which however are fo managed as not to overpower the main one. His fimiles are like pictures, where the principal figure has not only its proportion given agreeably to the original, but is also fet off with occafional ornaments and profpects. The fame will account for his manner of heaping a number of comparisons together in one breath, when his fancy suggested to him at once fo many various and correfpondent images. The reader will eafily extend this obfervation to more objections of the fame kind.

If there are others which feem rather to charge him with a defect or narrowness of genius, than an excess of it; those seeming defects will be found upon examination to proceed wholly from the nature of the times he lived in. Such are his groffer representations of the Gods, and the vicious and imperfect manners of his Heroes; but I muft here speak a word of the latter, as it is a point generally carried into extremes, both by the cenfurers and defenders of Homer. It must be a ftrange partiality to antiquity, to think with madam Dacier, "that those times and manners are so much the more "excellent, as they are more contrary to ours." Who can be fo prejudiced in their favour as to magnify the felicity of thofe ages, when a spirit of revenge and cruelty, joined with the practice of rapine and robbery, reignedthrough the world; when no mercy was fhewn but for the fake of lucre, when the greatest princes were put to VOL. I.

*

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*Preface to her Homer.

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the fword, and their wives and daughters made flaves and concubines ? On the other fide, I would not be fo delicate as thofe modern criticks, who are fhocked at the fervile offices and mean employments in which we fometimes fee the heroes of Homer engaged. There is a pleasure in taking a view of that fimplicity, in oppofition to the luxury of fucceeding ages; in beholding monarchs without their guards, princes tending their flocks, and princeffes drawing water from the springs. When we read Homer, we ought to reflect that we are reading the most ancient author in the heathen world; and those who confider him in this light, will double their pleasure in the perufal of him. Let them think they are growing acquainted with nations and people that are now no more; that they are stepping almoft three thoufand years back into the remotest antiquity, and entertaining themselves with a clear and furprizing vifion of things no where else to be found, the only true mirror of that ancient world. By this means alone their greatest obstacles will vanish; and what usually creates their diflike, will become a fatisfaction.

This confideration may farther ferve to answer for the conftant ufe of the fame epithets to his Gods and heroes, fuch as the far-darting Phoebus, the blue-eyed Pallas, the fwift-footed Achilles, &c. which fome have cenfured as impertinent and tediously repeated. Those of the Gods depended upon the powers and offices then believed to belong to them, and had contracted a weight and veneration from the rites and folemn devotions in

which they were ufed: they were a sort of attributes, with which it was a matter of religion to falute them on all occafions, and which it was an irreverence to omit. As for the epithets of great men, Monf. Boileau is of opinion, that they were in the nature of furnames, and repeated as fuch; for the Greeks, having no names derived from their fathers, were obliged to add fome other diftinction of each perfon; either naming his parents exprefsly, or his place of birth, profeffion, or the like: as Alexander the fon of Philip, Herodotus of Halicarnaffus, Diogenes the Cynic, &c. Homer therefore, complying with the custom of his country, used fuch diftinctive additions as better agreed with poetry. And indeed we have fomething parallel to these in modern times, fuch as the names of Harold Harefoot, Edmund Ironfide, Edward Long-shanks, Edward the Black Prince, &c. If yet this be thought to account better for the propriety than for the repetition, I shall add a farther conjecture. Hefiod, dividing the world into its different ages, has placed a fourth age between the brazen and the iron one, of " Heroes diftinct from other men: a divine race, who fought at Thebes and Troy, are called Demi-Gods, and live by the care of Jupiter in the islands of the blessed.*” Now among the divine honours which were paid them, they might have this alfo in common with the Gods, not to be mentioned without the folemnity of an epithet, and such C 2

* Hefiod. lib. i. ver. 155, &c.

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as might be acceptable to them by its celebrating their families, actions, or qualities.

What other cavils have been raised against Homer, are fuch as hardly deferve a reply, but will yet be taken notice of as they occur in the course of the work. Many have been occafioned by an injudicious endeavour to exalt Virgil; which is much the fame, as if one should think to raise the superstructure by undermining the foundation: one would imagine, by the whole courfe of their parallels, that thefe criticks never fo much as heard of Homer's having written firft: a confideration which whoever compares thefe two poets, ought to have always in his eye. Some accufe him for the fame things which they overlook or praise in the other; as when they prefer the fable and moral of the Aneis to thofe of the Iliad, for the fame reasons which might fet the Odysses above the Æneis: as that the hero is a wifer man: and the action of the one more beneficial to his country than that of the other: or else they blame him for not doing what he never defigned; as because Achilles is not as good and perfect a prince as Æneas, when the very moral of his poem required a contrary character: it is thus that Rapin judges in his comparison of Homer and Virgil. Others felect those particular paffages of Homer, which are not so laboured as fome that Virgil drew out of them; this is the whole management of Scaliger in his Poetics. Others quarrel with what they take for low and mean expreffions, fometimes through a falfe delicacy and refinement, oft

ner

ner from an ignorance of the graces of the original; and then triumph in the aukwardness of their own tranflations; this is the conduct of Perault in his Parallels. Lastly, there are others, who, pretending to a fairer proceeding, diftinguish between the perfonal merit of Homer, and that of his work; but when they come to affign the causes of the great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his times and the prejudice of those that followed: and in purfuance of this principle, they make thofe accidents (fuch as the contention of the cities, &c.) to be the caufes of his fame, which were in reality the confequences of his merit. The fame might as well be faid of Virgil, or any great author, whofe general character will infallibly raise many cafual additions to their reputation. This is the method of Monf. de la Motte; who yet confeffes upon the whole, that in whatever age Homer had lived, he must have been the greatest poet of his nation, and that he may be said in this sense to be the mafter even of those who furpassed him.

In all these objections we fee nothing that contradicts his title to the honour of the chief Invention; and as long as this (which is indeed the characteristic of poetry itself) remains unequalled by his followers, he ftill continues fuperior to them. A cooler judgment may commit fewer faults, and be more approved in the eyes of one fort of criticks: but that warmth of fancy will carry the loudest and moft univerfal applauses, which holds the heart of a reader under the ftrongest enchantment.