Virgil's crime he had invested Dido with grandeur; he might have made Amata lovely; and, as he had excited our admiration for the Tyrian queen, he might have drawn our tears for the daughter of Latinus. It must be obvious to every reader that Homer's women are infinitely preferable to Virgil's; but it is not a little remarkab e, that the women of Ossian are equal in grace, and superior in delicacy and feminine tenderness to both. The icicles on Dian's temple are not more pure, more chaste than they. This seems to the Reminiscent to afford a strong, but, in his opinion, a solitary argument, in favour of the authenticity of the poems which describe them.* The "Paradise Lost" did not admit the discrimination of character, or excitement of feeling, which the Iliad contains; and in this respect is necessarily its inferior. But the ability with which Milton struggled with this overwhelming difficulty is prodigious, and may justify our asserting the equality of the poets, while we admit the inequality of the poems. Perhaps neither the Latin nor the English epic contains any insulated passage which can be compared with the description of the Mourner at the Scæan gate, or with,-perhaps the very noblest effort of the epic muse,-Priam's begging the body of Hector to these only, Milton's descriptions of Satan in * The magic of exquisite poetry is, perhaps, nowhere more conspicuous than in the description of Dido's silent and indignant scorn of Æneas in the Stygian regions, and her return to Sichæus. Stript of the charm, with which it is invested by the poet, the scene is disgustingly ludicrous; but, as it is related by Virgil, it rises to sublimity. If the whole adventure on the Tyrian shore had been told by an ordinary poet, the widower and the widow would always have been in view, and been comic. + One fancied scene, however, of common life--the prison inter his first book, and some scenes in which he introduces Adam and Eve, are inferior. Yet, there is no part of Homer which we read with more pleasure than the second, fourth, and sixth books of Virgil. The story of Nisus and Euryalus is exquisite; but is it not exceeded by the nightadventures of Ulysses and Diomedes, in which we hear every step, and feel every breath? Homer's language is uniformly idiomatic : Is not Virgil's occasionally too highly polished? Does it not sometimes cease to be Latin? Has not the poem of Lucretius, have not the hexameters of Catullus, and the epistles of Horace, more of the true raciness of the Latian soil ? The Reminiscent recollects the little real admiration with which, when he was at Douay, he read the Olynthiacs and Philippics of Demosthenes, and the preference which he then gave to Cicero; but when afterward, he perused them with Dr. Harwood, and, by attending the debates in parliament, became acquainted with the nature and effects of public speaking, he perceived the excellence of Demosthenes. As an orator, Cicero always appeared to the Reminiscent to be entitled to the full measure, which he has received, of universal admiration ;--he trembles to add, that he thinks his philosophical works defective in order and precision, and that they contain a superfluity of words. His Letters are beyond praise it is observable that an epistle to Lentulus, in view between Jeannie Deans and Effie, in the Heart of Mid Lothian -has been described with such exquisite pathos, that, if it were lawful to weigh heroes and ordinary mortals in the same scales, it might be compared with this wonder of Homer's muse, and not suffer by the comparison. No judge of good writing ever approached the pages which contain it, without a fear of the author's failure; none has perused them without astonishment at the felicity of the execution. : * the first book of his familiar correspondence, contains the ablest delineation of ratting, and the most artful apology for it, which have appeared. No letters, ancient or modern, are comparable with Cicero's. Raçine always carried in his pocket a volume of those to Atticus.-Lord Bolingbroke's may be thought to approach nearest to them. From the specimens which we have seen, it may be confidently expected, that the letters of Mr. Burke will be found eminently beautiful and interesting.† Of the works of the ancients, which time has intercepted from us, it is difficult to fix on that, of which we should most lament the loss. Mr. Fox mentioned to the Reminiscent that he principally regretted the lost tragedies of Euripides, and the comedies of Menander: some think the Decades of Livy, and the portions of Tacitus, which have not reached us, a greater loss. If the Reminiscent could obtain any of the opera deperdita by a wish, it would be the Memoirs of Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus at Palibothra, the capital of the Prasii, or the country watered by the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna. What a store of ancient Indian learning might we not expect them to unfold! Classical literature naturally leads to a consideration of modern poetry. The Reminiscent's almost complete ignorance of the Italian language, does not allow him to speak of the poets of that country. He was once fami * Epist. ad Familiares, 1. 1. ep. 7. + The perfect diction of Madame de Sévigné must be lost, in a great measure, upon foreigners: they will be more sensible of the clear nervous style of Madame de Mainténon, and the unpretending wisdom and good sense of her observations, addressed, in general, to persons in the most exalted ranks, but conveying lessons of virtue and prudence to persons of every condition. Do not these letters place her at the head of the female writers of France? liar with those of France: but his total neglect of them, with very few exceptions, during the forty last years of his life, has driven them from his recollection. He remembers, however, his admiration of the perfect style of Boileau, without a useless epithet, or an imperfect word, and with very little of that inversion, which is the great defect of French poetry ;-he also recollects his admiration of the poems of Jean Baptiste Rousseau, who appeared to him to possess more of the true poetic character than,-(unless we should except Raçine),--has been bestowed on any of his countrymen. His works are little known in this country; a selection of them,--(for, unfortunately, several are highly objectionable),--was made by father Porée :-an English reader will be delighted with them; he will find that, in several, the French bard has mounted the winged steed, and soared with no middle flight.* It was not till" the subtle thief of youth" had stolen all his early years, that the Reminiscent was really sensible of the wonders and charms with which the pages of the bard of the Avon abound, and which, notwithstanding his countless deformities and absurdities, place him in the *Every reader of taste must admire the following stanza; the French bard abounds with strains of equal beauty. "Montrez nous, guerrièrs magnanimes! 3* PUBLIC LIBRARY British-the Reminiscent believes,-in every theatre, without a rival or a second. Shakspeare, perhaps, is the only poet who has put into the mouth of an actor a speech which the person, whom that actor was intended to represent, might have spoken on the occasion to which it is assigned. Brutus and Anthony might have uttered the very speeches, Hamlet might have pronounced the very soliloquy, Macbeth and his Lady might have held the same dialogue, and Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor might have had the same conversations as Shakspeare has ascribed to them. This is his peculiar praise; and, (at least with the single exception of Homer,) no other poet has so many real touches of simple or sublime nature.* On a late perusal of some of the best works of Dryden and Pope, the Reminiscent thought he perceived a great superiority in the former he remembers when he thought the contrary. Age, he believes, makes us fastidious in poetry, and feel much more than we do in youth, the truth of the known observation of Horace,- Mediocribus esse poetis, Non Di, non homines, non concessere Columnæ. *The circumstances, which he invents, are sometimes so perfectly suited to the scene which he describes, and the actors in it, that we feel it quite certain, and would even wager, that they really took place. Thus, when Casca relates to Cassius, the offer of the crown to Cæsar, and his unwilling rejection of it, Cassius asks, “Did Cicero say any thing?" "Aye," Casca answers, "he spoke Greek." "To what effect?" asks Cassius. "Nay," replied Casca, "an I tell you that, I'll ne'er look you i' the face again; but those that understood him, smiled at one another and shook their heads." Now, supposing Cicero to have been present at the scene, is it not quite certain that Cicero did talk Greek; and that all who understood him, did smile and did shake their heads? |