‘——But chief the spacious hall Thick swarm’d, both on the ground and in the air, Brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flow’rs Fly to and fro: or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer Their state affairs. So thick the airy crowd Swarm’d and were straiten’d; till the signal giv’n, Behold a wonder! They but now who seem’d In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’ I can only give another instance, though I have some difficulty in leaving off. ‘Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood So high above the circling canopy Of night’s extended shade) from th’ eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the horizon: then from pole to pole He views in breadth, and without longer pause Down right into the world’s first region throws His flight precipitant, and winds with ease Through the pure marble air his oblique way Amongst innumerable stars that shone Stars distant, but nigh hand seem’d other worlds; Or other worlds they seem’d or happy isles,’ &c. The verse, in this exquisitely modulated passage, floats up and down as if it had itself wings. Milton has himself given us the theory of his versification— ‘Such as the meeting soul may pierce In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.’ Dr. Johnson and Pope would, have converted his vaulting Pegasus into a rocking-horse. Read any other blank verse but Milton’s,—Thomson’s, Young’s, Cowper’s, Wordsworth’s,—and it will be found, from the want of the same insight into ‘the hidden soul of harmony,’ to be mere lumbering prose.