52 Lavinia.* Spensert has a better plea for his "Fairy Queen," had his action been finished, or had been one; and Milton, if the Devil had not been his hero, instead of Adam; if the giant had not foiled the knight, and driven him out of his strong hold, to wander through the world with his lady errant ; and if there had not been pomore machining persons than human in his em. After these, the rest of our English poets shall not be mentioned. I have that honour for them which I ought to have; but, if they are worthies, they are not to be ranked amongst the three whom I have named, and who are established in their reputation. Before I quitted the comparison betwixt epic poetry and tragedy, I should have acquainted my judge with one advantage of the former over the latter, which I now casually remember, out of the preface of Ségrais before his translation of the Eneïs, or out of Bossu, no matter which: "The style of the heroic poem is, and ought to be, more lofty than that of the drama." The critic is certainly in the right, for the reason already urged; the work of tragedy is on the passions, and in a dialogue; both of them abhor strong metaphors, in which the epopee delights. A poet cannot speak too plainly on the stage: for volat irrevocabile verbum; the sense is lost, if it be not taken flying. But what we read alone we have leisure to digest; there an author may beautify his sense by the boldness of his expression, which if we understand not fully at the first, we may dwell upon it, till we find the secret force and excellence. That which cures the manners by alterative physic, as I said before, must proceed by insensible degrees; but that which purges the passions, must do its business all at once, or wholly fail of its effect, at least in the present operation, and without repeated do ses. We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure. Thus, my lord, you "La Pucelle D'Orleans." It will hardly, I hope, be expected, that an editor of Dryden should be deeply read in the French epopee, which of all styles of poetry is the most uniformly stiff and freezing. That Spenser's twelve champions, each of whom was to achieve a distinct and separate adventure, could ever have been so brought together, as to entitle the "Fairy Queen" to be called a regular epic, may be justly doubted. I confess I think it probable, that the difficulty of concluding his work was one great cause of its being left unfinished. Dryden's objection to the "Paradise Lost," is founded on the unhappy termination, which is contrary to the rules of the epopee. Even so it has been disputed, whether a tragedy, which ends happily, is properly and regularly entitled to the name. Yet the story is more completely winded up in the "Paradise Lost," than in the "Iliad," where Troy is left standing, after all the battles which are fought about it. Our reverence for the ancients, in this and many other instances, has been driven to supersutious bigotry. pay the fine of my forgetfulness; and yet the I must now come closer to my present busi- In the following comparison, our author as- the general and one of the next in office under him. Agamemnon gives the provocation, and Achilles resents the injury. Both parties are faulty in the quarrel; and accordingly they are both punished: the aggressor is forced to sue for peace to his inferior on dishonourable conditions: the deserter refuses the satisfaction offered; and his obstinacy costs him his best friend. This works the natural effect of choler, and turns his rage against him by whom he was last affronted, and most sensibly. The greater anger expels the rest; but his character is stil preserved. In the mean time the Grecian army receives loss on loss, and is half destroyed by a pestilence into the bargain; Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi. As the poet, in the first part of the example, had shown the bad effects of discord, so, after the reconcilement, he gives the good effects of unity; for Hector is slain, and then Troy must fall. By this it is probable, that Homer lived when the Median monarchy was grown formidable to the Grecians, and that the joint endeavours of his countrymen were little enough to preserve their common freedom from an encroaching enemy. Such was his moral, which all critics have allowed to be more noble than that of Virgil, though not adapted to the times in which the Roman poet lived. Had Virgil flourished in the age of Ennius, and addressed to Scipio, he had probably taken the same moral, or some other not unlike it: for then the Romans were in as much danger from the Carthaginian commonwealth, as the Grecians were from the Assyrian or Median monarchy. But we are to consider him as writing his poem in a time when the old form of government was subverted, and a new one just established by Octavius Cæsar, in effect by force of arms, but seeiningly by the consent of the Roman people. The commonwealth had received a deadly wound in the former civil wars betwixt Marius and Sylla. The commons, while the first prevailed, had almost shaken off the yoke of the nobility; and Marius and Cinna, like the captains of the mob, under the specious pretence of the public good, and of doing justice on the oppressors of their liberty, revenged themselves, without form of law, on their private enemies. Sylla, in his turn, proscribed the heads of the adverse party he too had nothing but liberty and reformation in his mouth; (for the cause of religion is but a modern motive to rebellion, invented by the Christian priesthood, refining on the heathen ;*) This is one of our author's unseemly and far too frequent sneers at the clerical order, for which he Is severely reprehended by Milbourne. Sylla, to be sure, meant no more good to the Roman people than Marius before him, whatever he declared; but sacrificed the lives, and took the estates, of all his enemies, to gratify those who brought him into power. Such was the reformation of the government by both parties. The senate and the commons were the two bases on which it stood; and the two champions of either faction, each, destroyed the foundations of the other side; so the fabric, of consequence, must fall betwixt them, and tyranny must be built upon their ruins. This comes of altering fundamental laws and constitutionslike him, who, being in good health, lodged himself in a physician's house, and was over-persuaded by his landlord to take physic, (of which he died,) for the benefit of his doctor. Stavo ben: (was written on his monument) ma, per star meglio, sto quì. After the death of those two usurpers, the commonwealth seemed to recover, and held up its head for a little time. But it was all the while in a deep consumption, which is a flattering disease. Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar had found the sweets of arbitrary power; and each being a check to the other's growth, struck up a false friendship among themselves, and divided the government betwixt them, which none of them was able to assume alone. These were the public spirited men of their age; that is, patriots for their own interest. The commonwealth looked with a florid countenance in their management, spread in bulk, and all the while was wasting in the vitals. Not to trouble your lordship with the repetition of what you know-after the death of Crassus, Pompey found himselfoutwitted by Cæsar, broke with him, overpowered him in the senate, and caused many unjust decrees to pass against him. Cæsar, thus injured, and unable to resist the faction of the nobles, which was now uppermost, (for he was a Marian,) had recourse to arms; and his cause was just against Pompey, but not against his country, whose constitution ought to have been sacred to him, and never to have been violated on the account of any private wrong. But he prevailed; and, heaven declaring for him, he became a providential monarch, under the title of perpetual dictator. He being murdered by his own son, whom I neither dare commend, nor can justly blame, (though Dante, in his Inferno, has put him and Cassius, and • Here again Milbourne is very clamorous for authority, and exclaims, that it is one of the fundamental laws of Parnassus to write true history. Dryden probably rested upon the scandalous tale, that Cæsar intrigued with Servilia, the mother of Brutus; though it seems more likely, that he applied to his assassin the endearing epithet of my son merely as a term of affectionate friendship. Judas Iscariot betwixt them, into the great devil's mouth,) the commonwealth popped up its head for the third time, under Brutus and Cassius, and then sunk for ever. Thus the Roman people were grossly gulled twice or thrice over, and as often enslaved, in one century, and under the same pretence of reformation. At last the two battles of Philippi gave the decisive stroke against liberty; and, not long after, the commonwealth was turned into a monarchy, by the conduct and good for tune of Augustus. It it is true, that the despotic power could not have fallen into better hands than those of the first and second Cæsar. Your lordship well knows what obligations Virgil had to the latter of them: he saw, beside, that the commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroyed; the senate new moulded, grown degenerate, and either bought off, or thrusting their own necks into the yoke, out of fear of being forced. Yet I may safely affirm for our great author, (as men of good sense are generally honest,) that he was still of republican principles in his heart, Secretosque pios, his dantem jura Catonem. I think, I need use no other argument to justify my opinion, than that of this one line, taken from the eighth book of the neis. If he had not well studied his patron's temper, it might have ruined him with another prince. But Augustus was not discontented, at least that we can find, that Cato was placed, by his own poet, in Elysium, and there giving laws to the holy souls who deserved to be separated from the vulgar sort of good spirits; for his conscience could not but whisper to the arbitrary monarch, that the kings of Rome were at first elective, and governed not without a senate ;-that Romulus was no hereditary prince; and though, after his death, he received divine honours for the good he did on earth, yet he was but a god of their own making-that the last Tarquin was • The sense which our author has put on this line, has been warmly disputed; many commentators contending, that the elder Cato, called the Censor, and not Cato of Utica, is the person therein honourd. Pope held the same opinion with our poet, and bandoned it; and Spence, quoted by Mr. Malone, hus expresses himself:-"Virgil represents the blessed in Elysium, and Cato giving laws to them. This agrees best with the character of Cato the Censor. See Plutarch's account of the elder Cato; of his strict judgment and laws; of the statue set up to his honour in the temple of Salus, and of the inscription under it, in his life of that great lawgiver. Seneca speaks as highly of him in that capacity, as of Scipio in the military way: M. Porcius Censorius, quem tam reipublica profuit nasci, quam Scipionem ; alter enim cum hostibus nostris bellum, alter cum moribus gessit. Epist. lxxxvii. If Cato Uticensis could have been placed at all in Elysium by Virgil, (who says, expelled justly for overt acts of tyranny, and mal-administration; for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom: and I meddle not with others, being, for my own opinion, of Montaigne's principles, that an honest man ought to be contented with that form of government, and with those fundamental constitutions of it, which he received from his ancestors, and under which himself was born; though at the same time he confessed freely, that, if he could have chosen his place of birth, it should have been at Venice-which, for many reasons, I dislike, and am better pleased to have been born an Englishman. But, to return from my long rambling-I say, that Virgil having maturely weighed the condition of the times in which he lived; that an entire liberty was not to be retrieved; that the present settlement had the prospect of a long continuance in the same family, or those adopted into it; that he held his paternal estate from the bounty of the conqueror, by whom he was likewise enriched, esteemed, and cherished; that this conqueror, though of a bad kind, was the very best of it; that the arts of peace flourished under him; that all men might be happy, if they would be quiet; that, now he was in possession of the whole, yet he shared a great part of his authority with the senate; that he would be chosen into the ancient offices of the commonwealth, and ruled by the power which he derived from them, and prorogued his government from time to time, still, as it were, threatening to dismiss himself from public cares, which he exercised more for the common good, than for any delight he took in greatness:these things, I say, being considered by the poet, he concluded it to be the interest of his country to be so governed; to infuse an awful respect into the people towards such a prince; by that respect to confirm their obedience to him, and by that obedience to make them happy. This was the moral of his divine poem ;*-hon that such as kill themselves are in another part of Hades,) be would, at least, be a very improper per son to be set by him in so eminent a situation there." This is disputed by the learned Heyne. "De consilio quod poeta in Eneide conscribenda sequutus sit, et de fine, quem propositum habuerit, multa varii comminiscuntur. Nihil quidem magis alienum esse potest ab epico carmine quam allegoria; ju gulat enim totam ejus vim, rerum et hominum dignitatem attenuat, gratum animi errorem excutit, et æstum inter legendum refrigerat, voluptatemque omnem intercipit. Certatim tamen viri docti argutiis suis Eneæ per sonam nobis eripere, et Augustum submittere allaborarunt. Etiam ex parata nova in Latio sede miseros Trojanos exturbarunt; adumbratum esse a poeta novum tum Romæ constitutum unius principatum. Simili acumine alli ar cana. nescio quæ, dominationis Augustem consilia, in Eneide condenda deprehendere sibi visi sunt. Ita est in the poet; honourable to the emperor, whom he derives from a divine extraction; and reflecting part of that honour on the Roman people, whom he derives also from the Trojans; and not only profitable, but necessary, to the present age, and likely to be such to their posterity. That it was the received opinion, that the Romans were descended from the Trojans, and Julius Caesar from Iulus the son of Æneas, was enough for Virgil; though perhaps he thought not so himself, or that Eneas ever was in Italy; which Bochartus manifestly proves. And Homer, where he says that Jupiter hated the house of Priam, and was resolved to transfer the kingdom to the family of Æneas, yet mentions nothing of his leading a colony into a foreign country, and settling there. But that the Romans valued themselves on their Trojan ancestry, is so undoubted a truth, that I need not prove it. Even the seals which we have remaining of Julius Caesar, which we know to be antique, have the star of Venus over them (though they were all graven after his death,) Spencius, elegantis ingenii vir, [Polymetis, Dial. iii. p. 17. sqq.] Toмrucovepos esse Eneidem sibi persuasum habebat; neque aliud quicquam poetam spectasse, quam ut animis libertatis ereptæ desiderto gris fomenta admoveret, et novum principem approbaret. Nihil tamen Æneæ personam, fortunam, facta, et fata habere videas, quod ei consilio respondeat; nullus in Eneide populus est liber, qui dominum accipiat; nulla regni seu imperii, monarchiam vocamus, bona videas exposita aut commendata; verbo nihil occurrit, quo libertatis amore contacti animi adduci aut allici possint, ut a bono principe malint tuto regnari quam cuin libertatis vano nomine paucorum potentium dominatione vexari. In Juliæ gentis honorem, quæ ab Iulo Ene filio originem ducere videri volebat, nonnulla passim suaviter niemorari, ad Augusti laudes ingenlose alia inseri, ipsa carminis lectione manifestum sit, et a veteribus quoque Grammaticis jam moni tum est locis pluribus; sed, quantam vim ea res ad dominationem Augusti commmendandam habere potuerit, mihi non satis constare lubenter fateor. Neque, si nova Æneæ sedes in Latio divinis humanisque juribus vallata fuerit, quale inde propugnaculum novo Augusti regno partum sit, intelligo; ut adeo, si demonstrari hoc possit, poetæ consilium illud in Eneide condenda propositum fuisse, parum feliciter eum in eo perficiendo et exsequendo versa. tum videri dicerem. "In eandem tamen opinionem jam ante Spencium inciderat vir doctus inter Francogallos, (L'Abbe Va. try,] qui imprimis similitudinem inter Æneæ et Augusti personam et fortunam diserte persequitur. Ingeniose eum ludere non neges; et convenit ef cum multis aliis doctis viris, qui opinantur, Augustum sub Enea persona esse adumbratum; eo referunt multa alia. Videas nonnullos tam egregie sibi placere in hoc invento, ut undique conquirant et venentur ea, quæ ad Augustum accommodari possint. Sic oris dignitas, (lib. i. 589, Os humerosque déos,) cum assentatione in Augustum memorata est. Ignoscenda hæc putem alicui ex media assentatorum turba, qui Eneide lecta unam vel alteram Æneæ laudem ad Augustum traheret, ut Principi palparet. Sed, ut Maro tam dissimiles personas, fortunas, virtutes, et facta ac res gestas, inter se comparare voluerit, as a note that he was deified. I doubt not but one reason, why Augustus should be so passionately concerned for the preservation of the neis, which its author had condemned to be burnt, as an imperfect poem, by his last will and testament, was, because it did him a real service, as well as an honour; that a work should not be lost, where his divine original was celebrated in verse, which had the character of immortality stamped upon it. Neither were the great Roman families, which flourished in his time, less obliged by him than the emperor. Your lordship knows with what address he makes mention of them, as captains of ships, or leaders in the war; and even some of Italian extraction are not forgotten. These are the single stars which are sprinkled through the neis: but there are whole constellations of them in the Fifth Book. And I could not but take notice, when I translated it, of some favourite families to which he gives the victory and awards the prizes, in the person of his nero, at the funeral games which mihi quidem, si ejus judicium et elegantiam recte teneo, parum probabile videtur. Sapientior erat poeta, et rei poetica intelligentior, quam ut talem cogitationem in animum admitteret. Nam præterquam quod Enese characterem non invenit, sed ab aliis jam traditum accepit, circumspiciendæ erant a poeta virtutes Æneæ ejusmodi, quæ in epico argumento vim et splendorem haberent, et factorum, quas enarranda erant, caussas idoneas suppeditarent. Quod si ille studium suum ponere voluisset max. ime in hoc, et Eneas Augusto assimularetur, quam multa et quam parum consentanea epicæ narra. tioni, argumento, operis characteri, temporum rationi, illaturus in carmen suum fuisset! "Eadem fere via carmen word conditum a poeta visum jam olim erat R. Patri le Bossu, ut Romanos partim ad amplectendum et probandum præsentem rerum statum adducere, partim Augustum ad mod. erationem ac clementiam adbortari, et a dominationis libidine et impotentia revocare voluerit. Sed nec huic consilio ulla ex parte respondet Eneidis sive argumentum sive tractatio: profugus ex urbe incensa Eneas novam sedem quærit, armis vim illatam propulsat, et sic porro; quid tandem his inest, quod ad imperandi artes ac virtutes spectet? Fabulæ tamen Virgilianæ universe inesse, et in singu lis carminis partibus aut locis ac versibus occurrere talia, quæ principibus pro salubribus præceptis commendari possint, nemo neget; quin potius inter utilitates, quæ poetarum carminibus debentur, præcipue hoc commemoranduin est. Verum non propterea dici potest ac debet, in condendo car mine et in fabula deligenda et ordinanda tale præceptum propositum poete fuisse, cujus explicandi, caussa narrationem institueret. Narrare ille voluit ac debuit rem magnait et arduam et mirabilem. Quod narratio illa, et delectatio quæ inde accipitur, cum utilitate ad omnes hominum ordines, inprimisque ad principum animos conjuncta est, hoc epicæ narrationi per se consentaneum est; ipsa enim rei natura ita fert, ut magnorum virorum facta magna et præclara sine summo at hominum animos, mores ac virtutem, fructu exponi et narrari nequeant, multo magis si cum sententiarum splendore et orationis ornatu instituta sit narratio."Virg. a C. G. Heyne, Disquisit. i. de Carm. Epico. were celebrated in honour of Anchises. I insist not on their names; but am pleased to find the Memmii amongst them, derived from Mnestheus, because Lucretius dedicates to one of that family, a branch of which destroyed Corinth. I likewise either found or formed an image to myself of the contrary kind; that those, who lost the prizes, were such as had disobliged the poet, or were in disgrace with Augustus, or enemies to Mæcenas; and this was the poetical revenge he took: for genus irritabile vatum, as Horace says. When a poet is thoroughly provoked, he will do himself justice, however dear it cost him; animamque in vulnere ponit. I think these are not bare imaginations of my own, though I find no trace of them in the commentators; but one poet may judge of another by himself. The vengeance we defer, is not forgotten. I hinted before that the whole Roman people were obliged by Virgil, in deriving them from Troy; an ancestry which they affected. We and the French are of the same humour: they would be thought to descend from a son, I think, of Hector; and we would have our Britain both named and planted by a descendant of Eneas. Spenser favours this opinion what he can. His Prince Arthur, or whoever he intends by him, is a Trojan. Thus the hero of Homer was a Grecian, of Virgil a Roman, of Tasso an Italian. I have transgressed my bounds, and gone farther than the moral led me; but, if your lordship is not tired, I am safe enough. Thus far, I think, my author is defended. But, as Augustus is still shadowed in the person of Eneas, (of which I shall say more, when I come to the manners which the poet gives his hero,) I must prepare that subject, by showing how dexterously he managed both the prince and people, so as to displease neither, and to do good to both; which is the part of a wise and an honest man, and proves, that it is possible for a courtier not to be a knave. I shall continue still to speak my thoughts like a free-born subject, as I am; though such things, perhaps, as no Dutch commentator could, and I am sure no Frenchman durst. I have already told your lordship my opinion of Virgil, that he was no arbitrary man. Obliged he was to his master for his bounty; and he repays him with good counsel, how to behave himself in his new monarchy, so as to gain the affections of his subjects, and deserve to be called the father of his country. From this consideration it is, that he chose, for the ground-work of his poem, one empire destroyed, and another raised from the ruins of it. This was just the parallel. Æneas could not pretend to be Priam's heir in a lineal succession; for Anchises, the hero's father, was only of the second branch of the royal family; and Helenus, a son of Priam, was yet survi ving, and night lawfully claim before him. It may be, Virgil mentions him on that account. Neither has he forgotten Priamus, in the fifth of his neis, the son of Polites, youngest son to Priam, who was slain by Pyrrhus, in the Second Book. Eneas had only married Creúsa, Priam's daughter, and by her could have no title, while any of the male issue were remaining. In this case, the poet gave him the next title, which is that of an elective king. The remaining Trojans chose him to lead them forth, and settle them in some foreign country. Ilioneus, in his speech to Dido, calls him expressly by the name of king. Our poet, who all this while had Augustus in his eye, had no desire he should seem to succeed by any right of inheritance derived from Julius Cæsar, (such a title being but one degree removed from conquest,) for what was introduced by force, by force may be removed. It was better for the people that they should give, than he should take; since that gift was indeed no more at bottom than a trust. Virgil gives us an example of this in the person of Mezentius: he governed arbitrarily; he was expelled, and came to the deserved end of all tyrants. Our author shows us another sort of kingship in the person of Latinus: he was descended from Saturn, and, as I remember, in the third degree. He is described as a just and gracious prince, solicitous for the welfare of his people, always consulting with his senate to promote the common good. We find him at the head of them, when he enters into the council-hall, speaking first, but still demanding their advice, and steering by it, as far as the iniquity of the times would suffer him. And this is the proper character of a king by inheritance, who is born a father of his country. Eneas, though he married the heiress of the crown, yet claimed no title to it during the life of his father-in-law. Pater arma La tinus habeto, &c. are Virgil's words. As for himself, he was contented to take care of his country gods, who were not those of Latium : wherein our divine author seems to relate to the after-practice of the Romans, which was to I suspect our author spoke from recollection of adopt the gods of those they conquered, or re some of his own satirical strokes. Even in the "Hind and Panther," Sunderland, a convert to the religion defended by the poet, and Petre, the king's own chaplain and bosom counsellor, do not escape. ceived as members of their commonwealth. Yet, withal, he plainly touches at the office of the high priesthood, with which Augustus |