composition.”  Vondel’s Lucifer—­whose subject is not the fall of Adam, but the fall of Satan—­was acted and published in 1654, when Milton is known to have been studying Dutch, but when the plan of “Paradise Lost” must have been substantially formed.  There can, nevertheless, be no question of the frequent verbal correspondences, not merely between Vondel’s Lucifer and “Paradise Lost,” but between his Samson and “Samson Agonistes.”  Milton’s indebtedness, so long ago as 1829, attracted the attention of an English poet of genius, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who pointed out that his lightning-speech, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” was a thunderbolt condensed from a brace of Vondel’s clumsy Alexandrines, which Beddoes renders thus:—­

   “And rather the first prince at an inferior court
    Than in the blessed light the second or still less.”

Mr. Gosse followed up the inquiry, which eventually became the subject of a monograph by Mr. George Edmundson ("Milton and Vondel,” 1885).  That Milton should have had, as he must have had, Vondel’s works translated aloud to him, is a most interesting proof, alike of his ardour in the enrichment of his own mind, and of his esteem for the Dutch poet.  Although, however, his obligations to predecessors are not to be overlooked, they are in general only for the most obvious ideas and expressions, lying right in the path of any poet treating the subject. Je l’aurais bien pris sans toi. When, as in the instance above quoted, he borrows anything more recondite, he so exalts and transforms it that it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has entertained unawares.  This may not entirely apply to the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems indebted for the conception of his diabolical council.  Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy.  In Ochino’s “Divine Tragedy,” which he may have read either in the Latin original or in the nervous translation of Bishop Poynet, Milton would find a hint for his infernal senate.  “The introduction to the first dialogue,” says Ochino’s biographer Benrath, “is highly dramatic, and reminds us of Job and Faust.”  Ochino’s arch-fiend, like Milton’s, announces a masterstroke of genius.  “God sent His Son into the world, and I will send my son.”  Antichrist accordingly comes to light in the shape of the Pope, and works infinite havoc until Henry VIII. is divinely commissioned for his discomfiture.  It is a token, not only of Milton’s, but of Vondel’s, indebtedness, that, with Ochino as with them, Beelzebub holds the second place in the council, and even admonishes his leader.  “I fear me,” he remarks, “lest when Antichrist shall die, and come down hither to hell, that as he passeth us in wickedness, so he will be above us in dignity.”  Prescience worthy of him who