persuasion. When such a race as this was once risen, 'twas no longer possible to impose on mankind, by what was specious and pretending. The public would be paid in no false wit, or jingling eloquence. Where the learned critics were so well received, and philosophers themselves disdained. not to be of the number, there could not fail to arise critics of an inferior order, who would subdivide the several provinces of this empire.' 9. Know well each Ancient's proper character; * From their inattention to these particulars, many critics, and particularly the French, have been guilty of great absurdities. When Perrault impotently attempted to ridicule the first stanza of the first Olympic of Pindar, he was ignorant that the poet, in beginning with the praises of WATER, alluded to the philosophy of Thales, who taught that water was the principle of all things; and which philosophy, Empedocles, the Sicilian, * Characteristics, vol. I. 12mo. pag. 163. + Ver. 119. * Αριςον μιν ΥΔΩΡ. Sicilian, a cotemporary of Pindar, and a subject of Hiero, to whom Pindar wrote, had adopted in his beautiful poem. Homer, and the Greek tragedians, have been likewise censured: the former for protracting the Iliad after the death of Hector; and the latter, for continuing the AJAX and PHOENISSE, after the deaths of their respective heroes. But the censurers did not consider the importance of burial among the ancients; and that the action of the Iliad would have been imperfect without a description of the funeral rites of Hector and Patroclus; as the two tragedies, without those of Polynices and Eteocles : for the ancients esteemed a deprivation of sepulture to be a more severe calamity than death itself. It is observable, that this circumstance did not occur to POPE,* when he endeavoured to justify this conduct of Homer, by only saying, that, as the anger of Achilles does not die with Hector, but persecutes his very remains, the poet still keeps up to his subject, by describing the many effects of his anger, 'till it is fully satisfied; and that for this reason, the two last books * Iliad xxiii. Note I. books of the Iliad may be thought not to be excrescences, but essential to the poem. I will only add, that I do not know an author whose capital excellence suffers more from the reader's not regarding his climate and country, than the incomparable Cervantes. There is a striking propriety in the madness of Don Quixote, not frequently taken notice of; for Thuanus informs us, that MADNESS is a common disorder among the Spaniards at the latter part of life, about the age of which the knight is represented. "Sur la fin de ses jours Mendozza devint furieux, comme sont d' ordinaire les Espagnols."* 10. Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse, Although, perhaps, it may seem impossible to produce any new observations on Homer and Virgil, after so many volumes of criticism as have been spent upon them, yet the following remarks have a novelty and penetration in them that * Perroniana et Thuana, a Cologne, 1695, pag. 431. † Ver. 128. that may entertain; especially, as the little treatise from which they are taken is extremely scarce. "Quæ variæ inter se notæ atque imagines animorum, a principibus utriusque populi poetis, Homero et Virgilio, mirificè exprimuntur. Siquidem Homeri duces et reges rapacitate, libidine, atque anilibus questibus, lacrymisque puerilibus, Græcam levitatem et inconstantiam referunt. Virgiliani vero principes, ab eximio poeta, qui Romanæ severitatis fastidium, et Latinum supercilium verebatur, et ad heroum populum loquebatur, ita componuntur ad majestatem consularem, ut quamvis ab Asiatica mollitie luxuque venerint, inter Furios atque Claudios nati educatique videantur. Neque suam, ullo actu, Æneas originem prodidisset, nisi, a præfactiore aliquanto pietate, fudisset crebro copiam lacrymarum.—Qua meliorem expressione morum hac ætate, non modo Virgilius Latinorum poetarum princeps, sed quivis inflatissimus vernaculorum, Homero præfertur cum hic animos proceribus indurit suos, ille vero alienos.-Quamobrem varietas morum, qui carmine reddebantur, et hominum ad quos ea dirigebantur, inter Latinam Græcamque poesin, non inventionis tantum attulit, sed et elocu tionis tionis discrimen illud, quod præcipue inter Homerum et Virgilium deprehenditur ; cum sententias et ornamenta quæ Homerus sparserat, Virgilius, Romanorum arium causa, contraxerit; atque ad mores et ingenia retulerit eorum, qui a poesi non petebant publicam aut privatam institutionem, quam ipsi Marte suo invenerant; sed tantum delectationem."* Blackwell, in his excellent Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, has taken many observations from this valuable book, particularly in his twelfth Section. 11. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, Are nameless graces, which no methods teach, POPE in this passage seems to have remembered one of the essays of Bacon, of which he is known to have been remarkably fond. "There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strange VOL. I. K ness * J. Vincentii Gravinæ de POESI, ad S. Maffeium EPIST. Added to his treatise entitled, Della Ragion Poetica. In Napoli. 1716. pag. 239, 250. † Ver. 141. |