orks. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse
of Poetry, speaks of it in the following words: "I never heard the old
song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with
a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice
than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of
that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of
Pindar?" For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this
antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without
any further apology for so doing.

The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule that an heroic
poem should be founded upon some important precept of morality adapted to
the constitution of the country in which the poet writes. Homer and
Virgil have formed their plans in this view. As Greece was a collection
of many governments, who suffered very much among themselves, and gave
the Persian emperor, who was their common enemy, many advantages over
them by their mutual jealousies and animosities, Homer, in order to
establish among them an union which was so necessary for their safety,
grounds his poem upon the discords of the several Grecian princes who
were engaged in a confederacy against an Asiatic prince, and the several
advantages which the enemy gained by such discords. At the time the poem
we are now treating of was written, the dissensions of the barons, who
were then so many petty princes, ran very high, whether they quarrelled
among themselves or with their neighbours, and produced unspeakable
calamities to the country. The poet, to deter men from such unnatural
contentions, describes a bloody battle and dreadful scene of death,
occasioned by the mutual feuds which reigned in the families of an
English and Scotch nobleman. That he designed this for the instruction
of his poem we may learn from his four last lines, in which, after the
example of the modern tragedians, he draws from it a precept for the
benefit of his readers:

God save the king, and bless the land
In plenty, joy, and peace;
And grant henceforth that foul debate
'Twixt noblemen may cease.

The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets hath been to
celebrate persons and actions which do honour to their country: thus
Virgil's hero was the founder of Rome; Homer's a prince of Greece; and
for this reason Valerius Flaccus and Statius, who were both Romans, might
be justly de