His nostril wide into the murky air.
A superb example of this powerful use of abstract terms is contained in the First Book of Paradise Regained, where is described how Satan, disguised as an old man, took his leave of the Son of God, and
Bowing low
His gray dissimulation, disappeared
Into thin air diffused.
The word "dissimulation" expresses the fact of the gray hairs assumed, the purpose of deceit, the cringing attitude, and adds a vague effect of power. The same vagueness is habitually studied by Milton in such phrases as "the vast abrupt," "the palpable obscure," "the void immense," "the wasteful deep," where, by the use of an adjective in place of a substantive, the danger of a definite and inadequate conception is avoided.
Milton, therefore, describes the concrete, the specific, the individual, using general and abstract terms for the sake of the dignity and scope that they lend. The best of our Romantic poets follow the opposite course: they are much concerned with abstract conceptions and general truths, but they bring them home by the employment of concrete and specific terms, and figures so familiar that they cannot easily avoid grotesque associations. These grotesque associations, however trivial, are the delight of humour: Alexander's dust will stop a beer-barrel; divine ambition exposes
what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell.