Milton’s Paradise Lost was published in 1667. The country minister John Beale gave an early response that typifies the unfiltered experience: “Milton is a poet too full of the Devill . . . [he]
put such long & horrible Blasphemyes in the Mouth of Satan, as no man that feares God can endure to Read it, or without a poisonous Impression” (qtd. in Simmonds 181).
The point of the comment, as has often been repeated by critics, is that the best speeches are given to Satan (and that this is somehow wrong or harmful, at least to anyone that “fears God.”) Paradise Lost further challenges in that it takes the form of a classical epic, which seems to put Satan in the role of a hero. Consequently, reading it can’t help but create—for anyone familiar with the traditional role of Satan as evil incarnate—a kind of anxiety. Despite this, Milton’s epic was recognized for the brilliance of the verse and for the loftiness of the subject matter. In seventeenth century England, education focused heavily on classical philosophy and literature, and many people were happy to receive an English epic that was as good as pagan texts, and which focused on Christian themes instead of merely human battles or journeys like the Iliad and The Aeneid.
England’s first official poet laureate John Dryden was quick to commend Paradise Lost, and tried to turn it into a play in 1673. In a poem added to the 1677 edition, Dryden compares Milton to Homer and Virgil, connecting England to Greece and Italy as the new bearer of the epic tradition.
Three Poets, in three distant Ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The First in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The Next in Majesty; in both the Last.
The force of Nature could no farther go:
To make a third she joined the former two. (qtd. in Boswell 85)
And yet, given the topic of Paradise Lost, especially in light of Milton’s reputation for scandal and heresy, it was also met with immediate skepticism A poem by Milton’s acquaintance
Andrew Marvell, published in the 1674 edition of Paradise Lost, both acknowledges and aims to decrease this skepticism. Marvell admits that he started out misdoubting the intent, because a poet as strong as Milton could accidentally ruin the “sacred truths,” but ends up convinced that Milton’s poem wasn’t harmful to readers’ faith. He also comments on the controversial issue of Milton’s choice to use free verse rather than rhyming his poem, as was more common. Marvell agrees, even though the form is unusual, Milton has pulled it off.
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, needs not rhime. (qtd. in Todd 274)
After a lifetime of political writing, however—sometimes using crude, underhanded personal attacks to make his point—Milton had made many enemies. Especially after the Restoration, when sympathy for the monarchy returned and Milton was remembered for his role in justifying the execution of King Charles, many were reluctant to acknowledge Milton’s achievement. In
John Milton was one whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principle of our English Poets . . . But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honourable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and villainously bely’d that blessed Martyr King (qtd. in Kolbrener 115)
In 1689, Thomas Yalden has trouble reading the “sacred lines” which “with wonder we peruse,”
alongside the “seditious prose, which provokes our rage.” Even though the poetry was good, it was impossible to overlook the politics or forgive Milton’s other writings.
But when thy impious mercenary pen Insults the best of princes, best of men, Our admiration turns to just disdain, And we revoke the fond applause again.
(qtd. in Kolbrener 115)
Those who read Paradise Lost in light of his political treatises saw it as a text on behalf of “Civil, Religious and Domestic Liberty.” For John Toland, who wrote a Life of Milton in 1698, Milton was a revolutionary whose “chief design” was to “display the Effects of Liberty and Tyranny”
(qtd. Kolbrener 114). Toland’s Life raised a clamor, according to Kolbrener because Toland’s efforts “worked against those who sought to replace the memory of a radical and politicized Milton” with the one who, in Jonathan Richarson’s would “to Calm and Purify the Mind. . . to a State of Tranquility and Happiness” (115).
And there was the problem of the poem’s classification: calling it an epic would seem to make Satan the hero; yet that conclusion was hard to avoid given the poem’s construction. John Dennis relied heavily on Paradise Lost in his literary theory, developed between 1701 and 1704.
His principle aim was to show that, with the aid of Christian revelation, poetry can equal and excel that of the ancients (something it would have been difficult to demonstrate without the example of Paradise Lost. He called it “the most lofty, but most irregular Poem, that has been produc’d by the Mind of Man,” but admitted, “the Devil is properly his Hero, because he bests the better” (qtd. in Shawcross 129).
Dennis was mostly interested in the sublime, or delightful horror: “Fear then, or Terror, is a Disturbance of the Mind proceeding from an Apprehension of an approaching Evil,
threatening Destruction or very great trouble to us or ours. And when the Disturbance comes suddenly with surprise, let us call it terror; when gradually, Fear” (qtd. in Doran 131). Dennis also pointed out that poetry is more powerful than philosophy as a tool to “instruct and inform human reason”, since passions are strong and ungovernable, and reason feeble and weak. His argument however assumes the traditional view that the passions must be controlled and resisted;
in his view Paradise Lost could be used for moral education.
In 1691 an anonymous letter to the Athenian Mercury (vol. 5, No. 14) asks whether Milton and Waller were not the best English poets, and which the better of the two? The implicit question is whether blank verse is better than rhyme. At the time this was still a divisive issue, so the editor responds diplomatically:
They were both excellent in their kind, and exceeded each other, and all besides.
Milton was the fullest and loftiest, Waller the neatest and most correct Poet we ever had. But yet we think Milton wrote too little in Verse, and too much in Prose, to carry the name of Best from all others; and Mr. Waller, tho’ a full and noble Writer, yet comes up in our Judgements to that, – Mens divinior atque os – Magna Sonatorum, as Horace calls it, which Milton has, and wherein we think he was never equaled. (qtd.
Others criticized Milton’s use of old fashioned words. In 1694 Charles Gildon defends him on this account: “Those ancient and consequently less intelligible words, Phrases and Similes, by which he frequently and purposedly affects to express his Meaning, in my Opinion do well suit with the Venerable Antiquity and Sublime Grandeur of his Subject” (qtd. in Leonard 11).
In his History of Sin and Heresy (1698), Charles Leslie laments that the “Truth has been greatly hurt by . . . the adventrous flight of Poets, who have dress’d Angels in Armous, and put Swords and Guns int their Hands, to form romantick Battels in the Plains of Heaven, a scene of licentious fancy” (qtd. in Shawcross 117). Leslie also points out that Milton has significantly altered the traditional understanding of the war in heaven in political terms; Satan’s rebellion in Paradise Lost is caused by the event in which God declared his Son the Lord and King of the angels, and demanded their submission, which Leslie calls a “groundless supposition.”
In 1711, Daniel Defoe (most known for Robinson Crusoe) remarked that Paradise Lost
“passes with a general Reputation as the greatest, best and most sublime Work now in the
English Tongue, and it would be to lessen a man’s own Reputation to say any Thing less of it.” It is “above all Praise, a Poem of all Sublime, . . . all Beauty, all bright” (qtd. in McCarthy 72).
The first serious criticism was done in 1712, in a series of essays by Joseph Addison, who finds the main lesson of Paradise Lost to be “Obedience to the Will of God makes Men happy.”
On the question of whether Paradise Lost is a “heroick poem” he compares the character of Satan with Ulysses of Homer’s Odyssey. It is interesting to note that Ulysses is heroic because he uses guile or cunning (Milton’s Satan will later be demonized for the same reason).
The part of Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey is very much admired by Aristotle, as perplexing that fable with very agreeable plots and intracacies; not only by the many adventures of his voyage, and the subtilty of his behavior, but by the various
crafty being I have now mentioned, makes a much longer voyage than Ulysses; puts in practice many more wiles and strategems, and hides himself under a greater variety of shapes and appearances; all of which are severally detected, to the great delight and surprise of the reader. (qtd. in Todd 15)
Addison also reminds us that Milton’s Satan is not all bad, for example when he feels responsibility for condemning his followers to suffer with him. “Nor must I here omit that beautiful circumstance of his bursting out in tears, upon his survey of those innumerable Spirits whom he had involved in the same guilt and ruin with himself” (qtd. in Todd 46). While
ultimately, Addison finds Jesus, not Satan, to be the hero of Milton’s epic, the “sublimity” of the poem could not be achieved without the action, which is generated by Milton’s Satan.
It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend itself with greater ideas, than those which he has laid together in his first, second and sixth books. The seventh, which describes the creation of the world, is likewise wonderfully sublime, though not so apt to stir up emotion in the mind of the reader, nor consequently so perfect in the epick way of writing, because it is filled with less action. (qtd. in Todd 15)
In 1727 Voltaire chastises the French for not being able to produce an epic of comparable quality, but also claims Milton plagiarized from Andreini’s Adamo, and begins the tradition of ridiculing Milton’s devils.
Methinks the true Criterion for discerning what is really ridiculous in an Epick Poem, is to examine if the same Thing would not fit exactly the Mock Heroick.... no-thing is so adapted to that ludicrous way of writing, as the Metamorphosis of the Devils…
[which] heightens the ridicule of the whole Contrivance to an unexpressible Degree.
(137)
Benjamin Franklin references the morning hymn in Book Five of Paradise Lost in his “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion” (1728); however according to Lydia Shulman in Paradise Lost and the Rise of the American Republic, the largest number of quotations Jefferson copied down were Satan’s defiant early speeches proclaiming his undaunted will and plans for revenge.
“Jefferson apparently saw heroic qualities in Satan’s defiance. His Satan is a tragic hero in the classical vein, who refuses to submit to fate and boasts of controlling his own destiny” (129).
Not everyone was comfortable viewing Satan as a symbol of revolutionary heroism, however: Defoe, who wrote histories of the Devil, Apparitions and Black Magick (1726) uses Paradise Lost as evidence that the Devil can change his form and whisper temptations: “It is evident then, that the Devil can assume a shape whether man or beast, . . . I refer to Milton, who shows us the Devil in the Shape of a Toad crept close to Eve’s ear in her deepst slumpbers and injecting lustful or loose or wandering thoughts into her chaste mind” (111). The “Black Magic”
that Defoe’s works are warning against, are actually the natural philosophers and Newtonian scientists who rejected Christian doctrine and pursued, like Faust, other forms of knowledge.
In 1732, Richard Bentley spurred a closer reading of Paradise Lost, by “fixing” Milton by editing what he perceived as mistakes. As Walsh comments, “precisely because Bentley’s edition was so generally unacceptable, it concentrated minds wonderfully” (77).
As an example of Bentley’s response to Milton, we can view his comments on the following passage, where Satan is just about to embark on his journey across the Abyss.
Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave, Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixt
Confus’dly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless th’Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more Worlds, Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look’d a while, Pondering his Voyage. (2.910-19)
Bentley comments, “Here’s an absurd and ridiculous Blunder, that has pass’d through all the Editions. Satan STOOD INTO the Abyss; and he did not stand into it, but stood on the first ground, the Brink of Hell. No doubt the Author gave it; LOOK’D into it, not STOOD into it.”
Bentley accordingly changed the passage to “LOOK’D FROM the Brink of Hell, and STOOD a while.” However according to John Leonard in Faithful Labourers, “This robs the lines of a surprise. The repeated ‘Into this wild Abyss… Into this wild Abyss’ leads us to expect a verb of motion. We expect Satan to leap, or soar, or spring, but instead Milton springs a surprise with
‘Stood’. The anti-climactic verb is all the more arresting for being placed to prominently at the beginning of a new line” (26-27).
Likewise, Richardsons responded to Bentley in 1734 by pointing out that Milton’s original version is “very Artful! if his Stile is Somewhat Abrupt after Such Pondering it Better Paints the Image he Intended to give” (qtd. in Leonard 81).
Early commentary like this often concluded that Milton’s apparent errors were in fact precisely chosen decisions that enhanced the impact of the poem. According to Shawcross, by 1732, “Milton’s verse had begun its move to becoming a universal standard of excellence, an
Shawcross also notes that, by becoming a classic, Paradise Lost was met with the accompanying
“non-reading by the general public and lack of vitality.” Nevertheless, Milton continued to be lauded as one of England’s greatest poets, a national treasure—and even sometimes as a tragic hero himself, whose greatness was unappreciated in his own time. Dr. Dalton’s 1738 version of Comus a Mask begins with the following praise:
Our steadfast bard, to his own genius true,
Still bade his Muse, “fit audience find, though few.”
Scorning the judgment of a trifling age, To choicer spirits he bequeth’d his page.
He too was scorn’d; and to Britannia’s shame, She scarce for half an age knew Milton’s name.
But now, his fame by every trumpet blown, We on his deathless trophies raise our own.
In 1738-39, a controversy arose concerning the possibility of Arianism in Paradise Lost.
According to a letter in Gentlemen’s Magazine in March 1738, the epic “corrupted man’s religious ideas through the presentation of God and his host” (viii, 124-5).
This is a problem, because as Shawcross pointed out, many “learned their Bible at the hands of Milton” (25), and now had to distinguish between the God of men’s faith and the one in the poem. From 1741-51 there were charges of plagiarism and attempts to find sources,
prompted mostly by William Lauder’s allegations that Milton had plagiarized directly from Jacopo Masenio’s Sarcotis, Hugo Grotius’ Adamus Exsul and Andrew Ramsay’s Poemata Sacra.
The controversy died down in 1951 when John Douglas posted a vindication of Milton showing that Lauder’s work was full of deceptions and forgeries.
In 1746 Charles Batteux elaborated the argument that Satan was the true hero of Milton’s epic in Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe.
If it is a question of what creates admiration, astounds one’s sensibility, and exalts it, the obstacles confronting a hero must be extraordinarily difficult to surmount; they require a more than natural strength, and still the hero triumphs over them. Thus will the denouement of the epic essentially be successful and joyous. This is the
outstanding quality that brings one to admiration; if it fail, it will have been more deserving of pity than of admiration . . . In short, Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost triumphs over the first man. For it is he who is assuredly the hero. If he were not, and the hero was Adam, the ending would have been tragic and in no way epic: and if it were tragic, all the supernatural machinery that was used in the poem would have been useless devices, since the marvelous has no relationship with pity, and it is not created in order to excite pity. It is therefore the devil whom we are presented with to admire in Paradise Lost. The view is curious; but it is necessary to judge it like a painter’s conception, that is, but the execution rather than by the essential point of the subject. Moreover, if it does not bring about admiration, it begets less astonishment.
(qtd. in Tournu 433)
I leave this quote in full because it foreshadows what will later happen in Milton criticism:
according to Batteux, if Satan is not the hero, then all the rest of the poem, the “supernatural machinery” would be useless devices; the poem makes you feel admiration, not pity, towards Satan, and why would this happen unless Satan were meant to be heroic? Later critics will conclude that every passage that generates admiration is a trap Milton is using to illustrate the
Batteux’s book wouldn’t appear in English until 1761—which may be why in 1749, Bishop Thomas Newton, can proclaim, “In Paradise Lost we shall find nothing . . . that is not perfectly agreeable to Scripture. The learned Dr. Trap, who was as likely to cry out upon heresy as any man, asserts that the poem is orthodox in every part of it, or otherwise he would not have been at the pains of translating it” (qtd. in Bryson 19). At the same time, Newton’s defense of Milton itself reveals Milton’s personal resistance to organized religion, claiming that while Milton was “indeed a dissenter from the Church of England . . . and in the latter part of his life was not a professed member of any particular sect of Christians. . . nor used any religious rite in his family. . . it is certain [that he] was to the last an enthusiast rather than an infidel” (qtd. in Bryson 24).
Alexander Pope disliked Milton’s God, who he saw as a father-figured turned “School-divine.” More recent commenters point out that God speaks with “stark, forthright simplicity”
and that his speech is “plain, clear, unequivocal, dignified, and authoritative” (Flannagan 91).
God’s solemn and simple speeches are stifling compared to Satan’s bold and daring discourses, which stir the imagination. John Keats, marvels at the description of the angels rallying in response to Satan’s speech in Book One: “The light and shade—the sort of black
God’s solemn and simple speeches are stifling compared to Satan’s bold and daring discourses, which stir the imagination. John Keats, marvels at the description of the angels rallying in response to Satan’s speech in Book One: “The light and shade—the sort of black