In woman than to study household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Milton certainly shared the views of Knox concerning the "Monstrous Regiment of Women." It is unnecessary to meet him on his own ground, or to attempt a theory that shall explain or control Eve, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Catherine of the Medici, Mary Powell, and others of their sex. Such theories prove only that man is a generalising and rationalising animal. The poet brought his fate on himself, for since Eve was the mother of mankind, he thought fit to make her the embodiment of a doctrine. But he also (a thing of far deeper interest) coloured his account by the introduction of personal memories and feelings. Of Eve, at least, he never writes indifferently. When he came to write Samson Agonistes, the intensity of his feelings concerning Dalila caused him to deviate from the best Greek tradition and to assign inappropriate matter to the Chorus. And even in his matter-of-fact History of Britain, the name of Boadicea awakens him to a fit of indignation with the Britons who upheld her rule. There is full scope in Paradise Lost for similar expressions of indignation. Adam, after the Fall, speaks of his wife as
Not to be trusted--longing to be seen
Though by the Devil himself.
In the Eleventh Book the daughters of men are described as bred only
to sing, to dance,
To dress, and troll the tongue, and roll the eye.
But Milton, it is sometimes forgotten, was also the author of that beautiful eulogy of Eve in the Eighth Book:--
When I approach