We often hear of the magical influence of poetry.  The expression in general means nothing:  but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate.  His poetry acts like an incantation.  Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power.  There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words.  But they are words of enchantment.  No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near.  New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead.  Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed.  The spell loses its power:  and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, “Open Wheat,” “Open Barley,” to the door which obeyed no sound but “Open Sesame.”  The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this.

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-rolls of names.  They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than other names.  Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas.  Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value.  One transports us back to a remote period of history.  Another places us among the novel scenes avid manners of a distant region.  A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize.  A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso.  It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection.  These poems differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture.  They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself.  Every epithet is a text for a stanza.