Vondel's Johannes de Boetgezant. The resemblances which Mr Edmundson pointed out have their common source in Tasso. It is more probable that he knew the Strage degli Innocenti of Marino, and the severity of Milton's style is due possibly both to his sense of what was appropriate to his sacred theme, and to his disgust at the extravagance and "wit" of Marino and Cowley. But already, in The Reasons of Church Government, he had contemplated an epic "on the brief model of the Book of Job," and that was undoubtedly the work chiefly in his mind, as he composed his story of the Temptation mainly in dialogue; and if not so elaborate a work as the greater poem, the art of Paradise Regained is not less subtle, while its ethical tone is nobler. If Satan in Paradise Lost has some of the strength of Puritanism in resistance, it is to Paradise Regained one must go to study the source of Puritan strength—the disregard of wealth and glory, the submission of the will to God, and God only.
In Samson Agonistes (1671) Milton realised another long-cherished ambition, and reproduced classical Samson
Agonistes. tragedy as he had done classical elegy and epic; and, as in these, he assimilated and reproduced the form of Greek tragedy, including the chorus, with a completeness and harmony which no poet of the Renaissance attained, and that, while breathing into it a spirit which is Hebraic rather than Hellenic, and making it the vehicle for the expression of his intensest personal sentiments. In Samson Milton saw himself and the cause for which he fought.
