102 On the Machinery of the 



and a very questionable prejudice takes posses- 

 sion of our very understanding. Allowing to 

 the Iliad and Odyssey all that a pure taste and 

 judgment can relish and can approve, there are 

 innumerable passages, which the same taste and 

 judgmemt cann'bt enter into, which it may 

 candidly pardon and excuse, but cannot sanction 

 as absolutely proper, beautiful and. sublime. — 

 But this would be of little moment, if it acted 

 not . w^th a malignant influence on future 

 genius. That gift, which nature, not art or 

 rule, confers, is not permitted freely to exert 

 itself; fancy is controuled in the free and vi- 

 gorous exertion of its powers. Mi^lmoth has 

 fustly observed, that this fondness for the an- 

 cients has probably occasioned to us the loss of 

 many. excellent originals. For though, continuqjs 

 he, they may be proper and safe guides to those, 

 who have not the greatness of mind to, strike 

 out new paths ; yet, while it is thought a suffi- 

 cient praise to be their followers^ genius is 

 checked in her flights, and many a fair track 

 Vies undiscovered in the boundless regions of 

 itriagination. Thus had Virgil trusted more to 

 his native strength. Home might perhaps have 

 seen an original Epic Poem in her own lan- 

 guage. But Homer was considered even by 

 ^his admirable poet as the sacred object of the 

 first veneration ; and he seeme4 to think it the 



