“A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis”

["From which, as from a perennial spring, the lips of the poets
are moistened by Pierian waters.”—­Ovid, Amoy., iii. 9, 25.]

and the other,

“Adde Heliconiadum comites, quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus;”

["Add the companions of the Muses, whose sceptre Homer has solely
obtained.”—­Lucretius, iii. 1050.]

and the other: 

          “Cujusque ex ore profusos

Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit,
Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos. 
Unius foecunda bonis.”

["From whose mouth all posterity has drawn out copious streams of verse, and has made bold to turn the mighty river into its little rivulets, fertile in the property of one man.”  —­Manilius, Astyon., ii. 8.]

’Tis contrary to the order of nature that he has made the most excellent production that can possibly be; for the ordinary birth of things is imperfect; they thrive and gather strength by growing, whereas he rendered the infancy of poesy and several other sciences mature, perfect, and accomplished at first.  And for this reason he may be called the first and the last of the poets, according to the fine testimony antiquity has left us of him, “that as there was none before him whom he could imitate, so there has been none since that could imitate him.”  His words, according to Aristotle, are the only words that have motion and action, the only substantial words.  Alexander the Great, having found a rich cabinet amongst Darius’ spoils, gave order it should be reserved for him to keep his Homer in, saying:  that he was the best and most faithful counsellor he had in his military affairs.  For the same reason it was that Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, said that he was the poet of the Lacedaemonians, for that he was an excellent master for the discipline of war.  This singular and particular commendation is also left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the only author in the world that never glutted nor disgusted his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and always flourishing in some new grace.  That wanton Alcibiades, having asked one, who pretended to learning, for a book of Homer, gave him a box of the ear because he had none, which he thought as scandalous as we should if we found one of our priests without a Breviary.  Xenophanes complained one day to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, that he was so poor he had not wherewithal to maintain two servants.  “What!” replied he, “Homer, who was much poorer than thou art, keeps above ten thousand, though he is dead.”  What did Panaetius leave unsaid when he called Plato the Homer of the philosophers?  Besides what glory can be compared to his?  Nothing is so frequent in men’s mouths as his name and works, nothing so known and received as Troy, Helen, and the war about her, when