PREFACE
ways as the Hebrew prophets stood to theirs. Again and again, in reading Aeschylus, do we seem to hear the voice of Job or Isaiah; again and again does the gnomic wisdom of the Bible suggest the gnomic wisdom of the Greek poets. But there is a style and language which, to an Englishman, is for ever bound up with these associations—the style and language of the English Bible, in its origin indeed largely Hebraic, not English, but entering the language, when it was still fluid, till it has become as much a part of English as its most original elements. Here, then, we have a second model to guide us. But thirdly, the blank verse and the style of diction, which had been developed by the Elizabethan drama, was taken up by Milton and subjected to modifications and refinements under the very influence of classical types, and the Bible: it became something less adapted for dramatic uses, but it gained in richness, in elaborate pomp, and in organic structure. Here, then, is our third model, the more obvious in the case of this particular play in that the influence of the Aeschylean Prometheus is very pronounced in the Satan of Milton.
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