Even Shylock shows affection for his living daughter and regard for the memory of his dead wife. In like manner Milton does not represent the enemy of God and man as entirely destitute of gentler characteristics. He feels deep remorse (I. 605) at the thought of the ruin in which he has involved his followers, and this remorse actually moves him to tears (I. 620). In the second book he shows a noble sense of the duty of selfsacrifice incumbent on him on account of his position as king of hell, when "for the general safety he despised his own" (II. 481), and undertook alone the difficult enterprise which daunted the courage of the mightiest of his followers. The same treatment of Satan's character is maintained in the later books, in which he is twice melted with compassion at the sight of the harmless innocence of the very beings whose ruin he is plotting (IV. 389; IX. 462-466). These softer feelings are however only occasional touches introduced to relieve the grandeur of a character essentially terrible, a character which, though not entirely devoid of gentler traits, is on the whole most like a mighty tempest, or an avalanche, or any other force of nature that combines the beauty of sublimity with immense destructive power. THE VERSE. THE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin,-rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre; graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than else they would have expressed them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rime both in longer and shorter works, as have aiso long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicioas ears, trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar readers, that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming. xxxi THE ARGUMENT. This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject-Man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall-the Serpent, or rather Satan in the Serpent; who, revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of Angels, was, by the command of God, driven out of Heaven, with all his crew, into the great Deep. Which action passed over, the Poem hastens into the midst of things; presenting Satan, with his Angels, now fallen into Hell-described here not in the Centre (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan, with his Angels, lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confusion; calls up him who, next in order and dignity, lay by him: they confer of their miserable fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded. They rise: their numbers; array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech; comforts them with hope yet of regaining Heaven; but tells them, lastly, of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy, or report, in Heaven-for that Angels were long before this visible creation was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, suddenly built out of the Deep: the infernal Peers there sit in council. xxxii PARADISE LOST. BOOK I. Or Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar A 10 20 |