103 



The shapes of the fallen angels are not discernible in the gloom of 

 hell by the lurid gleam of those flames " from which no light but rather 

 darkness visible serves only to discover sights of woe." But without 

 light and shade no picture has roundness of form, or life-like plasticity. 

 Unqualilied and unrelieved depravity does not interest, it is not one of 

 the things we feel to be real or possible ; it is an abstraction and an 

 idea, not a thing, that we can perfectly realise in truth. 



It is a great mistake to say, that Satan appears in too favourable a 

 light, and that he is the real hero of the poem. He has, in truth, no 

 qualities, which are good in themselves, but only such, which may be 

 sanctified by serving a good end, as fortitude, endurance, courage. Who 

 can admire them, unless he admires the end for which they are called 

 into play ? The virtue of courage is the offspring of righteousness. It 

 steels the sinews of the man who feels justice on his side; it forsakes 

 him, who is inwardly conscious of wrong, and leaves him exposed to 

 the irresistible strength and divine fortitude of justice and of truth. 



As the fallen spirits are necessarily represented as totally alienated 

 from God, and all that is acceptable in his sight, so on the other hand, 



Were always (loT(Tiwavil bent, admiring more 



The riches of Heaven's pavement, ti'odtlen gold, 



Than aught divine or holy." 

 Milton was conscious of the dilemma, in which he was placed by the nature of his 

 fable. On the one side he attributes to the fallen angels, on philosophical grounds, 

 " semblance of worth, not substance," (I. 529) ; and on the other, he is, by aesthetic motives, 

 compelled to admit (II. 432,) " that neither do the spirits damned lose all their virtue." As 

 regards the poem, the latter admission is theoretical, the former practical ; that is to say, 

 the poet acts upon the former conviction throughout his work, aTid the latter thesis is 

 inserted like a mental reservation, to keep open a back door in an argument. This 

 element of contradiction is not confiued to the just-mentioned case. It is found also 

 in those passages which treat oifale. lu all of them, with one exception, fate isnpresented 

 like the fatum of the ancients, as a fixed all-ruling power, even beyond that of the Deity. 

 This offensive doctrine cannot be considered as practically set aside in the poem, by that 

 one passage, in which God says: "What I will, is fate." In a work of fiction 

 we cannot proceed as systematically as in a scientific treatise. We cannot expect, that a 

 definition given in one part of the work, should be rigidly applied everywhere. Persons 

 and things must appear, what they are, from the mode in which they generally act and are 

 spoken of; thcj-must not require, that the true light should be thrown upon them only 

 from one passage. Suppose that passage lo^t, everything else should remain discernible. 

 To illustrate my meaning, — if Homer had wished to represent Penelope as a second 

 Helen, it would have been nothing to the purpose, had he said in a line or two, that she 

 was false to her husband. Our impression is the result of what we see her do; we could 

 not form a dillerent opinion of her even on the authority of the poet, unless he made her 

 act differently. If we saw the name of Athene under a statue of Aphrodite, we should not 

 be convinced that it was the Goddess ot Arts, even should the sculptor himself have chiselled 

 the letters. Thus, to return to the point, from which we started, the spirits of Milton's 

 hell are thoroughly wicked, because thoy act willingly in direct opposition to God, nor can 

 we invest them with any good qualities, although the poet may say, that they had some left. 



