* * * * *
So he had written in 1642, and this lofty faith in his calling supported him twenty years later, in the arduous labour of his attempt to realise his own ideal. In setting himself down to compose Paradise Lost and Regained, he regarded himself not as an author, but as a medium, the mouthpiece of "that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and all knowledge: Urania, heavenly muse," visits him nightly,
And dictates to me Blumb'ring, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse.
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.