C. B.
Rex Lucifer.—It would be a most horrid barbarism to impute to such a Latin poet as Milton the use of this word for the devil; although in his theological poem he may have adopted that popular and discreditable gloss upon Isaiah xiv. The palace of the light-bringing king is no other than that known to our earliest school-days, in Ovid 1. ad fin. 2. ad init. Phaëthon passes the "positos sub ignibus Indos," and then "patrios adit impiger ortus," where
"Regia Solis erat sublimibus alta columnis," &c.
Milton uses the word as an adjective, as in Ovid, "luciferos, Luna regebat equos." Otherwise it would necessarily signify the Planet Venus, or morning star.
A. N.
Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative (Vol. v., p. 185.).
—Miss Porter's letter speaks of the piety and domestic concord of the Seawards. Your readers may be amused to know that this piety affords one proof of the fiction of the narrative. They sometimes give the dates both of the day of month and week, and derive together much comfort from the singular applicability of passages in the lessons for the day. When I was reading the book, the days of the month and week fell the same as in the narrative, and as it happened to be at the same time of year too, I made the unpalatable discovery, that, however suitable the passages might be, they were not as they professed to be, at least not always, from the lesson of the day.
P. P.
Spanish Verses on the Invasion of England (Vol. v., p. 294.).—
L. H. J. T. will find the Spanish verses which form the subject of his Query in Southey's Quarterly Review article on Lord Holland's Life and Writings of Lope de Vega (Quarterly Review, vol. xviii. p. 6.), together with the following lively version: