Page:Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice - Parnell (1717).djvu/81

 them. And yet even these shall speak differently concerning the Design of Writers, if the Question be of their own Performances; for to their own Works they write Prefaces, to display the Grandness of the Moral, Regularity of the Scheme, Number and Brightness of the Figures, and a Thousand other Excellencies, which if they did not tell, no one wou'd ever imagine. For others, they write Remarks, which tend to contract their Excellencies within the narrow Compass of their partial Apprehension. It were well if they cou'd allow such to be as wise as themselves, whom the World allows to be much wiser: But their being naturally Friends to themselves, and professedly Adversaries to some greater Genius, easily accounts for these different Manners of Speaking. I will not leave this Note, without giving you an Instance of its Practice in the Great Julius Scaliger: He has been free enough with in the Remarks he makes upon him; but when he speaks of himself, I desire my Reader wou'd take Notice of his Modesty; I give his own Words, Lib. 3. ''Poet. Cap''. 112. In Deum Patrem Hymnum cum scriberemus tanquam rerum omnium conditorem, ab orbis ipsius creatione ad nos nostraq; usq; duximus.—In quo abduximus animum nostrum a corporis carcere ad liberos campos contemplationis quæ me in illum transformaret. Tum autem sanctissimi Spiritus ineffabilis vigor ille tanto ardore celebratus est, ut cum lenissimis numeris esset inchoatus Hymnus, repentino divini Ignis impetu conflagravit.