No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than Milton.

His description of death in the second book is admirably studied; it is astonishing with what a gloomy pomp, with what a significant and expressive uncertainty of strokes and coloring, he has finished the portrait of the king of terrors: "The other shape, If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed; For each seemed either; black he stood as night; Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell; And shook a deadly dart.

What seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on." In this description all is dark, uncertain, confused, terrible, and sublime to the last degree.
SECTION IV.
OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLEARNESS AND OBSCURITY WITH REGARD TO THE PASSIONS.
It is one thing to make an idea clear, and another to make it _affecting_ to the imagination.

If I make a drawing of a palace, or a temple, or a landscape, I present a very clear idea of those objects; but then (allowing for the effect of imitation which is something) my picture can at most affect only as the palace, temple, or landscape, would have affected in the reality.

On the other hand, the most lively and spirited verbal description I can give raises a very obscure and imperfect _idea_ of such objects; but then it is in my power to raise a stronger _emotion_ by the description than I could do by the best painting.