us splendour. This portion of his work is
accordingly less great in detached passages, but is little inferior in
general greatness. No less an authority than Tennyson, indeed, expresses
a preference for the "bowery loneliness" of Eden over the "Titan angels"
of the "deep-domed Empyrean." If this only means that Milton's Eden is
finer than his war in heaven, we must concur; but if a wider application
be intended, it does seem to us that his Pandemonium exalts him to a
greater height above every other poet than his Paradise exalts him above
his predecessor, and in some measure, his exemplar, Spenser.

To remain at such an elevation was impossible. Milton compares
unfavourably with Homer in this; his epic begins at its zenith, and
after a while visibly and continually declines. His genius is
unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff. The fall of man and its
consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall
of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence. It was, moreover,
absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the
poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there
would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption,
equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art. The
effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar,"
which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the
conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and
languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the
contention between Brutus and Cassius. It is to be regretted that
Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted
him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode. It is not
until the very end that he is again truly himself--

"They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon.
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

Some minor objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of
Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days
of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic