; yet though
deficient in the principal requisites of an epic poem, so far as the
structure of the story and the delineation of the characters are
concerned, what exquisite beauties does it contain--what an assemblage of
lovely images has it brought together--what an irreparable loss would its
destruction have been to all future generations of men! Not all the genius
of subsequent ages could have supplied its place. There are beauties in
the _AEneid_, which neither Thomson in descriptive, nor Racine in dramatic
poetry, have been able to rival.

If Homer excels all subsequent writers in conception of character, vigour
of imagination, and graphic delineation, Virgil is not less unrivalled in
delicacy of sentiment, tenderness of feeling, and beauty of expression.
There are many more striking scenes in the _Iliad_, more animating events,
more awful apparitions; but in the _AEneid_, passages of extraordinary
beauty are much more numerous. What is present to the imagination when we
rise from the former, is the extraordinary series of brilliant or majestic
images which it has presented; what is engraven on the memory when we
conclude the latter, is the charming series of beautiful passages which it
contains. There are many more events to recollect in the Grecian, but more
lines to remember in the Roman poet. To the _Iliad_, subsequent ages have
turned with one accord for images of heroism, traits of nature, grandeur
of character. To the _AEneid_, subsequent times will ever have recourse for
touches of pathos, expressions of tenderness, felicity of language.
Flaxman drew his conception of heroic sculpture from the heroes of the
_Iliad_: Racine borrowed his heart-rending pathetic from the sorrows of
Dido. Homer struck out his conceptions with the bold hand, and in the
gigantic proportions, of Michael Angelo's frescoes; Virgil finished his
pictures with the exquisite grace of Raphael's Madonnas.

Virgil has been generally considered as unrivalled in the pathetic; but
this observation requires to be taken with a certain limitation. No man
ever exceeded Homer in the pathetic, so far as he wished to portray it;
but it was one branch only of that emotion that he cared to paint. It was
the _domestic pathetic_ that he delineated with such power: it was in the
distresses of home life, the rending asunder of home affections, that he
was so great a master. The grief of Andromache on the death of Hector, and
the future fate of his son begg