Milton was an accomplished Greek scholar. It has been already pointed out that his great epic is descended from Homer, and his _Lycidas_ from Theocritus. His _Samson Agonistes_ was deliberately built—though not with complete success—upon the traditional frame-work of Greek tragedies, and Milton himself leaves it to be judged by those who are “not unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.” His _Ode on the Morning of the Nativity_ is intended to be Pindaric. But the most palpable advance made by Milton on his predecessor Spenser is in the chastening of his style. The principles of that style Milton derived at first hand from his Hellenic models. He has learned how to use ancient material, how to adapt ancient thoughts, ancient expressions, how to sink them and imbed them in his own, not merely how to overlay or fancifully decorate his own with them. The texture of Milton’s verse is shot through and through with colours borrowed from the Greek; it would often be quite possible to resolve a series of his lines into components which are imitations and quotations. But he has made them all so much a part of himself that we may often pass by his loans, as we never can those of Spenser, unconsciously. Dryden owns himself an obedient follower of the Greeks. His ode _To the Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew_, like his _St. Cecilia’s Day_ and his _Alexander’s Feast_, is Pindaric. His admiration for Pindar was indeed peculiarly ardent. He speaks of him as “the inimitable Pindar, who stretches on pinions out of sight, and is carried upward, as it were, into another world.” Of his literary criticism we have spoken; there was a time when he conceived the idea of translating Homer, and he did in fact attempt versions of various writings of Greek poets. Pope was but an indifferent Greek scholar at first hand; he did indeed freely translate and recast Homer’s _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ by the help of his little Greek and a translation in French, but he never entered into the spirit of Greek life or penetrated to the precise secret of Greek style. Nevertheless, he makes great pretensions to follow in the footsteps of the Greek masters. One thing he did catch—the vigour and fire of Homer; and Pope’s _Iliad_ is still the English Homer commonly read in these days, although Chapman had preceded him, and Cowper, Derby, and Morris have made their more or less faithful renderings since. And yet the book is far too much Pope to be Homer. Of the _Pastorals_ and the _Essay on Criticism_ all has been said above that need be said for our purpose. We have only to add that his burlesque heroics, the _Rape of the Lock_ and the _Dunciad_, had their prototype in the heroi-comical poems of Greece, the _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_ and the _Margites_, compositions which were once ascribed to Homer, and which Pope professed to have in mind.