Again, he talks in the Motto, or Invocation to his Muse, of ‘marching the Muse’s Hannibal’ into undiscovered regions. That is, he thinks first of being a leader in poetry, and then he immediately, by virtue of this abstraction, becomes a Hannibal; though no two things can really be more unlike in all the associations belonging to them, than a leader of armies and a leader of the tuneful Nine. In like manner, he compares Bacon to Moses; for in his verses extremes are sure to meet. The Hymn to Light, which forms a perfect contrast to Milton’s Invocation to Light, in the commencement of the third book of Paradise Lost, begins in the following manner:—
‘First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old negro’s darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks, and smil’d.’
And soon after—
‘’Tis, I believe, this archery to show
That so much cost in colours thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow,