Paradise Lost temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men". In his introduction to the Penguin edition of "Paradise Lost", the Milton scholar John Leonard notes, "John Milton was nearly sixty when he published Paradise Lost in 1667. The biographer John Aubrey (1626–97) tells us that the poem was begun in about 1658 and finished in about 1663. However, parts were almost certainly written earlier, and its roots lie in Milton's earliest youth." Leonard speculates that the
The Fall of Princes of my sorrowe, roote of my heavinesse, That whilom were the sourse of my gladnèsse, When both our joyes by wille were so disposed, Under one key our hearts to be enclosed.— </poem> The poem tells about lives and tragic deaths of many historical and legendary persons. A sixteenth-century poem "The Mirror for Magistrates" by various authors is a sequel to "The Fall of Princes". The Fall of Princes The Fall of Princes is a long poem by English poet John Lydgate. It is based on Giovanni Boccaccio's work "De Casibus Virorum Illustrium", which Lydgate knew in a French translation