y to Milton were the concrete epic
realities with which his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of things,
and the definite embodiment of all his spiritual essences. Keats'
_Hyperion_ fails largely for want of an exact physical system such as
Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with vague Romantic suggestion,
and there is nothing for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening;
but it is difficult to say what, for we see only dream-imagery, and hear
only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and
suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The
"philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's _Platonick
Song of the Soul_ (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her
Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after
Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction,"
"exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation,"
"circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within
the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza. Milton keeps us in better
company than this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently,
but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the
names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for
concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He does not name, for
instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in
Hell:--

Four speedy Cherubim
Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy.

He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to
definite picture: of Death he says--

So spake the grisly Terror;

and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's king, rise

from among
Thousand celestial Ardours.

In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant scent of mortality,
becomes all nose--

So scented the grim Feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air.

A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in
the First Book of _Paradise Regained_, where is described how Satan,
disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and

Bowing low
His gray dissimulation, disappeared
Into thin air diffused.

The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed,
the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of
power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Mi