with angelic beings: Milton dismisses the nine orders
of the apocryphal hierarchy--although he enumerates five of them, in the
wrong order, in the roll of that recurring verse--

Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers--

and bases himself upon Scripture. There he finds mention of seven chief
angels, with some kind of pre-eminence enjoyed by Michael. In the poem he
finds employment for only four, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel,
with a few Seraphim and Cherubim, to whom he invariably, and very
improperly, assigns a subordinate position.

His angels fight and play games, as they were doing at the gate of
Paradise on the evening when Satan first appeared there. They wear solid
armour, and so fall a ready prey to the artillery of their foes--

Unarmed they might
Have easily, as spirits, evaded swift
By quick contraction or remove; but now
Foul dissipation followed, and forced rout.

They eat and drink and digest; they even--and here, though we be armed
with triple brass, we cannot avoid a sense of shock--they even blush when
an indiscreet question is asked of them. When Raphael colours at the
inquisitive demands of Adam, it gives a melancholy force to his earlier
suggestion--

What if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on Earth is thought?

This is the scheme of things, and these are the actors, that Milton sets
in motion. We shall do well to accept the limitations he assigns, and to
look in his poem only for what is to be found there. It would be a
wearisome and fruitless quest to journey through the _Paradise Lost_ in
search of those profound touches of humanity, and those sudden felicities
of insight, which abound in the Elizabethans. Subtleties of thought, fine
observation of truths that almost evade the attempt to express them,
sentences and figures illuminative of the mysteries of human destiny and
the intricacies of human character--of all these there is none. If an
author's works are to be used as a treasury or garner of wise and
striking sayings, the harvest of sensibility and experience, _Paradise
Lost_ will yield only a poor handful of gleanings. One such reflection,
enforced by a happy figure, occurs in the Third Book, where Satan,
disguised as a youthful Cherub, deceives the Archangel Uriel--

So spake the false dissembler unperceived;
For neither man nor angel can discern
Hypocri