ation that now seems utterly astounding. "Those who
admire the beauties of this great poem sometimes force their own judgment
into false admiration of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves
to think that admirable which is only singular." Of Lycidas he says: "In
this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for
there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and
therefore disgusting. . . Surely no man could have fancied that he read
'Lycidas' with pleasure, had he not known its author." He acknowledges
that "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" are "noble efforts of imagination";
and that, "as a series of lines," "Comus" "may be considered as worthy of
all the admiration with which the votaries have received it." But he
makes peevish objections to its dramatic probability, finds its dialogues
and soliloquies tedious, and unmindful of the fate of Midas, solemnly
pronounces the songs--"Sweet Echo" and "Sabrina fair"--"harsh in their
diction and not very musical in their numbers"! Of the sonnets he says:
"They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only
be said that they are not bad."[8] Boswell reports that, Hannah More
having expressed her "wonder that the poet who had written 'Paradise
Lost' should write such poor sonnets," Johnson replied: "Milton, madam,
was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock, but could not carve
heads upon cherry stones."

The influence of Milton's minor poetry first becomes noticeable in the
fifth decade of the century, and in the work of a new group of lyrical
poets: Collins, Gray, Mason, and the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton.
To all of these Milton was master. But just as Thomson and Shenstone got
original effects from Spenser's stanza, while West and Cambridge and
Lloyd were nothing but echoes; so Collins and Gray--immortal names--drew
fresh music from Milton's organ pipes, while for the others he set the
tune. The Wartons, indeed, though imitative always in their verse, have
an independent and not inconsiderable position in criticism and literary
scholarship, and I shall return to them later in that connection. Mason,
whose "English Garden" has been reviewed in chapter iv, was a small poet
and a somewhat absurd person. He aped, first Milton and afterward Gray,
so closely that his work often seems like parody. In general the
Miltonic revival made itself manifest in a more dispersed and indirect
fashion