point of dignity, to the more interesting objects which had before been presented to us, in the destruction of Troy, the intrigue with Dido, and the descent into hell. And in those Italian wars, there is, perhaps, a more material fault still, in the conduct of the story. The reader, as Voltaire has observed, is tempted to take part with Turnus against Æneas. Turnus, a brave young prince, in love with Lavinia, his near relation, is destined for her by general consent, and highly favoured by her mother. Lavinia herself discovers no reluctance to the match: when there arrives a stranger, a fugitive from a distant region, who had never seen her, and who, founding a claim to an establishment in Italy upon oracles and prophecies, embroils the country in war, kills the lover of Lavinia, and proves the occasion of her mother's death. Such a plan is not fortunately laid, for disposing us to be favourable to the hero of the poem; and the defect might have been easily remedied, by the poet's making Eneas, instead of distressing Lavinia, deliver her from the persecution of some rival who was odious to her, and to the whole country.

But, notwithstanding these defects, which it was necessary to remark, Virgil possesses beauties which have justly drawn the admiration of ages, and which, to this day, hold the balance in equilibrium between his fame and that of Homer. The principal and distinguishing excellency of Virgil, and which, in my opinion, he possesses beyond all poets, is tenderness. Nature had endowed him with exquisite sensibility; he felt every af fecting circumstance in the scenes he describes; and, by a single stroke, he knows how to reach the heart. This, in an epic poem, is the merit next to sublimity; and puts it in an author's power to render his composition extremely interesting to all readers.

The chief beauty of this kind in the Iliad, is, the interview of Hector with Andromache. But in the Æneid, there are many such. The second book is one of the greatest master-pieces that ever was executed by any hand; and Virgil seems to have put forth there the whole strength of his genius, as the subject afforded a variety of scenes, both of the awful and tender kind. The images of horror, presented by a city burnt and sacked in the night, are finely mixed with pathetic and affecting incidents. Nothing, in any poet, is more beautifully described than the death of old Priam; and the family-pieces of the Eneid, Anchises, and Creusa, are as tender as can be conceived. In many passages of the Æneid, the same pathetic spirit shines; and they

have been always the favourite passages in that work. The fourth book, for instance, relating the unhappy passion and death of Dido, has been always most justly admired, and abounds with beauties of the highest kind. The interview of Eneas with Andromache and Helenus, in the third book; the episodes of Pallas and Evander, of Nisus and Euryalus, of Lausus and Mezentius, in the Italian wars, are all striking instances of the poet's power of raising the tender emotions. For we must observe,

that though the Æneid be an unequal poem, and, in some places, languid, yet there are beauties scattered through it all; and not a few, even in the last six books. The best and most finished books, upon the whole, are, the first, the second, the fourth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the twelfth.

Virgil's battles are far inferior to Homer's in point of fire and sublimity: but there is one important episode, the descent into hell, in which he has outdone Homer in the Odyssey, by many degrees. There is nothing in all antiquity equal, in its kind, to the sixth book of the Æneid. The scenery, and the objects, are great and striking; and fill the mind with that solemn awe, which was to be expected from a view of the invisible world. There runs through the whole description a certain philosophical sublime; which Virgil's Platonic genius, and the enlarged ideas of the Augustan age, enabled him to support with a degree of majesty, far beyond what the rude ideas of Homer's age suffered him to attain. With regard to the sweetness and beauty of Virgil's numbers, throughout his whole works, they are so well known, that it were needless to enlarge in the praise of them.

Upon the whole, as to the comparative merit of these two great princes of epic poetry, Homer and Virgil; the former must, undoubtedly, be admitted to be the greater genius; the latter, to be the more correct writer. Homer was an original in his art, and discovers both the beauties and the defects which are to be expected in an original author, compared with those who succeed him; more boldness, more nature and ease, more sublimity and force; but greater irregularities and negligences in composition. Virgil has, all along, kept his eye upon Homer; in many places, he has not so much imitated, as he has literally translated him. The description of the storm, for instance, in the first Æneid, and Æneas's speech upon that occasion, are translations from the fifth book of the Odyssey; not to mention almost all the similes of Virgil, which are no other than copies

of those of Homer.
must, beyond doubt, be ascribed to Homer.

The pre-eminence in invention, therefore,
As to the pre

eminence in judgment, though many critics are disposed to give it to Virgil, yet, in my opinion, it hangs doubtful. In Homer, we discern all the Greek vivacity; in Virgil, all the Roman stateliness. Homer's imagination is by much the most rich and copious; Virgil's, the most chaste and correct. The strength of the former lies in his power of warming the fancy; that of the latter, in his power of touching the heart. Homer's style is more simple and animated; Virgil's more elegant and uniform. The first has, on many occasions, a sublimity to which the latter never attains; but the latter, in return, never sinks below a certain degree of epic dignity, which cannot so clearly he pronounced of the former. Not, however, to detract from the admiration due to both these great poets, most of Homer's defects may reasonably be imputed, not to his genius, but to the manners of the age in which he lived; and for the feeble passages of the Eneid, this excuse ought to be admitted, that the Eneid was left an unfinished work.

LECTURE XLIV.

LUCAN'S PHARSALIA-TASSO'S JERUSALEM-CAMOENS' LUSIADFENELON'S TELEMACHUS → VOLTAIRE'S HENRIADE - MILTON'S PARADISE LOST.

AFTER Homer and Virgil, the next great epic poet of ancient times, who presents himself, is Lucan. He is a poet who deserves our attention on account of a very peculiar mixture of great beauties with great faults. Though his Pharsalia discover too little invention, and be conducted in too historical a manner, to be accounted a perfectly regular epic poem, yet it were the mere squeamishness of criticism, to exclude it from the epic class. The boundaries, as I formerly remarked, are far from being ascertained by any such precise limit, that we must refuse the epic name to a poem, which treats of great and heroic adventures, because it is not exactly conformable to the plans of Homer and Virgil. The subject of the Pharsalia carries, undoubtedly, all the epic grandeur and dignity; neither does it want unity of object, viz. the triumph of Cæsar over the Roman liberty. As it stands at present, it is in

deed, brought to no proper close. But either time has deprived us of the last books, or it has been left by the author an incomplete work.

Though Lucan's subject be abundantly heroic, yet I cannot reckon him happy in the choice of it. It has two defects. The one is, that civil wars, especially when as fierce and cruel as those of the Romans, present too many shocking objects to be fit for epic poetry, and give odious and disgusting views of human nature. Gallant and honourable achievements furnish a more proper theme for the epic muse. But Lucan's genius, it must be confessed, seems to delight in savage scenes; he dwells upon them too much; and not content with those which his subject naturally furnished, he goes out of his way to introduce a long episode of Marius and Sylla's proscriptions, which abounds with all the forms of atrocious cruelty.

The other defect of Lucan's subject is, its being too near the times in which he lived. This is a circumstance, as I observed in a former lecture, always unfortunate for a poet; as it deprives him of the assistance of fiction and machinery; and thereby renders his work less splendid and amusing. Lucan has submitted to this disadvantage of his subject; and in doing so, has acted with more propriety, than if he had made an unseasonable attempt to embellish it with machinery; for the fables of the gods would have made a very unnatural mixture with the exploits of Cæsar and Pompey; and instead of raising, would have diminished the dignity of such recent and well-known facts.

With regard to characters, Lucan draws them with spirit and with force. But, though Pompey be his professed hero, he does not succeed in interesting us much in his favour. Pompey is not made to possess any high distinction, either for magnanimity in sentiment, or bravery in action; but, on the contrary, is always eclipsed by the superior abilities of Cæsar. Cato is, in truth, Lucan's favourite character, and wherever he introduces him, he appears to rise above himself. Some of the noblest and most conspicuous passages in the work, are such as relate to Cato; either speeches put into his mouth, or descriptions of his behaviour. His speech in particular to Labienus, who urged him to inquire at the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, concerning the issue of the war (book ix. 564,) deserves to be remarked, as equal, for moral sublimity, to any thing that is to be found in all antiquity.

In the conduct of the story, our author has attached himself

too much to chronological order. This renders the thread of his narration broken and interrupted, and makes him hurry us too often from place to place. He is too digressive also; frequently turning aside from his subject, to give us, sometimes, geographical descriptions of a country; sometimes, philosophical disquisitions concerning natural objects; as, concerning the African serpents in the ninth book, and the sources of the Nile in the tenth.

There are in the Pharsalia, several very poetical and spirited descriptions. But the author's chief strength does not lie either in narration or description. His narration is often dry and harsh his descriptions are often over-wrought, and employed too upon disagreeable objects. His principal merit consists in his sentiments, which are generally noble and striking, and expressed in that glowing and ardent manner, which peculiarly distinguishes him. Lucan is the most philosophical, and the most public-spirited poet of all antiquity. He was the nephew

of the famous Seneca, the philosopher; was himself a stoic; and the spirit of that philosophy breathes throughout his poem. We must observe, too, that he is the only ancient epic poet whom the subject of his poem really and deeply interested. Lucan recounted no fiction. He was a Roman, and had felt all the direful effects of the Roman civil wars, and of that severe despotism which succeeded the loss of liberty. His high and bold spirit made him enter deeply into this subject, and kindle, on many occasions, into the most real warmth. Hence, he abounds in exclamations and apostrophes, which are almost always well-timed, and supported with a vivacity and fire that do him no small honour.

But it is the fate of this poet, that his beauties can never be mentioned, without their suggesting his blemishes also. As his principal excellency is a lively and glowing genius, which appears sometimes in his descriptions, and very often in his sentiments, his great defect in both is, want of moderation. He carries every thing to an extreme. He knows not where to stop. From an effort to aggrandize his objects, he becomes tumid and unnatural and it frequently happens, that where the second line of one of his descriptions is sublime, the third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfectly bombast. Lucan lived in an age, when the schools of the declaimers had begun to corrupt the eloquence and taste of Rome. He was not free from the infection; and too often, instead of showing the genius of the poet, betrays the spirit of the declaimer.