The Academy Series of English Classics PARADISE LOST BOOKS I AND II EDITED BY HENRY W. BOYNTON Boston PREFACE. ANY excuse which may be needed for the existence of this new edition of the first two books of Paradise Lost will be found, not in the Notes so much as in the Introduction and Conclusion. The present volume aims to present, in form at once compact and continuous, and mainly in Milton's own words, the story of Paradise Lost, and especially the story of Satan. It is expected that the quoted passages will not only set forth the narrative with some clearness, but will afford something more than a glimpse of the poet at his best. The editor recommends that the Introduction, the first two Books, and the Conclusion, be first read from beginning to end, with a view to getting the perspective of the story; after which the student may take up more profitably a detailed study of Books I. and II. In the preparation of the Notes, constant use has been made of other editions. Special acknowledgment is due first, of course, to Masson; and in hardly less degree to the editions of Verity and Hale. ANDOVER, April, 1897. H. W. B. INTRODUCTION. It is doubtless possible to study the first two books of Paradise Lost by themselves with some degree of profit. They have a unity of their own. The limited field of action, the strength and simplicity of the conception which we here get of Satan and his followers, the dramatic quality of the dialogue (which seldom lapses into mere declamation), — all these characteristics of this fragment give it an interest of its own. And yet, after all, it is only a fragment. We must go back of, and forward of, these events in order to grasp their full meaning. Here is pictured the noblest phase of Satan's nature, but it is a phase which is to be succeeded by other developments of no less interest. The episode of the interview with Sin and Death is mainly significant as a prophecy: these monsters become of importance only in the sequel. Hell is here the stage of action; but there was a former and more varied action on the greater stage of Heaven, and there is to be a later (and again more active) series of events on the lesser stage of Earth. We shall attempt to trace from beginning to end the course of that great story of which the first two books constitute an intermediate episode. And we shall begin by quoting somewhat freely from Masson, the greatest of Milton's editors (Introduction to Paradise Lost, pp. 26-30): 'Paradise Lost is an epic. But it is not, like the Iliad or the Æneid, a national epic; nor is it an epic after any other of the known types. It is an epic of the whole human |