EMPSON AND BENTLEY
189
cance; and if this aimlessness reflects on the guidance of Providence,
so much the worse for Providence.
Then hand in hand with social steps their way
Through Eden took, with Heav'nly comfort cheer'd.
Bentley wanted to do away with the pastoral elements in the poetry
because they disturbed the character Milton was forced to assume.
Empson muddles Milton's need to do away with them by suggesting
a simple regret for Elizabethan hey nanny nanny which is really a
more complex and inclusive melancholy, for a lost synthesis of virtue
and grace, for a series of organized stock responses, for an archi–
tecture of the emotions. Only compare Raphael's speech on Harmony
(V 469 ff.) with the history of mankind according to Michael, the
fine tact of
Lycidas
with that provincial contempt of the classics which
resounds through
Paradise Regained
IV 285 ff.!
Paradise Lost
is one
of the first pastorals which express nostalgia for the good old days
when life was complex and harmonious instead of simple and dis–
orderly. Reading Empson, one can't help feeling that the chaotic
uniformity of his responses largely justifies the melancholy of Milton's
conclusion.
