The ninth chapter is one of the finest monuments of antiquity. Till now I was acquainted only with two ways of criticising a beautiful passage: the one, to shew by an exact anatomy of it the distinct beauties of it and whence they sprung; the other, an idle exclamation or a general encomium which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings upon reading it, and tells them with such energy that he communicates them. I almost doubt which is most sublime, Homer’s Battle of the Gods or Longinus’ apostrophe to Terentianus upon it
