_I speak my private, but impartial Sense, With Freedom, and I hope without Offence._
And here I cannot but observe, that tho' I am charmed with that fine Turn of his, after having remarked upon some supposed Faults in _Homer_;
_But I offend_; Virgil _begins to frown, And_ Horace _looks with Indignation down; My blushing Muse with conscious Fear retires, And whom they like implicitly admires:_
Tho', I say, I am charmed with the Elegancy of the Poet, the Modesty of the Critick, and the courtly Politeness of the Nobleman; and tho', as I shall observe hereafter, I am not of his Opinion, as to the Particulars he takes notice of, in the Verses preceding: yet I do not understand why, for disapproving of some things in _Homer_, he should apprehend either the Frowns of _Virgil_, or the Indignation of _Horace_. As _Virgil_ saw the Beauties of _Homer_, while he imitated them; he no less saw his Errours, while he avoided them. And as to _Horace_, that _Nil molitur inepte_, in one Place, and----_Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus_, in another, must be regarded as Hyperboles; the one as an Auxesis, the other as a Meiôsis. Not but that upon the whole, he certainly admired _Homer_; nor would he have been the good Judge he was, if he had not. But as he was acquainted with the _Iliad_, and the _Odyssee_, so had he lived to have been as well acquainted with the _Æneis_; would he not have preferred the last, before both the first? Those who differ from me will say he _would not_; and 'tis altogether as easy for me to say he _would_. The same, and more, may be remarked of _Aristotle_; who was perfectly acquainted with _Homer_, but not at all with _Virgil_.
Invention, Fire, and Judgment, will, I think, include all the Requisites of an Epic Poem. The Action, the Fable, the Manners, the Compass, and Variety of Matter, seem to be properly comprehended under the First of these; yet not so as to exclude the Two last. For the particular Disposition of them all is an Act of the Judgment, as the first Creating of them is an Act of Invention; and Fire, tho' distinct from Invention, and Judgment, has a near Relation to them Both, as it assists the one, and is to be regulated by the other.