fata trahunt, retrahuntque, sequamur.  I could please myself with enlarging on this subject, but am forced to defer it to a fitter time.  From all I have said, I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader.  One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat.  ’Tis the same difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully—­one persuades; the other commands.  You never cool while you read Homer, even not in the second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen), but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine.  From thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less compass than two months.  This vehemence of his, I confess, is more suitable to my temper; and therefore I have translated his first book with greater pleasure than any part of Virgil.  But it was not a pleasure without pains; the continual agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of any constitution, especially in age, and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats, the Iliad of itself being a third part longer than all Virgil’s works together.

This is what I thought needful in this place to say of Homer.  I proceed to Ovid and Chaucer; considering the former only in relation to the latter.  With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue:  from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began.  The manners of the poets were not unlike:  both of them were well-bred, well-natured, amorous, and libertine, at least in their writings—­it may be also in their lives.  Their studies were the same—­philosophy and philology.  Both of them were known in astronomy, of which Ovid’s books of the Roman feasts, and Chaucer’s treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses.  But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and Manilius.  Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness:  neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer’s stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors.  Boccace’s Decameron was first published; and from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his Canterbury tales; yet that of Palamon and Arcite was written in all probability by some Italian wit, in a former age; as I shall prove hereafter.  The tale of Grizzild was the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace; from whom it came to Chaucer.  Troilus and Cressida was also written by a Lombard author; but much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen in general being rather to improve an invention, than to invent themselves; as is evident not only in our poetry, but in many of our manufactures.  I find