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fettlement in Italy, as emblematical of Auguftus's modelling a new government out of the ruins of the aristocracy, and establishing the Romans, after the confufion of the Civil war, in a peaceable and flourishing condition. It does not, I think, appear that Homer had any fuch defign in his poems, or that he meant to delineate his cotemporaries or their actions under the chief characters and adventures of the Trojan war: and though the allufion I have mentioned in Virgil is a circumftance which the author has finely contrived to be coincident to the general frame of his ftory, yet he has avoided the making it plain and particular, and has thrown it off in fo many inftances from a direct application, that his poem is perfect without it. This, then, for diftinction, fhould, I think, rather be called a Parallel than an Allegory; at leaft in Allegories framed after this manner the literal fenfe is fufficient to fatisfy the reader, though he should look no further; and, without being confidered as emblematical of fome other perfons or action, may of itself exhibit very useful morals and inftructions. Thus the morals which may be drawn from the Æneis are equally noble and inftructive, whether we fuppofe the real hero to be Æneas or Auguftus Cæfar.

The fecond kind of Allegory, and which, I think, may more properly challenge the name, is that in which the fable or ftory confifts for the moft part of fictitious perfons or beings, creatures of the poet's brain, and actions furprifing, and without the bounds of probability or nature. In works of this kind it is impoffible for the reader to reft in the literal fenfe, but he is of neceffity driven to feek for another meaning under thefe wild types and shadows. This grotefque invention claims, as I have obferved, á licence peculiar to itself, and is what I would be understood, in this difcourfe, more particularly

to mean by the word Allegory. Thus Milton has defcribed it in his poem called Il Penferofo, where he alludes to the Squire's Tale in Chaucer:

"Or call up him that left half-told
"The ftory of Cambufcan bold,
"Of Camball, and of Algarfife,
"And who had Canace to wife,

"That own'd the virtuous ring and glass;
"And of the wondrous horfe of brafs,
"On which the Tartar king did ride:
"And if aught elfe great bards befide
"In fage and folemn tunes have fung,
"Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
"Of forefts, and enchantments drear,

"Where more is meant than meets the ear."

It may be proper to give an inftance or two by which the diftinction of this laft kind of Allegory may more plainly appear.

The ftory of Circe, in the Odyssey, is an allegorical fable, of which there are perhaps more copies and imitations than of any other whatever. Her offering a cup, filled with intoxicating liquour, to her guests; her mingling poifon with their food, and then by magical arts turning them into the fhapes of fwine; and Ulyffes refifting her charms by the virtue of an herb called Moly, which he had received from the god Mercury, and reftoring his companions to their true perfons, are all fictions of the laft kind I have mentioned. The perfon of the goddess is likewife fictitious, and out of the circle of the Grecian divinities; and the adventures are not to be understood but in a myftical fenfe. The epifode of Calypfo, though fomewhat of the fame kind, approaches nearer to nature and probability: but the ftory of Dido in the Eneis, though copied from the Circe and Calypfo, and formed on the fame moral, namely, to reprefent a hero ob

ftructed by the allurements of pleasure, and at last breaking from them, and though Mercury likewise affifts in it to diffolve the charm, yet is not neceffarily to be looked upon as an allegory; the fable does not appear merely imaginary or emblematical; the perfons are natural, and, excepting the diftance of time, which the criticks have noted between the real Æneas and Dido, (a circumftance which Virgil, not being bound to historical truth, wilfully neglected,) there is nothing which might not really have happened. Ariofto's Alcina, and the Armida of Taffo, are copies from the fame original: these again are plainly allegorical. The whole literal fenfe of the latter is a kind of vision, or a scene of imagination, and is every where tranfparent, to fhow the moral fenfe which is under it. The Bower of Blifs, in the Second Book of the Faerie Queene, is, in like manner, a copy from Taffo; but the ornaments of defcription, which Spenfer has tranfplanted out of the Italian poem, are more proper in his work, which was defigned to be wholly allegorical, than in an epick poem, which is fuperiour in its nature to fuch lavish embellishments. There is another copy of the Circe, in the dramatick way, in a Mafk, by our famous Milton, the whole plan of which is allegorical, and is written, with a very poetical spirit, on the fame moral, though with different characters.

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I have here inftanced in one of the most ancient and beft imagined allegories extant. Scylla, Charybdis, and the Syrens, in the fame poem, are of the fame nature, and are creatures purely allegorical: but the Harpies in Virgil, which disturbed Eneas and his followers at their banquet, as they

b another copy of the Circe,] Other copies also of Circe See the note on F. Q. ii. xii. 49. TODD.

exift.

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do not feem to exhibit any certain moral, may probably have been thrown in by the poet only as an omen, and to raife what is commonly called the Wonderful, which is a property as effential to epick poetry as probability. Homer's giving fpeech to the river Xanthus in the Iliad, and to the horfes of Achilles, feem to be inventions of the fame kind, and might be defigned to fill the reader with aftonishment and concern, and with an apprehenfion of the greatness of an occafion which, by a bold fiction of the poet, is fuppofed to have produced fuch extraordinary effects.

As Allegory fometimes, for the fake of the moral fenfe couched under its fictions, gives fpeech to brutes, and fometimes introduces creatures which are out of nature, as goblins, chimeras, fairies, and the like; fo it frequently gives life to virtues and vices, paffions and difeafes, to natural and moral qualities, and reprefents them acting as divine, human, or infernal perfons. A very ingenious writer calls thefe characters fhadowy beings, and has with good reafon cenfured the employing them in juft epick poems. Of this kind are Sin and Death, which I mentioned before in Milton, and Fame in Virgil. We find, likewife, a large group of these shadowy figures placed in the Sixth Book of the Eneis, at the entrance into the infernal regions; but as they are only fhown there, and have no fhare in the action of the poem, the de

• Homer's giving Speech to the river Xanthus, and to the horfes of Achilles, &c.] Homer's giving fpeech to the horse (not horfes) of Achilles, is indeed a bold fiction; but his giving fpeech to the river Xanthus is not fo, nor ought it to be reckoned more marvellous than his making Jupiter and Juno speak for Xanthus was not the water, the river, but the god of the river, as Neptune is the god of the fea. JORTIN. d Spectator, Vol. IV. No. 273. HUGHES.

fcription of them is a fine allegory, and extremely proper to the place where they appear.

"Vestibulum ante ipfum, primifq; in faucibus Orci,
"Luctus et ultrices pofuere cubilia Curae;
"Pallentesq; habitant Morbi, triftifq; Senectus,
"Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egeftas ;
"Terribiles vifu Formæ ; Lethumq; Labofque;
"Tum confanguineus Lethi Sopor, et mala Mentis
"Gaudia; mortiferumq; adverfo in limite Bellum;
"Ferreiq; Eumenidum thalami, et Difcordia demens,
"Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.

"In medio ramos annofaq; brachia pandit

"Ulmus opaca, ingens; quam fedem Somnia vulgo "Vana tenere ferunt, foliifq; fub omnibus hærent."

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As perfons of this imaginary life are to be excluded from any fhare of action in epick poems, they are yet lefs to be endured in the drama; yet we find they have fometimes made their appearance on the ancient stage. Thus, in a tragedy of Æfchylus, Strength is introduced affifting Vulcan to bind Prometheus to a rock; and in one of Euripides, Death comes to the houfe of Admetus to demand Alceftis, who had offered herself to die to fave her husband's

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are to be excluded] Why fo? And by what law? Somnus is introduced as acting in the Ilias more than once, as alfo in other heroick poems; and "Tπvos nai Oavalos, Sleep and Death, are appointed to carry off the body of Sarpedon, and have a place in Hefiod's Theogonia, ver. 759. In a poem which is built upon a Jewish or Chriftian plan, a mixture of true religion and fable, good and bad angels in one place, and Jupiter and Juno in another, is perhaps juftly liable to cenfure, though great poets have not avoided it. But to allow a poet to introduce Mars and Minerva, and to forbid him to make use of Sleep, and Death, and Fear, and Discord, &c. as actors, seems to be injudicious, founded upon a weak prejudice, that the latter have not in our imagination as good a right to be perfons as the former. The heathen theology is to be taken from the heathen writers; and whatever is a deity in Homer and Hefiod, has a perpetual and inconteftible right to be a poetical god. JORTIN.

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