and how he conforms to what is required in allegorical composition. The first condition then necessary to be observed, when the subject allows of the mixture of individuals of a supposed different nature, is to accommodate and reconcile their character, forms, and appearance by raising, as much as may be, the existent state of the real to a level with that of the poetical personages; an operation which, as before remarked, cannot take place reciprocally, because if the appearance of the latter were brought down to a level with the low character of the former, the allegory would cease to be visible, and would, therefore, not exist.

But there is still another class of proprieties to be observed in order to bring about this accordance; (no allusion is here intended to the degree of talent, skill, and sentiment in the artist.) The question merely concerns a rule of taste which requires that the poetical or allegorical personage, when participating in human actions, should not be figured in awkward attitudes, nor with gestures expressive of strenuous efforts, nor with motions irreconcilable with outward dignity. Independent of some subjects whose purport is to betoken by the very action of the personages, effort and motion, it is usually befitting to represent them in an attitude of composure, with a calm physiognomy, and with subdued gestures.

It is the only means* afforded by the language of corporeal signs, to express to the eye and the mind an idea of the superior intelligence and power of beings who must be looked upon as above and beyond humanity. And the ancients have always so conceived and represented their divinities in action, whether alone or associated with mortals.

* i. e. as regards action, of which only we are here speaking.

CHAPTER XIII.

WHY THE EMPLOYMENT OF MODERN ALLEGORY HAS LESS FORCE AND PRODUCES LESS EFFECT IN POETRY THAN IN PAINTING.

MORAL abstractions, the necessary results of the forms of speech, have become the source of the allegorical personifications, employed in the arts of design as signs of the general ideas required to be expressed.

We have shown that for the most part these signs must be nearly related to the creations of Paganism, which creations, although, owing to religious credence, they obtained formerly the force of corporeal existence, are nevertheless considered as a result of the same operation of the mind as in the formation of language.

Thus the modern allegorical figures, necessarily appealing to the eye under forms borrowed from mythological beings, have perpetuated in our arts a great number of images or signs, which have been changed only in name.

How is it that this has not also been the case

in modern languages and in their poetry? It is the property of poetry to animate all things, to give to every thing a body, a mind, a soul, a countenance; that is to say, to transform, to personify all things. Hence the infinite number of tropes, figures, metaphors, and allegorical emblems, which frequently are proper only to discourse, and lose their virtue when, as shown in Chapter ix, they are transferred to another sphere of imitation.

Modern poetry has not, like painting, been allowed to adopt and place among the number of its metaphorical means, certain mythological images which, from the frequent use made of them in language, are received as the synonymes of words or phrases serving to express moral notions or qualities. Thus Mars, Venus, Love, the Graces, &c., have become in the poetical vocabulary mere words, customary expressions; and, perhaps, there is no other restriction to their use than as regards religious subjects, and that for reasons of fitness as already given in the preceding Chapter.

Owing to this use of metaphors derived from Paganism, but now considered as mere synonymous terms, to which customarily the mind attaches no image, it has been inferred that the poet is justified in employing the marvellous of the ancient mythology as the principal machinery of the epic poem, and again to introduce the fabulous deities as the movers and instruments of

poetical action. But common sense was not slow in rejecting, more especially with regard to Christian subjects, the active intervention of these powers obliterated from general estimation by belief in Christianity. It became equally evident, that with the exception of some poetical trifles of no importance, or certain subjects that the imagination borrows from the history of Pagan times and people, the poet could not be permitted in subjects of a modern date to employ as supernatural agents, beings that have wholly fallen out of belief with those on whom it is proposed that they should be made to act; since their agency must be thought at least possible by those who are expected to be influenced by it.

The respect due to the mysteries and dogmas of Christianity, the very different nature of a religion that is in nowise addressed to the senses, the paucity of supernatural beings that it admits of personifying, and the danger of anthropomorphism, all contributed to render the employment of a marvellous drawn from Christian creeds still more difficult, unless by forming a poem, as Milton has done, the poetical marvellous, or the supernatural of which is, if one may so say, the sole subject, the subject itself, instead of being only an auxiliary resort.

Nevertheless, since all poetry exists by fiction, and since the poet, more especially in the creations of the epic muse, has need, according to