urselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it
approaches to others, becomes more distinct from them. The quantity of art
in him shews the strength of his genius: the weight of his intellectual
obligations would have oppressed any other writer. Milton's learning has
all the effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only
have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His
imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures.

"Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams."

The word _lucid_ here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the
most perfect landscape.

And again:

"As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light."

If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not have
described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages are like
demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be multiplied without
end.

We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he describes
visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an unusual degree of
strength in his mind, after the privation of his sight; but we find the
same palpableness and truth in the descriptions which occur in his early
poems. In Lycidas, he speaks of "the great vision of the guarded mount,"
with that preternatural weight of impression with which it would present
itself suddenly to "the pilot of some small night-foundered skiff;" and
the lines in the Penseroso, describing "the wandering moon,

"Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven's wide pathless way,"

are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also the
same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all the
different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells--the same
absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It
has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of criticism,
that his ideas were musical rather tha