As to men wrestling against divinities, that is a received idea. Jacob wrestled one whole night with an angel. If Jupiter sent a deceiving dream to the chief of the Greeks, the Lord also sent a deceiving spirit to King Ahab. These emblems were frequent and astonished nobody. Homer has then painted the ideas of his own age; he could not paint those of the generations which succeeded him. Homer has great faults. Horace confesses it, and all men of taste agree to it; there is only one commentator who is blind enough not to see them. Pope, who was himself a translator of the Greek poet, says: "It is a vast but uncultivated country where we meet with all kinds of natural beauties, but which do not present themselves as regularly as in a garden; it is an abundant nursery which contains the seeds of all fruits; a great tree that extends superfluous branches which it is necessary to prune." Madame Dacier sides with the vast country, the nursery and the tree, and would have nothing curtailed. She was no doubt a woman superior to her sex, and has done great service to letters, as well as her husband, but when she became masculine and turned commentator, she so overacted her part that she piqued people into finding fault with Homer. She was so obstinate as to quarrel even with Monsieur de La Motte. She wrote against him like the head of a college, and La Motte answered like a polite and witty woman. He translated the "Iliad" very badly, but he attacked Madame Dacier very well. We will not speak of the "Odyssey" here; we shall say something of that poem while treating of Ariosto. _Of Virgil._ It appears to me that the second, fourth, and sixth book of the "Æneid" are as much above all Greek and Latin poets, without exception, as the statues of Girardon are superior to all those which preceded them in France. It is often said that Virgil has borrowed many of the figures of Homer, and that he is even inferior to him in his imitations, but he has not imitated him at all in the three books of which I am speaking; he is there himself touching and appalling to the heart. Perhaps he was not suited for terrific detail, but there had been battles enough. Horace had said of him, before he attempted the "Æneid:" _Molle atque facetum_ _Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camoenæ._ Smooth flow his lines, and elegant his style, On Virgil all the rural muses smile. --FRANCIS. "_Facetum_" does not here signify facetious but agreeable. I do not know whether we shall not find a little of this happy and affecting softness in the fatal passion of Dido. I think at least that we shall there recognize the author of those admirable verses which we meet with in his Eclogues: "_Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error_!"--I saw, I perished, yet indulged my pain.--(Dryden.) Certainly the description of the descent into hell would not be badly matched with these lines from the fourth Eclogue: