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witnessed to his devotion, by putting themselves under his protection, to be replaced by him in their promised Italy. Neither the invention nor the conduct of this great action were owing to Homer or any other poet. It is one thing to copy, and another thing to imitate from nature. The copier is that servile imitator, to whom Horace gives no better name than that of animal; he will not so much as allow him to be a man. Raphael imitated nature they who copy one of Raphael's pieces imitate but him; for his work is their original. They translate him as I do Virgil; and fall as short of him as I of Virgil. There is a kind of invention in the imitation of Raphael; for though the thing was in nature, yet the idea of it was his own. Ulysses travelled; so did Æneas: but neither of them were the first travellers; for Cain went into the land of Nod before they were born; and neither of the poets ever heard of such a man. If Ulysses had been killed at Troy, yet Æneas must have gone to sea, or he could never have arrived in Italy. But the designs of the two poets were as different as the courses of their heroes; one went home, and the other sought a home.

To return to my first similitude-Suppose Appelles and Raphael had each of them painted a burning Troy: might not the modern painter have succeeded as well as the ancient, though neither of them had seen the town on fire? for the draughts of both were taken from the ideas which they had of nature. Cities had been burnt before either of them were in being, But, to close the simile as I began it, they would not have designed it after the same manner. Apelles would have distinguished Pyrrhus from the rest of all the Grecians, and showed him forcing his entrance into Priam's palace; there he had set him in the fairest light, and given him the chief place of all his figures; because he was a Grecian, and he would do honour to his country. Raphael, who was an Italian, and descended from the Trojans, would have made Æneas the hero of his piece; and perhaps not with his father on his back, his son in one hand, his bundle of gods in the other, and his wife following (for an act of piety is not half so graceful in a picture as an act of courage). He would have rather drawn him killing Androgeos, or some other, hand to hand; and the blaze of the fires should have darted full on his face to make him conspicuous among his Trojans. 'This, I think, is a just comparison between the two poets, in the conduct of their several designs. Virgil cannot be said to copy Homer: the Grecian had only the advantage of writing first. if it be urged that I have granted a resemblance in some parts; yet therein Virgil has excelled him. For, what are the tears of Calypso for being left to the fury and death of Dido? Where Is there the whole process of her passion, and all its violent cffects to be found, in the languishing episode of the Odyssey? If this be a copy, let the critics show us the same disposition,

features, or colouring, in their original. The like may be said of the descent to hell, which was not of Homer's invention neither: he had it from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. But to what end did Ulysses make that journey? Æneas undertook it by the express commandment of his father's ghost: there he was to show him all the succeeding heroes of his race, and next to Romulus (mark, if you please, the address of Virgil), his own patron, Augustus Cæsar. Anchises was likewise to instruct him how to manage the Italian war, and how to conclude it with honour; that is, in other words, to lay the foundations of that empire which Augustus was to govern. This is the noble invention of our author; but it hath been copied by so many sign-post daubers, that now it is grown fulsome, rather by their want of skill than by the commonness.

In the last place I may safely grant, that, by reading Homer, Virgil was taught to imitate his invention; that is, to imitate like him; which is no more than if a painter studied Raphael, that he might learn to design after his manner. And thus I might imitate Virgil, if I were capable of writing an heroic poem, and yet the invention be my own: but I should endeavour to avoid a servile copying. I would not give the same story under other names, with the same characters, in the same order, and with the same sequel, for every common reader to find me out at the first sight for a plagiary, and сту, This I read before in Virgil in a better language, and in better verse." This is like Merry Andrew on the low rope, copying lubberly the same tricks which his master is so dexterously performing on the high.

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I will trouble your lordship but with one objection more, which I know not whether found in Le Fevre or Valais; but I am sure I have read it in another French critic, whom I will not name, because I think it is not much for his reputation. Virgil, in the heat of action-suppose, for example, in describing the fury of his hero in a battle, when he is endeavouring to raise our concernments to the highest pitch, turns short on the sudden into some similitude, which diverts, say they, your attention from the main subject, and mispends it on some trivial image. He pours cold water into the caldron when his business is to make it boil.

This accusation is general against all who would be thought heroic poets; but I think it touches Virgil less than any. He is too great a master of his art to make a blot which may so easily be hit. Similitudes, as I have said, are not for tragedy, which is all violent, and where the passions are in a perpetual ferment; for there they deaden where they should animate; they are not of the nature of dialogue, unless in comedy: a metaphor is almost all the stage can suffer, which is a kind of similitude comprehended in a word. But this figure has a con

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trary effect in heroic poetry; there it is employed to raise the admiration, which is its proper business: and admiration is not of so violent a nature as fear or hope, compassion or horror, or any concernment we can have for such or such a person on the stage. Not but I confess, that similitudes and descriptions, when drawn into an unreasonable length, must needs nauseate the reader. Once, I remember, and but once, Virgil makes a similitude of fourteen lines; and his description of Fame is about the same number. He is blamed for both; and I doubt not but he would have contracted them had he lived to have reviewed his work but faults are no precedents. This I have observed of his similitudes in general, that they are not placed, as our unobserving critics tell us, in the heat of any action, but commonly in its declining: When he has warmed us in his description as much as possibly he can, then, lest that warmth should languish, he renews it by some apt similitude, which illustrates his subject, and yet palls not his audience. I need give your lordship but one example of this kind, and leave the rest to your observation, when next you review the whole Æneid in the original, unblemished by my rude translation. It is in the first book, where the poet describes Neptune composing the ocean, on which Eolus had raised a tempest without his permission. He had already chidden the rebellious winds for obeying the commands of their usurping master: he had warned them from the seas he had beaten down the billows with his mace, dispelled the clouds, restored the sunshine, while Triton and Cymothoë were heaving the ships from off the quicksands, Lefore the poet would offer at a similitude for illustration.

Ac, veluti magno in populo cum sæpe coorta est
Seditio, sævitque animis ignobile vulgus,
Jamque faces et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat ;
Tum, pietate gravem, ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant:
Ille regit dictis animos, et pectora mulcet:
Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, æquora postquam
Prospiciens genitor, cœloque invectus aperto,
Flectit equos, curruque volans dat lora secundo.

This is the first similitude which Virgil makes in this poem, and one of the longest in the whole; for which reason I the rather cite it. While the storm was in its fury any allusion had Deen improper; for the poet could have compared it to nothing more impetuous than itself; consequently he could have made no illustration. If he could have illustrated, it had been an "ambitious ornament" out of season, and would have diverted our concernment: "nunc non erat his locus ;" and therefore he deferred it to its proper place.

These are the criticisms of most moment which have been made against the Æneid by the, ancients or moderns. As for the particular exceptions against this or that passage, Macrobius and Pontanus have answered them already. If I desired to ppear more learned than I am, it had been as easy for me to have taken their objections and solutions, as it is for a country parson to take the expositions of the fathers out of Junius and Tremellius, and not to have named the authors from whence I had them for so Ruæus, otherwise a most judicious commentator on Virgil's works, has used Pontanus, his greatest lenefactor; of whom he is very silent and I do not remember that he once cites him.

What follows next is no objection; for that implies a fault: and it had been none in Virgil, if he had extended the time of his action beyond a year. At least Aristotle has set no precise limits to it. Homer's, we know, was within two months: Tasso, I am sure, exceeds not a summer; and, if I examined him, perhaps he might be reduced into a much less compass. Bossu leaves it doubtful whether Virgil's action were within the year, or took up some months beyond it. Indeed, the whole dispute is of no more concernment to the common reader, than it is to a ploughman, whether February this year had twenty-eight or twenty-nine days in it. But, for the satisfaction of the more curious (of which number I am sure your lordship is one), I will translate what I think convenient out of Segrais, whom perhaps you have not read: for he has made it highly probable that the action of the Eneid began in the spring, and was not extended beyond the autumn. And we have known campaigns that have begun sooner, and have ended later.

Ronsard, and the rest whom Segrais names, who are of opinion that the action of this poem takes up almost a year and a half, ground their calculation thus. Anchises died in Sicily at the end of winter, or beginning of the spring. Æneas, immediately after the interment of his father, puts to sea for Italy. He is surprised by the tempest described in the beginning of the first book; and there it is that the scene of the poem opens, and where the action must commence. He is driven by this storm on the coast of Afric: he stays at Carthage all that summer and almost all the winter following, sets sail again for Italy just before the beginning of the spring, meets with contrary winds, and makes Sicily the second time. This part of the action completes the year. Then he celebrates the anniversary of his father's funeral, and shortly after arrives at Cuma: and from thence his time is taken up in his first treaty with Latinus, the overture of the war, the siege of his camp by Turnus, his going for succours to relieve it, his return, the raising of the siege by the first battle, the twelve days' truce, the second battle, the assault of Laurentum, and the single fight with Turnus; all which they say can

not take up less than four or five months more; by which account we cannot suppose the entire action to be contained in a much less compass than a year and a half.

Segrais reckons another way; and his computation is not condemned by the learned Ruæus, who compiled and published the commentaries on our poet, which we call the Dauphin's Virgil.

He allows the time of the year when Anchises died to be in the latter end of winter, or the beginning of the spring he acknowledges that, when Æneas is first seen at sea afterward, and is driven by the tempest on the coast of Afric, is the time when the action is naturally to begin: he confesses, further, that Æneas left Carthage in the latter end of winter; for Dido tells him in express terms, as an argument for his longer stay,

Quinetiam hyberno moliris sidere classem.

But whereas Ronsard's followers suppose that when Æneas had buried his father he set sail immediately for Italy (though the tempest drove him on the coast of Carthage), Segrais will by no means allow that supposition, but thinks it much more probable that he remained in Sicily till the midst of July, or the beginning of August; at which time he places the first appearance of his hero on the sea; and there opens the action of the poem. From which beginning, to the death of Turnus, which concludes the action, there need not be supposed above ten months of intermediate time: for, arriving at Carthage in the latter end of summer, staying there the winter following, departing thence in the very beginning of the spring, making a short abode in Sicily the second time, landing in Italy, and making the war, may be reasonably judged the business but of ten months. To this the Ronsardians reply, that, having been for seven years before in quest of Italy, and having no more to do in Sicily than to inter his father-after that office was performed, what remained for him but, without delay, to pursue his first adventure? To which Segrais answers that the obsequies of his father, according to the rites of the Greeks and Romans, would detain him for many days: that a longer time must be taken up in the refitting of his ships after so tedious a voyage, and in refreshing his weather-beaten soldiers on a friendly coast. These indeed are but suppositions on both sides; yet those of Segrais seem better grounded: for the feast of Dido, when she entertained Æneas first, has the appearance of a summer's night, which seems already almost ended when he begins his story; therefore the love was made in autumn: the hunting followed properly when the heats of that scorching country were declining: the winter was passed in jollity, as the season and their love required; and he left her in the latter end

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