Hœremus cuncti superis? temploque tacente
Nil facimus non sponte Dei
.... Steriles num legit arenas.
Ut caneret paucis; mersit ne hoc pulvere verum!
Estne Dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aer,
Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
Jupiter est quodcumque vides quocumque moveris.
And though our priests are mutes, and temples still,
We act the dictates of his mighty will;
Canst thou believe, the vast eternal mind,
Was e'er to Syrts and Libyan sands confined?
That he would choose this waste, this barren ground,
To teach the thin inhabitants around?
Is there a place that God would choose to love
Beyond this earth, the seas, yon heaven above,
And virtuous minds, the noblest throne of Jove?
Why seek we farther, then? Behold around;
How all thou seest doth with the God abound,
Jove is seen everywhere, and always to be found.
—ROWE.
Put together all that the ancients poets have said of the gods and it is childish in comparison with this passage of Lucan, but in a vast picture, in which there are a hundred figures, it is not sufficient that one or two of them are finely designed.
Of Tasso.
Boileau has exposed the tinsel of Tasso, but if there be a hundred spangles of false gold in a piece of gold cloth, it is pardonable. There are many rough stones in the great marble building raised by Homer. Boileau knew it, felt it, and said nothing about it. We should be just.
We recall the reader's memory to what has been said of Tasso in the "Essay on Epic Poetry," but we must here observe that his verses are known by heart all over Italy. If at Venice any one in a boat sings a stanza of the "Jerusalem Delivered," he is answered from a neighboring bark with the following one.
If Boileau had listened to these concerts he could have said nothing in reply. As enough is known of Tasso, I will not repeat here either eulogies or criticisms. I will speak more at length of Ariosto.
Of Ariosto.
Homer's "Odyssey" seems to have been the first model of the "Morgante," of the "Orlando Innamorato," and the "Orlando Furioso," and, what very seldom happens, the last of the poems is without dispute the best.
The companions of Ulysses changed into swine; the winds shut up in goats' skins; the musicians with fishes' tails, who ate all those who approached them; Ulysses, who followed the chariot of a beautiful princess who went to bathe quite naked; Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, who asked alms, and afterwards killed all the lovers of his aged wife, assisted only by his son and two servants—are imaginations which have given birth to all the poetical romances which have since been written in the same style.
But the romance of Ariosto is so full of variety and so fertile in beauties of all kinds that after having read it once quite through I only wish to begin it again. How great the charm of natural poetry! I never could read a single canto of this poem in a prose translation.