the principal Actions which we may believe possible as human; and which may cause admiration in us, as being rare and of an elevated character. In a word, we shou'd have nothing but what is great, yet still let it be human: in the human, we must carefully avoid mediocrity; and fable, in that which is great.
I am by no means willing to compare the Pharsalia to the Æneis; I know the just difference of their value: but as for what purely regards elevation, Pompey, Cesar, Cato, Curio, and Labienus, have done more for Lucan, than Jupiter, Mercury, Juno, Venus, and all the train of the other Gods and Goddesses, have done for Virgil.
The ideas which Lucan gives us of these great men, are truly greater, and affect us more sensibly than those which Virgil gives us of his Deities. The latter has clothed his Gods with human infirmities, to adapt them to the capacity of Men: the other has raised his Heroes so, as to bring them into competition with the Gods themselves:
Victrix causa Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.
In Virgil, the Gods are not so valuable as the Heroes: in Lucan, the Heroes equal the Gods. To give you my opinion freely, I believe that the Tragedy of the Antients might have suffer'd a happy loss in the banishment of their Gods, their Oracles, and Soothsayers.
For it proceeded from these Gods, these Oracles, and these Diviners, that the Stage was sway'd by a Spirit of Superstition and Terror, capable of infecting mankind with a thousand errors, and overwhelming them with more numerous mischiefs. And if we consider the usual impressions which
