"Milton, perhaps to relieve the uniformity of English structure, which tends to become too barely evident in blank verse, tries often to imitate the classical order; but the result is an effect often of artificiality, at best of solemnity. Homer's Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος Οὐλομένην, and Virgil's 'Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris,' &c., put the right words in the right place, without any loss of spirit. Milton's opening— Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, &c. is like an organ prelude: no English writer of a secular epic in blank verse could begin thus with success. It is impossible not to feel how tense must have been the struggle of that toil which Milton had to bestow on the stubborn material of his native language, before the gold of his words and verses won its full refinement. Diction so magnificent yet so severe cannot carry the reader along; so far from being the mere slave of the thought, like Homer's Greek, it is itself a marvel of study and meditation, which arrests and amazes him."