interesting commentaries upon life.

The Shakespearean attitude of mind is quite a definite and articulate
one, and one that can be, by slow degrees, acquired, even by persons
who are not cultivated or clever. It is an attitude "compounded of
many simples," and, like the melancholy of Jaques, it wraps us about
"in a most humorous sadness." But the essential secret of
Shakespeare's genius is best apprehended in the felicity of certain
isolated passionate speeches, and in the magic of his songs.


10. MILTON. _Any edition_.

No epicurean lover of the subtler delicacies in poetic rhythm or of
the more exalted and translunar harmonies in the imaginative
suggestiveness of words, can afford to leave Milton untouched. In
sheer felicity of beauty--the beauty of suggestive words, each one
carrying "a perfume in the mention," and together, by their
arrangement in relation to one another, conveying a thrill of absolute
and final satisfaction--no poem in our language surpasses Lycidas, and
only the fine great odes of John Keats approach or equal it.

There are passages, too, in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, which, for calm, flowing, and immortal loveliness,
are not surpassed in any poetry in the world.

Milton's work witnesses to the value in art of what is ancient and
traditional, but while he willingly uses every tradition of antiquity,
he stamps all he writes with his own formidable image and
superscription.