Is most momentous to my country's weal!
Grainger frequently echoes Milton; and in the passage where he addresses the Avon, at Bristol, he pays a more explicit tribute:--
Though not to you, young Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
All-rudely warbled his first woodland notes;
* * * * *
On you reclined, another tuned his pipe,
Whom all the Muses emulously love,
And in whose strains your praises shall endure
While to Sabrina speeds your healing stream.
Better and more striking instances of the Miltonic spell laid on blank verse are easily to be found for the seeking. But since it is the omnipresence of this Miltonic influence that is asserted, passages like these, which catch the eye on any chance page of eighteenth-century blank verse, and are representative of hundreds more, suffice for the purpose.