es, and episodes of all kinds, than are to be
found even in those poems whose schemes are of the utmost latitude and
irregularity. The action is hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and
its whole duration employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of
so warm a genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as
well as a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both
Homer's poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his.
The other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it
so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of
action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor is
it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his
invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of story.
If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up their
forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus, Virgil
has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them) destroys
the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses visit the
shades, the AEneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent after him. If he
be detained from his return by the allurements of Calypso, so is AEneas by
Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be absent from the army on the
score of a quarrel through half the poem, Rinaldo must absent himself just
as long on the like account. If he gives his hero a suit of celestial
armour, Virgil and Tasso make the same present to theirs. Virgil has not
only observed this close imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the
way, supplied the want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon,
and the taking of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word
from Pisander, as the loves of Dido and AEneas are taken from those of
Medea and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.

To proceed to the allegorical fable--If we reflect upon those innumerable
knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy which Homer is
generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories, what a new and
ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us! How fertile will
that imagination appear, which as able to clothe all the properties of
elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues and vices, in forms
and persons, and to introduce them into actions agreeable to the nature of
the things they sh