Paradise Lost is inspired by intense consciousness of the eternal contradiction between the general, unlimited, irresistible will of universal destiny, and defined individual will existing within this, and inexplicably capable of acting on it, even against it.  Or, if that seems too much of an antinomy to some philosophies (and it is perhaps possible to make it look more apparent than real), the dualism can be unavoidably declared by putting it entirely in terms of consciousness:  destiny creating within itself an existence which stands against and apart from destiny by being conscious of it.  In Milton’s poetry the spirit of man is equally conscious of its own limited reality and of the unlimited reality of that which contains him and drives him with its motion—­of his own will striving in the midst of destiny:  destiny irresistible, yet his will unmastered.

This is not to examine the development of epic poetry by looking at that which is not poetry.  In this kind of art, more perhaps than in any other, we must ignore the wilful theories of those who would set boundaries to the meaning of the word poetry.  In such a poem as Milton’s, whatever is in it is its poetry; the poetry of Paradise Lost is just—­Paradise Lost!  Its pomp of divine syllables and glorious images is no more the poetry of Milton than the idea of man which he expressed.  But the general manner of an art is for ever similar; it is its inspiration that is for ever changing.  We need never expect words and metre to do more than they do here: 

          they, fondly thinking to allay
  Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
  Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste
  With spattering noise rejected:  oft they assayed,
  Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft,
  With hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws,
  With soot and cinders filled;

or more than they do here: 

    What though the field be lost? 
  All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
  And study of revenge, immortal hate,
  And courage never to submit or yield,
  And what is else not to be overcome.

But what Homer’s words, and perhaps what Virgil’s words, set out to do, they do just as marvellously.  There is no sure way of comparison here.  How words do their work in poetry, and how we appreciate the way they do it—­this seems to involve the obscurest processes of the mind:  analysis can but fumble at it.  But we can compare inspiration—­the nature of the inmost urgent motive of poetry.  And it is not irrelevant to add (it seems to me mere fact), that Milton had the greatest motive that has ever ruled a poet.