_Paradise Lost._--In _A Treatise on the Dramatic Literature of the Greeks_,
by the Rev. J. R. Darley, I read the following remark:
"In our own literature also, the efforts of our early dramatists were
directed to subjects derived from religion; even the _Paradise Lost_ is
composed of a series of minor pieces, originally cast in dramatic form,
of which the creation and fall of man, and the several episodes which
were introduced subordinately to these grand events, were the
subject-matter."
This statement being at variance with the received opinion, that Milton,
from his early youth, had meditated the composition of an epic poem, I
would inquire whether there is any evidence to support Mr. Darley's view?
Milton has been charged with having borrowed the design of _Paradise Lost_
from some Italian author; and this allegation, coupled with that made by
Mr. Darley, would, if founded, reduce our great national epic to what
Hazlitt has described as "patchwork and plagiarism, the beggarly
copiousness of borrowed wealth."