[ ] PREFACE. COMER is univerfally allowed to have had the greatest Invention of any writer whatever. The praife of judgment Virgil has juftly contefted with him, and others may have their pretenfions as to particular excellencies; but his Invention remains yet unrivaled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the Invention that in different degrees diftinguishes all great Geniuses : the utmost stretch of human study, learning, and industry, which masters every thing befides, can never attain to this. It furnishes Art with all her materials, and without it, Judgment itself can at best but steal wifely: for Art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of Nature. Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a fingle beauty in them to which the Invention must not contribute as in the most regular gardens, Art can only reduce the beauties of Nature to more regularity, and fuch a figure, which the common eye may better take in, and is therefore more entertained with. And perhaps the reason why common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to purVOL. I. B fue fue their obfervations through an uniform and bounded walk of Art, than to comprehend the vast and various extent of Nature. Our author's work is a wild paradife, where if we cannot fee all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which contains the feeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but felected fome particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If fome things are too luxuriant, it is owing to the richness of the foil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are over-run and oppreft by those of a stronger nature. It is to the ftrength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that unequalled fire and rapture, which is to forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical fpirit is mafter of himfelf while he reads him. What he writes, is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, every thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was faid or done as from a third perfon; the reader is hurried out of himfelf by the force of the Poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator. The courfe of his verfes refembles that of the army he defcribes, Οἱ δ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἴσαν, ὡσεί τε πυρὶ χθὼν πᾶσα νέμοιο. "They pour along like a fire that fweeps the whole "earth |