The most important part of Addison's literary criticism is his appraisal of Milton's Paradise Lost. Addison has devoted eighteen papers published in the spectator on the appraisal of Paradise Lost. He has judged Paradise Lost on the basis of classical principles, placing Homer's 'Iliad' and Virgil's 'Aeneid' for his models. According to Aristotle, the fable or plot of the epic must be single, complete and great. The plot of Paradise Lost fulfills all these three requirements.
The fable is single because it has only one action to relate the fall of man from paradise; it is complete because it has a regular beginning, a middle, and an end. The end is man's expulsion from heaven and his inevitable death. The action is great because it involves the fate, not of a single person or a nation, but of all mankind. The characters are equally great; God and His Archangels, Satan and his friends, and our first parents-Adam and Eve. Milton's style has unparalleled grandeur enriched with classical mythology and Homeric similes.
There is only one deviation from Aristotle's principles. The epic, according to Aristotle, must end happily. But Milton's Paradise Lost ends unhappily with the punishment to Adam and Eve and victory of sin and Death. All the same 'Paradise Lost' is one of the greatest epics ever produced in the world.
