"Now shew thy progeny; if not to stand Cast thyself down; safely, if Son of God; For it is written: 'He will give command Concerning thee to his Angels: in their hands They shall uplift thee, lest at any time Thou chance to dash thy foot against a stone.' To whom thus Jesus: Also it is written 'Tempt not the Lord thy God.' He said, and stood: But Satan, smitten with amazement, fell." {213} Nor must it be supposed by those who have not read the _Paradise Regained_ that the bareness of its style is invariable. Most conspicuous, for reasons of reverence no doubt, in the speeches of Christ, it is far less marked in those of Satan and disappears altogether in some of the descriptive passages. Take, for instance, the famous temptation of the banquet-- "He spake no dream; for, as his words had end, Our Saviour, lifting up his eyes, beheld In ample space under the broadest shade, A table richly spread in regal mode, With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Grisamber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drained Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. Alas, how simple, to these cates compared, Was that crude apple that diverted Eve! And at a stately sideboard, by the wine, That fragrant smell diffused, in order stood Tall stripling youths rich-clad, of fairer hue Than Ganymed or Hylas; distant more, Under the trees now tripped, now solemn stood, Nymphs of Diana's train, and Naiades With fruits and flowers from Amalthea's horn, {214} And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed Fairer than feigned of old, or fabled since Of faery damsels met in forest wide By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore." _Paradise Lost_ itself contains no more intricately beautiful passage than this. It is one of those things that have been the delight and despair of poets ever since. For all his disdain of the follies of the Middle Age Milton can never touch the old romances, as Joseph Warton well noted, without immediately rising into the most exquisite poetry: and this reluctant homage of classical genius is the greatest tribute ever paid to their undying fascination.