secure of blame? whereas the loftier walks of literature are by their
very loftiness perilous?

3
I am well aware, again, that there is a law by which in all human
productions the weak points catch the eye first, by which their faults
remain indelibly stamped on the memory, while their beauties quickly
fade away.

4
Yet, though I have myself noted not a few faulty passages in Homer and
in other authors of the highest rank, and though I am far from being
partial to their failings, nevertheless I would call them not so much
wilful blunders as oversights which were allowed to pass unregarded
through that contempt of little things, that “brave disorder,” which is
natural to an exalted genius; and I still think that the greater
excellences, though not everywhere equally sustained, ought always to be
voted to the first place in literature, if for no other reason, for the
mere grandeur of soul they evince. Let us take an instance: Apollonius
in his _Argonautica_ has given us a poem actually faultless; and in his
pastoral poetry Theocritus is eminently happy, except when he
occasionally attempts another style. And what then? Would you rather be
a Homer or an Apollonius?

5
Or take Eratosthenes and his _Erigone_; because that little work is
without a flaw, is he therefore a greater poet than Archilochus, with
all his disorderly profusion? greater than that impetuous, that
god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in
lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in