where we fee each circumftance of art *, and individual of nature fummoned together, by the extent and fecundity of his imagination; to which all things, in their various views, prefented themselves in an inftant, and had their impreffions taken off to perfection, at a heat? Nay, he not only gives us the full profpects of things, but feveral unexpected peculiarities and fide-views, unobserved by any painter but Homer. Nothing is fo furprizing as the descriptions of his battles, which take up no less than half the Iliad, and are supplied with fo vast a variety of incidents, that no one bears a likeness to another; fuch different kinds of deaths, that no two heroes are wounded in the fame manner; and fuch a profufion of noble ideas, that every battle rifes above the last in greatness, horror, and confufion. It is certain there is not near that number of images and descriptions in any Epic Poet; though every one has affisted himself with a great quantity out of him: and it is

bus vincimur, fortaffe æqualitate penfamus: "And, perhaps, Virgil compenfates his inferiority to Homer in the elevations of poetry, by his evenness of excellence."

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*

Of art. These words are not found in the first edition.

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evident of Virgil especially, that he has fcarce any comparifons which are not drawn

from his master *.

If we defcend from hence to the expression, we see the bright imagination of Homer shining out in the most enlivened forms of it. We acknowledge him the father of poetical diction, the first who taught that language of the Gods to men. His expreffion is like the colouring of fome great masters, which difcovers itself to be laid on boldly, and executed with rapidity. It is indeed the strongest and moft glowing imaginable, and touched with the greatest spirit. Ariftotle had reason to say, He was the only poet who had found out living words; there are in him more daring

* This, however, is a confequence, unconnected with sterility of invention, and inevitably incident to fucceeding writers. The face of Nature is much the fame in every age and in every pofition: the more prominent and ftriking peculiarities uniformly present themfelves to every obferver, and become of courfe the property of the prior occupant. Editor.

From what fource our author drew this intelligence, I have not discovered. His informant might have in view Ariftotle's rhetoric; iii. 11. where that philofopher expreffes himself thus: "Homer, by a metaphor, often fpeaks of inanimate things as "endued with life; and is very happy in that energy, which he displays by these means, on every occafion." Then, after

figures and metaphors than in any good author whatever. An arrow is impatient to be on the wing, a weapon thirfts to drink the blood of an enemy, and the like. Yet his expreffion is never too big for the sense, but justly great in proportion to it. It is the fentiment that fwells and fills out the diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it*: and in the fame degree that a thought is warmer, an expreffion will be brighter; as that is more ftrong, this will become more perfpicuous: like glass in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude and refines to and refines to a greater

clearness, only as the breath within is more powerful, and the heat more intense.

various inftances, fuch as "the arrow flew ;" and, "the point "rufht eagerly through his breaft;" he adds: "Thefe expreffions "owe their energy to the life which is given them.”

After Aristotle, Horace has vivas voces, living words, in his Epiftle to the Pifoes, ver. 317.

* We are here furnished with a beautiful example of that ingenious manner, in which our poet prepares us for a fimile, on the verge of introduction, by a gradual approximation of the phraseology to the circumstances of the fimile itself: thus conducting his reader, as it were, through the gradual fhades of twilight into the brightnefs of open day. See this elegant artifice fagaciously pointed out by Warburton, on ver. 253 of our poet's fecond Moral Epiftle; and illustrated with a luminous comprehenfion, characteristic of that extraordinary genius.

To throw his language more out of profe, Homer feems to have affected the compoundepithets *. This was a fort of composition peculiarly proper to poetry, not only as it heightened the diction, but as it affifted and filled the numbers with greater found and pomp, and likewife conduced in fome measure to thicken the images. On this last confideration I cannot but attribute these also to the fruitfulness of his invention, fince (as he has managed them) they are a fort of fupernumerary pictures of the perfons or things to which they are joined †. We fee the motion of Hector's plumes in the epithet KouBalon, the landscape of Mount Neritus in that of Eivosiçuaa☞, and fo of others; which particular images could not have been infifted upon fo long as to express them in a description

* Our own language is not much inferiour to the Greek in the facility and felicity of thefe combinations. Milton and Gray have exhibited fome of the fineft fpecimens of fuch compound-epithets.

+ This conclufion was judiciously altered from the colloquial vulgarity of the first edition :-" The perfons or things they are "joined to." In general, our author's profe compofition is too loofe and straggling, too much broken with diminutive and feeble words, not well connected and consolidated it wants energy, concentration, and rotundity. Otherwife, his conceptions are clear, his diction. appropriate, his figures numerous and fplendid, amidst an unaffected purity of phrafe, like conftellations in a winter's fky.

Editor.

(though but of a single line) without diverting the reader too much from the principal action or figure. As a Metaphor is a fhort fimile, one of these Epithets is a fhort description.

Lastly, if we confider his verfification, we shall be fenfible what a fhare of praife is due to his invention in that also. He was not satisfied with his language as he found it fettled in any one part of Greece, but fearched through its differing dialects with this particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers*: he confidered these as they had a greater mixture of vowels or confonants, and accordingly employed them as the verse required either a greater fsmoothness or strength. What he most affected was the Ionic, which has a peculiar sweetness from its never using contractions, and from its cuftom of refolving the dipthongs into two fyllables; so as to make the words open themselves with a more

I fhould think this pofition extremely difputable. It feems more probable, that the tenour of Homer's phrafeology is a very faithful reprefentative of the vernacular language of his Ionians, which had acquired this variety and flexibility from the concurring dialects of the various tribes, who had ftationed themselves in Leffer Afia.

Editor.