. He must have
worked not so much from love of his subjects as from dread of idleness.
But he had hours of relaxation, of social intercourse, and of music; and
it is pleasant to remember that one pipe of tobacco. It consecrates your
own.

Against Milton's great poem it is sometimes alleged that it is not read;
and yet it must, I think, be admitted that for one person who has read
Spenser's _Fairy Queen_, ten thousand might easily be found who have read
_Paradise Lost_. Its popularity has been widespread. Mr. Mark Pattison
and Mr. John Bright measure some ground between them. No other poem can
be mentioned which has so coloured English thought as Milton's, and yet,
according to the French senator whom Mr. Arnold has introduced to the
plain reader, '_Paradise Lost_ is a false poem, a grotesque poem, a
tiresome poem.' It is not easy for those who have a touch of Milton's
temper, though none of his genius, to listen to this foreign criticism
quite coolly. Milton was very angry with Salmasius for venturing to find
fault with the Long Parliament for having repealed so many laws, and so
far forgot himself as to say, '_Nam nostrae leges_, _Ole_, _quid ad te_?'
But there is nothing municipal about _Paradise Lost_. All the world has
a right to be interested in it and to find fault with it. But the fact
that the people for whom primarily it was written have taken it to their
hearts and have it on their lips ought to have prevented it being called
tiresome by a senator of France.

But what is the matter with our great epic? That nobody ever wished it
longer is no real accusation. Nobody ever did wish an epic longer. The
most popular books in the world are generally accounted too long--_Don
Quixote_, the _Pilgrim's Progress_, _Tom Jones_. But, says Mr. Arnold,
the whole real interest of the poem depends upon our being able to take
it literally; and again, 'Merely as matter of poetry, the story of the
Fall has no special force or effectiveness--its effectiveness for us
comes, and can only come, from our taking it all as the literal narrative
of what positively happened.' These bewildering utterances make one rub
one's eyes. Carlyle comes to our relief: 'All which propositions I for
the present content myself with modestly, but peremptorily and
irrevocably denying.'

Mr. Pattison surely speaks the language of ordinary good sense when he
writes: 'For the world of _Paradise Lost_ is an ideal, conventional world
quite a