of rebel
angels far exceeds those

"That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco or Trebisond,
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia."

So, in another of his returns to those tales and fancies of the Middle
Age which, in spite {169} of his intellectual and moral rejection of
their falsity, yet always moved him to unusual beauty of verse, he
compares the dwarfed rebels of Hell to the

"faery elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth
Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear;
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds."

So Eve at her gardening recalls Pales, or Pomona or

"Ceres in her prime,
Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove."

And so, in an earlier book, the beauty of Paradise itself, too great to
be directly told, is, like the splendour of Pandemonium, conveyed to us
by the most perfect of those negative similes which, forced upon Milton
by the narrow bounds of his story, are perhaps the most distinctive of
all the glories of _Paradise Lost_. It is too long to quote in full:
but a few lines may be given: and they must include the first four, one
of which has just {170} been quoted, verses of such amazing beauty
that, if Milton could be represented by four lines, these might well be
the chosen four--

"Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers.
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and the inspired
Castalian spring, might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive."

But it is time to leave Milton's similes, though similes play a more
important part in _Paradise Lost_ than in any other epic. Indeed their
necessary absence is a great element in the comparative dulness of the
books given over to the discourses of Raphael and Michael. A single
chapter in a little book of this kind can only deal with one or two
aspects of so great a subject as _P