Excerpt from Milton's Paradise Lost: Books I. And II., Edited With Introduction and Notes

In Milton's life Paradise Lost may be regarded as the great central point, to which everything else is subordinate. All through his youth and his prime of manhood he was consciously or unconsciously preparing himself to write a great epic poem. Very slowly his great purpose assumed definite shape in his mind. The poems in which he first showed his poetic genius were lyric and dramatic, but early in life ho had conceived the idea of rivalling the fame of Homer and Virgil, and becoming the epic representative of his native land and of modem Christendom. At first he meditated a national epic, based upon the legends of prehistoric England. In his youth his mind was attracted by the picturesque pageantry of chivalry and romance. "I betook me, " he writes in the Apology for Smedymnus "among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood." Tho poet's wanderings in the fields of old romance have left their traces distinctly in some of the most gorgeous passages of his epic poetry. At one time they seemed likely to determine his ultimate choice.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.