ight of mortal eyes.

Still, it must be admitted that, impossible as was the task of making
the Infinite and Eternal an actor and speaker in a human poem, Milton's
very failure in it is sublime. His prodigious powers are nowhere more
wonderfully displayed than in trying to do what no one, not even
himself, could do. The second half of his third book, for instance, is
far more interesting than the first, but it may well be doubted whether
the mere fact of his accomplishing the first at all is not a greater
proof of his poetic genius. Nowhere does that unfailing certainty of
style, in which he has scarcely an equal among the poets of the whole
world, stand him in such astonishing stead as in these difficult
dialogues in heaven.

"Father, thy word is passed, Man shall find grace;
And shall Grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers.
To visit all thy creatures, and to all
Comes unprevented, unimplored, unsought?
Happy for Man, so coming;"

On the side of invention there is nothing remarkable; but, on the side
of art, what a {159} divine graciousness there is in its tone and
manner; what incomparable skill in the management of the verse! Note
the quiet monosyllabic beginning, taking note, as it were, of the
decree of mercy, and then the expansion of it, the loving voice
pressing forward in freer movement as it confidently proclaims the
happy results that cannot fail to follow. And observe the peculiarly
Miltonic interlacing of the whole, line leading to line and word to
word: the "grace" of the first line giving the key to the "grace" of
the second, the repeated "find" of the second line and the repeated
"all" of the fourth, the "comes" of the fifth line leading on to the
"coming" of the sixth. To make a list of such details as these is not
to explain the effect which they produce; that is the secret of
Milton's genius. So is that cunning variety in the rhythm of the
verses: three pauses in the first line, two in the second, only one in
the third: the principal pause after the sixth syllable in both the
first two lines, and yet the words and their accents so artfully varied
that not the slightest monotony is felt; the suggestion of easy flight
in the smooth unbroken movement of the third line--

"The speediest of thy winged messengers."

{160} Milton knew that an utterance of this kind, in which the Bible
had anticipated him a hundred times, admitted of no nov