"He soon Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, The same whom John saw also in the sun: His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar Circled his head, nor less his locks behind Illustrious on his shoulders fledge with wings Lay waving round; on some great charge employ'd He seem'd, or fix'd in cogitation deep. Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope To find who might direct his wand'ring flight To Paradise, the happy seat of man, His journey's end, and our beginning woe. But first he casts to change his proper shape, Which else might work him danger or delay: And now a stripling cherub he appears, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffus'd, so well he feign'd: Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play'd; wings he wore Of many a colour'd plume sprinkled with gold, His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand." The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek statue; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and musical as the strings of Memnon's harp! Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of Beelzebub: "With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies:" Or the comparison of Satan, as he "lay floating many a rood," to "that sea beast," "Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!" What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as a very little thing! Force of style is one of Milton's greatest excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading, and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners, is to take down the book and read it.