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Paradise Lost. Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are
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Sodom (the plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of
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Comus ),
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Samson Marrying,
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Ahab,
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John the Baptist,
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Christus Patiens,
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Vortigern,
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Alfred the Great,
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Harold,
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Athirco (a very striking subject from a Scotch legend), and
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Macbeth, where Duncan's ghost was to have appeared instead of Banquo's, and seemingly taken a share in the action.
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Arthur, so much in his mind when he wrote the
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Epitaphium Damonis, does not appear at all. Two of the drafts of
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Paradise Lost are mere lists of _dramatis personæ_, but the others indicate the shape which the conception had then assumed in Milton's mind as the nucleus of a religious drama on the pattern of the mediæval mystery or miracle play. Could he have had any vague knowledge of the autos of Calderon? In the second and more complete draft Gabriel speaks the prologue. Lucifer bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels. Eve's temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which Milton would probably have reconsidered. The plan would have given scope for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion,
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a conception traceable in the eleventh book of
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Paradise Lost. But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of
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Paradise Lost in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the execution of Charles I.
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The contention between the father of Zimri and Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and approving Phineas. It was his earnest aim at all events to compose something
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human
Whatsoever, he says in 1641,
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An easier task than that of
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by the cosmogony and anthropology of
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Paradise Lost.
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Paradise Lost before the death of Cromwell, or have made very great progress with it ere his conception of his duty called him away to questions of ecclesiastical policy. The one point on which he had irreconcilably differed from Cromwell was that of a State Church; Cromwell, the practical man, perceiving its necessity, and Milton, the idealist, seeing only its want of logic. Unfortunately, this inconsequence existed only for the few thinkers who could in that age rise to the acceptance of Milton's premises. In his
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Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, published in February, 1659, he emphatically insists that the civil magistrate has neither the right nor the power to interfere in matters of religion, and concludes:
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The defence only of the Church belongs to the magistrate. Had he once learnt not further to concern himself with Church affairs, half his labour might be spared and the commonwealth better tended. It is to be regretted that he had not entered upon this great subject at an earlier period. The little tract, addressed to the Republican members of Parliament, is designedly homely in style, and the magnificence of Milton's diction is still further tamed down by the necessity of resorting to dictation. It is nevertheless a powerful piece of argument, in its own sphere of abstract reason unanswerable, and only questionable in that lower sphere of expediency which Milton disdained. In the following August appeared a sequel with the sarcastic title,
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Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church.