people, those persons who are under its influence are by supposition conceived to believe true. Whatever preternatural appear

ance therefore the poet relates, however doubtful may be its occurrence, however physically improbable may be its existence, provided it is reported on the faith of some character in his production, it must possess verisimilitude in being conformable to the adduced rule. To such characters it must preserve every necessary probability, in “not being questionable as true." The difference between real occurrences and preternatural appearances, in a physical sense, may be as great as can be conceived; but this is by no means the case when as incidents they are embraced by the imagination, or transferred to the ideal system of poetry. The human mind has often no power to separate among its conceptions that part which is the effect of delusion from that which is the result of reality it is even generally found to be most pertinacious in maintaining the superiour truth of the former.

But it is in the poet's power to represent his characters as deceived by superstitious illusion and as he is required to ascribe them not just, but natural feelings, not to

make them philosophical reasoners, but to represent them as human beings actuated by human passions, such a mode of delineation will impart to his narrative not only great nature, but every necessary truth; as being most consonant to the fabulous cast of that period in which they are represented to have lived.

These remarks cannot receive a more perfect exemplification than in the following passage from Ariosto, which is not less remarkable for the propriety of its fiction than from the splendour of its imagery. The poet represents the ghost of Argalia appearing to Ferrau, while he is in search of the helmet of the departed knight, which he had previously bound himself to cast into a river that no monument of victory might remain.

Con un gran ramo d'albero rimondo,

Di che avea fatto una pertica lunga,
Tenta il fiume, e ricerca fino al fondo;
Nè loco lascia, ove non batta, e pugna.
Mentre con la maggior stizza del mondo
Tanto l'indugio suo quivi prolunga;
Vede di mezzo il fiume un Cavaliero,
Infino al petto uscir, d'aspetto fiero.

Era, fuor che la testa, tutto armato,

Ed avea un' elmo nella destra mano;

Avea'l medesimo elmo, che cercato
Da Ferraù fu lungamente in vano.
A Ferraù parlò come adirato,

E disse: Ah mancator di fè, Marrano;
Perchè di lasciar l'elmo anche t'aggrevi,
Che render già gran tempo mi dovevi?

Ricordati Pagan quando uccedisti

D'Angelica il fratel, che son quell'io,
Dietro all' altre arme tu mi promettesti
Fra pochi dì gittar l'elmo nel rio.

All' apparir, che fece all' improviso
Dell' acqua l'Ombra, ogni pelo arricciossi,
E scolorossi al Saracino il viso :
La voce, ch'era per uscir, fermossi.
Udendo poi dall' Argalia, ch'ucciso
Quivi avea già (che l'Argalia nomossi)
La rotta fede così improverarse;

Di scorno, e d'ira dentro, e di fuor arse.

Cant. I. ott. 25-30.

The occurrence is represented as happening to one who lived in the prejudices of an age which disposed him to credit, not question the truth of any preternatural appearance and the incident described is of a kind which receives no contradiction from our religious notions. With infinite judgment the poet has enlarged upon the causes of the appearance of the spectre, and on the state of mental agitation into which the

N

knight was thrown. The fiction is thus brought to the very verge of truth; as a superstitious mind actuated by a perturbed conscience might have created the phantom with which it was affrighted.

2. As the poet's descriptions are intended to affect the reader, and as the reader's creed may be very different from that ascribed to the characters in the poem, a provision must be made against his considering the narrative improbable on entering into the feelings of the poet's characters, and placing himself in the same situation wherein they are described to be affected; for when the sense of any improbability in this respect predominates in his mind, the effect of the composition must be lost on him. And herein lies the necessity of the rule, that to the operation of spiritual agency nothing should be ascribed which our religious creed would reject as evidently false.'

i The most striking, and indeed only, instance of a violation of this principle in Ariosto, which would offend a modern reader, is that fiction wherein the poet represents a Christian knight, Aftolfo, as conducted by St. John, the Evangelist, to the palace of the Fates. (Orl. Fur. Cant. xxxiv. ott. 87-92.) We must ever feel a disposition to question the existence of such beings as the Fates of Heathen Mythology, and particularly so

3. It is scarcely necessary to extend these considerations to a third case, that in which certain marvellous occurrences are narrated by the poet on his own testimony, as distinct from those which he reports on the testimony of his characters. Where the religious creed of the poet's readers, and of his characters is the same, great licences may be used by him in this respect. He may construct entire episodes; and conduct them by none but marvellous beings, even where such fictions cannot be supposed to come under the observation of any human personage in the poem; whence, as was before observed, they might acquire probability, on the supposition of the spectator's having mistaken some illusion for reality. A remarkable instance, though not taken from a poetical romance, is the interview of Jupiter

when they are introduced to our notice by such a personage as St. John, who, on being barely mentioned, suggests the grounds of that creed, by which we at once decide on the impossibility of their existence. I must here, however, observe that this fiction must have appeared much less defective to a reader of Ariosto's age, than it does to one of ours; as well because many of the Pagan notions were retained and incorporated in the Italian superstitions, as I shall have occasion to observe hereafter, and because the history of St. John himself was in those times involved in much obscurity and mystery.