uble appeal
as only a very few poets in all the world have ever made it. And the
more poetry is studied and loved as the greatest of the arts, as the
medium through which that combination of the vision of genius with the
slow trained cunning of the craftsman, which is what great art is,
finds its most perfect expression, the more will men, or at least
Englishmen, return to Milton. And especially, in some ways, to
_Samson_, where his art is at its boldest and freest, and where it
suffered longest from the indifference of dull ears.

A little book of this kind is not the place for a discussion of English
metre, or even, in any detail, of Milton's. Those who wish to go into
such studies will find much of what they want in the Poet Laureate's
book on _Milton's Prosody_. It is possible to disagree with some of
his proposed scansions of doubtful lines, but it is impossible not to
learn a great deal from suggestions as to the rhythmical effects
intended by Milton which come, as these do, from one who is himself a
master of rhythm and has never concealed the fact {225} that Milton's
was one of the schools in which he passed his apprenticeship. So his
analysis, line by line, of the opening of the first chorus of _Samson_
will be a revelation to many of what they have, perhaps, never felt at
all, or felt only unconsciously without understanding anything of what
it was which they felt or why. But even without such help no one whose
ear has had the smallest training can fail to notice some of the more
daring of Milton's metrical effects. In the lines quoted above, for
instance, who can miss the triple stab of passionate agony in the
thrice repeated, strongly accented "dark, dark, dark"? The most
careless reader cannot fail to be arrested by the line, though he may
not realize the means employed by Milton to enforce attention, the rare
six stresses in a ten-syllabled line, the still rarer effect of three
strongly stressed syllables following immediately upon one another, the
inversion of three out of the five stresses of the next line,
"irrecoverably dark" suggesting the spasmodic disorder of violent
grief. These are certainly devices deliberately chosen for producing
the required effects. And so, probably, are the more regular rhythm of
the words which express the calming aspiration up to the throne of God,
and the quiet {226} mono-syllabic simplicity of the divine utterance,
"Let there be light," which continues its soft