Alcestis of Euripides, we see Death, brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no precedents can justify absurdity. Milton's allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin is indeed the mother of death, and may be allowed to be the portress of hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That Sin and Death should have shewn the way to hell, might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, because the difficulty of Satan's passage is described as real ́and sensible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative."

The two Latin Epics (the Æneid of Virgil and the Pharsalia of Lucan) are advantageously known to the English reader, by the translations of Dryden and of Rowe. The Æneid is an obvious imitation of Homer. It relates the Wanderings of Æneas as the Odyssey does those of Ulysses; and much of the former is merely a translation of the latter. Homer is the original and his style is more simple and sublime. Virgil might almost be termed a plagiarist; but he has adorned his thefts, and polished the diamonds which he stole from the mine.

The pictures of Virgil are more elegantly

His de

He lands

finished, and his versification is more harmonious; but the bold enthusiasm of Lucan electrifies his readers by frequent bursts of the sublime. Virgil was a courtier, but Lucan was a republican; and the moral character of their heroes corresponded with the opposing principles of sycophancy and independence. The stern virtue of Cato is represented as braving the decrees of Fate; but Æneas is a miscreant who commits every crime, under the real, or pretended, belief that such is the will of heaven. sertion of Dido is cruel and deceitful. in Italy, and trembles at the sight of danger. Jupiter decides the combat in his favour, and Turnus, wounded and disarmed supplicates for life; but the pious hero, deaf to every entreaty, plunges a dagger into the heart of his victim, in revenge for the death of Pallas, on whose funeral pile, he had already sacrificed, in cold blood, his prisoners of war. "If," says the Abbe Cartaut, "Eneas was truly devout, he was a dangerous madman, whose frightful superstition induced him to commit the most horrible excesses. If he was only a hypocrite who shielded his actions under the ægis of the gods, he was a monster. However this may be, the enthusiasm of Virgil appears to have been excited by the smoke of the incense, amidst the grimaces of the temple,

while that of Lucan must have been lighted at the flash of the thunder-bolt. Such are the effects of servility. Virgil, become a courtier, was fitted only to burn incense at the shrine of power; for

Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away."

311

CHAPTER XIX.

HIGHER SPECIES OF POETRY-continued.

The adjective Epic is derived from the Greek epo, I relate, and when used as a substantive, signifies literally nothing more than a tale. It is, however, a tale concerning a hero or heroes, and hence that sort of writing has also the denomination of Heroic. Epopea, or Epopoeia, is merely a learned name for Epic poem, being a compound from epo and poieo, I make, that is, invent. Such are the literal significations, but custom, as we have shown, has given a more determinate meaning to the words An Epic Poem:' which by the regularity of its construction, its extent, episodes, machinery, and the complicacy of means all directed so as to produce one momentous result, has come at last to occupy a splendid palace, instead of the humble roof of the simple heroic Ballad in which it was first reared.

A Drama, on the other hand (Greek drao, I

act,) is a poem of the Epic kind; but so compressed and adapted that the whole tale, instead of requiring to be read or recited at intervals, by an individual, may be exhibited as actually passing before our eyes. Every actor in the poem has his representative on the stage, who speaks the language of the poet as if it were his own; and every action is literally performed (or rather imitated) as if it were of natural occurrence, and as if there had been no poet to prompt the persons of the drama.

History is a record of transactions that are supposed to have existed; and, in the early times, was often written in verse. Those records were, then, intermingled with traditional tales of miraculous events and supernatural agents, which we, of a less credulous age, have termed superstitions. Such superstitions, however, constituted the creed of our ancestors; and in newmodelling the accounts of the olden time, it costs the modern historian no little trouble to separate the false from the true; or, in other words, the portions which he disbelieves from those to which he grants his faith. Nevertheless, it is of no consequence to the present race of mankind, whether the tales that are dignified by the name of History are real, or imaginary. Milton compared them to the narratives of the battles of the