Without going into the matter exhaustively, I will only say that from
these pieces it is clear that Milton's primary idea was to write, like
Salandra, a sacred tragedy upon this theme, and not an epic. These
drafts also contain a chorus, such as Salandra has placed in his drama,
and a great number of mutes, who do not figure in the English epic, but
who reappear in the 'Adamo Caduto' and all similar works. Even Satan is
here designated as Lucifer, in accordance with the Italian Lucifero; and
at the end of one of Milton's drafts we read 'at last appears Mercy,
comforts him, promises the Messiah, etc.,' which is exactly what
Salandra's Misericordia (Mercy) does in the same place.

Milton no doubt kept on hand many loose passages of poetry, both
original and borrowed, ready to be worked up into larger pieces; all
poets are smothered in odd scraps of verse and lore which they 'fit in'
as occasion requires; and it is therefore quite possible that some
fragments now included in 'Paradise Lost' may have been complete before
the 'Adamo Caduto' was printed. I am referring, more especially, to
Satan's address to the sun, which Philips says was written before the
commencement of the epic.

Admitting Philips to be correct, I still question whether this
invocation was composed before Milton's visit to Naples; and if it was,
the poet may well have intended it for some other of the multitudinous
works which these drafts show him to have been revolving in his mind, or
for none of them in particular.

De Quincey rightly says that Addison gave the initial bias in favour of
'Paradise Lost' to the English national mind, which has thenceforward
shrunk, as Addison himself did, from a dispassionate contemplation of