“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669By his ten-book format, Milton associates his poem explicitly with Lucan’s unfin-
ished epic, Pharsalia, or The Civil War, which was the font of a counter-tradition to
Virgil’s celebration of an Augustan empire predestined by the gods. Lucan treats the
resistance of the Roman republic and its heroes, Pompey and Cato, who were de-
feated by the victorious tyrant Caesar in a bloody civil war; by ascribing Caesar’s
victory to contingency and chance rather than the gods, and by having the spirit of
the butchered Pompey enter into the future tyrannicide, Brutus (9.1–17), Lucan
suggests an ongoing struggle against Caesarism.^29 Lucan’s own career was readily
assimilated to his epic, since he was forced to commit suicide at age 26 for involve-
ment in a botched conspiracy against Caesar’s infamous successor, Nero. By Milton’s
time Lucan’s epic tradition was firmly associated with antimonarchical or republican
politics through several editions and translations,^30 especially the 1627 English trans-
lation by the Long Parliament’s historian-to-be, Thomas May. May’s preface desig-
nates Pompey the “true servant of the publike State” for his opposition to Caesar in
defense of the Senate and the Roman republic, and he adds a couplet at the end
terming the future assassins of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius, “more just then Jove”
who has seemed to favor Caesar.^31 Milton alludes to and echoes Lucan especially in
the treatment of contingency in Satan’s flight through chaos, in the portrayal of the
War in Heaven as a civil war, and in linking Satan’s use of opportunistic republican
rhetoric with Caesar’s. Milton also found in Lucan a model for the tragic epic:
Lucan treats the loss of the Roman republic, Milton the loss of the earthly paradise.^32
In the Proem to Book IX Milton indicates that verses of his great poem came
readily to him – as if inspired and chiefly at night. Yet the difficulties under which
Milton labored were clearly phenomenal, dependent as he was upon friends and
amanuenses to record his lines when he had them ready.^33 The report of Cyriack
Skinner, who sometimes served Milton as an amanuensis, corroborates in more
prosaic terms the story of his Muse’s “nightly visitations,” indicating Milton’s habit
of composing poetry upon first waking and his urgent need to get his verses set
down:
The time friendly to the Muses fell to his Poetry; And hee waking early (as is the use
of temperate men) had commonly a good Stock of Verses ready against his Amanuensis
came; which if it happend to bee later than ordinary, hee would complain, Saying, hee
wanted to bee milkd. (EL 33)Richardson reports that Milton was “perpetually Asking One Friend or Another
who Visited him to Write a Quantity of Verses he had ready in his Mind, or what
should Then occur”; he also heard that Milton would dictate “perhaps 40 Lines as
it were in a Breath, and then reduce them to half the Number” (EL 289, 291).
Edward Phillips corroborates these accounts of Milton’s compositional habits, add-
ing the curious fact that he found himself able to write poetry – or at least epic
poetry – only during the winter months: