n of character, or clothing
abstract conceptions in the flesh and blood of real life.

Considered with reference to unity of action and identity of interest, the
_Jerusalem Delivered_, equal to the _Iliad_, is much superior to the
_AEneid_. Virgil appears, in his admiration of Homer, to have aimed at
uniting in his poem the beauties both of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_,
and thence in a great measure his failure to rival either. While the first
six books, which contain the wanderings of the Trojan exile and the dismal
recital of the sack of Troy, are an evident imitation of the _Odyssey_,
the last six, containing the strife in Italy, the efforts of the Trojans
to gain a footing on the Ausonian shores, and the concluding single combat
of Turnus and AEneas, are as evidently framed upon the model of the
_Iliad_. But it is impossible in this manner to tack together two separate
poems, and form an homogeneous whole from their junction. Patchwork will
appear in spite of all the genius and taste of Virgil. Epic poetry,
indeed, is not confined within the narrow limits of the Grecian stage; the
poem may embrace a longer period than it requires to read it. But in epic
poetry, as in all the fine arts, one unity is indispensable--the unity of
interest or emotion. Unity of time and place is not to be disregarded to
any great degree without manifest danger. The whole period embraced in the
_Iliad_ is only forty-eight days, and the interest of the piece--that
which elapses from Hector lighting his fires before the Greek
intrenchments till his death in front of the Scaean Gate--is only
thirty-six hours. Tasso has the same unity of time, place, and interest in
his poems: the scene is always around Jerusalem; the time not many weeks;
the main object, the centre of the whole action, the capture of the city.
The charming episodes of Erminia's flight and Armida's island are felt to
be episodes only: they vary the narrative without distracting the
interest. But in Virgil the interest is various and complicated, the scene
continually shifting, the episodes usurp the place of the main story. At
one time we are fascinated by the awful recital of the murder of Priam,
the burning of Troy, and the flight of AEneas: at another, we weep with the
sorrows of Dido at Carthage, and the exquisite pathos of his heart-rending
lamentations: at a third, we are charmed by the descent into the infernal
regions on the shores of Avernus, we sympathize with the pat