High-water mark even in the physical world is a variable limit. Shakespere
constantly, and some other poets here and there in short passages go beyond
Milton. But in the same space we shall nowhere find anything that can outgo
the passage beginning "Alas what boots it," down to "head of thine," and
the whole conclusion from "Return Alpheus." For melody of versification,
for richness of images, for curious felicity of expression, these cannot be
surpassed.

"But O the heavy change"--to use an irresistible quotation, the more
irresistible that the change is foreshadowed in _Lycidas_ itself--from the
golden poetry of these early days to the prose of the pamphlets. It is not
that Milton's literary faculty is less conspicuous here, or less
interesting. There is no English prose before him, none save Taylor's and
Browne's in his time, and absolutely none after him that can compare with
the finest passages of these singular productions. The often quoted
personal descriptions of his aims in life, his early literary studies, his
views of poetry and so forth, are almost equal in the "other harmony of
prose" to _Comus_ and _Lycidas_. The deservedly famous _Areopagitica_ is
full of the most splendid concerted pieces of prose-music, and hardly
anywhere from the _Tractate of Reformation Touching Church Discipline_ to
the _History of Britain_, which he revised just before his death, is it
possible to read a page without coming across phrases, passages, and even
whole paragraphs, which are instinct with the most splendid life. But the
difference between Milton's poetry and his prose is, that in verse he is
constantly under the restraint (sometimes, in his later work especially,
too much under the restraint) of the sense of style; while in his prose he
seems to be wholly emancipated from it. Even in his finest passages he
never seems to know or to care how a period is going to end. He piles
clause on clause, links conjunction to conjunction, regardless of breath,
or sense, or the most ordinary laws of grammar. The second sentence of his
first prose work contains about four hundred words, and is broken in the
course of them like a wounded snake. In his very highest flights he will
suddenly drop to grotesque and bathos; and there is no more difficult task
(_haud inexpertus loquor_) than the selection from Milton of any passage of
length which shall not contain faults of which a modern schoolboy or
gutter-journalist would be ashamed. Nor is