thereby misled
in his apprehension and corrupted with an erroneous opinion. But he that
constantly keeps in his mind and maintains as his principle that the
witchcraft of poetry consists in fiction, he that can at all turns
accost it in this language,--

Riddle of art! like which no sphinx beguiles;
Whose face on one side frowns while th' other smiles!
Why cheat'st thou, with pretence to make us wise,
And bid'st sage precepts in a fool's disguise?--

such a one, I say, will take no harm by it, nor admit from it any absurd
thing into his belief. But when he meets in poetry with expressions of
Neptune's rending the earth to pieces and dicovering infernal regions,
("See Iliad," xx. 57.) he will be able to check his fears of the reality
of any such accident; and he will blame himself for his anger against
Apollo for the chief commander of the Greeks,--

Whom at a banquet, whiles he sings his praise
And speaks him fair, yet treacherously he slays.
("From Aeschylus" The whole passage is quoted in Plato's
"Republic," end of book II. (G.).)

Yea, he will repress his tears for Achilles and Agamemnon, while they
are resented as mourning after their death, and stretching forth their
limber and feeble hands to express their desire to live again. And if
at any time the charms of poetry transport him into any disquieting
passions, he will quickly say to himself, as Homer very elegantly
(considering the propension of that sex to listen after fables) says in
his Necyia, or relation of the state of the dead,--

But from the dark dominions speed thy way,
And climb the steep ascent to upper day;
To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell,
The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.
("Odyssey," xi. 223.)

Such things as I have touched upon are those which the poets willingly
feign. But more there are which they do not feign, but believing
themselves as their own proper judgments, they put fictitious colors
upon them to ingratiate them to us. As when Homer says of Jupiter,--

Jove lifts the golden balances, that show
The faces of mortal men, and things below.
Here each contending hero's lot he tries,
And weighs with equal hand their destinies
Low sinks the scale surcharged with Hector's fate;
Heavy with death it sinks, and hell receives the weight.
("Iliad," xxii. 210.)

To this fable Aeschylus hath accommodated a whole tra