we bear in mind Milton's threefold canon, we must admit that
his poetry lacks three great elements of power. He is not Simple,
Sensuous, or Passionate. He is too essentially modern to be really
simple. He is the product of a high-strung civilization, and all its
complicated crosscurrents of thought and feeling stir and perplex his
verse. Simplicity of style indeed he constantly aims at, and, by the aid
of a fastidious culture, secures. But his simplicity is, to use the
distinction which he himself imported from France, rather akin to
_simplesse_ than to _simplicite_--to the elaborated and artificial
semblance than to the genuine quality. He is not sensuous except in so
far as the most refined and delicate appreciation of nature in all her
forms and phases can be said to constitute a sensuous enjoyment. And
then, again, he is pre-eminently not passionate. He is calm, balanced,
self-controlled, sane, austere. The very qualities which are his
characteristic glory make passion impossible.

Another hindrance to his title as a great poet, is that he is not, and
never could be, a poet of the multitude. His verse lacks all popular
fibre. It is the delight of scholars, of philosophers, of men who live
by silent introspection or quiet communing with nature. But it is
altogether remote from the stir and stress of popular life and struggle.
Then, again, his tone is profoundly, though not morbidly, melancholy,
and this is fatal to popularity. As he himself said, "The life of the
people is such that in literature they require joy." But not only his
thought, his very style, is anti-popular. Much of his most elaborate
work is in blank verse, and that in itself is a heavy draw-back. Much
also is in exotic and unaccustomed metres, which to the great bulk of
English readers must always be more of a discipline than of a delight.
And, even when he wrote in our indigenous metres, his ear often played
him false. His rhymes are sometimes only true to the eye, and his lines
are over-crowded with jerking monosyllables. Let one glaring instance
suffice--

Calm not life's crown, though calm is well.

The sentiment is true and even profound; but the expression is surely
rugged and jolting to the last degree; and there are many lines nearly
as ineuphonious. Here are some samples, collected by that fastidious
critic, Mr. Frederic Harrison--

"The sandy spits, the shore-lock'd lakes."

"Could'st thou no better keep, O Abbey old?"