n of Heaven:--

He through Heaven,
That opened wide her blazing portals, led
To God's eternal house direct the way.

But, indeed, the examination of the music of Milton involves so minute a
survey of technical detail as to be tedious to all but a few lovers of
theory. The laws of music in verse are very subtle, and, it must be
added, very imperfectly ascertained; so that those who dogmatise on them
generally end by slipping into fantasy or pedantry. How carefully and
incessantly Milton adjusted the sound to the sense is known to every
reader of _Paradise Lost_. The dullest ear is caught by the contrast
between the opening of the gates of Heaven--

Heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving--

and the opening of those other gates--

On a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus.

But there are many more delicate instances than these. In the choruses of
_Samson Agonistes_, where he reaches the top of his skill, Milton varies
even the length of the line. So he has hardly a rule left, save the
iambic pattern, which he treats merely as a point of departure or
reference, a background or framework to carry the variations imposed upon
it by the luxuriance of a perfectly controlled art. The great charm of
the metre of Wither, which Charles Lamb admired and imitated, lies in its
facile combination of what, for the sake of brevity, may be called the
iambic and trochaic movements. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ Milton
had proved his mastery of both its resources. The gaiety of these lines--

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee
Jest, and youthful Jollity--

passes easily into the solemnity of these--

But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale.

In _Samson Agonistes_ he sought to extend something of the same liberty
to the movement of blank verse. He freely intermixes the falling with the
rising stress, shifting the weights from place to place, and often
compensating a light patter of syllables in the one half of the line by
the introduction of two or three consecutive strong stresses in the other
half. Under this treatment the metre of _Gorboduc_ breaks into blossom
and song:--

O, how comely it is, and how reviving
To the spirits of just men long opp