rever
he has a close fight of one of his heroes with a multitude of enemies to
recount. So forcibly is the creative mind, in the first instance,
fascinated by the variety and brilliancy of its conceptions, that it
neglects and despises their subordinate details. It is careless of
language, because it is intent on ideas: it is niggardly in language,
because it is prodigal of thought. Homer's expressions or epithets are in
general admirably chosen, and speak at once a graphic eye and an
imaginative mind; but it is extraordinary how often they recur without any
variation. It is the same with Ariosto: he is somewhat more varied in his
expression, but even more identical in his details. Prodigal of invention,
varied in imagination, unbounded in conception, in the incidents and great
features of his story, he has very little diversity in its subordinate
parts. He carries us over the whole earth, through the air, and to the
moon: but giants, castles, knights, and errant damsels occur at every
step, with hardly any alteration. The perpetual jousts of the knights,
charging with the lance and then drawing the sword, are exactly parallel
to the endless throwing of the spear and leaping from the chariot in the
_Iliad_.

No man can read the _AEneid_ without seeing that it has been constructed,
both in its general conception and chief incidents, on the poems of Homer;
and yet so exquisite was the taste, so refined the sentiment, so tender
the heart of VIRGIL, that he has produced upon the world the impression of
a great original author. Dante worshipped him as a species of divinity; he
made him his guide through the infernal regions, to unfold the crimes of
the wicked and the intentions of the Deity in the distribution of future
rewards and punishments. Throughout the middle ages he was regarded as a
sort of necromancer, a mighty magician, to whom the past and the future
are alike known, and whose power even the elements of nature were
constrained to obey. The "Sortes Virgilianae," so well known, and so long
practised in every country of Europe, arose from this belief. The imagery,
mythology and characters of his epic poem are drawn from the _Iliad_: but
in two particulars he is entirely original, and his genius has opened the
two fountains from which the most prolific streams of beauty in modern
poetry have flowed. He is the father of _descriptive_ and _amatory_
poetry. The passion of love, as we understand it, was unknown to Homer,