Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/47

Book I. out the Turn: Whereas theirs was full of Mysteries and Allegories. The Truth was mask'd under these ingenious Inventions, which for their Excellence go under the name of Fables, or Sayings; as if there were as much difference between these fabulous Discourses of the Wise, and the ordinary Language of the Vulgar, as there is between the Language that is proper to Men, and the Sounds brute Beasts make use of to express their Passions and Sensations.

At first the Fables were employ'd in speaking of the Divine Nature according to the Notion they then had of it. This sublime Subject made the first Poets to be stil'd Divines, and Poetry the Language of the Gods. They divided the Divine Attributes as it were into so many Persons; because the Infirmity of a Humane Mind cannot sufficiently conceive, or explain so much Power and Action in a Simplicity so great and indivisible as is that of God. And perhaps they were jealous of the Advantages they reap'd from such excellent and refin'd Learning, and which they thought the vulgar part of Mankind was not worthy of.

They could not tell us of the Operations of this Almighty Cause, without speaking at the same time of its Effects: So that to Divinity they added Physiology, and treated thereof, without quitting the Umbrages of their Allegorical Expressions.

But Man being the chief and the most noble of all the Effects which God produc'd, and nothing being so proper, nor more useful to Poets than this Subject, they have added it to the former, and treated of the Doctrine of Morality after the same manner as they did that of Divinity and Philosophy: And from Morality thus discours'd of, has Art form'd that kind of Poem and Fable, which we call the Epick.

What the Divines made their Divinity, that did the Epick Poets make their Morality. But that infinite Variety of the Actions and Operations of the Divine Nature (to which our Understanding bears but little proportion) did as it were force them upon dividing the single Idea of the only one God into several Persons, under the different Names of Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and the rest. And on the other hand, the Nature of Moral Philosophy being such as never lays down a Rule for any particular thing, the Epick Poets were oblig'd to unite in one single Idea, in one and the same Person, and in an Action that appear'd singular, all that look'd like it in different Persons, and in various Actions, which might be thus contain'd as so many Species under their Genus.

Therefore when Aristotle speaks to this purpose, That Poetry is more serious than History, and that Poets are greater Philosophers than Historians are: He does not only speak this to magnifie the Excellence of this Art, but to in-