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1
Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.
Technology In Action, Complete, 14e (Evans et al.)
Chapter 6 Understanding and Assessing Hardware: Evaluating Your System
1) The rule of thumb that predicts that the number of transistors on a CPU will double every two
years is called ________ Law.
A) Charles'
B) Moore's
C) Intel's
D) Boyle's
Answer: B
Diff: 1
Objective: 6.01 Describe the changes in CPU performance over the past several decades
2) Which of the following is the lightest computer?
A) Laptop
B) Ultrabook
C) Tablet
D) Desktop
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.02 Compare and contrast a variety of computing devices
3) The processor market for desktop and laptop computers is dominated by ________.
A) IBM
B) Microsoft
C) Intel
D) Apple
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Objective: 6.03 Describe how a CPU is designed and how it operates
4) Which of the following does NOT determine a CPU's processing power?
A) Clock speed
B) Number of cores
C) Amount of cache memory
D) Speed of the motherboard
Answer: D
Diff: 3

2
5) Which of the following activities is carried out by the ALU?
A) Moves read/write heads
B) Performs arithmetic calculations
C) Creates virtual memory
D) Renders video images
Answer: B
Diff: 1
6) All of the following are part of the machine cycle EXCEPT ________.
A) fetch
B) encode
C) execute
D) store
Answer: B
Diff: 3
7) The CPU consists of which two parts?
A) The arithmetic logic unit and the front side bus
B) The control unit and the arithmetic logic unit
C) The control unit and the front side bus
D) Cache memory and SSD storage
Answer: B
Diff: 2
8) The control unit is one component of the ________.
A) CPU
B) cache
C) front side bus
D) clock
Answer: A
Diff: 2
9) Running the CPU at a faster speed than the manufacturer recommends is called ________.
A) fetching
B) latency
C) overclocking
D) hyperthreading
Answer: C
Diff: 2

3
10) Cache memory levels are based on proximity to ________.
A) the hard drive
B) RAM
C) the processor
D) the video card
Answer: C
Diff: 3
11) ________ provides high-speed information processing by enabling a new set of instructions
to start before the previous set is finished.
A) Multitasking
B) Cache memory
C) Hyperthreading
D) Overclocking
Answer: C
Diff: 2
12) Some of the cache memory of a CPU is ________.
A) inside the CPU, itself
B) on the hard disk drive
C) on a nearby SSD
D) in cloud storage
Answer: A
Diff: 2
13) RAM is an example of ________ storage.
A) volatile
B) nonvolatile
C) permanent
D) mobile
Answer: A
Diff: 1
Objective: 6.05 Discuss how RAM is used in a computer system.
14) The amount of RAM storage is measured in ________.
A) gigabytes
B) gigahertz
C) gigabits
D) machine cycles
Answer: A
Diff: 2

4
15) Windows uses a memory-management technique known as ________ to monitor which
applications you use most frequently an d then preloads them into your system memory.
A) SuperGet
B) SuperFetch
C) SuperTake
D) SuperRetrieve
Answer: B
Diff: 2
16) Select the best way to determine your RAM allocation.
A) List all programs you would run simultaneously and the amount of RAM each needs and add
together.
B) Count the number of available slots on the motherboard.
C) Divide the number of used memory slots by the number of total memory slots.
D) Monitor RAM usage in performance monitor and calculate an average of RAM used over 10
random periods.
Answer: A
Diff: 3
Objective: 6.06 Evaluate whether adding RAM to a system is desirable
17) When referring to hard drives, access time is measured in ________.
A) megahertz
B) bits per second
C) milliseconds
D) kilobytes
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.07 Classify and describe the major types of nonvolatile storage drives
18) A ________ uses electronic memory and has no motors or moving parts.
A) mechanical hard drive
B) solid-state drive
C) Bluray disc
D) digital video disc
Answer: B
Diff: 1
19) How do optical discs store data?
A) A laser burns tiny pits onto a disc.
B) A magnet aligns iron particles on a platter.
C) Electronic memory records data on chips.
D) A digital spectrometer leaves grooves in a platter.
Answer: A
Diff: 2

5
20) Which of the following is NOT a permanent storage option?
A) Optical drive
B) Random access memory
C) Internal hard drive
D) SSD
Answer: B
Diff: 3
21) The ________ has the largest capacity of any storage device.
A) compact disc
B) solid state drive
C) Bluray disc
D) mechanical hard drive
Answer: D
Diff: 2
22) Which of the following ports is NOT considered to be exclusively a video port?
A) HDMI
B) DVI
C) USB
D) DisplayPort
Answer: C
Diff: 3
Objective: 6.09 Describe the features of video cards
23) To speed up the display of graphics, a(n) ________ is integrated into some video cards.
A) GPU
B) CPU
C) ALU
D) SSD
Answer: A
Diff: 2
24) A(n) ________ enables the computer to drive the speaker system.
A) HDMI port
B) display port
C) sound card
D) PCI bus
Answer: C
Diff: 1
Objective: 6.10 Describe the features of sound cards

6
25) How many channels are in a Dolby 7.1 surround sound system?
A) 7
B) 8
C) 6
D) 12
Answer: B
Diff: 2
26) Running the Disk Defragmenter utility will ________.
A) detect and remove spyware
B) mark bad memory cells
C) make the hard drive work more efficiently
D) clean out your Startup folder
Answer: C
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.11 Describe steps you can take to optimize your system's reliability
27) Running the Disk Cleanup utility is a quick way to ________.
A) defrag your hard drive
B) remove spyware programs
C) clear out unnecessary files
D) clean out your Startup folder
Answer: C
Diff: 2
28) To remove all the changes made to your system, the Windows ________ utility returns your
computer to the state it was in when it came from the factory.
A) Backup
B) Erase
C) Restore
D) Refresh
Answer: D
Diff: 2
29) Which statement pertaining to system reliability is FALSE?
A) Having the latest version of software products can make your system more reliable.
B) An accumulation of temporary Internet files has no effect on your computer's overall
performance.
C) You can clean out unnecessary programs from your Startup folder.
D) When you defrag your hard drive, it works more efficiently.
Answer: B
Diff: 2

7
30) To securely erase data, the U.S. Department of Defense suggests that data be ________.
A) overwritten seven times
B) deleted
C) encoded
D) refactored
Answer: A
Diff: 3
Objective: 6.12 Discuss how to recycle, donate, or dispose of an older computer
31) ________ Law predicts that the number of transistors in a CPU will double about every two
years.
Answer: Moore's
Diff: 1
Objective: 6.01 Describe the changes in CPU performance over the past several decades
32) The CPU is located on the ________.
Answer: motherboard; system motherboard; mother board; system board
Diff: 2
33) A CPU's processing power is determined by the combination of the clock speed, the number
of cores, and the amount of ________ memory.
Answer: cache
Diff: 2
34) The ________ of a CPU dictates how many instructions the CPU can process each second.
Answer: clock speed
Diff: 2
35) The CPU is composed of two units, the control unit and the ________.
Answer: arithmetic logic unit; ALU
Diff: 1
36) The process the CPU performs for each program instruction is called the ________.
Answer: machine cycle
Diff: 1
37) ________ is a feature of a CPU that allows it to begin to fetch the next instruction before it
has finished executing the current one.
Answer: Hyperthreading
Diff: 2

8
38) Running the CPU at a faster speed than the manufacturer recommends is called ________.
Answer: overclocking
Diff: 2
39) ________ is the type of RAM memory used most often in today's lower-end computers.
Answer: DDR3; Double data rate 3; DDR3 memory modules; Double data rate 3 memory
modules
Diff: 3
40) The CPU's ________ memory is a form of RAM that gets data to the CPU for processing
much faster than bringing the data in from the computer's RAM.
Answer: cache
Diff: 2
41) RAM is an example of ________ storage because when the power is turned off, RAM is
cleared out.
Answer: volatile; temporary
Diff: 1
42) The time it takes a storage device to locate stored data and make it available for processing is
called ________ time.
Answer: access
Diff: 3
43) The ________ has the largest capacity of any storage device.
Answer: mechanical hard drive; hard drive; hard disk drive
Diff: 1
44) ________ drives are 100 times faster than mechanical hard drives.
Answer: Solid-state; Solid state; SSD
Diff: 2
45) ________ drives run with no noise and very little heat, and require very little power.
Answer: Solid-state; Solid state; SSD
Diff: 2

9
46) Optical drives use a(n) ________ to read and write data.
Answer: laser; high speed laser; high-speed laser
Diff: 2
47) A(n) ________ moves over the spinning platters to retrieve data from a hard disk.
Answer: read/write head
Diff: 3
48) A stoppage of the hard drive that often results in data loss is called a(n) ________.
Answer: head crash
Diff: 2
49) ________ improves disk writing performance because data is written across two drives.
Answer: RAID 0
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.08 Evaluate the amount and type of storage needed for a system
50) ________ automatically duplicates your data and saves it on two identical drives.
Answer: RAID 1
Diff: 2
51) A video card can deliver output to multiple ________.
Answer: monitors; displays
Diff: 2
52) GPU stands for ________.
Answer: graphics processing unit
Diff: 3
53) ________ sound is a type of audio system where the listener hears the sound as if it were
coming from multiple speakers.
Answer: Surround
Diff: 1
54) The audio subsystem consists of the speakers and a(n) ________.
Answer: sound card
Diff: 1

10
55) macOS X uses ________ software to automatically backup and restore data.
Answer: Time Machine
Diff: 3
56) Many computer manufacturers offer ________ programs to reduce the amount of computers
in landfills.
Answer: recycling
Diff: 2
57) Solid state hybrid drives are a combination of a mechanical hard drive and an SSD drive.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 3
58) Desktop computer systems are less reliable than laptop computers.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.02 Compare and contrast a variety of computing devices
59) Level 3 cache memory is faster than Level 1 and Level 2 cache.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 3
60) The use of multiple cores on one CPU chip allows the execution of two or more sets of
instructions at the same time.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 1
61) Cache memory is a form of ROM.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
62) Level 1 cache usually contains the least amount of storage of the cache memory levels.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 1
63) Accessing data from the hard drive to send to the CPU is faster than accessing data from
RAM.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2

11
64) The heads of a hard disk drive touch the surface of the platter to read or write the data.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
65) RAM prices tend to be very stable.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
Objective: 6.06 Evaluate whether adding RAM to a system is desirable
66) Optical discs store data using tiny pits and lands burned by a laser.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 2
67) Video cards are designed with their own RAM storage.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 1
68) When using multiple monitors, you must have multiple video cards.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
69) 3D sound is different from surround-sound.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 2
70) Dolby Digital 7.1 requires a total of eight speakers.
Answer: TRUE
Diff: 3
71) RAID 0 automatically duplicates your data and saves it on two identical drives.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2
72) If you reformat the hard drive on a computer, it erases all personal information from your
computer and makes it safe to donate.
Answer: FALSE
Diff: 2

12
73) Match each of the following terms to its meaning:
I. latency
II. sectors
III. tracks
IV. seek time
V. platters
A. time required for the read/write head to move to the correct track
B. round, thin plates of metal within a hard drive
C. time needed for correct sector to spin to the read/write head
D. concentric circles on a hard drive
E. pie-shaped wedges on the surface of a hard drive
Answer: C, E, D, A, B
Diff: 2
74) Match each of the following terms to its meaning:
I. RAM
II. hyperthreading
III. clock speed
IV. quad-core processor
V. ROM
A. a CPU with 4 cores
B. volatile storage
C. measure of CPU speed
D. permanent storage
E. simultaneous execution of more than one instruction
Answer: B, E, C, A, D
Diff: 2
Objective: Multiple Objectives in the Chapter
75) Match each of the following terms to its purpose:
I. virtual memory
II. physical memory
III. random access memory
IV. cache memory
V. video memory
A. temporary storage space
B. used by a video card
C. space on the hard drive for data that doesn't fit in RAM
D. can be accessed more quickly than regular RAM
E. the amount of RAM contained on memory modules
Answer: C, E, A, D, B
Diff: 2

13
76) Match each of the following terms to its function:
I. CPU
II. ALU
III. cache
IV. RAID
V. SSD
A. closest memory to the CPU
B. processor
C. uses electronic memory and has no moving parts
D. strategy for using more than one drive in a system
E. performs arithmetic calculations
Answer: B, E, A, D, C
Diff: 3

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And fortunes tell; and read in loving books;
And thousand other ways to bait his fleshly hooks.
Inconstant man that loved all he saw,
And lusted after all that he did love;
Ne would his looser life be tied to law;
But joyed weak women’s hearts to tempt and prove,
If from their loyal loves he might them move.’
This is pretty plain-spoken. Mr. Southey says of Spenser:
‘——Yet not more sweet
Than pure was he, and not more pure than wise;
High priest of all the Muses’ mysteries!’
On the contrary, no one was more apt to pry into mysteries which
do not strictly belong to the Muses.
Of the same kind with the Procession of the Passions, as little
obscure, and still more beautiful, is the Mask of Cupid, with his train
of votaries:
‘The first was Fancy, like a lovely boy
Of rare aspect, and beauty without peer;
His garment neither was of silk nor say,
But painted plumes in goodly order dight,
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array
Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight:
As those same plumes so seem’d he vain and light,
That by his gait might easily appear;
For still he far’d as dancing in delight,
And in his hand a windy fan did bear
That in the idle air he mov’d still here and there.
And him beside march’d amorous Desire,
Who seem’d of riper years than the other swain,
Yet was that other swain this elder’s sire,
And gave him being, common to them twain:
His garment was disguised very vain,
And his embroidered bonnet sat awry;
Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strain,
Which still he blew, and kindled busily,
That soon they life conceiv’d and forth in flames did fly.
Next after him went Doubt, who was yclad

In a discolour’d coat of strange disguise,
That at his back a broad capuccio had,
And sleeves dependant Albanese-wise;
He lookt askew with his mistrustful eyes,
And nicely trod, as thorns lay in his way,
Or that the floor to shrink he did avise;
And on a broken reed he still did stay
His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay.
With him went Daunger, cloth’d in ragged weed,
Made of bear’s skin, that him more dreadful made;
Yet his own face was dreadfull, ne did need
Strange horror to deform his grisly shade;
A net in th’ one hand, and a rusty blade
In th’ other was; this Mischiefe, that Mishap;
With th’ one his foes he threat’ned to invade,
With th’ other he his friends meant to enwrap;
For whom he could not kill he practiz’d to entrap.
Next him was Fear, all arm’d from top to toe,
Yet thought himselfe not safe enough thereby,
But fear’d each shadow moving to and fro;
And his own arms when glittering he did spy
Or clashing heard, he fast away did fly,
As ashes pale of hue, and winged-heel’d;
And evermore on Daunger fixt his eye,
’Gainst whom he always bent a brazen shield,
Which his right hand unarmed fearfully did wield.
With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid,
Of chearfull look and lovely to behold;
In silken samite she was light array’d,
And her fair locks were woven up in gold;
She always smil’d, and in her hand did hold
An holy-water sprinkle dipt in dew,
With which she sprinkled favours manifold
On whom she list, and did great liking shew,
Great liking unto many, but true love to few.
Next after them, the winged God himself
Came riding on a lion ravenous,
Taught to obey the menage of that elfe
That man and beast with power imperious
Subdueth to his kingdom tyrannous:
His blindfold eyes he bade awhile unbind,

That his proud spoil of that same dolorous
Fair dame he might behold in perfect kind;
Which seen, he much rejoiced in his cruel mind.
Of which full proud, himself uprearing high,
He looked round about with stern disdain,
And did survey his goodly company:
And marshalling the evil-ordered train,
With that the darts which his right hand did strain,
Full dreadfully he shook, that all did quake,
And clapt on high his colour’d winges twain,
That all his many it afraid did make:
Tho, blinding him again, his way he forth did take.’
The description of Hope, in this series of historical portraits, is one
of the most beautiful in Spenser: and the triumph of Cupid at the
mischief he has made, is worthy of the malicious urchin deity. In
reading these descriptions, one can hardly avoid being reminded of
Rubens’s allegorical pictures; but the account of Satyrane taming the
lion’s whelps and lugging the bear’s cubs along in his arms while yet
an infant, whom his mother so naturally advises to ‘go seek some
other play-fellows,’ has even more of this high picturesque character.
Nobody but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser; and he
could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that hovers over
it!
With all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor weep. The only
jest in his poem is an allegorical play upon words, where he describes
Malbecco as escaping in the herd of goats, ‘by the help of his fayre
hornes on hight.’ But he has been unjustly charged with a want of
passion and of strength. He has both in an immense degree. He has
not indeed the pathos of immediate action or suffering, which is
more properly the dramatic; but he has all the pathos of sentiment
and romance—all that belongs to distant objects of terror, and
uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in like manner, is not
strength of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and
palpable—but it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen
through the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling
associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, in proof of
this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the
account of the change of Malbecco into Jealousy. The following
stanzas, in the description of the Cave of Mammon, the grisly house

of Plutus, are unrivalled for the portentous massiness of the forms,
the splendid chiaro-scuro, and shadowy horror.
‘That house’s form within was rude and strong,
Like an huge cave hewn out of rocky clift,
From whose rough vault the ragged breaches hung,
Embossed with massy gold of glorious gift,
And with rich metal loaded every rift,
That heavy ruin they did seem to threat:
And over them Arachne high did lift
Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net,
Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet.
Both roof and floor, and walls were all of gold,
But overgrown with dust and old decay,[4]
And hid in darkness that none could behold
The hue thereof: for view of cheerful day
Did never in that house itself display,
But a faint shadow of uncertain light;
Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;
Or as the moon clothed with cloudy night
Does shew to him that walks in fear and sad affright.
· · · · ·
And over all sad Horror with grim hue
Did always soar, beating his iron wings;
And after him owls and night-ravens flew,
The hateful messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolour telling sad tidings;
Whiles sad Celleno, sitting on a clift,
A song of bitter bale and sorrow sings,
That heart of flint asunder could have rift;
Which having ended, after him she flieth swift.’
The Cave of Despair is described with equal gloominess and power
of fancy; and the fine moral declamation of the owner of it, on the
evils of life, almost makes one in love with death. In the story of
Malbecco, who is haunted by jealousy, and in vain strives to run
away from his own thoughts—
‘High over hill and over dale he flies’—

the truth of human passion and the preternatural ending are
equally striking.—It is not fair to compare Spenser with Shakspeare,
in point of interest. A fairer comparison would be with Comus; and
the result would not be unfavourable to Spenser. There is only one
work of the same allegorical kind, which has more interest than
Spenser (with scarcely less imagination): and that is the Pilgrim’s
Progress. The three first books of the Faery Queen are very superior
to the three last. One would think that Pope, who used to ask if any
one had ever read the Faery Queen through, had only dipped into
these last. The only things in them equal to the former, are the
account of Talus, the Iron Man, and the delightful episode of
Pastorella.
The language of Spenser is full, and copious, to overflowing: it is
less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer’s, and is enriched and adorned
with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both
ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain license
of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his
complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native
language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring
rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to their
language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is as
little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating
resistance which the consonant endings of the northern languages
make to this sort of endless sing-song.—Not that I would, on that
account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, indebted
to this very necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to
the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and
varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later
example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most
sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, ‘in many
a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out’—that would cloy
by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and
enchanted by their continued variety of modulation—dwelling on the
pauses of the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide of harmony with
the movement of the sentiment. It has not the bold dramatic
transitions of Shakspeare’s blank verse, nor the high-raised tone of
Milton’s; but it is the perfection of melting harmony, dissolving the
soul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the chains of suspense.
Spenser was the poet of our waking dreams; and he has invented not

only a language, but a music of his own for them. The undulations
are infinite, like those of the waves of the sea: but the effect is still the
same, lulling the senses into a deep oblivion of the jarring noises of
the world, from which we have no wish to be ever recalled.

LECTURE III
ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON
In looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we
are sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has
since been made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general.
But this is perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more contrary
to the fact, than the supposition that in what we understand by the
fine arts, as painting, and poetry, relative perfection is only the result
of repeated efforts in successive periods, and that what has been
once well done, constantly leads to something better. What is
mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration, is
progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: what is not
mechanical, or definite, but depends on feeling, taste, and genius,
very soon becomes stationary, or retrograde, and loses more than it
gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a vulgar error, which
has grown up, like many others, from transferring an analogy of one
kind to something quite distinct, without taking into the account the
difference in the nature of the things, or attending to the difference
of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful advances
have been made in biblical criticism, in chemistry, in mechanics, in
geometry, astronomy, &c. i.e. in things depending on mere inquiry
and experiment, or on absolute demonstration, have been led hastily
to conclude, that there was a general tendency in the efforts of the
human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in all other arts and
institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time. We look back upon
the theological creed of our ancestors, and their discoveries in
natural philosophy, with a smile of pity: science, and the arts
connected with it, have all had their infancy, their youth, and
manhood, and seem to contain in them no principle of limitation or
decay: and, inquiring no farther about the matter, we infer, in the
intoxication of our pride, and the height of our self-congratulation,

that the same progress has been made, and will continue to be made,
in all other things which are the work of man. The fact, however,
stares us so plainly in the face, that one would think the smallest
reflection must suggest the truth, and over-turn our sanguine
theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters, and
the finest sculptors that the world ever saw, appeared soon after the
birth of these arts, and lived in a state of society which was, in other
respects, comparatively barbarous. Those arts, which depend on
individual genius and incommunicable power, have always leaped at
once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn of invention
to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in general
declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and privilege of
each, of science and of art:—of the one, never to attain its utmost
limit of perfection; and of the other, to arrive at it almost at once.
Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and Ariosto, (Milton
alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it)—Raphael, Titian,
Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boccaccio, the Greek
sculptors and tragedians,—all lived near the beginning of their arts—
perfected, and all but created them. These giant-sons of genius stand
indeed upon the earth, but they tower above their fellows; and the
long line of their successors, in different ages, does not interpose any
object to obstruct their view, or lessen their brightness. In strength
and stature they are unrivalled; in grace and beauty they have not
been surpassed. In after-ages, and more refined periods, (as they are
called) great men have arisen, one by one, as it were by throes and at
intervals; though in general the best of these cultivated and artificial
minds were of an inferior order; as Tasso and Pope, among poets;
Guido and Vandyke, among painters. But in the earlier stages of the
arts, as soon as the first mechanical difficulties had been got over,
and the language was sufficiently acquired, they rose by clusters, and
in constellations, never so to rise again!
The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of
thought within us, and with the world of sense around us—with what
we know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the sacred
shrine of our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp of
nature. But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the
depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood
three thousand, or three hundred years ago, as they are at present:
the face of nature, and ‘the human face divine’ shone as bright then

as they have ever done. But it is their light, reflected by true genius
on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the
Muses’ feet, like that which
‘Circled Una’s angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.’
The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first
we come to—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There are
no others that can really be put in competition with these. The two
last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame. Their
names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation; while the
two first (though ‘the fault has been more in their stars than in
themselves that they are underlings’) either never emerged far above
the horizon, or were too soon involved in the obscurity of time. The
three first of these are excluded from Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the
Poets (Shakspeare indeed is so from the dramatic form of his
compositions): and the fourth, Milton, is admitted with a reluctant
and churlish welcome.
In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that
Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life; Spenser, as the
poet of romance; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the largest use
of the term); and Milton, as the poet of morality. Chaucer most
frequently describes things as they are; Spenser, as we wish them to
be; Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be. As
poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning
things according to nature, was common to them all: but the
principle or moving power, to which this faculty was most
subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice; in
Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous; in Shakspeare, it
was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible
circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The
characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of
Milton, elevation; of Shakspeare, every thing.—It has been said by
some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the other
dramatic writers of his day only by his wit; that they had all his other
qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense, another as
much fancy, another as much knowledge of character, another the
same depth of passion, and another as great a power of language.

This statement is not true; nor is the inference from it well-founded,
even if it were. This person does not seem to have been aware that,
upon his own shewing, the great distinction of Shakspeare’s genius
was its virtually including the genius of all the great men of his age,
and not his differing from them in one accidental particular. But to
have done with such minute and literal trifling.
The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare’s mind was its generic
quality, its power of communication with all other minds—so that it
contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had no
one peculiar bias, or exclusive excellence more than another. He was
just like any other man, but that he was like all other men. He was
the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was nothing in
himself; but he was all that others were, or that they could become.
He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty and feeling, but
he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively, into all their
conceivable ramifications, through every change of fortune or
conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had ‘a mind reflecting ages
past,’ and present:—all the people that ever lived are there. There
was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone equally on the
evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the monarch and
the beggar: ‘All corners of the earth, kings, queens, and states, maids,
matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,’ are hardly hid from his
searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity, changing
places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our purposes as
with his own. He turned the globe round for his amusement, and
surveyed the generations of men, and the individuals as they passed,
with their different concerns, passions, follies, vices, virtues, actions,
and motives—as well those that they knew, as those which they did
not know, or acknowledge to themselves. The dreams of childhood,
the ravings of despair, were the toys of his fancy. Airy beings waited
at his call, and came at his bidding. Harmless fairies ‘nodded to him,
and did him curtesies’: and the night-hag bestrode the blast at the
command of ‘his so potent art.’ The world of spirits lay open to him,
like the world of real men and women: and there is the same truth in
his delineations of the one as of the other; for if the preternatural
characters he describes, could be supposed to exist, they would
speak, and feel, and act, as he makes them. He had only to think of
any thing in order to become that thing, with all the circumstances
belonging to it. When he conceived of a character, whether real or

imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but
seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be
surrounded with all the same objects, ‘subject to the same skyey
influences,’ the same local, outward, and unforeseen accidents which
would occur in reality. Thus the character of Caliban not only stands
before us with a language and manners of its own, but the scenery
and situation of the enchanted island he inhabits, the traditions of
the place, its strange noises, its hidden recesses, ‘his frequent haunts
and ancient neighbourhood,’ are given with a miraculous truth of
nature, and with all the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole
‘coheres semblably together’ in time, place, and circumstance. In
reading this author, you do not merely learn what his characters say,
—you see their persons. By something expressed or understood, you
are at no loss to decypher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning
of a look, the grouping, the bye-play, as we might see it on the stage.
A word, an epithet paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole
years in the history of the person represented. So (as it has been
ingeniously remarked) when Prospero describes himself as left alone
in the boat with his daughter, the epithet which he applies to her, ‘Me
and thy crying self,’ flings the imagination instantly back from the
grown woman to the helpless condition of infancy, and places the
first and most trying scene of his misfortunes before us, with all that
he must have suffered in the interval. How well the silent anguish of
Macduff is conveyed to the reader, by the friendly expostulation of
Malcolm—‘What! man, ne’er pull your hat upon your brows!’ Again,
Hamlet, in the scene with Rosencrans and Guildenstern, somewhat
abruptly concludes his fine soliloquy on life by saying, ‘Man delights
not me, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say
so.’ Which is explained by their answer—‘My lord, we had no such
stuff in our thoughts. But we smiled to think, if you delight not in
man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you,
whom we met on the way’:—as if while Hamlet was making this
speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really
standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of
the players crossing their minds. It is not ‘a combination and a form’
of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character,
that will do this: but all the persons concerned must have been
present in the poet’s imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and
whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion,

and have been observed by others, passed through his, and is made
known to the reader.—I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always
gives the best directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes.
Thus to take one example, Ophelia gives the following account of
Hamlet; and as Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word
ought to be taken against that of any modern authority.
‘Ophelia. My lord, as I was reading in my closet,
Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,
No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,
Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous,
As if he had been sent from hell
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.
Polonius. Mad for thy love!
Oph. My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.
Pol. What said he?
Oph. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face,
As he would draw it: long staid he so;
At last, a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound,
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
He seem’d to find his way without his eyes;
For out of doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me.’
Act. II. Scene 1.
How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered
melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with
strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is
difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the

prompter’s cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of
Ophelia’s death begins thus:
‘There is a willow hanging o’er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.’—
Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind
which is as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in
fact, white underneath, and it is this part of them which would
appear ‘hoary’ in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of
intuitive power, the same faculty of bringing every object in nature,
whether present or absent, before the mind’s eye, is observable in the
speech of Cleopatra, when conjecturing what were the employments
of Antony in his absence:—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring,
where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ How fine to make Cleopatra have
this consciousness of her own character, and to make her feel that it
is this for which Antony is in love with her! She says, after the battle
of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk another fight, ‘It is my
birth-day; I had thought to have held it poor: but since my lord is
Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ What other poet would have
thought of such a casual resource of the imagination, or would have
dared to avail himself of it? The thing happens in the play as it might
have happened in fact.—That which, perhaps, more than any thing
else distinguishes the dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all
others, is this wonderful truth and individuality of conception. Each
of his characters is as much itself, and as absolutely independent of
the rest, as well as of the author, as if they were living persons, not
fictions of the mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify
himself with the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from
one to another, like the same soul successively animating different
bodies. By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his
imagination out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed
from the mouth of the person in whose name it is given. His plays
alone are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of
them. His characters are real beings of flesh and blood; they speak
like men, not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood by
at the time, and overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold
conversations with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate
intelligence, and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive,
and which we ourselves make, till we hear it: so the dialogues in

Shakspeare are carried on without any consciousness of what is to
follow, without any appearance of preparation or premeditation. The
gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the
wind. Nothing is made out by formal inference and analogy, by
climax and antithesis: all comes, or seems to come, immediately
from nature. Each object and circumstance exists in his mind, as it
would have existed in reality: each several train of thought and
feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world of
his imagination, every thing has a life, a place, and being of its own!
Chaucer’s characters are sufficiently distinct from one another, but
they are too little varied in themselves, too much like identical
propositions. They are consistent, but uniform; we get no new idea of
them from first to last; they are not placed in different lights, nor are
their subordinate traits brought out in new situations; they are like
portraits or physiognomical studies, with the distinguishing features
marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the
same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare’s are historical figures,
equally true and correct, but put into action, where every nerve and
muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all the effect of
collision and contrast, with every variety of light and shade.
Chaucer’s characters are narrative, Shakspeare’s dramatic, Milton’s
epic. That is, Chaucer told only as much of his story as he pleased, as
was required for a particular purpose. He answered for his characters
himself. In Shakspeare they are introduced upon the stage, are liable
to be asked all sorts of questions, and are forced to answer for
themselves. In Chaucer we perceive a fixed essence of character. In
Shakspeare there is a continual composition and decomposition of
its elements, a fermentation of every particle in the whole mass, by
its alternate affinity or antipathy to other principles which are
brought in contact with it. Till the experiment is tried, we do not
know the result, the turn which the character will take in its new
circumstances. Milton took only a few simple principles of character,
and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined
them from every base alloy. His imagination, ‘nigh sphered in
Heaven,’ claimed kindred only with what he saw from that height,
and could raise to the same elevation with itself. He sat retired and
kept his state alone, ‘playing with wisdom’; while Shakspeare
mingled with the crowd, and played the host, ‘to make society the
sweeter welcome.’

The passion in Shakspeare is of the same nature as his delineation
of character. It is not some one habitual feeling or sentiment preying
upon itself, growing out of itself, and moulding every thing to itself;
it is passion modified by passion, by all the other feelings to which
the individual is liable, and to which others are liable with him;
subject to all the fluctuations of caprice and accident; calling into
play all the resources of the understanding and all the energies of the
will; irritated by obstacles or yielding to them; rising from small
beginnings to its utmost height; now drunk with hope, now stung to
madness, now sunk in despair, now blown to air with a breath, now
raging like a torrent. The human soul is made the sport of fortune,
the prey of adversity: it is stretched on the wheel of destiny, in
restless ecstacy. The passions are in a state of projection. Years are
melted down to moments, and every instant teems with fate. We
know the results, we see the process. Thus after Iago has been
boasting to himself of the effect of his poisonous suggestions on the
mind of Othello, ‘which, with a little act upon the blood, will work
like mines of sulphur,’ he adds—

‘Look where he comes! not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the East,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow’dst yesterday.’—
And he enters at this moment, like the crested serpent, crowned
with his wrongs and raging for revenge! The whole depends upon the
turn of a thought. A word, a look, blows the spark of jealousy into a
flame; and the explosion is immediate and terrible as a volcano. The
dialogues in Lear, in Macbeth, that between Brutus and Cassius, and
nearly all those in Shakspeare, where the interest is wrought up to its
highest pitch, afford examples of this dramatic fluctuation of
passion. The interest in Chaucer is quite different; it is like the course
of a river, strong, and full, and increasing. In Shakspeare, on the
contrary, it is like the sea, agitated this way and that, and loud-lashed
by furious storms; while in the still pauses of the blast, we
distinguish only the cries of despair, or the silence of death! Milton,
on the other hand, takes the imaginative part of passion—that which
remains after the event, which the mind reposes on when all is over,
which looks upon circumstances from the remotest elevation of
thought and fancy, and abstracts them from the world of action to
that of contemplation. The objects of dramatic poetry affect us by
sympathy, by their nearness to ourselves, as they take us by surprise,
or force us upon action, ‘while rage with rage doth sympathise’; the
objects of epic poetry affect us through the medium of the
imagination, by magnitude and distance, by their permanence and
universality. The one fill us with terror and pity, the other with
admiration and delight. There are certain objects that strike the
imagination, and inspire awe in the very idea of them, independently
of any dramatic interest, that is, of any connection with the
vicissitudes of human life. For instance, we cannot think of the
pyramids of Egypt, of a Gothic ruin, or an old Roman encampment,
without a certain emotion, a sense of power and sublimity coming
over the mind. The heavenly bodies that hung over our heads
wherever we go, and ‘in their untroubled element shall shine when
we are laid in dust, and all our cares forgotten,’ affect us in the same
way. Thus Satan’s address to the Sun has an epic, not a dramatic
interest; for though the second person in the dialogue makes no
answer and feels no concern, yet the eye that vast luminary is upon

him, like the eye of heaven, and seems conscious of what he says, like
an universal presence. Dramatic poetry and epic, in their perfection,
indeed, approximate to and strengthen one another. Dramatic poetry
borrows aid from the dignity of persons and things, as the heroic
does from human passion, but in theory they are distinct.—When
Richard II. calls for the looking-glass to contemplate his faded
majesty in it, and bursts into that affecting exclamation: ‘Oh, that I
were a mockery-king of snow, to melt away before the sun of
Bolingbroke,’ we have here the utmost force of human passion,
combined with the ideas of regal splendour and fallen power. When
Milton says of Satan:
‘——His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than archangel ruin’d, and th’ excess
Of glory obscur’d;’—
the mixture of beauty, of grandeur, and pathos, from the sense of
irreparable loss, of never-ending, unavailing regret, is perfect.
The great fault of a modern school of poetry is, that it is an
experiment to reduce poetry to a mere effusion of natural sensibility;
or what is worse, to divest it both of imaginary splendour and human
passion, to surround the meanest objects with the morbid feelings
and devouring egotism of the writers’ own minds. Milton and
Shakspeare did not so understand poetry. They gave a more liberal
interpretation both to nature and art. They did not do all they could
to get rid of the one and the other, to fill up the dreary void with the
Moods of their own Minds. They owe their power over the human
mind to their having had a deeper sense than others of what was
grand in the objects of nature, or affecting in the events of human
life. But to the men I speak of there is nothing interesting, nothing
heroical, but themselves. To them the fall of gods or of great men is
the same. They do not enter into the feeling. They cannot understand
the terms. They are even debarred from the last poor, paltry
consolation of an unmanly triumph over fallen greatness; for their
minds reject, with a convulsive effort and intolerable loathing, the
very idea that there ever was, or was thought to be, any thing
superior to themselves. All that has ever excited the attention or
admiration of the world, they look upon with the most perfect
indifference; and they are surprised to find that the world repays

their indifference with scorn. ‘With what measure they mete, it has
been meted to them again.’—
Shakespeare’s imagination is of the same plastic kind as his
conception of character or passion. ‘It glances from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven.’ Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites
the most opposite extremes: or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own
feats, ‘puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.’ He seems
always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the
stroke, like the lightning’s, is sure as it is sudden. He takes the widest
possible range, but from that very range he has his choice of the
greatest variety and aptitude of materials. He brings together images
the most alike, but placed at the greatest distance from each other;
that is, found in circumstances of the greatest dissimilitude. From
the remoteness of his combinations, and the celerity with which they
are effected, they coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more
the thoughts are strangers to each other, and the longer they have
been kept asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to
become. Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made
more dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy
prisoner in the same instant. I will mention one or two which are
very striking, and not much known, out of Troilus and Cressida.
Æneas says to Agamemnon,
‘I ask that I may waken reverence,
And on the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning, when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phœbus.’
Ulysses urging Achilles to shew himself in the field, says—
‘No man is the lord of anything,
Till he communicate his parts to others:
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught,
Till he behold them formed in the applause,
Where they’re extended! which like an arch reverberates
The voice again, or like a gate of steel,
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat.’
Patroclus gives the indolent warrior the same advice.
‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid

Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane
Be shook to air.’
Shakspeare’s language and versification are like the rest of him. He
has a magic power over words: they come winged at his bidding; and
seem to know their places. They are struck out at a heat, on the spur
of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which arise from
an actual impression of the objects. His epithets and single phrases
are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination, fired by the
whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is hieroglyphical. It
translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds in sudden
transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source of his mixed
metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech. These,
however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact, become
idioms in the language. They are the building, and not the scaffolding
to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a well-known passage
entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the particular words
and phrases, than the syllables of which they are composed. In trying
to recollect any other author, one sometimes stumbles, in case of
failure, on a word as good. In Shakspeare, any other word but the
true one, is sure to be wrong. If any body, for instance, could not
recollect the words of the following description,
‘——Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,’
he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally
expressive of the feeling. These remarks, however, are strictly
applicable only to the impassioned parts of Shakspeare’s language,
which flowed from the warmth and originality of his imagination,
and were his own. The language used for prose conversation and
ordinary business is sometimes technical, and involved in the
affectation of the time. Compare, for example, Othello’s apology to
the senate, relating ‘his whole course of love,’ with some of the
preceding parts relating to his appointment, and the official
dispatches from Cyprus. In this respect, ‘the business of the state
does him offence.’ His versification is no less powerful, sweet, and
varied. It has every occasional excellence, of sullen intricacy, crabbed
and perplexed, or of the smoothest and loftiest expansion—from the
ease and familiarity of measured conversation to the lyrical sounds

‘——Of ditties highly penned,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer’s bower,
With ravishing division to her lute.’
It is the only blank verse in the language, except Milton’s, that for
itself is readable. It is not stately and uniformly swelling like his, but
varied and broken by the inequalities of the ground it has to pass
over in its uncertain course,
‘And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean.’
It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so
many or so great as they have been represented; what there are, are
chiefly owing to the following causes:—The universality of his genius
was, perhaps, a disadvantage to his single works; the variety of his
resources, sometimes diverting him from applying them to the most
effectual purposes. He might be said to combine the powers of
Æschylus and Aristophanes, of Dante and Rabelais, in his own mind.
If he had been only half what he was, he would perhaps have
appeared greater. The natural ease and indifference of his temper
made him sometimes less scrupulous than he might have been. He is
relaxed and careless in critical places; he is in earnest throughout
only in Timon, Macbeth, and Lear. Again, he had no models of
acknowledged excellence constantly in view to stimulate his efforts,
and by all that appears, no love of fame. He wrote for the ‘great
vulgar and the small,’ in his time, not for posterity. If Queen
Elizabeth and the maids of honour laughed heartily at his worst
jokes, and the catcalls in the gallery were silent at his best passages,
he went home satisfied, and slept the next night well. He did not
trouble himself about Voltaire’s criticisms. He was willing to take
advantage of the ignorance of the age in many things; and if his plays
pleased others, not to quarrel with them himself. His very facility of
production would make him set less value on his own excellences,
and not care to distinguish nicely between what he did well or ill. His
blunders in chronology and geography do not amount to above half a
dozen, and they are offences against chronology and geography, not
against poetry. As to the unities, he was right in setting them at
defiance. He was fonder of puns than became so great a man. His
barbarisms were those of his age. His genius was his own. He had no

objection to float down with the stream of common taste and
opinion: he rose above it by his own buoyancy, and an impulse which
he could not keep under, in spite of himself or others, and ‘his
delights did shew most dolphin-like.’
He had an equal genius for comedy and tragedy; and his tragedies
are better than his comedies, because tragedy is better than comedy.
His female characters, which have been found fault with as insipid,
are the finest in the world. Lastly, Shakspeare was the least of a
coxcomb of any one that ever lived, and much of a gentleman.
Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm,
and an indifference to personal reputation; he had none of the
bigotry of his age, and his political prejudices were not very strong.
In these respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct
contrast to Milton. Milton’s works are a perpetual invocation to the
Muses; a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on the
contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect
commonwealth; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from
the touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character
into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same sense
of duty to the cultivation of his genius, as he did to the exercise of
virtue, or the good of his country. The spirit of the poet, the patriot,
and the prophet, vied with each other in his breast. His mind appears
to have held equal communion with the inspired writers, and with
the bards and sages of ancient Greece and Rome;—
‘Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old.’
He had a high standard, with which he was always comparing
himself, nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He
thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found about
him. He lived apart, in the solitude of his own thoughts, carefully
excluding from his mind whatever might distract its purposes or
alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. ‘With darkness and with dangers
compassed round,’ he had the mighty models of antiquity always
present to his thoughts, and determined to raise a monument of
equal height and glory, ‘piling up every stone of lustre from the
brook,’ for the delight and wonder of posterity. He had girded
himself up, and as it were, sanctified his genius to this service from

his youth. ‘For after,’ he says, ‘I had from my first years, by the
ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been exercised to the
tongues, and some sciences as my age could suffer, by sundry
masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught was imposed
upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the style by
certain vital signs it had, was likely to live; but much latelier, in the
private academies of Italy, perceiving that some trifles which I had in
memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout, met with
acceptance above what was looked for; I began thus far to assent
both to them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to
an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour
and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined
with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave
something so written to after-times as they should not willingly let it
die. The accomplishment of these intentions, which have lived within
me ever since I could conceive myself anything worth to my country,
lies not but in a power above man’s to promise; but that none hath by
more studious ways endeavoured, and with more unwearied spirit
that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as far as life and
free leisure will extend. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with
any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on trust
with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a
work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine;
like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist,
or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the
invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout
prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases: to this must be
added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight
into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although it nothing
content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand; but that I trust
hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to
interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm
and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts,
to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, from
beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of
delightful studies.’
So that of Spenser:

‘The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent.’
Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a
severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to
leave nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always
labours, and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the finest
things in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and dignifies
his subject to the utmost: he surrounds it with every possible
association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or
physical. He refines on his descriptions of beauty; loading sweets on
sweets, till the sense aches at them; and raises his images of terror to
a gigantic elevation, that ‘makes Ossa like a wart.’ In Milton, there is
always an appearance of effort: in Shakespeare, scarcely any.
Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted
every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly
distinct from every other writer. He is a writer of centos, and yet in
originality scarcely inferior to Homer. The power of his mind is
stamped on every line. The fervour of his imagination melts down
and renders malleable, as in a furnace, the most contradictory
materials. In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence
of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others, becomes
more distinct from them. The quantity of art in him shews the
strength of his genius: the weight of his intellectual obligations
would have oppressed any other writer. Milton’s learning has the
effect of intuition. He describes objects, of which he could only have
read in books, with the vividness of actual observation. His
imagination has the force of nature. He makes words tell as pictures.
‘Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams.’
The word lucid here gives to the idea all the sparkling effect of the
most perfect landscape.
And again:
‘As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,

Dislodging from a region scarce of prey,
To gorge the flesh of lambs and yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies towards the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light.’
If Milton had taken a journey for the express purpose, he could not
have described this scenery and mode of life better. Such passages
are like demonstrations of natural history. Instances might be
multiplied without end.
We might be tempted to suppose that the vividness with which he
describes visible objects, was owing to their having acquired an
unusual degree of strength in his mind, after the privation of his
sight; but we find the same palpableness and truth in the
descriptions which occur in his early poems. In Lycidas he speaks of
‘the great vision of the guarded mount,’ with that preternatural
weight of impression with which it would present itself suddenly to
‘the pilot of some small night-foundered skiff’: and the lines in the
Penseroso, describing ‘the wandering moon,’
‘Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
Through the heaven’s wide pathless way,’
are as if he had gazed himself blind in looking at her. There is also
the same depth of impression in his descriptions of the objects of all
the different senses, whether colours, or sounds, or smells—the same
absorption of his mind in whatever engaged his attention at the time.
It has been indeed objected to Milton, by a common perversity of
criticism, that his ideas were musical rather than picturesque, as if
because they were in the highest degree musical, they must be (to
keep the sage critical balance even, and to allow no one man to
possess two qualities at the same time) proportionably deficient in
other respects. But Milton’s poetry is not cast in any such narrow,
common-place mould; it is not so barren of resources. His worship of
the Muse was not so simple or confined. A sound arises ‘like a steam
of rich distilled perfumes’; we hear the pealing organ, but the incense
on the altars is also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged
around! 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, &c. 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 fledge 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; glossy and impurpled, tinged with golden light, and
musical as the strings of Memnon’s harp!
Again, nothing can be more magnificent than the portrait of
Beelzebub:
‘With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies:’
Or the comparison of Satan, as he ‘lay floating many a rood,’ to ‘that
sea beast,’
‘Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream!’
What a force of imagination is there in this last expression! What an
idea it conveys of the size of that hugest of created beings, as if it
shrunk up the ocean to a stream, and took up the sea in its nostrils as
a very little thing? Force of style is one of Milton’s greatest
excellences. Hence, perhaps, he stimulates us more in the reading,
and less afterwards. The way to defend Milton against all impugners,
is to take down the book and read it.
Milton’s blank verse is the only blank verse in the language (except
Shakspeare’s) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. Johnson, who had
modelled his ideas of versification on the regular sing-song of Pope,
condemns the Paradise Lost as harsh and unequal. I shall not
pretend to say that this is not sometimes the case; for where a degree
of excellence beyond the mechanical rules of art is attempted, the
poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine that there are more perfect
examples in Milton of musical expression, or of an adaptation of the
sound and movement of the verse to the meaning of the passage,
than in all our other writers, whether of rhyme or blank verse, put
together, (with the exception already mentioned). Spenser is the
most harmonious of our stanza writers, as Dryden is the most
sounding and varied of our rhymists. But in neither is there any thing
like the same ear for music, the same power of approximating the
varieties of poetical to those of musical rhythm, as there is in our
great epic poet. The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression
of the sentiment, almost of the very image. They rise or fall, pause or
hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art, but without the least trick or
affectation, as the occasion seems to require.
The following are some of the finest instances:
‘——His hand was known
In Heaven by many a tower’d structure high;—
Nor was his name unheard or unador’d
In ancient Greece: and in the Ausonian land
Men called him Mulciber: and how he fell

From Heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o’er the chrystal battlements; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer’s day; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star
On Lemnos, the Ægean isle: thus they relate,
Erring.’—
‘——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.
To proceed to a consideration of the merits of Paradise Lost, in the
most essential point of view, I mean as to the poetry of character and
passion. I shall say nothing of the fable, or of other technical
objections or excellences; but I shall try to explain at once the
foundation of the interest belonging to the poem. I am ready to give
up the dialogues in Heaven, where, as Pope justly observes, ‘God the
Father turns a school-divine’; nor do I consider the battle of the
angels as the climax of sublimity, or the most successful effort of
Milton’s pen. In a word, the interest of the poem arises from the
daring ambition and fierce passions of Satan, and from the account
of the paradisaical happiness, and the loss of it by our first parents.
Three-fourths of the work are taken up with these characters, and
nearly all that relates to them is unmixed sublimity and beauty. The
two first books alone are like two massy pillars of solid gold.
Satan is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem;
and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the first
of created beings, who, for endeavouring to be equal with the
highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was
hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the
universe; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third part
of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his countenance, and
who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition was the
greatest, and his punishment was the greatest; but not so his despair,
for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. His strength of mind

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