s of Christ: limitations the possibility
of which, as recent controversies have shown, even Athanasian opinion
has been forced to face. But, in any case, in the _Paradise Regained_
stress is necessarily, for dramatic purposes, laid on the Hebrew and
Messianic character of Christ, and from that point of view it is not
unnatural to make Him the spokesman of Hebrew resistance to the
intellectual encroachments of Greece and Rome. Another part of the
explanation is that the strong Biblical and Hebraic element in Milton's
character does seem to have increased in strength during his later
years. It was far from getting exclusive possession even then, and all
the evidence shows that he was always the very opposite of the
narrow-minded Puritan fanatics of his day. But his tendencies in that
direction would be exaggerated while he was occupied with a purely
Biblical subject. And he may have thought, if he thought about the
question at all, that the contemptuous tone adopted about classical
culture in the speech of Christ was not only dramatically defensible,
but balanced by the far finer passage, evidently written from his {205}
heart, in which Satan exalts the glories of Athens. It is, perhaps,
the most famous thing in the poem.

"Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount,
Westward, much nearer by south-west; behold
Where on the Aegean shore a city stands,
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil--
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades.
See there the olive-grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;
There flow'ry hill Hymettus, with the sound
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites
To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream. Within the walls then view
The schools of ancient sages, his who bred
Great Alexander to subdue the world,
Lyceum there; and painted Stoa next.
There thou shalt hear and learn the secret power
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand, and various-measured verse,
Aeolian charms and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
{206}
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own.
Thence what the lofty grave Tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best