Nothing can exceed the imbecility of the angelic guard to which Man's defence is entrusted.

Uriel, after threatening to drag Satan in chains back to Tartarus, and learning by a celestial portent that he actually has the power to fulfil his threat, considerately draws the fiend's attention to the circumstance, and advises him to take himself off, which Satan judiciously does, with the intention of returning as soon as convenient.

The angels take all possible pains to prevent his gaining an entrance into Paradise, but omit to keep Adam and Eve themselves in sight, notwithstanding the strong hint they have received by finding the intruder "Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams." If anything more infatuated can be imagined, it is the simplicity of the All-Wise Himself in entrusting the wardership of the gate of Hell, and consequently the charge of keeping Satan _in_, to the beings in the universe most interested in letting him _out_.

The sole but sufficient excuse is that these faults are inherent in the subject.

If Milton had not thought that he could justify the ways of Jehovah to man he would not have written at all; common sense on the part of the angels would have paralysed the action of the poem; we should, if conscious of our loss, have lamented the irrefragable criticism that should have stifled the magnificent allegory of Sin and Death.