An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...have painted the Crucifixion, by either varying the attitude of the principal object to make it more sublime and admirable, or by rendering some inferior figure picturesque and animated which had escaped the notice of his Predecessors. When therefore a sublime object is not shown in some great and uncommon point of view, the Poet sinks in our esteem as much as he would have risen in it, if we had found his Genius equal to his Ambition. As I have already borrowed one illustration from painting, permit me to recall to your Lordship's memory, that noble figure by which the Church of Rome permitted Raphael to represent the Eternal Father, a figure which has always been considered as one of the greatest ornaments of the galleries of the Vatican62 . Any person may conclude that the difficulty of succeeding in this great attempt, must have bore some proportion to the temerity (shall we call it) of venturing to design it. If this celebrated Artist had failed of throwing into that figure an Air wholly extraordinary, his Design would either have been considered as rash, or his imagination censured as deficient. On the contrary, the Poet who chuseth a more unpromising subject, and displays an unexpected fertility of invention xlviii in his manner of treating it, is admired as an Original Genius, and the perusal of his work excites in our mind the most agreeable mixture of surprize and pleasure. It must immediately occur to any reader who peruseth the Hymn of Callimachus to Jupiter, that the subject was too great to be properly managed by the correct and elegant genius of that writer. Instead of enlarging (as we should have naturally expected) on any particular perfection of this Supreme Deity, or even of enumerating in a poetical manner the attributes which were commonly ascribed to Him, he entertains us coldly with traditionary stories about His birth and education; and the sublime part of his subject is either wholly omitted, or superficially passed over....