The historical subjects are all taken from
native history, none are foreign, and all are from the time before
the Roman conquest. The scriptural subjects are partly from the Old,
partly from the New, Testament. Some of these subjects are named and
nothing more, while others are slightly sketched out. Among these
latter--are _Baptistes_, on the death of John the Baptist, and
_Christus Patiens_, apparently to be confined to the agony in the
garden. Of _Paradise Lost_ there are four drafts in greater detail
than any of the others. These drafts of the plot or action, though
none of them that which was finally adopted, are sufficiently near to
the action of the poem as it stands, to reveal to as the fact that the
author's imaginative conception of what he intended to produce was
generated, cast, and moulded, at a comparatively early age. The
commonly received notion, therefore, with which authors, as they age,
are wont to comfort themselves, that one of the greatest feats of
original invention achieved by man, was begun after fifty, must be
thus far modified. _Paradise Lost_ was _composed_ after fifty, but
was _conceived_ at thirty-two.
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