the horses of Achilles, seem to be inventions of of the kind, and might be designed to fill the reader with astonishment and concern, and with an apprehension of the greatness of an occasion which, by a bold fiction of the poet, is supposed to have produced such extraordinary effects.

As Allegory sometimes, for the sake of the moral sense couched under its fictions, gives speech to brutes, and sometimes introduces creatures which are out of nature, as goblins, chimeras, fairies, and the like; so it frequently gives life to virtues and vices, passions and diseases, to natural and moral qualities, and represents them acting as divine, human, or infernal persons. A very ingenious writer calls these characters shadowy beings, and has with good reason censured the employing them in just epick poems. Of this kind are Sin and Death, which I mentioned before in Milton, and Fame in Virgil. We find, likewise, a large group of these shadowy figures placed in the Sixth Book of the Eneis, at the entrance into the infernal regions; but as they are only shown there, and have no share in the action of the poem, the description of them is a fine allegory, and extremely proper to the place where they appear.

Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisq; in faucibus Orci, 'Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;

Spectator, Vol. IV. No. 273. HUGHES.
C

VOL. IX.

• Pallentesq; habitant Morbi, tristisq; Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas;
Terribiles visu Forma; Lethumq; Labosque;

Tum consanguineus Lethi Sopor, et mala Mentis
'Gaudia; mortiferumq; adverso in limite Bellum;
Ferreiq; Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens,
· Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.

In medio ramos annosaq; brachia pandit

Ulmus opaca, ingens; quam sedem Somnia vulgo
Vana tenere ferunt foliisq; sub omnibus hærent."

As persons of this imaginary life are to be excluded from any share of action in epick poems, they are yet less to be endured in the drama; yet we find they have sometimes made their appearance on the ancient stage. Thus, in a tragedy of Eschylus, Strength is introduced assisting Vulcan to bind Prometheus to a rock; and in one of Euripides, Death comes to the house of Admetus to demand Alcestis, who had offered herself to die to save her husband's life. But what I have

* are to be excluded] Why so? And by what law? Somnus is introduced as acting in the Ilias more than once, as also in other heroick poems; and Ὕπνος καὶ Θαναῖος, Sleep and Death, are appointed to carry off the body of Sarpedon, and have wplace in Hesiod's Theogonia, ver. 759. In a poem which is built upon a Jewish or Christian plan, a mixture of true religion and fable, good and bad angels in one place, and Jupiter ant Juno in another, is perhaps justly liable to censure, though great poets have not avoided it. But to allow a poet to introduce Mars and Minerva, and to forbid him to make use of Sleep, and Death, and Fear, and Discord, &c. as actors, seems to he injudicious, founded upon a weak prejudice, that the latter have not in our imagination as good a right to be persons as the former. The heathen theology is to be taken from the heathen writers; and whatever is a deity in Homer and Hesiod, has perpetual and incontestible right to be a poetical god.

JORTIN.

here said of epick and dramatick poems does not extend to such writings, the very frame and model which is designed to be Allegorical; in which, therefore, as said before, such unsubstantial and symbolical actors may be very properly admitted.

Every Book of the Faerie Queene is fruitful of these visonary beings, which are invented and drawn with a surprising strength of imagination. I shall produce but one instance here, which the reader may compare with that just mentioned in Virgil, to which it is no way inferior; it is in Book II. where Mammon conducts Guyon through a cave under ground to show him his treasure.

At length they came into a larger space,

That stretcht itselfe into an ample playne,

Through which a beaten broad high way did trace,
That streight did lead to Plutoe's griesly rayne:

By that wayes side there sate infernall Payne,
And fast beside him sat tumultuous Strife;

• The one in hand an yron whip did strayne,
The other brandished a bloody knife;

'And both did gnash their teeth, and both did threaten Life.

On the other side in one consort there sate • Cruell Revenge, and rancorous Despight, Disloyal Treason, and hart-burning Hate; But gnawing Gealosy, out of their sight · Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bight; And trembling Feare still to and fro did fly, And found no place wher safe he shroud him might:

Lamenting Sorrow did in darknes lye;

And Shame his ugly face did hide from living eye.

• And over them sad Horror with grim hew
Did alwaies sore, beating his yron wings;
⚫ And after him owles and night-ravens flew,
The hatefull messengers of heavy things,
Of death and dolor telling sad tidings:
'Whiles sad Celeno, sitting on a clifte,
'A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings,
"That hart of flint asonder could have rifte;
'Which having ended after him she flyeth swifte.

*All these before the gates of Pluto lay, &c.'

The posture of Jealousy, and the motion of (Fear, in this description, are particularly fine. These are instances of Allegorical persons, which are shown only in one transient view. The reader will every where meet with others in this Author, which are employed in the action of the poem, and which need not be mentioned here.

Having thus endeavoured to give a general idea of what is meant by Allegory in poetry, and shown what kind of persons are frequently employed in it, I shall proceed to mention some properties which seem requisite in all well-invented fables of this kind.

There is no doubt but men of critical learning, if they had thought fit, might have given us rules about Allegorical writing, as they have done about epick, and other kinds of poetry; but they

have rather chosen to let this forest remain wild, as if they thought there was something in the nature of the soil which could not so well be restrained and cultivated in enclosures. What Sir William Temple observes about rules in general, may perhaps be more particularly applicable to this; that they may possibly hinder some from being very bad poets, but are not capable of making any very good one.' Notwithstanding this, they are useful to help our observation in distinguishing the beauties and the blemishes in such works as have been already produced. Ï shall therefore beg leave to mention four qualities which I think are essential to every good Allegory; the three first of which relate to the Fable, and the last to the Moral.

The first is, that it be lively and surpising. The Fable, or literal sense, being that which most immediately offers itself to the reader's observation, must have this property, in order to raise and entertain his curiosity. As there is, therefore, more invention employed in a work of this kind than in mere narration, or description, or in general amplifications on any subject, it consequently requires a more than ordinary heat of fancy in its first production. If the Fable, on the contrary, is flat, spiritless, or barren of invention, the reader's imagination is not affected, nor his attention engaged, though the instruction