His discourse affected me. I pitied this old man, who wept upon reading his poems; but I reflected that he had invented all those fabulous incidents, to which both pagans and Christians are equally attached. Homer, this genius who knew how to assume so many changes, had he need to endow with heavenly powers, those brave men whom he sent to the siege of Troy? he might have created heroes, without making them gods: to be sure, it is always permitted to poets to feign and magnify their subjects; or, in other words, the subjects thus aggrandised and exalted to heaven have no sublimity but in poesy and upon paper, like the figures that painters trace on canvass, or sculptors upon marble. How could the Greeks mistake and worship gods who had such an origin? however the thing has happened, Homer is the cause, and now mourns over his poetry and himself; he has for companions in misery, his disciples and imitators. Ought this not to serve as a lesson to living poets, who, abusing their talents, compose and read seductive works, causing those who think themselves in a condition to do the like, to lose their time, and often corrupting the heart in recreating the mind. From this chamber I passed into that of the Latin poets. Ovid and Virgil there disputed the throne. Horace chafed that he was not admitted into the contest, and Martial revenged himself upon them by a piquant epigram. Horace protested against the whole proceeding of the two first; he demanded arbitrators, and nominated on his own behalf Scaliger, who has declared that he would rather have been the author of the ninth ode, than the possessor of the crown of Arragon; but they would not notice him. The other poets espoused the party that suited them best: many declared for Seneca the tragedian, for Terence, and Plautus. These last, read in a corner of the chamber the finest passages of their compositions. They now began to talk of settling the dispute with blows: fearing, therefore, that I might get an unlucky hit in the mêlée, I left the place, and passed hastily into the chambers of the Spaniards, Italians, French, English, Turkish, Chinese, and Persian. I noticed the ancient Gaulish poets, crowned with misletoe of the oak, making processions, and singing the histories of their first kings. “Here, upon this side,” said Curiosity to me, “is a chamber of perfumers; they have fine scents for the gratification of the damned; but you would hardly be able to bear them.” “I will take,” said I, “a pinch of snuff.”