An Introduction to the Prose and Poetical Works of John Milton / Comprising All the Autobiographic Passages in His Works, the More Explicit Presentations of His Ideas of True Liberty.

by John Milton

[204]. single darkness: pure darkness, only that and nothing more.

[210]. may startle well: i.e. may well (or indeed) startle.

[212]. strong-siding: strongly supporting.

[215]. Chastity: significantly substituted for Charity, as the companion virtue of Faith and Hope, it being the theme, the central idea of the poem, to which an explicit expression is given in the Elder Brother's speech, vv. 418-475, and in the speech of the Lady to Comus, 780-799.

[231]. airy shell: the dome of the sky; 'cell' is in the margin of Milton's Ms.

[248]. his: (old neuter genitive) its, referring to 'something.'

[251]. fall: cadence.

[251, 252]. smoothing . . . till it smiled: Dr. Symmons, in his 'Life of Milton,' remarks: 'Darkness may aptly be represented by the blackness of the raven; and the stillness of that darkness may be paralleled by an image borrowed from the object of another sense—by the softness of down; but it is surely a transgression which stands in need of pardon when, proceeding a step further and accumulating personifications, we invest this raven-down with life and make it smile.' The metaphorical use of 'smile' or 'laugh,' applied to inanimate things that are smooth, shining, glossy, bright in colour, and the like, is, perhaps, common in all literatures. The Latin 'rideo' and the Greek γελάω are frequently so used; e.g. 'florumque coloribus almus ridet ager' (and the bounteous field laughs with the colours of its flowers).—Ovid, Met., xv. 205; 'Domus ridet argento' (the house smiles with glittering silver).—Horace, Odes, IV. xi. 6; 'Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet' (that corner of the earth smiles for me above all others).—Horace, Odes, II. vi. 14.

[262]. home-felt delight: i.e. delight that keeps one at home with himself, does not carry him out of himself; in contrast with the singing of Circe and the Sirens three, which 'in sweet madness robbed it (the sense) of itself.'

[267]. unless the goddess: i.e. unless (thou be) the goddess; 'dwell'st' should properly be 'dwells,' the antecedent of the relative 'that' being 'goddess,' third person, not 'thou' in the ellipsis.