OVERRATED WRITERS
think it a pity that your competition results last week should jibe at our noblest poet. When I was at Oxford we were taught exactly the stuff Mr. M. R. Ridley's entry repeats—that Paradise Lost was dull, heavy and rather silly. Some years later I had to look up that exquisite pas- sage, "Now came still evening on . . ." I sat down and read the poem through (it can be read in an evening). I shall never forget the cumulative effect—much like a Brahms' symphony. The infinite variety of cadence and image that only a master musician could create is joined to the astonishing rich pic- tures of Eden (surely the description of Eve is one of the most glorious in the world), contrasted with the stiffly beauti- ful heaven and the flaming hell. But not only the music and the painting ravished me, but I felt that I had been in the company of a higher and greater mind than nearly all our poets have—that truly Milton's prayer had been answered and he had been given to sing "of things invisible to mortal sight" as no other poet except perhaps Dante. This is not to say that my religious beliefs have anything in common with Milton's—but why condemn this magnificence and high beauty just because one happens not to be in sympathy with the Protestant spirit?—Yours, &c., A. B. V. DREW. 26 Primrose Gardens, N.W. 3.
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