which led up to the situation with which the "Henriade" begins are recounted to Queen Elizabeth by Henry, who, like the Trojan chief, enlists the sympathies of his listener, though not with the same result; and this imitation has not the sanction of historical fact. Again, Henry, like the Trojan hero, and like Ulysses, accomplishes the descent into hell, and, like Dante, visits heaven. The fight between Turenne and D'Aumale, which did not really happen, very much resembles that between Turnus and Æneas. Then there is a prophet and a palace of Destiny to connect, as Virgil's Sibyl does, the present of the poem with the future; there are personifications more or less fantastic, as personages having only such allegorical existence must be. Besides a palace of Destiny, there is a temple of Love, with its votaries; and, lastly, Truth herself descends from the skies to visit Bourbon’s camp. In strange association with these, the Father of the Universe appears, like a Christian Jupiter, on more than one occasion, and vouchsafes utterances which shake the spheres.
Voltaire, without denying that these are imitations, would probably have considered that they needed no defence. He might think it of small importance that some parts of his machinery were borrowed, provided he turned them to good account. His royal admirer Frederick asserts, indeed, in his preface, that the French poet has imitated the ancients only to surpass them. "If," says the illustrious critic, "he imitates in some passages Homer and Virgil, it is, however, always an imitation which has in it something original, and in which one sees that the judgment of the French poet is infinitely superior to that of the Greek. Compare
