TALBOYS.
“Heavenly” Muse is opposed to “Olympian” Muse; as if “Hebraic” to “Hellenic;” as if “Scriptural” to “Classical;” as if “Sacred” to “Profane;” as if Muse of Zion to Muse of Pindus. Therefore we must ask—What “Muse” ordinarily means? We know what it meant in the mouth of a believing Greek. It meant a real person—a divine being of a lower Order. But Milton is a Christian—for whom those deities are no more. They are, in his eye, mere imaginations—air.
“For Thou art heavenly! She (the Hellenic) an empty dream.”
And so already—
“The meaning, not the name, I call.”
To wit, the Hellenic is to him a name—air.
SEWARD.
We must ask—What does, in ordinary Verse, not in sacred poetry, a Christian poet mean, when He names, and yet more when he invokes, the Muse—the Sacred Sisters nine? And we are thrown upon recognising the widely-spread literary fact—not unattractive or quite unimportant—that Christendom cherished this reminiscence of Heathendom; that, in fact, our poetry seems to rest for a part of its life upon this airy relic of a fled mythology—varied in all ways, Muse, Helicon, Hippocrene, &c. Greatest Poets, not poetasters, the inspired, not the imitative and servile—and at height of occasion.
Thus Shakspeare—
“O for a Muse of fire that would ascend