quote:

The most valuable result of the anti-Miltonist campaign was the counter-reaction. Later critics, provoked into examining Milton's language more closely, have revealed a rich multiplicity of wordplay and subtle verbal effects. Far from being loose and rhetorical, his lines are saturated with meaning.

The Modern Library editors offer enough examples to give readers a good idea of what to look out for. In "Paradise Lost," to take a single small instance, the serpent as it first approaches Eve is "voluble and bold, now hid, now seen." The editors explain that "voluble" is being used in its original Latin sense, to mean "rolling along." But they make the further point that voluble in its modern sense -- "talkative" -- is what the serpent is about to become.

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I didn't study them in detail.