CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE JNCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Date Due 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 borneii umvonmy uin«y 
 
 PR 3588.T46 
 
 Essays on Milton, 
 
 3 1924 013 193 416 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 31 9341 6 
 
Essays on Milton 
 
 BY 
 
 ELBERT N. S. THOMPSON, Ph.D. 
 
 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 
 
 NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 
 
 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 MDCCCCXIV 
 
3588 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 JFIRST PRINTED FROM TYPE, SEPTEMBER, 1914 
 750 COPIES 
 
Essays on Milton 
 
Preface 
 
 THE essays contained in this volume have been 
 prepared in the belief that some such help is 
 needed either for a first study or a serious reading 
 of Milton's poetry and prose. No one of the essays 
 professes to be a minute study of the subject under 
 discussion. In consequence, footnotes have been 
 given only where they have seemed absolutely essen- 
 tial; and no formal bibliography is included, since 
 the author hopes to publish soon a topical bibliog- 
 raphy of Milton. For kind permission to reprint 
 the chapter, "The Theme of Paradise Lost" thanks 
 are due the editors of the Publications of the Modern 
 Language Association of America. If the essays 
 prove of assistance as an introduction to the work 
 of Milton, their object will be attained. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Milton, "The Last of the Elizabethans" .... n 
 
 II. Milton's Temperament and Ideals 37 
 
 III. The True Bearing of Milton's Prose 59 
 
 IV. Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 82 
 
 V. The Sources of Paradise Lost: 
 
 k (a) The Bible 109 
 
 (b) The Classics 130 
 
 (f) The Italian Renaissance 148 
 
 {d) English Poetry 156 
 
 (e) Summary 170 
 
 VI. The Theme of Paradise Lost 179 
 
 VII. Milton's Art . . - 197 
 
Essays on Milton 
 
Essays on Milton 
 
 Chapter I 
 
 Milton, the "Last of the Elizabethans" 
 
 \ LTHOUGH the quickening impulse of the 
 -*•■*- Renaissance had scarcely begun, in 1575, 
 to revive the flagging spirit of English poetry, 
 and although civil and religious dissensions de- 
 flected from literature talents that otherwise would 
 have been devoted to her service, so that the first 
 real harvest of the new poetry was delayed until 
 the sixteenth century was three quarters past, 
 nevertheless, before the close of the queen's reign 
 in 1603, two forms of poetry were raised to an 
 excellence never since equalled. The glorious 
 fruitage of the Elizabethan age was in drama and 
 lyric. Much as English poetry may owe to the 
 contributors to TotteVs Miscellany, their sonnets 
 and lyrics seem crude indeed beside the matchless 
 verse of the closing years of the century. Equally 
 marked is the difference between the rude comedy 
 and tragedy that England could offer the queen 
 at her coronation and the great plays that were 
 brought for her pleasure from the Bankside to 
 Whitehall before her death. During these few 
 
12 Essays on Milton 
 
 decades, progress both in lyric and drama was phe- 
 nomenal. An Elizabethan song-book is filled with 
 lyrics charming for their simplicity, melody, and 
 fervor; and the music-lover who looks before and 
 after thinks unconsciously of "bare ruined choirs 
 where late the sweet birds sang." In dramatic 
 literature progress was equally marked; tragedy 
 responded to all the throbbing emotion and vivid 
 imagination of the day, and comedy gave its inter- 
 pretation of life, either beautifully poetic in its 
 viewpoint or keen and observant in its realism. It 
 was the age of both lyric and drama. 
 
 Although this quick maturing of the Elizabethan 
 drama remains unparalleled, it is not beyond ex- 
 planation. For two centuries and more English- 
 men had found instruction and diversion in their 
 plays, till the dramatic instinct was ingrained in 
 their natures. Into the sacred drama had gone 
 the highest knowledge and most earnest hope of 
 those centuries. By long practice the first prin- 
 ciples of play-writing and an appreciation of the 
 art were learned and cultivated. Then came the 
 Renaissance to quicken the native dramatic im- 
 pulse. Dramatists were taught to ground their 
 work firmly on human life; they were furnished 
 new models and new forms of drama. Instantly, 
 the crude comedy and tragedy that but yester- 
 day had sufficed were cast aside; yet, fortunately, 
 a spiritless imitation of the classical drama was 
 just as decisively rejected. And the drama sprang 
 to its great culmination. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 13 
 
 It may be harder to explain the rapid develop- 
 ment of the Elizabethan lyric. Its perfection, in 
 the first place, lay in form more than in content. 
 At its best, the Elizabethan lyric was marked by 
 spontaneity and fervor, grace and charm, and ease 
 and simplicity of movement. The poets in hand- 
 ling their meters showed a versatility that seems 
 to belie the known facts regarding the newness of 
 this kind of poetry in England. But the poorer 
 lyrics are marred by artificiality and a fondness 
 for strange conceits that betray ingenuity rather 
 than genius in their authors. The song in praise 
 of an imaginary mistress served as a stock theme 
 on which one's skill might be proved. Yet even 
 a reader who knows the worst as well as the best 
 of Elizabethan verse, has one feeling toward the 
 age more strong than any other — that the im- 
 pulse for song throbbed in the pulse of all England 
 with a force that would inspire poets to the high- 
 est achievements in lyric verse. 
 
 In other forms of poetry, however, the same 
 power was not shown. Since the Renaissance had 
 brought its vast enrichment to English thought 
 only a few years before, time had not yet elapsed 
 for a full fruition. New meters and a general 
 knowledge of the quantitative principle of verse 
 had been transmitted by the New Learning to 
 the Tudor poets, as well as new forms of poetry 
 like the sonnet and the ode, and new themes in 
 the pastoral and the elegy. At the same time, 
 there was in English hearts enough creative im- 
 
14 Essays on Milton 
 
 pulse to check the craze for slavish imitation; the 
 Areopagites might theorize on rhythm and exem- 
 plify their theories, but Spenser and the inspired 
 English poets had their way. There was impulse, 
 also, sufficient to assimilate much of the artistic 
 acquisition. But in poetry other than drama or 
 lyric the poets were obviously experimenting in a 
 new art. Their classicism was not yet a natural 
 part of their speech; in long efforts their sense of 
 form was not yet sure, for the best in Virgil was 
 but half appreciated. The pastoral, the ode, the 
 elegy, and the epic were left for a later generation 
 to perfect. 
 
 Soon the Elizabethan age gave way to the 
 Caroline. The line of demarcation between the 
 two is necessarily shadowy and broken; for 
 the poetry of the one age differed from that of 
 the other not in kind so much as in quality and 
 power. In general, the Caroline authors carried 
 those forms of poetry already perfected on beyond 
 their culmination and down the further slope to- 
 ward decay. It needs no argument to show that 
 tragedy and comedy became labored and feeble; 
 Brome and Cartwright compare poorly with Jonson 
 and Dekker. It is harder to demonstrate the inferi- 
 ority of the Caroline lyric. The greatest of the 
 Caroline song writers preserve in part the high 
 traditions they inherited. Carew at his best 
 shows all of Jonson's fine sense of form; Herrick 
 equals the greatest of his predecessors in ease and 
 abandon to lyric impulse. But their work is un- 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 15 
 
 even in execution, and faults partially nullify the 
 graces. Carew is seldom at his best; Herrick 
 trifles and has slight sense of values; Donne labors 
 under a plethora of extraordinary thought. Fine 
 as many Caroline lyrics are, even they, like the 
 drama of the time, show decidedly decadent 
 tendencies. 
 
 Among these Caroline poets Milton is often 
 called "the last of the Elizabethans," and it is the 
 purpose of this chapter to justify the designation. 
 Standing aloof from the prevailing literary influ- 
 ences of his day, Milton contributed nothing to 
 decadent drama and song. His contact with the 
 drama was made rather in the study than in the 
 playhouse. Even when he undertook, in one of 
 his letters, to describe the theatrical repertoire of 
 Caroline London, his words look back, with only 
 a passing reference to Romeo and Juliet it may be, 
 to the work of Terence and Seneca. Ancient lit- 
 erature seemed to him noble and inspiring beside 
 the low-keyed writings of his contemporaries. For 
 this reason, he cared just as little to swell the vol- 
 ume of the love songs. Leaving that sort of poetry 
 to "libidinous and ignorant poetasters," as he con- 
 temptuously called them, he devoted his talents 
 to other things, choosing those forms left unde- 
 veloped by the Elizabethans. He took from them 
 the pastoral, the pastoral elegy, the sonnet, and 
 the masque, and, although he may not have im- 
 proved in all respects what he attempted, he in- 
 variably elevated and ennobled what he touched. 
 
16 Essays on Milton 
 
 In his early years he did not venture upon the 
 longer narrative poem, which he was familiar with 
 in English literature chiefly in Sylvester's trans- 
 lation of Du Bartas, in Daniel's, Drayton's, and 
 Warner's historical poems, and in Spenser's Faerie 
 Queene. To accomplish such greater undertak- 
 ings the schooling of years was necessary; for, 
 although Milton drew inspiration from his imme- 
 diate predecessors, he had also the wide horizon 
 of the scholar and rose above the standards set 
 by his own generation. In literature as in life 
 his "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." 
 
 The secret of Milton's power to ennoble what 
 he attempted lay partly in his character and 
 partly in ; his training. Where the pastoral and 
 the sonnet depended on classical and Renaissance 
 inspiration, he enjoyed a real advantage. Marlowe 
 had caught instinctively the beauty of classical 
 legend and literature. But the ardor that in-* 
 spired his impassioned address to Helen of Troy 
 differs widely from the scholarly veneration that 
 Milton had for Grecian poetry. Even far less 
 comparable with Milton's was the scholarship of 
 Gabriel Harvey. He could not have been so 
 stupidly pedantic as he has been represented, al- 
 though he did actually rank Sylvester on a par 
 with Dante and above Euripides; for he seems 
 to have appreciated the power of much ancient 
 literature. 1 Yet he lacked altogether the creative 
 impulse that Milton possessed, to show him how 
 
 1 Lee, French Renaissance, p. 347. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 17 
 
 that old art might transform and glorify the new. 
 Milton, however, was scholar and artist combined. 
 He had so thoroughly mastered Latin poetry that 
 not only his Latin verses but also his early Eng- 
 lish poems show plainly the thorough assimilation 
 of Roman art. He wrote Italian poetry equally 
 well. The fruits of his study, therefore, were 
 knowledge and power combined, and poetic forms 
 that were handled by the Elizabethans with some- 
 thing of unfamiliarity found in Milton a truly 
 sympathetic master. 
 
 The relation of the Elizabethans to their new 
 acquisitions from classical antiquity was not dis- 
 similar to the attitude of Milton toward the new 
 scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century. 
 The English humanists had gained a knowledge of 
 a forgotten past as he had come to know the new 
 scientific truth, notably in astronomy. But that 
 truth was still for him and his countrymen in 
 general too strange and too destitute of all but 
 scholarly associations to yield readily to artistic 
 treatment. In the same way, what the Eliza- 
 bethans had learned of higher creative art was as 
 yet but imperfectly assimilated. It had stimu- 
 lated their own creative effort, but as artists they 
 still remained in the experimental stage. Milton's 
 scholarship was wide and sure; what he had 
 studied was thoroughly his own; and he handled 
 these exotic types of poetry with both ease and 
 power. 
 
 Milton, it has been said, did little for song. 
 
1 8 Essays on Milton 
 
 Comus, to be sure, is graced by several charming 
 lyrics, as musical as any in the Elizabethan reper- 
 toire. Dr. Burney, indeed, felt that Henry Lawes, 
 who wrote the accompaniments, did them but 
 scant justice. The songs of Comus, though, do 
 not represent strictly, either in theme or spirit, 
 the common Elizabethan tradition, and are toe 
 few to weigh heavily even in the early work oi 
 their author. It is strange that a true musician 
 like Milton, reared in the home of a cultured lovei 
 of the art, should have slighted song. His ear, il 
 seems, was attuned to harmony higher than h« 
 could find in the Elizabethan song-book or tht 
 English psalmody that he loved. It was the music 
 of the Greek chorus and the Pindaric ode thai 
 more fully satisfied him. So he turned from 
 the simpler lyric forms of the Elizabethans and 
 with rare artistry composed the elusive music oi 
 Lycidas and the beautifully modulated verse ol 
 L' Allegro and // Penseroso. 
 
 No type of poetry was more popular among the 
 Elizabethans than the pastoral. One poetical mis- 
 cellany, England's Helicon, was largely filled with 
 it, and all poets gave more or less time to its cul- 
 tivation; for pastoralism afforded them full op- 
 portunity to exercise their powers in new lyri< 
 forms and to handle the mythology of antiquity, 
 Of these pastoralists Edmund Spenser was un- 
 questionably the greatest, both in the general pas- 
 toral type and in the special form of elegy. Hii 
 Shepherd's Calender and his Astrophel, though, im 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 19 
 
 press the reader with their artificiality and unre- 
 ality. Spenser is far less amenable to this blame 
 than others; for his art is higher than theirs, and 
 he really has deep-seated convictions to express. 
 Unfortunately, his thought is seemingly obscured 
 by his literary convention. He draws pretty pic- 
 tures of nature and broaches great subjects; but 
 the garb is so unnatural that it is hard to recog- 
 nize the true poet beneath it. Much more is this 
 true of Spenser's contemporaries, and unreality is 
 the blemish that mars the whole body of Eliza- 
 bethan pastoralism. 
 
 Pastoralism could hardly be other than unreal. 
 The question of all engrossing interest to these 
 Tudor poets was whether life in the country or 
 .the city was most free from care. Sidney undoubt- 
 edly gave the true answer: that he who would 
 find total exemption from care and trouble must 
 seek it neither in country nor in city but in the 
 grave. Yet the literary cult in general shrank from 
 such brutal truth. 1 Instead, it chose to conjure 
 up an unreal land, where an idyllic peace might be 
 enjoyed. In some love lyrics the theme is charm- 
 ingly developed. Greene's Shepherd's Wife's Song, 
 with its sweetly recurring refrain, pleads for the 
 shepherd's lot: 
 
 Thus with his wife he spends the year, as blithe 
 As doth the king at every tide or sithe; 
 
 'And blither too: 
 For kings have wars and broils to take in hand, 
 When shepherds laugh and love upon the land. 
 1 Courthope, History of English Poetry, 2, p. 314. 
 
20 Essays on Milton 
 
 Ah then, ah then, 
 If country loves such sweet desires do gain, 
 What lady would not love a shepherd swain? 
 
 The music and delicacy of feeling in such verse 
 gloss over its unreality; but elsewhere, in more 
 strictly pastoral poetry, those saving elements 
 often are lacking. 
 
 The unreality of the Elizabethan pastoral is 
 well illustrated by Barnfield. In the conventional 
 way his Shepheards Content exalts the rustic's life 
 above the king's. The shepherd 
 
 Sits all Day lowd-piping on a Hill, 
 The whilst his flocke about him daunce apace, 
 His hart with ioy, his eares with Musique fill: 
 Anon a bleating Weather beares the Bace, 
 A Lambe the Treble; and to his disgrace 
 Another answers like a middle Meane: 
 Thus euery one to beare a Part are faine. 
 
 Elsewhere, Barnfield depicts still more unnatu- 
 rally the pleasures of the shepherd's life. The poet 
 promises him doves and robins for pets, table 
 delicacies, and fine clothes. It is done with a 
 certain charm in The Affectionate Shepheard: 
 
 Wilt thou set springes in a frostie Night, 
 To catch the long-billd Woodcocke and the Snype? 
 (By the bright glimmering of the Starrie light) 
 The Partridge, Phaesant, or the greedie Grype? 
 
 He lend thee lyme-twigs, and fine sparrow calls, 
 Wherewith the Fowler silly Birds inthralls. 
 
 But where the charm is greatest the want of deep 
 thought and true emotion is possibly most strongly 
 felt. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 21 
 
 Yet from just such pastoral poetry L' Allegro 
 and 77 Penseroso sprang. The reader of Milton 
 can not lose sight of the background of Barnfield's 
 lyrics, if he has ever known them. And even 
 plainer reminiscences of the older poetry may 
 haunt him. The last lines of these two poems 
 bring to mind the close of Marlowe's lyric: 
 
 If these delights thy mind may move, 
 Then live with me and be my love, 
 
 and the corresponding part of Raleigh's clever 
 rejoinder: 
 
 Then these delights my mind might move 
 To live with thee and be thy love. 
 
 Or, as one reads of the dawn in L' Allegro and the 
 pleasures of the day, the picture in Breton's Pas- 
 sionate Shepheard will present itself. 1 
 
 Who can live in heart so glad 
 As the merry country lad ? 
 Who upon a fair green balk 
 May at pleasure sit and walk, 
 And amid the azure skies 
 See the morning sun arise, — 
 While he hears in every spring 
 How the birds do chirp and sing: 
 Or before the hounds in cry 
 See the hare go stealing by: 
 Or along the shallow brook, 
 Angling with a baited hook, 
 See the fishes leap and play 
 In a blessed sunny day: 
 Or to hear the partridge call, 
 Till she have her covey all: 
 
 1 J. L. Lowes, Mod. Lang. Rev., 6, pp. 206-209. 
 
22 Essays on Milton 
 
 Or to see the subtle fox, 
 
 How the villain plies the box: 
 
 After feeding on his prey, 
 
 How he closely sneaks away, 
 
 Through the hedge and down the furrow 
 
 Till he gets into his burrow: 
 
 Then the bee to gather honey, 
 
 And the little black-haired coney, 
 
 On a bank for sunny place, 
 
 With her forefeet wash her face: 
 
 Are not these, with thousands moe 
 
 Than the courts of kings do know, 
 
 The true pleasing spirit's sights 
 
 That may breed true love's delights? 
 
 These lines both in content and movement are 
 the most direct forerunners of V Allegro. 
 
 But Breton's pastorals in general and one of his 
 little prose works, Fantastickes, are written in this 
 same idyllic vein. Fantastickes consists of a series 
 of neat little prose essays, resembling somewhat 
 the sketches of the character books, on the differ- 
 ent seasons of the year, the twelve months, and 
 the twelve hours of the day. In these the reader 
 is reminded of L' Allegro. At "three of the 
 clocke" "the Cocke cals the seruants to their 
 dayes work, . . . the Milke-maids begin to looke 
 toward their dayry, . . . the Sparrow beginnes to 
 chirpe about the house." At four o'clock, "crowes 
 the Cocke lustily, and claps his wings for ioy of 
 the light, and with his Hennes leaps lightly from 
 his Roust." At five, "the Maids are at milking, 
 and the seruants at Plough; . . . the Shepheard is 
 almost gotten to his Fold; . . . the hounds begin 
 to find after the Hare, and horse and foot follow 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 23 
 
 after the cry." At six, "the Mower falles to 
 whetting of his Sythe, and the Beaters of Hempe 
 giue a hoh to euery blow." A nd so through the 
 series of little s ketches, the reader comes upo n 
 one reminder alter another of the chosen pleasures 
 ol L'Allegro's day. 
 
 It is interesting to see how Milton has re- 
 touched this background with an artist's hand. 
 The besetting sin of the Elizabethan poet was his 
 proneness to indulge in strange conceits or ex- 
 cesses of fancy. Barnfield, for example, in support 
 of the oft-expressed preference for black to white, 
 presents a long series of illustrations drawn from 
 animate and inanimate nature. Of this ingenious 
 argument, which was carried on even by Sidney 
 and Shakespeare in their sonnets, only a faint 
 reminiscence appears in the lines of II Penseroso: 
 
 Black, but such as in esteem 
 
 Prince Memnon's sister might beseem. 
 
 Barnfield is unable to go far without indulgence in 
 such conceit. He can prove that a shepherd is 
 courtier, scholar, soldier, and gentleman, and then 
 end his argument with the assertion: 
 
 In whose sweete lap He lay me downe to sleepe, 
 And neuer wake till Marble-stones shall weepe. 
 
 But Milton, even in his early poems, seldom yields 
 to this craze for novelty, and he follows consis- 
 tently the highway of poetic art. 
 
 L Allegro and 77 Penseroso, therefore, are written 
 
24 Essays on Milton 
 
 with an art that exalts them far above the pas- 
 toral type. The classicism that graces them be- 
 tokens the poet as well as the scholar; it shows, 
 in addition to learning, an imaginative reworking- 
 of old legend. The little glimpses that thej )oems 
 give of natural scene ry~are as r eal as they, are 
 ctrar nringT The c ottage hajQudiden. , by u the, oaks, 
 the little window fringed with crejeoerSj^the hedge- 
 row elms, the mountains and the shore, ^ and the 
 nightingale among the trees — all are there. The 
 efforts of readers to identify the locality give 
 proof of the poe t's tru th t o natu re. But some- 
 thing more than thislen!aTTreaIrty to L' Allegro and 
 77 Penseroso that the Elizabethan pastoral never 
 possessed. Instead of the fanciful pleasures of an 
 unreal existenc^^Mttfo^TTie'fe' describes the true 
 delights ^^""^TroH^s^m&^ ^^tylind th e" 
 rjeaTpastimes of rural England^ auch a man in 
 his more carefree moods finds in nature's stirring 
 life a real appeal and in rustic society a true com- 
 panionship* During moods of refl ection he can 
 find amid these same natur al surround ings an 
 e QMsIj!3li™i and inspiratio n, and from the ""world 
 of books and music a stimulus tr> which pypn in 
 
 pniwwnM hum JiilMnr 
 
 his other mood he was not Unresponsive. Thus 
 
 ~~ — ITT " rT " r T~ 1ir i i imm» M "u iJ ww i< i i J i n i n urn iii i^ ijiii !■■■ d f- ■ , 
 
 Milton has interpreted nature from the true stand-., 
 point of mood; he has associated man with the 
 world in which he lives. Pastoralism, which re- 
 mains in the poems only as a background, thus 
 yields place to a true interpretation of life. 
 
 In respect to fojm, also, these two poems carry 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 25 
 
 higher the Elizabethan pastoral. The Tudor lyrist 
 possessed sure artistry only in comparatively short 
 songs, and in simple, though melodious and ever- 
 varying, verse and stanza forms. Far higher is the 
 art of Milton. The subtle musical cadences left 
 by the rhythm, as it accommodates itself freely to 
 the most delicate changes in thought or sound, 
 show the master musician. Here is literary art 
 working in minutiae. Equally striking is the ar- 
 tistic structure of the poems. Milton set the same 
 pattern for the development of the two moods. 
 KfJJll^frro begins by banishing melancholy, as a 
 •mood inharmonious with his teekngs; 11 FenseTUso 
 bg gins Willi ih e b^ii idl rnTe T tr^f*'vain7~9eludihg 
 j oys! Eac^p1oeln7°witTi"*tlie"same e mploymen t *of 
 classical imagery an<T allusion^ after invoking com- 
 panions, suited "toTt^moo37pSs s ^ s onto a" descrip- 
 tion of its sense of true delight. How close "the 
 rorrps pnndenre re alty is b etween the two, only a 
 careful scrutiny can reveal. A single line, for ex- 
 ample, in one, "so b'ux om, blithe, and debon = 
 air," finds its close counterpart in the other's, 
 "sober, s teadfast, and demur e." Clearly, Milton 
 is developing with an artist's hand a carefully 
 wrought plan. In each case he works with the 
 surest grasp of total effect. Both poems rise 
 forcefully from their beautiful beginnings to fine 
 artistic climaxes ; for ^the music o f the lines and 
 the beauty of the thought seem tb'increale^sjihey 
 appi»»GJ^-4:heip-«<e»d'B-. It is often said that the 
 close of 77 Penseroso represents the high water 
 
26 Essays on Milton 
 
 mark of English poetry. In form the two poems 
 are unrivalled. 
 
 It would be needless to comment on the -ex- 
 quisite phrasing of these companion poems. Here 
 is all the old Elizabethan facility of expression, 
 with something of conscious art added in place of 
 the old-time spontaneity; but the aptly chosen 
 adjectives and the compact phrases, that suggest 
 pictures rich in color, sound, and movement and 
 modulate the verses sweetly to the ear, can not be 
 described. 
 
 Even more conspicuous is the excellence of 
 Lycidas as compared with the pastoral elegies of 
 the Tudor period. Its thought, like theirs, is ex- 
 pressed in the conventional language of elegy. 
 King is spoken of as a poet-shepherd, with whom 
 his bosom friend, the author of the lament, was 
 wont to perform the idealized duties of their 
 calling and sing their rustic songs. Nature, too, 
 mourns for King as it commonly has done since 
 the lament for Bion was written. Because of such 
 adherence to convention Lycidas was severely 
 arraigned by truth-loving Dr. Johnson. This, 
 he asserted, is not the language of sincere grief; 
 for grief has no leisureTor inclination for. fiction. 
 WKat a truthful elegy should be his own poem 
 on Dr. Levet shows. 
 
 Well try'd, through many a varying year, 
 See Levet to the grave descend, 
 Officious, innocent, sincere, 
 Of ev'ry friendless name the friend. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 27 
 
 Yet still he fills affection's eye 
 Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; 
 Nor, letter'd arrogance, deny 
 Thy praise to merit unrefined. 
 
 In these words Johnson frankly admits his friend's 
 obscurity and uncouthness, never thinking that 
 concealment would honor the memory of the great- 
 hearted man. This is Grecian directness in facing 
 the facts of life. Nevertheless, conventionality 
 in expression is not necessarily a proof of insin- 
 cerity, and a truthful poet or sculptor can employ 
 conventional modes of expression for even the 
 deepest thought. 
 
 Another objection raised against Lycidas has 
 been that no Christian poet can truly combine, 
 as Milton does, the pagan and the Christian re- 
 ligions. But such incongruity is characteristic 
 oT~afl Milton's poetry. The note of regret that 
 is heard in the Ode on the Morning of Christ's 
 Nativity, a regret for the passing of the old pagan 
 mythology, indicates that Milton saw in it an ex- 
 pression of some enduring truths and beauties of 
 life. So in Lycidas he could truthfully speak of 
 Jove's hist appraisal of all human endeavor, for 
 the name signifi ed to Milton poetically the 
 Christian God. Throughout, the poem expresses 
 Christian truths by pagan symbols, and there is 
 no impropriety in Milton's changing to a literal 
 expression of his faith in the closing lines. 
 
 Neither the Elizabethan elegy nor Lycidas, there- 
 fore, can be branded insincere merely because it 
 
28 Essays on Milton 
 
 employs a poet's language. The older type of 
 elegy, however, sounds insincere because its 
 thought is more shallow, its employment of clas- 
 sical allusion less easy, and its whole manner 
 i more conscious than the thought and manner of 
 Lycidas. Milton's art is sure enough of itself to 
 take the elegiac convention and beautify it. The 
 universal mourning of nature, the description of 
 the flowers, the procession of mourners, and all 
 other elegiac traditions are beautifully interwoven 
 to adorn the great truth that mankind has need 
 of such high-minded idealists as King seemed to 
 Milton to have been. The separate portions of 
 Lycidas articulate perfectly. The poet's thoughts 
 on self at the beginning, the reference to the 
 earnest student's life at Cambridge, the medita- 
 tion on fame, and even the censure of the selfish 
 clergy, all harmonize and lead artistically to the 
 words of Christian consolation at the close. Then 
 come the poet's own simple words after the 
 shepherd's monody is done. These lines have 
 been often interpreted as a reference on Milton's 
 part to his plans for future composition. It is 
 far better to take them in a larger way. The 
 tribute to the dead has been paid; the time for 
 mourning is past; and now before the poet lies 
 the future, large in its possibilities and its hope. 
 From the bitter loss a richer sense of life has 
 come, as it came to Tennyson in In Memoriam. 
 
 A relationship between Lycidas and its Eliza- 
 bethan prototypes, especially Spenser's pastorals, 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 29 
 
 can here and there be traced. Milton's fine de- 
 scription of the flowers grew from these lines in the 
 Shepherd's Calender: 
 
 Bring hether the Pincke and purple Cullambine, 
 
 With Gelliflowres; 
 
 Bring Coronations, and Sops in wine, 
 
 Worne of Paramoures: 
 Strowe me the ground with Daffadowndillies, 
 And Cowslips, and Kingcups, and loued Lillies: 
 
 The pretie Pawnee, 
 
 And the Cheuisaunce, 
 Shall match with the fayre flowre Delice. 
 
 There are portions of Spenser's poems, too, that 
 recall Milton's attack on the clergy. Piers con- 
 demns those shepherds [clergymen] "that playen 
 while their flockes be unfedde," and those others 
 who 
 
 Caren as little as they 
 What fallen the flocke, so they han the fleece, 
 And get all the gayne, paying but a peece. 
 
 Even Milton's celebrated digression on fame looks 
 back to Spenser's lines: 
 
 Cuddie, the prayse is better then the price, 
 The glory eke much greater than the gayne. 
 
 In addition, there are many similarities in detail 
 between Lycidas and the Shepherd's Calender, of 
 which the reference to St. Michael's Mount is 
 typical. 1 Clearly, Spenser and the Elizabethan 
 elegiac poets had added their quota to Milton's 
 knowledge of this classical poetic form. 
 
 *See S's. C, "April," 11. 136-144; "May," 11. 37-48; "July," 
 11. 165-168; "October," II. 19-20; "July," 1. 41- 
 
30 Essays on Milton 
 
 But Lycidas shows only these faint and inci- 
 dental reminders of older English elegies; for, 
 although Milton knew them, he as usual sought 
 not the most accessible but the best models. He 
 therefore turned to Theocritus, Virgil, and some 
 of the Italian poets for guidance. In Theocritus 
 he found both the fundamental conception of pas- 
 toral poetry and sincerity and naturalness of ex- 
 pression; from Moschus he copied the fiction of 
 the literary ties that had drawn the mourner and 
 his dead friend together; from Virgil he learned 
 how firm the pastoral's structure may be; and 
 from the Italian poets he derived authority for 
 the introduction of satire and protest in the midst 
 of his lament. Lastly, he added the best that 
 English poetry had to contribute to the enrich- 
 ment of the elegy. Lycidas, in short, is a rich 
 composite of all the best that literature had to 
 offer; yet the debt on Milton's part was really 
 unconscious, so thoroughly imbued was his mind 
 with his wide reading in the world's literature. No 
 finer instance than Lycidas can be found of the 
 artist's true receptivity. 
 
 The sonnets of Shakespeare's time bear an 
 even less direct relation than the elegies to Mil- 
 ton's work. The Elizabethan sonneteers, taking 
 the universally accepted themes of the Italian 
 poets, gave them vogue in England. It was ex- 
 pression and not thought that Tudor poets val- 
 ued, and many of the best of their efforts were 
 virtually translations. Daniel's "Care-charmer 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 31 
 
 Sleep, son of the sable Night," is only a close 
 rendering of one of Desportes' best sonnets. These 
 English poets, however, who pilfered Italian and 
 French literatures so boldly, possessed a style of 
 their own and devised a new form of sonnet that 
 allowed them more fluency and ease in expression. 
 Their work is often trivial in thought and over 
 fanciful in language; its charm is fluency, a rare 
 beauty in occasional pictures, and a profundity 
 revealed in scattered reflections on life. In the 
 last, especially, Shakespeare surpassed all others. 
 Milton, however, designed his sonnets to serve his 
 highest thought and most personal feeling. Hence 
 he went back, as he had done in Lycidas, to 
 models more remote than those of Elizabethan 
 England. He preferred the Italian form of son- 
 net, apparently for its greater dignity and power, 
 and except in two or three lighter pieces, like that 
 on the nightingale, he confined himself in the 
 sonnets to serious reflections on self and the great 
 occurrences of the time. His form of expression 
 may be no higher than the Elizabethans' at their 
 best; but his mood is more exalted and his pur- 
 poses more serious. Landor's judgment seems ade- 
 quate and fair, that Milton 
 
 Caught the sonnet from the dainty hand 
 Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave 
 The notes to glory. 
 
 Still another form of literature was carried by 
 Milton to a higher level than had been reached 
 by his predecessors. There are sticklers for form 
 
32 Essays on Milton 
 
 who maintain that Comus is simply a lyric drama 
 and not a masque, because it does not conform 
 strictly to the type as students define it. These 
 critics allege that the actors in Comus, besides 
 speaking their parts, carry through the elaborate 
 dances, since no special masquers are provided 
 for. The plot of Comus, also, is something more 
 than an excuse for the music and the scenic dis- 
 play. These, to be sure, are notable departures 
 from the Jacobean type of masque, in which the 
 plot was slight and the actors who handled the 
 plot and the masquers who performed the elabo- 
 rate fixed dances and processionals formed two 
 distinct groups. But Milton himself in his own 
 manuscript and his first editor as well, call the 
 poem a masque. And, indeed, there are in Comus 
 many resemblances to this dramatic type. 1 Its 
 charming use of old legend and of classical myth- 
 ology; its beautiful songs; its two anti-masques, one 
 at the beginning, where the anti-masque usually 
 came, of Comus's rout, the other of the rustics at 
 the close; and the idealized pictures of rural life, all 
 accord strictly with the treatment of the Jacobean 
 poets. To refuse Comus the designation that its 
 author gave it, seems mere pedantry. 
 
 In Comus Milton, as usual, has simply adapted 
 his pattern to suit his occasion and his own 
 peculiar temperament. Naturally wishing to 
 please the Earl of Bridgewater and his family, 
 the author added to the importance of the chil- 
 
 1 See Reyher, Les Masques Anglais, pp. 212-216. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 33 
 
 dren's parts by assigning them the masques as 
 well as the dialogue. The masque in Milton's 
 early manhood was still a living dramatic form, 
 and, like any other living organism, was rightly 
 subject to modifications like these. His tempera- 
 ment, also, as well as his occasion, dictated a de- 
 parture from the Jacobean type. Milton was not 
 content that his piece should be simply a grace- 
 ful compliment to a noble family and a charming 
 bit of fancy for an evening's entertainment. He 
 wished it to convey his own high thoughts on 
 serious matters — his own ideals of life. Comus, 
 therefore, becomes a poetic homily on temperance 
 in its broadest sense. Jonson had aimed at in- 
 struction in some of his masques, but he did not 
 key them so high as did Milton. The beauty of 
 temperate living and the power of righteousness 
 to defeat evil, are the texts of this arch-idealist in 
 Comus. The author presents his ideal in two 
 ways — by making vice repulsive and virtue at- 
 tractive; and he leaves with the reader the high- 
 est sense of moral elevation. With no loss of 
 beauty the masque was thus dignified and exalted 
 by the Puritan poet. 
 
 The sources of Comus are of especial interest in 
 this connection, because they are mainly of the 
 Elizabethan period. Of course, Homer's Odyssey 
 is Milton's ultimate original; but all the most 
 essential features of his masque can be traced to 
 works of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries 
 that he must have known. The union of the stories 
 
34 Essays on Milton 
 
 of Circe arid Comus, which in Homer are quite 
 separate, was made by Henry du Puy, in a Latin 
 work, Comus, sive Phagesiposia Cimmeria, which 
 was written in 1608 and was in circulation in 
 England before the composition of Milton's poem. 1 
 The germ of Milton's plot, also, the search of two 
 brothers for a sister who has been charmed by a 
 wicked sorcerer, is to be found in a sixteenth- 
 century source, Peele's Old Wives Tale, that strang- 
 est of Pre-Shakespearean plays. The charming 
 songs of Comus, furthermore, take one back 
 irresistibly .to Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, 
 although the moral tone of the two works is en- 
 tirely different. For the moral spirit of Milton's 
 masque one must turn to Jonson's Pleasure Recon- 
 ciled to Virtue, where Hercules and twelve gentle- 
 man masquers uphold temperance and virtue 
 against the bestial excesses of Comus, "the god of 
 cheer, or the Belly." In William Browne's Inner 
 Temple Masque, a story of Circe and Ulysses, the 
 anti-masque, as in Comus, is made up of men who 
 have been transformed by Circe into monsters. 
 Finally, in Spenser's Faerie Queene Milton found 
 the Bower of Bliss, where the knight Guyon over- 
 throws Acrasia and rescues men enslaved in her 
 brutish train. The freeing of Amoret, too, from 
 the spells of the enchanter resembles the corre- 
 sponding incident in Comus, which in general pre- 
 serves the old machinery of the romance, as it 
 was found in Tasso and Spenser. 
 
 1 See Stern, I, pp. 229-230 for an outline of this work. 
 
Last of the Elizabethans 35 
 
 So Milton took these four forms of poetry, the 
 pastoral, the elegy, the sonnet, and the masque, an 
 imperfect inheritance from the Elizabethan age, 
 and raised them to an excellence they never before 
 had reached. At the same time, he was medi- 
 tating some great achievement in poetry that 
 should distinguish and ennoble English literature 
 as the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Dante had en- 
 nobled the literatures of their native lands. For 
 this vast undertaking Milton had still less satis- 
 factory models in English sources. Elizabethan 
 poets had attempted the long historical poem, 
 such as Albion's England and The Civil Wars 
 of York and Lancaster. Giles Fletcher, Syl- 
 vester, and, above all others, Spenser furnished 
 other specimens of the long poem, which were of 
 influence on Milton's epic. But although Meres 
 called Daniel the Homer and Drayton the Virgil 
 of England, no one of these poets could set Mil- 
 ton a pattern in artistic structure. His epics, 
 therefore, are less dependent on earlier English 
 literature than are his minor poems, and it is in 
 them that he proves his claim to the designation, 
 "the last of the Elizabethans." 
 
 This phrase, however, should be used with 
 proper reservations. Milton belonged only in part 
 to the Elizabethan age. Born twenty years after 
 the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and five years 
 after the death of the queen herself, he lived 
 through the stirring Puritan epoch and on into the 
 dark days of the Restoration. Even in his earliest 
 
36 Essays on Milton 
 
 poetry, therefore, he could not be an Elizabethan 
 pure and simple, for the Puritan influence had 
 already affected him strongly. This new force soon 
 dominated his life and molded his character, so 
 that when he composed his great epics he seems 
 to have outlived the Elizabethan traits of his 
 youth. New forces had transformed his thoughts, 
 and a new theme and a new form of poetry de- 
 manded other modes of expression. Yet Milton 
 was even more removed from the Restoration age, 
 in which he then wrote, than from the Eliza- 
 bethan. Dryden is the great exponent of that 
 new era, and how different his spirit and his poetry 
 from Milton's. Even in his epics Milton is closer 
 kin to the Elizabethans than to the wits of the 
 new era. His fine choice of phrase, his powerful 
 creative imagination, and his love for the poetry 
 rather than the facts of life, link him with the 
 old Elizabethan age. Puritanism had not stamped 
 out the inborn poetic spirit, and among the poets 
 of the new era he stands as "the last of the 
 Elizabethans." 
 
Chapter II 
 
 Milton's Temperament and Ideals 
 
 A^ILTON'S relation, however, either to Eliza- 
 ■'-*-*- bethan or Puritan England can not be un- 
 derstood without an intimate acquaintance with 
 his temperament and ideals. No finer instance of 
 conscientious, unswerving loyalty to an ideal can 
 anywhere be found than in the life of Milton. The 
 fine sonnet composed on his twenty-third birthday 
 is not his earliest expressed recognition of a divine 
 call to high service, nor are the noble words of 
 the Second Defence his last. He there asserts: 
 "I never, at any time, wrote anything which I 
 did not think agreeable to truth, to justice, and to 
 piety"; and the proud boast is reaffirmed in the 
 lines of Paradise Lost: 
 
 More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged 
 To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, 
 On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues, 
 In darkness, and with dangers compassed round, 
 And solitude. 
 
 From beginning to end Milton pursued the same 
 high ideals. As distinctly as the prophet Isaiah, 
 he had seen the vision of human lips touched by 
 divinely illumined coals of fire, of a human life 
 set apart from and above the mass of humanity; 
 
38 Essays on Milton 
 
 in the genuineness of his high calling he never lost 
 confidence. 
 
 Just how much of his prophetic impulse Milton 
 owed to his father can never be known. He grate- 
 fully acknowledges in Ad Patrem: 
 
 Thou never bad'st me tread 
 The beaten path and broad that leads right on 
 To opulence, nor didst condemn thy son 
 To the insipid clamours of the bar, 
 To laws voluminous and ill observed; 
 But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill 
 My mind with treasure, ledst me far away 
 From city din to deep retreats, to banks 
 And streams Aonian, and, with free consent, 
 Didst place me happy at Apollo's side. 1 
 
 In these words Milton bears testimony to the 
 aspirations of his father to something higher than 
 material success for his son. This same sort of 
 parental encouragement and assistance laid the 
 foundations for the stimulating criticism of John 
 Ruskin and the virile poetry of Robert Browning. 
 Had Milton had another home environment, the 
 course of his life might have been very different 
 from what it was. 
 
 Milton, it is true, soon felt compelled to disre- 
 gard the more specific wishes of his parent. In 
 the seventeenth century the church still offered 
 for scholars and literary men the most lucrative 
 offices and the most attractive vocation, and 
 toward the church Milton in his youth almost in- 
 evitably turned. The choice was made, he tells 
 
 ' Quoted from Corson, Introduction to Milton, p. 38. 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 39 
 
 us, both "by the intentions of my parents and 
 friends . . . and in mine own resolutions." 1 But 
 "coming to some maturity of years," he con- 
 tinues, "and perceiving what tyranny had invaded 
 the church, that he who would take orders must 
 subscribe slave, ... I thought it better to pre- 
 fer a blameless silence before the sacred office of 
 speaking, bought and begun with servitude and 
 forswearing." The decision to abandon the sacred 
 calling was reached not without some opposition 
 from the father; Ad Patrem seems as much an 
 apology for disregard of parental wishes as an 
 elaborate compliment and expression of gratitude. 
 He reminds his parent that "verse is a work 
 divine," and that it, as well as the ministry, 
 brings to its devotees true uplift. The implica- 
 tion of his words is plain: better whole-hearted 
 service of the muses than selfish adherence to a 
 tyrannical ecclesiastical organization. 
 
 Abandonment of his first high intentions did 
 not mean for Milton a lowering, or even an altera- 
 tion, of his ideals. Literature and scholarship, as 
 he pursued them, brought him into kinship with 
 all who have followed a lofty purpose in any walk 
 of life. It may well be of himself that he is 
 thinking in Samson Agonistes when he writes: 
 
 Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed 
 As of a person separate to God, 
 Designed for great exploits, if I must die 
 Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out. 
 
 1 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 482. 
 
40 Essays on Milton 
 
 Possibly a similar interpretation is permissible of 
 Christ's words in Paradise Regained: 
 
 When I was yet a child, no childish play 
 To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
 Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, 
 What might be public good; myself I thought 
 Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
 All righteous things. 
 
 When these aspirations first exerted their influ- 
 ence, Milton seemed pre-eminently a child of the 
 Renaissance; intense seriousness, like his, in the 
 pursuit of an ideal was as possible for a Greek 
 as for a Puritan. From boyhood Milton had felt 
 strongly the appeal of the beautiful. In a letter 
 to his closest friend he wrote in 1637: 
 
 What besides God has resolved concerning me I 
 know not, but this at least: He has instilled into me, 
 if into any one, a vehement love of the beautiful. Not 
 with so much labour, as the fables have it, is Ceres 
 said to have sought her daughter, Proserpina, as it is 
 my habit day and night to seek for this idea of the 
 beautiful, as for a certain image of supreme beauty, 
 through all the forms and faces of things (for many are 
 the shapes of things divine). — Hence it is that, when 
 any one scorns what the vulgar opine in their depraved 
 estimation of things, and dares to feel and speak and 
 be that which the highest wisdom throughout all ages 
 has taught to be best, to that man I attach myself 
 forthwith by a kind of real necessity, wherever I find 
 him. 1 
 
 1 To Charles Diodati, Letter 7 (1637). 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 41 
 
 In this interesting self-examination Milton not 
 only proclaims his allegiance to the beautiful — 
 "what the highest wisdom throughout all ages 
 has taught to be best" — but also his conviction 
 that this divine spirit is to be found embodied 
 in many forms. This is the attitude of the 
 Renaissance, not of medievalism or Puritanism, 
 toward life — a full realization of all its manifold 
 possibilities. The youthful poet, then, was at 
 this time the child of the Renaissance. 
 
 With this for his impelling ideal, Milton wil- 
 lingly submitted, even in his earliest school-days, 
 to the most rigid intellectual discipline. All that 
 the literatures of Greece and Rome contain, and 
 all that France and Italy could offer, were placed 
 at his disposal by the generosity of his father. To 
 these subjects Milton added the study of music, 
 mathematics, and the other sciences, and finally 
 illuminated all this learning by converse with 
 cultured friends and well-advised travel in France 
 and Italy. Everywhere his remarkable powers and 
 worth were recognized — at Cambridge, as his 
 own words testify; in the household of Sir Henry 
 Wotton; and among the literati of Italy. Re- 
 garding the trivial interests of life Milton speaks 
 less often, possibly because his autobiographical 
 confessions are usually prompted by grave thoughts 
 and serious emergencies. Chance references in his 
 letters to Diodati, however, as well as the general 
 spirit of V Allegro, show that he had sympathy 
 with the pleasures as well as the duties of men. 
 
42 Essays on Milton 
 
 During his university days he visited the theaters 
 of London, roamed abroad to enjoy the beauties 
 of suburban scenery, and shared in the innocent 
 diversions of the country folk. It is, then, a mis- 
 take to regard him as a person devoid of ordinary 
 human interests and passions. But it is true that 
 his complete absorption in the pursuits of the 
 Renaissance, as well as the intensity of his devotion 
 to the Puritan ideal, gradually broke these points 
 of contact with the lighter sides of life. In a 
 college letter, for example, written to his former 
 teacher, Alexander Gill, he complained that at 
 Cambridge he found too few serious-minded men. 
 And in the Epitaphium Damonis he alludes with 
 real pathos to the loneliness of the human heart. 
 His main concern was the cultivation of mind and 
 character. 
 
 Milton's love of the English countryside, how- 
 ever, is one of the quiet pleasures that apparently 
 never left him. He wrote as a youth to Diodati 
 of his excursions into the country, and in L' Allegro 
 he drew his beautiful picture of the pleasures of 
 rural life. The glimpses which are there given 
 of the thatched cottages, the hedge-rows of the 
 quiet lanes, and the cheery sounds coming from 
 the country people at their work or play, are as 
 real as they are sympathetic. How fixed these 
 pictures were in the poet's memory one may infer 
 from the vivid recollections cherished of them in 
 his blindness. In Paradise Lost there occurs this 
 echo of U Allegro: 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 43 
 
 As one who, long in populous city pent, 
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, 
 Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe 
 Among the pleasant villages and farms 
 Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight — 
 The smell of grain, of tedded grass, or kine, 
 Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound — 
 If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass, 
 What pleasing seemed for her now pleases more, 
 She most, and in her look sums all delight. 1 
 
 Only force of circumstances kept this phase of 
 Milton's temperament in the background, and the 
 same can be assumed of other lighter interests 
 natural to him. 
 
 Side by side with this liberal humanism there 
 developed in Milton a severe, though cultured, 
 Puritanism. Would one be a poet? Then "let 
 him live sparely, after the manner of the Samian 
 master; let herbs afford him his innocent diet, let 
 clear water in a beechen cup stand near him, and 
 let him drink sober draughts from a pure foun- 
 tain!" 2 "Nothing," he likewise declared before 
 his university associates, "can deservedly be taken 
 into account as among the causes of our happi- 
 ness that does not somehow or other regard both 
 that everlasting life and this civil life below." 3 
 Such serious recognition of life's grave responsi- 
 bilities marks the poet's whole career; the Sonnet 
 on his having arrived at the age of Twenty-three is as 
 characteristic of him as the Ode on a Grecian Urn 
 is of Keats. In consequence, Milton as poet as- 
 
 1 P. L., 9, 11. 445-454- * Elegia Scxta. * Prolusion, 6. 
 
44 Essays on Milton 
 
 pired to something higher than superficial imita- 
 tion of the graces of English humanism — 
 
 Those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight 
 Which takes our late fantastics with delight. 
 
 With higher visions for the poet he wrote, apos- 
 trophizing the language: 
 
 Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, 
 
 Thy service in some graver subject use, 
 
 Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, 
 
 Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound: 
 
 Such where the deep transported mind may soar 
 
 Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door 
 
 Look in, and see each blissful deity. 1 
 
 This is simply the youthful humanist's way of 
 expressing his high Puritan aspirations. 
 
 Such a combination of these diverse attitudes 
 toward life is quite in accord with the higher trend 
 taken by the Revival of Learning in England. 
 The movement in Italy was dominated entirely 
 by zesthetic impulses, and letters and the arts 
 flourished at the expense of morality. But in 
 England the interests of the New Learning were 
 controlled by the nation's ethical ideals, and the 
 new studies were passionately pursued for what 
 they could yield to England's uplift. Erasmus, for 
 example, working in the service of the church, pre- 
 pared his scholarly edition of the Greek Testa- 
 ment, while More, in the interests of society and 
 humanity, dreamed his Utopia. In the same spirit, 
 John Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, 
 
 1 Vacation Exercise, II. 19-20, 29-35. 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 45 
 
 placed over the master's chair in the school-room 
 the picture of Christ and the motto, "Hear ye 
 him." Even Colet, however, could not have de- 
 manded a more whole-hearted obedience to this 
 injunction than Milton's, who was once a pupil 
 at St. Paul's. He was humanistic enough in 
 temperament to agree with those Greek philoso- 
 phers who taught that virtue without knowledge 
 is impossible. But in subscribing "to this tenet 
 he would also insist on its converse, that knowl- 
 edge without virtue is of no avail. His whole 
 attitude toward life was determined by the close 
 mingling of the two supposedly antithetic move- 
 ments, Puritanism and humanism. 
 
 In some of Milton's works one side of his nature 
 is more in evidence, in other parts the other side; 
 but Paradise Lost seems to be the harmonious 
 blending, in about equal degrees, of both humanism 
 and Puritanism. This statement may seem at 
 variance with commonly accepted opinion. The 
 majority of its readers have appreciated only the 
 Biblical origin of Paradise Lost and its religious 
 and theological trend. They have read it as a 
 faithful recital of historical fact, and indeed have 
 accepted its version of Lucifer's revolt and Adam's 
 fall as canonical. But Paradise Lost represents, 
 also, the fruits of Milton's close study of classical 
 literature and the critical and creative writings of 
 the Italian Renaissance. He had before him not 
 simply the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, but 
 Jerusalem Delivered and the whole body of Italian 
 
46 Essays on Milton 
 
 criticism. From all that was of high merit in 
 secular literature, as well as from the Bible, Milton 
 derived his inspiration. 
 
 The poet's hope was to achieve some enduring 
 monument for English letters. To attain this high 
 ideal no artist ever submitted to longer or more 
 rigorous training. The position he might easily 
 have won among Cavalier song writers did not 
 attract him. ' Even his efforts at Horton, fine as 
 they were in sentiment, and rich as they were in 
 subtle musical harmonies and in finely suggestive 
 pictures, failed to satisfy. Hence Milton did not 
 hasten to publish those early poems, which were 
 not printed by him till 1645. Something far 
 grander in proportions and more majestic in theme 
 had become his ambition. To achieve this the 
 poet resigned hope of immediate fame and worked 
 for a distant reward. 
 
 The fruition of his labors was destined to be 
 remote. Milton worked slowly, being possibly, as 
 he admits, "by nature slow and lazy to write." 
 The manuscript copy of his early poems attests 
 in its numerous corrections his scrupulous care. 
 His whole energy, moreover, was soon absorbed 
 by other duties. But, even in the most busy days 
 of the Latin secretaryship, his thoughts still cen- 
 tered on the one great goal. Of his absorption 
 in scholarship at this time his nephew, Edward 
 Phillips, gives an interesting picture: "Here he 
 liv'd a private and quiet life, still prosecuting his 
 studies and curious search into knowledge, the 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 47 
 
 grand affair perpetually of his life." Milton him- 
 self could truly say, "an idle ease has never had 
 charms for me"; and he never lost hope "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 some- 
 thing so written to aftertimes, as they should not 
 willingly let die." : 
 
 Whatever came to hinder him in his chosen 
 study was regarded as an interruption, for Milton 
 felt himself "led by the genial power of nature to 
 another task." "O perfect and accomplish thy 
 glorious acts," he beseeches Christ, "for men may 
 leave their works unfinished, but thou art a God, 
 thy nature is perfection. . . . And he that now 
 for haste snatches up a plain, ungarnished present 
 as a thank-offering to thee, . . . may then perhaps 
 take up a harp, and sing thee an elaborate song to 
 generations." 2 Only for the service of the Com- 
 monwealth was he content "to interrupt the pur- 
 suit of no less hopes than these." And in so 
 doing he by no means forgot "the thing which I 
 had to say, and those intentions which have lived 
 within me ever since I could conceive myself 
 worth anything to my country." Still seeing in 
 vision, then, as he had dreamed in youth, Milton 
 could exclaim: "Neither do I think it shame 
 to covenant with any knowing reader, that for 
 some few years yet I may go on trust with him 
 
 1 Familiar Letters, 14; Ch. Gov., 2, p. 477. 
 
 2 Animadversions, 3, p. 72. 
 
48 Essays on Milton 
 
 toward the payment of what I am now indebted, 
 as being a work not to be raised from the heat of 
 youth, or the vapours of wine; . . . but by devout 
 prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with 
 all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his 
 seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to 
 touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. . . . 
 I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small 
 willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no 
 less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleas- 
 ing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident 
 thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises 
 and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright 
 countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of 
 delightful studies, to come into the dim reflection 
 of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk." 1 
 For the highest, most exalted literary expres- 
 sion to which Milton thus aspired, there were two 
 models or types, the epic and tragedy, fully sanc- 
 tioned by the use and theory of antiquity and the 
 Renaissance. Other forms of poetry — the pastoral 
 drama of the Song of Solomon, as Milton terms 
 it, the odes of Pindar, the lyrics of the Prophets 
 — might suffice for other themes; but Milton ap- 
 proved only of these two for what he had to 
 express. Of the two, the epic unquestionably en- 
 joyed the preference of Renaissance humanists. 
 The drama of the Greeks had lain so long virtu- 
 ally unknown, and the authority of Virgil was so 
 supreme during all the Middle Ages, that the epic 
 
 1 Ch. Gov., 2, pp. 4.80-481. 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 49 
 
 was usually preferred over tragedy. It may seem 
 strange, therefore, that Milton should have first 
 considered tragedy for his purpose. But since 
 his reason for this, as well as his motives for de- 
 ciding ultimately in favor of the epic, were dic- 
 tated by the theme selected, further consideration 
 of the matter must be for the time postponed. 
 
 To the selection of his theme Milton gave the 
 most earnest thought. Moved by the example of 
 Dante and the Italian epic poets, as well as by 
 his own patriotic impulse, he aspired not simply 
 to become the "interpreter and relater of the 
 best and sagest things," but also tOv"fix all the 
 industry and art" he possessed "to the adorning 
 of my native tongue." * Some advantages would 
 have been gained by the use of Latin as the me- 
 dium of expression, but they were not sufficient 
 to offset his preference for English. The selec- 
 tion of a theme, however, was no such easy 
 matter. He first decided that the poem should 
 be based on some incident in early British his- 
 tory and have enduring significance for English- 
 men. To this determination he was led by the 
 example of other epic poets, who in general have 
 treated matters derived from the histories of their 
 own countries. Homer tells of the war of Greece 
 against Troy and the wanderings of the great 
 Odysseus; Virgil recounts the establishment of 
 the Roman race in Italy; Tasso celebrates mainly 
 the heroism of Italian knighthood. The first step, 
 1 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 478. 
 
50 Essays on Milton 
 
 then, in the growth of Milton's epic was his de- 
 cision to narrate in the mother tongue some inci- 
 dent from British history. 
 
 To be sure, in the Vacation Exercise he had ex- 
 pressed a desire to deal with heavenly things, and 
 in the great Ode, written shortly after, he had 
 realized the wish with unquestioned success. But 
 he had felt obliged to leave The Passion unfinished, 
 on finding "this subject ... to be above the years 
 he had." For his large undertaking his thoughts 
 were first directed to British history. In a letter 
 to Mansus he alludes to the plan in these words: 
 "If perchance I shall ever call back into verse 
 our native kings, and Arthur stirring war even 
 under the earth that hides him, or speak of the 
 great-souled heroes, the knights of the uncon- 
 quered Table." This project is next enlarged 
 upon in the Epitaphium Damonis: 
 
 I have a theme of the Trojans cruising our southern headlands 
 Shaping to song, and the realm of Imogen, daughter of Pandras, 
 Brennus and Arvirach, dukes, and Bren's bold brother, Belinus; 
 Then the Armorican settlers under the laws of the Britons, 
 Ay, and the womb of Igraine fatally pregnant with Arthur, 
 Uther's son, whom he got disguised in Gorlois' likeness, 
 All by Merlin's craft. . . . 
 
 Prize sufficiently ample 
 Mine, and distinction great (unheard of ever thereafter 
 Though I should be, and inglorious, all through the world of the 
 
 stranger), 
 If but yellow-haired Ouse shall read me, the drinker of Alan, 
 Humber, which whirls as it flows, and Trent's whole valley of orchards, 
 Thames, my own Thames, above all, and Tamar's western waters, 
 Tawny with ores, and where the white waves swinge the far Orkneys. 1 
 
 1 Translation by Masson. 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 51 
 
 But Milton was equally determined that this 
 British story should be Christian, not pagan, in 
 sentiment. He aspired: "To sing victorious 
 agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and tri- 
 umphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly 
 through faith against the enemies of Christ; to 
 deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states 
 from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, 
 whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in vir- 
 tue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or 
 admiration, ... all these things with a solid and 
 treatable smoothness to paint out and describe." \ 
 Such confidence in the Christian religion to sup- 
 ply heroic themes' for the modern poet had been 
 previously expressed by Minturno and Tasso, to 
 whom Milton a moment later alludes. Italian 
 critics were agreed that the true hero for the 
 modern epic must be not alone mighty in combat 
 but also true in faith. Hence came Milton's second 
 determination — to exhibit the "pattern of a 
 Christian hero." 
 
 But if the theme of the great poem was to be 
 Christian, why could it not be sought in sacred 
 history as well as in British legend? The story 
 of the Hebrew people was still regarded as the 
 type of universal history, revealing God's ways 
 not simply toward the chosen people but toward 
 all mankind, and bearing therefore for the Eng- 
 lish a really national significance. In the Bible, 
 furthermore, Milton found the best models of 
 
 1 Ch. Gov., z, p. 479. 
 
52 Essays on Milton 
 
 literature; "the Scripture," he continues, "also 
 affords us a divine pastoral drama in the Song of 
 Solomon. . . . And the Apocalypse of St. John is 
 the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy." 
 Surely, then, sacred story might easily be adapted 
 to literary treatment; it was as germane to mod- 
 ern English life as British history, and as inspiring 
 artistically as any secular theme could be. So, 
 long before Paradise Lost was begun, Milton was 
 turning over in his mind the suitability of various 
 themes. About the year 1640 he drew up a list of 
 the subjects then under consideration. There are 
 in all about one hundred titles, all designed, it 
 seems, for tragedy. Only thirty-three of these 
 entries relate to British history, and not one, it 
 is interesting to note, concerns King Arthur. Sixty 
 titles designate Biblical stories, of which only eight 
 are from the New Testament. The stories of 
 Adam, Abraham, Sodom, and John the Baptist 
 were among those on the list. In most cases 
 nothing beyond the mere, title was suggested, for 
 as yet Milton had approached no decision; but 
 even the bare list shows the growing inclination 
 of the poet to handle a scriptural theme. 1 
 
 Of all the stories from the Bible brought under 
 consideration, one especially seemed to possess to 
 full degree the heroism, the Christian principle, 
 and the vital relation to national life and experi- 
 
 1 Following the growth of Milton's plans in this way, one is able 
 to appreciate the full significance of the lines at the beginning of the 
 ninth book of Paradise Lost. 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 53 
 
 ence that the great poem, according to the teach- 
 ing of the humanists, must embrace. The story 
 of Adam might easily be taken to represent the 
 history of the whole race. According to the old 
 theology, mankind owes to Adam not simply its 
 existence, but its destiny as well; for Adam be- 
 queathed first life to man, then sin, and, lastly, 
 the means of ultimate salvation. Hence this story 
 clearly held preference in Milton's mind as he con- 
 sidered his plans. Instead of simply listing it 
 among the titles jotted down, Milton sketches 
 more or less fully four separate drafts for a tragedy 
 based upon the story of Eden. Hugo Grotius, 
 whom Milton had met in Paris in 1638, had pub- 
 lished, over thirty years before, a drama, Adamus 
 Exsul, and Giovanni Battista Andreini in 1613 
 had produced his version, L'Adamo. Vondel's 
 Lucifer appeared in 1654. Other poets, it is true, 
 had given non-dramatic form to at least portions 
 of the story. But scholars of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury highly esteemed tragedy constructed after 
 classical models, and naturally Milton, despite the 
 preference of the Renaissance for the epic, fol- 
 lowed the literary taste of the day. Thus his 
 choice of theme and his apparent preference for 
 tragedy can be explained. 
 
 The first two drafts for the tragedy on Adam 
 which the Cambridge manuscript contains, give 
 mere lists of the intended dramatis persona, most 
 of whom are allegorical abstractions such as Con- 
 science, Labour, Ignorance, and Death. With 
 
54 Essays on Milton 
 
 such characters the drama could scarcely have 
 been carried through, and Milton rejected both 
 drafts as unsatisfactory. The third draft is 
 considerably more energized. Act III, besides 
 relating the fall of Lucifer, presents the fallen 
 angel himself "contriving Adam's ruin." In 
 Act IV Adam and Eve are summoned to judg- 
 ment. But the first two acts are purely lyrical 
 and expository, and the last is masque-like in its 
 allegorical pageantry. This draft, therefore, has 
 only a nucleus of dramatic situation. The fourth 
 draft marks a development in two directions. In 
 the first place, it is more dramatic than its pre- 
 decessor in that the part of the Chorus is better 
 handled and the motives of the characters are more 
 explicitly stated. But the apparent improvement 
 may be due to the fact that this last outline 
 is longer than the others. The more inter- 
 esting development is toward the epic form that 
 eventually was chosen. The story of Lucifer's 
 rebellion is introduced at the start, as in Paradise 
 Lost, and then narrated more fully later; the 
 outline suggests rather the episodic breadth of the 
 epic than the stricter unity of the drama; and 
 at the end a "masque of all the evils of this life 
 and the world" is called by the angel before 
 Adam's eyes, just as the messenger in the epic 
 brings the vision of the future before him. After 
 this vision, Adam submits and repents, as he does 
 in Paradise Lost. So, although this fuller draft 
 points toward a better dramatic treatment, it 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 55 
 
 more distinctly shows how Milton's deliberation 
 was gradually leading him to the epic plan that 
 was finally evolved. 
 
 But from these last two outlines the kind of 
 drama that the poet contemplated is made obvi- 
 ous. He of course did not have in mind the Eng- 
 lish acting play. His tragedy was to be classical 
 in structure, and, for the more easy presentation 
 of matter lying beyond the natural scope of dra- 
 matic treatment, recital of incidents by an ex- 
 positor or Chorus was to be freely resorted to. 
 But the presence of allegorical characters in the 
 outlines suggests the spirit of the Renaissance. 
 Both drafts provide an ending resembling that of 
 the popular court masque. In the fourth draft, 
 especially, the masque of all the evils of life that 
 passes before Adam resembles the pageantry of 
 the court entertainment and the dumb shows of 
 some Elizabethan plays. Milton's play, then, 
 seems to hover between classical tragedy and 
 Jacobean masque. 
 
 Yet the work under consideration was not suited 
 either to tragedy or to masque. Its scope is too 
 vast for actual drama, and its theme too lofty and 
 too momentous in its consequences for the masque. 
 The story involves two plots, the revolt of Lucifer 
 and the fall of man, which are not only dissimilar 
 in place and nature of action, but not synchro- 
 nous, one, in fact, being the direct outcome of the 
 other. This difficulty would not be insurmount- 
 able in a classical play, for the earlier action could 
 
56 Essays on Milton 
 
 be presented by narrative, as is done in Oedipus 
 Tyrannus. But, in addition, the two plots involve 
 the whole creation, Heaven, Earth, and Hell, and 
 to relegate to an ever ready expositor all that 
 happens in these spiritual realms would be open 
 to serious objection. The characters of the play 
 are equally unsuited to dramatic handling; for to 
 dramatize them renders them too materialistic. 
 The arming of Michael, for instance, in Vondel's 
 Lucifer is simply the preparation of a Dutch soldier 
 for battle, and carries the reader no whit beyond 
 the soldier's common experience. And finally, 
 the story of Adam's fall, as Milton interpreted it, 
 is not tragic, for it ends with assured hope for 
 Adam and his posterity. In all these respects the 
 theme was ill-adapted for dramatic treatment, and 
 Milton, abandoning his early plans, chose ulti- 
 mately the more suitable epic form. 
 
 By so doing the poet obviated the difficulties 
 that have been pointed out. He could carry the 
 whole story, though not necessarily in strict chro- 
 nological order, from its beginning in Lucifer's 
 revolt in heaven, to its close, the expulsion of for- 
 given man from the Garden of Eden. The two 
 great incidents of the "fable" could be placed in 
 their strict sequential relationship, yet at the same 
 time could be kept jointly before the reader. Un- 
 hampered by the limited possibilities of theatrical 
 representation, the poet by allusion and the 
 exercise of imagination suggests vividly and power- 
 fully what lies beyond human vision. Hell's con- 
 
Milton's Temperament and Ideals 57 
 
 clave, the adoration of the angels before God's 
 throne, the sylvan splendors of Eden, lie within 
 the scope of the poet. It is a story, also, which 
 conforms to the critical theories of what the epic 
 should be. In the epic, according to Tasso, the 
 hero is not involved in action that rouses the on- 
 looker's pity and fear; instead, he is the con- 
 trolling agent in a story that brings out all the 
 generosity and bravery of a truly noble character. 1 
 Milton does all this with an artist's skill. Just 
 how he has given strict unity to so comprehensive 
 a theme, observing at the same time many of the 
 epic conventions, a following chapter will explain. 
 There can be no question that Milton's final de- 
 cision in favor of the epic as against tragedy was 
 fortunately made. 
 
 Thus through long years Milton's plans for his 
 great life's undertaking slowly but steadily took 
 shape. And when the opportunity came, after 
 the laying down of th& Latin secretaryship, to 
 return to his chosen studies, Milton was ready, in 
 spite of blindness and thwarted hope, to carry it to 
 completion. The epics of his mature years and 
 his one drama naturally represent the best part of 
 his life and thought. His scholarship, his ripened 
 philosophy of life, his ideals undimmed by disap- 
 pointment and misfortune, all go to make these 
 poems what they are. It was almost inevitable 
 that the poet should disregard the literary con- 
 vention that bids the epic and dramatic poets 
 
 1 DelV Arte Poetica, pp. 34-35- 
 
58 Essays on Milton 
 
 keep themselves apart from their work. Bernard 
 Shaw in recent years has flippantly defied this 
 convention for the dramatist; Milton seriously 
 and almost unconsciously defied it for the epic 
 poet. He speaks of himself in his blindness with 
 all the fervor of a lyric poet. He describes his 
 mode of composition and his conception of what 
 the modern epic should be. Homer, the other 
 blind epic poet, never obtrudes in this way; but 
 Milton, who wrote after a life of thought with a 
 conscious literary purpose, could not refrain. And 
 who would ask such concealment of him? He is 
 always at his best when his thoughts turn to self. 
 The finest passages in his prose are autobio- 
 graphical, for he could speak of personal affairs 
 with dignity and of his ideals with conviction. 
 And this intrusion of the subjective brings into 
 his last poems a glimpse of the earnest life and 
 the high ideals that made possible the fulfilment of 
 his literary aspirations. 
 
Chapter III 
 
 The True Bearing of Milton's Prose 
 
 I HE attainment of Milton's high ambition, 
 -*- the growth of which has just been traced, 
 was long delayed by more urgent duties of another 
 sort. He was still in Italy, enriching his mind by 
 study and converse with cultured literary men, 
 when the disquieting news came of political 
 troubles at home. At once the high-minded 
 Puritan returned to London that he might hold 
 himself in readiness should the call come. He had 
 a few pupils to occupy him, and his own studies; 
 but the muse in those days seemed, indeed thank- 
 less, and the poet soon found himself embroiled 
 in the work of pamphleteering for the Puritan 
 cause. From 1641, when his first tract appeared, 
 until 1660, when his last plea for liberty was 
 penned, his energies were given mainly to the 
 needs of the hour. Only the edition of the Minor 
 Poems, published in 1645, and several of his finest 
 sonnets, would remind the Puritan patriots, and 
 perhaps even the author himself, that a rare, 
 poetic genius was apparently being sacrificed in 
 the cause of freedom. 
 
60 Essays on Milton 
 
 There can be no doubt that Milton regarded 
 the enforced occupation of pamphleteering as a 
 serious interruption to his life's purpose. He 
 would have preferred studious retirement had it 
 not been for the realization that knowledge and 
 intellectual power bring grave responsibilities, to 
 which he, like the prophets of old, was forced 
 to sacrifice his ease and pleasure. He turned to 
 controversy unwillingly; "for surely," he declared, 
 "to every good and peaceable man, it must in 
 nature needs be a hateful thing to be the dis- 
 pleaser and molester of thousands; much better 
 would it like him doubtless to be the messenger 
 of gladness and contentment." * But his responsi- 
 bilities had to be met; "when God commands to 
 take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jar- 
 ring blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall 
 say, or what he shall conceal." So the Hebrew 
 prophets had shouldered their burdens, and Mil- 
 ton meant not to shirk his. "This I foresee," 
 he reasoned with himself, "that should the church 
 be brought under heavy oppression, and God have 
 given me ability the while to reason against that 
 man that should be the author of so foul a deed; 
 or should she, by blessing from above on the in- 
 dustry and courage of faithful men, change this 
 her distracted estate into better days, without the 
 least furtherance or contribution of those few 
 talents, which God at that present had lent me; 
 I foresee what stories I should hear within my- 
 1 Ch. Gov., 2, pp. 474-476. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 61 
 
 self, all my life after, of discourage and reproach." 
 It was this sense of duty — "the enforcement of 
 conscience only" — that induced him to abandon 
 poetry, and give his energies to controversy, in 
 which he had, as he remarked, the use but of his 
 left hand. 
 
 Other poets had already been forced to aban- 
 don their chosen work, and some, like Milton, 
 were metamorphosed into pamphleteers. William 
 Browne's cravings for the ideal had found expres- 
 sion in the first two books of Britannia's Pastorals, 
 published in 1613 and 1616. Then, before the 
 third part appeared some twenty years later, the 
 author's inspiration had largely waned, and finally 
 was altogether stamped out by the rapidly in- 
 creasing civil discord. Browne, yielding to the 
 sterner temper of the day, next planned a serious 
 epic, but to no purpose. His most un-Miltonic 
 motto, "noli altum sapere," stamped on the bind- 
 ing of the Salisbury manuscript of his poems, sug- 
 gests that he had neither the power nor the real 
 desire for such continued effort. In the same way, 
 George Wither first followed the diversions of the 
 courtly poet and later, abandoning the muse, 
 served the Puritan cause with both sword and 
 pen. Thus serious affairs of state interfered with 
 the work of the Caroline poets, just as public in- 
 terests had checked the activity of the Tudor 
 poets before the time of Spenser. Few like Her- 
 rick and Sir Thomas Browne could remain un- 
 concerned, and Milton gave almost twenty years 
 
62 Essays on Milton 
 
 of his life to active service of the cause he 
 championed. 
 
 It needs no further demonstration to show that 
 Milton was called from his chosen studies to this 
 other field of labor, and that he made the change 
 with real regret. It is more difficult, however, to 
 determine how much he was forced in consequence 
 to alter his ideals and to forsake his ultimate aim. 
 Possibly, in the work of these years his character 
 and power of thought took firmer shape. If that 
 be so, his prose will mark a steady, if not rapid or 
 even conscious, progress toward the three great 
 poems of his maturity. 
 
 Turning to Milton's prose with this considera- 
 tion in mind, the reader is at once impressed by 
 the absence in the tracts of that high artistry that 
 is noticeable in all his poems. The sure sense of 
 form displayed in L' Allegro and 77 Penseroso and 
 the firm structure of Paradise Lost are in the prose 
 works wholly lacking. Some, like the Animadver- 
 sions, are thrown loosely together, chapter by 
 chapter, as Milton doggedly follows the argument 
 of his opponents. The best of his treatises, the 
 Areopagitica, shows a careful plan, but its coher- 
 ence is not plainly marked and its progress is not 
 even. The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a 
 Free Commonwealth is more simple and direct than 
 the bulk of his prose. But in general, the poet's 
 sense of form, which proved its surety in many 
 different types of poetry, lay in abeyance in prose 
 composition. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 63 
 
 This want of careful structure is in part ac- 
 counted for by the haste with which the author 
 was forced to write and by his partial preoccupa- 
 tion with other duties. The Tenure of Kings and 
 Magistrates was composed in the few weeks, 
 possibly not more than three, preceding the 
 execution of King Charles. The other tracts were 
 hurried off as they were needed; yet Milton was 
 by nature a conscious artist, who composed with 
 extreme care. This alone would account for 
 some of the formlessness of the tracts. 
 
 Yet they are really not formless compared with 
 other prose writings of the time. Prose as an art 
 developed later than poetry, and in the seven- 
 teenth century huge folios like Burton's Anatomy 
 of Melancholy were inclusive in content rather 
 than compact and orderly. Details of style might 
 be considered, for euphuism had taught the 
 possibilities of sentence structure. Sir Thomas 
 Browne gave the greatest care to the revision of 
 his Religio Medici, and Milton, if one may judge 
 from his comments on Bishop Hall's brief sen- 
 tences, evidently prided himself on his long and 
 sonorous, though often unparsable, periods. His 
 diction, too, is strong and picturesque. But the 
 paragraph, which Milton developed so artis- 
 tically in his epics, is left in his prose a huge, 
 misshapen thing. The rhetoric of the seven- 
 teenth century did not demand a symmetrical 
 and steadily progressive development of thought 
 in prose. A useful art had not learned, except 
 
64 Essays on Milton 
 
 in rare cases like Sir Thomas Browne's, to be 
 also fine. 
 
 In this respect Milton's prose differs from his 
 highly artistic poetry; but in more essential re- 
 spects there is true similarity between them. It 
 could hardly be otherwise, since Milton engaged 
 in prose composition with the same high motives 
 that moved him as a poet. He was not seeking 
 praise or official position, and could truthfully 
 say that he had made himself "never even a 
 shilling the richer by those exertions." His one aim 
 was "that the truth, which had been defended 
 by arms, should also be defended by reason." He 
 may have drilled at one time with the trained 
 bands of London; but he never enlisted in the 
 Puritan army, for there were hundreds of robust 
 men, he thought, able to defend the truth in arms, 
 to the few capable of supporting it by sound ar- 
 gument, which, he adds, "is the best and only 
 legitimate means of defending it." 1 This being 
 his motive, Milton is never altogether engrossed 
 in the ephemeral phases of the controversies he 
 engaged in. He rises above them and leads the 
 reader on to the realm of great ideas and universal 
 principles where as a poet he loved to dwell. In 
 these higher moods, and they are frequent, there 
 is little to distinguish Milton, the pamphleteer, 
 from Milton, the poet. 
 
 Milton early became interested in the promotion 
 of liberty, which he regarded as the one doorway 
 
 1 Sec. Def., 1, pp. 219, 238, 243. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 65 
 
 to truth. For this single reason he abandoned his 
 first intention of entering the church, in whose ser- 
 vice he saw no chance of personal freedom, and 
 devoted his energies to the new cause. His own 
 words best explain his motives. 1 
 
 I saw that a way was opening for the establishment 
 of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the 
 deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and super- 
 stition; that the principles of religion, which were the 
 first objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence 
 on the manners and constitution of the republic; and 
 as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between 
 religious and civil rights, I perceived that if I ever 
 wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting to 
 my country, to the church, and to so many of my fellow- 
 Christians, in a crisis of so much danger; I therefore 
 determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I 
 was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my tal- 
 ents and my industry to this one important object. 
 
 To this general statement Milton adds a full 
 list of his controversial writings in behalf "of liberty, 
 and then closes the account of. this chapter in his 
 life with the characteristic summary: "Such were 
 the fruits of my private studies, which I gratui- 
 tously presented to the church and to the state; 
 and for which I was recompensed by nothing but 
 impunity; though the actions themselves procured 
 me peace of conscience, and the approbation of 
 the good; while I exercised that freedom of dis- 
 cussion which I loved." * 
 
 1 Sec. Def., I, pp. 357-261. 
 
66 Essays on Milton 
 
 The long-continued service of liberty that is 
 here described might have been rendered imper- 
 sonally, for there is an objective mode of defend- 
 ing even heart-felt truth. But Milton was never 
 given to self-effacement. In his great epic he 
 thrice speaks frankly of his own condition, and 
 once again, as he describes Abdiel, the angel of 
 truth, his thought is colored with consciousness 
 of self. 1 Curiously, he seems to have had greater 
 reticence in speaking of himself in his prose; "for 
 although a poet," he explains, "soaring in the 
 high reason of his fancies, with his garland and 
 singing robes about him, might, without apology, 
 speak more of himself than I mean to do; yet for 
 me sitting here below in the cool element of prose, 
 a mortal thing among many readers of no empy- 
 real conceit, to venture and divulge unusual 
 things of myself, I shall petition to the gentler 
 sort, it may not be envy to me." 2 Nevertheless, 
 he speaks much of himself in his prose. In the 
 Second Defence he outlines briefly the course of 
 his life; in An Apology for Smectymnuus he dis- 
 cusses with dignity his character and ideals. Here 
 one sees the "love of God" and the "pious and 
 just honoring of ourselves," which Milton re- 
 garded as the two principles "of all godly and vir- 
 tuous activities in men." The powerful and 
 unique personality of the author pervades all his 
 prose. Many readers have been inclined to cen- 
 
 1 P. L., 3, 11. 1-55; 7, "• i"39; 9, U. I3~47« 
 
 2 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 477. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 67 
 
 sure Milton for such apparent egotism, but there 
 was justification for it. His opponents had 
 misrepresented certain facts in his life and had 
 traduced his character. To-day, such untrue as- 
 persions are easily refuted and offset by the general 
 diffusion of knowledge through the medium of the 
 press. But in the seventeenth century there was 
 no such ready means of appeal, and the slandered 
 controversialist had to meet his opponent on the 
 field where he found him stationed. Milton might 
 believe that "the best apology against false ac- 
 cusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds 
 set against dishonest words"; 1 nevertheless, self- 
 respect would urge some reply, and for that his 
 own tracts offered the best medium. 
 
 Moreover, Milton was tempted for another 
 reason to speak of self. All his prose treatises 
 bore some direct relation to personal affairs. He 
 composed his plea for the freedom of the press 
 after he had been summoned before the Lords for 
 violation of the Licensing Act. The Tractate on 
 Education was the outgrowth of his actual experi- 
 ence in teaching. The discussions on divorce were 
 prompted by his domestic troubles, and several 
 of his ecclesiastical itracts were written to aid 
 Th6mas Young and other friends. It was easy, 
 therefore, for Milton to obtrude into his argu- 
 ment, especially since his conduct in life could 
 scarcely be dissociated from the principles he held. 
 He mentions himself,' however, with unfailing 
 
 1 Animadversions, 3, p. 97. 
 
68 Essays on Milton 
 
 truth and dignity, and his prose would lose much 
 of its warmth and human interest if these pas- 
 sages were stricken out. 
 
 Some of Milton's controversial works do not 
 rise above the immediate occasion that brought 
 them forth. For example, the Animadversions 
 upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectym- 
 nuus is as unlovely a piece of argument as its 
 crabbed title might indicate; it is contentious, 
 bitter, petty, and nothing more. Other works, 
 fortunately, rise far above the mere point at issue. 
 If the analogy would not be taken too rigidly, it 
 might be said that these disputatious arguments 
 compare with Milton's great prose as the Epi- 
 taphium Damonis compares with Lycidas. The 
 elegy in memory of Diodati is equal to its occa- 
 sion, whereas Lycidas is greater than its occasion. 
 So it is with the most vital of Milton's contro- 
 versial works; the civil or domestic troubles that 
 prompted them are forgotten as the author rises 
 to great principles and enduring truths. Free- 
 dom of thought and speech, confidence in the 
 power of truth and righteousness, the observance 
 of God's will — these are the great principles for 
 which Milton contends. 
 
 Such disparity between his best and worst work 
 is one of the most striking features of Milton's 
 prose. He may descend at times, and indeed 
 often, to the trivialities and abusiveness of seven- 
 teenth-century disputation; but like the bird at 
 sea he soars again to the higher elements of reason 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 69 
 
 and truth where was his home. He can argue on 
 the burning of the Ephesian books by St. Paul's 
 converts as though it actually were a matter of 
 moment, but immediately he rises above such 
 petty contention to the sublime truth: "He that 
 can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits 
 and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet 
 distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly 
 better, he is the true warfaring Christian." No 
 flight could be more sudden from triviality to truth. 
 
 An extensive and varied collection of such en- 
 nobling, universal truths might easily be made 
 from these prose treatises. "Honest liberty is the 
 greatest foe to dishonest licence." "He who would 
 not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter 
 in laudable things, ought himself to be a true 
 poem." "It is not the common law, nor the civil, 
 but piety and justice that are our foundresses." 
 "It is not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to 
 be capable of enduring blindness." "To be still 
 searching what we know not, by what we know, 
 still closing up truth to truth as we find it, . . . 
 this is the golden rule in theology, as well as in 
 arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a 
 church." These are only a few sentences taken 
 half at random from passages that do not happen 
 to be quoted elsewhere. 
 
 Sentences like these, which stud the pages like 
 jewels, render these pamphlets truly Miltonic. 
 The author's mind, however, reveals its power and 
 elevation not simply in such fragments; many 
 
70 Essays on Milton 
 
 great questions are handled at length with sus- 
 tained power. Milton's long plea for the freedom 
 of the press has been accepted as the true gospel 
 of intellectual liberty. His analysis of the rela- 
 tion between church and state, in which he 
 showed himself far in advance of his age, is clear 
 and incisive throughout. 1 His exposition of the 
 only true function of government is so thoroughly 
 sound that it should be quoted: 
 
 To govern well is to train up a nation in true wis- 
 dom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, 
 magnanimity (take heed of that), and that which is 
 our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness 
 to God, which in one word we call godliness. . . . 
 This is the masterpiece of a modern politician, how to 
 qualify and mould the sufferance and subjection of the 
 people to the length of that foot that is to tread upon 
 their necks. . . . To be plainer, sir, how to solder, 
 how to stop a leak, how to keep up the floating carcase 
 of a crazy and diseased monarchy or state, betwixt wind 
 and water, swimming still upon her own dead / lees, 
 that now is the deep design of a politician. Alas, 
 sir! a commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Chris- 
 tian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an 
 honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; 
 for look what the grounds and causes are of single 
 happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them 
 to a whole state, as Aristotle, both in his Ethics and 
 Politics, from the principles of reason, lays down. 
 
 Milton, one is too often reminded, was an ideal- 
 ist and not a practical reformer; but this force- 
 
 1 Reform., 2, pp. 392 ff., 409 ff.; Ch. Gov., 2, pp. 487 ff. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 71 
 
 ful passage displays a clear insight into sound 
 principles of statecraft. 
 
 In formulating this theory of the functions of 
 
 firch and state, Milton did not allow himself to 
 be blinded by the glamor of a name; what Bacon 
 had called the idols of the market-place never de- 
 ceived him. Hence he follows liberty as a sound 
 principle, not a fetish. "None can love freedom 
 heartily but good men," he asserts. Such free- 
 dom, of course, depends not on a mere form of 
 government, but on the physical and moral health 
 of the nation; it is "the fruit of piety, of justice, 
 of temperance, and unadulterated virtue." Hence 
 he insists, "Unless you will subjugate the pro-, 
 pensity to avarice, to ambition, and sensuality, 
 and expel all luxury from yourselves and from 
 your families, you will find that you have cher- 
 ished a more stubborn and intractable despot at 
 home, than you ever encountered in the field." 1 
 Such was Milton's conception of true liberty, a 
 freedom which depends on mind and character, 
 and which requires of those who would enjoy it 
 "a complete and generous education, that which 
 fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and mag- 
 nanimously all the offices, both private and public, 
 of peace and war." 
 
 This whole ideal of liberty is permeated with 
 the philosophy of individualism. A nation pros- 
 pers only when its citizens are sound, since the 
 commonwealth is but "one huge Christian per- 
 
 1 Sec. Def., I, p. 295. 
 
72 Essays on Milton 
 
 sonage." External restraints and coercion, there- 
 fore, can bring no vital improvement, and any 
 real reform must operate through the inner lives 
 of the individuals of the nation. Consequently, 
 instead of trying to force people to do right, teach 
 them to choose it. "A dram of well-doing," Mil- 
 ton argues, "should be preferred before many 
 times as much the forcible hinderance of evil- 
 doing"; we must learn "to ordain wisely as in 
 this world of evil." Such freedom may result 
 for a time in wrong. But in the end man can 
 learn to "apprehend and consider vice with all 
 her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet ab- 
 stain, and yet distinguish," and so become "the 
 true warfaring Christian." 1 The establishment 
 throughout the world of such individual self- 
 restraint — the love of that which is really good, 
 Milton calls it — was the object of all Milton's 
 philosophy. 
 
 It is hard to determine the exact limits of Mil- 
 ton's liberal philosophy. In several of his early 
 tracts he seems to deny the state any power of 
 coercion over the individual; in his last writings 
 he apparently assumes the position of a reac- 
 tionary. The inconsistency is not so great as it 
 appears. Even in his earliest republican tracts 
 his argument that the king is subject to the will 
 of the people must be taken to apply to the better 
 elements of the populace and not what we to-day 
 call the "masses." And although he argues at 
 1 Areopagitica, pp. 75, 68. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 73 
 
 the same time that Christians should have liberty 
 to elect their own ministers and formulate their 
 own doctrine, he adds the qualification, provided 
 their capacity, faith, and prudent demeanor com- 
 mend them. He never believed that atheists 
 should be tolerated, for their teaching was sub- 
 versive of all social life; nor papists, for they were 
 dangerous politically to the English state. This 
 is the general purport of his early teaching, and 
 he did not change these views radically in his 
 latest tracts, where he seems to advocate not a 
 democracy but an oligarchy, composed of the 
 wisest and most godly citizens of the country. 
 
 The most reactionary of Milton's publications 
 is The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free 
 Commonwealth. Written when the overthrow of 
 the commonwealth and the restoration of the 
 Stuart monarchy were imminent, this treatise is 
 primarily designed as a warning. But the stu- 
 dent's interest is most aroused by the exposition 
 it gives of the "ideal commonwealth." Such a 
 state must be ruled by a single representative as- 
 sembly, whose members should be chosen from 
 the best and ablest of the citizens. They are to 
 be selected not by a strictly popular vote, and are 
 to hold office for life or until incapacitated or con- 
 victed of misdemeanor; for frequent general elec- 
 tions bring instability and corruption into the 
 state. In addition to this national assembly, 
 whose character is far from being democratic, 
 there are to be local assemblies, which are to 
 
74 Essays on Milton 
 
 legislate on purely local affairs, and in which men 
 receive training for service in the national council. 
 But the right of suffrage is to belong only to "such 
 people as are rightly qualified," and the members 
 of the, grand council must be aristocrats be- 
 cause they, better than common men, can be 
 counted on for honest and efficient service. In its 
 general trend the argument seems to be that the 
 common people should not have the opportunity 
 of choosing what is unsafe; the rule of the 
 wise minority is preferable to the license of the 
 majority. 
 
 The Ready and Easy Way certainly seems to 
 repudiate much that Milton had more boldly 
 defended in earlier years. Impending dangers 
 had forced him to sacrifice something to safety. 
 In a letter of this same period he wrote: 
 "Whether the civil government be an annual 
 democracy or a perpetual aristocracy, is not to 
 me a consideration for the extremities wherein we 
 are, and the hazard of our safety from our common 
 enemy." It was no time, he felt, to theorize on 
 liberty in the abstract when the first essentials 
 of actual liberty, gained after so hard a struggle, 
 were threatened. Experience, too, had taught 
 him a practical lesson; for the lawlessness and 
 dissensions that disgraced the Puritan parlia- 
 ment naturally forced on all thinking men a dis- 
 trust of democracy. In 1660 the Puritans seemed 
 unable to rule wisely, and the people were bent 
 on the re-establishment of the old monarchy. But 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 75 
 
 the restoration of the Stuarts, Milton was con- 
 vinced, would result in a renewal of the old 
 tyranny in aggravated form. Why, then, grant 
 the people the whim of the moment, which is 
 bound to be regretted too late; why allow ill- 
 advised liberty to destroy the last vestiges of true 
 freedom? "More just it is," Milton concludes 
 "that a less number compel a greater to retain, 
 which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, 
 than that a greater number, for the pleasure of 
 their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to 
 be their fellow-slaves." 
 
 Is it unfair to conclude that Milton had been 
 forced only temporarily to abandon the more sub- 
 lime ideal of liberty and tolerance that he had 
 proclaimed in the Areopagitica? The three great 
 poems that he wrote after his retirement from 
 active life reaffirm the earlier views. Paradise 
 Lost traces the progress of the individual to that 
 perfect conformity with the divine will which 
 alone is freedom. The liberty to do right is again 
 upheld in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. 
 This same confidence in the power of righteousness 
 underlies the Areopagitica, where Milton asserts: 
 "And though all the winds of doctrine were let 
 loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the 
 field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibit- 
 ing to misdoubt her strength. Let her and false- 
 hood grapple;' who ever knew truth put to the 
 worse, in a free and open encounter?" In one 
 way or another Comus, the two epics, Samson 
 
76 Essays on Milton 
 
 Agonistes, and the author's best prose support this 
 bold declaration; it was the settled conviction on 
 which his life's work rested. 
 
 So confident is Milton of the eventual triumph 
 of his ideals that he writes often with the vigor 
 and the fervor of a prophet. His prose more truly 
 than De Quincey's can be called "impassioned"; 
 for Milton's is inspired by principle where De 
 Quincey's is moved by sentiment more than nor- 
 mal or healthy in its acuteness. It is provoking 
 sometimes to see Milton take his eye from his 
 subject to soar aloft into the realm of the ideal. 
 Nevertheless, no other style of thought would be 
 characteristic of him; his loftiness of purpose and 
 intensity of conviction must find vivid expression 
 in what he calls the "hymn in prose." 
 
 One such hymn in the Areopagitica is widely 
 known: "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and 
 puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man 
 after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; me- 
 thinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty 
 youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the 
 full midday beam; purging and unsealing her 
 long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly 
 radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and 
 flocking birds, with those also that love the twi- 
 light, flutter about, amazed at what she means, 
 and in their envious gabble would prognosticate 
 a year of sects and schisms." Very similar is the 
 style of the closing pages of Reformation in Eng- 
 land, where historical review yields place to fervent 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 77 
 
 prayer and prophecy. In such prose Milton's most 
 unique powers are seen. He can harass an oppo- 
 nent mercilessly, hammering away with vividly 
 concrete diction and vigorous sentences; he can 
 state facts in clear, compact form, as he does in 
 The Ready and Easy Way; he can handle deftly 
 the ordinary weapons of seventeenth-century 
 controversy. But he is most himself when the 
 substance of his treatise brings him face to face 
 with some great principle. Then the power of his 
 intellect, the intensity of his convictions, and 
 the artist's mastery of expression work in perfect 
 unison, and the prose controversialist becomes the 
 poet. 
 
 There are in all many dreary wastes of contro- 
 versy in Milton's prose that will be remembered 
 only by the historian. And even he can learn of 
 Bishop Hall, the Primate of Armagh, or the 
 unfortunate Salmasius better elsewhere than from 
 the pages of Milton. But there is also a great 
 deal in the prose works that the world could ill 
 afford to lose. Great thought, high principle, 
 courageous adherence to ideals, elevate most of 
 his tracts above the disputes of the day, and 
 bring them into kinship with his poetry. 
 
 The keynote or master passion of all Milton's 
 prose was love of liberty. Liberty, however, did 
 not signify to Milton the power to do one's own 
 pleasure. "There is not that thing in the world," 
 he asserts, "of more grave and urgent importance 
 throughout the whole life of man, than is dis- 
 
78 Essays on Milton 
 
 cipline." * Hence true liberty did not seem in- 
 compatible with honest servitude; Abdiel replies 
 to Satan: 
 
 Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name 
 
 Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains, ay 
 
 Or Nature. 
 
 In accordance with the same principle it follows 
 "that none can love freedom heartily but good 
 men." 2 Liberty, therefore, is the willingness and 
 ability to do what should be done. That such 
 freedom depends on character has already been 
 shown, but one more quotation may reinforce 
 this truth. In the Second Defence Milton insists 
 that "real and substantial liberty" is rather to be 
 sought from within than from without, and that 
 its existence depends, "not so much on the terror 
 of the sword, as on sobriety of conduct and integ- 
 rity of life." 3 Laws and political institutions may 
 repress freedom, but they never can create it; for 
 true freedom is within us, a possession of our own 
 souls. 
 
 This interdependence of freedom and virtue fur- 
 nishes the text for those eloquent closing pages of 
 the Second Defence. The fervent appeal to Crom- 
 well; the grateful recognition awarded Fleetwood 
 and the other Parliamentarians; and all of that 
 general appeal to the English public beginning, 
 "For it is of no little consequence, O citizens, by 
 what principles you are governed, either in acquir- 
 ing liberty, or in retaining it when acquired. And 
 
 * Ck. Gov., 2, p. 441. 2 Tenure, 2, p. I. 8 Sec. Def., I, p. 258. 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 79 
 
 unless that liberty which is of such a kind as arms 
 can neither procure nor take away, which alone 
 is the fruit of piety, of justice, of temperance, and 
 unadulterated virtue, shall have taken deep root 
 in your minds and hearts, there will not long be 
 wanting one who will snatch from you by treachery 
 what you have acquired by arms," — these pas- 
 sages are among the most eloquent that Milton 
 ever penned. 
 
 But liberty and individual rectitude, valued in 
 this noble spirit and brought into perfect unison, 
 are, after all, simply the high means to a still 
 more sublime end. Personal character, according 
 to Milton's philosophy, insured liberty for the indi- 
 vidual and the state; and freedom and character 
 together lead to the highest goal, truth. This is 
 the ultimate end of all human endeavor — the at- 
 tainment again of that divine truth lost by Adam. 
 Listen once more to Milton's own eloquent words 
 in Areopagitica: 
 
 Truth indeed came once into the world with her 
 divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious 
 to look on; but when He ascended, and his apostles 
 after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked 
 race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyp- 
 tian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt 
 with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her 
 lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them 
 to the four winds. From that time ever since, the 
 sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating 
 the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body 
 
80 Essays on Milton 
 
 of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb 
 still as they could find them. We have not yet found 
 them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her 
 Master's second coming; He shall bring together every 
 joint and member, and shall mould them into an im- 
 mortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not 
 these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of 
 opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that con- 
 tinue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the 
 torn body of our martyred saint. 
 
 With the most unconquerable idealism Milton 
 firmly believed that truth would once again pre- 
 vail on earth. Even in the darkness of his last 
 years, he still had sublime confidence in her im- 
 mortal strength. He would have reaffirmed then 
 the words of Areo-pagitica: 
 
 For who knows not that truth is strong, next to the 
 Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor 
 licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts 
 and the defences that error uses against her power: 
 give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, 
 for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, 
 who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, 
 but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except 
 her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the 
 time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adjured 
 into her own likeness. 
 
 It was for the furtherance of truth through the 
 upbuilding of character and the safeguarding of 
 liberty that Milton strove in his controversial 
 works. They may be marred by the bitterness 
 
True Bearing of Milton's Prose 8i 
 
 of party strife, but the final impression that they 
 leave with the reader is of a high-minded idealist 
 working in prose for those same master passions 
 that control his verse — liberty, temperance, vir- 
 tue, and truth. 
 
Chapter IV 
 
 Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 
 
 A LTHOUGH Milton was widely read in lit- 
 -*■*- erature and well versed in critical theory, 
 he composed no systematic treatise on epic poetry, 
 as others had done. In his prose he several times 
 describes the mission of the inspired poet — the 
 abstinence he must practice; the integrity of 
 character that should be his, since no man can be 
 "truly eloquent who is not withal a good man" 
 and whose life is not itself "a true poem"; and the 
 loftiness of the ideal to which he must hold. The 
 epics of Homer, Virgil, and Tasso, the tragedies 
 of Sophocles and Euripides, and the poetry of Job, 
 Revelation, and the Song of Solomon, are highly 
 praised by him; for such poetry brings uplift to 
 the character of a people. "These abilities," Mil- 
 ton sees, "wheresoever they be found, are the 
 inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed," and the 
 function of poetry is "to imbreed and cherish in 
 a great people the seeds of virtue and public 
 civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, 
 and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate 
 in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equi- 
 page of God's almightiness, and what he works, 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 83 
 
 and what he suffers to be wrought with high 
 providence in his church; to sing victorious 
 agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and 
 triumphs of just and pious nations, doing val- 
 iantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; 
 to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and 
 states from justice and God's true worship." x 
 If poetry achieves all this, "the paths of honesty 
 and good life . . . will then appear to all men both 
 easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and 
 difficult indeed." Thus Milton described the high 
 calling of a poet. But he nowhere gave an ac- 
 curate and inclusive definition of epic poetry or 
 formulated rules, as Tasso and others had done, 
 for the guidance of those who would attempt its 
 composition. 2 
 
 The reason that Milton wrote no more specifi- 
 cally on the nature of heroic poetry may be that 
 he thought much more of content than of form. 
 He calls Job, for example, an epic simply because 
 its theme is so truly heroic. But a student can 
 gather for himself Milton's theory of the epic 
 from a careful study of Paradise Lost and Para- 
 dise Regained. They were the work of years and 
 were written with classical poetry as a model and 
 with Renaissance critiques as guides. Yet in his 
 epics Milton followed no models slavishly, for he 
 realized that form is determined not by rule or 
 
 1 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 479. 
 
 2 His most precise definition, found at the close of the Second De- 
 fence, simply restates Aristotle's doctrine. 
 
84 Essays on Milton 
 
 precedent but by the thought to be expressed. 
 Hence he adapted the .pattern of the epic to his 
 own ends, and wrote as a creative artist. It will 
 be possible to show how thought and form in his 
 epics perfectly harmonize. 
 
 Paradise Lost opens with the usual epic invoca- 
 tion. But neither here nor elsewhere does Milton 
 adopt a literary convention that is unfitting. 
 Where Homer calls only on the goddess and where - 
 Virgil invokes the muse alone, Milton seeks aid 
 of two higher powers. The first is the Heavenly 
 Muse, called in a later book Urania, of whom he 
 asks the same inspiration that had enkindled the 
 ancient Hebrew poets; the other is the Holy 
 Spirit, who alone can reveal hidden mystery. Each 
 represents "eternal wisdom," but the latter, in 
 higher degree. It is both a prophet's vision and 
 an artist's hand that the poet craves, that he may] 
 rise to the "height of this great argument" and 
 "justify the ways of God to man." 
 
 After this invocation, Milton, still following the 
 accepted pattern of the epic, expounds the theme 
 of Paradise Lost. Homer outlines his story in the 
 opening lines of the Iliad: "Sing, goddess, the 
 wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son, the ruinous wrath 
 that brought on the Achaians woes innumerable, 
 and hurled down into Hades many strong souls of 
 heroes, and gave their bodies to be a prey to dogs 
 and all winged fowls; and so the counsel of Zeus 
 wrought out its accomplishment from the day when 
 first strife parted Atreides, king of men, and noble 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 85 
 
 Achilles." Virgil, in the same way, forecasts the 
 contents of the Aeneid: "Arms I sing, and the 
 •man, who first from the shores of Troy came, Fate- 
 exiled, to Italy and her Lavinian strand — much 
 buffeted he on flood and field by constraint of 
 Heaven and fell Juno's unslumbering ire; much 
 suffering in war, withal, ere he could found him a 
 city and bring his gods to Latium; — author of 
 the Latin race, and the sires of Alba, and the 
 walls of Lofty Rome." So Milton here asks the 
 question : 
 
 Say first — for Heaven hides nothing from thy view, 
 Nor the deep tract of Hell — say first what cause 
 Moved our grand Parents, in that happy state, 
 Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off 
 From their Creator, and transgress his will 
 For one restraint, lords of the World besides. 
 Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? 
 
 The answer that follows states dearly the cause of 
 Lucifer's revolt and its connection with the sin 
 of Adam. Thus Milton presents together the two 
 episodes, or plots, of which the epic is composed, 
 and shows their sequential relationship. An epic 
 convention again becomes a means to an end; it 
 enables him to outline firmly, as no other mode 
 of treating this much-used subject does, the two 
 stories, and to show their causal relationship. The 
 theme, in brief, is the downfall of Lucifer and the 
 sin and punishment of man. 
 
 This brief outline, furthermore, enables Milton 
 to disregard, without sacrifice of clearness, the 
 chronological order of events, and to begin, after 
 
86 Essays on Milton 
 
 epic fashion, in medias res. The great epic antag- 
 onist is at once introduced lying with Beelzebub 
 in the pit of Hell. The scene is first suggestively 
 described : 
 
 A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
 
 As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames 
 
 No light; but rather darkness visible 
 
 Served only to discover sights of woe, 
 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 
 And rest can never dwell, hope never comes 
 
 That comes to all, but torture without end 
 
 Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 
 
 With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. 
 
 The imagination can dwell almost indefinitely on 
 such a phrase as, "no light, but rather darkness 
 visible." In the same suggestive manner Satan, 
 lying amid such torture undaunted and defiant, 
 is described in words that carry far beyond their 
 actual reach into the realm of the imagination. 
 Then more precise description follows, with an 
 amplitude of figure and allusion characteristic of 
 Milton's epic style. First the picture is completed 
 of that Seat of desolation) void of light( 
 
 Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 
 Casts pale and dreadful. 
 
 Then Satan is depicted: 
 
 With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
 That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides 
 Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
 Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
 As whom the fables name of monstrous size. 
 
 The comparisons that follow to mythical giants 
 and the leviathan of Norwegian seas preserve in 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 87 
 
 this more definite picture the vagueness that stimu- 
 lates the imagination so strongly in the first. 
 Satan's personality and the setting are made as 
 vivid as any dramatic scene or character could be, 
 yet they embrace more. The rallying of the fallen 
 soldiery at their leader's call, the council of war in 
 Hell, and the self-delegated mission of Satan into 
 the surging elements of Chaos, afford material of 
 epic scope. Nevertheless, although the whole 
 scene is too stupendous, and the characters too 
 superhuman, for the drama, each of the great 
 leaders possesses dramatic individuality. Milton 
 has selected a powerful moment for his epic be- 
 ginning, when half his story has been already 
 enacted and when the other half is still to be car- 
 ried through. 
 
 How much of epic and dramatic force Milton 
 obtains by beginning thus in medias res is revealed 
 by a comparison of Paradise Lost with the Old 
 English poem on the same subject attributed to 
 Caedmon. His arrangement of details is not 
 strictly chronological; for his full account of the 
 revolt of Lucifer is preceded by the story of the 
 creation. Nor can one fail to see in this Biblical 
 paraphrase an artistry in proportions and a simple 
 dignity and power in phrase. By telling early of 
 the creation of man, and by leading directly and 
 rapidly to the temptation in the garden, Caedmon, 
 if he it were, focusses attention on the main 
 theme, the fall. The poem, however, lacks the 
 passages of highest power, the artistic variation 
 
88 Essays on Milton 
 
 from scene to scene, and the rising and falling of 
 poetic feeling, that distinguish Paradise Lost; the 
 light and shade of Milton's art were altogether 
 beyond the old Saxon poet. One was a chronicler 
 of real power, the other, a creative master. 
 
 In another respect, also, these first two books of 
 Paradise Lost display the author's sense of form. 
 By so beginning in medias res, he is able to keep 
 before the reader from the beginning the two epi- 
 sodes of which the epic is composed. No other 
 poet has succeeded so perfectly in connecting the 
 rebellion of Lucifer with the fall of man. Vondel, 
 for example, simply appends in the fifth act of 
 Lucifer the later story. And indeed, since the 
 stories are not coincident in time, and since each 
 presupposes its own locale, it would be hard to tell 
 how the dramatist could make them one. But from 
 the beginning of the epic the two are joined. (The 
 first lines direct attention to the disobedience of 
 Adam and explain the reason for Lucifer's treach- 
 ery; the council of war terminates with Satan's 
 determination to effect man's ruin, and his de- 
 parture to find the newly created earth. Thus the 
 two stories are woven indissolublytogether, and a 
 real artistic unity is made possible^, ' 
 
 The action of Paradise Lost, which begins here 
 in the depths of hell, moves on through Chaos to 
 heaven itself and earth. Each separate scene is 
 filled with the spirit of the unknowable, for even 
 the Garden of Eden transcends all earthly scenes 
 in its beauty and peace; and Milton's pictures are 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 89 
 
 necessarily suggestive rather than precise. Never- 
 theless, the locale of the poem must be made 
 clear, and the relative position of the separate 
 parts of creation have to be plainly fixed. Satan, 
 as the poem states, fell for nine days through 
 space, a distance thrice the radius of the earth. 
 Between the heaven which he lost and the hell 
 where his prison-house was to be, intervened the 
 hitherto untraversed Chaos, where unstable ele- 
 ments of hot and cold, moist and dry, still surged 
 and tossed without control. Just beneath the 
 bounds of this heaven hung the universe we know, 
 or the ten spheres, which, according to the Ptole- 
 maic system of astronomy, revolve about our 
 earth as center. On all sides of the fixed realm of 
 heaven lay the Empyrean; all about the universe 
 and hell was Chaos. Of the three realms hell is. 
 most specifically described. In the center lay a 
 lake of fire, fed by four streams, Cocytus, Styx, 
 Phlegethon, and Acheron. This was surrounded 
 by a parched desert where the council of war was 
 held, and this, in turn, was bounded by the river 
 Lethe and a frozen continent, "beat with perpetual 
 storms of whirlwind and dire hail." At some spot 
 on the edge of this frozen zone, stood the gate of 
 hell,- and through it Satan passed on his hazardous 
 journey into Chaos. He finally alighted on the 
 outermost of the ten concentric spheres, the 
 Primum Mobile, whence he gained his first glimpse 
 of this earth, the object of his search, far below. 
 After his departure from hell, Sin and Death built 
 
90 Essays on Milton 
 
 a bridge between that realm and earth, and the 
 universe, as Milton depicts it, was complete. 1 
 
 It takes more than a superficial reading to make 
 of the isolated statements regarding the relative 
 position of these places a clearly defined picture. 
 In each particular case the precise detail of fact 
 is colored by poetic imagery and allusion till it 
 leaves with the reader a sense of limitless reach. 
 The description of Chaos, for example, is made up 
 of an abundance of detail; but the darkness, the 
 murky clouds, and the swirl of the elements re- 
 move the picture from the world of space and 
 time far into the illimitable, unknown universe. 
 
 That Milton should conceive his vast epic back- 
 ground in accordance with the teachings of the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy has aroused much comment. 
 Over a century before the composition of the 
 poem, Copernicus had proclaimed the new teach- 
 ing, and by the middle of the seventeenth century 
 his theory must have been everywhere known, if 
 not generally accepted, among scholars. 2 Why 
 then did Milton, who had studied mathematics 
 and science in his youth at Horton, and whose 
 sympathy for Galileo was twice expressed, hold 
 to the old belief? Evidence is not wanting in 
 Paradise Lost that he accepted, or at least under- 
 stood, the Copernican system. Adam, it is true, 
 
 1 Two somewhat different diagrams of this universe can be found 
 in Masson's and Himes's editions of the poem. The above statement 
 is based chiefly on Himes's arrangement. 
 
 2 Consult T. N. Orchard: The Astronomy of "Paradise Lost." 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 91 
 
 supposes the earth to be the center about which 
 ill the stars and planets move, and his error is 
 lot unnatural. Satan, too, in a speech which 
 upholds the most unworthy view of life, approves 
 the same opinion. 1 But Raphael, whose vision is 
 more than mortal, reveals the truth : 
 
 What if the Sun 
 Be centre to the World, and other Stars, 
 By his attractive virtue and their own 
 Incited, dance about him various rounds? 
 Their wandering course, now high, now low, then hid, 
 Progressive, retrograde, or standing still, 
 In six thou seest; and what if, seventh to these, 
 The planet Earth, so steadfast though she seem, 
 Insensibly three different motions move? 
 Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe, 
 Moved contrary with thwart obliquities, 
 Or save the Sun his labour, and that swift 
 Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed, 
 Invisible else above all stars, the wheel 
 Of Day and Night; which needs not thy belief, 
 If Earth, industrious of herself, fetch Day, 
 Travelling east, and with her part averse 
 From the Sun's beam meet Night, her other part 
 StiH luminous by his ray. . . . 
 But whether thus these things, or whether not — 
 Whether the Sun, predominant in heaven, 
 Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun; 
 He from the east his flaming road begin, 
 Or she from west her silent course advance 
 With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps 
 On her soft axle, while she paces even, 
 And bears thee soft with the smooth air along — 
 Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid: 
 Leave them to God above. 
 
 1 See P. L., 8, 11. 5-38; 9> "• 99~i°9; 8. "• 122-168. 
 
92 Essays on Milton 
 
 These astronomical truths are conveyed by the 
 angel in the form of a question, and one can only 
 infer that Milton was ready to accept them. Since 
 the angel is God's messenger, he doubtless ex- 
 pounds the facts as Milton understood them, and 
 he leaves the question unsettled only because 
 Adam, or man in general, has more important les- 
 sons to learn than these. Thus Milton censured, 
 as Ruskin did, a too boundless intellectual curi- 
 osity, and would have man fix his attention on 
 his prime concern — his relation to God. 1 
 
 Besides feeling that man can realize his position 
 in the world and his relations to God as well under 
 the Ptolemaic as the Copernican system of 
 thought, Milton may have found the wealth of 
 association gathered about the old belief poetically 
 more inspiring than the cold fact still being ad- 
 duced in support of the new. Poets have often 
 clothed their deepest convictions in the language 
 of fancy. The great rose of heaven was to Dante 
 a symbol, not a fact, and Milton himself beauti- 
 fully harmonizes in Lycidas the legends of ancient 
 mythology and the fundamental truths of Chris- 
 tianity. A belief, then, is surely permissible that 
 Milton still retains what he knows to be an er- 
 roneous conception of the universe, simply for its 
 greater emotional appeal, though at the same time 
 he states the facts, and with approval, that science 
 was already teaching. 
 
 But it was not essential for Milton early in the 
 1 P. L., 7, 11. 118-130. Ruskin, Eagle's Nest, Lecture 4. 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 93 
 
 course of the poem to expound all these astro- 
 nomical principles; for the function of the first 
 two books in the scheme of the poem as a whole 
 is to present vividly certain scenes and charac- 
 ters powerful enough to serve as foundation for a 
 long epic narrative. The third book, in like man- 
 ner, lays the theological and philosophical ground- 
 work of Paradise Lost. Milton's purpose is to 
 "justify the ways of God to man," or, in other 
 words, to explain the relationship between good 
 and evil. But only God can expound the vexing 
 problem of the origin of evil in a sinless universe. 
 And so God, in this council about his throne, ex- 
 plains why he, in creating the angels and man, 
 left them free to choose either the right or the 
 wrong. 
 
 I made him just and right, 
 Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
 Such I created all the Ethereal Powers 
 And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed; 
 Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. 
 Not free, what proof could they have given sincere 
 Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love, 
 Where only what they needs must do appeared, 
 Not what they would ? What praise could they receive, 
 What pleasure I, from such obedience paid? 
 
 Thus God justifies the endowment of angels and 
 man with the freedom of the will; he has next to 
 predict and justify the consequences of that free- 
 dom. Man, he foresees, will sin and punishment 
 must be inflicted if justice is to prevail. Of this, 
 man can not complain, for God's foreknowledge in 
 no wise constrained him to sin. Endowed with 
 
94 Essays on Milton 
 
 a sense of right, and fortified by ample warning 
 regarding the nature and consequences of sin, 
 man has only himself to blame if he is forced to 
 suffer. Justice is God's first motive. Unfortu- 
 nately, many readers have failed to see in Milton's 
 system of thought a second ruling motive, love. 
 This principle, which is hinted at in the fourth 
 and fifth lines of the poem, is here emphatically 
 proclaimed. God explains that while Satan, who 
 fell "self-tempted, self-depraved," can claim no 
 forgiveness, man may expect grace. The plan of 
 atonement that Christ proposes is at once ac- 
 cepted, and man's eternal salvation is assured. 
 Love here triumphs over justice, as it does also 
 in Dante's Divine Comedy, and God's ways toward 
 man are summed up in his own words: 
 
 In mercy and justice both, 
 Through Heaven and Earth, so shall my glory excel; 
 But mercy, first and last, shall brightest shine. 
 
 This long discourse on dogma has been severely 
 censured as lying without the realm of poetry. 
 Unquestionably, the discussion of such matters 
 purely for theological reasons, would be out of 
 keeping with the end of true art. But Milton 
 sees that, if he is to justify, by concrete example, 
 the ways of God to man, he must make these 
 points clear. Adam must be made to feel both 
 the justice and the love of God, and the princi- 
 ples that lie at the bottom of that justification 
 must be established. Hence the third book, after 
 the epic and dramatic incidents that have pre- 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 95 
 
 ceded it, lays the foundation for the philosophy 
 that the poem would teach. 
 
 Although the main purpose of the third book is 
 philosophical, it does not fail to strengthen, also, 
 the structure of the poem as a whole. In the first 
 place, God's explanation brings together the two 
 plots, Satan's revolt and man's fall, and intro- 
 duces a hero for the first. Satan for all his might 
 can not be the hero of the epic; yet not till Christ 
 offers himself as a sacrifice does the reader see 
 what mightier force is to conquer. In the second 
 place, the philosophical explanation of the triumph 
 of good over evil prepares the way for the con- 
 crete handling of the same truths in later books. 
 In these respects, then, the third book is vitally a 
 part of the whole poem and on artistic grounds is 
 justified. 
 
 After this theological exposition the poet re- 
 turns to his narrative. Under Uriel's direction 
 Satan finally reaches the earth and enters Eden. 
 The locus of the poem here suddenly changes 
 from the spiritual to the visible universe; but the 
 change is not especially noticeable. The Earthly 
 Paradise is still, before the sin, almost a part of 
 heaven; an angel watch guards it, angels pass and 
 repass between it and heaven, and a glory of 
 verdure and a splendor of light make it a place 
 divine. Milton uses for his picture details of 
 landscape that he has seen or read of. A glimpse 
 or two of flowery English meadow land or pasture, 
 rich suggestions of Oriental herbage, amplified and 
 
96 Essays on Milton 
 
 colored by a comparison of Eden with three gar- 
 dens famous in classical literature and a fourth 
 known in Abyssinian history, leave the impres- 
 sion of Paradise and not of earth. The objects 
 that we know have been transformed by the al- 
 chemy of poetry to a sublimated form; it is as 
 though we were among the Platonic archtypes of 
 
 things. 
 
 The most important contribution, however, of 
 the fourth book to the epic is not this change of 
 place from the unseen to the seen universe; it is 
 the development of Satan's character. What of 
 heroic might he seemed to possess during the 
 scenes in hell he loses here. Among his fallen 
 lieutenants his aspect possessed force and even 
 grandeur of a certain sort; 
 
 Round he throws his baleful eyes, 
 That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 
 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
 
 But in the serener peace of Eden and the pure 
 light of heaven, Satan's debasement is obvious to 
 all, and to no one more than to him; 
 
 Now conscience wakes despair 
 That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory 
 Of what he was, what is, and what must be 
 Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue! 
 
 Nothing remains for him but courageous, though 
 hopeless, defiance of God. Even the adoration of 
 his followers brings only heightened misery; and 
 he describes his actual state in the words: 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 97 
 
 Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; 
 And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep 
 Still threatening to devour me opens wide, 
 To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven. 
 
 Realizing this, Satan consecrates himself to evil 
 doing: 
 
 All good to me is lost; 
 Evil, be thou my Good. 
 
 And, as he speaks, his face is disfigured by ire, 
 envy, and despair. To the old-time pride that 
 first prompted revolt, and to the rage against the 
 angelic victors, is now added a third, and the most 
 poignant, torment, hatred of man whom he finds 
 in bliss. From this point on, Satan loses all even 
 of the falsely heroic that he once possessed. > 
 
 After these incidents, Raphael is dispatched by 
 God from heaven to convey to Adam full warn- 
 ing of the presence of his arch enemy and the 
 certain coming of temptation. The flight of the 
 angel through the heavens gives opportunity for 
 splendid epic description, and the meeting of god 
 with man is in accordance with epic convention; 
 but the chief value of this incident is its ethical 
 significance. A portion of the story is trivial; 
 for meal-time in Paradise Lost is not the most 
 inspiring moment, and the angel's scientific ex- 
 position of the nutrition of planets is fancy and 
 not fact. But the poem's aim is to justify God's 
 dealings with man, and man must be duly warned 
 of coming danger if he is to be held justly ac- 
 countable for his fault." f Hence the angel fully 
 
98 Essays on Milton 
 
 explains the situation, and, after stressing the 
 necessity for obedience, narrates the' story of 
 Satan's defeat, without failing at the close to 
 point again the moral. The book closes with this 
 warning: 
 
 Thus, measuring things in Heaven by things on Earth, 
 
 At thy request, and that thou may'st beware 
 
 By what is past, to thee I have revealed 
 
 What might have else to human race been hid — 
 
 The discord which befell, and war in Heaven t 
 
 Among the Angelic Powers, and the deep fall 
 
 Of those too high aspiring who rebelled 
 
 With Satan: he who envies now thy state, 
 
 Who now is plotting how he may seduce 
 
 Thee also from obedience, that, with him 
 
 Bereaved of happiness, thou may'st partake 
 
 His punishment, eternal misery; 
 
 Which would be all his solace and revenge, 
 
 As a despite done against the Most High, 
 
 Thee once to gain companion of his woe. 
 
 But listen not to his temptations; warn 
 
 Thy weaker; let it profit thee to have heard, 
 
 By terrible example, the reward 
 
 Of disobedience. Firm they might have stood, 
 
 Yet fell. Remember, and fear to transgress. 
 
 But the account of the war in heaven, which 
 has often been ridiculed-, is in other respects 
 closely related to the structure of the epic as a 
 whole. Such narration of past events, of course, 
 is a part of the established epic convention. 
 Aeneas reviews for Dido the story of the Trojan 
 War, just as the angel here tells of the conflict 
 in heaven. The angel's story, also, exhibits Satan 
 still in his glory, as he was before the trans- 
 formations in hell and on earth, second only to 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 99 
 
 God in glory and might. And finally, "Jiere again 
 the two plots are firmly joined. Satan first re- 
 volts, withdrawing with him to his "quarters in 
 the North" the "third part of Heaven's host," 
 because of jealous hatred of the newly created 
 Son. The revolt and the ensuing punishment are 
 directly antecedent to the creation of man and the 
 temptation, since man was created to replace the 
 fallen angels, and since Satan's desire to ruin Adam 
 was prompted by thirst for revenge. All this is 
 brought before the reader during Raphael's nar- 
 rative. Satan, the great epic antagonist, in all 
 his might; Christ, the hero of the first plot; and 
 Adam, the hero of the second and the represent- 
 ative of the whole race, are brought together in 
 the story. Thus these incidents are made indis- 
 pensable to the development of the epicjj both as 
 a story and as a philosophy of life. 
 
 The combat in heaven, moreover, furnishes the 
 most strictly epic portion of the narrative. The 
 movements of the two armies, the prowess of 
 Abdiel and Michael in single combat against 
 Satan, and the speeches of the warriors are rem- 
 iniscent of Homer. But Milton wishes the reader 
 to see something more than the epic qualities of 
 the narrative. The angel, as he ends his story, 
 reminds Adam that, in describing the great battle 
 between good and evil, he has used language com- 
 prehensible to 1 man. In other words, the details 
 of the combat are not literally true, but simply- 
 express the truth symbolically, in terms of human ' 
 
ioo Essays on Milton 
 
 experience. Here Milton, it may be, forgets con 
 sistency, for Adam in Paradise would know noth 
 ing of armor or of cannon; but the central trutl 
 of the story is obvious. It is, in the first place, : 
 warning, which renders Adam liable to punish 
 ment in case he sins. And, in the second place 
 it symbolizes the whole relation of good to evil 
 which is the theme of the epic. Abdiel clearlj 
 personifies truth, for God thus judges his service: 
 
 Well hast thou fought 
 The better fight, who single hast maintained 
 Against revolted multitudes the cause 
 Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 
 And for the testimony of truth hast borne 
 Universal reproach, far worse to bear 
 Than violence; for this was all thy care — 
 To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
 Judged thee perverse. 
 
 And Abdiel defines Christian liberty as Miltor 
 himself would do : 
 
 Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name 
 Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains, 
 Or Nature: God and Nature bid the same, 
 When he who rules is worthiest, and excels 
 Them whom he governs. 
 
 The battle itself brings "rout deformed" and "dis- 
 order foul," which connote disorder in the spiritua 
 life; and the final defeat of Satan signifies plainly 
 the triumph of right over wrong. Moreover, th< 
 struggle of evil in heaven exactly resembles th( 
 same struggle on earth, and man must overcomi 
 evil, as God did, if order and justice are to rule 
 This is the meaning of the story. 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost ioi 
 
 From the overthrow of Satan, the great climax 
 of one plot, to the creation of man, the first inci- 
 dent in the second, an easy transition is made. 
 Adam, after listening to Raphael's relation, ques- 
 tions him further: 
 
 But, since thou hast voutsafed 
 Gently, for our instruction, to impart 
 Things above Earthly thought, which yet concerned 
 Our knowing, as to highest Wisdom seemed, 
 Deign to descend now lower, and relate 
 What may no less perhaps avail us known — 
 How first began this Heaven which we behold 
 Distant so high, with moving fires adorned 
 Innumerable; and this which yields or fills 
 AH space, the ambient Air, wide interfused, 
 Embracing round this florid Earth; what cause 
 Moved the Creator, in his holy rest 
 Through all eternity, so late to build 
 In Chaos; and, the work begun, how soon 
 Absolved. 
 
 In this manner the two stories are brought to- 
 gether. They really belong side by side; for, 
 although one is the consequence of the other, they 
 express the same moral truth. Furthermore, their 
 close juxtaposition is not without its purely artistic 
 value, since it brings variation of mood and 
 diversity of description into the poem. In these 
 two central books of the epic, then, the seventh 
 and the eighth, the second phase of Milton's 
 theme is definitely presented. 
 
 In the next incident of the poem, the tempta- 
 tion and fall, Satan meets his earthly enemy, man, 
 as he had formerly met Christ in Heaven's war. 
 
102 Essays on Milton 
 
 The same conflict is now waged on earth, with 
 different weapons and with apparently different 
 results; for the good seems here to fall before the 
 evil. Adam, who in Eden upholds the cause that 
 Abdiel, Michael, and Christ upheld in heaven, is 
 too weak to resist the subtler attack now made by 
 Satan, and yields. It may seem, therefore, that 
 Adam's position is not analogous to Christ's; but 
 the outcome is such that Adam foresees at least 
 an eventual victory. Man with Christ's aid can 
 emerge victorious on earth, as Christ and his 
 angels prevailed in heaven. 
 
 The story of the first conflict between these two 
 opposing forces was told in the language of clas- 
 sical poetry; the second story follows the then ac- 
 cepted Biblical tradition. Yet the temptation is 
 not easily suited to poetic treatment; for the up- 
 right movements of the serpent and his glibness 
 of speech are in themselves ludicrous either for 
 epic or drama. In Milton's early drafts for a 
 tragedy on the subject, no hint is given of the 
 serpent's actual rdle. Vondel slights the whole 
 incident in narrative, and Caedmon, disregarding 
 Biblical tradition, allows Satan to assume the 
 guise of a messenger from God. Milton, too, 
 might have simplified the problem; for in Para- 
 dise Lost Satan enters the Garden enwrapped in 
 the mists of the underground river, and could 
 appear to Eve as a disembodied spirit. But 
 Milton does not seek to avoid the incongruity of 
 the old Hebrew story; instead, he allows Satan 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 103 
 
 to explain why he selected that particular dis- 
 guise, and then adds as brilliant a picture of the 
 serpent as Keats paints in Lamia. 
 
 Milton by still further amplification enhances 
 the effectiveness of the story of the temptation. 
 In this regard, it is interesting to compare his 
 version with Caedmon's. Caedmon, in the first 
 place, brings the tempter to his victim in the form 
 of an angel-messenger. 1 He goes in that guise to 
 Adam himself, not to Eve, and, representing him- ' 
 self to be one of God's messengers come from 
 heaven with a divine commission, orders Adam to 
 eat of the fruit of the tree, that he may add to 
 his wisdom and power and so honor his creator 
 the more. Adam, however, sees through Satan's 
 deceit and repels him. Then the impostor ap- 
 proaches Eve and urges her to obey God's com- 
 mand, that her husband may be pardoned for his 
 disobedience. Eve, completely deceived, obeys the 
 supposed injunction, thinking thereby to save her 
 husband from punishment. At once she fancies 
 that the fruit has given the promised knowledge, 
 and she is then able to persuade Adam that he too 
 should obey God's will. Completely deceived, 
 he yields. Milton's version of the story is quite 
 different. His beginning, it must be admitted, is 
 inferior to Caedmon's; for a talking serpent as 
 tempter is far less probable than an angelic mes- 
 senger. And Milton's tempter proceeds along dif- 
 ferent lines from Caedmon's. Going first to Eve, 
 
 1 See 2 Cot., ii. 15. 
 
ic>4 Essays on Milton 
 
 he begins by flattering the woman for her beauty 
 and by arousing her curiosity to know how the 
 power of speech became his. But this is not enough 
 to lead her to eat, when she is told that his hu- 
 man powers have come from the fruit of the for- 
 bidden tree. Hence Satan changes his tactics and 
 shows her how good and not evil must follow the 
 eating of the apple. God, he explains, laid the 
 injunction simply out of jealousy, and only in a 
 mystical sense — the putting off" a lower for a 
 higher nature — could death be said to result from 
 the eating. Persuaded by this more subtle argu- 
 ment, and also impelled, it is to be regretted, by 
 the hunger of noon-time, Eve eats the apple. 
 Then, wishing that Adam may enjoy the blessing 
 she fancies is hers, she goes to him and urges him 
 to eat. He at once perceives the evil she has done 
 and reproaches her. But because he does not wish 
 to be separated from her, or to enjoy more of 
 divine favor than she, he tries to persuade him- 
 self that God's injunction has been nullified by 
 the serpent's eating of the fruit, and finally, in 
 part persuaded by these specious arguments and 
 in part overcome by Eve's physical charms, he, 
 too, eats and Satan's end has been gained. 
 
 Caedmon's version of the temptation is more 
 simple and credible than Milton's; but Milton's 
 is stronger and better suited to his purpose. Caed- 
 mon minimizes the fault of the guilty pair by as- 
 signing them the most creditable motives possible. 
 Eve sins through pure unselfishness and obedience, 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 105 
 
 and Adam sins through misunderstanding; both 
 have been deceived. Milton gives them baser 
 motives. In Eve, selfishness and envy as well as 
 vanity are the ruling motives; in Adam, uxorious- 
 ness and self-deception. These baser motives are 
 more fitting for the theme; for Adam's sin is in- 
 tended to embrace all sin, and Satan, if he has 
 power to inspire any feelings, would inspire the 
 most sordid. Because of the baseness of Adam's 
 motives, furthermore, the punishment that fol- 
 lows is rendered more just, and the regaining of 
 paradise in the end, a more signal instance of 
 divine mercy. 
 
 Moreover, the significance of the sin is more 
 effectively set forth by Milton than by Caedmon. 
 Satan, on achieving his victory in the medieval 
 poem, laughs like a Mephistopheles, whereas Satan 
 in Paradise Lost slinks ofF in shame and terror. 
 The most dire consequences attend the sin. While 
 Adam ate the fruit, 
 
 Nature gave a second groan; 
 Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops 
 Wept at completing of the mortal Sin 
 Original. 
 
 Further changes are wrought in nature by divine 
 command, when the guilty pair go forth to earn 
 their subsistence by hard toil. Although this, 
 like so many other incidents in the poem, is de- 
 rived from classical literature, Milton's thoughts 
 seem to be less on the Golden Age than on Biblical 
 story and the general moral law that good and 
 
106 Essays on Milton 
 
 evil have power to alter environment for better or 
 for worse. In that symbolical light most of the 
 transformations that follow the sin are to be taken. 
 A bridge is built by Sin and Death to link earth 
 with hell — a detail that needs no elucidation. 
 Satan, on his return, announces victory to the 
 fallen angels, but instead of shouts of triumph 
 hears "a dismal, universal hiss," and feels him- 
 self transformed to serpent form, doomed to eternal 
 (degradation. Milton amplifies the detail, be sure, 
 not only as fact, but as a symbol of the trans- 
 forming, imbruting power of sin on the soul. Such 
 debasement is even more noticeable in Adam and 
 Eve. Love at once is turned to lust, and, after 
 lust has been satiated, shame, recrimination, and 
 pangs of conscience come to destroy the peace of 
 Eden. Milton makes the scene of carnal passion 
 between Adam and Eve as repulsive as possible, 
 because he wishes to contrast it with Adam's first 
 meeting with Eve, where all was love and holi- 
 ness. By the degrading power of sin all that once 
 was good has been turned to evil. 
 
 But the epic was not designed by Milton for 
 such an end as this. Adam has sinned, punish- 
 ment must follow, and earth no longer can* be a 
 paradise. But the suggestion of a happier des- 
 tiny for man was given at the beginning in the 
 
 Words : Till one greater Man 
 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 
 
 and the plan of atonement was devised and accep- 
 ted in the council scene of the third book. Christ, 
 
Epic Structure of Paradise Lost 107 
 
 the victor over Satan in one plot, becomes the 
 ally and savior of the defeated hero in the second 
 plot. Adam, thus strengthened by the spirit -of 
 the heavenly victor, through long years of pro- 
 bation and schooling learns to conquer the mighty 
 power of evil. The long recital of Hebrew his- 
 tory that fills most of the last two books of Para- 
 dise Lost simply shows how this conquest is to be 
 gained. It shows what God's ways to man really 
 are; it exhibits the dire consequences of evil-do- 
 ing; and it formulates the great principles of right- 
 living. Christ then appears in the Garden as 
 intercessor and judge, to fulfill the promise early 
 recorded, and Satan and man receive their diverse 
 sentences together. The stories of the two con- 
 flicts are thus for the last time brought together; 
 Christ and Adam, who have fought the hero's 
 fight against the great antagonist, stand united- 
 Two stories have been told, widely different in 
 outward character, and extensive in scope, so that 
 they afford ample and widely varied material for 
 a long epic. But all this wealth of material has 
 been directed by the poet to a single end. The 
 two stories are first connected by the closest se- 
 quential relationship. They are also really paral- 
 lel, being simply different expressions of the same 
 great principle, the warfare of good against evil. 
 Both lead to the same end — a paradise lost and 
 regained; and here at the conclusion they stand 
 once more united in closest unity. The epic, 
 therefore, is an artistic whole. 
 
108 Essays on Milton 
 
 In this chapter the structure of Paradise Lost 
 has been discussed, in the attempt to show what 
 the epic form for this narrative material should 
 be. The poem has its deeper meaning, which has 
 been hinted at here, but which will be more fully 
 presented in a later chapter. For the exposition 
 of this same deep thought other poets have used 
 other forms of literature. Shakespeare presented 
 it 'dramatically on the stage. Later authors have 
 expounded it in psychological novels and in ana- 
 lytical poems. But Milton's chosen form was the 
 epic, and what this involved in his mind the dis- 
 cussion just concluded has been designed to show. 
 
Chapter V 
 The Sources of Paradise Lost 
 
 (a) The Bible 
 
 jVyflCHAEL'S forecast of the future in the 
 ■'-*-'■ closing books of Paradise Lost recalls ti 
 the well-read man several other such prophetic 
 visions. He -may think first of the revelation given 
 by Anchises to Aeneas of the heroes, yet unborn, 
 who were to found and rule the Roman state. 
 He may remember, also, the very similar, though 
 more discursive, historical resume found in Syl- 
 vester's translation from Du Bartas, the Diuine 
 Weekes and Workes, which Milton read in boy- 
 hood. And even more forcefully the analogy may 
 suggest itself with the divine revelation given to 
 Daniel, the first portion of which, as in Paradise 
 Lost and indeed also in the Aeneid, is given in 
 vision, and the last portion in narrative. If this 
 one division of the poem so gives indication of 
 Milton's classical scholarship, his knowledge of the 
 Bible, and his acquaintance with English litera- 
 ture, it is but typical in this respect of the poem 
 as a whole. Paradise Lost is a literary epic, and 
 behind it, giving detail, color, and artistic form, 
 
no Essays on Milton 
 
 are the literatures of various peoples of widely 
 different times. Israel and ancient Greece and 
 Rome, Italy of the Renaissance, Elizabethan Eng- 
 land, and possibly Holland of the seventeenth 
 century, contributed to Paradise Lost at least some 
 part of their best thought and their highest sense 
 of the poetic art. 
 
 Many old-time readers of Paradise Lost, con- 
 versant mainly with Biblical literature, were ac- 
 customed to read the epic solely as a sacred poem. 
 It was the favorite reading, for example, of John 
 Bright. Such minds found in it, vividly retold, a 
 large portion of Old Testament history, all focussed 
 about two or three incidents of human experience 
 on which rests the Christian faith. Milton's ver- 
 sion came to be regarded almost as canonical Scrip- 
 ture, and his story of the expulsion of Lucifer, the 
 creation of man, and the temptation and fall in 
 the Garden of Eden, has become part of the web 
 and woof of English thought. The burning pit of 
 hell, the state of innocence and bliss in Eden, the 
 eating of the apple, and even minor details like 
 Adam's naming of the birds and animals, are pre- 
 sented as authentic facts. Although Milton's 
 narrative is more full and varied than Biblical his- 
 tory, his spirit accords with that of the Hebrew 
 chroniclers, and his own confidence in divine in- 
 spiration is more than once expressed. Almost 
 unconsciously, therefore, the Bible-reading Chris- 
 tian has ascribed to Milton the divine guidance 
 which he prayed for of the 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost hi 
 
 Celestial Patroness, who deigns 
 Her nightly visitation unimplored, 
 And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
 Easy my unpremeditated verse. 
 
 It is wrong, however, whether one accepts 
 Genesis as history or myth, to interpret Paradise 
 Lost simply as recital of fact. Its theme, as the 
 following chapter will attempt to show, is far 
 deeper and more enduring than that, and there is 
 evidence in the poem that Milton wished us to 
 read the story not so much for the facts as for 
 the truths expressed. In Christian Doctrine, to be 
 sure, he displayed his unquestioning trust in the 
 literal reading of the Scriptures. He had formu- 
 lated his own system of belief, as he insisted every 
 one should do, by a close study of the Bible; no 
 verse, however insignificant, was purposely disre- 
 garded or perverted by false interpretation. So 
 Milton justified even the anthropomorphic repre- 
 sentation of Deity, on the ground that God must 
 have revealed himself to man in the form in which 
 he wished himself to be conceived. But Milton 
 realized that "both in the literal and figurative 
 descriptions of God, he is exhibited not as he really 
 is, but in such a manner as may be within the 
 scope of our comprehensions." Milton, therefore, 
 did not assert "that God is in fashion like unto 
 man in all his parts and members." He simply 
 believed that, "as far as we are concerned to 
 know, he is of that form which he attributes to 
 himself"; for God certainly employed language 
 
ii2 Essays on Milton 
 
 in his revelation adequate to teach the great 
 truths that man should know. And these truths, 
 rather than a literal statement of the revelation, 
 are of vital concern to the human race. 
 
 In Paradise Lost Milton shows himself even 
 more willing to recognize this distinction between 
 a literal and a symbolical revelation of the divine. 
 Dante explains in his letter to Can Grande four 
 different ways of interpreting Biblical stories; 
 Milton, I think, would justify two. He found in 
 the Bible an historical record which he accepted 
 as true not in all respects to actual facts but to 
 God's ultimate purpose. On that ultimate purpose 
 our attention is focussed in Paradise Lost. Had 
 Milton regarded the epic as matter of fact history, 
 he could not have incorporated, without serious 
 inconsistency, so much legendary material from 
 ecclesiastical and even pagan sources; for in 
 matters of faith "we are expressly forbidden to 
 pay any regard to human traditions." In his 
 poem he follows Scriptural story, because it seems 
 the fittest way of describing the eternal conflict 
 between good and evil; but he adds also non- 
 Biblical details that are in keeping with it. He 
 specifies, for example, the apple as the forbidden 
 fruit; he adopts a pagan cosmography; and he 
 founds his war in heaven on Homeric traditions. 
 Like portions of the sacred story itself, these 
 details seemed fit symbols of the truths that the 
 Bible aims to teach. 1 
 
 1 See Ch. Doctr., chaps. 30, 2. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 113 
 
 This distinction between facts and the enduring 
 truths revealed by them is plainly brought out in 
 Paradise Lost. 1 Raphael is careful in the poem to 
 explain to Adam: 
 
 And what surmounts the reach 
 Of human sense I shall delineate so, 
 By likening spiritual to corporal forms, 
 As may express them best — though what if Earth 
 Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein 
 Each to other like more than on Earth is thought. 
 
 A similar reminder is given later that spiritual 
 truth must sometimes be expressed in material- 
 istic form. Milton believed that some foundation 
 of fact in the heavenly kingdom lay behind this 
 symbolical revelation. But since God has with- 
 held the exact nature of those facts, there must be 
 something deeper than fact for man to learn from 
 Bible story. Ever the poet's thought is centered on 
 the truth itself and not on its expression. It was 
 the sin of Adam and not its trivial form, the 
 eternal consequences of evil and not the flames of 
 hell, that were truths to him. The poem does 
 not read the facts of creation literally. Paradise 
 Lost follows the Biblical narration of the work of 
 the six days, as Du Bartas and all others had 
 done, but plainly sanctions a less literal interpre- 
 tation of the story. This is the meaning of the 
 
 lines . Immediate are the acts of God, more swift 
 
 Than time or motion, but to human ears 
 Cannot without process of speech be told, 
 So told as earthly notion can receive. 
 
 1 P. L., 5, 11. S7I-576; 6, II. 893-896; 7, 11. 176-179. 
 
ii4 Essays on Milton 
 
 Thus the poet interpreted the Scriptures liberally 
 and philosophically, and Paradise Lost depends 
 less upon a literal acceptance of ancient myths 
 than upon the moral significance of what those 
 myths denote. 
 
 Milton was not the first to teach that the lan- 
 guage of the Scriptures is accommodated to the 
 finite character and experience of the human mind. 
 John Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, where 
 Milton himself received his early education, ex- 
 pounded in exactly this way the first chapters of 
 Genesis. 1 In one of his letters to Radulphus, Colet 
 explains that Moses in the account of creation, 
 "Setting aside matters purely Divine and out of 
 the range of the common apprehension, proceeds 
 to instruct the unlearned people, by touching 
 rapidly and lightly on the order of those things 
 with which their eyes were very palpably conver- 
 sant, that he might teach them what men are, 
 and for what purpose they were born, in order that 
 he might be able with less difficulty to lead them 
 on afterwards to a more civilized life and to the 
 worship of God — which was his main object in 
 writing." Hence Moses assigns to separate days 
 the creation of different parts of the universe, 
 which were in actuality created simultaneously 
 before the beginning of time. And hence he men- 
 tions in the story of creation those objects that 
 man most often sees, in what would seem to man 
 a natural order. For Moses wished to speak of 
 
 1 Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers, pp. 25-36. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 115 
 
 heavenly things in a manner not derogatory to 
 God, yet in words that could be easily com- 
 prehended by the unlettered men whom he 
 addressed. The lines just quoted from Para- 
 dise Lost exactly express Colet's theory of 
 " accommodation." 
 
 Because Milton read the Bible in the spirit of a 
 poet and philosopher, he drew his inspiration 
 mainly from the poetic books of the Old Testa- 
 ment and the Apocalypse and Jude, rather than 
 from the uncolored narrative of the Pentateuch. 
 The exegesis of early churchmen, too, and general 
 Biblical tradition enter in to give body and am- 
 plitude to the episodes that constitute the founda- 
 tions of the epic. The temptation in the Garden 
 is told in Genesis, but nothing is given there of 
 Lucifer's fall, and it is from scattered references 
 in the Prophets and the New Testament that Mil- 
 ton gathers his material. The creation is out- 
 lined in Genesis, but Milton was inspired more by 
 the glowing songs on the creation in Job and the 
 Psalms. The reader seldom stops to consider from 
 how many Biblical and extra-Biblical sources Mil- 
 ton's story is drawn. Hence Lamartine, like many 
 others, looked upon Paradise Lost as "the dream 
 of a Puritan fallen asleep over the first pages of 
 his Bible." * Although the idea is not inexplicable, 
 it is altogether erroneous. 
 
 For even the bare outlines of the story of 
 Lucifer's fall, Milton had to look to the later books 
 1 Quoted from Himes, Paradise Lost, p. x. 
 
n6 Essays on Milton 
 
 of the Bible, since the writings of the Pre-exilic 
 period say nothing of Satan or demonology. God, 
 to the early Hebrews, was the sole ruling spirit, 
 and all acts, good and bad alike, were attributed 
 to him. Even the Satan of Job was a spirit al- 
 lowed by God to tempt the man of Uz. In the 
 later Biblical writings, however, a system of 
 thought derived from the dualistic philosophy of 
 the Persians and Babylonians appears, and God is 
 represented as ever opposed and threatened by 
 his arch-foe, the spirit of evil. In Zechariah and 
 First Chronicles, however, the evil spirit is still not 
 independent of God. 1 This dualism is carried 
 further in the New Testament, where Christ is 
 represented as openly at war with Satan. 2 Luke 
 writes, "And he said unto them, I beheld Satan 
 as lightning fall from heaven." St. Peter speaks 
 still more explicitly: "God spared not the angels 
 that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and de- 
 livered them into chains of darkness, to be re- 
 served unto judgment." Jude makes essentially 
 the same statement, and the author of the Apoc- 
 alypse carries on the tradition in the verse: "And 
 the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, 
 called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the 
 whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and 
 his angels were cast out with him." 3 Like the 
 theologians of his time, Milton, of course, was 
 
 1 Zech., 3. 2; 1 Chron., 21. 1 ff. 
 
 s Matt., 4. ij 13. 39; John, 14. 30. 
 
 * Luke, 10. 18; 2 Peter, 2. 4; Jude, 1. 6, 7; Ren., 12. 7-9; 20. 1-3. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 117 
 
 inclined to understand the serpent mentioned in 
 Genesis as Satan; but his epic embodies these 
 dualistic ideas that the Hebrews learned during 
 their exile. 
 
 The reader can therefore understand why 
 Michael is the first angel commissioned by God in 
 Paradise Lost to lead the fight, and why he is 
 chosen to meet Satan in single combat. The pic- 
 ture simply amplifies the verse in Revelation: 
 "And there was war in heaven: Michael and his 
 angels fought against the dragon: and the dragon 
 fought and his angels." 1 About this verse and 
 several others the tradition of centuries has 
 gathered a vast wealth of legend. 
 
 In exactly the same way a few passages in the 
 Bible, extended and colored by uncanonical 
 writings, have given Milton his conception of the 
 angelic hosts. In the canonical scriptures only 
 two angels are mentioned by name — Michael, 
 called "the chief of princes," and Gabriel. Two 
 others, Raphael and Uriel, are named in the Apoc- 
 rypha, and in Zechariah and Revelation the 
 seven angels are alluded to who "run to and fro 
 through the whole earth." 2 These, too, are men- 
 tioned by Milton. The complete idea of the 
 heavenly hierarchy, which was elaborated by 
 Dionysius, the Areopagite, did not directly influ- 
 ence Milton; for although in Paradise Lost he 
 
 1 See Rev., 12. 7; Jude, 1. 9; Daniel, 8. 16; 9. 21. 
 1 Tob., 12. is; 2 Es-> S- 2 °J z ' f *-> 4- 10; *»•> 5- 6. See P. L., 3, 
 1. 650. 
 
n8 Essays on Milton 
 
 speaks often of the heavenly hosts, "each in his 
 hierarchy, the Orders bright," he alludes only 
 once to the nine definite orders. 1 He employs the 
 names "dominions," "thrones," and "powers" 
 vaguely, as they are used in the Bible. He seems 
 to have been influenced, therefore, only in a 
 general way by ecclesiastical tradition, and his 
 pictures of the angels in heaven and their move- 
 ments through the universe, are simply a poet's 
 rendering of hints found in the Bible. 
 
 To illustrate this point a single passage will 
 suffice: 
 
 Him all his train 
 Followed in bright procession, to behold 
 Creation, and the wonders of his might. 
 Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in his hand 
 He took the golden compasses, prepared 
 In God's eternal store, to circumscribe 
 This Universe, and all created things. 
 One foot he centred, and the other turned 
 Round through the vast profundity obscure, 
 And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds; 
 This be thy just circumference, O World!" 2 
 
 This is a poet's glowing vision of the verse in 
 Proverbs: "When he prepared the heavens, I was 
 there: when he set a compass upon the face of 
 the depth." Two other richly poetic hymns on 
 the creation moved the poet profoundly. The 
 Lord's reply from the whirlwind to convince Job 
 of man's insignificance among the wonders of crea- 
 tion, and the Psalmist's song of praise and grati- 
 
 1 P. L., i, 1. 737; s, 11. 748-750. 
 
 2 P. L., 7, 11. 221-231; Prov., 8. 27-29; Job, 38; Ps., 104. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 119 
 
 tude were ever before him. Each clause of these 
 two chapters is in essence a poem, and one can 
 trace them in expanded form in the epic. "Man 
 goeth forth unto his work, and to his labour, until 
 the evening," for example, finds place in the fifth 
 and ninth books of Paradise Lost, where Adam's 
 joyous labor in the Garden is portrayed. The 
 whole psalm breathes, if anything, a vivid sense 
 of God's unfailing presence on earth. The Psalm- 
 ist did not conceive of him as dwelling, since the 
 work of creation, apart from man in heaven; his 
 thought is that God still moves in every part of 
 his handiwork. Milton, too, has this same con- 
 viction of the ever-present, in-breathing spirit of 
 God throughout his creation. In other words, 
 Milton holds the poet's conception of creation, 
 not the annalist's or theologian's. 
 
 On almost every page of the epic, this same 
 quickening spirit of the Bible has left its impres- 
 sion. It does not reveal itself mainly in open 
 allusions to Biblical incidents or characters. The 
 number of the fallen angels may be suggested by 
 the comparison: 
 
 As when the potent rod 
 Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, 
 Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud 
 Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, 
 That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung 
 Like Night, and darkened all the land of Nile. 
 
 Similarly, the stairway from heaven to earth is 
 likeneM to the ladder of Jacob : 
 
120 Essays on Milton 
 
 The stairs were such as whereon Jacob saw 
 Angels ascending and descending, bands 
 Of guardians bright, when he from Esau fled 
 To Padan-Aram. 1 
 
 Such definite comparisons give the epic a con- 
 creteness and a Biblical coloring that it needs. 
 But they are less numerous, I think, than exactly 
 similar allusions to classical history and legend, 
 and reveal the influence of the Scriptures in pos- 
 sibly the least vital aspect. 
 
 Of more importance to the poem are the numer- 
 ous expansions of Biblical statements or thoughts. 
 Some of those relating to the creation have al- 
 ready been noted, and they are really too numer- 
 ous to list. Two passages of the Gospel of John 
 underlie the expanded figure: 
 
 As when a prowling wolf, 
 Whom hunger drives to seek new haunt for prey, 
 Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve, 
 In hurdled cotes amid the field secure, 
 Leaps o'er the fence with ease into the fold; 
 Or as a thief, bent to unhoard the cash 
 Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors, 
 Cross-barred, and bolted fast, fear no assault, 
 In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles. 8 
 
 The passage contains reminiscences also of Homer 
 and Virgil, reminding us again that Paradise Lost 
 is a composite, literary epic; but the foundations of 
 the description are the verses: "He that entereth 
 not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth 
 up some other way, the same is a thief and a rob- 
 
 1 P. L., i, 11. 338-343; 3, 11. 510-513. 
 
 2 John, 10. 1-2, 12-14. P- L., 4, 11. 183-191. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 121 
 
 ber. But he that entereth in by the door is the 
 shepherd of the sheep. . . . But he that is an hire- 
 ling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep 
 are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the 
 sheep, and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, 
 and scattereth the sheep." 
 
 In a similar way, Adam's brief lament over his 
 lost power and glory resembles Job's self-re- 
 proaches. 1 Here is found compression rather than 
 expansion of the original. And to the Bible Milton 
 seems to have turned instinctively as his thought 
 rose into "the Heaven of Heavens." For this 
 representation of God he could find nothing ade- 
 quate in the classics; he apparently failed to 
 remember Dante's radiant vision. He turned, in- 
 stead, to one of the Prophets, who exerted such 
 influence on both his prose and verse. Ezekiel 
 approaches the Almighty in the vision of the 
 whirlwind, the four living creatures and the chariot, 
 the voice heard from the firmament above their 
 heads, and the sapphire throne. Dante transposes 
 this wonderful vision to the Purgatory, and Mil- 
 ton, to describe Christ's going forth to battle, 
 renders it thus: 
 
 Forth rushed with whirlwind sound 
 
 The chariot of Paternal Deity, 
 
 Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel; undrawn, 
 
 Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed 
 
 By four cherubic Shapes. Four faces each 
 
 Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies all 
 
 And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels 
 
 1 See Himes, Paradise Lost, p. 449. 
 
122 Essays on Milton 
 
 Of beryl, and careering fires between; 
 
 Over their heads a crystal firmament, 
 
 Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 
 
 Amber and colours of the showery arch. 
 
 He, in celestial panoply all armed 
 
 Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought, 
 
 Ascended; at his right hand Victory 
 
 Sat eagle-winged; beside him hung his bow, 
 
 And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored; 
 
 And from about him fierce effusion rolled 
 
 Of smoke and bickering flame and sparkles dire. 
 
 Attended with ten thousand thousand Saints, 
 
 He onward came; far off his coming shone; 
 
 And twenty thousand (I their number heard) 
 
 Chariots of God, half on each hand, were seen. 
 
 He on the wings of Cherub rode sublime 
 
 On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned — 
 
 Illustrious far and wide, but by his own 
 
 First seen. 
 
 Here, then, in one of the finest visions of the 
 poem, where the great hero hurls his foe to "bot- 
 tomless perdition," the poet is content to see the 
 divine form through the eyes of the prophet. 
 
 In some cases it is a whole verse that finds its 
 way into the poem. God in the council scene is 
 seated on his throne, and 
 
 On his right 
 The radiant image of his glory sat, 
 His only Son. 
 
 These lines reproduce the verse in Hebrews: "Who 
 being the brightness of his glory, and the express 
 image of his person, and upholding all things by 
 the word of his power, when he had by himself 
 purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 123 
 
 Majesty on high." * Again, Abraham remonstrates 
 in behalf of Sodom, "That be far from thee to do 
 after this manner, to slay the righteous with the 
 wicked"; and in a very similar situation Christ 
 
 Sa y S : That be from thee far, 
 
 That far be from thee, Father, who art judge 
 Of all things made, and judgest only right! 
 
 Even more interesting is the scrupulous fidelity 
 to the Bible of the lines, 
 
 Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, 
 
 and, 
 
 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. 
 
 More frequently, it is but a single word or phrase 
 that so brings to mind the language and the inci- 
 dents of the Scriptures. The words, "That he 
 may know how frail his fallen condition is," rest 
 on the verse, "That I may know how frail I am." 2 
 In the same way one may place together: "Thou 
 hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass" 
 and "her [Babylon's] bars are broken," and 
 
 Whom no bounds 
 Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains 
 Heaped on him there. 8 
 
 Such passages must have come into the poem from 
 conscious reminiscences of the Bible. 
 
 Much more frequent, of course, are the instances 
 of a word or words used by Milton, probably un- 
 consciously, in a common Biblical sense. "Both 
 
 1 Heb., 1. 3. P. L., 3, 11. 62-64. 
 
 2 Gen., 18. 25; P. L., 3, U. 153-155- P'- 39- 45 P- L., 3. L 180. 
 * P. L., 3, 11. 81-83; Job, 14. s; Jer-, S«- 30. 
 
124 Essays on Milton 
 
 heaven and earth shall high extoll thy praises"; 
 "reaping immortal fruits of joy and love"; "for 
 ever with corruption there to dwell"; "renew his 
 lapsed powers"; "soften stony hearts"; "dead 
 in sins"; "let thine anger fall"; "the Powers of 
 Darkness bound"; "all knees to thee shall bow," — 
 these are only a few of the countless examples that 
 might be adduced of Milton's unconscious bor- 
 rowing of Scriptural phraseology. 1 Its presence is 
 most noticeable in strictly Biblical portions of the 
 poem, like this council scene in heaven or the 
 angel's revelation of the future to Adam; but all 
 parts are colored by the language of the Scriptures. 
 It is but natural that this should be true of a 
 poem so entirely Christian in intent. Although 
 Milton's aim is more than simple recital of Biblical 
 narrative, his whole poem, intended as it was to 
 justify God's ways with man, rests on Biblical 
 foundations. Incidents are taken from Hebrew 
 history, characters are borrowed and presented in 
 the traditional way, details of description are 
 copied, and the thought of the sacred writers is 
 reproduced. The workings of God's law, in short, 
 are given in the words of the inspired book. 
 Hundreds of such instances of relationship are 
 too obvious to need attention. Others are not so 
 conspicuous. Several times the poet's mind seems 
 fixed on the verse, "Mercy and Truth are met 
 together," from the Eighty-fifth Psalm, which he 
 had already translated. His whole report of the 
 1 P. L., 3, 11. 146, 67, 249, 175, 189, 233, 237. 256, 321- 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 125 
 
 heavenly council, with its argument against pre- 
 destination and its explanation of the atonement, 
 follows the Scripture, as Milton understood it. 
 From a passage of Philippians he derives the 
 thought: 
 
 Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume 
 
 Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own. 
 
 Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss 
 
 Equal to God, and equally enjoying 
 
 God-like fruition, quitted all to save 
 
 A world from utter loss, and hast been found 
 
 By merit more than birthright Son of God. 1 
 
 Like Carlyle and Ruskin, Milton was so thor- 
 oughly imbued with the language of the Bible 
 that he used it unconsciously in all he wrote. 
 
 To study this aspect of Paradise Lost, compari- 
 son with Milton's Christian Doctrine is constantly 
 necessary. This prose treatise serves for the reader 
 as an intermediary between the Bible and the 
 poem, as perhaps it served also for the poet. As 
 proof of God's grace, Christian Doctrine cites the 
 verse, "And I will put enmity between thee and 
 the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; 
 it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise 
 his heel." This same thought, very similarly ex- 
 pressed, appears several times in Paradise Lost. 2 
 One interested in such citations from the Scrip- 
 tures may compare the ninth chapter of Chris- 
 tian Doctrine with various passages in the poem. 
 That the angels fell of their own accord; that the 
 
 1 P. £., 3, 11. 303-309. Phil., 2. 6-10. See Himes, p. 315. 
 1 Gen., 3. 15. P. L., 10, 11. 181, 191, 1031; 12, 11. 149, 233. 
 
126 Essays on Milton 
 
 good angels are upheld by their own strength; 
 that angels, and especially the seven of whom 
 Uriel is chief, are sent to minister to all unbelievers; 
 that Michael is chief of all angels; that the knowl- 
 edge of devils is great, "but such as tends. rather 
 to aggravate than diminish their misery" — these 
 are only a few of the thoughts in Paradise Lost 
 for which full Biblical justification is given in 
 Christian Doctrine. 
 
 In this scriptural epic the doctrines of seven- 
 teenth-century divines naturally find a place. 
 Milton's motives in writing were not theological; 
 for he was intellectually too independent to ac- 
 cept the dogma of any church, and his main pur- 
 pose was philosophical and literary. He had 
 studied the works of the Fathers and had been 
 accustomed to read the most significant parts of 
 their writings to his pupils; but he recognized no 
 authority as final, and ever insisted that each 
 man must formulate for himself, from divinely 
 revealed truth, his own system of belief. He was 
 thoroughly Protestant in his assertion that the 
 Scriptures were given "for the use of the church 
 of all ages," and that they were so written that 
 all men, aided by the illumining light of the Spirit, 
 can comprehend the truth. "The Scriptures, 
 therefore, are plain and perspicuous in all things 
 necessary to salvation, and adapted to the in- 
 struction even of the most unlearned, through the 
 medium of diligent and constant reading." Hence 
 Milton excerpted from the Bible for his own good 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 127 
 
 I these hundreds of texts, which he arranged and 
 connected in such a way as to form what he called 
 his "Christian doctrine." The same task he 
 urged on all others who would hold a true faith. 
 And that every one might be free to do this, 
 Milton was ready to grant a wide toleration, at 
 least to believers, for he realized that independent 
 thinking must result in diversity of opinion. This, 
 in brief, was Milton's attitude toward the Bible, 
 an attitude that explains both the existence of 
 Christian Doctrine and the Scriptural basis of the 
 epics. 
 
 It may at first seem impossible to reconcile the 
 extremely literal reading of the Bible, which is the 
 foundation of Christian Doctrine, and the poetic 
 interpretation found in parts of Paradise Lost. 
 The visions of the poet, we suspect, often out- 
 stripped the reasoning of the theologian. In an 
 early poem he speaks of the soul after death as 
 carrying on its high existence, not altogether dis- 
 sociated from this world and its inhabitants; his 
 
 Words are: Orunsphere 
 
 The spirit of Plato, to unfold 
 What worlds or what vast regions hold 
 The immortal mind that hath forsook 
 Her mansion in this fleshly nook. 
 
 But in Christian Doctrine he proves, to his own 
 satisfaction, that souls have no existence between 
 death and Judgment Day. Doubtless, he became 
 more of a theologian in the time intervening be- 
 tween the composition of II Penseroso and Chris- 
 
128 Essays on Milton 
 
 tian Doctrine; for much Puritan teaching told him 
 to accept all Biblical statements as of equal value, 
 and controversy forced him to stand rigidly. But 
 there was the more liberal side to his nature, and 
 in Paradise Lost he shows the poet's, not the 
 theologian's, judgment. 
 
 Although Christian Doctrine and Paradise Lost 
 may rest on the same foundation, the Bible, there 
 is this vital difference between them. The prose 
 work contains simply a cold statement and exegesis 
 of hundreds of Scriptural texts; the epic em- 
 bodies in transfigured form whatever is most es- 
 sential in this body of doctrine for the elucidation 
 of God's ways to man. Nothing will exemplify 
 the difference more plainly than a comparison of 
 the chapter on the creation in Christian Doctrine 
 with the seventh book of the epic. In one, Milton 
 gives, with ample substantiation from Scripture, 
 his beliefs regarding the creation of the universe 
 and man. He declares that God created the 
 world by his word and spirit; that Christ was the 
 "less principal cause" of creation; that the world 
 was not created out of nothing, and that matter, 
 therefore, can not be annihilated; that the apostasy 
 of the angels occurred before the creation; that pre- 
 existence of the soul is not mentioned in the Bible; 
 and that the soul is not created at birth by special 
 act of God. Almost all of these propositions can 
 be found somewhere in Paradise Lost, but without 
 accompanying argument. The exact thought of 
 Christian Doctrine is expressed in the lines: 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 129 
 
 The King of Glory, in his powerful Word 
 And Spirit coming to create new worlds, 
 
 But on the watery calm 
 His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread. 1 
 
 But even where there is this close correspondence 
 between the two works, the spirit is different. In 
 one case Milton has a thesis to prove, in the other, 
 an emotion to express. Paradise Lost presents a 
 picture of creation, filled with the wonder of Job 
 and the gratitude of the Psalmist. Milton dis- 
 plays his own warm remembrance of the glories 
 of nature in such lines as, 
 
 And sowed with stars the heaven thick as a field; 
 
 and in many more detailed pictorial passages he 
 seems to remember the crude work of Du Bartas 
 and the epithet-description of Virgil. 2 Such poetic 
 elements in the narrative completely obscure its 
 theological basis, and all is fused by the poet into 
 a unified whole. As the description of creation 
 reaches its close, in the work of the sixth day, the 
 poet's emotion intensifies, and the spirits of earth 
 and heaven burst forth, one grand, symphonic 
 chorus in praise of their maker. The reader 
 thinks, perhaps, of the close of U Allegro and 77 
 Penseroso, where the music of the lines rises with 
 the thought to fine artistic climax; and the anal- 
 ogy is not inapt if it helps him to feel that this 
 seventh book of the epic is no bare rehearsal of 
 fact, but a hymn of praise. 
 
 1 P. L., 7, II. 208-209, 234-235. ' See P. L., 7, 11. 310 ff. 
 
130 Essays on Milton 
 
 Such a study of Paradise Lost in its relation to 
 Christian Doctrine and the Bible will inevitably re- 
 move part of the onus that the poem has of late 
 been forced to bear. It is not a Calvinistic treatise, 
 and God does not stand before the angels, as 
 many have alleged, simply as an expositor of rigid 
 Protestant theology. In the first place, Milton's 
 belief is not Calvinistic, for he rejects the doc- 
 trines of predestination, the total depravity of man, 
 and even the Trinity, in its strict form. Milton, 
 in fact, is neither Calvinist nor Unitarian. In 
 the second place, only those matters of doctrine 
 are introduced that are necessary to Milton's 
 main purpose — the justification of God's ways to 
 man. The poem, therefore, displays not an out- 
 worn theology, but vital and enduring truths re- 
 garding man's place in this universe. It is the 
 work of a man who has read the Bible with a poet's 
 heart. Its story he accepts; its truth he perceives; 
 its language and figures he almost unconsciously > 
 reproduces. No wonder, then, that Paradise Lost 
 and Paradise Regained seem the highest examples 
 of sacred poetry in English literature. 
 
 (b) The Classics 
 
 However numerous the close correspondences ; 
 between Paradise Lost and the Bible may be, Eng- 
 lish readers of culture have more often noted its 
 relationship to the epics of Homer and Virgil. 
 Addison, for example, asserts that "the thought 
 of the golden compasses is conceived altogether 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 131 
 
 in Homer's spirit," and fails to note that the direct 
 source of Milton's idea is the poetical description 
 of the creation in Proverbs. It is natural that the 
 scholarly reader should thus at first regard the 
 classics as the more important influence on Mil- 
 ton; for, whereas the Bible contributed many in- 
 dividual ideas and a countless number of words 
 and phrases, the work of Homer and Virgil dic- 
 tated the general form of the poem, as well as 
 many details. Though Milton had once consid- 
 ered the poetry of the Old and New Testaments as 
 not unfitting models for the modern poet, he 
 eventually decided to cast his life's work in the 
 mold of the classical epic. 
 
 The analysis of the epic structure of Paradise 
 Lost that has already been made, shows how 
 definitely the author had in mind the canons of 
 Aristotelian criticism. He allowed himself the 
 larger scope that the epic poet can claim, yet ob- 
 served the principle of unity in this more compre- 
 hensive field. "With no middle flight" he soared 
 to the height of the sublime, dealing with inci- 
 dents marvelous and impossible, as Aristotle says 
 that the epic poet may do. And, still following 
 the tradition of the classical epic, he selected a 
 theme in which the destiny of a whole people — 
 indeed, in this case of a whole race — is involved. 
 This phase of the 'epic is well explained by 
 Butcher: "The epic poem relates a great and 
 complete action, which attaches itself to the for- 
 tunes of a people, or to the destiny of mankind, 
 
132 Essays on Milton 
 
 and which sums up the life of a period." In all 
 these essential respects, Paradise Lost is outwardly 
 an imitation of the ancient epic. 
 
 But it is equally true that Milton adapted 
 this universally accepted epic pattern and its 
 minor conventions to suit his own purposes. His 
 fixed intent was so to treat the theme he had se- 
 lected as to render it most effective as a narrative 
 and most fully expressive of his deepest thoughts. 
 In so modifying the principles of the Poetics, he 
 was influenced greatly by Tasso. But Tasso made 
 his heroic poem a more slavish copy of the Iliad 
 than Milton could consent to do. In variety of 
 incident, in lack of emotional restraint, and in the 
 frequent resort to the supernatural, Jerusalem De- 
 livered resembles the medieval romance; but its 
 framework and many of its incidents are strictly 
 Homeric. Tasso, in the first place, recounts the 
 story of a great war, waged for the capture of a 
 foreign city. In this war the Italian knight, 
 Rinaldo, plays a part similar to that of Achilles in 
 the Iliad; for example, angered like Achilles through : 
 jealousy, Rinaldo abandons his allies, and their 
 cause in consequence suffers. Tasso also enumer- 
 ates, early in his poem, the various leaders of 
 the Christian army, just as Homer catalogues 
 the ships of the Greeks, and he attributes 
 words of encouragement to Godfrey and Peter 
 the Hermit that resemble the speeches of the 
 Grecian leaders who urge a continuance of the 
 war against Troy. Again, Erminia points out ' 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 133 
 
 the Christian leaders to Aladine from the walls 
 of Jerusalem, just as Helen names for Priam the 
 Grecian generals seen from Troy's wall. And 
 after the fashion of the pagan gods, Beelzebub 
 assumes the shape of Clorinda to encourage the 
 pagans to battle, and sends a dust storm to con- 
 fuse the Christian army. Tancred and Argantes 
 fight in single combat in imitation of Achilles and 
 Hector, and everywhere the Homeric poem is in 
 Tasso's mind. Milton, however, worked with 
 much greater independence. He selected a "higher 
 argument" than human deeds afford, and in its 
 treatment, inspired by the nightly visitations of 
 his "Celestial Patroness," he shaped his classical 
 models to suit his ends. 
 
 This independence was forced upon Milton by 
 the nature of the theme he had chosen and by 
 his higher regard for Biblical history than for 
 classical legend. Ancient mythology and history, 
 he believed, are of value chiefly for what truth 
 they mystically or by example reveal; in them- 
 selves they express no great truth. The Bible, on 
 the contrary, gives the history of the race; for 
 the Hebrews, as the Lord's chosen people, are the 
 types of man in general. In the Bible, therefore, 
 a modern nation like the English, destined, as 
 Milton hoped, to enjoy in later times the divine 
 favor that had once been granted the Hebrews, 
 can find the salient truths of life. It would have 
 been using a lower for a higher form of truth had 
 he employed secular, rather than sacred, literature 
 
134 Essays on Milton 
 
 for the groundwork of his epic. Both the form and 
 the content of Paradise Lost were determined by 
 the author's own carefully formulated purposes. 
 
 There are, notwithstanding, countless resem- 
 blances between Milton's poem and the classics. 
 Addison noted many, as a man of wide reading; 
 Todd, Bentley, and other editors have disclosed 
 more; and students of the scientific school of 
 to-day have gathered others by close research. 
 Just as in his early years the author of the Chris- 
 tian elegy, Lycidas, had employed all the conven- 
 tions of the pagan elegy, so in Paradise Lost he 
 adopted, for the conveyance of his deepest phil- 
 osophy of life, both the general form and many of 
 the details of the traditional epic. This time- 
 honored machinery of the epic is utilized in forms 
 more or less modified to suit the new setting or the 
 new purpose. Incidents are alluded to or copied 
 without acknowledgment in the building up of the 
 narrative, and long epic figures, many of them 
 directly borrowed from Homer and Virgil, serve 
 to give amplification or color to the English poem. 
 A person of Milton's training would have found 
 it impossible to work otherwise in the epic form. 
 To him, as to his learned contemporaries, the 
 absence of epic conventions would have occa- 
 sioned more surprise than their presence causes 
 to-day. 
 
 Comment has already been made on the invo- 
 cation with which Paradise Lost begins. But the 
 Heavenly Muse who is there addressed, is invoked 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 135 
 
 again at the beginning of the seventh book, where 
 the locus of the poem is changed from heaven to 
 earth. In like manner, Virgil, at the beginning of 
 the second half of the Aeneid, after the hero has 
 returned from the realm of the dead, calls again 
 to the heavenly guide, "Now come thou, Erato, 
 and I will unfold what kings, what times, what 
 modes of circumstance, — reigned in ancient La- 
 tium, when first the alien host ranged its barques 
 on Ausonia's strand." Homer, too, makes several 
 invocations in the Iliad. 1 Thus the opening of 
 Milton's seventh book follows strictly classical prec- 
 edent, and at the same time observes the higher 
 law of artistic fitness; for the change of scene 
 and spirit makes the renewal of the invocation 
 very appropriate. 
 
 Possibly no other instance of epic convention 
 in Paradise Lost has seemed to readers so incon- 
 gruous as the account of the warfare in heaven. 
 Milton's ultimate source for this is Hesiod's de- 
 scription in the Theogony of Zeus's battle with the 
 Titans. Between the old and the new generations 
 of gods in Grecian mythology existed the same 
 antipathy as between God and Lucifer, and Zeus 
 ordained "that whoso of the gods would fight with 
 him against the Titans, none of them would he 
 rob of his rewards." So Zeus, by showing kind- 
 ness to the immortals of the younger generation, 
 gathered his party about him. "Now do ye 
 show," he admonished them, "against the Titans 
 
 1 See Iliad, "Catalogue of Ships;" also, II, 1. 218; 16, 1. 112. 
 
136 Essays on Milton 
 
 in deadly fight both mighty force and hands in- 
 vincible, in gratitude for our mild loving-kindness." 
 They answered: "Excellent Lord, thou dost not 
 tell things unlearnt by us: but we too are aware 
 that thy wisdom is excellent, and excellent thine 
 intellect, and that thou hast been to the immortals 
 an averter of terrible destruction." Then Hesiod 
 tells how the gods, "holding huge rocks in their 
 sturdy hands," attacked the Titans, and how the 
 sea and earth resounded and the heavens groaned. 
 Finally, Zeus himself entered the battle, with fire 
 and thunder. His followers fought behind him, 
 "hurling from their sturdy hands three hundred 
 rocks close upon each other." And so the Titans 
 were conquered and hurled from Olympus to the 
 depths of Tartarus, as far as heaven is from the 
 earth, a distance that a falling anvil could traverse 
 not under nine days and nights." 1 There, in the 
 dark realm of Tartarus, inclosed by brazen gates 
 and a strong wall, they are to dwell forever. 
 
 This story of combat between the gods finds 
 place in Paradise Lost. Other details not given 
 by Hesiod can be found in the Iliad. The single 
 combat, for instance, between Michael and Lucifer 
 is surely reminiscent of the fight between Achilles 
 and Hector and of the whole seventeenth book of 
 the Iliad. 2 The speeches, too, of Paradise Lost 
 are modelled after those of Homer. And even 
 such a minor detail as the flight of Moloch before 
 
 1 See also, 04., 11, 11. 315-316, and Hesiod's later description of the 
 overthrow of Typhoeus. s Iliad, 20, 11. 419-503. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 137 
 
 Gabriel, reminds one of the defeat of Ares by 
 Diomede. 1 "Then brazen Ares bellowed loud as 
 nine thousand warriors or ten thousand cry in 
 battle as they join in strife and fray," Homer tells 
 us. Similarly, Milton shows how Moloch 
 
 With shattered arms 
 And uncouth pain, fled bellowing. 
 
 But Milton never would have been content to 
 rest so long and so important a part of his epic 
 on classical authority alone. Although the The- 
 ogony has been called the ultimate source of this 
 episode, it must not be forgotten that in Jude 
 and Revelation the war is briefly mentioned; that 
 those same sources authorize the part played by 
 Michael in the sixth book; and that even details 
 like the hurling of the hills are suggested in the 
 Bible as well as by Hesiod. And as Milton rises 
 to the climax of his story, when Christ rides forth 
 in person to overthrow the champion of evil, Mil- 
 ton turns again to the Bible. His splendid pic- 
 ture of the Savior riding forth in the heavenly 
 chariot was taken from the dream of the prophet 
 Ezekiel. Even the sixth book of Paradise Lost, 
 therefore, seemingly so ultra-classical in content, 
 shows what a composite the epic really is. The 
 account of the war between God and Lucifer rests 
 primarily on the Theogony and the Bible; it bor- 
 rows also largely from the Iliad and Aeneid; and 
 then, for its climax, has recourse again to the 
 
 1 Iliad, 5, 11. 859-861. See Him6s, p. 380. 
 
138 Essays on Milton 
 
 pages of the Bible. In this respect the sixth book 
 of the poem is thoroughly characteristic of its 
 cultured Puritan author. 
 
 Closely dependent though this portion of Para- 
 dise Lost may be on the older epics, Milton handles 
 his material in his own individual way. Homer is 
 interested in each detail of the combat for its own 
 sake, and states facts as facts. Milton, on the 
 contrary, weaves the details together into mag- 
 nificent pictures, and values them chiefly, it seems, 
 for their pictorial qualities. The description of 
 Satan's recoil, for example, has the magnitude of 
 some great mural painting: 
 
 So saying, a noble stroke he lifted high, 
 
 Which hung not, but so swift with tempest fell 
 
 On the proud crest of Satan that no sight, 
 
 Nor motion of swift thought, less could his shield, 
 
 Such ruin intercept. Ten paces huge 
 
 He back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee 
 
 His massy spear upstayed : as if, on earth, 
 
 Winds under ground, or waters forcing way, 
 
 Sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat, 
 
 Half-sunk with all his pines. 
 
 Other pictures are full of sound and movement. 
 
 Now storming fury rose, 
 And clamour such as heard in Heaven till now 
 Was never; arms on armour clashing brayed 
 Horrible discord, and the madding wheels 
 Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise 
 Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss 
 Of fiery darts in flaming volleys flew, 
 And, flying, vaulted either host with fire. 
 So under fiery cope together rushed 
 Both battles main with ruinous assault 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 139 
 
 And inextinguishable rage. All Heaven 
 Resounded; and, had Earth been then, all Earth 
 Had to her centre shook. 
 
 In these long descriptions, both the rapidity 
 and the reality of Homer are lacking. One may 
 remember for its decorative art such a passage as: 
 
 For likest gods they seemed, 
 Stood they or moved, in stature, motion, arms, 
 Fit to decide the empire of great Heaven. 
 Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air 
 Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields 
 Blazed opposite, while Expectation stood 
 In horror; from each hand with speed retired, 
 Where erst was thickest fight, the Angelic throng, 
 And left large field, unsafe within the wind 
 Of such commotion. 
 
 But the episode seems remote from earthly con- 
 flict — a struggle in which greater, but less tangi- 
 ble, than human interests are at stake. 
 
 Milton asserts his own individuality, also, by 
 infusing into the narrative a strong moral under- 
 current. The battle brought into heaven "de- 
 formed rout" and "foul disorder"; the din of war 
 was "odious." Nor is the thought forgotten that 
 all may be but a symbol. The angel who brings 
 the narrative to Adam explains that he has de- 
 scribed these marvels in terms of human experi- 
 ence, implying that such a conflict is only man's 
 way of conceiving the irreconcilable enmity be- 
 tween good and evil. Angels, indeed, might find 
 other words and other symbols to express it. But 
 the nature of the symbol is of no moment, if 
 only it serves to warn man of the presence of his 
 
140 Essays on Milton 
 
 arch foe and the need of circumspection. The 
 final impression, therefore, that the book should 
 leave with the reader is of the creative power of 
 its author. He has given the old incidents a new 
 setting; he has infused into them a new feeling. 
 Again he exhibits the powers of assimilation and 
 creation working in perfect unison. 
 
 Other incidents are transposed from the classics 
 to Paradise Lost with less modification and less 
 thorough assimilation, because their importance 
 in Milton's general scheme is less. One detail, 
 indeed, from the Theogony seems ill-fitted to its 
 new setting. In Tartarus, Hesiod continues, after 
 telling of the Titans' defeat, dwell Sin and 
 Death, and, in front of the mansion of Pluto and 
 Persephone, watches the ruthless dog, Cerberus, 
 who "devours whomsoever he may have caught 
 going forth without the gates." This fiction was 
 in Milton's mind when he described Sin and 
 Death as the gate-keepers of Satan's prison- 
 house. Sin is seated at the portal, while 
 
 About her middle round 
 A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked 
 With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
 A hideous peal. 
 
 That God should have entrusted the keys of Hell 
 to these guards, with strict injunction against 
 opening the gates, seems hardly conceivable; for 
 Sin and Death, instead of wishing to keep Satan 
 and the other evil spirits in captivity, would wel- 
 come their escape. The incongruity is due to the 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 141 
 
 two-fold source from which the conception is 
 drawn. By identifying Satan with that lust which 
 is mentioned by James as the origin of all sin, 
 Milton derives the idea of Satan's progeny from the 
 verse, "Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth 
 forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth 
 forth death." In visualizing these abstractions, 
 Milton's mind recurred to the legend of the 
 Theogony; Sin and Death become persons, and 
 their abode necessarily is hell. All this is fitting; 
 but the intrusion of the legend of Cerberus into 
 the picture renders it incongruous. Still, if hell 
 were to have any guards, they must needs be 
 faithless to their trust, else Satan never could have 
 reached Eden. Satan's sin-born progeny, there- 
 fore, may after all be as fit as any for the duty 
 imposed. 
 
 Other less conspicuous incidents in Paradise Lost 
 can be traced exclusively to classical sources. The 
 debate in hell, in which the future policy of Satan 
 and his followers is determined, corresponds to 
 the council scene in the second book of the Iliad, 
 where the first impulse of the Achaeans to abandon 
 the war is overcome, and the leaders decide to 
 continue the struggle. The games in hell, like- 
 wise, with which the fallen angels amuse them- 
 selves after the adjournment of the council, 
 remind one of the games of the Greeks after the 
 burial of Patroklos and those of the Romans in 
 memory of Anchises. But Homer and Virgil are 
 interested in the details of the chariot races and 
 
142 Essays on Milton 
 
 other contests of skill and strength for their own 
 sake; Homer, especially, was near in time to~the 
 civilization in which such things bulked large. 
 With Milton, however, the case is different; he 
 cares nothing for such diversion and employs it 
 simply as an epic convention. The contestants, 
 also, in the deeds of physical strength interest him 
 less than those more intellectual spirits who re- 
 tire to sing or to converse on weighty themes; for 
 here he can show how vain are the harmonies of 
 the apostates, who, instead of God and his glory, 
 have only "their own heroic deeds and hapless 
 fall " to celebrate, and how futile is the effort to 
 fathom the workings of divine providence for those 
 who have lost its inner light. In the wanderings 
 of other spirits through the precincts of hell, Mil- 
 ton finds opportunity, also, to describe, more fully 
 than he has done before, the exact topography of 
 the region. In this way Milton welds firmly in 
 the general scheme of his poem the incidents that 
 he borrows from the classics. 
 
 It goes almost without saying that the amount 
 of matter so borrowed from Grecian and Roman 
 literature must vary from book to book. If the 
 account of the conflict in heaven rests to a very 
 considerable extent on a classical foundation, the 
 revelation to Adam of the future destiny of the 
 race depends even more exclusively on sacred his- 
 tory. The story of creation, likewise, is based 
 largely on the Bible. But here there is oppor- 
 tunity for description that the closing books of 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 143 
 
 the poem do not afford, and these descriptions 
 abound with pictorial details suggested by Homer 
 and Virgil. So even where incidents can not be 
 transposed, Milton finds enrichment for his epic 
 pictures in classical sources. 
 
 Correspondences such as these are too numerous 
 to be listed. The movement of the hosts of heaven 
 is compared by Milton to the assembling of birds 
 in Eden to receive their names. So Homer likens 
 the gathering of Grecian warriors to the "many 
 tribes of feathered birds, wild geese, or cranes or 
 long-necked swans, on the Asian mead, by Kay- 
 strios' stream," who "fly hither and thither joying 
 in their plumage, and with loud cries settle ever 
 onwards, and the mead resounds." 1 Virgil em- 
 ploys the same figure thus: "They marched in 
 even measure and sang of their king: as often 
 snowy swans in the moist clouds, when full-fed 
 they return." 2 So the angels are said to lie in 
 hell "entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that 
 strow the brooks," just as Homer compares the 
 generations of men to the leaves of the trees that 
 fall and die before the new buds come, or as Virgil 
 compares the crowd gathering on the river bank 
 to "the leaves that fall in the forest at the first 
 chill breath of autumn." 3 The bare simile, 
 
 As, when heaven's fire 
 Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, 
 
 1 Iliad, 2, II. 459 ff. 
 
 2 Aeneid, 7, 11. 699 ff. 
 
 3 Iliad, 6, 1. 146; Aeneid, 6, 1. 309. 
 
144 Essays on Milton 
 
 revives Homer's frequent pictures of the ravaging 
 fire. Such comparisons, in fact, are usually rem- 
 iniscent of no one passage. The swarming of the 
 bees, which Milton uses to describe the move- 
 ments of the fallen angels, has its counterpart in 
 both the Iliad and the Aeneid, and the figure of 
 the ravening wolf might have been suggested either 
 by the Iliad or the Bible. 1 
 
 Descriptive words and phrases are borrowed in 
 the same apt way. Bentley called attention to the 
 correspondence between Milton's "right red hand" 
 and Horace's "rubente dextra." Newton con- 
 nected "ignoble ease" with Virgil's "ignobilis oti." 
 The beautiful phrase, "labouring moon," is to be 
 found in the Georgia and Juvenal's satires, and 
 the exact phrase, "the gods who live at ease," is 
 found in Homer. Milton also translates literally 
 Homer's epithet for Hesperus, "fairest of stars," 
 and borrows directly from the same source such 
 transitions as: 
 
 Now Night her course began, and, over heaven 
 Inducing darkness, grateful truce imposed. 
 
 In general, one of Milton's favorite and most 
 effective means of description was the adjective, 
 and many of his most apt adjectival phrases are 
 derived directly from classical literature. 
 
 So frequent are these borrowings that Milton's 
 thought seems to be often only a composite of 
 ideas derived from classical poetry. Professor Os- 
 
 1 Iliad, 2, 1. 87; 12, 1. 167; Aeneid, I, 1. 430; 6, 1. 707. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 145 
 
 good has analyzed clearly one such passage in 
 Paradise Lost: J 
 
 All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued, 
 
 Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way, till Morn, 
 
 Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand 
 
 Unbarred the gates of Light. There is a cave 
 
 Within the Mount of God, fast by his throne, 
 
 Where Light and Darkness in perpetual round 
 
 Lodge and dislodge by turns — which makes through Heaven 
 
 Grateful vicissitude, like day and night; 
 
 Light issues forth, and at the other door 
 
 Obsequious Darkness enters, till her hour 
 
 To veil the heaven, though darkness there might well 
 
 Seem twilight here. 
 
 "In this passage," Professor Osgood states, "there 
 is an almost literal adaptation of at least four 
 classical poets or poetic conceptions. The general 
 idea of Dawn's opening the gates is from Ovid; 
 the action of the Hours is from Homer; the cave 
 of Light and Darkness is Hesiod's house of Day 
 and Night; the final rout of Night before the 
 beams of the sun is a common conception in Greek 
 poetry, though perhaps in this case referable to 
 Dante." It would pay to follow this analysis 
 further, but the composite nature of Milton's epic 
 may have been already sufficiently illustrated. 
 
 The same writer has also shown most sympa- 
 thetically the use Milton makes of classical 
 mythology. 2 In some cases Milton introduces his 
 allusions in the form of similes and metaphors, 
 often grouping several together for their cumulative 
 
 1 Osgood, Classical Mythology of Milton's English Poems, p. xxvii. 
 
 2 Ibid., pp. xiii fF. 
 
146 Essays on Milton 
 
 effect. Besides this method, which is noticeable 
 especially in the epics and Comus, Milton in many 
 places incorporates some myth in an original set- 
 ting. For example, Chaos, which is but vaguely 
 and briefly treated by classical poets, is fully 
 elaborated in Paradise Lost; and Eve experiences 
 just the same surprise that befell Narcissus. Or, in 
 the third place, mythology is employed to give 
 color to descriptions of nature. In general, Milton's 
 use of classical myth shows not slavish borrowing, 
 but a "beautiful synthesis" of ideas gathered 
 from a number of sources. Out of this de- 
 pendence on the classics came the poet's growing 
 freedom from the oddities of Caroline poetry and 
 his surer taste. On the whole, Professor Osgood 
 concludes, Milton in the treatment of classical 
 mythology exhibits both the range and the in- 
 clusiveness of his reading. 
 
 To handle this one phase of ancient thought in 
 so scholarly a way, Milton must have possessed a 
 thorough knowledge of classical literature. In all 
 his poetry, as indeed in his prose as well, such 
 knowledge is visible. The two epics display the | 
 most sympathetic familiarity with the poetry of 
 Hesiod, Homer, and Virgil. Samson Agonistes is 
 carefully modelled after the pattern of Grecian 
 tragedy. Comus is filled with the philosophical 
 idealism of Plato; for even its tribute to the power 
 of chastity and the supremacy in general of soul 
 over body, is as much the result of Platonic as of 
 Christian teaching. Likewise, the Tractate on 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 147 
 
 Education shows direct influence from Xenophon 
 and Plutarch. Milton's classicism should not be 
 judged by his readiness to quote from ancient 
 literature in his prose tracts; for such excerpts 
 were then commonly gathered by controversialists 
 totally destitute of any sense of literary values. 
 In such display of erudition, a pedant as stupid as 
 "marginal Prynne" easily outranked the true 
 scholar and poet who contemptuously gave him 
 the nickname. Milton's classicism is of a higher 
 sort. In the Tractate on Education he outlines a 
 thorough course of classical study designed to 
 quicken a boy's thought and give him the informa- 
 tion and the power of expression that he needs. 
 Such was the benefit that he himself had derived 
 from antiquity. The poets and philosophers of 
 Greece and Rome, and their historians and scien- 
 tists, had all contributed in turn to the mental 
 development of the poet. All, too, had done some- 
 thing to mold his character and ideals. To esti- 
 mate completely Milton's debt to the classics will 
 remain an impossible task — a task for the philolo- 
 gian, the grammarian, the student of literature and 
 philosophy, and the psychologist. 
 
 Nevertheless, broad as the problem is, it has 
 seemed not unfair to confine this analysis of Mil- 
 ton's classicism to Paradise Lost. Better than any 
 other poem, ,this great epic represents all phases 
 of Milton's indebtedness to the classics. Its gen- 
 eral form was patterned after the Iliad and the 
 Aeneid; many of its episodes come directly from 
 
148 Essays on Milton 
 
 the same sources; and much of its phraseology is 
 of classical origin. Comus shows some of these 
 same influences, but is more strongly tinged with 
 romantic elements. Samson Agonistes is an even 
 closer copy than the epic of a classical pattern, 
 but its spirit and content are purely Hebraic. In 
 regard to this play the problem would be to de- 
 termine how much the thought and spirit of the 
 Attic playwrights modified Milton's Hebraism. 
 More adequately than any other of his poems-, 
 Paradise Lost displays his wide reading in classical 
 literature. It is one of the most classical, as it is 
 one of the most Biblical, poems in our literature. 
 
 (c) The Italian Renaissance 
 
 This analysis of the direct influence of the clas- 
 sics upon Paradise Lost must be supplemented by 
 a discussion of the indirect classical influence that 
 came to Milton through the literature of the Ital- 
 ian Renaissance. Tust as the drama of Tudor 
 
 > 
 
 humanists was strongly affected by Italian plays, 
 so the definition of epic poetry that prevailed in 
 the seventeenth century shows plainly the effects 
 of Italian criticism. A restatement in enlarged 
 form of the Aristotelian theory of heroic poetry 
 was forced upon Italian critics by the popularity 
 of the romance, a form of poetry that violated all 
 accepted principles of criticism and yet for its 
 popularity seemed to deserve official sanction. 
 Some orthodox critics were inclined to censure the 
 romance. Trissino, for example, disapproved of 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 149 
 
 the Orlando Furioso for its lack of unity, and, in 
 slavish imitation of Homer, composed the Italia 
 Liberata to show what the true heroic poem should 
 be. But Giraldi Cintio, Pigna, and others were 
 ready to defend the romance, although they ac- 
 knowledged its want of unity in plot. Finally, 
 Minturno assumed a compromise position, ad- 
 mitting that the varied and improbable subject- 
 matter of the romances was legitimate for poetry, 
 but objecting to their formlessness. This line of 
 argument was carried further by Tasso, who in 
 several critical treatises expounded the theory of 
 heroic poetry, and in Jerusalem Delivered sought 
 to prove that a true epic may possess all the 
 variety of the romance and yet retain structural 
 unity. Into this long and at times acrimonious 
 debate, the best minds of the time were drawn, 
 and no serious student of literature could re- 
 main in ignorance of the general trend of the 
 controversy. 
 
 This, however, was not Milton's only point of 
 contact with the poetry of modern Italy; for he 
 was widely read in the best Italian literature. The 
 scenes of enchantment in Comus owe something to 
 the direct influence of Ariosto, and not everything 
 to the indirect influence that came from the 
 Italian through Spenser. Milton quotes, also, 
 from Ariosto in Reformation in England, and trans- 
 lates literally from Orlando Furioso the much dis- 
 cussed phrase, "things unattempted yet in prose 
 or rhyme." Furthermore, Lycidas accepts in part 
 
150 Essays on Milton 
 
 the innovations of the Italian elegiac poets; and 
 the sonnets, both in Italian and English, reveal 
 indisputable evidence of Petrarchan study. One 
 might expect to find even stronger bonds of con- 
 nection between Milton and Dante; but this is 
 hardly the case. Milton alludes to the Divine 
 Comedy in the sonnet addressed to Henry Lawes, 
 and quotes from it in one of his prose works. 
 His phrase, "sphere of Fortune," has also been 
 traced to Dante's poem, and numerous other cor- 
 respondences between the two poets' works have 
 been cited. 1 But in general the influence of Dante 
 was of a sort that can not be measured or even 
 traced, and Pommrich is justified in asserting that 
 Tasso left the most visible impress on Milton's 
 poetic development. The reason for this, and his 
 whole connection with Italian letters, can best be 
 explained by reference to a few details of his life. 
 
 Very early in life Milton began the study of the 
 Italian language. In the poem, Ad Patrem, he 
 speaks gratefully of the opportunity afforded him 
 in youth of mastering Italian, and the assumption 
 is not unwarranted that he had read Fairfax's 
 translation of Tasso's epic even before he was able 
 to understand it in the original. To this study 
 Milton was naturally encouraged by the interest 
 of his closest friend, Charles Diodati, the son of 
 an Italian refugee then resident in London. Con- 
 sequently, by the year 1638 when he visited Italy, 
 
 1 See C. G. Osgood, M. L. N., 22, pp. 140-141, and O. Kuhns, 
 Ibid., 13, pp. 1-12. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 151 
 
 he was fully prepared to meet the most gifted 
 literary men of Florence, Naples, and Rome. In 
 Florence, he was hospitably entertained by Man- 
 sus, who had been the friend and benefactor of 
 Tasso; and at Rome he was fortunate in making 
 the acquaintance of Lucas Holstenius, the papal 
 secretary. Milton's Italian sonnets, which pre- 
 sumably were composed during this period of 
 travel, beautifully attest his command of the 
 language, and indicate, also, his preference for the 
 so-called Petrarchan sonnet form. In these Italian 
 poems, one sees again that rare combination of 
 knowledge and creative power that distinguishes 
 all Milton's great work. 
 
 Of all the Italian poets Tasso seems to have 
 appealed to Milton most strongly. Pommrich 
 finds much in Tasso's sad life and in his nobility 
 of character that would rouse Milton's interest 
 and sympathy. In addition, Milton's cordial host, 
 Mansus, presumably recommended most warmly 
 to the attention of his guest the work of the great 
 poet he had once befriended. It is not surprising, 
 therefore, that Milton, who so seldom mentions 
 modern poets by name, should refer four times to 
 Tasso, twice in the letter to Mansus, again, in 
 connection with the singer, Leonora Baroni, and, 
 lastly, in his remarks on the nature of the epic 
 poem. 1 This .last reference is of especial impor- 
 tance, because it was written very shortly after 
 
 1 AdMansum, "Introduction" and II. 7, 50; Ad Eandem (Leonoram); 
 Ch. Gov., 2, p. 478. 
 
152 Essays on Milton 
 
 the author's Italian journey and is directly re- 
 lated to the composition of Paradise Lost. This 
 alone justifies our giving to Tasso the place of 
 first importance among the Italian poets. 
 
 It was due in large measure to Tasso's influence 
 that Milton first planned to give epic form to the 
 great poem that he early aspired to write, and that 
 his thoughts were turned, as he sought a subject, 
 to early English history. Tasso had insisted that 
 the epic poet should choose a theme involving the 
 large interests of his own country, and the heroism 
 of some great national leader. The story, also, 
 should not be too ancient to engage the warm 
 interest of the poet's contemporaries, nor too 
 modern to warrant heroic treatment. As suiting 
 all these requirements, the critic mentions the 
 legends of Charlemagne and Arthur. How sig- 
 nificant, then, seems Milton's remark in addressing 
 Tasso's patron, Mansus, that he is meditating a 
 great poem — evidently from his description an 
 epic — on the Arthurian legend or some other 
 story from early British history. Milton soon 
 abandoned this first intention, owing to his re- 
 gard for Biblical story. But the theme that he 
 finally selected, according to his own interpreta- 
 tion, had a really national significance, and gave 
 opportunity for the display of heroism in which 
 the modern Englishman could feel sympathy. 
 Tasso had also insisted that the modern epic should 
 be Christian in subject and teaching; since the 
 marvelous incidents of the epic are credible only 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 153 
 
 if they are attributed to a deity in whom its 
 readers can have faith, and since the hero's per- 
 fection of character is possible only in a Christian. 
 So Milton's epic deals with a Christian theme, 
 which has also a real bearing on English life, 
 yet is not so deeply involved in dogma as to 
 hamper his invention as a poet. In all essential re- 
 spects, Milton's Paradise Lost meets the require- 
 ments for the heroic poem that Tasso's critical 
 essays prescribe. 
 
 Tasso would have approved the long delibera- 
 tion that Milton gave to his choice of subject; for 
 the critic, in one of his essays, calls that the first 
 step in the creation of an epic poem. As the 
 second step he names the giving of artistic form 
 to the matter selected. In this, Milton was little 
 influenced by Italian theory or example, for he 
 followed the better model of the ancient poets 
 and his own sure sense of form. But in the third 
 test to which the epic poet must submit, the addi- 
 tion of poetic adornment to the bare theme, 
 Milton's debt to Tasso was certainly greater. 
 Nevertheless, although many similarities between 
 Milton's epic and Tasso's have been pointed 
 out, the question of their relationship is still 
 unsettled. 1 
 
 Unquestionably, there are passages in Jerusalem 
 Delivered that remind an English reader of Para- 
 dise Lost. Satan, for example, filled with jealousy 
 
 1 See Pommrich, E., Miltons Verhaltnis zu Torquato Tasso. Halle, 
 1902. 
 
154 Essays on Milton 
 
 and hate as he watches the victorious advance 
 of the Christian army, summons his followers to a 
 council of war, and, by reminding them of their 
 former glory, urges them to resist the advancing 
 Crusaders either by force or fraud. Again, 
 Michael, who in Paradise Lost leads the assault 
 on Satan's host, is sent to drive back the devils 
 to hell. Another detail, the entrance of the 
 Egyptian army into Jerusalem by an underground 
 passage, may bring to mind Satan's mode of en- 
 tering Eden. Finally, Michael appears to Godfrey 
 and, removing the film from his eyes, reveals the 
 angelic hosts that are marshalled to fight in his 
 defense. This, too, has its counterpart at the close 
 of the English epic. And in addition to: these, 
 larger correspondences, Pommrich discovers many 
 resemblances in detail, more or less convincing. 
 In Fairfax's translation of Tasso, for instance, 
 hell is called the "house of grief and pain," while 
 in Paradise Lost it is called "the house of woe and 
 pain." Furthermore, both Tasso and Milton liken 
 the number of the fallen angels to the leaves that 
 strew the ground in autumn. Many other such 
 details might easily be added. 
 
 But this evidence offers no very convincing 
 proof of indebtedness on Milton's part. Each poet, 
 to be sure, describes a conclave in hell; but Mil- 
 ton's takes place immediately after the fall of 
 Lucifer, and Tasso's occurs during the Crusades. 
 Such councils of war, it may be added, have been 
 common in epic poetry, and this and the other 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 155 
 
 points of similarity noted above can be accounted 
 for better than by assuming any direct borrowing 
 from Tasso. Milton found Michael designated in 
 Revelation as the leader of the angelic host against 
 the rebels in heaven; in the Iliad and the Aeneid 
 he found revelations of the future, given the hero 
 by supernatural means. Nor do the verbal re- 
 semblances warrant the assumption of close copy- 
 ing on Milton's part. It would be hazardous to 
 assert that no recollection of Tasso's language was 
 in the mind of the blind poet as he composed; 
 for his memory was a veritable storehouse of 
 treasures from the world's literature. But the 
 phrases that he seemingly took from Tasso had 
 become part of his own possession, with only a 
 subconscious realization of their source left in his 
 mind. Tasso's influence on Milton can never be 
 judged merely by listing such parallelisms. 
 
 This conclusion does not undervalue the rich 
 gifts inherited by Milton from the works of Tasso 
 and the other Italian poets. After all, a poet does 
 not reveal his actual indebtedness to his prede- 
 cessors in verbal borrowings. The vital influence 
 of the Renaissance went to the upbuilding of Mil- 
 ton's poetic life. Dante's vision of the unseen 
 world must have done much to inspire the Puritan 
 poet in Paradise Lost. Tasso contributed vitally 
 to the quickening and enrichment of Milton's 
 mind, as he certainly aided him in the formation 
 of a sound theory of epic poetry. Milton's son- 
 nets in English and Italian are the fruits of Pe- 
 
156 Essays on Milton 
 
 trarch's example. Just how much these Italian 
 forces counted in the development of Milton's 
 powers, the world can never know; Milton him- 
 self did not know. The poet Wordsworth, whose 
 temperament Was formed by forces singularly few 
 and easily denned, does not give an altogether 
 satisfactory account of his mental growth. And 
 Milton surely could not tell just how much he was 
 indebted to this influence or that for his varied gifts. 
 But he would have counted his knowledge of Italian 
 poetry one of the most priceless of his possessions. 
 
 (d) English Poetry 
 
 During the foregoing examination of the foreign 
 sources of Paradise Lost, it is to be hoped that 
 the reader has kept in mind the discussion of 
 Milton's relationship to the Elizabethans. Other- 
 wise, the misapprehension might arise that Milton 
 was an exotic spirit among the Caroline poets, 
 owing little to the literature of his native land. 
 Even the slightest acquaintance, however, with 
 his scholarly and literary interests would forbid 
 such an assumption; his pride in England's his- 
 tory and his high hope for her future would co- 
 operate with his general intellectual curiosity to 
 lead him to a knowledge of English letters. He 
 may apparently prefer the classics; for they, more 
 nearly than many of the unproved works of Eng- 
 lish authors, approached high, absolute stan- 
 dards of art. The satires of Hall, for example, 
 meant nothing to him in comparison with Juve- 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 157 
 
 nal's; the trifling conceits and amorous fancies of 
 contemporary song writers seemed to degrade the 
 high calling of Aeschylus or Virgil. But the best 
 of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare — in fact, 
 whatever English thought seemed "not of an age 
 but for all time," was known and rightly valued 
 by Milton. 
 
 Writing in youth when the impulse from the 
 Elizabethan Age was strongest, Milton recorded 
 in several interesting passages his sympathetic 
 recollections of earlier English poetry. He speaks 
 of Chaucer's unfinished story of Cambuscan, and, 
 in an allusion to Spenser too apt to be mistaken, 
 mentions other romantic tales, 
 
 Of turneys, and of trophies hung, 
 Of forests, and enchantments drear, 
 Where more is meant than meets the ear. 
 
 In V Allegro he gives one of the most just 
 comparisons ever drawn between Jonson and 
 Shakespeare: 
 
 Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
 
 If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
 
 Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
 
 Warble his native wood-notes wild. 
 
 This fine bit of poetical- criticism and his poem on 
 Shakespeare, printed in 1632 in the Second Folio 
 edition of the plays, amply prove his open admira- 
 tion of the dramatist. And if the lines on the 
 theater in the First Elegy, written though they 
 are in classical terms, may be taken in conjunc- 
 tion with the lines of 77 Penseroso, 
 
158 Essays on Milton 
 
 Or what (though rare) of later age 
 Ennobled hath the buskined stage, 
 
 there will be reason to believe that Milton was 
 familiar with Shakespeare's contemporaries as 
 well. Milton's literary taste, then, was not wholly 
 a product of the schools. 
 
 Less frequent and less apposite are the allusions 
 to English authors in the prose pamphlets of the 
 middle period of Milton's career. But it is sig- 
 nificant that English works are sometimes quoted, 
 side by side with classical authorities, in support 
 of his arguments. To this end Milton mentions 
 "The Vision and Creed of Pierce Plowman" as a 
 powerful satire, and cites a passage from Gower 
 as an example of "truth delivered of old by a 
 voice from heaven." At this time, to be sure, 
 instead of Jspeaking, as he once had done, of Chau- 
 cer's romantic tales, he uses the words of the Friar 
 to uncover the evils of confession, and the 
 words of the simple Ploughman to condemn the 
 pride of bishops. 1 And in Eikonoklastes, to prove 
 that fair words in an evil king are not to be relied 
 on, Milton quotes the hypocritical professions of 
 Shakespeare's Richard III. So to subpoena the 
 Father of English Poetry and the greatest of 
 dramatists and wrest from them unwilling testi- 
 mony in behalf of the Puritan cause, seems a 
 perversion of belles-lettres. But that one hears 
 nothing more of Chaucer as a master of romance 
 or of Shakespeare as Fancy's child, is no proof 
 
 1 Apology, 3, pp. 141, 164; Reform., 2, pp. 390, 396. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 159 
 
 that Milton had lost his youthful love for pure 
 literature. On the contrary, these citations indi- 
 cate that, even in the hurry and bitterness of 
 party strife, Milton still looked to the self-chosen 
 studies of his youth. 
 
 This present chapter, however, is to deal only 
 with those English works to which Paradise Lost 
 stands closely related. Of these, the Biblical 
 paraphrase often attributed to Caedmon deserves 
 first consideration. 1 Historically, there appears to 
 be no evidence that Milton was acquainted with 
 this Old English version of Genesis. The manu- 
 script, to be sure, rested in London in the library 
 of Archbishop Usher from 1640, or thereabouts, 
 till 1650; but there is no reason to believe that 
 Milton knew of its existence, or that he could 
 have deciphered it even had he chanced to see it. 
 About the middle of the century, however, the 
 manuscript was given by its owner to the foreign 
 scholar, Junius, who appears to have taken it with 
 him when he left England shortly afterwards. In 
 1655 a reprint of the poem was issued in Amster- 
 dam, and some copies of the edition doubtless 
 reached London. At the time, Milton was already 
 blind, and, since the book contained no transla- 
 tion or comment, it seems hardly likely that any 
 one of his friends, when English philology was so 
 little understood, would have been able to read 
 or translate the poem for him. It is of course 
 possible that Junius himself, during his residence 
 1 See above pp. 87-88, 102-106. 
 
160 Essays on Milton 
 
 in London, read portions of the old poem to the 
 busy pamphleteer; but this is mere conjecture, 
 warranted by no real correspondence between 
 Paradise Lost and this earlier version of Lucifer's 
 fall, the creation of the world, and the sin of 
 Adam. The parallelisms between the two are 
 easily accounted for by the common traditions 
 from which both poets drew their material, and 
 the differences, to which attention has already 
 been called, are marked. We believe that Milton 
 knew of Caedmon only Bede's brief reference, 
 which is described in the Common-Place Book as 
 a "pleasant little story of an English poet sud- 
 denly made such by divine inspiration." 1 
 
 It is generally agreed that a closer connection 
 with Paradise Lost has been proved for Sylvester's 
 translation of Du Bartas' La Semaine and its 
 sequel. There is, in the first place, interesting 
 bibliographical evidence that this old folio would 
 naturally be one of the first books to come to 
 Milton's attention. Sylvester's complete transla- 
 tion of Du Bartas was published in 1605-6 by 
 Humphrey Lownes on Bread Street, where Milton 
 was born in 1608. The elder Milton, who like 
 his neighbor was a book-lover and Puritan, must 
 have known Lownes, and The Diuine Weekes 
 and Workes would doubtless be brought into his 
 home. In support of this conjecture, Dunster 
 
 1 S. v. Gajsek assumes that Milton knew the old poem. Milton uni 
 Caedmon, Wien, 191 1. Gurteen gives the best analysis and comparison. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 161 
 
 cites from Milton's early poem, The Passion, as a 
 possible reference to Sylvester's quarto of 1613, 
 the lines: 
 
 The leaves should all be black whereon I write, 
 
 And letters, where my tears have wash'd, a wannish white. 
 
 This r conceit, it is alleged, has reference to the 
 elegy, included in that particular edition of The 
 Diuine Weekes and Workes, in memory of Prince 
 Henry. One of the two title-pages of this poem 
 is a white leaf with a black back; the other is a 
 black sheet, printed with letters that Dunster 
 describes as "wannish white." Partly on this 
 bibliographical evidence he would believe that The 
 Diuine Weekes and Workes was one of the first 
 books with which Milton was acquainted — the 
 Prima Stamina, as he calls it, of Paradise Lost., 
 
 In addition to such bibliographical data, there 
 is also persuasive internal evidence of this rela- 
 tionship. Milton's translations of Psalms 114 and 
 115, which are his earliest extant poems, contain a 
 great deal of Sylvester's phraseology. A still more 
 significant resemblance is found in these lines of 
 At a Vacation Exercise: 
 
 Yet I had rather, if I were to choose, 
 
 Thy service in some graver subject use, 
 
 Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, 
 
 Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound: 
 
 Such where the deep transported mind may soar 
 
 Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door 
 
 Look in, and see each blissful deity. 
 
 Dunster compares this whole passage with Syl- 
 vester's lines: 
 
162 Essays on Milton 
 
 And though our soul live as imprisoned here 
 In our frail flesh, and buried, as it were, 
 In a dark tomb, yet at one flight she flies 
 From Calpe to Imaus, from th' earth to skies, 
 Much swifter than the chariot of the sun, . . . 
 She mounts above the world's extremest wall, 
 Far, far beyond all things corporeal, 
 Where she beholds her Maker, face to face, 
 His frowns of justice and his smiles of grace; 
 The faithful God, the chaste and sober port, 
 And sacred pomp of the celestial court. 
 
 Another pertinent quotation would be: 
 
 Then should I fly with Eagles' wings 
 Unto the glorious King of Kings; 
 And see that Heav*nly Court of his 
 The Beauty of the Angels' Blisse. l 
 
 Such comparisons as these strongly confirm the 
 evidence from other sources that Milton in youth 
 was familiar with Sylvester's translations. 
 
 But it is hard to believe that Paradise Lost is 
 dependent in any measurable degree on The Diuine 
 Weekes and Workes. There are, to be sure, 
 thoughts and phrases common to both. Du Bar- 
 tas supposes that Chaos is ruled by the four ele- 
 ments, hot, cold, moist, and dry. On the authority 
 of the Scriptures, he believes in the existence of 
 waters above the firmament, and in describing 
 Eden he amplifies the material furnished by Gene- 
 sis. Or, as a moral philosopher, he argues on such 
 abstract problems as the freedom of the will and 
 the all-inclusiveness of Adam's sin. These matters 
 find place in Milton's epic; but their presence is 
 
 1 Poems, ed. Grosart, I, pp. lii-liii; 2, p. 346. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 163 
 
 due not to imitation of Sylvester but to the nature 
 of the subject and the common knowledge of the 
 time. Even the verbal similarities adduced by 
 Dunster show at most nothing more than an oc- 
 casional sub-conscious recollection on Milton's part 
 of his youthful reading. 
 
 With all the richest stores of the world's litera- 
 ture to inspire him, Milton could not have felt 
 the need of assistance from a poet so inartistic 
 and eccentric as Sylvester. His verse is lumbering 
 and uneven, and his unpolished diction is marred 
 by strange compound words. Sylvester's beset- 
 ting sin, however, is verbosity — the unfortunate 
 proneness to expand ideas that the world has for- 
 gotten. Milton may never have accepted abso- 
 lutely the discoveries of Copernicus; but he does 
 not contemptuously array all his learning against 
 them, as Sylvester does. Nor does he argue at 
 length on the existence of the waters above the 
 firmament, or on Satan's assumption of the ser- 
 pent form, or on the ability of the ark to accommo- 
 date all the passengers divinely provided for it. 
 All these subjects and many more are grist for 
 Sylvester's mill. He discourses on the progress 
 of the arts and the various diseases; he explains 
 the inconveniences that have resulted from the 
 ill-advised plans of the builders of Babel, and then 
 proves that Hebrew is the most perfect language; 
 he even stops to name the authors that have 
 honored the various nations, naming More, Bacon, 
 Sidney, and Elizabeth herself as the glories of 
 
164 Essays on Milton 
 
 English letters. The difference between real art 
 and such verbose display may be seen by a com- 
 parison of the last four lines of Paradise Lost with 
 Sylvester's long account of the same incident, 
 which he duly heralds in the margin as "an ele- 
 gant comparison representing the lamentable con- 
 dition of Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise." 
 Though one grants willingly that Milton probably 
 knew The Diuine Weekes and Workes in boyhood, 
 it is impossible to believe that a poem so form- 
 less and inartistic had any vital influence upon 
 him. 
 
 Sylvester need not even be credited with having 
 led Milton to choose a Biblical theme. Tasso's 
 inclination toward Christian poetry would carry 
 more weight with Milton than anything Sylvester 
 could say or do. And in the early seventeenth 
 century many Biblical poems were composed in 
 England and France. Drayton's Moyses in a 
 Map of Miracles, Giles Fletcher's Christ's Vic- 
 torie and Triumph, and Quarles' Divine Poems, , 
 all attest the esteem in which sacred poetry was 
 then held. 
 
 Especial attention has recently been called to 
 the work of Abraham Cowley for its supposed 
 bearing on Milton. 1 In the year 1656, just after 
 his return from France, Cowley published his 
 Davideis, which he prefaced with an interesting 
 discussion on the value and nature of true sacred 
 
 1 Kirs ten, R., Studie iiber das Vtrhidtnis von Cowley und Milton. 
 Leipzig, 1899. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 165 
 
 poetry. He had evidently come to know, during 
 his sojourn in France, Godeau's Discours de la 
 Poesie Chrestienne and some of the French re- 
 ligious poems. In this essay Cowley reproaches 
 modern poets for degrading their art in mere 
 repetition of already out-worn legends or in cele- 
 bration of wanton passion, when such an abun- 
 dance of sacred history lay absolutely untouched. 
 "Truth is truest Poesie," he declares, and he 
 therefore recommends stories from the Bible for 
 the poet's consideration. Kirsten asserts that the 
 Davideis encouraged Milton to hasten to comple- 
 tion his great literary undertaking. But as early 
 as 1642, in the Reason of Church Government, Mil- 
 ton had expressed his marked preference for a 
 Biblical subject, and Cowley's late essay could 
 have done little in directing Milton to a task on 
 which his hopes had long been fixed, and for 
 which he found such general approval. 
 
 To this already rapidly growing list of poems 
 that have been called the sources of Milton's 
 epics, Fletcher's Christ's Victorie and Triumph 
 should be added, chiefly because of its relation to 
 Paradise Regained. The patriotic narrative verse 
 of Daniel and Drayton could next be tested. And 
 it would not be idle to subject Nosce Teipsum to 
 close scrutiny, for in at least one interesting pas- 
 sage Milton is known to have reproduced the 
 psychology of Davies. In Nosce Teipsum the 
 five organs of sense are said to transmit impres- 
 sions to Fancy, which arranges and compares 
 
1 66 Essays on Milton 
 
 them. Then Fancy, "wit's looking glass," trans- 
 mits the impressions so arranged to Wit, as Davies 
 calls the understanding or judgment, where they 
 are used in processes of abstract thought. This 
 psychology is reproduced in ' the fifth book of 
 Paradise Lost. But on more essential matters, as, 
 for example, on the origin of the soul in man and 
 the possibility of man's reattaining divine truth, 
 Milton stands at odds with Davies. And so the 
 study might go on, finding ever new connections 
 in detail between Milton's thought or expression 
 and that of other English poets, but ever ending 
 with a conviction of the poet's true independence. 
 It is a relief, however, to turn from such minute 
 study, whose results are at best fragmentary and 
 usually quite inconclusive, to a consideration of the 
 rich poetical inheritance that Milton derived from 
 Spenser. "Milton was the poetical son of Spen- 
 ser," Dryden declares in the Preface to the Fables, 
 and then adds in justification of the remark, "Mil- 
 ton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his 
 original." Yet Spenser's influence upon Milton, 
 owing to its nature, has been less discussed than 
 that of a half dozen other authors. The rela- 
 tionship does not manifest itself most plainly in 
 points that can be tabulated. Spenser reacted 
 directly upon the spirit of Milton — arousing his 
 interest, quickening his feeling, directing him to 
 new channels of reading, especially in the Italian, 
 and developing his power of expression. One 
 would almost assert that Spenser, of all the Eng- 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 167 
 
 lish poets, contributed the most really vital forces 
 to the growth of Milton's poetic life. 1 
 
 Spenser and Milton were close akin in spirit 
 and showed much the same sympathy for the two 
 great forces of their times — humanism and Puri- 
 tanism. Spenser lived when both movements in 
 England were in their infancy. The Shepherd's 
 Calender inaugurated the Elizabethan revival of 
 the New Poetry, and the half-veiled allegory of 
 several of its pastorals expresses the moderate 
 Puritanism of Tudor days. Spenser's classicism, 
 therefore, lacks the wide horizon and the surety 
 of Milton's; it is appreciative, ardent, and beauti- 
 fully expressed, but lacks the grasp and equipoise 
 of later scholarship. His Puritanism, too, differs 
 from Milton's in its mildness. In the Shepherd's 
 Calender he denounces the greed and idle ease of 
 the clergy, just as Milton does in Lycidas, and, 
 it may be, speaks more pointedly against certain 
 policies of church and state. 2 But his Puritanism 
 is that of Grindal's time rather than Laud's, 
 while as yet the conflict centered about vest- 
 ments and church ceremonies, and still showed 
 tolerance on "things indifferent." In both his 
 Puritanism and his humanism Spenser was of an 
 earlier generation than Milton. 
 
 Each poet had the true humanist's love of the 
 
 1 Certain phases.- of Spenser's influence have been discussed above, 
 pp. 29, 34. 
 
 2 See Higginson, J. J., Spenser's Shepherds Calender, N. Y., 1912; 
 Padelford, F. M., Spenser and the Puritan Propaganda, Mod. Phil., 
 II, pp. 85-106. 
 
168 Essays on Milton 
 
 aesthetic. Concerning his own temperament Mil- 
 ton wrote: "What besides God had resolved con- 
 cerning me I know not, but this at least: he has 
 instilled into me, if into any one, a vehement love 
 of the beautiful." 1 "It is my habit day and 
 night," he continues, "to seek for this idea of the 
 beautiful, as for a certain image of supreme 
 beauty, through all the forms and faces of things." 
 Clearly, he would be a disciple of Plato. But Mil- 
 ton's love of the beautiful seems to be as much 
 the product of an active mind as an emotion, 
 whereas Spenser's appreciation of the beautiful is, 
 like Keats', a passion which he does not fear to 
 encourage. The intense glow of passion in the 
 Epithalamion, compared with the calm statement 
 just quoted from Milton's letter or the emotions 
 displayed in L 'Allegro, marks the vital difference 
 in temperament of these two kindred poets. In 
 the same way, the sensuous appeals to carnal 
 instinct that Guyon, Spenser's Knight of Temper- 
 ance, has to face, contrast very strongly with the 
 cold and repulsive temptations that the Lady 
 in Comus overcomes. There is in Spenser little 
 of Milton's intellectual equipoise and Hebraic 
 severity. 
 
 Yet Spenser felt just as keenly as Milton did 
 the moral responsibilities of life. Guyon, as a 
 knight in the world of romance, serves the same 
 ideal of temperance and morality that Milton set 
 for himself in Cambridge and Italy, and that he 
 
 1 See above, p. 40. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 169 
 
 upholds in Comus. Both poets held the same ex- 
 alted idea of the duties of the clergy; both were 
 staunch supporters of the reformed church. Spen- 
 ser's Puritanism, however, is softened by the 
 spontaneous ebullition of poetic feeling and pas- 
 sion; Milton's passion is always calmed, if not 
 fettered, by his intellectual and moral sense. Nev- 
 ertheless, these are only external differences, and 
 Milton saw in Spenser a spirit akin to his own. 
 
 Of all Milton's poems, Comus and Lycidas ex- 
 hibit the most unmistakable traces of Spenser's 
 influence. Details of plot and the machinery of 
 the supernatural in the one; passages of descrip- 
 tion, the attack on the clergy, and the whole 
 elegiac convention in the other; and some of the 
 phraseology of both, owe much to the Shepherd's 
 Calender and the Faerie Queene. This phase of the 
 question has already been discussed. Obviously, 
 neither Milton's epics nor Samson Agonistes could 
 be so directly influenced by Spenser. In selecting 
 the theme of Paradise Lost Milton purposely 
 turned away from the romantic world of the 
 Faerie Queene, and in organizing his poem he 
 obeyed more rigid structural principles than Spen- 
 ser followed. Hence the Bible, the classics, and 
 the Renaissance epic are Milton's determining 
 sources. Of course, details from Spenser often 
 creep in. The phrase "adamantine chains" re- 
 sembles Spenser's "chains of adamant." Both 
 poets ascribe the invention of gunpowder to Satan, 
 and give him the disguise of an old man. But 
 
170 Essays on Milton 
 
 many more such resemblances might be adduced 
 without vitiating the general conclusion that the 
 Minor Poems are the most unmistakably Spen- 
 serian, and that in Paradise Lost other influences 
 predominate. 
 
 The same may be said of the relation of Para- 
 dise Lost to English poetry in general. Milton's 
 early poems were written before the old Eliza- 
 bethan spirit was totally extinct in England, and, 
 in many essential respects, they carry on the 
 poetical traditions that their author had inherited 
 from the past. Hence he is called "the last of 
 the Elizabethans." Just as conspicuously, how- 
 ever, Paradise Lost is the product of another age; 
 and the threads of connection between it and the 
 immediate past are less noticeable. The English 
 sources of Milton's epic are less important than 
 those other sources here discussed. 
 
 (e) Summary 
 
 It would be easy to add indefinitely to this list 
 of books that may have influenced Milton in the 
 composition of Paradise Lost; for, when Milton 
 wrote, the story of Lucifer's revolt and Adam's 
 fall had long been common property of theologians 
 and poets. A lover of these "Quellen und For- 
 schungen" hates to pass by Voltaire's interesting 
 statement, made in 1727, that Milton had wit- 
 nessed the performance of Andreini's Adamo in 
 Milan, and had received from it his first thoughts 
 of Paradise Lost. Equally interesting would be an 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 171 
 
 investigation of Adamus Exsul; for the great repu- 
 tation of Hugo Grotius and the personal visit 
 that Milton paid him in 1638, would almost in- 
 evitably bring the drama to the attention of the 
 young poet. To neither work does Paradise Lost 
 seem directly indebted. Even the contributions 
 of the notorious Lauder to the whole problem 
 have been forgotten, save by those who enjoy old 
 literary disputes or who are especially interested 
 in Dr. Johnson. But a third play, Vondel's 
 Lucifer, can not be dismissed with such cursory 
 attention. Its own merits as a poem, and the 
 claims that have been advanced for it as the 
 chief source of Paradise Lost, warrant fuller 
 consideration. 
 
 Vondel's drama, Lucifer, was first produced and 
 published in Amsterdam in 1654, two years after 
 Milton had become totally blind. But the imme- 
 diate suppression of the play by the authorities in 
 Holland occasioned so much discussion that some 
 news of the event very probably reached Milton. 
 The poet's curiosity, which would naturally be 
 aroused, could be speedily gratified. In London 
 at that time, when close political and commercial 
 relations existed with Holland, some one could 
 have been found to read or translate the work to 
 the blind poet. Milton himself knew some Dutch; 
 for Roger Williams, during his residence in London 
 from 165 1 to 1654, used to visit Milton to read 
 Dutch, in return for Milton's assistance in other 
 languages. Although the Rhode Island colonist's 
 
172 Essays on Milton 
 
 letter enters into no further particulars, Masson 
 suggests that Williams may have found time to 
 read Lucifer to Milton before his final departure 
 from London in the year of its publication. These 
 facts go far to justify the assumption that Milton, 
 in spite of his blindness, could have formed an 
 acquaintance with the work of Vondel. 
 
 Two very thorough comparisons have been made 
 by Englishmen in the effort to establish a connec- 
 tion between Milton's epic and Vondel's play. 
 The investigation of Edmund Gosse is less thor- 
 ough-going but more appreciative and sound than 
 Mr. Edmundson's. The latter's radical conclu- 
 sions virtually amount to the charge that Milton, 
 not only in Paradise Lost, but in the second epic 
 and in Samson Agonistes as well, borrows freely 
 from Vondel's poems. 
 
 To establish this uncompromising position, Ed- 
 mundson has collected every possible evidence, 
 however minute, of borrowing on Milton's part. 
 But too much can be made of accidental or seem- 
 ing resemblances between the two poets' works. 
 For instance, it might be assumed that Milton was 
 guided by Vondel in choosing Adam and Samson 
 as subjects for poems, did we not know that both 
 were already under consideration as early as 1640. 
 Hence it is possible for Masson to take a position 
 diametrically opposed to Edmundson's. Although 
 Masson is willing to admit that Milton may have 
 known Lucifer, and even that Milton himself may 
 have been acquainted with Dutch, he denies that 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 173 
 
 Milton borrowed from his contemporary. Most 
 of the resemblances between the two poems, he 
 emphatically asserts, are due to the traditional 
 character of the subject they handle. In other 
 cases, Milton has been made to appear a borrower 
 by Edmundson's use of Milton's own language in 
 the translation of the Dutch original. In still 
 other cases, the slight resemblance is only acci- 
 dental. To justify these assertions, Masson quotes 
 from one of the ablest editors of Vondel, M. Van 
 Lennep, the statement: "I do not regard it as 
 proved that Milton was acquainted with Vondel 
 or his tragedy." Masson's own conclusion is just 
 as emphatic : " Paradise Lost would have been 
 exactly the same as it is if Vondel's poems had 
 never been written." 
 
 This would be the opinion of a reader acquainted 
 with the general literature of the subjects handled 
 by Milton and Vondel, but uninformed as to the 
 results of such special studies as these under dis- 
 cussion. The two works are essentially different. 
 Since one is an epic and the other a drama, they 
 can not treat in the same way the two great epi- 
 sodes that they present. In addition, there are 
 many accidental differences. Vondel places the 
 creation of man before the defection of Lucifer, and 
 assumes that the angels, even before the revolt, were 
 mastered by evil inclinations. In general, the 
 reader who is more concerned for the author's 
 thought and purpose and poetic style than for 
 merely verbal accidents, will probably accept 
 
174 Essays on Milton 
 
 Masson's judgment, not feeling that he belittles 
 Vondel in so doing. His Lucifer is a great poem, 
 if not a great play, and would gain nothing were it 
 proved to be the source of Milton's epic. 
 
 So the search for possible sources of Paradise 
 Lost might go on. It has engaged the attention 
 of all students of Milton, from the spiteful Lauder, 
 who maliciously forged evidence to prove Milton 
 a "plagiary," to the most reverent of his editors. 
 In many byways of ancient and modern literature 
 reminders of Paradise Lost can be found. But 
 what do they indicate? Is it conscious borrowing 
 by Milton of ideas and forms of expression; or 
 unconscious employment of the fruits of early 
 reading and study; or simply the reappearance in 
 different places of thoughts naturally pertaining to a 
 given traditional subject ? It is no easy matter to 
 appraise Milton's debt to the world's literature. 
 
 The problem is complicated by the intricate 
 manner in which several influences blend. In- 
 stances have already been noted in which the Bible 
 and Homer or Virgil contribute together to the 
 thought of the English epic. In the same way, 
 influences from the classics and the Renaissance 
 mingle, and Spenser's poems can hardly be con- 
 sidered in this connection apart from Tasso's and 
 Ariosto's. One very significant instance of such 
 dual influence is given in Milton's own words in 
 the Apology for Smectymnuus: "Thus from the 
 laureate fraternity of poets, riper years and the 
 ceaseless round of study and reading led me to 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 175 
 
 the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the 
 divine volumes of Plato, and his equal Xenophon: 
 when, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity 
 and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose 
 charming cup is only virtue ... it might be worth 
 your listening." Here Milton attributes to the 
 influence of these Greek teachers traits of character 
 that we might ascribe solely to the Bible and his 
 Christian environment; humanism and Puritanism 
 cooperate in his development. Seldom in Mil- 
 ton's work can a single influence be studied apart 
 from the rest. 
 
 Consequently, the problem of determining Mil- 
 ton's exact relation to the influences that formed 
 his mind and character is largely psychological. 
 Samson Agonistes, for example, is the product of 
 Milton's understanding of Biblical story; of his 
 creative insight into Greek tragedy; of his Hebraic 
 trend of thought; and of the sad experiences 
 through which he had passed. But Samson Agon- 
 istes can not be analyzed quantitatively to deter- 
 mine the exact proportion of each influence in its 
 composition. The play is the expression of the 
 whole man — his mind, his character, and his 
 deeds, and the best understanding of it comes from 
 a sympathetic knowledge of its author. So it is 
 with Paradise Lost. The influences that contrib- 
 uted to its growth were many; but all were 
 thoroughly a part of Milton's personality, and the 
 epic expresses the whole mental and emotional life 
 of its author. 
 
176 Essays on Milton 
 
 To conceive of a Paradise Lost, therefore, or 
 indeed of any portion of Milton's work, destitute 
 of all evidence of his wide knowledge, would be 
 impossible. How nonsensical, then, is Macaulay's 
 theory that Milton's learning was a handicap to 
 him. To be sure, learning never made a true poet. 
 But it did not take from Milton his innate sense 
 of the world's beauty, his sympathy for the nobler 
 aspirations of the heart, or the ear, delicately 
 attuned to all the varied harmonies that words 
 can produce. His poems are allusive in the ex- 
 treme and demand wide knowledge of the reader. 
 Paradise Lost, especially, is a vast storehouse of 
 learning; but even more it is a work of art. 
 
 Such a study of Milton's learning brings to 
 mind the interesting argument that fills much of 
 the last book of Paradise Regained. As a final 
 temptation, after other attempts to mislead Christ 
 have failed, Satan urges him to sacrifice all else 
 for wisdom, through which universal dominion 
 over men can be gained. Satan warns Christ 
 that all knowledge is not summed up in the Bible, 
 and that if one wishes either to profit from the 
 wisdom of the ancients or to guard against their 
 errors, one must read widely in their works. The 
 tempter mentions Homer, the Grecian orators and 
 philosophers, and the writers of Attic tragedy, 
 those 
 
 Teachers best 
 Of moral prudence, with delight received 
 In brief sententious precepts, while they treat 
 Of fate, and chance, and change in human life. 
 
The Sources of Paradise Lost 177 
 
 None of these sources of knowledge and guidance 
 had been neglected by Milton. But although he 
 saw truth in Satan's arguments, the reply he at- 
 tributes to Christ shows his disapproval of the 
 tempter's conclusions. There may be much good 
 in pagan literature, Christ admits; for some "light 
 of nature" shone among the Gentiles even after 
 the fall. But there is also much that is false in 
 even their greatest work; the pagan philosophers 
 saw truth but partially, and the poets recom- 
 mended the wrong ideals of life. Hebrew litera- 
 ture, on the contrary, is altogether of God's 
 inspiration and contains unalloyed truth. Hebrew 
 poets surpass the pagan poets, and the prophets 
 give sounder advice than the Attic orators on the 
 right governing of nations; in the prophetic books 
 
 Is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, 
 What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, 
 What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat. 
 
 These are Milton's own opinions, to be sure, at a 
 moment when Puritanism held complete ascend- 
 ancy over humanism. But it is the general atti- 
 tude of the speaker toward learning that is of 
 especial pertinence. In reply to Satan, Christ 
 asserts : 
 
 However, many books, 
 Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads 
 Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
 A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 
 (And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?) 
 Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 
 Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself, 
 
178 Essays on Milton 
 
 Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys 
 
 And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge, 
 
 As children gathering pebbles on the shore. 
 
 Does not this express Milton's idea of true knowl- 
 edge? A complete education he defined as "that 
 which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and 
 magnanimously all the offices, both private and 
 public, of peace and war." The truly learned man, 
 therefore, knows how to interpret and apply all 
 that books contain; learning involves acquisition, 
 assimilation, and wise action. This was Milton's 
 ideal of scholarship, and who would say that it 
 is not to be found in Paradise Lost? 
 
Chapter VI 
 
 The Theme of Paradise host i 
 
 13 EADERS of Paradise Lost have always been 
 -*-*- interested by Voltaire's comment in the 
 Essai sur la Poesie Hpique, that French people 
 are inclined to laugh when they are told that Eng- 
 land has an epic in which Satan struggles against 
 God and a serpent persuades a woman to eat an 
 apple. Such matter, Voltaire explains, seems in 
 France suitable only for farce. More, careful 
 readers, however, may remember that in ''Paradise'. 
 Lost only Satan, in the moment immediately pre-i 
 ceding his degradation, regards the eating of thff 
 forbidden fruit as a subject for mirth. All elstf 
 abhor the crime; angels flee back to heaven in 
 terror, the guilty pair cower before even their own 
 reproaches, and the very face of nature changes. 
 Clearly, the eating of the apple possesses some 
 deep significance and must be interpreted as a 
 symbol of some important truth. In Christian 
 Doctrine Milton persuades himself that God pur- 
 posely made an insignificant matter the sole test 
 of man's obedience, since an apparently useless 
 prohibition would offer the surest proof of man's 
 
 1 This chapter should not be read without reference to the discus- 
 sion on pages 99-103, 111-130, 139-140. 
 
180 Essays on Milton 
 
 obedience. But in Paradise Lost, and indeed also 
 in Christian Doctrine, the symbolical interpreta- 
 tion is insisted on. 
 
 This seemingly trivial sin in Eden was intended 
 to denote wilful disregard of divine law. Milton 
 speaks of Adam and Eve as "manifold in sin," im- 
 plying in those two words, as he elsewhere explains 
 fully, 1 that their guilt comprehended not simply 
 disobedience, but distrust, ingratitude, presump- 
 tion, deceit, theft, and other sins. And Adam, the 
 guilty one, represents no one individual, but man 
 in general. ; Medieval theologians were fond of 
 finding in Biblical story such types of man. The 
 parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, was 
 commonly interpreted as the story of man in pil- 
 grimage through this mortal life, with Christ only 
 to aid him. Milton, then, is but following prece- 
 dent in regarding Adam as the representative of 
 the whole race. His theme, which thus assumes 
 both in person and incident an universal sig- 
 nificance, may be briefly formulated: jmankind, 
 gifted with high instincts and immeasurable capac- 
 ities for good, but able, at will, to turn each sepa- 
 rate virtue into a corresponding vice, determines 
 for himself his own destirjy. One is reminded of 
 Dante's interpretation of the Divine Comedy: "The 
 subject, then, of the whole work, taken according 
 to the letter alone, is simply a consideration of the 
 state of souls after death. . . . But if the work is 
 considered according to its allegorical meaning, the 
 1 P. L., io, 1. 16; Ch. Doctr., 4, p. 254. 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 181 
 
 subject is man, liable to the reward or punishment 
 of justice, according as through the freedom of 
 the will he is deserving or undeserving." 1 Both 
 poems face the same great problem. 
 
 With such an end in view Milton could not write 
 merely as Hebrew annalist or Christian theologian. 
 He was free to read the Bible as a poet, not a 
 historian, and to interpret it liberally. In Para- 
 dise Lost he apparently accepts the story of crea- 
 tion less literally than in Christian Doctrine, and 
 he clearly values the rebellion of Lucifer and the 
 sin in Eden less as historical fact than as a sym- 
 bol of moral truth. 2 God has seen fit to reveal 
 heavenly things to man in terms that he from 
 his own experience can comprehend. But such 
 materialism, or anthropomorphism, justified sim- 
 ply as a concrete mode of handling celestial truth, 
 must not blind one to the truths involved. It was 
 the act of creation, not its duration; the fact that 
 God, or the right, can triumph over Satan, the 
 wrong, and not the military strategy employed; 
 the sin of Adam and its consequences, and not 
 the outward form of that sin, that seemed of vital 
 consequence to Milton. He could have written 
 Paradise Lost just as he did had he been con- 
 versant with all the revelations of modern science, 
 for his chief purpose is not to record fact, but 
 to expound the workings of moral law. 3 
 
 1 Letter to Can Grande, ed. Latham, p. 195. 
 
 2 See above, pp. 111-115. 
 
 8 So, too, Roger Williams wrote in The Bloody Tenant; "The 
 
1 82 Essays on Milton 
 
 Such a theme, however, is as little theological 
 as historical. Some dogma may enter into the 
 poem; but the author's main concern is something 
 other than that. It may easily be shown that 
 Paradise Lost is neither Calvinistic, as many have 
 charged, nor Unitarian. Milton, on the one hand, 
 denies the doctrine of predestination, and, on the 
 other, holds his own belief regarding the nature of 
 the Trinity. But no dogma is introduced that 
 does not bear directly on the {philosophical and 
 ethical problem of man's relations' to the opposed 
 forces of good and evil. The doctrine of the free- 
 dom of the will explains the possibility of evil's 
 arising in heaven and on earth; predestination is 
 discussed only to prove man's freedom of will and 
 to justify punishment imposed for wrong-doing. 
 Milton's attention is firmly fixed An his central 
 theme — the origin and course of eviJL 
 
 In the story of Lucifer's revolt^ "aftd man's fall 
 Milton finds it easier to trace the course of evil in 
 human life than to find a satisfactory explanation for 
 the origin of sin in a universe ruled by an all-wise 
 creator. He represents first the original, self-begot- 
 ten guilt of Satan, in the loathsome figure of Sin, 
 sprung suddenly, like Minerva, from her parent's 
 head, and of Death, born of incestuous union of Sin 
 with her parent. The derivative guilt of Adam fol- 
 
 Battel about any Truth of God in Christ, is fought and managed by 
 that most high and glorious Michael, the Arch-Angel and Son of God, 
 attended with all his Holy Angels, the Messengers and Witnesses 
 of his Truth on the one side: On the other side by that great red 
 Dragon." 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 183 
 
 lows, who loses his innocence as a result of already- 
 existent evil. Just as there are two distinct but 
 mutually related plots, one enacted in heaven, the 
 other in part on earth, so there are these two forms 
 of evil whose workings Milton would explain.. 
 
 It is easy to account for the sin of Adam. Evil 
 already exists, and man has free choice of right or 
 wrong. God himself explains that this freedom 
 was given the angels and men that they might 
 honor and reverence their creator, as they could 
 not do were their actions ruled by the divine will. 
 This, however, seems only a dogma formulated 
 because the human mind is unable to conceive of 
 good without its counterpart of evil; existence of 
 the one implies the existence of the other.- But the 
 dogma applies better to earth than to heaven, and 
 it is more difficult for Milton to account for the 
 revolt of Lucifer — that is, for the origin of sin 
 in a perfect world. * Milton does not disregard the 
 problem as Vondel does, who, without excuse or 
 explanation, represents one-third of the angelic 
 host as ruled by ambition, jealousy, and even lust. 
 "Milton simply makes no distinction between the 
 psychology of angels and of men; and in heaven, 
 as on earth, honor, obedience, and reverence imply 
 the potential existence of corresponding vices. God 
 explains the situation thus: 1 
 
 I made him just and right, 
 Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
 Such I created all the Ethereal Powers 
 And Spirits, both them who stood and them who failed. 
 1 P. L., 3, 11. 98-101. 
 
1 84 Essays on Milton 
 
 Milton, however, distinguishes between the guilt 
 of Satan and of Adam. Since Satan fell self- 
 tempted, and since in his crime no element of 
 good entered, his sin was unpardonable. Adam, 
 on the contrary, sinned in part through the fault 
 of another, and his action sprang from desires in 
 themselves not altogether base. Hence Adam's 
 sin was not beyond forgiveness. The poet's main 
 intent seems to be to accept as fact the existence 
 of evil, and to disclose concretely, after the fashion 
 of poetry, its inevitable consequences. 
 . Milton's conception of the fundamental dis- 
 tinction between good and evil seems to be that 
 good is self-creative and ever-growing, whereas 
 evil is destructive and in the end self-annihilating. 
 God, the all wise and all good and all powerful, 
 creates Christ and then the angels. Christ, filled 
 with the power of God, creates the visible uni- 
 verse and then mankind. All this was good, as 
 Genesis tells us, and all sprang from good, or from 
 self. Evil, on the contrary, can produce only evil, 
 and leads eventually to its own destruction. The 
 revolt of Lucifer brings, in close sequence, the 
 creation of the realm of misery and evil passions, 
 as the antithesis of heaven; the humiliation and 
 complete degradation of Sat^n and his followers, 
 symbolized by their transformation to serpent 
 form; and the temporary loss of paradise for man. 
 So the course of evil is directly opposite to that 
 of good. Satan confesses: 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 185 
 
 For only in destroying I find ease 
 To my relentless thoughts; 
 
 and he himself realizes clearly that the one result 
 of all his effort must be ruin. 
 
 If evil in this way always begets evil, it must 
 eventually effect its own destruction. Satan, on 
 beholding the superior nobility of newly created 
 man, is forced to admit his inferiority: 
 
 So much hath Hell debased, and pain 
 Enfeebled me, to what I was in Heaven. 
 
 The final step in his complete degradation is ef- 
 fectively portrayed, and with obvious symbolism, 
 in the scene where Satan would announce to the 
 expectant rebels in hell his seeming triumph: 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Thus was the applause they meant 
 Turned to exploding hiss, triumph to shame 
 Cast on themselves from their own mouths. 
 
 Such self-destructive elements of sin leave the 
 good in the end triumphant. Throughout Para- 
 dise Lost this truth is expressed again and again. 
 
186 Essays on Milton 
 
 The angel-messenger, Zephon, once so inferior to 
 Lucifer in station and power, feeling no longer any 
 awe or fear in his presence, declares scornfully: 
 
 Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same, 
 Or undiminished brightness, to be known 
 As when thou stood'st in Heaven upright and pure. 
 That glory then, when thou no more wast good, 
 Departed from thee; and thou resemblest now 
 Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul. 
 
 Zephon's rebuke is keenly felt: 
 
 Abashed the Devil stood, 
 And felt how awful goodness is, and saw 
 Virtue in her shape how lovely — saw, and pined 
 His loss; but chiefly to find here observed 
 His lustre visibly impaired. 1 
 
 Satan may remain undaunted; but his determina- 
 tion avails nothing against the will of the higher 
 power; for against that will he can not move 
 even a muscle. 
 
 So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay, 
 Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
 Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
 And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
 Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
 That with reiterated crimes he might 
 Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
 Evil to others, and enraged might see 
 How all his malice served but to bring forth 
 Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 
 On Man by him seduced, but on himself 
 Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. 2 
 
 The powers of evil, which are thus chained abso- 
 lutely by the will of God, are themselves made 
 1 P. L„ 4, 11. 834-840, 846-850. 2 P. L., 1, 11. 209-220. 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 187 
 
 productive of good. Seeing this truth, Adam 
 exclaims : * 
 
 Goodness infinite, Goodness immense, 
 That all this good of evil shall produce, 
 And evil turn to good. ' 
 
 This principle has been more concretely formu- 
 lated by Shakespeare in King Lear. In no other 
 one of his plays do the forces of evil seem to tri- 
 umph more easily and surely; the plans of Goneril 
 and Regan and of Edmund meet with immediate 
 success. But the evil done springs up as virtue 
 in the hearts of others. Kent loses his brusque- 
 ness and insolence and displays only an unselfish 
 loyalty; Albany casts aside his subserviency and 
 stands for the right; Lear forgets his vanity and 
 imperiousness and learns to think and feel for 
 others and to suffer without complaint. And as 
 the good thus grows in stony soil the evil chokes 
 itself. Rivalry, jealousy, and hate among the 
 evil-doers turn victory to defeat and leave the 
 forces of the right triumphant. King Lear in this 
 way is founded on the principle that Milton pro- 
 pounds in Paradise Lost and elsewhere in his 
 writings. The elder brother in Comus is said to 
 talk nonsense regarding the self-defensive strength 
 of righteousness; but the poet believed it. With 
 equal faith, too, he declared in Areopagitica, "Let 
 her [Truth] and falsehood grapple; whoever knew 
 Truth put to the worse, in a free and open en- 
 counter?" Intense idealist that he was, he could 
 1 P. L., is, U. 469-473- 
 
1 88 Essays on Milton 
 
 not conceive of any long-enduring supremacy of 
 evil, and Paradise Lost shows how the right can 
 and must prevail. 
 
 Such an analysis of Paradise Lost deposes Satan 
 once for all from the position of epic hero, to 
 which he has been sometimes exalted. Those who 
 read the poem simply as a story, and possibly 
 only for what the first two books contain, have 
 naturally felt the tremendous force of Satan's 
 personality; for he really has more individuality 
 and aggressive will than any other character. 
 They know, too, that Milton himself battled for 
 liberty and suffered in consequence, and without 
 warrant they jump to the conclusion that Satan 
 must be the hero of the poem and the spokesman 
 of Milton himself. The romantic poets of the 
 nineteenth century, especially Byron and Shelley, 
 with their absolutely erroneous conception of the 
 meaning of liberty, gave their sanction to such 
 misreading of the poem. Hence the statement is 
 often made that Satan is the hero, and that the 
 first two books are the best of the whole. 
 
 But Milton assuredly did not regard Satan as a 
 martyr in the cause of liberty. "None can love 
 freedom heartily but good men," he declared; for 
 he drew a clear distinction between license and 
 that "true liberty . . . which always with right 
 reason dwells." x A character, therefore, like 
 Satan could not represent the heroic. Milton 
 represents him first in all the might that evil for 
 
 1 Tenure, p. i; P. L., 2, 11. 83-84. 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 189 
 
 a time may possess; but even here Satan lacks the 
 repose, the reserve force, that the heroic, either in 
 Michelangelo's sculpture or in literature, must 
 possess. In subsequent scenes Satan's loss of self- 
 respect, his feeling of inferiority, his final degra- 
 dation, make him a most unheroic figure. And 
 indeed, as the embodiment of all evil, he could 
 have been nothing else to Milton. Milton had read 
 and accepted the principle of the Italian critics 
 that the epic hero for modern peoples must be not 
 simply a mighty warrior, but a Christian knight 
 as well, whose actions conform to our highest re- 
 ligious ideals. This principle was readily accepted 
 by the Puritan poet, who "never, at any time, 
 wrote anything which I did not think agreeable to 
 truth, to justice, and to piety." J Satan, in the 
 light of this, is neither the strongest nor the most 
 inspiring personage in Paradise Lost. 
 
 Instead, the fallen angel symbolizes sin in all its 
 stages, at first powerful to attract and command, 
 but soon degrading and loathsome. He moves 
 through the whole poem, in the role of epic an- 
 tagonist, as the antithesis of all good. In the first 
 plot, he heads the revolt in heaven with such 
 force and generalship that only Christ, armed with 
 the full power of deity, can overcome him. Christ, 
 therefore, is the hero of this story — a hero both 
 in the field and in the council hall, where he offers 
 himself as mediator for man. This is the sig- 
 nificance of his words: 
 
 1 Sec. Def., I, p. 238. 
 
190 Essays on Milton 
 
 But I shall rise victorious, and subdue 
 
 My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil. 
 
 Death his death's wound shall then receive, and stoop 
 
 Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed; 
 
 I through the ample air in triumph high 
 
 Shall lead Hell captive maugre Hell, and show 
 
 The powers of Darkness bound. 
 
 To these claims God gives ready assent: 
 
 All power 
 I give thee; reign for ever, and assume 
 Thy merits; under thee, as Head Supreme, 
 Thrones, Princedoms, Powers, Dominions, I reduce: 
 All knees to thee shall bow of them that bide 
 In Heaven, or Earth, or, under Earth, in Hell. 
 When thou, attended gloriously from Heaven, 
 Shalt in the sky appear, and from thee send 
 The summoning Archangels to proclaim 
 Thy dread tribunal, forthwith from all winds 
 The living, and forthwith the cited dead 
 Of all past ages, to the general doom 
 Shall hasten; such a peal shall rouse their sleep. 
 Then, all thy Saints assembled, thou shalt judge 
 Bad men and Angels; they arraigned shall sink 
 Beneath thy sentence; Hell, her numbers full, 
 Thenceforth shall be for ever shut. Meanwhile 
 The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring 
 New Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell, 
 And, after all their tribulations long, 
 See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, 
 With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth. 
 
 Of the other plot, laid in the Garden, Adam must 
 be counted the hero. Fallen though he may be, 
 he has through Christ's intercession the means of 
 an eventual triumph. He represents the race, and 
 his victory displays symbolically the great lesson 
 that the race must learn. Christ is the hero of 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 191 
 
 one portion of the story, and Adam plus Christ, 
 the hero of the second. 
 
 It may at first seem strange to depose Satan as 
 hero in order to exalt the victim of his wiles. The 
 greatness of Adam, however, lies in latent psycho- 
 logical powers. Innate in him are instincts that 
 open dimly a vision of unseen powers ruling his 
 destiny, and he implores his angel-guide for further 
 insight : 
 
 Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here! 
 Not of myself; by some great Maker then, 
 In goodness and in power pre-eminent. 1 
 
 So he would learn the hidden mysteries that the 
 Heavens declare. He has yet to learn, by bitter 
 experience, how man's earthly environment may 
 displace these aspirations by others, which, being 
 not altogether ignoble, are alluring and dangerous 
 in the extreme. Raphael forewarns him that a 
 desire for knowledge, like any other virtue if 
 carried to excess, becomes a vice, and that man, 
 instead of seeking to fathom all the secrets of the 
 universe, should learn to use rightly what the 
 Creator intends him to know. 
 
 Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid : 
 Leave them to God above; him serve and fear. 
 .... Heaven is for thee too high 
 To know what passes there. Be lowly wise; 
 Think only what concerns thee and thy being; 
 Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there 
 Live, in what state, condition, or degree — 
 Contented that thus far hath been revealed 
 Not of Earth only, but of highest Heaven. 2 
 
 1 P. L., 8, 11. 277-279. 2 P. L., 8, 11. 167-178. 
 
192 Essays on Milton 
 
 Living in this way his divinely appointed lot, 
 enkindled by the consciousness that man "dwells 
 not in his own," Adam is made part of a vaster 
 life and becomes a hero. 
 
 Raphael's instruction profits Adam but little. 
 A dearly bought lesson and Michael's revelation 
 of human destiny must be added before Adam 
 learns to bring both his actions and his will into 
 conformity with divine plans. Eve, with what 
 Milton would call a woman's lack of insight and 
 reason, seeks means of evading God's judgment; 
 suicide or a childless life, she thinks, will defeat 
 God's purposes for the race. But Adam, whose 
 "more attentive mind" recalls the promise that 
 mitigated Christ's stern sentence, accepts the 
 punishment courageously. 
 
 With labour I must earn 
 My bread; what harm? Idleness had been worse; 
 My labour will sustain me, 
 
 he says; 1 for he sees that God's will rightly 
 prevails. With this submission comes a great con- 
 solation — that wherever God's, will prevails God 
 himself must be. Michael's assurance to him is: 2 
 
 Yet doubt not but in valley and in plain 
 
 God is, as here, and will be found alike 
 
 Present, and of his presence many a sign 
 
 Still following thee, still compassing thee round 
 
 With goodness and paternal love, his face 
 
 Express, and of his steps the track divine. 
 
 1 P. L., 10, 11. 1054-1057- 
 
 2 P. L., 11, 11. 349-354. 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 193 
 
 What matters it, then, whether Adam's work be 
 in Eden or elsewhere? The one great essential is 
 this * * 
 
 Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st 
 Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven. 
 
 This noble principle, which was Milton's own life's 
 motto, Adam finally accepts. 
 
 Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, 
 
 And love with fear the only God, to walk 
 
 As in his presence, ever to observe 
 
 His providence, and on him sole depend, 
 
 Merciful over all his works, with good 
 
 Still overcoming evil, and by small 
 
 Accomplishing great things — by things deemed weak 
 
 Subverting worldly-strong, and worldly-wise 
 
 By simply meek; that suffering for Truth's sake 
 
 Is fortitude to highest victory, 
 
 And to the faithful death the gate of life — 
 
 Taught this by his example whom I now 
 
 Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest. 
 
 All this the angel reaffirms. 
 
 This having learned, thou hast attained the sum 
 Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the stars 
 Thou knew'st by name, and all the ethereal powers, 
 All secrets of the Deep, all Nature's works, 
 Or works of God in heaven, air, earth, or sea, 
 And all the riches of this world enjoy'dst, 
 And all the rule, one empire. Only add 
 Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith; 
 Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, 
 By name to come called Charity, the soul 
 Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth 
 To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess 
 A Paradise within thee happier far. 
 
 Adam can now leave the garden to face his des- 
 tiny without dismay; 
 
 'P.i., ii.ll- SS3-5S4- 
 
194 Essays on Milton 
 
 The world was all before them, where to choose 
 Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. 
 They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, 
 Through Eden took their solitary way. 
 
 With these words the great epic ends. Years of 
 studious meditation and nobly planned effort and 
 suffering had left with the Puritan poet this reve- 
 lation of the ways of God to men. Paradise Lost 
 thus becomes virtually a paradise, though of an- 
 other sort, regained; and the poem may be called 
 another Divine Comedy. The Italian poem pro- 
 ceeds steadily, without retrogression, from the 
 wood of error to the radiant glory of the rose of 
 heaven, whereas the movement of Paradise Lost 
 is twofold, from happy innocence to sin and 
 from the agonies of sin to renewed righteousness 
 and trust. This is the theme of Job, also, and 
 of the Prometheus trilogy, it is supposed, and of 
 all the highest art. Such regaining of paradise is 
 the poet's real story. 
 
 Just one more matter relating to the theme of 
 Paradise Lost remains to be considered. If the 
 epic ends with this assured promise of salvation, 
 of return to a higher Eden, what does Paradise 
 Regained add to Milton's work? According to a 
 well-known story, Milton's Quaker friend, Thomas 
 Ellwood, handed back the manuscript of the earlier 
 epic to its author with the remark, "Thou hast 
 said much, here, of Paradise Lost: but what hast 
 thou to say of Paradise found." x The objection 
 
 1 Thomas Ellwood. " Relations with John Milton," English Garner, 
 Critical Essays and Literary Fragments, pp. 135-148. 
 
The Theme of Paradise Lost 195 
 
 s not well taken; from the fifth line of Paradise 
 Lost to the end, the regaining of paradise is ever 
 :he end in view. 
 
 Paradise Regained, therefore, is no necessary 
 iequel of Paradise Lost; it simply relates, in dif- 
 erent form, the other's fundamental thought. The 
 ;ame thought underlies the third gr^at poem of 
 Stilton's maturity, Samson Agoiiistes. The hero of 
 Paradise Lost is Adam, who through Christ learns 
 lis relation to God and wins salvation^ \ The hero 
 )f Paradise Regained is Christ in the form of man, 
 1 greater Adam, who sets the world an example 
 )f victorious resistance of temptation. The text 
 )f the second epic is that truth already quoted 
 : rom the first, which begins, 
 
 Henceforth I learn that to obey is best. 
 
 By bitter experience Samson learns the same les- 
 ion. Paradise Lost approaches this theme through 
 ong epic development; Paradise Regained, whose 
 scope is so much more limited, is centered about 
 t; Samson Agonistes, whose hero is merely an 
 ndividual and not a type, deals with it still less 
 iroadly. But all three poems express, each in its 
 jwn way, the central conviction of Milton's life 
 md thought. 
 
 With such reference to its inner meaning Para- 
 Use Lost must be interpreted if it is ever again to 
 lold the place in men's minds that it once had. 
 To claim an appreciation for the poetry of the 
 ;pic, and at the same time to disparage its con- 
 
196 Essays on Milton 
 
 tent, betokens an altogether erroneous idea of 
 what poetry and literature really are. The 
 thought of Paradise Lost, if it be a masterpiece 
 of literature, must be worthy of its form; indeed, 
 must be superior to its form. But that thought 
 can never again be accepted as a literally veracious 
 account of the creation and the fall; it is doubt- 
 ful if Milton, the poet, accepted it as such. The 
 reader must learn to see beneath the surface the 
 great truths that the story expresses. Paradise 
 Lost will then be not an antiquated version of 
 man's earliest history, but a poetic exposition of 
 eternal moral law. 
 
Chapter VII 
 
 Milton's Art 
 
 CONSTANT reading of Paradise Lost and 
 ^-^ Paradise Regained leaves one with an ever 
 increasing sense of their artistic grandeur. In 
 harmony of verse, in vividness of phrasing, and 
 in general structure, they represent the best of 
 English art. Milton had early learned to look on 
 poetry as Hans Sachs does in Die Meister singer. 
 Wagner's cobbler-poet cautions the gifted young 
 enthusiast, Walther von Stolzing, that, although 
 youth may sing as the birds do, inspired by the 
 fresh winds and the green forests, age, to achieve 
 all that art is capable of, must submit to long and 
 rigid schooling. Native genius, in other words, 
 must learn, without sacrifice of power, submission 
 to the highest enduring principles of art. No- 
 where else can a better exemplification of the theory 
 be found 'than in the faithful, consistent devotion 
 of Milton to his calling as a poet. 
 
 Even the earliest of Milton's poems, if his purely 
 boyish compositions be disregarded, betray the 
 care of an artist. Although they possess a grace 
 and charm that the severer work of his maturity 
 lacks, they rise, nevertheless, above the untutored 
 
198 Essays on Milton 
 
 spontaneity that graced young Walther's song. 
 Milton's painstaking exercises in Latin verse com- 
 position, if nothing else, would have checked the 
 unrestrained impulse of youth for song, and taught 
 the need of artistry. His study of the classics, 
 too, cultivated a high sense of literary form. 
 Hence, to the English poems of his early manhood 
 he gave an artist's care, as the erasures and inter- 
 lineations of the Cambridge manuscript amply 
 prove. These poems show a perfection in diction, 
 rhythm, and structure that comes only from a 
 conscious, conscientious exercise of art. Still 
 more truly can this be said of the later epic verse 
 and Samson Agonistes, in which one notes the 
 cumulative power of his sonorous periods, the 
 majestic expression of his thought, and the deep, 
 though repressed, feeling. In all his poetry, 
 natural inspiration and studied care work in 
 unison. 
 
 Yet Milton's poems bear none of the marks of 
 pedantry; indeed, they are most exquisite where 
 they show most care. He possessed the sure taste 
 of the poet-scholar, and his verse is seldom un- 
 suited to its occasion. One would scarcely believe 
 that Gabriel Harvey and the Areopagites only a 
 few years earlier had made their studied effort to 
 depoetize English expression by bringing it under 
 the domination of classical rules. All that Milton 
 knew of classical mythology and history, of Euro- 
 pean geography, and of science and literature, are 
 called into requisition to amplify and color his 
 
Milton's Art 199 
 
 thought. He had the knowledge that the pedant 
 craves, but the assimilative power of the true 
 scholar, also, that transmutes learning into culture, 
 and the creative energy that finds for old truths 
 new forms and new meaning. 
 
 Possibly the secret of the unfailing surety and 
 nobility of Milton's poetry rests primarily in the 
 fact that intellect and principle rule all that he 
 wrote. Like the figure of Dante in the background 
 of Rossetti's Beata Beatrice, Milton stands al- 
 ways in the presence of the reader. The ardent 
 classicism and religious awe of the Nativity Ode, 
 the love of refined pleasure expressed in L' Allegro 
 and // Penseroso, the high purpose and strong in- 
 dignation of Lycidas, reveal clearly the poet in 
 his youth. The sonnets, likewise, express his deep- 
 est thought and feeling, as they are roused in 
 him by personal relations with friends or by pub- 
 lic events. The later poems, although they are 
 epic and dramatic, are equally subjective; for not 
 even critical theory on the effacement of the author 
 in epic and drama could force him to forget self. 
 With a serene composure that should not hide 
 the depth of feeling, he refers in Paradise Lost 
 to his blindness. In the same spirit he alludes to 
 the dangers and discouragements that confronted 
 him after the Restoration. So Dante in the 
 Divine Comedy speaks of the ardor of his studies, 
 the bitterness of exile, and the intensity of his 
 love. 1 Such direct references to self are less fre- 
 
 1 Purg., 31, Par., 17. 
 
200 Essays on Milton. 
 
 quent in Paradise Lost than in the Divine Comedy, 1 
 and are less important than the half-veiled 
 personal feelings of Paradise Regained and Sam- 
 son Agonistes. The latter, especially, is colored 
 throughout by the spirit of the Puritan poet, 
 frustrated and perplexed by danger and distress, 
 but no whit daunted. Nor is it unnatural that 
 Milton's later writings should be more subjective 
 than his early verse; so great a character, thrown 
 back by force of circumstances within itself, in- 
 evitably seeks such revelation. This ever-felt 
 presence of Milton in his poetry gives it unfailing 
 dignity and power. 
 
 Because his art is never dissociated from self, 
 it follows that there is less characteristic of Mil- 
 ton, and Milton alone, in his early than in his 
 late poetry. What is most truly Miltonic could 
 come only after the full maturing of his character. 
 The exquisite phrasing of U Allegro and 77 Pen- 
 seroso and their delicate pictures of nature, are 
 near kin to the choicest Elizabethan expression. 
 We find, for example, the feeling of the Tudor poet 
 in the lines: 
 
 Like one that had been led astray 
 Through the heaven's wide pathless way. 
 
 More exclusively characteristic of Milton are the 
 words from Paradise Lost, "Seems another morn 
 risen on mid-noon." The simplicity and severity 
 of these words are truly Miltonic; it is the "grand 
 style" that is his distinctive possession. 
 
 In like manner the term Miltonic, applied to 
 
Milton's Art 201 
 
 versification, has primary reference to the epic 
 poems and Samson Agonistes. Delicate and haunt- 
 ing as is the music of the Minor Poems, it seems 
 hardly of Milton's own coinage; it is simply the 
 old Elizabethan lyric verse stamped by the per- 
 sonality of another craftsman. Nor would the 
 blank verse of Comus be called Miltonic. The 
 masque contains clear and fluent narrative verse, 
 from which the transition is easy to the lyric 
 movement of the closing songs. Portions of the 
 masque remind one of the blank verse of Fletcher. 
 But instead of such fluency, the reader counts 
 as the true marks of Milton's style the involved 
 periods and stately harmpnies of Paradise Lost. 
 Here phrases seldom isolate themselves for their 
 own distinct beauty, as they do in the Minor 
 Poems, from the carefully massed sentences in 
 which they stand; and sentences can rarely be 
 removed from their context without loss. The 
 looser form of Milton's prose makes all the more 
 noticeable the fine structure of sentences and para- 
 graphs in the epic. Sustained harmony and cumu- 
 lative power mark the poet's grander style. 
 
 Because they never were intended by their 
 author to be taken separately, many individual 
 lines of Milton's epics offer the most interesting 
 material for the student of metrics. Of especial 
 interest is the line, "Because thou hast hearkened 
 to the voice of thy wife," which, in reproducing 
 with only one slight change the words of the Bible, 
 becomes metrically most unorthodox. An abso- 
 
202 Essays on Milton 
 
 lutely exact quotation from Genesis is found in the 
 line, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat 
 bread"; and the whole passage, so interesting in 
 its metrical peculiarities, follows closely the words 
 of the original. Yet the divergence from the nor- 
 mal line is not harsh or displeasing; for the fa- 
 miliar sound of the words and the purpose and 
 mood of the speaker, conceal in part the bold 
 liberties taken by the poet. It is only when the 
 lines are examined by themselves that their 
 metrical peculiarities attract attention. 
 
 In general, this principle should be recognized, 
 that Milton's versification can never be fairly 
 judged apart from the thought. "Rocks, caves, 
 lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death," is a 
 line to be explained only in relation to its setting. 
 Symonds, in this same way, justifies the line, 
 "'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate," calling 
 attention to the "low, slow accent" of the first 
 two syllables, to the "proud emphasis" of the 
 fourth, and to the "stately and melancholy music- 
 roll" at the close. 1 Other similar passages are 
 quoted by Symonds, and it seems much sounder 
 to attribute the remarkable variations from the 
 normal verse to the nature of the context, as he 
 does, than to the fact, sometimes offered in ex- 
 planation, that the blind poet was forced to test 
 his work by ear alone. In Lycidas he shows him- 
 self susceptible to subtle musical effects lying alto- 
 
 1 J. A. Symonds, "The Blank Verse of Milton," ort. Rev., 22, pp. 
 767-781. 
 
Milton's Art 203 
 
 gether outside the structure of individual lines; 
 the same power is observed in the blank verse. 
 
 To appreciate in this aesthetic way the varia- 
 tions in Milton's pentameter lines, does not do 
 away with the need for a close study of the poet's 
 technique. Such an examination of Milton's work 
 shows that the chief sources of variation are three. 
 The pauses are placed freely within the lines as 
 the thought and the need of variety dictate; the 
 iambic, or rising rhythm is changed to the tro- 
 chaic, or falling measure, with extreme skill; and 
 the number of syllables in the line is altered by 
 the substitution of tri-syllabic feet for the iambic, 
 or by the addition of an unaccented syllable at 
 the close of the line or after its chief pause. An 
 almost endless variety is thus attained; yet the 
 music of the verse is thereby greatly enhanced. 
 Professor Saintsbury aptly calls attention first to 
 the wooden regularity of Gorboduc and then to the 
 unlicensed freedom of Davenant's blank verse, in 
 order to show by contrast the unlimited richness 
 and freedom of Milton's artistic verse. 
 
 This masterful control over rhythmic form is 
 proved again by the varied effects that Milton 
 produced with a single meter in his different works. 
 The blank verse of Comus is fluent and direct, 
 resembling the style of the Elizabethan dramatists 
 in their lighter moods. It is the work of a poet 
 who has learned the art of his predecessors, with- 
 out as yet being called upon to modify it to suit 
 his needs. That call came when he composed 
 
204 Essays on Milton 
 
 Paradise Lost. Here the Elizabethan blank verse, 
 which had been perfected only for dramatic usage, 
 had to be transformed into a nearer equivalent 
 for the hexameter lines of Homer and Virgil. It 
 had also to accommodate itself to subjects far more 
 vast than anything the old drama had ventured 
 upon. Hence Milton developed the elaborate and 
 richly ornate verse of Paradise Lost, the most elo- 
 quent and harmonious verse in the language. In the 
 interim between the composition of the two epics, 
 the poet's character could hardly have changed 
 materially, and we must suppose either that his 
 spirits were flagging as he wrote the later poem, or 
 else that the more restricted nature of its subject 
 made a less ornate expression advisable. Last, in 
 Samson Agonistes appears another type of blank 
 verse. In its severity and stateliness it differs 
 from the earlier dramatic verse of Comus, just as 
 it differs from the more richly modulated verse 
 of the epic. These variations of the pentameter 
 line, as the mood or need of the author changed, 
 prove his thorough mastery over his medium of 
 expression. 
 
 In the intricate and closely woven periods es- 
 pecially of Paradise Lost, Milton draws the most 
 elaborate pictures. They are not vivid, clear-cut 
 sketches, such as Dante draws with a few expres- 
 sive words; for where Milton depicts something in 
 a few words he uses suggestion rather than definite 
 detail. Even in his long descriptions the effect is 
 chiefly derived from suggestion. Two painters 
 
Milton's Art 205 
 
 working independently on some great scene of 
 Paradise Lost would produce very different results; 
 for they would find in the poem but little precise 
 detail that could be placed on the canvas. It is 
 to the imagination rather than to the sense of fact 
 that Milton appeals; the art of his description 
 lies in its suggestiveness. 
 
 The most vivid pictures in Paradise Lost are 
 therefore of the supernatural. For its power to 
 stimulate the imagination, the description of Satan 
 is probably the most widely known passage in the 
 epic, yet the method of the poet is too little con- 
 sidered. The reader gains first a very general im- 
 pression of Satan's mood and appearance in the 
 lines : 
 
 Round he throws his baleful eyes, 
 That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 
 Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
 
 This sketch is supplemented a moment later by 
 another picture, which by suggestive phrasing and 
 epic figure conveys to the eye a clear but not too 
 matter-of-fact idea of the fallen angel's form. 
 Further details are then added to this impression, 
 as the mighty fiend moves toward the solid ground 
 bordering the burning lake of hell. And finally, in 
 a fourth passage, all these impressions of physical 
 size and spiritual force are redrawn in the com- 
 pleted picture that begins: 
 
 He, above the rest 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 
 Stood like a tower. 
 
206 Essays on Milton 
 
 By so using four scenes, instead of one, to de- 
 scribe the appearance and mood of the fallen 
 angel, Milton avoids the tedious incoherence of 
 literary portraiture, and, by vivifying a few plain 
 descriptive details through the addition of poetic 
 suggestions that appeal to the imagination, he 
 introduces effectively a character too great for 
 words to picture. Such treatment is a fine example 
 of art adapting itself to its means. 
 
 As a setting for these portraits of Satan, Mil- 
 ton describes the fiery pit where the rebel angels 
 lay. Two other portions of what Milton calls the 
 "invisible universe" are involved in the poem, and 
 these, also, are effectively described. Milton's idea 
 of Chaos is based on Hesiod's; but a comparison 
 of Hesiod's simple brevity with the elaborate por- 
 trayal of Milton will make plain the latter's typi- 
 cal mode of appeal. In Paradise Lost the reader 
 sees the momentary recoil of Satan on the brink of 
 that "dark, illimitable ocean"; then the plunge into 
 the surging, tumultuous elements; the buffeting that 
 the adventurer undergoes as he is swept aloft or 
 dropped to immeasurable depths by the changing 
 forces that drive him on; and, finally, his uncertain 
 progress afoot over the half solidified land to the 
 kingdom of Chaos. A literal reading of the passage 
 leaves few definite details in the mind; but an imagi- 
 native reading calls up a clear impression of a limit- 
 less, formless space through which the elements roll 
 and surge in a light that is not light and a murky 
 atmosphere that the world has never known. 
 
Milton's Art 207 
 
 The description of Christ as he rides forth to 
 war in heaven produces the same general effect. 
 But here, instead of trusting to his own invention, 
 Milton uses the vision of Ezekiel as the basis of 
 his conception. 1 The result is a picture full of 
 color, sound, and movement, which grows with 
 constantly increasing power to its climax and 
 leaves in the imagination the mystery of the 
 unseen world. 
 
 Against these imaginative pictures of Paradise 
 Lost two others of a quite different sort can be 
 effectively placed. Vondel describes the arming 
 of Satan for battle clearly and vigorously; but 
 Satan is simply a Dutch burgher of the seven- 
 teenth century buckling on his armor, for the 
 poet's precision holds the description down to the 
 known facts of earth. In marked contrast with 
 this realism stand the majestic, imaginative pic- 
 tures of Milton. The art of Rubens, also, though 
 in another way, differs from Milton's. The great 
 painting of the Fall of the Rebel Angels is definite 
 rather than suggestive. God is literally anthropo- 
 morphized; the angels become demons, destitute 
 except in physical strength of the heroic qualities 
 possessed by the spirits of the epic; and the unity 
 of the composition forbids the sense of vastness 
 that the poet can convey. Art can handle such 
 themes only symbolically. The medieval sculp- 
 tors who attempted to represent on the portal 
 of the cathedral of Amiens the vision of Ezekiel, 
 
 1 See above, pp. 121-122, 137. 
 
208 Essays on Milton 
 
 depoetized it completely, where Dante and Milton 
 have been able to handle it with real power. The 
 same impression of insufficiency is left by Rubens' 
 canvas, as it is compared with the more stimu- 
 lating scenes of Paradise Lost. 
 
 In other portions of Paradise Lost the English 
 countryside is beautifully suggested. Recollec- 
 tions of L' Allegro and the First Elegy are brought 
 to mind by the lines already quoted: 
 
 As one who, long in populous city pent, 
 
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, 
 
 Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe 
 
 Among the pleasant villages and farms 
 
 Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight — 
 
 The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, 
 
 Or dairy. 
 
 In equal degree, the evening scene of the fourth 
 book creates an atmosphere that resembles the 
 peaceful, quiet mood of 77 Penseroso. In other 
 places, where the poet's object is to give an im- 
 pression of the super-terrestrial splendor of Eden, 
 these details of scenery are heaped together with 
 a luxuriance that makes the garden other than 
 earthly gardens. Much of this description is ac- 
 complished by the use of adjectives that are 
 strictly Virgilian. "Verdant grass," "clustering 
 vine," "swelling gourd," and the like are borrow- 
 ings from the classics that the romanticist of a 
 later century would avoid. Better than more 
 precise phrases, however, these generic terms serve 
 to give the impression that the poet desired. 
 It is interesting to compare the descriptions of 
 
Milton's Art 209 
 
 Milton's early poems with those of Paradise Lost, 
 which were written long after their author's first 
 spontaneous love for nature had been dimmed by- 
 life's cares, and some years after his total loss of 
 sight. He never allowed inanimate nature to 
 usurp too prominent a place in his poetry; for 
 his art was devoted to higher things, as he re- 
 garded them, than portrayal. In his early poems, 
 though, he shows a sincere love for rural scenery. 
 Remembrances of what he then had seen remain 
 with him after his affliction. And the epics show, 
 also, that all that he had read, while eyesight yet 
 remained, of remote lands and distant peoples, 
 still lived clearly in his memory. ^References to 
 mariners sailing on distant northern seas, or to 
 vultures in flight from Imaus to the springs of the 
 Ganges, show how clearly Milton had visualized 
 his early reading in history and geography. The 
 accuracy of some of his statements, judged even 
 relatively to the knowledge of his time, has been 
 questioned; but these passages indicate clearly 
 how his mind, working from personal observation 
 or knowledge acquired in books, amplified con- 
 cretely each idea that it received. 
 
 Another trait of Milton's mind, as revealed in 
 his art, is its preoccupation with the beautiful. 
 There are a few repulsive scenes in his poetry, such 
 as the description of Sin and Death, the enumera- 
 tion of the loathsome diseases that follow over- 
 indulgence, and the picture of Adam and Eve in 
 the grip of carnal passion. But each of these 
 
210 Essays on Milton 
 
 scenes has its place in the poem. How else could 
 Sin be depicted, for, unlike Satan, it never was 
 anything but foul, and must be so represented. 
 For the same reason, after the sin of Adam and 
 Eve, the old idyllic love in the Garden of Eden 
 must be succeeded by lust. Great artists never 
 shun the repulsive when their themes demand its 
 presence. There are repulsive incidents in the 
 Inferno and the Faerie Queene; but no one is ever 
 tempted to apologize for Dante or Spenser, as one 
 sometimes seeks to excuse Dean Swift, since there 
 is an obvious fitness in their writing as they do. 
 It is equally true that Milton introduces repulsive 
 scenes only where they serve the moral purpose 
 of his work, and that he resorts to them less fre- 
 quently than other great poets have done. 
 
 A comparison of Paradise Lost with other epics 
 and with its author's own early poems, may some- 
 times prompt the feeling that it is in parts too 
 ornate. The unsurpassed charm of U Allegro and 
 the beautiful, though elusive, music of Lycidas 
 may seem superior as art to the more majestic 
 movement and the statelier harmony of the epic. 
 In Paradise Lost narrative often yields place to 
 description. Hence Milton's poem lacks the rapid- 
 ity and brevity and simple vigor of Homer and the 
 Hebrew poets. He wrote much later than they, 
 when art was already regarded by many as merely 
 an ornament of the matter it presents. This i& 
 not Milton's view. He rises most noticeably to 
 the "grand style" in Paradise Lost, which of all 
 
Milton's Art 211 
 
 his poems is the most sublime and elevated in 
 content, because the highest degree of poetic 
 elaboration seemed to him fitting in a poem, like 
 that, possessed of varied incident, a supernatural 
 setting, and a universal theme. He was not con- 
 scious, be assured, of ornament superimposed on 
 his thought, for this was not his sense of true art. 
 From another standpoint Milton's epic has been 
 censured for its want of what critics used to call 
 "invention"; according to this judgment, the 
 poem follows too slavishly the material handed 
 down by Biblical history and tradition. In the 
 interesting prefatory remarks to Davideis, Cowley 
 had criticized all English scriptural poetry for 
 such want of originality, and, if Milton handled his 
 theme in this way, it was in disregard of the best 
 critical opinion of his day. But Paradise Lost was 
 
 ^composed after long and earnest deliberation. Its 
 incidents are most effectively arranged and con- 
 nected by the poet, and each great scene is finely 
 elaborated. If it seems at all destitute of poetic 
 invention, the reason is that Paradise Lost itself 
 has created the prevailing conception of the themes 
 it handles. In the largest sense, Milton made his 
 
 i material his own. 
 
 p The same is true of all Milton's poetry. In 
 lyric, epic, sonnet, or drama, as he understood it, 
 he shows thorough mastery of his art. Wide 
 knowledge, firm structure, and the finest diction 
 are the great features of Milton's art. There are 
 those who fail to enjoy or appreciate the thought 
 
212 Essays on Milton 
 
 of his poetry; but no one denies him the gift of 
 style. 
 
 The greater the pity, then, that readers in 
 general do not see the real personality of the poet 
 in his work. Because of his intellectual equipoise, 
 which the romantic poets so conspicuously lacked, 
 and because of the loftiness of his ideals, the man 
 has been judged cold and unsympathetic. Were 
 his early Latin verse better known, the world 
 would not lose sight of his capacity for friendship 
 and love of social intercourse. These traits are 
 not wholly obliterated in his later work. But it is 
 true that the great interests to which he devoted 
 his talents, and the lofty ideals on which he fixed 
 his mind, obscured his sympathy with the lighter 
 sides of life. Too much he seems to have "dwelt 
 apart." 
 
 As a result of this absorption in the most es- 
 sential things in life and character came a grow- 
 ing severity of style. Were a single comparison 
 sought to illustrate the change, a few lines of // 
 Penseroso might be placed beside a single clause 
 of Paradise Regained. Morning comes to the 
 thoughtful youth: 
 
 Not tricked and frounced, as she was wont 
 
 With the Attic boy to hunt, 
 
 But kerchieft in a comely cloud, 
 
 While rocking winds are piping loud, 
 
 Or ushered with a shower still, 
 
 When the gust hath blown his fill, 
 
 Ending on the rustling leaves, 
 
 With minute-drops from off the eaves. 
 
Milton's Art 213 
 
 In Paradise Regained, with equal beauty but with 
 a different spirit, 
 
 Morning fair 
 Came forth with pilgrim steps, in amice gray. 
 
 In one passage the youthful Elizabethan speaks; 
 in the other the blind Puritan poet. 
 
 Too much, however, i is made of these visible 
 signs of change if they are taken to indicate any 
 radical alteration in Milton's temperament. From 
 the first his disposition was serious and his ideals 
 high. His earliest portrait reveals him as a boy, 
 grave, earnest, and high-minded. In spirit, the 
 sonnet written on his twenty-third birthday, the 
 sonnet on his blindness, and the allusions to self 
 in the epics, are essentially the same. The same 
 noble seriousness was always his. On the other 
 hand, his youthful sympathy with the lighter in- 
 terests of life was simply obscured, not stamped 
 out, by the years that passed. True, the organ 
 in the quiet study took the place of the rebecks 
 in the shade; but there was solemn organ music, 
 too, in the Horton poems, and the quiet enjoyment 
 he then took in life was not beneath the sympathy 
 of the blind Puritan poet. 
 
 So Milton's style and character developed con- 
 sistently and harmoniously, marking a steady 
 growth but no radical change. There are phases 
 of his work that puzzle one sorely who would ap- 
 praise his character and achievements rightly. 
 Puritan and humanist, poet and controversialist, 
 a lover of religion yet an opponent of all estab- 
 
214 Essays on Milton 
 
 lished churches, he presents no simple character for 
 the reader to comprehend. Nevertheless, all phases 
 of his truly great work bespeak the same character 
 behind it. His style is pure and sublime because 
 his thoughts are sound and his ideals high. No- 
 where in that great work is his mode of expression 
 inadequate to express the thought; nowhere is the 
 thought unworthy of the noble style. He is the 
 arch-idealist of English letters, a worshipper of 
 purity, justice, liberty, and truth. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adam, as a type, 53, 180; his sin, 
 180, 182-183; his future, 182- 
 193; as hero, 95, 99, 107, 188- 
 
 191 
 Andreini, G. B., 53, 170 
 Angels, hierarchy of, 117-118 
 Animadversions, 47, 62, 67, 68 
 Apology for Smectymnuus, 66, 174 
 Areopagitica, 62, 72, 75, 76, 79, 80, 
 
 187 
 Ariosto, his Orlando, 148; and 
 
 Comus, 149 
 Art of Milton, dependent on 
 knowledge, 198; and on char- 
 acter, 199; subjective element 
 in, 199-201; versification, 201- 
 204; pictorial power, 95, 97, 
 121-122, 129, 137-139, 204-209 
 
 Barnfield, R., 20-23 
 
 Bible, The, Milton's acceptance 
 of, 99-100, m-115, 126-129, 
 133. I39-I40» I76-I78> 181; as 
 source of Paradise Lost, 102, 106, 
 109-130, 131, 137, 141, 174, 
 201; quotations from, 122-125 
 
 Breton, N., 21-23 
 
 Browne, Sir T., 61, 63, 64 
 
 Browne, W., 34, 61 
 
 Burton, R., 63 
 
 Caedmon, 87-88, 102-106, 159- 
 
 160 
 Cambridge Manuscript, 52-55 
 Caroline poetry, 14-16 
 
 Chaucer, G., 157, 158 
 
 Christian Doctrine, 111-112, 125- 
 
 130, 180-181 
 Cintio, G., 149 
 Colet, J., 44, 114 
 Comus, 18, 146, 148, 168, 169, 187, 
 
 201, 204; as a masque, 32-33; 
 
 sources of, 33-34, 149 
 Cowley, A., 164-165, 211 
 
 Daniel, S., 16, 30, 35, 165 
 Dante, 35, 49, 92, 94, 112, 120, 
 
 145, 150, 155, 180, 199, 208, 
 
 210 
 Davies, Sir J., 165-166 
 Diodati, C, 40, 41, 42, 150 
 Drayton, M., 16, 35, 165 
 Du Bartas, see Sylvester, J 
 
 Eikonoklastes, 158 
 
 Elegies, Latin, 42, 43, 157, 208, 
 212 
 
 Elizabethan literature, lyric and 
 drama, 11-13; pastoral poetry, 
 18-25; tn e elegy, 28-30; the 
 sonnet, 30-31; the masque, 
 31-34; other forms, 35-36 
 
 Ellwood, T., 194 
 
 England's Helicon, 18 
 
 Epitaphium Damonis, 42, 50, 68 
 
 Erasmus, D., 44 
 
 Familiar Letters, 40, 42, 47 
 Fletcher, G., 165 
 Fletcher, J., 34, 201 
 
2l6 
 
 Index 
 
 Godeau, A., 165 
 
 Good and evil, 107, 112, 116, 183- 
 
 188 
 Gower, J., 158 
 Greene, R., 19 
 Giotius, H., 53, 171 
 
 Harvey, G., 16, 198 
 
 Hesiod, 135, 136, 137, 140, 141, 
 
 146 
 Himes, J., 90, us, «*» 125, 137 
 Homer, 35, 45, 49, 82, 84, 130-148 
 
 passim, 155, 174, 176, 204, 210 
 
 // Penseroso, 23, 127, 158, 20,8, 
 2W see also V Allegro 
 
 Johnson, S., 33, 34 
 Jonson, B., 26, 27, 157 
 
 L 'Allegro, 18, 41, 129, 157, 168, 
 
 199, 210; sources of, 21-23; 
 
 art of, 24-26, 62, 198, 200, 2jfe 
 Landor, W., 31 
 Langland, J., 158 
 Lauder, W., 171, 174 
 Lee, S., 16 
 Lycidas, 18, 68, 92, 134, 149, 199, 
 
 202, 210; its pastoralism, 26-28; 
 
 its sources, 28-30, 149, 169 
 
 Marlowe, G, 16 
 
 Masson, D., 90, 173 
 
 Milton, J., relation to the Eliza- 
 bethans, 11-36; Latin verses, 
 15, 17, 212; knowledge of as- 
 tronomy, 17, 89-92; choice of 
 a profession, 37-40; love of the 
 beautiful, 40-43, 168, 209-211; 
 Puritanism, 43-46, 213; liter- 
 
 ary aims, 46-58; public service, 
 47. S9~6 2 i 65; statesmanship, 
 70-80; liberalism, 71-75; ideas 
 of liberty, 71-73, 77, 78; master 
 passions, 77-80; pictorial power, 
 95, 97, 121-122, 129, 137-139, 
 204-205, 208; learning, 146-148, 
 175-178, 198, et passim; his art, 
 197-214; subjective elements in 
 his work, 66-68, 199-200, 212 
 More, Sir T., 44 
 
 Ode — Nativity, 27, 199 
 Orchard, T., 90 
 Osgood, C., 145-146, 150 
 
 Paradise Lost, slow growth of, 
 46-58, 152;, epic character of, 
 54-57; epic structure of, 82- 
 108, 131-133; epic invocation 
 in, 84, 134; epic conventions in 
 84-87, 134-135; unity of, 88, 
 95, 99, ioi, 107; cosmography 
 of, 17, 89-92, 163, 206; its 
 theology, 93-95, 126, 130, 182; 
 its ethical significance, 92, 97, 
 99-100, 102, 106, in, 139-140, 
 180-195; ' ts sources: Biblical, 
 102, 106, 109-130, 131, 137, 
 141, 174, 201-202; Classical 
 98-99, 109, 119, 130-148, 174; 
 Renaissance, 148-156; Eng- 
 lish, 156-170; miscellaneous, 
 170-178; comparisons in, 119- 
 I2i, 143-144; the hero of, 95, 
 97. 99. 107. 188; quoted, 37, 
 43. 78. 85, 86, 91, 93, 94, 96, 
 97, 98, 100, 101, 105, 106, III, 
 113, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 
 123, 124, 125, 129, 137, 138, 
 
Index 
 
 217 
 
 139, 140. 144. 145. 183, 185, 
 
 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 193, 
 
 194. I9S. 20s, 208 
 Paradise Regained, 40, 195, 200, 
 
 204; its relation to Paradise Lost, 
 
 194-196; quoted, 176, 177, 213 
 Passion, The, 50, 161 
 Pastoral poetry, 18 
 Patrem, Ad, 38, 39 
 Peele, G., 34 
 Pigna, G., 149 
 Plato, 168, 174-175 
 Poetry, Milton's ideas on, 39, 43- 
 
 44, 46, 82-83, 133. IS2» 189; 
 
 the epic, 48-49, 51, 55-57. I3 1 . 
 
 148, 149 
 Prolusiones, 43 
 Prose writings, Milton's, their 
 
 form, 62-64; idealism of, 64, 
 
 68-70, 76-77; autobiography 
 
 in, 66-67 
 Puy, H. du, 34 
 
 Ready and Easy Way, The, 62, 
 
 73-74. 77 
 Reason of Church Government, The, 
 
 39, 47, 48, 49, 51-52, 60, 66, 76, 
 
 78, 83, 151, 165 
 Reformation in England, Of, 70, 76, 
 
 149 
 Rubens, P. P., 207 
 
 Sachs, H., 197 
 
 Samson Agonistes, 39, 75, 146, 
 
 148, 169, 172, 175. 195. 198. 
 
 200, 201, 204 
 Satan, depicted, 86-87, 205-206; 
 
 character of, 96-97; his fall, 
 
 115-117, 135-138; his sense of 
 
 evil, 185; degradation of, 185- 
 186; not the hero, 95, 188-191 
 
 Second Defence, The, 37, 64, 65, 
 71. 78, 83 
 
 Seebohm, F., 114 
 
 Shakespeare, 23, 31, 157, 158, 187 
 
 Sidney, P., 19, 23 
 
 Sonnet II, 43 
 
 Sonnets, The, 43, 150, 151, 199; 
 their prototypes, 30-31 
 
 Spenser, E., 14, 16, 157, 210; his 
 pastoral poetry, 18-19; an d 
 Lycidas, 28-29, J69> an d Comus, 
 34, 169; and Paradise Lost, 166- 
 170; his Puritanism, 167-169 
 
 Sylvester, J., 16, 109, 113, 129, 
 160-164 
 
 Tasso, T., 34, 40, 57, 82; his 
 theory of epic poetry, 132-133, 
 149, 152-153, 189; his influ- 
 ence on Milton, 150-156, 164 
 
 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 
 The, 63, 78, 188 
 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 1 1 
 
 Tractate on Education, The, 67, 147 
 
 Trissino.G., 148, 149 
 
 Vacation Exercise, 44, 50, 161 
 Versification, Milton's 201-204 
 Virgil, 14, 30, 35, 48, 49, 82, 85, 
 98, 109, 120, 129, 130-148 pas- 
 sim, 155, 174, 208 
 Vondel, 53, 56, 102, I7l-I74> 183, 
 207 
 
 Williams, R., 171, 181-182, n 
 Wither, G., 61