It has been said that Milton’s ideas were musical rather than picturesque, but this observation is not true, in the sense in which it was meant. The ear, indeed, predominates over the eye, because it is more immediately affected, and because the language of music blends more immediately with, and forms a more natural accompaniment to, the variable and indefinite associations of ideas conveyed by words. But where the associations of the imagination are not the principal thing, the individual object is given by Milton with equal force and beauty. The strongest and best proof of this, as a characteristic power of his mind, is, that the persons of Adam and Eve, of Satan, etc., are always accompanied, in our imagination, with the grandeur of the naked figure; they convey to us the ideas of sculpture. As an instance, take the following: ——‘He soon Saw within ken a glorious Angel stand, The same whom John saw also in the sun: His back was turned, but not his brightness hid; Of beaming sunny rays a golden tiar Circled his head, nor less his locks behind Illustrious on his shoulders fledged with wings Lay waving round; on some great charge employ’d He seem’d, or fix’d in cogitation deep. Glad was the spirit impure, as now in hope To find who might direct his wand’ring flight To Paradise, the happy seat of man, His journey’s end, and our beginning woe. But first he casts to change his proper shape, Which else might work him danger or delay: And now a stripling cherub he appears, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smiled celestial, and to every limb Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d: Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play’d; wings he wore Of many a colour’d plume sprinkled with gold, His habit fit for speed succinct, and held Before his decent steps a silver wand.’ The figures introduced here have all the elegance and precision of a Greek statue.