last week, as I say, I have had very few books with me.
One of the few has been Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and I have read it
from end to end. I want to say a few words about the book first, and
then to diverge, to a larger question. I have read the poem with a
certain admiration; it is a large, strong, rugged, violent thing. I
have, however, read it without emotion, except that a few of the
similes in it, which lie like shells on a beach of sand, have pleased
me. Yet it is not true to say that I have read it without emotion,
because I have read it with anger and indignation. I have come to the
conclusion that the book has done a great deal of harm. It is
responsible, I think, for a great many of the harsh, business-like,
dismal views of religion that prevail among us. Milton treated God,
the Saviour, and the angels, from the point of view of a scholar who
had read the _Iliad_. I declare that I think that the passages where
God the Father speaks, discusses the situation of affairs, and arranges
matters with the Saviour, are some of the most profane and vicious
passages in English literature. I do not want to be profane myself,
because it is a disgusting fault; but the passage where the scheme of
Redemption is arranged, where God enquires whether any of the angels
will undergo death in order to satisfy his sense of injured justice, is
a passage of what I can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in
the solemn and majestic robe of sonorous language. The angels timidly
decline, and the Saviour volunteers, which saves the shameful
situation. The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is that of a
commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. There is no largeness or
graciousness about it, no wistful love. He keeps his purposes to
himself, and when his arrangements break down, as indeed they deserve
to do, some one has got to be punished. If the guilty ones cannot, so
much the worse; an innocent victim will do, but a victim there must be.
It is a wicked, an abominable passage, and I would no more allow an
intelligent child to read it than I would allow him to read an obscene
book.

Then, again, the passage where the rebel angels cast cannon, make
gunpowder, and mow the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile
and ridiculous. The hateful materialism of the whole thing is patent.
I wish that the English Church could have an Index, and put _Paradise
Lost_ upon it, and allow no one to read it until he