Here and there, many times, in detached
places, Milton has consciously imitated. But, beyond this obvious
indebtedness, there runs through the whole texture of his verse a
suggestion of secondary meaning, a meaning which has been accreted to
the words, by their passage down the consecrated stream of classical
poetry. Milton quotes very little for a man of much reading. He says
of himself (_Judgment of Bucer_) that he "never could delight in long
citations, much less in whole traductions, whether it be natural
disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of
what God made mine own, and not a translator." And the observation
is as old as Bishop Newton, that "there is scarce any author who has
written so much, and upon such various subjects, and yet quotes so
little from his contemporary authors." It is said that "he could repeat
Homer almost all without book." But we know that common minds are
apt to explain to themselves the working of mental superiority, by
exaggerating the power of memory. Milton's own writings remain
a sufficient evidence that his was not a verbal memory. And,
psychologically, the power of imagination and the power of verbal
memory, are almost always found in inverse proportion.
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