DEDICATION.

TO THE MOST HONOURABLE JOHN, LORD Marquis of NORMANBY, EArl of mulgrave, &c. AND KNIGHT

OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

AN HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform. The design of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example. It is conveyed in verse, that it may delight while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes or under-actions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imperfect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagined more suitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish (which is of a perishable kind, destructive to the strength), but with brick or stone, though of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the crannies. Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling novels which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is designed in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, labouring and hastening in every line; the other slackens his pace, diverts him from his way, and locks him up like a knight-errant in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observed, was ambitious of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus. Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but changed

the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occa sions from the subject; though, to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or, at best, convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statius-who, through his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment-instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon, Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had leisure to perform when the siege was raised, and in the interval betwixt the poet's first action and his second-went out of his way, as it were, on prepense malice, to commit a fault: for he took his opportunity to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honours which he intended for him. Now, if this innocent had been of any relation to his Thebaïs-if he had either farthered or hindered the taking of the town-the poet might have found some sorry excuse, at least, for detaining the reader from the promised siege. On these terms, this Capaneus of a poet en gaged his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his enterprise.

If this economy must be observed in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detached from the body, and almost independent of it, what soul, though sent into the world with great advantages of nature, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conversant with histories of the dead, and enriched with observations on the living, can be sufficient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, without any strict method, on some few of those many rules of imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's Iliads and Odysseys, and which he fitted to the drama; furnishing himself also with observations froin the practice of the theatre, when it flourished under Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles: for the original of the stage was from the epic poem, Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it: what at first was told artfully, was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight and hearing. Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action: out of his limbs they formed their bodies. what he had contracted, they enlarged out of one Hercules were made infinity of pigmies; yet all endued with human souls tor from him, their great creator, they have each of them the "divinæ particulam auræ." They flowed from him at first, and are a last resolved into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their measure and symmetry were owing to him. Hi one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the proportions of the drama. If he finished his orb within the year, it sufficed to teach them that, their action being less, and

being also less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be circumscribed in a less compass, which they reduced within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day; so that, as he taught them to amplify what he had shortened-by the same rule, applied the contrary way, he taught them to horten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draught at length. Here, my jord, I must contract also; for, before I was aware, I was almost running into a long digression, to prove that there is no such absolute necessity that the time of a stage-action should so strictly be confined to twenty-four hours as never to exceed them, for which Aristotle contends and the Grecian stage has practised. Some longer space, on some occasions, I think, may be allowed, especially for the English theatre, which requires more variety of incidents than the French. Corneille himself, after long practice, was inclined to think that the time allotted by the ancients was too short to raise and finish a great action: and better a mechanic rule were stretched or broken, than a great beauty were omitted. To raise, and afterward to calm, the passions-to purge the soul from pride by the examples of human miseries which befall the greatest-in few words, to expel arrogance, and introduce compassion, are the great effects of tragedy; great, I must confess, if they were altogether as true as they are pompous. But are habits to be introduced at three hours' warning? are radical diseases so suddenly removed? A mountebank may promise such a cure; but a skilful physician will not undertake it. An epic poem is not so much in haste: it works leisurely; the changes which it makes are slow; but the cure is likely to be more perfect. The effects of tragedy, as I said, are too violent to be lasting. If it be answered, that for this reason tragedies are often to be seen, and the dose to be repeated, this is tacitly to confess that there is more virtue in one heroic poem than in many tragedies. A man is humbled one day, and his pride returns the next. Chymical medicines are observed to relieve oftener than to cure for it is the nature of spirits to make swift impressions, but not deep. Galenical decoctions, to which I may properly compare an epic poem, have more of body in them; they work by their substance and their weight. It is one reason of Aristotle's to prove that tragedy is the more noble, because it turns in a shorter compass; the whole action being circumscribed within the space of four-andtwenty hours. He might prove as well that a mushroom is to be preferred before a peach, because it shoots up in the compass of a night. A chariot may be driven round the pillar in less space than a large machine, because the bulk is not so great. Is the Moon a more noble planet than Saturn, because she makes her revolution in less than thirty days, and he in little less than thirty years? Both their orbs are in proportion to their several magní

tudes; and, consequently, the quickness or slowness of their motion, and the time of their circumvolutions, is no argument of the greater or less perfection. And besides, what virtue is there in a tragedy, which is not contained in an epic poem, where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punished; and those more amply treated, than the narrowness of the drama can admit? The shining quality of an epic hero, his magnanimity, his constancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever characteristical virtue his poet gives him, raises first our admiration. We are naturally prone to imitate what we admire; and frequent acts produce a habit. If the hero's chief quality be vicious, as for example, the choler and obstinate desire of vengeance in Achilles, yet the moral is instructive; and, besides, we are informed in the very proposition of the Iliads that this anger was pernicious; that it brought a thousand ills on the Grecian camp. The courage of Achilles is proposed to imitation, not his pride and disobedience to his general, nor his brutal cruelty to his dead enemy, nor the selling his body to his father. We abhor these actions while we read them; and what we abhor we never imitate. The poet only shows them, like rocks or quicksands, to be shunned.

By this example the critics have concluded that it is not necessary the manners of the hero should be virtuous. They are poetically good, if they are of a piece: though, where a character of perfect virtue is set before us, it is more lovely; for there the whole hero is to be imitated. This is the Eneas of our author: this is that idea of perfection in an epic poem which painters and statuaries have only in their minds, and which no hands are able to express. These are the beauties of a god in a human body. When the picture of Achilles is drawn in tragedy, he is taken with those warts, and moles, and hard features, by those who represent him on the stage, or he is no more Achilles; for his creator Homer has so described him. Yet even thus he appears a perfect hero, though an imperfect character of virtue. Horace paints him after Homer, and delivers him to be copied on the stage with all those imperfections. Therefore they are either not faults in an heroic poem, or faults common to the drama. After all, on the whole merits of the cause, it must be acknowledged that the epic poem is more for the manners, and tragedy for the passions. The passions, as I have said, are violent and acute distempers require medicines of a strong and speedy operation. Ill habits of the mind are, like chronical dis eases, to be corrected by degrees, and cured by alteratives : wherein, though purges are sometimes necessary, yet diet, good air, and moderate exercise, have the greatest part. The matter being thus stated, it will appear that both sorts of poetry are of use for their proper ends. The stage is more active: the epic poem works at greater leisure, yet it is active too, when need requires for dialogue is imitated by the drama, from the more