m is wanting
in the note of actuality. Satan himself is not what he used to be; he is
doubly fallen, in the esteem of his victims as well as of his Maker, and
indeed

Comes to the place where he before had sat
Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunned,
A spectacle of ruin.

"He who aspires," says Mr. Pattison, "to be the poet of a nation is bound
to adopt a hero who is already dear to that people." But how if the hero
subsequently fall out of vogue, and his name lose its power with a fickle
populace? Can even a poet save him?

The drifting away of the popular belief from the tenets of Milton's
theology doubtless does something to explain the lukewarm interest taken
by most educated English readers in _Paradise Lost_. But it is a mistake
to make much of this explanation. Certainly Milton held his own
theological beliefs, as expounded in the poem, in perfect good faith and
with great tenacity. But the generation after his own, which first gave
him his great fame, was not seduced into admiration by any whole-hearted
fellowship in belief. Dryden laments the presence in the poem of so many
"machining persons,"--as he calls the supernatural characters of
_Paradise Lost_. At almost the same date Dr. Thomas Burnet was causing a
mild sensation in the theological world by expounding the earlier
chapters of the Book of Genesis in an allegorical sense, and denying to
them the significance of a literal history. Voltaire, while he praises
Milton, remarks that the topic of _Paradise Lost_ has afforded nothing
among the French but some lively lampoons, and that those who have the
highest respect for the mysteries of the Christian religion cannot
forbear now and then making free with the devil, the serpent, the frailty
of our first parents, and the rib that was stolen from Adam. "I have
often admired," he goes on, "how barren the subject appears, and how
fruitful it grows under his hands."

It seems likely that Milton himself, before he was fairly caught in the
mesh of his own imagination, was well aware that his subject demanded
something of the nature of a _tour de force_. He had to give physical,
geometric embodiment to a far-reaching scheme of abstract speculation and
thought,--parts of it very reluctant to such a treatment. The necessities
of the epic form constrained him. When Satan, on the top of Mount
Niphates, exclaims--

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

wh