most {177} nothing for
them to talk about. So they constantly talk as if they had all history
behind them and the world's processes were to them, as to us, old and
familiar things. "War seemed a civil game To this uproar," says
Raphael, as if he were fresh from reading Livy or Gibbon and had all
the wars of Europe and Asia in his memory. Often Milton calls
attention, as it were, to his own inconsistencies, putting in an
apology like that of Michael when he talks to Adam about Hamath and
Hermon--

"Things by their names I call though yet unnamed;"

but more often he leaves them unexplained, perhaps not even noticing
them himself. These difficulties are seen at their worst in the very
earthly geography of heaven and its very unheavenly military
operations: and, interesting as the passages are, it is difficult to
forget the incongruity of Raphael and Adam discussing the Ptolemaic and
Copernican theories of the universe, or Adam moralizing on the
unhappiness of marriage as if he had studied the divorce reports or
gone through a course of modern novels. Yet few and foolish are the
readers who can dwell on dramatic improbabilities when Adam {178} is
pouring out the bitter cry wrung from Milton by the still unforgotten
miseries of his first marriage--

"Oh! why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven
With Spirits masculine, create at last
This novelty on Earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the World at once
With men as Angels, without feminine,
Or find some other way to generate
Mankind? This mischief had not then befallen,
And more that shall befall; innumerable
Disturbances on Earth through female snares,
And strait conjunction with this sex. For either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him, or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gained
By a far worse, or, if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already linked and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate or shame;
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound."

It is obvious that in all this we hear the poet's own voice. But it is
scarcely fair to quote it without pointing out that it must {179} not
be taken alone. The common notion that Milton's own melancholy
experience had made him a purblind misogynist is a comp