were united against the common enemy. The person whom they had elected their general, offers an affront to the most valiant of all the confederates. This offended prince is so far provoked, as to relinquish the union, and obstinately refuse to fight for the common cause. This misunderstanding gives the enemy such an advantage, that the allies are very near quitting their design with dishonour. He himself who made the separation, is not exempt from sharing the misfortune which he brought upon his party. For having permitted his intimate friend to succour them in a great necessity, this friend is killed by the enemy's general. Thus the contending princes, being both made wiser at their own cost, are reconciled, and unite again: then this valiant prince not only obtains the victory in the public cause, but revenges his private wrongs, by killing with his own hands the author of the death of his friend." This is the first platform of the poem, and the fiction which reduces into one important and universal action all the particulars upon which it turns. In the next place it must be rendered probable by the circumstances of times, places, and persons: some persons must be found out, already known by history or otherwise, whom we may with probability make the actors and personages of this fable. Homer has made choice of the siege of Troy, and feigned that this action happened there. To a phantom of his brain, whom he would paint valiant and choleric, he has given the name of Achilles; that of Agamemnon to his general; that of Hector to the enemy's commander, and so to the rest. Besides, he was obliged to accommodate himself to the manners, customs, and genius of the Greeks his auditors, the better to make them attend to the instruction of his poem: and to gain their approbation by praising them; so that they might the better forgive him the representation of their own faults in some of his chief personages. He admirably discharges all these duties, by making these brave princes and those victorious people all Grecians, and the fathers of those he had a mind to commend. | have been contented with this success, presses upon Hector too boldly, and, by obliging him to fight, soon discovers that it was not the true Achilles who was clad in his armour, but a hero of much inferior prowess. So that Hector kills him, and regains those advantages which the Trojans had lost, on the opinion that Achilles was reconciled. SECT. III. THE FABRE OF THE ODYSSEY. THE Odyssey was not designed, like the Iliad, for the instruction of all the states of Greece joined in one body, but for each state in particular. As a state is composed of two parts; the head which commands, and the members which obey; there are instructions requisite to both, to teach the one to govern, and the others to submit to go vernment. There are two virtues necessary to one in authority; prudence to order, and care to see his orders put in execution. The prudence of a politician is not acquired but by a long experience in all sorts of business, and by an acquaintance with all the different forms of governments and states. The care of the administration suffers not him that has the government to rely upon others, but requires his own presence: and kings, who are absent from their states, are in danger of losing thern, and give occasion to great disorders and confusion. These two points may be easily united in one and the same man. "A king forsakes his kingdom to visit the courts of several princes, where he learns the manners and customs of different nations. From hence there naturally arises a vast number of incidents, of dangers, and of adventures, very useful for a political institution. On the other side, this absence gives way to the disorders which happen in his own kingdom, and which end not till his return, whose presence only can re-establish all things." Thus the absence of a king has the same effects in this fable, as the division of the princes had in the former. But not being content, in a work of such a length, to propose only the principal point of the The subjects have scarce any need but of one moral, and to fill up the rest with useless orna- general maxim, which is, to suffer themselves to ments and foreign incidents, he extends this moral be governed, and to obey faithfully; whatever reaby all its necessary consequences. As for instance, son they may imagine against the orders they rein the subject before us, it is not enough to know ceive. It is easy to join this instruction with the that a good understanding ought always to be other, by bestowing on this wise and industrious maintained among confederates: it is likewise of prince such subjects as, in his absence, would equal importance that, if there happens any di- rather follow their own judgment than his comvision, care must be taken to keep it secret from mands; and by demonstrating the misfortunes the enemy, that their ignorance of this advantage which this disobedience draws upon them, the evil may prevent their making use of it. And in the consequences which almost infallibly attend these second place, when their concord is but counter-particular notions, which are entirely different feit and only in appearance, one should never from the general idea of him who ought to gopress the enemy too closely; for this would discover the weakness which we ought to conceal from them. The episode of Patroclus most admirably furnishes us with these two instructions. For when he appeared in the arms of Achilles, the Trojans, who took him for that prince now reconciled and united to the confederates, immediately gave ground, and quitted the advantages they had before over the Greeks. But Patroclus, who should vern. But as it was necessary that the princes in the Iliad should be choleric and quarrelsome, so it is necessary in the fable of the Odyssey that the chief person should be sage and prudent. This raises a difficulty in the fiction; because this person ought to be absent for the two reasons above mentioned, which are essential to the fable, and which constitute the principal aim of it: hut he cannot absent himself, without offending against another maxim of equal importance, viz. That a king should upon no accounts leave his country. It is true, there are sometimes such necessities as sufficiently excuse the prudence of a politician in this point. But such a necessity is a thing important enough of itself to supply matter for another poem, and this multiplication of the action would be vicious. To prevent which, in the first place, this necessity, and the departure of the hero, must be disjoined from the poem; and in the second place, the hero having been obliged to absent himself, for a reason antecedent to the action, and placed distinct from the fable, he ought not so far to embrace this opportunity of instructing himself, as to absent himself voluntarily from his own government. For, at this rate, his absence would be merely voluntary, and one might with reason lay to his charge all the disorders which might arise. Thus, in the constitution of the fable, he ought not to take for his action, and for the foundation of his poem, the departure of a prince from his own country, nor his voluntary stay in any other place; but his return, and this return retarded against his will. This is the first idea Homer gives us of it '. His hero appears at first in a desolate island, sitting upon the side of the sea, which, with tears in his eyes, he looks upon as the obstacle which had so long opposed his return, and detained him from revisiting his own dear country. And lastly, since this forced delay might more naturally and usually happen to such as make voyages by sea; Homer has judiciously made choice of a prince, whose kingdom was in an island. Let us see then how he has feigned all this action, making his hero a person in years, because years are requisite to instruct a man in prudence and policy. A prince had been obliged to forsake his native country, and to head an army of his subjects in a foreign expedition. Having gloriously performed this enterprise, he was marching home again, and conducting his subjects to his own state. But spite of all the attempts, with which the eagerness to return had inspired him, he was stopt by the way by tempests for several years, and cast upon several countries, differing from each other in manners and government. In these dangers, his companions, not always following his orders, perished through their own fault. The grandees of his country strangely abuse his absence, and raise no small disorders at home. They consume his estate, conspire to destroy his son, would con strain his queen to accept of one of them for her husband; and indulge themselves in all violence, so much the more, because they were persuaded he would never return. But at last he returns, and discovering himself only to his son and some others, who had continued firm to him, he is an eye-witness of the insolence of his enemies, punishes them according to their deserts, and restores to his island that tranquility and repose to which they had been strangers during his ab sence." As the truth, which serves for foundation to this fiction, is, that the absence of a person from his wn home, or his neglect of his own affairs, is the 1 Odyssey V. VOL XIX cause of great disorders: so the principal point of the action, and the most essential one, is the absence of the hero. This fills almost all the poem: for not only this real absence lasted several years, but even when the hero returned, he does not discover himself; and this prudent disguise, from whence he reaped so much advantage, has the same effect upon the authors of the disorders, and all' others who knew him not, as his real absence had before, so that he is absent as to them, till the very moment of their punishment. After the poet had thus composed his fable, and joined the fiction to the truth, he then makes choice of Ulysses, the king of the isle of Ithaca, to maintain the character of his chief personage, and bestowed the rest upon Telemachus, Penelope, Antinous, and others, whom he calls by what names he pleases. I shall not here insist upon the many excellent advices, which are so many parts and natural consequence of the fundamental truth; and which the poet very dexterously lays down in those fictions which are the episodes and members of the entire action. Such for instance are these advices: not to intrude one's self into the mysteries of government, which the prince keeps secret; this is represented to us by the winds shut up in a bullhide, which the miserable companions of Ulysses would needs be so foolish as to pry into: not to suffer one's self to be led away by the seeming charms of an idle and inactive life, to which the Syrens' song invited: not to suffer one's self to be sensualised by pleasures, like those who were changed into brutes, by Circe: and a great many other points of morality necessary for all sorts of people. This poem is more useful to the people than the Iliad, where the subjects suffer rather by the ill conduct of their princes, than through their own miscarriages. But in the Odyssey, it is not the fault of Ulysses that is the ruin of his subjects. This wise prince leaves untried no method to make them partakers of the benefit of his return. the poet in the Iliad says, "he sings the anger of Achilles, which had caused the death of so many Grecians;" and, on the contrary, in the Odyssey he tells his readers, "that the subjects perished through their own fault." SECT. IV. OF THE UNITY OF THE FABLE. Thus ARISTOTLE bestows great encomiums upon Homer for the simplicity of his design, beca. he has included in one single part all that happened at the siege of Troy. And to this he opposes the ignorance of some poets, who imagined that the unity of the fable or action was sufficiently preserved by the unity of the hero; and who composed their Theseids, Heraclids, and the like, wherein they only heaped up in one poem every thing that happened to one personage. He finds fault with those poets who were for reducing the unity of the fable into the unity of the hero, because one man may have performed several adventures, which it is impossible to reduce ader any one general and simple head. This redueing of all things to unity and simplicity, is what Horace likewise makes his first rule. Denique sit quodvis simplex duntaxat, & unum. According to these rules, it will be allowable to make use of several fables; or (to speak more correctly) of several incidents, which may be divided into several fables, provided they are so ordered, that the unity of the fable be not spoiled. This liberty is still greater in the epic poem, because it is of a larger extent, and ought to be entire and complete. I will explain myself more distinctly by the practice of Homer. No doubt but one might make four distinct fables out of these four following instructions. 1. Division between those of the same party exposes them entirely to their enemies. II. Conceal your weakness;, and you will be dreaded as much, as if you had none of those imperfections, of which they are ignorant. III. When your strength is only feigned, and founded only in the opinion of others; never venture so far as if your strength was real. iv. The more you agree together, the less hurt can your enemies do you. | simplicity of the fable; but it gives the fable andther qualification, altogether necessary and regular, namely, its perfection, and finishing stroke. SECT. V. OF THE ACTION OF THE EPIC POEM. THE action of a poem is the subject which the poet undertakes, proposes, and builds upon. So that the moral and the instructions which are the end of the epic poem are not the matter of it. Those the poets leave in their allegorical and figurative obscurity. They only give notice at the exordium, that they sing some action: the revenge of Achilles, the return of Ulysses, &c. Since then the action is the matter of a fable, it is evident, that whatever incidents are essential to the fable, or constitute a part of it, are necessary also to the action, and are parts of the epic matter, none of which ought to be omitted. Such, for instance, are the contention of Agamemnon and Achilles, the slaughter Hector makes in the Grecian army, the re-union of the Greek princes; and, lastly, the re-settlement and victory which was the consequence of that re-union. There are four qualifications in the epic action; It is plain, I say, that each of these particular the first is its unity, the second its integrity, the maxims might serve for the ground work of a fic-third its importance, the fourth its duration. tion, and one might make four distinct fables out of them. May not one then put all these into one single epopea? Not unless one single fable can be made out of all. The poet indeed may have so much skill as to unite all into one body, as members and parts, each of which taken asunder would be imperfect and if he joins them so, as that this conjunction shall be no hindrance at all to the unity and regular simplicity of the fable. This is what Homer has done with such success in the composition of the Iliad. 1. The division between Achilles and his allies tended to the ruin of their designs. 2. Patroclus comes to their relief in the armour of this hero, and Hector retreats. 3. But this young man, pushing the advantage which his disguise gave him too far, ventures to engage with Hector himself: but not being master of Achilles' strength (whom he only represented in outward appearance) he is killed, and by this means leaves the Grecian affairs in the same disorder, from which, in that disguise, he came to free them. 4. Achilles, provoked at the death of his friend, is reconciled, and revenges his loss by the death of Hector. These various incidents being thus united, do not make different actions and fables, but are only the uncomplete and unfinished parts of one and the same action and fable, which alone, when taken thus complexly, can be said to be complete and entire and all these maxims of the moral are easily reduced into these two parts, which, in iny opinion, cannot be separated without enervating the force of both. The two parts are these, that a right understanding is the preservation, and discord the destruction of states. Though then the poet has made use of two parts in his poems, each of which might have served for a fable, as we have observed: yet this multiplication cannot be called a vicious and irregular polymythia, contrary to the necessary unity and The unity of the epic action, as well as the unity of the fable, does not consist either in the unity of the hero, or in the unity of time: three things, I suppose, are necessary to it. The first is, to make use of no episode, but what arises from the very platform and foundation of the action, and is as it were a natural member of the body. The second is, exactly to unite these episodes and these meinbers with one another. And the third is, never to finish any episode so as it may seem to be an entire action; but to let each episode still appear in its own particular nature, as the member of a body, and as a part of itself not com plete. OF THE BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END OF THE ARISTOTLE not only says, that the epic action should be one, but adds, that it should be entire, perfect, and complete; and for this purpose, ought to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. These three parts of a whole are too generally and universally denoted by the words, beginning, middle, and end; we may interpret them more precisely, and say, that the causes and designs of an action, are the beginning: that the effects of these causes, and the difficulties that are met with in the execution of these designs, are the middle; and that the unraveling and resolution of these difficulties are the end. THE ACTION OF THE ILIAD. HOMER'S design in the Iliad, is to relate the anger and revenge of Achilles. The beginning of this action is the change of Achilles from a calm to a passionate temper. The middle is the effects of his passion, and all the illustrious deaths it is the cause of. The end of this same action in the return of Achilles to his calmness of temper again. All was quiet in the Grecian camp, when Aga- | sorts of causes, the humours, the interests, and memnon, their general, provokes Apollo against the designs of men; and these different causes of them, whom he was willing to appease afterwards an action are likewise often the causes of one anoat the cost and prejudice of Achilles, who had no ther, every man taking up those interests in which part in his fault. This then is an exact beginning: his humour engages him, and forming those deit supposes nothing before, and requires after it signs to which his humour and interest incline the effects of this auger. Achilles revenges him- him. Of all these the poet ought to inform his self, and that is an exact middle; it supposes be- readers, and render them conspicuous in his prinfore it the anger of Achilles, this revenge is the cipal personages. effect of it. Then this middle requires after it the effects of this revenge, which is the satisfaction of Achilles: for the revenge had not been complete, unless Achilles had been satisfied. By this means the poet makes his hero, after he was glutted by the mischief he had done to Agamemnon, by the death of Hector, and the honour he| did his friend, by insulting over his murderer; he makes him, I say, to be moved by the tears and misfortunes of king Priam. We see him as calm at the end of the poem, during the funeral of Hector, as he was at the beginning of the poem, whilst the plague raged among the Grecians. This end is just; since the calmness of temper Achilles re-enjoyed is only an effect of the revenge which ought to have preceded and after this nobody expects any more of his anger. Thus has Homer been very exact in the beginning, middle, and end of the action he made choice of for the subject of his Iliad. THE ACTION OF THE ODYSSEY. Homer has ingeniously begun his Odyssey with the transactions at Ithaca, during the absence of Ulysses. If he had begun with the travels of his hero, he would scarce have spoken of any one else, and a man might have read a great deal of the poem, without conceiving the least idea of Telemachus, Penelope, or her suitors, who had so great a share in the action; but in the beginning he has pitched upon, besides these personages whom he discovers, he represents Ulysses in his full length, and from the very first opening one sees the interest which the gods take in the action. The skill and care of the same poet may be seen likewise in inducing his personages in the first book of his Iliad, where he discovers the humours, the interests, and the designs of Agamemnon, Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, and several others, and even of the deities. And in his second he makes a review of the Grecian and Trojan armies; which is full evidence, that all we have here said is very necessary. OF THE MIDDLE OR INTRIGUE OF THE ACTION. each part. His design in the Odyssey was to describe the return of Ulysses from the siege of Troy, and his arrival at Ithaca. He opens his poem with the complaints of Minerva against Neptune, who op- As these causes are the beginning of the action, posed the return of this hero, and against Calypso, the opposite designs against that of the hero are who detained him in an island from Ithaca. Is the middle of it, and form that difficulty or inthis a beginning? No; doubtless, the reader trigue, which makes up the greatest part of the would know why Neptune is displeased with Ulys- poem; the solution or unraveling commences when ses, and how this prince came to be with Calypso? the reader begins to see that difficulty removed, He would know how he came from Troy thither? and the doubts cleared up. Homer has divided The poet answers his demands out of the mouth of each of his poems into two parts; and has put Ulysses himself, who relates these things, and be-particular intrigue, and the solution of it, into gins the action by the recital of his travels from the eity of Troy. It signifies little whether the begin- The first part of the Iliad is the anger of Achilning of the action be the beginning of the poem.les, who is for revenging himself upon Agamemnon The beginning of this action is that which happens by the means of Hector and the Trojans. The to Ulysses, when, upon his leaving Troy, he bends intrigue comprehends the three days' fight which his course for Ithaca. The middle comprehends happened in the absence of Achilles: and it conall the misfortunes he endured, and all the dis- sists on one side in the resistance of Agamemnon orders of his own government. The end is the reand the Grecians; and on the other in the reinstating of this hero in the peaceable possession vengeful and inexorable humour of Achilles, which of his kingdom, where he was acknowledged by would not suffer him to be reconciled. The loss his son, his wife, his father, and several others. of the Grecians, and the despair of Agamemnon, The poet was sensible he should have ended ill, prepare for a solution by the satisfaction which the had he gone no farther than the death of these incensed hero received from it. The death of Paprinces, who were the rivals and enemies of Ulys-troclus joined to the offers of Agamemnon, which ses, because the reader might have looked for some revenge, which the subjects of these princes might have taken on him who had killed their sovereigns: but this danger over, and the people van-part; since it puts Achilles upon the design of reguished and quieted, there was nothing more to be expected. The poem and the action have all their parts, and no more. But the order of the Odyssey differs from that of the Iliad, in that the poem does not begin with the beginning of the action. OF THE CAUSES AND BEGINNING of the action. THE causes of the action are also what the poem ✯ obliged to give an account of. There are three of itself had proved ineffectual, remove this difficulty, and make the unraveling of the first part. This death is likewise the beginning of the second venging himself on Hector. But the design of Heçtor is opposite to that of Achilles: this Trojan is valiant, and resolved to stand on his own defence. This valour and resolution of Hector are on his part the cause of the intrigue. All the endeavours Achilles used to meet with Hector, and be the death of him; and the contrary endeavours of the Trojan to keep out of his reach and defend himself, are the intrigue; which comprehends the battle of the last day. The unraveling begins at the death of Hector; and besides that, it contains the insulting of Achilles over his body, the honours he paid to Patroclus, and the entreaties of king Priam. The regrets of this king and the other Trojans, in the sorrowful obsequies they paid to Hector's body, are the unraveling; they justify the satisfaction of Achilles, and demonstrate his tranquillity. The first part of the Odyssey is the return of Ulysses into Ithaca. Neptune opposes it by raising tempests, and this makes the intrigue. The unraveling is the arrival of Ulysses upon his own island, where Neptune could offer him no farther injury. The second part is the re-instating this hero in his own government. The princes, that are his rivals, oppose him, and this is a fresh intrigue: the solution of it begins at their deaths, and is completed as soon as the Ithacans were appeased. These two parts in the Odyssey have not one common intrigue. The anger of Achilles forms both the intrigues in the Iliad; and it is so far the matter of this epopea, that the very beginning and end of this poem depend on the beginning and end of his anger. But let the desire Achilles had to revenge himself, and the desire Ulysses had to return to his own country, be never so near allied, yet we cannot place them under one and the same notion: for that desire of Ulysses is not a passion that begins and ends in the poem with the action : it is a natural habit: nor does the poet propose it for his subject, as he does the anger of Achilles. We have already observed what is meant by the intrigue, and the unraveling thereof; let us now say something of the manner of forming both. These two should arise naturally out of the very essence and subject of the poem, and are to be deduced from thence. Their conduct is so exact and natural, that it seems as if their action had presented them with whatever they inserted, without putting themselves to the trouble of a farther enquiry. What is more usual and natural to warriors, than anger, heat, passion, and impatience of bearing the least affront or disrespect? This is what forms the intrigue of the Iliad: and every thing we read there is nothing else but the effect of this humour and these passions, What more natural and usual obstacle to those who take voyages, than the sea, the winds, and the storms? Homer makes this the intrigue of the first part of the Odyssey: and for the second, he makes use of almost the infallible effect of the long absence of a master, whose return is quite despaired of, viz. the insolence of his servants and neighbours, the danger of his son and wife, and the sequestration of his estate. Besides, an absence of almost twenty years, and the insupportable fatigues joined to the age of which Ulysses then was, might induce him to believe that he should not be owned by those who thought him dead, and whose interest it was to have him really So. Therefore, if he had presently declared who he was, and had called himself Ulysses, they would easily have destroyed him as an impostor, before he had an opportunity to make himself known. There could be nothing more natural nor more necessary than this ingenious disguise, to which the advantages his enemies had taken of his ab- OF THE END OR UNRAVELING OF THE ACTION. If the plot or intrigue must be natural, and such as springs from the very subject, as has been already urged; then the winding-up of the plot, by a more sure claim, must have this qualification, and be a probable consequence of all that went before. As this is what the readers regard more than the rest, so should the poet be more exact in it. This is the end of the poem, and the last. impression that is to be stamped upon them. We shall find this in the Odyssey. Ulysses by a tempest is cast upon the island of the Phæacians, to whom he discovers himself, and desires they would favour his return to his own country, which was not very far distant. One cannot see any reason why the king of this island, should refuse such a reasonable request, to a hero whom he seemed to have in great esteem. The Phæacians indeed had heard him tell the story of his adventures; and in this fabulous recital consisted all the advantage that he could derive from his presence; for the art of war which they admired in him, his undauntedness under dangers, his indefatigable patience, and other virtues, were such as these islanders were not used to. All their talent lay in singing and dancing, and whatsoever was charming in a quiet life. And here we see how dextrously Homer prepares the incidents he makes use of. These people could do no less, for the account with which Ulysses had so much entertained them, than afford him a ship and a safe convoy, which was of little expense or trouble to them. forced When he arrived, his long absence, and the travels which had disfigured him, made him altogether unknown; and the danger he would have incurred, had he discovered himself too soon, him to a disguise: lastly, this disguise gave him an opportunity of surprising those young suitors, who for several years together had been accustomed to nothing but to sleep well, and fare daintily. It was from these examples that Aristotle drew this rule, that "Whatever concludes the poem, should so spring from the very constitution of the fable, as if it were a necessary, or at least a probable, consequence." SECT. VI. THE TIME OF THE ACTION. THE time of the epic action is not fixed, like that of the dramatic poem; it is much longer |