this is also where we get the stage-villain &apos;s hiss of die he or justice must . God is much at his worst here , in his first appearance ; but he needs to be , to make the offer of the son produce a dramatic change . I do not know what to make of his expressing the Calvinist doctrine that the elect are chosen by his will alone , which Milton had appeared to reject ( 185 ) ; it has a peculiar impact here , when God has not yet even secured the fall of Adam and Eve . one might argue that he was in no mood to make jokes ; and besides , the effect here is not a sardonic mockery of Satan , which can be felt in the military joke readily enough , but a mysterious and deeply rooted sense of glory . a simple explanation may be put forward ; Milton felt that this was such a tricky bit to put over his audience , because the inherent contradictions were coming so very near the surface , that he needed with a secret delight to call on the whole of his power . this is almost what Shelley took to be his frame of mind ; and it is hard to accept , with the de doctrina before us , without talking about Milton &apos;s unconsciousness . but we may be sure that there is a mediating factor ; if he had been challenged about the passage , he would have said that he was following the Old testament scrupulously , and allowing God to mock his foes . this has often been said about the jokes of Milton &apos;s God , or at least about the one which can n&apos;t be ignored because it is explained as a joke ( 5.720 ) ; and one can make a rough check from the concordance at the end of a Bible . the only important case is from psalm 2 ; here again we meet the ancient document in which the King of Zion is adopted as the son of God : why do the heathen rage &amp;hellip; ? the kings of the earth set themselves , and the rulers take counsel together , against the Lord , and against his anointed &amp;hellip; . he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ; the Lord shall have them in derision . this is echoed in psalms 37.13 and 59.8 , and perhaps in proverbs 1.26 , where Wisdom and not God mocks the worldly rather than a powerful aggressor ; but after trying to look under all the relevant words I do not find that the concordance ever ascribes the sentiment to the prophets . it was thus an ancient tradition but one treated with reserve , as Milton would understand . naturally his intention in putting so much weight on it has been found especially hard to grasp . the views of M Morand about the divine characters have been neglected and seem to me illuminating . in the same year as de Comus a Satan he published a pamphlet in English , the effects of his political life on John Milton , concerned to show that a certain worldly-mindedness entered Milton &apos;s later poetry as a result of his rather sordid experience of government , politics , and propaganda . what chiefly stands out in this lively work , I think , is an accusation that Milton himself had smuggled into a later edition of Eikon Basilike the prayer , derived from Sidney &apos;s Arcadia , for which he then so resoundingly denounced King Charles in Eikonoclastes ; we are given a shocking picture of an English expert getting the evidence of a Dutch researcher ignored by gentlemanly bluff . Mr Robert Graves used the main story in wife to Mr Milton , but I had not realized that the evidence for it was so strong ; indeed , Mr Graves often seems too disgusted by Milton to be convincing - disagreeable in many ways he may have been , but surely not a physical coward . I do n&apos;t feel that the action is too bad for Milton ; he would think the divine purpose behind the civil war justified propaganda tricks , and need not have thought this a particularly bad one . the King was dead , and the purpose of the cheat was merely to prevent the people from thinking him a martyr . he had n&apos;t written any of the book really , and Milton suspected that at the time , so it was only a matter of answering one cheat with another . Milton must in any case have been insincere in pretending to be shocked at the use of a prayer by Sidney , given in the story as that of a pagan , but so Christian in feeling as to be out of period ( it assumes that God may be sending us evil as a test or tonic for our characters , which even if to be found in Aeschylus or Marcus Aurelius is not standard for Arcadia ) . Milton might comfort himself with the reflection that he was n&apos;t even damaging the man &apos;s character in the eyes of fit judges , only making use of a popular superstition - as Shelley expected on another occasion . however , M Morand finds that this kind of activity brought about a fallen condition , as one might say , in the mind of the poet , and such is what de Comus a Satan examines throughout the later poetry . there is an assumption here that to do government propaganda can only have a bad effect upon a poet &apos;s mind , and I feel able to speak on the point as I was employed at such work myself in the second world war , indeed once had the honour of being named in rebuttal by Fritzsche himself and called a curly-headed Jew . I was n&apos;t in on any of the splendid tricks , such as Milton is accused of , but the cooked-up argufying I have experienced . to work at it forces you to imagine all the time what the enemy will reply ; you are trying to get him into a corner . such a training can not narrow a man &apos;s understanding of other people &apos;s opinions , though it may well narrow his own opinions . I should say that Milton &apos;s experience of propaganda is what makes his later poetry so very dramatic ; that is , though he is a furious partisan , he can always imagine with all its force exactly what the reply of the opponent would be . as to his integrity , he was such an inconvenient propagandist that the government deserve credit for having the nerve to appoint and retain him . he had already published the divorce pamphlets before he got the job ; well now , if you are setting out to be severe and revolutionary on the basis of literal acceptance of the Old testament , the most embarrassing thing you can be confronted with is detailed evidence about the sexual habits of the patriarchs ; it is the one point where the plain man feels he can laugh . Milton always remained liable to defend his side by an argument which would strike his employers as damaging ; his style of attack is savagely whole-hearted , but his depth of historical knowledge and imaginative sympathy keep having unexpected effects . he was not at all likely to feel that he had forfeited his independence of mind by such work . M Morand therefore strikes me as rather innocent in assuming that he was corrupted by it , but I warmly agree that it made his mind very political . Professor Wilson Knight has also remarked that Milton wrote a political allegory under the appearance of a religious poem , though he did not draw such drastic consequences from the epigram . on the Morand view , God is simply a dynastic ruler like those Milton had had to deal with ; Cromwell had wanted his son to inherit , no less than Charles . M Morand does not seem to realize it , but the effect is to make Milton &apos;s God much better . his intrigues and lies to bolster his power are now comparatively unselfish , being only meant to transfer it unimpaired to his son , and above all he feels no malignity towards his victims . his method of impressing the loyalist angels will doom almost all mankind to misery , but he takes no pleasure in that ; it simply does not bother him . the hypocrisy which the jovial old ruffian feels to be required of him in public has not poisoned his own mind , as we realize when he permits himself his leering jokes . this does , I should say , correspond to the impression usually made by the poem on a person not brought up as a Christian , such as my Chinese and Japanese students . the next step is to regard the debate in heaven , where the son , but no angel , offers to die for man , as a political trick rigged up to impress the surviving angels ; the son is free to remark ( 3.245 ) that he knows the Father will n&apos;t let him stay dead , so that the incantationary repetition of the word death comes to seem blatantly artificial . ( we find in the de doctrina chapter 12 that Milton includes under the head of death , in scripture , all evils whatsoever &amp;hellip; ) . nobody is surprised at the absence of volunteers among the good angels , whereas Satan , during the parallel scene in hell ( 2.470 ) , has to close the debate hurriedly for fear a less competent rebel put himself forward . otherwise the two scenes are deliberately made alike , and the reason is simply that both are political : ce qui frappe , c&apos;est le parallelisme des moyens employ&amp;eacute;es , conseils , discours . m&amp;ecirc;me souci de garder pour soi tout gloire . ( p 145 ) . on reaching paradise regained , M Morand is interested to learn how the son grew up . in paradise lost he often seems half ashamed of the autocratic behaviour of his Father , because his role is to induce the subject angels to endure it ; but when he is alone on the earth-visit which has been arranged for him we find he has merely the cold calculating pride which we would expect from his training . however , we already find this trait , decides M Morand , at the early public moment when he offers his sacrifice ; he is unable to avoid presenting himself as solely interested in his own career ( p 169 ) . as the creation for which he was the instrument has already happened , he might at least speak as if he could tell a man apart from a cow , but he says that his Father &apos;s grace visits all his creatures ( 3.230 ) . Satan , on the parallel occasion , was at least genuinely concerned to get the job done , whoever did it ; and M Morand decides that the ringing repetition of me in the speech of sacrifice of the son is a little too grotesque , however perfectly in character . Milton n&apos;e&amp;ucirc;t pas pens&amp;eacute; &amp;agrave; ce que peut contenir de ridicule ce martellement du moi . de personnages extra-terrestres , le moins &amp;eacute;loign&amp;eacute; de la modestie est encore Satan . ( p 171 ) . this is at least a splendid reply to the argument that pride is the basic fault of all the characters who fall . the Morand line of argument can be taken an extra step , to argue that the son too is being cheated by the Father ; and this excites a suspicion that there is something inadequate about it . he says nothing of the means of his death , and speaks as if he is going to remain on earth till the last day : our chief impression here , surely , is not that he is too little interested in mankind but that he does not know what is going to happen , except for a triumph at which he can rejoice . if the Jews had not chosen to kill him , he would presumably have remained on earth till the last day , making history less bad than the poem describes it as being ; and what they will choose can be foreknown by the Father only . the son expects to find no frown upon the face of God on judgement day , the dies irae itself , so we can hardly doubt that he expects things to turn out better than they do . his prophecy appears to be a continuous narrative : not long lie &amp;hellip; rise victorious &amp;hellip; then ... then , as if he will lead the blessed to heaven very soon after the resurrection . among human speakers lastly die is a natural way to express pathos , though a tautology ; but a meaning which would make it a correct description of the career of the son is hard to invent . 