Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of its disdain of the obvious attractions open to poetry, in spite of much in it that alienates the sympathies of many, the _Paradise Regained_ has received very high praise from the finest judges of English poetry. Johnson and Wordsworth have already been quoted, and to them may be added Coleridge, who says of it that "in its kind it is the most perfect poem extant," and Mr. Mackail, who has spoken of its "unique poetic qualities." Why have the poets and critics been so much {207} more favourable to it than the public? Perhaps because artists are always inclined to value work in proportion to its difficulties. Indeed, this fallacy seems natural to all classes of men about their own work. Gardeners in England tend to admire a man who grows indifferent oranges more than a man who grows good strawberries. It is like what Johnson said of the preaching lady: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." This tendency to let surprise sit in the seat which belongs to judgment is greatly intensified by professional knowledge. The architect is apt to exaggerate the merit of a building placed on a very awkward site, the artist to think a piece of very difficult foreshortening more beautiful than it really is. The public may not be so good a judge either of the building or of the drawing: but, knowing nothing of the technical difficulties, it at least forms its judgment on the true criterion which is, of course, the value of the product, not the surprisingness of its having been produced or the difficulties overcome in its production. Something of this kind may account for the fact that _Paradise Regained_ has been more appreciated by the poets than by the public. {208} The public finds it rather bare and dry and judges accordingly. The poets know how infinitely hard a task it was that Milton set himself, and find no praise too great for the man who did not fail in it. They see a poem of two thousand lines whose single subject is the attempt of a devil who knows himself doomed to defeat to persuade a divine Person who knows Himself assured of victory to be false to the law of His being. And into this barren theme they see art and nature, ethics and politics, luxury and splendour and empire, cunningly interwoven and "Eden raised in the waste Wilderness." They see a style stripped of almost all ornament especially in the speeches of our Lord: the poet deliberately walking always on the very edge of the gulf of prose and yet always as one perfectly assured that into that gulf his feet can never fall. Here and there, as when we come upon such lines as "I never liked thy talk, thy offers less,"