His story is not so pleasing as Ariosto's; he
is too flatulent sometimes, and sometimes too dry; many times
unequal, and almost always forced; and, besides, is full of
conceits, points of epigram, and witticisms; all which are not only
below the dignity of heroic verse, but contrary to its nature:
Virgil and Homer have not one of them. And those who are guilty of
so boyish an ambition in so grave a subject are so far from being
considered as heroic poets that they ought to be turned down from
Homer to the "Anthologia," from Virgil to Martial and Owen's
Epigrams, and from Spenser to Flecknoe--that is, from the top to the
bottom of all poetry. But to return to Tasso: he borrows from the
invention of Boiardo, and in his alteration of his poem, which is
infinitely for the worse, imitates Homer so very servilely that (for
example) he gives the King of Jerusalem fifty sons, only because
Homer had bestowed the like number on King Priam; he kills the
youngest in the same manner; and has provided his hero with a
Patroclus, under another name, only to bring him back to the wars
when his friend was killed.
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