It is needless to recommend to you the translations of Homer and Virgil, which every body reads that reads at all. You must have heard that Homer is esteemed the father of poetry, the original from whence all the moderns--not excepting Milton himself--borrow some of their greatest beauties, and from whom they extract those rules for composition, which are found most agreeable to nature and true taste. Virgil, you know, is the next in rank among the classics: you will read his Eneid with extreme pleasure, if ever you are able to read Italian, in Annibal Caro's translation; the idiom of the Latin and Italian languages being more alike, it is, I believe, much closer, yet preserves more of the spirit of the original than the English translations. For the rest, fame will point out to you the most considerable of our poets; and I would not exclude any of name among those whose morality is unexceptionable: but of poets, as of all other authors, I wish you to read only such as are properly recommended to you--since there are many who debase their divine art by abusing it to the purposes of vice and impiety. If you could read poetry with a judicious friend, who could lead your judgment to a true discernment of its beauties and defects, it would inexpressibly heighten both your pleasure and improvement. But, before you enter upon this, some acquaintance with the _Heathen Mythology_ is necessary. I think that you must before now have met with some book under the title of _The Pantheon_[28]: and, if once you know as much of the gods and goddesses as the most common books on the subject will tell you, the rest may be learned by reading Homer: but then you must particularly attend to him in this view. I do not expect you to penetrate those numerous mysteries--those amazing depths of morality, religion, and metaphysics--which some pretend to have discovered in his mythology, but to know the names and principal offices of the gods and goddesses, with some idea of their moral meaning, seems requisite to the understanding almost any poetical composition. As an instance of the _moral meaning_ I speak of, I will mention an observation of Bossuet. That Homer's poetry was particularly recommended to the Greeks by the superiority which he ascribes to them over the Asiatics: this superiority is shown in the Iliad, not only in the conquest of Asia by the Greeks, and in the actual destruction of its capital, but in the division and arrangement of the gods, who took part with the contending nations. On the side of Asia was _Venus_--that is, sensual passion--pleasure--and effeminacy. On the side of Greece was _Juno_--that is, matronly gravity and conjugal love; together with _Mercury_--invention and eloquence--and _Jupiter_--or political wisdom. On the side of Asia was _Mars_, who represents brutal valour and blind fury. On that of Greece was _Pallas_--that is, military discipline, and bravery, guarded by judgment.