ekness, unaffected dignity, and clear reasoning, makes not so great
a figure, as when in the Paradise Lost he appears cloathed in the
Terrors of Almighty vengeance, wielding the thunder of Heaven, and
riding along the sky in the chariot of power, drawn, as Milton greatly
expresses it, 'with Four Cherubic Shapes; when he comes drest in awful
Majesty, and hurls the apostate spirits headlong into the fiery gulph
of bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal
fire, who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.'

Dr. Newton has dissented from the general opinion of mankind,
concerning Paradise Regained: 'Certainly, says he, it is very worthy
of the author, and contrary to what Mr. Toland relates, Milton may be
seen in Paradise Regained as well as Paradise Lost; if it is inferior
in poetry, I know not whether it is inferior in sentiment; if it is
less descriptive, it is more argumentative; if it does not sometimes
rise so high, neither doth it ever sink below; and it has not met with
the approbation it deserves, only because it has not been more read
and considered. His subject indeed is confined, and he has a narrow
foundation to build upon, but he has raised as noble a superstructure,
as such little room, and such scanty materials would allow. The great
beauty of it is the contrast between the two characters of the tempter
and Our Saviour, the artful sophistry, and specious insinuations of
the one, refuted by the strong sense, and manly eloquence of the
other.' The first thought of Paradise Regained was owing to Elwood the
Quaker, as he himself relates the occasion, in the History of his own
Life. When Milton had lent him the manuscript of Paradise Lost at St.
Giles's Chalfont, and he returned it, Milton asked him how he liked
it, and what he thought of it? 'which I modestly and freely told him
(says Elwood) and after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly
said to him, thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou
to say of a Paradise Found? He made me no answer, but sat some time in
a muse, then broke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject.'
When Elwood afterwards waited upon him in London, Milton shewed him
his Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone said to him, 'this is
owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put me
at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of.'

In the year 1672 he published his Artis Logicae plenior Institutio ad
Rami methodum co