The highest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage!” &c.
Spenser—at entering upon his vast Poem—
“Me all too mean the Sacred Muse areeds.”
And the master of good plain sense in verse, Pope, acknowledges the ineradicably rooted expression—
“Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
I put these together, because I doubt not but that Milton in choosing and guarding (just like Tasso) the word, looked this practice of Christian, or christened poets, full in the face; and spoke, founding upon it. Muse, to his mind inventing his Invocation, had three senses. Imaginary Deity of a departed belief—An Authoritative Name, thence retained with affection and pride by Poets of the Christian world—Or, something new, which might be made for his own peculiar purpose, or which Tasso had begun to make, undertaking a Poem after a sort sacred.
TALBOYS.
I cannot believe that the word which has held such fond place in the minds of great poets, and all poets, can have been a dry and bald imitation of antiquity. Doubtless it had, and has, a living meaning; answers to, and is answered by, something in their bosoms—the Name to which Shakspeare and Spenser clung, and which Milton put by the side of the Holy Spirit and transplanted into Heaven.
NORTH.