However, literary parallels and precedents of this kind are perhaps rather interesting than important. Milton's greatness is his own. Only the fact remains that, as it was of an order that need not fear to measure itself with the Greeks and as he happened to put its dramatic expression into a Greek form, he has given us something which comes far {246} nearer to producing on us the particular impression of sublimity made by the greatest Greek dramas than anything else in English or perhaps in any modern language. In English nothing worth mentioning of the kind has been attempted, till in our own day the present Poet Laureate wrote his _Prometheus the Fire-Giver_ and _Achilles in Scyros_. But, interesting and beautiful as these are, they make no pretence to rival _Samson Agonistes_. They are altogether on a smaller scale of art, of thought, of emotion. _Samson Agonistes_ is Milton's last word and on the whole his saddest. Yet the final effect of great art is never sad. The sense of greatness transcends all pain. In the preface of _Samson_ Milton alludes to Aristotle's remark that it is the function of tragedy to effect through pity and fear a proper purgation of these emotions. Whatever be the precise meaning of that famous and disputed sentence, there is no doubt that Milton gives part of its general import truly enough when he paraphrases it "to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated." And its application extends far beyond the mere field of tragedy. So far as other kinds of poetry, or indeed any of the arts, deal with {247} subjects that arouse any of the deeper human emotions, the law of purification by a kind of delight is one by which they stand or fall. A crucifixion which is merely painful, as many primitive crucifixions are, or merely disgusting, as many later ones are, is so far a failure. It has not done the work art has to do. Shakspeare knew this well enough, though he very likely never thought about it. The final word of his great tragedies is one of sorrow overpassed and transformed. "The rest is silence;" "Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?" "I have almost forgot the taste of fears;" "My heart doth joy that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me!" This is the note always struck before the very end comes. And Milton, so unlike Shakspeare both as man and as artist, is no less conspicuous than he in the strict observance of this practice. All his poems, without exception, end in quietness and confidence. The beauty of the last lines of _Paradise Lost_, to which early critics were so strangely blind, is now universally celebrated-- "Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose {248} Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way."