nd, smiling, to his only Son thus said.

Here, it is true, "the Eternal Eye" smiles and speaks to his only Son.
But Milton has really discarded the figure after the words "his high
decree," which bring in a new order of thoughts. He trusts the reader to
follow his thought without grammatical readjustment--to drop the symbol
and remember only the thing symbolised. His trust was warranted, until
Landor detected the solecism. The clearest case of mixed metaphor ever
charged against Milton occurs in the Eleventh Book, where the lazar-house
is described--

Sight so deform what heart of rock could long
Dry-eyed behold?

Rogers pointed this out to Coleridge, who told Wordsworth that he could
not sleep all the next night for thinking of it. What months of insomnia
must he not have suffered from the perusal of Shakespeare's works!

The close-wrought style of Milton makes the reading of _Paradise Lost_ a
hard task in this sense, that it is a severe intellectual exercise,
without relaxation. The attention that it demands, word by word, and line
by line, could not profitably be given to most books; so that many
readers, trained by a long course of novel-reading to nibble and browse
through the pastures of literature, find that Milton yields little or no
delight under their treatment, and abandon him in despair.

And yet, with however great reluctance, it must be admitted that the
close study and admiring imitation of Milton bring in their train some
lesser evils. Meaning may be arranged too compactly in a sentence; for
perfect and ready assimilation some bulk and distention are necessary in
language as in diet. Now the study of Milton, if it teaches anything,
teaches to discard and abhor all superfluity. He who models himself upon
this master will never "go a-begging for some meaning, and labour to be
delivered of the great burden of nothing." But he may easily fall into
the opposite error of putting "riddles of wit, by being too scarce of
words." He will be so intent upon the final and perfect expression of his
thought, that his life may pass before he finds it, and even if, in the
end, he should say a thing well, he is little likely to say it in due
season. "Brevity is attained in matter," says a master of English prose,
"by avoiding idle compliments, prefaces, protestations, parentheses,
superfluous circuit of figures and digressions: in the composition, by
omitting conjunctions--_not only ... but also, both the one and