[Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett]@TWC D-Link bookLife of John Milton CHAPTER VI 1/33
CHAPTER VI. "Thought by thought in heaven-defying minds As flake by flake is piled, till some great truth Is loosened, and the nations echo round." These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the slow growth and sudden apparition of "Paradise Lost" than to most of those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation.
In most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep. In Milton's case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest.
After two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to consciously occupy himself with the idea of "Paradise Lost." His country might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than Thamyris and Maeonides.
Yet the material of his immortal poem must have gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so soon have been transmuted into song.
It can hardly be doubted that his cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life. Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in comparison with his powers, he had yet done to "sustain the expectation he had not refused:" and he would come little by little to the point when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing, as always hitherto, the impulse of others.
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