Hence the high degree of perfection
realised in the total result. For there were combined to produce it
the opposite virtues of two distinct periods of mental development;
the daring imagination and fresh emotional play of early manhood, with
the exercised judgment and chastened taste of ripened years. We have
regarded the twenty-five years of Milton's life between 1641 and the
commencement of _Paradise Lost_, as time ill laid out upon inferior
work which any one could do, and which was not worth doing by any one.
Yet it may be made a question if in any other mode than by adjournment
of his early design, Milton could have attained to that union of
original strength with severe restraint, which distinguishes from all
other poetry, except that of Virgil, the three great poems of his old
age. If the fatigue of age is sometimes felt in _Paradise Regained_,
we feel in _Paradise Lost_ only (in the words of Chateaubriand), "la
maturite de l'age a travers les passions des legeres annees; une
charme extraordinaire de vieillesse et de jeunesse."
A still further inference is warranted by the Trinity College jottings
of 1641.
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