spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend.  Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases:  to this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs.  Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies.”

So that of Spenser: 

      “The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
        And is with child of glorious great intent,
      Can never rest until it forth have brought
        The eternal brood of glory excellent.”

Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave nothing undone which it was in his power to do.  He always labours, and almost always succeeds.  He strives hard to say the finest things in the world, and he does say them.  He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost:  he surrounds it with every possible association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical.  He refines on his descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at them; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that “makes Ossa like a wart.”  In Milton, there is always an appearance of effort:  in Shakespeare, scarcely any.

Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer.  He is a writer of centos, and yet in originality scarcely inferior to Homer.  The power of his mind is stamped on every line.  The fervour of his imagination melts down and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory materials.  In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more distinct from them.  The quantity of art in him shews the strength of his genius:  the weight of his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other writer.  Milton’s learning has the effect of intuition.  He describes objects, of which he could only have read in books, with the vividness of actual observation.  His imagination has the force of nature.  He makes words tell as pictures.