rd came as fast
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode.

This is the passage that drew from Burke a rapture of praise. But as it
stands in the poem its elevation is a scaffolding merely, whence we may
view the greatness of Satan:--

The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired--
Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,
Created thing naught valued he nor shunned).

The same magnificent effect of suggestion is wrought even more subtly in
the scene where Satan approaches

the throne
Of _Chaos_, and his dark pavilion spread
Wide on the wasteful Deep.

Courteously and fearlessly Satan addresses himself to the monarch of the
nethermost abyss. His speech contains no threats; he asks guidance in his
quest; and, with politic forethought, promises that that quest, if
successful, shall restore an outlying lost province to Chaos. There is
nothing in his words to cause consternation; but the King is afraid:--

Him thus the anarch old,
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,
Answered:--"I know thee, stranger, who thou art--
That mighty leading Angel, who of late
Made head against Heaven's King, though overthrown."

In the war on the plains of Heaven Satan ranges up and down the fighting
line, like Cromwell; he fortifies his comrades to endurance, and
encourages them to attack. In Hell he stands like a tower:--

His form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appeared
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess
Of glory obscured.

In his contests with Michael in Heaven and with Gabriel on Earth he never
falls below himself:--

"If I must contend," said he,
"Best with the best--the sender, not the sent;
Or all at once."

But his motive passions, it is objected, were envy, ambition, and hate,
and his end was a crime. To which objection a modern poet has replied
that a crime will serve as a measure for the spirit. Certainly to Satan
there could never be imputed the sin of "the unlit lamp and the ungirt
loin." And Milton has not left him devoid of the gentlest passion, the
passion of pity:--

Cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
For ever now to have their lot in pain--
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
Of Heaven, and f