Other poets, of
inferior powers, have from time to time attempted, with different
degrees of success, some of the minor Scriptural histories; Bodmer,
the Noachian Deluge; Solomon Gessner, the Death of Abel, &c. And
Milton himself, after he had spent his full strength upon his greater
theme, recurred in _Samson Agonistes_ to one such episode, which he
had deliberately set aside before, as not giving verge enough for the
sweep of his soaring conception.
These considerations duly weighed, it will be found, that the subject
of the Fall of Man was not so much Milton's choice as his necessity.
Among all the traditions of the peoples of the earth, there is not
extant another story which, could have been adequate to his demands.
Biographers may have been, somewhat misled by his speaking of himself
as "long choosing and beginning late." He did not begin till 1658,
when he was already fifty, and it has been somewhat hastily inferred
that he did not choose till the date at which he began, But, as we
have seen, he had already chosen at least as early as 1642, when, the
plan of a drama on the subject, and under the title, of _Paradise
Lost_ was fully developed.
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