The sceptre of Agamemnon[24] becomes the pedigree of its wearer: it is the elaborate work of Vulcan for Jupiter, his gift to Hermes, his present to Pelops, the inheritance of Atreus, the shepherd-staff of Thyestes, the badge of command for Agamemnon. Thus Homer describes; this is the mystery, without which the most exquisite description becomes an excrescence, and only clogs and wearies the indignant and disappointed reader. Poetic imitation, we repeat it, is progressive, and less occupied with the _surface_ of the object than its _action_; hence all comparisons between the poet's and the painter's manners, ought to be made with an eye to the respective end and limits of either art: nor can these observations be deemed superfluous, except by those who are most in want of them, the descriptive tribe, who imagine they paint what they only perplex, and fondly dream of enriching the realms of fancy by silly excursions into the province of the florist, chemist, or painter of still life. Proceeding now to lay before the reader specimens of the translation itself, we shall select passages which, by their contrast, may enable him to estimate the variety of our author's powers, to poise his blemishes and beauties, and to form an idea of what he is to expect from a perusal of the whole. To exhibit only the splendid, would have been insidious; it would have been unfair to expose languor alone;--we have pursued a middle course; and when he has consulted the volumes themselves, the reader, we trust, will pronounce us equally impartial to the author and himself. Juno, entering her apartment to array herself for her visit to Jupiter on Gargarus, is thus described--Iliad, B. XIV. p. 365.