Ver. 631. _But where's the man, &c._] II. The second division of this last part, which we now come to, is of the morals of critics, by example. For, having in the first, drawn a picture of the false critic, at large, he breaks out into an apostrophe, containing an exact and finished character of the true, which, at the same time, serves for an easy and proper introduction to this second division. For having asked, from ver. 630 to 643, _Where's the man, &c._, he answers, from ver. 642 to 681, that he was to be found in the happier ages of Greece and Rome; in the characters of Aristotle and Horace, Dionysius and Petronius, Quintilian and Longinus, whose several excellencies he has not only well distinguished, but has contrasted them with a peculiar elegance. The profound science and logical method of Aristotle is opposed to the plain common sense of Horace, conveyed in a natural and familiar negligence; the study and refinement of Dionysius, to the gay and courtly ease of Petronius; and the gravity and minuteness of Quintilian, to the vivacity and general topics of Longinus. Nor has the poet been less careful in these examples, to point out their eminence in the several critical virtues he so carefully inculcated in his precepts. Thus in Horace he particularizes his candour; in Petronius, his good-breeding; in Quintilian, his free and copious instruction; and in Longinus, his great and noble spirit. Ver. 681. _Thus long succeeding critics, &c._] The next period in which the true critic, he tells us, appeared, was at the revival and restoration of letters in the West. This occasions his giving a short history, from ver. 682 to 709, of the decline and re-establishment of arts and sciences in Italy. He shows that they both fell under the same enemy, despotic power; and that when both had made some little efforts to recover themselves, they were soon again overwhelmed by a second deluge of another kind, namely, superstition; and a calm of dulness finished upon Rome and letters what the rage of barbarism had begun: A second deluge learning thus o'er-run, And the monk finished what the Goth begun. When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of recovery now seemed desperate, it was a critic, our author shows us, for the honour of the art he here teaches, who at length broke the charm of dulness, who dissipated the enchantment, and, like another Hercules, drove those cowled and hooded serpents from the Hesperian tree of knowledge, which they had so long guarded from human approach. Ver. 697. _But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days_,] This presents us with the second period in which the true critic appeared, of whom he has given us a complete idea in the single example of Marcus Hieronymus Vida; for his subject being poetical criticism, for the use principally of a critical poet, his example is an eminent poetical critic, who had written of the Art of Poetry in verse.