safely habitable again, he returned to his house in London'.

His great work of Paradise Lost had principally engaged his thoughts for some years past, and was now completed. It is probable, that his first design of writing an epic poem was owing to his conversations at Naples with the Marquis of Villa about Tasso and his famous poem of the delivery of Jerusalem; and in a copy of verses presented to that nobleman before he left Naples, he intimated his intention of fixing upon King Arthur for his hero. And in an eclogue, made soon after his return to England upon the death of his friend and school-fellow Deodati, he proposed the same design and the same subject, and declared his ambition of writing something in his native language, which might render his name illustrious in these islands, though he should be obscure and inglorious to the rest of the world. And in other parts of his works, after he had engaged in the controversies of the times, he still promised to produce some noble poem or other at a fitter season; but it doth not appear that he had then determined upon the subject, and King Arthur had another fate, being reserved for the pen of Sir Richard Blackmore. The first hint of

'Dr. Symmons remarks, that h The reader should consult a rumour had been circulated of the Preface to the second book Milton's having fallen under the of the Reason of Church Governdesolating disease. And he cites ment, from " Concerning therea very interesting letter to Peter "fore this wayward subject" to Heimbach, occasioned by this re- the end, vol. i. p. 61-65. ed. port. See Pr. W. ii. 586. ed. 1753. This passage gives the 1753. E. fullest insight into Milton's hopes * See Mr. Warton's note on and intentions. E. the Mansus, v. 80. E.

Paradise Lost is said to have been taken from an Italian tragedy; and it is certain, that he first designed

it a tragedy himself, and there are several plans of it in the form of a tragedy still to be seen in the author's own manuscript preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. And it is probable that he did not barely sketch out the plans, but also wrote some parts of the drama itself. His nephew Philips informs us, that some of the verses at the beginning of Satan's speech, addressed to the sun in the fourth book, were shown to him and some others as designed for the beginning of the tragedy, several years before the poem was begun and many other passages might be produced, which plainly appear to have been originally intended for the scene, and are not so properly of the epic, as of the tragic strain. It was not till after he was disengaged from the Salmasian controversy, which ended in 1655, that he began to mould the Paradise Lost in its present form; but after the Restoration, when he was dismissed from public business, and freed

edition of Milton's Poems. Mr. Todd gives a summary of all the inquiries of this kind.

But with the fanciful question of the origin, or first hint, of Paradise Lost, is much mixed up the consideration of Milton's use and imitation of earlier works, It is most probable that he was well acquainted, as Mr. Dunster contends, with Sylvester's translation of Du Bartas; and that he had seen Stafford's Niobe, as Mr. Todd suggests, and the work of the Anglo-Saxon poet Cedmon, which Mr. Todd quotes from Turner's History of the AngloSaxons. Milton's great learning in fact made him acquainted "with the poverty as well as the "riches of numerous other writ

"ers;" and he made the right use of learning in greatly improving upon the hints of others. This will continually appear in the notes on his Poems. But there was nothing like plagiarism in this; and indeed, his commentators, and the ingenious men who have been named above, are always anxious that an imputation of this kind should never, for a moment, be thrown upon Milton, whose originality, they all contend, was as great as his erudition.

Of the shameless attempt of Lauder to convict him of plagiarism a full account is given by Bishop Newton in the Postscript to Paradise Lost. E.

from controversy of every kind, he prosecuted the work with closer application. Mr. Philips relates a very remarkable circumstance in the composure of this poem, which he says he had reason to remember, as it was told him by Milton himself, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that what he attempted at other times was not to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much. Mr. Toland imagines that Philips might be mistaken as to the time, because our author, in his Latin elegy, written in his twentieth year, upon the approach of the spring, seemeth to say just the contrary, as if he could not make any verses to his satisfaction till the spring begun: and he says farther that a judicious friend of Milton's informed him, that he could never compose well but in spring and autumn. But Mr. Richardson cannot comprehend, that either of these accounts is exactly true, or that a man with such a work in his head can suspend it for six months together, or only for one; it may go on more slowly, but it must go on: and this laying it aside is contrary to that eagerness to finish what was begun, which he says was his temper in his epistle to Deodati, dated Sept. 2, 1637*. After all, Mr. Philips, who had the perusal of the poem from the beginning, by twenty or thirty verses at a time, as it was composed, and having not been shown any for a considerable while, as the summer came on, inquired of the author the reason of it, could hardly be mistaken with regard to the time : and it is easy to conceive, that the poem might go on

* See the note on v. 6. El. vii. In Adventum veris. E.

much more slowly in summer than in other parts of the year; for notwithstanding all that poets may say of the pleasures of that season, I imagine most persons find by experience, that they can compose better at any other time, with more facility and with more spirit, than during the heat and languor of summer. Whenever the poem was wrote, it was finished in 1665, and as Elwood says was shown to him that same year at St. Giles Chalfont, whither Milton had retired to avoid the plague, and it was lent to him to peruse it and give his judgment of it: and considering the difficulties which the author lay under, his uneasiness on account of the public affairs and his own, his age and infirmities, his gout and blindness, his not being in circumstances to maintain an amanuensis, but obliged to make use of any hand that came next to write his verses as he made them, it is really wonderful, that he should have the spirit to undertake such a work, and much more, that he should ever bring it to perfection!.

Besides what affliction he must have from his disappointment on the change of the times, and from his own private losses, and probably cares for subsistence, and for his family, he was in perpetual terror of being assassinated, and though he had escaped the talons of the law, he knew he had made himself enemies in abundance. He was so dejected he would lie awake whole nights. He then kept himself as private as he could. This Dr. Tancred Robinson had from a relation of Milton's, Mr. Walker of the Temple. And this is what is intimated by him

self, P. L. vii. 26.

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,

In darkness and with dangers compast round,

And solitude. *

Richardson, Remarks, p. xciv.

Dr. Symmons observes that these apprehensions were not those of a weak mind, or felt without sufficient cause; but were fully justified by the fate of Ludlow, pursued with daggers into the heart of Switzerland, and by the murders of Dorislaus and of Ascham at the Hague and at Madrid. E.