enth book
we get the tremendous lamentation of Adam, so strangely undramatic in
its argumentative justification of his own punishment, so full of true
drama as well as of magnificent lyrical power in its cry of human
misery and despair. Then follows the bitter attack upon Eve, as the
cause of all his woe: and the whole scene is concluded by her humble
and beautiful submission--

"While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace:"

by their reconciliation, and by their quiet and resigned acceptance of
their common fate.

{190}

It was perhaps worth while to go through one act of Milton's drama in
this detail to give some idea of the skill which he has shown in
working up a few verses of Genesis into an elaborate story. But no
detail, no fragmentary notes of any kind, even when they deal with
matters in which Milton was far stronger than he was on the side of
narrative or drama, can do much to exhibit the greatness of _Paradise
Lost_. For that there is only one way, to read it. And, as we said
just now, to read the whole. It is true that you cannot read it for
the interest of the story as you can all the _Odyssey_, much of the
_Iliad_ and some of the _Aeneid_: but the poem is still a whole and you
need the whole to judge and understand it. And even the weaker books,
the fifth, the seventh and twelfth, contain episodes, like the scene
between Abdiel and Satan and the incomparable conclusion of the whole
poem, which are among the last a wise reader would wish to miss.
Moreover, where the story is dullest it has things which give, perhaps,
the most astonishing proof of Milton's power of style. It is true that
he does himself occasionally fall into the empty pomposity which
characterized his eighteenth-century imitators who fancied that big
words could turn prose into poetry. So he talks of dried fruits as
"what by frugal {191} storing firmness gains To nourish, and
superfluous moist consumes." But the thing most remarkable about this
is its extreme rarity. Taking the poem as a whole, the mighty music
scarcely ceases: the majestic flight of the poet continues
uninterrupted: no contrary winds disturb it, no weariness brings it
flagging down to earth. There is nothing, not even theological
disputes, out of which he cannot make fine verse, and occasionally
great poetry. There is nothing, however great, that he cannot make his
own. Just as Shakspeare took the noble prose o