Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/292

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��PARADISE REGAINED

��wise, in Paradise Regained, the story of Christ's hunger and temptation in the wil- derness, so strangely moving in the bare apostolic account, suffers a change into something ample and grandiose almost be- yond recognition. The trial of hunger, in which Christ is bidden to turn the stone into bread, occupies in the original but two short verses. Upon the working up of this " simple passage of few notes " Milton ex- hausts the resources of his orchestration. He pictures forth a feast to tempt a prince in the Arabian Nights. In the trial of am- bition, again, Milton transmutes the single phrase " the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them " into a vast panorama of Persian and Roman imperialism, and enlarges the theme still more by including in his picture Athens, as a type of the im- perialism of mind. Out of the apostle's rude drawing he makes a mighty tapestry heavy with threads of gold, gorgeous and sombre with far-brought dyes. Here, as elsewhere, he shows the stamp of the later Italian Renaissance. He works over the earnest meagre traits of the apostolic story in a manner at once massive and rococo, just as the later Italian painters were wont to treat the subjects which they drew from the same source. And to match this physi- cal elaboration in the setting of the dialogue, there is an intellectual elaboration in the dialogue itself, a parry and thrust of de- bate, a refinement of forensic device, which is thoroughly unbiblical, yet admirably in harmony with Milton's whole conception of his artistic problem.

The tenable objection against this elabo- ration is not that it falsifies the original, (for every artist must be allowed to trans- late his material into his own idiom, and Milton's idiom happened to be magnilo- quent and orotund,) but that it lowers the moral tension of the original. Satan's sug- gestion to Christ, that he shall turn the stone into bread, is a subtle temptation, appealing at once to physical distress and to reason. The very simplicity of the thing

��demanded, the naturalness of the relief offered, gives the words a devilish insinu- ation. One holds one's breath before the outcome. But when Satan falls back upon steaming trenchers, cakes and dainties, sil- ver plate and dance-girls, to accomplish his end, the moral tension disappears. The temptation is one to conquer a school-boy or a prodigal. It is strange that Milton, ascetic and arch-idealist, should have fallen into such an error. For it is a moral error, though springing from an artistic source. The " motivation " of the poem is injured by it ; the spiritual intensity falls away in exact proportion as the decorative richness increases. The spiritual defect of Paradise Lost lies in the fact that both Satan's sin and Adam's are offences against positive edicts, not essential moral laws such as appeal to the universal conscience. The spiritual defect of Paradise Regained lies in the fact that, given Christ's nature, the temptations are not tempting.

And just as the elaboration of the physi- cal accessories lowers the moral tension, so does the elaboration of the argument lower the imaginative tension. Between Satan's words in the scriptural account, " To whom- soever I will I will give it. If thou there- fore wilt worship me, all shall be thine," and Christ's reply, "It is written, Thou slialt worship the Lord thy God," the mind hangs in awe-struck suspense. But when the Christ of Milton's poem begins to argue the point we lose interest. The air is no longer tense with the strain of mute deci- sions. In the flow of words the sense of spiritual catastrophe evaporates ; we are in a world of second thoughts, and can wait. Milton the controversialist has once more defeated Milton the artist.

But Paradise Regained is, after all, a great work of art, and it is great by virtue of the inexplicable quality of voice which must so often be Milton's sufficient justification. This force of style is most obviously shown in the gorgeous descriptive interludes of the poem ; but much more noteworthy is

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