All four drafts show that his early intention was to make the poem a drama, a gigantic Miracle play. The closing of the theaters and the prejudice felt against them during the days of Puritan ascendency may have influenced Milton to forsake the dramatic for the epic form, but he seems never to have shared the common prejudice against the drama and the stage. His sonnet on Shakespeare shows in what estimation he held that dramatist.

Subject Matter and Form. About 1658, when Milton was a widower, living alone with his three daughters, he began, in total blindness, to dictate his Paradise Lost,

sometimes relying on them but more often on any kind friend who might assist him. The manuscript accordingly shows a variety of handwriting. The work was published

in 1667, after some trouble with a narrow-minded censor who had doubts about granting a license.

The subject matter can best be given in Milton's own lines at the beginning of the poem:

'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse."

The poem treats of Satan's revolt in heaven, of his conflict with the Almighty, and banishment with all the rebellious angels. Their new home in the land of fire and endless pain is described with such a gigantic grasp of the imagination, that the conception has colored all succeeding theology.

The action proceeds with a council of the fallen angels to devise means for alleviating their condition and annoying the Almighty. They decide to strike him through his child, and they plot the fall of man. In short, Paradise Lost is an intensely dramatic story of the loss of Eden. The greatest actors that ever sprang from a poet's brain appear before us on the stage, which is at one time the sulphurous pit of hell, at another the bright plains of heaven, and at another the Elysium of our first parents. In form the poem is an epic in twelve books, containing a total of 10,565 lines. It is written in blank verse of

wonderful melody and variety.

After finish

Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. ing Paradise Lost, Milton wrote two more poems, which he published in 1671. Paradise Regained is in great part a paraphrase of the first eleven verses of the fourth chapter of St. Matthew. The poem is in four books of blank

verse and contains 2070 lines. Although it is written with great art and finish, Paradise Regained shows a falling off in Milton's genius. There is less ornament and less to arouse human interest.

Samson Agonistes (Samson the Struggler) is a tragedy containing 1758 lines, based on the sixteenth chapter of Judges. This poem, modeled after the Greek drama, is hampered by a strict observance of the dramatic unities. It is vastly inferior to the Paradise Lost. Samson Agonistes contains scarcely any of the glorious imagery of Milton's earlier poems. It has been called "the most unadorned poem that can be found.”

Characteristics of Milton's Poetry

Variety in his Early Work. A line in Lycidas says:"He touched the tender stops of various quills,"

and this may be said of Milton. His early poems show great variety. We have not only the soul-stirring dirge notes in Lycidas, but we also find the lines of the most of his minor poems fresh with the sights, sounds, and odors of the country. We have our own perception of the beauties of nature quickened, as we catch sight in L'Allegro of

66

". . . beds of violets blue

And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,"

as we inhale the matchless odors from

"The frolic wind that breathes the spring,"

and as we find ourselves listening

"While the plowman near at hand
Whistles o'er the furrow'd land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe."

Although Milton is noted for his seriousness and sublimity, we must not be blind to the fact that his minor poems show great delicacy of touch. The epilogue of the Spirit at the end of Comus is an instance of exquisite airy fancy passing into noble imagination at the close. In 1638 Sir Henry Wotton wrote this intelligent criticism of Comus to its author: "I should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your Songs and Odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language: Ipsa mollities."

Limitations.

All

In giving attention to Milton's variety, we should not forget that his limitations are apparent when we judge him by Elizabethan standards. As varied as his excellences are, his range is far narrower than Shakespeare's. Milton has little sense of humor. sorts and conditions of men, with the ruddy glow of life, do not throng his pages. We feel that he is farther from human life than either Shakespeare or Burns. We find that Milton, unlike those poets, became acquainted with flowers through the medium of a book before he noticed them in the fields. In speaking of flowers and birds, he sometimes makes those mistakes to which the bookish man is more prone than the child who first hears the story of Nature from her own lips. Unlike Shakespeare and Burns, Milton had the misfortune to spend his childhood in a large city. Again, while increasing age seemed to impose no limitations on Shakespeare's genius, since his touch is as delicate in The Tempest as in his first plays, Milton's style, on the other hand, grew frigid and devoid of imagery toward the end of his life.

Sublimity. The most striking characteristic of Milton's poetry is sublimity, and this consists, first, in the subject

matter. In the opening lines of Paradise Lost he speaks of his "adventrous song"

"That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."

Milton succeeded in his intention. The English language has not another epic poem, or a poem of any other kind, which approaches Paradise Lost in sustained sublimity.

In the second place, we must note the sublimity of treatment. Milton's own mind was cast in a sublime mold. His very figures of rhetoric frequently throb with sublimity. Thus, the Milky Way is spoken of as the royal highway to heaven:

"A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars."

When Death and Satan meet, Milton wishes the horror of the scene to manifest something of the sublime. What other poet could, in fewer words, have conveyed a stronger impression of the effect of the frown of those terrible powers?

"So frowned the mighty combatants, that Hell

Grew darker at their frown."

The pictures painted by Milton show strength and magnificence of touch, as well when the canvas discloses a lurid sea of flame that gives

"No light; but rather darkness visible,”

as when Eden with its atmosphere of a spring dawn presents her

"Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose."