When he began to compose
_Paradise Lost_ he had the reading of a life-time behind him. His
imagination worked upon an accumulated store, to which books,
observation, and reflection had contributed in equal proportions. He
drew upon this store without conscious distinction of its sources. Not
that this was a recollected material, to which the poet had recourse
whenever invention failed him; it was identified with himself. His
verse flowed from his own soul, but his was a soul which had grown
up nourished with the spoil of all the ages. He created his epic, as
metaphysicians have said that God created the world, by drawing it out
of himself, not by building it up out of elements supplied _ab extra_.
The resemblances to earlier poets, Greek, Latin, Italian, which could
be pointed out in _Paradise Lost_, were so numerous that in 1695, only
twenty-one years after Milton's death, an editor, one Patrick Hume, a
schoolmaster in the neighbourhood of London, was employed by Tonson
to point out the imitations in an annotated edition. From that time
downwards, the diligence of our literary antiquaries has been busily
employed in the same track of research, and it has been extended to
the English poets, a field which was overlooked, or not known to the
first collector.
Pages:
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304