And the "thin" story of Satan and Adam and Eve was not a Puritan invention. Indeed there is very little of the specifically Puritan in Paradise Lost or in the whole body of Milton's poetry.

"We have much more sympathy with virtu, which is always exciting, than with virtue, which is always smug. This instinctive response has of course grown the stronger as religion and morality have been increasingly sapped by romantic naturalism and sentimentalism."

Some warning about how we should not be too quick to paint Satan the hero nor God as Charles I

In short, if we think defiance is splendid regardless of what is defied, if we read this speech with a thrill of sym-pathy, we ought to feel the same thrill in reading the speeches of lago and Edmund and Macbeth. Certainly Milton did no less than Shakespeare to guide our reaction. But anything is possible to romantic sentimentalism combined with indifference to the principles on which

Cite Alduous Huxley on Milton's Satan and his sympatheic nature

Of course Satan has heroic qualities. A character of Mr. Aldous Hux-ley's remarks: "Indeed, you can't be really bad unless you do have most of the virtues. Look at Milton's Satan for example. Brave, strong, gen-erous, loyal, prudent, temperate, self-sacrificing. And let's give the dictators the credit that's due to them; some of them are nearly as virtuous as Satan. Not quite, I admit, but nearly.

One of the more chaster interpretations of the central theme of good & evil in PL

Adam and Eve are now left alone. The war between God and Satan had been only a macrocosmic illustration of, and background for, Milton's real theme, the war between good and evil in the soul of man; and while Satan had been defeated in heaven he is to be victorious on earth...

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