A nineteenth-century reader, it may be hoped, finds no more difficulty in idealizing Edward King as a shepherd than in personifying the ocean calm as "sleek Panope and all her sisters," which, to be sure, may have been a trouble to Johnson.

If, however, Johnson is deplorably prosaic, neither can we agree with Pattison that "in 'Lycidas' we have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production." Its innumerable beauties are rather exquisite than magnificent.

It is an elegy, and cannot, therefore, rank as high as an equally consummate example of epic, lyric, or dramatic art.

Even as elegy it is surpassed by the other great English masterpiece, "Adonais," in fire and grandeur.
There is no incongruity in "Adonais" like the introduction of "the pilot of the Galilean lake"; its invective and indignation pour naturally out of the subject; their expression is not, as in "Lycidas," a splendid excrescence.

There is no such example of sustained eloquence in "Lycidas" as the seven concluding stanzas of "Adonais" beginning, "Go thou to Rome." But the balance is redressed by the fact that the beauties of "Adonais" are the inimitable.