They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.

His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions especially Roman Catholicism. Otherwise at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition but experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. His own corpus is not devoid of humour notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson.

). William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author" and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language" though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which.