Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/125

 theodicy, our interest must depend upon our belief in the facts. Milton's poem, says M. Scherer, is intended to support a thesis. We cannot separate the form from the contents in a didactic work. If the thesis collapses, the poem will cease to interest, except, of course, in its parentheses. Pattison argues that the change in our conceptions has already sapped our interest in the poetry, and that, if the process continues, the 'possibility of epic illusion' will be lost. But why, one asks, should the decay in our belief be fatal to the poetry? We need not be pagans to enjoy the Iliad, and we may give up Dante's material hell without much loss of interest in the Divina Commedia. One possible answer is suggested in a striking passage of Ruskin. Milton's history, he declares, 'is evidently unbelievable to himself.' The war in heaven is adapted from Hesiod, and throughout the rest of the poem every artifice 'of invention is visibly and consciously employed.' Milton, of course, knew when he was inventing the allegory of Sin and Death that he was not writing history. The visions which he created could only be a projection upon his imagination of realities essentially beyond human perception. But we cannot doubt