in them to which the invention must not contribute: as in the most
regular gardens, art can only reduce beauties of nature to more
regularity, and such a figure, which the common eye may better take in,
and is, therefore, more entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why
common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to
a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves
to pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art,
than to comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.

Our author's work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the
beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the
number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which
contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those
who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according
to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant
it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to
perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed
by those of a stronger nature.

It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that
unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of
a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him. What he
writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, every
thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle
fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or done as from a
third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the
poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a
spectator. The course of his verses resembles that of the army he
describes,

Hoid' ar' isan hosei te puri chthon pasa nemoito.

"They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it." It
is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous, is
not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fullest
splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and others, and
becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact
disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have
been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this "vivida vis animi,"
in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected,
this c