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 contemporaries. Professor Raleigh draws a striking contrast between the 'solid materialism' of Milton's heroics and the spiritual vision of Vaughan the 'Silurist.' The interminable controversies of the day had led some keen intellects to scepticism and others to the mystical view which sees in all human dogmas and systems the 'broken lights' of absolute truth. Milton remained an uncompromising and unhesitating dogmatist. The 'scheme of salvation' could be expounded as clearly and definitively as a body of human law, though nobody but himself had perhaps hit upon precisely the right set of formulæ.

Milton's 'theodicy,' therefore, was already becoming obsolete; and even his first readers seem to have paid no attention to his merits or defects as a justifier of Providence. Indeed, the justification is obviously preposterous. The relations between man and his Creator are expressed, according to him, by a definite legal code. The defect of Paradise Lost, says Bagehot, is that it is 'founded on a political transaction.' It treats of a rebellion against an absolute, and moreover an arbitrary, sovereign. The offence committee by Adam and Eve is an offence against a 'posi-