the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all
the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells--the same
absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time. It
has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of criticism,
that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if because they
were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to keep the sage
critical balance even, and to allow no one man to possess two qualities
at the same time) proportionably deficient in other respects. But
Milton's poetry is not cast in any such narrow, common-place mould; it
is not so barren of resources. His worship of the Muse was not so simple
or confined. A sound arises "like a steam of rich distilled perfumes";
we hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is also there,
and the statues of the gods are ranged around! The ear indeed
predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and
because the language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a
more natural accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations
of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associations of the
imagination are not the principal thing, the individual object is given
by Milton with equal force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of
this, as a characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of
Adam and Eve, of Satan, &c. are always accompanied, in our imagination,
with the grandeur of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of
sculpture. As an instance, take the following:

"------He soon
Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand,
The same whom John saw also in the sun:
His back was turned, but not his brightness hid;
Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar
Circled his head, nor less his locks behind