a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him. What he

writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; every thing moves, every

thing lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle

fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or done as from a

third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the

poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a

spectator. The course of his verses resembles that of the army he

describes,

Hoid' ar' isan hosei te puri chthon pasa nemoito.

They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it." It

is, however, remarkable, that his fancy, which is everywhere vigorous, is

not discovered immediately at the beginning of his poem in its fullest

splendour: it grows in the progress both upon himself and others, and

becomes on fire, like a chariot-wheel, by its own rapidity. Exact

disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have

been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this "vivida vis animi,"

in a very few. Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected,

this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove.

Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, it brightens

all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour. This

fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected

from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant:

in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted

flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour

The Iliad of Homer