latter, for continuing the AJAX and PнOENISSÆ, after the deaths of their respective heroes. But the cenfurers did not confider the importance of burial among the ancients; and that the action of the Iliad would have been imperfect without a defcription of the funeral rites of Hector and Patroclus: as the two tragedies, without those of Polynices and Eteocles: for the ancients efteemed a deprivation of fepulture to be a more fevere calamity than death itself. It is obfervable that this circumftance did not occur to POPE*, when he endeavoured to juftify this conduct of Homer, by only saying, that as the anger of Achilles does not die with Hector, but perfecutes his very remains, the poet ftill keeps up to his subject by defcribing the many effects of his anger, 'till it is fully fatisfied: and that for this reason, the two last books of the Iliad may be thought not to be excrefcencies, but effential to the poem. I will only add, that I

* Iliad xxiii. Note 1.

do not know an author whofe capital excellence fuffers more from the reader's not regarding his climate and country, than the incomparable Cervantes. There is a ftriking propriety in the madness of Don Quixote, not frequently taken notice of; for Thuanus informs us, that MADNESS is a common disorder among the Spaniards at the latter part of life, about the age of which the knight is reprefented. "Sur la fin de fes jours Mendozza devint furieux, comme font d'ordinaire les Efpagnols *."

10. Still with itself compar'd, his text perufe, And let your comment be the Mantuan Mufe +.

ALTHOUGH perhaps it

fible to produce any new

inay feem impof

obfervations on

Homer and Virgil, after so many volumes of criticism as have been spent upon them, yet the following remarks have a novelty and penetration in them that may entertain; efpecially, as the treatise from which they are

• Perroniana et Thuana, a Cologne, 1695, pag. 431. + Ver. 128.

taken

taken is extremely fcarce. "Quæ variæ inter se notæ atque imagines animorum, a principibus utriufque populi poetis, Homero et Virgilio, mirificè exprimuntur. Siquidem Homeri duces et reges rapacitate, libidine, atque anilibus queftibus, lacrymifque puerilibus, Græcam levitatem et inconftantiam referunt. Virgiliani vero principes, ab eximio poeta, qui Romanæ feveritatis faftidium, et Latinum fupercilium verebatur, et ad heroum populum loquebatur, ita componuntur ad majeftatem confularem, ut quamvis ab Afiatica mollitie luxuque venerint, inter Furios atque Claudios nati educatique videantur.. Neque fuam, ullo actu, Æneas originem prodidiffet, nifi, a præfactiore aliquanto pietate, fudiffet crebro copiam lacrymarum. Qua meliorem expreffione morum hac ætate, non modo Virgilius Latinorum poetarum princeps, fed quivis inflatiffimus vernaculorum, Homero præfertur: cum hic animos proceribus indurit fuos, ille vero alienos.Quamobrem varietas morum, qui carmine reddebantur, et hominum ad quos ea dirige

bantur, inter Latinam Græcamque poefin, non inventionis tantum attulit, fed et elocutionis difcrimen illud, quod præcipue inter Homerum et Virgilium deprehenditur; cum fententias et ornamenta quæ Homerus fparferat, Virgilius, Romanorum arium caufa, contraxerit ; atque ad mores et ingenia retulerit eorum, qui a poefi non petebant publicam aut privatam inftitutionem, quam ipfi Marte fuo invenerant; fed tantum delectationem." Blackwell, in his Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, has taken mány obfervations from this valuable book, particularly in his twelfth Section.

II. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happinefs, as well as care.
Mufic resembles poetry; in each

Are nameless graces, which no methods teach,
And which a mafter-hand alone can reach †.

POPE in this paffage feems to have remembered one of the effays of Bacon, of which

* J. Vincentii Gravinæ de POESI, ad S. Maffeium EPIST. Added to his treatife entitled, Della Ragion Poetica. In Napoli. 1716, pag. 239, 250.

he is known to have been remarkably fond. "There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer, were the more trifler: whereof the one would make a perfonage by geometrical proportions; the other by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such perfonages, I think, would please nobody, but the painter that made them. Not but I think, a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he muft do it by a kind of felicity, as a musician that maketh an excellent ayre in mufic, and not by rule. A man fhall fee faces, that if you examine them, part by part, you shall find never a good one; and yet altogether doe well *".

12. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,

May boldly deviate from the common track;
From vulgar bounds with brave diforder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without paffing thro' the judgment, gains
The heart, and all it's ends at once obtains +.

Effay xliii. On BEAUTY.

+ Ver. 150.

HERE