“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669And when afterwards [after Milton’s return] I went to wait on him there (which I
seldom failed of doing, whenever my Occasions drew me to London), he shewed me
his Second Poem, called PARADISE REGAINED; and in a pleasant Tone said to
me, This is owing to you; for you put it into my Head by the Question you put to me at
Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.^47Honest Ellwood surely reported what happened but his story presents some prob-
lems. The passage does not make clear when the visit occurred – probably that
summer, but possibly at some later time. Also, Ellwood does not, as he did with
Paradise Lost, claim to have read the new poem, so it is not clear whether he saw it
when it was just begun or nearly finished. Finally, though Ellwood obviously be-
lieved he had served as a surrogate for Milton’s Muse in prompting this poem,
Milton may have been making a “pleasant” – that is, half-joking – compliment.
We can imagine the anxiety verging on terror that Milton experienced in early
September as fire raged for four days throughout London, devastating some 435
acres – two-thirds of the entire City – from the Tower to Temple Bar and from the
river nearly to Smithfield and London Wall. It broke out early in the morning of
Sunday, September 2, in the house of a baker in Pudding Lane, and, thanks to a
high wind and drought conditions, spread uncontrollably, destroying 13,200 houses,
89 churches, and goods valued at £3.5 million.^48 The only City church saved was
St Giles Cripplegate, the parish that included Milton’s residence in Artillery Lane.
The toll of public buildings included St Paul’s Cathedral, Paul’s School that Milton
had attended as a boy, the City gates, the Exchange, Guildhall, and Sion College.
Blind Milton must have waited through those awful days and nights with a mount-
ing sense of helplessness, smelling the scorching smoke and hearing the roaring fire,
the commotion of families fleeing the flames and moaning their losses, and terrified
reports by friends and family about the wildly spreading, unpredictable course of
the flames. Pepys writes of streets filled with people and loaded carts “ready to run
over one another and removing goods from one burned house to another,” of
showers of firedrops and blinding smoke, of the “horrid, malicious, bloody flame”
making an arch of fire a mile long, and of the terror and commotion caused by
often unavailing efforts to stop the fire by blowing up buildings.^49 He also reports
the widely believed rumors that the French or the Jesuits had set the blaze.^50 Rich-
ard Baxter deplores the loss of books from the libraries of ministers, booksellers, and
colleges, commenting that he found half-burned leaves of books everywhere.^51 Did
members of the Milton household also begin to pack up their goods, including the
manuscript of Paradise Lost and other unpublished works, for a quick removal if
need be? By September 5 or 6 Milton would have learned that the fire had been
stopped by the City wall and ditch at Aldersgate, Cripplegate, and Moorgate. It had
come within a quarter-mile of his house in Artillery Walk, and also spared his
former residences in the Barbican and Jewin Street. But the Cheapside neighborhood
of his youth, including Bread Street and his property there, as well as his birthplace