Its antithesis made it an incomparable vehicle for satire, its rapidity for narrative.

Outside its limits we have hardly any even passable satirical verse; within them there are half-a-dozen works of the highest excellence in this kind.

And if we except Chaucer, there is no one else in the whole range of English poetry who have the narrative gift so completely as the classic poets.
Bentleys will always exist who will assure us with civility that Pope's _Homer_, though "very pretty," bears little relation to the Greek, and that Dryden's _Vergil_, though vigorous and virile, is a poor representation of its original.

The truth remains that for a reader who knows no ancient languages either of those translations will probably give a better idea of their originals than any other rendering in English that we possess.

The foundation of their method has been vindicated in the best modern translations from the Greek.
(2) The term "eighteenth century" in the vocabulary of the literary historian is commonly as vaguely used as the term Elizabethan.