Anacreon's Muse is like Amoret, most sweet, natural, and delicate; all
over flowers, graces, and charms; inspiring complacency, not awe; and she
seems to have good nature enough to admit a rival, which she cannot find.
Sappho's Muse, like Lady ----, is passionately tender, and glowing; like oil
set on fire, she is soft, and warm, in excess. Sappho has left us a few
fragments only; time has swallowed the rest; but that little which
remains, like the remaining jewel of Cleopatra, after the other was
dissolved at her banquet, may be esteemed (as was that jewel) a sufficient
ornament for the goddess of beauty herself.
Horace's Muse (like one I shall not presume to name) is correct, solid,
and moral; she joins all the sweetness and majesty, all the sense and the
fire of the former, in the justest proportions and degrees; superadding a
felicity of dress entirely her own. She moreover is distinguishable by
this particularity, that she abounds in hidden graces, and secret charms,
which none but the discerning can discover; nor are any capable of doing
full justice, in their opinion to her excellencies, without giving the
world, at the same time, an incontestable proof of refinement in their own
understandings.
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