home again, and thither would have conducted his Subjects. But spite of all the attempts, which his eagerness to return home again put him upon, There are Tempests which stop him by the way for several Years together, and cast him upon several Countries very different from one another as to their Manners and Government. In the dangers he was in, his Companions, not always following his Orders, perish'd through their own fault. The Grandees of his Country do very strangely abuse his absence, and raise no small disorders at home. They consume his Estate, conspire to make away with his Son, would constrain his Queen to chose one of them for her Husband, and indulge themselves in all these Violences so much the more, because they were perswaded he would never return. But at last he returns, and discovering himself to his Son and some others, who had continu'd Loyal to him, he is an Eye-witness of the Insolence of his Enemies, punishes them according to their deserts, and restores to his Island that Tranquility and Repose, which they had been strangers to during his absence."
As the Truth, which serves as a Foundation to this Fiction, and which with it makes the Fable, is, That the absence of a Person from his own Home, or who has not an Eye to what is done there, is the cause of great disorders: So the principal Action, and the most Essential one, is the absence of the Hero. This fills almost all the Poem: For not only this bodily absence lasted several Years, but even when the Hero return'd, he does not discover himself; and this prudent disguise, from whence he reap'd so much advantage, has the same effect upon the Authors of the Disorders, and all others who knew him not, as his real absence had; so that he is absent as to them, till the very moment he punish'd them.
After the Poet had thus compos'd his Fable, and join'd the Fiction to the Truth, he then makes choice of Ʋlysses, the King of the Isle of Ithaca, to maintain the Character of his chief Personage, and bestow'd the rest upon Telemachus, Penelope, Antinous, and others, whom he calls by what names he pleases.
I shall not here insist upon the many excellent Advices, which are as so many parts, and natural Consequences of the Fundamental Truth; and which the Poet very dexterously lays down in those Fictions, which are the Episodes and Members of the entire Action, such for instance are these Advices: Not to intrude ones self into the Mysteries of Government, which the Prince keeps secret to himself. This is represented to us by the Winds shut up in a Bull-hide, which the miserable Companions of Ʋlysses must needs be so foolish as to pry into: Not to suffer ones self to be lead away by the seeming Charms of an idle and lazy life, to which the [1]Sirens Songs invite Men: Not to suffer ones self to be sensualiz'd by pleasures, like thosewho
- ↑ Improba Siren desidia. Hor.
