we must not only 'suspend disbelief' but get rid of our positive beliefs. We must forget as far as possible that the supernatural actors are really the personages suggested by the names. So long as we are in hell, that is easy. We are in presence of gigantic figures, with heroic impulses and intelligible motives—if only we do not ask too closely what was the warfare in which they were engaged. When we venture to the highest regions, the discord is harder to resolve; and we are painfully aware that Milton is writing 'in fetters.'
This, in fact, is implied in the opinion which Professor Raleigh shares with the best critics since Dryden's day, that Satan is the hero of the poem. If Paradise Lost be really a religious poem, that would seem to imply a stupendous blunder somewhere; and yet it is inevitable. Johnson quaintly praises Milton because 'there is in Satan's speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear.' That is perhaps the last compliment that we could have expected the genuine devil to deserve. In fact, it is impossible not to feel a strong admiration for so heroic a being, and to be even glad that he has found so sympathetic, we might say so loving, a portrait-painter. The first book of Paradise Lost holds the very first place in English, if not in all
