When Satan first comes in sight of Paradisal bliss and the new-created pair, here surely was a chance for attributing to him the foul passions of envy and hate unalloyed? On the contrary, he is struck with admiration for their grace and infused divinity. He could love and pity them--so he muses--though himself unpitied. He seeks alliance with them, and is prepared to give them a share in all he has--which, it must be allowed, is the spirit of true hospitality. He feels it beneath him to attack innocence and helplessness, but public reasons compel him to do what otherwise he would abhor:--
So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
But no imputation is cast on the sincerity of the plea, and we are left to conceive of Satan as of a lover of beauty reluctantly compelled to shatter it in the pursuit of his high political aims. In the same way, when he finds Eve alone, on the morning of the temptation, he is disarmed by her beauty and innocence, and, for a spell, is struck "stupidly good." Truly, Adam might boast, with Gibbon, that he fell by a noble hand.
It is possible that by the time he had completed the Fourth Book, Milton became uneasy as to the effect he was producing. Up to that point magnanimity and courage had been almost the monopoly of Satan. He had been the Great Dissenter, the undaunted and considerate leader of an outcast minority. But now, in the description of the war in Heaven, there came a chance of doing something to right the balance. Milton makes the most of the episode of Abdiel, who has been led away with the rest of Satan's followers, upon false pretences, and who, when he discovers the true purpose of the expedition, makes a lonely stand for the right:--
Among the faithless faithful only he; ...
Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind,
Though single.
And Abdiel, when he meets Satan again after the outbreak of the war, glories in his nonconformity, and hisses out defiance:--