text:  The vigour of these great men indeed overcame the obstacles created by contemporary envy; but how seldom especially in a refined age can genius effect such a prodigy? how often is it crushed in the outset of its career or turned aside into the humble and unobtrusive path of imitation to shun the danger with which that of originality is beset! Milton's _Paradise Lost_ contains many more lines of poetic beauty than Homer's _Iliad_; and there is nothing in the latter poem of equal length which will bear any comparison with the exquisite picture of the primeval innocence of our First Parents in his fourth book