But, apart from these, a
naturalist is at once aware that Milton had neither the eye nor the
ear of a naturalist. At no time, even before his loss of sight, was he
an exact observer of natural objects. It may be that he knew a
skylark from a redbreast, and did not confound the dog-rose with the
honeysuckle. But I am sure that he had never acquired that interest in
nature's things and ways, which leads to close and loving watching
of them. He had not that sense of outdoor nature, empirical and not
scientific, which endows the _Angler_ of his cotemporary Walton, with
its enduring charm, and which is to be acquired only by living in the
open country in childhood. Milton is not a man of the fields, but of
books. His life is in his study, and when he steps abroad into the air
he carries his study thoughts with him. He does look at nature, but he
sees her through books. Natural impressions are received from without,
but always in those forms of beautiful speech, in which the poets of
all ages have clothed them. His epithets are not, like the epithets of
the school of Dryden and Pope, culled from the _Gradus ad Parnassum_;
they are expressive of some reality, but it is of a real emotion in
the spectator's soul, not of any quality detected by keen insight
in the objects themselves.
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