which Milton saw performed at Florence. The subject of the play was the fall of man; the actors, God, the Devils, the Angels, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Death, and the seven mortal Sins. Milton, according to Voltaire, "pierced through the absurdity of that performance to the hidden majesty of the subject, which, being altogether unfit for the stage, yet might be (for the genius of Milton and his only) the foundation of an epic poem. He took from that ridiculous trifle the first hint of the noblest work which human imagination has ever attempted, and which he executed more than twenty years after." In spite of Dr. Johnson's decision that Voltaire's story is wild and unauthorized, a comparison of the plot of Paradise Lost with the contents of the play of Andreini seems to show that the great English poet did not altogether disdain to borrow from the work of this rather obscure Italian playwright. Besides a general resemblance between the principal incidents and the characters represented, there are some traces of imitation in detail. Thus, from Mr. Hayley's analysis of the Adamo, we learn that in Act IV. Scene III. of Andreini's poem, "Infernal Cyclops, summoned by Lucifer, make a new world at his command," and it is natural to suppose that this suggested to Milton the building of Pandemonium by Mammon. Besides Andreini's Adamo there were, as Mr. Hayley shows, several other poems published in Italy before or about the time of Milton's visit to that country, the subjects of which were the wars of the Angels and the fall of Adam. Among these was a poem called the Angeleida, in which the invention of artillery is attributed to the fallen angels. This hint not improbably suggested to Milton the chief

incident of his second heavenly battle, and he may have incurred similar obligations to some other of the Italian poems mentioned by Mr. Hayley. However, as of most of them only the names survive, it can only be said with certainty that the subject of Paradise Lost was a favourite theme in Italy at the time of Milton's visit there, and it is likely that, when he had once conceived the idea of writing a great poem on the loss of Paradise, he would have taken note of any incidents or ideas likely to be useful, that might be suggested by the Italian writers who had chosen the same subject, and not only by Italian writers but by writers in all the many continental languages with which Milton was acquainted. Two modern critics, Mr. Gosse and Mr. Edmundston, find the chief original of Paradise Lost not in Italy, but farther north in Holland. Vondel, who is considered the greatest of Dutch poets, published in 1654, four years before the date usually assigned to the commencement of Paradise Lost, a fine drama called Lucifer. Vondel had already become famous by his previous works, and as the treaty of alliance concluded between England and Holland in 1654 had renewed friendly relations between the two republics, it is likely that Vondel's poem may have been known to Milton soon after its publication. Mr. Gosse declares that the great resemblance between Vondel's Lucifer and Milton's Paradise Lost can hardly be accounted for as the result of accident. Mr. Edmundston finds among Vondel's plays the original not only of Paradise Lost but also of Samson Agonistes. On the other hand, it must be remembered that, though Paradise Lost may not have been regularly commenced in its present form before

As

1658, the plan of the poem had been thought out many years earlier, and also, that Vondel's Lucifer only covers a small part of the subject matter of Paradise Lost, namely, the rebellion of Satan and his war with the faithful angels. These facts are strong evidence against the belief that Paradise Lost as a whole can be founded upon Vondel's drama. As for resemblance in individual passages, the same evidence adduced to show that Milton borrowed from Vondel would probably, if accepted, lead us to believe that Vondel was in like manner indebted to previous writers. Thus Milton's well-known line,

is

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,"

very like two lines of Vondel's. But this proves little ; it may be paralleled not only in Vondel, but also in Fletcher and Crashaw, and very closely in Stafford's Niobe, a prose work quoted by Todd, in which Satan declares that God drove him to hell, in order that he "who could not obey in heaven might command in hell." Stafford's Niobe was published in 1611, and so, if close similarity of language and thought in a later writer is enough to prove literary obligation, Vondel's verse must be indebted to the prose of Stafford. It is, of course, not impossible that Milton may have consciously borrowed this and other ideas from Vondel in the same way as he has deliberately borrowed from Homer and Virgil; but such obligations are very hard to establish, unless the poet chooses himself to manifest them beyond doubt by the words he employs.

Among the English writers whom Milton is supposed to have imitated, the first in order of time and importance is Caedmon. This Anglo-Saxon poet composed,

in the seventh century, a poem in which is described the fall of the angels, the creation, and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The poem was printed at Amsterdam in 1655, and must have been known before that date in its MS. form to the learned in England. As Milton wrote a history of England down to the time of the Norman Conquest, it is probable that he was familiar with Anglo-Saxon literature, and he can hardly be supposed to have entirely overlooked Caedmon's poem, which from the character of its subject matter would naturally be very interesting to him. No one can read Caedmon's poetry without being continually reminded of Paradise Lost. Let any one refer to the extracts given from his poem by Mr. Turner in his History of the AngloSaxons, or even to the short extract quoted at the commencement of Chambers's English Literature, and he will see reason to believe that Milton owes much to his

Anglo-Saxon predecessor. In fact, the two poets, though born in distant ages and at very different stages of civilization, are not entirely unlike one another. If we could take away from Paradise Lost the melodious flow of verse and the rich variety of illustrations culled from all past literatures, there would still be left a narrative of great power which would read very like the poetry of Caedmon. Therefore it is difficult to help thinking that Milton's mind was thoroughly saturated with the spirit of that early poet, and that to this AngloSaxon original Milton was to a considerable extent indebted for the frame-work of his epic. The chief fact that militates against this conclusion is that Milton never appears to have mentioned Caedmon's name in the whole range of his writings. Whether this omission was due

to the practice of an age in which literary men were not in the habit of going far out of their way to acknowledge obligations to previous writers, or whether Milton thought he really owed no more to Caedmon than to the host of intermediate writers who had told the story of the beginning of the world, or whether after all Milton was totally unacquainted with Caedmon's works, is a question that will probably never be decided. All that we can say is that, as far as the uncertain evidence of close similarity in treatment and thought can be trusted, Paradise Lost owes more to Caedmon's poem than to any other original. So much can hardly be said in favour of the claims put forward in behalf of the Locustae, a Latin poem by Phineas Fletcher, published in 1627. The speech of Lucifer in this poem undoubtedly contains several ideas that recur in the speeches of Milton's fallen angels, and the striking language of one passage seems to be distinctly imitated (see ii. 624). But this is far from being enough to make us accept the unconfirmed story that Milton "ingenuously confessed that he owed his immortal work of Paradise Lost to Mr. Fletcher's Locustae." Dunster tries to show that Sylvester's translation of a poem on Creation by the French poet, Du Bartas, contributed more to the production of Paradise Lost than any other work. As this translation was very popular when Milton was a boy, and was published in the street in which his father lived, it is natural to assume that Milton in his childhood may have known it well, and that many of Sylvester's thoughts and expressions may have been deeply impressed on his mind and reproduced afterwards. It is also possible that Sylves ter's poem may have first distinctly suggested to him the