Wilkie's Epigoniad, of which few ordinary readers now know more than the name, if even that be very generally remembered south of the Tweed, inspired many zealous Scotsmen of the day, with the belief that their country had, at last, produced a great epic poet: but the national feeling was not responded to in England.[29:2] Finding that the Epigoniad was attacked by the English critics, Hume was determined to be the champion of his countryman's fame against all comers; and accordingly addressed a letter to the editor of _The Critical Review_, containing a long complimentary criticism, in which he says,-- There remained a tradition among the Greeks, that Homer had taken this second siege of Thebes for the subject of a poem, which is lost; and our author seems to have pleased himself with the thoughts of reviving the work, as well as of treading in the footsteps of his favourite author. The actors are mostly the same with those of the Iliad; Diomede is the hero; Ulysses, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Idomeneus, Merion, even Thersites, all appear in different passages of the poem; and act parts suitable to the lively characters drawn of them by that great master. The whole turn of this new poem would almost lead us to imagine, that the Scottish bard had found the lost manuscript of that father of poetry, and had made a faithful translation of it into English. Longinus imagines, that the Odyssey was executed by Homer in his old age; we shall allow the Iliad to be the work of his middle age; and we shall suppose that the Epigoniad was the essay of his youth, where his noble and sublime genius breaks forth by frequent intervals, and gives strong symptoms of that constant flame which distinguished its meridian. . . . The story of a poem, whatever may be imagined, is the least essential part of it; the force of the versification, the vivacity of the images, the justness of the descriptions, the natural play of the passions, are the chief circumstances which distinguish the great poet from the prosaic novelist, and give him so high a rank among the heroes in literature; and I will venture to affirm, that all these advantages, especially the three former, are to be found, in an eminent degree, in the Epigoniad. The author, inspired with the true genius of Greece, and smit with the most profound veneration for Homer, disdains all frivolous ornaments; and relying entirely on his sublime imagination, and his nervous and harmonious expression, has ventured to present to his reader the naked beauties of nature, and challenges for his partisans all the admirers of genuine antiquity.[31:1]