poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will

but follow modestly in his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and lofty,

let us raise ours as high as we can; but where his is plain and humble, we

ought not to be deterred from imitating him by the fear of incurring the

censure of a mere English critic. Nothing that belongs to Homer seems to

have been more commonly mistaken than the just pitch of his style: some of

his translators having swelled into fustian in a proud confidence of the

sublime; others sunk into flatness, in a cold and timorous notion of

simplicity. Methinks I see these different followers of Homer, some

sweating and straining after him by violent leaps and bounds (the certain

signs of false mettle), others slowly and servilely creeping in his train,

while the poet himself is all the time proceeding with an unaffected and

equal majesty before them. However, of the two extremes one could sooner

pardon frenzy than frigidity; no author is to be envied for such

commendations, as he may gain by that character of style, which his

friends must agree together to call simplicity, and the rest of the world

will call dulness. There is a graceful and dignified simplicity, as well

as a bold and sordid one; which differ as much from each other as the air

of a plain man from that of a sloven: it is one thing to be tricked up,

and another not to be dressed at all. Simplicity is the mean between

ostentation and rusticity.

This pure and noble simplicity is nowhere in such perfection as in the

Scripture and our author. One may affirm, with all respect to the inspired

writings, that the Divine Spirit made use of no other words but what were

intelligible and common to men at that time, and in that part of the

The Iliad of Homer