The unity of his being is the strength of Milton.  He is harmony, sweet and bold, throughout.  Not Philip Sidney, not George Herbert loved words and their melodies more than he; while in their use he is more serious than either, and harder to please, uttering a music they have rarely approached.  Yet even when speaking with “most miraculous organ,” with a grandeur never heard till then, he overflows in speech more like that of other men than theirs—­he utters himself more simply, straightforwardly, dignifiedly, than they.  His modes are larger and more human, more near to the forms of primary thought.  Faithful and obedient to his art, he spends his power in no diversions.  Like Shakspere, he can be silent, never hesitating to sweep away the finest lines should they mar the intent, progress, and flow of his poem.  Even while he sings most abandonedly, it is ever with a care of his speech, it is ever with ordered words:  not one shall dull the clarity of his verse by unlicensed, that is, needless presence.  But let not my reader fancy that this implies laborious utterance and strained endeavour.  It is weakness only which by the agony of visible effort enhances the magnitude of victory.  The trained athlete will move with the grace of a child, for he has not to seek how to effect that which he means to perform.  Milton has only to take good heed, and with no greater effort than it costs the ordinary man to avoid talking like a fool, he sings like an archangel.

But I must not enlarge my remarks, for of his verse even I can find room for only a few lyrics.  In them, however, we shall still find the simplest truth, the absolute of life, the poet’s aim.  He is ever soaring towards the region beyond perturbation, the true condition of soul; that is, wherein a man shall see things even as God would have him see them.  He has no time to droop his pinions, and sit moody even on the highest pine:  the sun is above him; he must fly upwards.

The youth who at three-and-twenty could write the following sonnet, might well at five-and-forty be capable of writing the one that follows: 

  How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
  Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year! 
  My hasting days fly on with full career,
  But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th. 
  Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
  That I to manhood am arrived so near;
  And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
  That some more timely happy spirits endu’th. 
  Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
  It shall be still in strictest measure even
  To that same lot, however mean or high,
  Toward which time leads me and the will of heaven: 
  All is—­if I have grace to use it so
  As ever in my great Task-master’s eye.

The It which is the subject of the last six lines is his Ripeness:  it will keep pace with his approaching lot; when it arrives he will be ready for it, whatever it may be.  The will of heaven is his happy fate.  Even at three-and-twenty, “he that believeth shall not make haste.”  Calm and open-eyed, he works to be ripe, and waits for the work that shall follow.