EMPSON AND BENTLEY
185
up with such spaniel vivacity. But the accumulation of his insights
results in an agglomeration, not a structure, not even a structure with
its lines of stress laid bare.
For, however richly Empson's method works out in tbe most
favorable circumstances, the price of these efforts is a multitude of
disappointments elsewhere. For instance, Milton compares Satan fly–
ing through Hell (II 634 ff.) to a fleet seen in the distance, and
Empson explains that he is "like a fleet rather than one ship because
of tbe imaginative wealth of polytheism and the variety of tbe world."
This mayor may not be so; a couple of reasons rather more imme–
diate and practical come easily to mind. (A single ship in Milton's
vast perspective would be lonely and small-unwelcome connotations
under the circumstances. A fleet on the other hand would bring to
mind the spice-and gold-fleets of Spain, Italy, and Portugal: rich,
wicked, and powerful empires.) But if we must see polytheism and
variety in Satan when he is compared to a fleet, what shall we see
when he is compared to "Teneriffe or Atlas unremov'd"? Shall he
then be monotheism and barrenness? Every successful excursion down
the byways of an image implies a long series of unsuccessful or in–
congruous ones.
If
no image can serve a simply decorative end until
we have exhausted all its conceivable thematic implications, reading
an epic will be like panning for gold in thin territory, our chief emo–
tional responses will be profound boredom and occasional surprise.
In order to read an epic by the explication-of-images method at all,
one must pick and choose and match images like a mosaic-worker;
even within the individual image one must somehow purge the un–
welcome elements. Empson finds it simplest to ignore elements which
don't serve his purpose, even when--especially when-they do serve
Milton's. He is enthralled by the subconscious motives which appar–
ently enabled Milton to write an interesting poem in spite of himself.
To judge from tbe account he gives of
Paradise Lost,
composing an
epic
mu~t
be something like standing guard over a basket of eels;
you wait for one to start wriggling, and then knock it over the head.
To say this much is not to deny the presence of subconscious or
half-perceived elements in Milton's work; precisely because his struc–
ture is so large and his conscious resolve so precisely focused, there's
a rare penumbra of half-glimpsed, half-developed conflicts on the
outer fringe of his vision. But there's a limit to the profitable percep-
