Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/13

 it were on propense Malice to commit a Fault. For he took his opportunity to kill a Royal Infant, by the means of a Serpent, (that Author of all Evil) to make way for those Funeral Honours, which he intended for him. Now if this Innocent had been of any Relation to his Thebais; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the Town, the Poet might have found some sorry Excuse at least, for detaining the Reader from the promis'd Siege. On these terms, this Capaneus of a Poet ingag'd his two Immortal Predecessours, and his Success was answerable to his Enterprise.

If this Oeconomy must be observ'd in the minutest Parts of an Epick Poem, which, to a common Reader, seem to be detach'd from the Body, and almost independent of it; what Soul, tho' sent into the World with great advantages of Nature, cultivated with the liberal Arts and Sciences; conversant with Histories of the Dead, and enrich'd with Observations on the Living, can be sufficient to inform the whole Body of so great a Work? I touch here but transiently, without any strict Method, on some few of those many Rules of imitating Nature, which Aristotle drew from Homer's Iliads and Odysses, and which he fitted to the Drama; furnishing himself also with Observations from the Practice of the Theater, when he flourish'd under Æschilus, Eurypides, and Sophocles. For the Original of the Stage was from the Epick Poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded Acting, and gave Laws to it: What at first was told Artfully, was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight, and hearing. Those Episodes of Homer, which were proper for the Stage, the Poets amplify'd each into an Action: Out of his Limbs they form'd their Bodies: What he had Contracted they Enlarg'd: Out of one Hercules were made infinite of Pigmies; yet all endued with humane Souls: For from him, their great Creator, they have each of Rh