When I speak of your lordship, it is never a digression, and therefore I need beg no pardon for it; but take up Ségrais where I left him, and shall use him less often than I have occasion for him; for his preface is a perfect piece of criticism, full and clear, and digested into an exact method; mine is loose, and, as I intended it, epistolary. Yet I dwell on many things, which he durst not touch; for it is dangerous to offend an arbitrary master; and every patron, who has the power of Augustus, has not his clemency. In short, my lord, I would not translate him, because I would bring you somewhat of my own. His notes and observations on every book are of the same excellency; and, for the same reason, I omit the greater part.
He takes notice that Virgil is arraigned for placing piety before valour, and making that piety the chief character of his hero. I have said already from Bossu, that a poet is not obliged to make his hero a virtuous man; therefore, neither Homer nor Tasso are to be blamed, for giving what predominant quality they pleased to their first character. But Virgil, who designed to form a perfect prince, and would insinuate that Augustus, whom he calls Æneas in his poem, was truly such, found himself obliged to make him without blemish, thoroughly virtuous; and a thorough virtue both begins and ends in piety. Tasso, without question, observed this before me, and therefore split his hero in two: he gave Godfrey piety, and Rinaldo fortitude, for their chief qualities or manners. Homer, who had chosen another moral, makes both Agamemnon and Achilles vicious; for his design was to instruct in virtue, by shewing the deformity of vice. I avoid repetition of what I have said above. What follows, is translated literally from Ségrais.
"Virgil had considered, that the greatest virtues of Augustus consisted in the perfect art of governing his people; which caused him to reign for more than forty years in great felicity. He considered, that his emperor was valiant, civil, popular, eloquent, politic, and religious; he has given all these qualities to Æneas. But, knowing that piety alone comprehends the whole duty of man towards the gods, towards his country, and towards his relations, he judged, that this ought to be his first character, whom he would set for a pattern of perfection. In reality, they who believe, that the praises which arise from valour are superior to those which proceed from any other virtues, have not considered, (as they ought,) that valour, destitute of other virtues, cannot render a man worthy of any true esteem. That quality, which signifies no more than an intrepid courage, may be separated from many others which are good, and accompanied with many which are ill. A man may be very valiant, and yet impious and vicious. But the same cannot be said of piety, which excludes all ill qualities, and comprehends even valour itself, with all other qualities which are good. Can we, for example, give the praise of valour to a man, who should see his gods prophaned, and should want the courage to defend them? to a man, who should abandon his father, or desert his king, in his last necessity?"
Thus far Ségrais, in giving the preference to piety before valour. I will now follow him, where he considers this valour, or intrepid courage, singly in itself; and this also Virgil gives to his Æneas, and that in a heroical degree.
Having first concluded, that our poet did for the best in taking the first character of his hero from that essential virtue on which the rest depend, he proceeds to tell us, that, in the ten years' war of Troy, he was considered as the second champion of his country, (allowing Hector the first place;) and this, even by the confession of Homer, who took all occasions of setting up his own countrymen the Grecians, and of undervaluing the Trojan chiefs. But Virgil (whom Ségrais forgot to cite) makes Diomede give him a higher character for strength and courage. His testimony is this, in the Eleventh Book:
————————Stetimus tela aspera contra,
Contulimusque manus: experto credite, quantus
In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam.
Si duo præterea tales Idæa tulisset
Terra viros, ultro Inachias venisset ad urbes
Dardanus, et versis lugeret Græcia fatis.
Quidquid apud duræ cessatum est mœnia Trojæ,
Hectoris Æneæque manu victoria Graiucirc;m
Hæsit, et in decumum vestigia retulit annum.
Ambo animis, ambo insignes præstantibus armis:
Hic pietate prior.———
I give not here my translation of these verses, (though I think I have not ill succeeded in them,) because your lordship is so great a master of the original, that I have no reason to desire you should see Virgil and me so near together; but you may please, my lord, to take notice, that the Latin author refines upon the Greek, and insinuates, that Homer had done his hero wrong, in giving the advantage of the duel to his own countryman; though Diomede was manifestly the second champion of the Grecians; and Ulysses preferred him before Ajax, when he chose him for the companion of his nightly expedition; for he had a headpiece of his own, and wanted only the fortitude of another, to bring him off with safety, and that he might compass his design with honour.
The French translator thus proceeds: "They, who accuse Æneas for want of courage, either understand not Virgil, or have read him slightly; otherwise they would not raise an objection so easy to be answered." Hereupon he gives so many instances of the hero's valour, that to repeat them after him would tire your lordship, and put me to the unnecessary trouble of transcribing the greatest part of the three last Æneids. In short, more could not be expected from an Amadis, a Sir Lancelot, or the whole Round Table, than he performs. Proxima quæque metit gladio, is the perfect account of a knight-errant. "If it be replied," continues Ségrais, "that it was not difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy enterprises, because he wore enchanted arms; that accusation, in the first place, must fall on Homer, ere it can reach Virgil." Achilles was as well provided with them as Æneas, though he was invulnerable without them.[50] And Ariosto, the two Tassos, (Bernardo and Torquato,) even our own Spenser—in a word, all modern poets—have copied Homer as well as Virgil: he is neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them; and therefore is safe, if they are so. "Who knows," says Ségrais, "but that his fated armour was only an allegorical defence, and signified no more than that he was under the peculiar protection of the gods? born, as the astrologers will tell us out of Virgil, (who was well versed in the Chaldean mysteries,) under the favourable influence of Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun." But I insist not on this, because I know you believe not there is such an art; though not only Horace and Persius, but Augustus himself, thought otherwise. But, in defence of Virgil, I dare positively say, that he has been more cautious in this particular than either his predecessor, or his descendants: for Æneas was actually wounded, in the Twelfth of the Æneis; though he had the same godsmith[51] to forge his arms as had Achilles. It seems he was no warluck,[52] as the Scots commonly call such men, who, they say, are iron-free, or lead-free. Yet, after this experiment, that his arms were not impenetrable—when he was cured indeed by his mother's help, because he was that day to conclude the war by the death of Turnus—the poet durst not carry the miracle too far, and restore him wholly to his former vigour: he was still too weak to overtake his enemy; yet we see with what courage he attacks Turnus, when he faces and renews the combat. I need say no more; for Virgil defends himself without needing my assistance, and proves his hero truly to deserve that name. He was not then a second-rate champion, as they would have him, who think fortitude the first virtue in a hero. But, being beaten from this hold, they will not yet allow him to be valiant, because he wept more often, as they think, than well becomes a man of courage.
In the first place, if tears are arguments of cowardice, what shall I say of Homer's hero? Shall Achilles pass for timorous, because he wept, and wept on less occasions than Æneas? Herein Virgil must be granted to have excelled his master. For once both heroes are described lamenting their lost loves: Briseïs was taken away by force from the Grecians; Creüsa was lost for ever to her husband. But Achilles went roaring along the salt sea-shore, and, like a booby, was complaining to his mother, when he should have revenged his injury by arms. Æneas took a nobler course; for, having secured his father and his son, he repeated all his former dangers, to have found his wife, if she had been above ground. And here your lordship may observe the address of Virgil; it was not for nothing that this passage was related with all these tender circumstances. Æneas told it; Dido heard it. That he had been so affectionate a husband, was no ill argument to the coming dowager, that he might prove as kind to her. Virgil has a thousand secret beauties, though I have not leisure to remark them.
Ségrais, on this subject of a hero shedding tears, observes, that historians commend Alexander for weeping when he read the mighty actions of Achilles; and Julius Cæsar is likewise praised, when, out of the same noble envy, he wept at the victories of Alexander. But, if we observe more closely, we shall find, that the tears of Æneas were always on a laudable occasion. Thus he weeps out of compassion and tenderness of nature, when, in the temple of Carthage, he beholds the pictures of his friends, who sacrificed their lives in defence of their country. He deplores the lamentable end of his pilot Palinurus, the untimely death of young Pallas his confederate, and the rest, which I omit. Yet, even for these tears, his wretched critics dare condemn him. They make Æneas little better than a kind of St Swithin[53] hero, always raining. One of these censors is bold enough to argue him of cowardice, when, in the beginning of the first book, he not only weeps, but trembles, at an approaching storm—