on every page. The mere invocation often tells a tale. Thus
Akenside:--

Thou chief, Poetic Spirit, from the banks
Of Avon, whence thy holy fingers cull
Fresh flowers and dews to sprinkle on the turf
Where Shakespeare lies, be present. And with thee
Let Fiction come; on her aerial wings
Wafting ten thousand colours.

The quotation need not be prolonged; even while he commemorates
Shakespeare, Akenside goes to Milton for his material, and plays a feeble
variation on the Miltonic phrase:--

In his right hand
Grasping ten thousand thunders.

Thus Lyttelton:--

Minerva, thee to my adventurous lyre
Assistant I invoke, that means to sing
Blenheim, proud monument of British fame
Thy glorious work!

"The building, not the field, I sing," he might have added, for Philips
had already chanted the battle of Blenheim in like Miltonic fashion.
Thus, again, the worthy Grainger, flattest of agricultural bards:--

Spirit of Inspiration, that did'st lead
Th' Ascrean poet to the sacred mount,
And taught'st him all the precepts of the swain;
Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps
To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns;
Where pastoral Dyer, where Pomona's bard,
And Smart and Somervile in varying strains,
Their sylvan lore convey: O may I join
This choral band, and from their precepts learn
To deck my theme, which though to song unknown,
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.

There has been a tendency among recent historians of English literature
to group together the poets who, like Dyer in _Grongar Hill_, and Thomas
Warton in _The Pleasures of Melancholy_, ec