tricks of art straining after the most unbounded flights of nature,
I cannot but apply to them that passage in Terence:


- Incerta haec si tu postules
Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias.
Eun., Act I., Sc. 1, I. 16.


You may as well pretend to be mad and in your senses at the same
time, as to think of reducing these uncertain things to any
certainty by reason.

In short, a modern Pindaric writer compared with Pindar is like a
sister among the Camisars compared with Virgil's Sibyl; there is the
distortion, grimace, and outward figure, but nothing of that divine
impulse which raises the mind above itself, and makes the sounds
more than human.

There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in a
second class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but only
for distinction's sake, as they are of a different kind. This
second class of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves
by rules, and submitted the greatness of their natural talents to
the corrections and restraints of art. Such among the Greeks were
Plato and Aristotle; among the Romans, Virgil and Tully; among the
English, Milton and Sir Francis Bacon.

The genius in both these classes of authors may be equally great,