The Beginning of The Spectator Reviews on Paradise Lost

By Joseph Addison
Edited by James Bair et al.

From Monday, December 31, 1711.

As the first Place among our English Poets is due to Milton; and as I have drawn more Quotations out of him than from any other, I shall enter into a regular Criticism upon his Paradise Lost, which I shall publish every Saturday till I have given my Thoughts upon that Poem. I shall not however presume to impose upon others my own particular Judgment on this Author, but only deliver it as my private Opinion. Criticism is of a very large Extent, and every particular Master in this Art has his favourite Passages in an Author which do not equally strike the best Judges. It will be sufficient for me if I discover many Beauties or Imperfections which others have not attended to, and I should be very glad to see any of our eminent Writers publish their Discoveries on the same Subject. In short, I would always be understood to write my Papers of Criticism in the Spirit which Horace has expressed in those two famous Lines:

—Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum,

“If you have made any better Remarks of your own,/communicate them with Candour; if not, make use of these I present you with.”

Cedite Romani Scriptores, cedite Graii.¹
Propert.

There is nothing in Nature more irksome than general Discourses, especially when they turn chiefly upon Words. For this Reason I shall waive the Discussion of that Point which was started some Years since, whether Milton’s Paradise Lost may be called an Heroic Poem? Those who will not give it that Title may call it (if they please) a Divine Poem. It will be sufficient to its Perfection if it has in it all the Beauties of the highest kind of Poetry; and as for those who allege it is not an Heroic Poem, they advance no more to the Diminution of it than if they should say Adam is not Aeneas nor Eve Helen.

I shall therefore examine it by the Rules of Epic Poetry and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or Aeneid in the Beauties which are essential to that kind of Writing. The first thing to be considered in an Epic Poem is the Fable,² which is perfect or imperfect according as the Action which it relates is more or less so. This Action should have three Qualifications in it. First, It should be but One Action. Secondly, It should be an entire Action; and, Thirdly, It should be a great Action.³ To consider the Action of the Iliad, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost in these three several Lights.

Homer to preserve the Unity of his Action hastens into the Midst of Things as Horace has observed:⁴ Had he gone up to Leda’s Egg, or begun much later, even at the Rape of Helen or the Investing of Troy, it is manifest that the Story of the Poem would have been a Series of several Actions. He therefore opens his Poem with the Discord of his Princes and artfully interweaves in the several succeeding Parts of it an Account of everything material which relates to them and had passed before that fatal Dissension.

After the same manner, Aeneas makes his first Appearance in the Tyrrhene Seas and within Sight of Italy because the Action proposed to be celebrated was that of his settling himself in Latium. But because it was necessary for the Reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy and in the preceding Parts of his Voyage, Virgil makes his Hero relate it by way of Episode in the second and third Books of the Aeneid. The Contents of both which Books come before those of the first Book in the Thread of the Story, though for preserving of this Unity of Action they follow them in the Disposition of the Poem.

Milton, in imitation of these two great Poets, opens his Paradise Lost with an Infernal Council plotting the Fall of Man, which is the Action he proposed to celebrate; and as for those great Actions which preceded, in point of Time, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World (which would have entirely destroyed the Unity of his principal Action, had he related them in the same Order that they happened), he cast them into the fifth, sixth, and seventh Books by way of Episode to this noble Poem.

Aristotle himself allows that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the Unity of his Fable, though at the same time that great Critic and Philosopher endeavors to palliate this Imperfection in the Greek Poet by imputing it in some measure to the very Nature of an Epic Poem. Some have been of opinion that the Aeneid also labors in this particular and has Episodes which may be looked upon as Excrescencies rather than as Parts of the Action. On the contrary, the Poem which we have now under our Consideration hath no other Episodes than such as naturally arise from the Subject and yet is filled with such a Multitude of astonishing Incidents that it gives us at the same time a Pleasure of the greatest Variety and of the greatest Simplicity: uniform in its Nature, though diversified in the Execution.

• These reviews, totalling about a hundred pages, are continued in the e-book The Spectator Reviews on Paradise Lost, available in Kindle format from Amazon.

…with respect to that species of Poetry which imitates by Narration... it is obvious, that the Fable ought to be dramatically constructed, like that of Tragedy, and that it should have for its Subject one entire and perfect action, having a beginning, a middle, and an end; forming a complete whole, like an animal, and therein differing, Aristotle says, from History, which treats not of one Action, but of one Time, and of all the events, casually connected, which happened to one person or to many during that time.