Is it _Paradise Lost_? After the agonies of expulsion and the flaming sword-- "Some natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The world was all before them where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way." Is it finally _Samson Agonistes_? "His servants he with new acquist, Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent." "Calm of mind, all passion spent," it is the essence of Milton's art. He worked in large ideas and painted splendid canvases; it was necessary for him to invent a style which should be capable of sustained and lofty dignity, which should be ornate enough to maintain the interest of the reader and charm him and at the same time not so ornate as to give an air of meretricious decoration to what was largely and simply conceived. Particularly it was necessary for him to avoid those incursions of vulgar associations which words carelessly used will bring in their train. He succeeded brilliantly in this difficult task. The unit of the Miltonic style is not the phrase but the word, each word fastidiously chosen, commonly with some air of an original and lost meaning about it, and all set in a verse in which he contrived by an artful variation of pause and stress to give the variety which other writers had from rhyme. In this as in his structure he accomplished what the Renaissance had only dreamed. Though he had imitators (the poetic diction of the age following is modelled on him) he had no followers. No one has been big enough to find his secret since. CHAPTER V THE AGE OF GOOD SENSE