omplements so fine and just, that I could
ne'er endure to read Statius, or any of the rest of the Antient Latins
after him; with whom therefore I shan't concern my self nor trouble my
Reader. Ariosto was the first of the Moderns who attempted any thing like
an Heroic Poem, and has many great and beautiful Thoughts; but at the same
time, 'tis true, as Balzac observes, that you can hardly tell whether he's
a Christian or an Heathen, making God swear by Styx, and using all the
Pagan Ornaments; his Fancy very often runs away with his Judgment, his
Action is neither one nor simple, nor can you imagine what he drives at;
he has an hundred Hero's but you can't tell which he designs should be
chief: Orlando indeed seems a wild Imitation of Homer's Achilles, but his
Character is not bright enough to make him the Principal; and besides he
orders it so, that he does more great Actions when he's mad then when
sober. Agreeable to this are Rapin's thoughts of him, which, in few words,
are "That he's elevated and admirable in his Expressions, his Descriptions
fine, but that he wants Judgment; and speaks well, but thinks ill, and
that tho' the Parts are handsome enough, yet the whole Work can by no
means pass for an Epic Poem, he having never seen the Rules of Aristotle;"
which he thinks Tasso had, and therefore wrote much better, whom he
commends as more correct in his Design, more regular in the ordering his
Fable, and more accomplish'd in all parts of his Poem than any other of
the Italians, whom yet he justly blames, because he has two Hero's
Godfredo and Rinaldo, of whom Godfredo seems the principal, and yet
Rinaldo performs the greatest part of the notable Actions. He seems to
imitate Agamemnon and Achilles, but then he raises his Agamemnon too high,
or keeps him too low, for he hardly lets him do one great Action through
the whole Work. He further criticises upon him as mingling too much
Gallantry with his Poem, which, he thinks, is unbecoming the Gravity of
his Subject. But whether this Censure be just, I know not, for Love and
Gallantry runs through all Virgil's AEneids, in the Instances of Helen,
Dido, and Lavinia, and indeed it gives so great a Life to Epic, that it
hardly can be agreeable without it, and I question whether ever it has
been so. Nor is he more just, I think, against Tasso's Episodes, which he
blames as not proper to circumstantiate his principal Action, not entring
into the Causes and Effects thereof, but seekin