Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known,
For Hector's nephew and Aeneas' son.

Virgil, though born to shine by his own intrinsic powers, certainly owed
much of his excellence to the wonderful merits of Homer. His susceptible
imagination, vivid and correct, was (170) impregnated by the Odyssey, and
warmed with the fire of the Iliad. Rivalling, or rather on some
occasions surpassing his glorious predecessor in the characters of heroes
and of gods, he sustains their dignity with so uniform a lustre, that
they seem indeed more than mortal.

Whether the Iliad or the Aeneid be the more perfect composition, is a
question which has often been agitated, but perhaps will never be
determined to general satisfaction. In comparing the genius of the two
poets, however, allowance ought to be made for the difference of
circumstances under which they composed their respective works. Homer
wrote in an age when mankind had not as yet made any great progress in
the exertion of either intellect or imagination, and he was therefore
indebted for big resources to the vast capacity of his own mind. To this
we must add, that he composed both his poems in a situation of life
extremely unfavourable to the cultivation of poetry. Virgil, on the
contrary, lived at a period when literature had attained to a high state
of improvement. He had likewise not only the advantage of finding a
model in the works of Homer, but of perusing the laws of epic poetry,
which had been digested by Aristotle, and the various observations made
on the writings of the Greek bard by critics of acuteness and taste;
amongst the chief of whom was his friend Horace, who remarks that

--------quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.--De Arte Poet.