"A cold and noble epic."--TAINE.
Paradise regained was written by Milton, judging from a passage in the
Autobiography of Thomas Ellwood, in the winter of 1665-6, but was not
published until 1671. It was printed at Milton's expense in a small volume
together with Samson Agonistes.
Paradise Regained tells the story of Christ's temptation in the
Wilderness, and the material was taken from the accounts of Matthew and
Luke, which the poet, with great skill, expanded without essentially
deviating from them.
The title has been criticised on the ground that the poem should have
extended over the whole of Christ's life on earth. But Paradise Regained
was written as a sequel to Paradise Lost, and, as in the first poem the
poet showed that Paradise was lost by the yielding of Adam and Eve to
Satan, so in the second, he wished to show that Paradise was regained by
the resistance of Christ to temptation, Satan's defeat signifying the
regaining of Paradise for men by giving them the hope of Christ's second
coming. Therefore the poem naturally ends with Satan's rebuff and his
final abandonment of the attempt on the pinnacle of the Temple.
The poem has been criticised for its shortness, some scholars even
affecting to believe it unfinished; its lack of variety, in that it has
but two characters, its lack of action, and the absence of figurative
language.
But with all these faults, it has a charm of its own, entirely different
from that of Paradise Lost. Satan has degenerated during his years of
"roaming up and down the earth;" he is no longer the fallen angel of
Paradise Lost, who struggled with himself before making evil his good. He
is openly given over to evil practices, and makes little effort to play
the hypocrite. His temptations are worked up from that of hunger to that
of the vision of the kingdoms of the earth with a wonderful power of
description which makes up for the lack of action and the few actors. The
pathless, rockbound desert, the old man, poorly clad, who accosts the
Christ, the mountain-top from which all the earth was visible, the night
of horror in the desert, and the sublime figure of the Savior, are all
enduring pictures which compensate for any rigidity of treatment. If
figurative language is omitted it is because the theme does not need it,
and does not show that the poem is less carefully finished than Paradise
Lost. Its lack of action and similarity of subject to the longer poem
sufficiently account for its not meeting with popular favor. Johnson was
correct when he said, "had this poem been written not by Milton, but by
some imitator, it would have claimed and received universal praise."