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Excerpts: Life of Milton, Paradise Lost Introduction, and Book 10

Milton’s life falls into three clearly defined divisions. The first period ends with the poet’s return from Italy in 1639 ; the second at the Restoration in 1660, when release from the fetters of politics enabled him to remind the world that he was a great poet; the third is brought to a close with his death in 1674. Paradise Lost belongs to the last of these periods ; but we propose to summarise briefly the main events of all three.John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, in London. He came, in his own words, ex genere hones to. A family of Miltons had been settled in Oxfordshire since the reign of Elizabeth. The poet’s father had been educated at an Oxford school, possibly as a chorister in one of the College choir-schools, and imbibing Anglican sympathies had conformed to the Established Church. For this he was disinherited by his Roman Catholic father. He settled in London, following the profession of scrivener. A scrivener combined the occupations of lawyer and law-stationer. It appears to have been a lucrative calling ; certainly John Milton (the poet was named after the father) att fained to easy circum-stances. He married about 1600, and had six children, of whom several died young. The third child was the poet.The elder Milton was evidently a man of considerable culture, in particular an accomplished musician, and a com-poser whose madrigals were deemed worthy of being printed side by side with those of Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and other leading musicians of the time. To him, no doubt, the poet owed the love of music of which we see frequent indications in the poems Realising, too, that in his son lay the promise and possibility of future greatness, John Milton took the utmost pains to have the boy adequately educated ; and the lines Ad Patrcm show that the ties of affection between father and child were of more than ordinary closeness. Milton was sent to St Paul’s School about the year 1620. Here two influences, apart from those of ordinary school-life, may have affected him particularly. The headmaster was a good English scholar ; he published a grammar containing many extracts from English poets, notably Spenser ; it is reasonable to assume that he had not a little to do with the encouragement and guidance of Milton’s early taste for English poetry^. Also, the founder of St Paul’s School, Colet, had prescribed as part of the school-course the study of certain early Christian writers, whose influence is said to be directly traceable in Milton’s poems and may in some cases have suggested his choice of sacred themes^. While at St Paul’s, Milton also had a tutor at home, Thomas Young, a Scotchman, afterwards an eminent Puritan divine — the inspirer, doubtless, of much of his pupil’s Puritan sympathies. And Milton enjoyed the signal advantage of growing up in the stimulating atmosphere of cultured home-life. Most men do not realise that the word ‘culture’ signifies anything very definite or desirable before they pass to the University; for Milton, however, home-life meant, from the first, not only broad interests and refinement, but active encouragement towards literature and study. In 1625 he left St Paul’s. Of his extant English poems’ only one, On the’ Milton was very fond of the organ; see II Penseroso, 161, note. During his residence at Horton Milton made occasional journeys to London to hear, and obtain instruction (probably from Henry Lawes) in, music. It was an age of great musical development. See “Milton’s Knowledge of Music” by Mr W. H. Hadow, in Milton Metnorial Lfctuns (190S).^ See the paper ” Milton as Schoolboy and Schoolmaster ” by Mr A. F. I^each, read before the British Academy, Dec. 10, tpoS.’ His paraphrases of Psalms cxiv. cxxxvi. scarcely come under this heading, Aubrey says in his quaint Life of Milton ; ‘ ‘ Anno Domini 1 6 19 he was ten yeares old, as by his picture [the portrait by Cornelius Jansen] : and was then a poet.”Death of a Fair Infant, dates from his school-days ; but we are told that he had written much verse, English and Latin. And his early training had done that which was all-important : it had laid the foundation of the far-ranging knowledge which makes Paradise Lost unique for diversity of suggestion and interest. Milton went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, in the Easter term of 1625, took his B.A. degree in 1629, proceeded M.A. in 1632, and in the latter year left Cambridge. The popular view of Milton’s connection with the University will be coloured for all time by Johnson’s unfortunate story that for some unknown offence he ” suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.”For various reasons this story is now discredited by the best judges. It is certain, however, that early in 1626 Milton did have some serious difSculty with his tutor, which led to his removal ‘ from Cj^mbridge for a few weeks and his transference to another tutor on his return later in the term. He spoke of the incident bitterly at the time in one of his Latin poems, and he spoke of Cambridge bitterly in after years. On the other hand he voluntarily passed seven years at the University, and resented strongly the imputations brought against him in the ” Sraectymnuus” controversy that he had been in ill-favour with the authorities of his college. Writing in 1642, he takes the opportunity “to acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect, which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned
men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some years : who at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the mannft- is, signified many ways how much better it would content them
that I would stay ; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time, and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me’.” And if we look into
those uncomplimentary allusions to Cambridge which date from the controversial period of his life we see that the feeling they’ An Apology for Smectymnuus, P. W.m.iii. Perhaps Cambridge would have been more congenial to Milton had he been sent to Emmanuel College, long a centre of Puritanism. Dr John Preston, then Master gf the college, was a noted leader of the Puritan party.represent is hardly more than a phase of his theological bias. He detested ecclesiasticism, and for him the two Universities (there is a fine impartiality in his diatribes) are the strongholds of what he detested : ” nurseries of superstition ” — ” not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages” — given up to ” monkish and miserable sophistry,” and unprogressive in their educational methods. But it may fairly be assumed that Milton the scholar and poet, who chose to spend seven years at Cambridge, owed to her more than Milton the fierce controversialist admitted or knew. A poet he had proved himself before leaving the University in 1632. The short but exquisite ode Ai a Solemn Music, and the Nativity Hymn (J629), were already written. Milton’s father had settled at Horton in Buckinghamshire. Thither the son retired in July, 1632. He had gone to Cambridge with the intention of qualifying for some profession, perhaps the Church’. This purpose was soon given up, and when Milton returned to his father’s house, he seems to have made up his mind that there, was no profession which he cared to enter. He would choose the better part of studying and preparing himself, by rigorous self-Hiscipline and application, for the far-off divine event to which h&^ whole life moved.It was Milton%constant resolve to achieve something that should vindicate tl%ways of God to men, something great that should justify his ora possessron of unique powers — powers of which, with no trac^W egotism, he proclaims himself proudly conscious. The feelm^’finds repeated expression in his prose ; it is the guiding-star that shines clear and steadfast even through the mists of politics. He has a mission to fulfil, a purpose to accomplish, no less than the most fanatic of religious enthusiasts ; and the means whereby this end is to be attained aire’ Cf. Milton’s own words: “the church, to whose service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and in my own resolutions” {The Reason of Church Government, P. W. II. 482). What kept him from taking orders was primarily his objection to Church discipline and government : he spoke of himself as ” Church-outed by the prelates,”devotion to religion, devotion to learning, and ascetic purity of life.This period of self-centred isolation lasted from 1632 to 1638. Gibbon tells us among the many wise things contained in that most wise book the Autobiography, that every man has two educations : that which he receives from his teachers and that which he owes to himself ; the latter being infinitely the more important. During these five years Milton completed his second education ; ranging the whole world of classical ^ antiquity and absorbing the classical genius so thoroughly that the ancients were to him what they afterwards became to Landor, what they have never become to any other English poet in the same degree, even as the very breath of his being ; pursuing, too, other interests, such as music, astronomy^ and the study of Italian literature ; and combining these vast and diverse influences into a splendid equipment of hard-won, well-ordered culture. The world has known many greater scholars in the technical, limited sense than Milton, but few men, if any, who have mastered more things worth’ mastering in art, letters and scholarship^. It says much for the poet that1 He was closely familiar too with post-classical writers lilce Philo and the neo-Platonists ; nor must we forget the medieval element in his learning, due often to Rabbinical teaching.” Science- — ^” natural philosophy,” as he terms it — is one of the branches of study advocated in his treatise On Education. Of his early interest in astronomy there is a reminiscence in Paradise Lost, II. 708 — 11; where “Milton is not referring to an imaginary comet, but to one which actually did appear when he was a boy of 10 (i6i8), in the constellation called Ophiuchus. It was of enormous size, the tail being recorded as longer even than that of [858. It was held responsible by educated and learned men of the da!y for disasters. Evelyn says in his diary, ‘The effects of that comet, 1618, still working in the prodigious revolutions now beginning in Europe, especially in Germany'” (Professor Ray Lankester).s Milton’s poems with their undercurrenC of perpetual allusion are the best proof of the width of his reading ; but interesting supplementary evidence is afforded by the Common-place Boole discovered in 1874, and printed by the Camden Society, 1876. It contains extracts from about 80 different authors whose works Milton had studied. The entries seem to have been made in the period 1637—46.he was sustained through this period of study, pursued ohm Hast, ohm Rast, by the full consciousness that all would be crowned by a masterpiece which should add one more testimony to the belief in that God who ordains the fates of men. It says also a very great deal for the father who suffered his son to follow in this manner the path of learning.True, Milton gave more than one earnest of his future fame. The dates of the early pieces — IJ Allegro, II Penseroso, Arcades, Conius and Lycidas — are not all certain ; but probably each was composed at Horton before 1638. Four of them have great autobiographic value as an indirect commentary, written from Milton’s coign of seclusion, upon the moral crisis through which English life and thought were passing, the clash between the careless hedonism of the Cavalier world and the deepening austerity of Puritanism. In V Allegro the poet holds the balance almost equal between the two opposing tendencies. In // Penseroso it becomes clear to which side his sympathies are leaning. Comus is a covert prophecy of the downfall of the Court-party, while Lycidas openly ” foretells the ruine ” of the Established Church. The latter poem is the final utterance of Milton’s lyric genius. Here he reaches, in Mr Mark Pattison’s words, the high-water mark of English verse ; and then — the pity of it — he resigns that place among the lyrici vates of which the Roman singer was ambitious, and for nearly twenty years suffers his lyre to hang mute and rusty in the temple of the Muses.The composition of Lycidas may be assigned to the year 1637. In the spring- of the next year Milton started for Italy. It was natural that he should seek inspiration in the land where many English poets, from Chaucer to Shelley, have found it.
Milton remained abroad some fifteen months. Originally he had intended to include Sicily and Greece in his travels, but news of the troubles in England hastened his return. He was brought face to face with the question whe!ther or not he should bear his part in the coming struggle ; whether without self-reproach he could lead any longer this life of learning and indifference to the public weal. He decided as we might have expected that he would decide, though some good critics seecause to regret the decision. Milton puts his position very clearly in his Defensio Secunda : ” I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home.” And later : ” I determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object” (i.e. the vindication of liberty).The summer of 1639 (July) found Milton back in England. Immediately after his return he wrote the Epitaphium Damonis, the beautiful elegy in which he lamented the death of his school friend, Diodati. Lycidas was the last of the English lyrics : the Epitaphium, which should be studied in close connection with Lycidas, the last of the long Latin poems. Thenceforth, for a long spell, the rest was silence, so far as concerned poetry. The period which for all men represents the strength and maturity of manhood, which in the cases of other poets produces the best and most characteristic work, is with Milton a blank. In twenty years he composed no more than a bare handful of Sonnets, and even some of these are infected by the taint of political animus. Other interests claimed him — the question of Church- reform, education, marriage, and, above all, politics.Milton’s first treatise upon the government of the Church {0/ Reformation in England) appeared in 1641. Others followed in quick succession. The abolition of Episcopacy was the watchword of the enemies of the Anglican Church — the delenda est Carthago cry of Puritanism, and no one enforced the point with greater eloquence than Milton. During 1641 and 1642 he wrote five pamphlets on the subject. Meanwhile he was studying the principles of education. On his return from Italy he had undertaken the training of his nephews. This led to consideration of the best educational methods ; and in the Tractate of Education, 1644, Milton assumed the part of educational theorist. In the previous year, May, 1643, he married’. The marriage proved unfortunate.’ His wife (who was only seventeen) was Mary Powell, eldest daughter of Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, a village some little distance from Oxford, She went to stay with her father in July, Its itnmediate outcome was the pamphlets on divorce. Clearly he had little leisure for literature proper.

The finest of Milton’s prose works, the Areopagitica, a plea for the free expression of opinion, was piiblished in 1644. In 1645′ appeared the first collection of his poems. In 1649 his advocacy of the anti-royalist cause was recognised by the offer of a post under the newly appointed Council of State. His bold vindication of the trial of Charles I., The Tenure of Kings, had appeared earlier in the same year. Milton accepted the offer, becoming Latin^ Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs.

1643, =”id refused to return to Milton ; why, it is not certain. She reconciled to her husband in 1645, bore him four children, and died in 1652, in her twenty-seventh year. No doubt, the scene in P. L. X. 909 — 36, in which Eve begs forgiveness of Adam, reproduced the poet’s personal experience, while many passages in Samson Agaiiistes must have been inspired by the same cause.

^ i.e. old style. The volume was entered on the registers of the Stationers’ Company under the date of October 6th, 1645. It was published on Jan. 2, 1645 — 46, with the following title-page :

“Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, Co7i!pos’d at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Mustek by Mr. Henry Lawes Gentleman of the Kings Ckappel, and one of His Majesties Private Musick.

‘ Baccarefrontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.’ Virgil, Eclog. 7. Printed and published according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at the signs of the Princes Arms in Pauls Churchyard. 1645.”

From the prefatory Address to the Reader it is clear that the collection was due to the initiative of the publisher. Milton’s own feeling is expressed by the motto, where the words ” vati futuro ” show that, as he judged, his great achievement was yet to come. The volume was divided into two parts, the first containing the English, the second the Latin poems. Comus was printed at the close of the fonner, with a separate title-page to mark its importance. The prominence given to the name of Henry Lawes reflects Milton’s friendship.

* A Latin Secretary was required because the Council scorned, as Edward Phillips says, ” to carry on their affairs in tlie wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing French.” Miltoa’s salary was £288, in modern money about £i)Oo.

There was nothing distasteful about his duties. He drew up the despatches to foreign governments, translated state-papers, and served as interpreter to foreign envoys. Had his duties stopped here his acceptance of the post would, I think, have proved an unqualified gain. It brought him into contact with the first men in the state, gave him a practical insight into the working of national affairs and the motives of human action ; in a word, furnished him with that experience of life which is essential to all poets who aspire to be something more than “the idle singers of an empty day.” But unfortunately the secretaryship entailed the necessity of defending at every turn the past course of the revolution and the present policy of the Council. Milton, in fact, held a perpetual brief as advocate for his party. Hence the endless and unedifying controversies into which he drifted ; controversies which wasted the most precious years of his life, warped, as some critics think, his nature, and eventually cost him his eyesight.

Between 1649 and 1660 Milton produced no less than eleven pamphlets. Several of these arose out of the publication of the famous Eikon Basilike. The book was printed in 1649 and created so extraordinary a sensation that Milton was asked to reply to it ; and did so with Eikonoklastes. Controversy of this barren type has the inherent disadvantage that once started it may never end. The Royalists commissioned the Leyden professor, Salmasius, to prepare a counterblast, the Defensio Regia, and this in turn was met by Milton’s Pro PopuloAnglicano Defensio, 165 1, over the preparation of which he lost what little power of eyesight remained’. Salmasius retorted, and died before his

‘ Perhaps this was the saddest part of the episode. Milton tells us in the Defensio Secunda that his eyesight was injured by excessive study in boyhood : ” from twelve years of age I hardly ever left my studies or went to bed before midnight.” Continual reading and writing increased the infirmity, and by 1650 the sight of the left eye had gone. He was warned that he must not use the other for book-work. Unfortunately this was just the time when the Commonwealth stood most in need of his services. If Milton had not written the first Dcfmce he might have retained his partial vision, at least for a time. The choice lay between

second farrao-o of scurrilities was issued : Milton was bound to answer, and the Defensio Secitnda appeared in 1654. Neither of the combatants gained anything by the dispute ; while the subsequent development of the controversy in which Milton crushed the Amsterdam pastor and professor, Morus, goes far to prove the contention of Mr Mark Pattison, that it was an evil day when the poet left his study at Horton to do battle for the Commonwealth amid the vulgar brawls of the market-place ;

” Not here, O Apollo,
Were haunts meet for thee.”

Fortunately this poetic interregnum in Milton’s life was not destined to last much longer. The Restoration came, a blessing in disguise, and in 1660’ the ruin of Milton’s political party and of his personal hopes, the absolute overthrow of the cause for which he had fought for twenty years, left him free. The author of Lycidas could once more become a poet.

Much has been written upon this second period, 1639 — 60. We saw what parting of the ways confronted Milton on his return from Italy. Did he choose aright ? Should he have continued upon the path of learned leisure ? There are writers who argue that Milton made a mistake. A poet, they say, should keep clear of political strife : fierce controversy can benefit no man : who touches pitch must expect to be, certainly will be, defiled : Milton sacrificed twenty of the best years of his life, doing work which an underling could have done and which was not worth doing ; another Comus might have been written, a loftier Lycidas : that literature should be the poorer by the absence of these possible masterpieces, that the second

private good and pubhc duty. He repeated in 1650 the sacrifice of 1639. All this is brought out in his Second Defence. By the spring of 1652 Milton was quite blind He was then in his forty-fourth year. Probably the disease from which he suffered was amaurosis. See the Appendix (pp. 68s, 683) on P. L. III. 2 3 — 26. Throughout P. L. and Samson Agonistes there are frequent references to his affliction.

‘ Milton probably began Paradise Lost in 1658 ; but it was not till the Restoration in 1660 that he definitely resigned all his political hopes, and became quite free to realise his poetical ambition.

greatest genius which England has produced should in a way be the ” inheritor of unfulfilled renown,” is and must be a thing entirely and terribly deplorable. This is the view of the purely
literary critic.

There remains the other side of the question. It may fairly be contended that had Milton elected in 1639 scholar’s life apart from ” the action of men,” Paradise Lost, as we have it, or Samson Agonistes could never have been written. Knowledge of life and human nature, insight into the problems ofmen’s motives and emotions, grasp of the broader issues of the human tragedy, all these were essential to the author of an epic poem ; they could only be obtained through commerce with the world ; they would have remained beyond the reach of a recluse. Dryden complained that Milton saw nature through the spectacles of books: we might have had to complain that he saw men through the same medium. Fortunately it is not so : and it is not so because at the age of thirty-two he threw in his fortunes with those of his country ; like the diver in Schiller’s ballad he took the plunge which was to cost him so dear. The mere man of letters will never move the world. .^Eschylus fought at Marathon: Shakespeare was practical to the tips of his fingers ; a better business man than Goethe there was not within a radius of a hundred miles of Weimar.

This aspect of the question is emphasised by Milton himself. The mail, he says, ” who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem , that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy 1.” Again, in estimating the qualifications which the writer of an epic such as he contemplated should possess, he is careful to include “insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs^.”

Truth usually lies half-way between extremes : perhaps it does so here. No doubt, Milton did gain very greatly by

‘ An Apology for Smectymnuus, P. W. in. 118.
‘ The Reason of Church Government, P. W. II. 481.

breathing awhile the larger air of public life, even though that air was often tainted by much impurity. No doubt, too, twenty years of contention must have left their mark even on Milton. In one of the very few places where he “abides our question,” Shakespeare writes {Sonnet CXI.) :

“Ol for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breeds : Thence comes it that my name receives a brand ; And almost thence my nature is subdued. To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”

Milton’s genius was subdued in this way. If we compare him, the Milton of the great epics and of Samsoji Agonistes, with Homer or Shakespeare — and none but the greatest can be his parallel — we find in him a certain want of humanity, a touch of narrowness. He lacks the large-heartedness, the genial, generous breadth of Shakespeare ; the sympathy and sense of the lacrimcs rerum that even in Troilus and Cressida or Timon of Athens are there for those who have eyes wherewith to see them. Milton reflects in some degree the less gracious aspects of Puritanism, its intolerance, want of humour, one-sided intensity ; and it seems natural to assume that this narrowness was to a great extent the price he paid for twenty years of ceaseless special pleading and dispute. The real misfortune of his life lay in the fact that he .fell on evil, angry days when there was no place for moderate men. He had to be one of two things : either a controversialist or a student : there was no via media. Probably he chose aright ; but we could wish that the conditions under which he chose had been different. And he is so great, so majestic in the nobleness of his life, in the purity of his motives, in the self-sacrifice of his indomitable devotion to his ideals, that we could wish not even to seem to pronounce judgment at all.

The last part of Milton’s life, 1660 — 74, passed quietly. At the age of fifty-two he was thrown back upon poetry, and could at length discharge his self-imposed obligation. The early

PARADISE LOST.

We have seen that the dominating idea of Milton’s life was
his resolve to write a great poem — great in theme, in style, in
attainment. To this purpose was he dedicated as a boy : as
Hannibal was dedicated, at the altar of patriotism, to the cause
of his country’s revenge, or Pitt to a life of political ambition.
Milton’s works — particularly his letlers-and prose pamphlets —
enable us to trace the growth of the idea which was shaping his
intellectual destinies ; and as every poet is best interpreted by
his own words, Milton shall speak for himself

Two of the earliest indications of his cherished plan are
the Vacation Exercise and the second Sonnet. The Exercise
commences with an invocation (not without significance, as we
shall see) to his “native language,” to assist him in giving
utterance to the teeming thoughts that knock at the portal of
his lips, fain to find an issue thence. The bent of these thoughts
is towards the loftiest themes. Might he choose for himself, he
would select some ” grave subject “:

” Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven’s door
Look in, and see each blissful deity.

Then sing of secret things that came to pass
When beldam Nature in her cradle was.”

But recognising soon that such matters are inappropriate to
the occasion — a College festivity — he arrests the flight of his
muse with a grave descetide ciilo, and declines on a lower range
of subject, more fitting to the social scene and the audience.
This Exercise was composed in 1628, in Milton’s twentieth year,
or, according to his method of dating, anno CEtatis XIX. It is
important as revealing — firstly, the poet’s consciousness of the
divine impulse within, for which poetry is the natural outlet ;
secondly, the elevation of theme with which that poetry must
deal. A boy in years, he would like to . handle the highest
‘arguments,’ challenging thereby comparison with the sacri

P. L. (,

vates 0/ inspired verse, the elect few whose poetic appeal is to
the whole world. A vision of Heaven itself must be unrolled
before his steadfast eagle-gaze : he will win a knowledge of the
causes of things such as even Vergil, his master, modestly
disclaimed. Little wonder, therefore, that, filled with these
ambitions, Milton did not shrink, only two years later (1629— 30),
from attempting to sound the deepest mysteries of Christianity —
the Nativity and the Passion of Christ ; howbeit, sensible of his
immaturity, he left his poem on the latter subject unfinished”.

The Sonnet to which reference has been made deserves
quotation at length :

” How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth.

Stolen on his wing my tliree-and-twentieth year 1

My hasting days fly on with full career,

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,

That I to manhood am arrived so near;

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

That some more timely-happy spirits endu’th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ;

All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great Task- Master’s eye.”

Mr Mark Pattison justly calls these lines “an inseparable
part of Milton’s biography” : they bring out so clearly the poet’s
solemn devotion to his self-selected task, and his determination
not to essay the execution of that task until the time of complete
“inward ripeness” has arrived. The Sonnet was one of the last
poems composed by Milton during his residence at Cambridge.

‘ A passage in the sixth Elegy shows that the Nativity Ode (a
prelude in some respects to Paradise Lost) was begun on Christmas
morning, 1629. The Passion may have been composed for the following
Easter; it breaks off with the notice— “This Subject the Author
finding to be above the yeare he had when he wrote it, and nothing
satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished.” Evidently Milton
lyas minded to recur to both subjects ; see later*

The date is 1631. From 1632 to 1638 was a period of almost
unbroken self-preparation, such as the Sonnet foreshadows. Of
the intensity of his application to literature a letter written in
1637 (the exact day being Sept. 7, 1637) enables us to judge.

“It is my way,” he says to Carlo Diodati, in excuse for
remissness as a correspondent, “to suffer no impediment, no
love of ease, no avocation whatever, to chill the ardour, to break
the continuity, or divert the completion of my literary pursuits.
From this and no other reasons it often happens that I do not
readily employ my pen in any gratuitous exeriionsV But these
exertions were not sufficient : the probation must last longer. In
the same month, on the 23rd, he writes to the same friend, who
had made entjuiry eis to his occupations and plans : ” I am sure
that you wish me to gratify your curiosity, and to let you know
what I have been doing, or am meditating to do. Hear me, my
Diodati, and suffer me for a moment to speak without blushing
in a more lofty strain. Do you ask what I am meditating ? By
the help of Heaven, an immortality of fame. But what am
I doing? rvTfpoipvSi, I am letting my wings grow and preparing
to fly J but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar
aloft in the fields of air^.” Four years later we find a similar
admission — ” I have neither yet completed to my mind the full
circle of my private studies… V

This last sentence was written in 1640 (or 1641). Meanwhile
his resolution had been confirmed by the friendly and flattering
encouragement of Italian savants — a stimulus which he records
in an oft-cited passage ‘ :

“In the private academies^ of Italy, whither I was favoured

1 P. W. HI. 492. 3 p. w. in. 495.

3 P. W. II. 476.

* The Reason of Church Government, P. W. 11. 477, 478 ; a few
lines have been quoted in the Life of Milton. A passage similar to the
concluding sentence might be quoted from the pamphlet Animadversions,
published the same year (1641) as the Church Government; see P. W.
III. -,i.

‘ He refers to literary societies or clubs, of which there were several
at Florence, e.g. the Delia Crusca, the Svogliati, etc.

C 2

to resort, perceiving that some trifles’ which I had in memory,
composed at under twenty or thereabout, (for the manner is,
that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading
there,) met with acceptance above what was looked for ; and
other things'”, which I had shifted in scarcity of books and
conveniences to patch up amongst them, were received with
written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow
on men of this side the Alps ; I began thus far to assent both
to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to
an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by
labour and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this
life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps
leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not
willingly let it die.”

It was during this Italian journey (1638 — 39) that Milton
first gave a hint of the particular direction in which this ambition
was setting : at least we are vouchsafed a glimpse of the possible
subject-matter of the contemplated poem, and there is that on
which may be built conjecture as to its style. He had enjoyed
at Naples the hospitality of the then famous writer Giovanni
Battista Manso, whose courteous reception the young English
traveller, ui ne ingratum se ostenderet, acknowledged in the piece
of Latin hexameters afterwards printed in his Sylvas under the
title Mansus. In the course of the poem Milton definitely speaks
of the remote legends of British history — more especially, the
Arthurian legend — as the theme which he might some day treat.
” May I,” he says, “find such a friend^ as Manso,”

‘ i.e. Latin pieces; the Elegies, as well as some of the poems
Included in his Sylvce, were written before lie was twenty-one.

^ Among the Latin poems which date from his Italian journey are
the lines Ad Salsillum, a few of the Epigrams, and Mansus. Perhaps,
too, the “other things” comprehended those essays in Italian verse
which he had the courage to read before a Florentine audience, and
they the indulgence to praise.

‘ i.e. a friend who would pay honour to him as Manso had paid
honour to the poet Marini. Manso had helped in the erection of a
monument to Marini at Naples ; and Milton alludes to this at the
beginning of the poem. From Manso he would hear about Tasso.

” Siquando^ indigenas revocabo in carmiiia reges,
Arturumque etiam sub ierris bella -iiioventem,
Aut dicam invictm sociali fsdere vtensce
Magnaniinos heroas, et (0 modo spiritus adsil)
Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub Marts phalanges I ”

This was in 1638. In the next year, after his return to
England, he recurs to the project in the Epitaphium Danionis
(162—71), his account being far more detailed :

“Ipse^ ego Dardanias Ruticpina per aquora puppes
Dicam, et Pandrasidos regiium vetus Inogenia,
Brennumque Arviragumque duces,, priscumque Belinmn,
Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub kge colonos ;
Turn gravidam Arturo fatali fraude logernen ;
Mendaces vultus, assumptaque GorlHs arma,
Merlini dolus. 0, mihi turn si vita supersit,
Tu procul annosa pendebis, fistula, pinu,
Multum oblita mihi, aut patriis mutata Camcenis
Brittonicum strides I ”

Here, as before, he first glances at the stories which date
from the very dawn of British myth and romance, and then

^ ” If ever I shall revive in verse our native kings, and Arthur
levying war in the world below ; or tell of the heroic company of
the resistless Table Round, and — be the inspiration mine! — break the
Saxon bands neath the might of British chivalry ” {Mansus, 80 — 84).
His Common-place Book has a quaint reference to ‘ ‘ Arturs round
table.”

” “I will tell of the Trojan fleet sailing our southern seas, and the
ancient realm of Imogen, Pandrasus’ daughter, and of Brennus, Arvi-
ragus, and Belinus old, and the Armoric settlers subject to British laws.
Then will I sing of logerne, fatally pregnant with Arthur — how Uther
feigned the features and assumed the armour of Gorlois, through
Merlin’s craft. And you, my pastoral pipe, an life be lent me, shall
hang on some sere pine, forgotten of me; or changed to native notes
shall shrill forth British strains.” In the first lines he alludes to the
legend of Brutus and the Trojans landing in England. JXutupina =
Kentish. The story of Arthur’s birth at which he glances is referred to
in the Idylls of the King. The general drift of the last verses is that he
will give up Latin for English verse j strides is a future, from strido (cf
iEneidlv. 689).

passes to the most fascinating of the later cycles of national
legend— the grey traditions that cluster round the hero of the
Idylh of the King, the son of mythic Uther. And this passage,
albeit the subject which it indicates was afterwards rejected by
Milton, possesses a twofold value for those who would follow,
step by step, the development of the idea which had as its
final issue the composition of Paradise Lost. For, first, the
concluding verses show that whatever the theme of the poem,
whatever the style, the instrument of expression would be
English. Just as Dante had weighed the merits of the
vernacular and Latin and chosen the former, though the choice
imposed on him the creation of an ideal, transfigured Italian
out of the baser elements of many competing dialects, so Milton
— more fortunate than Dante in that he found an instrument
ready to use— will use that “native language” v/hose help he had
petitioned in the Vacation Exercise. A,n illustration of his
feeling on this point is furnished by the treatise on Church
Government. He says there that his work must make for ” the
honour and instruction” of his country: “I applied myself to
that resolution which Ariosto followed. ..to fix all the industry
and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue ; not
to make verbal curiosities the end (that were a toilsome vanity),
but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things
among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother
dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens,
Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their
country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above, of being
a Christian, might do for mine’ ; not caring to be once named

‘ P. W. II. 47S. Refevence has been made so frequently to this
pamphlet on The Reason of Church Government urged agaiiist Prelaty,
(1641), that it may be well to explain that the introduction to the
second book is entirely autobiographical. Milton shows why he em-
barked on such controversies, how much it cost him to do’ so, what
hopes he had of returning to poetry, what was his view of the poet’s
mission and of his own capacity to discharge that mission. His prose
works contain nothing more valuable than these ten pages of self-
criticism.

abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with
these British islands as my woj-ld.” Here is a clear announce-
ment of his ambition to take rank as a great national poet. The
note struck is patriotism. He will produce that which shall set
English on a level with the more favoured Italian, and give his
countrymen cause to be proud of their

‘* dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world i.”

To US indeed it may appear strange that Milton should
have thought it worth while to emphasise what would now
be considered a self-evident necessity : what modern poet,
with a serious conception of his office and duty, would dream
of employing any other language than his own ? But we must
remember that in those days the empire of the classics was
unquestioned : scholarship was accorded a higher dignity than
now : the composition of long poems in Latin was still a custom
honoured in the observance : and whoso sought to appeal to
the “laureate fraternity” of scholars and men of letters, in-
dependently of race and country, would naturally turn to the
linguafranca of the learned. At any rate, the use of English —
less known than either Italian or French — placed a poet at a
great disadvantage, so far as concerned acceptance in foreign
lands ; and when Milton determined to rely on his patrice
Canunna, he foresaw that this would circumscribe his audience,
and that he might have to rest content with the applause of his
own countrymen-

Again, these lines in the Epitaphium give us some grounds
of surmise as to the proposed form of his poem. The historic
events — or traditions — epitomised in the passage were too far
separated in point of time, and too devoid of internal coherence
and connection, to admit of dramatic treatment. Milton evi-
dently contemplated a narrative poem, and for one who had
drunk so deep of the classical spirit a narrative could scarce
have meant aught else than an epic. Indeed thus much is
implied by some sentences in The Reason of Churck Govern-

1 Richard II. ii. i. 57, 58.

7nent, which represent him as considering whether to attempt
“that epic form whereof the two poems df Homer, and those
other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job
a brief model. ..or whether those dramatic constitutions, wherein
Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be found more doctrinal
and exemplary to a nation^.”

But ‘dramatic’ introduces a fresh phase; and as the first
period of the history of Paradise Lost, or rather of the idea
which finally took shape in that poem, closes with the Efita-
phium (1639), it may not be amiss to summarise the impressions
deduced up to this point from the various passages which we
have quoted from Milton. We have seen, then, Milton’s early
resolve ; its ambitious scope ; his self-preparation ; the en-
couragement he received in Italy and from friends at home ;
his announcement in 1638, repeated in 1639, that he has
discovered a suitable subject in British fable — more especially,
in the legend of the Coming and Passing of Arthur ; his formal
farewell to Latin verse, in favour of his native tongue; his desire
to. win recognition as a great national vates ; and his selection
of the epic style.

In respect of chronology we have reached the year 1639 —
40. The second period extends from 1640 to 1642. We shall
see that some verses of Paradise Lost were written about 1642 :
after 1642, up till 1658, we hear no more of the poem — proof
that the idea has been temporarily abandoned under stress of
politics. Therefore 1642 may be regarded as the ulterior limit
of this second period. And it is not, I think, fanciful to consider
that Paradise Lost entered on a fresh stage about 1640, because
between that year and 1642 Milton’s plans underwent a twofold
change by which the character of the poem was entirely altered.

First, the subject for which he had shown so decided a bias
is discarded ; after 1639 no mention is made of King Arthur.
We have no hint of the cause which led Milton to drop the
subject ; but it may well have lain in his increasing re-
publicanism. He could not have treated the theme from an

1 P. W. II. +78, 479.

unfavourable standpoint. The hero of the poem must have
been for him, as for the Milton of our own age, a type of
all kingly grandeur and worth ; and it would have gone sore
against the grain with the future apologist for regicide to exercise
his powers in creating a royal figure that would shed lustre on
monarchy, and in a measure plead for the institution which
Milton detested so heartily*. Only a Royalist could have retold
the story, making it illustrate ” the divine right of kings,” and
embodying in the character of the blameless monarch the
Cavalier conception of Charles I. Perhaps too he was in-
fluenced by discovering, after fuller research, the mythical
character of the legend. So much is rather implied by some
remarks in his History of Britain. Milton with his intense
earnestness was not the poet to build a long work on what he
had found to be mainly fiction. Be this as it may, Milton
rejected the subject, and it finds no place in a list of one
hundred possible subjects of his poem.

Secondly, from this period, 1640 — 42, dates an alteration
in the design of the contemplated work. Hitherto his tendency
has been towards the epic form : now (1640 or 1641) we find
him preferring the dramatic. Shall he imitate Sophocles and
Euripides ? Shall he transplant to English soil the art of the
“lofty grave tragedians” of Greece? The question is answered
in a decided affirmative. Had Milton continued the poem of
which the opening lines were written in 1642 we should have
had — not an epic but — a drama, or possibly a trilogy of dramas,
cast in a particular manner, as will be observed presently.
This transference of his inclinations from the epic to the
dramatic style appears to date from 1641. It is manifested in
the Milton MSS. at Trinity College.

When the present library of Trinity College, the erection of
wjiich was begun during the Mastership of Isaac Barrow, was
completed, one of its earliest benefactors was a former member
of Trinity, Sir Henry Newton Puckering. Among his gifts was
a thin MS. volume of fifty-four pages, which had served Milton
as a common-place book. How it came into the possession of
Sir Henry Puckering is not known. He was contemporary
‘ See the notes on P. L. xii. 24, 36.

with, though junior to, Milton, and may possibly have been one
of the admirers who visited the poet in the closing years of his
life, and discharged the office of amanuensis ; or perhaps there
was some family connection by means of which the MS. passed
into his hands. But if the history of the book be obscure, its
value is not ; for it contains — now in Milton’s autograph, now
in other, unidentified handwritings — the original drafts of several
of his early poems : notably of Arcades, Lycidas and Comus,
together with many of the Sonnets. The volume is not a
random collection of scattered papers bound together after
Milton’s death : it exists (apart from its sumptuous modern
investiture) exactly in the same form as that wherein Milton
knew and used it two centuries and a half agone. And this
point is important because the order of the pages, and, by
consequence, of their contents, is an index to the order of the
composition of the poems. Milton, about the year 1631, had
had the sheets of paper stitched together and then worked
through the little volume, page on page, inserting his pieces as
they were written. They cover a long period, from idj/to 1658 :
the earlier date being marked by the second Sonnet, the later
by the last of the series — ” Methought I saw.” It is rather more
than half way through the MS. that we light on the entries
which have so direct a bearing on the history of Paradise Lost.
These are notes, written by Milton himself (probably in
1641), and occupying seven pages of the manuscript, on subjects
which seemed to him suitable, in varying degrees of appropriate-
ness, for his poem. Some of the entries are very brief — concise
jottings down, in two or three words, of any theme that struck
him. Others are more detailed : the salient features of some
episode in history are selected, and a sketch of the best method
of treating them added. In a few instances these sketches are
filled in with much minuteness and care : the ‘ economy ‘ or
arrangement of the poem is marked out — the action traced from
point to point. But, Paradise Lost apart, this has been done in
only a few cases — a half dozen, at most. As a rule, the source
whence the material of the work might be drawn is indicated.
The subjects themselves, numbering just one hundred, fall, in a
rough classification, under two headings— Scriptural and British :

and by ‘ British ‘ are meant those which Milton drew from the
chronicles of British history prior to the Norman Conquest.
The former are the more numerous class : sixty-two being
derived from the Bible, of which the Old Testament claims
fifty-four. Their character will be best illustrated by quotation
of a few typical examples :

Abram in ^gypt.

Josuah in Gibeon. Josu. lo.

Jonathan rescu’d Sam. I. 14.

Saul in Gilboa i Sam. 28. 51.

Gideon Idoloclastes Jud. 6. 7.

Abimelech the usurper. Jud. g.

Samaria liberata’ 2 Reg. 7.

Asa or /Ethiopes. 2 chron. 14. with
the deposing his mother, and burning her Idol.

These are some of the subjects drawn from the New Testa-
ment :

Christ bound

Christ crucifi’d

Christ risen.

Lazarus Joan. ir.

Christus patiens
The Scene in y<= garden beginning fro y^ comming thither till
Judas betraies & y’ officers lead him away y’ rest by message &
chorus, his agony may receav noble expressions

Of British subjects^ there are thirty-three. The last page is
assigned to ” Scotch stories or rather brittish of the north parts.”
Among these Macbeth is conspicuous. Practically they may be
grouped with the thirty-three, and the combined list is remark-
able — first, because it does not include the Arthurian legend,

* The title is an obvious allusion to Tasso’s Gei-usalemme Liberata.

‘^ Milton’s attitude towards them is Illustrated indirectly by his
History of Britain. In his paper on ” Milton as an Historian ” read
before the British Academy recently (Nov. 2%, 1908) Professor Frith
says : ” It was not only by his treatment of the mythical period of
English history that Milton’s interest in the legendary and anecdotic
side of history was revealed. It appeared in the later books as well
as the earlier, and the introduction of certain episodes, or the space
devoted to them, might often be explained by their inclusion in the
list of suggested subjects for his ‘ British Tragedies.’ ”

which had once exercised so powerful a fascination on Milton ;
secondly, because in its brevity, as compared with the list of
Scriptural subjects, it suggests his preference for a sacred poem.
Of the Scriptural subjects the story of the Creation and Fall
assumes the most prominent place. Any friend of Milton
glancing through these papers in 1641 could have conjectured,
with tolerable certainty, where the poet’s final choice would fall.
For no less than four of the entries refer to Paradise Lost.
Three of these stand at the head of the list of sacred themes.
In two at least his intention to treat the subject in dramatic
form is patent. The two first^ — mere enumerations of possible
dra?natis personie — run thus’ ; it will be seen that the longer list
is simply an expansion of the other ■

the Persons
Michael.
Heavenly Love
Chorus of Angels
Lucifer
Adam)
Eve I
Conscience
Death

Labour \
Sicknesse
Discontent
Ignorance
with others
Faith
Hope
Charity

with the serpent

mutes

the Persons
Moses”

Justice’. Mercie Wisdume
Heavenly Love
Hesperus the Evening Starre
Chorus of Angels
Lucifer
Adam
Eve

Conscience*
Labour
Sicknesse

– mutes

Discontent

Ignorance

Feare

Death 1

Faith

Hope

Charity

‘ Neither is introduced with any title.

^ Milton first wrote “Michael,” as in the other list, but substituted
” Moses.”

‘ The epithet Divine, qualifying Justice, was inserted and then
crossed out again. “Wisdome” was added.

^ After Conscience Milton added Death, as in the first list ; then
deleted it, and placed Death among the ‘ mutes ‘ (mutai persona:,
characters who appeared without speaking).

These lists are crossed out ; and underneath stands a much
uller sketch, in which the action of the tragedy is shown, and
:he division into acts observed. Here, too, we first meet with
;he title Paradise Lost. The scheme is as follows :

Paradise Lost The Persons

Moses TpoXoyitci recounting how he assum’d his true bodie, that it
corrupts not because of his ‘ with god in the mount declares the
like of Enoch and Eliah, besides the purity of y* pi ‘ that certalne
pure winds, dues, and clouds prosserve it from corniption whence
horts’ to the sight of god, tells they” cannot se Adam in the state of
innocence by reason of thire sin’
Justice “j

Mercie >- debating what should become of man if he fall
WisdomeJ
Chorus of Angels sing a hymne of y= creation”

Act 2.

Heavenly Love
Evening starre
chorus sing the mariage song* and describe Paradice

Act 3.

Lucifer contriving Adams ruine

Chorus feares for Adam and relates Lucifers rebellion and fall’

Act 4.

Adam) , ,,
„ y fallen
Eve )

Conscience cites them to Gods examination’

Chorus liewails and tells the good Ada hath lost

1 The margin of the MS. is frayed here.

” ^hey^ i.e. the imaginary audience to whom the prologue is
addressed. Of. the commencement of Comus.
‘ After this the first act begins.
* Cf. VII. aS3 — 60, note.
» Cf IV. 7ri. ” Cf. bks. v— vi.
‘ Cf. X. 97 et seq.

_ mutes to whome lie gives thire names
likewise winter, heat Tempest^ &c

Act 5

Adam and Eve, driven out of Paradice

prsesented by an angel with-‘
Labour \

greife
hatred
Envie
warre
famine
Pestilence
sicknesse
discontent
Ignorance
Feare

Death enterd
into y” world j
Faith j

Hope > comfort him and istruct him
Charity)
Chorus breifly concludes

This draft of the tragedy, which occurs on page 35 of the
MS., is not deleted ; but Milton was still dissatisfied, and later
on, page 40, we come to a fourth, and Concluding, scheme —
which reads thus :

Adam unparadiz’d’

The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering”, shewing since
this globe was created, his frequency as much on eartii, as in heavn,
describes Paradise, next the Chorus shewing the reason of his” comming
to keep his watch in Paradise after Lucifers rebellion by command trom
god, & withall expressing his desire to see, & know more concerning
this excellent new creature man. the angel Gabriel as by his name

‘ Cf bks. XI — XII. – See x. 651, note.

” Underneatli was written, and crossed out, an alternative title —
Adams Banishment.

” Cf. Comus, “The Attendant Spirit descends or enters” (ad init.).

‘ !i?s. i. e. the chorus’s; he makes the chorus now a singular, now a
plural, noun.

signifying a prince of power tracing’ paradise with a more free office
passes by the station of y” chorus & desired by them relates what he
knew of man as the creation of Eve with thire love, & mariage. after
this Lucifer appeares after his overthrow, bemoans himself, seeks
revenge on man the Chorus prepare resistance at his first approach
at last after discourse of enmity on either side he departs wherat the
chorus sings of the battell, & victorie in heavn against him & his
accomplices, as before after the first act” was sung a hymn of the
creation, heer^ again may appear Lucifer relating, & insulting in what
he had don to the destruction of man. man next & Eve having by this
time bin seduc’t by the serpent appeares confusedly cover’d with
leaves conscience in a shape accuses him. Justice cites him to the place
whither Jehova call’d for him in the mean while the chorus entertains*
the stage, & his [sic”] inform’d by some angel the manner of his fall heer’
the chorus bewailes Adams fall. Adam then & Eve retnme accuse one
another but especially Adam layes the blame to his wife, is stubborn in
his offence Justice appeares reason^ with him convinces him the’ chorus
admonisheth Adam, & bids him beware by Lucifers example of
impenitence the Angel is sent to banish them out of paradise but before
causes to passe before his eyes in shapes a mask of all the evills ^ of this
life & world he is humbl’d relents, dispaires. at last appeares Mercy
comforts him promises the Messiah, then calls in faith, hope, & charity,
instructs him he repents gives god the glory, submitts to his penalty
the chorus breifly concludes, compare this with the former draught.

“It appears plain,” says Todd, ” that Milton intended to have
marked the division of the Acts, in this sketch, as well as in
the preceding. Peck has divided them ; and closes the first Act
with Adam and Eve’s love.” The other Acts may be supposed
to conclude at the following points : Act 2 at ” sung a hymn of
the creation”; Act 3 at ” inform’d.. .tlie manner of his fall”;
Act 4 at “bids him beware… impenitence” ; Act 5 at “the chorus
breifly concludes.”

It is in regard to the first Act that this fourth draft, which

‘ passing through ; cf; Comus, 423.
” i.e. in the third draft.

” Each of these sentences was an aftev-thought, added below or in
the margin.

^ occupies. ‘ i.e. reasons; or ‘»o reason.”

<■ See XI. 477 — 93, note.

Milton bids us “compare with the former,” marks a distinct
advance. Milton made Moses the speaker of the prologue in
the third draft because so much of the subject-matter of
Pai-adise Lost is drawn from the Mosaic books of the Old
Testament. But the appearance of a descendant of Adam,
even in a prologue, where much latitude is allowed by con-
vention, seems an awkward prelude to scenes coincident with
Adam’s own creation. It is far more natural that, before the
subject of man’s fall is touched upon at all, we should be told
who man is, and that this first mention ; of him should come
from the supernatural beings who had, or might have, witnessed
the actual creation of the universe and its inhabitants. The
explanation, too, why Moses is able to assume his natural body
is very forced. And altogether this fourth draft exhibits more
of drama, less of spectacle, than its predecessor.

With regard to the subject, therefore, thus much is clear :
as early as 1641 — 2 Milton has manifested an unmistakeable
preference for the story of the lost Paradise, and the evidence
of the Trinity MSS. coincides with the testimony of Aubrey and
Phillips, who say that the poet did, about 1642, commence the
composition of a drama on this theme — of which drama the
opening verses of Paradise Losl, book IV. (Satan’s address to
the sun), formed the exordium. It is, I think, by no means
improbable that some other portions of the epic are really
fragments of this unfinished work. Milton may have written
two or three hundred lines, have kept them in his desk, and
then, years afterward, when the project was resumed, have made
use of them where opportunity offered. Had the poem, however,
been completed in accordance with his original conception we
should have had a tragedy, not an epic.

Of this there is abundant proof. The third and fourth
sketches, as has been observed, are dramatic. On the first
page of these entries, besides those lists of dramatis persona
which we have treated as the first and second sketches, stand
the words ‘■’■other Tragedies,” followed by the enumeration of
several feasible subjects. The list of British subjects is
prefaced with the heading — “British Trag.” (i.e. tragedies).

Wherever Milton has outhned the treatment of any of the
Sci-iptural themes a tragedy is clearly indicated. Twice, indeed,
another form is mentioned — the pastoral, and probably a
dramatic pastoral was intended’. These, however, are ex-
ceptions, serving to emphasise his leaning towards tragedy.

But what sort of tragedy ? I think we may fairly conclude
that, if carried out on the lines laid down in the fourth sketch,
Adam unparadi^d would have borne a very marked resem-
blance to Samson Agonistes : it would have conformed, in the
main, to the same type — that, namely, of the ancient Greek
drama. With the romantic stage of the Elizabethans Milton
appears to have felt little sympathy 2; else he would scarce have
written // Penseroso, loi, 102. Nor do I believe that his
youthful enthusiasm for Shakespeare remained unmodified’ :
certainly, the condemnation of one important aspect of Shake-
spearian tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes is too plain
to be misinterpreted. So had Milton been minded to dramatise
the story of Macbeth — we have marked its presence in the list
of Scottish subjects — his Macbeth would have differed toto ccelo
from Shakespeare’s. In the same way, his tragedy of Paradise
Lost would have been wholly un-Shakespearian, wholly un-
Elizabethan. Nor would it have had any affinity to the drama
of Milton’s contemporaries*, those belated Elizabethans bungling
with exhausted materials and forms that had lost all vitality.
Tragedy for Milton could mean but one thing — the tragic stage
of the Greeks, the ” dramatic constitutions ” of Sophocles and
Euripides : and when we examine these sketches of Paradise

‘ These are the two entries in the MS. ; ” Theristria. a Pastoral out
of Ruth”; and — ” the sheepshearers in Carmel a Pastoral, i Sam. 25.”
There is but one glance at the epical style ; in the list of ” British Trag.”
after mentioning an episode in the life of ICing Alfred appropriate to
dramatic handling, he adds — “A Heroicall Poem may be founded
somwhere in Alfreds reigne. especially at his issuing out of Edelingsey
on the Danes, whose actions are wel like those of Ulysses.”

‘ See Appendix to Samson Agonistes.

‘ See note on L’ Allegro, 133, 134.

* In the treatise On Education, 1644, he speaks of “our common
rhymers and play- writers ” as “despicable creatures,” P. W. iii. 474.

P. L. d

Lost we find in them the familiar features of Athenian drama
— certain signs eloquent of the source on which the poet has
drawn.

Let us, for example, glance at the draft of Adam imparadisfd.
Milton has kept the ‘unities’ of place and time. The scene
does not change ; it is set in some part of Eden, and everything
represented before the eyes of the audience occurs at the same
spot. But whoso regards the unity of place must suffer a
portion of the action to happen off the stage — not enacted in
the presence of the audience (as in a modern play where the
scene changes), but reported. In Samson Agonistes Milton
employs the traditional device of the Greek tragedians — he
relates the catastrophe by the mouth of a messenger. So here :
the temptation by the serpent is not represented on the scene :
it is described — partly by Lucifer, ” relating, and insulting in
what he had don to the destruction of man” ; partly by an angel
who informs the Chorus of the manner of the fall. Again, the
unity of time is observed. The time over which the action of a
tragedy niight extend, according to the usual practice of the
Greek dramatists, was twenty-four hours. In Samso?i Agonistes
the action begins at sunrise and ends at noon, thus occupying
seven or eight hours. In Adam unparadiz’d the action would
certainly not exceed the customary twenty-four hours. Again a
Chorus is introduced (sure sign of classical influence), and not
only introduced, but handled exactly as Milton, following his
Greek models, has handled it in Samson Agonistes : that is to
say, closely identified with the action of the tragedy, even as
Aristotle recommends that it should be. Further, in the fourth
scheme the division into acts is carefully avoided — an advance
this on the third scheme. Similarly, in Samson Agonistes
Milton avoids splitting up the play into scenes and acts, calling
attention to the fact in his preface. Proofs^ of Milton’s

‘ Thus, apart from P. L., the Scriptural themes whereof the fullest
sketches are given, are three tragedies severally entitled ** Abram from
Morea, or Isack redeemed — Eaptistes ” (i.e. on the subject of John the
Baptist and Herod) — and ” Sodom Burning.” In each two unities
(time and place) are kept, and a Chorus used. In “Isack redeemed” the

classical bias might be multiplied from these Milton MSS. ;
and personally I have no doubt that when he began the tragedy
of which Aubrey and Phillips speak, he meant to revive in
English the methods and style of his favourite Greek poets.
But the scheme soon had to be abandoned ; and not till a
quarter of a century later was it executed in Samson Agomstes\
With Milton as with Dante the greatest came last — after long
delay : the life’s work of each marked the life’s close : and,
the work done, release soon came to each, though to Dante
sooner^.

The third period in the genesis of Paradise Lost dates from
165S., In that year, according to Aubrey, Milton began the
poem as we know it. By then he had gone back to the epic
style. He was still Secretary, but his duties were very light,
and allowed him to devote himself to poetry. At the Restoration
he was in danger, for some time, of his life, and was imprisoned
for a few months. But in spite of this interruption, and of his
blindness’, the epic was finished about 1663. The history of

incident of the sacrifice is reported, and the description of the character
of the hero Abraham as Milton meant to depict him is simply a
paraphrase on Aristotle’s definition of the ideal tragic hero. Most of
the other subjects have a title such as the Greek tragedians employed —
e.g. ” Elias Polemistes,” “Elisa;us Hydrochoos,” “Zedechiah veore-

‘ The point is important because it disposes of the notion that
Milton borrowed the idea of writing a tragedy on the classical model
from the play of Samson by the Dutch poet Vondel.

° “There is at once similarity and diiiference in the causes which
made each postpone the execution of his undertaking till a comparatively
late period in his life ; and a curious parallel may be observed in the
length of time between the first conception and the completion of their
monumental works, as well as in the period that elapsed between the
end of their labours and their death.” (Courthope.)

° According to Edward PhiUips, Milton dictated the poem to any
one who chanced to be present and was willing to act as amanuensis ;
afterwards Phillips would go over the MS., correcting errors, under his
uncle’s direction. The original transcript submitted to the Licenser is
extant, and is one of the many literary treasures that have gone to

d 2

each of his longer poems shows that he was exceedingly careful
in revising his works — loth to let them go forth to the world till
all that was possible had been done to achieve perfection’. It is
Aubrey’s statement that Paradise Lost was completed in 1663 ;
while Milton’s friend Thomas EUwood, the Quaker, describes
in a famous passage of his Autobiography, how in 1665 the poet
placed a manuscript in his hands — ” bidding me take it home
with me and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done,
return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came
home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that ex-
cellent poem which he intituled Paradise Lost.” Ellwood’s
account may be reconciled with Aubrey’s on the reasonable
supposition that the interval between 1663 and 1665 was spent
in revision. Still, some delay in publishing the poem ensued.
On the oij’tbreak of the Plague in 1665 Milton had left London,
retiring to Chalfont in Buckinghamshire^ where EUwood had
rented a cottage for him. He returned in the next year, 1666 ;
but again there was delay — this time through the great Fire
of London which disorganised business. Not till 1667 did
Paradise Lost appear in print. The agreement (now in the
possession of the British Museum) drawn up between Milton
and his publisher — by which he received an immediate payment
of £i, and retained certain rights over the future sale of the
book — is dated April 27, 1667. The date on which Paradise
Losfw&s entered in the Stationers’ Register is August 20, 1667.
No doubt, copies were in circulation in the autumn of this year.

America. It ‘ ‘ passed from the possession of the first printer of the
poem, Samuel Simmons, to Jacob Tonson [the publisher], and thence
to his collateral descendants, remaining in the same family… until
1904,” when it was bought by an American collector. (From an
article in TTie Athensum on ^’ Miltoniana in A”merica.”)

‘ ‘ ‘ When we look at his earlier manuscripts, with all their erasures
and correctluns, we m.ay well wonder what the Paradise Lost would have
been if he had been able to give it the final touches of a faultless and
fastidious hand. When we think of it composed in darkness, preserved
in memory, dictated in fragments, it may well seem to us the most
astonishing of all the products of high genius guided by unconquerable
will” (J. W. Mackail).

The system of licensing publications, against which Milton
had protested so vehemently in his Areopagitica, had been revived
by the Press Act of 1662 and was now strongly enforced. “By
that act,” says Dr Masson, ” the duty of licensing books of general
literature had been assigned to the Secretaries of State, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of London ; but it
was exceptional for any of those dignicaries to perform the duty
in person. It was chiefly performed for them by a staff of under-
licencers, paid by fees.” Five or six of his chaplains acted so for
the Archbishop ; and according to tradition one of them, to
whom Paradise Lost was submitted, hesitated to give his im-
primatur on account of the lines in the first book about eclipses
perplexing monarchs with fear of change (i. 594 — 99). Milton
must have remembered grimly the bitter gibes in his pamphlets,
e.g. in the Animadversions (1641) against “monkish prohibitions,
and expurgatorious indexes,” and “proud Imprimaturs not to be
obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow hand of
some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain.” The
wheel had come full circle with a vengeance.

This first edition of Paradise Lost raises curious points* of
bibliography into which there is no need to enter here ; but we
must note three things. The poem was divided into — not
twelve books but — ten. In the earlier copies issued to the
public there were no prose Arguments ; these (written, we may
suppose, by Milton himself) were printed all together and
inserted at the commencement of each of the later volumes of

^ For example, no less than nine distinct title-pages of this edition
have been traced. This means that, though the whole edition was
printed in 1667, only a limited number of copies were bound up and
issued in that year. The rest would be kept in stock, unbound, and
published in instalments, as required. Hence new matter could be
inserted (such as the prose Arguments), and in each instalment it would
be just as easy to bind up a new title-page as to use the old one. Often
the date had to be changed : and we find that two of these pages bear
the year 1667; four, 1668; and three, 1669. Seven have Milton’s
name in fiill ; two, only his initials. Mr Leigh Sotheby collated them
carefully in his book on Milton’s autograph, pp. 81 — 84.

this first edition — an awkward arrangement changed in the
second edition. Milton prefixed to the later copies the brief
prefatory note on The Verse, explaining why he had used blank
verse ; and it was preceded by the address of The Printer to the
Reader. It seems that the number of copies printed in the first
edition was 1500; and the statement of another payment made
by the publisher to Milton on account of the sale of the book
shows that by April 26, 1669, i.e. a year and a half after the date
of publication, 1300 copies had been disposed of.

In 1674 the second edition was issued — with several changes.
First, the epic (said to be 670 lines longer than the jEneid)
was divided into twelve books, a more Vergilian number, by the
subdivision of books vii. and X. Secondly, the prose Argu-
ments were transferred from the beginning and prefixed to their
respective books. Thirdly, a few changes were introduced into
the text — few of any great significance. It was to the second
edition that the commendatory verses by Samuel Barrow and
Andrew Marvell were prefixed. Four years later, 1678, came
the third edition, and in 1688 the fourth. This last was the
well-known folio published by Tonson ; Paradise Regained z.xid
Samson. Agonzstes were bound up with some copies of it, so that
Milton’s three great works were obtainable in a single volume.
The first annotated edition of Paradise Lost was that edited by
Patrick Hume in 1695, being the sixth reprint. And during
the 1 8th century editions’ were numerous. “Milton scholar-
ship V’ it has been justly said, “was active throughout the whole
period.”

There is, indeed, little (if any) ground for the view which one
so frequently comes across — that Paradise Lost met with scant
appreciation, and that Milton was neglected by his contem-

‘ Pre-eminent among them is Bishop Newton’s edition (1749). He
was the first editor who took pains to secure accuracy of text, doing,
on a smaller scale, for Milton what Theobald did for Shakespeare.
His services too in the elucidation of certain aspects (notably the Scrip-
tural) of Milton’s learning have never been surpassed.

‘ See Professor Dowden’s Tercentenary paper “Milton in the
Eighteenth Century (1701 — 1750).”

poraries, and without honour in his lifetime. To the general
public epic poetry will never appeal, more especially if it be
steeped in the classical feeling that pervades Paradise Lost;
but there must have been a goodly number of scholars and
lettered readers to welcome the work — else why these successive
editions, appearing at no very lengthy intervals ? One thing,
doubtless, which prejudiced its popularity was the personal
resentment of the Royalist classes at Milton’s political actions.
They could not forget his long identification with republicanism ;
and there was much in the poem itself-^covert sneers and
gibes — which would repel many who were loyal to the Church
and the Court. Further, the style of Paradise Lost was
something very different from the prevailing tone of the
literature then current and popular. Milton was the last of the
Elizabethans, a lonely survival lingering on into days when
French influence was beginning to dominate English taste.
Even the metre of his poem must have sounded strange to ears
familiarised to the crisp clearness and epigrammatic ring of the
rhymed couplet’. Yet, in spite of these obstacles, many whose
praise was worth the having were proud of Milton : they felt
that he had done honour to his country. He was accorded that
which he had sought so earnestly — acceptance as a great
national poet ; and it is pleasant to read how men of letters
and social distinction would pay visits of respect to him, and
how the white-winged Fame bore his name and reputation
abroad, so that foreigners came to England for the especial
purpose of seeing him. And their visits were the prelude of
that foreign renown and influence from which he seemed to
have cut himself off when he made his native tongue the
medium of his great work. ” Milton was the first English
poet to inspire respect and win fame for our literature on the
Continent, and to his poetry was due, to an extent that has not
yet been fully recognised, the change which came over European
ideas in the eighteenth century with regard to the nature and
scope of the epic. Paradise Lost was the mainstay of those

‘ Cf. Marvell’s “Commendatory Verses,” 45 — 54.

critics who dared to vindicate, in the face of French classicism,
the rights of the imagination over the reason in poetry^.”

There has been much discussion about the ‘ souices ‘ of
Paradise Lost, and writers well nigh as countless as Vallom-
brosa’s autumn leaves have been thrust forth from their
obscurity to claim the honour of having ‘inspired’ (as the
phrase is) the great epic. Most of these unconscious claimants
were, like enough, unknown to Milton ; but some of them do
seem to stand in a relation which demands recognition.

I should place first the Latin tragedy Adamus Exul (1601),
written in his youth by the great jurist Hugo Grotius after the
model of Seneca. Apart from the question of actual resemblances
to Paradise Lost, it might fairly be conjectured, if not assumed,
that Milton read this tragedy. He knew Grotius personally and
knew his works. Describing, in the Second Defence, his Italian
tour in 163S, Milton mentions his stay in Paris and friendly
reception by the English ambassador, and adds : ” His lordship
gave me a card of introduction to the learned Hugo Grotius, at
that time ambassador from the Queen of Sweden to the French
court; whose acquaintance I anxiously desired V He quotes the
opinions of Grotius with high respect in his treatise on divorce’.
The alternative titles of the fourth draft of Milton’s own con-
templated tragedy, viz. Adam unparadi^d and Adams Banish-
ment, certainly recall the title Adamus Exul; and it may be

‘ Professor J. G. Robertson, ”Milton’s Fame on the Continent,”
a paper read before the British Academy, Dec. lo, 1908.

Perhaps the strangest and most delightfuj evidence of Milton’s
acceptance among foreigners was Mr Maurice Baring’s discovery of the
popularity of Paradise Lost, in a prose translation, amongst the Russian
peasantry and private soldiers :

” The schoolmaster said that after all his experience the taste of the
peasants in literature baffled him. ‘ They will not read modern stories,’
he said. ‘ When I ask them why they like Paradise Lost they point to
their heart and say, ” It is near to the heart ; it speaks ; you read, and
a sweetness comes to you.” ‘ ”

= P. W. I. 255-

3 See chapters XVII., XVUI. of The Doctrine and Discipline.

noted that this draft was sketched in that period (about 1641)
of Milton’s hfe to which his meeting with Grotius belongs.
Of the likeness between Paradise Lost and the Adamus Exul,
and other works dealing with the same theme, it is impossible to
say how much, if not all, is due to identity of subject and (what
is no less important) identity of convention as to the machinery
proper for its treatment. But I do not think that community of
subject accounts entirely for the resemblances between Paradise
Lost and Grotius’s tragedy. The conception of Satan’s character
and motives unfolded in his long introductory speech in the
Adamus, the general idea of his escaping from Hell and sur-
veying Eden, his invocation of the powers of evil (amongst them
Chaos and Night) — these things and some others, such as the
Angel’s narrative to Adam of the Creation, seem like far-off
embryonic drawings of the splendours of the epic. It should be
added that Grotius’s other religious plays were known in England.
A free rendering of his Christus Patiens into rhymed heroics
was published in London in 1640 under the title Chrisfs Passion;
while his tragedy Sophompaneas, or Joseph, appeared in an
English version in 1650. And a sidelight may be thrown not
merely on the contemporary estimate of Grotius by the ex-
ceptionally eulogistic mention of his works in the Theatrum
Poetarum (1675) of Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips. The
Theatrum is commonly supposed to reflect in some degree
Milton’s own views ^ and it is significant therefore to find
Grotius described as one “whose equal in fame for Wit &
Learning, Christendom of late Ages hath rarely produc’d,
particularly of so happy a Genius in Poetry, that had his Annals,

1 See V. 177, 673, notes. Other touches in the Theatrum of
Miltonic interest are the accounts of Spenser and Sylvester, and the
praise of Henry Lawes in the notice of Waller. One may conjecture,
too, that the obscure Erycus Puteanus would not have had his niche
but for Comus. The Theatntm includes also Andreini — but not Vondel.
Phillips’s account of Milton himself is admirably discreet : and he
expressly terms Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained ” Heroic Poems.”
The relations between uncle and nephew were more than ordinarily
close.

his Book De Veritate ChristiancE ReUgionis…ajid. other his
extolled works in Prose, never come to Light, his extant and
universally approved Latin Poems, had been sufificient to gain
him a Living Name.”
Y^ It is an easy transition from the Adamus Exul to the Adamo
of the Italian poet Giovanni Battista Andreini (1578 — 1652), a
Florentine, which is said to owe something to Grotius’s tragedy.
Voltaire, in his Essai sur la Pohie Epique written in 1727, related
that Milton during his residence at Florence saw “a comedy

called .<4(/£j;7«i?i The subject of the play was the Fall of Man :

the actors, the Devils, the Angels, Adam, Eve, the Serpent,

Death, and the Seven Mortal Sins Milton pierced through

the absurdity of that performance to the hidden majesty of the
subject ; which, being altogether unfit for the stage, yet might be,
for the genius of Milton, and his only, the foundation of an epick
poem.” What authority he had for this legend Voltaire does not
say. It is not alluded to by any of Milton’s contemporary bio-
graphers. It may have been a mere invention by some ill-wisher
of the poet, a piece of malicious gossip circulated out of political
spite against the great champion of republicanism. But the
authenticity of the story is not perhaps very important, for inde-
pendently there seems to be evidence in the Adamo itself that
Milton was acquainted with it even before his visit to Italy. One
cannot read the scene of the Adamo (v. 5) in which the World,
personified, tempts Eve with all its pomps and vanities, without
being reminded of the scene in Comus of the temptation of the
Lady. And, as with the Adamus Exul, some of the coincidences
of incident and treatment between the Adamo and Paradise
Lost, or Milton’s early dramatic sketches of the action, seem to
constitute a residuum of resemblance after full allowance has

‘ It had been printed in 1613 (Milan), and again in 1617. The
title-page of the first edition describes the work as “L’ Adamo, Sacra
Rapresentatione.” It is more ” a hybrid between a miracle play and an
opera” (Courthope) than a “comedy.” A translation by Cowper and
Hayley was printed in their edition of Milton ; and it is in this
translation that the work is known to me. The fact that Cowper took
the Adamo theory seriously is significant. If

been made for the influence of practical identity of theme.
Thus the list of characters in the Adamo has abstractions like
the World, Famine, Labour, Despair, Death : and the ap-
pearance of these and kindred evils of life to Adam and Eve
(Act IV., scenes 6 and 7) recalls the early drafts of the scheme of /’
Paradise Lost and also the vision shown to Adam in the
eleventh (477 — 99) book of the poem. Andreini makes Michael
drive Adam and Eve out of Paradise and depicts a final struggle
between Michael and Lucifer. Andreini’s representation of the
Serpent’s temptation of Eve has been thought to have left some
impression on the parallel scene in Paradise Lost. After the
Fall Lucifer summons the spirits of air and fire, earth and water —
a counterpart to Paradise Regained, 11. 1151?/ seq. And occasion-
ally a verbal similarity arrests — as where Lucifer says (iv. 2, end) •
” Let us remain in hell !

Since there is more content

To live in liberty, tho’ all condemn’d,

Than, as his vassals, blest^ ”

(_” Foi, cK i maggior contento

viver in liberth tutti damnati,

eke sudditi beati “) ;
and inveighs (iv. 2) :

” Ahi luce, ahi luce odiata I ”
or where the Angels describe Man (11. i) :

“For contemplation of his Maker form’d”
{“Per contemplar del suo gran Fabro il merto”).

‘ See I. 263, note ; but of course the idea was not peculiar to any
writer. So tradition, literary or theological, may explain the following
similarity, which is at least an interesting illustration of P. L. v. 688,
699. Andreini makes Lucifer (i. 3) address his followers :
“I am that Spirit, I, who for your sake
Collecting dauntless courage, to the north
Led you far distant from the senseless will
Of him who boasts to have created heav’n.”
The reference occurs again in the Adamo, in. 8.
Tradition also may account for another feature common to the
Adamo, the Adamus and Paradise Lost, viz. the long description of the
convulsions and deterioration in the physical universe after the Fall of
Man.

Leaving the matter for a moment we will pass to the third
claimant, the Dutch poet, Joost van den Vondel. He was
contemporary with Milton, and the author of a great number of
works. Among them were several dramas on Scriptural subjects.
With three of them Milton is supposed by some writers to have
been acquainted. These are Liicifer (1654), a drama on the
revolt of the angels and their fall from heaven ; John the Messenger
(1662), and Adam in Banishment (1664). In a work published
a few years since it was contended that Milton borrowed a good
deal from these three poems.

That Milton had heard of Vondel may be conceded.
Vondel enjoyed a great reputation ; beside which, there was
in the 17th century much intercourse between England and
Holland, and Milton from his position as Secretary, no less
than from his controversies with Salmasius and Morus, must
have had his thoughts constantly directed towards the Nether-
lands. Also, we learn that he had some knowledge of the Dutch
language. But it will be observed that the earliest of the poems
with which he is thought to have been too conversant, namely
Lucifer, was not published till after his blindness, while by the
time that the last of them, Ada/n in Ba?iishment, appeared.
Paradise Lost was almost completed. It is impossible that
Milton read a line of the works himself ; if he knew them at all,
it must have been through the assistance of some reader or
translator ; and considering how many details concerning the
last years of Milton’s life have survived, it is exceeding curious
that this reader or translator should have escaped mention, and
that the Vondelian theory should not have been heard of till a
century after the poet’s death. For there =were plenty of people
ready to do him an ill-turn and damage his repute ; and
plagiarism from his Dutch contemporary would have been
an excellent cry to raise. As it is, Milton’s biographers — and
contemporaries — Phillips, Aubrey, Toland, Antony h. Wood,
are absolutely silent on the subject. Phillips indeed and
Toland expressly mention the languages in which Milton used
to have works read to him. The list is extensive : it includes
Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish and French :

and it does not include Dutch. I think that this fact tells
heavily against the hypothesis of Milton’s indebtedness to
Vondel. Still, it must be admitted that critics of eminence
accept it.

There remains the so-called Csdmon Paraphrase. In the
Bodleian is the manuscript of an Old Enghsh metrical Para-
phrase of parts’ of the Old Testament. This work was long
attributed to the Northumbrian religious writer Csdmon, of
whom Bede speaks. Csdmon lived in the seventh century.
He is supposed to have died about 670. There is no reason for
thinking that he was not the author of sacred poems, as Bede
represents him to have been ; but there is also no possibility of
believing that the Paraphrase, as we have it, was written by
him. It is a composite work in which several hands may be
traced, and the different styles belong to a date long subsequent
to Caedmon^. The MS. was once in the possession of Archbishop
Ussher. He presented it in 1651 to his secretary, the Teutonic
scholar, Francis Dujon, commonly called Franciscus Junius.
Junius published the MS. at Amsterdam in 1655. Milton never
saw the Paraphrase in print, for the same reason that he never
saw Vondel’s Lucifer. But inasmuch as Junius had been settled
in England since 1620, it is quite likely that he knew Milton^ ;
if so, he may have mentioned the Paraphrase, and even
translated* parts of it. Here, however, as in the previous cases
of Andreini arid Vondel, we cannot get beyond conjecture,

‘ Namely Genesis, Exodus and Daniel. It is the paraphrase of
Genesis that would have concerned Milton most.

* See the article by Mr Henry Bradley in the Dictionary of National
Biography. There is also a good discussion of the authorship of the
work in the Appendix to Professor Ten Brink’s Early English Lite-
rature.

* This was first pointed out by Sharon Turner; see also Masson,
* In a very ingenious paper in Anglia, iv. pp. 401 — 405, Professor
Wuelcker argues that Milton had not much knowledge of Anglo-Saxon.
In his History of Britain he habitually quotes Latin Chronicles, and
in one place virtually admits that an Old English chronicle was not
intelligible to him.

since there is no actual record or external evidence of Milton’s
acquaintance with the Paraphrase or its translator.

These then are the four possible ‘ sources ‘ of Paradise Lost
seemingly most deserving of mention ; and of , them the Adamus
Exul and the Adaino strike me as unquestionably the most
important, for various reasons. Milton’s acquaintance with them
may be referred to the early period when the influence on him
of other writers would be greatest. The Adamus and the Adamo
both present some points of resemblance to the early drafts of
Paradise Lost. With the Adamus there is the special con-
sideration of Milton’s personal knowledge and admiration of
its author. With the Adamo, apart from the possibility that
Voltaire’s story had some basis, there is the consideration of
Milton’s special devotion to Italian literature. With neither is
there, at least not in the same degree as in the case of Vondel’s
works and the Cffidmon Paraphrase, the difficulty involved by
the poet’s blindness. That he knew the Adamus’^ and the Adamo
appears to me, now, hardly an open question. In these and
similar works disinterred by the industry of Milton’s editors lay
the general conception, the theological machinery, the cosmic
and supra-cosmic scene of a poem on the Fall of Man. So
much is simply a matter of history ; and to claim for Milton or
any other writer who chose this theme the merit of absolute
originality is simply to ignore history. The composition of
religious poetry was the great literary activity of the earlier part
of the 1 7th century, and Milton did on the grand scale what others
did on the lower. The work of these lesser writers could not be
without its influence on him, since no poet can detach himself ffom
the conditions of his age or the associations of a subject that
has become common property and passed into a convention.
But that the qualities which have made Paradise Lost
immortal were due, in the faintest degree, to any other genius

‘ As regards the Adamus Exul William Lauder had some case, but
spoilt it by his forgeries ; for a sample of his libellous rtialevolence see i.
26J — 63, note. Todd (11. 585 — 89) has an Appendix on “Lauder’s
Intel polations.”

BOOK X.

THE ARGUMENT.

Man’s transgression known, the guardian Angels forsake Paradise, and return up to Heaven to approve their vigilance, and are approved ; God declaring that the entrance of Satan could not be by them pre-vented. He sends his Son to judge the transgressors ; who descends, and gives sentence accordingly ; then in pity =clothes them both, and reascends. Sin and Death, sitting till then at the gates of Hel), by wondrous sympathy feeling the success of Satan in this new World, and ■the sin by Man there committed, resolve to sit no longer confined in Hell, but to follow Satan, their sire, up to the place of Man. To make the way easier from Hell to this World to and fro, they pave a broad highway or bridge over Chaos, according to the track that Satan first
made ; then, preparing for Earth, they meet him, proud of his success, returning to Hell ; their mutual gratulation. Satan arrives at Pande-monium ; in full assembly relates, with boasting, his success against Man ; instead of applause is entertained with a general hiss by all his
audience, transformed, with himself also, suddenly into serpents, according to his doom given in Paradise ; then, deluded with a show of the Forbidden Tree springing up before them, they, greedily reaching to take of the fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes. The proceedings of
Sin and Death: God foretells the final victory of his Son over them, and the renewing of all things ; but for the j^resent commands his Angels to make several alterations in the heavens and elements. Adam, more and more perceiving his fallen condition, heavily bewails, rejects
the condolement of Eve; she persists, and at length appeases him: then, to evade the curse likely to fall on their offspring, proposes to Adam violent ways, which he approves not, but, conceiving better hope, puts her in mind of the late promise made them, that her seed should
be revenged on the Serpent, and exhorts her, with him, to seek peace of the offended Deity by repentance and supplication.

MEANWHILE the heinous and despiteful act Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
He, in the Serpent, had perverted Eve, Her husband she, to taste the fatal
fruit, Was known in Heaven ; for what can scape the eye Of God all-seeing,
or deceive his heart Omniscient? who, in all things wise and just, Hindered not Satan to attempt the mind Of Man, with strength entire and free will armed, Complete to have discovered and repulsed lo Whatever wiles of foe or seeming friend. For still they knew, and ought to have still remembered. The high injunction not to taste that fruit, Whoever tempted; which they not obeying Incurred (what could they less ?) the penalty, And, manifold in sin, deserved to fall. Up into Heaven from Paradise in haste The Angelic guards ascended, mute and sad For Man ; for of his state by this they knew, Much wondering how the subtle Fiend had stolen 20 Entrance unseen. Soon as the unwelcome news From Earth arrived at Heaven-gate, displeased All were who heard; dim sadness did not spare That time celestial visages, yet, mixed With pity, violated not their bliss. About the new-arrived, in multitudes, The ethereal people ran, to hear and know How all befell. They towards the throne supreme Accountable made haste to make appear With righteous plea their utmost vigilance, 30 And easily approved; when the Most
High Eternal Father, from his secret cloud Amidst, in thunder uttered thus his voice: “Assembled Angels, and ye Powers returned From unsuccessful charge, be not dismayed. Nor troubled at these tidings from the Earth, Which your sincerest care could not prevent, Foretold so lately what would come to pass. When first this Tempter crossed the gulf from Hell. I told ye then he should prevail and speed 40 On his bad errand; Man should be seduced And flattered out of all, believing Ues Against his Maker ; no decree of mine Concurring to necessitate his fall, Or touch with lightest moment of impulse His free will, to her own inclining left In even scale. But fallen he is; and now What rests, but that the mortal sentence pass On his transgression, death denounced that day? Which he presumes already vain and void, jo Because not yet inflicted, as he feared, By some immediate stroke; but soon shall find Forbearance no acquittance ere day
end : Justice shall not return, as bounty, scorned. But whom send I to judge them? whom but thee, Vicegerent Son? to thee I have transferred All judgment, whether in Heaven, or > Earth, or ITell. Easy it may be seen that I intend Mercy colleague with justice, sending thee, Man’s friend, his Mediator, his designed 60 Both ransom and Redeemer voluntary, And destined Man himself to judge Man fallen.” So spake the Father; and, unfolding bright Toward the right hand his glory, on the Son Blazed forth unclouded deity; he full Resplendent all his Father manifest Expressed, and thus divinely answered mild : ” Father Eternal, thine is to decree. Mine both in Heaven and Earth to do thy will Supreme, that thou in me, thy Son beloved, 70 May’st ever rest well pleased. I go to judge On Earth these thy transgressors ; but thou know’st, Whoever judged, the worst on me must light. When time shall be; for so I undertook Before thee, and, not repenting, this obtain Of right, that I may mitigate their doom On me derived; yet I shall temper so Justice with mercy, as may illustrate most Them fully satisfied, and thee appease. Attendance none shall need, nor train, where none 80 Are to behold the judgment but the judged. Those two; the third best absent is condemned, Convict by flight, and rebel to all law : Conviction to the Serpent none belongs.” Thus saying, from his radiant seat he rose Of high collateral glory; Him Thrones and Powers, Princedoms, and Dominations ministrant Accompanied to Heaven-gate, from whence Eden and all the coast in prospect lay. Down he descended straight; the speed of Gods 90 Time counts not, though with swiftest minutes winged, Now was the sun in western cadence low From noon, and gentle airs due at their hour To fan the Earth now waked, and usher in The evening cool, when he, from wrath more cool, Came, the mild Judge and Intercessor both, To sentence Man. The voice of God they heard Now walking in the garden, by soft winds Brought to their ears, while day declined; they heard. And from his presence hid themselves among 100 The thickest trees, both man and wife, till God, Approaching, thus to Adam called aloud: “Where art thou, Adam, wont with joy to meet My coming seen far off? I miss thee here, Not pleased, thus entertained with solitude. Where obvious duty erewhile appeared unsought. Or come I less conspicuous, or what change Absents thee, or what chance detains ? Come forth.” He came, and with him Eve, more loth, though first To offend, discountenanced both, and discomposed; iia Love was not in their looks, either to God Or to each other, but apparent guilt, And shame, and perturbation, and despair, Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile. Whence Adam, faltering long, thus answered brief: ” I heard thee in the garden, and of thy voice Afraid, being naked, hid myself.” To whom The gracious Judge without revile replied : ” My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast not feared, But still rejoiced; how is it now become 120 So dreadful to thee? That thou art naked, who Hath told thee ? Hast thou eaten of the tree, Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?” To whom thus Adam, sore beset, replied: “O Heaven! in evil strait this day I stand Before my Judge — either to undergo Myself the total crime, or to accuse My other self, the partner of my life ; Whose failing, while her faith to me remains, I should conceal, and not expose to blame 130 By my complaint; but strict necessity Subdues me, and calamitous constraint, Lest on my head both sin and punishment, However insupportable, be all Devolved j though should I hold my peace, yet thou Wouldst easily detect what I conceal. This woman, whom thou mad’st to be my help. And gav’st me as thy perfect gift, so good, So fit, so acceptable, so divine. That from her hand I could suspect no ill, 140 And what she did, whatever in itself, Her doing seemed to justify the deed; She gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” To whom the Sovran Presence thus replied : ‘”Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey Before his voice? or was she made thy guide, Superior, or but equal, that to her Thou didst resign thy manhood, and the place Wherein God set thee above her, made of thee And for thee, whose perfection far excelled 150 Hers in all real dignity?/ Adorned She was indeed, and lovely, to attract Thy love, not thy subjection; and her gifts Were such as under government well seemed, Unseemly to bear rule; which was tKy part And person, hadst thou known thyself aright.” So having said, he thus to Eve in few : “Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?” To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelmed, Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge i6o Bold or loquacious, thus abashed replied : i “The Serpent me beguiled, and I did eat/ Which when the Lord God heard, without delay To judgment he proceeded on the accused Serpent, though brute, unable to transfer The guilt on him who made him instrument Of mischief, and polluted from the end Of his creation; justly then accursed. As vitiated in nature. More to know Concerned not Man (since he no further knew), 170 Nor altered his offence; yet God at last To Satan, first in sin, his doom applied, Though in mysterious terms, judged as then best; And on the Serpent thus his curse let fall : ” Because thou hast done this, thou art accursed Above all cattle, each beast of the field; Upon thy belly grovelUng thou shalt go. And dust shalt eat all the days of thy life. Between thee and the Woman I will put Enmity, and between thine and her seed; 180 Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel.” So spake this oracle, then verified When Jesus, son of Mary, second Eve, Saw Satan fall like lightning down from Heaven, Prijnce of the air; then, rising from his grave. Spoiled Principalities and Powers, triumphed In open show, and with ascension bright Captivity led captive through the air, The realm itself of Satan long usurped, Whom he shall tread at last under our feetj 190 Even he who now foretold his fatal bruise, And to the Woman thus his sentence turned : /’ Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply By thy conception ; children thou shall bring In sorrow forth; and to thy husband’s will Thine shall submit; he over thee shall rule.’/’ On Adam last thus judgment he pronounced : “Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, And eaten of the tree, concerning which I charged thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not eat thereof,’ 200 Curs’d is the ground for thy sake; thou in sorrow Shalt eat thereof all the days of thy life ; Thorns also and thistles it shall bring thee forth Unbid ; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field ; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Till thou return unto the ground; for thou Out of the ground wast taken : know thy birth. For dust thou art, and shalt to dust return.” So judged he Man, both Judge and Saviour sent. And the instant stroke of death, denounced that day, 210 Removed far off; then, pitying how they stood Before him naked to the air, that now Must suffer change, disdained not to begin Thenceforth the form of servant to assume; As when he washed his servants’ feet, so now, As father of his family, he clad Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid; And thought not much to clothe his enemies. Nor he their outward only with the skins 220 Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousness Arraying, covered from his Father’s sight. To him with swift ascent he up returned. Into his blissful bosom reassumed In glory as of old; to him appeased. All, though all-knowing, what had passed with Man Recounted, mixing intercession sweet. Meanwhile, ere thus was sinned and judged on Earth, Within the gates of Hell sat Sin and Death, 230 In counterview within the gates, that now Stood open wide, belching outrageous flame Far into Chaos, since the Fiend passed through. Sin opening ; who thus now to Death began : ” O Son, why sit we here each other viewing Idly, while Satan, our great author, thrives In other worlds, and happier seat provides For us, his offspring dear? It cannot be But that success attends him ; if mishap. Ere this he had returned, with fury driven 240 By his avengers, since no place like this Can fit his punishment, or their revenge. Methinks I feel new strength within me rise. Wings growing, and dominion given me large Beyond this Deep, whatever draws me on, Or sympathy, or some connatural force, Powerful at greatest distance to unite^ With secret amity things of like kind By secretest conveyance. Thou, my shade Inseparable, must with me along; 250 For Death from Sin no power can separate. But, lest the difficulty of passing back Stay his return perhaps over this gulf Impassable, impervious, let us try Adventurous work, yet to thy power and mine Not unagreeable, to found a path — Over this main from Hell to that new World Where Satan now prevails ; a monument Of merit high to all the infernal host, Easing their passage hence, for intercourse 260 Or transmigration, as their lot shall lead. Nor can I miss the way, so strongly drawn By this new-felt attraction and instinct.” Whom thus the meagre Shadow answered soon : “Go whither fate and inclination strong Leads thee; I shall not lag behind, nor err The way, thou leading ; such a scent I draw Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste The savour of death from all things there that live. Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest 270 Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid.” So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell Of mortal change on Earth. As when a flock Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote, Against the day of battle, to a field, Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured With scent of living carcases designed For death the following day in bloody fight: So scented the grim Feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air, 280 Sagacious of his quarry from so far. Then both, from out Hell-gates, into the waste Wide anarchy of Chaos damp and dark Flew diverse, and with power (their power was great) Hovering upon the waters, what they met Solid or slimy, as in raging sea Tossed U13 and down, together crowded drove, From each side shoaling, towards the mouth of Hell ; As when two polar winds, blowing adverse Upon the Cronian sea, together drive 290 Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way Beyond Petsora eastward, to the rich Cathaian coast. The aggregated soil Death with his mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm As Delos, floating once ; the rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move, And with asphaltic slime ; broad as the gate Deep to the roots of Hell the gathered beach They fastened, and the mole immense wrought on 300 Over the foaming Deep high-arched, a bridge Of length prodigious, joining to the wall Immovable of this now fenceless World, Forfeit to Death ; ■ from hence a passage broad. Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell. So, if great things to small may be compared, Xerxes, the liberty of Greece to yoke. From Susa, his Memnonian palace high, Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined, 310 And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves. Now had they brought the work by wondrous art Pontifical, a ridge of pendent rock. Over the vexed Abyss, following the track Of Satan, to the self-same place where he First lighted from his wing, and landed safe From out of Chaos, to the outside bare Of this round World. With pins of adamant And chains they made all fast, too fa,st they made And durable; and now in little space 320 The confines met of empyrean Heaven And of this World, and on the left hand Hell With long reach interposed; three several ways, In sight, to each of these three places led. * And now their way to Earth they had descried, To Paradise first tending, when, behold Satan, in likeness of an Angel bright. Betwixt the Centaur and the Scorpion steering His zenith, while the sun in Aries rose ! Disguised he came; but those his children dear 330 Their parent soon discerned, though in disguise. He, after Eve seduced, unminded slunk Into the wood fast by, and, changing shape To observe the sequel, saw his guileful act By Eve, though all unweeting, seconded Upon her husband, saw their shame that sought Vain covertures; but when he saw descend The Son of God to judge them, terrified He fled, not hoping to escape, but shun The present, fearing guilty what his wrath 340 Might suddenly inflict; that past, returned By night, and listening where the hapless pair Sat in their sad discourse and various plaint, Thence gathered his own doom; which understood Not instant, but of future time, with joy And tidings fraught, to Hell he now returned, And at the brink of Chaos, near the foot Of this new wondrous pontifice, unhoped Met who to meet him came, his offspring dear. Great joy was at their meeting, and at sight 350 Of that stupendous bridge his joy increased. Long he admiring stood, till Sin, his fair Enchanting daughter, thus the silence broke: “O Parent, these are thy magnific deeds. Thy trophies, which thou view’st as not thine own ; Thou art their author and prime architect; For I no sooner in my heart divined (My heart, which by a secret harmony Still moves with thine, joined in connexion sweet) That thou on Earth hadst prospered, which thy looks 360 Now also evidence, but straight I felt. Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt That I must after thee with this thy son; Such fatal consequence unites us three. Hell could no longer hold us in her bounds, Nor this unvoyageable gulf obscure Detain from following thy illustrious track. Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined Within Hell-gates till now; thou us empowered To fortify thus far, and overlay 370 With this portentous bridge the dark Abyss. Thine now is all this World ; thy virtue hath won What thy hands builded not, thy wisdom gained With odds what war hath lost, and fully avenged Our foil in Heaven : here thou shall monarch reign, There didst not; there let him still victor sway, As battle hath adjudged, from this new World Retiring, by his own doom alienated, And henceforth monarchy with thee divide Of all things, parted by the empyreal bounds, 3S0 His quadrature, from thy orbicular World, Or try thee now more dangerous to his throne.” Whom thus the Prince of Darkness answered glad; “Fair daughter, and thou son and grandchild both, High proof ye now have given to be the race Of Satan (for I glory in the name, Antagonist of Heaven’s Almighty King), Amply have merited of me, of all The infernal empire, that so near Heaven’s door Triumphal with triumphal act have met, 390 Mine with this glorious work, and made one realm Hell and this World — one realm, one continent Of easy thoroughfare. Therefore, while I Descend through darkness, on your road with ease. To my associate Powers, them to acquaint With these successes, and with them rejoice, You two this way, among these numerous orbs, All yours, right down to Paradise descend ; There dwell and reign in bliss; thence on the Earth Dominion exercise and in the air, 400 Chiefly on Man, sole lord of all declkred; Him first make sure your thrall, and lastly kill. My substitutes I send ye, and create Plenipotent on Earth, of matchless might Issuing from me : on your joint vigour now My hold of this new kingdom all depends, Through Sin to Death exposed by my exploit. If your joint power prevail, the affairs of Hell No detriment need fear; go, and be strong.” t So saying, he dismissed them; they with speed 410 Their course through thickest constellations held. Spreading their bane; the blasted stars looked wan, And planets, planet-struck, real eclipse Then suffered. The other way Satan went down The causey to Hell-gate; on either side Disparted Chaos over-built exclaimed, And with rebounding surge the bars assailed. That scorned his indignation. Through the gate, Wide open and unguarded, Satan passed, And all about found desolate ; for those 420 Appointed to sit there had left their charge, Flown to the upper World; the rest were all Far to the inland retired, about the Walls Of Pandemonium, city and proud seat Of Lucifer, so by allusion called Of that bright star to Satan paragoned; There kept their watch the legions, while the Grand In council sat, solicitous what chance Might intercept their Emperor sent; so he Departing gave command, and they observed. 430 As when the Tartar from his Russian, foe, By Astracan, over the snowy plains Retires, or Bactrian Sophi, from the horns Of Turkish crescent, leaves all waste beyond The realm of Aladule, in his retreat To Tauris or Casbeen: so these, the late Heaven-banished host, left desert utmost Hell Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch Round their metropolis, and now expecting Each hour their great adventurer from the search 440 Of foreign worlds. He through the midst unmarked. In show plebeian Angel militant Of lowest order, passed ; and, from the door Of that Plutonian hall, invisible Ascended his high throne, which, under state Of richest texture spread, at the upper end Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while He sat, and round about him saw unseen. At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head And shape star-bright appeared, or brighter, clad 450 With what permissive glory since his fall Was left him, or false glitter. All amazed At that so sudden blaze, the Stygian throng Bent their aspect, and whom they wished beheld, Their mighty Chief returned : loud was the acclaim. Forth rushed in haste the great consulting peers, Raised from their dark divan, and with like joy Congratulant approached him, who with hand Silence, and with these words attention, won: “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers ! 460 For in possession such, not only of right, I call ye, and declare ye now, returned, Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth Triumphant out of this infernal pit Abominable, accursed, the house of woe. And dungeon of our tyrant! Now possess, As lords, a spacious World, to our native Heaven Little inferior, by my adventure hard With peril great achieved. Long were to tell What I have done, what suffered, with what pain 470 Voyaged the unreal, vast, unbounded Deep Of horrible confusion, over which By Sin and Death a broad way now is paved. To expedite your glorious march; but I Toiled out my uncouth passage, forced to ride The untractable Abyss, plunged in the womb Of unoriginal Night and Chaos wild. That, jealous of their secrets, fiercely opposed My journey strange, with clamorous uproar Protesting Fate supreme; thence how I found 4S0 The new-created World, which fame in Heaven Long had foretold, a fabric wonderful, Of absolute perfection; therein Man Placed in a Paradise, by our exile Made happy. Him by fraud I have seduced From his Creator, and, the more to increase Your wonder, with an apple! He, thereat Offended — worth your laughter ! — hath given up Both his beloved Man and all his World To Sin and Death a prey, and so to us, 490 Without our hazard, labour, or alarm. To range in, and to dwell, and over Man To rule, as over all he should have ruled. True is, me also he hath judged, or rather Me not, but the brute serpent, in whose shape Man I deceived : that which to me belongs Is enmity, which he will put between Me and mankind; I am to bruise his heel; His seed — when is not set — shall bruise my head : A world who would not purchase with a bruise, 500 Or much more grievous pain ? Ye have the account Of my performance ; what remains, ye Gods, But up and enter now into full bliss?” So having said, a while he stood, expecting Their universal shout and high applause To fill his ear; when, contrary, he hears, On all sides, from innumerable tongues, A dismal universal hiss, the sound Of public scorn. He wondered, but not long Had leisure, wondering at himself now more; 510 His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining Each other, till, supplanted, down he fell A monstrous serpent on his belly prone. Reluctant, but in vain ; a greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned. According to his doom. He would have spoke, But hiss for hiss returned with forked tongue To forked tongue ; for now were all transformed Alike, to serpents all, as accessories 520 To his bold riot. Dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick-swarming now With complicated monsters, head and tail, Scorpion, and asp, and amphisbsena dire, Cerastes horned, hydrus, and ellops drear, And dipsas (not so thick swarmed once the soil Bedropt with blood of Gorgon, or the isle Ophiusa); but still greatest he the midst, Now dragon grown, larger than whom the sun Engendered in the Pythian vale on slime, 530 Huge Python; and his power no less he seemed Above the rest still to retain. They all Him followed, issuing forth to the open field. Where all yet left of that revolted rout, Heaven-fallen, in station stood or just array. Sublime with expectation when to see In triumph issuing forth their glorious Chief; They saw, but other sight instead, a crowd Of ugly serpents ! Horror on them fell. And horrid sympathy; for what they saw 540 They felt themselves now changing: down their arms, Down fell both spear and shield; down they as fast, And the dire hiss renewed, and the dire form Catched by contagion, like in punishment. As in their crime. Thus was the applause they meant Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame Cast on themselves from their own mouths. There stood A grove hard by, sprung up with this their change, His will who reigns above, to aggravate Their penance, laden with fair fruit, like that 550 Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve Used by the Tempter. On that prospect strange Their earnest eyes they fixed, imagining For one forbidden tree a multitude Now risen, to work them further woe or shame; Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce, Though to delude them sent, could not abstain. But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks That curled Megsera. Greedily they plucked 560 The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed; This, more delusive, not the touch, but taste Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste With spattering noise rejected. Oft they assayed. Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft. With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws, With soot and cinders filled ; so oft they fell 570 Into the same illusion, not as Man Whom they triumphed once lapsed. Thus were they plagued And worn with famine long, and ceaseless hiss, Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed; Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo This annual humbling certain numbered days. To dash their pride, and joy for Man seduced. However, some tradition they dispersed Among the heathen of their purchase got. And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called 5S0 Ophion, with Eurynome (the wide- Encroaching Eve perhaps), had first the rule Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn dnven And Ops, ere yet Dictean Jove was born. Meanwhile in Paradise the Hellish pair Too soon arrived; Sin there in power before, Once actual, now in body, and to dwell Habitual habitant; behind her Death, Close following pace for pace, not mounted yet On his pale horse ; to whom Sin thus began : 590 ” Second of Satan sprung, all-conquering Death ! What think’st thou of our empire now, though earned With travail difficult? not better far Than still at Hell’s dark threshold to have sat watch, Unnamed, undreaded, and thyself half-starved ? ” Whom thus the Sin-born Monster answered soon : “To me, who with eternal famine pine, Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven ; There best, where most with ravin I may meet; Which here, though plenteous, all too Uttle seems 600 To stuff this maw, this vast unhide-bound corpse.” To whom the incestuous Mother thus replied: “Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next,’ and fish, and fowl, No homely morsels; and whatever thing The scythe of Time mows down devour unspared; Till I, in Man residing, through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all mfect, And season him thy last and sweetest prey.” This said, they both betook them several ways, 610 Both to destroy, or unimmortal make All kinds, and for destruction to mature Sooner or later ; which the Almighty seeing. From his transcendent seat the Saints among, To those bright Orders uttered thus his voice: “See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance To waste and havoc yonder World, which I So fair and good created, and had still Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man Let in these wasteful furies, who imptite 620 Folly to me (so doth the Prince of Hell And his adherents), that with so much ease I suffer them to enter and possess A place so heavenly, and conniving seem To gratify my scornful enemies, That laugh, as if, transported with sojne fit Of passion, I to them had quitted all. At random yielded up to their misrule; And know not that I called and drew them thither, My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth 630 Which Man’s polluting sin with taint hath shed On what was pure; till, crammed and gorged, nigh burst With sucked and glutted offal, at one sling Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son, Both Sin, and Death, and yawning Grave at last. Through Chaos hurled, obstruct the mouth of Hell For ever, and seal up his ravenous jaws. Then Heaven and Earth, renewed, shall be made pure To sanctity that shall receive no staiii : Till then the curse pronounced on both precedes.” 640 He ended, and the Heavenly audience loud Sung Halleluiah, as the sound of seas, Through multitude that sung: “Just are thy ways, Righteous are thy decrees on all thy works; Who can extenuate thee?” Next, to the Son, Destined restorer of mankind, by whom New Heaven and Earth shall to the ages rise, Or down from Heaven descend. Such was their song. While the Creator, calling forth by name His mighty Angels, gave them several charge, 650 As sorted best with present things. The sun Had first his precept so to move, so shine, As might affect the Earth with cold and heat Scarce tolerable, and from the north to call Decrepit winter, from the south to bring Solstitial summer’s heat. To the blanc moon Her office they prescribed; to the other five Their planetary motions and aspects, In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite, Of noxious efficacy, and when to join 660 In synod unbenign ; and taught the fixed Their influence malignant when to shower; Which of them rising with the sun, or falling. Should prove tempestuous. To the winds they set Their corners, when with bluster to confound Sea, air, and shore; the thunder when to roll With terror through the dark aerial hall. Some say he bid his Angels turn askance The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more From the sun’s axle; they with labour pushed 670 Oblique the centric globe: some say the sun Was bid turn reins from the equinoctial road Like distant breadth to Taurus with the seven Atlantic Sisters, and the Spartan Twins, Up to the Tropic Crab; thence down amain By Leo and the Virgin and the Scales, As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change Of seasons to each clime : else had the spring Perpetual smiled on Earth with vernant flowers, Equal in days and nights, except to those 680 Beyond the jjolar circles; to them day Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun, To recompense his distance, in their sight Had rounded still the horizon, and not known Or east or west; which had forbid the snow From cold Estotiland, and south as far Beneath Magellan. At that tasted fruit The sun, as from Thyestean banquet, turned His/course intended: else how had the World Inhabited, though sinless, more than now 690 Avoided pinching cold and scorching heat? These changes in the heavens, though slow, produced Like change on sea and land, sideral blast, Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot. Corrupt and pestilent. Now from the north Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore. Bursting their brazen dungeon, armed with ice And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw, Boreas and Csecias and Argestes loud And Thrascias rend the woods and seas: upturn ; 700 With adverse blasts upturns them from the south Notus and Afer black with thundrous clouds From Serraliona; thwart of these, as fierce Forth rush the Levant and the Ponent winds, Eurus and Zephyr with their lateral noise. Sirocco, and Libecchio. Thus began Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first, Daughter of Sin, among the irrational Death introduced through fierce antipathy : Beast now with beast ‘gan war, and fowl with fowl, 710 And fish with fish ; to graze the herb all leaving Devoured each other; nor stood much in awe Of Man, but fled him, or with countenance grim Glared on him passing. These were from without The growing miseries, which Adam saw Already in part, though bid in gloomiest shade, To sorrow abandoned, but worse felt within, And, in a troubled sea of passion tost, Thus to disburden sought with sad complaint : “O miserable of happy ! is this the end 720 Of this new glorious World, and me so late The glory of that glory? who now, become Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face Of God, whom to behold was then my highth Of happiness ! Yet well, if here would end The misery; I deserved it, and would bear My own deservings; but this will not serve: All that I eat or drink, or shall beget, Is propagated curse. O voice, once heard Delightfully, ‘Increase and multiply’; 730 Now death to hear ! for what can I increase Or multiply, but curses on my head? Who, of all ages to succeed, but, feeling The evil on him brought by me, will curse My head ? ‘ 111 fare our Ancestor impure ! For this we may thank Adam ! ‘ but his thanks Shall be the execration; so, besides Mine own that bide upon me, all from me Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound. On me, as on their natural centre, light 740 Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes ! Did I request thee. Maker, from my clay To mould me Man ? did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me, or here place In this delicious garden? As my will Concurred not to my being, it were but right And equal to reduce me to my dust, Desirous to resign and render back All I received, unable to perform 7So Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold The good I sought not. To the loss of that, Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added The sense of endless woes? inexplicable Thy justice seems. Yet, to say truth, too late I thus contest; then should have been refused Those terms whatever, when they were proposed. Thou didst accept them : wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? And though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son 760 Prove disobedient, and, reproved, retort, ‘ Wherefore didst thou beget me ? I sought it not ! ‘ Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But natural necessity, begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him; thy reward was of his grace; Thy punishment then justly is at his will. Be it so, for I submit ; his doom is fair. That dust I am, and shall to dust return. 770 O welcome hour whenever ! Why delays His hand to execute what his decree Fixed on this day? Why do I overlive? Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet Mortality, my sentence, and be earth Insensible ! how glad would lay me down As in my mother’s lap ! There I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would thunder in my ears; no fear of worse 7S0 To me and to my offspring would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, lest all I cannot die; Lest that pure breath of life, the spirit of Man Which God inspired, cannot together perish With this corporeal clod; then, in the grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living death? O thought Horrid, if true ! Yet why ? It was but breath Of life that sinned : what dies but what had life 790 And sin? the body properly hath neither. All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since human reach no further knows. For though the Lord of all be infinite. Is his wrath also? Be it, Man is not so, But mortal doomed. How can he exercise Wrath without end on Man, whom death must end? Can he make deathless death ? That were to make Strange contradiction; which to God himself Impossible is held, as argument Sao Of weakness, not of power. Will he draw out, For anger’s sake, finite to infinite In punished Man, to satisfy his rigour Satisfied never? That were to extend His sentence beyond dust and Nature’s law; By which all causes else according still To the reception of their matter act. Not to the extent of their own sphere. But say That death be not one stroke, as I stipposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery gio From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me and without me, and so last To perpetuity Ay me ! that fear Comes thundering back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head ! Both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both : Nor I on my part single; in me all Posterity stands cursed. Fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons ! Oh, were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none! 820 So disinherited, how would ye bless Me, now your curse ! Ah, why should all mankind, For one man’s fault, thus guiltless be condemned, If guiltless ? But from me what can proceed But all corrupt, both mind and will depraved Not to do only, but to will the same With me? How can they then acquitted stand In sight of God? Him, after all disputes, Forced I absolve; all my evasions vain And reasonings, though through mazes, lead me still S30 But to my own conviction : first and last On me, me only, as the source and spring Of all corruption, all the blame lights due; So might the wrath ! Fond wish ! couldst thou support That burden, heavier than the Earth to bear; Than all the World much heavier, though divided With that bad woman ? Thus, what thou desir’st, And what thou fear’st, alike destroys all hope Of refuge, and concludes thee miserable Beyond all past example and future; S40 To Satan only like, both crime and doom. Conscience ! into what abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which 1 find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!” Thus Adam to himself lamented loud Through the still night, not now, as ere Man fell, Wholesome and cool and mild, but with black air Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom; Which to his evil conscience represented All things with double terror. On the ground 850 Outstretched he lay, on the cold ground, and oft Cursed his creation; Death as oft accused Of tardy execution, since denounced The day of his offence. “Why comes not Death,” Said he, “with one thrice-acceptable stroke To end me? Shall Truth fail to keep her word, Justice divine not hasten to be just? But Death comes not at call; Justice divine Mends not her slowest pace for prayers or cries. woods, O fountains, hillocks, dales, and bowers ! 860 With other echo late I taught your shades To answer, and resound far other song.” Whom thus afflicted when sad Eve beheld. Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh, Soft words to his fierce .passion she assayed; But her with stern regard he thus repelled : “Out of my sight, thou serpent! that name best Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as false And hateful : nothing wants, but that thy shape, Like his, and colour serpentine, may show 870 Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended To hellish falsehood, snare them. But for thee 1 had persisted happy, had not thy pride And wandering vanity, when least was safe, Rejected my forewarning, and disdained Not to be trusted, longing to be seen, Though by the Devil himself, him overweening To overreach ; but, with the Serpent meeting, Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee, 880 To. trust thee from my side, imagined wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults ; And understood not all was but a show, Rather than solid virtue, all but a fib Crooked by nature — bent, as now appears, More to the part sinister — from me drawn ; Well if thrown out, as supernumerary To my just number found !y Oh, why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven With Spirits masculine, create at last 890 This novelty on Eartly this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once With men, ^as Angels, without feminine ; Or find some other way to generate Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen, And more that shall befall — innumerable Disturbances on Earth through female snares, And strait conjunction with this sex. For either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him, or mistake; 900 Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain. Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained By a far worse, or, if she love, withheld By parents ; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate or shame : Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound.” –‘ He added not, and from her turned; but Eve, Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing, 910 And tresses all disordered, at his feet Fell humble, and, embracing them, besought His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint: ” Forsake me not thus, Adam ! witness Heaven What love sincere and reverence in my heart I bear thee, and unweeting have offended, Unhappily deceived ! Thy suppliant I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not. Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid, Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, 920 My only strength and stay ; forlorn of thee, Whither shall I betake me, where subsist? While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps, .Between us two let there be peace j/both joining, As joined in injuries, one enmity Against a foe by doom express assigned us, That cruel Serpent. On me exercise not Thy hatred for this misery befallen; On me already lost, me than thyself More miserable. Both have sinned; but thou 930 Against God only; I against God and thee, And to the place of judgment will return, There with my cries importune Heaven, that all The sentence, from thy head removed, may light On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe. Me, me only, just object of His ire/^ She ended weeping; and her lowly plight, Immovable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration. Soon his heart relented 940 Towards her, his life so late and sole delight. Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost. And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon : p. L. 20 “Unwary, and too desirous, as before So now, of what thou know’st not, who desir’st The punishment all on thyself! Alas! Bear thine own first, ill able to sustain 950 His full wrath, whose thou feel’st as yet least part, And my displeasure bear’st so ill. If prayers Could alter high decrees, I to that place Would speed before thee, and be louder heard, That on my head all might be visited. Thy frailty and infirmer sex forgiven. To me committed, and by me exposed. But rise; let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blamed enough elsewhere-, but strive In offices of love, how we may lighten 960 Each other’s burden, in our share of woe ; Since this day’s death denounced, if aught I see, Will prove no sudden, but a slow-paced evil, A long day’s dying, to augment our pain. And to our seed (O hapless seed !) derivedJ’ To whom thus Eve, recovering heart, replied : “Adam, by sad experiment I know How little weight my words with thee can find, Found so erroneous, thence by just event Found so unfortunate ; nevertheless, 970 Restored by thee, vile as I am, to place Of new acceptance, hopeful to regain Thy love, the sole contentment of my heart, Living or dying from thee I will not hide What thoughts in my unquiet breast are risen. Tending to some relief of our extremes. Or end, though sharp and sad, yet tolerable, As in our evils, and of easier choice. If care of our descent perplex us most, Which must be born to certain woe, devoured 980 By Death at last (and miserable it is To be to others cause of misery, Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring Into this cursed World a woeful race, That after wretched life must be at last Food for so foul a monster), in thy power It lies, yet ere conception, to prevent The race unblest, to being yet unbegot. Childless thou art, childless remain ; so Death Shall be deceived his glut, and with us two 990 Be forced to satisfy his ravenous maw. But if thou judge it hard and difficult, Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain From love’s due rites, nuptial embraces sweet, And with desire to languish without hope, Before the present object languishing With like desire, which would be misery And torment less than none of what we dread; Then, both our selves and seed at once to free From what we fear for both, let us make short, 1000 Let us seek Death, or, he not found, supply With our own hands his office on ourselves. Why stand we longer shivering under fears That show no end but death, and have the power. Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy?” She ended here, or vehement despair Broke off the rest; so much of death her thoughts Had entertained as dyed her cheeks with pale. But Adam, with such counsel nothing swayed, loio To better hopes his more attentive mind Labouring had raised, and thus to Eve replied: “Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more sublime And excellent than what thy mind contemns j i’But self-destruction therefore sought refutes That excellence thought in thee, and implies, Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of Hfe and pleasure overloved/ Or if thou covet death, as utmost end 1020 Of misery, so thinking to evade The penalty pronounced, doubt not but God Hath wiselier armed his vengeful ire than so To be forestalled ; much more I fear lest death So snatched will not exempt us from the pain We are by doom to pay ; rather such acts Of contumacy will provoke the Highest To make death in us live. Then let us seek Some safer resolution, which methinks I have in view, calling to mind with heed 1030 Part of our sentence, that thy seed shall bruise The Serpent’s head ; piteous amends ! unless Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand foe, Satan, who in the serpent hath contrived Against us this deceit. To crush his head Would be revenge indeed ; which will be lost By death brought on ourselves, or childless days Resolved as thou proposest; so our foe Shall scape his punishment ordained, and we Instead shall double ours upon our heads. 1040 No more be mentioned then of violence Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness. That cuts us off from hope, and savours only Rancour and pride, impatience and despite, Reluctance against God and his just yoke Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild And gracious temper he both heard and judged, Without wrath or reviling; we expected Immediate dissolution, which we thought Was meant by death that day ; when, lo ! to thee 1050 Pains only in child-bearing were foretold, And bringing forth, soon recompensed with joy, Fruit of thy womb; on me the curse aslope Glanced on the ground : with labour I must earn My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse; My labour will sustain me ; and, lest cold Or heat should injure us, his timely care Hath, unbesought, provided, and his hands Clothed us unworthy, pitying while he judged ; How much more, if we pray him, will his ear 1060 Be open, and his heart to pity incline, And teach us further by what means to^ shun The inclement seasons, rain, ice, hail, and snow ! Which now the sky with various face begins To show us in this mountain, while the winds Blow moist and keen, shattering the graceful locks Of these fair spreading trees ; which bids us seek Some better shroud, some better warmth to cherish Our limbs benumbed, ere this diurnal star Leave cold the night, how we his gathered beams 1070 Reflected may with matter sere foment, Or by collision of two bodies grind The air attrite to fire ; as late the clouds, Justling or pushed with winds, rude in their shock. Tine the slant Hghtning, whose thwart flame driven down Kindles the gummy bark of fir or pine, And sends a comfortable heat from far, Which might supply the sun. Such fire to use, And what may else be remedy or cure To evils which our own misdeeds have wrought, loSo He will instruct us praying, and of grace Beseeching him; so as we need not fear To pass commodiously this life, sustained By him with many comforts, till we end In dust, our final rest and native home. What better can we do, than, to the place Repairing where he judged us, prostrate fall Before him reverent, and there confess Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air 1090 Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek? Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn From’ his displeasure ; in whose look serene, When angry most he seemed and most severe, What else but favour, grace, and mercy shone?” So spake our father penitent; nor Eve :f’elt less remorse. They, forthwith to the place Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell Before him reverent, and both confessed noo Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears Watering the ground, and with their sighs the air Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeigned and humiliation meek.

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