demurs to the line in Paradise Regained:

'_From that placid aspect and meek regard,_'

on the ground that; '_meek regard_ conveys no new idea to _placid
aspect_.' But _aspect_ is the countenance of Christ when passive
to the gaze of others: _regard_ is the same countenance in active
contemplation of those others whom he loves or pities. The _placid
aspect_ expresses, therefore, the divine rest; the _meek regard_
expresses the divine benignity: the one is the self-absorption of the
total Godhead, the other the eternal emanation of the Filial Godhead.

'By what ingenuity,' says Landor, 'can we erect into a verse--

"_In the bosom of bliss, and light of light?_'"

Now really it is by my watch exactly three minutes too late for _him_
to make that objection. The court cannot receive it now; for the line just
this moment cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same identical
structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very
same ripple, viz., a trochee in the second foot, _placid_ in the one
line, _bosom_ in the other. They are a sort of _snags_, such as lie in the
current of the Mississippi. _There_, they do nothing but mischief. Here,
when the lines are read in their entire _nexus_, the disturbance stretches
forwards and backwards with good effect on the music. Besides, if it did
_not_, one is willing to take a _snag_ from Milton, but one does not
altogether like being _snagged_ by the Mississippi. One sees no particular
reason for bearing it, if one only knew how to be revenged on a river.

But, of these metrical skirmishes, though full of importance to the