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critic, or the historian, but it may be said, perhaps, " that as 

 reason and imagination are independent faculties, this neces- 

 sity of tlie improvement of the former cannot be alleged in the 

 case of poetry, which may be called the exclusive province 

 of the imagination — that in times, when reason had been 

 but little cultivated, brilliant instances of poetic genius have 

 appeared, and that Homer himself, the great father of poetry, 

 flourished in the very infancy of reason." But it is to be re- 

 membered, that Homer, and the others, who shone forth amidst 

 the obscurity of rudeness, were indebted to their strength of 

 reason and accuracy of judgment, no less than the vigour of 

 their imagination. The works of Homer in particular abound 

 with sentiments and reflections replete with understanding 

 and wisdom ; the numerous speeches with which his poems are 

 interspersed, display' the reasoning faculty, in a degree of excel- 

 lence not unworthy the most experienced philosopher ; and if 

 we consider the times in which he lived, the knowledge and 

 learning which appears throughout his writings, has highly 

 deserved that admiration with which it has been received by 

 posterity. Horace says, " that wisdom is the origin and 

 source of all good writing," and wisdom is not the endow- 

 ment of nature, but the effect of long and patient study, of 

 continued exercise and unremitting perseverance. If the 

 nccessit}' of improving and consolidating the understanding 

 was so great in the times of Horace, as this and several pas- 

 sages of his works declare, it must be allowed, that among 

 all the disadvantages under which tragic and epic poetry 



