without any Connexion or Dependance:  wherein Dionysius the Halicarnassian very justly praises the Order and Management of the Design, as well as the Grandeur and Magnificence of the Expression, and the sweet and passionate Movements.  Nor is it without Reason that Horace, Longinus, and all Antiquity have given him, as the Model of just and noble Sentiments and Expressions.  I must confess there’s something in his Numbers that strikes me more than even Virgil’s, his Thoughts and Expressions appear stronger than his, tho’ it cannot be denied but that Virgil’s Design is much more regular.  Rapin says a great deal of that Prince of the Latin Poets, tho’ indeed he can never say enough, “He had an admirable Taste, says he, of what’s natural, an excellent Judgment for the Order, and an incomparable Delicacy for the Number and Harmony of his Versification.”  And adds, “That the Design of the Poem is, if we consider it in all its Circumstances, the most judicious and best-laid that ever was or ever will be.”  There is indeed a prodigious Variety in Virgil, and yet the same Soul visible in every Line.  His own great Spirit informs his Poetical World, and like that he speaks of,

    ——­ totos infusa per Artus
  Mens agitat Molem, & magno se corpora miscet.

He’s soft with the height of Majesty, his Marcellus, his Dido, and, I think, above all, his Elegy on Pallas is very noble and tender.  The joints so strong and exactly wrought, the Parts so proportionable, the Thoughts and Expression so great, the Complements so fine and just, that I could ne’er endure to read Statius, or any of the rest of the Antient Latins after him; with whom therefore I shan’t concern my self nor trouble my Reader.  Ariosto was the first of the Moderns who attempted any thing like an Heroic Poem, and has many great and beautiful Thoughts; but at the same time, ’tis true, as Balzac observes, that you can hardly tell whether he’s a Christian or an Heathen, making God swear by Styx, and using all the Pagan Ornaments; his Fancy very often runs away with his Judgment, his Action is neither one nor simple, nor can you imagine what he drives at; he has an hundred Hero’s but you can’t tell which he designs should be chief:  Orlando indeed seems a wild Imitation of Homer’s Achilles, but his Character is not bright enough to make him the Principal; and besides he orders it so, that he does more great Actions when he’s mad then when sober.  Agreeable to this are Rapin’s thoughts of him, which, in few words, are “That he’s elevated and admirable in his Expressions, his Descriptions fine, but that he wants Judgment; and speaks well, but thinks ill, and that tho’ the Parts are handsome enough, yet the whole Work can by no means pass for an Epic Poem, he having never seen the Rules of Aristotle;” which he thinks Tasso had, and therefore wrote much better, whom he commends as more correct in his Design, more regular in the ordering his Fable, and more accomplish’d in all parts