evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the same story, and the persons already formed:  the manners of AEneas are those of Hector superadded to those which Homer gave him.  The adventures of Ulysses in the Odysseis are imitated in the first six books of Virgil’s AEneas, and though the accidents are not the same (which would have argued him of a servile copying, and total barrenness of invention), yet the seas were the same in which both the heroes wandered, and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypso.  The six latter books of Virgil’s poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted; a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieged.  I say not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I have formerly said in his just praise, for his episodes are almost wholly of his own invention; and the form which he has given to the telling makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been the same.  But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design; and if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the second place.  Mr Hobbs, in the preface to his own bald translation of the Ilias (studying poetry as he did mathematics, when it was too late), Mr Hobbs, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should have ended it.  He tells us, that the first beauty of an Epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony of numbers.  Now, the words are the colouring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be considered:  the design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it; where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life, which is in the very definition of a poem.  Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise, and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best.  Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in this last, which is expression, the Roman poet is at least equal to the Grecian, as I have said elsewhere, supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his diligence.  But to return:  our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is, that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design, as in the execution of it.  The very heroes show their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful—­impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer, &c.:  AEneas patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies; ever submissive to the will of Heaven—­quo