are intoxicated with those notions which they have received from
their masters, and which they obstinately retain without examining
whether or no they be founded on right reason.

"In a word, he labours to render us happy in relation to ourselves;
agreeable and faithful to our friends; and discreet, serviceable,
and well-bred in relation to those with whom we are obliged to live
and to converse. To make his figures intelligible, to conduct his
readers through the labyrinth of some perplexed sentence or obscure
parenthesis, is no great matter; and, as Epictetus says, there is
nothing of beauty in all this, or what is worthy of a prudent man.
The principal business, and which is of most importance to us, is to
show the use, the reason, and the proof of his precepts.

"They who endeavour not to correct themselves according to so exact
a model are just like the patients who have open before them a book
of admirable receipts for their diseases, and please themselves with
reading it without comprehending the nature of the remedies or how
to apply them to their cure."

Let Horace go off with these encomiums, which he has so well
deserved.

To conclude the contention betwixt our three poets I will use the
words of Virgil in his fifth AEneid, where AEneas proposes the
rewards of the foot-race to the three first who should reach the
goal:-


"Tres praemia primi . . .