Chaos and old night

When we encounter an unfamiliar quotation, we typically ask where it comes from. However, identification of the source may only be a starting point, from which we can trace the quotation’s later life within the language. This paper will take the phrase chaos and old night, originally from Milton’s Paradise Lost, and trace the main branches of its life within the English language, a path which ultimately links Milton with a twenty-first century journalist. In the course of this exploration, the paper will also consider how the quotation in question is likely to have been handled by dictionaries of quotations.