Milton's introductory note to Paradise Lost, simply and functionally labeled "The Verse," offers a brief explanation of his poetic deportment and defends his use of English "heroic verse."  It is my hypothesis that this preface (included in full, below) not only reflects subjects and themes addressed in the Epistle to Cangrande, but does so deliberately -- and provocatively.

Before examining this possible reaction to Dante's Epistle, I would like to remind the reader that Milton's very first poem, written in 1623 when he was a schoolboy of fifteen, was "A Paraphrase on Psalm 114."  That, of course, is the poem of David, known to dantisti as Psalm 113 in the Vulgate, to which Dante referred -- in his Epistle, prologue to Paradiso -- as exemplifying the relation between the four biblical allegorical senses and his own Commedia.  Milton's first recorded poem contains ten rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter.  It is not a particularly thrilling example of a fifteen-year-old's poeticizing, but it is clear that this exercise was still of some importance to the older poet, who included it in his first collection of verse in 1646.  This observation is of course not meant to suggest that his youthful interest in David's poem about the Exodus was piqued by Dante's similar interest, but only that such early (and literary) awareness of the Psalm on Milton's part is noteworthy.

This conceptual frame is found, nearly half a century later, in Milton's introductory presentation of "The Verse" of Paradise Lost, first published in a later edition (1699) of the original ten-book poem (1668). Was he now aware of the presence of the psalm in Dante's similarly self-exegetical prologue?  Here is the text of Milton's first words in the work as they appear in his preface to the twelve-book version of his epic (1674):

The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct  or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame meter; graced indeed since then by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have expressed them.  Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.  This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming (italics and bolding added).

That Dante's Epistle was on Milton's mind as he addressed his own theological epic seems at least possible [1].  Rhyme, invented in the barbaric medieval past, has an insistent presence as the offender of libertarian prosodic principles.  It is referred to, in this fairly small space, fully five times (as indicated in boldface, above).  It has, we are informed, absolutely no place in "civilized" poetry, especially not in extended works -- and what particular extended work must come inevitably to mind?  Boiardo, Pulci, Ariosto, and Tasso (not to mention that other rhymester, Spenser, who had somehow failed to be "first in English" thus to liberate the "heroic poem") all may apply; nonetheless, and surely in Milton's view, the only longer poem most comparable to his own was Dante's theological "epic," even if it seems excluded by Milton's vaunt that his poem will pursue "Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme" (I.16).  Further, the "vulgar readers" to whom he deprecatingly refers are, apparently, those who, steeped in their enjoyment of the volgare italiano, are likely themselves to deprecate Milton for his failure to employ rhyme in his theological epic.  The last italicized passage, expounding the Exodal liberty of heroic verse in opposition to the Egyptian bondage of rhyming, may mimic either the Psalm itself and/or a prose recapitulation of it, such is found in the Epistula's treatment of In exitu Israël de Aegypto as the key to signifying in the Commedia.

Where might Milton have come across these Dantean formulations?  The various possibilities include the following:  (1) Since two sixteenth-century Italian commentators report that they have seen the Epistle themselves, it is possible that Milton, during his visit to Italy, also saw it -- doubtless an unverifiable hypothesis [2]; (2) Milton may have seen notice of the existence of the Epistle and understood some of its prescriptions in either or both of these sixteenth-century commentators, both of whom report that Dante was its author: Lodovico Castelvetro and Giambattista Gelli [3]; (3) several early commentaries to the Commedia contained bits and pieces of the text of the Epistle, if these are not identified as such [4], except in a single case (Andrea Lancia [see n. 5]).

Should Milton have come across either of these sixteenth-century commentaries in Italy (where Castelvetro was still among the "hot" deceased literary critics and Gelli remained an important and authoritative literary figure and commentator of the Commedia), he might well have been thinking of one or both of them in his preface and/or when he made his own announcement of a generic switch in Book IX.5-6: "I now must change / Those notes to tragic."  Dante's poem moved from registering the damned, whose individual tales were tragic, in Inferno, to telling of the saved souls, all of whom exemplify "comic" endings, in the last two cantiche.  Milton's poem finally moves in the obverse direction, from the creation of Adam and Eve to their fall, from concord to discord, from comedy to tragedy.  His own sense of generic distinction possibly reflects distinctions made in Dante's poem, in the Epistle to Cangrande, and in discussions in both those sixteenth-century texts.

If these similarities seem worthy of consideration, why has it taken so long for them to surface?  First, in the last three centuries the authenticity of the Epistle to Cangrande has been under assault.  Recently most of its detractors have, however, been confounded by the discovery of an early commentary to the Commedia by Andrea Lancia (finished in or before 1343) that makes clear and detailed reference to it and its formulations (e.g., Dante as its author, Cangrande as its designated recipient, the poem not as tragedy, but as comedy [5]).  As a result, one of the few potentially damaging arguments against the Epistle's authenticity, absence of any specific and definitive reference to it before the early fifteenth century (in Filippo Villani's annotations to Inferno I), has been disarmed.  If all or any of the document is false (an asseveration that this writer has always considered dubious, in whatever form it has been made), such an impersonation had to have occurred by 1343 -- and all or most of the prime candidates clever enough to have brought the putative counterfeit to life have thus been removed from possible consideration.

Most of Milton's reference to Dante occurs in his private papers rather than in the more public realm of his poems.  Indeed, Dante is never mentioned in Paradise Lost and is only named once in any poem, the sonnet to Henry Lawes, verses 12-14, where Lawes, who had set some of Milton's early poetry to music, is compared to Casella, with Milton playing the role of Dante.  The penultimate line concludes with the word "Purgatorio."  This sonnet was composed in 1646 and was apparently sent to Lawes in an attempt to regain his favor, but was only published posthumously from among Milton's papers.  Dante's nominal absence from all of the poetry published during his lifetime suggests that Milton was not eager to champion Dante's poetic mastery, even if he may have admired the Florentine privately [6].  Such behavior was perhaps motivated by his own need for pre-eminence and by his likely desire to avoid public support for a "papist," one who indeed believed in such fatuous notions as the existence of purgatory.

[2] Samuel, pp. 38-43, identifies the Dantists with whom Milton consorted in Florence: Benedetto Buonmattei, Carlo Roberto Dati, Agostino Coltellini; further, she reports that Milton knew the work of three important dantisti of the previous century, Iacopo Mazzoni, Torquato Tasso, and Lodovico Castelvetro.   However, she also points out (pp. 34, 286) that the only commentator specifically mentioned by Milton in any surviving writing, public or private, is Bernardino Daniello.

[3] Their commentaries may be found, complete, in the Dartmouth Dante Project.  See, in particular, Castelvetro to Inf. 1.101 and Gelli to Inf. 21.1-6.  And see discussion of these passages, both of which specifically identify Dante as the author of the Epistula and have been overlooked by all who oppose its authenticity, in my forthcoming article, "Due recenti contributi al dibattito sull'autenticità dell'Epistola a Cangrande," Letteratura italiana antica (2009).

[4] See my Allegory in Dante's "Commedia" (Princeton, 1969), pp. 266-96; Dante's Epistle to Cangrande (Michigan, 1993), pp. 23-41, 61-70, 78-79, and 97-101.

[5] See Luca Azzetta, "Le chiose alla Commedia di Andrea Lancia, l'Epistola a Cangrande e altre questioni dantesche," L'Alighieri 21 (2003): 5-76.

[6] Samuel's first appendix (pp. 285-86) indicates that between 1638 and 1647 Milton made, in addition to the three dozen possible echoes in various poems (some fourteen in Lycidas alone), treatises, and letters, five clear references to Dante in public documents -- two in letters, two in treatises, and only one in a poem (the sonnet to Lawes that remained unpublished in vita), while, also during that period, there are eight clear (if "private") references to Dante in Milton's Commonplace Book.