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and by these rules it must be decided, wheany poem can derive a dignity from the use of it.

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But, before we can bring to the test of credibility this allegorical metamorphosis of the heathen deities, we must know precisely what it means, and no better guide to this. knowledge presents himself than the celebrated Bossu, the great admirer and champion of the ancients. His definition of epic poetry is, that it is a discourse artfully invented to form the manners by instructions, which are disguised under the allegory of some one important action, related in verse, in a probable, diverting and surprising manner. Agreeably to this definition (in which the critics have thought proper generally to acquiesce) he defends the machinery of the ancient epic poem against those, whom its apparent absurdity offends, by saying, that with a view of conveying instruction by one great moral, which formed the groundwork of their poem, which the whole action. served to illustrate, and which was conveyed

by allegory, they meant that all their gods and goddesses should be considered as allegorical, or as representative of some mental or physical quality or defect, to which all their actions are supposed to relate, and with a reference to which they are all to be considered.

You will please not to smile at this fanciful statement of the ancient epic, because it would disturb the sober view, that we are to take of it. There are, in this statement, two distinct objects offered to consideration : 1st, whether the ancients ever did intend to make their poem to conduce to one great moral; and 2dly, whether they designed to support that moral by a continued allegory, and that for this purpose all their celestial machinery, as composed of mere ideal personages, was introduced.

To admit the first, viz. that in the epic poems of the ancients one great moral is intended and supported through the whole, would not materially weaken the argument of my essay. But this position is open to strong

strong objections. It may be said, that the end of poetry is not so much to serve as a vehicle of moral sentiment, as to please by addressing itself to the imagination and passions, in the conduct of which many morals may be inculcated, and many of equal worth and dignity. With this idea the epics of Homer and Virgil well accord, much better, I think, than with the notion of one single leading moral through each of their poems. assign to each of these poems a variety of morals, each claiming precedency with such a show of probability, as to leave it doubtful on which side the balance inclined. etry must instruct, if it be any tolerable delineation of human character and passions; for every character to a reflecting mind is either a positive or a negative lesson. It is said, that the great moral of the Iliad is, to teach the Greeks the advantages of union. The Greeks, in the time of Homer, had no formidable common enemy, as in a later period, when the Persian power threatened the G 4 general

It would not be difficult to

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general ruin of Greece; and, therefore, what circumstance suggested to Homer the importance of this moral, so as to found his poem upon it, is rather difficult to say. The critics, however, have pronounced this to be the moral, to which the whole Iliad is adapted; and such an implicit faith is rendered to their sentence, that it would be considered as a degree of scepticism to dispute it. It must be acknowledged, that this moral is fairly to be collected from the Iliad; but whether Homer designed it, or no, and fashioned his poem to this purpose, is very uncertain.—It is probable, that he took the tradition of the siege of Troy and the characters of its principal actors, as they were committed to him, and formed therefrom a popular tale, enriched with the embellishments of poetry. It is no wonder, that discord entered into the history, and that Homer exhibited it in his poem, because he found it in the history; as discord could hardly fail to be the issue of a confederacy, formed by rude, undisciplined, and inde

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pendent chieftains. May it not with equal probability be supposed, that impiety and irreverence to the gods in the person of Agamemnon, the general of the whole confederate army, when he rejected the modest prayer of Chryses, the priest of Apollo, and treated him with indignity and insult, was the great crime, which the poet meant to reprobate, and in the sequel of the poem to exhibit the long train of calamities, which were the punishment of this crime? From this impiety of Agamemnon sprang the discord of the chiefs, and all the evils, which followed. To a people, composed of a multitude of independent states, piety to the gods might be supposed to be a more important moral than concord. Homer, indeed, in the opening of his poem assigns the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, as the proximate source of the pula anysa μυ 'Ayatos, which constitute the history of his poem; but the irreverence of Agamemnon to Apollo, in the person of his priest, to which he immediately passes, is the primary

cause.

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