_Paradise Lost_, ix. 24.
Urania bestows the flowing words and musical sweetness; to God's
Spirit he looks to
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
_Paradise Lost,/i>, iii, 50.
The singers with whom he would fain equal himself are not Dante, or
Tasso, or, as Dryden would have it, Spenser, but
Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides,
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.
As he in equalled with these in misfortune--loss of sight--he would
emulate them in function. Orpheus and Musaeus are the poets he would
fain have as the companions of his midnight meditation (_Penseroso_).
And the function of the poet is like that of the prophet in the old
dispensation, not to invent, but to utter. It is God's truth which
passes His lips--lips hallowed by the touch of sacred fire. He is the
passive instrument through whom flows the emanation from on high; His
words are not his own, but a suggestion. Even for style Milton is
indebted to his "celestial patroness who deigns her nightly visitation
unimplor'd.
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