23d December, 1763.

An INQUIRY whether a Catalogue of the ARMIES sent into the Field is an essential part of an EPIC POEM.

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

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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 he

roes.

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 sentiments, the boldest, and perhaps the most extravagant. Mezentius was the law ful and hereditary sovereign of a country, of which he rendered himself the tyrant. His

subjects

subjects hurled him from the throne, and thenceforth regard themselves as free, without once considering the rights of his unfortunate and virtuous

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. 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 practice. Augustus must have read both with terror; and had Virgil continued to recite the eighth book of the Æneid, 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

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 Æneas 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 the city of Care.

Messapus,

Messapus, king of the Falisci, is a Tuscan. Fescennium, Soracte, the Ciminian forest, are among the most celebrated places of Etruria. This Tuscan prince, would he have forsaken the whole body of his nation united by the crimes of Mezentius? Is it to be expected that he should be found in the camp of the enemy; or that he would have brought, as auxiliaries to Turnus, a people sunk in effeminacy, and who knew war only by their detestation of it? The poet would have coloured so extraordinary a measure, by assuming for it some probable motive. Would he have said that all Etruria was in insurrection against Mezentius? 3. Aventinus, of Mount Aventine, the son of Hercules, makes a striking figure in the catalogue; but his part is inconsistent with that of Evander. They reigned at the same time, and over the same place. It will be said that one of those princes occupied the Palatine, while the other reigned over the Aventine Mount. This is impossible; for Evander shews the Aventine to Æneas, which was a barren rock,* situate in his little kingdom, which had no other boundaries than the Tiber, and the territory of the Rutuli.f

I believe that Virgil would also have corrected some faults, which it is painful to see in his enumeration of the Tuscan warriors. He well knew that when a poet speaks of a science, he ought to do it with precision; and he could not forget that accurate geography is not incompatible with poetry.

Virgil, Æneid. viii. 190.

+ Idem, 473.

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