innocent creature from the purely malignant motive

"That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation,"

without further interposition than a warning which he foresees will be
fruitless, implies a grievous deficiency either in wisdom or in
goodness, or at best falsifies the declaration:

"Necessity and chance
Approach me not, and what I will is fate."

The like flaw runs through the entire poem, where Satan alone is
resolute and rational. Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic
guard to which Man's defence is entrusted. Uriel, after threatening to
drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial
portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat,
considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and
advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the
intention of returning as soon as convenient. The angels take all
possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but
omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the
strong hint they have received by finding the intruder

"Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,
Assaying by his devilish art to reach
The organs of her fancy, and with them forge
Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams."

If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the
All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and
consequently the charge of keeping Satan _in_, to the beings in the
universe most interested in letting him _out_. The sole but sufficient
excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject. If Milton had
not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would
not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would
have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our
loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled
the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death. Another critical thrust is
equally impossible to parry. It is true that the Evil One is the hero of
the epic. Attempts have been made to invest Adam with this character. He
is, indeed, a great figure to contemplate, and such as might represent
the ideal of humanity till summoned to act and suffer. When, indeed, he
partakes of the forbidden fruit in disobedience to his Maker, but in
compassion to his mate, he does seem for a moment to fulfil the canon