the latter as a commentator on the classics, rather than as a
writer of travels; which last title, perhaps, they would both of
them have been least ambitious to affect. Indeed, if these two
and two or three more should be removed from the mass, there
would remain such a heap of dullness behind, that the appellation
of voyage-writer would not appear very desirable. I am not here
unapprised that old Homer himself is by some considered as a
voyage-writer; and, indeed, the beginning of his Odyssey may be
urged to countenance that opinion, which I shall not controvert.
But, whatever species of writing the Odyssey is of, it is surely
at the head of that species, as much as the Iliad is of another;
and so far the excellent Longinus would allow, I believe, at this day.

But, in reality, the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that
kind, are to the voyage-writing I here intend, what romance is to
true history, the former being the confounder and corrupter of
the latter. I am far from supposing that Homer, Hesiod, and the
other ancient poets and mythologists, had any settled design to
pervert and confuse the records of antiquity; but it is certain
they have effected it; and for my part I must confess I should
have honored and loved Homer more had he written a true history
of his own times in humble prose, than those noble poems that
have so justly collected the praise of all ages; for, though I
read these with more admiration and astonishment, I still read
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon with more amusement and more
satisfaction. The original poets were not, however, without
excuse. They found the limits of nature too straight for the
immensity of their genius, which they had not room to exert
without extending fact by fiction: and that especially at a time
when the manners of men were too simple to afford that variety