Letter No. 273. Saturday, January 12, 1712. Addison.
Notandi sunt tibi Mores.
Hor.
Having examined the Action of Paradise Lost, let us in the next place consider the Actors. [This is Aristotle's Method of considering, first the Fable, and secondly [1]] the Manners; or, as we generally call them in English, the Fable and the Characters.
Homer has excelled all the Heroic Poets that ever wrote, in the Multitude and Variety of his Characters. Every God that is admitted into this Poem, acts a Part which would have been suitable to no other Deity. His Princes are as much distinguished by their Manners, as by their Dominions; and even those among them, whose Characters seem wholly made up of Courage, differ from one another as to the particular kinds of Courage in which they excel. In short, there is scarce a Speech or Action in the Iliad, which the Reader may not ascribe to the Person that speaks or acts, without seeing his Name at the Head of it.
Homer does not only outshine all other Poets in the Variety, but also in the Novelty of his Characters. He has introduced among his Grecian Princes a Person who had lived thrice the Age of Man, and conversed with Theseus, Hercules, Polyphemus, and the first Race of Heroes. His principal Actor is the [Son [2]] of a Goddess, not to mention the [Offspring of other Deities, who have [3]] likewise a Place in his Poem, and the venerable Trojan Prince, who was the Father of so many Kings and Heroes. There is in these several Characters of Homer, a certain Dignity as well as Novelty, which adapts them in a more peculiar manner to the Nature of an Heroic Poem. Tho at the same time, to give them the greater Variety, he has described a Vulcan, that is a Buffoon among his Gods, and a Thersites among his Mortals.
Virgil falls infinitely short of Homer in the Characters of his Poem, both as to their Variety and Novelty. AEneas is indeed a perfect Character, but as for Achates, tho he is stiled the Heros Friend, he does nothing in the whole Poem which may deserve that Title. Gyas, Mnesteus, Sergestus and Cloanthus, are all of them Men of the same Stamp and Character.
--Fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.
There are indeed several very Natural Incidents on the Part of Ascanius; as that of Dido cannot be sufficiently admired. I do not see any thing new or particular in Turnus. Pallas and Evander are [remote] Copies of Hector and Priam, as Lausus and Mezentius are almost Parallels to Pallas and Evander. The Characters of Nisus and Eurialus are beautiful, but common. [We must not forget the Parts of Sinon, Camilla, and some few others, which are fine Improvements on the Greek Poet.] In short, there is neither that Variety nor Novelty in the Persons of the AEneid, which we meet with in those of the Iliad.
If we look into the Characters of Milton, we shall find that he has introduced all the Variety [his Fable [4]] was capable of receiving. The whole Species of Mankind was in two Persons at the Time to which the Subject of his Poem is confined. We have, however, four distinct Characters in these two Persons. We see Man and Woman in the highest Innocence and Perfection, and in the most abject State of Guilt and Infirmity. The two last Characters are, indeed, very common and obvious, but the two first are not only more magnificent, but more new [5] than any Characters either in Virgil or Homer, or indeed in the whole Circle of Nature.