ABSTRACT
The dominant English poet in the decade of Paradise Lost, John Dryden, noted when he introduced his most sustained and possibly his most influential work, his translation of the Aeneid, that the heroic or epic poem was ‘the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform’. There can be little doubt that Milton shared this sentiment, which was, after all, only the cliche of the age. Though in the juvenile ‘Vacation Exercise’ quoted above Milton had fluently hailed his ‘native language’ as quite suitable for ‘some graver subject’, when it came to the actual writing of the definitive epic he saw himself to be making a self-sacrificing choice. Milton aimed in his epic to vindicate not only his country and his language but also his faith. In the passage quoted above Milton speaks of the great advantage he has in ‘being a Christian’.
