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 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 by Laurent de Premierfait, entitled "Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes". Lydgate's poem was written in the years 1431-38. It is composed of nine books and some 36 thousand lines. It is made up of rhyme royal stanzas: <poem style="margin-left:2em"> Out of her swoone when she did abbraide, Knowing no mean but death in her distrèsse, To her brothèr full piteously she said, "Cause