NORTH. Milton, who had unremittingly studied the classical Art of Poetry, and who brought into the service of his great and solemn undertaking all the resources of poetical Art, which prior ages had placed at his disposal, whose learning, from the literature of the world, gathered spoils to hang up in the vast and glorious temple which he dedicated—He might, without offence to the devout purpose of his own soul, borrow from the devotion of those old pagan worshippers the hint, and partially the form, of those exordial supplications. SEWARD. He opens the _Paradise Lost_ with Two Invocations. Both implore aid. But the aid asked in one and in the other is different in kind, as the Two Powers, of whom the aid is asked, are also wholly different. Let us look at these two Invocations in the order in which they stand. “Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the sacred top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos: or, if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d Fast by the oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know’st: Thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like, sat’st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark, Illumine: what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.” The First is taken, hint and form both, from Homer. Homer, girding up his strength to sing the war of confederated Greece against Troy and her confederates, makes over his own overpowering theme to a Spirit able to support the burden—to the Muse. Sing, Goddess, he begins, the Anger of Achilles. NORTH.