is founded on a grand, heroic, and venerable enterprize. The author's invention is noble and fertile the events are striking and sufficiently diversified, by the tenderness of love and the fierceness of war: the heroes are well characterized. Godfrey is represented as generous, moderate, and brave: Tancred is tender and impassioned: Rinaldo, who is the principal hero, is drawn after Homer's Achilles. The machinery of Tasso is to me more interesting than that of any other poet. The fourth and ninth book contain some incomparable passages and descriptions; but some have thought that his demons act too great a part. The plot seems to turn too much upon enchantment. Rinaldo leaves the army in discontent, and retires into a desert island, where he is confined by spells. The chiefs are informed of the necessity of his presence to their success; hence some of them are sent in quest of him: they find him in this island, break the spells of the demon, who endeavours to detain them, and then hurry him along with them to the army, where he breaks all the enchantments which retard their success: after this every thing proceeds happily to a conclusion. The whole of

the sixteenth and seventeenth books are more worthy the genius of Ariosto than of Tasso. His descriptions, however, are fine, and rise happily towards the conclusion: the language is harmonious and elegant; and the poem in general displays infinitely more genius than Voltaire's Henriade.

Camoens, the epic poet of Portugal, was contemporary with Tasso. I am extremely partial to this poem. I read the original many years ago; but it was little known in England, till an excellent translation was published by the late Mr. Mickle. The poem has infinite merit; every part of it interests and entertains; and it is justly entitled to the appellation of epic. You are aware that the subject is the discovery of India by Vasco de Gama. The characters in general are tolerably well drawn, but not so well supported as might be wished. The subject too, you will be inclined to observe, is too recent, and the cruelties which the Portuguese committed naturally prejudice us against it. Notwithstanding this, the subject is novel and grand; it affords an admirable scope for description, and for the introduction very interesting scenes. If Paradise Lost is

of

emphatically styled the epic poem of religion, this justly may be denominated that of commerce; and if we read Homer and Virgil for pleasure, and to admire the poetry, let me add, we cannot read this without reaping some further improvement, a knowledge of nature and of the globe which we inhabit.

Spain can also boast of an epic poem of no inconsiderable merit, as appears from the sketch with which Mr. Hayley has favoured us, the Arancana of Don Alonzo de Erecilla. This epic poem differs from all others, for the author celebrates a course of military actions in which he had himself a share, the reduction, by the Spaniards, of the Arancanians, an Indian nation of singular heroism, in the country of Chili. The poem certainly contains fine passages, but is much inferior to the Lusiad of Camoens. It has not yet been translated into English.

The Henriade of Voltaire seems to demand a few observations. As this was written by a person of extraordinary genius, we are led to expect something uncommon: his boldness in attempting an epic poem in this age deserves our admiration; but the French language

seems improper for epic poetry, and the author has failed in other respects. The subject of the poem is the triumph of Henry IV. over the arms of the League: it lies under the same disadvantage with respect to the recentness of the date, &c. with Lucan's Pharsalia; and it would have been better had the author followed the example of Lucan, which he recommends as judicious, concerning the machinery. The poem opens with an interview between Henry, and Elizabeth, Queen of England. He has used fiction in order to bring together these two great personages, and to give his hero an opportunity of relating the exploits of the wars. Now it is well known to every one that Henry never was in England: besides, though Virgil makes Æneas properly enough relate his adventures to Dido, who cannot be supposed to have had any particuler account of them; yet we cannot suppose the Queen of England could be ignorant of what was done by the French King, until he came himself to inform her. The whole poem is employed on the subject of a civil war of the most detestable and bloody kind, and which presents ideas too shocking to the mind to excite our admiration

His episodes also are not full, for the poem is not long, yet it contains a great many important events, which are generally related in a very imperfect manner. But he is peculiarly unhappy with respect to the machinery; he has introduced chiefly allegorical beings, as Discord, War, Fanaticism, La Politique, and Love, which are the worst that can be employed in epic poetry. By mixing truth and falsehood together they render the whole improbable. The appearance of St. Lewis to Henry IV. is, however, much better; the whole is wrought up with great judgment, and is certainly one of the best parts of the poem. The descent into hell is also well managed.

Although Voltaire is not conspicuous for his zeal for religion, yet he understood the necessity of it in his poetry; hence it is full of the most noble and generous sentiments, and in these consists its greatest merit.

Though Milton's Paradise Lost was published long anterior to the poem I last noticed, the custom I have followed of considering the British writers the last in order, seems to justify my present arrangement. After the criticisms of Mr. Addison and Dr. Johnson, which are in

VOL. II.