the Manners; or, as we generally call them in
English
, the Fable and the Characters.
Homer
has excelled all the Heroic Poets that ever wrote, in the Multitude and Variety of his Characters. Every God that is admitted into this Poem, acts a Part which would have been suitable to no other Deity. His Princes are as much distinguished by their Manners, as by their Dominions; and even those among them, whose Characters seem wholly made up of Courage, differ from one another as to the particular kinds of Courage in which they excel. In short, there is scarce a Speech or Action in the
Iliad
, which the Reader may not ascribe to the Person that speaks or acts, without seeing his Name at the Head of it.
Homer
does not only outshine all other Poets in the Variety, but also in the Novelty of his Characters. He has introduced among his