And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints. —Rev. St. John ↩
The Humanitarians held that God was to be understood as having a really human form. —Vide Clarke’s Sermons, vol. 1, page 26, fol. edit.
The drift of Milton’s argument leads him to employ language which would appear, at first sight, to verge upon their doctrine; but it will be seen immediately, that he guards himself against the charge of having adopted one of the most ignorant errors of the dark ages of the church. —Dr. Sumner’s Notes on Milton’s Christian Doctrine
This opinion, in spite of many testimonies to the contrary, could never have been very general. Andeus, a Syrian of Mesopotamia, was condemned for the opinion, as heretical. He lived in the beginning of the fourth century. His disciples were called Anthropmorphites. —Vide Du Pin
Among Milton’s minor poems are these lines:—
Dicite sacrorum præsides nemorum Deæ, etc.
Quis ille primus cujus ex imagine
Natura solers finxit humanum genus?
Eternus, incorruptus, æquævus polo,
Unusque et universus exemplar Dei.
And afterwards,
Non cui profundum Cæcitas lumen dedit
Dircæus augur vidit hunc alto sinu, etc.
Seltsamen Tochter Jovis
Seinem Schosskinde
Der Phantasie.
—Göethe
Sightless—too small to be seen. —Legge ↩
I have often noticed a peculiar movement of the fireflies;—they will collect in a body and fly off, from a common centre, into innumerable radii. ↩
Therasaea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners. ↩
Some star which, from the ruin’d roof
—Milton.
Of shak’d Olympus, by mischance did fall.
Voltaire, in speaking of Persepolis, says, “Je connois bien l’admiration qu’ inspirent ces ruines—mais un palais érigé au pied d’une chaine des rochers steriles—peut-il être un chef d’œuvre des arts!
” ↩
“Oh, the wave”—Ula Deguisi is the Turkish appellation; but, on its own shores, it is called Bahar Loth, or Almotanah. There were undoubtedly more than two cities engulfed in the “dead sea.” In the valley of Siddim were five—Adrah, Zeboin, Zoar, Sodom and Gomorrah. Stephen of Byzantium mentions eight, and Strabo thirteeen (engulfed)—but the last is out of all reason.
It is said, (Tacitus, Strabo, Josephus, Daniel of St. Saba, Nau, Maundrell, Troilo, D’Arvieux) that after an excessive drought, the vestiges of columns, walls, etc. are seen above the surface. At any season, such remains may be discovered by looking down into the transparent lake, and at such distances as would argue the existence of many settlements in the space now usurped by the “Asphaltites.” ↩
Eyraco—Chaldea. ↩
I have often thought I could distinctly hear the sound of the darkness as it stole over the horizon. ↩
Fairies use flowers for their charactery. —Merry Wives of Windsor ↩
In Scripture is this passage—“The sun shall not harm thee by day, nor the moon by night.” It is perhaps not generally known that the moon, in Egypt, has the effect of producing blindness to those who sleep with the face exposed to its rays, to which circumstance the passage evidently alludes. ↩
The Albatross is said to sleep on the wing. ↩
I met with this idea in an old English tale, which I am now unable to obtain and quote from memory:—“The verie essence and, as it were, springe heade and origine of all musiche is the verie pleasaunte sounde which the trees of the forest do make when they growe.” ↩
The wild bee will not sleep in the shade if there be moonlight.
The rhyme in this verse, as in one about sixty lines before, has an appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro—in whose mouth I admired its effect:
O! were there an island,
Tho’ ever so wild
Where woman might smile, and
No man be beguil’d, etc.
With the Arabians there is a medium between Heaven and Hell, where men suffer no punishment, but yet do not attain that tranquil and even happiness which they suppose to be characteristic of heavenly enjoyment.
Un no rompido sueno—
Un dia puro—allegre—libre
Quiera—
Libre de amor—de zelo—
De odio—de esperanza—de rezelo.
—Luis Ponce de Leon.
Sorrow is not excluded from “Al Aaraaf,” but it is that sorrow which the living love to cherish for the dead, and which, in some minds, resembles the delirium of opium. The passionate excitement of Love and the buoyancy of spirit attendant upon intoxication are its less holy pleasures—the price of which, to those souls who make choice of “Al Aaraaf” as their residence after life, is final death and annihilation. ↩
There be tears of perfect moan
—Milton.
Wept for thee in Helicon.
It was entire in 1687—the most elevated spot in Athens. ↩
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
—Marlowe.
Than have the white breasts of the queen of love.
Pennon, for pinion. —Milton ↩
The poem styled “Romance,” constituted the Preface of the volume, but with the addition of the following lines:
Succeeding years, too wild for song,
Then rolled like tropic storms along,
Where, through the garish lights that fly
Dying along the troubled sky,
Lay bare, through vistas thunder-riven,
The blackness of the general Heaven,
That very blackness yet doth fling
Light on the lightning’s silver wing.For being an idle boy lang syne,
Who read Anacreon and drank wine,
I early found Anacreon rhymes
Were almost passionate sometimes—
And by strange alchemy of brain
His pleasures always turned to pain—
His naïveté to wild desire—
His wit to love—his wine to fire—
And so, being young and
