nine, numbers traditionally honoured by poetry,
throws suspicion on the efforts of the exact commentators. Even in his
statements with regard to spatial relations the poet was not always
minutely consistent with himself. The distance from the plain of Heaven
to the plain of Hell is said in the First Book to be three times the
radius of the World, or, in his own words, the prison of Hell is

As far removed from God and light of Heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.

The great globe, therefore, that hangs from the floor of Heaven reaches
two-thirds of the way down to Hell. Yet in the Second Book Satan, after a
long and perilous journey from Hell, comes in view of

This pendent World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.

So small is the World, compared with the wide extent of the empyreal
Heaven. But it is not easy to conceive how, in the limited space between
Heaven and Hell, the World could so appear to Satan.

A like curious consideration of the passages where time is mentioned
reveals a gap in the tale of days enumerated by Milton. We are not told
how long it took Satan to reach the Earth. Driven back on precedents and
analogies we find them conflicting. The outcast angels took nine days to
fall the same distance. But falling, as Moloch points out in his speech
at the Infernal Council, was to them less natural than rising; and
Raphael, who was subsequently sent to guard the gates of Hell during the
Creation, made the ascent easily in part of a day. If we allow a day and
a night for Satan's exploratory voyage, the action of the poem, from the
heavenly decree which occasioned the rebellion, to the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from Paradise, has been found to occupy thirty-three days, some
measured by a heavenly, some by an earthly standard. This would make Adam
and Eve about ten days old when they fell. But St. Augustine says that
they spent six years in the Earthly Paradise, and the question is better
left open.

A graver inconsistency is brought to light by a close study of the
framework of the poem. Milton seems to have hesitated as to which of two
theories he would adopt concerning the Creation of Man. After their fall
both Satan and Beelzebub mention a rumour which had long been current in
Heaven of a new race, called Man, shortly to be created. That rumour
could hardly have reached the rebels during the progress of the war. Yet
in the Seventh Book the Creation app