This grave introspective note, present from the first in everything written by Milton and far more conspicuous in _Paradise Regained_ than in _Paradise Lost_, is felt still more in the {219} last of his works, the drama _Samson Agonistes_. It is in the Greek form with a Chorus: and is as broodingly full as Aeschylus or Sophocles of the folly of man and the uncertainty and sadness of human life; but Milton has added an angry sternness of judgment on the one hand, and on the other an assured faith in divine deliverance, both of which are rather Hebrew than Greek. Into this strange drama, so alien from all the literature of his day, Milton has poured all the thoughts and emotions with which the spectacle of his own life filled him. All through it we hear a faith that was strong but never blind battling with the spectacle of the wickedness of men and the dark uncertainty of the ways of God. The Philistines have triumphed, lords sit "lordly in their wine" at Whitehall, the Dagon of prelatism is once more enthroned throughout the land, the saints are dispersed and forsaken, and he himself, who had as he thought so signally borne his witness for God, sits blind and sad in his lonely house, "to visitants a gaze Or pitied object," with no hope left of high service to his country and no prospect but that of a "contemptible old age obscure." No doubt he did not always feel like that, for the evidence shows him cheerful and friendly in company: and, of {220} course, the picture has undergone the imaginative heightening of art besides being coloured by the story of Samson, so much sadder than Milton's own. But the lonely hours of a blind man of genius who has fought for a great cause and been utterly defeated must often be full of the hopeless half-resigned and half-rebellious broodings in which throughout _Samson_ we hear so plainly the voice of Milton himself. "God of our fathers! what is Man, That thou towards him with hand so various-- Or might I say contrarious?-- Temper'st thy providence through his short course; Not evenly, as thou rulest The angelic orders and inferior creatures mute, Irrational and brute? Nor do I name of men the common rout, That wandering loose about Grow up and perish as the summer fly, Heads without name, no more remembered; But such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, And people's safety, which in part they effect: Yet toward these thus dignified thou oft, Amidst their highth of noon, Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard Of highest favours past From thee on them, or them to thee of service." {221} This is Milton undisguised speaking of and for himself. And so is the still sadder outburst in the very first speech of Samson--