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from the Muses, always invoke them, and extend to them all that they say." For a fuller and most admirable account of the poetic mania, and of the different species of poetry by Proclus, see the notes on the tenth book of the Republic, in my translation of Plato, and also the Introduction to my translation of the Rhetoric, Poetic, and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle.
From what is here said by Hermeas about enthusiasm, the intelligent reader will easily see that none of the Roman poets, whose works have been transmitted to us, possessed that which is primarily, properly, and truly enthusiasm, or that highest species of it in which the one of the soul is illuminated by a divine nature, and through transcendent similitude is united to it. As to Virgil, indeed, the prince of these poets, though he invokes the Muse in the beginning of the Æneid, yet his invocation of her is but a partial and secondary thing. For he only calls on her to unfold to him the causes that involved a man of such remarkable piety as Æneas in so many misfortunes: Musa, mihi causa memora, &c. And, confiding in his own genius, he begins his poem without soliciting supernal inspiration, Arma, virumque cano, &c. To which may be added, that this placing himself before the Muse, resembles the ego et meus rex of Wolsey. On the contrary, divinely-inspired poets, as Hermeas well observes, knock, as it were, at the gates of the Muses, and thus being filled from thence exclaim, Ανδρα μοι εννεπε Μουσα.Εσπετε νυν μοι Μουσαι And, Ανδρα μοι εννεπε Μουσα.Μηνιν αειδε θεα— And, Ανδρα μοι εννεπε Μουσα. For being always extended to them, they dispose the whole of what they afterwards say as derived from their inspiring influence. With an arrogance too, peculiar to the Romans, who, as a certain Greek poet[1] says, were a people Beyond measure proud. He associates himself, in his fourth Eclogue, with the Muses, as their equal: Sicelides Musæ, paulo majora canamus.
- ↑ Vid. Olympiodor. in Aristot. Meteor.
