Lectures On The English Poets William Hazlitt

65
So that of Spenser:
"The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent."
Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a
severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to leave
nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always labours, and
almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest things in the
world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies his subject to the
utmost: he surrounds it with every possible association of beauty or
grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical. He refines on his
descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on sweets, till the sense aches
at them; and raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation, that
"makes Ossa like a wart." In Milton, there is always an appearance of
effort: in Shakespeare, scarcely any.
Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every
source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct
from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in
originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind is stamped
on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts down and renders
malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory materials. In reading
his works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect,
that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more distinct from
them. The quantity of art in him shews the strength of his genius: the
weight of his intellectual obligations would have oppressed any other
writer. Milton's learning has the effect of intuition. He describes
objects, of which he could only have read in books, with the vividness
of actual observation. His imagination has the force of nature. He makes
words tell as pictures.
"Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams."
The word _lucid_ here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the
most perfect landscape.