Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined, representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might bear on the terrestrial story.

It must dare also into those infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge, through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World, upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme.
[Footnote 1: Phillips's words in quoting these lines are, "In the Fourth Book of the Poem there are six [he says _six_, but quotes all the _ten_] verses which, several years before the Poem was begun, were shown to me and some others as designed for the very beginning of the said Tragedy." These words, if the Epic was begun in 1658, might carry us back at farthest to about 1650 as the date when the ten lines were in existence; but, besides that Phillips's expression is vague, we have Aubrey's words in 1680 as follows:--"In the [4th] Book of _Paradise Lost_ there are about six verses of Satan's exclamation to the Sun which Mr.E.Phi.remembers about fifteen or sixteen years before ever his Poem was thought of; which verses were intended for the beginning of a Tragoedie, which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business." This, on Phillips's own authority, would take the lines back to 1642 or 1643; and that, on independent grounds, is the probable date.
Hardly after 1642 or 1643 can Milton have adhered to his original intention of writing _Paradise Lost_ in a dramatic form.] "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse"-- Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream.

The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy.

Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come.

Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions.