ing, to know when to be plain, and when
poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will
but follow modestly in his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty,
let us raise ours as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we
ought not to be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the
censure of a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to
have been more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of
his translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the
sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of
simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some
sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the certain
signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in his train,
while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an unaffected and
equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes one could sooner
pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be envied for such
commendations, as he may gain by that character of style, which his
friends must agree together to call simplicity, and the rest of the world
will call dulness. There is a graceful and dignified simplicity, as well
as a bold and sordid one; which differ as much from each other as the air
of a plain man from that of a sloven: it is one thing to be tricked up,
and another not to be dressed at all. Simplicity is the mean between
ostentation and rusticity.

This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the
Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the inspired
writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words but what were
intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that part of the
world; and, as Homer is the author nearest to those, his style must of
course bear a greater resemblance to the sacred books than that of any
other writer. This consideration (together with what has been observed of
the parity of some of his thoughts) may, methinks, induce a translator, on
the one hand, to give in to several of those general phrases and manners
of expression, which have attained a veneration even in our language from
being used in the Old Testament; as, on the other, to avoid those which
have been appropriated to the Divinity, and in a manner consigned to
mystery and religion.

For a further preservation of this air of simplicity, a parti