his apparition; that the murderers were sheep-stealers, and the twelve persons murdered were no other than twelve sheep; adding, that the shepherds had got the better of them, had secured two, and were proceeding with them to a justice of peace. This account greatly relieved the fears of the whole company; but Adams muttered to himself, “He was convinced of the truth of apparitions for all that.”

They now sat chearfully round the fire, till the master of the house, having surveyed his guests, and conceiving that the cassock, which, having fallen down, appeared under Adams’s greatcoat, and the shabby livery on Joseph Andrews, did not well suit with the familiarity between them, began to entertain some suspicions not much to their advantage: addressing himself therefore to Adams, he said, “He perceived he was a clergyman by his dress, and supposed that honest man was his footman.” “Sir,” answered Adams, “I am a clergyman at your service; but as to that young man, whom you have rightly termed honest, he is at present in nobody’s service; he never lived in any other family than that of Lady Booby, from whence he was discharged, I assure you, for no crime.” Joseph said, “He did not wonder the gentleman was surprised to see one of Mr. Adams’s character condescend to so much goodness with a poor man.”—“Child,” said Adams, “I should be ashamed of my cloth if I thought a poor man, who is honest, below my notice or my familiarity. I know not how those who think otherwise can profess themselves followers and servants of Him who made no distinction, unless, peradventure, by preferring the poor to the rich.—Sir,” said he, addressing himself to the gentleman, “these two poor young people are my parishioners, and I look on them and love them as my children. There is something singular enough in their history, but I have not now time to recount it.” The master of the house, notwithstanding the simplicity which discovered itself in Adams, knew too much of the world to give a hasty belief to professions. He was not yet quite certain that Adams had any more of the clergyman in him than his cassock. To try him therefore further, he asked him, “If Mr. Pope had lately published anything new?” Adams answered, “He had heard great commendations of that poet, but that he had never read nor knew any of his works.”—“Ho! ho!” says the gentleman to himself, “have I caught you? What!” said he, “have you never seen his Homer?” Adams answered, “he had never read any translation of the classicks.”—“Why, truly,” reply’d the gentleman, “there is a dignity in the Greek language which I think no modern tongue can reach.”—“Do you understand Greek, sir?” said Adams hastily. “A little, sir,” answered the gentleman. “Do you know, sir,” cry’d Adams, “where I can buy an Æschylus? an unlucky misfortune lately happened to mine.” Æschylus was beyond the gentleman, though he knew him very well by name; he therefore, returning back to Homer, asked Adams, “What part of the Liad he thought most excellent?” Adams returned, “His question would be properer, What kind of beauty was the chief in poetry? for that Homer was equally excellent in them all. And, indeed,” continued he, “what Cicero says of a complete orator may well be applied to a great poet: ‘He ought to comprehend all perfections.’ Homer did this in the most excellent degree; it is not without reason, therefore, that the philosopher, in the twenty-second chapter of his Poeticks, mentions him by no other appellation than that of the Poet. He was the father of the drama as well as the epic; not of tragedy only, but of comedy also; for his Margites, which is deplorably lost, bore, says Aristotle, the same analogy to comedy as his Odyssey and Iliad to tragedy. To him, therefore, we owe Aristophanes as well as Euripides, Sophocles, and my poor Æschylus. But if you please we will confine ourselves (at least for the present) to the Iliad, his noblest work; though neither Aristotle nor Horace give it the preference, as I remember, to the Odyssey. First, then, as to his subject, can anything be more simple, and at the same time more noble? He is rightly praised by the first of those judicious critics for not chusing the whole war, which, though he says it hath a complete beginning and end, would have been too great for the understanding to comprehend at one view. I have, therefore, often wondered why so correct a writer as Horace should, in his epistle to Lollius, call him the Trojani Belli Scriptorem. Secondly, his action, termed by Aristotle, Pragmaton Systasis; is it possible for the mind of man to conceive an idea of such perfect unity, and at the same time so replete with greatness? And here I must observe, what I do not remember to have seen noted by any, the Harmotton, that agreement of his action to his subject: for, as the subject is anger, how agreeable is his action, which is war; from which every incident arises and to which every episode immediately relates. Thirdly, his manners, which Aristotle places second in his description of the several parts of tragedy, and which he says are included in the action; I am at a loss whether I should rather admire the exactness of his judgment in the nice distinction or the immensity of his imagination in their variety. For, as to the former of these, how accurately is the sedate, injured