SAMUEL JOHNSONA REVISION

• A poem,which considered with respect to design may claim the first place and with respect to performance may claim the second place among the productions of human mind.

• Writing an epic poem requires the assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions.

• Epic poetry teaches the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts,and therefore relate some great truth in the most affecting manner.

• The poet’s first duty is to find a moral which has fable will illustrate later on.

• This holds true for Milton.The morals of other poems is incidental and consequent;in Milton’s only it is essential and intrinsic.

• He has involved in his account of “Fall of the man” the events which preceeded it and the events that will follow it.

• He has woven the entire system of theology that every pair seems necessary.

• He focused on:

-Fate of worlds.

-Revolutions of heavens and earth.

-Rebellion against the supreme king by the highest order of the beings.

-The punishment of their crime.

-The creation of a new race.

-Its fall and restoration to hope peace.

GREATNESS IN PARADISE LOST

• Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem all greatness shrinks away.

• The weakest of his agents are the highest and noblest of human beings,whose actions effect the fates of the worlds.

• Other agents in the poem are so high and lofty that we cannot take their name lightly and the lower powers those which are restrained by God or they will destroy everything and cause chaos everywhere,

• Such might task this might poet has undertaken and performed.

CHARACTERS OF PARADISE LOST

• Character which admit of examination are those of angels and of man,of angels good and evil;of man in his innocent and sinful state.

• Good angels

-Raphael who is mild and placid.

-Michael who is regal and lofty.

-Abdiel solitary fidelity.

THE BAD ANGELS

• Characters are most diversified.

• Satan given such sentiments which suit the most exalted and most depraved being.

• Milton had to be very cautious about Satan’s speeches.It was a difficult task to make a rebel speak without offending the sensibilities of the pious.

• The language of rebellion cannot be same as that of the obedience.

• So his language has haughtiness obstinacy-expressions are general otherwise offensive than as they are wicked.

ADAM & EVE (STATE OF INNOCENCE)

• During their innocence,sentiments are such as innocence can generate and utter.

• Their love is pure based on mutual respect.

• Their repasts are without luxury.

• Their diligence without toil.

• Their addresses to their maker have little more than admiration and gratitude.

• Fruition left them nothing to ask and innocence left them nothing to fear.

ADAM & EVE (STATE OF SIN)

• With guilt enter

-Distrust

-Discord

-Mutual accusation

-Stubborn self defence.

• They regard each other with alienated minds and dread their creator as avenger of their transgression.

• At last they seek shelter in His mercy.

• Before and after the fall Adam’s superiority is diligently sustained.

• The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience that it comprises neither human action nor human manners.

• The man and woman who suffer are in such a state that no man and woman would ever be in that state,so have little natural curiosity or sympathy.

• But these truths are too important to be new we have been taught since our infancy.They have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar conversation.

• Being therefore not new they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind what we know before we cannot learn,what is not unexpected cannot surprise.

• Pleasure and terror are genuine source of poetry,but the pleasure should be so that human mind and conceive and poetical terror such which human passion can combat.

• The good and evil of eternity are too heavy a subject for the wings of wit.

• So we feel humble adoration,calm belief and passive helplessness.

• So these known truths are conveyed by a new train of images.There is very little given to us by the scriptures but Milton has expanded it to such an extent and branched it of so variedly that it seems like a miracle that he managed to save the reverence of his subject from the lewdness of fiction.

• Paradise Lost is a display of study and genius.He took from nature,from story from fable,from modern science.Whatever could adorn his thoughts.

• An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,fermented by study and exalted by imagination.

• But the original deficiency cannot be overlooked.We admire it and all but we lay it down and then do not feel the urge to pick it up again.

• His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit and sometimes animated body

e.g

-When satan walks upon “burning mark”with a lance he has a body.

-On his journey between Hell and Earth he has a body.

-When he animates the toad he is more spirit.

-When he is ready to fight Gabriel he has a spear and a shield..

-Number of the inhabitants of Pandemonium but when they were overwhelmed by the mountains their armors crushed them.

• Dryden remarks that Milton has some flats.This is only to say that parts are not equal.

• In every work every part must be for the sake of others.

• Milton when he has expatiated in the sky may be allowed sometimes to visit the Earth.

• His play on words,his equivocations his unnecessary and ungraceful use of term of art can be ignored as they are little in number,they scarcely deserve the attention of critic.

• The basis of “Paradise regained” is narrow a dialogue without action can never please like a union of the narrative and dramatic powers.

• Had this poem been written not by Milton but by some imitator it would have claimed and received universal praise.

• Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing,he knew human nature only in gross.

• He knew what the books could teach but he had mingled little with the world and was deficient in the knowledge and experience must confer.

• Through all his greater works there prevails a uniform peculiarity of Diction that bears no resemblance to any past writers.

• Addison says “Our language sank under him”.

• He uses English with a foreign idiom which in his prose is condemined but the power and beauty of his poetry is so that criticism sinks in admiration.

• Wit like all other things has its changes and fashions and at different times take different forms.

• About the beginning of 19th century there appeared a race of writer that may be termed in Metaphysical poets.

• As Aristotle has called poetry an immitative act,these writers will lose their right to be called poets.

• They seem to have imitated nothing they neither copied nature nor life,neither painted the forms of matter,nor represented the operation of intellect.

• They may be called wits as Dryden also confesses the Donne was superior to him in wit.

• The thoughts of metaphysical poets in are often new but seldom natural.

• They are not obvious but they are not just wither.

• And a reader wonders why were they even formed.

• Wit in their case may be called discordia concors.A combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblance in things apparently unlike.

• They were not successful in moving or representing affection.

• As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising they have no regard to that uniformity of sentiment.

• They do not care what they should have said or done.

• They are beholders of human nature.

• They are beings looking upon good and evil.

• Impassive and at leisure.

• As deities making remarks on the actions of men and on vicissitudes of life without interest and without emotion.

• Their courtship has no fondness their lamentation had no sorrow.

• Their wish was to say what has never been said before.

• What they wanted of the sublime they endeavored to supply by hyperbole;their amplifications had no limits,they left not only reason but fancy behind them and produced combinations of confused magnificence that not only could not be credited but could not be imagined.