sence of matters of fact, which, however startling, are continuous with the realities of actual experience. The problems about freewill and foreknowledge are not supposed to be solved by stating the facts. He may be 'justifying Providence' in the sense that his personages obviously (to him at least) deserve what they get; but he does not profess to explain why there should be a hell and a purgatory and a heaven. They are there, and we must behave accordingly. Milton, on the contrary, has to be at one and the same time a philosopher and a historian. He tells a story as the embodiment of a dogmatic system. The supernatural characters must be anthropomorphic for the purposes of poetry, but they are also principles of a philosophy. Milton, we are told, believed sincerely that the pagan gods were the fallen angels. Still, the devils have almost become personified abstractions of pride, greed, and lust. In his early drafts of a drama, Milton has a number of such actors as Death, Hatred, Conscience, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Though they become angels and devils in the actual poem, Satan is still abstract enough to hold conversation with Sin and Death. The devils are utterly unlike the concrete and grotesque devils of mediæval
