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 Æneis, 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 Moine, 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 undecided, 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, .ad 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