Such Advantages as these help to open a Man’s Thoughts, and to enlarge his Imagination, and will therefore have their Influence on all kinds of Writing, if the Author knows how to make right use of them.  And among those of the learned Languages who excel in this Talent, the most perfect in their several kinds, are perhaps Homer, Virgil, and Ovid.  The first strikes the Imagination wonderfully with what is Great, the second with what is Beautiful, and the last with what is Strange.  Reading the Iliad is like travelling through a Country uninhabited, where the Fancy is entertained with a thousand Savage Prospects of vast Desarts, wide uncultivated Marshes, huge Forests, mis-shapen Rocks and Precipices.  On the contrary, the AEneid is like a well ordered Garden, where it is impossible to find out any Part unadorned, or to cast our Eyes upon a single Spot, that does not produce some beautiful Plant or Flower.  But when we are in the Metamorphoses, we are walking on enchanted Ground, and see nothing but Scenes of Magick lying round us.

Homer is in his Province, when he is describing a Battel or a Multitude, a Heroe or a God. Virgil is never better pleased, than when he is in his Elysium, or copying out an entertaining Picture. Homer’s Epithets generally mark out what is Great, Virgil’s what is Agreeable.  Nothing can be more Magnificent than the Figure Jupiter makes in the first Iliad, no more Charming than that of Venus in the first AEneid.

[Greek:  Ae, kai kyaneaesin ep’ ophrysi neuse Kronion, Ambrosiai d’ ara chaitai eperrhosanto anaktos Kratos ap’ athanatoio megan d’ elelixen Olympos.]

  Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit: 
  Ambrosiaeque comae; divinum vertice odorem
  Spiravere:  Pedes vestis defluxit ad imos: 
  Et vera incessu patuit Dea—­

Homer’s Persons are most of them God-like and Terrible; Virgil has scarce admitted any into his Poem, who are not Beautiful, and has taken particular Care to make his Heroe so.

—­lumenque juventae
  Purpureum, et laetos oculis afflavit honores.

In a Word, ‘Homer’ fills his Readers with Sublime Ideas, and, I believe, has raised the Imagination of all the good Poets that have come after him.  I shall only instance ‘Horace’, who immediately takes Fire at the first Hint of any Passage in the ‘Iliad’ or ‘Odyssey’, and always rises above himself, when he has ‘Homer’ in his View.  ‘Virgil’ has drawn together, into his ‘AEneid’, all the pleasing Scenes his Subject is capable of admitting, and in his ‘Georgics’ has given us a Collection of the most delightful Landskips that can be made out of Fields and Woods, Herds of Cattle, and Swarms of Bees.

‘Ovid’, in his ‘Metamorphoses’, has shewn us how the Imagination may be affected by what is Strange.  He describes a Miracle in every Story, and always gives us the Sight of some new Creature at the end of it.  His Art consists chiefly in well-timing his Description, before the first Shape is quite worn off, and the new one perfectly finished; so that he every where entertains us with something we never saw before, and shews Monster after Monster, to the end of the ‘Metamorphoses’.