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 hath 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 Shakspeare,
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
o