Glover's _Leonidas_; Shenstone's _Economy_, _The Ruined Abbey_, and _Love and Honour_; Young's _Night Thoughts_; Akenside's _Pleasures of the Imagination_; Thomas Warton's _Pleasures of Melancholy_; Mallet's _The Excursion_, and _Amyntor and Theodora_; Cooper's _The Power of Harmony_; and Lyttelton's _Blenheim_. The influence of Milton is not equally apparent in all of these, but in none is it wholly wanting; in most it is visible 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.