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human study, learning, and industry, which masters everything besides, can
never attain to this. It furnishes art with all her materials, and without
it judgment itself can at best but "steal wisely:" for art is only like a
prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature. Whatever
praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a single
beauty in them to which the invention must not contribute: as in the most
regular gardens, art can only reduce beauties of nature to more
regularity, and such a figure, which the common eye may better take in,
and is, therefore, more entertained with. And, perhaps, the reason why
common critics are inclined to prefer a judicious and methodical genius to
a great and fruitful one, is, because they find it easier for themselves
to pursue their observations through a uniform and bounded walk of art,
than to comprehend the vast and various extent of nature.
Our author's work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the
beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the
number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which
contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those
who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according
to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant
it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to
perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed
by those of a stronger nature.
It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that
unequalled fire and rapture which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of
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