the next, utterly useless, improper, indecent, and false. This is the more to be lamented, inasmuch as these two are the sorts whereon in a manner depend that Profit which must still be remembered to be the main end of our Writers and Speakers. We shall therefore employ this chapter in shewing the quickest method of composing them; after which we shall teach a short Way to Epic Poetry. And these being confessedly the works of most Importance and Difficulty, it is presumed we may leave the rest to each author's own learning or practice. First of Panegyric: Every man is honourable, who is so by Law, Custom, or Title. The Public are better judges of what is honourable than private Men. The Virtues of great Men, like those of Plants, are inherent in them whether they are exerted or not; and the more strongly inherent, the less they are exerted; as a Man is the more rich, the less he spends. All great Ministers, without either private or economical Virtue, are virtuous by their Posts; liberal and generous upon the Public Money, provident upon Public Supplies, just by paying Public Interest, courageous and magnanimous by the Fleets and Armies, magnificent upon the Public Expenses, and prudent by Public Success. They have by their Office, a right to a share of the Public Stock of Virtues; besides, they are by Prescription immemorial invested in all the celebrated virtues of their Predecessors in the same stations, especially those of their own Ancestors. As to what are commonly called the Colours Honourable and Dishonour able, they are various in different Countries: in this they are Blue, Green, Redo. But forasmuch as the duty we owe to the Public doth often require that we should put some things in a strong light, and throw a shade over others, I shall explain the method of turning a vicious Man into a Hero. The first and chief Rule is, the Golden Rule of Transformation, which consists in converting Vices into their bordering Virtues. A Man who is a Spendthrift, and will not pay a just Debt, may have his Injustice transformed into Liberality; Cowardice may be metamorphosed into Prudence; Intemperance into good Nature and good Fellowship; Corruption into Patriotism; and Lewdness into Tenderness and Facility. The second is the Rule of Contraries. It is certain, the less a Man is endowed with any Virtue, the more need he has to have it plentifully bestowed, especially those good qualities of which the world generally believes he hath none at all: for who will thank a Man for giving him that which he has? The Reverse of these Precepts will serve for Satire, wherein we are ever to remark, that whoso loseth his place, or becomes out of favour of the Government, hath forfeited his share in public Praise and • A severe sarcasm on three orders of knighthood in this country. But why ridicule such orders? Is it not of public utility, and consequently providential, that there should be a sort of minds in the world capable of being actuated and put into motion by such objects, as wits and philosopers call Trifles? Honour. Therefore the truly public spirited writer ought in duty to strip him whom the government hath stripped; which is the real poetical Justice of this age. For a full collection of Topics and Epithets to be used in the Praise and Dispraise of Ministerial and Unministerial Persons, I refer to our Rhetorical Cabinet; concluding with an earnest exhortation to all my brethren, to observe the precepts here laid down, the neglect of which hath cost some of them their Ears in the Pillory. CHAP. XV. A RECEIPT TO MAKE AN EPIC POEM". AN Epic Poem, the Critics agree, is the greatest work human nature is capable of. They have al 7 A severe animadversion is here intended on Bossu; who, after he has been so many years quoted, commended, and followed, by a long train of respectable disciples, must, I am afraid, alas! be at last deserted and given up as a visionary and fantastical critic; especially for imagining, among other vain and groundless conceits and refinements, that Homer and Virgil first fixed on some one moral truth or axiom, and then added a fable or story, with suitable names and characters, proper to illustrate the truth so fixed upon. Before Bossu, Mambrun had advanced the same doctrine, and treated it in a philosophical Aristotelian manner, in a laboured Dissertation, which he exemplified by a woful Latin Epic Poem, entitled Constantinus. He was one of those many critics who may remind us of the fate of Boccalini, when he was appointed by Paul V. governor of a small town, because he had written well on political subjects and on the art of government; but was obliged to be recalled after three months' administration for incapacity in the business. The lamentable Epic Poems that Boileau ready laid down many mechanical rules for compositions of this sort, but at the same time they cut off has strung together, the Jonas, the David, the Moses, the Alaric, the Clovis, are exactly of the sort and size of Sir Richard's Job, Arthur, and Alfred; from whom our Scriblerus takes so many instances of the absurd. To these Voltaire has added a work that ought to be exempted from this catalogue, the St. Louis of the Jesuit Le Moine, who seems to have possessed a more vigorous and fertile fancy than any of his countrymen; who, whatever talents they may lay claim to, are not eminent for imagination and creative powers. His poem is in eighteen books, on the Recovery of our Saviour's Crown of Thorns from the Saracens; the subject therefore closely resembles that of Tasso, certainly one of the most interesting subjects that has ever been treated. He has, like Tasso also, introduced machinery of angels, demons, and magicians. The speech and behaviour of one of the latter, Mireme, in the fifth book, page 145, who calls up from Hell the shades of many departed tyrants, is conceived with wonderful wildness of fancy, heightened by the scene of this transaction, near the pyramids of Egypt; especially when the ghost of Saladin declares, with an awful and tremendous voice, that the Sultan must slay his daughter as an expiatory sacrifice. In short, this poem abounds in the terrible graces, and is in a tone and manner very superior to that generally used by the writers of France, and approaching to the sublimity of Dante or Milton: the noble fictions of whose Paradise Lost, the cautious and severe Boileau has, it is imagined, endeavoured to ridicule in the third canto of his Art of Poetry, v. 193. "Et quel objet enfin a presenter aux yeux, Que le diable toujours hurlant contre les cieux, What Boileau says of the Epopee is the worst, and what Marmontel says, is the best part in their respective Arts of Poetry. It ought to be added, that although Le Moine frequently uses a turgid and hyperbolical style; yet that he has prefixed a discourse on Heroic Poetry, in which are many sensible and acute remarks. Le Moine is praised by Fontenelle, vol. 11 of his works. Voltaire very frankly owns, "Les Francais n'ont pas la tete Epique." almost all undertakers from the possibility of ever performing them; for the first qualification they unanimously require in a Poet, is a Genius. I shall here endeavour (for the benefit of my Countrymen) to make it manifest, that the Epic Poems may be made without a Genius, nay without learning or much reading. This must necessarily be of great use to all those who confess they never Read, and of whom the world is convinced they never Learn. Moliere observes of making a dinner, that any Man can do it with Money, and if a professed Cook cannot do it without, he has his Art for nothing; the same may be said of making a Poem, 'tis easily brought about by him that has a Genius, but skill lies in doing it without one. In pursuance of this end, I shall present the reader with a plain and certain Recipe, by which any author in the Bathos may be qualified for this grand performance. FOR THE FABLE. Take out of any old Poem, History-book, Romance, or Legend (for instance, Geoffry of Monmouth, or Don Bellanis of Greece), those parts of story which afford most scope for long Descriptions: put these pieces together, and throw all the adventures you fancy into one Tale. Then take a Hero, whom you may choose for the sound of his name, and put him into the midst of these adventures: there let him work for twelve books; at the end of which you may take him out, ready prepared to conquer or to marry ; being necessary that the conclusion of an Epic Poem be fortunate. it |