,
42).
There are some painters whose work appeals only to painters, and not
to the public. So the judgment of poets and critics has been more
favourable to _Paradise Regained_ than the opinion of the average
reader. Johnson thinks that "if it had been written, not by Milton,
but by some imitators, it would receive universal praise." Wordsworth
thought it "the most perfect in execution of anything written by
Milton." And Coleridge says of it, "in its kind it is the most perfect
poem extant."
There is a school of critics which maintains that a poem is, like a
statue or a picture, a work of pure art, of which beauty is the only
characteristic of which the reader should be cognisant. And beauty is
wholly ideal, an absolute quality, out of relation to person, time, or
circumstance. To such readers _Samson Agonistes_ will seem tame, flat,
meaningless, and artificial. From the point of view of the critic of
the eighteenth century, it is "a tragedy which only ignorance would
admire and bigotry applaud" (Dr. Johnson). If, on the other hand, it
be read as a page of contemporary history, it becomes human, pregnant
with real woe, the record of an heroic soul, not baffled by temporary
adversity, but totally defeated by an irreversible fate, and
unflinchingly accepting the situation, in the firm conviction of the
righteousness of the cause.
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