For the Grecian is more according to my genius than the Latin poet.

In the works of the two authors we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are wholly different.

Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire.

The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language, and the age in which he liv'd, allow'd him.

Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confin'd; so that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry; for nothing can be more evident than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the _Ilias_; a continuation of the same story, and the persons already form'd; the manners of AEneas are those of Hector superadded to those which Homer gave him.