The usual explanation of the frigidity of _Paradise Regained_ is the
suggestion, which is nearest at hand, viz., that it is the effect
of age. Like Ben Jonson's _New Inn_, it betrays the feebleness of
senility, and has one of the most certain marks of that stage of
authorship, the attempt to imitate himself in those points in which he
was once strong. When "glad no more, He wears a face of joy, because
He has been glad of yore." Or it is an "oeuvre de lassitude," a
continuation, with the inevitable defect of continuations, that of
preserving the forms and wanting the soul of the original, like the
second parts of _Faust_, of _Don Quixote_, and of so many other books.
Both these explanations of the inferiority of _Paradise Regained_ have
probability. Either of them may be true, or both may have concurred
to the common effect. In favour of the hypothesis of senility is the
fact, recorded by Phillips, that Milton "could not hear with patience
any such thing when related to him." The reader will please to note
that this is the original statement, which the critics have improved
into the statement that he preferred _Paradise Regained_ to _Paradise
Lost_.
Pages:
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286