you catch him
in the act. How do you propose to describe him?

Broadly speaking, there are two methods available. You may begin with the
more general and comprehensive of the relations that fall in with your
purpose, securing breadth of view and truth in the larger values, leaving
the imagination to supply the more particular and personal details on the
barest of hints from you: or you may fix your gaze exclusively on some
vivid cluster of details, indicating their remoter relations and their
place in a wider perspective by a few vague suggestions.

The first of these ways is Milton's. He maps out his descriptions in bold
outline, attending always to the unity of the picture and the truth of
the larger relations. He is chary of detail, and what he adds is added
for its own immediate importance rather than for its remoter power of
suggestion. Adam and Eve when they are first introduced, are thus
described:--

Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honour clad
In naked majesty, seemed lords of all,
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,--
Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,
Whence true authority in men.

As pictorial description this is all but completely empty. It tells you
only that they stood upright, that they were like their Maker, and that
they were possessed of the virtues that their appearance would lead you
to expect. Their physical delineation is to be accommodated by the
imagination of the reader to this long catalogue of moral
qualities,--nobility, honour, majesty, lordliness, worth, divinity,
glory, brightness, truth, wisdom, sanctitude, severity, and purity. In
the following lines the poet proceeds to distinguish the one figure from
the other, adding a few details with regard to each. The epithets he
chooses are still vague. Adam's forehead is "fair" and "large," his eye
is "sublime," his locks are "hyacinthine," and (a detail that has escaped
the notice of many illustrators of _Paradise Lost_) they fall in clusters
as low as his shoulders. From beginning to end of the description the aim
of the poet is to preserve the right key of large emotion, and the words
that he chooses are chosen chiefly for their emotional value. The
emotions are given; the portraiture is left to be filled in by the
imagination.

Shakespeare commonly works in the reverse way. He does n