KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTEZ, N Heroic Poem, truly fuch, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the foul of a man is capable to perform. The defign of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example; it is conveyed in verse, that it may delight while it inftructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The leaft and moft trivial episodes, or under-actions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either neceffary, or convenient, to carry on the main defign. Either fo neceffary, that without them the poem must be imperfect; or fo convenient, that no others can be imagined more fuitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be filled with rubbish, which is of a perishable kind, deftructive to the ftrength; but with brick or ftone, though though of less pieces, yet of the fame nature, and fitted to the crannies. Even the leaft portions of them must be of the epic kind; all things must be grave, majestical, and sublime: nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling novels, which Ariftotle and others have inferted in their poems: by which the reader is misled into another fort of pleasure, oppofite to that which is defigned in an epic poem. One raises the foul, and hardens it to virtue; the other foftens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the compleating of his work; which he is driving on, labouring and haftening in every line: the other flackens his pace, diverts him from his way, and locks him up like a knight-errant in an enchanted castle, when he fhould be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Boffu has well obferved, was ambitious of trying his ftrength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus. Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but changed the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occafions from the fubject; though, to confefs the truth, they were both ornamental, or, at best, convenient parts of it, rather than of neceffity arifing from it. Statius, who, through his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon, Tydeus, or fome other of his feven champions (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the two brothers, brothers, whofe exequies the next fucceffor had leisure to perform, when the fiege was raised, and in the interval betwixt the poet's first action and his fecond, went out of his way, as it were on propenfe malice, to commit a fault: for he took his opportunity to kill a royal infant, by the means of a ferpent (that author of all evil), to make way for thofe funeral honours which he intended for him. Now if this innocent had been of any relation to his Thebais; if he had either furthered or hindered the taking of the town, the poet might have found fome forry excufe at least for the detaining the reader from the promifed fiege. On thefe terms, this Capaneus of a poct engaged his two immortal predeceffors, and his fuccefs was anfwerable to his enterprize. If this œconomy must be obferved in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, feem to be detached from the body, and almost independent of it, what foul, though fent into the world with great advantages of nature, cultivated with the liberal arts and fciences, converfant with hiftories of the dead, and enriched with obfervations on the living, can be fufficient to inform the whole body of fo great a work? I touch here but tranfiently, without any ftrict method, on some few of those many rules of imitating nature, which Ariftotle drew from Homer's Iliads and Odyffes, and which he fitted to the drama; furnishing himself alfo with obfervations from the practice of the theatre, when it flourished under Æfchylus, Eurypides, and Sophocles. For the original of the VOL. V. P ftage : ftage was from the epic poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it: what at first was told artfully, was, in procefs of time, reprefented gracefully to the fight and hearing. Those episodes of Homer, which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action: out of his limbs they formed their bodies: what he had contracted they enlarged out of one Hercules were made infinity of pygmies; yet all endued with human fouls: for from him their great creator, they have each of them the ❝ divinæ particulum auræ." They flowed from him at first, and are at last resolved into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their measure and fymmetry was owing to him. His one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the proportions of the drama: if he finished his orb within the year, it fufficed to teach them, that their action being lefs, and being alfo less diverfified with incidents, their orb, of confequence, must be circumfcribed in a lefs compass, which they reduced within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day: fo that as he taught them to amplify what he had shortened, by the fame rule applied the contrary way, he taught them to fhorten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life: an epic poem is the draught at length. Here, my Lord, I must contract alfo; for, before I was aware, I was almost running into a long digreffion, to prove that there is no fuch abfolute neceffity that the time of a stage-action fhould fo ftrictly be confined to twenty-four hours, as never to exceed them, for which Ariftotle Ariftotle contends, and the Grecian stage has practised. Some longer space, on fome occafions, I think may be allowed, especially for the English theatre, which requires more variety of incidents than the French. Corneille himself, after long practice, was inclined to think, that the time allotted by the ancients was too fhort to raise and finish a great action: and better a mechanic rule were ftretched or broken, than a great beauty were omitted. To raise, and afterwards to calm the paffions, to purge the foul from pride, by the examples of human miseries, which befal the greateft; in few words, to expel arrogance, and introduce compaffion, are the great effects of tragedy. Great, I must confefs, if they were altogether as true as they are pompous. But are habits to be introduced at three hours warning? Are radical diseases fo fuddenly removed? A mountebank may promise such a cure, but a fkilful phyfician will not undertake it. An epic poem is not fo much in hafte: it works leifurely; the changes which it makes are flow; but the cure is likely to be more perfect. The effects of tragedy, as I faid, are too violent to be lafting. If it be answered, that for this reafon tragedies are often to be feen, and the dofe to be repeated; this is tacitly to confefs, that there is more virtue in one heroic poem, than in many tragedies. A man is humbled one day, and his pride returns the next. Chymical medicines are observed to relieve oftener than to cure for it is the nature of fpirits to make swift impreffions, but not deep. Galenical decoctions, to which I may properly compare |