“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669Milton might also contemplate another version of the modern epic modeled on
Tasso, Camõens’s Os Lusiadas in Richard Fanshawe’s English translation (1655); it
celebrates Portuguese exploration and empire-building, accompanied by the triumph
of Christianity, as the major heroic enterprise of Europe in the early-modern pe-
riod.^18 By its opening echo, “Armes, and the Men,” the poem proclaims its place in
the Virgilian tradition, and then asserts the superiority of the Portuguese heroes over
Aeneas, Odysseus, Alexander, or any others celebrated by the ancient bards. Both the
original and the translation are in ten cantos, with eight-line stanzas of alternating
rhymes and a concluding couplet. Milton’s poem alludes to Camõens in some epi-
sodes, and calls at times on the language of exploration and colonization. Also, Milton
probably knew or at least heard about Samuel Butler’s wildly popular burlesque epic,
Hudibras (1663? and 1664).^19 The three cantos of each part, written in rollicking
octosyllabic couplets, satirize the Presbyterian knight Hudibras (a Don Quixote fig-
ure, though with no trace of his idealism) and his Sancho-Panza-like squire Ralpho,
who stands for the Independents. Both are supremely incompetent, undertaking
mayhem in the name of religion but always coming a cropper; they are buffoons,
dishonest, corrupt, unchivalrous, and contemptible. Butler’s burlesque epic degrades
epic martial heroism, epic heroes, and the epic form itself, as well as the recent Eng-
lish conflict, setting Milton the task of demonstrating that epic is still possible, and
that epic heroism is to be found not in battle glory but in a “better fortitude.”
Abraham Cowley’s incomplete Davideis (1656) and its critical preface may have
seemed to pose Milton a direct challenge. Milton’s widow Elizabeth mentioned
Cowley with Spenser and Shakespeare as the English poets Milton “approved most”;^20
that approval was most likely for Cowley’s pindaric odes and lyrics, but Milton
would have encountered Cowley’s attempt at a modern biblical epic published
along with them in 1656. Cowley presents himself in the preface as a defeated
royalist who has resigned himself to the new order, abandoning an earlier epic on
the civil war, since it is “ridiculous, to make Lawrels for the Conquered.”^21 He de-
signed his “Heroical Poem of the Troubles of David” as an epic in twelve books, “not
for the Tribes sake, but after the Patern of our Master Virgil.” He had intended, and
in the four completed books undertakes, to weave in “most of the illustrious Stories
of the Old Testament” and “the most remarkable Antiquities of the Jews, and of other
Nations before or at that Age.”^22 The poem initially suggests a parallel between Saul
and Cromwell, and between David and Prince Charles who, like David, endured
trials and dangers in exile; David’s residence at the court of King Moab alludes to
Charles at the court of Louis XIV. If the projected conclusion, David’s anointing at
Hebron, was intended to allude to Charles’s restoration, Cowley may have stopped
writing when he lost confidence in that ending. Milton would have approved
Cowley’s strong recommendation of biblical subjects for epic, though not his em-
phasis on martial and regal stories and his use of heroic couplets: “What worthier
subject could have been chosen among all the Treasures of past times, then the Life
of this young Prince;... There is not so great a Lye to be found in any Poet, as the