exhausts itself, so that the appreciation of it has been
called the last reward of consummate scholarship. But the phrase does
Milton some injustice. It is true that the scholar tastes again and
again in Milton some flavour of association or suggestion which is not
to be perceived by those who are not scholars, and it is also true that
he consciously understands what he is enjoying more than they possibly
can. But neither Milton's nor any other {19} great art makes its main
appeal to learning. What does that is not art at all but pedantry.
Those who have never read a line of the Greek and Latin poets certainly
miss many pleasures in reading Milton, but, if they have any ear for
poetry at all, they do not miss either the mind or the art of Milton.
The unconquerable will, the high soaring soul, are everywhere audibly
present: and so, even to those who have little reading and no knowledge
at all of matters of rhythm or metre, are the grave Dorian music, the
stately verses rolling in each after the other like great ocean waves
in eternal difference, in eternal sameness. The ignorant ear hears and
rejoices, with a delight that passes understanding, as the ignorant eye
sees a fine drawing or a piece of Greek sculpture and without
understanding enjoys, learns, and unconsciously grows in keenness of
sight. To live with Milton is necessarily to learn that the art of
poetry is no triviality, no mere amusement, but a high and grave thing,
a thing of the choicest discipline of phrase, the finest craftsmanship
of structure, the most nobly ordered music of sound. The ordinary
reader may not be conscious of any such lessons: but he learns them
nevertheless. And from no one else in English can he learn them so
well as from Milton.

{20} For these reasons, these and others, we must cling to our great
epic poet, Shelley's "third among the sons of light." He is not easy
reading: the greatest seldom are: but as with all the greatest, each
new reading is not only easier than the last but fuller of matter for
thought, wonder and delight. At each new reading, too, the things in
him that belonged to his own age, the Biblical literalism, the
theological prepossessions, the political partisanship, recede more and
more into the background and leave us freer to enjoy the things which
belong to all time. And to all peoples. Milton is, indeed, intensely
English and could not have been anything but an Englishman. His
profound conviction