" And a general arraignment has been laid against Milton
of a vagueness and looseness of imagery, which contrasts unfavourably
with the vivid and precise detail of other poets, of Homer or of
Dante, for example.
Now first, it must be said that Milton is not one of the poets of
inaccurate imagination. He could never, like Scott, have let the
precise picture of the swan on "still Saint Mary's lake" slip into the
namby-pamby "sweet Saint Mary's lake." When he intends a picture, he
is unmistakably distinct; his outline is firm and hard. But he is not
often intending pictures. He is not, like Dante, always seeing--he is
mostly thinking in a dream, or as Coleridge best expressed it, he is
not a picturesque, but a musical poet. The pictures in _Paradise Lost_
are like the paintings on the walls of some noble hall--only part of
the total magnificence. He did not aim at that finish of minute parts
in which, each bit fits into every other. For it was only by such
disregard of minutiae that the theme could be handled at all. The
impression of vastness, the sense that everything, as Bishop Butler
says, "runs up into infinity," would have been impaired if he had
drawn attention to the details of his figures.
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