plain and
defend. When his free use of homely figures and turns of speech was
objected to him, his answer was ready: "Doth not Christ Himself teach the
highest things by the similitude of old bottles and patched clothes? Doth
He not illustrate best things by things most evil? His own coming to be
as a thief in the night, and the righteous man's wisdom to that of an
unjust steward?" But the defence is misleading, for the rules that
governed Milton's usage are not what it would suggest. When he came to
treat of the best and highest things his use of native English became
more sparing and dainty, while the rank, strong words that smack of the
home soil were all foregone.

His prose works, therefore, help us to appreciate better the tribulations
of the process whereby he became a classic poet. Eclecticism and the
severe castigation of style are dangerous disciplines for any but a rich
temperament; from others they produce only what is exquisite and thin and
vapid. The "stylist" of the modern world is generally an interesting
invalid; his complexion would lose all its transparency if it were
exposed to the weather; his weak voice would never make itself heard in
the hubbub of the bazaar. Sunbeams cannot be extracted from cucumbers,
nor can the great manner in literature emanate from a chill self-culture.
But Milton inherited the fulness and vigour of the Elizabethans, and so
could afford to write an epic poem in a selection of the language really
used by men. The grandeur of _Paradise Lost_ or _Samson Agonistes_ could
never, by any conceivable device of chemistry or magic, be compounded
from delicate sensibilities and a superfine ear for music. For the
material of those palaces whole provinces were pillaged, and the waste
might furnish forth a city.

CHAPTER III
PARADISE LOST: THE SCHEME

A prerogative place among the great epics of the world has sometimes been
claimed for _Paradise Lost_, on the ground that the theme it handles is
vaster and of a more universal human interest than any handled by
Milton's predecessors. It concerns itself with the fortunes, not of a
city or an empire, but of the whole human race, and with that particular
event in the history of the race which has moulded all its destinies.
Around this event, the plucking of an apple, are ranged, according to the
strictest rules of the ancient epic, the histories of Heaven and Earth
and Hell. The scene of the action is Universal Space. The time
rep