time of Tacitus. When that historian takes it for a truth certain and incontrovertible, that the Germans were indigenous, and that the purity of their blood was never corrupted by any foreign admixture, there is some difficulty in conceiving how he could be ignorant that a great Scythian colony had conquered Scandinavia one hundred and fifty years before his own times. I would rather suppose with Dalin, that Odin's migration happened in the reign of Trajan. That conqueror's design must have been greatly facilitated by the weakness of the Cimbri, and the slavery of the Senones, sufficiently indicated in Tacitus. This era tends to show that the poverty of human invention, as well as the policy of prophets, always obliges them to enrich new religions at the expense of the old, and to mould them conformably to the national character. A religion inculcating the fear of death would have met with a very unfavourable reception among the Celts. The genius of Odin's superstition and morals prevailed among the Cimbri, who were long anterior to that legislator; and among the Celtiberians, who probably never heard of his name. As to the country from which the author of the Edda came, I would adopt the common tradition which fixes his ancient seat in the neighbourhood of the Tanais and the Palus Mæotis. I am not frightened at the greatness of the distance. Great journeys are accomplished by savage nations; and their scanty geographical knowledge is often extended by accident. A Scythian of the tribe of Asæ, taken prisoner by his neighbours, may have passed through successive masters to the shore of the Baltic. At his return, he would describe the advantageous situation of the country, and the facility with which its conquest might be effected. Odin (we must suppose him a man of genius) would perceive, that the nations bordering on the empire were less ignorant, and more warlike, than those removed at a greater distance; and that the leader of a small tribe, who wished to found a great kingdom, must march against the northern extremity. The intermediate nations would gladly deliver themselves from a dangerous invader by granting to him a free passage; a favour which, in an age little skilled in the art of fortification, is of small importance; and which the heroical sincerity of barbarians seldom permitted them to abuse. The courses of the great rivers must have much facilitated his journey. He would sail up the Tanais and the Volga, to descend with the stream of the Dina to the neighbourhood of Riga. The sources of those rivers are not widely distant from each other; and when the land was less elevated by seventy-eight feet than it is at present, there may have been communications, now lost, between neighbouring seas. Odin established his worship in Scandinavia. Thence it spread among the northern nations of Germany called Saxons, by whom it was carried into England in the fifth century. In those countries only, I think, we ought to look for it: Mr. Mallet's system supposes it too exteasive. I do not find in the Edda that Odin the conqueror of the North, and the priest of a god also named Odin, wished ever to pass himself for a divinity; nor that the Scandinavians ever worshipped deified men; a worship much rarer than is commonly imagined.

Odin the conqueror boasted of being a magician; a pretension altogether inconsistent with that of his divinity.

16th. I did not wish to proceed with Mr. Mallet's large history, which followed his introduction; this would have diverted me too much from my present pursuits; but I could not deny myself the pleasure of reading a detached part, relative to the conversion of Scandinavia, in order to see the downfall of Odin's superstition, of which I had beheld the establishment, and examined the principles. This subject is treated dryly, and without taste. An important question occurs, why the inhabitants of the North should have so obstinately rejected Christianity, while their countrymen established in the empire embraced it with the utmost readiness. Mr. Mallet will answer, that the latter consisted only of unsteady young men who had left their native country before they were thoroughly confirmed in the prejudices of their ancestors. Yet he well knows that several of those migrations were made by communities at large; and that the young men were accompanied by men far advanced in years, whose hearts and principles were no longer susceptible of change; by women whose weakness and timidity rendered them peculiarly prone to superstition; as well as by bards, priests, and prophetesses, who combated the new worship by every weapon that their custom, fear, or honour could supply. This explanation, therefore, will not answer the purpose. Neither do I think it probable that the leaders of the barbarians embraced Christianity through policy, and ventured to provoke the conquerors, in order to ingratiate themselves with the conquered, whom they despised. Besides, those leaders of the Vandals and Burgundians embraced Arianism. Policy would not have taught them to adopt the sentiments of the smallest portion of their subjects. I believe the true reason for the difference arose merely from this circumstance, that the one class left their country, whereas the other remained at home. I speak not here of the Saxons, who knew Christianity only by baptism and punishment; and whose love of liberty rejected that religion as a badge of the imperious laws imposed by Charlemagne. I have in view only those nations among whom Christianity appeared not as a conqueror or persecutor, but as a supplicant. All religions depend in some degree on local circumstances. The least superstitious Christian would feel more devotion on Mount Calvary than in London. Among learned nations reading and reflection, and among the nations of the East a natural warmth of fancy, supply, in some measure, the real presence of objects, and give them in all times and in all places a mental existence. But mental representations are too subtile to make an impression on the phlegmatic insensibility of Scandinavians; and a missionary must have combated their faith with great disadvantage in their native country. The temple of Upsal in which they had purchased the favour of Odin by thousands of human victims; those rocks which the ancient Scaldi had covered with Runic characters, the more venerable because unintelligible: those mounts which religion had raised to the glory of their ancestors, and by which they hoped that their own would be perpetuated :-all these objects kept

possession of their minds, because they were continually striking their senses. But the nations of Germany, when transported into southern countries, lost hold of the firmest foundation of their faith. Temples, altars, tombs, and consecrated places were on the side of a new religion, which naturally insinuated itself into the void of cre dulity left craving in their minds. They first wondered, and then believed. The changes produced by a new climate in their modes of life, and in the education of their children, tended to estrange them from a superstition better adapted to the banks of the Elbe than to those of the Tagus, and to forests than to cities. A barbarian, who had tasted the wine of Falernum, would not feel much desire of intoxicating himself with hydromel at Odin's festival; and when he panted under an African sun, a hell open to the north would not greatly excite his terror. His understanding would be improved, and his heart softened, in his perpetual intercourse with the vanquished; and every cause would concur to make him quit a mode of worship founded on ignorance and barbarism, and to substitute in its stead a religion connected with science which he began to relish, and inculcating the virtues of humanity which he began to value. He was besides surrounded by a nation of missionaries, whose zeal was animated by a personal interest in the conversion of their mas ters, that those fierce tigers might be confined in the chains of religion. Bishops, priests, and women, who mingled caresses with controversy, were sedulous to convert the princes and great men, whose example was easily followed by that of the careless multitude. Such means of conversion are far more efficacious than those with which a few Benedictines are furnished, who travel into the woods of Sweden to preach patience, humility, and faith to numerous bands of pirates. These warriors either massacred the priests, or spared them through mere contempt. An apparent exception to this theory tends really to confirm it: the Saxons, who settled in England, were not converted till one hundred and fifty years after their establishment in that country. This happened, because they drove the ancient inhabitants into Wales; because the climate of England was not widely different from their own; and because this kingdom was the least polished of all the Roman provinces. But the same causes operated on the Saxons, though more slowly; and when they began to enjoy tranquillity at home, they readily embraced Christianity as taught them by the Roman missionaries.

A Protestant would also observe, that the Christianity of the tenth century is of far more difficult digestion than that of the fifth. It certainly is so to a reasoning man.

559

A COLLECTION OF MY REMARKS, AND DETACHED PIECES, ON DIFFERENT SUBJECTS.

NO. I.

December 23rd, 1763.-ALL epic poets seem to consider an exact catalogue of the armies which they send into the field, and of the heroes by whom they are commanded, as a necessary and essential part of their poems. A commentator is obliged to justify this practice; but to what reader did it ever give pleasure? Such catalogues destroy the interest and retard the progress of the action, when our attention to it is most alive. All the beauties of detail, and all the ornaments of poetry, scarcely suffice to amuse our weariness; a weariness produced by such enumerations even in historical works, but which are pardoned in them, because necessary. In history, the victory commonly depends on the number and quality of the troops; but in epic poetry, it is always decided by the protection of the gods and the marvellous valour of the hero. Achilles is invincible; his myrmidons are scarcely known. Homer has indeed given a catalogue; yet this perhaps was not right in Homer, or right only in him. Ought his particular example to make a general law? In that case, the subject of every epic poem ought to be a siege, and the poem ought to conclude before either the place is taken or the siege raised. Poets themselves afford a convincing proof that they were sensible of following custom rather than reason, by treating those catalogues merely as episodes, and by introducing into them heroes, who are rarely those of history; and who, after shining a moment in those reviews, totally disappear, in order to make room for characters more essential to the action. An epic poet stands not in need of so dull and vulgar an expedient for making the reader acquainted with his true heroes.

A critic may condemn those poetical catalogues; but woe to the critic, if he is insensible to all the beauties by which that of Virgil is adorned; the brightness of his colouring, the number and variety of his pictures, and that sweet and well-sustained harmony, which always charms the ear and the soul. The army of the Tuscans is not inferior to that of Turnus; being also composed of the flower of many warlike nations assembled under the standards of heroes and demigods. But it enjoys over the Rutuli an advantage which it was natural should belong to the allies of Æneas; having justice and the gods on its side. Every reader, while he detests the crimes of Mezentius, must applaud the exertions of a free and generous people, who have ventured to dethrone their tyrant, and are eager to punish him. I have always wondered that the courtier of Augustus should have introduced an episode which would have been more properly treated by the friend of Brutus. Every line breathes republican timents, the boldest, and perhaps the most extrava

gant. Mézentius was the lawful and hereditary sovereign of a country, of which he rendered himself the tyrant. His subjects hurled him from the throne, and thenceforth regard themselves as free, without once considering the rights of his unfortunate and vir tuous son. Mezentius finds an asylum among the Rutuli; but his furious subjects implore the assistance of their allies. All Etruria in arms determine to tear their king from the hands of his defenders, in order to subject him to punishment; and this fury of the Tuscans is approved by the gods and the poet :

Ergo omnis furiis surrexit Etruria justis,

Regem ad supplicium præsenti Marte reposcunt.

VIRGIL, Eneid viii. 494.

If I wished to establish it as a general and unlimited principle, that subjects have a right to punish the crimes of their sovereigns, I would prefer this example, which admits of neither modification nor restriction. Among the ancients themselves, it appears to me to have been as singular in theory as the death of Agis was in prac tice. Augustus must have read both with terror; and had Virgil continued to recite the eighth book of the Eneid, I suspect that he would not have been so well rewarded for the story of Mezentius as he was for the panegyric of Marcellus.

My surprise increases when I consider that the story of Mezentius is entirely Virgil's invention; that it entered not into the general plan of his poem; and that he himself had not thought of it when he composed his seventh book. It appears that Virgil, after forming a general idea of his design, trusted to his genius for supplying him with the means of carrying it into execution; and that entering into the character and situation of his hero, he prepared for him difficulties to encounter, without knowing exactly how he would surmount them: in one word, when he landed Eneas on the banks of the Tiber, that he knew not the whole series of events which should lead to the death of Turnus. I say the whole series of events; for the part of Mezentius depends on the introduction of Evander and Pallas, and the death of Pallas is intimately connected with that of Turnus. This manner of writing is not destitute of its advantages. It is applauded in Richardson, who has only imitated Virgil. The truth and boldness by which it is characterised far surpass the timid perplexity of a writer, who, while he forms his plot, is at the same time considering how he shall unravel it. Virgil's example is surely more worthy of imitation than that of Chapelain, who wrote the whole of his Pucelle in prose before he translated it into poetry. I am sensible that had Virgil lived to revise his work, he would have given to it uniformity and unity; and carefully effaced all those marks by which an attentive reader may perceive in it detached parts, not originally written the one for the other. Of these take the following examples.

1. Mezentius appears at the head of the warriors who follow Turnus, but appears as a king completely master of his dominions. He arrives from the Tyrrhenian coasts with numerous troops, and his son, the valiant Lausus, follows him with a thousand warriors from