v. 82. In number.] The sparkles exceeded the number which would be produced by the sixty-four squares of a chess-board, if for the first we reckoned one, for the next, two; for the third, four; and so went on doubling to the end of the account.
v. 106. Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram.] Not injured, like the productions of our spring, by the influence of autumn, when the constellation Aries rises at sunset.
v. 110. Dominations.]
Hear all ye angels, progeny of light,
Thrones, domination’s, princedoms, virtues, powers.
Milton, P. L. b. v. 601.
v. 119. Dionysius.] The Areopagite, in his book De Caelesti Hierarchia.
v. 124. Gregory.] Gregory the Great. “Novem vero angelorum ordines diximus, quia videlicet esse, testante sacro eloquio, scimus: Angelos, archangelos, virtutes, potestates, principatus, dominationae, thronos, cherubin atque seraphin.” Divi Gregorii, Hom. xxxiv. f. 125. ed. Par. 1518. fol.
v. 126. He had learnt.] Dionysius, he says, had learnt from St. Paul. It is almost unnecessary to add, that the book, above referred to, which goes under his name, was the production of a later age.
CANTO XXIX
v. 1. No longer.] As short a space, as the sun and moon are in changing hemispheres, when they are opposite to one another, the one under the sign of Aries, and the other under that of Libra, and both hang for a moment, noised as it were in the hand of the zenith.
v. 22. For, not in process of before or aft.] There was neither “before nor after,” no distinction, that is, of time, till the creation of the world.
v. 30. His threefold operation.] He seems to mean that spiritual beings, brute matter, and the intermediate part of the creation, which participates both of spirit and matter, were produced at once.