2 The Dee of Chester.
3 The Vergivian Sea, so called by Ptolemy, was the Irish Sea between England and Ireland.
4 Cambridge.
5 Milton had been rusticated (suspended) on account of a quarrel with his tutor, Chappell.
6 Chappell.
7 Ovid.
8 In Thebes—the guilty lords are Eteocles and Polynices the brothers-sons of Oedipus and Jocasta, who fell in their unnatural strife.
9 Troy.
10 London. The Dardanian (i.e. Trojan) hands are those of Brutus, the legendary founder of London.
11 The magical plant by which Odysseus was enabled to escape from Circe. See Homer (Odyssey, x. 370-375).