--_Paradise Lost_, II, 172-4.

Or, with solitary hand
Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow
Unaided could have finished thee.
--_Paradise Lost_, VI, 139-41.

2 12. sanctions. The word here means not permission, nor recognition
merely, but the avowal of something as sacred, hence obligatory; a
thing ordained.

2 13, 14. a triple character. De Quincey is fond of thus analyzing
the facts he has to state. Notice how this method of statement, marked
by "1st," "2dly," "3dly," contributes to the clearness of the
paragraph.

2 17. "Venice Preserved." A tragedy by Thomas Otway, one of the
Elizabethan dramatists (1682).--"Fiesco." A tragedy by the great
German dramatist Friedrich Schiller (1783), the full title of which is
_The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa_.

2 22. Cambyses, the Third (529-522 B.C.). He was king of Persia and
led an expedition into Ethiopia, which ended disastrously for him.

2 23. anabasis. The word itself means "a march up" into the
interior.--katabasis (l. 28) means "a march down,"--in this case the
retreat of the Greeks. The _Anabasis_ of the Greek historian Xenophon
is the account of the expedition of Cyrus the Younger against
Artaxerxes, which ended with the death of Cyrus at the battle of
Cunaxa (401 B.C.).