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It was perhaps worth while to go through one act of Milton's drama in this detail to give some idea of the skill which he has shown in working up a few verses of Genesis into an elaborate story. But no detail, no fragmentary notes of any kind, even when they deal with matters in which Milton was far stronger than he was on the side of narrative or drama, can do much to exhibit the greatness of Paradise Lost. For that there is only one way, to read it. And, as we said just now, to read the whole. It is true that you cannot read it for the interest of the story as you can all the Odyssey, much of the Iliad and some of the Aeneid: but the poem is still a whole and you need the whole to judge and understand it. And even the weaker books, the fifth, the seventh and twelfth, contain episodes, like the scene between Abdiel and Satan and the incomparable conclusion of the whole poem, which are among the last a wise reader would wish to miss. Moreover, where the story is dullest it has things which give, perhaps, the most astonishing proof of Milton's power of style. It is true that he does himself occasionally fall into the empty pomposity which characterized his eighteenth-century imitators who fancied that big words could turn prose into poetry. So he talks of dried fruits as "what by frugal {191} storing firmness gains To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes." But the thing most remarkable about this is its extreme rarity. Taking the poem as a whole, the mighty music scarcely ceases: the majestic flight of the poet continues uninterrupted: no contrary winds disturb it, no weariness brings it flagging down to earth. There is nothing, not even theological disputes, out of which he cannot make fine verse, and occasionally great poetry. There is nothing, however great, that he cannot make his own. Just as Shakspeare took the noble prose of North's Plutarch, and hardly altering a word made noble poetry of it, so Milton can take the Bible. "For now," says Job, "I should have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest." North could not rise to the height of this. But even this Milton will dare to lay his hand upon: and, if even he cannot lift it any higher, only he could have touched it at all without desecration. "How glad," says Adam—
"how glad would lay me down
As in my mother's lap! There I should rest,
And sleep secure."
Or take a passage like that of the Son of God clothing Adam and Eve after the Fall, where {192} many Biblical suggestions are gathered together—
"As when he washed his servants' feet, so now
As father of his family he clad
Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain,
Or, as the snake, with youthful coat repaid;
And thought not much to clothe his enemies."
The full appreciation of a passage like this, so very simple, so apparently obvious, yet so entirely in the grand style which, whether his subject stoops or soars, very rarely fails Milton, is not a thing of one reading or of two. Milton, the greatest artist of our language, is naturally the most conspicuous instance of the law which applies to all great art. Only natures as rarely endowed with the receptive gift as he was himself with the creative can fully appreciate his work at the first reading. Like all great works of the imagination it has generally to train, sometimes almost to create, the faculties which are to appreciate it aright. This is particularly true in the case of classical art, where the emotional appeal, though just as real, is much less apparent because it is so much more controlled by intellectual sanity. Gothic {193} and Romantic art are commonly far more instantaneous in the impression they make, perhaps because, according to the ingenious suggestion of the Poet Laureate, they admit at once of more daring flights of the imagination and of stronger realism than classical art can bear. But it may well be doubted whether the wonder and delight which every man of the most modest aesthetic capacity owes to them can in the end keep pace with the slower growing appreciation of the universality and sanity of classical work. But this is an old dispute not likely to be settled this year or next. Nor does it affect the fact that all great work, even Romantic or Gothic, gains by time in proportion to its greatness. It is the only absolutely certain test of greatness in art. The instantly popular tune is unendurable in six months, the instantly popular novel or poem is totally forgotten in a year or two. No one perceives the whole greatness of St. Paul's Cathedral, or Sansovino's Library at Venice, or the music of Bach, or the poetry of Milton, at the first sight or hearing. No competent eye, ear or mind fails to perceive more and more of it at each renewed experience. Whatever be the art, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a book, the test is the same: the cheap, the sentimental, {194} the sensational, the merely pretty, lose something, be it little or much, at each renewal of acquaintance: the great work steadily gains. To this test Paradise Lost can fearlessly appeal. It is not meant for idle hours or empty people. It is not amusing in the lower sense of the word. It is not as exciting as it might well have been. It is probably true that, as Johnson said with his usual honesty, "No one ever wished it longer than it is": yet there is equal truth in another remark of his, "I cannot wish Milton's work other than it is," and in the implied answer to his bold question, "What other author ever soared so high or sustained his flight so long?" The difficulty for Milton's readers is that they do not easily soar, and still less easily sustain their soaring. The great gifts which Johnson brought to the criticism of literature lay far more in common sense and in a profound insight into human life than in any real turn for poetry. Of that nearly every one who to-day gives much time to reading poetry will probably have as much as he. Such people are sometimes mistakenly content with a single reading of Paradise Lost. They remember a few of its glories and the rest of the poem they acquiesce in forgetting. Let them put it to the test to which lovers of music {195} put the Symphonies of Beethoven and lovers of sculpture the remains of the Parthenon and the temple of the Ephesian Artemis. Let them give the little time required to read it through every year, or every second year. They will find more in it the second time than they did the first, and much more the fifth or the tenth time. It will issue triumphantly from the trial: and before they reach middle age they will know by their own personal experience, what the best authorities have always told them, that this is one of those rare works of human genius whose power and beauty may in sober truth be called inexhaustible.
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CHAPTER V
PARADISE REGAINED AND SAMSON AGONISTES
Paradise Regained, like the Odyssey, the Aeneid and the second part of Faust, has been an inevitable victim of the human taste for comparison. It cannot fail to be compared with Paradise Lost and cannot fail to suffer by it. The poets and critics have indeed been kinder to it than the public. Johnson said that if it had not been written by Milton "it would receive universal praise." Wordsworth thought it "the most perfect in execution of anything written by Milton." But the great body of readers finds an epic with only two main actors in it, and hardly anything that can be called a story, too severe a demand upon its poetic taste. And when unprofessional opinion remains constant for several generations, as it has in this case, it is never wise to ignore or defy it. Paradise Regained is a very bare poem. It has none of the splendours of its predecessor: no {197} scenes in which we hear the full voice of that Milton