion, as Milton romantically imagines, LR II, 1 ff. His pastoral drama Aminta (1573) had a wide influence that probably reached Comus, as his reli¬ gious epic II Mondo Creato (c. 1590) is of interest in connection with PL. Tauric pool The Sea of Azov, PR 4, 79. Cf. MAEOTIS.

Tauris Tabriz, an important city of Persia; taken and lost several times by the Turks c. 1500, x 436. Adj. in connec¬ tion with “Pontic” pun, SD 122. Taurus The Bull, the second sign of the Zodiac, entered by the sun in April, i 769; x 673. Taurus mountain Chain extending parallel to the Mediterranean coast of South Asia Minor, tillyard quotes Gosson’s School of Abuse in connection with Prol VII 282: “Geese are foolish birds, yet when they fly over the mount Taurus they shew great wisdom in their own defence: for they stop their

pipes full of gravel to avoid gagling, and so by silence escape the eagles.” tawny Brownish yellow, C 117; vi 464. tear(s) Dirge(s), EM 55; L 14. tease Comb or card (wool), C 751. Tecla, manuscript of Named Thecla from the Egyptian woman who was supposed to have been its scribe, this is the Codex Alexandrinus, an early 5th century MS. of the Greek Bible, that was in the Royal Library in Charles I’s day and passed to the British Museum in 1757, An 153. teem To bear young, vii 454; SA 1703; C 175. Teia Musa ovin’s (Tristia, II, 364) designation for Anacreon (6th cent. b.c. ), the Greek voluptuary poet, who was born in Teos, an Ionian coastal town; his lyrics celebrating love and wine are in every way short, EL VI 22. Telamon Best known as the father of two of the leading warriors on the Greek side in the Trojan War, ajax and Teucer, EL IV 24. He joined Hercules in his expedition against Laomedon of Troy, and is thus sometimes identified as the “comes” of EL VII 40 (who could just as well be jason ). Telassar Mentioned in 2 Kings xix, 12 and Is. xxxvii, 12 as a city inhabited by “the children of Eden,” and associated with places in Western Mesopotamia, iv 214.

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A Milton Dictionary

Telegorcus Son of

circe

by Odysseus, PM 18.

Telephus Under the instruction of oracles, cured this Asia Minor king by means of the rust of the spear with which he had wounded him, FE #21 achiiles

86. Temesaean In the south of Italy, Temesa has the same name as the town mentioned in Od. I, 184 as celebrated for its cop¬ per mines (though the Homeric town was probably in Cyprus; aes Cyprium =copper, late Latin cuprum). The phrase QN 207 is ovidian. Met. VII, 207-8; Fasti V, 441; Medicamirw Faciei Femincae 41. Temir Tamberlane (1336P-1405) The Mon¬ gol conqueror xi 389.

“Milton” (1863), beginning "O mightymouth’d inventor of harmonies,/ O skill’d to sing of Time or Eternity,/ God-gifted organ-voice of England,” constitute a famous 16-line tribute. The latter half shows a fascination with Milton’s Eden that was reflected in “The Hesperides” (prefaced by C 982-3) (printed in 1832 and then sup¬ pressed) and “The Lotos Eaters.” Tennyson as a boy at Somersby al¬ ready admired Milton, having re¬ ceived from his father a 2nd edition of PL at the age of 7. “Timbuctoo,” the Cambridge prize poem of 1829, was Tennyson’s first published blank verse and the closest to that of PL. After the 1832 volume Tennyson’s imitative period was over, but he never lost the habit of reading Milton aloud and once burst out to his son Hallam, “What an imagination the old man had! Milton beats everyone in the material sublime.” He paired him with his other favorite, Virgil.

temper(ed) Attune(d), L 33; E 282. temperature Temperament, Col 250. tenasmus More properly, tenesmus (“strain¬ ing”), frequent, painful, and ineffec¬ tual desire to go to stool, Sm 330. Teneriff A celebrated peak in the Canary Islands, iv 987, of which donne wrote: “Doth not a Tenarif or higher hill Rise so high like a rock, that one might think The floating moon would shipwrack there and sink?” (First Anniversary, 286-8) Tennyson, Alfred, Lord (1809-92) The poet laureate’s alcaics,

The Tenure of/ Kings and/ Magisstrates:/ Proving,/ That it is Law¬ ful/, and hath been/ held so through all Ages, for any,/ who have the Pov/er, to call to account a/ Tyrant, or wicked King, and after/ due conviction, to depose, and put/ him to death; if the or¬ dinary Ma-/ gistrate have neg¬ lected, or/ deny'd to doe it./ And that they, who of late, so much blame/ Deposing, are the Men that did it themselves./ The Author, J.M. This was out Feb. 13, 1649. A sec¬ ond edition, extant in two somewhat different states, came out a year later. The second edition had, as the titlepage states, “some additions, and many Testimonies also added [CM pp. 45-59] out of the best & learnedest

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Milton Dictionary

among Protestant Divines asserting the position of this book.” (Cf. 2D 202.) Evidently Ten was written after Jan. 8 and during the trial of Charles I, which commenced Jan. 20 and ended with his execution Jan. 30. Milton explained with some exaggeration in 2D 134-6 that he wrote imperson¬ ally and generally and that his book, which “did not come out until after the death of the king, was made in the interests of composing men’s minds rather than determining anything re¬ lating to Charles, which was the busi¬ ness of the magistrates.” However, in the words of Phillips, “for this his last treatise, reviving the fame of other things he had formerly published, be¬ ing more and more taken notice of for his excellency of style and depth of judgment, he was courted into the service of this new Commonwealth” by being invited, exactly one month after publication, to serve as Secretary for the Foreign Tongues, and was soon at work on a formal reply to Eikon Basilike (see Eikonoklastes). Milton’s first political pamphlet, his defense of liberty against tyrants (to be further elaborated on in the three Latin Defenses), owes much to notes he had already taken in CB and to george Buchanan’s De Jure Regni apud Scotos (Edinburgh, 1579). The position of resistance to tyrants was reached gradually in the 1640’s and can be traced in pamphlets. Henry Feme’s The Resolving of Conscience (1642) granted: “we may and ought to deny obedience to such commands of the Prince, as are unlawful by the law of God, yea, by the established laws of the land.” The redoubtable John Goodwin in his Anti-Cavalierism of the same year postulated cases where “disobedience to kings by a strong hand, and with forcible resist¬ ance, is not only lawful, but even

matter of duty and obedience to God.” The anonymous An Answer to Mis-led Doctor Feme (1643) went so far as to leave an opening for regicide: “the person of a tyrant ought to be inferior to the law.” Milton begins with an attack on the Presbyterians and others who resisted tyranny up to a certain point and now draw back in betrayal of their prin¬ ciples and past activities. “Their pity can be no true and Christian com¬ miseration but either levity and shal¬ lowness of mind or else a carnal ad¬ miring of that worldly pomp and greatness from whence they see him fallen; or rather, lastly, a dissembled and seditious pity feigned of industry to beget new discord.” Others seek for precedents, which will be forth¬ coming. Note first “that all men natu¬ rally were born free.” Kings arose by revocable social contract: their power “is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all.” The people have an inborn right to call to account a tyrant, being “he who, regarding neither law nor the common good, reigns only for himself and his faction.” Greek, Roman, Jew¬ ish, and Christian—right down to Eng¬ lish and Scottish—history teach as much. The Scotch deposed queen mary, and the Presbyterians have de¬ posed King Charles. It remains only to “show manifestly how much they have done toward the killing him.” Accommodation now can only prove ruinous, fn conclusion (of the 1st edi¬ tion) the Presbyterian divines are admonished “not to be disturbers of the civil affairs, being in hands better able and more belonging to manage them.” In 1650 were added antityrannical quotations from the Re¬ formers, LUTHER, ZWXNGLI, CALVIN, BUCER, CHRISTOPHER GOODMAN, etc.

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A Milton Dictionary

and an attack on the timidity and in¬ consistency of the Presbyterian posi¬ tion in Scripture and Reason: “both the scripture and the reasons which they use draw consequences after them which, without their bidding, conclude [the deposing of a king] lawful.” Tenures See

littleton,

Col 248.

Terah's faithful son ABRAHAM,

Ps CXIV, 1.

teraphim Images connected with magical rites. On every revival of true religion in Israel, the teraphim were swept away with other idols (cf. 2 Kings, xxiii, 24), P 104. Teredon A city in ancient Babylonia, PR 3, 292. Terence (185-159 b.c.) Master of Latin come¬ dy—6 plays survive, skilfull adaptations from menander and others. Though Milton writes of plots like his in EL I, 27 ff., the only references are to the braggart soldier thraso in Eunuchus (who said, 781, “Ego ero hie post principia,” cf. ID 22) and to a quo¬ tation from the prologue to the same play, SD 60. Terentius, Marcus See

tacitus,

lands,” in East Indies in the Molucca Sea; famous for clove-trees, ii 639. terrifying Making terrible, D 434. Tertullian, Quintus Septimius Florens (c. 160-c. 200) African Church Father (see africanisms) ranking with aucustine as the greatest West¬ ern theologian of the patristic period: created, with his legally trained mind, the language of theology. Lived main¬ ly in Carthage. “No orthodox writer, notorious for many errors,” ID 246. Criticized for “terming st. Paul a novice and raw in grace,” R 21-2 (in Ad Marcionem, I, xx). Citations from On Prescription against Heretics, xxxii; Against Marcion (on the unity— and also Trinity—of God), IV, v; Against Praxeas, IX; Of Modesty (mis¬ leadingly called “his treatise concern¬ ing chastity ”—and tf.rtullian’s titles for the Bishop of Rome were ironical), P 96-7. Marriage dissuaded, D 383. Against Marcion, IV, T 143, 208-9; Col 249. Ten 11. H 86. ID 250. Word “Deicidarum” from, 2D 46. Apologeticum (c. 197), addressed to the pre¬ fects of the Roman provinces, defends the Christians as good citizens, who thrive under persecution ("semen est sanguis Christianorum”: see Piedmont Sonnet XVIII) ID 192-4. Propaga¬ tion of soul, CD 1, 7. CB entries (128, 131, 170, 207) indicate Nicolaus Rigaltius edition of Opera, Paris, 1634.

Annales, VI 8 ID 318.

terf

Tesiphon See ctesiphon.

Turf, L 140; C 280; v 391 (terfe); xi 324,

Tethys

Ternate With Tidore, one of the “Spice Is¬

Wife of oceanus and mother of the Oceanides and numerous river-divini¬ ties, C 870; EL V, 83.

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A Milton Dictionary

Tetrachordon:/ Expositions/ upon/ The foure chief places in Scripture,/ which treat of Mariage, or nullities in Mariage./ (Gen. 1. 27. 28. compar'd and explain'd by Gen. 2. 18. 23. 24. (Deut. 24. I. 2. On (Matth. 5. 31. 32. with Matth. 19. from the 3d. v. to the llth. (1 Cor. 7. from the 10th to the 16th. When'll the Doctrine and Disci¬ pline of Divorce, as was/ lately publish'd, is confirm'd by explana¬ tion of Scrip-/ ture, by testimony of ancient Fathers, of civil/ lawes/ in the Primitive Church, of famousest/ Reformed Divines,/ And lastly, by an intended Act of the Parlament and/ Church of England in the last yeare of/ Edward the sixth./ By the former Author J.M./

[Greek motto.] This was issued March 4, 1645, the same day as Colrnterion. As with the 2nd edition of D, Milton’s initials on the title-page were followed by his full name after a pre¬ face To the Parliament. The book was neither licensed nor registered. The contents are amply described on the title-page, but the common stall-reader boggled at the main title, as Sonnet XI complains. In the words of Spaeth, “Tetrachordon” means “literally fourstring ed, a term representing the earli¬ est Greek scale. The tones would be represented in the modem scale by e, f, g, a, the lowest being half a tone below the next, and the others rising in intervals of a whole tone. Milton probably had this primitive four-part “harmony” in mind . . . that is, a har¬ mony of the four chief passages in Scripture on divorce. The Preface ex¬ plains how this sequel to D came to be written: "The former book, as

pleased some to think, who were thought judicious, had of reason in it to a suffiicency; what they required was, that the scriptures there alleged might be discussed more fully.” This is done elaborately, according to the principles of Renaissance scriptural exegesis, but always from one point of view. Milton answers his casual critics too, beginning with the Greek quota¬ tion, euripides’ medea speaking (298301): "For if thou shouldst import new learning amongst dullards, thou wilt be thought a useless triher, void of knowledge; while if thy fame in the city o’ertops that of the pretenders to cunning knowledge, thou wilt win their dislike.” Two such critics are re¬ ferred to in the preface, Herbert Palmer (1601-47), one of the original members of the Westminster Assem¬ bly, who had preached to Parliament, August 13, 1643, against toleration of “a wicked book . . . deserving to be burnt, whose author hath been so im¬ pudent as to set his name to it and dedicate it to yourselves” (the sermon was printed in November), and Daniel Featley (cf. In Effigiei) (15821645), whose The Dippers Dipt, 1645, listed among the “damnable doctrines abroad “a tractate of Divorce, in which the bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate lust.” Among the points of interest in T is the granting of a possible exception to the rule that the husband should govern the wife: “if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield: for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female’; the anticipation of iv 340: "Adam had ... all creatures to delight him seri¬ ously, or to make him sport”; a mock anticipation of the 18th Amendment; a tendency to slight frigidity and

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Milton Dictionary

adultery as reasons for dissolving a marriage, as compared with incom¬ patibility; and a possible memory of Mary Powell in the vehement asser¬ tion that God by wife or helpmeet “does not signify deceitfully under this name an intolerable adversary, not a helpless, unaffectionate, and sullen mass, whose very company re¬ presents the visible and exactest figure of loneliness itself”; with the plight of being deserted being given in the paradox, “It is true, we grant divorce for actual and proved adultery, and not for less than many tedious and unrepairable years of desertion, where¬ in a man shall lose all his hope of posterity, which great and holy men have bewailed, ere he can be righted.” The work ends with a fist of authori¬ ties. tetragonum One who is “foursquare” in his deal¬ ings, SD 70. tetrarch(s)

Thales The poet, A 300 (not to be confused with the philosopher). This Cretan by his music and odes united the hostile factions of Spartan citizens, as related in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus. Thalia The muse of comedy, EL VI 48. Thame Thames, called “royal-towered,” V 100 because “with kingly houses crowned,” as Drayton says and enu¬ merates Hampton Court, Richmond, Westminster (Poly-Olbion XVII; cf. F.Q. IV, xi, 27). Thammuz In Babylonian religion, young god loved by Ishtar. The Greek equiva¬ lents are -\donis and Venus (Aphro¬ dite), and in both cases the slain deity had rites of spring symbolizing yearly death and rebirth of vegetation, N 204; i 446-57. Tamuz, K 88. Thamyris

Ruler of a fourth part of a region, PR 4, 201, here one of the four ele¬ ments. Cf. “Galilean tetrarch,” R 40; etc. tetter Pox, R 21; Sm 330.

An ancient thracian bard who, for his presumption in challenging the Muses to a test of skill, was deprived by them of his sight and of the power of singing, iii 35. thatch't pallet Nest of straw, C 318.

Teucrigenas Teucer was the first king of Troy; the English are Troy-born, QN 2, according to the legend that the island was settled by Rrut(us), Aeneas’ greatgrandson.

Thaumantia proles Thaumas was the father of rainbow goddess, EL III 41.

iris,

the

Theban monster The

sphinx,

PR 4, 572.

Teumesius

Thebes

Pertaining to the mountain Teumessus in Boeotia, close to thebes, from which emerged the fox sent by Bac¬ chus that devastated the country, EL VI 23.

(1) The city in Boeotia in northern Greece provided one of the three main subjects of Greek tragedy, IP 99, as in AESCHYLUS’ Seven Against Thebes about “tli’ heroic race... That fought”

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Milton Dictionary

there, i 577-3, when Polynices and six allies attempted to take the city from his brother Eteocles, and sophocles’ three plays on Oedipus, and Euri¬ pides’ bacchae. ID 310, 350. (2) Egyptian, v 274, on the Nile; in iierodotus (II, 73) the phoenix is as¬ sociated with Heliopolis in Lower Egypt, but Diodorus says that the Egyptians called this Upper Egypt city' Heliopolis also.

Theoctistus (3rd cent.) Rishop of Caesarea, in¬ vited origen to give church lectures after the latter had fled to Palestine from caracalla’s persecution at Alex¬ andria. This brought on the disap¬ proval of origen’s own bishop Deme¬ trius, who ordered origen back to Alexandria. See eusebius VI, xix, CG 258. Theodoret

Thebez A town in ephrajm, apparently taken as the “'native,” PR 2, 313, town of Elijah, “the great Thisbite” (PR 2, 16); cf. EL IV, 9, who is ordinarily assumed to have come from Thisbe, in Gilead. Themis Goddess of Justice, and by Zeus, mother of the hours, xi 14; S XXI, 2; PE 40.

(c. 393-c. 458) Bishop of Cyrrhus from 423. More important as a dog¬ matic writer than for his Church His¬ tory, which carries eusebius down to 428. Read, with the other Greek church historians, in, probably, Ecclesiasticae Historiae Autores (Paris, 1544) CB 136, 211. Cited by ussheb, Judgment, 1641 p. 6 P 88, Theodoret’s Polymorphos being the source, theodorit, H 64. Theodoric

Themistocles (527P-460? b.c. ) Athenian states¬ man and general persuaded the Athe¬ nians to increase their naval strength and, by a stratagem, led them into the great “sea-fight of Salamis,” off East Greece, in the Gulf of Aegina, where the Persians were routed, 480 D 464. The words of artabanus to Themis¬ tocles, ID 300-02, are in Plutarch’s Life of the latter. then Regular spelling of than.

(454P-526) King of the Ostrogoths conqueror of Italy, with ravenna as his capital, T 219.

and

Theodorus, the Canterbury bishop, a Grecian monk of Tarsus (c. 602-90) Summoned and presided over the first important synod of the whole English Church, Hertford. 673, canon 10 of which dealt with divorce. Col 249. B 169, 173. Theodosian See

Theocritus (3rd cent, b.c.) The first of the Greek pastoral poets, a native of Syra¬ cuse. See Lycidas. About 30 Idyls survive, E 284. VIII, 66 quoted, Early Proclusion 288. Theoctista (6th cent.) T 219 See Epistolarum Liber XI, XLV of grecohy the great.

Theodosius u.

Theodosius I (346P-95) Roman emperor from 379. When Ambrose excommunicated him, CB 170, for the massacre of seven to fourteen thousand rebellious citizens of Thessalonica, capital of Macedonia, 390, he humbly did public penance in Milan Cathedral, R 70, 73. K 296. ID 196.

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A Milton Dictionary

Theodosius II

Theophrastus

(401-50). Eastern Roman Emperor “of high wisdom and reputed piety,” D 487; “A Christian emperor and one of the best,” Ten 13. Ruled with his sister Pulcheria from 414. Published the Theodosian Code, used in making the Corpus Juris Civilis. R 42; T 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 223; K 298-ID 322. B 97. ID 258.

(c. 372-c. 287 b.c.) aristotle’s dis¬ ciple, Log 436, and successor as head of the Peripatetic School in Athens, wrote a History of Plants and Theo¬ retical Botany that in the Renaissance were printed with aristotle’s Natural History of Animals, E 283.

Theodotion, the heretical (2nd cent.) Editor of a Greek ver¬ sion of the OT, whom irenaeus re¬ ferred to as a Jewish proselyte, jerome as an Ebionite Cliristian, and epiphanius as a follower of Marcion, R 34. His version of Daniel has been ac¬ cepted in place of the Septuagint.

Thermodoontea A river of Pontus in the district of Themiscyra, the reputed country of the Amazons; the “puella” is Eliza¬ beth the Virgin Queen who was fond of hunting and sufficiently militant like an Amazon, as the Spanish Ar¬ mada defeat proved, QN 105. Thessala saga the ne portion of Greece, famous for magic. Cf. aesonian

thessaly,

Theodotus the Patriarch

was

(d. c. 445 ) Bishop of Ancyra, T 196.

and IIAEMONY.

Thessalonians, Apostle to the

Theodote A Creek transcription (in part) of “Diodati,” which means “given to Cod” or “gift from God,” FE #6 18; # 7 26.

The quotation, A 308, is 1 Thes. v, 21.

from st. Paul

Thessalonians, written of to the D 371 apparently refers to 2 Thes. ii, 3-4.

Theognis (6th cent. B.c.) Greek elegiac gnomic poet of Megara, ID 314. 1400 lines ascribed to him are extant. Theophanes, St, (758P-818) Greek monk who op¬ posed iconoclastic policy of Leo V. His Chronographia continues the chronicle of George Syncellus and covers 284-813, FE #21 86. Theophilus, the worthy emperor (d. 842) Reigned over the Eastern Roman Empire from 829, P 100. A strong—in fact ruthless—iconoclast, but great builder and lover of pomp and display. Seemingly overpraised by Milton on the authority of Cedrenus.

Thestylis Pastoral female name, L’A 88. Thetis The sea-goddess, called not “tinselslippered,” C 877, but “silver-footed” in the Iliad; in any case the meaning is, with flashing feet. Stands for the sea or specifically the Mediterranean, QN 52. Mother of achili.es, 2D 68 (quotation from Iliad IX, 411-16), by her mortal husband Peleus, Prol VII 248 (see Prometheus ). Thevenin (Tevenotum), Francois (d. 1656) Parisian ophthalmologist w hom philaras recommended to Milton as a last hope in his blindness FE #15 66.

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A Milton Dictionary

Thisbe See

Thirty Tyrants installed in Athens by Sparta, ID 338.

pyramus.

Thisbite

Thuanus, Jacques Auguste de Thou

See

(1553-1617) French magistrate and councilor, one of those who drafted the Edict of Nantes (1598), wrote a vast History of His Own Times (Historia Sui Temporis), of which the numerous entries in CB indicate Milton used either the 1620 Geneva edi¬ tion or the 1626 reprint. M 6, 8 (Vol. I, 264); 2D 198.

THEBEZ.

Thomason See Sonnet XIV. Thone, the wife of Polydamna, who was kind to Helen, as her husband the Egyptian king was to Menelaus, when the Greek pair stopped by on their way back from the Trojan War, C 675. thought Trifle, C 505. Thrace (Thracia), Thracian (Thressa) The country north of the Aegean Sea. For the association with Mars, EL IV 72; cf. 65, see odrysian. Thracian bard

Thrascias The north northwest wind, x 700. Thrasea(s) Paetus (d. 66) A distinguished Roman senator and Stoic philosopher who, having incurred the hatred of Nero by his independence and freedom of speech, was condemned to death, ID 116, 120.

braggart soldier in the

terence

ence),

(q.v.

Thummim See

URtM.

(1616-68) Secretary to the Council of State from 1652. Wanted Cromwell to accept the crown; supported Rich¬ ard Cromwell. Accused of high trea¬ son at the Restoration but liberated. His voluminous correspondence a documentary mine for the Common¬ wealth period, more asked his inter¬ vention to stop the publication of 2D SD 98, 100. thwart Adj. 1075.

Thraso, boasting A

The legendary northernmost limit of the world, an island, Ultima Thule, perhaps here (as in camden) Shet¬ land, R 77.

Thurloe (Thurloium), John

vii 34 (cf. L61 n. I 464); lyre (Thressa . . . barbitos, EL VI 37). orpheus

of

Thule, frozen

for

Transverse, viii 132; x 703,

Eunuchus

another

refer¬

thwarts v. Literally, crosses, iv 557.

Sm 293.

Thrasybulus (d. c. 389 b.c.) Athenian general and statesman who, after Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, got help from thebes and came back from Phyle with other exiles to overthrow the

Thyatira, the much-praised bishop of An 153, see Rev. ii, 18-19. A city of Lydia, Asia Minor. Rev. ii, 20-21, referred to CP 27-8, is obscure (some interpret it of the wife of the bishop).

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Milton Dictionary

Thyestean banquet Atreus slew the children of his brother Thyestes and served them to him at a banquet—a transgression from which the Sun averted his face and “turnd/ His course” x 688 for one day from west to east. Thyoneus (From “thuein,” to be inspired) Thyone was the name of semele, bacchus’ mother, as brought from Hades and introduced among the im¬ mortals, and thus the son was called Thyoneus, EL VI 18. Thyrsis See Comus and Epitaphium Damonis.

“Committing to a wicked favorite," Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the cares of government—until the latter was or¬ dered executed, 31 a.d., for his in¬ trigues. His “cruel” wish, CG 202 (in Suetonius, Nero, xxviii, or dion, Ro¬ man History, lviii, xxiii, 4). As tyrant, ID 172, 182-4, 234, 318, 376. Tidore See

tern ate.

Tigris Identified by josephus (Antiq. 1, i, 3) with Hiddekel (Gen. ii, 14; cf. 10), ix 71. The “straight” river seen by Jesus, the “winding” being the Euphrates: they join near the Persian Gidf, PR 3, 255-6.

thyrsus The Bacchic staff, surmounted with vine or ivy leaves with grapes or ber¬ ries, or a pine cone, ED 219. tiar Tiara, iii 625. Tibaltiana Apparently a reference to Romeo and Juliet, SD 190; cf. sestiada. Tiberias A town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, named after the Em¬ peror uberius; after the destruction of Jerusalem it became a center for Jews and Jewish scholarship, D 376. Tiberius (42 B.C.-37 a.d. ) Roman emperor (from 14 a.d.) in the period of Jesus’ maturity: ‘ Judaea . . . Obeys Tiberius,” PR 3, 159. In his degenerate old age, “Might’st thou expel this monster from his throne,” 4, 100, for he was spend¬ ing the last ten years of his life in the Isle of Capri (Capreae, 92; ID 74) in the Bay of Naples off Campania,

Tillyard, E(ustace) M(andeville) W(etenhall) (1889) Master of his alma mater Jesus College, Cambridge, since 1945. His Milton (1930) recognized as the best critical-biographical study since Sir Walter A. Raleigh’s Milton (1900). “Milton’s mental development” is broadly the subject of this book, which follows the customary triple chronological division, treating Lycidas as a landmark, searching the prose in a new way, asking “what were the feelings and ideas that dominated Milton’s mind when he wrote” PL, and filling “part of the curious lack of literary criticism on Paradise Re¬ gained.” There followed in the trans¬ lations of Mrs. Tillyard Milton’s Pri¬ vate Correspondence and Academic Exercises (1932) and volumes of sup¬ plementary essays, The Miltonic Set¬ ting (1938), Studies in Milton (1951), and The Metaphysicals and Milton (1956), besides important works of collateral interest, such as The Eliza¬ bethan World Picture (1943) and The English Epic (1951).

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Milton Dictionary

tilth

tine (tyne)

Land that is tilled, xi 430.

Related to tinder, to kindle, x 1075. Tine

Timarchus (4th cent. b.c. ) Charged aeschines with malfeasance on a mission to negotiate peace with philip of macedon; the orator evaded the danger by bringing forward with crushing suc¬ cess a counter-accusation, 345 b.c. (the speech survives), and by showing that the morals of his accuser were such that he had no right to speak before the people, SD 148. Time, On

TYNE.

tinsel trappings A Spenserian phrase (F. Q. Ill, i, 15) referring to a shining cloth orna¬ menting a knight’s horse, ix 36. tippet A shoulder-scarf worn by ecclesias¬ tics instead of a hood, H98. Cf. typetypet. tire

See On Time.

Battery, vi 605.

timelessly

Tiresias (Tyresias)

Unseasonably, untimely. In 2. timely In good time, W 149. timely-happy Ripe or successful early, S VII 8. Timna Timnath, a city of Judah, in Philis¬ tine possession: Judges xiv, 1-4, SA 219, 383, 795. timnian 1018. Timoleon (d. c. 337 b.c.) Acquiesced in the execution of his brother Timophanes, who had made himself tyrant of Cor¬ inth. Also aided Greek cities in Sicily against tyrants of Syracuse, 2D 64.

The blind prophet, iii 36 or sooth¬ sayer of thebes. In his youth, having come upon two snakes copulating, he struck at them with his staff, and as he happened to kill the female, he himself was metamorphosed into a woman; when he killed a male snake on a similar occasion seven years later, he again became a man, Prol VI 240. His plain living, EL VI, 68. Milton again compares himself to 2D 62 (as marvell was to do in “On Para¬ dise Lost,” 43-4). In Sophocles’ Oedi¬ pus Rex, CG 231; ID 310-2. Tisiphone One of the avenging Furies, as her name indicates, SD 118. tissued

Timothy, St.

Brightly colored, N 146.

(d. c. 100) Like Titus, disciple of paul. Mentioned in connection with whether he could be considered bish¬ op of ephesus,” P. 85. 82, 83, 86-7; An 151-2; CG 200; etc. tincture Absorption (of the sun’s rays), vii 367.

Titan(s) The sons of Earth (In 47, but these may also be the Giants) and Heaven, of whom Hyperion, the original sungod, was one, CE 5,—“Heaven’s first¬ born,” i 510. virgil named a daughter (Aen. IV, 178-80), Fama, QN 172. The titans, like the Giants, “warred

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A Milton Dictionary

on Jove,” i 198, and the other Olym¬ pians, Prol I 122. Tithonia

Tithonus Perpetually aging husband of au¬ the dawn-goddes Early Prol 290; EL V 49. Pathetic subject of one of Tennyson’s best poems. rora,

titular Sarcastic pun on (1) the word of the previous line, titles and (2) merely nominal, v 774. Titus TIMOTHY.

Titus Col 255, on p. 15 the author of An Answer uses two stock Roman names, Titus and Sempronius, like John Doe for a hypothetical common law case. Tityrus Pastoral name, ED 69. For chaucer (as in spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar, “February,” 92; “June,” 81; “Decem¬ ber,” 4) Man 34. For virgil (prob¬ ably), ED 117 (since chaucer is not known to have gone to Rome). tizical Phthisical, asthmatic, Sm 321. tizzick Asthma, An 112. Tmolus Who judged a musical contest be¬ tween apollo and pan FE #2 8. Tobiah See

sanballat.

Tobias See

asmadai.

See

ASMADAI.

Todd, Henry John

The dawn-goddess, QN 133. As an adj. eastern, EL V 31: see ttthonus, below.

See

Tobit

(1763-1845) Like warton, whom he so well follows, an Oxford scholar and a Spenserian. He began his editing of Milton with Comus, Canterbury, 1798. The nineteenth century saw his great variorum editions of the Poetical Works, 6 vols., 1801; 2nd ed., 7 vols., 1809 (Verbal Index added) (Some Account of the Life arid Writings of John Milton was also issued as a sepa¬ rate volume); 3rd ed., 6 vols., 1826; 4th ed., 4 vols., 1842; 5th ed., 4 vols., 1852. While Todd lacked warton’s critical mind, he was industrious and erudite, a clergyman of the old lei¬ surely, scholarly days, and his remark¬ able verbal memory in the era before concordances proliferated parallels. Toland, John (1670-1722) Deist, free-thinker, “prompt at priests to jeer,” author of Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), written at Oxford, burnt by the House of Commons in his native Ireland, whence he had to flee to England to avoid imprisonment, where he wrote his 31,000-word biographical preface to the first collected edition of Milton’s prose works (“Amsterdam,” 1698). This Life was republished as a sepa¬ rate volume in 1699, together with Arnyntor, or a Defence, the former addressed To Thomas Raulins of Kilreag in Herefordshire,” the latter made necessary by the great scandal occasioned by the passing remark in the Life (Darbishire, p. 150), apropos of the Eikon Basilike imposture, about “supposititious pieces under the name of Christ, his Apostles, and other great persons . . . published and approved in . . . primitive times,” which was taken as casting doubt on the NT

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canon. What is plain ( the combined volume was reissued in 1761) is that one iconoclast embraced another—Toland was characteristically the first to report on PL’s brush with the licenser —Milton’s whole production being re¬ viewed for the first time. Sixty per cent of the biography consists of quo¬ tation or summary. Toland got along well with the house of Hanover, be¬ came an intimate of the Prussian Queen Sophie Charlotte, and wrote many more polemical pamphlets, his favorite targets being High church¬ men and Jacobites. He struck some of the earliest blows on the relations be¬ tween reason and revelation and on questions never raised by Milton as to which parts of the Bible were au¬ thentic. Toledo, Twelfth Council of 681, established the primacy of the See of Toledo in the Spanish Church, Col 248.

cratical party who accused P. Cor¬ nelius Sulla of having been a party to Catiline’s conspiracies. Sulla was defended by both hortensius and cicero. Prol VI 242. to-(ruffled) Completely disarranged (“to” being formerly used sometimes as an aug¬ mentative prefix), C 380. touches Strains, i 557. tour, tower Falconry term for lofty flight, xi 185; cf. tow’ring, ii 635 and L’A 43. Tournay Flemish Doornik in Hainaut, on the Scheldt, R 46. Holinshed, Chronicles (1587), III, 848, criticizes Wolsey for persuading henry viii to abandon this town to the French. towred See

toledos

CYBELE.

Swords (word-play introduced by the above). Col 248.

Trachiniae

toling

Trachinia(n)

Enticing, Sm 289.

Tomi, a town of Thrace on the western shore of the Black Sea, re¬ nowned as the place of Ovid’s banish¬ ment, EL I 22. Tophet i 404.

Trachis or Trachin was a town of near the Vale of Tempe, that was a favorite haunt of both apollo and chiron, Man 66. traductions Translations, M 60.

n. and v. Tricks or lures, C 151; xi 624; SA 932; venereal trains=snares of love, 533. D 405; An 106.

topic folio Commonplace-book, A 335.

Trajan

Torquatus LR II, 1.

Torquatus, Lucius Manlius (d. 46

q.v. E 285.

train,trains

gehenna,

TASSO,

sophocles,

thessaly,

Tomitano

See

By

b.c.

) Member of the aristo-

(52 or 53-117). “The worthy Em¬ peror," Ten 13. Reigned from 98, in succession to Nerva. Panegyric by Pliny. Praised, ID 374-6. The quota-

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A Milton Dictionary

tion. Ten 13, from dion cassius, Ro¬ man History, V, 195, was used by crotius and buchanan also. Trallis A flourishing city of Asia Minor, R 18; recipient of an epistle wrongly at¬ tributed to Ignatius, “Trallians,” P 89. translated Conveyed (to heaven), C 242; iii 461. transverse Crosswise, away from the right di¬ rection, iii 488; SA 209. Transylvanian Transylvania, the Protestant prince of which received SL 52 and 164, now a province of central Rumania, before World War I Hungarian, was in the 17th century independent or semi-independent, A 340. Cf. LP 277. treatable

in the Army Debates at Whitehall, December, 1648: “it was the question, it is the question, and it will be the question to the ending of the world, whether the magistrate have any power at all in matters of religion, and what that power is.” With every¬ thing again in flux Milton seized an opportunity to strike a blow for disestablishmentarianism and against erastianism, “state tyranny over the church,” 17. “The scripture” is “sole interpreter of itself to the conscience,” and the conscience is the individual conscience. “Heresy” merely means choice. “How much bloodshed have the forcers of conscience to answer for!” If the papists “ought not to be tolerated, it is for just reason of state more than of religion.” But none should attempt to force the inward man. Violence was rejected by Christ (cf. PR). Such is the new dispensa¬ tion. The various scriptural texts are reviewed.

Gentle, CG 239 A/ Treatise/ of/ Civil power/ in/ Ecclesiastical causes:/ Shewing/ That it is not lawfull for any/ pow¬ er on earth to compel// in matters of/ Religion./ The author J.M. Published c. Feb. 16, 1659. Milton’s full name was appended to the pre¬ face To the Parliament. Richard Crom¬ well had become Protector after his father’s death, Sept. 3, 1658. Parlia¬ ment met Jan. 27. Milton, resuming an old role, sent them as a private citizen this plea for “Christian liberty” as distinguished from “civil liberty” of which “I have written heretofore.” This was the first of a pair of pam¬ phlets each on an aspect of the church problem; “force on the one side re¬ straining and hire on the other side corrupting,” the other being H. As Col. Sir Hardress Waller had observed

Trebellius Pollio (fl. c. 30) “Approximately the least of historians,” ID 338. -One of the six Scriptores Historiae Augustae. Trebisond A Black Sea port and independent Greek state from 1204 until 1461 when, the last refuge of Hellenistic civiliza¬ tion, it was taken by Mohammed II and has remained Turkish ever since. It was “in popular romance and in the imagination of the Italians and Provencals one of the most famous empires of the east, and the rallying point of the youth and flower of Asia” (Fallmerayer), i 584. Tremisen Modern Tlemcen, in Algeria: one of the five Barbary States and capital of the Moslem Berber dynasty, xi 404.

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A Milton Dictionary

Trent Third longest river of England, flowing 170 miles from Staffordshire to join the ouse west of hull and form the humbef. Cf. B 167. V 93-4. Milton associates “thirty” with it both etymologically (cf. Drayton, Polyolbion, XII) and on the basis of its reputed “thirty . . . streams” (F. Q. JV, xi 35, 9 and Drayton, idem.). TREANTAE, ED 176. Trent, Council of trentine, adj. A 302; K 228. “The most anti-christian council,” A 305 (cf. 302, 303, 321), with “plots and pack¬ ing,” FC 14, was held in this Tyrolian city on the Adige irregularly 1545-63, and while proverbial among Protes¬ tants for its compromises, was the outstanding instrument of the CounterReformation. D 448; T 136; K 183, 297; H 70, 71; ID 86, 280. See faolo.

trentals Services of 30 masses for the dead, said on 30 different days, An 143. trepidation Trembling; or oscillation of O eighth or ninth sphere, iii 483.

the

planets 120 degrees (a third of the zodiac) apart, x 659. Trinity (College) Manuscript See

CAMBRIDGE MANUSCRIPT.

triple tyrant The Pope, S XVIII, 2, with his three-tiered crown (“Tricoronifer,” QN 55), the priest-king of whom phxneas fletcher wrote in Apollyonists'. “Three mitred crowns the proud Impostor wears. For he in Earth, in Hell, in Heav’n will reign.” Triptolemus Founder of agriculture and hero of the Eleusiniar. mysteries. Was sent by ceres, 2D 14, from eleusis, in her chariot of winged dragons, to sow seeds of v/heat as far as Scy'thia, EL IV, 11. Triton “The herald of the sea,” L 89, Ocean’s trumpeter, NS 58, with his “winding shell,” C 873 (cf. Met. I. 330-5). Triton

Tribonian (d. c. 545) Roman jurist; chief legal minister of justinian, T 103-4. Trinacrian Sicilian (an old name for the island from its triangular shape), ii 661; QN

A river of northern Africa flowing through a lake, Tritonis Palus, in the midst of which is the island nysa, iv 276. triumph

36.

Festivity or public exhibition, xi 723; SA 1312; L’A 120.

trinal

triumphuls

Threefold, of the Trinity, N 11.

troll (troule)

Trinculos Reference to a drunken sailor in The Tempest, Sm 300. trine The

(favorable)

Tokens, PR 4, 578.

aspect

of

two

To wag, xi 620. Trophonius “In Trophonii antro,” Prol III, 160; VI 216. References to a celebrated

-337-

A Milton Dictionary oracle in a cave in Boeotia, which always left those who consulted it pale and gloomy.

Turma (Latin), a body of cavalry, PR 4, 66.

tropic, either

Turnus

Loosely, the northern and southern regions of the sky, PR 4, 409.

King of the rutilians, “arms-bearing son of old Daunus,” CE II, 3, who had been promised Lavinia by her father but found aeneas favored instead, ix 17, the which became a casus belli, ID 474.

truckage (truccage)

Commerce, R 56.

turm

Truths Manifest

Truth its Manifest; or, a short and true Relation of divers main passages of things (in some whereof the Scots are particularly concerned) from the very first beginning of these unhappy troubles to this day, 1645, K 155. Tubalcuin

“An instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,” Gen. iv. 22 D 505. tube, glar'd optic

Telescope, iii 590. See Galileo.

Turpin

The imaginary Archbishop of Rheims who figures valiantly in the Roland cycle, ID 368. Turretin (Turrettini)

Name of a prominent Protestant family in Geneva, of which Francis (1623-87) and his brother are men¬ tioned in FE #17 76 as enabling communication with spanheim: Fran¬ cis, professor of theology, became author of a Calvinistic masterpiece, lnstitutio Theologiae Elencticae.

tuition turtle wing, with

Guardianship, D 503.

On the wings of a turtle-dove, N 50. Tully

Tuscan

CICERO.

Tuningus, Gerardus

“A famous lawyer,” T 104; citation from In Quatuor Libros Institutionum Juris Civilis Divi Justiniani Commentarius (Leyden, 1618), p. 66.

Often equivalent to (the best) Ital¬ ian, as in S XX, 12 and FE #8 34 (Linguam Hetruscam). Tuscan artist, the

Galileo, i 288. Tuscan mariners transformed

turbants

Turbans, PR 4, 76; Sm 366. Turchestan

Turkestan, a region of central Asia, from which the Turks came, xi 396; now part of the USSR. Turkis blew

Turquoise, C 894.

C 48, ovid (Met. Ill, 590 ft.) relates how Bacchus hired a ship which be¬ longed to Tyrrhenian pirates (“who later were called Tuscan,” Hyg. 134) to carry him to Naxos; the men, in¬ stead of landing at Naxos, steered toward Asia to sell their passenger as a slave. Thereupon the god changed the mast and oars into serpents, and himself into a lion; ivy grew around

338-

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A Milton Dictionary

the vessel, and the sound of flutes was heard on every side; the sailors were seized with madness, leapt into the sea, and were metamorphosed into dolphins. Milton’s construction is Latin (post nautas mutatos). Tusculan . . . retirements favorite villa, Tusculanum, was 10 miles se of Rome; from there he issued (45 b.c. ) his Tusculan Dis¬ putations, D 442; FE #4 14. cicebo’s

type—typet Word play, CG 202, type meaning symbolic idea, tippet originally part of the hood in clerical vesture, then a band of silk worn round the neck with the ends pendent in front. types OT prefigurations, xii 232, 303; CG 203. Typhlos (“Blind”) Horse of Night, QN 71.

Tutbury

Typhoean, Typhoeus, Typhon

In Staffordshire, K 202. maby of scots was imprisoned there.

queen

Tweed The river separating England and Scotland, V 92; D 376; K 203. twelve tables The basis of Roman jurisprudence, A 300. See Decemviral Laws. twin-born progeny See

LATONA.

twins, the Spartan

(“Whirlwind") Referring to a mon¬ ster or giant, Prol IV 172, defeated by Zeus, i 199, and placed under Mt. aetna, whence he causes eruptions, QN 37: ii 539 ff.; Prol 1 122. There was also “Aegyptian Typhon,” A 338, connected with evil Set (in plutabch’s “Isis and Osiris”) who slew his brother Osiris, ID 290, and who would be the appropriate reference in N 226 but is given hesiodic (Theog. 821 ff.) or Apollodoran (I, vi, 3) serpentine char¬ acteristics. typical Symbolic, CG 190.

Castor and Pollux. two-handed engine See

Tyrian cynosure See cynosube.

ENGINE.

tympany A

Tyro, Marcus Tullius

distention of the

times dropsy,

called

abdomen

drum-belly

R 52; K 101.

or

some¬ wind-

tympanites,

2D

36. Tyndarus Alfanus Tindarus. Cited by pbynne; author of Tractatus de Materia Compensationum (Siena, 1493), H 66. Tyne (Tine)

(1st cent, b.c.) Freedman and pri¬ vate secretary of cicebo; editor of his letters, Ad Familiares, and collector of other works, Prol VI 220. Credited with having invented short-hand. Tyrrhene The portion of the Mediterranean between Italy and Sardinia, C 49; QN 108.

A river of north England, the lower course of which—particularly' newcastle-on-tyne—is celebrated for coal, V 98. B 81, 160, 207, 212, 310. ~

339

Tzetzes, Johannes (12th cent.) Prolific Byzantine writer. “Ille Graeculus,” ID 38; MAR (mainly Pindaric) passim. -

u ubiquitary

uncouth

Able to be everywhere at once, Sm 291.

(Anglo-Saxon) ii 407, 827; etc.

Ucalegonium

L

186;

undergo

“Unheeding” City, An 138.

To take the blame of, x 126.

Ulster NE Ireland (pbovincia ultonia, ID 286), scene of massacre of Protestants, 1641-2, K 188, 308. Ulysses See

Unknown,

uneasy Difficult, D 480. unenchanted Unenchantable, C 395.

ajax, alcinous, charybdis and

unessential

SCYLLA, “the GREEK,” MOL'/.

Uncreated, ii 439 (cf. 150). umbrage unexempt

Shade, ix 1087.

Allowing of no exception, C 685.

umbrageous

unexpressive

Shady, iv 257

Inexpressible, N 116; I, 176.

unat(t)cnable

unfinishing

Unaccordable, T 212.

Unfinished part, Sm 335.

unautoritied

unfortunately

Unauthorized , An 106. uncessant

Unhappily or unluckily L headnote; CG 273.

L 64, so the three printed editions of Milton’s lifetime; the MS read “in¬ cessant.”

unfounded

uncolored

unfumed

Being of one single color, as yet undiversified by clouds, v 189.

Unbumed (not in the form of incense but from the fresh plant) v 349.

unconform

unharbored

Unlike, v 259.

Foundationless, bottomless, ii 829.

Without shelter, C 423.

340-

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A Milton Dictionary

unhide-bound

but adapted as the name of maiden Man, 47.

Loose-skinned (famished) x 601. unison

any

Upon the Circumcision

Solo, vii 599. universe, man's less Referring to the centuries-old con¬ ception of man as a microcosm, a “little world” reflecting the big world PR 4, 459. unobnoxious to be pained Unliable to harm, vi 404. unoriginal Without origin or beginning (since nothing existed before Night, “eldest of things,” ii 962) x 477. unowned Unclaimed, and hence unprotected (also virginal) C 407. unprevented Unanticipated, iii 231. unprincipled

28 lines that could be printed as two stanzas rhyming abcbaccddceffe, iambic, mainly pentameter, decreas¬ ing to dimeter. The Feast of the Cir¬ cumcision occurs January 1, and it is natural to place this poem as inter¬ mediate between N and Pas, and thus belonging to 1630. It follows On Time in the printed poems and MS: Grier¬ son postulated a date as late as 1634. But despite an opening line Miltonic both in its reference and tone and even the placing of a noun between two adjectives, Milton no more kind¬ les to the subject of the sacrifice than in the unfinished Pas. He labors at the “sad” note with sighs and seas of tears and only ends up by being uncomfortably anatomical after a cold vein of legality. Like crashaw in “Our Lord in his Circumcision to his Father” (Steps to the Temple, 1646), Milton sees the portent of later suf¬ fering.

Uninstructed, C 367. upraided

unreerutible

Upbraided An 116.

Unable to get recruits, E 289.

Ur

unreproved Harmless, innocent L’A 40; iv 493. unshowered Unrained-upon (referring to arid Egyptian climate) N 215.

the

unvalued Invaluable, Sh 11. unweeting Unwitting In 23; C 539; x 335, 916; etc. Upis In

Callimachus

a name

for Diana,

By the Euphrates, evidently placed by Milton on the west bank, home of ABRAHAM, xii 130. Urania At first Milton invokes an unnamed “Heavenly Muse” (i 6; iii 19); next he uses the name of the muse of astron¬ omy among the ancients: “Descend from Heaven Urania, by that name/ If rightly thou art call’d,” “the mean¬ ing, not the name, I call,” “still govern thou my song,” vii 1-2, 5, 30-1, but denies a link with the pagan Nine. In du bartas’ La Muse Chretienne, Ura-

341-

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A Milton Dictionary

nia is the celestial patroness of divine poetry.

use

Uranus

Ussher

(“Heaven”) Son or husband of Gaea (Earth), primal deity, father of the titans, Prol I 134. urchin Referring to imps in the shape of hedgehogs, C 845. Uriah David successfully managed “to mur¬ der Uriah and adulterate his wife,” Bath-sheba, whom he had seen from a roof-top bathing. Ten 12-3; K 95. Uriel (“Light of God”) One of the seven archangels, iii 648, 654, “regent of the Sun,” iii 690; ix 60. Deceived by satan disguised as a lesser angel into giving directions to Adam’s Paradise. Pene¬ trates the “borrowed visage” betrayed by base emotions, afterwards, iv 114 ff., and hastens, 555, to warn uabriel. As warrior, vi 363. Urim Presented with Thummim, PR 3, 14, as “the oracle” (ib. 13; CG 204), and part of the “celestial panoply” of mili¬ tant Jesus, vi 760-1. First mentioned in the Bible as aaron’s “breastplate of judgment,” Ex. xxviii, 30. Probably a traditional survival of lots used in divination. RV margin has “Lights” for Urim: cf. Milton’s “radiant,” vi 761.

Are accustomed, L 67, 136.

See Of Prelatical Episcopacy. Uther (“Which in the Welsh tongue signi¬ fies dreadful,” B 125) Father of King ARTHUR, i 580. Utopia (Greek “Nowhere,” but also, as Mil¬ ton’s spelling in A 318, “Eutopian polities,” the place where it is well with one; thirdly, the reference may be to the U-shape of the island) The most famous of the Renaissance “new models of a commonwealth,” H 44— Milton was to do one himself in The Ready and Easy Way—set forth in the jesting and entertaining Latin ro¬ mance of Sir Thomas More (14781535), 4 continental editions, 1516-18; Englished by Raphe Robinson, 1551, revised 1556. Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem an unworthy addition, Sm 394. utter The old form of outer, i 72; iii 16; v 614; vi 716. uttered Published, A 324. Uxbridge On the river colne, scene of unsuc¬ cessful negotiations in 1645 between the commissioners of Charles I and the Parliament. K 235, 238. Uxor Cbraica

Ursicinus

See SELDEN.

See damasus. Ursinus (real name Bar), Zacharias (1534-83) German Reformed theo¬ logian, Log 512; CD 2, 7.

Uzza See 2 Sam. vi, 3, 6-7, CG 188. Uzzean

Usa

Uz, PR 1, 369, "a land . . . obscure,” PR 3, 94, the country east of Palestine

OUSE.

342-

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A Milton Dictionary

where Job Deserta.

dwelt,

probably Arabia

Uzziah King of Judah; “when he went into the Temple . . . was thrust out with a leprosy,” K 207. 2 Chron. xxvi, 16-21. ID 104.

Uzziel (“Strength of God”) “Next in power” to gabkdel in the contingent of angels guarding paradise, iv 782. In the Bible a human name only, but an angel in certain mystical and cabalistic writ¬ ings unpublished in Milton’s day.

343-

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V Valerius Publicola (‘'friend of the people")

vacation Absence, vacating, D 483. vagancies Wanderings, like those of a planet (which means “wanderer”), CG 186.

Roman consul four times; colleague of Junius Brutus in first year of the Roman Republic, 509 b.c., K 298; ID 328. Vallombrosa

vagaries

Valley of the (River) Arno, in the lovely upper part of which Florence was situated, i 290. Galileo had been appointed professor at the University of Florence for life, and was confined in the villa at Alcetri when Milton visited him.

“Vale of shades” or Leafy Vale, i 303. Site of an 11th century Benedic¬ tine abbey 18 miles se of Florence. Wordsworth wrote in a note to “At Vallombrosa”: “It is said that he has erred in speaking of the trees there being deciduous, whereas they are, in fact, pines. The fault-finders are them¬ selves mistaken; the natural woods of the region of Vallombrosa are decidu¬ ous, and spread to a great extent; those near the convent are, indeed, mostly pines; but they are avenues of trees planted.” Milton symbolizes the valley of the shadow of death.

Valens

Vane

Deviations from decorum, frolics, vi 614. vail(e)s Tips, H 71. Valdarno

(328P-78) Roman emperor of the East from 364, ID 322.

See Sonnet XVII. vans

Valentinian IE

Wings, ii 927; PR 4, 583.

(372-82) Emperor from 375. “Pious,” T 214. Successfully resisted by Am¬ brose, ID 254. T 219. Murdered by his chief minister Arbogast, ID 258.

vant-brace (vambrace, vant-brass) Armor for the forearm, SA 1121. vapour them out

Valentinian III

Pompously out-talk them, Sm 288.

(419-55) “Son of Placidia,” ID 256. Western emperor from 425. Slain by Petronius Maximus. -

Variana

344

Latin for variegated, An 138. -

A Milton Dictionary

Varro, Marcus Terentius

Verheiden, Jacobus

(116-27 B.c.) Roman scholar recom¬ mended as one of “the authors of agri¬ culture,” E 282, for his De Re Rustica, written when he was 80. Less volumi¬ nous than but superior to columella.

(fl. 1590) Dutch biographer. Author of Praestantium Aliquot Theologorum Qui Rom. Antichristum Praecipue Oppugnarunt Effigies (The Hague, 1602), M 5, 6.

Vashti

Verity, A(rthur) W(ilson)

“Whose mere denial to come at her husband’s sending [Mary Milton’s de¬ nial also] lost her the being queen any longer,” D 475. Repudiated and deposed by Ahasuerus for disobedi¬ ence, Esther, i, 9-22. Vatablus, Franciscus (d. 1547) “Within these hundred years professed Hebrew at Paris, a man of no religion, as beza [leones, Geneva. 1580, sig. VI] deciphers him,” T 108; 109.

(1863-1937) Trinity' College, Cam¬ bridge scholar who put out school texts of Milton’s poems in the 1890’s in the Pitt Press series that were super¬ lative for their meticulous learning at a time when standards were high and such rival annotators as Jerrarn and Bell and Trent and Browne provided outstanding competition. His PL was revised in 1910 and 1920. “The most learnedly annotated of all modern edi¬ tions” ( hanford). vermeil-tinctured

Vctinius, Publius A political adventurer in the last days of the republic, a parasite of Caesar’s, described by cicero as one of the greatest scamps and villians that ever lived. The dermatology of his face and neck was such that the orator called him “struma civitatis,” SD 96. verdot Verdict, SA 324, 1228. Verdune, John (16th cent.) “The French divine,” D 448; CB 191. Milton’s source is SAEPJ, p. 658.

Vermilion-tinted, C 752. vernant Verdant, x 679. Verres, Gaius (d. 43 b.c.) Praetor (74) and gov¬ ernor of Sicily, the “provincia” of SD 264 Made himself notorious, 7470, by his extortions, ruinous taxation, pillage, and disregard of civil rights of Roman citizens. Brought to trial (70) and prosecuted by cicero, A 330. (Never was a consul, BN 157.) Finally executed by antony.

Vertumnus

Vere

Vergiviurn ... salum

The god of vegetative change (verto), who assumed all possible forms in wooing pomona until he won her in the form of a blooming youth, ix 395. Thus, “Vertumnian distinctions and evasions,” T 183. CD 1, 5.

The Irish Sea (cf. L headnote) be¬ tween Great Britain and Ireland, EL

Verulam

See

DEVERE.

Vergil See

virgil.

See

1,4.

345-

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ST. ALBANS.

A Milton Dictionary

Verus (130-69) Roman emperor from 161, succeeding antoninus, ID 374. very Always an adjective in Milton’s ori¬ ginal English poetry, meaning actual, complete, C 428, 646; PR 2, 90; 4, 12. Vespasian (9-79) First of the Flavian em¬ perors, from 69. "Contending for the empire” with Vitellius (emperor Jan.Dec., 69) B 71; ID 340 Sent by Clau¬ dius to Britain, 43, where he con¬ quered Isle of Wight, B 54, 56-7. ID 152.

laughing and said, ‘You are indeed my Vicar of Hell’ (he was already called the King’s Vicar of Hell because of his ungodliness) whence everyone after¬ ward so called him.” A 313. Victor (d. 198) “Bishop of Rome,” R 20; P 87-8 from 189. Mainly remembered, as by Milton, for the Quartodeciman controversy as to whether Easter had to be on a Sunday, a position this pope met much resistance in affirming. viewless Invisible, Pas 50; C 92; iii 518. villafic

Vesta Greek Hestia, goddess of the hearth, one of the 12 Olympians, virgin daugh¬ ter of satubn; Milton makes her the mother of Melancholy, IP 23, even as he had previously imagined cupid aggressive towards her, EL V, 102. Her sanctuary in the Forum burned with an eternal flame that was at¬ tended by her priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, Prol VI 232. Vetus Comoedia The Old Comedy, of which the plays of Aristophanes are an example (Menander and his imitators being the representatives of the New Come¬ dy), A 299. vicar of hell The minor poet, Anne Boleyn’s cousin, Sir Francis Brian or Bryan (d. 1550). davanzati had told of Bryan’s reply to the King’s question apropos of Henry VIII’s sexual interest in both Anne and her mother: “‘What sin would he have committed who lay first with the mother, and then with the. daughter?’ He answered, ‘The same as he who eats first the hen and then the pullet.’ The King died of

Farmyard (of fowls), SA 1695. Viraginia(n) In Hall’s romance “Virago-land,” Sm 300, 328. Viretus, Petrus (1511-71) Genevan Calvinist, M 5. Virgil or Maro (Publius Virgilius Maro) (70-19 b.c. ) Few statements about the author of the “diffuse” epic, whose “heroic verse without rhvme” (Note on “The Verse”) was a model for PL. Competitor with ovid, EL I, 24, but ovro a greater influence on the Latin poetry. “The rural part of,” E 284 probably means the Georgies rather than the Eclogues. Line applied to Milton: see cyclops. Aen. VI, 679-80 quoted FE #9 40, with a change of case and “liinen” for “lumen.” Aen. I, 39 ff., CD 1, 11- cnx’s verses Virgilian, FE #2 6-8. virtue Frequently in the sense of efficacy or power, C 165; vii 236; viii 95; ix 110,145, 616, 649.

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A Milton Dictionary

Vitruvius Pollio, Marcus

(1st cent. b.c. ) Military engineer under Augustus. Author of De Archi¬ tecture (10 books), still standard au¬ thority in Milton’s time, E 283. vizor'd falsehood

Masked deception, C 698. Vlaccus

See Defensio Secunda and Pro Se Defensio. voiding

Clearing (emptying) the table, Col 260. volant

Flying, xi 561. volatile

(1) Winged, as hermes was (2) tending to evaporate, as quicksilver, iii 603. Volscia

The Volscians were an ancient peo¬ ple of Latium; allied, according to the Aenied, with the rutilians, CE II, 7. Voltaire

(1694-1778). This critic who called a barbarian was at first friendlier to Milton. In the work that he wrote in imperfect English during his exile in England, An Essay . . . upon the Epick Poetry of the Euro¬ pean Nations from Homer down to Milton, London, 1727, he adjudged PL “the noblest work which human imagination hath ever attempted,” de¬ spite its breaches of the French classic canons of decorum and good taste. But the noble Venetian of Ch. XXV of Candide (1759), Pococurante (“Little-caring”), derives as little satis¬ faction from his first edition of Milton Shakespeare

as from his other luxuries. “That bar¬ barian who wrote a long commentary on the first chapter of Genesis in ten books of harsh verses? That gross imi¬ tator of the Greeks, who disfigures the Creation, and who, while Moses represents the Eternal Being as pro¬ ducing the world by speech, makes the Messiah take a large compass from the heavenly cupboard in order to trace out his work? Should I esteem the man who spoiled Tasso’s hell and devil; who disguises Lucifer some¬ times as a toad, sometimes as a pigmy; who makes him repeat the same things a hundred times; makes him argue about theology; and imi¬ tates seriously Ariosto’s comical inven¬ tion of firearms by making the devils fire a canon in Heaven? Neither I nor anyone else in Italy could enjoy such wretched extravagances. Tbe mar¬ riage of Sin and Death and the snakes which sin brings forth nauseate any rnan of delicate taste, and his long de¬ scription of a hospital would only please a gravedigger. This obscure, bizarre and disgusting poem was de¬ spised at its birth; I treat it today as it was treated by its contemporaries in its own country.” The Dictionnaire Philosophique, reviewing the Lauder case, defends, on the whole, Milton against charges of plagiarizing from grotius and Masenius. volubil

Turning, iv 594. voluminous

The readable volumes of the stars collectively, PII 4, 384. Volusius, Annals of

So bad, these versified histories, that calls them “cacata charta” (XXXVI, 1), i. e., produced not by inspiration but by evacuation, 2D 176. catullus

347-

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A Milton Dictionary

Vortiger(n)

(fl. 450) British ruler who made the mistake of inviting the Saxons to Bri¬ tain to repel the Piets and Scots, and who married Rowena, the daughter of Hengist. “For committing incest with his daughter was by st. german, at that time his subject, cursed and con¬ demned in a British Council about the year 448,” K 296; cf. ID 158, 436; B 119, 113-4. votarist

One under a vow, a votary, C 189. Vulcan

The lame (Sal 2) (evidently be¬ cause of his fall from heaven, see lemnos and II. I, 588-95) son of Juno (N 23), god of fire and the forge and

consequently all artisans (Prol VI 244), maker of achilles’ armor (Prol VI 208), who appears in PL as the architect of pandaemonjum, Mulciber (i 732 ff.). Ugly though he was, he was wedded to the goddess of love, Venus, whom he caught being un¬ faithful with Mars, and threw an iron net over the two as they lay together, SD 244 (Ody. VIIII, 309 ff'.). He had a son cacus, who was said by Virgil to “vomit smoke,” C 655 (“illius atros/ ore vomens ignis, Aen. VIII, 198 f.), but the explanation of “sons” may be “apprentices.” Vultzes

A Slavonic tribe (Wiltzi) east of the Elbe originally conquered by CHARLEMAGNE, Ten 24.

348-

-

w wafts In the sense of sailing easily and safely, ii 10-12. Wakerley See

MARVELL.

wakes All-night religious festivals, C 121. Waldenses See Sonnet XVIII. Warbeck, Perkin (1474-99) The celebrated Walloon impostor who pretended to be Rich¬ ard, Duke of York, the second of Ed¬ ward IV’s sons murdered in the Tower, where he himself, having confessed his imposture, was imprisoned, and hanged when he attempted to escape, P 102. ware Aware, C 558. warping Referring to a swerving forward motion, i 341. warranted Safeguarded, C 327. Warton, Thomas (1728-90). Poet and professor of poetry at Oxford like his father Thomas Warton the Elder, wrote Ob¬ servations on Spenser’s “Faery Queen” (1754, 1762) and the still valuable History of English Poetry (through

the Elizabethans) (1774-81). The year he became poet laureate he put out the first truly competent edition of Milton’s Minor Poems, 1785 (en¬ larged 1791), the relative neglect of which he noted: “It was late in the present century, before they attained their just measure of esteem and popularity. Wit and rhyme, sentiment and satire, polished numbers, spar¬ kling couplets, and pointed periods, having so long kept undisturbed pos¬ session in our poetry, would not easily give way to fiction and fancy, to picturesque description, and romantic imagery.” Unlike previous editors, Warton was well read in the earlier English literature and had a mind sympathetic to Milton’s “Gothic” ten¬ dencies. The ample footnotes on Comus are preceded by 14 pages of Preliminary Notes—on Ludlow Castle, the Bridgewater Family, Lawes, sources. Answering dh. Johnson on the question of the sincerity of lycidas, Warton comments, “In this piece there is perhaps more poetry than sorrow.” Apropos of the now fashion¬ able conjunction of II Penseroso and Diirer’s Melancholia, this was made by one of Warton’s contributors, Bowie. wassailers Carousers, C 179. wattled cotes Sheepfolds made with branches, C 344.

349-

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interlaced

A Milton Dictionary

wayfaring Chrisian

So the text was printed, A 311, but Milton corrected in ink to “warfaring” (cf. “Christian warfare,” An 110; D 373; K 263). we(a)ther

A castrated ram, C 499; SA 538.

VII) and the Houses of Parliament —the palace of Whitehall, K 125-6, with Westminster Hall, K 106 (refer¬ ring to St. Stephen’s, the meetingplace of the House of Commons), which was part of the palace. Milton lived in the district 1649-60 and dated FE #13-30 from there.

weed(s)

Whalley (Hualei), Edward

Garment, C 189; Ilor 15; iii 479; CG 221; etc.

(d. 1675?) Woolen-draper; active adherent of Cromwell from 1643, di¬ stinguishing himself under him at Dunbar, 1650. and Worcester, 1651 2D 232. As he had sat as judge and signed Charles I’s death-warrant, he fled for his life to New England in 1660 and apparently died there.

weights

Waits, Sm 335. welkin

Sky, C 1015; ii 538. welter

whifflers

“Means ‘to roll’ or ‘to toss’—but there was another welter in this peri¬ od, a word which meant ‘to wither’ or ‘to wilt’; and Milton’s phrase, ‘wel¬ ter to the parching wind,’ [L, 13] would seem to indicate that this latter meaning is present too” (J. E. Hardy).

Persons who cleared the way for a procession—from the fact that a whiffler or lifer generally went first at pageants. An 138. (The association was suggested to Milton by Hall’s “flourished.”)

weltering

while(a)re

A little while ago, Ci 10.

Rolling, N 124; i 78. Wesembechius

whilom(e)

Matthew Wesenbeck (1531-96) Flemish jurist, whose In Pandectas Juris Civilis (Lyons, 1583), p. 212, is re¬ ferred to, T 229.

Once upon a tree, formerly, In 24; C 827.

Westchester

whippets

Small swift dogs. Col 271. whist

Same as Chester, county seat of Cheshire, 15 miles south of Liverpool, and the entry into North Wales, it was a royalist center, starved into submis¬ sion. after a two-year stubborn siege, 1644-46, K 142.

Hushed, N 64. whiteboy

Favorite boy, “fair-haired boy,” Sm 290. Whitehall

Westminster

Once an independent part of Lon¬ don, west of the City proper, site of Westminster Abbey (for an earlier building cf. B 291) A 351 (see henby

Palace in Westminster, residence, K 191, whence Charles “sallied out . . . with those trusy myrmidons, to block up, or give assault to the House of Commons,' K 106, and afterwards

350-

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A Milton Dictionary

to open war with Parliament, 156. Used during the Commonwealth, SL 66 ff. by the officers of government, and Milton himself lived there 164952. K68, 104, 111, 114. Whitelocke (Whitlock, Huitlochium), Bulstrode

(1605-75). Member of the Council of State and at various times commis¬ sioner of the great seal, 2D 234. Milton wrote him Feb. 12, 1651 about the safeguard for the count of oldenburc(h), EC 326-7. Other mention in the same connection, pp. 374, 376.

Army, K 167, 215; ID 520; 2D 204, 208. Willibrode (Wilbrod B 175)

St. Willibrod (658-739). North¬ umbrian, D 377, “Apostle of Frisia,” made Archbishop by Pope Sergius, 695, and given by pepin a seat for his cathedral just outside Utrecht. wincer

In the obsolete sense of kicker, Sm 308. wind-egg(s)

Addled egg(s), Col 237; K 185. white-thorn

The hawthorn, L 48 (so called from its bark being lighter than that of the black-thorn).

winds

Blows, L 28. Windsor

Whittingham, William

(1524P-79) Dean of Durham from 1563, had followed knox to Geneva, 1555, and having been appointed deacon (1558) and minister (1559), assisted in the translation of the Gen¬ eva ("Breeches”) Bible, 1560. Wrote Preface to goodman’s book, 1558, Ten 52.

On the Thames across from Horton (possible reference L’A 77?), famous for its castle dating back to edward III K 235. Winifride of Devon

Wikandus (or Vigand), Johannes

(680-754) Wynfrith, who became St. Boniface, the “Apostle of Ger¬ many,” began, like Willibrod, his mis¬ sionary work in Frisia, had his first success in Bavaria and Thuringia, and converted many of the Hessians, D 377. After the death of Charles martel (741) he was able to reform the whole Frankish Church. He ended, as he began, in Frisia, meeting martyr¬ dom.

(1523-87) 227.

wink on

Wicklef, Wickleffe, Wickliffe

See

WYCLIFFE.

wide-encroaching

See

EURYNOME.

Lutheran

theologian, T Close the eyes to, C 401.

Wight, Isle of (Vectis)

Off Hampshire, south England, where at Carisbrooke Castle Charles 1 was held captive in 1647 and made a secret treaty—the Engagement—with tlie Scots, while seeming to make “concessions,” K 161; 2D 210, to the

wizard stream

See

wizards

The three “wise men from the east” (Matt, ii, 1), N 23.

351-

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deva.

A Milton Dictionary

wons

Dwells, vii 457 (cognate with Ger¬ man wohnen),

Wood, Anthony

(or,

according to

his affected preference, Anthony a

spite its Tory-Oxford bias—which an¬ ticipates dr. Johnson’s—warton was able to call Wood’s sketch with some justice “the groundwork” for later biographies, and it was probably the direct impetus for e. Phillips’s more definitive account of 1694.

Wood)

(1632-95) Oxford antiquary, author of Athenae Oxonienses (1691 f.), a biographical dictionary of Oxford writers and bishops, the Fasti volume of which contained the first published biography (about 4000 words) cover¬ ing Milton’s whole fife, on the pre¬ mise, for which no evidence has been found, that Milton was incorporated A.M. Oxon. 1635. Wood was evidently glad for an occasion—even if he had to invent it—to lavish his hostility on a republican whose principles vexed him. He traces, mostly by a listing of titles, the course by which Milton “at length arrived to that monstrous and unparalleled height of profligate im¬ pudence, as in print to justify the most execrable murder of him the best of kings” and became “a hater of all things that looked towards a single person, a great reproacher of the Uni¬ versities, scholastical degrees, decency and uniformity in the Church.” Milton’s abilities are admitted: “He might have been highly useful to that party against which he all along appeared with much malice and bitterness.” Eikonoklastes was “published to the horror of all sober men, nay even to the Presbyterians themselves.” At the Restoration Milton “absconded, for fear of being brought to a legal trial and so consequently of receiving con¬ dign punishment.” Wood employed as sources the notes of Aubrey and the “anonymous life” (qq.v.), the latter furnishing almost one half of his material, Aubrey one-tenth. De¬

Worcester

See Sonnet XVI. Wordsworth, William

(1770-1850) The sonnet “London, 1802,” beginning, “Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour,” is famous, especially the sestet, “Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, ma¬ jestic, free. So didst thou travel on life’s common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.” About the same time came another tribute, likewise inspired by dismay at events in France: “We must be free or die, who speak the tongue/ That Shakespeare spake; the faith and mor¬ als hold,/ Which Milton held” ("It is not to be thought cF’; cf. “Great men”). In Book III of The Prelude. “Residence at Cambridge,” Words¬ worth “seemed to see him here/ Familiarly, and in his scholar’s dress,” the poet with whom he temperamen¬ tally had the most affinities. His poems contain at least one hundred fiftyeight borrowings from Milton” (Ha¬ vens). The sonnet “Latitudinarianism” ends by quoting iii 54-5. Milton’s attitude to us is harsh and dictatorial;

352-

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A Milton Dictionary

and it is here that Wordsworth sup¬ plies what we seek in vain in Milton. Wordsworth’s sympathy with human nature was intense if somewhat nar¬ row in range” (Grierson). worm

Serpent, ix 1068; PR 1, 312. Wotton

See Comus.

woottonus,

2D 120.

wove

Woven, Arc 47; ix 839. wreck

Wreak, iv 11. wreck

Reck, An 109. Writ of Error

To secure reversal of a court judg¬ ment on grounds of error, M 20.

-

Wyciiffe (Wicklef, Wickleffe, Wickliffe), John

(1329-84) “That Englishman hon¬ ored of God to be the first preacher of a general reformation to all Europe,” T 222, from Oxford, and under the protection of John of Gaunt. Accused of heresy in bulls by Pope Gregory XI (1377). Afterwards denied priestly power of absolution, and power to en¬ force confession; rejected indulgences and penances, insisting upon inward religion versus formalism; denied doc¬ trine of transubstantiation. Initiated first complete translation of Bible into English. Escaped the physical punish¬ ment that attended many of his fol¬ lowers, the lollards. Paired with huss (whom he influenced) A 303, 340; with luther, Sm 292; with alcuin, D 377. “The succeeding re¬ formers more effectually lighted their tapers,” R 5; “opening our drowsy eye¬ lids leisurely by that glimmering light.” An 145; “His egregious labors,” 177.

353

--

X Xenophon

Xerxes

(434P-355? b.c. ) Mentioned by Milton for his “moral works,” E 284 rather than for his celebrated Ana¬ basis (standard for beginners in Greek today), the account of the guiding of 10,000 Greek soldiers back to the Black Sea after their former leader, Cyrus the Younger, fell in the battle of Cunaxa (401). The “moral works” include the Memorabilia of Socrates, that teacher “who never bar¬ gained with any for teaching them,” An 161 (Mem. I, ii, 6-8), and the other Socratic writings of one who, like his “equal” (Sm 305), i.e. con¬ temporary plato, was a disciple who wrote his own Symposium or Ban¬ quet and Apology for socrates; the Cyropaedia (II, i, 20-25 seems to be referred to, CG 185), an ethical ro¬ mance on the founder of the Persian monarchy; and the Hiero (ID 304), a debate between King Hiero, com¬ plaining of the heavy responsibilities of exalted station, and the poet Simon¬ ides, enumerating the advantages of having the power to do good.

(519P-465 b.c.) King of Persia from 486, thought it necessary to carry on the tradition of his father dabius in preparing a punitive expedition against Greece, 483-81, “and over Hel¬ lespont/Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined,” x 309-10, but “scourged . . . the . . . waves,” as Herodotus relates, when they broke his bridge of ships. He was checked by the Greek navy at Artemisium and for a time by Leonidas at Thermopylae, made huge land invasion and burned Athens, but himself retreated after salamis, 480, and his army was beaten at Plataea and fleet at mycale the same day, 479. This dissolute mon¬ arch was murdered by the captain of Ills guards, artabanus, ID 302; his son artaxerxes succeeded, 294.

Xiphilinus

(11th cent.) Of Trapezus, a monk at Constantinople who abridged dion cassius, XXVI-LXXX, and was printed along with him, ID 114-6.

354-

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Y yafe

Gave, Sm 360 (Gower). Yale Milton

Complete Prose Works of John Milton, planned in 8 volumes, New Haven, 1953. The Editorial Board consists of Don M. Wolfe, Gen¬ eral Editor, and D. Bush, J. S. Diekhoff, j. m. french, Sir Herbert Grier¬ son (d. 1960), m. y. hughes, M. Kelley, A. M. Witherspoon, A. S. P. Woodhouse. The purpose: “to present an¬ notated texts of Milton’s prose in the ascertainable order of its composition, bringing to bear in notes, prefaces, and volume introductions the accum¬ ulated scholarship of the past cen¬ tury.” Works in Latin are presented in translation only. Vol. I, 1624-42, 1953, ed. Wolfe, was criticized for errors and too sharp differences of approach by the various cooperating editors. II, 1643-48, ed. E. Sirluck, 1959. Ill, 1649-50, ed. hughes, 1961. ycle(a)p'd

Called L’A 12. yeft

Gift, Sm 360 (Gower). York, Yorkshire

The North of England, like the West, was royalist in the Civil War, and the city divided by the ouse was the place of Charles’s first retreat in January, 1642 K 142, 150, 168-9; 2D

204. “The inhabitants of Yorkshire and other counties were called to arms, and actual forces raised, while the Parliament were yet petitioning for peace and had not one man listed,” K 167; cf. 144. The major battle of Marston Moor was fought eight miles west of York, July 2, 1644. Young, Thomas

(c. 1587-November, 1655). Milton’s Scottish tutor, recipient of FE #1 and 4 and EL IV, and Smectymnuus co¬ author. Son of Janet Glass and Wil¬ liam, reader and rector at Luncarty, 1576-80, and, as clerk of the presby¬ tery, a signer of the July 1, 1606 pro¬ test against introducing episcopacy into Scotland the month that Thomas, having gone to Perth grammar school and St. Leonard’s College, took his M.A. at St. Andrews. Sometime be¬ tween 1606 and 1614 Thomas went to London to seek his livelihood. It is not known when he was Milton’s tutor, the possible years being 161518 to 1620, when Young went to Ham¬ burg to be pastor to the English mer¬ chants there (see headnote to EL IV). In 1628 Young was back in Eng¬ land for good, having been appointed on March 27 vicar of St. Peter and St. Mary in Stowmarket, where Milton answers his invitation to visit him by promising to come. In 1641 they were allied against Hall (Dies Dominica, 1639, a learned treatise on the Lord’s Day, was attributed to Young by his

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contemporaries), and all the Smectymnuans were given places in the Westminster Assembly, 1643. In 1644 Young was made master of Jesus College, Cambridge (a position now held by Tillyard); “deprived" on re¬ fusal to comply with the Engagement, 1650. Returned to Stowmarket for his last years, with which place his sons Thomas and Roger also became associated. Young corresponded with (and was possibly a relative of) the much better known Patrick Young (1584-1652) (likewise educated at St. Andrews), librarian successively to Prince Henry, James I and Charles I, and Biblical scholar (contributor to Brian Walton’s Polyglot Bible, 1657), to whom Milton gave a presentation volume of his tracts (XVIII, 269). The surviving documents indicate Milton’s respect and affection for his tutor, whom he calls “best preceptor” in both letters. FE #1 is dated March 26, 1625, in the 1674 edition (which was carelessly printed), but that date seems impossibly early, 1627 being likely. (On the other hand, the ac¬ companying Elegia IV—33-38—indi¬ cates that Young had been in Ham¬ burg less than three years; but prob¬ ably Milton had seen him in England on a 1625 visit.) The letter is rich in acknowledgements and compliments, even to “instar Patris,” 6, with thanks for a gift of a Hebrew Bible (not ex¬ tant) and modest excuses for not hav¬ ing written for three years and not writing more elaborately now, Milton being in London away from books and the Cambridge muses. The verse

“Epistolium” referred to in the be¬ ginning is evidently, EL IV. Elegia IV, 126 lines (exceeded in length only by, EL V), was written “Anno Aetatis 18,” which evidently means 1627. After an exuberantly mythological opening, the poem takes on the tone of ovin’s Tristia, treating Young as something of an exile driven from his native land, Puritan (Pres¬ byterian) that he was. Milton misses him as the other half of his soul, and more than Alcibiades missed his teacher socrates, Alexander the GREAT

ACHILLES

PHOENIX

Yvronia

Land of Drunkenness in Hall’s Mundus Alter et Idem An 138.

356-

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ARISTOTLE,

and cheron the centaur. The next lines, the heart of the tribute, 29-32, seem to mean that Young introduced Milton to the pleasures of poetry. Young is imagined sitting in the midst of his family and his religious tomes. The war is next alluded to (the Lower Saxon and Danish War phase, 1623-9, of the Thirty Years’ War). Like the Lady in Comus Young has an invisi¬ ble protector, and will be able to con¬ quer his misfortunes and return to his native lares. FE #4, dated from Cambridge July 21, 1628, is a note accepting Young’s invitation to Stowmarket. “Simul ac Ver adoleverit,” 14 pre¬ sents a problem in translation: it may go with “accersitus”; if it goes with “adveniam" either the letter is wrongly dated, or Ver is a goddess who ages to summer—and past.

z Zachary

Zephon

A transition, O 261 from Zechariah, xiii, 4 to the Pope, 741-52, a Greek of Calabria by birth. He confirmed the deposition of the last Merovingian Childeric III (see chilpericus), and had pepin and his consort solemnly anointed by Boniface (winifride) ID 264, 436; CB 177.

(“Searcher”) (a human name in the Bible, Num. xxvi, 15). Angel dele¬ gated with ithuriel hv gabriei. to find the interloping satan, iv 788, 834, 854, 868. Zephyr(us) The west wind (cf. favonius ), “the frolic wind that breathes the Spring,” L’A 18 (cf. EL V, 2), imagined as father of euphrosyne by aurora; paired with chi.oris, EL III, 44; flora, v 16; opposite of eurus, x 705. Characteristic wind of Paradise, iv 329 (following homer, Od. IV, 567). EL V, 69. ED 72 (plural).

Zaleucus (c. 7th cent. b.c. ) Greek lawgiver of Locri in Magna Graecia, reputed author of first written legal code among Greeks (the Locrian code) (in Stobaeus’ Anthology) E 285. Sup¬ posed to have fallen on his sword when he discovered that he had un¬ wittingly broken one of his own laws.

Zephyritis Probably goddess of the Western Wind or Spring, CE I, 11.

Zanchius, Hieronymus (Jerome) (1516-90) Reformed theologian ac¬ tive in Germany, 2D 66; CD 1, 14, 27. Zebede(e) Fisherman of Galilee, whose sons the apostles James the Great and John had “the ambitious desire ... to be exalted above their brethren in His kingdom, which they thought was to be ere long upon earth,” W 119; ID 154. (Mark x, 35 if.) Zellius, Matthaus (1477-1548)

(5th cent. b.c. ) Celebrated Greek painter, who used as models for his masterpiece, the picture of Helen (for the temple of Juno at Croton, Magna Graecia) five local virgins, leaders in a beauty-contest set up for the pur¬ pose, Prol I 140. Zimri See

phine(h)as.

Zippora(h)

strassburg

reformer,

M 10; T 224. Zeno see

Zeuxis

Wife of moses, D 409 (cf. Ex. iv, 25-6; xviii, 2). CD 1, 10. Zisca (Ziska, Zizka), Jan

STOA,

STOICS,

(J360P-1414)

and icenorcjm. -

357

-

“The

most

brave

A Milton Dictionary

leader of the Bohemians, champion of the orthodox faith,” 2D 66. Though totally blind after 1421 (having lost his eyes in separate battles), he gained brilliant victories over the Catholics in the Hussite Wars. Zodiac Both xi 247 (1) “belt” and (2) the “glistering” “circle of animals” (“fig¬ ured like beasts,” Sm 314) that is the celestial zodiac with its 12 divisions or signs, each entered by the sun in a different month (cf. “eadem currit per signa rotarum,” NS 44). “For Na¬ ture hath her Zodiac also, keeps her great annual circuit over human things as truly as the sun and planets in the firmament,” T 190. zone Girdle, PR 2, 214; referring to the zodiac, v 281, 560. Zophiel (“Spy of Cod” or “Scout”). A cher¬ ub, vi 535 (according to Fludd ruler of the Dionysian Cherubim, the Rab¬ bis’ Ophanim). Zora Native town of Samson (Judges xiii.

2) a city of the tribe of Dan, SA 181. Zorobabel See ence.

for the Biblical refer¬

Zosimus (Zozimus) (Late 5t’n cent.) “The heathen” Greek historian, R 23, held an admin¬ istrative post at Constantinople. His Historiae of the Roman empire down to 410 (Lyons, 1624; see pp. 433-8 for criticism of Constantine) is a valu¬ able check on Christian writers for Zosimus’ consistently pagan and antiChristian coloration. Cited in B 88, 89, 94, etc. Zuinglius Ulrich

(Zwinglius)

or

Zwingli,

(1484-1531) Swiss religious leader, who established the Reformation in Zurich; predecessor of Calvin, A 339. Conferred at Marburg with luther, 1529, with whom he differed by re¬ jecting the carnal presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Accompanied Zur¬ ich troops in their campaign against Catholic cantons; killed at the battle of Kappel. Quotations from Opus Articulorum sive Conclusionum (Opera, Zurich, 1545, pp. 84-6) Ten 47-8; cf. 2D 202. ID 64, 202, 346.

358-

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