The choice is characteristic of the man. His "natural port," as Johnson well said, "is gigantic loftiness," and his end to "raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures." So it may well be that this disadvantage of his subject did not weigh with him as much as it would have done with most poets. But he was not altogether blind to it, and the amazing skill he shows in partly getting over it is the other half of the answer to {163} the question asked just now. His action up to the moment of the Fall is the inhuman one of a few days in hell, heaven, and a small sinless spot of earth: and the Fall does not increase the number of actors. Yet into the mouths of this tiny group of persons Milton may be said to have brought all the history of the world and all its geography, art, science and learning, the Jew, the Christian and the Pagan, Greek philosophy and Roman politics, classical myth, mediaeval romance, and even the contemporary life of his own experience. This is partly done, as Virgil had done it, by the way of a prophecy of future ages: but to a much greater extent by the way of similes which are more elaborate and learned in Milton than in any poet. By their assistance he gives rest to the imagination exhausted by the sublimity of heaven and hell, bringing it home to its own familiar earth, to scenes whose charm, unlike that of Eden or Pandemonium, lies not, in the wonder their strangeness excites but in the old habits, experiences and memories which they recall. So, after the strain of the great debate with which the second book opens, he soothes us with the beautiful simile of the evening after storm-- "Thus they their doubtful consultations dark Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; {164} As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings." Note how large and general it is. Its method is the classical appeal to universal knowledge and feeling, not the romantic method of strangeness of sentiment and detailed particularity of truth. Matthew Arnold once recommended those who cannot read Greek or Latin to read Milton as a far better key than any translation can be to the secret of the greatness of the ancient poets. This is the truth: and not only for the reason on which Arnold laid just stress--the "sure and flawless perfection of rhythm and diction" in which, as he truly says, Milton is unique among English poets: but also for his classical habit of mind, for his central sanity, for the sureness with which he makes his call on the thoughts and emotions, not of eccentric {165} or exceptional individuals, but of the men and women of all times and all nations.