ABSTRACT
I am very well pleas’d (said the ingenious Mr. Addison) when I find any beautiful Passage in an ancient Author, which hath not been blown upon by any succeeding Writer.2 Indeed, there are very few which have not undergone this Fate. Homer and Virgil, Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Demosthenes, have been torn (if I may be allow’d the Expression) Limb from Limb, and divided as lawful Spoil among the Poets and Philosophers of later Ages: And, I believe, there is not a Sentiment, not a Line in Horace, which is not at present extant in the Works of our modern Essay-Writers.
