This is also where we get the stage-villain's hiss of " Die he or Justice " .sx God is much at his worst here , in his first appearance ; but he needs to be , to make the offer of the Son produce a dramatic change .sx I do not know what to make of his expressing the Calvinist doctrine that the elect are chosen by his will alone , which Milton had appeared to reject ( 185 ) ; it has a peculiar impact here , when God has not yet even secured the Fall of Adam and Eve .sx One might argue that he was in no mood to make jokes ; and besides , the effect here is not a sardonic mockery of Satan , which can be felt in the military joke readily enough , but a mysterious and deeply rooted sense of glory .sx A simple explanation may be put forward ; Milton felt that this was such a tricky bit to put over his audience , because the inherent contradictions were coming so very near the surface , that he needed with a secret delight to call on the whole of his power .sx This is almost what Shelley took to be his frame of mind ; and it is hard to accept , with the De Doctrina before us , without talking about Milton's Unconsciousness .sx But we may be sure that there is a mediating factor ; if he had been challenged about the passage , he would have said that he was following the Old Testament scrupulously , and allowing God to mock his foes .sx This has often been said about the jokes of Milton's God , or at least about the one which can't be ignored because it is explained as a joke ( =5 .sx 720 ) ; and one can make a rough check from the Concordance at the end of a Bible .sx The only important case is from Psalm =2 ; here again we meet the ancient document in which the King of Zion is adopted as the Son of God :sx 1Why do the heathen rage .sx . ?sx The kings of the earth set themselves , and the rulers take counsel together , against the Lord , and against his anointed .sx . He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision .sx This is echoed in Psalms =37 .sx 13 and =59 .sx 8 , and perhaps in Proverbs =1 .sx 26 , where Wisdom and not God mocks the worldly rather than a powerful aggressor ; but after trying to look under all the relevant words I do not find that the Concordance ever ascribes the sentiment to the Prophets .sx It was thus an ancient tradition but one treated with reserve , as Milton would understand .sx Naturally his intention in putting so much weight on it has been found especially hard to grasp .sx The views of M. Morand about the divine characters have been neglected and seem to me illuminating .sx In the same year as De Comus A Satan he published a pamphlet in English , The Effects of his Political Life on John Milton , concerned to show that a certain worldly-mindedness entered Milton's later poetry as a result of his rather sordid experience of government , politics , and propaganda .sx What chiefly stands out in this lively work , I think , is an accusation that Milton himself had smuggled into a later edition of Eikon Basilike the prayer , derived from Sidney's Arcadia , for which he then so resoundingly denounced King Charles in Eikonoclastes ; we are given a shocking picture of an English expert getting the evidence of a Dutch researcher ignored by gentlemanly bluff .sx Mr Robert Graves used the main story in Wife to Mr Milton , but I had not realized that the evidence for it was so strong ; indeed , Mr Graves often seems too disgusted by Milton to be convincing- disagreeable in many ways he may have been , but surely not a physical coward .sx I don't feel that the action is too bad for Milton ; he would think the divine purpose behind the Civil War justified propaganda tricks , and need not have thought this a particularly bad one .sx The King was dead , and the purpose of the cheat was merely to prevent the people from thinking him a martyr .sx He hadn't written any of the book really , and Milton suspected that at the time , so it was only a matter of answering one cheat with another .sx Milton must in any case have been insincere in pretending to be shocked at the use of a prayer by Sidney , given in the story as that of a pagan , but so Christian in feeling as to be out of period ( it assumes that God may be sending us evil as a test or tonic for our characters , which even if to be found in Aeschylus or Marcus Aurelius is not standard for Arcadia) .sx Milton might comfort himself with the reflection that he wasn't even damaging the man's character in the eyes of fit judges , only making use of a popular superstition- as Shelley expected on another occasion .sx However , M. Morand finds that this kind of activity brought about a Fallen condition , as one might say , in the mind of the poet , and such is what De Comus A Satan examines throughout the later poetry .sx There is an assumption here that to do Government propaganda can only have a bad effect upon a poet's mind , and I feel able to speak on the point as I was employed at such work myself in the Second World War , indeed once had the honour of being named in rebuttal by Fritzsche himself and called a curly-headed Jew .sx I wasn't in on any of the splendid tricks , such as Milton is accused of , but the cooked-up argufying I have experienced .sx To work at it forces you to imagine all the time what the enemy will reply ; you are trying to get him into a corner .sx Such a training cannot narrow a man's understanding of other people's opinions , though it may well narrow his own opinions .sx I should say that Milton's experience of propaganda is what makes his later poetry so very dramatic ; that is , though he is a furious partisan , he can always imagine with all its force exactly what the reply of the opponent would be .sx As to his integrity , he was such an inconvenient propagandist that the Government deserve credit for having the nerve to appoint and retain him .sx He had already published the Divorce Pamphlets before he got the job ; well now , if you are setting out to be severe and revolutionary on the basis of literal acceptance of the Old Testament , the most embarrassing thing you can be confronted with is detailed evidence about the sexual habits of the patriarchs ; it is the one point where the plain man feels he can laugh .sx Milton always remained liable to defend his side by an argument which would strike his employers as damaging ; his style of attack is savagely whole-hearted , but his depth of historical knowledge and imaginative sympathy keep having unexpected effects .sx He was not at all likely to feel that he had forfeited his independence of mind by such work .sx M. Morand therefore strikes me as rather innocent in assuming that he was corrupted by it , but I warmly agree that it made his mind very political .sx Professor Wilson Knight has also remarked that Milton wrote a political allegory under the appearance of a religious poem , though he did not draw such drastic consequences from the epigram .sx On the Morand view , God is simply a dynastic ruler like those Milton had had to deal with ; Cromwell had wanted his son to inherit , no less than Charles .sx M. Morand does not seem to realize it , but the effect is to make Milton's God much better .sx His intrigues and lies to bolster his power are now comparatively unselfish , being only meant to transfer it unimpaired to his Son , and above all he feels no malignity towards his victims .sx His method of impressing the loyalist angels will doom almost all mankind to misery , but he takes no pleasure in that ; it simply does not bother him .sx The hypocrisy which the jovial old ruffian feels to be required of him in public has not poisoned his own mind , as we realize when he permits himself his leering jokes .sx This does , I should say , correspond to the impression usually made by the poem on a person not brought up as a Christian , such as my Chinese and Japanese students .sx The next step is to regard the debate in Heaven , where the Son , but no angel , offers to die for man , as a political trick rigged up to impress the surviving angels ; the Son is free to remark ( =3 .sx 245 ) that he knows the Father won't let him stay dead , so that the incantationary repetition of the word death comes to seem blatantly artificial .sx ( We find in the De Doctrina Chapter =12 that Milton includes " under the head of death , in Scripture , all evils " ) .sx Nobody is surprised at the absence of volunteers among the good angels , whereas Satan , during the parallel scene in Hell ( =2 .sx 470 ) , has to close the debate hurriedly for fear a less competent rebel put himself forward .sx Otherwise the two scenes are deliberately made alike , and the reason is simply that both are political :sx Ce qui frappe , c'est le parallelisme des moyens employe@2es , conseils , discours .sx Me@5me souci de garder pour soi tout gloire .sx ( p. 145 ) On reaching Paradise Regained , M. Morand is interested to learn how the Son grew up .sx In Paradise Lost he often seems half ashamed of the autocratic behaviour of his Father , because his role is to induce the subject angels to endure it ; but when he is alone on the earth-visit which has been arranged for him we find he has merely the cold calculating pride which we would expect from his training .sx However , we already find this trait , decides M. Morand , at the early public moment when he offers his Sacrifice ; he is unable to avoid presenting himself as solely interested in his own career ( p. 169) .sx As the Creation for which he was the instrument has already happened , he might at least speak as if he could tell a man apart from a cow , but he says that his Father's grace visits " all his creatures " ( =3 .sx 230) .sx Satan , on the parallel occasion , was at least genuinely concerned to get the job done , whoever did it ; and M. Morand decides that the ringing repetition of ME in the speech of sacrifice of the Son is a little too grotesque , however perfectly in character .sx Milton n'eu@5t pas pense@2 a@3 ce que peut contenir de ridicule ce martellement du moi .sx De personnages extra-terrestres , le moins e@2loigne@2 de la modestie est encore Satan .sx ( p. 171 ) This is at least a splendid reply to the argument that pride is the basic fault of all the characters who fall .sx The Morand line of argument can be taken an extra step , to argue that the Son too is being cheated by the Father ; and this excites a suspicion that there is something inadequate about it .sx He says nothing of the means of his death , and speaks as if he is going to remain on earth till the Last Day :sx Our chief impression here , surely , is not that he is too little interested in mankind but that he does not know what is going to happen , except for a triumph at which he can rejoice .sx If the Jews had not chosen to kill him , he would presumably have remained on earth till the Last Day , making history less bad than the poem describes it as being ; and what they will choose can be foreknown by the Father only .sx The Son expects to find no frown upon the face of God on Judgement Day , the Dies Irae itself , so we can hardly doubt that he expects things to turn out better than they do .sx His prophecy appears to be a continuous narrative :sx " not long lie .sx . rise victorious .sx . then .sx . " , as if he will lead the blessed to Heaven very soon after the Resurrection .sx Among human speakers 'lastly die' is a natural way to express pathos , though a tautology ; but a meaning which would make it a correct description of the career of the Son is hard to invent .sx