322 "For haste; such flight the great command impress'd 66 (Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,) 66 All, but within those banks, where rivers now "And saw that it was good and said, 'Let the earth "He scarce had said, when the bare earth, till then "Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad "Then herbs of every leaf that sudden flower'd," 66 Opening their various colours, and made gay "Her bosom, smelling sweet: and, these scarce blown. "Embattled in her field, and the humble shrub, i So "glad precipitance," 291, with rushing delight.—(N.) * As the earth had only just emerged from the waters, it was one great washy ooze, slime and mud; and channels were easily worn into it by the streaming water, till it had become all dry, everywhere, except within the banks of these rivers. The rivers are imagined as persons oC great quality, the length of their robes training after them. This part of the description cannot be read otherwise than slowly, and so as to give the mind a picture of the thing described.—(8.) The ancients feigned rivers to be divinities. "Perpetual" is here an adjective, used, as elsewhere, to mean continued, unbroken, like the Latin perpetuus, as "agmen perpetuum, fossa perpetua, dies perpetuus," etc.; and not used adverbially, as Todd thinks. s These are the words of Genesis i. to, 11.—(N.) See 2 Esdras vi. 44.—(7\) * Propertius iv. ii. 43 :— "Coarulons cucumis, tumidoque cucurbita ventre." The common reading was smelling, which Bentley has well changed into swelling, the mistake being a misprint; as gourds are a numerous family, smelling, though it suits with some kinds of the gourd, does not suit with all the particulars of that tribe, as swelling does; and Milton her* assigns to each of the other species, the vine, reed, shrub, bush, a general epithet, which suits with all of the same species.—(P.)— 'Corny reed." The horny reed, from cornu, horn, stood upright among the undergrowlhs of nature, like a grove of spears, or a battalion with its pikes aloft. Corneus (Lat.), of or 349 "And bush with frizzled hair implicit last, 66 Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread "Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemm'd "Their blossoms: 2 with high woods the hills were crown'd; With tufts the Yalleys, and each fountain-side; "With borders long the rivers; that earth now 66 Seem'd like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell, 3 "Or wander with delight, and love to haunt "Her sacred shades. Though God had yet not rain'd 66 "None was; but from the earth a dewy mist "Went up, and water'd all the ground, and each 686 6 "Again the Almighty spake : Let there be lights "And God made two great lights, (great, for their use 7 "The less by night, altern; and made the stars, "And set them in the firmament of heaven, like horn.—{B.) This explanation is adopted by the best modern commentators; bat, in my opinion, "corny" here is in reference not to cornu, horn, bat to cornut, the corneil tree, whose hard pointed branches resembled horn, and were used Tor spears. l "Hair," like coma in Latin, is used for leaves, and branches; and "implicit," (tmplicitus) is entangled.—(N.) > Put forth their blossoms, from gcminare (Lat.) to bud forth. Bentley thinks it plain that Milton gave it, "gemmed with blossoms," taking "gemmed" for a participle, as "hung" is. But "gemmed" may be a verb, as "spread" is. And to gem their blossoms, is an expression of the same poetical cast as "blooming ambrosial fruit," ir. 219. —(P.) Johnson quotes this passage as the example of "gem," «. n. meaning," to bud forth, and prints it with a semicolon after "fruit." In this case, "blossoms" must be taken as the nominative to "gemmed." s A manifest allusion to Homer, when he describes Mercury surveying with delight the bowers of Calypso, Odyss. v. 73: Ενθα κ' επειτα και αθανατος περ επελθων Θηήσαιτο εδων, και τερφθείη φρεσιν ησιν. (Stil.) Taken from Gen. ii. 4—6. » "Recorded." Celebrated. This was done by the "chorns" (275); by "harps" (450). What is done by the voices and instruments is poetically ascribed to the time in which they were employed.—(B.) < Taken from Gen. i. ii—is. 7 Milton judiciously has added these words to explain the words," two great lights,' for they were not greater than all other planets.—(N.) "Altern," (alternus,) alternately. 376 "To illuminate the earth, and rule the day 66 "A mighty sphere he fram'd, unlightsomc first, "And sow'd with stars the heaven, thick as a field : 66 Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and plac'd 66 'Repairing, in their golden urns draw light; 2 3 "Their small peculiar, though, from human sight "First in his East the glorious lamp was seen, "His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray 66 Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon, "But opposite in levell'd West was set— l So the sun is called by Lucretius the fountain of liquid light, v. 282:— "Largus item liquid! fons luminis nthereos sol Irrigat assldue cœlum caudore recentl." —"Other stars," i. e. the planets, as appears by his mentioning the morning star, or planet Venus.—(N.) > Aristopb. Nub. 271: ELT' арх Νείλου προχοαις υδάτων χρυσεοις αρνεσθε προχουσιν. — (Sft/.) s Like the Latin peculium, small private property or possession acquired by ser vants. This passage alludes to Psalm xix. 5: "The sun is a bridegroom coming from his chamber, and rejoieelh as a giant to run his course." Spencer, in a passage of exquisite poetry, alludes to the same text, Fairy Queen, I. v. 2.— "And Phcebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate, "Longitude" here means the sun's course from east to west in a straight line. See iii. 576.—(P., T.) 5 The Pleiades rise about the time of the vernal equinox, and are hence called Vergiliw. By this it would seem that Milton thought the creation was in spring, according to the common opinion, Virg. Geor. ii. 338:— ---"Ter lllud erat; ver magnus agebat 402 "His mirror, with full face borrowing her light 666 666 3 "And every bird of wing after his kind; "And saw that it was good, and bless'd them, saying, “And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill : "Of fish, that, with their fins and shining scales, 3 1 Divided; like the Latin dividuus, which is sometimes used for divitut. So he uses the word, xii. 85. • Taken from Gen. i. 20—22. » Here means, creeping things, i. e. the creeping things of the wafer, so in Psalm civ. 25: "the great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable, both small and great beasts." He also mentions "creeping things," in his description of the sixth day's creation (452), t. e. creeping things of the earth.—(P., T.) Addison remarks, that it is surprising how the poet could, within the compass of a space so bief, describe the whole creation with so much minuteness, accuracy, and beauty, as well the formation of the material world and all its parts, as all its productions from the reptile to the whale. "Whales" (ex) was a name given by the ancients to all large animals of the deep.—{Slit.) » Shoals and "sculls," (from the Saxon sceole, an assembly) both mean large collections of lish. What is called a shoal in one place is called a skull in anolher. Hence it is said by the commentators that "shoals of fish that glide in skulls" is an incorrect mode of speaking. I apprehend that Milton meant a distinction (if it were not recognised in his lime) between the two words; "shoal" signifying the whole aggregate multitude of the migrating fishes, and "scull," the separate bodies or assemblages into which it is divided. This division or the general mass into sections, which take separate courses, is a well-known fact; and they move along in dense bodies, resembling sand banks. The shoal divides in tho Northern ocean into three bodies, or skulls: one moves along the German ocean, coasting the east of Britain; another through the Irish Sea; and a third skirts the western coast of Ireland. The commentators omit what is more worthy of notice the syntax of "shoals." Is it "the seas swarm, and shoals swarm?" or "tbo seas swarm with fry innumerable and with shoals?" If the first, is there not here a bold, 423 "Bank the mid sea: part single, or with mate, "Show to the sun their wav'd coats dropt with gold; 66 Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend "Moist nutriment; or, under rocks, their food 66 "Hugest of living creatures, on the deep "Their callow young; but feather'd soon, and fledge," 66 They summ'd their pens; and, soaring the air sublime, "With clang despis'd the ground, under a cloud "In prospect: there the eagle and the stork and rather an unusual exercise of the poetic license, in saying, seas and shoals of fishes twarm? If the second, what is the difference between fry innumerable and shoals? As (o the first opinion, there are instances in the Classics and in Milton, where one verb refers to two subjects—metaphorically to the one, and strictly to the other. As to the second opinion, the solution lies in the word "fry," the incipient matter, or the first moving bodies, compared with the shoals, or full grown fishes. 1 Coral is a production of the sea, and was commonly ranked among marine plants. Kercher supposed that coral forests grew at the bottom of the sea. This is enough to justify Milton. The ancients believed that the plants were quite soft while under water, but got hard on exposure to the air. See Ov. Met. iv. 750. But it is now known that the tops of the branches only are a little soft, which become petrified when exposed to the air.— (N.) It properly is composed of a congeries of small marine animals, of the polypus kind, mixed with calcareous earth. It is fished up by divers, furnished with an iron instrument, from rocky caverns in the bottom of the sea at a great depth. In warm latitudes, the accumulation of this matter rises into islands. J The shells of lobsters, etc. and armour, very much resemble one another. In the civil wars, there was a regiment of horse so completely armed, that they were called "Sir Arthur Haselrig's lobsters."—(N.; s Dolphins are not more bent than other fishes, but (he word alludes to the curve their backs form as they spring forward out of the water, and plunge down again. So Or. Fast. ii. 113: "tergo delphina recurvo." Their sportive habit is mentioned by Virgil, En. v. 595: "luduntque per undas."—(N.) It is remarked, that the slow, halting, and, as it were, awkward motion of the numbers in this passage, are admirably contrived to express the sense; and that "tempest," used as a verb, increases the labour of the verse, while it adds force to the description. It is evident, that by "leviathan "here he means the whale, no matter how learned critics may apply the leviathan in the book of Job to the crocodile. See note on i. 200. He distinctly mentions the crocodile (474; as an amphibious animal; whereas leviathan is a lish. So Ov. Met. iii. 686: "Acceptum patulis mare naribus cfflant.—(N.) 6 For fledged, as iii. 627. So "satiate" for satiated. 7 "Pens," from penna, feather, wing. "Sum" is a term in falconry: a hawk is said to be full "summed" when its feathers are full grown. See Par. Reg. i. 14.—(«.) • Without quoting the various and conflicting interpretations of commentators, I may |