The Iliad of Homer - Get a Free Blog

he has given (in his excellent Essay), so
complete a praise:
"Read Homer once, and you can
read no more;
For all books else appear so mean,
so poor,
Verse will seem prose: but still persist
to read,
And Homer will be all the books
you need."
That the Earl of Halifax was one of the
first to favour me; of whom it is hard
to say whether the advancement of the
polite arts is more owing to his generosity
or his example: that such a genius
as my Lord Bolingbroke, not more distinguished
in the great scenes of business,
than in all the useful and entertaining
parts of learning, has not refused to
be the critic of these sheets, and the patron
of their writer: and that the noble au-