Then I consulted a greater genius
(without offence to the manes of that noble author)--I mean Milton;
but as he endeavours everywhere to express Homer, whose age had not
arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty
thoughts which were clothed with admirable Grecisms and ancient
words, which he had been digging from the minds of Chaucer and
Spenser, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of
venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I
looked. At last I had recourse to his master, Spenser, the author
of that immortal poem called the "Faerie Queen," and there I met
with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spenser had
studied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer, and
amongst the rest of his excellences had copied that. Looking
farther into the Italian, I found Tasso had done the same; nay,
more, that all the sonnets in that language are on the turn of the
first thought--which Mr. Walsh, in his late ingenious preface to his
poems, has observed.
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