e eleventh book of
"Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the
freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered. That he worked
upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by
Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech
which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the
exordium of his tragedy. Of the literary sources which may have
originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's
mind we shall speak hereafter. It must suffice for the present to remark
that his purpose had from the first been didactic. This is particularly
visible in the notes of alternative subjects in his manuscripts, many of
which palpably allude to the ecclesiastical and political incidents of
his time, while one is strikingly prophetic of his own defence of the
execution of Charles I. "The contention between the father of Zimri and
Eleazar whether he ought to have slain his son without law; next the
ambassadors of the Moabites expostulating about Cosbi, a stranger and a
noblewoman, slain by Phineas. It may be argued about reformation and
punishment illegal, and, as it were, by tumult. After all arguments
driven home, then the word of the Lord may be brought, acquitting and
approving Phineas." It was his earnest aim at all events to compose
something "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation." "Whatsoever," he says
in 1641, "whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable
or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of
that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and
refluxes of man's thoughts from within--all these things with a solid
and treatable smoothness to paint out and describe; teaching over the
whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example,
with much delight, to those especially of soft and delicious temper who
will not so much as look upon Truth herself unless they see her
elegantly drest, that, whereas the paths of honesty and good life appear
more rugged and difficult, though they be indeed easy and pleasant,
they would then appear to all men easy and pleasant though they were
rugged and difficult in deed." An easier task than that of "justifying
the ways of God to man" by the cosmogony and anthropology of "Paradise
Lost."

If it is true--and the fact seems well attested--that Milton's poetical
vein flowed only from the autumnal equinox to th