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Michigan State
University

 

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

AN ENRICHING OF ART:
PARADISE LOST AND THE GENRE QUESTION

presented by

Robert James Morris

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in English

 

 

l ,2 ' ’) .
( {‘gr1t‘l)(/ LL5‘1//-(\2..g

Major professor

 

Date M3L28. 1971

0-7639

ABSTRACT

AN ENRICHING OF ART:
PARADISE LOST AND THE GENRE QUESTION

 

By

Robert James Morris

Readers of Paradise Lost have always sensed a curious

 

doubleness in the work. This has been variously described

as a conflict between the poem's form and its subject, the
presence in it of two or more possible heroes, an ambivalence
in the poet between traditional and innovative notions of
heroism, and a tension between his conscious and unconscious
concerns.

A review of early responses to the poem reveals that this
question formulated itself almost immediately as one to be
resolved by measuring Paradise Lost against 'previous epics'.
In a Restoration and eighteenth-century atmosphere of rather
rigid neoclassical formalism there could be only two possible
analyses of the work: 1) it did not conform, in either the
nature of its hero or its ”event" to epic precedent and was
a failure, 2) it was a new kind of epic whose themes functioned
to modify the values and devices of traditional epic. What
was never questioned was the usefulness of the term 'epic' in
relation to Milton's poem.

A related difficulty is that the very studies most likely
to resolve a genre question, those of sources and compositional

methods, have themselves been colored by the 'epic assumption'.

Robert James Morris
Fianlly, the 'epic assumption' has made it difficult to
see in Milton any coherent and consistent literary theory.
It has encouraged the view that the poet's discussion of
forms in The Reason of Church Government serves as a program
of his later efforts and that these must have been seen by
him as a "diffuse" and a "brief" epic and one tragedy.

The thesis of my study is that Paradise Lost may be ac—

 

curately described as a long narrative poem containing dis-
crete epic and tragic-dramatic plots, each with an approp-
riate set of conventional attributes and each with its own
hero. Further, the contrasts and tensions between the epic
and tragic-dramatic actions carry the poem's most important
doctrinal significations.

The interrelatedness of these matters has led me to a kind
of double study. First the history of the 'epic assumption'
is examined to show how it has discouraged examination of the
poem as multigeneric. I contend that it has obscured a clear
progress within the Cambridge Manuscript plans in the direc-
tion of classical tragedy. The epic bias has also served, in
conjunction with the William Lauder hoax of the mid-eighteenth
century, to conceal the enormous significance of the Latin

tragedy Adamus Exul as a model for Milton's poem.

 

Using Hugo Grotius' play as a gauge (a use not dependent
upon the conviction that it is a source, though I believe it

is) I hypothesize a compositional stage of Paradise Lost as a

 

tragedy of strong Senecan tendencies. Such an interim form

is consistent with the trends discernable in the manuscripts

 

Robert James Morris
and where it suggests significant departures from them it is

consistent with major features of Paradise Lost.

 

I contend that, having written a tragedy, Milton realized
that it could not convey the 'beginning of things', since it
provided only the pattern of sin leading to contrition and re-
deemability. At this point Milton recast the play in narrative
and began to fill out the epic career of Satan, relying on the
politico-military emphases of that form to express the indom-
itability and cleverness of the unregenerate sinning and de-
cietfulness. Growth of the poem through a series of accretions
is examined in some detail.

The doctrinal ground of Milton's double poem is his view

(expressed in Christian Doctrine) of the notion of four degrees

 

of death. The hypothesized tragedy and the Fall story in Para-

dise Lost represent the passage of man through three degrees of

 

death: guiltiness, spiritual death, and physical death. But,
since his peculiarly Christian model of tragedy ends in the pro-
tagonist's election of contrition, Milton needed another form
through which to show death in the fourth degree, damnation.
Epic, with its emphasis on repeated, relentless strivings for
victory, afforded the context in which this could be shown by
Satan, the author of such behavior.

The poem as we have it, then, is comprehensive, showing the
pattern of sin and contrition and that of continual sinning,
the only options open to post-lapsarian mankind since he inher-
its three degrees of death. And it expresses the consistency

of Milton's faith in the doctrinal superiority of tragedy.

AN ENRICHING OF ART:
PARADISE LOST AND THE GENRE QUESTION

 

by

Robert James Morris

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1971

(QCopyright by
ROBERT JAMES MORRIS
1971

For Carol

who does not despair

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Section I - Critical History . . . . .

Section II - “Adam unparadis'd" and Adamus

 

Ag, I; 2;, IV . . . . . . . . . . .
Ag, II; 3;, V—VIII . . . . . . . .
Ag, IV; PL, IX . . . . . . . . . .
Ag, V; BL, IX-X . . . . . . . . . .

0

Section III - The Tragedy Narrated; the Epic

The Tragedy Narrated . . . . . . .
The Epic Affixed . . . . . . . . .
The Meaning of Genre . . . . . . .
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . .

iii

0

117
131
154
159
167
179
198

211

INTRODUCTION

The thesis advanced in the following pages is twofold:
first, that the play Adamus Exul of Hugo Grotius had a far
greater impact upon the structure and contents of Milton‘s

Paradise Lost than has heretofore been supposed; second,

 

that Paradise Lost can be fully described as a coherent

 

structure, using the terms of generic forms, without re-
course to such face-saving principles as the permissive-
ness of epic or the liberties opened to the poet through
his choice of subject, once it is recognized that the poem
contains not one but two generic wholes.

There are certain risks in connecting the two questions
of source and form in this way, and a few remarks at this
point may serve to make clear my reasons for and method of
doing so. My sense of the generic plurality of Paradise
{Lost grew initially out of my readings of the poem with
considerable attentiveness to its kind as compared to
those of other long narrative poems, but without any very
extensive familiarity with the body of scholarship treat—
ing its sources and the process of its composition. Each
reading strengthened the feeling that the poem as a whole
is not identifiable by any of the traditional generic
labels, including 'epic'. Further, it seemed to me that

2
some of the poem's most straightforward and obvious mean-
ings have been obscured by the simple fact of their re-
siding within a construct the whole of which we insist
upon calling epic.

My subsequent studies were aimed at discovering those
treatments of the poem which might serve to reveal what
Paradise Lost, in itself, is. These must include source
and composition studies since they properly treat the
constituent parts of the poem in relation to prior works,
generic traditions, and one another, rather than to those
assumptions about the whole which derive from critical
judgments subsequent to the poem's publication. Such
studies, I reasoned, should be relatively free of the very
powerful passions and prejudices stemming from 1) Eighteenth
Century attempts to preserve Milton's reputation in the face
of his gross violations of what neoclassical theory by that
time took to be the hard rules of heroic poetry, 2) Roman-
tic efforts to enlist the poet's name in a politico-literary
struggle to which his work was uncongeniai, 3) Victorian
attempts to rehabilitate Milton, even if at his own expense,
and h) contemporary tendencies to answer previous distor-
tions in their own terms.

Source and composition studies, however, are less valu-
able than they might be to the study of the poem's genre.
There are two reasons for this. Source studies have been
guilty enough of the familiar charges of “parallel chasing"

to provide no view of the whole poem at all. No source or

3

composition study I know of is entirely free of the assump-
tion that the poem under consideration is an epic in both
plan and execution. In the case of the few extensive treat-

ments of the compositional growth of Paradise Lost, this as-

 

sumption is invited by the distance between Milton's early
notes in the Cambridge Manuscript and the poem as we have
it, a gap filled apparently by reflex with speculation about
an 'epic plan“. The absence of external information about
the poem's compositional growth further hampers useful study
by imposing the need to justify methodology. Thus strati-
fied composition, for example, becomes an object of demon-
stration rather than a clue to Milton's evolution of a
vehicle for meaning.

In the course of these investigations I came across
Grotius' Adamus Exul in the edition of Watson Kirkconnell1
and found in it what I believe to be the most important
single influence on Paradise Lost. Demonstration that this
is so .— that Milton began his masterpiece by writing a
tragedy on the Fall patterned after Adamus Exul and that

 

1The Celestial Cycle (Toronto, 1952), p. 96-220. The play
was first published at Leyden in 1601 when Grotius was nine-
teen years old. Though, at Grotius' insistence, it was not
included in the collected works (ed. Wm. Grotius, Leyden,
1617), it did pass through several editions, the fifth of
which, in corrupt form, is included in Wm. Lauder's Delectus
Auctorem, etc. (Lond., 1752) (see p. 12-13 below). This
edition provided the text for Frances Barham's loose para-
phrase (Lond., 1839) (see p. 23-26 below). Kirkconnell's
1952 text, drawn from the apparently unique British Museum
copy of the first edition, is the first reliable one to
tmcome readily available.

u
the play forms the heart of the present poem -— are the
burdens of Section Two below.

But I mean to claim more for Adamus Exul than the pater-

 

nity of images or even structural features in Paradise Lost.

 

The play also offers clues to the compositional process it-
self which, while they do not eliminate the need for spec-
ulation, give speculation about interim stages of the poem‘s
growth coherence in relation to the poet's evolving concepts
of what the poem should mean. From these clues emerges a
view of the poem in its growth from the enumeration of pos-
sibilities in the Cambridge Manuscript, through a stage as
tragic drama on classical lines, to its present form: a
tragedy set in narrative and surrounded by a larger, more

spectacular, but subordinate, pattern of epic action.

 

Paradise Lost is no single generic thing, however we try
to stretch our construction of the term or our reading of
the poem. As a poem of ”first things" it lays the patterns
for the behavioral modes open to fallen man, whether as the
servant of God's will or as one persistent in the sin of
which Adam's is the original and hence a servant of Satan.
In portraying the coming into being of these modes, Milton
also accounts for the poetic genres, tragedy and epic re-
spectively, which are for him the natural forms of their
expression. Examination of these matters is the substance
of Section Three of this study.

I do expect a certain resistance to this thesis on the
very firm ground that he is no artist who must wait three

lumflred years for someone to label his poem. The survey

5
of the critical history of Paradise Lost with which I be-

gin is designed in part to show how the perspective of
English neoclassicism, forcing itself on all subsequent
study, has obscured the generic plurality of the poem from
critical view - though not from the less rigid and organ-
ized sensitivities of both lay and scholarly readers -
so that now it is necessary to examine the compositional
process and the sources, to locate one's perspective as
it were behind the poem, to see what ought to be clearly
apparent. Even this is less helpful than it might be, as
I try to show in discussing source and composition studies,
so long as the centrally important Adamus Exul is neglected.
To trace the reasons for this neglect is the other objective
of the opening section.

I should point out here, though I will do so again, that

consideration of Paradise Lost as a bi-generic poem is only

 

facilitated by, not dependent upon, the view of Adamus Exul
as a source. The two contentions require a substantial
amount of independent demonstration. For this reason they

are treated separately.

I
Critical History
the argument

Held me a while misdoubting his intent,

That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)

The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song

As he was among the first readers of Paradise Lost, so

was Andrew Marvell among the first to feel the deep discom-
fiture which is a part of the typical response to it. The
question was for him a generic one, specifically whether
the form of the poem, "Fable and old Song", was the proper
one for the expression of "sacred Truths". Nor did he re—

solve the question, only resting reassured that

That Majesty which through thy Work doth Reign
Draws the Devout, deterring the Profane.

His view of the "gravity and ease“ of Milton's verse as
compensatory to a real disparity between the poem's form
and its content is revealed by his fear that

some less skilful hand...

Might hence presume the whole Creation's day
To change in Scenes, and show it in a Play.

 

61;?n Paradise Lost”, prefaced to the 2d edition (Lond.,
l 7 .

7

Dryden phrased the question in more clearly generic terms:
His subject is not that of an heroic poem, properly
so called. His design is the losing of our happi-
ness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all
other epic works; his heavenly machines are many,
and his human persons are but two.2

The Fall was for Dryden clearly a tragic theme and he had,
with Milton's permission, written "The State of Innocence,
and the Fall of Man“, a dramatic adaptation of Paradise
lgggt, in 1677. Later, in the "Dedication” to his transla-
tion of the Aeneid (1697), he formulated the problem in
terms that would prove intermittently popular for genera-
tions. The heart of the matter then seemed to him to lie
in too close an adherence on Milton's part to epic prece-
dent, so that Satan, the “giant“, is a successful hero who
has “foiled the knight“ and "driven him out of his strong-
hold, to wander through the world with his lady errant“.3
John Dennis felt that Dryden was right but disagreed that
it was a problem. It had been Milton's intention, he ar-
gued, to “break thro' the Rules of Aristotle" in order to
avoid the "Fate which has attended all who have wrote Epick
Poems ever since H9293; and that is to be a Copyist instead

of an Original". Since in Homer "Achilles and Hector are

properly the Principals, and the Gods are but seconds“, he

 

2"Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire",
in Milton Criticism, ed. James Thorpe (New York, 1950), p. 337.

3Critical Essays, ed. W. P. Ker (New York, 1926), p. 165.

8

reasoned, Milton "resolved therefore, that his Principals
should be the Devil on one side and Man on the other: and
the Devil is properly his Hero, because he gets the better”.“

Aristotelian categories allowed only two possibilities:
either the poem was an epic with a tragic hero, or it was
an epic with a generically appropriate but Satanic hero.
Addison's attempt to resolve the difficulty was, therefore,
necessarily equivocal. Arguing that the kind of 'Implex
fableI in which the progress is from good fortune to bad is
not forbidden to epic, he allowed nonetheless that ”this
kind of fable, which is most perfect in tragedy, is not so
proper for an heroic poem".5 Milton's sensitivity to this,
he suggested, accounts for the “mortification' of Satan in
Book X of the poem and for Adam's 'paradisical vision“, for
these must be there to remedy the defect which had prompted
Dryden's "reflection that the Devil was in reality Milton's
hero". Finally he resolved nothing, for he concluded with
the self-contradiction that

 

The Paradise Lost is an epic, or a narrative poem,
and he that looks for an hero in it, searches for
that which Milton never intended; but if he will
needs fix the name of an hero upon any person in it,
it is certainly the Messiah who is the hero, both
in the principal action, and in the chief episodes.6

In 173“ Jonathan Richardson introduced what might have

 

“"The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry" (1704), in Milton
Crflticism, p. 345.

SSpectator No. 297 (Feb. 9, 1712), ed. D. F. Bond (Oxford,
1963), III, 59.

61bid.

9

become a useful new perspective in his assertion that

'Tis of no great importance whether [Paradise Lost7

be called an heroic or a divine poem, or only, as

the author himself called it in his title—page, a

poem. What if it were a composition entirely new,

and not reducible under any known denomination?
Like Addison, however, he seems to have felt obliged to equi-
vocate:

But 'tis properly and strictly heroic, and such
Milton intended it.... And 'tis not his fault if
there be those who have not found a hero, or who
he is. 'Tis Adam, Adam the first, the representa-
tive of human race.

It is at best a futile, potentially a counterproductive
critical strategem to deny, as both Addison and Richardson
do, the premises of a prior contention only to concede them
later in order to counter the contention itself. Yet no less
a figure than Samuel Johnson employs it in his turn when he

confronts the question of the genre of Paradise Lost.

 

The questions, whether the action of the poem be
strictly gng, whether the poem can be properly
termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised by
such readers as draw their principles of judgment
rather from books than from reason. Milton, though
he intitled Paradise Lost only a poem, yet calls it
himself heroick song. Dryden, petulantly and inde-
cently, denies the heroism of Adam, because he was
overcome; but there is no reason why the hero should
not be unfortunate, except established practice,
since sgccess and virtue do not go necessarily to-
gether.

 

7“Exp1anatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost?,
in M;lton.Critici§Q. P. 56-7.

 

8'Life of Milton“, in A Johnson Reader, ed. E. L. McAdam
xand George Milne (New York, 19637; p.514-15.

10

But, he continues,

if success be necessary, Adam's deceiver was at last

crushed; Adam was restored to his Maker's favour,

and therefore may securely resume his human rank.
Though Johnson's discussion is essentially a paraphrase of
Addison's, he ignores the latter's nomination of the Messiah
for heroic preeminence. The result is that, while he avoids
Addison's equivocation, he commits one of his own which
validates the criterion of success and leaves him with a
heroic Adam who when measured by it has very little epic sta-
ture, as Addison himself had owned, and who can only be mea-
sured by it if his heroic qualification is predicated on "vir-
tue', the very lack of which brings about his unsuccess in the
poem.

As Addison had demonstrated the perfection of Paradise

Lost with Aristotle in Spectator No. 267, only to be left

 

with what appeared to be an unsuitable 'event' and an un--
epic hero (or an heroic 'machine'), so Johnson, having
asserted the poem's perfect accord with the neoclassical
principles of René’de Bossu,10 could only conclude that,
while an unfortunate event was entirely suitable, Adam was
anyway not really unfortunate.

The only clear impression to emerge from all these early

comments is that there is a very great distance between

 

what Paradise Lost might be demonstrated to be and what it

 

91bid., p. 15.

lOExpressed by the latter in his Traité du Po‘eme Epigue.

 

11

might be felt to mean. Thus the way was open for Blake's
famous contention that Milton was "of the devil's party
without knowing it",11 and for Shelley's that ”Milton's
Devil as a moral being is... far superior to his God, as
one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived
to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture.... ac—
cording to the laws of epic truth".12 And Walter Savage
Landor, Addison to their intensified Dryden, could only

reply that "in the Paradise Lost no principal character seems

 

to have been intended" and that therefore "there is neither
truth nor wit... in saying that Satan is hero of the piece",
but that nevertheless Adam is the "main character", main
somehow without being principal.13

From this time forward, even to the present moment, the
lines of argument were to remain substantially the same.
Even of the large body of Milton scholarship produced since
1900, most -— that part which does not find the question of
genre irrelevant to its purposes - is predicated on what I
have called the epic assumption. The notion persists that
one's task is to discover the nature of this epic poem
rather than the generic nature of thisgpoem. To put it an-

other way, critics sensitive to the many insistently un-epic

 

11Note to ”The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", (Plate 5)
(1793), in Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V.
Erdman (New York, 1965), p. 35.

12A Defense of Poetry (1821), in Works, ed. R. Ingpen and
w. E. Peck (Lond., 1965), VII, 129.

13"Southey and Landor", in Thorpe, p. 368.

12
qualities of the poem have asked not 'does this generic
denomination really afford a useful critical perspective?'
but rather 'from what adjustment of critical perspective
can this poem be viewed as an epic?'

Discussions even of the origin and growth of the poem
rely at many points on the apparent fact that, whatever it
started out to be, it is in its final form a poem written
on an epic plan. A more fruitful approach would certainly
be one which attempted to trace the poem's growth first as
a oem, postponing the view of its destined form until that
form had been realized.

An early step in this direction may be found entangled
in one of the most notorious corruptions of source study in
all of English literary criticism, the infamous William
Lauder fraud of the mid-Eighteenth Century. A brief history
of the affair is in order since its infamy was to close off
one avenue to the poem for three hundred years.

The Gentlemen's Magazine for August, 17h? contains a
proposal for "printing, by Subscription, HUGONIS GROTII,
ADAMUS EXUL, TRAGOEDIA: With an English version, and notes,
and the lines imitated from it by Milton subjoined, By
William Lauder, M. A." This is followed by an advertisement
of some 500 words which presents the thesis that Adamus Exul
is "the genuine source of Paradise Lost“. The same piece, its
final paragraph altered, appears as the preface to Lauder's

Essay 2g Milton's Use and Imitation g: the Moderns in his

 

Ikflmyligg,gg§§, published two years later. Though unsigned,

13

the preface was quickly recognized by Dr. John Douglas
as the work of Samuel Johnson.14 Douglas was careful to
disassociate Johnson from the malicious hoax he exposed
in his vindication, but a blow had been dealt the reputa-
tion of the “Great Cham" which even the combined testimony
of Boswell, Douglas, John Nichols and Sir John Hawkins
could not salve.15

But precisely what was Johnson's relationship to the
Lauder thesis? It is certainly true that the Johnson
piece, with its complimentary tone, is "an inappropriate
preface to a work that tried to discredit Milton".15 It
is also significant that in its advertisement form it is
associated most closely not with the Essay, but with the
series of articles in the January, February, April, June

and August issues of Gentlemen's Magazine in which Lauder

 

first pressed his arguments. In these, Lauder's intentions
were not so clearly antagonistic to Milton, at least at
first, as they were in the later Essay. Most important,

though, is the fact that the advertisement reveals a

 

l“Milton Vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism (Lond.,
1750), p. 78:

158ee Boswell's Life (Oxford, 1946), I, 153; Nichols in
Arthur Murphy's "Essay on Johnson", Johnsoniana, ed. Robina
Napier (Lond., 1884), p. 388- 9; Hawkins' LifeITLond., 1787),
p. 275- 6. Johnson is consistently defended on the ground
of his ignorance of Lauder's intention in the Essay. For
discussion of the controversy and defense of Johnson see
Warren Mild, "Johnson and Lauder", mpg, XIV (1953), 149- 53.
An account of Lauder' 3 career is A. R. Millar' 5 "William Lauder,
. the Literary Forger“, Blackwood's (Sept., 1899), p. 392.

 

 

16Miid, p. 152.

14

perspective on the relationship of Adamus Exul to Paradise

 

Egg; which is fundamentally different from any Lauder seems
ever to have entertained.

From the beginning Lauder's eye was attracted by relatively
superficial similarities. His January article, in which
Milton is compared not to Grotius but to Jacobus Masenius,17
sets the pattern of his argument. Quoting the first six lines

of Paradise Lost, he remarks that they "very probably owe

 

their rise" to those seventeen of Masenius which he subse-
quently quotes in Latin.18 To these he appends thirty-eight
more lines from Masenius "on account of their exquisite
beauty', which, as he puts it, "Milton has past over”.19

The emphasis is clearly on verbal similarity from line to
line. ”The same author's description of Paradise is truly
charming”, he continues, "and has been copied by Milton, if
I am not greatly mistaken, in more places than one.“ He then
quotes fifty lines of Masenius' description, directs the reader
to Milton's 'c0pied" lines, and restates the relationship in
very different form: "To me it appears vastly probable that

Milton has transferred the sense of the foregoing lines into

 

l7Sarcotidos (Cologne, 165“).
1893.1.» p. 2"“
19gfl, p. 25.

 

15

Paradise Lost".20 Whether by 'transferring the sense'

 

Lauder means 'copying', closly paraphrasing, or translating
is unclear, as he offers no example of his own translation
of Masenius' Latin. The rest of the artiCle is simply a list
of Masenius' Latin marginal heads, a list which indicates
simply that the poem touched on themes of the Creation and
the Fall.

Lauder concludes the first article with the assertion that
"Milton could [Rot7 possibly write as he had done, without
ever seeing or hearing of this author's performance."21 Whether
he meant to suggest with the list some structural indebtedness,
which the list does not do, or merely the extent of Milton's
opportunity to make isolated borrowings is as uncertain as his
concept of copying. The February issue contains the inevitable
protest (signed “R. A.") against being asked to form a judgment
of Milton's debt to a poem without a substantial specimen of
its manner as well as a list of its "constituent parts".22
Another letter, signed “Miltonicus', questions Lauder's use of
the term 'imitation' to mean 'borrowing', and offers a trans-
lation of thirty-five of the Masenius lines describing Paradise
as demonstration that the two poems are not significantly
similar. Among his assertions is that "if Milton had ever seen

Masenius, and in any sort had attempted to borrow from him, his

 

20%, p. 25.
21921, p. 26.

2291. p. 58.

l6

poem would neither have been the same, nor so good as it
is."23 The editors appended a note reading, "several
other Gentlemen agree with the above letter-writer“.24

In the March installment of his argument Lauder repeats
the claim, first made in January, that he has lost the re-
mainder of the Masenius poem. Nevertheless, perhaps in re-
sponse to February's hostile correspondence, he hedges his
case considerably, saying now that Milton "begins to leave
him towards the beginning of his third book". At this
point he turns to Grotius, citing the item 'Adam unparadised
or Adam in Banishment" in Milton's Cambridge Manuscript
catalogue, "which I affirm is only a translation of Adamus
9.11111". 25

This, the second article, is rather more derogatory than
the first, though certainly less so than the later Eggay.
Indeed, throughout the series there is a progressive growth
of malice, probably pricked by the often sarcastic correspon-
dence elicited by each succeeding article. The discussion
of Grotius contains the clearly antagonistic allegation that
the Adamus Exul is "a vast treasure“ to which Milton "had
recourse" and "which he industriously kept secret". The
editors no doubt felt justified in heading page 82 of the

issue ”Milton accused of imitating the Moderns".

 

23%, p0 67‘80.
2“GM, p. 68.

259i. p- 82-

0‘)-

17

The article contains the first act of the Grotius play,
yet few parallels to Milton are drawn and not all of these
are spurious. Satan's identification of himself as ”Saevi
tonantis hostis" in the first line of the play is changed
to 'Sacri Tonantis hostis' in Lauder's text, presumably to
agree more neatly with the footnote "Antagonist of Heaven's
Almighty King. Milton”.26 The line "Quidni? quum gravior
orcus sub pedibus tremit" is an interpolation, evidently
designed to accommodate the footnote citation of "Hell trem-

bled as he strode', which occurs in Paradise Lost a Book

 

II, line 676, and refers to Death. Other interpolations are
at lines 110, where he inserts "Lacusque vivi sulphuris
semper fluent" and footnotes “And lakes of living Sulphur
always flow”, and 155 where he inserts the following passage:
Nam, me judice,
Regnare dignum est ambitu, etsi in Tartarus,
Alto praesse Tartaro siquidem juvat,
Coelis quam in ipsis servi obire munia,
Adsint licebit cuncta.
“Milton", the footnote reads, "has these lines literally
translated thus:
And in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, tho' in hell:

Better to reign in Hell, than serve in heaven
Paradise Lost, B. 1.27

 

269M, p. 83. Lauder's text is checked throughout against
the edition of Watson Kirkconnell. Unless otherwise noted,
translation of Grotius' text is also Kirkconnell's.

27GM: P. 89. The interpolated lines are in fact drawn from
the T690 translation of Paradise Lost into Latin by William Hog.

18

But there are in addition to these, five citations to Act
I which neither corrupt Grotius' text nor warp Paradise
ngfi. A few are close comparisons, such as line 232, "Homini
parem me reddat, aut hominem mihi" (shall make me peer to
man, or man to me), which Lauder footnotes, citing 'I with
you must dwell or you with me".28 Most of his citations,
however, are unconvincing, as when he marks line 289, “Mac
bene firmus substitit axis", and can find no better echo in
Milton than "All shook unless the throne of God" from Book
VI (lines 833-34 actually read "The steadfast Empyrean shook
throughout / All but the Throne itself of God"). Here Milton
is misquoted, there is no trace of genuine echo, and the
common element, the trembling, is a response in Grotius to
Satan's rebellion, in Milton to the chariot-wheels of the
avenging Son.

By June, Lauder's argument had degenerated to pure fraud.
In that articlerflne comparisons of Milton to Grotius are drawn

and all are corrupted by interpolation, sheer invention,

 

2895, p. 85. Comparison is to 2; IV, 377. Kirkconnell's

translation, "Shall make me peer to man or draw man down to
me' (93. Cit., p. 113), actually obscures a metric and gram-
matical parallel doubly convincing because it occurs at rough-

ly the same point in the speech of the same character in the
same circumstances.

19
elision, even at one point the selection and collocation

of three widely separated lines from Paradise Lost, Book

 

IX, so that they might be compared to a three—line passage
of Adamus Exul.29

 

Though the exposure of Lauder's fraud did not occur un—

til the publication of Douglas' Vindication in 1750, serious

 

objections had been raised to his methodology and his man-
ner by Miltonicus in February and again in September by
one C. S. 0f the Masenius comparisons C. S. remarks:

How could any two poets tell us they intended to
sing of the forbidden fruit, of the loss of par -
dise, and the coming of death and pgpgpy into the
world, in terms more different? The invocation
likewise is made by both to the Holy Spirit, and
not to Apollo, the Muses, &c. after the manner of
the antients; which would have been absurd in a
divine poem: but, I think, there is as little
likeness also in their manner of addressing him
as could well be expected in so similar a matter.

 

 

 

 

Of the Grotius comparisons:

I hope Milton might have called Satan (whose name
signifies an adversary) 'Antagonist of heavn's
almighty king', and 'the adversary of God and man',
without copying Grotius's sacri tonantis hostis;
and have made hell tremble at the strides of the
monster Death (when 'tis so frequent in the antient
poets to make the heavens, earth, olympus, ida, to
tremble under the footsteps of their gods and god-
desses) tho' Grotius had never wrote of Satan,
'Gravior orcus sub pedibus tremit'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The critiques of Miltonicus and C. S., rendered on the

supposition that Lauder's demonstrations were honest, are

 

29GM,’p.i286. The lines from Milton are IX, 291, 568,
and. 520

3095, p. 423-24.

20
so evidently just that it is hard to imagine a critic of
Johnson's perspicacity being convinced by the articles for
even a moment. But the most important thing about the ad-
vertisement/preface is that it bears no hint that Johnson

had even heard of either the Gentlgmen's Magazine pieces

 

or the argument as it appears in the Epppy.' His expression
of the relationship between source study and the way poems
get written is at striking variance with any Lauder could
have entertained:

[No study7 is more obscure in itself, or more worthy
of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the
progress of this mighty genius in the construction
of his work, a view of the fabric gradually rising,
perhaps from small beginnings, till its foundation
rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the
skies; to trace back the structure thro' all its
variations to the simplicity of its first plan, to
find what was first projected, whence the scheme was
taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it
was executed, and from what stores the materials
were collected; whether its founder dug them from
the quarries of nature, or demolished other build-
ings to embellish his own.3l

The method of composition here envisaged, a vertical devel-
opment from a prior structural foundation, itself a devel-
opment from a simple "first plan”, is substantially that
suggested in his "Life of Milton“ composed some thirty-two
years later (1779) where, discussing Milton's activity just
prior to 1655, he writes that

perhaps he did little more in that busy time than

 

3125. p. #04.

21

construct the narrative, adjust the episodes, pro-
protion the parts, accumulate images and sentiments,
and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing,
such hints as books or meditation would supply.32

Of course, the Lauder scandal would have been very much
in Johnson's mind during the writing of the "Life" and it
appears likely that the memory of its sting prompted the
wave of the wrist with which he dismisses speculation about
origins:

Whence he drew the original design has been var-
iously conjectured, by men who cannot bear to
think themselves ignorant of that which, at last,
neither diligence nor sagacity can discover.
But his brief discussion of previous conjectures is very
similar in the two pieces. In the "Life" he remarks that
some find the hint in an Italian tragedy; Voltaire
tells a wild and unwarranted story of a farce seen
by Milton in Italy, which opened thus: Let the
rainbow be the fiddlestick of the fiddle of Heaven. 33
In the advertisement the matter is handled thus:
Mr. Voltaire tells us, without proof, that the
first hint of Paradise Lost was taken from a farce
called Adamo, written by a player; Dr. Pearce that
it was derived from an Italian tragedy called 11

Paradiso perso; and Mr. Peck, that it was borrowed
from a wild Romance.

 

 

In both the “Life" and the preface, Johnson expresses the
belief that Milton's first conception was of a tragedy. In
the “Life“ he simply refers the reader to his discussion of

the Cambridge Manuscripts earlier in the piece, a discussion

 

32A Johnson Reader, p. 389.
33Ibld..

22
which makes no mention of 'first hints'. Interestingly
enough, he concludes with a description of the literary
growth process which is virtually a paraphrase of the one

in the preface already quoted:

...it is pleasant to see great works in their
seminal state, pregnant with latent possibilities

of excellence; nor could there be any more delight-
ful entertainment than to trace their gradual growth
and expansion, and to observe how they are sometimes
suddenly advanced by accidental hints and sometimes
slowly improved by steady meditation.3

In 1747 it had seemed only logical to Johnson that since,
in his view then, the dramatic drafts were not “seminal” but
'embryonic',36 the first hint was to be found in the sources
of the list of subjects itself, which "can be supposed nothing
more than a memorial, or catalogue of plays, which, for some
reason, the writer thought worthy of his attention“. He con-

tinues in the preface,

When therefore I had observed that Adam in exile
was named amongst them, I doubted not but, in find-
ing the original of that tragedy, I should disclose
the genuine source of Paradise Lost. Nor was my
expectation disappointed; for, having procured the
Adamus Exul of Grotius, I found, or imagined myself
to find, the first draught, the prima stamina of
this wonderful poem.

 

It is not to be supposed that Johnson would have writ-
ten the advertisement without having seen the manuscript
of the play, and it is entirely likely that what he saw
was the presumably good text sent to Lauder by Abraham

 

3“”Life', p. 384

35Ibid.

23

Gronovius, the librarian at Leyden.

36

Lauder's corrup-
tions of the text appear to have been accomplished on

the run during the Gentlemen's Magazine exchanges. In

 

any event, Lauder's corruptions do not bear on the case
made for the play by Johnson, since they are uniformly
relevant only to the charge of line and image copying
and do not affect such largely structural similarities
as Johnson perceived and thought to be both important to
an understanding of the poem and devoid of any deroga—
tory implications for the genius of its author. At the
same time, it is very likely that once Lauder was exposed
Johnson saw no reason to place any degree of confidence
in the text he had seen, concluding that 'neither dil-
igence nor sagacity' had prevented his becoming the chief
victim of an utter fraud. Certainly no other student of
Paradise Lost for the next ninety years saw any reason
to pursue the play further, and even very recent mention
of it assumes that only massive alteration of an other-
wise very dissimilar work could have produced the resem-
blances offered the readers of the Gentlemen's Magazine.
The case for Adamus Exul was not argued again until

1839 when Francis Barham's translation of the play

 

36There is no reason to doubt Lauder's testimony (QM,
Feb., p. 82) regarding the origin of the transcription
or that it was prepared for him by the librarian's son
from a printed copy.

24
appeared.3u Unfortunately, no serious critical use could
be made of the work. The "Prolegomena" is both vague, as
in its characterization of Milton's debt as the discovery
in the play of a "seed of thought and passion”, and inac-
curate, as in its contention that Lauder had endeavored

in his Essa , but not in the Gentlemen's Magazine articles,

 

“to supply the defect of his authorities by drawing on his
own Latinity'. The possibility is thus left open that
Lauder was not mistaken in “finding his materials defi-
cient".38 Nor does Mr. Barham provide any means to study
the text, for he simply asserts its accuracy and prints
only his own translation.

The translation itself is worthless for comparative
purposes not only because it is based on a text not pro-
vided the reader, but because One reads it mindful of the
translator's note that he has retained only "as much of
the spirit and sense of the original as is consistent
with poetical sentiment and expression".39 Even his final
remark, that “if this work should excite much interest, it

is our intention to re-publish the original Latin —- now

 

37The Adamus Exul o§_Gpptius, or the Prototype of Para-
dise Lost (Lond., 1839, #0).

381bid., p. 6.
39Ibid., p. 7.

25
extremely scarce,”0 is disquieting in its recollection
of Lauder's “In self-defense, I shall, if encouraged by
the public, hereafter publish the whole tragedy in the
original Latin".“1 Finally, the translation is so obvi-
ously Miltonized in its rather clumsy way, that no serious
critic would be encouraged to trust it. Lines 4-7 in the
text printed by Kirkconnell, for example, read,

Odium bonorum sede me infanta extrahit,

Diros scelesta mente versantem dolos.

Terrible iniquum, triste, formidabile,

Quod et ipse Sathan horream, quaero scelus.

Hatred has drawn me forth from that unblest abode,/
Planning in wicked mind dire plots against the
good./ Some awful wrong I seek, most terrible and
grim,/ A crime that even I, the Devil, tremble at.

The corresponding passage in Barham reads thus:

Hatred of all good
Hath hurled me forth from the hereditary throne
Of too unblest ambition, -— sowing lies,
And ripening damn'd sedition -— terrible,
Unuttered and unutterable fraud.
Guilt is become my nature and my joy;
I breathe essential vice; and most I seek
For that selectest crime, which to conceive
Is luxury; and yet Borror that appals [Eip7
Great Satan's self. 2

And this is typical.

 

“01bid., p. 8.

“lassay, quoted by Barham (p. 6-7). This is doubly odd,
since Barham's text is the one Lauder did later publish in
his Delectus Auctorum (Lond., 1752). Barham's faith in the
text rests on the fact that its authenticity was never dis-
proved (p. 7), a not surprising circumstance given the dis-
credit attaching to everything Lauder did after 1750.

“zBarham, p. 9.

26
These deficiencies -— they add up to the obvious fact
that Barham's work is a very loose paraphrase of a bad
text —— are enough to account for the circumstance that
only fifty years later George Edmundson could write a

full-length source study of Paradise Lost without mention-

 

ing Barham's efforts.”3 In fact, he gives scant attention
to Grotius, mentioning the Lauder controversy, erroneously
associating the Johnson piece only with Lauder's Epppy,
and faulting the "poems" of both Grotius and Masenius
"proofs of which may be found in the essays of Lauder" on
the ground that such “slight and trivial productions” could
not be sources.“u

Without further study of Grotius than Lauder can have
provided, he contends that the "admiration for, and personal
intercourse with Grotius, on the part of Milton is in fact
one of the valuable personal links which connect him with
Vondel',“5 since the latter enjoyed the literary protector-
ship of the former. It will be noted —— Edmundson does not ——
that such triangular relationships necessarily Open up
the possibility that resemblances found in the works of the
two juniors may well be evidence of a mutual debt to the

work of the senior. That possibility remains open until a

 

43Milton and Vondel (Lond., 1885).

 

441bid., p. 2-11.
”51bid., p. 24.

27
convincing number of shared deviations from the work of
the senior are demonstrated in the two more nearly contem-
porary works.

A further problem, not only in Edmundson's but in much
more recent source study as well, is the tendency to cite
similarities of language and idea as proof of influence
even when these border on the commonplace or must be drawn
together from scattered locations in one or both of the com-
pared works. Two brief examples should serve to illustrate
the tendency in Edmundson's practice.

Among the juxtapositions of the text of Vondel's Lucifer

to that of Paradise Lost, Edmundson includes the following:

 

Is it no help, that in your train you draw
A third part of the spirits? (Luc., iii, 1244-45)

Art thou that traitor-angel, are thou he
622% after him the third part of Heaven's sons?
(13;, II. 692—4)46
Other than that they are both rhetorical questions, these
passages demonstrate no more than an unstartling mutual

familiarity with Revelation, 12.4. Even as questions the

 

two are very different. The first is part of the Rebel
Chorus' attempt to console Lucifer; the second begins Death's
reply to the formulaic insulting challenge of Satan in their
epic confrontation at the gates of Hell. Ellipses here ac-

complish much, representing as they do not only the remainder

 

“6Edmundson, p. 62.

28
of the line beginning ”who“, but also a complete line
between it and the last line quoted.47
One of the most controversial passages in Paradise
Lost is the admonition of Raphael beginning at VIII, 172:
Heav'n is for thee too high

To know what passes there; be lowly wise:

Think only what concerns thee and thy being;

Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there

Live, in what state, condition or degree,

Contented that thus far hath been reveal'd

Not of Earth only but of highest Heav'n.
To this Edmundson compares Luc., ii, 555ff.

Thus learn we by degrees God's wise designs

To question with respect and lowliness.

He step by step lays bare the growing light

Of knowledge and of Science, and desires

That at his station each before Him bow."2L
The passages are similar insofar as they both relate to the
issue of audacious curiosity, but again their contexts re-
veal that they simply do not mean the same thing. In Vondel
the words are part of Gabriel's rather dull and pointless
speech to Lucifer on the progress of angelic knowledge.
Milton's lines have a totally different dramatic significance.
They are aimed at cultivating in Adam a perspective which might
save him and Eve from sin. "wand'ring thoughts, and notions

vain“, 'uncheckt' and “roving“ fancy are to contribute to

 

47Line 691 in the edition of Merritt Hughes (New York, 1957).
Further in-text citations of Paradise Lost will be by book
and line of this edition.

uaEdmundson, p. 59.

29
their undoing, and it is these to which Raphael refers.
"To know / That which before us lies in daily life,/ Is
the prime Wisdom", Adam replies (VIII, 192-4). Among the
things lying before the first couple in daily life are,
of course, the Tree and God's injunction, the proper re-
lationship of the pair to one another, and the impending
circumstances of the temptation. That Milton would have
sought the form of this warning in the pedestrian reci-

tation of the Lucifer's Gabriel is unlikely to say the

 

least. Much nearer the Milton passage in many respects
is the simple advice of Grotius' angel to Adam:

Vis conditorem nosse? rebus conditis

Utere magisteris; quiquid est index Dei est

Wouldst thou thy Maker know: Use as thy teachers then

The things that He has fashion'd. All are guides to God.

(Ag, iii, 413-14)
This is no warning, but it does stress attention to the
immediate, the things of daily life as opposed to specula-
tive fancies. It does not indicate a 'borrowing' but it is
part of a larger correspondence of tOpics treated in the
context of Adam's talk with the instructing angel.
In 1907 a study appeared which is worth mentioning here

because it contains a discussion of Adamus Exul and at the

 

same time illustrates several critical biases which have
marked most comparisons of the two works, however casual.

Perhaps more important, such biases must havedflssuaded many

 

“BTheppic of ”Paradise Lost“ (New York, 1907).

I:

~15

\ ,1
CV|u|

30

students from undertaking any comparison at all. The
study is Marianna Woodhull's“8 and the biases are these:
the Eighteenth-Century resolution of the Grotius/ Milton
relationship is accepted without question; check-reading
of Adamus Exul is superficial and limited to Lauder's
bad text; it is assumed that any source of Paradise Lost
must share its scope and excellence.

Though Miss Woodhull devotes some twenty pages to dis-
cussion of Adamus Exul, it is immediately clear that they
are not designed to support any evaluation of her own
concerning the play. She asserts at the outset that 'the'
question of Milton's indebtedness to Grotius was long ago
a dead issue." In an obvious, if somewhat misleading
reference to the Lauder controversy, she adds that the
question ”hardly needed the offices of Doctor Johnson as
chief executioner“, and that "in any case there is no pla-
giarism in 'bettering the borrowed'.“9 No discussion be-
ginning thus can be expected to add anything to previous
judgments.

But Miss Woodhull makes no attempt at unbiased analy-
sis. Her premises are simply those of an accolade. The

first of them is that "the episode of man's fall must find

 

“9woodhull, p. 146.

31
its inevitable expression not in a tragedy but in an epic."50
Given this, her task becomes one simply of demonstrating

the superiority of Paradise Lost as an epic of the fall.

 

When she turns to Grotius all she need do is show that he
wrote a tragedy, hence botched the story, failed the subject,
and can be dismissed -— as are also Vondel and Andreini who,
with Grotius, are introduced "for the light they throw upon
the distinction between epic’and tragedy... and for the in-
fluence they might have had upon Milton's decision to write
an epic rather than a tragedy.”5l Thus of Grotius' treat-
ment of angels she asks, 'Is the opposition of the good
angels to the bad angels as strongly depicted as the sub-
ject demands?”,52 assuming that 'the episode of man's fall'
demands any opposition of angels at all, and further that

Paradise Lost is the appropriate gauge of the necessary

 

strength of that opposition. Grotius fails this test. He
provides no confrontation of Satan with the angelic guard

and this, coupled with his insufficiently explicit warning

of Adam, causes us to feel that Satan has been insufficiently

resisted by cod.53

 

5°Woodhull, p. 14-15.
511bid., p. 143.
521bid., p. 159.

531bid., p. 160. This is ironic in light of similar com-
plaints often lodged against Paradise Lost -— e.g. Johnson's
that “Satan is with great expectation brought before Gab-
riel in Paradise, and is suffered to go away unmolested"
(Reader, p. 421).

 

32
But the greatest defect of her discussion is her failure

to read Adamus Exul attentively. She says, for example,

 

that Eve in the play is 'so bold, so hard, so unyielding,
that she has no prototype in literature except Medea.‘5u
This leads her to interpret the conclusion of Act Four as
follows: l'Adam's cheeks grow pale as he eats the apple and
hissmrength fails. 'Spare, ah spare man! ' he cries, and the
chorus laments the fall of man."55 It is in fact Eve who
says as Adam eats,

Sed quid tibi ambit languidas pallor genas,

Caputque nutat? omne rurat in me malum,

Si quod futuram est: Parcat, o, parcat viro.

But why does sudden pallor blanch thy languid cheek?

Why droops thy head? If an evil is to follow,

Let it all fall on me; but spare, ah spare my man!

(Ag, iv, 1466-68).
Nor, in this, may the Barham text be blamed. It is very
loosely paraphrased, but it does render to Eve the compassion
she feels in the original. At any rate, Miss Woodhull joins
Barham in the traditional and progressive obscuration of the
play.
Not until 1934 is Grotius mentioned again as a possible

influence upon Milton.56 Taylor reveals in his study a
high degree of sensitivity to the charges of “parallel

chaser“ which had become ever more frequent as the candidates

for a share of the paternity of Paradise Lost proliferated

 

5uWoodhull, p. 163.
55Ibid., p. 153

56George Coffin Taylor, Milton's Use of DuBartas (Cambridge,
Mass., 1934).

33

in the years following Greenlaw's articles on Milton and
Spenser.57 Taylor cites MacKerrow's argument for the
validity of parallels as evidence58 and takes pains to
renounce any claim of exclusivity for his own candidate:

[Thap7 on certain matters common to DuBartas and
Paradise Lost [Miltop7 consulted, as suited his
purpose, St. Augustine, Spenser, Sir Henry More,
Servetus, and some of the rabbinical readings noticed
by Fletcher, this study does not deny.... And how
anyone can read Grotius' Adamus Exul or Vondel with-
out concluding that Milton had read and liked them,
it is impossible for me to comprehend.59

 

 

He wisely devotes his second chapter to a catalogue of those
“thoughts and ideas” which, though “investigators of Milton
since 1917 have been attempting to trace to particular
sources, are for the most part the common property of Med-
ieval and Renaissance writers."60

For all his caution, however, Taylor's study reveals stum-
blings exactly like those of Edmundson: extensive reliance
on similarities of word or phrase; failure to recognize common-
places; and virtual disregard of the contexts from which paral-
leled jpassages are drawn. There is a~further difficulty
in Taylor, however, in that the reader is never quite sure

whether it is an idea or a word or phrase which is being

 

57'A Better Teacher than Aquinas," §§, XIV (1917), 196-217;
"Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost," §P, XVII (1920), 320-
59.

58Taylor, p. 14, n. 1.

 

59Ibid., p. 13. It is clear (p. 13, n. 4) that his know-
ledge of Grotius is through the Barham paraphrase.

 

60Ibid., p. 15.

34
compared, whether an intellectual influence or a case of
'cOpying' is being advanced. Again, some examples are
to the point.
Having noted Greenlaw's statement that Milton is the

poetical heir to Spenser in his ”fusing [637 the Christian

61
D

dogma with a philosophy ultimately Platonic“ Taylor cites

a similar fusion in DuBartas:

Th' all working Word alone
Made Nothing be All's womb and Embryon,
Th' eternall Plot, th1 Idea fore-conceiv'd,
The wondrous Form of all that Form receiv'd,
Did in the Work-man's spirit divinely lie;
And, yer it was, the World was wondrously.

 

"Milton condenses thus", he says:

Th' Earth was formed, but, in the womb as yet

Of waters embr on immature, involved,

Appeared noEITP%_—VII, 276- 78, italics Taylor' s).6
It is not clear what Milton is condensing here unless it be
the pppgp of Sylvester's DuBartas. Milton's application
of the image of gestation to Earth rather than World is not
a condensation but a difference. Where DuBartas places “all"
in "nothing”, an image of containment only, Milton places
”Earth" in the womb of ”waters“ whose resemblance to amniotic
fluid is certainly not accidental. The passage in Paradise
pppp continues;

over all the face of Earth
Main Ocean flow'd, not idle, but with warm

Prolific humor soft'ning all her Globe,
Fermented the great Mother to conceive,

 

61“A Better Teacher", p. 212.

62Taylor, p. 27.

35

Satiate with genial moisture, when God said,

Be gather'd now ye Waters under Heav'n

Into one place, and let dry land appear

(2;, VII, 278—8b).

Thus the Earth is 'born' in terms which recall the image
of the brooding wings of the Spirit in line 235, itself
a recollection of Genesis, 1.2. As Hughes notes,63 Milton
prefers the Hebrew rendered as "brood" to the “moved” of

the English Bible. He renders it in Latin as "incubabat"

 

in Christian Doctrine.6l+ There is also this major differ-

 

ence between the DuBartas passage and Milton's: in

Paradise Lost the passage is part of Raphael's narrative

 

to the listening Adam, whom he addresses directly at VII,
296. What one wants in an equivalent passage is the state-

ment of an angel to Adam that the Earth incubated in the

 

enveloping ocean. In Adamus Exul we find Adam listening

 

as his angelic visitor says;

[terrafi7 primo turbidis
Submersa in undis delitescebat salo
Cincto tenebris. Subito divina manu
Formatus aer cursibus liber vagis
Incubit undae.
[Earth7 submerged in turbid waves

 

63Miiton, p. 352, n. 235-7.

6“Elsewhere Sylvester's DuBartas provides this rather
awkward simile:
Or, as a Hen that fain would hatch a Brood
(Some of her own, some of adoptive bloud)
Sits close thereon, and with her lively heat,
0f yellow-white bals, doth live birds beget:
Even in such sort seemed the Spirit Eternall
To brood upon this Gulf; with care paternall
("First Day", 1. 334-39 in Works, ed. A. B. Grossart
AEdengurgh, issg7, I, 22). '

36
At first lay hidden in an ocean girt about
With murky darkness; suddenly the atmosphere,
Form'd by the Hand divine, free in its wandering courses
Brooded upon the wave (Ag, iv, #54-58).

Finally, while Milton and DuBartas do share a certain
Platonism, it is not very clearly revealed in Paradise Lost,
VII, 278-8h, where it is the imagery of Genesis which is
critical.65

'Greenlaw notes,‘ says Taylor, "that Spenser 'in the
Second Hymne'speaks of the 'patterne' used by the great
'work maister'. DuBartas, however, is distinctly in point
here.'66 His selection from DuBartas, though, demonstrates
only that he was aware of the commonplace notion of the
'archetect God' derived from Proverbs, 8.27:67

Th' Eternall Trine-One, spreading even the Tent
0f th' All enlightning glorious Firmament,
Fill'd it with Figures; and in various Marks
There pourtray'd Tables of his future Works
See here the pattern of a silver Brook,
Milton's God, he points out,
...Took the golden compasses, prepared

In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe (3g, v11, 225-27. Italics Taylor's).68

 

65Platonism in DuBartas is more apparent than real. He
does note the Creator's 'Idea fore-concieved', but also
says that 'Th' admired Author's Fancie fixed not/ On some
fantastick Fore-concieted Plot“ (”lst Day“, 1. 212-13, in
Grossart, p. 21).

66Taylor, p. 27.
67"...he set a compass upon the face of the deep."

68Taylor, p. 28. It is the act of circumscription that
Milton's passage and Proverbs share. The apparent parallel
usage - compass (L. ambitusS and compasses (L. circinus) -—
obscures the fact that two different instruments are intended.

37

Obviously, Milton's passage is far closer to the simplicity
of Proverbs than to the awkward language of DuBartas. But
if Milton did need a reminder of the Biblical circumscription,
he would be more likely to have found it in the words of
Grotius' angel, who reports at a precisely parallel point
in his narrative of the Creation that God shaped the uni-
verse,
partes mutuo aequales sibi,
Perfecta species, orbis in Justi modum
Rotunda, nullis angulis protuberans
Ne discreparet finis a primordio
(Its parts reciprocally equal, and in form
Perfection, a round globe in perfect measure shaped,
Projecting with no angular discrepancy
Lest the beginning should not balance with the end)
(fl, 11! le27"‘30) o
Verbal parallels count for little when they can be
traced to contexts which render them different or even 0p—
posite in meaning, and for even less when they rely on only
a word or two for their similarity. This is frequently the
case with the citations of both Edmundson and Taylor. Nor
is it uncommon to find parallels in either study assembled by
the writers from remote locations by the word, phrase and line,
containing a bewildering number of ellipses representing
uncertain numbers of words and lines. Such comparisons can
distort relationships every bit as much as interpolations can.
In general, R. M. Adams' complaint against Taylor and
Grant McColley, that ”both fall on the dilemma that the paral-
lels between Milton's poetic expression and that of DuBartas

rarely involves anything more than the crudest sort of raw

E1

38
materials,"69 is equally valid for Edmundson's treatment
of Vondel. It must be owned however, that McColley takes
greater care than his predecessors to compare large units
of verse, event sequences, relative inclusiveness of cata-
logues; matters more nearly of structure than of style in
its narrowest sense. And he occasionally acknowledges

great similarity of Paradise Lost to works other than the

 

Divine Weeks. This carries him into another classic pit-
fall of source study, however, as he presents portions of
Milton's poem against thickets of potential sources common
and obscure, substantial and trivial, suggesting a Milton
with incredibly undiscriminating packrat tendencies. Fur-
ther, it is frequently unclear whether such assemblages
represent precedents of indirect or direct influence, proof
of commonplaceness, intellectual background, or explanatory
paraphrases. Noting, for example, "the Spirit of God de-
scending like a dove" in Matthew, 3.16, he points to similar
usages in the works of Hugo of St. Victor, Joseph Beaumont,
Basil, Abelard, Diodati, and DuBartas as well as in Milton.70
Any one of these might have suggested the image to Milton,
but none is so certainly known to him as St. Matthew.

It is in these lists of precedent that McColley's

 

69Miitcn and the Modern Critics (Ithaca, N. 3., 1955, 1966),
p. 157. He refers to McColley's Paradise Lost: an Account
of_;ts Growth and Major Origins (Chicago, l9h0).

7OMcColley, p. 51-2.

39

scattered references to Grotius' Adamus Exul are to be

 

found, together with references to Hayward, Cedrenus, Val-
marana, Andreini, Andrew Willer and Campanella, for example,
as precedent for the use of an instructing angel.71

It might be noted that, like the earliest studies of

Paradise Lost, the later source studies —— with the obvious

 

exception of Barham's I'Prolegomena" —— assume that whatever
processes of acquiring material and planning its distribution
may have taken place, there was a point at which Milton held
both his early plans and his knowledge of precedent in some
sort of suspension while he decided to write the "diffuse epic"

referred to in The Reason of Church Government. Thus Edmund-

 

son sees the ”great idea“ maturing slowly for a long time
”before it issued from the poet's brain in its full perfec-
tion of form and beauty."72 Taylor argues DuBartas as a source

partly on the ground that La Semaine contains so much of "the

 

same basic stuff of Paradise Lost, arranged in very much the

 

same form, devoted to the same grand objectives",73 there

being no such similarity in "any other epic".74 McColley,

 

71McColley, p. 68-9. Bibliographic reference to Miss
Woodhull's book, which "includes valuable digests of such
works as Grotius' Adamus Exul" (p. 347), suggests that this
is the extent of McColley's knowledge of the play.

 

72Edmundson, p. 6.
73Taylor, p. In.
7“Ibid., p. 12—13.

40

though he subscribes to no such simplistic idea of the
poem's growth as Edmundson's, envisions Milton's desire for
"scope and comprehension” working to "persuade [him7 to aban—
don the long contemplated dramatic form" in favor of a modi-
fication of ”conventional epic treatment".75

Even criticism which focuses on specifically dramatic
elements in the poem, though, shares the epic assumption.
Hanford, for example, rejects the judgment of Sir Walter
Raleigh that Milton is Pan epic, not a dramatic poet", but
his own view is that "Milton's habit of dramatic expression
led him to a far-reaching modification of the epic form,"
or that he "goes beyond all previous epics in his approxi-
mation to dramatic form."76 Laurence Sasek, discussing the
importance of Books XI and XII as a dramatic resolution of
the whole poem, ''a drama in which the character of Adam is
molded into an example of Christian fortitude," relates the
matter to the epic precedents of Homer, Virgil, Tasso, and
DuBartas.77 Though he sees Milton's presentation of the Fall
as both tragic and dramatic, the action is nonetheless, for

him, no more than "action dramatically presented in the epic”.78

 

75Mc0611ey, p. in.
76"The Dramatic Element in Paradise Lost", SP, XIV (1917), I81.

 

77'The Drama of Paradise Lost", Studies in English Renais-
sance Literature (Baton Rough, 19585, p. 196.

 

 

 

 

 

781hid., p. 186.

41
Douglas Knight sees "the discovery by [Adam and Ev§7 of a
character and a course of action [SE7 the dramatic center

of the poem" but contends that this sets Paradise Lost as

 

far apart from Greek and Elizabethan tragedy as from Genesis
and the Iliad, also "a tragedy in the formal sense“.79

Clearly, the term 'dramatic' is not used in the same sense
by the three writers. Hanford's concept of a 'habit of
expression', Sasek's of a manner of thematic resolution,
Knight's of a depth and complexity of character development,
are very different but they share an equally vague and
shifting relationship to any strict notion of likeness to a
play -— wheflun~'play' be taken to denote either a peculiar
set of structural relationships or a generkzcategory capable
of conveying certain kinds of meaning, distinct from those of
lyric, epic, history, argument or commentary. That Milton
devoted considerable thought to genre both as structure and
as meaning is attested by the Cambridge Manuscript, the re-
marks on his aspirations in The Reason of Church Government,
the preface to Samson, at too many points in his work to be
slighted or overlooked.

I have suggested that there has always been a 'question
of Paradise Lost'. For the Eighteenth Century the question
was chiefly, how does Paradise Lost accomplish its meaning?

For later students, including many in the present era, it has

 

“79"The Dramatic Center of Paradise Lost", SAg, VXIII (1964),
5 -55-

#2
been, in the words of A. J. A. Waldock, ”what does Milton

 

mega in Pargdise Lost?"80 The question has usually re-
solved itself into discussion of the poem in generic terms.
But source study, which might have been expected to cast
some light on a question of genre, has produced mainly a
confusing variety of candidates for the poem's paternity.
If C. S. Lewis is right in calling "the pre-existing form"
the father of poetry,81 and if we may credit even a frac-
tion of the source-candidates, then Paradise Lost is
rather more like the seven-headed dragon of Revelation
than any poetic form yet identified, and it is meaning-
less.

What has been lacking is a study of the composition of
the poem like that sketched by Johnson; one which would
show 'the fabric gradually rising, perhaps from small be-
ginnings, till its foundation rests in the centre, and its
turrets sparkle in the skies". Such a study, to be use-
ful in answering the 'question of Paradise Lost', how-
ever, must meet two major requirements: it must make
full use of the available clues to the compositional pro-
cess, and it must pay particular attention to the trans-

forming influence of new and old matter upon one another.

 

ngggggiseLgst and Its Critics (Cambridge, 19u7), p. 1.
81A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford, l9u2), p. 3.

“3

Two recent studies do undertake to examine the growth
of Paradise Lost. Both are valuable and I will have many
occasions to acknowledge their lead in the following
pages. But both, it seems to me, fall short of full use
of the clues to composition, and neither gives enough
consideration to the impact of new upon old matter to
provide the basis of an examination of the poem's growth
as a generic entity.

The study of Grant McColley I have already discussed in
part. In taking for granted the value of Miss Woodhull's

'digest' of Adamus Exul, he is led to dismiss from close

 

consideration one of the most valuable clues to Milton's
compositional process outside the Cambridge Manuscript.
Though his treatment of the early plans is careful and
thorough, and though the techniques he uses for locating
compositional strata are sound, his study is less valu-
able than it might be to the expositor because he assumes
a very early date at which Milton must have set as his
objective the building of a 'diffuse epic'.

There is a very old tradition which sees the mature
Milton as an almost compulsive executor of that casual
listing of forms in the Reason of Church Government where-
in the poet pictures the mind "at home in the spacious
circuits of her musing” proposing to herself

that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer and

those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse,
and the book of Job a brief model.... or...those

44
dramatic constitutions, wherein Sophocles and Eurip—
ides reign... a divine pastoral drama.... Or...
those magnific odes and hymns wherein Pindarus and
Callimachus are in most things worthy.82
McColley subscribes to this tradition, going even so far
as to suppose that the national epic mentioned by Milton

"received being in the History of Britain" and that the

 

writing of Paradise Lost as an epic created a "gap" which

 

Milton "filled with the tragedy Samson Aggnistes”.83

 

Assuming ever that he is describing the growth of a dif-
fuse epic, he naturally answers none of the questions about
what sort of poem Milton wrote. The parts of the poem are
considered in their spatial and chronological relations,

but very little is said about their formal relationships as
ways of meaning. He shows us here the ground-line, there
the possible source of a brick, here the closing of an arch;
but never the shape, whether of a cathedral, a fortress or a
palace. He leaves us with the Milton who has not only done
less than 'spirits reprobate' -- whose Pandemonium, if it is
neither only a palace nor only a city, is nonetheless identi-
fiable as a feudal "seat" on the order of a castle —— but
who actually strove for such a diffuseness.

Alan H. Gilbert's workeu focuses on the compositional

 

821n Hughes, p. 668-9.
83McColley, p. 280.

849n the Composition of Paradise Lost (Chapel Hill, 1947).

45
process and makes no attempt to discuss sources except
incidentally. His aim is, as he says in his preface, to
”save appearances”, to account for inconsistencies in gagg-

dise Lost by showing stratified composition. His techniques

 

are those of Josephine Waters Bennett85 and McColley. He
draws few interpretational conclusions, trusting that his
work will be useful for the scholar who writes for the gen-
eral reader, as, I think, they are. If his work has a ma-
jor weakness, though, it is as with McColley, in his treat-
ment of the relationship of Milton's early plans and drafts
for a tragedy to the finished poem. Unlike McColley, Gilbert
never mentions Grotius, but like him links the Cambridge

Manuscript plans to Paradise Lost with a hypothetical draft

 

of Milton's play. The two differ in their notions of the
contents and form of this “intermediate stage“ and in many
particulars of the compositional process, but they share the
assumption that the play ultimately served as a source of
materials for an epic wholly new in concept, with a design
and objectives of its own distinct from those of the drama:

However dependent he was on the tragedy, he would

have thought out the new work as an epic, with ruth-

less abandonment of anything that did not fit his

new plan. His success is made evident by the im-

mediagg and continuing acceptance of his work as an
epic.

 

85The Evolution of the Faerie Queene (Chicago, 19u2).

86Gilbert, p. 211.

#6
Surely the final sentence cannot refer to the storms of

controversy which have raged over Paradise Lost as over

 

few other works of English literature, and which touch pre—
cisely on the question of its being ancepic. To get an idea
of the limits of this “acceptance" one need only imagine the
reactions of a convention of critics drawn from the three
centuries of the poem's life to the first footnote of the
Merritt Hughes edition. Citing I. 1-4, he remarks:
Man is emphatically repeated in a way that recalls
the stress upon the corresponding words in the open-
ing lines of the Odyssey and Aeneid and the convic-
tion of Milton's contemporaries that epic poetry
should portray a 'virtuous man' as Spenser said...
that Homer did 'in the Persons of Agamemnon and
Ulysses'. Milton's purpose is to draw two perfect
men, Adam and the'greater man', the Son of God,
whose portrayal is complete only in 23.87
Scarcely any would assent to this simple assertion without
extensive qualification of such matters as the meaning of
”perfect“ and ”purpose” in this connection. Many would point

out that the Son is, in Paradise Lost, never other than a

 

'machine'; others that Adam demonstrates not perfection, but
a degree of its loss; other, granting the Son a role as
'virtuous man', would concur that his portrayal is completed

in Paradise Regained and would point out that this leaves

 

Milton with a portrayal of one imperfect man and one imperfect
portrait of perfection; and so on through a tangle of 'immedi-

ate and continuing controversy.‘

 

87Hughes, p. 211.

47
Much of the preceding review of scholarship has had the
aim of accounting for the circumstance -— strange on the
face of it -— that a work whose extensive influence on nga-
dise Lost I am about to champion could have remained unac-
knowledged for so long. As I have shown, all attempts to
consider the Adamus Exul have led back to the ignoble Lauder,

there being no readily available text of the play other than

 

those of his Essay and Delectus Auctorem. But most scholars
have simply dismissed the play in reaction to the Lauder scans
dal. It was not until 1952 that Kirkconnel's monumental

collection and translation of analogues to Paradise Lost ap-

 

peared, and with it the first untainted and reliable text.88
Though it is far from Kirkconnell's purposes to assert in—
debtedness, much less undertake minute comparisons, he does
remark that “internal evidence is convincing“ of Milton's
acquaintance with the play, and he points to five major par-

allels between Adamus Exul and Paradise Lost:

 

(i) Satan's arrival in Eden and soliloquy (as, 1; 2;, IV),
(ii) The visit of an instructing angel (Ag, ii; PL, V),

(iii) The chorus of angels or angelic guard (Ag, passim;
2;. IV, 776.§Q fin),

(iv) The serpent's temptation of Eve (Ag, iv; 3;, IX),

 

88The text is the apparently unique British Museum copy of
the 1601 first edition.

48

(v) Adam's eating out of passion for Eve, their discord,
divine intervention (AE, v; 3;, X-XII).8

Kirkconnell feels nonetheless that ”the debt of Milton to
Grotius appears to be general rather than specific".90 I
think this judgment is as much determined by as productive
of the belief that "Paradise Lost is an epic and as such is
clearly distinguished in form and style from the great major-
ity of its analogues." 91

Though this edition became available in 1952, it was not
until 1968 that a major study took the play into consider-

ation as an influence on Paradise Lost.92 Comparison of the

 

two works in Evans' book is not detailed, but it is evident
that the has given the play closer scrutiny than any previous
student of Paradise Lost, perhaps including Lauder. But
whether because he had not time enough to execute a really
thorough study —— the scOpe of his excellent book is enor-
mous -— or because he had no wish to be classed with the
'ghosts of Lauder' for the sake of what is really only a
small, if important, part of his work, Evansstresses that "the

relationship between Paradise Lost and Adamus Exul. . . is

 

primarily a structural one'.93 He contends, rightly I think,

89Kirkconnell, p. 584.

90Ibid., p. 585

91Ibid., p. xii.
92

J. M. Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford,
:1968), p. 207 16. Editor Hughes, for example, follows Kirkcon-
nell in acknowledging the "many things that they have in common“,
though he includes Andreini's L' A____gl_____amo in the comparison (P. 174).

93Evan8 , p. 216 o

49
that the finished poem presents "a narrative structure

modelled partly on the Aeneid, partly on Adamus Exul'.9“

 

Evans' brief discussion of the play's structural rela-

tionship to Paradise Lost, however, is unfortunately ob-

 

scured by his arrangement of the latter according to the
'Five Act Epic' plan advanced some years ago by Arthur Bar-
ker.95 This is a point of some importance, since the use
of the Barker arrangement suggests something neither Evans
nor I believe; that Milton converted a five—act play into a
five-act epic act for act. More important, though, is the
fact that the Barker arrangement simply is not valid and it

severely distorts the structural movement of Paradise Lost.

 

The problem is worth some discussion here.'

Evans' acceptance of the Barker arrangement rests on his
feeling that 'the 1667 ten-book version of the poem falls
naturally into five acts consisting of two books each'.96
Barker's own discussion indicates only that ten and twelve
are naturally even numbers. The pairing of books which he
undertakes is on the contrary very unnatural, resting as

it does on the premise that “the mind of a responsive reader

 

94Evan8 , p. 2190

95'Structural Pattern in Paradise Lost", 3g, XXVIII
(1949), 17-30-

96Evans, p. 214-15.

 

50
does rest, consciously or unconsciously, at the end of each
book of a long poem, and at the end of each pair.”97 That
the reader should pause after each book seems natural enough,
but that the pause after the first pair is differentiable
from the pause to be expected after the second book is an
utterly unsupportable notion. True, the reader pausing
after Book II might take a retrospective view of the first
two books together, but he would also cast a glance over
the first three after reading the third and so on, unless
he were somehow propelled into even-numbered books and ar-
rested forcibly at their conclusion.

But Barker contends that “the reader is so induced to
rest in Paradise Lost by the invocations and the new de—
partures in subject matter in the first three pairs of the
poem".98 Of course the reader can not be made to rest by
material he has yet to encounter. Even granting that the

invocation in Book III of Paradise Lost could serve such

 

a function, only a new departure in subject matter could
serve it at the beginning of Book V. Yet the passage from
the expulsion of Satan discovered at Eve's ear in Book IV
to her relation of her dream in Book V is far easier than
that from the celestial to the Edenic setting between
Books III and IV.

 

97Barker, p. 24.
981bid., p. 24-5.

51

Such difficulties can only be overcome through reliance
on the style of one's argument to carry the persuasive bur-
den, and Barker does so fairly often. He speculates, for
example, that the recension of 1674 was designed to "shift
the weight of emphasis from the Fall".99 Examining the
five-act structure, he sees too much stress on the Fall,
each act ending as it were on a somber note. The obvious
problem is that whatever note is sounded by the last act of
a five-act poem must also be sounded by the sixth of a six—
act version of the same poem, unless substantive changes are
made. Thus in describing the last of the five acts of the
1667 arrangement Barker says, "What follows in the final act,
the vision of unending earthly misery and the expulsion
from Paradise serves only to make clear the pattern of woe
which makes the contexture of the whole.”100 .But the 1674
'last act' appears to be different only because he describes
it differently: "And the sixth [presentg7 the vision of

human misery, and Michael's_prophecy_of the Messiah with the
) lOl

 

expulsion“ (italics mine

 

99Barker, p. 22.

100Ibid., p. 23.

1011mm, p. 24.

52
In addition to distinct pairings, Barker finds three

distinct "movements“ in Paradise Lost, comparable to the

 

three movements ascribed to the Aeneid. This, of course,
is not apparent in the 1667 ten-book division. With the
1674 recension, however, division by three becomes possible
and with it a new kind of mental 'rest':

The rests at the ends of the first two movements

fell upon the scales seen in heaven and on the

delicate balance of Adam's original perfection,

of the third on the balance to be made up at the

last.102
A structure whose delineation depends heavily upon implicit
word play -— 'scales' = 'balance', unresolved action = 'bal-
ance', resolution = 'balanced ledgers' -— is both vague and
superficial.

The point to be made here is that structure in Paradise
,ngt just is not a matter of numbers. The structural im-
portance of Adamus Exul has no more to do with the 'five--
act epic' of 1667 than it does with the poem as we have it.
A glance at the brief comparisons of play to poem in Evans
and Kirkconnell reveals that the superficial equation of
'acts' must be forgotten when the texts are placed together,
for the impact of the play is to be marked in only three of
Milton's five 'acts', and then unevenly. It also has no-

thing to do with the number of books in Paradise Lost.
But the structure of Paradise Lost has nothing to do with

53
its quantity of books either. In fact, as I hope to show,

even the places at which books begin and end are more a
matter of convenient sizing than of anything significant
forfinterpretation.

But Evans' perception of the importance of Adamus Exul
is not less valid for his subscription to Barker. Both
Barker and Evans act out of what I have called the epic
assumption. This phenomenon has taken many forms, but the
most misleading of them is the will to see the flower in
its bud; to see in Milton at all points, young and old,
the Christian and the classicist, the epic poet and the
dramatist, to make portraiture of the foreshortened con-
temporary view.

Much of the following section has the aim of reassert-
ing the obvious. Milton's beginnings are examined without
the 'advantage' of prescience in the hope that the growth

of Paradise Lost will reveal the nature of the finished

 

poem. The key to that growth, it will become clear, is

Adamus Exul.

54

II
Adam Unparadis'd and Adamus Exul
...what the mind at home in the
spacious circuits of her musing
hath liberty to propose to herself...

Of Milton's early poetic aspirations we know fairly lit-
tle and we know it fairly well. Critics have tended to
feel, though, that the apparently obvious evolution of the
poet's goals, and of the literary values which were their
foundation, is deceptive. The poet's early statements have
been read in light of judgments of the entire canon which
find there discrete epic and dramatic impulses productive
each of separate works. An appearance of consistency in
practice is thus obtained but, ironically, at the expense
of consistency in the poet's theory. A feature of this
view is the cognate notion that Milton's early judgment
of the drama as the most doctrinally exemplary genre was
rejected prior to the writing of Paradise Lost, but revived
for the writing of §§m§ n Agonistes. Yet the poet nowhere
asserts the superiority of epic over drama and even in
Paradise Lost suggests that his higher regard for the lat-

ter never varied. I will return to this later. At this

55
point it is well to recall the obvious progress of the

early projections.

The Italian sojourn of 1638-9 was profoundly significant
for Milton in a number of ways. It produced a strengthened
sense of poetic vocation and of his potential worth as a
poet. He had made a pilgrimage to the center of literary
greatness and found himself praised there. His admiration
for the great calssical poets, already strong, had been
given exercise, and he had also met and been entertained by
the famed Giovanni Battista Manso, friend and patron to
Tasso and Marini. The Mansus, a tribute written while
Milton was still in Naples, expresses his reverence for
both the Italian poets and their patron, and for their clas-
sical literary progenitors. Its very form —— one hundred
Latin hexameters - is an expression of this reverence.

But the Catholic Mediteranean world had also sharpened his
sense of being English and Protestant. This self-conscious-
ness produced both lofty goals and an awareness of their
rashness:
You, who are so good, will not despise an alien Muse,
which, though poorly nourished under the frozen Bear,
has recently presumed to make her rash flight through
the cities of Italy.... Yet we, who in the long nights
endure the wintry Bootes in that zone of the world
which is furrowed by the seven-fold Wain, are no un-

cultivated race, profitless to Phoebus.1

It is as a "devotee of Phoebus“ that the thirty—year-old

 

1Hughes, p. 128.

56

Milton hopes to one day

... summon back our native kings into our songs,

and Arthur waging his wars beneath the earth...

[tp7 proclaim the magnanimous heroes of the table

which their mutual fidelity made invincible, and

(if only the spirit be with me) ... shatter the

Saxon phalanxes under the British Mars!2
His final wish is that, having died satisfied in these ac-
complishments, he might "congratulate" himself on “etherial
Olympus". Hughes comments that this “might mean the Christian
heaven as well as the seat of Zeus and the gods of Greece",3
but it is not the religious poet who plans these epic efforts;
it is the glorifier of his nation and the “devotee of Phoe-
bus", envisioning a patron like Manso who

... would see to it that, when livid death had relaxed

them, my limbs were gently bestowed in a little urn.

Perhaps he might even cause my features to take form

in marble and wreathe By looks with Paphian myrtle

and Parnassian laurel.

The same spirit informs the 'Epitaphium Damonis", written
shortly afterward to mourn the death of Milton's close friend
Charles Diodati. Here he claims to have begun a long poem
which is to contain the themes of

... the Trojan ships in the Ruptian sea and of the
ancient kingdom of Inogene, the daughter of Pandrasus,

and the chiefs, Brennus and Arviragus, and of old Bel—
inus.... of Igraine pregnant with Arthur by fatal

 

2Hughes, p. 130.
3Ihid., n. 100.
“Ibid., p. 137.

57

deception, the counterfeiting of Gorlois' features
and arms by Merlin's treachery,

at the completion of which song, "0 my pipe, if life is
granted me, you shall be left dangling... or else, quite
changed, you shall shrill forth a British theme to your
native Muses.'5 The announcement that his song might be
inspired by "native Muses”, that it would be British song,
is part of the same patriotic concern which would set him
to searching for proper epic subjects among the figures
of English history. There is an incongruity in wanting at
the same time to proclaim his native land to the outside
world and to intend doing so in a language which would cut
him off from all but "blond-haired Ouse... and he who drinks
from Alne and the Humber“. Yet the choice of an Arthurian
subject seems to derive largely from the fact that only Ar-
thur among the British heroes would certainly be known to
Continental Europe, including Italy.6

Apparently, Milton resolved this problem almost immedi-
ately. His remarks in The Reason of Church Government (1641)
contain the promise not only ”to fix all the industry and art
I can to the adorning of my native tongue,“ but ”to be an
interpreter of the best and sagest things among mine own cit-

izens throughout this island in the mother dialect“.7

 

5Hughes, p. 137.
6w. R. Parker, Milton (Oxford, 1968), p. 190.
7Hughes, p. 668.

58
The Arthurian subject had thus less to recommend it, Euro-
pean fame being no necessary qualification, and the question
underlying the famous musings upon ”diffuse" and “brief“
epic constructions became "what king or knight before the
conquest might be chosen in whom to lay the pattern of a

Christian hero".8

The poet had already begun those research-
es in the chronicles which were to produce the History of
Britain and, though his disappointment in_them appears to

be limited to ”the unskillful handling of monks and mechan-
ics", yet it occurs to him that perhaps “those dramatic con—
stitutions wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall be
found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation". In this,
the dramatic connection, the Biblical precedents are chiefly
alluded to; the “pastoral drama in the Song of Solomon” and
'the majestic image of a high and stately tragedy" in the

Apocalypse of St. John.9

 

8Hughes, p. 668-9.

9Ibid., p. 669. Job is cited as the model of “brief epic',
but one suspects Milton of citing the first thing to come to
mind approximating Aristotle's second category; the “rules"
are immediately opposed to “following nature", suggesting dis-
satisfaction with them. Origen and Pareus are invoked sup-
porting the Biblical dramas. Martin Luther had discussed
Job's drama (Table Talk, Works, ed. H. T. Lehmann [Phila.,
19627, LIV, 79-80), though he compares it to both Terrence
and the Aeneid; and Edward Phillips later called it "no other
than a kind of Tragic Poem“ (Theatrum Poematum, Lond., 1675).
See also Charles W. Jones, "Milton's Brief Epic", SP, XLIV
(1947), 209—27.

 

 

59

I have condemned those_pgst hoc ergo propter hoc arguments

 

which find the schedule of Milton's career in the remarks of
The Reason of Church Government, and I have no wish to err on
that side. All that can confidently be said about them is
that they mark Milton's final decision to write in English,10
that he was open in 1641 to the appeal of all the genres, and
that doctrinal utility was a chief criterion for selection of
an appropriate subject. But it might be pointed out that in-
sofar as contiguity of genre and subject references indicates
a pattern of aesthetic proprieties, Milton considered epic

a national-historical form, doctrinally valuable only to the
extent that among the kings or knights of a nation's history
“the pattern of a Christian hero” might be exhibited. Tasso
had exhibited it in Godfrey and presumably he would have done
so had he written of the campaigns of Belisarius or Charles
magne. But poetry 9: a nation is not necessarily the most
”doctrinal and exemplary" 39 a nation. The possibility

that "dramatic constitutions" might surpass epic in this re-
spect is clearly conjectural here.11 Nevertheless, it is

the drama which suggests the bulk of Biblical precedent, and
when Milton sets about listing specific subjects the associ-

ation of the dramatic with the Biblical becomes even stronger.

 

10An option first hinted in "At a Vatican Exercise" (1628).

11In a roughly contemporary Commonplace Book note, however,
Milton cites the anti-theater arguments of Lactantius with
the objection, "what in the whole of phiIOSOphy is more im-
pressive, purer, or more uplifting than a noble tragedy ——
what more helpful to a survey at a glance of the hazards and
changes of human life" (Works, Columbia ed., XVIII. 206-7).

60

The well-known notes for epic and dramatic subjects in
the Cambridge Manuscript were made during the period of both
the reading of the chronicles and the preparation of Th;
Reason of Church Government.12 They indicate a thoroughly
one-sided judgment of potentially fruitful undertakings.
There is a notation for an epic on Alfred, but the genre
which suggests itself almost exclusively is the tragic drama.13
Surprisingly, following a page of notes -— really two lists
of 'persons' and one brief sketch - on the tragedy of 'Par-
adise Lost', and one page of Old Testament subjects, there
are two pages listing possible tragic themes from British
history, an evident departure from the associations suggested
in the treatise. On the fifth page, however, he returns to
the Bible, noting Abram of Morea for a second time, and out-
lining dramas on John the Baptist and Sodom. After a list
of New Testament subjects, he sketches in greater detail a
tragedy of the Fall, this time titling it 'Adam unparadiz'd'.

Having set out, then, to find an historical hero for a
national epic, the poet was insistently drawn to casting
tragic dramas. In these, he inSistently reverts to Biblical
subjects ending with his first inspiration; a drama of the

Fall. Part of the reason for this, it is tempting to think,

 

12For dating see Parker, II. 843, n. 15.

13My use of this is too extensive to permit thorough page
citation; v. Columbia ed., Works XVIII, 228-32

61

may be hinted at in a Commonplace Book notation on Bede's
English church history, one of the first chronicles he perused:
"A wonderful and very pleasing little story is told by Bede
about an Englishman who was suddenly made a poet by divine
Providence.“ This was Caedmon, who was instructed in his
sleep to “Sing the beginning of created things".14

But the four 'drafts' of the tragedy on the Fall in the
manuscript represent more than a repeated return to the sub-
ject. They reveal a progressive development of the plan of

the play. The first two are only dramatis personae; the

 

earliest consisting of Michael, Heavenly Love, Angelic Chorus,
Lucifer, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Conscience, Death, Labor,
Sickness, Ignorance “with others, Mutes“; Faith, Hope and
Charity. This is erased and over it another list is written
embodying certain changes. Moses is listed as an alternative
to Michael, “(Moses held as preferable)“, and to the Chorus
and Heavenly Love are added Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, the Eve-
ning Star, and Hesperus. Lucifer, Adam, and Eve are listed
again and in the same order, but the Serpent is omitted.

With the exception of Death, all the personifications of evil

are repeated, in the same order, and the note "with others“

 

l“Parker, p. 192. The "Genesis-A" and "Genesis-B“ poems of
the Junius MS were in the 17th century thought to be Caedmon's,
but modern scholarship proves multiple authorship and questions
the existence of Caedmon. In any case, it is not certain that
Milton knew any more of the poems than the Latin hymn repro-
duced by Bede (in Kirkconnell, p. 510-12).

62
is replaced by the enumeration of Fear and Death. "Mutes;
Faith; Hope; Charity“15 are retained in this list.
The manuscript's third draft, headed Paradise Lost, is
a rough sketch of the play to be enacted by the persons of
the second list. Moses has been settled upon to speak the
prologue,
recounting how he assumed his true body, that it cor-
rupts not, because of his [being7 with God in the Mount;
declares the like of Enoch and Elijah, besides the purity
of the place that certain pure winds, dews, and clouds
preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to the sight
of God; tells they cannot see Adam in the state of in-
nocence, by reason of their sin.
The lists had evidently been arranged in the order of appear-
ance, for following Moses' prologue Justice, Mercy, and Wisdom
are projected “debating what should become of man if he fall“.
Then the Chorus of Angels “sing a hymn of the Creation". The
second act involves Heavenly Love and Evening Star, omitting
Hesperus. There is no indication what they do or say, but
it presumably has to do with the marriage of Adam and Eve.
The Chorus "sing the Marriage Song, and Describe Paradise".
The sequence of the list is followed as in Act III Lucifer
is discovered “contriving Adam's ruin“. The Chorus concludes
with “fears for Adam“ and the relation of Lucifer's “rebellion
and fall“. Adam and Eve, already fallen, appear in the fourth

act to Conscience, who “cites them to God's examination".

The Chorus “bewails and tells them the good Adam hath lost".

 

15Erasure of "with others“ leaves “Mutes” as an apparent
item in the list. It is a categorical term, however, as is
clear in the first and third drafts (see p. 63 below).

63

Act V presents “Adam and Eve, driven out of Paradise”,
and presented by an unnamed angel with a masque of evils
greatly expanded from the list through the insertion be-
tween Labor and Sickness of Grief, Hatred, Envy, War, Fam-
ine and Pestilence. “Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, Fear,
Mutes“ are indicated as in the list, but Death is reserved
for separate action. Adam names the evils, the poet adding
as an afterthought, “likewise, Winter, Heat, Tempest, etc.",
no doubt remembering late the importance of climatic changes.
After “Faith, Hope, Charity comfort him [Adam7 and instruct
him,“ the Chorus “briefly concludes“.

It is certainly true, as Parker says, that the drafts in
the aggregate show that Milton “was still close to the mood
of 92mgg,“ and that though “he greatly admired the drama
of the Greeks... his projected play hovers somewhere between
Jacobean masque and Italian neo-classical tragedy.“l6 There
is movement within the sequence of the drafts, however, away
from the mood of Cgmgg and to some extent from the excesses
of Italian tragedy, though it is not simply toward Greek
practice. In the matter of the prologue, for example, move-
ment is away from 99mg§ and a Euripidean practice and toward
a more Sophoclean design.

1
Moses' prologue is, as Parker notes, Euripidean. 7 What

 

16Parker, p. 192.

l7Ihid.

64
the speaker says is relevant as prefatory matter but he has
no role in the drama. He communicates only with the audi-
ence, then disappears. This is also Milton's practice in
ngug, where the Attendant Spirit §§ Attendant Spirit - he
later appears as Thyris - “descends or enters“, delivers
prefatory matter, and concludes,
But I hear now the tread
Of hateful steps. I must be viewless now.
(Com., 91-2).

Compare the Phantom of Polydorus in Hecuba, which “hovers“,
speaks, and concludes,

But aged Hecuba's sight will I avoid;

For forthlgf Agamemnon's tent she sets

Her feet.
Unlike his Euripidean counterparts, and unlike the Moses of
the draft, the Attendant Spirit reappears to deliver an epi-
logue, a common enough feature of the masque.

The role as well as the name of the prologue speaker changes
in draft four. Here we find the Angel Gabriel like Qgggg'
Attendant Spirit “either descending or entering". But he does
not remain external to the intercourse of the drama. The angel
is projected first “showing, since this globe was created,

his frequency as much on Earth as in Heaven —- describes

Paradise.“19 The poet envisions the Chorus, then,

 

18Loeb ed., trans. A. S. Way (Lond., 1922), vol. I. 253.
See also Hermes in Ion and Aphrodite in Hippolytus.

19Gilbert (p. 14) places this prior to the first act; there
are no divisions in the sketch. But he may be interpreting
prologos over-strictly in light of what follows.

65

showing the reason of his [itg7 coming —- to keep
watch, after Lucifers rebellion, by command from
God, and withal expressing his desire to see and
know more concerning this excellent creature, Man.20

There follows an exchange between the Chorus and Gabriel as
the latter,
by his nature signifying a Prince of Power, tracing
Paradise with a more free office, passes by the sta-
tion of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates
what he knew of Man, as the creation of Eve, with
their love and marriage.
Gabriel's discussion of the marriage replaces the material of
draft three, Act II, together with the figures of Heavenly
Love and Evening Star. Later reference suggests that at
this point the Chorus concludes the first act with a hymn
of the Creation, just as they do in draft three. Omitting
the debate of Justice, Mercy and Wisdom, draft four intro-
duces Lucifer one act earlier:

Lucifer appears after his overthrow, bemoans
himself, seeks revenge on Man. The Chorus prepare
resistance at his first approach. At last, after
discourse of enmity on either side, he departs;
whereat the Chorus sings of the battle and victory
in Heaven against him and his accomplices, as before,
after the first Act was sung a hymn of the Creation.

For the opening of Act III, Milton projects the possibility
that “Here again may appear Lucifer relating, & insulting
in what he had done to the destruction of man.“ He con-
tinues,

Man next & Eve having by this time been seduced by
the serpent appears confusedly covered with leaves

 

20Bracketed element is Gilberth. He argues convincingly
(p. 14, n. 7) that “his“ can only refer to “Chorus“, though
the pronoun could seem to refer to Gabriel.

66
conscience in a shape accuses him, Justice cites him
to the place whither Jehovah called for him in the
mean while the chorus entertains the stage, & is in-
formed by some angel the manner of his fall. Here
the Chorus bewails Adam's fall.
This concludes Act III.

At this point wholly new matter is introduced, an
achievement made possible by the conversion of the debaters
of draft three, Act I, into actors. Justice has already
served in the third act to cite Adam, a function undertaken
by Conscience in draft three, Act IV, where there is no
'accusation'. He appears again in the new Act IV as “Adam
then & Eve returne accuse one another but especially Adam
lays the blame to his wife, is stubborn in his offense.“
Justice “appears reasons with him convinces him.“ The in-
troduction of stubbornness is very important here. It pre-
sents matter which is enormously significant in the later
Paradise Lost. The Chorus ends the act as it “admonisheth
Adam, & bids him beware by Lucifer's example of impenitence".

Act V of the final draft begins as "the angel is sent to
banish them out of Paradise,“ just as in the third draft.
Also as in the third draft, the angel here “causes to passe
before his eyes in Shapes a mask of all the evils of this

life & world“, but they are not enumerated here and, more

important, Adam does not as previously give them names.21

 

21By interpolating the enumeration of draft three into draft
four in his construction of a hypothetical fifth draft, Gilbert
(p. 16) obscures their probable loss of importance between the
third and fourth drafts.

67
The masque here is functionally related to Adam's former
impenitence (Act IV). At its passing "he is humbled, relents,
despairs“. It thus has dramatic significance as a whole,
rather than in its particulars as an enumeration of the ills
of the fallen world.

Finally, Mercy, another personification drawn from draft
three, Act II,

comforts him, promises the Messiah, then callsin

Faith, Hope, & Charity, instructs him he repents

gives God the glory submits to his penalty.

Note that, though Faith, HOpe and Charity are "called in", the
use of the singular “instructs“ indicates that Mercy is to do
all the talking. “The Chorus briefly concludes“, says Milton,
appending a note to “compare this with the former draft!.

The poet's final note to compare drafts three and four
ought not to be taken as a warrant to fuse the two. Gilbert
does this and his hypothetical fifth draft fails to reflect
the Considerable clearing away of clutter accomplished in
draftifour. The number of evident speakers is cut from four-
teen to nine with the elimination of Wisdom (who perishes
with the debate of draft three, Act II), Heavenly Love and
Evening Star (replaced by Gabriel's narrative of the marriage),
and Faith, HOpe and Charity (apparently reduced to mutes), and
the addition of only Eve, who, surprisingly, says nothing in
draft three. In addition, the fourth draft provides an action

which begins earlier (with Lucifer's entrance in Act II) and

68
presents a more clearly causal sequence, since the debate,
the action and words of Heavenly Love and Evening Star, and
Adam's naming of the evils had all arrested the action with
interesting but causally insignificant matter. The new dis-
cord of Adam and Eve and the problem of Adam's impenitence
reinforce the centrality of the first pair, as that of Luci-
fer is reinforced by his second appearance. In short, Milton
may be seen moving in the direction of the Greeks, and this
movement is more nearly toward Sophocles than Euripides in
its effect on the prologo .

The only external evidence we have concerning what hap-
pened next to the Fall tragedy is the comment of Edward Phil-
lips, Milton's nephew, that the first ten lines of Paradise
ngt, Book IV, had been shown him as the beginning of a play
on which his uncle was working during the period 1642-3.22
This would mean that Lucifer (perhaps by then called Satan
as in Paradise Lost) had been given the Opening speech of
the play, a change consistent with his earlier removal from
Act III to Act II in previous drafts and probably done for
the same reason - to plunge earlier into the conflict.

But this could not have been accomplished as before by
simple omission. Matmnrrelating to the creation of the
world and Eve and to the marriage is too important to be cut

away. It seems likely that the material of Acts I and II

 

22For discussion of the date see Parker, II. 857, n. 94.

69

draft four, was simply switched. The sequence thus produced

is striking in its resemblance to Paradise Lost, and it is

 

very nearly the sequence of Adamus Exul. In the parallel

comparison below I hate altered draft four of Milton's tragedy

only as permitted by Phillip's comment. The sketch of Adamus

Exul is my own.23

Draft four (Adam unparadiz'd)

Adamus Exul

 

 

Act I

Lucifer appears... bemoans
himself, seeks revenge on
man... Chorus prepare re-
sistance... discourse of en-
mity... Chorus sings of Bat-
tle & victory in Heaven.

Satan bemoans himself, de-
scribes Paradise, plans
seduction of Adam and Eve.
Chorus sings War in Heaven,
Michael's victory, Satan's
exile.

Act II

Gabriel... describes Para-
dise... Chorus expresses de-
sire to... know more con-
cerning man... Gabriel... re-
lates... creation of Eve with
their love, & marriage. Chorus
sings a hymn of the Creation.

Act

 

23After Act II the material,
ciple of parallel arrangement.
Adamus Exul, with divisions of

 

 

Adam and anonymous angel con-
verse, angel describes Crea-
tion, departs, Eve enters,
Adam describes her creation,
Chorus sings hymn of the
Creation.

III

Satan attempts to win Adam
to his cause, discourse of
enmity, Satan departs, Chor-
us fears for man, urges o-
bedience to God's law.

not act division,is the prin-
Act headings are those of
draft four in parentheses.

70

Draft four

Adamus Exul

 

 

Act

Act

(Act III) Lucifer relating,

& insulting... Man next & Eve...
covered with leaves, Conscience
accuses... Justice cites...
whither Jehovah called. Chorus
bewails Adam's fall.

(Act IV) Adam then & Eve return
accuse one another... especial-
ly Adam lays the blame to his
wife, is stubborn... Justice
reasons... Chorus admonisheth...
by Lucifer's example.

(Act V) Angel is sent to banish
them... causes a mask of all the
evils... Mercy comforts... prom-
ises the Messiah... instructs he
repents... submits. Chorus
briefly concludes.

 

 

IV

Eve tempted by serpent, Adam
by Eve, they tremble, Chorus
bewails Fall, anticipates
consequences.

Satan exults, hides -— Adam
and Eve, Adam sees phantom
evils, despairs, wishes death.
Eve counsels against 'further
crime'. Vox Dei interrogates,
Adam blames Eve, she the ser-
pent. The judgment, they are
clothed, submit, are expelled.

 

Obviously, there are still major differences between Milton's

draft and Grotius' tragedy.

from the draft of a temptation scene.

Chief among these is the absence

There is a highly drama-

tic one in Paradise Lost, however, and it resembles Grotius'

 

Act IV in its sequential position and, as I will show later, in

many details.

The only suggestion of Grotius' rather eccentric

Act III to be found in Paradise Lost or the draft is the dis-

 

course of enmity between Chorus and Lucifer in draft Act I and

between the guards and Satan in Paradise Lost IV.

I incline

 

71
to believe that no such encounter ever occupied a full act
in any of Milton's plans.

It should be remembered that the lines Phillips saw were
part of an actual play, however incomplete, and not a mere
outline or sketch. Milton's practice in the drafts we have
shows him to be a very thorough reviser, the sort who would
be unlikely to so radically alter the beginning of his play
without changing its middle and end. As draft four in the
preceeding comparison shows, the Phillips alteration alone
would have left the play without a middle. Since the Gro-

tius tragedy resembles Paradise Lost where the draft fails

 

to resemble Adamus Exul, and since the revised opening of

 

the Milton tragedy indicated by Phillips brings it into a-

lignment with Adamus Exul, it appears not at all whimsical

 

to think that the play upon which Milton embarked was much
more like Grotius' play than Acts III-V of draft four indicate.

Moreover, further changes in the direction of Adamus Exul

 

would have been entirely consistent with those tendencies
already discernable in the series of extant drafts -— the par-
ing away of personifications, the expansion of dialogue among
the three principals, and the growing emphasis upon moti-
vation and cause rather than simple inclusiveness - in

short, away from masque and Italian neo-classical drama and

72
. 24
toward true tragedy, as approx1mated by Grotius.

Comparison of Adamus Exul with Paradise Lost will support

 

 

strongly the belief that Milton's tragedy did have a middle
and an end. It probably included a temptation and this was
probably in Act IV, as it is in Grotius. The material of
Acts III-V, draft four, was probably compressed into one act
through the elimination of the rest of the personifications,
allowing for perhaps a brief procession of evils.25 The
discussion of the Creation and of the origin of Eve was prob-
ably the property of an angel (either Gabriel, as in the
draft or Raphael as in.§L) together with Adam, as it is in

both Adamus Exul and Paradise Lost, and may have been long

 

 

enough in the play to occupy Acts II and III, the confron-
tation of Satan with Adam being rejected. Finally, the Ad-
versary appears to have been called Satan -— Phillips does

not remark otherwise -— as he is in both Adamus Exul and

 

Paradise Lost.

 

I should emphasize here that Milton's progress from draft
three through the tragedy mentioned by Phillips need not be
viewed as a succession of attempts to imitate Grotius. It

were a lame poet who took so long to do that. My view is

 

2(“The rhetorical flourish of Seneca marks the language of
Adamus Exul (Cf. Satan in Act I with Juno of Hercules Furens,
Prologue) and has its counterpart in Paradise Lost as well,
though it must contend with Elizabethan drama for paternity
here.

 

25The procession of evils is a possibility, but a stronger
one is Grotius' device of a vision of evils related by Adam.
(See p. 145-8 below).

73

that the alterations represent a series of conscious devia-
tions from Grotius, for each of which Milton had reasons:
the desire for the doctrinal inclusiveness afforded by per-
sonification, the desire to keep the catastrophe off-stage,
even, perhaps, the oft-cited squeamishness about pre-lap-
sarian nudity. But he was convinced successively of the
unwisdom of each deviation; the personifications were not
doctrinally precise and threatened to become a clutter of
inclusiveness, the off-stage catastrophe was very Attic, but

it deprived the play of its most interesting and instructive

 

scene, nudity was no problem in a play which had little hOpe
of ever seeing the stage. Finally, Milton was led to embrace
Grotius' design in all its major parts save the third act,
for which there was no precedent in Genesis, and whose con-
tribution to the meaning of the Fall is dubious.26
While the evidence I have thus far cited is strongly

suggestive of direct influence of an extensive sort; conclu-
sive proof awaits the detailed comparison which follows of
Adamus Exul with Paradise Lost. There is no external evi-
dence that Milton ever heard of the play. It is known that
he met “the learned Hugo Grotius, at that time ambassador

from the Queen of Sweden to the King of France, and whom I

was very desirous of seeing,“ on the way to Italy in 1638.27

 

26In both the Old English “Genesis B“ and the TwelfthCeentury
French Mystere d'Adam Adam is tempted first and his resist-
ance later interpreted by the Adversary to Eve as timidity.
See Evans, p. 200-202. '

27Second Defense (1654), quoted in John s. Diekhoff,
Milton on Himself (Lond., 1939, 1965), p. 18-19.

74
Milton certainly had a high regard for the older man,

praising him in the Tetrachordon and invoking his authority

 

in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.28 But that Adamus
Egg; served as a model for the Edenic passages of Paradise
ngt, through the lost tragedy or directly - the former
being the most likely - can only be shown through direct

comparison.

AEL Act I; PL, Bk. IV

 

Satan's opening speech in the tragedy to which Phillips
refers began with lines sufficiently like those of PL, Bk.
IV, to cause him to think them identical:

0 thou that with surpassing Glory crown'd,

Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God

Of this new World; at whose sight all the Stars

Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call,

But with no friendly voice, and add thy name

0 Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams

That bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell, how glorious once above thy Sphere;

Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down

Warring in Heav'n against Heav'n's matchless King
(Iv. 32—41).29

These are the words of a Satan both mourful and vengeful,
like the fiend of drafts three and four. We might expect
him to “bemoan himself“ (draft 4) in such a way as to pro-
vide a brief biography, including a statement of his condi-

tion, perhaps mention of the torments of Hell, and his motives

 

28For discussion of these and other connections see Parker,
11. 823-“, n. 10.

291 agree with Gilbert (p. 16-17) that Phillips' substitution
of 'glorious' for 'matchless' in the last line is an error
caused by the occurrance of 'Glory' and 'glorious' previously
in the passage; not by a difference in the remembered passage.

75
for being in Eden. But his being in the first act of the

drama would necessarily place additional burdens upon this
character. The description Of Eden in drafts three and four 1
had been the task of Moses and Gabriel not through any spe-
cial faculty of theirs, but because they had held the stage
at the play's opening. Satan must now do this. He must
also now provide the introduction of man as a preliminary
to his 'contriving Adam's ruin'. These are done by the Sa-
tan of Ag and by Satan with the narrator in.P;. IV -— this
is the case in the latter even though, coming now after
the first three books of the narrative, much Of the material
is redundant. In recasting the tragedy as a narrative, Milton
certainly rewrote a great deal of it and evidently added ma-
terial, but the outlines of the play become clear when the
text is placed against the dramatic exigencies just mentioned
and the first act of the Grotius play. Comparison also ex-
plains the otherwise baffling manipulation of the perspectives
of Satan and the narrator in this book.
Adamus Exul Opens with Satan standing on an elevation

near Eden, the entire garden within his view. He delivers
seventeen lines which identify him and his intentions:

Saevi tonantis hostis, exul patriae

Caelestis, adsum, Tartari tristem specum

Fugiens, et atram Noctus aeternae plagam.

Odium bonorum sede me infausta extrahit,

Diros scelesta mente versantem dolos.

Terrible iniquum, triste, formidabile,

Quod et ipse Sathan horream, quaero scelus.

Hac spe per omnes Orbis ibe terminos,

Hac spe citatus clausa littoribus vagis
Transibo timendus per locorum devia

76

Quaerit quod avido dente dilaniet pecus.30
Hac spe, quod unum maximum fugio malum,
Superos videbo. Fallor? an certe meo
Concussa Tellus tota trepidat ponders?

Bene est. Abunde est. Fiat hoc, fiat, nefas
Quod Mundus horret (I. 1-17)

(The savage Thunderer's foe, exiled from heaven, my
home,/ I hither come in flight from Tartarus' grim
cave/ And the black wilderness of everlasting Night./
Hatred has drawn me forth from that unblest abode,/
Planning in wicked mind dire plots against the good./
Some awful wrong I seek, most terrible and grim,/

A crime that even I, the Devil, tremble at./ In this
hope, I shall go through all the Globe's wide bounds;/
Spurr'd by this hope I'll cross the seas, hemm'd in/
By wandering shores; just as a cruel lion seeks/ Through
wandering ways, with formidable open jaws Some hapless
flock that he may rend with greedy fangs.3 By this
hope, fleeing from the greatest ill of all,/ I shall
attain to Heaven! Can I be wrong? Or does/ The whole
earth truly tremble, smitten by my weight?/ 'Tis well.
It is enough. Come, let this wrong be done,/ Shaking
the Universe.)

The Satan of Paradise Lost is given a far longer passage and

 

a more thoroughly develOped psychology as

Sometimes towards Eden which now in his view

Lay pleasant, his griev'd look fixes sad,

Sometimes towards Heav'n and the full-blazing Sun
(IV. 27‘9) 0

 

His prospect is, the narrator tells us, Mt. Niphates. But
nothing is made of the view of the Garden in his soliloquy.
He concludes,

Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least

Divided Empire with Heav'n's King I hold

By thee, and"more than half perhaps will reign

As Man are long, and this new World shall know
(IV. 110-13).

 

30This is, of course, canachronistic. Milton's similar
slip in Bk. IV is discussed below, p. 87.

77
The narrator informs us (IV. 114-30) that Uriel has detected
the Adversary's "mad demeanor", and Satan abandons Mt. Nepha-
tes. What purpose has been served by placing him there at

all? Adamus Exul provides a clue, for Grotius' Satan requires

 

the prospect for his description of Eden:

Ecce, quae petitur, prope
Apparat Heden (I. 17-18)
(Lo, Eden shows near by,/The object of my search.)

Re proceeds to describe it, beginning with large geographic
features and, by a smooth constriction of scope, finishing
with a view of Adam and Eve.

In Paradise Lost, description which must have been Satan's
in the play has been apprOpriated by the narrator, who, in
his efforts to keep Satan at what is really his own viewing
range, scrambles the elements of the description and disturbs
the original smoothness of constriction. Having delivered
his soliloquy, the narrator tells us, Satan

to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, Crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access den'd; and over head up grew
Insuperable highth of loftiest shade
(IV. 131-38) 0
Above these reaches the “verdurous wall Of Paradise“, itself
topped by
a circling row
Of goodliest Trees loaden with fairest Fruit,
Blossoms and Fruits at once of golden hue

Appear'd with gay enamell'd colors mixt.
On which the Sun more glad impress'd his beams

78
Than in fair Evening Cloud, or humid Bow,
When God hath show'r'd the earth; so lovely seem'd
That Lantskip (IV. 146-53).
The Argument to Book IV stipulates that at this point the
Garden's “outward prospect and situaltion" are described,
but what we have'is a fairly minute 'closeup' of the trees,

and nothing of the “situation“ is suggested. The comparable

description in Adamus Exul occurs much later, after the geo-

 

graphic situation has been described.

Hic densa tenuis languidos Zephyri sonos

Arbusta referunt, silvaque arguto tremens

Ludit susurro (I. 40-42)

(Here the dense groves give back the languid harmonies/
Of the light Zephyr; and the woods all tremulous/ Sport
with melodious whisper.)

Milton's Satan is delighted as

now gentle gales
Fanning thir Odoriferous wings dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils (IV. 156-60).

Grotius' Satan remarks that
semper hiC placido nitet

Solare vultu lumen: adridet favor

Constantis aurae (I. 42-44).

(Ever the sunlight here/ Shines with calm countenance; a

constant breeze's grace/ Smiles on it.)
Milton's narrator provides an epic simile which could not have
been in a tragedy, but which may be based on verses like those
just cited:

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at Sea North-East winds blow

 

79

Sabean Odors from the spicy shore
Of Araby the blest, with such delay
Well pleas'd they slack thir course, and many a League
Cheer'd with the grateful smell Old Ocean smiles
(IV. 159-65).31
Milton treats geography here (IV. 210ff.), a difficult
thing to do, since Satan, whose view he has been sharing,
has just been said to have "overleap'd all bound/ Of Hill
or highest Wall“ (IV. 181-2). Further, he has been compared
to a wolf entering a sheepfold (IV. 183-7) and to a thief
entering “In at the window... or o'er the tiles“ (Iv. 191).32
He and the narrator ought only to be able to see the interior
of the Garden at this point. The famous Cormorant comparison
is designed to re-establish a suitable “prospect“:
Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of Life,
The middle Tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a Cormorant; yet not true Life
Thereby regain'd, but sat devising Death
To them who liv'd; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life- iving Plant, but only us'd
For prospect IV. 194-200).
Mention that "Beneath him... now he views“ (IV. 205) reaffirms

the identity of Satan's and the narrator's views. The descrip-

 

31Milton may be thinking here of Diodorus' Arabia Felix (III,
xlv). Avitus, whom both Milton and Grotius may have known,
says of Eden that “The whole rich forrest, moved by whispering
breezes/ Trembles throughout its leaves and healthful flowers/
Dispensing fragrant odors to the earth“ (Poematum de Mosaicae,
etc., (A. D. 507), I. 252-54, in Kirkconnell p. 7)}

 

32Anachronism is avoided,. since similes are in the reader
present.

80
tion proceeds:
Eden stretch'd her Line

From Auran Eastward to the Royal Tow'rs
Of Great Selucia built by Grecian Kings,

Or where the Sons of Eden lon before
Dwelt in Telassar (IV. 210-14 .

This is precisely the view of Grotius' Satan from his Nephates--
like prospect:

. proxima Auranitidos
Amoena cerno; Lambit hic Babylonios
Narmalca campos, Susianes intimis
Fugiens (I. 18-21)

(I see the neighborhood/ Of pleasant Auranitis; here
Narmalca laves/ The Babylonian fields, fleeing the
innermost/ Confines of Susa.)

Included in his view are the Euphrates (the location of Telas-
sar)33 and the Tigris (site of the Alexandrian capitol of
Selucia). Both viewers describe the region of Upper Chaldea
(Auranitis). In a drama, with Satan as describer, Milton
would have had to name the Biblical rivers rather than the
fabled cities in order to avoid anachronism, though, as it is,
neither poet avoids it entirely.34
Both poets pass from geography to mention of the trees of
Eden (Ag, I. 40ff.; PL, IV. 216ff.). For Milton this is the
second mention and, since it includes the Tree of Life, “all
amid them... High eminent“ (IV. 218-19), it presents the awk-
ward situation of a view, purportedly Satan's, which includes

evidently at some distance the very tree in which he sits.

 

33See 2 Kings, 19.12 and Isaiah, 37.12.

3“For the most part, Grotius stays close to Genesis here,
naming even the minerals gold, bedellium and onyx.(I. 21-23).

81
Here Milton does mention the prime river of Gen. 2.10,
calling it only a “River large“ (IV. 223), pointing out that
it nurtures Eden's plants, and noting its division into
“four main streams“ (IV. 233).35 The passage ends with yet
another reference to the
Groves whose rich Trees wept odorous Gums and Balm,

Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden Rind
Hung amiable (IV. 248-50).

 

The descriptions of Eden in both Adamus Exul and Paradise
ngt are comparatively simple, restrained examples of pas-
toral portraiture.36 But Milton does introduce a certain
ambiguity concerning the difference between Eden and the

teeming gardens of pagan fable. The burnished fruits just

mentioned, for example, are said to be “Hesperian fables

 

true,/ If true, here only“ (IV. 250-51), underscoring the
priority and pre-eminence of Eden. Yet sixteen lines later
it is said that
Universal Pan

Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance

Led on th' Eternal Spring (IV. 266-68).
This is carrying the image of Spenser's Acidale rather too
far. Earlier suggestions of Spenser's mount had quite ap-

propriately highlighted Satan as an interloper and voyeur,

his circumstance comparable to that of Spenser's Calidore as

 

350f. Grotius' “Sectus quaternis“ (I. 39), which Kirkcon-
nell translates 'fourfold arteries', inadvertently raising
the false possibility that Milton's “veins“(IV. 227) is a
direct echo.

36Appropriately, as J. B. Broadbent says (MB, Ll [I9547,
171), since “the riches of God“ are being described and ef-
fusiveness would suggest decadence.

82
he approaches the hill
bordered with a wood
Of matchless hight, that seem'd th' earth to disdaine,
In which all trees Of honor stately stood

Ne mote wylde beasts, ne mote the ruder clowne
Thereto approach (fig, VI. x. 6-7).

Comparison is so logical that Milton follows it even to the
barring of “Man or Beast“ (IV. 176), despite the obvious
fact that earth's only man is already within the Garden.
The presence of Pan, the Graces and the Hours, then, is con-
sistent with part of the narrator's description, for Cali-
dore witnesses just such a dance. But immediately following
mention of these figures Milton has another of those nega-
tive similes designed to differentiate Eden from such gar-
dens. “Not that fair field/ Of Engg,“ he says, “nor that
sweet Grove/ Of Daphne,“ might “with this Paradise/ Of Eggn
strive; nor that Nyseian Isle“, "Nor... Mount Amggg“ (IV.
268-85). Thus, in the aggregate, he asserts that this para-
dise is better, though composed of the same ingredients, pre--
historical, but containing the mythic figures of the pagan
Golden Age. In this inconsistency, as in the shifting per-
spective of the description as a whole, the struggle to adapt
dramatic speech to the narrative is clearly marked.

By line 287 in Paradise Lost, IV, and line 65 in Adamus
Exul, I, the same items have been covered in the respective
works: Satan is identified, his oath of vengeance has been

uttered, he has seen the Garden and its geographic situation

83
has been indicated. Its topographic and floral features
have been lined. Each devil gets his first view of man at
this point; man,

Quo nil sub astris majus Orbis cerneret

... creavit, pulveremque ignobilem

In justa finxit membra, et inflata pater

Vegetavit aura, nec tamentvitam dedit

Sensusque solos, propriae sed imaginis

Expressit altum mente in humana decus,

Docuitque eundem qualis, et cuia manu

Formatus esset nunc, prius qui non erat (I. 65-71)
(... than whom, beneath the stars, Earth saw/ No thing
created greater; from the ignoble dust/ The Almighty
Father shaped the human form and quickened/ The body
with His breath; nor gave He life alone/ And lively
sense, but deep within the human mind/ He stamped at
last the glorious image of himself./ And taught that
same Man who he was and by whose hand/ He had been
fashion'd, who before had had no being;)

Of living Creatures new to sight and strange:

Two of far nobler shape erect and tall,

Godlike erect, with native Honor clad

In naked Majesty seem'd Lords of all,

And worthy seem'd, for in thir looks Divine

The image of thir glorious Maker shone (IV. 287-92)

Both Grotius' Satan and Milton's narrator stress the nudity
of the first couple:

nunc uterque in florido
Spatiatur horto nudus: omnis abest Pudor
Rudibus malorum: fraudis expers, et doli
Sincera virtus colitur (1. 85-8)
(... now both in flowering garden/ Walk wholly naked,
for no sense of shame have they,/ To evil uninitiate;
virtue is cherish'd,/ exempt from fraud and guile;)

Nor those mysterious parts were then conceal'd,

Then was not guilty shame: dishonest shame

Of Nature's works, honor dishonorable,

Sin-bred....

So pass'd they naked on, nor shunn'd the sight

Of God or Angel, for they thought no ill (IV. 312-20).

84
The succeeding thirty lines stress the docility and obedi-
ence of the animals to man, material included also in the
view of Grotius' Satan (I. 72-4). The tranquil beauty of the
scene and the happy pair provokes an outburst from each devil:

Sorte, Proh, quantum mea
Sors distat ista! (I. 93-4)
(Ah, how different is that lot of theirs/ From my
harsh lot!)
Iamjam parata tendit ad coelum via (I. 138)
(He presses on towards heaven by the way prepared;)

0 Hell! what do mine eyes with grief behold,
Into our room of bliss thus high advanc't (IV. 357-8).

The “pestis Tartaro“ (I. 159) of Grotius' Satan are invoked:

poenas poscite exilii graves,
Ruptoque Averni carcere, et nigri specus
Portis ahenis, latiorem invadite
Telluris orbem (1. 161-4)
(... exact strickt penalties for exile,/ And having burst
the brazen prison-doors of Hell/ And issued from its mel-
ancholy cave, invade/ Earth's broader sphere.)

Vows Milton's Satan,

Hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest Gates,
And send forth all her Kings (IV. 381-3).

Grotius' Satan, who already knows the significance of the
fruit, promises that upon Adam's tasting Of it,

subito in exitium ruet,
Poenasque socius, Tartari et novus incola
Pro perpetrato scelere communes dabit (I. 186-8)
(... he will rush straight to ruin,/ And will, as Hell's
new inmate and my sworn ally / Share in our common
penalties for sin and crime;)

"League with you I seek“, says Milton's Satan,

And mutual amity so straight, so close,
That I with you must dwell, or you with me (IV. 375-7).

85
The Satan of the play promises that,
ista quae lucet dies
Homini parem me reddat, aut hominem mihi (I. 231- 2)
(this very day that dawns/ Shall make me peer to man or
man to me.37)
After a brief statement of his plan, Satan's role in Act

I of Adamus Exul ends. The act's last seventy-nine lines

 

are choral, expressing Satan's peril,38 giving a brief history
of his rebellion and fall, and concluding with the hope that
man might not be tempted; exactly those things planned by
Milton in draft four of the Cambridge Manuscript.

One of the most important differences between the two
works up to this point is Satan's prior knowledge of the for-
bidden fruit in the play. His lack of such knowledge in Mil-
tOn's narrative provides the motive for the fiend's inhabita-
tion of the animals, in the course of which an anachronism
very much like one of Grotius' is committed. In both works
the point is made that all the beasts are the tame subjects
of lordly man. In Paradise Lost there is even a short list
of “Beasts of th' Earth since wild“:

Sporting the Lion romp'd, and in his paw

Dandl' d the Kid; Bears, Tigres, Ounces, Pards
Gamboll' d before them (IV. 343- 5).

 

37My translation. See p. 18, n. 28 above.

381n the course of this are the lines, “gravior semper/
Casus ab alto est. Levius contra/ Leviora cadunt. Sequitur
ma or/ Cura beatos, quo plus nactos/ Plura timentes“ (I.
23 -42)' ... the descent/ Is graver to the eminent. / While
lighter things more lightly fall, / Intenser cares the blast
enthral. ' In one of Lauder' s honest citations (GM, XVII, 85)
he compares these to PL IX. 169- 71 (IX. 168 in 2d ed. ).

86

In all there are seven beasts “since wild“ (including the
elephant and serpent), and one might see in them a pre-
lapsarian counterpoint to the seven-headed beast of Rev. 13.
1-2, “like unto a leopard, and his feet were the feet of a
bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon
gave him his power.“39 This association intensifies Satan's
inhabitation of the beasts as an ironic forecast; but the
inhabited beasts are themselves anachronistic, and incon-
sistent with their earlier portraits:

A Lion now he stalks with fiery glare,

Then as a Tiger, who by chance hath spi'd

In some Purlieu two gentle Fawns at play,

Straight couches close, then rising changes oft

His couchant watch (IV. 402-6).
Previous comparisons of Satan to a wolf (IV. 183) and a cor-
morant (IV. 196)“0 have been in the reader present. Here,
however, it is clear that Satan chooses the shapes of these
animals so that he might indulge in stalking, glaring, and
crouching without alarming Adam and Eve, forgetting with
his author that such behavior would be alarming indeed in

herbivores.“1

Interposed between these conflicting concepts of the

 

39The opening four lines of the book and reference to “hes-
perian Fables“ (IV. 250) prepare the reader for such an asso-
ciation.

“olt is often forgotten that, though in the Argument Satan
is said to sit “in the shape of a Cormorant“, the verse says
only that he sits “like a Cormorant“.

“lThe sight of just such behaVEOr stimulates Adam's despair
after the Fall (X. 706-16).

87
animals is the Satanic soliloquy (IV. 358-92) so much in
the manner of Grotuis' Satan. It is possible that the pas-
sage on the incarnation is derived from the tragedy where
it formed a simile or an option to the serpent ruminated
upon by Satan. Grotius' Satan, it will be recalled, com-
pares himself to an anachronistic lion“2 and he later con-
siders the tactics of the preying wolf (III. 855-7).

But the incarnations in their present form mark the point
at which Book IV departs from the material that could have
dramatic origin. The conversations of Adam and Eve (IV. 411-
91, 610-88, 724-35) are play-like to be sure, but there is
no provision in Milton's dramatic drafts for Satan to share
this act with anyone other than the chorus. The mission of
Uriel to Gabriel's guard, the discovery of the Satanic toad,
or toad-like Satan, "close at the ear of Egg" (IV. 800),
the epic confrontation of the angel guard with Satan (IV.
823-end); all these depend heavily upon narrative for their
effectiveness. There may be a suggestion of the last in
the “discourse of enmity“ of draft plan four, and much of
Grotius' Act III might be so described, but the passage as
it appears clearly owes little to either Grotius or anything
Milton might have composed for the chorus and Satan of a
tragedy; its importance as a visual spectacle is a narrative

dividend.

 

“ZSee p. 76 above.

88
AE, Act II; PLL Bks. V-VIII

Among the inconsistencies in Paradise Lost pointed out

 

by Gilbert is that, while the Argument to Book V refers to
the charge that Raphael "admonish“ Adam, warning of "his
enemy near at hand“, the warning itself does not occur un-
til line 895 of Book VI, the Argument to which makes no men-
tion of it.“3 He also notes that Eve's reference at IX.
274-8, to the departing angel's warning overheard at dusk
is inconsistent with both the actual warning at VII. 524-
47 - after which the angel does not depart -— and the
evening departure at VIII. 630 -— where there is no warn-
ing against Satan, only against passion. The warning she
seems to be referring to, he says, is that of Book VI. 895,
“once immediately followed by the departure of the angel at
enening'.44 The inescapable conclusion is that when Book V,
as reflected by its Argument, and Book IX were composed, the
greater bulk of Books VI-VIII simply were not there.
Numerous minor inconsistencies within the central books
also point to successive growths by addition, but they do
not, as Gilbert thinks they do, indicate radical changes

either in the poem's chronology or its ingredients as

 

43Cilbert, p. 30-31.
““1bid., p. 76.

89
compared to those of the hypothetical tragedy.“5
If, as I have indicated, the events surrounding Satan's
incarnations, his discovery by the guards, and his expul-
sion from the Garden are epic narrative conceptions without
dramatic origin, the early portion of Book V is too. Eve's
dream is the product of the toad's efforts
to reach
The Organs of her Fancy, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, Phantasms and Dreams
(IV. 801-3).
Adam's and Eve's discussion of dreams in Book V is beauti-
fully concluded with his comforting her:
So cheer'd he his fair Spouse, and she was cheer'd,
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wip'd them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in thir crystal sluice, hee are they fell
Kiss'd as the gracious signs of sweet remorse

And pious awe, that fear'd to have offended
(V. 129-35).

But the thoroughness with which the dream is forgotten as
“all was clear'd, and to the Field they haste“ (V. 136) is
odd. It is never mentioned again, even in the temptation
scene of Book IX, where one would expect the analogy to be-

come obvious to Adam if not to Eve. The point at which this

 

“5Space prohibits detailed answering of his conclusions
(e. g., that the War in Heaven once preceded Book III, and
that “in an early arrangement Books V and VI were placed be-
fore Books I and II“)(p. 69-70), but I will cite a number
of them in what follows.

9O
forgetting takes place, then, might be expected to mark the
return to dramatic material and, as it happens, it is here

that a passage analogous to the opening of Adamus Exul, Act

 

II, appears.

It is morning as the second act begins in Grotius' play.
The angel with whom Adam will converse during this act is
already present, but the first words are Adam's and they are,
quite appropriately, those of a traditional aubade:

Dies tenebras legis aeternae vice

Fugans resurgit: Certus ordo temporum

Solis reducit auremm terris caput.

Stellis fugatis majus exoritur jubar;

Nox jussa luci cedit, et Phoebe soror.

O quantus ille est, cujus ingenti manu

Coeli rotatur axis, et turbo celer

Refert Olympum duplici fultum Polo,

Vastumque mundi pondus aequalem trahit

Retrahitque in orbem! Sidera authoris sui

Secuta legem temperant anni vices,

Titan coruscis explicat lucem comis,

Et Luna ducens mille stellarum chbros

Tenebrosa noctis rumpit. Aetherei sacer

Sonus ille motus cantat artificem manum,

Omnesque stellae celeris ad coeli modos

Plaudunt choreis: Ipse nos Mundus monet

Haerere terris: supera nos rapit in loca,

Mentesque proprium ducit ad primordium (V. 311-31).
(Day, rising in the course of everlasting law/ Drives
Night away once more. Fix'd sequences of time/ Bring
back to earth the Sun's resplendent head of gold;/ His
greater radiance, rising, puts the stars to flight;/
Night and the Moon at God's great bidding flee away./
Behold how great is He, in whose gigantic Hand/ The
Sky's vast axle turns, as its swift wheeling brings/
The heavens about, supported on a double Bole,/ In a
due circle! Loyal to their Author's 1aw,/ Th' obedi-
ent stars control the changes of the year,/ The Sun
shakes out white glory from his glittering hair,/ And
the Moon leads a thousand choruses of stars/ To break
the gloom of Night. The ethereal motion's sound/ iSings
holily the hand of the Artificer,/ And all the stars
dance to those measures of the sky/ In swift delight;
The Universe itself exhorts us/ To serve God the Creator,
not to cling to earth;/ Its voice would speed us rather

91

to the realms above/ And lead our minds back to their
own high origin.)

Given even the traditional character of such dawnsongs, the
similarity of the words of Milton's Adam and Eve as they sing
“Thir Orisons, each Morning duly paid“ is striking:

Fairest of Stars, last in the train of Night,

If better thou belong not to the dawn,

Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling Morn

With thy bright Circlet, praise him in thy Sphere

While day arises, that sweet hour of Prime.

Thou Sun, of this great World both Eye and Soul,

Acknowledge him thy Greater, sound his praise

In thy eternal course, both when thou climb'st

And when high Noon hast gain'd, and when thou fall'st.

Moon, that now meet'st the orient Sun, now fli'st

With the fixt Stars, fixt in thir Orb that flies,

And yee five other wand'ring Fires that move

In mystic Dance not without Song, resound

His praise, who out of Darkness call'd up Light
(V. 166-79).

The song in Paradise Lost is longer than the one in Adamus

 

Exul. Thirteen lines preface the portion quoted here and
twenty-eight follow it whiCh deal in some detail with mun-
dane phenomena, the only such reference in Grotius being
that the stars “temperant anni vices“ (II. 322). The songs
are nevertheless so similar in their inclusiveness and in
their treatment of natural objects as worshipers as to sug-
gest direct influence. This possibility is further streng-
thened by their presence in the mouth of Adam at a point

just prior to the Conversation with the instructing angel.‘+6

 

46Gilbert's speculation that the song was originally the
narrator's (p. 47) is based upon a false 'inconsistency' in
pronoun use. “Us“ at V. 157 and 206 is probably, like “our“
(184) inclusive of "Air" and “Elements", all created things.
“I“ (202) and "my“ (204) differentiate human song from that
of the elements and phenomena, which also “witness and praise“

92
At the conclusion of Adam's song, Milton passes again to

epic narrative, describing the commissioning of Raphael and
the angel's journey to Eden, material impossible of repre-
sentation in a tragedy. He also sets the fictive scene of
the dialogue in some detail, portraying the approach of
Raphael and the laying out of a table of honor for him,
much of which could have been staged for a drama. Adam's
announcement of the angel's approach, for example,

Haste hither Egg, and worth thy sight behold

Eastward among those Trees, what glorious shape

Comes this way moving (V. 308-10),
is a conventional preparation for stage entrance. The tra-
gedy would have provided for Eve's early departure or left

her virtually without speech throughout the act, for the
dialogue with Raphael, like that in Adamus Exul, is exclu-

 

sively Adam's.

Among the most impressive similarities between the con-
versations in the two works is the order in which topics
of concern to Adam occur. Discussion in each work begins
with the angel's reminding Adam of the universal hierarchy.
In the play the angel acknowledges it in answer to Adam's
opening song of praise:

O te beatum, cujus in Praecordiis

Imago magni nobilis fulgent Dei,

Et cui, quod unum maximum at summum bonum est,
Rationis usus com Dei cultu datur.

Adame, quantum cerne praestes caeteris

Rebus creatis: Saxa et hos lapides vide:

Sunt ista, qua tu maximi authoris manu

Formata: nullos sed quibus tribuit parens

Natura motus (II. 332-40)

(Blessed art thou, within whose human breast there
shines/ The high and noble image of Almighty God,/ To

93

whom is given that sole and highest good of all -/
The use of reason join'd with piety towards God!/ Per-
ceive, 0 Adam, how thou dost surpass the rest/ Of
things created! For behold these rocks and stones,/
Form'd like thyself by the supreme Creator's hand:/ To
these, their parent Nature has assign'd no life,/ Nor
aught of movement.)

Trees, he continues, grow green and bear fruit but are sense-
less and suffer age (II. 340-44).”7 Birds, beasts and fish
are animate and sensible but lack mind, are incapable of rea-
son hence of religion (II. 345-53). But man,

praeter illa mortis expers et mali
Anima tributa est imperatrix sensunm.
Laudum suarum te Deus testem sacris
Parere jussis voluit, haec lex est data:
Tibi benignus reliqua, te fecit sibi (II. 355-9)
(... beyond these, is assign'd a soul, exempt/ From
death and sin, and mistress of the body's senses./ God
has ordain'd thee as a witness to extol/ And serve His
will; has given this law; all other things/ He kindly
made for thee, but made thee for Himself.)

In Paradise Lost the comment arises out of Adam's doubt con-
cerning the sufficiency of his food. It is sufficient, Rapha-
el says, because God created of

one first matter all,
Indu'd with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life;
But more refin'd, more spiritous, and pure,
As nearer to him plac't or nearer tending (V. 472-6).

Thus,

Flow'rs and their fruit
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual, give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding, whence the Soul
Reason receives (V. 482-7).

Milton's Adam is attracted by Raphael's statement that man

 

47Again, Grotius is careless of anachronism.

94
might ascend through the hierarchy if he "be found obedient“
(V. 513). Both angels find it convenient at this point to
talk of duty and will. Grotius' angel confirms Adams asser-
tion that God is boundless (II. 366-9) and continues,

Nostrae actioni temporum non competit

Mensura, semper non idem facimus tamen:

Incipimus, et desinimus: Haec absunt Deo.

Ab eo creati mortis immunes sumus.

Non vera scimus integre, non omnia,

Nihili futuri. Nostra rebus de bonis

Pendet voluntas: Mente ab illus bonum.

Adame nobis maxima est foelicitas

Hoc velle solum, quod Deus vult, et facit:

Parere jussis, sponte rectori obsequi (II. 401-10)

(No measurement of time is adequate to gauge/ Our action,
yet our action does not stay the same:/ For we begin and
end. These limits God transcends./ Fashioned by Him, we
angels are exempt from Death./ The Truth we know not ful-
ly, no, nor everything,/ And nothing of the future. Up-
on good our will/ Is all dependent; on His Mind all good
depends./ It is, 0 Adam, our supreme felicity/ Only to
will the thing that God may will and do,/ With swiftness
to obey our Master's governance.)

Upon the question of obedience Raphael is quite precise:

God made thee perfet, not immutable;

And good he made thee, but to persevere

He left it in thy power, ordain'd thy will
By nature free, not over-rul'd by Fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;

Our voluntary service he requires,

Not our necessitated, such with him

Finds no acceptance....

Myself and all th' Angelic Host that stand
In sight of God enthron'd, our happy state
Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds;
On other surety none; freely we serve,
Because we freely love (V. 524-39).

Raphael stresses that “To love or not; in this we stand or
fall“ (V. 540), and that “some are fall'n“ (V. 541). With
this the War in Heaven (V. 577-VI) is introduced. Milton's
dramatic plans had provided for the “battell and victorie in

95

heavn“ to be recounted as part of the chorus in the act
which introduced Lucifer. It is so handled by Grotius (I.
275-302), the conversation of the instructing angel being
confined to the Creation. It appears that when the conver-
sion of the play to narrative occurred, Milton saw the value
of the War as exemplary material and, starting perhaps with
the choral passages built up the narrative in successive
stages to its present magnitude. If this large mass is a
later interpolation, we might expect to discover, as before,
a resumption at its conclusion of material strongly similar

to that of Adamus Exul. This does, in fact, occur.

 

The angel of Adamus Exul, having cited the evidence of

 

God in things created, enjoins Adam to
rebus conditis

Utere magistris; quiquid est index Dei est (II. 413-14)

(Use as thy teachers then/ The things that He has

fashion'd. All are guides to God.)
The statement is an effective stimulus to Adam's curiosity
about the creation of those things:

Tacitus revolvo totus extra me feror,

Stupidusque rerum miror artificem Deum (II. 418-19)

(In wonder I am wholly rapt beyond myself/ And marvel

at the God that fashion'd everything.)
Curiosity in Milton's Adam derives from the same wonder as
he requests in Book VII that Raphael describesthe Creation
“the more/ To magnify his works, the more we know“ (VII. 96--
7). Both Adams are concerned about how long such a telling
might take; Grotius' asking it “si vacabit“ (II. 420), Mil-
ton's pointing out that “The great Light of Day yet wants to

run/ Much of his Race“ (VII. 98-9), and that perhaps “we can

96

bid his [Eleep'g7 absence, till thy Song/ En “ (VII. 107-8).
The relation of Grotius' angel follows naturally from his
advice that Adam “discere illum quem nihil rerum latet“ (II.
412), Raphael emphasises that he will impart such knowledge
as “best may serve/ To glorify the Maker, and infer/ Thee
also happier“ (VII. 115-17), appending a warning against in-
temperance in the quest for it (VII. 120-30).

What follows in each work is a short hexameron. The hex-
ameral form itself is so common and its elements so strictly
determined by Biblical chronology that the assertion of a
direct relationship between any two pieces is risky. But
there are enough major similarities between Milton and Gro-
tius here to underscore the importance of the minor ones,
and together they make a strong case.

The two pieces are, most importantly, angelic narratives.
By virtue of this, and of their location in the two works
between the introduction of the Adversary and the temptation,
their function in the dramatic progress is identical: each
serves to assist man in becoming sufficiently aware of him-
self and his relation to God to survive his impending trial.
In addition to this, however, the two accounts share such a
high proportion of likeness in the location within them of
commonly available concepts as to render the conclusion of

indebtedness almost inescapable.48 The only major difference

 

“8This is not to claim that where the accounts are alike
they are often different from all other accounts. Prece-
dents for every concept may be found with enough searching.

97

in the accounts is that in Paradise Lost Raphael spends

some time relating the announcement in Heaven of the Crea-
tion, recounting the triumphal return of the Son from the

War, and describing the commissioning of the Son as the ef-
fective agent of the Father's creative will (VII. 131-223).

At least the second of these, and perhaps the others, comes to
the narrative with the addition of the War in Heaven itself,
without which the events could not make sense to Adam.

Since evidence of the likeness of the two accounts is con-
vincing in a degree proportional to the thoroughness with
which the texts are compared, I have arranged the two works
in parallel text. Space prohibits comparison Of Milton and
Grotius to other hexameral poets with any completeness, but
I have noted those points where both Milton and Grotius
differ most from other poets in similar ways and those where
they differ significantly from one another in ways which sug-
gest Milton's independence from Adamus Exul. The degree to
which each adheres to the Biblical account is also noted in

its major fluctuations.

98

.Am>opm om .Qv mmuammsa no acmflamaeoc m.poamwa .eom:

c.wasa

damzqzoc pan .mmwz candy on» psoswsoane
spasm:

Hmpa> dam c.m:mca OSpAH> Hmpa> cn<
.dmoaampso

coo co cashew one ems“: mascoocn mam

3mm same ma.pmz on» :0 van
:mm "mump< .2» e.ac>oo
endomoaa
mmosxama "cao> use c.5aomms soups:
.aoasm
on» was» .coummao :.>mom 62» com mane
0:.6Hn03 o .oosoaomesoaao umsn as» on mane

.mcczon
as» use was» .U:Opxo new mace .edmm us<
.Oasomno zuacssmoan me> on» smzoasp dasom
6.:asp Lozuo on» can .dmausoo on poem Ono
“mmsHSp Umpmcao Ham use .omao>asb wane
Onaaomesopdc on .mEOpm Hmshoum m.eoc :H

mam c.amamaa .mommodaoo :Odaow 02p xoOp om

HH> .mm

 

lace cease osev

 

mm:.mOcOQ unmoamo flap Esau .oHcmE mama mama
m3: "psmnmpma oasezo
mHHHOE cause .m>ama macmma wwsmsoo
.aaca>acc ccamaae .sochc mneasoaa chads com
"moooa do unmanaoeo moaOQSm ma>ma ooz
H::.pnmpommoomm can» md>maw summon ammoaaoo

A.saoc sec to cream co ocscncmoe

.momzo 6.xpsq \mmmz moon on» mo mamoma>
soaaoa one case“: \.oHoa aosxm an coco
indent» unmpch pom \oso cognac as seen:
cme as no empaOQQSm \.m::: Emacmnooz
umoaw m.:o>mm£ Ohms» ....Uao ms» nu“:
cosmamn no: casosm wadscamon on» puma
\mosmgcaomau amaswsm o: and: msdpoonoam
\.ecmmsm cazmmoa accused :« macaw endow
m .coapoomaom \apom :a use .Hmzdo ma
(Hmooaaaoog 383 m3 39309.8 om museum
(Dam camaam new: .o.aaom pmaam mama onev
mm: momno Omeaom no .mHozq maoaxc panopmq
mpcomfi> manna maaoz cmessmoaa m>mosoo
.oHom asuamnmcaeaOp mucosa: moaam
asooaa Haaeow «so .mpasm «we penednom
an: wsanocz «Hooo mamas

one

.oficaoedaa m macaw ponenoaomfio oz
mamaonzuoaa measwnm waaazn .mcnspom
5:608 aumsfi ad manna .moacoaw muocmaom
.Hnam moamsdom cause coupon "canons:
om: page xoaaaam ompadsoc Headed “Ho:

HH .mm

99

pm cam: .mmma mesa m ousH \Oemam mm emu
tomaeoo .oaoaacuuapao gm SH :.>aan \.ocmaa
mu“ :6 them d.soHpmpm no» no: em: oasumz
....mmmz msoHoono on» Scam \mHOmua scam
(and: came msncsonueamaa been com on caev

mam .po: mmz mu: comm pHNSH HHHDoe dacoo muncaaoo
sum csHQESp campac no .msoaomsem mspapacm
on» pom pom .csoHo psmfiema 6 ca c.aosam maacnpcm mfiom cacao» sesame» mpowoo
.smwcn eooaw made on» swsoasp mosason ca Sousa a“ smmmwe cow mean-m .Ecnac monomcom
pmmm cedpmz pane eancOxO ma non .Opoeaoa uaafl<
no: scam use .QOOQ can some wssamm omso means a“ assam Haw “umamooa Emst
mean no: coca panda oadxoaa Sacco: manuwz

cosmmmOpcazv .mmzanp mo pmaam .HmoaOSum
mam camaq aces ....cammsfi scamH cameooom

(Space use .600 each .uswaq on open» pea Ho: mama Edameficza OHoz Humane we csvmuH

A.o>m3 on» com:
cocooam \.moma:oc wsaaocsmz mud a“ mean
.o:H>H© 62mm on» an c.8aom \.maogmmoaum

Os» masocozm “mmosxame hxase sud; \usonm
paaw smoco an a“ mecca: mea pupae p<
\mo>mz canes» a“ cowaOEQSm mmsazp whoa»
“pswaoz s30 mud mm \e.mmcaamo .npamm do
i>Hooca .maxm on» on psoomno< \.dwoap so:
pcom mSp scan: :0 .HHO mo pawn amoecaa
case ....eaa sea one: sea: amass» econ
.pmopw sad: com3maoo mwSHSp Hamam \.pmms
pso>acm spa: pecan among .uoz Spas c.wHa
one: mw:H£p man \.:oHpmpm aoswds Lacs»

.ws:: on needs no» now can mwuHSp unwaq \uuso

causoo he: so v.0:mHmnimaom Spamm ©s< cepmamQOm seen no» no: em: a>moz mwcasev
.aa¢ on» p30 csnm amczpmn use .cOpawamaa mm: Omens pasnzosH
com-Q Hmao>om mawmp aOnHH handmazc new mspmenom

on amen on» .Oxaa on mmzanp Oxaq same cza>a© cpansm .maan0:Op cpocao
c.90stoo came pmpoomouaaoc macs: a“ mmaOaQSm

son» .cmdssom son» “mafia on Omao>d< macHQaSu OSHAQ maaa "paaooon Bounce

 

amuse HmaammsH daoo msooamppmp xcman one can ammmcammo mamusoq “we mandmsoo

100

.eoc 3o: o mo Hoawam on» mpsaoa aonpo no ..cpo x.poq .efiom coo cs<e
mo HH.H no ocqoaooaao on» en doamda maonaom mos weapoau .muw.a mo pounce poaaafim on»
sea: 0H dam m.H mo noupoa on» moooaa seas: .noo mo mnacooa odapsoooo eao> o ma maseom

scm “easom csoom has» co
No>noo pooaeopps one on uazoaao :H

c.m5eefio .afi< Hopcosoam .usoaoawnoae

.oasa .dazwda mo omaogxo.u:oeoaaam one

oboe coo cam "maopoz onu acne maopoz one
ocaeac ca eoH eds .maoccz one case

How psoeoeaem on oposp poH .oaom coo .saow<

 

 

unwaz mp c.HHoQEoo .mod oeom was» so ...v

mam sumac uoaoapmaoa canoe sacs: osvoHooo
.aosuaa wanes no .momsoao pope monHaOpuaq
mecca poeocassfi mode menopaumoe pm

.oo5do psomoanoooa om monao no .oaaoa cH

dam omaoa amasmeoo ooze eoeoo cos ...
.Aaemvmee

.aao mo macawoa oops» on» no moapaefipoo

on» no scammSOmae Spas oozsausoo mzapoaov
A.oa:pmeoa cocsogmzm oaon

pH \.mpswaos one mmoaoo chocoo :30 one

no mnacoopno es< \.ooHo> max on 6.:oxaoos

aa< .zoaon oaos maopoz scam \opono moooae
on» mac 930 uswfie hos» omega on» a“ pose
\.moooaa soaao: me enough on UHSOSm Lao pmo>
on» non» ds< \menaz waaaoesoz Spas coda

(zooo on ooodm muaao pose \onoaeoo osa>ao
oeow coo .spnom on doaadpoa szoe aoszv

mma moaosdaa pdxo>
modsosoa asoom opao 2H cape: manomeaa

xosop opoosoe oHHH “moaoooe monogzm

canoes“ no poaoaoaom when: maddoa and

.macoa Hosomxo opoo mHSOo> onuESpmo>

.memo> aaoaaoa oupomm measo oesonH

mma ozoa pamooooam ooze canoe opusocom

Ammo cmoooo onpv

A.:oa0p weapoa o no macaw condos
:H ozone pH \.psosoahae on» mo wnaaoosz
pedzm on» SH uswsoo 6:4 \pmom on» :H soosoa

101

A.£paom

6oom o>HH haone \pmoo 6cm .zopw on com

Ion 6noeeoo mam no nos» omone \.Qom wcaos6
indispaoo: spa: :oonm mmsdaam mmoaw aoeo

(can: \.meaoae msaacsoae one excoeon oooam

mam meooa ao>opos3 \"muasae space pswzoam
.zuaom on» son: eaomaon a“ ma 6oom omonz mpoa6o m.6oo .eo6 wsdzoaaom on» soapv
n6sflx no: oaocanm

popmo agape wsd6aoem ooae passe 62¢ Ed6a>fi> no .pmo onoomoao asefiaa ommzn case

.6oom wna6aoam

nona> onoeflpSHom oosd ocean onaos um

naom .mmoao uao6ao> on» space pom .uamop momsoo mO6HaoHe coaaow onuszo6053

mom acocm .ac cog ...
mwN uzxm

on» 6aoomo once has» .m6soao on» once

o>oonas

mxoon oaon 6ooan has» 6am .pzomaoem
aoonao owss msaoussoz on» maouoe6oeeH
.aoonao 6soq ma6 poH 6so .oooam oao ousH
:.>oom ao6cz maouoz oz 30: 6.ao£pow om

.eace

60¢ sons .oESpmoa Hoanow so“: opoapom
.o>Hoosoo on aonpoz pooaw on» 6oucoeaom
.oooHo to: Has msaa.ceoe toss: chenaoad

ago: Sud:

use .oaea oos .e.onc ascoo one:

mum suaom mo oooe on» HHo po>o

mam .oH6 uaxz6oaa ommsn apnosvom mapczam

 

lace cause once

A.exo on» 0»

Bowen 6oxo: no: 6.Hoo>oa sumom zone \.moaogm
an 6onapomszoaao 6cm mxson an ad 6.88o: .ao

6o>oz \.6o6oon 6o: pmao mos» scan: osodwon

ooosu pmoa wna>o£ 62¢ \.msooapm 6am moon 0»

6.aaoe oaoz nuaom on» mo muons: one \.o:a>«6

 

 

.mn .o .Aommn .nwaanancmv nasmono .m .< .6o .nanozyiuonmoenem an .Hmumm .H

 

.mnooz onn>na .nooz nonnm .mon nnnsom

=.omonn no mnonw 6no cam onn onoe 6n6 .mnnoa one \omoeo

wnnmmonq 6no .nn 6o6n>n6 omao no \unnwnnn mononon omonn nnnz wnnaonm m.n>oom 6onmnnnou
\.nnwnn nonn no noonnwna wnnnooaom .606: nonn mane mnnogon on: .oonnomsa m.nonoo>aem .moem

Nam ....ecm nnmnpp sen: coneosdn
6nson

nounnon .nn Ham 6no .moa no nnowom
omm .noom mo:

neon mSOHAOHw onn nmom mnn nn nonnm

men .nemnq
3on6 can: n.6Hom annn nn .wnnnnomom

muonm nonno nnonnsom nnnn on no nonnnm

men ....cnmnq ensonn one xsncc one
o>nooon on mdonoa o6os .nno m.n:m onn nH
6.0on

6no .onnnnm m6soao non acne 6onnoaamnone
.noon on name nonoonw onn non en nnwnn no

m "3”on o no
nonnn a.>com one ancnm sen: 6.:om one
.mnonm no o63nnnwoa mno>o 6am .omonoao
noon onn

6.saon son» “canon neoconem no nmsone
.nmane

oaomnnwnan: .6.eonm on ononam mnnmne n
nzm

3mm one emann menace Hmnnmonoo no con

man ....accnnc ecmnz an when one

.moo en oasn o>on on nonoonm onn .noz oe
om: unnn non
63m noonw “onnwnq noonm ozn o6oa 600 6n<

 

 

nnnm asnnononn onHEO6 annoon onsn 6om

"ono6n6 oHooo omaoa onao nonzemno

nonsn asmnoean manso .non6 nonoom

.55605 nanooam nn nn66on eonoaoc mannoe
men ncneaoe enema anemone

A.6.3oaaon nwoz \mnonm

onn no nOHnoono one .nnnno wnnaonnc nnnz
\nm6na onn nn 6.aonno nonn oeoan .nonno

6am nno em \6no> nnoH ooomm onn nn 6no
nonnm wnnaooam nnnz 6.6onmnnnsm \.nnoaoennn
nwoaaon onn nnoonon 6oxom mos oponam «v

mmn noo EdnSoom msao
ezno6nw coon nmoa anuoesoae nn>oazooo on6oz
ozm annnomm canonno poo no nonno<

nnonozcna assoo> o366ozv .EOnwn nn>onn<

«mm onoaw aaooo sowanSw spawnn mango

name season cane

103

II. .30Hon manned .Q
oom umaua .HHH> .Am nnnz nOmnnoQEoo pom .nnnoa mnnn no womanaoo 6no mnOnnoHHonmnoo
Honomoom monomn6 Adamnmoounv nnwnoa nonoonw no monnomda 6:6 Ammimmm .HHV mannonomn

.nzm onn on Ammmmnv eno>oqe 6nd Ammmmnv eomsomme mo owao nooe
onn 0n mnonon on .eooonw m.nonnonm znn no 6ozonnon n06noaam= m.nooE .monnomsn .momm

 

.nnnom onn o>ono man Hzom noH 6:4 .won> n6n56na manoo monnoa onooom

"Hsom wnnno monoSHo> no nnmmdh "moomnm ononoz

mnn>na .nno6nsno nzoam nnnz oHanom ononm mannoeoe ozamon .osomsnnnonsq
onononow How .mzooa

muonoz onn noH .6nom 606 6n¢ moonnn> no .noszz .moneo non nnomsm

 

name nnnnn onnv

A.mnzoon nnnz Eoon onn mnon
unonm \n06noaam nmoaase non Hann .oonon6on
6o6nson on ozonw 6n< \nn enoaw wnnmoaao onn
mxanac one .asm ecmnan one no \nncd sceon
onn nnosnno ooonm an mnaoz onm non: 6:4
\"mmonnnwnnn 6.:onnon nnnz monnnm 6no neon
own .monnno onm m.nonnonn non mnnoan3m \eaomnon .nnwnn onn no
Chan non nmom onn nn nonn .nnwnn HHne mmonnmns .no>ozon .noo: one \.mnm onn moonoo
mmoox o6naw nonn mnonm nonno onn connomno \omno85n
oononmn6 nonn Hannm 6:6 .noommo nonn nH nmoe oonowaseon nnnz 6no zo6 onn woese nH
onon \“nonnna mnnnmoae o nnwna mo nnnoo onn no
6o6oon onm nnmna nonno non .EHn eonm noon ozonmom \onnm 6n>noenoa m.nzm onn ...v
nsmnq no: mmm mmacaeoson nceasm
wnnzonnon oooe Haze nnnx .nonnna mnm nonnn manoan n: .nnMn6op Eonno nn onOHmom
now mo: oon> onnmoaao mnaom onoonm oeHo osdESO
nmoz 6.HHo>oH nn onnmoaao nan mm.ooon ononao no6noHQm noESH ononsm

mam .dooz one nnmnao when

 

104

.manoHnEnm mnoonn nonn

on nonnz .Hzom wnnnOHnnoa onomon Amenia .mv .moHnEnm o>Hnosnnmnn ozonoESS wnnmnoom
(nonnn .nmnm no m6nnn mnnoe manoon mouneonn on: .monnomsn nmn6oaoeoeono onn .eodm

mom nnnom
men so c.nnennnss on axon one non one
"annn

mnonoz onn maoonnm wnnnnsn 6no monoq 6n<

whom one an can .nndnenss .Hsnnnsnn om
mom .wnneom .eonn

6.mwoan 6no .6oow mo: nn nonn 3mm 6n<

:mm Nmn6nnn
mnn nonno.wnn3 no 6nnm no>o 6n<
.m6nnn nnnn en 6onononow mnonoz one

eHmSOHnnoHQ

n0nn3 .naono nonn nooo .wnn>na asom
nooo 6no

.moaonz noonw onn 6onoono 600 6n<
.n.>oon

no nnoeoennm n.mo onn no 6.eoagmnn
own“: nnnz

 

 

.onoomn> mnnmn6n6noo oEHo nn onnmoaoa
mznnxom mnnmns osaoozd .moanno one63Hoxm
monnmnn mn>o no .oaonom monnmo> onowsn
oddosc monossn no .onnowonc oHoE onOnoz
mosh monnoESm oddoosw mam: nn onnoEnan
“mannoo> nn>ononaeoo mansooaao on:

mac .msca
oonnxo6 msgo oonmoa nono6n> 5:0 5oz

A.mnowon .monmnnson .mno

unon:d .mzonw .maooe nonn Hsoo < \.6.nwnm
(mo mo: in mon6on wnn>na no oaaecnnnm nonnm
\iu ance wnn>na o nooo oe .nnnw m.on:noz
oHnnnom nwsonne \o6oe on mononm 6no women
nnononen6 6nomsonn o nn 6.Enom \.nooo on
m6nnn 6nomsonn o "mnnm non: 6onnoaasm \ow
nonn m6oonn eaoom onn Haw 6no .oHonz ennwna
one \.oom mnHEoon onn no mnonmnoe 6onoono
on none \.nno 6n36na onn no nOnmon mmoHnnoQ
6no nmnn one \o>ooHo mnOHnHQ wnnnooan no
mason onn o6on on omnsonnq \MEnSm on .mo6nn
nonSH en one 6no on nzon6 moon 6n< \monoa em
(moaw 6cm meoonnm nn .nmne o6on annom onev

HH6 noonoong
no .nnHo .nonowo> .nowso .nnnnom oozd

.ESHnno>n> nmo eznoanoo wmoonnng oEnoe ooze
.ono6 nmo oEHno oneswnnm "mSKSH onno6onm
mono onznoz oHHnE esnonow odomonoom
.mnazmnnw monooam oHHne "EdnH3n oddmna<
.msnom Esnowneaosvm oneo no “onoo omnoEEH
manoa n6n30oom onnmnoa nn>oono ownm

105

 

.Azoaononnmma .Q oomv asxm mzeo6¢ nn nnoanom onn no nnoem6zn onn no
omnomnon monoe nonnz Eonnonnoono no nn 6oHno> on nn nan .enonn Onnoeon6 on mos mnnewm

.=Hoome on onennn6o manoo nn eoazome no nOHno6EoEo

eoHnnom onn nnOQQSo 6Hsoz Anew .006 .HHV mnnnoa HoHHonoc no =oEnnoe no om: .manonmmm

one: on

em: ones; cameo can: one
mm: ....ecnx anoSn an scam
.nnncm one no
nmoom 6no .mmnenn wnnaoono 6no oHnnoo
.cenx no: an
manenn nmnsom :nnon manna noncm .nn non
one ence coo

 

 

m6nnn 6on6nzn < \.oeo3 zoaaon 6no 30H en om
mnnomnom 6on6nsn < \o6on nonoono onn 600V
mmo oeaeoo onnoen<
mznnnno6nnn> no onoomoa .mn>enm ononnm
monon mnnasonn nnmofih m mansoo o6nonn>
.nonnm noazz no .onomow anonoe Ednnoo

.onn> monnoenom onn mnno>oo Ednnoo

2mm moon nnmmsn nonn6noo

name means onnv

 

n.=”soa omen

onn no moeoz onn dane mos none mmoannzoo 6n<
nnnoo Eonn wnnnmm eoe m6nnn 6.noneznns nonn
no6no nH \.nnnon Eonn mnnnn eoe so» nOmoom
oz6 nn nonn .o>nooone \.neos nnonwong onn nn
nonnson on eozo ononm sow \xom mo noo onn

nn mnnamnne nonno nonnz nonn 6n< \.mwmo nn
ow60H nonn mason wnn>na nso nonon .wnnnam
-nno con: \nnannnss cam omconoen .anso an
no» nonoonw zone \nomz nomonm men non nooo
.6oon so» 6ooe onn onon .oce \"oononon:

mnnn nnnz Hononago onn>n6 6o0no> on \.6non
mnanEHo mnn mo nnoz onn zoo 606 non: nomv
omonaom mo6nz nnooHQEn moomnm ozonnmo>

.mo>o nnnmmoa Henmoso oesn no no oonoEonnH
.onanon nn onSnn66on onosn ono>nom

106

mmm .Hsom
wnn>na o no.5ooon donn 62o .mmonnxm
606 no omoEH onn nn .oonn 6onoono
oon oonH n30 mnn nn “onnq no nnoonn one
6.nnoonn
mannnoon enn nn 6no .6ndonw onn no noon
awn as: o mono .scee .oonn e.snon on

can .nmon onn nno>oo

ononoo nnonm nnnz nnwnnnz 6no .onononm mnn

noono nnmne .nOmoom no ennnonom nnnz

6.:6no non .monSnoono nonno mo onsnm 6n<

onone non onz ononoono o “on06 no» HHo no
6no onn

mom .nnoz nonmoz onn no» 6onno3 onone

on: "noonw
excess: eon menonn one on onnnco one
"6.xnmz
eonn .omon eonn mnnom nn moone onn wnoe<
“see no cxcnm .noncnne an .ennz phonon on

 

A.nmon onn
mos nOnnoono nmoH man nonn wnnEnoHoonm
\.mo6 nnno>om neon onn non: nonn 6onwon
cm \.nachsnm no whosoxnn one on mean
o6oa 6on 6cm non3 \mmnnnn nonoonw monnnmo6
(one oonononnsoo anon omonz \oonn Eonn
oesononnnc Hmsnnn nnonn an .scee .mnnev
emo .Hnnnn manoe cannas mzmmon oomnoom
on6 ononom oEnnaoo nn>on56 .mdoa
ozm EdnsnEn onnmoEn nommoono soc .oe
msnnnonoe nonnnmo6 omen confine Sosa

mme .nsc
(nonnn6 on o 6056 coon nmo annnon oeo6<

A.nnnoo onn non: 6.xnn noeo on oonoew
nnonn Hao .noz \.eno onn onono mo6ono
onn 6no ono>oon onn nnonn oe \ooeo nnonn
omnon non ono6 6no .oeon o56 nnonn mo nnnoo
no \n306 noon6oonm noon omonn Heo ...V
mmw .oaoo Edznonnoq oxnn «noon onnnoo
mOEO6 monmoeooo ozono .mSnH:> ononnonoz
oaon nno6zo mono con .Eonnon onone oozd

0mm eonnnoa nnonoono ononSO

Anmenonn

noonw onn nH \noom on 6oon nnonn m6non
6no .m6oos 6.HHnnns onn nH \no6no3 mnooon
6Hn3 onn o6on on .6no>o nose mSOnnsoo
one \.nnenon 600 nn .nno6 eono> ooonz

107

It is just here that Raphael offers the second of his
three warnings. This alone of the three bears no connection
with the warning Eve refers to having overheani(IX. 273 ff.).
The first specifically mentions Satan, “Who now is plotting
how he may seduce/ Thee also from obedience“ (VI. 901-2). It
thus accords with Eve's later acknowledgment “that such an
Enemy we have, who seeks/Our ruin (IX. 274—5). The third
warning (VIII. 630 ff.) shares with Eve's reference the sub-
sequent evening departure of the angel.

But it would be rash to conclude with Gilbert (see p. 88above)
that Eve refers to the warning of Book VI, after which the
angel might originally have departed. In fact, there is every
reason to believe that ggng of the present warnings is the
“original“, the one Eve heard. What has happened is that an
originally continuous body of material, concluding with a warn-
ing, has both increased and multiplied until it is now three
discreet units whose shapes are determined by their contentual
differences and by the conclusion of each with a warning kgygg

to its peculiar themg. Thus the account of the War in Heaven

 

concludes with a warning against God's adversary, now man's.
The hexameral narrative concludes with Adam's placement in
“This Garden, planted with the Trees of God“ (VII. 538), and a
warning against the tasting of the fruit of one of those trees.
Adam's account of Eve's creation, betraying as it does a touch
of excessive passion, is quite appropriately concluded with a

warning against that particular aspect of his nature. The

108
original warning would have been far more inclusive than
any of these theme-related warnings, or at least more general.
There are other oddities in Eve's reference in Book IX,
however. She stipulates that her arrival at the scene of dis-
course had been roughly coincidental with the departure of the
angel,
As in a shady nook I stood behind
Just then return'd at shut of Ev'ning Flow'rs
(IX. 277-8).
Since her ministry at table (V. 443 ff.) is evidently uninter-
rupted until just prior to Raphael's discourse concerning celes-
tial motions (VIII. 40 ff.), she must have been present for the
first two warnings. This is inconsistent with both her later
reference and with Raphael's injunction in the first warning
that Adam “warn/ Thy weaker“ (VI. 908-9), apparently absent.
This last lg consistent with the narrator's statement that
The affable Arch-angel, had forewarn'd

Adam by dire example to beware
Apostasy (VII. 41-3),

 

but again, inconsistent with the immediate indication that

He [Adam7 with his consort Eve
The story heard attentive (VII. 50-1),

and with Adam's use of first person plural at VII. 70-97. The
reason given for Eve's departure at VIII. 40 ff., is no less
strange. Her preference for the conversation of Adam over that
of the angel is a beautiful touch in itself, but it jars with
her having endured nearly two thousand lines of Raphael's
narrative before leaving. Finally, a minor point, Milton

includes no indication of Eve's presence when the angel does

109
depart at the end of Book VIII.

If Adamus Exul is viewed as the model for the original

 

dialogue of Adam with the angel, all these difficulties be-
come explicable with a minimum of speculation. In the play,
at the conclusion of the hexameral story, a point exactly
analogous to that at which the second warning occurs in ngg—

dise_Lost, the angel does depart just at the approach of Eve:

 

Sed ad te euntem conjugem video tuam

Abibo, quo me munus appellat meum (II. 638-9)
(But now I see thy wife draw near to where we stand./ I
shall depart, whither my duty calls me forth.)

There is no warning in Adamus Exul, however, and here it is

 

necessary to speculate. If in his own tragedy Milton had
deviated from Grotius in including a four or five line warn-
ing, just prior to this, it would be that warning to which

Eve would later refer. Her approach at this point, of course,
would mean that she had been absent from the dialogue with the

angel as in Adamus Exul. That her presence during it in Para-

 

dise Lost is a late addition to the story accounts for the

 

inconsistencies related to the warnings and also for the fact
that only once in the whole of his discourse does Raphael ad-
dress Adam and Eve together,57

Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit
Improv'd by tract of time, and wing'd ascend (V. 497-8),

and this is ambiguous, since it may refer to Adam and his

 

57He includes her in his salutation, of course (V. 388-90),
but this is outside the substance of the dialogue, in the very
context in which the narrator elaborately stipulates her
presence 0

110
progeny ("men“, V. 493). The inclusion of “warn thy weaker“
might better have occurred in a warning unheard by Eve.
What then of Adam's description of the creation of Eve?
If it follows her arrival and the simultaneous departure of

the angel, as it does in Adamus Exul, it can only be addressed

 

after the manner of Grotius to Eve herself. Indeed, this
makes far more sense than addressing it to Raphael as Adam

does in Paradise Lost, for in its present context it requires

 

the person least likely to know what happened to tell one who
has already demonstrated that he knows pretty much everything
outside the mind of God. The first problem Milton solves ad-
mirably through the mechanism of Adam's vision of the event.
Far less satisfactory is his accounting for Raphael's ignor-
ance.58 First the dream:

Mine eyes he clos'd, but op'n left the Cell

Of Fancy my internal sight, by which

Abstract as in a trance methought I saw,

Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape

Still glorious before whom awake I stood (VIII. 460-64).
This is, on the whole, a very happy solution to the problem
of Adam's knowledge.59 Grotius follows Gen. 2.21, apparently
unmindful of the problem raised by Adam's relation of the

event:

 

58The pointless scouting mission of Raphael (VIII. 229-46)
has often been cited as evidence of Milton's capricious God.
But the implications for His character here are the incidental
costs of changing Adam's auditor.

59A dream during Eve's formation is traditional, but it is
not invariably a dream of her formation (see Evans, Ch. V1,
p. 169 ff.). Henry More uses the dream in the Conjectura Cab-
balistigg, which Evans (p. 263) believes “is the basis of Mil-
ton's description in Paradise Lost“.

 

 

111

dumque securum quies
Profunda tenuit, ultimo dorsi loco
Succincta geminis terga qua lumbis patent,

Hac parte costam corpori eripuit meo (11. 665-8)

(... and while profoundest sleep/ Then held me fast, God
from the soft base Of my back,/ Where girt about with
double loins my waist extends,/ Tore out a bloody rib
from that part of my body.)

The passage in Paradise Lost, excluding the five lines estab-

 

lishing the dream state of Adam, is very similar:
117 Dazzl'd and spent, sunk down, and sought repair
Of sleep, which instantly fell on me, call'd
By Nature as in aid, and clos'd mine eyes.

Zfié7 stooping op'n'd my left side, and took

From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits warm,

And Life-blood streaming fresh (VIII. 457-9, 465-7).
The poets share a deviation from the Biblical account in the
specification of the bloodiness of the rib,60 and each adheres
to it in noting the closing of the wound: "wide was the wound,/
But suddenly with flesh fill'd up and heal'd“ (VIII. 467-8);
"Vacuumque hiatum carne supplevit Deus" (II. 669) [TGod) fill'd
the vacant cavity again with flesh_7.61

Events leading up to the creation of Eve are no less similar

in the two accounts. In each the tradition is followed that

Adam's naming of the beasts revealed to him his own loneliness.‘>2

 

60Cf. also More (quoted in Evans) and DuBartas (6, 1040 ff.),
who do not include it.

61More (loc. cit.) notes this; DuBartas (loc. cit.) does not.

620f. DuBartas: "God therefore, not to seem less liberall/
To Man, then else to every Anima11;/ For perfect patern of a
holy Love,/ To Adam's halfe another halfe he gave“ (6, 1024-
27). The tradition in which Milton and Grotius write is de-
rived from the suggestion in Gen. 2.20.

112

Among unequals what society

Can sort, what harmony or true delight?
Which must be mutual, in proportion due
Giv'n and receiv'd (VIII. 383-6);

Quam bene putavit, nulla quem fugiunt Deus

Non posse vera me frui sine compari

Felicitate: semper animos dulcior

Tangit voluptas, sorte quam gratus pari

Socius frequentat: ista natura est boni (II. 648-52)
(How well has God, whom nothing can escape, consider'd/
That I without a mate could not enjoy a true/ Felicity!
Spirits are ever touch'd more sweetly/ By that delight
which kindly comradeship redoubles/ With equal lot. This
is the nature of true good.)

Milton's Adam, of course, is here relating part of his conver-
sation with his Maker, a circumstance which permits a far more
extensive and richer treatment of such matters as the relative
imperfection in man that he should need "Collateral love, and
dearest amity" (VIII. 426). The need Of “animos“ (II, 650)

for community is so generalized in Adamus Exul as to suggest

 

that God himself might be imperfect in this respect.

It is not simply community or amity that Adam feels upon
awakening to Eve's presence, however, but the beginnings of
that over-fondness which is to be his undoing. Raphael's
third warning, “with contracted brow", is prompted by the sort
of touchingly ingenuous first disclosure of psychological
weakness which is a feature of well-constructed drama:

here passion first I felt,
Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else

Superior and unmov'd, here only weak
Against the Charm of Beauty's powerful glance

(VIII. 530—33).
Just such weakness shows in Grotius' Adam, who recalls to Eve

his first sight of her

113

Somnus reliquit, ex meis, uxor tua
Formata membris astitit species mihi,
Quam cum viderem, languidos artus adhuc
Stupor Occupavit, flamma quem solvit nova,
Et amoris ignis (11. 671-5)

(... the former sleep/ Deserted me, and thy form, 0 my
wife, stood by./ Fashion'd in beauty from my proper
flesh and blood;/ And when I saw thee, sweet amazement
seized upon My still inactive limbs; a new flame
melted me/ With all the fires of love.)

Eve's response in Adamus Exul is an important part of the dra-

 

matic irony here, for it forecasts her later need to include
Adam in her own altered state:

Felicitatis magna pars, aut unica
Vir est maritae: dulce nunc quiquid mihi est
Te sine nocebit (II. 682-4)

(Her husband, to a wife, is happiness' chief part,/ Her
one true joy. Whatever now in me is sweet,/ Without
thee would be bane.)

The depth of irony in her statement is further extended by
our knowledge that its truth will come to her only after she
has violated it in seeking the virtues of the fruit. The
same sentiment, of course, leads directly to Adam's ruin, and
in Paradise Lost a virtual paraphrase of its expression by
Grotius' Eve comes from his lips:

I wak'd

To find her, or forever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure (VIII. 478-80).

The effect of this is to make much clearer in Paradise Lost

 

the extent of Adam's culpability in the impending Fall. Milton
achieves a balance of blame scarcely approached by his prede-
cessors. Even Grotius undercuts.his excessively enamored Adam
with his steadfast Adam of Act III and his suffering husband

of Act IV.

Among those other elements in Paradise Lost which further

 

114
the balancing of blame is a passage imbedded in the two nar-
ratives of creation. Adam's inquiry concerning celestial
motions establishes him as a potential over-reacher, one
whose speculative curiosity would, if unchecked by reasonable
humility render him.

in things that most condern
Unpractic'd, unprepardd and still to seek (VIII. 196-7).

His question and Raphael's answer, whatever they may indicate
about Milton's own views on astronomy,63 serve this dramatic
purpose very well indeed. Grotius' treatment of astronomy
takes the form of a simplistic account by the angel of the
seasonal relevance of the constellations and the “motus duo"
of the seven planetary spheres.6“ The first of these Raphael
approves,
for Heav'n

Is as the Book of God before thee set,

Wherein to read his wond'rous Works, and learn

His Seasons, Hours, or Days, or Months, or Years

(VIII. 66‘9)O

The second, however, like the issue of the centrality of Earth,
is treated with perhaps too much defensive energy, as by a man
without an answer satisfactory even to himself:

God to remove his ways from human sense,

Plac'd Heav'n from Earth so far, that earthly sight,

If it presume, might err in things too high,

And no advantage gain. What if the Sun

Be Centre to the World, and other Stars
By his attractive virtue and their own

 

63They suggest that “Milton took a conservative, almost ob-
scurantist position“, (R. M. Adams, p. 170).

6“This occurs in the context of their creation. See p. 103.
n. 53 above.

115

Incited, dance about him various rounds?

Thir wandring course now high, now low, then hid,

Progressive, retrograde, or standing still (VIII.

119-27).
This exchange was evidently interposed late between the two
narratives of creation. These were once contiguous and
formed one act of Milton's tragedy as they do of Grotius'.
This accounts for the original 1667 edition's arrangement
as Book 7 of the present Books VII and VIII, the impulse
being to transpose units of material as units even though
in their final form they produced a book of 1289 lines,
nearly four hundred lines longer than the average, exclud-
ing Book 10, in that edition.65 The division of Book 7
(1667), like that of Book 10, resulted primarily from Mil-
ton's late recognition of how bulky the originally manageable
unit had become; but it had other dividends as well. It em-
phasizes the refrain-like quality of Raphael's warnings, each
of which now falls at the end of a book, and it isolates in
Bobh VIII those passages in which Adam's susceptibilities
are most clearly revealed.

With Raphael's warning against passion and his evening de-

parture, Book VIII concludes. This is the third and final

segment of the conversation between man and angel. I have

hypothesized that in its tragic-dramatic stage Paradise Lost

 

contained a single warning, at a point coincidental with the

arrival on the scene of Eve, aftererICh the angel departed.

 

65Book 10 (1667), since 1674 Books XI and XII, had 1545 lines.

116
The relation of Eve's creation to her instead Of to the angel

would have followed this as it does in Adamus Exul. With the

 

end of Book VIII, then, we reach the end of material removed
from a context immediately posterior to Book VII's hexameron.
Further evidence that this is so is afforded by the circum-

stance that both the second warning in Paradise Lost (VII.

 

542-7) and Adam's account of Eve's creation in Adamus Exul

 

(11. 640-81) are followed by choral hymns of the Creation.

This in the play is just that long chorus (146 lines) which
would be expected to conclude the act, but it is joined by

Adam and Eve, who alone sing the last six lines:

Aeternumque modis sacris

Indulgere juvabit,

Gaudioque maximo

Tollere in astra Deum.

Si quid erit malorum

Benignus ille tollet,

Sanctorumque Chorus modulabitur omnis Allelvia (II. 835-
41) (I, too, shall sing and shall rejoice58/ To hail the
Eternal One in sacred measures;/ To praise Him to high
heaven with my voice/ Will e'er surpass the rarest of all
pleasures./ If there in me be aught of ill,/ May he re-
move it by His gracious wi11,/ While all the heavenly
host sing "Hallelujah” still!)

As is the case with the choruses generally, very little simi-
larity to Paradise Lost can be seen. Such passages would have

been absorbed into both dialogue and narrative statement in

 

68Whether 'juvabit' is a typographical error in Kirkconnell
or appears in Grotius, the translation in first person is clear-
ly appropriate in light of the rest of the passage. There is
no third person possibility beyond God, who is being praised
(837-8), and the Chorus, which should be plural and which is
referred to by this speaker (840).

117

Paradise Lost, but a few traces may remain. The angel chorus

 

quoted by Raphael in Book VI devotes about half its length

to praise of Jehovah as the Thunderer who defeated the “Giant
Angels“, half to the creator of the world and man; but it
ends with as direct an application to Adam and Eve as does
the chorus of the play:

Thrice happy men,

And sons of men, whom God hath thus advanc't,
Created in his Image, there to dwell
And multiply a Race of Worshippers
Holy and just: thrice happy if they know
Thir happiness, and persevere upright.

So sung they, and the Empyrean rung,
With Halleluias (VII. 625-7, 630-34).

 

AE, Act IV; PL, Bk. IX

 

Act IV of Adamus Exul sheds a great deal of light on Gro-

 

tius' handling of Act II. The Biblical account of the Temp-
tation accords nicely with classical dramatic practice in
providing an action in two phases, two of its principals ap-
pearing in sequence to engage the third. Thus an obvious
movement of the drama can be achieved with a minimum of pres-
ent speakers at any one time. Grotius appears to have de-
signed Act II in two similar phases (Adam with Angel, Adam
with Eve) as a structural parallel which underscores the polar
difference between the visits of the Heavenly and Hellis

spirits. Comparisons with Paradise Lost reveal that the al-

 

tered dynamics of the story in its narrative form permitted

Milton to sacrifice this sort of parallel with little Cost

118

compared to the dramatic benefits of extending the angelic
visit to a point just prior to the Temptation itself.

But Book IV, postpones the Circumstance of the central
dramatic occurrence in order to present more richly the de-
veloping relationship of Adam and Eve. The conversation of
the First Pair provides an effective heightening of tension
prior to the climactic scene, and at the same time contri-
butes to the case against Adam. His submission to Eve's will
is as important as her assertion of it.

Space is also afforded here for sufficient reintroduction
of Satan to compensate his very long absence in the late nar-
rative version of the work. His selection of the serpent as
that creature "which of all/ Most opportune might serve his
wiles" is based, like the earlier use of the anachronistic
predators, on the natural behavior of this beast,

for in the wily Snake,
Whatever slights none would suspicions mark,
As from his wit and native subtlety
Proceeding, which in other Beasts observ'd
Doubt might beget of Diabolic pow'r (IX. 91-5).
Stressing thus the “sleights”, the wily and subtle movements
of the serpent, Milton avoids both the imputation to him of
67

complicity in the crime and the simple anachronism of Grotius.

The complexity of Satan's character is reaffirmed as he exper-
iences the delight in the Garden and the hatred of its Creator,

that "seige/ Of contraries" (IX. 121-2) so fully portrayed by

 

67Whose Satan remarks in Act I (226-7). "Et qui venenum maxi-
mum spirat draco/ Majis loquetur" So shall the snake, most venom-
ous of things created,/ A greater venom speak.

119
both Milton and Grotius in his first visit. Satan's solilo-
quy here (IX. 99-178) may well have occurred in Milton's own
tragedy. It certainly dates from an earlier period than the
epic conclusion Of Book IV, for the outburst at IX. 163 could
only come from a spirit who had never before taken the form
of any beast, much less that of a toad:68

O foul descent! that I who erst contended

With the Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain'd
Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime

This essence to incarnate and imbrute,

That to the highth of Deity aspir'd.

Quite unlike the toad of Book IV, the serpent is gorgeous;

pleasing was his shape,
And lovely, never since of Serpent kind
Lovlier, not those that in Illyria chang'd
Hermione and Cadmus, or the God
In Epidaurus; nor to which transform'd
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen,
Hee with Olympias, this with her who bore
Scipio the highth of Rome (IX. 503-10).

 

 

This is the third of three clustered similes (others at IX.
385-95 and 439-43) which, like those of Book IV, recall the
fabulous only to denigrate it in favor of the Edenic truth.
The one I quote appears in the middle of a description of
the serpent and his actions very much like the one rendered
by Grotius' Eve. Milton presents a clear visual picture,

stipulating her presence in advance as the serpent “toward

 

68while Milton says first only that Satan was found “Squat
like a Toad“, he also points out that the touch of Ithuriel's
spear would cause “falsehood“ to “return/ Of force to its own
likeness“, and that at the touch
So started up in his own shape the Fiend.
Back stepp'd those two fair Angels half amaz'd
So sudden to behold the grisly King (IV. 800-821).

120
Eyg/ Address'd his way“ (IX. 495-6). One watches his approach
in both descriptions as he veers and tacks toward Eve's feet.
One sees a

Circular base of rising folds, that tow'r'd
Fold above fold a surging Maze, his Head
Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes;

With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold, erect
Amidst his circlin Spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant %IX. 498-503).

In the play,

Sibila retorquet ora setosum caput,

Trifidamque linguam vibrat: oculi ardent duo.

Arrecto cervix surgit, et maculis nitet

Pectus superbis: coerulis picti notis

Sinuantur orbes, tortiles spirae69 micant

Auri colore: lubricos longos sinus

Tendit volumen, terga se in gyros plicant (IV. 1037-43)
(Its flat and scaly head twists back a hissing mouth/ And
shakes a three-fork'd tongue; its two eyes gleam like
fire;/ Its rampant neck arises and its clammy7O breast/
Shines with proud spots; painted with azure markings,/
Its coiling spirals twine, and twist, with hue of gold/
Resplendent; in long slippery volutes it extends,/ And
folds its back in many a sinuous labyrinth.)

In their coal-like eyes, their golden color, their erect sta-
ture on spiral base, these are identical. Further, while
Milton, unlike Grotius, specifies the serpent's movement
not with indented wave,
§§one on the ground, as since, but on his rear (IX. 496-
9
and while Grotius refers to his “pronos anfractus“ (IV. 1048),

the postures of the two are clearly the same and resemble the

familiar striking coil of any venomous snake. Indeed, Milton

 

69Cf. Milton's Latinism “Spires“ (IX. 502).

70This zoological inaccuracy is the translator's. “Lubri-
cos“ (1. 1042) need not carry the sense of 'moist', but may
mean something like Milton's “sleek“ (IX. 525).

121
also refers to the “tortuous Train“ of the beast (IX. 516),
and where Grotius' Eve notes his travel in "obliquo means“
(IV. 1035), Milton's narrator describes his "tract oblique“
(IX. 510). Grotius' Eve describes the serpent's final pose
in words which call to the mind's eye precisely the speaker

of Paradise Lost

 

in act

Rais'd, as of some great matter to begin.

As when Of old some Orator renown'd

In Athens or free Rome, where Eloquence

Florish'd, since mute, to some great cause addrest

(IX. 668-72).7l

In Paradise Lost the serpent is the first to speak. His words
are a stream of flattery designed to snare Eve's incipient
self-love. Of course, she is filled with wonder:

Language of Man pronounc't
By Tongue of Brute, and human sense exprest? (IX. 553-4).

The oratorical posture of Grotius' Tempter fills his Eve with
similar awe:

Miror an queat et loqui (IV. 1030)
(I wonder whether it can speak.7 )

 

71Cf. Grotius' “Attollit ora“ (IV. 1050). Kirkconnell renders
this simply “It rears its head“, but a most accurate equivalent
is Milton's own line 669 above.

72Again, Kirkconnell's rendering fails to convey in the Eng-
lish “wonder“ the force of 'wonderment' or 'astonishment' of
“miror“. The very logical reaction is yet unusual. It is ab-
sent from DuBartas (v. 2d Sem., “The Imposture", 291 ff.),
Andreinni (v. L'Adamo in Kirk., p. 244-5), Avitus (in Kirk.,
p. 11). Valvasone includes it (v. Adamo Caduto in Kirk., p. 316),
linked with awe there, as in Andreini, at the serpent's human
face.

 

122
Each snake claims special knowledge and each pretends to
feel duty-bound to convey it to this monarch of Eden:

Utilia certe proloqui, et possum tibi,

Et non omittam. Gratulor vestris ego

Cessisse regnis, quiquid, immenso ambitu

Spatiosus aer Claudit: Omnes bestiae,

Quas Terra, vel quae pelagus aut aer habet,

Gaudemus illa sorte: res est maxima

Parere notis non feros dominos pati,

Sed jussa capere humana (IV. 1051-58)

(Things profiting thee I can most surely speak,/ Nor shall
forbear. I bring congratulations/ That all that spacious
air in its vast range encloses/ Has yielded to your sway.
All we beasts indeed/ Whom earth and sea and air possess

within their bounds/ Rejoice in our good fortune. 'Tis

a privilege,/ For those born to obey, not to endure wild
tyrants/ But to receive the clemency of human sway;)

Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,

Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine

By gift, and thy Celestial Beauty adore

With ravishment beheld, there best beheld

Where universally admired

Empress of this fair World, resplendent Egg,

Easy to me it is to tell thee all

What thou command'st and right thou should'st be obey'd
(IX. 538-42, 568-70).

Milton's Tempter includes at this point the attribution to the
fruit of his loquacity and his ability to reason, a very telling
argument later extended to discount the threat of death. He
then leads Eve to the Tree, which she recognizes as the one
prohibited. “Indeed?“ replies the serpent,
hath God then said that of the Fruit
Of all these Garden Trees ye shall not eat,

Yet Lords declar'd of all in Earth or Air? (IX. 656-8).

This is matter into which the serpent of Adamus Exul, like

 

that of most analogues of the Fall, has immediately plunged:

Miramur unum hoc, omnis authorem boni

123

(Nam sic vocari audet) istis fructibus

VetuiSSe‘ vesci IV. 1060-62)

(We marvel only that the Author of all Good/ (A title
He delights in) has forbidden you/ To feed on yonder
fruits.)

And he imputes a motive to God immediately:

Tanta quae menti sedet
Invidia? qui Telluris imperium dedit
Is vos nec uno patitur horto perfrui? (IV. 1062-4)73
(Does such great envy dwell/ Within His mind? Does He
who hast bestow'd on you/ The rule of Earth not suffer
you to use one garden?)

To this Eve responds with the words of Genesis:

Hortem per omnem, queis libet, vesci licet

Sed arbor una, qua Nemus medium patet,

Vitanda ramis poma curvatis girit.

His abstinere Lex monet magni patris

Ne forte vitae consequamur terminum (IV. 1067-71)
(Through all the Garden we may eat whate'er we like./
Only one tree, where spreads the middle of the Garden,/
Bears, on its curving branches, apples we must shun./
The Law of the Great Father warns us to abstain / Lest
we perchance be smitten and should surely die;7&)

Of the Fruit
Of each Tree in the Garden we may eat,
But of the Fruit of this fair Tree amidst
The Garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat
Thereof, nor shall ye touch it lest ye die (IX. 659-63).75

 

73Cf. Gen. 3.1, “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every
tree of the garden?“ For this surprise at ggy prohibition, both
Milton and Grotius substitute the deliberately suggestive as-
sumption by the serpent that the prohibition is vast (“all
these... Trees“ and “uno horto“).

74Trans1ator's "Lest we perchance be smitten“ introduces the
possibility of accidental poisoning. "Ne forte“ might better
be rendered 'Lest it happen that' or, more simply, 'Lest'.

75Cf. DuBartas: “But, all-good God (Alas! I wot not why)/
Forbad us touch that Tree (2d Sem., “Imposture“, 297-8).

124

Each Tempter delivers at this point the substance of his ar-
gument. The serpent of the play, beginning with the assertion
of the Biblical serpent that death would not result, goes on
to explain that death is really only a metamorphosis and one
which might be the vehicle of deification:

Metuere lethum non decet: poteris mori

Certe, et renasci in melius: haec lex corporum est,

Perfectiorum semper ad sortem trahi (IV. 1094-6)

(To fear death is not meet; for thou canst surely die/ To

live in higher state; this is a law of bodies,/ Ever to

be drawn on towards a more perfect lot.)

Milton's serpent makes the same ultimate point:

So shall ye die perhaps, by putting off
Human to put on Gods, death to be wisht (IX. 713-14).

But the mechanism to the attainment of the higher state, in
contrast to the natural process asserted by Grotius' serpent,

is avowedly a violation of nature in Paradise Lost:

 

ye shall not Die:

How should ye? by the Fruit? it gives you life

To knowledge: By the Threat'ner? look on mee,

Mee who have touch'd and tasted, yet both live,

And life more perfet have attain'd than Fate

Meant mee, by vent'ring higher than my lot (IX. 685-90).
The same basic argument, in each case meant by the poet to re-
call the natural ascension to spirit promised by the visiting
angel, is thus altered by Milton so as to make Eve's failure
to be warned less excusable in Paradise Lost. But his serpent
ends, as Grotius' begins, with the rhetorical question,

Or is it envy, and can envy dwell
In heav'nly breasts? (IX. 729-30).

It is a mark of Milton's genius that in making the dwelling--

place of this envy “heav'nly breasts“, rather than “his breast“

125
or “his mind“, he introduces a whole new dimension of irony.76
When Satan rebelled in Heaven his breast was still, in a very
important sense, 'heavenly', and Eve should have an answer to
his question whether or not she suspects the serpent's true
identity.

At this point the play includes an exchange not in Paradise
Eggfi. Eve is wavering, “Incerta jussi causa“ (IV. 1112) (The
cause of the command is doubtful), but still feels that "Dare
quenque jus est muneri legem suo“ (IV. 1118) ('Tis right that
one should join conditions to his gift). The serpent rejoins
with the matter of Gen., 3.577 and goes on in an effort to
prove God's envy with a reference which should have been dis-
astrous to his case: God's implacability toward the fallen
spirits in Hell. Grotius blunders here, for such a reference
makes Eve's eventual eating of the fruit an act of incredible
stupidity, not aspiration. She rejects the mention of the
fallen as irrelevant:

Dira Sathanum suae
Rebellionis quod luat poenam cohors,
Nihil illud ad me (IV. 1166-8)
(That the dread soldiery/ Of devils suffers castigation

for revolt,/ Does not concern me.)

Her concern is to know more about the virtues of the fruit.

 

76Cf. Grotius' "Tanta quae menti sedit/ Invidia?“ (IV. 1062-
3, p. 123 above), and Vergil, Aeneid, I. ll, “Tantaene animis
caelestibus irae?“ Similarity between Grotius and Milton here
could reflect mutual reliance on Vergil, but specification of
envy for Vergil's “ira”, and the extreme contextual parallel
between Milton and Grotius suggest that Milton was reminded of
the Aeneid by Grotius.

77“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing of good
and evil.“ Milton's serpent virtually quotes this (IX. 705-10).

126
Still, she is not won. The serpent's long restatement of the
fruit's powers is impressive in itself, however, and, like

the Eve of Paradise Lost, Grotius' Eve is drawn by both the

 

fruit's attraction of her senses and fascination with the an-
imal:

Adeone et alia praeter hominum pectora

Ratio occupavit? bruta namque haec bestia est,

At bruta certe verba non visa est loqui.

Ferme ut prohibitos edere fructus audeam

Facerent et eius pervicax persuasio,

Et mea cupido (IV. 1219-24)

(Can this be so? Does reason dwell indeed in breasts/
Other than man's? Surely this creature is a brute,/ But
never has a brute been known to utter words./ His reso-
lute persuasion and my own desire/ Doubtless would almost
make me dare to eat the fruit/ Against commandment.)

One last urging from the serpent and Eve's doom is sealed.
At this point the two works come together in remarkable
fashion; in both the play and Paradise Lost Eve delivers two
apostrOphes to the fruit, one prior to eating and one after-

ward which leads her to think of Adam.78

0 dulce pomum, quam tua haec species meis

Arridet oculis, quam vel olfactus juvat?

Utinam soluto te metu possem frui,

Tuosque succos discere, et magnas mihi

Vires, vel uno hoc, quod sub aspectu latent (IV. 1249-53)
(0 sweetest apple, how thy fragrance raptures me!/ Would
that, discarding fear, I might enjoy thee now,/ And learn
to know thy juices and thy mighty powers,/ That virtue
above all that lurks beneath thy beauty!;)

Great are thy Virtues, doubtless, best of Fruits,
Though dept from Man, and worthy to be admir'd,
Here grows the cure of all, this Fruit Divine,
Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,

Of virtue to make wise: what hinders then

 

78Nothing of the sort occurs in Avitus, DuBartas, Andreini or
Salandra. In the last two Eve is immediately stricken with pain
upon eating.

127

To reach and feed at once both Body and Mind?
(IX. 745-6. 776-9)

Each of the speakers keys her speech to the arguments of the
serpent, of course, and to the extent that the latter differ
so do the apostrOphes. Grotius' Eve, moreover, conveys con-
siderably more doubt and indecision:

Quid hoc quod artus horror incussit meas,
Et ima gelidus ossa perrupit tremor?
Causam timoris nescio: timeo tamen.
Placet admovere poma, sed renuit manus
Parere, dextra pondus accusat suum,
Alioque fertur.

Pendula est sententia.
Mens ipsa dubio trepida consilie labat (IV. 1262-7,
1279-80) (What is this horror, that has smitten all my
limbs?/ What trembling shudder penetrates my inmost bones?/
The cause of fear I know not; yet I surely fear./ I long
to pluck the apple, but my hand refuses/ To do my will,
accuses its reluctant weight,/ And elsewhere moves.... De-
cision is uncertain/ The hesitating mind in doubtful coun-
sel wavers.)

These passages render the Eve of Adamus Exul among the most ap-

 

pealing of her kind in literature, particularly when it is con-
sidered that among her motives is generosity:

audendum puto.

Humana morsu pendet ex uno salus.

Non sola tua res agitur: hac hora potes
Prodesse mille saculorum posteris (IV. 1287-90)

(1 think this must be dared./ The welfare of mankind de-
pends upon one bite./ Not thy lot only is at stake; for
by this hour/ Thou canst enrich a thousand ages yet to
come.

It is this genuine generosity, carrying into her post-prandial
apostrophe, which leads to consideration of Adam:

0 persuavis gustus, o tenero sapor.

Gratus palato, quam tuus succus juvat,

Quam me beastfl restat hoc unum modo,

Tanti ut maritus particeps fiat boni (IV. 1314-17)

128

(0 most sweet taste, 0 flavor to the tender palate/ Above
all else delicious, how thy juice delights,/ How thou
hast blest me! Now one privilege remains:/ To make my
husband sharer in so great a good!)

In Paradise Lost Eve's first reaction to eating is the same;

 

O Sovran, virtuous, precious of all Trees
In Paradise, of operation blest
To Sapience, hitherto obscur'd, inflam'd (IX. 795-7),
but she passes to the promise that she will henceforth pay
her devotions to the tree, and she thinks of Adam in far more
complicated terms than does her sister in the play:
But to Adam in what sort
Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known
As yet my change, and give him to partake
Full happiness with mee, or rather not,
But keep the odds of Knowledge in my power
Without Copartner? (IX. 816-21).
She determines to share her discovery, for
what if God have seen
And Death ensue? then I shall be no more,
And Adam wedded to another Eve (IX. 826-8).
Thoughts of Adam cue his entrance in both works, the serpent
having slunk away before Eve's final apostrophe in Paradise

Lost, after it in Adamus Exul.79 In the play, as in Paradise

 

Lost, Adam comes upon his mate in the course of an active
search.
Genesis is of no use to the poet depicting Adam's tempta-

tion and fall. Its half-sentence statement is more a challenge

 

79Grotius gives him a ten line aside which includes the an-
nouncement of Adam's approach (IV. 1318-28).

129
than an aid.80 Both Milton and Grotius include his tempta-
tion in some detail, but their variance from one another
here is considerable. The former, perhaps again under Sene-

can influence, presents the dialogue of the scene in extended

stichomythia:

fig. Herile jussum jure contemni putas?

E1. Si sceptra iniquo rector imperio tenet. 81

Ag. Si dominus aequus est, ames; 81 non, feras,

E1. Servire et ipso turpius letho putes.

Ag. Servire magno est summa libertas Deo.

E1. Quin hoc laboras potius ut fias Deus?

fig. Ex homine Numen effici ratio negat (IV. 1370-76)

(Ad. Dost thou then think our Master's edicts justly
scorn'd?/ Ev. Yes, if the Ruler holds His sway in unjust
rule./ Ad. If He's just, thou shouldst love Him; and if
not endure./ Ev. Thou shouldst consider servitude more
base than death./ Ad. Service to God Almighty is the
highest freedom./ Ev. Wouldst thou not rather toil that
thou shouldst be a god?/ Ad. Reason denies that man
can rise to deity.)

To this are added sections of more complex dialogue, Eve's
twenty-nine line primary supplication,82 and a fifteen line
final statement for Adam.
Milton's Adam resembles the Adam of Grotius very closely
both in his initial reaction, as he,
soon as he heard

The fatal Tresspass done by Eve, amaz'd
Astonied stood and Blank, while horror chill

 

80DuBartas rejects the challenge, saying only “She so pre-
vails, that her blind Lord, at last;/ A morsell of the sharp
sweet fruit doth taste“ (2d Sem., “Imposture“, 364-5).

81The unfallen Adam of Paradise Lost, of course, could never
have entertained both these possibilities, and the pious Grotius
allows histo do so only through inattentiveness to the doctrinal
implications of the statement.

 

82
Concluding, in the tradition of Avitus (v. Kirk., p. 14),
with a challenge to Adam's manhood. Grotius' Adam, however,
unlike Avitus', resists this ploy (IV. 1428-30).

130

Ran through his veins, and all his joints relax'd
(IX. 887-90),83

and in the cause of his own tresspass:
within my heart I feel
The Bond of Nature draw me to my own
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;

Our State cannot be sever'd, we are one,
One Flesh; to lose the were to lose myself 84

(IX- 955-9).

But there is no debate in his temptation, Presented by Eve
with the situation (IX. 856-85), he speaks some sixty lines
which only express his awareness of both the seriousness of
the crime and his own inability to refuse complicity in it
(IX. 896-916, 920-59).

The scene in Paradise Lost may nevertheless be of dramatic

 

origin. Milton shows no fondness for stichomythia, eschewing
its use even in the highly charged scene of Delila's visit in
Samson, so its absence here does not mark a passage conceived
exclusively filr a narrative work. Further, the burden of Gro-
tius' debate is to recall his Adam's successful resistance of
these arguments in his Act III temptation by Satan, an event
without a parallel in Paradise Lost.

 

 

83Cf. AE, IV. 1351-4: “Gelidus per artus vadit excussos tre-
mor,/ Exanguis asto, crinis erectus riget./ Vix ipse valido
spiritus gemitu viam/ Perrupit“(A frosty trembling runs through
all my smitten limbs;/ Bloodless I stand, with hair erect and
terrified:/ My very breath, with mighty groan, can scarce
breathe forth.)

Bqu. 5E, IV. 1455-7: “Sociae bonorum, vita quo auxillio mea/
Sustenta floret, una quaemecum caro est./ Quid huic negandum?“
(To the companion of my blessings, by whose aid/ My glad life
is upheld, who is one flash with me,/ What is to be refused.)

131

With the poignant cry of Eve,

Caputque nutat? omne ruat in me malum,

Si quod futurum est: Parcat, o, parcat viro (IV. 1467-8)

(Why droops thy head? If an evil is to follow,/ Let it

all fall on me; but spare, ah spare my man!),
Grotius concludes the Temptation. The chorus very briefly
anticipates the imminent sorrows of the couple and the race,

and Act IV of Adamus Exul ends.

 

AEL Act V; PLL_Bks. IX. and X
Paradise Lost shares with the fifth act of Adamus Exul

 

 

three major actions: the exultation Of Satan, the recrimin-
atory conversation of Adam and Eve, and the Judgment. As I
have pointed out in discussing Milton's early plans (p.70-73
above), the elimination of personifications from “Adam unpara-
din'd“, Acts III-V, coupled with the inclusion earlier in the
play of both a long passage of conversation with a friendly
angel and an act presenting the Fall, would necessarily have
compressed the events of those three acts into at most two

and probably only one act,

The removal of Conscience and Justice from Act III of M11-
ton's last plan would have left “Lucifer relating and insulting“
to Open the act, a mute Adam and Eve “covered with leaves“,
and a bewailing chorus. The Judgment was evidently planned

to occur Off stage, at the place “whither Jehovah called“.

Removal of Justice from draft Act IV would have left Adam and
Eve in mutual recrimination and an admonishing chorus. Removal

:Of Mercy (who “promises the Messiah“) from the last act would

132
have left the banishing angel and a briefly concluding chorus.
This is clearly manageable in a single fifth act consisting of
1) Satan's assertion of victory,
2) Adam and Eve's grief and accusations,
3) The instrction and expulsion of Adam and Eve, and
4) A concluding chorus.

The contents of Adamus Exul, Act V differ only in that in the

 

third place the Judgment and expulsion are represented, and
that there is no choral conclusion.85 The last is a minor dif-
ference, of course, and it might be assumed in light of his
practice in Samson that Milton would have kept a choral con-
clusion of roughly a dozen lines.

The major point of difference between the hypothetical Mil-

ton tragedy and Adamus Exul in this act is, then, the nature

 

of the third event. When Milton cast his fourth plan he ob-
viously had reservations about presenting not only the Fall
but the Judgment as well. He stipulates that Adam be cited to
the place of judgment and that “mean while the chorus enter-
tains the stage and is informed by some angel the manner of
hiss fall“ (see p.6fl3 above). The problem of propriety was

a real one for the poet, for it would have been unthinkable

 

85One suspects again the influence of Senecan practice.
Only twice (in Hercules Oetaeus and Octavia) does Seneca con-
clude with a choral passage. Among the Greeks, such conclusions
are the rule.

133

to substitute a mere messenger for the Judge, and the repre-
sentation of divinity itself was a thing to be considered
thoroughly even though only a voice need be represented.86
Milton solved the problem, I think, by reference to Adamus
EéEl. in which the offstage Vox Dei accomplishes both the
Judgment and the Expulsion.

It should be noted, however, that the early plans reveal
Milton's consistent preference for widely separated Judgment
and Expulsion, and it is entirely possible that their separa-

tion inanradise Lost is the result of continuous development

 

of this feature throughout the various stages of the work.

If so, it is one of the few major resemblances to Andreini's
WIDE; to survive.87 But it is equally possible that Milton
returned to the concept of separate events only after his

decision to Convert the work to a narrative freed him to treat

 

86“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3.8). Salandra has God
physically enter to judge Adam and Eve (v. Kirk., p. 336) and
Andreini represents the Eternal Father both creating and judg-
ing them (v. Kirk., p. 228-33 and 257 respectively). In Eng-
land civil and ecclesiastical law provided that “no pageant be
used or set furthe wherin the Matye of God the Father, God the
Sonne, or God the Holie Ghoste... be counterfeyted or repre-
sented“ (from a 1576 order of the Privy Council of the North
to the village of Wakefield). Harold C. Gardiner, Mysteries'
Egg (New Haven, Conn., 1946), p. 78.

 

87The expelling angel is unspecified in the plans, but he is
Michael in both EE and L'Adamo. An unnamed angel does this in
Salandra immediately after the Judgment. The consolatory and
instructional functions of Mercy in the plans appears to derive
from Salandra's Act III, Scene vi, but these are Michael's
duties in both L'Adamo (V, ix) and EE.

 

134

them both in the proper detail. The following pages will
show that those passages of Book X which resemble Grotius
closely and are of likely dramatic origin leave little room
for other material in the same act.

But a word about the final lines of Book IX is in order
first. It is in the nature of the Fall story, with its
double protagonist and its overpoweringly present antagonist,
that a sharply focused catastrophe is difficult to manage.
There is, of course, a single catastrophic act, but its af-
fective value is greatly reduced by auditor awareness that it
is the product of three wills, not one, and that a very com-
plex and often subtle interplay of motives and circumstances,
not a single course Of overreaching aspiration, has reached
its climactic moment. That moment in the ideal tragic mythos
at which the hero's self-absorption is total, and he has reached
the point at which, the auditor knows, his wings must melt, is
the emotional apogee of the dramatic movement. Here, ideally,
his hubristic speech draws together the threads of apprehension,
sympathy and repulsion. His coincident near-perfection and
nearly total error are held up to view for a motionless moment
before the fatal crash - a moment the auditor needs if he is
to follow the remaining action with complete emotional compre-
hension; that is, if he is to experience catharsis.

None of the analogues of Paradise Lost provides a very

 

effective moment of this sort for Adam. Indeed, Grotius al-

most permits Eve to usurp it in her apostrOphes to the fruit.

135

Milton follows him in this but includes a speech for Adam
after he has eaten which provides exactly the touch needed
to reassert both his centrality and the extent of his respon-
sibility for the Fall. It is pure hubris:

Eve, now I see thou are exact of taste,

And elegant, of Sapience no small part,

Since to each meaning savor we apply,

And Palate call judicious; I the praise

Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purvey'd.

Much pleasure we have lost, while we abstain'd

From this delightful Fruit, nor known till now

True relish, tasting; if such pleasure be

In things to us forbidden, it might be wish'd,

For this one Tree had been forbidden ten

(IX. 1017-26).

The debased reasoning of the first lines and the self-conscious
irony of the last -— they recall Satan's “evil be thou my good“
- are worthy of the Adversary himself. Nor is the speech doc-
trinally ambiguous. That Adam, who once called Eve “Daughter
of God and Man“ (IV. 660), should praise her attractions now
as the “bounty of this virtuous Tree“ (IX. 1033), makes clear
his denial of the Creator.

The dalliance which follows, “of thir mutual guilt the Seal/
The solace of thir sin“ (IX. 1043-4), is an exclusively nar-
rative possibility. But it is tempting to credit Milton with
the wisdom to have included Adam's lines in his tragedy. They
would have made a fitting close to Act IV; a better one than
the lament of Grotius' Eve, which nearly gains her heroic

centrality.

If Adam's words did occur in Act IV of Milton's tragedy they

136
could hardly have been followed by the mutual accusations

which close Book IX of Paradise Lost. The present location

 

of this conversation is made possible by the intercession of
the narrated “Loves disport“ and “grosser sleep“ and the making
of leaf loincloths, sufficient event and elapsed time to per-
mit the great alteration of mood. The poet's early plans (see
p. 70 above) had called for Adam and Eve to “accuse one another“
as part of the post-lapsarian sequence, but this was to have
occurred after the offstage Judgment. Clearly then, the present
sequence is the product of much alteration in the process of
narrative recasting.

The most likely fifth-act arrangment, and the most effec-
tive, would have been to open, as both the post-lapsarian se-

quence in the drafts and the fifth act of Adamus Exul do, with

 

the exulting Satan. This is particularly true if Adam's dazed
exhilaration closed Act IV, for the latter's nearness to Satan
would thus be strongly underscored. Satan would also prepare
the auditor for the scene of human Confusion and strife, per-
haps by reference to the evils already beginning. Satan's be-

havior in Paradise Lost, is of course, epic. His flight, the

 

meeting with Sin and Death, and his return to Pandemonium are
presented almost wholly in narrative. I can find little that
looks as though it could derive from a tragedy. Certainly there
is almost nothing resembling Grotius.

A few minor similarities do appear, however. The first is
merely verbal. At the end of his interview with Sin and Death

Milton's Satan gives them their charge:

137

You two this way, among those numerous Orbs

All yours, right down to Paradise descend;

There dwell and Reign in bliss, thence on the Earth

Dominion exercise and in the Air (X. 397-400).
The exultation of Grotius' Satan begins,

Cessare voto cuncta: sublimem meo

Superis superior vertice exaequo Polum.

Nunc regna Terrae teneo, nunc Sceptrum maris

Aeria spatia sub meum misi jugum (V. 1531-34)

(My hopes are all fulfill'd. Higher than all things high,/

I now shall smite the stars with my triumphant head!/

Now I possess Earth's rule, the sceptre of the Sea,/ And

I have placed the realms of Air beneath my yoke.)
The second is the shared concept of Satan's mistaken idea that
God would forsake man because of his sin, that,

he thereat

Offended... hath giv'n up

Both his beloved Man and all his World (X. 487-9).
Grotius' Satan invokes increase of sin and Fury “paeniteat Deum/
Hominis creati“ (V. 1558-9) (until God repent/ Of man's crea-io
tion). 88
Finally, the two poets share concern for the tradition that
Adam received a vision of the future. Each assumes, with cer-
tain Jewish rather than Christian commentators, that such a
vision would follow the Fall rather than accompany the cre-
ation of Eve.89 But Grotius faces severe limitations in pre-

senting such an event in the economical form of classical

 

880f. also Satan's proposal in Book II, written soon after
the narrative recasting (see p. 167 below), “thir God/ May prove
tgir fpe, and with repenting hand/ Abolish his own works“ (II.
3 9-70 -

89For discussion of this tradition see Evans, p. 54-7, 169,
291-2. As Evans notes, Milton does associate the two events
at XI. 367-9.

138
tragedy. Milton's early plans indicate that he considered
presenting the Opening of Adam's eyes through the device of
a masque of mute evils, but this is far from the representa-
tion of events.90 Grotius attacks the problem by having Sa-
tan announce, quite gratuitously, that there will be no reve-
lation:

... nil vetitum sibi
Putet ira: frater dirus in fratrem ruat
... nec suarum pignorum
Aspicare nutrex Terra sustinest nefas,
Redire ut iterum tentet ad priscum Chaos,
Sesque, at 11103 vindici immergat salo.
Adame, quantum est haec quod ignoras mala?
Sed et hoc peribit: cuncta non uno impetu
Simil patebunt (v. 1555-6, 1559-65)
(... let rage consider naught/ Forbidden it. Let ruthless
brother slaughter brother/ ... nor may Earth, his nurse,
endure/ The spectacle of all her children's felonies,/
So may she try to turn again to ancient Chaos/ And
plunge herself and them in an avenging sea!/ How strange,
0 Adam, that of this thou knowest naught!/ But this will
pass; though all things will not be reveal'd/ By one
swift act of Cod.91)

Both poets, but especially Milton, must have felt the dramatic
importance of the vision, and in light of the present Paradise
Egg; it seems inevitable that any comforting and instruction

of Adam should be intimately connected with it. Yet in Milton's
draft four it is Mercy who comforts, instructs and promises the

Messiah. At some point, obviously, Milton recognized both that

 

90Salandra tries to represent the murder of Abel in his fourth
act, but this only further extends an already awkward play.

91"... of God“ is a translator's liberty, but I think the con-
text warrants it.

139
a vision was needed and that it should be integrated with
these other matters, and if he attempted such an integration
in his drama the unwieldy result must have confirmed that
Grotius' omission Of the vision was as wise as his mention
of it was not. This problem was surely among the most impor-
tant and perhaps among the first factors leading finally to
Milton's decision to rework the play as a narrative.

Book X of Paradise Lost, after a short narrative of the

 

Son's journey to the Garden, moves quickly to the Judgment.
Milton adheres rather closely to Genesis throughout this
scene, deviating significantly only to provide Adam with an
expression of doubts about blaming Eve (X. 125-36), the Son
with a direct answer to Adam's explanation of his eating (X.
145-56), and the reader with a reminder that the judgment of
the serpent is to be given “in mysterious terms, judg'd as
then best“ (X. 173, 182-92). In addition, he appends to the
account the clothing of Adam and Eve's
inward nakedness, much more
Opprobrious, with his Robe of Righteousness
(x. 221—2).

Grotius diverges a little more often in the Judgment from
Biblical text, paraphrasing often but seldom quoting as Milton
frequently does. He does not give Adam “qualms“ about accusing

Eve.92

 

921 cannot agree with Evans (p. 290, “qualms“ is his word)
that this speech reduces Adam's apparent cowardice. Adam's
“strict necessity/ Subdues me“ (X. 131-2), since it calls to
mind Satan in Book IV (393-4) who “with necessity/ The Tyrant's

plea, excus'd his devilish deeds", serves rather to intensify
it.

1.40
In Grotius, Vox Dei's judgment of Adam combines the extra

matter of Paradise Lost, X. 145-56 with a paraphrase of the

 

Biblical Judgment somewhat looser than Milton's:

Cape tuas, Adame poenas, quem ducem, non asseclam

Esse oportuerat maritae, quique culpam feminae
Praepedire debuisti mascula prudentia,

Non inire perpetrati criminis consortium,

Quique muliebri lepori posthabens legem meam

Vetita persuasus profana poma violasti gula (V. 1940-45)
(Adam, accept thy punishment, for thou in truth/ Shouldst
be the leader, not the follower, of thy wife,/ And with
male prudence shouldst have check'd a woman's fault,/
Not entered into partnership in acts of crime./ And thou,
who thought my edicts less than female charm,/ Wert
moved with greed to violate forbidden fruit.)

Compare

Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice, or was she made thy guide,
Superior, or but equal, that to her

Thou didst resign thy Manhood, and the Place
Wherein God set thee above her made of thee,
And for thee, whose perfection far excell'd
Hers in all real dignity: Adorn'd

She was indeed, and lovely to attract

Thy Love, not thy Subjection, and her Gifts
Were such as under Government well receiv'd,
Unseemly to bear rule, which was thy part (X. 145-55).

The two judgments of the serpent bear close comparison. Milton,
having rendered the Biblical Judgment almost verbatim, inter-
jects a narrative explanation of its “mysterious terms“:

So spake this Oracle, then verifi'd

When Jesus son of Eggg second Egg,

Saw Satan fall like lightning down from Heav'n

Prince of the Air; then rising from his Grave

Spoil'd Principalities and Powers, triumpht

In open show, and with ascension bright

Captivity led captive through the Air,

The Realm itself of Satan long usurpt,

Whom he shall tread at last under our feet;

Ev'n hee who now foretold his fatal bruise (X. 182-91).

141

Grotius' Voice, having rendered judgments of both the serpent

and

Tu ferox homicida Sathan, angue qui tectus latens
Perfidis effascinati feminam mendaciis (V. 1895-6)

(Thou, fierce murderer Satan, who conceal'd within/ The

serpent didst bewitch the woman with base lies.)

continues thus:

IPSE veniet, ipse carnem sumet humanam Deus,

Non viro genitus, sed uno feminino ex semine,

Virginali natus alvo, generis humani Salus,

Qui Triumphator superbum conteret tibi verticem,

Et feri victor veneni tempus utrunque opprimet.

Illius ductu piorum coetus armata manu

Spolia referet saepe opima, vimque superabit tuam

Non tibi tuto licebit Marte aperto cernere,

Non in os prodire contra: semper aversos petes,

Ausus inflixisse tantum caeca calci vulnera (V. 1915-24)

(HIMSELF shall come, for God shall take on human flesh,/

By mankind not begotten, yet from woman's seed,/ Born of
a Virgin's womb, the Savior of mankind,/ And He as
Conqueror shall bruise thy haughty head,/ And tramp tri-
umphantly on both thy venom'd temples./ Often, with

Him their Head, the just, with armed hand/ Shall bring
back spolia opima, routing thee./ Nor shall I suffer
thee to strive in open warfare,/ Nor meet them face to
face. Ever behind thou'lt lurk,/ Venturing nought but
hidden ravage on their heel. )

 

Each poet returns to Biblical precedent at this point taking

up the judgment of Eve.

It appears very likely that the substance of the narrative

interjection was, in Milton's play as in Adamus Exul, the pro-

 

perty of the “voice of God“ (X. 97). When in recasting the

work the poet determined to sustain Satan's delusion of vic-

tory until his return to Hell (see X. 494-6), and to reserve

the revelation to Adam of the incarnation for Michael's

interview (XII. 356-456) - the first of which is certainly a

142

later, narrative addition, and the second probably - he
simply rewrote this passage for the narrator, unwilling
to let go the opportunity of stressing to the reader this
most important connection.93

Only one element of the Fall story as told by Milton and
Grotius remains to be discussed. As I have said, the post--
lapsarian discord and despair of Adam and Eve must have oc-
curred in Milton's tragedy. The sequence may have been split

by the Judgment as it is in Paradise Lost and therefore suf-

 

fered little alteration in the process of recasting. But

oddly enough, in comparing this portion of Adamus Exul with

 

Paradise Lost, one finds first a passage in the play which

 

points clearly to Milton's manuscript plans but which in only
hinted at in the narrative poem.
The masque of evils which was intended in the early plans

to cause Adam's despair leaves only a trace in Paradise Lost.

 

It occurs at the end of the narrative of the onset of climatic
changes in Book X. Having noted these changes the narrator
continues,
Thus began
Outrage from lifeless things; but Discord first

Daughter of Sin, anong th' irrational,
Death introduc'd through fierce antipathy:

 

93Nothing of the kind is to be found in Avitus, Andreini,
Salandra or DuBartas.

143

Beast now with Beast gan war, and Fowl with Fowl,

And Fish with Fish; to graze the Herb all leaving,

Devour'd each other; nor stood much in awe

Of Man, but fled him, or with count'nance grim

Glar'd on him passing: these were from without

The growing miseries, which Adam saw

Already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade (X. 706-16).

 

Thus is Adam's lament introduced. As we have seen before,
such narrative introductions sometimes mark points where
dramatic material has been recast, some of it passing from
dialogue to the narrator, and traces of the original material

can be discovered by reference to Adamus Exul. It appears that

 

the dramatic material replaced by narrative here is the masque
procession of the plans, but this would require an author of
the drama utterly inconsistent with the Milton I have pictured
-— one steadily moving away from personification and masque
elements and toward classical practice. Grotius provides a
clue which may clear Milton of such an inconsistency (or me
of hasty judgment).

Adam's first speech in Act V of the Grotius play is in

fact a description of a masque of personified evils:

 

dira Furiarum loca
Aspicere videor: Mors quid a tergo mihi
Crudelis instas: pectus hoc, pectus feri
Miseranda coniunx agmen infernum vides?
Ego video: dirum Noctis obscurae genus
Me circum oberrat: ducit omnem exercitum
Scelus, et rebellis fastus, et facti pudor.
Hinc pallidorum longa morborum cohors,
Turpisque egestas sequitur, et duri labos
Sudoris author: parte ab hac luctus venit:
Tremulo senectus tarda procedit gradu
Vicina lethi. Turba curarum ingerit
Se parte ab omni: nec procul tristi Fames
Bellique nutrix impotens Discordia
Tollit, cruentas sanguine innocuo, manus.

144

Perspicere nequeo: semper ulterius malum est (V. 1593-
1609). (I seem to see th' abode/ Of the grim Furies.
Why, 0 cruel death, ah why/ Dost thou behind me stalk?
Strike, strike this breast of mineI/O wretched wife,
dost thou behold their hellish train?/ I see them.
Round me wander the insensate brood/ Of sable-vested
Night. 94 Sin marshals all their host ,/ And hot rebel-
lious Pride, and melancholy Shame ,/ Thereafter come
long, livid Legions of Disease ,/ And squalid PovertX. and
Toll that still engenders/ Swooning and Sweat. '

From that same quarter issues Grief; / And tardy age,
the neighbor of pale Death, advances/ With tottering
step. A multitude of Cares draws near/ From all direc-
tions; while from close at hand dread Hunger,/ And Dis-
cord, the outrageous nurse of wanton War,/ Lifts hands
bedabbled with the blood of Innocence./ I cannot look:
ever worse evils lie beyond.)

It is for Adam exactly the experience Milton had desired for
his Adam in the plans, but it is achieved without crowding the
stage with a collection of mutes. The evils are products of
his delirium and, while this in itself would not prevent their
presence on stage, Eve's response to the speech makes it clear
that Grotius did not envision this:

Quae fingis amens spectra? quis te agitat furor?

Quove aestuantes huc et huc vultus refers,

Acieque falsas turbida species vides?

Compesce sensus: comprime affectus truces,

Parumque sanae mentis affectum doma

Resipisce, et animos ipse pacifica tuos (V. 1610-15)
(What phantoms of delirium Oppress thy brain?/ In what

hot frenzy dost thou glower to and fro/ And see illusive
semblances with blood-shot glance?/ Control thy senses!
Damp these wild emotions down ,/ And tame thy spirit, that
just now is far from sane2/ Come to thy senses, pray, and
calm thy soul thyself!)

The immediate dramatic source of Milton's narrative reference,
then, need not have been a masque procession. It may have

been what it is in Adamus Exul, a vision reported. The decline

 

91“Cf. “Noctis obscurae“. Kirkconnell is not immune to
Miltonizing.

145
in importance —— and the change in function —- noted in my
discussion of the drafts (p. 66-7 above) would have produced
as a logical next step just such treatment as Grotius gives
the vision.
Grotius' Adam, like Milton's, is aware of tangible

change:

Pisces, volucres, cumque jumentis ferae

Sentire video criminis poenas mei:

Ea cuncta clamant: Morere, decede, occide (V. 1713-15)

(1 see that fishes, birds, wild beasts, and cattle feel/

The fatal consequences of my awful crime./ All these

cry out to me: “Die! Perish! Pass away!")
This is a more specific and a more telling condemnation than
Milton's Adam receives from the glaring or fleeting beasts, and
the difference suggests what may have been another important
reason for Milton's rendering the detail in narrative. Milton's
purpose, at least by the time of the narrative and perhaps in
the drama, required him to make clear at this point both the
fact of external changes and the growing degree to which con-
sciousness of the consequences of his sin already impresses it-
self upon Adam. But he had to maintain a delicate balance
between sufficient despair to make clear Adam's knowledge of his
sin and sufficient retained reason to permit Adam to reassert
himself as Eve's superior later in the book. Grotius' aims
permitted, indeed they required, the clear demonstration of
absolute despair in his Adam. By rendering this passage in the

relatively less affective narrative form, Milton allows Adam

the retention of a credible amount of reason, and he takes the

146
opportunity to point out, as narrator, that the changed cli-
mate and behavior of the animals were seen by Adam only “in
part“ and “hid in gloomiest shade“ (X. 716).

Again, the difference is a function of the radically dif-
ferent subsequent behavior of the two Adams. The focal point
of this difference is the question of suicide. In Paradise
Eggg, of course, it is Eve who suggests suicide. Adam's dis-
suasion of her is the important first mark of his redeemabil-
ity; the first mark of hers is her corresponding submission

to his guidance. In Adamus Exul the positions of Adam and

 

Eve on the question of suicide are exactly the opposite.

But Milton is not so careful of balance as to deny Adam
considerable anguish. At the outset his Adam is indistinguish-
able from Grotius':

dust I am, and shall to dust return:
0 welcome hour whenever! why delays
His hand to execute what his Decree
Fix'd on this day? why do I overlive
Why am I mockt with death, and length'n'd out
To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be Earth
Insensible (X. 770-77).

Compare the Adam of Adamus Exul:

 

Mors quid a tergo mihi
Crudelis instas? pectus hoc, pectus feri
Quin parte ab omni rector astrorum tonas?
Quin motus ira bella ventorum indique
Immittis: imbres cadere collectos jubes?
Oppono cuivis vile supplicio caput.
Intende dextram

eripe hoc cruciatibus
Vivum cadaver. quid juvat poenas tuas

147

Proferre? possum, debeo, cupio mori (V. 1593-4, 1620-
24, 1676-78) (Why, 0 cruel Death, ah why/ Dost thou
behind me stalk? Strike, strike this breast of mine!
... Why Ruler of the stars, dost thou not everywhere/
Thunder, and send in anger on all sides the winds/

To battle? Why not enwrap the sky in dreadful clouds?/
Why not command the gathered rains to fall on me?/ To
any penalty I offer my vile head./ Stretch forth Thine
hand!... snatch this living corpse from pain!/ What
pleasure is there in prolonging punishment?/ I can,
indeed I ought, and so desire to die.)

So similar are these that one cannot say with any confidence
that Milton did not at some point have his Adam conclude in
the manner of Grotius',

Longas omittam languidae poenae moras,
Nec aeger ultro fumus extendam meum

Tu manus potius veni
Ministra poenae, quae fuisti criminum (V. 1684-5, 1692-3)
(1 shall forgo the long delays of lingering pain/ Nor
further, nauseate at heart, postpone my death.... 0 thou
my hand, come rather,/ My minister of punishment, as
once of crime!)

The anguish of Milton's Adam, including the prominent feature
of distress at the effects of his crime on posterity, continues
"through the still Night“ (X. 846) unabated. This
when sad Eve beheld
Desolate where she sat, approaching nigh,
Soft words to his fierce passion she assay'd (X. 863-5).

She is rebuffed but perseveres, pleading,

I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in the uttermost distress,
My only strength and stay (X. 918-21).

The Eve of Adamus Exul has preceeded her:

Ne me relinquas: nunc tuo agxilio est Opus,
Cum versa sors est. unlcam apsae mihi

Firmamen, unum spem gravi afflictae malo
Te mihi reserva dum licet (V. 1768-71)

148

(I beg thee, leave me not! I need thy succour now,/
When thus our lot is overthrown! But while thou mayst,/
In this my fall preserve for me my one support,/ One
hope in adversity.)

Milton's Eve is sensitive of her double sin:

both have sinn'd, but thou
Against God only, I against God and thee (X. 930-31).

Compare:

Poenas rependam scleribus tantis pare

Sclerata conjunx.... ego duplex feci nefas,

Cum fallor, et cum fallo (V. 1793-4, 1796-7)

(Curst consort that I am! My own sin not enough,/ I made
my husband sin.... Mine was a two-fold crime,/ Deceived
and then deceiving.)

The Eve of Paradise Lost vows to

 

With my cries importune Heaven, that all

The sentence from thy head remov'd may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe,

Mee mee only just object of his ire (X. 933-6).

Precisely this has Grotius' Eve importuned at the conclusion
of Act Iv.95
Milton's Eve proposes suicide:

miserable it is
To be to others cause of misery,
Our own begott'n, and Of our Loins to bring
Into this cursed World a woeful Race,
That after wretched Life must be at last
Food for so foul a Monster, in thy power
It lies, yet ere Conception to prevent
The Race unblest, to being yet unbegot
But if thou judge it hard and difficult,
Conversing, looking, loving, to abstain
From Love's due Rite, Nuptual embraces sweet

 

9SSee p. 133 above.

149

Then both ourselves and Seed at once to free,

From what we fear for both, let us make short,

Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply

With our own hands his Office on ourselves (X. 981-8,
992-“) 999‘1002)0

So does the Eve of Adamus Exul:

 

Si, Adame, pietas vera quaeranda est tibi,

Ne perime meritam: si tibi ignotum est scelus,

Ego sum majistra: sine tu jugulum petis,

Praebo jugulum

Si tu recusas feminae facient manus

Opus virile (V. 1782-5, 1789-90)

If, Adam, thou wouldst seek to do thy duty now,/ Slay me,
who merit it! If crime's unknown to thee,/ I shall in-
struct thee. If thou seek'st a throat to out,/ I shall
present my throat.... If thou refusest, with my female
hands I'll do/ A man's stark work!.

The difference between the scenes is this: Milton's Eve
attempts to assuage Adam's despair and, failing that, suggests
death as a selfless gesture, a well-meant, if erroneous, sac-
rifice. The words of Grotius' Eve are a ploy. Her Adam has
already vowed to die by his own hand. Having failed to dis-
suade him, she promises to preceed him in the well-founded hOpe
that he could not bear her death and will assent to live in
order to prevent it. In Paradise Lost Adam answers the sug-
gestion of suicide with essentially the same argument already
used by Grotius' Eve.

No more mention'd then of violence

Against ourselves, and wilful bareness,96
That cuts us off from hope, and savors only
Rancor and pride, impatience and despite,

Reluctance against God and his just yoke
Laid on our Necks (X. 1041-6).

 

96Though both Eves and both Adams dread the evils to befall

posterity, only in Paradise Lost is “wilful bareness“ contem-
plated.

150
Compare,

nemo sic perit
Ut non salutis spe foveri debat

Quod odit auget, scelere qui punit scelus,
Dignum esse vita monstrat hoc, dignum nece
Quod te putoris. Majus isto crimine
Crimen relinquet vata, si mortem petis.97

Iam facies scelus

Ultro, atque certis? unicum hoc aufer malum (V. 1651-

2, 1700-1703, 1729-30) (No one is so far lost/ That

he should not still hope for some deliverance....He

who pays crime for crime, increases what he hates./

That thou dost think thyself deserving death but shows/

That thou deservest life. For if thou seekest death/

Thou wilt but aggravate thy sin by further sin.... Wilt

thou now commit/ A conscious further crime? At least

avoid this evil!)
It is impossible to determine whether the alterations in
Milton's scene were made at the outset, for his drama, or were
coincidental with his narrative recasting. It is also impos-
sible to doubt that these were alterations —- impressively
few -— in a scene for whose substance and shape Milton is in-
debted to Hugo Grotius.

The scene of Adamus Exul just discussed takes place, it
will be recalled, just prior to the Judgment. Grotius con-
cludes the fifth act, and the play, with Vox Dei's summoning
his cherubim to guard the east gate of the Garden, lest man
return to eat also of the Tree of Life.

It has been my aim throughout the preceeding comparison

to prove Milton's direct indebtedness to Adamus Exul for many

 

 

97Cf. Milton's Adam: “Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure
seems/ To argue in thee something more sublime/ And excellent
than what thy mind contemns;/ But self-destruction therefore
sought, refutes/ That excellence“ (X. 1013-17).

 

151
of the most important structural features and a great deal of

the detail of Paradise Lost. I have hoped too to demonstrate

 

the very high degree of probability that this debt was first
incurred in the composition of a tragedy now lost. Many of

the features of Paradise Lost derived from Grotius' play

 

could have been incorporated directly into narrative only

with enormous difficulty. But I hope also to have thrown

into clearer relief the contours of that portion of Paradise
Eggg which still is a tragic drama, with a Coherence and unity
of action that could only have been consciously cultivated and
carefully preserved by the poet.

Paradise in Paradise Lost is a stage, just as it is in Adamus

 

Eggl. Great, indeed epic actions rage above and below. Glor-
ious confrontations, great councils, war,hazardous quest, the
opposition of implacable foes with indomitable wills; these
form the larger context in which the primal tragedy is acted
out, just as events of public moment, the affairs of states

and parties, form the context of both Greek and English theater.
And they provide the terms in which any tragedy is acted. But
what happens in Eden is personal, immediate, individual. It
happens in a quiet world in which the fatal blows do not re-
sound the thunder of steel on bronze because they are struck
by the spirit against itself and with a subtlety whose opposite
is epic confrontation.

That human life has this doubleness as a fundamental

152
characteristic is, for Milton, directly attributable to the
Fall, and the tracing of its sources is among his purposes

in Paradise Lost. The doctrinally critical point in the poem

 

is not the Fall itself, but the decision of Adam and Eve to
avoid further crime. Fallen they are tragic, but redeemable.
Their moment of heroic exhilaration is forever over, but they
will know grace. Were they to choose to repeat their crime,
they might know again that heroic moment when the stakes of
a single action are large beyond calculation and the enemy a
worthy one. They would then have embarked upon a life of ac-
tion, a style which, to fallen eyes, has a certain grandeur,
but they would have lost their souls eternally, for that style
is Satanic.

The choice is there in the tragedy Milton wrote. It is in

Adamus Exul. But its meaning in the tragedy is only fully felt

 

in terms of the option chosen by the “first pair“. The poet

of “first things', who would “justify the ways of God to men“
(I. 26) rather than only the ways of God to those who choose
Him, must do more. He must write the tragedy, of course, but
he must also go beyond tragedy to find a form expressive of the
other choice, the choice of perpetual conflict and the never-
ending quest for violent victory, the choice of eternal damna-
tion. The choice is Satan's and the form is epic. It is the
burden of the next section to explore the means by which Milton

achieved his unique double poem, and to examine further his

153

reasons for producing a narrative which contains both an epic
and a drama held in careful suspension in the total work, two

stories which are yet inseparable because they are parts of the

one first story.

154

III
The Tragedy Narrated; the Epic Affixed
Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or Rhyme.
The lines are famous -— undergraduates by the thousands

memorize them -— and editors confidently note the echo in

them of Ariosto's boast of novelty in the Orlando Furioso.1

 

But what do they mean? Surely more than that this 'epic'
will contain a more lofty theme than 'previous epics'.
While “things unattempted“ may be taken to refer to certain
aspects of the argument and certain themes, the lines assert
far more than the topical superiority or even the exceeding
truth of the poem. They claim no less than that the very
"Song“ will soar above anything ever offered by the Muses.
“Song“ of course is more than melody; it is structure as
well.

When the poet asserts that his song will be superior and
that it will pursue the as yet unattempted he is talking

about structure and scope. The Creation had been sung before

 

1See Hughes, p. 212, n. 16 and 379, n. 29-31.

155

in numerous hexamera. The Fall had been told in both nar-
rative and dramatic form. The War in Heaven had been re-
lated in many different ways and Heavenly and Hellish coun-
cils had been Offered. No poet, however, nor any writer of
prose had yet attempted the truly comprehensive story of
First Things.

80, having written a tragedy of the Fall, Milton deter-
mined to work out from it to include both those events pre-
ceeding it which, with the Fall, established the pattern of
human life until the Second Coming, and sufficient subse-
quent events to demonstrate the adherence of the life of
fallen man to that pattern.

The pattern of the Creation is already well established
in the drama through Raphael's hexameron. The antithesis of
this, the destructive pattern, is already strongly suggested
in the character of Satan. The movement of man out of the
purity of the first toward the absolute impurity of the
second is the tragic movement. The arrest of this movement
by the couple's choice to re-submit establishes the third
pattern of action, the pattern of doomed but redeemable man.

Milton's new narrative, then, might amplify its treatment
of the primal pattern, the divine design. Not much could
be done to convey to the fallen reader, this first perfection
and its absolute harmony, but some conception of it in the

abstract might be attempted. The second pattern would be

156
easy to represent, since it has been the pattern of life
of a great portion of humankind in every era. The reader
would know the original of his own sinful acts instantly.

Only the third, the pattern of action produced by the
tragedy, required development from almost nothing. The
play presents clearly the choice between absolute villainy
and absolute harmony with God. It also portrays life in
each pattern in the pre- and post-lapsarian behavior of Adam
and Eve. But the all-important second choice between eter-
nal denial of God, absolute Satanism, and the more ambig-
uous pattern of error ggg submission to punishment, sin ggg
repentance, death gpg life; this in the tragedy is simply
a choice made, not a pattern acted out and generalizable.
Examples of life in this pattern might be rendered.

In the pages that follow I will examine the manner of M11-
ton's extension of the work to include these patterns.2
Briefly, it was this: The tragic movement, freed from the
'stage restrictions' of even a closet drama, was amplified
chiefly in Adam's conversation with the angel. This made

clearer both the divine and the demonic pattern through the

 

2The order in which I treat compositional increments is not
intended to reflect precisely the order of composition
itself. Major questions of compositional order may be resolved,
but analysis of the substance of the text, like analysis of ver-
sification, quickly takes us to the point where “confident con-
clusions become impossible." (Ants Oras, Blank Verse and
Chronology in Milton [Eainsville, F1a., 196§7, p. 40).

 

157
addition of the War in Heaven at the beginning and through
general expansion of the narrative of the Creation. This,
together with the general extension of dialogue between
Adam and Eve, effected at once a deepening of the tragedy
and an underscoring for the reader of the elements of the
primal choice.

The Satanic pattern, however, was further detailed out-
side the tragedy and exclusively for the reader, first by
projecting the character of the Adversary as revealed by his
Act I soliloquies onto the larger canvas of detailed action.
This produced Books I and II. Second, the extra-tragic ac-
tivities of the spirits were added (the epic confrontation
of Book IV and the epic return of Book X). Similarly, scenes
in Heaven were added which, though more abstractly, would
amplify outside the tragedy the contours of the divine pattern.

Finally, the repentant character of Adam in Book X was
projected onto an historical canvas thus to portray the new
dynamics Of human choice set up by his fall. To put it
another way, Adam's tragic anagnorisis, his personal recog-
nition of the meaning of his choice, is made a true revelation
through its projection into a picture of active, historical
choice-making.

Notice that the heart of the work is still the tragic
mythos or plot. Expansion of Adam's dialogue with Raphael
does not alter its dramatic function. But the order in which

extra-tragic occurences are presented is also controlled by

158
the tragic design. The result is that the dramatic value
of Satan's holding the stage for the first half of Act I is
retained in his extended dominance of the early books of the
narrative. The contrast to him provided in the tragedy by
the introduction of the perfect couple near the close of the
first act is afforded (probably at a later stage of compos-
ition) by the Heavenly conversation of Book III. The first
three books are thus quite literally a macrocosmic projection
of Book IV (Act I).3 By the same process the character of
the lapsed Adam of Book X is projected onto history in the
final books to reveal the tragically determined character of
fallen human life. Besides its doctrinal significance, this
projection provides an extended period of anagnorisis, pro-
portioned to the whole poem as the briefer dramatic version
had been proportioned to the whole tragedy.

These, in general, are the means by which the tragedy of
the Fall was expanded into a more complete narrative of First
Things, one which would account for all subsequent human phenom-
ena, even, implicitly, the literary forms themselves through
which these phenomena are expressed. For convenience I will
discuss in some detail first those accretions of material ad-
ded to the tragic movement, reserving the extra-tragic or

“epic“ additions for separate discussion.

 

3The effect for the reader, of course, is to sense a micro-
cosm in the Edenic context of Book IV.

159
The Tragedy Narrated

 

Milton's chief motive, I have said, for converting his
play to narrative was to permit expansion. Conversion it-
self, however, required certain obvious alterations which
add little. Dialogue was instantly fitted into the narra-
tive by simply replacing the play's speaker denominations
with short phrases or sentences; “To whom the Angel“ or “To
whom the patriarch of mankind repli'd“. The second of these
formulae might be varied within the confines of a single
pentameter line; “To whom the Angel with contracted brow“, or
“Whom thus the Angelic Virtue answer'd mild“. This would pro-
vide tiny points of description almost like stage directions.
A third variety, easily insertable without disturbing lines of
extant dialogue, is the two to four line sentence:

To him she hasted, in her face excuse
Came Prologue, and Apology to prompt,
Which with bland words at will she thus addrest
(IX. 853-5);
So having said, as one from sad dismay
Recomforted, and after thoughts disturb'd
Submitting to what seem'd remediless,
Thus in calm mood his Words to Eve he turn'd
(IX. 917-20).
This more complex variety frequently appears also as the con-
cluding sentence of a long narrative passage both in sections
of the poem of clearly dramatico origin (as is the case with
the second sample quoted) and in those clearly composed from

the beginning as part of a narrative poem. Two other formulae

for speaker identification, however, rarely occur in material

1.60

which might have been carried over from the play. The first
of these is the complex and lengthy sentence whose primary
burden is to introduce a speaker but which is also laden
with descriptive and evaluative phrases and clauses:

Then Crown'd again thir gold'n Harps they took,

Harps ever tun'd, that glittering by thir side

Like Quivers hung, and with Preamble sweet

Of charming symphony they introduce

Thir sacred Song, and waken raptures high;

No voice exempt, no voice but well could join

Melodious part, such concord is in Heav'n.

Thee Father first they sung... (III. 365-72).

Finally there is the simple insertion of 'said' (plus name)
in speech itself:

Is this the Region, this the Soil, the Clime,

Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat

(I. 214'2—3).

This is a rarity in the poem as a whole, and of its fourteen
occurrences only two (IX. 631 and X. 855) appear in the midst
of material I have judged to be drawn from the drama.“

Milton's use of these formulae is not of course a reli-
able guide to the origin or compositional age of passages.
They are all useful in all parts of the poem as we have it.
There is, however, a preponderance of the first three varieties

in passages closely comparable to Adamus Exul and the dramatic

 

drafts. In those portions of Books IV through X compared to

Grotius in the previous section these are the incidences of

 

“The first of these occurs in the serpent's description of the
route from where he encounters Eve to the tree; a passage pos-
sible in the drama. The second comes in a twenty line passage
whose first ten and last four lines are descriptive and whose
spoken lines repeat the immediately preceeding speech. These
mark it a likely insertion.

161

the five formulae:

1) phrases (e. g. 'thus Adam'), 10
2) pentameters with verb, 30
3) two-five line sentences, 18 Total - 58

 

4) long, complex sentences (6-10 11.),17

5) single word insertions, 2. Total - l9

 

Incidences in the rest of the poem (I-III, IV. 776-V. 307,
XI-XII, and scattered passages of scenes in Heaven, Chaos and

Hell) are as follows:

 

 

l) phrases, ll

2) pentameters, 3O

3) short sentences, 16 Total - 57

4) long sentences, 46

5) single words, 10 Total -g56
The difference in ratios - 3:1 as against 1:1 —- arises, I

think, from the fact that usages of the sort indicated in items
4 and 5 occur quite naturally in the course of narrative with
quoted speech, but can only be added to extant dialogue with
some inconvenience unless lengthy narrative passages are in-
serted or new dialogue is added. A good gauge of Milton's
handling of such matters in material of the purest narrative
kind may be found in Raphael's hexameron and story of the war.
The angel's style is virtually identical to that of Milton's

narrative persona. Incidences of the five formulae in Raphael's

162

narrative are as follows:

 

1) phrases, l
2) pentameters, 5
3) short sentences, 5 Total - ll
4) long sentences, 18
5) single words, 5 Total - 28

 

In this clearly narrative verse the ratio is nearly 1:3, the
reverse of that for passages most likely from the drama.

The poet's heavy reliance on simple narrative links in the
play-related material argues, as I think the comparisons in
Section II above do, very strongly that much of the tragic

dialogue finds its way into Paradise Lost with a minimum of

 

alteration or supplement, the speech of personages being al-
ready well able to carry the movement of many scenes without
the narrator's assiStance.

There are however a number of other ways in which basically
dramatic material was altered and augmented in conversion.
The conversation of Adam and Eve in Book IV could only have
occurred in a play if Act I were extraordinarily long. Their
conversation in Book V (25-135) concerning Eve's dream depends,
as I have pointed out (p. 89-90 above), upon the scene of the
toad in Book IV (776-end), an obviously late epic addition.
Yet both Of these are virtually indistinguishable in manner
from the rest of their dialogue. At numerous points, no doubt,
exchanges were added to extant conversation, individual speeches

were lengthened through the addition to them of one or more ideas,

163
perhaps large segments of dialogue were deleted or replaced
to bring the material into line with new elements of narra-
tive. As I have suggested at numerous points, certain pas-
sages in the poem appear to have been appropriated by the
narrator from one of the personages. Finally, the auditor
or speaker of some passages may have been changed. I have
argued the likelihood that the first is the case with Adam's
relation of Eve's creation (p. 109-12 above). It is possible
that aspects of Adam and Eve's despair and recrimination
have been shifted since the play in order to emphasize the
reassertion of hierarchy between the couple (see discussion,
p. 149-54 above).

Far and away the greatest changes Milton made in recasting
his drama resulted in the extension of Adam's dialogue with
Raphael to its present nearly four book length. We know of the
last alteration, for it Occurred after the first edition. In
1667 the seventh book consisted of the material in the present
Books VII and VIII. It is entirely reasonable that in 1667
Milton should have viewed this body of material as a unit de-
spite its great length and the change at its center of the main
speaker. It had originally constituted a single act of his
tragedy as it does in Adamus Exul (see p. 115-17 above for com-
parison). Moreover, in its first narrative form it may have

been no longer than the 900 line average for books of the

164
present poem. Its growth to 1289 lines was probably a slow
process of accretion, occasionally of long passages such as
the 200 line discussion Of astronomy.5
That the astronomical material was added as a block is

strongly hinted when the transitional lines (1-4) of Book
VIII and the 198 lines of discussion are omitted and the pre-
ceeding and succeeding passages read as though they were con-
tiguous:

And thy request now think fulfill'd, that asked (VII. 635)

How first this World and face of things began,

And what before thy memory was done

From the beginning, that posterity

Informfld by thee might know, if else thou seek'st

Aught, not surpassing human measure, say. (VII. 640)

are perhaps a one-line speaker designationg7

Thee I have heard relating what was done (VIII. 203)

Ere my remembrance: now hear mee relate

My story, which perhaps thou hast not heard (VIII. 205).
Such an addition would, of course, have had to take place very
late in composition, after the shift of Adam's auditor from
Eve to the angel as I hypothesize. Much of the increase of
bulk in the material of 1667's Book 7, however, may have been
the result of many afterthoughts of dialogue and narrative.

The narrative of the War in Heaven raises several questions.

Both McColley and Gilbert discuss aspects of it which seem to

 

5Perhaps only the germ of this existed in the play, a treat-
ment in the manner of the hexameral poets and of Grotius (see
p. 114 and n. 63 above) without its present thematic import.

165
them to mark it as an interpolation. The facts that the
early plans call for choral treatment of the War, that it

is related in Adamus Exul by the chorus of Act I, and that

 

material which in Paradise Lost preceeds and succeeds the

 

War is contiguous in Adamus Exul (see p. 95-6 above); all

 

these argue for its inclusion sometime after the decision
to convert the work to narrative. Nevertheless, its speci-
ficity and detail are not choragic and very little of a choral
passage can have been carried into Raphael's narrative ver-
batim.6 There is no reason to suppose, as Gilbert does,
that the War in Heaven was originally written for the nar-
rator or for another location in the poem.7 Gilbert does
cite compelling evidence to indicate that the War was com-
posed in more than one segment, the earliest of which ended
with Michael and the loyal angels victorious. He points
out (p. 121) that in Book VI (lines 864-66 and 880-84) the

 

6Cf. McColley (p. 319): “With one exception, Raphael's
narrative [6f the Wag7 is in the third person, and could
have been presented by the chorus which gave it in the Adam."
Actually there are five exceptions (V. 628-9; VI. 91, 200,
571-81, 769). but the bulk of the narrative is third person,
which, together with one reference pg Raphael (VI. 363), sug-
gests that an anonymous (as in Grotius) non-participating an-
gel may have talked to Adam in the play and for some time in
the narrative.

7Gilbert (p. 58-65) thinks Raphael's Homeric self-doubt
(VI. 297-8) more appropriate to Milton as narrator. Yet at
V. 563-5 it is clearly the angel's expression, and the con-
vention is employed by the Heavenly Chorus (VII. 603-4).
Citing (p. 69) McColley's evidence (p. 318-19) of inconsis-
tencies in the nature of the fallen and the identity of the
War's victor, Gilbert places the War before Book 1. His
evidence argues as well for stratified composition as for
altered sequence, however.

166
Son pursues the rebellious angels to the edge of Heaven.
Yet there are five references in Books I and II to pursuit
into Chaos by the loyal angels, and one to the devils' fear
of “Thunder and the Sword of Michael“ (II. 294).8 Nowhere
in Books I and 11 do the fallen fear, resent or indeed even
mention the Son. This is odd not only in light of his having
beaten them in battle but also in light of the jealousy of
His exaltation later imputed to Satan. In Books I-II the mo-
tive for the rebellion is said to be the Adversary's ambition.9
The discrepancies can be resolved with somewhat less inventive-
ness than Gilbert employs.

As I have pointed out, comparison of evidently dramatic
material with Adamus Exul indicates that the growth of Egpg-
dise Lost was by a process of expansion and division of ori-
ginally whole units. Thus it was with Books 7 and 10 of the
1667 edition (now Books VII-VIII and XI-XII respectively).

I have contended that the increment of growth which ultimate-
ly made division of Book 7 necessary was the interpolation
of the dialogue on astronomy. A similar process yielded the

present Books V and VI from an originally undivided whole.

 

88cc also I. 169-71, 325-7; II. 77-9, 165-6, 996-7. Gilbert
cites all but 1. 325-7.

9For discussion of theological and literary traditional con-
nections of this change see A. Williams, “The Motivation of
Satan's Rebellion in Paradise Lost“, EE, XLII (1945), 253-68.

 

167
Milton's early plans, calling for choral treatment of
the War, make no mention of who the victor might be, the
Son or Michael's host. If, however, Milton followed Grotius
in his preparation of the choral conclusion to Act I of the
tragedy, he treated Michael and the loyal angels as the vic-
tors. Of the rebellion Grotius' chorus says,
Solque in tenebras

Capiens regnem tradere lucis

Jura sorori, nisi magna Dei

Jussa capessens sumperat audax

Arma Michael (I. 291-5)

(The Sun had gone to rule the dark/ Leaving the day to

Luna's spark,/ Had Michael not, at God's command,/ Made

fearless war on Satan's band.)
Very early in the narrative recasting of the play Milton
evidently realized the value of the War as exemplary material
and included it in some form in the angel's conversation with
Adam. But it was then a sufficiently brief story so as to
form, with the preliminaries to the Conversation a single
book of the poem, the whole conversation then consisting of
one book each for the War and the Creation.10 It then ended
with Michael's victory and probably contained most of the
present material up to about line 665 of the present Book VI.

The Epic Affixed
At this point, I think, Milton turned to the first extra--

tragic narrative. If Satan's rebellion and defeat were

 

10It is even conceivable that these two, much shorter than
now, occupied a single book at one time composed of almost
unaltered matter from the Act I chorus and Act II.

168
exceedingly valuable to the instruction of Adam, how much more
so might the continuance of that rebellion be to the reader.
If a view of the fiend was the perfect first act of a tragedy
of the Fall, how much more compelling might be a view of
those proceedings by which he arrived in Eden, revealing as
they would the whole complex of motives, values,and justifi-
cations which form the primal pattern of sinning unto damna-
tion.

The present Books I and II were then written in a form
preliminary to their present one, and as a single unit. The
emphasis on pursuit and the contention that they feared “Thun-
der and the Sword of Michael“ accorded with the narrative of
the War in Heaven as it then stood.11 Written just after the
War narrative, they contain two other features of Milton's Act

I chorus which had been derived from Grotius. Adamus Exul's

 

Act I chorus begins with an idea which the playwright may have
found in Avitus. Regarding the plotting Satan they observe,

gravior semper
Casus ab alto est. Levius contra
Leviora cadunt. Sequitur major
Cura beatos, quo plus nactos
Plura timentes (1. 237-41)
... the descent is graver to the eminent./ While lighter
things more lightly fall,/ Intenser cares the blest
enthral/ With fears proportion'd to their gains.12

 

11Assuming, of course, that the War narrative then included
a pursuit eliminated when the War was extended to include the
Son and His victory.

12Cf. Avitus (p. 7 in Kirk.) of Satan: A heavier doom to
him is due,/ At whose fall one may marvel, for the author/
Enhances still the crime; in an unknown sinner,/ The guilt is
less; transgressions of the great/ Incur with greater evil
greater blame.

169
In Book II Satan twice reminds the rebel angels of this
aspect of eminence:

who here
Will envy whom the highest place exposes
Foremost (11. 26-8);

Wherefore do I assume
These Royalties, and not refuse to Reign,
Refusing to accept as great a share
Of hazard more, as he above the rest
High honor'd sits? (11. 450-56).

Grotius' chorus laments how the former Lucifer
mutato
Nomine surgens dux tenebrarum,
Noctis et atrae signifer exit
Hesperus idem (I. 256-9)
(... changed in title would recur/ And rise as Hesperus
again/ And lead the shadows from their den/ As standard-
bearer of black Night.)
Milton's Satan stands before the double throne of Chaos and
Night asking the way to the world newly created at the expense
of their domain:
no mean recompense it brings
To your behoof, if I that Region lost,
All usurpation thence expell'd, reduce
To her original darkness and your sway
(Which is my present journey) and once more
Erect the Standard ther Of ancient Night (11. 981-6).
A growth process very much like that already examined in
its effect on the present Books V and VI, VII and VIII, per-
haps IX and X, and XI and XII appears to have produced the
present Books I and 11 out of Milton's first depiction of
Satan's agonies and his resolution to persevere only related

by himself at the opening of the tragedy,

170

Gilbert senses the process in his discussion of inconsis-
tencies in Book I as compared to its argument. Chiefly, he
complains that the sentences in the Argument, I‘To find out
the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon
he refers to a full Council”, and "What his Associates thence
attempt", do not reflect events of the book.

Thence seems to mean either afterward or as a result
but there is no result from a council. Nor do the devils

merely attempt anything; they actually accomplish the
building of Pandemonium.l

 

 

This, coupled with certain ambiguities in the debate and pro-
posal in council and what Gilbert takes to be inconsistencies
in references to Pandemonium here and in Book X, prompt him
to conclude that “at one time there was other material here
or a different arrangement; perhaps the attempt of Satan's
associates mentioned in the Argument was related.1n
Inconsistencies in the Argument to any book of Paradise
Lost must be carefully handled. The arguments were no doubt
hastily prepared at the request of the printer Simmons; per-
haps as Ants Oras says, the poet regarded them as 'last--

minute concessions to unintelligent readers'.15 But I think

 

13Gilbert, p. 108.

luGilbert, p. 105. Again, space prohibits detailed dis-
cussion of Gilbert's argument, nor is it my purpose to prove
him wrong. My view is that he is once again perceptive of
important inconsistencies but overly eager to postulate shifts
in the order of the poem.

150ras, p. 8.

171

there is reason to suppose the Argument to Book I to be the
product of an early plan of that book, perhaps quickly read
to the poet, slightly and hastily altered, and sent on to
Simmons. With the exception of the final sentence, 'Pandg—
monium the Palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the
Deep: The infernal Peers there sit in Council", the Argu-
ment relates, if somewhat cryptically, the events of the
present Books I and II without the building of Pandemonium.
The ”full Council" and the "attempts" which Gilbert thinks

lost are in fact the council and subsequent divertissements

 

of the fallen spirits presently in Book II. The building
of Pandemonium is a later interpolation, attached to the new
Book I at the point of incision.

The place at which the original book was cut in two is
clearly marked. The spirits having arisen from the burning
lake and arranged themselves about their chief, Satan deli-
vers a short address (40 lines) in which the possibilities
of renewing conflict with the Heavenly host and of discover—
ing "new Worlds" to invade are offered. He concludes:

this Infernal Pit shall never hold
Celestial Spirits in Bondage, nor th' Abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full Counsel must mature: Peace is despair'd
For who can think Submission? War then, War
Open or understood, must be resolv'd (I. 657-62).

Interestingly, his proposal is for “Full Counsel", a thorough

debate, not a full council or meeting of a committee of the

172
whole (everyone is already present); he certainly does not
suggest the construction of a place in which to hold such a
meeting. The building of Pandemonium is a spontaneous act.
The council of Book II is opened by Satan with a speech
of 31 lines and considerable redundancy. It ends with the
repetition,

we now return
To claim our just inheritance of old,
Surer to prosper than prosperity
Could have assur'd us; and by what best way,
Whether of open War or covert guile,
We now debate, who can advise, may speak (II. 37- 42).

One sees the contiguity of the now separated passages when
the points of connection to the new matter are brought together:

War then, War

Open or understood, must be resolved. (I. 61-2)
He ceased and next him Moloch, Scepter'd King (II. 43)
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest Spirit
That fought in Heav'n; now fiercer by despair:
His trust was with th' Eternal to be deem'd
Equal in strength, and rather than be less
Car'd not to be at all; with that care lost
Went all his fear: of God, or Hell, or worse
He reck'd not, and these words thereafter spoke.

My sentence is for open War... (II. 50).

The consultation then proceeded exactly as it does now. This
is why when Mammon argues for the potential prosperity of Hell
he speaks as though to convince the others that such a struc—
ture as Pandemonium is a possibility:
Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
Useful of hurtfull, prosperous of adverse

We can create, and in what place soe'er
Thrive under evil, and work ease of pain

173
Through labor and endurance.

As he 159g7 our darkness, cannot we his Light

Imitate when we please? This Desert soil

Wants not her hidden lustre, Gems and Gold;

Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise

Magnificence (II. 257-62, 269-73).
He fails to mention the magnificence, proof both of Hell's
riches and the spirits' skills, in which they are all pur-
portedly sitting; and this is yet more odd in light of his
being the archetect of the place. In neither the rest of
the debate nor in the interstitial narrative is there any
hint that it takes place in any building at all. The shore
on which they had originally assembled might do as well.

The council or counsel having settled the plan of subver-
sion of the new world, Satan accepts the "dreadful voyage“
and leaves standing orders for his legions:
Go therefore mighty Powers.

Terror of Heav'n though fall'n; intend at home,

While here shall be our home, what best may ease

The present misery, and render Hell

More tolerable (II. 456-60).
He departs and the others set about the various amusements
and adventures. These, it seems to me, are ”what his Associ-

ates thence attempt", once the conclusion of the first book.

Here again there is no mention of "Pandemonium, the high

 

Capitol/ Of Satan and his Peers" (I. 776-7). Some of the
spirits engage in Olympiam games,

Part on the Plain, or in the Air sublime
Upon the wing, or in swift Race... (II. 528-9)

174
Others with vast Typhoean rage more fell

Rend up both Rocks'and Hills, and ride the Air
In whirlwind... (II. 539-41)

Others more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes Angelical to many a Harp (II. 546-8)

Others apart sat on a Hill retir'd,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high (II. 557-8)

Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands,
On bold adventure... bend
Four ways thir flying March (II. 570-74).
The "Capitol“, it would seem, has completely disappeared.

The Pandemonium question affords an ideal view of the poem's
epic growth, for not only Books I and II are affected by it,
but also Book X. As I have pointed out, the extra-tragic events
of Book X share that book with events certainly drawn from the
earlier tragedy. Among these is Satan's exultation which in
the present poem is rendered in two installments, one in Chaos
and one in Pandemonium. These are radically altered to fit
their new epic contexts. Part of this alteration is the care-
ful specification of Pandemonium as the place of Satan's last
boast and his humiliation. Even the name of the place, "Eag-
demonium, City and proud seat/ Of Lucifer (X. 424-5), has the
specificity of a first reference. Best advantage is taken in
the narrative of the interior scene as Satan, disguised as be-
fits an epic hero returning, in 'Plebian garb",

from the door

Of that Plutonian Hall, invisible
Ascended hisvhigh Throne (X. 443-5).

 

175
At his unmasking, the Peers rush, "raised from thir dark Divan"
(X. 457). The din of unexpected hisses with which he is greet-
ed rises not to the roof of Hell, as crowd noises do in Book
II, but "through the Hall" (X. 522). The serpentine rout then
appear "issuing forth to th' open Field (X. 533). This sort
of reference is to be expected in an interior setting, yet
there is none of it in Book II.

In addition, an entirely different version of Satan's de-
parting charge to the spirits is rendered in this book. No
longer dispersed in various endeavors, the spirtSu are now
said to be

Far to th' inland retir'd, about the walls

Of Pandemonium....

There kept thir Watch the Legions, while the Grand

In Council sat, solicitous what chance

Might intercept thir Emperor sent, so hee

Departing gave command, and they observ'd (X. 423-30).
Again,

the late

Heav'n-banisht Host, left desert utmost Hell

Many a dark League, reduc't in careful Watch

Round thir Metropolis, and now expecting

Each hour their great adventurer from the search

Of Foreign Worlds (X. 436-41).
These passages are so obviously designed to accommodate Satan's
epic return and recognition that one suspects them to be the
origin of the Pandemonium concept. This portion of Book X
presumes the council of the early books and must have been

added soon after that episode was written. But, since the

early council does not presume the "City and proud seat",

176
these must enter with the scene in Book X. Milton evidently
returned then to add the building of the place, dividing the
then Book I in order to accommodate the added bulk, but ne-
glecting to adapt the original "counsel" of the spirits to
its new setting, and neglecting also to revise Satan's parting
charge and the subsequent behavior of the spirits to the brief
references in Book X.

The same process accounts for another of the anomalies
discussed by Gilbert. He points out the repeated references
to the building of the bridge by Sin and Death in Books II
and X, suggesting that

If Milton had the entire manuscript read straight
through to him after it was completed, he would have
caught such an obvious repetition,

and that
If this repetition is intentional, the artistic reasons
for it should be apparent; yet it is difficult to find
them in this summary of an action later to be described
in full.15

It is reasonable to suppose that Satan's encounter with
Sin and Death in Book X presumes his encounter in the earlier
book, just as his boasts in Hell presume the earlier council.
The detail of the bridge-building, however, occurred to him

in the preparation of the second encounter as a felicitous

device demonstrating the new ease with which Chaos could be

 

15Gilbert, p. 129-30.

177

traversed. When he returned to add the building of Pande-
monium, he added also the twelve line passage (II. 1021-33)
predicting the bridge. "Artistic reason” for the forecast lay
in the usefulness of the reference as another of many counter-
points to the apparent vmight and grandeur of Satan. This
last determined the location of the short passage in Book II,
just at the point where the trials of the Adversary in Chaos
(he is favorably compared to Ulysses and Jason at II. 1017-
20) threaten to render him rather too gloriously heroic.

With the addition of Beck III, brief passages in Books IV,
V and X which look back as it were from the vantage of the
Garden at the celestial response to Earthly events, and Books
XI and XII, the poem was complete. I will not treat these
additions in detail,nor is the list above intended to represent
the order of their occurrence. My point has been to show the
consistency of Milton's methods of adding to his work, a con-
sistency net to be explained by a desire for 'epic inclusive-
ness' or 'giving full vent to his feelings', but by a steady
vision of the structural contrasts to be achieved by adding
a coherent epic to his drama. I am reminded by the total
effect of those Renaissance paintings, like Messina's Saint

Jerome in His Study or Bellini's Saint Frances in Ecstacy,

 

in which great expanses of canvas are given over to the care-

ful delineation of background scenes whose energy and complex-

ity cast into relief the simple quietude of the subject. In

178

some of them, as in Paradise Lost, one is tempted to see

 

the background as the important thing. One is sometimes
tempted to explain the subject as an excuse for a virtuoso
performance.

It is impossible to settle with any confidence on dates
for any of the narrative additions and changes in Paradise
ngE. The closeness with which the Edenic passages follow

the design of Adamus Exul, however, indicates that the tra-

 

gedy was completed notlong after Phillips saw the Opening
lines of Act I in 1642 or 1643; certainly long before Mil-
ton's total blindness in 1652. It is possible that the bee,',
ginnings of the narrative recasting also predate the poet's
utter blindness - direct reference to his condition in the
invocation to Book III is obviously of very late composi-
tion - but the thoroughness with which the narrative addi-
tions and changes may be traced in inconsistencies points
to the likelihood that nearly all of them were accomplished
by the poet with the aid only of memory and a reader-amanu-
ensis guided by that memory to affected passages.16 Con-
sidering the span of time involved, the methods of change,

and the poet's other work during the period, Paradise Lost

 

 

16Parker (Ch. 13) places half the poem's composition after
the Restoration, but he assumes seriatim composition (dating
Book III after Milton's blindness) of a work conceived as an
epic and making only broad use of the tragic plans.

U—_ x

179
is truly a remarkable feat of both art and memory.

The Meaning of Genre

 

I have said that the tragic and epic actions in Paradise
ngt represent two major phases of composition. The poet,
starting out to account for "the Fruit/ Of that Forbidden
Tree”, found that this simply could not be done with any
comprehensiveness in a tragedy. First, even the sins of
Adam and Eve could only be related to immediate' causes with-
in the scope of the drama. Second, since Adam and Eve are
ultimately found to be worthy of the Messiah, they can only
illustrate pg; of the paths open to fallen man. The tree
bore more fruit than that.

Both of these shortcomings were remedied with the addition
of the epic action. The introduction of Satan's rebellion
in Heaven provided a view of the first in-a chain of causes
which resulted in the Fall of Man. Together with events in
Hell and Chaos, it provided illustration of that pattern of
behavior, alternative in its unswervingness to that of the
fallen Adam, which men might slavishly follow ever afterward.

Since doctrinally God is the only creative force in the
universe, there has always been room for the conjecture that
He is the source of evil as well as good, destruction as well
as innovation. The epic action provided for emphasis on Sa-
tan's actions as a perverted imitation of God's, sinful man's
as an imitation of Satan's.

But more. Through the association of the most obvious char-
acteristics of the two genres with certain aspects of Christian

doctrine, the doctrine itself could be conveyed in its most

180
useful form. The most significant associations are as follows:
The preoccupation of the sinful with social values, to the
neglect or the rejection of an awareness of God, is embodied
in the epic-heroic Satan as military and political leader
and the type of his society. Pride in the accomplishment of
social continuity, patriotism, becomes the imperialism of Sa-
tan's adventure. Skill in wiles becomes deceitfulness. Epic
indomitability becomes persistence in sin. The epic mode is
thus the literary expression, the imitation, in an Aristotelian
sense, of damnable acts.

In Paradise Lost, the tragedy is preserved so that it can
express in its focus upon the psychological war of self with
self, the final accountability of the individual for his error.
Detailed depiction of the rise of the individual will against
the law is the tragic progress of the first pair to death.
Emphasis upon death as the product of tragic action becomes
the Judgment in the Garden. Tragic anagnorisis, the recogni-
tion as Northrop Frye puts it of "the determined shape of the
life [the herg7 has created for himself",17 becomes the prelude
to contrition. Catharsis, the subjective sense of purgation,
becomes the awareness of Grace. Tragedy is thus the mode

through which the passage of man through sin to redeemability

 

may be expressed.
It has often been noted that, to some extent, the careers

of Satan and Adam parallel one another. Satan lives a tragedy

 

17Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N. J., 1957), p. 212.

181
before becoming epic. The poet acknowledges this in his ac-
count of the angel's life before the expulsion. It is this
life that Adam imitates throughout a great portion of the
tragedy in the Garden. But, wisely, Milton renders only a
sketch of Satan's tragedy, for, beyond his role as Tempter
the devil's chief importance is as the forerunner of the eter-
nally damnable. The point where Adam and Eve stop imitating
him is the doctrinal and artistic pivot of the work. This is
the point of an anagnorisis which leads to the beginnings of
understanding and to an acceptance of the law. It is, doc-
trinally, a point short of the "fourth degree of death".
The best way to illustrate this is to trace again the careers
of Satan and Adam.
W. R. Parker remarks that
There were, in fact, three falls, not one. There was
first Adam's fall from responsibility and good judgment
when he yielded to Eve's whim to work apart from him in
the garden; this made possible the Fall, 'the mortal sin
original', when Eve yielded to temptation; and, finally
there was the 'completing' of this sin through Adam's
inevitable 'compliance bad'j Adam's guilt antedated Eve's,
was different from Eve's, but partook of Eve's, as Adam
himself recognized and acknowledged.18
Parker here recognizes the most important element in the tragic

mythos. But equally important is the fact that Adam and Eve
are challenged to fall a fourth time when the possibilities of

 

18Parker, p. 512. For detailed discussion of the logic of
the Fall see John M. Steadman, Milton's Epic Characters (Chapel
Hill, 1959, 1968). p. 139-159-

182
'wilful barrenness' and suicide present themselves, and they
elect rather to submit to God's will.

In the epic action, the hero, Satan, is when we first see
him already well along in commission of the 'further crime'
rejected by Adam and Eve after their fall. He falls not once
but three times and again a fourth. It is this that seals
his eternal doom and locks him into the perpetual striving
against odds which is so well represented as epic indomitabi1-'
ity.

The doctrinal ground of these two patterns of fall is the
concept of the 'four degrees of death", treated in some detail
by Milton in Christian Doctrine. He begins by pointing out
that death is a movement, a developing progress, not a simple
condition:

Under the head of death, in Scripture, all evils what-
ever, together with every thing which in its consequen-
ces tends to death, must be understood as comprehended.
Hence divines, not inapprogriately, reckon up four
several degrees of death.1
The first of these, he says, is

guiltiness; which, though in
its primary sense it is an imputation made by God to
us, yet it is also, as it were, a commencement or pre-
lude of death dwelling in us, by which we are held as
by a bond, and rendered subject to condemnation and

punishment.

The autobiography of Sin, added late to Paradise Lost, prob-

 

ably after the addition of the War in Heaven,20 has as its

 

19Works, Columbia ed., xv, 203.

2OSin claims to have been born during a conspiritorial
meeting, but the narrative of the War does not mention her.

183

first purpose to relate this "commencement or prelude of
death" in Satan, then Lucifer. Her birth from the left side
of his head, recalling as it does the birth of Minerva from
the brow of Zeus, underscores Satan's affecting to be a god
capable of creation. It is at the same time the first of
two births which produce a parody of the-holy trinity, Satan
functioning as a perverted imitatOr of the Holy Spirit; and
it foreshadows Eve's birth from Adam's left side (VIII. 465),
suggesting that the latter relationship is net immune to per-
version.

The second degree of death is called SPIRITUAL DEATH;

by which is meant the loss of divine grace, and that of

innate righteousness.... This death consists, first, in

the loss, or at least in the obscuration to a great ex-

tent of... right reason.21
Here Milton cites, among other Scriptural references, John,
8.34, I'whosoever committeth sin, is the servant of sin', and
Romans, 1.26, "for this cause God gave them up unto vile af-
fections”. He comments, "The reason of this is evident; for
in proportion to the increasing amount of his sins, the sin-
ner becomes more liable to death", but he cautions that "some
remnants of the divine image still exist in [the sinne§7 not
wholly extinguished by this spiritual death'.22

Satan's arrival at this degree of death is expressed in

his lust's service to Sin, those "vile affeCtions” manifested

 

21Works, p. 203.
23wdrks, p. 209.

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184
when, as Sin puts it,
' full oft

Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing

Becam'st enamor'd, and such joy thou took'st

With me in secret, that my womb conceiv'd

A growing burden (II. 763-7).
The story provides quite literally for the birth of Death
as a product of 'increasing sin', with all the horror inher-
ent in the traditional incest theme.23 At the same time, Sin's
words in this passage prepare the alert reader for unease when
Adam as early as Book V addresses Eve as-"best Image of myself
and dearer half" (V. 95). Nevertheless, Satan does still re-
tain some “permissive glory", some "remnants of the divine
image", and continues to retain it until, in Book X (452), the
poet suggests that it may have become ”false glitter“.

The third degree of death is what is called THE DEATH

OF THE BODY. To this all the labors, sorrows, and dis-

eases nhich afflict the body, are nothing but the pre-

lude.2
Milton includes here citation of Romans, 2.19, “tribulations
and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil". This
reference, I think, provides the clearest ground for the poet's
expression of Satan's death in the third degree. His difficulty,
of course, was that, as a spirit, Satan could not suffer a

complete 'death of the body'; yet he must, as the precursor of

sinning unto death in man, pass through this degree. Milton's

 

23Sin incestuously begets Death in Gower's Mirrour de
l'Omme and in Andreini's Adamo Caduto.

 

2("‘rlorks, p. 215.

\l

’l

a

.1

185
solution is to portray the physical suffering of Satan and
the fallen angels during the War and after. The "labors,
sorrows, and diseases" which are physical death's prelude
are conveyed, albeit somewhat equivocally, when at the sword--
blow of Michael,

then Satan first knew pain,
And writh'd him to and fro convolv'd; so sore
The grinding sword with discontinuous wound
Pass'd through him, but th' Etherial substance clos'd
Not long divisible, and from the gash
A stream of Nectarous humor issuing flow'd
Sanguine, such as Celestial Spirits may bleed,
And all his Armor stain'd erewhile so bright (VI. 327-34).

The whole rebellious host is subsequently said to have

with fear surpris'd and sense of pain
Fled ignominious, to such evil brought
By sins of disobedience, till that hour
Not liable to fear or flight or pain (VI. 394-7).

They are later said to be "crusht and bruis'd' by their
armor,

which wrought them pain
Implacable, and many a dolorous groan,
Long struggling underneath, are they could wind
Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light,
Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown (VI. 657-61).

The fallen, then, stand in the third degree of death,
though not physically dead; yet they persevere. The Son's
assumption of the battle is attended by a softening of God's
militance:

At his command the uprooted Hills retir'd

Each to his place, they heard his voice and went
Obsequious, Heav'n his wonted face renew'd,

And with fresh Flow'rets Hill and Valley smil'd.
This saw his hapless Foes, but stood obdur'd,
And to rebellious fight rallied thir Powers
Insensate, hope conceiving from despair.

186

In heav'nly Spirits could such perverseness dwell?

But to convince the proud what Signs avail

Or wonders move th' obdurate to relent?

They hard'n'd more by what might most reclaim,

Grieving to see his Glory, at the sight

Took envy (VI. 781-93).
The importance of line 791 above cannot be over-stressed. It
is, I think, a hitherto unremarked point of Milton's interpre-
tation of doctrine that the rebellious angels retain sufficient
of the 'divine image' at this time to be 'reclaimable'. The
'renewing' of Heaven's face is an act of mercy, a final appeal
to the rebels. Their rejection of it "obdurate to relent'
marks their passage to the fourth and final degree of death, in
his discussion of which Milton cites Matthew, 10.14, 15:
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your
words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake
off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It
shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Go-
morrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
These are the words of Jesus to the apostles. The precedent
for them is his own treatment of the rebels who, unlike the
hills and valleys of Heaven, neithm'received nor heard him
on that day of the War when He went forth to meet them. Their
punishment is that "Eternal wrath" (VI. 865) which is death
in the fourth degree. Raphael stresses this most extreme pos-
sibility in his subsequent warning to Adam, cautioning against
Satan lest

with him
Bereav'd of happiness thou mayst partake
His punishment, Eternal misery (VI. 902-4).

This much of the angel's advice Adam ultimately heeds.

187

Enough of Satan's progress from life to living death is
revealed in these passages to make it clear that the danger
to Adam and Eve consists as much in following him as in suc-
cumbing to his blandishments as Tempter. His epic career,
however, serves to mark a trail which Adam and Eve do not fol-
low but which others after them will. It fills out the poem's
objective of accounting for all First Things. Its special
relevance lies in the fact that after the Fall humankind can
never again face the first choice of Adam and Eve. Their
tragedy is universal in the most literal sense; it is trans-
mitted to all posterity. Fallen man's chief interest lies in
the fallen couple's choice between three and four degrees of
death.

Of course, fallen man must first accept that he does share
complicity in the Fall. His affinity for Adam and Eve at all
points in the tragic progress must be cultivated so that
the Fall is sensed experientially, not merely as a point of
doctrine. For this purpose the tragedy is central to Paradise
ngt.

Some problems arise in the tragedy out of the need to por-
tray "man's first disobedience" as a single action. Adam and
Eve fall as Man, not individually even to the extent suggested
in the statement quoted from Parker above (p. 180). For this
reason, Milton's Eve can be neither the Eve Miss Woodhull sees
in Adamus Exul, “so bold, so hard, so unyielding, that she

has no prototype in literature except Medea",25 nor the Eve

 

25Woodhull, p. 163.

188
actually portrayed by Grotius, vain but generous, the temp-
tress of Adam but also the voice of reason who saves him from
despair. Nor may Milton's Adam be so nearly the simple vic-
tim as are the Adams of Grotius and most treatments of the
Fall before Milton's. He must be involved in Eve's fall to
such an extent that he seems almost as much to cause it as,
in Parker's words, to 'partake of it'.
Part of the importance of the autobiography of Sin is,
as I have said, that it prepares the reader to recognize the
implications not only of Eve's narcissism (IV. 449-67) but
of Adam's early reference to her as "best Image of myself
and dearer half“ (V. 95). To the extent that these represent
a yielding to self, they express "a commencement or prelude
of death dwelling in [them7". Adam's responsibility for this
'first fall' is fully conveyed when, having heard the story
of Abdiel and his rejoinder to Satan,
This is servitude,

To serve th' unwise, or him who hath rebell'd

Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee,

Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall'd (VI. 178-81),
he can still say of Eve that

a...
Far otherwise, transported I behold,
Transported touch; here passion first I felt,

Commotion strange (VIII. 528-31),
and that

so absolute she seems
And in herself complete, so well to know
Her own, that what she wills to do or say,
Seems wisest, virtuousest, discretest, best (VIII. 547-51).

Raphael, "with contracted brow“, points out that Eve is

189
worthy well

Thy Cherishing, thy honorin , and thy love,

Not thy subjection (VIII. 568-70),
but when this leads Adam to thoughts, not of the danger of
subjection or the requirements of honoring, but of the nature
of love in Heaven, the reader is prepared to acknowledge his
complicity in the 'mortal sin original' of Eve, the sin which
makes them both as it were pregnant with death in the second
degree, spiritual death, one of whose marks is "the loss, or
at least the obscuration to a great degree of... right reason".

The Temptation itself is a masterpiece of unreason even to
the point of illogic in Eve's acceptance of the serpent's ar-
guments. But this is preceeded by Adam's submission to her un-
reasonable arguments to work apart. In this he participates in
her sin. Neither is Adam's 'completing sin' his alone, for in
tempting him Eve commits further sin of which Satan's tempting
of his legions is the original. The pair are thus brought si-
multaneously to ”the death of the body", foreordained by God
as the penalty for eating the fruit. The catastrophe is complete.
In the carefully worked out hubris of the pair all the debil-
ities attendant to having "grown gross with sinning" are dis-
played. The loss of the will to do good is implicit. The loss
of reason is perfectly expressed in Adam's confusion of "Sapi-
ence" with "taste" (IX. 1017-26). Their lust (IX. 1016-45) is
a fit of “vile affections”. They sleep
a grosser sleep
Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams

Encumber'd (IX. 1049—51).

The subsequent shame and rancor of Adam and Eve (IX. lO54-end)

190
are the beginnings of what must be the most extended anag-
norisis in all tragic literature. Such a recognition is im-
plicit in the 'opened eyes' of Genesis, but it is extended
here as a growing awareness throughout the remainder of the
poem. In Books IX and X, however, it provides the pair with
a context in which they are challenged to sin yet once more,
and I think it is chiefly to permit this that Milton deviates
from Grotius and others in separating the Judgment and the Ex-
pulsion so widely.
When the Judgment is rendered the catastrophe is over. But
the poet stresses the Son as "both Judge and Saviour sent". He
th' instant stroke of Death denounc'd that day
Remov'd far off; then pitying how they stood
Before him naked to the air, that now
Must suffer change, disdain'd not to begin
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume,
As when he wash'd his servant's feet, so now

As Father of his Family he clad
Thir nakedness, with Skins of Beasts

Nor hee thir outward only with the Skins

Of Beasts, but inward nakedness, much more

Opprobrious, with his Robe of righteousness,

Arraying cover'd from his Father's sight (X. 209-23).
This merciful gesture is analogous to the renewing of the face
of Heaven offered the rebellious host then in the third degree
of death (see p. 185-6 above). In the period to follow Adam
and Eve are confronted with the choice whether to remain within
the tragic context or, like the rebel spirits, "hard'n'd more
by what might most reclaim" (VI. 791), to adopt minds “not to

be chang'd by Place or Time” (I. 253) and "courage never to

submit or yield" (I. 108); to adopt those essentially epic

191
virtues which in the fallen lead to the eternally ongoing re-
sistance of a God become 'Fixt Fate" (II. 560).

Just at this point the return of Satan to Hell is inter-
posed. It has two major functions. First, it constitutes the
final reduction of epic values to absurdity. The “universal
shout and high applause” which are the reward of the conquering
hero become "a dismal universal hiss, the sound/ Of public scorn"
(X. 505-9). Satan the Odyssean disguiser finds the serpentine
to be his actual form (X. 515-16) and, since he is epically the
type of his society, the others too are converted to snakes
through the action of social concord become a "horrid sympathy"
(X. 540). They become the deluded victims of Satan's own wily
strategem as they compulsively devour the "Fruitage fair” (X. 56D.

In addition to these, however, and very importantly, the re-
petitive, cyclical nature of their lives in sin and punishment
is emphasized:

So oft they fell

Into the same illusion, not as Man

Whom they triuph'd, once lapst (X. 570-72).
The poet follows this with speculation that theirs will be an
annual humbling and he cites the traditional identifications
of the serpent with the Titan Ophion (X. 581), recalling in
this way the earlier catalogue (I. 364-521) of the pagan names
by which the spirits would corrupt ”by falsities and lies the
greatest part/ Of Mankind".

The emphasis in this scene on repeated sin and punishment

serves in large part to cast into full relief the significance

192
of Adam‘and Eve's later decision to reject continued sin.
This is preceded by Adam's soliloquy on those evils seen
"already in part, though hid in gloomiest shade" (X. 716),
which extend his anagnorisis and challenge him to despair.

Eve's proposal comes about only after she has attempted

to console Adam and has appealed to him as her 'guide and
head':

bereave me not,

Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,

Thy counsel in the uttermost distress,

My only strength and stay (X. 918-21).

She ends weeping ”at his feet submissive in distress" (X. 942),
a position emblematic of her rediscovered sense of hierarchy.
Yet what she takes to be continued despair in her leader,

I see...

A long days dyin to augment our pain,

And to our Seed %0 hapless Seed!) deriv'd (X. 962-5),
prompts her, quite self-consciously, to attempt again what is
Adam's proper role. Thus not only the suicide proposal it-
self (X. 981-1002) but her daring again to lead are repetitions
of the primary sin. Moreover, to the extent that Eve is

prompted by Adam's unceasing despair, she is responding to

his continued abdication of manhood.26 When Adam counsels

 

26This is a complicated matter, not merely a rigid anti--
feminism in the poet. Milton allows exceptions to St. Paul's
injunction, "wives be subject to your husbands", in some cir-
cumstances -— such as the wife's demonstrated superiority in
prudence, "for then a superior and more natural law comes in,
that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or
female". Tetrachordon, in Works, IV., 76-7.

193

against violence and 'wilful barreness', therefore,

That cuts us off from hope, and savors only

Rancor and pride, impatience and despite,

Reluctance against God and his just yoke (X. 1043-5),
he both rejects further sin and re-establishes his willingness
and worthiness to lead. The original pattern of obedience is
fully re-established when, as Eve has already done at Adam's
feet, the pair now prostrate themselves, "with tears wat'ring
the ground” (X. 1101-2) and 'hearts contrite" (X. 1103), in
demonstration of their "sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek"
(x. 1104).

The key to an as yet unremarked function of Books XI and
XII, lies in God's response to the submission of Adam and Eve.
In submitting, they have proven themselves worthier than those
spirits who, confronted with the Son's glory, yet

Stood reimbattl'd fierce, by force or fraud

Weening to prosper, and at length prevail

Against God and Messiah or to fall

In universal ruinfla§t*(VI. 794-7).
He therefore spares them the devil's punishment, "Eternal
misery”, by ordering their removal from the vicinity of the
Tree of Life, which else, like their original immortality,
had 'seerd but to eternize woe” (XI. 60). But if Man is to
be both “Tri'd in sharp tribulation, and refin'd/ By Faith
and faithful works, to second Life” (XI. 63-4), he must learn
to cultivate that tragic sense of life which is the alternative

to epic relentlessness and defiance in despair:

We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal War

194

Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,

Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy

Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n.

So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain, 2

Vaunting aloud, but rakt with deep despair (I. 120-26). 7
Michael is told to

Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveal

To Adam what shall come in future day,

As I shall thee enlighten, intermix

My Cov'nant in the woman's seed renew'd;

So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace

(XI. 113-17).
His mission is to provide Adam with an experience which will
prepare him for tragic life by so cultivating his sensibilities
that he may become the progenitor of a special human ability,
the ability to avoid despair and maintain patience through
the purgative mechanism whose aesthetic name is catharsis.
Having acted the primal tragedy, Adam must be guided through
the purgative experience which will shield future mankind, both
actor and witness to tragic life, from despair and loss of faith.
Michael makes it clear that through the visions of the fu-

ture Adam is

to learn

 

27Cf. Aeneas:

per varios casus, per tot descrimina rerum

tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas

ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae.

durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundus.

Talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus aeger

spem voltu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem

(Through divers mishaps, through so many perilous chances,
we fare towards Latium, where the fates point out a home of
rest. There 'tis granted to Troy's realm to rise again; endure,
and keep yourselves for days of happiness. So spake his tongue;
while sick with weighty cares he feigns hope on his face, and
deep in his heart stiffles the anguish)(ll., I. 204-9), Loeb
Class. Lib. ed., trans., H. R. Fairclough (Lond., 1935), p. 254.

195

True patience, and to temper joy with fear

And pious sorrow, equally innur'd

By moderation either state to bear (XI. 360-63).
In the Preface to Samson Milton accounts tragedy ”the gravest,
moralest, and most profitable of all other poems" specifically
because it has the power "by raising pity and fear, or terror,
to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is to
temper and reduce them to just measure“.28 The importance of
the scenes called up in Books XI and X11 rests largely upon
their completing Adam's anagnorisis and their ability to evoke
the fullest range of his passions, thus to purge them.29 A
profile of Adam's responses both narrated and spoken reveals
the thoroughness with which this is accomplished:

[St the murder of Abel7 o sight

Of terror, foul and ugly to behold,

Horrid to think, how horrible to feel! (XI. 463-5);

_[5f the Lazar-housg7 Adam... wept,

Though not of woman born; compassion quell'd

His best of Man, and gave him up to tears (XI. 495-7);

[6r death by ag§7

Henceforth I fly not Death, nor would prolong

Life much, but rather how I may be quit

Fairest and easiest of this cumbrous charge (XI. 547-9).

.[Sr the sons of Lamech7

O pity and shame, that they who to live well
Enter'd so fair, should turn aside (XI. 629-30);

 

28Hughes, p. 549.

29These are their importances tg_Adam over and above the
special significance of any one of them to Milton or the reader,
such as the anti-epic import of the 'heroes' and 'conquerors' of
the plain of Enoch (XI. 638-73), described in careful echo of
the Homeric Shield of Achilles (11., XVIII. 478-616).

 

196
[of the Flood7

0 Vision ill foreseen! better had I
Liv'd ignorant of future (XI. 764-5);

[61‘ Noah7

Far less I now lament for one whole World

Of wicked Sons destroy'd, than I rejoice

For one Man found so perfet and so just (XI. 874-6).
The angel's turning in Book XII to description places this
book in relation to Book XI as the two books together stand
in relation to the whole poem; the relatively less evocative
verbal descriptions aim at the calming of spirit with which
the poem concludes. But Adam is still responsive:

‘lof the rebel Nimrod7

O execrable Son so to aspire

Above his Bretheren, to himself assuming

Authority usurpt, from God not giv'n (XII. 64-6);

[of the Exodu§7 now first I find

Mine eyes true op'ning, and my heart much eas'd,

Erewhile perplext (XII. 273-5);

[at Christ's victory7 full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By mee done and occasion'd, or rejoice (XII. 473-5);
and, finally,

Greatly instructed I shall hence depart,
Greatly in peace of thought (XII. 557-8).

Adam is the first of God's servants whomq, as the chorus of
Samson puts it,
he with new aquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind, all passion spent (SA., V. l755-end).
Eve also has been "calm'd' by Michael "and all her spirits

compos'd/ To meek submission" (XII. 596-7), and the quiet of

197

the closing lines of Paradise Lost, as Adam and Eve

 

hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way (XII. 648-9),

is the quiet of achieved catharsis.

198

Conclusion

 

Common consent has it that Samson Agonistes is a late

 

work, roughly contemporary with Paradise Regained but prob-

 

ably later, certainly later than Paradise Lost. There has

 

recently been some dissention from this view but it appears
to hold sway1 supported most recently by Professor Oras'
statistical analysis of Milton's style. Among the diffi-
culties in the traditional view has been its assumption that,
though the order of Milton's early list of genres in The

Reason of Chgrch Government represents the planned sequence

 

 

of his use of genres, his apparent preference there for tra-
gedy was an attitude somehow suppressed or neglected while

the 'diffuse' and 'brief' epics were written and then revived
for the composition of Samsgn. I hope to have provided evidence
to the exact contrary; that while the list in 39g does not pro-
vide accurate labels for Milton's major works (with the excep-
tion of Samson), its expression of his view that tragedy is the

form most doctrinally useful to a nation represents a view

 

1The most powerful advocate of an early date is Parker (see
esp. his Milton, II, 903-17). who places it as early as 1647-
8. He is joined by Gilbert and by J. T. Shawcross in "The
Chronology of Milton's Major Poems", PMLA, LXXVI (1961), 345-58.

199
the poet held throughout his career after 1641.

There simply is no "diffuse epic”. Paradise Lost does

 

contain an epic, and the career of Satan is both “brief"

in respect of the number of lines treating directly his ac-
tions, and "diffuse" in that it is various, containing al-
lusions to and strong conventional and verbal echoes of the
9d sse , the Aenig, and the Iliad: fitted on a plot similar
to the Aeneid's. But the structural heart of the poem is
tragic just as its philosophical center is the Fall of man.
To try to fit the poem which contains these two forms into
one generic category, even the vaguest, is to risk sacrificing
full appreciation of the poem's completeness as an account
of First Things.

Generic categories are useful to the extent that they allow
us to see the thematic and philosophical purposes of a work
interms of the traditional structure which most effectively
conveys them. This being the case, generic labels call up
sets of expectancies in readers which, if the work is mislabel-
led, are bound either to mislead or frustrate them. Readers

will be frustrated or misled by Paradise Lost as long as we

 

insist on calling it epic and mean by that anything other than
'long narrative poem'.

Since it was Milton's imperative to illustrate the first
patterns of two radically different kinds of behavior, that

of the damned and that of the saved, it was necessary for him

200
to use the two genres in which they could be best expressed.
His choice was dictated by fairly broad criteria. Since the
unregenerate invariably draw their values and aspirations
from the rewards of the world (fame, glory in war, political
power, luxury, conquest, etc.) the epic, man's highest device
for expressing these values, was chosen to convey Satan's
primal exhibition of them. Since saved man is both guilty
and aware of the meaning of his guilt, since his first concern
is his personal relationship to the Law, tragedy, that most
intimate form, containing both error and anagnorisis, was
chosen to convey the Adamic pattern.

This is not to say that Milton held epic a morally repre-
hensible form. Certainly he admired Homer and Virgil and
Tasso for their excellence as poets. *But for all the presence
of divine 'machines' in Homer and Virgil, and for all the vir-
tues of their heroes, it is still earthly glory and terrestrial
conquest that they celebrate. The loyalties of their heroes,
and indeed of their gods, are after all, tribal.

In this connection one might recall what Milton recorded

in his Commonplace Book about Lactantius on amor in patriam:

 

This virtue should be sought by philosophers warily.

For a blind and carnal love of country should not sweep
us to deeds of rapine and slaughter and hatred of neigh-
boring nations in order that we may aggrandize our coun-
try by power, wealth, or glory; for so did the heathen
act. Christians, however, ought to cultivate mutual
peace and not covet other men's goods. For this reason
Lactantius assails philOSOphy.2

 

2Works, XVIII, 164-5.

201
No matter how much Latium may seem an ideal place, it is
still the terrestrial Home that Aeneas seeks to establish,
they are still the values of the Trojan society that he seeks
to implant. And Tasso's Jerusalem is still a military objec-
tive no matter how badly his God may seem to want it liberated.

It is true, as C. M. Bowra says, that in Jerusalem Liberate

 

the effort to take Jerusalem is a test of Christian man-
hood as Aeneas' efforts are of Roman virtus, and the
final success is a sign that, after all, the right qual-
ities have been shown and the right steps taken,
and that the trials of the Crusaders, though ”comparable to
those of Aeneas" are yet "an essential part of the whole pro-
cess. By overcoming them the Crusaders become fit to take
Jerusalem.”3 But their behavior is undifferentiable from

Aeneas' and from that of Camoent' Portugese imperialists in

his blatantly patriotic Os Luciadas (1572).“ A mark of this

 

problem is that one might with no hint of sarcasm paraphrase
Bowra's differentiation of the Crusaders from Aeneas and say
that 'by overcoming his trials Aeneas becomes fit to take
Latium'. As much is often said.

Milton was well aware that heroic effort even unto victory
is a morally indifferent matter in itself. He must have been

able to see that "the qualities of devotion, perseverance,

 

3From Virgil to Milton (Lond., 1945), p. 153.

“E. M. W. Tillyard points out that CamoenS? DaGamma "is a
successful and conscienscious military commander and in no
sense whatever an allegory of the human soul. And his action
is military and political and not religious", The English Epic
and Its Background (Lond., 1954), p. 249.

 

202

obedience and courage"5 mark specifically Christian chivalry

 

in Tasso's romance epic only through the imputation of the
poet himself. It is to stress the merely putative differences
in such matters that Milton's War in Heaven is militarily
unresolved, the only advantage gained by the virtuous angels
being their knowledge of service to God, the'victory of the
Son being so quick and overwhelming as to mock war.6

Paradise Lost is the result of Milton's resolution to pre-

 

sent two actions which would be morally differentiable in
themselves and which would reveal qualitatively different be-
havioral modes quite apart from any extraneous virtues or
vices of the actors. He is hardly to be supposed free of im-
putation, however, for the poem is studded with the narrator's
judgments of the actions.7 But these do not draw differences
in otherwise like actions.

The clearest of these evaluations in Paradise Lost is the

 

oft-cited invocation to Book IX, where the poet takes time
just prior to the tragic catastrophe to point to the relative
values of epic and tragic heroism:

I now must change
These Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach

 

5Bowra, p. 152.

6Arnold Stein goes so far as to call this ”almost a kind of
epic farce", Answerable Style (Minneapolis, 1953), p. 22.

 

7Excellent treatments of the narrator are Anne D. Ferry,
Miltongs Epic Voice (Cambridge, Mass., 1967) and Stanley E. Fish,
Surprised by Sin(Lond., 1967).

203

Disloyal on the part of Man....

....Sad task, yet argument

Not less but more Heroic than the wrath
Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu'd
Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall: or rage
Of Turnu§ for Lavinia disespous'd

Or ngtgngs ire or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek and Oytherea's Son;
If answerable style I can obtain

Of my Celestial Patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd,

 

Since first this Subject for Heroic Song
Pleas'd me long choosing and beginning late;
Not sedulous by Nature to indite

Wars, hitherto the only Argument

Heroic deem'd, chief maistry to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl'd Knights
In Battles feign'd; the better fortitude
Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom

Unsung, or to describe Races and Games

The skill of Artifice or Office mean,

Not that which justly gives Heroic name

To person or to Poem. Mee of these

Nor skill' d nor studious, higher Argument
Remains (IX. 5-43)

We might take the poet at his word here. First, by argument
he means what argument meant in the seventeenth century -—
story, arrangement of incidents, plot, action. He does not

mean theme. By Tragic he means as in a tragedy, not simply

 

involving misfortune. He goes on to contend that this tragic
action is not less but more heroic than the actions of three
specified epics. His long enumeration of the trappings of
epic is clearly designed not to differentiate his from "any

other epic poem”, as Hughes would have it,8 but his tragic

 

8Hughes, p. 379, n. 40-41.

204
argument for all epics including the one about Satan he him-
self has written. He concludes by reiterating his conviction,
first stated in the invocation to Book 1,9 that this is a
”higher Argument”, a more worthy, lofty action.

Readers of Paradise Lost confronted with its denigration
of epic, but unwilling to let go the term, are forced to do
one of two things; to claim that Milton's epic is unique, in
which case the term is meaningless, or to posit in the poem
a second or true epic which conforms to a number of the genre's
broad characteristics but which escapes the poet's own stric-
tures.

Examples of these strategies are numerous. Peter Hagin,
for example, says,

The connections and affinities between the neoclassi-
cal epic and Paradise Lost are many. But they are not
in the first place those of subject matter and style,
and they are not deliberate; they lie in the respective

endeavors to solve the question of what a modern epic
should be.10

 

J. M. Steadman says:

Finding the true essence of heroic virtue in divine
virtue, recognizing in God himself the heroic archtype
of man, he tuned the epic lyre an octave higher than
his predecessors. Instead of the praises of men, it
sounds the honour of God. This transformation repre-
sents, in a sense, the death and resurrection of the

9See my discussion above p. 154-6.

10Tie Epic Hero and the Decline of Epic Poetry (Bern, 1964),
p. l 8.

205

heroic poem.... Adam's defeat tolls the knell of heroic
poetry, Christ's victory revives it.11

Faced with assertions of the first sort one can only examine

the critic's particular statements about the poem and judge
each subjectively. The second, far the most frequent sort

of statement, rests on the commission of an enormously popu-
lar critical distortion -— the ascription to the divine figures
of far more importance than they actually have in the poem.
Critics both to praise and to blame Milton focus an axtraordi-
nary amount of attention on the Father and Son. But, after

all, they only occupy one full book and scattered passages else-
where. The War in Heaven takes place at one remove from the
fictive present and is arranged in accordance with the require-
ments of Adam's tragedy. The only other acts performed by the
Son in the poem are the Creation (again at one remove) and the
Judgment, the last performable for the most part by an 'off-
stage' voice and not strictly an act at all. When Steadman says
"the Son's humiliation displays the image of true magnanimity,
just as Satan's vainglory embodies its idol”,12 he is no longer
talking about Paradise Lost, for in the poem the Son's humili-‘
ation is only a legal commitment with thousands of lines of

actual event involving Satan to balance. The Son is contracted

 

11Milton and the Renaissance Hero (Oxford, 1967), p. 200—201.
lZIbid., p. 147.

206

to atone for Man, but in the poem this is doctrine not ac-
tion. To assert that Christ's victory revives heroic poetry
is to suggest either that a mere contract has equal weight
with extensive and detailed deeds, or that Milton wrote the
poem which Steadman himself explains his not writing - 'an
epic of the Passion and Ressurection".13

It must be owned that divinity in Paradise Lost is, as
B. Rajan says, "a collection of abstract prOperties'.lu
Conversation between the Father and the Son, modeled as it is
on the traditional_dep§t of the four (or three) daughters of
God, inevitably produces points of doctrine rather than char-
acterization, and to the extent that the points imply character,
God must seem unappealing in the extreme.15 Other activities
in Heaven compound this problem by introducing sufficient
anthropomorphism to arouse the antagonism of the very people
Milton was perhaps hoping to quiet, those who could not, like
him, rest comfortably with “an equation of sin with guilt, an
outmoded psychology... and a narrowly legalistic theory of the
16

Atonement".
13Ibid., p. 70.

1("Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader (Lond.,
1947), p. 106-7.

153ee, for this,John Peter, A Critique of Paradise Lost
(N. Y., 1960), p. 10-21.

 

 

16Helen Gardner, A Reading of Paradise Lost (Oxford, 1965),
p. 27.

207

Finally, most of the critical problems attendant to the
'epic assumption' involve a concept of Milton as a poet
which is not to be supported by anything we know of him as
a man. Proceeding from the premise - often unconscious
I am convinced -- that epic poetry is the highest form of
poetry, a concept which Milton did not share, critics have
undertaken as their prime task to vindicate or vilify him as
a bard. This leads to some very misleading assertions about
the poet's purposes and about the premises of Paradise Lost.
Steadman, for example, points to the epic poet's traditional
mode of I'investing the epic fable with moral significance“
by constructing a causal structure ”based largely on poetic
justice: heroic virtue -u- heroic action -c- merit -- reward."

Then he says that ”Paradise Lost alters this pattern. Adam's

 

fall has destroyed it. It is to God's glory rather than man's
honour that Milton dedicates his heroic poems'.17 The tradi-
tional causal pattern is accurately stated, and it is true
that Milton "dedicates" his poems to God's glory. But Eggp-

dise Lost does not alter the pattern because "Adam's fall has

 

distroyed it”. Believing in a literal Fall, Milton could not
have entertained the notion that its consequences, even for
literature, were delayed until the mid-seventeenth century.

The implication that he does derives from a confusion of the

 

17Steadman, p. 196.

208
historical facts of the poem's composition with the premises
of the poem.

Historically, Paradise Logp is a departure from tradition,
but a major premise of the poem is that the Fall produced the
heroic tradition in both its epic and tragic expressions. The
presence in the poem of so many 'traditional elements', pas-
toral and lyric as well as heroic, derives from the need of
the poet of First Things to account for these traditions. It
is thus a distortion cf the poem to see the War in Heaven as
a product of Milton's ”skill in adapting to his own theme and
purposes a traditional element in ancient epic that had ceased
to hold serious meaning for his age."18

Not much different in import is Miss Ferry's comment that

throughout Paradise Lost, the allusions to the fables
feigned by pagan poets evoke a sense of all the wealth
of knowledge and feeling which has entered the world
since Adam's Fall. By his disobedience we lost our ori-

ginal simplicity and innocence, but we gained a multi-
plicity of choices.1

 

Or Steadman's that Milton rejected the Passion and Resurec-
tion as subjects because

the detailed account in the Gospels left the poet
little scope to invent, to alter and arrange his mater-
ials in the interests of verisimilitude and the epic
marvellous, or to adapt his sources to the laws and
conventions of heroic poetry.20

 

18Gardner, p. 70.

19Ferry. p. 37.

20Steadman, p. 70.

209

These resemble the assertion of A. J. A. Waldock that

Adam cannot give Milton much scope to express what

he really feels about life; but Satan is there, Satan

gives him scope. And the result is that the balance

is somewhat disturbed.21

One continually gets the impression from students of the
poem who share the epic assumption that Milton was a man con-
demned as if by a witch to wrestle with inadequate materials,
an uncomfortable tradition and an uncongenial faith; a man
whose greatest moments are when he uses one of his liabilities
to free himself from another. Yet we know he took his vision
of poetic mission, for him a sacred ministry, far too seriously
to be bound by anything but his own notion of truth. I find
his vision of truth rather clearly expressed in both the prose
and the poetry so long as one does not confuse him with other
poets and their different imperatives.
Milton's concept of the utility of poetic skill to God and

Man is uncomplicated:

To inbreed and cherish in a great poeple the seeds of

virtue and public civility, to allay the purturbations

of the mind and to set the affections in right tune.22
These were the objectives of the Christian poet. It is no
accident that they are also the desired effects of tragedy (see
p. 195-7 above). But, since the primal tragedy and its mean-

ing demanded for their completeness an accounting for the per-

sistence of the bulk of mankind in ignoring that original error's

 

21Waldock, p. 24.

22Reason of Church Government, in Hughes, p. 669.

210
significance, the primal pattern of blind persistence in
sin had also to be discovered.

The inevitable result was a long narrative poem in which
the significance of the first tragedy is underscored and
strengthened by the epic which explains one side of fallen
man's choice. The old heroic values are undermined in the
service, not of new heroic values, but of the doctrinal util-
ity and purgative value of tragedy. Even so is the epic
strength of Samson destroyed in the service of the will of

God, his survivors sent away "calm of mind, all passion spent“

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