rtion to its greatness. It is the only absolutely certain test of
greatness in art. The instantly popular tune is unendurable in six
months, the instantly popular novel or poem is totally forgotten in a
year or two. No one perceives the whole greatness of St. Paul's
Cathedral, or Sansovino's Library at Venice, or the music of Bach, or
the poetry of Milton, at the first sight or hearing. No competent eye,
ear or mind fails to perceive more and more of it at each renewed
experience. Whatever be the art, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a
book, the test is the same: the cheap, the sentimental, {194} the
sensational, the merely pretty, lose something, be it little or much,
at each renewal of acquaintance: the great work steadily gains. To
this test _Paradise Lost_ can fearlessly appeal. It is not meant for
idle hours or empty people. It is not amusing in the lower sense of
the word. It is not as exciting as it might well have been. It is
probably true that, as Johnson said with his usual honesty, "No one
ever wished it longer than it is": yet there is equal truth in another
remark of his, "I cannot wish Milton's work other than it is," and in
the implied answer to his bold question, "What other author ever soared
so high or sustained his flight so long?" The difficulty for Milton's
readers is that they do not easily soar, and still less easily sustain
their soaring. The great gifts which Johnson brought to the criticism
of literature lay far more in common sense and in a profound insight
into human life than in any real turn for poetry. Of that nearly every
one who to-day gives much time to reading poetry will probably have as
much as he. Such people are sometimes mistakenly content with a single
reading of _Paradise Lost_. They remember a few of its glories and the
rest of the poem they acquiesce in forgetting. Let them put it to the
test to which lovers of music {195} put the Symphonies of Beethoven and
lovers of sculpture the remains of the Parthenon and the temple of the
Ephesian Artemis. Let them give the little time required to read it
through every year, or every second year. They will find more in it
the second time than they did the first, and much more the fifth or the
tenth time. It will issue triumphantly from the trial: and before they
reach middle age they will know by their own personal experience, what
the best authorities have always told them, that this is one of those
rare works of human