Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 2.djvu/16

 Heroe, his Magnanimity, his Constancy, his Patience, his Piety, or whatever Characteristical Virtue his Poet gives him, raises first our Admiration: We are naturally prone to imitate what we admire: And frequent Acts produce a habit. If the Hero's chief quality be vicious, as for Example, the Choler and obstinate desire of Vengeance in Achilles, yet the Moral is Instructive: And besides, we are inform'd in the very proposition of the Iliads, that this anger was pernicious: That it brought a thousand ills on the Grecian Camp. The Courage of Achilles is propos'd to imitation, not his Pride and Disobedience to his General, nor his brutal Cruelty to his dead Enemy, nor the selling his Body to his Father. We abhor these Actions while we read them, and what we abhor we never imitate: The Poet only shews them like Rocks or Quack-Sands, to be shun'd.

By this Example the Criticks have concluded that it is not necessary the Manners of the Heroe should be virtuous. They are Poetically good if they are of a Piece. Though where a Character of perfect Virtue is set before us, 'tis more lovely: for there the whole Heroe is to be imitated. This is the Æneas of our Author: this is that Idea of perfection in an Epick Poem, which Painters and Statuaries have only in their minds; and which no hands are able to express. These are the Beauties of a God in a Humane Body. When the Picture of Achilles is drawn in Tragedy, he is taken with those Warts, and Moles, and hard Features, by those who represent him on the Stage, or he is no more Achilles: for his Creatour Homer has so describ'd him. Yet even thus he appears a perfect Heroe, though an imperfect Character of Vertue. Horace Paints him after Homer, and delivers him to be Copied on the Stage with all those imperfections. Therefore they are either not faults in a Heroick Poem, or faults