risons. Thus the spacious hall of Pandemonium is compared to--

A covered field, where champions bold
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair
Defied the best of Panim chivalry
To mortal combat, or career with lance.

It is plain that although almost all of the characters of the poem are
precluded from making allusion to the events of human history, the poet
himself is free; and he uses his freedom throughout. Most of the passages
that have gained for Milton the name of a learned poet are introduced by
way of simile. At times he employs the simplest epic figure, drawn from
the habits of rustic or animal life. But his favourite figure is the
"long-tailed simile," or, as it is better called, the decorative
comparison, used for its ennobling, rather than for its elucidating
virtue. Here he parts company with Homer, and even with Virgil, who could
draw on no such vast and various store of history, geography, and
romance. From Herodotus to Olaus Magnus, and onward to the latest
discoveries in geography and astronomy, the researches of Galileo, and
the descriptions given by contemporary travellers of China and the
Chinese, or of the North American Indians, Milton compels the authors he
had read, both ancient and modern, to contribute to the gracing of his
work. It is partly this wealth of implicit lore, still more, perhaps, the
subtly reminiscent character of much of his diction, that justifies Mr.
Pattison in the remark that "an appreciation of Milton is the last reward
of consummated scholarship."

A third device, not the least remarkable of those by which he gives
elasticity to his theme, is to be found in the tradition that he adopts
with regard to the later history of the fallen angels. A misunderstanding
of four verses in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, and some cryptic
allusions in the Book of Revelations are the chief Scriptural authorities
for the Miltonic account of the Fall of the Angels, which is not borrowed
from the Fathers, but corresponds rather with the later version
popularised in England by the cycles of Miracle Plays. According to the
_Divine Institutes_ of Lactantius, the nameless Angel, to whom from the
first had been given power over the new-created Earth, was alone infected
with envy of the Son of God, his elder and superior, and set himself to
vitiate and destroy mankind in the cradle. He tempted Eve, and she fell;
after the expulsion from Paradise he set himself also to corru