Simon François Ravenet after Francis Hayman, illustration to Book I, engraving. Paradise Lost: a poem in twelve books ... Third edition, with notes of various authors, by Thomas Newton, D.D., vol. 1 (London: J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper, 1754). Ff.2.5, after p.2.

This two-volume edition of Paradise Lost illustrated by Francis Hayman (1708-1776) was first published in 1749. Hayman’s twelve plates were engraved by Charles Grignion (1716-1810) and Simon François Ravenet (1706-1774). Milton’s other poems, including most notably Samson Agonistes, were added as a third volume in 1752.

This plate depicts the same scene from Book I as the 1688 edition (no. 45): Satan arousing his legions from the burning lake. We can already see at work a broad iconographical shift that turns Satan from a horned demon, in the seventeenth century, into a heroic and imposing figure in the eighteenth and nineteenth. Hayman also includes his lieutenant Beelzebub in the background, girding Satan with the spear and shield of Milton’s famous description.

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