It is true that Milton has a way of making his own even
what he borrows. While Horace's thefts from Alcaeus or Pindar are
palpable, even from the care which he takes to Latinise them, Milton
cannot help transfusing his own nature into the words he adopts. But
this is far from all. When Milton's widow was asked "if he did not
often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon
him for stealing from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that
he stole from nobody but the muse who inspired him." This is more
true than she knew. It is true there are many phrases or images in
_Paradise Lost_ taken from earlier writers--taken, not stolen, for the
borrowing is done openly. When Adam, for instance, begs Raphael to
prolong his discourse deep into night,--
Sleep, listening to thee, will watch;
Or we can bid his absence, till thy song
End, and dismiss thee ere the morning shine;
we cannot be mistaken, in saying that we have here a conscious
reminiscence of the words of Alcinous to Ulysses in the eleventh book
of the Odyssey. Such imitation is on the surface, and does not touch
the core of that mysterious combination of traditive with original
elements in diction, which Milton and Virgil, alone of poets known to
us, have effected.
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