Of Tasso.

Boileau has exposed the tinsel of Tasso; but if there be a hundred spangles of false gold in a piece of gold cloth, it is pardonable. There are many rough stones in the great marble building raised by Homer. Boileau knew it, felt it, and said nothing about it. We should be just.

We recal the reader's memory to what has been said of Tasso in the Essay on Epic Poetry;* but we must here observe that his verses are known by heart all over Italy. If at Venice any one in a boat sings a stanza of the Jerusalem Delivered, he is answered from a neighbouring bark with the following one.

If Boileau had listened to these concerts, he could have said nothing in reply.

As enough is known of Tasso, I will not repeat here either eulogies or criticisms: I will speak more at length of Ariosto.

Of Ariosto.

Homer's Odyssey seems to have been the first model of the Morgante, of the Orlando Innamorato and the Orlando Furioso; and, what very seldom happens, the last of the poems is without dispute the best.

The companions of Ulysses changed into swine; the winds shut up in goats' skins; the musicians with fishes' tails, who ate all those who approached them; Ulysses, who followed the chariot of a beautiful princess who went to bathe quite naked; Ulysses, disguised as a beggar, who asked alms, and afterwards killed all the lovers of his aged wife, assisted only by his son and two servants,—are imaginations which have given birth to all the poetical romances which have since been written in the same style.

But the romance of Ariosto is so full of variety and so fertile in beauties of all kinds, that after having once read it quite through, I only wish to begin it again. How great the charm of natural poetry! I never could

* Volume of the Henriade.

read a single canto of this poem in a prose translation.

That which above all charms me in this wonderful work is, that the author is always above his subject, and treats it playfully. He says the most sublime things without effort, and he often finishes them by a turn of pleasantry which is neither misplaced nor farfetched. It is at once the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Don Quixote; for his principal knight-errant becomes mad like the Spanish hero, and is infinitely more pleasant.

The subject of the poem which consists of so many things, is precisely that of the romance of Cassandra, which was formerly so much in fashion with us, and which has entirely lost its celebrity, because it had only the length of the Orlando Furioso, and few of its beauties; and even the few being in French prose: five or six stanzas of Ariosto will eclipse them all. His poem closes with the greater part of the heroes and princesses, who have not perished during the war, all meeting in Paris, after a thousand adventures; just as the personages in the romance of Cassandra all finally meet again in the house of Palemon.

The Orlando Furioso possesses a merit unknown to the ancients-it is that of its exordiums. Every canto is like an enchanted palace, the vestibule of which is always in a different taste-sometimes majestic, sometimes simple, and even grotesque. It is moral, lively, or gallant, and always natural and true.†

*We suspect that Voltaire will induce few Englishmen to agree with him. His notion in this respect is very Gallic. Florian has translated Don Quixote into French, omitting every particle of the broad humour by way of improvement!-T.

+ Here Voltaire enters into a formal critique of the Orlando Furioso, which he follows with another upon the Paradise Lost, neither of which would interest the English reader. The latter indeed is entirely out of the question; and possibly the whole article might have been spared, but for the vivacity with which the author advances his opinions of every sort. The deprecation of Homer in comparison with Virgil will be little relished in England.-T.

EPIPHANY:

The Manifestation, the Appearance, the Illustration, the Radiance.

Ir is not easy to perceive what relation this word can have to the three kings or magi, who came from the east under the guidance of a star. That brilliant star was evidently the cause of bestowing on the day of its appearance the denomination of the Epiphany.

It is asked, whence came these three kings? What place had they appointed for their rendezvous? One of them, it is said, came from Africa: he did not, then, come from the east. It is said they were three magi; but the common people have always preferred the interpretation of three kings. The feast of the kings is everywhere celebrated, but that of the magi nowhere: people eat king's-cake and not magi-cake; and exclaim "the king drinks"-not "the magi drink."

Moreover, as they brought with them much gold, incense, and myrrh, they must necessarily have been persons of great wealth and consequence. The magi of that day were by no means very rich. It was not then as in the times of the false Smerdis.

Tertullian is the first who asserted that these three travellers were kings. St. Ambrose, and St. Cæsar of Arles, suppose them to be kings; and the following passages of the lxxi. psalm are quoted in proof of it:— "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall offer him gifts. The kings of Arabia and of Saba shall bring him presents." Some have called these three kings Magalat, Galgalat, and Saraim; others, Athos, Satos, and Paratoras. The catholics knew them under the names of Gaspard, Melchior, and Balthazar. Bishop Osorius relates that it was a king of Cranganor, in the kingdom of Calicut, who undertook this journey with two magi, and that this king on his return to his own country built a chapel to the holy virgin.

It has been enquired how much gold they gave Joseph and Mary. Many commentators declare that

they made them the richest presents; they build on the authority of the gospel of the Infancy, which states that Joseph and Mary were robbed in Egypt by Titus and Dumachus; 66 but," say they, "these men would never have robbed them if they had not had a great deal of money." These two robbers were afterwards hanged; one was the good thief and the other the bad one. But the gospel of Nicodemus gives them other names; it calls them Dimas and Gestas.

The same gospel of the Infancy says that they were magi and not kings who came to Bethlem; that they had in reality been guided by a star, but that the star having ceased to appear while they were in the stable, an angel made his appearance in the form of a star to act in its stead. This gospel asserts that the visit of the three magi had been predicted by Zerdusht, whom we call Zoroaster.

Suarez has investigated what became of the gold which the three kings or magi presented; he maintains that the amount must have been very large, and that three kings could never make a small or moderate present. He says that the whole sum was afterwards given to Judas, who, acting as steward, turned out a rogue and stole the whole amount.

All these puerilities can do no harm to the Feast of the Epiphany, which was first instituted by the Greek church, as the term implies, and was afterwards celebrated by the Latin church.

EQUALITY.

NOTHING can be clearer than that men enjoying the faculties of their common nature are in a state of equality; they are equal when they perform their animal functions, and exercise their understandings. The king of China, the great Mogul, or the Turkish pacha, cannot say to the lowest of his species, "I forbid you to digest your food, to discharge your fæces, or to think.” All animals of every species are on an equality with one another; and animals have by nature, beyond ourselves, the advantages of indepen

dence. If a bull, while paying his attentions to a heifer, is driven away by the horns of another bull stronger than himself, he goes to seek a new mistress in another meadow, and lives in freedom. A cock, after being defeated, finds consolation in another hen-roost. It is not so with us. A petty vizir banishes a bostangi to Lemnos; the vizir Azem banishes the petty vizir to Tenedos; the pacha banishes the vizir Azem to Rhodes; the janissaries imprison the pacha, and elect another, who will banish the worthy mussulmen just when and where he pleases, while they will feel inexpressibly obliged to him for so gentle a display of his authority.

If the earth were, in fact, what it might be supposed it should be, if men found upon it everywhere an easy and certain subsistence, and a climate congenial to their nature, it would be evidently impossible for one man to subjugate another. Let the globe be covered with wholesome fruits; let the air on which we depend for life convey to us no diseases and premature death; let man require no other lodging than the deer or roebuck; in that case the Gengis-Khans and Tamerlanes will have no other attendants than their own children, who will be very worthy persons, and assist them affectionately in their old age.

In that state of nature enjoyed by all undomesticated quadrupeds, and by birds and reptiles, man would be just as happy as they are. Domination would be a mere chimera, an absurdity which no one would think of; for why should servants be sought for when no service is required?

If it should enter the mind of any individual of a tyrannical disposition and nervous arm to subjugate his less powerful neighbour, his success would be impossible; the oppressed would be on the Danube before the oppressor had completed his preparations on the Wolga.

All men, then, would necessarily have been equal had they been without wants; it is the misery attached to our species which places one man in subjection to another: inequality is not the real grievance, but de