Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/217

Rh sympathies were with kings and magistrates, and what he emphasises is Lucifer's hypocrisy rather than his pride. He is pushed to the front by the discontent of others; he fights for God against God; at the last moment he wavers and almost relents. Milton's Satan is the sole author of the rebellion in heaven and all that follows from it.

Of the other actors, Adam and Eve are certainly not wanting in humanity. They are intensely human; but they hardly attain to the dignity of humanity in its first innocence and independence sufficiently to make them the adequate heroes of this "treurspel aller treurspelen," tragedy of tragedies, as Vondel calls it. It is evident that Milton's whole treatment of Adam and Eve was too deeply coloured by his own sublime egotism, his memory of his own experiences. He was too anxious to inculcate a lesson, and the moral of the story, that it is a man's duty to keep his wife in due subjection, hardly rises to the tragic level, though Eve repentant is one of the gems of the poem.

But it is in the celestial portions of the poem that criticism has found Milton most wanting as a religious poet. This is not the place to discuss Milton's theology. The important thing is not the theology but the impression produced on the imagination. Milton's heaven is not wanting in majesty and splendour. The poet was too deeply read in the Hebrew prophets not to have at his command magnificent images and sublime eflects. Still, when we close the poem, we feel acutely that the poet has never caught a glimpse of the Beatific Vision, in which alone could be found