rodigies of mankind, who, by the mere strength
of natural parts, and without any assistance of art or learning, have
produced works that were the delight of their own times and the wonder of
posterity. There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these
great natural geniuses, that is infinitely more beautiful than all turn
and polishing of what the French call a _bel esprit_, by which they would
express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of
the most polite authors. The greatest genius which runs through the arts
and sciences takes a kind of tincture from them and falls unavoidably
into imitation.

Many of these great natural geniuses, that were never disciplined and
broken by rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in
particular among those of the more Eastern parts of the world. Homer has
innumerable flights that Virgil was not able to reach, and in the Old
Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in
Homer. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius
to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed
in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness
of the moderns. In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a
likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the
comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower
of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus, as the coming of a thief in
the night is a similitude of the same kind in the New Testament. It
would be endless to make collections of this nature. Homer illustrates
one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy, by an ass in a field of
corn that has his sides belaboured by all the boys of the village without
stirring a foot for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his
bed, and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the
coals. This particular failure in the ancients opens a large field of
raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an indecency, but not
relish the sublime in these sorts of writings. The present Emperor of
Persia, conformable to this Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many
pompous titles, denominates himself "the sun of glory" and "the nutmeg of
delight." In short, to cut off all cavilling against the ancients, and
particularly those of the warmer climates, who had most heat and life in
their imaginations, we are to cons