bearing no impress of change or variation which
would lead one to conclude that the heavens were other than eternal,
attracted then, as now, the admiration of beholders.

Apart from the orbs which constitute the solar system, little was known
of the sidereal heavens beyond the visual effect created by the
nocturnal aspect of the star-lit sky. Though ancient philosophers
hazarded an opinion that the stars were suns, they received but scant
attention from early astronomers, by whom they were merely regarded as
convenient fixed points which enabled them to determine with greater
accuracy the positions of the planets and the paths traced out by them
in the heavens. The Ptolemaists, who believed in the diurnal revolution
of the spheres, assigned to the stars a very subordinate place in their
cosmology, which was the one adopted by Milton; and although Copernicus
relegated them to their proper location in space, yet he had no clear
conception of a universe of stars. Tycho Brahe, who declined to accept
the Copernican theory, disbelieved that the stars were suns, and
Galileo, who discovered the stellar nature of the Milky Way, remarked
that the stars were not illumined by the Sun's rays in the same manner
that the planets are, but expressed no opinion with regard to their
physical constitution. It is only within the past fifty years that proof
has been obtained of the real nature of the stars. By the spectroscopic
analysis of their light it has been ascertained that the elements of
matter which enter into their composition exist in a condition similar
to what is found in the Sun. The stars are therefore suns, many of them
surpassing in magnitude and brilliancy the great luminary of our
system.

Though Milton makes frequent allusion to the magnificence of the starry
heavens, we have no evidence that he regarded the stars as suns, nor
does he refer to them as such in any part of his poem.[12] What
impressed him most was their number and brilliancy, to which reference
is made in the following passages:

About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars.--iii. 60-61.

And sowed with stars the Heavens thick as a field.--vii. 358.

Amongst innumerable stars, that shone
Stars distant, but nigh hand seemed other worlds.--iii. 564-65.

her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangl