to Hell. This objection has already been discussed, and found invalid. By no protraction of the poem over the rest of Christ's life, we may repeat, could Milton have brought the story to the consummation thought desirable. The virtual deliverance of the World from the power of Satan and his crew may be represented as achieved in Christ's life on earth, and Milton represents it as achieved in Christ's first encounter with Satan at the outset of his ministry; but the actual or physical expulsion of the Evil Spirits out of their usurped world into their own nether realm was left a matter of prophecy or promise, and was certainly not regarded by Milton as having been accomplished even at the time when he wrote. Such completion of the poem, therefore, as could be given to it by working it on to this historical consummation, was impossible. "Well, then," some critics continue, raising a second question, "can the poem properly be called an epic?" They have in view the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Æneid, as the types of epics; and they think Paradise Regained too short and too simple for such a name. But Milton had anticipated the objection as early as 1641, when, in his Reason of Church-Government, speaking of his literary schemes, he had distinguished two kinds of epics, of which he might have the option, if he should ultimately determine on the epic form of composition as the best for his genius. "That epick form," he had said, "whereof the two poems of "Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and "the Book of Job a brief, model." May we not say that, whereas in Paradise Lost he had adopted the larger or more diffuse of the two models, so in Paradise Regained he had in view the briefer model? This would put the matter on its right basis. Paradise Regained is not so great a poem as Paradise Lost, because not admitting of being so great; but it is as good in its different kind, artistically perfect in its clearness and coherence, and altogether one of the most edifying and full-bodied poems in any literature. The difference in kind between the two poems is signalised in certain differences in the language and versification. Paradise Regained seems written more rapidly than Paradise Lost, and, though with passages of superlative beauty, with less avoidance of plain historical phrases, and less care for sustained song. PARADISE REGAINED THE FIRST BOOK I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's firm obedience fully tried Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Eremite Into the desert, his victorious field Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence 10 By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire, As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute, And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds, And unrecorded left through many an age: Now had the great Proclaimer, with a voice 20 |