Passages in Which Milton’s Idea of True Liberty Is Set Forth
P. 104. Deep versed in books: Milton would, I conceive, have thus characterized his old antagonist, Salmasius.—Dunster.
P. 104. trifles for choice matters: as choice matters.
P. 104. worth a spunge: deserving to be wiped out. So in his ‘Areopagitica’: ‘sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together, dialogue-wise, in the piazza of one title-page, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge.’
P. 111. Uzza: see 2 Sam. vi. 3-8.
P. 112. Whom do we count a good man:
‘Vir bonus est quis?—
Qui consulta patrum, qui leges juraque servat;
Quo multæ magnæque secantur judice lites;
Quo res sponsore, et quo causæ teste tenentur.
Sed videt hunc omnis domus et vicinia tota
Introrsùs turpem, speciosum pelle decorâ.’
—Epistolarum Liber, i. 16, vv. 40-45, Ad Quinctium.
P. 118. Crescentius Nomentanus: Roman patrician, a native of Nomentum (now La Mentana), tenth century, was at the head of the Italian party against the Germans and the popes, with title of Consul; was besieged in the Castle St. Angelo, and finally capitulated on terms honorable to himself, but was basely put to death by Otho III., A.D. 998.
P. 118. Nicholas Rentius: Rienzi, or Rienzo (Niccolo Gabrini), or Cola di Rienzi, ‘the last of the Roman Tribunes,’ b. about 1313, d. 1354.
‘Then turn we to her latest tribune’s name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame—
The friend of Petrarch—hope of Italy—
Rienzi! last of Romans! while the tree
Of Freedom’s withered trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be—
The forum’s champion, and the people’s chief—
Her new-born Numa thou—with reign, alas! too brief.’
—Byron’s Childe Harold, Canto iv. St. cxiv.
P. 120. the resentment of Achilles: the subject of the Iliad.
P. 120. the return of Ulysses: the subject of the Odyssey.
P. 120. the coming of Æneas into Italy: the subject of the Æneid.
P. 121. As when those hinds: he compares the reception given it [the doctrine of his Divorce pamphlets] to the treatment of the goddess Latona and her newly born twins by the Lycian rustics. These twins afterward ‘held the sun and moon in fee’ (i.e. in full possession), for they were Apollo and Diana; and yet, when the goddess, carrying them in her arms, and fleeing from the wrath of Juno, stooped in her fatigue to drink of the water of a small lake, the rustics railed at her and puddled the lake with their hands and feet; for which, on the instant, at the goddess’s prayer, they were turned into frogs, to live forever in the mud of their own making (Ovid, Met., vi. 335-381).—Masson. Wordsworth uses the phrase, ‘in fee,’ in the same way in the opening verse of his sonnet on the ‘Extinction of the Venetian Republic’: ‘Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee.’
P. 121. lapse: fall.
P. 121. twinned: as a twin.
P. 121. dividual: separate.
P. 121. undeservedly: without right or merit; no thanks to them.
P. 121. virtue, which is reason: ‘Virtus est recta ratio, et animi habitus, naturæ modo, rationi consentaneus.’—Cicero.
P. 123. 424. his son Herod: king of Judea when Christ was born.
P. 123. 439. Gideon, and Jephtha; see Judges vi.-viii. and xi., xii.; the shepherd-lad: David; see the Books of Samuel.
P. 123. 446. Quintius: Quintius Cincinnatus: Fabricius: the patriotic Roman who was proof against the bribes of Pyrrhus; Curius: Curius Dentatus: who would accept no public rewards; Regulus: after dissuading the Romans from making peace with the Carthaginians, returned to Carthage, knowing the consequences he would suffer.