oduced reforms of his own,
no less striking than the reforms effected by Dryden. Shirley is a good
example of a genuine late Elizabethan. But in Shirley's works there is
nothing that is not an echo. In Milton's, on the other hand, after the
volume of 1645, there is nothing that echoes any earlier English poet
even faintly. He renayed his ancestry; and, if he left no descendants, he
must needs be regarded as "a vast species alone."

The Elizabethans, including even the author of _Sejanus_ and the
translator of Homer, were Romantics. The terms Romantic and Classic are
perhaps something overworn; and, although they are useful to supply a
reason, it may well be doubted whether they ever helped any one to an
understanding. Yet here, if anywhere, they are in place; for Milton is,
by common consent, not only a Classic poet, but the greatest exemplar of
the style in the long bead-roll of English poets. The "Augustans" prided
themselves on their resemblance to the poets of the great age of Rome.
Was there nothing in common between them and Milton, and did they really
borrow nothing and learn nothing from him?

This much is agreed, that of all English styles Milton's is best entitled
to the name of Classic. In his poems may be found every device that
belongs to the Classic manner, as in Shakespeare's plays may be found
every device that belongs distinctively to the Romantic. Perhaps the two
manners are best compared by the juxtaposition of descriptive passages.
In description it is impossible for literature to be exhaustive; a choice
must be made, an aspect emphasised, and by far the greater part left to
the imagination of the reader. A man, for instance, has stature, feature,
bones, muscles, nerves, entrails; his eyes, hair, and skin are of certain
colours; he stands in a particular attitude at a particular spot on the
surface of the earth; he is agitated by certain passions and ideas; every
movement that he makes is related to his constitution and his past
history; he has affinity with other men by the ties of the family, the
society, the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute than a hundred
writers can describe and explain in a year; he is a laughing, weeping,
money-making, clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping, amorous,
credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative, gregarious, prehensile,
two-legged animal. He does not cease to be all this and more, merely
because he happens to be at one of his thousand tricks, and