Feature Writer: John Milton

Feature Title: Paradise Lost i. 490-504

Link: Paradise Lost

About the Author: 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608–1674) – Paradise Lost concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton’s purpose, as stated in Book I, is to … “Justify the ways of God to men.”

Note from XP: Don’t you love the use of the LONG ‘S’ — it’s the ƒ in the word ‘Paradiƒe — Before and after an f a round s is used: offset, ſatisfaction. Before a hyphen at the end of the line a long s must be used: Shaftſ- bury. In the 17th century the round s was used before k and b: ask, husband; in the 18th century: aſk and huſband. Otherwise long s is used: ſong, ſubſtitute.

In Milton’s Paraƒise Lost

“Belial came last; than whom a Spirit more lewd
Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love,
Vice for itself. To him no temple stood
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he
In temples and at altars, when the priest
Turns atheist, as did Eli’s sons, who filled
With lust and violence the house of God?
In courts and palaces he also reigns,
And in luxurious cities, where the noise
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers,
And injury and outrage; and, when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that night
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.”