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So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay.
gpt
Paradise Lost. The most striking counterpart is Calderon, to whom he owed as little as Calderon can have owed to him.
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El Magico Prodigioso, already cited as affording a remarkable parallel to
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Comus, though performed in 1637, was not printed until 1663, when
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Paradise Lost
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Like the red outline of beginning Adam,
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In myself I am A world of happiness and misery; This I have lost, and that I must lament For ever. In my attributes I stood So high and so heroically great, In lineage so supreme, and with a genius Which penetrated with a glance the world Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit, A King--whom I may call the King of Kings, Because all others tremble in their pride Before the terrors of his countenance-- In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems Of living light--call them the stars of heaven-- Named me his counsellor. But the high praise Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose In mighty competition, to ascend His seat, and place my foot triumphantly Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know The depth to which ambition falls. For mad Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now Repentance of the irrevocable deed. Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory Of not to be subdued, before the shame Of reconciling me with him who reigns By coward cession. Nor was I alone, Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone. And there was hope, and there may still be hope; For many suffrages among his vassals Hailed me their lord and king, and many still Are mine, and many more perchance shall be.
gpt
Paradise Lost was firmly implanted in his mind. External evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that
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Vondel's Lucifer--whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Satan--was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have been studying Dutch, but when the plan of
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Paradise Lost must have been substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and
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Paradise Lost, but between his Samson and
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Samson Agonistes. Milton's indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his lightning-speech,
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Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,
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And rather the first prince at an inferior court Than in the blessed light the second or still less.
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Milton and Vondel, 1885). That Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet. Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject. _Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi._ When, as in the instance above quoted, he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's
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Divine Tragedy, which he may have read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate.
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The introduction to the first dialogue, says Ochino's biographer Benrath,
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Ochino's arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius.
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God sent His Son into the world, and I will send my son. Antichrist accordingly comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council, and even admonishes his leader.
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I fear me, he remarks,
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In his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care; And princely counsel in his face yet shone.