Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/273

Rh Il. 5. When Idæus quitted his fine chariot, which was entangled in the fight, and for which he might have been slain, the poet was a fool for making him leave his chariot, he had better have run away in it.

Il. 24. When Achilles makes Priam lie out of his tent, lest the Greeks should hear of his being there, the poet had no breeding to turn a king out in that manner.

Od. 9. The poet says, Ulysses lost an equal number out of each ship. The critic says, that's impossible.

Od. 10. He derides the men who were turned into swine, and calls them Homer's poor little blubbering pigs. The first five of these remarks are found in Didymus, the last in Longinus. Such as these are the cold jests and trifling quarrels, which have been registered from a composition, that (according to the representation handed down to us) was born in envy, lived a short life in contempt, and lies for ever buried with infamy.

But, as his design was judged by himself wonderfully well accomplished, Macedon began to be esteemed a stage too narrow for his glory; and Egypt, which had then taken learning into its patronage, the proper place where it ought to diffuse its beams, to the surprise of all whom he would persuade to reckon themselves hitherto in the dark, and under the prejudices of a false admiration. However, as he had prepared himself for Rh