A thing not undesirable--sometimes
Superior.
It is easy to understand how tired Eve might well become (even before the fallacious fruit was tasted) of Adam's carefully maintained superiority. On thinking, however, of the judgment that she may have to suffer, and of her own death, she resolves to draw him in, her motive being not fear, but a sudden movement of jealousy at the thought of--
Adam wedded to another Eve.
This is as near an approach to drama in the handling of a human situation as is to be found in all Paradise Lost.
But enough of this vein of criticism, which is justified only by the pleasure of detecting Milton too imperfectly concealed behind his handiwork. To treat the scenes he portrays as if analysis of character were his aim, and truth of psychology his touchstone, is to do a wrong to the artist. He is an epic, not a dramatic, poet; to find him at his best we must look at those passages of unsurpassed magnificence wherein he describes some noble or striking attitude, some strong or majestic action, in its outward physical aspect.
In this, the loftiest part of his task, his other defects, as if by some hidden law of compensation, are splendidly redeemed. While he deals with abstract thought or moral truth his handling is tight, pedantic, and disagreeably hard. But when he comes to describe his epic personages and his embodied visions, all is power, and vagueness, and grandeur. His imagination, escaped from the narrow prison of his thought, rises like a vapour, and, taking shape before his eyes, proclaims itself his master.
No other poet has known so well how to portray, in a few strokes, effects of multitude and vastness. Now it is the sacred congregation in Heaven:--
About him all the Sanctities of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight received