Paradise Lost Annotated

In Milton's life Paradise Lost may be regarded as the great central point, to which everything else is subordinate. All through his youth and his prime of manhood he was consciously or unconsciously preparing himself to write a great epic poem. Very slowly his great purpose assumed definite shape in his mind. The poems in which he first showed his poetic genius were lyric and dramatic, but early in life he had conceived the idea of rivaling the fame of Homer and Virgil, and becoming the epic representative of his native land and of modern Christendom. At first he meditated a national epic, based upon the legends of prehistoric England. In his youth his mind was attracted by the picturesque pageantry of chivalry and romance. "I betook me," he writes in the Apology for Smectymnus "among those lofty fables and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood." The poet's wanderings in the fields of old romance have left their traces distinctly in some of the most gorgeous passages of his epic poetry. At one time they seemed likely to determine his ultimate choice.
This edition of Paradise Lost includes:
- Introduction by M. Macmillan
-An Extract from Milton's Paradise lost by ROBERT VAUGHAN
-QUOTES by John Milton