an overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove.
Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, it brightens
all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour. This
fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected
from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant:
in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted
flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour
by the force of art: in Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an
accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns
everywhere clearly and everywhere irresistibly.

I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in a
manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent parts
of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which
distinguishes him from all other authors.

This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the
violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex. It seemed not
enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole compass of
nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward passions and
affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all the outward
forms and images of things for his descriptions: but wanting yet an ampler
sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundless walk for his
imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable.
That which Aristotle calls "the soul of poetry," was first breathed into
it by Homer, I shall begin with considering him in his part, as it is
naturally the first; and I speak of it both as it means the design of a
poem, and as it is taken for fiction.

Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the
marvellous. The probable fable is the recital of such actions as, though
they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature; or of such
as, though they did, became fables by the additional episodes and manner
of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of an epic poem, "The
return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in Italy," or the like.
That of the Iliad is the "anger of Achilles," the most short and single
subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet this he has supplied with a
vaster variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater number
of councils, speeches, battl