Exact disposition, just thought, correct elocution, polished numbers, may have been found in a thousand; but this poetic fire, this "vivida vis animi," in a very few.

Even in works where all those are imperfect or neglected, this can overpower criticism, and make us admire even while we disapprove.
Nay, where this appears, though attended with absurdities, it brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour.

This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in Shakspeare it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly and everywhere irresistibly.
I shall here endeavour to show how this vast invention exerts itself in a manner superior to that of any poet through all the main constituent parts of his work: as it is the great and peculiar characteristic which distinguishes him from all other authors.
This strong and ruling faculty was like a powerful star, which, in the violence of its course, drew all things within its vortex.

It seemed not enough to have taken in the whole circle of arts, and the whole compass of nature, to supply his maxims and reflections; all the inward passions and affections of mankind, to furnish his characters: and all the outward forms and images of things for his descriptions: but wanting yet an ampler sphere to expatiate in, he opened a new and boundless walk for his imagination, and created a world for himself in the invention of fable.
That which Aristotle calls "the soul of poetry," was first breathed into it by Homer, I shall begin with considering him in his part, as it is naturally the first; and I speak of it both as it means the design of a poem, and as it is taken for fiction.
Fable may be divided into the probable, the allegorical, and the marvellous.

The probable fable is the recital of such actions as, though they did not happen, yet might, in the common course of nature; or of such as, though they did, became fables by the additional episodes and manner of telling them.