r to be
acquainted with any of the parties in this poem, except the Man and the
Woman, the characters and speeches of a dozen or two of angels and of as
many devils, are as much above my reach as my entertainment. Keep this
secret for me: for if it should be known, I should be abused by every
tasteless pedant, and every solid divine in England.

'Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds
much stronger against Tasso's 'Gierusalemme': it is true he has very fine
and glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle,
then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor 'concetti', and
absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and the Parrot; extravagancies
unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better have become Ariosto,
who professes 'le coglionerie'.

I have never read the "Lusiade of Camoens," except in prose translation,
consequently I have never read it at all, so shall say nothing of it; but
the Henriade is all sense from the beginning to the end, often adorned by
the justest and liveliest reflections, the most beautiful descriptions,
the noblest images, and the sublimest sentiments; not to mention the
harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly exceeds all the
French poets: should you insist upon an exception in favor of Racine, I
must insist, on my part, that he at least equals him. What hero ever
interested more than Henry the Fourth; who, according to the rules of
epic poetry, carries on one great and long action, and succeeds in it at
last? What descriptions ever excited more horror than those, first of the
Massacre, and then of the Famine at Paris? Was love ever painted with
more truth and 'morbidezza' than in the ninth book? Not better, in my
mind, even in the fourth of Virgil. Upon the whole, with all your
classical rigor, if you will but suppose St. Louis a god, a devil, or a
witch, and that he appears in person, and not in a dream, the Henriade
will be an epic poem, according to the strictest statute laws of the
'epopee'; but in my court of equity it is one as it is.

I could expatiate as much upon all his different works, but that I should
exceed the bounds of a letter and run into a dissertation. How delightful
is his history of that northern brute, the King of Sweden, for I cannot
call him a man; and I should be sorry to have him pass for a hero, out of
regard to those true heroes, such as Julius Caesar, Titus, Trajan, and
the present King o