, who had incurred Milton's
contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however,
there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only
fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties
of his subject. A sense of humour would have spiked his celestial
artillery, but a lively perception of the ridiculous is scarcely to be
demanded from a Milton. After all, he was borrowing from good poets,[7]
whose thought in itself is correct, and even profound; it is only when
artillery antedates humanity that the ascription of its invention to the
Tempter seems out of place. The metamorphosis of the demons into
serpents has been censured as grotesque; but it was imperatively
necessary to manifest by some unmistakable outward sign that victory did
not after all remain with Satan, and the critics may be challenged to
find one more appropriate. The bridge built by Sin and Death is equally
essential. Satan's progeny must not be dismissed without some exploit
worthy of their parentage. The one passage where Milton's taste seems to
us entirely at fault is the description of the Paradise of Fools (iii.,
481-497), where his scorn of--

"Reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,"

has tempted him to chequer the sublime with the ludicrous.

No subject but a Biblical one would have insured Milton universal
popularity among his countrymen, for his style is that of an ancient
classic transplanted, like Aladdin's palace set down with all its
magnificence in the heart of Africa; and his diction, the delight of the
educated, is the despair of the ignorant man. Not that this diction is
in any respect affected or pedantic. Milton was the darling poet of our
greatest modern master of unadorned Saxon speech, John Bright. But it
is freighted with classic allusion--not alone from the ancient
classics--and comes to us rich with gathered sweets, like a wind laden
with the scent of many flowers. "It is," says Pattison, "the elaborated
outcome of all the best words of all antecedent poetry--the language of
one who lives in the companionship of the great and the wise of past
time." "Words," the same writer reminds us, "over and above their
dictionary signification, connote all the feeling which has gathered
round them by reason of their employment through a hundred generations
of song." So it is, every word seems instinct with its own peculiar
beauty, and fraught w