machining persons than human in his poem.After these the rest of our English poets shall not be mentioned. I have that honour for them which I ought to have; but if they are worthies, they are not to be ranked amongst the three whom I have named, and who are established in their reputation.

Before I quitted the comparison betwixt epick 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 Æneis, or out of Bossu,--no matter which. "The style of the heroick poem is and ought to be more lofty than that of the drama." The critick is certainly in the right, for the reason already urged; 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 physick, 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 with

out repeated doses. We must beat the iron while it 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 undecided, till you declare whether it be more for the benefit of mankind to have their manners in general corrected, or their pride and hardheartedness removed.

I must now come closer to my present business, and not think of making more invasive wars abroad, when, like Hannibal, I am called back to the defence of my own country. Virgil is attacked by many enemies; he has a whole confederacy against him, and I must endeavour 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 answered what the ancients could urge against him; and some things I have lately read in Tannegui le Fevrè, Valois, and another whom I name not, which are scarce worth answering. They begin with the moral of his poem, which I have elsewhere confessed, 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 so ever he may be supposed to have lived and flourished. Homer's moral was, to urge the necessity of union, and of a good understanding betwixt confederate states and princes engaged 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, occasioned 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 punished the aggressor is forced to sue for peace to his inferior, on dishonourable conditions; the deserter refuses the satisfaction offered, 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 preserved. In the mean time the Grecian army receives loss on loss, and is half destroyed 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, it is probable, that Homer lived when the Median monarchy was grown formidable to the Grecians; and that the joint endeavours of his countrymen were little enough to preserve their common freedom from an encroaching enemy. Such was his moral; which all criticks have allowed to be more noble than that of Virgil, though not adapted to the times in which the Roman poet lived. Had Virgil flourished in the age of Ennius, and addressed 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 established by Octavius Cæsar; in effect, by force of arms, but seemingly by the consent of the Roman people. The commonwealth had received a deadly wound in the former civil wars betwixt Marius and Sylla. The commons, while the first prevailed, had almost shaken off the yoke of the nobility; and Marius and Cinna, like the captains of the mob, under the specious pretence of the publick good, and of doing justice on the oppressors of their liberty, revenged themselves, without form of law, on their private enemies. Sylla, in his turn, proscribed 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 declared; but sacrificed 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 destroyed the foundations of the other side: so the fabrick of consequence must fall betwixt them, and tyranny must be built upon their ruins. THIS COMES OF

ALTERING FUNDAMENTAL LAWS AND CONSTITU

TIONS. Like him, who being in good health, lodged himself in a physician's house, and was over-persuaded by his landlord to take physick, 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 seemed 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

6 i, e. I was well, but endeavouring to be better, I am here.