---

Copyright © 1997 Roy C. Flannagan and the Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this header included, for noncommercial purposes within a subscribed institution. No copies of this work may be distributed electronically outside of the subscribed institution, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the JHU Press.

Reply to Robert Fallon

Michael Murrin

I would like to comment on several points in Robert Fallon's genial and useful critique of History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic, part of which I accept. He makes a crucial observation about Milton's audience, especially if one thinks of war in its broadest sense, something which Fallon stresses as well in his forthcoming review in JEGP. Milton's readers in the 1660s all had experienced war in some fashion, and Milton had to consider this fact when he composed Paradise Lost. On the other hand, a much smaller number of people inflicted or suffered violence directly, and it was war in this narrower sense that I studied in my book. ¹ How many Londoners, for example, who formed a significant portion of the poet's audience, ² ever went to war? Milton himself illustrates this point, and here Fallon agrees with me: the poet never experienced battle. He did see the militia drilling and read military textbooks. He did what he could, and the marching, the reviews are things he stresses, not only in Book One of Paradise Lost but also in Book Three of Paradise Regained, where he partially modernizes the Parthian army. Indeed Milton loved military reviews and some kinds of pageantry, despite his vigorous disclaimer in the Invocation to Book Nine of Paradise Lost. In his Brief History of Moscovia, for example, he says at the beginning that he wants to shorten previous narratives and remove extraneous matter, yet he finds space for more than one description of royal ceremonies in Moscow, two of which are very similar to each other. ³ Milton then had a well-educated person's knowledge of war, who had no direct experience of battle, yet he had to address an audience which included many who did have such experience.

This situation might help to explain the unique way the poet describes the war in heaven. Using my own data, Fallon makes a very effective analysis of the three-day war. He has shown that Milton really presents a dramatized history of warfare and the logic behind its tactics and technology. Satan opts for missiles on the second day to offset the physical advantage of the loyal angels, who feel no pain in combat. This thinking also explains why Satan does not follow up the initial barrage with a charge, the only way he could have won the battle. That would have involved close combat and pain, so he contents himself with a stalemate. Fallon's parallel between the battle of mountains which follows and the way contemporary poets describe naval battles is also suggestive. And finally, I accept his wonderful parallel between the American Indians leaping off cliffs and the rebel angels diving into the abyss.

On the other hand, this same lack of battlefield experience in the poet makes me uncertain that Milton would have seen Satan's concealing of the cannon as a legitimate maneuver. I agree, of course, with Fallon, that it is legitimate in war to conceal weapons to gain a tactical advantage, but did Milton think so? He develops such a strong thematics of fraud in Paradise Lost, always connected to Satan, and fraud was tra ditionally associated with cannon. Yet I am willing to leave the issue open. Fraud came into my discussion of the gun late and initially messed up the entire argument. I think I worked it out satisfactorily with [End Page 123] Camões but remain more tentative with Milton. Much more, I suspect, yet needs to be said.

Fallon and I disagree over statistics. 900 out of 10,000 lines in Paradise Lost devoted to actual battle gives 9%, a figure which compares favorably with Drayton's 10% and Daniel's 7%, being in between the two. By the wider notion of warfare which would include the military review in Book One of Paradise Lost and the council of war in Book Two, one gets 12%, which is indeed significantly higher than Daniel but not that much more than Drayton. The real comparison, however, should be to other well-known epics which Milton read and studied like the Aeneid and Gerusalemme liberata. Virgil has roughly four books of battle (Books Two, Ten, Twelve, and half each of Nine and Eleven). He has six books about war more broadly conceived, since Seven has a military review, half of Nine concerns the military messengers Nisus and Euryalus, and half of Eleven presents a battle council. The proportions are about the same for Gerusalemme liberata. Nearly six cantos present straight conflict (all of Cantos Eight and Nine, Eleven, Eighteen, Twenty, and the equivalent of another book scattered through Cantos Three, Seven, Twelve, and Nineteen). War in the larger sense, which includes military reviews, war councils, and espionage, accounts for another two and one-half books (all of One and the equivalent of one and one-half cantos disposed through Cantos Three, Ten, Twelve, Fifteen, Seventeen, and Nineteen). The difference is telling. Half of the Aeneid and nearly half of Gerusalemme liberata concern war in its wide aspects, but only a quarter of Paradise Lost does. For battle the gap is still wider: one-third of the Aeneid and Gerusalemme liberata, under one-twelfth for Paradise Lost. I, therefore, hold to my main contention that Milton fits the English pattern which either eliminated war from heroic narrative or reduced it to a minimum.

As is evident, I disagree with Fallon in some things but accept others, though I do not always give them the same application. It is rare one learns from a review. I did from this one.

University of Chicago

Notes

1. In fact, it was only by setting clear limits that I could have written a book of such scope.

2. London continued to grow, even after the population of England stopped increasing around mid-century. See Tables I and III in Theodore K. Rabb, "Population, Economy and Society in Milton's England," in The Age of Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century Literature (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1980), 74, 77.

3. See his descriptions of Richard Chancellor's meeting and that of Thomas Randolph with Ivan IV in A Brief His tory of Moscovia, ed. George Philip Knapp, vol. X in The Works of John Milton (NY: Columbia UP, 1932), 368-69, 372-73.