Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/296

168 proposal begins the moral of the whole piece, which is, that hasty, ill-founded, or unnatural friendships and leagues, will naturally end in war and discord. But Zoilus, who is here mightily concerned to take off from Homer all the honour of having designed a moral, asserts on the other hand, That the poet's whole intent was to make a fable; that a fable he has made, and one very idle and trifling; that many things are ascribed to Homer, which poor Homer never dreamed of; and he who finds them out, rather shows his own parts than discovers his author's beauties. In this opinion has he been followed by several of those critics, who only dip into authors when they have occasion to write against them: and yet even these shall speak differently concerning the 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 would 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 could 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