His genius is unimpaired, but his skill transcends his stuff.

The fall of man and its consequences could not by any device be made as interesting as the fall of Satan, of which it is itself but a consequence.

It was, moreover, absolutely inevitable that Adam's fall, the proper catastrophe of the poem, should occur some time before the conclusion, otherwise there would have been no space for the unfolding of the scheme of Redemption, equally essential from the point of view of orthodoxy and of art.

The effect is the same as in the case of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," which, having proceeded with matchless vigour up to the flight of the conspirators after Antony's speech, becomes comparatively tame and languid, and cannot be revived even by such a masterpiece as the contention between Brutus and Cassius.

It is to be regretted that Milton's extreme devotion to the letter of Scripture has not permitted him to enrich his latter books with any corresponding episode.