substantive carry it easily, is the strongest word in a sentence. But when once it loses its hold upon concrete reality it becomes the weakest, and not all the protests of debility, superlative degrees, and rhetorical insistence, can save it from neglect. It is apparent, therefore, how necessary to Milton were the concrete epic realities with which his poem deals,--the topographical scheme of things, and the definite embodiment of all his spiritual essences. Keats' _Hyperion_ fails largely for want of an exact physical system such as Milton devises. Keats works almost wholly with vague Romantic suggestion, and there is nothing for the poem to hang on by. Something is happening; but it is difficult to say what, for we see only dream-imagery, and hear only muffled echoes. Had Milton made unsparing use of abstraction and suggestion, his poem would have fallen into windy chaos. The "philosophical poems" of his age did so fall. Henry More's _Platonick Song of the Soul_ (1642), wherein are treated the Life of the Soul, her Immortality, the Sleep of the Soul, the Unity of Souls, and Memory after Death, is a dust-storm of verbiage. Such words as "calefaction," "exility," "self-reduplication," "tricentreity," "individuation," "circumvolution," "presentifick circularity," struggle and sprawl within the narrow room of the Spenserian stanza. Milton keeps us in better company than this, even in Hell. He uses abstract terms magnificently, but almost always with a reference to concrete realities, not as the names of separate entities. By the substitution of abstract nouns for concrete he achieves a wonderful effect of majesty. He does not name, for instance, the particular form of wind instrument that the heralds blew in Hell:-- Four speedy Cherubim Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy. He avoids defining his creatures by names that lend themselves to definite picture: of Death he says-- So spake the grisly Terror; and he makes Raphael, at the call of Heaven's king, rise from among Thousand celestial Ardours. In the Tenth Book, Death, snuffing the distant scent of mortality, becomes all nose-- So scented the grim Feature, and upturned His nostril wide into the murky air. A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in the First Book of _Paradise Regained_, where is described how Satan, disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and Bowing low His gray dissimulation, disappeared Into thin air diffused. The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed, the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective in place of a substantive, the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is avoided.