first similitude: suppose Apelles and Raphael had each of them painted a burning Troy, might not the modern painter have succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the town on fire? for the draughts of both were taken from the ideas which they had of nature. Cities had been burnt, before either of them were in being. But, to close the simile as I began it; they would not have designed it after the same manner: Apelles would have distinguished Pyrrhus from the rest of all the Grecians, and shewed him forcing his entrance into Priam's palace; there he had set him in the fairest light, and given him the chief place of all his figures; because he was a Grecian, and he would do honour to his country. Raphael, who was an Italian, and descended from the Trojans, would have made Æneas the hero of his piece; and perhaps not with his father on his back, his son in one hand, his bundle of gods in the other, and his wife following; for an act of piety is not half so graceful in a picture, as an act of courage: he would rather have drawn him killing Androgeos, or some other, hand to hand; and the blaze of the fires should have darted full upon his face, to make him conspicuous amongst his Trojans. This, I think, is a just comparison betwixt the two poets, in the conduct of their several designs. Virgil cannot be said to copy Homer; the Grecian had only the advantage of writing first. If it be urged, that I have granted a resemblance in some parts, yet therein Virgil has excelled him. For, what are the tears of Calypso for being left, to the fury and death of Dido? Where is there the whole process of her passion, and all its violent effects to be found, in the languishing episode of the Odysses? If this be to copy, let the critics shew us the same dispositions, features, or colouring, in their original. The like may be said of the descent to hell, which was not of Homer's invention neither; he had it from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. But to what end did Ulysses make that journey? Æneas undertook it by the express commandment of his father's ghost; there he was to show him all the succeeding heroes of his race, and, next to Romulus, (mark, if you please, the address of Virgil,) his own patron, Augustus Cæsar. Anchises was likewise to instruct him, how to manage the Italian war, and how to conclude it with his honour; that is, in other words, to lay the foundations of that empire which Augustus was to govern. This is the noble invention of our author; but it hath been copied by so many sign-post daubers, that now it is grown fulsome, rather by their want of skill, than by the commonness.