Abstract
This chapter traces the emergence of the term ‘grand style’. It was first applied to Milton by Matthew Arnold, but in his early writings Arnold spoke of ‘a grand style’ (not ‘the grand style’), and he used the term to link Milton with Shakespeare and Keats (poets with whom Milton would later be contrasted). The change came with Arnold’s lecture ‘On Translating Homer’, which entrenched ‘the grand style’ as a key term in Milton criticism and exalted Milton as poet of sound divorced from sense. The chapter also discusses Keats’s supposed ‘rejection’ of Milton and Tennyson’s supposed eulogy of Milton’s ‘organ music’. The case is made that both of these poets’ pronouncements on Milton have been misunderstood. Other critics discussed include: Hunt, Landor, Bagehot, Masson, and Lowell. The chapter draws special attention to two neglected critics, Edwin Guest and John Addington Symonds, who preserve the eighteenth-century view of Milton’s ‘apt Numbers’.
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