Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/57

 velation. Had Homer wrote like Milton, his countrymen would have despised him; had Milton adopted the theology of the ancient bard, he had been truly ridiculous. Again, should I depreciate Plautus for not enlivening his pieces with the characters of a coquet, or a marquis, so humourous in modern comedy; or Moliere, for not introducing a legal bawd, or a parasitical boaster, so highly finished in the Roman poet; my censure in either case would be as absurd as his, who should dislike a geoprapher for not introducing more rivers, or promontories, into a country, than nature had given it; or the natural historian, for not enlivening his description of a dead landscape with a torrent, a cataract, or a volcano.