are in my mind, the reader must determine. I think myfelf as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my foul, excepting only my memory, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I lose not more of it, I have no great reason to complain. What judgment. I had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in fo fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to chuse or to reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of profe. I have so long studied and practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. In short, though I may lawfully plead some part of the old gentleman's excuse; yet I will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which I writ it, or the feveral intervals of sickness: they who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them; and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deserved no better?

With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the first part of this discourse: in the second part, as at a second fitting, though I alter not the draught, I must touch the same features over again, and change the VOL. III. dead

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dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only fay, that I have written nothing which favours of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not confcious to myfelf of any such intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contraband goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. On the other fide, I have endeavoured to choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them some instructive moral, which I could prove by induction, but the way is tedious; and they leap foremost into fight, without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm with a safe confcience, that I had taken the fame care in all my former writings; for it must be owned, that fuppofing verses are never so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain any thing which shocks religion, or good-manners, they are at best, what Horace says of good numbers without good sense, "Versus inopes rerum, nugæque "canore." Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right of self-defence, where I have been wrongfully accused, and my sense wire-drawn into blafphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer, in a late pleading against the stage; in which he mixes truth with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating strongly, that Something may remain.

I refume

I resume the thread of my discourse with the first of my tranflation, which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the whole Ilias; provided still that I meet with those encouragements from the public, which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some chearfulness. And this I dare affure the world before-hand, that I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil (though I say not the translation will be less laborious): for the Grecian is more according to my genius, than the Latin poet. In the works of the two authors we may read their manners, and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words: Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined: fo that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry : for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the same story : and the persons already formed: the manners of Æneas are those of Hector fuperadded to those which Homer gave him. The Adventures of Ulyffes in the Odysseis are imitated in the first Six Books of Virgil's Æneis : and though the accidents are not the fame (which would

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would have argued him of a servile copying, and total barrenness of invention) yet the feas were the fame, in which both the heroes wandered; and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypso. The fix latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted: a quarrel occafioned by a lady, a fingle combat, battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict any thing which I have formerly said in his just praise: for his Episodes are almost wholly of his own invention; and the form, which he has given to the telling, makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been the fame. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design: and if invention be the first virtue of an Epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr Hobbes, in the preface to his own bald tranflation of the Ilias, (studying poetry as he did mathematicks, when it was too late) Mr Hobbes, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us, that the first beauty of an Epic poem confifts în diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony of numbers: now, the words are the colouring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be confidered. The design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life; which is in the very defiwition of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise, and strike the fight: but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill-difpofed, posed, the manners obfcure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monfter at the best. Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in this last, which is expreffion, the Roman poet is at least equal to the Gre. cian, as I have faid elsewhere; fupplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways, is, that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design, as in the execution of it. The very heroes shew their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful, "Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, "acer, &c." Æneas patient, confiderate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies: ever submissive to the will of heaven, "quo fata trahunt, retrahuntque, "sequamur." I could please myself with enlarging on this subject, but I am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From all I have faid, I will only draw this inference, that the action of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. It is the fame difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and Tully. One perfuades; the other commands. You never cool while you read Homer,

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