ough the field be lost?
That Glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me (I, 93-111, passim.)
There is immediate evidence of a grandeur of spirit, however grandiose it also is. Vowing to make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven in Book I, Satan argues in Book II with his principal lieutenants, Moloch, Belial, Mammon, and Beelzebub, for what today would be called a proactive approach to the incursion of evil on a place Beelzebub explains will be the earth, and toward earth's chief inhabitant man, all with the ultimate object the reclaiming of heaven itself. Meanwhile, Satan has more or less institutionalized his declaration of empire by raising the palace, Pandaemonium. Hughes (230n) notes that Pandaemonium "signifies the dominion of the devils in this world," according to metaphysical poet Henry More. Book II ends with the onset of Satan's journey toward the new world; it is also the onset of Satan as the active agent of conflict on earth. According to Hughes, "It is only in the first two books of Paradise Lost that Satan seems heroic" (177). Hughes develops an idea of a
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distinction between heroism and grandeur, with a view toward focusing on the fall of man and the victory of heaven over Satan. As he continues:
There is grandeur but no heroism in his later soliloquies and after the seduction of Eve he departs to Hell, leaving the world to his vice-gerents [sic] Sin and Death. There is no doubt of Milton's intent to degrade him, step by step, down to the scene of his second and involuntary appearance in serpent form in Book X. The first shock to any admiration for him in a reader's mind comes when he meets his allegorical daughter Sin and his incestuously begotten grandson Death at Hell's gates (II, 648-883). For over two centuries critics agreed that the step into pure allegory in Sin and Death was a blemish on the poe...