144- On the Machinery of the 



pressioa of i\\Q iiieanness and gnossness and 

 worthlessiTcss of" Homer's supernatural ma- 

 chinery was my direct view in this com- 

 parison. 



\ye have se^n und^r j^hat circumstances^ 

 Homier first and Virgil, {xom his^xampie, were 

 led to adopt this machinery, and give to it so 

 principal a part in their poems. But whatever 

 <pircumstances submitted their geniuS; thereto, 

 impose no fetters on the more ' correct and 

 chastened taste of a better day. True taste 

 and judgment are unyielding and unalterable, 

 the plea of the man cannot alter the character 

 of his work, nor any circumstances make that 

 allegory, which is history, that moral, which is 

 wicked, that dignified, which is puerile and 

 contemptible, those heroes, who are macbine^^ 

 noilrejicite sympathy, where the field of sym- 

 pathy is destroyed. To support this charge 

 a"-ainst the use of the gods of Greece and 

 Rome, as the machinery of the ancient Epic 

 Poem, has been the object of the whole essay, 

 illustrated in a regular examination of the al- 

 legory, the moral and the passions. The de- 

 cision is left to your judgment. , 



If a supernatural, machinery be requisite to 

 an epic poem, it- is' certainjy: oot to be sougbt; 

 fbrnn the imagined inhabitants of the Christip 

 Heaven. I ihink \\ would be foynd, if anjt? 



