CHAPTER IX

66

"PARADISE REGAINED" AND SAMSON

AGONISTES"

THE two great poems― minor they are not in any true sense of the term — that form the subject of this chapter appeared in one volume in 1671. There is reason to think that they were printed for Milton rather than published by John Starkey on his own account. At any rate Mr. Samuel Simmons did not figure in the transaction, while the Rev. Thomas Tomkyns, the ecclesiastical censor, gave his signature to the license to print with few twinges of conscience. With regard to the dates of composition there is little available information. If Milton acted immediately upon the query of Ellwood, "But what hast thou to say of 'Paradise Found,'" it is not unlikely that the shorter epic was completed during the year 1666, or before "Paradise Lost" was published. As for

Samson," no definite year can be assigned, but critics prefer to place it as near 1671 as

they can, chiefly because its style is supposed to bear marks of old age. It is hard to say whether the harsh passages thus relied on as determining data are not the result of metrical experimentation on Milton's part, and equally hard to deny that many passages show a surprisingly youthful vigor. One may more confidently agree with the critics on psychological grounds. "Samson" is the pathetic but nobly strenuous protest of an old man against an age and country that have deserted ideals precious to him; it is the kind of protest to which Milton may have worked himself slowly up, as the last service he could do mankind. Besides, having finished two epics, the aged poet may have felt a desire to carry out his youthful purpose of writing a drama on a Scriptural subject; he had, indeed, thirty years before, considered the propriety of writing two dramas on the theme, and he may, as one may gather from his preface, have desired both to qualify the usual Puritan judgment on the drama and to censure the stage-plays then holding the Lon

don boards, as well as most of those that had hitherto been produced in England. Be this as it may, the two poems must have added to Milton's reputation and suggested by their numerous misprints the misfortune of their author.

As might have been expected, critics have differed greatly over "Paradise Regained." It is often said that Milton preferred.it to "Paradise Lost," whereas he seems merely to have disliked to hear it slightingly treated in comparison with the more elaborate poem. In this he was entirely right. "Paradise Regained" is not, as Coleridge and Wordsworth thought, Milton's most perfectly executed work, but it is, as its author seems to have perceived, thoroughly sui generis, a masterpiece to be judged after its own kind. The reading public has not taken to it because of a preconceived notion that as a sequel to "Paradise Lost" it ought to continue the style and general interest of that great work. This, however, Milton never intended that it should do. He seized upon Christ's temptation by Satan — relying on the accounts given in Matt. iv. and Luke iv., particularly in the latter as a parallel to the temptation of

Eve and Adam, and resolved that in Christ's triumph he would shadow forth Satan's ultimate defeat and the final acquisition of Paradise by Adam's race. He will have little or no action, but will rely in great measure upon the effects produced by the speeches put in the mouths of the protagonists. He hardly tells a story; he reports an argument in the issue of which the sequel of the first epic is found. It is evident, then, that to judge the second poem. properly, one must in many respects dissociate it entirely from the first, and ask one's self whether Milton could possibly have succeeded better in the task he undertook.

It is hard to see how he could have done so, or how, with the materials at hand, he could have constructed an epic on the plan of "Paradise Lost." We need not call the sequel an epic at all unless we are inclined to agree with Masson, who follows Milton, in holding that there are two kinds of epic, one diffuse, the other brief. Neither need we look to Giles Fletcher's "Christ's Victory and Triumph," or to other poems, for Milton's model. He meant his second poem to be a spiritual exposition

of a transcendent truth; he had made his former poem a sublime setting forth of an empyrean and cosmical catastrophe. As he succeeded beyond expectation in his earlier task, it is idle to talk of the later poem as his most perfect work of art, for it accomplishes its purpose no better than " Paradise Lost" fulfils its mission, and it is obviously inferior in power and scope. But of its kind it is far more admirable than general readers seem to know. Even Dr. Garnett hardly does it justice when

it occasionally becomes jejune.

he asserts that

From first to

last its tone is that of poised nobility, which takes on at times a note of the richest eloquence known to verse. Sublimity is nowhere to be found; but poised nobility is no despicable substitute for it. Charm, too, is present, although not to the same extent as in "Paradise Lost" or in "Comus." But the peculiar note indicated is so perfect and so unique in literature, that the popular depreciation that has attended the poem seems to cast a sinister light upon Anglo-Saxon capacity to appreciate at least the subtler phases of the poetic art.

As a matter of course the mere interest of