incalculable. Whoever strikes out a new region of thought or
composition, whoever opens a fresh vein of imagery or excellence, is
persecuted by the critics. He disturbs settled ideas, endangers
established reputations, brings forward rivals to dominant fame. That
is sufficient to render him the enemy of all the existing rulers in
the world of taste. Even Jeffrey seriously lamented, in one of his
first reviews of Scott's poems, that he should have identified himself
with the unpicturesque and expiring images of feudality, which no
effort could render poetical. Racine's tragedies were received with
such a storm of criticism as wellnigh cost the sensitive author his
life; and Rousseau was so rudely handled by contemporary writers on
his first appearance, that it confirmed him in his morbid hatred of
civilization. The vigour of these great men, indeed, overcame the
obstacles created by contemporary envy; but how seldom, especially in
a refined age, can genius effect such a prodigy? how often is it
crushed in the outset of its career, or turned aside into the humble
and unobtrusive path of imitation, to shun the danger with which that
of originality is beset!

Milton's _Paradise Lost_ contains many more lines of poetic beauty
than Homer's _Iliad_; and there is nothing in the latter poem of equal
length, which will bear any comparison with the exquisite picture of
the primeval innocence of our First Parents in his fourth book.
Nevertheless, the _Iliad_ is a more interesting poem than the
_Paradise Lost_; and has produced and will produce a much more
extensive impression on mankind. The reason is, that it is much fuller
of event, is more varied, is more filled with images familiar to all
mankind, and is less lost in metaphysical or philosophical
abstractions. Homer, though the father of poets, was essentially
dramatic; he was an incomparable painter; and it is his dramatic
scenes, the moving panorama of his pictures, which fascinates the
world. He often speaks to the heart, and is admirable in the
delineation of character; but he is so, not by conveying the inward
feeling, but by painting with matchless fidelity its external
symptoms, or putting into the mouths of his characters the precise
words they would have used in similar circumstances in real life. Even
his immortal parting of Hector and Andromache is no exception to this
remark; he paints the scene at the Scaean gate exactly as it would have
occurred in nature, and mo