we hear it when Adam, like a weary scholar, says that
"not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom;"
when Raphael asks, like a Platonic philosopher,
"what if Earth Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought?"
when Adam, like a doubting Christian in an age of speculation, hesitates for a moment about the efficacy of prayer—
"that from us aught should ascend to Heaven
So prevalent as to concern the mind
Of God high-blest, or to incline his will,
Hard to belief may seem:"
{182} and once more when Adam cries—
"solitude sometimes is best society,"
as if he, like the blind Milton, was worn out by twenty years of contending voices, and longed for the relief of silent and lonely thought.
To the direct interventions of the poet there is less need to call attention as, of course, no reader can miss them. They are probably the most universally admired passages of the poem. Every reader who deserves to read them at all finds himself unable to do so without wishing to get them by heart. They do not rival the daring splendour of the scenes in hell: nor perhaps the suave and gracious perfection of the evening scene in Paradise in the fourth book; nor can they, of course, exhibit the dramatic power of the scene that precedes and still more of those that follow the Fall. But nothing in the whole poem moves us so much. It is not merely that Milton has exerted his whole mastery of his art to make their every line and every word please the ear, awaken the memory, stimulate the imagination, lift the whole mental and emotional nature of the reader up to a height of being unknown to its ordinary experience. This he has {183} done in some other parts of his poem. But, fine as some of his dramatic touches are, the essence of his genius was lyrical and not dramatic or objective at all. And so none of his characters, divine, diabolic or human, will ever move us quite as he moves us himself.