An intriguing triologism, part of an inventively astronomical metaphor to distinguish a man’s head from his much larger body, so much larger as to render the head a mere ‘satellite’, as the moon is to the earth.  But a satellite which, at least, was not melancholy looking. And I never knew that Milton described the moon as a ‘spotty globe’.
‘Mr Casson’s person was by no means of that common type which can be allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the upper, which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr Casson’s head was not at all a melancholy-looking satellite, nor was it a ‘spotty globe,’ as Milton has irreverently called the moon …’
Source: George Eliot, Adam Bede (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (1859)), p. 58
