And so it is. Fielding's architectural power is a yet more wonderful thing
in Sophocles, where it is allied to poetic energy; Ruskin's moral fervour
is, for all its nobility, less memorable than Wordsworth's and Ben Jonson
defines character more pungently than Sheridan. These energies remain,
nevertheless, distinct from the poetic energy. When, however, a poet is
endowed not alone with his own particular gift of poetry, but also with
some of these other energies--of which there are many--his work very
rightly is allowed an added greatness. It is so with _Paradise Lost_.
Of the three energies other than the poetic that I have mentioned, Milton
had rich measure of two and something of the third. No man has ever
excelled him either in power of intellectual control or in moral passion,
and he was not without some sense of character. Consequently we get in
his great poem, not only the dominating poetic quality which is the chief
thing, enabling the poet to realise his vision (or mood) perfectly, but
also the spectacle of a great number of perfectly realised visions being
related to each other with excellent harmony; we get, further, a great
moral exaltation--again perfectly realised by the poetic energy, and we
get, finally, considerable subtlety--far more than is generally allowed--of
psychological detail.
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