more reading than genius, in the age in which he wrote, to introduce, so often as he does, his allusions to the pagan mythology: And that he neither raised his sublime subject, nor did credit to his vast genius, by it.
Mr. Addision, said Mr. Walden, is a writer admired by the Ladies. Mr. Addison, madam, as you will find in your Spectators [Sneeringly he spoke this] gives but the second place to Milton, on comparing some passage of his with some of Homer.
If Mr. Addison, Sir, has not the honour of being admired by the gentlemen, as well as the ladies; I dare say Mr. Walden will not allow, that his authority should decide the point in question: And yet, as I remember, he greatly extols Milton.—But I am going out of my depth—Only permit me to say one thing more—If Homer is to be preferred to Milton, he must be the sublimest of writers; and Mr. Pope, admirable as his translation of the Iliad is said to be, cannot have done him justice.
You seem, madam, to be a very deep English scholar. But say you this from your own observation, or from that of any other?
I readily own, that my lights are borrowed, replied I. I owe the observation to my godfather Mr. Deane.

He is a scholar; but a greater admirer of Milton than of any of the antients. A gentleman, his particular friend, who was as great an admirer of Homer, undertook from Mr. Pope's translation of the Iliad, to produce passages that in sublimity exceeded any in the Paradise Lost. The gentlemen met at Mr. Deane's house, where I then was. They allowed me to be present; and this was the issue: The gentleman went away convinced, that the English poet as much excelled the Grecian in the grandeur of his sentiments, as his subject, founded on the Christian system, surpasses the pagan.
The debate, I have the vanity to think, said Mr. Walden, had I been a party in it, would have taken another turn.
The baronet expressed himself highly delighted with me, and was running over with the praises he had heard given me at last Northampton races; when I endeavoured to stop him, by saying, Surely, Sir, it must be your too low opinion of the qualifications of our Sex, that can induce you to think such obvious remarks as I have been drawn in to make, at all considerable.
But this hindered not Sir Hargrave