ck, but appealing wholly to observation and
experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and
continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often
examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is
because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As
among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep, or a
mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains, and many rivers;
so in the production of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it
has been compared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration
immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the
flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by
their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is
discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that
was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or
square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to
time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be
perfect; but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common
limits of human intelligence, but by remarking that nation after nation,
and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose
his incidents, new name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments.

The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore
not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or
gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of
acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known
has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood.

The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision, may now begin to
assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of an
established fame and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived his
century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever
advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or
temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of
merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded
him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects
of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships
and his enmities has perished; his works