to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din.

Milton, in short, has hardened the heart of the God that hardened
Pharaoh's heart, and has narrowed his love and his power.

Some kind of internal blindness must have visited him if he did not
perceive what must inevitably be the effect of all this on the sympathies
and interest of the reader. And the irony of the thing is that his own
sympathies were not proof against the trial that he had devised for them.
He lavished all his power, all his skill, and, in spite of himself, the
greater part of his sympathy, on the splendid figure of Satan. He avoids
calling _Paradise Lost_ "an heroic poem"; when it was printed, in 1667,
the title-page ran merely--_Paradise Lost, A Poem in Ten Books_. Had he
inserted the word "heroic," the question as to who is the hero would have
been broached at once. And to that question, if it be fairly faced, only
one answer can be given,--the answer that has already been given by
Dryden and Goethe, by Lord Chesterfield and Professor Masson. It was not
for nothing that Milton stultified the professed moral of his poem, and
emptied it of all spiritual content. He was not fully conscious, it
seems, of what he was doing; but he builded better than he knew. A
profound poetic instinct taught him to preserve epic truth at all costs.
And the epic value of _Paradise Lost_ is centred in the character and
achievements of Satan.

Satan unavoidably reminds us of Prometheus, and although there are
essential differences, we are not made to feel them essential. His very
situation as the fearless antagonist of Omnipotence makes him either a
fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him
a fool. The nobility and greatness of his bearing are brought home to us
in some half-dozen of the finest poetic passages in the world. The most
stupendous of the poet's imaginative creations are made the foil for a
greater than themselves. Was ever terror more magnificently embodied than
in the phantom figure of Death?--

The other Shape--
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either--black it stood as Night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook a dreadful dart: what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onwa