se with the
beloved Apostle John. But which of us even in fancy can ride with the
Red-Cross warrior, penetrate with Guyon into the cave of Mammon, or
realise the dreary pageant that issued from the House of Pride?

Spenser's is the purer allegory--Virgil's but a secondary one. The AEneid
is a hybrid poem, wherein the real and the ideal mingle. There is
sufficient of the first to preserve for us some epic interest, and
enough of the latter at times to stagger our belief. But apart from
this, how inferior is the AEneid in interest to the masterpiece of Homer!
It consists, epically speaking, of three divisions--the landing at
Carthage, the Sicilian visit to Acestes, and the final campaign of
Italy--and the two first of these have no bearing at all upon the third,
and even that third is incomplete. Whatever homage we may be compelled
to pay to the sweetness of Virgil's muse, and his marvellous power of
melody, this at least is undeniable, that in inventive genius he falls
immeasurably short of the Greek, and that his scenes of action are at
once both tinselled and tame. One magnificent exception, it is true, we
are bound to make from such a censure. The second book of the AEneid
stands out in strong and vivid contrast from the rest; and few poets,
whether ancient or modern, have written aught like the conflagration of
Troy. Nor shall we, with the severer critics, darkly hint of works which
had gone before, but of which the substance long ago has perished--of
the Cyclic poem of Arctinus, said to have been of all others the nearest
in point of energy to the Iliad, or of the songs of Lesches and
Euphorion. Rather let us be thankful for this one episode, without which
the great tale of Ilium would have been incomplete, and the lays of
Demodocus in the Odyssey remained mere hints of the woful catastrophe of
Priam. But if you wish to see how Homer could handle a ballad, turn up
the eighth book of your Odyssey until you come to the Minstrel's son--or
if haply you are somewhat rusted in your Greek, and yearn for the aid of
Donnegan, listen to the noble version of Maginn, who alone of all late
translators has caught the true fire and spirit of Moeonides.

"The Minstrel began as the Godhead inspired:
He sang how their leaguer the Argives had fired,
And over the sea in trim barks bent their course,
While their chiefs with Odysseus were closed in the horse,
Mid the Trojans who had that fell engine of wood
Drag