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armour, Virgil and Tasso make the same present to theirs. Virgil has not
only observed this close imitation of Homer, but, where he had not led the
way, supplied the want from other Greek authors. Thus the story of Sinon,
and the taking of Troy, was copied (says Macrobius) almost word for word
from Pisander, as the loves of Dido and Æneas are taken from those of
Medea and Jason in Apollonius, and several others in the same manner.
To proceed to the allegorical fable--If we reflect upon those innumerable
knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy which Homer is
generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories, what a new and
ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us! How fertile will
that imagination appear, which as able to clothe all the properties of
elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues and vices, in forms
and persons, and to introduce them into actions agreeable to the nature of
the things they shadowed! This is a field in which no succeeding poets
could dispute with Homer, and whatever commendations have been allowed
them on this head, are by no means for their invention in having enlarged
his circle, but for their judgment in having contracted it. For when the
mode of learning changed in the following ages, and science was delivered
in a plainer manner, it then became as reasonable in the more modern poets
to lay it aside, as it was in Homer to make use of it. And perhaps it was
no unhappy circumstance for Virgil, that there was not in his time that
demand upon him of so great an invention as might be capable of furnishing
all those allegorical parts of a poem.
The marvellous fable includes whatever is supernatural, and especially the
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