Note 96 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
The author, after this verse, originally inserted the following, which he has however omitted in all the editions:
Zoilus, had these been known, without a name Had died, and Perrault ne'er been damned to fame; The sense of sound antiquity had reigned, And sacred Homer yet been unprophaned. } None e'er had thought his comprehensive mind To modern customs, modern rules confined; Who for all ages writ, and all mankind. Be his great works, &c.—Pope.
Perrault, in his Parallel between the ancients and the moderns, carped at Homer in the same spirit that Zoilus had done of old.