Milton,
without being a very wide reader, was likely to have seen the _Adamus
Exul_ of Grotius (1601), and he certainly had read Giles Fletcher's
_Christ's Victory and Triumph_ (1610). There are traces of verbal
reminiscence of Sylvester's translation of _Du Bartas_. But out of the
long catalogue of his predecessors there appear only three, who can
claim to have conceived the same theme with anything like the same
breadth, or on the same scale as Milton has done. These are the
so-called Caedmon, Andreini, and Vondel.
1. The anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem which passes under the name of
Caedmon has this one point of resemblance to the plot of _Paradise
Lost_, that in it the seduction of Eve is Satan's revenge for his
expulsion from heaven. As Francis Junius was much occupied upon this
poem of which he published the text in 1655, it is likely enough that
he should have talked of it with his friend Milton.
2. Voltaire related that Milton during his tour in Italy (1638) had
seen performed _L'Adamo_, a sacred drama by the Florentine Giovanni
Battista Andreini, and that he "took from that ridiculous trifle" the
hint of the "noblest product of human imagination.
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