Let this be said without entering
into the interests of factions and parties, and relating only to the
bounty of that king to men of learning and merit--a praise so just
that even we, who are his enemies, cannot refuse it to him.
Now if it may be permitted me to go back again to the consideration
of epic poetry, I have confessed that no man hitherto has reached or
so much as approached to the excellences of Homer or of Virgil; I
must farther add that Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil,
knew not how to design after him, though he had the model in his
eye; that Lucan is wanting both in design and subject, and is
besides too full of heat and affectation; that amongst the moderns,
Ariosto neither designed justly nor observed any unity of action, or
compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught: his
style is luxurious without majesty or decency, and his adventures
without the compass of nature and possibility. Tasso, whose design
was regular, and who observed the roles of unity in time and place
more closely than Virgil, yet was not so happy in his action: he
confesses himself to have been too lyrical--that is, to have written
beneath the dignity of heroic verse--in his episodes of Sophronia,
Erminia, and Armida.
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