Thus Milton, at each great turning point of his epic, comes openly to the front of the stage and claims his part among the actors. As for Milton the adversary, critic, and companion of Satan, he is to be found wherever Satan and his angels are. No impartial and cold historian he: he adds his personal curse to all the disadvantages Satan is laboring under:

Who first seduc'd them to that foul revolt?
Th' infernal serpent, he it was, whose guile,
Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceiv'd
The mother of mankind, what time his pride
Had cast him out from heav'n, with all his host
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equall'd the Most High,
If he oppos'd; and with ambitious aim,
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Rais'd impious war in heav'n, and battle proud,
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Pow'r
Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition. . . .

. . . he with his horrid crew

Lay vanquish'd, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought

Both of lost happiness and lasting pain

Torments him. Round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witness'd huge affliction and dismay,

Mix'd with obdurate pride, and stedfast hate.22

Note the adjectives: foul," "infernal,' impious," vain," "horrid," "baleful," " obdurate": all could be suppressed; each is a personal insult of Milton to his foe. Similarly, Satan's first speech is followed by this com

ment:

22 I, 33-58.

So spake the apostate angel, though in pain

Vaunting abroad, but racked with deep despair.23

And the first gesture of the great rebel calls for this malediction:

So stretch'd out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay,
Chain'd on the burning lake; nor ever thence

Had ris'n, or heav'd his head, but that the will

And high permission of all-ruling heaven,
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others; and enrag'd might see,
How all his malice serv'd but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shewn
On man by him seduc'd; but on himself

Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance pour'd.24

There is a note of terrible rejoicing in Satan's disaster, as in the lines,

With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition.25

To his description of the cursed ground of hell, Milton adds:

Such resting found the sole

Of unblessed feet.26

Here are, in the midst of the all-too-successful deliberations of the infernal council, two short half-lines which interrupt the explanation of Satan's diplomacy:

But their spite still serves

His [God's] glory to augment.27

Here is Satan's magnificent journey through chaos. Milton admires him; but he does not forget himself: note the "ill chance":

23 I, 125-26.

24 I, 209-20.

27 II, 385-86.

25 I, 46-47.
26 I, 237-38.

All unawares,

Flutt'ring his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance,
The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud,
Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him
As many miles aloft.28

And Milton cannot end the second book without an extra malediction:

Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,

Accursed, and in a cursed hour he hies.29

In the third book, when Satan goes by the bottom of Jacob's ladder, Milton does not overlook his chance:

The stars were then let down, whether to dare

The Fiend by easy ascent, or aggravate

His sad exclusion from the doors of bliss.30

And Book IV opens on another outburst:

O for that warning voice, which he who saw
The Apocalypse heard cry in Heav'n aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be revenged on men,
Woe to th' inhabitants on earth! that now,

While time was, our first parents had been warn'd

The coming of their secret foe, and 'scaped,

Haply so 'scaped his mortal snare; for now
Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,
To wreck on innocent frail man his loss

Of that first battle and his flight to hell.31

And so on through the poem. We have seen Milton at this sort of work, relentlessly pursuing and insulting the author of Eikon Basilike, or Salmasius or More in the Defences. The insult which ends Book II is particularly

28 II, 932-38.
29 II, 1054-55.

30 III, 523-25.
31 IV, 1-12.

reminiscent of the ending of many chapters in the Defensio prima, where Salmasius receives each time a surplus hit. Milton treats Satan as he had treated the anonymous Gauden or the celebrated Salmasius: as a personal enemy.

But not only in the fierceness of his personal relationship to Satan is Milton discoverable in Paradise Lost. The whole experience of his life has been poured into the poem. The wonderful eloquence of the council in hell is an echo from a period of passionate Parliamentary life. Each orator gives such powerful arguments that one feels he must carry the assembly; but each succeeding orator is more powerful than his predecessor, and the whole culminates in Satan's finest piece of diplomacy. And the war in heaven is a civil war, characterized by the bitterness of feeling and language peculiar to internal broils.

The summary of Milton's experience of private life, too, is here, in the charming and deeply human relationship between Adam and Eve. And we cannot refrain from pointing out one more proof of the humanity of the poet in that scene, admittedly imitated from Milton's reconciliation with his wife, in which Eve's humble affection opens the way back to life. Here Milton happily forgets his theories of the predominance of reason, and the influence of "female charm" on Adam is this time his salvation:

Forsake me not thus, Adam. Witness, Heav'n,
What love sincere, and rev'rence in my heart
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,

Unhappily deceived. Thy suppliant

I beg, and clasp thy knees. Bereave me not,
Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,

My only strength and stay. Forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace.

She ended weeping, and her lowly plight,
Immoveable till peace obtain'd from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration. Soon his heart relented
Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid;
As one disarm'd, his anger all he lost,

And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.32

And here again Milton is the hero of his own epic.

II. GOD IN PARADISE LOST: THE DIVINE IRONY

Compared with the intense and active life of the party of Satan, and with the pathetic and richly human life of the first human couple, the life of the heavenly party can hardly be said to count. Yet there is one feeling Milton has touched upon-one feeling that might have been susceptible of rich development, both poetical and philosophical, in his treatment of the Divinity.

Since the divine plans are laid from all eternity, since God has foreseen all the manifestations of the free creatures and has provided for them—or against them, the only feeling that may yet move God with regard to the efforts directed against him, or even those that aim at knowledge of him, is a feeling of irony: the irony of intelligent Fate looking on at the vain struggles of beings submitted to inevitable law. In order, however, to deal adequately with this subject, perhaps a poet should be a 32 X, 914-46.