War, which we meet with among the Ancient
Poets. What still made this Circumstance the more proper for the Poets
Use, is the Opinion of many learned Men, that the Fable of the Giants
War, which makes so great a noise in Antiquity, [and gave birth to the
sublimest Description in Hesiod's Works was [l]] an Allegory founded
upon this very Tradition of a Fight between the good and bad Angels.

It may, perhaps, be worth while to consider with what Judgment Milton,
in this Narration, has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in
the Descriptions of the Latin and Greek Poets; and at the same time
improved every great Hint which he met with in their Works upon this
Subject. Homer in that Passage, which Longinus has celebrated for its
Sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copy'd after him, tells us,
that the Giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds
an Epithet to Pelion ([Greek: einosiphullon]) which very much swells the
Idea, by bringing up to the Readers Imagination all the Woods that grew
upon it. There is further a great Beauty in his singling out by Name
these three remarkable Mountains, so well known to the Greeks. This last
is such a Beauty as the Scene of Milton's War could not possibly furnish
him with. Claudian, in his Fragment upon the Giants War, has given full
scope to that Wildness of Imagination which was natural to him. He tells
us, that the Giants tore up whole Islands by the Roots, and threw them
at the Gods. He describes one of them in particular taking up Lemnos in
his Arms, and whirling it to the Skies, with all Vulcan's Shop in the
midst of it. Another tears up Mount Ida, with the River Enipeus, which
ran down the Sides of it; but the Poet, not content to describe him with
this Mountain upon his Shoulders, tells us that the River flow'd down
his Back, as he held it up in that Posture. It is visible to every
judicious Reader, that such Ideas savour more of Burlesque, than of the
Sublime. They proceed from a Wantonness of Imagination, and rather
divert the Mind than astonish it. Milton has taken every thing that is
sublime in these several Passages, and composes out of them the
following great Image.

From their Foundations loosning to and fro,
They pluck'd the seated Hills, with all their Land,
Rocks, Waters, Woods; and by the shaggy Tops
Up-lifting bore them in their Hands--

We have the full Majesty of Homer in this short Description, improv'd by
the Imagination o