If JOHN MILTON had died in, say. 1640, on the eve of the great Civil War between King and parliament, he might have been remembered as the author of some exquisite lyrics. If he had died twenty years later, at the time of the Restoration, he might have found a place in the histories of the time as Cromwell’s Latin Secretary and as one of the most virulent of the apologist for those formidable characters who overthrown the monarchy, slaughtered the King in public view, and set up a military dictatorship. But in fact he did not die until 1674, and this gave him time to produce Paradise Lost, by common consent the greatest and grandest epic poem in the English language, and perhaps in any other – not to mention the not so very much less remarkable Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.
Everyone knows the story that he made the groundwork of his epic: it is one of the oldest stories in the world, and in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis it is preserved in language of immortal grandeur and beauty. “Of Man’s first disobedience,” he begins:
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....
But it is soon apparent that he has no intention of merely rewriting the Bible story in blank verse; which is just as well, for not even Milton could have improved on the majestic simplicity of the original. No, he has more something in mind. His motive in writing is that –
I may assert Eternal Providence, and justify the ways of God to Men.
What a presumptuous idea! But we may be quite sure that Milton did not think it so. He had an intensely legalistic mind, and he could not help feeling that Adam and Eve been hardly done by. What after all had they done? On the face of it nothing more than picking a fruit from the forbidden tree, eating it and finding it good! And for this trivial fault they had been condemned to toil and sorrow and eventual death! But was the fault so trivial? Surely there must have been more to it than this, and Milton at length satisfies his sense of right and wrong with a magnification of the apparently trivial misdemeanor into a most heinous sin. So far from having been trivial, the action that the Serpent had instigated was part of a carefully planned and skilfully executed revolt against the authority of ht Most High God.
The villain of the piece was the Serpent, whom Milton identifies with “Satan, the Arch-Enemy”. Some readers may be supried to be told that there is no mention of Satan in the Genesis account: it was Milton who put him in the story, and it is a tribute to his influence that the Serpent (who in the Authorized Version is not accorded even the capital letter) is so generally identified with Satan or the Devil.
Until recently (we given to understand) Satan had held an honorable post in the courts of heaven, perhaps even as the second in-command to the Most High. But when God indicated His preference for “His Only Son”, Satan had “raised impious war in heaven”, with the result that he and all the angels who had supported him and had “durst defy the Omnipotent to arms” were:
Hurl’d headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, with hideous ruin combustion, down to bottomless perdotion....
For nine days and nights “he with his horrid crew Lay vanquish’d, rolling in the fiery gulf”, but still he retained his “obdurate pride and steadfast hate”. Then he succeeds in raising himself from the fiery deluge and, looking round on the companions of his fall, “with bold words” breaks “ the horrid silence”.
Already, when we have no turned half a dozen pages, the figure of Satan dominates the stage, as indeed he does almost throughout. The Miltonic conception of the Arc-Fiend has been called the grandest character in the whole world of poetry, and beyond any doubt Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost-great in his power to arouse the devotion of his followers and to retain it even when he has led them into what must appear to be irretrievable ruin, mighty in battle and dauntless in defeat, even when he was learn t through bitter pain and loss that their opponent is indeed the Omniponent. There is never a suggestion of the faint heart or craven in his demeanor.
What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield, and, what is else, not to be overcome.....
When Beelzebub urges him to reconcile himself to defeat or worse may befall, Satan rejoins,
Fallen Cherub! To be weak is miseable,
And he overcomes his lieutenant’s remaining objections with the assertion that:
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven!
Now “on the beach of that inflamed sea” he “call’d so loud, that all the hollow deep of Hell resounded”:
Princes, potentates, warriors, the flower of Heaven! Once yours, now lost, if such astonishment as his can seize Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this place after he toil of battle to repose, you wearied virtue, for the ease you find. To slumber here as in the vales of Heaven? Or in this abject posture have ye sworn to adore the Conqueror?..... Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!
Whereupon, “they heard, and were abash’d, and up they sprung”. Led and directed by their great Chief, they set about the raising of a palace - Pandemonium by name - where they proceed to hold counsel. Even before their expulsion from heaven they had heard rumors that the “Monarch in Heaven” had planned to create a new world somewhere out in space and “plant it with a generation whom his choice regard should favor equal to the sons of Heaven”, and now Beelzebub remind them of his proposal. “Though Heaven be shut,” he says, “this place may lie expos’d”. It having sounded good to the assembled peers of hell, Satan with characteristic courage and boldness takes upon himself the dangerous mission to “go in search of his new world” and “confound the race of mankind”. After many a strange adventure and encounter he arrives at length on the newborn earth, leaps the wall of Paradise, and from a perch in the boughs of the Tree of Life has his first glimpse of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that God had planted.
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall, Godlike erect, with native honour clad. In naked majesty seem’d lords of all......... His fair large font, and eye sublime, declar’d absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks, round from his parted forelock manly hung clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad. She as a veil, down to the slender waist, Her unadorned golden tresses wore dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d as the vine curls her tendrils, wich implied subjection, but requreid with gentle sway, and by her yielded, by him best receiv’d, yielded with coy submission, modest pride, and sweet, reluctant, amoruos delay...... So pass’d they naked on, nor shunn’d they sight of God or Angel; for they though no ill: So hand in hand they pass’d, the loveliest pair, that ever since in love’s embraces met.......
In this ecstatic description of the first human lovers in their heavenly bowers was Milton thinking of his own wedding-night in the bedroom in Aldersgate street? Eve was very unlike the first Mrs. Milton, who was so far from being submissive that she ran away home to her parents after only a few week of marriage, and could not be prevailed upon to return for several years. Out of his experience Milton had written a tract in advocacy of divorce (by the husband) that had earned him an unpleasant notoriety. After his first wife’s death, he had married a second time, and again a third, this time a young woman thirty years his junior, and with them all his experiences seem to have been not altogether satisfactory. Perhaps it is true what Dr. Johnson alleged, that Miltonv”had something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings..... He thought women made only for obedience, and men only for rebellion.” The sort of wife he wanted was Eve, and he married Mary Powell..... But we must return to the drama that is now about to be played out in the Garden, where Adam and Eve are exposed, in all their inexperienced virtue, to the viles of Arch-Tempter. Disguised now as a serpent, Satan first ravishes the girl’s ear with his flatters if her matchless loveliness, and hen he induces her to partake of “this fruit divine, fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, of virtue to make wise”. And Adam likewise,
She gave him of that fair encinting fruit with liberal hand; he scrupled not to eat, against his better knowledge; not deceiv’d, but fondly overcome with female charm.
Whereupon, “earth trembled from her entrails”, and “ nature gave a second groan”. While as for Adam and Eve, now that their pristine innocence is gone, “in lust their burn... to dalliance move,” until with the morning their eyes are opened and they make themselves afrons of fig-leaves, “to hide their guilt and dreaded shame”.
Meanwhile, “the heinous and despiteful act of Satan done in Paradise” has become known in heaven, and the decree of banishment from Eden is pronounced. The Arch-Angel Michael is dispatches to enforce the sentence, and so the mighty poem reaches it sombre end:
They, looking back, all teh eastern side beheld of Paradise, so late their happy seat, wav’d over by that flaming barnd; the gate with dreadful face throng’d, and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropt, but wip’d them soon; the world was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way.
Paradise Lost was published in 1667. Milton received £5 down, and a further £5 when the first impression of 1.300 copies was disposed of; his widow subsequently parted with all further claims for the sum of £8. These figures have been quoted as an indication of the low esteem in which the poem was held at first. But, as Dr. Johnson maintained, “the sale of 1.300 copies in two years, in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius”. And from the first the best judges, such as Dryden and later Addison, were most lavish in their praises. Every generation since has agreed that, to quote Milton’s own description of a good book, Paradise Lost is “the precious life blood of a master spirit”.
