What could be more exactly in the downright manner affected by men of his type in the world of to-day and every day? And there are other similar touches. Then again the sequel recalls its predecessor when we hear Satan strike the very note he struck so often in Paradise Lost—
"'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate,"
and when we see him fall in ruin at the awful end of the long debate—
"Now shew thy progeny; if not to stand
Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God;
For it is written: 'He will give command
Concerning thee to his Angels: in their hands
They shall uplift thee, lest at any time
Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.'
To whom thus Jesus: Also it is written
'Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood:
But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell."
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Nor must it be supposed by those who have not read the Paradise Regained that the bareness of its style is invariable. Most conspicuous, for reasons of reverence no doubt, in the speeches of Christ, it is far less marked in those of Satan and disappears altogether in some of the descriptive passages. Take, for instance, the famous temptation of the banquet—
"He spake no dream; for, as his words had end,
Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld
In ample space under the broadest shade,
A table richly spread in regal mode,
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort
And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Grisamber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore
Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin,
And exquisitest name, for which was drained
Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.
Alas, how simple, to these cates compared,
Was that crude apple that diverted Eve!
And at a stately sideboard, by the wine,
That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood
Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue
Than Ganymed or Hylas; distant more,
Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood,
Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades
With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn,
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And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed
Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since
Of faery damsels met in forest wide
By knights of Logres, or of Lyones,
Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore."
Paradise Lost itself contains no more intricately beautiful passage than this. It is one of those things that have been the delight and despair of poets ever since. For all his disdain of the follies of the Middle Age Milton can never touch the old romances, as Joseph Warton well noted, without immediately rising into the most exquisite poetry: and this reluctant homage of classical genius is the greatest tribute ever paid to their undying fascination.
But of course such a passage as this is not typical of the poem: it is one of its far-shining heights which cannot be altogether missed even by eyes quite blind to the beauties of the lower country through which Paradise Regained takes the most part of its course. Ordinarily the poem is grave, plain and unadorned, engaged in the discussion of moral problems which give little opportunity for the more obvious graces of poetry. The interest of the speeches which constitute the bulk of it is threefold: technical, in the rhythmical or metrical skill by which Milton sustains an {215} abstract discourse expressed in unadorned language and keeps it at the level of high poetry; moral or intellectual, the interest of the subjects discussed; and, the greatest of all for many readers, autobiographical, the interest of the evidence they afford of the poet's own thoughts and character. All may be seen, for instance, in such a confession as that of Satan in the first book—
"Envy, they say, excites me, thus to gain
Companions of my misery and woe!
At first it may be; but, long since with woe
Nearer acquainted, now I feel by proof
That fellowship in pain divides not smart,
Nor lightens aught each man's peculiar load."