Racine has introduced into his Esther a certain sweetness of melody, with which Virgil has, in like manner, filled his second eclogue. The difference, however, in their respective strains is that which exists between the voice of a tender maiden and that of a youth, between the sighs of innocence and those of sinful love.

These are, perhaps, the points in which Virgil and Racine resemble each other; the following are, perhaps, those in which they differ.

The latter is in general superior to the former in the invention of character. Agamemnon, Achilles, Orestes, Mithridates, Acomates, are far superior to all the heroes of the Eneid. Eneas and Turnus are not finely drawn, except in two or three passages. Mezentius alone is boldly delineated.

In the soft and tender scenes, however, Virgil bursts forth in all his genius. Evander, the venerable monarch of Arcadia, living beneath a roof of thatch, and defended by two shepherds' dogs on the very spot where, at a future period, will rise the magnificent residence of the Cæsars, surrounded by the Prætorian guard; the youthful Pallas; the comely Lausus, the virtuous son of a guilty father; and, lastly, Nisus and Euryalus, are characters perfectly divine.

In the delineation of females Racine resumes the superiority. Agrippina is more ambitious than Amata, and Phædra more impassioned than Dido.

We shall say nothing of Athalie, because in this piece Racine stands unrivalled; it is the most perfect production of genius inspired by religion.

In another particular, however, Virgil has the advantage over Racine; he is more pensive, more melancholy. Not that the author of Phædra would have been incapable of producing this melody of sighs. The role of Andromache, Berenice throughout, some stanzas of hymns in imitation of the Bible, several strophes of the choruses in Esther and Athalie, exhibit the powers which he possessed in this way. But he lived too much in society, and too little in solitude. The court of Louis XIV., though it refined his taste and gave him the majesty of forms, was, perhaps, detrimental to him in other respects; it placed him at too great a distance from nature and rural simplicity.

We have already remarked' that one of the principal causes of Virgil's melancholy was, doubtless, the sense of the hardships which he had undergone in his youth. Though driven from his home, the memory of his Mantua was never to be effaced. But he was no longer the Roman of the republic, loving his country in the harsh and rugged manner of a Brutus; he was the Roman of the monarchy of Augustus, the rival of Homer, and the nursling of the Muses.

Virgil cultivated this germ of melancholy by living in solitude. To this circumstance must, perhaps, be added some others of a personal nature. Our moral or physical defects have a powerful influence upon our temper, and are frequently the secret origin of the predominant feature of our character. Virgil had a difficulty in pronunciation, a weakly constitution, and rustic appearHe seems in his youth to have had strong passions; and these natural imperfections, perhaps, proved obstacles to their indulgence. Thus, family troubles, the love of a country life, wounded self-love, and passions debarred of gratification, concurred in giving him that tincture of melancholy which charms us in his productions.

ance.

We meet with no such thing in Racine as the Diis aliter visum -the Dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos-the Disce puer virtutem ex me, fortunam ex aliis-the Lyrnessi domus alta: sola Laurente sepulchrum. It may not, perhaps, be superfluous to observe that almost all these expressions fraught with melancholy occur in the last six books of the Æneid, as well as the episodes of Evander and Pallas, Mezentius and Lausus, and Nisus and Euryalus. It would seem that as he approached the tomb. the Mantuan bard transfused something more divine than ever into his strains; like those swans of the Eurotas, consecrated to the Muses, which just before they expired were favored, according to Pythagoras, with an inward view of Olympus, and manifested their pleasure by strains of melody.

Virgil is the friend of the solitary, the companion of the private hours of life. Racine is, perhaps, superior to the Latin poet, because he was the author of Athalie; but in the latter

1 Part I., book v., chap. 14.

2 Sermone tardissimum, ac pene indocto similem . Donat., de P. Virg. vit.

.facie rusticana, &c.

there is something that excites softer emotions in the heart. We feel greater admiration for the one, greater love for the other The sorrows depicted by the first are too royal; the second addresses himself more to all ranks of society. On surveying the pictures of human vicissitudes delineated by Racine, we may imagine ourselves wandering in the deserted parks of Versailles; they are vast and dull, but amid the growing solitude we perceive the regular hand of art and the vestiges of former grandeur:— Naught meets the eye but towers reduced to ashes,

A river tinged with blood, and desert plains.

The pictures of Virgil, without possessing less dignity, are not confined to certain prospects of life. They represent all nature; they embrace the solitudes of the forests, the aspect of the mountains, the shores of ocean, where exiled females fix their weeping. eyes on its boundless billows:

Cunctæque profundum

Pontum adspectabant flentes.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WARRIOR-DEFINITION OF THE BEAUTIFUL IDEAL.

THE heroic ages are favorable to poetry, because they have that antiquity and that uncertainty of tradition which are required by the Muses, naturally somewhat addicted to fiction. We daily behold extraordinary events without taking any interest in them; but we listen with delight to the relation of the obscure facts of a distant period. The truth is, that the greatest events in this world are extremely little in themselves: the mind, sensible of this defect in human affairs, and tending incessantly toward immensity, wishes to behold them only through an indistinct medium, that it may magnify their importance.

Now, the spirit of the heroic ages is formed by the union of an imperfect civilization with a religious system at the highest point of its influence. Barbarism and polytheism produced the heroes

of Homer; from barbarism and Christianity arose the knights of Tasso.

Which of the two-the heroes or the knights—deserve the preference either in morals or in poetry? This is a question that it may not be amiss to examine.

Setting aside the particular genius of the two poets, and comparing only man with man, the characters of the Jerusalem appear to us superior to those of the Iliad.

What a vast difference, in fact, between those knights so ingenuous, so disinterested, so humane, and those perfidious, avaricious, ferocious warriors of antiquity, who insulted the lifeless remains of their enemies,-as poetical by their vices as the former were by their virtues!

If by heroism is meant an effort against the passions in favor of virtue, then, most assuredly, Godfrey is the genuine hero, not Agamemnon. Now, we would ask how it happens that Tasso, in delineating his characters, has exhibited the pattern of the perfect soldier, while Homer, in representing the men of the heroic ages, has produced but a species of monsters? The reason is, that Christianity, ever since its first institution, has furnished the beau-ideal in morals, or the beau-ideal of character, while polytheism was incapable of bestowing this important advantage on the Grecian bard. We request the reader's attention for a moment to this subject; it is of too much consequence to the main design of our work not to be placed in its clearest light.

There are two kinds of the beautiful ideal, the moral and the physical, both of which are the offspring of society, and to both such people as are but little removed from the state of naturethe savages, for instance-are utter strangers. They merely aim in their songs at giving a faithful representation of what they As they live in the midst of deserts, their pictures are noble and simple; you find in them no marks of bad taste, but then they are monotonous, and the sentiments which they express never rise to heroism.

see.

The age of Homer was already remote from those early times. When a savage pierces a roebuck with his arrows, strips off the skin in the recess of the forest, lays his victim upon the coals of a burning oak, every circumstance in this action is poetic. But in the tent of Achilles there are already bowls, spits, vessels. A

few more details, and Homer would have sunk into meanness in his descriptions, or he must have entered the path of the beautiful ideal by beginning to conceal.

Thus, in proportion as society multiplied the wants of life, poets learned that they ought not, as in past times, to exhibit every circumstance to the eye, but to throw a veil over certain parts of the picture.

Having advanced this first step, they perceived that it was likewise necessary to select; and then that the object selected was susceptible of a more beautiful form, or produced a more agreeable effect in this or in that position.

Continuing thus to hide and to select, to add and to retrench, they gradually attained to forms which ceased to be natural, but which were more perfect than nature; by artists these forms were denominated the beautiful ideal.

The beautiful ideal may, therefore, be defined the art of selecting and concealing.

This definition is equally applicable to the beautiful ideal in the moral and to that in the physical order. The latter consists in the dexterous concealment of the weak part of objects; the former in hiding certain foibles of the soul-for the soul has its low wants and blemishes as well as the body.

Here we cannot forbear remarking that naught but man is susceptible of being represented more perfect than nature, and, as it were, approaching to the Divinity. Who ever thought of delineating the beautiful ideal of a horse, an eagle, or a lion? We behold here an admirable proof of the grandeur of our destiny and the immortality of the soul.

That society in which morals first reached their complete development must have been the first to attain the beautiful moral ideal, or, what amounts to the same thing, the beautiful ideal of character. Now, such was eminently the case with that portion of mankind who were formed under the Christian dispensation. It is not more strange than true that, while our forefathers were barbarous in every other respect, morals had, by means of the gospel, been raised to the highest degree of perfection among them; so that there existed men who, if we may be allowed the expression, were at the same time savages in body and civilized in mind.