ho the strains of Milton's
early poems, and to name them "Miltonics," precursors of the Romantic
Revival. No doubt there is a marked difference between Milton's earlier
manner and his later; not a few of his lovers, if they were forced to
choose, would readily give up the three major poems to save the five best
of the minor. But it is going far to appropriate the name of "Miltonic"
to imitators of the earlier poems. Perhaps the study of _L'Allegro_ and
_Il Penseroso_ and _Comus_ helped forward the Romantic Revival; but the
chief influence of Milton on the development of English poetry was not
this. It was natural enough that those who had been taught from childhood
to read and admire _Paradise Lost_ should find relief and novelty in the
freer and more spontaneous music of these youthful poems. But the truth
is that before ever he abetted the escape, he helped to forge the
fetters; that Milton, as much as any other single writer, was responsible
for the wide and potent sway of the classical convention.

Above all, he may fairly be called the inventor and, by the irony of
fate, the promulgator of that "poetic diction" which, in the time of its
deformity and decay, Wordsworth sought to destroy. Johnson attributes the
invention to Dryden. "There was therefore," he says, "before the time of
Dryden no poetical diction, no system of words, at once refined from the
grossness of domestick use, and free from the harshness of terms
appropriated to particular arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat
the purpose of a poet."

There is no need to quarrel with this account, if we are careful to
understand exactly what Johnson means. Dryden, he says in effect, wrote
plain, well-bred English; he eschewed technical terms, shunned the florid
licenses of the Elizabethans, and yet, in his more studied verse, never
dropped into the town-gallant vein of some of his contemporaries, the
slang of Butler or Lestrange. Johnson, it should be remembered, thought
the diction of _Lycidas_ "harsh," and it is plain enough from many of his
utterances that he ranged Milton with the poets who use words and phrases
"too remote" from the language of natural intercourse. He was a devoted
adherent of the school of Dryden and Pope; in the _Lives of the Poets_ he
loses no opportunity of expressing his contempt for blank verse; he was
only too likely to exalt the influence of his masters on the poets of his
own time, and to ignore the influence of Milton. Sin