runs through the Arts and Sciences, takes a kind of Tincture from them, and falls unavoidably into Imitation.
Many of these great natural Genius's that were never disciplined and broken by Rules of Art, are to be found among the Ancients, and in particular among those of the more Eastern Parts of the World.
Homer
has innumerable Flights that
Virgil
was not able to reach, and in the Old Testament we find several Passages more elevated and sublime than any in
Homer
. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring Genius to the Ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, if you will, that they were very much above the Nicety and Correctness of the Moderns. In their Similitudes and Allusions, provided there was a Likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the Decency of the Comparison: Thus
Solomon