lete mistake.
No one has praised marriage as he has. The chastest of poets is as
little afraid as the Prayer Book of frank acceptance of the physical
facts which must commonly be the basis of its spiritual relation. It
is the whole union for which he stands, of body, mind, and spirit. He
puts into the mouth of this same Adam the most eloquent praise woman
ever received, culminating in

"All higher Knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded. Wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenanced, and like Folly shows;
Authority and Reason on her wait,
As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally: and, to consummate all,
Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic placed."

It is true that the reply of the Angel moderating these ardours is more
evidently Miltonic--

"what transports thee so?
An outside? fair no doubt and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love;
Not thy subjection. Weigh with her thyself;
Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right."

{180} But, though in these last words Raphael entirely disappears in
Milton, the poet who could conceive the panegyric to which Raphael
replies, who could elsewhere make his hero say that he received "access
in every virtue" from the looks of Eve, had assuredly no low ideal of
what a woman may be. Adam speaks for him when he praises love as

"not the lowest end of human life;"

and he gives us a true corrective of the over-severe picture of Milton
which half-knowledge is apt to draw when he goes on to declare that

"not to irksome toil, but to delight,
He made us, and delight to reason joined."

But this is only one of many subjects on which Milton lets us hear his
own voice speaking through his characters. We hear it when Satan cries
to Beelzebub--

"Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering:"

when Raphael reports Nisroch as saying of pain and pleasure what may
well have been felt by the blind poet who owed his knowledge of
pleasure to memory only, while he knew {181} pain by the frequent
experience of one of the most painful of diseases--

"sense of pleasure we may well
Spare out of life, perhaps, and not repine,
But live content, which is the calmest life;
But pain is perfect misery, the worst
Of evils, and, excessive, overturns
All