imitated others which were built before it? Walls, doors, and windows, apartments, offices, rooms of convenience and magnificence, are in all great houses. So descriptions, figures, fables, and the rest, must be in all heroic poems: they are the common materials of poetry, furnished from the magazine of nature; every poet hath as much right to them as every man hath to air or water. Quid prohibetis aquas? Usus communis aquarum est. But the argument of the work, that is to say, its principal action, the economy and disposition of it-these are the things which distinguish copies from originals. The poet who borrows nothing from others is yet to be born; he and the Jews' Messias will come together. There are parts of the Æneid which resemble some parts both of the Iliad and of the Odyssey: as, for example, Æneas descended into hell, and Ulysses had been there before him: Æneas loved Dido, and Ulysses loved Calypso: in few words, Virgil hath imitated Homer's Odyssey in his first six books, and, in his six last, the Iliad. But from hence can we infer that the two poets write the same history? Is there no invention in some other parts of Virgil's Æneid? The disposition of so many various matters, is not that his own? From what book of Homer had Virgil his episode of Nisus and Euryalus, of Mezentius and Lausus? From whence did he borrow his design of bringing Æneas into Italy? of establishing the Roman empire on the foundations of a Trojan colony? to say nothing of the honor he did his patron, not only in his descent from Venus, but in making him so like her in his best features, that the goddess might have mistaken Augustus for her son. He had indeed the story from common fame, as Homer had his from the Egyptian priestess. Eneadum genitrix' was no more unknown to Lucretius than to him. But Lucretius taught him not to form his hero, to give him piety or valor for his manners, and both in so eminent a degree, that, having done what was possible for man to save his king and country, his mother was forced to appear to him, and restrain his fury, which hurried him to death in their revenge. But the poet made his piety more successful; he brought off his father and his son; and his gods 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 Apelles 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 honor 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 amongst his Trojans. This, I think, is a just comparison betwixt 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 effects 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 coloring, 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? Eneas 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 honor; 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 a heroic poem, and yet the invention be my own but I should endeavor 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 cry, '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. 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 reputa tion. Virgil, in the heat of action-suppose, for example, in describing the fury of his hero in a battle, when he is endeavoring 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 contrary 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 Æolus 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, before the poet would offer at a similitude for illustration. Ac, veluti magno in populo cum sæpe coorta est Jamque faces et saxa volant; furor arma ministrat ; Sic cunctus pelagi cecidit fragor, æquora postquam 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 been 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 appear 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 benefactor; 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 VOL. I. VIR. |
