These lines, slightly altered from Shelley, are more applicable to the slow growth and sudden apparition of “Paradise Lost” than to most of those births of genius whose maturity has required a long gestation.  In most such instances the work, however obstructed, has not seemed asleep.  In Milton’s case the germ slumbered in the soil seventeen or eighteen years before the appearance of a blade, save one of the minutest.  After two or three years he ceased, so far as external indications evince, to consciously occupy himself with the idea of “Paradise Lost.”  His country might well claim the best part of his energies, but even the intervals of literary leisure were given to Amesius and Wollebius rather than Thamyris and Maeonides.  Yet the material of his immortal poem must have gone on accumulating, or inspiration, when it came at last, could not so soon have been transmuted into song.  It can hardly be doubted that his cruel affliction was, in truth, the crowning blessing of his life.  Remanded thus to solemn meditation, he would gradually rise to the height of his great argument; he would reflect with alarm how little, in comparison with his powers, he had yet done to “sustain the expectation he had not refused:”  and he would come little by little to the point when he could unfold his wings upon his own impulse, instead of needing, as always hitherto, the impulse of others.  We cannot tell what influence finally launched this high-piled avalanche of thrice-sifted snow.  The time is better ascertained.  Aubrey refers it to 1658, the last year of Oliver’s Protectorate.  As Cromwell’s death virtually closed Milton’s official labours, a Genie, overshadowing land and sea, arose from the shattered vase of the Latin Secretaryship.

Nothing is more interesting than to observe the first gropings of genius in pursuit of its aim.  Ample insight, as regards Milton, is afforded by the precious manuscripts given to Trinity College, Cambridge, by Sir Henry Newton Puckering (we know not how he got them), and preserved by the pious care of Charles Mason and Sir Thomas Clarke.  By the portion of the MSS. relating to Milton’s drafts of projected poems, which date about 1640-1642, we see that the form of his work was to have been dramatic, and that, in respect of subject, the swift mind was divided between Scripture and British History.  No fewer than ninety-nine possible themes—­sixty-one Scriptural, and thirty-eight historical or legendary—­are jotted down by him.  Four of these relate to “Paradise Lost.”  Among the most remarkable of the other subjects are “Sodom” (the plan is detailed at considerable length, and, though evidently impracticable, is interesting as a counterpart of “Comus"), “Samson Marrying,” “Ahab,” “John the Baptist,” “Christus Patiens,” “Vortigern,” “Alfred the Great,” “Harold,” “Athirco” (a very striking subject from a Scotch legend), and “Macbeth,” where Duncan’s ghost was to have appeared instead of Banquo’s, and seemingly taken a share in the