Editorial note — INDEX TO THE NOTES.

893. Thick set, etc., i.e. thickly inlaid with agate and beautified with the azure sheen of turquoise, etc. There is a zeugma in set. azurn sheen. Sheen = brightness: it occurs again in l. 1003; see note there. ‘Azurn’: modern English has a tendency to use the noun itself as an adjective in cases where older English used an adjective with the suffix -en = made of. Most of the adjectives in -en that still survive do not now denote “made of,” but simply “like,” e.g. golden hair, etc. Azurn and cedarn (l. 990), hornen, treen, corden, glassen, reeden, etc., are practically obsolete; see Trench, English Past and Present. Comp. ‘oaten’ (Lyc. 33), ‘oaken’ (Arc. 45). As the words ‘azurn’ and ‘cedarn’ are peculiar to Milton some hold that he adopted them from the Italian azzurino and cedrino.