Milton is sometimes harsh, crabbed, grim in expression as in thought: but these things are not at all necessarily fatal to poetry as is the cool and contented obviousness of Wordsworth's weak moments. Milton is occasionally contented in his own lofty fashion, but he is never cool, and never less so than in _Samson_. All through it he is face to face with a tremendous issue in which he himself is supremely interested: he is "enacting hell," to use Goethe's curious phrase, which fits Milton so much better than it fits the serenity of Homer. Twenty years before he had written, in quite another connection, "No man knows hell like him who converses most in heaven": and now in his old age he embodies that tremendous truth in his last poem. All his poems are intensely emotional and personal: but none so much so as _Samson Agonistes_, where he is fixing all eyes on the {231} tragedy of his own life. The parallel between Samson and Milton does not extend, of course, to all the details. But even of them many correspond, such as the blindness, the disastrous marriage with "the daughter of an infidel," the old age of a broken and defeated champion of God become a gazing-stock to triumphant profanity. But more than any special circumstance it is the whole general position of Samson as a man dedicated from his birth to the service of God, and gladly accepting the dedication, yet failing in his task and apparently deserted by his God, which makes of him a type in which Milton can see himself and the Cromwellian saints who lie ground under the heels of the victorious Philistines of the Restoration. To him as to Samson the situation is one that makes questionings on the dark and doubtful ways of God unavoidable: darker to him even than to Samson: for he has no guilty memory of a supreme act of folly to explain the divine desertion. The action of the drama is extremely simple. Samson is found enjoying a brief respite from his punishment. The day is a feast of Dagon, and the Philistine "superstition" allows no work to be done on it. Accordingly an attendant who is a mute person is leading {232} him to a bank where he is accustomed to take what rest he is allowed and enjoy "The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet With day-spring born;" that sensation of delicate scents and cool breezes which, as Milton knew only too well, mean so much more to the blind than to those who can see. Then his restless thoughts begin to crowd upon him-- "Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed As of a person separate to God, Designed for great exploits?" The whole passage belongs naturally enough to Samson: but obviously here, as well as in the blindness, the poet is already thinking of himself. So again, when Samson proceeds to speak of being "exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,"