These serious faults are balanced by virtues of another kind. Putting
Bacon aside, the condensed force and poignant brevity of whose
aphoristic wisdom has no parallel in English, there is no other
prosaist who possesses anything like Milton's command over the
resources of our language. Milton cannot match the musical harmony and
exactly balanced periods of his predecessor Hooker. He is without
the power of varied illustration, and accumulation of ornamental
circumstance, possessed by his contemporary, Jeremy Taylor
(1613-1667). But neither of these great writers impresses the reader
with a sense of unlimited power such as we feel to reside in Milton.
Vast as is the wealth of magnificent words which he flings with both
hands carelessly upon the page, we feel that there is still much more
in reserve.

The critics have observed (Collier's _Poetical Decameron_) that as
Milton advanced in life he gradually disused the compound words he
had been in the habit of making for himself. However this may be, his
words are the words of one who made a study of the language, as a
poet studies language, searching its capacities for the expression of
surging emotion. Jeremy Taylor's prose is poetical prose. Milton's
prose is not poetical prose, but a different thing, the prose of a
poet; not like Taylor's, loaded with imagery on the outside; but
coloured by imagination from within. Milton is the first English
writer who, possessing in the ancient models a standard of the effect
which could be produced by choice of words, set himself to the
conscious study of our native tongue with a firm faith in its as yet
undeveloped powers as an instrument of thought.

The words in Milton's poems have been counted, and it appears that he
employs 8000, while Shakspeare's plays and poems yield about 15,000.