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Show I N T E R L U D E II. Bookfi!!er. THE monfiers of your Botanic Garden arc as furprifing as the bulls with brazen feet, and the fire-breathing dragons, which guarded the Hefperian fruit; yet are they not difgufiing, nor mifchievous: and in the manner you have chained them together in your exhibition, they fucceed each other amu:fingly enough, like prints of the Londoa Cries, wrapped upon rollers, with a glafs be ... fore them. In this at leafl: they refemble the rnonfiers in Ovid's Metamorphofes; but your fimilies, I fuppofe, are Homeric? Poet. The great Bard well underftood how to make ufe of t'his kind of ornament in Epic Poetry. He brings his valiant heroes into the field with much parade, and fets them a fighting with great fury; and then, after a few thrufrs and parries, he introduces a long firing of fimilies. . During this the battle is fuppofed to continue; and thus the time neceifary for the action is gained in our imaginations; and a degree of probability produced, which contributes to the temporary deception or reverie of the reader. But the fimilies of Homer have another agreeable characterifi-ic; they do not quadrate, or go upon all fours (as it is called), like the rnore formal fimilies of fome modern writers; any one rcfembling feature feems to be with him a fuHicient excufe for the introduction of this kind of digreffion; he then proceeds to deliver fome agreeable poetry on this new fubject, and thus converts every fimiiic into a kind of fhort cpifodc. B. Then a fimile fhould not very accurately refemblc the fubjcct? P. No; it would then become a philofophical analogy, it would be ratiocination infiead of poetry: it need only fo far refcmble the N |