40 
save the life of Helen. . Itis this fine dis- 
position of the fable, and judicious mix- 
ture of the marvellous and the proba- 
ble, that the superiority of Virgil, in point 
of judgment, is so conspicuous, and justi- 
fies the observation, that in the Iliad we 
miost admire the poem; in the /Eneid, 
the poet. 
As it has been already more than once 
remarked, that the merit of Virgil consists 
fess in the general execution of the poem, 
than in the beauty of its details, it may be 
asserted that the episodes in the Aneid 
are most of them superior to those of the 
fliad. he fourth book, to which we 
have so often alluded, and which relates to 
the unhappy passion and death of Dido, has 
always been highly admired, and abounds 
m the two great characteristics of Virgil, 
tenderness and sensibility. Another im- 
portant episode is the Descent into Hell, 
i which he is generally supposed to have 
surpassed Homer in the Odyssey. 
antiquity does not present a more sub- 
hime picture than the whole of the sixth 
book. The objects are grand and strik- 
img, and the mind, in the perusal, is filled 
with that solemn awe which a descrip- 
tion of the invisible world could not fail 
to inspire, when drawn by a such a mas- 
ter-hand. The entrance into hell is thus 
pourtrayed, a 
Vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus 
Orci 
Luctus et ultrices posuére cubilia Cure: 
Pallentes habitant Morhi, tristisque Senectus, 
Et Metus, et malasaada Fames, et turpis 
Egestas, 
Terribiles visu forme—Letumque, Laborque : 
Tum censanguineus Leti Sopor, & mala men- 
tis 
Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bel- 
lum, 
Ferreigue Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia 
mens 
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis. 
The poet describes the infernal rivers, 
and. distributes into different bands the 
criminals of every kind. What Achilles, 
in the Odyssey, relates to Ulysses, when 
he sees him, Virgil has put into the 
mouth of ‘the  self-murderers, whose 
highest wislnis said to be to live again, 
and endure all those evils which hac be- 
fore made them so weary of life, as to 
determine them voluntarily to leave it. 
Quam vellent, zthere in ipso 
Nunc et pauperiem, & duros perferre la- 
bores. 
The meeting of /Eneas with Dido is 
extremely moving, and the silence of the 
injured queen finely imagined, and won- 
Lyceum of Ancient Literature.—The Aeneid, 
All. 
[Aug. Ty 
derfully pathetic. Throughout the whole 
of this book there.is a vein of philoso- 
phy which the platonic genius of Virgil, 
and the enlarged ideas of the Augustan 
age, enabled him to maintain with a ma~ 
jesty which is not to be found in Homer, 
in a similar instance. Indeed, every’ 
reader who compares thie ¢-7ne ef Ely- 
sium in the Latin, with the Greek 
poet, cannot but allow sat the advan- 
tage is greatly on the side of Virgil. The 
interview of /Eneas’ with Andromache 
and Helenus is another interesting epi- 
sode, and those of Pallas and Evander, 
Nisus and Euryalus, and of Lausus and 
Mezentius, are among the most highly 
finished passages of the latter books. 
But these detached beauties of style 
and sentiment are innumerable, and we 
forbear any further quotations of passages 
which, we are persuaded, are familiar to 
most readers. It would be equally use- 
less to descant on the sweetness of Vire 
gil’s numbers, sufficiently obvious to every 
ear at all susceptible of harmony: the 
wages and smiles that occur in the course 
of the poem are eminently beautiful; 
but Virgil is never less original than in 
those passages. That highly celebrated 
description of night, 
Nox erat, & placidum carpebant fessa scpos 
rem, &c. 
as well as the whole episode of Dido, is 
borrowed from Apollonius Rhodivs. 
Most of the similes are taken from Ho+ 
mer, and other Greek poets: and it 
would be difficult to point out an image 
which cannot be traced in some preceed=- 
ing writer. But Virgil never fails to im- 
prove the ideas which he mnitates. . In 
him they are always noble and dignified; 
he is at once grand and elegant, at once 
concise and perspicuous; in every part 
great, i none extravagant. In the ori- 
ginal description of Apollonius, he mi- 
nutely aliudes to the silence of the night, 
as undisturbed by the barking of dogs, or 
the busy hum of men. These details are 
judiciously omitted by Virgil, whose si- 
ales, without being trifling and minute, 
are always natural and pleasing, 
Upon the whole, as to the comparative 
merit of the two great princes of Epic 
Poetry, Homer and Virgil, the former 
must undoubtedly be admitted to be 
the greater genius, the latter to be the 
move correct writer. Homer was an ori- 
ginal in‘ his art, and discovers beth the 
beauties and the defects which are to be 
expected in an originalauthor; eompared 
with those who succeed him, more bold- 
ness, more nature and ease, more subli- 
muy 
