"In myself I am
A world of happiness and misery;
This I have lost, and that I must lament
For ever. In my attributes I stood
So high and so heroically great,
In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
Which penetrated with a glance the world
Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,
A King—whom I may call the King of Kings,
Because all others tremble in their pride
Before the terrors of his countenance—
In his high palace, roofed with brightest gems
Of living light—call them the stars of heaven—
Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
In mighty competition, to ascend
His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls. For mad
Was the attempt; and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed.
Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
Nor am I now, nor shall I be, alone.
And there was hope, and there may still be hope;
For many suffrages among his vassals
Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
Are mine, and many more perchance shall be."
A striking proof that resemblance does not necessarily imply plagiarism. Milton's affinity to Calderon has been overlooked by his commentators; but four luminaries have been named from which he is alleged to have drawn, however sparingly, in his golden urn—Caedmon, the Adamus Exul of Grotius, the Adamo of the Italian dramatist Andreini, and the Lucifer of the Dutch poet Vondel. Caedmon, first printed in 1655, it is but barely possible that he should have known, and ere he could have known him the conception of "Paradise Lost" was firmly implanted in his mind. External evidence proves his acquaintance with Grotius, internal evidence his knowledge of Andreini: and small as are his direct obligations to the Italian drama, we can easily believe with Hayley that "his fancy caught fire from that spirited, though irregular and fantastic composition." Vondel's Lucifer—whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Satan—was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have been studying Dutch, but when the plan of "Paradise Lost" must have been substantially formed. There can, nevertheless, be no question of the frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel's Lucifer and "Paradise Lost," but between his Samson and "Samson Agonistes." Milton's indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his lightning-speech, "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," was a thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel's clumsy Alexandrines, which Beddoes renders thus:—
"And rather the first prince at an inferior court
Than in the blessed light the second or still less."
Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel," 1885). That Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel's works translated aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet. Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject. Je l'aurais bien pris sans toi. When, as in the instance above quoted, he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate. "The introduction to the first dialogue," says Ochino's biographer Benrath, "is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust." Ochino's arch-fiend, like Milton's, announces a masterstroke of genius. "God sent His Son into the world, and I will send my son." Antichrist accordingly comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture. It is a token, not only of Milton's, but of Vondel's, indebtedness, that, with Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council, and even admonishes his leader. "I fear me," he remarks, "lest when Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity." Prescience worthy of him who
"In his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat, and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone."
Milton's borrowings, nevertheless, nowise impair his greatness. The obligation is rather theirs, of whose stores he has condescended to avail himself. He may be compared to his native country, which, fertile originally in little but enterprise, has made the riches of the earth her own. He has given her a national epic, inferior to no other, and unlike most others, founded on no merely local circumstance, but such as must find access to every nation acquainted with the most widely-circulated Book in the world. He has further enriched his native literature with an imperishable monument of majestic diction, an example potent to counteract that wasting agency of familiar usage by which language is reduced to vulgarity, as sea-water wears cliffs to shingle. He has reconciled, as no other poet has ever done, the Hellenic spirit with the Hebraic, the Bible with the Renaissance. And, finally, as we began by saying, his poem is the mighty bridge—
"Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move,"
across which the spirit of ancient poetry has travelled to modern times, and by which the continuity of great English literature has remained unbroken.