it could not fail to be the case that their number was increased by the comparative sensitiveness to the more intricate music of words which was inevitably produced in those who had learnt much Shelley or Tennyson by heart. And such people at once heard things in Milton which were absolutely inaudible to the ears of Dr. Johnson's generation. The comparative subtlety, both in imagination and in form, of the poetry of the nineteenth century made it impossible for poets to compete with journalists for the attention of the big public as Pope had done triumphantly; but as a set off against that loss it gave a far {224} richer delight to those who were capable of that interaction of the natural ear and the spiritual to which all great poetry makes its appeal. This led straight back to Milton who made that double appeal as only a very few poets in all the world have ever made it. And the more poetry is studied and loved as the greatest of the arts, as the medium through which that combination of the vision of genius with the slow trained cunning of the craftsman, which is what great art is, finds its most perfect expression, the more will men, or at least Englishmen, return to Milton. And especially, in some ways, to _Samson_, where his art is at its boldest and freest, and where it suffered longest from the indifference of dull ears. A little book of this kind is not the place for a discussion of English metre, or even, in any detail, of Milton's. Those who wish to go into such studies will find much of what they want in the Poet Laureate's book on _Milton's Prosody_. It is possible to disagree with some of his proposed scansions of doubtful lines, but it is impossible not to learn a great deal from suggestions as to the rhythmical effects intended by Milton which come, as these do, from one who is himself a master of rhythm and has never concealed the fact {225} that Milton's was one of the schools in which he passed his apprenticeship. So his analysis, line by line, of the opening of the first chorus of _Samson_ will be a revelation to many of what they have, perhaps, never felt at all, or felt only unconsciously without understanding anything of what it was which they felt or why. But even without such help no one whose ear has had the smallest training can fail to notice some of the more daring of Milton's metrical effects. In the lines quoted above, for instance, who can miss the triple stab of passionate agony in the thrice repeated, strongly accented "dark, dark, dark"? The most careless reader cannot fail to be arrested by the line, though he may not realize the means employed by Milton to enforce attention, the rare six stresses in a ten-syllabled line, the still rarer effect of three strongly stressed syllables following immediately upon one another, the inversion of three out of the five stresses of the next line, "irrecoverably dark" suggesting the spasmodic disorder of violent grief.