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on men of this side the Alps, I began thus far to assent to them, " and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and "intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined "with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die. "These thoughts at once possessed me and these other: that, if I were certain to write, as men buy leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's glory by "the honour and instruction of my country. For which cause, and "not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second "rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution which "Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the "industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue : "not to make verbal curiosities the end (that were a toilsome vanity), "but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest things among mine own citizens throughout this Island in the mother"dialect; that what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for their country, "I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, "might do for mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though 'perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these British "Islands as my world, whose fortune hath hitherto been that, if "the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and "renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble "achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks and "mechanics."1 From this passage, written just after the meeting of the Long Parliament, and when Milton was for the first time a London householder on his own account, we learn three things: first, that, from his return from Italy about two years before, he had been full of the idea of some great literary enterprise; secondly, that he had resolved that it should not be in Latin, but in English; and, thirdly, that he did not despair of producing such a work as should be an example of a new kind of nobleness in the national literature of Britain. He does not here tell us that he had gone so far as to determine that the intended work should be an epic poem, and that he had all but fixed on a subject. These facts, however, we learn from his Latin poem to Manso, written at Naples just before his 1 The Reason of Church Government, Book II., Introduction.

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return to England, and from his Epitaphium Damonis, written immediately after his return. Passages in these two pieces (see Mansus, lines 78-84, and Epitaphium Damonis, lines 155-178) distinctly prove that, while in Italy, he had conceived the notion of an English epic poem on the subject of the legendary history of Britain, including the Romance of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and that, for some time at least after his return, this idea still fascinated him. Gradually, however, the idea had lost its hold; and, by the time when the foregoing passage was written, Milton, though still in the same general state of mind as to some great literary work to be undertaken and carried out, was all at sea again both as to the subject and as to the form. He had become uncertain whether the dramatic form, or some combination of the dramatic and the lyric, might not be fitter for his purpose than the epic; and, relinquishing the subject of Arthur, he had begun to look about for other subjects. All this we learn from the sequel to the passage already quoted. "Time serves not now," he there says, "and perhaps I might seem "too profuse, to give any certain account of what the mind, at home "in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to “herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting: whether "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 whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, which, in them that know art and "use judgment, is no transgression, but an enriching of art; and, lastly, what king or knight before the Conquest might be chosen "in whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And, as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice whether he would command "him to write of Godfrey's expedition against the Infidels, or "Belisarius against the Goths, or Charlemain against the Lombards, "if to the instinct of nature and the emboldening of art aught may "be trusted, and that there be nothing adverse in our climate, or "the fate of this age, it haply would be no rashness from an equal diligence and inclination to present the like offer in our own "ancient stories. Or whether those Dramatic constitutions wherein "Sophocles and Euripides reign shall be found more doctrinal and exemplary to a nation. The Scripture also affords us a divine "Pastoral Drama in the Song of Solomon, consisting of two persons " and a double chorus, as Origen rightly judges; and the Apocalypse

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"of Saint John is the majestic image of a high and stately Tragedy, "shutting up and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with at "sevenfold chorus of halleluiahs and harping symphonies: and this "my opinion the grave authority of Paræus, commenting that Book, "is sufficient to maintain. Or if occasion shall lead to imitate "those magnific Odes and Hymns wherein Pindarus and Callimachus " are in most things worthy, some others in their frame judicious, in "their matter most and end faulty; but those frequent Songs "throughout the Law and Prophets beyond all these, not in their "divine argument alone, but in the very critical art of composition, 'may be easily made appear over all the kinds of Lyric poetry to be "incomparable." This whole passage is to be taken as a literal record of Milton's meditations and hesitations with himself over his great project in his house in Aldersgate Street in 1641, when the work of the Long Parliament was waxing warmer. He had still some inclination to the epic form, but wavered between an epic of the ordinary heroic or historic kind and an epic of some other conceivable kind that Scripture might suggest; and, if he were to choose the ordinary or historic kind, there were so many subjects from British History competing in his mind that he could repeat Tasso's offer to let another person decide which he should take. But the dramatic and lyrical forms had also their attractions for him, and in each of these forms there were possible varieties. Thus, if he resolved to write a drama, should it be a tragedy of British legend, after the model of the tragedies of the Greek dramatists, or should it be a tragedy of a Scriptural kind, with interspersed songs and choral accompaniments?

Even had Milton not told us all this so distinctly in one of his prose-pamphlets, we should have had the means of knowing most of it. Some of the very papers which he had by him when he was writing that pamphlet in his house in Aldersgate Street are still extant in the famous volume of Milton relics in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge 2; and among these is one most interesting record of his literary schemings and hesitations about this time, in the shape of a list, in his own hand, of about one hundred subjects which he had jotted down as all suitable for dramatic treatment. He had jotted

1 The Reason of Church Government, Book II., Introduction.

2 For a more detailed account of this Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. see the General Introduction to the Minor Poems, ante, vol. i. pp. 102-107.

these down, apparently, from day to day, as they struck him in the course of his readings, with the intention of estimating their relative degrees of merit, and at last fixing on the one, or the one or two, that should seem best. Sixty of the subjects are Scriptural, fifty-two being from the Old Testament, and eight from the New. Among the Old Testament subjects for tragedies are two from the history of Abraham, and others at various points of interest from the Flood downwards through the history of the Patriarchs, the Hebrew Judges, and the Kings both of Judah and Israel: in fact, from Genesis to the Books of Kings and Chronicles. The subjects from the New Testament include one relating to John the Baptist and several from the life of Christ. Most of the subjects in both sets are merely jotted down in the form of titles; but in other cases there is a brief sketch of the probable plot of the drama, with a list of the probable persons. Following the Scriptural subjects, in a separate list headed "British Trag.," is a series of thirty-three subjects for tragedies from British History, from the end of the period of the Roman occupation, on through the times of the Saxon Heptarchy, and as far as to the Norman Conquest; and added to these is a distinct list of five subjects from Scottish History, with the heading "Scotch Stories, or rather British of the North Parts." It is worthy of remark that among the British subjects there is no mention of Arthur, the favourite heroes being rather Vortigern, Edwin of Northumbria, Edward the Confessor, and Harold. Among the Scottish subjects Milton was bold enough, though Shakespeare had preceded him, to set down Macbeth.

This most interesting list of subjects, still extant in Milton's own hand, and written by him, as may be proved, between 1639 and 1642, corroborates in a singular manner his account published in his prose-pamphlet at that time of what his mind "at home in the spacious circuits of her musing" had then liberty to propose to herself. But it does more than this. It shows a stronger determination to the dramatic form than we should have inferred from the passage in the pamphlet. All the subjects in the long list are subjects for "Tragedies"; and, if Milton still contemplated an epic as an alternative, the fact is not noted. But, further, though the list, by the multitudinousness and variety of its subjects, confirms the account which Milton gives of his uncertainty in this matter, it furnishes evidence at the same time that he was, consciously or unconsciously, tending towards one particular subject. Among the Scriptural sub

jects most fully sketched out, and which, it may be assumed therefore, attracted Milton most as they occurred to him, are these seven : Abram from Morea, or Isaac Redeemed, Sodom, Dinah, Moabitides or Phineas (Numbers xxv.), Abias Thersaus (the Sickness of Abijah, 1 Kings xiv.), Baptistes, and Christus Patiens (the Agony in the Garden). But there is one subject which predominates in the list over all these. This is PARADISE LOST, expressly set down under that now familiar title, and figuring in the list as no other subject is permitted to figure. For, in the first place, it is at the head of the total list of subjects, as if, when Milton began to look about for possible subjects, this was the very first that flashed upon his thoughts. But, in the second place, once the subject had been thought of, it evidently held its place in Milton's estimation more than any of the others. There are no fewer than four separate drafts of this one subject as meditated for dramatic treatment. The first Draft consists merely of a list of dramatis personæ, as follows:

"The Persons:-Michael; Heavenly Love; Chorus of Angels; Lucifer; "Adam, Eve, with the Serpent; Conscience; Death; Labour, Sickness, Dis"content, Ignorance, with others, Mutes; Faith; Hope; Charity."

This Draft having been cancelled, another is written parallel with it, as follows:

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"The Persons:-Moses [originally written Michael or Moses,' but the words "Michael or' deleted, so as to leave Moses' as preferable for the drama]; Justice, Mercy, Wisdom; Heavenly Love; the Evening Star, Hesperus; "Lucifer; Adam; Eve; Conscience; Labour, Sickness, Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death, [as] Mutes; Faith; Hope; Charity."

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This having also been scored out, there follows a third Draft, more complete, as follows:

"PARADISE LOST :-The Persons: Moses #poλoviše, recounting how he "assumed his true body; that it corrupts not because of his [being] with God "in the Mount; declares the like of Enoch and Eliah, 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 them they cannot see Adam in the "state of innocence by reason of their sin.-[Act I.] : Justice, Mercy, Wisdom, "debating what should become of Man if he fall. Chorus of Angels sing a hymn "of the Creation.-Act II. : Heavenly Love; Evening Star. Chorus sing the marriage-song and describe Paradise.—Act III.: Lucifer contriving Adam's "ruin. Chorus fears for Adam and relates Lucifer's rebellion and fall.-Act IV. : "Adam, Eve, fallen; Conscience cites them to God's examination. Chorus be"wails and tells the good Adam hath lost.—Act V.: Adam and Eve, driven out

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