Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/130

 shame, and the interest that one devotes to him reflects upon Achilles and can even be increased. The gods are divided; but Venus and Juno, Minerva and Mars, Vulcan and Neptune are of a like nature; and although divided in the epic action, they are none the less venerated by both parties, equal among each other and all equally subject to Jupiter, who excites or checks their resentment. I know not whether any one has already made this observation; but be that as it may, it is very important. One can attain to the sublimity of epopœia only if like Homer one knows how to oppose the Powers which serve the hero with the Powers which persecute him. For if everything which serves the hero is good, holy, and sacred, and everything which is harmful to him wicked, impious, and reprobate, I do not see the glory of his triumph.

The principal defect in Milton's poem is that his hero succumbs, although he has to combat only the evil things within himself, whilst everything which is good protects him: the poem of Klopstock does not hold the reader's interest, because the perils of his hero are illusory and as soon as he is represented as God, and when he himself knows his divinity, his downfall is absolutely impossible.

But it is too much to dwell upon points of criticism which do not belong to my subject. I have touched upon them only slightly so that you may feel, Messieurs, notwithstanding the pretensions of three rival peoples, that the epic career remains none the less wholly open to the French nation. Some out-of-the-way paths have been traced here and there; but no poet since Vergil, has left the imprint of his steps upon the true path. The moment is perhaps at hand for gathering the palms that time has ripened. Must this century, great in prodigies, remain without an impassioned and enchanting voice to sing of them? Assuredly not. Whoever may be the poet whose genius raises itself to this noble task, I have wished from afar to lend him my feeble support; for I have often enough repeated, that