tive list of subjects, made in 1641, Arthur has
disappeared, and the story of _Paradise Lost_ already occupies the most
conspicuous place, with four separate drafts suggesting different
treatments of the theme.

It would be idle to speculate on what Milton might have made of the
Arthur legends. One thing is certain; he would have set up the warrior
king as a perfectly objective figure, hampered by no allegory, and with
no inward and spiritual signification. The national cause, maintained
heroically in a hundred battles, and overwhelmed at last by the brute
violence of the foreign oppressor, was subject enough for him; he would
never have marred his epic by sickly irresolution and the struggles of a
divided will in the principal characters. Perhaps his mind reverted to
his old dreams when he came to describe the pastimes wherewith the rebel
angels beguile their time in Hell:--

Others, more mild,
Retreated in a silent valley, sing
With notes angelical to many a harp
Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall
By doom of battle, and complain that Fate
Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance.
Their song was partial; but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience.

This is only one of the very numerous places in _Paradise Lost_ where,
before he is well aware of it, we catch Milton's sympathies dilating
themselves upon the wrong side.

His researches in British annals, begun at the time when he was still in
quest of a theme, convinced him that the whole story of Arthur was
"obscured and blemished with fables." He foraged among other British
subjects, feeling that the great poem which was designed to raise England
to the literary peerage and set her by the side of countries of older
fame must deal with a theme of truly national import. Some of the
subjects that he jotted down were obviously of too incidental and trivial
a nature for his purpose, and a wise instinct confined him to the earlier
history of the island, where his own freedom of treatment was less likely
to be hampered by an excess of detail. And then, precisely how or when we
do not know, the idea came to him that he would treat a subject still
larger and of a more tremendous import,--the fortunes, not of the nation,
but of the race:--

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.

The attract