The  third  great  theme  of  Milton  is  a  cosmogony  —
that  is,  a  story  of  creation :  it  is  told  by  Raphael  to  Adam,
and  it  is  supplemented  by  the  history  of  mankind  which
is  shown  to  Adam  prophetically  by  Michael.  It  has  been
the  fashion  of  science  to  ridicule,  as  Huxley  did,  Mil-
ton's description  of  the  origin  of  living  creatures ;  but  as
a  tale  of  creation,  his  story  is  quite  the  most  consistent
and  nobly  imaginative  of  any  that  poets  have  told,  and
his  panorama  of  history  is  effectively  unrolled,  with
comprehensiveness,  vigour  of  thought  and  vividness  of
scene.  In  two  respects,  nevertheless,  modern  sympathy
parts  company  with  Milton  here,  too.  He  adopted  as  his
scheme  of  the  universe  of  space,  you  remember,  the
older  or  Ptolemaic  idea,  that  the  earth  is  the  centre,  and  is
surrounded  by  the  spheres,  one  inside  another,  till  you
reach  the  outermost  or  primum  mobile.  He  knew,  of
course,  the  Copemican  scheme,  which  we  now  all  hold,
when  we  think  of  the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the  sun  and
stars.  It  was,  I  think,  the  classical  prepossession  of  his
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MILTON
mind  —  his  desire  for  a  world  limited,  closed  and  clear,
like  a  Greek  temple  —  which  led  him  to  adopt  this  older
scheme  of  the  universe.  But  the  result  is  that  the  rest  of
the  poem  is  apt  to  seem  as  antiquated  as  its  celestial
geography.  Again,  in  his  view  of  history,  he  necessarily
made  human  history  unroll  as  a  consequence  of  the  fall
of  Adam,  and  gave  an  importance  to  its  Biblical  events,
which  they  can  only  retain  in  a  limited  way.  The  centre
and  movement  of  history  are  now  so  differently  con-
ceived by  the  general  modem  mind  that  Milton's  ac-
count of  history  has  little  essential  interest  to  the  reader.
