Read Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) Online
Authors: John Milton,William Kerrigan,John Rumrich,Stephen M. Fallon
Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) (11 page)
Title page to the second edition of
Paradise Lost
(1674).
(illustration credit fm5.1)
NTRODUCTION TO
P
REFATORY
P
OEMS
These laudatory poems first prefaced
Paradise Lost
in 1674. The Latin verses by Samuel Barrow concentrate on the expulsion of Satan and his followers from Heaven and its classical precedents, the defeat and punishment of the Titans and Giants. Given the literary triumph of this section of
Paradise Lost
, Barrow confidently welcomes Milton onto the stage of world poetry (where he has been ever since). The English verses by Andrew Marvell assert the religious propriety and superior artistry of Milton’s achievement, stressing its capaciousness and aesthetic excellence by invoking the cramped neoclassical canons that prevailed after the Restoration. Aware of Dryden’s desire to rewrite
Paradise Lost
as a drama in heroic couplets, Marvell detects traces of divine inspiration even in Milton’s blank verse prosody, created like the world itself “in number, weight, and measure.”
Barrow was noted for his affection for Charles I, had been much involved with the political maneuvering of the late 1650s leading to the Restoration, and yet had also been linked with Cromwell. Appointed a physician to Charles II in 1660, he was a discreet, well-connected man of science and a great admirer of Milton. Marvell had a similar history of shifting political allegiance and a well-deserved reputation for discretion. Like Barrow a Royalist sympathizer at the beginning of the English Revolution, he must have adopted the Republican cause by 1653, when Milton recommended him for a position in Cromwell’s government. (He was not appointed until 1657.) After the Restoration, he served ably as member of Parliament for Hull and was widely respected. The participation of Barrow and Marvell in the second edition seems to have been orchestrated as a broad-based appeal to judicious men of learning and affairs on behalf of a poet much maligned for his political crimes. Marvell had earlier come to the aid of
the embattled Milton. Immediately after the Restoration, he helped protect the defender of regicide against his enemies and was instrumental in clearing Milton of a supposed debt to the sergeant at arms after his imprisonment in 1660. A decade later, in
The Rehearsal Transpos’d
, he championed Milton against the scurrilous attack of Samuel Parker.
POETAE IOHANNIS MILTONI
[
On the Supreme Poet John Milton’s
Paradise Lost]
Qui legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni
Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis?
Res cunctas et cunctarum primordia rerum
Et fata et fines continet iste liber.
Intima panduntur magni penetralia mundi,
Scribitur et toto quicquid in orbe latet:
Terraeque tractusque maris coelumque profundum
Sulphureumque Erebi flammivomumque specus;
Quaeque colunt terras pontumque et Tartara caeca,
9
Quaeque colunt summi lucida regna poli;
Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam,
Et sine fine chaos et sine fine Deus,
Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine,
In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor.
Haec qui speraret quis crederet esse futurum?
Et tamen haec hodie terra Britanna legit.
O quantos in bella duces, quae protulit arma!
Quae canit et quanta praelia dira tuba!
Coelestes acies, atque in certamine coelum,
Et quae coelestes pugna deceret agros!
Quantus in aetheriis tollit se Lucifer armis,
Atque ipso graditur vix Michaele minor!
Quantis et quam funestis concurritur iris
Dum ferus hic stellas protegit, ille rapit!
Dum vulsos montes ceu tela reciproca torquent
Et non mortali desuper igne pluunt,
Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus
Et metuit pugnae non superesse suae.
At simul in coelis Messiae insignia fulgent,
Et currus animes armaque digna Deo,
Horrendumque rotae strident, et saeva rotarum
Erumpunt torvis fulgura luminibus,
Et flammae vibrant, et vera tonitrua rauco
Admistis flammis insonuere polo,
Excidit attonitis mens omnis et impetus omnis,
Et cassis dextris irrita tela cadunt.
Ad poenas fugiunt, et ceu foret Orcus asylum
Infernis certant condere se tenebris.
Cedite romani scriptores, cedite Graii
Et quos fama recens vel celebravit anus.
Haec quicunque leget tantum cecinisse putabit
Maeonidem ranas, Virgilium culices.
9.
pontumque:
“portumque” (harbor) in the 1674
Paradise Lost
.
S.B. M.D.
English Translation
You who read
Paradise Lost
, great Milton’s grand poem, what do you read but everything? This book contains all things, and the origins of all things, and their fates and their ends. The innermost secrets of the great universe are displayed, and whatever in the whole world is hidden is written out: the lands and the expanses of the sea and deep heaven and the sulfurous and flame-vomiting cave of Erebus; and those things that inhabit the lands and the sea and blind Tartarus, and those that inhabit the bright realms of highest heaven; and whatever anywhere is enclosed within any boundaries, and boundless Chaos, and boundless God; and more boundless—if anything is more boundless—Christ’s love directed toward men. Who would have believed there would come someone who would aspire to such things?—and yet today the land of Britain reads them. How many chieftains he brought to war, and what weaponry! What battles he sings, and with what a trumpet!—battlelines in Heaven, and Heaven in conflict, and fighting that befits the fields of Heaven! What a Lucifer lifts himself to ethereal warfare, and strides scarcely lower than Michael himself! With what great and fatal rage the fight is joined while one in his fierceness protects the stars, the other assaults them! While they hurl uprooted mountains as retaliatory weapons and they rain down from above with no mortal fire, Olympus stands unsure to which side to yield, and fears it will not survive its own battle. But as soon as the Messiah’s standards shine out in Heaven and you rouse his chariot and the arms worthy of God, and the wheels shriek horrifyingly and savage lightning breaks from the wheels with grim flashes, and flames shake and true thunderclaps resound with a mixture of flames in the clangorous sky, all consciousness falls from those who have been struck, and all strength, and their useless weapons drop from their empty hands. They flee to punishment, and as if the underworld were asylum they strive to settle themselves in the infernal shades. Yield, Roman writers, yield, Greeks, and those whom recent or ancient fame has celebrated; whoever reads this will think Homer just sang of frogs, Vergil of gnats.
S[amuel] B[arrow]
PARADISE LOST
When I beheld the poet blind, yet bold,
In slender book his vast design unfold,
Messiah crowned, God’s reconciled decree,
Rebelling angels, the Forbidden Tree,
Heav’n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, all; the argument
5
Held me a while misdoubting his intent,
That he would ruin (for I saw him strong)
The sacred truths to fable and old song,
(So Samson groped the temple’s posts in spite)
9
The world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight.
Yet as I read, soon growing less severe,
I liked his project, the success did fear;
Through that wide field how he his way should find
O’er which lame Faith leads Understanding blind,
Lest he perplexed
15
the things he would explain,
And what was easy he should render vain.
Or if a work so infinite be spanned,
Jealous I was that some less skilful hand
18
(Such as disquiet always what is well,
And by ill imitating would excel)
Might hence presume the whole Creation’s day
To change in scenes and show it in a play.
Pardon me, mighty poet, nor despise
My causeless, yet not impious, surmise.
But I am now convinced that none will dare
Within thy labors to pretend a share.
Thou hast not missed one thought that could be fit,
And all that was improper dost omit:
So that no room is here for writers left,
But to detect
30
their ignorance or theft.
That majesty which through thy work doth reign
Draws the devout, deterring the profane.
And things divine thou treat’st of in such state
As them preserves, and thee, inviolate.
At once delight and horror on us seize,
Thou sing’st with so much gravity and ease;
And above human flight dost soar aloft,
With plume so strong, so equal, and so soft.
The bird named from that paradise
39
you sing
So never flags, but always keeps on wing.
Where couldst thou words of such a compass find?
Whence furnish such a vast expense of mind?
Just heaven thee, like Tiresias
43
, to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.
Well might’st thou scorn thy readers to allure
With tinkling rhyme
46
, of thine own sense secure;
While the
Town-Bays
47
writes all the while and spells,
And like a pack horse tires without his bells.
Their fancies like our bushy points
49
appear:
The poets tag them; we for fashion wear.
I too transported by the mode offend,
And while I meant to
praise
thee must
commend
.
Thy verse created like thy theme sublime,
In number, weight, and measure
54
, needs not rhyme.
5.
argument
: the plot or subject matter.
9.
Marvell appears to have read
Samson Agonistes
, first published in 1671. But the primary allusion is to Judges 16.28, a passage that Milton does
not
represent in
SA
.
15.
perplexed
: complicated unnecessarily.
18.
some less skilful hand
: Dryden, who asked Milton if he could make a rhymed drama of
Paradise Lost
. “Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses” (Aubrey, p. lxviii).
30.
detect
: expose.
39.
bird named from that paradise
: Birds of Paradise were thought to live entirely in the air, never touching ground.
43.
Tiresias
: The legendary seer, mentioned in
PL
3.36, was given prophetic vision in recompense for his blindness.
46.
tinkling rhyme
: Cp. Milton’s “jingling sound of like endings” in his remarks on “The Verse” of
PL
.
47.
Town-Bays:
In Buckingham’s play
The Rehearsal
, Dryden is lampooned in the character of Bayes. The name alludes to the laurel used to crown poets, which by synecdoche refers to all fame-seeking versifiers.
49.
bushy points
: Points attached the hose to the doublet. They were either tasseled (
bushy
) or gathered together, like modern shoelaces, in a metal
tag
. Tagging bushy laces is here a metaphor for introducing regular end-rhyme in Milton’s flowing blank verse.
54.
In number, weight, and measure
: See Wisdom 11:20: “thou hast ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight.”
THE PRINTER TO THE READER
1
Courteous Reader, there was no argument at first intended to the book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the poem rhymes not
. S. Simmons
HE
V
ERSE
The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Vergil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.
This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.