In purely poetic value <strong>Paradise Regained</strong> is little inferior to itspredecessor. There may be nothing in the poem that can quite touch the firstt... » 

In purely poetic value Paradise Regained is little inferior to itspredecessor. There may be nothing in the poem that can quite touch the firsttwo books of Paradise Lost for magnificence but there are several thingsthat may fairly be set beside almost anything in the last ten. The splendidstand at bay of the discovered tempter Tis true I am that spiritunfortunate in the first book his rebuke of Belial in the second and thepicture of the magic banquet it must be remembered that though it iscustomary to extol Miltons asceticism the story of his remark to his thirdwife and the Lawrence and Skinner sonnets go the other way above all thepanoramas from the mountaintop in the third and fourth the terrors of thenight of storm the crisis on the pinnacle of the temple are quite of thebest Milton which is equivalent to saying that they are of the best of onekind of poetry. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature «