Variety in his Early Work.--A line in _Lycidas_ says:--

"He touched the tender stops of various quills,"

and this may be said of Milton. His early poems show great variety.
There are the dirge notes in _Lycidas_; the sights, sounds, and odors
of the country, in _L'Allegro_; the delights of "the studious
cloister's pale," in _Il Penseroso_; the impelling presence of his
"great Task-Master," in the sonnets.

Although Milton is noted for his seriousness and sublimity, we must
not be blind to the fact that his minor poems show great delicacy of
touch. The epilogue of the Spirit at the end of _Comus_ is an instance
of exquisite airy fancy passing into noble imagination at the close.
In 1638 Sir Henry Wotton wrote to Milton this intelligent criticism of
_Comus_: "I should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did
not ravish me with a certain Doric delicacy in your Songs and Odes,
whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in
our language _Ipsa mollities_."

Limitations.--In giving attention to Milton's variety, we should not
forget that when we judge him by Elizabethan standards his limitations
are apparent. As varied as are his excellences, his range is far
narrower than Shakespeare's. He has little sense of humor and less
sympathy with human life than either Shakespeare or Burns. Milton
became acquainted with flowers through the medium of a book before he
noticed them in the fields. Consequently, in speaking of flowers and
birds, he sometimes makes those mistakes to which the bookish man is
more prone than the child who first hears the story of Nature from her
own lips. Unlike Shakespeare and Burns, Milton had the misfortune to
spend his childhood in a large city. Again, while increasing age
seemed to impose no limitations on Shakespeare's genius, his touch
being as delicate in _The Tempest_ as in his first plays, Milton's
style, on the other hand, grew frigid and devoid of imagery toward the
end of his life.

Sublimity.--The most striking characteristic of Milton's poetry is
sublimity, which consists, first, in the subject matter. In the
opening lines of _Paradise Lost_ he speaks of his "adventurous song"--

"That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."

Milton succeeded in his intention. The English language has not
another poem that approaches _Paradise Lost_ in sustained sublimity.

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