man.  An angel guard is set over Eden, and Satan is arrested while tempting Eve in a dream, but is curiously allowed to go free again.  Book V shows us Eve relating her dream to Adam, and then the morning prayer and the daily employment of our first parents.  Raphael visits them, is entertained by a banquet (which Eve proposes in order to show him that all God’s gifts are not kept in heaven), and tells them of the revolt of the fallen spirits.  His story is continued in Book VI.  In Book VII we read the story of the creation of the world as Raphael tells it to Adam and Eve.  In Book VIII Adam tells Raphael the story of his own life and of his meeting with Eve.  Book IX is the story of the temptation by Satan, following the account in Genesis.  Book X records the divine judgment upon Adam and Eve; shows the construction by Sin and Death of a highway through chaos to the earth, and Satan’s return to Pandemonium.  Adam and Eve repent of their disobedience and Satan and his angels are turned into serpents.  In Book XI the Almighty accepts Adam’s repentance, but condemns him to be banished from Paradise, and the archangel Michael is sent to execute the sentence.  At the end of the book, after Eve’s feminine grief at the loss of Paradise, Michael begins a prophetic vision of the destiny of man.  Book XII continues Michael’s vision.  Adam and Eve are comforted by hearing of the future redemption of their race.  The poem ends as they wander forth out of Paradise and the door closes behind them.

It will be seen that this is a colossal epic, not of a man or a hero, but of the whole race of men; and that Milton’s characters are such as no human hand could adequately portray.  But the scenes, the splendors of heaven, the horrors of hell, the serene beauty of Paradise, the sun and planets suspended between celestial light and gross darkness, are pictured with an imagination that is almost superhuman.  The abiding interest of the poem is in these colossal pictures, and in the lofty thought and the marvelous melody with which they are impressed on our minds.  The poem is in blank verse, and not until Milton used it did we learn the infinite variety and harmony of which it is capable.  He played with it, changing its melody and movement on every page, “as an organist out of a single theme develops an unending variety of harmony.”

Lamartine has described Paradise Lost as the dream of a Puritan fallen asleep over his Bible, and this suggestive description leads us to the curious fact that it is the dream, not the theology or the descriptions of Bible scenes, that chiefly interests us.  Thus Milton describes the separation of earth and water, and there is little or nothing added to the simplicity and strength of Genesis; but the sunset which follows is Milton’s own dream, and instantly we are transported to a land of beauty and poetry: