Of these two poems, describing the bright and the thoughtful aspects of Nature, my friend Mr. Palgrave, in his exquisite collection of English Lyrics, “The Golden Treasury,” has observed that these are the earliest pure descriptive lyrics in our language, adding that it is a striking proof of Milton’s astonishing power that these are still the best, in a style which so many great poets have since his time attempted. When, after a poetic silence of nearly thirty years, Milton, old, blind, and fallen, as he thought, on evil days, addressed himself again to poetry, in his two Epics, and in his Classic Drama, he gave vent to all that was lofty and sublime in his severe nature, but he returned no more to rural description. Immense scholarship, experience of men and of affairs, ripe meditation on things human and divine,—all these he brought to his later work; but the simple love of Nature, such as it was in his earlier poems, has disappeared, or is overlaid by his learning.[15] The description of the garden of Eden, in the fourth book of “Paradise Lost,” is magnificent, but vague. The pomp of language and profusion of images leaves on the imagination no definite picture. You have, it is true, “in narrow room Nature’s whole wealth,” but it does not satisfy, as many a humbler but real scene described with a few strokes satisfies. Such landscapes in poetry, entirely projected by the imagination and answering to no scene on earth, are, like the composition pictures, which some painters delight in, only splendid failures. There is, however, another use made of Nature in those later poems, which may be called the geographical use of it, in which Milton has no rival. His vast reading enabled him to bring together similes and illustrations from every land—from China, India, Tartary, Cape of Good Hope; nor from these only, but from old Rome, Greece, Syria, Babylon. Such images from many lands, so rich, varied, and grandly worded, form one of the most permanent attractions of “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained.” The one real inspired creation of scenery, if scenery it can be called, which “Paradise Lost” contains, is the description of Hell. The primeval elements of the world are drawn upon, the unmeasurable abyss of fire, the frozen cataract, every thing vast that is to be found on earth is here. From things of earth too are drawn the images that set forth the appearance of the inhabitants—the fallen angels like scathed oaks or pines on a blasted heath—Satan himself like leviathan “slumbering on the Norway foam,” and many another image from Nature taken to shadow forth things supernatural or infernal.