uous
questions, on which the life and death of the speakers certainly
depended, on which the weal or woe of the country perhaps depended.
He knew how profoundly the individual character of the speakers--their
inner and real nature--modifies their opinion on such questions; he
knew how surely that nature will appear in the expression of them.
This great experience, fashioned by a fine imagination, gives to the
debate of Satanic Council in Pandaemonium its reality and its life. It
is a debate in the Long Parliament, and though the _theme_ of
_Paradise Lost_ obliged Milton to side with the monarchical element in
the universe, his old habits are often too much for him; and his real
sympathy--the impetus and energy of his nature--side with the
rebellious element. For the purposes of art this is much better--of a
court, a poet can make but little; of a heaven he can make very
little, but of a courtly heaven, such as Milton conceived, he can make
nothing at all. The idea of a court and the idea of a heaven are so
radically different, that a distinct combination of them is always
grotesque and often ludicrous. _Paradise Lost_, as a whole, is
radically tainted by a vicious principle. It professes to justify the
ways of God to man, to account for sin and death, and it tells you
that the whole originated in a political event; in a court squabble as
to a particular act of patronage and the due or undue promotion of an
eldest son. Satan may have been wrong, but on Milton's theory he had
an _arguable_ case at least. There was something arbitrary in the
promotion; there were little symptoms of a job; in _Paradise Lost_ it
is always clear that the devils are the weaker, but it is never clear
that the angels are the better. Milton's sympathy and his imagination
slip back to the Puritan rebels whom he loved, and desert the courtly
angels whom he could not love although he praised. There is no wonder
that Milton's hell is better than his heaven, for he hated officials
and he loved rebels, for he employs his genius below, and accumulates
his pedantry above. On the great debate in Pandaemonium all his genius
is concentrated. The question is very practical; it is, 'What are we
devils to do, now we have lost heaven?' Satan who presides over and
manipulates the assembly; Moloch

the fiercest spirit
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair,

who wants to fight again; Belial, 'the man of the world', who d