the wisdom of his choice and referring all to the aid of his celestial patroness, he pushes bravely on. The imaginative sweep which comes and goes with Satan prevails again in the description of his sevenfold encircling of the world (lines 62 ff.). There is more bitterness and more despair in the soliloquy which precedes his imbruting himself within the serpent and it is his own word which expounds the symbolism of the act. The coming of morning brings a new dialogue between Adam and Eve (lines 192 ff.). The latter, with an impulse housewifely but unfortunate, proposes a brief separation that they may work at their gardening without the interruptions of affectionate discourse. Adam, in his superior wisdom, deprecates such hyper-conscientiousness and warns her of the danger she runs in exposing herself unprotected to the assault of the tempter. Such an apparent slighting of her firmness hurts Eve's feelings and brings the first small cloud upon the domestic horizon. It is not quite clear whether the poet intended Adam's attitude throughout this dialogue to be regarded as irreproachable and Eve's alone the cause of trouble. One fears he did; yet, judged by Milton's general philosophy, Eve has much the best of the argument. She criticizes, as he himself would have done, the naïve idea that the mere temptation leaves a stain of dishonor on the soul, and she employs the very language of the Areopagitica in her denunciation of a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed (lines 322-341). The trouble is that her confidence is unjustified by the event and the whole discussion may perhaps be taken as a supplement rather than a contradiction to the doctrines of Milton's prose * pamphlet, a warning that the philosophy of freedom does not apply to the immature and weak. Adam himself, in his refusal to coerce her will (lines 341 ff.), acts in the spirit of Milton's statement in Areopagitica that children and childish men may be exhorted to abstain from the possibility of evil influence but hindered forcibly they cannot be. The parting of Adam and his spouse is full of tender loveliness, and classical mythology is ransacked for images wherewith to express Eve's beauty. Satan, watching her, is like an Iago plotting the ruin of Desdemona or even more exactly like another Lovelace preparing for what is to all intents and purposes a seduction. His crafty approach through the insidious means of flattery is subtly conceived (lines 494 ff.). Eve is deluded in her weakness, but once confronted by the tree of prohibition she recognizes clearly the guilt involved. This is Milton's modification or interpretation of the Biblical statement "the woman was deceived." He could not have her sin unconsciously. To overcome her hesitation Satan musters all his eloquence, bursting forth without exordium, in praise of the sciential sap, like some ancient orator— Cicero, for example, in his first oration against Catiline. He employs all the arguments which scepticism can suggest against an arbitrary and irrational command, and, with the coöperating aid of mere physical appetite at the noontide hour, prevails. Eve unconsciously falls into his own train of reasoning. Her disobedience is followed by an unnatural exhilaration as of wine. She exhibits new and unworthy motives of selfishness and jealousy in thinking what course she shall pursue with Adam, and she appears before him with a lying word upon her lips. The fall of Adam himself (lines 896 ff.) is motivated by passion. At least it is that which prompts his immediate resolve. Though his understanding enables him to penetrate the deceit, as Eve with her feebler mentality did not, and anticipate the certain consequence, he soon falls under the influence of a reasoning as false as hers, and experiences afterward the same transient delight in sin. The representation is colored by the Greek idea of “hybris"-the intoxication of the mind which afflicts the sinner and leads him to fancy himself the equal of the gods. A new element, moreover, has entered his relations with his mate—the element of lust in contrast with the former innocence and purity of their married love (lines 1034 ff.). Disillusionment promptly follows, and bitter recrimination. [The fruits of the tree are, indeed, new knowledge, but a knowledge which is really sophistication leading to selfcontempt and shame] In Milton's treatment of this, the central incident of his poem, there are, besides its dramatic vividness and keen psychology, many essential points of moral and theological doctrine. He explains in the De Doctrina Christiana that the fall of our first parents, properly considered, was a transgression of the whole law, all sins being included in the act-unbelief, ingratitude, disobedience, gluttony; in the man, excessive uxoriousness; in the woman, a want of proper regard for her husband, parricide, theft, invasion of the rights of others, sacrilege, deceit, fraud in the means employed to attain the object, pride, and arrogance. The eating of the apple, therefore, becomes a type or even a symbol of sin rather than a particular offense. In making Eve fall through vanity and curiosity for new experience, Adam through blind passion, Milton points to what he believes the characteristic weaknesses respectively of man and woman. Adam's act was to Milton in no sense noble or heroic. It was, indeed, less pardonable than Eve's in proportion to his superior intelligence and moral strength. There is no gainsaying the fact, however, that the poet bears a grudge against woman as the perverse occasion of man's entanglement. The book, as a whole, displays new ranges of Milton's genius-a unique power of analysis of the ways of evil in the soul. Its greatness is not inferior to that of the more celebrated picture of Satan in Books I and II. Book X. The account of the judgment (lines 104 ff.) proceeds in strict accord with the Scriptural narrative in * Genesis iii, no detail being omitted. The allegory of Sin and Death is completed as the hideous pair ascend to earth and prepare to set their seal of mastery upon created nature (lines 229 ff.). Satan returns to proclaim the triumph of his epic adventure (lines 410 ff.)—a triumph which is turned to bitterness by the metamorphosis of the demons into serpents and of their shout of applause into a hiss, the sign of scorn. This degradation of their forms is the consequence and outward symbol of the degradation of their souls. A similar though less complete alteration, carried out by angels in obedience to divine command, takes place in the realm of physical nature, now no longer pure (lines 641 ff.). The passage illustrates the habit of mingling science and theology which Milton inherited from medieval thought. A more human note is struck in the Job-like lament of Adam (lines 720 ff.), reminiscent also of the baffled speculations of Hamlet on life and death. A fine contrast not altogether favorable to the man is drawn between the remorse of Adam and Eve. She is more concerned with his state than with her own. of disillusionment and resorts to Euripides for bitter reflections on the curse of the eternal feminine, but is ultimately won by the helpless pathos of her appeal. She exhibits a fertile but unsound ingenuity in her suggestion of a way by which to avoid the doom pronounced upon their offspring with an implication of stoic fortitude which wins Adam's admiration (lines 966 ff.). His own courage returns in the attempt to comfort her, and the book ends, in contrast to Book IX, with a cessation of mutual blame and an access of sincere repentance. Book XI. Further celestial dialogue (lines 1-125) prepares for the decree of banishment, to be pronounced, with an accompanying remission of the penalty of immediate death, by Michael, the minister of God's justice. Adam has a presentiment of some further change by the mute signs of nature (lines 193 ff.). Eve, with pathetic irony, is made to express her willingness to submit to any fate in this beloved home of Paradise. At the news that they must leave forthwith, Adam is struck dumb, and it is Eve who utters the first spontaneous lament (lines 268 ff.). Her strong instinctive love of the flowers that she has tended, of the nuptial bower that she has adorned, is rudely violated. The angel gently reminds her that her going is not lonely. Then Adam expresses his profounder fear of a break in his communion with the Divine (lines) 293 ff.). To reassure him of the continued presence of God to him and to his offspring and to discipline his soul in patience, Michael leads him to a lofty hill and begins a visionary revelation of the future of the race. This |