(the reversion of an estate with an immortal incumbent, would he worth little) a being unlike the other Spirits, who seems to have been supposed to be a detached portion of himself, and afterwards figured upon the earth in the well-known character of Jesus Christ. The Devil is represented as conceiving high indignation at this preference, and as disputing the affair with arms. I cannot discover Milton's authority for this circumstance;[1] but all agree in the fact of the insurrection, and the defeat, and the casting out into Hell. Nothing can exceed the grandeur and the energy of the character of the Devil, as expressed in Paradise Lost. He is a Devil, very different from the popular personification of evil, and it is a mistake to suppose that he was intended for an idealism of Evil. Malignity, implacable hate, cunning, and refinement of device to inflict the utmost anguish on an enemy, these, which are venial in a slave, are not to be forgiven in a tyrant; these, which are redeemed by much that ennobles in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil, as a moral being, is as far superior to his God, as one who perseveres in a purpose which he has conceived to be excellent, in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy—not from any mistaken notion of bringing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the open and alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments.
Milton so far violated all that part of the popular
- ↑ For Milton's purpose there is quite sufficient authority in the second Psalm and the twelfth chapter of the Revelation. The Revelation, though purporting to relate to the future, of course draws upon tradition and antecedent literature for its imagery.
