sea beast,"

"Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!"

What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an
idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it
shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as
a very little thing? Force of style is one of Milton's greatest
excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and
less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners, is to
take down the book and read it.

Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except
Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had
modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope,
condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not pretend to
say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree of
excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the poet
must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect examples
in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the sound and
movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our
other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put together, (with the
exception already mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our
stanza writers, as Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our
rhymists. But in neither is there any thing like the same ear for music,
the same power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of
musical rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his
lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the
very image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite