with words! We
steal from one another and from the spirit of the hour; and with our
phrases and formulas and talismans we obliterate all distinction. One
sees the modern god as one who perpetually apologises and explains;
and the modern devil as one who perpetually apologises and
explains. Everything has its word-symbol, its word-mask, its
word-garment, its word-disgrace. Nothing comes out clear into the open,
unspeakable and inexplicable, and strikes us dumb!

That is what the great artists do--who laugh at our word-play. That is
what Milton does, who, in the science and art of handling words, has
never been equalled. Milton, indeed, remains, by a curious fate, the
only one of the very great poets who has never been "interpreted" or
"appreciated" or "re-created" by any critical modern. And they have
left him alone; have been frightened of him; have not dared to slime
their "words" over him, for the very reason that he is the supreme
artist in words! He is so great an artist that his creations detach
themselves from all dimness--from all such dimness as modern
"appreciation" loves--and stand out clear and cold and "unsympathetic";
to be bowed down before and worshipped, or left unapproached.

Milton is a man's poet. It would be a strange thing if women loved
him. Modern criticism is a half-tipsy Hermaphrodite, in love only
with what is on the point of turning into something else. Milton is
always himself. His works of art are always themselves. He and they
are made of the same marble, of the same metal. They are never
likely to change into anything else! Milton is, like all the greatest
artists, a man of action. He, so learned in words, in their history, in
their weight, in their origin, in their evocations; he, the scholar of
scholars, is a man, not of words, but of deeds. That is why the style
of Milton is a thing that you can touch with your outstretched
fingers. It has been hammered into shape by a hand that could grasp
a sword; it has been moulded into form by a brain that could
dominate a council-chamber. No wonder we word-maniacs fear to
approach him. He repels us; he holds us back; he hides his
work-shop from us; and his art smites us into silent hatred.

For Milton himself, though he is the artist of artists, art is not the
first thing. It is only the first thing with us because we are life's
slaves, and not its masters. Art is what we protect ourselves
with--from life. For us it is a religion and a drug. T