But suppose that Homer and Virgil were the only of their species,
and that nature was so much worn out in producing them that she is
never able to hear the like again, yet the example only holds in
heroic poetry; in tragedy and satire I offer myself to maintain,
against some of our modern critics, that this age and the last,
particularly in England, have excelled the ancients in both those
kinds, and I would instance in Shakespeare of the former, of your
lordship in the latter sort.
Thus I might safely confine myself to my native country. But if I
would only cross the seas, I might find in France a living Horace
and a Juvenal in the person of the admirable Boileau, whose numbers
are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just,
whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed and whose sense is
close. What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of
his own in coin as good and almost as universally valuable: for,
setting prejudice and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the
stamp of a Louis, the patron of all arts, is not much inferior to
the medal of an Augustus Caesar.
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