for the framing their verfes. However, by this art of fiction or allegory, more than by the structure of their numbers, or what we now call Verfification, the poets were diftinguished from hiftorians and philofophers, though the latter fometimes invaded the province of the poet, and delivered their doctrines likewife in allegories or parables: and this, when they did not purposely make them obfcure in order to conceal them from the common people, was a plain indication that they thought there was an advantage in fuch methods of conveying inftruction to the mind; and that they ferved for the more effectual engaging the attention of the hearers, and for leaving deeper impreffions on their memories.

Plutarch, in one of his difcourfes, gives a very good reason for the use of fiction in poetry, because "Truth of itfelf is rigid and auftere, and cannot be moulded into fuch agreeable forms as fiction can. For neither the numbers," fays he, "nor the ranging of the words, nor the elevation and elegance of the ftyle, have fo many graces as the artful contrivance and difpofition of the fable." For this reafon, as he relates it after Plato, when the wife Socrates himself was prompted by a particular impulfe to the writing of verfes, being by his conftant employment in the study of truth a ftranger to the art of invention, he chofe for his fubject the Fables of Efop, "not thinking," fays Plutarch, that any thing could be poetry which was void of fiction." The fame author makes ufe of a comparison, in another place, which I think may be most properly applied to allegorical poetry in particular; that" as grapes on a vine are covered by the leaves which grow about them, fo under the pleafant narrations and fictions of the poets there are couched many ufeful morals and doctrines."

It is for this reafon, that is to fay, in regard to the moral sense, that allegory has a liberty indulged to it beyond any other fort of writing whatfoever; that it often affembles things of the most contrary kinds in nature, and fuppofes even impoffibilities; as that a golden bough fhould grow among the common branches of a tree, as Virgil has defcribed it in the Sixth Book of his Æneis. Allegory is indeed the Fairy Land of poetry, peopled by imagination; its inhabitants are fo many apparitions; its woods, caves, wild beafts, rivers, mountains, and palaces, are produced by a kind of magical power, and are all vifionary and typical; and it abounds in fuch licences as would be fhocking and monftrous, if the mind did not attend to the mystick fenfe contained under them. Thus, in the Fables of Efop, which are fome of the moft ancient allegories extant, the author gives reafon and speech to beasts, infects, and plants; and by that means covertly instructs mankind in the most important incidents and concerns of their lives.

I am not infenfible that the word Allegory has been fometimes ufed in a larger sense than that to which I may seem here to have reftrained it, and has been applied indifferently to any poem which contains a covered moral, though the story or fable carries nothing in it that appears vifionary or romantick. It may be neceffary, therefore, to diftinguifh Allegory into the two following kinds :

The firft is that in which the ftory is framed of real or hiftorical perfons, and probable or poffible actions; by which, however, fome other perfons and actions are typified or reprefented. In this fense the whole Aneis of Virgil may be faid to be an Allegory, if we confider Æneas as representing Auguftus Cæfar, and his conducting the remains of his countrymen from the ruins of Troy to a new

fettlement in Italy, as emblematical of Auguftus's modelling a new government out of the ruins of the ariftocracy, and establishing the Romans, after the confusion 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 distinction, 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 fhould 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 suppose 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 story confifts for the most 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 fhadows. This grotefque invention claims, as I have obferved, a 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:

It

"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 brais,
"On which the Tartar king did ride:
"And if aught elfe great bards befide
"In fage and folemn tunes have sung,
"Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
"Of forefts, and enchantments drear,
"Where more is meant than meets the ear."

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

Her

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. 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 shapes 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 person 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 Æneis, though copied from the Circe and Calypfo, and formed on the fame moral, namely, to reprefent a hero ob

ftructed by the allurements of pleafure, and at laft breaking from them, and though Mercury likewife 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 distance of time, which the criticks have noted between the real Æneas and Dido, (a circumftance which Virgil, not being bound to hiftorical 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 vifion, 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 fpirit, on the fame moral, though with different characters.

b

I have here inftanced in one of the most ancient and best 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 difturbed Æneas and his followers at their banquet, as they

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