56 



hot-beds of the most elaborate education. When Homer, in 



endeavouring to raise to the highest pitch our conception of 



the Vionors of a battle, says, Aeion 5 ingde^ otucc^ hs^m 'Aiimtui, 



^jtt^ ' &c. he falls into one of those errors, which made Plato say, 



that as he raises his men to the dignity of gods, so he de- 

 grades his deities to the condition of men, of those very crea- 

 tures» whom he has called the most miserable of animals; 

 yet none of his poetical readers would wish to have it ex- 

 punged from tli€ passage, of which il is so grand an orna- 

 ment. When Demosthenes broke forth into his celebrated 

 » , oath, 'Ov fji^a. Tus iv MagaOam, &c. or Burke into his eulogium on 



the Queen of France, and lamentation for the extinction of 

 chivalry, it is hardly possible that they could have produced 

 *uch towering sublimity by study or deliberation, passion and 

 native genius alone could have effected it. 



It will not be improper therefore to mark particularly those 

 circumstances in which a peculiar opposition seems to sub- 

 sist between the two pursuits. 'J'he first cannot be expressed 

 better than in the words of Lord Bacon ; in the preface to 

 the Novum Organum, he has these words (In Philosophia) 

 " Mens rebus morigera sit, nee impotenter rebus insultet," 

 and the same great man elsewhere * says, " Poesis animum 

 erigit et in sublime rapit, rerum similia ad animi desideria 

 acconimociando, non animum rebus (quod ratio facit et his- 

 toria) submittendo." The second is nearly the same as Locke 



• De Augm. Scknt. 



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