John Milton: The Critical Heritage Volume 1 1628-1731: Volume 31 (The Collected Critical Heritage)

Select Studies and Resources. Originally published in Dennis Danielson ed. The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Klemp for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this piece. Their suggestions have improved it greatly, though it is my sincere regret that, in several instances, limitations of length and scope have prevented me from adhering to them fully. My gratitude, also, must be extended to the Killam Trust, for its generous and kind support during the time during which I was at work on this chapter, and to Cambridge University Press, for their permission to co-publish this chapter in electronic format with Early Modern Literary Studies.

The electronic version of this piece differs slightly from that version published by Cambridge UP; it also contains a small number of emendations. Introduction to the Electronic Edition Approaching the works and life of John Milton, for the new reader and experienced scholar alike, can be a task that brings with it some expressions of hesitation.

This is, in part, because of the breadth and depth of Milton himself, available to us today through his ample writings and life records. For firsthand engagement of these there is no substitute, nor is there much in the study of Milton more rewarding. In such engagement, moreover, one finds much good company, evident in the several hundred studies published annually about Milton; herein lies another probable reason for expressed hesitation. Some 4, studies have been documented, by Huckabay and Klemp see 23 , below , between the years of and alone; another 1, or so are recorded in the ten years prior to by the MLA International Bibliography see 32 , below.

Milton's writing is rewarded with such voluminous, careful scrutiny for a number of reasons, among them its aesthetic, its erudition, and its thematic matter, which is both temporal and eternal in nature. But, as noted by Mikolajczak -- whose "Reading Milton: A Summary of Illuminating Efforts" 27 provides a useful overview of materials available in the late s to those new to Milton -- while such a large concentration of scholarship and criticism may seem inordinate, our understanding of a writer such as Milton necessarily requires the constant and ongoing revitalization that it enjoys.

Ultimately, this dynamic enterprise amounts to a valuable context in which to situate one's own thoughts and work -- a context that deserves to be embraced, vast as it is and hesitation-inspiring as it may well seem to be. The list of select studies and research resources presented in this piece, below, builds on that provided earlier by Mikolajczak; while the below list is intended to stand on its own, it also updates and revises that select portion of work by and on Milton that he presents.

That said, this bibliography also contextualizes those materials more sparsely, presenting them in the form of a numbered list, and grouping them into a number of categories, as below: The section housing works on Specific Contexts for Interpretation of, and Influences upon, Milton 89 - is further divided into subsections containing the headings Biblical, Religious 89 - , Literary - , Political, Social, Historical - , and Other, Collections - The section on Paradise Lost - is also further divided, into subsections consisting of Broad Studies, Introductions - , Theological Context - , Narrator, Reader, and Argument - , Epic, and Considerations of Form - , the War in Heaven - , Eden, Edenic Life, and the Fall - , Further Considerations - , and Collections - However, since studies typically overlap a number of such categories, no one should take the latter as definitive.

Accordingly, many below are accompanied with liberal cross-references. E ditions and Texts 1. Cambridge Milton for Schools and Colleges. The Poems of John Milton. Hughes, Merritt Y ed. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Orgel, Stephen, and Jonathan Goldberg eds. The Prose of John Milton. The Works of John Milton. Hugh MacCallum, and A. Selected Poetry of John Milton. An Annotated Bibliography, A Bibliography for the Years Reference Guide to Milton from to the Present Day.

See also - A Summary of Illuminating Efforts. Modern Humanities Research Association. Other Useful Reference Works: Ingram, William, and Kathleen Swaim. A Concordance to Milton's English Poetry. Sterne, Laurence, and Harold H. A Geographical Dictionary of Milton. Milton Quarterly Relational Database. See also 17 - A Sketch of His Life and Writings. A Preface to Milton. Milton and His England. Background and General Context: English Political Literature, English Literature and Backgrounds, A Selective Critical Guide. The Age of Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century Literature.

The Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton. Literature and Revolution in England, Literature in the English Revolution. John Milton at St. The Early Lives of Milton. The Intellectual Development of John Milton. The Life Records of John Milton. The Life of John Milton: The Self and the World. The Life of John Milton. Milton, Aristocrat and Rebel: The Poet and His Politics.

Studies with Multi-Work and Contextual Emphasis. Milton and Other Writers: Milton and the Miltonic Dryden. God, Man, and Satan: Milton and Wordsworth, Poets and Prophets: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History. Spenser, Jonson, Milton, and the Literary System. Mythopoeic Continuities and Transformations.

Joyce, Milton, and the Theory of Influence. Low, Lisa, and Anthony J. Milton, the Metaphysicals, and Romanticism. The Metaphysicals and Milton. Inspiration in Milton and Keats. Specific Contexts for Interpretation of, and Influences upon: Milton and the Science of the Saints. The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton.

Milton's Rhetoric of Christian Liberty. Seventeenth-Century News see , University Park, Milton and the Redemption of Language. Patterns of Augustinian Thought in Paradise Lost. Milton, The Bible, and Misogyny.

Cunnar and Gail Mortimer eds. The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic. John Milton, Poet, Priest and Prophet: From Shadowy Types to Truth: Studies in Milton's Symbolism. Milton and the Pauline Tradition: A Study of Theme and Symbolism. Milton's Epics and the Book of Psalms. Rumrich, John Peter, and Stephen Dobranski eds. The Bible in Milton's Epics. Milton and the Scriptural Tradition: The Bible into Poetry. Religious Rite and Ceremony in Milton's Poetry. Milton and the Angels. Cosmos and Epic Representation: Orpheus Dis re membered: Milton and the Myth of the Poet-Hero.

Milton and the Sense of Tradition. Milton and the Renaissance Ovid. Edited by Stephen Knight. New All Published Forthcoming. Shawcross First published in Literature in Protestant England, Routledge Revivals 1st Edition By Alan Sinfield The hardline, uncompromising theology preached by the English Church in the 16th and 17th Centuries had disturbing effects on the literature of the period. Key Writings on Subcultures, Classics from the Underworld, 1st Edition Edited by Various This collection is a facsimile reprint of five exceptional books that provide fascinating insights into subversive movements from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries.

These volumes will be of interest to researchers in sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century history and also to… Hardback — Routledge Routledge Library Editions. Southam Comprises of individual volumes on: Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for… Hardback — Routledge. Southam This set comprises of separate volumes on: The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures… Hardback — Routledge. The poem ends with the expulsion from Paradise and a vision of mankind's coming misery, but Michael also offers the future hope of the Redeemer who will one day bring salvation to mankind.

Principal Characters Adam, the first man and representative of mankind. Though gifted with reason and restraint, he allows an excessively passionate tenderness for Eve to blind him. Forewarned by the archangel Raphael of danger from Satan, he nevertheless yields to Eve's entreaty that she alone be trusted. When he learns that she has fallen, he chooses to join her rather than turn from her. His first reaction after his own fall is to rebuke and blame her for his own sin.

After falling into almost suicidal despair, he repents, and when the archangel Michael foretells the future redemption of mankind by Christ, he accepts his fate with gratitude. Eve, the first woman and representative of womanhood. Beautiful, gentle, and submissive, she holds Adam enthralled. She is horrified when Satan first approaches her in a dream, but piqued by what she considers Adam's lack of faith in her, she stubbornly insists on working alone, thereby leaving herself vulnerable to the serpent's temptation.

Like Adam, after the Fall she is first lustful, then quarrelsome. Finally, she too accepts her fate with dignity and resignation. Satan Lucifer , chief of the fallen angels, adversary of God and man. A splendid conception, his heroism and grandeur are tainted by a perversion of will and accompanying perversion of intellect. Rebellious against God, he is incapable of understanding Him. A self-tormented spirit, conscious of his loss but unwilling to repent, he allows evil to eat away at him, tarnishing his splendor.

His degradation is complete when he wills to enter the body of the serpent. His attempt to seduce man succeeds, but his triumph is temporary and hollow. Beelzebub bi-eTzs-bub , Satan's chief lieutenant. Less confident and less splendid than his chief, he works his will and serves as his mouthpiece. In the council of the fallen angels in Pandemonium, he presents forcefully Satan's plan of indirect war on God through man.

Moloch mo'lok , fiercest of the fallen angels. Appropriately worshipped in later years with human sacrifice, he is bloody-minded and desperate. If the fallen angels cannot win Heaven, he chooses either to make Heaven intolerable for the angels who did not fall or to anger God to the point that He will annihilate the fallen spirits. Smooth and oily, he favors peace at any price and expresses the hope that if the fallen angels do not call God's attention to themselves, He will forget them and allow then-sufferings to decrease.

He favors a proper course but for improper reasons, basing his surrender on sloth, not on acceptance of God's will. Mammon mam'an , the materialistic fallen angel. Like Belial, he is opposed to a second war against Heaven, but he favors a plan of development of natural resources and exploitation of Hell to raise an empire that will rival Heaven. Formerly the planner of many of Heaven's buildings, he is now architect of Pandemonium, Satan's palace in Hell.

Sin, Satan's daughter, born from his brain without a mother. She is the loathsome keeper of Hell's gates, through which she lets Satan pass to attack the world. She and her grisly son Death follow Satan to Earth to prey on mankind. Death, son of Sin and Satan by their incestuous union. He ravishes Sin and begets a horde of hellhounds on her. His voraciousness is so great that he would devour his own mother, except for the fear that her death would involve his own destruction. His fierce reaction to Satan is mollified by the latter's offer of hosts of men and beasts for him to devour if Satan's assault on Earth succeeds.

God the Father, All-knowing and all-powerful, He foresees Satan's activities and man's fall, but extends to man His grace and brings forth good from evil. Christ Messiah , the only Son of God. He is first granted by His Father the overthrow of Satan and his legions in the War in Heaven, then granted His wish to sacrifice Himself to redeem man.

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Michael ml'kal , the warrior angel. Chief of the angelic forces in the War in Heaven, he is a worthy opponent of Satan. He is God's messenger to Adam and Eve to tell them of their banishment from Paradise and their coming death; however, he is allowed by God's grace to foretell to Adam the future of the human race and the redemption to come. Abdiel ab'dl-el , angelic servant of God. Alone among Lucifer's angel hordes, he remains steadfast and is rewarded by God's own praise and the favor of striking the first blow against Satan in the war against the rebel angels.

Clearly one of Milton's favorite creations in "Paradise Lost," he is perhaps an idealized version of the poet himself. Gracious and friendly, he still is capable of severe judgment and warns Adam particularly against unreasonable and passionate adoration of Eve. Gabriel ga'bri-9l , chief of the angelic guards in Paradise. He is a leader in the War in Heaven against the evil angels. Uriel yoor'i-sl , regent of the Sun. Even though an angel, he is incapable of seeing through the mask of a hypocrite and fails to recognize Satan in his disguise as a lesser angel.

He directs the evil spirit to Paradise, but sees his actions in Paradise and hastily warns Gabriel that an evil spirit has gained entrance there. The Story In Heaven, Lucifer, unable to abide the supremacy of God, led a revolt against divine authority. Defeated, he and his followers were cast into Hell, where they lay nine days on a burning lake.

Lucifer, now called Satan, arose from the flaming pitch and vowed that all was not lost, that he would have revenge for his downfall. Arousing his legions, he reviewed them under the canopy of Hell and decided his purposes could be achieved by guile rather than by force. Under the direction of Mulciber, the forces of evil built an elaborate palace in which Satan convened a congress to decide on immediate action. At the meeting, Satan reasserted the unity of those fallen and opened the floor to a debate on what measures to take. Belial recommended a slothful existence in Hell.

Mammon proposed peacefully improving Hell so that it might rival Heaven in splendor. His motion was received with great favor until Beelzebub, second in command, arose and informed the conclave that God had created Earth, which He had peopled with good creatures called humans.

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It was Beelzebub's proposal to investigate this new creation, seize it, and seduce its inhabitants to the cause of the fallen angels. Announcing that he would journey to Earth to learn for himself how matters were there, Satan flew to the gate of Hell. There he encountered his daughter, Sin, and his son, Death. They opened the gate and Satan winged his way toward Earth. God, in his omniscience, beheld the meeting in Hell, knew the intents of the evil angels, and saw Satan approaching the Earth.

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Disguised as various beasts, Satan acquainted himself with Adam and Eve and with the Tree of Knowledge, which God had forbidden to man. Uriel, learning that an evil angel had broken through to Eden, warned Gabriel, who appointed two angels to hover about the bower of Adam and Eve. The guardian angels arrived too late to prevent Satan, in the form of a toad, from beginning his evil work. He had influenced Eve's dreams. Upon awaking, Eve told Adam that in her strange dream she had been tempted to taste of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

God, seeing that danger to Adam and Eve was imminent, sent the angel Raphael to the garden to warn them. At Adam's insistence, Raphael related in detail the story of the great war between the good and the bad angels and of the fall of the bad angels to eternal misery in Hell. To Adam's further inquiries Raphael responded with an account of the creation of the world and of how Earth was created in six days, an angelic choir singing the praises of God on the seventh day.

He cautioned Adam not to be too curious, that there were many things done by God which were not for man to understand or to attempt to understand. Adam then told how he had been warned against the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, how he had asked God for fellowship in his loneliness, and how Eve was created from his rib.

After the departure of Raphael, Satan returned as a mist to the garden and entered the body of a sleeping serpent. In the morning, as Adam and Eve proceeded to their day's occupation, Eve proposed that they work apart. Adam, remembering the warning of Raphael, opposed her wishes, but Eve prevailed and the couple parted. Alone, Eve was accosted by the serpent, which flattered her into tasting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve, liking what she tasted, took a fruit to Adam, who was horrified when he saw what Eve had done.

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Yet in his love for Eve, he also ate the fruit. Having eaten, the couple knew lust for the first time, and after their dalliance they knew sickening shame. The guardian angels now deserted the transgressors and returned to God, who approved them, saying they could not have prevented Satan from succeeding in his mission. Christ descended to Earth to pass judgment. Before Adam and Eve, who in their shame, had been reluctant to come out of their bower to face Him, Christ sentenced the serpent to be forever a hated enemy of humanity.

He told Eve that her sorrow would be multiplied by the bearing of children and that she would be the servant of Adam to the end of time. Adam, said Christ, would eat in sorrow, his ground would be cursed, and he would eat bread only by toiling and sweating. Meanwhile, Death and Sin, having divined Satan's success, left the gates of Hell to join their father on Earth.

Back in Hell, Satan proudly reported his accomplishments to his followers. He was acclaimed by hisses, however, as his cohorts became serpents, and Satan himself was transformed into a serpent before their reptilian eyes. Trees similar to the Tree of Knowledge appeared in Hell, but when the evil angels tasted the fruit, they found their mouths full of ashes. God, angered at the disaffection of Adam and Eve, brought about great changes on Earth.

He created the seasons to replace eternal spring, and the violence and misery of storms—winds, hail, ice, floods, and earthquakes. He caused all Earth's creatures to prey upon one another. Adam and Eve argued bitterly until they realized that they must face their common plight together. Repenting their sins, they prayed to God for relief. Although Christ interceded for them, God sentenced them to expulsion from Eden and sent the angel Michael to Earth to carry out the sentence.

Adam and Eve, lamenting their misfortune, contemplated suicide, but Michael gave them new hope when he brought to Adam a vision of life and death; of the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires; of the activities of Adam's and Eve's progeny through their evil days to the flood, when God would destroy all life except that preserved by Noah in the ark; and of the subsequent return to evil days and Christ's incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension as mankind's redeemer.

Despite the violence, evil, and bloodshed in the vision, Adam and Eve were pacified when they saw that mankind would be saved. They walked hand in hand from the heights of Paradise to the barren plains below.

Critical Evaluation With Paradise Lost, John Milton realized his longstanding ambition to write an epic poem based upon a classical model, following conventions established by Homer and Vergil. The task was formidable, for during the seventeenth century the epic was considered man's greatest creative achievement. For his theme, Milton chose a grand synthesis of the Christian religion based upon the Bible.

Centering on the Fall of Adam and Eve and their restoration to God's favor, the epic ranges over time from the rebellion of Satan and his followers in Heaven until Judgment Day, offering a comprehensive account of Christian history, belief, and values. Primarily a Protestant epic, emphasizing moral choice and salvation through faith, it narrates the most significant biblical events and represents what the minor seventeenth century poet Samuel Barrow called "the story of all things.

Yet the narrative focus centers upon Adam and Eve, initially flawless human beings who violate God's covenant, fall from grace, and are restored. Satan, the most thoroughly developed character, is created on a grand scale with a single-minded goal of revenge and most closely resembles the conventional epic hero. Yet the mythic hero is Christ, the character who performs the positive actions of the story—creation, judgment, and redemption. Adam, the human hero, undergoes a change of fortune through the Fall and is restored; he stands as Milton's long-suffering hero of faith and resignation, in the tradition of Prometheus and Job.

Structurally, the epic forms three major parts, each consisting of four books. In books 1 to 4, Milton introduces the characters, settings Heaven, Hell, Chaos, and Earth , and major conflicts. Book 1 accounts for the fall of Satan and his millions of followers and its immediate aftermath; in book 2, a council in Hell determines the course of action for Satan: In book 3, a contrasting council in Heaven establishes that man will fall and lays the groundwork for his redemption through the willing sacrifice of Christ.

Book 4 introduces the human characters Adam and Eve, who lead an idyllic life in the Garden of Eden, their only restraint being God's prohibition against the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Satan briefly appears in the garden following his journey through Chaos but is driven away by angelic guards.

The middle books concern the mission of the angel Raphael in the garden, sent by God to warn Adam about the danger posed by Satan. These books, sometimes referred to as "the education of Adam," prepare readers for the Fall of Man through a psychological treatment of character that makes it credible. Unfalien Adam learns of Satan's fall and punishment.

In conversation with Raphael, Adam confesses his uxoriousness, and thus the reader is prepared for Adam to disobey God's commandment motivated by a desire to share Eve's fate. Through the use of exposition, the middle books introduce numerous epic conventions. Raphael's narrative of the War in Heaven, which includes events that took place before the beginning of book 1, is an extended account of warfare, a theme Milton associates with the demonic.

In this section, Milton continues his strategy of balancing and contrasting books; Raphael's account of the destructive War is counterbalanced by the narrative of Creation in book 7. The final section narrates the Fall and restoration of Adam and Eve, following Satan's return to the garden and assumption of the form of the serpent. Satan cleverly deceives Eve, and Adam willingly disobeys God in order to share her fate. In the final two books, the archangel Michael illuminates for Adam human history from his own time until Judgment Day, allowing Adam to comprehend all the panorama of human suffering and unhappiness that results from the Fall and to recognize Christ as man's redeemer.

At the end, both Adam and Eve are reconciled to the loss of Eden and depart as wayfaring, warfaring Christians. Written in blank verse in which the verse paragraph, not the line, is the most significant unit, Paradise Lost achieves a dignified, sonorous tone while incorporating traditional epic conventions. Milton chose blank verse because he considered it the closest English equivalent to classical epic verse. Biblical, classical, and Renaissance allusions abound, particularly character and place names.

Often the allusions have typological significance, for Milton follows the Christian tradition of viewing Old Testament figures as precursors to and types of Christ. He extends the device by citing classical myth for parallels to Christian events and beliefs. Among the striking stylistic elements, one finds heavy use of Latinate diction, epic similes, frequent inversions, and complex schemes of repetition.

Classical allusions and imagery recur as significant motifs in the narrative. Although he incorporates familiar epic conventions such as the invocation of the muse, the statement of theme, the roll call, the dream, settings on different levels, and different orders of being, Milton frequently associates these conventions with the demonic, in part because he rejects traditional heroism in warfare in favor of the hero who suffers and endures for the right. Like other epic poets, he speaks in the authorial persona or voice, not only in prologues but within the narrative, in order to guide the reader, to express approval or disapproval, or to admonish or caution.

Paradise Lost forms an encyclopedic and comprehensive mythology based upon the Bible. For more than two centuries, readers considered the poem a sound theological interpretation of history and, like Milton, believed that it chronicled actual events, except for those passages obviously intended as allegorical. Like other epics, it embodies a value system that advocates a code of living and answers the most profound questions that man can ask concerning values and beliefs. For modern readers, the epic stands as the greatest example of its genre in English literature and a synthesis of Christianity unsurpassed in poetry.

John Milton First published: Milton's impassioned argument for unlicensed printing, the Areopagitica, appeared in November, , during a stormy period in English history. Parliament had rebelled against the authoritarian rule of King Charles I two years earlier, and its supporters, Puritans for the most part, were beginning to demonstrate their military superiority in periodic battles against the Royalist forces.

Since Parliament had abolished the venerable Court of the Star Chamber, which previously had exercised control over the press, Milton for a time took advantage of the new freedom to publish a series of pamphlets against the episcopal form of church government inherited from Roman Catholicism. When Parliament convoked the Westminster Assembly of churchmen in to advise the lawmakers on religious reform, however, this freedom proved to be short-lived, for the Assembly soon recommended, and Parliament passed, a new licensing order which differed from the earlier one chiefly in that the responsibility passed from the bishops to a twenty-man Committee of Examinations.

In defiance of the order, Milton issued four pamphlets between and defending divorce, a subject in which he had a strong personal interest, as his own marriage to Mary Powell had turned out very unhappily. In the midst of this concern, Milton turned his attention to the issue of censorship; he addressed the Aeropagitica, itself another unlicensed pamphlet, to Parliament. Milton's title derives ultimately from the Areopagus, a hill in Athens which served as a governmental meeting place from early in the city's history.

Thus the name had been extended to the Athenian council, which exercised both civil and religious authority. Milton may well have intended to acknowledge similar jurisdiction by Parliament, for nowhere in the Areopagitica does he argue for the separation of church and state; as a matter of fact, he needed the support of those who opposed such separation.

In addition, one of the political arguments of Socrates in the fourth century B. Christian humanists of the English Renaissance regarded the oration as a species of poetry calculated to stir an audience and move it to the practice of virtue, as Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry c. Finally, Milton probably also had in mind Saint Paul, who addressed the Areopagus as a gathering of religious men who nonetheless required further enlightenment Acts Milton alludes to Saint Paul a number of times in the Areopagitica.

A thorough classical scholar, Milton knew intimately the techniques of the great orators of the ancient world and skillfully adapted them to the pamphlet form. The Areopagitica is much more than an oration, however; it is also a bold appeal by a patriotic Englishman who is eager that his nation increase its stature by granting intellectual liberty to its writers.

As in the case of the divorce pamphlets, his motives were hardly disinterested. Nevertheless, he crafted the Areopagitica as a general defense of freedom of the press that could not be interpreted as mere special pleading, for its argument transcends his own difficulties with censors and the problems of intellectuals disenchanted with what, in the s, looked like dangerous backsliding into the tyranny of the past.

Milton deploys his immense learning, remarkable verbal facility, and diplomatic skill in composing a work designed to force the Lords and Commons to see the issue in the context of Parliament's—and England's—continuing struggle for liberty from oppression. To gain the goodwill of the lawmakers, Milton applauds their concern about the press, "for Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are. His first argument consists of a survey of the history of licensing, which he judges the inevitable handmaiden of tyranny in the ancient world and particularly in the Roman Catholic church.

He singles out the activities of the Inquisition and those of the sixteenth century Council of Trent, in its attempt to counter the effects of the Protestant Reformation by establishing an index of forbidden books and an elaborate system of imprimaturs the term means "it may be printed" by ecclesiastical authorities. Milton acknowledges this argument as his weakest one by placing it first; still, it was bound to carry emotional weight in a society that had been cultivating fear of Rome for more than a century.

Conceding that a thing may possibly be good in itself despite its association with oppressive regimes of the sort Parliament has repudiated, Milton next argues the necessity of access to all manner of ideas, including bad ones. Even good books can be misused, and bad ones "to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate.

His essay Of Education, written in the same year, addresses the educational needs of "our choicest and hopefullest wits. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdome can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: The printed text of this famous passage refers to "wayfaring" rather than "warfaring" Christians, but textual scholars have pointed out that Milton's r's can easily be confused with his v's, and "warfaring" accords with the militant context and with Milton's attitude toward Christianity generally.

A key qualifying clause is the first one in the passage: Such pursuits as Milton has Satan recommend in the later work here "are not temptations, nor vanities; but usefull drugs and materialls wherewith to temper and compose effect and strong med'cins, which mans life cannot want" that is, cannot be without. In the latter-day warfare against Satan, Christians must turn his own duplicitous arguments against him, for in the world as it is, good and evil are always intermingled, and only moral choices can disentangle them. Virtue consists precisely in making such choices. To prevent man from choosing is to deny the possibility of virtue.

Only by familiarity with evil can a person reject it in favor of the good. Milton goes on to praise Sir Guyon, the hero of book 2 of a classic by another Christian humanist, Edmund Spenser. In The Faerie Queene , , Spenser "brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse that he might see and know, and yet abstain. God commands these virtues but "gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. This emphasis clearly diverges from the Calvinism in which Milton was reared and to which he still professes allegiance at the time of the writing of the Areopagitica.

Milton's third major argument concerns the futility of censorship. Books are, after all, only one way in which malign influences are propagated. Plato was more consistent in his Republic than is Parliament in its licensing order, for he regulated all manner of education and recreation to forestall the evil influences that reside in music, dance, conversation, and many other activities when left unscrutinized. Plato, however, was describing an ideal and not a real commonwealth. No discipline imposed from without can prevent real people from finding opportunities to indulge their moral weaknesses, and the effort will only remove the means by which the self-disciplined can test and develop their virtue.

Furthermore, Milton adds, even the backlog of previously published books to be examined and judged imposes a Herculean burden on the censors. Could a committee of examiners wise enough and industrious enough be found, and if so, how could they be prevailed upon to spend all their working hours in such a negative occupation as reading suspect books in search of error?

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Thus Milton demonstrates the impossibility of controlling the circulation of evil and also the foolishness of a law that expects to dam the flow of opinion in this way. Finally, Milton argues that licensing is the enemy of truth. Though absolute and knowable, men do not possess it in its fullness. Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear,.

We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall doe, till her Masters second comming. Until such time as truth reappears in its wholeness, there remains a long task of recovery which licensing can only impede. Although Milton thinks of the available truth as largely the possession of Protestant Christendom, the capacities that can reassemble more pieces are diffused widely and require maximum encouragement. In contending that scholars will not suffer the funneling of their efforts through a censor, Milton is affirming what the situation was already demonstrating, as he and other writers disdained to recognize the authority of a committee which, he implies, inevitably must consist of their intellectual inferiors.

To think that a mature, reflecting Christian could not without danger to his faith contemplate such books as came along was a patent insult. Having repudiated Roman Catholic authority in one century and the severities of the English episcopacy in the next, reformers would inevitably oppose a relapse into yet another form of passive obedience. For Milton, viewing the ongoing political and religious struggle, the Reformation was incomplete; in many respects it had scarcely begun in England.

The head of the church was still nominally, if not effectively, Charles I, a monarch already repudiated and destined for execution, although it is unlikely that rational men in could have anticipated the reality of After presenting his arguments, Milton envisions the fully reformed nation: Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heav'nly radiance.

Milton uses all the weapons of his rhetorical arsenal to convince Parliament that its part in this consummation of a greater England is the promotion of intellectual freedom: He explicitly denies the free press to Roman Catholics; in his mind they would employ this freedom to destroy that of others. Only truth-seekers qualified, and Milton could define this concept only by this arbitrary exclusion. At the end of his essay, Milton puts to Parliament a practical question which can be appreciated even better centuries later: John Locke's Letters on Toleration and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty notably extended and enlarged the scope of Milton's argument, but from a literary standpoint the Areopagitica remains the greatest work of its kind.

While John Milton's reputation rests primarily upon his long works, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, his lyric poetry, written for the most part before he reached the age of forty, shows the same genius at work and reveals the wide range of his interests and abilities. He worked with many different verse forms and traditions adapted from his study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Italian; many of his youthful lyrics are either translations from one of these languages or from original poems.

He did a fine English version of the famous Horatian ode "To Pyrrha," translated many of the Psalms from Hebrew into English verse, and at seventeen composed an elegy for the vice-chancellor of Cambridge and a long poem commemorating the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. He mastered the style and spirit of classical literature, as well as its verse forms and vocabulary.

The influence of the Greeks and the Romans is pervasive in both his pastoral poem, Lycidas and his great epic. Milton's twenty-one sonnets, composed at intervals over a thirty-year period, illustrate remarkably well the variety of tones at his command. Five of the first six were written in Italian, and all six show his temporary immersion in the Petrarchan tradition. He proclaims himself the servant of the Muse and Love and sings the praises of his anonymous lady in terms that belie the traditional concept of Milton as the stern Puritan moralist. More characteristic of Milton's work is the better-known "How Soon Hath Time," a poem in which he muses on the fact that he has reached his twenty-third birthday and still has little notion of where life will take him.

He is, however, prepared to follow the will of God: Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure ev'n To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav'n; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great task-Master's eye. Some ten years after the composition of this poem, Milton returned to the sonnet form to write a witty piece addressed to whatever "Captain or Colonel or Knight in Arms" who might come to his house during the Civil War.

He asks, tongue in cheek, that his home be spared, as that of the great poet Pindar was when Alexander the Great conquered his homeland. This poem is especially interesting as one of the very few pieces showing Milton in a mildly humorous frame of mind. The same period saw Milton using the sonnet to pay graceful tribute to virtuous ladies and to a friend, the composer Henry Lawes, to praise leaders of the Parliamentary cause—Fairfax, Cromwell, and Vane—and to issue harsh-sounding tirades against critics of his treatises: I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of Owls and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes and Dogs.

The massacre of a group of Waldensians in the Piedmont occasioned one of his finest poems, which rises above his protest about a specific incident as a defense of all seekers after religious truth. Milton seldom surpassed the power of the opening lines: When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And to that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied," I fondly ask; But patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his State Is Kingly.

Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait. His early works, in addition to translations and Latin verses, included speeches for allegorical pageants presented at Cambridge and portions of entertainments for noble families. Arcades, composed in , when Milton was twenty-four, forshadows Comus in its pastoral, allegorical theme and in its mellifluous speeches and songs: Nymphs and Shepherds dance no more By sandy Ladon's Lillied banks.

On old Lycaeus or Cyllene hoar, Trip no more in twilight ranks. Though Erymanth your loss deplore, A better soil shall give ye thanks. Even at this stage in his poetic development, Milton knew the incantatory effect of resounding classical names, which were to be used often in Paradise Lost. Before he was thirty, Milton wrote four poems that reveal fully that gift that was to make him one of England's two or three greatest poets.

All Milton's learning comes into play as he portrays the exodus of the pagan deities at the birth of Christ: The dynamic, turbulent quality of the portion of the poem from which this stanza is taken contrasts sharply with the serene, pastoral tone of the beginning and end of the hymn, where Milton is describing the birth of the Christ Child at Bethlehem: But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The Winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kiss't, Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

Milton has been criticized by some who believe that these contrasting tones destroy the unity of the poem, yet by emphasizing both the peaceful and the forceful aspects of the Incarnation, he has attempted to capture one of the central paradoxes of the Christian faith. He sets forth this paradox in more philosophical terms, reminiscent of Edmund Spenser's Hymnes, in the four introductory stanzas of the Nativity ode.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable. And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty.