Troy was but a little town, of the little kingdom of Phrygia; whereas Rome was then miftrefs of an empire, that reached from the ftraits of Hercules, and the Atlantic ocean, to the Euphrates, and from the bottom of the Euxine and the Cafpian feas, to Æthiopia and Mount Atlas. The inimitable Virgil is yet more straitened in his fubject. Æneas, a poor fugitive from Troy, with a handful of followers, fettles at laft in Italy; and all the empire that immortal pen could give him, is but a few miles upon the banks of the Tiber. So vaft a difproportion there is between the importance of the subject of the Æneid and that of the Pharfalia, that we find one fingle Roman, Craffus, mafter of more flaves on his estate, than Virgil's hero had fubjects. In fine, it may be faid, nothing can excufe him for his choice, but that he defigned his. hero for the ancestor of Rome, and the Julian race..

I cannot leave this parallel, without taking notice,. to what a height of power the Roman empire was then arrived, in an inftance of Cæfar himself, when but proconful of Gaul, and before it is thought he ever dreamed of what he afterwards attained to it is in one of Cicero's letters to him, wherein he repeats the words of Cæfar's letters to him fome time before.. The words are thefe; "As to what concerns Marcus "Furius, whom you recommended to me, I will, if 68 you please, make him king of Gaul; but, if you "would have me advance any other friend of yours, "fend him to me." It was no new thing for citizens. of Rome, fuch as Cæfar was, to dispose of kingdoms.

as they pleased; and Cæfar himself had taken away Deiotarus's kingdom from him, and given it to a private gentleman of Pergamum. But there is one furprizing inftance more, of the prodigious greatness of the Roman power, in the affair of king Antiochus, and that long before the height it arrived to, at the breaking forth of the civil war. That prince was master of all Egypt; and, marching to the conqueft of Phoenicia, Cyprus, and the other appendixes of that empire, Popilius overtakes him in his full march, with letters from the fenate, and refuses to give him his hand till he had read them. Antiochus, ftartled at the command that was contained in them, to stop the progress of his victories, asked a short time to confider of it. Popilius makes a circle about him with a ftick he had in his hand, " Return me an answer,” faid he, "before thou stirrest out of this circle, or "the Roman people are no more thy friends." Antiochus, after a fhort paufe, told him with the lowest fubmiffion, he would obey the fenate's commands. Upon which, Popilius gives him his hand, and falutes him a friend of Rome. After Antiochus had given up fo great a monarchy, and fuch a torrent of fuccefs, upon receiving only a few words in writing, he had indeed reafon to fend word to the fenate, as he did by his ambassadors, that he had obeyed their commands, with the fame fubmiffion, as if they had been fent him from the immortal gods.

To leave this digreffion. It were the height of arrogance to detract ever fo little from Homer or Virgil,

who

who have kept poffeffion of the first places, among the poets of Greece and Rome, for fo many ages: yet I hope I may be forgiven, if I fay there are feveral paffages in both, that appear to me trivial, and below the dignity that shines almost in every page of Lucan. It were to take both the Iliad and neid in pieces, to prove this: but I shall only take notice of one inftance, and that is, the different colouring of Virgil's hero, and Lucan's Cæfar, in a storm. Æneas is drawn weeping, and in the greatest confufion and defpair, though he had affurance from the gods that he fhould one day fettle and raife a new empire in Italy. Cæfar, on the contrary, is reprefented perfectly fedate, and free from fear. His courage and magnanimity brighten-up as much upon this occasion, as afterwards they did at the battles of Pharfalia and Munda. Courage would have cost Virgil nothing, to have bestowed it on his hero; and he might as eafily have thrown him upon the coaft of Carthage in a calm temper of mind, as in a panic fear.folga

St. Evremont is very severe upon Virgil on this account, and has criticized upon his character of Æneas in this manner. When Virgil tells us,"

"Extemplo Æneæ folvuntur frigore membra,

"Ingemit, & duplices tendens ad fidera palmas, &c." "Seized as he is," fays St. Evremont, "with this "chilnefs through all his limbs, the first sign of life we find in him, is his groaning; then he lifts up "hands to heaven, and, in all appearance, would

his

"implore

66 implore its fuccour, if the condition wherein the "good hero finds himself, would afford him ftrength enough to raise his mind to the gods, and pray

with attention. His foul, which could not apply "itfelf to any thing elfe, abandons itfelf to lamen"tations; and like thofe defolate widows, who upon "the first trouble they meet with, wish they were in the grave with their dear husbands, the poor Aneas bewails his not having perifhed before Troy with Hector, and esteems them very happy who left their bones in the bofom of fo fweet and dear a country, Some people," adds he, "may perhaps believe he fays fo, because he envies their happinefs; but I am perfuaded, fays St. Evremont, it is for fear of the danger that threatens him." The fame author, after he has expofed his want of vant of courage, adds, "The good Æneas hardly ever concerns himself in "any important or glorious defign: it is enough for "him that he difcharges his confcience in the office "of a pious, tender, and compaffionate man. HA

carries his father on his fhoulders, he conjugally "laments his dear Creifa, he causes his nurse to be "interred, and makes a funeral pile for his trufty "pilot Palinurus, for whom he sheds a thousand ❝ tears. Here is (fays he) a forry hero in paganism, "who would have made an admirable faint among "fome chriftians." In fhort, it is St. Evremont's opinion, " he was fitter to make a founder of an order than a ftate."

Thus far, and perhaps too far, St. Evremont: I

beg

.

beg leave to take notice, that the ftorm in Lucan is drawn in ftronger colours, and strikes the mind with greater horror, than that of Virgil; notwithstanding the first has no fupernatural cause assigned for it, and the latter is raised by a god, at the inftigation of a goddefą, that was both wife and fifter of Jupiter.

In the Pharfalia, most of the transactions and events, that compofe the relation, are wonderful and furprizing, though true, as well as inftructive and entertaining. To enumerate them all, were to tranfcribe the work itself, and therefore I shall only hint at some of the most remarkable. With what dignity, and justness of character, are the two great rivals, Pompey and Cæfar, introduced in the First Book; and how beautifully, and with what a masterly art, are they appofed to one another? add to this, the jufteft fimilitudes by which their different characters are illuftrated in the Second and Ninth Book. Who can but admire the figure that Cato's virtue makes, in more places than one? And I perfuade myself, if Lucan had lived to finish his design, the death of that illustrious Roman had made one of the most moving, as well as one of the moft fublime episodes of his poem. In the Third Book Pompey's dream, Cæfar's breaking open the temple of Saturn, the fiege of Marfeilles, the fea-fight, and the facred grove, have each of them their particular excellence, that in my opinion come very little fhort of any thing we find in Homer or Virgil. In the Fourth Book, there are a great many charming incidents, and among the reft, that of the foldiers

running