From the preceding short account of this celebrated Ode, it will appear that the transitions are extremely artful, the sentiments noble, and that the whole conduct is happy and judicious. These, if I mistake not, are the distinguishing excellencies of the larger Odes of Horace, in which the Poet’s _didactic_ genius is remarkably conspicuous. Perhaps however, your Lordship, like the French Critic, is at a loss to find in all this, the energy, the vehemence, the exuberance of Pindar. Horace himself was perfectly sensible of the superior excellence of the Greek Poet, and never rises to truer sublimity than when he is drawing his character. The following image is great, and appropriated to the subject. _Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres Quem super notas aluere ripas Fervet, immensusque _ruit_ profundo Pindarus ore[96]._ Pindar like some fierce torrent swoln with show’rs, Or sudden Cataracts of melting Snow, Which from the Alps its headlong Deluge pours, And foams, and thunders o’er the Vales below, With desultory fury borne along, Rolls his impetuous, vast, unfathomable song. WEST. [Footnote 96: Car. Lib. IV. Od. 2.] I know not, my Lord, how it happens, that we generally find ourselves more highly pleased with excess and inequality in poetic composition, than with the serene, the placid, and the regular progression of a corrected imagination. Is it because the mind is satiated with uniformity of any kind, and that remarkable blemishes, like a few barren fields interspersed in a landschape give additional lustre to the more cultivated scenery? Or does it proceed from a propensity in human nature to be pleased, when we observe a great Genius sometimes _sinking as far below the common level_, as at others, he is capable of _rising above it_? I confess, that I am inclined to deduce this feeling more frequently from the _former_ than from the _latter_ of these causes; though I am afraid that the warmest _benevolence_ will hardly prevail upon your Lordship not to attribute it in some instances to _a mixture of both_. Whatever may be in this, it is certain that the Odes of Horace, in which he has professedly imitated Pindar, are much more correct and faultless than these of his Master. It would, perhaps, be saying too much, to affirm with some Critics, that the judgment of the Roman Poet was superior to that of his Rival; but it is obvious, that the operation of this Faculty is more remarkable in his writings, because his imagination was more ductile and pliable. --Upon the whole, therefore, we shall not do injustice to these two great men, if we assign to their works the same degree of comparative excellence, which the Italians ascribe to the pieces of Dominichino and Guido. The former was a _great_ but an _unequal Genius_; while the more corrected performances of the latter were _animated by the Graces_, and _touched by the pencil of Elegance_[97].