" This
self-assured unrelenting certainty of his, carried into his prose essays
in argument, produces sometimes strange results. One is peculiarly
interesting to us now in view of current controversy. He was unhappily
married, and because he was unhappy the law of divorce must be changed.
A modern--George Eliot for instance--would have pleaded the artistic
temperament and been content to remain outside the law. Milton always
argued from himself to mankind at large.
[Footnote 4: "Milton," E.M.L., and "Milton" (Edward Arnold).]
In everything he did, he put forth all his strength. Each of his poems,
long or short, is by itself a perfect whole, wrought complete. The
reader always must feel that the planning of each is the work of
conscious, deliberate, and selecting art. Milton never digresses; he
never violates harmony of sound or sense; his poems have all their
regular movement from quiet beginning through a rising and breaking wave
of passion and splendour to quiet close. His art is nowhere better seen
than in his endings.
Is it _Lycidas_? After the thunder of approaching vengeance on the
hireling shepherds of the Church, comes sunset and quiet:
"And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
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