SOURCE: “From The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton,” in The Critical Response to John Milton's Paradise Lost, edited by Timothy C. Miller, Greenwood Press, 1997, pp. 192-95.

In the following excerpt, which originally appeared in his edition of Milton's poetry, Moody praises Paradise Lost as one of the greatest poems and declares that it is the epic's style which is its surest claim to enduring admiration.

As for his poetry, Milton must be thought of first and last as a master stylist. Keats is more poignant, Shakespeare more various, Coleridge more magical; but nobody who has written in English has had at his command the same unfailing majesty of utterance. His is the organ voice of England. The figure suggests, too, the defect of his qualities. His voice is always his own; he has none of the ventriloquism of the dramatic poets, none of the thaumaturgy by which...