The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress are
such as could only be produced by an imagination in the highest
degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by
incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton's mind
may be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work
the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts.

He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions
are therefore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to
unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were
extensive. The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He
sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He
can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is
gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it
is his peculiar power to astonish.

He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to
know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully
than upon others--the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the
splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating
the dreadful; he therefore chose a subject on which too much could
not be said, on which he might tire his fancy without the censure of
extravagance.

The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not
satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are
requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the
fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of
possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent
his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination