of telling them. Of this sort is the main story of an epic poem, "The

return of Ulysses, the settlement of the Trojans in Italy," or the like.

That of the Iliad is the "anger of Achilles," the most short and single

subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet this he has supplied with a

vaster variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater number

of councils, speeches, battles, and episodes of all kinds, than are to be

found even in those poems whose schemes are of the utmost latitude and

irregularity. The action is hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and

its whole duration employs not so much as fifty days. Virgil, for want of

so warm a genius, aided himself by taking in a more extensive subject, as

well as a greater length of time, and contracting the design of both

Homer's poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his.

The other epic poets have used the same practice, but generally carried it

so far as to superinduce a multiplicity of fables, destroy the unity of

action, and lose their readers in an unreasonable length of time. Nor is

it only in the main design that they have been unable to add to his

invention, but they have followed him in every episode and part of story.

If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up their

forces in the same order. If he has funeral games for Patroclus, Virgil

has the same for Anchises, and Statius (rather than omit them) destroys

the unity of his actions for those of Archemorus. If Ulysses visit the

shades, the Æneas of Virgil and Scipio of Silius are sent after him. If he

be detained from his return by the allurements of Calypso, so is Æneas by

Dido, and Rinaldo by Armida. If Achilles be absent from the army on the

score of a quarrel through half the poem, Rinaldo must absent himself just

as long on the like account. If he gives his hero a suit of celestial

The Iliad of Homer