Lucifer bemoans his fall and altercates with the Chorus of Angels.

Eve's temptation apparently takes place off the stage, an arrangement which Milton would probably have reconsidered.

The plan would have given scope for much splendid poetry, especially where, before Adam's expulsion, "the Angel causes to pass before his eyes a masque of all the evils of this life and world," a conception traceable in the eleventh book of "Paradise Lost." But it is grievously cramped in comparison with the freedom of the epic, as Milton must soon have discovered.

That he worked upon it appears from the extremely interesting fact, preserved by Phillips, that Satan's address to the Sun is part of a dramatic speech which, according to Milton's plan in 1642 or 1643, would have formed the exordium of his tragedy.

Of the literary sources which may have originated or enriched the conception of "Paradise Lost" in Milton's mind we shall speak hereafter.