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But there is a higher instance in view. The humanity and easy elegance of the two Latin

poets, just mentioned, joined to an unaffected naivetè of expression, were, perhaps, most proper to describe the petulancies, the caprices, the softnesses of this passion in common life. To paint its tragic and more awful distresses, to melt the soul into all the sympathies of sorrow, is the peculiar character of Virgil's poetry. His talents were, indeed, universal. But, I think, we may give it for the characteristic of his muse, that she was, beyond all others, possessed of a sovereign power of touching the tender passions. Euripides' self, whose genius was most resembling to his, of all the ancients, holds, perhaps, but the second place in this praise.

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A poet, thus accomplished, would omit, we may be sure, no occasion of yielding to his natural bias of recording the distresses of love. He discovered his talent, as well as inclination, very early, in the Bucolics; and even, where one should least expect it, in his Georgics. But the fairest opportunity offered in his great design of the Aeneis. Here, one should suppose, the whole bent of his genius would exert itself. And we are not disappointed. I speak not of that succession of sentiments, reflexions,

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and expostulations, which flow, as in a continued stream of grief, from the first discovery of her heart to her sister, to her last frantic and inflamed resentments. These belong to the former article of internal movements: and need not be considered. My concern at present, is with those visible, external indications, the sensible marks and signatures (as expressed in look, air, and action) of this tormenting frenzy. The history of these, as related in the narrative part of Dido's adventure, would comprehend every natural situation of a person, under love's distractions. And it were no unpleasing amusement to follow and contemplate her, in a series of pictures, from her first attitude, of hanging on the mouth of Aeneas, through all the gradual excesses of her rage, to the concluding fatal act of desperation. But they are deeply imprinted on every schoolboy's memory. It need only be observed, that they are such, as almost necessarily spring up from the circumstances of her case, and which every reader, on first view, as agreeing to his own notices and observations, pronounées natural.

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It may seem sufficient, therefore, to ascribe these pourtraitures of passion, so suitable to all our expectations, and in drawing which the

genius of the great poet so eminently excelled, to the original hand and design of Virgil. But the perverse humour of criticism, occasioned by this inveterate prejudice " of taking all resemblances for thefts," will allow no such thing. Before it will decide of this matter, every ancient writer, who but incidentally touches a love-adventure, must be sought out and brought in evidence against him. And finding that Homer hath his Calypso, and Euripides and Apollonius their Medea, it adjudges the entire episode to be stolen by piece-meal, and patched up out of their writings. I have a learned critic now before me, who roundly asserts, "that, but for the "Argonautics, there had been no fourth book "of the Aeneism." Some traits of resemblance there are. It could not be otherwise. But all the use a candid reader, who comes to his author with the true spirit of a critic, will make of them, is to shew, "how justly the poet copies nature, which had suggested similar "representations to his predecessors,"

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What is here concluded of the softer, cannot but hold more strongly of the boisterous

m JEREMIAS HOELSLINUS, Prolegom. ad. Apollon. Bhodium.

passions. These do not shelter, and conceal themselves within the man. It is particularly,

of their nature, to stand forth, and shew themselves in outward actions, Of the more illustrious effects of the ruder passions the chief are contentions and wars-regum & po pulorum aestus; which, by reason of the grandeur of the subject, and its important consequences, so fitted to strike the thought, and fire the affections of the reader, poetry, L mean the highest and sublimest species of it, chuses principally to describe. In the conduct of such description, some difference will arise from the instruments in use for annoyance of the enemy, and, in general, the state of art military; but the actuating passions of rage, ambition, emulation, thirst of honour, revenge, &c. are invariably the same, and are constantly evidenced by the same external marks or characters. The shocks of armies, single combats; the chances and singularities of either; wounds, deaths, stratagems, and the other attendants on battle, which furnish out the state and magnificence of the epic. muse, are, all of them, fixed, determinate objects; which leave their impressions on the mind of the poet, in as distinct and uniform characters, as the great constituent parts of the material universe itself. He hath only to look

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abroad into life and action for the model of all such representations. On which account we can rarely be certain, that the picture is not from nature, though an exact resemblance give to superficial and unthinking observers the suspicion of art.

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The same reasoning extends to all the phaenomena of human life, which are the effects or consequences of strong affections, and which set mankind before us in gestures, looks, or actions, declarative of the inward suggestions of the heart. It can seldom be affirmed with confidence, in such cases, on the score of any similarity, that one representation imitates another; since an ordinary attention to the same common original, sufficiently accounts for both. The reader, if he sees fit, will apply these remarks to the battles, games, travels, &c. of a great poet; the supposed sterility of whose genius hath been chargedwith serving itself pretty freely of the copious, inexhausted stores of Homer. In sum;

Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas,

Gaudia, &c.

Whatever be the actuating passion, it cannot but be thought unfair to suspect the artist of

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