his own guilt; and he treats her with such coldness that she retires in confusion. She even leaves the camp, and resolves to return to her father in Etolia ; but is taken on the road by a party of Thebans, who carry her to Creon. That tyrant determines to make the most political use of this incident: he sends privately a message to Diomede, threatening to put Cassandra to death, if that hero would not agree to a separate truce with Thebes. This proposal is at first rejected by Dio. mede, who threatens immediate destruction to Creon and all his race. Nothing can be more artfully managed by the poet than this incident. We shall hear him in his own words :

Sternly the hero ended, and resign'd,

To fierce disorder, all his mighty mind,
Already in his thoughts, with vengeful hands,
He dealt destruction 'midst the Theban bands,
In fancy saw the tott'ring turrets fall,

And led his warriors o'er the level'd wall.

Rous'd with the thought, from his high seat he sprung;
And grasp'd the sword, which on a column hung;
The shining blade he balanc'd thrice in air;
His lances next he view'd, and armour fair.
When, hanging 'midst the costly panoply,
A scarf embroider'd met the hero's eye,

Which fair Cassandra's skilful hands had wrought,

A present for her lord, in secret brought
That day, when first he led his martial train

In arms, to combat on the Theban plain.

As some strong charm, which magic sounds compose,
Suspends a downward torrent as it flows;
Checks in the precipice its headlong course,
And calls it trembling upwards to its source:
Such seem'd the robe, which, to the hero's eyes,
Made the fair artist in her charms to rise.

His rage, suspended in its full career,

To love resigns to grief and tender fear.

Glad would he now his former words revoke,

And change the purpose which in wrath he spoke ;

From hostile hands his captive fair to gain,

From fate to save her, or the servile chain:
But pride, and shame, the fond design supprest;
Silent he stood, and lock'd it in his breast.
Yet had the wary Theban well divin'd,
By symptoms sure, each motion of his mind :
With joy he saw the heat of rage suppress'd;
And thus again his artful words address'd.

"The truce is concluded for twenty days; but the perfidious Creon, hoping that Diomede would be overawed by the danger of his mistress, resolves to surprise the Greeks; and accordingly makes a sudden attack upon them, breaks into their camp, and carries every thing before him. Diomede at first stands neuter; but when Ulysses suggests to him, that after the defeat of the confederate Greeks, he has no security; and that so treacherous a prince as Creon will not spare, much less restore Cassandra, he takes to arms, assaults the Thebans, and obliges them to seek

shelter within their walls. her head over the walls.

Creon, in revenge, puts Cassandra to death, and shews This sight so inflames Diomede, that he attacks Thebes with double fury, takes the town by scalade, and gratifies his vengeance by the death of Creon.

"This is a short abstract of the story on which this new poem is founded. The reader may perhaps conjecture (what I am not very anxious to conceal) that the execution of the Epigoniad is better than the design, the poetry superior to the fable, and the colouring of the particular parts more excellent than the general plan of the whole. Of all the great epic poems which have been the admiration of mankind, the Jerusalem of Tasso alone would make a tolerable novel, if reduced to prose, and related without that splendour of versification and imagery by which it is supported: yet in the opinion of many great judges, the Jerusalem is the least perfect of all these productions: chiefly, because it has least nature and simplicity in the sentiments, and is most liable to the objection of affectation and conceit. The story of a poem, whatever may be imagined, is the least essential part of it: the force of the versification, the vivacity of the images, the justness of the descriptions, the natural play of the passions, are the chief circumstances which distinguish the great poet from the prosaic novelist, and give him so high a rank among the heroes in literature; and I will venture to affirm, that all these advantages, especially the three former, are to be found in an eminent degree in the Epigoniad. The author, inspired with the true genius of Greece, and smit with the most profound veneration for Homer, disdains all frivolous ornaments; and relying entirely on his sublime imagination, and his nervous and harmonious expression, has ventured to present to his reader the naked beauties of nature, and challenges for his partizans all the admirers of genuine antiquity.

"There is one circumstance in which the poet has carried his boldness of copying antiquity beyond the practice of many, even judicious moderns. He has drawn his personages, not only with all the simplicity of the Grecian heroes, but also with some degree of their roughness, and even of their ferocity. This is a circumstance which a mere modern is apt to find fault with in Homer, and which perhaps he will not easily excuse in his imitator. It is certain, that the ideas of manners are so much changed since the age of Homer, that though the Iliad was always among the ancients conceived to be a panegyric on the Greeks, yet the reader is now almost always on the side of the Trojans, and is much more interested for the humane and soft manners of Priam, Hector, Andromache, Sarpedon, Æneas, Glaucus, nay, even of Paris and Helen, than for the severe and cruel bravery of Achilles, Agamemnon, and the other Grecian heroes. Sensible of this inconvenience, Fenelon, in his elegant romance, has softened extremely the harsh manners of the heroic ages, and has contented himself with retaining that amiable simplicity by which those ages were distinguished. If the reader be displeased, that the British poct has not followed the example of the French writer, he must, at least, allow that he has drawn a more exact and faithful copy of antiquity, and has made fewer sacrifices of truth to ornament.

"There is another circumstance of our author's choice which will be liable to dispute. It may be thought that by introducing the heroes of Homer, he has lost all

the charms of novelty, and leads us into fictions which are somewhat stale and thread-bare. Boileau, the greatest critic of the French nation, was of a very dif ferent opinion:

La fable offre a l'esprit mille agréments divers

Là tous les noms heureux semblent nez pour les vers:
Ulysse, Agamemnon, Oreste, Idomenée,

Helene, Menelas, Paris, Hector, Enee.

"It is certain that there is in that poetic ground a kind of enchantment which allures every person of a tender and lively imagination; nor is this impression diminished, but rather much increased, by our early introduction to the knowledge of it in our perusal of the Greek and Latin classics.

"The same great French critic makes the apology of our poet in his use of the ancient mythology:

Ainsi dans cet amas de nobles fictions,

Le poet s'egeye en mille inventions,

Orne, eleve, embellit, aggrandit toutes choses,

Et trouve sous sa main des fleurs toujours ecloses.

"It would seem, indeed, that if the machinery of the heathen gods be not admitted, epic poetry, at least all the marvellous part of it, must be entirely abandoned. The Christian religion, for many reasons, is unfit for the fabulous ornaments of poetry: the introduction of allegory, after the manner of Voltaire, is liable to many objections: and though a mere historical epic poem, like Leonidas, may have its beauties, it will always be inferior to the force and pathetic of tragedy, and must resign to that species of poetry the precedency which the former composition has always challenged among the productions of human genius. But with regard to these particulars, the author has himself made a sufficient apology in the judicious and spirited preface which accompanies his poem.

"But though our poet has in general followed so successfully the footsteps of Homer, he has, in particular passages, chosen other ancient poets for his model. His seventh book contains an episode, very artfully inserted, concerning the death of Hercules where he has plainly had Sophocles in his view, and has ventured to engage in a rivalship with that great master of the tragic scene. If the sublimity of our poet's imagination, and the energy of his style, appear any where conspicu ous, it is in this episode, which we shall not scruple to compare with any poetry in the English language. Nothing can be more pathetic than the complaint of Her. cules, when the poison of the centaur's robe begins first to prey upon him:

Sov'reign of heav'n and earth! whose boundless sway

The fates of men and mortal things obey,

If e'er delighted from the courts above,
In human form you sought Alcmene's love;
If fame's unchanging voice to all the earth,
With truth, proclaims you author of my birth;
Whence, from a course of spotless glory run,
Successful toils and wreaths of triumph won,
Am I thus wretched? better that before

Some monster fierce had drank my streaming gore;

Or crush'd by Cacus, foe to gods and men,
My batter'd brains had strew'd his rocky den:
Than, from my glorious toils and triumphs past,
To fall subdu'd by female arts, at last.

O cool my boiling blood, ye winds, that blow
From mountains loaded with eternal snow,
And crack the icy cliffs: in vain! in vain!
Your rigour cannot quench my raging pain!
For round this heart the furies wave their brands,
And wring my entrails with their burning hands.
Now bending from the skies, O wife of Jove!
Enjoy the vengeance of thy injur'd love :
For fate, by me, the Thund'rer's guilt atones;
And, punish'd in her son, Alcmene groans:
The object of your hate shall soon expire;
Fix'd on my shoulders preys a net of fire;
Whom nor the toils nor dangers could subdue,
By false Eurystheus dictated from you;
Nor tyrants lawless, nor the monstrous brood
Which haunts the desert or infests the flood,
Nor Greece, nor all the barb'rous climes that lie
Where Phoebus ever points his golden eye,
A woman hath o'erthrown!-ye gods! I yield
To female arts, unconquer'd in the field.
My arms-alas! are these the same that bow'd
Anteus, and his giant force subdu'd?
That dragg'd Nemea's monster from his den?
And slew the dragon in his native fen?
Alas! alas! their mighty muscles fail,

While pains infernal ev'ry nerve assail :

Alas, alas! I feel in streams of woe

These eyes dissolve, before untaught to flow.

Awake my virtue, oft in dangers try'd,

Patient in toils, in deaths unterrify'd,

Rouse to my aid; nor let my labours past,

With fame atchiev'd, be blotted by the last;

Firm and unmov'd, the present shock endure;
Once triumph, and for ever rest secure.

"Our poet, though his genius be in many respects very original, has not disdained to imitate even modern poets. He has added to his heroic poem a dream, in the manner of Spenser, where the poet supposes himself to be introduced to Homer, who censures his poem in some particulars, and excuses it in others. This poem is indeed a species of apology for the Epigoniad, wrote in a very lively and elegant manner it may be compared to a well-polished gem, of the purest water, and cut into the most beautiful form, Those who would judge of our author's talents for poetry, without perusing his larger work, may satisfy their curiosity, by running over this short poem. They will see the same force of imagination and harmony of numbers, which distinguish his longer performance: and may thence, with small application, receive a favourable impression of our author's genius.

"D. H."

That Wilkie may not be deprived of any favourable opinion, nor the admission of his works into this collection stand in need of any further apology, I shall subjoin the opinion of a very elegant and candid critic of the present day." The Epigoniad of Wilkie is the bold attempt of an energetic mind to try its powers in the most arduous path of poetry, the epic; without that correctness of judgment, and previous discipline in the practice of harmonious numbers, which can alone ensure success in an age of polish and refinement. It has accordingly been measured by that standard of criticism, which the most unqualified judges can easily apply, a comparison with the most perfect productions of its kind and its pal, pable defects have involved in an indiscriminate condemnation its less obvious, but real merits 2.”

* Lord Woodhouslee's Life of Lord Kaimes, vol. i. p, 178. 4to. 1807.-C.