Cædmon thus represents Satan:--"Then spoke the haughty king, who of angels erst was _brightest, fairest in heaven_--beloved of his master--_so beauteous was his form_, he was like to the light stars." Milton's conception of the form of Satan is the same. His form had not yet lost All her _original brightness_, nor appear'd Less than archangel ruin'd.[10] And, His countenance as the _morning star_ that guides The starry flock, allured them.[11] Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for these apparent resemblances, and to learn whether similarity and coincidence necessarily prove identity and imitation; and whether, finally, Cædmon was ever known to Milton. The Cædmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its history as its subject. This poem, which we are told fixed the attention of our ancestors "from the sixth to the twelfth century," and the genius of whose writer was "stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our country,"[12] had wholly disappeared from any visible existence. It was accidentally discovered only in a single manuscript, the gift of Archbishop Usher to the learned Francis JUNIUS. During thirty years of this eminent scholar's residence in England, including his occasional visits to Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study of the Friesic living dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he devoted his protracted life to the investigation of the origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem, considerable for its size and for its theme, in a genuine manuscript, was for our northern student a most precious acquisition; and that this solitary manuscript should not he liable to accidents, Junius printed the original at Amsterdam in 1655, unaccompanied by any translation or by any notes. We must now have recourse to a few dates. Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began "Paradise Lost" about 1658; the composition occupied three years, but the publication was delayed till 1667. If Milton had any knowledge of Cædmon, it could only have been in the solitary and treasured manuscript of Junius. To have granted even the loan of the only original the world possessed, we may surmise that Junius would not have slept through all the nights of its absence. And if the Saxon manuscript was ever in the hands of Milton, could our poet have read it?