Mr. Mark Pattison, quoting part of this passage, remarks with justice,
"on the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or
the character of the poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost,
as in Paradise Regained and Samson, Milton felt himself to be standing
on the sure ground of fact and reality" (English Men of Letters--Milton,
p. 186, ed. 1879).

St. Jude for ages had been sufficient authority for the angelic revolt,
and in a sense it was a reasonable dogma, for although it did not
explain the mystery of the origin of evil it pushed it a step further
backwards, and without such a revolt the Christian scheme does not well
hold together. So also with the entrance of the devil into the serpent.
It is not expressly taught in any passage of the canonical Scriptures,
but to the Church and to Milton it was as indisputable as the presence
of sin in the world. Milton, I repeat, BELIEVED in the framework of his
poem, and unless we can concede this to him we ought not to attempt to
criticise him. He was impelled to turn his religion into poetry in
order to bring it closer to him. The religion of every Christian if it
is real is a poem. He pictures a background of Holy Land scenery, and
he creates a Jesus who continually converses with him and reveals to him
much more than is found in the fragmentary details of the Gospels. When
Milton goes beyond his documents he does not imagine for the purpose of
filling up: the additions are expression.

Milton belonged to that order of poets whom the finite does not satisfy.
Like Wordsworth, but more eminently, he was "powerfully affected" only
by that "which is conversant with or turns upon infinity," and man is to
him a being with such a relationship to infinity that Heaven and Hell
contend over him. Every touch which sets forth the eternal glory of