and, above all, _non omnes omnia_ must be constantly kept in mind. It is better to begin with pastorals and minor subjects; solitude and country life are very desirable circumstances. And so Book I. closes with a fresh invocation of the spirit of poetry and a fresh celebration of its power. ----- Footnote 37: _Insignis facie ante alios_, ed. Oxon., p. 215. ----- After this rather ample prelude the author somewhat unreasonably (seeing that the delay has been his own doing), but in coachmanlike fashion, says _Pergite! Pierides_, and proposes to unfold the whole of Helicon to coming ages. The first disclosure is scarcely novel. You must invoke Jove and the Muses; nor will one Invocation do. When in doubt always invoke.[38] Next you should, without holding out bombastic promises, allure your reader by a modest but sufficient description of the subject of your poem. So far the method of turning the practice of the ancients into a principle is impartially adjusted to Homer and Virgil alike; but after a few score verses the partisan appears. The beginnings of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, the plunging into the midst of things with the wrath of Achilles, and the sojourn with Calypso, instead of the rape of Helen (why not of Hesione?) or the launching from Troy, are duly praised. But the elaborate Homeric descriptions—as that of the car—are boggled at; the introduction of Thersites shocks Vida (Drances seems a far nobler figure), and the pettiness of the subjects of some of the Homeric similes would never suit the magniloquence of the Latian Muse.[39] In Virgil, on the other hand, he can see no fault; even the demand of Venus for arms to clothe her bastard son, which had given qualms to admirers of old, does not disturb Vida at all; and his poem seems to be slipping by degrees into a mere _précis_ of the _Æneid_, that each trait actually found in Virgil may be registered as a pattern to poets generally. He wrenches himself free for a moment to inculcate the following of nature; but presently lapses into an elaborate demonstration of the beautiful way in which the Mantuan _does_ follow nature. In short, though now and then to “save his face” an illustration is drawn _honoris causa_ from Homer, this Second Book on the _ordonnance_ of the poem is, till it ceases with a panegyric of Leo X., little more than a descant _On the Imitation of Virgil_. ----- Footnote 38: For a very interesting and characteristic view of this “invoking” in the next generation, see Castelvetro, _Op. Var._, _ed. cit. inf._, pp. 79-99. Footnote 39: “Drances ... consiliis non futilis auctor, Dives opum, pollens lingua et popularibus auris. ... Neque enim in Latio magno ore sonantem Arma ducesque decet tam viles decidere in res.” It is interesting to hear the watchword “Low!” so early. -----