P. 61. Tasso (Torquato): Italian poet; b. 1544, d. 1595; author of the Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). P. 61. a prince of Italy: Alfonso II., Duke of Ferrara? P. 61. Godfrey's expedition against the Infidels: the subject of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the first crusade; b. about 1058, d. 1100. P. 61. Belisarius: a celebrated general, in the reign of Justinian; b. about 505 A.D., d. 565. P. 61. Charlemagne (or Charles the Great): b. 742, d. 814; Emperor of the West and King of the Franks. P. 61. doctrinal and exemplary: instructive and serving for example. P. 61. Origen: Christian Father, of Alexandria (185-254). P. 61. Pareus (David): b. 1548, d. 1622; a Calvinist theologian, Professor of Theology, University of Heidelberg. P. 62. Pindarus: Greek lyric poet, about 522-442 B.C. P. 62. 6 Callimachus: Greek poet and grammarian, about 310-235 B.C. P. 62. most an end: almost uninterruptedly, almost always, mostly, for the most part.'- Murray's New English Dictionary, s.v. ' an end.' The phrase occurs again in Chap. III. Book II. of this same pamphlet: 'the patients, which most an end are brought into his [the civil magistrate's] hospital, are such as are far gone,' etc. Vol. II. p. 491, of the Bohn ed. of the P. W. P. 63. demean: conduct; O. Fr. demener. P. 63. such (sports, etc.) as were authorized a while since: i.e. in the Book of Sports. Proclamation allowing Sunday sports, issued by James I. P. 63. paneguries: same as panegyrics. P. 64. Siren daughters: the Muses, daughters of Memory or Mnemo syne. P. 65. gentle apprehension: a refined faculty of conception or perception. Apology for Smectymnuus P. 66. Solon: Athenian statesman and lawgiver, about 638-558 B.C. 'According to Suidas it was a law of Solon that he who stood neuter in any public sedition, should be declared aruos, infamous.' P. 66. doubted: hesitated; or, perhaps, in the sense of feared. P. 66, 67. my certain account: the account which I shall certainly have to render. S P. 67. tired out almost a whole youth: see the extract given from "The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty.' P. 67. this modest confuter: Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, afterward of Norwich; the reference is to his 'Modest Confutation' of Milton's 'Animadversions.' P. 69. Animadversions: 'A. upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus.' 1641. P. 69. devised: described, represented. P. 70. conversation: in New Testament sense, mode or way of life, conduct, deportment (åvaσтpopń). of. P. 70. apology: defence, vindication. P. 71. propense: inclined, disposed. P. 71. that place: the University. P. 71. to obtain with me: prevail, succeed with me, to get the better P. 71. both she or her sister: Cambridge or Oxford University; 'both' requires 'and'; 'or' requires 'either.' P. 71. that suburb sink: the 'pretty garden-house in Aldersgate street,' as his nephew, Edward Phillips styles it, to which he removed from 'his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard,' in 1640, and where he was living when he wrote his 'Apology for Smectymnuus.' P. 72. I never greatly admired, so now much less in 'The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty' ('The Conclusion. The mischief that Prelaty does in the State '), Milton writes: "The service of God, who is truth, her (Prelaty's) liturgy confesses to be perfect freedom; but her works and her opinions declare that the service of prelaty is perfect slavery, and by consequence perfect falsehood. Which makes me wonder much that many of the gentry, studious men as I hear, should engage themselves to write and speak publicly in her defence; but that I believe their honest and ingenuous natures coming to the universities to store themselves with good and solid learning, and there unfortunately fed with nothing else but the scragged and thorny lectures of monkish and miserable sophistry, were sent home again with such a scholastic bur in their throats, as hath stopped and hindered all true and generous philosophy from entering, cracked their voices for ever with metaphysical gargarisms, and hath made them admire a sort of formal outside men prelatically addicted, whose unchastened and unwrought minds were never yet initiated or subdued under the true lore of religion or moral virtue, which two are the best and greatest points of learning; but either slightly trained up in a kind of hypocritical and hackney course of literature to get their living by, and dazzle the ignorant, or else fondly over-studied in useless controversies, except those which they use with all the specious and delusive subtlety they are able, to defend their prelatical Sparta.' P. 72. wisses: knows. P. 72. the bird that first rouses: the lark; see 'L'Allegro,' 41 et seq. P. 72. old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers, and salt lotion: the passage alluded to in the 'Animadversions,' is the following: 'We know where the shoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and oh what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased, to have the periwigs plucked off, that cover your baldness, your inside nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time, once every year, when their slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if the free-born people of England, with whom the voice of truth for these many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow hand of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and strait-laced almost to a brokenwinded phthisic, if now, at a good time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and resurrection of the state, if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long-persecuted truth, could not be suffered to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of words, could not be excused after such an injurious strangle of silence, nor avoid the censure of libelling, it were hard, it were something pinching in a kingdom of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists, have thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust themselves under disguise into a popular throng, to stand the night long under eaves of houses, and low windows, that they might hear everywhere the utterances of private breasts, and amongst them find out the precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless pebbles of the shore; whereby they might be the abler to discover, and avoid, that deceitful and close-couched evil of flattery, that ever attends them, and misleads them, and might skilfully know how to apply the several redresses to each nalady of state, without trusting the disloyal information of parasites and sycophants; whereas now this permission of free writing, were there no good else in it, yet at some time thus licensed, is such an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and tenderest particular truths, as makes not only the whole nation in many points the wiser, but also presents and car ries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or restrained good among the commons, as that they shall not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller for eaves-dropping, not to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with these freespoken and plain-hearted men, that are the eyes of their country, and the prospective glasses of their prince? But these are the nettlers, these are the blabbing books that tell, though not half your fellows' feats. You love toothless satires; let me inform you, a toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleekstone, and as bullish.' P. 73. antistrophon: reasoning turned upon an opponent. P. 73. mime: a kind of buffoon play, in which real persons and events were ridiculously mimicked and represented. P. 73. Mundus alter et idem (another world and the same): a satire by Bishop Hall. P. 73. Cephalus: son of Mercury (Hermes), carried off by Aurora (Eos). P. 73. Hylas accompanied Hercules in the Argonautic expedition. His beauty excited the love of the Naiads, as he went to draw water from a fountain, on the coast of Mysia, and he was drawn by them into the water, and never again seen. Viraginea: the land of viragoes. P. 73. P. 73. Aphrodisia; the land of Aphrodite (Venus). P. 73. Desvergonia: the land of shamelessness. Ital. vergona, shame, infamy. P. 73. hearsay: the hearing of, knowing about. P. 73. tire: head-dress. P. 73. those in next aptitude to divinity: divinity students. P. 73. Trinculoes: Trinculo is the name of a jester in Shakespeare's 'Tempest'; or, according to a note in Johnson's 'Life of Milton,' signed R., referred to by J. A. St. John, 'by the mention of this name he evidently refers to "Albemazor," acted at Cambridge in 1614.' P. 73. mademoiselles: ladies' maids. P. 73. Atticism because he is here imitating a well-known passage in Demosthenes's speech against Æschines. - Keightley. P. 74. for me: so far as I'm concerned. P. 74. ȧжειрокаλíа: ignorance of the beautiful, want of taste or sen sibility (Liddell and Scott). P. 75. elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce: i.e. they are much read in the schools. P. 75. numerous in poetic numbers; in prose or numerous verse.' P. 75. For that: because. – P. L., v. 150. P. 75. severe. serious. P. 76. the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura: Dante and Petrarch. P. 76. though not in the title-page: an allusion to his opponent's 'A Modest Confutation.' Corinthian: licentious, Corinth having been noted for its P. 78. licentiousness. P. 78. the precepts of the Christian religion: J. A. St. John quotes from Symmons's 'Life of Milton': 'It was at this early period of his life, as we may confidently conjecture, that he imbibed that spirit of devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: and we need not extend our search beyond the limits of his own house for the fountain from which the living influence was derived.' P. 78. had been: i.e. might have been. P. 79. sleekstone: a smoothing stone; a toothed sleekstone would fail of its purpose as much as a toothless satire. P. 79. this champion from behind the arras: probably an allusion to Polonius, who, in the closet scene (A. III. S. iv.), conceals himself behind the arras to overhear the interview between Hamlet and his mother. P. 80. Socrates: surnamed Scholasticus; a Greek ecclesiastical historian; b. about 379, d. after 440; author of a 'History of the Church from 306 to 439 A.D.' P. 81. St. Martin: there are two saints of the name; which one is alluded to is uncertain, but probably Bishop of Tours, 4th century. P. 81. Gregory Nazianzen: a Greek father, surnamed the Theologian; b. about 328, d. 389 A.D. P. 81. Murena: Roman consul, 63 B.C.; charged with bribery by Servius Sulpicius; defended by Cicero, in his oration Pro Murena. In Cicero's answer to Sulpicius, 'three months,' as given by Milton, should be 'three days': 'itaque, si mihi, homini vehementer occupato, stomachum moveritis, triduo me jurisconsultum esse profitebor.' To Carlo Dati. (Familiar Letters, No. X.) P. 83. tomb of Damon: i.e. of Carolo Diodati. |