ening parallels in other portions of his works; and in such cases the student has been directed to draw his own inferences from the passages cited in elucidatioa. Milton has been interpreted by other poets. It is often asserted, with considerable justice, that there is a class of pedantic commentators who darken counsel by words without knowledge; and that, being intent on the mint, the anise, and the cummin of scholarship, they have omitted the weightier matters, insight and sympathy. How obvious is it, then, that we should look to a poet's brethren in craftsmanship and soul to supply interpretative comment, in cases where they have shown themselves disposed to do so. Fortunately, there is no lack of poetic exegetes upon Milton, and it has proved easy to enrich the pages of this edition with opinions of the highest significance from artists and men like Landor, Lowell, Wordsworth, and Matthew Arnold. The sources whence Milton derived inspiration or phraseology have been exhibited somewhat more fully than usual. It is a commonplace that Milton was learned, and used his learning freely in Paradise Lost. So fully has this been recognized, that the greater part of the parallels, Biblical, classical, and from earlier English poets, included in this edition, have been indicated by previous commentators. The present editor, however, has often quoted more extensively from standard translations of the ancients than his predecessors, and in several instances, as, for example, in the notes on I. 521, 550, 668, II. 302, 420, etc., has made contributions of his own. An appendix contains Morley's translation (English Writers, vol. II) of those portions of the Pseudo-Cadmonian Genesis which are most strikingly similar to passages in Paradise Lost. Besides the features just mentioned, there are others of a subsidiary nature, such as the interruption of the continuity of the text by typographical devices, and the provision of marginal summaries. The latter may be welcome to those who wish, before they have acquired a familiarity with the poem, to gain a rapid survey of the course and argument of the first two books. The study of the text should involve substantial conformity with the suggestions of the notes, and, in fact, a use of all the illustrative matter provided. When reference is made to the Bible, or to any other book, the reference should be looked up. Nor should the labor end here. The matter of the reference or the quotation is but a basis for more interesting and profitable thought than would be possible without it. The inferences and deductions to be drawn by the student are, after all, the main thing, and what has been provided for purposes of elucidation has been presented in strict subservience to this view. The books accessible for consultation ought to comprise as many as possible of those recommended on pp. 48, 49. There should be a Bible; a Globe edition (Masson's) of Milton; a Globe Spenser and a Globe Shakespeare (Macmillan); Lang, Leaf, and Myers' translation of the Iliad; Butcher and Lang's Odyssey; the Globe translations of Virgil and Horace; the Bohn translation of Ovid (at least the Metamorphoses); Mrs. Browning's version of the Prometheus Bound, or Plumptre's Eschylus (D. C. Heath & Co.); Longfellow's Dante (or Norton's, or Butler's); and Fairfax's Tasso (in the Carisbrooke Library). Longinus on the Sublime might be added, in Havell's translation (the best), or in the cheap edition published, together with Aristotle's Poetics, by Cassell & Co. Milton's employment of rhetorical figures has frequently been remarked in the notes, so that the work is adapted for use in conjunction with the teaching of rhetoric. For the classification of figures, De Mille's Elements of Rhetoric is the work which has been drawn upon. Compositions should be written upon such themes as Milton's life, the principal characters of the poem, etc. The editor would acknowledge his obligations to the labors of his predecessors, from Newton to the present. The principal editions have been consulted, and something of value obtained from each, the earlier ones, especially Newton's, being richest in independent discoveries of literary parallels and sources. A large number of these are recorded in Todd's edition of Milton. The text is substantially that of Masson, but this has sometimes been more strictly conformed to the first edition of Paradise Lost, or changed in certain particulars of spelling or punctuation to render it more consistent with itself, or more clear to the reader. The account of The Composition of Paradise Lost, in the Introduction, is abridged, without further alteration, from that given by Masson in the Globe edition of Milton, since there was no possibility of improving upon it. Those interested in the imaginative cosmogony of Paradise Lost are referred to Masson's remarks on the subject in his Introduction. The Sketch of Milton's Life, and the Chronological Table, have been prepared by Mr. Frank H. Chase, Clark Scholar in English in Yale University. YALE UNIVERSITY, Jan. 20, 1896. ALBERT S. COOK. |