Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/116

68 that he did not possess that extensive acquaintance with ancient literature; that he had not explored its intimate recesses, and that he was not master of that critical learning", without which, it could not be expected that the work which he undertook, would either delight us by the sagacity of its conclusions, or instruct us by the arrangement of its facts. The Homer of Parnell is an imaginary being, formed out of all the conjectures and contradiction of antiquity. Having composed his image of these broken fragments and relics, the biographer attempts to invest it with vitality and intelligence. Perhaps it would have been better to have contented himself with simply arranging the different narratives, or scattered anecdotes as they have come down to us. It is not very profitable to read an account of the conversations that might have taken place between Homer and Lycurgus, or to exhaust pages in conjectures on the character, manners, and pursuits of a person who may never have existed; or if he did, who probably bore but little resemblance to the portraits whose features have, from time to time, been put together from the conjectures of fanciful theorists, or the fragments of obsolete traditions. As it is, the plan of his life is defective; it is not instructive enough for a history, or entertaining enough for a romance. The style in which it is written