202 HARD WORDS. 



Let me pause a moment before the awful genius of Milton, 



" That with no middle flight intends to soar 

 Above the Ionian mount." 



Though the subject be linked to our earliest and most sacred asso- 

 ciations, though the cadence be majestic and the thoughts divine, 

 the language is felt as peculiar and essential. James Montgomery, 

 in his eloquent Lectures on Poetry, remarks — fl Thus, nothing can 

 be less adorned than the opening of Paradise Lost ; the cadence of 

 the verse alone redeems the whole from being plain prose in the 

 first six lines, but thenceforward it rises through every clause in 

 energy and grandeur, till the reader feels himself carried away by 

 the impetuosity of that adventurous song. In the proposition the 

 language is colloquial, but, rising to the invocation of the Deity, 

 how ponderous the tones become ! 



" Thou from the first 



"Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread, 

 Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, 

 And mad'st it pregnant," &c. 



Now let any man attempt to tell to another the subject of Mil- 

 ton's exordium ; this he might do, and correctly enough, but it 

 would be no more like Milton than "I to Hercules :" the word is 

 the body to the thought, and cannot be separated without death. 

 The eloquent Hazlitt says — " Words are the only things that last 

 for ever." " Nor is this merely a splendid saying," writes Mont- 

 gomery, " or a startling paradox that may be qualified, by explana- 

 tion, into common-place ; it is literally true." Art and science de- 

 cline in the succession of ages, and nothing remains but their verbal 

 commemoration. u The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

 the solemn temples," like " the baseless fabric of a vision," will 

 f leave not a wreck behind," save the history of their existence. 



Such are words, born of, and co-existent with, time ! By their 

 magic inspiration immortality is given to truth, and though dead 

 we still live in the perpetuity of our thoughts — the first, last sym- 

 bol of the soul. Shall we look into Johnson, surnamed the Grail a- 

 tore, Swift, Burke, Addison, Goldsmith — 



" Eloquent as is Apollo's lute ;" 

 or examine the immortal works of Taylor, Milton, Luther, that 



