Thus with the year
Seasons return, but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
He later identifies with the faithful angel Abdiel: ‘Among the faithless, faithful only
he; / Among innumerable false, unmoved, / Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified’
(III.897–9).
Paradise Lost follows the Renaissance idea that poetry should set an attractive
pattern of heroic virtue. Holding a humanist belief in reason and in the didactic role
of the word, Milton turned argument back into poetry. In the European conversa-
tion of the Renaissance, his was the last word. As well as relating the Fall, he
attempted a more difficult task: ‘to justify the ways of God to men’. He would retell
the story of ‘Man’s first disobedience’ so as to show the justice of Providence. The
result is, in its art, power and scope, the greatest of English poems. Dr Johnson, no
lover of Milton’s religion, politics or personality, concluded his Life thus:‘His great
works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties
vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the
gr eatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first.’Paradise Lost is a work of
grandeur and energy, and of intricate design. It includes in its sweep most of what
was worth knowing of the universe and of history. The blind poet balanced details
occurring six books apart.
Paradise Lost begins with the fall of the angels, Satan’s plan to capture God’s newly
created species, and a Heavenly foresight of the future. In Book IV we meet Adam
and Eve in the Garden. Raphael tells Adam of Satan’s rebellion, the war in Heaven,
the fall of the angels, the creation of the universe, and of Man and of his requested
mate, and warns him of the tempter. In IX, Satan deceives Eve, and Adam resolves to
die with her; the Son conveys God’s doom and promises redemption. In X, Satan
boasts of his success, but he and his angels are transformed to serpents. In XI and
XII, Raphael shows the miseries of mankind until the Redemption, whereafter Adam
will have ‘a paradise within thee, happier far’.
The ‘heroic poem’ exemplified right conduct. There are several heroisms: Adam
and Eve, like the Son, show ‘the better fortitude / Of patience and heroic martyr-
dom’ (IX.31–2) – not the individual heroism of Achilles or the imperial duty of
Aeneas, nor yet the chivalry of the Italian romantic epics. The magnificence of
Satan’s appearance and first speeches turns into envy and revenge. At the centre of
the poem is an unglamorous human story, although ‘our first parents’ are ideal at
first, as is their romantic love:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair
That ever since in love’s embraces met,
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons,the fairest of her daughters Eve.
In IV, Eve says that Paradise without Adam would not be sweet. In IX, the Fall elab-
orates the account in Genesis. Eve, choosing to garden alone, is deceived by the serpent’s
clever arguments. She urges Adam to eat. ‘Not deceived’, he joins her out of love:
How can I live without thee, how forgo
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?160 5 · STUART LITERATURE: TO 1700