The story of Adam and Eve, read as a love story between two very human (though rather large) people, is deeply affecting. Adam is devoted to Eve from the first time he sees her, a devotion so enveloping that Eve is led to plead with her husband to be allowed to go off by herself for a day so that she may learn to be more independent, and so be a more useful helpmeet. Reluctantly Adam agrees. Satan takes advantage, of course, seducing Eve into tasting of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. The Devil’s arguments are masterful, the temptation is irresistible, and we forgive Eve at once: she is confronted by a power of which she can have no comprehension.
As soon as she returns Adam realizes what has happened and almost immediately forgives her, although he knows better than she the consequences of her fall. She offers him the apple and he eats, knowing full well that he will lose Paradise but knowing, too, that without Eve there is no paradise for him anywhere. And so they are punished, after first having the future of mankind foretold them by the Archangel. They look back at the flaming sword over the gate and then turn away from Paradise and toward their new life:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon. The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow Through Eden took their solitary way.
It is surely one of the most beautiful partings in poetry.
The story of Adam and Eve is more than just a biblical tale. Every newly married couple has something like the same experience to undergo and something like the same suffering to endure. Paradise Lost is therefore much more than the greatest of all baroque literary monuments. It is a story for all people at all times. In addition, it is a profound apologia for the Christian religion capable, I believe, of softening even the hardest heart.
At the end of his life Milton wrote a kind of sequel to Paradise Lost that he called Paradise Regained. It is not much read today except by Milton scholars and their students, yet it is an interesting work. Paradise was to be regained, of course, through the intercession of Christ for all mankind. Satan knew very well what the birth of Christ meant, so he set about the task of tempting the Son of God as he had tempted Eve. Temptation was Milton’s great subject: as a young man he had written a masque, or musical show, Comus, about temptation; Paradise Lost was about the temptation of both Adam and Eve; in his tragic play Samson Agonistes, Milton reveals Samson tempted by Dalila; and here at the end Christ is tempted by Satan in many and diverse ways. Christ, like the Lady in Comus but unlike Samson and Eve and Adam, is proof against temptation, and so man will be saved and ultimately find Paradise again. The verse of Paradise Regained is heavy and ornate, with little of the graciousness and beauty of Paradise Lost, but the conception of the work is fascinating.
Samson Agonistes, too, is but a partial success. It is too long and insufficiently dramatic: one imagines Shakespeare handling the scenes between Samson and Dalila. On the other hand, not even Shakespeare, perhaps, could have outdone the magnificence of the final moments of Samson, as he brings down his enemies in his own fall. His epitaph is spoken by his father:
Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Shakespeare is unquestionably the greatest English poet and Milton is almost certainly the second greatest, although there are some who might claim the latter distinction for Chaucer or Wordsworth or Yeats—no others, probably. The reason Milton’s claim is so secure is that he not only wrote the magnificent long works of his old age—Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson—but that he also composed, at various times in his life, a collection of lyric poems that, taken all together, constitute an achievement that would earn him a high rank even without Paradise Lost.
Even Milton’s juvenile poems are worth reading if you would know the beginnings of this mighty poet, but at any rate do not skip over “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” This pair of lyrics—the one about the charms of life and happiness and comedy, the other about melancholy and deep thoughtfulness and tragedy—is the best example of an academic exercise ever written. In the dainty four-foot meter that we usually associate with poets like Marvell, rather than Milton, they prove that the great baroque poet had a light side, however difficult this may sometimes be to believe. The best way to read both “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” is to read them out loud, rather softly, while playing Vivaldi’s “The Seasons,” also rather softly, in the background. The combination is dynamite.
Do not try to read “Lycidas” while listening to Vivaldi; the greater weight of Bach (say, the Brandenburg Concertos) is needed for this bigger, more serious poem. An acquaintance of Milton’s, a young and aspiring poet and clergyman, has been lost in the Irish Channel and Milton contributes to a slim volume published in his memory. But the poem goes far beyond mourning for Edward King. It also mourns for Milton himself, for his lost youth, and for the waste of his time in other deeds and activities when he should be writing his great poem.
The lines in which Milton reminds us of the chanciness of life are justly famous—but so are many others in this poem, which stands as one of the greatest English lyrics:
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th’ abhorrèd shears, And slits the thin-spun life.
“And slits the thin-spun life”—did ever a line of poetry more perfectly sound what it means?
Do not pass over, either, the sonnets of Milton. Half a dozen are among the finest sonnets in any language.
Finally, try some of Milton’s prose, though it is often antique and clumsy to our modern ear. At least read Areopagitica, Milton’s passionate plea for the freedom of the press. Do not censor books, he cries:
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye . . . A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.