adowed! This is a field in which no succeeding poets
could dispute with Homer, and whatever commendations have been allowed
them on this head, are by no means for their invention in having enlarged
his circle, but for their judgment in having contracted it. For when the
mode of learning changed in the following ages, and science was delivered
in a plainer manner, it then became as reasonable in the more modern poets
to lay it aside, as it was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was
no unhappy circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that
demand upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing
all those allegorical parts of a poem.

The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially the
machines of the gods. If Homer was not the first who introduced the
deities (as Herodotus imagines) into the religion of Greece, he seems the
first who brought them into a system of machinery for poetry, and such a
one as makes its greatest importance and dignity: for we find those
authors who have been offended at the literal notion of the gods,
constantly laying their accusation against Homer as the chief support of
it. But whatever cause there might be to blame his machines in a
philosophical or religious view, they are so perfect in the poetic, that
mankind have been ever since contented to follow them: none have been able
to enlarge the sphere of poetry beyond the limits he has set: every
attempt of this nature has proved unsuccessful; and after all the various
changes of times and religions, his gods continue to this day the gods of
poetry.

We come now to the characters of his persons; and here we shall find no
author has ever drawn so many, with so visible and surprising a variety,
or given us such lively and affecting impressions of them. Every one has
something so singularly his own, that no painter could have distinguished
them more by their features, than the poet has by their manners. Nothing
can be more exact than the distinctions he has observed in the different
degrees of virtues and vices. The single quality of courage is wonderfully
diversified in the several characters of the Iliad. That of Achilles is
furious and intractable; that of Diomede forward, yet listening to advice,
and subject to command; that of Ajax is heavy and self-confiding; of
Hector, active and vigilant: the courage of Agamemnon is inspirited by
love of empire and ambition; that of Menelaus m