The mean associations, therefore, in so far as they exist, help Shakespeare's purpose. Milton had no purpose that could be furthered by such help. The omissions in his descriptions cannot be supplied by an appeal to experience, for what he describes is outside the pale of human experience, and is, in that sense, unreal. His descriptions do not so much remind us of what we have seen as create for us what we are to see. He is bound, therefore, to avoid the slightest touch of unworthy association; the use of even a few domestic figures and homely phrases would bring his hanging palace about his ears. What dangers he escaped may be well seen in Cowley's _Davideis_, which fell into them all. This is how Cowley describes the attiring of his Gabriel, who is commissioned to bear a message to David-- He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright, That e'er the midday Sun pierced through with light: Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spred; Washt from the morning beauties deepest red. An harmless flaming _Meteor_ shone for haire, And fell adown his shoulders with loose care. He cuts out a silk _Mantle_ from the skies, Where the most sprightly azure pleas'd the eyes. This he with starry vapours spangles all, Took in their prime ere they grow _ripe_ and _fall_,-- --and so on. The whole business suggests the arming of Pigwiggin; or the intricacies of Belinda's toilet in _The Rape of the Lock_. Such a Gabriel should add the last touch of adornment from a patch-box filled with sun-spots; and then is fit only to be-- Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. Milton was not in the least likely to fall into this fantastic-familiar vein. But he was also debarred from dealing freely in realism; from carrying conviction by some sudden startling piece of fidelity to the mixed texture of human experience and human feeling. When the feast is spread in Eden he remarks, it is true,--"No fear lest dinner cool"; but a lapse like this is of the rarest. His success--and he knew it--depended on the untiring maintenance of a superhuman elevation. His choice of subject had therefore not a little to do with the nature of his diction; and, through the influence of his diction, as shall be shown hereafter, with the establishment of the poetic tradition that dominated Eighteenth Century poetry. The same motives and tendencies, the same consistent care for remoteness and loftiness, may be seen in the character of the similes that he most frequently employs. Almost all his figures and comparisons illustrate concrete objects by concrete objects, and occurrences in time by other occurrences later in time. The essentially Romantic sort of figure, scarcely used by Milton, illustrates subtle conceptual relations by parable--