Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night.
With as decisive a touch he sketches the story of Jacob--
In the field of Luz,
Dreaming by night under the open sky,
And waking cried, This is the gate of Heaven.
Or the descent of Raphael:--
Like Maia's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
The circuit wide.
The packed line introduced by Milton is of a greater density and conciseness than anything to be found in English literature before it. It is our nearest native counterpart to the force and reserve of the high Virgilian diction. In his Discourse of the Original and Progress of Satire, Dryden has called attention to the close-wrought quality of Virgil's work. "Virgil," he says, "could have written sharper satires than either Horace or Juvenal, if he would have employed his talent that way. I will produce a verse and a half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion; and with commas after every word, to show that he has given almost as many lashes as he has written syllables: it is against a bad poet, whose ill verses he describes:--