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into their subject, trusting to nature for that language which is at
once the shortest and the most appropriate to the occasion; spurning all
far-fetched metaphors aside, and ringing out their verse as the iron
rings upon the anvil! It was in this way that Homer, the great old
ballad-maker of Greece, wrote--or rather chanted, for in his day pens
were scarce, wire-wove unknown, and the pride of Moseley undeveloped.
God had deprived the blind old man of sight; but in his heart still
burned the fury of the fight of Troy; and trow ye not, that to him the
silent hills of Crete many a time became resonant with the clang of
arms, and the shouts of challenging heroes, when not a breath of wind
was stirring, and the ibex stood motionless on its crag? What a
difference between Homer and Virgil! Moeonides goes straight to work,
like a marshal calling out his men. He moves through the encampment of
the ships, knowing every man by headmark, and estimating his
capabilities to a buffet. No metaphor or nonsense in the combats that
rage around the sepulchre of Ilus--good hard fighting all of it, as
befits barbarians, in whose veins the blood of the danger-seeking
demigods is seething: fierce as wild beasts they meet together, smite,
hew, and roll over in the dust. Jove may mourn for Sarpedon, or
Andromache tear her hair above the body of her slaughtered Hector; but
not one whit on that account abstain their comrades from the banquet,
and on the morrow, under other leaders, they will renew the battle--for
man is but as the leaves of the forest, whilst glory abideth for ever.

Virgil, on the contrary, had but little of the ballad-maker in his
composition. He was always thinking of himself, and of his art, and the
effect which his AEneid would produce,--nay, we are even inclined to
suspect that at times he was apt to deviate into a calculation of the
number of sestertia which he might reasonably reckon to receive from the
bounty of the Emperor. The AEneid is upon the whole a sneaking sort of a
poem. The identity of AEneas with Augustus, and the studied
personification of every leading character, is too apparent to be
denied. It is therefore less an epic than an allegory; and--without
questioning the truth of Hazlitt's profound apothegm, that allegories do
not bite--we confess that, in general, we have but small liking to that
species of composition. For in the first place, the author of an
allegory strips himself of the power of believi