If Milton's
intention were to reproduce Jacob's ladder, he should, like Dante
(_Parad_, xxi. 25), have made it the means of communication between
heaven and earth.
It is possible that Milton himself, after the experiment of _Paradise
Lost_ was fully before him, suspected that he had supplemented
too much for his purpose; that his imagery, which was designed to
illustrate history, might stand in its light. For in the composition
of _Paradise Regained_ (published 1671) he has adopted a much severer
style. In this poem he has not only curbed his imagination, but has
almost suppressed it. He has amplified, but has hardly introduced any
circumstance which is not in the original. _Paradise Regained_ is
little more than a paraphrase of the Temptation as found in the
synoptical gospels. It is a marvel of ingenuity that more than two
thousand lines of blank verse can have been constructed out of some
twenty lines of prose, without the addition of any invented incident,
or the insertion of any irrelevant digression. In the first three
books of _Paradise Regained_ there is not a single simile. Nor yet can
it be said that the version of the gospel narrative has the fault of
most paraphrases, viz.
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