Him, by whom all things live, to spare my life for some years longer, I hope to say that of her which never yet hath been said of any lady.” How completely that hope was attained is to be seen in the closing canto of the Purgatorio and in the whole of the Paradiso.

[Pg 64]

The life and poetry of Milton contain nothing (if exception be made of his beautiful and lofty sonnet, written in the very spirit of the Divina Commedia, on his second wife, “Methought I saw my late espousèd Saint”) to compare with Dante’s love, at once real and ideal, masculine yet mystical, for Beatrice. The language used by Eve in addressing Adam, in Paradise Lost—

My author and disposer, what thou bidst Unargued I obey, so God ordains. God is thy law, thou mine—

and the very choice of a subject the dominating incident of which is described by the well-known words, “The woman did give me, and I did eat,” would almost seem to indicate that Milton’s conception of woman, and his attitude towards her, were such as can be attributed to no other poet. It is the attitude of unqualified masculine domination. Again, in Samson Agonistes the very centre and pith of the poem is the incorrigible frailty and inferiority of women—a thesis that would be extraordinary, even if true, for a poet. Samson starts with a reproval of himself for weakly revealing the[Pg 65] secret of his strength to the persistent subtlety of a woman, “that species monster, my accomplished snare,” as he calls Dalila, since “yoked her bond-slave by foul effeminacy”—a servitude he stigmatises as “ignominious and infamous,” whereby he is “shamed, dishonoured, quelled.” When Dalila, profoundly penitent for what she has done, thereby incurring his displeasure, prostrates herself before him, and sues for pardon, he spurns her from him with the words,

[Pg 65]

Out, out, hyæna! these are thy wonted arts,

and goes on to say they are the arts of every woman, “to deceive, betray,” and then to “feign remorse.” With abject humility she confesses that curiosity to learn all secrets, and then to publish them, are “common female faults incident to all our sex.” This only causes him to insult and spurn her yet more fiercely; and he declares that God sent her to “debase him”—one of those theological peculiarities which apparently made God an accomplice with “this viper,” for which the non-Calvinistic Christian finds it difficult to account.

Nor can it be said that 

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