That Shepherd, Who First Taught the Chosen Seed: A Note on Milton's Mosaic Inspiration

In the third of Milton's plans for a drama on the subject of the fall of man there occurs a notation which challenges attention by its oddity, and which, like so many other items in the Trinity Manuscript, proves on examination to have a more than curious interest in relation to the poet's finished art. This notation is an amplification of the first entry, “Moses x3C0x3C1x3BBx3BFx3B3x3B9x3B6x3B5x3B9,” and may well have been added after the rest of the third outline stood complete. Moses prologuizes, “recounting how he assum'd his true bodie, that it corrupts not because of his [converse] with god in the mount, declares the like of Enoch and Eliah, besides the purity of the pl[acee] that certaine pure winds, dues, and clouds praeserve it from corruption, whence [he] exhorts to the sight of god, tells they cannot se Adam in the state of innocence by reason of thire sin.”