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Paradise lost, book i., ed. with intr. and notes by F. Storr
Paradise lost book i ed with intr and notes by F Storr Author:John Milton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES 1-26 An invocation of the Holy Spirit for his aid in the great work the poet is essaying; viz., the account of man's disobedience, and the consequent lo... more »ss of Paradise. 1 Notice the order of the opening lines. The attention is held in suspense till line 6. In this the opening of Paradise Lost resembles rather Georgic i. than either the Iliad or AZneid, to which it is generally compared. 2 We still speak of a mortal wound, though we could not use ' mortallest poisons,' as Bacon does. In patristic Latin ' mortale crimen' means a deadly sin. 3 How is this line to be scanned ? We can only indicate the general principles on which the scansion of English blank verse depends. Accent is the basis of modern scansion, as quantity was in Greek and Latin. Blank verse ('heroic verse without rime ' as Milton in his preface calls it) consists of lines containing five pairs of syllables, or feet, with the accent on the last syllable of each foot. Such is the normal line, but a succession of such lines would be insufferably monotonous, and though every line approximates to this type, a perfectly regular line is the exception. The variations are most frequent at the beginning of the line, but the last syllable is not unfrequently without an accent; e.g. lines 81, 138, 157 of this book. But accent alone is insufficient to explain English versification. It must be supplemented by 'rhythm.' Rhythm, while recognizing metrical feet, does not regard them as units, but makes them part of a larger group. "Out of the tick-tack of a clock we can make any tune." Applying these principles to this line, we would divide it thus : Brought death | into the world | and all | our woe | The first foot is a spondee, though the accent on 'death' is a shade stronger than that on 'brought.' 'Into t...« less