It is easier for Milton to convince us of the otherness of hell and heaven than to demonstrate the singularity of the garden, for the garden necessarily involves a human perspective. The inalienable otherness of the garden, its existence outside the known human world, is so critical and difficult to convey because, unlike Hell or Heaven, it is nonetheless a human dwelling-place. The garden may well be regarded as the most strenuous achievement of Paradise Lost. A closer look at its positioning in the narrative is instructive, and a proper view of its place requires us to look back, however briefly, at the description of the garden.
As such the catalogue serves a functional end rather than purely a descriptive one. Milton's point here is to emphasize the singularity of Eden, and to set it apart from history, myth and legend. Curtius notes that this rhetorical device was used to suggest the beauty of landscape. The catalogue may be seen as a special form of what Ernst Curtius described as the topos of outdoing, in which ‘on the basis of a comparison with famous examples provided by tradition, the superiority, even the uniqueness, of the person or thing to be praised is established’. Although Satan expresses grief at what he has lost, he does not repent. With sadness, he speaks of how he has fallen from his former glorious state because his pride would not allow him to remain subservient to God. Alastair Fowler cites a comparable passage from Spenser ( The Faerie Queene, II.xii.52). Book 4 Book 4 Summary Perched on a mountaintop and gazing down on the beauties of Earth, Satan engages in a reflective soliloquy. The catalogue of gardens that comes after the description of Paradise in Book 4 (ll.268–85) of Paradise Lost has been viewed as something of a rhetorical topos.
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