A Preface to Paradise Lost by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic, especially in its refutation of modern Milton critics (including T. S. Eliot).

From Lewis's Conclusion:

[Milton's] art is eminently civil ... in the sense that it presupposes in those who are to enjoy it some discipline in good letters and good 'manners'. It demands that our merely natural passions should have already been organized into such 'sentiments' as ordered and magnanimous commonwealths prefer.... It will therefore be ... hateful to the baser spirits among them. It has been compared to the Great Wall of China, and the comparison is good: both are among the wonders of the world and both divide the tilled fields and cities of an ancient culture from the barbarians. We have only to add that the wall is necessarily hated by those who see it from the wrong side, and the parallel is complete. From this point of view the decline in Milton's fame marks a stage in the rebellion of [today's] 'civilization' against civility.


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