afflatus

noun

1. A sudden rush of creative impulse or inspiration, often attributed to divine influence.

   “divine afflatus”

   “'Tis extremely difficult to keep up the Spirit of Poetry in another's Compoſitions, tho' you catch all the […] apteſt Moments; and never employ the Mind, but when there is an Impetus comes upon it toward that particular buſineſs: […] I know not how far this was the Caſe with Mr. [Alexander] Pope, in this performance: but wherever it was, the Poet will be little more than a common Man: He is, at ſuch times, much the ſame as a Prophet without his Afflatus.”

   “[…] Men acted by seducing spirits: for πνεύματα doth often signify the impulses or afflatuses of good or evil spirits; […] You are zealous, πνευματων, of spiritual gifts, or afflatuses, and so throughout the chapter; […]”

   “He used to gallop Rebecca over the neighbouring Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if you please, we shall call Chatteris, spouting his own poems, and filled with quite a Byronic afflatus as he thought.”

   “We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a single masterpiece,—the artists and poets who but once in their lives had known the divine afflatus, and touched the high level of the best.”