n picturesque, as if because they
were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to keep the sage
critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities at
the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. But Milton's
poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-place mould; it is not so
barren of resources. His worship of the Muse was not so simple or
confined. A sound arises "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes;" we
hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is also there, and
the statues of the gods are ranged around! The ear indeed predominates
over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and because the
language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural
accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas
conveyed by words. But where the associations of the imagination are not
the principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal
force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a
characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and Eve, of
Satan, etc. are always accompanied, in our imagination, with the grandeur
of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an
instance, take the following:

"He soon
Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,
The same whom John saw also in the sun:
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind
Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings
Lay waving round; on some great charge employ'd
He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep.
Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope
To find who might direct his wand'ring flight
To Paradise, the happy seat of man,
His journey's end, and our beginning woe.
But first he casts to change his proper shape,
Which else might work him danger or delay:
And now a stripling cherub he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb
Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd:
Under a coronet his flowing hair
In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore
Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold,
His habit fit for speed succinct, and held
Before his decent steps a silver wand."

The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek
statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with