The great fault is the frequent harshness of the style, principally in the choruses, where some strophes are almost uncouth.

In the blank verse speeches perfect grace is often united to perfect dignity: as in the farewell of Dalila:-- "Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights.
My name perhaps among the circumcised, In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes, To all posterity may stand defamed, With malediction mentioned, and the blot Of falsehood most unconjugal traduced.
But in my country where I most desire, In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath, I shall be named among the famousest Of women, sung at solemn festivals, Living and dead recorded, who to save Her country from a fierce destroyer, chose Above the faith of wedlock-bands; my tomb With odours visited and annual flowers." The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of the Greek drama, the only one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so few personages, and these only as foils to the hero.

It is, but for its Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks.

Consummate art is shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe.
We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been no place for it since the days of Greece.

Milton confesses as much when in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing.
Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes" is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic, from its want of harmony with the more essential characteristics of our tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.
In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has always been recognized.