“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674As well, these poems carry forward Milton’s effort to redefine the heroic for the
modern age. Even more directly than Paradise Lost, these poems challenge the aesthet-
ics and cultural politics of the contemporary heroic drama: its pentameter couplets and
what Steven Zwicker terms “its bombast and cant, its aristocratic code of virtue and
honor, its spectacle and rhetoric... its warring heroes and virgin queens, its exaltation
of passion and elevation of empire.”^19 Milton’s largely dialogic brief epic celebrates in
blank verse the heroism of intellectual and moral struggle, and entirely redefines the
nature of empire and glory. And his severe classical tragedy, written in a species of free
verse with varying line lengths and some irregular rhyme, eschews every vestige of
exotic spectacle, links erotic passion with idolatry, and constructs a tragic hero whose
intense psychic suffering leads to spiritual growth. Milton’s preface to Samson Agonistes
explicitly sets his practice against that of his contemporaries, describing his tragedy as
“coming forth after the antient manner, much different from what among us passes
for best.”^20 The two-part volume did not appear for some months, until late in 1670
with George Starkey as publisher.^21 The delay may have occurred because Milton,
working with inadequate scribes, took some time to see this octavo volume through
the press; also, Milton’s printer (John Macock) was at the same time producing Milton’s
History of Britain for yet another bookseller, James Allestry.^22 At some point during the
printing process, and too late to be inserted at the proper place in Samson Agonistes,
Milton added or retrieved ten non-consecutive lines (now numbered as lines 1,527–
35, and line 1,537), evidence of his ongoing revision or oversight of the work in
progress.^23 Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes are discussed on pages 510–36.
Milton’s History of Britain from the beginnings to the Norman Conquest had
been written much earlier, in two stages: the first three and most of the fourth
books, including (probably) the famous Digression denouncing the Long Parlia-
ment and the Westminster Assembly, in 1648–9; and the rest sometime after 1654.^24
It seems likely, however, that some passages were added in 1670 as Milton prepared
his text for publication: probably the final passage of the Digression and the last
paragraph of the History, with their long, melancholy perspective on past English
events and their emphasis on what became Milton’s leitmotif in these final years,
that only through virtue and sound education can liberty be gained or preserved. At
the end of the Digression are these words:
Hence did thir victories prove as fruitless as thir losses dangerous, and left them still
conquering under the same grievances that men suffer conquerd, which was indeed
unlikely to goe otherwise unless, men more then vulgar, bred up, as few of them were,
in the knowledge of Antient and illustrious deeds, invincible against money, and vaine
titles, impartial to friendships and relations had conducted thir affaires. But then from
the chapman to the retaler many, whose ignorance was more audacious then the rest,
were admitted with all thir sordid rudiments to beare no mean sway among them both
in church and state. From the confluence of all these errors, mi[s]chiefs, & misdemeanors,
what in the eyes of man cou[ld] be expected but what befel those antient inhabit[ants]
whom they so much resembl’d, confusion in the end. (CPW V.1, 451)