Page:Modern Parnassus - Leigh Hunt (1814).djvu/9



IT is now generally admitted, that the Greek and Roman poets, together with those of modern times, who have copied their manner, ought no longer to be considered as examples for the youthful bard. Those critical compositions, therefore, which in an earlier age were drawn up, either in prose or verse, for the direction of the novitiate in poetry, inasmuch as the precepts, which they contain, are derived from the exploded models, must now be entirely useless, or,