Camp, and in the City of Troy, there was nothing to be seen but Sedition, Treachery, Villainy, Lust, and Passion: And he never commends Achilles, neither for his Valour, nor for his killing Hector, nor for any thing else he did against the Trojans.
Yet 'tis evident what an esteem he has for Homer; and that he carped at no Faults of his but * Peccadilloes. He would have every one, that has a mind to be a Poet,† have Homer before him night and day: And he proposes the Achilles of Homer with all the Vices, and all the Defects he imputes to him, as a great Exemplar for others to follow. ‡ He would have him be cholerick, inexorable, one who knows nothing of Justice, but has all his Reason at his Sword's Point.
'Tis true, to these Qualities he has joined Vigilancy and Zeal to carry on an Enterprize. But these Qualities being in their own Nature indifferent, have nothing that is good, but in Persons duly accomplished as was Scipio. In wicked Persons they are pernicious Vices, as in Catiline, who made no other use of them but to oppress his Country. 'Tis then in this last sence that Horace ascribes them to Achilles, since he would have him be represented, as unjust and passionate.
In †Ʋlysses he did discover an Example of Vertue: But since, in truth, he does equally commend Homer, for giving us in his two Poems an Example of Vertue, and an Example of Vice, should we not conclude, that the good or bad Qualities of the chief Personages, are not at all necessary nor essential to the Epick Fable; and that Horace never thought the Epopéa was an Elogy of an Hero?
That which the Iliad and the Odysseis have in common, is, that each of them is a Moral Instruction disguised under the Allegories of an Action. This is what Horace discovers in them; and by Consequence each of them, in the Opinion of this Critick, is a Fable, and such a one as we described it.
CHAP.
