MSS. at Trinity College1, shew that exactly ninety-nine possible themes occupied his thoughts from time to time; but even as early as 1641 the story of the lost Paradise began to assume prominence. Still, even when the subject was definitely chosen, the question of its treatmentdramatic or epic-remained. Milton contemplated the former. He even commenced work upon a drama of which Satan's address to the sun in the fourth book of Paradise Lost 2 formed the exordium. These lines were written about 1642. Milton recited them to his nephew Phillips at the time of their composition. Possibly, had Milton not been distracted and diverted from poetry by political and other interests, he might from 1642 onwards have continued this drama, and thus produced a dramatic masterpiece akin to Samson Agonistes. As things fell out, the scheme was dropped, and never taken up again. When he finally addressed himself to the composition of Paradise Lost he had decided in favour of the epic or narrative form. Following Aubrey (from Aubrey and Phillips most of Paradise our information concerning Milton is derived) Lost begun. we may assume that Milton began to write Paradise Lost about 1658. He worked continuously at It was finished in 1663, the Two more years, however, the epic for some five years. year of his third3 marriage. 1 They include the original drafts of Arcades, Comus, Lycidas, and some of the minor poems, together with Milton's notes on the design of the long poem he meditated composing, and other less important papers. The MSS. were presented to Trinity by a former member of the college, Sir Henry Newton Puckering, who died in 1700. It is not known how they originally came into his possession. 2 Bk. IV. ll. 32 et seq. 3 Milton's second marriage took place in the autumn of 1656, i.e. after he had become blind. His wife died in February, 1658. Cf. the Sonnet, "Methought I saw my late espoused were spent in the necessary revision, and in 1665 Milton placed the completed poem in the hands of his friend Thomas Ellwood1. In 1667 Paradise Lost The poem was issued from the press2. Milton received published. £5. Before his death he was paid a second instalment, £5. Six editions of the poem had been published by the close of the century. Paradise Regained: Samson Agonistes. When Ellwood returned the MS. of Paradise Lost to Milton he remarked: "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" Possibly we owe Paradise Regained to these chance words; or the poem, forming as it does a natural pendant to its predecessor, may have been included in Milton's original design. In any case he must have commenced the second epic about the year 1665. Samson Agonistes appears to have been written a little later. The two poems were published together in 1671. In giving this bare summary of facts it has not been saint," the pathos of which is heightened by the fact that he had never seen her. 1 Cf. the account given in Ellwood's Autobiography: “after some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his; which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he intituled Paradise Lost," 2 The delay was due to external circumstances. Milton had been forced by the Plague to leave London, settling for a time at Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, where Ellwood had taken a cottage for him. On his return to London, after "the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed," the Great Fire threw everything into disorder; and there was some little difficulty over the licensing of the poem. For these reasons the publication of Paradise Lost was delayed till the autumn of 1667 (Masson). our purpose to offer any criticism upon the poems. It would take too much space to show why Samson Agonistes is in subject-matter the poet's threnody over the fallen form of Puritanism, and in style the most perfectly classical poem in English literature; or again, why some great writers (among them Coleridge and Wordsworth) have pronounced Paradise Regained to be in point of artistic execution the most consummate of Milton's works-a judgment which would have pleased the author himself since, according to Phillips, he could never endure to hear Paradise Regained “censured to be much inferior to Paradise Lost." The latter speaks for itself in the rolling splendour of those harmonies which Tennyson has celebrated and alone in his time equalled. In 1673 Milton brought out a reprint of the 1645 Close of edition of his Poems, adding most of the Milton's life. sonnets1 written in the interval. The last four years of his life were devoted to prose works of no 1 The number of Milton's sonnets is twenty-three (if we exclude the piece on "The New Forcers of Conscience"), five of which were written in Italian, probably during the time of his travels in Italy, 1638-9. Ten sonnets were printed in the edition of 1645, the last of them being that entitled (from the Cambridge MS.) "To the Lady Margaret Ley." The remaining thirteen were composed between 1645 and 1658. The concluding sonnet, therefore (to the memory of Milton's second wife), immediately preceded his commencement of Paradise Lost. Four of these poems (XV. XVI. XVII. XXII.) could not, on account of their political tone, be included in the edition of 1673. They were first published by Edward Phillips at the end of his memoir of Milton, 1694. The sonnet on the "Massacre in Piedmont" is usually considered the finest of the collection, of which the late Rector of Lincoln College edited a well-known edition, 1883. The sonnet inscribed with a diamond on a window pane in the cottage at Chalfont where the poet stayed in 1665 is (in the judgment of a good critic) Miltonic, if not Milton's (Garnett's Life of Milton, p. 175). particular interest to us1. He continued to live in London. His third marriage had proved happy, and he enjoyed something of the renown which was rightly his. Various well-known men used to visit him—notably Dryden, who on one of his visits asked and received permission to dramatise Paradise Lost. Milton died in 1674, November 8th. He was buried in St Giles's Church, Cripplegate. When we His death. think of him we have to think of a man who lived a life of very singular purity and devotion to duty; who for what he conceived to be his country's good sacrificed-and no one can well estimate the sacrificeduring twenty years the aim that was nearest to his heart and best suited to his genius; who, however, eventually realised his desire of writing a great work in gloriam Dei. 1 The treatise on Christian Doctrine is valuable as throwing much light on the theological views expressed in the two epic poems and Samson Agonistes. 2 The lines by Dryden which were printed beneath the portrait of Milton in Tonson's folio edition of Paradise Lost published in 1688 are too familiar to need quotation; but it is worth noting that the younger poet had in Milton's lifetime described the great epic as "one of the most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced" (prefatory essay to The State of Innocence, 1674). Further, tradition assigned to Dryden (a Roman Catholic and a Royalist) the remark, "this fellow (Milton) cuts us all out and the ancients too." Why written, and when. COMUS. Comus was probably written in the spring of 1634. There can be no doubt that its composition was due to Milton's intimate friend Henry Lawes, the musician. Among Lawes's pupils were the family of the Earl of Bridgewater, son-in-law of the Countess of Derby, in whose honour Arcades was written. In July 1631 the Earl of Bridgewater was made Lord-Lieutenant of the counties on the Welsh border and of North and South Wales-a viceregal post similar to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. For some reason the Earl's formal entry on his duties was delayed till the autumn of 1634. To celebrate the event great festivities were held at his official residence, Ludlow Castle. The first performance of Comus was part of these festivities. It took place on Michaelmas night, 1634. Doubtless Lawes, as music-master to the Earl's family, and as a practised writer of Masque-music, had been asked to undertake the provision of an entertainment suitable to the occasion, and had applied to Milton for help. With the Puritan Milton of later years, who in Paradise Lost, IV. 764, decried "mixed dance or wanton masque," the petition would have fared ill. But at this time there could be nothing distasteful in it. Milton showed himself in L'Allegro friendly to the stage, admitting masque and antique pageantry" among the legitimate delights that Mirth might offer. Further, there was the desire to do a service to his friend Lawes. Milton accepted the commission, and Comus was the outcome. Probably he wrote the piece early in 1634. "Comus." It had to be ready by the autumn; and time would be required for the setting of the music, and for all the preparations incidental to the representation of an unusually long Masque. The spring Date of |