" Musadeclitifdibus divos, puerosque deorum, Et pngilem victorem, et equum certamine prinium, Et Juvenum curas, et libera viva referre."—Ars Poetica.
The ode, therefore, is necessarily a composition in which dignity, energy, and passion, are conspicuous; it is usually meant to be a warm transcript of the poet's heart—a cha racter which it still, in a great measure, retains, though, in modern times, it has been divided into four denomina tions, each more or less distinct and different from the others. These arc sacred odes ; heroic odes; moral and philosophical odes ; festive and amatory odes. The two first possess the distinction by which the ode was origi nally 'narked, elevation and pathos ; while the two last are of a more subdued and tame description, in general ele gant and nervous, though sometimes gay and sportive. To the festive and amatory ode belong songs of every charac ter, and of every degree of merit. The most celebrated writers of odes of antiquity are Pindar, Anacreon, Horace. In England, the names of Cowley, Dryden, Collins, Gray, Smollett, will at once occur to every poetic reader. " Dry den's Ode to St. Cecilia," " The Tears of Scotland," by Smullett, and " Collins's Ode to the Passions," may be mentioned as, probably, the finest specimens of lyric com position which the country has yet produced.
As not unconnected with the ode, or rather as a species of it, the Elegy may be mentioned. " It is," says Johnson, " the effusion of a contemplative mind, sometimes plain tive, always serious, and, therefore, superior to the glitter of artificial ornaments." It was originally appropriated to mourn the death of a friend, a benefactor, or a distinguish ed character; but it was afterwards used in a wider sense, and came to express the grief of lovers, and every species of distress and disappointment. Poets of almost every age and nation have cultivated, with various success, elegiac composition ; but "The Country Church Yard" of Gray probably stands unrivalled in ancient or modern times. "It abounds," says the author just quoted, " with images which find a mirror in every breast, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." But though lyric poetry be regarded as the first species in use among savage tribes, yet the Epic has a claim to nearly as remote an origin, and certainly at least it retains its original characteristics as unpolluted as any other divi sion of the art. The recital of the achievements of heroes and of ancestors, of warriors who had fallen, or who had conquered in battle—and this recital would literally con stitute epic poetry,—would naturally be a subject which, in the earliest periods of society, would call forth the poet's powers, and which he would wish to embalm and perpetuate in song. And this mode of poetic writing, be sides beiog old, is allowed to be the most dignified, eleva ted, and majestic, fitted only for the cultivation of men of the finest and most diversified genius. A story, or the
achievements of a single hero, are regarded as indispen sable requisites in an epic poem, both to excite the in terest and admiration of the reader, and to connect the subsidiary narratives and episodes of the work. It has been compared to tragedy, and indeed the only essential difference between the two is, that the epic employs nar rative, and in sonic respects partakes rather of the cha racter of historical composition ; while tragedy represents incidents as appearing before our eyes, and her heroes and actors speaking their own sentiments, and engaged in all the bustle and fervour of active existence. Tragedy, therefore, displays characters chiefly by means of senti ments and passions which seem to pass under our review ; epic poetry chiefly by actions. Epic poetry, besides, is a less animated and impassioned composition, and deals more in narrative and description than tragedy. It re quires indeed occasional bursts of energetic and overpow ering emotions, but these are not its leading characteris tics. 1 he emotions, however, which it does excite, if not so ft eque.it or so violent as those of dramatic composition, are more prolonged and more developed by actual occur rences; for it embraces a wider compass of time and action than the kind of writing with which we are con trasting it. The action of the Odyssey, for example, ex tends to eight years and a half ; that of the li,neid about six years. The epic poet is not obliged to confine himself to historical truth ; fiction, invention, imagination, may be admitted almost to any extent, at the expense of scrupu lous accuracy, provided always the poet sin not against the unities, or that his work, according to the language of critics, embrace an entire action, or have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the distinguishing quality of the great epic poems. The object, for example, of the Odyssey, is the return and establishment of Ulysges in his own country ; and amid all the ramifications of the poem, every portion of it has its proper and suitable dimensions ; the great object is steadily kept in view, and every sen tence and every apparent departure from the subject, is made powerfully and directly conducive to the interest and progress of it. In this department of writing, in addi tion to the work just mentioned, the most distinguished are Virgil's Eneid, Tasso's Jerusalem. Lucan's Pharsalia, Statius's Thebaid, Camoens' Lusiad, Voltaire's Henriade, Cambray's Telemachus, Ossian's Fingal and Temora, Milton's Paradise Lost, Glover's Leonidas, Wilkie's Epi goniad.