NOTE I. Ver. 7.

Of the several authors who have written on Epic Poetry, many of the most celebrated are more likely to confound and depress, than to enlighten and exalt the young Poetical Student. The Poetics of Scaliger, which are little more than a laboured panegyric of Virgil, would lead him to regard the Aeneid as the only standard of perfection; and the more elegant and ac­complished Vida inculcates the same pusillanimous lesson, though in spirited and harmonious verse.

A Critic, who lately rose to great eminence in our own country, has endeavoured by a more singular method to damp the ardour of inven­tive Genius, and to annihilate the hopes of all who would aspire to the praise of originality in this higher species of poetical composition. He has attempted to establish a Triumvirate in the Epic world, with a perpetuity of dominion. Every reader who is conversant with modern criticism will perceive that I allude to the following passage in the fa­mous Dissertation on the sixth Book of Virgil:—"Just as Virgil ri­valled Homer, so Milton emulated both of them. He found Ho­mer possessed of the province of Morality; Virgil of Politics; and nothing left for him but that of Religion. This he seized, as aspiring to share with them in the government of the Poetic world: and, by means of the superior dignity of his subject, hath gotten to the head of that Triumvirate, which took so many ages in forming. these are the three species of the Epic Poem; for its largest sphere is human action, which can be considered but in a moral, political, or religious view: and these the three Makers; for each of their Poems was struck out at a heat, and came to perfection from its first essay. Here then the grand scene was closed, and all farther improvements of the Epic at an end."

I apprehend that few critical remarks contain more absurdity (to use the favourite expression of the author I have quoted) than the preceding lines. Surely Milton is himself a proof that human action is not the largest sphere of the Epic Poem; and as to Virgil, his most passionate admirers must allow, that in subject and design he is much less of an original than Camoens or Lucan. But such a critical statute of limita­tion, if I may call it so, is not less pernicious than absurd. To dis­figure the sphere of Imagination with these capricious and arbitrary zones is an injury to science. Such Criticism, instead of giving spirit [Page 121] and energy to the laudable ambition of a youthful Poet, can only lead him to start like Macbeth at unreal mockery, and to exclaim, when he is invited by Genius to the banquet, "The Table's full."

NOTE II. Ver. 77.

For this fable, such as it is, I am indebted to a passage in Athenaeus, which the curious reader may find in the close of that fanciful and entertaining compiler, page 701 of Casaubon's edition.

NOTE III. Ver. 207.

I have ventured to suppose that Greece produced no worthy successor of Homer, and that her exploits against the Persians were not celebrated by any Poet in a manner suitable to so sublime a subject;—yet an author named Chaerilus is said to have recorded those triumphs of his country in verse, and to have pleased the Athenians so highly as to obtain from them a public and pecuniary reward. He is supposed to have been a cotemporary of the historian Herodotus. But from the general silence of the more early Greek writers concerning the merit of this Poet, we may, I think, very fairly conjecture that his compositions were not many degrees su­perior to those of his unfortunate namesake, who frequented the court of Alexander the Great, and is said to have sung the exploits of his Sove­reign, on the curious conditions of receiving a piece of gold for every good verse, and a box on the ear for every bad one. The old Scholiast on Horace, who has preserved this idle story, concludes it by saying, that the miserable Bard was beat to death in consequence of his contract. Some eminent modern Critics have indeed attempted to vindicate the reputation of the more early Chaerilus, who is supposed to be confounded, both by Horace himself, and afterwards by Scaliger, with the Chaerilus rewarded by Alexander. Vossius ^*, in particular, appears a warm advo­cate in his behalf, and appeals to various fragments of the ancient Bard [Page 122] preserved by Aristotle, Strabo, and others, and to the testimony of Plu­tarch in his favour. But on consulting the fragments he has referred to, they rather fortify than remove my conjecture. The scrap preserved by Aristotle in his Rhetoric is only half a verse, and quoted without any commendation of its author. The two citations in Strabo amount to little more. The curious reader may also find in Athenaeus an Epitaph on Sardanapalus, attributed to this Poet; who is mentioned by the same author as peculiarly addicted to the grosser excesses of the table.—Let us now return to that Chaerilus whom Horace has "damn'd to everlasting fame." The judicious and elegant Roman Satirist seems remarkably un­just, in paying a compliment to the poetical judgment of his patron Au­gustus, at the expence of the Macedonian hero. Alexander appears to have possessed much more poetical spirit, and a higher relish for poetry, than the cold-blooded Octavius. It is peculiarly unfair, to urge his li­berality to a poor Poet as a proof that he wanted critical discernment, when he had himself so thoroughly vindicated the delicacy of his taste, by the enthusiastic Bon-mot, that he had rather be the Thersites of Homer than the Achilles of Chaerilus.

NOTE IV. VERSE 231.

Though Bossu is called "the best explainer of Aristotle, and one of the most learned and judicious of modern critics," by a writer for whose opinions I have much esteem, I cannot help thinking that his celebrated Essay on Epic Poetry is very ill calculated either to guide or to inspirit a young Poet. The absurdity of his advice concerning the mode of forming the fable, by chusing a moral, inventing the incidents, and then searching history for names to suit them, has been sufficiently exposed: and as to his leading idea, concerning the design of Homer in the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey, I apprehend most poetical readers must feel that he is pro­bably mistaken; for it is a conjectural point, and placed beyond the pos­sibility of decision. Perhaps few individuals differ more from each other in their modes of thinking, by the force of education and of na­tional manners, than a modern French Critic and an early Poet of Greece; yet the former will often pretend, with the most decisive air, [Page 123] to lay open the sensorium of an ancient Bard, and to count every link in the chain of his ideas. Those who are most acquainted with the move­ments of imagination, will acknowledge the steps of this airy power to be so light and evanescent in their nature, that perhaps a Poet himself, in a few years after finishing his work, might be utterly unable to recol­lect the exact train of thought, or the various minute occurrences which led him to the general design, or directed him in the particular parts of his poem. But, in spite of the interval of many hundred centuries, the decisive magic of criticism can call up all the shadows of departed thought that ever existed in his brain, and display, with a most asto­nishing clearness, the precise state of his mind in the moment of com­position.

"Homere," says Bossu, "^*voyoit les Grecs pour qui il écri­voit, diviséz en autant d'etats qu'ils avoient de villes considerables: chacune faisoit un corps à part & avoit sa forme de gouvernement inde­pendamment de toutes les autres. Et toute-fois ces etats differens etoient souvent obligéz de se reünir comme en un seul corps contre leurs enne­mis communs. Voila sans doute deux sortes de gouvernemens bien dif­ferens, pour etre commodement reunis en un corps de morale, & en un seul poëme.

"Le poëte en a donc fait deux fables separées. L'une est pour toute la Grece reünie en un seul corps, mais composée de parties independantes les unes des autres, comme elles etoient en effect; & l'autre est pour chaque etat particulier, tels qu'ils etoient pendant la paix, sans ce premier rap­port & sans la necesseté de se reünir.

"Homere a donc pris pour le fond de sa fable, cette grande verité, que la Mesintelligence des princes ruine leurs propres etats."

On the Odyssey Bossu remarks, "Que la verité qui sert de fond à cette fiction, & qui avec elle compose la fable, est, que l'absence d'une personne hors de chez soi, ou qui n'a point l'oeil à ce qui s'y fait, y cause de grands desordres ^†."

On the mature consideration of these two moral axioms, the Critic supposes the sublime Bard to have begun his respective Poems; for Homer, continues he, "^‡ n'avoit point d'autre dessein que de former [Page 124] agreablement les moeurs de ses Citoïens, en leur proposant, comme dit Horace, ce qui est utile ou pernicieux, ce qui est honnete ou ce qui ne l'est pas: — il n'a entrepris de raconter aucune action particuliere d'Achille ou d'Ulysse. Il a fait la fable et le dessein de ses poemes, sans penser à ces princes; & ensuite il leur a fait l'honneur de donner leurs noms aux heros qu'il avoit feints."

The preceding remarks of this celebrated Critic have been frequently admired as an ingenious conjecture, which most happily illustrates the real purpose of Homer. To me they appear so much the reverse, that if I ventured to adopt any decided opinion on a point so much darkened by the clouds of antiquity, I should rather incline to the idea which Bossu affects to explode, and suppose the Poems of Homer intended panegyrics on the very princes whom the Critic affirms he never thought of while he was designing the works which have made them immortal.

There is a striking passage on this subject in a dialogue of Plato, which I shall enlarge upon, for two reasons: 1st, As it proves that the latter persuasion concerning the purpose of Homer was enter­tained at Athens; and 2dly, Because it gives me a pleasing oppor­tunity of supporting the learned Madame Dacier against an ill-grounded censure of a late English critic. In her Preface to the Odyssey, she asserts that the judgment of antiquity decided in favor of the Iliad; and she appeals to part of the sentence in Plato to which I have alluded, as a proof of her assertion. Mr. Wood, in a note to the Introduction of his Essay on Homer, endeavours to shew the insufficiency of this proof; and still farther, to convince us that Madame Dacier was utterly mis­taken in her sense of the passage to which she appealed. If he ventures to contradict this learned lady, he does not however insult her with that insolent pertness with which she is frequently treated in the notes to Pope's Homer; and which, for the honour of our English Poet, I will not suppose to be his. But though Mr. Wood endeavours to sup­port his opinion by argument, I apprehend that he is himself mistaken, and that Madame Dacier is perfectly right in understanding the words of Socrates in their literal sense, without the least mixture of irony. It is true, indeed, that the aim of Socrates, in the course of the dialogue, is to ridicule the presumption and ignorance of the sophist Hippias, in the [Page 125] most ironical manner; but the particular speech on Which Madame Dacier founds her opinion, is a plain and simple address to Eudicus, be­fore he enters on his debate with the Sophist. It turns on the most simple circumstance, the truth of which Eudicus could hardly be ig­norant of, namely, the sentiments of his own father concerning the Poems of Homer. As these sentiments are such as I believe most ad­mirers of the ancient Bard have entertained on the point in question, I perfectly agree with Madame Dacier in thinking that Socrates means to be literal and serious, when he says to Eudicus, [...]. Plat. Hip. min. edit. Serrani, tom. i. pag. 363. " I have heard your father Apemantus say, that the Iliad of Homer was a finer poem than his Odyssey, and as far surpassed it in excellence as the virtue of Achilles surpassed the virtue of Ulysses; for those two poems, he said, were purposely composed in honour of those two heroes: the Odyssey, to shew the virtues of Ulysses; the Iliad, those of Achilles." Plato's Lesser Hippias, translated by Syden­ham, page 13.

Let us now return to Bossu; whose opinion concerning the purpose of Homer we may venture to oppose, supported as it is by an ingenious interpretation of some ambiguous passages in the Poetics of Aristotle; and this opposition may be grounded, not so much on the sentence which I have quoted from Plato, as on the probable conduct of Epic compo­sition in the early ages of poetry. In such periods as produced the talents of Virgil and of Dryden, when all the arts of refined flattery were perfectly understood, we can easily conceive that they might both be tempted to compliment the reigning monarch under the mask of such heroic names as history could supply, and their genius accommodate to their purpose. We find accordingly, that the Roman Bard is supposed to have drawn a flattering portrait of his Emperor in the character of Aeneas, and that the English Poet has, with equal ingenuity, enwrapt the dissolute Charles the Second in the Jewish robes of King David. But in so rude an age as we must admit that of Homer to have been; when the Poet was certainly more the child of Nature than of Art; when he had no history to consult, perhaps no patron to flatter, and no critics [Page 126] to elude or obey; in such an age, may we not more naturally conjecture, that poetical composition was neither laboured in its form, nor deep in its design? that, instead of being the slow and systematic product of po­litical reasoning, it was the quick and artless offspring of a strong and vivifying fancy, which, brooding over the tales of tradition, soon raised them into such life and beauty, as must satisfy and enchant a warlike and popular audience, ever ready to listen with delight to the heroic feats of their ancestors.

If the learned Bossu appears unfortunate in his system concerning the purpose of Homer, he may be thought still more so in his attempt to analyze the Divinities of Virgil; for, to throw new light on the conven­tion of the Gods, in the opening of the tenth Aeneid, he very seriously informs us, that "^*Venus is divine mercy, or the love of God towards virtuous men; and Juno his justice."

I cannot conclude these very free strictures on a celebrated author, without bearing a pleasing testimony to the virtues of the man.—Bossu is allowed by the biographers of his country to have been remarkable for the mildest manners and most amiable disposition; totally free from that imperious and bigotted attachment to speculative opinions, which the science he cultivated is so apt to produce. He endeared himself to Boileau by a generous act of friendship, that led to an intimacy between them, which was dissolved only by the death of the former, in 1680.

NOTE V. VERSE 244.

As it requires much leisure to examine, and more skill to unravel an intricate hypothesis, twisted into a long and laboured chain of quotation and argument, the Disserta­tion on the sixth Book of Virgil remained for some time unrefuted. The public very quietly acquiesced in the strange position of its author, "That Aeneas's adventure to the infernal shades, is no other than a figurative description of his initiation into the Mysteries; and particu­larly a very exact one of the spectacles of the Eleusinian." At length a superior but anonymous Critic arose, who, in one of the most judicious [Page 127] and spirited essays that our nation has produced on a point of classical literature, completely overturned this ill-founded edifice, and exposed the arrogance and futility of its assuming architect. The Essay I allude to is entitled "Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of the Aeneid;" printed for Elmsly, 1770: and as this little publication is, I believe, no longer to be purchased, the curious reader may thank me for transcribing a few of its most striking passages.

Having ridiculed, with great spirit and propriety, Warburton's gene­ral idea of the Aeneid as a political institute, and his ill-supported asser­tion, that both the ancient and modern poets afforded Virgil a pattern for introducing the Mysteries into this famous episode, the author pro­ceeds to examine how far the Critic's hypothesis of initiation may be supported or overthrown by the text of the Poet. "It is," says he, "from extrinsical circumstances that we may expect the discovery of Virgil's allegory. Every one of these circumstances persuades me, that Virgil described a real, not a mimic world, and that the scene lay in the Infernal Shades, and not in the Temple of Ceres.

Having shewn, in this spirited manner, how far the hypothesis of the Critic is inconsistent with particular passages, and with the general character of the Poet, the Essayist proceeds to alledge "two simple [Page 130] reasons, which persuade him that Virgil has not revealed the secret of the Eleusinian mysteries: the first is his ignorance, and the second his discretion." The author then proves, by very ingenious historical arguments, 1st, That it is probable the Poet was never initiated him­self; and, 2dly, That if he were so, it is more probable that he would not have violated the laws both of religion and of honour, in betraying the secret of the Mysteries; particularly, as that species of profanation is mentioned with abhorrence by a cotemporary Poet.

When Horace composed the Ode which contains the preceding passage, "the Aeneid (continues my author) and particularly the sixth Book, were already known to the public ^*. The detestation of the wretch who reveals the Mysteries of Ceres, though expressed in general terms, must be applied by all Rome to the author of the sixth Book of the Aeneid. Can we seriously suppose that Horace would have branded with such wanton infamy one of the men in the world, whom he loved and honoured the most ^†?

"Nothing remains to say, except that Horace was himself ignorant of his friend's allegorical meaning; which the Bishop of Gloucester has since revealed to the world. It may be so; yet, for my own part, I should be very well satisfied with understanding Virgil no better than Horace did."

Such is the forcible reasoning of this ingenious and spirited writer. I have been tempted to transcribe these considerable por­tions of his Work, by an idea (perhaps an ill-founded one) that the circulation of his little Pamphlet has not been equal to its merit. But if it has been in any degree neglected by our country, it has not escaped [Page 131] the researches, or wanted the applause, of a learned and judicious fo­reigner. Professor Heyne, the late accurate and accomplished Editor of Virgil, has mentioned it, in his Comments to the sixth Book of the Aeneid, with the honour it deserves. He remarks, indeed, that the Author has censured the learned Prelate with some little acrimony; "Paullo acrius quam velis." But what lover of poetry, unbiassed by personal connection, can speak of Warburton without some marks of indignation? If I have also alluded to this famous Commentator with a contemptuous asperity, it arises from the persuasion that he has sullied the page of every Poet whom he pretended to illustrate; and that he frequently degraded the useful and generous profession of Criticism into a mean instrument of personal malignity: or (to use the more forcible language of his greatest antagonist) that he "invested himself in the high office of Inquisitor General and Supreme Judge of the Opinions of the Learned; which he assumed and exercised with a ferocity and despotism without example in the Republic of Letters, and hardly to be paralleled among the disciples of Dominic ^*." It is the just lot of tyrants to be detested; and of all usurpers, the literary despot is the least excusable, as he has not the common tyrannical plea of necessity or interest to alledge in his behalf; for the prevalence of his edicts will be found to sink in proportion to the arbitrary tone with which they are pro­nounced. The fate of Warburton is a striking instance of this impor­tant truth. What havock has the course of very few years produced in that pile of imperious criticism which he had heaped together! Many of his notes on Shakespeare have already resigned their place to the superior comments of more accomplished Critics; and perhaps the day is not far distant, when the volumes of Pope himself will cease to be a repository for the lumber of his friend. The severest enemies of Warburton must indeed allow, that several of his remarks on his Poeti­cal Patron are entitled to preservation, by their use or beauty; but the greater part, I apprehend, are equally destitute of both: and how far the Critic was capable of disgracing the Poet, must be evident to every reader who recollects that the nonsense in the Essay on Criticism, where [Page 132] Pegasus is made to snatch a grace, which is justly censured by Dr. War­ton, was first introduced into the poem by an arbitrary transposition of the editor.

Though arrogance is perhaps the most striking and characteristical defect in the composition of this assuming Commentator, he had cer­tainly other critical failings of considerable importance; and it may possibly be rendering some little service to the art which he professed, to investigate the peculiarities in this singular writer, which conspire to plunge him in the crowd of those evanescent critics (if I may use such an expression) whom his friend Pope beheld in so clear a vision, that he seems to have given us a prophetical portrait of his own Commentator.

I shall therefore hazard a few farther observations, not only on this famous Critic of our age and country, but on the two greater names of antiquity, to each of whom he has been declared superior by the partial voice of enthusiastic friendship. I wish not to offend his most zealous adherents; and, though I cannot but consider him as a literary usurper, I speak of him as a great Historian said of more exalted tyrants, sine ira et studio, quorum causas procul habeo.—There seem to be three natural endowments requisite in the formation of an accomplished critic;—strong understanding, lively imagination, and refined sensibility. The first was the characteristic of Aristotle, and by the consent of all ages he is al­lowed to have possessed it in a superlative degree. May I be pardoned for the opinion, that he enjoyed but a very moderate portion of the other two? I would not absolutely say that he had neither Fancy nor Feeling; but that his imagination was not brilliant, and that his sensibility was not exquisite, may I think be fairly presumed from the general tenor of his prose; nor does the little relique of his poetry contradict the idea. The two qualities in which Aristotle may be supposed defective, were the very two which peculiarly distinguish Longinus; who certainly wanted not understanding, though he might not possess the philosophi­cal [Page 133] sagacity of the Stagyrite. When considered in every point of view, he appears the most consummate character among the Critics of anti­quity. If Warburton wore any resemblance to either of these mighty names, I apprehend it must be to the former, and perhaps in imagina­tion he was superior to Aristotle; but, of the three qualities which I have ventured to consider as requisite in the perfect Critic, I conceive him to have been miserably deficient in the last, and certainly the most essential of the three; for, as the great Commentator of Horace has phi­losophically and truly remarked, in a note to that Poet, "Feeling, or Sentiment, is not only the surest, but the sole ultimate arbiter of works of genius ^*." A man may possess an acute understanding and a lively imagination, without being a sound Critic; and this truth perhaps can­not be more clearly shewn than in the writings of Warburton. His understanding was undoubtedly acute, his imagination was lively; but Imagination and Sentiment are by no means synonymous; and he cer­tainly wanted those finer feelings which constitute accuracy of discern­ment, and a perfect perception of literary excellence. In consequence of this defect, instead of seizing the real sense and intended beauties of an author, he frequently followed the caprices of his own active fancy, which led him in quest of secret meanings and mysterious allusions; these he readily found, and his powers of understanding enabled him to dress them up in a plausible and specious form, and to persuade many readers that he was (what he believed himself to be) the restorer of ge­nuine Criticism. As a farther proof that he was destitute of refined sen­sibility, I might alledge the peculiarity of his diction, which, as Dr. Johnson has very justly remarked, is coarse and impure. Perhaps it may be found, that in proportion as authors have enjoyed the quality which I suppose him to have wanted, they have been more or less dis­tinguished by the ease, the elegance, and the beauty of their language: were I required to fortify this conjecture by examples, I should produce the names of Virgil and Racine, of Fenelon and Addison—that Addi­son, who, though insulted by the Commentator of Pope with the names of an indifferent Poet and a worse Critic, was, I think, as much superior to his insulter in critical taste, and in solidity of judgment, as he con­fessedly [Page 134] was in the harmony of his style, and in all the finer graces of beautiful composition.

NOTE VI. VERSE 257.

These, and the six subse­quent lines, allude to the following passage in Dr. Warton's Essay on Pope. "I conclude these reflections with a remarkable fact. In no polished nation, after Criticism has been much studied, and the rules of writ­ing established, has any very extraordinary work ever appeared. This has visibly been the case in Greece, in Rome, and in France, after Aristotle, Horace, and Boileau had written their Arts of Poetry. In our own country, the rules of the Drama, for instance, were never more com­pletely understood than at present; yet what uninteresting, though faultless, Tragedies have we lately seen? so much better is our judgment than our execution. How to account for the fact here mentioned, ade­quately and justly, would be attended with all those difficulties that await discussions relative to the productions of the human mind, and to the delicate and secret causes that influence them; whether or no the natural powers be not confined and debilitated by that timidity and cau­tion which is occasioned by a rigid regard to the dictates of art; or whe­ther that philosophical, that geometrical, and systematical spirit so much in vogue, which has spread itself from the sciences even into polite lite­rature, by consulting only reason, has not diminished and destroyed sen­timent, and made our poets write from and to the head, rather than the heart; or whether, lastly, when just models, from which the rules have necessarily been drawn, have once appeared, succeeding writers, by vainly and ambitiously striving to surpass those just models, and to shine and surprise, do not become stiff and forced, and affected in their thoughts and diction." Warton's Essay, page 209, 3d edition.—I admire this ingenious and modest reasoning; but, for the honour of that severer art, which this pleasing writer has the happy talent to enliven and embellish, I will venture to start some doubts concerning the fact itself for which he endeavours to account. Perhaps our acquaintance with those writ­ings of Greece and Rome, which were subsequent to Aristotle and Ho­race, is not sufficiently perfect to decide the point either way in respect [Page 135] to those countries. But with regard to France, may we not assert, that her poetical productions, which arose after the publication of Boileau's Didactic Essay, are at least equal, if not superior, to those which pre­ceded that period? If the Henriade of Voltaire is not a fine Epic poem, it is allowed to be the best which the French have to boast; not to mention the dramatic works of that extraordinary and universal author. If this remarkable fact may indeed be found true, I should rather suppose it to arise from the irritable nature of the poetic spirit, so peculiarly averse to restraint and controul. The Bard who could gallop his Pegasus over a free and open plain, might be eager to engage in so pleasing an exercise; but he who observed the direction-posts so thickly and so per­versely planted, that, instead of assisting his career, they must probably occasion his fall, would easily be tempted to descend from his steed, and to decline the course. Let me illustrate this conjecture by a striking fact, in the very words of the Poet just mentioned, who was by no means deficient in poetical confidence, and who has left us the following anec­dote of himself, in that pleasing little anonymous work entitled, Com­mentaire Historique sur les Oeuvres de l' Auteur de la Henriade. "Il lut un jour plusieurs chants de ce poeme chez le jeune Président de Maisons, son intime ami. On l'impatienta par des objections; il jetta son manuscrit dans le feu. Le Président Hénaut l'en retira avec peine. "Souvenez vous (lui dit Mr. Hénaut) dans une de ses lettres, que c'est moi qui ai sauvé la Henriade, et qu'il m'en a couté une belle paire de manchettes."

To return to the Essay on Pope.—I rejoice that the amiable Critic has at length obliged the public with the conclusion of his most engaging and ingenious work: he has the singular talent to instruct and to please even those readers who are most ready to revolt from the opinion which he endeavours to establish; and he has in some degree atoned for that excess of severity which his first volume discovered, and which sunk the reputation of Pope in the eyes of many, who judge not for themselves, even far below that mortifying level to which he meant to reduce it. Had Pope been alive, to add this spirited essay to the bundle of writ­ings against himself which he is said to have collected, he must have felt, that, like the dagger of Brutus, it gave the most painful blow, from the character of the assailant:

Yet Pope ascended not the throne of Poetry by usurpation, but was seated there by a legal title; of which I shall speak farther in a subse­quent note.

NOTE VII. VERSE 359.

Boileau's Art of Poetry made its first appearance in 1673, six years after the publication of Pa­radise Lost. The verses of the French Poet to which I have particularly alluded are these:

The preceding lines, which are said to have been levelled at the Clovis of Desmaretz, appear so pointed against the subject of Milton, that we might almost believe them intended as a satire on our divine Bard. [Page 137] There is nothing in Boileau's admirable Didactic Essay so liable to ob­jection as the whole passage concerning Epic poetry. His patronage of the old Pagan divinities, and his oblique recommendation of Classical heroes, are alike exceptionable. Even a higher name than Boileau has failed in framing precepts for the Epic Muse. The maxims delivered by Tasso himself, in his Discourse on Epic poetry, are so far from perfect, that an agreeable and judicious French critic has very justly said of him, "S'il eût mis sa theorie en pratique, son poeme n'auroit pas tant de charmes ^*." I am not so vain as to think of succeeding in the point where these immortal authors have failed; and I must beg my reader to remember, that the present work is by no means intended as a code of laws for the Epic poet; it is not my design ‘To write receipts how poems may be made.’ For I think the writer who would condescend to frame this higher spe­cies of composition according to the exact letter of any directions what­ever, may be most properly referred to that admirable receipt for an Epic poem with which Martinus Scriblerus will happily supply him. My serious desire is to examine and refute the prejudices which have pro­duced, as I apprehend, the neglect of the Heroic Muse: I wish to kindle in our Poets a warmer sense of national honour, with ambition to excel in the noblest province of poesy. If my essay should excite that gene­rous enthusiasm in the breast of any young poetic genius, so far from wishing to confine him by any arbitrary dictates of my own imagination, I should rather say to him, in the words of Dante's Virgil,

NOTE VIII. VERSE 377.

NOTE I. VERSE 28.

Homer, like most transcen­dent characters, has found detractors in every age. We learn from a passage in the life of Socrates by Diogenes Laertius, that the great Poet had, in his life-time, an adversary named Sagaris, or Syagrus; and his calumniator Zoilus is proverbially distinguished. In the Greek An­thologia, there is a sepulchral inscription on a slanderer of the sovereign Bard, which, for its enthusiastic singularity, I shall present to the reader.

Parthenius, say the Commentators, was a disciple of Dionysius of Alexandria, who flourished under Nero and Trajan. Erycius, the author of the inscription, is supposed to have lived in the same age. Among the modern adversaries of Homer, the French are most remarkable for their severity and injustice: nor is it surprising, that the nation which has displayed the faintest sparks of Epic fire, should be the most solici­tous to reduce the oppressive splendor of this exalted luminary. The most depreciating remarks on genius, in every walk, are generally made by those who are the least able to prove its rivals; and often, perhaps, not so much from the prevalence of envious malignity, as from the want of vivid and delicate perception. The merits and the failings of Homer were agitated in France with all the heat and acrimony of a theological dispute. Madame Dacier distinguished herself in the contest by her uncommon talents and erudition: she combated for the Grecian Bard with the spirit of Minerva defending the Father of the Gods. It must however be confest, that she sometimes overstepped the modesty of wisdom, and caught, unwarily, the scolding tone of Juno. It is indeed amusing, to observe a people, who pique themselves on their extreme po­liteness, and censure Homer for the gross behaviour of his Gods, engag­ing among themselves in a squabble concerning this very Poet, with all the unrefined animosity of his Olympian Synod. In the whole contro­versy there is nothing more worthy of remembrance and of praise, than the lively elegance and the pleasing good-humour of Mr. de la Motte, who, though not one of the most exalted, was certainly one of the most amiable, characters in the literary world; and made a generous return to the severity of his female antagonist, by writing an ode in her praise. [Page 141] Voltaire has pointed out, with his usual spirit, the failings of La Motte in his Abridgement of the Iliad; but he has frequently fallen himself into similar defects, and is equally unjust to Homer, against whom he has levelled the most bitter sarcasms, both in prose and verse. Voltaire at­tacking Homer, is like Paris shooting his arrow at the heel of Achilles: the two Poets are as unequal as the two ancient Warriors; yet Homer, like Achilles, may have his vulnerable spot; but with this happy dif­ference, that although the shaft of ridicule, which is pointed against him, may be tinged with venom, its wound cannot be mortal. Perhaps no better answer can be made to all those who amuse themselves with writing against Homer, than the following reply of Madame Dacier to the Abbé Terrasson, who had attacked her favourite Bard in two abusive volumes:—"Que Monsieur l'Abbé Terrasson trouve Homere sot, ridi­cule, extravagant, ennuyeux, c'est son affaire, le public jugera si c'est un defaut à Homere de deplaire à M. l'Abbé Terrasson, ou à M. l'Abbé Terrasson de ne pas gouter Homere."

NOTE II. VERSE 85.

Dio Chrysostom, in one of his orations, has called Socrates the disciple of Homer, and drawn a short parallel of their respective merits; observing in honour of both, ‘ [...]. DION. CHRYS. p. 559.’

NOTE III. VERSE 119.

I mean not to injure the dignity of Pindar by this assertion. Though Quinctilian, in drawing the character of the Grecian Lyric Poets, has given him high pre-emi­nence in that choir, we may, I think, very fairly conjecture that some odes of Alcaeus and Stesichorus were not inferior to those of the Theban Bard, who is said to have been repeatedly vanquished in a poetical contest by his female antagonist Corinna. The absurd jealousy of our sex con­cerning literary talents, has led some eminent writers to question the merits of Corinna, as Olearius has observed, in his Dissertation on the fe­male Poets of Greece. But her glory seems to have been fully established [Page 142] by the public memorial of her picture, exhibited in her native city, and adorned with a symbol of her victory. Pausanias, who saw it, supposes her to have been one of the handsomest women of her time; and the ingenuity of some Critics imputes her success in the poetical contest to the influence of her beauty. They have taken some liberties less par­donable with her literary reputation, and, by their curious comments on a single Greek syllable, made the sublime Pindar call his fair rival a Sow, though the unfortunate word [...], which may be twisted into that meaning, signifies, in its more obvious construction, that the Poet challenged his successful antagonist to a new trial of skill.—For a more minute account of this singular piece of criticism, I must refer the reader to the notes on Corinna, in the Fragmenta Poetriarum, by Wolfius. Time has left us only a few diminutive scraps of Corinna's Poetry; but Plutarch, in his Treatise on the Glory of the Athenians, has preserved one of her critical Bon-mots, which may deserve to be repeated. That author asserts, that Corinna instructed Pindar in his youth, and advised him to adorn his composition with the embellish­ments of fable. The obedient Poet soon brought her some verses, in which he had followed her advice rather too freely; when his Tutress, smiling at his profusion, [...].

NOTE IV. VERSE 126.

Apollonius, surnamed the Rhodian from the place of his residence, is supposed to have been a native of Alexandria; where he is said to have recited some por­tion of his Poem, while he was yet a youth. Finding it ill received by his countrymen, he retired to Rhodes, where he is conjectured to have polished and completed his Work, supporting himself by the profession of Rhetoric, and receiving from the Rhodians the freedom of their city. He at length returned, with considerable honour, to the place of his birth, succeeding Eratosthenes in the care of the Alexan­drian Library, in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, who ascended the throne of Egypt in the year before Christ 246. That prince had been [Page 143] educated by the famous Aristarchus, and rivalled the preceding sove­reigns of his liberal family in the munificent encouragement of learning. Apollonius was a disciple of the poet Callimachus; but their connection ended in the most violent enmity, which was probably owing to some degree of contempt expressed by Apollonius for the light compositions of his master. The learned have vainly endeavoured to discover the particulars of their quarrel.— The only Work of Apol­lonius which has descended to modern times, is his Poem, in four Books, on the Argonautic expedition. Both Longinus and Quintilian have assigned to this Work the mortifying character of Mediocrity; but there lies an appeal from the sentence of the most candid and en­lightened Critics to the voice of Nature; and the merit of Apollonius has little to apprehend from the decision of this ultimate judge. His Poem abounds in animated description, and in passages of the most ten­der and pathetic beauty. How finely painted is the first setting forth of the Argo! and how beautifully is the wife of Chiron introduced, holding up the little Achilles in her arms, and shewing him to his father Peleus as he sailed along the shore! But the chief excellence in our Poet, is the spirit and delicacy with which he has delineated the passion of love in his Medea. That Virgil thought very highly of his merit in this particular is sufficiently evident from the minute exactness with which he has copied many tender touches of the Grecian Poet. Those who compare the third Book of Apollonius with the fourth of Virgil, may, I think, perceive not only that Dido has some features of Medea, but that the two Bards, however different in their reputation, resembled each other in their genius; and that they both excel in deli­cacy and pathos.

NOTE V. VERSE 190.

Scaliger appears to be the most extravagant of all the Critics who have lavished their undistinguish­ing encomiums on Virgil, by asserting that he alone is entitled to the name of Poet. Poetices, lib. iii. c. 2. — Though the opinion of Spence, and other modern Critics, concerning the character of Aeneas, considered as an allegorical portrait of Augustus, seems to gain ground, yet it might perhaps be easy to overturn the ingenious conjectures [Page 144] and the fanciful reasoning by which that idea has been supported. This attempt would have the sanction of one of the most judicious Commentators of Virgil; for the learned Heyne expressly rejects all allegorical interpretation, and thinks it improbable that a Poet of so correct a judgment could have adopted a plan which must necessarily contract and cramp his powers. He even ventures to assert, that if the character of Aeneas was delineated as an allegorical portrait of Augustus, the execution of it is unhappy. The strongest argument which has been adduced to support this conjecture, is founded on the ingenious interpretation of the following passage in the opening of the third Georgic:

These lines, in which Virgil expresses his intention of dedicating a temple to Augustus, have been considered as the noblest allegory of ancient Poetry ^*; and the great Critic who first started the idea, has expatiated, in the triumph of his discovery, on the mysterious beauties they contain: but the whole of this hypothesis is unfortunately built upon the rejec­tion of three verses, which are pronounced unworthy of the Poet, and which, though found in every MS. the Critic claims a right of re­moving. A licence so extraordinary cannot even be justified by the talents of this accomplished writer; for if the less elegant passages of the ancient Poets might be removed at pleasure, their compositions would be exposed to the caprice of every fantastic commentator. The obvious and literal interpretation not only renders this violence unne­cessary, but is more agreeable to the judgment of the Poet and the man­ners [Page 145] of his age. The custom of erecting real temples was so familiar to antiquity, that a Roman would never have suspected the edifice was to be raised only with poetical materials. We may even conjecture, from a line of Statius, that the Poet himself had a temple erected to his memory; and, without any breach of probability, we may admit his intention of giving his living Emperor such a testimony of his gra­titude. This adulation, though shocking to us, was too generally justified by example to oblige the Poet to palliate it by a fiction. He had before acquiesced in the divinity of his Imperial Patron, and had expressed the idea in its full sense.

Having made such an invocation in the beginning of his Work, was his delicacy afterwards to be shocked, and oblige him to pay a compliment under the disguise of an obscure conceit? for that allegory must be allowed to be obscure, which had remained through so many ages unexplained. The unfortunate rejected lines, for whose elegance we do not contend, may at least be rescued from impropriety by a li­teral interpretation of the preceding passage; for, dismiss the conjectured allegory, and the chief objections against them remain no longer. If the phraseology be peculiar, it is at least supported by concurring MSS. The adjective ardens is sometimes undoubtedly joined to a word that does not denote a substance of heat or flame, as the Critic himself ad­mits in the case of ardentes hostes, to which we may add the verbum ardens of Cicero. As to the line which is said to contain the most glaring note of illegitimacy, ‘Tithoni primâ quot abest ab origine Caesar,’ many reasons might induce the Poet to use the name of Tithonus, which at this distance of time it is not easy for us to conjecture. Per­haps [Page 146] he chose it to vary the expression of Assaraci Proles, which he had adopted in the preceding lines. The absurdity of the subject-matter, and the place in which it is introduced, that are insisted on as the prin­cipal objections, arise solely from the allegorical hypothesis: without it the construction will be plain and natural. The Poet expresses his intention of erecting a temple to Augustus, and expatiates on the mag­nificence with which it was to be adorned: he then returns to his pre­sent poetical subject; ‘Interea Dryadum sylvas saltusque sequamur:’ and, having dwelt a little on that, to avoid too long a digression, very naturally resumes the praises of the Emperor, by alluding to the sublimer song which he intended to devote to him hereafter.

Perhaps the important position that gave rise to this conjecture, and to others of a similar complexion, "that the propriety of allegorical com­position made the distinguished pride of ancient poetry," is as question­able as the conjecture itself; and a diligent and judicious perusal of the ancient Poets might convince us, that simplicity was their genuine character, and that many of their allegorical beauties have originated in the fertile imagination of their commentators. Aristarchus, indeed, the celebrated model of ancient criticism, rejected with great spirit the alle­gorical interpretations of Homer, as we are informed by Eusthathius; but the good Archbishop of Thessalonica, who, like some modern pre­lates, had a passion for allegory, censures the great Critic of Alexandria for his more simple mode of construction, and supposes it an injury to the refined beauties and profound wisdom of the Poet. ‘ [...]. EUSTH. vol. iii. page 1300.’

NOTE VI. VERSE 260.

There is hardly any emi­nent personage of antiquity who has suffered more from detraction, both [Page 147] in his literary and moral character, than the poet Lucan. His fate, indeed, seems in all points to have been peculiarly severe. His early death, at an age when few Poets have even laid the foundation of their capital work, is itself sufficient to excite our compassion and regret; but to perish by the envious tyranny of Nero, may be considered as a blessing, when compared with the more cruel misfortune of being branded with infamy in the immortal pages of Tacitus. As I am per­suaded that the great Historian has inadvertently adopted the grossest calumny against our Poet, I shall most readily assign my reasons for thinking so. It may first be proper to give a short sketch of Lucan's life.—He was the son of Anneus Mela, the youngest brother of Seneca; and though born at Corduba, was conveyed to Rome at the age of eight months: a circumstance, as his more indulgent critics observe, which sufficiently refutes the censure of those who consider his language as provincial. At Rome he was educated under the Stoic Cornutus, so warmly celebrated by his disciple Persius the Satirist, who was the in­timate friend of our Poet. In the close of his education Lucan is said to have passed some time at Athens. On his return to Rome he rose to the office of Quaestor, before he had attained the legal age. He was afterwards inrolled among the Augurs; and married a lady of noble birth, of whose amiable character I shall speak more at large in a subse­quent note. Lucan had for some time been admitted to familiarity with Nero, when the Emperor chose to contend for poetical honours by the public recital of a poem he had composed on Niobe; and some verses of this imperial production are supposed to be preserved in the first Satire of Persius. Lucan had the hardiness to repeat a poem on Orpheus, in competition with that of Nero; and, what is more remark­able, the judges of the contest were just and bold enough to decide against the Emperor. From hence Nero became the persecutor of his success­ful rival, and forbade him to produce any poetry in public. The well-known conspiracy of Piso against the tyrant soon followed; and Taci­tus, with his usual sarcastic severity, concludes that Lucan engaged in the enterprize from the poetical injuries he had received: a remark which does little credit to the candour of the Historian; who might have found a much nobler, and, I will add, a more probable motive for his conduct, in the generous ardor of his character, and his passionate adora­tion [Page 148] of freedom. In the sequel of his narration, Tacitus alledges a charge against our Poet, which, if it were true, must lead us to detest him as the most abject of mankind. The Historian asserts, that Lucan, when accused of the conspiracy, for some time denied the charge; but; corrupted at last by a promise of impunity, and desirous to atone for the tardiness of his confession, accused his mother Atilla as his accomplice. This circumstance is so improbable in itself, and so little consonant to the general character of Lucan, that some writers have treated it with contempt, as a calumny invented by Nero to vilify the object of his envious abhorrence. But the name of Tacitus has given such an air of authority to the story, that it may seem to deserve a more serious dis­cussion, particularly as there are two subsequent events related by the same Historian, which have a tendency to invalidate the accusation so injurious to our Poet. The events I mean are, the fate of Annaeus, and the escape of Atilla, the two parents of Lucan. The former died in consequence of art accusation brought against him, after the death of his son, by Fabius Romanus, who had been intimate with Lucan and forged some letters in his name, with the design of proving his father concerned in the conspiracy. These letters were produced to Nero, who sent them to Annaeus, from an eager desire, says Tacitus, to get possession of his wealth. From this fact two inferences may be drawn, according to the different lights in which it may be considered:—If the accusation against Annaeus was just, it is clear that Lucan had not betrayed his fa­ther, and he appears the less likely to have endangered by his confession the life of a parent, to whom he owed a still tenderer regard:—If Annaeus was not involved in the conspiracy, and merely put to death by Nero for the sake of his treasure, we may the more readily believe, that the tyrant who murdered the father from avarice, might calumniate the son from envy. But the escape of Atilla affords us the strongest reason to conclude that Lucan was perfectly innocent of the abject and unnatural treachery, of which Tacitus has supposed him guilty. Had the Poet really named his mother as his accomplice, would the vindic­tive and sanguinary Nero have spared the life of a woman, whose family he detested, particularly when other females were put to death for their share in the conspiracy? That Atilla was not in that number, the Historian himself informs us in the following remarkable sentence, [Page 149] Atilla mater Annaei Lucani, sine absolutione, sine supplicio, dissimulata; thus translated by Gordon: "The information against Atilla, the mo­ther of Lucan, was dissembled; and, without being cleared, she escaped unpunished."

The preceding remarks will, I hope, vindicate to every candid mind the honour of our Poet; whose firmness and intrepidity of character are indeed very forcibly displayed in that picture of his death which Tacitus himself has given us. I shall present it to the English reader in the words of Gordon: — Lucan, "while his blood issued in streams, perceiving his feet and hands to grow cold and stiffen, and life to retire by little and little to the extremities, while his heart was still beating with vital warmth, and his faculties no wise impaired, recollected some lines of his own, which described a wounded soldier expiring in a manner that resembled this. The lines themselves he rehearsed; and they were the last words he ever uttered." The Annals of Tacitus, Book xv. — The critics differ concerning the verses of the Pharsalia which the author quoted in so memorable a manner. I shall transcribe the two passages he is supposed to have repeated, and only add that Lipsius contends for the latter.

Such was the death of Lucan, before he had completed his twenty­seventh year. If his character as a man has been injured by the Histo­rian, his poetical reputation has been treated not less injuriously by the Critics. Quintilian, by a frivolous distinction, disputes his title to be classed among the Poets; and Scaliger says, with a brutality of language disgraceful only to himself, that he seems rather to bark than to sing. But these insults may appear amply compensated, when we remember, that in the most polished nations of modern Europe the most elevated and poetic spirits have been his warmest admirers; that in France he was idolized by Corneille, and in England translated by Rowe.—The severest censures on Lucan have proceeded from those who have unfairly compared his language to that of Virgil: but how unjust and absurd is such a comparison! it is comparing an uneven block of porphyry, taken rough from the quarry, to the most beautiful super­sicies of polished marble. How differently should we think of Virgil as a poet, if we possessed only the verses which he wrote at that period of life when Lucan composed his Pharsalia! In the disposition of his subject, in the propriety and elegance of diction, he is undoubtedly far inferior to Virgil: but if we attend to the bold originality of his design, and to the vigour of his sentiments; if we consider the Pharsalia as the [Page 151] rapid and uncorrected sketch of a young poet, executed in an age when the spirit of his countrymen was broken, and their taste in literature corrupted, it may justly be esteemed as one of the most noble and most wonderful productions of the human mind.

NOTE VII. VERSE 293.

Pompey, after his defeat at Pharsalia, proceeded to Lesbos, as he had left his wife Cornelia to the protection of that island; which received the unfortunate hero with a sublime generosity. The Lesbians entreated him to remain amongst them, and promised to defend him. Pompey expressed his gratitude for their fidelity, but declined the offer, and embarked with Cornelia. The concern of this gallant people on the departure of their amiable guest is thus described by Lucan:

NOTE VIII. VERSE 296.

Polla Argentaria was the daughter of a Roman Senator, and the wife of Lucan. She is said to have transcribed and corrected the three first books of the Pharsalia, after the death of her husband. It is much to be regretted that we possess not the poem which he wrote on the merits of this amiable and accomplished woman; but her name is immortalized by two surviving Poets of that age. The veneration which she paid to the memory of her husband, is recorded by Martial; and more poetically described in that pleasing and elegant little production of Statius, Genethliacon Lucani, a poem which I the more readily commend, as I may be thought by some readers un­just towards its author, in omitting to celebrate his Thebaid. I confess, indeed, the miscellaneous poems of Statius appear to me his most va­luable work: in most of these there is much imagination and sentiment, in harmonious and spirited verse. The little poem which I have men­tioned, on the anniversary of Lucan's birth, is said to have been written at the request of Argentaria. The Author, after invoking the poetical deities to attend the ceremony, touches with great delicacy and spirit on the compositions of Lucan's childhood, which are lost, and the Phar­salia, the production of his early youth; he then pays a short compli­ment to the beauty and talents of Argentaria, laments the cruel fate which deprived her so immaturely of domestic happiness; and concludes with the following address to the shade of Lucan:

I cannot close this note without observing, that the preceding verses have a strong tendency to prove, that Lucan was perfectly innocent in regard to the accusation which I have examined before. Had he been really guilty of basely endangering the life of his mother, it is not pro­bable that his wife would have honoured his memory with such enthu­siastic veneration, or that Statius, in verses designed to do him honour, would have alluded to the mother of Nero. The Reader will pardon my recurring to this subject, as it is pleasing to make use of every argument which may remove so odious and unjust a stain from a manly and exalted character.

NOTE I. VERSE 36.

An allusion to ridens moriar, the close of the celebrated Northern Ode, by the Danish king Regner Lodbrog; a translation of which is inserted in the curious little volume of Runic poetry, printed for Dodsley, 1763.

Bartholin, in his admirable Essay on the Causes which inspired the Danes with a Contempt of Death, affirms, that it was customary with the Northern warriors to sing their own exploits in the close of life. He men­tions the example of a hero named Hallmundus, who being mortally wounded, commanded his daughter to attend while he composed a poem, and to inscribe it on a tablet of wood. BARTHOLIN. Lib. i. cap. 10.

NOTE II. VERSE 60.

The poetry of Provence contains many spirited satires against the enormities of the Clergy. The most remarkable, is the bold invective of the Troubadour Guillaume Fi­gueira, in which he execrates the avarice and the cruelty of Rome. The Papal cause found a female Poet to defend it: Germonda of Montpellier composed a poetical reply to the satire of Figueira. See MILLOT's Hist. des Troubadours, vol. ii. p. 455.

NOTE III. VERSE 76.

There never was a cen­tury utterly destitute of ingenious and elegant Poets, says the learned Polycarp Leyser, after having patiently traced the obscure progress of Latin poetry through all the dark ages. Indeed the merit of some Latin Poets, in a period that we commonly suppose involved in the grossest barbarism, is singularly striking; many of these are of the Epic kind, and, as they describe the manners and customs of their respective times, a complete review of them might form a curious and entertaining work. I shall briefly mention such as appear most worthy of notice.

Abbo, a Parisian monk, of the Benedictine order, wrote a poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans and the Danes, at which he was pre­sent, in the year 886: it is printed in the second volume of Duchesne's Script.Francorum; and, though it has little or no poetical merit, may be regarded as an historical curiosity. The following lines, addressed to the city of Paris, in the beginning of the work, may serve as a specimen of its language:

Leyser has confounded this Poet with another of this name; but Fa­bricius has corrected the mistake, in his Bibliotheca Latina mediae et infimae Aetatis.

Guido, Bishop of Amiens from the year 1058 to 1076, wrote an Heroic poem on the exploits of William the Conqueror, in which, according to Ordericus Vitalis, he imitated both Virgil and Statius. William of Apulia composed, at the request of Pope Urban the IId, a poem, in five books, on the actions of the Normans in Sicily, Apulia, and Calabria, to the death of Robert Guiscard their prince; addressing [Page 157] his work to the son of that hero. It was written between the years 1080 and 1099; first printed in 1582, 4to; and again in Muratori's Script. Ital. Du Cange, in his Notes to the Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena, has illustrated that history by frequent and long quota­tions from William of Apulia; but though the learned Critic gives him the title of Scriptor Egregius, his poetry appears to me but a few de­grees superior to that of the Monk Abbo, whom I have just mentioned. The Reader may judge from the following passage, which I select not only as a specimen of the Author's style, but as it shews that the wives of these martial Princes shared with them in all the perils of war.

The Princess Comnena has also celebrated the fortitude which this Heroine, whose name was Gaita, displayed in the battle; and it is re­markable, that the royal female Historian describes the noble Amazon. more poetically than the Latin Poet.

Gualfredo, an Italian, who succeeded to the bishoprick of Siena in the year 1080, and died in 1127, wrote an Heroic poem on the expedition of Godfrey of Boulogne, which is said to be still preserved in MS. at Siena. I believe Gualfredo is the first Poet, in point of time, who treated of the happy subject of the Crusades; which was afterwards em­bellished by two very elegant writers of Latin verse, Iscanus and Gun­ther, of whom I shall presently speak, and at length received its highest honour from the genius of Tasso. There is also an early Latin poem on this subject, the joint production of two writers, named Fulco and Aegi­dius, whom the accurate Fabricius places in the beginning of the 13th. century; the title of the work is Historia. Gestorum Viae: nostri Tem­poris Hierosolymitanae. It is printed in the fourth volume of Duchesne's Script. Franc. and with considerable additions in the third volume of [Page 158] Anecdota Edmundi Martene. I transcribe part of the opening of this poem, as the curious reader may have a pleasure in comparing it with that of Tasso.

I will only add the portrait of Godfrey:

The poem closes with the capture of Jerusalem.

Laurentius of Verona, who flourished about the year 1120, wrote an Heroic poem, in seven books, entitled, Rerum in Majorica Pisanorum. Edidit Ughellus, tom. 3. Italiae sacrae.

But in merit and reputation, these early Latin Poets of modern time are very far inferior to Philip Gualtier de Chatillon, who seems to have been the first that caught any portion of true poetic spirit in Latin verse. He was Provost of the Canons of Tournay ^* about the year 1200, according to Mr. Warton, who has given some specimens of his style in the second Dissertation prefixed to his admirable History of English Poetry. I shall therefore only add, that the best edition of his Alexandreid, an Heroic [Page 159] poem in ten books on Alexander the Great, was printed at Leyden, 4to, 1558.

The superior merit of Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, has been also displayed by the same judicious Encomiast, in the Dissertation I have mentioned; nor has he failed to commemorate two Latin Epic Poets of the same period, and of considerable merit for the time in which they lived—Gunther, and William of Bretagny; the first was a German monk, who wrote after the year 1108, and has left various historical and poetical works; particularly two of the Epic kind—Solymarium, a poem on the taking of Jerusalem by Godfrey of Bulloign; and another, entitled Ligurinus, on the exploits of the Emperor Frederick Barba­rossa, which he completed during the life of that Prince. The first was never printed; of the latter there have been several editions, and one by the celebrated Melancthon, in 1569. That his poetical merit was considerable in many respects, will appear from the following verses, in which he speaks of himself.

William of Bretagny was preceptor to Pierre Charlot, natural son of Philip Augustus, King of France, and addressed a poem to his pupil, entitled Karlotis, which is yet unpublished; but his greater work, called Philippis, an Heroic poem in twelve books, is printed in the collections of Duchesne and Pithaeus; and in a separate 4to volume, with a copious commentary by Barthius. Notwithstanding the praises bestowed on this Author by his learned Commentator, who prefers him to all his contemporaries, he appears to me inferior in poetic spirit to his three rivals, Gualtier de Chatillon, Iscanus, and Gunther. Yet his work is by no means despicable in its style, and may be considered as a valuable picture of the times in which he lived; for he was himself engaged in many of the scenes which he describes. His profest design is to cele­brate the exploits, of Philip Augustus; and he closes his poem with the [Page 160] death of that Monarch, which happened in 1223. He addresses his work, in two separate poetical dedications, to Lewis, the successor of Philip, and to Pierre Charlot his natural son, who was Bishop of Noyon in 1240, and died 1249, He seems to have been excited to this compo­sition by the reputation of Gualtier's Alexandreid; to which he thus alludes, in the verses addressed to Lewis:

He takes occasion also, in two other parts of his poem, to pay a liberal compliment to Gualtier, to whom, in poetical ability, he confesses himself inferior; but this inferiority his admirer Barthius will not allow. Of their respective talents the reader may judge, who will compare the passage which Mr. Warton has cited from the Alexandreid, with the following lines, in which William of Bretagny uses the very simile of his predecessor, comparing his hero Philip to a young lion.

I will add the following passage from the eleventh Book, as it con­tains an animated portrait, and a simile more original than the pre­ceding.

[Page 162]William of Bretagny had an immediate successor in Latin poetry, who appears to have at least an equal portion of poetical spirit; the name of this Author is Nicholas de Brai, who wrote an Heroic poem on the actions of Louis the VIIIth, after the death of that Monarch, and addressed it to William of Auvergne, who was Bishop of Paris from the year 1228 to 1248. As a specimen of his descriptive power, I select the following lines, which form part of a long description of a Goblet presented to the King on his accession:

The Author proceeds to describe Thebes and Troy, as they are figured on this superb Goblet; and concludes his account of the workmanship with the four following lines, of peculiar beauty for the age in which they appeared:

[Page 163]This Poem, Which the author seems to have left imperfect, is printed in the fifth volume of Duchesne's Script. Francorum.—England is said to have produced another Heroic Poet of considerable merit, who cele­brated in Latin verse the exploits of Richard the First, and who was called Gulielmus Peregrinus, from his having attended that Prince to the Holy Land. Leland mentions him by the name of Gulielmus de Canno, and Pits calls him Poetarum sui temporis apud nostrates facile Princeps; but I do not find that his Work was ever printed; nor do the several biographical writers who speak of him, inform us where it ex­ists in MS.

In Italy the Latin language is supposed to have been cultivated with still greater success, and the restoration of its purity is in great measure ascribed to Albertino Mussato, whose merits were first displayed to our country by the learned author of the Essay on Pope.—Mussato was a Paduan, of high rank and great talents, but unfortunate. He died in exile, 1329, and left, besides many smaller Latin pieces, an Heroic Poem, De Gestis Italorum post Henricum VII. Caesarem, seu de Obsi­dione Domini Canis Grandis de Verona circa maenia Paduanae civitatis et Conflictu ejus.—Quadrio, from whom I transcribe this title, says it is printed in the tenth volume of Muratori. Vossius, who speaks of him as an Historian, asserts that he commanded in the war which is the subject of his Poem.

In a few years after the death of Mussato, Petrarch received the laurel at Rome, for his Latin Epic poem, entitled Africa; a performance which has sunk so remarkably from the high reputation it once obtained, that the great admirer and encomiast of Petrarch, who has published three entertaining quarto volumes on his life, calls it "Un ouvrage sans chaleur, sans invention, sans interet, qui n'a pas meme le merite de la versification & du style, & dont il est impossible de soutenir la lecture.— I must observe, however, that Tasso, in his Essay on Epic Poetry, bestows a very high encomium on that part of Petrarch's Latin poem in which he celebrates the loves of Sophonisba and Masinissa; and indeed the censure of this amiable French writer, who in other points has done ample justice to the merits of Petrarch, appears to me infinitely too severe. There are many passages in this neglected Poem conceived with great force and imagination, and expressed with equal elegance of lan­guage. [Page 164] I shall select some verses from that part of it which has been honoured by the applause of Tasso. The following lines describe the anguish of the young Numidian Prince, when he is constrained to aban­don his lovely bride:

The well-known catastrophe of the unfortunate Sophonisba is related with much poetical spirit. The close of her life, and her first appearance in the regions of the dead, are peculiarly striking.

With Petrarch I may close this cursory review of the neglected authors who wrote Heroic poems in Latin, during the course of the dark ages.—A peculiar circumstance induces me to add another name to the preceding list. John, Abbot of Peterborough, in the reign of Edward the Third, wrote an Heroic poem, entitled Bellum Navarrense, 1366, de Petro rege Aragoniae, & Edwardo Principe. This per­formance, containing five hundred and sixty verses, is said to be pre­served in MS. in the Bodleian Library; and I have thought it worthy of notice, because it treats of the very subject on which Dryden informs us he had once projected an Epic poem.

Of the many Latin compositions of the Epic kind, which later times have produced, the Christiad of Vida, the Sarcotis of Massenius, and the Constantine of Mambrun, appear to me the most worthy of regard; but even these are seldom perused: and indeed the Poet, who in a polished age prefers the use of a dead language to that of a living one, can only expect, and perhaps only deserves, the attention of a few curious se­questered students.

NOTE IV. VERSE 81.

Dante Allighieri was born at Florence, in May 1265, of an ancient and honourable family. Boccacio, who lived in the same period, has left a very curious and entertaining Treatise, on the Life, the Studies, and Manners of this extraordinary Poet; whom he regarded as his master, and for whose memory he pro­fessed the highest veneration. This interesting biographer relates, that Dante, before he was nine years old, conceived a passion for the lady whom he has immortalized in his singular Poem. Her age was near his own; and her name was Beatrice, the daughter of Folco Portinari, a noble citizen of Florence. Of this fair one the best accounts are ob­scure. Some refining commentators have even denied her corporeal exist­ence; affirming her to be nothing more or less than Theology. But we may question if Theology was ever the mistress of so young a lover. The passion of Dante, however, like that of his successor Petrarch, seems to have been of the chaste and Platonic kind, according to the account he has himself given of it, in one of his early productions, entitled Vita Nuova; a mixture of mysterious poetry and prose, in which he mentions both the origin of his affection and the death of his mistress, who, according to Boccacio, died at the age of twenty-four. The same author asserts, that Dante fell into a deep melancholy in consequence of this event, from which his friends endeavoured to raise him; by per­suading him to marriage. After some time he followed their advice, and repented it; for he unfortunately made choice of a lady who bore some resemblance to the celebrated Xantippe. The Poet, not possessing the patience of Socrates, separated himself from her with such vehement expressions of dislike, that he never afterwards admitted her to his pre­sence, though she had borne him several children.—In the early part of his life he gained some credit in a military character; distinguishing himself by his bravery in an action where the Florentines obtained a signal victory over the citizens of Arezzo. He became still more emi­nent by the acquisition of civil honours; and at the age of thirty-five he rose to be one of the chief magistrates of Florence, when that dignity was conferred by the suffrages of the people. From this ex­altation [Page 167] the Poet himself dated his principal misfortunes, as appears from the fragment of a letter quoted by Lionardo Bruni; one of his early biographers, where Dante speaks of his political failure with that liberal frankness which integrity inspires.—Italy was at that time dis­tracted by the contending factions of the Ghibellins and the Guelphs: the latter, among whom Dante took an active part, were again divided into the Blacks and the Whites. Dante, says Gravina, exerted all his influence to unite these inferior parties; but his efforts were ineffectual, and he had the misfortune to be unjustly persecuted by those of his own faction. A powerful citizen of Florence, named Corso Donati, had taken measures to terminate these intestine broils, by introducing Charles of Valois, brother to Philip the Fair, King of France. Dante, with great vehemence, opposed this disgraceful project, and obtained the banishment of Donati and his partizans. The exiles applied to the Pope (Boniface the VIIIth) and by his assistance succeeded in their design. Charles of Valois entered Florence in triumph, and those who had opposed his admission were banished in their turn. Dante had been dispatched to Rome as the ambassador of his party, and was re­turning, when he received intelligence of the revolution in his native city. His enemies, availing themselves of his absence, had procured an iniquitous sentence against him, by which he was condemned to banish­ment, and his possessions were confiscated. His two enthusiastic bio­graphers, Boccacio acid Manetti, express the warmest indignation against this injustice of his country. Dante, on receiving the intelligence, took refuge in Siena, and afterwards in Arezzo, where many of his party were assembled. An attempt was made to surprize the city of Florence, by a small army which Dante is supposed to have attended: the design miscarried, and our Poet is conjectured to have wandered to various parts of Italy, till he found a patron in the great Can della Scala, Prince of Verona, whom he has celebrated in his Poem. The high spirit of Dante was ill suited to courtly dependence; and he is said to have lost the favour of his Veroneze patron by the rough frankness of his beha­viour. From Verona he retired to France, according to Manetti; and Boccacio affirms that he disputed in the Theological Schools of Paris with great reputation. Bayle questions his visiting Paris at this period of his life, and thinks it improbable, that a man, who had been one of [Page 168] the chief magistrates of Florence, should condescend to engage in the public squabbles of the Parisian Theologists; but the spirit both of Dante, and the times in which he lived, sufficiently account for this ex­ercise of his talents; and his residence in France at this season is con­firmed by Boccacio, in his life of our Poet, which Bayle seems to have had no opportunity of consulting.

The election of Henry Count of Luxemburgh to the empire, in November 1308, afforded Dante a prospect of being restored to his na­tive city, as he attached himself to the interest of the new Emperor, in whose service he is supposed to have written his Latin treatise De Monarchia, in which he asserted the rights of the Empire against the encroachments of the Papacy. In the year 1311, he instigated Henry to lay siege to Florence; in which enterprize, says one of his Biographers, he did not appear in person, from motives of respect towards his native city. The Emperor was repulsed by the Florentines; and his death, which happened in the succeeding year, deprived Dante of all hopes concerning his re-establishment in Florence.

After this disappointment, he is supposed to have passed some years in roving about Italy in a state of poverty and distress, till he found an honourable establishment at Ravenna, under the protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, the lord of that city, who received this illustrious exile with the most endearing liberality, continued to protect him through the few remaining years of his life, and extended his munifi­cence to the ashes of the Poet.

Eloquence was one of the many talents which Dante possessed in an eminent degree. On this account he is said to have been employed on fourteen different embassies in the course of his life, and to have suc­ceeded in most of them. His patron Guido had occasion to try his abilities in a service of this nature, and dispatched him as his ambassador to negociate a peace with the Venetians, who were preparing for hosti­lities against Ravenna. Manetti asserts that he was unable to procure a public audience at Venice, and returned to Ravenna by land, from his apprehensions of the Venetian fleet; when the fatigue of his journey, and the mortification of failing in his attempt to preserve his generous patron from the impending danger, threw him into a fever, which ter­minated in death on the 14th of September 1321. He died, however, [Page 169] in the palace of his friend, and the affectionate Guido paid the most ten­der regard to his memory. This magnificent patron, says Boccacio, commanded the body to be adorned with poetical ornaments, and, after being carried on a bier through the streets of Ravenna by the most illus­trious citizens, to be deposited in a marble coffin. He pronounced him­self the funeral oration, and expressed his design of erecting a splendid monument in honour of the deceased: a design which his subsequent misfortunes rendered him unable to accomplish. At his request, many epitaphs Were written on the Poet: the best of them, says Boccacio, by Giovanni del Virgilio of Bologna, a famous author of that time, and the intimate friend of Dante. Boccacio then cites a few Latin verses, not worth transcribing, six of which are quoted by Bayle as the com­position of Dante himself, on the authority of Paul Jovius. In 1483 Bernardo Bembo, the father of the celebrated Cardinal, raised a hand­some monument over the neglected ashes of the Poet, with the following inscription:

Before this period the Florentines had vainly endeavoured to obtain the bones of their great Poet from the city of Ravenna. In the age of Leo the Xth they made a second attempt, by a solemn application to the Pope, for that purpose; and the great Michael Angelo, an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, very liberally offered to execute a magnificent mo­nument to the Poet. The hopes of the Florentines were again unsuc­cessful. The particulars of their singular petition may be found in the notes to Condivi's Life of Michael Angelo.

The person and manners of Dante are thus represented by the descrip­tive pen of Boccacia:—"Fu adunque questo nostro Pceta di Mezzana statura; e poichè alla matura età fu pervenuto, andò alquanto gravetto, ed era il suo andar grave, e mansueto, di onestissimi panni sempre vestito, [Page 170] in quello abito, che era alla sua matura età convenevole; il suo volto [...] lungo, il naso aquilino, gli occhi anzi grossi, che piccioli, le mascelle grandi, e dal labbro di sotto, era quel di sopra avanzato; il colore era bruno, i capelli, e la barba spessi neri e crespi, e sempre nella faccia ma­linconico e pensoso—Ne costumi publici e domestici mirabilmente fu composto e ordinato; più che niuno altro cortese e civile; nel cibo [Page 171] e nel poto fu modestissimo.—Though Dante is described as much inclined to melancholy, and his genius particularly delighted in the gloomy and sublime, yet in his early period of life he seems to have possessed all the lighter graces of sprightly composition, as appears from the following airy and sportive sonnet:

These lively verses were evidently written before the Poet lost the object of his earliest attachment, as she is mentioned by the name of Bice. At what time, and in what place, he executed the great and sin­gular work which has rendered him immortal, his numerous Commen­tators seem unable to determine. Boccacio asserts, that he began it in his thirty-fifth year, and had finished seven Cantos of his Inferno before his exile; that in the plunder of his house, on that event, the begin­ning [Page 171] of his poem was fortunately preserved, but remained for some time neglected, till its merit being accidentally discovered by an intelligent Poet named Dino, it was sent to the Marquis Maroello Malespina, an Italian nobleman, by whom Dante was then protected. The Marquis restored these lost papers to the Poet, and intreated him to proceed in a work which opened in so promising a manner. To this incident we are probably indebted for the poem of Dante, which he must have continued [Page 172] under all the disadvantages of an unfortunate and agitated life. It does not appear at what time he completed it perhaps before he quitted Ve­rona, as he dedicated the Paradise to his Veronese patron.—The Critics have variously accounted for his having called his poem Comedia. He gave it that title, said one of his sons, because it opens with distress, and closes with felicity. The very high estimation in which this production was held by his country, appears from a singular institution. The re­public of Florence, in the year 1373, assigned a public stipend to a per­son appointed to read lectures on the poem of Dante: Boccacio was the first person engaged in this office; but his death happening in two years after his appointment, his Comment extended only to the seventeen first Cantos of the inferno. The critical dissertations that have been written on Dante are almost as numerous as those to which Homer has given birth: the Italian, like the Grecian Bard, has been the subject of the highest panegyric, and of the grossest invective. Voltaire has spoken of him with that precipitate vivacity, which so frequently led that lively Frenchman to insult the reputation of the noblest writers. In one of his entertaining letters, he says to an Italian Abbé, "Je fais grand cas du courage, avec lequel vous avez osé dire que Dante etoit un fou, et son ouvrage un monstre—Le Dante pourra entrer dans les biblio­theques des curieux, mais il ne sera jamais lu." But more temperate and candid Critics have not been wanting to display the merits of this origi­nal Poet. Mr. Warton has introduced into his last volume on English Poetry, a judicious and spirited summary of Dante's performance. We have several versions of the celebrated story of Ugolino; but I believe no entire Canto of Dante has hitherto appeared in our language, though his whole work has been translated into French, Spanish, and Latin verse. The three Cantos which follow, were translated a few years ago, to oblige a particular friend. The Author has since been solicited to execute an entire translation of Dante; but the extreme inequality of this Poet would render such a work a very laborious undertaking, and it appears very doubtful how far such a version would interest our country. Perhaps the reception of these Cantos may discover to the Translator the sentiments of the public. At all events, he flatters himself that the ensuing portion of a celebrated poem may afford some pleasure from its novelty, as he has endeavoured to give the English reader an idea of [Page 173] Dante's peculiar manner, by adopting his triple rhyme; and he does not recollect that this mode of versification has ever appeared before in our language; it has obliged him of course to make the number of trans­lated lines correspond exactly with those of the original. The diffi­culties attending this metre will sufficiently shew themselves, and obtain some degree of indulgence from the intelligent and candid reader.

NOTE V. VERSE 127.

Boccacio was almost utterly unknown to our country as a Poet, when two of our most accomplished Critics restored his poetical reputation.

Mr. Tyrwhitt, to whom Chaucer is as deeply indebted as a Poet can be to the judgment and erudition of his commentator, has given a sketch of Boccacio's Theseida, in his introductory discourse to the Canterbury Tales; and Mr. Warton has enriched the first volume of his History of English Poetry with a considerable specimen of this very rare Italian Epic poem, of which our country is said to possess but a single copy.—The father of Boccacio was an Italian merchant, a native of Certaldo, near Florence, who in his travels attached himself to a young woman of Paris; and our Poet is supposed to have been the illegitimate offspring of that connection. He was born in 1313, and educated as a student of the canon law; but a sight of Virgil's tomb, according to Filippo Villani, his most ancient Biographer, made him resolve to re­linquish his more irksome pursuits, and devote himself entirely to the Muses. His life seems to have been divided between literature and love, as he was equally remarkable for an amorous disposition, and a passionate attachment to study. His most celebrated mistress was Mary of Arragon, the natural daughter of Robert, King of Naples, the gene­rous and enthusiastic patron of Petrarch. To this lady, distinguished by the name of The Fiammetta, Boccacio addressed his capital poem, the Theseida; telling her, in an introductory letter, that it contained many allusions to the particular circumstances of their own secret attachment. In his latter days he retired to Certaldo, and died there in the year 1475, of a disorder supposed to have arisen from excessive application. Few authors have rendered more essential service to the republic of let­ters than Boccacio, as he not only contributed very much to the improvement of his native language, but was particularly instrumental in promoting the revival of ancient learning: a merit which he shared with Petrarch. The tender and generous friendship which subsisted between these two engaging authors, reflects the highest honour on both; and their letters to each other may be ranked among the most interesting productions of that period. Boccacio composed, according [Page 199] to Quadrio, no less than thirty-four volumes. His Novels are univer­sally known: his Poetical Works are as follow: 1. La Theseida in Ottava Rima. 2. L'Amorosa Visione in Terza Rima. 3. Il Filostrato in Ottava Rima. 4. Il Ninfale Fiesolano in Ottava Rima.—He piqued himself on being the first Poet who sung of martial subjects in Italian verse; and he has been generally supposed the inventor of the Ottava Rima, the common Heroic measure of the Italian Muse; but Quadrio has shewn that it was used by preceding writers; and Pasquier, in his Recherches, has quoted two stanzas of Thibaud king of Navarre, writ­ten in the same measure, on Blanch queen of France, who died in 1252. The neglect into which the Poems of Boccacio had fallen ap­pears the more striking, as he peculiarly prided himself on his poetical character; informing the world, by an inscription on his tomb, that Poetry was his favourite pursuit—Studium fuit alma Poesis, are the last words of the epitaph which he composed for himself.

NOTE VI. VERSE 142.

Giovanni Giorgio Trissino was born of a noble family in Vicenza, 1478: he was particularly dis­tinguished by a passion for Poetry and Architecture; and one of the very few Poets who have been rich enough to build a palace. This he is said to have done from a design of his own, under the direction of the cele­brated Palladio. He had the merit of writing the first regular tragedy in the Italian language, entitled Sophonisba; but in his Epic poem he is generally allowed to have failed, though some learned Critics (and Gravina amongst them) have endeavoured to support the credit of that performance. His subject was the expulsion of the Goths from Italy by Belisarius; and his poem consists of twenty-seven books, in blank verse. He addressed it to the Emperor Charles the Vth; and professes in his Dedication to have taken Aristotle for his preceptor, and Homer for his guide.

The reader will excuse a trifling anachronism, in my naming Trissino before Ariosto, for poetical reasons. The Italia Liberata of the former was first published in 1548; the Orlando Furioso, in 1515. Trissino died at Rome, 1550; Ariosto at Ferrara, 1533.

NOTE VII. VERSE 194.

The reputation of Torquato Tasso has almost eclipsed that of his father Bernardo, who was himself a considerable Poet, and left two productions of the Epic kind, L'Amadigi, and Il Floridante: the latter remained unfinished at his death, but was afterwards published in its imperfect state by his son; who has spoken of his father's poetry with filial regard, in his different critical works. The Amadigi was written at the request of several Spanish Grandees, in the court of Charles the Vth, and first printed in Venice by Giolito, 1560. The curious reader may find an entertaining account of the Author's ideas in composing this work, among his Letters, volume the first, page 198. I cannot help remarking, that the letter referred to contains a simile which Torquato has introduced in the opening of his Jerusalem Delivered.

The Italians have formed a very pleasing and valuable work, by col­lecting the letters of their eminent Painters; which contain much in­formation on points relating to their art. The letters of their Poets, if properly selected, might also form a few interesting volumes: as a proof of this, I shall insert a short letter of the younger Tasso, because it seems to have escaped the notice of his Biographers, and relates the remarkable circumstance of his having deliberated on five different subjects before he decided in favour of Goffredo: ‘Al M. Illustre Sig. Conte Ferrante Estense Tassone.’

Io ho scritto questa mattina a V. S. che io desidero di far due Poemi a mio gusto; e sebben per elezione non cambierei il soggetto che una volta presi; nondimeno per soddisfar il signor principe gli do l' elezione di tutti questi soggetti, i quali mi paijono sovra gli altri atti a ricever la forma eroica.

Espedizion di Goffredo, e degli altri principi contra gl' Infedeli, e ritorno. Dove avrò occasione di lodar le famiglie d' Europa, che io vorrò.

This letter is the more worthy of notice, as the subject on which Tasso fixed has been called by Voltaire, and perhaps very justly, Le plus grand qu'on ait jamais choisi. Le Tasse l'a [...]traité dignement, adds the lively Critic, with unusual candour; yet in his subsequent remarks he is peculiarly severe on the magic of the Italian Poet. The merits of Tasso are very ably defended against the injustice of French criticism, and particularly that of Boileau and Voltaire, in the well-known Letters on Chivalry and Romance. Indeed the genius of this injured Poet seems at length to triumph in the country where he was most insulted, as the French have lately attempted a poetical version of his Jerusalem.

I enter not into the history of Tasso, or that of his rival Ariosto, because the public has lately received from Mr. Hoole a judicious ac­count of their lives, prefixed to his elegant versions of their respective Poems.

NOTE VIII. VERSE 197.

Alessandro Tassoni, the supposed inventor of the modern Heroi-comic Poetry, was born at Modena, 1565. His family was noble; but his parents dying during his infancy, left him exposed to vexatious law-suits, which absorbed a great part of his patrimony, and rendered him dependant. In 1599 he was engaged as Secretary to Cardinal Ascanio Colonna, whom he at­tended on an embassy into Spain. He was occasionally dispatched into Italy on the service of that Prelate, and in the course of one of these ex­peditions wrote his Observations on Petrarch. In 1605 he is supposed [Page 202] to have quitted the service of the Cardinal, and to have lived in a state of freedom at Rome, where, in 1607, he became the chief of a literary society, entitled Academia degli Umoristi. He was afterwards em­ployed in the service of Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy; which, after suffering many vexations in it, he quitted with a design of devoting himself to study and retirement. But this design he was induced to re­linquish, and to serve the Cardinal Lodovisio, nephew of Pope Gregory XV. from whom he received a considerable stipend. On the death of this patron, in 1632, he was recalled to his native city by Francis the First, Duke of Modena, and obtained an honourable esta­blishment in the court of that Prince. Age had now rendered him unable to enjoy his good fortune: his health declined in the year of his return, and he expired in April 1635. His genius was particularly dis­posed to lively satire; and the incidents of his life had a tendency to increase that disposition. After having passed many vexatious and un­profitable years in the service of the Great, he had his portrait painted, with a fig in his hand; and Muratori supposes him to have written these two lines on the occasion:

His celebrated Poem, La Secchia rapita, was written, as he has him­self declared, in 1611; begun in April, and finished in October. It was circulated in MS. received with the utmost avidity, and first printed at Paris 1622. In a catalogue of the numerous editions of the Secchia, which Muratori has prefixed to his Life of Tassoni, he includes an English translation of it, printed 1715.

NOTE IX. VERSE 209.

The famous Lope de Vega, frequently called the Shakespear of Spain, is perhaps the most fertile Poet in the annals of Parnassus; and it would be difficult to name any author, ancient or modern, so universally idolized while living by all ranks of people, and so magnificently rewarded by the liberality of the Great. He was the son of Felix de Vega and Francisca Fernandez, [Page 203] who were both descended from honourable families, and lived in the neighbourhood of Madrid. Our Poet was born in that city, on the 25th of November 1562. He was, according to his own expression, a Poet from his cradle; and, beginning to make verses before he had learned to write, he used to bribe his elder scholl-fellows with a part of his breakfast, to commit to paper the lines he had composed. Having lost his father while he was still a child, he engaged in a frolic, very natural to a lively boy, and wandered with another lad to various parts of Spain, till, having spent their money, and being conducted before a magistrate at Segovia, for offering to sell a few trinkets, they were sent home again to Madrid. Soon after this adventure, our young Poet was taken under the protection of Geronimo Manrique, Bishop of Avila, and began to distinguish himself by his dramatic compositions, which were received with great applause by the public, though their author had not yet completed his education; for, after this period, he became a member of the university of Alcala, where he devoted himself for four years to the study of philosophy. He was then engaged as Secretary to the Duke of Alva, and wrote his Arcadia in compliment to that patron; who is frequently mentioned in his Occasional Poems. He quitted that em­ployment on his marriage with Isabel de Urbina, a lady (says his friend and biographer Perez de Montalvan) beautiful without artifice, and vir­tuous without affectation. His domestic happiness was soon interrupted by a painful incident:—Having written some lively verses in ridicule of a person who had taken some injurious freedom with his character, he re­ceived a challenge in consequence of his wit; and happening, in the duel which ensued, to give his adversary a dangerous wound, he was obliged to fly from his family, and shelter himself in Valencia. He re­sided there a considerable time; but connubial affection recalled him to Madrid. His wife died in the year of his return. His affliction on this event led him to relinquish his favourite studies, and embark on board the Armada which was then preparing for the invasion of England. He had a brother who served in that fleet as a lieutenant; and being shot in an engagement with some Dutch vessels, his virtues were cele­brated by our afflicted Poet, whose heart was peculiarly alive to every generous affection. After the ill success of the Armada, the disconsolate Lope de Vega returned to Madrid, and became Secretary to the Marquis [Page 204] of Malpica, to whom he has addressed a grateful Sonnet. From the service of this Patron he passed into the household of the Count of Lemos, whom he celebrates as an inimitable Poet. He was once more induced to quit his attendance on the Great, for the more inviting com­forts of a married life. His second choice was Juana de Guardio, of noble birth and singular beauty. By this lady he had two children; a son, who died in his infancy, and a daughter, named Feliciana, who survived her father. The death of his little boy is said to have has­tened that of his wife, whom he had the misfortune to lose in about seven years after his marriage. Having now experienced the precari­ousness of all human enjoyments, he devoted himself to a religious life, and fulfilled all the duties of it with the most exemplary piety; still continuing to produce an astonishing variety of poetical compositions. His talents and his virtues procured him many unsolicited honours. Pope Urban the VIIIth sent him the Cross of Malta, with the title of Doctor in Divinity, and appointed him to a place of profit in the Apostolic Chamber; favours for which he expressed his gratitude by dedicating his Corona Tragica (a long poem on the fate of Mary Queen of Scots) to that liberal Pontiff. In his seventy-third year he felt the approaches of death, and prepared himself for it with the ut­most composure and devotion. His last hours were attended by many of his intimate friends, and particularly his chief patron the Duke of Sessa, whom he made his executor; leaving him the care of his daughter Feliciana, and of his various manuscripts. The manner in which he took leave of those he loved was most tender and affecting. He said to his Disciple and Biographer, Montalvan, That true fame consisted in being good; and that he would willingly exchange all the applauses he had received, to add a single deed of virtue to the actions of his life. Having given his dying benediction to his daughter, and performed the last ceremonies of his religion, he expired on the 25th of August 1635.

The splendor of his funeral was equal to the respect paid to him while living.—His magnificent patron, the Duke of Sessa, invited the chief no­bility of the kingdom to attend it. The ceremony was prolonged through the course of several days; and three sermons in honour of the deceased were delivered by three of the most celebrated preachers. These [Page 205] are printed with the works of the Poet, and may be considered as curious specimens of the false eloquence which prevailed at that time. A vo­lume of encomiastic verses, chiefly Spanish, and written by more than a hundred and fifty of the most distinguished characters in Spain, was pub­lished soon after the death of this lamented Bard. To this collection his friend and disciple Perez de Montalvan prefixed a circumstantial ac­count of his life and death, which I have chiefly followed in the pre­ceding narrative. An ingenious Traveller, who has lately published a pleasing volume of Letters on the Poetry of Spain, has imputed the duel in which Lope de Vega was engaged to the gallantries of his first wife; but Montalvan's relation of that adventure clears the honor of the lady, whose innocence is still farther supported by a poem written in her praise by Pedro de Medina Medinilla: it is printed in the works of our Poet, who is introduced in it, under the name of Belardo, celebrating the ex­cellencies and lamenting the loss of his departed Isabel.

Of the person and manners of Lope de Vega, his friend Montalvan has only given this general account:—that his frame of body was parti­cularly strong, and preserved by temperance in continued health;—that in conversation he was mild and unassuming; courteous to all, and to women peculiarly gallant;—very eager when engaged in the business of his friends, and somewhat careless in the management of his own. Of his wealth and charity I shall have occasion to speak in a subsequent note. The chief expences in which he indulged himself were books and pictures; of the latter, he distributed a few as legacies to his intimate friends: to the Duke of Sessa, a fine portrait of himself; and to me, says Montalvan, another, painted when he was young, surrounded by dogs, monkies, and other monsters, and writing in the midst of them, without attending to their noise.—Of the honours paid to this extraor­dinary Poet, his Biographer asserts that no person of eminence visited Spain without seeking his personal acquaintance; that men yielded him precedence when they met him in the streets, and women saluted him with benedictions when he passed under their windows. If such ho­mage can be deserved by the most unwearied application to poetry, Lope de Vega was certainly entitled to it. He declared that he con­stantly wrote five sheets a day; and his biographers, who have formed a calculation from this account, conclude the number of his verses to be [Page 206] no less than 21,316,000. His country has very lately published an ele­gant edition of his poems in 19 quarto volumes; his dramatic works are to be added to this collection, and will probably be still more volumi­nous. I shall speak only of the former.—Among his poems there are several of the Epic kind; the three following appear to me the most remarkable. 1. La Dragontea. 2. La Hermosura de Angelica. 3. La Jerusalem Conquistada. The Dragontea consists of ten cantos, on the last expedition and death of our great naval hero Sir Francis Drake, whom the Poet, from his excessive partiality to his country, considers as an ava­ricious pirate, or rather, as he chuses to call him, a marine Dragon: and it may be sufficient to observe that he has treated him accordingly. The poem on Angelica seems to have been written in emulation of Ariosto, and it is founded on a hint in that Poet: it was composed in the early part of our Author's life, and contains many compliments to his sove­reign Philip the IId: it consists of 20 cantos, and closes with Angeli­ca's being restored to her beloved Medoro. In his Jerusalem Conquistada he enters the lists with Tasso, whom he mentions in his preface as hav­ing sung the first part of the history which he had chosen for his subject. From the great name of Lope de Vega, I had some thoughts of present­ing to the reader a sketch of this his most remarkable poem; but as an Epic Poet he appears to me so much inferior to Tasso, and to his coun­tryman and cotemporary Ercilla, that I am unwilling to swell these extensive notes by an enlarged description of so unsuccessful a work: the Author has prophesied in the close of it, that, although neglected by his own age, it would be esteemed by futurity:—a singular proof that even the most favoured writers are frequently disposed to declaim against the period in which they live. If Lope de Vega could think himself neglected, what Poet may ever expect to be satisfied with popu­lar applause?—But to return to his Jerusalem Conquistada. Richard the Second of England, and Alphonso the Eighth of Castile, are the chief heroes of the poem; which contains twenty cantos; and closes with the unfortunate return of these confederate Kings, and the death of Saladin. It was first printed 1609, more than twenty years after the first appear­ance of Tasso's Jerusalem.—One of the most amiable peculiarities in the character of Lope de Vega, is the extreme liberality with which he commends the merit of his rivals. In his Laurel de Apollo, he cele­brates [Page 207] all the eminent Spanish and Portugueze Poets; he speaks both of Camoens and Ercilla with the warmest applause. Among the most pleas­ing passages in this poem is a compliment which he pays to his father, who was, like the father of Tasso, a Poet of considerable talents.

Among the smaller pieces of Lope de Vega, there are two particularly curious; a descriptive poem on the garden of his patron the Duke of Alva, and a sonnet in honour of the Invincible Armada: the latter may be considered as a complete model of Spanish bombast: "Go forth and burn the world," says the Poet, addressing himself to that mighty fleet; "my sighs will furnish your fails with a never-failing wind; and my breast will supply your cannon with inexhaustible fire."—Perhaps this may be equalled by a Spanish character of our Poet, with which I shall close my imperfect account of him. It is his friend and biogra­pher Montalvan, who, in the opening of his life, bestows on him the following titles: El Doctor Frey Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, Portento del Orbe, Gloria de la Nacion, Lustre de la Patria, Oracula de la Len­gua, Centro de la Fama, Assumpio de la Invidia, Cuydado de la Fortuna, Fenix de los Siglos, Principe de los Versos, Orfeo de las Ciencias, Apolo de las Musas, Horacio de los Poetas, Virgilio de los Epicos, Homero de los Heroycos, Pindaro de los Lyricos, Sofocles de los Tra­gicos, y Terencio de los Comicos, Unico entre los Mayores, Mayor entre los Grandes, y Grande a todas Luzes, y en todas Materias.

NOTE X. VERSE 239.

Don Alonzo de Ercilla y Zuniga was equally distinguished as a Hero and a Poet; but this exalted character, notwithstanding his double claim to our regard, is almost to­tally unknown in our country, and I shall therefore endeavour to give the English reader the best idea that I can, both of his gallant life, and of his singular poem.—He was born in Madrid, on the 7th of August 1533, the third son of Fortun Garcia de Ercilla, who, though descended from a noble family, pursued the profession of the law, and was so remarkable for his talents, that he acquired the appellation of "The subtle Spaniard." The mother of our Poet was also noble, and from her he inherited his [Page 208] second title, Zuniga: Ercilla was the name of an ancient castle in Biscay, which had been long in the possession of his paternal ancestors. He lost his father while he was yet an infant, a circumstance which had, great influence on his future life; for his mother was received, after the de­cease of her husband, into the household of the Empress, Isabella, the wife of Charles the Vth, and had thus an early opportunity of introducing our young Alonzo into the palace. He soon obtained an appointment there, in the character of page to the Infant Don Philip, to whose service he devoted himself with the most heroic enthusiasm, though Philip was a master who little deserved so generous an attachment. At the age of fourteen, he attended that Prince in the splendid progress which he made, at the desire of his Imperial father, through the principal cities of the Netherlands, and through parts of Italy and Germany. This singular expedition is very circumstantially recorded in a folio volume, by a Spa­nish historian named Juan Christoval Calvete de Estrella, whose work affords a very curious and striking picture of the manners and ceremonies of that martial and romantic age. All the cities which were visited by the Prince contended with each other in magnificent festivity: the bril­liant series of literary and warlike pageants which they exhibited, though they answered not their design of conciliating the affection of the sullen Philip, might probably awaken the genius of our youthful Poet, and excite his ambition to acquire both poetical and military fame. In 1551, he returned with the Prince into Spain, and continued there for three years; at the end of which he attended his royal master to England on his marriage with Queen Mary, which was celebrated at Winchester in the summer of 1554. At this period Ercilla first assumed the military character; for his sovereign received advice, during his residence at Lon­don, that the martial natives of Aranco, a district on the coast of Chile, had revolted from the Spanish government, and dispatched an experienced officer, named Alderete, who attended him in England, to subdue the insurrection, investing him with the command of the rebellious pro­vince. Ercilla embarked with Alderete; but that officer dying in his passage, our Poet proceeded to Lima. Don Hurtado de Mendoza, who commanded there as Viceroy of Peru, appointed his son Don Garcia to supply the place of Alderete, and sent him with a considerable force to oppose the Arancanians. Ercilla was engaged in this enterprize, and [Page 209] greatly distinguished himself in the obstinate contest which ensued. The noble character of the Barbarians who maintained this unequal struggle, and the many splendid feats of valour which this scene afforded, led our author to the singular design of making the war, in which he was himself engaged, the subject of an Heroic poem; which he entitled "La Araucana," from the name of the country. As many of his own par­ticular adventures may be found in the following summary of his work, I shall not here enlarge on his military exploits; but proceed to one of the most mortifying events of his life; which he briefly mentions in the conclusion of his poem. After passing with great honour through many and various perils, he was on the point of suffering a disgraceful death, from the rash orders of his young and inconsiderate Commander. On his return from an expedition of adventure and discovery, to the Spanish city of Imperial, he was present at a scene of public festivity displayed there, to celebrate the accession of Philip the IId to the crown of Spain; at a kind of tournament, there arose an idle dispute between Ercilla and Don Juan de Pineda, in the heat of which the two disputants drew their swords; many of the spectators joined in the broil; and, a report arising that the quarrel was a mere pretence, to conceal some mu­tinous design, the hasty Don Garcia, their General, committed the two antagonists to prison, and sentenced them both to be publicly beheaded. Ercilla himself declares, he was conducted to the scaffold before his pre­cipitate judge discovered the iniquity of the sentence; but his innocence appeared just time enough to save him; and he seems to have been fully reinstated in the good opinion of Don Garcia, as, among the com­plimentary sonnets addressed to Ercilla, there is one which bears the name of his General, in which he styles him the Divine Alonzo, and cele­brates both his military and poetical genius. But Ercilla seems to have been deeply wounded by this affront; for, quitting Chile, he went to Callao, the port of Lima, and there embarked on an expedition against a Spanish rebel, named Lope de Aguirre, who, having murdered his captain, and usurped the chief power, was perpetrating the most cruel enormities in the settlement of Venezuela. But Ercilla learned, on his arrival at Panama, that this barbarous usurper was destroyed; he therefore resolved, as his health was much impaired by the hard­ships he had passed, to return to Spain. He arrived there in the twenty-ninth [Page 210] ninth year of his age; but soon left it, and travelled, as he himself in­forms us, through France, Italy, Germany, Silesia, Moravia, and Pan­nonia; but the particulars of this expedition are unknown. In the year 1570 he appeared again at Madrid, and was married to Maria Bazan, a lady whom he contrives to celebrate in the course of his military poem. He is said to have been afterwards gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Emperor Rodolph the IId, a prince who had been educated at Madrid; but the connection of our Poet with this Monarch is very in­distinctly recorded; and indeed all the latter part of his life is little known. In the year 1580 he resided at Madrid, in a state of retirement and poverty. The time and circumstances of his death are uncertain: it is proved that he was living in the year 1596, by the evidence of a Spanish writer named Mosquera, who, in a treatise of military discipline, speaks of Ercilla as engaged at that time in celebrating the victories of Don Alvaro Bazan, Marques de Santa Cruz, in a poem which has ne­ver appeared, and is supposed to have been left imperfect at his death. Some anecdotes related of our Poet afford us ground to hope that his various merits ware not entirely unrewarded. It is said, that in speak­ing to his sovereign Philip, he was so overwhelmed by diffidence that language failed him: "Don Alonzo! (replied the King) speak to me in writing."—He did so, and obtained his request. The Spanish His­torian Ovalle, who has written an account of Chile, in which he fre­quently supports his narration by the authority of Ercilla, affirms that our Poet presented his work to Philip with his own hand, and received a recompence from the King. But in this circumstance I fear the His­torian was mistaken, as he supposes it to have happened on the return of Ercilla from Chile; and our Poet, in a distinct portion of his work, which was not published till many years after that period, expressly de­clares, in addressing himself to Philip, that all his attempts to serve him had been utterly unrequited. Ercilla left no legitimate family; but had some natural children, the most eminent of which was a daugh­ter, who was advantageously married to a nobleman of Portugal.

In that elegant collection of Spanish Poets, "Parnaso Espan̄ol," there is a pleasing little amorous poem, written by Ercilla in his youth, which is peculiarly commended by Lope de Vega; who has bestowed a very ge­nerous encomium on our Poet, in his "Laurel de Apolo." But the great [Page 211] and singular work which has justly rendered Ercilla immortal, is his Poem entitled Araucana, which was published in three separate parts: the first appeared in 1577; he added the second in the succeeding year; and in 1590 he printed a complete edition of the whole. It was applauded by the most eminent writers of Spain; and Cervantes, in speaking of Don Quixote's Library, has ranked it among the choicest treasures of the Castilian Muse. Voltaire, who speaks of Ercilla with his usual spirit and inaccuracy, has the merit of having made our Poet more gene­rally known, though his own acquaintance with him appears to have been extremely slight; for he affirms that Ercilla was in the battle of Saint Quintin: a mistake into which he never could have fallen, had he read the Araucana. Indeed the undistinguishing censure which he passes on the poem in general, after commending one particular passage, suffi­ciently proves him a perfect stranger to many subsequent parts of the work; yet his remark on the inequality of the Poet is just. Ercilla is certainly unequal; but, with all his defects, he appears to me one of the most extraordinary and engaging characters in the poetical world. Per­haps I am a little partial to him, from the accidental circumstance of having first read his poem with a departed friend, whose opinions are very dear to me, and who was particularly fond of this military Bard. However this may be, my idea of Ercilla's merit has led me to hazard the following extensive sketch of his Work: — it has swelled to a much larger size than I at first intended; for I was continually tempted to ex­tend it, by the desire of not injuring the peculiar excellencies of this wonderful Poet. If I have not utterly failed in that desire, the English reader will be enabled to judge, and to enjoy an author, who, considering his subject and its execution, may be said to stand single and unparal­leled in the host of Poets. His beauties and his defects are of so ob­vious a nature, that I shall not enlarge upon them; but let it be re­membered, that his poem was composed amidst the toils and perils of the most fatiguing and hazardous service, and that his verses were some­times written on scraps of leather, from the want of better materials. His style is remarkably pure and perspicuous, and, notwithstanding the restraint of rhyme, it has frequently all the ease, the spirit, and the volu­bility of Homer. I wish not, however, to conceal his defects; and I have therefore given a very fair account of the strange episode he intro­duces [Page 212] concerning the history of Dido, which has justly fallen under the ridicule of Voltaire. I must however observe, as an apology for Ercilla, that many Bards of his country have considered it as a point of honour to defend the reputation of this injured lady, and to attack Virgil with a kind of poetical Quixotism for having slandered the chastity of so spotless a heroine. If my memory does not deceive me, both Lope de Vega and Quevedo have employed their pens as the champions of Dido. We may indeed very readily join the laugh of the lively Frenchman [Page 213] against our Poet on this occasion; but let us recollect that Ercilla has infinitely more Homeric spirit, and that his poem contains more genuine Epic beauties, than can be found in Voltaire.

Ercilla has been honoured with many poetical encomiums by the writers of his own country; and, as I believe the most elegant compli­ment which has been paid to his genius is the production of a Spanish lady, I shall close this account of him with a translation of the Sonnet, in which she celebrates both the Hero and the Poet.

NOTE XI. VERSE 280.

The Epic powers of Camoens have received their due honour in our language, by the elegant and spirited translation of Mr. Mickle; but our country is still a stranger to the lighter graces and pathetic sweetness of his shorter com­positions. These, as they are illustrated by the Spanish notes of his indefatigable Commentator, Manuel de Faria, amount to two volumes in folio. I shall present the reader with a specimen of his Sonnets, for which he is celebrated as the rival of Petrarch. Of the three trans­lations which follow, I am indebted for the two first to an ingenious friend, from whom the public may wish me to have received more ex­tensive obligations of a similar nature. It may be proper to add, that the first Sonnet of Camoens, like that of Petrarch, is a kind of preface to the amorous poetry of its author.

[Page 276]The Spanish Commentator of Camoens considers this vision as the most exquisite Sonnet of his author, and affirms that it is superior to the much longer poem of Petrarch's, on a similar idea. It may amuse a cu­rious reader to compare both Camoens and Petrarch, on this occasion, with Milton, who has also written a Sonnet on the same subject. The Commentator Faria has a very pleasant remark on this species of compo­sition. He vindicates the dignity of the amorous Sonnet, by producing an alphabetical list of two hundred great Poets, who have thus compli­mented the object of their affection; and he very gravely introduces Achilles as the leader of this choir, for having celebrated Briseis. If the Sonnets of the Portugueze Poet are worthy of attention, his Elegies are perhaps still more so, as they illustrate many particulars of his interest­ing life, which ended in 1579, under the most cruel circumstances of neglect and poverty.

Portugal has produced no less than fourteen Epic poems; twelve in [Page 277] her own language, and two in that of Spain. At the head of these stands the Lusiad of Camoens. The Malaca Conquistada of Francisco de Sa' de Menesis—and the Ulyssea, or Lisboa Edificada, of Gabriel Pereira de Castro, are two of the most eminent among its successors.— For a list of the Portugueze Epic Poets, and for an elegant copy of the Malaca Conquistada, I am indebted to the very liberal politeness of the Chevalier de Pinto, the Ambassador of Portugal.

NOTE XII. VERSE 287.

Though a vain insipidity may be considered as the general characteristic of the French Eloges, it is but just to remark, that several of these performances are an honour to the country which produced them; and particularly the little volume of Eloges lately published by Mr. D'Alembert. This agreeable Encomiast [Page 278] has varied and enlivened the tone of panegyric by the most happy mix­ture of amusing anecdote, judicious criticism, and philosophical precept: we may justly say of him, what he himself has said of his predecessor Fon­tenelle: Il a solidement assuré sa gloire .... par ces Eloges si interessans, pleins d'une raison si fine et si profonde, qui font aimer et respecter les lettres, qui inspirent aux génies naissans la plus noble emulation, et qui feront passer le nom de l'auteur à la posterité, avec celui de la compagnie célebre dont il a été le digne organe, et des grands hommes dont il s'est rendu l'egal en devenant leur panégyriste.

NOTE XIII. VERSE 302.

Before the appearance of Bossu's celebrated treatise on Epic poetry, the French had a similar work written in Latin. The learned Jesuit Mambrun published, in 1652, a quarto volume, entitled, Dissertatio Peripatetica de Epico Carmine. His Dissertation is founded on the principles of Aristotle, whom he considers as infallible authority; and he introduces the Greek Philosopher to de­cide the following very curious question, which he argues with becom­ing gravity, Whether the action of a woman can be sufficiently splendid to prove a proper subject for an Epic poem.—Having reasoned on this delicate point, with more learning than gallantry, he thus concludes the debate: Congruenter magis finem huic quaestioni ponere non licet, quam verbis Aristotelis capite 15 Poeticae, ubi de moribus disputat, [...];—id est, secunda proprietas morum est, ut sint congruen­tes, ut esse fortem mos est aliquis; at non congruit mulieri fortem esse aut terribilem ut vertit Riccobonus, vel prudentem ut Pacius. The latter interpretation of the word [...] would render the decision of these Phi­losophers very severe indeed on the Female character, by supposing it in­capable of displaying both fortitude and prudence.—The Fair Sex have found an advocate, on this occasion, in a French Epic Poet. The famous Chapelain, in the preface to his unfortunate Pucelle, has very warmly attacked these ungallant maxims of Mambrun and Aristotle. In speak­ing of certain critics, who had censured the choice of his subject, before the publication of his poem, he says, Ceux-cy, jurant sur le texte d'A­ristote, [Page 279] maintiennent que la femme est une erreur de la nature, qui ayant toujours intention de faire un homme, s'arreste souvent en chemin, et se voit contrainte, par la resistance de la matiere, de laisser son dessein im­parfait. Ils tienne [...]t la force corporelle tellement necessaire, dans la composition d'un heros, que quand il n'y auroit autre defaut à reprocher à la femme, ils luy en refuseroient le nom, pour cela seulement, qu'elle n'a pas la vigueur d'un Athlete, et que la mollesse de sa complexion l'em­pesche de pouvoir durer au travail. Ils n'estiment ce Sexe capable d'au­cune pensée heroique, dans la creance que l'esprit suit le temperament du corps, et que, dans le corps de la femme, l'esprit ne peut rien conce­voir, qui ne se sente de sa foiblesse. — Ces Messieurs me pardon­neront, toutefois, si je leur dis qu'ils ne considerent pas trop bien quelle est la nature de la vertu heroique, qu'ils en definissent l'essence, par un de ses moindres accidens, et qu'ils en font plutost une vertu brutale, qu'une vertu divine.— Ils se devroient souvenir que cette vertu n'a presque rien à faire avec le corps, et qu'elle consiste, non dans les efforts d'un Milon de Crotone, où l'esprit n'a aucune part, mais en ceux des ames nées pour les grandes choses; quand par une ardeur plusqu' hu­maine, elles s'elevent audessus d'elles-mesmes; qu'elles forment quelque dessein, dont l'utilité est aussi grande que la difficulté, et qu'elles choi­sissent les moyens de l'executer avec constance et hauteur de courage. Pour prevenus qu'ils soient en faveurs des hommes, je ne pense pas qu'ils voulussent attribuer à leur ame un seul avantage, auquel l'ame de la femme ne pust aspirer, ni faire deux especes des deux sexes, desquels la raison de tous les sages n'a fait qu'une jusqu'icy—je ne croy pas non plus qu'ils imaginent que les vertus morales ayent leur siege ailleurs, que dans la volonté, ou dans l'entendement. Mais si elles y ont leur siege, et si l'on ne peut dire que ces deux facultés soient autres, dans l'ame de la femme que dans l'ame de l'homme, ils ne peuvent, sans absurdité, accorder une de ces vertus à l' homme, et ne l' accorder pas à la femme. En effet, cette belle pensée d'Aristote qui a donné occasion à leur erreur, est si peu physique, qu'elle fait plus de tort à la philosophie du Lycée, qu'elle n'appuye l'opinion de ceux que nous combattons." Chapelain then enters into an historical defence of Female dignity, and opposes the authority of Plato to that of Aristotle, concerning the propriety of woman's ever appearing on the great theatre of active life. Happy had he sup­ported [Page 280] the Female cause as forcibly, in the execution of his poem, as in the arguments of his preface: but Chapelain was unfortunately one of the many examples, which every country affords, that the most perfect union of virtue and erudition is utterly insufficient to form a Poet; and, as he had the ill fate to be persecuted by the pitiless rigour of Boileau, his inharmonious poem can never sink into a desirable oblivion. The treatise of Mambrun seems to have excited, among the French, an eager­ness to distinguish themselves in the field of Epic poetry; for several Epic poems were published in France in a few years after that work appeared; but most of them, and particularly those on scriptural sub­jects, were hardly ever known to exist.

The Alaric of Scudery, and the Clovis of Desmarests, can scarce be reckoned more fortunate; but in this band of unsuccessful Epic writers, there was one Poet, of whom even the severe Boileau could not allow himself to speak ill; this was Le Moine, the author of St. Louis. The Satirist being asked, why he had never mentioned the poetry of Le Moine? replied with the two following verses, parodied from Corneille,

The judicious and candid Heyne has bestowed considerable applause on Le Moine, in one of his notes to the 6th book of Virgil, where he examines the different methods by which the Epic Poets have introduced their various pictures of futurity. From his account, Le Moine excels in this article. I can speak only from the opinion of this learned Critic, for the neglected French Poet is become so rare, that I have sought in vain for a copy of his work.—The number of obscure Epic writers in France is very trifling, compared to those which Italy has produced; the Italians have been indefatigable in this species of composition, and, as if they had resolved to leave no Hero unsung, their celebrated Novelist, Giraldi [Page 281] Cinthio has written an Epic poem, in twenty-six cantos, on the ex­ploits of Hercules.

NOTE XIV. VERSE 304.

Nicolas Boileau Des­preaux was born in or near Paris, for it is a contested point, on the first of November 1636, and died in March 1711 of a dropsy, the very dis­ease which terminated the life of his English rival. The Lutrin of Boileau, still considered by some French Critics of the present time as the best poem to which France has given birth, was first published in 1674. It is with great reason and justice that Voltaire confesses the Lutrin inferior to the Rape of the Lock. Few Poets can be so properly compared as Pope and Boileau; and, wherever their writings will admit of comparison, we may, without any national partiality, adjudge the superiority to the English Bard. These two great authors resembled each other as much in the integrity of their lives, as in the subjects and execution of their several compositions. There are two actions recorded of Boileau, which sufficiently prove that the inexorable Satirist had a most generous and friendly heart; when Patru, the celebrated Advocate, who was ruined by his passion for literature, found himself under the painful necessity of selling his expensive library, and had almost agreed to part with it for a moderate sum, Boileau gave him a much superior price; and, after paying the money, added this condition to the pur­chase, that Patru should retain, during his life, the possession of the books. The succeeding instance of the Poet's generosity is yet nobler:— when it was rumoured at court that the King intended to retrench the pension of Corneille, Boileau hastened to Madame de Montespan, and said, that his Sovereign, equitable as he was, could not, without injus­tice, grant a pension to an author like himself, just ascending Parnassus, and take it from Corneille, who had so long been seated on the summit; that he entreated her, for the honour of the King, to prevail on his Ma­jesty rather to strike off his pension, than to withdraw that reward from a man whose title to it was incomparably greater; and that he should more easily console himself under the loss of that distinction, than un­der the affliction of seeing it taken away from such a Poet as Corneille. This magnanimous application had the success which it deserved, and it [Page 282] appears the more noble, when we recollect that the rival of Corneille was the intimate friend of Boileau.

The long and unreserved intercourse which subsisted between our Poet and Racine was highly beneficial and honourable to both. The dying farewell of the latter is the most expressive eulogy on the private character of Boileau: Je regarde comme un bonheur pour moi de mourir avant vous, said the tender Racine, in taking a final leave of his faithful and generous friend.

NOTE XV. VERSE 313.

This elegant and ami­able writer was born at Amiens, and educated in the society of the Je­suits, to whom he has paid a grateful compliment in bidding them adieu. At the age of twenty-six he published his Ver-vert, a poem in four cantos, which commemorates

Voltaire has spoken invidiously of this delightful performance; but a spirited French Critic has very justly vindicated the merits of Gresset in the following remark:—Le Ver-vert sera toujours un poeme char­mant et inimitable, sans souiller sa plume par l'impiété et la licence qui deshonorent celle de l'auteur de La Pucelle, le Poete a su y répandre un agrément, une fraîcheur et une vivacité de coloris, qui le rendent aussi piquant dans les détails, qu'il est riche et ingénieux dans la fiction. On placera toujours cet agreable badinage parmi les productions originales, propres à faire aimer des etrangers la gaieté Françoise en écartant toute mauvaise idée de nos moeurs.

NOTE XVI. VERSE 325.

Madame du Boccage is known to the English reader as the correspondent of Lord Chesterfield. This in­genious and spirited Lady has written three poems of the Epic kind—Le Paradis Terrestre, in six cantos, from Milton; La Mort d'Abel, in five [Page 283] cantos, from Gesner; and a more original composition, in ten cantos, on the exploits of Columbus. I have alluded to a passage in the last poem, where Zama, the daughter of an Indian Chief, is thus described:

The works of this elegant female Poet contain an animated version of Pope's Temple of Fame. And she has added to her poetry an account of her travels through England, Holland, and Italy, in a series of enter­taining letters, addressed to Madame du Perron, her sister.

NOTE XVII. VERSE 344.

Though the Henriade has been frequently reprinted, and the partizans of Voltaire have endeavoured to make it a national point of honour to support its reputation, it seems at length to be sinking under that neglect and oblivion, which never fail to overtake every feeble offspring of the Epic Muse. Several of our most eminent Critics have attacked this performance with peculiar seve­rity, and some have condemned it on the most opposite principles, merely because it does not coincide with their respective systems. Their sen­tence has been passed only in short and incidental remarks; but a French writer, inflamed by personal animosity against Voltaire, has raised three octavo volumes on the defects of this single poem. Mr. Clement, in his "Entretiens sur le Poeme Epique relativement à la Henriade," has endeavoured to prove it utterly deficient in all the essential points of Epic poetry;—in the structure of its general plan, in the conduct of its va­rious parts, in sentiment, in character, in style. His work indeed dis­plays an acrimonious detestation of the Poet whom he examines; and perhaps there is hardly any human composition which could support the scrutiny of so rigid an inquisitor: the Henriade is utterly unequal to it; for in many articles we are obliged to confess, that the justice of the Cri­tic is not inferior to his severity. He discovers, in his dissection of the [Page 284] Poem, the skill of an anatomist, with the malignity of an assassin. If any thing can deserve such rigorous treatment, it is certainly the artifice of Voltaire, who, in his Essay on Epic Poetry, has attempted, with much ingenuity, to sink the reputation of all the great Epic Writers, that he might raise himself to their level; an attempt in which no au­thor can ultimately succeed; for, as D'Alembert has admirably remarked on a different occasion, Le public laissera l'amour propre de chaque ecrivain faire son plaidoyer, rira de leurs efforts, non de genie, mais de raisonnement, pour hausser leur place, et finira par mettre chacun à la sienne.

NOTE XVIII. VERSE 475.

It seems to be the peculiar infelicity of Pope, that his moral virtues have had a tendency to diminish his poetical reputation. Possessing a benevolent spirit, and wishing to make the art, to which he devoted his life, as serviceable as he could to the great interests of mankind, he soon quitted the higher regions of poetry, for the more level, and more frequented field of Ethics and of Satire. He declares, with a noble pride arising from the probity of his intention,

The severity of Criticism has from hence inferred, that his imagination was inferior to the other faculties of his mind, and that he possessed not that vigour of genius which might enable him to rank with our more sublime and pathetic Bards. This inference appears to me extremely defective both in candour and in reason; it would surely be more gene­rous, and I will venture to add, more just, to assign very different causes for his having latterly applied himself to moral and satyric composition. If his preceding poems displayed only a moderate portion of fancy and of tenderness, we might indeed very fairly conjecture, that he quitted the kind of poetry, where these qualities are particularly required, because Nature directed him to shine only as the Poet of reason.—But his earlier productions will authorize an opposite conclusion. At an age when few authors have produced any capital work, Pope gave the world two poems; [Page 285] one the offspring of imagination, and the other of sensibility, which will ever stand at the head of the two poetical classes to which they belong: his Rape of the Lock, and his Eloise, have nothing to fear from any ri­vals, either of past or of future time. When a writer has displayed such early proofs of exquisite fancy, and of tender enthusiasm, those great constituents of the real Poet, ought we not to regret that he did not give a greater scope and freer exercise to these qualities, rather than to assert that he did not possess them in a superlative degree? Why then, it may be asked, did he confine himself to compositions in which these have little share? The life and character of Pope will perfectly explain the reasons, why he did not always follow the higher suggestions of his own natural genius. He had entertained an opinion, that by stooping to truth, and employing his talents on the vices and follies of the passing time, he should be most able to benefit mankind. The idea was perhaps ill-founded, but his conduct in consequence of it was certainly noble. Its effects however were most unhappy; for it took from him all his enjoy­ment of life, and may injure, in some degree, his immortal reputation: by suffering his thoughts to dwell too much on knaves and fools, he fell into the splenetic delusion, that the world is nothing but a compound of vice and folly; and from hence he has been reproached for supposing that all human merit was confined to himself, and to a few of his most inti­mate correspondents.

There was an amiable peculiarity in the character of Pope, which had great influence both on his conduct and composition—he embraced the sentiments of those he loved with a kind of superstitious regard; his imagination and his judgment were perpetually the dupes of an affec­tionate heart: it was this which led him, at the request of his idol Bo­lingbroke, to write a sublime poem on metaphysical ideas which he did not perfectly comprehend; it was this which urged him almost to quar­rel with Mr. Allen, in compliance with the caprices of a female friend; it was this which induced him, in the warmth of gratitude, to follow the absurd hints of Warburton with all the blindness of infatuated af­fection. Whoever examines the life and writings of Pope with a mi­nute and unprejudiced attention, will find that his excellencies, both as a Poet and a Man, were peculiarly his own; and that his failings were chiefly owing to the ill judgment, or the artifice, of his real and pre­tended [Page 286] friends. The lavish applause and the advice of his favourite Atterbury, was perhaps the cause of his preserving the famous character of Addison, which, finely written as it is, all the lovers of Pope must wish him to have suppressed. Few of his friends had integrity or frank­ness sufficient to persuade him, that his satires would, destroy the tran­quillity of his life, and cloud the lustre of his fame: yet, to the honour of Lyttelton, be it remembered, that he suggested such ideas to the Poet, in the verses which he wrote to him from Rome, with all the becoming zeal of enlightened friendship:

This generous admonition did not indeed produce its intended effect, for other counsellors had given a different bias to the mind of the Poet, and the malignity of his enemies had exasperated his temper; yet he af­terwards turned his thoughts towards the composition of a national Epic poem, and possibly in consequence of the hint which this Epistle of Lyt­telton contains. The intention was formed too late, for it arose in his decline of life. Had he possessed health and leisure to execute such a work, I am persuaded it would have proved a glorious acquisition to the literature of our country: the subject indeed which he had chosen must be allowed to have an unpromising appearance; but the opinion of Addi­son concerning his Sylphs, which was surely honest, and not invidious, may teach us hardly ever to decide against the intended works of a su­perior genius. Yet in all the Arts, we are perpetually tempted to pro­nounce such decisions. I have frequently condemned subjects which my friend Romney had selected for the pencil; but in the sequel, my opinion only proved that I was near-sighted in those regions of imagina­tion, where his keener eyes commanded all the prospect.

NOTE I. VERSE 103.

For the advice which I have thus ventured to give such of my fair readers as have a talent for poetry, I shall produce them a much higher poetical authority. In the age of Petrarch, an Italian Lady, named Giustina Perrot, was desirous of distinguishing herself by this pleasing accomplishment; but the remarks of the world, which represented it as improper for her sex, discouraged her so far, that she was almost tempted to relinquish her favourite pur­suit. In her doubts on this point, she consulted the celebrated Poet of her country in an elegant Sonnet; and received his answer on the inte­resting subject in the same poetical form. I shall add the two Sonnets, with an imitation of each.

NOTE II. VERSE 210.

Milton sold the copy of Pa­radise Lost for the sum of five pounds, on the condition of receiving fifteen pounds more at three subsequent periods, to be regulated by the sale of the Poem.—For the ceiling at Whitehall, Rubens received, three thou­sand pounds.

NOTE III. VERSE 298.

Ariosto is said to have been publicly crowned with laurel at Mantua, by the Emperor Charles the Vth, towards the end of the year 1532. This fact has been disputed by various writers, but it seems to be sufficiently established by the researches of Mazzuchelli.

The custom of crowning Poets with laurel is almost as ancient as poetry itself, says the Abbé du Resnel, in his Recherches sur les Poetes couron­nez, a work which contains but scanty information on this curious topic. Petrarch is generally supposed to have revived this ancient solemnity, which had been abolished as a pagan institution in the reign of the Em­peror Theodosius. It appears however, from two passages in the writings of Boccacio, that Dante had entertained serious thoughts of this honour­able distinction, which his exile precluded him from receiving, as he chose, says his Biographer, to be crown'd only in his native city.

An amusing volume might be written on the honours which have been paid to Poets in different ages, and in various parts of the world. It is remarkable, that the most unpolished nations have been the most lavish in rewarding their Bards. There are two instances on record, in which poe­tical talents have raised their possessors even to sovereign dominion. The Scythians chose the Poet Thamyris for their king, though he was not a native of their country, [...]. Hist. Poet. Script. Edit. Gale, p. 250. Saxo Grammaticus begins the sixth book of his History by relating, that the Danes bestowed their vacant diadem on the Poet Hiarnus, as a reward for his having composed the best epitaph on their deceased sovereign Fro­tho. From the four Latin verses which the Historian has given us, as a [Page 291] translation of this extraordinary epitaph, we may venture to affirm, that the poetical monarch obtain'd his crown on very easy conditions.

NOTE IV. VERSE 314.

Of the great wealth which flowed into the hands of this extraordinary Poet, his friend and biographer Montalvan has given a particular account. This author con­cludes that Lope de Vega gained by his dramatic works alone a sum nearly equal to 20,000 pounds sterling; the revenue arising from the posts he held, and from his pension, was very considerable. His opu­lence was much encreased by the most splendid instances of private libe­rality. He received many costly presents from various characters to whom he was personally unknown; and he was himself heard to say, in speaking of his generous patron, that the Duke of Sessa alone had given him, at different periods of his life, sums almost amounting to six thou­sand pounds.

It must be confessed, that the noble patrons of English poetry have not equalled this example of Spanish munificence, even if we admit, the truth of our traditionary anecdotes concerning the generosity of Lord South­ampton to Shakespeare, and of Sir Philip Sidney to Spenser. Consider­ing the liberality for which our nation is so justly celebrated, it is re­markable, that not a single English Poet appears to have been enriched by our monarchs: yet Spenser had every claim to the bounty of Elizabeth; he sung her praises in a strain which might gratify her pride; and of all who have flattered the great, he may justly be considered as the most worthy of reward. His song was the tribute of his heart as well as of his fancy, and the sex of his idol may be said to purify his incense from all the offensive particles of servile adulation. The neglect which he ex­perienced from the vain, imperious, and ungrateful Elizabeth, appears the more striking, when we recollect, that her lovely rival, the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots, signalized her superior generosity by a magnificent present of plate to the French Poet Ronsard. This neglected Bard was once the darling of France, and perhaps equalled Lope de Vega in the honours which he received: his sovereign, Charles the Ninth, composed some elegant verses in his praise, and the city of Toulouse pre­sented him with a Minerva of massive silver.

[Page 292]If our princes and nobles have not equalled those of other kingdoms in liberality to the great Poets of their country, England may yet boast the name of a private gentleman, who discovered in this respect a most princely spirit; no nation, either ancient or modern, can produce an ex­ample of munificence more truly noble than the annual gratuity which Akenside received from Mr. Dyson; a tribute of generous and affectionate admiration, endeared to its worthy possessor by every consideration which could make it honourable both to himself and to his patron!

It has been lately lamented by an elegant and accomplished writer, who had too much reason for the complaint, that ‘the profession of Literature, by far the most laborious of any, leads to no real be­nefit.’ Experience undoubtedly proves, that it has a general tendency to impoverish its votaries; and the legislators of every country would act perhaps a wise, at all events an honourable part, if they corrected this tendency, by establishing public emoluments for such as eminently dis­tinguish themselves in the various branches of science. It is surely possible to form such an establishment, which, without proving a national burthen, might aggrandize the literary glory of the nation, by pre­serving her men of letters from the evils so frequently connected with their pursuits, by securing, to those who deserve it, the possession of ease and honour, without damping their emulation, or destroying their inde­pendence.

NOTE I. VERSE 76.

Aristotle has said but little, in his Poetics, concerning that weighty point, which has so much employed and embarrassed the modern Critics—the machinery of the Epic poem; and the little which he has said might rather furnish an argument for its exclusion, than justify its use. But Rome, in her most degenerate days, produced a writer, to whose authority, contemp­tible as it is, most frequent appeals have been made in this curious lite­rary question. In almost every modern author who has touched, how­ever slightly, on Epic poetry, we may find at least some part of the following sentence from Petronius Arbiter:—Ecce, Belli civilis ingens opus quisquis attigerit, nisi plenus litteris, sub onere labetur. Non enim res gestae versibus comprehendendae sunt, quod longe melius historici fa­ciunt; sed per ambages, deorumque ministeria, & fabulosum sententi­arum tormentum praecipitandus est liber spiritus; ut potius furentis animi vaticinatio appareat, quam religiosae orationis sub testibus fides.

These remarks on the necessity of celestial agents, were evidently, made to depreciate the Pharsalia of Lucan; and Petronius may be called a fair Critic, as Pope said of Milbourne, on his opposition to Dryden, because he produces his own poetry in contrast to that which he con­demns. His specimen of the manner in which he thought an Epic poem should be conducted, sufficiently proves the absurdity of his cri­ticism; [Page 294] for how insipid is the fable in those verses which he has opposed to the Pharsalia, when compared to the first book of Lucan! Yet the Epic composition of Petronius has not wanted admirers: a Dutch Commentator is bold enough to say, that he prefers this single rhapsody to three hundred volumes of such poetry as Lucan's: an opinion which can only lead us to exclaim with Boileau, ‘Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire.’

If men of letters, in the age of Lucan, differed in their sentiments concerning machinery, the great changes that have since happened in the world, and the disquisitions which have appeared on the subject, are very far from having reconciled the judgment of modern writers on this important article. Two eminent Critics of the present time have delivered opinions on this topic so singularly opposite to each other, that I shall transcribe them both.

I have thus ventured to confront these eminent critical antagonists, that, while they engage and overthrow each other, we may observe the injustice produced by the spirit of systematical criticism, even in authors most respectable for their talents and erudition.—Here is the unfortunate Voltaire placed between two critical fires, which equally destroy him. The first Critic asserts that the Henriade must be short-lived, because the Poet has introduced invisible and superior agents;—the second denounces the same fate against it, because it wants the agency of superior natures: yet surely every reader of poetry, who is not influenced by any particular system, will readily allow, that if Voltaire had treated his subject with true Epic spirit in all other points, neither the introduction nor the absence of St. Louis could be singly sufficient to plunge the Henriade in oblivion. Indeed the learned author, who has spoken in so peremptory a manner concerning the necessity of supernatural agents to preserve the existence of an Epic poem, appears rather unfortunate in the two exam­ples by which he endeavours to support his doctrine; for the Epic poems both of Davenant and Voltaire have sufficient defects to account for any neglect which may be their lot, without considering the article of Machinery.

If I have warmly opposed any decisions of this exalted Critic, it is [Page 297] from a persuasion (in which I may perhaps be mistaken) that some of his maxims have a strong tendency to injure an art highly dear to us both; an art on which his genius and learning have cast many rays of pleasing and of useful light.

NOTE II. VERSE 166.

This anecdote of Nean­thus, the son of King Pittacus, is related by Lucian. The curious reader may find it in the second volume of Dr. Francklin's spirited trans­lation of that lively author, page 355 of the quarto edition.

NOTE III. VERSE 276.

The Indian mythology, as it has lately been illustrated in the writings of Mr. Holwell, is finely calculated to answer the purpose of any poetical genius who may wish to introduce new machinery into the serious Epic Poem. Besides the powerful charm of novelty, it would have the advantage of not clashing with our national religion; for the endeavours of Mr. Holwell to re­concile the ancient and pure doctrine of Bramah with the dispensation of Christ, have so far succeeded, that if his system does not satisfy a theo­logist, it certainly affords a sufficient basis for the structure of a Poet. In perusing his account of the Indian scripture, every reader of imagina­tion may, I think, perceive, that the Shastah might supply a poetical spirit with as rich a mass of ideal treasure as fancy could with to work upon.—An Epic Poet, desirous of laying the scene of his action in India, would be more embarrassed to find interesting Heroes than proper Divi­nities. —Had justice and generosity inspired and guided that English valour, which has signalized itself on the plains of Indostan; had the arms of our country been employed to deliver the native Indians from the oppressive usurpation of the Mahometan powers; such exploits would present to the Epic Muse a subject truly noble, and the mytholo­gy of the East might enrich it with the most splendid decorations. Whether it be possible or not to find such a subject in the records of our Indian history, I leave the reader to determine.—Our great Historian of the Roman empire has intimated, in a note to the first volume of his immortal work, that ‘the wonderful expedition of Odin, which deduces [Page 298] the enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply the noble ground-work of an Epic poem.’ The idea is cer­tainly both just and splendid. Had Gray been ever tempted to engage in such a work, he would probably have convinced us, that the Northern mythology has still sufficient power to seize and enchant the imagina­tion, as much in Epic as in Lyric composition.

It may amuse our speculative Critics, to consider how far the religious Gothic fables should be introduced or rejected, to render such a per­formance most interesting to a modern reader. Few judges would agree in their sentiments on the question; and perhaps the great dispute con­cerning Machinery cannot be fairly adjusted, till some happy genius shall possess ambition and perseverance enough to execute two Epic poems, in the one adopting, and in the other rejecting, supernatural agents; for Reason alone is by no means an infallible conductor in the province of Fancy; and in the poetical as well as the philosophical world, experi­ment is the surest guide to truth.