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 magnitudes; 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 contain'd in an epic poem, where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punish'd; 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 inform'd 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 propos'd 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 shews them, like rocks or quicksands, to be shunn'd.

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: tho', where a character of perfect virtue is set before us, 't 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 describ'd him. Yet even thus he

appears a perfect hero, tho' 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 a heroic poem, or faults common to the drama. After all, on the whole merits of the cause, it must be acknowledg'd 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 diseases, to be corrected by degrees, and cur'd by alteratives; wherein, tho' 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 is active too, when need requires; for dialogue is imitated by the drama from the more active parts of it. One puts off a fit, like the quinquina, and relieves us only for a time; the other roots out the distemper, and gives a healthful habit. The sun enlightens and cheers us, dispels fogs, and warms the ground with his daily beams; but the corn is sow'd, increases, is ripen'd, and is reap'd for use in process of time, and in its proper season. I proceed from the greatness of the action to the dignity of the actors; I mean to the persons employ'd in both poems. There likewise tragedy will be seen to borrow from the epopee; and that which borrows is always of less dignity, because it has not of its own. A subject, 't is true, may lend to his sovereign; but the act of borrowing makes the king inferior, because he wants, and the subject supplies. And suppose the persons of the drama wholly fabulous, or of the poet's invention, yet heroic poetry gave him the examples of that invention, because it was first, and Homer the common father of the stage. I know not of any one advantage which tragedy can boast above heroic poetry, but that it is represented to the view, as well as read, and instructs in the closet, as well as on the theater. This is an uncontended excellence, and a chief branch of its prerogative; yet I may be allow'd to say, without partiality, that herein the actors share the poet's

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praise. Your Lordship knows some modern tragedies which are beautiful on the stage, and yet I am confident would not read them. Tryphon the stationer complains they are seldom ask'd for in his shop. The poet who flourish'd in the scene is damn'd in the ruelle; nay more, he is not esteem'd a good poet by those who see and hear his extravagances with delight. They are a sort of stately fustian, and lofty childishness. Nothing but nature can give a sincere pleasure; where that is not imitated, 't is grotesque painting; the fine woman ends in a fish's tail.

I might also add that many things which not only please, but are real beauties in the reading, would appear absurd upon the stage; and those not only the speciosa miracula, as Horace calls them, of transformations, of Scylla, Antiphates, and the Læstrygons, which cannot be represented even in operas; but the prowess of Achilles or Eneas would appear ridiculous in our dwarf heroes of the theater. We can believe they routed armies, in Homer or in Virgil; but ne Hercules contra duos in the drama. I forbear to instance in many things which the stage cannot, or ought not to represent; for I have said already more than I intended on this subject, and should fear it might be turn'd against me, that I plead for the preeminence of epic poetry because I have taken some pains in translating Virgil, if this were the first time that I had deliver'd my opinion in this dispute. But I have more than once already maintain'd the rights of my two masters against their rivals of the scene, even while I wrote tragedies myself, and had no thoughts of this present undertaking. I submit my opinion to your judgment, who are better qualified than any man I know to decide this controversy. You come, my Lord, instructed in the cause, and needed not that I should open it. Your Essay of Poetry, which was publish'd without a name, and of which I was not honor'd with the confidence, I read over and over with much delight, and as much instruction, and, without flattering you, or making myself more moral than I am, not without some envy. I was loth to be inform'd how an epic poem should be written, or how a tragedy should be contriv'd and manag'd, in better verse, and with more judgment, than I could teach others. A native of Parnas

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sus, and bred up in the studies of its fundamental laws, may receive new lights from his contemporaries; but 't is a grudging kind of praise which he gives his benefactors. He is more oblig'd than he is willing to acknowledge; there is a tincture of malice in his commendations; for where I own I am taught, I confess my want of knowledge. A judge upon the bench may, out of good nature, or at least interest, encourage the pleadings of a puny counselor; but he does not willingly commend his brother sergeant at the bar, especially when he controls his law, and exposes that ignorance which is made sacred by his place. I gave the unknown author his due commendation, I must confess; but who can answer for me and for the rest of the poets who heard me read the poem, whether we should not have been better pleas'd to have seen our own names at the bottom of the title-page? Perhaps we commended it the more, that we might seem to be above the censure. are naturally displeas'd with an unknown critic, as the ladies are with the lampooner, because we are bitten in the dark, and know not where to fasten our revenge. But great excellencies will work their way thro' all sorts of opposition. I applauded rather out of decency than affection; and was ambitious, as some yet can witness, to be acquainted with a man with whom I had the honor to converse, and that almost daily, for so many years together. Heaven knows if I have heartily forgiven you this deceit. You extorted a praise which I should willingly have given, had I known you. Nothing had been more easy than to commend a patron of a long standing. The world would join with me, if the encomiums were just; and, if unjust, would excuse a grateful flatterer. But to come anonymous upon me, and force me to commend you against my interest, was not altogether so fair, give me leave to say, as it was politic; for by concealing your quality, you might clearly understand how your work succeeded, and that the general approbation was given to your merit, not your titles. Thus, like Apelles, you stood unseen behind your own Venus, and receiv'd the praises of the passing multitude; the work was commended, not the author; and I doubt not this was one of the most pleasing adventures of your life.

I have detain'd your Lordship longer than I intended in this dispute of preference betwixt the epic poem and the drama, and yet have not formally answer'd any of the arguments which are brought by Aristotle on the other side, and set in the fairest light by Dacier. But I suppose, without looking on the book, I may have touch'd on some of the objections; for, in this address to your Lordship, I design not a treatise of heroic poetry, but write in a loose epistolary way, somewhat tending to that subject, after the example of Horace, in his First Epistle of the Second Book, to Augustus Cæsar, and of that to the Pisos, which we call his Art of Poetry; in both of which he observes no method that I can trace, whatever Scaliger the Father or Heinsius may have seen, or rather think they had seen. I have taken up, laid down, and resum'd as often as I pleas'd, the same subject; and this loose proceeding I shall use thro' all this prefatory dedication. Yet all this while I have been sailing with some side wind or other toward the point I propos'd in the beginning, the greatness and excellency of an heroic poem, with some of the difficulties which attend that work. The comparison, therefore, which I made betwixt the epopee and the tragedy was not altogether a digression; for 't is concluded on all hands that they are both the masterpieces of human wit. In the mean time, I may be bold to draw this corollary from what has been already said, that the file of heroic poets is very short; all are not such who have assum'd that lofty title in ancient or modern ages, or have been so esteem'd by their partial and ignorant admirers.

There have been but one great Ilias, and one Eneis, in so many ages. The next, but the next with a long interval betwixt, was the Jerusalem: I mean not so much in distance of time, as in excellency. After these three are enter'd, some Lord Chamberlain should be appointed, some critic of authority should be set before the door, to keep out a crowd of little poets, who press for admission, and are not of quality. Mævius would be deaf'ning your Lordship's ears with his

Fortunam Priami cantabo, et nobile bellum — mere fustian, as Horace would tell you from behind, without pressing forward, and

more smoke than fire. Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto would cry out: "Make room for the Italian poets, the descendants of Virgil in a right line." Father Le Moyne, with his Saint Louis; and Scudéry with his Alaric: "for a godly king and a Gothic conqueror; and Chapelain would take it ill that his Maid should be refus'd a place with Helen and Lavinia. Spenser has a better plea for his Fairy Queen, had his action been finish'd, or had been one; and Milton, if the Devil had not been his hero, instead of Adam; if the giant had not foil'd the knight, and driven him out of his stronghold, to wander thro' the world with his lady errant; and if there had not been more machining persons than human in his poem. After these, the rest of our English poets shall not be mention'd. I have that honor for them which I ought to have; but, if they are worthies, they are not to be rank'd amongst the three whom I have nam'd, and who are establish'd in their reputation.

Before I quitted the comparison betwixt epic poetry and tragedy, I should have acquainted my judge with one advantage of the former over the latter, which I now casually remember out of the preface of Segrais before his translation of the Eneis, or out of Bossu, no matter which. The style of the heroic poem is, and ought to be, more lofty than that of the drama. The critic is certainly in the right, for the reason already urg'd; the work of tragedy is on the passions, and in dialogue; both of them abhor strong metaphors, in which the epopee delights. A poet cannot speak too plainly on the stage: for volat irrevocabile verbum; the sense is lost, if it be not taken flying; but what we read alone, we have leisure to digest. There an author may beautify his sense by the boldness of his expression, which if we understand not fully at the first, we may dwell upon it till we find the secret force and excellence. That which cures the manners by alterative physic, as I said before, must proceed by insensible degrees; but that which purges the passions must do its business all at once, or wholly fail of its effect, at least in the present operation, and without repeated doses. We must beat the iron while 't is hot, but we may polish it at leisure. Thus, my Lord, you pay the fine of my forgetfulness; and yet the merits of both causes are where they were, and un

decided, till you declare whether it be more for the benefit of mankind to have their manners in general corrected, or their pride and hard-heartedness remov'd.

I must now come closer to my present business, and not think of making more invasive wars abroad, when, like Hannibal, I am call'd back to the defense of my own country. Virgil is attack'd by many enemies; he has a whole confederacy against him; and I must endeavor to defend him as well as I am able. But their principal objections being against his moral, the duration or length of time taken up in the action of the poem, and what they have to urge against the manners of his hero, I shall omit the rest as mere cavils of grammarians; at the worst, but casual slips of a great man's pen, or inconsiderable faults of an admirable poem, which the author had not leisure to review before his death. Macrobius has answer'd what the ancients could urge against him; and some things I have lately read in Tanneguy le Fèvre, Valois, and another whom I name not, which are scarce worth answering. They begin with the moral of his poem, which I have elsewhere confess'd, and still must own, not to be so noble as that of Homer. But let both be fairly stated; and, without contradicting my first opinion, I can shew that Virgil's was as useful to the Romans of his age, as Homer's was to the Grecians of his, in what time soever he may be suppos'd to have liv'd and flourish'd. Homer's moral was to urge the necessity of union, and of a good understanding betwixt confederate states and princes engag'd in a war with a mighty monarch; as also of discipline in an army, and obedience in the several chiefs to the supreme commander of the joint forces. To inculcate this, he sets forth the ruinous effects of discord in the camp of those allies, occasion'd by the quarrel betwixt the general and one of the next in office under him. Agamemnon gives the provocation, and Achilles resents the injury. Both parties are faulty in the quarrel, and accordingly they are both punish'd: the aggressor is forc'd to sue for peace to his inferior on dishonorable conditions; the deserter refuses the satisfaction offer'd, and his obstinacy costs him his best friend. This works the natural effect of choler, and turns his rage against him by

whom he was last affronted, and most sensibly. The greater anger expels the less; but his character is still preserv'd. In the mean time, the Grecian army receives loss on loss, and is half destroy'd by a pestilence into the bargain:

Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.

As the poet, in the first part of the example, had shewn the bad effects of discord, so, after the reconcilement, he gives the good effects of unity; for Hector is slain, and then Troy must fall. By this 't is probable that Homer liv'd when the Median monarchy was grown formidable to the Grecians, and that the joint endeavors of his countrymen were little enough to preserve their common freedom from an encroaching enemy. Such was his moral, which all critics have allow'd to be more noble than that of Virgil, tho' not adapted to the times in which the Roman poet liv'd. Had Virgil flourish'd in the age of Ennius, and address'd to Scipio, he had probably taken the same moral, or some other not unlike it. For then the Romans were in as much danger from the Carthaginian commonwealth as the Grecians were from the Assyrian or Median monarchy. But we are to consider him as writing his poem in a time when the old form of government was subverted, and a new one just establish'd by Octavius Cæsar, in effect by force of arms, but seemingly by the consent of the Roman people. The commonwealth had receiv'd a deadly wound in the former civil wars betwixt Marius and Sylla. The commons, while the first prevail'd, had almost shaken off the yoke of the nobility; and Marius and Cinna, like the captains of the mob, under the specious pretense of the public good, and of doing justice on the oppressors of their liberty, reveng'd themselves, without form of law, on their private enemies. Sylla, in his turn, proscrib'd the heads of the adverse party: he too had nothing but liberty and reformation in his mouth; for the cause of religion is but a modern motive to rebellion, invented by the Christian priesthood, refining on the heathen. Sylla, to be sure, meant no more good to the Roman people than Marius before him, whatever he declar'd; but sacrific'd the lives and took the estates of all his enemies, to gratify those who brought him into power.

Such was the reformation of the government by both parties. The senate and the commons were the two bases on which it stood, and the two champions of either faction each destroy'd the foundations of the other side; so the fabric, of consequence, must fall betwixt them, and tyranny must be built upon their ruins. This comes of altering fundamental laws and constitutions; like him, who, being in good health, lodg'd himself in a physician's house, and was overpersuaded by his landlord to take physic, of which he died, for the benefit of his doctor. Stavo ben; (was written on his monument,) ma, per star meglio, sto qui.

After the death of those two usurpers, the commonwealth seem'd to recover, and held up its head for a little time. But it was all the while in a deep consumption, which is a flattering disease. Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar had found the sweets of arbitrary power; and, each being a check to the other's growth, struck up a false friendship amongst themselves, and divided the government betwixt them, which none of them was able to assume alone. These were the public-spirited men of their age; that is, patriots for their own interest. The commonwealth look'd with a florid countenance in their management, spread in bulk, and all the while was wasting in the vitals. Not to trouble your Lordship with the repetition of what you know: after the death of Crassus, Pompey found himself outwitted by Cæsar, broke with him, overpower'd him in the senate, and caus'd many unjust decrees to pass against him. Cæsar, thus injur'd, and unable to resist the faction of the nobles, which was now uppermost, (for he was a Marian,) had recourse to arms; and his cause was just against Pompey, but not against his country, whose constitution ought to have been sacred to him, and never to have been violated on the account of any private wrong. But he prevail'd; and, Heav'n declaring for him, he became a providential monarch, under the title of perpetual dictator. He being murther'd by his own son, whom I neither dare commend, nor can justly blame, (tho' Dante, in his Inferno, has put him and Cassius, and Judas Iscariot betwixt them, into the great devil's mouth,) the commonwealth popp'd up its head for the third time, under Brutus and Cassius, and then sunk for ever.

Thus the Roman people were grossly gull'd, twice or thrice over, and as often enslav'd in one century, and under the same pretense of reformation. At last the two battles of Philippi gave the decisive stroke against liberty; and, not long after, the commonwealth was turn'd into a monarchy by the conduct and good fortune of Augustus. "T is true that the despotic power could not have fallen into better hands than those of the first and second Cæsar. Your Lordship well knows what obligations Virgil had to the latter of them: he saw, beside, that the commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroy'd; the senate, new molded, grown degenerate, and either bought off, or thrusting their own necks into the yoke, out of fear of being forc'd. Yet I may safely affirm for our great author, (as men of good sense are generally honest,) that he was still of republican principles in heart.

Secretisque piis, his dantem jura Catonem.

I think I need use no other argument to justify my opinion, than that of this one line, taken from the Eighth Book of the Eneis. If he had not well studied his patron's temper, it might have ruin'd him with another prince. But Augustus was not discontented, at least that we can find, that Cato was plac'd, by his own poet, in Elysium, and there giving laws to the holy souls who deserv'd to be separated from the vulgar sort of good spirits. For his conscience could not but whisper to the arbitrary monarch, that the kings of Rome were at first elective, and govern'd not without a senate; that Romulus was no hereditary prince; and tho', after his death, he receiv'd divine honors for the good he did on earth, yet he was but a god of their own making; that the last Tarquin was expell'd justly, for overt acts of tyranny and maladministration; for such are the conditions of an elective kingdom: and I meddle not with others, being, for my own opinion, of Montaigne's principles, that an honest man ought to be contented with that form of government, and with those fundamental constitutions of it, which he receiv'd from his ancestors, and under which himself was born; tho' at the same time he confess'd freely, that if he could have chosen his place of birth, it should have been at