he pronounced "very bad." And of some tumid metaphors he says, "All too
forced and over-charged."

At p. 51. Spence says:--"Does it not sound mean to talk of lopping a
man? of lopping away all his posterity? or of trimming him with brazen
sheers? Is there not something mean, where a goddess is represented as
beck'ning and waving her deathless hands; or, when the gods are dragging
those that have provok'd them to destruction by the Links of fate?" Of
the two first instances, Pope says:--"Intended to be comic in a
sarcastic speech." And of the last:--"I think not at all mean, see the
Greek." The remarks are, however, expunged.

The longest remonstrance occurs at p. 6. of the Fifth Dialogue. Spence
had written:--"The _Odyssey_, as a moral poem, exceeds all the writings
of the ancients: it is perpetual in forming the manners, and in
instructing the mind; it sets off the duties of life more fully as well
as more agreeably than the Academy or Lyceum. _Horace ventured to say
thus much of the Iliad, and certainly it may be more justly said of this
later production by the same hand_." For the words in Italics Pope has
substituted:--"Horace, who was so well acquainted with the tenets of
both, has given Homer's poems the preference to either:" and says in a
note:--"I think you are mistaken in limiting this commendation and
judgment of Horace to the _Iliad_. He says it, at the beginning of his
Epistle, of Homer in general, and afterwards proposes both poems equally
as examples of morality; though the _Iliad_ be mentioned first: but then
follows--'_Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit
nobis exemplar Ulyssem_,' &c. of the Odyssey."

At p. 34. Spence says:--"There seems to be something mean and awkward in
this image:--