Page:The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton.djvu/42

 xxxiv THE LIFE OF MILTON

��to the complexity of the poet the complexities of the theologian, the theorist, and the publicist. He was compelled to make himself over from Elizabethan to Crom- wellian, not quietly and by slow processes, but in the centre of clashing forces. This slight sketch can at best have pointed out only the most salient material ne- cessary to judgment of a character so variously endowed and acted upon. It will have accomplished its end if it has dissatisfied the reader with a conventional opinion.

As for his poetry, Milton must be thought of first and last as a master stylist. Keats is more poignant, Shakespeare more various, Coleridge more magical ; but nobody who has written in English has had at his command the same unfailing majesty of utterance. His is the organ voice of England. The figure suggests, too, the defect of his qualities. His voice is always his own ; he has none of the ventriloquism of the dramatic poets, none of the thaumaturgy by which they ob- scure themselves in their subject. Milton is always Miltonic, always lofty and grave, whether the subject sinks or rises. Through him we come nearest to that union of measure and might which is peculiar to the master poets of antiquity, and it is through a study of him that the defects of taste incident upon our modern systems of education can be most surely made good.

W. V. M.

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