hich he has dared to place in the
mouth of the Most High--words at the utterance of which

... ambrosial fragrance filled
All heaven, and in the blessed spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused.

Little wonder that in his further flight he does not shrink from colloquy
with the Eternal Son--in his theology not the equal of His Father--or that
he does not fear to describe the fearful battle between Christ with his
angelic hosts against the kingdom of darkness:

... At his right hand victory
Sat eagle-winged: beside him hung his bow
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored.

* * * * *

... Them unexpected joy surprised,
When the great ensign of Messiah blazed,
Aloft by angels borne his sign in heaven.

How heart-rending his story of the fall, and of the bitter sorrow of our
first parents, whose fatal act

Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.

How marvellous is the combat at Hell-gate, between Satan and Death; how
terrible the power at which "Hell itself grew darker"! How we strive to
shade our mind's eye as we enter again with him into the courts of Heaven.
How refreshingly beautiful the perennial bloom of Eden:

Picta velut primo Vere coruscat humus.

What a wonderful story of the teeming creation related to our first
parents by the lips of Raphael:

When from the Earth appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane.

And withal, how compact the poem, how perfect the drama. It is Paradise,
perfect in beauty and holiness; attacked with devilish art; in danger;
betrayed; lost!

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked and ate;
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost!

Unit-like, complete, brilliant, sublime, awful, the poem dazzles
criticism, and belittles the critic. It is the grandest poem ever written.
It almost sets up a competition with Scripture. Milton's Adam and Eve walk
before us instead of the Adam and Eve of Genesis. Milton's Satan usurps
the place of that grotesque, malignant spirit of the Bible, which, instead
of claiming our admiration, excites only our horror, as he goes about like
a roa