The full appreciation of a passage like this, so very simple, so apparently obvious, yet so entirely in the grand style which, whether his subject stoops or soars, very rarely fails Milton, is not a thing of one reading or of two. Milton, the greatest artist of our language, is naturally the most conspicuous instance of the law which applies to all great art. Only natures as rarely endowed with the receptive gift as he was himself with the creative can fully appreciate his work at the first reading. Like all great works of the imagination it has generally to train, sometimes almost to create, the faculties which are to appreciate it aright. This is particularly true in the case of classical art, where the emotional appeal, though just as real, is much less apparent because it is so much more controlled by intellectual sanity. Gothic {193} and Romantic art are commonly far more instantaneous in the impression they make, perhaps because, according to the ingenious suggestion of the Poet Laureate, they admit at once of more daring flights of the imagination and of stronger realism than classical art can bear. But it may well be doubted whether the wonder and delight which every man of the most modest aesthetic capacity owes to them can in the end keep pace with the slower growing appreciation of the universality and sanity of classical work. But this is an old dispute not likely to be settled this year or next. Nor does it affect the fact that all great work, even Romantic or Gothic, gains by time in proportion to its greatness. It is the only absolutely certain test of greatness in art. The instantly popular tune is unendurable in six months, the instantly popular novel or poem is totally forgotten in a year or two. No one perceives the whole greatness of St. Paul's Cathedral, or Sansovino's Library at Venice, or the music of Bach, or the poetry of Milton, at the first sight or hearing. No competent eye, ear or mind fails to perceive more and more of it at each renewed experience. Whatever be the art, a picture, a piece of sculpture, a book, the test is the same: the cheap, the sentimental, {194} the sensational, the merely pretty, lose something, be it little or much, at each renewal of acquaintance: the great work steadily gains. To this test _Paradise Lost_ can fearlessly appeal. It is not meant for idle hours or empty people. It is not amusing in the lower sense of the word. It is not as exciting as it might well have been. It is probably true that, as Johnson said with his usual honesty, "No one ever wished it longer than it is": yet there is equal truth in another remark of his, "I cannot wish Milton's work other than it is," and in the implied answer to his bold question, "What other author ever soared so high or sustained his flight so long?" The difficulty for Milton's readers is that they do not easily soar, and still less easily sustain their soaring. The great gifts which Johnson brought to the criticism