Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/110

 enrag'd and pacified person, where every thing was transacted in one and the same place.

This Length of the Odysseïs, compar'd to that of the Iliad, would still hold good, though we should substract from it the several Years which precede the opening of the Poem; and began the Action only at the time of the first Council of the Gods. For it would be still longer than that of the Iliad by a fifth part; the one taking up 58 Days, and the other only 47 or 48.

But one cannot exclude from the Subject that which precedes the opening of the Poem, and that which Ulysses relates to Alcinous, without contradicting Aristotle, by reducing into the Compass of less than two Months, what he says took up several Years. This would be to give Homer himself the Lye, who says, That his Subject contains the Voyages and Travels of a Man, who after the taking of Troy, saw several Cities, and knew the Customs of a great many States and People: he says, that he suffer'd much by Sea, and did all he could to secure the Return of his Attendants as well as of himself. Now all this did not happen since the first Council of the Gods. Then, there were seven whole Years, in which he never so much as thought of his Attendants, for they were all destroy'd. And since that, there happen'd but one Tempest, and he visited no more than one City. These seven Years then, and all the Adventures, the Travels, and the Tempests which preceeded, from the Ruin of Troy down to that time, are not extraneous, foreign, or additional Pieces; but are with the rest the Subject of the Poem. And yet they are Episodes, as Aristotle asserts in these Words, The rest are Episodes: for this Rest is all that he did not name in particular. Now he spoke only in general, of the Absence of Ulysses, of the Storms he met with, of the Disturbances of Ithaca, and of the Re-establishment of this Prince.

In short, when we discours'd of the Nature of the Fable, we there took notice of the absolute Necessity the Poet lay under of keeping Ulysses from his Country a very long time; of ordering his Absence as caused by the Storms he met with; of casting this Hero upon several different Countries; of raising great Disorders in Ithaca; of making an Example of his Enemies by punishing them; and of re-establishing the Prince himself. This was so far necessary to the Subject, that the Poet was not left to his Liberty of changing it, without destroying his Design, spoiling his Fable, and making another Poem of it.