Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective

“Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again,” Samuel Johnson wrote in the late eighteenth century. “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions.” These nearly two and a half centuries later, how many of us attempt to seek out the instruction of Milton in the first place?