of fifty-oared galleys only. Gelo and Hiero built vessels of a larger size; the Greeks and Carthaginians imitated them; and in the first Punic war, the Romans put to sea some of those galleys with three or four tiers of rowers, which are still matter of astonishment to our antiquaries and mechanicians. This armament would be well adapted to efface from their recollection their rude and ancient attempts.† XXXIV. I have felt pleasure in defending a useful and interesting history; but I wished, more especially to show, by these reflections, how delicate are the discussions of criticism, where the object is not merely to lay hold of demonstration, but to compare the weight of opposing probabilities; and how much the most brilliant systems should be distrusted, since there are so few which will stand the test of a free and attentive examination. XXXV. Another consideration embarrasses criticism with a fresh difficulty. There are some sciences which consist exclusively of knowledge; their principles are speculative truths, but not practical maxims. It is much easier barely to understand a proposition, than to render it familiar, to apply it with propriety, and to use it as a guide in study, and a torch in discovery. The march of criticism is not a mere routine. Its general principles are correct but barren. The man who is acquainted only with these, is alike deceived whether he endeavours to follow or dares to leave them. A genius, full of resources, master of the rules, but master also of the reasons for the rules, often appears to neglect them. His new, bold path appears to diverge far away from them; but follow him to the goal, and you will find him an admirer, but an enlightened admirer, of those very rules, which are always the basis of his reasonings and discoveries. That all the sciences might be legum non hominum respublica, is what the people wish for from the learned. The accomplishment of this would be the perfection of their happiness; but it is but too well known that the good of the people at large, and the glory of those who enlighten or govern them, are often different, and sometimes opposing objects. The highest order of geniuses will only prosecute studies that resemble Achilles' spear; it was made for the hero's hands alone. Let us try to wield it.. XXXVI. The legislator of criticism has ordained that the poet ought to depict his heroes such as history presents them to our notice: Aut famam sequere, aut sibi convenientia finge, Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis, &c. Horace, Ars Poetica, ver. 119, et seq. Shall we, then, restrict the poet to the part of a cold chronicler ? Shall we deprive him of that great power of fiction, that contrast, * Arbuthnot's Tables, p. 225; Huet's Histoire du Commerce des Anciens, cap. 221. Another hypothesis has been offered by M. Freret. Its simplicity is pleasing, but it appears to me to be untenable. See Mémoires de l'Academie des Belles Lettres, tom. xviii. p. 102, &c. See Bentley and Sanadon on ver. 120 of Horace's Ars Poetica. that clashing of characters, those unexpected situations, in which we tremble for the man or admire the hero? Or shall we, fonder of beauty than of rules, pardon him for anachronisms rather than for tediousness? XXXVII. The object of poetry is to delight, affect, and elevate the mind. It should never be forgotten, that partially applicable laws are only intended to aid, not to hinder its operations. It has been already seen that philosophy, though bristling with demonstrations, scarcely dares to disturb preconceived ideas; how, then, can poetry hope to please except in lending itself to them? We are pleased at again beholding the heroes and events of antiquity; if they appear under another aspect, they occasion surprise, but still a surprise which is disgusted at novelties. When an author wishes to risk some alteration, he ought to reflect whether there will thence arise a striking or a slighter beauty, and whether it would be proportionate to the violation of the rules. It is only at such a price that he can redeem the propriety of his attempt. Ovid's anachronisms displease us.* In them truth is corrupted without being adorned. Of how different a character is Mezentius in Virgil! This prince perished by the arms of Ascanius; not before. But where is the reader so frigid as to recollect this for an instant, when he beholds Eneas, the minister of celestial vengeance, becoming the protector of the oppressed nations, darting the thunderbolt at the head of the guilty tyrant, but weeping over the unfortunate victim of his blows, the young and pious Lausus, worthy of a better father and a more propitious fate. Of how many beau ties does history deprive the poet! Encouraged by his success in this, he abandons it when he ought to follow. Æneas arrives in the so much longed for Italy; the Latins run to the defence of their homes; every thing threatens a bloody conflict; Dejà de traits en l'air s'élevait un nuage; Racine, Iphigenie, Act 5, scene last. Æneas' name makes the weapons fall from the enemies' hands. They fear to engage that warrior, whose glory arises from amid the ashes of his country. They run to embrace this prince, foretold by so many oracles, who brings them, from the recesses of Asia, their gods, a race of heroes, and the promise of the dominion of the world. Latinus offers him an asylum and his daughter's hand. § What a theatrical event! How worthy of the dignity of epic poetry and of * In geography and chronology very little stress should be laid on Ovid's authority, for he was grossly ignorant of both those sciences. Read his description of Medea's travels, Metamorphoses, lib. vii. v. 350-402, and lib. xiv. The first of these is full of geographical errors, which torment even the commentators themselves; and the latter swarms with chronological blunders. + Servius ad Virg. Æneid. lib. iv. v. 620; Dionysius Halicarnasseus; Antiquitates Romanæ, lib. i. Already through the darken'd air a cloud of arrows rush'd; Already from the deadly fight the first blood trickling gush'd. § Livy, lib. i. cap. 1. Virgil's pen! Compare with it, if you dare, Ilioneus' embassy, Latinus' palace, and the monarch's speech.* XXXVIII. Again I say, let the poet run the risk, provided the reader always find in his fictions, the same amount of pleasure as would have been afforded him by truth and probability. Let him not overturn the annals of a century, merely for the sake of pointing an antithesis. Ingenious invention will not find this law too severe, if it be recollected that feeling belongs to all men, that knowledge is shared only by a few, and that beauty acts more powerfully on the heart, than truth does on the intellect. Let it also be always remembered, that there are departures from truth which nothing can justify. The vivid imagination of Milton, the harmonious versification of Voltaire, would never reconcile us to a cowardly Cæsar, a virtuous Catiline, or a Henri IV. conquering the Romans. In summing up our ideas, let us say that the characters of great men ought to be held sacred; but that poets may be permitted to write their history, rather as it ought to have been than as it really was; that an entirely new creation is less revolting than essential alterations, because the latter suppose a mistake, but the former merely ignorance; and, lastly, that times may be more easily brought together than places. Some indulgence ought, undoubtedly, to be accorded to very remote ages, in which chronological systems differ scarcely at all from poetic fictions. Whoever dares condemn the episode of Dido, has more of the philosopher or less of the man in his composition than I have.† * Virg. Æneid, lib. vii. v. 148-285. † It may, however, be doubted whether this episode is at variance with correct chronology. In the plausible system of Sir Isaac Newton, Æneas and Dido are contemporaneous. (See Newton's Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Reformed, p. 32.) The Romans ought to have been better acquainted with the history of Carthage than the Greeks. The archives of Carthage were transferred to Rome (Universal Hirtory, vol. xviii. p. 111, 112). The Punic language was there very well understood (Plautus, Pænulus, Act v. scene 1). The Romans freely consulted the Africans on the subject of their origin (Sallust in Bello Jugurthino, cap. 17; Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxii. ; Mémoires de l'Académie des Belles Lettres, tom. iv. p. 464). Besides (and this is sufficient to exculpate our poet), Virgil adopts a chronology more conformable to Newton's calculations than to those of Eratosthenes. Perhaps it will be as well to exhibit the proofs of this opinion. Seven years scarcely sufficed for Juno's wrath and the wanderings of Æneas; this I learn from Dido: Nam te jam septima portat, Virg. Æneid, lib. iv. v. 755. A few months after he arrived on the banks of the Tiber. There the god of the river appeared to him, predicted for him fresh combats, but gave him hopes of a glorious termination to his woes. The oracle was confirmed by a prodigy: a sow lying on the bank showed, by her thirty little pigs around her, the number of years that were to elapse before young Ascanius should lay the foundations of Alba. Jamque tibi, ne vana putes hæc fingere somnum, Triginta capitum fœtus enixa, jacebit ; Alba, solo recubans, albi circum ubera nati. XXXIX. The more deeply the sciences are investigated, the more clearly is it seen that they are all connected. They resemble a vast forest, every tree of which appears, at first sight, to be isolated and separate, but on digging beneath the surface, their roots are found to be all interlaced with each other. There is no branch of study so insignificant and unimportant as not sometimes to afford facts, disclosures, or objections to the most sublime and exalted sciences. I like to dwell on the reflection, that it is highly necessary to show different professions and nations their mutual wants. Point out to the English the advantages they may derive from the French; acquaint a natural philosopher with the assistance he may obtain from literature; and then self-love will perform the office of sound reasoning. Thus philosophy is extended, and human nature benefited. Before, men were rivals; now, they are brethren. Ex quo ter denis urbem redeuntibus annis Virg. Æneid, lib. viii. v. 42. For three hundred years was this town the seat of empire and the cradle of the Romans. Hic jam ter centum totos regnabitur annos Virg. Æneid, lib. i. v. 272. These are the expressions put by Virgil into Jupiter's mouth. Our chronologists care but little about making the Lord of Thunder keep his word. They make Tullus Hostilius destroy the town of Alba nearly five hundred years after its foundation, and about a century after the building of Rome (See Helvicus' Chronological Tables, from B.C. 656, &c.) But on Newton's system every thing is plain. The taking of Troy being placed in the year 904 B.C., and followed by an interval of 337 years, brings us to the year 567 B.C., sixty years after the institution of the Palilia, an epoch which admirably coincides with the reign of Romulus' third successor (Newton's Chronology, p. 52, &c.) An ancient tradition preserved by Plutarch (in the life of Numa) exactly agrees with this. Numa's books were disinterred in the year B.C. 181, four hundred years after the death of that king and the accession of Hostilius. So that Numa died in the year 581 B.C. How ingenious is it in the poet, so to place the moment of Æneas' arrival at Carthage, as to answer critical objections in the only manner permitted by the rapidity of his course and the grandeur of his subject. He makes it apparent that, upon his own hypothesis, the meeting of Dido and Æneas is not in any degree a poetic licence. Virgil is by no means the only one who has called in question the common chronology of the Latin kings. I even suspect that he took his ideas from the works of his contemporary, Trogus Pompeius. That historian, the rival of Livy and Sallust (Flavius Vopiscus, in Proemate Aureliani), gave to the kingdom of Alba the same duration of three hundred years. Had not his Universal History been lost, we should, probably, have seen the details and proofs of this opinion. As it is, we must be contented with his abbreviator's scanty exposition, " Albam longam condidit, quæ trecentis annis caput regni fuit" (Justin, lib. xliii. cap. 1). Livy himself, that father of Roman history, who sometimes shows so strong an attachment to the received chronology (lib. i. cap. 18, et alibi passim), but who generally glides over the tender places in a manner that shows that his good faith and ignorance seem to distrust his guides in those remote ages, is entirely silent on this point; though nothing would seem more natural than to mark the length of the reign of each Latin king whose name he records (see lib. i. cap. 2, 3). Nothing could be more necessary than at least to fix the interval between Æneas and Romulus, which he does not do. This is not all. "The destruction of Alba," he says, took place four hundred years after its foundation" (lib. i. cap. 29). Subtracting a hundred years for the reigns of Romulus and Numa and half that of Hostilius, there remains three, instead of four hundred years, as given us in Eratosthenes' chronology. Livy, then, very nearly agrees with Virgil, and the slight difference between them rather strengthens than invalidates their agreement. I foresee an objection, but a very insignificant one. To answer it, would be to create a monster only for the sake of combating it; so I will now put an end to this digression, already too long. XL. All sciences are founded upon reasoning and facts. Without the latter, our studies would be chimerical; deprived of the former, they would be blind. Thus it is that the different branches of literature are united; and all the various ramifications of the study of nature, which under an apparent meanness often hide a real magnificence, are connected together in a similar manner. If natural history has its Buffons, it has also (to speak in the language of the times) its erudites. The knowledge of antiquity offers to both classes a rich harvest of facts adapted to unfold the secrets of nature, or at least to prevent its disciples from mistaking a cloud for a goddess. What light has not been afforded to the physician by the description of the plague that ravaged Athens? I can admire, as well as he, the strong, majestic style of Thucydides,* the energy and ingenuity of Lucretius; but he goes much farther, and in the afflictions of Athens studies those of his fellow-countrymen. I am aware that the ancients did not pay much attention to natural science; that, being destitute of instruments and unconnected in their operations, they collected merely a small number of observations mingled with uncertainty, injured by time, and scattered promiscuously up and down through a great number of volumes.‡ But ought poverty to occasion carelessness? The activity of the human mind is spurred on by difficulties. Necessity the mother of indolence, would be a strange association indeed. XLI. The most zealous partizans of the moderns will not, I think, deny that the ancients possessed opportunities of which we are destitute. I shudder at the recollection of the sanguinary spectacles exhibited by the Romans. The sage Cicero detested and despised them.§ Solitude and silence were, in his opinion, preferable to these splendid displays of magnificence, horror, and perverted taste.|| Indeed, to be delighted with slaughter, is worthy only of a band of savages. Palaces for the purpose of beast fights, could be built only among a people who preferred theatrical decorations to elegant poetry, and stage trickery to dramatic incidents.T But such were the Romans; their virtues, vices, and even their weaknesses were all closely connected with their ruling passion-the love of their country. Still these exhibitions, so horrid to a philosopher, so frivolous to a man of taste, must be very valuable in the eyes of a naturalist. Think of the world exhausted to furnish these games, the treasures * Thucydides, lib. i. + Lucretius de Rerum Naturâ, lib. viii. v. 1136, &c. M. Freret supposed that the philosophical observations made by the ancients were more exact than is generally supposed. Whoever is acquainted with M. Freret's genius and learning, will acknowledge the weight of his authority. See Mémoires de l'Académie des Belles Lettres, tom. xviii. p. 97. § Cicero envied the lot of his friend Marius, who was in the country during Pompey's splendid games. He speaks very slightingly of the other shows, but particularly remarks on the wild beast fights. Reliquæ sunt venationes," says he, "binæ per dies quinque; magnificè, nemo negat, sed quæ potest homini esse polito delectatio, cum aut homo imbecillus à valentissimâ bestiâ laniatur, aut præclara bestia venabulo transverberatur." Cicero ad Familiares, lib. vii. epist. 1. ¶ Horace, Epistles, lib. ii. epist. 1, v. 181, &c. |