aradise Lost_. That being so, it is
best, perhaps, to touch on points in which Milton stands pre-eminent or
unique. The similes are one of these. Another is the splendour of the
Miltonic speeches. It is one of the defects of _Paradise Lost_ that
its actors are seldom soldiers whom all the ages agree to admire, and
often theologians whom all fear or dislike, or politicians whom all
obey {171} and despise. Yet how magnificently Milton turns this
weakness into a strength! His speeches have not the eternal humanity
of Homer's: but as oratory, above all as debating oratory, they have no
poetic rivals outside the drama. The poet who had lived through the
Long Parliament and the trial of Strafford knew the art of speech as
Homer could not know it. It may seem strange to us that the political
struggle of his day affected him so much more than the military; but
the fact is so. Pym and Hampden are felt in _Paradise Lost_ far more
than Fairfax or Cromwell. The speeches of the second book could only
have been written by the citizen of a free state who had lived through
a crisis in its fortunes. Other speeches in the poem--that
incomparable one of Eve to Adam in the fourth book, "Sweet is the
breath of morn," those that pass between Eve and Adam after the Fall
and Adam's Job-like lament in the tenth book--have a purer human beauty
about them: but of the oratory of debate no poem in the world provides
a more magnificent display than the second book of _Paradise Lost_.
The debate is a real debate. The opening of Moloch, "My sentence is
for open war," would be instantly effective in any Parliament in the
world. It {172} rouses attention by its directness, it compels
adherence as only courage can. To undo its effect Belial has to employ
the most subtle of all oratorical arts, that of accepting the arguments
which he dare not directly combat and then gradually turning them to
the confusion of their author. So he and Mammon bring the assembly
completely round to the mood of ease and acquiescence. Then follows
the tremendous figure of Beelzebub, an aged Chatham or Gladstone, who

"in his rising seemed
A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone,
Majestic though in ruin. Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look
Drew audience and attention still as night,
Or summer