Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/300

172 but as apartments hung with the deformities of humanity, done by some great hand, which are the more to be abhorred, because the praise and honour they receive results from the degree of uneasiness to which they put every temper of common goodness?

P. 51. v. 26. Ye mice, ye mice.]The ancients believed that heroes were turned into demi-gods at their death; and in general, that departing souls have something of a sight into futurity. It is either this notion, or a care which the gods may take to abate the pride of insulting adversaries, which a poet goes upon, when he makes his leaders die foretelling the end of those by whom they are slain. Zoilus, however, is against this passage. He says, that every character ought to be strictly kept: that a general ought not to invade the character of a prophet, nor a prophet of a general. He is positive, that nothing should be done by any one, without having been hinted at in some previous account of him. And this, he asserts, without any allowance made either for a change of states, or the design of the gods. To confirm this observation, he strengthens it with a quotation out of his larger work on the Iliad, where he has these words upon the death of Hector: ''How foolish is it in Homer to make Hector (who through the whole course of the Iliad had made use of Helenus, to learn the will of the gods) become a prophet just at his death? Let every one be what he ought, without falling into''