Inftruct me; (for thou knoweft, thou from the first Say firft, (for heaven hides nothing from thy view, It is very obfervable that all the three poets concur in requesting the mufe to reveal to them the cause and firft movement of the action. This is the jet of the invocation, the fecret which chiefly concerned the mufe to lay open. For the poet is supposed to know the agents and matters of fact, and the only mystery to him is the spring, cause or motive of the action. An epic poem, though in fome fort hif toric, yet in this it materially differs from history, that instead of relating facts, events, wars, in a regular order and chronological feries from beginning to end, it plunges at once into the middle, or haftens to the latter part of the ftory; opening with the cause, or some eminent difplay of the action. Thus Homer begins not with the origin of the Trojan war, the affociation of the Greeks, M Greeks, their march up to the walls of Troy, but with the quarrel, which happened between Achilles and Agamemnon during the latter end of the fiege; and relates other circumftances incidentally in the progrefs of the poem. So likewife Virgil exhibits the trial and fortitude of Æneas, not from his egrefs out of Troy, but in the ftorm, which drove him off from the wished for fhore of Italy upon the hated coaft of Africa, and makes Æneas himself relate his paffage through the Archipelago in his way to Italy, I. 378, to Venus, and the fall of Troy to Dido, in books fecond and third. In this agreeable manner is sketched out to us the history of Troy, of Rome and of Carthage. Milton also, instead of beginning like Mofes with the Creation, opens his poem with the fall of Angels prior to the Creation, and with the infernal council, how to regain their loft happiness in heaven, or to alleviate their mifery in the world newly created. Ovid in the fifteenth book of his Metamorphofes introduces Numa hearing Pythagoras at Crotona, though Pythagoras is fuppofed to be born above one hundred years after Numa, and Virgil carries Æneas to Carthage into the prefence and love of Queen Dido, though it is agreed, that Dido lived long after Æneas, and that Rome was built long after Carthage. These anachronisms are no blemishes or abfurdities, but real beauties, in a philosophical and epic poem. Ovid, to encourage the favourable idea the Romans had of Numa's profound wifdom, artfully makes him contemporary with Pythagoras, and Virgil ufes the fame art to cultivate the opinion and belief, that the Roman nation was connate with the Carthaginian. It is easy to fee that Homer was a man of refined understanding and extensive science, equal, if not fuperior to the wisest of the Egyptian, Chaldean and Grecian fages. Not to repeat trite remarks on his skill in the arts of war and of anatomy, fhown by difpofing the army in regular order of battle, and by wounding heroes to death in the vital parts, as also in the art of healing fuch wounds, as were not mortal, by fovereign medicines, it may be more useful as well as perhaps more novel to obferve on his knowledge of moral philofophy. His intimate acquaintance with the human heart, and with the nature of the paffions, evidently appears from their movement and conduct throughout the Iliad. He knew very well, that anger for instance, any more than love and the other paffions, is not evil in itself, but only in its abuse, when it is followed by hatred, proceeds from bad motives, or is carried into excess by ill language and revengeful deeds. Displeasure and anger muft exist in the Deity himself against fin, as well as the approbation and love of righteousness, unlefs with Epicurus we fuppofe him to fit at reft, unconcerned about his creation. Every fenfe, every appetite and every paffion is in itself good and virtuous, when kept kept within certain bounds; they become vicious and evil only by being placed on wrong objects, or by being carried to excefs on right. The Author of the Creation hath planted in our nature the feelings of Resentment and Anger against wrong; of Pride and Ambition to preferve us from meanness and inactivity, by stirring up in us emulation and industry. Hatred and Fear bid us flee from evil; Love and that ardent paffion, called Jealousy, urge us to purfue what is amiable and good, yet not beyond due measure; for good itfelf, even virtues, by stepping beyond fixed limits, become vices: Humility defcends to meanness and fervility; Meeknefs diffolves into cowardice and indolence; Pride and Ambition fwell into fuperciliousness, self-sufficiency, illmanners and cruelty, by raising in us too high thoughts and imaginations; Anger and Hatred, unreftrained, proceed to malice and revenge, but in its first and proper impulfes anger is a quick fenfe of wrong, a just resentment of injury-To be angry with another without, or for a trifling, cause, M 3 |