PREFACE ΤΟ HOMER'S ILIAD. HOM OMER is univerfally allowed to have had the greatest invention of any writer whatever. The praife of judgment Virgil has juftly contested with him, and others may have their pretenfions as to particular excellencies; but his invention remains yet unrivalled. Nor is it a wonder if he has ever been acknowledged the greatest of poets, who most excelled in that which is the very foundation of poetry. It is the invention that in different degrees diftinguishes all great geniufes: The utmoft ftretch of human study, learning, and induftry, which mafter every thing befides, can never attain to this. It furnishes art with all her materials, and without, judgment itfelf can at beft but steal wifely: For art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature. Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a fingle beauty in them, to which the invention must not contribute. As in the moft regular gardens, art can only reduce the beauties of nature to more regularity, and fuch a figure, which the common eye may better take in, and is therefore more entertained tertained with. And perhaps the reason why common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves to pursue their obfervations through an uniform and bounded walk of art, than to comprehend the vast and various extent of nature. Our author's work is a wild paradife, where, if we cannot fee all the beauties fo distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. 'Tis like a copious nursery which contains the feeds and firft productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but felected fome particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If fome things are too luxuriant, it is owing to the richness of the foil; and if o thers are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppreffed by thofe of a stronger nature. It is to the ftrength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that unequalled fire and rapture, which is fo forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him. What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, e very thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was faid or done as from a third perfon; the reader is hurried out of himfelf by the force of the poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator. The courfe of his verses resembles that of the army he describes, Οι δ' αρ ισαν, ώσει τε πυρί χθων πασα νέμοι Γου They pour along like a fire that fweeps the whole earth before it. It is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is every where vigorous, is not difcovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fulleft fplendour; it grows in the progrefs both upon himself and others, and becomes on fire like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact difpofition, juft thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been found in a thoufand; but this poetical fire, this vivida vis animi, in a very few. Even in works where all thofe are imperfect or neglected, this can overpower criticifm, and make us admire even while we difapprove. Nay, where this appears, though attended with abfurdities, it brightens all the rubbish a bout it, till we fee nothing but its own fplendour. This fire is difcerned in Virgil, but difcerned as through a glafs, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but every where equal and conftant: In Lucan and Statius it bursts out in fudden, fhort, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: In Shakespear it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from heaven: But in Homer, and in him only, it burns every where clearly, and every where irresistibly. I fhall here endeavour to fhow, how this vast invention exerts itself in a manner fuperior to that of any poet, through all the main conftituent parts of his work, as it is the great and peculiar cha racteristic which diftinguishes him from all other authors. This ftrong and ruling faculty was like a powerful ftar, which, in the violence of its courfe, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole compass of nature to fupply his maxims and reflections; all the inward paffions and affections of mankind, to furnifh his characters; and all the outward forms and images of things for his defcriptions; but wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundlefs walk for his imagination, and created a world for himfelf in the invention of fable. That which Ariftotle calls the foul of poetry was first breathed into it by Homer. I fhall begin with confidering him in this part, as it is naturally the firft, and I fpeak of it both as it means the defign of a poem, and as it is taken for fiction. Fable may be divided unto the probable, the allegorical, and the marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of fuch actions as though they did not happen, yet might, in the common-courfe of nature; or of fuch as though they did, become fables by the additional episodes and manner of telling them. Of this fort is the main ftory of an epic poem, the return of Ulyffes, the fettlement of the Trojans in Italy, or the like. That of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles, the most short and fingle fubject that ever was chofen by any poet. this he has fupplied with a vafter variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater number of councils, fpeeches, battles, and epifodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in thofe poems whofe fchemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is hurried on I Yet with with the most vehement spirit, and its whole du- N Dido |