Grand indeed is the thought of the unequalled strain poured forth when every other voice was hushed in the mighty city, to no meaner accompaniment than the music of the spheres.

Respecting the date of composition, we may trust Aubrey's statement that the poem was commenced in 1658, and when the rapidity of Milton's composition is considered ("Easy my unpremeditated verse") it may, notwithstanding the terrible hindrances of the years 1659 and 1660, have been, as Aubrey thinks, completed by 1663.

It would still require mature revision, which we know from Ellwood that it had received by the summer of 1665.

Internal evidence of the chronology of the poem is very scanty.

Professor Masson thinks that the first two books were probably written before the Restoration.