Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/91

Book I. strates how beautiful and regular the Iliad is; and the Narration of the Adventures of the Mouse shews the contrary in the Achilleid. If my two Parallels are of equal justness, the Difference that appears to be between the Achilles of Homer and that of Statius ought to be attributed to nothing else but the different Conduct of these two Authors.

There is still another way of irregularly multiplying Fables. without making a Rehearsal of the Hero's whole Life: and that is, by mixing with the main Action other foreign Actions, which have no manner of Relation thereto. This belongs to the Unity of the Action, and the Art of making the Episodes; of which we shall speak in the next Book.

The Poem of Ovid's Metamorphoses is of another kind. If (as I have already laid down the Idea I conceiv'd of the Achilleid of Statius, of the Heraclid, of the Theseid, and of other such like Pieces of the Ancient Poets) I had a mind likewise to present the World with an Example of Æsop's Fables compar'd with Ovid's Metamorphoses; I should be forced to put all the Fables of Æsop into one Body: Because Ovid is not contented to rehearse all that ever happen'd either to Achilles, or to Hercules, or to Theseus, or to any other single Personage; but he makes a Recital of all that ever happen'd to all the Persons of the Poetical Fables. This Recital is by no means an Epick Poem, but a Collection of all the Fables that were ever writ in Verse, with as much Connexion and Union, as the Compiler of so many Incidents could devise.

And yet I do not see how any one can condemn this Design, and tax its Author with Ignorance: provided none pretend that he design'd to make an Epopéa, nor compare it to the Poems of Homer and Virgil, as Statius has done his Achilleid and Thebaid.

Ltho' we have been speaking so much against the Multiplication of Fables, yet one cannot absolutely condemn it. Our Poets have got several Fables in each of their Poems, and Horace commends Homer for it. Nay Aristotle himself forbids it in such a slight way, as might be easily evaded. He finds fault with those Poets who were for reducing the Unity of the Fable into the Unity of the