in the will of God; the song of the Chorus--

Just are the ways of God
And justifiable to men--

finding an echo in Samson's declaration--

Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me
But justly; I myself have brought them on;
Sole author I, sole cause;

--these together make up a theme where there is no possible place for the
gay theology of _Paradise Lost_. The academic proof of God's justice,
contained in the earlier poem, if it were introduced into _Samson
Agonistes_ could be met only with the irony of Job: "Am I a sea, or a
sea-monster, that thou settest a watch over me?... What is man, that thou
shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him,
and that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every
moment?" The question has become a real one; not to be answered now by
the dogmatism and dialectic of a system. Milton's bewilderment and
distress of mind are voiced in the cry of the Chorus:--

Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft
Amidst their height of noon
Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard
Of highest favours past
From thee or them, or them to thee of service.

And there follows their humble prayer, heard and answered with Divine
irony on the very day of their asking:--

So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,
The image of thy strength and mighty minister.
What do I beg? How hast thou dealt already?
Behold him in this state calamitous, and turn
His labours, for thou canst, to peaceful end.

In the days that now, as he looked back on his youth and manhood, must
have seemed to him both distant and barren, Milton had sought for
triumph, in action and in argument. His seeking was denied him; but he
found peace, and the grace to accept it.

CHAPTER V
THE STYLE OF MILTON: METRE AND DICTION

To approach the question of Milton's poetic style thus late in the course
of this treatise is to fall into the absurdity of the famous art-critic,
who, lecturing on the Venus of Milo, devoted the last and briefest of his
lectures to the shape of that noble work of art. In truth, since Milton
died, his name is become the mark, not of a biography nor of a theme, but
of a style--the most distinguished in our poetry. But the task of
literary criticism is, at the best, a task of such disheartening
difficulty, that those who attempt it should be humoured if they play
long with the fringes of the subject,