‘Latinism’ within the grand style is the felt presence of Latin diction and usage within the English, interacting with it. Most readers of Paradise Lost felt it, and liked or loathed the poem accordingly, until Alastair Fowler expunged many supposed instances; and concluded that the poem is the ‘most colloquial secondary epic ever written’. Thomas Corns's recent study has continued the tendency to expunge, along with the polemical tone. The present study, on the other hand, is committed to the view that Latin – and Milton's other tongues – are an important interlingual intertext for Milton's poems. I hear more such interactions than the current orthodoxy allows. Moreover, the precedent of Dante, relevant as usual, persuades me that an epic may be colloquial and interlingual in the sense I intend: as Tuscan and Latin for Dante, so a more English hybridizing for Milton.

Accordingly, I shall summarize the debate hitherto, then propose different terms of reference, to focus attention on the most profitable, least contentious interactions. Though their proportion is indeed smaller than used to be claimed, their placing, clustering and local impact enrich the text in important ways. So of course do the contributions in diction and usage from Milton's other languages, albeit by less frequent interactions.

THE DEBATE HITHERTO, AND THE DEFINITION OF ‘LATINISM’

We can accept, to start with, that