Discourses on Satire Epic Poetry | Page 9

is close.
What he borrows from the ancients, he repays with usury of his own in
coin as good and almost as universally valuable: for, setting prejudice
and partiality apart, though he is our enemy, the stamp of a Louis, the

patron of all arts, is not much inferior to the medal of an Augustus
Caesar. Let this be said without entering into the interests of factions
and parties, and relating only to the bounty of that king to men of
learning and merit--a praise so just that even we, who are his enemies,
cannot refuse it to him.
Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration of
epic poetry, I have confessed that no man hitherto has reached or so
much as approached to the excellences of Homer or of Virgil; I must
farther add that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil, knew not
how to design after him, though he had the model in his eye; that Lucan
is wanting both in design and subject, and is besides too full of heat and
affectation; that amongst the moderns, Ariosto neither designed justly
nor observed any unity of action, or compass of time, or moderation in
the vastness of his draught: his style is luxurious without majesty or
decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and
possibility. Tasso, whose design was regular, and who observed the
roles of unity in time and place more closely than Virgil, yet was not so
happy in his action: he confesses himself to have been too lyrical--that
is, to have written beneath the dignity of heroic verse--in his episodes
of Sophronia, Erminia, and Armida. His story is not so pleasing as
Ariosto's; he is too flatulent sometimes, and sometimes too dry; many
times unequal, and almost always forced; and, besides, is full of
conceits, points of epigram, and witticisms; all which are not only
below the dignity of heroic verse, but contrary to its nature: Virgil and
Homer have not one of them. And those who are guilty of so boyish an
ambition in so grave a subject are so far from being considered as
heroic poets that they ought to be turned down from Homer to the
"Anthologia," from Virgil to Martial and Owen's Epigrams, and from
Spenser to Flecknoe--that is, from the top to the bottom of all poetry.
But to return to Tasso: he borrows from the invention of Boiardo, and
in his alteration of his poem, which is infinitely for the worse, imitates
Homer so very servilely that (for example) he gives the King of
Jerusalem fifty sons, only because Homer had bestowed the like
number on King Priam; he kills the youngest in the same manner; and
has provided his hero with a Patroclus, under another name, only to
bring him back to the wars when his friend was killed. The French have

performed nothing in this kind which is not far below those two Italians,
and subject to a thousand more reflections, without examining their "St.
Louis," their "Pucelle," or their "Alaric." The English have only to
boast of Spenser and Milton, who neither of them wanted either genius
or learning to have been perfect poets; and yet both of them are liable
to many censures. For there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser;
he aims at the accomplishment of no one action; he raises up a hero for
every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some
particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal, without
subordination or preference: every one is most valiant in his own
legend: only we must do him that justice to observe that magnanimity,
which is the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole
poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of
every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth, and he
attributed to each of them that virtue which he thought was most
conspicuous in them--an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned
not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem in the six
remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece; but could not
have been perfect, because the model was not true. But Prince Arthur,
or his chief patron Sir Philip Sidney, whom he intended to make happy
by the marriage of his Gloriana, dying before him, deprived the poet
both of means and spirit to accomplish his design. For the rest, his
obsolete language and the ill choice of his stanza are faults but of the
second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still
intelligible--at least, after a little practice; and for the last, he is the
more to be admired that, labouring under such a
difficulty, his verses
are