Strait as above the furface of the flood O JAMIE, JAMIE! Had you no bowels for fish? The poor man forgot that fish had feelings, I fuppofe, because he was fond of catching and eating them; whereas killing of oxen was quite out of his way. LETTER LETTER XXIII. PROPOSE in this Letter to continue and conclude`my examination of the merits of Virgil as a poet, which I began on a former occafion*. This fcrutiny has already been extended to his Bucolics and Georgics; and shall, in the laft place, be applied to his Eneid, which is confeffed by his admirers to be much inferior to his Georgics; a poem before shewn to have very little claim to applaufe. Let us examine this Eneid with regard to its plan, its characters, and its language, the grand divifions of epic poetry. If we take ever fo curfory a view of the fable of the Eneid, we fhall perceive it to be fervilely copied from Homer's two immortal poems, the Iliad and the Odyffey. The last of thefe gives the general defign of the first six books of the Eneid, the Iliad of the fix last. * Letter XVI. The The ftory of Dido, which is confidered as the only proof that Virgil gives of originality or genius in all the Eneid, even by his admirers themselves, is a moft injudicious and abfurd imitation of Homer's Circe. It is injudicious, because Dido from her courage and manly fpirit, fhewn in leading a colony from her native realm to a remote and barbarous land, and fettling and ruling that colony there, must in the book of human nature, page first, be read to have been a character very little fufceptible of tender paffions, far lefs of carrying them to fuch excess as Virgil reprefents. It is injudicious, because Dido had formerly borne the lofs of a husband without defperation; nay had thewn a spirit upon the occafion almost too heroic for a woman: there is therefore no confiftency in the character of Dido; which is certainly one of the groffeft faults any writer can be guilty of. It is injudicious, because there is likewife in this love ftory an inconfift ency in the character of Eneas, which any school-boy would be afhamed of; the character of Eneas is that of perfect piety; the PIOUS ENEAS gratifies the irregular paffions of a fond woman; and then, in return for the kindness the hath fhewn to him and his followers, he forfakes her without remorse, because the gods command him fo to do. Impious Virgil! would a Greek reader have cried; Homer only wounded the bodies of the gods, and their leffer morals; but you have ftruck at their very vitals, their effence! You have made them guilty of cruelty, of injustice, of ingratitude itself! Eneas, if he was pious, ought to have known that his gods could not be guilty of impiety; and to have disdained any imputation to the contrary, tho communicated in a vifion. This story is laftly utterly abfurd, and might have been added to our inftances of that figure of speech, because in defiance of chronology, and of propriety, Virgil brings characters together as living at the fame period, tho no lefs than 410 years afunder. What should we fay of a writer, who should now introduce into an epic poem Alexander the Great making love to Julia the daughter of Auguftus? Yet this were not fo abfurd by near a century as the amour of Eneas with Dido. WHY fhould I be condemned to follow Virgil thro all his feeble imitations of Homer, in the the plan and conduct of the Eneid? Virgil's ftorm is Homer's, tho Homer would not have begun with it. The converfations of the gods are all Homer's, Virgil meets Venus, Ulyffes Nausicaa. The story of Dido hath already been fpoken of. Homer hath games: Virgil hath games; his very fhips, which he introduces as a novelty, prove him incapable of originality, for their accidents are from Homer's races. Homer's fhips are on fire, Virgil's are on fire. If Ulyffes goes to hell, Eneas goes to hell. If Homer enumerates the forces of both parties; fo doth Virgil. The tale of Cacus is indeed a puerility; and the paffage, in which Eneas is reprefented as going his own ambassador, an abfurdity that would not have entered even into the dreams of Homer, Virgil indeed found the latter ludicrous invention, of a prince and general leaving his army when furrounded by enemies, in order to go an embassy, which the faithful Achates was certainly the fit perfon to mediate: I fay, he found this neceffary to introduce the affected and filly epifode of Nifus and Euryalus, which is wondrous pitiful. Homer defcribes the fhield of Achilles; fo doth Virgil that of Eneas. Virgil then fends Iris to Turnus, L 2 |