Ancleut Epic Poem, 139 



wliich it gives to all nature, from a poetic 

 imagination, common to man in every age ; 

 and with the whole are incorporated the irre- 

 gular and desultory' actions of mere men of 

 some early and rude age; altogether forming a 

 most incongruous mass. — Had it been per- 

 mitted to Homer and Virgil to have adapted 

 this machinery at their discretion, and as a 

 vehicle of dignified and elegant moral, it is to 

 to be presumed, that they would have moulded 

 it to their purpose with more taste and judg- 

 ment. But obliged to receive it with all its 

 absurdities and fooleries and grossness, its 

 character in the appeal to true taste appears to 

 be, that it disgraces their poems, presents an 

 immorality beyond the utmost licentiousness of 

 man, debilitates the human story, and in the 

 most interesting exhibitions of human charac- 

 ter, which constitutes the ])rincipal interest in 

 the Epopoeia, takes the human agent out of the 

 field of human sympathy, by placing him under 

 the direction and controul of a more powerful, 

 but more capricious and Immoral agency. 



Homer, in all probability, entertained as 

 little doubt of the theology of his day as any of 

 his rude and unpolished countrymen, and 

 therefore, without scruple, admitted into iiis 

 poetic history of the wars of Troy all the 

 crudities of the popular superstition, with 



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