Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/135

 PARADISE LOST

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��" Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave . . . with a solemn and treatable smooth- ness to paint out and describe; teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight . . . that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear now rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant, they would then appear to all men both easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficult indeed."

There is plainly apparent here the tem- per which would ultimately have decided Milton against a purely romantic theme, and in favor of that one among those drawn from the Bible, which was most in- stinct with ethical and religious doctrine, even if national circumstances had not thrown him more and more inevitably upon the subject of Satan's rebellion and revenge. Just when his decision was finally made, either as to subject or form, it is impossi- ble to say. We do know, on the authority of Edward Phillips, that as early as 1642 Milton made a tentative beginning upon a drama such as had been indicated in his notes. Several verses which now form part of Satan's speech as he stands for the first time on earth and beholds the splendor of the sun in Heaven (Book IV, 32-37) formed the opening lines of this in- cipient drama. The suppression of stage plays and closing of the theatres by Parlia- ment in 1642, and the great distrust of the drama felt by all Puritans, may have been instrumental in diverting Milton's inten- tion. The next positive information con- cerning the growth of Paradise Lost is Phillips's statement that his uncle began the composition of it in its present form " about two years before the king came in," i. e., about 1658, while he was still Crom- well's secretary. Its further progress, until it was shown to young Ellwood at Chalfont in 1665, has been traced, conjecturally, in the introductory biography.

Two editions of Paradise Lost appeared

��in Milton's lifetime. In the first edition, 1667, the poem appears in ten books; in the second, 1674, this number is increased to twelve by a division of the seventh and tenth books into two each. A third edition appeared in 1678.

��II

It has been shown that the subject of Paradise Lost took tolerably definite shape in Milton's mind as early as 1641-2. Dur- ing the twenty odd years between this date and the completion of the poem, the theme lay in the background of his consciousness, accreting to itself a rich alluvium, slowly deposited from reading and reflection. A portion of the patience with which he bore the delay of his project was undoubtedly due to the necessity he felt for a long pre- paration. His poem was not one, he says in the Reasons of Church Government, " to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amo- rist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming para- site, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit which can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out His Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altars, to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases. To this must be added industrious and se- lect reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly arts and affairs." The under- scored words are significant. During those years of preparation Milton travelled through an immense cycle of reading, con- stantly selecting and assimilating. The question of the " origins " of Paradise Lost is therefore a very complicated one, leading in a hundred unexpected directions, traversing indeed, in one form or another, nearly the whole area of European litera- ture. Of the thirty or forty works which have been cited by commentators, many, such as the Divine Weeks and Works of

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