As is well known amongst the UES Council of Elders, I am a huge fan of Milton. I esteem him perhaps a better poet than Shakespeare (who in turn dominates Anglophone drama). In reviewing some of my notes from my last concerted reading of the blind poet’s works, I thought I would share the following selections from Paradise Regained with you. Fitting that I post this after Vakenhobbes warns of an apocalypse, for these are words spoken by Christ in rebuke to Satan’s temptations. I reserve the best lines ever written (IV.551-70, especially 560-62) so that you can fully appreciate them in a proper reading. It is my hope that these passages illuminate, if only slightly, why I think the UES school should stress the classics of English and Western literature.
Book III: 47-57, 72-81
For what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people’s praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol (50)
Things vulgar, and, well weighed, scarce worth the praise?
They praise and they admire they know not what,
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extolled,
To live upon their tongues, and be their talk?
Of whom to be dispraised were no small praise–
His lot who dares be singularly good.
…
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to overrun
Large countries, and in field great battles win,
Great cities by assault. What do these worthies
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable nations, neighbouring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conquerors, who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe’er they rove, (80)
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy;
Book IV: 133-46
That people, victor once, now vile and base,
Deservedly made vassal–who, once just,
Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquered well,
But govern ill the nations under yoke,
Peeling their provinces, exhausted all
By lust and rapine; first ambitious grown
Of triumph, that insulting vanity;
Then cruel, by their sports to blood inured (140)
Of fighting beasts, and men to beasts exposed;
Luxurious by their wealth, and greedier still,
And from the daily Scene effeminate.
What wise and valiant man would seek to free
These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslaved,
Or could of inward slaves make outward free?
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