PREFACE "PARADISE LOST," says Mark Pattison, was composed after fifty, but was conceived at thirty-two. Hence the high degree of perfection realised in the total result. For there were combined to produce it the opposite virtues of two distinct periods of mental development; the early imagination and fresh emotional play of early manhood, with the exercised judgment and chastened taste of ripened years. It may be made a question, if in any other mode than by adjournment of his early design, Milton could have attained to that union of original strength with severe restraint which distinguishes from all other poetry, except that of Vergil, the three great poems of his old age. If the fatigue of age is sometimes felt in 'Paradise Regained,' we feel in Paradise Lost' only (in the words of Chateaubriand) 'la maturité de l'âge à travers les passions des légères années; une charme extraordinaire de vieillesse et de jeunesse.' To realise the spiritual and imaginative élan with which, after years of waiting and questing, the poem was conceived, and the first few lines committed to paper, one must turn to the prose pamphlets of the years between Milton's return from Italy in 1639 and his marriage in the autumn of 1643, when the enthusiasm flooding his mind, as he contemplated the task before him, overflows in a strain of almost lyrical rapture the barren pages of prelatical and presbyterian controversy. "The ruling idea of Milton's life," to quote Pattison again, "and the key to his mental history, is his resolve to produce a great poem "-a poem, that is, on a lofty theme. In some of the earliest English verses he ever wrote, "At a Vacation Exercise in the College" (Vol. I. pp. 53-6), composed when he was not twenty years old, we can see him half consciously "mewing his mighty youth and kindling his undazzled eyes at the full midday beam," as he addresses his native language: Yet I had rather if I were to chuse, Thy service in some graver subject use, Such as may make thee search thy coffers round, How he before the thunderer's throne doth lie, To th'touch of golden wires, while Hebe brings Then passing through the Spheres of watchful fire, The Gods and Creation and Kings and Queens and Heroes old-no less will content the young student of Homer and Hesiod and Lucretius and Vergil growing conscious of possessing powers of the same order. Milton knew himself too well to be modest, but also too well to be presumptuous or to make too premature an effort. Moreover he was a Christian. His first and his final choice will be a religious theme. In 1629 he composes "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," but some months later he finds the subject of "The Passion "above the years he had." Some or most of the poems which Milton wrote at Horton give an impression as of his Muse taking a holiday, not yet attempting to follow up the flight he had essayed in the "Nativity." None of his poems are so delightfully secular in spirit as "L' Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and even "Comus," despite the high seriousness of its intention. They are "iuvenilia carmina, lusus," like his Latin verses. But the serious purpose is only in abeyance. The great poem to be written, however dim its outlines remained, is the inner justification of the months spent in turning over the Greek and Latin classics with occasional visits to London to learn something new in Mathematics or Music "quibus tum oblectabar." The sonnet composed in December 1631 "How soon hath time" (I. p. 94) and the letter drafted some months later, while admitting the appearance, to an onlooker, of one who has given himself up "to dream away the years in the arms of studious retirement," are both clear as to the underlying purpose which justifies to his conscience the years of waiting. "Comus he seems later to regard as the last of his "lusus." "Lycidas" is forced from him, an act of piety, a premature essay in the loftier manner of the poem which is to come: Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more I come to pluck your Berries harsh and crude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. "Lycidas" was written in 1637. By August 1638 he was in Florence. In Paris he had met Hugo Grotius, the author of the Latin drama "Adamus Exul," the influence of which is traceable in Milton's first choice of the dramatic form for his poem on a sacred theme. The encouragement given to him in the Academies of Florence strengthened and quickened his purpose, and before he left Naples and set his face homeward in January 1639, he had determined what was to be the subject of an epic poem. In the Latin verses addressed to Giovanni Battista Manso, Marquis of Villa, the patron of Tasso and Marino, he writes (I will quote the lines in Cowper's translation, referring a reader to the Latin original in Vol. I. PP. 174-5): Oh might so true a friend to me belong, |